00:00:00 Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this is the best news to ever happen 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 checkout and you get five bucks off any of our previous volumes. Go check it out. Prime viewing for you. All right, thanks for joining the Meat Eater Podcast. We're recording in a very teeny sounding hotel room and Bethel, Alaska. Bethel Alaska is in western Alaska. Specifically, it's where the Costa Quim River flows out into the Bearing Sea. Just north of here, you've got the Yukon River flowing out into the Bearing Sea, and so the delta that these two things form. People say it's the Yukon Cuska Quim Delta or y K delta. It's way bigger than the delta made by the Mississippi flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. It's actually, um, the y K delta is bigger than the state of Louisiana. It's a huge tundra delta. And this area is predominantly Um. There's six thousand people in Bethels, predominantly Native Alaska. Uh Yupik Eskimo. We're coming from an island, Nu Nevak Island, which is forty miles out into the Bering Sea Islands, about forty miles by sixty miles approximately, and that's Chupic Eskimo out there. UM. And the only chupas like Chupas just live on New Nevak. There's two hundred people on New Nevak Island in a town called McCory Uck, and that's where we're coming from. We're just out there hunting muskox. But speaking of how big the y K delta is, Um, we're here with Mike washed Leski. You've never done one of these Mica. We kind we kind of try to do on an anchors, but I didn't have a hot Mica, Mike's done him. But Mike has done him. But as Mike was on so kind of no, and we were asking Mike, Mike's from Texas, and this morning we were asking Mike if why is Texas so into the thing about how their states so big? But it's not the biggest state. It's like Texas fits inside of Alaska, but Texans are. It's a big thing. It's like no other second place thing acts like it's the first place thing. I think it's because it was its own country, so that's the claim to fame. I guess a certain degree. It's the biggest in the lower forty eight. I guess you could just say that, yeah, but it's it's probably carrying over from when before, from before Alaska became a state and then it was Okay, what's the sports team that used to be good? Now they suck? Well. It's like like the Packers. The Packers ever used to win that they always win the Super Bowls in the old days. I feel like they did. They've been great. Okay, so people the Packers don't run around and being like, yeah, number one champion, right, It's like you used to be you're not now now you're just like a team. Yeah texts. You guys are just like a state. Texas has a lot of pride. Yeah, I mean people get tattooed. I mean how many tattoos you see have, Like you know, Massachusetts on somebody's shoulder. Well here that you tattooed nine oh seven on your arm. That the areas a single area code state like Wyoming. So what happens whenever there's another area code and you happen to have that tattoo, you do slash, then you're you're the next the next three time. It's like a remember also so so Mike's a camera operator and still photographer um and works with us on the show Media. We're actually coming from filming an episode of Media and we're also joined by Honest But tell us who who you know is always hanging around? It's always kind of murmuring in the background there. And then Corey, how do you say your last name? Catch mark or catch mark or kasmeric? Which do you like? Depending on the day. It's like, if you want to tell someone how it sounds, it's kasmeric if you look at it. Yeah, Corey comes from a big state, sixty six miles wide, Montana, and um, what's super interesting about Corey. Tell them what you used to do before you start being a cameraman. I'll tell him Corey was the dude. Corey is one of the dude is it jumps out of the helicopter with the snowboard and goes down a big, huge mountain that looks like you're gonna die. Talk about that just for a quick second. I've been snowboarding like twenty five years, and uh, I think my favorite kind of snowboarding is big mountain snow waring. So I used to compare bing mountain, big mountain, big. Sorry I got a little bit of a cold, but uh yeah, I was competed at a professional level, traveled around big mountain snow waring. I one time asked Corey, we're hunting, and I asked Corey if there's ever been a mountain the other dudes would go down on their snowboard and he wouldn't go down. And at the time he said, no, You've never seen a dude go down a hill. And then you said, there's no way I'm going down that hill. I could go down the hill. There might be routes where right now in my age, I'm only thirty nine, But that's old for a snowboarder to be jumping off fifty sixty ft cliffs. Yeah, you know, K two or I don't know what. Everest would be one that I would question, but it was at low elevation. I could probably make it down. Okay. You know it's the elevation that will get you on those mountains. What do you mean, I mean just the air, the air. Yeah, you could just be snowboarding and just pass out, you know, is that right? Oh? Yeah? Hey, what what is it? What's the death zone twenty? What is it? I think? So? Do you snowboard downhills where I don't want? I do want to talk about snowboard for a minute. Um, do you snowboard down hills or if you fell you would die? Yes? Yeah, I do that a lot. So you have to keep up right, Yeah, you don't want to fall or usually it's you're exposed. So if it's steep enough where you can like fall and you start getting momentum, it's the rag dolling effecting when you're going to pass over heels all the way down the mountain, you know, and then that's when you will probably die, have trauma or go over a cliff for you know, so you don't want to smack into a tree or trees. Did that happen a lot? I mean, do you see that like when it happens all time? Well, I mean like during a competition. Oh, during competitions, he can't get to the bottom hill for all the carcasses land everywhere. There are deaths. There are some deaths in that competitive scene. You know, it's just unfortunate. But you are a risk. You know, it's a time of day. Wake up, it's competition day. Or at the top, and you're gonna push your limits. And some people try to go a little past their limits, or some people just mess up off takeoffs and maybe landing and then an oncoming rock or cliff because you're missing you're looking at it from the bottom with your binoculars, this mountain face, and then you have to go up top and kind of turn that whole you know vision in your head because you're gonna go down the mountain now, so you're flipping the image and you have to remember like this rock, this tree, this four ft tree, you know, three ft to the left. I'm gonna take off there and it's gonna be a two ft wide landing and then I gotta take a hard left here because this is a you know, there's other trees or another forty ft cliff, so you gotta like it's a little puzzy putting to your head, and then you know you're at the finish line hopefully. And how fast you're going, I mean it's depending on your route route finding. Are you judged on speed? It's not really speed. You know. The judging criteria was line choice, which the line you pick going down the mountain, control your fluidity or aggressiveness, and um style. It sounds like a lot of like pretty arbitrary stuff. It's like figure scanning. Yeah you know that, but what speed would you hit? Oh, you can hit easy, you know, you points point to shoot for a long period of time. You can be going fifty easily. So do you do? You go on these mountains like side unseen, like you're like, here's your mountain, figure out the map and then you've never actually done the rap up. Yeah. True, that's at the high level. The low level, they'll let you go onto the face, ski around, look off things. You know. It's called an inspection day. You get one run through and you get the find your route and that you know, it's pretty explosive skiing when you have when you can go see where you're going. So these guys are just flying on the mountain, but when you have a there's actually a contest the World Tours in Handes, Alaska this week, and would you normally be at that right now? I followed that tour. I used to snowboard on that tour for two years and I've worked at probably like four years worked as a camera. So yeah, you just it's just the adrenaline thing. It's like hunting, like probably sheep or something. I would say I hunt, but on that like these guys, you know, not like Steve, those who are listening, but you know, you get that scene adrenaline rush, probably chasing sheep, walking these cliff edges, trying to find the sheet probably and you don't want to fall here with your big pack on. If you do, you're gonna get messed up a way in the back country. And it kind of brings me and Mike peeked over a couple of edges. I wasn't about snowboard down. Yeah, I was just like Steve, you can go ahead up over that edge. I'm just not cool right here. So uh, let's go way way back. I'm gonna go way back in time from it here. During like the place the scene epic, you had musk cocks all the way likes there's a term circumpolar, like muscles like the blue muscle eat when you get muscles in the restaurant, the blue muscles circumpolar. There's a band of latitudes around the globe that that muscle exists at. Okay um. Way back during the place the scene, European stone ages, you know where you've got humans spread around but still a long time ago, muskoks were circumpolar. They were like all through the Arctic, but way down man like, there's cave paintings of muskox down in France, so chro magnet people Stone age Europeans were hunting from muskoks. If it's any indication that they used to paint the stuff they haunted on cave walls from thirty thousand, thirty five thousand years ago, you had muskoks way down there. Um. Interestingly, by the time anyone, due to under our current understanding, by the time any human being step foot in the Western hemisphere. In this step foot in North America. Muskox only existed in North America. It seems by that point in time, um when the Russians first started dick and around in the Arctic, and you know, some American Americans are coming up, not quite Americans yet, but we're coming up into the Arctic. They're running the musk ox all through Alaska, the Canadian High Arctic into Greenland like everywhere. But they whittled away at him and whittled away at him, and they by about eighteen twenty muskox were gone from Alaska extra paated. Uh, you'll offer if you read about what happened all the muskox and like, let me let me back up one quick second. A musk ox is a big wooly animal with like a horn boss whereas horns dropped down and sort of gold on the side of his head and curl out, Like what's that haircut? We're saying, I can't because at a Betty Page. Yeah. No, it's like little Debbie on a little Debbie snap cake. Yeah. If you ever eating a little Debbie what what are some of those little devvie deals? Remember those? Uh? Uh, she's a big sponsored big dan you're na dingdong um, it's like a muskox is horns like are sort of plastered over the top of his head and dropped straight down into candy cane hooks. They got real wooly coats. In fact, they produced a wold called kivot and it's supposed to be x times warmer than any other kind of wool on the planet. A big bowl might be six hundred pounds um. And they live in coastal Arctic regions. People you'll read different things. You read like, oh, the Russian fur traders wiped out the musk Ox, and then some people will point out that the Russian fur traders didn't actually wipe out the Muskoks. Natives wiped out the Muskox operating on behalf of Russian fur traders who wanted to meet in the hides. So whatever it was, Russians came in flashing big money around and people shot the Muskox out. Period Like when you hear about Arctic explorers, you hear about the guy named Peery. Some guys sat down and figured out how many Muskoks did Peries expeditions alone account for, and they feel like PERI killed six hundred Muskoks to feed his expeditions. The Arctic explorer Stephenson, he's always eating muskox um. We'll get into why it's easy to wipe out muskoks some how. You could probably wipe out muskox the second time if you felt like it, within about five months, five or six months if you felt like it. They're not difficult to find. But they wiped them out of a Laska by the mid eighteen hundreds. Then in nineteen thirty, I'm just giving you some background here. In nineteen thirty, they brought thirty some muskoks from Greenland, one of the places where they hadn't been extrapated. So like the super remote Ship, muskox never got killed out of They never got killed out of Greenland. And I think like Banks Island, the Coronation goldf Area, the way Canadian hier Arctic stuff, they never got wiped out of soties. Someone was like, man, we should get some muskoks back. They went to Greenland, got some muskox and eventually put those muskaks out on New Nevak Island in the Bearing Sea, which is off western Alaska, and they dumped them out on Nunivak Island and they just let them start reproducing, and it wasn't much time at all. They had hundreds of the things. So at that point in time, like as late as nineteen the only muskox that existed in the US besides for a captive zoo specimen here and there were the pop was the population on Nanovac or nun Novak. They went out and caught some of those in the sixties to start an experimental herd in Fairbanks where they wanted to start messing around with this idea of using it as an agricultural product, where you'd raise muskox to get the wool kiveot and you'd have like economic development in rural areas. That seems to have kind of gone nowhere. As that heard on Nunivak expanded, they kept grew in numbers, they kept peeling off some to start all these herds. And now if you look at a map of Alaska where a musk ox live, they're kind of like back to everywhere they would have been. You got them on Seward Peninsula. The first muskox I've ever seen the first time, the first three times I ever ran into muskox was all hunting carried on the north slope they got muskots on the north slope around Prudeo Bay. They're around and that's kind of how they came to be. So hunting opportunities are extremely limited for muskox. The hunt I did the State of Alaska. The hunt just did. The State of Alaska calls like d X O O three. It's a hunt unit you apply for. It's a tag that's good from February one to March fifteen on now Nevak Island and it has I don't know, it's about a nine percent chance of drawn the tag. They're giving out fewer and fewer tags right now. The herds not doing great on now Nevak. I think this year they gave out twenty tags for the winter hunt and then I don't know, five or ten tags for the summer hunt. Um the spring hunt they calls the March hunt. And it's cold. So did you choose no Nevak specifically or their other draws in different areas of the this year, now Nevak is the only drawing nonresident can put in for. So like the way Alaska run hunts, Alaska has over the counter stuff, which is just over the counter stuff. Tag you're gonna buy you can buy the day you want to go hunting. They have registration hunts which are first come, first serve open to residents. Then they have like the Then they have like a Tier one draw which is a resident draw. Then they have just like the drawing hunts. And so if a non resident wants to put in for a musk ox tag. So if you don't live in Alaska and you want to hunt muskox right now, now Nevaks your only option. You can go up the Northwest Territories and is by permits from guides, but if you want to hunt here, that's it now Nevak Island. I was awarded one of the tags several years ago and wasn't able to go, and I never thought it would have had another chance. It's was not even fair that you can draw it and draw again, like a lot of stose not that way. If you draw a buffalo tag in Alaska, that's it for the rest of your life. If you draw a toke sheep tag, it's it for like four or seven years. I don't know why they let you keep cracking on muskox. It's not fair, but I did it, and I got a second tag and went back and we just got back. Um. It was interesting was that the locals on the island had to It was a first come, first first come, first served basis on the island. Even you know the two people there, I think, uh one are One of our guys was saying Raymond that he stood in line when he was the first one there and he was two days early, two days a good tag. So yeah, tags are always distribute, like generally, I shouldn't say always. Registration hunts are you go online and get the tag. It's like or you go something you have to go into the actual office and get a tag. So you might have a registration hunt where you gotta go to Bethel, Alaska to pick up your tag, right, and it really limits it two dudes in Bethel because people aren't generally gonna fly to Bethel to pick up a tag. The residents the Chupic on now Nevak Island every year get allocated some number of tags. This year, I think it was five cow tags, five bull tags. There's two people that live on the island. Um, it's not online, it's said a dude from Alaska Department and Fishing Game flies out there with the tags and hands the tags out to the first guy's waiting in line. So Rain was saying, the same people seem to get the tags every year. So he went and waited in line two days in a row this year, so that when the guy showed up he got a cow tag for a muskox. Yeah, and he's out there right now. He's out there today. He's probably out butchering a muskox right now, and that's a subsistence hunt for him. There are a lot of muskox hunts in alas where it's a registration hunt and you have to destroy the head of the muskox. You have to saw the horns in half. They have those from moves too. You know, they don't want you doing the hunt. They don't want a trophy dude coming out to do the hunt, so they make it that. Sure, you can go get the registration thing and hunt the muskox, but you don't get to keep the head. You gotta destroy the head. I read an article about a guy who was involved in the game commission in Alaska who tried to pull a fast one, and he because you can buy handicrafts from indigenous people like you know, if people are trying to sell US seal hats. Right, you can't buy a seal skin from a native lad like you can't buy a seal skin from a chup, for instance, because of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. But if that individual takes that sealskin and make something out of it, you can buy it from him, Like you can buy carved ivory, but you can't buy raw ivory. So could they give you so say, this is a square seal towel. That's the thing. That's what I People wonder about that all the time, and like, I don't know, it's somewhere it's spelled out. But anyway, some guy had gone, so I'm gonna go do a registration muskox, hunt, kill my musk ox, give the head to a native woman, have her do a carving on it, and then buy it back from her. And they determined that that violated the spirit of that law. I'd be like, just a little teeny carving on the bottom would be fine. Write your name on the upper palette, the one that sits on the wall. So the first like the biggest thing that coming up, like coming up to go out and hunt? What else should we say? What else is important to established about musk cos it tastes good talking more about that, boss, you know. I read that the horns and then the skull beneath it to where the brain cavity star is eight to ten inches. Muskox bash heads one name. It's like sheep, dude, Like when big horns are bashing heads, it sounds like a twenty two rifle. In fact, I was out hunting one time and thought a guy kept shooting a gun and later realized there was two big horns cracking heads. I saw a big horn ram a tree one time. I counted he ran that tree seventy five times, like quickcounting are seventy five times in real a bighorn sheep can withstand forty times. The bighorn sheep can withstand the amount of power to his head forty times greater than what would fracture your skull. Why do you think he was in a trade for practice, just getting pumped up. I guess it's this time of year. It was September. They don't run till November. Like a football player. Just like banging his helmet. He was banging a ponder roles the pine and all those buddies must have did the same things is ponder rolls a pine look like someone had been hitting with a baseball bat for about three years. That was nuts, so they got what. Yeah, it's called a horn boss where the horns are like on top of their head. It's like if a girl who's got thickle hair pulls, splits her hair down the center and makes a braid or like a pony a pigtail, and almost like almost like piggy tails would be like a hair boss. And the horn boss is just this amorphous blob of horn that sits up there and as the bull gets bigger, girls bigger and bigger, and that thing's polished off like someone took a palm stander to it. It looks kind of like an ass. It does not off anyone, I know. It's ass like in that it has a gluteal crease, has a crack um. Beautiful animals when you're when you're reading about muscos, because muscots like live in the Arctic, and the real wooly people eyes like an ice age relic. But all animals that we know about today, with the exception of perhaps the mule deer, are ice age relics. I never I think people say that because it's wooly. But like, why do people say human beings the ice age relics? Like we were live during the ice age, or you might say the field mouse. It's just it's because it still lives in a ice age like climate. Is that what they mean? You remember the lead up to the Iraq War, I was reading that Saddam Hussein had published several books of poetry and novels, and I would always say Saddam Hussein, the poet novelist. You know, it's like in conversation that say, yeah, you know, Saddam was saying the poet novelists. His country is being invaded. Um, but yeah, like everything's like everything's the ice age relic. But that might be what they mean, that it's out on the tundra, which would mean you'd have to say, um, a vole, the ice age relic. He still lives on the tundra. You know. It's just looks like a throwback to like that's what it is. You think you're looking at a mammoth. That thing had hair on it, the one we butcher, the muskox we butchered had hair on it. It was over eighteen inches long, short of a horse's tail nothing his hair like that. It's very interesting to see him standing there and then actually moving running and it's almost like they had a skirt around him, and that hair almost seemed like it was close to the almost hits the ground almost. The writer Peter Matheson who wrote a book about like there's some natives called Muskox, not on, not the Tupic, but some natives called Muskox m mac. Peter Matheson wrote this book. It's sort of like a magazine article that turned into a book that he wrote, and he relates that wool, the way it sways. He talks about it reminds him of chain mail moving. And he also has a line where when they're in tall grass, the grass coming up from the ground and the wool coming down from the animal meat in a way that makes it hard to sort of distinguish where one ends and one begins. It's kind of like they're just gliding across the As the animal moves, they do seem to glide like they're on wheels, almost super wooly. And um, I remember, like when I was working on my Buffalo book, I remember reading it. They did this study where they took um different animals. They had a high a Scottish Highland cattle, Tibettan yak, and a buffalo and put them in context containers and started lowering the temperature to find out at which point the animals metabolic rate went up in response to the to the dropping temperature like a basically like when you started shivering and getting like not relaxed. And they had I think they had like an angus in there. He tapped out at like ten degrees um. The Scottish Highland cattle tapped out, the Tibetan yak tapped out the coldest they could get that context container was negative forty, and the buffalo was still relaxing. But I'm telling you a muskox smoked that thing. You can't. You can't find his body, you know what I'm saying, When he's laying there dead. You can't. If you can't get your hand to where it's touching leather, like where you parted, Like if you're looking at your dog to find ticks, you can't do that with the muscox. You can't find him underneath there. It's really hard to tell what isn't there. You know, it's very thick, which you guess that we were just packing that we checked in the hide already at Alaska air And how's that hideway? Yeah, I threw it on the Yeah, the hide no hooves on it. So this is a hide cut from the ankle, skinned out and clean skinned. I mean not a scrap of fat or meat on that hide. That hideway pounds well, Hilayer scan too is super dance too, way thick fact fat leather the biggest thing I'll say this like as begin to this discussion, my muskuts, I just want to cut right to the main primary point and and and leading up to this hunt, not the primary point, but just something that this is gonna tea off a whole of the conversation leading up to this hunt. I was sorry to this dude who was saying, it's not really a hunt, it's like an experience. And when we're out, I had observed to someone how all animals have like a vulnerability um that we exploit when we hunt them. You know, deer are suckers for alfalfa and shelled corn right um. Turkeys when they're breeding, they're very vocal, uh right everything sure kind of find your weakness. And that's how ducks are gregarious. Ducks want to be around other ducks, so you play that against them. He makes sounds of sound like a duck. You put out some fake ducks. Duck can't help himself. He's gotta go check it out. You know. Generally the thing you exploit on the musk ox is they just got nowhere to go for one, and they'll bunch up when they're threatened. They'll they'll bunch up and stand around, and it's easy to see how dudes wipe them out. They got nowhere to go, you know, and they can't really put on miles very fat, like not that fat, not like most stuff can put on miles. So this guy was saying, the hunts more of the experience, and I can say that it is, and I would almost haven't done it now. I would almost say that it's not really a hunt. But what makes it like the hunting the animal? I wouldn't say it's really like a hard hunt. What makes it what it is is the conditions you're dealing with and the getting to the place you're going to and being in the place you're going to. It's tough, Like how would you guys sort of describe the cold and wind it's full tundra, negative below with that wind. The win chill what was it called we saw I think negative it was negative ten, no win chill. Yeah, that's just that was just air temperature with the winds with Yeah, yesterday it was I mean there was guys like the thirty and so I just I mean, I think who knows what the win shill was, probably negative. I mean it was cold. You're in the middle of the Baring Sea, so the humidity level is way high. It's like the comparing Michigan ten degrees to Montana ten degrees. That Michigan ten degrees is way but this is way different. Yeah, like this island is not. It's hard. At times. We're fishing cod tom cod through the ice. I couldn't tell when I was land around ice. Yeah, it's all just a big white blanket that's undulating. It's like I feel like we aren't we kind of drilling a hole over the dirt. You realize that you are. It's like there's no real protective buffer on land, no vegetation. Well, I mean there's tundra, but nothing to block the wind. The wind howls and the funny thing is like they've they've got you know, sand dunes, but they're made of snow. Yeah it's nice and you know it's soft, but those are I mean those are sand. You know, there's snow dunes just blasted by the wind. There's move just as you know a sand dune would on the beach. But it's just white, blistering cold. I was wearing just just this is just the girls stand around. I was wearing bunny boots. Bunny boots are like government issue cold weather Korean war boots, which are rated to negative sixty three degrees fahrenheit, which you know, who should go ahead and just jump in and promote some bunny boots because if anybody does any cold by their activities and need some cold boots, and you're not gonna really hike too far in spend the bucks, get some military serapost bunny boots, and you will not be disciplined. There really isn't. No one makes a boot that can go. No one makes an equivalent. There is no equivalent. And the other thing is it's sealed rubber, so like we always warm ice fishing, because you can't you can fill the boot up with water, but the water can't get to the insulation. It's it's wool sealed between rubber bunny boots. If you like bunny boots, these big gass white boots to actually have a pressure valve on the side that you need to like open when you're flying so you don't burst the boot. When I was a kid, there were five bucks. I mean, we just had bunny boots. Man, five bucks apiece. Now they're what yeah, something like that, and they got like instructions written on them. It says like double lace to hold firmly, and then it says, um, open valve when airborne. And they're white, they're great. Yeah nothing nothing. I mean running on them was terrible and yeah, yeah you sweat. They're not for walking. Man. People call Mickey mouse boots too. But then I was here and like black, I didn't know this till recently. If you see black bonny boots, which are Mickey mouse boots, they're not. I thought it's just you could get them in black or in white. But black is not as cold rated as white blacks negative twenty. White's negative sixty something, which is one of the few things in life that's actually true, because like when someone tells you sleeping bags rated for negative tent. They're lying. That's the survival rating though, Yeah, the comfort ratings probably like yeah, survival rating, like I always go, I don't know, I are you sleeping bag? That's probably like I'll generally go ten or twenty degrees off of what they're saying. Is the rating for me? It's my legs get cold anyways. These boots are legit war mask. Never been had such comfortable feet out in towns like that. So yeah, So I'm running around and like thick Marino blend socks, Bunny boots, Marino ljs. Then like h are yeah, I kind of sweat panty thing down pants. Then like the new first Light bibs way call him Sanctuary, which are some heavy nice bibs synthetic installation. Then I got a Marino bass layer, a Marino hoodie, a flee shirt, the same first Light type Sanctuary jacket. Then a giant down puffy, a net gator, a face mask, another face mask, a fur hat, gloves and beaver fer mittens and goggles and goggles. And at that point you're feeling pretty bulletproof, like you're just not cold. Did you get cold ice fishing? Oh? Yeah, my feet dicks. I was kneeling for so long, and but then I'd sweat it up my boots. My boots are sweaty right now. Um, it's just cold, man, Like you know, I mean, that's the coldest I mean, the coldest to this point that I've ever experienced. I think was when we were in Montana for ELK and I was like, I think it was like five when we're in the wall teeth, Yeah, I mean at night. But when we're out in the in the environment, hunting and stuff. I mean, those are the coldest temperatures I've ever experienced it. So I had never This is the first time I've ever felt negative temperatures. Yeah, but what was wicked about It's almost more wicked Montana because you gotta move, you gotta climb new backs flat and you're on snow machines so you can get all bundled up. And if you're conservative, dude, we we walked a little ways. I was poor and sweat, man. But out there when it's so cold, if you watch those guys, they have like the chupic man. They have like a you don't see a lot of people jogging around town. They're like very purposeful movements. Man, you're playing in the head like there's this this tentativeness pervades about what the weather is doing. I remember, like the day we got there, a kid had gone out. He was going on a snow machine to fish. He's going to fish Dolly Varden's and he was coming back. I'm like, We're like, oh, you got fishing. He said, we called it off because they had seen some some kind of weather thing. You know, anybody else would have been like that, let's go anyways. But just like you know, deep respect for the weather man, like you do stuff when the weather says it's okay to do it, yeah, you know, not bashful about it. It's not like they don't try to act like those dudes don't try to act like like we'll try to act like, hell, I'm going anyway, man, can't hold me back. You know, they're like, no, the weather is no good, I'm not going. We're going to weathers because you know how much it sucks. Because they know, man, it's ridiculous. Man. Yeah, nature will uh you know, put you on your ass in an instant. Oh it's deadly. And they're travel long distances on snow machines, so you might be like, oh, yeah, they're hunting off snow machines, but would be kind of like saying like, yeah, but dude, you're hunting out of a truck because you drive to where you start hunting there, hunting fifty miles away, miles away from the village. So you might think like you might all feel like proud of yourself because you hike in a mile to where you hunt. But if you're hunting twenty six miles from your house and you drive in a car twenty five miles and then walk one, I don't feel proud of yourself because you walk them out to where you hunt. I don't know, is snow machining twenty six miles in negative temperatures like that gravy? No, not at all, It's really not. It's like it's a difficult place to be out in, you know, and that really plays into how you hunt. It's like a difficult place to be out in, you know. So there's this sort of like they're like in that covid not accustomed to it, and then being out and you're in a strange place and it's sea ice, which looks like not like a frozen hockey pond. I mean it's just like a jumble of ice piled up is out there in the wind. I don't know. You get like this, I don't want to say like a feeling of danger, but you get a feeling of as an outside or you get a feeling of being on on the edge of something. It's like another planet. Yeah it is. And the guys that lived there are not flipping about it, but they're probably more parent, not paranoid, more cautious, you know, respectful. Oh, then we would be, for sure, and yeah, until you gain their respect. So do you think if if somebody said, okay, we'll go hunt to mus cocks and then they just dropped you there, you know, you would obviously wouldn't have the same approach as you do now. Having done it, just start beating the ground. Yeah, just like I'm gonna walk over there and look around and find them and get them. It's it's hard, it's hard to picture how you do it. You would just have to travel, just like Arctic ski explorers do. Now. You have to travel with the sled behind you on skis and you have to be packing. You know, whether it's Arctic ovens or I don't know what. The alcohol still there's no wood to burn. Yeah, you travel with the alcohol stove like we got for our our We have an arcticle of intent, and we got a thing called like the heat. Pal's like a sailboat. Heater burns d nature to alcohol, but to keep warm. In those conditions, you're gonna be going through a at least the court of alcohol a night. And how are you gonna get everything back if you don't one It's like, yeah, then here's this seven hundred, seven hundred pound bull laying there and you snow you you skied thirty miles out of the village. They're excited if they can find a musk ox within twelve miles of mccoriack. Let's talk about mccoyak for a minute. Like when the Russia, Like when the when the Russians first made contact with the Chupick, they said there was four hundred people living on nu Nevak and something like seventeen villages or something. Yeah, that's what I are in. People were living at every river mouth. Now there's two hundred people in one village. Later something, they go to some of those old villages now and now they're just they're not are just called fish camps. Oh, is that what they met my fish camp? Yeah? Once like church, a church came, a school came, people got centralized. Later there someone came and estimated there were seven people living in like far fewer villages, when far more people after the Russians first made outside contact. Um, so now everybody McCory, McCory, yuck. Everyone on the island lives in mccorrey. It's about two hundred people. It's just like on the spit of snow out in the Buring Sea. And what's interesting about it is it's like they still live very much. I mean, it's you know, everybody's got a TV. Right, there's electricity, surface level stuff like very modern existence. But underneath it is that it's still subsistence lifestyle. Um. They hunt seals, they hunt walrusks, They do subsistence fishing. They eat stuff that Americans won't eat easily, like chum salmon. You know, people are as like talking about fresh salmon. They don't catch their salmon. They fished chums for food for human consumption. They fished chumps after the chumps have spawned, and they looked like hell, they got fungus all over their fins. Then they net him to eat him because they the less fat on the fish allows it to dry. They eat dried fish dipped in seal oil a lot, which is something we ate kind of um. One day after we hunted muskoks, we went out to fish and fish called tom cod. We went, I mean, how close were we to the bank, just like took forever to drill. We had a dull spun. I don't even if it was basically trying to sput a hole to drinking straw man, it's like a bunker metal like crow bar. I mean, I guess crowbar even sharp sharper crow bars way sharp, was blunt two ft right, slowly chiseled ahole. You couldn't have pulled a can of beer up through that whole well like, but it's star and wide by the time that something bitch got through the bottom of the ice. You couldn't have shoved a beer. Can't do it. And that was the second hole, the first hall. Just Peter, oh yeah, hit dirt right, yeah, oh yeah. We chilled. We chiseled another hole and got down to the ice. Ended that dirt. There's no like water colmn or he dice. So he go to drill the second hole, and he's got a rig where he's got like a stick with some line wound around two dowels punched into the stick at perpendicular angle to the dowel, and there was a handful of beads on there in a banana. So it's like it runs from the monofilment to a barrel swivel. Then there's like five or six beads, no banana. Wait, then five or six beads in a big gass rusty, dull trouble hook. He lowers that thing down that home. I'm like, come on, dude, ain't gonna work out. Pops the tom cod within seconds. It was so fast. We set out there and caught thirty time cod just like sometimes this fasting pum out of the ice. And it's right with the tide, right, I mean the yeah, he said, like tide tide fluctuations affected, and whenever the tide change, you could hear like boulders and stuff moving under an ice. There's a dull thud resonating through the ground. This dude, we like when you hunt the nune of that hunt, you have to hire a guide um or, or you have to hire what's called a transporter because the only way to get on nune of back is you have to land on native land. Most of the island is what what's the refuge. It's the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. So Yanna speak to about the land ownership issues, who owns what where we could hunt where normal dudes can hunt, because it's kind of interesting because we always have to get film permits to hunt public land, usually cost us anywhere from thousands to two thousand dollars for a week long shoot to be on to be filling publicly. This is a commercial commercial use permit, yeah, because we're gonna take the footage and then sell it. Um. This was a national Wildlife refuge, which we've had permits before in the past. But what we didn't realize is that on New bac Um most of the refugees wilderness as well, and so they don't really give out commercial film permits or any kind of commercial permit on wilderness too much. And so you can guide hunters out there, yes, kind of just like you can in the Bob Marshall. This is a side note to what I think is like a seriously bullshitty thing on part of the federal government is that you can get a permit in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area to every day march up twenty tourists on horseback, load them on the rafts, raft them down the river, have a giant base camp set up at the trailhead generators running hauling in horse feed every day all summer long. And that's a okay commercial use. But two dudes and the camera can't go in there. Well, it's such bullshit. They are reworking the rules and the rags. Yeah, but you want to talk about high impact US, hear you, But I think those those rules are written for back in the day when any when basically if someone's gonna come to film, it was gonna be like a big highwood production, yea setting up fake western town and they're like, no, we don't want that understanding. Now it's different. You can go in there and film a show like you just said, with a couple of guys, a couple of cameras. Yeah, because like an outfitter. And I'm not I'm not hacking. I'm not saying the outfitters shouldn't be able to do it. But outfitter could be like he's got wall tent camp set up every which way, packing and dudes on horses right, setting up full on little villages out there, electrified wires to keep grizzlies out, stacks of hey, cutting fire would and you can't be out there with the backpack and a handicamp. Do they still make andicamps? You can't be out there with the backpack and a camera. You can as long as you're not gonna Yeah, but we're talking about commercial use. The guys running those rafting companies where they're hauling in thirty people every day, they'll float down rafts aren't out there for for charity. No, It just it just seems like it just strikes me as being not fair. There's a case to be made, and we're gonna work on it. We're gonna so at the refuge, they're actually reviewing their film permit process and so we couldn't even apply for a permit, so we can't film the whole the new the Tupic. This is something I don't want to get into, but but Native communities are organized into corporations in Alaska. It's not like the reservation system in the lower forty eight Native communities through the Native Claim Settlement Act, which is put it under Carter have corporations where Native community members are shareholders in the corporation and sort of their world as run as a corporation. They own this big long strip across the north shore of New to Back. Yeah, it's like anywhere I think from like one to three miles from the shore line inland. For how many miles is that thing run? I think about thirty basically from mccoyak to nash Harbor. And uh when I applied, when I first applied for the permit trying to get it, it has some spots that that are James Whitman are outfit or had told me we're gonna hunt. The dude came back and said, oh, well, all that stuff's on NEMA Corporation land, So you guys can film there as much as you want as long as NEMA will let you. And uh so they did. We paid a trespascity and uh they signed a location released for us and we basically had to find a muskox on that land if you guys were going to get to see us hunt Muskox, which is a big chunk of land, but it's like right from what we lay there found out is that as the season progresses, there's muskoks like a couple of miles from town. The first day of the hunt, you know, when the first dudes come in, and then as those animals are hunted hastle, they just moved farther south. Farther south. Its basically getting away from mc quoak. And so by the time we were the last group on the island to hunt Muskokah, no one was out there hunting when we were out there. No. I think there's a couple of locals. Yeah, yeah, doing their hunt, but there's no more. Um. The day we actually got out, some dudes were leaving on a snow machine to go hunta kow. They blew past and smell. Those guys had rain bibs. I don't remember. He was ready to the clients that James had previous to us killed his muskoks based on the southern tip of the island, fifty miles one direction away from the town. Was just out. I thought that was combined. No, man, he did. He did the hunter miles on a snow machine that day. So thank goodness, we probably found the only bowl. Yeah. I was doing some serious praying, you know. I don't pray too often, but I was praying that we could find Who are you directing them to? Huh? Just the universe. You're praying to the universe for muskoks to be on the land. The bull muscots the other suit. What's way more interesting than hunting muskox is hunting walters. And these guys go out um when the ice starts to break up in late spring, they go out and hunt walrus. They look for They cruise around their boats trying to find walrus that are hauled out on the ice floes. And a walors weighs two thousand pounds and they kill him on the two twenty three in the Heady was gonna go kill his cow muscots two in the head, Yeah, he said, you hit that walrus right, and he kind of showed me where you gotta hit it. He said it just crumples. And he hunt seals the same way. Hit him in the head of the two twenty three close range and pile them up. And then he jacked that water's up on the ice. If he falls in the water and you start chopping up a two thousand pound critter, the butcher on the ice, they don't they don't hold on the butt. I'd like to get involved in that. Yeah, we really wanted to. Unfortunately we're just a little too early. It sounds like the sea on the waters huntings in about another month. Yeah, So we went out on fish these Tom Catt and he was showing us a traditional thing they eat where like a tom cuts about if you're familiar with lake perch. Tom cuts as big as a lake perch. It looks just like a damn cod. But it's like the size of a perch, you know, like eight ten inches twelve inches for a big one, big fatty, and they take a they free I mean the fish freezes rock ass solid the minute you pulled out of the water. But they take the fish, take a h knife and cut, not flaze, just shave off pieces of the fish frozen solid, and then just dip it in seal oil and eat it. And our guide's wife, our guide was born out there. A wife is you know, Chupicka was born there. She was saying that her father had explained that if you just lived on tom Codd you would starve to death. But if you ate Tom Codd dipped in seal oil, you can stay alive and I asked her if that was something that in his generation was a reality, and she said, oh, yes, like they you know they could at that time. We're still, you know, just in her father's lifetime face starvation. She had a picture of her father hanging on the wall dressed completely in skins, you know, boots up, m now the most common skin. I did't me see his sealskin hats, which Janni actually bought very close. It wasn't our style. Yeah, it's just flashed me a look to suggested, don't want to talk about the Seals getting No. No, I have no problem at all sharing the story. You know, it's pretty interesting. It was. It was tense negotiation, so to you when you guys talking, when of you guys don't. I wasn't even there. I was sick. Steve was laid up. Yeah, I had like I had gas thrown testinal issues much of the time I was out there. No, we can bring we got to town. Everybody's wearing these great looking Seal skin hats. You know Ray's got a beard, no ribbon ribbon seal, yeah, which she said is a rare seal to run into a big gassars And James was wearing a bearded bearded Well, that's kind of what we've seen. Oh and in town here in Baffle, we had seen some beaver hats, Steve rocking new beaver hat coin and our Corey and I are like, all right, cool, when's next time we're gonna be that's old beaver hat. You guys are on the hunt. I mean you're like, yeah, you guys are like that. Yeah, you guys are cuting. We pull people all over on the streets and ask if we could take a picture. Let me try it on. Yeah. Yeah. The Korean dude selling twenty dollar hamburgers, he had an amazing fur hat and he said he paid three hundred bucks for it, and I'm like, you got ripped, But then I realized he didn't get ripped at all. No, dude, a bag of zip, a bag of like bad zip blocks up here as eight bucks. Man, he's man, he's is twelve dollars, which is that's sanity. If you want to ride a cab across the street, it's twenty everywhere everything three three dollars. Yeah, As the guy explained, a cab driver was trying to explain how expensive Where is the cab driver from Korean. Yeah, most of the cab drivers were finding our Albanian creature was a Korean segment of the cab driving population. He was trying to explain how expensive everything wasn't explained to these guys that it's not double, it's three double. That was a catchphrase for the hunt. What was So we basically are are told that you know, a relative, um someone skin make these hats for us, like sweet, we would make you a steal hat, steal hat, you know, beaver trim. So we're literally looking at one hat thinking like all right, this is the hat we're getting made, and it's like very like okay, you guys sure you want it? Like yeah, cool, We're kind of ask him like it. And it's a very muted the seal skin is very muted. I'm the one you're looking at. Yes, it's like a dull gray some black markings. Yeah, it's a muted color. It's real subtle. And as they age, the hair stands up on them on the skin itself, so it's really a blonde kind of a fuzz to it, almost yeah, dirty blonde though dishwater blonde, brown blonde. So three or four days into it, we're told that Hey, both the hats are ready, let's go. You guys need to go over there to take your hat side to right by the measurements. No, no, we didn't do that because they gotta pay. I was a little nervous about that. It was basically like, yeah, you want a large, medium, or small, you know. So we tried on a few other hats and said, okay, it's large, I'll probably be a small one. Was the most nerve wracking part was is it gonna fit? You know? So when he said you're supposed to go over and look at the hat, no, no, no, we need to go over and buy that. As they're ready for you to buy, you put your order in. And so I've been looking. In two thousand and twelve, i lived in Fairbanks. I saw a lot of these hats there as well too. I almost bought one there, the same hat steal hat with the beaver trim. Some of them had like almost like a thicker wolf lining, you know, that would give you a little more uh, you know, wind protection. So I've been in the market because I feel like sitting on a really high glass and tit when the winds howling, like you glass forever wearing that hat. Yeah, yeah, we I should point out there is no hat warmer than a fur hat. Yeah, like there hasn't been matt Like, no one has matched like my beaver fur hat. It's like no one has matched that with a synthetic material. It's like the subtraffics. It's just like, you know, you can't hear any you can't hear anything. You can anything, But anyway, we walk a couple of minutes across, you know, a couple of through back but the back alleys in the quick and into another house. No cameras aloud, we were told, And there are these hats and they are spotted seal. So it's like this blonde, bright blonde base with basically black spotchy kind of poking. It's like it's like almost almost leparty. And instead of being like a natural beaver on the I don't know what you call that part of the hat, it's basically the forehead. I don't know if it's an accent, if it's actually technically does something and maybe it keeps your forehead warmer, but it's a second layer of beaver on the hat. It's died black, like died shiny black. Didn't say tourist on it just right, it said Gaper, I think and uh yeah, mine was I don't know, trimmed and rabbit yours. Corey's is trimmed and something that couldn't be identified by anybody in the room and not know what it was made up. Tell that part of the stories. That's interesting. Yeah, so we're like looking at him now, we're like, man, like, this is not what we thought we were getting, and like, I want to see this skin hat. I want to wear it. I want to pay It looked like something like Liberace would have ordered. Yeah some gal and yeah, a female and asthen is not gonna wear a seal skin hat one. It's very style. I mean, it's beautiful. I mean just because the whole thing, because they know that the seal had died, they'd like first oh yeah, alright, I'm staying corrected. It doesn't matter. Um. So anyways, we've we've we've entered this sort of you know, contractual you know, verbal agreement, but having these hats made for us. So how well when you first walked in there, she was just like, oh, I worked non stop. She was like she was shaking her hands and she was she was elderly, and she she was just like, I've been working non stop for two days to make these hats pieces to make sure that you got them before you left. So I mean, like, you know, the pressure is on nows like these are yours? Top ball off. We just we were getting ready to actually go shoot outside to catch you know, just shoot shots of mcquarick. We're in like full down triple triple double no three double down, layers, bunny boots and everything walk into this house and how we get into this uncomfortable situation and like, you know, just as many close as you could possibly have on and we are sweating bullets, and finally I just had to be like, look, I don't want to disrespect you. We need to get out of this situation. And with enough talking, she finally offered up that said, hey, I don't want a discount for you. Don't buy him at a discount. I can sell them somewhere else. And we basically ended it with that. It wasn't miscommunity. Well, well, then her husband comes in and like and everything it kind of like found like a nice resolve, that's right, And he comes in and he introduces himself and then he sits down. He's like, he's like, what's wrong with these hats? What's wrong with you guys? Why why don't you like these hats? Like getting you know, kind of offended that they didn't like them or they didn't want to purchase them. Yeah, you boys wanted He's like, what's wrong with you? Says He's perfectly fine, you boys want to seal. You gotta see the moral story is if you want to ribbon seal, hey, you gotta stay ribbon seal exactly, You're exactly right, You are exactly right, or bearded seal. And then she had a lot of other things, but it's there is definitely a little feeling of like, Okay, remember we're in like a very small town of two hundred people were on an island, like we are outsiders, we need to play this very Yes, we want to get out of here. Wasn't the diplomacy? Yeah, but I understand too, because these these hats are not um cheap no three ducks three hundred bucks. Yeah, so just so listeners realized we're talking about a three hundred dollar hat and for three hund bucks you should get what you want. Yeah, you know, because it's certainly it's a very it's vastly inflated. You know. The dude that one of my the dude that one of my um A guy wanted one of my rifles, seventeen caliber rifle. And when I talked about how maybe I would probably his seals can had out of him for it, he didn't act like that was any kind of sacrifice on his part whatsoever. You know, I think seals can as grow on trees, the spot of ones apparently, but they're sweet looking. Man. The official ones are badass either way. Corey and I are still sealskin hatless. Yeah, the I just wouldn't. I wish we could identified what was the interior of here is Corey, because I think you can say it's like this this this made a dog. I think it was dog, some sort of dog. Another thing they got going on out here, which is cool, is you go? So there are no native Noonavak has no large native land mammals um for native animals, native land mammals. They have a variety of small voles and things um Arctic fox, red fox. It's about it like a red fox is the biggest native land land mammal they have out there, but for for a long time, they've had a herd of reindeer and they have muskoks and muskoks while they were in like historically they were inland, they weren't. It doesn't seem that they were actually on now Nevac. They were inland, but they weren't on the island. Um the island. At one time they had mammoth and all kinds of stuff. But you know, when the when the sea levels were much much lower, but when the sea levels rose, and that in the Bearing Sea, which is very a shallow ocean, was just like a you know, a grassland steppe environment. They had many animals, water level rolls, things turned to tunder. Eventually no big stuff out there. But now they got muskots, reindeer and they you know, a reindeer is like the term reindeer is sort of a eura, like a reindeer is a Eurasian caribou. People talk about different species of cariboo woodland, mountain, um, barren ground, but a geneticist doesn't even geneticis don't even really draw a distinction between reindeer or the European caribou and the cariboo that we have here. But in regards that they have a reindeer population, so seedstock of the animals came from Europe, and they're like a domestic critter out there. They don't do any agriculture. They just feed on tundra. They live a wildlife. I guess what makes them domestic as they round them up with snow machines and slaughter them. And the way they do their slaughtering is about maybe like three and a half four miles from the village, and they slaughter reindeer on what is the biggest lake on the island, and the lakes frozen solid, and again you wouldn't know you're on a lake. It just looks like snoggerware and flat stuff, but you're on a lake. They drive They built these big drive line fences like funnel fences. They go out on snow machines and push the reindeer out onto this ice, shoot all the reindeer in the head of the I'm assuming with the twenty two or two twenty three apparently kill all the reindeer, and then everybody in the village buys reindeer. This year, I think the going price is two bucks from reindeer for a reindeer. That's just like what they pay, so like that's what a community member pays to access one of the reindeer that's owned by the community. And there's some commercial slaughtering going on too, or some guy is shooting reindeer and then shipping the meat out, so they butcher these reindeer out on the ice and they're just pulling meat off, like all the heads, all the horns, all the hides are just laying out on the ice. Spring comes, ice melts, and all that stuff just goes into the lake. They've been doing this for decades and decades and decades, and I think if you wanted to make the weirdest video ever, you would go to that lake and snarkle around or scuba dive around filming decades worth of caribou or decades worth of reindeer skulls and horns accumulated on the bottom of a tundra lake where nothing breaks down, nothing breaks down. It's pretty cool. I mean, that's what tundra is is just like vegetation that doesn't decompose. You know, it is probably the creepiest place on the planet. You couldn't wade through there. No, it's just so the ice is covered with slaughtered caribou bits and pieces, and like you go out there and it's just like red fox and Arctic fox just to come in and going out there. The Arctic fox coming off the sea ice, the red fox come off the island. I got one of each red fox in the Arctic fox, and um women was telling me that in the old days, when arctic fox is worth a hundred bucks, just sit out there in a little hut shooting artic fox and selling him and nothing he did for businesses. We're talking about fishing tom cod. He would call him to Bethel here, find out who wanted tom cotton. He'd sell frozen com cod for two fifty pound, catch him through the ice, freeze him, send him by air to Bethel. We didn't catch five bucks for the tom cod at that price. You know. Now they fish halibut commercially out there. Did you notice any of the did you see any of those big big antler piles with the the skins and stuff that there was holes that the article or eat the artic of the red fox had dug underneath the piles. So essentially just had a little little little dan and they just like you know, probably just sit there and just like take a little snack from the roof and just take a nap and just wake up and just like eat from underneath. Yea, just like the and the stuff is frozen. Everything's frozen, soil rock card. They must just rasp that stuff off. I don't know, I don't ever. I would be shocked if when I'm like dying, okay, Okay, yeah, I've been telling the people lately, I don't want to get in this too long. That's one point. If if, like at whatever age my kids are old enough for if I died a tragic death, it wouldn't screw them up psychologically. How old is that? Like, how old you gotta be? How old your kids need to be that you dye in tragically has a greatly reduced chance of screwing them up psychologically adults. Adults. So I got a one month old right now, and I'm forty one, so at age sixty, roughly you're gonna start at age sixty. I'm gonna go die on K two. So when I'm laying there dying, if you if I'm laying there dying as a man who's been to now Nevak Island twice, I'll be shocked Mike's going back. I'll go back. I'll put it in. Why not. I I enjoyed my time there. Um, I enjoyed my time there. I'm very glad I went there to to have that experience. It's an animal I've always been curious about. It's a landscape that I'm curious about. I've read a lot about, you know, the baring scene in the Arctic. I've been a Browns Mary. I I am glad I went. But one, um, you are you would never overcome outsider status. No, you're not chupid, you got money. No, but you could marry in possibly if you live there, I think you'd overcome out side er status. Yeah, maybe not with everybody. But you're still the white guy. I mean they said that there was there was like, oh yeah, there used to be a white guy that lived here for five years. But I don't hold. I don't hold. I'm not I don't. I'm not even saying that as a negative. Man. I totally understand it, all right, Well, everybody everybody's like family. I mean it's literally like one giant family. Yeah, i'dn't understand. I just don't. I don't. I don't know that I'm dying to go back well for the seal or for Walters. I would go back to hunt Walter. I would go back to go I can't hunt walrus. I would go back to be present for a walrus hunt. I would go back to be present for a seal hunt, to witness it. Um, but I'm not gonna apply for d x O O three the Muscots hunt because I didn't like it, or that something's wrong with it. It's just like it was. It was a once in a lifetime thing, not legally, but like spiritually or something. It's like a once in a lifetime thing now for me, Like if I go down you know and hunting National forest land right all, Like when I walk out of there, all I want to do is go back and hunting in But I didn't get that feeling hunting muskots. Yeah, that's a good point. I felt like UM in large measure, Uh, I felt like an interloper out on the Muskot. I just felt Yeah, I didn't feel like UM. I didn't feel like an ecological participant. I felt more like an ecological war year that because of the challenge. Yeah, it just was. It's not like it just not a kind of hunting that I'm interested in doing. I mean, I'm glad I went. It's not a kind of honey, I'm interested in doing. What's kind of like if you know, I'm gonna go see the lead entire pizza. Once you've done it, what are you gonna go back and see it again? Yeah, I mean you know you really yeah right, but yeah, but it feels like that. But um, but most things, like a lot of hunting doesn't feel like that to me. You know, like I'm dying to get back up in the Brooks Range and hunt moves because it's because that's gonna be a different adventure and tight you don't know what's gonna happen. I mean, this is kind of predictable, that's right. If you went back and hundred muskox, it would be the same thing. There's no I mean, the only thing that would be surprising is if you got caught in some nasty weather and got stuck out overnight, you know, in the tuns and had to do some arctic survival. I mean, that would be which is never happened to our you know guide They're cautious doing it, yeah, because because they respect the land, because they know it, but there's more to it because even something as small and simple as like the gray squirrel, you're looking forward to your next grade squirrel. Absolutely. Yeah, I think there's no mystery when those boys go out, when they get a good weather day, they're going out and the muskox is gonna die. Mhm. You know you got four there's like four muskoks out on the island. The islands huge, like you know, I keep saying it's an island. There's no Lancet Island, but we're gonna saying the islands. Well, it's why does point close to seventy is the same size as Long Island? Roughly? Okay, so it's the island, but it's giant, right, But you have four kas out there, there's nowhere to really hide. When they go out, they're gonna get a muskas if the weather is good. So it's like, uh, I don't know, man, it would be like I guess it's like going to the bar. Like when you're single, there's sort of an adventure to going to the bar that probably doesn't exist. Going to a house of ill repute, you know what's gonna happen. It's kind of like Buffalo hunting outside of the Elstone. Yea almost same thing. But I put in for that tag every year, but once I draw it, I don't know if I mean I put it in for it all the time. But yeah, it's like they're either there or not. They're they're you're gonna kill them, But they're not hunting for novelty. They're hunting for food. Who the locals are new to that. I'm not talking about them, talking about me right for them? Yeah, it's a subsistence harvest. Yeah, I'm talking. I'm trying to put into words why Sometimes I'll come back from my hunt and all I want to do is go do it again, Like, for instance, that hunt we did in the like hunting Cou's deer. Yeah, when were we down here? All right, sign me up, man, Yeah, I'm ready to go. I didn't even get a deer. Maybe and there in lines to catch. Maybe that's why I want to go because there's a level of uncertainty. But it's not like this is a secret, because you can go on the Last Department of Fishing Games website and go look at success rates. So every year they give out X number tags. Let's say on a typical year, they give about thirty tags, you're go look and and be like they issued dirty tags. Twenty two dudes actually showed up and most of us to be like when he one killed the musk. Cos you know, so going into you're like, all right, you set aside a week, and the reason you're setting aside a week is you're trying to get a good weather day. We got lucky and had we like we had a day. We had a day we got stuck in Bethel. Couldn't even fly for it's a little bit complicated, but we couldn't have flown to Bethel. We couldn't have flown out there. Even that they couldn't even have flown out there. Definitely could have hunted that day, had another day when it wasn't good to hunt, had later, but the day we got there just so happened. We got there. It was a good hunt day. When those boys loading up those trailers and those snow machines, there was no doubt what was gonna happen that day we were killing the musks, you know. And but I don't know, man, Like if I went to my mom's house right now on September, opening day of Squirrel and I call Mrs Elder Rust and I said, Mrs hunt squirrels on your place. Not only do I know I'm gonna get a squirrel, I'm gonna get the daily bag limit of five. They would take an act of God to for me to not get five. That's enjoyable to me. So is it that I don't know what it is? I'm gonna kill five squirrels. Absolutely, if I'm out of Miles City, We're gonna go hunt cotton tails. We're gonna kill cotton tails. I'm going out there next week to fish catfish. We're gonna knock the hell out of them. Is it not fun? Now, dude, I know we're gonna catch catfish. Do you know what is it? I don't know. It's a mystery. It is the serenity wasn't there with loud snowmobiles and cold exercise. Maybe you're not in the driver's seat. It might be a guided hunt thing, because think about it like this. Say you've gone out there and it wasn't administered. It wasn't that you had to land on native land Okay, and it was just you could just have a pilot. He's got a plane on skis. You could fly around. You can't hunt the same day you fly. You flew around founder Herd, put down somewhere a couple miles or mile away, so you're not going to disturb him, set up camp, and then out on foot. You'd be like, I'm coming back, dude. That was a blast. You know, it's just the mechanics of the hunt itself. Just how long we've been talking for you? We're at an hour plus? All right, it's all you guys paid for us. One hour. We're gonna log out. Um a concluding thoughts, Mike, Texas is big. Mike's wants clarified just how big Texas is. I wish you'd best of luck, best of luck in the muscock straw next year. Yeah, have you when you give your concluding thoughts right now, tell us where you're at on doing the muscart straw. Uh to be able to take part in it as a well, you know, you bring up some good points and screw it. I said, I'm just tring. I don't know what. I'm sorry, but I can't subtract us from my brain already in there. Um, I don't know. I mean, like you said, it is a once in a a one lifetime kind of thing to do. It would be nice because you know, we took part in it, so I've you know, the whole operation and stuff, and so it's less of a mystery. So maybe I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing, But to do it yourself, I think would be kind of cool. I'd like to come, you know, bring my dad and like, you know, be able to share in that experience. It's a great experience because I mean there's no place that I've been to that's more I mean save the you know, southern slope of the Brooks Ranch when they were there, just vast open, just it's bleak, but it has its own really like sharp edged beauty to it. And you know, there's something about the landscape that is just so it's I mean, like I said, you know, it's like it's another planet and you'll never see I mean, you know that stuff like that doesn't exist in Texas as an owned as it is, as big as it is, it doesn't have that doesn't have arctic tundra snow dunes. So to be able to to or be able to experience that vicariously, to bring somebody else there would be pretty cool. You know, having the knowledge of being there and taking part in their in their community and stuff, and just you know, just in a cultural sense, being able to see how you know other people are. That's what's so great about this job, as you get to go all these different places and experience all these different people and stuff, and that's that's rewarding in itself, beyond the animal. So you're making me feel like a dick. Not for us that because everything you're saying, no, because I was trying to talk, you're shaming me on my own podcast. I was trying to speak to just the just hunt. Yeah, culturally right, I loved it. Okay, Yeah, granted there the hunt is its own kind of beast. You hit the nail on the head. It was the mechanics of the hunt. We can we can let that one lay rest. I mean, but yeah, being there, dude eating frozen tom con dipped in seal oil. There are a few places wrap up the mike still doing as wrap up um, you know, because you know right now it's just such putting that the chances of actually drawing that tag, I mean, it would be more of just like, yeah, let's see what happens, you know, throw on the wall seap of sticks, and then I would have to like, okay, you know if I did draw a tag, Okay, is this really going to happen? And then there would be a whole another process of like thinking about that and if actually pulled the turner on it. But you know, right now and just like a far off not real place like yeah, sure it might be kind of cool, but definitely not definitely not for the you know, the challenge of the hunt. For sure. I feel like there's a few places in the United States of America that are as exotic in both like landscape and culture and activity and animal That's what we just experienced. Put all those things together. Where else are you gonna go to really like get that far out of your comfort zone across the board like that not necessary comfort zone, but just like what you know about like we really mean, like even at the airport here in Bethel, dudes are talking you know, some dialect of Eskimo. Like it's the real deal. You're way out here in Eskimo. It was shocking to be with people who are speaking cupid. Yeah, like you know, like these people are like into James. We we touched on the Tom cod in the seal oil. James Whitman's wife really never really hung out with us too much, didn't really eat with us even as pain clients. Like around the dinner table when we bosted out that tom clot in the sea oil she was in, it was like this, this stuffs the bomb, you know, yeah, I mean she had a whole fish before you even got the first bite, Like, you know, um, would you put in for the tag? Not yet? Not yet? Give me your concluding thoughts. I'm very excited to add I think species number ten to my freezer. With that, weren't talk about the meat. Fifty pound box of meat that you so generously rich, very good meat, but very rich. Yeah, fatty meat, that's good. We ate some that's great. We ate some ribs that we're tasty. We ate pot no, we ate diaphragm. What else we that sounds raw? Raw? Rich, fatty meat. We went up was easy. We have over two hundred pounds of meat. My box weighed in at sixty something sixty So yeah, so we're each going home with sixty pounds of you know, untrimmed meat, no bone, untrimmed but bones. Yeah, but you'll probably yield you know forty I got a sack of Tom caught me, and Corey got a sack Tom got. It's gonna be eating shavings. So that is that you're concluding thoughts concluding I had a great time. I mean the experience and I agree with everyone in the cultural aspect of it was amazing. I think that the imagery that it's gonna stick in my mind and the rest of my life is like pulling alongside, you know, paralleling the moscocks running. I'm looking off the snowmobile thinking, wow, you know there's like Jurassic Park or something. You know, where's the saber tooth tiger now? But you know that animals just like gliding on the thunder rod. See that animals came to the ice age. He was right there. Dude. It did me too. I know I was happening on I know I was happening on the ice age thing. But when I looked at him, I'm like, if I was just sitting here, if you if you said to me, like, if I somehow lost my position in time, okay, you somehow could be confused where you were in the space time continual, and you sat me down with my bannockers on that glass and tip and I looked out, I'd be like, well, there's a mammoth down there. That's what I would think. I had talked about this a couple of times out there. Is that when I first saw musko was the first time I went Carribo hunting and we drove up hunt caribool. I didn't hire, We just like did it with a canoe in a truck. And it was the first time I'd ever hunted in Alaska. And this was the way it was fifteen years ago. I knew that there was a thing called the muscos that exists did but I couldn't have told you if it existed there still or not, or where I knew. It was just like I knew it was a creature, right, and all of a sudden, We're looking at something through the barbanoculars. You know, it was like looking across Some talk about confusion and spacetime continue. It really was like I wasn't like clear what I was looking at. I could be like, Oh, there's a Muscox, but I'm like, but what is a musco? Like where are they right now? As a species? Am I did? I am? I seeing the last one, you know, like what am I looking at? It's just there's not a lot of awareness about that, am because it's where I say, ram, it's like the normway rat. I mean overall, the beautiful trip. Really, those old ice shanties just sitting on the edge of the Bearing Sea, Like the more sunrises sunsets were amazing. I think we got lucky with the weather, Like really we had five days straight of you know, partly cloudy to sunny days. You had to have liked watch me jack those time caught up through that whole new ice. That was inspiring for you. Probably. I think making the hole is the best. I don't know. Man, it wore out. It wore a whole thing by beaver Mitten. Man, it did were a whole thing by Beaver May has worked for those holes. Four hours four hours of whole pounding. All right, Yannis, give me the old wrap it up. Thanks for listening, say say thanks for listening and laughing, and I'll shut up. Paul Disca, he's close at this. I love bun alright, signing out mediator podcast tune the next time. Hey, listen up. This sounds like an advertisement, but it's not. It's it's it's different than an end. 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