00:00:08 Speaker 1: The Hunting Collective is presented by Element. I guess I grew up on a Hey, everybody, welcome to episode one hundred and forty nine. We're almost all the way through October already. That's very sad and poignant for me. How about you, Philip? How about me? What? How are you feeling, buddy? I was check in with you. I'm doing great. Yeah, it's almost it's almost Halloween, spooky times. What's what's the costume plan over there? You know I don't have one yet. My kid is iron Man. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. Last year, of course, I was Duck Holiday, the white clock Cowboy. Yeah, that was normal times when we could see each other. I still have my costume. Maybe I'll break it out again because I'm feeling lazy. But I should get more creative. Yeah, I mean, you could just do any other doc holiday kind of costume. Just remove the white claw in this in Canada, what do you have like cut off jean shorts? It was a sassy number short ripped jeane shorts. I've got my Yeah. Still I saw my cowboy hat with the drink holders and the straws. It's like, you know, maybe I'll just I'll swap out the swap out white cloth for whiskey and just get a little yeah, you know, just just just to just prepare for election night. I'm gonna be uh, I'm gonna be a stormtrooper, as is my wife, and my son is gonna be our boss. Kylo Wren. I love you. You're gonna be very excited for those those images. Phil. I'm only doing it because I love my son. I'm not going to protest, so you know, but I already did dress up like a stort trip for his birthday, and I was feeling it. I was feeling it, uh, feeling the dark side, if you will. Sure. So we got a big episode today. We told you last week at We're gonna talk about wound loss and bow hunting and all the things surrounding that. The data, um, the emotion, the feeling hunters get when you wound an animal with archery tackle and it uh it's never found, or it's found and you lose the meat, on and on. So that's that's what we canna talk about today with the Great Janice. But tell us the lot via an eagle who we find out gave himself his own nickname, and then Sam Longren, our good buddy who had a tough experience this year. So we get onto that. But before we do that, with the emails continue to pile in after the Paul Basher episode and then last week with Brian Lynn. UM, thank you guys so much. Once again, I think this is the high point for the old th HC inbox. So please keep those emails coming to th HC at the Mediator dot com no matter what the subject. I want to read them, and I promise I try to read as many as I absolutely can't. Um. And if you're if you're not busy, go over to drink l L m n T dot com slash Mediator check out our wonderful title sponsor, Drink Element and they're wonderful sugar free a lecture Lie beverage that we are now going to next time we get together, Phil, whenever that is we're going to turn. We have to create a new cocktail called the Bitter Vegan. So I'll leave it up to you to creative. Okay, all right, it's gonna be a tiki drink. Get filling his tiki drinks. Well, speaking of some of your fans, Phil, some of your greatest fans. We've got an email from a fellow named Ben Upton. You want to hear this email? Yeah? Um, he says, my name is Ben Upton. Even you can't mess that name up, Ben, which is right? I think I nail it, he said. I'm writing in to provide Phil with some encouragement to finish his son Er safety course and get excited about hunting. While I know Fillers received plenty of messages, both gentle and otherwise from all sorts of people, I am here to nudge fill on as a fellow video game lover this work. Yet up there, Phil, you're feeling this, I am continue. Yeah. I know. Well, I'm an avid hunter and hunting represents most of my identity. I also really love video games. Phil. I know a lot of folks in the hunting community, especially one Steve and Ronnella frown on the idea of video games. But I'm here to tell you that you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. While I prioritize hunting, thinking about hunting, and preparing for hunting over just about anything else. When I do have downtime, I still love to play video games. Don't let the bullies over at Metator convince you that video games are detrimental to an outdoor lifestyle. They all have downtime hobbies. Bands, for example, seems to be drinking. It's fine. Yeah, that's really is, uh, Phil. Once you experience how we're wording it to be to dedicate yourself to preparing for a hunt, waking up early, putting in the miles, and working hard to put good quality meat on the table of the family, you'll understand why we're all pushing you so hard to complete your hunter's head. That being said, sometimes there is no sound in the worl world better than the so sweet staccato of your PlayStation after a long day's hunt. The blood, sweat and tears that you put into that day and that week pursuing wild game will make those video games all the more enjoyable. That's coming from our buddy Ben Up and he said, so, cheers, do you feel crack a white cloth? Finish your damn hunter education and keep providing us with the content we all love so much. Thanks been a commentary film. I mean that was a very compelling argument. Um. I just want to say, first off, the bat, I'm it's going to happen this. By next week, it will be done. I also want to say that if there are any destiny two players on PlayStation four who want to, you know, do some stuff with me before the next DLC comes out next month, hit me up on Instagram. I'd love to run some dungeons, some raids. Um, you know, get a hold of me. I don't know what you're talking about. I have no I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded inviting. I wouldn't laugh either too. Um. All right, we got a whole lot of other real serious stuff to get to. A bunch of your emails, and we're gonna skip one from Blake McGhee. Blake McGee, of course, I'm sure it's written in before. He says, your podcast really has me examining my own ethics and morals around hunting. I agree with you about not quote unquote farming out the responsibility of killing to someone else, and like you said, this journey of iron out the nuances of our experience is and should be a lifelong one. This past weekend, while sitting in the stand, I had a thought, if my joy of hunting is derived from the experience in the pursuit, not just the killing of an animal. Could I be happy with the hunting season if I didn't kill one? I know you had to struggle this season with your Montana elk. I'll be very interested in hearing your take what you anticipate your emotions would be if you were completely unsuccessful for a hunting season. That's going from Blake, well, Blake, uh, I'd I've never had. I will say that I've never had a totally in completely unsuccessful hunting season. And you know, talking about an entire year or even entire fall, entire spring. I've always kind of been able to fill a tag or two along the way somewhere. But I will tell you to flat out, straight up, Montana has been kicking my ass um It seems every other state I go to, I feel a tag. But Montana is stingy. Man. It has been stingy for me for reasons I can't explain. But you know, it's a it's a shot right to the ego to not be able to be successful in any in any long stretch of time, as I would would couch my time in Montana thus far. But you know, it's this is a hard thing to think about. It's a hard thing to talk about. So those of you that are the middle October here and maybe haven't filled a tag, whether you're new or veteran hunter, whether it's because you haven't had time to go outside and spend because of whatever reason, or you spent a lot of time and you just haven't found the success that you were hoping for. I don't know that I have any one shred of advice to get you thinking in the right way. But to answer Blake's question, could I be happy with the honey season if I didn't kill an animal? Not fully? Um? Not fully? I think it's a little bit trite. It's, you know, to say, oh, it's all I'm out there for the experience. I mean, I'm out there for the experience up until the point where I want to provide for my family and I want to have success. And the thing I've been been thinking about and training for and preparing for for for my entire life kind of strung along here throughout the years, so you know, I it's it's really easy to say it's all about the journey and the experience. People that usually say that are the ones that aren't killing stuff, are the ones that aren't having the success that they that they want. So in the moment when you're pursuing animals and it's not working out, one thing I do is just take a step back and look around and enjoy the scenery and enjoy the fact that I'm out there doing what I love and I have something I love so much, like hunting. Um. But beyond that, you should be bummed if you don't kill something. You should be seriously bummed, um, and probably a little bit hungry along the way, because you know, no matter what, it's so much better having elk or deer or pheasant or turkey on the table than it is, uh beef or chicken or pork or whatever. So um, that's my thing. And and thank you Blake for writing. Then we're gonna move on to John Stell stell flu Let mean, come on, John S s t E l l F l u E. How would you spell that stell flu stell flu. That's probably pretty easier than I made it sound, all right, John, he said, I joined your conversation with Brian Lynn that was last week. If you haven't listened to it, stopped now I'll go back and listen to episode with Brian Lynn from Sports AND's Alliance. We'll take a break and we're back, he said. One part that was thought broken to me was when you said, don't find yourself at the extreme, don't go yelling at vegans on the street. I agree with this, but what is extreme extreme to you and I may be different than extreme to a vegan, an anti hunter, or even a non hunter. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but as the fall hunting continues to happen, my social media feeds are full of what many people think are just a picture of a deer or a pheasant or some ducks. In our mind, not extreme at all. But to a non hunter or an anti hunter, those same pictures could be viewed as extreme when those pictures are captions or hashtag in a certain way. Of course, I saw one recently that bothered me. It was an i G photo of a bunch of dead Canadian geese. He says, Canadian geese, Remember their Canada geese? They didn't, They're not Canadian. Uh, Their candidates remember that stacked on a tailgate and it was hashtagged. Piles make smiles. Well, not everyone is going to smile at this. Some will consider this extreme. I know you've talked about this before regarding gripping grins, and I think this is something that we all need to be talked about more. One thing I have tried to incorporate in my grip and grinds is a story. Now. I understand that everyone enjoys whipping up a story like I do, but having some context around a photo can allow the view which to receive that photo an entirely different manner. Uh. And he sent some posts where he's illustrating what he tries to do. Um. The overall question, I mean, we've covered grip and grins a whole lot on this show, right Phil, I mean you're you're you're read in on the on on what that is. Yeah, yep, to the point where some people like, just stop talking about it. We get it, we get it, we get it. Um. But to to to address what John is saying here, I get it, man Um, It's hard to level set everyone's perspective on something that you do on social media or otherwise. It's hard to think of what everyone might uh think about something that you've posted or some or some picture or some ways. But there But to his example of piles make smiles. That's obviously not taking into consideration some folks that never shot a pilot Canadian. Dammit, John, Canada geese before you, bastard, John, you got me seeing Canadian. But we do love Canada. Um. And by by the way, a lot of people were upset at a lot of Canadians wrote in last week we're upset at Brian Lynn for saying that hockey is like soccer on ice. And so I just want to say, in in this time of cancel culture, I disavow that statement, um, and I do not want anybody to think that I agree that hockey is soccer on ice. Hockey is a lovely sport played by mostly Canadians, and we love, we love the country of Canada. That that statement was both offensive to Canadians and all Europeans. So good job Brian Lynn. Now we disavalue. Uh, we don't want to get canceled. We're a little bit scared of that, so we like to keep going on our show. So but but anyway, I don't even know what I was saying. Everybody knows when somebody is going to be a little more brass or you know, crass about something like hunting and sharing dead animals. Some people just say, I'm gonna do what I do, and I'm gonna celebrate the way I celebrate and just and I'm not really gonna think about what everyone in the world might think of what I'm up to UM. And I've said in the past the way that I approach it has changed over the years. When I first got into podcast and when I first got into thinking that I might have something to say on a public forum, I really did want to want to tell people to to think hard about this grip and grin and how non hunters viewed us, because I was in a in a in a spot in my life where I was surrounded by a bunch of non hunters at my workplace and in my life, and they are they were all asking me, why do you guys do that? UM? And I wanted to get across the people that that is that is often what what those folks think when they see these grip and grins or whatever images that we throw out there. So I still do believe that, I do believe that you have an opportunity to UM go out there and share something that's going to shine a positive light on everybody. You have that opportunity and you do and almost everything in your life. UM. But at the same time, I'm not going to be the one to tell you what to do. I'm just not. UM. I hope that if you listen to this podcast, you're you're kind of gathering, um, some insights and perspectives on important topics and ways that are productive to move throughout the social media and the rest of your life. I know I have learned and gotten better over over time, UM, and learned what I want to share, what I not want to share, because I think hard about everything I put on social media and I don't really want to live my life there. UM. I want to curate the things I post there in a certain way so that because I know there's a lot of people that follow me there that don't know me, that don't know who I am, that don't know why I say what I say. They're not my inner circle. I've never met them and I probably never will meet them. And so I try to understand my audience. UM. In terms of what John saying, Man, just understand your audience and post what you think is appropriate and you and most people know when they're poking the bear, and know when they're trolling and know when they're throwing this thing that we do back in everyone's face purposefully, and that's something just turns me off. And if I see it, I walk away from it. I don't need it around me. Um, and I don't imagine anybody does. So you feel like that sums her up there, Philip, Yeah, good job, thanks, thanks, But um, I'm gonna crack I need to crack a white claw after some of these, some of these emails. But before we get to anything, before we get to our great friend Janice a lot being eagle patel Us and Sam Longer and to talk about wounding loss, We've got a little not so sharp moment for you. Play the jingle, phil No, just kidding, not so sharp movement, so you don't have to before we get going here on this this uh particular not to a shart moment. We have to continue to address this, folks. I have accounted, and I am looking. I'm trying to find a non poop related not to a sharp moment to read. I'm trying to give you people, uh free field sharpeners from our friends at work sharp and you just can't get off the poop stories and I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's it's something that Phil and I have done to deserve this. Um, where are we at, Phil? What do we do? I think I might just have to read one of them. No, I won't let you. Yeah, yeah, I mean, don't you guys want to win the field sharpener? And yeah, you're not. You're not going to do that with with the poop stories, We've we've talked about this and honestly, I don't even want to acknowledge them. Ben, I feel like we're just it's just encouragement even just bringing it up. This this one came from Jeremy minor Um, and Jeremy says, I submit for your pleasure, a shitty, not so sharp moment. Picture this in your mind if you will. I was new to hunting and was invited by a buddy to partake in the December deer drive with a college buddy and his family. On one particular drive, I asked where should I stand. My buddy proceeds to tell me just walk along the timber line fence next to the waterway until you see a pile of spent shells from a previous hunt. You could stand there. So I did just that and started walking to my spot. It was my first time actually deer hunting, and I was excited. I was walking through some marsh grass with no issues. But as I got close to where I thought I was supposed to stand, I heard a squishing sound. My next step would be one I would never forget. As I took one more step, it felt like I fell into a sinkhole. I found myself up to my waist and what I thought was mud. How you feeling, Phil, I'm gonna take a big swing here and guess that it's not mud. M picture of the old Vietnam movies where soldiers are holding their weapons high above their heads while crossing a river. That was me. As I stood there, up to my waist with a old twenty gage held high over my head, I caught a good whiff of a rank stench. As I crawled out, I realized I did not sink into a pit of mud. As my eyes and nose started to burn, I realized quickly I was in a lot of shit, A literal pit of ship, a ship pit. Um. I'm done, I quit. I can't That is I was going to be a serious journalist. You know. When I was in college, people would ask me what are you gonna do? I would say, like change the world, and oh, you're you're saying you're not proud of this man, You're not proud of what you've built. Here. I feel like I'm in a similar ship pit right. I can't get out of it too. I can't get out of it, but let's put our rifles above her heads and move move on. You see, I had actually stepped into a spot where an old leech bed tie had been laid decades ago. This tile happened to be connected to a nearby dairy barn, so as you can imagine, it was ripe. There was nobody around, and I knew the deer drive was beginning, so I leaned forward and laid my belly to try to wiggle myself free from my pitch shiit situation. After a minute or two, I could feel myself slowly coming free and I was able to pull my legs out of this stinky sludge. I managed to get myself completely out, but it wasn't good. Ripe dairy cow shit covered me from the waist down. I was soaked cold and coated in a thick layer of sludge. As I stand there trying to shake the ship clumps off of my pants and boots, trying not to gag and not get my hands or shotguns messy. I realized no deer should be able to ever smell me. So I stood there waiting to finish the deer drive. All of a sudden, from down wind, a nice ten point buck came up from behind me and stopped at about twenty yards. It stood there sniffing the air, trying to figure out if there was a human close by or just some dumbass who fell in some ship. It was my first experience with a deer that close ever in the wild. The drive finished and the buck got away. Wait a minute, the drive finished and the buck got away. How did that happen? But he says, But the stench from my ship soak pants and boots remained. My friends gathered around to point, laugh, and eventually gag. At my situation, there was no way a vehicle ride was going to happen, so I began the slow wattle of shame back up the field to deer camp. My friends were waiting with a hose, ready to begin the process of cleaning up my mess. The pants and Andys went straight into the trash. Luckily it happened to be the same size as another guy in camp who offered a clean, fresh pair of old jeans to get me home. No ondies were offered, so I was told to just keep that pair of jeans. The boots had to be power washed off and were able to be salvage, but they rode in the back of the truck. It was a fantastic day that led to my deeper passion for friends, family, and hunting white tailed deer. I'm so happy to say I've been hunting with this group of jackasses ever since, and they've supplied plenty of notz a sharp moments, including someone getting hit in the eye from a baseball pitch of a handwarmer, and someone getting stitches because he tried to open a sleeve of crackers with a buck knife that slipped from his hands and stuck in his leg. You get the picture. When we do jew drives at this location, Miner's ship hole is a specific spot on the map that brings back a good laugh and a burn to the eyes and nostrils. Keep up the good work, Jeremy playing a jingle. Phil Sharp not so Sharp moment shop you don't have all right, Well we uh we we we landed in the middle there, buddy. That was that was it was a ship story. But it wasn't it was It wasn't the human variety. So I think we're in the clear. That's the the reason I'm giving it a pass. But I'd like to officially put put an end to digit stories starting right now. Yea, We're never gonna do it again. People, people are over. If you send in a ship story expecting a field sharpen, you will not receive one. You will not received one. But Jeremy will receive one, and he'll receive one from our friends of work sharp. He's gonna get a field sharpen. We're gonna ship it right to his house, be able to sharpen knives and do all kinds of crazy things with it in the field. You can go over to their YouTube page and check out their weekly sharpening tips and all the other continent or YouTube page check their website out. Generally, please support our advertisers because they support us, and without them we do not do this whole thing. So moving on to more more not so sharp moments in the woods of a more serious nature. We're gonna get ourselves over to be honest and Sam to talk about wound loss and archery, ELK and beyond. Please enjoy. All right, guys, we are gonna talk about some important stuff now. Um, like we always do here on t HC. We'll introduce our panel. Uh maybe not including Phil because we just heard that he still hasn't completed his hunter safety course so he can't really commentate on this issue. But first, Sam Longer, Hey Sam, howden uh the great Joannice the Eagle to tell us, Hey, Johnny, Well, I didn't get a setup like that. Yeah, and in the future you can just say just Johnny too. I'm cool with that, Okay, I thought I needed to. I always want to build you up. Sam. We don't have to. You don't have to call me sir or Mr. Just Johnny is good. Okay, I can do that for you. Sam. You gotta get yourself a good nickname like that. Well, you can't come up with your own nickname, then that's not true, because that's how the Latin and Eagle started. Oh you came up? Okay. I didn't propose owes it as a nickname for myself. I just made a joke that the Labban eagle had not spotted anything after I had come back from a glassing session, and it's just sort of stuck. Well for Sam, he's in listeners obviously won't be able to see this, but he's in a room with two pronghorns kind of flanking him on either side, so we could call you the pronghorn. I was already planning on it cut that you cut that out, and there's Philip. The engineers say hello, Philip, Hey, how's it going? Oh it's going really good? Um. Great. Once again, for all your listeners were on Squadcast. Are not a sponsor, so if this has done't sound good or it's all messed up, it's their fault. Um. And we'll keep on going here. We're gonna talk about something today that UM. I don't want to pat ourselves on the back too early for for really digging into this, but I do want to start by saying this. I I believe this is something that isn't quite covered enough and hunting media. It's something we could all think about a little bit more planned for, a little bit more understand, a little bit more, UM on a lot of levels, and so I you know, and It's happened to almost every hunter that I know that goes out in the field in any regular clip. It's happened to me, It's happened to Sam, It's happened to Yanni, happened Ryan Callahan last year, happened to Steve Ronella. If you watched our Colorado episode of Netflix, Um, and his was with the muzzleloader. So this is uh, I don't I don't know how we would couch it, Yanni. Would you call it a common occurrence? How would you kind of describe wounding an animal and not recovering it in terms of of frequency, I guess relevancy, yes, sir, And it's certainly higher with different animals and different methods of take. But I'd say that it's uh, it's a constant. How's that. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Sam, Um, When you're thinking about this, is this something that you I can tell you that in this elk season, as as we ran around Montana, you know a third of the people I talked to that are regular hunters that do it as much as the folks of us here that have taken a hunter safety courses do it. We you know, it's a third of the people have wounded an elk that I've talked to this year. Um, you know, what's your what's your thoughts, Just like a general collection of the people that you talked to, it wouldn't be dissimilar to to what you've heard. And I've been lucky to live here in Montana a bit longer than you have, and it's like that every year. Every year I hear about a dozen or more dozen more hunters who had elk with arrows and then don't find them. Yeah. Yeah, And I think, as as Janni mentioned, you know, archery tackle plus the toughness, the historic toughness of an elk will do that. Um, maybe up the frequency a little bit in regards to wounding loss, but um, we all have stories about it. So we're gonna tell some stories and talk about specific instances and and certainly try to highlight the emotions and kind of the way that you think about this, because when when we use the word wounding loss, loss is really the feeling that I've had in the past. Um, it's a it's a true feeling of loss because it's one you value, the animal, you value, the meat, you value, the experience and losing wounded game kind of not kind of. It absolutely dampens that entire experience from from the beginning to of course the end results. So you know, it's something I take rather seriously. We've talked about it on this show a couple other times, but never kind of really in depth. From a lot of angles. That's what we're gonna do. Um, Sam, you want to kind of Sam had Sam has the most recent occurrence of this. UM. I don't know if we'll call it loss because you ended up finding the animal, but you did lose a ton of of important and delicious elk meat in the process. Yeah. Um, so let's see. I guess that was mid to late September. Uh, John Dombeck, our data and analytics guy here at Meat Eater, UH, and I just tried to sneak out for a before work hunt, um, pretty pretty close to our our houses. Uh. Started hiking like four in the morning, got way up over this mountain and dropped into some super elky country and I bugled once and had just a big nasty bugle response. That one of those where it's just like, oh man, that's a big bowl. And we just we charged down into where he was. He kept he kept piping off and we got inside about a hundred yards and then I was I set set John up kind of in between and down down wind, tried to cow call this bowl in through this really dense cover, but he hung up, wouldn't come any further. I could tell he was about fifty yards off, but he was just bugling, telling the cow to come over to him. And then finally I decided to cut him off with a bugle, and then he took off uphill and John kind of saw John kind of throw up his hands and and I was like, no, no no, we let's let's chase him. I said, come on, and I just went running up the hill, smashing through the brush. I thought John was right behind me, um, but it turns out the bowl had just uh just gone up hill to try to outflank us. He was coming right back down at me, just trying to be uphill, trying to have the dominant position. Um. And I basically just walked. I just walked out into just a slight little clearing, and there he was standing there looking at me at thirty yards And I mean I was in full fusion camera with a face mask up and arrow already on the string, and he was looking right at me, but just didn't really you know, I just didn't really see me. He was kind of stepping out into the open right as I was, and I drew and there was a little bit of a bush covering up his vitals, and I was just like, I just you know, I was waiting for him to take one more step, and he he took that step, and I was holding right on, you know, right on his rib cage. I always tried to count a couple of ribs back from the shoulder, and I let the arrow fly, and um, right as I did, I just all I remember is just kind of a flash of color and he just kind of kind of spun and took off. I and I mean it with within all of that, I couldn't really see the flight of my arrow, but I know it went the direction I you know, told it too. But I thought I missed. I I didn't. I didn't hear the thwack that you that you look for, that you that you want to hear with an arrow impact, and uh, you know, I was kind of stunned. It all happened really fast, and then then you know, five minutes later, John finally finally crushed up through the brush to me and and sees me with you on my hat off and it Stephanie goes, what what happened? I was like, I just shot at that bowl. He's like, what you saw it? Again? I thought it was gone? Um so he I mean, he was, you know, probably forty yards behind me. Hadn't even had any idea that I had had that that direct interaction with it. We walked up and we're just, you know, going to look for my arrow because, like I said, I thought I missed because I didn't hear the impact. But there there's a there's my arrow covered laying They're covered in blood and there's big spurts of blood all over the place, and we're like, well, what do you know? Looks like it looks like I did tag him. Uh So it wasn't, you know, it was it clear there's a full pastor at that point it was yeah, yeah, but it wasn't. It was clearly not lung blood, there weren't bubbles in it. But it was also clearly not gut blood because it didn't have that smell. So it was a little bit hard to parse out. And like I said, I just I just didn't get a clear view of the of the arrow impact because the bowl kind of spun at the sound of the bow. Like I know, the arrow flew straight, but the but the bowl reacted to the sound of the the bow going off and took off. So I just I didn't really know what to think. But we waited for an hour and a half. We both kind of called in to work to let folks know what was afoot and that we might not be sitting at our laptops hammering away. Uh right, first thing at nine am, I mean then this this, This was I think eight thirty in the morning. Um. Yeah, So we we gave it quite a while. I'm always super cautious with elk not to not to try to blood trail too quickly and bump them. Um. But then we started started off on the on the blood trail. Um, pretty dense stuff, lots of blown old, blown down and burnt trees. But it was pretty good blood. I like to go along and wherever I find blood, I put a stick in the ground so that I can line up those sticks later on if I lose blood. I can kind of get a feel for the general direction of travel. Um. We followed that blood trail for I believe about three or four hundred yards kind of up uphill and kind of over this rise, and then it kind of just started trickle out to pin pricks and then just disappeared and we got We were down our hands and knees for quite a while looking trying to pick it up, because there was it was kind of that kind of at a divergence, it's like there's a major game trail going off one way, a major game trail going off another way. The feeling that I got from the general direction of travel was more of like a left trajectory, which would have made sense going downhill into a bit of a swampy, uh kind of water hole wallow area. And so we left our stuff at the at the last blood, you know, and I started tracking myself on on X and I had John track himself, and we we went off and kind of the natural fall lines, the natural ways we would have we would have thought it might have gone, and then just started doing loops, trying not to cover the same country twice. By looking at our tracks, it was really deliberately trying to grid out the country, trying to cover everything because you know, how those high mountain forests are. Can it can kind of start to look pretty uniform after a while. Um, we kept looking, kept looking, Uh, just couldn't pick up any more blood, couldn't couldn't find the animal. We went back and and and kept, you know, just scouring the area around the last blood, trying to pick up that next drop to give us a sense of the trajectory. But you know, all of a sudden, it's like noon, one o'clock and John had work piling up in a big meeting he had to lead later that afternoon. Um, we're both out of water, we're both out of food because you know, it was going to be a morning hunt. Wanted to be light. We had to climb two thousand feet up in the dark. And um, but you know, we got pretty stressed out by the whole situation. Ended up slugging down on a bunch of water and a bunch of food. And you know, I had responsibilities, John had responsibilities, and uh, we ended up making the call to back out, um, figuring the animal went aways and we didn't want to push it. Um, which I feel is a pretty standard decision to make. A lot of people will do that. You don't want to kind of give it a minute, come back with a fresh mind. So we ran home. I bust out a bunch of work, John did his meeting. UM we were able to you know, talk to a bunch of co workers and see if anybody wanted to come help us look. Spencer new Hearth volunteered, UM, and we headed back in around for thirty. Uh me a little bit ahead of Well, No, they got there a little early, and they came up and met me. UM got back up, looked until dark, couldn't find any more blood. You know, big kept doing big loops through the country. But I packed. I packed over night gear um, thinking that might happen. So they walked out. I spent I spent the night just under the stars at the point where I found the last blood, and uh woke up again at first light and just kept looking, kept doing loops, kept you know, keeping my eye on the on X track and just you know, trying to fill in the blanks and the just kind of the broad array of directions where he could have gone. Then about Sam, when I got a question, when you're doing that, when you're doing that gritting, what's your like average distance between track lines? That you're trying to, you know, keep so that you're not going, you know, too far that you're missing something, but not like right on top of itself. Do you have a number that you kind of shoot for, you know, Johnny, it was it was a little bit more frenetic than that. I didn't have anything in particular. I was just at a at a you know, relatively tight zoom range. I was trying to keep it probably about fifty seven five hundred yards off of my other tracks, but my first tracks were just kind of zig zags all over the place. We were just I was just running, and we were just running through the country, just trying to cover as much of it as we could. And so then after that, I was I was trying to just do my best to cover in the blank spots after that. And so you slept, you slept out. You just roll out of sleeping bag and and just lay under the stars. Yeah. Yeah, didn't bring didn't bring a tent. It was it had gotten fairly warm, pretty warm that day. Um, it had been pretty cool the day before and it was very cool the rest of the week, but it did get warm that day is when we had a bunch of smoke, but the wind kind of blew out the smoke that day and it was direct sunlight. Yeah, but about go ahead, well that you know, you you when you're laying out there in the at night at you like your confidence waynes I always try to think of like when do I start the grid search or and when do I narrow in on just where it just a blood trail? Uh? Like what's that? You know, what's the dividing line between those two things? Um? And at the same time, you got to think about like people should should hear from you that, you know during that evening, what are you thinking? You know, you're laying out there thinking I'm screwed here, this is a waste of time, or like you know, what's the what's the what's going through your head? So what was going through my head is just like I can't believe this is happening again. You know, this happened to me once before, and and I you know, really I didn't ever want to let it happen again. I really like swore to myself that it wouldn't happen again, that I would only make really good shots on ELK, that I would always be as close as I could I would practice as much as I possibly could. I would shoot my broad heads as often as I could, because that's, you know, giant differential that a lot of people failed to account for that broadheads just don't fly. I like field points. So I was, I was beating myself up left and right. I was in a really bad place mentally. Um, I was just just it's extremely upset. I barely slept that night, you know, it was. I was when first light started to you know, kind of illuminate the landscape a little bit. I was just I was just sitting there awake and got up and started looking again. Yeah, that's a feeling that we'll we'll let you finish your story, but I do want to talk about like that feeling and if if it's comparable to anything else in life. Um, because it's a it's a shifty feeling. I mean, you can describe it in many in many ways, but I've I've certainly had it um before too. Or you just can't sleep, you don't know, they're so you you're replaying the story you just told. You end up replaying that story in your head every time you close your eyes. You're like, if I would have just if I would have if I only could have. Why didn't I this question? Yeah? Yeah, And the hardest part about that is is when you don't have, you know, you don't necessarily have some sort of error to point to. I made what I felt like was a good, clean, ethical, broadside shot. The arrow went exactly where it was supposed to go. It passed cleanly through the elk. I'm not sure where at this point, I'm not sure where it passed through the elk. But you know, the thirty thirty yards is a is a chip shot. I don't take shots past forty yards in the field, but I feel like thirty as well within my wheelhouse, and it was you know, I felt like I had him dead to right, So I felt like I did everything right. I knew I didn't push him off a off a bed or anything. We waited nearly two hours before following the blood trail in a significant way. So, you know, sometimes when when you can look at a mistake and have that to point to, then you can seek to correct that mistake the next time. But when there's a lack of you know, learning or you know, uh, some lesson in it, but the lesson is obscured, it makes it more difficult to process mentally, so so saying he was so chewed up you couldn't tell where the impact was when you found him. Yeah, Yeah, it was right at the back of the rib cage, so it was liver blood that I was looking at. Oh so you do know that you hit him back? Yep? M janny. Did you ever have that that sense when you're in a situation like this where you feel like you've done everything, just about every thing you can do, and maybe the animal did something you didn't expect, or they just circumstances like where there's just you have no control over the outcome. Sometimes how matter much of practice, unless you think about this, I'm gonna critically are of yourself. Well, I mean, there's always things that are out of out of your control, and it just depends on what what part of the this whole, the story or the um you know, the process, which part you want to you know, talk about, because you know you can only control so much. And as much as we all think we can even control our own brains and emotions in the moment of truth as they call it, when when you're taking the shot, even that sometimes gets away from us, and uh, you know. That's why when I'm shooting, especially these days, I shoot fewer arrows and I just try to take like take a solid minute or two between every single arrow, and that way, when I put an arrow on my string, I'm thinking, like, Okay, this is the one. Make sure that this is the one that is going to go exactly where you want it to be. And like I like to go weeks on end where I don't have a bad hit on a target. Uh. And last night, actually I was shooting and had like I had an instance where I had been holding probably a little bit longer than I usually do, and then the wind kind of kicked up and it blew my bow off a target a little bit, and I came back to it and I was starting to like lose my back strength a little bit, and I could feel that I was collapsing. And what I should have done is let down and then refocused and try it again. But instead I just I lost focus, and my brain, you know, said, I was just like, now you can still pull this off, you know, and I shot and it ended up what would have been like a very far forward like brisket shot, you know, might have been into the cavity. Maybe not me. It's hard to tell when you're shooting at a deer target, you know, But um, yeah, I don't know. It just depends on what part of what part of it all you want to talk about that you can or cannot control. Um. I mean, I've been on blood trails and where you think you're gonna find them, and then all of a sudden, it just starts raining that turns into snow and it gets dark and the next morning there's of eight inches. It doesn't matter if it's two inches or eight inches, but there's so much snow on the ground that there is no more trailing at that point. And so it goes from like being a blood trail into a grid search like Sam was just describing, and that's totally out of your control. I mean, there are people that if you knew that weather was coming that and and I think all of us should that should like adjust what sort of shot you're gonna take right where it's four pm and you know it's gonna be dark in three hours and you have rain that's gonna turn into snow overnight, you should probably only be taking shots where you're like, when I release this arrow, that elk or beer or whatever is only gonna go twenty fifty or a hundred yards and keel over and die like there's not gonna be any Like I wonder if this shot is going to kill him? Um instances, right, because you know that there's a higher chance that if you're on a blood trailer, you're gonna end up losing it. Um. So yeah, I don't know. I think they answer your question is it's very difficult. There's just so much that's you know, that's out of your control. And uh, it just points to the fact that we should all do our best when we're practicing and when we're in the moment of truth of you know, controlling what we can control and being as good at it as we can. Yeah, that's a skilling of itself. Man, That's that's a skill very much akin to sports. Um, being able to perform in the you know, to do what you've practiced in a pressure field moment like that's not that's not too far away from an analogy to a basketball player, football player, somebody that you know it's all on the line and you gotta do it for them. It's just a fake trophy. But yeah, in this case, there's there's real consequences. So but you don't I guess and control. What I had in my head based on Sam's story up to this point is that moment when you release the arrow, you put the arrow exactly where you wanted just so happens the animal is not in the spot where it was when you pulled the trigger or release the arrow. And this at this point and so as much as you can't control the rest of the scenario, even the scenario where your thirty yards from from an elk, and I think the dynamics of calling an elk certainly changed this a bit because they're moving into you, across from you. That it's not sitting in a tree stands shooting down at a deer walking down a trail when he doesn't know you're there. So so you know, I just think even the moment of kill, you know which I want to talk about this idea of fair kill rather than fair chase. Even at the moment of kill, even if you when that air releases, if it flies to the hole in the timber that Sam shot through, and you think, perfect, that's a dead elk, and that elk spins, takes a step, reacts in a certain way. Um, yeah, your lack of control even in that micro scenario is clear. So yeah, it's it's enough to throw it off and you can't beat yourself up for it. I mean, if you're honest with yourself and the end, you really did everything that could be done, and you bear down and you took the extra time to make the shot, and you can say no, I did not rush it, and my pin was rested and the animal was there, you know, and the animal wasn't aware of me. That's a big thing to write where if you're on an animal and he's like aware of you and he's like, uh, you know, they're gonna most likely there could jump or wheel. So that's again something to be considered in that moment of truth. It gets tough, but again, yeah, you're totally right if you're if you can, if you're honestly yourself and you say you did everything to the best of your ability, and then the animal spins or there is a branch that you know you couldn't see even though Sam said there was a branch there. Um, there's there's certainly times I didn't with the rifle once where like I shot a deer and did not kill the deer, didn't even hit him. And turns out that you know, I shot up it was like a two inch sapling that completely like just was not registered by my brain as it was you know, cover that was in front of its vitals. Um. So yeah, well, Sam, give us a give us the update, and let's hear the rest of the story, because I think the end when you actually find the cells as interesting as anything. But but keep on going. Yeah. So, like I said, I just kind of kept trying to fill in the grid that next morning, and I think it was I mean it was right around eight thirty the next morning, so about twenty four hours after after the shot. Um, I was walking through this kind of low meadow and caught a got a smell, you know, scent of something dead. Um. It was pretty faint, but you know, you know when you smell it. And I pulled out my my little wind checker because there wasn't a definitive wind direction that I could really take note of, and so I was just puffing and then going in the exact opposite direction of of the you know, the dust from my my wind checker going up wind kept going up this little gully. Um, following that scent got stronger, and then all of a sudden I came over a rise and there was just chaos and commotion. And I had brought my dog in with me that night, not that he's you know, a blood trailing dog or anything, just thinking, you know, you know, he has better knows than I do, and I wanted a little bit of company sleeping out overnight. He starts going nuts. Um. But you know, pretty quickly I realized that they were just bears everywhere in in in this little this little gullie. I didn't even bet for register that there was a dead elk on the ground, but you know, obviously made sense. But um, I saw so kind of as the picture became clear, I saw a big sow brown black bear. She was woofing at me up on her hind legs, about seventy five yards off. And then I registered that she had to year old cubs up a tree. Kind of right buyer. And so I was like backing off, going whoa, whoa, whoa. I had my had my pistol drawn the safety off, my bear spray too on my hip, um, and just kind of backing off giving them some space. And then I hear big and it's straight above me. And I looked up and saw another probably hundred and fifty pound black bear up a tree directly above my head that I had like backed up to. So there's four bears in there. Three of them had gone off one way, one had gone another way, and I was right underneath and one of them. And you know that that, you know, kind of threw me into a different level of, you know, kind of concerned for the situation. I backed out a little bit further, yelling the whole time, um, but you know, letting them know that they could get out of their trees. And as soon as I saw that bigger one come out of the tree, I kind of kind of rushed it a little bit and shouted, and it ran off, and the cubs had come down and they ran off, and I just kind of made a big scene. UM, fired my pistol once into the ground, just kind of for good measure, and claimed the claimed the carcass. Um my bowl was bull was lying there by far the biggest bull elk I've ever killed. Um, it's really cool animal, really old, it's been I think Ben you said, he's probably you know, kind of in regression probably used to be bigger than he was now his his bases are like six eight inches around. It's the kind of it's the it's the kind of elk have you've been out there a long time doing it that you really want to kill. I mean, it's just the not only uniqueness of what was on its head, but obviously the age and just the narties just just by the head that I saw later on, just a gnarly noble by by the looks of of his just his skull and his anilers. Yeah, yeah, tough motherfucker. Um, but he had you know, he was completely rotten. Um bears had eaten the pile of meat off them. So he's just torn apart, rotten. I mean the ground around him was moving with maggots. It was very very gruesome. Um. I was. I was just devastated. I mean I was. I was crying. It was very very upset. Um. And I had been going light and fast. I didn't carry my pack with me when I went out looking that morning because I just wanted to be moving fast, covering as much country as I could, So I didn't have a didn't have a sharp knife, so I need to walk away for a second I walked back to my pack, he had gone about another half a mile maybe from the last blood, and I followed very clearly along the major game trail he had followed, seeing just no blood at all. And I came and I went and got my knife in my pack and my stuff, and I came back again looking again just zero blood. Zero. You know this. I mean, there's a lot of elk in that country, so you know there's elk sign, but nothing really distinctive as like that big bowl and and coming back in again, um one of the bears that order you returned and I had to run it off again. And uh, but I was looking at my on X track, and I had walked within within a hundred and fifty feet of him the day before when John and I were up there that that morning, and it's just such thick, dense country, and I was just kind of over a little rise in the next gully and I just didn't see him. So you know, I was damned close to just walking right up to him. If I had, if I had been just thirty yards to the east and higher up on a little finger, I definitely would have seen him. But I didn't thirty yards man. Yeah, that's got to be the part of the tough The toughest part is knowing how close in so many ways you were to you know, just if he would have bled just a little bit more, if you'd have been thirty yards, or if that air would have been a couple of inches you know to the left, Um, what you would have what what the outcome would have been. Yeah, And I was looking at I was able to see the exit wound, and um, it was basically a clean path path through kind of perpendicular to the animal um and it hit at the back of the rib cage, exited back at the rib cage. But that that exit wound was tiny. I mean, it just just it just sealed up, you know, as as you hear people say, but it just it just sealed up. There wasn't really any blood coming out of it. It was mid body. Uh, not the shot you aim for, but a completely lethal shot. I mean, I'm guessing he probably took an hour or two to die. Um, but you know, he ran about three quarters of a mile and laid down own and and died. So I mean that's like that's what you kind of have to expect from milk I've killed like, I've killed four bowls with my bow and now, and I mean even even the most perfect double lung passed through, they still run a couple hundred yards. The first bowl I ever killed, I shot through the heart with the thirty at six and eighty yards and he still ran a hundred yards and then took a header off a cliff. You know, they're just tough animals. And uh, you know, if I had had good blood, we would have had him for sure. If I had just feared off a little in in another direction looking that first day, I would have had him for sure. But yeah, so I ended up cutting the head off, skinning and out notching my tag and and walking out of there. And you know, it was I had already decided the day before that I was going to notch my tag whether or not I found him, be as I knew I had drawn blood, um likely in a lethal manner, and I was, I was. I had already decided that I was done elk cunting for that year, for this year, and I mean, and I had a moose tag this year, so I had a lot of other things to do. But you know, I was devastated, felt awful, and I felt like, you know, that was kind of a like the punishment I was gonna lay on myself. I felt like it was the ethical thing to do, but I felt like I needed to, I need to kind of lash myself a little bit because I had messed up or I hadn't done things right, even though I still can't quite put my finger on what exactly I did wrong in the moment, but I felt like that was that was necessary. But since I had already made that decision, I decided to carry the the antlers out of there. But you know, I don't look at them as as a trophy or a prize or something that I'll display with the same level of pride that I do with other with other elk. It's almost it's almost as a reminder. But um, yeah, so that was that. Yeah, I don't know. I can definitely relate on a lot of levels to to that last point you made, because I don't if if if a kill doesn't go well, if the killing of an animal doesn't go well, and it's my fault. Even if you know, I shot at a meal deer last year eight times. Uh. Come to find out, the rifle I was usually had some copper foiling in the barrel and just wouldn't hold a group. Never borrow what I did, um and end up having taken to a gunsmith. But at the time I didn't know that, um and and the deer didn't go more than a hundred yards. Did you not shot that gun? Then? Yeah, we shot that gun. Yea, we shot Sam Solholt and I shot that gun. And it was I was hitting rocks at five yards UM right prior to that, so and it and it it just changed overnight. It was about two or three days later and there was a bunch of snow. It went from sixty degrees to degrees in a blizzard. So that could have been it also could have been nothing to do with that fouling. It could have been everything to do with me. Um. But the next barre season, I took the gun out to try to to sight it in and it wouldn't. It wouldn't hit a piece of cardboard at at a hundred yards two hundred yards UM and so there's no way for me to know if that was me or a combination of both things. But they definitely Sam was there. We went through. It was basically a blizzard that that opening day last year. Um, yeah, so it was. It was cold and wet and and who knows what what it was. But I mean, I you know, I shot at any times, but it didn't go more than a hundred yards somewhere I first pulled the trigger on it, and and it didn't suffer for more than five or ten minutes after I hit it in the front leg the first time. Um, and then I was shooting out it through a bunch of thick brush to try to put it down. And you know, so it was it was a rodeo. It was not. It didn't make me proud in terms of what I my end of it. And um, you know, it was a nice it was a decent buck, and it was a tough hunt, um in a really cool area with some good buddies. But still when I look at that deer, I just kind of think about my own failure and you know, the ridiculousness of shooting eight times at a meal deer. I don't think of like how cool it was. Those other factors that were badass. Um, I think about why the hell am I shooting eight times at a deer? That's ridiculous? For whatever the reasons were, so so so. Now when someone asked you how many bullets do you take into the field, with your answer, I take a whole box. You go for twenty. I've always just taken a whole box. You've been a twenty guy your whole life. Always, Yeah, most always I'll have a box. I'll have, you know, a couple in my pocket of course, a full a full mag in the in the rifle, and then the rest of the box in my pack. Almost always, because you never know, you never know what's gonna happen. You might have to research your gun in on the fly. Um, So that's good to have. It's good to be prepared in that way. But you know, there again, it's like these are ridiculously like they're embarrassing. You feel like, man, I'm you know, I think about hunting all the time. I've I've been shooting rifles since I was twelve. What in the world is going on? Um, that's not fair to that deer that I couldn't get myself together to make to make that happen. And then in that case, I was pulled the trigger the first time and was looking at that deer waiting for him to drop, and the guys I was with where we don't see where you hit, and I pull the trigar again, we don't see where you hit. I pull the sugar again. It hit him in the leg. So it was confusing, frustrating, piss me off moment. But I said, you know, I say all that to say, like, I know what Sam's feeling in terms of when you look at that deer, you're not thinking. Man, I can't wait to tell us, Tellbdy the story of this one. It's gonna be great. Um. There's some like modicum of shame there that you gotta deal with when you're looking at it. So that's certainly part of it, certainly part of it. But um, we should talk about this notching tags when you when when when you don't recover an animal, or even when you do. In your case, Sam, Um, I think you're notching of a tag is probably so well. I guess the point is you had planned to to not your tag before you found the bull, right, Yeah. Yeah, I had told myself when I walked out of the aircume, hell or high water, I wasn't gonna have a valid ELK tag. And we know through there's a there's a good article that we've all read and this is it's been sometimes since this was published on the mediator dot com, but a good article buy our good friend and writer Pat Durkin about wounding loss and depending on what state you're in, UM game agencies, when they put together their population data and they put together a tag allotment in those things for the year and for the units they're they're assuming some wounding loss, uh, building that into their set data set. And so from a practical standpoint, you can say, well, I wounded this animal. That's part of it, and that is taken into account by the folks that that afforded me this tag or allotted me this tag out of the larger group of tags that were UM that were sold. And so I'm gonna keep hunting because that's what essentially, that's what is in the plan for them and maybe should be in the plan for me. But I imagine what people are notching tags, are notching tags for more personal reasons than practical I feel like that's true, Johnny, Yeah, for sure, have you arned you've notched? Have you notched tags before? Thanks you didn't recover? I never have, never have, But I don't know if i've ever been faced Well, I mean I was telling you before we started it two years ago. I guess I was faced with it with that scenario, and I chose not to notch my tag. Um and even after I saw if if, if I can, I can really quickly tell my story of archery hunting um and uh, and I can tell you sort of my decisions that that I made after it. But um, it was like the first or second night. Uh, my hunting partner was actually packing the bowl out, so I was out by myself and ended up getting a great shot like exactly forty yards on the mark on a like a four by five. I had ranged the log that he was going to step over ahead of time. I told myself, if he goes to that log and you know, stops near, I'm like, it's money. It's forty yards. And I had been shooting a lot that summer, felt really good, and uh took the shot and hit him exactly where I wanted to hit him. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a single thing. Um, just pretty much like saw the red spot and I'm thinking to myself, smoked him. Well, he wheels and he turns and he's running off, and I'm like, man, I don't really have that grade of arrow penetration. Like I can see a solid foot maybe more, um, maybe half my arrow. I should have pretty long arrow. It's almost thirty inches, so if half my arrow is in him, that was fifteen inches. And he runs off, and I'm thinking, man, like, that was not great penetration, and so I gave it. I was gonna give a little bit longer, and I was gonna give like a couple hours, and then it started to rain, and so I think, I like ninety minutes. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna at least go to where I last saw him, see what kind of blood I can find. Um, just kind of assess the situation. So I go over. I find my arrow. It's got nice pink, frothy blood on it, a fair amount of blood on the ground. I pick it up and I just kind of peek over a little rise and I see the bowl down below me. And he takes off and I can hear him sort of breathing through that hole in his side where you can sort of hear air moving through an animal that's it's not his mouth, you know, And uh, he runs off, and I'm like, well, backing out for sure, now, you know. So I back out. The rain kind of continues and it's getting dark, and at that point I'm like, well, I'm just gonna have to wait till the morning. Well get up in the morning and it was I don't know, somewhere six eight inches of snow or so, and uh so I literally had no there was no blood trail. Um My hunting partner showed back up that uh I don't know, one too late in the morning. It was nine o'clock or so, and we with the snow. It actually made gritting easy because you know, you just walk straight line and just kind of, you know, when you come back, you just like you can see your old tracks ten yards away or whatever, and just you know, make another uh you know pass. And we basically did that over I don't know until dark that night, and it we probably covered I don't know, maybe a square mile you and just just tromped all over everything. But we're at that point we were just looking for one antler that was gonna be sticking up out of the snow and probably just a bump in the snow that would you know, show us the body and uh, it did not find it. Best. I can tell you that what I think happened is I probably got one long and with that kind of penetration, I don't know, but you never know. I feel like if I would have gotten to like the way we gritted that area, I would have found him. Um, But they can go long ways on on a long They can go long ways and live on one long. They can go a long ways and die on one long. So I can't tell you what happened. Did not notch my tag. UM continue to hunt, And then like two or three days later at a bowl we called a bowl in and he came by me top pin range and he was walking, and I thought I was good enough to just follow him as he walked and let my arrow loose, And that turned out to be a mistake. Um, from here on out, I'll always try to stop an animal with a cal call or grunt or something. And then settled my pin and shoot because what I thought was gonna tuck in right behind his shoulder ended up hitting in that like I didn't don't even think I got liver, so I was even behind the liver. The arrow basically showed hair and fat, zero blood and he was in a giant metal like a meadow that's literally a mile long and probably I don't know, yards across, and so we were able to watch that bowl, follow his trail see that there was little to no blood. He actually hooked back up with three bowls that he'd been feeding with earlier before we called him over to us and went back to feeding and then slowly worked their way into the timber. So the next morning we followed that bowl for there was just we had the fresh snow now and I had like pin drops every I don't know, ten thirty ft, you know, like a pin drop, and we could stay on his track and find that pin drop, and we went over two ridges and eventually his tracks ran into like a whole herd of elk tracks and there was no more you know, following him. So at that point we did quit hunting, but we were also at the end of the trip. Uh would I have punched my tag? I guess I didn't punch my tag because I hunted in a rifle season and killed a bull. Um. So that's how that went for me. Both of those times. I feel like again one long because we didn't find him. I'm guessing the bull lived that shot that went right through him, with what the arrows showed and the sign showed and the way he acted, like, my guess is that it went through a space somewhere between his guts and the diaphragm. Um, and and again didn't kill him. Do I know that for sure? No, there could have been some festering wound and he could have you know, perished months later. But again, like Sam said, man, they are tough. They take uh antler times to their flanks all the time, and um probably don't live through all of them, live through some of them. But yes, I think that's like the only time I've been faced with whether or not I'm gonna like punch a tag and know both those I chose not to, and I actually filled my tag later with a with a bull tag. Um, I think if I was in sam situation and I found one of those bulls, even if it was later, if I had something to go on, you know, I was able to like had a zone that I could search and I had found him even had I even though it was wasted. If I was packing antlers out of the mountains, a notch attack for sure. But if I'm putting like mega effort into it, and signs are showing that like it's fifty fifty whether that animals living or not. I'm not necessarily going to punch the tag. It's it's it's the sign and everything's gonna have to tell me and show me where like inside of me, I'm like, you know what, more than likely that animals dead? Yeah, um yeah, And I think for many people that travel out west Ard, well, really travel anywhere. Many outfitters I've hunted with half a dozen outfitters I can think of that that would have had this role. If you draw blood, that's your tag. Many outfitters will enact that on one private property. Um. And I've always really agreed with that because I've been a part of some camps where um, there's a lot of wounded animals in a very short amount of time and a lot of you know, you really want a client in that case to to think really long and hard where they want to pull that trigger. Um. Because one of the things I guess it in returning maybe a little bit to like the the in the moment decision making one of the things that happens on well what I guess we me and Clay Nuken we're calling transient hunts where you have like seven days to hunt, right you know, Samsun was and in nearly his backyard, you know, in his in his hometown. He that tag goes until the end of the year, um if you want to count shoulder seasons even longer. And so he doesn't have like a time restriction. But when a lot of people that are listening to this, when you're talking about and maybe you can talk about this to Yanni being a guide, you have six days to hunt and you're on your last day or you you know, you have three days to hunt or ten days hunt, doesn't matter. You have a time limit and that's the time you have to hunt that tag. I think a lot of times I've seen people at the very end of these hunts where you're traveling into a spot, You're willing to take shots you wouldn't otherwise, You're willing to do things you wouldn't otherwise, and a lot of times that turns that turns bad um for the animal and for for the hunter. So I don't know, there's a lot of situations that kind of when we we when it comes down to pulling the trigger, that expand the scenarios on which you would would do it, which you would pull the trigger, whether it's yeah, I'd like to mention that it takes a very mature hunter two have that control in that situation time and time again. And it only you only become that way. I think through lots and lots of experience, um, and people that have just you know, shot at a lot of things and then wounded a lot of things and killed a lot of things. And I personally and certainly not there even all that time I had as a guide. I got a lot of experience from it, but what I didn't get from it was having to control my own you know, emotions in the moment of truth, you know. And so that's something. But now, you know, kind of learning to do more of because I'm getting to hunt a little bit more myself, and I always uh, you know, guiding other people. UM. But there's like, I know very few hunters that like are so good where they're like, yeah, I don't shoot forty yards at an elk. And the reason they say that is because they've had all those experiences that we're talking about right now. They have like a limit to where it's just like in their mind it's gonna be and it's probably not gonna be percent nothing is in hunting, but like in their mind, that's like and they every single moment, you know, they might even pass something at fifteen yards because maybe it didn't stop moving or you know whatever. Um maybe because like that second bowl I shot, even though you grunt at him or cow call at him, maybe he doesn't stop me. He just kind of keeps walking as he's looking at you. And again you have to be like, I'm not going to shoot until it's right. And uh, it just takes a lot, a lot of experience to be in that moment and not want it so bad that you let your emotions take over. That's such a good point, like wanting it's so bad, Like no matter the scenario, no matter whether you've spent ten tho dollars on an elk hunt and this is your ten thousand dollars and all the time and all the practice and all the gear you bought and all the pressure. That's one version, but there's so many other versions of where those emotions come into play. Well, And we tell people all the time that you've really got to want it really bad. I mean that that's the that's the that's the way I became successful Elk Hunter, Right, I went through a lot of failure trying to figure it out, trying to learn, just going all the time by myself. And it's that it's that dogged desire to succeed that makes you good. But you need to learn to rain that in, like at the moment of truth White right, when it's finally coming together, Like the penultimate moment is when you can't want it too bad, and and and but you also at the same time you have to capitalize on very brief windows of opportunity and and like this that this pole, this this year, it's a great example of that. Like, you know, I did have a good, clean shot, but it was it was a quickly disappearing opportunity. And so you gotta want it bad, but you can't want it to want it too bad. So it's it's really difficult to parts where that where that line lies, Sam, would Sam, would you take that shot again? Everything everything being the same, would you would you shoot again? Yeah? Yeah, that's a that's a shot that I I would take. And I had a couple and I wrote a long post about this on you know, Instagram, Facebook, and I had. You know, most people kind of commiserate, but a couple, a couple holier than now, folks who I won't mention by name, talking about oh before I was a mature hunter, and uh, you know I I never do that kind of thing again. And like you, you didn't, you didn't read my my story. Like I, I I do not feel like I made I made a bad judgment call. I don't think I rushed the shot. I don't think it was a bad shot to take. Um. You know, I probably would have put my no. And that he's on he was on a hair trigger. You know. I shoulder bladed a bowl one time, like totally non lethally. I got like three inches of penetration. And I looked for a couple of days and saw that bowl later and he knocked the arrow out and was pushing cows again. So I felt like he had he had survived. So since then I tried to move backwards from that shoulder, to get away from that shoulder. But I mean in a situation where they're on a hair trigger at close range, I might move a little bit closer to the to the shoulder. I guess. I mean, there there's some things to derive from this. But but no, I don't. I would probably take that shot again, and and others like it. Yeah, and I you have to think of the situation. Man. Then this goes back to that We've had plenty of conversation on this show about ethics and um and no matter how much you think about what ethics are and and really how you would put them into practice, they're still the moment of truth. And once you what you just well described saying as that pen ultimate moment where you are in control of of what happens, and when when you release that air, that ultimate moment, you're not really in control of much of it. And so there's uh, this idea that I've been tracking with that I think this this really this conversation really leads to, which is rather than maybe not in replacing fair chase, but in in adding to it or making it a little bit more substantial in this pen ultimate moment, is this idea of fair kill and fair kill is essentially it's a It's a million things. It's a million things. It's certainly the practice the preparation being able to understand that you're the lethality of you perly with whatever weapon you're holding. But it's also being able to understand the impact of those decisions and and try to train yourself mentally in some instances physically too, you know, to make that that decision, that penultimate decision, and all fairness um to the animal and not to yourself, not to not to give in too. As as you guys both described that emotion of wanting to get it done, needing to get it done. I spend all this money and all this time and all this emotion and sacrifice for this, and now I'm going to I'm going to expand my ethical boundaries because I want it so damn bad. Um. That's like the most natural selfish reaction in that moment. And I think this idea of being fair to the animal in the moment of kill is the idea that you have to somehow as hard as it is, and as to your point saying to like to judge someone else for not doing it as holier than now. But this idea of personally trying to hold yourself to some sort of fairness at that moment um, it is impossibly hard as that. It just is because some people are better, some people are just If you read psychology books, I mean, and listen to psychologists. Some people are better in the moment. Some people are able to compartmentalize their emotions and and and have tunnel vision and focus on the moment. Some people are not. Some people, UM are are influenced by the existential at all times. So it's it's a it's a tough thing, but that's that's one philosophy that I've tried to personally apply UM and trying to make this work, and I still suck. But UM, I'm trying. Yeah, And it's it's so situational UM. An example I Another example I'd like to share is my my first archery bowl. UM was a substantially similar experience. I called it into about thirty yards and dense timber and shot it through an even smaller window. Uh, got one lung, got pretty good blood. But it was it was late. We were way up in the mountains. I was with my girlfriend at the time, and it crossed a creek in a swampy area, and then we couldn't pick up blood anymore, and she was getting freaked out. It was dark. She had to work in the morning, so we hiked all the way out of there and dropped her off and slept like two hours, and then picked up a buddy and we went all the way back in there. And this was hours away from where I lived in the Zula, so I mean probably three you know, two and a half hour drive, three and a half hour hiking. Um. But we went back in spent hours trying to pick up the next blood. It had crossed this creek and taken a right angle and went and went downhill, and we were able to find it. Uh just I think it was twenty three hours after the shot, and it was cold, there was some snow on the ground, and I lost maybe three pounds of meat around the ball joints. So the same thing, you know, left a blood trail because of responsibilities and just needing to kind of a mental reset, and I came back in and recovered that entire animal. And it was just a difference of air temperature between between uh taking it all home and losing all of it in, you know. And I remember thinking the day after that that if I killed it the day after that, I would have had that would have had that elk. So it was just the it was just the warm weather that was that was the difference. Yeah, I was I've had a lot of those discussions. Mark Kenny and I talked about this on this podcast last year, and I've talked about a lot of folks and the white tail space. When I was coming up watching Hunter Specialties dvs or named DVDs, it was videotapes and real Dream Starbucks and things like that. This is this is kind of the cadence of how it would go. They shoot the deer and be like, but we gotta let him lay. We gotta, you know, let's go back to the truck, give it about four or five hours, we'll come back and we'll track them. That was always kind of how it went, and I think for new hunters that can be a little bit confusing. Um, especially when you're hunting in an evening, when you're gonna leave something lay overnight. UM. I had a situation in Iowa where I was I was filming a guy. He shoots this giant buck. I was filming it. I'm watching this era go in. I'm like that that that buck ran right down in there and laid down for a couple of hours and died. He was shot in the liver um with a rage broadhead. And I was sure and the hunter wanted to wait and I wanted to go, and we had this, you know, we just had. It was a friendly debate about it. It was his property, so I wasn't gonna get the final call anyway, and his deer, and so we waited, and my argument was like, man, he said, if we bump him, he's gonna go to the neighbors. Then we got problems. And I said, well, I think he's dead and I really would like the to get the meat out of this thing. Um. And if we leave him lay, there's we've been seeing coyotes all weak. Those kyats are gonna be on them. Um, They're going to be right on him. So that was a discussion we had. He ultimately decided, because it was his deer and his property, that we were gonna wait. He didn't want to push this deer under the neighbors. We waited. We came back in the morning and that deer was laying right where I thought he would be half eaten by coyotes. Um. And I think at some level that becomes that's a big part of that is Um exactly what you're talking about, Sam, How long do you leave something lay? What's the judgment call? There and do you risk risks pushing him and never finding him, knowing that you're probably gonna lose some meat in your case to black bears. But in that case the coyotes. Um, there's a whole lot to that equation too, in terms of when do you set off and and what kind of country are you in and all those types of things. Um. So I think that's another important deal. And in that case it was it was hot too. But I want to move on, maybe start with you, Yanni, because you've been doing this as long as anybody, and I had an impact, you know, via the Netflix show and Meat Eater and your work on that. I think that the work that you do has has a larger impact than maybe then a lot of people are industry. Do you feel like we talk about this enough, um, across the media spectrum in hunting, across everything. If you were trying to tally up all the stuff you watch and listen to and and think about in the hunting space. Um, and you're specifically just asking if we talk about wound loss. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yes, this this this scenario where we are wounding an animal and losing it, and the ethics involved and the notching of the tags, the general idea that hunters fail a lot in very serious ways. Man, it's hard for me to say if like, yeah, it's certainly not growing up watching hunting media and reading hunting media, it didn't seem like it was part of the conversation. I feel that like now that I'm a part of it, And certainly when I was even guiding, uh a decade ago, it was certainly a part of the conversation in my crew. Um, we happened to be guiding right when arrows made a big leap from like heavy aluminum you know giants to like the speed freaks since you know, things of like the early two thousand's, um and mid two thousands, and when everybody started shooting really light, really fast U you know, um graphite arrows right, and UM we saw I go from like a lot of clean pass throughs to like these like sand described earlier where people were and that was passing routes on shoulders, And then we'd get these shots with these fast arrows that would hit shoulders and go in like three inches and you just would like watch and walk away. We would even start the blood trail. It was like it wasn't even worth it, but yeah, it's gone, you know. So we always had that conversation going a lot. And it's something that in a guide camp you're maybe more aware of because you're seeing so much of it. And at the end of you know, every season, you can tally it up and you know, someone's like, yeah, my guys shot three times and he maybe only hit once, didn't recover one that somebody else had one that you know what I mean. So it was just easier to have that conversation around a lot. So I don't know, I feel like now, at least amongst our crew, we talk about it a lot. Is it like do I scroll through Instagram right now and see anybody? It's mostly dead animals that you see, uh, and usually not not dead ones like Sam's where he's telling a bigger story there with a with an eaton carcass. It's usually just like a guy with a fairly fresh looking elk and and that's it and it's congratulations. Um. So I don't know, Uh, yeah, it's definitely but do you know, I don't know, I mean, am I gonna, I haven't killed, I haven't wounded something yet? Uh? This year and lost it And if I do, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I'll probably post about it to like share the story of you know what happened. Um, But yeah, overall, I don't know. I guess the question is is, like does it need to be talked about more? Um? Is there? Like like what's the value in it? Right? Like, it's certainly valuable I think in the hunting community to talk about it because I think that hopefully it just makes all of us practice more and and like be better at at what we're doing. Um. But like Jim Heffelfinger points out in that article that Pat wrote, it's like all the other predators aren't held to the same thing of of like of ethics and these like kills. Right, It's not like every time a mountain lion jumps onto the back of a mule deer that that thing dies. My buddy Jimmy over in Colorado. Every other year he's got a buck that will be roaming in the backyard all winter long. It's got like a patch of hair missing off its rear end. Like how do you think that happened? You know, like a hundred didn't shoot it off? No, I got raked off by a mountain lion's clause. And now his dear has got to go through the whole winter with like, you know, a twelve inch by twelve inch square patch missing out his rear end where he doesn't have any installation, and uh, most of the time, as far as he can tell, you know, they live through it. Yeah, but mountain lions like don't practice in their backyards. Uh, and listen to podcasts about and no, they don't know, they don't know, but by no, by no means, by no means do they. I think maybe the point that Jim's making that I agree with and I think that you're backing up, is like there's there's like there is an acceptable amount of this just by what we're partaking in, like we have we have to decide what the acceptable amount is for us personally, and and like why it happened is more of a personal endeavor. But in general, you know, Um, another good quote in here in that article for Patrick, and please go go give that a read because it kind of lines out some of the good and bad in terms of wounding loss Um. But there's there's a ton of good quotes in here, but I think one of them is it comes from Jim Heffelfinger, and it's really about is it objective or subjective? And and he talks about um. He says, brutality varies greatly with hunter density, thickness of vegetation, terrain, and hunt structures. Like many mortality factors, a number of deer left in the field after the hunting season would be very difficult to estimate accurately, and any estimate would not be applicable to wide areas were subsequent years. And basically what he's saying is it's damn hard to figure this out. There's so many variables across the board to try to take like a percentage. And and one of the variables is was win or hunters admitting to this? And who were they telling they would be having to tell them in the game. For surveys that that you get from most every state you buy a tagging or draw a tagging, you'd have to be admitting to this at some level. And and and who knows how truthful folks would be even in that, even in that sense. But interestingly, all the surveys I've ever taken, whether written or the phone call you get in January, I don't think I've ever been asked a question about me either me either you know, so, how do you are you there? Are they generally just taking there's some studies mentioned that article, but they're just generally taking this idea of a certain percentage um and applying it in in a generalized fashion. Um, you know. They He talks about a penn State professor who said research in the past twenty years suggests that only one to two of deer shot by hunters aren't found, and that Pennsylvania in this case loses way more deer to cars and trucks than undercovered hunting losses UM. And outside hunting season, we might they say, we might lose five to twelve tops to other factors, and that's mostly cars um. And so there's there's just a ton you know, when it comes to the data side of things. I don't know that there's a whole lot we can talk about. It's a really tough thing that's never gonna get pinned down, um in any real way that I can see based on a lot of these experts and what I've seen, And so then it just comes down to ethics and and some of the other less tangible ship that we can talk about that we often do. Yeah, But you know, at the same time, one thing that really jumped out to me about that article was that he he said, you know, he's spends a lot of time in this explaining how deer and elk un populations are estimated and accounted for, and was saying that Colorado estimates wounding loss for bull elk. Colorado has the biggest elk population and the most elk hunting of any state, and they just across the board assume that percent of bulls that are killed every year aren't aren't being found, and so that that varies pretty widely from some of the other states that are just talking about whitetail deer that account for a lot smaller wounding loss, accounts for a lot smaller percentage of the overall population loss every year. And I think it just goes to show that elk are incredibly difficult to bring down. They just have that really that strong will to live. And I mean, I've I've heard that from hunters my whole life. You guys who have hunted all over the world in Africa and Asia, and they'll tell you that elk are one of the hardest to bring down. Just have so much fight in them. And I mean that's an intangible too. But you know, I think it's really in deicative that that Colorado just across the board assumes that fifteen percent of bowls won't be recovered, and I think it's and it says that twenty five percent of cows, that's right, aren't recovered. And you know, explain a lot of this is really uh, out of this is really cognitive that you know, you look a lot harder when you've got a bowl on the line. Um. Often when you're hunting cows, you know you're in kind of a a group of them and it's hard to tell what one did what. Um, yeah, yeah. Well you also you also think like over the years, Colorado has it's changing now, but has had as much over the counter activity from out of state hunters is any state. And you put that into those archery seasons being long, um, a lot of over the counter tags, a lot of elk, a lot of interactions. Um, that number is going to go up. And then you've got to add in there that elk are as tough as they are, it's tough to bring down as they are. And then that number seems the way it seems very very reasonable, UM, in terms of you know that that particular situation. So to the to that quote I read by Jim it you know, it's so hard you couldn't apply the archery specific method of take the game animal and the state. UM, you'd have to you know, you can't compare really one to the other. And even probably withinside a state, if you have a very limited entry white tail season and a wide open archery season for elk, the wound lost percentages are gonna be way different even within that with those two scenarios. So as a it's a tough thing to nail down for sure. But maybe back to the UM, to the media point, because I I do think as much as I think this is kind of trite now like social media has a big impact on new hunters for sure. I mean the term influencer exists for a reason. UM. And I I've I ran into a guy in a in a turkey camp years ago, UM that shot and wounded a turkey with archer with archery equipment, and in some way expressed to me that he had never seen he didn't understand what wounding an animal looked like, what it was. He understood everything about success what the where the shot had to go, where like how far the animal is gonna run, what it looked like when you shot it, what it looked like when it was dead, how to eat it, how to cut it up? But he had never seen or been exposed to that same level of clarity when it came to wounding an animal, because he got all his gumption to go hunting off social media and some some very famous individuals that we were showing a lot of hunting there. So I don't know if you know that's addicative of a lot of new hunters, if they do or do not. But I, like you said, yeah, on our platforms, I think we probably talked about it, you know at a good a good clip and as much as it happens, we mentioned it. Um. But I don't know, like if you thought about this, Sam, do you feel like social media, particularly just because of the way it is, dead animals get more likes, so you see who're dead animals? Right? Yeah? Absolutely? And I and I think, uh, you know, kind of within the social media influencer sphere, I think of many many people are loathe to portray their own mistakes. You know, we all try to give the best, best version of ourselves on social media. I mean, anytime I run into a friend from college or high school, they're like, you hunt all the time. It's cool that you get to hunt for work like I. I hunt on the weekends just like everybody else, um or before or after work. You know, I don't. I don't usually post a lot of selfies of me sitting here on my basement pounding on my computer. UM. And I think that's even more true with the higher levels people have higher followerships. They don't want to. I think it's a natural thing to portray the best version of yourself, not the worst. But at the same time, you know, we have one of the one of the biggest platforms in the hunting world being on on Netflix, and season nine of Meat Eater dropped on Netflix like a few days before the situation that happened to me this year. I had just seen Steve's Colorado hunt where he wounded a bull elk with a muzzle loader. Um, and he did not recover it. He did punch his tag or or stopped hunting. I don't. I don't remember if he if he actually made that, you know, the actual action of punching the tag. I don't remember, but you know he had to wrestle with that, and I think he did it very well and talked about how you know, he he could make some peace with it, knowing that there's that there's no zero sum in in in the wild, that that bowl either survived or if it died, it would feed, you know, it could it might feed a black bear cub. That that might make the difference between that bear surviving and not making through making through its first winter. And I I knew that for a fact that two black bear cubs, we're going to be very well fed on that elk. And that wasn't exactly what I went out trying to do. I wasn't too worried about those those cubs. And clearly that that spot has a very healthy bear population. If I ran, oh yeah, and those those thousands of maggots too, right, you're not like trying to like feed the fly population and help them out. But like none of that stuff goes to waste, man, it all just goes right back into the earth. And you're and if this is a place where you frequent, like you frequent this these mountains, like you might get a chance to hunt that bear later on you know, like well, I mean I gave I gave Janice here the way point of that carcass so he could try to go hunt bears. Don't Yanni, did you end up making up there? I never did. I never did. But hunted not not right to that car, because but I certainly hunted the area just in general, uh like around it like that roughly that same ridge. And um was you know, knowing that you had seen so many bears. I was always on the lookout, sure, and I would have I probably would have gone. I mean, I killed a bear of this spring, so I don't have a bear tag this fall. So but if I had, I probably would have tried to arrow one of those bears when I was in there with the elk, or gone back with a rifle once the Yeah, I guess the bear rifle. Bear season was open at that time. So I don't know. It's there's there's no there's no complete loss if you look at it in at an ecosystem level. And I mean that that may be just a platitude that makes itself helps us make make ourselves feel better about it. But I think I think it's important for us to take a you know, a landscape level approach to what we do because wildlife managers should do and that's how natural systems function. It isn't it, Yeah, it isn't. It isn't right. It is a It is a platitude at some of it. But when you when you shoot at elk and you don't recover it and you shed some tears, like I feel like you've on emotional level, You've done You've done the work you need to do in terms of understanding the impact to you and the animal and everything. So I mean, there's that like if you were to just say that happens and just keep on rolling that that probably isn't isn't quite enough depending on the scenario. Um. But when you when you can first deal with the personal emotions and then deal and then and then let that dissipate, and then and understand the ecosystem and how it functions above that, that's that's that's totally natural, I think, UM, But you know I and I would say that I said before we started recording that my dad told me not to talk about wounding animals early in my hunting life. I don't know that he ever told me that specifically. Um, and I can't remember I'm ever saying, hey, son, you know, if you wound one, don't tell anybody, but I must I must have wounded as a twelve year old, I must have wounded two or at least two deer with the right but before I killed my first one. Um, And so so we definitely went through that. But I'm glad like as the years have gone by that um this traditional idea that that you don't really talk about as much as as has changed. So the fact that it's on Netflix Stephen Ellis talking about it is a big deal UM to me personally, that that that we can do that and and it it works for everybody, and and it's not something that the quote unquote anti hunters will attack us for um as much anymore. I'm not afraid of that, that's for sure. So, um, Phil, you're you've been here the whole time, what whenever? What do you think about this when you get on your first hunt, when you get out there? Uh, and your face with this like ultimate moment. I don't know, I guess I mean, so, as you guys have been talking, I've been doing some hunter safety. I finished events in the last hour. We coerced him into it. Coincidentally, the what I'm doing is on marksmanship right now. Um, I mean, I don't, I don't. I don't know, man, I feel like it's just one of those things where it's just like, you know, you do everything in your power to to to do everything correctly, but you know, you guys, you guys have been talking about this. There's a million there's a million variables, but you have the power to to you know, shift things as much in your favor as possible and the animals favor. Um, you know I'm gonna do my best. Ben Okay, I know you will. Phil, I know you will. I just wonder of all this is not like the most happy, go lucky way for you to experience this. You know your your excitement level. Uh, what's the number there so we can tell our friend Eric Hall Oh, I don't know. I mean like, honestly, the more I work on on on the hunter safety course, my my number goes up. I drifted away from it, but I'm I'm I'm coming back. People are pissed at you, man, Yanni. Yanni has developed apathy for the situation. But people in my Instagram games are just hunting is not for everybody. It's true. Be honest. I see what you're doing and it's working. I'm not trying to do anything, man, I'm being very just straightforward about you. I know, I sense your your disappointment. It I respond to you way more than Ben. Yeah, every time Yanni's on and the heat Now you're just stirring the pot film he was staring the pot. Well, you never know. We may this may give us a chance to invite one of your listeners on the hunt with me and Phil on his first hunt, so you can give the play by play anyhow, Man, let me throw something out that I thought i'd bring up for this conversation. It is always fine, kind of interesting. We start talking about ethics and then the decisions we make about how we kill animals and how clean we try to do them. I feel like that we never extend the same, uh, you know, level of care towards you know, how quickly and cleanly and and all that we kill a small game animal or a bird is like that we do with a with a big game animal. I mean, all the servers are just held on this pedestal that you just it has to be, you know, one bullet dead as soon as possible, etcetera. Yet, like when a flock of ducks fly by, like I'm often like not shooting, and everybody else in the blind empties their gun and sometimes zero birds fall out of the sky right, And so it's like that is way like two totally different things, and it's completely acceptable to do that with ducks or I don't know, maybe am I not? Do you guys think it's acceptable to Janni Yanni? If you if you think if elk are fifteen percent, as the City of Colorado says, I mean, ducks have to be approaching fifty. And last last weekend, I was with some friends in a in a duck camp. You guys know HANSI in production and he had two new buddies. The duck hunting was terrible. Um, I never even shot. I fired my gun once and missed. But the second day we're out there, we shot four ducks, well, the group shot four ducks. I didn't shoot any of them, and we were covered two and lost two that they're winged and swam off and got in the wind. And I mean HANSI almost flipped his canoe chasing after one and it got into the reeds. And he never found it and like, and he exhibited an incredible dedication to trying to get that duck, like literally put himself in danger of trying to do it, and and opened my eyes because I've been duck hunting my entire life, and I've seen so many people just be well, that one got away. Hopefully maybe it'll maybe it'll make it. Maybe it's kyote food you got, the coyote's gotta eat too. And that's that's wounding loss in that in that one duck shoot last weekend. And I've seen that my entire life, that that ducks are difficult to recover and uh and hunters don't don't get don't pay them that same respect as as large animals. And I wonder if that's because we actually pay them less respect or because it's a bigger pay off to find your elk. I I don't know. It's it's difficult to understand that with ducks. I mean, you see a lot of duck hunters hold Yeah, they hold a duck up right like like a little you know, like I think they look like they want to pet this duck when they kill it. And how beautiful ducks are. So I think there's like respect after the kill. I think one of one of the big parts here is that I always say that the hunters of when the gloves come off, you know, when Farrell hogs in Texas as a whole, that's a party um for people, and and the ethics kind of go out the door. But in this case you can there isn't just one tag and oftentimes you do not have to draw that tag unless we're talking about cranes or or something like that, or swans. When in the waterfowl world, um, so you have you feel like there's carte blanche and if you don't get today's limits, you could get tomorrow's limit, and and there's not such a you know, on a personal level, you duck hunt can be ten ducks or three ducks or or whatever, depending on where you're at. And so I imagine people just take less umbrage of of the seriousness of of notching your tag or or getting your limit when when there's less to be worried about there. I don't know, but I do think that that has a lot to do with it. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I think you're probably right about that. Then it's it does it does vary by by animal, but I think, you know, the some of the overarching lessons remain. I think I think one thing we need to point to is that death is rarely clean. We try to make it as much as we can, but even you know that perfect heart shot with an exit wound is going to be messy mess Yeah, and lung shots aren't aren't aren't immediate death either. Yeah. I mean I think you should you know, And I've seen this is like a growing thing on social media. Like I trained so I can be I want to be perfect. That's my My goal is to shoot an elk and have it, you know, shoot a duck, shoot whatever I train. But I'll tell you right now, and to being fully transparent, the times that I've failed in the woods have almost always gone back to my lack of preparation with the gear and my lack of practice with that same gear. And it doesn't mean just the bow or the right full It means everything, all of it um, whether it's not having your range find or attached to your bino harness so you can drop it when you need to draw, or a million different things that go that go into it. Me personally, I can just say that almost every time something has happened that I would say was was poor on the animal's end. I could go back to my own preparation on many levels, um and fix something and fix something, So you know, I take I know you do too, Yanni, I know you do too, same because you your work with the bridge or bowman and do a bunch of shoots in the summertime. We all love going to the Total Archery Challenge. And I've got a big, big elk in my backyard and Yanni's got targets in his backyard, and so we definitely do that and take pride in that, um. And that's an important part of what you can control. So yeah, yeah, I think I mean to kind of close out thought for me. I think over the years, I've certainly become a little sort of like I guess like hardened to the emotions of this the wounded thing. And maybe it's because you know, I just saw a lot of it, you know, guiding, and he's sort of like just become like kind of like it's just like part of the deal, right, And I think, what like what makes me want to do good? It's not always necessarily so the animal dies quickly, but like so that I don't have to go through those emotions, those shitty emotions, and I have success because I liked the meat. I want to eat that meat. But like that's why I'm not. I'm not like trying to be a better hunter necessarily for the animal's sake. It's it's for selfish reasons. And that's because like I want the success and what that equals, whether it's the meat or the picture on the Instagram or and not having to go blood trail and not having to like you know, think about it for two days and whether or not I got the animal. Um, But like that that's what drives me, you know. It's not it's not because like I'm like, oh, I don't want the animal to suffer. The animals gonna suffer anyways, no matter how I kill it, Like you're taking its life. Yeah, I agree, I agree. I think if you appeal all that back. Man, we always talk about like the game like qualities of hunting here and something like you want to win the game at some level, you want to have I have a I always like the best feeling when I kill an animal is the feeling of accomplishment and and however that comes. Um, i'd much rather have that feeling than the feeling Sam had or or I've had in the past, or or whatever. Um so complicated. But I agree with you the Janni, I think it it would be false to say, like I all of a sudden start caring only about the animal when I'm about to kill it. I mean, that's not that's just not true. Yeah, And Yanni, I think I think something that really stood out to me the air was that, you know, you feel a little hardened to it. And you know, one thing I wanted to bring up as I have a good, really good buddy from college who's been trying to get into hunting the last couple of years, and he a couple of years ago when he was on his first deer hunt and he had he had heard a story of a friend who had wounded a deer and hadn't recovered it. And he he had called me and just wanted to, you know, know my perspective on that, and like, how how could that happen? Like what a tragedy that somebody didn't recover the deer that they put an arrow through. And I told him that nobody wants that. It's sad, but it does happen. That it had happened to me, and that if he hunted long enough, it would happen to him. And so this year I I partially felt like I that I had jinxed him because he drew his first elk tag this year, a spike elk in uh Nevada, and he shot a bowl with his with his ful and hit it like kind of high and back and didn't bleed much. And they looked hard and couldn't find it. And then later that week he shot one and killed it and put his tag on it. And you know, he he had called me wanted to share in his excitement and everything. But but then later in the conversation he told me that he had lost one and was very interested to know my my take on that. And he knew I had killed the tag and killed an elk but not recovered the meat and still punched my tag, and he wanted to know if I, if I felt like he did did the wrong thing there, that he should have walked away without without an elk and had punched his tag and called and called it, called it quits. And I told him, like, man, this is your first big game animal like your freezer has never seen wild game before that tag is meant for you to take an elk comb, and so it's it's a philosophical it's a philisop offical choice at that point that you're allowed to make. And I told him that I did not fault him for not punching his tag and taking one home. He's got he's got three kids and a wife, and no, I mean not like they want for anything, but they don't have wild game in their freezer, and he was so excited to feed them wild game for the first time. And I'm like, you absolutely should have kept hunting. I'm glad you did. I'm glad you brought an elcomb for your family. It's a shame that happened, and you can tell you feel badly about it. You're gonna try not to ever let that happen again. But that that tag is for you to remove an animal from the woods, and if you want to, if you want to cut it up into tatters for your own personal you know, self flagellation for a mistake, You're welcome to do that, but but there's no one forcing you too. There's no legal mandate that you do that. So I told him I supported his decision to keep hunting. I'm glad that he gets to feed his his children elk for the first time. Um. But I told him that my freezers was still half full at that point in time, and that it didn't, you know, change my ability to feed myself wild game throughout the winter to not recover an elk, And I went and killed a moose two weeks three weeks later. Um, and now I have zero freezer space and a couple deer that I want to still kill at this point. So it's always a little bit different calculus. But I think we need to remind people that, you know, while it can be an ethical choice to to punch a tag on an unrecovered and animal, you you don't you don't necessarily have to. And um, you know, I think I think feeding yourself is is the highest goal of hunting and and and should you know, is still a rational consideration in this discussion. Yeah, well I think that's a great place to end it. Um, thank you guys. I mean I do in terms of my concluder, as Steve would say, I just think that hopefully talking about this um at length like this, and hearing other stories and being able to relate to things as Sam just said right there, just being able to have someone to relate to that you feel like you can say, like, this happened to you, this happened to me. What should I do? Um? I think that's important for everybody in there that goes hunting. So we'll keep talking about it at a at a at a clip that's respectable, and when it happens, we'll address it and you'll you'll always hear hear about it from us. Man, let's have let's have Eric hall on and talk to him about I'd like to get his perspective. He's not we will at that point. I probably could call him up right now. He jumped right in. He's been sending me Eric, He's been sending me uh T shirt ideas for the air Call T shirts. So he's into it. He's he's back on the he's back on the TC. He left us for like a couple of weeks and I was wondering where he might have gone. But he's back with Avengece. Don't don't let him go, man, keep him in alive. Well, we need him, we need alright boys, We'll talk to you and I really appreciate it. Um, Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks Ben. That's it. That is all another episode in the books. Thank you too, Janice and Sam as always h for diving into that. Be sure to go to our website and read um our good friend Pat Jerkins article. Also you can read Ryan Callahan's article from last year talking about his wounded elk from last season. So and you can, as we said during the show there you can watch the on Netflix the Colorado Muzzloader Hunt with Steve or Heat wounds an Elk. And so there's a lot of examples of that going on. But it's important to talk about be open about. Boy, you know, I wasn't was anything for me. It was a hit to the ego, so I might as well just lay it all out there for um. There's no no use in trying to hide it. Um. And and that's that's something all the way around. But Phil, we've had we had a little gift come to the office the other day. I'm not in the office, so I didn't get mine, but you got something from a very special Yeah. I can only assume you have one too. But I go into the office a couple of times a week to set up the soundboard for some recordings, and on my desk was a shirt um. On the front it says fill the Engineer th HC podcast Bosa Montana. On the back it says, hey Ben Phil Eric call here. So I'm gonna assume that was from our good friend Eric call. Yes. Uh, Eric called the leader of th HC nation, the Czar, the beating heart of the land of th HC. I don't know, like I think I've I've received more gifts from Eric Hall than my own children in my lifetime. Yeah, well, he loves you. He loves you dearly, and that's that's serious. You know, like a lot of podcasts, they'll they'll come up with some some I think relatively lame like ways to describe the people that listen. Um, Like, don't a lot of famous people have, like Taylor Swift like swift ease, Yeah, beliebers, beliebers. We don't have that. So maybe we maybe people can write into th HD at the media dot com. What should we call the listeners? I mean, Eric Hall is the leader, the Graham pumba um of of the cult. Is it a THC cult? I mean I prefer not to attach that word to our listeners. Probably a good idea. Probably good day. Well right in at THC the media dot Com, thank you for the wonderful shirt. I can't wait to see Phil wearing it as a bass layer when he kills his first dear and he's gonna take it off and pose for his first grip and grin with that shirt on Eric call. So we're I think that's a pretty good idea, Phil, that was just off the cuff. But I think if you wear it underneath your first light, um, and then and whip it out for your first grip and grant that you'll posted into social media with like hashtag piles equal smiles or whatever. Um oh yeah, you know me, that'll be that'll it'll probably like in your face animal rats look at this something like that. All right, Well, it was a great episode today. Hopefully it was thoughtful and hopefully we didn't annoy you with the ship stories. There's a moratorium. Don't send them into anymore your band from the thhd calt You can't join the call if you're gonna send email in ship stories. Okay, just get it together, say bye, Phil, good bye, because I can't go a week without doing right drinking in Heaven