00:00:08 Speaker 1: The Hunting Collective is presented by Element. I guess I grew up. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I am Ben O'Brien. What is this episode one fifty four? Phil? Hey, you got it? Great? Ah, look at me, look at me? Hey, you don't have their buddy. I'm doing all right. I was just telling you I'm going to the chiropractor for the first time today. Um, I'm in I've been. I've been in great pain since I woke up Friday morning. I just I have no like you know, we've all had those nights where we sleep funding we wake up the next day a little stiff, normally for me, though it eventually works its way out after a couple of hours of me just taking it easy. This has only gotten worse. I haven't. I hadn't been able to turn my head in any meaningful way for how far can you turn your head? Let me see? Well, so swiveling is actually not too ad? Yeah? Sorright? Like tilting. I can't tilt at all. Phil is is move tilted his head about one degree visible pain. Alright, Well, everybody send Phil get well soon messages on Instagram. Just just just send nice thoughts. Shall we give you give out your address? Maybe people send you care packages, white ball maybe something like that for the holidays. Yeah, stay, I'll check that onto the end of the show. I'll definitely do that. Alright, perfect, perfect, alright. Well, um, a lot to get to today. We've got Mark Kenyon, the great and powerful Mark Kenyon from Wire to Hunt from back forty and all the different things that you know from the mediator whitestyle content that he leads over here. Um, we're gonna talk about a lot of things, specifically hunting with your dad and also the psychology of naming deer and then chasing the deer you named all year long, having like some weird relationship with the particular single deer um, which Mark tends to do. So we're gonna get to that a little bit later on the show with Mr Kenyon. But before we get to that, we got to talk about our Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving was made better by all of you because we asked for Thanksgiving holiday traditions and you all absolutely came through. Made me. I was laughing pretty much the entire holiday weekend and and also moved by a lot of the stuff that you guys sent in, Um, but I will say this. Let me just say that part of why i wanted to have this contest one I'm a silly I'm a silly little bit and I like to make jokes. And Phil just shook his head like, yeah, yeah you are. Uh. I like to I like to have fun, and I like to do things that are sarcastic and ironic. And that's just me. But also, you know, has been a tough year for a lot of people. It's a year where a lot of the normalcy that we're used to, the things that kind of track our lives lives and keep us saying, have been been ripped away from us. So it's nice to, especially around these holiday seasons when we might not have been able to gather like we all wanted to, it's nice to remember the things they're gonna keep us going and to look back in order to look forward. So, Um, that really came through in spades with everybody sending their stuff. And now, Phil, this was my first I'll be thirty five on Wednesday tomorrow. This is the first time in my thirty five years that I didn't have Thanksgiving with my family. Um, what about you, what's the what's the Thanksgiving? What's the Thanksgiving feel around the Engineer the t Engineer household. Honestly, this was exactly. We had the same Thanksgiving that we always do. Ever since I, um moved away from home, came out to Montana for school, met my wife. We've always just done Thanksgiving as the two of us and then with some some little kid additions along the way, and we usually saved the family gathering for for Christmas. Um, just because we don't we don't live anywhere near near family. UM, we haven't for a while now, so I you know, for for budget, budgetary reasons and just like wrangling children reasons, we just stick stick the family gathering on Christmas and we usually have a small Thanksgiving. So this Thanksgiving wasn't wasn't a whole lot different for me. Yeah, for me, it was I've always you know, my brother and I so my family. I have a brother, so it's just me and my brother were around the same age. Like we've always kind of coalesced around Thanksgiving. I mean we both lived around home until college time. He moved to Georgia for college. I've moved around the country pretty consistently, UM for the last twelve years or so, and so has he um. But somehow we've always managed get on the plane, get on the train, get on the bus, getting you know, get in the car and and find our way back home for Thanksgiving. It's always a priority. And to your point, Vill, I always spend way more money than I can afford and spend a lot more time now I have kids being miserable during Thanksgiving to get them to the place. Man, traveling with kids is no joke. Like, it doesn't matter whether you do plane or car or train. There's there's always there's so much baggage literal and figurative that comes with with traveling with kids. It's a whole whole, whole new ball game. I always feel like it's the Oregon Trail. Trail. You're like, yeah, man, you pack up the pack up the wagon. We're going east. Um. But anyway, that that's that's my experience. My dad brought this up to me the other day. My brother did as well, like, hey, man, this is the first time that we haven't been together with your mom and you're and eventually significant others and eventually kids. This is the first time we haven't ever done that in our entire lives, um, and so that's you know, it was it was, it wasn't. The positive was we didn't have to travel, we didn't have to go through all the craziness we normally do as a family to get home. But you know, at the end of the day, it was. It was a tough It was a tough couple of days just knowing, Um, this is the first time that we weren't together. So I'm sure they're you know, a lot of you listening have similar stories. Maybe you're like Phil. It just it just was another Thanksgiving. But I tend to tend to think that a lot of people's lives are in some form of upheaval, and so it was your holiday. So it's good to look at traditions and kind of ground ourselves now. And I didn't I didn't mean for the contest that we announced last week to be like a real sappy affair, but man, it was. And I think maybe that would that, you know, tells me where everybody's heads are at right now in terms of the holiday season. So we're gonna read some emails. We're gonna get to some of the entries and some of the stories that people sent in for their holiday traditions, but to remind everyone the long story of how this contest came to be. Phil and I spent months planning this out. Essentially, what what we asked people to do last week on last week's show was to send us some sort of video, photo, story, anything that would tell their holiday tradition, that would would tell us about what they did, and we wanted to be entertained, and in return, you would get some Element, some drink element tea of course, always go to drink element te dot com slash media to support Drink Element our title sponsor. UM, we'll get you a bunch of Element to get you hydrated, salty hydration. We're gonna get you that, and then we're gonna get you a Jetti tumbler emblazon with the Hunting Collective logo on it, only available here at my house to send to you. And then, um, most importantly, especially Phil, Phil was adamant that we include this. He told me, hey, this is a great idea. UM that I only now follow White Claw on my social my Instagram on social media. I watched The Social Dilemma, the documentary. I got a little bit scared, and then next thing, I know, I'm up in the middle of night deleting everybody from from my um Instagram. So now, but then I got to White Clawed. I just couldn't hit that unfollowed button and so now they're the only people I follow and they don't have their their social media kind of sucks. Anyway, it's just pictures of cans of white claw. They could they could really use to step up their game over there. Yeah, I mean, if they would bring us on, as if they would sponsor us, we would do free social content for them, free videos, free everything. I mean, but they just want't to return our calls unfortunately. So anyway, that's that's what we were doing. A lot of you sent things in UM. A lot of them made me laugh, but the bulk of them were We're like, we're moving and and something I had. I actually read a couple of the Sason got a little emotional myself, Phil, which I was not expecting to do. So I'm gonna read a few of these. But um, first of all, Phil, did you see the t C pie? I did. Uh, They're very very impressive, impressively, Yeah, I I loved it. Uh. This was Katrina. She's at kit kat is hungry. I think that's what that says. Kick cat is hungry. She said, Happy Turkey Day, Ben. Every year I make a pie and this year was no exception, except that I tried to write th HC with the crust, and now my family just thinks I'm some kind of pothead parentheses. They aren't wrong, but still not why I want to discuss via zoom it was it's a nice looking pie. You can you can clearly see the th h C on the pie. So I appreciate that that that there's now a THC pie. Um, So thank you Katrina for for help us out there. I will also say that the cult debate rages on, Phil, I mean rages on in my life, does it? Though? I feel like it's about of people telling you it's a horrible idea. No, that's not, it's not. It's fifty. I did a tabu tabulated this ship. It's fifty fifty. The people that you know, it's one of those things where the people that hate it think it's the worst thing in the world. The people that love it are embracing it with all of their being. So, um, you know how I like, you know, a good polarizing topic. Um, so you know, we'll keep it going. A lot of people are signing their emails cult follower, all kinds of things. Um, so here we go. Anyway, we got a lot to get to today, but I'm just gonna what I'm gonna do now is just read some emails from all of you that share any traditions. Um. A couple of them really made me stop and be like, wow, Um, this is a cool damn show that we do. So so I just wanted to preempt this by saying, like, when I was looking at this this morning, I thought I'd sent hibout half an hour skimming through some stuff, pick out the good ones. I spent about three hours, um reading it, all these emails, looking at all these photos, laughing, but like overall, the feeling was, um, real heartwarming. So thank you everybody. First one comes from Austin Smith. I really appreciate your name, Austin. It's really easy to pronounce, he said. Um. He sent a couple of pictures along. He said, my name is Austin, and I wanted to tell y'all what this holiday weekend has meant to me. I snapped this picture. He sent a cool little picture of a bunch of his family around the table said, I snapped this picture over the holiday without telling anyone. Also, looking back at it, I'm tearing up because this isn't my holiday tradition. My family has been splitting apart in some ways recently, and to be honest, we didn't have this type of holiday growing up anyway, because my dad was Air Force and we never lived close to family and never had any traditions aside from food. This year, my brothers in laws invited us up to their place on the Rocky Mountain Front outside of Augusta, Montana. Most of my family went. This is a raw picture of their family mixed with my family. A group of people wildly different, some hunters, some brainiacs, a nurse, stay at home mom, young newly weds, and some older people that have lost their spouse, but all of us in a different stage in life. Coming together to enjoy fellowship, food, hunting, stories, laughs, and excitement makes the reality of life feel easier and more of a blessing when surrounded by those that we love. I've never felt so included by and thankful for people that I have known for such a short period of time. I hope this doesn't seem long winded or too much or too sappy, but it's all true, and I was when I was trying to figure out how to enter this contest last week while listening to the podcast, I kept coming up empty because the lack of traditions my family has. I wish this is how it had always been, but I can pray this is how it will always continue to be. The weekend of love, laughter, and hunting also the time to brag and show some first, he sent a picture of his younger brother with his first deer over the weekend, and he got his first earlier in the season. Pretty badass. Thank you, Austin Smith. I'm glad you have to hang out of your family, dude. It looks pretty fun the photo. I don't know if you guys are drinking or not, but it looks like you're having a good time. Nonetheless, anyway, Phil, these are all pretty heartwarming. Man. It's did you feel warm by that? Yeah? I know I can kind of. Uh. I'm kind of the same boat as Austin, because whenever I think about traditions, I don't like the first thing that runs to my head is that I don't really have any, at least growing up I was like, there wasn't a specific thing we did like surrounding an event, like like hunting or going somewhere specific. There are there are these like little tiny things that are that are tied to the holidays, Like for ample, he would always just visit my dad's parents on Christmas Eve and my mom's parents on Christmas. And that doesn't sound like very there's not really anything exciting about that, but I'm still very much tied to that ritual and I have really fond and warm memories around those two dates. And it doesn't have to be anything big, it doesn't have to be something momentous. It's those small, those small details that that remind me how important family is. Even if at the time it didn't seem like it. Looking back, it's definitely it had an impact on me. Yeah. I mean for those of us that like had a good family unit growing up, whether that's just your your extended family or just you know, your your parents and siblings. When you move away like I did or or Phil, did you certainly get some perspective on what was just normal life growing up? You know, for me, it was very much when I was a kid, it was it was we would wake up, we would hang out, we would get ready. We would go to my first grandmother's house, who was like the best cook in the world. She was just short lady and like the most homey little house on View Street in Hagerstown, Maryland. Like we would go there and it would be the warmest place. We would have a wonderful meal with our family, and it was a very wholesome event. Like I really just I think about that time, and I think about like the warmth of that side of my family. It's my dad's side of the family. And then we would go to my mom's side of the family next for like a second meal. Now there, the food wasn't as good. In fact, I told this story at my grandmother's funeral. She used to make I think it was sweet potato castrole or some sort of sweet potatoes. She was not a good cook, and it would be like black on the top, and then you would put a spoon in that ship and it would be nuclear orange underneath the black burnt castle. And she did this fairly off starting on childhood, as if it was a traditional dish um. So the food wasn't as good, but but man, that side of the family knew how to party, so we would go there. You know, we were old enough to get a beer too and laugh and run around and have a great time, and so we had I always kind of felt like we had the best of both worlds now Christmas, that side of the family that like to drink would give better presents than the other side of the family, but the other side of the family had better food. It's I always felt like we had a good dichotomy. But anyway, that like our like that was our our traditions. Our holiday traditions were very much around the people that we loved and and the way that they loved us. And then also, you know, my dad and I would always go hunting. The the rifle opener in Maryland would be the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so we would spend the Friday oftentimes shooting our rifles getting ready, and then we will go out and hunt on Saturday. So hunting, as with a lot of you that rode in hunting, is a part of the Thanksgiving tradition. It that time of the year, it's the perfect time to blend the two things which we often do. Um and as as you'll hear from some of these other stories, so that's why I think this contest and and some of your feedback on holiday traditions went the way it did. It's really about the people closest to you and spend that time with them. So I appreciate that, um, of course. And I know that you know, I'm trying to keep this one brief, but I know that I told a lot of you guys earlier in the year about my dad. He had some hard issues earlier in the year and then came out and hunted with me, and a lot of you have continuously brought up the fact that I said earlier in the season, Um, when I was with Clay Newcom in the Missouri Breaks that after my dad had hunted with me earlier this year in September, that I felt, you know, fairly desperate for him to live long enough to really see my kids get into hunting and join us and the thing that we've created, you know, our value set and our traditions. And I still do feel that because throughout my childhood, my dad has had a couple of different issues with his heart, and he's had a couple of stints in the hospital. One of those was right around Thanksgiving when I don't know how what I was, maybe seventeen, I want to say seventeen or eighteen, and it was one of the first times I could actually drive and go on on my own, which I had never really done because I was always with my dad or one of my buddies or something like that. And when my dad had a heart attack, it was in the hospital for getting stints put in his heart. I had the decision to make because he was recovering and couldn't really hike, I had decision to like go hunt on my own in a place him and I had scouted and set up on public Land in Maryland, or stay home with him. And I remember pretty vividly him telling me, go, man, go you can go. You can do this. You can do this on your own. It's not a big deal, going do it um. And I went and in a very very predictable fashion, I shot a small buck on public Land in western Maryland, which is kind of how it goes there. And I remember him telling me the story, like he woke up, he couldn't sleep, he woke up early, and he kind of just stood there and stared out the window because he couldn't imagine not being out hunting with me. Um. So that was I mean, it was like it was a formative time for me, a tough time, but also it always underlined for that period in my life what hunting really was, which was following my dad around in the woods and being with him. Um and so a lot of you guys have have shared that here this last couple of days. So that that brings me to an email from a young lady that would rather not be named, so we won't name her, but I think her one of her. It's a long story, so so stick with us. But um man, it was a story that moved to me, so I'll read it too. She says, I've enjoyed the Hunting Collective show for a while now. I've been listening to the Meat Eaters for years and Cow's Weekend Review since it started. I think your show is less serious than Steve and Yanni's. I can always count it for a good laugh. I love the notaza sharp jingle and I sing along every time. Is the cat a voice from one of Phil's cats? Uh? Phil, you want to answer that for I'm sorry to disappoint, but it's not. That's a great idea, though. Yeah, I think I should replace it right. That makes more live authentic. I'd like to have Kevin and meat Loaf both in there mixing it up together. If we don't know, if you don't have a great idea, uh, she says. I took hunter's head when I was twelve. I was one of the two girls in my class and I tied for first on the test. But do you think I have ever harvested? No. I just turned twenty six and I've yet to be a successful hunter. That is partly because I'm a school nerd. It can never justify going hunting over a weekend when I knew I had hours of homework to do. That mindset never changed throughout college as well. Now that I am graduated, I have a job where I move all over the state and why and I will not hunt without my dad. So it does my own fault. But I still have tried when I had the chances to go out, she says, moving on to my father, I wanted to write in because of him. I am overwhelmed with joy for his success this fall. Hunting for most is a pastime in which people use to get away from the regular stresses of the world. This is the same with my dad, except with a slight difference. You see. When I was twelve, my older brother got into a car accident while driving to school. We are from a small town outside of Great Falls, and my brother went to high school in town. He suffered a brain injury, injury that left him in a coma for eleven years and nine months. Last year nineteen, on June four, my brother passed away from complications from both his brain and injury, as well as a random blood infection. It was matic for our whole family to lose my brother in that way after years of caring for him throughout my life since the beginning when my brother got in his accident, my family did the best we could to be as normal as possible. Eventually, after my brother's initial accident, he was healthy enough for him to leave the hospital despite remaining in a coma. My father didn't hunt for a couple of seasons after my brother's accident, except to take me when I passed hunters in. Eventually we needed to meet and he got back into it. For the past several years, my dad has tried many times to harvest elkin deer. He was successful with a couple of cows, a small bull and a few smaller deer here and there, just enough to feel the freezer and be happy about it. But hunting is how he was able to escape the everyday stresses that came with caring for my older brother at home, as well as having a regular job, being a husband and a father. To me, hunting has always been more to him than killing and punching a tag. Eventually, it got to the point my dad wasn't punching any tags for everall seasons in a row. My uncle finally convinced my dad two years ago that he would benefit from a bow surifid so he could extend his hunting season from just general rifle. However, my dad was fifty at the time, he has a bad shoulder, and my parents weren't sure about taking on a new hobby because of how expensive bow hunting can be. Well, a year goes by and a friend of my uncle's gave him a free, brand new, hardly used Matthew's bow. So this spring and early COVID times, my dad took to the course and passed with flying colors. So now it's archery season and he doesn't see anything. So then comes opening a rifle weekend he decides to resort back to the regular hunting rifle Opening Weekend. They were deep snow and there was a small herd of four or five elk. Dad said the bull saw him before my dad saw the bull. He said. The bull started to run when he finally spotted it. Then it went down a little hill and came up the other side, and even with my dad on the opposite hillside, it stopped and turned broadside. Dad said, he whished to himself, that was dumb of you. He shot him dead where he stood. This bull is my dad's best bull. It was a narrow and tall seven by seven, really pretty, but not that classical wide bull you think of. Still a beautiful animal. The bully shot on the last hunt he did before my brother's accident was a six by five, a beautiful wide old bull. This new bull will go on the wall next to the old one and my brother's only bull he shot the year before his own accident. That was so happy and grateful, he said. He stopped and prayed the second he saw the bull go down. My dad has never harvested Opening weekend. This is why I'm happy for him. My dad works very hard and determined hunter despite not always harvesting. I am extremely proud of him and his accomplishments this year. He deserves his rewards from both these hunts more than I can ever explain, and I will honestly this This email is longer than what I read to you just now. There's more to it, UM, but I didn't want to go too long on it. But I did want to make sure folks want not because I when I first read that man it was it choked me up, UM really bad. I mean I to think of a father going not only going through the moment of of an accident like that, but also to dealing with caring for a child for almost twelve years. Um, it's tough. And UM, if you want to if you want a shining example the power of hunting, look look no further than this story. There's so many things hunting can do, and it's it's so much more than just killing an animal to the people that that really value it. So thank you to this young lady for writing in. I'm not sure what more I can say than I'm glad your dad filled his tag this year, and I'm glad you shared that story with us, UM, and we got it's actually she sent the photos of his bull and his buck and um, he had a better er than I did. Congratulations to him all the way around. Next up is Ben Upton, and I think Ben Upton wins the day, and I'll tell you why. He said. Um hey Ben, Ben. Here for this week's contest. I want to I want to share with you a little Thanksgiving time tradition that I've established for myself over the past few years. I grew up in Vermont with the privilege of learning to deer hunt for my dad and grandfather on a two acre property that we own. It is a beautiful oak and beech forest that we actually manage for wildlife habitat, much like you all do on the Metator back forty So, even though that property isn't in your name, I'm sure you at least somehow know how special deer hunting on a family's property is to me. When I started college a few years ago on the University of Vermont, I met a lot of kids who had similar passions for the outdoors as I do, but didn't grow up with the privilege of a family of hunters and landed hunt on. I decided to make it a tradition each November to take a friend who hadn't been deer hunting before down to deer camp, lend them a rifle, lend them close, and take them out with me to learn how to hunt white tails in the hardwoods. This tradition has somehow made me even more in love with hunting and strengthened my understanding of what it means to hunt and be a hunter for the reasons well beyond the scope of killing game. This year, after graduating college, I moved to Denver to hunt the Rocky Mountains and test my medal in a whole new world of backcountry hunting, and thus didn't have the opportunity to take a new friend out with me to deer camp. But through th HC, I found a way to do the next best thing. You might remember a fellow who rode in a week or two ago named Hayes Hyle. He wrote in about becoming an adult onset hunter and about the issue of wolves in Colorado. While I didn't know Hayes at all, he mentioned that he lived in Denver, and I thought it would be a cool way to continue my Thanksgiving tradition. In some way, I found haze on Instagram and reach out to him, and I let him know that I'd love to talk about hunting with him and even invited him to come duck hunting with me for the rest of the season. Even though this isn't exactly my tradition of taking out a brand new hunter, I still feel excited about the prospect of a new hunting buddy and the ability to share my passion for hunting was someone who didn't grow up with it like I did. Well, Phil, we're really doing it, buddy. Wait what do you what's your reaction to Ben? What Ben's doing and over there in Colorado. I I just still can't get over how how this show goes about connecting people. I'll never understand it. Yeah, man, Um, you know, I know we've had some funny stories before where you know game wardens, a game warden in Canada who who had found the guy that was trashing public lands and then found him later and said that he heard the story on our podcast and was now cleaning up public lands. Um, but this is is a little different for me. So there's I am with you. I don't understand how how this uh talking into our microphone, what it means to people I'd rather not understand it because it would be hard to do if I did. But I man thank you to Ben Upton. Um, thank you too to Hayes and Ben. He's actually sent me a screen grab of their conversation on Instagram, and UM, it sounds like they're gonna go hunt, So hopefully they check. Hopefully Hayes and Ben check back in with us and let us know how the duck hunt was in Denver. Um and maybe one of these days we'll get these guys out to hunt with me and you once you're a veteran hunter, or maybe for your first hunt. We got a lot of prospects out share three years from now, three years time we actually get it. So all I want to say is we're gonna have Mark Kenny and Marks the perfect guest because we just ran episode four of the Back forty is about him and his dad. Um. I worked on that episode closely with Mark and did a lot of writing for it, and um, I feel like his story, that story really um is a proxy for all of our stories in terms of hunting with our fathers, but then also all of our stories for for how we got into hunting and how we share it with other people and so um, I just want to sincerely they thank you for writing in, thank you for moving me, thank you for being a part of the cult, and thank you for being a part of our lives here. And we'll keep on keeping on, So please enjoy Mark Kenyon, Hello about Kenyon A little bit, O'Brien, How you doing, sir? Good good. I'm I don't think the flurry of the morning. It's been flying around um virtually. So this is my nice coffee break of the day where I can sit and chill out a little. Oh dude, I could only agree with you so much. I was just thinking, we're getting ready to record the opening segment to this and do a bunch of things. I was like, man, I really want to concentrate on this, but I cannot get anything done. It's like five every five seconds something is interrupting me or some ridiculous thing happens. Yeah, right, sorry, sort, I will say. Now, I was looking at you know they have like the there's a thing I have on my phone that tells me the people I call the most. You're now number four. Oh so well my wife, thank god, my wife, my dad and my brother and then you. So you're number one outside of the family. Yeah. Man, So congratulations, I'm glad you keep it going here. The momentum is rolling. Just keep talking to each other daily, every day, all the time, no matter what. Now if people don't understand what I'm talking about. I work closely with Mark on the back four to either show that's on the Mediator YouTube channel right now, And so we're always talking about some ship that we're trying to pull off. Uh, And generally I think we pull it off without you know, without anybody knowing how hard it is to accomplish. Yeah, we certainly do the best we can. It's uh, it's not always easy to get to the end destination. We have our ups and downs, but we, uh, we get there. We get there because I always feel like you and you could probably do this with every show, like like you could make a show about making the show in this in this case, you can make a show about what it takes, like have a property, get everything together, film it, make it entertaining, try to tell a story. You try to kill a deer along the way, Uh, that could be its own true. There might be more drama behind the scenes than from the camera. I think that a few times this year. That was the case. That was the case. So you're like, so we're pretty much, well, we're we're editing the last couple of episodes, but you're done. On the back fording like you're it's it's over for you basically, Yeah, they basically, Um, you know, there might be a little bit here and there, but the real deal, full season, it's it's wrapped. It's a It was a weird thing wrapping up on that last day when we're closing shop and pulling down the tent and yanking down trail cameras and all that stuff. That was it was a little emotional, honestly. Yeah, we were just you know, in the beginning of this show, we're talking a lot about holiday traditions, and it got emotional because I think so many people that right in and and tell us about why they value hunting and like what it means, especially around Thanksgiving, especially in I think a lot of people are just straight up emotional, dude. I think a lot of people are just feeling pulled in a lot of different directions. A lot of things are changing around him a little scarier once a while, you know, Yeah, it's been a crazy year. Uh, certainly a year that gives us all. I think it's given us all a good opportunity to kind of take a step back, take stock of what matters of of uh, all the good things we do have in our lives, and and if if there's any tiny silver lining out of all the various challenges that have been thrown to people this year, I think I think maybe that that forced centering that we've all had to go through, I think is maybe a good thing. And um and we'll see if that can lead us to better places. Yeah, we'll see. We we intended to. We announced the last year contest that's with a group people could tell us what their holiday traditions were, make us laugh, entertain us on the show, and then me and Phil would would um allow we would give people we we got like a Yetti tumbler and some element drink mixed, but also Mark I got I have you watched The Social Dilemma? No, It's on my two watch list, but I haven't. Dude, I watched it when I was in covid UH lockdown. I couldn't leave the room, and I got so I got so emotionally worked up about it that I on the followed everybody on Instagram except for White except for White Clause, the only people I couldn't keep them on there. That just seems like a that seems on character ben like that's an on brand move. I try to keep it consistent, though, I just nothing I can do. I can just see you that that night. If only we had a phone call that night, I would have loved the emotion, the concern, and that moment is We're in trouble, man, We're in trouble. Instagram is trying to trying to kill us and brainwash us all. And now I got to COVID, there was like I I followed like eight d people. So it took me a while to do it, man, it took me, like, you know, hours to to get through it. And also I found out that Instagram, I think, probably because it doesn't want people to unfollow, everyone has a little like a governor on how many people you can unfollow at one time. So I had to do like a hundred and then wait an hour, and then do a hundred and then wait an hour. So it was a big ordeal. So it wasn't just an impulse move, like you got past the initial impulse and then it was No, I'm determined. Yeah. I was like, I started looking at how much time I start on my phone. I'm like, man, this is now. Now I know how evil Silicon Valley is. It's full of a bunch of evil nerds trying to hook me to these You know you used to work at Google. Maybe you're just some kind of insider. I was just gonna say, you're speaking of my crew. How long you worked at Google for? Did you work at Google long enough to to figure out their secret for world domination? Is the question? Oh? Yeah, we learned about that on day one. I was there. Yeah, I was there. I was there for four years, and so I got to put my fingerprint on that. I think you can say I dominated you were there for four years. I've never really thought about how long you were there? Yeah for What did you do there? What did you do there? If you're willing to tell us, because I know it's probably something that was unscrupulous. Yeah, basically just diving into everyone's private web browsing history and then developing databases that I could sell to just kidding, kidding, kidding, kidding. Uh No, I helped online retailers or regular retailers develop online marketing strategies using various advertising and marketing tools that we had at Google. So helping people figure out how to use YouTube ads and display ads and search advertising and all that to develop a branding and marketing plan. What did you really do? Because that sounded well rehearsed, sounds like back to my first answer, that's like you've practiced that. Um, all right, well we're way off track, way way off track. We got we got sappy earlier in the show because a lot of people wrote in with their highlight traditions, and a lot of them are super moving and I am my my normal uh, satirical jokes just don't work right now. And it it in my own head, even because I started to get emotional about the holiday season about I wasn't able to spend this year with my family for the first time ever in my thirty five years. Um, and so that that got me. But then I was reading YouTube comments, which my friend Joe Rogan says never to do. But I always feel like there's such a MacB sensibility around comments on YouTube that's it just makes me laugh, positive or negative. But I was reading the comments on episode four to the back for You and This is for folks who don't know this is UM an episode where you could you get to see Mark's dad, David, who I've never met but feel like I really have an intimate relationship with at this point. UM. I feel like I was reading the comments and that itself warmed my heart because there's hundreds of comments. I don't know how many, how many there will be when when this hays, but hundreds of comments, and almost all of them were positive and uplifting and people felt moved by the hunt with you and your dad. UM, have you read any of those? Yeah, I did break our cardinal rule and and looked at those and and I looked because I was hoping that it would resonate with people in that way. And so it was it was cool to see that. It was cool to see that it connected with people, that the relationship that my dad and I had and and with my son and the journey that we tried to share with people, that that came across and it was something that people could relate to and connect with. Um of everything that we do here and Mediator with our podcasts and our articles and our TV shows and everything like that, for me, at least, the greatest thing, the greatest achievement, the greatest goal to work towards, is to is to connect with someone and that kind of way where they feel something, where you change them, even it's for a couple of seconds on a Tuesday in some small way. So to see that that you know, in some way we did that, it makes all those late nights and all that work worth it. Then, Yeah, it's being you and a hole working on the back forty um. Not that there's a lot of the people that put a lot of effort into it, but it does. I you know when I think about that show and I think about this time of year, and I'm glad you're we can do this today, because it all kind of seems like it collides in a in a way that is you know, that makes makes sense to me because your your relationship with your dad is in a way not in a way it is emblematic of my own relationship with my father. Um. And to tell your story as a proxy for all of our stories, for for those of us that are in a situation like you and I where we grew up hun with our dads. We we built these traditions, we built these connects suns. These are things that kind of drive us to this day. And it becomes like a cycle of payback, like we talked about in that episode, Like you feel like I'm the same way my dad comes on with me now and and I'm the one going like, we gotta go here, we gotta do this, we gotta call now we Bob Bob. That's the relationship I have my dad, and you throughout that episode display that. But it also makes you feel like you want like that's a giving back to the guy that even told you that this could be a possibility for your life. Yeah. Yeah, there's so much of that, a little bit of a role reversal and a wanting to pay it at least to pay it back in some kind of way. And and you know, my dad gave me so much over the years, whether it be take me on the woods or teaching me these things about hunting or life. Um, and now that I have these new opportunities that I've been able to kind of take the baton that he passed to me when I was young, and I took that forward and I went further with it in different directions with it now it's it's a really exciting and it may be satisfying thing to be able to now bring him along on the new journeys I took and and and show him where I took the patn to and ah. Yeah, I mean it's it's hard to put words on a lot of this stuff without it seeming like over the top sappy, you know. I know we've talked about this when we're working on the episode, like how do you say something without having to say it over and over again? Um? But but yes, being able to share something like this with someone like a father in this case, who was there for you when you were young and you can be there again later in life for them is a powerful thing. And I'm just really really glad I was able to do that and that things came together in this circumstance, and excited to continue to trying to do more things like that in the future. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I feel like you could see it in this episode and on One of the things I think people would otis in their own lives, you know, in terms of the intensity of their own emotion and connection to what they're doing. If you if you look at your dad and look at you throughout that episode, you see like just look at your face, look at your eyes, Look at the way that you react with things. Look at you know, kind of the intensity with which that the joy and the pain and like this, you know, all that stuff it comes out because that is because there is so much emotion built on decades of hunting together and wanting to to in this case, get him his first archery book. Um. And so those stories are enduring. I know it in my own life. I I I am happier and more fulfilled when my dad's along no matter what we're doing, but especially hunting, because we have we've build up twenty years of of this story together, and every time we go it's another chapter in the story. You know. You know something that that was that struck me in the comments on that video that that I'm reminded of this somewhat often, but it was another important reminder was how many people said, man, you're so lucky that you got to do that, that your dad's still around to have moments like that. You cherish those, and it's so easy for us and for a lot of people I'm sure who are in this part of our lives. We have kids, and we have really busy jobs and We're trying to do all these things, and it's just go, go, go, go go. It's so easy to lose sight of, you know, staying connected with your family sometimes, of taking time to do something like that, of stepping away from whatever your goal or mission or job description is, whatever it is, and take some time to call dad to go and have dinner with mom, to whatever it is. One of these days you're not able to do that. And I think this was, in a strange way of reminder for me that, yeah, you know, you better take advantage of while you can. What'd your dad say about all this? Oh? No, he hasn't seen it yet. I called him. I called him this morning and he was looking for it last night and it wasn't up yet. And then this morning he's been a meeting. He's been meeting this all day. So I have not heard from him yet. After watching I'm sure, I don't know if he's gonna have a lunch break or something today. Maybe he did get to watch it. If not, he'll watch it tonight, and I'm I'm very interested to see what he thinks. I think he'll I think he'll be really happy with it. I hope. So if he's not. I mean, you know, let me know, delete it. I get what you're saying too, because I do now that we were Phil and I were talking about this earlier. When when you look back, you know, I moved away from home. You have haven't really moved away from home, and he's still two hours away. Yeah, but not that that far, not that far. I moved a long way away. Phil moved along ways away. And then when when the traditions you had around, especially around holidays, but also around hunting, and then in the cross section of those two things, when you start to think about when you when when that goes away? Right when I can't just drive over and hunt with my dad for the opening Saturday after Thanksgiving, then you start to realize what that meant to you. And when you're a kid, it's just life, you know, go into your grandparents house for Thanksgiving is just life. That's just what you do. It's it's how you function. And then when it's not there anymore, you sit back, like, how can I recreate that? Because I'd love to have that back, um, And I think hopefully you know this, that episode can be that for a lot of people, that's a proxy of stuff saying, listen, if you didn't have a dad or a mom who took you hunting, or a family it took you hunting, you can create that for someone else, Like you have the opportunity to create what you didn't have for someone else inside of hunting. Um. And so I I do like that note you hit what we hit with your kid there with Everett at the end, because I think that is important for people to know, like, if you didn't have it, you can create it. Yeah. Yeah, And I'll tell you what I'm I was just super lucky to have in spades. I mean, I had a wonderful dad and grandpa and uncles who who brought me along and made me a part of it, and it changed my life. Uh, it completely changed the direction of my life and maybe who I am in a lot of ways. So yeah, I cannot wait to continue bringing my boys along, uh that same route and whatever. You know, who knows what the end up being interested in. But at least for the moment, my oldest son seems to be out of control into it, constantly recreating hunting shows and pretending to be hunting at all hours of the day. Loves animals, loves the outdoors. So um, I'm just thoroughly enjoying this new part of life too. Yeah, I'm right there, right there alongside. And I always wonder how much are they gonna really build up this idea of hunting because they see me doing it so much, they hear me talking about so much. How much are they going to build it up to be more than it was when I was a kid, Because when I was a kid, I'm just, like we said in this episode, I'm just following my dad around. But yeah, I didn't think I have to have this book, or I have to take this photo, or I have to have this experience. I just follow my dad and whatever he did, I did. And that's all I wanted, and that's there was nothing else for me. You know. Then I got old enough to change that. But you know, I want that for my kids, the simplicity of it. You know, I don't want them to be thrown into the world that I'm in right now. I want them to have some some babe in the woods years if I guess that makes sense, Yeah, yeah, it will be really interesting. I thought about that too, like how different the circumstances are that that my sons are coming into while while we we both we're little kids and families that love the outdoors. Um, my son is definitely thrown into something cranked up to fifteen compared to you know, I was at level six maybe, Um so, yeah, don't know what that means. I hope it doesn't mean that it's going to be eventually too much for him and he wants to rebel away from it. Uh So I want to make sure not to force them into anything. I hope it just means that he will find his own passion within this somewhere somewhere else and he'll chase that. Um. But I hope we can foster with an Everett and my other son Coult a love for these things that they can appreciate in their own way. Yeah. You and I are tracking along the same kind of a child having schedule, right, I mean we're mating at the same times of the year basically. Basically it's because there's only one we have, like two nights a year we're not working and so hey, you're gonna go to yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. All right, well let's talk to nine months. That's true, because I feel like it's so. My My son James is well we got a little bit of a gap there he my son James. But then our second once we started working together, immediate or our second sons, I sure and cold are are aligned, right up? Man? What's it like within days? Within days three or four or five something like that. Yeah, then this this may now evolve into like a daddy daycare podcast where we talk about all the ship, all the ship. Uh. Well, it's good. If you haven't watched it, everybody go watch episode four. I I think it's one of the better Capture creative. Shout out to Justin and Taylor and Um Jordan and everybody Capture Creative and Charlie Um who put this together. I think they did an exceptional job helping us tell the story. And and I'm I'm happy for you man, I'm happy that you have this kind of time capsule, Uh, to show your kids and to explain those things to them. Yeah, that's that's an interesting point. Is is what a special thing just for my own little family that we could look back on this and and someday relive this moment in a way that does capture the emotions I think in a in a in a real way. So yes, selfishly, this is a pretty nice thing to happen. And my son just watched it this morning and he was really excited about it. He'll be watching on replay for a number of days. I'm sure. Yeah. I mean it's it's thinking about kids too. Um. My wife and I were watching the Steve what's that guy's name? What's the old comedian shit? It's called Parenthood, Steve help me out here, Mark st Martin. There it is. We're watching on Steve Martin movie Parenthood. And he in this movie, he's all stressed out about what his kids are going to be and he keeps visualizing like his kids being the valedictorian or some sort of like shooter on the bell tower and like what he did, what he did to cause that? And I told him, if I'm like that, I turned this off. I got this is the most anxiety inducing movie I've ever watched my entire life. I am not I do not want to listen to this this crap because now I got to think about and I was thinking about hunting, Like, am I gonna over expose my kid to this? And he's gonna be like he's going to be a vegan at age you know ten? Like what are we? What do I gotta do here? But in a few years he starts The Vegetable Collective as a podcast. Damn it just point counterpoint against dead damn. But what do I do anyway? That that stressed me out? We did turn I just like turn that off, turn it off. I can't watch. So we watched. We watched National Lampoons Christmas Deal, which out classical. What did you told me the other day that you were watching like a Christmas movie? Was like, what's your movie go to for Christmas time? Well? Right now, it wasn't even like us Christmas movies as a kid Christmas movie. I'm trying to think that was the I don't I think I don't think it was lasting as the night before we put on the old like puppet Santa Claus comes to town like the original Christmas movies. Creepy, creepy. Yeah, my boys love them. So this is the story of how little baby Santa Claus got raised by these elves and then he was trying to bring presents to this town with Burger Meister Meister Burger, and then he eventually becomes Santa etcetera, etcetera. So yeah, that was that was creepy man that says this little puppet one's creep me out big time, big time, big time. Um, all right, well we should we're we're down the rabbit hole pretty far. Um, there's nothing we want to talk about. When we were talking the other day, and I think this is it's not unique. I don't know. We'll see if we can figure this out, but I feel like it's unique to white tail hunters, core white tail hunters, people that do it and that's all they think about. Uh, there's a lot of this in the waterfowl space, in the white tail space, in the elk space, and people get become one species, you know, addicted or focused. Right. The difference, I think the big difference in the white tail world as I see it is that nobody names a duck h and if they do, they got problems. And I don't know a lot of people that name elk. People do, but it's not as commonplace as it is in the white tail space. And so I feel like a place to start in terms of the white tail community, the people, and when I say community, I mean people that a self identifies white th hunts, Like, what do you do? I'm a white TiO hunter. Those are the people I'm talking about. I was very much one of those people. Early on in my life and hunting career, all I thought about was white tails. So I know the feeling. But I think we have to start at naming deer or or maybe better described, hunting a single deer or a couple of deer or target target animals, giving them names and having a relationship. Have you thought about the psychology of that, like what it does to you? Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I get from the outside end, from the outside looking in, it seems bizarre. Ah, I understand that, and even from the inside looking in, I can see it being bizarre. But there is it just makes sense when you have to actually live within the box that we as many white tail hunters do, which for a lot of folks, involves hunting relatively small places and hunting him over and over and over and over again. And when you do that, you're you're presented a different hunting experience than someone who lives out west, who hunts miles and miles and miles of country, who has millions of acres to rome. When you're hunting forty acres, when you're hunting sixty acres and that's what you're doing for every weekend or weeks on end, You're going to see the same deer over and over. You may only have one buck you actually want to hunt if you have, If you go into this and you have certain goals, Like for me, I'm at the point where most of the time when I'm hunting some of these small properties that spend a lot of time on in Michigan, it's it's a four year old bucker Holders where I've kind of set um the goal for myself that's gonna allow me to have to work really really hard and have to do things well and have to get better after year um and and have a long, challenging, exciting, interesting hunting season. Um. That is that's like the That is how I tried to craft my experience here hunting in Michigan. Because if I just wanted to fill my freezer right away, I could do that, and I want to fill a freezer, but I also want to have this set of experiences alongside filling the freezer, which is why I have these goals. Um. So when you do that, you see these deer and you never really want to talk about them. So if I was just a random person that didn't have a podcast and a show and all these things, you still might end up referring to these deer by something. Because when you share the experience with friends, which is one of the most fun things about hunting, is telling the stories, right, you want to share what happened. Uh, it just becomes practically in convenient to just try to describe the deer over and over again. Yeah, I saw that same you know, ten pointer that's got the dark patch underneath his neck and two spots on his left shoulder and maybe a little crabic on the left. If I had to say that in a conversation over and over and over again, it just wouldn't make sense. So you can, eventually, you know, just call it was the one ten point, or maybe you describe a little more it's the wide ten, or maybe you want to get creative with it and call them something funky like tim um whatever. I think the simple fact of it is that it makes talking about and sharing and then even in your own head thinking about these animals just a little simpler because you're gonna do it over and over and over. Um. So that's what it comes down to for a lot of us. Um and then for me having you know, all these different platforms where I'm sharing this story, it becomes a necessity to help, you know, describe these experiences. Um And because I do have in many cases aran is with the same deer for multiple years, where I'm getting to learn about one of these specific deer and kind of by default, because I don't have a bunch of land I'm hunting. My main property hunt a lot is a little over eighty acres, but half of it is which is wide open fields by the road. So really it's a little over forty acres of huntable ground that I have permission to hunt. And then I have permission on a couple of little like twenty acre thirty acre sections in the same general area around that I'm hunting little tiny stuff. I don't have hundreds and hundreds or thousands of thousands of acres acres to work here. So in any given year, I'm lucky if I've got one buck that is, um you know, that is the kind of deer I want to hunt on a given year. So yeah, I'm hunting a deer. And when that's the case, you give it a name so you can talk about it and you can think about it, and then you watch it and you see trail camera pictures of it, and it becomes a really interesting, really frustrating at times, kind of one on one duel when you go into the woods and you're constantly thinking when you walk out there in the dark in the morning and you hear a dope or you hear a deer blow and run off, and right then and said, well, that could be my hunt. That could have been the only one deer. There might be seventy deer in this square mile, but there's only one of them that I'm after, and there's only one of them that can make this hunt, you know what. I'm trying to make it be. So it can be unbelievably frustrated, because you know that you make one tiny mistake with that one animal, the one chance you have, it's all shot. On the flip side, um, that challenge is also really fascinating, trying to go deep something I like about deer hunting and why I'm so fascinated by deer hunting. Yeah, I love all hunting like I I love going out elk counting. I've tried bear hunting. It's awesome. I tried prong hunting, prong horn hunting. It's awesome. I've been carible hunting was great. All these things are really cool. I want to keep doing them. But something about white tail hunting that has just made it, you know, just just has can consume me, is the level of depth you can go with it. I love deep experiences where you can really dive into the nitty gritty studying habitat, studying behavior, studying how wildlife reacts to outside factors and conditions like the weather and the moon and precipitation, barre much or pressure and hunting pressure, and trying to look at all the probabilities of all these different things that might happen in a given day, and then sorting through all these puzzle pieces that you've collected, all this data you've collected and tried to try to take all these try to take all these dots and connect them in a way that makes sense so that you, on this one time and this one perfect place, with this one perfect set of conditions, can kill that one deer. Uh in this small, tiny area where there's twenty other guys surrounding you try to do the same thing. That's the hardest thing I've ever tried to do, and it's also the most satisfying um both the process of itself and then when you actually do finally accomplish that goal. Every once in a while. Man, that's that's something. So that's a long rambling way of explaining why I name dear. So you're saying you've thought this out. I guess there's two things that interest me, and what you just said one I think it's the most interesting is the turn from the practicality to the emotionality of the relationship. Because we talked about relationships with animals, right. We talked about it from the steff of animal rights activists to vegans to us as hunters, and we generally talk about relationships in a in a way like I have relationship with the idea of the animal right, I have the relationship with the wild, a relationship with a habitat or ecosystems that is, like the broad relationship means something. But a lot of people don't get to experience a relationship with an animal. It's even it seems weird to describe it like like that. But where you have multiple years of experience with one animal, you're through that animal, you're learning so much about the idea of you know, in a case of a buck, you're learning so much through that animal. He's a proxy for your own knowledge of the habitat where he lives and his relationship with other deer, and that itself is interesting. And so where like, can you describe the turn, the psychological turn from where it's like, I gotta describe this, dear right, It's the wide eight, it's the Big ten, it's you know, tran. It's like, I'm just gonna call him something so people know what I'm talking about. But then at some point, with a few of these animals, not all of them, but a few of them, you have so many encounters, you think about them so much, you strategize so much that people will probably get tired of me saying this, but I do believe that the game like quality of hunting is one of the things that draws us to it. And so now you have this like one v one, you know, first person game that you're playing with this animal, and that it turns things, it turns things psychologically just in a different way, and your value system becomes you know, shifts. Yeah, there's like a thousand different aspects of that. Because you're right, there's a whole lot of different things that pop up when you have that shift, um, both good and bad. Um from the from the good side, you know, as you spoke, you kind of get these animals become the the analog for the larger species, so you can learn a lot about the general through the specific um. And and there's this fascinating aspect that you can actually begin to see where there's actually you know, we often try to talk about animals from the higher level, like from the species level we should manage. From the species level, from the population level, we should you know, let's not anthropomorphize, let's not um go so deep been to the individual. But animals are individuals, um. And when you start spending this much time around them, you see the individual qualities and tendencies and you know, for lack of a better term, personalities UM. And that is both fascinating and eye opening. And and you do see stuff that something as you're man like, there's there's a lot going on here. Um. And I don't know what I don't even know what I mean by that. But but let me let me stop you for a minute and ask you this question. Is it possible my head, I've had a lot. As you know, I've had a lot of animal rights folks on this show, a lot of vegans, a good number of them. We talk about things, and one of the things that we always talk about is this idea of the individual animal right. Animal rights folks see animals and individualistic fashion. Right. I see the animal, I see the mother. I see the wolf as a mother, you know, and I see the alpha male as a father and their pups as children. I see them. We use this term anthemor portanization all the time, but it's just a way of saying, like, I see myself in them, right. And so now we have an example of of you as a hunter. And I've done this too, So it's not community of hunters that is centering around the same idea. But yet you know, obviously with a different end yea. And so do you ever think about the dichotomy between like how you like Tran is a buck that you've hunted for years. You know that buck, you know where he lives, you probably know who, like where his kids are hanging out? Um, yeah, so you like you have this relationship and it becomes an individualistic relationship, much like some of these animal rights folks I've talked to, but it manifests itself in a completely entirely different way. Yeah, and and you're right, it's kind of a wild thing to think about in that kind of context, and and the bizarre parallels there, um and and I will say that, right, I can't deny the individual aspects of these animals, um But I can also I also realized that the individual is still part of the larger population, and I can also separate myself from it emotionally and understand the reality of what's happening out here, whether I'm a part of it or not. Um and and So, because I think of the way I engage with these animals, I'm able to have a certain while still there's certainly relationship, there's also a certain ability to separate myself from from that individual lens while also looking at the big picture of what this thing is. This thing is, this is wildlife, this is nature, this is this is a system of animals and plants and elements that are going to go round and round and round and round, regardless of of may being a part of it. And it's it's beautiful and it's ugly, and it's it's bloody and it's it's it's life and death and all those things happen. Um, if you have an opportunity like I've had to see glimpses of that up close, or as many of us hunters have in different circumstances, I think you come to not only see the beauty in that individuality, but also respect for the larger hole too. Um. So I think that's what I've taken from it. And and yeah, there are some weird things though where I when you say related, like you you you address thisss earlier, it sounds weird when you say, like, oh, I've got a personal relationship with a here, it's the weird thing to say. Um, it's it's this is, for lack of a better term, I don't know how to competter describe, but um, but yeah, you like, there's a deer that I have watched for three years, and the first year I was like, man, that's a great buck. But you know, I'm gonna target it. I'm hunting a different deer this year. I'm gonna pass something this year, but he's gonna be He's gonna be the one next year. And so I'm watching and watch him study and taking notes, look for shed antlers in the winter. The next year. It's all about him, making plans, adjusting things, thinking about what did you do last year, What's he gonna do this year? Get out there scouting all the time, glassing, I mean, spending hours and hours and hours watching for this deer from hilltops and trees and getting out there and seeing him and having these incredibly exhilarating experience where you finally see this animal you've been looking for, and you're watching him and you're learning more and you have close calls and it comes together. It doesn't come together, and it's frustrating and it's exciting. And this happens over and over and over. UM. You eventually get to a point where maybe it does come together, like it did for me a week ago. I killed this year I've been after for three years. UM. So many different experiences with this creature. UM, And you have this very paradoxical set of emotions where I'm so excited and relieved and happy that I finally killed this animal that was my goal. But I'm also once I stepped away from it, like Wow, how much emptier are the woods gonna be now that he's not out there? So a certain sense of I don't know if remorse is the right word, um, because you know, my goal is to go out there and kill a deer and I did that, and I mean, I feed my family and I had this set of experiences, but you can't ignore the fact that something else happened here too, and and that's something else is is not there anymore. I'll have this story, and I'll have these memories, and I'll have this meat and these lessons learned that you know, will sustain me for a long time and I am really really appreciate it for but that that thing is gone. Um, So there's a certain sadness that comes about from that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would think, like you know, I think the important point to make and and the thing that I see and what what you go through and I go through a lot of hunters go through in terms of that the game we play, and then the remorse at the at the back end, and definitely, like the individual relationship with an animal is that that the knowledge that animals are in them and of themselves individuals, right, they do have their own personalities, they do things in a certain way, Like is important to understand animals themselves that's an important thing to do. Um. The difference I think between a vegan and somebody like you or me is not only do we understand the individual characteristics of an animal. That that's important, and that they have their own kind of way and their own personality, like that's an important thing to understand, but at the same time you have to understand the larger picture. And where a lot of the folks have had on the show that our Animal Rights Act stop is understanding. They understand the emotion, that the emotional connection to an individual animal, but they stop at the realistic and pragmatic application of conservation and hunting and resource management and things of that nature. And so it's it's a while you share and I've always always say this, while you share some sensibility with them, they stop at a very important point where do you keep going? Right? Yeah? Um yeah, yeah, that's that's the truth. And and while the the diverting paths that that why in the road is a pretty important one and leads to very different places. Um, you know, I think it is important that we can remember that we do share that respect and genuine care caring for these animals and fascination with these animals and Um, I guess if there's if there's anything that can come from those conversations you're having, I hope it's that people can see and and rally around some type of shared shared sensibility there. Um, Because yeah, you know, there's probably a lot of things we've got in common with some of these people. I love these animals, I love these places, I love these creatures, I love watching them, learning about them, studying them. Um. And we can probably do some goods together if we can somehow learn to live with our difference over the back ends. I have a dream, is what you're saying. Yeah, that's that's one thing I want to address. But another thing I think that's important to address is the more internal struggle within hunting. And this is probably also without Like, there are a lot of people want to label what you do as trophy hunting, right, this is a term that we'll deal with the semantics of it and the reality of it for as long as we probably do what we do. UM. And so now you've got to deal with this idea that trophy hunting is defined in a lot of different ways. But a lot of people that we've collected in our company a lot of people that come and listen to us really like the meat, and they really don't understand why you would sacrifice some delicious meat four a bigger set of antlers or a more mature deer, etcetera, etcetera. So, like I said, people, you know, it's it's something I bring up all the time, but I do think I do feel like it's real. Everybody plays the game of funting differently, and everybody is looking for a different set of experiences that ultimately lead to an endgame. Whether that endgames meet or antlers or both often both, um is up to the individual. But like, can you explain from your perspective how you see the entanglements of labeling, you know it within and without hunting them, Because we're all calling it's something trophy hunting, you know, subsistence sunning, It's going to be labeled. Yeah. So my first thought is that I just really dislike the term trophy hunting. I think it brings up the wrong set of images and connotations that right away um colors a certain segment of the hunting world in a really negative way that brings all these negative assumptions to to bear that I do not think are accurate for the lion's share of people that that someone might lump into trophy hunting. But let me, you know, it's hunting. Hunting is hunting. So I think, screw subsistence hunting, screw trophy hunting, screw all these these specifics. Let's just say we're hunting. We're all gonna hunt though, with our own set of goals and our own um ways and places and experiences and and yeah, instead of experience that we're trying to achieve within that. So for me, the way I look at this this when I started hunting, Um, I just want to kill my first dear, And it was a really hard thing to do, and it took me a long time to figure it out. And then I finally did and I got I killed that deer, and I got that meet and I had that experience, and then it was okay, now can I do it again? Can I figure out how to do this? You know? Year after year? And so I kept doing that, but eventually I figured all that stuff out and then it got to the point where I can kill it. I can I can do it. I can get my meet and film my freezer day one, day two. If I wanted I've I've kind of figured a certain group of things out that UM make that a non issue. It's going to happen. Um. But for me at the same time, over the course of my lifetime, I was as I was learning the how to, I was also learning the why too. So why am I doing this? And I found that I was doing it not just to put me in the freezer, but also because all of the things that revolve around it, because of the people I got to spend time with, because of the time I got to spend outside in nature. Because of this. As I just described the the work and the time and the study that's required to get UM sufficient at doing this, that process of learning about animals, about studying a landscape, studying and learning about habitat, spending time out there just watching and waiting. UM, all of that stuff. I love it. I love it. UM. It's what it's what like turns turns, like the gears in my body on. It's like what gets me going, um, engaging with wild things and that like that's the thing for me. So why would I personally want to begin and end the thing that gets me going in one day? No, I don't want to do that. I want to enjoy this process as much as I possibly can, and I want to find ways. And maybe this isn't gonna be the case for everybody, right, everyone's gonna have a different way they want to do this, everyone's gonna want something different out of hunting. But for me, because it's something that has grown into UM, really what my life revolves around, I want to find ways to extend that and to deepen it. So I want to have a deeper experience. So what that has become for me is steadying, UM, a steady evolution of my goals. So at first, like I described want to get a deer, and then I wanted to, you know, consistently kill a buck every year, and then it was eventually, I want to see if I can kill a three year old buck because this is an older deer. They're they're rarer, they're more rare, they're they're harder to kill, they're a little more savvy. UM. And then it was a four year old, and so steadily it was what can I do to UM to both create a set of circumstances that requires I get better, that requires I spend more time, which requires I go deeper into this thing. While also challenging myself in new ways to two to learn and to go further in all of these things that I love. That's what having some kind of higher level set of goals, what some people would say trophy hunting related goals does for me. Um that's why I hold out for bigger, older dear because I want to take things to a different level because I love that. It's not because I just need some big set antlers on the wall. It's because I need everything that comes along with that, which is time, which is study, which is work, which is passion, which is uh persistence, which is dealing with a whole bunch of ship going wrong and somehow pushing through it and getting to the other side. That kind of stuff that hunting forces me to participate in is why this is such a a deep special thing for me. So that's why I do this. I know everyone's a little different. Um So for me, I think trophy hunting makes someone think that, oh, I'm just waiting to kill one. I'm passing on all the other deer because I just want this huge racked buck and all I'm gonna do is cut off his head and sticking on my wall and tell everyone look at me. I'm a big, bad hunter and I kill big deer, um, And that's not the case. But at the same time, I go through all those things I just described, and when I do kill a deer and I you know, I'm gonna bring that meat home, and yeah, I am going to bring the antlers home too, and maybe I will put those on my wall too, because that signifies and symbolizes all of these other experiences I just described, all that work, all that time, all that passion and love and respect and and fascination. Every time I'm able to go and look at the antlers in my office or in my in the den next to me, um and tell my son the stories, it brings all those things back to life, and it allows me to continue experiencing those things years and years later. So I wouldn't call him trophies, um, but I would call him some really damn important Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's two ways that I've come to think about this, And I think the way that the way that you describe it is the way that I describe it, and the way that everybody that I think that has over time here really wanted to dive into the y has passionately expressed like this is a thing that addicts people. It is a thing that draws you in in a way that nothing else in my life, and I know your life has. I played lots of things. I played lots of games, um, football, soccer, baseball, UM, I've played chess. I have run. I ran, and never very fast, but I one time I tried to run in a marathon. Whatever. All of those things are akin to this, but this has a different ways of being expressed. And if you think of it again, if you think of it, my theory of of hunting as as a game. A game is a series of interesting choices, and those interesting choices like navigating those choices, and the course through the course of play reveals and especially in hunting, it reveals who you are, how you think, and what you value. And that's why the duality, the two truths of hunting are that everybody should be able to do it the way they want and everybody shouldn't be able to do it the way they want. H This is a duality of hunting that is super interesting for me to look at because there's like shades of gray within that that duality that are important to to understand, um, because you did say, like in the beginning, they're like, don't label me. I want to do what I want to do, and you're right, don't label me. But at the same time, you can't do what you want to do. We have to confine things, right, There's gonna be some running boards on either side, but within within that framework, within what's legal, Um, then I think, you know, we can all have our own experience. So yeah, there's an just like government, right, we want to have our freedoms. We want to be able to do what we want to do. We don't want the government telling us what to do. But you know what, actually we do want the government to tell us not to murder people, and we do want the government to do certain things. So I think the same thing goes with this too. There's got to be some set of guidelines. There's gotta be some type of legal framework to keep um, to keep us on the straight and narrow. But then within those frameworks, let's have our own experience. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to me, especially because I know what you're doing and what I do. If I had a chance to hunt the same giant elk every year until it got as big as possible and then kill it exactly what I would do. Um, I to your point earlier, I just can't find them. There's there's millions of acres, and I'm also not real good at it, but I mean there's millions of acres and it just isn't a reality. I once heard somebody say out west like I would never be able to name an animal because I've never seen most animals I kill, I've never seen more than once. And so there is there is the difference within hunting right there. I mean it's it's it's hard to understand each other when you're playing different games. Yeah, yeah, different different places, different types of animals. I mean, white tailed deer have small home ranges typically to hang out in Littlelarios's gonna be a lot different with an elk that can roll miles and miles frequently. Um, I'll tell you what you know. It is to go deep like that with one animals that a lot of fun is fascinating, Like I just said, it can also be the incredibly frustrating, incredibly frustrating when when you go from having a very target rich environment where there's all sorts of deer that you could kill and hunt and shoot, and and you know you could, you could achieve your goal readily. When it goes down to just one deer, um, it makes it nearly impossible. And so n of the times you go hunt, you are not going to achieve the goal that you set out with, and that that is a whole another conversation about the negative aspects of that and the frustration that can come with that and how you can deal with that, because I can tell you what My hunts and like this are huge roller coasters, um where you go from the highest highest to the lowest lows, and and lots of times I'm like, man, is this even fun anymore? And and then the next day I'll be like, yes, but I'll have these moments where it's really challenging. But I guess for me, that's that's I guess I like that. I like things that forced me to to have that wild um, that wild set of ups and towns and challenges and something that you don't think you're gonna be able to pull it off if you want to, and yes, I can do it. I don't know if it will have to come to it. Yes I can do it. This isn't gonna happen. Damn it, Donna keep trying. Um, maybe I'm just I don't know if it was a massive massochistics like that. No, man, here, I've read a lot about some of this stuff and philosophical terms, like with the game. Imagine if you had like an X and Y access right, if you had this and this was challenge of the game, right, and it's an arrow pointing up to forever, and this right here was skill level, and it's an arrow pointing to forever as the challenge of the game increases so much, your skill level, As your skill level increases so much, the challenge of the game to keep you entertained, and so like, as you think about those X and Y X season in an example of hunting, it's what you're doing what you just described as a kid. The challenge of the game is limited, and your skill level is limited, and so just killing them the deer for the meat or a spike. I mean, we talked about it in the back forty with your level of where you were at Ken Rovan, that those things like I'll put my fingers down now, but like those play paper football or no. But that's what happened to me as a young kid. Um, now I am at a different level. My dad didn't follow me along the track right of the of the skill level and the challenge of the game. He kind a state where he was, and as did your dad, which will probably if we get lucky, our kids will surpass us and their skill level and the challenge that they need. And so when you start thinking in these terms, it makes way more sense. You know, you don't have to say things like well, you know, over time, I just want to kill bigger bucks, Like no, over time, my skill level, I can what you just said earlier fits into a nice little picture where the more the challenge of the game, the more the anxiety, the more the skill level, the less the anxiety, and those things match up together and that that gets you where you are. Yeah, And you know, I talked about this a lot on my podcast too, and it's I always make I always think it's important to point out the fact that it doesn't have to be this way, right. You don't need to feel like if you're getting into hunting or you're on this road that you have to keep going further and further down that X access or further and further up that Y access. You don't need to do what I've done or what you've done. Ben. If you want, you know, find where we're on that graph, you are happy wherever it works for you, and be happy there. I don't think there has to be a pressure that you have to keep taking it to the next level of the next level if you want to, awesome. If you don't, that's awesome too. We're all going to have a different place on that graph that feels right for us. Um So it's you know, keep keep exploring, find your plays, enjoy it, make it what you needed to be. Yeah, And if you're looking like go, if you're inside a hunting and you want to label somebody or outside of hunting on a label somebody, think about when you just say trophy hunting, how much of the intricate of the details that you're displacing by saying that. And when you think of somebody who's a trophy hunter, who really wants to kill the biggest and most mature thing out there, think about it in the think about it in what in this discussion and the frame of this discussion. Because it's true a person is not driven to kill the biggest block ten years into their hunting experience because they're now addicted to the antlers and driven by ego. They're doing that because they're following the track of the game like quality of hunting. That's what they're doing. It's all that they're doing, and it's not a change. It's not an evil change in their mentality. It's a natural progression of how anybody plays a game. And at some level, as long as we admit that we're playing a game, you know, we're okay. Have you Have you had the conversation with anyone about the idea of of referencing this as a game though, Do you have any qualms with that? I bring that up because I get what you're saying, but I also worry about language like game being attached to hunting, trivializing the serious nature of it and the fact that the end the end game for lack of their term, we're getting good now. Yeah, uh, I'm with you, And that's why I try to always say hunting has game like qualities, and that's one of the things that attracts us psychologically to it. It's not that it's a game. You're not out there to score points. Now, social media, you may you may defer there there is some point scoring that happens there, but that happens for everybody that goes and spend two media, right, And that's why I only follow white Claw. And that's why because white calls are playing any games with anybody, they just wanted to drink, to drink as much alcohol as possible in a very fruity way. Um. But anyway, I do. I think the expression of hunting is a game is wrong. Hunting has qualities, attractive qualities akin or mirrored by a video game or or any other any other game that we play, any other competition that we have. Um. And that's what leads to where you are, I think, and where I am, and where a lot of people that we hang out with our Um. It's more complex, Yeah, And I think that's what makes hunting so singularly powerful, more so than like someone who loves basketball or someone who loves soccer loves poker. Is the fact that you have Hunting has that those game like qualities, but then it also has this incredibly complex deep life or death set of elements that that connects you to something that's that's a wormhole into a whole another world. And and those two things combined set hunting in a different arena than almost anything else, um, which is both why it's controversial in some circles and why it's something so deeply loved by folks within our circles. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there's something isn't when you agree that there's something ironic about playing Like we're playing at hunting, dude, I can go get a steak tomorrow would be delicious. We're playing a very human game, right we are. We are participating in a in a very game like way and something that people used to do for essential human survival. Right, So there's something ironic about that. I get that. You know, I understand that that's probably that can't be hard for people to understand. Um, but that's I mean, I think that's true throughout the modern sense of humanity. Like we you know, throwing a football is like throwing a rock on the savannah, you know, a million years ago, like we are expressed. Yeah, playing the Guard, we're expressing our humanity. Yeah, we want to do things that connect with you know, the essential human nous of of what we are and what we were and where we came from and and yeah, hunting is a way to do that. A real tactile way to do that, and uh, yeah, it's it's interesting. Well, we could talk about it forever, I'm sure, Like I I do. You know when it's cool too when the topic comes up, because I know your show you don't talk about ship this very often. I mean you do and don't, you do and don't. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I listen and I know, like it's cool to see the celebration of that singular focus and the way that you described earlier on that Like it's so it's endless, dude, It's endless. The depth of just hunting white tails in Michigan on a hundred and fifty acres is endless. And that is a nice way to think about the natural world. It is fucking endless, and you pick just pick a small part of it and live the rest of your life trying to learn it. And you're not gonna get there. Yeah, you're not gonna. You will be constantly surprised and you will learn new things about these places of animals yourself. Yeah, that's you can't beat the natural world. I mean, that's where we came from. That's where I keep on going back to because it's just like you said, it's endless. There's everything we need is there had been right there? All right, well, let's go back to work. Let's go make some more hunting TV and keep keep talking about it. We got what episode five, episode six of the Back forty, I got a couple more. We're just frantically cranking out. Oh man, it's gonna be fun. All right, we'll go over there and subscribe and watch Mark toil on sixty four acres in Michigan for a couple more weeks before it's all over, and uh, we'll see what we do next. All right, man, good talk to you brother always. Hey, thanks for having me out. So yeah, that's it. That's all. Another episode in the books. Thank you to Mr Kenyon. Thank you to all the listeners out there for writing in with your holiday traditions. You kind of you guys, Mark Mark as well. But you guys moved to me enough that it's hard for me to make jokes about white Claw and do our normal uh satire, And so I'm just gonna quickly say before we end the show that, um, it's clear to me after reading all your emails and talking through this episode and thinking about the value that hunting brings to my life and always has that. There's so much more at play with what we do outside. There's so much more for us to to find value in. And so that's why podcasts like this one and all the other podcasts are network are endless because there's so much more for us to explore. Um So I'm glad we got to hear a couple of stories from listeners about about how they see holidays and they see hunting, and they see all the things that have to do with their families and the connection. So I'm happy for it. We're gonna keep going. I feel inspired by you guys, hope you feel inspired by us. We will see you next week on the Hunting Collectives Say by Phil goodbye because I can't go a week. God do with role, Oh with Absolute Roll, Drinking out roslu Wrong, Drinking in Heaven,

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