00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcomed episode number twenty two of the Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien and today we are in Big Sky, Montana once again for the great conversation. This time is with a bunch of dudes, three to be exact, the first of which is Sam Sohold, whom you know have hopefully listed podcasts, a regular guest, and the bus guy, second of which is Janice Ptelis Bozeman, Montana, part of the Meat Eater crew. You've seen Janice Hopefully on Media TV, Steve Rinella, you've seen him or heard him moreover on the Media to podcast. And last but not least, David Wise. David Wise is, among many things, an Olympic gold melist free skier and half pipe um. He's a four time X Games gold medalist, two time Olympic gold medalist. He scored one most recently a few months back in Soci. He was just coming off a win at the sp Awards as well. So David is a hunter and an Olympic gold manalist. Not a lot of those running around, but it was it was great to get his new perspective on what competing and hunting and what both those things added to his life, so he's had some relative fame quite recently. It was also great to hear that about that from him and those changes and have this whole group together. We all shot the Total Archery Challenge and enjoyed the crap out of that and had a great conversation. So hopefully you enjoy episode number twenty two coming at you. We're recording Yanni tell Us where like tell us about Mike placement on podcasts. Right. I've been taught to by our sound guys that um who are stringing a can in New York who mixed the Mediator podcast to put the mic roughly two fingers off your top lip, so roughly mustache. And I thing we commonly run into is that everybody does this and they go, yeah, I got two fingers and they're basically making a peace sign, just like I'm just talking about two fingers together together and not yet turned into a B sign. But I was explained, Um, part of it is you're right, David, that you don't want to be breathing into the mic and you don't hear that sound. But supposely there's a lot of sound that comes out of um, sort of the cheekbone, area as people are talking. So what what do you mean by that very confused sound that come Like that's where some of the sound resonates from, Like reverberates from your cheekbones as you're talking. Maybe just the quality of the sound, I don't know, Like, like it's not just all coming out of out of your throat right wherever the MIC's picking it up from. There's something that's coming through your mouth and out through your cheeks a little bit higher than you imagine where your sound comes from. The last thing I'll say about mike placement is that right in front of the lips you get a lot of peas really breathes and and you don't you don't want the popping peas well as this prevent popping peas. That's what you're telling me. Uh, Yanni, introduce yourself. Uh. Jana patel us Bose in Montana yea producer, Meat Eater Television, right now, podcast, anything else you want? Know we're at we're talking about we were talking about what your title should be, right, and I said, producers, not enough? Do you agree that's that's not quite descriptive enough? Yeah? Not that I've outgrown because I feel like there's room to grow as a producer still for me, but there's a lot of you know, outlying things that I'm involved in, so producer doesn't quite you know, cover at all. I said, the glue, What do you feel about that? I like it? I like it like that. Yeah, it's got legs. The glue right in? I always tell me, just right, I don't know where you're writing to? Where do you don't have an info at the Hunting Collective? Where do you know most of your messages? I don't know. They're just spread out like half for Instagram. Just right, just right in. Our address is not listed anywhere. Go ahead and right in because I feel like this is bullshit, because I feel like a lot of people out there know my email or can find is. I think there is no no, there's maybe go to the hunting clicks dot com. There's emails right there. I can find it there. So right in there, write a letter right to Ben No, right to Yanni. He's got enough going on. Yanni's the glue. He can handle anything. Well, he'd be great. You showed up in a couple of weeks and you're like, y need to have a quick fifteen minute meeting a bunch of people wrote in, I've got some ideas, ideas, here's here's the top ten. So if I listen to this, please write in what you think Yanni's meat eater uh idols should be, and please include I'm looking forward to seeing what your fans come up with. Please include descriptions. I don't have any fans, just reluctant listeners. David described who you are. Hey, everyone, I'm David Wise uh and I am a professional skier by trade slash bow hunting addict. So I'm here in this room because I happen to like to shoot bows a lot, and I'm in the same place as these guys, and we decided to sit down. Yeah, that's how, hopefully how all podcasts work. We're just like, we want to just keep talking to each other, but put headphones on and make sure there are two fingers away from your mouth above the top lift or at yeah, top lift oriented somewhere so that the sound through my cheekbones. I hope you have a strong pronounced cheekbone. That's right, you have to have that that tenor through the cheekbones. Um. I'm coming off of a very what will probably forever be the most successful season of my life. Um got to go represent the US of A and the in the Olympics and pyong Chang and bring home a gold medal, and uh, I couldn't be more excited. Let me tell you guys this real talk. I couldn't be more excited to be in the mounds of Montana shooting bows with you guys, because I'm an introvert at heart. I'm a mountain man in my soul, and I'm passionate. I love I love skiing, I love Part of the reason I love skiing as much as I love hunting is that both things get me further up, further in, further into the wilderness where I wouldn't spend time normally seeking, you know, seeking new experiences. And um, so yeah, I'm just excited to be I'm excited, excited to be back in my element because one of the one of the benefits and downfalls to getting too compete in the Olympics is more people care about what I do for one year than they ever have cared about about it for my entire career. You know, the the Olympics tend to connect people, and they connect me to people who really probably don't even know what I do, you know, or or even if they know, and even if they've watched me ski and the half five, they don't really understand what's going on. They don't understand why my run is better than anybody else. They're like dude with the long hair flips upside down when he does the flips and spins and stuff, but he want a gold medal, you know. So, um, the attention that I get is certainly for me kind of overwhelming. So um, it's just nice to take a step back and remind myself, you know, what what what life is all about, and and do the do the enjoyable things in the mountains. And I like flinging arrows that whatever I can flame that targets. We're coming back to that, Sam. I want you to describe where we are and then say who you are. Okay, So we are in a big sky Montana. We are currently in a corner unit kind of condo hotel room type thing looking out over pretty amazing mountain views. Yeah, but we're up at the Total Archer challenge and I think all of us have shot a couple of days in a row now, and um, arrows have been lost and good shots have been made, but a few of those, but overall, um, yeah, pretty amazing time up here and just good to be having a conversation with you guys and the buses here. The bus is here, the bus is down in the parking lot. Bus guy. I'm the bus guy. I don't I'm not eve gonna say my name the bus guy. Is that annoying that you're the bus guy? No, I don't think so. I think it's uh so, I'm Sam sohl Um, most recently known as the bus guy. But I think it it's nice to have a little bit more of a title on my nomadic lifestyle because I kind of started doing living on the roads in two and um it was probably I think it was two thousands, may have two fourteen, I moved out of my house that I was renting, and I haven't had a permanent address since then, so I've just been living on the road. Last summer I built up the school bus, and when I'm on the road, i'm living in that, and when I'm not, I'm just crashing wherever I can find a place. In all seriousness, what mostly goes on in the school bus like driving and sleeping and then hu hunting out of it. Yeah, driving, sleeping and hunting. So it's it sounds like that, sounds like a well used school bus. So you do there, you eat in there? Probably, yeah, yeah. Like so a lot of times I'll hunt alone, and I'll uh, you know whatever. Got a little camp stove set up on the kitchen counter in there, and coffee pot ready to like a French press ready to roll. And so I wake up and I make eggs and whatever and coffee, and then out the bus store into wherever I'm going. And then when I've got people in camp, I always set up the wall tent sits up next to it. Um did a custom wall tent, and so you got wood stove and all the cooking stuff out in the wall tent, and then everybody's sleeping inside, and I've got like a propane fireplace, and so I always set my alarm an hour before we have to get up. I hop out of bed, turned the fireplace on, go back to bed, and then when everybody and I start the wood stove. And so when everyone wakes up, the buses warmed, the tents warm, and then we cook breakfast and go hunt. What you're doing, you're doing hunting camp. Right, Yeah, it's a Bluebird bus. It is Bluebird full size school bus. So what's the ratio of breakdowns? Two hunts for the bus? I should knock on wood. I have yet to break down. So but I have done a lot of I've spent a lot of money on preventative like maintenance. So I before I took off last fall, I went and I spent almost six dollars on oil change. Um. They fixed a bunch of exhaust leaks, there was hydraulic fluid that needed to be sealed up. Um, they did a full run through. They did. UM. I had some lights that I had, you know, put a screw through some electrical work, and so I had shorted out the tail lights on one side, and so they fixed all that. I mean, it was just that I had him run through the whole thing. Um. A guy that does service on all the regional school buses in the area where I did the build. And so I figured, if he's getting school busses ready for kids riding on him, I figured, I'm in good hands. But and then I've you know, I've I've any time I start to think I'm having trouble with it, I take it in and go, Okay, I need you to run through this, I need you to check it out. And then I'm always trying to be ahead of it because I don't want to be out in the middle of nowhere. And oh yeah, I've been in the dial Like when you're in there, You're like, I could do a couple of honts out of this thing podcasting the bus. Have you had anybody reach out and say, hey, do you have plans on how to do? I want to do a busy? So I will say so, I've had a lot of people reach out and say, oh, I've always thought about doing a bus. Uh, you know, like, can I ask you questions if I get one and build it in h If I'm going to be completely honest, I probably talked more people out of buying a bus then I have inspired people to buy one. And I love the school bus and it's the project has been awesome and everything I've done with it has been awesome and for what I'm trying to do with it, it is the perfect vehicle. I mean, it's you can't miss. It goes by, You're like, well, there's just painted up school bus. You can tell there's like you know, beds and stuff inside. It's like trying people trying to figure out what's going on. But if your goal is to travel somewhere and just enjoy the outdoors more, a school bus may not be the answer. You know, I feel like that statements common sense, but well it's nice to people know. Yeah, no, don't buy a school bus if you want to go up in the mountains, right, it's not a you know, you're not taking it off road. Once you get there, you don't have a vehicle unless you pull something or meet people there. Um, Like last year, I pulled up, so I had the full sized bus, and then I pulled a utility trailer with a four wheeler on it, and so I was, you know, like I think the bus is thirty six ft long. And then I had a you know, fourteen feet a trailer, so I was, you know, running fifty ft up. You're a moving conglomerate like gravel roads and stuff, And like every time I turned on one, I was just kind of in a panic trying to figure out if I could take this. It's like, yeah, I don't, I don't know, like and had no idea how bus is handled on like muddy roads or snowy roads or whatever. So my option, uh, if there was bad weather coming, I just parked it and stayed. This didn't go anywhere. I've dealt with that on a on a much subtler level. Uh, just pulling a trailer. I think anybody's I got a little travel trailer for the family, and and uh, everybody just assumes you can just drive the danny thing everywhere. And I've definitely had some conversations with my wife where I'm like, look, we gotta have a plan for how we're going to get out of the parking lot before we get into it, because if I jack knife this thing in the parking lot, I'm gonna have to take it off and get some get five friends to like tork it back around. Now, how about you want Darry Queenly, Yeah, let alone camping spots, just getting just getting fuel, you know, just stopping off and I'm picturing you trying to back like maybe telling a boat on there and trying to back that into a doting honestly, like with the mirrors are pretty good, so you could, like you gotta go slow, but you can back something up. The worst part is the departure angle on behind your rear axel is so far back, like, you know, so much vehicle behind the rear tires that if you go through a dip like I like the jack on my trailer, it was you know, I don't know how long it was when it started, but I probably ground off like six or seven, which is at the bottom of the jack, because every time I go through a dip it was just and I would just run that through. So I just run a couple of extra two buy six is yeah, it's just fine. You have a big, you know, block, and I could jack a lot up on that. That's that's well. You gotta be strategic. But overall the bus is awesome. Well and the main sorry ahead now, I said, when you first did the bus, I said, it's going to break down. Every time I was like, there's no way the bus to the hunt to ratio breakdown. I figured would be one to one. Well I got got one. You beat me on that. Yeah, it's a zero percent zero, But I got pretty lucky. When the I bought, I basically bought the bus from a school district. It was one guy had bought it but he didn't use it, and I bought it from him. But the school had paid to do a complete rebuild on the motor and the transmission. So like when I got it, only had twenty thousand miles on the rebuild, and I think I've put fourteen thousand miles on the bus. Now. Two questions, Yeah, main real quick, main purpose of the bus, and then what's the ninety two rebuilt engine bus go for? Okay, so main purpose of the bus. So a long time ago, I was sitting around with my brother and a buddy of ours, and we we're talking about, like how cool would be to buy a school bus and do like a twelve state turkey tour and just drive around and kill turkeys. I didn't know you were such a turkey finate. We were talking a little bit at lunch, but this is let's let him get through this, but we're getting into the ten turkeys bring it. So we were like, you know, you could you could try. I mean, you can buy turkey tags everywhere. There's almost nowhere you have to like, there's a very few states you have to draw a turkey tag. And so you could say you go hunting Nebraska and you kill three turkeys and then you just go to the next date and you buy tags, and we just thought that to be cool too, rip out all the guts out of a school bus and have a couple of cots and just a wood stove and whatever and keep it super simple and just like travel around and kill turkeys. And that was the original, like, you know, three guys sitting around bullshit and idea. And then it was I think it was like three years after that. But like when we had that conversation, like every time I'd see a school bus and'll be like, oh, look at that bus, you know, means like I feel like I feel like a look at that short bus, Like, oh man, look at that one. That'd be like perfect size for doing this, you know. Um, it was the fall of I was kind of coming off a hunting season, trying to kind of figure out what I wanted to do next. Um, all of the public land transfer debates and everything that we're coming you know happening. People are starting to get fired up about trying to keep public lands public, and I just it seemed like the right opportunity to both get the bus and build it out and then have it mean more than just some guy rolling around hunting, because that's you know what, that's not that cool of a story, like it's just a homeless guy in a bus traveling around trying to shoot things. So I tried I attached it to this public land message, and my whole goal was to stay at a very elevated level to raise awareness about the issues and help educate people and kind of have people look at it and try to figure out what I'm talking about and then go do research on their own about all the public land stuff and just kind of a little bit of a call to action to get people involved with trying to figure out what they can do to keep stuff public. So that was the the whole goal, and it was to buy the bus. What would you have guessed John on the cost well higher, So he had he had it listed for I first tried to trade guns in gear because I like to barter, and uh fine, I think I wore him to trade out. Well, I've done so. I've done a lot of photo work for different clients over the last six eight years. And you know, he had a gun here there, and a pack here and there, and clothing and coolers and all sorts of stuff. And so the guy I bought it from, his name was carlos In Fort Lupton, Colorado, and I was like, do you like to hunt? You like to fish? Like, would you want to trade gear for it? And he's like, well, what do you got? And I was like what do you need? You know? So he's like, oh, we'll take you know, like looking for this, and so I gave him like a whole laundry list of stuff and then I just wore him down and finally he was like, all right, I'll take five thousand in gear trade or cash, and I said sold. So I bought it New Year's Eve. And the funny part about that is that about five years ago Sam and I were on a hunt and during the hunt, I was talking about podcasting, and then the same hunt he was talking about building a bus, and then about at the same time. Yeah, four years later or whatever, now we're talking about you're on your podcast talking about my bus. That's crazy. That's deep. Whoa, it's real deep. All right, we're going back, David. Um, I don't have any transition at all. Wow. That was that was great. Thanks. We're just gonna get back to you eventually. Thank you. Sam. Part of the podcast, Um, when you start hunting a great question? I started, Uh, it depends on how you define it. I started tagging along with my sisters um when I was eight or nine, and uh, I got my license as soon as I possibly could. UH primarily hunt. I mean, I'm an opportunist. I'll hunt, I'll fish, I'll i I love the idea and the and the ability to go out there and provide food for yourself off the land. So um but but I definitely because my time has always been limited. Even from a young age, we were always traveling to ski. Um, I've I've sort of naturally gravitated towards the big game side of things because I could go out for a couple of days at a time. A lot of times it was just weekends and and the reward was immense, Whereas if you're if you're an amazing chucker hunter or you're an amazing fisherman, you are still providing food for you and your family, but not at the levels that you are when you can harvest a deer, harvest and elk um. So, my dad and my I have sister, I've twin sisters that are four years older than me, and my dad hunted kind of recreationally when he was growing up, and um, it was always something that he respected and liked, but it wasn't it wasn't a big thing to him until his daughter starting to get into the age where maybe they could hunt, and he realized, now, this is something that I kind of want to pass down. So my dad ironically got back into hunting because of my sisters because they were getting to the age where they could hunt. And uh, they went out those first couple of years and they were just absolutely clueless because he wasn't he wasn't a great hunter. He was he had just done it, like I said, recreationally and his knowledge level was low. But um, when you're the guy, when you're the guy that because when we all go out and hunt, especially most of Nevada hunting is public ground. So when you go out and hunt in public ground, you bump into other people who are hunting as well, and you don't always tell them where you're going, but you always chat about what what's your experience? Have you guys seen any nice bucks? Have you seen any dose? What have you seen? And uh, the guy with two twelve year old girls, twin girls hunting, uh, definitely sticks out like a store a sore thumb. So my family essentially lucked out in the fact that they kind of bumped into some people who are really knowledgeable about hunting. And uh, those guys basically took my dad and my sister's out hunting, and that was just at the age where I was old enough to tag along. I'm not gonna say that I wasn't kind of holding them back, and I'm in hindsight, I'm thankful that they were willing to hike at the pace that an eight year old hike. I would say I was probably setting a pretty a pretty decent pace for an eight an eight year old, but I was still late, you know. But um, I loved it so much. I don't know. I think some of hunting is in nate, you know that. I don't I can't really explain why I liked it, but I always liked it lot. And I got to be there when my sister got her first buck, and um, I got to experience the whole process from you know, the hunting. We hunted hard, we had we were having a hard time finding anything. Then we saw a buck. She shot it, She heart shot it. I mean it was an amazingly quick, ethical lethal kill. And you know, the butchering process. All that stuff fascinated me and then I got to experience it from from a food side, and that was it. I was at eight years old. I've been eaten years since I was eight. And um, like I said, my time, the time for me has always been the biggest, probably the biggest obstacle between me and hunting. I think I look at me and hunting kind of the same way I look at me and my wife. This is gonna be a really ridiculous analogy, So here we go. You're ready. Um where Like my wife and I we met when we were young, and we we didn't get together when we first met, but we were always destined for each other. And that's how I feel about hunting. Is like I hunting and I met at a really young age, but I always just kind of dip my toes in it. But but I was meant to be a sold out bow hunter and I just didn't realize it. And the same way, the same thing with my wife. I like, I met her and she fascinated me, but I didn't really know and I wasn't really in a good place in my life to be with her at that time. And we went we went our separate ways, and um, you know, I met back up a couple of years later and I was like, holy crap, yeah I can't. I haven't been able to forget this girl. And you know, but beyond that, it was just wildfire. And uh, same thing with hunting. It was like I always liked hunting, and and in Nevada are our opportunities are somewhat limited, especially on the rifle side. Um, if you put in for easy to draw units, you can probably you can most likely draw a tag a year, but that's not even guaranteed. That even that's not guaranteed. The between hunting cow elk and putting in for everything else, I mean literally when I when I when I would put in for the Nevada draw it, I'd I'd run it out of things to put in for because I just wanted to draw something. So the hunting was a little limited, so I would just hunt when I drew a tag. So you know, when year I draw a deer tag and I'd hunt that, And the next year I draw a deer tag or maybe an antelope tag, and I'd hunt those. Um, whatever tag I happened to draw would be the animal I chased. It wasn't like I was. I was not very calculated about it. It was just kind of like throwing some darts at the wall and and and hunting, which everyone stuck. And I drew an elk tag one year and I realized, when I drew an elk tag, I've never seen an elk. That's gonna sound super funny to you guys, because you grew up in areas where elk are plentiful, and you see him on the side of the highway. And I've seen a lot of elk since then. But when I drew it, and I want to clarify that, uh, when uh, I always started as an elk hunting guide, I'd probably only seen maybe a dozen elk up to that point. I grew up in the east coast. Yeah, and I grew up on the east side of South Dakota. That's true. Shut that down. Continue pardon my ignorance. Before you continue, I want to give you a plus, definitely an A on your analogy, because like, if your gal isn't happy with the way that you compared hear, do you like your love to hunting, and then she doesn't love you more now like she should. I was super first when you first put off the analogy, I'm like, he's about to crash and burn on that. But that was good because when I'm hunting, I'm chasing. When there's chicks running up chases, you know, there's no way. I would also say, Um, your story, I think it's similar to a lot of folk stories, and I'd like to hear from everybody about this particular point, which is one my dad stopped hunting for a long time until I got into it, and then he got back into you at my level. And then as I've as my levels of honey with kind of increased, he's he's gone back with me, kind of like the metronome X. But then also during college, I didn't hunt as much. Like during that formative time, we're not trying to figure out my life. I wanted markedly less than I did when you know, I turned twenty three and got out all that and got into like, what what do I want my life to be? So I I find like that story is not it's pretty damn yeah, it's it's a common It's actually a more common story. The more I share it with people, the more common I realized that is is that um, and I think that that the heritage of hunting is super important. I'm excited to teach my kids the hunt when they grow up, you know. And uh so anyways, yeah, I was I stopped on you know, drawing my first elk tag and realized I've never seen an elk before and being like, Okay, I guess I gotta go figure this animal out. But I've I've grown up. I feel really fortunate to have grown up in a in a state with so much public land. And I think that that's something that we for are all very passionate about. Is like we want to see if anything more access to public land. Uh, if anything, we want to see it just it protected better and better. Because I never once hunted on private land until that was like as you're talking about, like, idrew a tag here that was all public, always peblic land. There was no other there was no alternative. We were kind of I mean, me and my dad and our hunting buddies, we would kind of laugh at the people who went out and bought land on our tags, were like, why would we buy a land on our tag when we can buy the thirty five dollar deer tag? You know. It just it just wasn't the it wasn't the the approach that we had to hunting because hunting for us was always about food, you know. Uh, it was never about shooting the biggest animal. And would we shoot if you had a choice between the bigger buck or the smaller buck? Are you gonna shoot the smaller buck? No, You're gonna shoot the bigger one. But if you have a chance between a small buck and no buck, are you going to shoot the small buck? Yeah? Because it's food. It's food for the freezer, and so yeah, I was that was always my heritage growing up in hunting was it? It was public land was the only option. And that's why I say, I feel really fortunate to having grown up in Nevada because we do have so much access to public land, and I've learned I wouldn't I wouldn't describe myself as a very good hunter, but I'm a very relentless hunter. And I think the public land is what taught me. That is because I realized everybody has the same chance on this piece of ground, but the guy who walks a little further in, or goes or climbs him out in a little bit faster, he has a greater chance. And I learned that from a pretty young age and that's how I hunt today. It drives some of my friends that I hang out with crazy. They're like, why did you walk that far in? Why did the main the main question usually is why did you shoot that that far in? And I'm like, because that's where I found it? Sorry, you know, and uh so, anyways, I don't I kind of got lost on my No, that's a different It's just a different way to grew up. I mean, I grew up hunting public land, but it was it was a lot different. You grew up problem Michigan. I don't even think the concept of public land really hit me until I was probably but I don't know, five years into guiding Elk hunters on public land and so I kind of sort of realized what was going on. And we had private access to private land to public land, right, it was harder to get to. So we saw a few dudes coming in and just slowly figured out that we were, you know, kind of protecting it. You wouldn't talk about it much in town as to where we were hunting, right because we had a little bit of a honey hoole. But yeah, I mean I was mid mid twenties until I was kind of like, oh wow, yeah, a hundred square miles that just like just go right. I was the same way I was, like maybe years old. I grew up on in public land mostly and then got to wait a minute. I grew up in public land. I just thought that was the place everybody went hunting. I didn't know. I had no idea that it was like some kind of classification around where we could go and not go. I just thought we go sometimes, we go to private every once in a while. We would hunt farms. Every once in a while we would most of the time we would go public. Yeah, we were two things. We would access public through private quite a bit growing up, but that was just part of it, and I didn't think anything of it. I really didn't, And most of the time, most of the time for me, it was never uh we were never hunting on the private ground. It was just an access point to to a big piece of public land that didn't have a lot of access. So um, it was always a cool It's cool to be able to go through there because then you know, you kind of knew you were gonna you're gonna get some opportunities to other people weren't. But um, as I was talking about my analogy, I'm going to complete the circle of the analogy of how I went from being a recreational hunter to uh to a guy sitting here having a podcast with you guys. Uh. And it's almost a hundred percent Remmy Warrant's fall because um he beat me to it. I was gonna be yea. So if he gave you the Remmy Warrant disease, then that's why. Yeah, yeah, he gave me the bug, and I haven't been able to get away from it. Um. I So after I was always a hunter and I would always put in for tags and and I enjoyed it. But it wasn't it honestly wasn't even at the top of my list every year. Everything the top five items on the top of on my list, we're skiing related. And then when I finally changed my perspective, got married and had my little girl, my first, my my daughter. I have two kids now, Ni Alien Malichi. When I had my little girl, my perspective changed, and and and three or four of those top five things became family and and and people oriented. And that really helped actually helped me be a better athlete, better skier because I wasn't so caught up in success on a pair of skis. But um, but the top five never really included hunting. Hunting was up there, you know, it was. It was like six seven eight somewhere in there. But um, after the Olympics in I won my first gold medal, and all of a sudden, I had more attention on me than I had ever expected to have in my whole life. For one month of the year. They treat you like an absolute celebrity, and people want you to show up to their events and they want to they just want to take photos with you, and and it was just kind of foreign for me because skiers have always appreciated what I do, but the rest of the world really didn't care. They're like, wow, why why would you flip around? And a half pipe? That's silly, you know. Uh So I was overwhelmed, as as the mountain. The mountain main introvert Emmy was overwhelmed, and I was just having a just a casual conversation with Remy. Um. He and I have had mutual friends forever. We kind of grew up together, and he was just like, listen to Dave I know you love to hunt, but I really think you should try shooting a compound bow. Um and I I had had an old bear re curve my whole life that my grandfather handed down to me and my dad kind of collectively, He's like, here, this is for both of you guys. And Um. So I liked bows. I think everybody likes bows, and bows are super cool. But when Remy gave me one of his old bows and I started shooting a compound bow, and I realized how how meditative it was, because archery is one of those things where you have to slow your heart rate down and be focused at the same time. And that really related to what I was striving to be as a skier is you know, intense. The things that the tricks that I'm doing a lot of them have never been done before, and so it's really I'm at a high level. I'm I'm basically my goal is to reach the highest level that I'm capable of on skis, and so it's it's kind of intense. But in order to reach that level, you can't be you can't be overhyped about it because then you're gonna then you're gonna pin the throttle too hard and crash um. So you have to be focused by calculated and relaxed and calm and and that side of archery just spoke to my soul. I mean it was as soon as he put that bone in my hands and I went and bought my first twelve pack of arrows at Cabela's, it was like game over, just first of our first really, yes, it's great a heaven recommended for guns, but with bows. Just drink away, so like, give me a quick it feels like this, And I want Yanni to talk to you about skiing because I've never skied. Um, but well we need to we need to change that. Well we will, Like if we could ski right now, we'd go, but it'd be weird and stick the landing and stick the arrow like arrow goes in the twelve ring, stick to landing on a gold metal run. Like what's the I mean you're describing the two differences, but those two success points, like what remove the audience from the skiing part? Just just you, yeah, just me, And and that's that's something that I've always had. It It's been both a benefit and the drawback for me as a skier because I have these natural mountain man tendencies where I don't need to train with a crew. I can train. I Actually some of my best training is by myself. I mean not even not even by myself with a coach or by myself with a friend. It's just literally me and the half pipe. That's where I sometimes do my best work. And so yeah, yeah, I I can. I don't have a hard time removing the crowd from the situation because when I'm out there trying to do a new run or trying to land what might win a gold medal at the end of the day, I'm not necessarily doing it for the crowd. I'm not going to say that the crowd doesn't add to the experience and isn't awesome to have them stoked for it. But I would do it anyways even if they weren't there. So, um, there eerily similar those two feelings, uh, And I would describe it in the sense that, um, especially when when you look at the Olympics, right, the Olympics is every four years. I only compete in one event, So I worked, essentially on paper, I work for four years for thirty five seconds and a half pipe. Yeah, it's four years of effort. It's four years of timing, it's four years of blood, sweat and tears, and it all comes down to that one moment. And I would say that that is the greatest parallel that I The bow hunting is actually the closest parallel that I've ever found to that same feeling with a bow, more so than a rifle, more more so than any other form of hunting. You have to practice quite a bit. You gotta practice all year long. You gotta stay fit, you gotta be in shape, you gotta do your scouting. You gotta know you're gonna be able to find the animals. Then when you get to the zone where you know you're gonna find the animals because you've been doing all your scouting ahead of time, and you feel confident that you can shoot because you've been shooting so much, you still have to see the animals. They still have to be in a place where you can make an effective stock. All those things have to line up. So that would be that that would be the parallel to me maybe qualifying for the Olympic team. It's like, okay, here I am, I'm ready for the Olympics. Close, yeah, but I still have to make the dang team. And then you make the team. You know, you get say you close the distance, your your hundred yards away now and you can maybe it's time to blast off a little cal call, bringing in just a little closer into the into the zone. And that's me, you know, making the qualifiers. I've qualified, you know for finals at the Olympics. Is top twelve, Okay, I qualified. I'm in the top twelve. I get to compete in the finals at the Olympic Games. That's That's that when you close that distance between a hundred and fifty on an elk, and then it all comes down to that one moment and can you execute so you're in range, the elk doesn't know you're there, that whatever the animal you're hunting is doesn't know you're there. Can you still, with your heart pounding, with all of that pressure on you still drawback, take a deep breath, and execute the shot that you want to execute. And that's kind of how it feels that the Olympics is like everything everything goes to that one moment, but you can still totally fuck it up in that last moment. You know. I joke often about the fact that my main job at the Olympics is to not blow it. You know, it's like you got there, everything is lined up, but you still have to not blow it in the same way that you have to treat hunting is like I know that arrow, how to get that air to that animals. But there's plenty of done in a thousand times. You've done it in a thousand times. But this last year I shot an up right square in the ass. I was like, oh yeah, when he's coming in view, Oh yeah, daddy, oh yeah, he's thirty three yards steady stops and I just shot it right in the ass. And I thought, yeah, for me, that for you jumping up doing the halfway probably like jumping into the crowd steak. Here's here's where the here's where my analogy falls apart right at your wife coming back internet different analogies. Uh. Here my my analogy between comparing skiing and hunting. Uh. At the Olympics, I get three tries. It's the best of three format. Don't know how many hunts are best of three formats, but uh. But because because that's how the Olympics went from me this year I was having on my first run, potentially what would have ever would have always gone down for me in my mind as the best run of my life. I was literally landing the tricks, I was going higher, and I was landing the tricks cleaner and making everything as smooth as I have ever done it, and my ski just popped off, And that would that would be kind of you know, if we're if we're gonna I'm I'm as people are probably aware by now. I'm pretty I'm a pretty big fan of analogies. That would be the equivalent of your your rest breaking or your de loop breaking is like, oh, maybe switching, yeah, or the wind switching. Exactly. You did everything right and there's one thing that you have no control over. It went wrong. That happened on my first run, and I was like, I was kind of like, I was a little flustered, but but I've been doing this long enough that I can. I can, you know, shrug my shoulders, wipe, wipe the dirt off my shoulders, and go up and do another one. It happened again on the second round, and I was like, this is ridiculous, Like the first of all, this kind of thing doesn't happen to me at all. It maybe happens once or twice a season, you have a you have we we would call it a binding prerelease, where you're you're binding releases in a situation where it shouldn't have and that will happen to me once or twice a season and you kind of just you kind of just brush it off and move on. It just happens. The the amount of torque that we're putting on skis is more than any design any manufacturer ever intended skis to have any any that then they ever intended. So you don't get special bindings, are they are? Yeah, my skis are custom made. My bindings are custom made. But I'm just saying those tolerances even then, I'm pushing the level of the tolerances. So at some point, every once in a while you have a fluke binding issue. It happens. But to have it happened twice in one day and have it be have that day that it happens twice in one day be the Olympic Games was kind of ridiculous. I mean it was silly, and so I was going into my third run and and I was kind of mad. I was mad between my second and third run, and I was like, this is really how this story is gonna go, Like, after everything I put into this, is this how the story is gonna go. Because I went through some pretty hard seasons getting back to the Olympics. Uh. But then I just kind of laughed kind of the same way that you do when you are going on a hunt and and you're just kind of like, well the wind switch, man, Like I don't have any control over that, and that's how I. That's how I. That's like kind of that whimsical field that I had going into my third run, It's like, no, I just reminded myself. I was like, look, man, you did everything that you were capable of doing, and things went wrong. We're going to crank those bindings up as high as they go. On my third run, if I had crashed my my my legs would have broken before my bindings came up. The thing, things weren't coming off on that third run. We put them all the way at the top, which is obviously not that safe. Not something what bindings are, right, I don't know. Let me let me inform you by the binding is the thing that you you used to attached your foot to the ski. It's the thing that you click into so you so there's a heel piece and a toe piece kind of kind of similar to, uh, just a pair of a really good pair of boots. Is like you you click the toe in and then you click the heal in. That thing keeps you attached to the ski. And the dudes that are hardcore, uh, they had a couple of people once tell me, um, better than knees than the skis, meaning that they're going to crank up those bindings so that that ski never comes off because they want to stay with their ski, not lose it somewhere off in the woods that they crash whatever. They'd rather just have a blown out knee. That's kind of That's kind of the approach that I had to that third run is like, I'm for it because it's the Olympics and because I've been working so hard to get here. I'm going to crank these things all the way up with the confidence that I'm going to land it. So I'm worried that people don't understand, like truly what you're talking about. You're talking about cause I watched the Olympic Games. Um kind of with Remy, we were texting back and forth when you won the gold. We're not talking about just I just jump up and do a couple of ends and land. This is like how many how many rotations do you go through on one of these? Uh? Can you back up? If we're gonna go go here, let's back up all the way to like, yes, tell us about the half pipe, the depth of the half pipe, because that alone, like to stand in the mid in the bottom of the half pipe that these guys ride and look up at those walls that they're riding. I mean, I'm a decent skier. I'll ski most everything on this mountain that we're sitting next to. But to even come up to that lip and just confidently ski off of it and down to the half pipe, it's it's it gets you know, butterflies a little bit, you know. I would say, I would say the half pipe is probably the most uh daunting looking feature that you can ski on skiing. I mean it's a twenty two football basically vertical wall. Most of the time, they're pretty icy because they construct these things and it's not like they can keep at once they've constructed it. They can't keep adding fresh snow so that it's nice and soft and chalky. It's like no once you've built it, it stays there. So they're usually pretty icy and um, the margin for air is really slim because I'm taking off and landing on the same surface, just like half pipe on a skateboard or a BMX bike or anything else. So if I pop a little too hard pop is our term for jumping. If I jump a little too hard off the takeoff, I'll land way out in the middle, you know, where it's flat and if I pop a little, if I don't pop enough, uh, then I'll land on what on the deck or on the coping where which is the flat part beyond the vertical part. Yeah, I'm getting it. So it's it's a daunting I'm getting no. No, no, I watched it, so I know what it looks like. I'm visually, but I just just the description of, like I look at these hills, I'm like, I can't go down that, like I hike up it and walk down it. But just just a description of being in your head speeding down that son of a bit going up the other side. That's to me. That is how much actual vert is is of the twenty two ft is vertical wall. How it's the last three or four feet. It's near it's actually not it's actually not ninety degrees, it's about eighties eight, six eighty nine anywhere. And they're depending on who's cutting it and how their night went last night or whatever. So but another thing people have to think about is you compared the half pipe, you know, like to skateboarding and BMX, but not only are you moving vertically, you're moving very fast horizontally yep, so you're at That's one of the one of the main differences skiing and snowbarning. Half pipe are are a half pipe that's built on a hill. It's it's built apparel, it's built down a hill. So, um, the way the only way that we can generate enough speed. We're going my I think my Olympic run of average seventeen or eighteen ft out of the half pipe. So on each hit, I'm going eighteen feet out of a twenty two ft How fast you going into the half pipe thirty five to forty miles, But that's in the that's in the flats. When I start. As soon as you hit the wall, you're you're going up a hill, so you slow down. I'm not going thirty five miles an hour. Off the takeoff or I'd probably go thirty five ft out it's so um but so yeah, we're traveling. Not only just not we're not we're taking off and landing on the same surface. But each air I'm probably eating up six seventy a half pipe. So from takeoff to landing, uh, is anywhere between forty five and sixty five feet down the half pipe. So yeah, that's yards in archery terms. Yeah, we're gonna keep baking. There's a lot of travel. Uh yeah, and each each hit, I guess since we're going there, I'll give you a good overview of of my sport and what I did. Don't be shy, we won't. Um. So I average just say this for listeners. We're gonna get to my turkey hunting things, hunting talk. It's way more interesting. We're going to get to that. Go. We'll get there. Um. On average, there's five hits in a run, so it's in it's a combination five or six. Sometimes there's six, and most of the time it's five. Occasionally there's a half pipe that's extra long, we'll get seven. Uh. And occasionally there and a half five it's extra short and we get four. But most of the time it's five or six and you're scored on all five of those tricks, and if you do four out of five and mess up the last one, you still get a fall score. It's just it's you can't you can't do well with a with a following around at all. Um. The judging is based around quite a few criteria, but just to simplify it, I'll say it's based around how high you go, the difficulty of the tricks that you do, and how well you execute those tricks. Well, I'll do four, how will you execute the tricks, and how stylish you are And a huge part of free skiing. Free skiing originated because we wanted to do things differently than all the other sports that were out there. We didn't want to race, we didn't want to wear spandex, we didn't necessarily want to ski the moguls anymore. We didn't want to do aerials, We didn't want to do anything that was similar to what was being done. We wanted to do things our own way, and so style is a huge part of it. And a way that you can recognize good style is somebody who takes something that looks really hard and makes it look easy. That's style or what we do, what we ste styling, and uh so we're judged on all those four criteria and the guy who can do all four of those can go really high, do technical tricks, execute them well. That means landing high, carrying their speed well, and add that element of style. That's the guy who wins at the end of the day. Ste No, I don't have style, orse like everything looks harder. I give you skiers props too, because I came from snowboarding and probably went I changed to his being a skier in like two thousand and one too, somewhere in there. And that was after twenty years of snowboard man. So I was like, die in the wool man. That was like my thing, you know, it was a skateboard and whatnot. And so when skiers first started dropping into half pipe, so I was like, what is this bullshit? But then man, they progress us and the next thing, you know, snowboards could only make it out fifteen feet. And the next thing, now you're talking like you're so maybe I was off. They were going out at ten and all of sudden, skiers and that's the reality is there. There's some physical there's physical reasons for that. Right, snowboard you have one edge on on skis you have too. Um, there there's things that are easier on a snowboard. There's there's there's things that are easier on skis. That's why I mean the guys I like to hang out with and and actually inspire me the most are snowboarders at right. Yeah, because uh, I think it's important to not spend too much time with people who are just like you. And so there's things that I can see on from the snowboarding guys and I'm like, ah, man, I feel like we could do that on skis. And that's where I draw some inspiration from. It's it's sort of like a secret source because everybody's like, where do you come up with all this stuff from? And I'm like, well, what kind of somebody else? Stealing from somebody that you aren't looking to. I like, that is there. Um, you got a lot of adulation, right, You got a lot of people coming up to you saying thank you or congratulations or whatever people say adulation. That's it's great. Where I put that in my repertoire word of the day calendar, um describe that the adulation. I mean, you just want to ask you award? Right, how many days ago? Not long today, Saturday? I wanted on Thursday, Thursday, you were in l A walking the red carpet, all kinds of people. Now you're here walking the walking side, walking side of the mountain. Is that just this has nothing to do with anything other than that adulation, you know, I know it's temporary in the in the Olympics sense. But as that adulation comes, and as as people you know, read these things and give you praise, do you find yourself more defensive or do you fall into it? You fall into like I was great, fuck it like I was because you were. You were better than everybody in the world for that one month that time. I always wondered that about people that experience those crazy highs. You fall into that high and just be like I'm going Or is there some defensiveness, like, man, I'm a skier, I just did that one thing really well. They gave me a big shiny thing. But that is there somewhere in the middle there for you or definitely you get you get the gold medal for that question, because that's a really good question. Um. I think I've I think I've definitely fallen victim to both both sides of it, and uh, I think the more mature you are, the more you realize that that stuff is temporary and that adulation is is fleeting. And that's why I think it's most it's more important to surround yourself with people who knew who you were before you had any success than it is to surround yourself with people who really like you, because I've I think we've all seen it in Hollywood, and I mean, I'm sure we've all had we all have personal experiences with people who had a little more success than they expected to, or they got what they wanted and suddenly they weren't that cool to you anymore. And that is the last thing that I want to have happened to me. You know. The reality is I feel like everything that I have is a gift. I didn't make myself. I didn't choose how how how tall I was going to be yet and choose the fact that I was gonna grow up in a family that would would sell out and support my dreams. Um we didn't as a family, wouldn't go on a family vacation. Ever, the first vacation that I went to a sunny place where you know, the sunshines and I could surf. Was with my wife after the first elymp after my first Olympics, because and I'm not complaining, I'm I'm just saying that my parents we sacrificed every dollar that we had, in every moment of vacation time that we could to support both my ski career and my sister's ski careers. So um, that's not that's something I can't take credit for. How can I take credit for that that I did do any of that stuff? So realizing that even though for that one moment, I did execute as well as I could have, and I did win that gold medal, even in that moment, I can't take credit for it because all of those things that got me there were gifts. So um, I like to my my goal with that adulation is to share it. I'm like, hey, look, I'm glad you're excited about what I did, because I think skiing is super eff and cool too. I I think you should go ski half pipe. I really do. So I want to. I want to sort of embrace that excitement around my sport and what I do. At the same time, I want to be like look, this belongs to you too. This isn't just mine and I I'm just a guy who likes who's doing what he likes to do. And uh. Another one of my huge motivations in my public persona is is inspiring kids to do what they want to do too. I don't care if it has happens to be half five skiing or not, but I would I would describe my elf as not necessarily the most talented person ever. You know, I wasn't the kid who was a phenom. I was never the kid that people picked out from a lineup and said that kid's gonna be something someday. I just I was born without that. I was born without the takes no for an answer gene like. I just I was just like, I don't really care how good I am now. I think I can get there, and I would just chip away at it, one day at a time, one one contest at a time, one one trick at a time. All of a sudden, the kids who were the phenoms that everybody was talking about and saying that kid's gonna be something someday, we're losing to me. And there they didn't understand why. And so that's my That's one of the main things that I try to talk to uh, the youth or or even even adults, because everybody has something they can they can be inspired by. That's what always what I say is, don't focus on where you're at right now, don't focus on what people tell you you don't have enough of focus on what you do have and make it a little better. What is it you want to do, Get a little better and so um, that would be my that that's my uh six years removed persup. UH perception of the adulation of of winning an Olympic gold medal is like it is, uh certainly one of the most overwhelming things. And I've spent time thinking I was the coolest thing in the world. And I've been reminded by I've been reminded by the people in my life who really love me that I'm not that I'm not that cool. I'm really just the nerd who likes to ski at the end of the day. So UM, I think it's important to surround yourself with people who know who you are deep down, and not with people who are who are who are just saying your name and saying you're the coolest thing ever. Because that's what happens. I think to two people in Hollywood is they just they get so much adoration, and the reality is those people who are coming up to you on the street, you could do something that was totally messed up and not cool, and they'd still be like, Wow, I don't care, You're the coolest. And as soon as you get too many people are like that around you, you're in a dangerous spot. So I try to avoid that. I try to avoid having people in my core group who think anything I do is cool. I like to have the people around me who tell me, David, that was not that was not that, that was not that tight. I don't like how you're your motherfucker. I like that. I've had a lot of like most of the guests on this podcasts have been, you know, high level hunting folks. I don't know how to describe, like there's no comparison to what you do to hunting world type of stuff, but most of the people have have experienced some kind of adulation based on their hunting life. Yanni has to some extent, like Sam has some extent. There's these are tiny little blips on the radar, but these are still somebody come up to be like what you do is cool, Like that's the first time that happens to everyone, whether you're hunting or skiing or whatever. I feel like that just kind of it can either go a good way or it can go a really bad way. Yeah, I agree. Do you think about that, Yanni ever? Like because you're I mean, you're on the it's good good to stay humble, you know, stay humble, Sam, I'm just gonna be a full bad way. Yeah. Let that go to my start, just starting, just starting handling. Sign a sign, an autograph. But like you ever seen the bus sign your baby? I always carry a sharpie. I sign a lot of things people don't want to to. I've ruined a lot of just you know, like memorability that people got just for being an event. I've drawn a lot of busses on people's T shirts. I'll tell you that right now. No, I think Yoh's right. I think it's it's good to stay humble, and it's just you at the end. I think the best quote I've ever heard as far as people in the hunting industry, no matter how many people know who you are in the hunting industry, you're not famous. I think that that's a very good equipta d Yeah, it doesn't matter how big you are in skiing, you're still just a skier. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Totally fine. We're gonna spend this off now to the turkey topic because I really liked turkeys and Yanni is a big turkey hunting right Ni would you describe speaking of being good at skiing t hunting? Yeah? Out what level of turkey hunter are you? How much? How much compared to my passion? Like right now it it might be number one? Do you think so? For me? Right now and at this time it's number one for me, Sam, Where does it rank for you? I would say probably number two because behind what I love deer hunting. It doesn't matter if it's white, tyler, mule deer. I just love deer hunting. Okay, So, David, have you ever run in Turkey's? What's Let's let me bring up another analogy since that's my that's my theme, my wife and turkey hunter. Since I'm sitting with three very avid turkey hunters, I'm gonna be I've heard a sportscaster this Olympics talk about how there should always be like a layman for every every time you have an intense Olympic sport, you should always have somebody who's just a random er pulled from the crowd so that everybody can unders and exactly how hard this is. Uh and and I think Half Life is a great example of that, where there there should be somebody who just skis up that thing and is terrified, just to show you that it's actually terrifying. Like me, like, yeah, next time you would film a pipe video, I'm gonna have you come and be there and it would just be me screaming. That's all you would hear. There go. So I'm the turkey layman in the group. I've literally never hinted a turkey in my life. That's good to hear, but it's now apparently because I respect all three of you and your opinions. If you think turkey hunting is that dang cool, there must be something I'm missing because I grew up in Nevada where you gotta put in for seven years and get seven years of bonus points to maybe draw a turkey tach. I like that. I like that, that's that's your and I've never bothered because it's the wrong season. Well there's there's yeah, there's other things that other things to do, like mule deer and elkins, every other thing. Um, Turkey hunting is the best because why um, speaking of being humbled, you can get your ass humbled on a consistent basis chasing those birds. And that probably is one of the reasons that it's hard. In the moment, it's hard, kind of hard to say. When he just walks away from you and you get humbled, you're like, yeah, that's why I love it. In that moment, it's hard to say that. But looking back over the course of the season, where I got to hunt eighteen days and I think I killed three birds, um, and that had probably for three birds that I killed, there was probably ten birds that I'm interacted with and I didn't kill them like you know, and I could again, I consider myself to be a good hunter, and so did to have that playing field be right there. Had I killed all thirteen, I don't know how I feel about it, right. Sam describes them sometimes like puffed up rumas like they're just rolling around, they don't know what's going on. I like to believe they're so dumb that they're hard to hunt because they there is no rhyme. Yeah, turkey really does never know where he's going. They have no idea. So I described it as a puffed up room because they fly down and then they puff up and then they just walk around and they like run into the edge of the field and then they just go to the other direction and they hit that edge of the field and they go into the woods and then like a half hour later just like pop back out. So you know they're in there, just like hitting trees back and forth and eating bugs and you know, just chasing huh yeah, let it all. But let them see a glimpse of a kyo on the far side of that field yards away, and they're like and they just melt into the ground, just gone gone. That's why they're so great because they're so unpredictable. Don't know what the turkey is gonna do, because the fucking turkey doesn't know what it's going to do. And then at some level that switches on when that turkey knows what it wants and you know what it wants, and you've got to play that game and you're talking to a raptor like that's for like this is a mini dinosaurs sleeps. It's a uh sleeps and trees and it's got rapture like hooks on the back of its legs and it flies down out and you talk to it and it comes in. You're like, hey, on my hand so and it's like, yeah, okay, I see you. I'm looking to have some I'm go the fuck. And then it's like yeah, okay, I want that. Then it starts coming and maybe it's just hooking up. What are you really down? Like, I don't really see you moving around too much? And you got per get it in these last little bits of like tantalizing sounds that that turkey's gonna have. It finally comes in. It checks up on the decoy and it starts to strut, spit druns. It's like oscillating feathers and its wings are moving back and forth, and it's just it doesn't have any idea what it's doing. It's a room at that point because this is like I'm about to get it on, but I'm not sure how to do it. I'm gonna take a couple of circles and then like that moment happens when you're ready to shoot it. And you shoot it and you always have. Like the flopping turkey is, in my mind, the number one thing you can see in the woods, Like the flopping turkeys. Your guy that likes to flop, you don't like to just when they fold up and fall over. I'm not saying I like the fact that they're flopping around. I just like the fact that that that entire dance is played out and now I'm successful. I'm not saying I disrespect the thing as it's dying or like enjoy the death of it, but I enjoy like it gets me going to know that I've just had a conversation to some level with a wild raptor that sleeps in trees, flies down every morning and has little to no chance to really know what it's doing. But like that that dance, to me is it's more intense than elk cutting. I feel like, yeah, I'm still at the point where every time one is flopping or folds over dead, I'm kind of relieved and like, oh my god, I can't believe that happened, Like I can't believe he's dead. Yeah, yes, that's I think. Why the flop is It's such a satisfactory thing, Like that happened. I did that. I used a fucking piece of wood that's some fellow crafted to make noises to a giant, you know bird that just came in and I'm gonna eat it. It's gonna be glorious and some of the best meat ever. That's another reason, Like you say you grew up, Dave, Yeah, I think. Uh not to interrupt you, sorry, I really resonated with the fact you talked about this, uh, this thing that we're gonna get into a little later, so I won't I won't spoil. But you talked about shooting enough turkeys to not have to buy white meat for the year, and that you have like, because that's so foreign to me. Turkey hunting hasn't appealed to me anymore than it ever did. In that moment when you said that, I was like, oh, I could I could get into that, because the reality is in my house, we don't need any we don't eat anything that's red meat that's not game. Um. I've and that's you know, God, given I've had some very successful years. I've had a couple of a couple of years in a row, three years in a row where I've been able to kill a deer in an elk and a couple of times, uh too too elk in a deer. So I've got lots of meat around. I'm actually kind of getting getting dry. So we're gonna need We're gonna need to go hunt again here pretty soon. But um, being able to just pull from the freezer and never have to go to the store for red meat is amazing to me, and in the qualities ten times better. So when you said that about white meat, and I was like, man, all right, do you guys eat chicken? Do you guys eat chicken like store about chicken and lunch meat like turkey and whatnot? You guys, Sam, you eat a lot of chicken storebroll chicken, probably half dozen chickens. Well, now we have chickens, so it's probably last year. I don't know if we bought any of the chicken. But prior to that, Yeah, And Steve said this about like what his brother says, like the store bought chicken. You simply cannot replicate that going up on the mountain. No, it's just like even shooting a while at turkey. You can roast that thing a special way you want. You're not getting what you get when you take out getting a vacuum sealed thing. They just lived in a barn and like stood in one area for oh, not necessarily. I mean, I mean we grew chickens that basically just ran around our yard. And when you roast that chicken, man, it's a different animal. It's just been domesticated over you know, over time. Yeah, and it's greasy and buttery, and it's been genetically bread to be delicious. Exactly whereas the turkeys that were hunting, the elk that we're hunting, the deer that were hunting, even though they do so happen to be delicious, they didn't. They weren't bread to be delicious. And they just are delicious. That not even if you put like little bowls of butter and garlic out in the field that they'd come and eat, or maybe even in your backyard, would you ever feed them butter or anything like that. They eat scraps, you know, so I'm sure there's some butter in there. Sometimes he's lookingna be like the fucking dumb question. All right, Well we'll go back to here's mine. Everybody has said it in this room, Like there's the red meat thing we're all dialed in on if you kill an elk, you have a family of four, Correctly, you've got a family of four. I've got a family of three, and you just live in a bus. It takes more than one elk, more than one elk right in my house. Yeah, for me, it's like an elk, an elk and two or three deer is so much that you can give a lot of way to the people that you care to share that with and get them excited about it and still be well in hand with last season, and an elk and two deer was enough for me to be generous, not not overtly generous, but generous and still feed my family. But I'm down to my like last ten pounds of me. Then you're starting to get nervous around July. Yeah, I gave too much. I'm out here shooting. I need to I need to be I need to be ready to harvest when the chance comes. That's I mean, if that happened to me every year, we're late July, I was kind of running out. That's you know, it's a good place to Yeah, And the reality is, because I've been I've been in three years of plenty. Um if I run out. I got hunting buddies who haven't you know, And and there's a community sense in that aspect. They're like, oh wow, yeah, you're right when you shot those two elk that one year and you gave me a bunch that was good. I got a lot. You can always go to Remy's house. He's probably, yeah, he's talking to me about that guy, like I'd like to have some bongo and a little bit of tar beating, like a couple of freezers from that. Yeah, we all know plenty of people that aren't getting through everything that they're killing now. No, not at all. I would put myself in that. This is kind of you start to you understand, Like, man, we eat a lot of backstripping tendeling around my house. It's a first world meeting and we're doing right now. Um. But for the turkey part, like my wife, about two years ago, my wife started saying to me, I started getting frustrated with the chicken we were running because my fault was like, let's buy chickens and salter and or figure something out. And she just said, I don't want to eat red meat all the time. I want other options. Um. And I was frustrated with the night tratee turkey meat we were eating and the pretty chick in that we were buying. And of course over that time we've shifted up those types of habits to make sure ship is organic and a little more comfortable with that. But at the same time, it's like that doesn't jive with my the way that I want to live my life, the way that I want to eat my meat. And so it feels like a little bit of a fallacy to be like, I'm a wild game guy, you know, eat with your killed type thing. But then when it comes to white meater, like I'll buy a chicken here, They're just to make sure we have a little variety, and so we I try to sit down and think about how many turkeys I would have to shoot to eliminate the chicken that we bought. Now, I also put for point empstence, I put in there like doves and pheasants and or quail in Texas, like how much of that do I need to have to make sure that we don't have this first world problem, but a problem nonetheless for the lifestyle that we want. And I came up with ten turkeys, legs, breast, the entire thing for a year would get my family, there's three of us, get us through without having to buy any chicken or any lunch meat or anything like that. So that's my mission. And now that's been two years ago. And then at that time of my goal of killing twenty turkeys, I've killed I think eight of them, but I still have that goal every damn year to kill ten turkeys. How did you come up with the number? I looked at how much yield you get from turkey breast, and how much if I cook a full turkey breast, is I put on the trigger and smoke or whatever, how much we can get from that. So we generally would get just from that, just just kind of medallion roasted turkey. We could generally get one dinner and about three or four or five lunches from one breast, depending on what we were doing. And so then you're looking at two breast off one turkey is going to get you through generally two weeks of of living. And tried to say, if we meet our consumption of white meat, then we would eventually get to the fact where we got twenty breast, twenty legs, and we can get through any needs we have generally for one ends up being about ten months a time before you can refresh and get get back to it. That's it's all just guesswork. But from killing like three or four turkeys a year, that's like a breast every three weeks least somewhere seems good. It's like just under a whole turkey a month. Yeah, something like that. And because a lot of states Montana we were talking about, you can kill five turkeys if you get real real Western and in Texas you can kill four if you just buy a license, and a lot of states South Dakota you can kill two Miriam's Yes, uh, you can kill two? Yes you can. Can you kill two and then go to the Black Hields and kill another one? Or is it no? You can? Well, yes you can. You can buy leftover tags even as non residents. You can get more than more than two tags. But um, if you're just doing it like right off, like if you just want to buy two over the counter tags, you can get a state wide archery and a Black Hills shotgun tag. So you do it. And then Montana, what's it looked like? Yeah, four regions where you can get a specific region specific turkey tag and then um, I think there's two regions where you have to use your statewide tag. Um, but so basically five times per spring. Yeah, Texas, you buy non resident license, you can kill four turkeys and there's no I don't think there you can go. You can have your entire take in one day, I think. And then you know, you say you're living in Montana or living somewhere out west, You've got a bunch of drivable states to the point where you can get to ten if you work at it pretty hard. The way that season goes, Yeah, there's only more and more turkeys everywhere, it seems like, so it should get just easier. Healthy population, healthy population. David, is this convincing you full on to go turkey? I think I gotta experience at first hand first and and and think it's as cool as you guys do. We're invited. Yeah, I'm I think I mentioned at the beginning. I'm I'm an opportunist. I'll hunt anything at any time with any weapon. I mean, my preferred thing to hunt is big game with a but I'll absolutely hunt turkeys. Sure sounds cool. If I convince you any to go, I'll come along. Yeah, let's go with me so much as I can on you can tend do we do? We need to talk a little bit about like archery hunting turkeys versus Oh yes this is something. So here here's here's my layman's h perspective. I'm adding to the conversation. Uh, I notice that most people hunt turkeys with shotguns anyways, even people who are die hard archery fans who would only some guys who are like, no, man, I only hunt with a bow. I do not hunt with a gun. We'll still hunt turkeys with a shotgun. Why is that? That doesn't make sense to me as about hunter? Okay, as a guy, I would call myself a bow hunter, but I will never again my life hunt turkeys with a bow. Because people getting right into the addresses that don't exist at some level, she'd right in and tell me, like, where there's archery. I'm sure in this country there are archery only turkey seasons at some level. I'm I'm positive of that, but that is not the norm in anyway. And so most times you're choosing, unlike with an elk or there's you're choosing the less effective tool for whatever reason. And I'm telling it's less effective. And I'll argue that with anybody for the point of imagine if you put a you know, a candle up on a string and you were it was walking around, you're trying to shoot with a belt. That's hard enough. But we do that as archers. We do it. But imagine now if you covered that in feathers and wings and a tail fan that move and oscillate and adjust as it comes into struct and out of strut. And now those vitals are kind of they're not moving around its body, but from your advantage point, that turkey's body is adjusting and moving and becoming a different size or at least a different silhouette. That's the problem with turkeys because you and be aiming for the wing butt if it's or the base of the beard with a broadhead, and if that turkey goes into struct and then out of struct you're aiming point becomes different. And I've I've watched some of the better archers that I know of put tendering turkeys and watch them flying to a tree with a luminoc and sit there all night and be down the next day. So given that fact that I've seen, like there's no way that you can say I kill every turkey guy shoot out with a bow because I'm the best that archery like that. There's just too many variables. It's just not effective enough. But then also to add to the point we're talking about eating turkey meat, you are shooting it at some level ones broadside, right through the meat that you want to eat, and when you shoot it with a shotgun, you're shooting its face off. And I've never eaten a turkey face in my life, and so it's just at the end of the day, I was like, there's almost no reason you can tell me that if you couldn't pick up a shotgun, you wouldn't. And I would also argue on the third point, you can tell me if people tell me if I'm wrong. But hunting with a shotgun you're able to move around more and run and gun as they call it, call a turkey in and move as it moves, as opposed to popping up a blind, sitting in and putting out a deco and waiting for it to walk in. Because withdrawing your bow you need concealment. Pop up blind or a stationary blind allows you to just sit there and draw relatively in undercover, whereas if you're just sitting against a tree, you gotta draw out in the open. Turkeys have historically amazing eyesight. So for all those reasons, I don't see myself ever picking up a bow and pointing out a turkey. Yeahny am, I yeah, you spot on. I feel like to like the the again, the playing field I like talk about like where I'm happy with the challenge of it all right, because the big reason I hunt, right, adventure challenge. I'm not just out there to put some meat my freezer, but like it's hard enough with the shotgun, right, and the distances they're pretty similar. Most guys will won't shoot past forty yards with a shotgun at a turkey, right, So you still got to get them close, you know, bo might need to be a little bit closer. But I feel like you've kind of executed all the fun stuff, you know, whether it's this or this at that last moment. Yeah, And I think in quite honestly, And there's some people that are my friends layer and be like, you know, fuck you. But we've got to this point where I like, I'm only an archery hunter or my brand or my thing that I do is archery only all the time, and that's what I am. That's why I am. So I can't be seen with a gun or it seem it would be like cheating or whatever. You'll lose your steas man hashtags. We're looking for a hashtag still twenty episodes into the podcast and maybe that could be it. But yeah, you're losing your steas man in and it's just I think that's why there you you You look around nowadays and turkey hunting and there's a lot of people using bows, and again, people can correct me if I'm wrong. At the same time that you release that arrow, you could be releasing a payload of pellets that will that will destroy that thing's face and drop it and flop it. Rather haven't run away with an arrow sticking out of it. And so there's ethics, there's morality. There's just like remove your own personal preference and put yourself in a place at turkey. I'm much radity get shot in the face, then I have to suffer with a freaking you know, tom bomb and my But here's the only other point to make. There's a lot of guys that shoots the gobbler guillotine or or these these broadhead Magnus bullhead or anything like that, that broadheads that are designed to lop the turkey's head off fully, which is a pretty gruesome activity to do. But for most of the time you either are gonna miss completely or you're gonna so there's its head off. There's the example of where I'm wrong. I put my my gobbler guillotine with its what are the cutting diamonds, one of those things, so you have well on the guillotine, I think there's four blades, and so you have four or three inch blades, and so you actually have six inches square kind of yeah, it's like, yeah, so you actually have a larger like kill zone because, like I say, if you're aiming at the head, you can miss two and a half inches either side of the head, and so you've got a whatever, a seven inch target at that point instead of trying to hit you know, a golf ball at the center of the body for the vitals and anybody's experience you on it. You're saying, guys that are using archie tackle are shooting heads or bodies? Like what's percentage? I don't know. Not a lot of people shooting heads off. So I've done both. And the reason I like to not like to archer on turkeys, but the reason my archer hunt turkeys because it allows me to get more turkey texts. So in like in St. Nebraska, the first I think it's the first two weeks of the season you can and it's really a lot of times it's too early to barbet turkey hunting. They're not really fired up, they're not getting after it. But you can start hunting late March, and if you're in the Midwest, it's a it's a spot to go and you can start turkey hunting and it's just with a bow, and so it does keep a fair amount of people out of the bottle woods, which is kind of fun. It's a little bit more peaceful. But at the same time, in my I've filmed a few turkey hunts and I've been on a bunch of turkey hunts, and average percentage with a bow without using like the guillotine is about fifty fifty. As far as like birds shot two birds recovered. Are we talking a bird shot the birds wounded or birds like birds hit and recovered. You never find or die like right there, that's too much. It's way too much. That's not a good percentage. But then uh, I've had some people that hunt with me that have switched to the you know, the guillotine of the Magnus bullhead, and you put your decoys at six or seven yards and so you're not worried about arrow flight, and that's a much higher percentage. Especially I mean if it's hit, yeah, and if it's missed, it's missed. You chop a feather off here there or whatever. And in that case, you're not putting an arrow through its wing button, it's breast and then you pull his breast down, it's got a hole, you know jam hole right in the front and in the middle of it that you can't eat. Yeah, I think I have a again from the layman's perspective on turkeys, but um, in the sense of hunting birds with a bow, I've I've actually had some very similar experiences because I shoot a lot. I like to hunt quail with my bow, um, and I've hunted some geese with my bow, and I've had the same experience where occasionally I would pass an arrow right through what I would consider the boiler room on a goose or a quail or um a chucker or a pheasant and have them fly off and you know you killed. You know that that that that birds can be dead, but you don't get to recover it, you know, because because like you said, the vitals move around. So I've actually switched when I'm when I'm hunting small bird, you know, small game birds with my bow, I should I shoot for the head because that for the same reason you're talking about with the guillotine and the guillotine stuff is uh, if I if I miss a miss and I didn't hurt the animal, but if I if I do hit it, then it's it's it's done. It's it's game over. Yeah. I think that spins off well to something that we all experience here until Archery Challenge. Now, so we're you know, Big Sky Resort and there's a lot of country here. There's a wide open country. It was if you're hunting elkin here, this is this is it. This is a good Western elk, bear, meal, deer, whatever country. There's courses at the Total Archery Challenge where a lot of your shots are as we were saying earlier, shots that you likely wouldn't take or be moan to take, you know, last day type of shots where you're like, I think I can do it, but I wouldn't take this one day one or two of a hunt. Um, what you know, I'd like to hear everybody talk about this is an archery it's not an archery tournament. Nobody gets scored, it's not it's not marketed as practice for hunting in any way. But in all of us, are you know, wearing our hunting boots, were wearing our hunting packs, were shooting the same dambo we'd be shooting in an animal And to to be practicing or to be you know, having fun with shots that we know we wouldn't take in the field. Ah, yanni, start and tell and just talk about like is that the right way to go? Is that setting expectations for hunters that come to these deals that yes, you should be proficient in a hundred and twenty eight yards on it on a der or something like that at some of these shots are I mean, it's something to talk about because think it's an issue that it's important. Yeah, for sure, Um, we shot today right, Yeah, I mean we felt like three or four where we're definitely way like no matter what whatever, even if even if it was elk, I had already hit, and I was gonna go for a follow up shot. I probably wouldn't win one at I'd probably be trying to get closer before I let one fly at closer or not shoot. Yeah, that's well, yeah, But I'm talking about the reason I do even have a tape that goes to nine two or whatever it is now is that if my first shot have a good about it is, once an arrows in him, I'm gonna try to get as many arrows I can if he's still standing right. And so that's really what I'm always thinking when I'm sitting there at home practicing at eighty, like, why am I doing this? Well? Shoot at eight? He definitely makes forty yard shots a lot easier. But it almost happened me last year stuck one at forty was still on his feet at somewhere out there, but the timber was just too thick and I couldn't really slide one in there. But uh, yeah, I mean I think it's good practice for hunting. I like these like real situations at home. I try to set my targets is as real as I can um because there are shots that are downhill uphill through lodgeball timber there, you know, through a bunch of the young pines that you're trying to shoot around the corners. That that's all real, real stuff, and you see things that you might not see just shooting level ground at home, like the one thing that we kept saying we'd shoot like across the ski run and you guys, we all have this shot the same course today, right, and a couple of shots. I'd set up and be like, oh, I just feel so good now look at my bubble and be like, holy cow, how can I be so cantid? And just you're looking at the ski you're standing, you see the angle of ski run under your bow, and you start to can't, can't, can't get that bubble center again, and you really can't believe how torqu do you feel? Almost you know, to get your bow straight. So that I noticed that my whether it's psychological, psychological or or what, I noticed that my shots fell down the hill when we were shooting across the slope. I never shot into the loope. I always would, and I'm sure that was a bubble issue where because I always my part of my processes I draw back and make sure I'm level but but the time between making sure your level, when you're focusing on that bubble and when you're actually really focusing on the pin and where it is U you can still slide back out a level. And I think that that must have been what was happening, because I had a lot of shots that were just a little bit more either left or right going down the hill than I expected them to be. Yeah, I think maybe at some point when you're shooting in a hundred twenty two yard what was that an antelope of some kind? It was an African like? It was like as it was a small it was a small bodied deer animal and it's five yards. I would prefer to have them all closer. I am gonna go home. I do my house, want to someday have whatever out to as far as my boat can shoot until my site maxes out again, just because I feel like if you practice a bunch at one twenty, all of a sudden, seventy, it starts to become like a three pointer. Yeah, I think that's what I think. That's what Ben's trying to get into is is are we are we spending too much time shooting long and creating unrealistic um comfortability with long shots, because the reality is, as a Western hunter, I've only ever hunted open country spot stock and having shot a lot of shots at a hundred yards. When I have an opportunity to a hundred yards and I know I can't get closer, gosh, I'm tempted. Sometimes you start thinking about it. I started thinking about it. I think it also comes down to influence, though, like there's some level of influence that that that maybe we don't even understand. One how we influence other people, you know, have if we start normalizing these types of shots, and then people that are coming up are like, hey, I'm I'm following these folks and learning from them, and this is what how they do it? Well, this must be the way. You know, if I go Western hunting, I better be dialed into eight yards. You're like, wait a minute, No, you don't start thinking like that. Um, so that's one problem that's problematic. But so to argue against my own point, I think we all figured out after shooting that hundred twenty five yard target, we don't want to do that, you're gonna do it. So it's nice in person there tangibly to say I'm not doing that like, maybe maybe I would if I practiced for about a decade, But at this point I'm more likely to hit grass and skip and hit it in the leg than than eightywhere near it. It's quite the rabbit hole because really at a hundred yards, I mean, those arrows take a long time that animal and then you started, you know, talking about you know, the animal moving, the wind picks up while you're arrows in the air, all kinds of variable. Even just a single step by an animal, you know, changes the where your impact is by two to three feet. So I think the one I mean, this is a fun event. You know, it's for it's people to come out and you get to see that magical flight of the arrow, you know, going that far um. You know, if you came out and you shot twenty five targets in the first one, it was like forty yards. You try to figure out why you're hiking around the mountains shooting forty yards. But I think the one thing it does do is when you start to stretch out your shots with a bow, it amplifies all your imperfections in your form. And so if you say at twenty yards you've got a grouping, you know, two to three in grouping, and you're feeling pretty good about that. Well, when you move out to seventy yards, you know you might be barely hitting the target. And so it forces you to look at how you're shooting and be more consistent in your shots. And I think everybody needs to, you know, really take a good look at themselves and figure out what their effective ranges in the field. And it most likely shouldn't be you know, over sixty yards or whatever it might be for you. But I think shooting those long distances, like Yanni was saying, is if you become proficient at shooting a hundred yards, that sixty seventy yards shot feels much more, not a chip shot, but much easier. That target looks so much bigger at seventy than it did before when you were only practicing. Yeah, yeah, the perspective is huge if you, yeah, anybody listening to this, go shoot at eighty yards for a week and then start at twenty what So this is simple? Yeah? I read, Uh, here's a little insight that I picked up from a from a non archery perspective about how to shoot better. Um, I read a psyche as a book on psychology. It was a sports psychology book, and um, somebody was actually talking about sniper training in there, and he was saying, uh, he would train he was a sniper training instructor, and he would train them to shoot. Uh. They would practice at only two different yardages or two different distances super super super far, like the absolute limit of how far you can shoot, and very close, because the very close shots trained the mind a different type confidence. Like all four of us after having shot today at you know, I think the average range was probably seventy five yards, between between six and seventy five yards. Uh, that's what was That was the average we shot today. I think after shooting that all day, if we went out and shot uh three D targets to thirty five yards, we would just feel light out. And so those short shots, though, really train your mind to be confident that you're gonna hit what you're gonna hit when you shoot. And so uh, this psychologists argument was you should practice the hardest thing for you and then build confidence with the easiest thing for you. So that's how I practice with my bow and I'm getting ready for hunting season. I I practice at a hundred yards, which is which is how far my range goes. At my house. I practice there more often than anything else. That's where I'm like, because I feel like if I can hit something in a hundred yards, then I can fort sure hit it at sixty. But I also almost always end the day with a nice round of five arrows at twenty yards, and I'm just like, yeah, smack, good day on the range, And yeah, you know, it's nice about that because I do the same thing. I have a bag target that a buddy bill for me, which, by the way, man, dude, you gotta try this out. I mean we literally out of my house is under construction right now. There's some kind of a polly like a woven bag, and we had a bunch of leftover vis queen that was getting ripped up and it wasn't doing this job anymore. So we sat there two or three guys holding the bag and another dude jumping on top of the vis queen to fill it up, tied it off, spray painted elk on there, and out of my compound of twenty yards, it's just probably like ten and twelve inches of penetration. It's unreal for I like made out of trash. Anyways, back to uh twenty yards last shot. Yeah, it's so nice because it's just all form. You're like, you're not even thinking about aiming anymore, and you just thinking about a nice, clean release. And because even practicing at a hundred yards holding steady at twenty just feels like just that goes back to archery as a mental game. And know, well, the reason I want to talk through this because I wasn't really sure where the hell I stood on and I'm like, I can see somebody coming here and never having shot long distance, and be like, why I must I have to do this now? Um on game? And so maybe there's a rule where we say, like, if it's past eighty yard, it's got to be a block target. God damn, it can't be some you know fa similar some to me, I guess real quick, I forget to me, I just don't. I don't mind shooting as far as we can all shoot, but to me, this isn't the place for it. Yeah, Like I would just instead of having those one twenties out here, I'd rather have it, you know, mix it up and give me another eight and a fifteen, a thirty good point and just something that I'm gonna take a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, like just just what are we doing right? Because when you're training, you understood, you have an understanding everyone. You know all everybody's sitting here like I'm training. I know what I'm doing, Like this is my process. When you get out here, you're just like, I'm having fun, but you're not really realizing the influence it might have on on what you might do in the yield, because you're not you as you think about things. You're having fun. I'll take it. I'll take a crack at her. And if that, I'll take a crack out of mentality gets shifted into the woods. Nobody wants that, and so that's that's slides down with a bunch of folks. I have a I have a thing I want to interject before we move on to some other topic um that I think it relates well compared to how I trained for skiing, and it's the idea that I I always trained for the absolute worst case scenario. I always I would rather my goal at the end of Uh. You know this, actually, right now is a perfect time to describe. Right now, I mean I'm in the off season, I'm not competing, and the next contest I have is in December, so I have quite a bit of time to really work on fitness and strength, and um, a lot of what I'm doing anymore is training my nervous system just as much as my muscles. So uh, it doesn't do me a lot of good just to be this wrong stude out there. I have to both be strong and extremely quick and explosive, so um, A lot of the things that I do are all jumping oriented. So I will train in a way that I'm trying to actually do more. I'm trying to be more powerful than I would ever need to be. I'm trying to have better balance than I would ever need to actually have in the half pipe, because you're only you're you're training for worst case scenario. I'm training for those bad landings. The reality is the good landings I don't need to try. I don't need to spend a lot of time in the gym for those because, especially in a half pipe, if I land high at the top of the wall, then the g forces aren't that high because because I'm catching the transition perfectly, So those good landings don't need the training as much as the bad landings do. So I'm always training for I'm training the fringe. I talked a lot to kids I mentor about training the fringe. Pick what you're not good at and just train it until you're good at it again. And even the things that you're good at them to uh where you're all where you're uncomfortable and and and know that you're uncomfortable with those things. And I'm not saying that you should do those things that you've just been training in competition, because you don't. At the end of the day, when I'm crafting a run and I'm going to do in a big contest like the X Games of the Olympics, I'm always choosing a run that I know I can pull off. It's not something that's like, well, there's a couple of tricks that I can pull off in this one right, here's a hail Mary. I'm never doing that. It's always calculated, and that's how I feel about what we're doing out here hunting wise. I kind of agree with you, Joannie where I think it's maybe maybe the averages have got because it's a total archery challenge and it's like, oh, we gotta make it a challenge. Maybe the averages have gotten a little too crazy, and there's a little bit, there's a few there's a few too few shots that I would practically take as a hunter. I would like to see a few more of those. But at the same time, I'm like, you know what, I don't mind taking those weird shots that I wouldn't that are that are the fringe of what I'm capable of, because I'm training the fringe. Um, I think we should talk about our scoring system because that is what that would go go all the way back. That's Remy's scoring. Yeah, Remy and I came up with that scoring system when we first started shooting these totally our total, our three challenges together. And it's a good way of keeping yourself in it because you talked about how uh you kind of get out there and after you've lost like three arrows, you're just kind of like, I don't know, I ran out of fox to give a while ago, you know, and you just start you just start drawing back and flinging arrows, and you don't stay very mentally in tune to it. So Remy and I came up with this system we call kill Wound miss, and it's just a scoring system rather than scoring the rings on the all these most of these are Rhinehart targets, so rather than scoring the ten twelve or twelve ten eight five scoring format, we just kill it. We just score it as if you kill it you get a point, and if you wound it you get a negative point. An outright misses zero because we were trying to relate it as closely as we possibly could to actual hunting situations where I kill as a thing, A wound is absolutely the worst thing that we want, and a miss is actually not that big of a deal, you know. I think every archer in the world would rather miss a deer than wounded. So we we came up with this system, and we all obviously, as we're all competitive dudes, we once we came up with a system, then we started. Then then came the wagers. So it's for us because we're shooting. Of course, that's super challenging. It's got more shots in it than I would ever take in a hunting situation. Uh, but the scoring helps keep me focused. Because Sam and I were going back and forth today. We both shot really good the first couple of targets, and then we both got on the struggle train. And we struggled to get off the struggle train towards the end and uh, but it was just fun because it was like, Okay, no, it's every shot, it's a new shot, and and I'm still getting of some kind of a point for this. So I thought that was a really good way to score a three D archery. Uh, target shoot because it teaches you also to just shoot for the shape of the animal rather than trying to figure out where the hit a circle or whatever. So what do you score today? Targets five? I I wounded? You got a Yeah, that is freaking high. I scored in eleven today. I got a fucking one. Four. We had a guy in a group scored twenty yeah on the prime course. On the Prime course. So did he wound any He wanted to wounded too. Actually hit twenty two in the vital so he wounded to missed one? Yeah, yeah he was. He nearly. Mike Collins works for Prime He is he nearly. He nearly cleaned it because he cleaned that course. Yeah. And one the one that he missed, he just forgot to change the slidder and he shot like a hundred yards over a turkey. He didn't have a Yanni sticker on his bow. I'll sign him one. Yeah, you were talking about selling these sticks and custom megan one real quick tonight. It's a piece of orange gave tape. This is returned to zero. Yeah, that's just like the game. I said. We're so, what's terrible archers? We're like, we're just trying to return to zero target, trying to get back and down positive. That's I mean, I think of the best in our group. There was twelve people shoot in our group, and I think the best was nine. Like that shot in eleven and I got fifth. What Yeah, we had, dude, I've shot this this well we shot system. Yeah, I've just got this short scoring system. Maybe eight or so rounds and I don't I don't think. Yeah, double digits is rare. We had Mike coins one. Did you know Corey Jacobson he shot a seventeen? Ye what you shot? And then somebody was in between me and you. Yeah, I laughed because Cory and I, like I said, we're competitive dudes. We all go back and forth. We started, you know, church in each other's ears and stuff. Corey and I started talking, uh and uh. He had one target where he was just in the kill zone and I was laughing. I was inches out, but you missed my inches. They're still a wound. And uh that was that was the difference between Corey and I. But it was fun because, um, we were I feel like we were all actually competent level archers. I mean I can can comparable level archers. Uh, Sam and I bowl shot the first seven targets clean and and of course and I look back on it. This is what I do with skiing too. I always look back and I'm like, gosh, you're such a dummy. Because as soon as we shot the first seven targets clean, my mind, as an arrogant dude, was like, I got the first seven, I can get the I can get all the rest of them visions. You shot the first seven clean, and then both of us dropped Target eight. I missed and he wounded it. I gotta get back on my course. I'm fired up now. I feel like, yeah, I get get back. One is not enough. I think I wounded enough. That's good, real real time, real level training, right or real What am I trying to say, um, prices for the real world of hunting is is trying to is not letting visions of glory or that is such a real thing, and I battle it all the time. That Turkey's gollant and coming in and like you're talking about you're like you can see the freaking turkey nuggets vision. You're gonna be taste it. You can taste it. Turkey's done, You're already like I can just imagine jumped around the pickup truck. Oh no, I didn't get one. Besides this, you know, like all that stuff is going through your head where you should be just going like I need to kill that bird. I need shooting in the head. I need shooting in the head. What is this turkey doing? What should I do next? What is the absolute what I need to I'm don't think I might change my flight just so I shoot tomorrow and get back like figure this out. I think you should change your flight just because Montana is so great. That also, we shot together in South Dakota. Nobody was doing that good. The difference we shot horribly in South Dakota. That's the difference. Yeah, what you shoot in South Dakota, Sam, like a negative one is terrible. So what the hell? So the day before so I'm gonna give this a disclaimer. The day before I actually shot very well, but we weren't keeping score. We started like a couple of targets that it was kind of shot. But I was like, I was just shooting, and then the next day I fell apart. So let me let me just I don't answer this question today. Were you guys super competitive and like all really dialed in on on the achievement of the score. Yeah, we were. We were all being super competitive from the get go. Yanna and I shot in a group of twelve people and it was not It was just like half the group didn't score. Yeah, So do we feel like that could be the difference? That's the difference that like you're just thinking, okay, you're dialed in your playing. Yeah. I think it's my fault. I really do, because I can't do things halfway. Man, Like I don't show up and not wager. I don't show up and not compete. Like even though I suck at golf, I show up to golf tournaments and I'm like, man, I'm gonna be the longest drive. I don't care if it's three fair ways over. I'm gonna do something better than everybody else. So as soon as we got on the course. Of course, for me as a hunting fan, the reality is I'm stoked to be shooting with these folks, and so I want to challenge them. I want to kind of I want to chirp in there. I want to have them chirp back because I think it's fun. So I kind of set the tone go back to because I'm trying to figure this out because in my head I'm now the worst. Wait, let let me get eight yard target? How many people in your how many people are group five? No? We had ten today, ten in your group? How many people out of that ten hit that target today? Only one? Yesterday? Two of us hit it. Okay, that's normal. If you're gonna let's get out of the room. Let's do something more realistic though. Let's do one that you have a site a pin for, because nobody has how about how many? How many guys in your group at about the fallow the fallow bucks, the one I can remember more as the hog that's that was stretching at like nine two yards? Target sucks. We are group cleaned up on that. Oh you did yeah in the shower, the one in the shadow. Our group cleaned up on that. But that's one of the ones that I wounded. Like our group struggled with that target. But again and again that one where that vital was on that one, I got a wound on that one. But if you were going to say, like where would you shoot to hit him in the heart, you'd be like where young erra was right? So well, we so you're still shuture reference. We always vote, oh, because we don't know. We don't always shoot the insert because a lot of these, especially not so much here in uh in Big Sky Button in Snowboard where I shot where Remy and I came up with this system, a lot of the shots were at like thirty degrees uphill, and so you shoot the insert at thirty degrees up hill, you're actually gonna miss at least one long maybe. So we would shoot, like if it was an uphill shot at at thirty degrees, we would actually shoot it in the in the chest below the insert and call it good. But it was always a vote, and it most of the time came down to where is the exit wound gonna be? So so on that one, you and your group could have voted, and if they had voted, if they had voted, I yahni got it, then you would have got the point still. And that was one difference between South Dakota and here, because there were some shots in South Dakota that like I ended up getting called the wound on because it wasn't in the insert. But you know, it would be a ram quartering too at fifty yards and you m, it's gonna kill it. Because the whole the whole idea was that we didn't have to look for the circles because it started actually because when we first did this the first time, uh, some of the some of the rings were really hard to see. And Remy and now we're talking about We're like, this is stupid. Why are we shooting the rings anyways, Like, let's just aim for where you would on the animal, and and Remy was actually kind of giving me some pointers because, uh, he thought I was aiming a little far back and I was like, no, that's where I've always aimed. He's like, no, aim a little bit more forward. That's a better pocket. And so then we just got into aiming for the shape of the animal, not worrying about where the actual insert was. Yeah, I really yeah, I really want to get back out there now. I think you should stay. I think we you and I go out there and start voting on Ya's and A's will both be fifteen plus, so you'll suddenly be myself and clean the course right now, I don't know, I found a couple of your arrows. No, I just found one of your arrows. Listen. I was terrible today, terrible, maybe the worst I've ever shot, and I just you know, I'm watching archeres of mind. Fuck Like there were some days I got a hundred range in my backyard. I've got five six targets. I had a bunch of people from Yetie come over and we're just drilling them, drilling them, drilling. Of course, there's nothing like this. It's not down. It's a freaking yard. But you feel good. You're like, yeah, okay, done, and then you get out there and you start failing that. Then I hear that you guys are busting eleven and fifteens. There's no yeah. Yeah. But the cool thing about the cool thing I'll say about archery events like this is that brings you to a different level. Because I think everybody, everybody is there is the best archer in a certain group of people. Right you can just keep you can keep dropping the level until at some point you're the best archer. And I was stopping and say this, I've been in a group's at the Total Archer Challenge last year. I was in a couple of groups where it was just arrows flying through the trees the entire time. Like, so I've also seen the other side of like our group today. I'm like, man, that's a really good group. Everybody's basically doing what they need to be doing. Like there's some variances and stuff like that. My goal was just to hit foam. Yeah, if I had pham on every single target and I missed three at but yeah, every time I had heard of ponk walking, like, uh, I got my dad's out here for the event, and he's never shot a course like this, and he's you know, he's practiced whatever flat ground back in South Dakota. But he I mean, if you're talking about just like slamming foam, he cleaned house today. Yeah, I mean there was a couple of targets he you know, missed or whatever, but for the most part, just asis I'm stressed. But anyways, my point earlier was that, uh, it's good to get out here. To places like this that bring people who are better than you into your interaction. Because I shot yesterday and I was I shot the best out of the group, and I was like, alright, I'm doing pretty good. I'm ready for hunting season. I shot today and I got my ass handed to me and I was like, all right, I could still be better. You know. Well, that's why the takeaway from me is when you go into an event like this, understand what you're doing personally, sit down with yourself'll be like, I'm training now, and this is how this is going to work with my overall training for hunting, because everybody that's using about to kill things should train a lot. If you're not, then hopefully you come out to something like this and learn that you should then go home and train. But come into this like, hey, it's a fun shoot, I'm flying at him, or this is I'm training. I want to this is what I want to achieve. And if you do that, then no worries. But if you come into this and kind of just walking around shooting arrows and not thinking about it and the next thing you know it's changing the way you're hunting, then that's problematic sure, because I'm sure a lot of people do that. There's kids that shoot this, there's wives that shoot this. You know, there's people that just want to have a fun archer day out there shooting this that don't really understand the scope of what what's going down. So we we had a little roundtable discussion last night for a little video, and we talked a lot about um, like this is it can be. You can use it as like a preseason gear test, so you can wear your booster you're gonna wear this season. You know, you got your bowl completely dialed in how you think you wanted for hunting season, and gives you that opportunity. You can wear the pack that you're gonna wear for hunting season. You can wear like the you know it's hot, so you can wear like the lightweight clothing and you're gonna wear for early season, and you can start to kind of put all those things together and you know, bust the dust or rustoff before season actually hits a month from now. And so I think a lot of people use it as an opportunity for that to kind of yeah, instead of walking an opening day going I don't know my backpacked out then like where all my stuff sits you don't you know very well, could shoot an elk this fall wearing almost the exact same things I had on today. My pants would probably be different. But we talked about that going in. I was wearing was in South Krona. I was wearing camo, and somebody said something like, Okay, so you and I talking about guys in like full camera. Your first thought of the O Jesus, you're ever playing your hand there, fella. But then you think, like, hey man, that's not the worst idea in the world. You know, maybe it's you kind of look like a fool walk testing your kid, but testing your kid to some level. Yeah, absolutely, I think that's that's David doesn't scheme blue jeans um all year and then just puts on his waterproof pants for go time. Right. Yeah, but that's a it's a great it's a damn fun event. I got enoughing tied to this thing other than I'd love to go do it. And if you're not doing total archery challenge, it's I think it's right now. It's seven cities everywhere from Pennsylvania, Texas, Uh, Montana, Utah, Tennessee, South Dakota. I mean so there's gotta be someplace that's close to where you're at. And if you're a bow hunter and you you truly believe that you want to be good at it and not just be, you know, a Saturday shooter, come and do one, give it her up and figure out kind of what you want to get out of it, and then go there. Like that's what I could think of. I think. So my ender to your your original point about are we are we stretching the distances too longer? Are we are we creating danger for ourselves? I think if you just go back around and talk about our scores, the fact is we all wounded animals. So that proved to us that I am not competent to shoot at that range, you know. So that's not to tout me and remy scoring system anymore, but I'm just saying, like it's a was a good practical, real world application of this is a challenging shot, and I'm probably not good enough to shoot it, you know, so you gotta so we all do that, that we all do that assessment. Whenever I spott a deer and I started stock, I'm like, if I can get to that point, if I can get to that piece of cover or that bush or that rock outcropping, is that close enough to shoot? Because that because I'm always assessing that's probably the last that's probably the last cover I'm gonna have. If I get that close, can I do it? And so it's good to it's good to know maybe you can't, maybe you can. You know, Yeah, it's for David's point, there's no this scoring systemsn't have a name. It's not like the wise warrant scoring methods. That could be it for anybody that wants to go do that. Go do that in your backyard. Like you got a target, go do that. You know you got three D target? A lot of people. Sure do you have that? Go do it and let us know how the hell it goes. And then when you're done that, think about what Yeah, and he's titled should be that here? Thank you. Those are the two that's two pieces of homework from this conversation and right into Ben right in send it to go to go to the website. But I'd like to have people to write in, you know, like letters, but I don't have I don't want to give out my address. Can I give your address? You? I think you need to get a po box in Bozeman or something like that, something like that, once a month, check it, check it on every six You know what, This is a total rabbit trail. Let's go. But I like the concept of right ends. Yeah, because in our world of social media, we have a little too much instance feedback, don't you think, like it's a little too easy to sit down at the computer and write a comment or an email or um or even record a video in response to what somebody else said. But it takes time to sit down at the table, write something out with a pen and paper and put it in an envelope, find the address you're gonna send it to, and send it in. That's why there were a lot less trolls back in the day, because you guys are writing that, like, know what, man, here's what I think. It's not really worth my time, right, So I think it'd be I think it actually it would be a good thing maybe if we had a little less instant feedback and we had to because, like you said, it would be a lot better sometimes if people just decided, you know, maybe I shouldn't say this. I think that's the most of what happens on social media, as people say things that they shouldn't say because they're fired up right in the moment, and later they might they might wish to go back and unsay it. There's too late. There's a lot of folks that do that. Then you call them out for it. They know. I'm sorry, man, I just I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I was not thinking. I got a little I was drunk. All positive comments can be on digitally. All negative comments must be mailed to to PO Box PO Box, Belgrade, Montana. That might be a good idea. There's no that's homework for me. I'll create a po box or something like that. Malory. People can write in Uh, Yanni, do you have any concluding? I'm still I must steal this first, since you're here, I'll steal this from the meat Eator podcast. What's Steve called? Uh concluder? Concluding thought? I don't think everything, I guess I have one last question for David. Are your sisters still hunters? Uh? One is and one is? And I think that that maybe speaks to what I was talking about at the beginning, where hunting is isn'n eate for some people. Some people are really passionate about it, and some people are just like, no, this isn't this isn't really for me. And my sisters are exactly like that. One of them, uh got criticized by her friends for going out there and wanting to kill Bamby and and she thought the social pressure was more than she wanted to overcome to go out and hunt, and the other one was the opposite. She was just like, I don't care what you think. I think hunt's cool. I'm gonna keep doing it. I like that good respect, especially for twins. I don't know why twins matters, but they look the same. There Are they identical twins? They're not? Damn sorry, Ruins's all who was the whole point? Is that a generally concluder? Yeah, I'm happy with that, Thank you, David. Final thoughts, Oh man, it's just an honor to be here Sam with you guys chat. This is fun. I really appreciate you guys allowing me in the room. And Uh, I'd love to shoot with you guys sometimes if we sometimes we get a chance, And I'd love to hunt turkeys with any or all of you. Yes, turkeys, let's do it. Can Turkeys are the best and anybody who downs turkeys come see us. I see a turkey bus tour coming together. I'm really I'm already doing a month. Come find me. You're doing a month? At least? Where do we send mail to bust? I'd give out my address. It all gets forward and wherever I'm at. Sam, have you got any traction on bus B and B that we talked about. I have yet to get a message about bus being music. Let's continue to get that narrative. Tell people about bus being so bus B and B. If you're traveling somewhere and you're gonna need a place to stay, you just rent my bus and I'll drive to you. Yep, it's called bus B and B. Bus the different than airbnb because Sam will drive to wherever you're at. You can and you'd be like, man, I need you to park that bus next to the conference center and Sam will drive right over there. Done, just pull up, pull up, and then he'll go get a hotel and then you just have there's no toilet or shower, but you know it's okay whatever, some stupid airbnb that's right anyway. Think which is a terrible name because nobody makes you breakfast? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is a misnomer. Would you cook breakfast and bust being definitely? Oh there you go. See. I think you could get a sunshower, you know, a little solar solar shower bag. That wouldn't be too hard to actually have. I have all of the pieces to do a like a full on like propane tankless water, heat or shower. I just haven't put all the pieces together. But for bust, B and B you'd put it together. Yes, how much a night? I think depending on the location, I don't know, twelve fifteen thousand, that's fine. I gotta cover diesel fuel to get there. It's not great in the mountains. So if you're doing, like trying to do a mountain get away, I gotta you know, it's the risk. Score. Yeah, let's not go over the complication. So let's just talk about the good. You know, it's a good things and anything else. Sam, No, just thanks for having me on. It's good to be here. I'm stressed about changing your flight to stay and shoot again. Yeah, because I really think that if I took your guys attacked and I was like, I'm going out here to shoot score and kill these animals, every one of them, and I'm not going to accept those errors to go anywhere anywhere else, because today I was kind of just like slaying them and then I started sucking, and I was like, well, now I'm just gonna keep slaying him and I'm not even gonna aim anymore, and it just got bad. I'm very stressed about ah, as well as you guys did now poorly perspective wives that we did. Let me think about that. Yeahni, are you stressed too or don care? No? No, I feel pretty good about it about my shooting today the first time ever. Yeah, yeah, again, all the like you get, like you said, David, all the ones that are within range that you would take in the field in real time. I felt like I killed all those animals. Hm, well I might change my flight. Maybe we'll do about another podcast from tomorrow. I'll follow up. I'll follow up podcast. Probably not gonna happen, but they might amount empty promises. All right, that's it, bye bye, Oh you do it, Johnnie, Johnny gonna hit this stop button. That's it. That is all. Episode number twenty two is done. Thank you to David, Sam Yanni. We're joining me for episode number two and twenty two. I think great conversations there, really love and learning a little bit from David about how to be a better hunter, a better competitor, just a better human beings. Davids one is definitely one of those, one of my favorite guys hang out with and run into um and I'm glad he could jump on a podcast with us. Same for Yanni tell Us Media Ta Crew really enjoyed him. Make sure if you have thought about it, hit me up an email, hit me up at video B three oh one on Instagram and tell me what title should be over there need be fun to see what we can come up. Help out Mr Rinnella, he's a businessn so in the meantime episode number twenty three, it's coming at you next Tuesday. But in the meantime, the Honey Collective dot com is there. You can read articles, you can watch videos, you can listen to podcasts, all kinds of stuff. Hopefully you've heard from Mr Charles Post, Hopefully you've heard from last week's guest Jason Matt Singer and a lot of others. So we'll be with you next time number sign it off. See us at