00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to episode number fifty of The Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and we made it the episode fifty. It's pretty cool. I never thought this podcast would last episode number five, let alone number fifty, so I am very happy to be here with you. Uh and with us today is two men, uh Byron and Darryl Pace from Scotland, and I would imagine that if you've never been to Scotland, or if you don't, you're not aware of their hunting culture. These are two the two best guys to be talking to to get the perspective from that side of the world. And Byron and Darryl also prolific creators of media. They have a podcast, they're wonderful photographers, and they are also filmmakers. Um. It made me feel a little bit lazy by seeing and watching and learning about what they do. But also they've lived amazing lives for their young years, and well, we wanted to get into a lot of the land use and wildlife management in Scotland, but we didn't get there because their life stories are so damn interesting. So please enjoy. Straight from the Mediator Offices of Montana, Byron Darryl Pace the Pace Brothers on the episode number fifty. I'm warming up now. Yeah, yeah, you getting used to it after it said would have been a week. It is, but we left, we left Scotland. It was pretty cold, although not minus twenty, which is what it was in Yellowstone when we visited the first day. Yeah, it's just a couple of degrees undering a wee bit of snow. It's all gone. Now. You enjoyed Montana. Now it's terrible. It's it's views are terrible. Yeah, it's it makes you not want to come back. It's it's amazing here, absolutely spectacular. It's actually screwed me up, if I'm honest, because I've kind of spent I've spent so much of my life always looking for the backup to Scotland, where we live, where we're from. And despite all the awesome places I've been around the world, there's always it's never it's like, no, I'm not I wouldn't make that trade. And now I've been here a week and I'm like, oh, dear, oh, I found I found a place. I'm very much into Plan B. I have like this thing where I in case I lose my job, and my wife and son decide they don't want me around anymore. You gotta have like a you know, pull the ripcord. So for me, it's New Zealand. It used to be Alaska. Until I went to New Zealand. I was like, WHOA, I could live here. So that's my my plan B. So maybe this could be your plan B in case everything doesn't work out. If maybe plan A. If you guys let us in, yeah, well we would let you. And okay, we're so temporary. We're not pass ben nicely for a temporary job. Yeah. As you can tell around here, we have plenty of seats and people to fill them. I was tempted when I was looking. I was looking through your store at the meat each story the other day and I saw a couple of jobs up for grabs and something, Well, let's do an into view. Now, tell me about your skills, no, I hear at the Meatia, we will ask you, like, what if you were a bird, what type of bird would you be? That's how that's how our interviews begin. Well, after seeing a bold eagle for the first time the other day, I think I want to be that. That's a that's a bad motherfucker. First time I've seen one, Yeah, right outside Tyler's house. I mean it didn't you know, I don't know that I saw a bald eagle until I was in my teenage years because I lived on the East Coast and then very rare. They're not populated. That not populated. There there are some around. You would see him, you know, rarely. But then now I live over here on the Gallatin River and they fly across my backyard every morning. Pretty special. It's pretty special thing they must be. I mean it was above my head. So it's difficult to judge the scale of something when it's just in the sky. That golden little sea eagles are the biggest thing we have in Scotland, the golden eagles being more common, but they were a lot bigger than a golden eagle. Yeah, yeah, they're They're a big raptor um and and you know for us that they have you know, when you go you go like Prince of Wales Island, say coastal Alaska, and they're like buzzers. I mean they're everywhere, and every pile of trash has a gold ea has a bald eagle on it. Every dead carcass has ten bald eagles on it. You know, every dead seal is washed up on the shore has ten bald eagles. So imagine if you lived in that place, your your perspective might be a little bit different. But here and to see a bald eagle, I mean now, we were sitting in the airport and I look out and there's like a bald eagle flying with a backdrop of the Bridge mountains, and I'm like, oh man, in my in my mind, I was like, America. Yeah, that's the American dream. That's it right there. That's like if I was a pilgrim coming out west then I stopped and saw that, I'd be like, I'll live here, I will homestead here. Um, all right, we're gonna talk a lot about um where you came from. But first I want to talk about your time in Montana. You gotta give me. We got bison hunts. You guys have met and podcasted with some interesting individuals and and plan to do more. So yeah, I gotta tell us all about it. We've got a busy day head today. We've got we're seeing your buddy Brad. Yeah. Um, over said kill a. So, which is gonna be pretty cool. And we the first well, the first thing that happened when we came to to Montana was it went to Yellerstone. Yeah. I mean that doesn't get much better than that. I think that's a pretty good introduction. Yeah, what you know, being from uh Scotland and coming here, obviously that's a legendary place. I mean it's it's a place of held in high regard in our country. And does it does it hold up to the to the legend in your mind? Yeah? It does. You know, everyone at home knows Yellowstone pretty much everyone in the thing. Everybody knows Yellowstone. It's probably, I dare say it's probably the most well known national park in the world. The other day in the UK, Like you'll be lucky if three or four national geographics a year don't have something to do with the Yellowstone in the UK. So, I mean it's it's widely known. Yeah, and it is. I mean it's I went to for the first time two years ago and it was amazing. I mean there's not just a wildlife. Did you guys go to the paint pots and go to the well. A lot of the roads are closed. There was only sort of the main drags. There was only one of the thermal areas that when you could get to, so we were told it wasn't the most vivid, but it was still cool to see. But it was the bison that kind of behind blew us away. Was it's this, it's this icon of North America and it's this icon of conservation and I kind of expected to go in there and see them, but they might be over there when we might have to know. Looking with the buyers for an hour, and we were in there for all of about thirty there's a bison, and it was like yeah. And then Tyler, who was driving us around and schurefeuring us, it's okay, you're gonna see that, And sure enough we went around the next bend there was thirty and then it was fifty. And then we went down to on this plane where we were looking for one of the wolf packs and there was maybe two or three hundred, and it was like it kind of made me feel like the early pioneers and how they must have felt, just like popping over the horizon and just seeing this awestness, this wilderness and all these animals everywhere. And I think going in the wintertime, um, which I again I did this winter for the first time and going in the summertime it is a completely different experience. I mean it completely and the summertime you just a traffic jams around the Buffalo, you know, and and to go there and just as like you said, to see it, you know, it's not untouched, but to see it rather unbothered. You know, we were pretty lucky there wasn't that many people on the road that they were they were saying that it was very quiet, which I'm glad. I'm you know, I'm glad you got to experience it without without you know, a car load of people behind you, and that's you know that that is the very you go in July and you will have that. So it is we've talked about on this podcast before. I feel I felt always felt conflicted about that because I think it's it's as great as you said, this great representation of what the Western United States has to offer, and really there are this this continent has to offer um. But sometimes you go there and you feel like, man, I wish you would wish we would have put a thumb on this some years ago, but we talked about and passed on some other conversations it being just a representative for wildlife, you know, being a place that everyone can go to see what it's like in wild places without having to interact. Is not everybody will go and interact in the way that it's important because it gives people. It gives people a reason to be interested when they can see it in in a tangible form. But we have the same problem in Scotland and certain locations, not so much with wildlife, with landscape and like the Isle of Sky, which is the most awesome place, and yet through the summer months we just don't go there anymore because there's just so many tourists And it's which which is because we're also a tourists and it's it's a it's a conflict, isn't it, Because I don't want to be self and said, we don't go there because I don't want you because you're paining the ass, You're blocking all the roads and there's two cars parked to go and you know, look at a particular rock formation because I want to see it, so why should I not share it with everyone else? But there's a difference here though they're paying to go in they are paying and there they don't In Scotland. They don't they don't pay, and so it's it is actually having detrimental impacts to the local people and the environment. Though also the scale is much bigger Yellowstone. I mean, even if you do have loads and loads of people disturbing wildlife on roads and potentially walking on trails, and that it's so big that wildlife can move off into its own area and not be disturbed. So we we were doing the maths of of scale of Yellowstone and it's just compared to what we have at home, it's colossal. Yeah, sure, Miles, Yes, it's just unbelievable. We think our national parks pick Yeah, it's just like a drop in the ocean. Yeah, No, I think it's it's I've come to appreciate the fact that for what it represents, it represents a chance for for people to go and see wildlife and be inspired to go and learn more. Um. But sometimes when you go there and there's a traffic gam for an hour and a half to be old faithful, you think, damn, man, like this is what it what are we really doing this the right way? But I feel like there's so much positive that comes from and you can't you know, it's hard. It's hard to really focus on the negative. It's such a beautiful place. Yeah, it is. It blew us away for sure. Good, it's good, and I'm glad you got to, like say, I got to go there in the winter experience it that way. Um, there's a calumness there in the winter that there there certainly isn't. And we were learning something interesting yesterday because we saw so many bison and we saw two elk fighting. We were telling you about this the other day, fighting in the petrol station. We put a picture of it. Uh, and we saw a handful of female elk. But we were speaking to someone yesterday and they were telling us how the olt population inside Yellowstone has declined so much over the last twenty years, largely due to the wolf predation, which I hadn't I hadn't appreciate it at all. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it. It becomes. I think test case is probably the wrong world, but that's what it becomes. I mean, it's an untouched landscape where the human interaction is not allowed because there's no management. It'side Yellowstone Atoll, not no no. Um, there's you know, problem, animals are killed, there's interactions with humans. But there's no hunting based management within within the Yellowstone at all. I'm uh. And you know people love to hunt the edges had We had a buddy out there doing that just the other day for bison. Um. So it is it is this like you know, often anti hunters or vegans would say, like, wouldn't we just why do we have to prey upon animals? Now, you know, we can just go to the store and eat meat, and let's let's allow the natural predator prey balance to you know, let's reintroduce grisly bears, reintroduced wolves in Serenade range and just let it go. And I would say Yellowstone is a good example of what can happen and what likely will. It's I think people don't appreciate this quite the scale of landscape that you need for wildlife to truly balance itself. As we've said, Yellowstone is colossal. But the grand scheme of these massive migrations that historically used to happen in the interactions of wildlife across all of North America, which is a vast place, it's still relatively small. Everything is relative. It is small in relation to North America, but it's large in relation to a land mass in Scotland, and you know, I think people it's very difficult for us to get our heads around actually what scale you need? Yes, for wildlife to look after itself. Um, So what else do you guys do in Montana? Is there? Um? Is there anything that that sticks out beyond the grand this is yellow Stunt? Well, I think Daryl's probably. I mean, we've been meeting people. It's been you know, catching up with you and a whole heap of other people that are been doing some podcasts and also you know, we've we've been staying staying with Tyler Sharp, editor Modern Huntsman. We've been we did some stuff on volume two and we're going to be doing some bits and pieces and working on volume three as well. So that's been part of the reason for being here. But I think Daryl probably managed to steal the highlight of sort of activities because he was photographing a bison hunt yesterday before, yeah, like two day, two days ago. It was Yeah, it was pretty damn amazing because especially when you're told we're going to go and do a bison hunt and then you find out it's on horseback as well. And it was last minute. We come here knowing that this was going to happen, hooked up for us while we're here, literally like twenty four hours before. It was like yes or no, like you're going and that So I went. And being on a horse riding up into the mountains, it's kind of just been a dream of mine for forever. And this is what I was trying to tell the people I was with. I was like, I don't think you appreciate how special this this is because they do all the time, but this for them, this is a yearly thing. UM taking horses up into the you know those mountains, and it was it was annoying because I was taking pictures. I couldn't. I couldn't. Actually it's difficult to appreciate, appreciate, you know, just like when you're doing when you're doing a job. But also it was the added challenge of taking pictures on horseback. So that was that that was interesting. But yeah, we rode higher and higher and you know wooded area and UM went up this track and it was I mean, we didn't unfortunately didn't see anything at all. We saw problems and you didn't see anybody, But that was right at the bottom basically by the truck when we started. But yeah, it's funny as perspective there, because you know, from the hunter's perspective, who's from this area and does that every year, it's like, wow, this is this is an unsuccessful day. But to you, it's like this is a day I'll remember for a long time. Like, yeah, I said this, and I was like, you do not. I appreciate this so much that I got to go along. Um, and you know, we were speaking for people back home, and people back home literally save up for potentially their whole life to do what I just did, so like, yeah, so it's so easy to forget the importance of the things that are on your doorstep. And the same is true for us. We live just below the Highland Faults in Scotland, so when we look out from our office the mountains start, that's the Highland Faults of of historic Scotland right there. We've got like four castles like where we live, and you know, we know, of course we don't think about it. You guys live in a castle, right, yeah, of course everyone, but you know, we don't think about it every day, and sometimes I do have to just sit there normally with a brandy in hand or something something like that, one of contemplation, juice and look at the mountains and just take a deep breast, like this is where I live, and the same is true for you, know, you the folks who live here and get to experience what is really quite quite a unique thing. Horseback into the mountains of Montana. Yeah. Yeah, everywhere I go, I always I remember, prior to moving to Montana, when I felt like I lived in a less impressive environment. I would when I was coming here. But one of the first questions I would ask the guide or whoever was hosting me here, whomever I was with it lived in that place, is like, did you ever does this ever get old? Do you ever wake up and just like breeze by the mountain and just forget what you're looking at, Like you forget that you're on the doorstep of the Greater Eli Yelstone ecosystem that holds, you know, America's wildlife treasures in it. I've been here for about three months, so hasn't hit me yet that I'm here, You know, It's like the reverse. I haven't yet got to appreciate it because I'm not I don't think I've it's hit me that I live here and intend to live here for a long time, So I mean it is, that's it's the opposite. But you're right. I mean, I'm sure people are lived all their life. There's days they wake up and they just breeze through life and they forget. You get busy, and you get busy with life, just human nat. I'm just glad. I've spent quite a few years learning to ride horses back home, and it's quite different here, different saddles and a different environment. Uh you know, the most we ever did was kind of trails and across fields, kind of hacking across farmer's fields and things like that, but into the mountains as such, because we don't have we don't have this kind of wooded alpine steep areas that you can just ride a horse into. It doesn't it doesn't exist back home. So that was pretty pretty cool. My horse was called Shrek talk. I appreciate that he was pretty chilled because I was clicking the camera obviously above his head and the guy though, and the horse was like, yeah, it might be a bit edgy with that, because that's making the same noise as the electric fence in his paddock right above his head, and he was a bit edgy for the first ten minutes and then he kind of just easy easy now. I mean it's good to hear that you have that perspective and coming all the way across the world like you did to have that experience. I appreciate that too. And and for my for my money, I'll do my best not to ever to not you know, to lose perspective on this place. And you know what it is, and yeah, I think that's that's why people here want to fight for it so much, fight for access to it, fight for for its health, and it's you know, the health of these ecosystems, because it's because it is such a prize. For me, Montana was one of these locations that was always on the bucket list for visiting. And it's going to be a little bit cheesy, but that started with a river runs through it. Incredible. I mean it's even today. I mean it is a piece of cinema for sure. It's a it's a beautiful film hired from the local library on tape exactly on VHS and just seeing that, I mean it was it was the mountains, it was the river, it was the fish. It was obviously of a different period, and I am probably somewhat guilty of hankering for periods of the past true of North America, and it was That's probably one of the reasons I have spent so much time in Africa. But because of that, it was always it was what was the catalyst from my intrigue of North America and understanding what happened here historically. And of course you guys have a fascinating story. Yeah, I mean, it's you know, fascinating wildlife story. But I think you know I was doing this earlier. I just thought, what if I if I google hunting in Scotland, what's going to come up? Nothing comes up. There's no good information, at least in my searching, Like there's no here is the pre eminent source to learn about hunting in Scotland or or you know, hunting in the United Kingdom, over and above that. It's interesting, you say, because funny enough, I was just thinking the other day because I write, I write a back page of Hunting magazine at home, and when I took it over it was always on historical figures in hunting. And when I took it over. I said, I'm not just gonna make about historical figures, but I'm going to make it about historical and current figures. And it's going to be people who have not only been important for hunting, but also important for conservation, even if they had nothing to do with hunting. So I think it's important many of them did, especially the historical figures. And it's very very easy to find awesome examples in the rest of the world. I mean North America is full of them, yes, just some great examples in Africa and India and the rest of the world. And we do have them in the UK, but they're not spoken about their names that if you were to mention them now, people wouldn't know who they are. And that's kind of sad. And I've just I realized this week in the long journeys, we've been driving around and he's trying to readdress that a little bit, and I have been putting them on the back page, but it needs to be it needs to be more than that some magazine that goes in the bin every month. Yeah. No, I mean I've learned a lot about it from you guys specifically, but without you guys, I probably would still think it's you know, dudes and tweed, you know, asking the gamekeeper if they can go out and kill a red deer. But so talk about, um, where do you come from? And it's kind of your your upbringing in a little bit of you know, kind of take us over to Scotland and give us a little bit of an insight into your lives growing up. Do you want to start going? Yeah, I can, I can, I can start start Mr Navy Yes, so um me and by while I was born in the Highlands, so in Inverness on the banks of Loch Ness looking at a monster. It wasn't really but I was born in Inverness. I don't really remember my time up there too much because you're around one years old. Yeah, but we had a boat on Loch Nest and then we moved. Where would we Where do we go to after that? Um? Yes, well where we live now? Yeah, it was straight for you. It was straight from from Invernessta there basically from there we um ever since we were I don't know, we could walk. My dad took us out hunting, rabbit hunting, a bit of pigeon shooting, fishing, fishing, and that was yeah, that was just our life. We used to do a lot of like stock ponds because when you're when you're small, you want to it's it's better to catch a child's attention if they're guaranteed. I used to do that. Yeah, my dad, just take a drop your line in this hole and you'll pull out of sunfish every time. It's more exciting and then and then you can move on to the days of no catching catching, which is quite common back home. But in the early days kind of hunting for us was a little more of a necessity than them for fun or anything. Because both our parents are from Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwie, and they basically came to the UK due to uh well, it was after the after the after the Bush War, and they saw that things we were going to go downhill. And while you can see the state of Zimbabwie now, it hasn't really changed since then, if not, it's worse than ever. And they came to the UK and my dad will tell you with two sick cases and four pounds, which is probably probably true. And they were my dad was shooting rabbits for for food, yeah, digging. He was also told us about digging coal out from an old coal bunker. And that's true for for heat, for heat, because they rented this shitty little cottage on a farm somewhere outside because he didn't want to live He didn't want to live in the city. Yeah, you want to live in the countryside. But obviously you've gone forward to Florida. So it's like the damp. He did point it out to us once, just this damp, little one bed cottage with nothing to stay warm. But yeah, it was through it was through a complete necessity of extra food meets expensive um so shooting rabbits, pigeons, just whatever you could get his hands on. He was working behind a bar. Um there's not a huge amount of money to support a family of four. And then as life went on, he got a different job and we moved and the hunting aspect just stayed stayed with us our entire life. A lot more fishing early earlier on a lot more fishing because where we live now, where our offices, there's a river that just goes straight past it. So that's kind of after school, we could go take our rods and just fishing Tenute walk. It was kind of like a little section of paradise and it was all if it's we can do about this later. But it was most of the rivers and the lands private, and this was owned by the local farmer who was a friend. So we had like four or five miles of river that no one ever fished that we could fish. And we're like ten and twelve. Did your father in Zimbabwe did they did they hunt there or did he just pick it up like you said, ada nessess. I mean he hunted a lot as a as a kid, you know, with an air gun and uh, you know whatever else is his our grandfather would bring back from the from the army there. He was always bringing him back different guns and stuff to shoot. But it was different times. You know, he would give him a gun to say, you know, here's son, you've I've taken this for the weekend for you to shoot. But you know, here's six bullets. You know. It's not like you know, we're spoiled now, or it was. He had he had an air gun that his um an uncle had bought him, if I'm remembering the story correctly. And they didn't have a huge amount of money either, so it wasn't you know, I when I bought my first air gun. I bought five thousand pellets just so that once I found the ones I liked because I didn't want to run out, He'd be given a little box of twenty five and that was there, and then he'd have to go and ask our grand making a better Yeah. So he did a lot of that, but not You would think growing up in Africa that there would be lots of big stories of big game, but there wasn't for him. But one generation back there was. There's also a bush walk going on, so he was doing you know, they were fighting people when they should have been having fun. You know, in the teenage it was like national service. Yeah, you don't want to venture too far into the bush because there's people it's kind of kind of stolen from them. But yeah, well and it sounds to me like despite you know, I would say relative you know, poverty. When you guys are growing up, you found that it seems like you had a happy childhood. We had a great I mean we wanted for nothing. We can we can't go zero complaints by the time we were you know, of any age. Yeah, Dad had forged on. Mom and dad forged on. He had good jobs worked in the oil, and then that was from working in the bar. Someone someone behind the bar, was like, you shouldn't be behind the bar. I'm going to give you a job in a while, and he got a job. I got a job in a while, um, and then was made redundant very quickly after a few years. The year I was born was one of the big oil slumps globally oil oil slump, which I then paralleled then in two thousand and both of us two thousand and fifteen or whatever when this next global oil slump came. Because I was working in all times funny parallel. But to continue with my story, I guess. Yeah. So growing up, going through high school, I didn't really do a huge amount of hunting or anything. Through high school, bar and did a lot more than than I did. I would go out pheasant shooting and pigeon shooting. I did that quite a bit, but nothing too serious. I'm too busy chasing girls. My brother. My brother still that this day doesn't really hunt at all, or doesn't hunt at all, and I attributed to his partying. Yeah that's what it was, buddies. Yeah, it's Saturday morning. Would you like to get up early in about four am and drafted a hunting spot and spend all day walking around the woods, or would you like to stay up all night and then go to sleep at four am? See what he hasn't told you is that his incentive of riding horses was also motivated by that. It was do you want to place minated by females? It was I was like the old lady that could ride a horse. I found it a good it's a good match. I was the only dude and it was about fifteen girls. It was. It was a no brainer. You're a smart man to be admired. What was it was there a hunting culture growing up for you? I mean, because was it as prevalent as you've seen here in the States. It was definitely not as prevalent. And the thing for us was, although like Daryl said, Dad was, you know, showing us the ropes as best as he knew. It was still a new country for him. So the equivalent of my dad if he had grown up in Scotland, you know, I would have known all the plants all you know, all the floora, all the fauna and all the intricacies of the wildlife and management there. You know, by the age of like twelve, but he couldn't tell us that because he didn't know and he didn't know anyone either, So we had, you know, at the beginning, almost zero access too for shooting. I'm talking about zero access to going shooting anywhere, because you especially where we live, if you want to shoot easily accessible land, then you've got to know farmer on the low ground. So that's what we've We've their whole life now and now we have access to all of it around our little kingdom of our round the castle. I knew it, ah, But why was asking about the culture? But there is I mean we can and we can expand on that, but the there is a There is a really there is a good culture of hunting and an incredible historic story of hunting in the in the UK and in Scotland in particular. But it's not as sort of publicly in your face as it isn't here. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but it's very obvious for me driving around here the person probably hunts. You just see the way people addressed and the way people act in the Rocky Mountain Foundation place around this. Yeah, we're in the mecca of it. Aren't we. Yeah, you're you're you're in the core of it here for sure. So we had to you know, gun safety fishing. We were given the elements to take it on if we wanted. But a lot of what we did after was, you know, we were teaching ourselves and then eventually teaching Dad because he's been because he's busy working. He was away rafting and working well to the age of what twelve thirteen years old, working back he was still working in Africa. Yeah, that's it's it's very similar to a lot of you know, the Patrick Lennard Patrick lineal um, the way that it happens here like it. For me, it was I grew up my dad. My dad had this amazing ability to you know, when I was a kid. He could name every tree, name every bird, you know, name pretty much everything and you know, for me and teach me that. But um, at the same time, he came up and he didn't his father didn't hunt. He came to hunting on his own, and again he didn't have this like this is the way we do it, this is how we hunt. It's just honey, was the thing we did. It wasn't It wasn't so structured. It was like, we can buy a license, we'll go out and shoot this deer, we'll eat this deer. And we didn't talk much more about it than that. I mean, it was kind of that's what we We never talked about the philosophies of it, or or our wild places or conservation. We never did that because it was just part of it was just part of our lives, part of our lifestyle, never to be questioned, never to be you know, I really thought through um on a deeper level. And that's that's not to say anything bad about my dad, but that's just how how it was. Then. It was just a more accepted practice. I feel like at least where I where I grew up then from well after I finished Chasing Girls writing. That's also very natural for American for the American hunter to like start hunting around twelve, hunt till eighteen, taking a little break during college, chase girls, drink beer, and then come back to it. In the early twenties, I we we had an experienced try dive, So this is kind of where my career started at the age about sixteen, and it was basically going to swimming pool try scuba dive in Aberdeen, and I was like this, it's awesome being able to breathe underwater. It's like I can fly, bloom, blew my mind. So I decided there and then that's what I want to do for a living. That's that's what I want to do. And kind of I was like, how how do I achieve this? So I was in my last year of high school and I said to them, I want to be a diver. They didn't really know what to do with me, because that's an insane career choice as far as they were concerned. And um, I managed to arrange to work at a dive shop in Aberdeen on Fridays and they basically said, yeah, you can take the Friday off school and you can basically work experience. There's an hour from where we look, so it's not exactly close, a bit of a community. And my neighbor worked in Aberdeen as a recruiter for the military and he was like, I'll give you a lift um to the dive shop every day because he kind of went past it, and you know, the weeks go by, weeks go by, and he starts speaking. He's like he's like, you know, the Navy has divers right, and I was like, no, I didn't know that. He's like, yeah, yeah, let's um. If you want some more information, then they do it. Come along to the office and they gave me this this leaflet and it basically was just like three pages of pictures of like divers doing underwater knife fighting, bomb disposal, like Hawaii on a beach with ten women and you can come up like I refused the bar ladies ladies signs tried and I was like, that is That's the coolest thing ever. I want to do that, and so I, um, I signed up, did all my tests and what they didn't tell me originally, they were like, there's basically a two percent chance of you you're doing this. That's that's a success rate. From the moment that you walk through the careers office to the moment that you finish your dive training, there is a two percent chance that you'll make it to the end. Um just due to a number of factors. One, some people just don't like the diving because it's mainly dark. Secondly the physical aspect. I used to be a lot a lot fitter than I was now. And thirdly the mental aspect, which is probably the most most important. So I joined up basically when I turned eighteen, because you had to be eighteen to join that unit. And I went through training and and I don't think I quite appreciated how much bomb disposal was enrolled in because I was a wind clear start. It was, it was, it was in the title. But I didn't quite appreciate how much we were going to be doing, which was really cool because I do like blowing things up. It doesn't it doesn't like it is. It is, like, its interesting if somebody says you're gonna dive and you're going to diffuse, you're going to take care of these bombs, like it's pretty freaking badass man. Yeah, it was cool and I loved it, you know, as an eighteen year old like that, that's the coolest job title on the planet. And yeah, I loved it. Um, But I mean training was it was bloody hard. I mean when so once you go through basic training, basic training, that's that's basically a piece of piss. It's it's just tow the line, polishing, ironing, washing, marching, all that kind of ship and you have a bit of like battle damage repair and it always quite cool. Actually, you do spend a bit of time. That's like this huge like part of a ship and then they pretend it's been hit by missiles and it starts to flood and the whole thing is like on hydraulics and starts to rocks. It's like the ultimate simulator and the components filled to the top. So if you don't stop the leaks, guess what you're underwater? Um, So that's that's pretty cool and basic training. But once you finish that, you're like, right, dive training week one beaver in mind, you've already done a selection to be on the dive course. This is like the second selection and it's one week. We started on day one with thirty eight people. By the end of the week we had ten left and then when I finished, so that basically by the end of the training it's it's almost a year basically once you've gone through all. By the time I finished, there was four of us left. That was it. People are just dropping out because they can't hack it physically. Mentally, I would say that it's a mental game. You do have to be physically fit, of course, but a lot of it was Yeah, it was just it was a mental game. A lot of time by yourself. You were diving for three four hours by yourself and the pitch black, out of time and just swimming. I mean it was pointless tasks in a way other than getting used to your dive set in that but it was swim until you run out of of a That was it and for hours and hours now And what's it like being down there in the dark, like you know, like said flying or you know it's suspended in some way. Well, I was in a fortunate position where I'd actually done quite a lot of diving before I joined, which was a good and a bad thing, because it's kind of like if you're learning how to drive and then you go on to do like an advanced driving course or please driving course like I did, and then they look at you can go your ship. We just dive once we passed our like civilian course, all the gear, and then we just the two of us just went diving on the cust So there's a lot of things that you've got to kind of unlearn and then relearn. But diving just gives you the most amount of freedom you can think, especially if you're a nice, nice waters and we are. When you're in training, the water is not particularly amazing, and at night because you're you're wearing a rebreathe most of the time, and you've got a head up display and the early dive set, which we kind of called the death set because it killed so many people. Uh, the eels used to come at night and see the green light and the red light on your head up display, and they used to hit you straight in the face, square in the face, but you didn't see them coming. Was pitch black, and I used to give the hard heart rate going, um so, yeah, what Once I had finally finished training, then it was into the big bad mix and you've basically gone a ship for three three years, about three years. Um so I ended up doing two deployments, one out into the Baltic Sea, which is basically it was. It was basically a piss up around Europe well blowing up money and we basically visited nearly every country in that basin. So what years released? It was two thousand and so I joined in eight oh nine, and then I think it was two thousand and ten was my first deployment, and that was seven months part of a NATO task force. And yeah, so we basically spent like two weeks just looking for ordinance and then and then go ashore and then get drunk and run around Europe. And yeah, that was it, I mean a proper sailor. Oh yeah, in my first deployment, I visited maybe ten eleven countries in my first appoint and that was that was really cool. And also we're working with so many other nations as well, and a lot of the stuff we were looking for was stuff from World War One, world War two. That was and there was some modern day stuff as well. We found a U boat, which was pretty cool. So they used sonar to look on the seabed and we found a U boat. But that was like like some ridiculous steps, so we didn't get to go into now. We didn't. It was way too deep. Could it have been full of gold potentially? Potentially? But we the Germans were with us. The story was going, we found the goal and that's why we've got a castle, as you well know. We found the goal. Um yeah, and yeah, we we found a lot of audence. We actually found one um it was German c mine and it was it was almost in the harbor entrance of Estonia. There are main harbor entrance where they have maybe ten plus ferries a day going in and out of there, like huge passenger ferries. And this was like a two thousand pound c mine. It was huge. And we found it and we're like, okay, well we'll go and get rid of it. And the Germans that were with us, we're like, no, that's right, it's our it's our mine. So we did it. We did it, We'll deal with it, and we we we found it, and we don't always. We didn't always used to do it. We used to send basically an RV down to have a look at it. Um that didn't always happen. Sometimes most of the time it was the divers that went down and did the initial see what it is. But this time we sent r V and we I did it, and the Germans sent down there r V when it was their time to go and get rid of it, and there are of a hit it and it went off. And this was from World War two. Yeah, it was. It was like we but basically the rule thumb was if it was German, it was very well made and it probably still functioned, uh not always. I mean, I mean I could go into the different ways of uh you know, the different way in the whole afternoon with different ways, different minds and the way they functioned. And some of them have safety devices in them, so after i know, like a hundred days or a hundred twenty days, basically explosive cutters would would blow through the side. So that means that you could use an area again it was like a safety device. Um, but they didn't it didn't always function. You know. These things were made on mass in factories by on the whole um young children and women because all the men were fighting during the war. Um and Russian minds particularly were quite dangerous because they looked like they were made in the garden shed, probably because they were I mean to the point of they were armed from the moment they went came out the factory. So it was quite dangerous transporting them. But they can you imagine that Laury full of mind put them in the way by the German and the British minds. They had soluble plugs. You plopped them in the water and twelve hours later they would they would arm themselves. But yeah, so that's what we were doing. We also found a torpedo as well a few a few other things. But we also did stuff on land, so UM. We didn't actually end up doing the job, but we um one of the town's near one of the harbor cities. They had found it was even in Germany, a construction site they had found a whole heap of ordinance because there was probably it was probably usked it was it was that was bombing it UM and it was actually the German dive team that went and dealt with that. But you know, we were doing all sorts of things and then came back home. You do a lot of trading and the next point was out to the Middle East, so we went out there seven and a half months out there, huge range of stuff. It was basically a lot of it was forced protection, keeping shipping channels open, but we're also doing um some stuff on land as well. And then we went out awards Um Somalia as well and was doing some anti piracy things out there just as a as a force role as part of an American Task force. So most of the time in the Middle East you were working with the American units, which is is pretty cool. After that deployment, came home and then I was part of a bomb team based in Glasgow, so West coast of Scotland in falls Lane, and our job was kind of to support the submarines aroughout the world because that's where the main submarine basis, that's where the people the nuclear weapons, and the other role was bomb disposal. So on that team, they've got I D and UM E O D on that team. So we covered. Our range was huge. It was like all the way down. It was like part of the way down to England, the whole of Scotland and part of northern Ireland as well, So it was a huge range. And yes, so that that was an amazing time because you just youve got to drive around the kind tree blow things up on beaches and um hand grenades. We had one where a walker and found hand grenade and they walked into a police station and put it on the counter and the police are like, what the fuck they exactly I found? Hey guys, look, I don't know what this is. I don't know how it functions, but can you take it? It It had a pin in it, I don't know, I don't It turned out it was some weird I can't because we couldn't even idea properly. We we did eventually, but it was some Eastern European hand grenade that we hadn't hadn't even seen before. Um, and you plunked it on the counter, and obviously that the whole pee station has to evacuate when when you do that, and they're like cheers. I mean the normal small bomb. But the normal advice is if you find a piece of orange, leave it where you found it, and then just call the police and then and then they'll call whoever needs to be called. Um, if anything comes out of this podcast, folks, if you find leave it be Yeah, we were. We were once in the same place at the same time I was. I was doing some hunting up in the Isle of Sky and Daryl knew that I was up there. So it was when he was in this team and he says, are you still in the sky? He says, yeah, and I'm still here. I'm here with our body Scott McKenzie, who's interestingly the last full time gamekeeper and stalker on the island used to be full of them, but it's the last like managed to stay. Um. So I was doing stalking with him and taking some pictures and Dara said, well, I'm on my way up right now. We've got the lights on. They've found something on the beach, and it just so happened that his boss was big into hunting, and because I wrote for one of the hunting magazines, he also had like read my articles on that. So he he said to Daryl, if he can, if he can be there, you should come down and we can have a look and I can watch the team work and watch my brother work. And I said, well, you know, I'll try I'll try it for can. But we had we had an agenda. We were getting content stuff for the magazine. So that then he messaged me back and says, the boss is that if you can make it, you can press the button to blur it up. Okay, yeah, it's okay, every range. So I don't think it really was. I think it was just a piece of scrap metal. But they did a lot of put a lot of explosives on it so that I could press the button and it was. It was a very you know were you couldn't even see it where we pressed the button from, just to make sure that we weren't in the blast range, but you could feel it in your chest. You pressed the button and it was there's vibration, So yeah, it was, it was, it was. It was pretty cool. We we I'll tell you what one more. I was gonna say any close calls along the way, because I am interested in this subject. I had close calls diving. Um. On my it was a day before my nineteenth birthday. We're in the middle of the English Channel and I my captain said to me, I hadn't This was my first piece of ordinance I had done on my completely on my own. And he said to me, your birthday, congratulations, happy birthday. Yeah, we found something. So I went down that did the first first dive, did all my measurements. UM. So, basically how it works is that most of the time you're working in the dark. The North Sea is particularly bad for visibility, so you measure everything with your body parts. So that's a lot of your training is you know, knowing your measurements. You're thumbed, your arms, so on, so on, and you've got to be within ten percent. And basically if you put all these measurements in and the shapes and sizes of it into a computer, then it will bring up what piece of ordinances and I'll tell you where the explosives is and basically the best place to place charges or anything you want to do to it. So I went down, did the the wrecky on it, and I did it. It It was a five pound German air drop bomb and it's just been rolling around the seabed and it was in a fairly busy shipping channel. I mean, the English Channel is probably one of the busiest in the world in the world, and so we're like, oh, let's get rid of it. So a few hours later it's it was now Yeah, I was poke about three four in the morning now and they're like, right, you can, you can do it. It was four twos under the water. So I went down and basically because the depth, I only had a certain amount of time before I could um go into stops and stops facing means that when I come up, I might have to wait at ten ms for ten minutes or fifteen minutes and then and so on so on. And the idea. The idea is that if you're placing explosives on a piece of ordinance, you don't want to be doing any stops, or you can do drifting stops where the boat kind of takes you away from the piece of ordinance. UM And I went down there and I didn't make the explosive pack up, so basically it's um it's plastic explosives with debt chord going all the way to the surface onto a float. And the swell had picked up by the time we got out there, and basically there was like a two m kind of swell. And the person who I think I know who it is, We're not gonna mention it had hand hadn't taken into account the swell. So basically the debt chord was slightly too short. So I'm down there and I've got half a meter of between the bomb and where I can actually pull, and I'm like, how am I going to explosive pack underneath or like around this thing? Eventually I kind of like anchor myself, like holding onto the bomb, and and I managed to. I got one bomb here. I managed to pull it underneath so like the pressure is pulling it up so that the float doesn't yank it, and I managed to tight on. I took a bit longer than that than that it should have taken, but I didn't go into any stops. And I came back up and about we blew up and it all that all went fine, But about an hour later I just started losing the vision of my eyes like blurry, couldn't see within thirty centimeters of me. And we had a phone call at home from I don't know, somebody on this ship. It was my it was my exit that called, and I was like, oh shit, like this is this is not good. And it it was really cold as well. It was like minus twenty celsius and I mean it was so cold that that that we had like icicles off the site at the side of the ship. I mean, it takes a lot to free seawalls. And we we're lucky enough that the Germans that were with us, they had a diving nurse who specialized. We were all medics to help each other anyway. So I was sitting in the chamber, our dive chamber on our ship and it broken. It's the seal had broken on it. So we're like our dive chambers out and so I was transferred to the German ship and the German nurses there and she's they're doing you know, all all everything you can think of, and she's trying to put bloody ivy in me and she missed four times in my arms and I told her to funk off because I was like as she because she said to me, do you do you have wanted in your foot? And I was like you can know? Boy, well, I was like, go away, I don't need fluids. And event they had a seeking helicopter come and pick me up and take me to a place called hell Go Land, which isn't I think it was helleg Land, an island off the west for voting. Yeah, uh, basically an island off of Germany. And they had a diving doctor on that the island, and they took me there and you've gotta fly really low level because if you're still you basically no, you still know, so you're not completely not blind. But I can't see like it literally I couldn't. If I was holding my phone, the entire screen was blurred. How long did this go on for? It lasted two days. It's quite a long time. I was thinking that two hours, two days, unbelievable. They flew me there and the diving doctor was like, I have no idea what's wrong with them, because they started just ruling things out there like we don't think, we don't think it's the beds and I didn't think it was either. I don't know what it was, but I just like, it's just there's something wrong with my vision, but I don't know what it is. Eventually they made the decision not to put me in the chamber, and this is this is the British military all over made the fantastic decision. I've gone, I've got no idea why they did this. They're like, you need to fly home now. Bear in mind they had no idea what was wrong with me. So I then they they dropped me off with a rib on the jetty in Germany with a piece of paper beare in mine I couldn't see properly to the taxi driver gave it to him. He took me to the airport and then I had a note in German basically saying on me to keep on me if I pass out, what's wrong with me on the plane because there was a high chance that something might happen if flying because now he's going to alt But after two days they kind of were it's relatively safe, all right back to the UK and my vision just started coming back. I got no idea why I went. I went to an ice specialist and she was sitting with Google open, and I was like, I was a good. Do you don't think the German doc you have no idea what was wrong with me. Basically, the conclusion that they came to it was actually a combination between the diving and the really cold temperatures basically made my um the muscles and that in my eyes too. I'm not sure if it's muscles, but basically you know when your eyes focused, and clothes like a camera. Basically they had just frozen, not frozen, but they just stopped functioning for whatever lagging like yeah, but yeah, that was kind of the closest the closest call two days, and it was pretty It was pretty scary because I didn't really know what was wrong with me, but I had confidence that I was going to come out on the other side, and I did. I went straight onto Christmas leave after that, because it was actually the end of the deployment that that's what really annoyed me. It was like three days before the end of the deployment. I got sent home and I booked flights personally myself that I paid for because the dive team was allowed to go home slightly earlier because we were doing another job after and they flew me home for free. Anyway, and my flightside just booked paid for I couldn't use. And then I was diving like three weeks after that, and it was part of a crossover course of new I said. And after a week of it, someone comes in diver base, we've got a thing here saying that you're not actually medically clear to die. No one had told me. I've been diving for a week. So then I had to go to the experimental diving medicine place and they did loads of tests on me and just made sure that I could. I was gonna be okay. I never had a problem since. Yeah, I never had a problems. That's not calmon that it can't be calming, I mean, the way you describe it, Yeah, I don't. I don't think anyone had a clue. And to this day, I still don't know what what happened, what went wrong, But I was fine afterwards, no ill effects. My eyes are sharp as anything. I'm just glad it's never happened. Happened since all this time your brothers are around as an outdoor writer, Well, yeah, there you were doing some other things. But uh I did care though, like let me get this deer down. And then then I'll deal with this, then I'll come home and make sure you can see. So during all this time, what were you doing? So I had, I did quite well at school. And one of the frustrating things that I I've come to realize since then is that there's an expectation from most people. You go through high school, next step university. Yes, I'm sure it's the same here, especially if you've done kind of same here. Though I didn't have. I didn't do well enough. You could have gone to university probably if you really want, if it would have been a waste, it would have been. And you know what really annoyed me is I joined the Navy because I was like, I hate exams. Honestly, I hated I liked school. I was good. I was good at school. By I never did particularly well in any magxams UM other than the ones I was really passionate about, like P because it was just physical exercise and history. I did really well in History UM. But I was like, I'm going to join the Navy and then fuck exams. I did more exams and then I have ever done in my entire life. It's funny, how like, you know, my brother is a world class artist. I can't draw sticks figure like you know, I'm a writer. He can't write his way at any enjoy like the but drawic pagassa. This is funny how those It is strange, isn't it. You know whether that's nature or nurture, who knows, but you you have a degree in economics. I went the stupid things you think when you're sixteen. So I actually left school year early because I had everything I needed. When I finished school, I was still sixteen, but I was seventeen by the time I went to university. A lot of the university's actually they would have taken you, but they recommended, you know, you've got in, but wait until you've a year older, a bit more drink. Yeah, well yeah, that's part of it, because you can drink to here to your eighteen. But I had this great plan that I was gonna go and work in the city, be a fun manager or something like that, or stop broke and retire at thirty From thirty one, so I'm definitely not retired yet, so you can tell that that plan never worked. But you know the motivation. The motivation for that was because I wanted to do the things that I really wanted to do, which was the only thing that I did when I wasn't studying at school or swimming, both of us. I was missed a massive part of his growing up, which we did a lot of competitive swimming um which helped me in the water situation. So that I mean that took up a lot of our time when we were when we were younger. Was that I just wanted the time and money to be able to do the things that I wanted to do. So this was my grand plan. Sacrifice ten years of your life. We all have grand plan. Man up, tough it out, get in there, get the job done, get out. So I studied economics, which is a perfect thing to do if that's where you want to go. And I knew sort of, so I went to studied at the University of Sterling and I got I actually got a sports scholarship for swimming for the first year, but I knew within about six months later. It's really not interesting me that much. I'd rather I'd rather go fishing. My cousin incidentally, who now lives in New Zealand, but he was my good sort of fishing hunting buddy growing up. He he did a similar thing and he went to study medicine, and he liked fishing so much that he failed to use in medicine. But he still became a very and was moved to short the Mecca fishing. But you know, parents are always encouraging you to, you know, stick in and kind of tough it out. So I did, and I was quite good at it, you know, I did. I did. I did well well. And exams and the sort of competitive nature in me is probably more than anything else what made me do well at it just a lot of study, more than any more than anything. But after three years, I just kind of I just had it, kind of had enough, like that, I want to be in the bush. I want to I want to be I want to be in Africa. I spent my whole childhood reading capstick and hearing the stories, you know, from my dad, and then we we visited all the time anyway to see my grandparents. But it wasn't until years later that I really saw Africa when I worked there myself. So I ended up but somehow through summer gardening jobs, um getting a role or being involved in a in a company that manufactured and design tranquilizing darts for darting big game, and they were based literally five minutes from my parents house. So I started doing some stuff with them, and then the opportunity came as part of the sort of testing and development to go out to Africa and start darting elephants and in in Kruger National Park. That's right, you've done your research, Ben, I'm just reading the thing I got. No, I've done no research. Now when I read, I just was reading all that this morning about you guys, and that came across that and I thought I knew we were going to talk about Where did you read that? It's on your website. It's an easy mark, real fucking research clicked on the web. Kruger Park um, which is you know, you know probably in my mind is stands up to the Yellowstone Park because it's it's not right. Most people will probably know Krueger if they had to name an African park. So they, I mean, all the stuff that we were doing there was all the rhinos were d horning or chipping for obviously rhino poaching. The stuff with the elephants was recallering, um. So they actually I didn't dart it, but I was there with the team and the helicopters and stuff. They darted this, at the time, the second biggest bull in Kruger Park. Interestingly, that day when we did that, they went up in the helicopters and they found the elephant, and they hadn't darted any elephant. Um, well, this is what I was I was told. I haven't actually checked that this was true, but no reason to doubt it. They hadn't actually darted any elephant on foot there for a very long time, because it's quite dangerous. That was gonna be my question. Normally it's out of a helicopter. But the whole point behind the new dart system was that you could dart at much longer ranges. You could I mean I shot at plenty. You could dart out almost hundred meters very successfully. So this was kind of the point. Let's start on foot. So they found the elephant that they wanted to dart with the collar on it, and they went in. They darted it. It took a little bit of time to find it after it went down. Um no, sorry, it took quite a lot of time and much longer than they they it should have taken to find it. And so they went up in the helicopter again and then they found the elephant still standing, so they thought they had missed it, so this time they darted it from the helicopter, and it turned out they darted two elephants and there was another elephant there with another collar that they didn't know it was in the area. So they ended up changing the collar that needed collar that they needed changed, and then just checking out the other elephants and then you know, giving the revival stuff and they're being on their way. It was the one are the mechanics of changing an elephants color. It's I mean the box on it's like the size of your laptop, like this deep um and it's just a big I don't know, I can't remember a synthetic collar that held on with bolts, so it's just ratchets, you know, It's like six bolts and you just ratchet it off and then ratchet it back on. And I guess there was a new battery pack in there so that they could keep tracking them. So that was definitely one of the coolest things I did when way cooler than I thought. It's not that I think you were cool, but like you die. You died in the English channel and put out a bomb and you were darting elephants and Krueger. Well, I don't know what I was probably doing. I forgot to mention chicks in a bar in Maryland. I probably had the most expensive fishing bow on the planet because because I was on a mine hunter when they were when they were hunting for mines, they travel at like almost nothing, but it's enough for a trawling speed. So I, yeah, throw a line over the back of the ship and just troll for fish. And when when I was out in the Middle East, I actually used to catch loads of fish off the back and I used to trade them with a local guy for like ice creams and chocolates and DVDs like Pirate of DVDs and all that kind of thing. And yeah, I used to trade and trade of fish for doing that. But fish were literally arranged from some some of them I didn't even know what they were, and I just knew that he would buy them. It looks like this guy like this thing. Yeah it looks edible. Uh, But a mine hunter is the most expensive ship per square meter because it's made out of fiberglass. Entire ship, so it was the most expensive off the trolling off the back of it. And it doesn't have props either, so you can you're lying, can go straight down almost and you know you won't get caught in the props. Pretty pretty and empty. I got nothing, nothing one time, So you you know what a lot of interesting subjects we had to that was speed up you had to go. But that for me to see. The weird thing with that kind of initial experience was as I said earlier, we we've been going back and forth Africa for years, but becausins their grandparents still lever obviously parents from that, but I kind of always gone. Even though they lived there, none of they can. My grandpa fished and stuff a bit, and they did some cool stuff called bikes and jet skis and that, but they weren't hunting and they weren't fishing. They weren't involved. We would go to Kruger Park and you look around, but you were tourist. And then I was there and I was like part of the team, and I was like ship. Now I can smell Africa, and it really got onto my skin. I mean it was under my skin anyway. But I was just completely screwed after that because I ended up going um, So I had two years out of university UM during that period of time, and I went back to Africa in that sort of two years and I spent a couple of months there. My grandparents very kindly kind of looked after me as I was bouncing around visiting different people, and then that was kind of my HQ. I'd go back to their house. They were they were very kind to kind of put up with. Somebody was a bit lost trying to work out, you know what, what the hell do I really want to do? But I made us some awesome friends during that period, and a lot of my hunting bodies and phs out there now are people I met during that period of time. I was during most of that I was writing for a hunting magazine UM back in the UK, Sporting Rifle, and a few other publications, and it became my kind of gateway, an excuse to visit places. So I literally just arrived on that the second trip, and I wrote about thirty emails to outfits to say, you know, I right back in the UK, spent a lot of time in Africa. I'd love to if you've got a hunt going on, I'd love to just just join it. You know I'm not. I don't expect to do any hunting, but I'd love to just write about it, take some pictures and then you can get some exposure back at home. And a handful of them got back to me and I made some great friends that way, so that was pretty Yeah, that was pretty incredible, and I've gone back once or twice a year ever since. But after sort of two years out so we needed to four years to get your honors degree back at home, I kind of came to the realization that what I was doing with that the company wasn't really going anywhere, and they've actually folded. They don't exist anymore. So even in hindsight, it was a shrewd move, and I think there was always this element of it's probably fair to say, sort of disappointment from my parents that I didn't finish my degree properly. I had a bachelor's, but I mean that doesn't really mean anything. Didn't finish my honors and at that point, like no one else in the Pace family had a degree, like I was the first to go to university in that line. So I didn't need to do much to finish it because I've done quite well, so I just like sold it. Let me just go back. So I went back. I got my honors degree, and now I've got this honest, this first and economist. Like what the hell they do? Feel? Yeah, feeling a little bit pressured. I mean not that they put pressure on me, but you just feel it like you know people around you and like, what the hell you've been because I hadn't. I'd had a lot of fun for two years, and I've been trying to find myself, but I didn't have a career. I was doing some writing that would put a little bit of food in my mouth or no, I was eating about my parents table. I was using that, let's be honest, but I you know, I applied for jobs that you would get with an economics degree, and I ended up getting a job with black Rock's largest investment company in the world. I think it still is, certainly was at the time, but at two thousand and eight, so just when he's going to Navy, I get a job at the start of the financial crisis in finance brilliant. But I was a risk analyst, so that was the one thing everyone needed. No one knew what anything meant or what it's worth. Was so they needed risk analysts to work it out. So that's what I did, and I knew within like the first five days of that job I hated it. I was there was there any exciting moments. There was there was. There was one highlight in that two and a half or three years. So I started in Edinburgh, um, which was which was good for me. Edinburgh a beautiful city, so I had to live in a city Edinburgh. I could probably stomach it, and I did for for a couple of years. But basically on Friday, when I finished work, because we started at six in the morning and we could finish a bit earlier. That very rarely happened, but on Friday always tried to finish it earlier. I got in my car and I drove straight homes that I could hunt all weekend. That was That was my routine every week. I basically it was stupid of me because I didn't see much of Edinburgh even though I lived there for two and a half years. But the highlight of that black Rock experience that obviously talking a lot of life lessons, but the highlight of it was I helped set up the fixed income side in India because they were continually trying to cut costs, so that was why they moved our team from London to Edinburgh. And then eventually I set up the team that I had been part of in India UM for a couple of months and my my plan there was just kind of work the Monday to Friday and then experienced India was so I was taking trains up into the mountains and um fishing the rivers there. There's there's there's no hunting, but just trying to immerse myself in the culture as much as I could. I actually took a train. This was kind of near the end of my trip. I wanted to go up to to fish the Ganges River because on I knew that there was Golden Marsiera in there, and I had seen Golden Marcia in the Corbett River. Obviously, the famous writer and hunted Jim Corbett had been in his National Park UM the weekend before that, and the only way to get there was basically to take a train. So I took this sleeper train, which is very very different to the sleeper trains that we have at Hume up hours and hours. It was like six or seven hours UM. So I got on it in the evening, and I found my little space, which was my bed wasn't much wider than your laptop, and it was sat on chains and there was three on each side, and then seats because and that that was like one of the premium carriages as well. So I didn't sleep at all because it's really noisy, absolutely stinks, and I was also worried about, you know, people stealing my stuff, so sleeping on on my rucksack. But for some stupid reason, I had never thought to think to myself, how am I going to know when I get off? Because if you get on a sleeper at home, you know when you stop it and someone comes and chaps on your door. They even bring you a cup of tea. Yeah, it's pretty good. I used to take the sleeper down to London when I worked there, so right only costs about five thousand pounds. I wasn't I wasn't paying for it. I wasn't paying, but obviously you don't have that on on these trains. So I woke up as the train had slowed down, and I look out the window, and out the window I can see the name of the place I'm supposed to get off. In the trains going and this train went right to the north of India like next stop big in China. Um. So I'm like, what the hell am I going to do? And there wasn't many stops. That only stopped like three times in seven hours. So I ran to the door and all the doors were opened with my backpack on, and I'm looking just like at the railroad going past and all the bush and in the distance I can see some lights. So I'm just gonna have to wait. There's nothing I can do. I can't exactly jump off at this speed. And then it slowed down, like thirty minutes later, it slowed down a bit but didn't quite stop, and I could still see lights in the distance that I just saw it. I'm just gonna jump off because I don't know what's gonna happen. How am I going to get to where I need to go. So I jumped off the train and it's like four o'clock in the morning in the dark, and then walk through the bush like minutes to this little village and eventually imounaged to solicit a ride to the place I needed to go to uh and then I I camped and in a little hammock and walked down the river back to a place that fishing, back to a place that I thought I could get a lift back to the train station. And long story short there that I ended up at a whitewater rafting camp by mistake, and the owner there, who was an Indian guy, I thought I was completely mad to be walking out there by myself because I saw leopard prints in the sand where I've been camping. I think they were leopard. I don't think they've been tiger, but they looked like leopard to me. And he just thought that it was like, what on earth are you doing, your little white boy. I don't understand, just a risk analyst, exactly what I'd calculate that lately I was living. And he so gave me food and everything. I ate it his camp. And then I met this Indian couple there. It's it's weird how life works out this who just got engaged and they were there with their friend. It was kind of a weird honeymoon because it was a couple of plus they had their body there and they'd lost their camera and they were so gutted that they had lost their camera and they had no photos from like the last week up there and I have obviously had a camera with me and they were like would you mind Obviously because I looked at a place, they ended up speaking to me. It's like, would you mind taking pictures? Like well, we're just us and around beach for the next half an hour and you know, send into the class case we got nothing from our honeymoon. It's like, yeah, of course, no worries. And then they gave me a lift all the way back to the day. So that was but I left that because the moment there, I ended up going work back in Edinburgh. I've told the story a few times but people have taken something from it. So I was sitting in Edinburgh at my desk looking at my three screens of graphs and analytics, just I was looking for any excuse art. I thought I was going to become a helicopter pilot. Anything can must be better than this, and I was desperate, desperate to get out. But you still got to make a living. So I'm fairly young still, I'm twenty four or five at the time. And we've had a week where we've had a lot of like big dogs over from New York and stuff, and we've been out for a lot of dinners, and I'd heard a lot of stories. And you know, if if you and I were to go out for a beer, and or any of the people that I've been with this week, it's it's like, it's fascinating. You're talking about really interesting ship and I was just bored up my mind all week. I'm eating in fancy restaurants in places I can't afford to eat, and you're starving afterwards, You're starving arswers, and I'm hearing all these insignificant stories about fast cars and lap dance and clubs, and it's just bullshit, you know, stuff that Okay, yeah, we we all do it and can appreciate that two dimensional yeah, but it's like life is more than that. So I literally at the end of that week, I wrote my resignation letter. I printed it off in the printer behind me, and I gave it to my manager and I said, look, I don't want to leave you guys stuck, because it was it was an important job, So tell me how long you need me for and then I'm afraid I'm out of you. And after that I went, I went back to Africa, and then kind of I paddled around for a bit writing doing started to do a little bit of film work, and then again I was looking for a direction, but also knowing that I really needed to kind of get a serious job. I need to I need to buy a house, you know, I got to do something that's that's a bit more. So I ended up going and I started studying petrolleum engineering and I got a job in oil for three years as a drilling fluids engineer. But then the downturn came, and then that's kind of where our paths and lives crossed. So during this whole time, I'm I mean, I've missed out all the hunting and fishing because but that was like that was every spare minute that I had um I was reading, writing or hunting or fishing. That's basically what I lived for. But there are paths crossed at this point because Daryl had come out the Navy and had done a year in Australia commercial diving and had come home and was trying to find a job commercial diving and spear fishing, comercial diving. That's basically spend my year day. Were you married at that time? Now that time you got an Australian to my wife that's from Scotland, but she came out with me to Australia. Yeah for a long time. Yeah uh. And I really enjoyed my job. Now, it was a really good job and I was I was good at it, but it's still not hunting or fishing. And the reason that I did it was one it was interesting, but two of us six months off a year, some rotation work three weeks. You're off three weeks. What can I do in those three weeks and go hunting fishing. But when the downturn came, that kind of all went to ship because loads of people lost their jobs. I didn't, fortunately, but it meant that they were always trying to make the best use of resources. So I was never at home and I was not doing my job most of the time either. I was doing ship jobs like cleaning pits of just crap out of oil rigs on that because they were like, well you should, you should feel lucky that you've got a job now, and we I said to Darryl. Whatever reason, I still can't quite know exactly what the catalyst was, just like there is a gap in the market in the UK to make some hunting films that means something and I've done a bit of filming before. He hadn't, but he'd always you know, taking pictures and use the camera and said, what do you think let's try and let's try and start this. So we at the same time, there was these Merlin groups were starting up in the UK, which was a collection of areas around Scotland initially that were designed to basically helped portray in a positive manner how our uplands are managed and they needed to tell the story que us just starting to make films and we there are local group which has been one of the most successful in their endeavors to our films, part partly due to our films, but also because they've got an awesome court and they do who is now a very good friend of ours. Um. We we kind of got together and said, yeah, yeah, we can do that. We didn't know we could do it, but we said we could do it. And Darrel eventually left his laboring job that he was doing. I couldn't get a job diving. I came back from Australia and I was like, what have I just done? Because I had a really good job out there and I came back, I was I kin find any work, and then I was just doing a laboring job, and yeah, it was soul destroying. So this was a lot more fun. These are the yeah, man, these are the best stories. Like so we just we just started. We just started, and I kept working in all of our money and yeah, yeah, I kept working in all for a year just to kind of help support the start of the business. And after a year I left. We had done a couple of films for the Merlin groups. But over that period of time our kind of idea of showcasing what we could do. I believed we could do it. I didn't quite know how we would do it. But it's very difficult to go to company and say, hey, do you want to make your film? It's gonna be awesome. Never done, yeah, oh yeah, just show me something you've done before. Oh no, I haven't actually done anything, but I promise you it'll be awesome. Like it's very it's very difficult by self belief. So we so Fortunately, because I've been writing for so many years, I had a lot of good friends who were connected with different companies in the UK, and I managed to convince them that we could do it, and we were going to do a film, a short six part series m A called Into the Wilderness, and it was just going to be us hunting the way we like to hunt, which is actually quite different to most of the hunting in the UK. It's much more like how you guys hunt, but trying to tell a little bit of the culture in the story in it. That was kind of the original thought process. So we got some sponsorship in for it that kind of just paid enough to be able to afford to sponsorship, and that was that kind of little portfolio was the catalyst for everything else that followed. And actually we always thought we would carry on doing stuff like that because we like and we get to hunt a lot, and even if we're filming ourselves, and we've basically done nothing like that sense, because off the back of it, we've continually been asked by various people or companies to be involved in projects where we've been the people filming or producing or taking pictures, which I'm not complaining about because it's a lot different than being in front of the it's a lot of being in front of the camera and we've got to hunt. Hunting inverted commas, some of the most awesome places on the planet. And to it's certain extent, I don't care like I don't. I've hunted a lot, and I don't need to be killing something every time, and I've shared the experience, like like the bison hunt, Yeah, I was on I wasn't going to be pulling the trigger. No. I could see it in your eyes when you're telling the story. You know that the brief story about your bison, Like your eyes were lit up just to be there. Um. I think that's something a lot of hunters could learn from. Yeah, yeah, but yeah here, And I've seen a lot of our industry and I've been that way some parts of my careers. Like you just want to hunt. You don't just want to hunt, you don't really like you're not thinking about the end result. You just want to go out there, smell it, find it, Like wherever it is, you're gonna find it. And if it's you have a job where there's like maybe a hunt, you'll do anything. Yeah. Yeah. The best stories. The thing that I was so gutted by when I was back at Black Rock was that the stories were ship that all these people were telling. It's like, these are not interesting stories. Like Darrell's just told you a heap of interesting stories the name and he's only scratched the surface. It's like, get a whiskey plan. I cannot live my life and be an old man and have those stories. Yeah, I mean that's my life. What is the point? Like I said, I always say this, there's the two dimensional life and the three dimensional life. Like a two dimensional life are the stories you're talking about? Like I have this, I have, this is what I have. Yeah, but what is it giving you? Really? And what's it giving the people around you? Like you've been to Nepal, you could free you know, you could share and now through experiences you have shared connections. So like when we when you were on our podcast the first time, I started off asking you about Nopole because we there was this weird connection that because we've been in the same place at a slightly different time, and it brings people together. Yeah, there's something about that, you know. I'm sure you guys wouldn't wouldn't say this, but I feel like when I look over to your part of the world or anywhere close to where you guys, are you the most prolific photographers, filmmakers, podcasters. I mean it is, Uh, the breath and depth of work you've been willing to that you've put out over the last year is amazing. I mean, it really appreciate you saying that. And you've spun these like you know, you guys are smart dudes with passion forward and you found it because you had to the point. I don't think it was a choice. Yeah, you just like you. Just like you said, you just like you, You're always looking for it, even if even if you get lost in a career choice or you know, some destination you think you have to head towards. You Still the podcast was an interesting one because we we just we started that just because we felt there was a lack of education in in the UK and we just wanted we wanted an open plant, an access for free. And how long you've been doing the podcast? Yeah, three and a half years and so three years? And how many podcasts do you feel like are hunting fishing related in in this Well? Yeah, but I mean so one only started six months ago, another one was probably a year. Yeah, it's not that regular, it's not that regular. So yeah, we were we were the first in the UK. Yeah, I mean, and what's the you know, there's obviously the American influence, right, I mean that I talked about if you talk about that all the time around, like how much of the American culture and our value systems and our model conservation has affected other UM hunting cultures around the globe. But like, what do people where you're from saying about what you're doing? You know, are they what we do? Yeah? Are they inspired by? Do they pick up a rifle and go a field because of of what you're doing? That's the beautiful thing and I a combination of the film, but probably more importantly the podcast podcast. I wouldn't say it was people are inspired by also, not by us. It's more the guests. The podcast is probably the biggest thing that really gets people thinking. And we've had more emails and messages from people saying, I'm getting my my certificates for rifles, UM doing my first hunt because of the back of this, this and this and this that they've listened on the podcast or they've now email s Now, I get it. There's something I didn't know before I had a um a misconception about something. Now I get it. Or yeah, maybe I don't fully agree with you, but I understand more and that you know, sometimes it can be sometimes you can wander, especially with the podcast, and what our intention for it was is whether if you're really making a difference because we can talk all day to hunters and it's good fun, but is that really going to make a difference to the understanding of what we do in the greater the world? No, we need to reach we need to reach out, and this is a it's a free medium, it's hopefully easily consumable, and I'm sure you have a lot of people listening to your your podcast who have found it somehow, who it's maybe not a big part of their life, but and we don't want it. We are not saying that everybody needs to hunt, but it's good that people can at least understand it from a different point of view. And that's been I mean, that's been incredible. I always every time I get an email like that where I hear from somebody who is not inside the general hunting community who has taken something from a conversation with one of the awesome guests that we've had on it just makes me smile. Yeah, we have a good contingent of people that don't hunt on our podcast. And a part of that it's just due to some of the guests. Some of our guests are just not they're not hunters in any way, but they're adventures explorers, you know, just doing really cool ship stories and living life as it should be, which means whatever you're doing, you need to find meaning and you need to enjoy what you're doing. And anyone who enjoys what they're doing in life is going to be a cool person and have awesome stories. And it's about sharing that. I mean, who are your your I guess this can be cliche, but who are you're like outdoor heroes? Who are the people that you know drove you to that if you have them for adventure, yeah, or just just sometimes you read some somebody who's like shared ideas like clicked in you that you know, we tell stories all the time around here about you know, books and writings and people that that you know there's something inside of you that you you can't explain, and then someone explains hunting or explains fishing in a way that you're like, that's it for me. I mean, I mean it's were we well, now, I there was two things. One watching you McGregor and Charlie Boorman go around the world on a motorbike. When I saw that, it just kind of it kind of blew my mind. When I watched them first do that and the adventure they had going around, I was like, I want to I want to do something like that. And the second one was Ed Stafford. He was the first man to walk the full length of the Amazon. We're lucky enough to actually just have him on our podcast, which is really cool because it's here in mind. And then he comes on our show and I saw him talk as well a few years ago, and he's just a phenomenal inspirational person. And the trips and the expedition he does solo are absolutely They're incredible. I was incredible, say if if I was, Yeah, going by his book, I think it's just called Walking the Amazon. It's also TVDM well Worth, well Worth going to see. For me, it was it's probably a little bit more, a little bit more cliche for the on the hunting fishing side. When I was younger. On the fishing it was a um an English, a very famous English fisherman and naturalist called Hugh Focus. I don't know if you've ever combined that familiar but beautiful book, the book on Sea chat in particular. I used to read that book when my mom was driving us to the swimming pool to go swimming training every night. I mean, it's a big, thick book like this, and I consumed it multiple times. So he was probably my first sort of hero of the countryside would have been Hugh Folcuse, it turns out later as I found out more about him, he was a complete womanizing, a bit of an asshole. He was a fantastic but he was a fan. I've never met him, but it was just what I heard, so it might not have been true. But but he was an amazing naturalist. His the detail with which he studied what he was passionate about was incredible. And then on top of that, I mean the usual suspects for um being intrigued about Africa and then North America, the one that is there's two books that have impacted me most in recent times. One is Aldo Leopold's book Sam County Almanac, and I yeah that you yeah, it's in that bag sitting there. And the second one was a book which I literally have only read in the last six months, and it was sent to us by a podcast listener completely out of the blue, with just a letter in it by Gray Owl, and it's one of the name of the actual book. He didn't write that many is has slipped my mind at the moment, and he is one of the great conservations for the Canadian wilderness. And that book just was unbelievable, the section about I gave it to my dad when it arrived and he was sitting in his office. He's just retired, but he had an office next two hours and I gave it to and said, you know, I can believe this podcast Listen just sent us a first edition book about Gray l with a with a handwritten notes saying, I heard you mentioned this film about Gray al and this book made a big impact of my life, Soti. When I saw it in the bookshop, I just bought it. That's why I want you to share it with you guys, which was incredible. Our listeners are awesome are And I gave it to my dad and I went back in like forty five minutes later, and he's always busy and he was reading the book. So have you been reading the book the whole time? He says, I can't take my eyes off it. And it was like that for me. So when I remember the Pilgrims of the Wild, Gray Our Pilgrims of the Wild, that book is unbelievable. And if you can't appreciate nature after reading that book, then that's there's no hope. Yeah, you're hopeless. What do you guys? What's what's on the horizon for what you you know? For your adventures? Ah, we're off to Africa. We are. We're off to Africa in April. We've got some clients going out um and we're going to be making some films. We're doing some filming with pangulin. So we've just started an auction to raise some money for some panguin research and we're hopefully working with a company that was approached us again through the podcast Funny Enough Um, to try and get some software together for tracking pengulin with a guy over there in South Africa who we've got to know. If you don't know what penguin is, it's like an armadillo looking creature. I guess which is the most traffic mammal on the planet. Really, I didn't know that. I was thinking. I bet people listen to that don't know. I think there was the most trafficing is most most traffics and they're they just found a big consignment of it recently. They're they're endangered that these guys are poached for their scales, which have zero medical benefits, the same as your nails that are on your hands, and people are you know, grinding them up so they can get a big hard on. And that's basically what it is. It's for viagra and all different it's not for viagra like like foodoo, medicines that don't work and uh, And we're working with the guys in Africa because there's actually species of pangulin in Asia as well, and well, I don't know how they're going to tackle that because obviously it's quite hard with governments there and that's where most penguins are going anyway, so it would be quite hard to any kind of rescue effort over there. But in Africa, there's there's there's still hoping, there's people on the groundings really cool stuff. And so I mean in our media future, that's yeah, that's what we're doing next. We're going to make a film film about it, and and the calendar will undoubtedly book up. Yeah, I'm often Ambia in May um for that a conference for the Council of International Conservation to talk about basically the future of the future of conservation and hunting. So that's gonna be interesting. We'll probably be off to Norway at some point. I was, I've been. We we keep going back to Norway. I was there in October November last year. Oh yeah, we're photographing a moose hunt. Wow, that's a whole story in itself, an incredible experience. That's that's the place in the world that I most want to get. Are you got to do in a This is like hunting moose in the mountain and it is your your leg are just killing you by the end of a few days. But you know, you're walking so many miles each day, and it's it's such a cool community thing they have over there where you'll be ten of you that kind of go out in the morning and you're spotting in the mountain mountain range and these are steep, steep mountains, and you see a moose and then you'll go out and you'll walk, you know, fifteen miles kind of across these these things, and they'll shoot a moose out right at the back of where a probably a glacier would have been and once it shot, they were the one we did shoot on kind of the last day, it's all cut up, hung up in a tree because it was later in the day. And then the following day we hiked down the mountain, went back up again. Whole community, the whole community kind of walked. It was like ten eleven people. We were up there by seven in the morning, and there was people already with backpacks walking back down. And when they when they come back down, they finished the job in a garage and then that shared out between all the people that were hunting and in that community all of the meat. I might start a commune just like that. That's very cool. I think I'm weird, but like that's I you know, people that a lot here in the States talk about solo hunting and celebrate going out in the wilds by herself. I do enjoy that, but nowhere near as much as I enjoy like being in a camp with a bunch of people, being surrounded by a bunch of people, like the counterflast stories, campfire stories, man camp fire stories. Well, we're gonna get our ass kicked by an ex navy sealing you guys, better go ye. This dude, he will kick yours. I've met him a few times. I don't know him. I've heard the rumors. The Mountain Tout Fitness is like, but we gotta work out twelve we've been traveling. If we're late, that workout's gonna be even more painful, feel bad. Let's close the podcast about you telling everybody we figured out earlier what your poor names were, What was it, what wasn't? It's the first it's your first. Pete is the first name, and your last name is You didn't have a street where you grew up in the town where you grew up, so it would be Bimbo inch Bar would be my well, the same pet, but my first actual pet that was mine was a dull, cold Sparky and they're close close to inch Bear where I went to school is Edzel, so be Sparky, ed Sparky, Edsel and Bimbo inch Bear. You almost got through the podcast that I haven't I almost forgotten. Then you brought up the the boner down to boner scales. In my mind was like I had to make sure I mentioned I dragged down the podcast ruined the end. I ruined the ending all right, boys, thanks for coming appetially. What you do. It's great speak to you again. I need to come to your neck. There is an open invite for you in Scotland and the Highlands, so alright, make that journey. Convinced Ronella, let me out of Montana. Alright, that's it. That is all number fitting of books. Pretty cool, pretty cool discussion with those two boys. It was early in the morning, snow was falling in Montana. Um, but it was an interesting conversation, and it's good to know a little bit about their backgrounds and what they do. I'd love to have them back or go visit them in Scotland and learn a little bit more about wildlife management and and things and land use over there. They're part of the world. But we just had an interesting conversation. We got rolling and didn't get to it, but we'll get to it next time. I hope you enjoyed this one either way. I love those guys. What else, what else? What else? Well, Um, a lot of things going on, but but number one, we're still rocking and rolling on the Mediator Live Tour. You've heard me say it before. I would imagine if you're listening to this that it's going. So if you go to the meat Eater dot com, you go over there, what you're gonna find is the events page. Click on that, find the event near you, and then go. We just launched the We just announced the Austin podcasts. I believe it's on April two in Austin. Come see us, man, I'll be there. I'll be on stage and I hope to see all you Texans out there cheerings on talking hunting and fishing. Um. You know, regular business. Subscribe to our newsletter. Go to the website to do that. Go to the website, look at our stores. See if you find anything in there you'd like to wear, or stickers you might want to put on your truck or vehicle or prius who knows. I like reasons are fine with me. I'm fine with it. But all those things you can do here with our folks at the Meteor dot Com. But I would say in closing for for ups at number fifty, uh, it is exciting to be a part of this company. I am running around every day for meeting to meeting, discussing concepts for content, new content around people. You know, some people you don't ideas you that I've never considered. It is invigorating and inspiring to be around these people, and I cannot wait for you all to hear, to read, to watch what we're producing here right now in the future. I think it's gonna be an exciting year years for us, and I know some of the concept we're discussing and pitching and batting around here and even producing already our heller and it's it's a pleasure to be a part of this crew that includes Ryan Callahan, you as Matelas, Steve Vannella Morgan Mason, Spencer Newhart, Sam Longren, Miles Nulty, all the guys I'm working with. Um It's it is an amazing team, and I am very excited for all of you too to hear and watch and listen to our content going forward. So I'll get off my soapbox in regards to that, but it's a it's been a good time here in Bozeman lately, and so that's all I have for this episode. Join us next Tuesday for some more talking and hopefully the next time you will join us as well here on the Hunting Collective. Bye bye,