00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I'm been O'Brien as always, but this is a brand new show and a brand new time. It's gonna be weird for a while. Um. Because of COVID nineteen, the coronavirus has shut down major parts of our society, parts of our country. And so here we are living in in what my friend Joe Rogan would call strange times, strangest health times, and and we're all going through at to some level. You know, here at Meat Eater, here at the company I work for that that the hostess helps me host this podcast. We have a lot of employees that you know and love that are on this show and on other shows that are quarantined at their homes, unable to come into work, unable to do the work that they do every day. Um. This company has has has banned us from traveling, and that's the right thing to do. UM. A lot of our live shows for for the month of April especially and March are getting canceled. Hopefully that we can reschedule those for all of you that wanted to come see the crew live and in color. But I think all those are the right things to do. There is a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of confusion, a lot of people wanting to control things. And I think we all know how that feels, and I certainly know how that feels. So I take all of that very seriously, to say the least. And I think the measures that this, this organization is that company has taken, and many other companies like it have taken, and then that we've taken as a country on a national level, are appropriate. I feel that they are appropriate, But they're also kind of scary, and they change everything and they make us feel um, make us just feel different. And so maybe every morning what this show can do. We're because we're gonna go daily until this damn thing gets normalized. We're just gonna do a daily podcast. We're gonna talk hunting stories, We're gonna talk with great guests. We're gonna have laughs, we're gonna make jokes, we're gonna have contests. We're gonna be as normal as we can within the time you're listening to this show. Because everything else is gonna seem crazy around you, feel free to come here and hang out with us. We're gonna have a good time. Phill the engineers at home with his family. He's also on quarantine or working from home, and it's gonna be uh. We'll try to check in with him, make sure we get him on the phone a couple of times this week and see what he's up to saying with Steve Ronella, Yanni pitel Us, other people within our our group that we gotta call check up on and make sure they're good, make sure they're still having a good time wherever they may be. So that's th HC Daily Quarantine Podcast. That's what you're gonna hear every single morning from Monday to Friday until this freaking thing is over. We're gonna go hard and we're gonna make some good content, so hopefully you stick around with us. The last thing I'll say before we get into our guest today is let's use this time to come together. Let's use this time to understand what binds us, not what drives us apart. There's some in the media, there's some out there on social media as well that would like to tell you that that this is a time to point fingers, this is the time to blame, This is the time to retreat into your ideological corners. I don't believe it's that time at all. I'm going to focus on my community, my family, the people around me, the people I love, and the people that I can affect. And I'm gonna do that with as much positivity and sensibility and pragmatism as I possibly can. It's good, it's hard. As I said, it's confusing. It feels like this, there's just a danger in the air. It's just everything just feels different. Um. But if we all get if we'll hunker down, do what we need to do, have a good time on this podcast, it'll be over as soon as we know it. We'll be back to Turkey season, we'll be back to picking Morrel's, we'll be back to doing the things that we love to do. And luckily going outside it's probably not going to be something that they ban ever, So hunting is the way to go, all right. This episode, my buddy Sam Sohol you've heard him. He's the public landbus guy. I've known him for years and one of my best friends on the Earth. We're gonna tell hunting stories. We're gonna talk shit. We're gonna tell you about the time we went to British Columbia with Joe Rogan, we ate roll Heart. We watched Joe chase moose on by his simply his feet, trying to run towards the moose I had just killed, and a bunch of other things. We shot a cover for a magazine. It was a hell of a time. We got drunk on spiced rum. What a great time in British Columbia. Enjoyed that story with my buddy Sam soho right now, what's up Samuel? You know, not a whole lot, just you know, enjoying a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning. Well, welcome to uh first ever th HC Quarantine Daily Podcast. I'm excited. I get to be the one that kicks it off. You're you're the one that kicks it off. And uh this is where I'm just stuck in the podcast studio alone because fills it at home with his family. I'm out here. It's just I'm just gonna podcast like a telethon for the next however long it takes, however for anything. Are you talk? No? Uh, no, I don't. I'm just behind my own white claw and that's it. So here, I'll open I already told you I was drinking when I'm gonna have a second have a second one? Oh yeah, you know everybody. I feel like everybody at this point in time, it's got to be feeling a little bit of anxiety. Um oh yeah. Even as confident as a person I am, Like if I get sick and I go, oh well, um, I still feel like just the level of insecurity and anxieties at a peak. Where are you at with that? Yeah? No, I'm right in the same boat. Like I uh, like every year this time, at this time of year, like when the season's changed, I typically get like a pretty decent chest cold, Like it just happens. I know what's coming at some point. Um. And so that started on Tuesday, Like I started to get a cold, and I was like, man, I like I've got travel plans and stuff, like I'm not really worried about me, but like if I get on a plane and cough, I'm worried, like people are gonna like point a finger at me and like pushed me out of the way or something. It's just a weird like you just start to think about stuff that irrationally. Yeah, it's a weird time. And it has as like I said, as as Mr Rogan says, who will speak about here in a moment um yep, at our first meeting of that that fellow, as he said, strange times. It's just strange times. My wife and I and son sons went to Barnes and Noble last night to get some puzzles and games and books and such, and it was just like a vibe of weird people around, Like people were just like taking a wide berth. It's like, especially I think little kids, um were normally people be like, oh a little kid, I'll get my high five and just you just still. So it's it's it is the weirdest of times. Um. But as I said earlier, is long for you and I as long as it does in Pete our Turkey season, which it probably won't because we can just go outside. Yeah it shouldn't and most mostly because we'll be driving everywhere, um for Turkey season, which helps. That's true. Yeah, I canceled my Texas trip, which is a sad, sad moment, but I had to do it. Um. So now I'm thinking of all I'm gonna I'm coming to your if you're in the West, I'm coming to your state. Turkey hunt. I'm not just staying in Montana spreading spreading it out have to. Well, yeah, the nice thing about beating Montana is if you wanted to, you could kill whatever five birds there, which you know, ye without leaving. I figured, you know, my ten bird goal, which I'll I've kind of resigned to always having and maybe never achieving. Um, you know, like Charles Barkley trying to get NBA title, Let's it's not gonna I'm gonna keep trying. I'm gonna keep saying it, but it's it's probably never gonna happen. Um. I figure, if I could get five in Montana, if I could get one in South Dakota to in Nebraska, two in a again, I got ten right there. Yeah that's true. So numbers wise, it's a piece of cake on paper. It's a piece of cake. And that's it. Um yeah, all right, Well you know what we should talk about before we get into anything else. Well, well, two things we got to talk about. One the public land van. You just got this thing. You were just in town, hung out a little bit. You got this thing wrapped. First, we should say, just in case no one knows who Sam is, I should say, like who you are, what you did with the bus, and then what's going on with the van. Yeah. So I've been on the podcast before, but I'm Sam as the whole. I've been kind of a major public land advocate over the last few years. Uh, and that included turning an old school bus into my rolling hunting shack and using it as a billboard to raise awareness about public land issues. And over the last six months have um kind of transitioned from the bus into something a little bit more mobile, which is a fifteen passenger Chevy Express van which has been converted to four wheel drive and uh we yeah, we just had it out in Bozeman and got the exterior wrapped, um kind of the same color scheme as the bus, just a little bit different lines. And the next step is to uh do the interior build out and then obviously more accessories and stuff on the exterior, but basically creating a mini version of the public Land bus and using it as the public Land van public Land van. Yeah, we hunted out of the public Land van when it was more just like we did just like a van at that point. Yeah, yeah, right, you were, and you were the you were the first guest in van. So it's still yeah, still had all the carpet and the paneling and everything inside. So yeah, at least I slept on the ground. Yeah it was four wheel drive. But that's about it. Well, I'm looking forward to all the crazy things you're gonna do to it and then, um, what other plans with the van anything else? Just uh yeah, just getting the build out done and then um, kind of using that to spend time on public land and document all the adventures and uh, continue to raise awareness and raise dollars for conservation and public land protection. Well here's something we both attended a rally for when you were here for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and I said for THHC Quarantine Daily. We were just gonna just gonna not We're not gonna get political or controversial. We're just gonna have a good time. But I feel like I feel like the land or Conservation Fund as it is now and the bill that's going around S three four two two, um, aren't political. We should just it's it's nothing to get upset about. This is something we at all gather around, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think it's something that everybody needs to needs to hear about two if if they are haven't already. I mean, it's a pretty pretty amazing bill that's that's going to be rolling through the Senate here. Okay, well, I'll I can handle the bill. You tell people land our conservation phone. What the hell is that thing? Sure? So? Land Water Conservation Fund was started in ninety four and it was basically it's a royalty fund, or it's a fund that's generated primarily up based off the royalties of offshore oil exploration. So it's um Basically, they thought, um, you know, because we're extracting one resource, we want to invest some of that money back into protecting other resources. And so they passed into law that each year the Land and Water Conservation Fund could be funded up to million dollars a year. And then though that money goes to the entire nation and used for things like fishing access points, hunting access but above and beyond that, ball fields, parks, soccer fields, I mean, like you name it. There's the cool thing about the LWCF is every single county in the nation has benefited from those dollars coming out of that fund. Yeah, it's kind of it's such a by it's by Parson even in its idea, right, the idea that if you lean left and you and you really don't you're against extraction or against um mining and those types of things, fracking all all that. Let's say you like lean that way while this is taking this is making sure that even though we're doing these things off shore, we're taking that money and plug it back into our system. We'll probably get back to into our communities to make our communities better. So you lean the other way, So you lean right and you're into this stuff. Well, this this is one way to to to go back and justify what's going on and with these offshore oil rigs and off shore oil drilling to say, like the royalties here being passed back to the American people. So either way you lean, we I can paint this as a positive for for the way you approach these issues. Um and So this thing hasn't really ever been funded, as it is so explain to people how kind of how funding might work. And the fact that this thing has only once I believe it's been fully funded. Yeah yeah, so, like I said before, it can be funded up to nine million a year, but I'm pretty sure that has only happened once, maybe twice in in the last fifty six years. I think maybe something like that. I can't remember, but I think it was once, is what they said at the rally. So, um, yeah, so it's only been funded once, which basically is, you know, it leaves a lot of people in limbo when you don't know exactly how much money is going to be coming from the fund each year. Um. And so you know, about a month ago they had proposed to cut that even more, you know, up to nine seven per cent, and so the LBCF would have only been funded roughly fifteen million a year instead of the nine million that it could be funded. And then obviously I'll let you take it over about what S thirty two does, um, which was a complete one eighty for the administration in a good way. Yeah. Yeah, I mean when we hear me need to report that Trump President Donald Trump. If you're not when I say Trump, if you're not a worker, I'm talking about President Donald J. Trump is a j Trump Yeah, um, tweeted support of the LWCF. You know, Number one, it's nice to see the President of the United States acknowledging things that we care deeply about. Number One, like that alignment is wonderful. Um. At this point, you know, the thing to fight for for the LWCF is that full funding that you mentioned, right. So, a bunch of Senators bipartisan showing this bipartisan solidarity that that you rarely see. Senators Mansion from West Virginia, Gardner from Colorado, Warner from Virginia. Those folks are all Um Democrat, Republican Democrat, Danes from Montana here in Montana, Heinrich from New Mexico, and Portman from Ohio. Introduced this Great American Outdoors Act, which is is more beautifully known as S three four two two. And that's that's something you should all remember. And I start for you say it does some things, but it's simply when it in terms of the LBCF, it would it would fully fund FISCO year nine million dollars annually for that LBCF. It would appropriate all nine million dollars of that to what we just talked about, two parks, two ball fields, to fishing access sites, to hunting Easeman's to all the things that that we know and love from just a from hunting angling level, but also just to our personal lives. My kid plays in a park in Bozeman called the Dinosaur Park that was funded by the LWCF. So it stretches well across, but I would think even just as big. This is another thing that this does that's been a huge issue for conservation and public lands for a long time. It provides one point nine million billion dollars at one point nine billion dollars annually through to address this backlog, this maintenance backlog that's happening in our national parks are through the US for Service and our public lands and the US Fish and Wildlife Service BLM on state lands, there's just a maintenance backlog and you're talking about falling down buildings, restrooms, roads, trails, everything that needs repaired. There's been this huge backlog and been one of the things that I've talked about with the folks at b h A a a lot in our our meetings and conversations. And so that's what s fort S for two two would would essentially provide roughly I mean two point eight billion dollars for conservation. That's what it would do. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing to see that dollar amount on an annual basis fiscally put into too conservation and to see Republicans and Democrats all cheering for it, right, Um, and you posted a lot of things about what what can people do to support this bill? Yeah, so there's a couple of different things. Um. You know, if you go to the b h A website, obviously they have links where you can email your senators directly. If you don't want to go through the anguish of looking up a link, you can dial I'll just look it up right here. Um. You can actually call directly the US Senate at two oh two to two four three one to one, and it takes you to basically operator and then you can ask to talk to your state senator and you can leave a message and just basically encourage your senators to vote yes on Senate bill. Give me that number again, Give me that number again. Yeah, yeah, two zero two to two four three one to one to one. All right, when we get off the phone with you, since I've ben to be locked in here, I want to call that number and while we're recording, we're going to leave a message. Yea. And it's and it's super easy. I mean, it's uh, yeah, it's it's I called last week and left messages from my senators and just made sure that they knew, you know, how I felt about the issue, and just wanted them to vote. Yes. It's it's simple. I mean, typically you're not going to end up talking directly to your senator. You're going to talk to an AID or or somebody you know, a secretary. Um. But yeah, it's it's still they keep track of all of those calls and they know that when you know, for every person that either sends an email or makes a phone call, you know, there's another thousand of us out there that are thinking the same thing. Yeah, and we feel like from a from just a block and the tackling level, will this thing get passed? It feels really good. It's got to buy the bi part support from a number of senators. It only needs I think six more senators to sign on for for it to get pushed through, you know, relatively unchallenged. Um, it seems like the President will sign it with no problem at all. Must like the public Lands package we discussed on this podcast you know last year. Um, this seems like something that could fly through the House and the Senate, you know, And to be perfectly honest, like it's I feel like both sides could really use a win at you know, at the moment, and this this is certainly a win. Yeah. And we're only in a good spot for our community when we when we become the win for politicians, when we have spoken up enough and gotten behind something that is uniquely American to the point where we are seeing is something that you know, the things we care about, UM allow politicians from both sides of the out to coalesce. Uh. It's it's I think that's a bigger thing than most of us could ever understand. It's huge. It's huge for conservation, huge republic lands. I hope it stays this way forever. But but you and I and everyone else that thinks like us are going to continue to push and push and push and push, because that's the only way it will stay that way. You know, It's the only way that we're gonna get what we want. I if we call these senators, we call our congressmen, and we tell them this is what we want, go do it for us. Yeah, you know, And I was having a conversation with somebody about it, UM a couple of days ago, and just the just the fact that that you know, if this all goes through and dollars for the lbcf IS is funded fully like the amount of other dollars that can be leveraged off of knowing that that full amount is going to be there. I mean, it really doubles the triples or quadruples the amount of conservation dollars that go back into it from matched funds from other organizations, state dollars, you know, different avenues that that people will match for certain projects. Yeah, yeah, it's it's these things have have a way of becoming grounds well and also just just for all of us, you know, even in a political sphere, to point to this thing is like this is you know along with this, this really reminds you of of Pittman, Robertson, Dingle Johnson, those type of things, like we are taking the funds, these the funds that we're collecting, and we are driving them to a local level and doing good for conservation. UM. It's a very similar concept and one that's worked well with both both these legislations for for decades and so UM we have right now fifty six centers. I just wanted to look that up. Fifty six centers, which is a more a majority of the US Senate. UM on this bill, and so we need to convince the rest of them so we don't have to have the way, we don't have to worry about We do not have to worry about this going through one way or the other. And so we'll leave that behind. Just while you're you're quarantined, while you're sitting around, this is something to think about. It's all positive. As I said before, no matter how you what you think UM about you know, public lands, or what you think about politics, this is something that we can all come together around. And this is a great time to come together around anything, UM. And so look look up that and we'll at some point later in THHD Daily Quarantine. I probably won't call today, and now I realized it's Sunday, Um, nobody's gonna be there. I don't know, maybe call tomorrow. But we're gonna call that number. We're gonna leave a message here on the show, and we're gonna see who we can talk to UM and see how far we get. But it would encourage every everybody to take a few minutes do the same thing. All right now, now, Sam, have we I think we've probably talked about while recording a podcast story, we're about to tell. I can't imagine we haven't covered we have most we've covered it, but but I think it's been very like briefly, I think, yeah, yeah, we covered a little bit of this. We laughed about it in the context of other conversations. We've never really sat down and just straight up told the whole story. And we didn't. We didn't like confer on this beforehand. Uh well, I'd be interested to see how we remember it, if we remember the same remember the same way, or based on that what was that spice rum we were drinking spice box, based on the how much spice box we consumed, whether even we remember parts of it at all. Uh yeah. So I want to start kind of at the end um because I watched a show called This Is Us. If anybody watched that show, it makes me cry all the time. But they bounce around in time. So that's what we're gonna do as we tell these hunting stories on the TC Daily Quarantine podcast. I want to start with the moment that you looked up out of the truck. I think you were probably in the truck. It might have been gotten out at this point. You looked up and you saw famous comedian host of Fear Factor podcaster Joe Rogan running down a muddy road in British Columbia with his sicken jacket flapping in the breeze as he sprinted toward a freshly fallen freshly fallen bullness. So, in preparation for this podcast, I uh, I pulled up the original um like, I went back into on an old hard drive that I have all these photos on, and I pulled up all whatever photos that I shot that week, and that was one of the first ones I was looking for, was when Rogan was literally sprinting down the road. Yep, there it is right there. I remember, I remember that. It just burned in my brain. I just remember, like his jacket is flapping in the breeze and he's sprinting down this road. Yeah, and when when this podcast airs, I'm not sure when you're posting it, but I will. I will re edit this photo and post it and push people that way so they can get the rest of the story. But yeah, I'll probably bother you to We're going to post it a tomorrow morning, Monday, so you're looking at this on Monday, I will post I will bother you for some some select images from this hunt. Will share them up on my social too, Um, because you just need to see some of the things that happened on this h But anyway, you're from your perspective, you you look up and there goes Joe sprinting. I mean that the moose is maybe two yards from our position. At this point, there goes Joe. It was I'm glad I at least captured one image of it because at this point, like we were, you know, it's towards the end of the hunt, and so we're driving down the road end up spotting two moose. I'm in the back seat, Joe's in the back seat next to me. You're in the front seat. We all stop, everyone bails out of the truck. Um. You set the moose and then like literally the next thing is Joe was sprinting down the road. Yes, from my from my angle, like we these two moose run across our way ahead of us. They get up in to our right. You know, this is like a logging road in the middle of you know, central British Columbia, and it's it's at this point it's been a relatively tough hunt. It hasn't been what we expected, but when we look up and see two bull moose. And at this point in my life I had laid eyes onto that many moose. Um, especially you know, decently mature bull moose as these two were. It was a shock of all shocks. Our guy in my cockage slams on the brakes. I jump out. I'm up down the barbage up the other side. I'm tracking these bulls. They kind of stop out in this meadow. Sorry, I'm burping the white claw. They stop out in this meadow, and I had I remember I had a man, I'm forgetting a straight pull action rifle. Um, I'll think of a Blazar straight pull action rifle, and that means the action pulls straight back, ejects the cartridge and objects the case, and then you push it straight back in. So, man, you can get rolling with this thing. So I'm up fully, I'm at a standing position. These two moose stopped at like a couple hundred yards and I shoot, hit it in the shoulder, Rack another round and it almost instantly. Shoot hit it in the shoulder again, Rack another round in it's still kind of up. I shoot again, hit it somewhere high in the shoulder of the third time, it falls down. And by the time I'm able to eject the third case and look down the road towards where the bull was had fallen, there is Joe Rogan who has jumped out of the truck. It is now running down the road toward towards this moose. And I think later like we were like going through images, and he's like, I don't know what happened. I just like, I guess I'm running. Yeah, I just started I started running. Uh so what from your point of view, what happened next? So? Uh, Joe sprints down the road and then you and I and Mike hop back in the truck and basically just rode up to catch up with Joe. And obviously your moose was down not too far off the road, and so so we uh we ripped down the road. But it was kind of later in the afternoon, and since we were so close to the moose, we opted to rather than quarter like skin it, quarter and out do all that stuff. We took a few photos and then we cut the moose in half, and then all four of us put like loaded it in the pickup and we were on the way back to camp. Let me I have a video of me asking Joe to describe this, tell a story better bris moose, and I'm gonna give you thirty seconds. We're having a good time, laughing, joking. All a sudden, Mike goes Holy Ship, two bulls. We stop the truck, you jump out. Within ten seconds, the first shot goes up, boom, the moose drops. I don't know. I might have yelled shoot him again or something. Who knows what happened the moose drop. You're you've got this this crazy guns. You're unloaded, bang bang. You hit him about at least three times. You shot about four shots. And then I don't even realize I'm running. I'm halfway to the bull. It's down, it's kicking, and I'm halfway there, and I'm like, I guess I'm running, So I just keep running. And so I get there. I don't know why I was. I guess I wanted to be there when it died. I don't know why. So I get there and this enormous fucking horse on steroids is lying there with two saloon doors grown out of the side of the head. And we get there. We we got it. We take the organs out that we want. We saw it in half hit at the pieces up, throw it in the back of the truck, close the tailgate. We're back home in an hour and twenty minutes. That that description was in the middle of our spice box. Uh experiment. I can watch that video forever. I don't know how to get that video. I don't only have a video on Facebook. I don't know how to get that off of Facebook. If I can, I'll post that too. I have somebody figured out. But yeah, we this is the last the day, I think the day before we leave. Um, this is we have just essentially a day left to hunt. And I we had not seen a branch antler bull moose at all before this, and so yeah, we get up to it. It's it has died kind of in a weird spot off the road, and we feel like we can just back the truck up to it, cut it in half, and all three of us, four of us could lift this moose into the back of my cockriage. Is you know and struggle like I just do you remember like when we were gutting that thing, do you remember how big? Like so those two balls were standing basically in a in an old clear cut, and so it was like half growth pine and they were eating the tops off of all of those pine trees. And I don't know if you remember how big the stomach was in that thing when we pulled it out, but it was like it was like an extra large physio ball full of those pine needle tops or pine tree tops. It was insane, like I'll never forget that, I'll never know. And I remember pulling the organs out and just being you know, and for me, I had never I don't know if you at that point I ever killed, but i'd never shut him. I did not, and I had I had been traveled around and killed a lot of big game animals at that point. Even then, it's five five years ago. According to this Facebook post, I was just looking at five years ago. Um had to be more than that six years ago now, And yep. And so at this point, I never I so I was. And we're talking a central Central Canada or Central British Columbia movie. This is we're not talking to Yukon moves here. Um, this is a totally different animal. But even even then, to me, this is a giant, a giant giant bull. And I just I just remember being as as you can hear from Joe's voice, we were all just kind of like that just happened. That happened. And even on the ride back, I remember just like that did we have two halves of a moose in the back of the truck. It was one of those things and had gone by that quickly, and that was kind of I think we just keep going because I we'll get to exactly how this all came to be here soon. But so we get back in the truck, as Joe said, there, um, thanks Joe for joining the podcast. I guess your will. Um, And an hour and twenty minutes, we're back home, back to the little house. We're staying on this little homestead with Mike Cocker, who's our guide. Um, and we mean it was like a party. We just erupted because I think that hunt, I don't know if if you can agree with it's like one of the better dynamic group dynamics I've ever been a part of. It was we had a good damn time, like we just yeah, we had we had a blast. We laughed the whole time the majority of the hunt, you know, like it was it was November and so it was you know, kind of like post rut and the worst we were doing. We're covering a lot of ground, and so we were doing a lot of just driving from cut block to cut block to cut block, just glassing and calling and looking, and I mean we we covered It was basically we spent a week in the truck together, like just getting no getting to know each other, which was awesome. Yeah. I mean, and at that point it's two thousand fourteen, and and you know, Joe Rogan is a known entity. He's a celebrity, but he's not. He wasn't where he is now. Um, we talked a lot about podcasting. In fact, this trip was one of the trips where um, as you'll remember, Joe kept convinced me to try to start a podcast. So you should start a podcast. You're funny, you could do it. You should start a podcast. I'll help you. I'll help you. And by the time this thing was over, I was fully convinced I was going to start a podcast, Like I told my girlfriend at time now wife, I was going to do it. Um, and then never did it. This didn't do it for years. I mean, this is podcast worth two years. That's fourty years of time where I could have been doing this that I you know, with that man's support that like I just wasn't doing it. So it's a you know, professionally, probably probably a time where I screwed it up big time, but THHD wouldn't be what it is today anyway. But yes, so we get back to this little lodge. There's an assistant guide. If you remember his name, I don't, Um what was his name? Travis? Travis was there. He also liked to go by Joe Dirt. Joe Dirt. Does he look Joe Dirt too? If you ever listen to this, I love you, buddy, buddy boy. He looks just like Joe Dirt, kind of acts like him too in a little wait, sweet dude, nice, nice guy. Um. And then I think some of Mike Hackages, his wife and kids were there at some level. But it became it immediately became I think because we had such a great time. We had this like furious end, this like really we had really wanted success a lot ride on this hunt for me and for you and for I guess for everybody. Um, well, we all loved each other, cared about each other, We had a great time and we just let it loose. We got back, Yeah, we did indeed um in the way that Joe had. We had the moose heart. Joe chops the moose heart, up Um starts cooking it, starts chops to liver, up starts cooking it, and and we break out this bottle of spice box. Was it rum or was it something else? No, it was a rum. It was rum. I just remember the taste I found. It was like this taste like turpentine. This is the most awful trash gut rum ever ever be made. Like it just was just just awful um. But we proceeded to drink I don't know how many bottles of it enough to it was a lot, enough to fully black out to the point where I was trying to remember. I remember later on trying to remember everything that happened to write and I was writing an article at the time. I worked for Peas and Sunny Magazine to write this article, and I felt like I had to start the article at this moment, this like celebratory moment because the idea of behind the article was tracing this all the way back. Stephen Ronnella Um introduced Joe Rogan to hunting. Stephen Ronnella introduced Joe Rogan to me when I asked him like, hey, you know my celebrity type guys that like hunt and just do it for the meat, and he brought up the fear factor. Guy. I was like, oh crap, Um, so we'll get to how that all went down soon. But um, you know it's funny. I just looked over in the podcast studio and there's a picture of me and Joe with that mouse right right to the right. Yeah, right to my right. They asked us like, send us send in a group and grand that you think is cool? When I did, and they put on the wall. Um, Anyhow, when I'm sitting when I'm trying to write this article later, we had we had drank so much that there's so much of that I couldn't remember. I was like, I'm blacked out for like the most mem As a journalist, you don't really want to black out during um parts of your story. It's frowned the pond. So from that night you have any I just remember there being I remember there being a beaver. I was I was going to bring that up like all of a sudden that like somebody like just walks back through the door. But this isn't just any beaver. It's the biggest beaver, right, it was giant. Yeah, I have no idea how many hounds that thing was, but it was. I mean he had to be close to four long. Yeah, it was. I just remember Mike cocker Is is our guy, and we'll kind of describe the kind of guy he is here coming up. He he comes walking in the door and just like plops a fucking beaver on the ground. And the beaver like it's sitting up like it was alive, and it's it's two three ft tall. It's the biggest beaver I've ever seen. And we're in like a drunken haze. We're laughing, we're joking. I'm filming that video we just heard from Joe. We're eating moose heart, we're eating moose liver. We're just having we're laughing. I just remember like it was some of the best some of the best time, one of the best like post hunt experiences I've ever had. Um And so I just want to read I wrote this story. I'll also post a link to this story UM post published April for Patients Hunting and they're magazine, their website, and we'll get to exactly how that came to be. But I said this, I said, He sat across. This is the beginning of the store. He sat across from the table from me, tall in his chair, looking satisfied, seemingly unable to remove the triumph from his face. It was Joe Rogan's expression. It wasn't just Joe Rogan's expression that read a victory, though, it was his whole demeanor. For a man who's part comedian, part fighter, it was a damn good time to be the former, to sit back with his fellow hunters and enjoy were better yet revel Rogan's plate was overflowing with wild organs. Thick, juicy slices of fresh moose heart sat steaming beside that same animal's liver, smothered and grilled onions. Beyond that, beyond this first plate of wild protein, there was so much more, and the stand up comedian, actor, martial artists, UFC commentator, and podcaster with being joined at all. Though Rogan has spent some of his time in Hollywood, there'd be no private chefs to prepare his backstraps. He hunts, kills, butchers, and eats his own meat, joining thousands of other converts in a movement that cannot be ignored. Eat what You kills this mantra and its front man is the dude sitting in front of me devouring a bloody moose heart. Anyway, that was the beginning of the story, and this whole thing, the beginning of this whole thing, Sam was around. Funny enough, I sit here now working for Steve Rinella at a company called Meat Eater Um, and at this this moment, we're kind of celebrating and eat what You Kill movement. And that's kind of what this what brought us all to British Columbia, or at least you know, kind of what it was. The reason why I wanted to go there, and why we hired you to come and shoot photos, and then why we called Mike Cockerage and Joe Rogan. We wanted to kind of make a statement about this movement that was was coming up six years ago. Really I think probably started by Steve Rinella, adopted by so many people, including Joe Um. And so it's a good time to kind of go back to how this all began. You and I didn't really know each other prior to this hunt, right, we had never met. No, No, we had never met. Um, I was actually thinking about all that went down and uh so, um, it was like early in October that same year, I was out in West Virginia on a photo shoot for Remington's Firearms at one of their new products seminars, and I had met Mike Scobie out there, and um, he was at that time the editor of Peterson's and so then I had sent him my whatever portfolio at the time that I had, and uh, that's how him and I met. And then that's how he introduced me or like you know you to me, and that's like we had a whatever, a little conference call and you guys are like, hey, can you be in British Columbia like next week? Yep. Um, yeah, that's kind of all that went down. And for me, I'm just you know, I'm working at Fusion Signing as a you know, managing editor or whatever, second in command to a guy named Mike scobe who you and I both know to be a legend in our own mind and it probably his own mine in our minds too. Um. It's a great dude, and and we're patients. Hunting Magazine is is I think the largest hunting only publication that is in this country as far as subscribership goes. So it's it's for me as a hunter, somebody, a journalism student and a hunter. I've arrived at a place in my life where I'm working as an It like getting paid to go hunting right about it produce a magazine for everyone, I like my fellow hunters. And at this point, I think, like I've made it. This is it, and I think during that time my career, this was the culmination of all the work I've done to that point, and I wanted to I had we had written the year before, UM, we had done a eat what You Kill cover. UM that had a it just said eat what you kill on it, and it had a knife that our our mutual friend of Leechose shot for us. Had a knife with a backstrap on it and a bunch of blood on this hand. And it was it was seen is kind of a little bit controversial, but also await kind of like pushing pushing our community to think about things differently. I was proud of that cover. I know Mike Scobe was proud of it too, and so we wanted to follow that up was something even more jarring, even maybe more different, and um, probably not controversials not the right word, but um, you know, more diverge from what you normally see like a big buckle on every every hunting magazine cover. So that was where we were trying to We're trying to figure out how to follow up this this cover, and I just said, uh. And at this point I had talked to Ronnella the year before when I was writing the article for the the original Eat which You Kill Um cover on Peterson's and he had pointed me towards Joe Rogan and I interviewed him for that story. He only made a little sidebar because the interview was it was like three hours long. I just called him, right, He's like, called your Rogan and I was like, do you mean the fear factor? Yay? And so I called him and just as you can imagine now in his podcast Fame, we talked, I don't know how long. We talked for three hours. We talked about wolves in World War two. We talked about everything you could possibly think of, and I ended up writing a sidebar on the subject for this article in Pearson Hunt. And so I felt like at the time, I felt like, well, I didn't really get all that, but we had Also, he had also talked about wanting to go to more hunts, and I said, manu a little we should go hunting. And so when this idea for the second cover came around, I was like, what's gotta be Joe Rogan and we got to take him to do something where he can get the most meat out of one single trip. And so then the idea came up Moose, Like that's the perfect way to go um. And so I called Joe asked him, say, hey, man, you want to go hunt moose Rish Columbia. He said, hell, yeah, you tell me when and I'll try to make it happen. So we're like, well, we gotta go. It was I think that was in late October. So we had a couple of weeks, got it, got on the worn with Mike Hawkard, who I knew from a mutual friend who's up in Quesnel, British Columbia who runs an outfitting service up there, and gave him a call. He's like, yeah, dude, I'd love to I'm a huge UFC fan. I would love to have Joe Rogan come up here. I would do anything to make that happen. Um. Here's some dates you guys can come. We called Joe. He more actually was available those dates, and then we were like, holy sh it, now we gotta have somebody photographed this thing. We kind of work backwards and so we're like in in Scoby says, hey, man, I know this. I met this, this, this guy, this young kid at I'm like, what's my age or both kids? I'm at this young kid at a at an event. I he'd be perfect for this. And we called you and it's like boom, you were there, and and knowing how this all came together afterwards, like when we're eating this mooseheart, how good it felt like all this stuff seems serendipitous in a way for this, for this trip because I didn't know you. I didn't know Joe other than than the interaction I just described, and I did know Mike hawckerage other than the interactions I just described. So it's literally four people coming to to shoot what I felt at the time was a very important cover for Hunting and for our magazine and just for just for my career, um for you, the same thing, you know, as an up and coming photographer, to get a chance to shoot a cover number one, but a cover of Joe Rogan number two UM, and and for for my cockerage, for his guiding service to be able to be a part of that. So we're all coming together for a very important thing, um And it turned out to be legendary. And it could have gone somebody we could have got there, and Joe could have been you know, a Dick or Mike could have just not had it set upright, or or I could have you know, been awful or whatever. Anything could have gone wrong. But man, it didn't go wrong, and the things that did you are just kind of swept under the road. I feel like we guys got super lucky with that whole trip, and just like like you said, that's how it all came together. And like I'm going back through photos right now and like as we're talking and just kind of like remembering the trip. And man, I was a horrible photographer at the time you guys hired me. I mean I was I was truly like just up and coming, like I was really just getting my feet wet. And so you know, fortunately I was able to shoot a photo good enough for that cover, and uh, you know, I think it's one of my you know, definitely one of my favorite shots I've ever taken. But um, just looking at some of the other stuff that I shot during the trip, it's like, you know, like we've all come a long ways. Yeah, it's like one of those. It's also one of those trips, right. That was the start of a lot of things, you know, the start of my finding my way here, um, the start of you finding your way to where you are. Um. I think because like you said, I mean we were. I was. I was just a writer for a magazine at that point. I hadn't nobody kne who I was, and I didn't intend for anybody to other than in the context of I wrote for this magazine. I wanted it to be good, um, you know. And Joe Rogan had had was talking to us the entire trip about this podcast that he had and how he thought it was doing really good and it was just an amazing thing and he was just kind of him and his buddies at that point, um, and how millions of people were listening to it. And I had never even at that moment, it would never would have realized what it is today, um, and where we all are today. After this the whole thing went down, So it's just a weird coalescence of all these things. Um, I've always felt that it drove a lot of my career. Do you feel like this this thing kind of was something that just snapped and and became more than just a trip. Oh yeah absolutely. Um, you know when that cover hit, it really helped catapult my career. Um just you know, just mostly from people knowing my name as a photographer. Um. Yeah, so it's it definitely helped me, like, you know, probably skip a few steps that I normally he would have had to take to get to where I am today. Alright, just that you know, just spending a week in British Columbia. Yeah, and we I I see these photos now, I'm looking at the article on Pigeon Sunny dot com and I see these photos and I'm wearing like all this shitty kid I don't want to say if you made it, uh, gear that I would never wear today. And like, I've learned so much about hunting from this moment. I'm so much more dialed with how I go through hunting. At this from six years ago, that's not it's it's ridiculous. It's not even funny. Um when I look at like what I was wearing and the mannerisms, UM say with Joe. I mean Joe, he had a bunch of sick of gear on, but he was he was a novice hunter when we all met up um there. And now, man, you know, he's one of the better bow hunters that I know. And so he's come so far in that time, and you know, not to mention his podcast and what he's done with that, that that goes about saying that goes out saying he's become He's become you know, a sort of a god within the podcast space, and you know, such a leader in in our culture. Um. So, anyway, we should probably get to I remember um showing up there. I think I was the last one to get there, if I remember correctly. Yeah, And I'd actually like to tell yeah, I'd like to talk about my trip up there. So I, uh, we we got you and Scobie and I got off the phone, and UM, basically it was like you book your own flights and then we'll you know, like a lot of times, book my own flights get reimbursed at the end. So, um, I booked my own flights, but the best flight that I could get in there to actually make it on time. Was I landed late the night before everybody else was getting there, and then nobody else was showing up until the next afternoon. And I was like, oh, that's fine. I like applying up there with all my camping gear. I'll fly into the airport, crash on the airport floor, and then just wake up, have breakfast in the airport, wait for everybody to roll in. Well, no, they closed the airport night up there. So uh, I got off the plane, grabbed all my stuff. I'm walking around looking for a place to set up and sleep, and the security guard goes, um, what you're doing and I was like, oh, I'm just looking for a place to sleep. The rest of my group isn't getting here until tomorrow, and he's like, oh, no, we closed the airport. So, in true Canadian style, uh, somebody overheard this interaction and they just offered up to give me a ride into town where I could book a hotel room. And so I got a ride with some nice family that had just come back from some trip and they took me into because we're gonna flying to Prince George. Yeah, Prince George, yeah, yeah. So they gave me a ride into Prince George and I got a hotel room and then to go back out to the airport the next day to wait for uh, the Hawkridge family to pick me up, and then for Robin to roll in and then yeah, and then you showed up last. Yeah. Yeah, just there's so many now even I was just going to Hawkridge. Is Mike's website. It's look, um, there's a couple of things about his outfitting business, so we could get that right. We can tell people about his business and they're on the They're on his homepages. Is the cover of the of that we shot and a quote from Joe Rogan about my cockriage, so I figot I could probably just read that to you, um, because we need to kind of give people who Mike is because he's one of my favorite people in the world. Um, my cockriage is an outstanding hunter. This is from Joe Rogan. Mike Cockeage is an outstanding hunter and a man amongst men. He's a rock solid outdoorsman, as knowledge of the animals he's going after and the terrain they live in is unparalleled. There's ever a zombie apocalypse. He's one of the first people I would pick to help form a squad of able bodied people to help safe humanity. When you meet him, When you meet him, get a good look at him and take it all in. Because if this ever feminized world where we're living in, in wait, in this ever feminized world we're living in, real men like him are the last of a dying breed. I had a fantastic time in camp with him, and I look forward to visiting and hunting with him as many times as I can before I leave this earth. Joe Rogan and that is legitimately how we all felt after leaving this I felt safe. I felt the exact same way um as Joe did. And on one of Mike's websites, Big Country Outfitters dot c A is his website, if you ever want to go take part in one of these badass moosehns, um, he'll see the indelible image of Joe rogue and hawking a big s s moose hind quarter over his shoulder. I think, well never, so we'll get to that um probably to end this story. That's probably where will end. But that's my Cockridge is just is is a statue of a dude. He's got like a stone jaw. He lives in you know, um it's a north of quesnel Bridge, Columbia, which is just timber country. Um as as Sam said, it's big cut blocks um moose everywhere, and it's just it's just a rural place. And this is a guy who cuts horses, who just lives this you know, outdoor lifestyle to the fullest man. And he's been doing it for over fifty years. Um. And they you know, he's he outfits for elk, grizzly mule, deer, white tailed deer, black bear, cougar, wolf links, coyote, but Canadian mooses is the thing that I think he's known for and really that that no r essential region of British Columbias he's known for two. So what was your first feeling of Mike Cockridge. He's I mean he's a mountain of a man. Yeah. Um, Like he's just like from head to toe like just built like a brick um and like but like you know, again like a true Canadian, like the nicest human you've ever met. He's got he's got that he's got and Joe's the same way too. He's got an infectious laugh that you just you can't get out of your head man. M hmm. Yeah, but you can tell, you know, you could tell he's just a guy you would never want to mess with or piss off. I mean, I think at one time, or was he still he wasn't still boxing, but he was a boxer at one point. And uh yeah, and then if if you go back through you know, his social media pages, you know there's a picture of Mike carrying out an entire like giant black bear on a frame pack. Um. Yeah, I don't you know, three fifty pound bear or whatever, just like strapped to a frame pack, um hauling it out. So he's just one tough guy. And I think, isn't he like on some show now up in Canada? Yeah, so he's on a skull a show I believe. I want to say it's on the travel channel, Discoverage channel. He called me and told me about this not long ago, that he was going to be on a show. I'll try to find that. We'll look that up and figure out what that is. But now, yeah, he's a superstar. Now, Um this is back when he's just my cockroage. But he remember, he just didn't uh it doesn't like to hug. We would try to hug him. I I we ended up like breaking him down. Eventually he did, but but uh, when we first got there, he's like, I don't hug, like do handshakes. And Duke could rip your hand off. He's got baseball mits for hands. Um. And so yeah, I mean, And and the way you hunt up there is as you said before, Man, you just get in the truck. You drive from timbered cut block to cut block. It's this vast country. I mean, there's logging roads to every point you could try to get to. And Um, for all the reasons we already said, we show up there and probably not the prime time. You know, we're in the You say post rut, I'd say we're like post post rut. We're like the vestiges of the rut are still hanging around. You may find a bull here or there that might want to come into to call, but it's just not the prime time to be up there. We it just happened to start getting really cold when we were there too. We had a bunch of snowy days when we were up there, so we just didn't hit it at the right time. And I remember being the first time we all got in the truck together, we're having we're still having a great conversation. But I was just a little bit nervous about how this is all gonna play out because I was realizing it at some level how much of a roll of the dice I had made with with my career, with this exact trip. Oh whoa whoa man who Yeah, my apologies, Uh corona, um, corona, I hope you don't have it anyway, But I I was realized how much a roll of dice I had made. I'm like, I don't know this outfitter. Um, We're not here at a great time, the weather is not great. I don't know anything about anything here. I'm just really just hoping that's some part of this turns out because I need to get I need to get a cover shot. Um. I need to get We need to have something happens so I can write a cover story. Um. And we're hoping to kill any moose. We didn't have really have anywhere, like, hey, that's the you killed movement. We're gonna shoot any moose week that's legal. Um and luckily for us, we could really shoot any any antlerd uh moose. So that was good. Yeah, what was your feeling in the beginning, and I don't know if he I don't know if Mike, you know, he pulled me aside, like and he was like, so, what do you what do you think they're looking for for the cover photo? And ME like just being you know, a naive new photographer, like growing up with every hunting cover, you know, being some giant animal. Um, I just assumed that's the you know, that was the goal. And so I think I think I probably made Mike nervous. And I was like, wow, I'm assuming that they're looking for some you know, big gass moose and uh yeah. I could see the look in his face like, oh god, November, you know, we'll see, see we can pull this off. And then a couple of days into the trip, you know, I think both you and and Rogan you know, just expressed like oh no, no no, no, anything with antlers, like we're gonna we're gonna shoot. Yeah, because Joe had just been he had been to the Missouri Breaks with Stephen Company to film Meat Eater and that's the only Honey he'd been on and this is this is not too long after that. Now we're out and he's just like just learning about these things, and I just remember, and now that I know him better, I know that he's like this with everything. But I just remember him being so excited at every point and to learn everything. How do you know, shooting a rifle of sick of gear that he had on all this stuff. I mean, he just he just was enamored with everything and that I had never seen anything like that before. I've never experienced somebody that was so into it. Um. But now you know, years later, I know him a little bit better and I know he's like that with everything, um, but I just never I've never known that. So I felt the same energy, like, man, this is this is, this is there's something going on here. Even though through the first days, I like, I don't have any real memories for the first couple of days other than laughing in the truck, talking about psychedelics, talking about you know whatever, fear factor stories. Who the hell knows what we talked about. But you know, two days, right around the truck, getting out, walking on the roads, calling, you know, going on long hikes, three four mile hikes. We did see one bull. I feel like, up in the top of a cut block all like it would have been impossible to get to um. But over the first three or four days of this hunt, we didn't have much action at all. I mean that just was and then like then, then, even though we're having a good time, even though all of us together are enjoying ourselves, we don't like the anxiety builds for me, I'm sure for you, like I think this is gonna suck if we don't if we don't even see them, what are we gonna do? Because I always had in my mind an image of the cover I wanted to shoot, and it it was very close to what we ended up with, but it wasn't a moose quarter. I had him like holding a knife in one hand and a backstrap in another hand, and it said eat what you kill, really big down the side and the name played for the magazine. So that's what I had my mind. And I'm like, well, if we don't kill a moose, what am I gonna do? Like a ham sandwich? So yeah, I mean it's it was a struggle, and we got some photos, but it wasn't like there was It's not a picturesque place compared to some other places you and I have gone together. Um, you know, so I'm sure for a young photography like ship man, what am I? What's going to happen? Yeah? No, And it was hard for me, you know because because we were riding around the truck so much, like you know, I shot about, you know, a third or less of the photos that I typically shoot on a trip like that, because what do you take photos of? You know, like we're just riding around like it's it's there's nothing like exciting, Like you can shoot a few photos, but there's nothing exciting after the first day. Um, And so I just yeah, going into it, you know, And we were talking like, well, if we didn't kill a moose, you know, maybe you know, Rogan would stay longer or you both would stay longer. And I had a date that I needed to fly back, and it was like, oh man, like you know, what what happens if I'm not here to actually shoot the cover photo, like you know, like this is gonna be a nightmare. So yeah, and I mean I had to I had a moose tag with that to me at that point didn't matter. I like, the moose we already covered that I ended up killing wasn't a big deal to me. Like I was like, because if you know, just to explain a little bit more of the pressure that I was under. I'm a young you know, second in command editor out of magazine. I have begged, im pleaded for my bosses above above Mike Scobe, to let me try to pull this off. They they have. There's one individual that just straight up looked me in the eisn said, I'm not paying for you to do that, Like that's nobody cares about that person you're that's just another celebrity guy that you're gonna try to put on a cover that's pandering, like you should come up with a better idea. And I that no, you don't understand this is a good idea. I know it seems like we're just going to take a picture of a celebrity guy who actually hunts. But it's more than that, Like there's something here. I'm telling you. I'm telling you, I'm telling you. I remember arguing this and arguing this and finally get in the green light. But they're like, don't spend a lot of time, don't spend a lot of money. I was like, oh, all right, thanks for the confidence, don't I don't know if I can do that. So I was like, well, it's one of those points for me, Like, if I come back with nothing, I don't know, they might just let me go. They might just be like, well, you had your chance and he screwed it up. Who knows. I Like that wasn't the case. Yeah. So so when we get to the point where Joe actually shoots a moose, it is the least oh man, it's the least climactic killing of an animal I've ever been a part of. Maybe, um, but I would say that's true. Yeah, Like the actual mechanics of what happened, the details are the least exciting thing I describe. But where we all were, the anxiety that I felt, that Joe felt, that you felt, I'm sure Mike felt it too. How such a good time we were having all together, Like we really wanted it for Joe. Everybody really really really wanted this for Joe, and we also really wanted to do our jobs, all four of us. Um the I mean, we could tell the story in five seconds. We're driving down this we go through a cut and into kind of a timbered area. Well that's on the way back to to the little camp that we're staying at, the little house. We're saying it we kind of break into the timber from this cut block and we're going down the road. I think I almost remember that we were laughing about some sort of psychedelic adventure that Joe, we're laughing about something. We were loudly doing what we were doing the whole trip, kind of laughing and bullshit. And my carcage slams the brakes on this truck. And the truck is this old shitty remember like Ford something. Rather, it's not a it's like it creaks to a halt. It's like creaks to a halt. Slams. He there's a bull. We look out the left side of the window and there's a bull, but it's a forker. It's like a year a year and a half year old forker moves essentially the youngest most we probably could have shot, could have shot um. And I remember I'm in the back at this point, or no, I'm in the front seat. I'm trying to get out and I can't. Before I do anything, I hear Mike say, like, you want to shoot one. You want to shoot that one, And Joe's out of the truck with his rifle before well, I think, I don't know if you remember this, but Mike goes, he goes, there's a bull, and we all start looking and he goes, it's not very big, and Rugg goes, I don't give a ship. Yeah, and uh, you know because we were there too, you know, we were there to shoot a bull. And like you said, like you said, like the next that we were just out of the truck and uh like like it was done. It was over, continued, Yeah, it was over. No I wanted to I don't want to tell the old star like whole store myself, but yeah, I mean it was I my from my prostector. I roll around the back of the truck and by that time, Mike's already pointing in the timber. I mean these things like seventy five yards away, right, I mean it wasn't far away. Stand there looking at us, like what are you doing? And and we're just off the road where like down the road a bit into the into the woods. But we're still I mean, you could still throw a rock at the truck and hit it every time. Um, we're down down into the into the timber a little bit, and Mike's pointing at this bull. Joe is is trying to get a scope on he's probably had to dial dial his his uh power back to get a freaking field view or you can see this thing. Finally sees it and by the time I get to his side and I think you're there trying to snap some photos of this, he just shoots and think fall and he just drops it immediately and this all had gone down and I don't know, thirty seconds. I don't have a minute if that. Yeah, so yeah, I didn't. I didn't even I don't think I even got my camera turned on by the time that thing was dead. No, it was like from the time did you get that on film? And I was like, no, man, I really even at my camera and then like the thing falls over immediately, and you know, my cockage being this kind of like this stone jaw, you know, just very serious guy. He remember he was the first one to kind of like scream out like yeah. And then Rogan and I like he makes his rifle safe. We made sure of that. And then immediately it was like we won the Super Bowl. I would never Yeah, we were just running around like some ball bark yelps in there, like it just it just was unbelievable. Like, what's your memories of that thing. Yeah, no, it was. It was just like that moose dropped and it was just high fives and hugs and just like the like every one was just a little kid again, the excitement that Rogan had had the entire trip like for him, like being such a new hunter, like everybody was had that going. Yeah, yeah, the whole thing. Man, um, I'm trying to find Yeah, okay, I got just a part. I'll read you guys, kind of what I wrote in the article um of the article for Peterson's Rogan's posture stiffened, his eyes locked on his target. I watched him make the mental decision to squeeze in a split second, and he was shooting a three D roum at this thing, and they're like, yep, it's like diminutive moose for for moose, for for all bull moose in the world. His three wind bag rock the timber with a familiar roar, and things went silent. The bull crumbled at seventy five yards. Just then, as Rogan that loosed the primal celebration, things seemed to slow down. I think I realized why we both made the trip. Honey had somehow been changed, Its purpose had morphed We weren't chasing a trophy, and there was no singular joy in the group and green photos. The byproduct of this badass eat which killed movement, or the baddest adventure, was the meat, and it was the perfect moment for the witch kill movement. Every things calmed down. I sat with Joe and a freshly Downtreet's bark, still ripe and wet. The moose that lay in front of us was no great trophy. He would make no record book. He would not look right on the cover of this magazine. The final moments of the hunt would seem anticlimactic the most, but we never felt happier or celebrated harder. The transformative property of becoming a full fledge eat which you killed convert had taken hold. Our thoughts now turned to the most important outcome. Rogan had are already had his knife in hand. Let's cut him up and eat him, he said, turning to me with a determined Claire, It's time to get to work, and work we did. I Our spent gutting, skinning, quartering, and hauling meat were done with pleasure, all a part of the honesty of our efforts. The next day, I tagged the bull of my own, the celebration mirror the previous day. I had never been happier to be a part of a hunting crew. That night, we dined on the aforementioned Organs. Rogan man the grill, dolling out slice of moose heart. We partied hard. I've haunted all my life putting wild meat on the table for as long as I remember. With this new perspectives, departure from the norm had an impenetrable logic. Kill which you eat, eat which kill. No matter how you phrase it, it's a game changer. Just ask Joe Rogan. That's the end of the story I wrote. That's not too bad. You know, you write things and you look back and you're like, oh, I'll lame, are you. I thought that sounded pretty good. Yeah, man, you know it could be worse. I read a lot of stories I wrote at this time. I was like, Holy hell, learn how to calm down a little bit of O'Brien um. But yeah, but like all that is kind of true to how I remember it, man, I felt. I know, we filmed a little video Joe and I talked, and you filmed us talking to kind of about the experience and and it was this weird The thing that happened in the end was the the least you know, kind of like the least celebratory type of kill, but the most celebration of the kill, which is really kind of what we were going for anyway, at least what I envisioned. Yeah, for sure. Um, And so we got back. We've got back to camp with our moose. We had to pack it out all of hundred yards. It was easy hundred yard pack out. We get back and now we've got this moose and we've got to uh shoot a cover with it, and I'll let you take it from I'll let each other take it from work. Is because that I would just say this Joe was was didn't want to do this cover shoot because I hadn't shot a moose and we only had a certain amount of time left. So he was a little aggravated that we were wasting time. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean aggravated is is a good but you know, not even a good enough word for it. Like he was just piste off that we were having to use any time when somebody still had a tag in camp. Yeah, and so like he was like, like we had to be we were out there kind of got the photo all set up, so like I've got photos of you know, Mike kind of like standing in place holding the stuff, and like like you know, we moved a whole bunch of boards, like to do a different backdrop against this barn. Like you know, we were trying to trying to come up with some different stuff and uh um yeah, so like you were staying like a photos of you stand in place and Mike stanyding in place and then obviously robing out here, and I've got photos of him uh um, you know, standing with the backstrap and the knife, like you said, like kind of what was the vision in your head? And uh and then eventually you know, the photo that we went with against kind of like a much like whier background on the top of that little hill. Um. But no, I mean like and I have a video too of it. Um like us kind of like having the the shot all prepped and uh there's some Luke Brian playing in the background. And that was a big part of the trip too. I remember that was a big part of the trip. But no, there's a yeah, there's a video like that songs playing and both you and Rogan are dancing at one point, so you know, we had a pretty good time. Um, but no, it was you know, like me because it was my first cover photo and so I was just you know, trying to figure out like okay, what you know, how to shoot this, how to frame this, and looking back on it, like I definitely would have done things differently, like knowing that what I know now, Um, but just happy that it did turn out the way it did. Yeah, I mean it, you know, the what the vision in my head we had to put all we took all these boards from over that was behind a barn, put it, put him in a backstrap where Joe was going to stand with a knife and a backstrap, and that was the idea. Um, he was just gonna be kind of standing there, and it wasn't don't smile and should just just stand there. And I remember we were taking him like that just doesn't I don't think that's gonna work, man, Like it could. It might, but I just don't feel like, let's we gotta try something else. I don't know, I remember who had the idea for him to just be holding the moose quarter. Who knows. But at the point I remember, at the point where we were we were doing the shoot at the top of that little hill with the actual photo we ended up using. I remember Joe like telling Hawkridge go get the truck and get it ready. He was over it. He's like, we got it. Whatever where you don't got I don't care. Ben needs to shoot a mose just to type of person he is. He wasn't doing that because he didn't want to do it. He was doing it because it was foolish not to be hunting while we had time for hunting. He thought that was silly. And so you gotta piste off subject. You got me trying to figure out, like what is this even gonna be? And I don't know how many photos how many photos did you take of the shot where it ended up? I mean you can describe kind of what it looks like too for folks that haven't seen. Yeah. So so basically like we um, we kind of moved over into this little pasture area just the short grass, and I got real low and then had Rogod stand kind on the top of this hill and so it's got you know, a nice like white background behind him in the quarter and just the short grass in the foreground, just a lot of room for all the words and everything that needed to go on the cover, and then uh, you know, I think I shot it wasn't nearly as many as it was in front of the in front of the other like ideas that we had, So you know, I probably only took oh it's like shots, yeah, for a cover shoot like shots. We probably shot a five hundred and the other location that we and so we yeah, so we just took this as like a last ditch effort and like throw that moose quarter over your shoulder on the suit we get and we mocked up all the photos. And I remember seeing this and seeing what you kill really big down the left side of the page and seeing Joe just kind of like he I think his face is like that because he's pissed. He wants to go hunting, but at the end of the photo it just looks like I mean, I remember all the commentary afterwards, like somehow we had described like we had designed this way. He's weren't a first light top and sick of bottoms. I remember getting so many comments from people like thank gosh, you did that, you know, uh, trying to go against the sponsor. I was like, no, that's just what he was wearing. I didn't. We didn't tell him what to wear, you know, yeah, we didn't. We didn't plan that. No, we just he just was wearing that and he would have punched us in the face had we tried to make a wardrobe change. And so yeah, man, and I don't know. We just said pick that up and see what it looks like. And you know, after all said and done, that's the cover of the April May two thousand and fifteen cover of Peterson Sunning. Um. And certainly I'll share that We've all shared it a million times. Every time we share it just gets people just go nuts because it is. It seems like it blows up more every year. I think it's coming right up. It's typically um, I think towards the end of March. Yeah, it's like our yearly, our yearly thing where we look back on this and shared everybody remember this because it really is. Man, I couldn't you know the best way to start like this these THHD Daily Quarantine podcast. For me, I was like, I just want to tell stories. I've done so many cool things and outside of my life and sometimes on the show, on our regular show, um, we get into controversial topics or controversial guests and and other silly jokes and stuff, and and too often forget about hunting stories man, and what they mean to our lives and kind of where not not only the hunt in this case, because obviously after we as soon as we were done shooting these photos, Joe had us in the truck and then the story we told at the beginning the podcast happened. I mean literally we we have were fresh off the photo shoot. Yeah, it was like hanging the quarterback up, getting the truck. We were out like and then we were back with yours in twenty minutes. We're back of mine. The other people that were still back at camp, like when we came rolling back in, they were like, oh what do you forget? So yeah, and all the drunkenness and crazy stuff afterwards. But you know, hunting stories being how they are. Not only is this a hunting story about a moose, but like there's so much about says that you're saying before that just I don't know, so so much serendipity. There's so much um like transformative things that happened there. People I met, I met, you become good friends. We've adventured all over the world together Joe. I met Joe. We've become good friends and gone all over the place and hunted together. Um, and through Joe, I've met so many people, and I just couldn't imagine this not have happened in my life or where i'd be if if this hunt's got canceled the day before or something. Yeah, No, it's you know, it's really hard to know kind of where I'd be at without, you know, being given the opportunity to go up there and you know shoot that photo. Um, Like we said earlier in the podcast, I think it was just a you know, for for all of us, kind of just a big stepping stone in the you know, in this world of hunting and cooking and you know everything that we're up to. Yeah, for sure. And I will say that, Um, one thing that I remember about this people always ask about you know, you and I both have hunted with some really you know, notable individuals, right, people that a lot of people admire. And after this was all over, Mike Cockeradge is another person I admire. It doesn't have to be a celebrity. He and his wife drove Rogan's meat down to l A from British Columbia. It's no short drive because you couldn't couldn't. We couldn't. We didn't have time to really get it all on the plane, and it was all a huge thing. They drove his meat down to l A, which was a huge task to do just to drop his meat off from his moose. And then, you know, a couple of weeks after the hunt, I get a call from Joe and he's like, hey, how much does a hunt like that cost? I said, well, you know, for us, it's Mike just you know, it was nothing for the publicity like he was doing it, um so he could get you know, some voriety for his business around the magazine. That's you know, that's not that's not uncommon in our industry. Um. And Joe said, well, yeah, that's fine whatever. I don't care about how much would if I was going to pay for him something like this, how much would it be? And I told him it wasn't. She's not cheap, you know, thousands of dollars, many thousands of dollars. And I told him, I was like, all I look it up and I texted it to him and then I get a call maybe a week or two late after that from my cockerage, She's like, man, I just gotta check from Joe for you know whatever, nine grand like what, So, Yeah, I gotta check from Joe. Um And a little note in it just said, you know, um, you earned this the best hunt in my life or something like that. I can't remember exactly what it said, but that just goes to show the kind of dude we're dealing with here, Um, with Joe Rogan. So people that asked, like, what kind of guy is he? Um, that's it. That's what it is. Yeah, this straight stand up guy and my cackage is the same exact damn way. And and so it's just a good example of like, even though there was cover shoots and all this other stuff that surrounded this is just a good time with some really great people. And that's how I remember it. But but it's it became more than that and the years, the years after anyway, it's it's it's still one of my favorite hunting trips of all time. Yeah, for sure, And let's go back. Let's go I'd love to go back. Uh, we're all way busier than we probably were then, at least we think at least this point but I'd love to go back up there. And just even though you know I'd love to go to the Yukon and kill a moose, I would love to go um other places, Alaska, whatever. There's something about like that that this experience exactly doing it again would be great. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. Awesome, Man, make it happen to post post quarantine reunion tour. I love it. Quarantine's quarantine alright, brother, Well, I really appreciate it man spending time with him. I don't know how long these that these stories would go, but this one was. It needed the time, it needed signs. So this is the first ever th C Quarantine Daily, and we're gonna be back tomorrow with another great guest. I got a bunch of people in the hopper. Um here, we got Remy Warren hopefully. Uh. I shot a couple of texts around the guys like Cam Haines and Steve Ronnella and uh old cal Ryan Callahan is gonna be in here. We're gonna have Mark Kenyon in here talking, so we're gonna tell stories. We have a good time. We've got some more contests. We're going to announce next next uh episode, some other fun stuff, some some really interesting um stories all the way from Bulgaria to Dominican Republic to New Zealand, a bunch of places we're gonna discover until this goddamn quarantine is over. I'm gonna be in the US room ripping out hunting stories with folks like Sam and many others, So please stick around with us. We'll see you tomorrow morning. The Hunting Collective with Ben O'Brien is a part of the meat Eater podcast network. It is produced by Cringe Schneider and engineered by Phil Taylor. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, the meat eater dot com, or anywhere podcasts are downloadable wherever you listen, leave a five star review and subscribe.

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