00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome episode number unt Collective. I've been O'Brien and this week joined by none other than Adam Fosse. And why should you know Adam foss Well, there's a ton of reasons. Uh. He is renowned in my mind. He's a renowned filmmaker, a renowned photographer, one of the best mountain hunters you'll ever meet, and one of the best sheep hunters you'll ever meet, denoted by the fact that he was the youngest sheep hunter ever get the Grand Slam with a Bow. I believe he was twenty four years of age, which is ridiculous. He came from an ultimate mountain hunting badass family raised now Alberta, and he's got a lot of stories to tell about hunting with his dad and his brother and what that means to them, their connection that led to his connection with the hunting community, how that's changed his life and being a part of my generation somebody I feel is my peer. Adam also has a lot of insight on on how he can do better going forward and what the hunting community can benefit from the future. So, without further ado, my friend Adam fo Hey, buddy, any how you doing good. Now are you. I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. We're currently in Montana and we're drinking beer from the apple named four oh six Brewing Company. Yes, Sarah here in Bozeman. Um, I like it? Do you like it? I really like it. I like the kind of a hoppy floral. Yeah. Describe the notes as you if you were to like hoppy and flora. There's a little bit of citrus in there, nice and light. You know, summer is kind of coming to an end, and it's reminding me, it's bringing me back, it's bringing me back to summers. Drank at all before the podcasting, so I like to I like to make sure everybody knows how much we're drinking, and if we're drinking during these podcasts. Um, I feel like if you're drinking while you're listening at the same sort of rate, yeah, you're just tracking along with Yeah. So if you have a growler at home, you'll have to at this point, you'll have to chug it to almost the bottom and then you'll be right where we are and you'll be feeling pretty good about life. Um, welcome back to Bozeman. Thank you, sir. You're a Canadian though full blooded, full blooded Canadian. That's right. Trying to think of the Canadians I've had on the podcast to see who see how we can match the momp. Now we've had one Shane Mahoney on the Shane Mahoney, Shane Mahoney. Who else? Adam Yankee very well, I called Jankie for a long time, so he corrected me. But you only were saying that over email, so you couldn't tell you no I on the podcast, because yes, because that's how I roll. I'm still a Rednecks regardless of how I do this, and I think that that might be it number three, the third Canadians. I'll take it. Little known fact Adam and my myself are in the same town up in British Columbia, Colonal Colonna, British Columbia being the Montana of the North. I think in terms of honeying opportunity, in terms of mountains, public lands fishing, it's a pretty good comparison. Yeah. I mean, you have every game species you ever want to chase. Basic white tails they're there, meal deer they're there, black bear yeah, grizzly bear don't hunt them though anymore. The elk, Yeah, two kinds sheep, three kinds, goats, one kind, moose, one kind. Yeah, I guess there's some shyris down the southeast corner. I think, yeah, is there a caribou, there is bison, Yeah, wild horse, lots of wild horses. Yeah, you cannot those cats species. Got some mountain lions, bobcats. I think that's most of everything. Some of the best fisheries in the world, that's right. Yeah, And you've got you've got black tails, You've got smule deer, got white tails. There's a lot going on. There's a lots going on, and I feel h I feel jealous. But now that I'm leaving to Monteina, this is my first week in Monsana, and I see the people talking around, mean, they talk like in a language that I've never heard before. Or but there's these shared resources, but you can all go and hunt. There's all kinds of game species running around. Everybody talks about it like, oh my god, we have this. Have you been up? I have been up to the the castles, you know, White Creek, even up Black Creek, been up Great Creek. I don't know whey of these places are creek? You have been up Bear Creek? I don't know where any of these places are, but it sounds like we can all go there and do the thing we like to do. So I'm glad that you live in British Columbia and you're only not far from here, I mean drive across the board ten hours. Yeah, we're not too far. Um. We share a little bit of border and and a lot of similarities. Yeah, there's a lot of similarities, a lot of differences, and lots of lots of land to roam free. Like you said, it is a novel concept to be able to do the things that we do and trying to take it, take it for granted. On when it comes to species in BC and you think about coming down below the fort lower Fort, eaton the opportunity I just hunt a mountain goat and sheep and just rolling through town today and running into a bunch of friends. How many years to take you to draw that tag? None? And just yeah over the counter to the counter, the sheep counter, that's right. Yeah, So yeah, he tried try to not take it for granted because it is a pretty fantastic opportunity and and one that growing up doing it and doing it now and in my adulthood. It is, uh, it is pretty special. Yeah, I think there's a perspective that gets lost. And you know, every everybody that haunts her fishes and and comes to love it. You know, they have their own perspective, right, Whitetail hunters. A lot of people hunt out of their backyard. They hund the back forward, hunt on the farm, on the ranch, whatever. But that's all they have, you know. Everybody's like the purview of a regular hunter is pretty small, right look around you. You have certain opportunities in certain places. Come in place like this or coming place in British Columbia, and all of a sudden your vision is iden and the opportunities are endless. And you could buy a combo license in Montana and if you hunted your ass off, never fill all the tags, which I've been told a few times, and it just doesn't. I mean, there's no way to get that perspective unless you come here and you see the people and you're like, these people don't know what they got? What if they do know what they got? You know, it's it's it's hard unless you've lived other places and seeing other things. So no, especially in British Columbia. I've always you know, in my past magazine editor jobs, it was always the best hunting destinations. What what are they British Columbia one, two, three, whatever the number, But it's up there. That's up there, and um and you grew up where exactly I grew up in Alberta. So the province east of BC straight north from here, right north of us all the same species, yeah, a lot of the same species, um and a little bit different geography. So bcs set up where huge portion of the population is all centered around the U. S. Canada border in Vancouver, and then when you go north, it gets a lot less, um densely populated, so you can really kind of get into some areas where not a lot of people are getting in Alberta sort of it's similar, but a lot of the good sheep countries right down south and southern Alberta. Um, so a lot of different areas for big corn sheep and the area that I grew up hunting archery zone, a lot of that good stuff is a bit closer to the city of Calgary in the city Edmonton, so kind of populations of a million people in each of those cities are over You've got the Rockies runn right through there. It's beautiful. Yeah. I mean you get the Edmonton bow Zone where everybody's killing stick in big Bucks right there. Exactly. Yeah. I've spent a lot of time hunt in that province. It's a great province. Yeah. Yeah, that part of Canada is beautiful. Um, describe your upbringing. I mean, I know, I know there's a it's I want to say, hunting rich. Is that right, sir? I mean your dad is a badass, badasses when it comes to sheep on, so give me a rundown. Yeah, And I think I just grew up following along. I don't know. Do you have siblings? I do. I have an older brother, right, just one? And would you follow in his footsteps and look up to him? Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah I had to. Yeah, I had no choice. But yeah, I mean there's a certain age I think there's a certain age range where you know, you just you gravitate towards that. I mean, it's it's the thing that you know, it's the things in front of you all the time. So yeah, but then you break off at some point, hopefully and do your own thing. Yeah exactly. And so I don't know if I really consciously made the decision to to hunt. As much as it was, I was just had a bow in my hand, and I was shooting gophers and killing skunks and doing all that dumb stuff you do as a kid. Because my brother was doing it, my dad was doing it, and followed them everywhere. Um, and for us, it was just one of those things that we love doing, we love being outside. But it was all is just a foundation of our relationship. And I told people, a lot of people can sit on a coach and watch TV with their dad every Sunday. I watch football and have dinner and and go to movies and live life and seemingly have a great relationship. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but there's level of depth and richness that only comes when, or is only enhanced when you're doing it outside and you're doing it together. And I think that I haven't lived in the same place as either of those guys since I was eighteen off to college, and both have been able to maintain those relationships just because I think that hunting is such a big part of it. And maybe not even hunting, um, you know, fishing, camping, being outside. Just that part of being able to connect with somebody, even for a small period of time, makes it last. And and some of my my greatest friendships are with people that might start in that set and no matter what, if you can get back to those places with those people, it, uh, it always seems to rekindle it. Yeah, I mean, you know as well as I do. There's there's this level of connection, right. I always try to describe it as there's experiences that are exciting right in life. Football if so many scores a touchdown on TV, that you may get excited, it's what an amazing thing. But it's a two dimensional experience because when that's over, what do you get from it? You get the high, you get the you know, you're excited for the thing that happened on the television. Very much the same as riding a roller coaster. Who rather roller coaster? Get off roller coaster? You got your high for the moment. But then so there's no residual effects from football in your life, I would hope, unless you're in the stands of getting drunk and you get arrested or there's no residual effects from a roller coaster. But hunting in itself is in my experience, is exciting and connective as anything else you can do. But after the exciting part is over, there's this connective tissue with the food, of the experience, of the skills, of all the things that come with it. And so I say that about my relationship with my dad. This just like a three dimensional relationship to the point where we have these moments that you can't you couldn't recreate those moments. You couldn't recreate the experience of killing an elk with your dad, and how that feels you couldn't do it. And I think that's what a lot of those two dimensionals experiences that are manufactured by society you're trying to do, right, They're trying to recreate that experience that you could have in the woods with your dad, and you had it with your dad and your brother, which all the better for me. Super lucky, Yeah, super lucky. And I think that the other part of it is you make those relationships and then that other residual effect is sort of this. I've been thinking a lot about sort of mental callousies that you've build on your brain of what you can actually do, what you are capable of and there's lots of ways to test yourself. You can be an ultramarathon runner, or you can try a new diet, or you can get into cross fit. You know, you can get into different things that are sort of these disciplines that require a lot of energy and focus and commitment. But I think that hunting somehow makes it sort of elicits this more deeper, primal, something that's a little bit inside of you that triggers this notion of wow, I am capable of feeding myself, of traveling through the mountains, of navigating, of getting out of a tough situation, of cutting up an animal that I might not know necessarily how to do that, but I can see the muscle groups, and I tell people that all the time, Well, how do I know what to do? And when will I understand how to do the gutless method on an elk, or or when to take five steps when I should have only taken three. It's like, well, one experience, but two you got the instincts were it's baked in and it's something we haven't lost yet and I hope we never do. But those hunting experiences always seem to you just bring back a flood of of those skills that you just didn't know you had it. And then you get you get back from one of those experiences and let alone be with your dad or your brother, just somebody you never even met before, or somebody that you've known all your life and never hunted with. And then next time you see him, like the hugs a little bits a little bit tighter, and the handshakes a little bit firmer, and like the stories are a little bit funnier, and get to the point where like, man, I'm not sure how we achieve this, but like the human connection, Yeah we got that. Yeah we got that. And it wasn't like we didn't go to a sporting event or we didn't go golfing, or we didn't go well, we went living like we lived together and experienced something that you couldn't recreate anywhere else and ship. Now we have this bond and I'm I describe before like walking in trade shows and you have all these disparate like I hunted sheet with that guy in British Columbia, I was in why when I with that guy, But the feeling is the same, right, you all experienced some real ship together. You know, and I imagine I hate to compare it and this is that's an empty comparison a lot of ways. But you know, when I've had folks that were in the military and they described the brotherhood of these experiences bringing you together, it's not it's not that, but it's some version of that ah that drives you and let alone having that with your family, which I think is even a way deeper version of that experience. Yeah, and it's it's been really fun. I just got back from a hunt with my wife and she grew up downtown Seattle. I took her first time she'd ever been in the mountains. She called it a tennis shoe summit to the top of the mountain. I just want to stop, because the first time I met your wife today, I heard a lot about her. She had apparently heard a lot about me. I don't know that means um, but like she seemed to be the most accepting wife of your hunting habits, which are pretty aggressive, to the point where she was suggesting more. And I immediately thought, wow, okay, Adam Foss could not have any other wife than this one right over here, because not only did she like well, you know, that's those sounds are tough. We should do more of them, you know, if you can't, If you don't get a RAM this year, we'll just go back. I'm thinking you've done well. Yeah, she's pretty special. I think she just knows how sort of the history with my family and just what a big part of it it is for me and probably what I'm like if I don't do it. Yeah, my wife knows that part of me too. Get home from one of them big trips, it's like it takes you while to come back. Yeah, And where I was going with it is that she didn't grow up doing this stuff, and she has no barometer of what the normal hunting experience should be. The first trip we ever did, it's probably eight years ago, and it turned into a It was a through hike, lake to lake connecting it, and it ended up turning into the sideways bush bash, horrible weather. She was purple from the waist down from all these willows and catching the floatplane just in time. The guy was doing one pass and picked us up and it was one of those moments I'm never doing that again in your own mind, in my mind too, asking why do we do this stuff for her, it was her first experience at it, and we're looking at each other feeling the same thing, and and this floatplane takes off off the lake and we look over our right shoulder and we see this glacier and this whole flat that we had just covered, and the valley that we dropped into and skirted around really bearing three cubs, and all the goats that were dot in the mountainside. And as soon as that plane came off the lake and we looked over, we both looked at each other and it was if we wanted to just be right back at that first, they can do it all over again immediately. The bruises and the blisters hell instantly, and we were hungry to get back up there. But I thought you were like hungry for a pizza. Yeah, that too, definitely. And so so that was one of her first experiences, and it wasn't I didn't sort of, I didn't do it strategically. We just she said, hey, I want to go backpacking in this area, and I said, well, there's goats there, and let's do a backpacking goat trip and it'll be fun and it'll be fun. Hey. I didn't strategically say Okay, well, I'm going to get her involved in in some some white tail hunting and shell to see some deer and then get here involved maybe on a spotstock mule there hunt and then easier and it was she kind of got thrown into the Yeah, he had a baptism by fire well and in anybody who you know that experience with your wife. You know, I know you guys don't have kids, but some day maybe like that'll make you better for that You'll have been through something that it's freaking hard. And that's why I hate to repeat myself with these fancy analogies. But I like him, you know, I like, oh yeah, real big fan. People are listening to Pocks and be like, oh he fucking likes this one. He's pulling it out again. But if you think about were Cole Cranmer and I were doing a podcast, you know, Cole well, and we were just talking about these backhuntry experiences and kind of what they do for your life, utility of the backhuntry experience, and uh, we started talking about if if your life was a knife life, the old life life, that just the slog of daily society, the slog of the nine to five the office, the the stress, the computer, the kids, the thing that dolls the knife right, because it makes it. It makes it so life is just harder to go through. Like the challenges become bigger. Sitting in traffic becomes annoying, you know that, like these first world problems become bigger than what they really are. Then you go out in the woods and you realize and you stay for it, you know, like you you do for weeks on end, and you overcome challenges like well, I gotta eat, but I gotta go over there before I can. I gotta go get water down the creek that ships, that's some buch is a mile drop down, and then I gotta come back up to camp. You start to sharpen that freaking knife again, you know, because the hardest things that you're doing, the sharper you are to do them. And then when you come back to the real world, your sharpest ship and you cut through life. It's easy. You know, you're sitting in traffic these I don't gotta go down and get water to creek mile down h so you're not as frustrated with traffic or the sub shop taking too long to make your sandwich or whatever. And that perspective is valuable. And then you do that long enough, then you know, ife gets dollar and dollar and you get more frustrated and more frustrated. Then you go back to the wodness, sharpen that bitch up again and go back at it. And that's what's very much like for me, and that's where I'm sure you're like me. You get back to the real world for a minute, you get a little bit depressed because those challenges are less intense and they're more surface. They just seem less important too. Yeah, yeah, you know, you get see people getting mad about like waiting in line for something. Dude. The only reason you're mad about this because you don't have respective. You're not sharp enough to just be like, funk this man, this is fine. There's nothing compared to having a chop a tree down, cut the wood up, make a fire, and eat my dinner. Um, And what do you think about? I find this too, where day by day you sort of build this layer of immersion where the first day you're kind of bopping around, You're going, I should be in something or because I think that we are just so stimulated right sitting right here, and we have these phones and we have these Netflix shows and we have just so much stimulis to treat us with and access to everything. And I don't know when I get out there. The first day or two or three, I'm finding myself feeling like I should be doing something, I should be busier. And I think that that kind of goes away after a couple of days, and then it's just sort of traveling, glassing here, thinking about where sheep might be, where are we going to camp for water, mapping it out, thinking about the clouds and way that they're moving, and when weather is coming in, all those things, and you start to just tune in. And I think, so I like these like longer trips is because you rip out for an elk hunt in the morning and you just start to get there here in Bugles and and you're sort of in the in the moment and and then you you go back. Or the thing that I hate to is you get to the top of the mountain service. Yeah, I was gonna say, save ship, like you get to the top to the middle of Fuck. I got emails, we did that. We were doing that last weekend. We're hiking up and I had no service, no service. We got to the mountain. We sat down because I hadn't even turned my phone on silen because I had no service in camp. And we got to the top of the mountain, ding dinging. You you kidding me? So yes, a hundred percent. That's the ultimate that's the ultimate irony of that. That scenario ripped right out of the EJAC button, out of the We were talking about Northwest territories. You spent a ship ton of time up there, and we talked. We could probably the whole podcast just about um that country. But I remembers the first I figured it. But I it was like this before, but this, this trip last year in August, was the first time I had figured that. There's like a you have to shake the society off you. You know, day one and your hike and you're like, I'm tired, I'll just stop, or I'm tired, I want to stop. And then day three, day two, and you're like, I wish I could get a shower. I'd really like a shower. And then day three like I'd love a lasagna that I'm not eating out of a bag. But then day four you're like, funk this ship. I love it, Like I don't want any of that stuff anymore. So like you take some time sometimes soon sometimes it takes some sixs a week sometimes to just shake off the comforts of society and just be there, just be in the moment and be like this is gonna be tough, but that's why I'm here. And for me, even just just my lungs, my hip, my really is your brain that's trying to tell you, like, remember that thing that we were doing that was really comfortable. We'll go back to that. We can still go back. We can call them, the plane will come pick us up. We'll go back. And three or four days into it, they're like, no, turn them back now, exactly too deep, exactly too deep. And that's beautiful. That reminds me of something Frankie said on this it's my wife, um, Frankie said on this last trip. And and we had this hunt plan. We we walked in up this valley and then we punched up in the alpine and we hunted this ridge and looking at all these bowls, and we were pretty far back into this spot, and it was cold and it snowed, and and we end up killing this goat way far back and and it turned into a total as they do bush whack out. It took us three days to bush whack this goat out point of the story. She reflecting back on it, she said, well, it only started to get really fun when it got hard, and I said, bingo, because she was she was going, oh, this is cold, and I don't know, and we're not really seeing a whole lot of rams. And she enjoyed it, but she said it only really got fun when it got hard. And I went to, holy sh it, you've learned more from these few handful. She's been to Spain hunting Ibex and Argentina red stick and she doesn't hunt herself. Let me clarify, she's around glassing for animals and hiking around. She's done these sheet hunts and Alberta for big horns, and my brother and coat hunts in BC. And and we're at we're at the end of the life of this growler. Okay. I thought we had a lot of beer this growler but started to evaporate. Yeah, there's a hole in the bottom. Uh. Continue, And she was saying, hey, it only got it only got good when it got hard, And I said, wow, you've learned more about this stuff. In a compressed amount of time than most people know because and sometimes I find myself and this is why we picked this hunt. We had a friend. This is sort of an old as as all best hunting stories start, Well, all the old pilots say that the biggest rams in that range live here, all the old pilots, and and so we both leaned in and said where, and he said here, and he said it's about Yeah, it's about k MA. Sure, you know, eighteen miles up the horse trail. Then you got to take a left and then it's a couple more days back and then you drop in. And anyways, this, this, this whole hunt was planned around a good old fashioned hard mountain hunt. And that's kind of what I was going for. And I think that you think about ways to make it easier, better technology, lighter, lighter boots and equipment and apparel and packs and higher calorie foods, uh, bows and rifles that shoot farther and more accurate. You think about ways to make it easier and more efficient and better for the hunter. And we sort of relearned that the beauty of and the challenge of it isn't is how hard it is. And for her to say that at her junior level of Jedi hunting training was was pretty astounding, and she she didn't miss a beat. She just she also said, the only way out is out. What am I gonna do? We gotta go out. That's the most beautiful thing about those trips. How many times in your daily life do you get to a point where I like, I either have to do this or I don't. Like, I either have to do this or I die, or I have to do this or I'm here for the rest of my life, Like I either whacked this thing out of here or I've gotta drop all this stuff. But there's there's consequences out there that are tougher and harder than consequences daily life. You know, I find even the hardest thing in my daily life, you know, which is relatively simple, becomes this, like, well I could do something else. It is one and harder to do something than it is not to do it, right, That is a fact. Yeah, And it's it's beautiful that that Frankie's has kind of picked that up so quickly because and the fact that you picked it up as a child, I'm sure from your dad, who's who's you know, As we said, a badass, you know, I don't know that I didn't pick it up for my dad. But but we lived in a different place. We didn't have sheep. We we just had a white tailed deer, and it was more of a communal thing. It was more of a you know, sharing the meat, sharing the time, sharing the family. There was less of a challenge to ourselves. It's cold in the morning, of course, but that's sitting true standing Cold's all right, It's nothing later till I was later in life. So I started discovering this kind of like perspective giving experience, and I was glad to have it when I got it, but I wish I had it sooner. And I think what the coolest thing about hunting is is that there isn't very many activities where there is so many there's a myriad of options for progression, and it is such a personal journey. And we talked a lot about that in that hunt too, because we I think it's really easy to compare ourselves to other people at hunt in different states, on the internet, on TV, and what's relative for that person is not the same for you. For me, it is not the same for you. And it's a personal quest It's one of the only activities that is like that that I can think of. That is it is, it is so personal, and there's so many options. You can do it any way you want, and you can always make it harder, you can always make it easier, you can always make it different. And you just talked about living just being up here in Montana and all the public land that's available, and you could never hunt out of a two hour circle of Bozeman, Montana and probably hunt the same trail twice or for the same species twice, and you start thinking about that. He started zooming out and thinking about ways to put a different spin on a hunt that you've done. Or one thing that we've sort of gotten into is taken newer people out to it and experience it through their eyes, and there's just no it's just an infinite life doesn't have enough years to be able to experience all these things. And so I think that it's truly just such a special thing about this thing that we love to do, is that you can always we can always do something different and make it harder. And that journey is so personal, track yourself along through it, and to see her starting on this journey and wherever I am in this journey, whenever you are in this journey, is it is something profound, And I just encourage everybody to kind of remind themselves of that that it is. It's it's about you, the way you want to do it and how you want to do it, not anything else when it comes to hunting, do you find I've struggled with that concept for a lot of reasons. I think social media has kind of given us all this prism through which to shine the lights, right, you know, this is what I do. But it's always the best ship. You know. It's not like, oh I'm terrible at this, Oh my god, I'm a terrible medioc forgot my fucking boot like that. It's always like I did that, I'm so fit to kill the sheep. So that that is a struggle too. But the personal experience, I think is is a is a very positive thing for hunting, but it can be a negative thing too because it is such a personal experience. There isn't a scorecard, There isn't an announcer saying what you're doing and when, and the level of success that you that you glean I think is most basically the how you feel when you first lay hands or first lay eyes on that animal. You know, you could kill the four bull and do it in a way that's not pure to you and not feel much when it's dead. You can kill a raghorn bull. It took you fourteen days to hike too, It's gonna take you three days to hike out it's still and feel this immense satisfaction in that um. And so there's so much different levels you can And then we get into all these like how do we how do we I mean, you're a photographer, you're a videography You've been a part of some amazing films. You've been a part of some amazing photography, and uh, and then it's like, how do we capture that? How do we tell this story? Because it's such a personal damn thing that if I tell my own personal story it makes to somebody else somewhere else it may seem like I'm an egotist, or may seem like I don't care about the animal, But really it's just your own perception love it. Yeah, And I think that that's that's something that as hunters we need to get better at because I'm I mean, it's the same way when you hit the trade show floor, or probably when you're hanging around a bar here in Bozeman and you can see the light in somebody's eyes when they say, hey, I called in this raghorn and I shot him at eight yards and they can't even get the rest of the story out, and your you go, that is it? Or you see a guy that pulls his phone out and goes, I want was this wants to be seventy one? As fon as three forty? It has kind of piste off that year and you go, whoa, whoa, whoa. You you're missing the boat. You're missing the boat. And I think the more that we can kind of drill back to that that feeling of of connection and accomplishment and really promote that, I think the better we're doing, because because yeah, yeah, I just think that I want to get back to that feeling, the feeling that you had when you were sitting in a tree. Standard deer comes over the first time, you just both fall out of your trees and you're shaking so bad, Oh my god. Yeah, And there's some purity to that, right, you know, we always talk about purity score like what's yeah, you know it is to me. You know, we've gotten twisted up in a lot of subject matter, right as hunters, how big the antlers are as a public landers de private? You know, how far did you go back? Did you pack them out? You're driving a TV to him or whatever. But all those things are like building blocks on which you build your personal experience. Right, You're your wife has been lucky enough to be married to a fucking mountain hunting badass her experience. I don't know that she would probably argue with you that that's not like you want to push she probably she probably wish she was married to a badass restaurant to her or something. He just stay, you can relax, But yeah, I mean so her her. I mean, she's lucky to get that like initial experience of hunting to come through your to your your prison in the way that you see things and do things. A lot of people just aren't lucky to have that. I my personal journey was very much like just a regular regular hunting weekend warrior. It was all about me and my dad, kind of me and my friends. That was all. It was all kind of about that. But then you know, I went away from hunting for a while during college, and it just wasn't a big part of life. They have a lot of opportunities. Was busy, came back to it professionally and discovered this immense, vast world that I fucking knew nothing about. I didn't even have to work a shotgun when I got my first job in the industry, and and I just remember thinking that journey was essential to where I am right now, to my my respect for the wilderness, my respect for public land, my respect for coming to a place like Montane and looking around and being at all. It wouldn't have happened if it didn't happen that way. It doesn't mean I'm a bad hunter, doesn't mean I'm a good hunter. It just means that's the way it came to me, you know, And the way it came to you, Frankie, was it was just as great a whole lot of willows purple for the waist down. Um. So yeah, I mean it's a deep it's a deep deal. But but your experience very much was family oriented, and I would say next level, right, I mean, sheep hunting is is um it's not elitist, but very few people do it are able to do it because it is a hard thing to do, and then and it is, Uh, there's not a lot of opportunities running around, so you're able to achieve some things young in your life that maybe not a lot of people have. Um, So give me a rundown of kind of like when you were first introduced to sheep hunting and then and how it grew on you and how you kind of got a bit of a reputation. I know you do. Can't you just post it in the show like a show's notes shows notes this guy. Now you gotta be able to talk about yourself on the podcast. Gosh, but just run through it pretty quickly. You don't have to give me the full details. Okay, we'll get back. Well. Yeah, like I grew up in southern alberta awesome opportunity for hunting just about everything, including bighorn sheep in the can mor Bo zone. So my dad grew up hunting that stuff. Um, I should back up. I grew up hunting that stuff with my dad. My dad and hunted that stuff back in the day, in the nineties eighties when it was before all this stuff was on draw and you could could. I mean, he just got stories about those I mean you should see something pictures actually the three pin site where the pins are as big as a match stick, and the pin that it's like your ten yard pin, you're like fifteen yard pin, You're twenty yard pin. Is it's down by the bottom camp. Yeah, and he said, oh, man, if you would have seen some of the rams that we missed. And the range finder, well, there was no range finders and the first range finder was that split split level thing. Yeah. I shouldn't needed to throw a rope at him then pull a rope back exactly, but he ran away. Okay, next time, next time. Uh. But anyways, so grew up doing that, and it's just exposed to the beauty of the country, and the country kind of locks you in because I was actually straight in this article about talking about climbing up and and walking through the boulder fields and and the shale and then the alpine scrub and then that first moment of emerging of the alpine and just seeing cheap country. And you probably experienced that in the Northwest territories. Yeah, very much. So it's impactful. It's vast. You can just look at it and it's almost like it's almost like a piece of art that you're looking at. And the more that you look at the piece of art painting, you see the brush strokes, you see the cracks, and he's see the way that this is laid out geographically, but also starts to see it as as how an animal might see it and see a little bit of water here and sort of the shade this cliff is throwing, and maybe they're gonna go in there in the afternoon and this black shale that they love pond their beds out and bedding in, and oh there's I can start to see some trails carved out, looks like they might go through that pass, and you start to look at it, and the more you look at them more it just it's just sort of enthralling. And so that part of it as much it is about the sheep hunting, it is the country is just right there with it, and maybe even more so. And I'm kind of making that argument, I think to myself, I think so because you know, sheep or not just like whey. I mean, they're wary, but relative to other animals there there, they're not docile, but they're you know, get after him pretty good. Yeah, you can get after him beautiful country, in this rugged country is right there along with these animals, and um so I think that got into me right away, and from there it just sort of evolved. And lucky enough to have a father that was interested in it, took me on hunts in the province, out of province. Um same with my brother, followed along in his footsteps, and just got to see it through the eyes of somebody who it gets their heart going, it gets them repped up, it gets it's all they can think about. And I think about my brother in the way he is now to this day, I mean, maybe even more obsessed than he ever was, which is insane. Yeah, And I'm and I'm and Frankie and I were talking about this in this last hunt too. I'm I'm kind of at this point where I'm I'm trying to experience a bunch of the stuff. Probably same to you. You You know, he talked about your year last year. You're in Nepal and New Zealand and Hawaii and Northwest territories and every everywhere everywhere, and you and and that's why I feel like I'm kind of they're in that stage of, Hey, I want to go hunting is a vehicle to take me to all these places and meet all these cool people and see these animals and the mountain landscapes they live in. And so for me, I'm kind of like taking that approach, and my brother is like focusing on the hardest possible fucking ship I think you can do with the bow in your hand and and which is awesome. And to watch him push it and you know he's hunted. He was the first bow hunter to kill and Ibex in Pakistan. Yeah, and we're going to Tajikistan on Tuesday and he's going to try and kill Marco Polo with a bow. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. There's a lot of sheet and you gotta be kidding me, man, you gotta be joking. That is legit. It's uh yeah, we'll see to do it all the bow, I mean it just just the sacrifice, the time. I mean, I know your brother has a family, correct, Yeah, he's married kiddos, yes, none that he knows of. Yah. It might have been one of those one of those kids that last trip to Argentina a good time. Uh No, But just to just to do it with with those guys, my brother and my dad, just to see the way they kind of operate and and like you said earlier, you've following these footsteps and then you make your own path. And for me, what what I've done is evolved and have these experiences and looking for challenges and new places and and I don't know, I don't I don't know where it goes from here. And probably the same for you. You go, well, what what what's next? Is It? Is it the value I get from throwing a dart at a map on a chunk of public land and going, all right, I know nothing about this mountain range. I'm gonna try and figure it out all my own. It might take me four years to killable in there, but when I do, no matter how big it is, it's going to be satisfying. Yeah, I mean, I think the beauty is that it's just a it's a like if you're wandering a path you don't know. You know. For me, and you know, there was a time in my life where I decided that this was going to be my profession right in some shape, way, shape or for no I just decided I'm going to commit to the hunting industry, the hunting community. That's gonna be my people, and that's what that's what matters. And in the moment that I decided that my my hunting life took these like ridiculous turns that they probably should have never took, like things I should never get to do. But at the same time, like I felt like, hey, I'm earning them. You know this, These are things that I, um, I'm not any better at this than anybody else, but these are things that I certainly appreciate in the moment and in hindsight and any future adventures. But then your life changes, right. I had a kid and in my life changed, um, and when he got old enough to have an opinion, which has been recent, I realized that I was never gonna be truly happy in my pursuits if he wasn't top of mind any future kids that might have. So that that's my journey though. I went from coming into the industry and the honey industry, not really know much about ship haven being a hunter, but wearing coveralls and shooting a bold action rifle and you know, loving the skin and parties of my dad too, going on a ball to shoot a blue sheep the funk out of here. You know, yours is a little bit more direct, like your dad led you down the path. Look, but shoot, I mean the place, the places you've been and things you've done weren't mapped out for you. Everybody mapped that ship out, tell people how to do, how to be at m foss you know, how do you? How do you? Because even in your business life, right, Yeah, in creating content for brands, creating content for clients and the things that you do, UM, you can't map it out. You can't say, like your your creativity that the type of photos you want to take, the equipment you're going to use, it all just kind of like comes that just keeps coming. Yeah. I think energy follows what you're focused on. You focus on it, You focus on making an intentional shift to build everything in your life around this direction that you're headed. And it's amazing the way that things start to roll out, um, and the opportunities that present themselves or that we're always there that you just didn't really see until you made this conscious choice to pursue something. And I'd like to think that I mapped it all out and did it, did did some goals and have really strategic plan, But like you said, it was sort of focusing on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it and less strategic man um, Yeah, I think five of your plans are fucking bullshit because I think you never had a destination. Right, But your dad and and greatly so like set you on a path, right, My dad set me on a hunting path. Our. Our starting points couldn't be any anymore different if you try to play some different points on the map. Right, somehow we got some point when we're sitting in the room talking about hunting, you know, and it's the path we were set on, and we if I had have been like, well, you know, the five year plan, not the five year plan is here's what I'm gonna do Northroest Territories, kill Cariboo. Yeah, I probably would have never got there. I might have, but it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been a serendipitous as what it was. I'm sure for you, the same thing like you find yourself in Argentina Jason rids day. I could never map that out. And people, actually, how did you get to where you are today? I don't know. Yeah, I just really like the hunt. I really like the hunt. Uh, And it's cool and you talk about sort of the perhaps some of the cons with the relative exposure to perhaps social media and the way that hunting is presented. I think about that a lot. I also think about the connectivity to the hunting world that we have with that tool and talking about hunting red stag. Two people that have gotten a hunt with the Patagony River guides Rants and Travis that run a fishing outfit and had a fishing lease and said, holy ship, there's some monster red stags that we were start hunting these things and then I really good friend. It's it's just have come really close with him and haven't spent a lot of time with him other than hunting Um Santiago Um down in Argentina. We hunted red stag with him, and it's the same thing. It's like, I would never know these guys existed without this this sort of tool for outreach. And so it's a double edged sword to it's it's a challenge that I find myself. Maybe you're the same, but you think about how much that warps our sense of of value and just peace with what our lives are and we don't have to compare every single thing that we do. And on the other hand, there's these positive, deep relationships that we've made. Because somebody saw a picture on some Instagram posts that a brand shared and they said, hey, would you ever consider coming hunting red Stack? Then you had a friend, and you have a friend and the total side. The people in Argentina are awesome. They are. They are the type of people that if you invite them two, if you said, hey, come on up and hunt out right now, if they could, they would, and they would sleep on that couch right there, that's three weeks. That's my type of that's my type of people. And vice versa. You're down there, come in, They'll give you the shirt off their back. And it feels like that New zealand other places like there's just like little cultures that have maintained this ethic. I agree, I agreed. I think that's something perhaps maybe in North America, maybe we're just tight wads or I don't know what it is, but there's just so many cool people out there that hunting has connected me with and I'm so fortunate, and it's it's it's it's totally a pay up forward type thing. We were just doing this trip up in northern BC. Um Blacktails and we were cruising around. Oh man, it's just like a long story. But this guy, we're looking for the spot we wanted to get in the Alpine. Talked to this guy. He was cutting this logging road and he goes, hey, he kind of waves us over, and we're going, I don't know if we're supposed to be here, and we're looking for this trailhead and we drive up and he goes, hey, what are you guys doing And he said, well, we're, um, we're deer hunting. And he went, oh, well, you guys should go over there. He said really and he said, oh yeah, I see him up there all the time. And he goes, oh, no, you got across the bay on a boat. Well that's okay, I got I got my boat. You guys go grab it. It's the blue one. And we were going, what's your name, what's your address or what's your phone number? Here? Do you want us to leave anything with you is collateral? He said, just take my boat. I don't give a ship. So that's something I think is in the North you might have experienced that a little time up there. Of course, it's of course maybe in South America New Zealand. It seems like European people are like that sometimes. And um, I don't know, going off on a tangent, but I would say this, man, I always think about life in the place I live, and I've lived in a few places, like what is the culture of the neighbor? Right? I always go back to the culture of what a neighbor is in America right now, a lot of places I've lived, a neighbor as a person you're either annoyed by or you give the courtesy wave to. And that's the culture. Now. It's not everywhere, but funk all, it's a lot of places. And the neighbor in New York City is somebody that you yell at or ignore or have to wait in line behind to get a coffee. Right, But there's other places in the world where the neighbor is this like, it's a it's you are now part of a community. The culture of the neighbor is uplifting, it's sharing, it's giving, it's sleep on my couch and stup in your couch. That's the culture of the neighbor. We have fucking lost My dad his culture. He's like, dude. When I was a kid, I'd run around the neighborhood and they just let us go in whatever. How we just run in somebody's house and who they are, run out, We don't care. Have a cookie leaves like that. That is to eat people randomies. You can't be eating random cook those cookies. You don't know what you're in those cookies. Yeah, yeah, it could be good. But there's this you know, we're more connected, right, we're more connected than ever you were able to connect somebody across the world, but then have a relationship that was built on disconnect, which is this oxymoronic activity that we do because we're just we're in we're like little babies when it comes to communicating because we're just got this tool not too long ago, the tool of social media and internet and instant communication anybody around the world all time. So we just got that in the spain of human communication that's been like maybe less than one percent of the time. That's a world a baby with that ship. We're terrible, Like we get frustrated, we're like fuck you when we're on the internet. But it's not you know, but it also can lead to awesome things. So it's it's it's it's as oxymronic. Is some of these cultures can can be and I've found the Hawaiian culture. I don't know why. It's islands definitely. You feel like islands that you do. You just said this. You have to get on the boat to leave or a plane to leave. So we're all got we're all together on this floating little piece of land and New Zealand Australia. It's hard to get stuff. It's hard to get stu from the north. It's hard to get stuff on islands. You got a trade, you need a cup of sugar, you need a couple of extra arrows. If you ran out, you go to your neighbor. That's where it's That's where it's so much more connected. It seems like you can't Amazon Prime ship to the north coast of BC. Did you ever do you ever think about people? Do you ever think about the fact that you can live in this society and in Bosan, Montana and never leave your house and live very productive life. You can never leave your house. You can get all the food you need, all the shelter you need, You have people, all the relationships you need, you can see people in video chat. Never leave your house and you could be the productive you could be a CEO of a company never leave your house, not one time? How scary is that definition productive definition of? But as our society grades the game and of like what's a good person, it would be like, well, I have a job, right, I've got a family, I've got friends. I just don't ever leave the house. I'm gonna die and here my cats are gonna eat me. But they always have cats, they always Why do they have cats? Are the cats? Yeah? I mean I think that's That's a big part of what I think about, is what our society allows us to do. But then what what told does it exact for that allowance? You know, we can do kind of whatever we want. Technologies allowed us to do a lot of things, but it also exact toll in our humanity takes a little bit away, It takes a little bit weight of our connective tissue along the way, and honey fucking gives it back. Hey, I think we solved all the world's problems. Well, I mean, the growler is empty, you're about you have to go to you have to leave and go to a I think that I thought was cool when you're telling me earlier, Ah, your wife and yourself. Yeah, the group of friends. You do what's called a cookbook night, cookbook club, cookbook club, which is even better because it's not just one night's right, I guess if he cooks right, you pick a cookbook, right, just a single cookbook. Now, do you pick a different cookbook every time? Or you cycle through this. There's actually a pitch week. Everybody brings a cookbook. You pitch your cookbook, the group votes on the cookbook. Once that cookbook is selected, the group will cook dishes out of that cookbook for maybe four times, until we've cooked everything through it or everything that looks good. And so you'll bring an entree, I'll bring an appetizer, somebody will bring a dessert, all from this cookbook. And we'll meet once a month usually, And it's basically an excuse to drink wine. Yeah, I was good cocktails. I guarantee you're drinking dirty. There's no way you're sitting around having tea. There's some food, you know, and there is. What it does is it makes you cook Korean food, Icelandic food, old school home cooking, Italian food, and things that you would never just sits there. I mean, I cycle through tacos, pasta elk steaks and then I probably do it all over again. That's about three things. I know, three things I can make, and that is it. And I think that it just gets you. It just gets you out doing something different and we all meet over food. The kitchen is where everybody gathers at a party. Um. Food is where stories are told. And so I can't I can't tell you that we had this grand plan. It was a friend of ours who came up with it, but it was actually really cool and his friendships were evil and we knew. The nice thing is anytime in this day and age and to travel that you do and I do that. When you say bye to a friend and you know the next time you're going to see him, that is a good feeling. It's like when you say bye to relative and you say, I know I'm gonna see you at Grandpa Tim's birthday, or I'm gonna see at Christmas. You have these Christmas, Thanksgiving, you have Easter. Maybe you have these gathering points with family that you know you're gonna see them. And now as an adult, we're in our thirties, we get to choose our family and our friends and we get to say hey, We're gonna make it a priority to spend time with these people. We love them like family. And I think that that feeling this cookbook little cookbook club thing. To have that feeling and to have a reason to get together and say hey, I'll see you next month is awesome ship that feeds the soul. Man not to get too dramatic about it, but as I like, I got a pretty steady soul, I think, like, I don't. I'm not too you know, sketchy own life. I think I got it. I'm pretty grounded. I'm like, I know what i want to do. I'm happy with this. I'm not happy with that. I'm not. You don't need to see a therapist and talk through any of this ship. And I wonder why that is a lot of times, because I'm not any better than anybody else. But then I think back to my family life and I'm like, there was all when I was a kid. There's always a place to go back to. There was always I'll see at Easter, both grandparents house, our house, it's a cousins. There was close family you can always get back to. And I feel like that's that's you know, that steadies your soul. Like life's less trouble even if the people that you have to get back to are fucked up because they are, because they are. I mean, there's no perfect family. Your family is fucked up by anybody listening to this. If your family is perfect, just right in and tell me how you've chepd it. Ask them if they're adopting. Yeah, I'll be in um. But yeah, I mean those things I think are they're studying, and I think it's hard to recognize sometimes in your life. But yeah, I mean you have, you know, to bring that all full circle and be real melodramatic about it. Haunting is that way too. It steadies your own relationships but also studies your life a little bit, gives you, like a little perspective on on the what the old soul needs to feel like one to the only basis no question. You don't have to go get get therapy and talk through your issues. You can work them through on a freaking mountain. They go buy a growl growler from four or six to a podcast, or go hunting. But it is pretty astounding, And I think I'm excited for it because I'm excited for you to find that in Bozeman and that's something that we miss. We live here for a while and whether it's your little three D rchery league or the same group of guys that you go for a beer with a cookbook club or you're fishing buddies, there is a really good sense of community here, it seems. And just walking around town today, we just ran into so many people. Yeah, yeah, that's why we were talking about that. You know. One of the most exciting things for me and moving here was like, I think this place could be a community. And I said, I lived here for thirty years because I think it's a community. And my wife and I was talking about that. You know, you live in a place and you're there for work or you're trying to like adopt the culture, and it's a lot of effort make friends. It's a lot of effort. But when you get to a place where like I could smoothly fit into this without a whole lot of monkey wrenching. These are my people, I feel like I could, you know, I could be friends with them, They could be friends with me no matter what. I met somebody at the gym there earlier today and they were like, I had a b h a vest on there, like b H love b H A. And the next hour we set and talk for an hour. I did work out, said, is that dark for an hour? Um? So yeah, I mean it's it's that kind of feeling that means something to me, like coming back to a place and be like, my it's my place. These are my people. Yeah, and that's important. And you know, hunting can provide that. It's fraud that from me in like an abstract way, but um, there's some things that are more like more important. In the cookbook club, this is a delicious way to make that happen. You can you can adopt that you should maybe should join our cookbook club. Maybe I'll take you, Maybe I'll take your spot. Are these nice people? They are the best people. They are talented, really good cooks, creative. It's a lot of pressure. We did some wild game, Yeah, we do wild game signature cocktails. Yeah, yes, we'll give me one. Let's close out with one signature cocktail. I just need. Yeah, I mean we're right there, sat Shore cocktail. Something that you my own personal or Adam Foss sheep tag special. Well, I don't know if this is a sheep take special, but I'm a fan of the Caesar. I am a big fan the Caesar salad or Caesar the not the salad. I'm not talking about the salad, folks. It was our signature cocktail at our wedding. Caesar, for those that don't know, is a Canadian cocktail invented in Calgary, Alberta in the late sixties the Palace Hotel. Stuckers got fifty eight years of history. That's what I'm talking about. Damn. Lots of people talk about a bloody Mary. Do you ever drink bloodies after a long night? It's bullshit. They got shipped on the Caesar. The bloody Mary's wicked cool cousin. It is clamato juice, which is clam and tomato juice vodka. I gotta go back to clmato of juice. Never had it? You probably have? You never? You know I have had a Seesar with you one of the shows. I know I've had one with you. Have We had a season and now listen, I was probably six whisky is deep when we started knocking these down. It might be. And the beauty of the Caesar is it is the hangover cocktail. And so let me break it down. Clamato juice, which is tomato juice and clam juice. You can't really get it in the States. It's a Canadian thing, or you gotta have it special ordered in not everybody has it all right, intriguing vodka, Worcester sauce, Oh, tabasco, Oh, salt and pepper rim the glass with a lime rim it in a little bit of a seasoning salt. And now you do a toothpick with a banana, pepper, spicy pickle, asparagus. People who put pepperoni or beef jerky, and I'm oh my god, I had one at this is where I had a Caesar with you. I'm remembering it was that sci Okay, we're in Vegas. It was breakfast at that wherever hotel it was. We had we like a really quick breakfast. Oh yeah, that was a Caesar. That's ship's good. There you go. I'd like to have a drunk someone don't even remember what he did? Do you remember that chicken on it? A piece of fried chicken? Yes? Okay, well listen, that's like yep. I think a challenge for the listener is to create your own Caesar based on the recipe that Adam just provided. Is there any other like main takeaway and the things you gotta do. There's a secret and sometimes you want to give away. Well, what do you think I trust? I'm gonna trust. Nobody's listening. No, we're the trust tree. We're in the nest. There is a secret among caesar enthusiasts and mixologists everywhere. My brother does this and he makes the best Season's kill sheep with a bow, so he knows what he's talking about. He knows he's talking about a little bit of pickle juice like that and a little bit of horse radish if you like it spicy. I do like a spicy you will like one of the horse radish cream. You've got this salty savory drink and it's you start your night off with one, or it's a breakfast cocktail. You get an eggs benny in a Caesar and you're back at it. This is science, so it's real talk. Why don't we leave everybody with that? Tell me what you would put as garnish and what would you do to it and get creative with it. Yeah, you can do steak spice, turn it in like homework. That's right, let's do next week. All right? When this launches, you hit it here. You heard it here first, folks, Caesar two point now bring him. Maybe we'll do it on the next time. We'll do Caesars. Well, well, we'll make all the season recipes that where people said that halfway through we'll just be just so drunk and full of fried chicken, pickles, brisket. That's not a bad idea. It's the Southern season. That's yeah, that's a Texas season. There you go. Well, thanks, sir. I appreciate your general badass now and if you if you, uh, if people want to see kind of your work, where what should they look at? They should check out brands that I'm fortunate to work for, sick of gear, Yettie Stone, Glacier backpacks, Gerber knives and tools, fishing tools. Um, check out what those guys are doing. Are my Instagram handles. Fosse which is my last name, man the number eight fos eight eight. People call me fosse Man. People call me I call you that Sloan goes fast man. Fosse Man. Okay, that's just I like it. I do like it. You gotta pick that up over the way. I think there's people like you. If they just called you Adam. That's so many Adams, there's only one false man. That's right. Um, they can check some of that stuff out. And yeah, just see where the hell we are come hanging with us the wild Cheap Show. I'll buy you if I see you in your reference this podcast, I'll buy you a Caesar and you'll see you. Adam and I leaning up against the ball, that's right, trying to handle our Caesar's. That's right, Thanks sir, Thank you, all right, cheers, Cookbook night coming up. Thanks buddy, that's it. That's all Episode number twenty eight in the books, thanks to Adam Fass, great conversation, a great four oh six beer. H denote the fact that we're in Bozeman, Antana for the foreseeable future. That will be our new home for myself, my family and the podcast, so hopefully a lot it's good to come of that change. And thanks to everybody who's who's supported up by the way, as we moved up there and made a big road trip north and did our Texas podcast to say goodbye to that place. Really appreciate all the well wishers and the comments and the insight along the way. Uh, please go in the meantime, to the Hunting Collective dot com check out the podcast there. There's a whole bunch of good ones. As I said, the series of Texas podcasts that includes Wyman, Menser, Russell Cunningham, omar Vila, and our latest, Roy and Ryan Sears, the founders of Eddie Until next time when we'll be taking a trip at some point soon to Washington, d C. And during that trip we'll be talking to a lot of influential folks in politics and legislation and just some of my friends that live around there, and so stay tuned for that. We'll come on at next time, Unty. Collected by and In Christ mst and

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