00:00:01
Speaker 1: It’s so crazy.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: I mean, just dead asleep one second, and then all of a sudden, the doe and that buck just up on their feet, like, looking over here.
00:00:09
Speaker 3: I don’t know.
00:00:10
Speaker 2: Maybe a coyote over here.
00:00:12
Speaker 4: Maybe there’s more deer coming over here, so I can’t see it on the phone.
00:00:18
Speaker 5: I don’t know.
00:00:19
Speaker 1: I do know it’s kind of up-down. That may seem.
00:00:23
Speaker 5: Like too much, but I bet you it’s going to take.
00:00:25
Speaker 3: Me an hour to get there.
00:00:40
Speaker 4: What you just heard were my post shot thoughts after sitting on a buck for over two hours. Seemed like five hours, but maybe it was just two. Welcome to the 12 and 26 podcast. This is a companion show to our 12 and 26 films rolling out this year. Now, if you’re just tuning into this now and haven’t already seen the new film, which, by the way, I hate calling them films. They’re still episodes to me. It is out on the MeatEater channel. Please hop over there and watch it and smash the old like and subscribe buttons. There’s still more 12 and 26 films coming, so please keep checking back on the MeatEater YouTube channel. Today I’m here with Garrett Long and Phil the Engineer to address your questions about my mule deer hunt. Thank you all for writing in. posting questions on YouTube and on social media. We’ve curated a handful of the most compelling audience questions. I’m going to do my best to answer them here now. Uh, this episode in particular is centered around a solo backcountry mule deer hunt, kind of solo. Um, I didn’t film it myself, so I had, uh, Max Barta there with me, which was a lot of fun. Um, But it was in the western United States. The hunt was remote, incredibly demanding physically. Really tested my skills and patience, kind of. It wasn’t an easy hunt, but it wasn’t the hardest hunt I’ve been on either. But again, if you haven’t watched it, go check it out now, and all of this will make a lot more sense. This time around, let’s start with some general comments before getting into the actual questions.
00:02:23
Speaker 1: Good or bad?
00:02:24
Speaker 4: We will start with a few more questions. a few of the more critical comments, and then move on to what folks seem to enjoy about the film. And then we’ll get into some actual questions from all of you. So, number one, should I read out the guy’s handle or the person’s handle?
00:02:44
Speaker 6: You can if you want to. I don’t think they’re trying to stay out of it.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: It’s just a handle.
00:02:48
Speaker 4: Kurt Thomason, 4620, wrote, Latvian Eagle kidded up like he’s a Formula One hunter. guess i’m priced out of this sport too um i wish i could remember exactly what my kit was i didn’t feel like it was too overboard i feel like i had socks undies a pair of pants probably a base layer up top my undies kind of my bottom base layer and then uh Usually like a second layer. And I think it’s my second layer. I was wearing the, uh, suppressor, um, the soft shell jacket. And then, uh, I probably just had a, uh, a big puffy over that. Cause the weather was really nice. I didn’t carry any rain gear.
00:03:33
Speaker 1: Um, so I don’t know. Formula one.
00:03:36
Speaker 4: Um, I guess that means it’s like just really, really expensive. I mean, that big down puffy jacket is an expensive jacket, but I think the rest of that kit is probably like 500 bucks.
00:03:49
Speaker 5: I don’t know, man. Formula One drivers are pretty sharp.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: Sharp looking? Yeah. I didn’t have my hair all.
00:03:57
Speaker 4: I probably didn’t get a haircut like a Formula One guy before this hunt.
00:04:02
Speaker 1: But I always tell everybody.
00:04:04
Speaker 4: I try to remind people on the old Instagram that one, you should just get off Instagram and go out hunting. And if buying First Light gear or any other hunting gear is keeping you from hunting.
00:04:17
Speaker 1: Because of the price… Because you need.
00:04:20
Speaker 4: Money for gas or you just need money for food so that you can just have time to go hunting. Don’t buy the stuff. You don’t need it. I mean, literally all you need is some kind of a weapon to go hunting. You don’t even need camo. People killed stuff in blue jeans and flannels for a lot of years before we all got super hyped on camo.
00:04:44
Speaker 7: So….
00:04:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, if you’re in a spot where you can’t do the first light thing, then, yeah, you can literally wear the clothes that.
00:04:54
Speaker 1: You probably went to work with.
00:04:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, get out there.
00:04:57
Speaker 4: And just get out there and make it happen.
00:05:02
Speaker 1: Let’s see.
00:05:04
Speaker 4: At JackTackle57 wrote, he must be an angler.
00:05:09
Speaker 1: Great hunt.
00:05:10
Speaker 4: Might I suggest a larger caliber rifle? Clearly the wind was pushing your bullet. That elevation and those conditions, a heavy bullet over 160 grains will buck the wind a lot better. It’s okay to be overgunned in the Rocky Mountains, especially in.
00:05:27
Speaker 1: By the way, you are a great shooter. Well, thanks, Jack. It’s like a compliment sandwich, as Steve likes to say. He’s not wrong.
00:05:39
Speaker 4: A heavier bullet, um, which I think actually in the six fives, a buddy of mine who’s a big time shooter was telling me about like a one 75, maybe kind of a custom bullet that he, he got from somewhere. He says over in Sweden, that’s all they shoot are like the one 75s, uh, out of the six, five out of the six fives, you know, which they’ve been shooting, uh, moose over there with six fives for well over a hundred years. Um, But yeah, he’s not wrong. Bigger bullet would have been less affected by the wind in that condition. And yeah, I guess my response, why I would probably still carry the gun I was carrying and probably stick with my 160 grain bullets is that it’s like, man.
00:06:30
Speaker 1: You do a little bit of shooting. You do a lot of carrying.
00:06:33
Speaker 4: So having that short action and just a light setup in that rifle was really nice. Usually once you go to those heavier bullets, you’re going to be in a long action magnum. And I don’t know. I guess you could just shoot. 308 and have a heavier bullet.
00:06:51
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, but that wouldn’t have gone through the wind as good as your PRC either. You don’t? No. Like, I think that.
00:06:58
Speaker 4: 180-grainer out of a.
00:07:00
Speaker 6: 308?
00:07:00
Speaker 5: Well, I don’t know what the BCs are, but. 308 with a 180-grainer, it’s going to be slow.
00:07:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:07:07
Speaker 7: Right?
00:07:08
Speaker 5: But weight is only part of the equation, right? So, BC is really just how it flies through the wind, right? And 6.5 PRC has been built around very high BC bolts. I don’t know what you were shooting, 140s, 156s. Do you know?
00:07:23
Speaker 1: They’re probably the 140 Acubons.
00:07:25
Speaker 4: Right, right.
00:07:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that’s arguably a little bit light for that caliber, but I think it’s easy to say, well, heavier is better, but man, I can tell you, generally speaking, out of a. 308, your wind holds compared to a 6.5 PRC are dramatically more.
00:07:41
Speaker 1: Okay, so I’d have to have probably a.
00:07:43
Speaker 4: 30 caliber Magnum to really make a difference.
00:07:47
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:07:47
Speaker 4: And then you’ve got to carry that sucker around for a week until you get to make a couple shots.
00:07:53
Speaker 6: Yep.
00:07:54
Speaker 4: You know, the other answer is that, like, you know, you just, and again, I really thought that wind was pretty much coming straight in my face and I wasn’t going to get that drift. Um, but, uh, I could have gotten closer, you know, where it, uh, it wouldn’t, wouldn’t matter as much.
00:08:12
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:08:13
Speaker 4: Uh, at trash hunt, interesting handle. He says meat eater saying spot burning is a thing. Dot dot.
00:08:22
Speaker 3: LOL.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Laugh out loud. Is that what that stands for?
00:08:27
Speaker 4: Definitely.
00:08:27
Speaker 6: We can roll this short clip here.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: The spot burning thing is real. I’m just going to try not to do it. I’m backpacking in.
00:08:34
Speaker 4: Limiting factor is batteries for cameras. So about three, maybe four nights is what we can do.
00:08:38
Speaker 1: It’s chilly. A little bit of snow on the ground. Mid-October. Pretty excited.
00:08:45
Speaker 7: Yep.
00:08:47
Speaker 4: Um.
00:08:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s a thing, and we discuss it internally a lot here in Meat Eater. I try to protect my private land in Wisconsin because I don’t need visitors there, and the people that I hunt there with like to go there and just get away and have peace and quiet. So that’s kind of why I don’t really talk about the county I’m in in Wisconsin when we go there. But in this case where it’s a unit or even a state, you know, all the locals that are mostly hunting there, not somewhere else, you know, they like to keep their spots to themselves and I can’t blame them for that. So we’ve decided to talk less about, you know, even to the extent of saying not the state where we’re at. Because honestly, it’s just not that important, right? It’s, I think for the viewer, the adventure, the content that they watch, it’s not going to be any less engaging if they don’t know which boundaries we were hunting within. Yeah, man, I’m.
00:09:54
Speaker 5: Going to challenge that a little bit. I think, uh, you know, we’ve found like, imagine you draw a tag in Colorado, um, and you want to look up elk hunting in Colorado. What do you type in?
00:10:12
Speaker 1: Right.
00:10:13
Speaker 5: Colorado elk hunting. I do think that there’s a subset of the audience that And a lot of the questions were around where they think you might have been. I think there’s a large subset of the audience that genuinely does want to know general state of where you’re at.
00:10:35
Speaker 1: A large subset? Like more than 25%?
00:10:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that mostly the people that don’t want to know where you’re at are the people living in that state.
00:10:47
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:10:48
Speaker 5: So it’s a balance for us of being approachable and everything like that and showing opportunity.
00:10:57
Speaker 4: I think that we have historical evidence that we have done it to places in the past.
00:11:06
Speaker 1: The Meteor Show.
00:11:08
Speaker 4: I won’t mention which ones, but I’ve heard enough where they’re like, oh yeah, after you aired that one, Things changed around here. You know, took more points to draw my unit or there are more hunting leases all of a sudden in this area. Um, people never knew that we had this opportunity here. And of course we’re like, Oh man, that’s a bummer. Cause like, that’s what we’re interested in.
00:11:31
Speaker 1: Right.
00:11:31
Speaker 4: Are these sort of like off the wall opportunities that are neat that you haven’t heard about? Like we want to go experience them and we want to share them with the, with the viewers. But again, the locals live in there that, uh, That spotlight’s not good.
00:11:46
Speaker 5: Yeah. It’s a balance, man.
00:11:48
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:11:49
Speaker 1: It’s a thing. We’re aware of it.
00:11:53
Speaker 4: We’re constantly trying to figure out how to do it right.
00:11:57
Speaker 1: Let’s see. Flip side. Oh, okay. More comments. RobertWatson-N6Z wrote….
00:12:11
Speaker 4: Absolutely respect the accountability and humility at the end when he realized his point of impact wasn’t where he thought it was due to the fall on the mountain.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: Other haunting content creators would.
00:12:21
Speaker 4: Have cut that part out and attributed the less than ideal shots to the fall. This is why I’m consistently drawn to Meat Eater over others. Side note, how he was able to find that super secret backcountry roadless area in Texas is amazing.
00:12:38
Speaker 1: Thanks, Robert.
00:12:39
Speaker 4: It took a lot of digging on the old Onyx, but found it. Yeah, thanks overall, I guess, for the nice words there. Yeah, I just feel like it’s, for me, the whatever, the humility and all that is not what I was thinking about, including the checking the rifle zero. It’s more like, oh, this is what I’m going to do anyways when I get home, because I have to, because… my kid’s probably going to shoot that rifle a week later at a deer and I need to make sure that it’s on. And so it’s kind of like, I’m going to do it. I then want to film it and include it so that people just see like more of the process. You know, sometimes it’s so easy to gloss over that or like, you know, the things that happen around camp, you know, between the times that you’re actually out chasing elk, whether it’s cook-ins, you know, how you’re sleeping, you know, whatever it is. It’s just kind of, I don’t know, it adds to it, right?
00:13:43
Speaker 1: When you see more of it. Dalton Unguided.
00:13:48
Speaker 4: Nice.
00:13:50
Speaker 1: Hardcore. Cold October. Elk and deer season. Cross.
00:13:57
Speaker 4: Awesome country that looks like it would hold giant deer. 30 doe to one buck ratio. Reeks of blank state.
00:14:08
Speaker 1: Ha ha.
00:14:11
Speaker 4: So, yeah, Dalton just wanted to try to figure out what state I was hunting in.
00:14:16
Speaker 5: Most of the questions were about what state.
00:14:18
Speaker 1: There’s a lot of that. Yeah. I didn’t look.
00:14:20
Speaker 4: I try not to, unless I have to. What we’ve been talking about doing is making a, Phil, we really have to do this. Garrett Long is like our head of, what is your title again now?
00:14:31
Speaker 1: You’re not head of content. You’re the VP of.
00:14:34
Speaker 5: SVP of content.
00:14:35
Speaker 4: SVP of content.
00:14:36
Speaker 5: Which only matters when the chief of content isn’t in the room.
00:14:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker 4: But I feel like people are nice to me. I appreciate it. But Randall, they really get after him in the comments. Don’t say nice things. And Randall and I have been thinking it’d be fun just to find all of the worst comments and read them and then talk smack about them. I think that would be a lot of fun. See, Phil, you’re already laughing.
00:15:02
Speaker 6: I mean, it would be a very fun video, but it would also encourage people to comment on things in bad faith, just trying to get selected for this.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: That’s true. Well, we won’t tell that we’re doing it.
00:15:13
Speaker 4: So just like the people that are trolls already, they would be the ones whose comments we would read.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
00:15:19
Speaker 6: And we would dox the commenters and then make fun of them and their lives and their appearance, of course, as well, right?
00:15:25
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:15:25
Speaker 1: Yes, okay. Yeah, okay. All right.
00:15:28
Speaker 4: So that’s all for the just straight up comments. Appreciate it. And we appreciate you guys watching and interacting.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: It’s great.
00:15:40
Speaker 4: So with that, let’s get into some of the more direct questions from the audience.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: Garrett, what you got?
00:15:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, man. So there was actually a lot of questions just about gear in general. BlaineCyphers3406, which it’s hard to imagine there’s that many BlaineCyphers. But he asked, what’s the rifle setup, scope, caliber? Silencer. Are there any just highlights you want to hit there? A litany of questions throughout the comments about what caliber and gun and all that you’re using.
00:16:16
Speaker 4: And that’s one of those things where I should have just addressed it in the episode because people always wonder. And I’m pulling up the scope so that I don’t mess up any of the numbers. Um… Scope-wise is the Sig Whiskey 6 3-18×44.
00:16:40
Speaker 1: First focal plane. Rangefinder, probably one of the most important parts of that whole thing.
00:16:53
Speaker 4: Because now with the BDX app, we do enough shooting of these rifles. We true them, range them, What’s the word I’m looking for?
00:17:04
Speaker 1: Not true.
00:17:05
Speaker 4: But when you kind of check and make sure that the ballistics that the range finder is giving you is actually it.
00:17:13
Speaker 5: True. All right.
00:17:15
Speaker 1: It is true.
00:17:17
Speaker 4: But man, it’s so slick when you can just range something at 400 yards, which I think is roughly what that shot was. And then it says it right to you in the range finder.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, you need to go up.
00:17:27
Speaker 4: 2.5 or 3.0, whatever it was. Um, just gives you a lot of confidence in making that shot and knowing that you’re going to hold that on. And it’s going to hit pretty much dead on as long as you, you know, execute a nice shot. But, uh, that was the, uh, SIG cross, uh, sawtooth right in a, in a PR in a six, five PRC. I did have a, I guess like semi custom barrel put on there. It was, it’s a short 18 inch, um, uh, carbon fiber from, uh, proof. And, um, you know, the shortness of the barrel, it definitely takes away, uh, from the velocity, but man, does it make it easy to run a suppressor on there? And man, I just love shooting with the press person.
00:18:18
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:18:19
Speaker 4: I love shooting with a suppressor these days. Um, so I give up a little bit of, uh, velocity to, uh, you know, to be able to run it quiet and reduce that recoil a bunch. So it was a very nice, you know, easy, compact rifle to pack around.
00:18:40
Speaker 1: What else?
00:18:41
Speaker 5: Well, you never actually said what range finder you had.
00:18:45
Speaker 1: Oh, just the, I believe it’s the Kilo 8.
00:18:47
Speaker 5: Oh, the 8K, yeah.
00:18:49
Speaker 1: 8K, yeah.
00:18:52
Speaker 4: And then the meat eater.
00:18:55
Speaker 1: Suppressor.
00:18:56
Speaker 4: That’s, uh, built by, uh, silencer central. Um, nice, you know, compact. How long is that thing? Six inches, right under six. It’s like five and three quarters, something like that. Um, does the trick, especially for that smaller caliber. It’s a, you know, it seems like it’s the perfect combo. And then, like I said earlier, 140 grain Nosler Acubond, uh, loaded uh sig loads those up um yeah i can’t complain like that all those sig crosses shoot inch or better uh for me just with with those factory ammo from sig um and what’s even more important i think at times is that uh the deviation of the uh velocities it’s like you know more about this than i do if I feel like we find a lot of times with the SIG ammo, it’s been like less than 10 feet a second. And you were telling me, I think, at one point that average for a lot of factory ammo is going to be more like 20 to 30 feet per second.
00:20:04
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:20:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:20:05
Speaker 4: And that, like, folks, like, at 400 yards, it makes a big difference on your point of impact when, you know, your bullet’s not going the same speed as the last bullet you shot or the next bullet you’re going to shoot. So, yeah, that’s pretty much it for the rifle setup.
00:20:25
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: So, Galliper, Silencer.
00:20:27
Speaker 5: And I think on that, so another question we got by at 306. Vic Z KO five. Uh, he asked about, it seems that you’re a fan of, of silencers, um, on your high country hunts. And he’s just curious for your reasoning. It says he has speculation, but, um, he’d appreciate you to outline kind of why you like to use them.
00:20:53
Speaker 4: Hmm, man. I like them on any kind of hunt, high country, low country, back country, front country. Uh, man you just don’t have to take that extra step of uh you know throwing in ear protection and it’s kind of got built in um you know recoil suppression um you know it’s not quite as much as a break but golly i don’t ever want to shoot a gun with a break on it ever if i don’t have to um I just got my hearing tested again recently because we got some new hearing protection. And so when you go in to get the molds, they also do some testing. And then my left ear is so bad that they’re actually, they’re starting the conversation of putting in a hearing aid in my left ear. As a right-handed shooter, that’s the ear that is, you know, kind of pointed towards the muzzle more. And I feel like for the last, 10 to, you know, definitely 15, maybe even come on 20 years. Like I’ve been pretty good about like always at the range, um, you know, and even having, and just a pair of those, a lot of times I wear those Howard light, uh, it’s like a neck band that has the two foamies on it and just can stick those in real fast when I need to take a shot. But all that being said, man, I did enough damage as a youngster that, uh, I’m looking at a hearing aid.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: Um, so yeah, Yeah.
00:22:18
Speaker 4: I don’t know. I just don’t see a reason not to. I mean, they’re so light these days. Um, I think carrying that extra little bit away is, is totally worthwhile.
00:22:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, I’m 35 and, uh, they say I need a hearing aid in my left ear.
00:22:35
Speaker 1: There you go.
00:22:36
Speaker 5: Oh, either put, put on muffs or get a suppressor. Um, all right, man, shifting gears a little bit. Um, another question we got wrote in is his name is Garrett actually. So he’s gotta be a pretty smart dude. Uh, he asked when hunting for mule deer, what are some of the best tips for e-scouting?
00:22:57
Speaker 4: Hmm.
00:22:59
Speaker 1: Good question.
00:23:02
Speaker 4: Um, I think like all, any, any animal, you know, they need water, food cover. So even with mule deer, you gotta be looking for that. Uh, I think defining out, you know, you can always call the biologist or the warden and find out sort of what elevation these deer like to hang at in whatever unit you’re hunting, depending on the.
00:23:28
Speaker 1: Time of year.
00:23:28
Speaker 4: And then go to the EMAP and, you know, find those elevations and find country that looks good. I mean, for me, for mule deer hunting, I haven’t done too much desert mule deer hunting.
00:23:42
Speaker 1: It’s mostly been, I don’t know.
00:23:45
Speaker 4: I mean, we still live, we live in the Western high country, you know, arid desert, but, um, find the feed, I guess. And with e-scouting, you know, you’re gonna have to find the aspects, meaning like which direction is the hill pointing to find the feed that the deer need. Um, yeah. Cover next to food with water nearby. Um, And I think what else in particular, um, you know, spots where too many people can’t get to too easily. I think that’s a good, uh, tip for hunting mule deer. But honestly, it’s like this unit that I was in, there wasn’t a lot of country that didn’t have some deer. Um, you know, some a little bit less than others. Uh, but I think that, man, You just kind of have to put your boots on the ground and go and look at it.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: Um, yeah, sorry.
00:24:49
Speaker 4: I don’t have too much more for that. Uh, but yeah, I found zones that just didn’t have too many roads, didn’t have too many trails. Um, and you know, places where the deer can feed and not get messed with.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: Um, Yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker 5: It reminds me, uh, old Randy Newberg said one time that, uh, there’s a lot more deer habitat than there are deer.
00:25:15
Speaker 7: Hmm.
00:25:17
Speaker 5: And he was kind of getting at, like, you just got to go look at a point. Like you, you can do a lot of prep, but at a point you just got to go look. And on that note a little bit, uh, and, and, and Phil will play a clip here, but, um, another really good question, man, that, that I’ve actually thought about is from Kurt’s world, uh, at Kurt’s world. Um, and he said with back country hunting, do you need to worry about scent if you’re camping in near your glassing spot?
00:25:51
Speaker 4: Hmm, man, on a, on a, any, I guess back country hunt. I try not to camp too close. Hmm. uh, to whatever I’m, I’m hunting or wherever I think, you know, the spot that I think the animals are going to be. And like in that spot, sure. There was probably deer on the ridge that I camped on. I mean, you’re gonna have to give and take a little bit, but you know, with hiking, sweating as much as I do, you know, when you’re going up and down mountains, I mean, I don’t do any kind of scent control for those types of hunts. I usually just feel like when I’m you know, going to find a deer by glassing, it’s going to be far enough away where no matter what the wind’s doing, they’re probably not going to pick me off by scent. Once I start making a stalk, you know, then I’m going to start worrying about what the wind’s doing.
00:26:47
Speaker 1: But again, I feel like most times, you know, four, 500 yards, you can get.
00:26:56
Speaker 4: With these animals, with the wind on your back, and they’re not really going to spook.
00:27:00
Speaker 5: Okay.
00:27:00
Speaker 4: You know?
00:27:00
Speaker 6: I’m going to roll this clip really here.
00:27:02
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah.
00:27:03
Speaker 4: I did not achieve my goal of one mule deer before dark, but that’s not going to deter me. I’m camped right on top of a great glassing knob, and I’ll be back on the glass at first light.
00:27:18
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you were fine glassing from camp. just because you had that buffer where you were kind of past that four or 500 yard zone.
00:27:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again, like I said, there’s probably animals on the ridge I was on, but you can’t, I mean, you just can’t always go where there’s zero animals.
00:27:37
Speaker 5: And so another question, you remained optimistic in the video, but after glassing for half a day, this made me kind of realize that maybe I have a patience issue. Were you like second guessing yourself at all that night when you were setting up your tent?
00:27:57
Speaker 1: No, no.
00:27:59
Speaker 4: I just feel like one, one afternoon just.
00:28:04
Speaker 5: Without a deer.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:28:06
Speaker 4: You got to give it more time. And honestly, it’s like in that kind of, and when you know you’re in deer country.
00:28:13
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker 4: You got to just give it more time. And I always remind myself, like I’m only looking for one. And maybe it’s that kind of a spot where there aren’t a lot of other deer that a single big buck, or maybe with a couple does, that’s where you’re going to find them. Because when there’s less deer, and if you’re in good deer habitat, that’s more food, more cover, more all of that for the deer that are in that area. And, you know, hopefully you think the big buck’s going to.
00:28:41
Speaker 1: Be in there.
00:28:42
Speaker 4: But no, I mean, but I did move after whatever it was, two and a half, three days. And when it just seemed like I wasn’t seeing enough and it was mostly, I was seeing more hunters than deer. But yeah, honestly, like I could have had more patience and probably just like stuck to it and stayed in there and eventually turned up a buck in that spot.
00:29:08
Speaker 1: I think so. Cause you got to trust it.
00:29:12
Speaker 4: You know, if you like, if you’re in a good spot, you know, it’s deer country, you’ve seen some does around. And again, that time of year, late October, those deer are starting to move. You know, those deer have a little bit of migration that they do. And so, you know, any morning you could wake up and there’s a whole new batch of deer in your zone.
00:29:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:29:35
Speaker 5: I mean, the rut can bring anything in. That too. So. sticking with the camp theme, another question that came in was, how does all the clothing you wear play into your sleeping bag and or rating? Meaning, do you put on all your gear at night and then get into a lighter bag? Or do you just always bring the warmest bag possible?
00:30:00
Speaker 4: Um, I don’t bring the warmest bag possible, but I also do not put on all my gear, uh, to sleep at night. Um, I kind of have that in the back of my head is like, Oh, if something really changes in the weather and it gets cold, like I have that option, but I’ve found that when I wear too many clothes, um, like I just have a harder time regulating and I end up sort of sweating. And then once you sweat, you got it, you know, you’re going to get evaporative cooling and you’re going to get colder. So I like to, you know, like I’ve definitely done like a pair of pants, you know, in a base layer for sure. Or maybe my long johns on the bottom and the base layer up top. But I feel like when I get too much over that, it just gets too warm in there and I sweat and then that’s a bad, bad, bad gig. So in my mind, though, I do think about In the worst case scenario, let’s just say they’re calling for lows in the upper 20s, low 30s, but you’re like, oh, I’m going to be up on the mountain, so maybe it could drop to 15 one night. In that scenario, can I survive? I always ask that question to myself. In the worst case scenario, when I’m out there, can I make it through the night by… I had a big puffy down jacket. Instead of wearing it, I could actually just lay it over my bag and add some insulation. So I more think about it this way where I’ll wear, I’ll bring less clothes knowing that I have a sleeping bag that if there’s like a really cold evening or cold morning, I could use that bag, wrap it around me, do some glassing, wrap it around me while I’m preparing food or whatever, because it’s going to be probably a very short period of time in the day when it is that cold.
00:31:47
Speaker 1: Sun’s going to come up. It’s going to warm me up.
00:31:49
Speaker 4: Or at night it’s like well you’re gonna eat and then you’re getting in your bag to go to sleep so you really only have like these short periods when it’s going to be really cold you kind of have to endure before you’re going to be fine.
00:32:00
Speaker 5: Again yep yep makes sense um and then ryan ryan scott ray wrote in and said how far from a main road did you have to go to find this spot and i there was a lot of questions similar to this because it did have such a backcountry vibe um you know, in the week we got the on it, like the e-scouting question as well. Like, is there kind of a level where you just know you need to get away from, from a main road or is it?
00:32:29
Speaker 1: No, no.
00:32:30
Speaker 7: Okay.
00:32:31
Speaker 1: I don’t think so.
00:32:32
Speaker 4: I think it’s more about finding a spot where the spots that are overlooked, because these days it’s like, buddy of mine, like many years ago, who’s in Colorado, he said, it’s like, he’s like, everybody that comes here now is like a little mini Cam Haynes. He’s like, we were 10 miles in, covered up in guys. And it’s like, sometimes that hurts people because they’re like, oh, the farther I get, the better it’s going to be. And sure, there’s some truth to that because you are cutting out people the farther you get. But it’s like, how many people does it take to make a place busy, right? Sure. I mean, if there’s two or three groups hunting the same basin, it feels real busy. Um, so I think it’s more about just finding the spots that are like, are overlooked. And sometimes those can be.
00:33:24
Speaker 1: Close to the road.
00:33:25
Speaker 4: They can be close to town even, um, cause people are just driving by them all the time. Um, if there’s not easy access, you know, you have to maybe go around some private land to get in there, or you got to, paddle a canoe across the reservoir to get in there or there’s no trail. And so you’re like right off the bat, you just got to go up some Ridge with no trail. I don’t know.
00:33:48
Speaker 1: Um, yeah. So I didn’t have to go far from.
00:33:52
Speaker 4: And when they say main road, I don’t know exactly what they’re asking if that’s pavement or just something you can drive. But honestly, I think that that pack out, uh, where we finally killed the buck was, it was definitely less than two miles.
00:34:06
Speaker 1: Like it, it wasn’t too, too bad.
00:34:08
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:34:08
Speaker 5: And so you brought it up, but we had a couple of questions come in and then before you answer, I’ll let Phil play the clip. But a couple of questions came in about, you know, first spot doesn’t work out. You go to the second trailhead, but you just immediately get off the trail and start bushwhacking it. Let’s play the clip here, Phil.
00:34:32
Speaker 4: Instead of walking up the trail, I decided to cross a creek and push back towards a ridge with no trail. Having never been here, I picked the most jungle-like willow thicket in the county to go through. Buddy, it’s deep.
00:34:49
Speaker 1: You don’t want to just fall in here. half of it.
00:35:07
Speaker 4: Yeah when I pole planted to jump the creek the pole like this pointy end stuck between some rocks and it literally pulled it right out of the upper part of the shaft and never to be seen again this.
00:35:23
Speaker 1: Looks like fun.
00:35:31
Speaker 2: That’s open 85 yards. Talk about some country to get turned around in. There’s a creek to our left, maybe. I feel like we crossed that.
00:35:52
Speaker 5: F * * * er a bunch.
00:35:53
Speaker 2: I just f * * * ing don’t know how to get around it.
00:35:56
Speaker 1: Do you want to try to go around it? It was thick.
00:36:01
Speaker 4: You can tell by my vocabulary I’m a bit frustrated, but maybe this is what it takes to get away from the crowd. If it wasn’t for Onyx, I’d still be beating the brush.
00:36:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, I mean, it looks like you had to work harder, but is that kind of a common strategy of yours where you’ll roll into a trailhead and just be like, everybody’s going this way because that’s where the trail goes, I’m going this other way?
00:36:27
Speaker 1: I mean, you know how it is. I mean, some trails… You know, they zigzag.
00:36:35
Speaker 4: What’s the other term for that?
00:36:37
Speaker 1: Switchbacks. Switchbacks. Thanks, Phil. See?
00:36:40
Speaker 4: Phil said he’s going to have nothing to add to the conversation.
00:36:42
Speaker 1: He just got switchback. Nailed it.
00:36:44
Speaker 4: That could be a good trivia question, actually.
00:36:47
Speaker 1: Hold on, folks.
00:36:48
Speaker 6: I think it’s been one.
00:36:49
Speaker 1: Really?
00:36:49
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:36:49
Speaker 4: Dang it.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: And kind of recently. Dang it. I got to host an episode in a week.
00:36:57
Speaker 5: Sorry.
00:36:57
Speaker 1: No, it’s all good.
00:36:59
Speaker 4: Never know.
00:37:00
Speaker 1: Um, but, uh, yeah, you never know.
00:37:05
Speaker 4: Like the trail is going to take you to someplace, whether it’s some ridge and it might be a great ridge to go hunt or a great overlook to go hunt. But the, just the spot when I was done looking at Onyx that night, I was like, okay, where I want to go is like, it almost paralleled the trail, but it was up the ridge instead of going up the gut. And so eventually when I was on the ridge, I was probably, I was glassing across the trail itself, but the trail just didn’t go up that ridge. I needed to get high so I could glass, right? And I just hadn’t scouted it. I mean, I pulled in the night before, it was dark and it’s like, or almost dark. And we just didn’t have enough time to really find like where to go exactly. And when I walked out that evening, in dusk, I didn’t have to go through that jungle. I literally just went like a hundred yards, you know, whatever it was farther West and like went around all of that and made a very easy Creek crossing.
00:38:06
Speaker 1: And I was out, you know?
00:38:08
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, um, it’s like, uh, I don’t know if it’s like a strategy. I just like pick the spot and to get to that spot. That’s what I had to go through.
00:38:18
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:38:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:38:19
Speaker 5: Makes sense. Um, and then, you know, speaking of, of the physicality, uh, At the beginning, you said, you know, yeah, it was kind of hard. But there were a lot of questions about getting prepared for something like this. Can you speak to that in terms of, you know, really was this a pretty arduous hunt? And then, you know, how do you get yourself ready for, even if you weren’t as far back as maybe what it looked like, it certainly looks steep. even just your cross country or your cross canyon to get to that buck after it went down. Were you feeling the miles on this one a little bit?
00:39:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn’t have a ton of time to hunt, so I think we ended up killing the buck on like day five. So it was probably not quite long enough to really start getting worn down too bad.
00:39:12
Speaker 1: I was definitely a little tired.
00:39:18
Speaker 4: And, you know, a big part of what makes this one fascinating More physical is that if you’re gonna be, you know, sleeping out of your backpack, and carrying your shelter, carrying your sleeping bag, carrying your food, all that stuff, you know, it’s not much, but it adds, you know, depending on how light your gear is, 10 to 20 pounds to your backpack. And all of a sudden every step just is a lot harder. So, um, I definitely, I go, I try to go to the gym once a Definitely, maybe twice a week when I’m in town.
00:39:53
Speaker 1: And it’s called the Mountain Project. It’s in Bozeman.
00:39:56
Speaker 4: And their motto is sort of like they train the uphill athlete. So people that like to go up and down the mountains around here, whether it’s on skis, bikes, their own two feet, running, hiking, whatever it is, they have us do things that’s going to make going uphill easier. So it’s like every day is leg day in there. I was in there this morning, and I did a bunch of squats. I’m trying to think what else we did. I think it was like three different kinds of squats. It was like back squats, sumo squats, and some other ones. My legs are going to be worn out tomorrow from that workout. But there’s no better feeling when on day three, and this is what I tell people, is everybody has it in them to do it on day one. But doing it on day three and four and five gets harder if you haven’t done some kind of training for it. And your training should look like what it’s going to be like in the field. Like all of us go out for a hunt that’s three days or five days or maybe seven days. So you need to be able to do it one day after another, after another, after another, and not after just one or two days be like, oh my God, I need to take a half day off, right? If you only have five, that’s, is that 20%? yeah that’s 20 of your um no one hunt would only be 10 on a five-day hunt anyways 10 still a lot you don’t want to give it up one afternoon yeah took off a whole day be 20 yep um so yeah and and so like how best to do it i mean if it is literally like a like gonna be a a backcountry mule deer hunt in the mountains is yes make every day leg day Make sure your butt and your quads and your calves are strong. And make sure that you have some kind of endurance. And that doesn’t mean that you have to do 20 miles at once, but the kind of endurance that lets you go five days in a row.
00:42:04
Speaker 5: No prison bods.
00:42:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don’t think you need a prison bod.
00:42:10
Speaker 7: Another.
00:42:12
Speaker 4: My main elk hunting mentor, Ethan, used to always say legs and lungs, legs and lungs. You know, that’s what gets stuff killed in the mountains. And I still believe that, you know, if you have legs and lungs, you’re going to be able to get it done.
00:42:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:42:27
Speaker 5: And so another person, I don’t know, Ivy B, Lil Slim, wrote in. and said, I hunt the hardwoods for whitetail and wonder what’s the difference hunting mule deer out west?
00:42:48
Speaker 1: Bigger country.
00:42:51
Speaker 4: And that in of itself, I think, makes most of the differences. I mean, we could get into the nuanced differences of how mule deer act versus whitetail deer act and maybe what they eat. I mean, a lot of places where we hunt out west, we have both species. The mule deer are usually like down in the riparian areas. I mean, my house is an example of this, like where we, our house sits. Like if you look down the hill, you’re more likely to see a white tail deer. If you look up the hill, you’re more likely to see a mule deer. Um, you know, the browse is probably pretty similar. Uh, like actually hunting like hardwoods.
00:43:32
Speaker 1: It’s like, yeah.
00:43:33
Speaker 4: And the hardwoods that I hunt in Wisconsin, uh, it’s like max distance is going to be 200 yards. And you don’t see those kinds of sight lines very often where you can actually see 200 yards. Although my little Oak Savannah project bucks that trend. Um, but like in the hardwoods, yeah, you’re, you’re a lot of times trying to kill stuff at 50 yards and under and, uh, mule deer hunting out West. It can happen close range. Like you bump something as you’re walking somewhere, but, again, most people that I know and hunt like the way I do for mule deer are going to glass something up at, you know, out to a mile and then make a play to get to within rifle range. Um, and, and the range is going to be probably dictated. I had to go through this on this hunt on the stock. There was another ridge that would have been a lot faster to get to, but it was going to bump me out to like 600 plus. Um, And it actually wasn’t as later, you know, looking at it, it wasn’t as direct, like a, like a look on the hillside that they were on. So I’m glad I went to the other one, but, uh, just like the, that’s the, the topography itself dictated how far the shot was going to be. You know, I got as close as I could be without getting on the hill with them, which at that point, you’re sort of like going to walk in there and then just hope to get a shot when you jump them. Um, and the closest I could get was right there at 400 yards. Um, So shot distances, big difference. And, and yeah, there’s a lot of way to hunt, a lot of ways to hunt white tails in the hardwoods, you know, whether you’re, you know, sitting, slipping around, there is all that. And, you know, you could do that with mule deer too, but most of us feel it’s more efficient to glass a lot of country, find, find a deer and then make a move.
00:45:31
Speaker 5: Um, All right, well, before the next question, Phil, I’ll have you play this next clip here.
00:45:39
Speaker 7: The buck batted. I got his location marked on Onyx. And I’m trying to make the approach now. If I can get the ridge opposing him, I should be 400 to 500 yards. 1,200 and 660. I have another ridge that’s right between me and the buck right now. The shot’s going to push it out closer to 600. I just don’t know if I’m comfortable with that. I almost feel like it’s worth going up there and checking. The other ridge puts me just over 400. I’m going to go for the closer shot. A little walk and walk. worth it. Um, plus this ridge is at 600 from the deer. It’s awfully thick. I just don’t know what my shooting lane off the ridge is going to be where the other one, I know for a fact I’ll have, it’ll be clear for me.
00:46:51
Speaker 4: Um, yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker 5: So, so question there, you know, you, you’ve been looking for your deer, you find him, uh, when you find your, your target animal, um, and you know that clock is ticking, how much time do you spend watching behavior, bedding them down, getting a lay of the land, versus just, man, we got to cut distance now?
00:47:17
Speaker 1: Well, you can tell from that clip, I was in a hurry.
00:47:21
Speaker 4: I was in a rush to cut the distance and get on them. And I think we had, I say we, because Max was there too, I had found that buck It’s probably getting on in the morning, you know, I don’t know, 8.30, 9, 9.30, something like that. And so those deer bedded down pretty soon after we found them. And as soon as that happens, it’s like, okay, do the best you can to actually mark that spot on the map with Onyx, right?
00:47:51
Speaker 1: Figure that out.
00:47:53
Speaker 4: Then figure out, you know, what’s going to be the best approach, what’s going to be the best place to try to get a shot on them from if they stay there.
00:48:00
Speaker 1: And then go.
00:48:02
Speaker 4: Had they stayed on their feet and kept feeding longer, I probably would have stayed and kept.
00:48:07
Speaker 1: On watching them.
00:48:08
Speaker 4: I mean, there’s two clocks ticking. One is the one where they’re just going to like walk out of your life, right? They go behind some ridge. You can’t see them anymore. They, you know, go up the drainage and leave it. You can’t see them anymore. There’s the other one where it’s like it’s public land. Someone else might be seeing them or someone else is walking down the ridge that they’re on.
00:48:28
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden they bump them. Like, you don’t know.
00:48:31
Speaker 4: Um, so it’s, uh, you know, it’s, it’s a balance, but I definitely don’t, uh, you know, I’d rather be laying there at 400 yards, getting bored, waiting for him to stand up. Then like, you know, dilly dally my way over there and then get there and they’re not there anymore.
00:48:51
Speaker 1: So, I mean, it like the less pressure.
00:48:55
Speaker 4: I can remember Randy Ulmer telling me, if you don’t know who Randy is, like, you know, one of the, Greatest Western bull hunters ever. And he was talking about watching deer and big bulls for days and watching what they do, where they walk, where they sleep, where they’re feeding, how they get between the two areas until he felt like, okay, I know exactly where I’m going to go. And that bull, and he’s an archer. So he’s like, I’m going to go right there. And that bull is going to walk by me at, you know, less than 50 yards and I’ll kill him.
00:49:30
Speaker 3: Right.
00:49:31
Speaker 4: But, uh, you know, that’s, you know, in a, in a scenario where he felt like someone else wasn’t going to come in there and bump them out of there.
00:49:40
Speaker 5: You know so so then when you’re cutting the distance like that um you get to the ridgeline that you’re you want to be at obviously you had to do quite a lot of vert um is there a point where you start pacing yourself a little bit thinking about heart rate and nerves uh before you kind of crest that ridge or settle behind your gun.
00:50:03
Speaker 1: Uh For sure.
00:50:07
Speaker 4: I mean, especially if they’re up on their feet or looking like they’re going to get up on their feet. I mean, they were bedded the whole time we made the approach and slipped in there. So I didn’t really have to think about that because at that point it seemed like I had a lot of time and I could easily just slip in and my heart rate had already dropped not thinking about it. But I can tell you just like from recently being on an elk hunt, where I was chasing elk around every single day. Like I thought about that a lot as I was like getting in there and you’re realizing that like, okay, this might happen. I might get a shot, start, you know, controlling your heart rate and either moving slower or just some deep breaths. Cause you’re, you know, you’re getting anxious and excited about, you know, the proximity of elk and just trying to calm myself down. But for that buck didn’t really have to think about it. Cause I, He was just bedded, so we were able to slip into that 400 yards without having to drop the heart rate.
00:51:15
Speaker 5: All right. This next question comes with another clip that came from IG on why not shoot your deer when it’s bedded. But, Phil, let’s play that.
00:51:29
Speaker 7: He’s behind that tree.
00:51:30
Speaker 3: Oh, man.
00:51:32
Speaker 7: He’s bedded. Okay. Now he’s gonna have to wake up and stand up. It took me about two hours to do the stalk and then get in here and get all situated. So my rifle’s pretty much pointed at him within a few yards. They were all bedded. A few of the does are standing now. So the name of the game now is just wait. I’m not a huge fan of shooting them bedded. It certainly can be done, but it’s harder to tell where exactly the vitals are. I’m just going to sit here, just trying to stay comfortable, keep glassing him, and hopefully he’ll stand up sooner than later.
00:52:19
Speaker 1: Pretty buck.
00:52:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, two things with that particular deer.
00:52:25
Speaker 1: One, he was bedded directly behind that treetop.
00:52:31
Speaker 4: So i would have had to change positions to maybe to even get an angle you know to him um and he was bedded in a little bit of that uh buck brush or tobacco brush they call it so i wasn’t even really looking at that opportunity because i felt like that stuff kind of might have been in the way but mostly it’s just because like when a deer or an elk or whatever beds down it’s like not only are they sort of compressing their body and their legs get into kind of a funnier position and their shoulders roll back or forward or depending on how their legs are, but it’s not like they just go from standing perfectly broadside and they go straight down onto their belly, right? I mean, they might do that, but a lot of times they’re sort of canted over a little bit, right? And their belly is showing and so they’re more like almost laying partially on their side. And so, yeah, you can still sort of visualize where exactly the bullets paths should be, but it just gets a little bit trickier. And again, in that situation, like, had he been at a hundred yards, I probably would have just shot one right in there.
00:53:42
Speaker 1: Right. Cause it’s like, there’s just less chance of messing something up. Right.
00:53:49
Speaker 4: I can like, pinpoint it in there at a hundred yards. And like, I mean, if you want, you can shoot them in the ear at a hundred yards, um, at 400 yards. It’s like, I want as big of a target as possible and like know exactly what I’m shooting at. And the best opportunity for that is going to come when he’s standing and broadside. Um, so yeah, that’s why I’m not shoot a deer while he’s bedded. And again, there really wasn’t an opportunity on this one. But even if he was wide out in the open, I feel like the target’s smaller. The angles of the target are more difficult to understand.
00:54:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, makes sense, man. There were quite a few questions in general about wind and everything. You might have answered this a little bit off the top. But as you were laying there on that hillside, were you talking to Max at all about, you know, the, the feeling that there could be a little bit of a wind going cross Canyon, um, between you and that deer before shooting?
00:54:57
Speaker 1: Was it, man, we, we talked about it a lot.
00:55:00
Speaker 4: It’s just like the, it literally felt like it was coming straight on at us and straight on or straight from us to the deer. You know, you shouldn’t get much, you know, left to right deviation. Um, but as we can see, there was some, um, yeah. Cause I guess that’s like a one MOA.
00:55:22
Speaker 1: Wind, right? 400 yards.
00:55:24
Speaker 4: It was about four inches, maybe five inches.
00:55:28
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:55:28
Speaker 4: I can’t remember much, man. No, it doesn’t, you know, I mean, uh, that mule deer is, you know, a little bit bigger than a whitetail, not much. Um, so, you know, honestly, they’re, You know, they’ve got like what, probably a 10 inch circle roughly for vitals. And yeah, you can clearly see in the video that both my shots, I can’t remember now, which I think they go right. I think the first shot he’s facing left and I hit him a little back and then he turns, he’s facing the other direction.
00:55:58
Speaker 1: I ended up hitting him in the neck.
00:56:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, we can actually play that clip now. Maybe a little low, but I think it was a hard shot.
00:56:55
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:56:56
Speaker 4: I mean, that’s why I had to go and check that zero, man. Cause like we had all, we had two hours plus to like set up the shooting position. So I was extremely comfortable. We had moved all the rocks out of the way. Like everything was just solid as could be. Um, and then to sort of miss like that, right.
00:57:15
Speaker 1: A little bit.
00:57:16
Speaker 4: It was, it was like, what’s going on here?
00:57:19
Speaker 1: You know?
00:57:20
Speaker 4: And so we had just, we had definitely discussed the wind a bunch, but like every time we’re sitting there feeling it, it just felt like it was just coming right at us. And again, it’s kind of like, it’s tricky. Cause that’s, there’s, that’s a Canyon for you.
00:57:32
Speaker 7: Right.
00:57:32
Speaker 4: And so maybe it was right there at the muzzle, but then, you know, 20 or 30 yards out from that, it was blown left or right, you know? Um, so yeah, we just, we just couldn’t really feel it that it was, it was going to push, push that much left to right.
00:57:50
Speaker 5: Yeah. It’s crazy how much it can move, man. And you, and you, you are one of the more, I’d say this, if you weren’t here, you’re one of the more methodical shooters I’ve, I’ve been around too. Um, and I think it just goes to show that those cross Canyon shots can be really tricky because so much is happening between you and the animal that it just doesn’t make, make sense sometimes. Um, But Buck is down. I mean, the good thing is that you stayed on scope. You had a good follow-up shot.
00:58:23
Speaker 4: Speaking of that, let’s just make another comment on.
00:58:27
Speaker 1: I didn’t even think about this for the suppressor.
00:58:30
Speaker 4: It’s like staying on scope, staying on target for follow-up shots, seeing what your shots are doing. At 400 yards.
00:58:39
Speaker 4: With that setup with the, with the, when I’m going to attribute this to the suppressor, but like I was watching my bullets hit him and man, that is huge Intel. Cause what if it was like, you know, what if both of them hit way low and I’m like, okay, obviously like my dope is wrong.
00:58:58
Speaker 1: Right.
00:58:59
Speaker 4: Well, if you know, they both hit low, it’s like, okay, we’ll make the adjustment to hit 10 inches higher and shoot again.
00:59:06
Speaker 3: Right.
00:59:06
Speaker 4: But if your gun is bucking so much, that you’re losing that sight picture and you don’t know where you’re hitting, then that’s when stuff gets Western because you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve waited all, I’ve put all this into this. Now I have my opportunity. It’s not going my way. And you can get rattled really easily. And the next thing you know, you burn up all 10 rounds of ammo that you brought with you and he’s still walking around on the hillside. Yeah.
00:59:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it’s a debate right now in comp shooting, suppressors versus brakes, right? Because a lot of being able to track your bullet going through the air, right, has to do with whether or not you’re reacting to the concussion that a brake causes. and cause right so you’re talking about recoil management and a brake does a little bit better job but your ability to keep your eyes open and watch that thing go through the air man the suppressor you can’t beat it and you’re not really when you flint you know and i don’t mean flinch when pulling the trigger but when you flinch on recoil you’re not really reacting to the recoil gun it’s a 65 prc right i think.
01:00:17
Speaker 1: It’s yeah i think it’s more the sound and the.
01:00:20
Speaker 5: Concussion concussion Right. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a really good point.
01:00:24
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that’s why my girls are good shooters is because they’ve never shot a gun that scares them. They’ve never had to.
01:00:31
Speaker 1: Deal with that.
01:00:32
Speaker 4: Maybe a little bit on like shooting a 20 gauge shotgun, but like with rifles.
01:00:38
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:00:38
Speaker 1: They’re as calm as can be.
01:00:39
Speaker 4: Cause they’re not like, they’re not scared of the recoil or the bang, the concussion or whatever it might be.
01:00:44
Speaker 5: That’s great. Um, so buck is down. Uh, What’s going through your mind immediately post-shot?
01:00:54
Speaker 1: Pumped.
01:00:57
Speaker 4: We were close enough in those mountains to town, and it was early enough in the afternoon where once that buck was down, we started figuring out what it was going to take to hike over to him, butcher him, film all of it, and then hike him out. That we would probably be able to have pizza and beer. We’d be pushing it. We’re going to come in right at closing time. But more than likely, instead of eating another rehydrated meal, we’re going to be eating pizza and beer. Did you?
01:01:29
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:01:33
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I slept in a hotel.
01:01:34
Speaker 5: All right.
01:01:36
Speaker 1: In a bed with sheets. Which is, you know, I think.
01:01:41
Speaker 4: It’s funny because you always think about that you really want that. But honestly, it’s a better story. And in the end, it ends up probably being more fun to go back to camp, eat whatever you got. Maybe we had some beers there or not. I don’t know. But you make a fire. You celebrate there. And that’s honestly probably a better story to tell later. Then you’re like, well, yeah. And we just rushed out of there and made it to a hotel and pizza and beer, you know, cause we’re all so soft that that’s, that’s what we need, you know? Uh, but yeah, just like, just pumped, you know, when it, when it happens and it, and it all, it all comes through, you want to, uh, you want to get over there and get your hands on him. And, uh, you know, it was, even though it was early, it was late enough that, and it turned out so that we got to the truck, maybe, I don’t know, 30 minutes after dark. And, uh, I don’t know, hiking around in those mountains off trail. It’s, uh, it’s always nicer to do that in the daylight.
01:02:42
Speaker 7: Yeah.
01:02:42
Speaker 5: And, uh, he was on a pretty steep hillside. How long does it take for you to break down a mule deer? You know, you had Max there. Was he helping with that process much?
01:02:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, he helped.
01:02:53
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:02:54
Speaker 4: Um, I always figure for a bull elk, it’s about two hours. Um, you know, so for a mule deer, it’s honestly probably not that much faster. Yeah. It’s smaller, but you sort of still have all the same parts that you have to deal with.
01:03:07
Speaker 1: So I don’t know, 90 minutes to two hours.
01:03:10
Speaker 4: To get them, excuse me, to get them actually in game bags and, you know, in the pack. Um, so yeah, not too bad, you know, and it all takes longer when we’re filming that. That’s, that’s what really adds time is that, uh, You can’t rush through it. You know, you got to give the camera operator time to get the shots that they want to get. Sure.
01:03:32
Speaker 5: Any idea how much your pack weighed once you got loaded up?
01:03:36
Speaker 1: Oh, man.
01:03:38
Speaker 4: Max helped, you know, pack some meat out too. It wasn’t too, too bad. If I just had to throw a number out there, 70.
01:03:48
Speaker 6: Hmm.
01:03:53
Speaker 4: Very manageable, you know, like enough that you like feel the strain on your hips a little bit and your knees a little bit, you know, when you’re coming off of a steep hillside. Um, but you know, I packed the trekking poles around everywhere, although I only had one that was in working order, uh, for that pack out.
01:04:11
Speaker 1: But, uh, Yeah.
01:04:14
Speaker 4: I mean, just enough that, you know, like you’re, you’re carrying a pack and you know, the, the hips are going to hurt a little bit when you, when you get to the bottom, but definitely not a hundred pounds. Um, I think once I get to a hundred, I’m strongly considering like making two fifties versus one, one hundred. Um, I just know too many people that have backs that are, uh, going to probably be a problem for the rest of their lives. And a lot of it came from, and maybe it wasn’t packing meat. Maybe it was from, you know, shoveling too big and heavy as snow at one time or whatever it was. But like, I don’t want that problem in my life until I die. Like I want to have a good strong back. And so I got no problem going back twice.
01:05:02
Speaker 7: Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker 1: Saving my back.
01:05:05
Speaker 5: Um, uh, uh, I thought a pretty thoughtful question. Um, Derek, the fancy caveman wrote, uh, can you do a deep dive, uh, on putting the food in the dead deer’s mouth?
01:05:20
Speaker 1: Oh, uh, sure.
01:05:24
Speaker 4: Um, I can’t remember exactly where I picked that up. It was definitely at the original elk camp that I guided at in Colorado. Man, I wish I could remember like who exactly brought that to my attention, but, um, I think at the time when I learned about it, I think I was looking for a way to, you know, maybe respect the animal a little bit. Or like in Europe, a big thing is they, you know, they put, you always see the boughs of, you know, usually it’s like a spruce branch or something on the animal. And if you watch the Latvia episodes, you’ll see that a lot of it is like to cover up the wound. Like there in Europe, at least where I’ve been in Europe, it’s like a sign of disrespect to like take pictures of the wound. Like they want that animal to look, you know, as much as it was when it was alive. Not, I mean, not really recreating it being alive, but just like that wound is somehow disrespectful to show it. So they cover that up. And again, I don’t know where I picked it up from, but it was just sort of like, Hey, if you’re like sort of moving on from this world that we’re, we’re at now, and you’re going to where dead deer go to, deer heaven, like here’s a little snack for the road ahead. I think no matter what you do, I think the real thing that you get out of it and that it does for everybody is that it just slows everything down for a second and makes you think about it and whether it lets you just look around a little bit and appreciate the country you’re in, or just say thanks for the animal for being there, or thanks to the big game biologists that do all the work to have those animals there.
01:07:12
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, I.
01:07:15
Speaker 4: Always regret it when we kill something, and then we rush out of that situation as fast as we can. Someone’s like, okay, go get the can-am, and you’re going to chop it up, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and we’ll have pizza and beer in no time, right? It’s like there’s no reason to rush out of there. Like, enjoy it, you know, like soak it in. You’re going to be gone from that place. You may never go back to that same Ridge, you know, look around. Um, and I think that that’s now I realize that that’s kind of what that does is by just taking a moment to, you know, think about that as it just, it just kind of slows everything down a little bit and you get to, um, just get a little bit more, add a little bit more to the experience.
01:08:00
Speaker 1: That’s great.
01:08:01
Speaker 5: Um, That does it for questions. Anything you’d want to finalize here? No, man.
01:08:12
Speaker 1: Get out there and go hunting. That’s all. Figure out a way to do it.
01:08:19
Speaker 4: And yeah, don’t let having to buy expensive gear keep you from doing it. And don’t let stupid internet keep you from doing it.
01:08:28
Speaker 1: Like Instagram.
01:08:29
Speaker 4: Instagram.
01:08:30
Speaker 1: Quit scrolling and.
01:08:31
Speaker 4: Figure out a way to buy a pair of boots and a gun so you can get out there and go hunting.
01:08:38
Speaker 1: That’s great. But you got one last clip.
01:08:40
Speaker 5: Yeah, there’s one last clip. I think it’s just, man, it’s a good headspace that I think we should all be in.
01:08:46
Speaker 4: This is a surprise. I don’t know what Phil’s going to play now.
01:08:51
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about how heavy my pack was starting to feel.
01:08:55
Speaker 2: Oh.
01:08:55
Speaker 4: Shoulders are getting a little sore.
01:08:56
Speaker 1: Hips are feeling it.
01:08:59
Speaker 3: Still got a couple miles. to go to the truck. But then I thought, man, how lucky am I and how lucky are we that we get to just do this for fun and we have this opportunity for everybody and enjoy the public lands and these hunting opportunities and all the things to be grateful for when we get to do this. not just the public lands, you know, your family that lets you go and do this, an employer in my case that pays me to go do this and have a great time, and the wildlife managers that make sure that we have these abundant populations of game that we get to hunt. There’s going to be a lot of people I’ll forget to say thank you to, but instead of complaining about how heavy the pack feels, it’s better just to think about how grateful I am that, uh, I even have the opportunity to have.
01:09:52
Speaker 1: A heavy pack like this.
01:09:54
Speaker 3: Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time.
01:10:01
Speaker 4: Slippery. Almost went down hard there.
01:10:08
Speaker 1: In my old age, Garrett, I’m losing my balance a little bit.
01:10:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s, you know, that is a good headspace to be in to, you know, always remember how fortunate we all are. I’ve tried to bring that around to tell me what you think about this. I’ve been doing some announcing I was telling you about the varsity volleyball games here at Bozeman High. And it seems like for some reason people have quit singing the national anthem. Instead, we just listen to like a recording or we listen to if there’s a singer that comes to sing it, we listen to them sing it, which in some cases I agree. In that case, maybe it’s better just to listen. But like, I feel like growing up, We always sang the national anthem.
01:10:53
Speaker 7: Yeah.
01:10:54
Speaker 4: And so, and I feel like it’s kind of in the same headspace. It’s like when you sing the national anthem, you’re like, oh yeah, that’s right. Like we’re all Americans and we’re sort of like you’re, it takes a second to be like, oh yeah. Even though we all don’t always think the same way and things aren’t going, you know, the way we think they should be going or whatever. It’s like, we should still all appreciate, you know, being Americans and getting to live in this country. Cause it’s pretty sweet compared to a lot of other places where you could be in situations you could be in. And so I think singing that national anthem is a good way to remind us of all of that. And, uh, same thing there when you’re out hunting, the hunting sucks and you’re not seeing them. It’s like, man, just, just like, think about how like, it’s pretty awesome. Cause again, like I can compare it to Europe. Like, in Latvia at least like they don’t have like even even it’s probably not even two percent of like sort of the vastness of what we have especially in the Rocky Mountains and I would even say in a lot of places back in the east where they have large tracks and national forests where you can literally walk for miles like it’s not a thing in Latvia sure to go walk for miles um And, uh, it’s, um, it’s something that we, yeah, we should all appreciate and remember, you know, that it’s, uh, it’s a real privilege.
01:12:18
Speaker 5: Yeah, man. It’s a good reminder for all of us. There’s always something to bitch about.
01:12:22
Speaker 3: Right.
01:12:23
Speaker 5: But, uh, life is pretty good on the side. Um, and you’re right. We always did sing along to the national anthem before.
01:12:31
Speaker 1: I don’t know.
01:12:31
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:12:32
Speaker 1: So I’m, I’m trying to bring it back.
01:12:33
Speaker 4: I asked him to sing along when I, uh, I, I did announce a game on Saturday.
01:12:38
Speaker 5: Did they?
01:12:39
Speaker 1: I heard a little bit of it.
01:12:42
Speaker 4: A lot of people are going to be coming back because it’s going to be the same parents coming back to see the same players. And so I’m hoping it’s going to catch on. Because honestly, I looked at the words beforehand. I’m like, I know it pretty good, but I should brush up a little bit, right? Because it’s a lot easier to sing when you know what the words are. And it’s easy to forget the lyrics sometimes.
01:13:04
Speaker 1: Do you think you could sing it right now?
01:13:05
Speaker 7: Yeah.
01:13:06
Speaker 1: Every single word. No problem.
01:13:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so, man. Like, but, you know, I went to a one room schoolhouse where, you know, that’s how we would start a lot of our day.
01:13:16
Speaker 4: Yeah.
01:13:16
Speaker 5: Raising the flag.
01:13:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:13:19
Speaker 5: I think, you know, when I don’t sing it now, we’re way off topic. But, you know, not all of us have like a singing voice like Phil.
01:13:26
Speaker 2: You know.
01:13:27
Speaker 6: I know.
01:13:28
Speaker 4: I know.
01:13:29
Speaker 5: You might be getting judged by the, you know, the little ladies standing next to you.
01:13:33
Speaker 1: But that’s fine. Like, we’re all in it together.
01:13:37
Speaker 4: And, you know, there’s great singers, there’s bad ones, and then there’s everybody in between, you know. And it doesn’t really matter how it sounds. I think it’s just like, you know, it’s like a show of community.
01:13:49
Speaker 7: Sure.
01:13:49
Speaker 5: I’m sure there’s a hunting parallel there. Yeah.
01:13:53
Speaker 1: Well, I think it’s just about being grateful for what we have.
01:13:56
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:13:57
Speaker 4: That’s great thank you all for listening and watching if you went to youtube to watch this and uh hopefully you like the video and um yeah I just got done filming an elk hunt that uh will probably be a long episode with all kinds of action that you’ll be able to watch next year um what is that it that’s it nothing else from you Phil I think we’re good to sign off.
01:14:26
Speaker 1: Y’all keep it real. Go hunting.
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