00:00:00
Speaker 1: Being as fit and healthy and rested going into the hunt as possible, because there might be days where we get back at eight o’clock and we get up at five and go back, you know, like it’s just your like Ben said, it’s but there’s this emotional roller coaster that you can’t account for of like excitement on the next set of the ridge or the next set of heavy timber or and this is we’re talking archery, which rifles a little bit different. We will be covering a ton of ground because you know, we’ll sit in glass. We don’t have something we’ll move, We’ll sit in glass because we can get to some really good spots out here. The stakes are real. Effective Preparation starts with fitness, but it requires so much more. This show explores the tools, knowledge, resilience, and skills needed to be ready when it matters the most. Join me Rich Browning as we apply the decades of wisdom I’ve gained through training and competition to hunting in the back hunt. This is in Pursuit, brought to you by Mount Thoms in collaboration with Mayhem Hunt, uh Spike Camp. We got a Have you ever been on any of our podcasts?
00:01:16
Speaker 2: No?
00:01:18
Speaker 1: Single one got Mike Watkins.
00:01:19
Speaker 2: It’s the first time he’s ever been on a podcast, a podcast.
00:01:22
Speaker 1: But any of our oh you’ve never been on period, nobody’s ever the man behind We got the man behind the camera, Scott, and then we got the man behind the guy on the camera Watkins. Yeah, he’s like he’s always on the camera too.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: He’s a background character to the point where like people know.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Now he’s like he’s a blue Shirt guy.
00:01:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so now he’s about to be that for our hunting community as well.
00:01:45
Speaker 1: Watch that movie blue Shirt Guy. Wat Oh yeah, the video game character.
00:01:49
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, it’s a I you know, just like when he takes that snot sure.
00:01:55
Speaker 1: I think it’s perfect because well we’ll talk a little about Richard Ryan, but it’s perfect because Watkins, what six weeks ago, now about a month ago. Yeah, Watkins works out with us pretty regularly. Like StairMaster Champion.
00:02:11
Speaker 2: He actually is the best at the StairMaster I think that we have at the gym.
00:02:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
00:02:16
Speaker 2: I don’t know why that is, Like his body’s just built perfectly for the StairMaster, but he’s really really good at it.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: He’s really good at it. Does a lot, right, Yeah, he has regular fitness, but a lot a lot of StairMaster anyway, So Watkins works for us at the gym. All right, Mayhem just kind of does a little bit of everything for us. And we were we’re going on a hunt this week actually in two days, to Colorado, and our buddy Ensie Campers, Dave Curtis, is finishing up our sprinter van, so we needed somebody to drive it back. And so Watkins is gonna go hunt with us. He’s gonna Shirpa for Matt and then drive the sprinter back. So what about a month ago we were like, Watkins, you want to go hunt with us? He was like, hell, yeah, I’m in And so you’ve been getting in hunting shape. I mean you you’re in shape. And then you’ve just added some extra steermaster in the last couple of weeks.
00:03:07
Speaker 3: As long as I just stay behind villains, I’ll be good.
00:03:11
Speaker 1: You can do that. You can keep up with Billings for sure. You guys had a little interesting sighting his rifle in yesterday. He got the wrong it’s I heard or.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: No, he got thirty and so his tubes thirty four.
00:03:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, he ordered a thirty yeah, and.
00:03:28
Speaker 3: He’s when I walked in and then.
00:03:30
Speaker 1: He’s trying to like plumb. So the shooting range that we went to is about forty five minutes away, forty five fifty minutes away, and Billings was waiting on this piece. It’s yesterday, was Monday. We hunt on Thursday or no, we can hunt on Saturday. We’re leaving on Thursday. So we need to get these uh gun sighted in and he has he’s gonna shoot his old field craft. I’m shooting the SIG seven mil and they discontinued the field craft, so we had to special order some rings for his scope to mount a scope. Well, the moron didn’t look at what inch the scope diameter was or circumference was, and he ordered a thirty instead of a thirty four, and so he so we we were already up there shooting. Watkins was bringing Matt the park because we’re waiting on FedEx. And we finished sighting in my gun. We left to go pick up Lakeland and Watkins is driving up Matt’s truck and we see him pass and then I text probably what thirty minutes later, and I said, how’s it going? He said pretty terrible, but different adjective, and then described the fact that he had ordered the wrong part. So apparently he’s going to Murphy’s Broo today last morning. But I’m like, why not just you shoot? He’s got a three hundred win that we shot last year, that shot out. He shot that bullet what five hundred and forty yards.
00:04:45
Speaker 2: Something like that.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we is too heavy. That was this whole thing that doesn’t work out.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: It’s too heavy, that does not work out. Matt’s also the one that thought he got rabbed on our first el hunt. So there is that.
00:04:57
Speaker 2: You’re siting in. Experience was rate yesterday? Pretty awesome range and the gun were pretty impressive.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, both were really impressive. They the iPads they shoot. The gun was sighted into two hundred I’m pretty sure originally from SIG and we backed it down to one hundred, and then a buddy of ours had all of the the moas for out to a thousand, and it was pretty darn close out to one thousand to what Lucas had sent us. And that first you weren’t there the first The only shot I took at a thousand, like dead center bullseye at a thousand thousand yards. It was kind of funny. Uh, but yeah, we shot. So they have two hundred, three hundred, six hundred, eight hundred nine and then a thousand.
00:05:48
Speaker 3: This one is at the very back thousand. That looked cool.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s a pretty cool place. And that. Yeah, you just sit there with iPad and then each you can send it to MOA or EMRAT or whatever and just where you need to.
00:06:00
Speaker 3: Does it show you where you hit on the IPEd?
00:06:02
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, immediately stuck. So that saved us a lot of time. Saved us so much just last year having to ride the bike out check the uh yeah, would Yeah, gosh, that was a mess.
00:06:15
Speaker 1: Was it? Lance Lane Lance the shoot?
00:06:18
Speaker 2: I don’t know, man.
00:06:19
Speaker 1: He was a good dude too. The you know sometimes you show up to some of those places in the range Master.
00:06:23
Speaker 3: The tall dude in the gray shirt was one headed.
00:06:25
Speaker 1: Younger guy like our agent, maybe a little bit younger than us are. Our age is all about within us.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: Similar to my age.
00:06:31
Speaker 3: Probably, Yeah, because when I got up there, there’s nobody there.
00:06:34
Speaker 1: Flannel on this guy, this guy at the range.
00:06:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I went to where y’all was shooting because it’s where Billy said y’all was at, and then nobody was there. I kind of just sitting there. Of course there’s no service, and the guy’s like shooting, bud. I go, ah, no, I’m just gonna watch. He goes watch who I was like rich and Billings. He goes, buddy, they’re gone. They left a long time ago. I was like, well, I was following his location. I was like, all right, well, I guess i’ll see you later.
00:07:02
Speaker 1: He probably wasn’t. He was a good dude. You know. Sometimes you show up to those places and people either high hatch or talk to you like here, moron, And this guy was he was just cool, good.
00:07:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, especially to like, I know a lot of people do nerd out on the rifle stuff, but I think we nerd out on the bows more than the rifles.
00:07:17
Speaker 1: For sure.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: And if you don’t shoot, you know, twenty four to seven like those guys, sometimes it can be some type of.
00:07:24
Speaker 1: Way, yeah, for sure. But he didn’t like, No, you didn’t belittle. Usually sometimes you get guys like that that belittle, even on the archery side, where you’re like, dude, just come on, I’m trying to get better. I’m trying to learn. I want to make sure we’re making good shots, you know, And he was dude. So yep, if you’re ever passing through Tennessee and want to go to UH Spencer and Dead zero, it’s a pretty good shooting range.
00:07:46
Speaker 2: Watkins, Are you excited to to tie in Richard Ryan go on this hunt and get disconnected from technology?
00:07:53
Speaker 1: Oh?
00:07:53
Speaker 3: Du I can’t wait.
00:07:54
Speaker 1: Yeah you will. You won’t be able to right, left or right, that’s for sure. There won’t be much to swite, But.
00:08:00
Speaker 3: I can’t wait.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: It’s one of those things where the very first time we went on, or I went on with you, we had absolutely zero zero service and like granted, like take out the fact that you want to be able to like tell your family you’re okay each day. Take out that fact. It’s incredible that this was pre starlink as well, obviously because now you can get starlink it cam Push is awesome, but also takes away some of the disconnects.
00:08:24
Speaker 3: I think it’s different if it’s not with people that.
00:08:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to hang out with. Yeah, so it’s just yeah, it’s a good group. Yeah, man. I those first couple of years we went to Gunnison and there was zero service day night anything. We used the garment in reach. I think Hillary is way more. That way better now that she knows at least I can check in or she can even like I share my location all the time so she can like track our location on the mountain even too, so give a little bit of peace of mind. But man, it is awesome most places there. There might be some sides of the hill that you might get some service, but for the most part it’ll be very limited service. So it’s a pretty cool disconnect. And since actually since talking to well, we had to talk with Richard Ryan and then just some some dudes internally. Jake Lockert, one of our guys, showed us, showed me that be Present app. It’s pretty cool. You can set it an actual limit the number of times you open an app and how long you can be on the app, And so I set one for Instagram and my Safari, which kind of makes it hard at times because when you have to actually get something done. But it’s been awesome, so I’ve got like forty minutes max. The problem is if you open it, you have a five like I have it set to a five minute window, no matter if I’m on it or not, Like if it’s open, it takes five minutes, and then that whole session counts.
00:09:55
Speaker 2: Can you make Onyx hunt unlimited?
00:09:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can. What’s cool is you can go app by app, because that would suck because I’m originally I madear. I kept Safari open, but when I noticed instead of going to Instagram, I’d go to Twitter and that was like taking the place of the time that I was on my phone, so I put it on Safari too. But yeah, no, you can go app by app, so it’s not a full like phone. You can go you know, whatever you want to or whatever you see as your vice and turn that off.
00:10:23
Speaker 3: You’ve got the streaks too, I know.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And then there’s like it’s so what’s kind of cool about it is, you know, usually you can set app limits, but you’re just like a bypass app limit bypass app. This makes you do like three things to go to it, and one of them you have to say give up, and I just can’t say give up, you know, like.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: Like seventy yeah, yeah, yeah. I always thought it was interesting the perspective after the first year or two we hunted the It kind of makes you realize when you’re in situations like that where you don’t have a phone at your dispose all the time to distract you or even other things in your life to distract you. That it’s almost like we’re supposed to live that way, because let’s say we’re out there with like five or six guys. I always called it like dog years in terms of relationship building, Like like Curtis, for example, I’ve only known him five years, but because all those years have been on hunts, like really like I’ve known him for like twenty years, like a really great friend because of I guess the nature in which same with you know you Angelo and.
00:11:23
Speaker 1: You share suffering as well as you know, like we’re we’re in it, and you can see a lot about somebody’s character, a lot about somebody’s uh how they react to things. We’ll learn a lot about you, Watkins. When we’re going through some oak brush or a little bit of a blowdown we need to take, Watkins, just take a random uh road through a blowdown patch just so you can. It’ll be tough. It’s eight a second season. Sam said, uh, where we’re going? He said he heard some bugles this week? First, rightfle finished on Sunday, and then we’ll get out there Thursday. You might even get there in time to like go out Thursday evening and just listen now at the bottom must they can down at the bottom corrals by the corrals, and then and then Friday we can we’ll hunt basically but without a rifle, just.
00:12:08
Speaker 3: Because they’re further out. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:12:12
Speaker 1: So we’ll be able to we’ll be able to hopefully hear a bugle.
00:12:16
Speaker 3: I don’t know what.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: We didn’t hear anything third rifle last year.
00:12:18
Speaker 2: No, we didn’t hear anything. But he said they were still bugling last week, so we’ll see.
00:12:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing got killed up there this week too, so that’ll be should be prime, should be prime. How did you there was a bunch of bulls allegedly.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: How did you change or like, what did you add into your training the last month? Let’s say you’re ready for the hunt.
00:12:37
Speaker 3: Step for every day unless I was gone, and then even then you stuff like that.
00:12:41
Speaker 1: I saw when you were at some crossfoad events selling merchandise, so you I saw you on the treadmill.
00:12:47
Speaker 3: Treadmill. So for all the events that I was gone to, is either when I walked in to have like elliptical, not a star Master, treadmill, a bike, So I just picked one piece of equipment every day and just did it for an hour. It didn’t matter what it was. Elliptical was probably the worst.
00:13:03
Speaker 2: One, like the hardest one, not.
00:13:06
Speaker 3: The hardest, was the easiest.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: Bid.
00:13:08
Speaker 1: It sucks. It sucks epical.
00:13:09
Speaker 2: It’s it’s just I’ve never spent much time on an elliptical.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: I’s been an hour I have when my knee was messed up, just trying to get a little bit or like running in It’s terrible. It’s terrible.
00:13:18
Speaker 2: Were you always like unweighted or what’s the ratio to which you rock and do the stairs?
00:13:24
Speaker 3: I waited three times a week, so I’ll go twenty five, thirty five and fifty five and everything else is just usually rotate each day every other day. Usually I try to do so you go so typically weekends I’ll go, I’ll do like a fifty five pounds for that hour, No, forty forty to forty five minutes, and then or like I’ll change up because it’ll you don’t want to get two complaints. It complacent the right word. But I’ll go like thirty minutes, take the pack off, do twenty minutes, kind of just go backers and forth.
00:13:59
Speaker 1: You guys are gonna learn new vocabulary. But yeah, on this.
00:14:01
Speaker 3: Podcast Country Bumpkin. But usually that slid push.
00:14:07
Speaker 1: Slid push is a big I was, that’s what I told you add this week.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: Mean bird did that yesterday.
00:14:12
Speaker 1: Rough slid push is such a good I had that kind of epiphany on the last hunt. You know, the Saremaster is obviously really good, but you’re footing is sure you’re not in that like over extended back of the knee calf centric like walk. You know, when we were walking, I was thinking that day when we went up those avalanche shoots. When we were going up to it, you’re just well.
00:14:37
Speaker 3: The crazy part is when I was going to Beach Sprawl, I used that treadmill. I took the incline as how as you can get. I was like, oh, this would be a piece of cake. Do that blue me up?
00:14:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is exactly how it blew me up, exactly how it’s gonna feel up a mountain.
00:14:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker 3: So I went to like five. I was like, oh, this ain’t too bad on the speed, and I think the incline was fifteen U five minutes sounds like, uh no, what would that speed a little bit more? It blew me up though.
00:15:05
Speaker 2: It’s good though, Yeah, it’ll be no matter what. The first kind of like hike of the morning, it just sucks. There’s nothing good about it.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: Be bold, start cold, Jeff DUTs, Mike Scott.
00:15:20
Speaker 3: I don’t see. I think it might be a little bit different for me though, because it’s my first time. I’ve got adrenaline from it socking.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: Well, and I’m mostly just saying, like your lungs you go.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: From nothing yeah to just up. Then I’m just thinking of our first climb. When we climb on a camp usually is just it’s steep. It’s about about eighteen minutes something like that, depending on how many times we stop and wait for people. But it’s cold, there’s your altitude, and it’s five point thirty in the morning. It’s it’s great. You’re gonna once you get to the top, you’re like, hell yeah, this is awesome because the view of there and just you just you’re in it. So you will have that like he’ll have definitely have the like excitement and we will too, because you know, you’re like there’s always over that hill. You’re like maybe there’s something and then there’s I like, until you experience it the like highs and lows, it’s gonna be it’s gonna be uh. I mean Ben’s been there. You know. When we we got Ben ready, he don’t have a mic, does he?
00:16:22
Speaker 2: He does?
00:16:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have a mic. Oh he’s not plucked up. But Ben went with us, and you know, at first the first day, I was a little sick the first time when the first time Ben went, and so we sat a wallow all day, like literally all day, and Ben said he had the thought of like, man, we trained way too hard for this train. Why we why did we do this? And then the next two or three days we hunted hard and I still remember him going in the middle of like one of the days, he was like, oh, yeah, I get it now. You know.
00:16:52
Speaker 2: It’s one of those things where you definitely will never get out there and go through it and and think, man, I just trained way too much for this.
00:17:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that’s the point. The whole I would love for you to feel like.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole point is you get out there and you feel great the whole time. You’re you’re crushing miles, you kill a bull, you’re packing it out, you can you know, front back ham and you’re fine, and that’s great, but you’re not going to be like man, I’m just overtrained.
00:17:20
Speaker 3: How far do you think you walk a day?
00:17:22
Speaker 2: It depends actually, there you go. Yeah, I was just talking to Rich yesterday. So Ben and I last week we ran almost nine miles on Thursday, and I had a pretty active day. Like also like worked out like hard.
00:17:36
Speaker 1: So your your stride isn’t really long. So this is because I don’t want some people to be there.
00:17:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, your stride’s way different than it was, Like it was like a nine to forty five mile pace, Like we were running slow. We were talking the whole time, conversational and you know, I had a normal day after that, but like worked out, Like I sit at the desk sometimes but sometimes I’m up and around and I had twenty one thousand steps and when and this is on the whoop, which whether the steps re accurate or not is kind of irrelevant here because it’s the same device for both. And when we were hunting in Wyoming, every single day I was over thirty thousand steps, and sometimes I was like thirty three to thirty five, which means I was we were probably putting on thirty three percent more mileage.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: So like eleven thirteen miles r I.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: Mean at least twelve, because if I went nine plus third, like a third.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Of that, what’s in between eleven and thirteen twelve?
00:18:33
Speaker 2: But sometimes it’s highre like thirty five thousand, so it could have been up to like fifteen.
00:18:37
Speaker 1: Some days we wilding wyoming, we put it in.
00:18:40
Speaker 2: Right right, And that’s not and that’s not flat like you’re going up and over stuff. You’re going over deadfall. You’re going down aggressive terrain to where it’s more tiring to go down than it is up because you’re blowing your quads up so much trying to get down whatever it is. So it’s one of those things where I think it it’d be great if you somehow thought you were over prepared, but I don’t think that’s ever the case, even how we train.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: No, I think there’s still days. Really, I mean, obviously your upper body is gonna be way different, but still, even if you’re carrying something around like surprisingly your arms get a little bit tired and pushing stuff, pushing up and over things. And I mean there were times runn all fours, and so I look at the upper body as like a preventative, you know, like if you fall, at least you got you know, the strength to hold yourself up and that you know that reaction to it.
00:19:30
Speaker 4: So but yeah, you know right, one of the biggest things was the what you’re back was the the fatigue factor. Just doing that every day, Yeah, for multiple days. Then you get back to camp like eight at night and we’re all just cramming as much calories in as we can. Yeah, then you’re like trying to sleep as fasts you can because you gotta be up in like seven hours and just.
00:19:52
Speaker 1: Start that off again. Start. That’s a huge thing. I think, you know, when we talked to and doctor Andy Gallpin, being as fit and healthy and rested going into the hunt as possible, because there might be days where we get back at eight o’clock and we get up at five and go back. You know, like it’s just you’re like Ben said, it’s but there’s this emotional roller coaster that you can’t account for of like excitement on the next set of the ridge or the next set of heavy timber or and this is we’re talking archery, which rifles a little bit different. We will be covering a ton of ground because you know, we’ll sit in glass, we don’t have something we’ll move, We’ll sit in glass because we can get to some really good spots, but it’s gonna be work to get to those spots. And so, but you’re just on your feet all day. Your brain is on all day. You’re you’re up, you’re down, you’re moving around, you’re emotionally, you’re excited, you’re disappointed, and you just the mental physical fatigue just takes a toll on you, which is awesome. You know, in the moment, you’re like, man, this sucks, and then when you get done, you’re like, that was awesome. You know, secondhand fun. So I’m I’m excited for walkins to experience it.
00:21:06
Speaker 2: It’s one of those things too, where if the hunt’s going well, you sometimes oh are you work even harder and you’re more on mentally because let’s say you’re trying to close the distance on a bowl during archery season, it’s so much mental fatigue, like your adrenaline’s pumping, but also you’re going to cover so much country chasing a bowl. Then if you’re not hearing anything, like the last morning we were in Wyoming, we went six miles.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: Probably yeah, in an hour and a half.
00:21:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, just because this bowl was just pushing cows, pushing cows, pushing cows.
00:21:39
Speaker 1: Satellite would come in.
00:21:40
Speaker 2: We’re blowing up the satellites on the way in, but we’re still on the herd bowl, pushing cows, pushing cows, and the country you can cover. I mean, we got done and you don’t realize how far you made it until we had like two trucks parked separately and we had to drive the truck. Yeah, we had to drive what twenty minutes down the road or more just to get back to where we drop we had started from. So it’s pretty crazy when you get in as we call it, pursuit mode and you’re just going after something. But that’s I mean, that’s when you’re thankful for that fitness because you don’t have to think about that. You can worry about it later when you’re like, man, I smashed my shin on a tree, which still hurts, by the way. My bone was that the night, No, it was different. It was a night time one, not that morning.
00:22:24
Speaker 1: But did I tell that story on here?
00:22:25
Speaker 2: I don’t think so. It actually also happened something like that happened when we were going after that bear as well.
00:22:31
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we both had and that one of those Like everybody I think thinks that rifle hunts are like it’s way easier. It is. It’s a different style of hunt. But I would say that time that we we hunted two cow got two cows down in that bear was the hardest four days in the woods that we’ve ever had.
00:22:48
Speaker 2: I felt like I got in a car accident.
00:22:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker 2: We were as you pack out something every day.
00:22:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so so we hear bugle and it’s getting dark and we’d had Wyoming was tough, and I think we talked about in the last podcast or one of the podcasts that did just it was rough. You know, wolf grizzly country, public land is tough, and so every bull we would get within one hundred yards one hundred and fifty yards and they just wouldn’t come in. So set last night, No, it would have been the last night.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: Last night.
00:23:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a morning to midday hunt to do the next day because that was the only thing that was going on was in the mornings. But we just happened to fire one bowl up and so we were kind of slow played it all week and it just wasn’t working. So finally Justin was like, let’s go. The guy we were with and so we went after this thing. He’s like go, and so me and Scott went into pursuit mode, as we call it, and we’re just running the gun and basically and it’s kind of dark in the timber, but you could see out in the meadow it’s still light. And so we take off and I go up and over this tree what had these like branches kind of like this. It was dead, as you know, been dead for years. But all of a sudden, I hear some breaking of sticks, and I hear every cussword you can think of, and I turn around and Scott’s just like rolling, but he’s still got the camera and he’s still trying to like run but cuss and like you all right, man, I’m good. It was just so funny.
00:24:14
Speaker 2: It was one of those things where you go to step over the log, but a stick had jammed into my boot, and so as I’m stepping, it’s just getting more jammed into my boot, and so it finally trips me and then my shin hits one of those like stoves that’s poked out and it went straight into the bone. And then I went I went over top, and I’m like, holy my arms everywhere to not fall on the cameras and the bone where it hit it’s like if I if I press on it right now, it still hurts, like it’s like it’s just like, yeah, I don’t know, but it was. Yeah, that was a bad situation. So you know if something like that happened.
00:24:48
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, there’ll be some some moments. Yeah. So one of my cousins is coming with us, so my uncle this hunts with my uncle who’s killed a couple of cows with number a bull, So we’re gonna get him a bull. So we’ve got three bolts, a cow tag, and then one of the other guys at camp I think has mule deer and something else. So hopefully we’ll have some experience and you get some experience packing some stuff out. But Ashton, my one cousin, he’s not a huge outdoorsman. He’ll go with his dad and just kind of like help. And he was talking about he was asking questions about how what how do we hunt? And I was just trying to explain it to him because he said the last time when he hunted with Bill Bill sixty five, and so he’s you know, sitting in glassing a lot and he was like, we sat for eight hours. I said, I can almost guarantee you will never sit for eight hours with us, except for that one time if you’re over a walla if for sick, if we’re sick.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, if you’re sick. If I’m sick. That happened Wilding too, It.
00:25:46
Speaker 1: Did happen in Wyoming. You’ve got a good nap after that though, yeah, true, true, yeah. So yeah, I mean you’ll disconnect this week, which will be nice. You know. Another thing that we talked about with Richard Ryan was farming. Sustainable farming. Pretty cool that we’ve got that here with the bison, you know, and it started as a just a more of a hobby thing with the kids, so you know, one day they’ll have you know, we can still now at this age they get have chores and different things and have to take care of and see where their food comes from comes from, which is a huge part of why we hunt as well. The kids have gone out with us or I should tell that story about going up to Sam or Scott McKinney’s place this last weekend with Thomas, but you know, we uh, it’s cool to look out and see that, you know, we know where our food comes from and that modern day disconnect with You know, anybody who listens to this podcast doesn’t have disconnect with their food, but the general public or general general population has. You just don’t realize where your food comes from or realize that, you know, it had a had a life at some point. And so it’s cool that my kids get to experience that their entire life and be a part of that and have that.
00:27:03
Speaker 2: It’s even cool like obviously anyone that hunts, like your game meets a big part of your diet and you have so much appreciation. You know where that came from. You worked hard for it. But Watkins and I will we’ll share a cow from Where does that come from? Livingston?
00:27:18
Speaker 1: Oh?
00:27:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, So it’s cool, like all the meat it can our house, All the meat that we is either like something I’ve killed, something you’ve killed and I’ve been a part of something that comes from a coyle the next county over. And then we have a like a guy at the local market will get pork and chicken from Yeah. So it’s it’s cool to know, like all of the meat where and we try to do with some vegetables too, Like we had a big garden, but everything is coming from like local stuff. And that was like part of what he talked about on the podcast as well, which is how important the like agriculture is and actually it being regenitive, regenerative to the ways that it is existing, so like the farm is actually healing the land, not just taking from it. So that’s another cool perspective on whether it’s like me or vegetable consumption.
00:28:14
Speaker 1: What are you most excited about this week? The bugle?
00:28:22
Speaker 3: And it’s just because you always do the call, So it’s just like I see you doing it, yeah, and it’s kind of aggravating because you just do it all the time. So I was just like, I just want to put that to an actual elk.
00:28:35
Speaker 2: Just you just want that primal instinct on whatever we kill, because that’s what makes the sound.
00:28:42
Speaker 1: So they have ivory teeth in their mouth and apparently that’s when it comes through the whistle.
00:28:47
Speaker 2: Off of that, you can make a necklace out of it.
00:28:51
Speaker 3: Oh, then I want to get.
00:28:54
Speaker 1: Shd oh.
00:28:55
Speaker 3: That’s that’s that’s that’s part of the second biggest.
00:28:58
Speaker 1: A couple of sheds. We found a freaking moose paddle.
00:29:01
Speaker 2: We found one, we find a shed. Uh one or two months ago in Colorado. Curtis found one.
00:29:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh didn’t Ali find his wife. She may have she stepped on one of them by right, Yeah, because.
00:29:16
Speaker 3: I think that would be cool to like, because I’m driving back, so keep it, keep it. And then I missed out of cal this year though, putting all my chips on the table. What do you mean where we get a cal every I didn’t get one. So he put all my chips on.
00:29:33
Speaker 1: The Hopefully we’ll get at least two elk.
00:29:39
Speaker 3: My first year this year.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: Yea, yeah. So we went up Thursday, friend of ours pastor here in town. They do it’s called uh Buck Lake. It’s a five O one C three now, so they take critically ill children and wounded bats or just bats, I guess on And so we went up to his place. I took Lake one two weeks ago. Man, she had a chance at she had a chance at a dough. She was intimidated. I bought the kids a a crossbow, which still I’m like with kids, I think it’s great. I think it’s something, you know, gives them a chance to get out in the woods during archery season. But for a I’m now I was already kind of against crossbows for archery season for able bodied men. Now that I’ve seen a crossbow in action, I’m definitely against crossbows for able bodied men in archery season. If you want to use it during muzzleloader or whatever, fine with it. But Lakeland was a little intimidated. She thought it was gonna kick or she shot it a couple of times, but just was just nervous about it. So she let a dough pass. Well, then we had a buck come in and we were kind of on dough duty, and so I was texting back and forth with Scott. He was with his daughter, and right, one hundred and twenty inch maybe one hundred and thirty inch buck walks out. I’m still not really good at, you know, judging them. It was a big, nice bot, and so it starts to come in, and long story short, I text Scott kind of giving him updates the whole time, and he’s like, let her have some fun. And so she was fired up. She was ready to shoot it. And coyote about he was probably he was coming into his frontel underneath some trees. We were in a cornfield, and man, he was probably fifty sixty yards out and freaking coyote just spooked him with a little yep and he was gone. But it was cool to see her get fired up. And then two minutes after he was gone and it was she’s kind of like found out that it was over. She’s like, why is my head hurt so bad? Because like that adrenaline dump, and so it was pretty cool. She was fired up and fired up to go again. So fast forward we went the next week and it’s Trice’s turn. Trice is terrified at this crossbow, but he had his buddy over, Thomas, and they’re the same age seven eight and Thomas, we shot it here a bunch of times, five six times, got him used to it. He’d shot a gun a bunch And so we had these doze kind of about seventy yards all night and they just nothing would close. Well. Finally, right around dark one starts to come in and Thomas all night I’d be like, he’d be like, what’s the range? Like eighty five? He’s like, oh, I can shoot that. I’m like, bro, you can’t shoot that because it has right, yeah, it has bubbles all the way out till hundred. But every time a deer would walk out and I’d tell him the range, and nothing under seventy. He’d go, oh, I got that, I can shoot that. And so I told him, I said, if something comes within forty, you know, I’ll let you do it. So, you know, at different times, I would be like, all right, it’s at seventy. Practice putting the bubble that’s the seventy on it, and practice pulling it. So we practice all night, and so one comes out at forty or one’s coming in, and so I’m like, all right, Thomas said, looks like this is gonna be the one. He’s like, all right, we’ren a shooting house and he’s up on the ledge, he’s got the crossbow, and I’m behind him, and I’m like, all right, here we go, Bud. He said, he’s at she’s at forty. She’s at forty four. I think, I said, so aimed. You know, I showed you where to aim on the target here, and he was drilling tax and so I was like, aim just a little bit higher than that, and you know, let me know when you’re ready. He’s like, all right, I’m ready to say, all right, safe’s off those years and dude, I’ve still got to get used to seeing the bolt leave the crossbow because it goes so fast.
00:33:17
Speaker 2: It’s smaller too.
00:33:18
Speaker 1: No, it’s well, it’s shorter, but it’s thicker. I mean it’s shorter, shorter, but it like if it passes through something, it passes through so quick that it looks like it’s a whiff. And so I see it hit the ground and him and Trice are like, heart shot, she’s dead. I’m like, I think you missed. But and so we’re sitting there and they’re like, yep, nope, smoked her got her. These two and they must have said six seven, four hundred and thirty thousand times. You know that six seven that kids do. They must have said it a million.
00:33:48
Speaker 2: Times in seven.
00:33:49
Speaker 1: It’s in a song. You don’t have kids old enough yet. You’re probably aren’t there yet, Ben, But man’s this like it was in a rap song. I don’t get it. Nobody gets it, but the kids love it. Anyway.
00:34:00
Speaker 2: What song is it in?
00:34:01
Speaker 1: I don’t know, and I don’t know where they would have heard it other than at school, but they do this like six even thing, and it’s anybody listening, you can tell us if you actually Apparently it’s this guy. This guy was singing about his friend who’s six seven, but it’s in a song and the kids think it’s awesome. I don’t know, but anyway, so we sit there, Scott comes and gets us and turns out he just he whifted her just underneath, not whift her, but he got a little We searched for hours and found a little bit of blood, but it wasn’t a kill shot.
00:34:30
Speaker 2: And Bird’s son, on the other hand, was he hit his daily limit?
00:34:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, he killed three dos in one day. It was like put in a put an arrow, won a car, put an arrow one in a car, just like Vegas vacation. Yeah.
00:34:43
Speaker 2: So Bird came in the next day and he was so run down? Was it because well I guess he had got those three deer and then well.
00:34:51
Speaker 1: No, they got it. We got it him there And I don’t know why he skinned him and not just drop him off like in here in Tennessee.
00:34:56
Speaker 2: The processor, Yeah, they just take a deer. Yeah, it leaves a cool skin them. He skinned them or both.
00:35:03
Speaker 1: Which I get.
00:35:04
Speaker 2: If you’re gonna do it yourself, well that’s why I said, So you’re gonna process them. No, I’m going to take the why’d you do all the all the work? Yeah, you’ve already done everything so that was pretty funny. But yeah, it sounds like a cool spot.
00:35:14
Speaker 1: No, it’s awesome. Yeah, so I think we’ll go back there late season, he said, with rifles, because they need some does knocked down. I mean we saw I saw thirty does. You guys only saw like five or six. Yes, six d Lane had fifteen dos just in one video that one time, but there were none within range. Nothing was in. It was all like everything would come out about sixty seventy yards and with that crossbow.
00:35:39
Speaker 2: Then of course here in Tennessee, we had a cold front come through yesterday, so we had to get that rifle sited in for the elk hunt. But deer were on their feet, deer on their feet all day and it must have been everywhere because one of our athletes, Austin Hatfield, his shooter buck was out at like nine o’clock fifteen yards from his stand yep in West Virginia. So yeah, it was a good day to be I guess yep. So you’re trying to get your first year this year too, Mike. Have you shot? Have you had an opportunity at one yet? Have you been able to draw back? Yeah?
00:36:17
Speaker 3: I’ve drawing back, but everything so when I say I draw back just to make sure I could. Yeah, in the position that I was in.
00:36:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, you’ve never drawn back on an animal.
00:36:28
Speaker 2: You’ve never drawn back on an animal with the intent of Okay, I’m gonna let an go. Yeah, that’ll be interesting to see, like how your body reacts to it.
00:36:38
Speaker 3: And then so the past two weeks everything’s just been new. So when we went to that form, I guess you would call it when they dressed it first time, saying.
00:36:49
Speaker 1: Oh you’ve never seen something, gut it. Oh, man, I hope we kill and it was cool. I mean I can almost I don’t want to say this, I shouldn’t say it, but I can almost guarantee we’ll kill cal we.
00:36:58
Speaker 2: In the in our whole group, because that’s when something there’s going to be three four shooters.
00:37:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, four shooters, four.
00:37:06
Speaker 2: Shooters in camp. So something you should be able to see something because I would think, depending on how the day goes, we would go over and help.
00:37:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:37:17
Speaker 3: So I’m hoping you fill them all on a bear because you’re getting another bear tag rat. Yes, I hope you get them all.
00:37:26
Speaker 2: The odds of us seeing a bear are not high, so I wouldn’t hold your breath on that still. That was the joke when we saw the bear, as we couldn’t believe it. Apparently in West Virginia where Hatfield hunts, bear like our huge problem, like they’re everywhere and.
00:37:44
Speaker 3: That would freak me out.
00:37:45
Speaker 2: His he had a bear on camera yesterday. We were working out and had a bear on camera, and he knew his buddy was hunting and he had a miscall and he’s like, Oh, I wonder what have here? So he called him and I guess for some reason, he he was dialed to like thirty. He has a three pin. He’s dialed like thirty forty fifty. But the bear was at fifteen, but he thought he was at twenty thirty forty. Somehow Hatfield’s buddy and he just shot, like missed it by a mile because the bear. And he’s like, I’m not even mad that you missed because like you don’t get the bear. I’m mad because you didn’t kill the bear because I guess there’s so many bears there it’s just destroying like other populations. Yeah, he said the area is a big, big bear, big bear problem.
00:38:34
Speaker 1: He said, if we want to come up there and kill bear next year, we should.
00:38:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, he’s killed on every year the past like seven years.
00:38:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, doesn’t post it on social because people freak out.
00:38:43
Speaker 2: Yeah he didn’t. He was killed a deer this year too, he didn’t post it. He must not be allowed to keeping those followers.
00:38:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, you got any questions, anything you’re worried about, anything you think is beneficial to guys that, well, we’re gonna do a follow up podcast after so you can like tell, hey, we should have done this. Hey, you guys should have told me this.
00:39:06
Speaker 3: Hey, another thing I’ve done while I was going. Of course, obviously there’s no steppers, so I just walked the stairs at the hotel. That’s what his uncle does, up down, up and down and down for thirty minutes. I’m sure everybody’s just like, what’s this guy doing?
00:39:24
Speaker 1: Was it in the open or was it in the like, No, it’s like in.
00:39:27
Speaker 3: The stairwheel, just up and down, up and down.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: It’s probably good because the downhill is what sucks the worst.
00:39:33
Speaker 3: That’s probably what I’m most kind of nervous.
00:39:35
Speaker 1: That downhill is the worst, just.
00:39:38
Speaker 3: Because short legs. Yeah I’m short and stubby.
00:39:40
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don’t mean this in a bad way, but if if you’re able to do it coming from east of the Mississippi, so you don’t live in mountains necessarily, like we’ve got mountains, but not like that, and your like body shape and structure is not built for the mountains. So if you can do it, anyone can do it.
00:39:59
Speaker 3: Built different, Yeah, different, No, I say, like if you yeah, what are you?
00:40:04
Speaker 2: Five six on a good day, but your long tours though a short leg Yeah yeah.
00:40:09
Speaker 3: I got some stubby stubby legs. But I think on the which will be interesting is just like when we get back, like I’ll know more.
00:40:19
Speaker 1: Yeah about how to train for the next one.
00:40:22
Speaker 3: But I think a lot of good hands step ups to just boxes mm hmm yeah. What else? I think that’s It’s pretty the main thing I think right now. Of course, everything is new to me, so I don’t know.
00:40:34
Speaker 2: We’ll have a follow up.
00:40:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, we’ll follow up.
00:40:38
Speaker 3: I’m pumped.
00:40:40
Speaker 1: All right, that’s it. Anything else, No, we’re good, yep, we’ll follow up, all right, next uh, next guest, I’m an insult.
00:40:53
Speaker 3: True, we’ll get another podcast, all right.
00:40:59
Speaker 2: Peace
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