The Hunting Stories Podcast
The Hunting Stories Podcast
Ep 108 The Hunting Stories Podcast: Robin Warman
Join us as we trek through diverse terrains and unforgettable hunts, from the dense woods of Texas to the mountainous expanse of Colorado. From a Volkswagen Tiguan navigating hunting grounds to a calf moose standoff, the episode is packed with vivid, jaw-dropping narratives. Whether it’s the rapid-fire bugles of elk or the strategic maneuvering through swampland, Robin and Michael’s tales capture the resilience and passion that make hunting such a unique adventure.
Feel the camaraderie and learn the valuable lessons of the hunt as Robin and Michael recount the steep learning curves, the joys of storytelling, and the thrill of the chase. From humorous mishaps to triumphant successes, these stories emphasize not just the hunt, but the bonds formed and the spirit of community in the great outdoors. Tune in for a captivating mix of engaging narratives and deep insights that will leave you inspired and eager for your own hunting adventures.
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Howdy folks and welcome to the hunting stories podcast. I'm your host, michael, and we have an unusual one for you. Today we're doing another co-release with someone that's actually been on the podcast before, robin Warman. He started his own podcast shortly after coming on the hunting stories podcast and, frankly, I love his podcast and I want to share it with all of you. So I'm going to not go too deep into the intro here, because I love Robin's intro, love his podcast and I want to share it with all of you. So I'm going to not go too deep into the intro here, because I love Robin's intro of his podcast the bugs, the noises it's just so awesome. So I'm just going to stop it there and let Robin kick this thing off with his own intro. I hope you guys enjoy. You're definitely going to get some hunting stories maybe some of mine that you've already heard, but still it's a great episode.
Speaker 1:So I dropped down to the road and I just start. You know I'm wearing my early morning camo, like the heavy stuff I'm wearing way too much. I'm super hot, I've got a bag full of apples and what's funny is I at least two trucks drive by me and I'm just jogging down the road with my muzzle loader. I'm like they don't even say hi. They're like what's this guy's problem?
Speaker 2:And I'm just jogging, jogging, jogging, jogging. Hello and welcome to a special episode of the Wild Dispatch. My name's Robin and I'm back with more human stories from the wild Now, today we are doing something a little different. That's why it's a special episode. Not to say that any of the other episodes aren't special I don't want to talk down on my other children but this one is a little different. We are going to be splitting the podcasting universe into two parallel lines.
Speaker 2:This is pretty dramatic sounding, isn't it? I guess that's a, yeah, a pretty dramatic way of saying this is going to be a double release, both an episode on the wild dispatch butatch, but also on the Hunting Stories podcast with Michael. So I've been friends with Michael since I was a guest on his show, coming up to almost a year and a half ago now, and I think I say this in our conversation. But it was actually really that chat that inspired me to set up my podcast and go on this whole adventure myself. So, given that I already gave some of my time and shared some of my stories, I couldn't resist the opportunity of tapping Michael on the shoulder and just tell him that he owes me a few of his own Michael's had some great outdoor adventures in the past few years. I've I've been lucky enough to be sent the occasional envy inducing photograph of uh things that he's got up to successes, and also, I mean, on top of that, he's had some amazing conversations, and I've heard a bunch of those that he's passed on. I figure, while he's been busy digging up lots of other people's hunting stories, it's about time that he really rolled up his sleeves and shared some of his own. I also couldn't resist to throw in some of my own ones that I haven't actually told yet, so I'm excited to share those. I want to give a big thank you again to Michael for being a guest and also for having the brain bonkingly brilliant idea of suggesting a double release, something that wasn't even in my mind at the time, so it's a great idea. Thanks, michael. I also want to say a big thank you to everyone listening.
Speaker 2:If you're new, if you're coming from the hunting story side of things, then I will just give you my pitch. If you're into the idea of hearing more wild stories from all kinds of folks from around the world, then be sure to follow the wild dispatch. Yeah, you can just jump in wherever you like to listen, tap that follow button and I'll be there in your ears for all eternity. I'm sure you're probably already well aware of the hunting stories podcast. He's got a lot of traction already, but if not, then definitely head over and check it out, give him a follow and listen to some of the many fantastic stories he has from all kinds of outdoorsmen and women from all over the place. But there's a whole variety of great stories of which you actually hear some secondhand from Michael in this episode too. Right, it's time for me to start waffling. Let's get on with the conversation with Michael here. He is Welcome to the Wild Dispatch. You know the way conversation flows, you um oh yeah there's a couple of stories that I haven't really told.
Speaker 2:Uh, I haven't really told yet, so, but I mean, as always, you know me like and took the leg off a donkey, so I'm like this is going to be a dual effort here. Just keep me. Keep me honest, as they say. All right, okay, so I feel like we should just jump in.
Speaker 1:Man, you tell me man, I'll follow your lead, michael welcome Hello. Howdy, nice to be here, robin I. You finally pinned me down and got me on here to record.
Speaker 2:It has been a little while, hasn't it? Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about this for months now and you've been running around having all kinds of fun adventures.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's been a busy couple months for me, but I mean, you asked me to be a guest before I think you had actually even released any episodes, and I was like sure.
Speaker 2:And then I just made you chase me for like six months, so I'm glad I finally get to get on here, man, that's, oh man, that's a good point. So I guess I'm probably like, maybe, close to nine months in now.
Speaker 2:So that is a while I think, yeah, I don't know, this is going to be episode in the 30s, uh so, but yeah, we've both been busy, we've both been running around doing stuff absolutely, but I guess what? So one thing it's been the first time we met. I got a little note here was maybe coming up to 18 months ago, something around that kind of time that adds up and that was through your podcast, right, correct?
Speaker 1:Through a mutual friend, Preston, with I'm drawing a blank on his Mountain Physio, Mountain Physio.
Speaker 2:I was going to say Mountain, mountain, tough, but I knew that wasn't it. But yeah, mountain physio preston over there introduced us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he did and I think he's been a guest on both of our both of our podcasts now, yep, yep, yeah, I remember recording with him when we wrapped up and I was like, well, if you have anyone else that's got some good stories, let me know. And he was like I know exactly who you need to talk to and you were that man and he did not or you did not disappoint. I think you still hold the record for the longest episode on my podcast as far as full time, and I had to cut some out of it. I think, maybe I made maybe my 2023 elk recap, which was just a bunch of us having too many drinks and chatting. That one might be longer, but as far as one person, man, you, you, you hold the cake I don't know if that's a thing to be proud of.
Speaker 2:I feel like I might be a little embarrassed.
Speaker 1:I still tell your stories. That's how I know someone told me some great stories is outside of my podcast. That's what I'm telling stories. Years constantly come up, all of your adventures in South Africa. So thanks for coming on, man, and, like I said, I owed you this and I'm glad to be here. I'm excited to to uh, just you know, chat with you today yeah, I'm excited to hear all of your stuff as well.
Speaker 2:I mean, like obviously we listen to your elk adventures, congrats. I mean I've said it before like we've been messaging constantly not constantly but periodically and I remember actually chatting with you whilst you were on that elk hunt before and it being like very long and tough and just like sending positive wishes and just really hoping that it was all going to come together because it, like you, definitely earned it. You're working hard for that thing, man. And then also, you just got back from hawaii as well. What island was it?
Speaker 1:molokai. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it is the. It is a not tourist island. They, literally anyone that sees you there, goes what are you doing here? Because obviously, big white guys, yeah, everyone on the uh on the tide looks like a Hawaiian islander. Um, they're like what are you doing here? And we're like we're hunting. They're like, oh yeah, kill them all because they're. There's 6,000 people on the island but 40,000 deer, so they're a huge problem. Huge problem, in fact. It looks more like Africa than I would say Hawaii, because these animals have eaten everything. It's just red dirt from the ground and to as tall as they can reach right.
Speaker 1:Yeah so it's these canopy trees everywhere. There's no growth on the ground, which is a big problem Because when it rains, there's nothing to hold that water, there's no plants to hold that water in the ground, so it actually runs off and into the ocean. Okay, that red dirt is is actually killing the uh, the coral reefs that are around the island and really screwing up the ecosystem of the of the ocean around the hawaiian island. So it's a big problem they're trying to figure out how to solve. So I'm doing my part, right and going out there and putting a couple deer down, very honorable very honorable, uh, work that you're doing, yes, in the nature of conservation it's for the for the fishy.
Speaker 2:But I can imagine then, like from a visual point of view, it must be quite similar. Then, if you've got like a lot of runoff happening, you must get these like canyons in red earth, like running down, breaking away the earth which is actually. You get a lot of that in south africa as well, and it's a very classic, often quite nice to hunt through, those where you can kind of work your way through just a little. It's like a mini canyon and just pop your head up every now and then and see what's on the other side absolutely there are canyons everywhere.
Speaker 1:I will say, most of them, if you really got into a canyon, were so steep that you couldn't really just pop your head out. Okay, so we didn't spend too much time in the bottom of them, uh, but it sounded exactly like that where they're just canyons everywhere, but they're just too tall, too tall to hunt okay, this is a little.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's a slightly larger scale than some of the stuff that I was doing. One thing I should just say, maybe I'm just looking to realize we just like started recording and shooting the shit.
Speaker 2:But I should actually just look and see if my levels are actually good, because I don't want to be like a tiny smurf voice. Yeah, I'm still, I'm still learning. I need to. Uh, okay, we look, I think we're good. I think we're good. Yeah, it looks good. Um, okay, so we should actually do a bit of an intro as well. I figure, figure, because I mean, I guess we have what do you think we should maybe do a little bit of a nutshell introduction of each of us you know a little bit about us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Do you want to go first, if you don't mind?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so hi everybody, michael Scrogan, here I'm the host of the Hunting Stories podcast. Just an average guy who started hunting I don't know nine years ago at this point Just fell in love with every part of it. Just the hard work. Hiking with a weapon is what I did for most of it, but in the last couple years I've actually had a little bit of success, fallen in love with archery. I still do go rifle hunting and really for me it's about the adventure meeting great people and then sharing these stories and, of course, the the amazing food that we get out of this. So just fell in love with it.
Speaker 1:It started a podcast about two years ago because at the time I knew more vegans than I did hunters and I was like I need to meet more people and that's kind of why I started the podcast, got to meet great people like Robin and hopefully we can get out into the woods together this year together. Man, um, but yeah, that's me. Uh, just an average guy that loves telling hunting or actually loves listening to hunting stories. So, um, thank you guys for letting me join the podcast today. Robin, why don't you introduce yourself? I know your listeners already know, but we're we're going to co-release this thing and so you know the people that haven't already heard your episode.
Speaker 2:Tell them who that was a great intro dude. Now the pressure's on right, okay. So I'm robin woman. I'm british, a bit of a weird, I guess my identity is pretty splintered by these days. So I'm a british guy who lives in, uh, california. Actually, my wife is from south africa, so I guess really I started properly hunting, um, only five or six years ago and that was over in south africa of all places. It's like a bizarre way in which to start the whole hunting experience, but it was through discovering how much fun it is, going off on missions, getting meat, putting it in the freezer and then just like, yeah, discovering that, and then bringing it back over to america, being here and actually, yeah, I mean the last. I guess it was actually about a year ago to this day now. We now are american citizens, we got our passports hey.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's official congratulations, thank you, welcome aboard yeah, exactly uh.
Speaker 2:So since getting, yeah, getting that bug which I well and truly got, um, hunting with a rifle first, but then also in the same way I think we have quite similar stories in a way yeah, just getting really into bow hunting and this, that it's just such an enormous challenge it is.
Speaker 2:That was the kind of the process which we went through. So, yeah, again, a lot of taking weapons for a walk happened for a number of years. A lot of hard learning, yeah, a lot of time spent out there, which was a good time anyway. It may be a little bit of frustration here and there, always, yeah, but now managing to meet a lot of good people and learn a lot of great lessons about the wild. So part of that journey, which I should probably even get to, is actually the process of setting up my own podcast as well. The Wild Dispatch and I actually have to say, going on your podcast about I don't know something like 18 months ago was the thing that triggered in my mind how fun it is to just sit, shit, sit around, uh, chatting about the outdoors adventures, getting up to mischief, uh, and that kind of yeah I guess that what do they call it?
Speaker 2:adult onset hunting obsession, which?
Speaker 1:we both. Yeah, which we both have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's, that's pretty much me. In a nutshell, I'd say yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad that coming on my podcast kind of spurred this for you, because I've been listening to your podcast and it's a ton of fun. Um, I think you tow a very fine line of like just enjoying the stories but also doing a lot. I do a fair amount of like learning and asking really good questions to people that come on. You have people that aren't just hunters on your podcast, so I'm I'm honored that I was able to like inspire you just even a little bit, but what you're doing is great thanks, Thanks, man.
Speaker 2:Likewise, I mean, you know, I've been an avid follower since, since Preston. Dr Preston Ward gave me a shout and was like you need to tell this guy some stories.
Speaker 1:That's funny. Yeah, I still need you to connect me with a few folks. That was a. I have these crazy trains of, like one person on to me is the next. So Preston was introduced.
Speaker 1:I want to say um, the folks at the bo hitch, because preston had that crazy buffalo story and you introduced or he introduced you, and you had those crazy south african stories and I know you've connected me with a couple folks, but I need to get in touch with fred hammer for sure, because you two sound just like you're having too much fun in the woods and I'd love to talk with that guy yeah, he's a.
Speaker 2:He's a busy man, but he is definitely full of good stories. I think I managed to tie him down for a couple of episodes early on, but I've been calling him for a long time now trying to get him back, but I think it's actually this time of year now, I mean like it's coming into summer, which is prime hunting time in South Africa, so he's a very busy boy right now, periodically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to think it's our spring, so it's got to be his fall, right?
Speaker 2:So that's when everything usually is hunting, yeah it's cooking over there and periodically I get sent some insane pictures of giant animals that he's seen nearby. He knows just enough. He knows to send, just enough to remind me of what I'm missing.
Speaker 2:I believe it. But yeah, so I would love to hear a little bit about you. I don't know how much you've spoken about your story. We, you know we don't have to go super deep, but I'd love to just hear a little bit about your, your process of like you know. I know you kind of you said yourself you traveled around quite a lot, but did you like get fully into the outdoors? Like I mean, you said you were around 30 when you first got into hunting, but you were you outdoorsy before that yeah, so I uh, you know I did the boy scouts as a kid.
Speaker 1:Uh, my parents weren't really outdoorsy people, so it's not really something we did. A lot of my dad's a big like sit on the the shore of a reservoir with a bobber line and just fish a little bit. But that's about the extent of the outdoors as I was growing up maybe a camping trip here or there. But when I got into college I just fell in love with the outdoors. You know, I went to school in boulder, colorado, and I don't know if you've ever been there. It's a beautiful place and you can be. I just fell in love with the outdoors. I went to school in Boulder, colorado, and I don't know if you've ever been there. It's a beautiful place and you can be in the mountains pretty quickly, and so I would just get out there for hikes, car camping. I didn't do much backpacking, we just drove to fun places and parked and then went out and adventured from there. But yeah, in college it's probably a little bit more about the beer and the girls and the camping than anything else. But yeah, hunting was not on the. It wasn't something that I ever even thought about, like not once in my entire life until I was engaged with my wife and I was living in Washington at the time and my brother-in-law lived out there, my father-in-law, who's from Canada. They went on an annual elk hunting trip, and so my wife was like you should go with them. And I was like well, I'm not really interested, but you know, if I'm going to be marrying into the family, sure, why not? So I was like all right, fellas, what do I got to do? You know, walk me through this. And they're like nope, I'm like what, what do you mean? No, it turns out that their rule rule which they later broke, and I called bullshit on for for them. But it was if you're not in the family, you're not invited to the hunting, uh, hunting camp. And I was like well, I'm engaged to your sister. They're like get married, we'll talk. Um. So I was like okay, well, what do I need to do to get ready for that? I ended up getting married. Of course, that worked out just fine, still, actually, this will be our 10-year anniversary. Okay, congrats. Um, so that's all I know about how long I've been hunting, right, um, yeah. And so I was like what do I need? And and they no, no, they didn't really tell me anything.
Speaker 1:I eventually had to figure out myself. Um, I knew that I needed to get my hunter education and my license. Um went with my father-in-law and got a muzzleloader, because they did muzzleloader. Okay, um, the reason they did that was actually an accident. I think there's just too many hunters out there in the wild for a rifle. They never even considered archery and so they went with muzzleloader. So I got my first muzzleloader and in washington it's a pretty crazy thing, because you can't use a sight, so open sights, it's got to be, um, an open bore as well. So that's like where the black of the black powder goes into the rifle, yeah, and then the sabbat goes in there, and then you use the ram rod and you shove it down to the end. But then there's a cap and you put this cap on and it has to be open to the elements. Where you put a blast cap, that's what the hammer hits, which then ignites the black powder and sends it off. And because that's all got to be open to the elements, you're in washington.
Speaker 1:It's raining all the time so you find yourself just like holding these parts of your gun to try and make sure they don't get wet. Otherwise you might get up on an elk, fire your gun, but with wet gunpowder nothing's going to happen. So it was interesting. I really enjoy shooting muzzleloaders If you haven't. You feel like you're in the Civil War and you fire this gun off and there's just this huge plume of smoke and you're like brushing it out of the way to try and see what you hit. It's a really cool experience. Sucks to clean the guns because it's a very dirty way to shoot, but it's very fun Either way got all the stuff I needed camo and whatnot and then headed out into the woods with my brother-in-law, my father-in-law and one of their close friends, my brother-in-law's friend, steven. They'd known each other since they were like three and at the time they were probably 35. Wow, um, yeah. So yeah it was. It was a process.
Speaker 2:I kind of just started teaching myself everything did you got out there a rifle, or was it like you were?
Speaker 1:fully all in you were just like I'm going all in, I'm getting this stuff yeah, I was well, so if I borrow, they didn't have an extra one, right, okay? Um, so I couldn't borrow one. I probably would have, and so, yeah, but went out. I think my first season it sucked. I didn't really like it. I enjoyed the camaraderie around camp. I loved hearing their stories, their jokes and those things, but it was soaking wet. It was October in Washington, it was cold. They kept putting me in this field called bear field and you could hear the bears. I never saw one, but I saw their scat and I could hear them like chomping in the woods and I'm like this sucks, I don't. I don't know why anyone likes this Just kind of scared, wet and tired. It's really hard work. I wasn't prepared for how much work it was going to be, yeah, but I was happy to be invited and so then go ahead.
Speaker 2:I mean you said that it was like a bit of a baptism of fire or, I guess, of water would probably be the more appropriate term for Washington at that time of year. Oh yeah, so how long did you do that for, and did you have any? I mean you said that you didn't see much at the beginning. Did you get some close encounters? Did you have moments, like have moments, can you remember, like the first time that you saw something or like, I mean, I don't know, is it, is it mating time, is it the right at that point, or have they already done it by that by then?
Speaker 1:you. It's it's late, right? Um, it's, it's like the first week of october, so will something be running? Maybe not necessarily, um, but the first year we I didn't see any animals, except for, like my second to last evening, and we went to camp in the middle of the day, had some sandwiches, took some naps, woke up, had a beer or two, which you really shouldn't do. I don't recommend it, but at the time I didn't know any better. And then I walked myself right back out to bear bear field, found my spot and the only animals I saw that entire trip.
Speaker 1:I remember waking up cause I had fallen asleep in my spot and there was, like I don't know know, eight does in front of me, like mule deer does, which I only had an elk tag. So I was just like, oh, that's cool to see, it's glad to know that there are animals out here. Um, it's actually funny. At the time I was asking the guys, I was like how do I tell the difference between a mule deer and an elk? I have no idea, like I didn't know what I would do if an animal showed up and they're like oh, you'll know, and I do know it's. It's pretty easy to tell once you've actually seen them both.
Speaker 1:But at the time, yeah, it was just hanging with the boys spending a couple days in the woods not really doing anything in particular. But the second year, when I was like okay, let's go, I was like that sucked, but let's go, it's fun and I feel like I'm closer and a better part of the family here. So the next year we actually drew a bull tag so in Washington you can get spike tags and so we put in for a special unit and we got it. And they were pissed because they had like we went in as a team and everyone just like puts one name in the hat and if one of us gets drawn we all get drawn. But they had like eight points and seven points and I had one yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I got my my bull tag, um, but uh, we went to a different unit that we had never hunted. Uh, and I mean, there's a to the story. But we did actually see elk that year we got into elk. We killed one elk. I could tell that story if you'd like me to, but that was the moment that I knew I was hooked. We had. Oh hell, I'll just tell the story, tell it, okay.
Speaker 1:So again, this is my second year of elk hunting. I don't even have a truck right. So I'm driving a Volkswagen Tiguan, like not even the full-size Volkswagen SUV, and I roll into the hills. I actually come in late, so camp's already set up. I just had to get off work. When we get out there, everyone's like so what's the plan? And my father-in-law and brother-in-law got some. They call it a watering hole, but it's a dry watering hole. There's no real reason to sit it. But that's where they're going to go. My other buddy and I are like why don't we just walk out the back of the camp? There's no roads that direction, we'll just go. And so we just start walking the hills behind camp. So we're up at four in the morning, we're walking and nothing happens. Wouldn't expect anything else to happen, being that ill-prepared? Um, but we go back to camp and my buddy's like okay, let's have a quick breakfast, let's run go check some of our cameras that we put up there earlier in the year.
Speaker 1:Um, so we fill our bag with apples because you can bait in washington okay, okay so he, he somehow got a whole bunch of apples, yeah, and so we're putting all these apples in our packs, um, and we drive, you know, a couple of miles to this entry point, across this river, go up this mountain to where they decided they would put a camera. We get there. There's not a picture of anything on the cameras, but that's a shame. But what we're doing now at this point and of course, because this is elk hunting 101, is we're pitching the apples to each other and we're batting them with a stick, so they basically just like disperse, right? So you wouldn't just like put a bunch of apples, just basically making applesauce, baseball style. And so we're just, you know, emptying our bags slowly, thinking not much is happening, let's not worry about it. And then we hear an elk bugle, and it's probably like eight in the morning, nine in the morning, something like. And we're like, oh, you know, it's too late in the year because it's october. We're like it's too late in the day, like that's not, that's not an elk, that's just some hunter out there trying to make something happen. Let's not worry about it, let's just keep playing baseball. We just, we just keep blasting these apples and we're doing it. And then all of a sudden we hear just the bugling picks up, the pace picks up where it's a bugle here, a bugle there and a bugle here, a bugle there and a bugle here and a bugle and we're like, wait a minute, okay, one hunter couldn't possibly be bugled Like you'd have to catch your breath. They were just rapid-fire bugles back and forth and we're like what the hell is going on here? So we basically stopped playing baseball, put our bats away and just start running down our hillside. So we were running, running, running, running. We get down to the valley where there's like an old, decrepit building, and then you got to cross the field, the river, and then our truck and then the other hillside. And we look on the other hillside and we just see a massive bull walk into an opening, rip a massive bugle and then walk into the trees. And that's like the exact moment I was like whoa, this is. I'm like this is cool, like that's, that's an elk. I'm not gonna confuse that with a deer. Um, and I was like this is, this is awesome, like let's go. So now we got to run across this field and we're actually running the opposite direction because our truck, we had to cross the river, so we're running over the wrong way. Yeah, cross down, jump the river, get to the truck. And my buddy just starts running up that hill. And you know, because, of course, along with playing baseball when you're elk hunting, another good strategy is to try and outrun the elk. Right, you're gonna catch up to them.
Speaker 1:Another little caveat is I'd actually torn my achilles, I want to say like eight months before this. So i'm'm like pretty like my legs are nowhere near where they should be. I'm just happy to be on my feet at this point, not on crutches, cause I think I was on crutches for six months. Um, and my buddy just starts running up this mountain and remember we got like 30 pounds of apples still in our backpack, so I'm running up with them and I get maybe 150 yards up this Hill and I'm like Nope, like I can't do this. I just can't get it up this hill. It hurts, I'm not going to rupture my Achilles, it's too fresh.
Speaker 1:So I look at my buddy and I'm like good luck. I was like I know that this is basically a finger ridge and I think I could run flat for days. I just can't run uphill, so I'm going to go down and I'm going to swing around the mountain. If you push them up, maybe you'll push them over to me, cause I'll probably be faster going around than you going up and over. So I dropped down to the road and I just start. You know, I'm wearing my early morning camo, like the heavy stuff. It went way too much. I'm super hot, I've got a bag full of apples and what's funny is I at least two trucks drive by me and I'm just jogging down the road with my muzzle loader like just I'm like they don't even say hi, they're like what's this guy's problem? And I'm just jogging, jogging, jogging, jogging. So I get around and I swing around and I'm coming up on where I think I should be and I hear and I'm like, oh man, did my buddy just get one?
Speaker 1:like oh, you had like a gunshot yeah, yeah, I heard a muzzle drops down from the mountain that I just got around and stops on the road right in front of me. Like 80 yards and I'm like holy moly, look at that guy. I pull up my muzzle loader and I realized directly behind him is a camp.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know the, the big wall tents specifically, it's like one of those really big davis wall tents, like 20 by 30 wall tent, and I'm like I don't know, maybe they're in there, maybe they're sleeping. I was, I can't take that shot. So I just sort of look at this beautiful giant elk to this day probably the biggest elk I've ever seen in my life Just walk across the road and the other way out. So I then jog the 80 yards over to where he was. I'm looking into the trees to see, hey, do I see him? Now? There's nothing behind him. Maybe I can shoot him, but there's nothing there. And then I hear something behind me.
Speaker 1:So I turn around and I look up the hill that he had just come down from and there's another elk and I'm like, oh, all, right. So this is about 60, 65 yards uphill, pretty steep angle. But I pull my muzzleloader up, center it on the bowl and fire smoke everywhere. You know, center it on the on the bowl and fire smoke everywhere. I don't see anything knocking the smoke down, trying to bake it. So I can see the elk's not there anymore.
Speaker 1:So the only thing they told me like the only bit of hunting advice, because it was if you shoot, reload your muzzleloader. Yes, yeah. So I then you know, get my little box, my little waterproof box, with my black powder and all the different materials and I I open it and drop the entire thing in a ditch on the side of the road. So now I'm like on the ground, you know, like pawing through the grass trying to find the right amount of black powder, trying to find my sabbats and my blast caps. Again, trucks are driving by me like they're not questioning anything. They're just, you know, this panicked child on the side of the road just like trying to trying to figure.
Speaker 1:They didn't say hi, they didn't do anything, they just drove right by, which is so weird to me now that I think about it. But either way, got it loaded and I just ran straight up the hill and, and I don't know how long it seems like it was 10 seconds, but it had to be longer than that. Either way, I get to the top of the hill and I hear someone yell because again, elk hunting 101. As soon as you shoot something, you're supposed to scream through the woods like that's right, we're really killing it at this point. Yeah, um, and it's my brother-in-law.
Speaker 1:So, as it turns out, he was about a mile north of there, but they heard the bugling too. So he had started in and about halfway about half a mile um, towards where they were going, he took his, his dad, and was like dad, sit here, don't move, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna drop a pin and his dad's not hunting, his dad's just coming along. So he leaves him in the woods, says here's the stump, drops a, an onyx pin on him and just leaves him and says I'm gonna run these elk down, okay, again, another one of my friends think they can outrun an elk either way. Funny thing about that is my father-in-law, who was sitting there, had five videos of herds of elk just walking by 20 yards. The entire time my brother-in-law was gone. Elk were passing my father-in-law as he was just sitting on a stump with no weapon.
Speaker 1:Either way it's fine, because my brother-in-law ran in and what he did was, when he got there, he realized all of a sudden that he was in the midst of all of these elk. So he just sat down and said I'm going to sit here and wait for an opportunity. And he says there were 20, 30 elk. There was a lot of commotion. Obviously, with all the bugling there was a lot of commotion. Yeah, he got an elk to stop at about. He says five yards, five to 10 yards broadside and just. And that was the first shot oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So my other buddy, who knows where he is at this point, right, I'm still climbing the other side of the hill, I guess I don't, I don't really know, um, but so I. So I hear him yell through the, my brother-in-law yell through the woods hey, who's shooting? And I'm like I recognize his voice. I'm like doing, it's me, I shot an elk. And he's like I did too. And we're like, yeah, he's like I have no idea where mine went. And I'm like, duman, it's me, I shot an elk. And he's like I did too. And we're like, yeah, he's like I have no idea where mine went. And I'm like, well, I'm standing where mine was, come to me. And so he comes to me.
Speaker 1:So we're hollering at each other through the woods until we find each other. We're standing on this game trail, again about 70 yards up this hillside, and I'm looking down the game trail and there's an elk And'm like, oh. And I'm like, oh, he's got a wound. I was like there's the elk, and then I noticed there's two wounds on this elk. What? So, as it turns out, he, my brother-in-law, hit it broadside five to ten yards.
Speaker 1:We're talking 50 caliber, yeah muzzleloader yeah, um liquefied its heart and then it was just standing there basically dying when I shot it. And I shot it long spine from, uh, from, uh, the angle below Right Um, and it ran 40 yards down that road and then it just slowly expired it's. It was on its feet for another 30 to 40 minutes. It was absolutely crazy. I don't I should have shot it again, thinking about it, uh. But my brother-in-law came and he sat next to me and we just sat there and looked at it and he's like, oh crap, I left dad in the woods. So he's like you watch this, make sure it doesn't go anywhere, I'm gonna go back and get my dad. And so he runs off and I'm like, okay, well, now I've got this elk, I've got no idea what to do.
Speaker 1:And eventually my other buddy, who's probably the only one with any experience he's a, he's from texas, he knows a lot about whitetail hunting, um, and he's killed a couple of elk. But he shows up, the elk dies and we walk over to it and start to, you know, process it. And eventually my brother-in-law and father-in-law come back. We managed to get this thing gutted and what's funny, like I said, there's a that camp, right, yeah, right there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're standing on this hillside and those guys come back from their morning hunt and they're like, what are you boys doing up there? They're like, oh, we shot an elk. They're like you shot an elk in our camp. And I'm like, almost, I almost did, but no. And so these guys come up take a look at the elk and it's a beautiful elk probably I mean, I don't know if my brother, ever brother-in-law, ever measured it probably a 300 plus inch bull, wow, um. But what's amazing is we my father-in-law went, got the truck, drove it up to that hill, backed it in and we slid the the elk full down that hill into the truck, like with six guys, just just right in easiest pack out ever. Um. But from that point on, man I was, I was absolutely hooked. Uh, I didn't get. I got some meat, of course, but I didn't keep the antlers in. In retrospect, I think the person who puts it down the last shot should get to keep. That's my perspective.
Speaker 1:So, um, but, yeah, that was the moment that I just knew like hunting was for me. We went back to the other spot the next few years and didn't really have any luck and it was never really um, the same experience. But then when I moved to colorado, yeah, uh, I started.
Speaker 1:I started researching because I was like all the stuff that they had done as far as finding locations now needed to be done again in colorado yeah and I just fell in love with the entire process of, like researching the animals, of researching the locations and why they might be there, and scouting and cameras, and all of a sudden I was spending way more time in the woods and I and I love everything about it and my wife loves some of the things about that but yeah, that's the, that's the yeah, so that's the story of my first elk and kind of what got me into hunting.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, yeah, so that's the story of my first elk, and kind of what got me into hunting, so I didn't really have any interest in it until I had fully experienced it. In fact, the only reason I said yes initially was because you know when, when guys turn 30, they either get really into like history or smoking meats. And so I was into smoking meats and I was like, oh, if I'm going to smoke all these ribs, I should probably kill, kill an animal at some point. And so that's kind of why I said yes, man, and yeah, here we are now. I've, you know, harvested a bunch of animals my freezer's full right now. I got three tags, maybe four for this year. So it's just, it's my personality now, good times yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:I can definitely relate it. The whole kind of figuring stuff out when you're new is so hard, isn't it? Like you're definitely. I don't know what the expression is. You are out in the woods with no idea what's going on, and it's like yeah it takes a lot of time to get a bit of an intuition, doesn't it? Yeah, so I'm glad to hear that that barrier to entry existed for not just myself.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was tough. What's funny is like hunting with those guys in Washington for all those years. Not once did anyone ever say the term thermals, and if you've ever hunted Western big game, it's like the number one thing you need to be aware of have. We might have killed a lot of stuff if we were. We were always thinking back to hunting washington, always in the wrong spot. Yeah, we were. All the thermals were always wrong for what we were doing, so we got lucky.
Speaker 2:That's what we did exactly your buddy like chasing up the hill at that time of day, going like, oh, let's go up here. I'm wondering if the you know there's that kind of time when the heat starts going up the hill.
Speaker 1:That's like exactly, exactly, I guaranteed. I remember how hot it was. I'm sure the thermals were going just right up his back up the hill.
Speaker 2:So I guess when was the moment that you decided to pick up a bow, like what happened?
Speaker 1:with that.
Speaker 2:Like cause you were, you know, using muzzle loader and running around and getting like that's the moment that you really, you know, saw red. I guess like got into, got into hunting, but was it? Was it like a mentor or a friend or what you know? Who was it that kind of got you into it?
Speaker 1:This is not a big cool, cool, romantic answer to that question. Um, so I went to colorado trying to figure out how to get a tag. Muzzleloader wasn't necessarily an option, it wasn't like washington, just totally different systems. So I bought a, bought my first like rifle, went rifle hunting in mid-november in colorado by the wyoming border and was so damn cold and miserable that I was like, nope, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. So I was like, what are, what are other options? I was like, oh, there's over-the-counter archery. I should get a bow and then I can hunt in September. Yeah, and that's it. Man, it was the weather. Um, the weather is why I did it, because I was like I'd like to experience the, that that bugling, that like that ruddy crazy September elk hunt. Um, I've got a taste of it a little bit, but mainly I just didn't want to be in a snowstorm like that's. That was, that was it, which is actually funny. That that's what drew me to it and I ended up falling completely in love with archery.
Speaker 1:But I still go on that november hunt, like every year I go and I, and I suffer like, I think, the year that I officially decided I was going to archery hunt, the high for the entire week that we were there and this is midday was 20 degrees, like the highest temperature of the entire week was 20 degrees during a midday one of the days, otherwise it was just so cold, so cold.
Speaker 1:So that's that's why. So it's just complete random luck. So same thing. Very crazy learning curve. I didn't have anyone to go to and say how do I do this? I just started watching YouTube. So there's sources out there for people. But that was a struggle too. I made a lot of mistakes in archery. My arrows were not spined correctly, all sorts of different things that were making me just a really bad archer, and that's probably why it took like five years to get my first archery kill.
Speaker 2:But you're also a pretty big guy, right? I'm guessing you've got a pretty long draw. So then spine is even more important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah. And what's funny is I didn't know that I was shooting the wrong spine until I went to a really good archery shop here in Denver and I bought a new bow. And then shop here in Denver and I bought a new bow and then I showed them my arrows. They're like no, you can't shoot those out of. Hit this. They're like we're not gonna let you destroy this brand new beautiful bow. And I'm like what do you mean? And so they explained the science behind it.
Speaker 1:I went sure, you're just trying to upsell me some arrows, classic went back went back home, started googling these things and looking it up and I was like, oh no, they're actually saving my life. Like my bow could explode because my arrows are not stiff enough. Yeah, like it's crazy to think that that's something you need to worry about.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I'm curious then, like the bow hunting thing became an addiction. What made you shift over to texas? Because, like I mean, and also like versus texas, versus colorado, like, is what's the hunting like over there? Because you spent time over in texas, you were there for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, texas is different, right? So what's crazy is there's, I think, 10 to 20 times the amount of public land in Colorado than there is in Texas. Wow, so Texas is, you know, 10, 15 times larger than the state of Colorado, but it's all private. Um, so the reason we went down there was actually cause my, my father-in-law, who again was one of the first guys I ever hunted with. He got really sick, um, so we moved down there two separate times to basically spend more time with him, get him so that he could actually meet our children. Um, so now I have a five-year-old and two-year-old. He's met them both. We didn't think he'd meet either one of them, which was great. He has passed away at this time. In fact. Um, for the people listening, I did a? Uh in memory of him. You'll hear that exact same story, but with the other guys that were on that hunt. Um, and a couple of other fun stories. If you haven't heard that one, it's the Larry Peterson episode. It's, it's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1:Um, where was I? Oh, yes, going to Texas. It was very different because I couldn't find access, I couldn't get on land to just go hunting, so I ended up finding a couple loopholes, like at the time rivers in Texas were public land and you were allowed to hunt them, but only with a shotgun. So the only whitetail I've ever killed. I went down to a really good deer area, found a river and just started walking down it with my shotgun. They just have to be navigable, which doesn't mean water, it just means like an average of 30 feet wide, which, yeah, no problem, easy to find that. So I would just start walking rivers and hunting them. And I did shoot a really nice, probably 130-inch whitetail buck.
Speaker 1:Complete luck, right, I don't have any options. I just walk down the river until something shows up, and I got lucky that one particular time. Yeah, and I've been hog hunting a bunch of times. I've actually never killed a hog, they just never seemed to show up. I've been on hog hunts Whereas a group we kill 30. Wow, but I didn't. I didn't even see one. Another guy killed 15. Really, yeah, it's just that's why it's hunting, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, when it comes to Texas versus Colorado Colorado you can go out, you're always going to have a place to hunt, and that's why I think public land is really important. In fact I'd write senators in Colorado and they love public lands, right, senators in Texas, they're like nope, there shouldn't be public lands. Ted Cruz specific, I was like screw that guy man, he just has no interest in people having public land and he wants to sell it all off Either way. And and that he wants to sell it all off, um, either way. Uh, yeah, man, that's, that's the main difference. So I became I've always been an opportunity hunter, not so much an archery hunter, so like I'll take whatever weapon I can with me to try and fill my freezer, um, and, and I've had a lot of fun doing that I have more fun doing that with the archery equipment. Personally, I'll do it with whatever.
Speaker 1:But yeah, texas is, if you know someone with land, it's great. There's so many animals and there's all sorts of critters. You got hogs, you got axis deer, white tail deer, there's mule deer, there's neil guy, there's everything you can possibly imagine in texas. I mean, you can go shoot a zebra if you can find one. Uh, elk elk are considered an invasive species in texas, oh really. So if you, if you run into an elk, you can shoot it in the middle of the night out of a helicopter if you wanted to like. There's no rules, um, and you can. And there's odd ad, which are these crazy rams from afghanistan? There's all sorts of crazy fun things in texas, but you have to know someone who has land yeah or pay for a lease or pay for a guide.
Speaker 1:So texas is wonderful, I love it, but I struggled. I didn't hunt nearly as much as I thought I would in Texas.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I mean, I've not made it over there, but it is true and I think in a funny way it's quite similar in South Africa as well. Yeah, and actually in a weird way, from what I hear, texas looks quite a lot like South Africa in places too At least the areas where I've hunted Lots of kind of like bushy, hot, everything's spiky, trying to. You know, they say that the everything's trying to bite you, even if it's the plants but yeah, so yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's definitely not somewhere I've gone and I'd be curious to go, but obviously you've got to have those contacts and I don't have those right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've got got one buddy who is like a friend of a friend who has a ranch out deep west texas, um, which is not necessarily the funnest place to go and you don't want to go out there in july and august, but other than that I don't really have any contacts out there. So I, you know, I bought a house out there 15, 20 deer in my yard at any given moment, but I couldn't do anything about it, um, due to other regulations about how much land before you're allowed to hunt it, and stuff like that, oh, okay yep, yep.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean, it's beautiful place and tons of fun animals and and I encourage everyone to go out there and try their their best to hunt in texas. Um, it's also different because you sit in a blind right I I, which is a total different game than western big game where you're stomping around doing 12 miles a day. So it's it's very different, but, um, it's still very fun I mean it always looks fun, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:like a new area, trying out new stuff yeah, new quarry, I guess, is the term. It's always a fun thing. I'm wondering, like I wrote down a few little questions before this chat, things that I was just curious about, like okay, you've got a great concept for a podcast like it's. I mean you can tell like you've obviously got a bunch of great stories from, like the hunting world. It's such an infectious kind of thing. It's so just fun to hear people recount their stories and I figure I'm sure people have been doing it since the beginning of time, right, like it's one of the main focuses of mankind.
Speaker 1:Right Cave dwellings always had the hunt.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, cave dwellings always had the hunt. Yeah, exactly on the walls. They're not drawing about other stuff, are they? That's that's the thing, that's the main focus. The time that there was like a bajillion animals all around, yep, so I guess, like, was there a moment when you had the idea to do a podcast about hunting stories was?
Speaker 1:there it was. It was like three moments. I went to a do you know, Elkshape, Dan Staten.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, I went to his elk hunting camp in Texas and I was there and we did the working out and that sucked and the shooting. And he does a very good job of kicking your ass and making you realize you're not in good enough shape to elk hunt or you have a lot of stuff to work on. But one thing a portion of his camp was like side hustles, make money so you can make opportunity, get tags and those things. And I was like, okay, that's smart. But I was thinking about it a little differently. I don't know if I need a side hustle necessarily, but it helped me realize that what am I lacking? And that was I don't know any hunters. So I go to these events to meet people to make friends in Texas. Realized that, like, what am I lacking? And that was I don't know any hunters, right, so like I go to these events to meet people, um, to make friends in Texas more than anything is why I went to it, not necessarily Cause I thought I'd get a ton of knowledge from the thing, cause I've done so much research in my life and I was like, okay, I want to meet people, how do I meet people? And so that was. That was kind of the first thing that happened.
Speaker 1:So then I'm driving, actually from Texas to Colorado it's turkey season and I'm listening to Chris Rose and um I'm trying to blank on the other gentleman's name, maybe I'll remember it, but they put together a turkey hunting series for Miriam Turkey specifically, and it's nine episodes. Each episode is an hour to an hour and a half, and so I'm like episode seven, like I'm 10 hours deep in turkey hunting and I'm looking at the road in West Texas. Being like this is awful, I can't listen to why turkeys gobble anymore. I can't listen to why they roost in this tree and you need to get up at three in the morning and gobble to try and find. I was like no, I don't want to learn anything, I just want to hear a fun story. I just want to hear stories. I just want to be entertained, I want to stay in the hunting vein, but I just want to hear stories. Yeah, that's all I want. I don't want to learn anything.
Speaker 1:And so I started looking online and I was like you know, nothing's here. There's, there's like maybe one other podcast that's specific to it, but they, they put out one episode a year or something like that, um, it's like, um, uh, a group, group of podcasts, that's just one that they don't really pay attention to, okay. And I was like. I was like, okay, so there's, there's an opportunity here. And I was like but I really don't, I really don't want to be on podcasts. Like that doesn't sound good to me. So I just sort of put that. So that's, that's um, moment number two where I was like that's that's when the idea happened.
Speaker 1:And then, uh, a friend of mine came into town from washington and we're sitting there having a beer on the back patio and he goes like so, you know, any, any business ideas, you know what do you got going on in your brain, anything you've been thinking about doing, and I was like you know, thank you for asking. Actually, yeah, I thought about starting a podcast and he's like well, about what? And I explained it to him and he's not a hunter, and he's like you should, you should try it, yeah. And so I was like you know what? There's my side hustle right there. And so you put those three moments together, which is probably over the course of three to four weeks, and, uh, I just started reaching out to hunters, um, on instagram, being like, hey, I'm starting this podcast, would you like to come share some stories?
Speaker 1:And I realized I had something when no one said no, yeah, everybody, every single hunter. Like, regardless of where they are, where I felt they fit into the chain of who's a big deal in the industry, every single person was like, yeah, no, I'd love to. I'd love to. That'd be awesome, I'd love to tell some stories.
Speaker 1:And here I am, two years into this thing and I still get that attitude from people all over the industry, like people that maybe they are known for their e-scouting and maps and they're like I would love to come on and not talk about e-scouting and maps and tell you my favorite stories.
Speaker 1:Or people that are CEOs of companies. They're like, yeah, I would love to come on and not talk about my products, but instead just tell you my favorite hunting stories. Like it's different. And, uh, I would say almost every time I do a podcast, some of the people reach out to me afterwards and go oh man, I just thought of three more stories, I need to get back on the podcast. So I think you said it. You had a lot of fun. Yeah, you realized how fun it can be. I have a great time doing it. Um, and I think that most of my guests I think that maybe is what makes my podcast maybe a little bit different than most is that, like the people aren't doing it to push any agenda, they're just there to tell their favorite stories.
Speaker 1:They're just having fun and it's, it's going well.
Speaker 2:I mean, I believe it. It's so true, isn't it? And I think that's the thing. People get a chance to tell the stuff that's been their world for so long, and there's no you're right, no agenda, no, like trying to sell something or trying to push something specifically, and that's just free, isn't it? It's free, it's just people having a laugh, entertaining each other, telling stories which have been entertaining people since the beginning time, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:so 100 man absolutely.
Speaker 2:I've got to agree, though I think it's. It was really nice when I started the pod as well. People are super open and usually really helpful. People who I would never imagine were going to like get back to me yeah right.
Speaker 2:I guess the thing is you just got to try, right, you've just got to try and and see what happens, and that's the thing. So I guess, like you must have had like I mean, I know for a fact I'm this is a bit of a leading question I already know the answer. Well, you, you had all these amazing conversations with pretty incredible people who are like super talented in the hunting world and have some great stories. But then obviously a product of that is that you're meeting people and your your in. Your whole goal, your whole reason for setting this thing up is beginning to pay off, right, and you're having these very cool experiences going off on adventures I mean, I'm sure there's been far more than the ones that I'm saying now, but like a big one that popped in my, on my radar was like when you called me, I was like, hey, I'm going to hunt, I'm going to go hunt elk with a champion elk caller, right.
Speaker 1:I was like what? Yeah, yeah, that was. That was fun, man. Jermaine Hodge. What's funny is we just had a great time. He held the record for the longest episode before I met you. He was like episode six and we had a few too many beers and we talked and we were on the phone for, honestly, like four and a half to five hours. We recorded like a three-hour episode, Wow.
Speaker 1:But, we just kept talking. He was walking me around his house, house showing me his taxidermy, and I mentioned to him what unit I put in for that I didn't get, and he's like that's my secret unit. And next thing, you know, um, I'm like he mentions if I draw it next year I'll take you. I mean, I wrote that down, yeah I'm not amazing.
Speaker 1:I am not gonna forget that. So, uh, and the next year, I said hey, you know you, we had had a couple drinks, so I'm not gonna hold you to it, but I do want to remind that you said this and he was like no, let's go. If you get that tag, I'd love to go out with you. And that's just who jermaine is.
Speaker 1:Um, as it turns out, it's not not abnormal for him to to take people out okay I might have been the first person he'd never met before that he took out, but like he's constantly taking people out and and like he loves to get people on elk as much as he likes to get them himself, I think last season he had his hands on at least like 15 different animals going down. Wow, yeah, it was absolutely crazy. He's a great guy and an amazing hunter and he's in way too good of a shape because he's like he's like five, six, I'm six, four and I'm not in good shape and he's basically a professional athlete. Trying to keep up with him in the mountains was awful. That's why, when you said we were texting the whole time and you sounded like I or it sounded like I was- gassed.
Speaker 2:It's because I was falling germane everywhere. There was a tone in your voice at times just sounding like, I don't know, broken was maybe an overstatement. But you're just like man, this is sad, this is really savage. That you hadn't I could see like you hadn't quite seen the light at the end of the day. You were working super hard and I don't think you'd had that many opportunities at that point. So it was just like is this gonna happen?
Speaker 2:and then it can be hard to visualize, can't it where you like, can't imagine that to it, for it to work out until you get to that point where you suddenly get an opportunity, but like what, how many days was it before you even got on like a good, good chance?
Speaker 1:uh. So I went out a couple days with uh. Jermaine couldn't make it the first couple days because of work, he was in philadelphia, so I went out with his friend, uh, pat latrell, and pat had literally a month before, won the like the men's division not the professional division, but the men's division world outgoing championship and he won it again this year. So I'm in good hands, right, yeah. And so I go out with Pat and my, my buddy, jared, and um, we got, we saw elk, but we never really had an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Um, I actually have a video that went viral of me looking like an idiot in a field. It's like 2 million views. Um, cause I'm stock, I'm stocking, right, and there's an elk right behind me and they're like oh no, oh no, turn around. So I was stocking a bull, not a great bull, but I was stocking him for a couple hours and they were just on a hill watching me do it, so never drew my bow back, never really got within range, and a moose ended up blowing the whole thing, not even me. I blew that one cow out, but a moose came and blew the rest of everything else out, which is where I got that moose tag, robin, which we need to go talk about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where was I with that? Oh yeah, so, so nothing that day. The next day we go to the top of the mountain, we hike around to another 15 miles, and nothing that day. And then Jermaine shows up and, um, jermaine has this saying if you want to win, put hodge in. And so, like he's, he's texting that to his friend, pat, and pat's like jermaine's such an a-hole like. And so pat or jermaine shows up, does the exact same thing that pat's been doing this whole time.
Speaker 1:But first, first call. A bull answers and is coming in winds, bad the wind. He runs off we, we repositioned 300 yards down the hill and he starts calling again. And I'm not kidding you, within five minutes he called in five different bulls. Wow, yeah, it like we're standing there. And one comes in like behind us. So I'm up in front down the hill and I grab my bow and I run up to next to jermaine. And when I get next to him, 15 feet not yards, 15 feet to our left, three bulls come in. The first one sees us, stops. The other two run into that bull, knock it over and it like rolls in front of us and it stands up and jermaine's like draw your bow and shoot that thing. And I'm like there's three more to your left.
Speaker 1:And jermaine's literally just like, wide-eyed, slowly looking. He looks over there, he sees all these other bulls and then they all spook and he's like, well, oh man. And so like I run back and grab my backpack. And then as soon as I grab my backpack, another bull comes in right to this exact same spot. But I just it's, it's moving and I'm moving, but the bush is in between us. I can never get a a view of its vitals. All I can ever see is it's, it's rump. So I'm just like moving and it just keeps moving, and then it runs off.
Speaker 1:And so then I go back down because I dropped my backpack again and I'm looking and I see another elk. I'm talking 80 yards through the brush and I'm like get there. Like okay, yeah, you want to win, put Hodge in, like he's right. And so it was just the craziest day. It was insane. There was like four or five of us. They actually recorded a lot of it. I'm hoping that they can. They were going to put some video out sometime soon, but I'm hoping they got a bunch of that on he's got it all as footage We'll see.
Speaker 1:I haven up looking like but uh, yeah, it was crazy. So we, we had, I wouldn't say we had an opportunity, but there were elk everywhere every day, just all over us. Um, but the only time I drew back is when I actually killed the bull that I killed on day eight.
Speaker 2:Ah, nice, yeah, but it's also nice to have like a bunch of action going on around you.
Speaker 1:I mean, you must've been feeling like oh something's gonna happen now if you suddenly the hodge comes in. Yeah, I don't, I don't think there was a day that we didn't see elk. It was amazing. It was a great trip. Now again didn't have opportunities, but it's just fun to see them. Uh, call to them and have them, you know, holler back.
Speaker 2:So we knew that it was eventually going to happen if we put in enough time yeah, man, when it did, how was the, how was the pack out and everything, I mean you, you, so the shot goes off. I mean maybe we're jumping ahead, but you get to that point, day eight, you, you draw the bow back. What is it like a 40 yard shot? Something like that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, so well, yeah, we'll tell the story, why not? So we're we? We? The night before I had been, uh, I told jermaine I'm like man, I am tired. We have a night where, like we always see elk in this particular valley, let's go sit there and glass it. If something comes up, we'll go after it. And he's like, okay, let's do that.
Speaker 1:Jermaine can't sit still, so we're there for like an hour. And then he's like all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna walk to the top of that mountain and when, when we get up there, I'm going to rip some bugles and then we're going to just chase after whatever happens. And I'm just looking at this guy like, oh man, I'm tired. And I was like Jermaine, five minutes, like I'm going to. I was like I'm not talking to you about that for five minutes, being just like. I look over his shoulder and I see a bull and I'm like, oh, that's down, not up, we're going in right there. That's where we're going. And so we're on this big tall rock that actually looks over everything. So we sneak down the backside of it, we drop down again, cross this little stream and we're cruising up the tree line. The wind is perfect. It's coming right down the valley, right to us. And so we're like, yeah, let's just cruise in the trees until we get to where that elk is, try and lay eyes on it and then put on a stalk.
Speaker 1:So we get probably 50%, no, maybe 70% of the way there, probably 150 yards, something like that, with another 50 or so, maybe 100 to go, and a baby calf moose jumps up and runs off and we're like, uh-oh, where's mama? And the next thing we know, mama jumps up. And mama jumps up and runs right through us and just stops 30 yards from us and is just staring us down and we're like, well, well, we can't move, yeah, and we don't want mama to stomp us, but we can see the elk on the other side of this little like finger opening in this valley and the, the elk don't see us, they don't know anything about us. But the moose spook the elk. So we're like, well, damn, so we just stand there and we 30, 40 minutes of us staring down mama moose and I was like this is a crazy experience to be this close to a moose.
Speaker 1:If I had a tag dead, no doubt she didn't move. She had eyes on both of us just standing there. Eventually we're like, okay, let's just get out of here, let's just slowly back away. We backed away and we got out of there. What did she do? Stood there.
Speaker 2:Still stood there.
Speaker 1:Didn't move. I assume maybe it was like maybe she went and found her baby or something later on. I think that's actually what happened. But this, the valley that we were hunting, is, if you continue kind of downhill from there, it closes up, the trees close up and then it opens up into another valley. So we're like let's go to that valley and then get out of here, walk back to the truck and it's. It's basically dusk, like we can't really see very well. But I'm looking into this field and I'm like I think I think there's an elk at the bottom of this field. We're talking like 600 yards. So you pull up our binos you can see better, because it allows more light in. And we're like yeah, there's a bull down there and so like let's go, like we got maybe five to ten minutes once we get down there.
Speaker 1:So we sprint in the trees down this valley down to the bottom and jermaine starts calling and this bull is piping off like they are growling at each other. They're going back and forth for a second. He's like it's coming, so he has me drop down into the into the valley. The valley is filled with bear, bear brush. It's coming, so he has me dropped down into the, into the Valley. The Valley is filled with bear bear brush. It's 12 feet high. I can't see anything, like nothing's working. I'm like I think he's calling this bull in, but I don't know. And so I'm like trying to get to points where I can see the bull never really came in, but they were calling back and forth for 30 minutes, like past the point that I could shoot by a long shot Either way. So we eventually I'm like, okay, I can't do anything here. So I'm going to back out.
Speaker 1:I back out to Jermaine and he is like a chipmunk, just jazzed. He's like, oh, like just getting into that yelling match with that bull. And he's so fired up and I actually recorded this video. I'm like Jermaine, what'd we just do? And he's like this is what we live for Like the most fired up I've ever seen a human.
Speaker 1:And so we eventually go back to camp and we tell everybody our story and he's like, okay, well, tomorrow we're going to go climb these mountains and that mountains. And I was like, well, hold on, still, in my like saving my legs kind of mentality, I'm like, wait, let's just back up a little bit here. Jermaine, what would you expect that bull to do here, germaine, what would you expect that bull to do? We didn't spook him out of there. He had a bunch of cows. What would you expect him to do? And he's like, oh, he'd probably be there in the morning. And I'm like, well, then, let's go back there in the morning. It's like why would we do anything different? Like we know we've got a hot bowl. Like let's go back and have you scream at him. He's like, all right, it's your tag, we do whatever you want, but the mountains are calling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he wants to just hike.
Speaker 2:I'm like no, I don't want to go up the hill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like you bastard. Either way, we go back the next morning, we get into a good position to start calling, kind of up in the trees at this peak above the valley, and we're calling and nothing's happening. So we're like, well, what the hell? Like maybe he's not here. So we dropped down into the Valley and we're looking there and there's nothing. Like, well, I guess, I guess you were wrong because he's not here, but either way, let's keep hiking. And then all of a sudden we see a cow and then we see another one, and then we eventually gets. He had called in apparently all of the cows in the area. After we'd gotten him fired up there was 15 or so cows and him.
Speaker 1:And the way this these valleys are, there's two of them, both kind of it's like a capital T, right, but they're both kind of going uphill. And so he's right at the junction of that T and we're kind of just down one of the veins from him. But we know that our wind is going straight down to him. So we're like, let's not move, let's wait until he crosses over to the other side of the T and he'll probably walk up that other valley. He does exactly that and so we shoot across the bear brush.
Speaker 1:It's not easy to get through, it's swampy, but we get through to go to the other side and we're just like, let's drop down to that other end of the Valley. If we're behind him, the wind will be coming in our face and we should be good to see where he is and we can make a play from there. So we're just moving quick as we can down our side of this Valley and as we're hiking I just realized I see elk feet, like just legs, and so I stopped. Jermaine, pat is behind me, pat runs into me and I'm like elk.
Speaker 2:And so, just like through the brush, like under the brush, like under the bottom of the brush, you can see them.
Speaker 1:Just just one, just one elk, okay. And I see legs, yeah, so I managed to somehow stop the group, you know. And it walks out and it sees us and it stops and it's the bull. And Jermaine's like knock an arrow. And I'm like, oh yeah, shit. So I look at the bull and I'm like, yeah, he stopped. And this bull stopped with his head exactly behind a tree, so it can't see me. And then behind me is Pat. So it can't see Pat. The only thing you can see is little old Jermaine Hodge, like three feet to my left. So I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll knock an arrow.
Speaker 1:So I knock an arrow and Jermaine goes 40 yards and I'm like all right. So I look and I'm like all right. So I look and I'm like there's a lot of trees, can I shoot through that? And he's like you got this. And I'm like, wow, what a positive influence here. Let's do it. So I pull back and I realized that there's a branch right in front of me, so I just dropped down. I sort of get down into a squat, like a standing squat at full draw.
Speaker 1:That's a tough shot and I let it rip and my Luminok goes off. I've sent you this video. I'll send it to you again, if you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But the Luminok goes off, which is for those who don't know archery. It's like everyone Basically an LED that, when you fire the string, makes the knock of the arrow glow, makes it really easy to track your arrow, see where you hit and also find your arrow after, hopefully, you hit something. So it goes in and this elk is quartering to me and it goes in right behind the shoulder blade, zips right through it like no problem and he just rears up and runs off and he didn't make a lot, lot of noise. So we know he didn't go into the trees with the downfall. We thought he went back out into the valley, okay, um, and so at this point we also have a camera guy with us and so we all just sit down.
Speaker 1:We're like we're gonna wait, we're gonna wait an hour and let's watch that video. So pull the card, get it on our phones and we're watching this and they're like oh, maybe you shot it in the ass. I'm like I didn't shoot an ass Like, so it went from like when I shot it, everyone being like yeah, yeah, yeah, you kill it. You kill it. Like on our eyes. We all thought it was a done deal watching the video. Now, all of a sudden we can critique every little bit of it. And they're like, well, maybe it's a little the morning and I'm like, okay, let's go look. And so Jermaine goes, looks for the arrow, and he looks up at me, he's like oh, he's like there's a lot less room to get that arrow through than I thought and apparently I had like a three-inch window and I managed to just hit that window perfectly.
Speaker 2:Didn't hit any branches, wow, zero, it's covered in blood he's smelling it, you know, like you do, to see if you hit the guts and he's like well, maybe he's like there's.
Speaker 1:It smells a little funny, but being a quartering two, they probably will be guts. Yeah, yeah, you'd expect a little bit. Um, and so he's like all right, well, let's start looking for blood. Just four of us, and we're just looking. Three of us are in the tree line. We see like two or three steps and then nothing, no blood, not a drop of blood anywhere. Um, and we lose the steps and so we've been looking for half an hour and we see nothing. And then I, I'm like whatever. I walk out into the field and I see jermaine standing on a rock, you know doing the old sailor, you know trying to block the the sun from his eyes. He's got his hand up and salute and he's like I see something funny and he and pat and I are like he looks like he's walking with with some gumption or whatever you want to call it, yeah, he sees something that he wants to check out, turns out what happened.
Speaker 1:He found the elk, um, and he had found it because he was looking for antlers, but he saw a rock that looked weird. That's, that's it. So the elk had turned into the field, ran about 100 yards, reared up and, uh, apparently I'd hit the lung, hit everything I needed to hit and it had basically bled to death in under 10 seconds.
Speaker 2:Whoa.
Speaker 1:And the blood didn't leave its cavity, so it was drowning. So it reared up, lost its balance and fell backwards. So the only thing that was showing was its chest. Its arms and legs were down, its antlers were in the dirt and its chest was up. So it was like this bright yellow furry rock is what Jermaine said he saw. And so he ran over to it and there it was. Just you know, it took two of us to get it out of the mud without stabbing someone, because it was spring loaded, basically Spring loaded, antlers in the ground, just ready to shoot back. So yeah, antlers in the ground, just ready to shoot back so, um, yeah it, we waited two hours, but that thing had to be dead within 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that's such a great story and then you, you, you asked about the packout, so it died in the middle of this field, a swamp basically it died.
Speaker 1:It died on the only patch of dry ground, like we had like a 30 foot circle of dry ground and we're like, yes, perfect, thank you, mr elk. Um jermaine's, like I didn't bring a knife. Who's got a knife? And I'm Like we have like a 30 foot circle of dry ground and we're like, yes, perfect, thank you, mr Elk Um Jermaine's, like I didn't bring a knife. Who's got a knife? And I'm like, well, I have one. He takes my knife, him, and Pat, process that entire thing down skinned Um, where the the skin came off with the head, everything out, gutless method. In like 45 minutes they're done no, just like yeah, just completely done.
Speaker 1:And I'm like I'm sitting there watching it. The only thing I did was like we have to keep the, the proof of sex. And so pat's like hold this. And he slaps the big old dong in my hand and I'm like, all right, yeah, I guess this is what I gotta do. Is what I gotta do? So like, while pat's cutting the hind quarter off, I'm just keeping the pecker out of the way of his blade so it didn't get cut off for for legal purposes, but that's literally all I did.
Speaker 1:Those boys just tore that thing down, um, and then we had let's see, there's four of us. The cameraman was an elderly gentleman, so he actually didn't carry. He carried my bow back. I carried, I think, a hind quarter somebody, and the other boys each carried a quarter. And then we went back and jermaine carried a hind quarter. Somebody in the boys each carried a quarter. And then we went back and Jermaine carried a hind quarter hat, carried the like you know, extra pieces, backstraps and things like that. And then I carried the hide and the head and I had never done that before. It's heaviest thing I've ever carried to this day, like by far. And part of the issue was when I was putting it on my bag. I'm like, should I put the antlers up, guys, or should I put the?
Speaker 2:antlers down.
Speaker 1:They're like you're tall enough, you can probably go antlers down. So I'm like all right, cool, so I strap it all up, get this thing on, get the hide on there and I start walking. And then I realized almost immediately that I'm walking through five feet tall bear brush and these antlers are catching every bush and I'm just ripping. Every step is just this laborious effort to move forward, and so it was awful until we eventually got to a path that wasn't so bad. And then, you know, we got out of there pretty quick, I would say. Before shot shot the bullet. Six, two hours of waiting, we were back at camp having a victory beer by like 9 30. So it wasn't.
Speaker 1:It was hard work, but it wasn't, wasn't super long, good times yeah yeah, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done and like I can't think of it without smiling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just yeah, that's a good memory I kind of love those moments where you're like just gotta suck it up because you think that the work was hard before, but once the animal's down, I mean it's a cliche, but like the work really does begin, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:yes, I've got a story.
Speaker 2:I got a story for you. If, uh, if I can jump in with one, please, please do. I haven't told this story. I don't think it's also along the theme of like a furry rock um, that's kind of rock, so. But then actually, before we jump into that, I have a question. I've always wondered about this like see people like hiking out with giant elk antlers like high up on above their backs, like that seems like I mean, I guess you've got to have like orange on that thing, right, because you don't want to be walking around like a giant antenna and going, hey, I'm a target right here. That seems like it could be, yeah, a little bit uh risky making yourself a target yeah, well, conveniently, you know, archery, no one's really gonna shoot it's just archery season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the next. I was glad I shot it when I did the next day muzzleloader opens. In colorado muzzleloader season is in the middle of archery season, but I shot it during archery season. Um, I do always keep a like orange flag in my pack for exactly that reason, in case I'm like yeah I want to make sure people know what's going on here.
Speaker 1:Uh, didn't, didn't have to use it, then we're, we're in an open field. They could see me better than they could see the elk, and I had the antlers down, um. But yeah, you're, you're absolutely right, it's a, it's a dangerous thing, I think. I think two years ago an archery hunter got shot by a muzzleloader hunter in colorado and killed. So it's definitely you know, some hunters out there are just shooting at movement in antlers.
Speaker 2:I guess it's easy to be like, oh yeah, how could you possibly do that? But you never know if you get like the adrenaline pump and you just think that you think you're seeing one thing and I don't know. I don't know, it would be easy to have opinions about that, but who knows, unless you're actually in the situation 100%, unless you're actually in the situation 100, yeah, all right, let's hear your fuzzy rock. Okay, fuzzy rock.
Speaker 2:well, I mean, first of all, I had like a bunch of amazing things happened when I was over in south africa last time, like it was I mean I think last time we spoke I told you a bunch of stories about hunting with fred hammer and kind of it was almost like the seasoning that gave me the taste for, like, how good hunting can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like my time there now, just this like a few months ago, was absolutely as delicious as I thought that it could possibly be. It was. It was so amazing and like those extra ingredients of understanding all these like tools and knowledge, and like the depth and complexity of like knowing how to move in the wild that I was like so dazzled by beforehand was all like starting to click into place and that was I mean. I mean, you must feel that as well and we'll jump to that, I'm sure, when you're in hawaii. It's like that having those experiences again and again is just learning and realizing, like realizing your own progress is just such a nice moment, right, like progress in anything is always a positive, positive feeling yeah, I think I shared with this with you when we were talking before the podcast a week or so ago.
Speaker 1:But with hunting, especially archery hunting, like you might, I think, five years of hunting. I shot one arrow and I was like, oh yeah, I killed a bull. That you know. It wasn't easy, but there we go. And then Molokai, which I compared to your African trips, is like you have enough opportunity to make mistakes and then correct them right then and there, which is super cool and if you can, as a hunter, go out and find an opportunity where you're going to get lots of opportunity. It's like years of years big game hunting, because you're just going to be able to make those mistakes and then fix them or at least think about them and not have a year to forget those mistakes before you go and make the mistake again. So, um, yeah, I'm jealous of your your africa trips after molokai because I was like that's amazing, like that was so much fun and I think I still even got a fraction of the opportunities that you get when you're in Africa.
Speaker 2:I think it's also, especially, as we've already explained, like the two of us coming to hunting a bit later than perhaps a lot of other people who grew up with it and had all those experiences Yep, generational knowledge and also you know that stuff. We got to do something to try and get ahead on the curve and it seems like this kind of thing is the way to do it, like accelerated a lot of stalks, you know that kind of experience. But okay, so furry rock, um over at that time that I was over there, um, it was kind of let me think about what time of year it was. It was sort of summery time, so it's not the most ideal time to be hunting in the african heat, but that's the time that I was over there, we were seeing family. It was, um, it was actually over the holidays, the christmas time, so in the southern hemisphere that's actually pumping summer or like the beginning of absolute rip-roaring hot summer.
Speaker 2:So, um, I'd had a bunch of other fun adventures before, like, for, maybe I don't know, a few days beforehand got lucky with some warthogs hunting with fred hammer some really good times. Like warthogs, I think personally like some of the funnest animals to to hunt. They're like super smart but also still have a little bit of that pig. I don't know, I can't explain it, but hogs in any way are just epic fun to tell, can you eat warthogs?
Speaker 1:I know they're like wow, delicious I would imagine. So okay, I just wanted to ask.
Speaker 2:Yeah, warthogs are really, really good. The only thing, apparently the only pig that's better, according to some people, um, like dr adrian de villiers, who's a guest on my show I can't remember what episode it is, but he thinks that the? Um, let me think about it. You've got warthogs, you have wild pigs the name escapes me. Now there's another kind, oh, bush pig, okay, bush pig is apparently the most tasty pig and it's very nocturnal and very violent. Those pigs are angry, angry things and they look it. They look it as well. They've just got these jerked bones on their faces to protect from fighting and they'll mess you up.
Speaker 2:So I haven't had the privilege of managing to come across, uh, one of those pigs yet. But uh, yeah, warthogs, delicious bush pigs, apparently even more delicious, I can only imagine. But they all, uh, yeah, they all. They all taste good, yeah, but anyway, there's also happens to be in south africa a lot of fallow deer, and which is kind of surprising, because you think fallow deer, you think New Zealand or Australia, I guess.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there's a bunch over there as well, and particularly in the Eastern Cape, where I like to do quite a bit of hunting. I mean, I hunted quite a few areas, but over there there's a ton of fallow deer, but at that time of year it's like a couple of months before the rut begins. So the males it's kind of like not the time to be chasing males. You could shoot one like they might have a reasonable size rag, but it'll be in felt. And it's also just kind of like the culture there is, like don't go around shooting bucks before they're like fully grown at that time of year, so you know it means that chasing the does is the way to go and there's a lot of them around and it's like great fun, you know, like so this furry rock situation.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of firsts when I was over in south africa. You know, shooting a lot of other arms like a kudu bull was my first that it was like shooting a daika from like six yards away. It was an unbelievable first. But shooting two animals in like 45 seconds with a bow, yeah okay, was another first and that was two fallows and I guess I I was like making a move through an area and I saw a fallow deer and did you know, put into action the things that I've been taught about walk and stalk, moving around, getting to the shade, and there was this perfect moment where the the doe had its head in a bush. It was just feeding, chowing in this bush and I thought, okay, this is a perfect moment.
Speaker 2:Now, like I think my previous experience would have told me to stay where I was, I was probably like 45 yards away, maybe 35.
Speaker 2:I don't know exactly how far away it was, but I was coming out of the side of the bush that was on the sunny side, sunny side, and the things that I learned over there is that the eyes of everything is so keen that, like drawing back but even behind the bush and then coming out to like take the shot from there, you're gonna make life harder for yourself, like they're probably gonna see you, just because it's that light, light pinging off you, the level of awareness of just knowing all that stuff. So in a weird way that was like counters what you might think. I actually waited while its head was in a bush, crawled through the open couple yards, three yards maybe, and then across to another bush that was fully in shade and I was actually nothing in front of me, but I was like deep in the shade and at that moment then I was able to draw back and the next moment that it put its head down, took this shot and I was like shots don't always perfect.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we all know that as archers but that one was just like perfect, quartering away I don't know 35 yards, something like that, and it's just. The arrow went through, smacked the back shoulder and the thing was just down.
Speaker 2:It didn't run, it didn't go anywhere, it just like hit the ground and was just like you know, didn't understand what was going on and it was just like perfect. But that moment I'm like okay, standard procedure, I'm gonna grab an arrow, quickly, knock, get ready to go again. Like you never know, it might get up, it might be startled, it might get up and run. So just think like okay, I'm gonna get another arrow in if you can shoot another arrow, if you get the opportunity right. So at that moment I'm drawn back and I'm like lining up to take a shot. And then I just hear this like bark of like more fallows that are in that group have circled back around and just don't understand what's going on. They haven't seen me, they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2:I'm just like in the open but in the shade, and they just get closer and then another closer, closer, just crawl up to it and they're just looking like trying to work out what's going on, with their buddy who's just kind of, I guess, expiring their final breaths. So I've never actually probably start by saying like you know, you go through your shot process, you practice everything, you have your like routines to make sure that everything goes as well as it can. But what I never practiced was like how that routine works, when you're taking another shot on an animal and your adrenaline is through the like, through the roof. Yeah man, so I. I was drawn back, getting a bead on the first animal and then there's other ones come in and I've probably been holding for like 45 60 seconds. At that point you've got the adrenaline, you're not feeling anything and I was like well I'm gonna take another shot on this other, on this other doe.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I should have like taken a breath or something, just like calm myself down because the second shot was not good. It was not a good shot, man, I think I maybe my shoulder was a bit tired from holding and drawn back so long, but I like pulled that shot a bit too much and I just hit like center body and it was not, it was not like a good money shot lungs and everything. It was kind of maybe slightly forward of center. So I was like that is maybe liver at best. So yeah, I it. It ran that moment where you're like oh, why did I even bother taking a second shot, right, like it was pure instinct yeah, just in the in the moment man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're in the moment. You're like, oh my god, like this thing could be. I think, I think this is happening. I'm gonna do it. Yeah, so I know that, I know that feeling exactly from molokai.
Speaker 1:There was times I'm like, after I did it, I'm like what did I do that for? Yeah, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2:exactly what are you gonna do? So I felt a bit silly a bit of a silly billy, as they would say in england. At that point, um, I saw, I saw it run off and yeah, I just I just thought like, oh no, I've really screwed this up it. At that point it was pretty dark, it was getting really dark. There wasn't much time left. Fred was just like we need to just wait. You know, like, yeah, there's no point chasing this thing around, it's just going to run further.
Speaker 2:So it was that long wait, man, like and and I think I couldn't believe my luck, like this whole trip, I had a lot of luck. Uh, it was amazing at that point it had been a hot summer's day, so it's not a time that you want to be leaving an animal overnight, right, you don't want to be doing that. But at that particular moment, like the clouds just rolled in, like it was like a message, and just it started raining and it just chilled, it dropped like 20 plus degrees, I don't know like instantly, like five minutes, minutes, 10 minutes after taking that shot. I couldn't believe my luck. So, yeah, after processing the first animal in the dark the long, like the long sleepless night, came back the next day and, um, it was one of those things again where instinct and luck I guess a mixture I could probably more luck than instinct, to be honest. But it was that thing where you start trying to realize, like, what's going on? Where's this thing gone? I saw it run in a certain direction, you know, run off, say, I think it went west.
Speaker 2:But like from the things I'd heard in podcasts or conversations, I was kind of like this thing's going to be injured, it, it's probably going to go to water. Where's the nearest big watering hole? So I looked on the, you know, on on X, looked at where, like, the dams were, looked where it was, and actually the nearest dam was completely the other way. Yeah, but for some reason, I don't know why, but I was just like I round, got distracted by some impala for a minute. I was like, oh, they're right there, maybe I should just make a little no focus, focus. Okay. Well, all right, maybe I was just scared them off first, but anyway, yeah, as I was, as I was walking around to that, to that spot, I looked on the horizon and now I saw this rock that just didn't quite look right.
Speaker 2:It was another furry rock and it's that moment where you're like walking and it's that moment where you're like walking and you think that rock looks a bit furry, it looks a bit weird. I don't know. You know you dare to hope. So just walking up I kind of got within about 50 yards and I could see the speckles of like a fallow deer and I was like okay, we're in there like within 20 minutes, within like 20 minutes of actually starting to walk.
Speaker 2:I was probably a mile away from where I even started. I covered the ground and managed to get there, so it was like, oh, managed to get out of jail free on that one and that's awesome, then began the process of packing it out and like throwing it in the dam to cool it down as quickly as possible, just in case.
Speaker 2:And actually it was kind of a wild moment, running across like a whole mile or two to get my very tiny rental car driving on an off-road track that was like really really rough, bouncing around, oh, it was like I don't know. The car did fantastically and I I had one tiny tarp with me that was just big enough to put in the back, uh, in in the, in the in the trunk and put the animal in, get back and get it, get it cooled.
Speaker 1:But yeah, no, that's too funny, man, that's too funny. I'm glad you had the tarp. I was just waiting for you to hear just throwing the bloody, you know deer in the back of the rental that would have been terrible.
Speaker 2:You know, that would have been such a predicament, wouldn't it like oh do I want to lose however many hundred dollars, uh lose your deposit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's too funny man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was a good. It was a good moment, but also stressful. Man, and like not well, not what you want to do, and I definitely learned that lesson. I'll be. I'll think twice again before throwing another arrow so quickly.
Speaker 1:I'll just definitely make sure that I'm go through that process again yeah, yeah, well, let me do this, so I'll tell some stories about me taking some, uh, decisions that I would like. After, the fact was like I don't know how I feel about that, because they're from molokai, right, my most recent. Yeah, I haven't shared these stories with anyone yet, um, so I'll just go through my whole trip. I'll try not to be too brief or too long-winded, but uh, yeah, go for it, man, we get, we got time yeah, uh, it's the.
Speaker 1:It's the first hunt, right? So the first morning they just sort of dropped me off and they say sit along those pipes. There's these big metal pipes. There's like 50 of them stacked up and I'm like okay, sure, like this doesn't seem like a very good hunting spot to me, but it I'm just gonna take off my jumper.
Speaker 2:It's getting hot in here that's fine I got over excited with that story. Okay, okay, go on, carry on.
Speaker 1:You're at the pipes yeah, so they, they put me the pipes and I'm sitting there and I'm like this doesn't seem like a great hunting spot to me, but whatever. But like you know, we're all sitting in those, everyone's got good cell reception, so we're just kind of spaced out along this road. Um, and they tell me hey, they come through, they don't stop moving. Yeah, you gotta take shots at animals that are moving, which typically I wouldn't do.
Speaker 2:Um, really yeah, yeah, because they yeah, they've.
Speaker 1:I was told that they are the jumpiest deer of all deer, and the reason why is they come from india. Their only natural predator is the bengal tiger, so they just like I've seen, uh like a, a doe gets spooked by her, by her calf, or not calf, the cast not the right word. Either way, the, the baby deer, was just jumping around playing and that scared the mom to run away. Like anything and everything makes these deer jump. It's absolutely crazy. And they never stop moving is what I was told. So the first morning I'm sitting there and they're like, hey, there's some deer coming your way and I see them. They're like 80, 90 yards, running by, they don't stop moving. And I'm like there's no way I'm taking a shot. These things are basically sprinting by. Yeah, I get another text saying hey, more coming your way, and I see them. They're just sort of feeding along and so they're not moving very fast. But they're like 90 yards and so I'm I scoot forward about 10 yards and the pipes, from the back of the pipes more to the front of the pipes, um, and this little gap, and I'm building up the courage to to take that 80 yard shot. I'm like I know, it is a long way. I've never shot at an animal that long. I don't. I didn't love the idea of it, which is why I was like building up the courage. And then I realized they're moving actually towards me and I'm like, sweet, I'll just sit right here, they'll come right by and then I'll take a shot. So they come by at 40 yards and they stop right in front of me and I'm like, well, this isn't supposed to happen, this is easy, let's do it. So I pull back, nothing moves. Put my pin out there, everything's still good, let her rip. And my arrow goes right underneath. I used my 30 pin and not my 40 pin, um, on this herd. So like there was, there was 10 deer and it just right underneath them. They all just start running. Everywhere I walk over there, I see my arrow completely dry, covered in red dirt, because there's red dirt everywhere, and I'm like I screwed up. Like they say they don't stop running, and those ones were standing there and I missed. Like how how could I do that? And I'm thinking, man, I might have just blown my only opportunity, because I knew that the year before multiple guys had come and not killed any. So I'm like that might have been the one, and this is the first morning of seven days. So I'm like I'm yeah, I might have just screwed this entire thing, like that might have been my only opportunity. So I'm just like I'm pissed either way. No, I think one guy did kill a doe that morning, which was great. We then took it back, we processed it, or maybe it was that evening hunt that did it, but we had back straps and tenderloins and ate up and ate like Kings that night. So it was, it was a fun night. Um, the next morning not much happens for me specifically, but the the the second evening was the interesting evening for me.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting at this place. They called it broken pipe. It's again a large pipe that water's filled with, but there's a crack in it and so it just leaks water and the animals know that they can get water from it. So there's this great blind. It's about 60 yards from the pipe and I'm sitting there and at this point deer come in like a herd of deer and they're like 90 yards and I'm like, ah no, they'll come closer, they'll come closer and they they never really did did and they took off like, okay, well, I'm seeing deer, so that's good news. So I just sit there and keep waiting and I see more coming in.
Speaker 1:But these deer come to about 60 yards and you said you know you pull back. I'm in this blind this doe its back half is covered by a bush, but I can see its vitals. I can see her head. She's her head's down, she's feeding and I'm like this, is it 60? It 60 yards, exactly 60 yards. I can range. She has no idea that I'm there. I pull back and I just the perfect release. You know that. You know that, feeling like it was your first shot, right when it breaks you.
Speaker 1:You aren't sure when it's going to break.
Speaker 1:And it breaks perfectly. You, you know your pin was exactly where you wanted it to go and you're positive that arrow is going to do everything that you want it to do. And it hits exactly where I wanted it to. But the deer had left, apparently 10 minutes earlier, because it just ate into the dirt. And I'm like, are you kidding me? So you know, they scatter and they run around and I could see my knock glowing we already talked about using luminox and I'm just like, damn. So I take a photo and I draw a deer on the photo and send it out to the guys and I'm like, well, that's where the deer was standing, damn it. And so at this point I'm starting to think, okay, is my bow not fast enough? Is my bow too noisy? So I have the bow hitch on my bow, which is a great thing, to help you carry it when you're in the brush. You don't have to actually carry the thing, screwdriver. And I had to take it off when I brought it in. So I put it on like by hand, and there was an obvious rattle, so I popped that off. That was the first thing I did, um, and I and I put all the, I put the screws back in, but I put the bow hitch in my in my bag and I'm okay, we're back to hunting.
Speaker 1:Another deer comes in, or another group of deer come in, and it's, it's maybe so dark that I'm like I wouldn't be probably shooting if it weren't for the fact that these are an invasive species. They are destroying the Island, they want them gone. I kind of have the mentality of like wild hogs in Southern United States Right, they're, they're, they're menace. People don't want them there. So I'm like, okay, I'll take a shot that I wouldn't normally take. And so it's 60 yards Again, I, I, I pull back, this deer is looking, you know, I would say quartering two and I rip. And again the deer just runs up to me, slaps me in the face and runs off Like I'm like my bow's not fast enough. I don't know what I'm going to do here. Like I've gotten two great shots at these deer, and this last one was like it's too dark to really like do anything. And my this last one was like it's too dark to really like do anything. I, in my arrow, I don't even know where it went. It disappeared, like bounced, couldn't find it.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting there and I'm like, all right, well, I'm gonna hang out for another five, 10 minutes and I'll start packing out and another herd comes in. But at this point it's it's too dark, I can't see anything. And I'm like what do I do here? And I'm like you know what? I'm going to shine a light at them. See what happens?
Speaker 1:So I take my headlamp and I get to the red light, where supposedly deer can't see but people can. So I plop it over the red light, hiding it in my backpack or in my jacket or whatever, and I shine it at them and they don't move. Don't move an inch. And I'm like no way. So I like take my range finder and I range them. I'm like they're at 45 yards on this hill, across this little canyon. I'm like no way, they're just sitting there. So I'm like let's do it.
Speaker 1:So I this is a miss. Again, I wouldn't shoot this after dark, which is legal, but I wouldn't necessarily say do this, I wouldn't do what I did, um, and I missed entirely. So it's okay, it's okay I, I, I got the, the light on my head and I see the deer, and so I put the narrow, an arrow in. They're not moving, they're just staring at me like what is that? I can't quite figure it out, because apparently they can't see the red um, and I pull back, and when I pull back and lean in to look into my peep site, to look through my sight at the deer, all I can see is my bow.
Speaker 1:My light was just illuminating my bow yes everything behind it was black, just complete black, and I'm like, well, they're 45 yards and they're right there. So I was like, screw it. And I just threw an arrow into the darkness, um, and I missed. I missed by a lot, like it just went into the dirt and I was like, well, that was dumb, I don't like. It was like your second shot, like why did I shoot that? Why did I do that? And I don't know why I did in retrospect. Maybe I should have like brought it down, set the light next to me and then tried, because you could easily see them. They weren't that far, but just my, my bow was like a glowing red that's the only thing I could see.
Speaker 1:so they ended up getting away. I shot three arrows and really was pretty frustrated, right? Because now I've shot four arrows, five arrows or something like that, and had really great opportunities and still screwed up all of them, and so this goes back to, like you know, just getting opportunity. So I'm like, okay, well, now I know I'm not going to shoot that far, like they're too fast, I'm not going to shoot 60 yards.
Speaker 1:I got to make adjustments. I've taken my bow hitch off. I'm making adjustments, I'm going to, I'm going to get this done, just trying to stay positive when I feel like I've just completely screwed the pooch on on everything Right. So I think it's. I think it's the next morning. I, uh, there's this one spot right by the place we're staying and they're like, yeah, there's always big bucks in there. Why is no one ever hunt there? And I keep like, well, I'll hunt there.
Speaker 1:So I go there that morning and I figure out why there are so many damn mosquitoes. Like I'm there for 10 minutes and I'm like, nope, this ain't happening, I'm not even going to bother, like I can't sit here any longer, I'm already. When there's not a lot of mosquitoes, I'm the guy that gets the mosquito bites, so being the only the game warden there's one game warden on the whole island and of course we run into him. Great guy. But he told us, walk all the way to the other side of this ridge because the big bowl to this opposite mountain. He's like that's where the deer are.
Speaker 1:But the group I was with most people just get dropped off and walk in their hundred yards and they're, they're satisfied with that because there's deer everywhere. But at this point I'm like, oh well, I'm not going to sit where I said I was going to sit and the car's not here, so I'm just going to walk to the other side of the mountain. I'm going to walk around these mountains. It's about two mile track. So I'm just walking, walking and as I get to the out of the, the trees, more towards the back, where this bowl is, all of a sudden deer just start barking at me and I'm like, oh okay, this is a good sign, they're here. Like I'm obviously doing a poor job hunting them, but they're here.
Speaker 1:But he told me that there's a water trough. So I'm like I'm going to walk until I find that so I can maybe hunt it some other time, come in at a better time, because it's probably I don't know seven, eight in the morning. I get to where I can see the water trough and there's deer at it and at it and I'm like, oh, all right. So I sneak down to the edge of the bowl because it doesn't have any plants, so it's just red dirt. So I pop my bag off, I pop my shoes off so I can be really quiet because my shoes have a little squeak because there's so much dust.
Speaker 1:They were squeaking, yeah yeah, yeah um, so I pop all that off and I start walking in on this ridge so I can be completely silent and I walk in probably 100 yards to where this is big bush I know I'm right next to him and I stand up and I look over and I see the deer, but they're not the 30 yards that I think they would be, they're like 100 yards. I'm like, well, what the hell is, why'd they move that far? And I can't figure it out. So I just start slowly moving in and then I realize they didn't move. I just can't see the deer that I had originally seen, and there are probably 200 deer here. So I'm like crawling with my bow, like moving it forward like six inches, crawling a little bit, and then I realized that I can hear deer I can't see them I can't see them, but they're like within 10 feet in every direction of me and I'm like, oh no, like what have I done?
Speaker 1:like there's deer everywhere, and so eventually one of them go, smells me and they all take off and I just I just up and I'm like this is so cool, I didn't even care that I blew this. I mean, I've never been somewhere where 200 animals were just running in every direction around me and I'm like that was awesome. And so I was like I don't even know what to do at this point. So I just walked back to our camp and told everybody. I was like, yeah, I ran into 200 deer. I walked back to our camp and told and told everybody. I was like, yeah, I ran into 200 deer. I don't know what happened. It was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1:And the next evening I hunted. That evening nothing, didn't, didn't see anything. So I'm like, all right that next morning I was like I'm going to hike back over there, I don't care how far it is, I'm going to go. And I picked out a bush that I would sit at. It would give me shade in the morning, cause there really was not any cover. There's just like three foot tall bushes everywhere yeah, yeah and.
Speaker 1:But there's one big one. So like I'll stand on the what would be, I guess, the west side of that bush, so that the shade is there for at least a little while. So I get there and I'm standing there and I'm I'm uh, there's deer at the feet at the trough. When I arrive, like five in the morning, right, still dark, and I can see the deer because it's a big bright sky, and I'm like I spook them. I'm like that's okay, there'll be more, I don't have to worry about it. Um, so I, I get to the spot that I want and I'm like 50 yards, is that? Is that good enough? Is that good enough? And I'm like, no, it's not good enough, I gotta get closer. So I, I sneak 10 yards closer.
Speaker 1:I'm basically sitting on a road, but I have, I have cover on each side, but I'm on the road that you can drive up to this thing if you have access. And I just am sitting there and all of a sudden a buck walks in with a doe and I'm like, oh man. But he's on the opposite side of this trough. And this trough is three feet wide, 16 feet long, three feet tall, made of solid concrete, and three sides of it are brush, so he's on the opposite side, so I can see his head, his antlers, but I can't shoot his body Like I can't even drop it in, it's too tight.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting there and he starts moving and so I pull back and the dough spook, and so the dough runs off and the and the buck runs off, but he stops cause he doesn't quite know what's going on. And I'm like damn it, 60 yards, so on. And I'm like damn it, 60 yards. So I let my arrow fly and I miss, I miss, I miss short. I'm like damn it, like how does this keep happening? Like I'm never gonna get this done. This is the most frustrating thing ever. It's like, rather than failing because I'm not seeing animals, I'm failing because I suck like. This is totally different experience.
Speaker 2:Um, it sounds like a tough situation anyway, man, like it's like a sudden change in range is always that's a bit, it's always a hail mary right right perfect shot, then it's tough yeah.
Speaker 1:So then I'm literally just sitting there and we're talking. Five minutes has gone by. I'm staring at my boots, trying not to cry, just like, oh, this sucks, like I hate this. Well, how do I keep missing? And I'm also like I'm running out of broadheads because I'm losing my arrows, because you can't find them. Of course, I have red glowing nocks and the dirt's red, so like they hit the ground and they disappear, even though they're glowing. And I just had a corner of my eye because I can see through this brush.
Speaker 1:At the trough I see another buck and he's twice the size of the first one and I'm like, oh, hell, yeah, and he's at the end of the trough. So he's, he's at the end of the trough, so he's quartering away from me, looking away, head in the trough, and I can see his whole body. And I'm like, I was like this couldn't be better and I and I I can, from seeing him to pulling back, couldn't have been more than seven seconds, because I was like, if there's another deer here, don't care, I can hit that deer and I pull back. And it was exactly 40 yards and I put my 40 yard pin on him and it went right in behind his shoulder blade and I just heard which I wasn't sure at the time if it was his um other shoulder blade or it had gone all the way through and hit the concrete of the trough but he just jumps up and like basically does a backflip. I see my arrow sticking out of him, the glowing knock is flying like crazy, it shoots up into the air and he runs off and I'm like I was like I think I did it, I think I got it like I'm gonna wait 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:I ended up waiting like 15 because I was like just too jacked up and I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna go look for him yet. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look for the other arrows that I had already lost, because I think I I think I actually fired one the day before and then one that morning, and so I was like I got to find some broadheads here, cause I'm running out of ability to hunt. Um, and I'm walking across the road, walk toward the trough and all of a sudden, in the brush on the other side, I see more antlers and I'm like oh shit, it's another buck. And so it just starts hopping and run and it runs away and I'm like, okay, I'm not going to go looking for my arrows over there, like there's still a lot of deer, I'm just going to start looking for blood. Let's find my arrow. I can't even find my arrow, like.
Speaker 1:I saw it hit it. I saw where it landed, like I said, red dirt everywhere. It had buried itself in the dirt and I couldn't find it. And I took a video of it and there was no blood. And I'm like, oh, like a couple of specs. And I'm like, oh, no, did I hit the front shoulder blade? It was like what I was worried about. But then I picked it up, you know, brought it out of the rush that's on the ground and the backside was covered in blood. And I'm like, okay, we're onto something here. It turns out axis deer. Apparently they just don't bleed. They say it's because they're dehydrated, but they're just, they just don't bleed at all.
Speaker 1:So I know that he's heading a general direction, I know where my arrow is and I'm like, okay, I'm going to head towards that game trail and hopes that that's what he did. And I'm going to look and I'm looking. You know everything's red, everything's green, and I'm looking for specks of blood. Like we're talking so hard. Like like half a centimeter specks are all I'm finding and I'm finding them, you know, every 15 feet.
Speaker 1:So it's not like I'm finding a great blood trail and I'm just like, well, if he went to this trail, that's what it looked like when I shot him, let's go over there. And I just found a little bit more here, a little bit more there. Turns out he was right there, he had made it maybe 50 yards and but literally no blood. I just got lucky, like again, like I just have bad luck with blood trails because um, and it was different broadheads each time. This time I used a sever and, um, turns out the arrow went in, it did hit that other shoulder blade, he ran 50 yards and he expired. Man, and in less than 30 minutes I don't know how long exactly, but a beautiful deer. If you guys haven't seen an axis deer before, they look like baby deer, but full size with super unique antlers. They're very cool.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so and uh, this is a secret. I hadn't told many people, but I'd actually never broken down an animal by myself before, until then, and I was like all right, let's figure this thing out.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'd always had someone there to kind of support me or just take over, right, with my elk. They just took over. They didn't give me the opportunity to try, so I just started breaking it down. I wanted to make sure I saved the hide, because they are so beautiful, and got that thing packaged up.
Speaker 1:Um, I was having, I was in this moment of zen. I put my just get cell phone service, so I put spotify on, just like hawaiian instrumental music. So I'm just like like listening to the luau. I can see water in like every direction. I'm on top of this mountain with a deer. I'm like this is amazing.
Speaker 1:I'd stand up occasionally and there were more deer drinking at the trough 50 yards away and I'm like this is how it's supposed to be, like this is so awesome. I'm just having a great time. And then, you know, packed it out two miles back and to it, like a standing ovation of the boys. They had the truck there's a gate so you can't drive in but they had parked at that thing just waiting for me and they were, like you know, just just fired up that, um, I think it was the second buck of the trip, um, but it was three times the size of the other buck that the guy got, so everyone was like just super fired up and it was. It was a really fun experience yeah, yeah, I mean, and there's more to it.
Speaker 1:I'll try, and I've worked going way over here, so I'll tell the last couple of things quickly.
Speaker 2:It's all. It's all. Don't worry, man, it's all good. I'm enjoying the stories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, um, then the next day this other guy wants to go out there and he had never actually hunted before and so it was his first archery hunt. And so he goes out there and he gives himself a doe at the same place that I had found, which is awesome. And then there and he went out for that evening hunt and I and I helped him. I actually ran out there, grabbed his bow and his bag and I was like and he's carrying the whole deer out on his shoulders, it's, and it was awesome.
Speaker 1:Another guy hadn't. He'd been there two years and he hadn't killed anything and he's a relatively new hunter and he was a little maybe intimidated by walking two miles in the dark to a place he'd never been and trying to find the right spot. So I was like, man, I've killed the deer, I'm totally content. Let me go with you, I'll put you in the exact right spot. And this is actually a funny story. But we get there and the deer start coming in right, so the first ones come in and he goes up and they spook, they see him, they all run. Next time a group comes in and we see four of them coming in. Turns out it was about eight or so. But he pulls, pulls up and they do spook, but this one deer stops and he Is that a doe or a bug?
Speaker 1:A doe, okay, and I'm being quick because it gets good here in a second. But he pulls back and I'm like, well, I'm not doing anything, let me film this thing. So I got the whole thing on video. But his arrow, when he releases it's a perfect shot, but it hits a branch right in front of them, like you see the the branch go through and the arrow goes and I lean up and in the video I actually dropped the camera because I'm so confused.
Speaker 1:But we're on top of this mountain and there's a trough and it's a water. It's fed by a, a pipe, that arrow. That branch took just enough from that arrow that it dropped right underneath the deer and the deer was standing on top of the pipe that filled that trough, so it nails that pipe, shoots water everywhere, like straight up underneath this deer, and the deer freaks out and runs off and I'm like what the hell's going on? And there's just a sprinkler head on the top of this mountain spraying water everywhere and I'm like what you shot? The? Like one in a million, like you could put all this out there, use all of our arrows. We wouldn't hit that pipe if we tried.
Speaker 1:And he just perfectly split it in half, um. And so now we're two miles from anything and I'm like, well, how do we fix this? So I chugged my water. He had some paracord. I had a water bottle. We like cut the water bottle into a sleeve, put that around the pipe and then use paracord to cinch it up. It was leaking, but it was a good enough fix to to start the process. But we ended up later going back to town getting all the pieces we need to actually to fix the pipe, um, but after that huge mess like it was just red dirt.
Speaker 1:Now all of a sudden it's this giant mud pit because it was spewing so much water. Um, I'm like I don't think we're gonna see anything here. We We've been hanging out making a lot of noise fixing this. I was like do you want to go stock some stuff? And he's like no, I'll sit here. And so he sits there and nothing comes in for him.
Speaker 1:But I go to the other side of this mountain and I see a lone buck and I'm only allowed one buck. I already got one. The guys like, hey, if I get buck, I use one of your tags. And they're all like no, we still have a couple more days. No, no, and so I have, I have an access to your call. And so I was like, let me see if I can call this thing in. And so I, and it looks across the canyon at me and I'm like, oh, he knows, I'm here. He goes back to feeding. Yeah, he looks right up at me again and I'm on an open hillside. There's, there's no cover. I'm just sitting next to a rock just playing around and he goes back to feeding. And then he starts walking away from me. So I give him a third call. He looks up at me and he just drops straight down the canyon and then I'm like, oh, I think he's coming in.
Speaker 1:So now, all of a sudden, I'm trying to text the guys. I'm like I think I might have accidentally called in a buck. Can I shoot this thing? For whatever reason? My phone, I lose all service, like I have no service, so my texts aren't going out. And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, turning my phone off, turning my phone on, and then I realized that deer is 10 feet away and he came right to where I called and I'm just sitting there looking at him. I'm like, well, I could have killed this thing, but now I can't. And he's just 10 feet away looking at me. The wind's good, he's staring at me, I'm staring at him, and then I think he's just like ah, man, you can use my tag. I'm like damn it, damn it.
Speaker 2:That's always the way, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I've never heard of anyone calling in an Axis deer before and these guys have been doing this for five years and they're like you brought calls and I'm like, yeah, I tried this in Texas and I bought the calls from Texas and apparently they work. So with a little doe call, I called this buck in like 150 yards across the canyon, so it was a super cool experience I bet you there's a a few sales of those calls are now from your group of hunters we'll see.
Speaker 1:Actually, I don't have those in their pockets yeah, I left before everybody else.
Speaker 1:So I actually left the call with them and I was like, try it, man. I was like if you, if you can lay eyes on them, you can actually see them respond. So, um, but yeah, man, it was. It was a once in a lifetime trip. I did shoot a doe the next day as well. My arrow went right through her. You know that, like they say, there's that like no man's land above the lungs, where, like you're not going to get anything. There was meat on the fletchings. But I didn't get her that night, because it's actually a funny story. So I shot her and I was like dead, dead deer, like complete pass through Like we're done.
Speaker 1:That was awesome. Shot her at 20 yards. Like couldn't be more proud of that shot. I go looking for it and again, no blood, zero blood. And I have a full pass through. Like I'm like I don't know what to do. Where I shot her? She ran straight up this hill right next to her and I lost sight of her within five seconds. She was immediately out of my vision and so I have no idea where she went.
Speaker 1:So I'm walking around this hillside and I'm like how do I get more time? So I'm like here's an idea. We've all been eating pretty crappy like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. So I was like, guys, I'll pay for to town, get pizza on me. And I was like this buys me another hour and a half of looking for this deer. So I send them to go get pizza in town. And I didn't tell them because it was, I couldn't find my deer. I was like, yeah, no, on me, go get the pizzas, they go get the pizza, they come back.
Speaker 1:And I ended up looking for a long time, walking a couple of miles, and I never found a drop of blood. Uh, the problem was more deer just kept showing up and I didn't want to blow out all of these deer. At one point there, a herd of 200 came over this hill and I just sat down and like watched them until the sun went down and it was completely black and I was like, well, I guess today's not my day. So, um, I did. I'm 100% sure she died. I actually found her the next day, but I was already at the airport. So, uh, yeah, so shame, yeah, even if I had found her that night, I'm not sure if we had enough time to freeze the meat so I could actually have taken her home. So somebody else got some of that meat, so they did okay good yeah so, but uh, man, it was a great trip.
Speaker 1:Uh, there was, I think, nine, nine deer in our group and then he had a second wave of like guys come in and those guys put down like 22 deer, like crazy, and you know there's still 39,990 whatever more deer left on Molokai for more people. So it's a fun experience and I strongly recommend it to anybody listening oh man, I gotta get over there.
Speaker 2:It's it's been on my list for a long time but yeah, yeah, no, it would have been. It would have been good to get over there. I know we talked about it at some point. Have been good to get over there. I know we talked about it at some point, about maybe trying to get over there, but at the time it was like too much, well, not enough work going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's always the way, right, I should have just, I should have just been like, yeah, let's do it yep, yep, I actually signed up for it and then I lost my job and I was like, well, I'm gonna go do this anyways, like just gonna make it, make it work, and I'm glad I did so yeah, it's the way it goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you've got a great experience and learned a ton as well. It sounds like yeah, absolutely and also there must have been, must have been, a nice moment, you saying like you know, you're into your, like I don't know what eighth, ninth, tenth year of hunting and you're learning stuff. And now you're going out with people and you're the more experienced one and you're like teaching some things that you've learned along the way. It's got to be, it's got to be a nice moment, right yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I, I tell them what I can, and I also throw that caveat in of like, hey, I'm teaching myself, so if this is completely wrong, my bad, but this is what I've from my experiences, right, but yeah, it is nice to go out with that. I do have more experience than and try and help them, because I've said this on my podcast a bunch. But, like I know, I'm not gonna be the world's best hunter, but I wanna be a good enough hunter that I can teach my son to be a damn or my daughter to be a damn fine hunter. And so that's kind of where my goal is is to like learn enough to pass it along so that I can sharpen their learning curve, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no-transcript. Going to go for a little walk and saw three, three bucks and I actually, maybe it was just one. Actually, this time I'm getting my stories mixed up, but it was just.
Speaker 2:There was just one there yeah, and uh, and at that point he he had, um I think he does um he has some radio. So he had a radio and I was just like I called him on the radio. I was like, hey, dude, I'm looking at a buck right now and, uh, I think I could probably get within bow range. So if you could like run over here then you could shoot it that's awesome, yeah he got over.
Speaker 2:He got over quickly and, uh, managed to take the shot and it was actually he took his first animal with a rifle as well. That was like his first big animal, full stop. It ended up rolling into the bushes and you know, it was late, late dark again. But we kind of had this moment where I haven't actually told this story. We were like followed into where we thought it was and we get to the spot where we're at the bushes and there's just a pair of eyes looking at us you've been there, okay. There's just a pair of eyes looking at us in this bush.
Speaker 2:And I mean, if you like, if you go back to the episode that we recorded together on on your podcast, like I had a few encounters with bears and lions and all kinds of things where my first instinct isn't necessarily like oh, this is just the animal that we shot, it's still alive. Like, yeah, it's like there's maybe a predatory animal on this thing right now, but for whatever reason, we got a bit closer and kind of figured I had a feeling like it was a deer, but I was like in south africa. I don't know why, but it's like a bit of a thing which I've kind of learned is that tradition? It's not tradition, but it's like bullets are super expensive in South Africa.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, like you're going to go finish this thing off with a bullet in the head. They're like, no, no, no, no, what are you doing here? Use a knife. And you're like, uh, okay. So I kind of had that moment with my buddy where he's like, oh, here, he hands me like a seven millimeter, and they're like we're like 10 yards away from this thing, you're gonna make a massive hole in this guy, um, so I was like, no, I'll just go in with my knife, it'll be fine. Little did I know. The shot was not quite as um, well placed as we thought and the thing had a lot more. I had a lot more life in it. So I'm, oh, man, like I'm. Yeah, there's like he actually took a video of this which we'll never see the light of day. But you just see my hand reaching and grabbing a pair of antlers and suddenly I'm just like on a bucking Bronco deer for a second, furiously trying to resolve this situation as quickly as possible. But yeah, that was an intense moment, man, man, that's funny.
Speaker 1:So Bert Soren, his episode, I don't know if you listen to it, but he has a friend who went out to get a deer that he thought was expired, but he didn't have a knife, he didn't have a gun, he didn't have anything. So he basically I mean I recommend everyone listen to Bert's episode because it's one of my favorites but this gentleman basically goes he's like well, the humane thing to do is to put this animal down. I don't have any weapons, so he grabs it. It and, if you know, burt, burt's like he owns a weightlifting equipment company, so like great shape people, he hangs out with great shape. This guy basically headlocks the deer and and and sleeper chokes it to death.
Speaker 1:No, way and he's like you do it with one arm, and with the other arm he's like trying to pack its nose with dirt so it can't breathe. He's trying to like put this thing out of its misery, but he's like rolling around with his deer and just like smothers it to death, which is absolutely crazy. Um, and then I don't know if you missed it, I was just thinking about your story with the knives. That's what they do, why they have a lot of wild hogs there. So I've had multiple friends who've been on hunts. They chase the hogs and then dogs basically get the hog, knock it up, and then you show up and you just basically finish it off Like no weapons involved other than a knife and some dogs, which is a crazy. I mean something I'd like to experience. I don't know how I'd feel about it in the moment, but man it's.
Speaker 1:It's crazy to think that's just what people do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's one of those things right when where bow hunting it was one thing like it's a super intense experience because you're so close and you have a much more like a better understanding of the animal and and that that intensity of experience is very high, and then even more with a trad bow because you have to be even closer and then I mean, I guess, like I can say, with a knife.
Speaker 2:It's definitely an intense experience oh, I'm sure yeah, but I can't imagine what it's like with the dogs barking and and pigs. It would be definitely something I'd be up for experiencing at some point yeah, it's on my list.
Speaker 1:It's not at the top, but it's on there yeah yeah, well, robin man, this was fun. Yeah, we've gone, we've gone long right, who would have thought?
Speaker 2:but thanks, dude, thanks for making the time. It was amazing. It was really nice the man who is the one who's normally in this seat asking all the questions and hearing the stories from people. It was nice to flip it around and pot and poke you and hear, hear all the stories from you. So there we go, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, I appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. Um, we'll both be releasing this. I think that we're going to have another episode coming up soon, robin. Think that we're gonna have another episode coming up soon, robin, if you can make it out to colorado, to moose hunt with me. Um, I think that would be a fun experience. Maybe we could do one live in the camper. So, um man, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'll be well up for that man this was.
Speaker 1:This was a lot of fun. So thank you for taking the time and thanks for starting your podcast. It's it's a lot of fun and I've told you this before. You got the best intro in all podcasts. That is the bugs, and it just makes me like, makes me shiver, thinking about your intro, and it's a great start to something that you've put together.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks very much, dude. I think I spent far too much time thinking about what the intro should be.
Speaker 2:I should have just got on with the podcast at the beginning. But yeah, it's nice for you to say that and I mean, I really enjoy hearing all the hunting stories as well, man. So should we do like a little thingy if we're going to do these out for everyone, or maybe we'll do our own intro outros? But I guess it's like how can people find you on the Hunting Stories podcast? What's the best places to go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Instagram is best. It's just huntingstories. Underscore official on Instagram. What about you? What's your best one?
Speaker 2:Obviously the Wild, the wild dispatch podcast. Um, actually, just the name is the wild dispatch, but if you go on Instagram, it's the wild dispatch. Youtube the wild dispatch. Uh, tick tock all of them, it's all the same. Um, no one scores nothing. So, yeah, that's, that's the name, Pretty easy to find, I mean. Admittedly, some of those channels are a bit more threadbare than others, but Instagram's the main one.
Speaker 1:Yep, same same Cool man. Well, yeah, I'll put links to all that stuff in the show notes. I'm sure you'll do the same. But yeah, this was fun.
Speaker 2:Can't wait till we get to do it again. Man, great, thanks very much, of course. Right, that's it, folks, that's a wrap. That's another episode in the bag or the game bag, I should say, giving a nod to the hunting stories vibe for the day. Thanks again to Michael for jumping on this double release episode and thanks to everyone who's still listening. If you made it this one step further and hit the follow button both on Michael and my own podcast, then that would make our collaborative days. You can find both myself and Michael on the socials. You just need to go to the show notes. I'm trying to remember the word. Yeah, it's the show notes. We're going to have a bunch of links down in the show notes. Check it all out, like, share, subscribe and all that lovely stuff. That's all for now. Thanks everyone for listening and I'm going to wrap up by saying if it feels wild, get out there and get after it and make some stories a bit of a mishmash there, Alrighty.
Speaker 1:Thanks everyone. All right, guys, that's it. Another couple stories in the books, obviously, some stories you maybe heard before if you've been listening for a long time. Maybe a little bit in more detail and then, of course, some new stories from both myself and Robin. So I hope you guys enjoyed and please do check out his podcast.
Speaker 1:He does a lot of cool stuff. It's not just stories, but he definitely makes sure that stories are being told. Um, and you can learn some really cool stuff. Uh and uh, he just has a lot of fun doing it and I think that's what's really important. So, robin, thank you for having me on. Thank you for letting me share this episode with my podcast listeners as well. Um, to listeners, make sure you go, follow him. Links to everything are going to be in the show notes. Make sure you're following us on Instagram, if you're not already. And then, if you have some great stories, reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to get you on the podcast. Or, if you just know someone else who's got some great stories, introduce me. I'll convince them, I promise. But that's it, guys. Thank you so much Hope.
