Ep. 119: Elk, Deer, and Antelope with Josh Boyd

Dirk catches up with Josh Boyd every year, just exchanging hunting stories and expressing opinions and ideas from our experiences while hunting. This episode Josh recaps his amazing hunting season and then takes us down memory lane with the story of his giant whitetail buck from years ago. We also talk a little about the diseases that whitetail deer face and what game managers are doing about it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast.
I'm Dirk Durham and tonight my guest is my.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good buddy, Josh Boyd.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Josh is a Montana resident, a great hunter, and all
around good guy. Welcome back, Josh.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Thanks for having me back, Derek. It's always fun to chat.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah. Our listeners might remember you from our earlier episodes
we did last spring. One was on Elk Hunting and
another one was on Spring Bear Hunting, and if you
guys haven't listen to those, it's a it's a must
must listen. There's a lot of good a lot of
good nuggets and good conversation there.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Josh.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
I saw all of your success on Instagram and we
just haven't had a chance to catch up about how
your fall went down. So I thought, you know, what
better time to get on the podcast and just kind
of talk about it.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah, yeah, you bet. It was a great fall. It
just seemed to fly by. I don't I really honestly
don't know where the time went. I just it seems
like it was just a few weeks ago. I was
just putting gear together to head to Wyoming for early
September Elk and it just I cannot believe it's mid December.

(01:30):
It's crazy how fast time goes.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's crazy, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Did you hunt in August and all or just September, October, November.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
September, October, November. I mean, we do have long seasons
in Montana, and the antelope season archery season starts October
excuse me, August fifteenth here, and I just don't have
how much time to get to the east side to

(02:02):
hunt that time of year. I'm still busy with work
field seasons going on, and I just don't make it
out in August, and I hunt so much the rest
of the year that it's just really hard to get
away that much. And I try to burn my family
preference points later on September and October if I can.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, that's good thinking. It's a little nicer to be
a little nicer weather, I guess in September October than
it is in August. I feel like those eastern Montana
August tenths would be pretty warm.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Oh, it would be brutal out there, I think. And yeah,
the only thing I have to hunt out east would
be antelope. And this past year I had a rifle tag,
so I kind of like to wait till October and go. Okay,
it's a really fun haunt because it's kind of in
between our archery season and our general rifle season in
the state. Okay, so it's a great little like long

(03:03):
weekend trip to head head out there and enjoy the prairie.
So I kind of try to see if I have
a rifle tag. I try to save my antelope tag
for that opening week of rifle analo rifle.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, I've been applying for I think this is year three,
maybe maybe four for ant help. I'd have to look
at my points, but I still haven't drawn. I thought
for sharsing draw this year and I still haven't, so
maybe next year. Really looking forward to it. I don't

(03:37):
know if I'm super like interested in shooting like a
giant trophy one. Maybe, I mean, if I see what,
I'd love to shoot one. But I just want to
go and have the experience and just go Analoe hunting.
Everybody says it's so fun and you can do it
all day, and it's not just a dog down and
dusk type of a hunt, you know, like some hunts

(03:58):
can be sometimes.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, it is a fun hunt. I it,
and they're easy to kill, so I make it into
a trophy hunt, just to to drag it out a
little bit. Oka But it seemed, well, it seems like
every year I end up shooting a pretty good buck
that first day. Yeah, but I go over a few
days early and I scout and hike and glass and

(04:23):
try to find a couple of trophy bucks, and I
end up just getting on them first thing in the morning.
But you know, sometimes it's you know, there's a little
bit of effort you have to have to apply. You know,
you have to sneak out, and I'm hunting them out,
you know, a couple of miles away from a road too,
so that it's a naxtra effort for sure. So I

(04:44):
take my backpack with me so I can shove that
the whole antelope in my pack and pack it across
the prairie when I am successful. But yeah, you can
make it into a much of a hunt as you
want it to to be, so it's it's super fun.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, that's kind of what I found with Eastern Montana
muleder hunting. I mean, if you want to drive around
your pickup and shoot them from the pickup. You can
if you want to spot them from the truck and
then make moves. If you just want to go like
my buddy and Ryan Lampers, I think they'll go and
and backpack in and stay out there in that cold,

(05:19):
nasty weather and you know, suffer and uh, you know,
you can make it whatever you want.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I think you know.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Which is cool, which is that's awesome. Yeah, that's the
beauty of it.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
It's there's something there for everybody, you know.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
But yeah, that was a.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Man I I seen that. I will say, you know,
I I'm like, I don't know if I don't really
care if I shoot a big one or not, but man,
I saw that one you shot and I was.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Like, oh wow, I want one like that. That was
a nice buck.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah. So the unit that I apply for, it's I
haven't drawn one. It seems to be the pattern that
I've fallen into is every other year I'll get it
for that UNI and there seems to be some decent
bucks in there. I don't know what it takes to
get to be a big buck. I don't know if
it's genetics, nutrition, I don't I've kind of heard it's

(06:11):
not necessarily old age but anyway, we're I've been hunting.
I've been seeing a lot of nice bucks, and so
every tag that I've pulled from this unit produced really
solid antelope, and they're really neat. I just like the
looks of those big bucks. They'll have that big, dark
nose and it kind of has a Roman bend to it,

(06:31):
so it kind of droops, and they get a little
longer when they get bigger like that, okay, and blacker,
and the face markings are more striking, and of course
the horns stick up and are very impressive. So I
don't know, It's just kind of fun shooting big animals
if you can do it. Not that I'm strictly a
trophy hunter. If you look at a bunch of the

(06:52):
elk I've shot, you can I can tell you. I'm
definitely not a trophy hunter when it comes.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
To elk, But I'm the same way I got it
but here.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, but I like shooting big animals, you know, if
given the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
And it looks like you found a big old deadhead too.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, it looked like a kaya kill. Potentially,
I don't know what killed it, but it was a
you know, the spinal cord was or column was there
attached to the head and still had its horns, but
it had been pulled down into a gully. So I
took my daughter over there for her first real hunt.

(07:31):
She wasn't hunting, she just wanted to go along and
one of the she's eleven and she was had never
really spent much time out in a prairie, so she's
really into exploring the country. So one day before the
season started, we just decid to walk down some of
these big washes, these big blown out gullies. She was

(07:53):
looking for who knows what crystals ens, dinosaur bones. She
is looking for whatever catches her eye. And we walked
up on that dead antelope and it was kind of stinky.
She it caught her eye, but she wasn't going to
hang out much longer, especially when I touched it. She
didn't want nothing to do with that stinky things.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Oh yeah, are you able to retrieve dead heads in Montana?

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yes, yeah you can. Yeah, but if oh.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, it's like yeah, it's it's it'll be good staying
right there.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah, it was pretty nasty smelling.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
I know a lot of a lot of Western states
don't allow you to pick up dead heads like Oregon
and Washington, Wyoming. One year, we were all kuinting of
Wyoming and we could glass across this huge basin and
we could see a big bowl elk that was dead

(08:55):
and there was a bear on it. It's like, wow,
that looks like a pretty nice bear. And we sit
there and as we bugled and listened for other bulls
and glassed for other bulls, we thought, you know, we
kind of got caught up watching this bear and it
was kind of a cool, but far enough away for
the can of cameras we had we couldn't really video
anything good.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
But we were.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Watching and yeah, that's a pretty nice bear. And then
all of a sudden, he just jumps up and runs off,
like huh wow. Something spooked it out. And then a
big bear came out. This other bear was giant. It
dwarfed that other bear and it went over there and
it like ate on the elk a little bit, and

(09:36):
then it would just lay right on top of the elk,
and he was so big he would just cover that
whole elk. Like if you can imagine a bear that big,
he covered you. He covered up most of that elk
when he'd lay on it, and he would just lay
there and take a nap, and then every now and
then that other little bear would kind of come around
and like peek around, and he'd get up and kind
of flex a little bit, and that other bear dike off.

(09:58):
But man, it was cool. The funny thing is the
night before we were over there and we're bugling a
bull and we're like, man, something dead up here. We
could smell it, you know, And this bull was bugling
right up there, right by that dead elk.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
And just bugling.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
We were right on him right at the last light,
and we got up there and it's like, man, it stinks.
And all of a sudden you could hear a bear
come down the hill and chased off my buddy and
my two buddies are up there putting the sneak on
this elk, and uh so coincidentally, the next day we're

(10:42):
glassing over there, like I wonder what was dead over there,
and we could see that elk, and then we saw
the bear. The first one was like, oh yeah, that's
a pretty big bear, and then the other one's like,
holy cow, and he looked he was colored like a grizzly.
We're like, oh my god, it's a grizzly bear. Holy
this in this area of Wyoming, what at the time
wasn't really known for grizzlies, Okay.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
And we were like, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
You know grizzly. And we watched that thing for a
long time and finally determined it wasn't a grizzly. It's
just a black bear colored like a grizzly. He didn't
have a dished face, and it took a lot of
looking though to to like, you know, if he'd stand right,
it looked like he had a hump on his back.
But after spending a couple hours you know, watching him,
I was like, okay, that's a that's just a giant

(11:26):
black bear.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Those big male black bears. Yeah, if they're the right color. Hey,
sometimes they are really hard to tell between that and
a darker face grizzly because they will have a hump
on their shoulders, they'll have a shoulder.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Up mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
It's not as distinct as a grizzly, And a lot
of times the face will give them away and the
ear size and all that. But the last fall bear
I shot up here, it was a big, dark, chocolate
male black bear, and I looked at it for a
long time before I shot it, just to make sure
because it had a serious hump on his shoulder. And uh,

(12:04):
obviously it turned out to be a black bear, And
I made dang sure before I pulled the trigger. Yeah
that there was no doubt in my mind. But it
took me a little bit to like really look at him.
I watched him for solid maybe fifteen minutes before I
determined for sure that he was illegal bear. But yeah,
that's interesting. He was on at elk kill.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, man, he was just on it. And it was
a nice bowl. It was like a three hundred inch bowl. Anyway,
back to the story, like you can't take dead heads then,
where he's like, man, it'd be cool to go back
to town and get a bear tag and go shoot
that thing and then get that elk crack, But you
can't keep the alk cracks, you know, dead heads in Wyoming.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
So it was like a pah. I did not know
that bowl.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, so we just had to watch and enjoy it.
But you know, for guys like us, we we hadn't
seen grizzly bears really up at that point, you know,
in our lives to be like, oh, yeah, you know,
we're easily to spot a grizzly, you know, but I
think a lot of folks like us. Maybe first the

(13:10):
first thing you do is say grizzly Barry, because it's
just giant and the right colors and stuff.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
But once we kind of shoot on it for a.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
While, then it's like, that's not a grizzly.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
So yeah, huh.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
But so you talked about Wyoming, Tell me, did how
did the elk bugle this faull Did you have good bugling?
Did you have crappy bugling?

Speaker 3 (13:33):
That's a good question. That first time hunting this area,
so don't really have a lot of, you know, background
information on it. The bugling was good first thing in
the morning for maybe two hours they were and all
night we were just dealing with the full moon.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
We laid there in our tents listening the bulls bugle
all night, all night most nights. Yeah, And then they
were still fired up for a few few hours in
the morning, and then by like say nine thirty, ten o'clock,
maybe not even ten, they were done. As it got warmer,

(14:15):
we kind of had that little heat wave kind of
build it that window in the morning got shorter and shorter.
But we had great, great action for a couple hours
in the mornings, and we had some evenings that were sporadic.
But we had a hard time coch and bulls to
bugle in the day. Midday we'd get it. Occasionally'd get

(14:37):
one of the bugle out of its bed, but it
would not respond beyond just a little tiny light bugle
maybe once twice, but just could not get them going midday, okay,
which is kind of what we were after, you know,
those midday boys or just ideal.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, try to get one of those big herd bulls
di leave his cows. Yeah, this year we had a
lot of that. Like midday we just didn't hear any
bugles at all. They kind of experienced some of the
same stuff and we had the first day it was
pretty warm, but then a huge storm came in. This

(15:17):
is Idaho, a huge storm came in and man it
got cold and rainy and snowy, and the.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Bulls picked up.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
They started bugling pretty good, but they weren't bugling on
their own. They weren't, you know, unless we prompted, you know,
unless we were started doing some location bugles.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
They didn't.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
They weren't out there talking on their own, and it
took a little bit of you know, creative talking on
our part.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
To get them to bugle.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
But once they'd kind of bugle, they bugled pretty good
during that cold weather. But but then after the storm
had kind of passed, and think I thought, oh, yeah,
once this storm passes, they're really going to kick things
in high gear.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh it just went to a ghost town.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Man. It was.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
It was tough.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
In fact, you know, bulls would just you get if
you got very close to him and did any call,
and they would just run. They they did not want
any competition. Maybe they thought we were hunters, but we just didn't.
In that particular spot at that time, we hadn't really
seen a bunch of people. So I don't know that
it was pressure. I just and we've kind of been

(16:23):
told that these elk in this air area in general
don't like calling, and they made a believer out of us.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, I'm trying to Yeah, I guess the first bull
that my partner killed with this we were in there
when it was still archery. Our first trip back into
the back country was still archery, and we had a
we had a little bit of a rough go getting
bulls of bugle like the first day, but we found

(16:55):
some elk got him fired up that evening. The next day,
it was dead silent in there, but we still dropped
down into this canyon and made this big loop into
this canyon and around the top and the backside of
this knob, and we got a bowl of bugle. He

(17:15):
answered consistently. It was noonish eleven, OK. But he hammered
a couple different times right away, and it was pretty warm.
But as soon as he hammered on the bugle, I
thought they had this bull's going to come in for sure.
And yeah, so we did call that bulling and Trevor

(17:36):
shot him nice. So yeah, that was good. Yeah, we
were both at full draw on him and he came
in and I was, I mean, I was waiting for
him to like just move a front shoulder forward, And
just as he was moving that front shoulder forward, I
had my pin barry. He was under twenty yards probably

(17:57):
like sixteen eighteen yards from me. Wow, so top ten
had that top pen buried in his shoulder. I just
as I released another arrow, like smacked him from the
from the other side any world, and my arrow went
right in front of his front shoulder as he spun
away Reilly, Which that's incredible. I know, I've never had

(18:19):
that happen. I thought for sure. I was like, oh,
this bull is so dead. And it's like what he
was a half a step. He was moving his leg forward.
You know that that shoulder moves. Yeah, they're stepping forward.
I was just waiting for that to come to completion,
and I was just gonna just peg him, and another
arrow hits just as I was squeezing. It was funny. Yeah,
But anyway, we got the bowl. But that was a

(18:41):
midday bowl. Yeah, pretty warm out and uh, that was
really our best midday action that we had was that bowl.
And he came in hot, came in all fired up.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh man, I god, I love that ID two s.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, that was awesome.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
And that happened to be like River's second archery bowl.
I think it was his first public land bull. So yeah,
he was super promatant. We were all pretty excited about it.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah. Yeah, huh you said they they were They were
talking really good the night before and then they kind
of shut down.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
What do that? What's your opinion on that?

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Do you have any kind of a hypothesis or a
theory of why up do that, because it's not uncommon
for them, like one day they're just boiling hot.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
The next day it's like ghost town. Why is that?

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Well, so we camped. I don't know what it is.
This is maybe if this is one theory, So we
in that situation. We camped not far from where we
heard these bulls bugle in that night, and they definitely
didn't wind us, they didn't see us. We were very stealthy.
We were on this little tiny finger ridge back away,
but we could hear in there, and they bugled all

(19:58):
night long. They went nuts down there, and one bowl
you could hear him round up his cows and he
pushed him up past our camp and we could hear
him going through this meadow behind us, just away from us.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
All night.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
The cows just fitted in the meadow, and I think
they just exited out the back end of the meadow
and just kept going away from where the rest of
the oak word. I just think they were so busy
all night they just wore themselves out, and the next
morning they're just like, we're done. Yeah, we partied all night.
We're just we're good. So I don't know, I think
there's various reasons for it, but I think that in
that situation, that was what was kind of going on.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Have a lot of belief in that same idea as well.
Part of me says too, sometimes they get to moving
around too and like they'll like maybe one herd bowl
or grab the cows and make a mad dash and
out of one drainage to another and the party moves right.
I kind of think there's some of that also think

(21:00):
I think a lot of it.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I think a lot of it is.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Man, they party pretty hard, and they they run that
whole evening and all night, and the next day they're
just licking their wounds. Maybe that cow is not heed anymore.
They got the job done and it's just we're gonna
take a break today, guys, it's gonna.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Be a lazy in milkwoods.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I have yet to have anybody, Yeah, I know, I
kind of feel that way. Yeah, I have yet have
anybody you know, explain it any different, like you know,
but I'm always I'm all ears. I'm always looking for
for you know, the reasons why on these help they
seem to you know, by the time you think you

(21:45):
know something you don't really know anything. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, how long have we been doing this and we're
still learning? It's pretty Oh that's I mean, that's part
of the beauty of it.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
If it was just like fishing, shooting fish in a
barrel would be like, man, that's kind of boring now
and probably something different.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
Yeah, but it's always a challenge.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Now, you killed a bowl, and there was quite a
story backstory for perhaps the area.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Uh and maybe maybe you.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Killed this bowl in an area your grandfather hundred years
and years ago.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Yeah, So it was an area that my dad grew
up in and I'd been hearing stories of and I
actually went to their hunting camp when I was a
little kid.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Okay, So.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
My dad, his father, and my dad's grandfather hunted elk
in this mountain range forever and my great so that
would be my great grandfather and my great grandfather's father hunter.
I mean, then they have native they're enrolled Indians out
of Wyoming. So they go way back, you know, six

(23:07):
thousand generations or so, so they've been they've been trapesing. Yeah,
they've been trapsing those mountain ranges for years and years
and years and I was as a little kid. Some
of my first memories of hunting were up there in
my great grandfather's hunting camp. Like my parents would take

(23:30):
me out of me and my brother out of school
and we would drive all the way to Wyoming and
then we'd go up to this camp and there would
be some a couple old trailers that he pulled in
to his cow camp slash hunting camp, and then my
great grandfather and my dad would get on their horses
and go into the back country and shoot elk for

(23:51):
themselves and the whole family for the most part. But
it was like I remember seeing story or hearing stories,
seeing pictures, being immersed in the hunting camp, you know,
in early October, and just the sights and smells, and
I just had never really got to experience that mountain
range as an adult. Yeah, so this was an opportunity

(24:15):
for me to go hunt that same mountain range and
kind of get a feel for how those elk act,
how they use the landscape, how I can navigate and
get around in that landscape, and just to see if
I can put the puzzles together with the help of
some friends. Of course, sure, of course, And I wasn't

(24:36):
over hunting, you know, in their area where my great
grandfather hunted. But it was just fun. And there's a
picture on the wall in the hallway of my parents' house,
and I remember seeing it ever since I was a
little kid of my great grandfather with a big bully
shot and my dad was with them the day the

(25:00):
he shot it. They got into a herd elk and
this bowl had some cows pushed up into these small
pines and he ended up shooting it pretty close. They
shot a couple of elk that day, and I think
they were packing it out and my grandfather's horse like
fell over on top of a log with my grandfather

(25:20):
on it and crushed him kind of injured him and
he had to go out early out of the hunting camp.
But anyway, you hear all these stories and see these pictures,
and this picture of that big bull with my great
grandfather was on the wall my whole life basically, and
I don't know, just always intrigued me, always drew me
to that area of the state and just made me
like get excited to go down there and just to

(25:43):
see what it was like and hunted as an adult
and experience it. So yeah, that was this trip to
Fall was getting back to that country and just seeing
what it looked like and seeing if I could kind
of piece together things from a just hunting on your
own perspective.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Did you did that just hit different? Did you like
have did you have the fields? Did you feel the fields?
Did you like have some like man the nostalgia, like
I kind of remember some of this or was it
completely different and foreign from what you remembered as a kid?

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Well, yeah, it was a little different. You know, where
they're hunting camp was on the one side of the
mountain range. It was a slightly different terrain. It was
still rockies. It was just real rugged, but there seemed
to be bigger, like willow complexy meadows. Yeah, just slightly

(26:42):
different terrain, but it was still pretty similar. Some of
the smells, Like there's a certain kind of willow that
grows down there. It's different than the willows I'm used
to having appear in western Montana, And they just have
a slightly different smell in those meadows. And I don't
know if it's with some of the sedges that grow
there as well. And there's beaver dam complexes and the

(27:04):
whole you know, mess of the ecology those wetland meadows
that makes them smell that way. But they definitely there's
a distinct smell to those. And you know how smells
are linked to memory. So when I first popped out
into one of those meadows, like it just hit me
as like, oh yeah, this smells exactly like it did

(27:26):
at my great grandfather's hunting camp. So it kind of
gives you a little bit of the kind of the
those feelies as you were saying.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, my grandfather hunted in area here in
Idaho at the time was full elk, and my dad
and my uncles would hunt there too. And you know,
fast forward several years too, when I was a young adult,

(27:58):
I started hunting there and and there's some there's some
meadow grass, kind of those those moose bog type meadows,
and that kind of tall yellow grass that grows in
there's kind of that swampy stuff and I can, I
can just smell it right now. Just the thought of
like I can, I just triggers that that thought of

(28:18):
memory of of going there as a young kid, and
that particular smell for that area. I haven't smelled that
anywhere else I've ever been.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
You know whether it's.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Wyoming or even way way way North Idaho or wherever
in Idaho or Montana. I haven't smelled those same smells
per se. There's just exactly what you say. You know,
the willows had a different smell than what you're used to.
And yeah, those like just just what you said. It

(28:50):
triggers little memories and things. And you know, in this
one drainage, my grandfather used to hunt and in two
thousand I called in the biggest bull I've ever seen
in my life anywhere on planet Earth, you know, hunting.
Of course, I know you see pictures on the internet
all the time, but uh, it was. I would say

(29:11):
it was close to a four four hundred inch bowl
and this area is not really known for that size
of bulls. And when I seen this bull, I thought, man,
I wish there was somebody with me because nobody is
ever going to believe this. And it was, it was,
it was just such an amazing thing. And I you know,

(29:33):
the it's classic elk hunting story. You know, the bull
was screaming, just coming in on a string like tension
on the bow string. The brush is moving, you haven't
quite seen him yet, and then the wind hitch in
the back of the neck and.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
He takes Ah.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
It was right on this little ridge ledge and where
it kind of opened up. It's kind of a timbered ridge,
and over on the ledge of the ridge, it kind
of opened up a little bit. So it ran over
the real quick, and he ran off in the backside.
It was kind of a little basin in there that
was nothing but olderbrush up in this flat kind of
basin that graduate had a gradual climb up to a

(30:10):
up to another ridge. And I ran over there and
I looked and I seen this bowl, and I'm like, oh,
holy cow, nobody's ever gonna believe this thing.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
And of course it's out of bull range.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
And he goes over to the alders and he and
they're huge alders, and he starts raking. I think, you know,
he starts he puts his antlers on those alders and
just starts messing with him, just starts raking. I'm like, oh,
maybe he's not that spooked. I can call him back.
And then all of a sudden, he just kind of
just lunges and jumps into the middle. He was trying
to part them, is what he was trying to do,

(30:43):
because they were so thick. He's trying to part them
with these antlers, and he jumps and he just jumps
right into those alders and just kind of just kind
of just kind of did this this walky jump thing,
treading through these all this older patch all the way
up out of this basin. So I walked this giant
rack and head float through the alders all the way

(31:04):
up out of this basin and out of my life forever.
And yeah, I'm like, nobody is ever gonna believe this.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Ah. So it was like surreal, you know.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
I was like, man, if I could have killed that bowl,
it would have been like the icing on the cake.
But I had killed bulls in that in that drainage
that my grandfather hunted and which was really special, and
my mom always said, she's like, this is her dad.
And back in the old days, he would he would

(31:39):
get like PBC pipes or like galvanized pipes and put
the little plug in the end of them and blow them.
Remember those kind of elk beagles people used to have.
It's just like kind of a whistle and he'd mess
around with that and he's like, man, if I could
just figure out how to bugle and sound good, like
a real elk man. We could really kill these things.

(32:00):
And he was always messing with it and wishing and
wanting to be able to bugle like a real elk.
And unfortunately, you know, he passed away when I was
really little, so he never got to see the progression
of elk bugles that we have today or even in
the eighties. You know, he passed around pretty early eighties. So,

(32:23):
but that was always a really special place. So I
can understand the nostalgia and the want to go hunt
somewhere where, you know, and we would always go up
there as a little kid, you know, to return to
those places for the nostalgia, I can I can relate.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, No, it was fun. It was It made my
entire year, my entire season, regardless of what happened after September,
it was that was like it just it just made
everything perfect.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
But yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
I still went and hunted more and had a bunch
more fun.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Matter of fact, as I was driving I was leaving Wyoming,
I got a text from my good hunting buddy back home.
He's like, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? I
want to go el hutting. And I'm like, well, let
me check the temperature of my household when I get

(33:24):
home and let you know, He's like, oh yeah, I UNDERSTANDABLEOK,
cause I was gone, like I don't know, eighteen days
down there, so maybe not quite that much, but close
to that. And so I got home unpacked and looked
at my wife and she's like, so you're going out
this weekend and I was like, yep, yep, I am.

(33:45):
I guess I'm going out. So we went out and
it was awesome too, because my partner here, he decided
this year that he was going to hunt elk strictly
with his recurve. He's never killed the bull his recurve.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
And so he's like, I'm gonna take my recurve.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
I'm like, well.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
That's great, let's go. Let's see who we can do.
And we went out that morning. He shut his first
bowl at his recurve by like eight thirty.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Oh man, it was awesome. I'm so jealous.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah. It was perfect. I mean, the wind was perfect.
It was that cold, crisp morning. I bugled off this
little point and there's just this little i don't know,
forty acre pocket a brush of just mefi and spruce
and subalpin fur and huckleberry brush, and he just screamed
instantly out of there. We dropped in closed the distance

(34:43):
a little bit, screamed at him a few more times,
cut him off, and I could just hear him come.
And my buddy Jared went out in front and he
got set up, and I videoed the whole thing with
my phone, and I just I could see Jared and
just pan over to the elk. I could see the
elk rack in my phone. I could see the elk

(35:04):
pretty well by you know, I had my phone down low,
kind of my bino arms sure, and I saw Jared
come to full I saw the bull move forward, and
then I heard a little squeak, like a little tiny
light calcohol from Jared, and I'm like, oh, here we go.
And then all I heard was this wet thud oh
of that of that arrow just smacking it and the

(35:26):
bull world I bugled, and then it was just silent,
and then I looked over at Jared. He was just
frozen there. Then he like dropped his head and he
looked up and dropped his head again, like, oh no,
did he just whiff it? Oh no, this is not good.
And then he just gives you that fist pumped, you know, like,

(35:47):
oh yes, yeah, he's yeah, twenty yards, perfect placement. The
bull world went down the hill thirty yards and just
fell over dead, rolled down into the brush and just
laying there dead. Or Elvis's that's awesome, wet thud.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
I love it, man.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
I've never heard anybody describe it as that. And as
soon as you said it, man, my brain started going,
that's exactly what it sounds like.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Yeah, I don't He didn't hit any ribs, so he
didn't hear that crack. It was just a yeah, yeah,
it was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
So that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
And then there was a bull. Like as we butchered
that bull and packed it out, there was a bull
bugle and at the head of the base and he
did not shut up all day long. He sat back there,
bugled and and bugled. We dropped down with one load
to the truck and hiked back in, and as we
were hiking back in, he was still bogling back there.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Man.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
I know, isn't it always the times that you just
don't have the time, opportunity, whatever, that you can go
after those that you got balls the cranking like that.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah, Well, when we were starting off of there with
the second load, I'm like, Jared, what do you think
should we drop this load down there and go after
that bull. He's like, yeah, Okay, let's do it. But
I was like, I'm just joking, let's get this thing
to the truck.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Oh man, man, if.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
That kind of finished out my when was that? That
must have been like the last weekend of September. Okay
maybe yeah, something like that. So that kind of finished
out my September. So it was great.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, lots of all.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
I not for ELK. I did not go look for
Elk at all with my rifle. I still had a
Montana tag and my freezer's packed with Helk. Beat it
just to the brim because I shot two bowls last year,
so I'm still working on some of that. And then
I shot this Wyoming bowl and I was like, I
do not need to shoot another bowl. I know it's

(37:58):
not about need sometimes, but I was just like, yeah,
and rifle hunting for elcause it seems to be more
of a chore at times than it is enjoyable. So
I just took my time and hunted mule deer after
my ad a little punt in October a hundred mule deer.
And then I got beat down pretty hard with some

(38:20):
of the deep, deep snow that we got in mid November,
I took a break and hunted some white tails.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, I really wanted to pick your brain on these
white tails. Now, you won't brag on yourself at all.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
But I'm going to do it a little bit.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
You're kind of an old I mean, you're all around hunter,
like one of the best all around hunters I know.
But you're pretty dang good whitetail hunter too. Now, it's
been a while, but there was a time when you
had a picture on the cover of a major outdoor

(39:03):
publication with a giant white tail. Is that?

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Am I right?

Speaker 3 (39:08):
Yes, yes you are.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
What magazine was that and when was that?

Speaker 3 (39:12):
So that was Eastman's Bow Hunting Journal, and that well
I killed the buck in two thousand and six, Okay,
so I think the magazine came out in two thousand
and seven. Ok Yeah, it was a cover. Like it's
not very often you get a white tail on the cover.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
Of an Eastman's.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
No, it's usually an antelope or a sheet, or an
elk or a mule deer. I mean, your classic Western
big game.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, to get a white tail on there. I mean,
that's that's saying something that was a big buck.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, that was pretty fun. Yeah, and that buck was
that consumed my life for a while. I spent so
much time trying to put together the puzzle of that
white tail. I saw him at the very end of
the previous hunting season. Okay, Like so it was like

(40:08):
right after the season ended. I actually went on a
little I was going for a trail run, and I
thought I might as well just run through this little
area I like to go a white tail hunt. There's
kind of an old logging road that goes back. There's
all really grown in, kind of more than two track.
Now sure did anything. I'm like, I'm just going to
go for a run through there. And I was jogging
through there, I see this deer kind of like drop

(40:32):
into this little draw and pop out the other side.
Massive deer. I mean it was just immediately in my
mind like that is a giant buck. Oh my god,
where did he come from? And how do I how
do I get him? How do I find this thing?
Next year? So I spent I don't know how many

(40:52):
days just looking for his sheds and I never did
find his sheds. Apparently some dog dog walker picked him up.
I kept found out later. Man, he take his dog
out down the Seoul Loggin Road and they were just
laying there. But I found an antler from the previous year,

(41:14):
so it had been there, been laying there two years,
and uh, it's like, oh, this is a big bucket.
I was finding big rubs, trails, and I just and
it's just this weird kind of flat and so I
kind of put together a game plan and had all
these tree stands hung in this area. And you know,

(41:35):
when you scout in the spring and your shedhitting in
the spring, you're seeing all this sign from the previous year.
You've seeing all the old scrapes, and the trails are
more observable, and you can see the rubs and you
can see the rubs that have been rubbed multiple years
in a row, like big heavy trees. And I was like, well,
that buck is definitely rubbing these trees over and over

(41:56):
year after year. So I kind of focused on that,
and man, I ended up sitting a few times. I
passed up a pretty nice buck and I decided, here's
the crazy part. I decided to bowhunt them. I don't
know why. It was rifle season, and I thought, you know,

(42:18):
I just I'd been reading a bunch of articles about
bow hunting white tails back East, and I'm like, I
just I want to kind of experience that, so I'm
just going to do it.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Sure, So I just did it.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
And yeah, I think the fourth time I was out
rainy was after like a four day rain in November.
Oh yeah, and everything was kind of hunkered down for
a while, and then it just started to let up.
And then the deer started crawling out of the woodwork
and ended up kind of rattling, and I used a

(42:52):
doughe eat and some other bucks came in, some smaller ones,
and started sparring out in front of my tree stand.
And they just sat there and sparred and sparred and
sparred all evening long, and I just kind of like
let him do their thing, yeah, and thinking it's gonna
there's a big buck around, He's going to come in potentially.

(43:12):
And I was really focused on watching those deer because
I they'd be like three of them sparring. And then
I looked up and I saw another one come out
of the timber and join in, and I was just
really focused on those deer, and I decided I better
and I thought to myself, I better keep an eye
out behind me and off to my left. And I
look over and I could see the top of this

(43:34):
this larch tree just whipping back and forth about one
hundred yards away. I was like, oh, what is that?
And then out he walks kind of heading straight down
right to me. He was going to walk right in
front of me to where these bucks were over to
my right, and so I just stood up, grabbed my
bow and got ready. He walked out at fifteen yards

(43:58):
right below me, and I just stroked him. And I
didn't know how it was like the buck that that
I was after, but I saw he was a big deer.
He looked real heavy, and his tians kind of looked
short because he was so heavy. But after the arrow hit,
you know, any whirled and went out there and crashed.
I was like, oh, man, that's a good deer. And

(44:19):
I walked over and pulled his head up out of
the brush. I was like, who, this thing is a
giant deer. This is the this is the buck I
was after. That's the on was yeah, yeah, so yeah,
that was a crazy yeah, but I'd spent maybe twenty
five thirty days in that area just scouting, looking and
also looking for his sheds. I was like, my wife

(44:44):
was in grad school in another state, and I was
living on my own. I didn't have a kid, I
had nothing else going on.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Nothing, but yeah, the good old days.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yes, life gets in the way. Done that sometime.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah you wouldn't trade it for nothing, but no, I wouldn't.
But sometimes it'd be nice to just be able to
have some of that time and pret go do that
stuff again. That uh, that buck. I just have a dull,

(45:25):
distant memory of what it looked like, and I remember
it being incredibly massive. If you don't mind sharing, what
did that buck score?

Speaker 3 (45:37):
M hm? I never got it officially scored.

Speaker 5 (45:40):
Okay, but if I remember right, lots of people asked,
so I put a tape on it, and I want
to say it was one eighty two gross.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, nets are for fish, right.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yes, Yes, I'm not much of a fisherman.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah that's yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
It's a solid deer.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, that was a giant, giant buck. So now this
year you killed a great white tail.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
I was so happy to see that. I've seen it
come across my feet on Instagram.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
I was like, oh, yes, my white tail buddy is back.
He did it again. It's really nice, beautiful buck. Tell
me tell me that story.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Boy, It's not as exciting as the archery one, but it.
I have a coworker who is just sort of kind
of getting into hunting. Yeah, he listens to the Meat
Eater podcast all the time. He's always asked me questions

(46:57):
about different rifle and how to hunt and where to hunt,
and super curious about it. But he's never really asked
to go out hunting with me. And I was spending
a ton of time earlier and in November looking for
mule deer. Oh yeah, And he kind of went after
some mule deer for a little bit, but he wasn't

(47:19):
super pumped on shooting one. So one day I asked
him like, Hey, you want to we should go We
should go out hunting at some point together. And he's like, oh,
really you want to do that. I'm like, yeah, let's
do it. Let's just do a day hunt for white
tails or something. So we put together a plan and
there's a spot that I I kind of know, it's

(47:40):
sort of little not I wouldn't say it's a secret spot,
but it's it's not the most logical spot to go
park and then go hunt. So it was a day
hunt I took. Of course, I always take my backpack,
my big backpack when I go day hunt, because I
never go in places where I can get a deer
out hole.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
For the most part, you don't want to drag it.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
No, I thought about dragging this one out, but it
was a way, so I'm glad I had them a pack.
But so we just split up, and I was kind
of give them the spiel about still hunting and sitting
and watching like the edges of some of these clearcuts
and some of these little brushy draws, and just trying
to tell them about the train that these deer liked

(48:23):
to use and travel through, how the they feel protected. Yeah,
And also it was middle of the rut, and I
was like, you can see a deer at any point, anytime, anywhere.
Just stay vigilant, take your time, don't move too fast.
And so you know, we split up before daylight, and
we had a plan to meet up on top of

(48:46):
this ridge and later in the morning. And so I'd
hiked up this ridge and popped up on some high points,
and I glass some kind of some brushy clearcuts, and
the snow was still kind of on the brush at

(49:06):
this time, but it was starting to warm up. We'd
had a fresh snowfall the night before, so you can
kind of see fresher sign. And I popped out on
the edge into this clear cut and I could see
most of it, and I thought, I'm just gonna like
work my way through it. And it's kind of sat
on this shoulder, so you could kind of see. It's
kind of on a ridgetop, so you could see kind

(49:27):
of both sides of the shoulder, so think of like
a saddle on a horse. I was just walking right
down the backbone and I got out there and I
could see like a fairly fresh track that crossed the
clear cut from heavy timber to heavy timber. And I thought, well,
I'm gonna follow that track for a little ways. And
I worked my way down this track and I could

(49:49):
see where it bedded, and then it got really fresh
and it went a little I could see it kind
of going down the hill towards this opening, and I
glassed down in this opening, and sure enough, there's a
new it. It was a dough so I just kind
of leaned there against the tree and watched her for
quite a while, and she just fed and fed and fed,
didn't act nervous. You could tell she was by herself,

(50:12):
like there's nothing else around. A lot of times you
could tell and there's something bugging them, or they're waiting
for another deer, be it their fawn, or there's a
buck pestering them, but she seemed to be alone. So
I just sat there for a long time. It was
a great vantage point, and I kept thinking myself, like,
you know what, you better watch your backtrack there, buddy,

(50:33):
because how many times you walk back on your own
track and see deer tracks that have crossed your own
a lot a lot. So I, yeah, it happened to
me all the time. So I just looked back and
I caught a little glimpse of movement out of the
corner of my eye, and it was a flash of
a deer coming up out of that heavy timber into

(50:54):
the clear cut, and I could see it was a
buck rider just by its body language and size of
the shape of it. So I kind of dropped down
to one knee looked at it through my scope, and
I could tell it was only one hundred and fifty

(51:16):
yards away, right, and I could tell it. It was like
it's a good deer, good dear. Something looks a little
funky with him, but boy, it looks like a good buck.
And then I could see him kind of walking around
a little bit nosing, and there was enough brush there.
I just didn't have a clear shot at him, but
I could just get glimpses of him, and then I
could see what he was after. There's a doe was

(51:37):
right there in front of him. He just pushed a
dough out into that unit and was just kind of
hanging back. Well, she wasn't in any hurry. They weren't spooked,
and I kind of lost sight of him for a second.
So I just got ready, kind of dialed my scope
power up a hare and probably like maybe ten power,

(52:02):
and just rested on my knee, and as soon as
he popped out and turned broadside, I just just you know,
squeezed my first round off, first and only round off
I shot, and he just disappeared like my rifle recoiled
and he wasn't there anymore. Yeah, but there's enough brush
and little roll there in the terrain. I just couldn't
tell exactly if he just like jumped over some brush

(52:25):
or just that roll of that ridge and I just
couldn't see him. But the dough just stood there and
looked around to start walking away. I have a suppressor
on my rifle, okay, and it I mean she had
was not concerned at all. But I just stayed there
and looking at the last spot I saw him, thinking, well,
if he's still up, I'm gonna see him here in
a minute.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
I sat there for probably three or four minutes, and
I never saw him re emerged. The doe walked off like, well,
he's either either that shot hit close to home and
he just high tailed it out of here, or I
killed him. And I walked over there and he's just
laying there, just spread out dead. I mean, he just
dropped right at the shot kind of find out, and

(53:08):
so I hit him a little on the he was
cording away a little bit. I hit him kind of
right in the back of the ribs and it angled
forward through his chest and it just swattered him. Wow,
And then I realized that that's a solid I mean,
he was as big as I thought he was, but
he looked a little funky because he had that he
had a broken tie on one side. That photo that's

(53:30):
on Instagram. He can't really see it, but if you
look close, you can see one of his back times
snapped off.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
I noticed that. I was like, something's not right here,
and then I was like, oh, it's got a broken
G two, which probably I would have matched.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
What was a ten inches it.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Was maybe, yeah, maybe a little more.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Yeah, it was pretty tall.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
It was a good buck.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
Yeah. And it was a fresh break too, so it
seemed like it look to me like it had been
within the last couple of days. It was just like
that fresh, white, clean break. It hadn't been rubbed and
polished at all from rubbing on anything, so you could
tell it was fairly fresh. So that was November twenty first, okay,
I believe. So they were hot and heavy, oh, right

(54:19):
there in the middle of November.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, man, I we've been talking about this for a
long time. And one of these days, maybe next year,
if I can get a tag.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
Dang Montana.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
They hate me, but if I could get a tag,
I want to come over and go hunt that north
country up in the White Tail Woods with you do
the old yes little wall Tunt Camp and yeah, It's
the thing about that time of year is of hunting,
is the days are short and the nights are long,

(54:54):
and man, you got to you gotta be camp with
somebody that you like and enjoy their you're your time
with them, because if you're by yourself. I've done this before.
I've done these hunts by myself, and man, it is boring.
The nights are long, like they are. It just like, man,
I'd like to go to bed right now, but it's.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Six six thirty yep.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Shoot. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
So the last couple of years I've I've had this year,
I didn't. This is the first year I didn't have
one in a couple of years anyway. But I had
some friends that come up and we put up a
wall tint and woodstove, piles of wood cots, the whole works,
and just hunt straight from that wall tint. We just leave.

(55:40):
I'll just start hiking right from there. Oh yeah, just
leave in the dark, come back in the dark. It's great.
Don't even fire up the truck. Just there's so much
country to go hunt that you can do that in
a couple of these little areas that I know you
can just just anchor in and then just go find deer.
And we've been pretty successful over the years doing that.

(56:02):
And it's fun. It's just you come back, you cook
a good meal, you hang out, drink a little whiskey,
tell some stories. Yeah, talk shop. Yeah, it's a good time.
So yeah, you should come up. You'd enjoy the hell
out of it. And I know you liked to come
hunt North Idaho for white tails. It's real similar.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's my cup of teas. Yeah. I love
that kind of hunting and that kind of country. You know,
my wife and I came over two years ago, I
think it was two three years maybe three years ago,
into Montana whitetail hunting when we had a really short

(56:44):
window to hunt and we were only they had like
three days, right, so the conditions weren't ideal. But I
ended up getting deer. I got a little buck. But
but you know, I was a little weirded out because
in Montana they check for c w D. Right, you
have your CWD stations and they're checking for that all

(57:06):
over it seems.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Like nowadays, even Idaho.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
But they took a sample and and the same thing
I had to. I bone this deer out, you know,
and packed it out on my pack and in the head,
and they're like, oh man, you almost didn't get us
that that little what is that. It's a little thing
in the throat there in the back of the neck
there that they keep.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
That's the lymph note.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
They sampled it for CWD way by taking those lymph
notes there, just to see if it has CWD, and
and they were kind of making a big deal about
It's like, oh God, I'm scared to death to eat
this deer. And they're like, yeah, don't eat this thing
until if we till you, you'll get an email that
tells you if it has IT or not. I'm like, okay,
so get I get the email and it was fine,

(57:52):
of course, which I was thrilled because man, I love
deer meat.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
It's so so good. But yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
I got mind tested this year and it came back clean.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
And I don't know, you know, I probably have an
unpopular opinion.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Maybe I might be wrong.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
I've just this is kind of my gut feeling, like
I feel like maybe cwd's probably been here for a
lot longer than we think, and they're starting to find
it more because they're testing more for it. I know,
people and I've shot a deer that was obviously sick
and weird and had something wrong with it, and I
know other people that have and who knows, you know,

(58:34):
that's been you know, twenty thirty years ago even but
but who knows, you know, it may have been around
maybe not, But.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
I guess we'll see.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
I mean, that's a pretty big hot topic among you know,
a lot of the different state game agencies. They're they're
taking it very seriously.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
Yeah, they're and they're finding it in more and more
areas too. And they've been testing some these areas for
a while, but they are finding it now. And I
don't know how long it's been in our area, but
we've been dealing with it for I don't know, six
or seven years now, and it seems like a lot
of deer are coming back clean from the tests. But

(59:17):
they are still finding it. It's never going to go away. Unfortunately,
their their management strategies are questionable. I don't know. I'm
not a wildlife biologist, but god, it doesn't seem like
we're going to shoot our way out of the problem.
But yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem to have

(59:37):
worked in Wisconsin. They're still dealing with it right, Well, like, yeah,
I honestly I am ignorant on management strategies and how effective.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
They are, so take that worth maybe trying to do something,
you know, let's let's try to do something to fix it,
whatever that may be or for Unfortunately, like in Idaho
and some of the places they found it, Man, they've
they nuked the deer off. They killed a bunch of
them in the first then the in the unit where

(01:00:11):
they first found it they found it, and then that
that fall they had an emergency hunt which they wanted
to they give out I don't know, four or five
hundred extra tags or I might be wrong on the number,
but it would seemed like a lot and to go
harvest somewhere deer and then that way they could test
those as well to see, you know, how bad is it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
And then.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Man, they've just kind of doubled down on killing. You know,
let's shoot our way out of this. I don't know
if that's the right answer, But like you say, I'm
not a biologist either by by no means. But yeah,
I guess time will tell, you know, how it all
plays out. I think everything probably runs its course a
one way or another. And there's not a lot you
can do about it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Yeah. Yeah, let's just so there researchers come up with
some type of treatment that it can be dealt with
in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
They look to dolculate, like to uh, I guess, I
don't know. It's hard saying I already know what they're
even thinking about being in a pre on disease. It's like,
I don't know if it's preventable or if Yeah, I
don't you think they would. They've got a long ways
to go.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I guess. Yeah, Well, like EHD and and and blue tongue,
you know, those are.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Passed from the bugs or whatever. You know, nats bite
in the deer and you know common you know, I
don't even I don't know anything about anything, But I'm like, well,
why aren't people spraying you know, you know, insecticides around
ponds and areas where these deer are getting getting congregated
during a drought year. You know, the area I grew

(01:01:58):
up in. You know, there's a lot of cattle pond
and stuff. Why why aren't they going out and just spraying,
you know, killing bugs. Obviously that's not the right answer.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
They would have done it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Maybe maybe that's just a foolish thinking, you know, the
armchair from the armchair. It seems like, oh, we got
all these ideas, why don't you do this?

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
But yeah, you just don't know. Yeah, we.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
As a country, we sprayed a lot of stuff around
and with very negative results for other creatures from unintended consequences.
So I think people are a little leary of that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Songbirds and everything else. Yeah, we have little critters and stuff.
Who knows, maybe the deer wouldn't like to spray, but
yet they'll put all these other things, all these you know,
we'd killers and crap on fields.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
And I don't know, it's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
We'll never know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
Yeah, and I it seems like those like EHD and
blue tongue really really happened when there are yeah, dry seat.
It seems like dry years and warm falls when we
start like don't have a frost early on, those midges
kind of can persist into the fall. Yeah, And I

(01:03:17):
guess I don't know. Maybe they reached this this threshold
where it can start passing amongst the deer population and
the midge population. All right, but yeah we haven't We've
not had it affect our deer up here, but I

(01:03:39):
it has affected the deer in the Missoula area, and
I know central Idaho has had it, yeah, but it
seems to be more persistent on the east side of
the state of Montana and the river bottoms. Yea, in
Montana anyway, I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Know where I grew up then in the agricultural areas
and on the on the canyon breaks those areas, which
is always a little warmer, little and I think there's
more deer there too. And they had a matt when
when the first hit, like we I think was ninety
five or ninety seven somewhere in there, and man, they

(01:04:18):
had a giant die off. You know. You talk to
the farmers and they're like, man, we went out and
there were dead rotten deer carcasses everywhere. Wow, picking up
big deadhead bucks everywhere. And then they're you know, the
biologists say, some of the deer will develop a they're

(01:04:39):
not effected by it per se, or a resistance to it,
and those deer will carry on and have more offspring
that we'll have a resistance. But then a few years
go by and then we have another.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Big die off.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
So I feel like there's a lot of I don't
think it's a perfect science.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
I might be right, but.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
But yeah, it seems to come around ever since then,
ever since that year. We've never had it before, instant
ever since that year.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Where'd these damn nats come from? Did they blow in
on the wind?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
I mean, how did like Idaho's had droughts before then? Right?
Why all of a sudden We've always had a lot
of deer back previous to that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
So what made it happen? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
I need to get a biologist on here and just
really ask all those questions and hopefully they could maybe
shed some light on that for us.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
That'd be great.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, those are good questions. Yeah, right,
because you know we've had those those midges or gnats
or whatever that transmits this disease. And why why now?
And why so frequently? And if deer are developing resistance

(01:05:55):
are the is the disease slowly changing or adapting? Is
it this this back and forth war between resistance of
the deer and the and a new kind of slightly
different type of like just a little little change in
the DNA of this disease to make it penetrate the

(01:06:18):
armor of the the deer. I don't know. Those are
all good questions. I'd like to know more about that
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Yeah, I'll have to start sniffing around and see if
I can find a CWD expert that that I would.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Love to get on here and talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
Yeah, like a wildlife disease or parasitology expert.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
There's that guy on on Instagram, serve a nut or
something maybe, Oh yeah, reach out to him, see if
I can pick his brain, get him on her full finger.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
I think that's his name.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Well, he's a I think he's friends with the meat eater.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
Yeah, I'll see if I can look him up.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Yeah, that would be interesting to hear more about.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Well, man, I appreciate we're we're we wrote. We've gone
over an hour here, so man, I appreciate you coming on.
It's always like we could sit here for hours and visit.
I'm glad we got to catch up. It seems like
we don't get to catch up until the Western Hunting
Expo in Salt Lake, so now we'll have other things
to talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
When I see you down there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Yeah, definitely, but I appreciate it. How can folks find
you if they want to look you up on social.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
They can find me on Instagram. That's the only place
I really exist as far I guess I'm on a
Rockslide as well as a staff writer. But yeah, in
my Instagram handle is Josh Underscore boyd Underscore MT something

(01:07:54):
like that. I don't even remember what it is, but
if you do, if you go Josh Boyd MT, you'll
find me. I'll show up. There'll be a bunch of
hunting pictures. That's about all I share. There is some
hunting content. Yeah, and if you go to rockslide dot
com you can find me over there as well, mostly

(01:08:16):
just review articles on the homepage for gear reviews. I
do participate in the forums a little bit, but mostly
it's just review writing, gear testing right on. So yeah,
it seems to be a busy place over there these days.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Yeah, good, well, thanks again man, I appreciate it coming
on and yeah, look forward to more conversations down the road.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
Yeah, I appreciate it, Derek, it was a great, great conversation.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Yep, absolutely