Ep. 415: The Element

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
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you can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
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for every hunt first, like go farther, stay longer, all everybody,

(00:36):
it's like the Alamo in here. So much Texas is
in the room. It's like the Alamo. Especially like the
Alamo because those dudes weren't Texans. Not really a lot
of more like like Crockett, he did he just We've
covered this. Crockett had just shown up in town. Dude,

(00:58):
how do you die? Yeah? Was he there? He was there?
And I think he quit me too. I think he's surrendered. Yep.
Texans don't like embrace Crockett. I don't think like some
of the movies make the ALBUMO thing out to be,
Oh you're not. Oh see, I get a whole different
Like Jesse Griffiths, he gets he gets visibly uncomfortable when

(01:19):
he started talking about he's South Texan though, you know
so yeah, so you guys are so so layout We're like, well,
first of all, I cover out, we're gonna get to
your Texas. You guys are both born in like actual Texas,
real Texans. But then this is Jordan's Sailers first time.
So are you pronounced your name Stillers? Stillers yea. I
used to think of Silers just from reading it too much. Stillers.

(01:43):
It's actually a very uncommon last name. Uh, You're not
You're you're barely even American. Man. Yeah, I live in Texas.
Now I've been embraced. I've married into the state. You
could say, born in Winnipeg, Canada. Up. Born in Winnipeg. Um,
lived there for well, lived in Calgary, actually for five

(02:05):
years in Alberta, and then moved to Texas when I
was seven. And then we moved to Virginia when I
was eleven. Um, and that's where my parents still are.
But now I live in Texas. Why were they Why
were they doing all that moving around for my dad
to go to grad school and then Virginia is where
he found a job out of college. If you go,

(02:27):
if you spend much time on our website, you've probably
read many of Jordan's uh caliber battles, gun battles. Yeah,
that's me, he writes. The comparison contrast dude. The other day,
I was actually doing a little comparison contrast research and
I want to just from Google Search, I want to

(02:48):
read one of your damn articles. Good, good, that's what
we want. We want it showing right up there, showing
right up. Yeah, I read it for real. Yeah. Yeah.
I had a buddy just tell me the other day.
He was like, I'm trying to figure out whether I forget.
It was like three or eight or six five, and
I found this article. I started reading it and I
looked up and I realized, hey, I know that guy.

(03:10):
So yeah, trying to think about when I was digging
into I think I was digging into the um two
fifty seven weather be versus the the whether the man.
I've written a lot of these. I'd have to look

(03:31):
it at. There's like a twenty six on six right
or something like that, Like, would it makes sense that
I was comparing the two seven weather be with the
six Yeah? I think so they're both caliber cost difference
on the AMMO. Yeah. Yeah, that's big. That's big. And
that's something I think people don't often like think about

(03:53):
when they're buying a gun. Yeah, and then they go
try to buy m O and because it I think
it has to be cheap enough to pray just with.
You know, you want to be able to go out
and practice with the gun. You're gonna you're gonna use
hunting and if the AMMO is too expensive, you can't
really do that. So how do you get when you're
doing a caliber battle? How do you break it down? Uh?
So the first categories ballistics UM, which is just like

(04:16):
how fast is the bullet going, what is it weigh
what's the energy? Um? And then the second is shootability.
So we talked about um the recoil, so we we
say how much does it hurt your shoulder and your wallet? Um? So,
how much does it recoil? And then how much does
the AMMO cost? And then we look at versatility. It's

(04:36):
the last one. You know what I think is the
least shootable gun on the planet, even though I've owned
him and like them. Yeah is the seven? Yeah? How is?
It doesn't make sense? It is the fastest punch to
the head. It's like it's the most accelerated punch to
your jaw comes so fast. Yeah, for a while I

(04:59):
was shooting, is said, have a millimane or three s
h and three SEV and H kicks, but it's like
it takes five minutes for the kick to play out. Yeah,
so it's not that bad. It's like yeah, yeah, it
depends on the weight of the gun to seven MILLI
like pop, that's what I was purchased as my first
deer off like nine years old. Oh yeah, it's like,

(05:23):
why are my teeth? I'm surprised. I'm surprised you stuck
with it. I'm a bone hunter now. The Yeah, so shootability,
which is that yep? And then versatility. We talked about
kind of the range of animals that can be taken with,
which comes out on how many loads you can get
for it. In some respects, Yeah, a lot of times

(05:44):
it's like the range of bullet weights. Um so if
you have something that can go down to kind of
those light varmint bullets and then up to like you know,
elk and moose, then it's it has a good range.
I was thinking today you should do like, um, like
imagine it all that ship's like the playoffs? Right no, no, no,

(06:05):
that was all regular season, right sports sports analogies, God
bless you for trying to you know, someone should start
app it'd be a great app. Politicians will be able
to use it and stuff where you type in the
thing and then it generates a sports analogy. That's good. Yeah,
So you could be like, if you're just trying to

(06:26):
connect with the common man, I could use that. You
can like type it in and it's spit out like
a like a yeah, great sports analogy, new kind of yeah,
a new kind of AI. So to put into sports analogy,
it has been the regular season, Yeah yeah, you're gonna
have the playoffs and then you're gonna have the ind

(06:48):
five so close and then you're gonna have Yeah. Yeah,
I've thought about doing a kind of March Madness like Brackett,
you know, just just to throw another analogy out there. Yeah. Yeah.
It starts to be tricky because like if you're comparing

(07:08):
like a like a twenty too long rifle, it's like
a three o eight. It's like it's hard to really
but I think that you would wind up doing um,
like you know, like small game. Yeah, there you go,
different greatest of the greatest, like verse, you could do
the greatest versatile big game gun. There you go, like

(07:29):
you're gonna buy one of them, Lord knows, who knows
what you're gonna go do with it. Yeah. Uh another
question for it would be too late now Auxid already
came out. Yeah, but you're you're you guys are working
on a big expose. Yeah, the beaver expose. Yeah, the
beaver letter right yeah, um yeah, it's coming out today

(07:52):
the day we're recording the podcast. So, um, you only
just go into it, no, just give it a quick
like a quick of course. Okay. Yeah. So um uh
this letter from an organization called the Western Watersheds Project.
They're gonna send a letter to the President Joe Biden,
um requesting that he's uh past an executive order that

(08:15):
bands beaver hunting and trapping on all federal public land
in the US. Um. So the article, we we're kind
of going to break that down and and investigate that.
So meaning uh one wildlife manager put it like, uh,
you're taking a sledge hammer to an issue that requires
a scalpel. Yeah. We had a little bit of chuckle

(08:39):
about this. Can we just can we talk about this
at all? Yeah? I think so what they're saying is
there's some that they're they're saying that like, because of
climate change issues, it's better to have more beavers out there.
Holding back more water. Um. But then simultaneous with them
writing this letter is a out of reporting coming out

(09:01):
of the Arctic where beavers are invading the Arctic because
the climate change and they're exacerbating climate change because of
their activities in the Arctic. So then here you have
these guys making this really ham handed. This gets this
gets funny in the minute, making this very ham handed thing,
like all federally managed public lands, well the American Arctic

(09:25):
is I don't know what nine federally managed public lands.
So you're saying to mitigate climate change, we're going to
remove a tool you would use to address climate change.
And then Jordan goes to them for comments and they're like, oh,
we didn't really think about that. Hold on, will adjust
the letter? Yeah yeah. They they say they haven't seen

(09:50):
the adjusted that they haven't seen the adjusted letter. Yeah yeah,
which by the time, you know, by the time you're
listening to this, maybe they've made those adjustments. But yeah,
and I pointed, in our own state, you have very
fine tuned management of the resource. And I counted up,
so you have they're managed across seven regions. Eleven counties
have closures. This is not a thing that they no

(10:14):
one's willy nilly about the management of the resource. Yeah,
you have state for bear biologist, you know. I mean
to be like, well, I'm gonna talk to him, President Biden,
and he's going to end the whole thing. Yeah. No,
do you people know what you're doing? Yeah, I mean
they have a sound like, well they do. I mean,
that's pretty much what they say that. They have a

(10:35):
line in the letter that talks about how state game
agencies are kind of beholden to hunters, and that's why
it's interesting that they say that Native they they feel
that Native Americans would still be allowed to hunt beavers. Yeah,
they because those ones, those beavers don't help climate change. Yeah, yeah,

(10:56):
they have. Those beavers are not helpful. They have a
few exceptions, one of which are our Native Americans. Yeah,
those beavers, like bro I was gonna hurt climate change. Um.
Jordan's also a huge help on Cal's Weekend Review as well.
So I just want to throw that out there, rock Star. Yeah,
I've been I've been helping Cale with that podcast for

(11:17):
a long time. That's really fun. Hunter Spencer's here. Tell
him about the work you've been doing on the blue
collar Scholars Uh. The Wild mill uh Wild milking Uh competition.
Tommy Edson, the blue collar scholar, has been on the
show before as as a trivia guest. He thought he

(11:37):
kicks acid trivia. We had him out. He got beat bad.
I later learned that part of his secret is that
he pauses to think, and explaining he pauses to think,
so that's a problem. He is on a is the
rodeo event I didn't know about where you hold down

(12:01):
cows and milk him. Yeah. I think the guy like it.
It looks like it's like a team of three or four.
I think two of them are supposed to be able
to go out there and and rope it in some
form or grab it by by the head, and whoever
you can get And then you've got the guy that's
got the milk you know the container. Um, Yeah, and

(12:25):
whoever gets the milk fastest and sprints back to the judge. Yeah,
he's got a team. He wanted. We're gonna sponsor his team.
You know how much cost a sponsor his Wild Milk
team Bucks. However, he says he's going to donate all
the windings back that will roll into the l A.
I so we could come out ahead. Is he a

(12:45):
raw milk drinker? That's a great question. I bet he
gets a little in there. I'm just n no, Yeah,
he might be at the bottom of the horse you so,
uh yeah, yeah, there might be a gnome writing a

(13:07):
wild Well, yeah, I want. I wanted to Hunter to
be like, dude, you need to make a logo for
his milk rodeo team. And then a Hunter was supposed
to be doing normal stuffer his job. Someone found out,
someone named Tracy found out that I've done this half
a plectic that I would have taken Tommy Wild. I
was like, we need a logo for Tommy's Wild Milk team.

(13:28):
And then I later learned you're supposed to have You
had other stuff you're supposed to be working on. But
it's the it's our nome friend riding a big milk
and cow with a jug of milk, and it's bucking.
He's riding a bucking milk cow. Ye celebratory lap around
the ring with his h jugging milk. Dude. I think

(13:48):
that people are gonna when we when we finished that
T shirt, that's gonna be a hot selling T shirt.
It's gonna be I don't know if it messes up
Tommy that his team will have a shirt that's like
widely available to the public. I think it'll go on
an audience sports put this into the sports analogy. We're
going back to that that that professional sports players. You

(14:12):
drank milk when you win the ND five. D Oh
you do it? Champagne? Yeah, champagne. No, there's like all
milk drinking thing. Yeah, it's like, yeah, if your leg
tols a tolerant or allergic to dairy milk. We gotta
put the bottom of the horseshoe on that shirt and

(14:32):
then it'll be very applicable when people show you what's
on a dollar bill, all the crazy ship and symbolism
on there, you know, like the yeah, I'll have a
little horseshoe on there and people are looking at it.
You know what that means, don't you? Um? Okay, keep
the guys from the Element are here. Can you guys

(14:53):
introduce yourselves. Then we gotta do a couple of things
that we're gonna dig in heavy duty. I'm Tyler Jones,
and um, I've got two kids in a while, and
I like to bow hunt deer. There you go, yeah,
says it all Um Casey Smith and Tyler Jones took
my answer. So, yeah, Texas. You guys each have a
wife and two kids yesterday, and you both like to
hunt deer. Absolutely, so we're gonna we're gonna spend a

(15:13):
bunch of time with the with Tyler Casey. But if
you go into YouTube whatever type in the element, you'll
find find a lot of these guys, uh dear bow
hunting materials all over the place. Do a little bit
of that of Texas land public well some no, yeah,
a little bit. Um. What's kind of how we had
to start. Not to say a lot of Texas public

(15:35):
land is a little bit a misnomer there. Yeah, well
just uh that's where we kind of started doing this
stuff and filming and all that, because you had to. Yeah,
it's what's close to home, and we're kind of priced
out of the leasing game, you know, So that's what
we started doing together. Old I started hunting public land
and Texas when I was about toil Thank for white tails. Yeah.

(15:58):
I grew up duck hunting public around mostly that's what that's.
My dad owns a fishing lodge on like fork and
you know, naturally there's the birds around. So grew up
hunting like fork for ducks, and you guys both got started. Yon, Yeah,
I was probably. I started warter fou hunting about eight
so deer hunting next year after that, and bo hunting

(16:22):
about sixteen. That's great, we're gonna dig into that. We
gotta talk. So Cran, you want to talk abou the
bottom of the Horseshoe. Okay, the guy rode in. You're
gonna do it? Oh you just you just didn't you
just say that. I'd love it if you did it. No,
I don't want to do it. You need to practice.
You need to practice. Present here we go. Do you

(16:44):
want me to do it? I think you should do it.
I think it's funnier if you do it. Yeah, you'll
be reading the list out loud and chuckling about it.
So we had an episode called lung King. Oh it
was named after the liver King, but I think there
was there like a big liver King expose. Oh yeah,
he's totally up. Everybody knows that. I mean, just look,
he had ad implants. He did that too. He was

(17:07):
just a really heavy socle and was saying, you know,
all the raw meat was what was making him big.
Fellow Tex for sure, yeah, I should have had him
in here. Well, you know what I need to talk about?
Can you hear me from it? I forgot a whole
thing top about Tommy Edson. He like he like like
he's like Seth and he seems to be like he's

(17:29):
always shopping for a boat, like perpetually shops for boats.
How many does he own? I don't know one. I
don't know. He's always shopping for boats. He sent me.
I gotta I gotta slightly edit this. He sent me
a boat listing for a boat that's up for sale
right now on offer up. Does he want need to
check to see if it's like legit? No, I gotta

(17:51):
edit it because it's um. Remember in the movie Spinal Tap,
he gets accused of being sexes, but he doesn't know
what it means and thinks he says, what's wrong with
being sexy? No, didn't see a spinal Tap. It's in
my top five movies of all time. I gotta slightly
eye at this. Tommy sent me this boat he wants.
This boat listed is my sixteen foot tracker deep v pro.

(18:14):
This boat is a fish killing bastard. It should be outlawed.
And forty nine of fifty states, why not all fifty
because no one fishes in California. Here's the thing, though,
I looked it up this morning. California has twice as
many fishermen as Washington. California has just over two million fishermen.

(18:34):
Washington has less than a million. It's easy, my mom,
I was, I was watching. My mom gets news only
from one place, Like she only watches Fox News because
it doesn't even go read other news like that elsewhere.
So in her mind, the news is what they cover.

(18:56):
She said to be there morning, we're watching Fox News,
and she said this countr would be a lot better
if they got rid of New York California. And I said,
what do you mean, mom, because of the crime. Yes,
So I said, well, let's take a look. So I
started researching violent crime and I didn't spend much time
on it, but I found one thing that's like, Mom,
if you're gonna ditch states because of violent crime, you

(19:19):
gotta get rid of Arkansas. First. Well, I don't know
about that. I was like, here's filer crime per hundred
thousand people, and there you can't even like like if
I was like, California's like eleven. Oh, there's a lot
of hate, a bunch of people like Clay running around

(19:39):
in Arkansas. Crime that is an oxym. I'm not gonna
read the rest of it. It's a great boat description,
but just strive me like how just casually you can
throw hate their way. You know, facts be damned not
to mention it's a huge large mouth bass fisher. That'll

(20:00):
tell you. Yeah. We had a big conversation with two
airline pilots on the way over yesterday, one of them
from California, and we were names. Um. We were just
talk about word from and we told him kind of
what we did and he was like, oh, yeah, I
know some people at fish or something like that. You know.
So the pilot says, you, where are you from? Yeah?

(20:20):
We and we we talked about like four yeah, because
people know we're like four yeah. Yeah. To give you
the little wings that you can pin under your used
to give it out with peanuts. But my kids, when
I was a kid, I had that on the wall.
I had this, they do I've been seen one since
I was a child. Well there's a reason for that.

(20:45):
Do you ask the tour of the cockpit, I do not.
I'm the long King episode. We got to talking about
the bottom of the horse shoe, where the right and
the left come back together and meet. You're following me,
like picture of horse shoes, hang with the open end up,
and he's like, the political right the political left, Well,

(21:08):
there's areas where they get along at the bottom of it.
This guy says, I've worked in politics in various shapes
and forms for more than fifteen years, and working in
a legislative office. A number of staff members have noticed
this phenomenon over the years based on the context we
have received in our office. Here's some of the topics
to include pro raw milk, let's go, pro home schooling,

(21:37):
anti five G, anti fluoride and water, pro home baked
and other goods. Wait, but the parenthetical statement parenthetical for
sale at farmers market and not prepared and an inspected
commercial kitchen. I get that carrot cake and banana bread
from the hutter rights all the time at the local

(22:00):
Anti contrails, chemtrails, COVID you and Agenda one, natural pathic doctors,
and essential oils. So when I write my book called
the Bottom of the Horseshoe, which is an exploration of
where we how areas where we all get along, we'll

(22:23):
be able to include those in there on raw milk
another man, So there was was there a lot of
a lot of raw milk? A lot of feedback? Guys says,
I like the perspective of Dr Reisman on episode four
O nine. Is refreshing to hear doctor questions some of
the norms without being a pseudo scientist quack. I grew

(22:46):
up farming and we always drank fresh, raw milk for
practical reasons. I never thought much of it until I
fell in love with and married a city girl. When
we settled down and started a family, naturally, I bought
a cow, as one does pretty quickly float Pretty quickly, folks,
including my wife, had me questioning whether it was safe

(23:08):
for my children to drink the milk from my cow.
One day, I was on the phone feeling guilty with
a farmer friend, debating if I wasn't irresponsible parent because
I was giving my kids raw milk. Can I interject
real quick? My dad would bring home raw milk and
we called it cow's milk. He's like, it's all cow's milk,

(23:29):
But for some reason in our head, raw milk is
cow's milk to be differentiated from milk, which came from
heaven like the suck he brought home. Dude had like
grass floating it. Man, it was his body was a
dairy farmer named Mr Overley, and he brought home milk.
You had like this milk? Would like separate out right?

(23:51):
Um back to the letter. As I was standing there
on the phone, my one point five year old son
was crawling around the are next to me. I was
pretty stressed out when I looked down to try and
figure out what my son was so focused on. As
I watched him, he was crawling behind the barnyard ducks
with a determined look on his face. As the ducks
would take a ship, he would quickly grab it up

(24:13):
and eat it, then proceed to continue following the ducks,
obviously looking for more. I cut my friend off on
the phone and said, he says a naughty word here.
He said, to hell with it. The milk is not
going to hurt him. It's good thinking. Have your kids

(24:33):
ever eating duck poop? One time we were squirrel hunting,
and my daughter we told the story last night at
the dinner table, We're duck hunting. I turned around. My
dag's spitting yeah, eating dear ship. Look like little chocolates
and I was like rosy eating this and I held
up for dear ship and she's it looked brown M

(24:59):
and m' you got you got you guys ready for
ethics one. Absolutely, it's about tree stance song and put
it to the I'm gonna put it to the to
the element. Boys here, why you why are you justtured
towards your colleague, because we've had some experience with this
and you'll have some good anecdotal thoughts here. Do you

(25:20):
guys know we we have a thing called Chatticotte, which
is Chester. If you combine Chester and etiquette, chat makes sense.
That's one of our favorite things today is to find
two words. Yeah, we did all time. Also, if you
have a series of three words, will take the first
letter of each of those and yeah, which happens more
often than you think in the English language, like little

(25:40):
buck down. Yeah, there's a like a an adjective, a noun,
and a verb. It's a thing that happens in the
English language. So yeah, like h b H yeah or
b h A. They have a new one for that.
They're telling me this morning. Shoot at guys. Yeah, So
there's this like orzation out there called b h A.

(26:01):
Are you familiar with it? It's called the Bozeman Had Association.
So it's you and this is Tyler's by the way,
this is how you came up with this. He's the
genius here. But like there's a certain membership here in
Bozeman of hat wearers that are unlike other places. Right, So,
like if you're a member of the Bozeman Had Association,
there's a couple of qualifications, a couple of what do

(26:23):
they call them, um, you know, different groups within the group, right, um.
But there's like the flat bill like cowboy hat but
not that's kind of felt. And then there's like another
cowboy hat but not it's like Montana like that wolf
felt kind of hat. Yeah, like Indiana Jones head yeah
kind of yeah yeah yeah, but I mean a lot

(26:44):
of gals wear that I guess would be like, oh yeah,
will wear it for sure. Yeah. It's it's got a
bigger brand than in Fedora. Yeah yeah yeah. And then
it's kind of like yeah, it's like you're kind of
half hopping through the Daisies kind of half Western yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, those are members of the Daisies. And then
there's like maybe like a a chet hat or somebody

(27:07):
like that that has like it's kind of like the
fly fish and hat that has a rope across you know,
kind of the between the bill and the top there.
In other words, when we were at d f W,
that's not that's an Austin hat bro Well those places
there are h members in Austin. For the Branch Act.

(27:28):
We knew the gate that we were supposed to be
in just by looking at the v h A. Membership
at the gate W changed a few times and we
followed the we have to see what because yeah, the
rope pad is retro you're like harkening back to a
simpler time when old men had those hats like that
cat usually one by people who can't remember those times.

(27:49):
Actually the second hand information, no, I think they're a
little aware that it's like harkening back to a different times.
There's all of the that there's a t T bit
of irony. M hmm. Irony makes it fun for sure. Yeah. Yeah,
So those are the two main categories. Yeah, those are
two main ones. And and then there's like a bridge

(28:11):
between all that where it's like if it has a
little bit of like jade on it or something like that.
You know what like that whatever the bluestone is, um,
you know kind of a design turise turquoise, yeah, not turquoise. Yeah.
What about when you you get yourself a king rope
pad even though you've never been within fifty ft of
a of a of a rope being used. I'm not

(28:34):
faguing with a king Rob Pad. What does that? Somehow
I don't understand it. Well, it's a company that makes
roping ropes. Okay, yeah, but if you like to ski
a lot, you get yourself a king rope pat as
though you're roping. Well, there's a little bit of correlation.
You do a little more, Yes, got to spend more time.
Deal You're you're you're definitely assuming that being a text

(28:56):
it makes you cowboy. That's what they're talking about, the
king Rob pad. If you google it, it's exactly what
they're talking about. That. Like with the it's like a
little flat where the forehead is, and then it's like
a shorter bill and there's a rope across and it's
like two toned, often including corduroy. Got you so skiers

(29:16):
do that? Here? It means you like to ski a lot? Okay,
which is weird because there's a big ski area here
near here called Big Sky, and if you go to
the hotel there, they don't dress up like their skiing.
They dress up like their cattle ranchers. They make the
valets and stuff dress like their cattle ranchers. When you're

(29:38):
sort of like the antithesis, it's the throwback still second information.
There's like a thing it would be like if you
were at a place trying to think of it. Put
this into the sports analogy. Let's go to be up
to work in Big Sky with a cattle rancher outfit
on would be like if you worked at Peda and

(29:59):
wore a ink coat. Mm hmm. That's not sports. No,
it's different. You guys right for this check question. I
have a cheka question to submit to the council. But
you guys are honorary right now. I hung a climb
and stand on public land in October, about a mile

(30:19):
from the road. I killed a buck from it. In November.
I hunted one day in early I'm already getting confused.
I gotta back up. I didn't I was gonna get
this complicated. Those dates don't matter too much. I hung
a no, No, I'm paying attention to Sometimes I go
into things thinking the not complicating. I hung a climb
and stand on public land in October a mile from

(30:43):
the road, killed a buck from it in November. I
hunted one day in early December. Guess track. Up to
that point, I had seen no sign of other hunters
in the area. After each set, I left the stand
at the bottom of the tree. I hunted today and

(31:09):
when I got to my stand, someone had hung a climber.
I love it. Yeah, I'm sorry. Today when I got
to my stand, so I had hung a climber in
the same tree above my stand. I love it, dude,

(31:29):
I've never heard of that happening. I had to unhook
my stand and reattach it above the other stand to
climb the tree. That's a great story. I ended up
shooting a dough right at dusk and climbed down in
a hurry because it wasn't sure how good the hit was. Well,

(31:51):
it doesn't make a help less sense. True. It depends
on where you here. Yeah, whatever, whatever about the story.
Maybe you want to just go look at their Maybe
you need something we don't. I intended to put my stamp.
I like that that you're sticking up for the guy.
It's good. So you're not like people on social media.
No matter what you do, they find a problem. You
should be liked. Be great social media for Sona. Instead

(32:13):
of being like, I wouldn't skin it that way, I
wouldn't do that that way, be like, um, just be
like a kind of guy who goes on social in
the comments to actually be like, uh, you know, really interesting.
I'm sure he had a wonderful I'm sure he had
a great justification for the way he did it. No,
he's a supportive soul. He does youth ministry. Yea sometimes
Uh probably am just being nice because you know, who knows?

(32:36):
Who knows? Uh, you have a what's the comment that
um that guy made on So we have a pretty
viral video of Tyler shooting a big buck at a
long range and smoked it right, But it's still there's
always somebody who's like, oh, it's the guts, you know,
it's kind of ridiculous. But this dude was like, it
wouldn't matter if you smoked a deer he died inside.
You use the same broadhead to skin him and gut

(32:57):
even packed him out on your back. There'd be somebody
telling you use the wrong product. Yeah, okay, So back
to our back to our individual the lead the tree
stand leap froggers. I ended up shooting a doll right
at dust and climbed down in a hurry because I
wasn't sure how good the hit was. I intended to

(33:18):
put my stand back. I intended to put my stand
back on the bottom, thinking the other hunter would probably
the next one he used the tree, but in the
heat of the moment, I forgot. So now he has
left his stand on top of the other man stand.
So my question is, what is the move if someone
does this? Have I potentially escalated the situation by leap

(33:41):
frogging the others hunters stand after he leap frogged mine,
goes on, I'm gonna I'm gonna go on. He has
a couple of clarifying points. I have a toddler and
pregnant wife at home. Here he's playing the sympathy card,
so I rarely get the scout hunt. I've also killed
two deer from this stand, and I'm not eager to

(34:03):
give up my spot. I'm happy to share its public land,
but I'm not sure what my next move should be.
I should point out that none of my stuff was
bothered or stolen, so take that into consideration when assessing
potential etiquette violations. I got a lot to safe, would
take it away. I love this question man um. Sometimes

(34:27):
without getting too deep tactically, the tree is the tree.
You have to be in that tree to kill deer
in that spot. I feel like as a bow hunter
with a gun, it's a little less maybe so, but
I can see I've actually been in this this position
before the leap froggerum or the leap frog. So I

(34:50):
killed a deer from a tree in and the next
year there was a tree stand in that tree. And
you can't claim a spot in the state with a
tree stand. You can you can legally hunt somebody else's
tree stand if they're not there. So, but this is
the tree, and this state does not have a lot

(35:11):
of trees in it. So it's one of those situations
where I have continue to hunt that tree some um.
But I don't know, it's just, uh, it's it's really
like as far as what he's asking, um, I mean,
you never know if you're gonna escalated situation. You don't
know what that guy's thinking, right, So Um, you try

(35:32):
not to, certainly, but it's kind of weird when guys
are walking around with deadly weapons out in the woods
and you don't know what their demeanor is, you know. Um,
I just think that if there's nothing messed up, this
is the same it's the same situation like leaving trail
cameras out you you, you know, try to be respectful
of other people's trail cameras and hope that they do
the same for you. You see, Guys, we actually had

(35:53):
a guy moon our trail cameras the other day. Understand that. Yeah, yeah,
I've I like that movie. Um, but yeah I don't.
I'm like, I know what's going on out here in
the woods. People do time White till by the moon,
So maybe he was given This guy's situation is like

(36:26):
an ethical net zero. I don't think there's any wrong
done in any of this that he's talking about. Now,
I can see where if he's I'm assuming this guy
is honest because I don't know him, so I'd like
to assume that, Um, if he's honest, that he didn't
mean to like, you know, stack the stand on top
the other guy. Then you know whatever, I think. I
like these two guys A lot. I think that you

(36:47):
would do it like I have a Like many guys.
I argue with my wife about toilet seat, I always
feel like, uh, I think that each user should position
it for their use according to the immediate need. Like
that's what I do. If I come in and find

(37:08):
the seat down, I adjust it according to what I'm
gonna do. I don't go like, well it's down now,
I have to live with it being down and then
p on the seat. So I adjusted ahead of time,
and I'm migrant. Why don't you? I tell my wife,
why don't you make these adjustments as need be and

(37:30):
not a plan on other people, anticipating who might use
it next, and then leave it fit for them to
what She'll point out that, like sitting down. If you
make a mistake and sit down when the seats up,
it's bad, it's not good. I could see him, if
he's really trying to I could see him taking my
wife's approach to toilet seat placement and being an extra

(37:53):
gentleman and move your movie or stand back down to
the bottom. I think I really appreciate you, like it's
all ready for you, my friend. Neither of these guys
touched each other stands. Well, that's what I was gonna say.
It's like, we know that the guy that wrote it
in is considered, but it seems as if potentially the
other guy was too, because he could have taken that
guy's stand off and just laid it by the trade.

(38:13):
But he didn't take his off. But it could have
been the same situation this guy that if forgot too,
because it's not a natural thing. If you plan on
leaving a stand, you don't usally take it off the
tree and put it back on again under another stand
But I'm just saying if he wanted to go extra.
But see, the thing I would worry about is I
would worry about psychologically. I would want him to know
that I'd been there and got one. So I could

(38:33):
picture taking my stand, moving it down, putting his up,
and then maybe scratching like a little notch or something,
and then have a little note that says I scratched
this not I make a notch every time I get
a deer. Here. Notice there's two fresh notches. So that
that person doesn't go thinking, you know, I'd want him

(38:56):
to know who he's dealing with, cold blooded killer. You
could have a a yearly banter back and forth, just
you just keep up with it out the same tree,
you know. It kind of like, let's have a little
journal and share our experiences. Especially if it's annymous. You
never actually meet the guy. He's just a hypothetical dude
who hung the stand. You know, they won't really know
until they both walk out there someday at three o'clock

(39:19):
and they both like there they are, Then they're gonna
have to start it out. I think actually was that
that's a good rom comment the making. We had a
guy right in one time that was having one of
these disputes of someone and one day there's like two
trees kind of together, and he's up in one and
the guy comes and I mean literally climbs up right

(39:41):
behind him, and they sat quite awkwardly, him looking out
one way and the guy looking out the other way. Yeah.
One of our camera guys in Illinois last year, same thing.
They sat like twenty yards from each other. Yeah, it's
like the second guy is just there to ruin the
experience for the first guy so that he doesn't come back.
It's kind of silly. Yeah, not my favorite. It kind
of ruins it for me, though, like too. Uh, And

(40:03):
I'm not a big like who who kind of experienced
guy too much. I just like to hunt here, but um,
it does. I don't like to sit in another person
stand in particular, like one time in a tree, a
person and used screens, So we're gonna take those out
and be hard to hang my own steps in the tree.
So I used the screens, but then hung my own
stand next to the stand that was in the tree,
partially because I don't like the position that I was

(40:25):
in better than the way he'd hung it. But I
just don't like sitting on it, and you don't. There's
like a safety factor too. You don't know if this
person is using you know, from you're pretty safe, Yeah,
usually his and safety is my number one concerned. Yeah,
it's kind of weird. We're gonna do one last thing.
We're gonna talk about one last thing before we talk
about what we're gonna talk about. Uh, this guy's thought

(40:48):
about you know, I don't know uh what I'm trying
to say. I thought about having him on the show
before because I read this book guy wrote in about
a bad experience he had with one of his works
on Amazon recently, Um, about what he's you know, I
don't know if it's is its censorship. I guess it's censorship.

(41:09):
Censorship let me at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah,
people confuse their's censorship like First Amendment censorship that would
come from the government, right, and then there's just private
companies doing what private companies want to do. So meaning
if someone wrote a big article about how all the
reasons that like hunting should be outlawed, and we said,

(41:30):
I'm I don't feel like publishing that article on our website.
That's not gonna it's I don't that's not gonna go
over well where they'd be like, you're censoring me. You'd
be like, no, it's just we have It's like we
own our own thing and we just do with our
own thing what we want. I'm not censoring you. It's
more like their standards for what is acceptable and allowable
are you know, questionable. We're talking about organization that sits

(41:54):
one rung below the government, which is Amazon. Given another
thirty years, I think they're coming. They're like they're sort
of you know, like how our military will have that
the red phone to the Chinese military, they probably have
like a red emergency phone. Talking between Amazon and the government.

(42:17):
So the guy goes on to write, in my newest book,
more than Wolverine, an Alaska wilderness trap line on the cover.
He's got a there's a picture of him holding the
wolverine trapped in the in the bush, no blood, no gore, animals,
harvest responsibly found, state regulations displayed in a respectful manner.

(42:41):
He had an ad campaign for an Amazon canceled My
ad campaign blows their message following my appeal kind of
blew me away. Anybody, just heads up when designing your
future book covers. M Hello from Amazon Advertiser Support. When
we were seeved your ad campaign more than Wolverine, we

(43:02):
determine that your cover contains images of excessive violence. The
image contains graphic depictions of cadavers m hm. And also
not just that, and also we determine that your ad
contained violent content. To ensure a good customer experience, we

(43:23):
don't allow ads containing images of human or animal abuse, mistreatment,
or distress. Because your ad uses the cover image on
your book, you'll need to update the cover of your
book in order to be eligible for Amazon advertising. A
quick note, I had something about this kind of burned
my ass here to day. One of our senators in
Montana has his profile picture. It's him and his wife,

(43:45):
Senator Danes. It's him his wife and an antelope. So
him and his wife with an antelope. And he got
booted off Twitter, which just struck me as weird because
the whole thing with Elon must Buy and Twitters, they're
supposed to quit screw with everybody about like stupid stuff. Anyways,
his thing got reinstated. I put the picture up on
it on Instagram, so I thought it was interesting that

(44:07):
that is excessive violence. Yeah, I read the musk. Reached
out to him personally to talk about it. Yeah, Kal
thought I was being stupid. It's like, what's the Elon
must have to do with this? I said, well, I
don't know if you've been following this with somebody. It's like,
I think your account got hacked. Dude, he bought Twitter.

(44:29):
The whole thing is he's gonna make Twitter not cracking
down on everybody all the time for like like totally
objective or sorry for totally subjective stuff. And then I
sent him a headline that says that he put it back,
made it back right again. I said, ha, that's what
I wrote, I put like multiple exclama. If you look

(44:51):
at three of them in there, things you'll get dinged
for as bad as Facebook is. If say they've got
a list of fifteen things Instagram, maybe like eight. You
get to Twitter and it's probably like a list of
twenty and fractions, you know, from alcohol to one down
the line, you know, for getting restricted on. Oh, but

(45:15):
I have a book I have so I have books
published with I feel like it's like, I don't Well,
you've got a book that in particular makes me think
of this guy's situation. Well, I have two books. I
have a book of holding a grailing. It's a vertebrate.
I'm holding it a grailing that's no longer alive. So
it's where I have a turkey, right, another vertebrate sentient

(45:41):
being no longer alive, published by the world's biggest book publisher,
Penguin Random House. Uh, but then they they messed with this, dude,
what's your what's your? Don't you have a thing about eyelashes?
You know? If the animal has I forgot about my
own rule? I wonder I wonder if us calling this

(46:03):
out on this podcast will have uh, you know, we'll
get some kind of Amazon message about those books being
up and maybe needing to be taken down, and then
Hunter will have to redesign a cover of you like
cuddling a turkey that's alive, like animal like thing. To
us bringing it up was gonna flag my books, not

(46:24):
fix this guy's situation. Maybe. Yeah, I guess I have
not too much hope When I sent Cal the article
that that um after a little bit of public pressure,
Senator Gaines's Twitter account got put back up with his
grip and grind of his antelope, and Cal said, did
they credit you when they they they had pointed out

(46:45):
they had pointed out ted Ted Cruz. That's like stolen
valor on Ted Cruizes to have because it was me
mans stolen valid. What was the nature that was that?
A profile picture change that triggered it or put up
a new profile picture of him? Is why for then
antelope not a speck of blood to be seen? You
could almost thought the animope was still alive if you

(47:06):
don't know what you're looking at. Yeah, So what you
what you take Hunter as a designer, Well, we could
do a whole podcast on this, but I mean the
situations that we've run into and it's kind of even
hard to quantify because it doesn't make sense. But so

(47:27):
for example, if I had a shot of you in
the field with a meat crafter and we used it
in an ad versus a shot of a meat crafter
on a cutting board, one's getting dinged. One isn't the
same exact thing promoting the same exact thing. But contextually,
I've taken out out of one situation into another because

(47:47):
it looks like I'm fixing the knife someone yea or
or or you're you're using it in a in a
violent way, you know, be it, you know, skinning. So
you're saying like, if you have a picture of a
piece of raw meat, right, or let's say a deer's
leg and you're making an opening cut a dude being
in there, it's bad. But if it's a knife in

(48:10):
an opening cut in a culinary sense, you're fine. Um.
I was talking to Ben Rummery about this and a
couple other situations like f HF has a lot of
trouble because older always in trouble because it's all things
that are accessories to modify a weapon. So you're promoting

(48:33):
the use or sale of a weapon. UM I mean
like if you have a little bullet holster, yeah, or
a little cartridge holder. The worst one is the bear
spray holster. No, whether you show it in the field
or you just show because it's harming the bear as
opposed to saving potentially saving your own life. Pepper spray. Oh,

(48:55):
pepper spray. Yeah. What So that's like one of the
ones at the top that nobody even bothers doing because
they're thinking of pepper spray being used in like a
militious sort of environment rather than like for protections. I
would assume yeah, yeah, Um. Now here's one that's puzzling.
Um that we were talking about this morning was obsidian

(49:16):
pants for the longest time would get dinged. And what
ends up happening is so when they go just a
plane picture someone, Yeah you don't have to show. Yeah,
the ad could just be of the pant. But I
think what I guess it happened over time is when
they go to scan that ad, they're also checking the

(49:38):
landing page to where that ad is taking you to.
So if that it was you know, the city, and
pant takes you to a page where that you in
a hunting situation, then that gives them cause to paying
that ad. So it's it's not just visually what that
ad looks like, but it's a lot of times you know,

(49:59):
the loophole where it's taking you too. Yeah, because the
way that they justify those is you don't want to
be scrolling through necessarily and see something that is offensive
you don't like, right, But if they're also looking at
the landing page, that says it's about the product itself,
not just your user experience. Correct, correct, Like we've never

(50:19):
we don't seem to have issues promoting Vortex in a
sense when you're not necessarily showing it on a weapon. However,
sig no go. And I don't know if that's tied
to because of it being uh, you know, they're thinking
in terms of you know, the I mean rifle and

(50:39):
stuff like that, pistols, right, So I don't know if
Vortex gets Vortex makes optics and optics right, and that
could be for you know, golf, birding, whatever. There's got
to be some kind of workaround. Is there like a
universal symbol or visual of a thing that is like
so neutral or like, I don't know, a box of
lucky charms and we just put that in the background

(51:00):
of every picture that we put up. Yeah, until they
find out, until General Mills comes out to you. Yea. Um,
but yeah, it's it's Traine. I mean you just eventually
kind of learned, you know. Ah, I mean it's it's
it makes it a little tough in certain situations, Like
I said, with like rifle slings and things like that.
I mean, how do you how do you promote or

(51:24):
use that? Um? Uh? Yeah. The meat crafter was definitely,
uh a unique and tough one. So a lot of
times I'll just take my own meat crafter and photograph it.
You know. She'd called the tofu crafter promoted for you absolutely. See, man,
you know what the problem is, Like, I got like

(51:46):
two things that are happening at the same time. I'm
getting older and Ship's getting more ridiculous. And when you're older,
you get less tolerant or ridiculous stuff. And I feel
like at trajectory if you're just on an exponential Yeah,

(52:06):
it's a war on Christmas. It's like that's like you
know what I mean, I'm there. I'll probably say it
not as a joke next year, you know what I mean?
Like the besieged feeling, Yeah, but it's like that plays
in are gonna be on a balcony like Steller and
waldor from the mupp That's just me a brody. But

(52:27):
I started to think called besiege the old Men. But
that's a good point about the grailing, because it does
make me wonder, like visually, you know, I don't recall
any dangs with anything spear fishing related, you know any Yeah,
no eyelashes. What if you shave the eyelashes off your deer?

(52:48):
Now you're gonna do it? Yeah, here's a trip watch
this transition. Do you guys ever get in trouble at
the element for stuff you put on the Internet? Yeah,
I mean mean by trouble like just flash demonetized. I
dealt with Google for weeks one time, and of course

(53:09):
the people I'm in touch with are foreign and the
I mean, I couldn't figure out why our ads weren't running,
and essentially just came to my own conclusions that it
was being censored. There was no I was never told
that it's you know what I mean, like algorithm in
the AI. It's just and the people on the other
end of the line could never tell me that either,

(53:29):
for they don't they don't know exactly right, Yeah, so
I just came to a conclusion that way we would
stop running ads pretty much. There's other individual times to
where a certain video of the demonetized and a personal
appeal would change that. So that get flagged by AI
for having something. And then if you send in the
you know, we eat all the meat. You know, you

(53:51):
you you give a personal appeal to justification of what
you're doing it it would work. You know a lot
of times what you guys used to do pred your
control work. As me tell about that, Clay, Clay told
me to ask you about it, all right, thanks Clay.
I worked for the government, which is just a red flag, right,

(54:12):
but I like state or apist our for a fist. Yeah,
well so we're try funding so um, A portion of
the funding for me as a state trapper came from
APHIS support, portion came from the state which was Wildlife Services,
and a portion incomes from the county that I worked within.
Do we just clarify what APHIS stands for and we'll

(54:32):
plant Health Inspection Service. Yeah, we've had some We've had
some APIs big wigs on the show. Yeah. If this
has got some cool people over there, man, yeah, and
it was like, the thing we brought up is that
they don't they don't get credit for they don't get
credit for a lot of good work they do. People
just take some stuff they do and make it seem
like as controversial as possible. But then they eliminate invasive

(54:53):
neutrius from Chesapeake Bay and yeah, exactly, it's how weird.
But so I was pretty much a glorified county trapper,
you know what it is is used to these uh
counties would just fun to trapper, just old guy you
know around there, just trapped. And in the South, trapp
is different because we don't have a fur market too much,

(55:15):
you know, coons, maybe raccoons whatever, um, and so uh,
coyotes don't really have pelts that are worth anything. Um.
So it's strictly for livestock protection pretty much. And then
you throw the hogs in. In the last thirty years
that have become more of an issue. Um. That's I
spent probably eighty percent of my time on hogs and coyotes.
And then uh, the other rest of that would be

(55:35):
like disease monitoring for avian flu or neutria or uh,
you know, some ladies losing their cats in South Houston.
You can go figure out what's going on there. There
was disease monitoring with the hogs. To your Yeah, there was.
That was kind of cool that. That was one of
my favorite parts. Where so we used to do aerial
operations with hogs, with the helicopter stuff. But um, with
like you know, a purpose, I guess. And who are
you working for doing hogs? Uh? Freface? So you were

(55:58):
shooting hogs from helicopter? Uh so I was not a
gunner in that scenario. Now that what were you doing
from a helicopter? Um, that's a different um job I had. Actually,
so I was a state trapper and then previously and
this is actually one of the things I put on
my on my resume to kind of help me get
that job as I was a I don't know what

(56:20):
you call it. It's a pretty much Yeah, I'm a
guy told me things to ask you about. They're gonna
bleed together in a minute. Yeah. Good. So. Um, I
was a game capture specialist, I guess. So, you know,
the exotic industry is a big thing in Texas. So
we got exotics, especially in the western half of the state.
There's exotics trying out a lot of portions state and

(56:41):
so there they are treated like talking dancers. Right, yeah,
I guess I don't know what is that? What do
you mean you don't tell me? Oh no, okay, okay,
so azotic specialists. Uh so, yeah, I'll clarify. Um, exotic

(57:03):
game animals and not a game animals too. Um caught
some weird things, but um, there's a big industry for those.
They're treated as livestock in Texas according to the Texas
um AD Commissioner or whatever, so you can freely transport
them around the state and out of state too, out
of country even um so, um, we pretty much would
go out and we're glorified cattle wranglers except for rounding

(57:26):
up you know, game animals mostly odd ad access in
black Buck, but a lot of other stuff too, for
people that wanted them out of certain areas or the
wanted them into certain areas all that. Yeah. Um so,
Usually the common scenario was a landowner has a plethora
of exotic game on their property, usually low fence. Uh.

(57:48):
Our company would pay them per head of different game
animals we caught, and then we were kind of a
peddler of those animals. We would then find a high
fenced operation that wouldn't want those animals and then sell
them to them and release them there. So the motivation
on the motivation on the part of the landowner that

(58:10):
has them might be a they want a bunch of
them gone, be they just want to make some money
off the resource, or see both. Usually it was a
lot more of b yeah, a little bit a little
bit of sea mixed in there, but um guy's wheeling
and dealing. Yeah. Man, money is what drives everything, you know,

(58:32):
especially in Texas huge economy. U's Texas is the ninth
or tenth largest economy in the world if you even
look at national scales, So like the state of Texas
is like a national player when it comes to world economy.
So that translates to a lot of money in the state,
but also a very economically minded, like average citizen. So
those people are like, yeah, sure, I'll let you fly

(58:54):
helicopter in my place and catch sixty animals for three
dollars ahead, you know, and then but there's a pretty
hey be turnover there, or like the margins are good,
you know, especially for bigger animals, so you guys would
come in and contract on it. Yeah, we'd uh, and
so are you usually? Are you usually employed by the um.
You don't have to get specifics with your industry but

(59:16):
with your particular outfit. But the way, I just curious
how the industry works. So like you, what do you?
What do you are? You guys gett a percentage of
sale a per animal thing. You're hired by the guy
that wants them. You're hired by the guy that wants
to get rid of him. So I got a daily rate.
I was, you know, just a hand pretty um. And
so my old boss in this, uh, he ran a

(59:39):
business that offered these services, and then usually the helicopter
service was a different service that we would combine with.
So the pilot kind of had his own bird and
then we would team up with him. There would be
a net gunner, a pilot, and then a ground crew.
And I ran ground crew a lot until we went
out west and did all that stuff. And so, h um,

(01:00:00):
there's pretty much like it is a contracted service to
a landowner. And then I'm paid a daily rate. Yea. Yeah,
So you swoop down. Let's say you're what was the
most common an Emily dealt with, I'd say access to here, Yeah,
they come in on a helicopter, come down, pah, landing, Uh,
throwing net on it, shooting net onto It is that
hard to get a hit right, Uh depends on the guy.

(01:00:22):
It's hard to get good at but when you're good
at it. Man, my buddy Chobvy he was. He was
good good net gunners skill. Yes, yeah, very much obtained it.
It's kind of cool. They ran a single shot blank
three O eight pistol and they have like a fabricated
netgun cage that goes in the front of it. You
have these four little weights that you know, one at
each corner of the of the net and pound and

(01:00:42):
then that thing just lies out there and the moving
shot yea. And the other cool thing is the the
talent of the pilot. Man. Some of those pilots are
just insane because they're running at our twenty two, which
is really uh, what's the route where the very maneuverable helicopter. Um,
it's a two s eat, very light weight and man,
they could just do some insane stuff. And what they're

(01:01:04):
doing is they're like not only getting the guy on
the animal, but they're positioning the animal to where the
guy has a good shot and they're kind of directing
animal to a certain direction, all while avoiding live oak
trees and mesquites, and they're flying below deck man like
they are like in the stuff, you know, they're not like.
You can't shoot a netgun from a hundred foot up.
You gotta be probably and somebody probably knows better than me,

(01:01:25):
But just in my experience, looking like forty ft or less,
it's kind of where you want to be. It seemed
like the shoot a little higher, but it's harder the
higher you get because you're losing velocity and the animal
can move more. Stuff like that, and when that that
net gets them that their legs get tangled up whatever.
Usually yeah, and antlered or horn critters are way easier
because you got another thing to get. Yeah, and then

(01:01:47):
the ground coop runs in and you tranquilize it or
you don't even bother to it. That's a different thing.
It's the thing we do. But um, the anytime there's
neck gun, you just stir hog time them pretty much
three around three legs, leaving one leg done. You know,
a little half it's there. Usually leave the net on
them unless it's easy to get off, and then you
just put them in the back of like a UTV
or something like that and take them back to a trailer.

(01:02:07):
Do you blindfold them? Sometimes? Uh, different animals stress worse
than others. Um, black buck, we're kind of bad about
being stressed. Access are pretty tough addad never blindfolded alldad there,
they're just toughest goats, you know. So it just goes
on whether or not that thing is gonna get so
freaked out of die yea. Yeah, the African game really
except for all that which are African game, but planes game,

(01:02:29):
I'll say it that way. Planes game is really finicky,
which black bucking access are not high stream there. Yeah. Yeah,
they're high strung so like um, and they're expensive too.
So one time we lost a will the Beast, which
was a pretty expensive loss, you know, and it was
stressed and it was even tranquilised it's still and it's
still stressed. So that's an expensive animal, fairly expensive. They're

(01:02:50):
super exotics um and wilderbeast is kind of like boring
on that because it's a little rarer in the scheme
of exotics. But like you look at like a games
buck or a z or or a giraffe or a
cudo or addicts, like you're kind of in that super
exotics type range there. Yeah, yeah, and then those we
would usually tranquilize because tranquilization is a little safer and

(01:03:11):
easier on the animal. But with the African game, tranquilization
is a little finnick. You're more finicky because you had
to be really precise with your dosage, which I wasn't
licensed to do that, so I was, you know, just
observing this stuff, but I would see it. Uh you know,
it could go bad pretty easy. And some of those
things are worth like the animals worth like eight nine
thousand bucks, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Like you take like

(01:03:32):
a sable um, that's a I mean back then that
was like a twenty animal and that's this ten years ago,
So he's worth that alive. Yes, not just to a hunter.
You have to a hunter. You're talking a big turnover there,
especially a big one. I know, the ar thing Clay
told me to ask you about. Tell me about it.
You got your pant leg hung up on a Yeah,
I got your pant leg hung up on a one time.

(01:03:54):
I did, Man, do you story on this? Let me
grab a drink of water here, because this is a
white whistle for this one, Ladies jump whistle. That's right. Um,
So this is kind of cool because it's like one
of the first few times I felt like we had
a greater objective than just economic stuff. So we were

(01:04:14):
working in West Texas, um, and the big horn restoration
stuff is a big deal in West Texas, and there's
a ton of addad that inhabit native big horn range.
Uh So what we were doing was a captured in
eradication of addad so they could come in and restock
native big horns. Those two things conflict, I'm sure for
resources and probably for what's the ovis flu or whatever

(01:04:38):
it is that there's some sickness right, the pneumonia. Yeah, yeah,
so I'm sure they conflicted this from uh moves from
domestic sheep species into big horns, and that as much
as as much as market hunting like that decimated big horns. Yeah,
I could see that being the case because there odd
ad are roamers where I've never hunted big horn had

(01:05:00):
spent much time with the before to understand they don't
move as much, right, I mean, is that a thing
like they kind of have their spot. They're not as
uh transient as an odd ad you would say, I
wouldn't ask me. Yeah, I don't know too much, but
it's what it seemed at least like on that subject.
Well at not those all Dad would hit the valley

(01:05:21):
floor and men they take off there, you know. So
the way that sets up is there's these u um
plateaus out there in West Texas. They're kind of like mountains,
but they're flat on top. Everybody knows the platois and there,
you know, thousand acre or something like that, and you'll
have these groups of animals that live on those and
there's valley floor that's completely different ecologically than what that

(01:05:41):
mountain is up there. And those mountains are cool to
be have. Alina's elk all kinds of stuff out there,
really really neat country. Um, I love it out there. Um.
Also we uh this is a side note, but um
sleeping on the ground out there. One out we heard
a uh jet fly below the level of the mountain
while we were out there. So there's some sketchy cartel

(01:06:02):
stuff kind of going on out there. For sure. What
are those mountains top off that? Like? You know, I
don't remember elevation wise, but I would imagine I imagine
those are in the four range something like that. But
it's like I remember being th feet of change from
the valley floor to the top of the mountain and you,
I mean, you gain twenty or lose twenty degrees in temperature.

(01:06:23):
You'd be in short sleeves at the bottom, and by
the time you get out of the truck at the top,
you're putting a jacket on. Just you know, in the
summer in Texas, it's cool. So we're out there doing
this all day work and we're contracted to take like
twenty five rams years and then we're gonna eradicate the
rest um and we are flying a our forty four

(01:06:44):
helicopter which is a four seater um because of the
rugged terrain. So normally you'd have a t V s
ut vs running around on the ground running ground crew,
but out there you can't really do that. You have to,
uh have another guy in the helicopter as a jumper,
which is usually of dumbest guy. And I was a
jumper so uh young, you know, and could do it.

(01:07:05):
I did the whole thing and still to boots Man
ab Peples like to say people that rodeo, Yeah, it's
it's a drilling rush. For sure, guy's gonna ride a
bulls like hell, I'll talk about and grab that thing.
Yeah exactly, And then you don't sleep that night because
you go out and you know, chase wild women and stuff,
you know, former life, you know, just being a wild
young man and so um. We were on the top

(01:07:26):
of a mountain there. I'll keep these names kind of vague,
but we're on top of a mountain that you could
not access by vehicle. It's a plateau um and it's
about like a fifteen degree grade. It's a really heavy
grade up top, and every rock has is about a
basketball size, and it has let your gia growing up
in between the cracks between let you Gia is a

(01:07:47):
Southwestern plant. You've probably seen it. It looks like alo,
but it's not um um what's it doesn't have the
juice inside of it? You know, it's pretty. Is it
one of the ones that when you get in your
ship it feels like you got hit by a hornet? Are? Yeah,
for sure, not for long. A surprisingly short lived pain, yea.
And those that have to eat that stuff, that's what
they're living on. That's what their tongue must feel like.

(01:08:07):
I bet it's rough. Constant pain, tough creators. Man. There
they are something else. So, um, whenever you knit an
animal out there, the jumper has to get out and
deal with that stuff. And back then it's more than
happy to do it. Yeah yeah, and just you know,
do it again next day. Whatever it comes out a

(01:08:29):
kind of a brown tip. Is that the one of
your tom Yeah? And it's you know, eighteen inches tall,
maybe a little taller. We call it what Yankees call those.
We call them. Um, if you're trying to describe where
something as you go, you know that, y'all a looking thing.
There's a lot of there's cool plants out there, and
I got we have a Yankee camera guy. Let me explain.
He now lives in Texas and he's great. But he's like, yeah,

(01:08:52):
he's from north of the Red River, so he's a
Yankee for he's from Illinois. Um and he um. He
likes the names of stuff in Texas, so he's trying to,
you know, learn this stuff. So there's Akato, there's let Guia,
there's we sash Guahillo, there's what else. There's all kinds
of stuff out there. And we were out hunting out

(01:09:13):
there the other day and He's like, look at acaptio
over there. So I kind of just made up words,
you know, just whatever stuff is, you know, just trying
to be like, oh that's what that like a good cheese. Yeah. So, um, anyways,
we need a you, which is a less valuable animal. Right,
So like rams by the inch are worth more money. Uh,

(01:09:36):
a thirty inch ram is considered a big trophy. Anything
over twenty inches is worth a good bit. Anything under
that it's like a banana ram or whatever. And so
the use or at that time, we're three dollars or so,
so already I'm like, okay, well whatever, still like pretty good? Yeah,
well a v fuel and a crew and all that stuff,
you know, like you get a helicopter involved. Yeah, but

(01:09:59):
I don't really care because it's not money out of
my pocket. But still, you know, it's also cool just
put your hands on a big ram. So you know,
I'm thinking about that stuff too. Um and um, the
net is less than ideal. We want to say the net,
I mean like the job of the net gunning, and
my buddy does a great job on that. I'm not
saying that, but it happens, right, just like bad shots
and archery, it happens. Um. So she has a front

(01:10:23):
leg and one horn caught in the net, which means
she is still really mobile, almost more mobile than a
twenty two year old casey, you know what I mean. Like, Uh,
she's getting it and this is her country, right, I'm invading.
I can't walk around on that stuff. Very good. So, um,
I finally catch up with it. You know, I jump
out of a helicopter. Uh that's like not a big jump,

(01:10:43):
but like you know, five six ft or whatever. They
don't land because they can't land up there and that stuff,
and uh, A chase her. She's rolling down the hill,
you know, fighting, and I can already tell it's gonna
be a bad one. There's good ones, bad ones, and
there's in the middle, right and this she has an
attitude and it's a bad situation. Okay, So oh man,
here we go. I finally chase this thing down the

(01:11:06):
hill too, almost the edge of the plateau foot down
cliff pretty much straight down from here, um, and we're
about twenty ft from the edge for when I finally
catch her in huge side relief, right, I finally because
she's not that valuable, still an animal that I don't
want to die for no reason and fall off the

(01:11:26):
side of the mountain, and then I have to account
for what I didn't get her, you know, so you
don't want to be that guy. Um So a lot
of things playing in here. I get caught up to
her and she's hore. So I finally get her tied
up because she's not much in the net, so I
have to really wrestle her to get the three legs
tied up. And uh, the helicopter has a big sling
rope off the bottom. Um, So you know, imagine a

(01:11:48):
really thick nylon rope with the Caribbean near at the
end of it. You run that through the legs of
the odd ad back up to the rope, hooking in,
and they sling her out to a trailer that's like
two or three miles away. You could hang up by
the legs with that. Um you know hogtown there. Yeah,
for sure, that's kind of like the way it's done.
I word of thought. You had to cradle it somehow. Well,

(01:12:09):
a lot of times, you know, there is the like
super ethical way to do things, and then there's the
utilitarian way that companies do stuff. If you see the
state doing stuff, you would did some stuff with the
Mule Deer R Mule Deer Foundation. They they did the
cradle the whole It's like a harness signals around the
whole body and ideally you have the net in there

(01:12:32):
too that is functioning as that, but she didn't and
there's no way to get the net more around her.
But yeah, she she's perfectly fine doing that. Um for sure,
like a survival on this stuff is like in the
high nineties. I bet this is I'm just pulling numbers out,
but I mean we hardly ever lost audad distress um

(01:12:52):
so or injury, like you know, she wouldn't be limping
or anything on that um and so um, I get
to slip rope run through her, I give the guys
the signal like we're good and um this on Reu
gets one last horai at me and flings her head around.
It's like she knew I was there, you know. And

(01:13:14):
her us have horns, but they're not that long, mature
used like ten twelve inches probably something like that, maybe
a little longer depending on the goat. Um and uh,
they know how to use them because they're always there.
They're not like a white tailer drops them, you know,
like those horns are always there. They know exactly what
they're doing with them. She flings her head around, catches

(01:13:35):
the cuff of my right leg on my blue jeans,
and the helicopters going up and all. You know, this
happens fast, right. I process things pretty quickly too, so
this is all kind of going slow in my head.
But before I know it, I'm being lifted off of
the top of a mountain in West Texas, six hours

(01:13:56):
plus from a hospital. Um, which I wouldn't even if this,
you know, went bad. Yeah, exactly, They're gonna have to
have shovels. But I'm being lifted up by my leg
by an ad dad who has slung to a helicopter.
And these guys have no clue that this is happening
because I'm straight below the birds. Yeah. I gave him

(01:14:18):
the go ahead. We're good. And I didn't have anywhere
really to go because the edge was right there and
pretty unsafe anyways, you know, so like never ran through
my mind, Hey, get away from the animal um, and
I'm getting lifted up, and all of a sudden, I'm
off the ground. And remember I was twenty feet or
so from the edge of this mountain, and I can
remember having my hands straight out like this, thinking I'm

(01:14:41):
hanging upside down. I'm looking down at my hands and
I'm seeing the ground go further away, and I'm seeing
this really close. No, man, And I had the pants
for a long time still because I wanted to save them,
because they about six or eight feet off the ground.
I heard that little rip and I fell down to

(01:15:02):
the where I fell, I could spit over the side
of the cliff foot down. Yeah, right then and there, man,
its prayer time for sure, you know. Ship well I was.
I was kind of at that point where it's like
I need to need these plants pants to be really strong,

(01:15:24):
or I need him to rip right. I don't want
to rip it in like a minute. They need to
like take the whole trip or none at all, you know. So, yeah,
I've had some near different experiences, but that's top five
for sure. Now, if you had to wear with all
the undo your bridges, I'd be impressed. I don't know,
you know, under that of your belt, under that amount

(01:15:46):
of pressure, not not like middle pressure, but actual physical pressure,
I don't know if I could do the pants. Yeah, So,
if anything, I was thinking about trying to get ahold
of the animal. But that didn't have to come to
the at If I was ended up hanging out over space,
I probably would have been grabbing something, you know. You know, Um,

(01:16:11):
thank you. It was a lot of fun. But that
a story like that probably ain't all that uncommon. Not
not that that exact scenario plays itself out, but um,
we actually had a film crew come out one time
and film us doing this thing. They were gonna start
like some type of a you know. It was during
the Deadliest Catch days, you know, so they're trying to
get the next great anybody catching something, Yeah, exactly risking

(01:16:32):
their catch something because we were called like they're gonna
call us like modern cowboys or something chilly, you know,
and and uh so like crazy stuff like that. It
was always happening, you know, but that was like mine
for sure. The thing that I remember being that's when
I realized I kind of almost went from young man
to um, you know what, maybe need to get the
stuff figured out a little bit more and not be

(01:16:53):
doing this stuff too much. After that, it's great, that's
a good story. Than just say that story for close
calls man, Well, we can tell it again. I think
if we do, I mean, that would be a great one.
And I think we should cut it out of this
podcast if we actually want to do. We could just
beep out the end. We can beep out the entire

(01:17:14):
And then I was like, uh so, so Tyler, this
is all. This is all before you guys became the elements.
He wouldn't like me back then, I don't think anyway,
So you were wild master, don't you were? Like you

(01:17:35):
almost you were serious about football and almost at NFL. Yeah, yeah,
I played. Uh, I was a power forward and at
SUMME and uh, I think Steve doesn't know what that means.
I don't mean sm he started power forward. Yea, it's

(01:18:02):
like a position. It's a position. Yeah yeah there on
the court, on the court, on the field. Uh yeah,
I played, I was. I was My dad and his
dad and he had an identical twin. They all played
college football, and so I guess you could say I

(01:18:24):
was kind of in that line of that was in
my family, you know, So that was kind of what
uh like, I had some pretty good um, I had
some pretty good coaching, you know, I had I had
a a natural inclination to be pushed that way. I guess.
And so how did you reconcile all that fall sports
playing with with hunting fishing? Yeah, that's so. I actually

(01:18:48):
when I got done with football, um, I kind of
debated on being a coach, and that was the hunting
was the thing that I was like, I missed. I
missed too much at this point, you know. But we
I mean we always went like after football season, we
just that's when we deer hunted. So December you know,
and so everything, you know, and then on the bye

(01:19:10):
week or whatever, you know, anytime I had time that
was I hunted, you know, and we fished a bunch
because we lived on like fok. So you actually getting
a nickname because of that, right, Uh, what's this gonna be? No, No,
it's serious, Mr. December thing because you're always always I
killed most of my deer in December until I was
doing That's what my dad called me. Yeah, you know,
just see because I would always take it down to

(01:19:31):
the wire, you know, chasing a deer. You know. It
was early on deer hunting. I was very much kind
of I was. I was relegated to one property a
lot of times like that was my dad had a
lease in Kansas, and that was where we you know,
that was where I hunted and I got to go

(01:19:51):
three times a year or whatever, so I would always
and that So the way they managed that is they
want like five year old buck shot off of that place.
It's not like strict thing, but you know, we come
from Texas where you know q d M started, and
that was kind of their mindset is like we want
to shoot big old deer. Is that true that q
DM like took hold in Texas for its spread out. Yeah,

(01:20:14):
that's uh yeah, I was down in South Texans and
brush about just just so people who were talking about
Quality Dear Management, which there's a thing there's like Quality
Dear Management Association q DM as it's actually changed the NDIA,
but yeah, but you know that was like that's an organization,
but there's a set of there's a set of principles.
It was eventually exported all around the country. Yeah, And

(01:20:36):
people talk about QDM meaning taking strategies popularized by q
d M A and applying it basically you know, trying
to select age classes and girl big bucks not just
like brown is down. So that's what that my you know,
my dad and the people on that lease with him
where and we basically so I was always looking for

(01:20:56):
I was kind of a little man on totem pole
up there, and so I'm always looking for Like I
don't get to chase the big ones, you know, I
get to chase the old ones that are like nine
years old and have seven points or something like that.
Like they'd tell you if you see this big one,
don't touch it. No. But it's a big place. And
so these deer they hang out in certain areas and

(01:21:20):
they my dad would for sure, but I I just
didn't want to step on you know, I don't. I
didn't feel right hunting his stand, you know what I mean?
Just what's That's what I did sometimes? Yeah, that was
my that was what I did, you know. And and
uh and then eventually, uh, towards the end a college football,

(01:21:41):
I kinda I had to make a decision where I
was playing in some I was playing music and so
I was in a band that was kind of regionally
gaining some success in Texas, and UH kind of got
burnt on football a little bit. Just decided, uh not
to pursue the NFL. Uh. You would send me an
email and you mentioned cold Wetzel. So funny because like

(01:22:01):
big like he had that whole football music. I don't
associate that stuff. Man. Well so I mean Texas football
is huge and music. Yeah so, I mean those are
two things that are common for like a high school
boy to do, or at least in our generation. Now.
I don't think people play instruments too much in high
school anymore. Dude. I think if you went and took

(01:22:22):
the dudes like nothing against him, I hung out with
the ball, You went and took the guys from my
high school to play football, right, like the good the
guys that played. You put that whole crew together. Not
one of them to know how to play an instrument.
I mean they might like cruise the FM dial a
little bit, but they would not think of that. It's

(01:22:42):
like a you know, guys are like football and music.
Ted Nugent fans, Yeah yeah, man, yeah, I mean Motor
City man. Man, he's but he didn't play football, Dune, No,
but he's surely some Michiganders were looking at him like
I want to be that. You know, tons of dudes
there was. I would say more like there was some
more like hunting music cross over. I'm saying, fuck like

(01:23:05):
the and maybe I just met just recently met you
and me recently met CO. So I just happened to
just meet two football musician people. I just don't think
of that as the thing. And I'm saying, when when
where I grew up, Like the football guys weren't like
going home and string getting out the old six string. Yeah,
guys from my hometown. You know it's a I said,

(01:23:27):
we'll ago how the uh you know, the Alamo movie
kind of not but Friday out Lights. It's really how
he is, man. I mean it's really close, you know. So,
like part of it is like to get the girl,
so you learn how to play music. But yours really
wasn't that different. Uh. I had some good friends that
I had two good friends that started playing guitar, And
I'm just sitting around six months later listening to them

(01:23:48):
play Green Day songs and stuff, and I'm like, I
wish I could do that, you know so, And until recently,
I was the only guy still playing guitar at all them,
you know. So, But you guys had a serious band going, Yeah,
we had. I had. I was in a couple. There
was the first one came through football. Actually met a
guy who was a singer, songwriter and one of the

(01:24:08):
crazier people ever met. And uh, you know, he kind
of forced me. I was a songwriter. He forced me
to learn what some people would call lead guitar and
um and kind of be a harmony singer with him
and help him write and that kind of thing. So
we did that for like five years, had quite a
thing going on. And it's a long story, but basically

(01:24:29):
he sent an email it was not very good to
somebody he didn't know was as well connected as they were,
and we got like blacklisted and lost like half our
schedule for the next six months. And uh up, yeah,
can you go in a little more detailship, Yeah, no,

(01:24:50):
there was okay, So we played a show in Manhattan, Kansas,
and uh, we had we had recently had some pretty
good radio success. Um told the name of the band.
The name. The name was Clay Wilson Band. You know
he was. It was very like what people would call
Texas country when we started out, and it became a

(01:25:12):
lot more kind of I don't know, artistic or abstract
or heavy rockets and some country elements. Yeah yeah, and uh,
and so we went and play it. We opened for
a guy I won't say his name, but just not
into you know, doing that, So you wouldn't know this guy.

(01:25:33):
Yeah you would know him. Uh, just kind of a
regional dude that had a lot of money and had
a bus and yeah. Uh anyway, we opened for him
at this place and there's like, um, it's probably like
a four or five cat venue and um because of
the radio single we had that like everybody showed up

(01:25:57):
for us and was singing this song that was our
radio single currently. It was like the first time we've
ever seen this happen really, especially outside of the state,
and so we were kind of taken aback by it.
But like I said, he's I mean, this the lead singer.
He was at my wedding. But he's one of the
craziest people I've ever met, just you know, but also
like a sweet dude like you would you would he

(01:26:19):
would do anything for you. He would, you know, he's
a good friend, like crazy like Van Go old type stuff. Yeah,
I don't I hadn't studied vand Go too much, but
he would. I mean he would like put a little
of his ear off and bailed it to his girlfriend. No,
not that crazy, but uh, definitely like you know, would
spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars a week on alcohol,

(01:26:41):
and well that kind of like party crazy, party crazy, yeah,
not like um or whatever. Yeah. Um. Anyway, so we
play the show, h our crowd is better than the singer,
the main acts crowd and stage a little bit. Yeah
and uh at the so but while he's on stage,

(01:27:03):
our guys are in the you know in and in
the back party. And well there's a glass window behind
the stage to the outside, this outside deck where people
can hang out and stuff. You know, they're back. They're
just messing around. They're not trying to distract from a show,
but they are certainly doing that because everybody looking at
the stage is seeing through the back window at this
party going out and just people being you know, unruly

(01:27:26):
and like their butts are out potentially potentially um yeah,
I I so I actually you know side note, I
never even uh drank alcohol. I never tried alcohol until
I was twenty two years old, just as like a
discipline thing. I wanted to like prove that I could

(01:27:48):
just dude, I didn't know about the word discipline. Yeah,
it's and we have we're so alike indifferent too, and
a lot of specs to, which makes it would compliment
pretty well. But you know I'm talking about Casey here.
But um. Anyway, so they have a long story short.
We get a email from his management because he complained

(01:28:11):
about us causing a scene um, and she was just like,
you know, hey, just ask you if they were play
with him again, don't you know, don't be distracting or whatever.
At this point, like we've seen some success, the lead
singer kind of gets the big head a little bit
and he's like, he tells our manager, who's also seriously
the nicest guy I've ever metched about. He tells him, Hey,
if you don't send an email in twenty four hours,

(01:28:31):
I'm sending an email um to this lady and it's
not gonna be good. And he wants him to say
these specific things like, look, if I want to disturb
someone else's show, I'll pretty much my god, mind your
business kind of thing. And he's and my manager, Jared
said no, I'm not gonna do that, man. And twenty

(01:28:53):
four hours later, Clay sends this email. My best friend
at s m U actually helped him craft the email.
He said, Man, I toned it on as much as
I could. It was pretty rough and essentially her husband,
uh owned a company that works real tie with Toby Keith.
At the time, we didn't know that was a connection,

(01:29:15):
and she was a regional radio rep and so just
I mean literally, uh, within hours, it was like you
didn't hear that radio single anyway? We lost uh like
seriously half our shows, probably only that were on the books.
And uh that was when I was like, and things
have gotten crazy. Man like a little big for his

(01:29:36):
bridges and like people on the band, we're bringing just
gallon bags of you know, pot and on road trips.
I had a six month old, no money, I mean
no money my wife. Uh, I didn't have a job
at the time. Um, and so we're just broke. And
I'm like, if I go to jail, we're toast. I

(01:29:57):
can't do it. We can't we can't make it as
a family, you know. And if I go and I
knew these guys, if we got caught with drugs and stuff,
I was they were gonna I was gonna go down
with them, even though I wasn't do any of that stuff.
And so I just I said, you know what, I'm
a songwriter two and I know I had met a
few guys recently in Sulfur Springs where he grew up
that were musicians, pretty good young guys. They were all

(01:30:17):
like four years for five years earn me and started
my band and then but I had a lot of
network and connections through that, so we were able to
jump start pretty well and you know, for the next
four or five years did our thing was. It was fun.
That's an example of great decision making, very smart. Thank you.
I uh, I guess you could say that being sober

(01:30:40):
helped me. Uh Tyler in the tribe. We still record
every summer, my my so we we. The reason we
stopped touring was we played a big so we we
turned into country music, like kind of subculture, I guess
in those circles. But we we we kind of especially

(01:31:02):
now have edged more rock and um we always didn't
like fit in completely, you know. So, but we did
play a big show that was called uh Texas Thunder
or something as a big festival with like uh big
artists at the time like Florida, Georgia, Line, Brad Paisley,
some of these big country artists. Um Texas Thunder sounds

(01:31:25):
like a weed stream. Yeah, there's probably plenty of them.
Out there. Yeah. Exc when I was growing up, there
was like fruit Port Crippler, Texas. Yeah, tell them about
the inauguration. It's a local here. The uh now we
played Wyoming inauguration. Yeah, yeah, pretty close here. Yeah, Governor

(01:31:46):
Maade Matt Mead, Yeah, we played as inauguration one time
the band I did. Yeah, yeah, they saw us. So
we actually played the Republican National Governor's Convention in San Diego. Uh.
They flew his first class. Who was the actor that
I flew with? I can't even remember his name. Flew
right next to that guy on the way back from

(01:32:06):
that show. But anyway, Matt has been the most annoying
guy on the planet. And like, yeah, quoting his movie. Yeah,
I don't watch any movies, so I I when they
walked on the planets, like, I know that guy, I
just don't know who he is, you know, and my
buddy told me he was. But long story short, we

(01:32:27):
played that and then Matt Mead's wife really liked We
gotta back up for a second. Probably uh, perhaps the
greatest movie he's in, Perhaps the greatest movie ever made.
Monsome dove yep Pocalypse now the Pocalypse. Now, none of

(01:32:47):
these I've seen the other day. I was, it's just
we have a guy. You'll meet him in a minute.
Spencer new Heart, I've met him before, Okay, the other
day he's him. The same director that made Apocalypse Now
made what is perhaps the second greatest movie ever made,
which is called The Godfather too. Spencer Deuhaus never seen

(01:33:10):
any of the Godfather movies. He's like, well, I don't
feel that bad if I haven't seen a movie that's
made four I was born, Spencer, but that hurts me.
I told him I was to listen, man, you gotta
make me a promise that in two weeks you'll have
watched The Godfather. Yeah, he's he's he's in that, he's in.

(01:33:31):
He's a conciliers. What's the word they use. He's like
not Italian in the Godfather movies, he's not Italian, and
he's like a outsider. He's like Irish or something. But
he's like there, he's like legal counsel. He's a conciliers
to the Italian mafia. He's like the only non Italian

(01:33:52):
they trust. And two is like the all of the trilogy.
Neither of us have seen either of those movies. Either
should write something trivia and just the best Robert movie
is not some stuff he's been The second Hand Lines
is one of the best ever. Michael Haley, Joel Osmond,

(01:34:16):
Michael Caine, in a joking mood, I say that Ranchold
He Looks was the greatest American movie ever made. In
a joking mood. He wasn't a nat but he's like in.
He's in. Like if you get a bunch of critics
together and stuff and they like make a list of
the ten greatest movies they're made some bitches in a
couple of them. Yeah, he's great. And people off often
like you know, like Loan some doves highly regarded. We

(01:34:38):
don't see poodles. You for being on the plane with
the guy, I mean, I've had big plans him a
huge favor by not saying anything to him. I was
right behind him and I didn't say anything. He probably
loved you, he did. He actual guy don't talk to
He was the first talking to him. Yeah, he had
a he had a baseball cap on super Low and
everybody walked on and he was the first one on
the plane. Everybody walked right by, just sat there like this.

(01:35:00):
Took his hat off when everybody loaded on and they
closed the door when he wasn't incognito anymore, and they
were talking about it. Yeah, I love the smell day
Paul give him that one. No, No, but it was
we were riding. That's the only time I've ever been
first class in a plane. It was cool because the
Republican governors flew us out that way, so it's great.
They booked your first class. Yeah, they booked his first class.

(01:35:22):
And then, like I said, Matt Maid's wife saw us there,
liked us. Julie, I can't remember it now. She's like,
I feel like she's like six too, she's super tall. Yeah,
she she had. Yeah. I was telling him, you ought
to run for president. Yeah, nothing's gonna do it. No,
I wouldn't either. He kind of had that attitude like

(01:35:46):
about He had that like old George Washington style attitude
about public service, like do a thing, yeah, and then
you know, do a thing, go in, dude, public service,
leave public service, right yeah, let somebody else come in
and yeah, And I'd be like, like, you like contribute

(01:36:06):
to society, you get like reach a level of maturation,
do with time in public service say goodbye? Yeah? Yeah,
because it doesn't happen anymore. So, Yeah, we played U
Governor means inauguration, which was very weird, um because we're

(01:36:29):
playing just head banging. No, but but there were people
that were way too old to be doing that doing that,
you know, so uh it was it was very interesting.
You know. We tried to play some George Strait got
him up there to sing, and he was not much
for singing. Yeah, very reserved when he's on stage. Um.

(01:36:52):
But yeah, that was that was kind of like that
was the end of that band pretty much. We started
to kind of fizzle out and I could see guess
the riding on the wall and then uh, my band
after we started four five years later, like I said,
we were playing that that festival out in Midland, Texas,

(01:37:12):
out in the world country, that's a Friday light lights country,
and um, I was I was supposed to have my
second kid Journey. Um like any day you named your
kid journey after the band, um or just after journeys. Well,
we wanted a jay name. My wife's big on the
it's not alliteration. Yeah, so uh we already had one. Yeah,

(01:37:36):
so the second one had to be that phenomenon they
go with Jay's like I grew up with Genie, John
and Jason. People that want to go all letter. They
rarely break from Jay. Really, I don't think can you
think of any examples. My wife's family is a bunch
of kys. Oh they went with kids. That's very close
to the what comes after Jay? We're progressive here a

(01:38:00):
bunch of q You ever watched um Seven Brides for
Seven Brothers. It's old musical, pretty good. It's one of
my favorites. So uh. The mom wanted Bible names and
a dad wanted the alphabet, so they have Abraham through
F and they couldn't find the F. So they named
the baby Frankin. Since it's pretty good anyway, So we

(01:38:27):
because she was supposed to she was do really soon.
I had decided to drive her car out play the show,
and then we drove out. Um or, I drove out
that night, and so I'm in the hospital and I
find out there was only our tour manager. Who's this
big dude from Uncertain Texas who was six ten. I
don't know how or why he decided he should fit

(01:38:49):
in a van and uncertain Texas. Uncertain Texas, yep, so
right right on the border Louisiana and near Cattle Lake,
the only natural lake in Texas, and um, just good,
good dude loved him. Uh. And then two guys I
think it was our drummer and our guitar player, and
the guitar player was driving. He was definitely the worst

(01:39:09):
driver of us all. And I don't know if there
was anything involved in this accident, but I do know
they were in a like construction zone where the they
put those concrete walls up, you know, to kind of
like devvy you to a different direction, and um, they
I guess somehow hit one of those total ur van. Um.
Our guitar player also happened to be Uh. He's very

(01:39:31):
introverted and didn't really hang out with us on trips
a whole lot. He puts ear phones in, you know,
and just do his own thing. Um. And but we
still loved him. A good guy, you know overall. And um,
he apparently totals our van. He's also kind of does
like a lot of our finances, whatever that means. I mean,
you know, just we got we had a couple of loans.

(01:39:52):
We had a loan pulled out to get our first
album done, or really our second album, but our first
you know, Uh, produce. We produced our first album, we
wanted a different producer and um, anyway, it was tied
to the van. The van was collateral on the loan
note for that album. So to get the uh the

(01:40:13):
van title, UM, so that we could claim insurance, we
had to pay off the note for the album and
it left us with sixty seven dollars in our account
and and so and then uh, two weeks later, our
guitar player quit, just out of out of the blue.
And when he quit, there you know, he was good
friends from high school with the other two dudes in

(01:40:35):
the band, and they were like, man, I just don't
really want to play without him. You know, things were
going well um overall, but we were all just I
always think that that the biggest like stifle to creativity
is uh, too big a workload on people. I think
that's what That's what stimy's creativity, in my opinion, is
when people get so busy that they don't have time

(01:40:56):
to sit there and think, you know, yeah, and so
I feel like that uh, we were at that point,
We're like, we're all working these jobs at pizza in
I was basically a glorified janitor at my dad's fishing lodge.
You know, I have a degree from s m U
with a economics which is like I could go get
a good job in Dallas, you know, but I'm making

(01:41:17):
you know, hardly anything working for my dad just because
he would let me go tour on the weekends, you know.
And so uh, anyway, we're all just like kind of
burnt a little bit, but we're doing good things. We're
still just on this weird we're in this weird category.
We're not making a whole lot of money still, um,
but we're playing some big shows a big artist. Anyway,

(01:41:38):
when he quit, everybody else to kind of fell off,
and uh, I truly like kind of went into I
would say I went I was depressed for like eighteen
months and um, and kind of had to work through that.
But that was kind of the end of the whole thing.
Is just like, you know, we're playing this big festival
guitar play gets in the Wreck and Totals of Van
and that was But it was like at the time,

(01:42:00):
I was depressed for eight teen months, But then I
look back on it years later, a couple of years later,
and like I got to spend all that time with
my daughter as a newborn that I would not have
I would have been gone all the time. You know,
I was gone all the time. And my son at
the time, you know, he's five at the time, four
years old whatever it is. So you know, we're just
like I got to spend some like precious time with

(01:42:23):
them that I would don't. I would not trade anything
for good. Yeah, and so I it was definitely blessing.
I'm very glad it happened. And now things are a
lot more calm and have a you know, decent job,
and I'm just really appreciative for that as opposed to,
you know, doing the touring thing. It's hard. You probably

(01:42:44):
talked co about it, so it's it's not always easy.
And he's doing he's super successful right now, so he
probably gets to you know, at the time, we were
loading all our own stuff in and out. I was
driving the van a lot. And I don't sleep well,
you know, like I mean, if I I'll wake up
when it pen drops, you know. So it's just I didn't.
I would go to sleep at four and wake up

(01:43:06):
at six thirty, you know, and then go do it
all over again. Bloodshot. It was. It was tough for
a twenty five year old. Even it's tough, you know,
I can't imagine doing it right now for sure. So
how did you guys meet? Funny story, you say it
how you wanted. So I will always joke that we
made on the internet. Um, but we didn't go to

(01:43:27):
the same high school. Uh, but my wife is from
the same hometown as Tyler's right up the road, you know,
like uh like eighteen miles or something like that. I
don't know. Um. And um, when my wife and I
were dating, she was like, Hey, this guy fly fishes.
You should go fly fish with him because I like
to fly fish a lot too. Um. And so I

(01:43:47):
was like, okay, you made a film going fishing at
the Valley of at All in New Mexico and I watched.
I was like it was pretty cool. Yeah. So uh
she was like, now, um, I don't think she regrets it,
but now fly fishing for large mouths or you went
to trout water no, So like it's funny, yeah a
little bit. But um, we kind of grew up in

(01:44:07):
that bass culture thing with like fancy boats, fancy trucks,
and we didn't really weren't in it that much because
we were pretty poor. But like we saw that this
firsthand for me because my dad had a fishing lodge
and that was I mean, it was just like the
nineties were crazy at Fork, like it was operation world Record.
I mean they were trying to break the world record
at Fork. It was like all this new, this whole

(01:44:29):
new school thought as like pertaining to large mouth bass.
Text parks and wildlife was trying to grow the biggest
bass they could and Fork was a place that they
were supposed to do it. You know, they're a double
digit every day in the spring. It felt like whenever,
like in those days like that. I mean, it was
just it was crazy that that fishing lodge was a
large mouth bass fishing lodge. Um, they called it a

(01:44:53):
bass and breakfast. It was kind of a play on words. Yeah,
so um it was. It was pretty much still probably
is the hot kind of the more high class, one
of the nicer places on the lake. Yeah. It's got
seven rooms and my dad it was originally like a
house slash real estate office for when the lake, you know,
when they did eminent domain, all the lake, all the

(01:45:15):
new property around the lake is all a sudden worth
a lot more like it took a lot of money
away from those land away from those landowners. But it
also created this new lake front property that is worth
a lot of money. And so this guy, this proprietor
kind of opens up this business slash his house. It's
a big place. While he sold it to my dad,

(01:45:36):
and my dad kind of renovated a little bit and
put bathrooms in rooms and what's it called Lake FOURK
Lodge pass and breakfast. So he's well, they used to make.
My mom's a really good cook and and they used
to make a huge breakfast for everybody stayed there at
ten thirty. So the guys would fish the morning and
bring them all back in and they'd eat just you know,

(01:45:58):
sixty eggs and all the biscuits and gravy and sinemon
rolls and everything. My mom made everything, you know homemade. Yeah,
my parents still do it, but they they have scaled
back a lot because as you could imagine, phone calls
at midnight from you know, they pretty much do groups,
and they kind of do it more like an airbnb
thing where it's like, hey, you kind of take care
of yourself where you're there this weekend. You know, So

(01:46:20):
you rebelled and decided to become a trout fisherman kind of.
I don't know. Originally I was fly fishing for bass
because you know, at sixteen or whatever, seventeen like, but
not really, I don't really. The Rockies is a whole
different world, you know. Um, But if in college that's
what I dreamed about. I didn't have any free time

(01:46:41):
in college. I mean we were practicing like probably three
fifteen thirty days a year, you know, so any time.
But my dream I would read books about fly fishing
and tied flies in my own room and just you know,
that was what I wanted to do. And I don't
know if it was like an active counterculture role mindset,

(01:47:02):
but it probably was countercultural subconscious nudged that way a lot,
you know, because you kind of just see this whole
just like flash and bang of big bass fishing and
ninety thousand dollar boats and ninety thousand dollar trucks and
you know, all the things that come with it, and
it's like, I don't know, it's a little bit of
that and a little bit of also this whole mystique

(01:47:22):
and the Rockies. The inability to to buy ELK tags,
when you can go get to thirty dollar fishing license,
you know, that's kind of what drove me that way.
Probably you guys caught wind of each other. Yeah. I
was actually living on the coast, working for a fist
and spending all my free time fly fishing in the bay.
That's how I learned how to fly fish pretty much.

(01:47:43):
I was like Tyler, I had that you know, the
warm trout, yeah, red trout and flounder, you know, and
and honestly, I really like catching sheep head, which might
be different than what you'll call it sheepid, but I
know that. I know that about big teeth. You know,
jump some tarp in too. I did jump some tarping
on fly. Yeah that's kind of wild. Um. So that's
how we kind of started lining up. Was m Tyler

(01:48:07):
saved my name in his phone is what was it?
Uh something? Because I really wanted to catch her red
fish you know at the time on the fly. So
we still haven't done that. But um, I was up there.
I was long distance with my girlfriend at that time,
who's my wife now, and I was up visiting her
and him and I planned a little fly fishing trip

(01:48:28):
to a place that we have um uh striper fishery, um,
you know, stock strapper fishery. I think they might reproduce
there anyways, it's there's enough salinity that I think they
have reproducing population, So pretty good fishery. I actually caught
one there a month before, a nice fish, like you know,
twenty five in long fish and um, so we took
a little trip up there, and Tyler was like, hey, man,

(01:48:51):
you monify like film this and I was like sure, man,
I don't care. You know, whatever sounds cool, and we
like put together a little thing, you know, just kind
of for fun. And then like a month later he's like, hey,
you want to come up and we'll drive to Arizona
in fish for twenty four hours and then drive that home.
And I was like absolutely, So then we took off
across the country to go, uh catching Apache trout, which

(01:49:12):
is kind of a rare native trout species. Is that
a cutthroat pretty much like a subspecies of cutthroat, which, uh,
your friend Mark Kennon would probably have some interesting things
to say about how that all works. You know, Uh,
there's group there's groupers or lumpers, and then there's dividers split. Yeah. Um,
whether no matter how you feel on that, they do

(01:49:33):
look different. So it's fun to cross those off your list.
And in the native fish live in some really cool
places and uh really, um, we made a video from that.
It's pretty cool. We called the Apache Trout like we
wanted to. And then on the way home from there,
we kind of, like I don't know, also decided we
like to deer hunt, and uh, Tyler kind of floated
the idea of having a podcast, Um to me while

(01:49:55):
we're driving home through hail storms. Yeah, how many years
ago is this? That was sixteen early and six mid
summer sixteen. So what do you guys do with your
patchy trout video? You put it on YouTube. It's on YouTube. Ye, yeah,
it's a pretty low views, like six minutes. It's gotta
a couple hundred views on it. Well, did you guys

(01:50:24):
get into it thinking you're just good do it for fun?
Or did you get it thinking that you were going
to figure out a way to like do outdoor media. Um,
but just do it on your own without We definitely
had different outlooks on this. Tyler is a visionary. I
mean you can sell by starting bands doing all that stuff,
you know, Um, I am much more of a free spirit,
which not to say he isn't. But I just was like,

(01:50:45):
this is fun cool. I kind of fly out the
seat of the pants, kind of impulsive a little bit,
which my wife will tell you. I'm not so I
don't understand you know of stuff, but thank you by
the leg of your pants. Yeah, man, Tylered experimented with
the outdoor stuff a little bit before that. Yeah, I did,

(01:51:06):
uh kind of having video and ducks and whatever forever.
But yeah, I mean, I've always have always wanted to
do what I'm doing right now for a living, Like
It's always been the goal. Even like even when I
when I was chasing the music dream, I always thought
if there was something one thing I could do besides

(01:51:28):
music that I would rather do, it would be this.
Do you'd rather do more than being a rock and
roll star? Yeah, I think so. I love and I
love creating music right there. Oh, this is I mean,
it's what it's literally, it's who I am. Like I
this is what I've done since I was I mean,
I was running around one time. It was a quick
little story interjection here, Sorry, my dad. I left a

(01:51:51):
red rider out in the rain and and uh leaned
up against chain Lake fence and it rusted and my
dad got he's a gun he's very strict with gun safety.
So he got, you know, a little bit perturbed by that,
and so he banned me from my gun for a
long time. I don't know, it was like probably a year,

(01:52:12):
but he, uh, he made me a bow out of
a willow tree and it's literally like cut the branch
in two spots, tie some trot line string mcnotchet, tie
some trot line string to it. And he gave me
an aluminum arrow. And that was what I hunted birds
with for a year. I never killed. You always do

(01:52:32):
with the red riders. It would rust them out, is uh.
We'd speed load them where you put all your babies
in your mouth, like hundreds of babies in your mouth,
then you line up your mouth to that port, blow
them all in there, and you just could rust your ships. Man,
I had a daisy. Everybody's got the like leave the
or maybe not everybody. A lot of people of that

(01:52:53):
leave the baby gun out and get in trouble. Story.
I feel like it's a thing. It's like almost a
rite of patches us. It was if you left the
old man's tools out. Yeah, I was getting in trouble
for a roof and hammer a lot because it's kind
of like a hatchet. I'd always take that bath. Uh.
But I was doing that with a Daisy twenty two
caliber um, you know, like bolt action, and those are lead.

(01:53:14):
So as a kid, I was packing lead lead pellets
in my lip like it was snuff. And it's a
great way to carry him, you know. And so yeah,
if I like twitch a little bit, that's probably why
I remember, Uh, my old man, we left someone left
the tools out in the yard and they got rained on.

(01:53:35):
And remember my old man taking me my two brothers
and putting us in the bathroom with the light out,
and he said, when someone's ready to tell me who
left those tools on in the rain, and three of
you can come out of that bathroom. And no one
had any idea. I can't hereby we're just I feel
like someone had the way we remember it, someone had
even to come out and be like, I didn't you know,

(01:53:55):
no one had any idea. You couldn't come out of
the bath roountil. Someone's gonna clarify for the two left
the tools on the rain. There's such a big thing
to So you were the youngest, did you get remember
like that? Feeling that you'd be laying in bed and
then start raining, and just the feeling a dread that
you know something's out in the rain. It's not the
rain outside, just to feeling like you're gonna wake up

(01:54:19):
and be like, oh no, we left that out in
the rain and in all the trump but you're gonna
be rain anxiety for sure. It's constant. Yeah, So that's
kind of how we kind of got together, was the
fly fishing thing, and then decided we deer hunt. Yeah,
so how many how many how many videos have you
guys made it as the Elements four hunt? I think
it's OK. Yeah, I mean there's probably a few that

(01:54:42):
we made that aren't on the channel too. There's definitely
some we've got something. We've got something pervace that we're
going to media channel at some point, so some new ones.
How did you guys come up with the name of
the Element? I wanted something, so I wanted something that
basically I was trying to compete with meat Eater, right,
so I needed something that was broad. I didn't because

(01:55:04):
we I mean, I love deer hunting and I think
I've learned a lot about it the last few years especially,
but I mean what we did growing up, Like whatever
season it was, that's what you did, you know, if
it's smart, Yeah exactly. So, I mean we did everything,
and I love doing everything. I love fishing and hunting everything.
So that's what we did growing up, and that's what
I wanted to do eventually with the Element. But I

(01:55:26):
also knew like if we niche down a little bit,
we can gain some traction because why it tells a
pretty big category. And so, um, I I left the name.
It's kind of like a broad thing and uh and
then we need to become a rock band that name.
Yeah yeah yeah, um so yeah, that's that's kind of

(01:55:48):
the reason I wanted the name to be, to be
able to represent like whatever you're doing is what you're doing,
you know, but you guys have had You've guys had
the most action and become known for just like on
the fly wait til hunting Yeah yeah, which, like I said,
it's like they tail version of running and gunning for turkeys. Yeah,

(01:56:10):
I mean that's what. Yeah, I mean, that's and he's like,
like he mentioned, he's always down for a good time
and he's always just like he's super optimistic. His uh
just positive spin on everything, I mean, and that's like,
that's a big part of this deal because uh, we
had no money when we started this thing at all.
It was just like I had some cameras. I actually

(01:56:31):
did wedding wedding film, wedding videography so that I could
pay for cameras to do this, and basically we uh
he his his kind of optimism is what got us
through because we're hunting public land pressured stuff, especially in
Texas where we started, lots of people, little deer, not

(01:56:52):
very many bucks, low kind of low deer density areas,
and that sounds great. Yeah, it's so much funny. It's
so much funny. You know, you're just sitting in a
tree waiting on something to walk by, you know, and
nothing does most of the time. So it was a
struggle and uh like for me, h, knowing that we
needed to make videos, I mean to to have any
sort of traction happened that it was hard. I got

(01:57:14):
down on myself a lot about it. And so having
him around is like crucial to our his like mentality
to our what we that's then it's crucial to um,
I try to be as optimistic as I can, and
it really isn't even it's it's very inert within me.
Yeah you want to try. So it's not that like

(01:57:34):
I'm optimist, but I'm just always looking for the next
good thing to do, and not like a not like
a fix or a high. But like, if we're in
a situation this is this is like the microcasm of
how we are twenty nineteen eighteen. Um. We are calling
in a buck on public land, rattling them in from

(01:57:56):
three fifty yards out. I'm the shooter, Tyler's the videographer.
Uh rallis deer in liket yards and I take the
shot and my arrow deflects off of something grass or
something like that, and immediately I'm grabbing another era I'm
like trying to kill it, dear still, and Tyler like,

(01:58:17):
and then on the way home, I'm like, oh man,
that's s dunk. And then Tyler, you know, Tyler's kind
of over it already, but like in the moment, I'm like,
let's go, you know, like we just gotta get this
thing done, whatever it takes to do it, which just
sounds so cliche, you know, but the reason cliches exist
is because a lot of times they're true. And a
lot of times the thing you need to do. So yeah,
that's kind of how I operate. Just um uh Tyler, Um,

(01:58:41):
you're not critical of me of this, but you've pointed
out I'll put it that way, Tyler, this is great.
We have a great relationship because what we do in
the woods is we stand next to one another and
we shoot as many holes in the boat as we can,
uh proverbably not like the boat we're hunt out of,
but um, until we just find run the sieve through
the idea, until we find the idea of what to

(01:59:03):
do hunting. And that's what we do. And so where
was I going with that? Whenever I was talking about that,
I kind of got lost. You were talking about the
microchasm of our Yeah, yeah, just that that's kind of
how we are. So like, I'll have an idea and
Tyler was like, no, we can't do that because this
isn't this And like, if you learn to put your
pride aside and understand that you're both trying to have
the best outcome, then you can get that. But if

(01:59:25):
you're the guys like, well, why don't we want to
do my idea become possessive of like like you want
to own the end results, so you feel like you
need to own the process. Yeah. If you can get
by that, man, you can you can do some stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
that's that's it. I think even in business, like that's
the way to be. Like, you have to be able
to speak to another person straightforward. There's no reason to

(01:59:47):
mess around, you know, like, let me tell you how
I think about it, and don't get offended. And I won't.
I'm not saying anything about you. I'm just saying this
is my idea, So what do you think about that?
And we just could constantly. That's like, that's a business thing,
but it's also it's how we kill deer. What I
was saying was what your critical ever bring up about me?
That's what I was saying. The um, I'm kind of

(02:00:09):
a little bit too optimistic sometimes, so It'll be the
last day of a hunt eleven am and I'm still
like trying to rattle in dear on the way out
of the woods or something like that. That's that's me.
I'm that guy, like got you're slow to switch it
into the holy ship mode. I don't. I don't take
my release off pretty much till I get back to
the truck, you know, yeah, and where Tyler's like, Okay,

(02:00:29):
let's get home and see the family, you know, which
is a good thing. Uh So just you know, a
different way we operate. You guys, ever get in to
a fist fight. Never fist fight, no, no, never even
yelled at each other. But we've had our disagreements, for sure.
We Uh, this thing Tyler remarks about a lot. And
I think it's kind of interesting is we're both Christians. Uh,
we kind of try to live by a certain set
of standards and uh, you'll never this. Now, this stuff

(02:00:52):
only happens between us, right, We we usually keep these
disagreements pretty private. Um, but you'll never see two grown
men like be very vehemient with one another and not
say a single cuss word the whole time. It's yeah, yeah,
So it's like we have a lot of pauses like

(02:01:13):
like what do I say? And it kind of goes
back to like the leap for all Triestians, like how
do I not escalate the situation? You know? That's right,
that's right, And honestly, we we um, we still have
disagreements from time to time, but we haven't really ever
had like a knockdown drag out, I'm not doing this
anymore too much kind of deal. Were you guys? Were
you guys raised the religious households? Yeah? Yeah, there was

(02:01:34):
a moment, uh though, just to go back to what
you said, where I was like I was pretty much
done with the element. There was a moment, yeah, Like
I got to the point where no, I just we
So at postseason there's always this kind of like postseason
drag where you're like, man, it's cold, there's nothing to do.

(02:01:55):
We didn't have as good a season we wanted as
we wanted maybe uh, like early on especially, and and
we're in that same mode where I was talking about
with my band earlier. We're like, uh, we have to
go work jobs and then also do this part time.
You know, however we can make ends meet. And so
you know, he did a lot of um, he did
a lot of carpentry work because that's kind of where

(02:02:17):
he grew up, was in that that space and so
uh and so the reason that I ended up doing
a lot of the the editing and stuff like that
for videos UM was I had like we had sold
a house in um the house that my wife and
I bought when we first got married, and uh, we
took like everything I made off of that she worked

(02:02:39):
as a teacher, which is not a very good income,
but it's okay, you know, and then took all the
money that we made, which wasn't a bunch, and that's
what we lived on for the next few years while
I just edited every day. He didn't have a job,
and so like full transparency, you know, it feels like
he's going out and making money. I'm editing and not

(02:02:59):
making any money and keeping this thing afloat, and and
it's just a hard time right in like a business
owner of proprietor's life. And it was like just a struggle.
And so it came down like after the season where
I told my wife, I was like, I'm not I
would rather than lose a friend and be like angry
at him or him be angry at me and me

(02:03:21):
all have to make a passive aggressive statement or whatever.
I'd rather just say done with this, you know, and
finding find a decent job or whatever, you know, we
wanted to do at the time. And so I had
gotten to that point and that was like probably the
last one of the last times that he and I
had like a an argument. Yeah, And so when during

(02:03:41):
these years when you were being so like I I
appreciate all the elbow greef so like. I think it
like a principled existence where you're you were going to be.
You pursued music, you pursued you know, being an outdoor
media like stuff. That's hard. Did your wife ever was
shiver like listen, man, I heard the phone companies hiring.
There was definitely sometimes oh yeah, like towards probably she

(02:04:06):
was really like, I mean at this point, like I've
been out of college for ten or twelve years or
whatever it is. I can't even think about it right now,
but it's been a while, and and the whole time
we've lived very poor. Like I've sat with my hand
my head in my hands in the driveway thinking how
am I gonna pay for you know, five mortgage? And

(02:04:29):
I said, cheap mortgage, you know what I mean. We
had a little house, so I mean not a little house,
but at a cheap house that we bought in the recession.
And uh, it came it came down to where she
was like, listen, we got to put an ultimatum on
this thing, Like there's got to be a time where
you say, okay, you don't have to quit, but like
maybe time to get a more stable job, you know.

(02:04:50):
And I don't know if we ever came to a
date or terms with that. The season I think is whenever.
Like that was kind of the make or break year,
and you and I both had kind of make or
break experiences in the woods that kind of because I

(02:05:11):
was like, um, kind of excited about you taking that
job that we would take some of the heat off
of that situation. I was a newly with I forgot
I didn't even mention the job that I had when
the works and so like I had to work. My
wife met me before the element, so pretty much Tyler
video on my wedding, okay, So like that was like

(02:05:31):
kind of how it all started at the same time. Yeah,
a smoking deal. Um. So and like my wife is like,
hold on, this is not what I was like, you know, nuptualate,
innuptuating or whatever, you know. So uh um uh we

(02:05:53):
junglingly say you gotta thought with your wife. Sometimes, Um,
I'll just say I say that I'm not gonna I've
been there. We're married too. Wonderful women by the way,
Uh they're great. Um. But like in the year twenty
it was somewhat of a make or break year because
it was like, man, we've got a things are moving
slow as far as like element stuff goes. I got

(02:06:13):
I'm trying to put my wife through grad school. You're working,
you know, doing editing pretty much full time. Caylee is
you know, uh, the one income on your end, and
like we're like, man, what do we do? And then
we kill some deer that year and like it was like, man,
we can actually do this. So it's self filming too.
This is we had got an intern that year and

(02:06:36):
he washed out before November got here, and so it's like, gosh,
you know, what are we gonna do? So we end
up to self filming ourselves a like that year, put
some things together and then man, it was a good year.
It's a good year. It's kind of it was kind
of like I had a job, so I was actually
with my church was trying to hire me to like
lead the music portion of the services, you know, yeah

(02:06:57):
and do and do a church podcast and that kind
of you know. So uh my wife is like, yes,
he'll do it, you know, and I'm like, I'm like
pretty much. I was like, man, I don't know, like
things are going okay, you know. And then I killed
five bucks a year and it was three of them
were like wall hangers, I mean, big year, you know.

(02:07:19):
And uh, I remember that my church kind of gave
me this, like, uh hey, by the end of November,
can you let us know something, you know, where you
gonna do this? I had. I had already been basically
starting in COVID like that's when I started leading the
music stuff there and I was just doing it as
like an interim, you know, and uh they wanted me
to continue, and I told him. I was like, oh yeah,

(02:07:40):
I guess I was hoping we could get through the
season and see how the Element is doing it, you know,
in January or something, and uh so, but they wanted
to do it by December. So I literally killed my
fourth buck on November and it it's the video. We
just reached a million views on that video. But it's
our you know, biggest deer video, I guess you could say.
And when I killed that buck, I was pretty much

(02:08:02):
like I found that as a sign as I should
probably decline that job and kind of do the Element thing,
you know. Yeah. Yeah, So and then killed another deer
at the end of December that is like our second
biggest video. So we had a pretty good talk on
Cyculotyer on November twenty three that year, and uh, we
were both driving back in separate vehicles and we had

(02:08:24):
a pretty good talk that was kind of like, you
know what, let's just go and just do this thing,
you know, and which again cliche, but you know, that
was like, we can we can make this happen with
hard work. If we continue this on you know, um,
we'll have some doors open up. And if not, you know,
we can still scrape it together and make it work.
And well, yeah, we're scrappy. Yeah, that's a that's a

(02:08:45):
that goes you know, I gotta gotta be scrappy to
kill deer, that's right. Yeah, you guys got Michigan elbow
grease all we're done in Texas. Yeah up, well guys,
we're running out of tanks. We gotta do the trivia
show Man. We'll tell people what you got coming because
now you now you're you got some stuff that's gonna

(02:09:06):
come out on Meat Eator's channels. You got some stuff
that's coming on in your own channels. Yeah, I appreciate that.
So um we uh, at the end of the year one,
I shot a deal on public ground in Oklahoma, and uh,
well to back it up, there was a nickname being
thrown around that year of the buck truck, the truck
I was in. You could chuck joking around. It seemed
to be that there were bucks around when that truck

(02:09:28):
would show up, you know, his truck. He got COVID
in South Dakota in a tent, you know, and so
with a bunch of other guys. Well, we also have
another guy on the team that uh, he's not a
morning person, so he doesn't get up and hunt in
the morning. Sometimes. Well, they were buddies, you know, riding
around the truck in the mornings because he you know,
he was hacking all night. Just felt terrible. So they

(02:09:50):
get up, you know about sun sunrise, and go sea
bucks out of the truck. So they started bragging on
themselves about how they were the buck truck truck and
all the kid we're in the woods plays music, yeah,
actually ground calls come out of Yeah. But then uh,
Tyler and I teamed up at the end of that

(02:10:10):
season in one and killed that deer on public ground
in texts, I mean in Oklahoma, and uh, the buck
truck like really was cemented. Then was like, hey, this
is a thing. So we decided to maybe put a
little effort into it and have a little bit more
direction with that. So we're gonna have a series that
comes out this May, I believe, called The Buck Truck,
where it's just you know, two best friends traveling in

(02:10:32):
the country hunting deer and you're just watching the buck
Truck and you guys like, could hear each other shooting? Yeah,
that's pretty sick. Yeah, it's funny when he realized some
of that heard his buddy shooting arrow. That's some small parcelo. Man.

(02:10:53):
It was. We were in tight quarters of both shot
and nice bucks. It was kind of kind of man,
crazy things happen whenever you go out there and actually
put some effort into it. And so I always like
to say, man, it's great coverage. Yeah. Yeah, our guys
did a killer job. That was the first. That was
the first one of those episodes that we did too,
so the camera work gets better throughout. We did. We

(02:11:14):
had really good deer footage. We did seven episodes. It's
not like, oh, if you look real carefully, you kind
of see you deer. It's like good, Yeah, they kill
it they eyelashes never, that's right. So uh yeah. I
always like to say you've got to give amazing a
chance to happen. And that's kind of what we did
that not you know, two guys set up eight yards

(02:11:34):
from each other, kind of on a I don't know,
tough hunt. It's kind of hot, you know, late September smoke,
couple deer, you know, eight pizza back country bag them out.
When you have a bunch of camera guys, you tell
the one of them to bring a pizza a mile
back into the woods, you know, eight them and didn't
work on your deer. Nothing like a three thirty uh a,

(02:11:56):
m you know, bead roll. That was good. You know
those those nights are sure you appreciate them. It's memories. Yeah, yeah,
you got some with Claylor recently. Yeah, that's on that series. Yeah,
so that'll that'll release in May as well. Thinking, Yeah,
it's we're in Arkansas. They're a bunch of boating around.
It's cool, not swearing exactly. A bunch of America's last

(02:12:22):
three non swear to throw Spanish at Clay because he
tries to play along with it, you know a little bit. Yeah,
I'm from South yeah, so's I love Yeah, good dude.
Al Right, guys, so everybody check them out at just
type in the Element, yeah yeah, type in media or

(02:12:44):
the Element. Type in the Element. You'll find him. You guys,
you give all your social media handles too, So see
Element Wild a lot of times where you'll see to
the Element podcast depending, um that's gonna be where you
find us at on you know, a hard Apple all
that to podcast exactly and then the YouTube channels called
the Element and the Element podcast gets pretty heavy into
white tails y. Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's still kind

(02:13:04):
of has that Element vibe of like, you know, the
seasonal thing or whatever. We actually just did a pretty
pretty cool podcast about access hunting in Texas because it's
uh kind of did it a little bit of deep
dive into you know the history of that and that
sort of thing. So you know it'll be a little
bit seasonal, but always some white tail stuff for sure.
And uh, the meat eater dot Com you find all
Jordan's Stiller's writing, the gun battles, beaver battles, beaver battles,

(02:13:29):
color battles, and if you're looking at something that looks
like someone designed, it's probably hunter spencer. Yeah. Yeah, and
the shirt will be out, the milk and shirt. Yeah.
Can we auto with Born for a time and can
you just like maybe give give us a little spiel?

(02:13:49):
Thank you for that. I would love to do that.
Um I, so this is The Food Fighters are my
favorite band. Um, sorry I mnna interrupt you. I listened
to your track a couple of days ago and Cran
sent it to me and I was like, this sounds
like the Food Fighters. Well, thank you, Yeah, that's what
I was aiming. Oh, thank you. I Uh, I just
feel old and washed really, but uh, basically, when their drummer,

(02:14:14):
Taylor Hawkins died recently, um, I kind of I don't know,
it's a very weird. It's very weird way that I
wrote this song. I feel like it's not like a
very typical and sometimes I think what gets me into
trouble is that like creativity. I want this creativity and
it's not super digestible by most people. And so but

(02:14:35):
I don't care anymore because I'm not trying to make
money off of music, you know, and so um I
wrote this song basically it's almost like uh, my perceived
relationship of Dave and Taylor, who are like best friends
in the band together, and but I'm like speaking towards
Dave as like, hey, this is a terrible thing that happened,
but you also have like a big platform and an

(02:14:58):
opportunity to say something to the world here, you know,
like and basically taking esther four fourteen saying like you
were born for a time to do something very powerful,
and maybe this is that time. So that's why I
wrote a song. Is the hook line is maybe you're
born for a time such as this. Oh it's great, man.

(02:15:19):
I listened to the tune. I liked it. Thanks, man.
I was surprised where I don't look like very good
at things do I no, no, no, I don't mean
surprised by it being good. I just I was surprised
by um because it didn't sound like country. Yeah. I
was expecting more, you know, I thought it would be

(02:15:40):
more what what most people would identify to be more
like leaning in the country genre. We definitely have UM
the sense we have stopped like touring and pursuing a
career in music. We've basically just don't what we wanted
to do and stopped worrying about like what people would like.
So it's way more fun. Just make make tunes you

(02:16:04):
like and don't worry about what bucket it's in. Yeah, alright,
we're gonna kick off. We're gonna end off with it.
Thanks man. So find these boys at the Element, Element
Wild on social Yeah, that's it. I'll track it down
and the Element podcast anywhere podcasts are found, stay tuned.
Thanks guys. Trivia, oh one nice question. Do you think
you'll win or not? I'm fired up. He's got a

(02:16:26):
good shot. You're gonna win. I like trivia. You want
to do a side bet? Yeah, I don't know. I'll
pay for it. Can we do something non monetary? You
don't want to do a five dollar side? But I
mean that's that's almost not worth it. We'll talk about Yeah,
we're visiting with like. I like the I like it
to be a little bit more meaty when it comes
to you want something like that. I really like and

(02:16:48):
don't want to give up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll talk
about it. Thanks guys. You were born for this a

(02:17:15):
time in a place it seems like mess. I want
to des appair hurt so bad. Don't want these but

(02:17:38):
streams long build over night, hed up your eyes is

(02:18:07):
energy gave you lie he roll in this sky. You
question why a second time? Wookay soside if you as

(02:18:58):
your best friend again, maybe you were more born times
such as theirs. You all that you live, your whisper,

(02:19:41):
you can feel in. Maybe we're born born time suggest
thes do you all, lady? Love them because you're best

(02:21:34):
friend you can get. Maybe are more time, maybe more
times such as they

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Host

Steven Rinella

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 415: The Element