Ep. 593: Patience is a Good Hunter, with Will Primos

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
can't predict anything.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every
hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
dot com. F I R S T L I T
E dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I normally like to when we're starting the show, I
normally introduce I find myself. I introduced guests like, uh,
like I'm dealing poker m hm clockwise if I'm gonna
do it counterclockwise because I want to end on a finale.
Giannis is here, Seth is here, Krinn, doctor Randall, Corey
is here, and Will Primos nice to be here. You're

(01:04):
one of my.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
UH.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I don't want to. I don't want to get off
on the wrong foot by overdoing it. You're one of
my he you're one of my communication heroes. And let
me tell you more about why that is. Okay. You've
been making products for hunters for your whole life, and
you've been talking to hunters for your whole life, yep,

(01:32):
eye to eye. You don't talk down to hunters. You
don't talk, you don't criticize, you don't talk negative. You
have an infectious enthusiasm about the hunt. You have an
infectious enthusiasm about wildlife. You have an infectious enthusiasm about

(01:54):
your family, about the people around you. You celebrate everyone
around you. You don't bring people down. You've been doing
this how many years?

Speaker 5 (02:05):
I'm seventy two. I started the company in nineteen seventy
six when I was twenty four.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
I've never heard I've never heard a single person say
a single negative word about you.

Speaker 5 (02:16):
Oh my gosh, Okay, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Let me tell you something that don't happen. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:21):
Well, one time I killed this big deer, really big
deer in Mississippi. And my wife goes, have you been
on the internet? Have you seen what they're saying about you?
And I'm going no, And she says, well you ought to.
I said it don't matter what that what?

Speaker 1 (02:37):
By the way, what are they say?

Speaker 5 (02:38):
And they said, well, you killed it in a pin,
you raised it in a one acre pin, and then
finally killed it. I said, Okay, she says, you're not
going to go and answer that.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
He says, no, you know, because we'll primos don't do that. Yeah,
it don't exist. So I ain't worried about it. And
it goes away.

Speaker 5 (02:55):
But you know, I'm sure somebody says something bad somewhere,
but you know, the you know, the camera doesn't love everybody.
And I didn't want to be I didn't want to
become some known hunting person. That's not wasn't my goal.
My goal was to make a living. My goal was
to share my love of the outdoors with others and
get them to love it and hopefully want to protect it,

(03:15):
because if you protect what you love.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, so if I.

Speaker 5 (03:19):
Can go out there and share il cunting and share
waterfowl in the green timber or just wherever we are
turkey hunting, you know, just whatever it is, if I
can share that and you can fall in love with it,
then you'll want to protect it. And it's all about habitat.
If we don't have the habitat, you ain't got the
critters they take. Each animal takes a certain quality of

(03:39):
habitat to thrive. And so that was kind of my goal.
And as I went and began to go through it,
and began to get a little bit of win in
my sale and understand that I might be able to
make a real company out of this thing I was
trying to do. I came on a realization that if
you can let people have the opportunity to know you,

(04:02):
then you have the opportunity for people to like you.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Now you're you're.

Speaker 5 (04:06):
Gambling, because if they don't, you've really you've really kind
of hurt yourself. And so the key to that is
to keep your ego out of it. And that was
the secret behind Primos. When we hired people and we
had people and it was all about them, and because
everybody got to hunt, it wasn't about Will Primos. Everybody

(04:27):
got to hunt. When we went, we went, we went.
I would hunt usually first, and I didn't wait for
the biggest one.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Did a Cory Well for folks not watching, uh Phiel
just gestured to uh Corey, who sorry, Will just gestured
to Corey. And you guys a hunted together, which we'll
talk about.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah we have.

Speaker 5 (04:48):
So so anyway, you can't wait. So you can't wait
for the biggest one. If there's somebody behind you and
you only got five day window to try to fill tags,
and so I wouldn't kill the first thing that was
decent and let the person hunt. Yep, yeah, I'll never forget.
I forget what year of the fire was up there
at the c two thousand and one or nineteen ninety
nine or somewhere. Anyway, we were hunting, I begive this

(05:11):
first day was September seventeenth. We were hunting the bar None,
which was next to the C eight, and early snowstorm came.
We were staying in the old schoolhouse on the bar
None at ted Turner's place, and so we're staying there
and it's seventeen degrees and my wife says, I'm not going.
So we got in the suburban with our special tires

(05:33):
that we had put on for all our rental cars
and went up the mountain and got up there. Couldn't
find an out. Brad Ferris has said, will, I'm gonna
hunt first, and I'm gonna kill the first thing I see,
so that you could have the rest of the time
to try to kill a big one. I said, Okay,
can't finding out they've left. There's so much snow. There's
two feet of snow. We're pushing snow in front of

(05:55):
the vehicle. We're coming down and I see this elk
and he's been over feeding on something in the snow.
You can see his head down and he's about one
hundred and fifty yards away. And the winch r Wife
was wor in a minute, and they went and he
threw his head up and I went, oh, my gosh,
it's a big l I said, okay, buddy, look, look

(06:15):
nobody they didn't. Nobody saw him. He got spooked and
went down.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
He went.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
As soon as he went down, I said, bail, let's go.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
We went.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
After we got over there, he's going up hill. He's
about forty yards away. So I'm running the camera. So
I sat down with the camera. At the same time
I got on the hyper lip.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 5 (06:34):
He turned around and started coming. Brad scrambled him. He's
putting his release on getting he's getting ready. So this
elk comes up there and Brad won't shoot. He won't shoot.
So I got my range finder out of my vest
and I ranged him. I said fifty five. The elk stops,
turns round and walks sixty. Brad nails him at sixty yards.

(06:54):
Brad turned, he runs about twenty five yards and falls
over dead and rests. You think you'll go three thirty,
said Brad. You just killed a four hundred inch elk,
He goes.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 5 (07:08):
I never saw what elk the rest of the trip,
so Brad was gonna kill the first one he saw,
and he did. But you know, it's not about you.
It's about sharing. It's about being there, it's about loving it.
It's about teaching people how much fun we can have
out there, being a part of what God created, and
watching elk be elk during the rut and watching white

(07:28):
tails do it, and watching turkeys do it, and watching
ducks in their migration, and just being able to be
enthusiastic and share that and help other people get to
that spot. Some are more talented than others, some have
whatever might keep them from being as successful. But you
don't look down on them, You're right, You just you
help them rise up.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yanny, tell Williams what you used to tell me about
the Truth video series.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
I don't know how it was hugely.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
You're talking about going down and checking at Walmart see
if they were out yet.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Oh right, pre internet?

Speaker 6 (08:08):
Yeah, yeah, I would go to the Walmart every two
or three days. You got them New Truth videos yet
you know, and they look at me like the what
you know? Because you know, we were in Avon, Colorado.
I don't know if you ever passed through there. That's
where the Walmart was there in Colorado. But oftentimes that
department might not have somebody that actually knew anything about
elk hunting.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
I be like, yeah, it's about.

Speaker 6 (08:30):
This big, it's gonna be kind of green, it's gonna
say the truth on it.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Can you call me when it gets here?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, let's go back to the beginning. And and and
in the beginning, you were born with very crooked fingers,
my little peaky fingers. Shout those off.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
I don't know from my mother, my mother's side of
the family, there's an extra boat in therere shaped like
a triangle.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
From south right. Huh south from the south. Yeah, well,
my mother, this probably is from her Irish shide of
her heritage.

Speaker 5 (08:59):
I'm fifty Greek, and yeah, that's where a primo.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's where that makes more sense.

Speaker 5 (09:05):
That's where primos come from. My daddy was half French
and half Greek. Okay, he was a freak.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
That's what he said. That's what he told me. My
daddy just passed away at ninety eight World War two
vet hell of a guy.

Speaker 5 (09:19):
I'm telling you what, no kid, you know, kid and
wonderful man.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
And your mom's still alive.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
Yeah she's ninety seven.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah wow. Yeah, but anyway, had a lot of turkey
meat or something.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
Oh yeah, a lot.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
So you were born out with crooked pink. Yeah. But
they don't get in the way.

Speaker 5 (09:33):
And I don't worry about him, but some some people
have to know all about him, like people like you.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
First thing, I asked you, right, when I meet someone,
I always checks if they got ten fingers there you go.
And in my account, I was like, wow, he's got nine,
he's got ten, but.

Speaker 5 (09:48):
But one looks at off. So yeah, yeah type and
I got it in something. No, I've done that too.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Well.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, So did your dad hunt?

Speaker 5 (09:57):
My dad was a it was a depression child, you know.
He he went through the Depression, He went through World
War two. He was a navigator in the Pacific and
lot never had a dime and was always working to
support his family to take care. So yes, he hunted,
but it was very limited. But I'll never forget.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
I was six years old, double barrel, side by side
fox that he paid ten dollars for us Model B
Fox double trigger. I'm not familiar with that gun.

Speaker 5 (10:27):
It's a side by side made by Fox. But anyway,
we walked out the back door and we went squirrel hunting.
I was so excited to go squirrel and my daddy
sees a nest. He goes, let's see if there's a
squirrel in there.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
God, they go red squirrel.

Speaker 5 (10:43):
Comes flying out of that nest.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
That is a hammer. That was a fox squirrel. Yeah. Yeah,
this is just a little joke with us because in
the South, like we have a red squirrel, in the
North a pine squirrel. Okay, and in the South they confuse.
You got confused Yankees because when you tell Yankees that
you got a red squirrel, I'm picturing what we call

(11:06):
red squirrel with the tailor out with that No, with
his tail he's how long is the pine squirrel?

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Well, the same little pine squirrel that runs around out west.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
The one that gives me away when I'm sitting there college,
like he's always chittering at you, like that's a red
Like we'll hear red squirrel. So when you guys from
the South are getting red squirrels and you're talking to Yankees.
Yankees are thinking that you're getting little.

Speaker 5 (11:31):
Our squirrels are twice that big. They got a big
white face.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yep, that red squirrel. Yeah, that red squirrel. Uh. So
was your So did your folks your folks were us
born though, Oh yeah, they're they're us born. Yeah, got it.
And you would get and he would do uh some
little bit of hunting.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
Oh yeah, girl hunting, dove hunting, take me duck hunting,
duck cutting on the river. We didn't do any serious
waterfowl hunting. That was left up to my uncles. My
uncles were all interested in playing. I had four uncles
and they were awesome, and they they took me serious
waterfowl And when I was eleven years old, that's the
first time I stood in twelve inches of water in

(12:12):
green timber and watched two hundred matters come down.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Through the trees. And I was, I was, I was?
That was it? So you had some serious experiences, ah young, Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Do those guys make calls? Like how did you get
interested in making calls?

Speaker 5 (12:27):
So, my uncle Gus was a great caller and he
blew ay Jake Gardner's single red call guy from Uncus,
who was friends with Chicken Major's famous call maker, and
so I took that call and my daddy had a
lathe and I just tried to copy it. And that
started my game calling desire to figure out how to

(12:47):
make things that made sounds.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
When you say you took a leave, like, explain that
to people that might not.

Speaker 5 (12:54):
You chuck a piece of wood into it and you
turn it to shape it like you want, and then
you drill out the center.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Uh, you've got to make the soundboard.

Speaker 5 (13:01):
You've got to figure out the curve and how how
to make the cork hold it in place. Well, the
cork is a wedge that holds the reed to the soundboard.
What's the what's the reed gonna be made out of?

Speaker 1 (13:14):
The reds? Are we?

Speaker 5 (13:15):
We in the old days were very limited in the products.
But when when I started in seventy six doing stuff,
we were borrowing from the medical industry and the automotive industry,
any any technology that we could to building into game
call So my lar became.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
The reed of choice. My Lar, Yeah, uh for for reeds.

Speaker 5 (13:39):
But you have a spool, and so most people think
where you would stamp the read out with the length
of the spool, Well, if you do that, there's a
huge curve in the reed which totally changes the sound.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Oh well, you'll never get that curve out of it,
that's right.

Speaker 5 (13:53):
So you've got to You've got to stamp it crossways.
And then if you stamp it on the outside of
the there's a slight bow in that reed, And if
you stamp it out of the center where it's called
up in the center, there's a much tighter that totally
changes the sound of the call.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
And you can't press that bow out of there by
getting a little warm or something.

Speaker 5 (14:14):
You can try, but I was never able to do it.
And whether it's upside down or right side up on
the soundboard.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Makes a huge difference to So can you nowadays just
get it flat? I don't know. I couldn't do it.
Couldn't get it flat when you were doing that? Why
did your dad have a lathe?

Speaker 5 (14:33):
He just ThReD a woodworking shop. He was turning and
building would just as a hobby, building stuff all the time.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
He built tops.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
You put him in a box and tie a string
around and pull the little top, go around and bunce
around and knock stuff over. He's always doing.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Stuff like that. God who'd you sell your first call to?

Speaker 7 (14:54):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (14:54):
Buck Deerman?

Speaker 1 (14:57):
I don't know who that is.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
Buck Derman was a friend of mine. He courage old
as a buddy years okay, yeah, and he he encouraged
me because the calls he had, the turkey calls he had,
were following apart. And he said, look, you can do this.
I said, I can't do that. I don't know nothing
about making no turkey call. He goes, yes, you can.
So I went to work and built one in box call,

(15:18):
no mouthcoll. You did those first, that was the first.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
What you made.

Speaker 5 (15:22):
It was a It was a double read. It had
two reads stacked on top of each other. They were
the reads were an eighth of an inch apart.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
And you made that before you made a wood call.
That's right, huh would you? Would you? How you build that?

Speaker 5 (15:36):
How do I build the You just one and got
like prophylactic latex, and well you'd go back then we
called them rubbers. They weren't called prophylactics because that dirt.
That word didn't exist where kids they were called, that
word exists.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
And so we go to your tooth brush. Your toothbrush
is a prophylactic. It's a disease prevention.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
To understand that. But anyway, so we'd go to the
service station because you could not buy them in a
drug store. They weren't on the count yet, only given
like a prescription, so you you weren't allowed to buy.
So you go to the service station and you'd buy
whatever they had, and most of them were lubricated.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Now would you go be like, hey, I want you
to get the wrong idea. I'm making turkey calls here.

Speaker 5 (16:13):
Well not, there's a story about that.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Ok So, finally I went to Daddy and I said, Daddy,
I finally figured out which one of these rubbers works
are the best, and it's not lubricated, and I need
to order them from the pharmacists.

Speaker 5 (16:26):
But I'm only seventeen or however old I was. I said,
would you call mister park in the Parking's pharmacy and.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Order me a case?

Speaker 5 (16:35):
He said, be glad to so.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
So they called me and said you're rubbers are in. Okay.
I went down there, walked up to the counter. Mister
Parker put him on the counter, and my my counselor
from high school, Miss.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Breelin, walked up. He knew he knew you know.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
So he looked at me, and he looked at her,
and he handed them to me, and he goes, you
can pay at the girl up front, and I went okay.
So Hays Brayley took off up front and his little
blond headed, blue eyed girl up there. He had a
little job as a cashier. I put him on the
accounter there and she looked there and she goes, we're
having a party at the grove tonight. And I said,
you don't understand. I'm making turkey calls out of these.

(17:18):
And she said, you can come anyway.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
That's a true story. How long you been married?

Speaker 5 (17:28):
I've married thirty four years. It's a second marriage for
Mary and I.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
We have no children. We mean a second marriage.

Speaker 8 (17:34):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
You haven't married the same person twice, but you've been married.

Speaker 5 (17:37):
Oh you know, I was married once before it didn't
work out.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
How long you married the first time? Fourteen years? On paper,
it's a good chunk of time. Yeah, but then you
knew it wasn't right.

Speaker 5 (17:48):
Oh, I knew it long before that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
That's an interesting way to put it on paper.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
Yeah, that's a qualification that goes a long way.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah. Uh So this guy asked you to come a
turkey call. Yeah, and you get your robbers, you get
some aluminum.

Speaker 5 (18:06):
I got some beer in ten beer cans to walk
me through it.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, you at first, you got to shape it.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
You gotta side. Everybody's mouth is different. That's one of
the problems with turkey cars. Some people have very narrow palette.
Some people have very high palette. Some people have wide
palettes and low so the mouth is huge. So I
can look at somebody's face and have a pretty good idea,
but I'll have them lean back and open their mouth
and look at their palette because they tell me they're
having trouble that gag or this. Some people have a

(18:35):
short throat, short pallet, and that those people gag a
whole lot more than the people that have what I
call it a normal palette.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
So so you can eyeball someone's palette and then make
a recommendation yeah, yeah, and so so then you start
trying to get that to fit so that that call
becomes the roof of the mouth and once you can.

Speaker 5 (18:57):
Seal that there and pass air through it. It's all
about out your jaw.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
It's all about how you move your jaw and how
and how you use your lips to be able to
call turkeys. But explain the back in those days, what
you got together to make a call.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
Well, I started out with an adhesive. It was kind
of like a contact cement that I would coat onto
these illuminum frames that well, you illumined them out out
of beer cans. It wasly ten uh, and you would
get that on there, and then you put get the
right stretch that you thought you'd put it down on
the frame, and then you part of the beer can

(19:36):
the lid. Sometimes the lid with lid was usually too thick,
but that had worked because it helped separate mine a
certain distance. He used different stuff, But then I went
to aluminum, and then I built ade and it was
I didn't have a I didn't have a punch press.
So I went to the die maker and said, here's

(19:56):
what I want, here's the shape, here's what I want,
and I want to feed the strip of aluminum through there,
and I just want to hit it with a sledgehammer.
He goes, okay, so we still have it. I mean,
it's still a little risk play. So it's got big
legs and you fed it through there, put the aluminum,
put it on there and took the sledgehammer. Bamn, there's
your peace, bounced on the concrete, and you know you'd

(20:19):
get a piece a whole lot quicker than I could
cut him out. But the real secret was people in
Pennsylvania figured out how to make what's called a crown
frame where the outside edges of the frame pinch the reed,
so you stretch the red, insert the frame, fold it over,
then have a tab that helped seal itep. So that

(20:39):
became a lot more efficient and a lot better.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
That was Pennsylvania innovation.

Speaker 5 (20:43):
Yes, as far as I know, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
So when you sold that first call where you just
saw off to the races then or was it slow?
You know?

Speaker 5 (20:50):
I charged him twenty bucks, you know, and he was thrilled.
And that was twenty bucks in nineteen probably seventy.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Five or so. How many calls did you give him
for twenty bucks?

Speaker 5 (20:58):
One mouth gul.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Wow, wow.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
I wantn't go sit there and do all that. I
mean that there was too much.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
And Buck understood, and he said, I want you to
I want you to make me more.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
How many could you make in a day?

Speaker 9 (21:12):
Here?

Speaker 5 (21:12):
I asked that question, Seth, I don't know. It was
usually a night because I was working in the day
and i'd get home sometimes eleven o'clock at night. I
was in the restaurant business with my family, okay, And
so I might work two or three hours and I
might make six or ten.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
It took a while. If I had the parts done.

Speaker 9 (21:30):
Yeah, if I had the So would you go through
and make all the parts and then and then have
a night where you just went through and finished everything.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
I ended up using double sided sticky tape rather than
a glue, and that worked pretty good. Oh. So that
would put it on one side of the frame, peel
it off, put the latex in place, and then seal
it did stick to it? Gotcha? Is it safe to
say that if you hadn't discovered making calls, you to
bend restaurant business for career?

Speaker 4 (21:55):
No?

Speaker 1 (21:55):
No, I didn't.

Speaker 5 (21:58):
I didn't love the restaurant business. It was too confined.
I I just couldn't working twelve fourteen, sixteen hours a day,
six days a week most of the time, and part
of the seventh day. I just it just was, it
didn't work for me.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
What was the family restaurant?

Speaker 5 (22:14):
We had five of them, my grandfather, my daddy's daddy,
immigrated at eight years old from Greece in nineteen oh eight.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Came through New Orleans.

Speaker 5 (22:21):
Of course, he was uneducated, didn't know anything, couldn't speak English,
and his mother. The Turks killed his daddy. His mother
lost their property to the Turks and brought them over
to the United States for a new life. New Orleans
restaurant business. All Greeks become restaurant tours, and he learned
how to bake and how to bust tables, and he

(22:43):
was very smart. He ended up building quite a quite
a business.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
But he wasn't building Greek restaurants down there. Say he
wasn't making Greek restaurants, was he? It had all had
Greek flares, to Greek salides, steak houses, different, everything had
something very Greek oriented about it. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:01):
Yeah, So I sold my interest in the company, owned
stock in the company. Family five restaurants, and there were
a huge Some of them were huge.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
One of them was four hundred yards long, had thirteen
banquet rooms, had.

Speaker 5 (23:15):
Two restaurants inside it. She she's absolutely huge. Three hundred
and fifty employees is huge.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Damn is huge. But I sold my stock back in
nineteen eighty eight and told Daddy that I can't do it,
and because you wanted to plow that money into your business.
I didn't have any money, but I wanted to put
my energy into business. At what point did you know
that you were just that you had established yourself and

(23:41):
you're gonna be making calls the rest of your life.

Speaker 5 (23:44):
In nineteen ninety I had a million dollars in sales
and my CPA told me I made money.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
I said, show it to me.

Speaker 5 (23:55):
He said, it's an inventory and it's unreceivable. I said,
and now you owe this much in taxes. I went, well,
where does that come from? He said, I guess you'd
go borrow that too.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Oh, I gotcha. How many people did you have at
that point? Oh?

Speaker 5 (24:10):
Probably eighteen or so.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah. When I sell the company, we had right at
two hundred. Right shot, What year did you sell premost
game calls? Night?

Speaker 5 (24:22):
Two thousand and.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Six. Johanni wants to ask you a question.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
About voiceover.

Speaker 6 (24:32):
Yeah, man, we were just we had a little content
summit with a bunch of our creators just earlier this week,
and we and Steve talked about his approach to voiceover,
and that was really a hallmark. I felt like of
the truth videos was your narration. Talk a little bit
about that, like why why Woul did that end up

(24:53):
being the way that you guys did those videos where
it seemed like you sort of recorded them, but there
wasn't really too much story on camera. It was really
your voice that then narrated and drove that story.

Speaker 5 (25:04):
Well, it's really hard to keep the camera running twenty
four to seven, so to speak and capture every moment
and every word. And then back then when we were
doing it, we didn't have the audio capabilities we have now.
You didn't have the wireless mics, so the mic was
on the camera, so you had to tell the story

(25:25):
to bring the viewer into place somehow.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
So what would they do?

Speaker 5 (25:30):
They'd edited, the editors would edit it on Avid edit
systems the way they thought it out a beat, and
then they would write what they thought needed to be said.
And then they would bring me in and I would
watch it and look at their words and change it
to my lingo, to my words because I was I

(25:50):
became the voice.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Man. I didn't realize, but we we really just stole
will system.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Yeah, that's kind of how I feel.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
We owe you some like we owe you some sort
of payment for having accidentally stole your methodology, you owe
me nothing you got. You remain like a very staunch
supporter of a bunch of conservation or I shouldn't say
a bunch, but I know you're heavily involved in conservation groups.
Who do you like to? I know you help out

(26:20):
NWTF a lot. Now who else do you get involved with?

Speaker 5 (26:24):
Well, there's so many out there, but those that are
so connected to being able to double and triple the
money that they get through grants, those are the ones
that I'm right now most interested in.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Help me understand that.

Speaker 5 (26:40):
So if you give Ducks unlimited one hundred thousand dollars,
there's a good chance they can turn that into three
or four or thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
But I don't understand.

Speaker 5 (26:49):
I mean they apply for grants through the federal government
typically to do matching campaigns, matching in dublin and tripling.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Okay, meaning if they're able to demonstrate citizen corporate sponsorship
that somehow can lead to more.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
Yes, it can. So what I center in on, all
of my interest goes toward habitat protection and restoration.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
So that's where you personally like to.

Speaker 5 (27:19):
I personally try to put all of my enter into
the ground on the ground.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
That's correct. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 5 (27:25):
So I'm just now engineering a situation. I have got
a set of Party shotguns. Party is a London made
side by sys the p U r D Y right
p U r D E y d E y Okay
Party shotguns. And so I have the only consecutive set

(27:46):
serial numbered Party side by side hammer shotguns ever made four, ten, twenty,
sixteen and twelve. And so I've been collecting these for
about almost twenty years, and I reserved when I ordered
my first.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
One, I reserved all the serial numbers.

Speaker 5 (28:06):
And so the guns cost somewhere through my through my
years of buying them, somewhere around a million two and.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
To accumulate the collection to get the collection.

Speaker 5 (28:20):
And so I'm now giving those guns to conservation. And
the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, which a lot of people don't
know about, is a fantastic organization that helps to protect
all of our hunting and fishing rights, habitat restoration, habitat
protection by state and federally. And they're out there fighting

(28:41):
making sure the states passed the right legislation, making sure
the federal government passes the right legislation, and so I
chose them to head this project up. And so Rock
Island is the great auctioneer of high end guns, and
they're going to auction off my guns.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Can I tell you that's how that punk gun out
there we bought from Rock Island?

Speaker 5 (29:03):
Okay, Okay. So they're going to auction the guns off
and the money is going to be divided between certain
conservational organizations that protect or restore habitat.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Are you guys fixing the auction them as a block
to a single buyer because people don't want to break
them up?

Speaker 10 (29:22):
Right?

Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's I think that if you right now, we're about
to make that decision for sure, But more than likely
they're going to be sold as a set only, because
if you buy a single gun, the set's not worth
as much. What do you think it'll go for?

Speaker 5 (29:35):
You know, it depends if you find the right guy
who realizes that anything over the appraised value.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
And I'm not sure what they'll praise for. They could
have praised for a million, they could have praised for
a million and a half. I'm not sure. You can't.

Speaker 5 (29:48):
You can't build them anymore. That the fourteen and twenty
eight will never be built again, So that person could
come in there and say, well, look, anything over and
above that I get to write off because all this
money is going to observation. So it might be two million,
five million, ten million. Maybe Stephen Ronnello will jump forward
and do something with all that money that's under his.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
I don't know that he will.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
So anyway, it's all about habitat, it's about responing. And
I love the grasslands. Just to think about the world
that I read about in your book, in the Buffalo,
your unbelievable book. I just couldn't put it down. But
the story of of all of that that was Buffalo
and the animals before him, and the grasslands and the

(30:34):
tall grass and the short grass, and the prairie chickens,
and they were they were thick like mosquitoes. And and
the fact that we've lost so much of that we've
got we got to keep that. That's that's the heartbeat
of the United States.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
When's that action going to happen?

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Probably December of twenty five. You got to remind us
when you do it. Okay, I'd love to. Maybe we
can do a little thing where it follows along. Sure
that auction happens. It's like a pretty discreet period of time, right,
It's not like open forbidding for months or something.

Speaker 5 (31:05):
Rock Island is the masters at that, and I'm not
going to run their show. They know exactly how they're
going to go about doing it.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Man, if you remember, let us know, it'd be fun
to do a little something about that. Yeah, have you
shot muscols guns?

Speaker 5 (31:17):
Oh yeah, I've killed white tailed deer sixteen gage buckshot,
you know, rough growl, sharp tails. You know you name turkeys, ducks.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
I've shot them all.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
That's cool that you use them actually and put it
away Field.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
I got a phone full of gorgeous pictures. You killed
merge quail in Arizona, and you put that male merge
right next to those hammers. The hammers have pretty dragons
on them. When the hammers fall, the dragon breeze fire.
It's cool.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
So Corey, talk about your experience, how you know, will.

Speaker 11 (31:57):
Well, let's see, I landed a job on a elk
cotton ranch north of town here back in twenty fourteen
and was offered to guide the next September, And growing
up always watched Primos The Truth, Big Bulls one through
fourteen or whatever we were at that year. And yeah,

(32:19):
I was offered to guide Will's friend that was coming along,
Mike ellig who used to own black gold archery sites.
So I got to guide Mike. I think we got
a nice bowl on day.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
No, you don't take you know.

Speaker 11 (32:33):
He scored three sixty three. He was an eight x ten.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
I think I got one. It was a beautiful bowl.

Speaker 11 (32:41):
But then your guide had to do something the next day,
and I was offered to take you out, which was
kind of a dream come true. Honestly, Oh man, we
had fun, we did. Yeah, I think we hunted that afternoon.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Was he whining and moaning the whole time, you know,
talking bad about old buddy.

Speaker 11 (32:57):
We had a big bowl on a ridge above you,
and I tried backing up as far as I could
and tried calling him in, and the bowl had forty
fifty cows with him and never never would leave his cows.
And I remember after this, I think it was after
the sun went down. It just, you know, that didn't
work out. The planets didn't a line, as I like
to say. You came back to me and you said, no,
you should have done this instead, And you know, learn

(33:18):
from your mistakes, and definitely learned from those who have
done it.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
You remember what I told you you should have done.

Speaker 11 (33:24):
There's something with a bugle like you grabbed a bugle
from me. It was still around my neck, and you
said you should have wailed on it like this instead,
because I think I might've been being a little too
soft or something less aggressive.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Should I just just a frustration.

Speaker 11 (33:39):
I mean we were both fired up still that it
didn't work out. Adrenaline was still rolling. And then I
remember we had a pretty solid hike back up to
the truck after that.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, and now's your day with will Primos.

Speaker 11 (33:50):
Well, and then the next day we went out and
by eight thirty in the morning had a nice six
point down.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Oh really Yeah, so you guys got together. Yeah, yeah,
that was pretty cool. That's fun.

Speaker 11 (33:59):
Mary and I got to do the calling. We backed
up about eight.

Speaker 5 (34:03):
My wife is a really good elk caller, and one
time she called this elk up and my friend Brad
Fast killed it and I was one hundred and fifty
yards above and watching her. I'm going I just shut
up and let her do it. And she was throwing
rocks down the hill and doing all kind of make
it all kind of racket and then she get on
that dead, gumb that the open read hyperlip single, God

(34:26):
the heck is that? And that elk came in there
going crazy and Brad shoots him at ten yards. He
walks over and falls dead. And I walk up to
the mirror. I said, Mary, what did you say to him?
And she said, will I know what y'all are thinking?

Speaker 1 (34:49):
You know, there's like this thing, like this little rule
for getting along with people socially. You don't talk about politics,
you don't talk about religion. You're pretty open about your
spiritual life.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
Oh gosh, I love the Lord, I love I am.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
I am.

Speaker 5 (35:04):
I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. He is my in,
my rock, in my guide.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
And there's just no way that wasn't going to be
part of your public persona, because I.

Speaker 5 (35:15):
Mean, God knows, I know you. I mean, you know
what lightning is. You know, he knows I know better
you know.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
But you lived by your walk.

Speaker 10 (35:25):
You know.

Speaker 5 (35:25):
And not everybody you meet as a Christian or wants
to be or is in climb. That's that's fine, that's
their choice, That's what God gave us, his choice. But
I'm good, you know, yeah, never never any hesitation, none?

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Yeah? Yeah, what what year was the first truth, well,
the first truth that.

Speaker 5 (35:46):
Six eighty seventh.

Speaker 9 (35:47):
And when when you guys decided to make that, was
it like we're going to see what happens.

Speaker 5 (35:52):
Or was this in just no, let's see what happens.
We don't know what we're doing. Yeah, the equipment wasn't good.
We had a back you had a real to reel.
You had to set the thing down on the ground
and get it going out a wire, and had a camera.
The stuff wasn't in the camera, it was on another backpack.
He weighed about eighty five pounds to carry all the equipment,

(36:13):
and you had to get to the where you were
going to go and set it down and get ready
and hope the turkey was.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Still around by the time.

Speaker 5 (36:21):
And then climbing a tree.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
You know, we always just for Why did you guys
hire like professional camera guys.

Speaker 5 (36:27):
Oh no, no, no, no, no no, we hired hunters.
You've got to have a hunter behind that. He's got
to tell that story through that lens, and only a
hunter can do that.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Music to sess ears, Yeah, listen, man, this is like
you're you're touching on the thing that we've that Jannis
and I have spent an incredible amount of time discussing
is and this is a real riddle. I appreciate that
you feel like you got the code cracked, but I
don't know. I think that this is whype be one
of those areas where you and I don't necessarily align.

Speaker 5 (36:59):
Okay, you're wrong and not right, but that's okay. You
can teach a hunter to be a cameraman, but you
cannot teach a cameraman to be a hunters necessary.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
That has not necessarily been my finding.

Speaker 5 (37:19):
Okay, uh.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
In the we agree on this, in the best case scenario,
you have In the best case scenario, you have a
lifelong cameraman who's a lifelong hunter and observer of wildlife.
Everyone would agree. Everyone would agree that's the best case scenario.

(37:46):
I have found examples of both. There are really good cameramen,
like the kind of camera and you'd want to call
like a cinematographer okay, right, who never can get used
to animals. They don't know how to behave around animals.
They can't get used to animals. But there are some
there are some individuals out there that I've worked with

(38:06):
over the years, and I don't want to and I
gotta say this because if they they probably won't listen
to this. But in case they do. Rick Smith, Chris Gill,
No Fallon Gartt Garrett, Gary Smith grew up on Yeah yeah,
but not like not like we did. These are some examples.

(38:30):
These are outliers. Perhaps these are examples of people who
came to their world of cinematography being a DP, director
of photography, camera guy whatever. They came to it from
a world of appreciation for like appreciation for the arts,
being very schooled and cinema history, getting formally educated in

(38:53):
camera work and like majoring and that stuff in college,
and after a short time in the field, got it okay.
Like when you say, if I go, don't move, these
guys don't move, okay, ma'am. They at least understand. I
have had to sit with I've this is something I've

(39:16):
literally done. I've literally say out with the camera guy
before Turkey Hunt, and I want to go like, I'm
gonna show you. I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna
show you what not moving looks like, because apparently apparently
there's different understandings of what not moving looks like. And
I'd be like, this is not moving, that's not moving.

(39:41):
You think not moving is this? I get it. Not
moving is right and it can be learned, And I think,
but what. At the same time, you could grow up
being a great hunter like okay or just let I
don't want to say great, you grew up being an
avid hunter. I want to be able to roll myself

(40:03):
into this without claiming to be a great hunter. You
grew up being an avid hunter. I still, this is
not a joke. I would not know how to turn
this camera on. I honestly wouldn't know how to turn
it on. I probably wouldn't either. No, I've done it,
but I probably wouldn't know. I took when I was
in regular college. I took black and white photography one,

(40:26):
black and white photography two and struggled. I know how
to wield the English language. I do not know how
to work with images, right, So.

Speaker 5 (40:41):
We answer to all that. Bottom line, we had a trademark.
This ain't Hollywood, so we're not trying to win a
cinematography award. We're trying to share with the public what happens.
And the problem you have with people who aren't hunters
is they can't anticipate yes, and if they can't, they're
gonna miss something that really needed to be seen by

(41:03):
the viewer.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
But Okay, it's good. We're good. No, we're good. But
but I don't want to I don't want you to
think by me using the term cinematography, I don't want
you to think that I'm talking about people who are
trying to arts stuff up. If you talk to these guys,
they don't talk about they're not like, oh, it's not beautiful.
It's not that they talk about coverage. Right, Like you

(41:28):
could be trained in photography, trained as a camera guy, whatever,
that that doesn't mean that you're like focused on that.
You're focused on that. You think you're gonna set everything
up with the setting sun and the fog and right,
it's like coverage, did you get coverage? Meaning? Uh, can

(41:49):
you fill the scene out? Right? And they have a
people like these guys at the right training and right experience,
they understand they can picture. You're to get out of
your truck. You're gonna walk in the dark, You're gonna
kind of arrive at a place. You're gonna hear a gobble, right,

(42:09):
You're gonna find where to set up. You're gonna get
set up. You're gonna not like it. You're gonna get
set up again, you're gonna get your stuff out, you're
gonna write, and every little single part of that, they
got a part of it. When you're watching something that's
that's not great, maybe you got like the lights coming
on when you open the truck door and the next

(42:31):
thing there's a guy sitting on a tree. You missed
a bunch, Yeah, because you didn't get coverage and that
knowledge of coverage. I just don't want to be hacking on.
I don't want to be hacking on. I get it,
I get it. I once was listening to an interview
with Ralph Stanley, the bluegrass musician. He won't play with
college kids. He says, college kids don't understand blue grass.

(42:53):
You don't want to play with college kids, or something
to that effect. And I'm like, you know, that's funny
hacking on college kids. But there's a pretty good college
kid camera guys out there.

Speaker 5 (43:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, I get you.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
I do agree with anticipation.

Speaker 9 (43:07):
Like I filmed with Steve a bunch in the field,
and I'm like to the point now where I can
something changes with him where I'm like, okay, like I
need to get ready to get some sort of shot here,
you know.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah. Well there's also a part he didn't mention is
that I have to look at him to see if
that was actually a gobble. Yeah. So Bratt Brad Ferrish
was the was the master at being able to anticipate
it and get over the shoulder stuff. Yeah, absolutely magical.
But I like you. I like your word choice anticipate. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:43):
But one time the Outdoor Channel, we were the rated
number one on the Outdoor Channel, and they came to
see us. They came all the entourage, about four of them,
came to our office and sat down and said, Okay,
y'all have got to change some things. Let's look at
this footage. Look at so that right here. You've got
to change that airplane has no business being in your footage.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Here. What airplane?

Speaker 5 (44:06):
This airplane flew?

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Oh, just some random airplane. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 (44:09):
And the gobbler was goblin and got shot while the
airplane was and then we looked at him and go
just reshoot it and get some other ambient sound and
edit the airplane out.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
And look, I don't think we're gonna be number one
much longer. We're gonna keep doing what we do. Because
of the feedback we get from the public that says,
thank you, thank you for not reenacting scenes.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Gotcha, you know.

Speaker 5 (44:39):
And the first time I saw a guy killing elk
on video that was reenacted, he walked up with the
camera here the elk in the middle, and the guy
walking up and finding the elk.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
You didn't like. That's bs. They all knew it was there.
It wasn't original. We won't. You don't do that.

Speaker 5 (45:00):
You get behind the guy and you you get what
you get.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yep. You fill it up with what really happened, and
if you fall down, you show it and you get
to laugh, which I've done, which we are going down
a steep invitment and end up with your.

Speaker 5 (45:18):
Self in the water and all messed up, and you
know you show it.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Fine? Yeah, Hey, what do you think makes a good hunter?

Speaker 5 (45:25):
What makes a good hunter?

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yeah, nothing to do with camera guys. But what do
you think makes a good hunter? Oh?

Speaker 5 (45:30):
Somebody that realizes what patience is and giving things time
to happen, not trying to force it.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah, yeah, you do? You do? You subscribe to that
Turkey hunting philosophy. If you think you ought to do something, don't.

Speaker 5 (45:46):
That that's that's fifty percent of the time.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
That's what time you do do it. Yeah, you do
it anyway, but you like the idea that you should
at least double quite yes, question the impulse, Yes, sir.
What's your favorite thing? You know is Turkey's your favorite?
I always think of you as that. I imagine you'd be.

(46:10):
You like turkeys. Turkeys and elk.

Speaker 5 (46:11):
I'm glad they don't come at the same time of year.
But in this stage of my life upland hunting. That's
what got me into the shooting of sporting clays, and uh,
I wanted to get better at shooting upland birds. There
were certain crossers that I would not shoot will primos,
if that dove or that duck was coming left to

(46:32):
right because the way the winds we had to set
up and the way the wind was on the on
the blind or whatever. I learned not to shoot at him.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I want to go hit him. Yeah, well, what the
hell you still shoot?

Speaker 5 (46:42):
You know, I mean, thirty forty fifty you just set
the shot out. I mean, I just, I just I
just wanted to go shoot at him. Would I want't
gonna hit him?

Speaker 1 (46:50):
And so I would. I started shooting for the Claye
because I wanted to go to these people who knew
how to shoot this stuff and teach me this is good?
Can we the it's a good chance to talk about sure,
so kind of the reason I've always wanted to have
you on, and we've talked about having you on over
the years for various things. But what allowed it to happen? Now?

(47:10):
What the reason you're sitting here is you sent me
an email about a book you worked on. I'm sorry,
I'm not can you pronounce your your partners, your your
buddy's name?

Speaker 5 (47:22):
Anthony Matisse.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Matteris so Will sent me an email about a book
he's got that's available now, Straight Shooting for Hunters, a
champions guide to using shotguns in the field. And it's
by Will and Anthony Mattie. And the significance of that
is here we have a lifelong hunter who knows the

(47:45):
challenges of being in the field, knows the challenges of
making real shots in the field on stuff that you
got to not just nick but kill. And Anthony is
a competitive.

Speaker 5 (47:55):
Shooter and a hardcore hunter also hard lives to duck hunt.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Okay, so Will. The premise of the book is to
take technical shooting expertise and the dos and don'ts of
shooting and apply it in real world scenarios so that
when you sit there like you're saying, and the wind's
blowing left to right and the bird's coming right to left,

(48:20):
that doesn't mean that you've got to not shoot.

Speaker 5 (48:21):
Yeah, the nuances of the game of sporting clays is incredible.
And by sporting clayes, I mean shooting stuff that's flying
through the air. Okay, for instance, I'm behind a setter,
a pointer Germany short air their own point, and I'm moving.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Up to the side of the dogs.

Speaker 5 (48:39):
The dogs got a view of me where you hold
that gun, where that gun starts from, because you're going
to be low gun, You're going to have to mount
that gun.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
And then where your eyes are.

Speaker 5 (48:47):
Your eyes can come back to focus one hundred thousand
I forget what the exact number is, but let's just
use one hundred thousand times faster than your eyes can.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Go out to focus. Keep back up and say that
again your brought us up there. I'm on a thing.
I'm on a kicking life where when someone tells me
something I don't understand, instead of going Huh, that's great,
I go like, no, I don't understand so and that
doesn't mean they need to re explain it, okay, so
it allows room for explanation.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
Quail or right here at this door, which is approximate,
and lay ten feet away from me, and that dog's
pointing right there.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Well, rather than look right there, I want to look
over and beyond at about fifty yards in soft focus,
so you know, like you know the birds there because
the dog's telling you. And instead of staring at the
brush like you see it.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
Here, So the quail could be here here, here, here,
it could be anywhere, because the dog's got the scent
and you don't know if that they've run off and
stopped again or what. You don't know exactly where they are,
but you know about So don't try to look and
see the quail and see where where they're going to
come from. Look over them and beyond them, say fifty yards.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Well, if you're look at how you're ever going to
just hold them right out of the bushes, all right, smarty,
So your eyes come back to focus so much faster
than out to focus.

Speaker 5 (50:09):
So if I'm looking and solve focus and the quail rise,
my eyes come back and see the flash. My eyes
come back and grab the flash. Now, I don't look
at the quail. I look at his beak, I look
at his head. I look at you can. Some guys
are really good at being able to shoot only male
bob whites rather than just fifty fifty it because they're

(50:29):
looking that intensely and they pick out that bird. And
then your hands. Your eyes tell your brain where your
hands go. It's no different than baseball. You don't look
at the bat. You look at the ball, and that's
all you look at when you're throwing a football.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, that's a good point, man.

Speaker 5 (50:51):
Yeah, when you're throwing a football and the guy's running,
you're not looking at the ball. You're looking at the runner,
and you're deciding how fast you gotta throw, how far
you've got to throw it, at what angle you've got
to throw it so it will drop into the receiver's hands.
Your brain calculates all that, and through repetition in practice,
which is what sportingclays gives you, you learn to be

(51:12):
able to execute that subconsciously. And so you become subconscious
when that quail is down there, your eyes look out
that you're ready, and you move and shoot and you're
much more effective. And there's different techniques. Let's just say
it's dove hunting or duck hunting. You've got what's called
swing through, and here's you start behind the bird and

(51:33):
you move past the bird. Your brain, you match speeds
with the bird. Then you move your gun slightly ahead
to the lead, and your brain tells you that's it, and.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
You pull the trigger.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
Yep, that's technique one yeah, that's one yeah. And then
you've got maintained leads because of what the how far
it was, whatever, You mount in front of the target,
match speeds with the target, and then.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Pull the trigger. That's my technique. Is that bad?

Speaker 5 (51:56):
Not necessarily, But if you can learn the all three techniques,
you know, if you can learn how to swing through,
how to maintain lead, and how to mount, own the
bird and stretch it all three, you will be a
much better shot because they all come at different times
that you should apply depending on a distance, angle, and speed.
So how how far it is? You know how fast

(52:19):
it is, and you know, uh and the angle is
it a quarter?

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Is it straight away? Is it going straight up? What
is it?

Speaker 7 (52:26):
So?

Speaker 5 (52:28):
I mean, I've gotten I've gotten crazy about this game.
Anthony Matterez helped me tremendously. I went up there and
took lessons as part of this book. I took lessons
from him and carry luft Our editor stood behind me
and videoed everything that was said. I've got the videos
of Anthony Saytan, will you don't trust yourself? Will You're
not look you're you're stepping up to the plate and

(52:49):
you've You've gone to the prom and you've got a date.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
She's what you got. You know you ain't gonna find
another one.

Speaker 5 (52:57):
And it's just amazing the analogies that he use to
be able to help me understand how to properly move
a shotgun. But I've made friends with Givin Miles from
Arizona and his wife carrying both world champions, Bill Maguire
from Tennessee World champion. I mean, these guys are so
much fun and they're so great and they're all very accomplished.

(53:17):
And when I went to Anthony, he wrote a book
called Straight Shooting one hundred dollars Coffee table book. And
I went to him and said, when you signed my book,
and he said, will I'll be glad to sign your book?

Speaker 1 (53:27):
I went, how's he no mon name.

Speaker 5 (53:30):
He turns out he's a duck hunter and all he
uses is the witch. Yeah, so he and his brother
are big witch callers that they hunt. They live on
Delaware Bay on the river there and they hunt every day.
They're crazy. And so he called me the next day.
I said, how'd he get my number?

Speaker 1 (53:47):
You know what kind of deal?

Speaker 5 (53:48):
He actually emailed me and I said, how do you
get my email? And he says, call me sometime. I
adn't mailing him back. I said, is now a good time?

Speaker 1 (53:55):
He said sure. I called him.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
He said, let's write a book together. I said, okay,
what are we gonna write a book about? He goes
about you learning how to shoot?

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Well, you know that eye trick. That's great. I never
heard that eye trick with birds, like I am absolutely
try it dissecting the sage brush or whatever. Being like,
I'm gonna see that try I'm gonna look for that sucker.
What are your eyes doing in the duck bline?

Speaker 5 (54:20):
Oh well, it depends on whether you're the one who's
controlling the blind or not. If you are not the
coller just gonna call the shots. You're not doing the colling. No,
you're looking down hopefully you're seeing the reflection in the water. Mate,
you're watching the collar. You're you're hiding. That's the worst
thing waterfowlers do is they don't hide, and the ducks
see something they don't like. Maybe circle one more time. Whatever,

(54:43):
you know, you gotta hide, so.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
So you'll you're content to miss the show.

Speaker 5 (54:47):
If you're not, you have to be if you want
to get good shots, okay, because you're screw up putting
your big old white face out there. You know, we
wearing masks and stuff like that. But they see movement you.
It's best to have something over you.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
So when you go to make the shot on a mallard,
are you you're looking at a part of the mallard?

Speaker 12 (55:05):
Right?

Speaker 5 (55:05):
Oh yeah, It depends on the shot. If he's coming
into decoys, I'm I'm naming at his feet because he's
coming down. If he's let and now he's rising, you know,
I'm I'm just mounting right on the duck and moving
my gun slightly above his head, just like maybe an inch,
trying to shoot him right, you know, just as as
he moved. Depends on the steep.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Whether it's a teal that's real fast and rising, if
the duck's crossing.

Speaker 5 (55:31):
It depends on the speed. George Digweed is the twenty
eight time world champion from England. He's won the World champion,
Anthony's won everything. Uh, George has won the world, especially
in Hungary and in Dubai and all over the place.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (55:51):
And I just went to England and took lessons shot
a day with George Digweed and the guys. He's he's
he doesn't know what he does.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
He's so good.

Speaker 5 (56:00):
He's incredible, he's incredible.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
He primarily uses swing through.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
He starts behind the bird, gets perfectly online and comes
through the bird and for ninety five percent of his shots.
But there's just just so wonderful studying this and understanding.
But writing that book, you know, with with with Carrie
and Anthony was incredible because I have now I now

(56:26):
don't have any excuses.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
That's the deal. Well, yeah, because now you wrote a
book about it. Yeah, it's gonna be embarrassing when you miss.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. I want to tell
you the worst shot for me, Maybe you can tell
me what the problem is. Darks come in you know whatever,
they're coming into decoys. Everybody shoots and then you get
the one that's like he's leaving, he's going up, he's

(56:50):
going right or left, and he's going over your shoulder.
So from my perspective, he's going Okay, that's hard. Okay. Now,
sometimes maybe he's already been hit a little bit to see,
especially when to here's the duck.

Speaker 5 (57:06):
Okay, go in this mount right behind him and follow
his line, and when the gun passes his beak, pull
the trigger. The speed of the gun will give you
the lead. Mount own the duck, come right through and
that gives you the line. And move right through and
look at something on there. Look at his beak, look
at his feet through something. Don't look at the duck,

(57:28):
and do not look at the gun. It's just like
when you hit a baseball.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
You're not looking at your bead at all.

Speaker 5 (57:33):
No, no, Now, the only time you would do that,
The only time you would do that is if a
low flying bird is coming in and he's close to
the ground your gun. Your brain will confuse the dark
color of the you see the gun.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
In your periphery.

Speaker 5 (57:53):
I'm gonna use this analogy. It's like it's like merging
into traffic. You're not looking at your hood. You're looking
at the track, and so you're timing your speed of
your vehicle to either merge in front of a car
or right behind it. That's what you're doing with a
shot gun. You're taking your gun and you're matching speeds
with the bird and then slightly moving ahead to pull

(58:15):
the trigger that gives you the lead.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
All these analogies you're using, like when you throw a ball,
you don't look at your arm. When you're driving your car,
you don't look at your car right.

Speaker 6 (58:25):
No, listen, when I got to shoot a little bit
with an instructor in Latvia a couple of years ago.
Anytime I've shot with an instructor and I'm I first thing,
I'll tell him as well, not that good because I'm
left eye dominant and I shoot right handed. And this
guy he looked at me and goes, oh, So I
was like, well, still sometimes I like to close my
left eye. It helps me line everything up. And he goes, oh,

(58:47):
when you you play basketball at all?

Speaker 3 (58:49):
I go, yeah, decent shot.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
He goes, do you close one eye when you shoot
your basketball?

Speaker 5 (58:54):
No?

Speaker 1 (58:55):
You know, no, I just that yeah, so very very free.

Speaker 5 (59:01):
People are a hundred percent left or right eye dominant,
and there's a there's a test to do that.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Did we show it in the book, so not to
this one. So if I'm looking at you, you know
no that that only shows you, which is okay. Because
this is an audio thing, there's a video component which
you can find What's Our What's.

Speaker 10 (59:25):
Our Meat Eater podcast network on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Make sure you hit the subscribe. It was also so
from the ever since I was a little boy. I
want to tell what Yanni did when I did like
my dad would say, as probably ninety percent of dads
in America would say to their kid if this question
comes up, they'd go when they're trying to ascertain if
their kid is right or left eye dominant, they go like, okay,

(59:50):
aim your thumb at me, close your eye and aim
your thumb at me right and I close my right
eye and then aim my and I'd take my left
eye and and my thumb at will and then they go,
left eye, donamant left eye dominant? Yohani did, uh. He
made a little he put his hands together and made
a little diamond between his What do you call that

(01:00:11):
the crook of your thumb?

Speaker 10 (01:00:12):
I don't tell that is like a like a an
arrow pointing out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Yeah, make the make it inverted.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
I love you get as small as you can look.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Tighten her down, down down, So you got a little
aperture there and then aim that at someone.

Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
Yeah, that tells you what you're most most likely to eat.
But the real test is like like like right now,
I am going to point at your right eye, okay,
and I want you to look and see where my
finger is and lined up on my eyes?

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Where is it? Oh? Huh? What where is it? Where's
where is where is my finger in relation to my eyes?

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
On your right eye?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Okay? H where is it?

Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
On your nose?

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Will you? Guys will yelling at you? So you look
at his eyes when he points, say that very naturally.
If you see me to get off his land, I'd
probably get off his lamb.

Speaker 5 (01:01:06):
So what you're doing is you're you're establishing how much dominant?

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Do it to me? Because I don't understand huh, doud
do the same thing to me? I'm trying to understand
what he's seeing.

Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
Okay, So I'm going to point. I'm gonna you're you're
trying to tell me. You're trying to tell me which
one of my eyes is dominant?

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
But I got both open. Oh yeah, you're closed. I
am too.

Speaker 5 (01:01:24):
So I'm gonna point my finger at your right eye.
Where is my finger lined up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
On my face a little bit that way.

Speaker 10 (01:01:30):
Of center, looks that way to the left, Steve.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Right eye, Will's right eye. I'm looking at you dead
eye with both my eyes. It's on the bridge of
your nose.

Speaker 5 (01:01:42):
Should be my finger should be lined up with my
right eye. It's not right there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
It's dead nuts on the bridge your nose. Okay, now
now you got to you got two left eyes. Now
now I'm pointing my finger with both eyes with my
left hand. Now it says that way.

Speaker 5 (01:02:00):
So what you're doing, you end up you end up
establishing somebody can be cross eye dominant and they get
their both.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
So if it's on the middle of your bridge, you're
seeing with.

Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Both your eye, both your eyes. So that's that can
be very hard for a shooter because it's brains does
the brain doesn't know which eye to tell the hands
where to go. So when you have when you're when
you're dominant, you can be eighty percent dominant, ninety percent dominant. See,
so it's very important to establish that. So you should
establish that and One of the things you could do

(01:02:33):
if you wanted to do, You could put a dot
over your glasses. We talk about that in the book,
to barely obscure your dominant eye a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Yeah, I've done that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:41):
Yeah, so that it makes your other eye your you're
said left eye, your your left eyes dominant.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
But can we establish like a very basic thing you
it's true, this is true right like when you're when
you're wing shooting, there's no reason to be closed in
the eyes.

Speaker 5 (01:03:00):
Well, I was going on to that, we got distracted
a little bit. So if the bird is loaded the
ground and coming in close, coming in right at you,
the brain can confuse the barrel. You're seeing the barrel
like the hood of your car. It's in your periphery.
You don't really see it, but your brain is going well,
and you think you're on the target and you miss, Well,
that's a that's a spot shot. That's a spot on

(01:03:23):
aim shot. You point it like a rifle. So for
a coming straight at you. A lot of times in sportingclays,
I was shutting my left eye because I want to
make sure my gun's pointing right at that. There's no
lead involved, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
God then you're aiming at like you're shooting a turkey.
That's right.

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
So there are instances, and Anthony talks about it in
his book Straight Shooting. He was a young guy, he
was doing really well. He was down in Florida shooting
in a major tournament, and I believe he shot. He came,
he tied for six, but he was he was winning.
And he got to the station with that low incoming
and Dan Carlisle was an Olympic champion bunker trap and

(01:04:03):
other disciplines, and he taught Anthony never to close the eye.
And Anthony went back.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
He was tearful. I believe he was like eighteen years old.

Speaker 5 (01:04:14):
He was tearful. He was gonna win this tournament and
he tied for six. He went home and thought about it,
thought about it, went back to this hotel, thought about it,
thought about it, and the next day he shot one
hundred straight. He figured out that he needed to squint
an eye or close it a little bit on these
incoming straight birds to be positive where his brain was

(01:04:36):
being told his gun was pointing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Hmmm.

Speaker 5 (01:04:39):
So there are disciplines and nuances within the game for
different stuff. Just like you said, that's the way I shoot,
you shoot and maintain lead. If you would mount on
the bird on some of those then barely move in
front of him, it gives you the line you're not
when you mount online, you're taking out the fact that
I'm too low or too high. You start right behind
the bird and move straight through, so you're in the

(01:05:00):
line with the flight of the bird.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
M hm.

Speaker 5 (01:05:02):
And that takes out fifty of your error over and under.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 10 (01:05:08):
But Steve, that sounds exactly like what you've told me
in the past when you've taken me out. You're like,
imagine a paint brush and you're painting beyond the bird.
I don't think you told me to keep an eye
on the dot. You're like, you're going beyond the bird,
in front of it from the beak, and that's where
you're shooting because the time that you know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Okay, So yeah, there's a lot of things in life
where we tell people your thing fine, then you catch
yourself not but yeah, like in my you know, and
then in the heat of the moment or whatever, and
you just might have not doing there's certain things you
don't do, you know. But I've done enough where I
can try different not as disciplined as you are. But

(01:05:50):
I've done enough shooting where I know that in some
try instances this and some instances that. But but you're
talking about a very You're talking about really major shifts
and strategy based on situations. And I think most shooters
are not consciously yeah, thinking about not consciously going, I'm
gonna use this method. Now, I'm gona use that method

(01:06:11):
on that shot. I'm gonna use that method on that show.

Speaker 5 (01:06:13):
That brings you to understanding gunfit. So gunfit is not
the number one thing, but if you want you to
get to shooting a little bit, gunfit is major important
because when you mount that gun, when you mount that gun,
I should be pointing at what I'm aiming at. So
when I'm helping somebody, I'll let them fit the gun,

(01:06:35):
show me it's unloaded, and then I have them mounted
and pointed at my right eye, and I can look
down and see exactly where their eyes looking, so I
can tell it if there's too much not enough comb
height too. You know, the comb mite's too low, it's
too high, the pitch is wrong. And women are different
than men, They're built different. So the heel to toe

(01:06:55):
of the butt plate and how it's angled can hurt
and it also so if a gun hurts you, it
doesn't fit you. If it hurts your face or your shoulder,
it probably doesn't fit you. And everybody, most everybody shoots
too hot a shells. They shoot way too much.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Pa, there's not better, no no news to me.

Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
I can show you right now George Digweed shooting clays
at a one hundred and thirty yards with not too
hot of shells.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
I can't picture that. You see the video kind of
like lobbing it in there. Man, you're holding for drop.

Speaker 5 (01:07:36):
Yeah, he is doing that too, but it's incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Are you ever holding for drop on ducks only.

Speaker 5 (01:07:41):
If they're seventy five eighty yards or further? Okay, you
shoot slightly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Off, so that's not the thing you're not.

Speaker 5 (01:07:46):
You don't shoot at him that far. Yeah, you don't
shoot at him that far.

Speaker 6 (01:07:51):
Here's one thing I'd like to ask you a lot
of times I've heard from water fowlers that a good
way to know if the duck is close enough to
shoot at is when you can see their eye.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Yeah, you've heard that that's really close. That's good, that's good,
that's good.

Speaker 6 (01:08:05):
But it means that like, there's that mandatory or do
you feel like, oh no, I could easily shoot when
I can't see can't make out the ducks eye.

Speaker 5 (01:08:12):
Oh yeah, you can see the color of the head.
You can just mallards are great because you could see
the green head from the hen. You got something to
focus on. But typically you learn like bow hunting. Yeah,
when before rangefinders got so easy to use and so forth,
if I can look at that tree and I can
see the distinguishing mark bark on that tree with my

(01:08:33):
twenty twenty vision, twenty fifteen vision, when if I can
see that, I know that that tree is thirty five
yards are closer.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Hmm. That's a good little trick.

Speaker 5 (01:08:43):
Yeah, but you've got to know your eyes to be
able to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
That's a great trick.

Speaker 5 (01:08:47):
And here's here's here's a perfect example to kind of
help you put some of this lead and so forth.
Let's say that birds doing that. Okay, he's flying pretty
fast and he's I'm just shooting as a way to
say goodbye thirty yards Okay, So what you do is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Showing him out here up here comes the bird over
your head. Oh, you mount right behind him and when
you move straight down the line, your hands, your gun
will hide the bird. But what you're doing is, if
the bird's flying at twenty miles an hour, you want
to move your gun at twenty one or twenty two
miles an hour.

Speaker 5 (01:09:22):
So you combine. And when you combine, you keep moving
your gun and you bend at the waist and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
You pull the trigger, and he will crumple when you
pull that trigger. Are you already pulling the second shot?

Speaker 10 (01:09:36):
No, okay, you're not, like, because he knows he's gonna
hit it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
No, this is not I don't know if this is
a this is a uh, this is at assary, This
isn't a wing shooting question. But uh, in your mind,
what's a far away turkey? What's a fire shot? Forty yards? Okay?
I won't shoot one past forty just because it's not

(01:10:02):
the game, right, and it's not the game, and it's
not fair.

Speaker 5 (01:10:05):
There's too many little things that can go wrong. Okay,
but it might be forty five, but I misjudged the distance. Really, Yeah,
I shoot tss. I shoot a twenty gauge youth eleven
eighty seven with a silencer.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
What do you use for using an optic or to
shoot beads.

Speaker 5 (01:10:25):
So, because the silencer is a big can, I had
to put a I put a Bushnell hologram kind of sight.
It's kind of weird. No matter where your head is,
as long as the dots on there, it kills it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Dude, I was into those, well, no, I wasn't. I
was using those for my kids. The red dots, Okay.
I was putting red dots on a break open four
ten okay, because it's just easy to explain to a kid. Yeah,
I shot red dots last spring on turkeys. I'm done.

Speaker 5 (01:10:55):
I'm a bead gallon turkeys. If I didn't have my
silence shirt, it's beads.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Done with that craft. Yeah, it's fun, but it's just
it's just another thing to think about it, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's another thing thing.

Speaker 5 (01:11:06):
She should have shot gun, you know. And I've gone
to the silencer because of my ears.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Sure, so I know that you got to. You got to.
You got the hearing aid, I got to hear it.
You blew your years out of your head over the years.

Speaker 5 (01:11:17):
Look, I was the Martians ship instructor and the Air Force.
I taught people how to shoot them sixteen's and thirty
eight and forty five stuff they got shot down in
the airplanes. They could protect themselves, and they didn't tell
us to protect their ears. They gave us some mere
must in Lackland where I trained, but they didn't tell
us we had to use them. And then I shot skip.
I was the I was the Mississippi State Junior skeeek

(01:11:37):
champion in nineteen sixty four at twelve years old. Nobody
entered but me, and I won by the fault. I
never forget my little futer cup. I'm standing up.

Speaker 9 (01:11:48):
I won.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Isn't that something I didn't wear? Hear in protection?

Speaker 5 (01:11:52):
So now I've got I've got, you know, I've got
here in eighth and I got high frequency back. I
can hear high frequency. I can talk to a child now,
whereas I couldn't for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
And you know, did it bring the gobbels back? Yeah,
for a long way.

Speaker 9 (01:12:06):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
Grace started it.

Speaker 5 (01:12:07):
She came, dear precious friend of mine, and Grace she's
meeting with me, and she looks at my chart and
she says, will you need to be wearing here in age?
I says, I don't really want to wear here in age.
I'm due fine without him, she says. Will the first
The first thing that somebody who's lost the kind of
hearing that you've lost is gonna get is dementia. Your

(01:12:30):
brain quits using that part of the brain. And so
I said, okay, I'm in. So she'd send a lady
who calls on your house. I got these hearing aids.
I'm learning to use them. I walked outside one morning,
it's just barely getting light. It's still dark. Then the
winter oak tree is bird singing up there. I went,
holy CD, I've never heard that bird before. That is incredible.

(01:12:52):
I went back inside. I got my binoculars. I want
to see what bird it was. Bird wasn't there. I'm
standing there. Start singing again. I run in the backyard.
There it is, but not, here's a robin. I ain't
heard a robin sing in twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
I'm headed that way. Yeah, and I was not regret it. Well,
the gobbles are getting hard. I always talk. I talk
about this all the time. But like my kids, there's
one like, no, it's not shut up. Just like Seth
and I have fish as next to each other. I'll
yell something over that Seth and he'll yell back. I'm big.

(01:13:31):
I look at my kid. He said this.

Speaker 5 (01:13:34):
He said, Look when I say we have the camera, mean,
what do you saying?

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Yeah, that's what'd you say. Now I can hear what
they say.

Speaker 5 (01:13:43):
I got these here and they're they're incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
Or even in the boat. My daughter will be in
the boat and it's set a little bit of background
noise of the motor running. Not even bad should be
looking out the front of the boat talking everybody in
the boat. I'm like, what's she talking about. I'm like, ros,
you got to turn around, look at me or come
back here. But I can't hear you from one end
of this eighteen foot boat to the other.

Speaker 5 (01:14:02):
Well, it's a pretty good test that I can hear
everything you say in this room because that microfat is
in front of your lips and I cannot read your lips.
Reading lips is a big deal when you start losing
your hearing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
I tried so hard not I really try to enforce
the hearing aid stuff with my kid. My kid had
these we uh on the fourth of July, whereas by
by the fireworks, you know, and my kid had these
kind of like souped up snapp its that came in
this plastic thing, and he decided to try to open
that package with his teeth that had his ears ringing,

(01:14:38):
oh blood, his lips all bloody, and one of them snapped.
It snapped a couple of them because then it detonated
its neighbor. And he's like Mayor's mayors, And I'm like,
damn it, man, Now he's gonna be like me and
a half deaf, you know, And I had the We
keep teasing my wife about this because, uh she had
probably the best mom quote all the time. She says

(01:15:01):
she's all mad, and uh so the kids always tease
her and I do too, but she goes, that's why
fireworks should be for professionals. True, we're gonna bring in
a professional to light this black cat. The professionals will
be here at nine to throw our snappops. That sounds horrible, Uh, anyhow,

(01:15:25):
I don't. Yeah, we were so stupid. I mean, listen,
I never not that I wasn't aware of what they
were sitting in. Duck blinds. We didn't have blinds, but
duck hunting as kids hunker down, make it. Yeah, we
make blinds. Whatever duck hunting, including like belly crawling up

(01:15:48):
on ducks in a pond and get them the old
one two three with your buddy shotgun, like like three
inches from the side of your face. I would people
didn't even bring they didn't even leave hearing protection in
the truck. Like you simply did not own it.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
You gotta own it like I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
When I I don't mean own it like how people
use it now, Like you got to own that. You
know it's your responsible. I mean own it like they
didn't possess. I got you, and it was just a
part of the deal that some guy would light one
off next to your head. It's just like there's that
old feeling.

Speaker 5 (01:16:30):
I know, somebody who wanted to be funny and he
had a few too many beers and he had his
thick of dynamite and they were trying to make it
blow up in the air, and he held it the
fust just the right late and he went off right there.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
You got to see his hand his ear. It gives
me a sickening feeling now thinking of all that time,
all those times when I would just be like for
two days, know when someone touched one off next to
your head.

Speaker 5 (01:16:57):
Yeah, look, the foam mere plugs are inexpensive. They usually
give him away gun rangers. And if you know how
to use them and you squash them down and put
them in your ears and then hold it in there
until they swell up, that helps tremendously.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
That's all Anthony uses. Really, that's a grace start of
it makes fantastic. And he just uses the old phoemis.

Speaker 5 (01:17:16):
Yeah, the old phoneies.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Yeah, better nothing. And I'll tell you what, like when
you're young, you can't picture if someone had told me, like,
oh later, you'll have hearing problems. And I don't even have,
like really I have like kind of hearing problems. You
can't hear bugles good like the guy next to you can.
And the worst is not hearing gobbles. I have to
look at it. Like when I'm hunting with Seth, I
just had to look like we'll we'll crow call whatever

(01:17:39):
and that will brill in my case blue jay crawl
you know how, We'll make a noise, will make a loud,
disruptive noise, and I'll have to look at I'll listen,
but I'm also looking at Seth to see if he
like raises his eyebrows or some indication to something.

Speaker 5 (01:17:52):
Which like an alcoholic. The first step is admitting you
have a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
You have a problem with yeah, calls and hearing. Yeah,
that's my two primary problems. Uh. You and I are
both big fans of Jeremiah Johnson.

Speaker 5 (01:18:13):
No, no, no better cinematography, no better word.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
You think that was the Hunter? Let me ask you,
do you think a hunter shout that movie or a
camera guy?

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
I think it was a camera Well, can you get
a little closer to your microphone please?

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
I'm I think it was the camera guy. Yeah, yeah, Uh,
will brought me a gift. The position of this suggests
that you're trying to take credit for writing Jeremiah Johnson.
But it's just your email address up top. That's it's
the entire script, Yeah, for Jeremiah Johnson. So the v O,

(01:18:49):
there's a little vo. There's a narrator that has a
couple of lines in there up top and at the
end discreet and and then it's every word and then
including the parts where he can't tell what anybody's saying. Well,
the reason he can't tell, but it's like it's one
of those things where people debate what said.

Speaker 5 (01:19:07):
Yes, So what inspired me was when when delle gue
has come up on the Indians. After he's after the
Mormons buried him in the sand and he got dug out,
you know, not the Mormons turn Mormons, part Mormon, but anyway,
you know, he finally gets there and he goes in
there to kill him. He starts screaming as he's going
in to kill him. And I'm listening, listening, I've listened

(01:19:30):
to it thousands of times. What you're hearing, Aiden, with
the hearing Aiden everything, I just can't understand what he's saying.
So I went and researched and found finally and you
can read what Dale gus.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
I will, but I want to did you once you
found out what it was, did you then watch yes, okay,
and you're convinced this is what he says.

Speaker 5 (01:19:51):
Yes, okay, now now it made sense. It's kind of
like a song that you can't really understand. But once
you read the lyrics and listen to it song, oh
that's what he's saying.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
In cases any idiots out here in the listening public,
There's a movie called Jeremiah Johnson. It was directed by
Sidney Pollack. Uh. It's set eighteen thirty six, So what
the movie is set?

Speaker 5 (01:20:14):
And I believe it's set in like eighteen sixty Was
it that late?

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
It was the well, no, it was right. He was
coming out of the.

Speaker 5 (01:20:21):
Spanish American War. Yeah, yeah, that's later.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
Yeah, sixty three, No, not sixty.

Speaker 5 (01:20:27):
Three, somewhere in there.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Robert Redford plays a character Jeremiah Johnson. He's coming from war.
He's coming from the Spanish American War, not the Spanish
Mexican Americans come from the Mexican late eighteen forties. No,
I don't think it's that. It is, man, he just missed.
He just missed the fur era. Yeah, take that up. Randall,
doctor Randall. You know, Randall's got PhD in what history?

(01:20:54):
All right, Turkey, all right, it's all I got. So
he's gonna apply. He's gonna watch you to a PhD historian,
apply his training, and he's gonna tell us what year
that war ended. Watch you'll find it.

Speaker 5 (01:21:06):
Go for random.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
I gotta double check all these sources.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
He's going back to the primary source work.

Speaker 5 (01:21:13):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:21:14):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Jeremiah Johnson is the Spanish. The Mexican American tales name
of the war, Randall Mexican American following the Mexican American War.
He wants to go and be a mountain man. But
he arrives, and he arrives in the Northern Rockies and
the heyday's over, the beaver trade is wound down. He

(01:21:39):
just wants to be largely left alone. He encounters these
number of these great characters. He sort of acts very
accidentally against his better judgment. Starts like a little family.
He winds up not accidentally, like against his wishes. He's
thrust in due position where he has to adopt a

(01:22:00):
young child, also against his wishes, and against his better judgment.
He's thrust in the position where he has to become married.

Speaker 5 (01:22:07):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
So now he's like has a wife that he didn't want,
he has a child that he doesn't want, and he
tries to establish a life for them. Spoiler alert, they're killed,
and it sets him on a quest for vengeance. And
through time his thirst for vengeance is sated, and and

(01:22:28):
he's just now like a sort of ghost of a
man and living alone in the mountains. And I will
say that the vengeance in this case was really the crows,
because he made his amends when he went and kill
the people that killed his wife and his kid. That's true.

Speaker 5 (01:22:47):
And he left one and that one then reports back
to paints his shirt red, which is the headed guy,
head of the tribe, and he says, and the drenth
of them is built on one warrior, and so they
send one warrior at.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
A time to kill Jeremiah. Yep, and he is able
to kill everyone that he sent after you.

Speaker 8 (01:23:11):
Okay, if I may interject, there's no specific year that's
pinpointed to the movie, but.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
I know that if there was, we wouldn't be arguing
about it. I'd be holding it right in my hand.

Speaker 8 (01:23:22):
That's fair because he was a veteran of the Mexican
American War, and he's still wearing his cavalry pants when
he went into the mountains Mexican American War eighteen forty six,
eighteen forty eight.

Speaker 5 (01:23:34):
Okay, I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
He encounters a man. He's out in the desert and
he encounters a man buried to his neck, just his
head's bald headsticking out. No, he's wearing it. He had
hair at the time. No, he was bald, bald time. Yeah,
And he yells something, he says, I am delG you,

(01:23:58):
I can whip my weight andes that everybody knows that.
What they don't know is this, straight through a crab
apple orchard on a flash of lightning. I never knew
that till last night. Yeah, you've stolen my pelts and die.

(01:24:20):
You must already knew that. Straight through a crab apple
orchard on a flash of lightning. And the old days
we would have called this whole episode that. There you go,
I like it. Well, we can't anymore trying to get
more serious about what SEO. I don't know what the
hell we're.

Speaker 10 (01:24:38):
Trying to search engine optimism.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
No one's searching that because they don't know that that's
what he says, it would get se O zero. No
one's searching that today. Straight through a crab apple orchard
and a flash of lightning. Well, I love the movie
most because then, so we're gonna go to this is

(01:25:05):
this an episode of Steve Reid's movie Scripts?

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
So you don't know what about?

Speaker 6 (01:25:08):
Are we gonna skip over the part where he's running
into the house, the part that Will didn't know what
he was saying.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
Now we know was not in the house.

Speaker 5 (01:25:17):
He's the Indians are sleeping.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
So yeah, they attack him.

Speaker 5 (01:25:22):
So the young boy that he's been forced to take
on as a son. And Jeremiah have found del U
buried up to his head and you know, asked him,
he said, engines bury you here twarnt marmons. So they
dig him out. And now the search becomes to go
find these Indians and they were black Feet, I believe,

(01:25:47):
and to find them and and and Dale is gonna
kill him. Jeremah doesn't want kill him. He's supposed to
be left alone. Yeah, and that's when he's that's when
he when when Dale g that's when he's that part
is charging and that's what that's what he's. George Indian,
one of the delightful characters.

Speaker 1 (01:26:07):
He meets his bear claw, Chris lap Lap, and he said,
Chris lap begrudgingly saves his life and gives him his
initial education and mountain living, how to stay warm, how
to get food and all that, and then uh, how
to trap you leave. Then Chris lap leaves him and
the end Jeremia Johnson's like way up in the high country.

(01:26:29):
He's uh cooking a rabbit. Now. One problem, the one
problem in Jeremiah Johnson. There's one distinct, singular problem in
the whole movie. One imperfection he's roasting a rabbit on
a stick. The end of the movie, it's just sad.
Everything's sad and depressing. He's way up in the high

(01:26:49):
country by himself, bundled in his furs. He's got a
little fire going and he's cooking a rabbit. The one
problem in the movie Randall, what is it? Do you know?
Oak beagles No. When he goes to get he goes
to pull a leg from the rabbit and it comes
off as though it's tender. Mmmm.

Speaker 5 (01:27:07):
It's like it's.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
It's no way. They almost got to the end with that.
If I would have been there as a consultant, I
would have said he needs to really try to pull
hard and can't get it off, and eventually tries to
cut that leg off because I don't care how you
cook a contail rabbit on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
A fire, so you think it was a like it
was pre cut or was a farm raised.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
The rabbit reaches out bearcrock. Chris Lap pulls up. Ask him,
everything's unspoken this movie. Ask him what's on the spit?
Chris Lap asks Jeremia Johnson what's on particular. Jeremiah Johnson says, no,

(01:27:52):
who guess what? Yeah, Chris Lap asked Jeremi Johnson, what's
on the spit grown particular? And he says to him,
he replies, have you grown particular? And he says, only
about the company I keep, mm hmm. But he throws he.

Speaker 5 (01:28:07):
He says, not about my feeding, just the company.

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
That's just the company I keep. But he's willing to
come talk to Johnson. Johnson then removes the leg of
the rabbit and it's just too easy. It's always tripped
me up.

Speaker 11 (01:28:20):
Maybe he had an instant.

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Yeah it. If he pulled it off, I'd be like, yeah,
this looks great. There's a movie I want to get
into subtlety. We're nearing the end of the show here
will but there's a very good movie called You Can
count on Me, Okay, And it's about a brother and
a sister who are orphaned and then one of them

(01:28:44):
becomes like a family person and one of them becomes
an addict and wander and the whole movie. You never
know why the movie is called you can count on Me.
No one ever says you can count on me. Nothing.
In the end of the movie, the brother and sister
tried to come together, but he's too messed up, and
the sister doesn't want the brother around her children, so

(01:29:05):
he's got to go away. And one of them says
the other one, do you remember what we used to
always say to each other? And you're thinking, well, here's
the part where someone's gonna go, yeah, it was you
can count on me, But he just says, yeah, I
remember never said. No one ever says the words in
the whole movie. But you know the name of the
movie is the answer to the riddle, right, Jeremia Johnson

(01:29:30):
nothing said in the end of the movie, but it's this, Uh,
Jeremiah Johnson wants to know of Chris ask Chris Lap,
would you happen to know what month of the year
it is? And Chris Lap takes a stab at it.
March maybe April. March is a money month down below.

Speaker 5 (01:29:53):
Some folks like it mostly I hope you will farewell.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
No, you left out, he says. They speculate about what
month it is, and they don't arrive at an answer. Right,
It's just left is an open question. They don't know that.
They're so out there now and so removed from anything
to say March. I don't believe April. Yeah, he goes, March.
Maybe I don't believe April. Winner's a long time going

(01:30:20):
stays long. This high march is a green, muddy month
down below. Some folks like it, farmers mostly. Then he
says that he changes the subject. It's a non sequitor.
You've done well to keep so much hair when so
many is after it, when so manyar after it. I
hope you farewell. And the movie no no, then the

(01:30:42):
voiceover yeah, the then paints his shirt red, says his
piece doesn't say anything and say it, but he says it,
says it with his hand. Yeah, wow, thanks for that.
I need a really long hallway because I'm gonna frame
this whole thing. But I need a hallway long enough
to We've got that. Yeah, really long frames. So the

(01:31:07):
eleven inches higher.

Speaker 5 (01:31:08):
To me, to me, paints his shirt red, and Jeremiah's
ending scene is about forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
Yes, it's it's it's paints his shirt red, that offers
the sign of peace. I shouldn't leave that off.

Speaker 5 (01:31:22):
And then when Jeremiah gives, gives when he realized when
he reaches first gun at first because he thinks we
go again, and then he realizes it's paints his shirt red,
and he realizes he's offered the peace sign. He cannot
stretch his hand any tighter.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Yeah, you know, he goes and then he goes higher.
It was like got the trump got his earshot fist
in the air defiant. Yeah, but it's not. It's a piece.
He stretches it and then he like strains to get
it higher and instead emitting, he's just got rags wrapped
around his hands.

Speaker 5 (01:31:54):
Well, I'm telling you, it's been wonderful to meet all
of y'all as a bee here. It's been absolutely great.
And as far as the book goes, you can pre
order audio right now. You go to Amazon and and
just type in Straight Shooting for Hunters and audio. Yeah,
the audio version and the book. The audio version will
come out first, and the audio is read by me.

(01:32:14):
It's my good, perfect, it's my voice.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
You let some idiot read it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:18):
Yeah, so it'll be Straight Shooting for Hunters And type
in Primos or matteris and you can pre order the
audio and that'll do you a lot of good riding
your car. Listen to it. But the diagrams that are
in the book are very visual.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
That's why. That's why when you said audio, I was like.

Speaker 5 (01:32:32):
Sure, when you go to talking about pointed the eyes
and establishing how dominant you are and either I it's
in there and then the swing through the pass through,
the maintain lead.

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
You know. All that is in the book Street Shooting
for Hunters, A champions Guide to using shotguns in the
Field Anthony Mattise correct and uh, Jeffert Will primos Jack,
big Jack Jack, Big Jack, Oh, big Jack. Sorry, I'm
little Jack. Well, thanks for coming on the show man.

(01:33:05):
It means a lot to me. Like I said, are
up top, I'm gonna and I'm gonna end it the
same way I began. I've uh always admired you and
and and your positivity and and just like euphoria for family,
wild life friends being in the field. It's it's just

(01:33:25):
it's good man.

Speaker 5 (01:33:26):
I've gone her a whole lot more respect than I deserve.
But let me thank you because you've taken up the
torch and the work that you do and what you
do with your team and sharing with the world what
meat eater is all about and what loving outside is
all about. It hunting and fishing is awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:33:45):
Good Thank you, good ship, keep it up, thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:33:48):
Good job, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Thanks Will.

Speaker 5 (01:33:50):
Yeah, You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
Thank you. It's in the morning and I'm dropping the game.

Speaker 4 (01:34:06):
Little my boys, it's getting her my dog. I'm running
with my dog.

Speaker 9 (01:34:18):
I've got a black flat.

Speaker 12 (01:34:20):
Blood down the mountains and curl.

Speaker 7 (01:34:24):
Any kind of game feeder, Hofir, I got my dog.

Speaker 4 (01:34:31):
No runing with my dog?

Speaker 3 (01:34:37):
Well first like midnight. It's all the same, me and
the dog.

Speaker 7 (01:34:43):
We're after the game, wet lands, up lands.

Speaker 12 (01:34:48):
Mountain juices, we get to jews. Well, it's turning the morning.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
Mount to drop the girl.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):
Come on, little little boys.

Speaker 4 (01:35:19):
Let's getting late. I not my dog.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
I'm going hunting with my dog.

Speaker 12 (01:35:30):
I got a blooted leadhound a mountain care.

Speaker 9 (01:35:36):
And it kind of gave it all leather, Afir.

Speaker 7 (01:35:40):
I got a dog, and I'm going to hunting with
my dog. Will let its first like mid ninety soul,
the same being the dog gonna go get us a game.
So wedd landsy up lands are.

Speaker 12 (01:36:00):
Just some mount cues.

Speaker 9 (01:36:03):
You know you did tooose?

Speaker 12 (01:36:05):
Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 9 (01:36:45):
Do.

Speaker 4 (01:36:45):
Don't feel like today, the lapse of thirty all it's bad,
don't matter how anything, knowing no l

Speaker 12 (01:37:13):
In the

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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. 593: Patience is a Good Hunter, with Will Primos