Ep. 076: The Impossible Hunt

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten and in my case, underwear lessening podcast. You
can't predict anything, have like your own show. And I
was like, oh, I don't think you're talking about to

(00:31):
say that. Um, your turkey talk did not inspire me,
but I would love to be able to bottle Brittany's lap.
You don't like that, y'all. Don't know what you brought
up recently that I've been meaning to bring up with
other people. Don't maybe think like a lot less of you.
Uh yeah, it's just saying that it's gonna happen sometimes. Yeah,

(00:55):
just just saying that. When he was guiding l Hunters,
did dude like, there's turnover day, right, and new guys
come in. Janice would look and and hope to get
a signed to the person that looked like they were
the highest tipper. That's what I was curious about. Look

(01:17):
at their shoes or something. Because we were talking about
tips in general, and we were talking about somewhere we
were talking about where they were pooling tips. I said,
I'd like that because you would like that. Well, yeah,
because when the new crew rolls in, you can you
can't pick the guys out like they do the rolls in.
It's like you were saying, save five thousand dollars over

(01:39):
ten years by collecting metal scraps, and then at the
end of the week he doesn't kill out and he
tips his dude a thousand bucks, and you're like, how
how did that happen? Sounds like a big tip. That's
a giant tips you were saying. I thought you were
saying the guy with the metal scraps would not tip. Well,
well that's what you would think, right, So you're I'm

(02:02):
saying you can't pick them out. The guy that was
stripping down copper wire for ten years just to go
on a hunt, you'd be like, I don't want him.
And then it turned out that you could. You didn't
really know because maybe he had stripped so much copper wire. Right.
I grew up. This is the last I'll say about this. Uh,
you can explain more. But I grew up with guys

(02:22):
that were so ambitious, but not ambitious that rather get jobs.
These guys one time went and hot wired some kind
of piece of heavy equipment in order to load a
spool of rubber coated copper cable into a truck and
then spent days with a fire burning off the coating
to sell them and like how much copper were talking

(02:44):
about a giant spool pounds hundreds of pounds of copper. Yeah,
that's where some money, and had a campfire and just
rather than like getting a job, I'm just working for yourself, man,
But um yeah, some guys don't back up, so so
I just I just felt to you, like knowing you,

(03:05):
I felt like you would you would say uh, or
the way I understood you to be before, before I
found out how you really are, I would have pictured
that you'd say like, uh, yeah. You know. The guys
come in and I look and I try to find
the one who's dreaming the most, the one that's hungryest
for this hunt, because I want to team up with
him and give him an experience, and by god, if

(03:29):
I need to pay him to do it, I'll do it.
I need the guide's dreams of the client that you want.
A guide probably change, you know, as you mature as
a guide, it changes because like in the beginning, you're like,
I want the guy that's never elk on it, and
then he won't call me out on the fact that
I've only hunted two weeks more than he. And then

(03:50):
later you sort up probably get to the person that
you're like, man, I wanted to do this is just
gonna charge, gonna get up at three am. He wants
to hunt the top of the mountain every day and
hike three hours in the dark every day, like three
hours in the dark back every day. And then I
think right towards the end at least definitely happened with
fishing for me, is that, Um, I like taking just
newbies and beginners that just you know, you show them

(04:12):
one bugle and elk and they're just like, wow, blew
my mind. That was unbelievable, you know. Um And even
if they weren't the best hunters, if they at least
were just trying into it, and you know, that's how
you wanted a guide, So that changes, I think, you know,
but you are working at the end of the week.
Sure it's nice to go to the bar with the
big wall in your pocket. Yeah. What was a good

(04:33):
tip for how long were these elk hunts? Five days?
And what was a good tip at the time what
the hunt cost? It was a bargain basement hunt. Man,
it was cheap. It was like three thousand ish for
our treat, maybe even a little bit less. And uh,
but we hunted a lot of public land, you know,
and you might run into other dudes, and then I think,

(04:53):
like if you hunted out of the cabin for rifle,
might have been thirty five thirty eight ish something like that.
So good tip, A good tip. I think like everybody
was stoked if you got two got it two to
one and you were like fine to go walk out
of there with two hundred bucks from each guy. You know,
you felt like you were getting stiffed if it was
they only give you a hunter for the whole week,
you know, but every now and then you did get

(05:15):
a dude the three down the k like he basically
double because we're getting paid two hundred bucks a day
and so he would double your wages for the week,
which was sweet cash. Yeah, exactly cash. Yeah. Are you
related to Mark Roscoe, the former governor? I am? Then
your dad, Now that's my uncle, Yeah, my dad's oldest brother.

(05:36):
So you're like politically connected. Oh yeah, no, not necessarily,
I mean yeah, yeah, how uh that was in the
mid nineties, Yeah, it was, so he was and he
had two terms here and unfortunately can't bring the exact
dates to you, but yeah, it was in that time
for him. Uh and and having a back having your

(05:59):
own do you own out do you own stone Glacier
out right? No? No, I do not? You run it?
What a how's it work? Um? Yeah? Like you like
the explain to me? You tell me, I will explain
it to you. Can we hear who you're talking to?
Is it too early to no? Let's do no, let's

(06:20):
let's do round tablets here. Pete Munich, Pete Munich has
been out here before. Um talking goats. Yeah, because Pete
runs Rocky You know how Janice has the Rocky Mountain
Squirrel Foundation. Pete Munich invented, right, you invented the Rocky
Mountain go to lines once upun a time, which is

(06:41):
the only got focused mountain goat focused. And you were
inspired like you you had like a moment, like a
like a epiphany. Uh. Yeah. I saw the Governor's tag
Big Horn Tag in Montana get auctioned off that wild
cheap Foundation one winner for five eighty thousand dollars and

(07:06):
eight I didn't know what ever went that high? Yeah,
well we gotta return to that because that's something I
want to talk about anyways, talk boy at. That money
went back to the state of Montana for sheep management
and conservation. And I love mountain goats and had previously
hunted one and kind of inquired about our governor's tag
Mountain goat Governor's tag, and then kind of started asking
about volunteer opportunities and conservation efforts and that kind of

(07:30):
a quiet answer. So the go To Alliance was formed?
What what did the goat tag go for? That same year?
The Montana Governor's Mountain Goat tag ranges from about fifteen
to twenty three thousand dollars. I don't know they had one.
You never hear about that? Yeah, a lot most states do. See,
all right, we're already digging a hole. Man. There's so
much easily explained now, Okay, so Pete, you also work

(07:55):
Peter or Pete, I see, just go But you also
work for Stone was Yes, I do. It's like you're
main because you don't make money off running the go
to line. Um, then Kurt tell to tell all about
what you got going out? Now, Okay, So, Um, I
am the lead designer for Stone Glacier and I'm also
one of the owners and the founder. I'm the founder

(08:17):
one oh yep, one of yep. Yeah. We were in
the room where you design packs. Yeah, yeah, a lot
of it. You know, n I do right here. Um
nice quiet space, you don't, you know, no distractions and
uh have everything you need right here. So yeah, I
started Stone Glacier back in two thousand twelve, and then

(08:39):
this last year, you know, we're looking for growth, we're
looking to expand in other markets, do lots of other things,
and we found um the right people that wanted to
be involved, and and so you know, it's given me
the time to move back into the design primarily and
focus on on you know, what I need to do

(09:00):
to grow the company. You know, back in the mid nineties,
I was saying, went a little later now, I was like,
you know what, there's no more room in his world
for another micro brewery. Yeah, just a few. Yeah, look
at both around declared market saturation. Yeah. But is it like,

(09:20):
is it scary? Was it scary getting like starting a
backpack company? No, it wasn't scary at all. Um. I
think you know, financially, it wasn't scary, just because of
the way that I went about it. Um, I wasn't
looking to hit a home run. I wasn't looking to
leverage my you know, my family's life savings. UM. I
was just looking to bring a product to market that

(09:41):
I thought was viable, that people would use. Uh and
and so that was the only step was actually taking
on myself. I talked to other companies, you know, nothing serious, um,
but you know, they had their own programs going. They
were doing their own thing, and so that that was
the only option. And started very small, you know, a

(10:02):
minimum run. And this was a side gig. This is
not Kurt's full time job. Yes, yep, yep, yep, exactly.
So uh, all time job, full time job, high alted
electrician in Alaska. Yeah, that's why this room is plastered
with stuffed doll sheet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I

(10:23):
wanna use me up there? Is that just don't know
us now how gonna use you up there? I was
up there for Oh yeah, so you're stacking up doll rams. Yeah,
I was trying you shot all these doll sheep yep, yep. Question.
That's the brown that is a Montana big one. That's
the that's the unlimited that is Yeah, I want to

(10:44):
talk about that a whole bunch. And then Brittany brothers,
you've been on here a bunch of times? How many
times been on here? Only two times? No? No No, no,
that's not true. I guess after the episodes too, So
four times? Can you laugh for a minute? No, because
the fella I'll just tell Brittany fella rode in last
time you were on and and he was saying that

(11:04):
he wished that he could bottle bottled Brittany's laughter. He
provided full contact information. So I feel like you should
chuckle for him. Now, Well, it's organic, right, Like I
have to be prompted. I can't just like fake it otherwise,
you know, would be the fun in that? Um, what
do you have to say? Did you want to get

(11:25):
in a turkey the spring? No? I didn't. We went
once with Janice and Helen and her boyfriend came into
town and my boyfriend and the whole Patelis clan. And
then another time my boyfriend and I went out east
and were attacked by like the worst tick infecon infection.
But it doesn't those ticks don't matter. Oh they sure

(11:45):
as held. When you have two dogs that are crawling
with hundreds of ticks, why would you bring dogs turkey
hunt were hunting turkey's illegally under the bush. We were
not hunting with dogs. They were hanging out in the
camp or while we went in the morning. But then

(12:06):
like during the day and it was like ninety degrees
to during the day, so we're like hanging out and
then they just like suddenly realized they were crawling with texts.
The problem with those laugh The problem of those ticks
is that when you pick them off you, you always
leave the parts in you and the parts in you.
It's like a bastard. But they don't don't really bite

(12:28):
onto you for like another for like a day or so.
But once they get on, you get in your weight,
they get onto your belt anywhere, man, and then they
grab on and you tear them off, and then you
think you got them, and then it itches and swells
and you gotta get a tweezer and a razor. Ticks
off of myself and our pets growing up all the time,

(12:49):
I've just never seen anything or experience anything like that.
But these ticks don't carry lime, right, so it makes
them cool with me. Okay, Well, it's like it's like
it by mosquitoes. I'm not gonna go west. Still still
better than Mosquito. They don't carry West now anyway, So
next year, yeah, without the dogs and maybe no ticks.

(13:13):
Good luck that kind of comes with the territory. So
I want to talk about these these this Big Horn
deal a little bit because what's interesting is that both
Pete and Kurt have done the impossible and killed the
Big Horn from a and this isn't gonna be anything
the people listen killed the Big Horn from an unlimited unit. Um.

(13:37):
But first I want back up, what at what point
when you're doing high volta uh electrician work? Why why
are you? Like? Man, what I really should be doing
is is stitching backpacks? Why? You know what I mean? Yeah? No,
it was more on a necessity. I was. I was
accessing or trying to access some areas in Alaska that

(13:58):
you know, if you if you could if you can
make one trip in and one trip out, then you've
effectively doubled the range that you could cover. But if
you had to make two trips out with you know,
all the extra gear that you're carrying in an entire sheet.
Do you mean hunting off the road system? No? This
is all yeah, this is all flying you know, flying
in a super cub drop off at a strip. And

(14:19):
then what mountain range were you on chew gash In
and the Laska Range alone? Well, yeah, I mean most
of the time there. There was a couple of hunts
I went with with good friends. But that's that's really
where it started. That's where I learned that I or
I was trying to learn how to sew because you
wanted to make modifications I've gone through like you were

(14:42):
trying to like dick around with your exist exactly. Yeah,
that's exactly what it was making a superpack well lighter, lighter,
and just a little bit more function for specifically what
I was trying to do, and but primarily it was weight.
It was being able to take things out of existing
packs and still be able to put them back together
so they'll function. So, like, what would be an example

(15:03):
what was it back? Like, what would be an example
of a backpack that you started? Right? Were you? Like?
What kind of pack would you buy that you'd want
to dick with to make different? It was it was
pretty much all of them at that point. Frames. No,
I didn't I didn't carry any external frames. I went
primarily with the internals um, you know I had some

(15:25):
north face, had some arc terics, and a majority of
the time it was removing things and still being able
to put it back together so it would work. So
you know, get rid of extra pockets, extra zippers, extra straps,
move a strap down lower so you had more load compression. Uh,
you know, simple things like that. And you know, slowly, yes,

(15:47):
I started ending up closer to what we have today.
Um like a way as stripped down back pack, Yeah, yeah,
for sure, for sure, and being able to keep it modular.
You know. Interesting enough, one of the first backpacks that
is when I went up there. I don't know if
you guys have remember to ever use yet was the
old Coleman external. Yeah. Well they had different packs that

(16:08):
you could put on there, so now you could you know,
at the time this was you know, yeah you said
you didn't use external pa, No, but not like that,
not like the true tubular external. So that this Coleman
frame was, you know, a footprint that was very small
and in in comparison to say, you know the Kelty
or the Barneys, which are I mean good packs on

(16:29):
that when we started using in Alaska. That when I
first started hunt up there was the like the tubular Yeah,
I mean the full on like pins with the for sure,
the pins with the key, the key ring molders, the
hold the pins in and ship like that. Well and
still squeaky is all. Okay, they are squeaky, but I
mean they're the go to if your hall and moose. Yeah.
I don't know of anybody who you know, who would

(16:51):
say much different, especially the guides and a lot of
the guys that use them in Alaska. It's just bomber,
you know. You throw a hind quarter on there, you
have something to lash too. Um, It's just it's just
a different animal than this, you know. And so um, yeah,
that's kind of where it all started as far as
the sewing portion. And then so you bought a soul

(17:11):
machine or hint doing it? Yeah, no, no, I bought
a sewing machine and that that was quite the learning
curve in itself, because you get what you pay for.
You know. The first one I have is garbage and
you just fought it right there. That's a jukie. Our
singer is good. My mom runs a singer, don't be
bad mouthed singer. That's when I was a little kid.

(17:34):
My mom, when I was looking at my mom sold
our clothes. We wore homemade clothes a little. It sounds
like kind of amish, Yeah, should we not? All we
had a lot of homemade clothes and we hunted deer
and homemade wool clothes. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, wool pants
with elastic waste, you know, yeah, a lot of that.
Times change, man. Oh but I had a follow up question.

(17:57):
So like mains and singers, No, back to walking as
far as you could and not had to make two
trips out. Um, So you're just thinking, like, if I
make it lighter, even if it's by this a couple
of pounds, that will essentially just remove a whole trip. Yeah, yeah, obviously. Okay, okay,

(18:17):
but that doesn't work with just the pack because you're
you're adding with with the with the sheep head and
all the meat. You got like forty five pounds of
meat the heads, Like thank god, I had eight quite
a eight ounce pocket out of my pack. It doesn't matter, No,
it does, it does in the end, Okay, So it's
it's it's the entire I need to let you ask

(18:39):
this question. No I did, I got it out. No,
it's the entire it's the entire program, you know. So
it's everything that you carry in the pack. It's the
difference between going in on my first sheet point where
you're sixty five pounds. Yeah yeah, I mean there's it's
you know, a sleeping bag that weighs a pound and
a half more than what I have, you know, ultimately,

(19:01):
and so you go through your entire gear list, your tent,
you're you know, you're stove, you get dialed in on
your food. All of a sudden, you're looking at thirty
five pounds going in. Now you're looking at thirty pounds
difference coming out. And so even at my lightest weight,
I was still looking in that hundred and ten hundred
twenty pound range of one load coming out, you had

(19:21):
thirty pounds on that. I'm not doing it. I know
that there are guys that are doing but that and
the dollars take care of That's it. That's it. So
you know, at the end, when I decided I'd gone through,
I'd gone through all the rest of my gear. Because
you could, you could spend money and you could buy that.
That's all you had to do is just pony up
the cash and drop weight out of your pack. But
once you got to the pack. You know what what

(19:42):
you mean, like like that just buy lighter. Buying like
a lighter stove is going to cost more than a
big heavy stove. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so you got
down two, you got down to let's say you're doing.
You got down where you could do a nine day,
ten day hunt. It varied, it varied, so you know,

(20:04):
you're looking at that you're looking at two pounds of
food today. So it really depended on where you were
going and what you were doing. Um and so you know,
some of the areas you knew that there was only
five days of hunting going this way out of the strip,
there might be seven days going the other might be
ten days. You know. You just all depended on the
specific hunt. So the actual weight that you left the

(20:25):
strip from that would vary and it would carry on.
You might fly in with then just hang a bag,
I don come back. You're gonna come back and you're
gonna go the other way. And and then it also
depended on the country. So when you go into certain spots,
you know, maybe it's tight. You know, maybe there's only
one canyon that they're in there. So now you're not
going to carry a four pound spotting scope because you

(20:48):
know that you can glass most of it up with
your binoculars once you get there. You just knew a
little bit more about the program than say, you know
what we do when we just go out down the
canyon here LK counting might be trying to look at
something that's two miles away. So I think just the
the entire program got more dialed in up there because

(21:09):
you're going back to the same spots, so you kind
of knew exactly what you needed and you'd start cutting
those things out and you know, so that's that's where
you ended up. You know, I can picture that you're
saying when you uh, when you when you were out
doing that kind of stuff you just mentioned because you
mentioned spotting scopes. Um. I thing I like about Sheephunt

(21:30):
is you can burn up the ground so quick. Yeah,
because you're looking at this like black rock or is
that that rich that Rick French made that movie? Yeah,
black black white sheep. So you don't it's not like
glass couzi or you're like, I know, I'm looking at tenam.
I just can't mind it. You know, it's like, is
there a white thing sitting there? No, let's move. It is.

(21:50):
It is. But you know, it's amazing how much little
things like they just the topography and then the little swales,
a little cuts. They absolutely and light. I mean, you
get up in you get up into that kind of
shale country and you get a certain type of light
in the middle of the day and things look, rocks

(22:12):
look lighter, everything looks lighter. The sheep, you know, they're
laying in this dark shale, so they you know, they
don't look white like they're not all of them look
white like this. You know, they're more of a dirty
So you would think that they'd be super easy to find,
but you know, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are. Sometimes
they're standing in the middle of a great, big green
patch and they just stand out from miles away. Sometimes

(22:34):
you're right on top of them. The worst thing to
have to us hunting sheep one time is that snow
is very frustrating. We we found sheep one time after
it snowed by. Just eventually found some tracks with my
spotting scope and started following the tracks with my spotting

(22:55):
scope and eventually lost the tracks. I was like, oh,
where do you go from there? And never realized it's
something staring at it. That's where they ended. Yeah, it's
like they're not quite they're not snow white though, they're
like yellow. But it was just like eventually the snow
melts and we're back in business. That really that really
feels like you're like not hunting real good anymore. Yeah,

(23:17):
that snow happens. No, that makes it tough, It makes
it treacherous. What years was that you were that you're
up there doing all this. Um, I moved up there
and I guess it was nineties six and then moved
back in two thousand ten. Yeah, back to him Montown,
And that's when you started making packs. Did you just
quit Electrician NG altogether? No, No, I didn't. I didn't

(23:40):
ever quit. I think that's that's one of the keys
to the business personally, because what do you mean, because
I was able to make decisions that are best for
the business, not best for me. You know, I wasn't
trying to put cash in my pocket. I was able
to do mean, it was key that you kept having
a different Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, And yeah, you

(24:04):
know it was it was a really unique decision. But
I didn't have to be in a spot where I
was trying to pull extra out so my family had
health insurance. And you know, especially when you're when you're smaller,
and and I think it allowed, in my opinion, allowed
the company to grow faster, you know, pose it. It's
not my personality to try to go hit up an

(24:25):
investor and take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in
leverage everything I have. Um not that I didn't believe in,
it was just not my personality and I would rather
I believe that if I was building a good product,
that it was going to grow itself. You know, I
didn't have to shove it down anybody's throat. And there
was a process of going along. When you bring the

(24:46):
first you you bring it to market, you get that
feedback and you you slowly start to make those changes
that take it from a good product to an exceptional product.
And you need that time. You can't just come up
with it. I mean some people do. I shouldn't say
it way. I didn't. And I knew that it had
room to expand and it needed to grow. You know
what's different about them? And I've used the Brazilian packs,

(25:09):
and I liked the Brazilian packs over the years, but
it's like some packs you get and you're like, it's
just like someone's like, I'm just gonna make a pack,
like how people make packs. My key my secret sauce
would be how I market my pack, right honest, gonna
go take you know, whatever people like and make a
version of that and try to sell it. It's like

(25:30):
a very different pack. Yeah, I mean, you get it.
You gotta mess with it for a minute, and then
you go through like a day of a little bit
frustrated and then all of a sudden you're like, oh no,
ship that's why that's like that, And then that's a
fun feeling to have over the course of a few
days where you kind of go like I got it now,

(25:50):
you know. I mean, like your buddies like no, no, no,
do this and you'll be loving You're like, oh yeah,
that's right because it's like really unique features and unique design.
Is it kind of like solve problems that you didn't
know we're there? But one of the biggest things is
is uh that it's like they're so like, I don't know,
tidy is that a word you guys using the backpack?

(26:12):
I think we're gonna start but cleaning. Yeah, like clean
tidy packs. Yeah. We were eating a real fancy dinner
there night, and I told the smali a remember the wine.
Just he had all these wine descriptions. I said, you
need to start describing certain wines as rough and tumble wines.
He wasn't using. He was using a lot of more
effeminate terminology, but he out the other. But yeah, it's

(26:35):
like a tidy kind of like clean nothing, no ship
snagging on brush kind of pack. Well that's because you
put that on the lady. No bills and whistles, no
ships snagging on brush packs. Yeah. Well, what I was
really hoping to do for myself was to have a

(26:55):
pack because at the time, you know, it's hunting in Alaska,
is hunting sheep, doing a little about to moose hunting
up there. And then I was coming back and I
was hunting in Montana, yeah, you know when I could
get Yeah, but that was before that, unfortunately, so I
was still having a draw a tack at that point. Um,
what do you mean, Well, they have to come back
to hunt in Montana now, so you but that's only

(27:17):
good for one year, right, that's a good question. I
don't know, because I wasn't ever in that because I
think there was like two different kinds, like one was
just if you were. Yeah, I can't remember how they were,
but anyways, didn't have that program. Yeah, they didn't have
that program. So a long story short, I was looking for.
I was just looking to build a pack that I
could use everywhere, and you know, the same thing if
I was going hiking, if I you know, whatever it

(27:38):
might be, so I could pack in all my gear
just like you said, take it down and make it
tidy and be able to day hunt out of it.
Still pull my bow, keep it tight, you know, tight
footprint on your back, and just try to hit that
middle ground so that you always had it on. Because
I didn't ever take my pack off, you know, whether

(27:59):
it's whether I was packing all my stuff in or
whether I was actually hunting. Um, I always had it on.
So I wanted to be functional. I wanted to be
narrow on the pack so you can move. Didn't want
it to be noisy, and just like you said, tidy,
but then but then you can blow it up. But
then you can blow it up. Always have people being like,
I don't understand what you always gott in that pack.

(28:20):
I'm like, lot's is nothing in that pack. But I'm
not gonna get something and then go on some hell
hike back to go get my pack and then hike
all the way back up again to go fetch it.
That's it. I was gonna have it with me. Yeah.
And if you have an empty pack, you know, and
say you're hunting out, you can you know, you can
get a lot out if you have your your friend
with you, because yeah, that's why. More and more of

(28:43):
the packs I like are the kinds that like have
a lot of space that actually blow up big. But
the key is making it that once you tuck it
all into itself and sinch everything down, it's like you
basically got like a board on your back almost, but
it can blow out and be like a gigantic m
haul in apparatus. And this thing too about packs is uh,

(29:06):
I kind of always tell me because you know what
you used to get in situations where you're gonna like
leave your pack for a minute. Yeah, I just I
never leave you know the pocalypse now, never get out
of the boat. And I'm like, never leave your pack.
People like they get to where they're gonna like, yeah,
I think we're gonna make a shot from the ridge.
So this is all leave our packs. I'm yeah, you
know what's gonna happen. Then you're gonna get up on

(29:27):
the bridge. You're gonna like, shoot, it's gonna you're gonna
wing it. It's gonna run off. You're gonna run over
the next bridge and see what's going on. You're gonna
see it, go over the next ridge and next thing
you know, it's been dark for three hours. You don't
know where you're at, no clue where your pack is.
You know, It's like I do I now every time
I think like, yeah, I leave my pack, I'm like, no,
you will not leave your pack. Yeah, yeah, you're not

(29:48):
gaining much in it, even if you're carrying all your gears.
So now if you're at thirty five pounds, you know
minus rife plus your minus, if you always have that
with you, you hunt right to dark, you kick out
a flat spot, you're going to sleep, and you wake
up and you go when you compare that to try
and to go back to camp, get back into a spot,
trying to figure out where you're at, hiking in the dark,

(30:08):
all that other ship, Mandy, you're just way ahead of
the game. In my opinion that and that's what I
always try to do. I'm not gonna say it always happens,
you know, because sometimes it just doesn't make sense. But
typically on longer hunts, it's everything goes with you every step,
and then you know you can back out and throw
a camp up. But I don't know if I've ever

(30:30):
seen somebody leave their pack behind and have it work
out to the time. Countless times I've seen, and myself
included dropping packs, not once. I can't think of one
time it was like, thank god, I've even like, he God,
I didn't bring my backpack. I've even taking mine off
and then like got away from it and then I
thought about it, took away point. You know, it's just like, yeah,

(30:53):
never leave your pack, Never leave your pack. So did
already mentioned you guys both killed a thing in Unlimited
you I wanna explain this now. Earlier I called Pete
and said, hey, add up. How many big horn tags
there are? Okay, state of Montana. How many big horn
tags are available in this state of Montana lottery tags? Yeah,

(31:17):
I'm gonna start even more bases in this Okay, this
is for New Jersey cat ladies so they can understand
we're talking about, Um, there's there's uh, this is this.
I'm gonna I'm gonna trim this up a little bit
and say there's three types of hunting tags. Yeah, I
need to jump in. When you don't like something, I

(31:37):
to say, I'm trying to simplify it without two two
types might be the most simple. Laders govern tas. Okay, okay, okay,
So you got There's the thing we call over the
counter tags OTC tags. It's a kind of tag where
if you're hunting deer in Wisconsin, Michigan, wherever, and you
can go down to the gas station and buy a

(31:59):
life anybody, anybody, any time, just go in, you buy
your deer license. In that situation, the resource is strong
enough to meet all of the demand, all of the
demand on the resource. There's no restriction on allocation of opportunity.
Anyone who wants to go can go. When you get

(32:21):
a population of animals that has more demand than supply,
you need to limit how many people are gonna get
an opportunity to hunt. And you do this by having
what we call limited draw tags lottery tags. And what
they do is they find a democratic way to allocate

(32:43):
the tags to all the people who wish they could go,
and it generally works at you fill out the application
and send in a little bit of money or sometimes
a lot of money. The state um does a drawing,
pulls names out of the hat, and then they hand
out tags. And some tags are lottery draws, and it's like,

(33:03):
if you fill out your materials, you'll probably get it, right,
you know, you could be you could be almost guaranteed
to get it because there's one hundred of them available
and in most years only guys apply, so they're limiting,
but it's easy to drop. The third kind of tag

(33:24):
is like, I'm gonna do the third kind of A
and the third kind of beat the third kind of A.
The third kind of tag is awarded not democratic, but
it's awarded to the highest bidder, okay, and there's very
few of those in the country. The reason I bring

(33:44):
that kind of and that's the thing that there's a
thing called landowner tags. I am doing A and B three.
A is a landowner tag where a guy owns a
big gas chunk of land and it provides core vital
habitat and so the rewards this individual for providing good
while theife habitat by giving him some tags that he

(34:05):
can do with as he wishes, and he can sell them,
use them, give him to his nephew. Three B is
a governor's tag that's sold to the general public. Highest bidder.
Is everybody cool with this? STI permit governor's tags. What's

(34:28):
what makes governor's tag so valuable is that many of
them you can hunt all year anywhere that they issue tags.
What do you mean all year? There's so like you
buy the Arizona Governor's tag. Because here's the thing, was
she It doesn't matter because he doesn't shed his horn.

(34:51):
He's not like you know, so you could feasibly hone
when you can hunt when no one's hounting. When she
would she really if you draw like the if you
get the governor's tag elk tag, you're not gonna go
in May and shoot some bowl of six inch velvet
stubs sticking out the top of his head. But what
she was like? Why not? So they sweetened it up
by letting you hunt year round, And they sweetened it

(35:14):
up by ah, you tell them to get rid of
that gun. I'm tell him to get rid of the guy, right,
I wasn't pop it. It wasn't out he handed you see,
he handed me gum. He was like, oh, you want
some gum. I was like, no, dude, I don't want
I don't want some to take your gun out. So, uh,
where was that? We're talking about Governor's tex Governor's tag.

(35:37):
But yeah, but so you can hunt anywhere in the state,
but you can't hunt anywhere in the state. You can
hunt anywhere in the state that hunting for that species
is allowed in some form or another. I mean that
makes sense, right, or glacier because now the highest selling
Governor's tag in the country happens to be in Montana. Correct,

(35:58):
And every year it go that always makes the news.
Often times it goes to a guy who owns the
chain of sandwich shops. Sandwich shops he likes. A man
with a chain of sandwich shops like to buy the
governor's tags. The guy that owns Jimmy John's right, the
same guy. It's the same guy. He's bout some numbers.

(36:19):
It is it limited to just Montana resident residents ever
bought the Montana go Okay, and uh, it's always in
the vicinity of between over three hundred thousand dollars every
year is a little different. Um, but I think between
two to five dollars. So with that kind of like timeline,

(36:43):
what's the percentage of that person, Like, um, what's their
success rate? These guys are these guys? Yeah, they're not
hunting them though they're trigger men. When a guy buys
the governor tag, what he does he hires a whole posse.
He hires a posse of of eager young fellers who
go out and scour in this state. They scour the

(37:08):
Missouri Breaks. So the biggest rocky mountain big horns in
the world is the General's amis Johnny Street. The biggest
rocky mountain big horns in the world come out of
the Missouri Breaks. There's some tankers in Alberta. What's that
area now, Bertha Line? But big, big ass. You're like, yeah,

(37:32):
just stay you stand behind a big horn. Look at
the way that scroll. I was going to ask you
because we had a video YouTube. Are you telling Joe
Rogan about like how big those hanging way below what
I tossed you in the garage? That honest Yeah, I
was picking up meat for the cookbook shoot that were

(37:52):
actually in town doing this feat And he's like Hey,
you haven't he used to, he's and he throws me
a set of frozen You need to make a extra
big pack for packing those time. So that's the governor's tax.
Now when when it dude buys a governer's tag, This
guy generally like, you're a trigger man. The guys of

(38:13):
bibles are trigger man. They don't have time, right, They're
not gonna go out and spend the whole summer out
sweat is that they have all of the time in
the world. No, they're not here. Not here. That's the difference.
In Montana, you have to hunt within the rate. Well
some seasons. Every state handles the governor's tax is in

(38:33):
the general hunting season, just like everybody else who would
draw the tags. Yeah, basically what they get here is
they get to hunt any unit. So um and actually
I don't believe that there's any area here that they
can hunt that there isn't already I've never heard. Yeah,
I've never heard of exclusive access. And they don't have
exclusive You can go to river Bridge where you want,

(38:57):
and you can go to places that might only have
that might only otherwise to give out one tag. But
what so, I mean oftentimes a guy will buy a
governor's tag because he already knows what he's going to
be going after, because they'll get ten, twenty whatever. They'll
hire glasses who will go out to the areas that
everyone knows holds big, big horns. And these guys are like,

(39:20):
these are real woodsmen. Those are the guys hunting the ramp.
And they'll put together a dossier on every sheep they
can find in the unit, and the guy will peruse
the dossier. Come on, the detail of this kind of
stuff would blow your mind. I've given you the version
that doesn't make people that angry. So but so the incentive,

(39:42):
like long story shirt, the incentive is that they spend
a lot of money and then it goes back into conservation. Right. Yes,
there in lies the rup So okay, I wasn't getting
all this not gonn get a little bit bar uh okay,
let's up eighteen for you to Martin versus Waddel was

(40:03):
a Supreme Court decision, and it was a Supreme Court
decision that settled a dispute between an oysterman got a
commercial oyster harvester in the New Jersey meadow lands and
a landowner who traced his ownership of the land to

(40:24):
a land grant made by King George the Second to
the Duke of Earl, I believe. And when King George
the Second gave this land of the Duke of Earl,
who passed along down the line to him, he gave
him the land. And with the land came all the fishings, huntings,
hawkings and foulings. Because in Europe, when you own the land,

(40:47):
you own the animals. Now the guys out picking oysters.
The guy says, you can't pick oysters. I own the
oysters because I owned the land up against the water
where you're picking oysters. Goes all the way to the
Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decides, they say this, They say,

(41:09):
because we have the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration
of Independence stripped all of the rights of the sovereign,
stripped all of the rights of the king, and gave
it to the people. So by virtue of the Declaration
of Independence, we are deciding that the animals in this
country belong to the people, that you do not belong
to the king, and the animals will be administered on

(41:30):
the people's behalf by their state. And it was meant
to be that we had a system of the democratic
allocation of wildlife. Governor's tags are a perversion of the
democratic allocation of wildlife because you're selling it to the
highest bidder, lottery draws or democratic with your name in

(41:52):
the hat. Everyone's at the same chance. However, here's where
it's the kind of thing where I don't agree or
disagree because of that money is spent on the ground
for big horn conservation and big horns are absent, Like
we've done a lot for recovery. We don't even scratched
the surface. I'm putting big horns back where they block,

(42:14):
like elk absent from their historic range in this country.
You would never get that because it seems like elk revery,
but they're not there. Used to be elk in Michigan,
you know, And I mean there's some number, but they
used to. Like if you look at elk distribution in
this country at the time of European contact is the
whole damn country almost. So there's a lot of work
to be done on big horns, and that's a big
gass chunk of money every year. Maybe it's not fair.

(42:39):
It's very very hot topic, hot contentious topic, and both
sides are right my first years. They're both wrong first
years guiding in Arizona. I can't remember. I think I
was still scouting you because I didn't have the client
with me. But I was going to hit the spot
out that was like two hours almost from where our

(43:00):
staying via truck and then um like side by side
because the road was so rough, right, So get up
trailer like thirty minutes, get to a rough road, plump
side by side, and then run another hour and a
half in the dark trying to get to this spot
at daylight to see who was hanging around. So no, ELK,

(43:20):
I think I was just going to check a water hole. You, Yeah,
as I'm kind of closing it on the spot where
I'm supposed to get huh yeah, down in this area.
Can you add this on your story? Yeah, down in
this area, you could take a bucket of water and
dump it out on a road and the bullet come
out and wallow in it. Yes, sometimes tell that story
added in somehow weave it in. Yeah, I don't. I

(43:45):
don't know if they've ever actually made a wall by
the thing that they had seen spots where there was
like old tracks, maybe like the remnants of some wallowing
in a road like in an old dry and they said, oh,
I wonder what would happened, you're yeah, we just they
happened to have whatever. You know, it was fifty gallons
of water in the truck for whatever reason, probably to
fill up the trailer, and they dropped six gallons into

(44:08):
this mud hole and put a trail cam up in
the tree and came back twenty four hours later and
sure enough it's a dry place. You weaved it right in.
So continued, But yeah, I'm buzzing down the road two hours,
you know, through the darkness and trying to look at
my GPS make sure I'm in the right spot, getting

(44:28):
ready to start hiking, and uh, I kind of see
like the flash of like where my lights might hit
some other like tail lights or something. As I'm kind
of getting closer from getting to park, and I think
I had to park. Maybe it was like the end
of the road, or I forget what the reason was
why you had to stop there. But anyways, I'm pulling
in and I come around one or more corner, and

(44:50):
also I can see that there are trucks there, you know,
and there's some people and they're awake too, must be hunters.
I mean, there's the only reason people would be out there,
you know, awake at that time in the morning. And
as I pull up, it's like the whole camp is like,
who's that, you know, and they turned and I must
have seen twenty headlamps turn in my direction and they're
just shining up all these trucks and I'm like, holy ship,

(45:11):
and I kind of got scared. So I'm like, what
what what what? What? What? Why? Why are you guys
all out here? It's party? And so I just kind
of kept rolling, went on, did my scouting, and then
later it didn't take long, you know, through who I
was with, you know, there was some texting phone calls
and they're like, yeah, do you guys have a guy

(45:31):
down here this morning? And they're like, yeah, we've been
on a big Bowl and we've got seventy trail cameras
out um, you know, we got the guy coming in tomorrow.
And I was like, all right, I'm not gonna hang
out here any longer. But there was a Governor's tag.
Yeah yeah, I mean, I'm not kidding. It was like
twenty headlamps all turned at once, like who's rolling in

(45:52):
there on our spot? On this big bowl that we've
been looking for. So then what kind of tips do
you think that those guys get you? Can you fill
in some of the details on the dudes that find
the rams for the governor's tag? Guys, have you been
involved in that? No? I haven't. I haven't that interests you.

(46:12):
Uh no, not not necessarily, but but not because I
have anything against it. There's just you know, I'd rather
be scouting for myself to um. Now, when you say
you have nothing against it, what do you mean? I
mean I don't have anything against it? But what do
you mean by that? Well, I think it is something
to be against it. It' no, I personally don't know.

(46:32):
I think that it's a hot topic. You know. It's
interesting because just for the reasons we're talking about. Yeah, yeah,
some people don't like the idea that that you can
just go by what what what somebody else has to
put in for. But you have the chance to go
by it. I have the chance to go by it.
You know, I could mortgage my house. I could do
you know, any of those things and throw my name

(46:53):
in the hat if it is that important to me. So,
you know, the fairness you're saying, you would mortgage your
house to buy the Governor's not like you gotta bee.
I don't know, I thinking about yeah, sweethearts to be
talking about something thinking about no, But I mean, I

(47:16):
mean we're all free, we're all free to raise our
hand at those auctions. So so yeah, and I yeah,
I see both sides of it. And it's different, you know. Um,
but if someone said, like, hey, you like to you're
good at fine and cheap, would you like to do
some scouting for me, you just uh wouldn't. I don't
have time. I don't have time to go scout for
myself these days, you know. So it's maybe it's just

(47:38):
a different spot that. Yeah. And I've never never been
approached to it, I'm not. But we do have several
close friends that have been involved in the process. Yep, yep,
for sure. And you know you hear, you hear all
different types of stories, you know, like you saying with
you know ten twelve guys. Uh, the guys I know
have been involved. Are you know a couple of guys

(47:59):
out there bust in their ass to do scouting year round? Well,
I wouldn't say y're around. You know, they're typically not
in those areas in the winters, but you know throughout
the summers and and yeah, I mean, so somebody pays
for it at the end, somebody's paying for them to
be they are they are there. Those are like crackman,
those are the crack commando hunters. Yeah, there's no woods

(48:21):
in the Missouri River breaks there the brakes, you know,
and you look at the history of the Montana Governor Tag.
You know historically they weren't up here hunting the brakes.
You know, back in the late or in the early
and mid nineties, they were hunting Perma Paradise and they
were hunting wrong. Absolutely, yeah, Scott and oh yeah, those

(48:42):
guys and I want to say it, Scot, I might
have it wrong. There was there was a guy who
bought it two years in a row, chasing one ram
or as the story goes, um somewhere in that nineties
time frame out of Perma Paradise or one of those units.
I mean, it's a true mountain hunt. It's uh and

(49:04):
you know what I mean, they're in the timber that
that so so you know you have to take it
all with a grain of salt because it's uh one unfair. No, No,
absolutely take me to task if you just don't know
that I described it the wrong way. No, No, absolutely not,
because but I will say, in my opinion, I think

(49:25):
that there's a vast difference between a governor tag in
Montana with the guys I know that have been involved
in the work and all the rest of it, in
comparison to what you might describe where you have a
twelve month season, um, you know in one of these
other states and the boat shot in August when there
isn't even a hunting season. So those are two different animals. Yeah,

(49:46):
whether one's right or whether one's wrong, I'm not saying,
but those are that's that's a that's a different deal.
Because these bodies do some of the Governor's sheep Desert
sheep tags, yeah, down in Arizona. And these are some
dudes that like to be out. They like to be
out in the wood or not. They like to be
on the desert and they like to be out the
desert for months on end, and they like to look

(50:07):
through b knoculars. That that's what these guys like to do.
And they're they they're the ones that are hunting those sheets.
It's just like the guy that's one point, I'm not
gonna let you change my mind about not to try
to change my mind anything like. Those are the people
that hunted the sheet for sure. Every now and then, though,
I bet you must get somebody that actually wants to

(50:29):
hunt on their own, and it doesn't some other guys
do the leg where. Yeah, there's a good friend of our,
Lorenzo from Go Hunt has the Idaho Big Horn Governor's
tag this year and he's going d I y. Really, Yes,
he's going to Hell's Canyon all on his own, really
on the Governor's coolest guy ever. That's cool. But Steve,

(50:51):
someone paid you to go scout for them to the
Governor's tag, would you do it? Listen? Man? Uh, at
the time that I would have been at the at
a time, absolutely, but I wouldn't have been qualified. Like
at the time that I would have jumped at the opportunity,
I wouldn't have been Not that I'm qualified now, I

(51:12):
can make it like some sort of argument now that
I would be that I would be able to go
scrape up some sheep and maybe find some sheep in
a place that people hadn't known they were there. Whatever.
So I like to wander around the through binoculars. Um.
But yeah, at a time I would have jumped at it,
but I would have been a shitty hire did later
been like, I don't know why I did that? Do

(51:33):
that job camp up there with his girlfriends some van
so uh um no, So anyhow, that's that's uh three
beat okay? How many? Okay? Drawing So so the Governor's tag,
you buy that for a whole shipload of money. You
get to go hunt if you want to draw a

(51:55):
tag in the vicinity Air governors tag holders like the Hunt,
meaning the best units in the country. You have about
a percent of a percent. It's about one in a
thousand less than that. Yeah, you know, we'd have to

(52:18):
look up. I can tell that I haven't put in
for fifteen years and I haven't drawn it yet. Oh
yeah you are. You are less than one nineteen. I've
been putting in for nineteen years. They've been doing bonus
points for fourteen or whatever the hell is. Yeah, that's
right in the back of their eggs. You can look
it up for each unit. But you know, I want
to say a lot of them are in that you know,
four tenths of a percent or five. But if you

(52:41):
draw and in some tags get better. Like you know,
we're just talking about rams too, because you can draw
U take like my old girlfriend, you take first year
she ever applied, But we're talking about rams. There are
some units that have slightly better odds, and those tend
to be units um that don't grow big gas ramp
when you see even good odds and good odds. What

(53:02):
we're referring to is a three to five percent draw.
I don't think there's such a two to on some years,
that would be the best odds you could find in
Montana and chasing, and that would be the extremely good odds.
And when those odds come up, it's usually because the
weird fluke happen, so like a bunch of attention focuses
somewhere else. Everyone then looks and goes like, oh wow,

(53:27):
now that the results came out, I see that last
year you had a two percent chance of drawing in
this unit. I'm gonna try that next year and that's like, yeah,
you and every other dude in the world is gonna
see that, and then you're all gonna pounce on that unit.
And then the next year you're gonna look in that
unit had a point five percent chance of drawing because
everybody saw that. It was a two percent. So you're

(53:49):
not the longest short of it is, you're not gonna
draw big horn tag. My brother drew big warntag. Very good.
Um this year, No, no, no, A few years ago,
a lot of years ago. We had fun though. Man,
we had a great time. He drew down at um
just outside of Gardener. Oh, very good. There's an unlimited
unit across the road. Yeah, but he drew the cinembar

(54:11):
mountain there. Uh so there's that you're not gonna draw one.
If you do draw one, you're gonna get a ramp,
right Yeah, Well if you show up and put in
some time, you kill ramp. It was a hundred nineteen tags. Yeah,
and I don't know if we missed a unit on there,
but it was just looking it up beforehand at success

(54:35):
rate and so and this is this is off of it.
This is off of just the tags issued, so that
that's not even assuming everybody hunted. This state has a
shipload of relative to all other states, Like this day
has a shipload of tags. They gave out a hundred
plus tags. Yeah, I think it. Well, this this has
it at a hundred nineteen but I would say it's

(54:56):
there within a couple of them. Does you say how
many mugs applied for a hundred nineteen tags? M hm No,
Well times of hungry right or more so, if you draw,
you're gonna have a high quality sheep hunt and if
you put in your time like you will kill a sheep. Yeah.

(55:16):
But now keep in mind all this ship has nothing
to do with anything. We're just laying the ground where
what I want to talk about. There are a couple
of spots where there's a different system in place, and
these are the famed in some circles. These are the
famed unlimited units, and they're very remote areas in Montana

(55:42):
where any where it's over the counter where any time
to kind of over the colm, you gotta put it in.
You gotta fill out the application and send it in.
But anyone that wants can go. Try to get the
sheet guaranteed draw guaranteed draw. You fill in your application,
you can hunt sheep. Yes, the application may one, Okay,

(56:11):
it's unlit by May one. You send in your thing,
you can go. And theise are the most not the
most yeah, like borderline, the most rugged areas in the state.
I would argue outside of the state. I mean that's
some of the earlier stuff in the lower for what
they do to what they do to protect the herd
is they put a mortality quota down where they're like,

(56:36):
anybody that wants can come hunt. But once you boys
kill what two once to get killed, it's over. So
you gotta be calling because that's what if it was
a draw hunt, they'd be given her unit per unit

(57:00):
sheep can get killed. Yeah, and what's the cutoffs? Remember,
like with bears and units like that, it used to
be like seventy two hours buffer periods. Yeah, I feel
like yeah, and I feel like one of them is
shorter than that. I think that that one out of
gardeners twenty four. How often does it go over though
pretty rarely. Every year is a little different. You hear

(57:21):
about it happening more back in the day. I've heard
a lot of stories of you know, in the night
for satellite communications or yeah, because people wouldn't get word. Yeah.
And in some of the unlimited units, Uh, what makes
them tricky is it the sheep aren't even there correct
until the weather turns bad, So you could have the
whole season pass and the weather never gets shitty enough,

(57:43):
and the sheet like when we when when my brother
drew a big horn tag, we're hunting sheet that are
coming off lightning peak and you could hunt on open day.
You could go there and cover every square inch of
the unit. But they're literally like there are not cheap
in the unit. Correct, And then one day there are
sheep in the unit because they migrate down into the

(58:04):
unit and then you go down there and there they are. Um.
So some of the unlimited units are like that. But
on the unlimited units to have or they have a
mortality to there's some years that no one gets the two. Oh. Absolutely,
it's it's very regular. So I mean last the quota
never gets met. Last year com Yeah, last year five

(58:29):
O two didn't didn't is what these specs say. So yeah,
I mean half of them and and I think that
that's pretty normal. That's pretty normal that half of them
won't fill out. Yeah. Well, and you have to take
into consideration that the season opens September. There's no weapons restrictions,
so you know most people are hunting with a rifle

(58:49):
and goes until the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So what is
two and a half months and an unlimited numbers of
people going there and they can't scrape up two ramps.
They sold two d unlimited tags last year. Yeah, that's
what the specs said. So did you you got one
last year? That's it. I'm surprised if it's that low. Yeah,

(59:14):
I mean you got killed eight eight. So the success
rate was, uh two point six seven, So two point
six seven percent of the guys that throw in on
the unlimited get yeah. Yeah, yeah, And I mean it's
and that's that's pretty standard. Um, I you know though

(59:35):
those numbers aren't. That's not dude. Yeah, that's a normal year.
That's that's a normal year. And you know, and take
all of these with a grain of salt because you
you know, you you pull these off the fishing game websites.
Ouf there's if we're off a tenth percent. Yeah yeah,
So now what year did you do this? Two? Did

(59:56):
you try a lot of years before you got one?
Two years? Did you guys get yours? Did you have
you both gotten yours in the same location, different units? Yeah? Yeah,
all right, So tell me what happened, like, like, give
me the rundown on what happened when you did it?
Your first year? Start with your first trip. Oh yeah,
Well my first year, I had just got done Honey

(01:00:18):
in Alaska, and um I took a RAM up there,
and uh, I was a non resident. I wasn't a
resident of Montana at that time, so I bought the
I bought the the over the counter non resident tag
for the unlimited units and I came down and I mean,
you were non resident Montanas, non resident Montana at that time,

(01:00:39):
and uh, you know, I came down and and just
gave it everything. I had just flew down to Montana.
Your with your up backpack that you made yourself, That's
exactly what it was, and struck off into the mountains. Yeah,
struck off into the mountains. And you know it's a

(01:00:59):
by yourself. Yeah. Yeah, but it was an interesting story
because it was it was before I don't know, it
was a few days before the season started and I
was trying to get on. Yeah yeah, but you know,
the more I learned about it there that rarely happens. Really,
did you sure hear about it? Yeah, but it's kind
of like you hear the same stories where you have

(01:01:20):
to be their opening day and be on a RAM
or you'll never fill it. Well, I mean the data
tells you that that's just not the case. So but regardless,
So I'm standing in the parking lot, I'm getting all
my stuff together, and I'm in this trailhead and there's
a guy kind of getting his stuff together. I don't
know if he's hiking or what he's doing. And then
Allison a rifle case comes out and we're starting from

(01:01:41):
the same trailhead and there's only you know, there aren't
a ton of them throughout, you know, these units, because
you're going into the wilderness. And so I figured, well,
I'm gonna go talk to the wilderness with the capital W. Yeah,
it's readily designated wilderness. Yes, their tooth wilderness. Yeah. And
so I just said, well, I better go chat with
this guy. Yeah. It's like four days in you take

(01:02:03):
different routes, you're both standing on the same mountain. So yeah,
I went in and talk to him. He was a
really nice guy and he said, yeah, this is my
seventh year of doing this, and I was like, man,
that's that's awesome. You've got some stamina on this. It's
in the back of my head I'm thinking he hadn't no,
he hadn't killed no, you know, you know, well, it's
like kind of quison. How long are you going for?

(01:02:24):
He's uh, six seven days, you know each time, and
and and so I'm thinking you must be looking for
something pretty special. So I asked him, I said, well,
you know, how many how many legal rams you ever seen?
You know, you pass over some I'm trying to get
some information so that you know, Bootleather, like, why did
you want to come do this? Um, had you read

(01:02:45):
about it? Well? I grew up here, you know, so
I had always known if about it, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But you know, at the time, it just wasn't as
compelling because I grew up in the western part of
the state at the time when that's where all the
Governor Acts were coming out of. I mean, they're shooting
one ninety plus rams out of multiple units out of
the west, and you weren't going to take your name

(01:03:09):
out of that hat because the odds back then we're
you know, we're better than they are now. I'm not
gonna say what they were. I don't remember, but you're like, yeah,
I'm gonna go for one of the yeah, yeah. And
then they were right out your back door, you know.
We go and take pictures of him during the winter,
So you had this, yeah, this kind of attachment to
it opposed to driving halfway across the state into unknown. Yeah.

(01:03:31):
So but I was talking to the guy and I
was asking, you know, how many legal rams he had seen,
and he said, I've never seen one, and so you
know that. Then like I shook his hand and good luck.
I said, well, I'm gonna go this way if you're
going that way, and kind of walked back to my truck,
and it's thinking, well, what do I do now? You
know this this dude sounds like he's put some time
in here, and and it was pretty much the way

(01:03:52):
my trip went. You know, I I covered a lot
of miles back in I don't know, spent five or
six days. Someone laid some way point was but a
pre way point. But if someone lays them like hey
check here, check here, check their No, because I didn't
at the time, I didn't know anybody who had ever
hunted it. I've never you know, I've never talked to anybody.
I yeah, I didn't have any information. And it was
before these days where information, yeah, and misinformation, you know

(01:04:18):
a lot of misinformation, which is kind of one of
the reasons you know that we're talking about specifically what
it is, because I feeled a few questions on that
and um, but yeah, I went in, went in, and
I didn't turn up USh sheep ushep. Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not certain that where you're seeing sheep trails carved

(01:04:39):
into the screen. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you can feel
like you're where they sometimes there, yep, yep, you see sign,
you see sign, but you know you kind of walk
out of there. How many days did you do it?
I'm trying five or six days. It wasn't super long,
and um, and then I had to go back to Alaska.
So you know after after that though, was at that

(01:05:03):
point in time, were you like, I'm going to be
like a sheep guy, Like I'm gonna be like a
sheep dude who hunt sheep? Um? I not necessarily. I
think it was just something that was really really enjoyable.
And I knew that within the next few years that
we were going to be moving back to Montana. So yeah, yeah,
my my my time in Alaska was limited and saw

(01:05:24):
I was looking for other opportunities and had the time
and thought, well, I'm gonna, you know, go start to
get my feet wet and but then after that I
found out you're gonna have to figure out a lot
more than this. This is what it's going to be,
dude from the trailhead No, no, no, no, I didn't.
But the sea it didn't get closed and there wasn't

(01:05:46):
a ram taking the first part. No, not that season,
if I remember right, And um no I didn't how
many rams were in there? Ah, that's that's a I
don't know. If they're killing two, there's got to be, like,
there's guy to be a substantial number of male, substantial
number of ramps. They can't I mean, if they are

(01:06:06):
openly the idea that two are going to die. Yeah,
they're very they're very conservative with those populations. Yeah. Um
I I really couldn't speak to that. That's a tough one,
and I think it's tough for everybody too, because some
of it's, like you said, some of his migratory, So
you don't know what you're gonna get coming into some
of those units. So now you you might be making

(01:06:27):
judgments off populations that you don't have access to except
there they're during the winter or um or maybe they're
not all migrating. That way, you have some of the
sheep that actually don't live in the unit. Going the
other way, that might be just on the fringes of
the unit. You know, you have some sheep that are
you know, quote transplant sheep that have been transplanted by

(01:06:49):
one way or another. And then you have um, um,
you know, these historical herds that have been there since
whenever you start of time. So you have all of
these different factors. And I think that's what makes it
interesting is that it's not just one population. There's a
lot of different things going on, and all of these
units are much different when you go into them, and um,

(01:07:15):
you know. But that that's that's what makes it cool.
But I think it's also it's also you know, notable
to be able to say that it's not a free
sheep you know, it's not, you know, just just because
it's the only open tag and I believe, but I
know it's the only open sheep tag in the lower

(01:07:35):
forty eight Canada. You don't need a guide, you know, Alaska,
you need a guide, so pretty much in North America
to my knowledge, if you're not a resident of last yeah, yeah,
so I mean it's open to non resident aliens. You
can come in here. From any country and buy that
tag the same way. So there's really no restrictions on
that portion. So it makes it a very unique thing

(01:07:55):
that way. But in the same respect, it's, um it's
not very successful. So what happened the second time you went?
The second time I went? Yeah, yeah, completely different out
of that. But UM yeah, I just changed my whole
program about everything that I was going to do. And

(01:08:17):
is the only thing I did know, no different unit
right next to it, and what you do differently, UM,
I spent a lot more time glassing. I um like
valley floors are from big Glass and two's it's it's
kind of a little bit of everything, you know, because
it just depends on where you can see from. UM

(01:08:38):
and I just tried to spend as much time as
I could that. That's really what it comes down to.
I don't think that there's there's no trick. There's no
that's I mean, if there was a trick, if the
historical data, the historical kill data was always accurate and
guys kept going back there there, there wouldn't be a
sheep unit staying open for two and a half months.

(01:08:59):
So you know, that's I think that's the cool thing.
About it is that they just do what they do
and you gotta figure it out that year. So um,
probably then then that's that's what makes the population sustainable
the unsustainable as it almost self manages. So what happened?
So what happened? Uh? So I went days vote, I

(01:09:22):
was I carved. I was gonna stay in for thirteen. Um,
I think I ended up staying for twelve I believe
twelve eleven or twelve and so, and then it was
what had to been eleven because I ended up getting
a ram on the tenth day. And yeah, ironically enough,
as I was working through, you know, kind of my

(01:09:45):
plan how I was going to work through the different
drainages that I was hunting. I had spent a day
and a half glass in this one area because this
big country and it takes a lot of time to
cover it, and there's a lot of timber, so it's um,
you can sit there all day and you know, all
of a sudden something appears, so they have to be
very patient. And I had moved one drainage down, looked

(01:10:07):
back to where I had just spent the last day
and a half, and there he was, and it was
right at dark and so I tried to get whatever
sleep I could that night, and then got everything loaded
in my pack well before daylight so I could make
it back over to the glassing spot and try to
pick him up again for ast thing in the morning.
And I did and made it over there, and I

(01:10:30):
found him, found him that morning, and he was feeding
out in the slope, pretty exposed by all by all standards,
kind of where where they were hanging out. But I
knew the sun was going to be moving around on him,
and so he dug a bed right there on that
right just up out of where he was he was feeding.

(01:10:51):
And so I waited about another hour, hour and a half,
and sure enough sun came back around. As soon as
the sun got on him, he picked up and went
down into the timber yep. And so he kicked out
a bed and and didn't use it for long, No,
not for long at all, textbook sheet moves. As soon
as the direct sunlight got on, let me move, you
don't like it. And and so then it was probably

(01:11:13):
o'clock in the morning, and it took me the rest
of the day to get over to the other side,
got up above him, found the bed that he was
in that I had put him to bed in and
he wasn't there, and this was probably not you mean,
not the one in the timber, but the one the
second bed. So you saw him going to the timber
laid out yet, so I'm going to bed and then
I was able to pick that one up, and so

(01:11:36):
I knew he had to be in the area. But
I just you know, I had kept working up and
down this this rock spine, trying to pick up anything,
figure out where he went, and all of a sudden,
he just popped out in this little avalanche shoot and
it was about three three and fifty yards and the
wind was the thermals were just howling, and I mean

(01:11:59):
probably and he just came out and walked straight across.
It was probably twenty yards open. I never had a shot,
and he disappeared into the timber on the other side,
and I just, I mean, it was it was, and
it was timber kind of forever out there. There was
no big opening. So you feel like he had picked
you up at that point or no, no, absolutely not.

(01:12:20):
He's not gonna feed that timber though, it's not. No, no,
it's not. But there was definitely enough grass that can
travel in the timber two though, Oh I just could
go to usware. Yeah, yeah. And so I spent the
rest right until dark trying to find him. And I

(01:12:41):
had moved down this rock spine and got my spotting
scope out, and I found him and he was bedded
behind this big pine and he had just tucked in
just right. I couldn't see him until I got into
the right vantage point and there he was, and had
had my one shot kind of through the one area,
and I fel well, this is the only opportunity I'm

(01:13:01):
going to have, so so you know, but it was
a great solid dress. You're on rock, laid down at
all the time in the world, work through it. But
there's a horn requirement there, there is, Yeah, yeah, but
I have a three quarter curl. Yeah, it's half curl.
How do you know it's it's it's from the base

(01:13:21):
that everybody should look at the rigs, right, don't take
my word for it, but it's from the base of
the front base of the horn through any portion of
the eye back. And they write that differently depending on
the unit, right, like some of the some of the
that I don't know about, don't know, yeah that I'm
not sure. I mean I'm not saying from one unlimited unit,
but is that the same as it is for for

(01:13:42):
limited units? I believe so, Yeah, it's always thought it
was the corner of the eye three quarter curel okay,
looking at him sideways away in a circle. Yeah, and
you and and did, and you had to figure that out.
I haven't had a chain in the night before you saw.

(01:14:02):
I had. I had looked enough and as soon as
I you know, it was it was coming back up,
you know, coming off at that bottom, and I could,
I could see the horn coming back up, so that
it's a pretty was he by himself? Yeah? How do
they determine that then, because isn't it for doll sheep?
It has to be all the full girl for dolls. Well,
there's three things like in Alaska's three things that make

(01:14:23):
a doll legal full curl. So you're looking at him
on the side, he's got three circle or you count
eight annually, so eight girlth rings, or he's broomed now
it's he's broken off both of his lamb tips completely.
So so I guess how do you deter like, why
is it different in one state and different than the other.

(01:14:45):
It doesn't have to do with like how old they Well,
there's units in Idaho they used to have horn restrictions
and now they don't have horn restrictions. Is that just
because there's more Well what I heard was this, and
this is just like a dude who used to guide.
They're telling me and lots of you don't all the
motivations right, Like a lot of times there's rules in
place and and people have ideas about it, but without

(01:15:08):
really digging into you don't know like why really did
it beat? But a guy explained this to me and
some of the Frank Church. There's like a unit in
the Frank Church in Idaho that I think went no
horn restrictions because I think there was some cases in
which um people were not identifying rams properly and then

(01:15:29):
due to the remoteness of the area, felt that rather
than going in reporting, they just kept hunting. So they
to take that to remove the obligation of a person
have to make a prisoners maybe never hunted chap before,
maybe not never hunt cheap again without putting that situation

(01:15:49):
where they need to be able to judge the legality
of that ram. They got rid of that requirement in
that area and they just said, it's just up to
the hunter's discretion. You're allowed to ram and and not
made it to wear people. At one time, we were
sitting and checking a ram. Were you there? We were
checking a doll ram in Alaska one time, and while
I was there, I saw three illegal rams. I got

(01:16:14):
there and there was a guy checking an illegal ram
not knowing it was illegal. There was an illegal rams
sitting there that they had just confiscated from a guy,
and Awarden came in with another illegal ramp that he
had just taken from a guy that was trying to
hide it from him. So I saw four rams during
my visit, mine being one of them, and the other
three were people bringing rams in and then saying I'm sorry,

(01:16:40):
that's not full curl. H. I had a friend one
time that had one held and he got it back
and in the end they said, it's fifteen sixteenth curl.
We'll let you keep me Listen. There is nothing more
stressful in life. I'm talking even when your wife, like
her water breaks. Nothing more stressful in life than the

(01:17:02):
minutes that passed between you touching that trigger on a
sheet and you're getting up to that sheet. It doesn't
matter how much you look. It's just like it's not fun.
Uh half curlers legal? No, three quarters I'm sorry when

(01:17:25):
I'm saying three quarter curl legal. So he's I'm looking
at the sheep right now by himself. So if he
wouldn't have shown up, or if you just not looked there,
I might still be hunting up. Have you ever gone back?
Have you done it again? No? Well you're out for
seven years, so I get you kill Yes, I get

(01:17:46):
I get my tag back next year. So you never
get to really get that good at it. Yeah, there's
there's a few guys who have got good at it.
Just yeah, I got I was read a book about
there's like a book about the unlimited un you know,
there's a book about big Horns. There's a big section
in about the unlimited units. And there's some guys who
are kind of had like some legendary status they'd got

(01:18:08):
to yeah you know or whatever. Yeah, there are people
that will go for a hat trick, try to get
one from each district. So not what, so what happened
you got one on your first attempt? Absolutely not? Oh no,
I don't know. If we got to the end of
Kurt story there you're sitting. Yeah, I got it, you
got it. It's more. I think the night of camping

(01:18:30):
after you shot the sheep is the best part of
the story, so I think you should hear about that
through the sheep went for a role. Yeah, the sheep
went for a role, ended up you know, finding it.
They're dark, and ended up just kicking out a flat
spot behind a tree. Just and but you know, it

(01:18:50):
was interesting because you had focused on it for so long,
and I'm sure lots of people have experienced things like
that where I couldn't sleep, you know, I was just
so you're so excited, but but not in this excited yeah,
where where you want to like jump around and not

(01:19:10):
like you want publishers clearing out. No, no, no, kind
of like kind of like it's just hard to take
it all in. Yeah. I threw up within an hour
of shooting on I puked. I don't know what balances
were going on in me, but water wouldn't stand down. Yeah. Yeah,
it's very similar. This is heavy, heavy, grizzly bear country

(01:19:35):
and now you're camping with a dead hand of it,
with a dead an Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so you know,
but it happened. It was all right at dark, so I,
you know, other than you know, taking care of the
general cleaning of it. You know, I hadn't started any
butchering or anything. But you know, from there it was

(01:19:55):
just because there were so many griz in the area.
Is back to the whole thing that we're talking about.
Being able to make one trip, you know, that makes
a big difference to not have to leave it behind,
not have to figure out here in the wilderness. You
have to sling it well. And you can't keep and
cap the skull. Yeah, you have to take everything out

(01:20:19):
and that that's a load. You can't skin the head.
You can't skin the head. No, yeah, what's the thinking
on that. That's a good question. I can only speculate
because they don't they don't publish it in their eggs
or anything. But my guests would would be that they
can validate it's only forty eight hours old. You have
to check it in four Yeah, I got it. Allows

(01:20:42):
them to make some determination, absolutely, Yeah, you have you know,
the eyes. You know, there's a lot of forensics that
they can put together. It's not somebody's walking over into
the next unit, you know, showing up three days later
and saying hey, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. Well then
it took me the better part of two days to
get to your yep. Yeah, yeah, I was just barely

(01:21:02):
under the limit. But yeah, I mean it's uh yeah,
it's a it's a very unique experience. I'm looking forward
to going back again. It's up again next year. Yeah
you're gonna go oh yeah, no brainer. Those three people
you think that were they hunted it last year? What
do you think the average number of days put in?

(01:21:26):
I don't know, you know, and I don't know how
they calculate that, because I was never quizzed on how
many days that I spent. I don't know. If you were,
I could take an educated guess at it, I would
say seventy of the people that buy the tag go hunting.
Oh you think so, I think so. Yeah. I haven't
dabbled in this at all, but I feel like that's

(01:21:47):
got to be high. Well only just from areas, just
some units where I know, like even limited drawing units
where you do look at like participation rates. Um, i'd
be I don't know, I could be, I would be.
I would be a little bit surprised A seven people
put in some time of the people that do go home,
No opinion somewhere in there of the people that I

(01:22:10):
like to believe that these are pretty serious people that
are investing in their time and they want to talk
to anyone who's done it, who was like not an
accomplished from well, I think people do try to go
get their toes wet and very quickly decide this is
not for them and this is not fun. And I
think there are people like that that buy the tag

(01:22:31):
and pretty quickly throw the towel in um. But on
the flip side, the guys filling tags and the guys
doing it year after year pretty hardcore about it. There's
a pretty hardcore scene that goes out and does it.
And I would argue puts in seven to fifteen days
looking steep and still not fine and cheap, and you

(01:22:51):
have to I mean, if if the success rates only
less than three, you know you're gonna have to put
in some time. Think you're gonna have to go your way,
You're gonna have to have a lot of things all
come together. It's night. You can be the best at
dude in the world, but if you if if you're
not in the right place at the right time, it's
not gonna happen. So I think that that's that's kind

(01:23:13):
of the interesting part is that it is. It's just
a lot of time. So it's not like something you
would like go out every weekend and go do like
you need like a big chunk of time, like five
to seven days you want to be serious about it. Yeah,
but there's you guys are riven. The nature of the
country wouldn't work do like weekends if you're not gonna
go out for a couple of hours after work. No, No,
I mean a lot of yeah, a lot of the
sheep country. You know, it takes better than a day

(01:23:35):
to access, and you know, while there are trails into
this country, you're you're not spending a majority of your
time on them. Um or if you are, you're probably
not seeing sheep. Yeah, So how many times did you
try before you got one? I killed a rim on
my fourth year, So I met Kurt in two twelve

(01:23:59):
and never knew anything about unlimited sheep hunting, but very
quickly got the bug just from talking with Kurt Um.
The next year or two thousand thirteen, was the first
year I bought a tag, and I would argue I
had better intel than were you guys. Were you guys.
Were you guys working on backpacks together at the time? Ye? Were?

(01:24:22):
I was working at SNAs at the time, and when
Kurt brought Stone Glacier to market for a short time there,
SNAs was the exclusive retailer. I was the marketing director
of SAS and met Kurt and shot some product videos
and photos with him and learned up on his backpack
company that he was starting, and pretty quick there was
building him in my garage after work to help Kurt

(01:24:45):
chore is done. Yea. So that's where my involvement with
Stone Glacier began, just kind of after hours, lending a
helping hand when Kurt wasn't able to get everything done.
But anyways, two thousand twelve met two bought my first
unlimited tag. And what I was saying is I would
argue that I had some of the better intel of

(01:25:09):
unlimited cheap hunters. Kurt had done a tremendous amount of
homework that he was generous enough to share with me,
and I felt like I went into it with a
lot of information, which in hindsight really doesn't mean a
whole lot, Is that right? See? I thought it was
like when I've because I've thought about this and you know,
a good bit over the years, and like, I don't

(01:25:30):
know why, because because some stuff is this way, maybe
I wished it was this way. I thought I was
like once you know what's up. But it's just different
all the time. So the most valuable piece of advice
Kurt gave me, beyond the maps, beyond the spreadsheets, beyond
every little piece of advice he gave me, the most
valuable thing that ever stuck to me was don't go
chasing dead cheep. I like that because you get some

(01:25:53):
information that there's been five there's been five rams killed
there in the last twelve years, it's got to be
the spot. Don't go chasing that cheap. He's not there anymore.
And that there's a lot of truth. That there's a
lot of truth because you're saying if that was the case, yeah,
they'd all the seasons would all close in a couple

(01:26:14):
of days, correct, And it's just not. And the other
factor that you need to take into consideration is these
are timber rams. These sheep live a tremendous amount of
their life in the trees, so visibility is so low.
Not only are there next to no sheep in there.
The few sheep that are in there are extremely hard

(01:26:36):
to find because they're spending so much time in the trees.
So I started in two thousand thirteen and I dove
head first into it, and I went on a big rip,
big week long expedition, and I think I went in
like five days before season opened. And on night one,
I had scouted quite a bit that summer. I think
I had done three different backpacking trips that summer into

(01:26:56):
the bare Tooths, never seen a sheep, just scouted country.
Night one, hiking in, I saw like eight nine sheep
and a piece of g I just thought I had
it figured out. None of them were legal rams. It
was a family band using lambs and a couple of
young you know, two or three year old ram banana heads.

(01:27:17):
But we call him and I was like, well, there's
gotta be his big brother coming up behind him. So
I camped with him. I camped with them that night,
I spent the next morning with him. Was like, there's
no big brother here. And as much as I wanted
to hang out with those sheep, because you're you're looking
at the easter bunny, I mean, you have found an animal.
You are not supposed to have found. So it's a
fascinating animal to spend time with and to look at.

(01:27:40):
And as much as I wanted to sit there and
stay with those sheep, it was like, there's nothing to
shoot here, keep moving. Never saw another sheep a week,
So that was my year one. Actually this is a
whole another story. But what, okay would it work? When
does season end after Thanksgiving? So you still not into

(01:28:00):
the ruck? Well, it matters. Some of these districts are
very unique. There are migratory areas and some of the
unlimited areas that with the right snowstorm and with the
right day on the calendar, things might be a little
easier than normal. And what I was going to suggest
is whatever like to wait for him? No, that's tactic
to wait for rams to find us late. That is

(01:28:21):
the tail end of the season when the rams might
be starting to think about rut. That absolutely is a
tactic that people use, and I think they've viewed successfully.
But yeah, it's tough. It depends on where you're at
there because you know, some of some of that writting,
you know, they move up to winter, so now you
now you're at you know has been blown off. Yeah, yeah,

(01:28:42):
so you know, the different herds do different things in there, alright.
So some like on day three of that first year camped,
I was camped on a really cool spot, kind of
perched on a cliff, a very steep spot with a
big drop off below us, and I was had a
great view and I was posted up there for about
a day and a half half and out comes a

(01:29:04):
humongous black bear way below me. I has a big bear.
And then I'm like, guh, it's feeding on something. It's
like messing with something and digging and feeding on something.
And I put the spotting scope on. It is eating
a mountain goat. Yeah, And I don't know if he
killed the mountain goat of the mountain goat fell and died,
but he is consuming a large, dead white animal down

(01:29:25):
below me. I'm like, that's a big bear and I
love mountain goest. That's not cool that he's eating this
mount goat. So like had it out for this bear.
And a couple of days of not seeing sheep, you
get burnt out quick, you lose. I mean, I think
the stamina required this, the endurance, the mental endurance of

(01:29:50):
not seeing an animal day after day after day. It's
exhausting and it's very discouraging. And so it's bear showed
up like that'll work. Bear season to open until the
same day that sheep season open. Long story short, I
watched this bear the next day going to another drainage.
I was in the next drainage a couple of days later,

(01:30:10):
and here's this big, giant bear again. And so I
wound up shooting this bear. It was the worst decision
in my life. I now had to pack a black
bear out of the Beartooth Wilderness. It was it was
a psychotic movie. Oh yeah, which is a damn shame
because I had just gotten into the best sheep habitat

(01:30:30):
that I had touched that whole week and I had
to put a bunch of bear meat on my back
and walk out. So that was year one and that
was a very humbling experience and pretty discouraging. UM did
it year after year. Did not see a legal ram
until summer scouting of my third year. And I don't know, Hi,

(01:30:56):
fact can speak for Curt here, but I've when I
found a legal ram. You you like you are looking
at Santa Claus. I can't I can't even begin to
explain to you, Like the feeling of seeing an animal
that you are I'm not supposed to have found. So
it's a really cool thing and it's super addicting. So

(01:31:16):
I found a sheep summer scouting, and uh, I had
my plan, and so, you know, three or four days
before season, was heading back in to the general area
where I had seen this ram during the summer and
I couldn't find anything. Season opened opening day. I'm hiking
up into a drainage and as I'm coming over this

(01:31:38):
big saddle, I run it. Here come three hunters towards me,
and I realized that's they've got a mountain goat on
their back, their goat hunters, and they filled a tag
on opening day and I should talking great goat, congratulations. Hey,
what are the odds you've seen some sheep more legal ram?
Oh yeah, we saw one this morning. Like, you gotta

(01:32:00):
be kidding me. You saw you saw I rama this morning?
So they're like and I and I grilled him. I
was like, let me be like, let's talk in detail
about what you saw and where and exactly what it was.
And they were very confident that they had seen a
legal ram. So I climbed the highest peak to my

(01:32:22):
right in that saddle. From that saddle, I went feet
up to the tippy top of the peak and I
sat down, and I said that was eight am. The
in the morning, seven eight am, I ran into those
people get up on top of the peak. I sat
there all day. I was like, I know he's somewhere.
He didn't vaporize. I sat there all day, and thirty

(01:32:45):
minutes before dark, this ram comes loping through the saddle
where I had talked to the goat hunters like full run.
He looked scared. I you know, hunter, it's opening day.
There's some traffic there, pack trains coming through some of
these drainages, there's some commotion compared to a normal day.
This ram just comes running through long a story. I

(01:33:09):
sort of camped on that it wasn't opening day. I
apologized this was prior opening day because I spent a
day and a half with the sheep, not able to
shoot him yet. So that's what it is. Goat season
opens before unlimited season, so these goat hunters filled the
tag call it September twelve. I can't shoot this sheep
until September. So I find him, put him to bed.

(01:33:33):
I lived with him for I didn't leave him for
you know, I lost sight of him throughout the day
and stuff. But I spent the better part of two
days with the sheep. You know, the night of September.
Next next morning is opening day. The sheep beds three
yards from my tent, just me and the rim. That's it.
And he's three yards away from my tent. I'm like,

(01:33:56):
that's great, son's gonna come up. I'm gonna go dump
this thing, and I'm I'm going to get this room. Well,
that night, a horrible blizzard blew in. Hardcore snowstorm came
in and uh, really nasty weather. And so I got
up in the dark and I was like, I don't care,
it's nasty out. I know where that sheep was sleeping.
He's got to be somewhere close to there. Even if

(01:34:16):
he moved, he's somewhere over there. So I go out
in the dark and I got soaking wet and really cold.
Sun came up. Sheep's gone. In hindsight, that sheep definitely
high tailed it down into the timber when that weather
blew in. I looked and looked for him that morning,
and as hypothermia began to set in and as more

(01:34:37):
bad weather began to blow in. I I've quickly realised
I had to leave. It's like I can't, I can't
stay up here in this state. So I hiked out.
I went home, I did a load of laundry, slept
in my bed, and I came right back and I
hiked back in and I spent a lot of time
looking for that sheep. I never saw him again. So

(01:35:00):
are you glassing up all kinds of elkinship when this
is going on? Or is it not like that place
is pretty void of life? Grizzly bears, A lot of
grizzly bears. You see a lot of grizzly bears. Sometimes
you see goats, but no, there's I've seen one. In
my four years of hunting in there, I've seen one
elk heerd, a couple of mule deer, a couple of goats,
and a bunch of bears in a couple of sheep. Yeah,

(01:35:23):
so what year was that? That was my third season.
And see, that's like I'm getting I'm dialing this in
a little bit. I'm starting to regularly see sheep. I'm
feeling a little more confident about it. And then uh,
year four is almost repeat opening day found a ram

(01:35:45):
weather blue in lost lost ram bad weather blue in.
It was like absolute repeat. I went home, I walked
out of there, hiked all the way out to let
the weather. You know, you get these forty eight I
think you can sit in your time forty eight hours.
You can hike for ten hours and get out of here.
What happens just like this wet shitty snow. You think
like like I got three days of this two days again,

(01:36:10):
it's all side. Yeah. So I went home. Whether whether
the storm did some laundry went back in there, um
turned up. No, I didn't turn up sheep. I camped
next moek. My tactic throughout my four years of funting,
which I still think is the most productive way to
do it is to get to the highest point you can.
And I don't think that's exactly Curt style, but that's

(01:36:32):
how I hunted the unlimited is I would go to
the tippy top of stuff and I would post up,
and I would spend whole days sitting on mountaintops where
I could just see everything, and then you turn around
and you could see everything over there. So just keeping
visibility in your favor. And something I didn't wasn't good

(01:36:53):
at before I was hunted sheep and was uh, you know,
talking with Curt about sheep hunting a lot was the sun?
How important it is to plan your day around the sun,
to work with it. Work with the sun, don't work
against it. Always planning your whole day around I'm gonna
be glass into the west in the morning, I'm gonna
be glass into the east at sunset. And this is

(01:37:16):
this is a tricky thing, man, because if you're up
in a glass and tip and you got sixty degrees
and stuff you want to look at when the sun
is bad for one of where you're look in one
direction everything is shadowed, and you look at another direction
and everything is just glowing nice. It's like you gotta
make a decision where like I'm gonna ignore the shadowed

(01:37:37):
ship as good as I know it seems, and as
much as there's probably animals over there, I'm gonna ignore
that and just glass and stuff with the sun is
really working for me. But it takes like that takes
discipline because proofs of you waste your time staring to
that shitty stuff. We meanwhile, the good side, they like
the animals glow. Oh yeah, when the sun hits them. Yeah,
you gotta put everything in your favor and using the

(01:37:59):
sun to your advantage while glassing is certainly a good
place to start, because then he said, they start moving
to once the sun hits them, right. Yeah, A big
horn sheep on average, I don't think likes to lay
out bed, particularly in direct sunlight. I think like if
a sheep beds in the morning in the in a shady,

(01:38:20):
nice little spot, and at thirty eleven AM and the
sun gets up a little higher and the sun direct
sunlight is hitting that sheep more often than now, he's
gonna get up and he's gonna go find a second
bed for the day. He might move yeah yards into
the timber. Yeah, he might move on the other side
of his tree. Gone. Yeah. So uh anyways, went back

(01:38:43):
in and turned up a ram right at first light,
same ram, No no different sheep. And uh do you
like you're like Joe unlimited? Now no gum. Now Jim
turned up some sheep right at first light, made a

(01:39:04):
quick move on him and moved in tight on him,
and he pegged me. He I wound up being within
a hundred yards of this ram, bumped him. Oh and
he had he was bug eyed staring straight at me
when I shot him. Oh that's one you got, Yeah,
I got him, got you? Mm hmm. So now you

(01:39:25):
got seven years seven years. Well, I drew a permit
in Alaska, so I'm going to sheep hunting next month.
Oh yeah, Drew gotch catch permit. So I'm going doll
sheep hunting in August. Yeah, get one of these white
ones hopefully. Yeah. Man, so but that one. Because you
don't have a relative up there, you gotta right, you

(01:39:46):
gotta hire a guy. Correct. Yeah, that'll be fun though,
it'll be awesome. Yeah, it's gonna be a really fun trip.
Fly in No, it's a hike in only it's a state.
It's the state at state Park. It's Upper Eagle River,
which is uh, you start at the nature Center. I
think I'll have to connect you with my brother. Man,
guys need resources, and for sure I'm going up on Monday.

(01:40:09):
Actually yeah, so maybe we go get lunch with them. Yeah,
but whatever, you know, stuffs living. When you live in Anchor,
do you find a lot of dudes have a lot
of dead ship in your garage throughout the fall? Man?
Because that's this is like having a house thera. People
are like, hey, man, I use your freezer. The amount

(01:40:29):
of what's funny about his house the amount of bear spray,
A lot of milk crates of bear spray. Because everyone
flies to Alaska. Then they're always like somehow wind up
sleeping in his house or storing ship in his house
and he has like crates of pepper spray. Yeah, that's
good man, those are good stories. Is it worth it? Like?

(01:40:54):
Is it too hard? Are you interested in going? I'm
not like asking because I'm not asking you like take me,
but um, is that not interesting? Is it just like
too hard to be? Like, Okay, I'll throw in with
a body of mine. Is the kind of thing you
kind of gotta be doing it for yourself. I was
not really into solo hunting when I started this whole endeavor.
I in fact didn't like it, and it was something

(01:41:16):
you have to get comfortable with because you find out
really quickly it's very hard to find somebody to join
you in the middle of the elk rut on a
two percent hunt. On a two percent hunt, yeah, because
if you had some sweet tag like like I like
to jump in when friends draw like bitch and tag
because like, yeah, we're going there. Is gonna ship run
around everwhere We're gonna shot a big old one. Let's go.

(01:41:37):
But to have it be like now, we're not gonna
see anything anything. You like to come. There's lots of
barrass you just like to come and watch me not
get anything. It does interest me. I think I will
this year. Yeah, it does interest me. I've got a
couple of good friends who are giving it hell several
years into it now, and it doesn't interest me because

(01:41:58):
we have to do it again for seven years. You
can try again and it's really exciting because Kurt gets
his tag back next year, So you'd be loving now.
Is it helpful? Um? If someone did want to go
and like I'd like to go and just glass up
with you, is that helpers? It just want to be
not helpful because then you've got to deal with too
many people's attitudes. More eyes. Yeah, I mean it's more

(01:42:22):
eyes the split, yeah exactly. Yeah, I've I've never been
in that situation. I can't really speak to it, but
I would have to think if you have somebody that's
like minded, that wants to spend the time and they
want to pound glass, yeah, and that they don't get antsy,
their patient. They know the program. But if you want
to go along and think that, you know, it's like

(01:42:42):
running gun and elk during you know, the September on
the chase that it's not it's not, it's it's it's
just a lot of misery and miles and then sitting
for long periods of time. It's a nasty place, man,
it is it is. You know, you're just And then
there are lots of different ways that people can go

(01:43:03):
about it. I know guys have been successful many different ways.
But you know, typically you're not gonna go, you know,
jump one up out of the timber and packs it's
pack stock helpful. No, you can't take a worse in
to this stuff. No, it's it's been it's been done. Um.
But advantage no, now, I mean some of the country

(01:43:23):
you can't. Some of the units can't even get the
biggest advantage you can give yourself as time, the more
time you just have to clock. You have to go
punch the clock. Yeah. Now, how often does it happen? Um,
the day one, you know, different ends of the unit whatever,
like day one? By am I am? Do you guys
are about do you guys get them? You hear about

(01:43:45):
the old war store. I mean, there's there's stories of
that happening, and I've never heard of it happening in
recent years, but it has happened. It's definitely happened where
opening day three sheep get shot and then there's still
a twenty four a grace period where you can legally
harvest a sheep within the next two days. So I'm
with you. So give me um, give me like a

(01:44:10):
give me a big stone glacier. Sales pitch man, you
ever done that before? I got our general manager, right, Harry,
So catch up popsicle to a lady in white gloves, Bud.
That's a fact. That's a line from Tommy Boy. If
nobody else picked up, I got a good sales pitch.
Sales pitch. You know. I had seen him around a bunch.

(01:44:33):
I was like, yeah, another backpack and hunting backpack. You know,
it's pretty good. But I hadn't really like I had
touched him in Schnais, I think, and you know, farted
around a little bit with him, and even I think
I even had one Pete had shown me how do
you use it? I carried around a little bit. But
don't you tell everybody how we met um. How did

(01:44:54):
we mean? We met in a bar right and we
met a yoga class. I like that man. Kurt gave
me a yoga pass for Christmas. One year I was
doing some yoga. I walk in. This guy's got a
meet you love it. I've been there six times. Yeah,

(01:45:15):
it's the best. I like it a lot, so I
wanted me to go last. There's a guy with a
meat eater shirt on. I'm like, hey, you hunt. He's
like yeah. In fact, I produced this television show called
meat Eater Cool. That was pre uh the first time
I saw you podcast with Randal and we went out
to dinner and head beers. We went turkey hunting in
the morning. Before that podcast, We've had some great turkey hunts.

(01:45:39):
I'm a real redneck turkey hunter. Just kill him. I
just get the turkey killed. And Janice is such an
artsy turkey hunter. It's got to be this beautiful setup
and I'm just just shoot the bird. Anyways. Sorry, doesn't
serve me right. Talking about big old sales. Pitch yeah,

(01:46:01):
act like, can I tell you story? The following story
to the yoga class, and I'm like, oh sweet, yeah,
good to meet you. If I see here again, don't
see Pete, don't see pe, don't see p because one pass,
don't I think the guy is a stingy crisis. He

(01:46:21):
was chasing something else. Those in that class that was
and uh, he's like, yeah, work out for me. Not
doing yoga anymore. I remember it a little differently. Stretch. Well,

(01:46:42):
I'm there quite often. Still haven't seen you? They call
me yoga yoga, but no, I got like a lot
of good it does you all crippled up all the time,
blowing your knees out all the time. I tell you,
I can't wait to go back in now that this
knee is gonna be scoped and fixed. I'm gonna get
to flex stability that I have in my left in
my right knee, my right side pigeon is gonna go

(01:47:07):
to it in the next level. Can you I can
bend over now, I can bend over and palms flat
on the ground and he's locked. Yeah, that's impressive. That's
good that I can't even touch my toes bend as
I am. Um so anyhow here I am. I'm like, hey, man,
just think about getting a pack. Pack. What do you

(01:47:28):
think I should get? Oh? We got you probably don't
get this. I got the special sales pitch from Kurt
at the now the old show room. Why can't I
have the sale? Why? Why don't you give me the
sales pitch? Because he doesn't hang around. He doesn't hang
around in the show down here at the juke, he's stitching.
But uh, I was just about to go backpack hunt

(01:47:49):
with your brother or Lama hunting, and it's kind of
like like backpack yeah, light, no, ladies and gentlemen. He's
not mean hunting llamas. He means hunting with llamas as
pack animals at Lama. Yeah, I've at Lama, but you
were not hunting lamas. It was like in a It
was in she could have been a house cat. You've

(01:48:12):
had alpaca tastes like very tender be taste like me. Yeah,
was it like all super cooked or was it like
a steak? It was like a steak. Oh see I
hadn't didn't get that. Yeah, I know. It was like
very um yeah, like presented like a steak. It was
like very tender back maybe I know. Yeah, I got

(01:48:33):
a good place you hunt. Lama's giving my brothers, so
I can't remember. Are you giving a sales pitch or
not trying. And I was getting ready to go hunt
with your brother and I had the solo and I'm
in there and I'm like, yeah, I'm telling curtain be.
I'm like, yeah, I don't know, man, only these packs

(01:48:54):
like gonna be big enough because we're going in for
six nights seven nights, maybe, you know, And I think
I need a little bit bigger pack. And uh curts like,
oh no, you don't. I did fourteen days in the
limited ship unit with this pack and I'm like, okay,
showing me please, and uh, yeah, so you showed me
how to run basically the what do you guys call
like the load sack, know, not the load shell, but

(01:49:16):
what's the sack that goes between the pack drive back.
He's like, you just take this, put your food in here.
So this is this is it basically looks like a
very a tidy game bag that's water resistant. Yeah, and uh,
you can slip it basically between the pack in your frame. Yeah,

(01:49:36):
because the whole bag will kind of move away and
move away. Yeah. And then you just showed me. Then
he just said, yeah, you just walk into the woods
and then when you get to your spot, you're gonna
hunt the best part about what I liked about this
system is that you just pull that out, pull out
your cord, throw it up in a tree. Now if
you've got your food hung and you just send you

(01:49:56):
down your backpack, you got a extra tidy pack now
and off you go. I was like, man, that's the ship.
So I was going to I was gonna start just
like adding attachments and extra bags and you know this,
that and the other. And instead I walked into the
woods lighter on that trip, you know, because of that
pack in that system, and uh, I was sold. Liked it. Yeah, no,

(01:50:16):
And it works so slick man. I mean the whole
time I was hunting when we talked about this earlier,
but I had the capability to carry a quarter out
had we gotten something. But while I'm hunting, I felt
like I have a little daypack on, you know the
ways nothing you kind of like forget it's there in
your own pack. Did you use do you guys put
the white hangbags? Do you use those? Do you not

(01:50:40):
use them? I use them. I do not connect them
to the backpack. You just you just use it as
a I used them to organize my things. You don't
you don't hang it inside there. I do not. I
find myself kind of like liking the hanging in there.
But I was curious if you guys did, because like
I got, like, you know, put a couple of extra
shells and ship like ship you might you know, Yeah,
and I can just like reach in here. Oh, I

(01:51:02):
use a bunch of them. I'm very organized in my
backpack and have a little kits and stuff. But yeah,
I've more often than not pulling them out and throwing
them in. I just like I like having where I
could even the dark, it's right there. Yeah, I just
know when I put my hand in and I drag
it out. Yeah. Johanna touched quickly on the ability to

(01:51:22):
carry a quarter out and our load shelf feature and
the ability to carry something between a frame and a bag.
And that's worth talking about for a second, which is
the physics behind why carrying something in a load shelf configuration.
I keeping heavy stuff close to your back is the
smartest way to carry heavy stuff off a mountain. And

(01:51:43):
Kurt's taking done some cool experiments and we've got them
all on our website. Um to where the lateral forces
that the pack is going to affect on you are
much smaller. When the heavy load is vertically oriented up
and down, you're back close to your center of gravity

(01:52:05):
rather than moving away from your center of gravity. So
you can't change gravity hundred pounds, the hundred pounds, the
hundred pounds, you can change the forces that that weight
is going to put on your body was waving back
and forth around. Yeah, the closer you can keep the
heavy stuff to your back, the better it is. We're
about lower higher, conventional wisdom is lower. Yeah, well, it

(01:52:30):
it changes because it all depends on the center gravity
of the body. Right, So, uh, take for example, in
a in a standard pack, if if you if you
wanted to, you know, you're working off of that that
general fulcrum angle. You know, well just just that just
that leverage, that the angle that it comes up, so

(01:52:50):
that the farther you move it away from your back,
the more leverage that's gonna happen. But the point that
you're gonna work from is the center gravity of your
you know, somewhere in your hips. That's that's that's the fulcrum.
That's where it's you know, moving you back and forth.
So you can move the load higher and achieve the
same vertical amount of leverage as as if it was

(01:53:15):
as if it was lower. But the problem is is
now your lateral you know, you're left or right. Now
you've increased that leverage going that way. So you know,
there's this there's this uh, this this medium where you
where you try to get it close enough to offset
both leverage. And what we've found is when you draw
it out out on autocat and you figure out the

(01:53:37):
density of the meat and you figure out, you know,
the density generally of of the gear that you're carrying,
and you start moving it around and you're gonna get
you're gonna get a center of gravity of your pack
at some point. So you move it here, it might
move up, it might move down. So the key is
being able to get it the most in line obviously

(01:53:57):
with your your center avenue, you know, which is generally
going to be in the center of your hips and
so I know one ever put a quarter in right
side up. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's that's a great example
of it. Yeah, because it's in it's physically in the
same spot vertically, but you know, now you're left or

(01:54:21):
right front to back, you know, being able to control it,
so yeah, that that's that's kind of the concept behind it,
is just being able to increase stability and any advantage
that you can get. You know, if you're only packing
it a few hundred yards to your truck, obviously it
doesn't make that big difference. But if you're under that
same load for for two days, you have to manage

(01:54:41):
the meat. So now you have to be able to
get out, especially in sheep hunting, if you're in the
Northwest territories, you know, you're even earlier in the year
in Alaska, you're in early August. You don't know what
kind of weather you're going to have, so you can't
just leave it in a ball of me You're gonna
have to, you know, get it out, get some air
on it, get it cool, try to get it on ice,
if there's a glacier round, whatever, whatever you can do
to take care of the meat. So now being able

(01:55:02):
to manage it and keep it clean and then be
able to repack it. So if you just end up
with a you know, a ball of meat in the
middle of your pack with all the rest of your gear,
there's just there's a whole another level of dynamics. You
need to start to work with. That's the thing you love.
People don't realize how much And that was kind of
hot days August September. How much you're messing with that stuff.

(01:55:25):
You have to be on it all the time, airing
it out, putting the shade, taking it out of the shade,
putting your bag. You can't like throw it in a
garbage bag and put in your backpack and then like,
I think it's gonna two days later and be like no, no, no,
that's it too and you could lose it quickly. Yeah,
you're like keeping an eye getting the heat out of it,
you know, quickly after you right after you take it,
so you know, um, so yeah, that's that's kind of

(01:55:48):
the concept behind it is twofold, you know. One of
it is is an easier way to manage. To me,
once you have it, keep it as clean and then
and and you don't keep as much of it easy
canbviously not lose anything. And then being able to have
it in the most comfortable spot. So are are you
h are you digging the backpack business like do most years?

(01:56:10):
You you know, go and sell more packs than you
did the year before and stuff like that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
I I dig it a lot like it you're in
its stay. Oh yeah, yeah, it's just started making all
kinds of all this ship too. Oh you never know,
there's there's a there's a lot more time to work
on stuff like that right now. Yeah, I might do
fanny packs us. I mean, but you're not kidding about

(01:56:34):
making other stuff. I'm not kidding about that. No, No,
they make some other thing. What would you go make?
Uh like what completely out of pack? But like what
class of like yeah, like what would be like mountain
hunting gear? Okay, yeah, mountain and gear? Yeah, I think
things that go along with it and naturally go along

(01:56:56):
with it, the stuff that you pull out of your pack,
you know, like a new kind of claw hammer. No, no, no,
we're gonna see that's that's a lot of work. So
it'll stay in like like high quality mountain ye yeah
for sure. Yeah, I mean that that's the fun part
about it. But give me a like, okay, here, I
put it this way. What would be something that you'd

(01:57:18):
be like say it finished his sense? You know, Steve,
I wouldn't be surprised if down the road I made
a blank five that made a piece of gear that
you're gonna be carrying in our back in in a
stone glacier back something that I might toe around in

(01:57:38):
my path. There is a lot of cool stuff on
the drawing board. Yeah, yeah, that's fun. Yeah, it is fun.
I think that's that's the best part of the business
as far as I'm concerned. Britain, how do you cut
your leg up so bad? Chicken wire? Fence fence, chicken wire.
I guess you're trying to restrain some chickens. No, my
my might have a little five month old puppy that

(01:58:00):
likes to get. You're trying to keep it, trying to
keep it out of the garden. You got including thoughts, pretty,
I don't want to I don't want to go first,
I don't I don't got ship, I got nothing. All
my questions are answered. I was gonna say, it's easy
for Kurt to uh go sheep on in September and

(01:58:22):
the middle of the raw in good Elk country here
because he's already got a whole corner of his man
cave here. They're not even on the wall. Um was
just how many other five? Anymore? Five? Here's probably more others.

(01:58:42):
Just beautiful six point bowls and anybody would be happy with.
So once you've a mass knees and you're like, whatever,
elk milk going cheap. I don't care if I see
the animals anymore. I hadn't old client once tell me
after we kill the six point bull those maybe he's

(01:59:04):
big as the smallest one that I'm looking at here,
And he said, yeah, he can never have too many
six point bulls. I agree with that. Six points or
six point right, Yeah, I think, like, yeah, I think
I got mutely bucks. I feel like you can't just
there's no I can see that like you'd say you can't,
like for instance, for instance, like I went must cox

(01:59:27):
on no desire at all to go Muskoxn. But I'm saying, like, yeah,
I think that people find they're kind of a lot
of guys find their thing, you know, like how many
how many buck Racks be caught up hanging in Doug
Durn's in the Buckman juice room. Twenty's not all his?

(01:59:47):
But I mean, you know it's not He's not like,
oh you know, two more and I'm done. You know,
it's just not how he looks at it. What was
your concluding thought? That was it? You can't have too
many big old can have too many six points and
that's how you get to go unlimit sheep points after
even mask and you have to give up some you know. Now,
what's up? So your wife doesn't like you have You

(02:00:09):
can't put antlers and whatnot up in your living room? No,
I could. I like having everything right here. Just I
like my space. Yeah, yeah, that's one of the things
I like about my wife. Yeah. I put anything anywhere
I want. People are always like, oh, I can't put
it in the bedroom. It's it's like, dude, I don't
say i'd go get a new wife, but my wife,

(02:00:32):
My wife doesn't mess any about stuff like that. Man,
I'm not saying yours does. You just like to keep
it all tidy. I like my space and I come
down here. That's what I want to as a fan
of Buffalo too, I take it because I see two
pieces of art Buffalo on them. Yeah. Actually my sister
painted that one for me. Yeah, back in the day.

(02:00:56):
But yeah, you know I like about you most Kurt
is it? Uh you keep everything real neat I have
a real problem like with neatness means that I like it.
I like it too much. I like it too much.
I don't have a problem keeping neat. I just like
I like it so much that it becomes a thing
in and of itself. It's like there's a great functional

(02:01:20):
quality to neatness, right, But for me, neatness is an
end in itself. Do you understand what I'm saying. That's
when it becomes a problem. Yeah, Well a four and
a six year old take care of that, and two
four and seven so they did, Like we have a
fish and check. And my brother who likes stuff neat too,

(02:01:41):
He's like when he closes his eyes and pictures it
in the future, he pictures a coast guard station like
that neat you know, yeah, I like that, but this
this room doesn't make Matt. Matt's trick to neatness, though,
is to get rid of all your ship, he says.
He goes, when I shut the door in my house,

(02:02:02):
I like, it's not like I'm walking into a gymnasium.
So his need is is just to expunge the house
of all items. So it's like his house is like
about as empty as a house could be, because that
means it's like there's nothing too straighten up because he
got rid of it all, you know, just like stripped.

(02:02:22):
He lives a monastic, like a fairly monastic life, he
commented on liking my house, but he lives nine hours
away from his wife. They have separate homes that are
nine hours apart. Wow. When they hang out, it's like
they're like like a dating couple having a good old time,

(02:02:43):
good stuff. Yeah, and it's not like they're they're not
about it. They're not about it, like, oh, we're just
trying to get through this right, And then it'll be
that they're like just very fine with that. Him having
his very neat house without even having her ship. Well,

(02:03:04):
I figured out it was well like when you guys
first asked me to be on this particular podcast and
you said you were going to talk about she hunting
the whole time, I was like, I don't really have
anything to contribute, which I didn't have much, But but
what I will say is that I think you guys.
I went into it thinking like, I don't think I
could ever do is she hunt or would ever want

(02:03:25):
to do in I think you guys your enthusiasm definitely
changed my mind. I'm not going to do it, but
you're like that she would have a hard time shooting
a bull elk because they're too majestic. Oh my, she
has a thing of like the majestic quality. I don't know,

(02:03:47):
and majestic you should see him up close once they're dead.
But that's the thing. Yeah, I don't know. It's like
I feel like and I've just never I've never had
the opportunity, so I can't say, like, what would happen
like in the moment, you know, it's hard. It's one
thing to say it now sitting here, but it's another
to say it like actually in the moment. But I
don't know, Like I feel like if I saw one,
I would just be like like last to see last season, Um,

(02:04:11):
my boyfriend I went hunting in for meal and the
Missouri breaks and I had an opportunity at like a
huge um and I like, I was just like my
boyfriend was like, are you gonna just what's going on here?
Like my jaw was on the floor. So it's weird
to me because that seems like a patriarchal perspective. But

(02:04:33):
to have a woman say that she grants a male
animal a higher majestic score, that's entirely possibly and a
female seems like I like it because it's unexpected. I
would just expect to have I would visualize that as
like this, like very like patriarchal view of animals. I
don't know. The male is more he's the he's the

(02:04:56):
special one. Well, he's more like spectacular. I mean he
has these incredibly huge, you know antlers that you know,
took him a long time to throw those. No, he
grows a few. I don't know. I mean it's just
like there's something more like majestic to the way that
they look. But I don't know it has it has

(02:05:16):
I don't know. I can't I can't explain it. I
can't explain that was a good one. Uh you anything
you don't want to add? Well, I don't you ever
get shocked messed around with high volted electricity. I guess
you don't get any chances to have it. No, No,
it's kind of a one shot deal. You're combine the
two somehow high voltage packs into like tie fashion and

(02:05:41):
like make fancy packs with like glow in the dark. Yeah, yeah,
with your specific tools. Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a
tough one to go. You know, people will spend a
lot of money on their recreation. They really won't spend
it on their work necessarily, so yeah, but it would
be fun. I mean, you're not gonna make like a
super up tool kit for I don't think so compete

(02:06:04):
with Lows and home depot. Yea, um, never been shocked.
You got anything you want to add that you didn't
get a chance to, Like you were wishing had come up,
but it never came up. No, uh no, I mean
I just appreciate you guys having us on and it's
been a lot of fun, learned, a lot came up.
I hope you can sell a whole shipload of packs. Man,

(02:06:27):
Well thank you. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna We're gonna keep
hammering on it. And I think you guys need to
start to marketing campaigns. One would be tidy. Two would
be we kill unlimited rams. Just have a sign says
that yeah, non guided we killed non guided unlimited rams. Well,

(02:06:49):
you know, it's it's funny that that's that. That would
be My only closing comment on that is is that
the the unlimited cheap hunt is Uh, people are pretty
tight with the information and the guys who go in
there and spend the amount of time, uh, you know,
you own it. You can earn it and so. But

(02:07:09):
in in the same respect, you can have all the
information in the world from guys have been successful and
go in there and you know, not not see anything,
but you know it kind of reminds me of fight
club or something. You know. Number one rule, right, first,
number one first rule, do not talk about Sorry, but

(02:07:30):
you haven't done anything bad because you guys haven't even
named like a train now range um. But that's a
question I have is do you feel like it could
be a possibility that you might get your tag back
next year and then you can haunt every year until
you're like, all right, I'm over on them to sheep

(02:07:51):
hunting and not kill another ram. Well, there's only a
two point five seven percent chance that I you know
that I take. I mean, obviously you're a positive thinking
person because you're gonna go in there and try and
every time you walk in there you're thinking, I'm gonna
kill one. But like that's a realistic possibility you could
hunt another twenty years and not kill another sheep. Yeah,
And and I think it depends on you, know, how

(02:08:12):
you where you hunt, what you want to do. Do
you want to spend more time exploring it? Do you
want to. It's not that this is going to happen.
And it might sound silly to say, but it almost
be disappointed if you walked in there and only spent
three days after waiting seven years and you got one. You,
I mean, you wouldn't turn it down. And I don't
want to, But there is there. There's a lot to

(02:08:34):
being able to look up at that and and and say,
you know, I invested a lot of times. There were
a lot of good memories went along with it. That
might be the representation of it right now, but really
what was special was just the stuff that I got
to experience where you know, how you grew back there,
how you overcame things that that you didn't think maybe
you would. You know those times when you haven't seen

(02:08:55):
anything for nine days and you start the question why
am I here? You know, you spending time with my
family right now, I haven't seen anything for nine days,
and then the tenth day something's there. It's like it
just happens like that. So you know all of those
things that you start to grow, and then you start
to apply that to say LK hunting, where you're seeing
many elk in comparison, and and it changes your your

(02:09:20):
perception of hunting. I think is probably the most positive
thing that's done for me, because you pay more attention to,
you know, all the little things that happened imposed it
just you know, the big things and something standing in
front of you. So because some days there aren't no
big things, yeah, many days, most days yeah yeah, and

(02:09:42):
you're you know, after nine days of being by yourself,
it doesn't happen very long. You are very often you
start to run out of things to even think about.
Most people, most people, it's an interesting people will never
ever happen. Bring a book or three, Yeah, bring a book.
Work with the Sun. That was a ringer of a

(02:10:02):
closing thought right there, Because do you have any final
thing you want to add? Man, things that didn't come
up that you wish you'd got to talk about. I
want to talk about a big old posts were just
caught in our shrimp pop. But I'm not gonna talk
about that right now. Ok it was actually my buddy shrimps.
I am so confused about. Okay, we got big I'm
thinking of a cat son. You want to talk about
something that never had you guys, think unlimited sheep hunt.

(02:10:25):
It's like seeing sand Claus. Yeah, getting octopus to shrimp pots,
just like you know, you pull a lot of shrimp pots,
not get oxoputs. Go out the other day and I
boaded over to my like a buddy of mine was
out pulling shrimp pots and he was kind of mad
that I wasn't coming to help him, and I don't
want to go because it's it's a very difficult area

(02:10:45):
to take a skiff too. And I go over there
and he already he had eight and the water he
already pulled six. He's kind of pissed. I'm not really pissed,
but he's annoyed. Um, hook it up, pull a pot,
big old pusts man. Yeah, he's in my freezer right now.
I was all geared up to talk about that. So

(02:11:05):
tell me how you're gonna cook it, because we did
that a couple of times in Alaska and we never
really got it figured out. Yeah, it was really good.
It just was you had to you had to work
at it. There's a couple of ways people do it. Um.
One way as you take a switch like I know
that one chef likes to use the apple switch stick

(02:11:26):
and beat the snot out of it or uh in Japan.
They'll take a bucket and they'll have salt Corse salt
in the bucket and put in the bottom of a
five gallon bucket with a bunch of very coarse salt.
Punch it. No, just put it in the bottom and
just start punching the legs and punching the legs and
working around and punch and punch and punch. You're saying

(02:11:47):
this is to kill it, to kill it, Yeah, we
figured that. Yeah, to kill you way lower than you
think it would because the brains to tenderize it crazy. Yeah,
So you just you ever watch Gero Dreams of Sushiyah.
There's a scene in there where someone's tenorizing just beating
in the bible bucket, uh my mentor in all things, uh,

(02:12:13):
all things salt water um par boils them. So thirty
minute he gets no beating at all, he gets pissedly
say parbo he rolled, he'd like to say roll boil.
He roll boils them the arms for thirty minutes and
then the kind of this outside skin kind of comes off.
You scrape it off. Then he packs in to dry

(02:12:34):
Brian four to one. Then he smokes it, then he
jars it and it is the best ship on the planet. Man.
My closing thought is, man, is that puss sound good? Man?
I want some Oxtrobus for dinner now. Umm. Would just
be at tune. Encourage people to try new things and

(02:12:56):
collect as many experiences as you can. And if unlimited
Cheap Hunting is one of those things, go for it. Yeah,
there's only guys out there trying to kill ten sheet.
Just know what you're getting into. Just know what you're
signing up for in the realities of it, and it's
the most rewarding thing. Oh yeah, that getting out there
and doing stuff thing is so important if we're just

(02:13:18):
getting like general life ship, because when you're laying there dying,
we got a couple of minutes, you're not gonna be like, Man,
am I glad I didn't do that unlimited Cheap Hunt Right,
It's just not gonna be what you say when you die,
unless you're dying on the cheating you whatever you say,

(02:13:43):
I'm not answering. I'm done talking, okay. Um. I don't
know if this is the time for because what if
he wants to tell us a story himself, who we're
gonna possibly go in and hang out with positives and decent.
He miss You guys know Jim Pozwits one of Montana's
greatest conservationists. Well, he's a national figure. Yeah, he's a

(02:14:07):
national figure. But he did most his work. He's very yeah,
but very influential cons You could you could say that
he you know, not single handily, but he certainly spearheaded
the effort that kept the Yellstun River from being damned. There,
helped keep it the longest free flowing river in the country.
But I was hanging with him the other morning talking, uh,

(02:14:28):
doing some recording of some other stuff. Sorry to something, Well,
I've messed something up. The longest freestone river in the
lower forty eight not the country, copy um and Jim,
I think it's eighty two this year, and drew a
goat tag I think second or third time. He's like,

(02:14:52):
I've already killed, I think he said. And he's killed too.
He's like, I'm already killed two, don't need to kill
a third one. But he says, I'm not giving this
one back so someone else can go kill. I'm gonna
give this got a pass go up there, that's going
to get to live another year. Right, But because of
his health, he also cannot make it up to go.

(02:15:14):
And it's the first time I asked him the first
time the health is keeping you off of hunt? He said, yep,
I said, ship if I'm eighty two and I get
to say that this this year's the first year, the
first time not going up on the mountain because of
my health, Like it'll be a good life, right. He
added to that to say that, he said, like, that's

(02:15:34):
all cool, I'm happy with it. Whatnot? He says, you know,
kind of he says, I hope you know when the
time comes or when there's that moment I think you
can all kind of get when I'm getting at here,
He's like, I hope to see what that goat is seeing. Well,
it's kind of a beautiful stout. He's a good thinker.

(02:15:54):
I know I wasn't say anything, but uh, sorry, Jim,
I'm not talking. I'm channeling Jim Posits, so I'm not
actually saying Jim Posits was talking about. Uh, you know,
he's an elderly man and a couple of years ago
he was out hunting and near his home in Helena

(02:16:15):
and he's climbing up to a place to to hunt
Elco place where he knows the outcome through and ship
I got myself in the situations in earlier. Okay, before
I tell you this, I'll tell you some other thing now.
Roosevelt Poter Roosevelt, So Roosevelt um has his famous quote

(02:16:37):
where a guy said, like, so earlier, I talked about
how it came to be that the wild animals belong
to the people. Um, you know, Roosevelt was, I want
to be conservative and conserved wildlife. And so someone once
said that Roosevelt like, if it belongs to us and
it's ours, why can't we just go get it all?
And he said, it doesn't just belong to you, it

(02:16:58):
belongs to those Americans. Ill in the womb of time.
What a line so posits is uh going up the hunt,
and he becomes aware of a father and two kids
behind him and on the trail, and the father is
holding the kids back because he's reluctant to allow his

(02:17:21):
kids to come smoking up past some old man. And
Jim realizes that they're like purposefully plodding along out of
out of deference, and he says that he turns and
talks to says, I want you to go ahead, and
he says and he's telling the story. He talks about

(02:17:41):
um them passing him, and there are three generations worth
of those people that we're in Roosevelt's womb of time out,
sharing the resource. He's a profound dude man. That sounds
like it. He's got some real s angers, all right.

(02:18:02):
Thanks for joining h

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Steven Rinella

Popular Podcasts

The Breakfast Club

Dateline NBC

Decisions, Decisions

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.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. 076: The Impossible Hunt