And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. I'm the host Dirk Durham today and I'm in the beautiful blue mountains of Oregon, Northeastern Oregon. If you will, I've got my buddy Derek Miller, who is an owner operator of an outfitting business here in Oregon in some of the big three units ELK units in Oregon, which, uh, which are you? How many units do you guide in?
Here? I'm permitted to operate in all of the big three that I primarily operate in Mount Emily and Wanaha.
Okay, yeah, nice, nice. We just wrapped up like a what's a lifetime type of ELK hunt for me here in Oregon here in one of the those big three units. I don't know if do we want to tell people where it's at or they'll probably figure it out, but I always had to leave a little mystery.
Yeah, it doesn't matter to me. The availability of tags is so small that it doesn't really matter.
But right right, well, I had the opportunity to come hunt with Derek through the Outfitter Tag program. So an outfitter, the outfitters apply for an opportunity to draw a tag one tag in these units tell us how that works.
So licensed outfitters in Oregon can apply for non resident outfitter tags in the Big Three and if you're if you're issued one of those tags, if you're lucky enough to draw it, then they'll if you for service, will issue you a operating permit for that hunt. I happen to have a priority permit on part of that National forest and a temporary permit year to year permit on the rest of it.
So yeah, that's coo. And then I was able to have the opportunity to buy that tag. It's it's crazy, you know, some people kind of poo poo on that idea, which I kind of get. You know, it's there's a lot of folks who will spend twenty plus years applying as a resident in this state trying to draw a tag, and and it's probably a little disheartening for them when some jerk like me comes along and buys a tag. But you know this is you know, the state, the
state does this, They allow it. Somebody's gonna buy the tag, and and by gully, this time, it's just a good old kid from we Ipe that I would have never thought in a million years I'd ever been able to hunt this unit, So I'm super thankful and fortunate to come here. But man, I was really I've been really
looking forward to this this hunt all summer. You've sent me pictures of some big bulls you've been scouting, and then in September hit and you had some cool videos on from from trail camps of bulls on wallows, bugling and stuff, and that's really cool. I'm just I'm just wondering, what is your normal what's your normal client base look like?
Is that? You know? I feel like some people get this idea that like, oh, somebody went with an outfitter there, they must not be a good hunter, or oh they should have just did that theirself, or oh outfitted hunt not for me. I don't want to even hear about it, right, but I feel like there's some weird misconceptions about who actually will book a hunt with an outfitter.
Right in the Big Three, it's kind of a unique situation because it takes so long to draw, and the average age of a hunter that draws the Big Three because it takes twenty plus years to draw, is probably fifty and above. So the age demographic is probably fifty to seventy on average. Those are the guys that are typically booking hunts. The guy that's, you know, twenty to thirty, he's still he still thinks he can do it on his own, which he can. There's no reason that he
can't do it alone. But we all know as we get older, we have physical limitations and time limitations. So the average guy is going to be fifty to seventies, probably either retired or a business owner. He has the disposable income to hire an outfitter. He doesn't have a lot of excess time to come and scout like you would want to for a twenty five year tag to do that tag justice and do your due diligence to
find yourself a bull. So he's probably the average. Most all of them are hunters of one type or another, all different skill levels. There's some really experienced hunters and there's some that have never killed a bull. The vast, vast majority of my clients have probably never killed a mature bowl. They may have spy hunted or cow hunter or whatever, but they've never killed a mature bowl anyway. It's not that they're new hunters, it's just that in Oregon,
our opportunities are somewhat limited to hunt big bulls. We don't have a ton of units that have them, and the ones that do have them, it takes a bit to draw a tag, so the average hunter just wants to maximize what he's got. You know, it took him twenty five years to get the tag, and he doesn't want to waste it, so he hires a guide. And the benefits of the guide, there's a lot of them. But the guide knows the country better than you'll ever know it, even though you may have friends that have
hunted it with friends or whatever. The guides are hunting that every single year, two months out of the year between archery season and rifle season, so they're just they're familiar with the unit in waste that most people aren't. It Also, you know, maybe they don't have the equipment. It's late season, we can end up with a lot of snow. Transportation can be an issue. So sometimes it's equipment they don't have. Sometimes it's the time they don't
have the scout. Sometimes it's maybe the knowledge. They don't feel like they have enough knowledge to kill a ball that they've been waiting twenty years to kill, so there's a lot of reasons. I've found. Very rarely it's because the person is inept. It's just they've weighed the they've weighed the odds, and they think that their odds are stacked better with help.
Absolutely well. One thing I've kind of noticed over the years is when some people draw really hard to get tag, whether it's Oregon or Idaho or Utah or whatever, they may have a network of friends that like are are like, hey, I want to go along and help. But not everybody has a network of friends that want to or can you know, some of us are friends just they work, you know, they can't get.
Out, And a lot of times you have when you draw the tag, you have a whole bunch of people that want to help, but as the time approaches, they can't get time off, or life happens like it does for all of us, and some of those guys find out that they're going to be on their own, and if or maybe they have one or two friends. But if you're fifty to seventy, your friends are mostly fifty to seventy, and so they may not be quite the help you need.
Right so right, yeah, and there, you know, it's nothing beats boots on the ground, somebody that's been in the unit a lot and familiar with the area and the areas that help frequent and you know, it's it sure saves a lot of leg work. Definitely.
Yeah, it's nice that you can on day one because it takes over twenty years to draw the tag. Most people haven't scouted the unit and they think they're going to scout the unit in the months leading up, but they don't. Either they don't because of time constraints, or even when they do. Where the elk are in June and July and August and September, they probably aren't going to be in November. So it's kind of you're scouting
country but not really scouting elk. And so it's also nice that on day one you hit the ground running. We've all gone places where we're not familiar with, really a new place. We're kind of going in blind, maybe with some scouting, but how many days do you spend just kind of get the feel of the country, And this way you don't have to. Your guy's already been there. He's probably been there. Hopefully he's been there in the days right prior to your hunt, so he already has
Elk spotted. You know, we knew exactly where we were going this morning. We knew exactly where we were going. We had videos of Elk that we wanted to kill from less than twenty four hours ago. So I think there's some real benefits to And it's not that a guy can't do that. I'm not saying that they can't do it on their own. They can, but it's sometimes and for certain people, I think it's just a better option if you have the ability to do it.
Right right or when it comes to like get an animal out, you know, right, let's say once you're successful, I mean, and Elk is a big animal and his canyons are pretty steep, right and rugged here and a lot of folks, you know, it's it's going to be a big burden to get it out, and you know, especially if you're diy do it yourself, and you may not have that again, that safety rope or network of friends, or maybe all your friends are back home, you know,
eight hours from here, and they just can't run over to help you pack out an Elk man. It's sure is nice to you know, have yeah.
A group of guys right there that can just throw it on their back and get out.
Yeah, make it a one trip pack out and it's done. And man, it's it's fun. Yeah, it's really fun.
It makes it a lot more enjoyable. There's something to be said for the suffering of packing a bull out over several days by yourself, but there's also something to be said for getting it done and sitting around camp just visiting for a few hours afterwards too. Oh yeah, definitely, it's both ways are great.
So my expectations when I came on this hunt, I've always tempered my expectations for all hunting because I've been hunting for thirty five years, you know, do it yourself type hunting, so I understand what hunting is about. You know, of course you're going to set your sights on the big animal you can possibly find, and we would all like to go home with that three fifty or three eighty or whatever number type of bowl or just maybe just I want a big, heavy six point or whatever.
So coming into this hunt, I always try to like temper my expectations. I didn't have a number set on a bowl. I just I wanted to shoot a big, beautiful bowl. I didn't care if it was a perfect six. I didn't care if it was a lopsided seven by eight. I like, you know, with weird points. I didn't really care. I just wanted a cool opportunity, a cool bowl that I that I liked when I seen it. And sometimes you find those on the first day. Sometimes a guy don't find those at all in a season, or maybe
you find them on the last day. But today, man, wait, the elk gods smiled on us, like they put one right in front of us. We We've done a little bit of due diligence the night before and spotted a really nice seven by eight, And I'm like, oh, man,
I want that thing. And but I know hunting, and I just know how it works to where just because you see one the night before and they're and and and you guys have been watching them for a for a day or two, and it's like, it doesn't mean it's a gimme tomorrow morning.
That elker they have seen killing two different things entirely.
Yeah, yep. And then you have you have some other things in the equation. We're not out here just this is not like an exclusive private land place. You know, there are a few uh mature bull tags, you know, branch bull tags. But there's a lot of spike hunters out hunting, so you know, it's public land, so we're gonna out We're to be out here competing with those guys. And you know, we always hope and that everyone's gonna
be respectful because we're going to be respectful. But sometimes you just ever know what could happen till it could you know, we could have the whole hillside to ourself, we could be sharing it with twenty other people, right, So I just kind of tempered my expectations, like I just want to have a really fun hunt. I've never hunted here for myself before. I got to hunt this area with Jason Phelps here in twenty twenty one and enjoyed it, and I thought it was a really cool experience.
And I just thought, you know, I just want to have a good time and see lots of elk and see lots of bowls, and maybe I'll get fortunate enough to get a nice one that I want to shoot within range.
Right, And I think I think people should temper their expectation. We all, I had wind Aha in twenty eighteen, and of course I had high expectations. But as you go into the hunt, you when you're thinking about it, you're only thinking about the end result. I'm going to kill a three fifty bowl or three sixty year or whatever your number is. But you don't realize. And we talked about it last when we saw that seven by eight bowl, and we're like, we pretty much had that thing already
on our backs at that point. We were like, this is going to happen on the wall, right, Yeah, But then you start to realize and then, like I think I said, anything can happen, we start to get these wild card things that come up, and like last night, we're watching that bull and all of a sudden, there's other people that hadn't seen the bull but just kind of showed up randomly looking like they're doing the same
that we were when we found the bull. And so now you've got other DIY hunters with branch boll tags that are watching the same bull. And like you said, there was sometimes people are respectful, sometimes they're not. Uh. We had spike hunters rolling on us this morning, like walk right up next to us while we're glassing for
the bull. That was a wild card. We had wind, We had snow, we had, fog, we had There's all these wild cards that come in that you don't really think about, and those are the ones that kind of beat you down mentally to where a guy will either settle for something way less than they wanted or or quit. There's the success rate is high in these units, but it's not one hundred percent, even though there's a lot
of ilk. And I think really my favorite clients are the ones that say, well, I've never killed a big bull, I've never killed a bull, or I've killed a bowl three hundred inch bul and so they just want that to be the best bowl of their life. And it's not that I don't think they can do better than that goal, but that's a realistic goal and you'll never feel shorted if you can achieve that goal. Or maybe they just want to kill a mature bull. That bull
you killed was a mature bull, beautiful bull. It wasn't a seven by eight, no, but it's a beautiful bull. There's nothing wrong with that bull, you know what I mean. So I think it is important to temper your expectations with reality. And if you talk to people that hunt the unit a lot frequently, guides or other people. You'll realize that there's not three eighty bulls around every tree. You're not going to to see three fifty bowls every day or even every week, right and so, and weather
is huge too. You know, the first week we generally have pretty good weather, and in the area that we're hunting, the first week there's no snow, and the elk are still here. But by next week, if we've got a foot of snow or six eight inches of snow, these elk are gone. And so sometimes you shoot the elk that's in front of you if you like the bowl, instead of waiting and trying to hold out and getting greedy.
And then you know, later in the week it's snows and there's nothing, and so you've kind of shot yourself in the foot over some pride, you know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah, And this is a short hunt. This is a five day hunt. You know, it's not like we have two weeks to enjoy these mountains and turn over every rock and just be choosy and super choosy. So I thought, you know, with everything considered, a lot of hunters around with weather coming.
In, it's snowing right now.
Yeah, you guys may hear the wind, and we got the generator going, and it's snowing outside now, like it could snow a couple of inches tonight. It could snow afoot, it could.
Yeah, you just don't know.
We don't know what that's going to be, but we do know it's going to affect the elk one way or another, and probably not in our favor. And a lot of times, well I was just glad, like where we packed packed this bull out if I can't imagine if that had been snow on the ground that we'd have had it had been dangerous, like it was switch dangerous.
And I carry I carry a couple pair of crampons that I can give guys that are like one inch crampons, regular mountaineering crampons, and those help immensely on that really slick, frozen ground. But luckily we didn't need it.
But yeah, thank goodness. But anyway, I was able to make a good shot. You know, we had some pretty gusty winds this morning, and then right it when the shot was when I was able to take that shot, the wind kind of switched to be kind of blowing right in her face, so you know, wasn't left or right and made a good shot and then the I hit him pretty good, but I ended up having to make a follow up shot, which made a okay shot when when I took the follow up shot it was
really windy then. So you guys will be able to see all this whole. I shouldn't even I shouldn't even spoil it because you'll be able to see the video where you have the video come out and we'll let you know when it's out. But you'll be able to And if you want to go, check out my Instagram, it's the Bugler and I'll collaborate with Philips game calls and you'll be able to see the bull on there the picture of it. But he was a beautiful six point. He was every like I said, everybody comes here with
stars in her eyes, including me. It's like he never know you might get a three eighty bowl.
But that's the attraction to the Big Three.
It is.
It is the wild like you never know, you never know what might walk out. You just don't know what's going to walk out. We didn't expect that seven by eight to be what he was when he walked out last night. Either. We had seen him in the timber the day before that, couldn't really see his whole frame and everything he had, but he was a really cool, unique bowl that anybody would have shot. Yeah in that unit.
Yeah, and the bowl I squeezed the trigger on. Yeah, I'm so happy with it. I'm very happy. He's a beautiful bull. If I was to draw a picture of a bowl in my mind before it came, I would probably draw a picture the shape of antlers like that. It's just he's pretty, he's well proportioned. He's symmetrical, yeah, which I was kind of laughing last night. I'm like, I I typically, if you look at my horn pile, I've got some asymmetrical stuff. It's like not like non typical.
It's just like one side's really good, one side's not so good, or one side's a little different. And I thought for sure it was like, oh yeah, I'll probably get that seven by eight, But no, I got a beautiful symmetrical six by six, which was surprising to me. So really yeah, so that was really fun. Well, listen, we're gonna shift gears here. We're gonna do the old
Pendleton Whiskey question and answer segment. And first question, Now, this might be all sensitive and I and I think a lot of people are thinking it, but not a lot of people are saying it. But why are the costs of guided and outfitted hunts so expensive?
You know, there's a wide there's a wide variety of costs for outfitted hunts. Bigger, more established outfitters charge a lot more. They've got a history of maybe killing big bulls. If your goal was to come in here and kill you know, one of the top five bulls in the unit that people know about, you're going to pay for that opportunity. Yeah, and so those are some things, but
there's it's just like any business, there's costs. Every guy that we have helping, whether he's glassing, guiding, cooking, whatever he's doing, that guy's getting paid every day. And I pay my guys for the entire week, whether we hunt one day or whether we hunt a week. And so
that's an expense. Our permitting cost, money for service wants, there, share insurance, you know, fuel for the rig, the side by side, someone's got to pay for the side by side, and you know, hey for the horses all year, even though we use them for a few months out of the year. So it it just is it seems like a lot, and it is a lot. But you know, if you if you break it down, it's it's not you can you can justify every expense. It's just unfortunate.
It feels even as an outfitter, which is part of why I started outfitting myself, because I was working for other outfitters that were charging whatever they were charging. I'm not going to say they were too much, but in my mind, I felt like people were being priced out of an outfitted hunt. And I kind of like the idea of just being a regular, like every man's outfitter, and so if I can keep my prices lower. It's not a lot of people say raise your price, you
need raise your price. But I just feel like I'm I feel like I'm not serving the clientele that I want to serve. I want to serve the guy that maybe I had to save five years to go on a hunt, you know, or but they're expenses. It's just all expensive. Oh yeah, equipment, you know, it's campus four thousand dollars and it's just everything, oh yeah, food, the tents, you know, how much? How many hundreds of dollars did we spend? Like this hunt was planned for a week.
We have food for a week for six people, and we hunted one day. Yeah, so it's just expenses, you know.
Yeah, and that's not money, get you just you don't get that very store.
Yeah, you don't get it back.
No, no, no, that's a that's a great, great answer, which I think. You know, sometimes it's easy to like sit here and pick pick things apart, like or people like, oh it must be nice, but like people prioritize in their life what's important to them. Right, So one guy might say, oh, it must be nice, but he drives an eighty thousand dollars truck, right, And I drive a truck that's been paid off since twenty twelve, right, and it's not real pretty. But anyway, you know that everybody
has different priorities. You know. People say, like you say, some people up for a long time. Some people maybe they just have that extra income and like they're a bonus or something that they can throw on a hunt or something, which is cool too.
But and it's like anything I would love to have a house with five hundred acres, it's I can't afford it, so it's just out of my reach. And there's going to be things like that in life that are just out of your reach. There's no reason to be jealous or petty about it. Just is what it is. But you shouldn't also fault the guy that owns that or that can afford to go on a guide it hunts if that's what he wants to do, right, there's I
think there's no shame in it. I also think for some guys that I've hunted, that you'll learn you'll learn more on a guided hunt than you want to admit you're going to learn. But most of the guys that I hunt, especially in archery season, at the end of that hunt, they almost all say, I can't believe how much I learned. And so how much is an education? Not that guides are better than you, and you may know more than a guide does, but if you're not, if you're a new hunter, a fairly new hunter, how
much is that education worth? You can cram a lot of learning into five or seven days, all them out. So I think there's a lot of benefits to outfitted and guided hunts.
Right Well, yeah, if if, if you maybe you're a new hunter, or maybe someone who struggled for a long time to be successful hunting, you can struggle for years, like learning making all the mistakes. I know, I've made all the mistakes, and it takes a long time to figure that stuff out. And it's like kind of like that shortening the learning curve. Really, it's like you go somebody with that does things right, and you pick that stuff up, You're like, oh, wow, I was doing this
wrong the whole time. I never had an idea that this is a better, a different way to do it, you know. So I've heard that a lot from guys too, they've gone on outfitted hunts.
Yeah, I think I think it's the older you get. Also, you realize that we all have kind of a finite number of hunts in US. You've got, you know, if you're if you're really really lucky, you've got forty years thirty forty years of good hunts, you know, where you're not just sitting on a stump watching for the young guys, you know. And so if you can shorten that learning curve five years, ten years, that's five or ten more potentially more successful years of hunting. And so it is
a good idea. I think it's a good idea if you have the money.
Yeah, absolutely, Okay, here's another question for you, what should a hunter expect on a guided her outfitted hunt? Should they how should they prepare for the hunt?
I think what they should expect is these. These would be a super basic list. Like if I was going on a guide hunt. I never been, but if I was, I would expect a quality camp with quality gear, quality whatever is used in the camp. I wanted to be quality. You know you, it should be quality gear. I would expect my guide to be nulled, bligible, friendly, experienced. He should know the country. He should be in as good or better shape than I am, and he should be willing.
I think a guy should be willing to impart knowledge to the guy that he's hunting with, Like you can't just hunt tight lip because you're afraid you're going to teach him and not get him to come back. You should be teaching those guys, Like we should all do that in our life, but especially in that position. That's what I would expect. I wouldn't expect success if that's what you're expecting that I'm going on a guide to hunt, so it's one hundred percent I'm going to kill something.
I think you're misled and if that's your goal, there's plenty of there's high fence and private land opportunities where the success rate is really high. But on public land, even in the Big three, it's not as easy as what people think. And so I wouldn't expect success. I would expect, I would hope for opportunity. I wouldn't I wouldn't fault the guide if I didn't have opportunity, But I should see animals also, That's what I would expect. How they can prepare, it's pretty tough to say how
they can prepare. Like physically, it's really hard. If you live it at sea level or five hundred feet, how do you prepare to hunt at six thousand? And if you have no way to climb sixty degree inclines? How can you prepare for that? Physically? That's been pretty pretty tough. But there's other things that you can do. And the places where I see guys fail is equipment, personal equipment.
There's a lot of examples. I could site boots, clothing, binoculars, those types of things, your own personal hunting gear, backpacks. I know they're paying for a guided hunt, but that's not the time to cheap out on personal gear that's going to really affect the quality of your hunt and the comfort of you during your hunt. And also some of the like these guys that draw these tags, they've
got twenty five years. You know, when you're within four three four five years of drawing that tag, that's it's a great time to be able to start adding some gear to your gearbox. Maybe binoculars one year and maybe you know, boots, clothing, whatever it is that you need. I think gear is one place where guys end up
shorting themselves, and ultimately they're the ones that pay. I think being proficient with your weapon, whether it's archery or whether it's a rifle, is going to be critical, you'll find. I've had a lot of guys who, when the time came to actually execute the shot, they didn't do their part, and they were like almost heartbroke. And I thought they
were heartbroke because they missed the animal. But they would say, Derek, you work so hard every single day to get me within range and to get me a shot, and I keep screwing it up, and I'm like, don't even think twice about it. But you know, they feel that burden because they realize that you're working really hard for him and I think that would be a place where people should spend some time shooting.
Yeah. Yeah, And I always say, you know, I have to always be shooting your high powered rifle right reps behind a trigger, a twenty two, like I spent my life. People probably don't remember know this about me, but I spent my younger days as a kid. As soon as I could hold a gun, I was shooting BB guns and twenty two's, And I've probably shot about a million bbes through an old piece of crap bby gun that didn't even have a stock on it. I would like improvise and hold that thing up as close as they
could and shoot BB's with that thing. And then I finally got a twenty two. And I don't know how many bazillion dollars I spent in twenty two shelves. But man, I've shot my whole life, and then I shoot high powered rifles from time to time. But I still shoot twenty twos a lot. It's just being just being on the gun. Yeah, I understand.
I think the part that where people fail is not we think when we talk about shooting, it's just hitting the target. Yeah, that's really not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is probably target acquisition, where we see a bull or deer, whatever it is we're hunting, and I'm saying, he's right there, but you don't see him, and you're trying to get him in your scope, but you can't
even see it because target acquisition. Maybe you've got your scope turned the magnification all the way up or or whatever it is, and you need to back out and then find him and then turn up to whatever you want to shoot at. But target acquisition is a big deal. That's probably you think about it. You might get hopefully we've spotted a bull, and you have all the time in the world to set up dial if you're going to use turrets or whatever. But sometimes it's not that way.
Sometimes you have maybe a five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds to set up and you've got to be able to find that animal in that scope and get a shot. It's not always about hitting it. That's not what I'm talking about specifically. But target acquisition is a big deal. And you need to be honest too with your guide.
When he asked, I don't always see guys shoot, and so I'll ask him, you know, what are you what's your comfortable rain, and a lot of guys are west side guys, and they'll say, well, I never shoot more than two hundred yards, so I don't really know. And they'll say, well, I shoot a you know, a two to three inch group at one hundred, and that's good enough for the coast range at one hundred yards, so it's no big deal. But out here, you know, two inches at one hundred is six inches at three hundred,
and those shots are super common. You know, you shot five hundred or roughly five hundred today, I guess. And your rifle that you were using was dialed, it was set up for it, everything was great. But not everyone has that rifle, and so people just need to be honest about their shooting experience, their you know, their rifle, their capabilities. I need to know if I know that you can shoot a one inch group at one hundred, that gives me an idea of our maximum effective range, right,
So it's important to be honest with the with your guide. Yeah, and I have I have rifles that clients can use as well that are dialed and turreted and all that stuff. It doesn't make sense for a guy to go buy, you know, a six thousand dollars rifle to go on this l hunt. That doesn't really make sense. So I have those available that people use. I just let them use them. I don't charge them anything for it, but.
Sure, sure, yeah, And sometimes, like you know, it lets you know where you need to set them up too. It's like, well, I can't set them up we're going to shoot five hundred yards. We need to set up further down the ridge, or we need to be on a different ridge, you know, we need to set up in the right places to shoot from.
So and I don't want to give the impression that it's always a long range of fair because it's not. They're sure. The average range, if I think back on the bulls that I've killed in the Big Three with clients, is probably one hundred and seventy five to two hundred and twenty five yards. I'm an archery hunter myself, and so my nature is to get as close as I can. There's no reason to shoot at three hundred if we
can get to one hundred and fifty easily. Yeah, And the potential to miss at one hundred or one hundred and fifty is a lot smaller than it three four five and greater.
Yeah, I was watching a video of Ryan Lampers. He's an excellent hunter. If you talk to him, he doesn't you know, if you quiz him out, he won't really tell you a lot of a lot of times and like when was the last time you missed? And he doesn't miss very often, hardly at all. But I watched him on a on a video where he was hunt mulder hunting and he could have taken a shot and it was probably I think it was like four hundred
yards or so. I might have this wrong, but he's like, I can make that shot, but man, I just really want to make sure I get this tier. So they moved up and he snuck up and got he cut the distance almost in half. Maybe he's not to two hundred yards, and now it's a chip shot, right, And it's just like that's sometimes by by just getting up a little bit closer, it becomes a chip shot and then you don't miss, right.
So and I think too, it depends on your experience that for a guy who shoots a lot of shoots his rifle a lot is intimately familiar with that rifle. I would say three and four hundred yards off of a prone rest you know, calm wind conditions, it's almost a chip shot. With the right rifle and with the optics and the ballistic apps and range finding binoculars and all that stuff that we have now, it's almost a chip shot. But that's to the that's to a guy
who's doing that. To a guy who hunts the west side in the you know, in that thick brush and never shoots more than one hundred yards, it's not really fair to put him behind a gun that can shoot that and then say shoot five hundred yards. You know, that's not it's not even truly, that's not even ethical. Yeah, honestly. So, and that guy shooting your gun in camp for three shots to make sure he can hit you know, a one inch group or whatever whatever you think is acceptable,
that's not preparing him to shoot five hundred Right. So I have guys who you know, you guys can shoot five hundred yards, and I'm confident that you can do it. I would let you shoot that. I would, And I I'm not the guy who's also going to say, you know, you can't take that shot. I'm not going to let you do that. I feel like there's a lot of that heavy handedness and outfitting. You can't shoot this bullet,
you can't shoot this broadhead, you can't. I'm not your babysitter, Like my job is to get you within an ethical range and then be a support to you. And you know, we've all hunted, and we all know that stuff. Stuff just happens. Yea, we miss, we make poor hits. We all kinds of stuff happens, and your guide should be your support system to help minimize the effects of that. But if I felt like a guy could not shoot five hundred yards, either because of equipment or because I
saw him shoot, I would just get him closer. Yeah, I would always push that on him. Yeah, absolutely, Usually there's no reason we can't get a little bit closer. You know, we could have cut where you shot your bull. We could have caught a cut one hundred yards just by going down the hill further, and it would have caused some other issues. We would have been shooting maybe at a different incline, or you know, your support wouldn't
have been prone on the ground. You might have been shooting off of you know, my tripod with a gun saddle on it or something which wouldn't be ideal. But there's options we can get closer. Sure, and if nothing else, there's another day. We'd rather wait and hunt an elk the next day than to wound it and lose it. Nobody wants that over a marginal shot, you know, just for the sake of saying I did it.
Sure, What's been your very favorite hunt? And in your years of guiding and outfitting hunters you have, do you have one that stands out that was like this was like probably one of my favoritest hunts ever. I have one.
It wasn't even a paid hunt. I was guiding. I was guiding an el kunter. I told you guys this story this weekend. I was guiding an elk hunter in Mount Emily and we had gone down over a hill after a bull to get a better look at it before we committed to shooting it. And so we sat on that bowl all day. It finally came out at almost dark and just a smaller bull than what the client wanted to shoot. So we were just sitting there kind of killing time, so we didn't blow those elk out.
When we left and I looked down and I see a guy and his wife and like a teenage daughter looked like young teenage daughter coming around the hill below us. And I'm not sure how I knew that they were spike hunters. I'd hate the stereotype, but I just had an idea that they were spike hunters, and so I told that hunter. I said, I'm going to go down
and I'm going to bring the we were. Also when we were sitting there, there was two spikes above us, like one hundred and seventy five yards above us, and I said, I'm going to go down and get that guy and see if he wants to kill one of these spikes. I'll help him. And so client wasn't super happy about it, but we didn't have anything to lose. We weren't going to shoot that bull. We were done hunting for the day. So I ran down to the guy, told him who I was, asked if he had spike tags.
He did or his wife and daughter did. I said, if you want to kill two spikes right now, I'll bring you up here and we'll shoot these two. And so I brought him up to where we were, had both his daughter and his wife prone, and they shot both those spikes. Boom boom. Both of them fell down, and it was the cool part was it was his daughter's first big game animal, and it was his wife's I think, first time hunting. She was a five year breast cancer survivor. It was like her first time out.
And another cool part was it was their last last day of their hunt, and he said, he told his wife, We're going to go out on the face of this mountain. And she said, why are we going to do that? And he said, oh, I think we might see something out there. And she said, we're not going to see anything, and he said, oh, God will provide away. And they went out there and it just it turned out amazing that we were able to help them kill that and it wasn't even a paid thing I had. You know,
we had nothing really to gain from it. That was what my client said. He was a little bit upset about it, you know, And I said, we have nothing to lose and everything to We're going to help this guy and his family and we're going to feel good about it. And it's what we should be doing anyway as sportsman, just helping each other out. We don't have to gain on every single thing. Sometimes you do things just for the good of doing them.
Yeah, yeah, doing the right thing feels.
Good, right, right, And even that guy reached out to me months and months later and was so appreciative that it just it fills your heart to do stuff like that for people.
Yeah. Absolutely, well, Matt, I have had the best time hunting here. I mean, it's been a short it's been a short trip. I mean I kill on day one. How great's that? You know? I always say, you know, maybe it's not a real l hunt until you've had to have the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and then get back to the highest of highs.
But we had some highs and lows today with wind and lots of competition, a lot of other folks out there in the woods, and then we had a really big high when I got that bowl.
Yeah, yeah, just going from we were almost sure we were going to get a shot at that bull, and then to have, you know, a bunch of competition from DIY hunters coming into the same area and no one really being willing to yield to the other. So we're all kind of hoping to spot this bull from different vantage points. But that was a low, Like I know, all night long, it was a low for all of us.
We were all worried how it was going to turn out, but it just turned out it wasn't that bull, but we knew there were other good bulls in that same drainage, and so we just put ourselves in the best spot to hopefully have a shot when no one else would and it just worked out.
Yeah.
But yeah, it was really good to have you guys out. It was great when Jason first reached out to me about this tag, when I first drew it, and Jason was trying to figure out a way to do it himself and that didn't pan out. And then he said, well, what what if Dirk? What if Dirk could do it? And I said, man, Dirk would be awesome. Everybody loves Dirk and Dirk is a great guy. And I feel like the people that are mad about outfit or tags go into I think what they're mad about is that
they just go to someone that has a bunch of money. Yeah, and we don't like the sound of that. We don't like the way it feels. It feels elitist, and that these guys are just buying a deal. So to have a regular guy like Dirk get that tag, I don't I don't understand how anyone could really be mad about that.
I know I'm not. Yeah right, I'm happy about it. Yeah, yeah, I'm appreciative for the opportunity. And man, i'd like to say I can't wait to come back, But I don't know that will ever happen again. But you know, who knows. You know, maybe maybe maybe I'll get lucky again someday, maybe I'll draw a tag. But but yeah, it's been fun. It's beautiful. It's beautiful country up here. They call it the Blue Mountains, but man, they're sure are a lot of tamaracks that are bright gold, you know, foll so
beautiful and a lot of game. We saw a lot of bulls. We saw like seven bowls last night, and yeah, it was it's been fun. It's been fun. I I'm that's that's the bad part about pulling trigger. The good part and the bad part. The good part is like, yes, I got one. The bad part is it's over. It's over now, I don't I mean, we could have we could have spent more time hunting, and it's it's not
easy haunting them. Like we sat there and about froze to death today the wind and it was cold and the wind just cut and then tonight with the weather coming in, I could I can tell the rest of the week would not have been easy.
This was the best day to kill if you're going to Yeah.
But but we would have we would have dug in and enjoyed every bit of it and suffered through all the hardships. And but that's hounting, right, that's the that's the fun part about hunting. Yeah.
Yeah, And if it if you can look at a bull and you even if it's just in that moment, you think, man, that's this is a great situation. Sometimes it's the guy's hunting with his son, his father, whatever it is, and it's not. Sometimes the hunt isn't about the size of the antlers. It's just about the It might be the stock, it might be the country, it might be the company. Yeah, it's just a lot of things.
So I wish people wouldn't get hung up on the size of the antler so much because I think it cheats us out of the experience really, And so yeah, hopefully hopefully you're happy with that bowl. I'm happy for you. Yeah, And it's beautiful, bul It was a great hunt, good time in camp, you know, it's great. I'd have you guys come back next year in a second. Yeah, if I could get you to cut away and come help me on that sheep hunt this week, that'd be great.
Your wife already thinks you're gone for a week, it would be great.
You could probably just like not send her any pictures and be like, yeah, yeah, the hunt went the distance. Hant honey, not knowing we want sheep hunting. That'd be fun.
Go help on that, right, Well, anytime you got time, yep, I'll put you in camp cooking and washing dishes.
Yeah, that'd be good too. That'd be good too. We've had good food here so far, so it's been great. So tell everyone how they can find you on social on website and stuff.
So my website is Eastern organ Outfitters dot com. I have Instagram, Facebook, it's also Eastern organ Outfitters. Super easy to find. You could google it. It's easy to find. And I'm fairly active on social media. I kind of when I get into a hunt, I don't post a whole lot. I'm more collecting content that I can share later when I have time to breathe. But you know, this is a busy time of year. But yeah, you can get a hold of me on Facebook, Instagram or my website.
That's awesome. Well, thanks a lot, Derek, appreciate you having us, having us as a guest in your camp. Thanks for coming on the podcast, and I look forward to seeing what the rest of your hunters do this fall. Yep.
Thanks, I appreciate you guys.
Yep, keep back
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