And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. I'm Dirk Durham and tonight my guest is my.
Good buddy, Josh Boyd.
Josh is a Montana resident, a great hunter, and all around good guy. Welcome back, Josh.
Thanks for having me back, Derek. It's always fun to chat.
Yeah.
Yeah. Our listeners might remember you from our earlier episodes we did last spring. One was on Elk Hunting and another one was on Spring Bear Hunting, and if you guys haven't listen to those, it's a it's a must must listen. There's a lot of good a lot of good nuggets and good conversation there.
Josh.
I saw all of your success on Instagram and we just haven't had a chance to catch up about how your fall went down. So I thought, you know, what better time to get on the podcast and just kind of talk about it.
Yeah, yeah, you bet. It was a great fall. It just seemed to fly by. I don't I really honestly don't know where the time went. I just it seems like it was just a few weeks ago. I was just putting gear together to head to Wyoming for early September Elk and it just I cannot believe it's mid December. It's crazy how fast time goes.
That's crazy, that's crazy.
Did you hunt in August and all or just September, October, November.
September, October, November. I mean, we do have long seasons in Montana, and the antelope season archery season starts October excuse me, August fifteenth here, and I just don't have how much time to get to the east side to hunt that time of year. I'm still busy with work field seasons going on, and I just don't make it out in August, and I hunt so much the rest of the year that it's just really hard to get
away that much. And I try to burn my family preference points later on September and October if I can.
Yeah, that's good thinking. It's a little nicer to be a little nicer weather, I guess in September October than it is in August. I feel like those eastern Montana August tenths would be pretty warm.
Oh, it would be brutal out there, I think. And yeah, the only thing I have to hunt out east would be antelope. And this past year I had a rifle tag, so I kind of like to wait till October and go. Okay, it's a really fun haunt because it's kind of in between our archery season and our general rifle season in the state. Okay, so it's a great little like long weekend trip to head head out there and enjoy the prairie. So I kind of try to see if I have
a rifle tag. I try to save my antelope tag for that opening week of rifle analo rifle.
Okay.
Yeah, I've been applying for I think this is year three, maybe maybe four for ant help. I'd have to look at my points, but I still haven't drawn. I thought for sharsing draw this year and I still haven't, so maybe next year. Really looking forward to it. I don't know if I'm super like interested in shooting like a giant trophy one. Maybe, I mean, if I see what, I'd love to shoot one. But I just want to go and have the experience and just go Analoe hunting.
Everybody says it's so fun and you can do it all day, and it's not just a dog down and dusk type of a hunt, you know, like some hunts can be sometimes.
Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, it is a fun hunt. I it, and they're easy to kill, so I make it into a trophy hunt, just to to drag it out a little bit. Oka But it seemed, well, it seems like every year I end up shooting a pretty good buck that first day. Yeah, but I go over a few days early and I scout and hike and glass and try to find a couple of trophy bucks, and I end up just getting on them first thing in the morning. But you know, sometimes it's you know, there's a little
bit of effort you have to have to apply. You know, you have to sneak out, and I'm hunting them out, you know, a couple of miles away from a road too, so that it's a naxtra effort for sure. So I take my backpack with me so I can shove that the whole antelope in my pack and pack it across the prairie when I am successful. But yeah, you can make it into a much of a hunt as you want it to to be, so it's it's super fun.
Yeah, that's kind of what I found with Eastern Montana muleder hunting. I mean, if you want to drive around your pickup and shoot them from the pickup. You can if you want to spot them from the truck and then make moves. If you just want to go like my buddy and Ryan Lampers, I think they'll go and and backpack in and stay out there in that cold, nasty weather and you know, suffer and uh, you know, you can make it whatever you want.
I think you know.
Which is cool, which is that's awesome. Yeah, that's the beauty of it.
It's there's something there for everybody, you know.
But yeah, that was a.
Man I I seen that. I will say, you know, I I'm like, I don't know if I don't really care if I shoot a big one or not, but man, I saw that one you shot and I was.
Like, oh wow, I want one like that. That was a nice buck.
Yeah. So the unit that I apply for, it's I haven't drawn one. It seems to be the pattern that I've fallen into is every other year I'll get it for that UNI and there seems to be some decent bucks in there. I don't know what it takes to get to be a big buck. I don't know if it's genetics, nutrition, I don't I've kind of heard it's not necessarily old age but anyway, we're I've been hunting. I've been seeing a lot of nice bucks, and so every tag that I've pulled from this unit produced really
solid antelope, and they're really neat. I just like the looks of those big bucks. They'll have that big, dark nose and it kind of has a Roman bend to it, so it kind of droops, and they get a little longer when they get bigger like that, okay, and blacker, and the face markings are more striking, and of course the horns stick up and are very impressive. So I don't know, It's just kind of fun shooting big animals if you can do it. Not that I'm strictly a
trophy hunter. If you look at a bunch of the elk I've shot, you can I can tell you. I'm definitely not a trophy hunter when it comes.
To elk, But I'm the same way I got it but here.
Yeah, but I like shooting big animals, you know, if given the opportunity.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And it looks like you found a big old deadhead too.
Oh yeah, yeah, it looked like a kaya kill. Potentially, I don't know what killed it, but it was a you know, the spinal cord was or column was there attached to the head and still had its horns, but it had been pulled down into a gully. So I took my daughter over there for her first real hunt. She wasn't hunting, she just wanted to go along and one of the she's eleven and she was had never really spent much time out in a prairie, so she's
really into exploring the country. So one day before the season started, we just decid to walk down some of these big washes, these big blown out gullies. She was looking for who knows what crystals ens, dinosaur bones. She is looking for whatever catches her eye. And we walked up on that dead antelope and it was kind of stinky. She it caught her eye, but she wasn't going to hang out much longer, especially when I touched it. She didn't want nothing to do with that stinky things.
Oh yeah, are you able to retrieve dead heads in Montana?
Yes, yeah you can. Yeah, but if oh.
Yeah, it's like yeah, it's it's it'll be good staying right there.
Yeah, it was pretty nasty smelling.
I know a lot of a lot of Western states don't allow you to pick up dead heads like Oregon and Washington, Wyoming. One year, we were all kuinting of Wyoming and we could glass across this huge basin and we could see a big bowl elk that was dead and there was a bear on it. It's like, wow,
that looks like a pretty nice bear. And we sit there and as we bugled and listened for other bulls and glassed for other bulls, we thought, you know, we kind of got caught up watching this bear and it was kind of a cool, but far enough away for the can of cameras we had we couldn't really video anything good.
But we were.
Watching and yeah, that's a pretty nice bear. And then all of a sudden, he just jumps up and runs off, like huh wow. Something spooked it out. And then a big bear came out. This other bear was giant. It dwarfed that other bear and it went over there and it like ate on the elk a little bit, and then it would just lay right on top of the elk, and he was so big he would just cover that whole elk. Like if you can imagine a bear that big,
he covered you. He covered up most of that elk when he'd lay on it, and he would just lay there and take a nap, and then every now and then that other little bear would kind of come around and like peek around, and he'd get up and kind of flex a little bit, and that other bear dike off. But man, it was cool. The funny thing is the night before we were over there and we're bugling a
bull and we're like, man, something dead up here. We could smell it, you know, And this bull was bugling right up there, right by that dead elk.
And just bugling.
We were right on him right at the last light, and we got up there and it's like, man, it stinks. And all of a sudden you could hear a bear come down the hill and chased off my buddy and my two buddies are up there putting the sneak on this elk, and uh so coincidentally, the next day we're glassing over there, like I wonder what was dead over there, and we could see that elk, and then we saw
the bear. The first one was like, oh yeah, that's a pretty big bear, and then the other one's like, holy cow, and he looked he was colored like a grizzly. We're like, oh my god, it's a grizzly bear. Holy this in this area of Wyoming, what at the time wasn't really known for grizzlies, Okay.
And we were like, oh my god.
You know grizzly. And we watched that thing for a long time and finally determined it wasn't a grizzly. It's just a black bear colored like a grizzly. He didn't have a dished face, and it took a lot of looking though to to like, you know, if he'd stand right, it looked like he had a hump on his back. But after spending a couple hours you know, watching him, I was like, okay, that's a that's just a giant black bear.
Those big male black bears. Yeah, if they're the right color. Hey, sometimes they are really hard to tell between that and a darker face grizzly because they will have a hump on their shoulders, they'll have a shoulder.
Up mm hmm.
It's not as distinct as a grizzly, And a lot of times the face will give them away and the ear size and all that. But the last fall bear I shot up here, it was a big, dark, chocolate male black bear, and I looked at it for a long time before I shot it, just to make sure because it had a serious hump on his shoulder. And uh, obviously it turned out to be a black bear, And I made dang sure before I pulled the trigger. Yeah
that there was no doubt in my mind. But it took me a little bit to like really look at him. I watched him for solid maybe fifteen minutes before I determined for sure that he was illegal bear. But yeah, that's interesting. He was on at elk kill.
Huh.
Yeah, man, he was just on it. And it was a nice bowl. It was like a three hundred inch bowl. Anyway, back to the story, like you can't take dead heads then, where he's like, man, it'd be cool to go back to town and get a bear tag and go shoot that thing and then get that elk crack, But you can't keep the alk cracks, you know, dead heads in Wyoming.
So it was like a pah. I did not know that bowl.
Yeah, so we just had to watch and enjoy it. But you know, for guys like us, we we hadn't seen grizzly bears really up at that point, you know, in our lives to be like, oh, yeah, you know, we're easily to spot a grizzly, you know, but I think a lot of folks like us. Maybe first the first thing you do is say grizzly Barry, because it's just giant and the right colors and stuff.
But once we kind of shoot on it for a.
While, then it's like, that's not a grizzly.
So yeah, huh.
But so you talked about Wyoming, Tell me, did how did the elk bugle this faull Did you have good bugling? Did you have crappy bugling?
That's a good question. That first time hunting this area, so don't really have a lot of, you know, background information on it. The bugling was good first thing in the morning for maybe two hours they were and all night we were just dealing with the full moon.
Okay.
We laid there in our tents listening the bulls bugle all night, all night most nights. Yeah, And then they were still fired up for a few few hours in the morning, and then by like say nine thirty, ten o'clock, maybe not even ten, they were done. As it got warmer, we kind of had that little heat wave kind of build it that window in the morning got shorter and shorter. But we had great, great action for a couple hours in the mornings, and we had some evenings that were sporadic.
But we had a hard time coch and bulls to bugle in the day. Midday we'd get it. Occasionally'd get one of the bugle out of its bed, but it would not respond beyond just a little tiny light bugle maybe once twice, but just could not get them going midday, okay, which is kind of what we were after, you know, those midday boys or just ideal.
Yeah, try to get one of those big herd bulls di leave his cows. Yeah, this year we had a lot of that. Like midday we just didn't hear any bugles at all. They kind of experienced some of the same stuff and we had the first day it was pretty warm, but then a huge storm came in. This is Idaho, a huge storm came in and man it got cold and rainy and snowy, and the.
Bulls picked up.
They started bugling pretty good, but they weren't bugling on their own. They weren't, you know, unless we prompted, you know, unless we were started doing some location bugles.
They didn't.
They weren't out there talking on their own, and it took a little bit of you know, creative talking on our part.
To get them to bugle.
But once they'd kind of bugle, they bugled pretty good during that cold weather. But but then after the storm had kind of passed, and think I thought, oh, yeah, once this storm passes, they're really going to kick things in high gear.
Oh it just went to a ghost town.
Man. It was.
It was tough.
In fact, you know, bulls would just you get if you got very close to him and did any call, and they would just run. They they did not want any competition. Maybe they thought we were hunters, but we just didn't. In that particular spot at that time, we hadn't really seen a bunch of people. So I don't know that it was pressure. I just and we've kind of been told that these elk in this air area in general don't like calling, and they made a believer out of us.
Yeah, I'm trying to Yeah, I guess the first bull that my partner killed with this we were in there when it was still archery. Our first trip back into the back country was still archery, and we had a we had a little bit of a rough go getting bulls of bugle like the first day, but we found some elk got him fired up that evening. The next day, it was dead silent in there, but we still dropped down into this canyon and made this big loop into this canyon and around the top and the backside of
this knob, and we got a bowl of bugle. He answered consistently. It was noonish eleven, OK. But he hammered a couple different times right away, and it was pretty warm. But as soon as he hammered on the bugle, I thought they had this bull's going to come in for sure. And yeah, so we did call that bulling and Trevor
shot him nice. So yeah, that was good. Yeah, we were both at full draw on him and he came in and I was, I mean, I was waiting for him to like just move a front shoulder forward, And just as he was moving that front shoulder forward, I had my pin barry. He was under twenty yards probably like sixteen eighteen yards from me. Wow, so top ten
had that top pen buried in his shoulder. I just as I released another arrow, like smacked him from the from the other side any world, and my arrow went right in front of his front shoulder as he spun away Reilly, Which that's incredible. I know, I've never had that happen. I thought for sure. I was like, oh, this bull is so dead. And it's like what he was a half a step. He was moving his leg forward. You know that that shoulder moves. Yeah, they're stepping forward.
I was just waiting for that to come to completion, and I was just gonna just peg him, and another arrow hits just as I was squeezing. It was funny. Yeah, But anyway, we got the bowl. But that was a midday bowl. Yeah, pretty warm out and uh, that was really our best midday action that we had was that bowl. And he came in hot, came in all fired up.
Oh man, I god, I love that ID two s.
Yeah, that was awesome.
And that happened to be like River's second archery bowl. I think it was his first public land bull. So yeah, he was super promatant. We were all pretty excited about it.
Yeah. Yeah, huh you said they they were They were talking really good the night before and then they kind of shut down.
What do that? What's your opinion on that?
Do you have any kind of a hypothesis or a theory of why up do that, because it's not uncommon for them, like one day they're just boiling hot.
The next day it's like ghost town. Why is that?
Well, so we camped. I don't know what it is. This is maybe if this is one theory, So we in that situation. We camped not far from where we heard these bulls bugle in that night, and they definitely didn't wind us, they didn't see us. We were very stealthy. We were on this little tiny finger ridge back away, but we could hear in there, and they bugled all
night long. They went nuts down there, and one bowl you could hear him round up his cows and he pushed him up past our camp and we could hear him going through this meadow behind us, just away from us.
All night.
The cows just fitted in the meadow, and I think they just exited out the back end of the meadow and just kept going away from where the rest of the oak word. I just think they were so busy all night they just wore themselves out, and the next morning they're just like, we're done. Yeah, we partied all night. We're just we're good. So I don't know, I think there's various reasons for it, but I think that in that situation, that was what was kind of going on.
Yeah, I.
Have a lot of belief in that same idea as well. Part of me says too, sometimes they get to moving around too and like they'll like maybe one herd bowl or grab the cows and make a mad dash and out of one drainage to another and the party moves right. I kind of think there's some of that also think I think a lot of it.
I think a lot of it is.
Man, they party pretty hard, and they they run that whole evening and all night, and the next day they're just licking their wounds. Maybe that cow is not heed anymore. They got the job done and it's just we're gonna take a break today, guys, it's gonna.
Be a lazy in milkwoods.
Yeah, I don't know.
I have yet to have anybody, Yeah, I know, I kind of feel that way. Yeah, I have yet have anybody you know, explain it any different, like you know, but I'm always I'm all ears. I'm always looking for for you know, the reasons why on these help they seem to you know, by the time you think you know something you don't really know anything. Yeah.
Yeah, how long have we been doing this and we're still learning? It's pretty Oh that's I mean, that's part of the beauty of it.
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
If it was just like fishing, shooting fish in a barrel would be like, man, that's kind of boring now and probably something different.
Yeah, but it's always a challenge.
Now, you killed a bowl, and there was quite a story backstory for perhaps the area.
Uh and maybe maybe you.
Killed this bowl in an area your grandfather hundred years and years ago.
Yeah, So it was an area that my dad grew up in and I'd been hearing stories of and I actually went to their hunting camp when I was a little kid.
Okay, So.
My dad, his father, and my dad's grandfather hunted elk in this mountain range forever and my great so that would be my great grandfather and my great grandfather's father hunter. I mean, then they have native they're enrolled Indians out of Wyoming. So they go way back, you know, six thousand generations or so, so they've been they've been trapesing. Yeah, they've been trapsing those mountain ranges for years and years
and years and I was as a little kid. Some of my first memories of hunting were up there in my great grandfather's hunting camp. Like my parents would take me out of me and my brother out of school and we would drive all the way to Wyoming and then we'd go up to this camp and there would be some a couple old trailers that he pulled in to his cow camp slash hunting camp, and then my great grandfather and my dad would get on their horses and go into the back country and shoot elk for
themselves and the whole family for the most part. But it was like I remember seeing story or hearing stories, seeing pictures, being immersed in the hunting camp, you know, in early October, and just the sights and smells, and I just had never really got to experience that mountain
range as an adult. Yeah, so this was an opportunity for me to go hunt that same mountain range and kind of get a feel for how those elk act, how they use the landscape, how I can navigate and get around in that landscape, and just to see if I can put the puzzles together with the help of some friends. Of course, sure, of course, And I wasn't over hunting, you know, in their area where my great
grandfather hunted. But it was just fun. And there's a picture on the wall in the hallway of my parents' house, and I remember seeing it ever since I was a little kid of my great grandfather with a big bully shot and my dad was with them the day the he shot it. They got into a herd elk and this bowl had some cows pushed up into these small
pines and he ended up shooting it pretty close. They shot a couple of elk that day, and I think they were packing it out and my grandfather's horse like fell over on top of a log with my grandfather on it and crushed him kind of injured him and he had to go out early out of the hunting camp.
But anyway, you hear all these stories and see these pictures, and this picture of that big bull with my great grandfather was on the wall my whole life basically, and I don't know, just always intrigued me, always drew me to that area of the state and just made me like get excited to go down there and just to see what it was like and hunted as an adult
and experience it. So yeah, that was this trip to Fall was getting back to that country and just seeing what it looked like and seeing if I could kind of piece together things from a just hunting on your own perspective.
Did you did that just hit different? Did you like have did you have the fields? Did you feel the fields? Did you like have some like man the nostalgia, like I kind of remember some of this or was it completely different and foreign from what you remembered as a kid?
Well, yeah, it was a little different. You know, where they're hunting camp was on the one side of the mountain range. It was a slightly different terrain. It was still rockies. It was just real rugged, but there seemed to be bigger, like willow complexy meadows. Yeah, just slightly different terrain, but it was still pretty similar. Some of the smells, Like there's a certain kind of willow that
grows down there. It's different than the willows I'm used to having appear in western Montana, And they just have a slightly different smell in those meadows. And I don't know if it's with some of the sedges that grow there as well. And there's beaver dam complexes and the whole you know, mess of the ecology those wetland meadows that makes them smell that way. But they definitely there's a distinct smell to those. And you know how smells
are linked to memory. So when I first popped out into one of those meadows, like it just hit me as like, oh yeah, this smells exactly like it did at my great grandfather's hunting camp. So it kind of gives you a little bit of the kind of the those feelies as you were saying.
Oh yeah, yeah, my grandfather hunted in area here in Idaho at the time was full elk, and my dad and my uncles would hunt there too. And you know, fast forward several years too, when I was a young adult, I started hunting there and and there's some there's some meadow grass, kind of those those moose bog type meadows, and that kind of tall yellow grass that grows in there's kind of that swampy stuff and I can, I
can just smell it right now. Just the thought of like I can, I just triggers that that thought of memory of of going there as a young kid, and that particular smell for that area. I haven't smelled that anywhere else I've ever been.
You know whether it's.
Wyoming or even way way way North Idaho or wherever in Idaho or Montana. I haven't smelled those same smells per se. There's just exactly what you say. You know, the willows had a different smell than what you're used to. And yeah, those like just just what you said. It triggers little memories and things. And you know, in this one drainage, my grandfather used to hunt and in two thousand I called in the biggest bull I've ever seen in my life anywhere on planet Earth, you know, hunting.
Of course, I know you see pictures on the internet all the time, but uh, it was. I would say it was close to a four four hundred inch bowl and this area is not really known for that size of bulls. And when I seen this bull, I thought, man, I wish there was somebody with me because nobody is ever going to believe this. And it was, it was, it was just such an amazing thing. And I you know, the it's classic elk hunting story. You know, the bull was screaming, just coming in on a string like tension
on the bow string. The brush is moving, you haven't quite seen him yet, and then the wind hitch in the back of the neck and.
He takes Ah.
It was right on this little ridge ledge and where it kind of opened up. It's kind of a timbered ridge, and over on the ledge of the ridge, it kind of opened up a little bit. So it ran over the real quick, and he ran off in the backside. It was kind of a little basin in there that was nothing but olderbrush up in this flat kind of basin that graduate had a gradual climb up to a
up to another ridge. And I ran over there and I looked and I seen this bowl, and I'm like, oh, holy cow, nobody's ever gonna believe this thing.
And of course it's out of bull range.
And he goes over to the alders and he and they're huge alders, and he starts raking. I think, you know, he starts he puts his antlers on those alders and just starts messing with him, just starts raking. I'm like, oh, maybe he's not that spooked. I can call him back. And then all of a sudden, he just kind of just lunges and jumps into the middle. He was trying to part them, is what he was trying to do,
because they were so thick. He's trying to part them with these antlers, and he jumps and he just jumps right into those alders and just kind of just kind of just kind of did this this walky jump thing, treading through these all this older patch all the way up out of this basin. So I walked this giant rack and head float through the alders all the way up out of this basin and out of my life forever. And yeah, I'm like, nobody is ever gonna believe this.
Ah. So it was like surreal, you know.
I was like, man, if I could have killed that bowl, it would have been like the icing on the cake. But I had killed bulls in that in that drainage that my grandfather hunted and which was really special, and my mom always said, she's like, this is her dad. And back in the old days, he would he would get like PBC pipes or like galvanized pipes and put the little plug in the end of them and blow them. Remember those kind of elk beagles people used to have.
It's just like kind of a whistle and he'd mess around with that and he's like, man, if I could just figure out how to bugle and sound good, like a real elk man. We could really kill these things. And he was always messing with it and wishing and wanting to be able to bugle like a real elk. And unfortunately, you know, he passed away when I was really little, so he never got to see the progression of elk bugles that we have today or even in
the eighties. You know, he passed around pretty early eighties. So, but that was always a really special place. So I can understand the nostalgia and the want to go hunt somewhere where, you know, and we would always go up there as a little kid, you know, to return to those places for the nostalgia, I can I can relate.
Yeah, No, it was fun. It was It made my entire year, my entire season, regardless of what happened after September, it was that was like it just it just made everything perfect.
But yeah, of course.
I still went and hunted more and had a bunch more fun.
Yeah.
Matter of fact, as I was driving I was leaving Wyoming, I got a text from my good hunting buddy back home. He's like, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? I want to go el hutting. And I'm like, well, let me check the temperature of my household when I get home and let you know, He's like, oh yeah, I UNDERSTANDABLEOK, cause I was gone, like I don't know, eighteen days down there, so maybe not quite that much, but close
to that. And so I got home unpacked and looked at my wife and she's like, so you're going out this weekend and I was like, yep, yep, I am. I guess I'm going out. So we went out and it was awesome too, because my partner here, he decided this year that he was going to hunt elk strictly with his recurve. He's never killed the bull his recurve.
Oh yeah.
And so he's like, I'm gonna take my recurve.
I'm like, well.
That's great, let's go. Let's see who we can do. And we went out that morning. He shut his first bowl at his recurve by like eight thirty.
Oh man, it was awesome. I'm so jealous.
Yeah. It was perfect. I mean, the wind was perfect. It was that cold, crisp morning. I bugled off this little point and there's just this little i don't know, forty acre pocket a brush of just mefi and spruce and subalpin fur and huckleberry brush, and he just screamed instantly out of there. We dropped in closed the distance a little bit, screamed at him a few more times, cut him off, and I could just hear him come.
And my buddy Jared went out in front and he got set up, and I videoed the whole thing with my phone, and I just I could see Jared and just pan over to the elk. I could see the elk rack in my phone. I could see the elk pretty well by you know, I had my phone down low, kind of my bino arms sure, and I saw Jared come to full I saw the bull move forward, and then I heard a little squeak, like a little tiny light calcohol from Jared, and I'm like, oh, here we go.
And then all I heard was this wet thud oh of that of that arrow just smacking it and the bull world I bugled, and then it was just silent, and then I looked over at Jared. He was just frozen there. Then he like dropped his head and he looked up and dropped his head again, like, oh no, did he just whiff it? Oh no, this is not good. And then he just gives you that fist pumped, you know, like,
oh yes, yeah, he's yeah, twenty yards, perfect placement. The bull world went down the hill thirty yards and just fell over dead, rolled down into the brush and just laying there dead. Or Elvis's that's awesome, wet thud.
I love it, man.
I've never heard anybody describe it as that. And as soon as you said it, man, my brain started going, that's exactly what it sounds like.
Yeah, I don't He didn't hit any ribs, so he didn't hear that crack. It was just a yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool.
So that's awesome.
And then there was a bull. Like as we butchered that bull and packed it out, there was a bull bugle and at the head of the base and he did not shut up all day long. He sat back there, bugled and and bugled. We dropped down with one load to the truck and hiked back in, and as we were hiking back in, he was still bogling back there.
Man.
I know, isn't it always the times that you just don't have the time, opportunity, whatever, that you can go after those that you got balls the cranking like that.
Yeah, Well, when we were starting off of there with the second load, I'm like, Jared, what do you think should we drop this load down there and go after that bull. He's like, yeah, Okay, let's do it. But I was like, I'm just joking, let's get this thing to the truck.
Oh man, man, if.
That kind of finished out my when was that? That must have been like the last weekend of September. Okay maybe yeah, something like that. So that kind of finished out my September. So it was great.
Yeah, lots of all.
I not for ELK. I did not go look for Elk at all with my rifle. I still had a Montana tag and my freezer's packed with Helk. Beat it just to the brim because I shot two bowls last year, so I'm still working on some of that. And then I shot this Wyoming bowl and I was like, I do not need to shoot another bowl. I know it's not about need sometimes, but I was just like, yeah, and rifle hunting for elcause it seems to be more
of a chore at times than it is enjoyable. So I just took my time and hunted mule deer after my ad a little punt in October a hundred mule deer. And then I got beat down pretty hard with some of the deep, deep snow that we got in mid November, I took a break and hunted some white tails.
Nice.
Yeah, I really wanted to pick your brain on these white tails. Now, you won't brag on yourself at all.
But I'm going to do it a little bit.
You're kind of an old I mean, you're all around hunter, like one of the best all around hunters I know. But you're pretty dang good whitetail hunter too. Now, it's been a while, but there was a time when you had a picture on the cover of a major outdoor publication with a giant white tail. Is that?
Am I right?
Yes, yes you are.
What magazine was that and when was that?
So that was Eastman's Bow Hunting Journal, and that well I killed the buck in two thousand and six, Okay, so I think the magazine came out in two thousand and seven. Ok Yeah, it was a cover. Like it's not very often you get a white tail on the cover.
Of an Eastman's.
No, it's usually an antelope or a sheet, or an elk or a mule deer. I mean, your classic Western big game.
Yeah, to get a white tail on there. I mean, that's that's saying something that was a big buck.
Yeah, that was pretty fun. Yeah, and that buck was that consumed my life for a while. I spent so much time trying to put together the puzzle of that white tail. I saw him at the very end of the previous hunting season. Okay, Like so it was like right after the season ended. I actually went on a little I was going for a trail run, and I thought I might as well just run through this little area I like to go a white tail hunt. There's
kind of an old logging road that goes back. There's all really grown in, kind of more than two track. Now sure did anything. I'm like, I'm just going to go for a run through there. And I was jogging through there, I see this deer kind of like drop into this little draw and pop out the other side. Massive deer. I mean it was just immediately in my mind like that is a giant buck. Oh my god, where did he come from? And how do I how do I get him? How do I find this thing?
Next year? So I spent I don't know how many days just looking for his sheds and I never did find his sheds. Apparently some dog dog walker picked him up. I kept found out later. Man, he take his dog out down the Seoul Loggin Road and they were just laying there. But I found an antler from the previous year, so it had been there, been laying there two years, and uh, it's like, oh, this is a big bucket.
I was finding big rubs, trails, and I just and it's just this weird kind of flat and so I kind of put together a game plan and had all these tree stands hung in this area. And you know, when you scout in the spring and your shedhitting in the spring, you're seeing all this sign from the previous year. You've seeing all the old scrapes, and the trails are more observable, and you can see the rubs and you can see the rubs that have been rubbed multiple years
in a row, like big heavy trees. And I was like, well, that buck is definitely rubbing these trees over and over year after year. So I kind of focused on that, and man, I ended up sitting a few times. I passed up a pretty nice buck and I decided, here's the crazy part. I decided to bowhunt them. I don't
know why. It was rifle season, and I thought, you know, I just I'd been reading a bunch of articles about bow hunting white tails back East, and I'm like, I just I want to kind of experience that, so I'm just going to do it.
Sure, So I just did it.
And yeah, I think the fourth time I was out rainy was after like a four day rain in November. Oh yeah, and everything was kind of hunkered down for a while, and then it just started to let up. And then the deer started crawling out of the woodwork and ended up kind of rattling, and I used a doughe eat and some other bucks came in, some smaller ones, and started sparring out in front of my tree stand.
And they just sat there and sparred and sparred and sparred all evening long, and I just kind of like let him do their thing, yeah, and thinking it's gonna there's a big buck around, He's going to come in potentially. And I was really focused on watching those deer because
I they'd be like three of them sparring. And then I looked up and I saw another one come out of the timber and join in, and I was just really focused on those deer, and I decided I better and I thought to myself, I better keep an eye out behind me and off to my left. And I look over and I could see the top of this this larch tree just whipping back and forth about one hundred yards away. I was like, oh, what is that? And then out he walks kind of heading straight down
right to me. He was going to walk right in front of me to where these bucks were over to my right, and so I just stood up, grabbed my bow and got ready. He walked out at fifteen yards right below me, and I just stroked him. And I didn't know how it was like the buck that that I was after, but I saw he was a big deer. He looked real heavy, and his tians kind of looked short because he was so heavy. But after the arrow hit, you know, any whirled and went out there and crashed.
I was like, oh, man, that's a good deer. And I walked over and pulled his head up out of the brush. I was like, who, this thing is a giant deer. This is the this is the buck I was after. That's the on was yeah, yeah, so yeah, that was a crazy yeah, but I'd spent maybe twenty five thirty days in that area just scouting, looking and also looking for his sheds. I was like, my wife was in grad school in another state, and I was living on my own. I didn't have a kid, I had nothing else going on.
Nothing, but yeah, the good old days.
Yes, life gets in the way. Done that sometime.
Yeah you wouldn't trade it for nothing, but no, I wouldn't. But sometimes it'd be nice to just be able to have some of that time and pret go do that stuff again. That uh, that buck. I just have a dull, distant memory of what it looked like, and I remember it being incredibly massive. If you don't mind sharing, what did that buck score?
M hm? I never got it officially scored.
Okay, but if I remember right, lots of people asked, so I put a tape on it, and I want to say it was one eighty two gross.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, nets are for fish, right.
Yes, Yes, I'm not much of a fisherman.
Yeah that's yeah.
It's a solid deer.
Yeah, that was a giant, giant buck. So now this year you killed a great white tail.
I was so happy to see that. I've seen it come across my feet on Instagram.
I was like, oh, yes, my white tail buddy is back. He did it again. It's really nice, beautiful buck. Tell me tell me that story.
Boy, It's not as exciting as the archery one, but it. I have a coworker who is just sort of kind of getting into hunting. Yeah, he listens to the Meat Eater podcast all the time. He's always asked me questions about different rifle and how to hunt and where to hunt, and super curious about it. But he's never really asked to go out hunting with me. And I was spending a ton of time earlier and in November looking for
mule deer. Oh yeah, And he kind of went after some mule deer for a little bit, but he wasn't super pumped on shooting one. So one day I asked him like, Hey, you want to we should go We should go out hunting at some point together. And he's like, oh, really you want to do that. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Let's just do a day hunt for white
tails or something. So we put together a plan and there's a spot that I I kind of know, it's sort of little not I wouldn't say it's a secret spot, but it's it's not the most logical spot to go park and then go hunt. So it was a day hunt I took. Of course, I always take my backpack, my big backpack when I go day hunt, because I never go in places where I can get a deer out hole.
For the most part, you don't want to drag it.
No, I thought about dragging this one out, but it was a way, so I'm glad I had them a pack. But so we just split up, and I was kind of give them the spiel about still hunting and sitting and watching like the edges of some of these clearcuts and some of these little brushy draws, and just trying to tell them about the train that these deer liked
to use and travel through, how the they feel protected. Yeah, And also it was middle of the rut, and I was like, you can see a deer at any point, anytime, anywhere. Just stay vigilant, take your time, don't move too fast. And so you know, we split up before daylight, and we had a plan to meet up on top of
this ridge and later in the morning. And so I'd hiked up this ridge and popped up on some high points, and I glass some kind of some brushy clearcuts, and the snow was still kind of on the brush at this time, but it was starting to warm up. We'd had a fresh snowfall the night before, so you can kind of see fresher sign. And I popped out on the edge into this clear cut and I could see most of it, and I thought, I'm just gonna like work my way through it. And it's kind of sat
on this shoulder, so you could kind of see. It's kind of on a ridgetop, so you could see kind of both sides of the shoulder, so think of like a saddle on a horse. I was just walking right down the backbone and I got out there and I could see like a fairly fresh track that crossed the clear cut from heavy timber to heavy timber. And I thought, well,
I'm gonna follow that track for a little ways. And I worked my way down this track and I could see where it bedded, and then it got really fresh and it went a little I could see it kind of going down the hill towards this opening, and I glassed down in this opening, and sure enough, there's a new it. It was a dough so I just kind of leaned there against the tree and watched her for quite a while, and she just fed and fed and fed, didn't act nervous. You could tell she was by herself,
like there's nothing else around. A lot of times you could tell and there's something bugging them, or they're waiting for another deer, be it their fawn, or there's a buck pestering them, but she seemed to be alone. So I just sat there for a long time. It was a great vantage point, and I kept thinking myself, like, you know what, you better watch your backtrack there, buddy, because how many times you walk back on your own track and see deer tracks that have crossed your own
a lot a lot. So I, yeah, it happened to me all the time. So I just looked back and I caught a little glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye, and it was a flash of a deer coming up out of that heavy timber into the clear cut, and I could see it was a buck rider just by its body language and size of the shape of it. So I kind of dropped down to one knee looked at it through my scope, and I could tell it was only one hundred and fifty yards away, right, and I could tell it. It was like
it's a good deer, good dear. Something looks a little funky with him, but boy, it looks like a good buck. And then I could see him kind of walking around a little bit nosing, and there was enough brush there. I just didn't have a clear shot at him, but I could just get glimpses of him, and then I could see what he was after. There's a doe was right there in front of him. He just pushed a dough out into that unit and was just kind of
hanging back. Well, she wasn't in any hurry. They weren't spooked, and I kind of lost sight of him for a second. So I just got ready, kind of dialed my scope power up a hare and probably like maybe ten power, and just rested on my knee, and as soon as he popped out and turned broadside, I just just you know, squeezed my first round off, first and only round off I shot, and he just disappeared like my rifle recoiled and he wasn't there anymore. Yeah, but there's enough brush
and little roll there in the terrain. I just couldn't tell exactly if he just like jumped over some brush or just that roll of that ridge and I just couldn't see him. But the dough just stood there and looked around to start walking away. I have a suppressor on my rifle, okay, and it I mean she had was not concerned at all. But I just stayed there and looking at the last spot I saw him, thinking, well, if he's still up, I'm gonna see him here in a minute.
Yeah.
I sat there for probably three or four minutes, and I never saw him re emerged. The doe walked off like, well, he's either either that shot hit close to home and he just high tailed it out of here, or I killed him. And I walked over there and he's just laying there, just spread out dead. I mean, he just dropped right at the shot kind of find out, and so I hit him a little on the he was cording away a little bit. I hit him kind of right in the back of the ribs and it angled
forward through his chest and it just swattered him. Wow, And then I realized that that's a solid I mean, he was as big as I thought he was, but he looked a little funky because he had that he had a broken tie on one side. That photo that's on Instagram. He can't really see it, but if you look close, you can see one of his back times snapped off.
I noticed that. I was like, something's not right here, and then I was like, oh, it's got a broken G two, which probably I would have matched.
What was a ten inches it.
Was maybe, yeah, maybe a little more.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was pretty tall.
It was a good buck.
Yeah. And it was a fresh break too, so it seemed like it look to me like it had been within the last couple of days. It was just like that fresh, white, clean break. It hadn't been rubbed and polished at all from rubbing on anything, so you could tell it was fairly fresh. So that was November twenty first, okay, I believe. So they were hot and heavy, oh, right there in the middle of November.
Yeah, man, I we've been talking about this for a long time. And one of these days, maybe next year, if I can get a tag.
Dang Montana.
They hate me, but if I could get a tag, I want to come over and go hunt that north country up in the White Tail Woods with you do the old yes little wall Tunt Camp and yeah, It's the thing about that time of year is of hunting, is the days are short and the nights are long, and man, you got to you gotta be camp with somebody that you like and enjoy their you're your time with them, because if you're by yourself. I've done this before. I've done these hunts by myself, and man, it is boring.
The nights are long, like they are. It just like, man, I'd like to go to bed right now, but it's.
Six six thirty yep.
Shoot. Yeah.
So the last couple of years I've I've had this year, I didn't. This is the first year I didn't have one in a couple of years anyway. But I had some friends that come up and we put up a wall tint and woodstove, piles of wood cots, the whole works, and just hunt straight from that wall tint. We just leave. I'll just start hiking right from there. Oh yeah, just leave in the dark, come back in the dark. It's great.
Don't even fire up the truck. Just there's so much country to go hunt that you can do that in a couple of these little areas that I know you can just just anchor in and then just go find deer. And we've been pretty successful over the years doing that. And it's fun. It's just you come back, you cook a good meal, you hang out, drink a little whiskey, tell some stories. Yeah, talk shop. Yeah, it's a good time. So yeah, you should come up. You'd enjoy the hell
out of it. And I know you liked to come hunt North Idaho for white tails. It's real similar.
Yeah, yeah, it's my cup of teas. Yeah. I love that kind of hunting and that kind of country. You know, my wife and I came over two years ago, I think it was two three years maybe three years ago, into Montana whitetail hunting when we had a really short window to hunt and we were only they had like three days, right, so the conditions weren't ideal. But I
ended up getting deer. I got a little buck. But but you know, I was a little weirded out because in Montana they check for c w D. Right, you have your CWD stations and they're checking for that all over it seems.
Like nowadays, even Idaho.
But they took a sample and and the same thing I had to. I bone this deer out, you know, and packed it out on my pack and in the head, and they're like, oh man, you almost didn't get us that that little what is that. It's a little thing in the throat there in the back of the neck there that they keep.
That's the lymph note.
They sampled it for CWD way by taking those lymph notes there, just to see if it has CWD, and and they were kind of making a big deal about It's like, oh God, I'm scared to death to eat this deer. And they're like, yeah, don't eat this thing until if we till you, you'll get an email that tells you if it has IT or not. I'm like, okay, so get I get the email and it was fine, of course, which I was thrilled because man, I love deer meat.
It's so so good. But yeah, it is.
I got mind tested this year and it came back clean.
Yeah.
And I don't know, you know, I probably have an unpopular opinion.
Maybe I might be wrong.
I've just this is kind of my gut feeling, like I feel like maybe cwd's probably been here for a lot longer than we think, and they're starting to find it more because they're testing more for it. I know, people and I've shot a deer that was obviously sick and weird and had something wrong with it, and I know other people that have and who knows, you know, that's been you know, twenty thirty years ago even but but who knows, you know, it may have been around maybe not, But.
I guess we'll see.
I mean, that's a pretty big hot topic among you know, a lot of the different state game agencies. They're they're taking it very seriously.
Yeah, they're and they're finding it in more and more areas too. And they've been testing some these areas for a while, but they are finding it now. And I don't know how long it's been in our area, but we've been dealing with it for I don't know, six or seven years now, and it seems like a lot of deer are coming back clean from the tests. But they are still finding it. It's never going to go away. Unfortunately,
their their management strategies are questionable. I don't know. I'm not a wildlife biologist, but god, it doesn't seem like we're going to shoot our way out of the problem. But yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem to have worked in Wisconsin. They're still dealing with it right, Well, like, yeah, I honestly I am ignorant on management strategies and how effective.
They are, so take that worth maybe trying to do something, you know, let's let's try to do something to fix it, whatever that may be or for Unfortunately, like in Idaho and some of the places they found it, Man, they've
they nuked the deer off. They killed a bunch of them in the first then the in the unit where they first found it they found it, and then that that fall they had an emergency hunt which they wanted to they give out I don't know, four or five hundred extra tags or I might be wrong on the number, but it would seemed like a lot and to go harvest somewhere deer and then that way they could test those as well to see, you know, how bad is it.
And then.
Man, they've just kind of doubled down on killing. You know, let's shoot our way out of this. I don't know if that's the right answer, But like you say, I'm not a biologist either by by no means. But yeah, I guess time will tell, you know, how it all plays out. I think everything probably runs its course a one way or another. And there's not a lot you can do about it.
Yeah. Yeah, let's just so there researchers come up with some type of treatment that it can be dealt with in the future.
Yeah. Yeah.
They look to dolculate, like to uh, I guess, I don't know. It's hard saying I already know what they're even thinking about being in a pre on disease. It's like, I don't know if it's preventable or if Yeah, I don't you think they would. They've got a long ways to go.
I guess. Yeah, Well, like EHD and and and blue tongue, you know, those are.
Passed from the bugs or whatever. You know, nats bite in the deer and you know common you know, I don't even I don't know anything about anything, But I'm like, well, why aren't people spraying you know, you know, insecticides around ponds and areas where these deer are getting getting congregated during a drought year. You know, the area I grew up in. You know, there's a lot of cattle pond and stuff. Why why aren't they going out and just spraying,
you know, killing bugs. Obviously that's not the right answer.
They would have done it.
Maybe maybe that's just a foolish thinking, you know, the armchair from the armchair. It seems like, oh, we got all these ideas, why don't you do this?
But yeah, you just don't know. Yeah, we.
As a country, we sprayed a lot of stuff around and with very negative results for other creatures from unintended consequences. So I think people are a little leary of that.
Songbirds and everything else. Yeah, we have little critters and stuff. Who knows, maybe the deer wouldn't like to spray, but yet they'll put all these other things, all these you know, we'd killers and crap on fields.
And I don't know, it's weird.
We'll never know.
Yeah, and I it seems like those like EHD and blue tongue really really happened when there are yeah, dry seat. It seems like dry years and warm falls when we start like don't have a frost early on, those midges kind of can persist into the fall. Yeah, And I guess I don't know. Maybe they reached this this threshold where it can start passing amongst the deer population and
the midge population. All right, but yeah we haven't We've not had it affect our deer up here, but I it has affected the deer in the Missoula area, and I know central Idaho has had it, yeah, but it seems to be more persistent on the east side of the state of Montana and the river bottoms. Yea, in Montana anyway, I.
Know where I grew up then in the agricultural areas and on the on the canyon breaks those areas, which is always a little warmer, little and I think there's more deer there too. And they had a matt when when the first hit, like we I think was ninety five or ninety seven somewhere in there, and man, they had a giant die off. You know. You talk to the farmers and they're like, man, we went out and there were dead rotten deer carcasses everywhere. Wow, picking up
big deadhead bucks everywhere. And then they're you know, the biologists say, some of the deer will develop a they're not effected by it per se, or a resistance to it, and those deer will carry on and have more offspring that we'll have a resistance. But then a few years go by and then we have another.
Big die off.
So I feel like there's a lot of I don't think it's a perfect science.
I might be right, but.
But yeah, it seems to come around ever since then, ever since that year. We've never had it before, instant ever since that year.
Where'd these damn nats come from? Did they blow in on the wind?
I mean, how did like Idaho's had droughts before then? Right? Why all of a sudden We've always had a lot of deer back previous to that.
So what made it happen? I don't know.
I need to get a biologist on here and just really ask all those questions and hopefully they could maybe shed some light on that for us.
That'd be great.
Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, those are good questions. Yeah, right, because you know we've had those those midges or gnats or whatever that transmits this disease. And why why now? And why so frequently? And if deer are developing resistance are the is the disease slowly changing or adapting? Is it this this back and forth war between resistance of the deer and the and a new kind of slightly different type of like just a little little change in the DNA of this disease to make it penetrate the
armor of the the deer. I don't know. Those are all good questions. I'd like to know more about that as well.
Yeah, I'll have to start sniffing around and see if I can find a CWD expert that that I would.
Love to get on here and talk about.
Yeah, like a wildlife disease or parasitology expert.
There's that guy on on Instagram, serve a nut or something maybe, Oh yeah, reach out to him, see if I can pick his brain, get him on her full finger.
I think that's his name.
Well, he's a I think he's friends with the meat eater.
Yeah, I'll see if I can look him up.
Yeah, that would be interesting to hear more about.
Well, man, I appreciate we're we're we wrote. We've gone over an hour here, so man, I appreciate you coming on. It's always like we could sit here for hours and visit. I'm glad we got to catch up. It seems like we don't get to catch up until the Western Hunting Expo in Salt Lake, so now we'll have other things to talk about.
When I see you down there.
Yeah, definitely, but I appreciate it. How can folks find you if they want to look you up on social.
They can find me on Instagram. That's the only place I really exist as far I guess I'm on a Rockslide as well as a staff writer. But yeah, in my Instagram handle is Josh Underscore boyd Underscore MT something like that. I don't even remember what it is, but if you do, if you go Josh Boyd MT, you'll find me. I'll show up. There'll be a bunch of hunting pictures. That's about all I share. There is some
hunting content. Yeah, and if you go to rockslide dot com you can find me over there as well, mostly just review articles on the homepage for gear reviews. I do participate in the forums a little bit, but mostly it's just review writing, gear testing right on. So yeah, it seems to be a busy place over there these days.
Yeah, good, well, thanks again man, I appreciate it coming on and yeah, look forward to more conversations down the road.
Yeah, I appreciate it, Derek, it was a great, great conversation. Thanks for having me.
Yep, absolutely