Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. I'm your host, Dirk Durham, and today I have my oldest friend in the house. He's my oldest friend, he's my best friend, and he's my brother in law. Welcome to the show, Randy Wise.
All right, thanks for having me, Dirk. It should be entertaining. Yeah, I think I think it should. You're quite a character.
Now. Some people that have followed some of the films I've been in over the years, hunting with different different folks. I was on a hunt with Trent from Born and Raised outdoors here a few years ago in Wyoming, and Randy came along with his goats. He had these pack goats and he joined the hunt and he was like kind of filled in as a cameraman and he like he said, He's like, I'm not a professional camera man, and I'm just gonna say, Andy, we could all tell by the shots you got.
Yeah, I appreciate you taking notice. And for the record, I had no instruction or classes or even hey do this when this happens. I was just left in the dark and.
I did what I could with what I had. Oh, I know absolutely, and we could tell t it's like, hey man, you want to run a camera And you're like, I don't know sure. Like he's like, you're like, what do I do? And he's like, push the red button and hold the camera towards us. That was the insurrection and it turned out. But we had a We had a pretty good hunt, killed a couple of bulls. We used your goats to pack one bull out and cross the river there in Wyoming.
It was it was fun. And then the other bull out in the river.
Yeah, yeah, we we I shot a bull and it died in the river and we had to break that thing down in the dark in.
The river, pack it out.
It's probably the cleanest piece of meat we've ever had. But anyway, that's all water under the bridge. Today we're going to talk about the misadventures of Randy Wise.
Being Randy.
We've been buddy since seventh grade, so if you can imagine, you know, we've had a lifetime of fun and goofy adventures and hunting trips and just you know, Any's family too, so there's all the whole family aspect of it. But I kind of wanted to rewind to back in the olden days, if you will, and me and Randy were high school boys. I would say we were probably freshmen sophomores in high school. Yeah, maybe. And we went hunting. Excuse me, we went camping in the back country of Idaho.
We're way back, one hundred miles from from the closest town. We're right off the Montana border in the Clearwater region of Idaho. It some of the most beautiful country you've ever seen. The deer were so tame that we would literally take a leak, we would urinate on the ground, and a mule deer would would come right up.
They would come up and lick your your urinated dirt.
They would come up and lick that dirt like immediately they sing while you're there. Yeah, why we were standing there. I have a picture of Randy standing there right after he peed, and there's a deer licking the pee right like one foot away from him. It's the craziest thing I've I've ever seen. But that that was kind of a cool trip. We were up there with my folks and Randy and I were like, we're not gonna camp at the truck with these old people, right, We're a
teenagers now. We we want adventure. We're gonna go backpack. We're going to backpack into a cool place and and set up a tent and have a good time. So we we we backpacked down into this basin and it was pretty easy going, and you know, it's kind of steep, but no real trails. We get down we could see this big flat sp It was a big, beautiful grassy flat.
It almost looked lake.
It was a little lake. Yeah, and we're like, oh, yeah, that looks like an awesome place to camp. So we get down there and that that grass turned out to be about waist high and full of mosquitoes.
Remember the mosquitoes. They were so bad, the mosquitoes. And the brush was you know, looking down, you know, it didn't look nothing like that. We get down in there. Yeah, it's shoulder high. You can't see nothing anywhere.
Yeah, that's that's your that. This is Idaho. This is Idaho, one on one, Like it always looks good at a distance, but you get up close, you get into it, it's like, Okay, that brush is over our head. The grass is wiste tall, and it's a marsh and it's like full of mosquitoes. So I'm like, oh god, we got to set up this tent, you know, and we had a few hours before it was going to be dark, but the mosquitoes were so bad. We got to get this tent set up and get in the tent. And I told him,
I said, okay, you go look for firewood. I'm going to set this tent up. So I start setting ten up and you wander off and you come back and you have this worried look on your face, and you say, he said, you got to see this, that's all you said.
You have to see you have to see this. But you got to rewind just a little bit back to the lake. Okay. So there we are, like you know, we're we're in the brush on the edge of the lake and we walk up into the waters just a little bit, if you remember, and we could see bear tracks in the mud and they were squished out like they're giant bear tracks. You remember that.
Oh yeah, yeah, basically grizzly bear tracks.
In our minds, yeah, in our minds. And I believe we're probably eighth graders. This is this is in our first two years of our Yeah, it's unclear. I know, we were young. We're pretty young, pretty young, and so this is like Brandy getting his first adventure with the Durham family, and that's how I remember it, you know. And so here we are, like, like Dirk said, back in the back country anyway, Yes, it's time to set up camp. And we went miles from his parents and we're kids, and there's this lake.
We got cans of chili in, yeah, and like no sleeping pads and like this shitty little like yeah, two man pup tins.
Yeah, we got nothing. And I don't even think we have a pistol. We have we had it. We did have a flashlight between us and.
It's probably was one of those survival knives.
Yeah. And so we see this big pushed out bear tracks in the mud that go into the water of this little lake. And then we needed to hike up this Razor back ridge. Remember that big ridge that we were going up. And then we got into the brush and the huckleberries and we're like, we need to set up camp here. Yeah, you remember that. And it was on the main trail. There's the only trail on this Razor Back ridge.
Right, And I tell Randy, I said, you go get firewood and stuff. I'm gonna start setting this tent up. So I start setting the tin up. He comes back and says, you got to see this. So I'm like, well, what's up? So I walk over there to this huckleberry brush, and huckleberry brush is about waist high, you know, and thick. You can't hardly walk through it. And it's all broken down like it looks like a bear. It tore up. It's been just like wallowing and like tearing all this
brush up, eating huckleberries. He just tore out this spot big enough. It looked like a couple of a bull elk had been fighting there. There was so much stuff torn up, and I'm like, and Randy doesn't say anything other than you got to look at this. And I go over there, I'm like, oh my god, we got to move our tent right now. It's a grizzly bear and he's been eating. We got to get out of here.
Right This was an unintended consequence of Randy Shenanigan's Yeah. So the backstory is I want to take a leak, and I seen all these huckleberries and I thought, wouldn't it be fun to break all these up and put the idea into Camp's head and that there's a big bear and this is the only trail. So yes, there comes over. He evaluates the situation and correctly evaluates that, Yeah, there's something in here eating and rummaging and foraging, and we should not camp.
We're right on his trail.
We should not camp here. Yeah, But what we didn't know is where we were. And we'd never been there before. And this trail had straight up this on the left side. You remember, you could look off it would it would be like a shoot in a snowmobiller's paradise, like an avalanche. Yeah, it was just straight off the left side of the canyon, and the right side kind of feathered out into the brush and the and the aspens and whatnot. You know.
So we were on this only trail, Rocky And at this point, my unintended consequence was the fear that I instilled in camp.
Oh. I was scared that.
I am like, we gotta go. I run down.
I grab the tent, I throw that thing together, I throw that tear it down, throw it in my pack and my pack.
We have these backpacks.
I think we got them at the Goodwill or somewhere. These old aluminum frames.
Yeah, the luminium frame, the orange ones and the blue ones, and they were garbage.
Yeah, and uh, you know, threw all of our nice heavyweight stuff under our packs and like, we got to get the hell out of here. And I start hiking like a madman. We got to get the hell out of this place.
He wouldn't let up, and I was like more leisure like it's fine, I know fine.
I'm just like, what are you doing?
You going to get out of here? But now I'm hooked into this prank I've pulled and they can't go back on it, so I have to kind of live what I've started.
And he can't let me know. Yeah, he can't let me know that he was him at this point. Yeah, because I'd bought it, so hrd, Yeah, he bought it.
He hooked line and zincer and we're in the darkness, pitch black. There ain't a moon, I don't I don't remember stars or nothing. It's one of them pitch black nights. And we're in the the flashlight and hiking up a single little game trail that's in the like the most backcountry Idaho Montana orderline country you can find. Like it's it's not a human There's there's nobody around, like like it's just us, and there's no trail. Yeah there and no like not like a horse trail. This is just
like a game trail. There's no GPS, there's no ONYX, there's no nothing like. It's on us to find our way up this like very remote country. And you know, we we aren't worried about that, like for some reason, our our internal GPS systems are working fine. We know when you get up this ridge, we're in a camp
on the top of the ridge line. We're in a white hike six seven miles to the left, whatever direction that was at the time, and then eventually we'll hit a road gets us back to your mom and pop. Yeah, you know.
So we we climb up this thing and finally find a flat spot because it's steeper than the back your head. We finally find a flat spot. It's like, okay, okay, we're gonna sleep here, but I'm worried. I don't want to I don't want to sleep in a tent because I don't want to not be able to see a bear come get us. Yea, So we just kind of propped our our sleeping bags up against this old log and we build a little fire and we drift off into sleep somehow.
I don't know.
It was very like I was that kind of like lucid sleep, you know, kind of like halfway in, halfway out, and I'm laying there and I can hear a noise coming down the trail. It's like I hear something coming down the trail and I hear like clippity clop of like hoof beats and like like like a little bell tinkering, and it's like an old miner with some mules going by us in the middle of the night. And the next day I'm like, Grandy, what's up. Did you see
that that old miner and stuff? He's like, what are you talking about?
And I don't know.
You know how it is when you're half half lucid, if you're you're in and out of sleep. I'm pretty sure I dreamt it.
We honestly were scared to death, both.
Of us, but we didn't get eaten by this make believe grizzly bear. Yeah, even though that was kind of a weird dream to have about the old minor forty nine er coming down the hill, you never seen.
That, no, But what I did see was we nested up against this log. It was full of red ants.
Yeah, those things woke up and the things were all over us, eating us alive.
Our sleeping bags, they were all over us. We had wounds everywhere. Anyway, it was a miserable night, a sleepless night, you could say. Yeah. Next morning we're up and at him. We're first light.
We get up. We're like, okay, we're getting the heck out of here. We hike back to my folks and like, I think we'll stay in camp these next day night.
And Randy being on the prank, you know here, I'm like, now I'm kind of feeling like so Dirk immediately gets back. He tells his folk about the grizzly bears and the pond, the water and the trail and the huckleberries tore up. And now all of a sudden, my prank turned into I'm a liar, you know, and I don't want anybody to know. So I'm like, he just kept it to himself. Yeah, I just kevied to myself. I thought it was kind
of funny. It blew out of proportion, and so I'm living with this thing inside me.
How many years did you keep that? It was years, It was years, and it was years and finally adults I think finally told me.
Yeah. I'm like, you know, you know, remember that time, you know, and we're laughing and you know, having a beer or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I tore up all those huckleberries.
Like what.
I felt ashamed, but you know it was a fun joke at the time, but it kind of just got away from me.
Yeah, you know, that kind of happens in life. Yeah, even though I feel like in high school you did some of those little pranks too. I think you're like, hey, you see that guy out there. He wants to kick yours. I'm like, why, I never said a thing about it, but we've always been good, Like he don't like me, that he hates you, he wants to beat you up.
Remember that I may be guilty of some things like that, and I may I may be guilty of having girls write you love letters too.
Yeah, well yeah, there was some of those.
Like I'm like, man, somebody's writing me a love letter?
Who is?
And You're like, huh wow, yeah you should ye for whatever. So you know, we're dumb kids. I was a dumb kid especially.
I don't know. I feel like that sets the tone of who Randy Wise is. He's kind of a joker, kind of a prankster, pretty funny. Uh loves to try to like get a reaction out of people, you know, will say and do things to try to get a funny reaction for fun.
Yeah, it's all it's all for good intent, right and and yeah, hasn't always played out in my favor, but you know what, I can see myself in that. And then when somebody tells me something two years later, you know that they did to me, I think maybe it's a joke. But that's not always true too, which I think we're gonna talk about later in this podcast.
Right right, we'll get we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So I wanted to kind of set the tone with that little story, and I wanted to kind of shortly thereafter Randy and I decide we're gonna be bow hunters. We wanted to bowhunt. I got that got the bug the year before we started bowhunting, and Randy's like, oh man, I want to bowhunt too. So we worked
really hard. We we you know, we didn't. We weren't just handed a bunch of money as kids, you know, back then, you know, we we just had to work and make our money and earn our way, which was good because you know, I feel like we hate Yeah, we worked. We worked in the hayfield. We worked, We worked at dairies. We did hard labor, laborious work putting up hay all summer, saving that money. And I bought
my first bow and all the gear. Randy bought his first bow and all the gear, and we bought elk calls. We're like, all right, we're gonna learn how to use these.
And that was the summer between eighth and ninth grade.
No, it was freshman year and sophomore year we bought this stuff. So so the summer between then is so we were fifteen. Okay, you're a year older than me, so you must have been sixteen. But anyhow, we get this these calls, and we played with them and practiced them, and we kind of liked I think we both liked the same diaphragm. But then you had an external call. It was like one of those elk O E l
k ink talk. It looked like two plastic almost like two plastic credit cards that were kind of melted and bent and had a rubber band in between them, and you could kind of blow on it, make it a little Wasn't.
That a cow talk was a cow talker? Yeah?
Yeah, but you had one of those, and you're like, you were pretty like like that calls. Yeah, You're like, I spent twelve dollars for this, Why I'm want to use it. I'm gonna call some milk in with that.
That was three hours of labor.
So fast forward. We practiced with their calls, We practiced with their bows all summer. We got really good shooting bows, got really good with our calls for for what we were I feel like we were both really naturally gifted it and picking up on calls and using them. And we get to opening day and our first spot we wanted to go to opening day, well, it rained the night before and it was just really brushy and thick, and we're like, oh man, we're gonna be soaking wet if
we go this way. So let's go up to this other spot. So this farmer said, hey, you guys can hunt our place. So we get up and park by his house and walk over the hill and there's there's elk in the fields.
Right.
He's got these wheat fields that hadn't been harvested.
Yet yeah, and.
They were right there. We're like, wow, this is awesome. And the bowl was like bugling on his own and running around chasing cows.
I was like, wow, how is this the one? How you're thinking about.
How great is this? Well? Yeah, and I'm like I'm like I look down. I'm like, Ranny, I forgot my bugle tube. Oh yeah, And you're like, oh, I forgot my diaphragm. I'm like, that's okay. I said, give me your bugle tube. I'll call I'll call for you. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no no no no no no no, you'll you'll call it into yourself. Well, we give give me. He's like, I've got this elk talk thing.
Yeah. Well, there's a lot at that time, Dirk, we didn't understand about even calling out right, Like, we didn't know a lot about calling out.
No, he never called it out ever before. This was the first time in history of our history.
Yeah, we didn't know. There's a lot we didn't know. And we both wanted to we both wanted to be successful. And the whole forgetting the tube having reads and a cow talk on my end, it was very I don't even know it was a very pivotal moment. I feel like in our hunting relationship as early day hunting, you know, because we both wanted to do our own thing, but we didn't have a concept of working together necessarily. Right.
I wanted to do this, You wanted to do that. Right, We had our own mind on what should be done to kill these elk.
In Yeah, we had differences. We all had our own opinions, and neither one of us knew what was right. But what we did know is we worked for the stuff we had and what we brought for that day, and we wanted to work that into the equation to each of our favors. And so there we were, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
So I start cal calling and I start bugling into my hand, like amusing my hand as like a tube with a glove on it. And it sounded it probably sounded like a hog squealing. Honestly, it sounded terrible. And then you you had your elk talk jabbed into the end of that tube and you were blowing on that thing, and it sounded just as terrible. It's sounded like somebody was killing a chihuahua or something.
It was horrible, but just the same back in the eighties you could whistle and elk.
These elk were unpressured.
You know.
It wasn't that it was some exclusive ranch or something that nobody else got to hunt. Just nobody really bow hunted that area back then. It was just as everybody else went to the back country.
It was amazing time. We were in the.
Front country, uh close to close to home, and you know, nobody really messed with these elk, just because people thought we got to go to the mountains. So we start calling to these elk, and the bull starts bugling his head off and running around and chasing these cows around, and Randy kind of angles his way up and he gets to the edge of that field. Before me, I'm kind of stuck in this pin down in this like
open spot down the bottom of this draw. But he kind of took a different line and had a more cover, and he got to the edge of that field, and that bowl had kind of walked off and pushed his cows off away, you know, probably a couple hundred yards, and all of a sudden, I see Randy and he bends over and he puts he kind of hunches over and he puts his bow over his head. He goes, he goes, does this weird trot thing across the field with the bow over his hand and head or his head,
like it's an elk you're emulating. That looked like an elk. And this this wheat was tall. It was like probably waste hime. And you go bouncing across this field and then just you know, you get out there like one hundred and fifty yards and just disappear into the wheat. And I'm like, that's never going to work. And I look over and that bull had stopped and seen you and just made a bee line, just ran right charged me. He charged in, yeah, and.
I'm like, and he just stops.
I'm like, and I see the bull kind of fidget around. I'm like, and then he kind of did it again. I'm like, what is going on? And then pretty soon he turned around and trotted back to his cows, round him up and took off, And I'm like, what the heck happened?
Randy?
What why did you shoot that thing?
Yeah? So on my end of it, my perspective was exactly that, except I remember a calf following the bowl and there was a draw before the ridge eyes up on top of a ridge in this so Idos has rolling wheat fields. We're not Midwest flat Landers where we have rolling ridges between out in our fields. Right. So I'm up on the say, the high point of the ridge, and so playing with the elk originally, and I'm down in the timber on a fence line, calling Dirk calling
on his end the elk all run. There's let's call it a twenty five head. Heard a couple of bulls a little five point which is the herd bowl, and they're one hundred and fifty yards from me, down on Dirk's end of the field, and me and Dirk went separate ways, and I end up belly crawling and fight my way through this terrible brush that we deal with
all the time where we're from. And I get on the fence line and as I break through this brush, I'm I'm cow calling and bugling as best I can with these kind of half assed calls that I got on my arsenal. And the bowl would work from Dirk's end of this hundred and fifty fie yard field down to my end. And I remember that bowl coming probably fifteen yards from me, but I can't even lift my bowl, let alone draw back. I'm like in dead broken brush. You know, it's it's terrible brush in there, Like I
can barely get through it. Dirk Bugle's bowl runs down one hundred fifty yards where the elk are the herd, and I get out cross the fence line, and I think, all right, the herd spook does not coming my way again, and I need to cross this wheat field and work my way over to the south east corner of the field. Get back into the timber. Yeah, get back into the timber. And I do know the country. We've been there, you know,
we know that we know the area. There's there's a power line road through there, or power line that cuts through the timber where the power line utility is cut back for eazem and whatnot. So my thoughts are I need to cross his open wheatfield and get to that power line road, and Dirk's t goanna get a chance to hunt and bogle and shoot this bowl. But when they spook or whatever he shoots or whatever happens, they're going to have to go out that ind because I've
already basically ruined this end of the field. So that's their only exit out that way. So I want to kind of be in position to flank them. So yeah, like Dirk said, I get out in the field. I put my bow over my head because I have no cover, and I'm cow calling and I'm hunkering down like I'm some kind of elk. And that bowl sees me, and he charges me, and there's a calf that follows me, or follows him, and I lose sight of the bowl, but I can still see the calf, and the calf stops,
and I have no cover. I'm in a wheat field. And then all of a sudden, I'm twenty yarder approximately to this bowl for the first time in my life as this teenage kid, to my first shot at an elk, and I'm scared to death. I'm honestly, I'm scared to death. My adrenaline is pumping, my heart's beating. You know, I've already this thing's already came in on me. And he was a mad bull. Remember he was mad as hell. Yeah, he was a Yeah, he was a mad bull.
And well he's seen you, he's seen that other bull over there. Yeah, and then he disappeared and then come to kill you.
And he come in and I was scared to death. And I remember shooting that thing or shooting at that thing, and I watched my arrow shoot underneath it's his brisket like between it right right in that corner between his front leg. You know. It just shot through the grass, the wheat field, and he rolled and turned and ran off, you know, and gosh what at a time the adrenaline was pumping. I was obviously, you know, broken hearted. I didn't get it, didn't kill him, you know, but he
ran off. Helped me out here. What happened next? Like he so he ran off your direction and got the herd, and I think they headed out that power line.
I was trying to flank him from h Yeah. Yeah, And it was over at that point. But the next day, I mean every day this this this was a Saturday or something, but but every day we'd go back out there chasing things around him. And I think it was a week later maybe we were back out there, and we didn't like, we weren't in the teamwork. We were like kind of every man for himself thing. We hadn't figured out teamwork, like we I want to do it like this, and you're like, I want to do it like that.
Yeah, and we're just like.
Okay, well cool, well I'm gonna do this. You're gonna do it. We're gonna try to get these elk.
Both of us.
Are going to try our own little stories. But then one day we split up and I drop you off and you kind of went in that same area, and my brother and I we drove around, way around and come in from a different side. O.
Yeah, And.
I'll say, Randy, I think you might be the only person I know that has shot every single arrow in his quiver at an elk and not got an elk at a different elk, at different helk in the same day, in the same day, right, and not and not got one.
Yeah, we're talking about the heydays of the eighties when when you could whistle or bugle or whatever, like, they had had zero hunting pressure on archery or calling in where we lived, and it was so easy to call an elk. But in my defense, I would get so wound up my heart would pump a thousand miles an hour, my adrenaline with a pump a thousand my hour. I had one of them powermag bows. It was one hundred and ten pounds of pull back because I thought that's
what you needed, and that's what they sold me. And you know, like so like one hundred and ten pound bow? Was it one hundred and ten bout? What was it? Yeah? Yeah? And it was no, this is no exaggeration, like it was ridiculous. You know.
You know, you got guys shooting eighty pound bows today and most people shoot about seventy and you got Camaines pulling on a hundred pound bow. But this is no bullshit. Randy had one hundred and ten pound bow. And I remember you told me the story when you went into the bow shop and to buy a bow and there was a bow landing there and the guy said, hey,
don't even attempt to draw that. And he's like, I've only seen one other person draw it and you and you picked it up and pulled it back like twice, like it.
Was nothing like fifteen years old.
Yeah, and he's like, what the hell right, and you put there like, well, I want one of those things.
Yeah, Like that's at that time, you know, pounded equal speed right and performance right, and so the if you could man up and get a certain pound bow, you're automatically at an advantage.
Yeah, and an overdraw you gotta have an overdraw. Yeah, I had to have an overdrawn your bow that way, you're just shooting the lightning fast.
Oh my goodness. You know. Yeah at that time, you know, I had what I thought was the catsw oh, yeah it was.
I was jealous. Was all I had was an eighty pound bowl with bow with sixty five percent let off. And I was a little jealous.
And I can't remember really any of my friends be all to pull out. I couldn't.
I couldn't pull it, yeah, and it made me so pissed off. I was just like, I'm like, give me that thing, and I would try to pull it like this is this is bullshit, Like how how can you pull this bow? Like it's you know, not to brag up Randy, but he kind of had superhuman strength. He's got this superhuman grip and superhuman strength, and I've never seen anything like it. Yeah, anyway, but anyway, back back there to it.
So I had this this this bow I had. You know, we worked hard, like he said, and we anyway, I didn't know why I couldn't hit a freaking elk Like that same day he's talking about him and his brother went this way, I went this way. I'm hunting solo and I have these bults, Like I have a bull come in twenty yards, I can't hit it. I missed the one that I was pretending to be a both with my bow upside down my head. He came at
twenty yards. I couldn't hit it, multiple times, time after time through that course of art first few years, Like I couldn't freaking hit one, and I don't. I didn't know what was wrong, Like I honestly couldn't. I couldn't pinpoint it. I was so frustrated. I was disheartened. I was so far from hitting elk. I never even wounded one, Like it was ridiculous.
What was the pivot? What was the pivoting point? Like, when did you figure out what you were doing wrong?
Well, I was whitetail hunting, and I've been white tail hunting on the ground. I had two we'll call them brothers, white tail nice five byce coming in.
We're in ten point to the eastern folks.
Yes, yeah, And and it's cattle country on the verge of a huge canyon, right it's it's this canyon is known to everybody, all the locals. Is literally a hell and so I'm hunting the top of that where it comes out on top. It's kind of prairie land on top, and there's a coupond there and we we hate derk and I hate for everybody. We knew, all the farmers. They let us have permission to hunt everybody. We had special rights to some of this private land because of all our effortin right.
So yeah, this worked our butts off for these farmers.
Farmers. Yeah, they freaking loved us, you know that.
One guy's like, if you want to shoot an milk, you have to shoot two though, Like no, no, yeah, yeah, He's like, no, no, you have to shoot two of them.
Yeah. They they literally encourage us to thin the herd. They wanted these elk off their property, so their food. Yeah. The pivotal point for me killing something with my bow was I was whitetail hating. I always enjoyed elk haning in the morning because they were very active. They they called a lot back in those days, but not so
much in the evening for my taste. And I honestly, I didn't care to hunt elk in the evening as much as I did whitetail because the white tail in that country, there's some beautiful bucks, and I really wanted to get one of these big bucks with my bow. And I'd got busted a few times on the ground where they came in out of this big canyon to this cow pond, and so I decided to build a tree stand, you know. So it was like noon, two o'clock in the afternoon. It took me a couple hours,
and I built. I had a little Mechita screw gun, and I built me a tree stand out of two by fours and climbed up in it, and I had a burl sack kind of blind around it to block my motion. And so there sweat is hot. It was very hot, you know. I remember the heat. And I get up in that thing and it's like two o'clock and I have to wait till like seven thirty. So, you know, I got five hours roughly before the last thirty minutes when actually White Hill come out, you know.
So I'm sitting there and two three hours later, here comes a combined like it just happens to be. It just happens to be, you know, time to harvest. And so about every forty minutes this combine would go by two or three times before dark set in. He had come swathen by and wave at me and my tree stand. I'm on them. I'm on the on the cattle side of this fence line, and you know, I'm a high with this guy and he's eat, He's gotten the eat, and I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? You know?
And so as it. You know, we're in the last half hour daylight and I'm glass and I can see the deer coming out, but they're they're three hundred yards away, you know. And I'm like this, this guy in the combine, it's got everything fouled up where I'm at. They're not coming into this cowpond and they're gonna come in out
down here, and I need to make a decision. Am I going to go try and sneak this fence line that has brushed on the bob wire and try and get in a position to shoot one of these deer because I'm literally deer hunting.
But I have I have.
An ELK tag, you know, so I'm gonna move in on these deer. I take one look back down to this canyon that's literally a hell hole, and there's a hurd ELK thirty yards from me coming out of this canyon on this trail to this cowpond, and the lead out comes up and let's call my feet twelve to fourteen feet off the ground, off this homemade tree stand thing, and she comes in. She's at seven yards or less. Like it's a down it's a downward shot for me.
Pretty steep angle, pretty steep angle, straight, you know, it's pretty down right, And she knows something's up, like I can tell. She's alert. She knows something's up. But I'm not calling. I'm silent, you know, I'm I'm white tail hut. And where we're at it's it's bowls or cows. And I have this I have to reach over with my burlac sac covering to get my bow over the top of it to be able to shoot straight down at her. And right before I pull the trigger, well, it's like
I always do. I don't know. Let me say I've shot at fifteen olcause this time haven't hit one yet, you know, it was ridiculous back in the those days. And right before I squeeze on my release, I notice I'm not looking through my peep site like I ain't I see my pins right, you know, and my pins on the elk, but my peep sites clear off to the right side of my face. I don't even care where that thing's.
Out, not even close, not even close.
And it dawned on me at that time. That's why I missed all those previous elk because of the excitement of the moment. I mean, like, this is a cow, like she's the lead cow, and my heart's beating a thousand miles an hour, right, And because I've missed so many now I'm frustrated. I'm angry with myself and all
this stuff's going on emotionally inside of me. And but but probably because I had the screen of this camouflage burlap sack and I'm in a tree stand that like, I have a few extra seconds before I pull the trigger, and I, for some reason I realized I'm not looking through that peep site, so I pulled the peep site in I'm like, oh man, that's where I've been going wrong. And I shoot that cow, which you know, that's the extended story. I did get the cow. It was great, she dropped in her tracks.
But yeah, dude, that's it's tough to hear that. Like, yea, but some people go there like for even further, you know, years and years, Like they don't diagnose their their issue. They black out, they do whatever they're not. They just get so caught up in excitement, excited in the moment they forget their shot process. So that was cool that you were able to finally catch yourself in that moment and be like, oh, I see what I've been doing, right, that's what I've been missing. Yeah.
So unfortunately for me, you know, I I realize that, but that's probably eight years after I started bow hunting or some We're in there and Dirk been killing out the whole time, you know, and I'm.
Like just like, I'm like, what the hell's going on? You know, and.
Dirk's just knocking tag after tag, you know, and I'm like, what the hell's wrong with me?
Anyway, you had a pretty good run with a with a tree stand hunting. Yeah, like another time you shot a spike bowl out of a tree stand by a pond.
Yeah, it's like.
A lesson you wanted to you know, early season, hot season places where you elk need not a lot of water, but there's cow ponds or there's ponds around. It's a great place to put a tree stand. You shot a spike that had a broken skull. Yes, that was That was always crazy. I always like to tell that story to people when they're talking about weird stuff they found in the woods.
Yeah, that was. That was inner and so as you said, you know, so after that, I kind of got on into the tree stand el cunning for a little while, and I had a purple tree stand. I put on the same pack frame we.
Talked screw screw two by four. Yeah, into the tree with you, Pakita.
Yeah, I went all out and bought me one of these portable tree stands. Job. It wasn't a self climber. It was when you had to you know, screw in peg deal.
I was.
I was a screwing pig tree stand guy. And so yeah, I screw in, put my stand up and the same pack frame we talked about about me pranking, prank, being prankster down in the back country, you know, the same same darn thing, same backpack. You know. It's like, I leave my backpack at the bottom of my tree because while I'm up in the tree, and I'm only fifteen feet up because I'm over a pond, it's thirty seven yards across the furthest point from from me. It's five
twenty in the afternoon. I remember it like yesterday. Bear comes in on the same trail that I hiked in and I could tell he sniffing my trail and he's sniffing to me, and he sniff all the way to the base of my tree and he rattles the buckles and stuff on my little backpack. Oh really, yeah, and it scared it. It startled him, and he pounced off, you know, kind of reminded me of like a meal deer the way he left out through the tall grass, kind of bounced down there. And so he bounced on
out of there. And then I sat there for another two hours. It was in the seven o'clock range now, and I thought, man, so why I'm here is because I seen twenty five head and some bulls here the day before. Yeah, of elk. So I decided I'm going to set up here and try and you know, I know they're here. I know they come out just before dark, and so I want to get things fired up just
a tad bit earlier because I'm hunting now. So I decided to do some calling from this tree stand and two two and a half hours after I've been in this tree stand, I do some cow caols and bugle, and I'm not kidding at all. Forty yards across from me, a spike gets up out of the brush. He been betted down there the whole time, the whole time I climbed the tree, the whole time I set up my tree stand.
The bear, the whole deal.
He been betted down with inside of me that I couldn't see because he was betted down in the brush and whatnot. He stands up and he circles over, and this to me was the first time I ever passed up And Ok, he's a spike bowl and I knew there was a nice bowl there because I'd seen him the night before, so I decided not to shoot him. He's at thirty seven yards. He's bellied deep in this cow pond, and he gets out of the pond. He
circles around. He literally gets in the same trail that that bear walked in, and he followed that bear's trail in my trail all the way up to the buckles. He's seven feet below my heels in this tree stand. Like I can see his fuzzy little elk corn, you know, he hadn't rubbed his velvet is the first two days of season, late August, and yeah, I passed him up and then he turns, wrinkles my back, back turns and he walks back and he circles back around and gets
bellied deep in the pond again. And he's at thirty seventy yards. I him with my range fire. I'm like, I'm shooting him. You had, you had your chance to get away, and so I shoot him and my arrow goes, you know, passed through, which I'm like, you know, I'm super excited he passed through. And he runs forty yards
and piles up that. Yeah, he had he he had spikes and his right side and his whole skull plate between the spikes were broken, and he would I don't think unimate through the winter honestly, because he had rott in his head and brain like he had.
He had seat down inside there inside the brain hole.
Yeah, something broke him. I don't know how is he not dead? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.
You know you see a ton of bulls with broken pedicles and weird antler configurations and weird like like the pedicle and the complete wrong spot on their head. But I wonder do they reheal after all that and then just like they make it.
I think this is a different deal though, because you know, you're talking about clear out on a brown tying and above to the whale tails or whatever something.
But but they're they're like the pedicle right, it's like in the wrong spot on their melon, right on their skull. It's not in the right spot.
His skull cap between his eyes were broken, like where it stitched together. Yeah, how did that happen? I have no idea. I always wonder that. I don't know. I mean, maybe who knows.
But there's there's the road in a highway close by, you know, within a mile or two.
Yeah, yeah, it could have happened. The shootures in the skull was broken. Didn't you say it had maggots? It hadn't. He had an infection in maggots down inside of his skull plate. And there's no way he would have lived through the winter. So I got him, yeah, you know, and he was good. Yeah. I got my wife's uncle, uncle Fred, come come out and help help me pack him out. You know, we got him. And anyway, that was there was another you know, early time elk killing
for me. That I realized my pins and yards. That's the first Elk I had ever effectively used the rangefinder on. Oh yeah, you know what year that was two thousand, ninety nine or two thousand. Yeah, it was pretty Yeah, I.
Remember you had your little shanty up there at that time, in your little cabin. Yeah.
I bought that ninety nine, so it was ninetey two thousand. I think it was that first sure you had that place. Yeah, so twenty five years ago. Whatever.
You know, spikes are in trouble sometimes. You know, people are probably gonna scoff like I would never shoot a spike, But man, I've shot I've shot a ton of spikes. I know you have to. You know, sometimes you know it it's well, most of the time it's not about some majored out big rack that's gonna score x y Z. It's just about like filling the freezer, bringing home an Elk.
Well, our priority is meeting the freezer. Yeah, And like I said, that's the first that's the only time we passed up a shot and I end up killing him anyway. Yeah, But like for those twenty minutes until he got back into where I killed him, I was like I shouldn't have passed him.
I know there's we had enough time to reflect and be like, yeah, I shouldn't.
We need we need to eat before we decide anything else. Yeah. So that's really the heart and soul of what why I all kind is I know you two is. Yeah, we all want to kill big bulls. We all want to have the trophy role. But if it you know, if you're not fifteen miles in the back country, which is a different conversation altogether, It'd be hard for me to shoot a spike if I'm fifteen miles back in somewhere. But typical weekend warrior hunting, if it's brown it down, it's.
Well, I always it's funny because people I've been there, We've you and I've been there. We've all been there. Like you get into some damn hell hole and you're like, do not shoot anything except for a giant ball, Like it's got to be like a three fifty bull or we're not going to kill it in here. But I feel like that's the wrong attitude. You should be like, do not kill anything but a spike or a calf because a spike or a calf is can be a
lot easier to get out. Then they're so good to eat three fifty to be hard to pack out a place like that. Yeah, and to your point, yeah, they're so good to eat. I love spikes, they're so they're so naive.
I would take a spike over a cow.
Oh. Yeah.
And I've shot multiple cows, and I've learned a lot with cow killing. And I have learned that if they have a really black mane versus a lighter ten mane, the darker black mans are so much tender. There's so much a young cow. It's a younger cow. Yeah. And I've learned that because I also hunt Washington and I get cow tags right. And you know, I've shot say, we'll call it ten year, ten out of ten years, right, elk of cows.
You've experimented, Yeah, And I've shot.
You know, the the ones that I believe were lead cows versus the other cows. And if you can shoot a cow that has a really dark mane, from my experience, that will be the best to one on the table. Okay. I have a really dark Maine, dark Maine, Okay. So as they get older, they fade, the sun beats them down, they get bleached out a little bit, and that's I'll take that to the bank. And I believe that firmly because I feel like I've proved that to myself. So
you guys all do what you want to do. But if you got a cow tag, shoot the dark main one.
Yeah, if you want good food. I shot a cow in Oregon. I had a sled Springs tag in Oregon when I lived in Oregon for I lived there for like five years or so. Back in my former life, I like to call it. Back in my former career when I worked slinging tires of lesh one. Oh yeah, and I put in, I drew. I had some points. I drew sled Springs back when it was easy to draw as a resident. And one of the local ranchers said, hey, man, you can come out. He's like, he's the one that
encouraged me. He's like, hey, you need to draw this tag and you can come out. We got tons out. Like I'm like, and I don't want to really not into it. He's like, no, put in for the tag gets tag. You can come out, you can hunt here, you can stay here, you know, just like beyond beyond, you know, generous with its. Yeah, I'm like okay. So I'm like, hey, whatever, okay, I guess I'll put in for it. And the guys at work are like, yeah,
you needed to put in. That's that's a really good There's a ton of elk that that's the one that's the people would kill to go there.
It's like a ten thousand acre place.
So I draw this tag. I go out there and I hunt opening weekend and I seen that. I mean there's elk everywhere, hundreds. It would be a herd of four hundred elk. I'm like, oh my god, there's too many elk. But they weren't really bugling too much. But so I have a week off and later on I go and I chase these elk around, and I there were so many bowls and so many elk. Like when I would bugle, you might as well take your bugle too and throw it away. They didn't give a shit,
like it meant nothing to the elk. There there was fourteen bulls bugling at all times. There's there's just too much. I was just one another voice. Nobody give a shit. So I had to start, you know, spot stock, you know, crawl in, you know, try to get a shot. Oh man, yeah, open his Ponderosa Pine. And he had a team of
laborers there that would clear the land. He was the landowner was like paranoid for fire danger, so he limbed every tree to like six feet, took all the limbs off, every tree to six feet, took all the limbs, put them in piles, burned them.
Every winter.
Like this place, I could not find a freaking stick to rub a tree with. Like it was literally there was no sticks on the ground because the fire danger they were worried about.
So it's so open.
So time after time after time, I see a big bull and a big bull with a herd. You know, there's multiple bulls, you know, probably fourteen, fifteen, twenty bulls in this herd of four hundred cows. And you do like you would crawl and creep and just like get as close and you would. I would be like, okay, I'm in within range, and then something stupid freaking cows.
There's so many eyes it would pick me off.
So I had a ten day hunt. I'd hunted out there. I hunted my little heart out. I had some opportunities on some smaller bulls, but man, I really wanted it. I wanted a herd bowl. You know, I really wanted and things weren't like giants. These were not like, you know, three fifty type poles. These were like, you know, like but the biggest boll I saw was probably like a three twenty bowl.
But I hunted all week.
And just got my ass handed to me, you know. On the last day, you know, and I and I you know, some people probably turn their nose up to this. But on the last day, I'm heading back. It just had just gotten schooled again and I just pissed off.
I'm like, I'm out, I'm going home.
And I'm driving back to the to the ranch house to get my crap and load up my stuff and leave. And there's these three cows lay next to the road cow elk and I'm like, huh, I pull over. I got a rattle in diesel truck. And it's like running around around. Yeah, And I stop and look at him. They don't pay me, no mine, So I get out stand there my range finders zap them like fifty fifty four yards. I'm like, they're not even looking at me.
So I'm like, huh, open up the back door, grab my bow, walk over the side of the road, get off the road because I shoot from the road. I want to I want to be legal. So I get to fifty yards of my zap again and they're still looking out there. They're just kind of chewing. They could not paying attention, like they don't care. And finally I'm like, man, if that want, if they would stand up, I might
shoot that one. I might shoot that biggest one. So I start like I start, I start making eat calls with my mouth yea, And finally they they stand up. In this one in the middle, I wanted to shoot. She started get up, but she kind of like she kind of like had a struggle. I kind of goot up like like kind of hurt, like she's like this old cow right. I have my bow drawn back, put my fifty yard ten I shoot, and I see my arrow. It's like it's all in slow motion. I see my
arrow go high. You see it higher than her back, and then it just disappears. And I don't hear a noise. I don't hear nothing. There's no reaction. She don't even batter ear or she won't even blink. I'm just like, how could I How did I miss? I'm like that felt such like such a good release. So I grab another row, put it on there, and I start, I'm like, wait a minute, Like, if if I didn't hit it on that shot, I have no business shooting again because that was like the perfect shot.
Yeah, and then so.
I just know I stop. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to shoot again. And I look and she kind of like she starts looking around with her head like something's something's wrong, Like she she's looking around like, hey, what what's going on here? And all of a sudden, her her knees get wobbly and she tips over dead like this is like thirty like not even thirty seconds.
Nice.
She tips over feet in the air, dead Like I've never seen an elk die with an arrow hit that fast in my life. So I get over there and it and it'd shot and it had passed through and the arrow was like twenty yards on the other side of her and the other elk, you know, the other COWSI ran off.
But anyway, we loaded this thing.
Up with a tractor. I mean, you know, I feel even embarrassed even and metting this whole story, you know, I mean, for all the all the folks out there suffering and packing mean, I mean, you know, at least every now and then you get an easy one, right, and so skin this thing out. You know, the arrow hadn't even hit a rib, right, it would just a miracle. It just went through between two ribs on both sides, in and out and anyway, just it was a perfect
capstone to that hunt. I got even with them, damn elky, I got me a cow, like screwing me over a whole week. I got me a cow. I got even. But back to your point, I can't remember. I wish I could. I didn't even get a picture, but I don't know how old. I don't know what her main looked like, but I will say like her ivories were like worn off to nothing, Like they were tiny and black, hardly nothing. And it was the toughest elk I've ever een in my tires. Absolutely, it was like the worst.
I mean, it tasted fine, it wasn't gamy, yeah, but it was tough, like backstraps. You had to like bring a beef stroke or you had to make elks strogan off out of them.
They were just oh like trying to cows are deceiving, you know, and me hunting. So I've been blessed to have basically two cow kill permits in Washington State for ten plus years, but probably fifteen years. I don't know. I have to do some math on that. But so me and my son Ryan have both literally killed elk multiple years. And so it's taken away from my mountain hunting of Idaho and bowl hunting, et cetera, because I'm a mean like I said earlier, and we get these
it's fun. Yeah, we get these cow tags. But I've absolutely in my own world, between I mean, his amount of kills and my amount of kills, proven that if you can kill a cow, which is cow only for this situation, if you've proven that you've killed the darker, blacker maned cows, they're so they're so good. We've we've missed early on. We've shot some of the browner, tanner colored mans. You can't chew them like you're talking about. They're they're like an old bowl. They don't have that
rut flavor. But they're tough. They're tough. They're tough man. They've been around for a long time, you know. And I'm like, I a soon that I identified that, I'm like, don't shoot that one. Shoot that one, you.
Know, burger meat and slow cracker, right, and I don't like that. I love Backstride, I love Elksteak, I love all that stuff.
But you know, anyway, tweet his own for you guys out here listening to this in randy Land, which is where I live, shoot the ones with the black Mans.
Write that down right right that down well, Now, in randy Land, it's not always been blue skies, tweety birds, lollipop all that, like, you know, it's not. It hasn't been all this like great like like lucky opportunities and like all this stuff. There has been some unlucky things happened.
I know too.
We're gonna we're gonna start on one. Now, back to your tree stand hunting. Yes, you were back trying to kill a white tailed deer.
Oh yeah, on.
Out of a tree. And he had a he had a hunting partner at the time, and yeah, tell us about this, and this is a place you and I had for years had seen big bucks. And yeah, I was like, I'm a little jealous. I was like, bastard, You're going in there and get kill one of.
Those big bucks. Yeah, all right, I know I know what you're talking about and there I was, and I've so I've targeted, like I said earlier, white tail in the evening out of tree stands, I'll hunting in the morning, white tail hunting in the evening. So I'd had a tree stand set up where I'd seen some very like, very beautiful bucks white tails, and I'm like, yes, I'm gonna get one. So every time I sit in that stand, I see they don't seem to come out where I'm at.
They're on this other ridge. And so I've decided I'll put my buddy in this stand that I already had established, and I'll pack frameman put up my own tree stand. And so this country's super steep, like it's ridiculously steep. So there's a big bowlpline Ponderosa Pine to the layperson. Yes, And so the game trail is at the upper elevation and this tree is below downhill of it, and so and it's at a slight angle. This tree is leaning
because of the canyon country, et cetera. And so I put in this screw in footpags, you know, to climb up this tree. And I I get up there, and I'm going to consider this part of this podcast the safety talk for all you people who take for granted safety or don't consider safety now right, I'm here to tell you need to think about it. And and this is a real situation. So I'm higher in this tree, which the base of the tree you can't get your hands around the base of it, like you can't get
your hands around half of it. It's a giant Pondurosa bulpine. And it's real dry country. It's a dry hair. And when you go up these huge trees, they are one hundred plus feet tall, you need to go up a certain I needed to go up a certain elevation to get straight across from the game trail, like to have literally a horizontal shot straight to the deer as it comes through this trail. I'm thirty feet in the air because this tree base is below the trail. Right. It's steep, Yeah,
it's steep country. Is like very steep country. And there's no limbs on these trees. Tell thirty feet up. They're huge trees. And well, so a buddy of mine, which I had a tree stand set up, we'll call it a one hundred yards away roughly. I had already had a tree stand there and it was over a watering hole, the only water you can find between there and the river, which is eight hundred yards downhill. So I'm like, you
go here. I'm gonna go put up this portable tree stand here, and between the two of us, one of us is gonna get any giant white tail because there's a beautiful bucks here. So I get up that I'm I screwing my pigs. I climb up the tree and I have some five fifty cord and I'm hoisting up my portable tree stand from the ground and I'm straddling a four inch limb, which is the first limb thirty
feet up from the ground on a sixty grade. Right, It's it's like a cow's face, cow's face, and I just I get my backpack that has this purple tree stwn and I set it on the next limb to my right, and I'm straddling this four inch limb, huge limb like you'd never suspect, right, And I set this up there, and I start taking these little bungee cords off of this tree stand on the backpack to unhook
it so I can set up my trees down. And I have all these little screw and pick that I got up to this elevation and I'm literally if you look to your left, it's level to where I need to shoot this white tail that I think is going to come out at right, and it's earlier in the evening.
So as soon as I start unbuckling these bunging cords from my tree stand the one I'm on, which is the first limb from the ground that I'm straddling, I hear this big and it shears off at the bait at the at the tree and I fall thirty feet. But because of the angles and everything, I thank god, I don't gut myself on my tree pegs.
Oh yeah, on the way, you know.
So I fall to the ground thirty feet. When I hit the ground, I'm I'm fifteen feet from a property line where there's some fence line. You know, where we're from, there's a lot of different fence you know, there's a private properties and whatnot, and I have permissions to hunt there and et cetera. But there's a barb wire fence. It's a foresharing barbire fence. And I pile up in a pile of rocks literally like it's it's decomposed granite stone that I land in, and my heel is facing
me like my leg is shattered. I can see my boot prints. My whole entire boot is looking at me from below, like not up, but down behind my kneecap like it's literally piled up. My back is in extreme pain. I'm I'm broken, like this is a safety situation here, right, there's a life it's a life critical situation. So I'm piled up. We do have two way radios between me and my hunting partner, and you know, I know, I'm I know without a doubt that my leg is entirely destroyed.
I don't know what the other extents of my injuries are. And I get on this two way radio. I get my pack off, this pack frame that fell with me, with the tree stand that fell with me, and I dig this stuff out. I get on this two way radio and I called to him. I'm like, hey, I've fallen. I need help. This is emergency, right, That's all I that,
you know. And in the meantime, I can feel my boot swelling, my foot inside my boot swelling like like it's it's bad, and and I I kind of army crawl to this fence I know I need to elevate. You know, I've been me medically trained. I was in
the military. I know that. Like it's almost it's kind of weird, but it's almost like, I know my leg's screwed up and I need to just elevate it, and then I need to assess my other critical life components, right, And so I get to a fence line and I flip my leg up over the bottom rung of this bob wire fence and I can just feel the bones grinding and pouncing in there, and it just it's just like a j off the backside. It just flops off the back. My leg is destroyed, my ankle is destroyed,
and my back has severe pain. And so I'm I'm in a bind, right and he's not answering right. So the message I'm telling you guys right now is you guys need to pick a hunting partner that you trust and you can have accountability for and you know he's got your back. Yeah, you know. And I hate to say that, but my hunting partner did not have my back, and you know he knows who he is. It it it wasn't relevant at the time. So anyway, moving on,
I'm broken. It's two hours, three hours before dark. And not only if my radio didn't work, I could holler and he could hear me. We're not that far far. Yeah, we're not that far apart. And but he's not responding, no response, and I'm on my own, and so I lay there. I get myself in position. I do leave my boot on because I think from my military training that apply pressure, and you know your boots are playing my boot. My boot in itself is applying basically a splint.
Even though the heel was facing me, I balanced it and it would flop back and forth over this bob wire strand and I got it to where my body is downhill of this bob wire fence and my my head and chest is downhill and so everything's elevated. And I know that's the best condition I have, and as long as I don't have internal bleeding or external bleeding, which I had no idea of, right because I literally
couldn't move. I like I moved enough to get myself in that situation, but it was like it was like I give up after that, right, you know, this is this is as far as I can go. End My back end up was broken in two places, and my leg and ankle was shattered and destroyed. So I lay there for two hours plus and I'm hollering. I'm on my mic I'm trying to get support, and he's not come, you know, And this is the guy we're like, we're good friends and anyway, eight people amblent. He comes to
me after dark, surprised I'm alive. He's kind of chaotic, and you know, not everybody deals with trauma the same. He's he's out of sorts and he's gonna drive to town, which is an hour and a half away. I'm like, no, go to these people's houses. And I'm kind of you know, I've had enough time to think, Yeah, you know, you know what needs to be done. Yeah, you hiked it this this house that's over here, and you use their phone, you call for ambulance. So we get that going. He
does that, The ambulance comes. It takes eight people to pack me out out of this countryside. It's nasty, right, so I'm on a stretcher. I get packed out. We go in there in cheat room. They is a small town, Idaho hospital. They send me to a bigger hospital and another town another fifty miles away. So anyway, we get fixed up. Years go by. This kind of reminds me of this prank I pulled on you. Yeah, right years ago by, and you know, everything's good and we've been
friends this whole time. And then he tells me, he confides in me that he heard me fall and when he was in my stand that I set up for him and put him on, he got queasy and you know, kind of sicked himself. He thought I died immediately, and then he heard me squalling like a well, he called me like a little woman. You know, He's like, I heard you crying like a little woman out there in the woods. You know, like he's some tough guy, but
I'm the one out there in pain. Yeah. That he left everything right, you know, And so anyway, we discontinue our friendship after that. He left me there hoping that I was dead by dark, and it was. It was an hour after dark before you come to check on me.
And so lessons learned is you know, you guys that that you hunt with and your brothers in the mountains, and you guys need to really understand, you know, there's there's hunting advantages where you trust each other for hunting events and calling events and who's the shooter and all this stuff, But there's actually a safety aspect that really should be considered. Base you trust your life with this person. Yeah, you know, you don't think about it because there's not
an injury. But these people that you're with, they need you need to trust them with your life, and you need to kind of vet them. I would say, I feel like that you guys should talk about that before you go hunting. How are you going to handle this situation if this happens, what are you going to do?
You know, if you cut yourself or wound yourself or cut an artery or you know, trip on a broadhead goes through your your you're you know, whatever the situation is, you guys that are out there hunting should discuss safety protocols and how to respond to him.
Absolutely, yes, And I think that's very overlooked.
Like we all will talk about like what your expectations for hunting.
We always kind of talk about that, like oh I want this, I want to do that, and who's going to do this, who's gonna that, But we don't talk about the whole safety aspect enough, Like, hey, man, if something bad happens. This is, you know, our plan maybe whatever.
I would have never guessed in a million years that this guy would have seized up because he got sick himself. Yeah right. He seems like a pretty I know him. I would have never thought that, yeah, you know, and I don't I don't really, I literally don't hold it him against him. But he wasn't there for me, right, you know. And and because of that, you know, we went separate ways, you know.
Well, speaking about people having their your back, yeah, you've also I've had Yeah, and now there's there's When I started off, I said, this is the Misadventures of Randy, So it's not just adventures, but there's been some misadventures too.
And then his next story.
And we're we're over an hour right now, but thank you all for listening, and I'm gonna I gotta get this story out because it's one of my favorite Andy stories. You were you were late season cow hunting. You had some of your your buddies from work on your crew hunting with you, and you get it. You shoot this elk and what happens this is yeah again, yeah, I mean, if it can happen to anybody, it's gonna happen, tory.
I think, yeah, And out of all this, I'm a survivor. So there I was, like Dirk said, he you know, he kind of told you we're we're at But I did shoot an elk.
You guys were had the boat into this place. You got to guess use a boat to get to this place to shoot this elk?
Yes, yeah, we we We were on a lake, north Idaho. It was in late November, hunt snow, sleet, kind of cold, misery, wet, foggy environment, and I I saw hurdle. I had a tag, the shot was good. I took it, It dropped and we went after it. That's the summary. Since we're late in this, so we hike hundreds of yards let's call it five hundred yards up up the mountain. And they had marked the tim and had brushed the lower brush for a future clear cut for this winter. So this's November.
A lot of times in Idaho they timber fall in in the winter months when there's you can't excuse me, you can't haul logs because the roads aren't quite froze up, et cetera. So things have been cut, Timber been cut, timber been cut well the brush. The brush had been cut to get to the timber. The logs hadn't been dropped yet. So I shoot this cow. There's three others with me. We boat it up into this canyon country and we are hunting up way up in there, and
life is good, like success. I'm the only one with the tag. It's a special draw thing. Blah blah blah.
Get my elk. It drops. We hike way up in there, and honestly, we have to drag it down this huge We have to drag it down this mountain and we have to get it down to the boat, and we have to load it on the boat, and then we have to boat for miles down to the boat ramp and we have to load it on the boat ramp, and then we have to drive miles and miles take it back to even the local town, which is still an hour plus from the normal town that we live in,
right right, so we're way back in there. Well, well, we get to the elk. We got the elk. That ring's good and it's just snowing now. It's just coming down. It's slick. It's I don't know what the grade is on the hill, but it's plus steep. It's it's plus foury degrees, you know, it's it's steep, and it's slippery,
and it's wet, and it's miserable. And I'm on the downhill side of this elk, and we've all decided instead it because it's just a downhill slippery drag, we'll just drag it down, get it on this boat, and we'll take it out hole. And so I'm on the downhill of the elk, pulling on the rear leg and it's just so cold and so slippery that I lose my grip on it and I fall backwards downhill onto the ground. So if you know, you guys need to need to
picture an angle pulling and falling downhill. It's it's it's it's quite a drop. It's very awkward. Yeah, even though you're not far from the ground, it's still a considerable fall. Yeah. So I fall and I get up and something's not right. I literally have an eight foch eight foot pine branch hanging out of my butttalks somewhere. You've been impaled. I was impaled. Yeah, I was impaled by something that was
brushed by loggers. And so they have an angled, sharp inch and a half inch and a quarter you know branch that that impaled me. And I didn't know how what. I didn't know what the extremness of it was at the time because it happened so fast. And I got these three other guys who were trying to work this out down and I immediately stand up from this fall and I'm like, whoa, stop. Everybody's the top right and I have this thing penetrating me. But we're so far back.
Like you know, they always say never like, never pull out if you're impaled.
That's what they say.
That's what they say. That's what they say. But they weren't in a place like this, and agree. I was military trained, like I know that. You know, if you get something stuck in your eye, put a DICKSI cup over and secured. This is not the same. This is an eight foot pine branch that is impaled me and I don't and I don't know how deep it is. I don't know if it's an inch. I don't know how deep it is. I can't tell.
It just hurts.
And I stopped the show. Stop dragging the elk. Everybody, whoa, whoa, whoa, Something's wrong. I'm hurt. And I'm on my feet and this thing is stick it out of the back of me like a peacock tail, and I don't know what, you know, my instincts are draw it out right, so because to see how, I don't know if it tore through my butt, cheek or my leg or whatever. I
really don't know. It's pitch black. We're by the time this we're wailing into the evening gets dark at four thirty five o'clock this time of year, and so I grab the base of it where it's touching my flesh, and I draw it out and it's like twelve thirteen inches. It went inside me and it went between my ass and my tail bone, which I didn't know at the time, but it's up into my guts, and still I didn't
know what was going on. I call over one of my my hunting buddies here and without humility, have to drop my drawers and say, what's the injury? Yeah, what what are we going? I don't see it. I don't know what the heck's going on. I'm like, what's the injury? And he's like, oh my god, Oh, we need to get you to the hospital. Oh my you know you're gonna die. That's that's his impression of what he sees.
You're good, yeah, and we're we're so far from civilization. Yeah, it is not convenient, and it is steep as steep as a cow's face. And they decide as a team that to keep me from going to shock, they should feed me alcohol. This is once you got back to the boat. No, no, they had in their back back. Oh yeah, they're they're already celebrating a big hunt, you know, and we hadn't drink any yet, but they're ready, you know, they're they're backwoods fellas, and they're they're ready to party.
You know, they're ready to celebrate. And so to keep you from going to shock, they decided to give me alcohol, which, to whoever's listening to this is, do not do this. Do not drink alcohol if you've been injured in the back country. This isn't a Western movie, right, yeah, this ain't poor poor you know, pull the bullet out old Colt forty five and dump the powder on you, and you know, set it on fire to catterize.
This is not what it is, right, So don't do this. But this is what.
Randy agreed to. I don't blame them. This is the nobody had, Nobody made me do it, nobody knew, right, And so you know, we start drinking. They're gonna they're gonna like keep me from going to shock by giving me alcohol. So me and one other guy, and because of the alcohol, my mind changes from survival mode to when you get this elkout mode, like you know, which is odd, it's weird. Yeah, this is weird.
Now you got a potential like catastrophic injury. Yeah, and but you're like, we gotta get this elkout.
Still, Guys, when you get this elk out, and it just so happens the boat that I have borrowed, the friend of mine who owned this boat was in Afghanistan. He trusted me with the boat, right, So I didn't have a boat to send the I couldn't go to the hospital and let these guys go recover this elk the next day. Right, That's how I thought of it. And because I was, you know, unfortunately intoxicated at this point,
I'm like, hey, you bob, you're helping me out. These other two guys are gonna continue to drag this helk out. We're getting this helk out tonight and I won't accept anything other. Yeah, right, this is what we're doing. Right, So my butt's buckered, like I don't want to spill a drop of blood. My butts bluckered. We get it out. We go to the boat ramp, we load the boat, We drive the town. We go to the local emergency room, which just by coincidence, my wife is a nurse there.
And what the on call er doctor says to do, she just happens to disagree with. Oh, which I give my wife my life in this situation. She refused to let them do what they wanted to do to me. They wanted to sew up the wound. So if you can imagine what happened is I had a plug of five layers of clothing that was missing, like a muzzleloader patch inside me. Oh yeah, thirteen inches. And so she didn't know that. Nobody knew that. And when I got home, I literally took a shower first, and I had her
inspect my wound because she's a nurse. Which that's a lot of humility. Yeah, which remind everybody listening, is that's below my tailbone, but above my butt, that that little chunk of skin is where this inch and a quarter branch went in thirteen inches right up into my guts. And well that happened. I lost material from layers of clothing.
You know, not to mention pieces of branch, yes, and bark, et cetera.
So I go home. I tell my wife I'm hurt, and I get in the shower and I'm rinsing things and I got pine needles and I got blood and I got everything going on, and I'm like, honey, I think I got a problem. We go to the er. The doctor says, oh my god, we need to sew this up. She says, no way, this needs you need to dig stuff out. Yeah, exactly. So we get ship quack. Yeah,
so she love her, Thank you mama. She opposes the on call surgeon decision, and we get another ambulance who drives me an hour plus to a larger hospital who evaluates the situation and the next day does surgery. And I'm in the hospital for over a week. Yeah. Yeah, it was a bad deal.
So but talk about got your back. Those guys they got you out of it and that's what matters. And they got you drunk. Now here's the here's the kicker about the be the drinking like you couldn't have anesthesia because of drinking the alcohol.
My god, they wouldn't give me. I was so thirsty in the emergency room. I wanted to water. They I wanted to like they're giving me drops from a ring drag just to give you know, they would not give me nothing. So back to the being alcohol affected, they will give you nothing. And maybe not even with alcohol, they will give you nothing before surgery, which was the next day.
So, man, what an incredible story from from people who failed you to people who had your back, to back in the olden days when we had a lot of fun and did some some crazy stuff. And these are just some of the like some of our stories that we've had in the in the in the Elk woods and and in the in the years that we've known each other. You know, we didn't even talk about the time we found a dead guy. But I think that'll be.
For another time. That's a whole nother story. That's a whole other story.
And if we try to fit it in now, it's not even gonna He's not just a dead guy.
He was a murderer.
He was a murderer. But uh, we're gonna have We're gonna we'll have that story again at a later time. But uh, anyway, Randy, thanks so much again for coming on here. It's people, Ranny is family. Not only not only from being family from the marriage connection him his wife and my wife are sisters. But I mean, we've we've been together through thick and through thin. We've had
each other's backs, like since seventh grade. And I can only hope that that the other folks out there have had somebody, a good friend like Randy to to be able to lean on and can fight in and and and go through all their their highs and lows of life. So appreciate you coming on here, Appreciate your friendship, and I look forward to the next adventure.
So yeah, it was fun. More adventures to come. They never end right, especially with me, They never uh yeah anytime.
All right, Well, thanks for being on here, and we'll catch everybody on the flip flop yep.