All right welcome to the podcast uh adam and nathan thanks for being on here yeah.
Yeah so uh the the film that they just put out nathan i'm sick of blacktail southeast alaska over the counter is that the name of it or is there like another i put a couple like yeah it's long long title but it's adam crick is the last title and that's yeah that's what i title the film perfect yeah it was it was funny wasn't really sure i knew that he was on the hunt so i was worried i was wondering how much prominence he would have and right off the bat when he's
sitting on the shore i was like oh yeah that's perfect yeah no i had a great, that wasn't discussed i knew he was gonna film it i didn't know i was the feature presentation feature yeah well you had to kind of know if you're sitting down next to the to the lake and it was sneaky interviewing you well that was the last day it was sneaky yeah i knew i would be in the film but yeah well that's just to keep you calm and to keep you from getting nervous if he
said that he's going to feature you then you know you might get nervous you start doing weird stuff so that that way you can just focus on the hunt yeah thankful for that so how long did it take for you guys to figure out where you wanted to go and obviously we're going to be very vague about everything there and that's kind of how things roll but were you just like on x for weeks and months or was there something that you kind of picked out or did you just pick an island
pick a place or throw a dart what'd you do. You know, we'd been talking for a long time about the trip, you know, probably a couple years, I would say. I think three years. Yeah. And so we had some ideas. I had some islands that I wanted to go to that, you know, just wanted to check out. And then we kind of pinned it down to one. But we were kind of talking for a long time about where to go all the way into February, I think.
We tried to narrow it down. each of us pick a few spots and then we call every couple weeks and figure it out and then i mean we made a game time decision too at the end there yeah we did there was and i mean adam has local knowledge and then i i know a couple people that live up there and and they gave some words of advice around islands and things like that but i mean we really didn't have a clue.
We just kind of said hey like let's just go make it happen and have a good time and we we both were saying like we may not see anything but this looks like a pretty spot so we were just kind of up for the adventure nice yeah a lot of places you know that you're the chances are pretty good that time of year you just go up into the alpine and you're probably going to be in good shape it's going to be a matter of sometimes those hot days can really push things
down and off but you guys found some snow which is really important sometimes by the time the the sun comes up it's already so hot that they're just back bedded down if there's no dew on the on the forge then they're just they're just in the brush and it can be hard to find but you guys had some some good uh good terrain up there and then some snow it's really helps melting fast yeah so how did you guys meet i know that nate you were on tongas talk with adam a couple years ago how'd
you guys meet that was it that's how we met yeah so who did you did you seek him out because at that time adam you were living in met la catlin that's how i know you and then nathan i just i i heard that podcast had you on the podcast and i met you that two springs ago now when you were up here.
Yeah crazy so you just reached out and internet relationship yeah i just i you know it's the new thing this online deal dude for hunting it's such it's the way to go well yeah no we just i think i watched a couple of your videos and and then i was like this guy knows a lot about blacktail hunting and more than that but just specifically that seemed kind of your niche and so we had john and And we thought it was a really, really good, probably our best one to date that we had had.
And so, and we just kept talking and, you know, it's, you just learn about somebody and learn how, what a good guy is. And, and so it was like, man, we should, should do a hunt sometime. So. And we just never stopped talking about it too. I mean, we'd go on different hunts, link back up at like the end of the hunting season talk and like, Hey, when are we going to make this happen? And I think for whatever reason, like I'd have a kid and then Adam would have a kid.
And then like, so it just didn't work out with having babies in the household. And then that was like, this was like the perfect year to just be like, we got to make it happen or else we'll never get it out there. And so, yeah. The irony too, is that you're making it happen now that Adam lives in Colorado. So now that he's got to pay the out of state tag fee and all that stuff.
Brutal. i had miles luckily so i could fly where we went for free till the till the other flight but yeah it's still pretty good though what are the prices for uh out of state what's elk in oregon nathan i don't i don't know the elk price very well but i mean it's got to be close close to a thousand dollars for license and tag for an elk in oregon blacktail you got columbia blacktail Yeah, and I knew that really well last year, but I'm going to go with like $485 for
a license in Deertag in Oregon. And then you hunted California too, right? Yeah. And then I did the California black tail hunt. And this year I went all in and got two deer tags, which is kind of crazy because I did not fill my only deer tag last year. And yeah, because you lived in California and know what that's all about. Yeah, I did one season. I got my license there. It was kind of when I was early into hunting because I didn't grow up hunting.
I just fished because we had a cross country start in early August and that went right into basketball. So just traveling and everything. And my, my buddies weren't really as into it. My parents had moved up from Colorado, so they were used to kind of whitetail and mule deer hunting, but didn't really get into it. We moved up here. And so, you know, I never really got into it until later, but yeah, the California that's, that's just a wild experience.
Especially. So it was one of those, I think it was the D three through five, where there was like 80,000 tags for a small area. And there's just, it's more about the deer camp kind of hanging out with the, with the buddies, beer drinking than it is actually trying to find deer. So it was, it was, it was terrifying. I saw one doe and it was just out of its mind that the, the horror in its eyes was, was obvious.
Yeah. I think Adam and I were both kind of surprised that we were able to pull off Alaska as non-residents and, and do it kind of in an affordable way. Cause we have families and, and you think about like the price per pound of meat and things like that when you're out there.
But it's like we were both kind of pleasantly surprised like hey we we were able to do this cost effective and and we did you know pull like reach out to well adam's friend and and just kind of like they helped us out in some ways too with where we stayed but regardless i think we were able to do it in kind of a affordable way so that was huge bonus yeah it was because i think each tag was what 300 yeah yep and so i mean yeah but then i had a friend that we stayed with when we got we
came out a little early and then stayed with him he helped we froze meat and you know so that saved us the hotel and that kind of stuff so that was helpful had you been on flats before, i have for goat oh and that a fog dad cunt yeah kodiak for me okay yeah i just did i did did an elk and then did deer and it didn't work out really well this year where's the fun you did the elk fun capping trip i do the edelin tag in like 2015 before i knew anything about anything.
It was one of those let's just give the tag to well that's the the assumption that it's all rigged and it's like hey let's give this tag to this person who doesn't know anything he's definitely not going to shoot an elk and it'll be fine yeah but yeah that's rough that good yeah it's it's brutal yeah yeah it's brutal but uh it's fun it's just a whole different experience and once you. There's no other hunt that you can do that kind of gets you away.
Cause even like if you're driving, like I was driving on the North slope to go to the hall road, you're still attached. Like there's there, the road that's still connected to Fairbanks, which is still connected to, you know, Florida, if you keep driving far enough. So once you fly out, you're really leaving civilization behind in a way that's really unique. And it's, it just gives it a whole different flavor. What, uh, what'd you guys feel about, about that?
I mean, I always liked that feeling when the plane leaves. It's like kind of my favorite feeling of the trip, um, in a lot of ways. Cause you're like, Ooh, now we got to like, I mean, you're kind of, you got to get kind of serious and you know, the, the consequences increase for any injury or anything like that. And so it kind of just adds that heightened alert. So I really liked that feeling. Yeah, it was, it was just a beautiful place too. So it felt like you're just
dropped in my mind, like in a paradise and it's yours. I kept thinking about it too. After the trip, it felt like we had a national park to ourselves. It's like without all the crowds and cameras and everything. Well, I packed some, but, but still, I mean, it, it was just pristine. It felt untouched. Like nothing felt invasive about it. Whereas like, it's so hard to imagine most of our ecosystems here that aren't tampered with and it's up there.
It's untampered. It was just incredible in that way. And then also we gave ourselves a lot of time on the trip and then that we didn't really need because the weather was perfect. But the whole month prior to the trip, it was pouring rain every day. I was packing three pairs of rain pants, three pairs of rain jackets and like extra everything, extra tent. And then it gets down to the day before and it's like, wow, do we need sunscreen? And we really did, but we didn't take it. Yeah. I got burnt.
Yeah, I did too. it was it was pretty good yeah yeah when you guys showed up to to fly were there any concerns about weight or were you in in pretty good shape, We were in good shape just because there was two of us. The concern was the return flight. He's like, well, if you guys each get two bucks, we're going to be real close. And so we promised we would eat as much food as we could and bone everything out. I lost weight. Nathan brought a 50-liter dry bag full of food.
We were eating good at base camp, but that was the only concern.
And flying in we could we could have brought more it's just we wanted to be able to bring out four deer so so because you'd never actually hunted together but you talked a lot about stuff when you arrived kind of where you're at was there a moment of hey let's let's get going or you know i can just go full speed because i know both you guys just go you're you're a high performing high octane types uh fishing with you in wyoming adam it's
just like over the next mountain there's another one you know he's gonna end up in montana this is wild and i know nathan you get after it too so was it kind of cool to be in with with a kindred spirit with uh working really really hard or did you both have to say all right we should probably just relax ourselves a little bit before we run around too much do you want to start go ahead okay well i mean i told Adam on this on the whole trip.
It's like I've hunted with a few different people on some of my more difficult hunts. And I'm always a little nervous about it now because of, I've had one person blew out a knee in some really steep country and it took. Several hours to get this person off a hillside. And then just the need to go home early or things like this that are related to just not being ready for a trip. But I kind of had trust in Adam's experience with being up there and doing hunts like this.
And that was the limit of like, you know, hunting together was just kind of mutually knowing what we've done. But like Adam's a stud and like a great athlete too. And so it was really comforting to know that I had a good teammate. And there was never a question after maybe the first hike of was I worried about where we would go. Because yeah, we weren't shy with the country. And it's weird to think about it now, maybe a little careless, but we were just having fun and going for it.
And it's like, oh, there's deer a couple of miles that way. Let's go. And we always got back to the camp that night.
We never had to pull an all-nighter, but yeah, we stayed out late and had a good time yeah i was i knew i mean nathan's a runner and i knew he was physical and so i've hunted with a fair amount of different people and it's always nice to have the same pace with somebody or usually it's like more i'm waiting a little bit and so it was really nice we had a pretty similar pace and i think the first night when we went to glass we wasn't a far hike but you know it's a good test to
see where everyone's at and so we were pretty on par with each other and you know and then just yeah like you said not being worried about let's go to that far mountain you know the third day when we saw the deer over there and like it's like yeah let's do it and then pack some deer out and like you know we got back i think we made it back like almost at before dark every maybe one night we were a little late but it's
around midnight i think yeah but it's light later and light yeah so yeah i mean i was a little nervous like.
Mainly because i hadn't been hiking much that summer i was nervous i was gonna hold nathan back a little i was like god usually i hike like a lot but you know with two kids it's my summer trips have dwindled a lot and what he's saying is we were a good match even though he was kind of handicapped no no no i think i might have been a little slower than you is what i'm saying but no yeah so it was cool there was some gnarly stuff too there was this one interesting part of the hike that we
had to really figure out and we had to do it like every day but there was this cliffed out waterfall section where the there's this river that goes through a rock and it was gnarly it was so crazy we looked at it just one time by hiking up and looking over the drop-off edge and and just the wildlife had there was a there was a trail that we were able to eventually figure out how to navigate around this future but it really made it like kind of a technical spot to.
And then the pack out always involved getting around this waterfall, you know, water river through rock feature and it, but it was cool. I mean, kind of adds to the adventure, but, but that was kind of a hard thing. Like you're load, you're loaded up with an entire deer and a half or two that one day when we did the meat hall and yeah. And you got to climb up and over this ridge. It was kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah.
Everything changes when you add a little bit of weight and same thing with, you know, if you're just doing like training hikes with, uh.
You know lesser pack or you're doing runs or this or that once you get into the mountains and then everything's at like a different angle there's an unsure footing and then the weight shifts things can get a little bit hairy there do you have to i know both you really like challenges and challenging yourself do you have to talk yourself out of things a little bit more or what's that inner voice saying is it always like go go go you can do this don't wuss out or is it hey
hey hey i I got to just, let's just, just, just relax here. Cause some people go too hard, too fast and put themselves in, in, in trouble. Whereas I think the good balance with the people who there aren't intimidated, but they're able to be smart in those situations. So how do you gauge that? How do you navigate that? So you don't undercut the experience, but you're also staying safe. I guess we kind of knew our abilities pretty quick, I would say.
And I thought we actually did it about perfect where I think we had reached our max distance from camp in some of our hikes. What was that? How far was it? Maybe three or a bit more, probably. I think it was a mile to the class knob. Okay. So we're looking, it was over five. Yeah. It might've been that one day. We know how Adam gets through. He doesn't count the miles. He's not concerned about that. That's how I get people to go with me. Yeah. It's not that far.
Yeah, I just, we never, I don't think I tracked any of it. So that's why I don't know, but. I don't, we did do a lot of talking though, too, to like kind of gauge how we're feeling. And like, there were some tarts where we were on one mountain and looked over and it's like, well, I don't think we can make that today. Like at one point. And so, I mean, we were smart about it, but we also, I feel like I felt challenged in a good way. And I felt like we went as far as I thought was good.
Yeah. There was one time where, so I came from the snowdrift, which was the furthest out point. And then Adam had got his second buck, which I didn't get on film because I was packing meat. And then, so Adam had his meat and then this new buck and I show up kind of gassed. And then he's like, hey, do you want to help? And I'm like, sure. What do you want me to take? And so I don't remember. I think I took like very little. I took maybe the head.
I don't even remember. You took my rifle for sure. You did help me. I helped a little bit, but we had to go slow because Muscag was more firm, but still sloppy. And you know what that's like when you step wrong and you slide like you're skiing. And so when you're fully loaded, like Adam had nearly two deer. Yeah, that was sketchy. So we just went slow and helped as needed. And it was a short, it wasn't super big.
We we had like a staging point for all the meat before our pickup day from the flight and then we so we kind of chopped up our our yeah pack outs yeah yeah we need its help just go ahead too like it's just nice to be like hey i'll follow you like instead of trying to lead with that much weight and you can just don't have to worry about finding a path so nathan was leading that and it makes it that much easier but you did take you took i know
you took some weight because i had a rifle and you took that and something else but yeah what kind of packs and trekking poles using, my bought an exo mountain pack so i used that and that's been great and then i bought some, i don't know what kind of trekking poles they were 25 bucks you broke you broke one got bent, yeah but i'm glad that's the first pair i i've ever bought or used yeah without borrowing one to like cross
the creek and i mean previous hunts that goat hunt i wish i would have had them because it was so rainy and stuff and i was like i'm gonna buy them like heavy loads it'll be great and i was really thankful i had them i used to be anti-trekking pole.
Now i'm just on principle or what what was the anti-trekking kind of principle and then i also couldn't like if i'm just hiking i won't use them but it's like with the heavy load it's nice i just couldn't get a rhythm either like walking i felt like it was like my feet were off or you know i just couldn't get a rhythm i'm this normal hiking i kind of used it more like a more like a crutch anymore just something to brace a fall and and i'll usually use one and especially going downhill to brace
the downhill step if you're loaded up heavy and also to that security of not wiping out it's been really nice so always pack one track and pull i had those aluminum ones before this like the same ones adam had and i broke both so now i have a carbon one that i got a year ago and it hasn't broke yet a pair of black diamonds and i really like they're they're fixed but it was i hadn't used them before and then someone said you should definitely use them especially on the slick downhills i was like
all right sure and i would i kind of planted it down and i had a deer in my pack and like the land just like gave way and it was super super steep and i just swung and i had one hand i grabbed onto the trekking pole the other hand too and i was able to kind of just swing, but the thing stood right there. So I didn't fall and tumble, but I thought that's exactly why you have the trekking pole. And it was just a muddy, sloppy thing.
And it was really, really thankful I had that. And the going downhill is, is huge. I I've used micro spikes before. But I get a little nervous about if you shift your weight or one of them slips and the other one doesn't, if you're going up in those things, it's great because it's just like four, four wheel drive and your feet doesn't, your feet don't get tired, but going down, if you slip or you could, I feel like just catching an angle, ankle or a knee and it just,
it makes me cringe even thinking about it. Yeah. I'm cringing.
We brought those. we never i don't think we i didn't use mine and take them out of bag no yeah it was because i think if it rained it would have been nice but maybe what kind of pack do you have anything, it's a mystery ranch terra frame something like that i got it from rei it was dividends kind of thing nice yeah yeah the packs are a big thing too what kind of packs you guys start off do you remember like first deer and what the pack was and how much better nathan
is probably you like after school in a jansport backpack had pencils and a pencil sharpener in there and then yeah and some deer no yeah my first pack was the badlands gosh it's like a 4800 it's huge and it was my dad's my dad everything i ever owned was a hand-me-down from my dad so yeah i think mine was a kelty i still have it i use it for like backpack fly fishing, because i just know how to pack it so well everything has its spot and then it's just quick so is there
a piece of gear that's like your go-to and it's like you're really really happy with it and that it makes the trip kind of different if you didn't have it you would just be like off shorts shorts i dude dude when i saw i saw that on there i thought how is he not just getting destroyed like were the bugs not there how are you wearing shorts up there.
Well and also adam that was the first thing you said it's like yeah man the shorts were kind of a surprise i think for us we arrived and it was still kind of cold and it just got done raining like the day we arrived so i think the bugs were slow to respond they didn't really like catch our wind or scent or whatever it took a while from the wake up and then especially the biting flies they didn't really get bad until like middle of the trip and
mosquitoes too mosquitoes weren't bad until like middle of the trip it's like all the insects were really flourishing from the heat so we had a couple days of a buy and so i wore the shorts early in the trip but yeah gators it seems like i like gators and good boots those are like that's like my my go-to i just feel not equipped if i had like bad boots or no gators i just like it, Yeah, I would say boots for me, those, yeah, I have a good pair of boots and
those were, they always make me feel secure on those backpacking hunts. Cause they're waterproof and they're really good ankle support. Cause I have pretty bad ankles just from spraining each one, right? Five times or so. Who got boots? They're Zamberlins. My, uh, old boss bottom for me, actually I outfitted with it or guided with him and he bought me a pair. I was like, wow, that's pretty generous. Do we have the same boot?
Oh, we do. Yours might be newer. Yeah. A little bit. My tread's a little weak, but yeah. So you have all the gear, you have the packs, you're ready to go. You're up there. As you're glassing through, when you started seeing deer, was it a matter of, okay, let's take the first available? Or was it like just sort through? Or was it primarily a, what can we stock? What can we get to? How many deer did you kind of pass up? What were the first hours like when you're glassing?
It was good. We, yeah, the first night we didn't, we just glassed because we got there in the afternoon and we saw probably 35 deer and Nathan brought his big camera and big lens up. We didn't have a spotting scope. And so we were looking off a ways and we, we were trying to pick out bucks that we thought were, or deer that were thought were bucks.
And then Nathan would kind of zoom in on, you could kind of make out antlers and, and then nathan could zoom in and be like okay that's a fork or a heavier deer we could kind of tell which ones were heavier and so we had a few at least two that we thought were probably you know three-pointer and mature and so we kind of were going to target those the next day.
I don't know if you want to add yeah did you end up seeing some of the same bucks i know it's always when you look at some of the films from like whitetail hunting it's like they have names for all these bugs that they've seen on the game cameras whereas up here you can see something the night before it's like a whole mountain away thinking man we might never see that buck again but because you saw 30 plus deer you're probably
going to see something that is comparable or something that's at least worthwhile uh was there anything that you saw that you wished you would have been able to get on or what did it work out pretty perfectly Anyway. Let me jump in real quick on this one. So I think one of the biggest lessons learned, and then I'll launch into answering it, but was you can really disturb these deer in the alpine and bump them out.
So it's like, it seems like your first impact, like you have to be pretty effective at like making it happen on at least one mature animal. If you were hoping for like mature deer, like you got to make it happen on that mature buck. Cause if you, if you really spook him hard in the alpine, he may not come back. Like in our experience, when we spooked a big buck, he was really on edge if we saw him again, or we never saw him again. And so we kept, we kind of kept tabs on where the best deer were.
And there was, there was kind of three spots of best deer and the furthest we couldn't really tell what they were. So it was like, we have these two spots. So day one, we get into the first spot, we pick out the biggest deer and we got, we got both kind of by miracle. Mine, we were both trying for archery at first. And so Adam was with his bow and this big three point puts its head over a rock and is looking at us. And I was, I just inhaled a bug.
And so I'm actually like coughing out a bug out of my lungs and I'm like, Adam, go. And so I'm hanging back and I'm, I'm trying not to ruin it. And I video him stalking with the bow. And then I look at the buck and I'm like, I'm like, no, Mike, shoot it with a gun. Cause it's like, it's like such a good buck. Like we've been seeing them all. And I'm like, no, this is a good one. And so he's, he's like switching it up and the deer runs. So then.
We kind of pursue and I look out a mile away and this buck, like, it's not a different buck. This buck's already a mile away just in the time it took us to go about a hundred yards to see it again. It made it a mile and then it looped down and it's like running away. And then next thing I know, I look back, Adam, this buck's running back to us and it runs all the way back below us on the hillside.
And so I look over a cliff and it's kind of a longer shot, but ended up making a perfect shot with my bow and that's the first buck we get on the film and so it kind of went back and forth on that one between adam and i and it just worked out that i was able to shoot with the bow because we wanted to try with the bow over yeah the gun yeah but then that big one that you got on day one it was super spooky we we were videoing it and we spooked some deer to
our right they winded us and this buck was just on edge and he looped and came back and bedded a little bit lower on a different bench and we're like what's going on and we i kind of try to capture some of that dialogue but i don't have the best audio and we're just we were just we decided in that moment like we just need to shoot it with a gun and so we got right down on it and you made a perfect shot yeah that was weird go ahead it was just funny how he like i don't know if he saw like he just
started running and then he bedded and faced like uphill looking at us and we're like all right you know and in my other experiences like they're very curious animals and so i don't know if the alpine because it's so open that they just seem to be pretty skittish you know i understand getting winded and things like that but sight i would think they would be a little bit have a little more grace. But they, they did not do that because they can be a little bit curious.
Did that impact you? Did you kind of get your tent set up maybe too high? I know some people, they go to the very, very top. Well, that's probably not great whether it's skittish or not. Like just being up there, like in their living room was probably not the best idea.
Like being close enough to be like, you roll out of the tent and it's, it can be on rather than have to make a lot a long run in the morning or being too close so how did you decide where you wanted to camp and how close you wanted to be to where you thought was going to be the the go time zone. We camped, well, we had a base camp and then we had the option of spike camping.
And so we set up two tents, one for gear, one for sleeping. And then we're like, let's just see the first day, how it goes. And we were planning on making that hike and we'll just kind of gauge if we want to move kind of over into the valley. We had to get up over this one ridge and then we'd kind of be in this valley where we could access from about an hour closer, probably, or 45 minutes closer. And that was just an option. And we actually just never needed that option.
We were able to make the long hikes and we, we kind of forfeited the morning hunts as far as like getting up there at first light. We're like, well, we'll start hiking at light. And we were able to find deer throughout the mornings and, you know, it would slow down during the day, but they were, it was weird because it's so hot, but they were like bedded in the open.
Sometimes you saw in the video and by the snow or by these water holes but they weren't like well some were in the timber but some were out in the open so it was it was interesting we weren't camp near them which i think helped us have a lot of different options in the morning yeah so i think too with when we chose to do our trip which was early i mean we were only a few days after the opener these these deer were still really interested in sunning their antlers a lot of the bucks so So they
would come out during the mid heat of the day to get sun on their antlers is what it seemed like. So even the mornings weren't that great because mornings they were bedded up in more of a brushy cover at times. We jumped deer that were bedded in brushy covers. So it was more of a better afternoon hunt. The deer were much more likely to bed down in the sun in afternoon heat.
Less direct sun and maybe just more heat. I'm not sure. And then also the other advantage is that with where we camped is we had like lakefront property. It's super nice to use the lake is beautiful. So that was just a really neat spot to camp. It didn't, we don't, I don't want to move. I mean, I'd rather hike it. We both like had to hike. So it was like, yeah, it didn't bother us to go a ways.
Yeah. And sometimes during those hot stretches, it seems like they, they come out to feed and then they go down to bed pretty early and so it can seem like unless you can find them in their beds or there's some nice creases where you get some cooler air that's coming up from the timber or near a pond or near some snow you can have some deer out there but sometimes it seems like they just kind of feed and they go away but it does seem to kind of depend on.
Where you're hunting and which deer you're kind of looking at because same thing during the heat of the day you've seen some bucks that are just kind of out they're not moving like actively feeding they're just kind of just out there and kind of lounging around a little bit but yeah you just you know if if you just sleep all day then and only prioritize the first 20 minutes in the last 20 minutes like you could miss out on a lot of
really good opportunities because you think it's just oh it's too hot for them to be out or you know even too rainy or too whatever like you got to put forth the the right type of effort yeah yeah nathan shot his first one probably at i think about 11 wasn't it because i think we were hiking into the snow about noon or so so yeah it wasn't early or later so it was interesting how do you like the or how do you compare the kind of hunt in general the daily movement to
the hunts in colorado and arizona or maybe let's go colorado oregon and then alaska what's the difference in the in the moving and the vegetation because you have some thick stuff in in Oregon for sure but being able to get up out of that is such an advantage or how do the tactics kind of vary and then maybe how are some things similar. Go ahead, Mason. Okay. Oregon actually has quite a bit of similar terrain in our coast range as southeast.
So it would be as though there is no alpine really in Oregon. So you just can't ever get out of the brush if you're on the west side in our coast range. We have a lot of that devil's club and a lot of nasty brush that's got thorns. It's super steep. And we do have big timber. So there was a lot of similarities to southeast with our coast range. But of course, Oregon, you just go east. As you go east, everything becomes more arid, opens up more or less undergrowth vegetation.
And we have high country, but it's not pretty like southeast with the muskeg and moss and the upland, the lily pad sort of plant vegetation. It's just so neat, so unique. And then also where we were hunting, there was some old growth, which was really pretty and pretty easy to hike through some bear trails that we used and saw some bear. But yeah, so that's kind of the Oregon. And then Adam, if you want to. Yeah. I mean, I've never hunted alpine mule deer in Colorado.
I've seen videos and such, and it seems similar where they're up high above the alpine. So I think the tactics are similar. I mean, even rifle hunting here, you're, you're glassing at prime time over kind of feeding areas. And that's kind of when you make your move. And obviously the country's a little bit easier to hike around in Colorado than Alaska. Sounds like Oregon too. But consider, I mean, I was expecting terrible hiking conditions as far as vegetation
and weather. And I was surprised how easy the terrain was to navigate and move through. It just seemed, I don't know what it was, but we had a few sections of bushwhacking, but there was, you know, some muskeggy stuff and then some gold growth and then, you know, up over a ridge that was pretty much grass.
You know i think we i don't know what it was but that area seemed that landscape seemed pretty easy to move across as far as alaska standards from what i've experienced so yeah i was i was happy about all that yeah there's definitely a lot of territory there which was nice there's like some flat areas too some of the areas you get up to it's just it's steep timber it's monolithic faces and then like a little crest of alpine and that's just about it but yeah it
looked like there was a lot of territory, which is a good thing to scope out and take advantage of. I'll let the listeners go and watch the video for a lot of the other details, but we kind of went over some of the books that you got and some of the basic details there. But when you're back down at the lake and you're about ready to get picked up, are you excited? Do you wish you could stay another couple of days? What were your emotions when you're leaving?
Because those are the types of experiences, man, that you don't really get to do very often and you look forward to them. You know maybe sometimes even years in advance so what was it like to to leave that.
I might go i had mixed feelings and that's changed over the last few years for me like, usually i'm one that wants to stay or go longer always like oh i wish we could have went another three days and you know things like that but you know recently haven't i have a two-year-old and a one-year-old and so. You know, I was ready to go home, you know, see my wife and family. But it is a mixed feeling because you're leaving this amazing area after all
these amazing experiences. And, you know, you wake up and like Nathan said, you're in paradise every morning and you walk around and you get to see awesome wildlife. I mean, you saw tons of deer, some brown bears, just some great experiences. So I had a lot of mixed feelings, but I was happy to go home and see my family. And I knew my wife was, was ready for that too. So, but it was good timing when we did leave because the heat and we just couldn't keep our meat preserved any longer.
So, and we, so we came out, I think a day or two early, which was kind of nice given those circumstances. But, but I always, when I go into these trips, it's like, I don't get to do this, like, but every like three years that's been three to four years has been my repeat cycle on doing a cool hunt like that.
So it doesn't it just doesn't feel long enough I feels like you know most hunts are like a nine to ten day to get it done and the four lower 48 like so I'm used to that type of struggle and effort to finally fill the tag but it was up there it's like day one and then we had some we had some off days like we had the lake day so we did have the chakos in the water and like worked on our bucks and just kind of like had fun and chatted so it was a good mix of
Had the hunting been harder, I think I probably would have really been pushing to stay longer, but we were able to get it done within our time frame. Yeah. And the weather was coming in that next day too. So yeah, it did work out pretty good. It was an interesting feeling. And the first time I'd ever had it this year was when I was up on a mountain and Abby texted me a picture of my daughter and it was her smiling and she wrote, good luck, daddy.
And I was like, oh my gosh, I just want to go down the mountain right now. Being the new father at that point, she was like, you know, two or three weeks old. And I thought, oh my gosh, what am I even doing on this mountain?
But it's a cool thing to, you know, we, we both went, I would watch the baby and she would go hunt and vice versa, which is really cool to still be able to do what you love to do and really enjoy that so you don't feel that you're sacrificing either like you can do both and that's a cool thing and that's takes an understanding spouse to be able to allow that and which is pretty cool because that doesn't happen with everybody i know i've taught with some people
especially in lower 48 that like used to fly fish a lot until they got married and now it's been 20 years since they fly fished at all they've you know it was just shut down and so i think he geez like there has to be a sacrifice there has to be give and take but it's nice to to have that and then you know it's nice to to go back to to the family for sure yeah i was super impressed when i saw when you told me abby got a buck and it was like four weeks after having baby it's pretty impressive and
then you you got a buck a good one yeah i got a nice one on like the 16th of october that's kind of in the no man's land wow and it was pretty high it was about 2 000 feet of elevation So I was just going up there to hold a game camera for the winter. Uh, move it down to, to where the bucks would probably move down. But on the way up, I saw a doe. I was like, oh, okay. So I just blew the call really softly and the doe just kind of took off.
I looked over the lip and, and saw a buck that was right there. And I said, dude, it's a nice four by three. So that's the, the highest, the, the highest elevation I'd, I'd shot a buck after like the alpine season. but usually it's mid-September is when they kind of get down to the timber and they're not moving a whole lot. And then rut starts late October and it's usually lower muskegs. But around here, there's not a huge migration.
They can just kind of be where they want to be. And the weather hadn't been bad and there were still feet up there. So you just happened to be up there. So I got that one. And then Abby said she wanted to go out closer to the house. And we're actually within... Reach or pretty close in reach range. So she, she said she shot a buck, shot a spike and I was like, oh, great. And then I thought, what are we going to do about this? And I don't hear from her for a little bit.
And then she said, I drug it as far as I can. I got it in drugged as far as I can. So she messaged me. And so I loaded up the baby, drove to where I dropped her off, met her there. And so then she drove home with the baby and then I went up, bring the, bring the buck back down.
But it was just a cool cool thing that back-to-back bucks and we had a whole bunch of meat to process but yeah she said she probably would not have shot a buck that small had it not been so close to when she gave birth and then secondary she it was a small buck and it wasn't one of the bucks that had been in the garden eating all the flowers and everything for the last couple months but it was just close enough and it reminded her so she said she said the buck the buck may have
gotten it just because of his friends that were in the garden this year so i was like that's that's fair enough but it was probably not one of the one of the bucks it was far enough away but it was pretty funny so yeah that was that was pretty cool he's cool that's awesome that's that's impressive yeah she's hardcore she's a force great so what's the.
Youngest that you would take a baby out or a kid out hunting i know nathan you've had some kids out there and what's the complications there abby is thinking about doing a fly out somewhere oh wow for the 10 month old and i thought well well maybe but i mean if she's crying that's like a constant predator call so we might want to be uh consider where we're going yeah i can jump in since i've done stuff like that it seems like when you have one kid and then
if there's two of you so it's both you know mom and dad you're you're in a good position to kind of push the boundaries i think whatever your comfort is so like we had my son on a bear hunt and he was six months old and i had him in a chest carrier and and so it felt pretty safe pretty good on my feet and we had a camp so we're at the truck like we were able to camp at a truck and so we're just hiking out ridges and glass and my wife got a bear on that day with with
my son out there so and we had my other dot my oldest my daughter at camp she would be she would have been two and so that was kind of tough but we pulled it off and then. Sammy, my wife got a buck with, with our four week old last season, last rifle season. And we were, we were kind of like just walking old roads. And so again, pretty safe, but we had, you know, we had four kids at that time. One of them was being watched by grandma and I had, so I had the three younger boys with us.
It was pretty gnarly to pull that off, but we made it happen. And then there was like, there's actually kind of high pressure hunting. So we recruited some help from some people. We actually knew them. We're like, hey, yeah, do you want to help us watch the kids while we go recover this buck? So yeah, pretty wild. Not a fly out, but definitely it's like whatever's within your comfort as parents.
And if you're responsible adults, it seems like you could still try to involve your kids when they're young. But now we're pretty busy and I'll take one kid out like my son hiking and look for antlers and I'll usually throw them on my backpack most of the time.
So it certainly just used to be the way like there was no one that was waiting until they were you know 10 years old to to hunt you know 200 300 years ago or if you you dropped a kid on the oregon trail it wasn't a matter of well you know are they really old enough to be camping out here it's just kind of so when you look at it in those sort of terms that we're we come from the people in our DNA is some pretty rugged early years.
So, but yeah, it just seems kind of find the right moments and should be pretty fun, but yeah, we'll, we'll see what happens. Wild. Yeah. So what else do you have to add? Coming up on an hour here, all three of us have to get back to, to the kids, but what any, any insight, any take from the hunts or anything that you'd like to share? Adam, go for it.
Don't have a whole lot I mean I would just encourage people to do it and you know find a good partner that similar to you and enjoys hunting and being outside I mean I would yeah I would just encourage people to do it because you're not going to regret it later that you did the trip it can be hard to make it happen but if you kind of make a commitment to it like we did we kind of committed and bought tickets early and you know I started a job and I ended
up having to And before I accept it, I was like, this is happening. So I told the superintendent, I was like, look, this week I'm gone. And we happened to have some, we started school that week. And so we made it happen. So I would just say commit to it and do it. Not a whole lot of other insight I have. Well, how about that a little bit more? The better life you have outside of work, the better you are in work.
Do you agree with that? And how do you think that having this, this good, fulfilling outdoor life helps you come and be more impactful at your job? Yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree with that. And I agree with that as far as at the home life too.
Like it is hard on, on my wife when I, when I do hunt and, but I'm a, I mean, it's just part of who I am and it's part of, I think who all of us are and you're, you're more fulfilled when you go do those things and then you're a better husband and father when you return in a lot of ways and you think about like it's like what do you want your to be known as the dad that doesn't do stuff or do you want to be the the dad that's like yeah
my dad hunts and fishes and we go do all this cool stuff like you know that's what you want and so yeah taking yourself taking care of yourself outside of work is is is more important in a lot of ways to me. Yeah. I want to jump in real quick too on that line of thoughts. So it seems like there's a big piece that's missing with most people in comfortable environments.
So that's like, we have our house, we have our work, and we have family life, and we go between the three, and we just kind of keep going along with life. But we don't really get challenged where we have to depend on our own instincts. And so it's like when you really depend on those instincts of survival, making good decisions that could result in something bad, negative consequence, or I use my instincts and have a good resolved outcome.
So when you really challenge yourself, it's like you take that back to your normal life and then stressful things are no longer very stressful. You have this broadened perspective of what actually was stressful was being loaded up and trying to navigate out of a pretty hairy situation or make a really sound judgment call, you know, in the heat of a moment. And so we bring those lessons back and we apply them in our life and we help.
Like, I always feel like my wife is a good person to help coach and she lets me know it if I do it too much, but it's like, Hey, you know, it feels like this one's not one that we really want to stress about too much. And, and I also, I think this is not just, you know, hunting, but also like I was listening to a short reel somewhere on the social media, but that Alex, I think it's Honnold, the rock climber that does. Yeah.
And he's got a pretty famous couple of lines in there around this same thing of feeling danger. And then, you know, and then he relates it to being in a airport. And when people are stressed out about losing, you know, missing their flights and it's like, Whoa, you're in a climate controlled environment and every, there's food at your fingertips. Like, what is there really distress about? Don't make mountains out of molehills.
That's the lesson. And I think as hunters, we don't necessarily always recognize that, but we do put ourselves in situations where we have to depend on survival instincts and things that make us human. And then we bring that back to our lives and we get to apply it, which is a pretty neat opportunity, maybe even overlooked. And then of course we get to eat and use the efforts and the struggles that we put into the hunts.
We get to eat that meat that we acquired so yeah for sure you can't eat a par or bogey so those people who are golfing like hey that's great do what you want to do that's awesome love that you get outside but yeah something to be said for being able to eat what the what you get what you get so thanks a lot for being on here really appreciate it congratulations on the on the on the hunt and then make sure you check out nathan endicott's youtube
page and watch that for sure so thanks again guys appreciate it All right. Thanks, Jeff.