Ep. 229: The Atomic Oryx

we are here at RAX Camp. We're in south central New Mexico, at a camping spot that I have come to be uh very familiar with and fond of over a number of years now. I've probably camping in and around this particular spot for close to a decade of hunting a variety of species, and over the course of those hunts, I have encountered rix in this general area

on a number of occasions. So we're here just just outside the periphery of the White Sands Missile Range in south central New Mexico, which is the place you want to be if you're looking for the wily and elusive African oracs. I think that you might have even expressed at one point here that you intimated that you may have even seen one very near where we're at right now.

If you were to take a straight line distance from where our keysters are on these seats right now, I have seen an orix no more than three yards sitting right now, right shot range. Uh, tom Bodett's here. Mike rules on the show before and people wrote in the guy wrote, Mike saw a comment where he said, um Man, that guy sounds just like tom Bodett. Hit it hit at my Yeah, like I said, dude, sounds just like

Tombo Deett, So do a Tambo Deett line. This is Tombo Deett from Hotel six, and we'll leave the line on for you. That's pretty good man job. I really respect Tombo Debt, so I really took that as a compliment. Yeah, Mike is actually a Tombo Deett fan. I think that'd be fair. Yeah, he's got a great backstory Homer, Alaska, and it's tied in with the singer Jewel. What was her tune? She had like one super famous tune, didn't she. She had a bunch of good ones. And you're a

Michigan guy. She she did some of her training at that Interlocking Fine Arts camp. Well, and that's been there. I saw Gordon Lightfoot there first time I saw Gordon Lightfoot, but the the Interlocking camp as part of the whole

story about Tombo Dett and jewel and the connection. Yeah, Homer, Alaska is the hometown of well Tombo that's not from Homer, I don't think, but but he moved up there, right, And then they had a fundraiser to send this jewel individual to Interlock to Interlock, and tom Boudette donated money toward it. Correct. I got one jewel thing, one jewel line that's rolling around in my head. I'm pretty sure it's that who Will Save Your Soul? That that was

her big hit. Yeah, that's the I can't remember the name of the song, but hearing her little her voice kind of cracking a little bit as she sings that, I mean I I totally had a jewel crush going on for sure. Yeah. She had, you know, she had that like imperfection of that one crooked tooth on the on her top top shelf. I don't remember she had on her trademark. Yeah, it was like kind of like Cindy Crawford. She had that birthmark, right, and my wife's

got one snaggle tooth. So I found that. I found that the fact that she wasn't just like this perfectly polished. Don't be staring at my wife. I'm not talking about you wife, talking about Gel. Start talking about my wife Snaggle too. No, I'm talking about Jewel. But I like the fact that, you know, she's like in the in

the spotlight of Hollywood and she's just out there. I mean, she's a beautiful woman, of course, and very talented, and I always found it appealing thing that she had this imperfection that she was not sufficiently vain to want to pursue like a correction. You know. I saw that as just like a level of authenticity that want to be very attractive. She's a big Jewel fan. Uh yeah, for sure, man, I thought, yeah, I love the music. I loved her voice. I thought she was just a cool person in the

Alaska thing too. You know, I've never been to Alaska at that point in my life, but I was just like, man, Shania Twain too, the same kind of thing, Like this woman from the rugged North who's just beautiful and has an incredible voice and so talented. And ye, Shni is out of Alaska too. Oh no, no, she's she's Canadian. Oh, Canadian, okay, but like that rugged northern thing. It's not even American.

That's all right? Really. Yeah, my buddy Ronnie was all excited because Shania Twain has the same kind of dog he as, Okay, an Italian broco. I wonder if she ut as pretentious people would say, a Braco Italiano. Uh, Jeremy, can you say where you Are you allowed to say where you work? Yeah? Absolutely. I work for the National Wildlife Federation on the Regional Connectivity Coordinator because it's not like the government where you gotta y'all sly about where

you work at all. You don't want to get in trouble. I'm happy, I'm happy talking about it. Yeah, that's that's right. I am a conservation professional, not currently representing any organization on this podcast. Yeah, it's Jeremy Romeo correct um. And you're the New Mexico. Well, I work at a New Mexico.

But I represent, you know, a regional level. I worked for the National Wildlife Federation out of the Rocky Mountain Regional Center, so we have quite a few states that I that I work to promote and protect Wildlife Corridor as the Connectivity, which is a hot thing in conservation

right now. Yeah, absolutely. You know, as as we know, wildlife move across multiple jurisdictions, and so when you're gonna sit down and really protect and prioritize these efforts, you really need to bring a robust group of stakeholders to the to the table. And that's something that's that's a pretty hot topic and we've been pretty successful in doing here in the landscape. And then um seth, yep, the flip flop no longer flesher. Who's fallen incredibly behind. Yeah,

it's I blame on COVID. Yeah, when you flesh at the office and COVID comes, beaver fleshing grinds to a halt, which I could do in my garage. But it's just it's fun or yeah, I like when people are complaining about it in the office. You know. I recently played teen Wolf for my kids, Like when we have movie night, I tend to when we have movie night, I want to like they want to pick by was like wild pick.

So I picked movies that I remember from being like in high school, even though they're in pre an element pre elementary and elementary. But somehow I don't line it up right. So I'll be like, I remember a movie when I was young, but it has some scenes in the the Uh, you know, he's got some scenes in it. And while watching Teen Wolf, this is the original Team Wolf, Michael J. Fox, do you know about this movie? I don't. I don't think it's I don't think it's all the original.

Do you know the premise? It's a duty. He's like, he turns into a wearwolf and then he gets like people like him. He's a dork, but then he's a werewolf and uh, he's really going to basketball. There's a girl he really there's a girl that like the neighborhood girl likes him, but he don't like her. There's a girl he really likes, but she's too good for him. He turns into a werewolf, gets super good at basketball, the mean girl likes him, then he like self discovers

right in the end, he winds up with the neighborhood girl. Um. Watching it, I was thinking that we could do that same movie called The Flip Flop Flusher, where it's like, you're just a normal dude, then you become the flip flop Flasher and I think you're rul of ship, right, yea, because there's a big part of Team Wolf where Michael J. Fox he can win all the games, he doesn't even need his teammates, but his teammates start getting bummed out.

So then in the end they play the championship and he plays it and he doesn't turn into the werewolf to win the championship, do it through regular old teamwork. So what would I win? Just win flushing contest or to just half the top. He'd come in just as you and not the flip up lasher. It's like you'd be like, I'm flashing this one as steth bro Yeah yeah, um uh, explain White Sand missile Range in greater do you two who wants to take that one? We could

probably tag team in a little bit. I mean we've been doing a little bit of homework. Um, because it's a it's an interesting story, man, it is an interesting story. So the wait stands Missile range is this massive chunk of country about in the in the neighborhood of two million acres hundred thirty miles by what do we figure out northwest or north south about and east and west was roughly forty I think, Yeah, So it's it's a

long ass time to even drive around part of it. Yeah, especially if you're like a Midwestern or by birth and you get out here and just see like how vast the expanses. And that's kind of the point. So when the Department of Defense was trying to figure out places to do things like test missiles, detonate the first nuclear bomb, atomic atomic bomb, thanks, they were looking for places where there weren't a lot of I can't tell you the difference between those two things. I think the same thing,

but I'm not. I don't think that they are man isn't like a fish and fusion kind of thing. Yeah, me, I'm sure there will be some physicists who ways in on this and we can we can see what they have to say. Remember, in tenth grade, I was in science class. I don't remember what great I was in.

I remember losing a lot of faith in my teacher because I was like, is it possible that you could hit you could be splitting firewood and hit it just right, that you split an atom and split an atom and causing atomic explosion and looking back on it, they were not able to answer that question. I think it's a thoughtful question, and now understand that you no matter how much fire would you split, you're not gonna split at

will not split an atom. Yeah, I don't know. Man Like if you were to say, you know, drop a nuclear bomb, and drop an atomic bomb, in my mind different, it's different. So that's something I'll take a face value. So they're looking for a place where they have enough open country to be able to do some of this stuff that would be real dangerous if you have a

bunch of people in proximity. And so when it comes to you know the history of things like testing atomic bombs, a lot of that were happened in places like the Arizon Strip, places like the Trinity Site, which is not terribly far from where we are right now, the Trinity Site being the place where they detonated the first of

those bombs. And so the White Sands Missile Range is an area where they're they're all manners of testing of missiles, aircraft, um and all kinds of other stuff that the general public, including myself, probably has no idea about. But it's a vast chunk of d D country. And it's also the site of the original introduction of the African orcs, which

is the species we've been hunting. Let's back up one step, because I just wanted to tell people, if you want to read it, really fascinating story about American history and warfare, the story of the Manhattan Project leading up to the Trinity Site test and the level of secrecy in manipulation that had to go into doing a surface test of an atomic weapon while having no one know that you just did that. Even people they were in the military

in the area at the time thought. I think that they thought it was a munitions train exploded or something like that. They had some cover story like they touched off and atomic bomb, like the same bomb they used to destroy what it was like a little boy and big fat boy. Anyways, the same bomb they used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They touched off a version of it in New Mexico and kept and it remained a secret that they had the weapon. Yep. Yeah, And that

spot it was a different place back then. It was a different a different time for sure, and that that

spot where that occurred. So when I started with the Forest Service, I was down on the Lincoln National Forest where the headquarters is based in Alama Gordo, New Mexico, and the regional offices up in Albuquerque, so would oftentimes be traveling between Alama Gordo and Albuquerque, and there's a stretch of highway called Highway three eight that goes along the north side of the White Sands Missile Range and there's very little, um human development along that highway. It's

pretty open country. So a long Highway three the route that I would take between Alama Gordo and Albuquerque. Um, you go along the north side of the White Sands Missile Range, and among the very few human developments along that stretch of highway is a rock shop. And the thing that the rock shop advertises on the side of the road most prominently is that they have trinitite available

for sale. And trinitite is this um, mildly radioactive glass that was created by the detonation of that first bomb test. So you can go out there and there's like fragments of this class at the bomb site. And I've I've never yet had the opportunity to do the tour, but I know a couple of times a year, UM, the White Sands Missile Range offers public tours to go back and actually visit the Trinity site. Yeah, especially on the

anniversary I believe, is that right? And I've I've heard that that you know, the date's coming up and it hasn't lined up to where could come down and make it happen. And I feel like I've missed missed an opportunity a few times to do that. But um, that site is, you know, as the crow flies, not terribly far from some of the spots we've been poking around

looking for ORCX. Do you understand why? What's the story of how it came to be that they decided to cut some oracs loose in the White Sands missile range. So the history is that the state of New Mexico back in the late sixties and early seventies, in an effort to try to provide more big game hunting opportunity, was trying to identify portions of the state that could

potentially support other big game hunting opportunities. But we're essentially unfilled um niches from a big game hunting perspectives, too severe the conditions. Yeah, and then and then essentially marry up the kind of ecological niche that was perceived to be available with a species that had the ability potentially to thrive in that portion of the landscape. So there's this kind of matchmaking going on and a lot of energy around the idea of trying to bring in exotic

species to exist in portions of the state. And there's a handful of examples, and uh, the orcx being one that they successfully introduced, like taking an African antelope suited to deserts yep and and then they took the Barbary sheep. Ye. The Barbary was another which is in the North Africa right, a mountain animal from North Africa. And then there were two different ibex species, the Persian and the Siberian that

they brought in. All these are all like drought tolerant species, and they looked at some and decided against it as well. I think they looked at the kudu and the coudoo was having some issues contracting diseases from cattle, so the

kudo didn't work. And with the species that they did want to release, what I've read is that there's a federal law that prohibits the importation and release of exotic wildlife, and the way that the state worked around that was to bring them in and establish experimental populations and propagate offspring and captivity and then they were able to release

the offspring of those imported orax for example. And there's a spot kind of on the west side of the missile range um Red Rock, where they were doing the initial captive breeding propagation of those first ninety or so orcs that they brought out and released on the missile range. That's somewhere they cut loose was it was ish and you know, guys correct me if I'm wrong here, you know, brushed up a little bit on this. So and it

wasn't all at once. They were like adding them in kind of overtime supplementing the population, and then pretty quickly they got to be self sustaining. And you know, ecologically, one of the things that's cool about rix is that you know, they're able to reproduce year round, so they're very productive. You know, a cow will conceive, carry the pregnancy, deliver the calf, raised the calf for some period of time,

and then she'll cycle again. But they're not constrained by seasonality the way a lot of the ungulates that we're used to thinking about in North America are When did they start? So they brought him in the sixties and seventies. They explode in numbers on this giant missile range which was very limited hunting, and then at some point someone must have gotten uneasy with what was going to happen

because it didn't just let them overrun the whole damn state. Yeah, the the history, I mean, initially the motivation for the whole program was to provide hunting opportunity, and the fact that they intentionally selected the White Sands missile range as the release site, suggests to me that the intention was to have some hunting opportunity on White Sands missile range.

And whether or not that's the case, I mean, I'm not super scoop them on all the details here, but it's certainly the case that the original population became very well established on White Sands missile Range and has provided a lot of hunting opportunity over the decades since. And to your point, the objective was to keep the population primarily contained to the White Sands missile range. So that's how we're here on what what in local vernacular, everybody

calls the off range orc son uh que. Back up a moment to your use of the words skukum uh, what's your own what? How do you define the scukum. So I would think of scukum as being like, you are totally on point on a given topic topic in Alaska, particularly Southeast Alaska, UM where I think that word might come from. Maybe that would be interested in know the history, but don't check that you check that out, seth, Why are you sitting there while you're sitting there with a

real bad cell phone service? Um it means good. Scugum is good. Okay. He'd be like, that's a scucum rig for fishing. Someone's like, hey, should I try this? Yeah, it's a scucum rig. Okay, good rig. I don't know what the hell it means. I was just curious. You have always I've only ever heard I've only ever heard in Southeast last they've only ever heard its mean good. So I took took note when you just use scuocum to mean like a good understanding of Yeah, like I

think about it being like you're on point. So when it comes to nuclear versus atomic bombs, fever not scookum. I'd want to learn a little bit more about that. I looked that up. What'd you look up? Atomic versus nuclear bombs? Different atomic bombs are nuclear weapons, but not all nuclear weapons are atomic bombs. Hydrogen bombs are thermonuclear weapons, which is a different category. Remember when Oakley Sunglasses used

to advertise as thermonuclear protection. No, you remember that? Yeah, they dudes it liked Oakley's a lot, Like a certain type of guy in high school liked Oakley's a lot and would have Oakley stickers on his truck and whatnot.

And one of the stickers you'd put on your truck window would say Oakley Thermo Nuclear Protection, as though the implication being that should whiskey whiskey three breakout, uh, and you had your Oakleys on, you would not be blinded and would be able to see yourself, um shortly thereafter die of radiation radiation poison. And couldn't you argue that the sun is like a form of thermonuclear Oh maybe that's the oh one thing on the on the Oakley's.

You know, they had those stalls in the mall where you'd walk in and and they were like all the rage and in the Grand the Grand Travers mall in Northwest Northwest, Lower Peninsula, Michigan. I was like begging my mom to get a pair of those sweet shades when I was in late elementary school and maybe fifth grade, and finally for my birthday, you know, she broke down. They were just ridiculously expensive for our family budget, and uh, she broke down and bought me a pair. And I

thought they were so cool. I could not wait for like recess. And it didn't matter if it was raining out at recess. I don't want to have those sunglasses onto like strung playground and shore. Everybody in my red Oak least I could name off. I could name off the dudes in high school who had elementary school, I could name them off, and they they also had this. They were the kids that got to have Nikes their moms and buy him Nikes. They were the kids that

got to have individually bagged Doritos in their lunch. They were the kids that got to have where they put the cheese in one compartment and the crackers in the art compartment. What do you call those things? They were the kinds of kids that had like Levi, actual Levi jeans, not tough skins and wranglers. They had Nike shoes, Dorito's, like all kinds of store bought shipping their lunch bag, and not like stuff their mom made you know what about Starter jackets was I was gonna go start jackets

and the other one is not Nikes. But okay, I want I want to back up to name them right now. I don't want to give their last names. Nate stand Steve. I could name all these dudes last names. I remember who still and they had Michael and they had those Michael Jackson, Jackets, Kenny, Chris, Kenny, Chris and George or three that come in my mind. But you know, the shades. Like. The reason it's notable to me is it was such such a stretch because we had typically like not a

bunch of this store bought lunch ingredients, for example. But the other thing besides Starter jackets, it wasn't the Nikes. It was the Adidas Sambas. Yeah, dude, the sambas. Where I was I'm just saying, like sambas and starter jackets, that was Those are the kids. Those the girl versions of the guys I'm talking about had rebox. Okay, we also had probably slightly slightly different like cultural subtleties to our respect, even though we're saying state pause, I'm a

little bit of head of you. I'll tell you horrible I'll tell you I want to get back to talking about ORCS much of the next guy, I'll tell you horrible story. So I was never allowed to have any kind of nice stuff. I thought we were poor, but it turns out my parents just weren't stupid. Like I grew up, I grew up thinking out his poor even though we're like absolutely not poor. You know, we had like boats, My parents drove new cars, we had a

big nice house. By thought, as a young kid, I thought we were poor because I couldn't have stupid ship. But it was not because they couldn't get it. They just were annoyed by it. Like we couldn't get we wouldn't get There's no way we're gonna get inn Atari machine like to play video games, Like there's no way my parents were gonna buy one of those. There's no way they were gonna buy like a nice television. There's no way they're gonna buy Levi's and rebox and whatnot.

And I remember one time we went down to MC Sporting Goods and they had a pair of mismatched Nikes in a box for like no money. Because one shoe the right one, I can right left one of them had red smush marks and one of them had dark burnt orange slush mark. And it was a subtle difference, but there was a difference, and we could get him for like twenty some MT sporting goods. So here was my mom's finally like I really have a pair of because I'll buy those ones for you. And I'm like,

no one will notice. No one noticed. I wasn't in I was in fifth or sixth grade. I wasn't at the schoolhouse. Five minutes someone noticed stand ate Steve. Yeah, they picked up on it like flies on ship. They were just on it, like they knew it, and they were they let you know commercial you keep wearing them. I remember, man, Probably not. I do remember there being like a little bit of a plan where my mom was gonna try to darken up that other stripe somehow.

It's horrible. Well, being a parent, do you find that you have some of those same tendencies with your family? Now it depends why they want what they want, But no, I'll buy them like good outdoor stuff of two colored shoes. You wouldn't. Oh, I do lots of just a mess with them, though, like make them eat something they don't want. It just I just do Yeah, I just do mean stuff to him, just so they're like, I tell them someday when you're in college you're telling stories about how

mean your dad was. You'll be glad I did this because you have a funny story. All right, So you're welcome. Kids. Where were we? Scook them? Good? Scook them? Hold on, yeah, scook them story about orcs am I doing a good job of using this appropriately. Okay, you am strong, brave or impressive? Does it give the etymology of the word? You know what that means? Look up the etymology of etymology? Hm, what entomology? Word history? Study of words? Where where they

come from? From the etymology of the word. People say, what's the etymology of flip flop flusher? I'd say, well, he flushes in flip flops? Mid nineteen century? Chinook Jorgan oh Chinook? Yeah, Northwest Pacific northwest cool. It's a tribe in the Pacific Northwest. But that's why the guy I know it from is sim Shan, and they probably used to take big canoes and fight each other. If I had to guess the sim Shan and the Chinook. But

he's simp Shan. His his people must have picked it up from the chinook High Simian people should start using it more often. Scoop them you're good and strong on a given topic. Okay, the scoopum story of the feel semi scookum on the history of orcs. Do you wand it real quick for people just to ease this back into the conversation about orcs, do you might really quick laying out what one of these things looks like? Who wants to do that? Mike, you haven't said Tombodet, will

now explain, Oh man, what does it works look like? Uh? Dig deep into your bi biology training. Well, they are in terms of size like a mature bull. Orcs is roughly you the size of a cow elk. I would say, uh, they are probably slightly shorter in their body, but deeper like when you look at one, they're there their chest particularly like if you come up the leg, they are very deep from the bottom of the chest to the top of their back. They kind of look like a

like a billboard, you know, standing there um. And they have really distinct markings, so we we say that they have like a clown face. They have a face that is is black, angelic white right with with striking white alongside the black. Yeah, is their face mostly white or mostly black? I'm trying to think of it now. It's got more a little probably a little more white than black. But what is the butterfly? Is that same butterflies white? But it's like two triangles that kind of at the

middle of the face. Yeah, I just scunned one, but I can't remember. Makes its way up to its ears. Really pretty. Their their bodies are tan, mostly tan in color. Their bellies are white, but they have a black stripe that runs along their belly. Uh. And then as far as headgear, they got big sweat socks on. Yeah. Oh yeah, they have big white socks of black legs and then big white like a big white band like a sock band. Reminds me of the old baseball socks I used to

wear a little. Then they got some horns and then the Yeah, the head gear is like a really striking element of of them. Uh, long straight, it's like two swords, sword like horns, and they're they're especially from a distance, I think that the horns will look jet black when you get up to them. Once you've harvested one, I think they look almost a little bit more dull, but maybe they're just a little dusty to once you know, once that business is done, there's an age piece to

it too, with the darkness. Then, yeah, the juveniles will have like a a relatively kind of dusty looking horns. So the one, the one that you shot, is relatively young bull. We'll get into those those details a little bit more. But when you look at the tips of those horns, you can see where that initial sheath is starting to wear away. And if you get into one that's that's an older animal, it'll have more of a smooth and polished and darker kind of horn to it,

and a long horn. On orcs, like Jeremy, you kill the orcs long and some of the longest horns or females. Yeah, you know, the females tend to have, in my experience, some pretty long thin or horns, and you know, the bulls tend to be a little shorter, hold a little bit more mass like yours did um and like like Carl said, the older they get, they get a little bit more polished. The female hour was you know, lucky enough to harvest, had some She was third eight inches long.

She flared out right at twenty four not to put numbers on it, but it was just a beautiful specimen. She was polished all the way down and she even had a little bit of like ivory tips there at the tip of her horns. Yeah. Yeah, real pretty and a big whopper is mid forties. Well yeah, I mean like if for bulls, if you shot a forty inch bull, people would be like, that is you know, that is the orcs of of a lifetime kind of like, you know, that's the that's that's one eight white tail. I think

that thirty to forties what I'm seeing is being the average. Yeah, and where were we in terms of the one you got in terms of the story. I just wanted to real quick fill people on what they look like. Well, I think Mike's doing an awesome job of lining out the appearance of the orcs. Um. One one piece that

we haven't talked about those that paint brush tail. Oh, that's something that's something that always stands out and um, especially when you're glass and for them, they've got this tail that like the tip of the tail it looks like it could almost drag on the ground, and it's got these maybe twelve inch or longer hairs that extend from probably halfway down the tail to the tail tip.

The whole the whole length of the tail is probably in the neighborhood of eighteen inches or so, and then those hairs extend significantly farther beyond that, and it seems like when they're on their feet, that tail is just constantly swooshing, so a lot of times in your glass, and especially once the heat of the day has picked up and you're looking through that heat mirage, you know, you're trying your your search images like that that kind of cream colored body, and if you see that that

flickering tail, that fly fly swatter tail kind of blacking out a portion of the shape in the distance, that can be one of the tell tale things that you're looking at an oryx as opposed to a similarly colored cow. And we have encountered a number of cattle on this trip that have some striking resemblance to marks in various ways. But but the tail is one of the things that can definitely give them away from a long distance. If I could spin back to a couple of the numbers

some of the population just to throw that out. So they said between nineteen seventy seven ninety three, as you mentioned, car were released, they expected that to reach about six hundred animals on Wismer and by two things White Sands missile range, and by two thousand and one the population had peaked to about between four and six thousand. And now we're looking at it and they say currently the

population is between three to four thousand. And the information Jeremy's quoting is from a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Wildlife. Note, So if somebody's really curious what they look like, that would be a place to go and get a page or two of information about or in New Mexico and see a picture of one. Does it? Does it? Do? You guys know what year they started allowing people to hunt for him? Well, they said they already by the mides. The overabundance had prompted the game

department in Wismer to start to create hunting opportunities. So what when we say that I'm down here hunting right now hunt for orcs. I drew what's called an off range hunt. And Carl mentioned off range hunts a minute ago. So ricks hunting like in the general vernacular of ricks hunting, if you say like I drew an ORCS tag. Uh. People in the know will know that you're talking about New Mexico. UM. They will say to you immediately off

range round range. On range is I don't want to say it's cooler, but on range is much more difficult to draw correct correct And why is that? Well, it's it's there is a whole bunch of them. Well, there's a whole bunch of them. And of course, you know White Sands Missile Range is an active military installation and so there are a lot of things going on on that installation, and so any of the hunts that are on the range require really close coordination between New Mexico

game and fish and the missile range. And you know, that level of complexity to kind of work hunts and around missions UM, I think makes makes it really difficult to hold lots and lots of hunts on the range. So there are much you know, the hunting opportunities are far fewer on the range, and so there's more orcs on the range because you know, there there's just not as many tags, there as many hunting raortunities as what

you drew here off range. When you so if you draw an on range or its tag, which means you draw a tag to hunt on White Sands missile Range. Um, you and everyone with you has to go through a background check. Yeah, so my wife drew a once in a lifetime hunt. But now we're getting I gotta explain that. Okay, now I'll do that. I'll do I think I can handle this one. There are a variety of hunts that the cur on White Sands missile range. There are broken

horn hunts, and you can apply for this. Anybody listening to this show. I think you can go if they can pass it back. Well, no, you need to. You don't need to pass the background check to apply, but if you get drawn, they can apply. I don't know you can apply. Anyone could go on here and fill out the thing and say I want to apply for a White Sands an no range hunt. You can apply for a broken horn hunt, which means you can only shooting orcs with one busted horn that is not once

in a lifetime. You can get it again later. You can apply for a non a once in a lifetime ORCS hunt, which means you can pick any orcs you want. Then when you draw that, you're done for your life. Yeah, I've been over here shaking my head. I think all of that was correct. Now, can you go from getting

the once in a lifetime to a broken horn? So, which which I think is one of the things if you look at drawing odds for broken horns, it's not like, oh man, it's you know, it's really easy to draw an on range broken horn hunt because everybody that's ever drawn once in a lifetime range hunt then becomes more likely to apply on the range for broken horn hunts. So, and then there's also hunts, as I understand it now, there are all manner of hunts that the military puts on.

They put on a hunt, they have tags available to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, they have tags available to people that work there. There there may be I'd have to look at the at the book there there may be an active duty veteran hunt, although that a special draw for them. There are also rics on some other military installations in New Mexico, like the McGregor Range, which is part of Fort Bless And so I get a little confused on the details sometimes regarding active duty hunts and

the returning Iraq and Afghanistan veteran hunts. But there there there are a number of opportunities for military folks, and then there there are population management or hunts that you have to have the clearance to go. You have to have security clearance to go on range, which generally means that you are somebody who in some capacity works on the range and has already passed all of the security

So if you actively hold security clearance. There are sort of like these emergency hunts where you can go out and they use it to go out and get orcs that are yeah stuff column necessarily emergency, but they're used as a population management tool. So when you apply and you and you land. So you apply and you get an on range hunt, which is not what we have. You get an on range hunt, then you gotta submit and go through security clearance. Yeah, and you and your

hunting buddies, then you have a three day season. Well so yeah, I mean it's you do a number of things through that application process. You know, some pre training about being on the missile range where there's always a concern about unexploded ordinance. Yeah, they told you if you didn't drop it, don't pick it up. My favorite quote from the training was the guy was like pretty much oils down to like, if you didn't drop that thing, I don't even think about picking of them. It could

blow you up. Um. But yeah, so you uh my wife's hunt, so she drew a once in a lifetime hunt on the range. Um. We show up at the gate early in the morning. You know, they tell you when to be there. You end up in a big line of cars with all the other people. How many tag holders are rolling in there on that day? I think around fifty is my record. And they all got two buddies with them or whatever. Three probably it's like maimum it is right. It is a maximum of the

hunter plus three guests, so it's basically never more than four. Um. All the guests have to do the background checked. Everybody has to be checked, and they like, you know there's this is all pre checked. Yeah, yeah, that's all ahead of time. Then you show up at the gate. You know, they may what an enormous amount of work for somebody, right, and you have to like you have to do things like, uh, submit the serial number of the firearms that you're gonna take.

You know, you're you're not allowed to take additional firearms outside of those. You're limited to a two rifles, no photos, no recording equipment. Right do they check your firearm one you get on range. I do not recall that we got checked, but I have certainly heard stories of people getting checked. I know, I've heard stories of other folks showing up like and having their cooler because they're down their camping or whatever, you know, and they have some

beer in the cooler. Well, that's against the range rules, so they won't let you on with that beer. You know, you gotta you gotta throw that away. So it's you know, it's pretty rigorous right there at the gate, just getting on, and they check everybody in and look at everybody's I

d s. And they do all that stuff. And then you proceed to a little sort of hunt organization area and everybody gets out of their truck and and then you stand there and listen to a briefing, so they really sort of repeat all the stuff that they've already provided you written material on you know about I mean a little bit about orcs and you know their anatomy so that you're effective at at shooting them, which I

think will probably get into. But you know, also again about unexploded ordinance and being very careful and they review a hunt map with you, because there are places on the range that require that that either are closed because they are known to have unexploded ordinance, you know, and a high density of it, and you can't go in there because dangerous, or that there's some active you know, military exercise or or operations experiments and aliens and stuff.

I don't know about that testing alien aircraft something, but you know. So so there's there's all a number of places even when you're on range. It's like if you if you are caught going in there, you will immediately be escorted off the range and probably lucky if that's the only consequence that that comes of it. And even when you leave, they look at your phone. I've you know, I've I've heard that's another sort of thing that i've

i've heard has happened. Uh, it didn't happen to us. Um, like no one reviewed your your record and my you know, my recollection. And again, if if you draw one of these hunts, don't listen to this podcasts and not read any of the information they send you. I'm good. I'm I actually recall that they they now I believe, require you to have a cell phone so that if they lose track of you or you know, some of the roads on the range are as rough as things that we drove to this week. You know, if you get

stuck back there, you have a or chance of getting help. Um. My recollection is they told us you can take a photo, you can take photos of the rics, but they don't want anything in the photos, Like they don't want big panoramic skyline kind of stuff. You know. It's like if you're standing there kind of looking down at the orcs, you know, with with dirt, you know, juniverse, whatever it is kind of the ground, that's okay, but you know, don't don't drive around and take photos of anything other

than your rix. Don't take any video period, you know, and when you do take pictures of the rics, make sure that that those photographs are, you know, just that limited to that sort of small field of view. And when you go through all this rigmarole, you drive out of there and all of a sudden it's just or standing everywhere. Uh. I don't know that I would say that that was necessarily our experienced success strates are in the nineties. It's it's interesting because of course, you so

one thing to come back too quick? Is you mentioned three days? So my wife's hunt, that was what all that I just described was Friday morning and then we had I believe we had to be off range by the end of shooting light on Sunday. So really I mean, and really the briefing and stuff takes up most of that Friday morning, so it's really about two and a half days of hunting that you get on that once

in a lifetime hunt. So there's some there's some pressure, you know, I mean by the end of my wife shot hers on Saturday afternoon, and by Saturday afternoon you're going, like, you know, we want to make something work out here, because the once in a lifetime element doesn't have anything to do with whether you actually harvest in the animal or not. So did she get like a big giant toad. No, she got one very similar to the to the one

you harvested this week. But as far as what it was like kind of interesting because of course, now you've got fifty hunter right at the hunt briefing area, and there's a there can be a bit of a race two their trucks to kind of like get out there and find, you know, the orics close to the road. We we kind of opted out of that. We were just kind of like, you know what, we'll mosey back

to our trucks. We'll we'll let this, you know, this rush of of folks clear out, and then we'll take off to some areas that you know, we had gotten advice from people to look at, and we'll leave the

light on for you, right. And so we got we you know, we did get back there the first afternoon and got up kind of on top of the you know, cooler in the bed of the truck and broke out some glass and pretty quickly found some animals and and uh, we spent I've actually probably never spent that much time within two hundred yards of a group of animals that we wanted to harvest one of and and we never

got a shot because of what. Uh they were in a really wide open area and we made a good stock, but the shooting conditions were such that the grass was tall enough we couldn't she couldn't lay down and shoot off of her pack, so we had to try to get up just a little bit. But but I mean, like there's really nothing between us and the Yorks other than you know, ten inch tall grass, and so trying not to be obvious, but but getting high enough and

a solid enough rest to get her a shot. And then kind of what would happen would would be there were enough animals that one that we would want, you know, would get out in the perfect spot, and by the time we got set up and she got on that one, another one would walk in front of it, or it will walk back into the group. So it just it was one of those weird kind of situations where you're, you know, you're just like for two hours, you're like,

any second, this is going to all come together. This is a comfortable range, you know, this is really sort of confident shooting area for my wife, who's quite handy with a rifle. But um, it just never happened. And then we as it was getting dark, we tried to get a little bit more aggressive, and of course that would which you know, I tried to get more aggressive and and get it to come together, and it didn't. They have a reputation for going down and getting up

and running off. Well, you know, Carl may actually be better to tackle the anatomy, but but they are. They they have a very interesting anatomy that is substantially different from North American deer species. Yeah, I mean they do that that deep chest that Mike was talking about. I think it leaves you a lot of opportunity to place what you think is a good shot and have it not end up being lethal. And they're also just a

tough animal, you know, so that that build that they have. UM. The advice generally that that you hear when it comes to shot placement on an oors is if you think about, like on a white tail, for example, putting those cross here sort of tight behind the shoulder. UM. You'd want to be farther forward with that and maybe even a little bit lower UM. And then when you take that first shot, if you're fortunate enough to put the animal down.

I think it's very advisable based on a lot of anecdotes I have both heard and personally experienced to be ready for a follow up shot because I have I've personally seen animal be knocked down off their feet by a shot, lie there on the ground for a handful of seconds, and then kick their feet a few times, jump back up, and then run to the horizon. So high degree of um conservatism with your your willingness to

follow up like air. On the side of multiple shots, I would say, be liberal with your follow up shots. Be liberal with your follow up shots. That's a good way putting it in. Conservative with your um celebrations. Yes, yea, so we had so that breaks down. That's pretty good

job range. Oh. Yes, to Carl's anatomy lesson there, I would say that I would add that, in addition to their chest being very deep, their necks are very deep, and the location of their spine actually dips kind of far down into their body, and so this big hump of shoulder that makes up you know, the depth that you're looking at them in profile, has processes or like almost fin raise of bone that stick up off of it. And I think that it is not uncommon spinal processes.

I think they came right, Yeah, I think I think it is not uncommon for them to get hit up high in those processes of bones sticking off the spine, and that kind of creates shock in the spine, knocks them down, gives them the appearance of being stone dead.

And then as a lot of white tail hunters even have experience, you know, if you shoot just above or just below the spine with a rifle, like you can have that happen, right, the deer just looks dead for a minute or two minutes and then just pops up runs away. So I think my suspicion is that that is a kind of a common thing that occurs with ORYX.

So we had we did not have the en range hunt for everybody else who does not like the other thing you can apply for when you go online to apply, you apply for like the broken horn on range, the once in a lifetime on range, YadA YadA, or you just get a straight up off range tag. And the off range tag is good for the entire state, except the range spatial is good for anywhere who was not

a bunch of them. Yeah, and those those other military installations, and of course you can't go on those places that are specifically excluded. There's some research areas, and so it's good. Yeah, it's good for not on the military installations, not on any kind of thing that would otherwise be closed to hunting, but it's good for all public lands um in the state. Though the activity in the population is kind of centered around the missile range, um private land, off range private land.

Anyone can go buy a tag at any time and shooting orcs on private land year round. I didn't know that little detail till yesterday. So when you get an off range tag like what I had, it's good private or public off range and they run the hunts. They used to run the hunts year round, so every month, for every month they issue about a D sixty tags. They now only run it ten months out of the year April and May. They take it off for whatever reason, as you want to go turkey hunt, they take turkey

season off. No, I think it's it's associated with the draw because you have to apply for the license, so there has to be a period, you know where, Like so our draw was in April, right, Well, they couldn't We couldn't call They couldn't call you up in in April basically and say oh hey, it's the twenty April and you drew an orc's Yeah, but it's easy to that's not the answer because if that was the case, then you would just do the draw and issue April

in May for the whole year ahead. YEA. But hunting license because about the hunting license expires, I think that you think it is related to that. That's that That's been my understanding again, maybe not totally scoop them on. No, no, no, Now that you put it that way, I like it, and I think that you would have without divulging details about you, I think that you would have reason to

understand sure through proximity. I have a lot of conversations about talks a lot about hunting and fishing in Mexic with people who are very knowledgeable. So, uh, every month, ten months a year they hand out right now, like what one believe, they give out a hundred and sixty tags and your tag is good for one month. So in a lot of areas where you get used to like deer seasons, whatever, it's a month long, too much long.

It is always rac season. And those orcs that are off range seem to be very aware of the fact that people are trying to get them because they live with it year round. It's always Oris hunting season, and they really really overreact. Two sounds of trucks appropriately, they responded, Probably a dude perched up on a safari rack in the back of a pickup. It was cause for leaving not only the area, but cause for leaving the county.

Draw proportionate response from the orcs or returning to the range exceedingly wary, and perhaps they have a sense of where it's safe to be. It would seem that way, Yeah, relatively safe anyway. Yeah, they have a sense of what

direction to go when you get after him. So we showed up to hunt, and I had what these guys have called themselves and I stand by at the O team because I was probably the first at first, I'm a first time RIX hunter who was being able to hunt with three friends who all are seasoned the rics hunters, Like, how many hunts have been on Jeremy, Probably about a half dozen, six or seven, And how many of you

gotten personally? I've gotten one personally and you I've gotten too, and probably about a half a dozen others other haunts that were successful. Yeah, I would say, I mean similar. So I've shot one and I've probably been not with half a dozen hunts total. And you know, I certainly would acknowledge there's a ton of people who have like

infinitely more experience. But the team that we've assembled, I think there's good chemistry and a just a good degree of um like the right personalities and some people that have good game eyes. So I would say, like we're probably not like the varsity level in terms of RIX experience. But we're we have a trio here. People have spent a lot of time glassing and you know what we're looking for. Um. So I'm sure there's a bunch of people listening to this who would be more scoop um

than we are when it comes to Oric's hunting. But we're I would say, like at a at a proficient level, describe or hunting well. To be honest with you, the time I've spent looking at Orix, um has I probably spent more time looking through glass at Orix when I've been hunting deer or elk than when I've been hunting Rix. So UM A lot of the same strategies, like trying to get out there, find a good vantage point. Um. You know, I think in an ideal situation, you would

identify the location of Rix before they see you. I know a lot of people spend a lot of time driving driving roads and looking for him from the vehicles. I think, you know, and we've we've spent a lot of time driving around just because the area is so vast and the places that we want to hunt are

far from each other. But like the idea of getting out away from the vehicle, getting up high looking through glass, hopefully finding an animal before it's detected you, which is one of the downsides I think of essentially road hunting. You know, oftentimes you're gonna be jumping up in orcs with the truck and and hoping to bail out and get a shot at it. And to me, like, I would prefer a hunt where you're standing on your feet looking through a pair of binoculars on a tripod, finding

an ORCX, planning a move and getting in there. I think Mike, Mike put it really well. He said something like getting in there and tangling with them. You just gotta get in there, get in there and mix it up. I think that that puts it really well, man. And that's you know, for me, and I think for for us, like that's the that's the way that we like to hunt, man, But that that gets a little bit, that gets a

little bit complicated because of the landscape. So the first big time the conditions, Yeah, the first orcs we found on this trip that wasn't on range, So we're up on a glass and knob where I don't know, man, half of what you're looking at on range we're actually like staring down the fence line from on high and you're like, you're looking down there's a there's a fence line that's been cleared, like a very clear demarcation line, and half of what we can see is on range.

Half what we can see is off range, and there's a big difference. I mean, there's a bunch of orcs on range. Maybe I don't know what we saw the at first afternoon and next morning we saw sixteen close. Yeah, I mean there was seventeen at one point in time, all visible on one side of the fence. Jeremy and I were confident we had seventeen at one, you know, basically at one time, and then Mike finally finds one maybe two yards on the other side of the fence. Right.

We felt saw it from three and a half miles away, and you think, like, wow, if you can see it from three and a half miles away, it must be wide open. That's not the case. It's like you get glimpses of stuff from way far away, if you're up high or whatever. You just get these little glimpses and you realize that you might only the thing might only be visible like five percent of the time one percent of the time, I don't know. You can watch for hours and there's like one moment when there it is

and then it's not. But then you get down on its level and there's nowhere to get up and like kind of like snipe in at him. There's just nothing you can do. You just gotta go in there. It's all stuff higher than your head. And even though you cause some little random glamp glimpse through the gaps and the stuff, at the end of the day, you gotta get in there. There's like no place to go wait, there's just you gotta go in there and find him. He's not gonna come to you. You gotta mix it up. Yeah,

I mean, like you're gonna get him. You know, he's not gonna You're not gonna get him at the Old crossing, you know. I mean it's difficult, you know, being kind of someone of a spot or two. You know, you see these animals, you know, the hunter and whoever else takes off after the animal to put on a potential stock. And as a spotter, you really want to be, you know, dead set on that animal and provide the most intel to that hunter to make sure they can they have

that they can have a successful stock. And when you're sitting behind the glass, you know the contour of that landscape looks so flat, but when those animals start moving, they just almost instantly disappear, you know, and so it can get real frustrating as a spot or as you're you know, trying to lay down the groundwork for that hunter closing the distance, but you lose sight of those

animals and you lose sight of them. For I think Mike and I, you know, as you guys were hunting, as you were stalking in on your orics, there were moments where we would see the orix completely broadside, you know, as plain as day, and then he would disappear and we would for ten fifteen minutes have have no idea where he was, and you would just be panning across and every now and then, you know, going back to Carl's,

you know, the polishing of the horns. You would see these yuccas going back and forth and shaking, and then you would just see a little shine with the tips of the horns and you would occasionally glance that, you know, and then the orcs would move. And then there was a couple of instances where we were like, well, I think they're gone, you know, like I don't know what

we're gonna do. But all of a sudden you would see something barely, you know, flicker and and you would think that it was the wide open and if there were an orics there you would see it. But he's just behind the contour that makes him almost invisible. Yeah, the one with the one we got onto where we

went in after it. We spooked that probably fifty yards I think when it jumped up it was probably sub fifty and when it crossed out in front of us at a gallop, and I like, I like that because when that thing moved, I mean, we knew we were getting it close to where we'd seen it, and there were probably three or four seconds of hearing galloping hoofs before we could see the thing. And there was no question like, that's the orc's right, It's not gonna be

a beef cowmbering out of there. It was like the brum brum. And it came across a gap at you know, fifty or sixty yards in front of you, looking animal, big long tail flying out behind it, and that was that was a big body, bold he didn't have very large, like very long horns, but the body on it was like a tank of an orix. And you know, he made a good decision in that situation not to shoot.

And one of the things we talked about after the fact is the tendency of that animal to want to look back at whatever spooked it, you know, kind of like when you think about a mule deer sottting away and wanting to pause and look back and occasionally give you a shot opportunity. Um orcs are notorious for kind

of wondering like what the heck was that? And so you know, that particular individual did stop, unfortunately in an area where we could not see it, and as we pursued the direction that he had galloped off, we end up spooking him again at a farther distance and watched him, you know, disappear again to the vegetation, which in that particular example was some kind of scattered, fairly thick juniper trees one seed junipers where the thing given us fits it,

and that animal, Jeremy and I stayed up on the glassing knob to try to keep an eye on it, and and we lost that orcs about twenty minutes after you guys laughed, you know, to cover my vehicle and then foot this three and a half miles, which we knew would take at least an hour um, and we lost it. But where you jumped it was probably within a hundred yards of where we had last just disappeared.

We never saw it. Well. After we spooked that one, we decided to go check out the other side of this little ridge and went over there, and Pope popped into one the second one we saw, and this one was at four yards already dead on us, just staring at us, and we're just like creeping up over the top. It's locked onto us and gone. Then I was like, man, this is not going to be super easy, because a lot of really hard to draw tags while not being easy,

but this is not the case. Yeah, I think this is like a really interesting tag to hunt because it's not easy. But when you look at the success rates, they're not bad. It's not like, you know, it's not like killing a bull elk in Montana in the general season success right, I mean twenty or something like that. Yeah, you know, so I think this hunt is like fifty or sixty percent success rate. So like if you hunt them if you really you know, if you put days in and you kind of grind it out, you know,

and you will very likely have an opportunity. So it's not like it's not hard from the sense that, like you never see an animal, you know what I mean. But but it's very hard from the sense that, like you have to make a lot of right, correct decisions, you know, in in the whole process to really get at the work. When the state post success rates for the hunt, are they only giving you last year's success

rates or is it like an accumulation of years. Probably just last year's success rates, right, Like you can look it up year to year, and we're talking like if you look last year, I think it's like a forty to sixty window across those ten months of off ranch hunts is kind of the park. Another factor there is that you got a month to do it, you know. And you and I were chatting a bit when you found out you drew the tag. You're like, what would you what would you recommend? And I said, well, you

could come down here. We might end up getting one in a day or two. But I think like a week of grinding it out, if we hit it hard, you will very likely have a good opportunity if we hit it hard for a week and you're we got one on our fourth day, fourth day. Another thing that happened to us while hunting is uh Orcs don't jump fences or its go under fences, and they're big and they don't fit just under any old fence, and so the thing is well known amount or its hunters is

that you need to find they'll use. They'll know of crossing spots to get on fences. So whether it's a fence that would put them back into the mist into the safety of the missile range, or or just range fences out on the open out on the BLM land. Like everything around here is BLM ton of BLM, so range fences out on BLM land, um, they'll have known

crossing spots. And it seems just from my observation, it seems like they like washouts where flash flooding or whatever scours out and makes a significant gap under a fence, and then they'll use those spots. I was talking to an outfit. He was saying, when he's seen people archery successfully archery hunt, did he ever say he says he's seen people get shots. He hasn't had any clients off range. He hasn't had any off range clients get one with a bow, but on range clients get them with bows.

But I think you're saying off range. He's had people get shots, um, and those have been by finding a crossing under a fence and then just posting up and waiting on that crossing under the fence. And the thing that they like to do, he was explaining, is the thing they do is they brush out all the crossings so you can tell the vintage of tracks coming through.

And they'll also just take tires and stuff and drag tires down the road to scrub the road of tracks, and then the morning you go drive the scrubbed road. I've seen people do this by pulling old box springs behind there, like just like bed springs, the same way you might groom out of baseball field or whatever, a chunk of chain link fence. Yeah, yeah, scrub it all out, and then the morning go drive and pick up a track.

Because the peculiarity of this area, which would not this would be hard for people to picture they live in other parts of the country. When you're following a track in the desert, you can pretty much run. You can pretty much run and follow a track once you know what you're looking at. There's not so many tracks, and it's confusing. It wouldn't be like following white tails in the snow, where you know they're criss crossing and zigzag.

And here's another group of six and then seven more across the track, and then he started hanging out with five of them and split off, and you can never do It's like it's sparse enough. There's a few enough life forms around that when you get on that track,

you could run that track down. And one day we're driving along and we hit where there's a whole look a little hole down in the road, and we got out and sussed it out for quite a while and eventually found where the track he had come in, mingled around the road a long time, went under a fence, and then we got on that track and followed that track, and um, you're just most of the time you'd have like a maximum shooting distance of fifty yards most of

the time, like for like a clear shot, but you're just able to follow that track. And following this ORCS track he went to I think we were calling betting areas, but they're like scent post areas. He went from one to the next. I think he went to four spots, and the spots were all the same, big shade tree.

Tons of ships scattered around the shade tree, pawed up ground and obvious beds, and then that track would leave and he'd go off in some other direction and he'd hit another one of those spots, and we followed him in a gigantic backwards s that's exactly right, at which point was like a hundred three degrees and we gave

up on the track. Yeah, that s I mean the way you described it as exactly if you imagine just the mirror image of a giant s that from top to bottom was about one point four miles tall, So the length of that s We probably tracked that thing for two two and a half miles. And it was this securitist route that intersected with a number of those

sent post spots along the way. And it was cool because there were other, you look like, other places where multiple animals might have come together and broken off and split apart. It hard, and I felt like at one point we might have got off big certainly upgraded. It's all a sudden the track we were on, like you'd get confused at these scent areas, and Carl felt and I think he was right advise, I feel like our track is like ever so slightly bigger than when they

were on earlier. An interesting thing about the reason I was hard to keep optimism about the track was that we found where a coyote had stepped in its track, and I'm like, okay, did a Kyle step in its track five minutes ago? Or are we on a day old track from the evening before? And then we found where it bedded, but we're it bedded a lizard had walked across, and I'm like, okay, did he just get up and a lizard happened to then just run across? Or has that been there a while? And that you

know what I mean? That shook my confidence a little bit. And on the flip side, though, we had a couple we found a couple of fecal piles that you know, if you chipped away at the top down at the core, there was still like some mucusie moisture down in there, and and the way that sun is loking down like I don't think a pile of scat like that could stay put for twenty four hours and not get baked to the drive all the way out because that I

mean they were out in the wide open. So you and I, like independently, I think we reached a similar conclusion that that the tracks we were looking at were probably from like the afternoon or evening of the day before. And then you're wondering, like, Okay, you know, the gate

of these things. If they're just cruising, obviously they can cover a ton of ground, but if they're in the process of you know, like kind of checking out these different sent post areas, bedding down from time to time, feeding like maybe we're gaining ground, but one thing is sure in your mind, You're like, I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt at the end of this trail there is an oryx and I don't know how far that if you and if you had the stamina and

and it didn't get over the fence into the range, like you would eventually spook it or find it, uh following that track. Another interesting thing about it is like when you're up glassing, so Jeremy, explain your safari rack. Well, I think I think you guys, you know, bring up a great point, right, there's no perfect way to hunt Rix. You know, we did. We tracked, we got up on knobs,

and we glassed, and we cruised the Safari Rac. And you know, about ten years ago when I first started hunting Orix with some friends of mine, we've kind of fell into that same scenario where we were in the vehicle, you know, trying to track, trying to get to knobs to glass, and we just weren't being productive. We weren't turning up a lot of animals. And we realized, you know, with the contour of the landscape, we needed to get

a vantage point. You know, they're the habitat is so expansive that you know, in order to cover that ground, you want to be doing it efficiently. And so we you know, I have two really good friends, my my two buddies. They you know, put in a lot of hard work and creating this Safari Rac. They took an old ski lift at the time. At the time, Hey, this is coming from the world worst welder, well knows, people that have never welded, and then there's me, the

world's worst welder, and then everything up from there. I feel like I could give you a run for your money on my high school legg teacher more or less just like ask me to stop, please, Mike, Yeah, this is I would like you to stop using the welder you. I'll just give you a passing grade, but I don't want you to do it anymore. That is really an

accurate portrayal of my my experience in welding. I think not to beat the welding thing to death, but there's like form and function, right and when it comes to function, that rack held two of us. You know that we're insensitive. We're insensitive times. We're insensitive times. And everyone right now, and I'm talking nationally, everyone right now is over sensitive

and we're struggling with our sensitivity. I'm just making a joke about some globby ask looking wells on the Safari rack, and I'll point out that I was very aware of these because the roads are very rocky. And when you're up on the Safari rack and the driver tip a little bit to the right, because it's a thing you're like on a in the what do you call it

a tuna boat. You're in the tuna tower. So it's two foot seas in a tuna tower feels like it's eight foot seas put someone down on the deck because like, no, stupid seas, Like, how could it be tupid seas. I'm swaying ten feet side to side. I think you're The wells held. The sea clamp didn't go at point the sea clamp inexplicably broken half. I never see, like I thought it, well, it must have come loose, and they're like,

I don't know it broke. They got too hot. Yeah, I've never seen it got too hot from the heat of the sun and it burst the metal. But listen, man, a sense of time. Understand everyone's sensitive, but everything the wells they might hold great. I'm not saying I could do better. The wells are shitty. I'm not going to disagree. But they held. And it just struck me as funny absolutely to be up there, swaying back and forth looking at that weld. Yeah, for a lot of hours, and

that's yeah. You know, well, it's the type of thing where you know, the first time you you make it, you've learned what you can add to it to make it that much more comfortable, and it's just unfortunate that we haven't had the time to make it. He found he found a former ski lift bench. Yeah, and it and it fixed it to the top of a contractor rack. Yeah, it's perfectly you know, when it gets the job done.

The idea is when you're trying to get to point A to point B, you know, get on those high spots, use the extra you know, six six ft on top of that rack to just spend some time glass the breeze. Two does you know you get you get the driver to cruise at that fift blowing through your hair. Yet you're just comfortably miserable. But you know, it's it's been something that has has helped us tremendously and covering ground

and being able to turn up worcs. And but like you guys said, point being what I was good at about the spar I rack and when we abound other hunt methods, but when we were tracking in orcs, we never got like terribly far away from the zig zagging around. We got from the one we got one point five miles from the where the truck was. You're you're up there in your glassing and you're like, oh, there's nothing here. Yeah,

I've looked none here. Let's move And then you get down into that ship and the Safari rack on the truck is how high, it's probably about seven. You get down into that ship, you're six ft tall. Yep, the Safari rack is probably yea, the Safari rac seven ft tall. And you realize that almost at no time can you look and see that thing right, And you're like, I think, Carl put it like you said, I think that when we're glassing this stuff, we're probably maybe we're seeing ten.

We're having like if there's an ORCS there, we have like a one in ten of seeing it. And to bring that to highlight at we go to a spot you guys that hunt it before, and we're looking out on just solid, like you know, over eight degrees of no, hundred eighty degrees of like great stuff. We're kind of up by a stock tank. We got of just flat and we're nice and high, nice and high. It's so flat that I noticed that Jeremy. When Jeremy glasses, you

don't even really mess around too much of binoculars. It's so flat. You can just take your spot and scope and you can basically get everything from hundred and fifty or two hundred yards out to infinity in one frame. So you can just take your spot and scope paste it out and just move it back and forth. And there's no like up down movement. You just got the

whole damn scene as you swoop along. Uh, We're sitting there, all of us, glass and glass and glass, and and all of a sudden and ORCS is seven yards away, standing on a sand mound. No one saw it. It's right and front of us, so everything to the left, everything right. No one caught a glimpse of wherever the hell it came from. It popped up in the frame

of my binoculars. As I'm looking in my binoculars seeing no Orex, all of a sudden in Oris just emerges from below, full body up on this knob, looking at us in order to stare at us seven yards is

already like very aware of us. Yeah, I have a theory that that ORACX was closer, way closer, minutes before that or seconds before that, Like it was cruising along towards where we were, where we were heard of us, whatever heard us, saw us, bolted and then was doing that like what the heck is going on back there from seven yards away. And that's when I saw it, because that for it to pick us up, like we went back down and it seemed track. It just didn't

make sense. So that's my theory on that one. So we went out, Well, I was just gonna say, and ORCX. You know, if if you imagine the way that we're looking, I mean, the ORCS is at twelve o'clock, you know, like you know, it's not like off to the side. It quickly the way that everybody is faced unless it had been waiting there. Lets it have been waiting there all day. It somehow passed, traveled through some amount of stuff in front of us, emerged, became visible, then gallops off.

No one catches a glimpse of it leaving. We go out and strike its track and follow its track. And what does it do? It doesn't look like from the where we found from where we picked up the track, it looks like it trotted in a bee line and crossed into the missile range. It was like it had a particular spot in mind, and we got to that place. It was a spot where you know that bottom strand of that barbedware fence on the edge of the missile range.

Ordinarily it's probably like shin Hai, and at that spot it was like mid thigh high, and that oracs like without breaking stride, just a duct right under at that spot as we were like fouling the track, and I could see the missile range boundary coming up. I'm thinking that We're all thinking like it'll hit the fence, but then it will obviously have to travel, and I'm trying to figure out, like, is he gonna cut left or right and maybe we'll catch it going down the fence

line somewhere, trying to find work across. But it had already knewhere I was gonna cross and hit the fence at a crossing and book back to safety. And it did.

And then I was like, these sons of bitches, like hard it did all that with any without any of us seeing it cover like what four hundred yards while you think you're sitting there glassing the area I meanwhile you're glassing is so well in fact, that one can run through four yards of the stuff in front of you and no one lays Anne right, it disappeared off

the sand mound. Jeremy picked it up one place to the left, so we knew it was going you know that direction, and then nobody ever saw it again in the five of them, I mean and we're looking in the range, t right. We expected that animal to make its way in there and do the old fashioned look back, you know, And an hour later, we're still looking for that.

I'm all on range and never found it. Did Jeremy and I continued to spot from where we had originally seen the animal, you know, while you guys tried to put a track job on it. And nobody, neither of us ever put eyes on that. And that's the thing I've speculated on a couple of times. I wondered about the relationship to the fence in two ways. I wondered about the relation to the fence is how onerous do

they view? Like? How annoying is it to cross? Because if you're hunting pronghorn, you'll often find that a spook pronghorn will get really confused at a you know, like a four or five strand fence if they hit, if they're out of their normal routine and they get bumped or spooked some hunt way, they don't want to be spooked and they hit a fence, they'll be like, because they don't, let's just say they don't. They will, Okay, for all you people that are gonna send in videos,

of the prong horm. Wile jump a fence, they'll jump fence. Do they like to do? They do it norminally generally want to go under fences. But they are capable, yes, of jumping fences. But I've watched them hit fences and then run for a mile down the fence, almost like second guests themselves, and start coming back and running down. It's always like when you when a deer's going across the road and hit your car, that they'll just start paralleling your car now and then, and it seems so illogical.

I see him do crazy ship up against fences, like very disoriented. So I was like, what is the orcs relationship to the fence in that way, and what is its relationship to knowing that the safety of the other side of the fence. And I think that, uh, they're not terribly annoyed by getting across the fence because they

have spatial awareness where they know like the crossing. And I and my just little pet theory, which is like completely like an amateur theory, is that they are um, they're aware of that there that they get screwed with less over there, which are the other kind of big animal animal definitely figures that kind of stuff out. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think they understand, you know, that they're safer on the range

side of the fence. I've seen those animals cross in front of us at a fence line, and they will cross under a fence almost about the same speed that they're approaching that fence, if they're in about a gallop. I've seen those that It's amazing how fast in order its can dip down to the ground. You know, we think about ourselves trying to crawl under the bottom strand of the barbed wire, you know, and you're on your

knees and you're you know, things are hurt. And I've seen those animals just dip and they're under that fence and they're maintaining the same momentum out of there, so they they're pretty athletic. I'll share with you a fence story that I've shared before, but it's worth it's worth telling it again. Uh, we knew this guy in Florida. We're down there turkey hunting in Florida one time and we ran into these guys that like to run pigs with dogs and they're like, oh, you guys should come

out with a snipe and um. This guy's family's cattle ranch, a butts of nature preserve, um, and the between stuth that's been traditionally grazed, the difference between like what's been traditionally grays, which is all these hammocks. So it's like just grasslands with these palm hammocks in it, very open um, grays very low. It's just been you know, grace for

whatever a couple hundred years. I don't know. The bird preserve is a comparatively a jungle, so it's amazing to see this juxtaposition between something that hasn't been grayed and however many decades and something that traditionally is like a very different landscape. So on the border between the cattle ranch and the preserve is a fence. The cattle ranch has a problem with hogs digging it up too bad,

so he put a hogproof fence. Someone had put historic it's going to put a hogproof fence, but there are other people argue whether there really is no hogproof fence, but it's like kind of a hogproof fence, though they're always finding ways to get in and around it. What this guy would do because this guy liked to hunt pigs. He put little doorways into the hogproof fence. This is

the rancher's kid. He puts doorways into the hogproof fence in order that the hogs can come onto the ranch and let he lets him get used to the holes. So when we go out to hunt hogs, the first thing he does is, well, let me go close all the doors. He then drives down this big gass long fence, closing all the doors. Once it's about midnight, then we started hunting. And guess where the dogs catch the x at the doors? At the doors. So yeah, there's a

little hunting method. There's a research preserve. I used to live on um in southeast Michigan when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and there was a deer herd on the property. It's a famous deer heard The George Reserve is the name of this place. And the fence had fallen into tremendous disrepair and um I worked one summer helping to repair that fence line. And there were some places where white tailed deer trails were

coming on and off the reserve. And one day, in the middle of the day, I just closed up a portion of that fence, and there's a mountain bike trail that goes along the outside of the reserve, and a mountain biker had spooked a white tail dough And so I'm standing there along the fence, just mending mending a portion of the fence, and twenty yards to my left

is the spot I just fixed. And this dough comes tearing through the woods and smashes into that spot in the fence, backs up, smashes into it again, and then stands there looking at the spot, and then races off the other way down along the fence line. So they get keyed into those crossing points. That's interesting, man, She's

like this normally works. I mean, she hit it hard, Like I'm standing there at the fence, and you know, if you imagine like an outfielder going for a home run and crash into the fence, that's what it sounded like, that big ching of the you know, the chain link. And then and then backed up and did the same thing again, like I know this is the spot without a shred of doubt in her mind. I don't know why mountain biker comes by. Yeah, I was like, what's

she running? From, you know, and then there's this ten seconds away and here comes a dude on the mountain. But I don't know why I'm thinking this right now, but I want to get back to what we're talking about. But I got a buddy who's a surveyor, and he was surveying in Michigan's Apa Peninsula. And you put up those little contraptions that you look at each other, the two surveyors. He said that it's all it's in the wintertime, and the all dear starving and ship in the wintertime.

Him and they got to go through a sight line through the hemlocks, and he's bit like, well, they call like cedar swamps up there, right, there's the hemlocker cedar up there. I've heard. I think it's cedar swamps. So they cut the sight line and then he gets on his little thing and the other guys on his little thing, and he said, they having the chainsaw running while they cut the sight line. Deer just showing up. They hear the chainsaw and come running. So he said, you get

set up to do your work. And he had to hustle becauseaid all of a sudden, all the deer would be filling in eating all the junk they knocked down, and someone had to run along trying to scare the deer, heard the deer out of the way enough to then go back and try to do your survey work. Anyways, works. I'd knock cedar limbs down to catch deer is like a bait source when I was darting deer from my

grad project winter. Yeah, you could just you could just trim a couple of low limbs that were just out of reach of the brows line, and it was just as good as having any other kind of bait out there for bringing him into dart range and then try and quil huh uh the one we got, the one we got, the works we got. It was very similar to hunt. It was like very similar to an antalope

hunt situation, at least for me. I would agree in general terms other than the vegetation, but in terms of there's some generally drifting like like a caribou antelope kind of set up. I feel like like there's some pretty far away ye generally drifting in some direction on a somewhat identifiable land along a somewhat identifiable vegetation zone. Um, and you strike off at an angle and try to get to where you think they will arrive, but again

far off. It was like, oh, there's some WORCS moving along and there he is, and there he is, there he isn't there he is? And then you get down in the ship and it's like I have no idea what is going on and we're using this far off power line like who you spot it again? Like damn? Well yeah, I mean it was a real group effort though to keep up with that. Well was the first one that picked it off. Yeah, right and way off, and it was a real obvy. I mean, this one

was like an easy one. It just sort of like Carl's where it was like you know, scanning something you scanned ten times and like standing right, like no question like that right, there's an ORCS broad side and way the hell off as a power line, and you're able to be like there's a trailer you could see like

count eight power polls. And so when we struck off, we just went at an angle and at the point got lucky because we're sort of getting like, you know, one where they are, and then we eventually catch a glimpse of one and we had it being like let's say we're facing some way, um, and we had to be that they were gonna be appearing at one o'clock

if we're lucky. And we're recognizing at this point that like everything's very far away, you can't see ship, like not thumbing your gotten knife to check if it's sharp.

You know, you're like, who knows. But we had a little cow like an analop hunting blind cole blind looks like a cow set up, and our line was off or they changed course, and all of a sudden, Carl's got one at what distance I would say at that point it was probably like one fifty pick us picking us off at one, Yeah, and most you know, our attention had been focused. If you imagine looking at like twelve o'clock is where we're thinking we might see these orcs.

I was trying to make it a point to do like a three sixty every few minutes, because we're also seeing a lot of fives try and they're probably the most tracks we've seen. And I was thinking, like, we've got these this group that we've seen of three or four, and who knows what else is in here. So I was trying to keep heads up with what's going on. Around. Yeah. You had even said, like, we're just gonna all of

a sudden have one staring at us. Yeah, when we're sneaking in there, and and what caught my attention, So again, if you're thinking twelve o'clock, I happen to be looking towards like let's say, four thirty off over my right shoulder and spotted that sword like horn immediately dropped down without any question in my mind about whether or not that was an oryx, and I whispered to each guy individually and like, do not move, because that thing was dialed dialed in, and it went from what I saw

was the like the parallel of one horn, and it turned and gave me the two horns. So I saw, you know, the the fact that the skull staring at is facing at us, and I never I could not see the face at that point. I could just see these two They kind of remind me like antennae off an insect um, And I could just see the tips of those two sword like horns and could not see the face of the animal. And I'm just kind of like peeking up. So I tell you guys, like, you know,

don't move. I've got Steve on my left with the rifle that seth on my right. We're all kind of packed in behind this decoy, and I start trying to get the shooting sticks set up. I've been carrying around a set of shooting stick because that's one lesson we've learned the hard way, you know, about trying to get steady from a standing position. You're always trying to work through all that vegetation. So my chief responsibility this trip has been chasing Steve around with the shooting sticks so

they're at the ready. So I get the shooting sticks set up at a good height for Steve to be like in a kneeling position. He sneaks around behind me, peeks up over the top, and as we rise up, you know, I'm thinking there's probably like a chance that the ORACX is still there because there's been quite a bit of commotion. And he's like, Hey, that Cole's got a gun. Yeah, that Cole's got a gun stick out of its back. So so yeah, um, you know, I'm I'm thinking, I know, like exactly where this thing is.

I don't initially relocate it, but within a couple of ticks there are two racs trotting from left to right. And at that point, in order to gain like a good shooting lane, we abandoned the decoy. We get up on our feet and we shifted to the right. What do you think like fifteen yards maybe, and we get this nice gap where the orcs are now stopped doing the ox. Look. But he did what he shouldn't have done. Yes, he did did what he should not have done. Stop

the two hundred thirty yards and stared. Yea. The problem was, though the shooting sticks were set for the kneeling. The kneeling shot at that point, so we drop a couple of the legs that still wasn't quite stable enough. We got the third leg out, got him ranged. Steve took his time blouch And the thing was the thing that was interesting about that is and I'm a ears plugged trying to do a good job of protecting my head. Yeah, you're asking me for a range of my ears. What's

the range? What's the range? Well, let me ask you this, what turning back Carl's guy's ears like extra plugged? What? Let me ask you this, what range? Are you zeroed on? That? Rifall? I don't know how big they are? Zero? Okay? I'm looking at that thing like, there's no question you don't

need to worry about race because the circums. Me being a novice and not having sort of like a very fixed mental image of how big they are and hearing all these stories of how big they are, I was like, if you had said three fifty, I wouldn't have been shocked. That's good to know. And it's a very disorienting landscape. It's it's like flat ass desert with brush in it because an annually don't know how big it is. You can see it from like the brisk it up, and

I just was you could have said three ye. Well, so my thought process in that situation, like in that instant, I was thinking, like, don't you you're not worrying about adjusting anything like that that animal in terms of where your point of aim would be if you're zero to two ish, that animal somewhere right in that ballpark. So I'm just I would only be a minute. I would be a minute low, and may yeah, in hindsight maybe,

but that was the thing I wanted to know. And so I noticed your your lips moving and I've got my ears like plugged with my fingertips and I unplugged my ears. You're saying range, You're like perfect, and don't you know you imagine, don't adjust anything aimed that on. So I've got my ears like plug plugged, like fingertips over those little ear flappers pushed way down in there. And when you pulled that trigger, the sound of the impact was what stands out in my mind. It was

such a distinctive whop. And and I wasn't exactly sure which of the two you might shoot at. The one that you shot was the one I expected, but I thought you might shoot it either one potentially, and they were close enough together that I saw one of them run away, So I wasn't certain, like which, you know, what exactly had happened at that moment, but I definitely heard a very distinctive whop o. Our buds who were

back on the glass heard that. To you. I liked the whop, yeah, And I liked that only one ran away and there was a there was a big cloud of dust to like, instantly there was this pluma dust. I don't know if you saw that, but big brown pluma dust. And you know, we you were in the right mind space at that point because you're like we need to get to where I can be ready for

a follow up shot. And I was sitting there with a good line where there were a couple of sort of like semidistinctive bushes lined up where I felt like we could we could keep a good line to get in on that thing. But we kind of split up a little bit, worked our way into the area where we where we thought that orcs might be, and you very quickly identified the location and that animal had not taken a single step from the down going right down. We did shoot him in the neck, yes, because it

was hard to tell. We were very uh yeah, I'm a little I'm little trigger shy. Well I think is that the right word liberal? With the follow up shot, I mean the stories you hear like you we heard another one that day, Yeah, we did, and that's heart to another hunter. He wasn't hunt right now, but he hadn't hunted orcs in the past, and told another story. Yeah, you want me to recount that. The guy was talking about being out with his his so called friend and

knocking an oorcs down. There's stop being friends over. I don't blame the guy, man um, And I'm sort of haunted by the situation with my buddy too, and I can I'll tell that very quickly as well. But the situation the guy told us was he shoots an OORX, the orix is on the ground. They walk in and they're trying to determine whether or not a follow up follow up shot is necessary, and his friend unexpectedly decides the best course of action is to throw a stick

at the downed ox. No, the guy wanted to shoot it. Yeah, he's he's like, maybe we should take a following and he said, no, don't, let's not shot it's dead. And instead he chucks a stick at the down ORIX, at which point the OORCX jumps to its feet and runs

to the horizon again. And just real quick while around the topic, I've got one of my dearest hunting buddies, um guy named Ryan, who we were out on his off range orics hunt and we worked hard, we suffered together, we earned a shot opportunity where he hit an orax knocked it off its feet, and we were both so elated and so rookie in our rax experience that we're standing there, you know, just like giddy, looking at each other like yeah, yeah, and the orax is laying there

and the next thing, you know, the thing kicks its feet back under itself and just gallops to the horizon. And when we can never to be seen again, we went down there, found a couple little spots of blood and that oracs. I mean, we followed it, Like you said, the tracking conditions, you can basically walk at a fast walk, and we followed it for miles up and over hill after hill, and it never even slowed down. So there, Yeah, the idea of being liberal with follow up shots makes sense.

And when I got around to where I could see what what was the exit point of your shot, it was up at the base of the neck, So you'd made it. You'd made a solid shot on that oorcs. And I do not believe that ORCS would have gone anywhere. But when I saw the hole at the base of its neck, and the fact that you know, the oracs was still breathing a little bit, you could have could have been stunned from the load of the process. When I saw that hole on the neck, I just said,

shoot it again. And we went back and forth, I think three different times. We're like, really, like, shoot it again, just just be safe. And that's that follow up shot you took it didn't do a ton of meat extra meat damage. Yeah, and so I feel like a shot in the neck. Then for a minute was scared that I just blew the horn off, Carlton. It doesn't matter. I did say that, and I stand and I stand by that because also was like one of those horns. Yeah, that was one of That was one of the most

sickening experiences with with my buddy Ryan. And I take responsibility for that because I should have just said, like, you know, the same thing I said you was chamber around and just keep your cross hairs on that thing, and if there is any question in your mind about whether it may or may not get up, like if it blinks wrong, take a fill up shot. We spoke to a guide who expressed to us that the glory days of off range or funning in New Mexico are waning.

That is getting harder. You don't have the big ones around anymore, and it is like they're with they're I mean, you gotta think it is it fair to say that they're kind of whittling away at them. I mean, you just read the numbers. There's a thousand fewer and when we're only talk about four or five thousand thousands a lot. But we're still over the objective, right. I'm not saying we're not objective. I'm saying that the good old days

are waning. I mean, I, for one, I can't speak to the good old days because I I wasn't fortunate enough to hunt at those times. But the hunts that I've been fortunate to be on, you know, we've we've turned up ricks and I can't tell you it's a lot of rics, it's a little orics. I don't know how to you know, quantify that to past experiences in the nineties. But I think, you know, um, the direction of of you know, the way the population is being managed. They wanted to be at a lower target rate. Um.

But I think the hunting is good still. You know, I would find it hard to believe that it's dwindling down to the expectations that we might have gotten from the individual. Yeah. Well, let's say you had two billion dollars and then all of a sudden you had one billion, and I observed, man, you have less money. You would then be like, but a billion is a lot, Like, yes, but you have less. That's all I'm getting at I'm

not saying it's bad. I'm just saying he seemed to think that he used to be like why am bam? Maybe that's not even true. There is like a real good old days problem that hunters, and I think, you know, it might have been as simple as like everyone remembers. Okay, just me now, I'm thinking back to the last Turkey season. In my mind, all I did was called back and forth at hot gobblers. How much does that happen a

couple of times? But in my head, it's like, dude, right, you know, you forget about all that, like the days nothing happens and you might as like turkey on, Oh yeah, it's great man working, hot working, you know, so whatever, Uh, it might just be his you know, And he wouldn't be the first guy to tell you that things used

to be good. Yeah, I mean, and you know, he spent a lot of time hunting in those good old days, and I'm sure a lot of has changed since then as far as tag allocation and pressure and those types of things that could be you know, there could be many more contributing factors to you know, maybe that that dwindling down of the of the experience and I've I've never looked at those data, but you know, we do post harvest success data that includes because so like you'll

have to report on this harvest and you know, identify

the sex of the animal that you killed. I don't think they'll ask you anything about the horns, although I can't recall, but they will ask you how many days did you hunt, so you could I mean from a quality of I'm not talking about necessarily from the number of animals and the population standpoint, but if that's a corollary to the quality of the hunting, I mean, you know, the good old days, you could look at those data and ask how many you know, what percentage of people

are being successful, and how long is it taking them to be successful. So that information exists so you can find us all out and the range on range hunts, uh, they do record the length of the horns on the animals, so you can see if there was a Yeah, you can see if there was a drift there, right, So you know, maybe it wouldn't tell you anything about off range although I think I think the animals that you see on an off range hunt, many of them also

spend a lot of time on the range. I don't think they have I don't know what they're each other up and do. Okay, you guys are off range, we're around range. I don't get a sense that there's like a really high level of you know, fidelity to a particular area. It's just like or show up in one place and if they don't get bumped, they hang out around there for a while. Yeah, when then they might just all take off walking and go, you know, ten miles back onto the range or wherever. Yeah, I'm not

like bad mouth and experience. I mean, we had interact except for the day we got here and only went out in the afternoon, we had interactions and like opportunities. Yeah, and I we even had an opportunity to day we got here right at dark that we ran out of daylight. We found one. It was like you could have walked there anyways. Multiple opportunities after that too. So like not bad mouth in it. I'm just I'm just sharing a thing that a guy said, and take it for what

it take it for what it's working. I was trying to sort of offer the approach that if some you know, that if if we were really interested in that question, you could find the information is publicly available, so we had opportunities every day. Got one the morning of our

fourth day. You could say, basically, this is gonna sound like you're giving away something and to something you can find, Like the most basic Internet search would reveal to you that you want to hunt within I don't know, ten twelve miles of the missile range across the northern and western sides. And if you think I'm narrowing it down, I'm talking one hundred and eighty linear miles of a

ten mile wide stretch of ground. So yeah, plenty of place on Yeah, in the east side too, I mean right seven when there's some story somebody reached out through some guy sent me a screenshot of an on of on X. I not had to like go on on X and kind of figure out where it was, but it was on the east side. He said, look here if you're struggling to yeah, okay, so maybe there is one thirty two sixty nine linear miles of a ten

mile wide strip. That's my hot tip by looking at on X. So it seems that that east side there's not as much ground the hunt well, it seems to be a little bit more checkerboarded um, but you know, they've they've seen him, you know, really far north to they've seen him you know south as well, So that three sixty degrees around there. I think that's a that's

really good. My hot tip would be like five to seven miles around the entire perimeter of the missile range, the potential bump into them and there is an enormous amount of BLM lamb. Yeah, there is no need millions of acres. There is no need to feel like, you know, you don't have spots, I mean state BLM planning of space. That's right. Another hot tip is they're pretty serious about that missile range boundary. So having having on X you know, or or some other mapping app to, so you're confident

where it is. It's it's pretty well marked. But yeah, that's so bad that I leaned on it one time. I leaned on it and and quickly withdrew my fingers, realizing that that my fingers had wrapped around the barbed wire into it. Probably felt they're probably reading my right now with some kind of contraption. But and of course there are some private in holdings around, some ranch in holdings, you know, and amongst a lot of BLM and state lands,

and you got to be careful about as well. I think one of the biggest tips I can give to folks that may be lucky enough to draw that tag is not only do you get a four wheel drive vehicle, you know, I mean from get a tune up. You know, from a map it looks like you can get from point A to point B very easily, But once you're there on the landscape, you'll quickly understand that, you know, time really erodes those roads in a in a quick thunderstorm can really have a lasting impact. Flash flooding is

serious issues, absolutely, especially this time you're in June. You got monsoons and they just like make the rivers turn into the roads turned into rivers. Right, These guys travel with um lots of water, twenty extra twenty gallons of fuel and fuel cans, all your repair stuff, shovels and whatnot. And then you do want to have like your your camp gear and just keep your stuff in your truck so you can roll from Yeah, and I have an extra spare tire, and he knowed that he's running ten

ply kevlar. Those those mesquite thorns. Well, well, your tiresias and tread side, like good solid tires are are a huge advantage. Yeah, my buddy who built that Safari rack. One time we were hunting and he popped the tire, put the spare tire on a couple hundred down. A couple hundred yards down the road. He started hearing some air and sure enough he popped that that same tire that we just replaced, so multiple spars. We were out of tires and we had to make a trip back

into town to get those tire space. I also have an air compressor and so like a little we've got two air compressor plug all of it. You gotta be if you rig up like that, if you rig up, we got a good BAA truck and rig up with fuel, water, food, camp gear. I got one more for you. Okay. If we were to count up the number of full coolers of ice that we've been here, that's how I just think, man, I forgot it's a hundred It's a hundred degrees in the daytime. We probably have at least half a dozen

coolers with us. Some of them are giant that we had hundreds of pounds, Like we probably had three hundred pounds of ice. I had to fifty in my head. No,

but yeah, I think three. I forgot that detail because you gotta picture putting, uh at the top end, you gotta picture of putting a four hundred fifty pound bowl parted out, and if you want to keep the hide or sweet that you need to be able to ice that thing because you're a long way from any kind of town and your long way from replenishing ice, and so you need massive amounts of ice and cool because it's a hundred degrees really right, it's it's I mean over a lot of this hunt. It was over a

hundred degrees in the middle of the day. So if you shoot one at eleven o'clock, you gotta get that

thing cool down. Yeah, you're just not gonna be like if you got to carry it a mile or two and then like get in your truck and then driving too, you're screwed, right, Like the bull you killed, you know, we uh, Jeremy and I again and hung back the spot and you guys went in and killed him, and then you know, normally it would have like you guys took a couple of quick photos, I would imagine, and then you know, until we were able to make our

way there. You guys were, you know, in the middle of it of getting that animal apart, and you know, maybe would have been a little offended in some situations, like oh, I would have liked to get a picture of the animal, Like not like that thought never crossed my mind, Like, no, the you just got to get to work and get that thing taken down. It's alarmingly warm. Yeah, I mean those quarters were off, and it's like put

him in the bag, let's go, let's take them. As Carl was gutting that thing, just the the stomach, like second by second, it seemed like it was just growing. Yeah, like in my hands. Yeah. Times the time Jeremy had a cape spoiling two hours, right, yeah, the the ORCX. I was lucky enough to harvest in August within a couple of hours. And it was nowhere near as hot as it was when we were able to. Yeah, the hair was already slipping, you know. I I took the cape home and I wanted to donate it to a

tax it or missed. And I called him and he said, do me a favor and go ahead and take a clump of that hair and just give it a pool. And I pulled it, and I was I was pulling off handfuls of hair off that cape hours. Oh yeah. He was like, how long when did you kill When did you kill it? I said about three thirty it was you know, four, five thirty six, somewhere around there. He said, go ahead and just pull some hair. I pulled it in. He's like, is it coming off? I

said yeah, He's like, throw it away. We took a giant cooler, put sixty pounds of ice in the cooler and then put down a contractor bag and then laid the hide meat side down, kind of loosely folded packs all and like, you know, you hear a lot of people say, oh, oh, hesitatedn't get this. You're able to say, like, don't put meat and water and sure when in the perfect world, like if you go into a slaughterhouse, they don't put well, they cool they cool poultry as we

now know, and ice baths. But um, and like, no one in the slaughterhouse puts meat in the water to cool it off. But I've found it in really hot places hunters don't hesitate to put meat in the water because wet meat is better than rotten meat. One in Hawaii, everything goes into ice water to take a shipload of ice, put water on it, submerge it, because it's like, well, I don't like it when it's rotten, I'll take wet. I'm just thinking of us load in our water bottles

with ice. I mean, you would fill an analogy and container full of ice and by the time that sucker hits your lips, it was already all melted. Uh. And the meats highly regarded. Oh man, yeah, it seems like you know, you know, a lot of these are good. But he says they're no good, like people like oh big Buck Milder. I love him, my wife likes him. Ever likes him, but some people like to ship talk him. But Orcs everybody says it's good. Orcs acts as dear

seek a deer. Everybody says it's good. Yeah. It would be like a really common reaction, Like if you ask a non hunter in New Mexico, like, oh, do you like wow game meat, they'd be like, I like Orcs. It's I mean, that's it's got that good of a reputation. I think it's more. I think it's just really mild. Yeah, I wouldn't say. I mean, I'm glad you said that, because I would not say it's my favorite for that very reason. I feel like it's a little bit too mild.

I think that's why I like milder. I like, you know, I don't mind a robust flavor. Yeah, I mean, I you know, people like to say, you know, people like talk about wild game being organic. Yeah, and most of the vast majority of wild game eating this country is not organic, right, um or no way, they're not organic. What would be a thing that would make them not organic?

If they got into maybe if they got into some of that one of those cattle spots where there's some kind of supplemental out there that could be But I agree with your point. But there there may be the occasional exception. And the ones that are on the missile range probably probably almost to the individual, because they don't graze any livestock on the range, right, not the my knowledge. So organic, yep, you're dark your mallard, Nope, your white

tail probably not. But these are organic ORCS certified yep. Uh what else? Man? Fill me in? And we missed well, I think on that logistics piece. You know, we we

talked a lot about ice just now. Um, and the fact that Now, I think this kind of hunt really lends itself to teamwork in terms of the hunt itself, but also logistically, I think going out into that country with a single vehicle, you know, I would put like I would put like an extra vehicle as a valuable pieces car because if you get buried, like we've all got toe straps and there's just peace of mind. Like

some of the stuff that we were driving over. There was some places I thought, I thought that one night that Jeremy's truck was going to tip over in that in that washout man, And if something like that happens in your way, the heck back in here. And there's some places where phone services spotty and you cannot you cannot exaggerate the vastness of the landscape. So having an extra vehicle I think is really smart. And then also you know, just having another person in case something goes wrong.

You know, there's snakes, it's hot, there's all kinds of stuff that you know might happen from a health and well being perspective. So I would suggest not doing the hunt solo would be my other piece of advice. Yeah, but if you rigged up properly, two rigs couple buddies outfit them all the way. You could let me talk about the thing being a hundred thirty miles north south. You could finagle your way just on washed out two

tracks and whatnot. Fonnago your way for days, sitting up on top of the top or whatever the hell you're doing, stopping at every high spot to look and just spend your time. Yep, And it might be worth noting. You know somebody who has no idea what they'd be. You know what this landscape is like in the vegetation, Like if you bring a brand new six pick up down here, you may end up sending Stephen angry email. Get Arizona

Arizona pins drives. You just you get scratches. It's it's real good to have a capable truck that's already broken in, broken in and got a few dance and scratches because you're gonna yeah, you guys took a fence when I call them Arizona pins drivers, right. Um, The best thing I heard lately is what was the what was the rifle? We were talking about their day, those old Remington, those Remingtons, slide action rifles. What were those? The Amash machine guns.

They're like seven seven six seven sixties and seventies, remember guys have like if you were when we were kids, man, like you know, yeah, like a lot of people like your hand me down was the thirty thirty, right or whatever. But the thing to get was if you could get one of those Remingtons slide action rifles and then get the look through mount Oh yeah, so you had the iron sight corn sight on the bottom and then like these like plastic mounts you can or through, and then

you had your scope on top. So it was like a brush gun and a field gun. Yeah, machine gun, man, you get a lot of rounds down range quick. Yeah. Seth and I both grew up in Pennsylvania, and I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to say, like in in the heyday of our deer camp, when there were twenty plus guys there, at least fifty percent of the rifles that people were hunting with were slide pump action Remington rifles and the other we're lee reaction thirty. Yeah.

I mean, you know, some guys were starting to hunt with bowl guns. I was old school. I had a third I had a Model thirty two Special with the peep site nice and had that reducer so as you always had to carry that reducer around in your pocket, you know. And um, in the morning you had to take the reducer out because it was too dark. But then once it got good light, you kind of like screw that reducer in because you get the extra accuracy. That started getting dust, you had to take the reducer

back out. But I put some does down at that put down a buck or two that thirty two wins special is a good man. I was so stupid. I sold that thing and it was given to me. There's this guy one of my one of my mentors as a kid was the guy Eugene Grotors, and he had he was in his eighties. He had a gun for he he made a point to have a gun for every year he'd been alive. And he kept him in these big overhead racts in his house. So his house was like the ceiling instead of a drop ceiling, it

looked like a like what his like den area. It looked like a drop ceiling of firearms eighty three of them or whatever up there. And super generous, nice dude. Um. I remember he used to have like he was a big admirer of these are all World War two guys, you know. But he was a big admirer of like centerfolds from you know, like old whatever to hell Playboy precursors or Tiger magazine or whatever you know, like, and

he had always decorated everything with these. And I remember being a little kid and wandering around there, you know, like, man might also look at this, sir, I can't really help not look at it. Oh my dad, don't catch me looking anyways. He had all his damn guns, and he was such a nice dude the way instead but but uh, he gave me a model. And instead of him saying like, I just want to give this to you as a nice guy, he presented it to me to be like I got to counting and realize that

I have an extra gun. Oh man, what a guy, and I like to have one for every year I'm alive, So please take this, and positioned it to me as a kid that I was doing him a favor by taking that gun. And then I took it shot a bunch of deer with it. I remember going out in the yard and someone filled the milk jug up full of water and put it out there at seventy five yards and hit the milk jug full of water and it was like that was like the test, you know,

And I was like, it's a hunting gun. And then later UM sold it to a dude, the head of uh uh wood Stove a gunshot wood Stove shop sold it to him, and he gave me three hud bucks works. I wanted a trap and gunna those uh twenty two over and under and then later realized that I was grossly underpaid. Yeah for that model ninety four. My fault anytime you sell a gun later and I'm like, dude, I think because you forget what it's like to be out of money, and then you just think you're being stupid.

But I'd like to have that thing back. I got something we forgot. God, well, it's still fresh in my mind. Carl mentioned snake that just happened with across the table a seth. I don't want to take your story from you. Yeah, be careful you step out here. We pulled up. I think we're just pulled up to a glass and spot. I swung the door open and stepped out and walked over between a bush and the door, between a bush

and the doors, not very much space. And I walked over to Jeremy's truck was in front of us, and you know, we exchanged words and stuff, and I turned around to get back in Mike's truck, and right where I had stepped out is coiled up rattlesnake a little dish and a little dish. I think it was like an old cattle track or something that just you know, got washed out and just made his perfect little dish.

And uh yeah, I stepped inches from it. I mean, it really would be difficult to step closer to the snake without actually stepping. I got a video, did you. I put a video on my If you go to Instagram at Stephen Ronella, Yeah, is there one at Signs Underscore West, there'll be photos of it. You should change your thing to SETH so people can find you, or at the flip Flop Flusher, Yeah, or at Seth. I gotta talk to who would know I would who would

know how to look you up. I want to talk to the even just type my name and it comes up. I want to talk to someone about about like if that makes a difference by changing your Because Sessa takes a sense of photographer takes beautiful photographs. Thank you you're going there and follow him at Signs West signs underscore West. Yeah, so it's not his name, it's just signs West yea underscore.

Maybe it needs updated. I think you need to update it. Um. One last thing another good satis m is uh tagged out. I'm gonna call this we should call this episode tug out because rather than saying we tagged out, Seth would say we tug out yea and scun it. I think that's a Pennsylvania thing. That's where I came out, talk out, tug out. We're all tug out, like I don't know that sounds that's perfectly normal to me. I'll tug out. I love it. I'll tug out. Okay, Jeremy, thank you.

Well tell people how to find uh how do people go? If you want to look at the work you guys do, well, you can go to the National Wildlife Federation or NWF dot org. You know, from there that's a hunting friendly conservation absolutely yeah. You know, the National Wildlife Federation focuses

on a lot of conservation issues. But one of the things that I and a lot of my you know, team, prides ourselves and doing are you know, conservation that's related to sportsmen and sports women, you know, advocating for things like Land Water Conservation Fund, the Great American Outdoors Ach, you know, access to for sportsmen and sports women of public lends a lot of those issues that we hear

a lot about on this show. You know, the National Wildlife Federation and you know, the team that I am fortunate enough to work with, you know, really does a great job of, you know, working hard to protect these these traditions that we you know, value that allows us to be here talking about you know, and so folks want to learn more about as you know, the National Wildlife Federation itself is a nonprofit, but we're also made

up of state affiliates. So you know, if you're in New Mexico and you draw an orange tag and you want a little bit more information, you can always go check out the New Mexican Wildlife Federation, but you know, go to NWF dot org and you can really start to see kind of all the different angles that we focus on in conservation and uh kind of start to you learn from there and kind of really divulge into the many different state you know affiliates that are also

focused on more specific issues. Yeah, when I say a hunting friendly conservation group, that's like a thing that I think it's really important for you to understand, because when you support hunting friendly conservation groups, you're in you're getting in bed with people who want there to be a they want they want there to be great habitat, they want there to be a lot of wildlife, and they support your right to use that wildlife when there is

enough of it to warrant some consumption. And other conservation groups that might really support the habitat and support the wildlife end uh want to starve you out. And so I think always lend your support to the hunting friendly ones, because if not, you're just you're you're helping the long game but screwing the screwing yourself in the short term. That's not two cents, Mike, He's got nothing to say. I got nothing to say any concluders, Carl Uh. I

would just like to express gratitude to my two buddies. Um, you know, these guys taking time off of work and beating the crap out of their vehicles and you know, cooking some incredible food and you know, just like you, I think you guys both have an appreciation Steven Seth at this point for they rolled all the red carpet. Yeah, but they rolled all the red chili sauce. And the point I want to make is it's not because it's not because it's not because you were the guy coming

to hunt. But that's just the kind of guys that they are. And if if you were any other old Joe buddy of mine coming from out of state to go on in oracs, not they would have gotten the same kind of treatment. Because I'm lucky enough to have friends like these two. Appreciate you, guys. Jeremy, Mike, thank you. And anyone draws an OORCS tag Jeremy might be take out. No, I mean you guys, don't eve worry about bringing a truck.

You guys are thoroughly welcome. This was This was an absolutely enjoyable five days of just bombing around with with people that you know, really feel like old friends at this point and so really an authentic experience and just a heck of a lot of fun. So I you know, I appreciate the time together. This is great. Thanks guys,