Ep. 232: How You Get to be a Big 'Ol Bear, Plus an Interview with Don Trump Jr.

Has anyone else ever had a covid rant? Yes? I think not maybe within this group, but there's certainly been a thing. The internet is like covid rants underblog on It's good, it was impressed. Don't waste your time here, Clay, Uh, Clay. I'm gonna start because because I don't think you've pronounced your name right, So I'm gonna start calling you. Start calling Clay Newcomb Newcombe man one time, one time, Clay Newcomb Newcombe. Here's a good one for you. I guess

it's Newcomb like like Newcomb, like Newcombe. We're gonna nukem if the only reason I really but how do you know that that's what it is? Because that's what my dad taught me. So that's good enough. The only reason I told you that because I used to pronounce your name. How did I pronounce it? And somebody literally said yan Yeah, I said Ryan Nella, that's great emphasis on the rye.

I like it, Ryan Nella. Somebody was like, if you ever meet him, don't call him that because it's yeah Stephen, Ryan Nella, Ronella, Clay Newcomb, Nukem, nukem whatever, you whatever, North Korea. We're gonna newkem. Um. Uh, here's one for you. Do you know this about? This is in your wheelhouse. Uh. There's a guy we know, Damon bun Guard. You ever met him? Oh? Yeah, yeah, he's a friend of mine.

He's taken up. Like you know, I have a someday I'm gonna take up the cause of that that I wanted there to be federal blaze orange laws where blaze orange, by federal edict is a hat while hunting with firearms, nothing else. Hat. Why ooming, It's the Wyoming law hat. And it would be like people, no vest. If you want to wear a vest, feel free. If you want to wear orange snowsuit, be my guest, but all you have to wear the law would be And it's because I know I believe in states rights and all that

kind of stuff. When when it suits, say the fans would come in the Supreme Court, say would come in and say, um here ye here ye, you know hereby the majority opinion, you know, written by Justice Roberts, is that you can't make someone wear more an orange hat. This is one all the way to the top Supreme Court. Yeah. No, it was like seven to So an individual state, Soldomeyer, couldn't get on board. It wasn't r P yeah, rpg RBG and Soldomeyer felt that it wasn't rudely enough, wasn't

like it didn't have enough imposition into it. But everybody else like, yeah, seems cool. Some states have noblaze orange laws. All right, let's get back. So an individual state couldn't add on to that. No, it would be illegal, okay, like in Georgia. Uh, in Georgia, the like the governor got sick. In Georgia, the governor got sick of towns trying to go it alone on COVID restrictions. So the governor said, made a law that says that municipalities and

whatnot can't make added. So this would be like a deal where they also came in and did like the Georgia governor's COVID move on Orange rules. This would become my thing when I retire. Uh, did you hear that the governor of Georgia sued the mayor of Atlanta. No, did you hear about that over Orange laws? Over over COVID laws. Yeah, So the governor may government a statewide regulation about COVID laws, and in the governor of the Mayor of Atlanta came in and made a stricter policy

than the state, and the governor literally sued. As I understood, I just heard that this morning. He doesn't want it. Yeah, he doesn't want the people going roll. That's that's pretty pretty rough, pretty rough situation when the governor is suing the mayor of Atlanta. A weird part about that is that, um, a governor is going to be the one who is going to advocate for states rights, right like it's chili typically like the governor perspective would be adversarial to higher

level oversight. And if you were going to extend that logic just for him to be intellectually consistent, it seems that he would have to say, because I generally advocate for for local control and I don't want a burden, some federal imposition on my state. By an extension of logic, it seems that he would then have to say, therefore, I support even more local control in terms of mayor, mayor, mayor what do they call mayor, l mayorship goobertorts governor.

So he's saying like, oh, no, no, no, I like local control, but not any more local than me. Um the that's I'm about as local as I like to get. So he's in a weird intellectual position on that. So I got I got his back on it. Here's the thing for you, damon. He's made his his life's calling to make it legal too. What I don't know? Oh, you're friends with him. I am friends with him. He has a tracking dog warmer. Oh yeah, he wants he wants to leave with a blood blood track with the dogs.

He not even friends with the guy, never even heard of. I thought we were talking about Orange. Oh yeah, that was just amazing. His dog's named Yeager, and uh yeah he's yeah, damon, we've we've had him on the podcast before talking about I've met Yeager's dog. He sent me a map with the holdout states. Okay, so here's where it gets interesting like his crusade. There's an organization you

should be leading the convo um United Blood Trackers. Now his group that he's he's affiliated with the United Blood Trackers. Do me a favorite bring bringing everybody up to speed. Forget all that with what he's talking about. Well so, so basically, basically, blood dog blood trailing dogs is a thing where you you shoot an animal, the animal runs off, it leaves a blood trail. Sometimes that trail is short,

sometimes that trail is long. And historically, in Europe, blood trailing dogs are big time, like if you are a hunter, you have access to a blood trailing dog, and they view it from a position of an ethical position of recovery, you know. So, so in Europe it's, uh, it's in many places it's almost I think it's even mandated that you know, you have blood trailing dogs. And so in the United States there are some places that don't allow you to use a dog to recover hit or wounded game.

And it's because really it's just because of a lack of knowledge, like they feel like it's, oh, you're using dogs to kill game. Are you're using dogs to pursue game? Are you're using dogs? You're using dogs to help you be a successful hunter. So it's like, oh, we don't you know, no dogs involved in hunting whatsoever. So it's kind of one of these like uh blips on the radar, where really it makes total makes a logical sense where blood trailing dogs on a leash and blood trailing dog

is always gonna be on a leash. I mean, you know some states are different, Like you've read my notes, good, well, yeah, it makes zero sense that we couldn't use blood trailing dogs and a lot of these guys have uh, I mean, these guys get into it. Man. A guy I've used blood trailing dogs twice for deer that I've shot. And my buddy in Arkansas, he big time hunter. He would rather the telephone ring with a hunter calling him the blood trailer deer than for himself to go hunting and

kill a deer. That's the sense I get from a couple of people I've talked to in this space is they're like blood trailing enthusiasts. That's what they've become. And that's what Damon is. He he really enjoys it. My brother's dog, Um Shifty, has has emerged as that eat

anything has emerged as a blood trailing dog. Um. It's it's like it kind of gets the it's with the program, like it's been out hunting enough where it's with the program and is a and is a real asset on trailing m But they've been whittling away at states that Um, they've been whittling the way at states that don't allow it. And he says, usually, and Damon's emailed me about this.

Usually the turning point and in legislation, in the legislation process is clarifying that we're talking about animals that are on the leech. That's right, So they're not out free roaming, they're not like running deer. There, we're ruling out trust. You're not releasing this dog to go catch it, dear, and it's not. There's no risk of it crossing fence lines and whatever. Um. And then this is explained and captured properly, they find that the states wind not being

very sensitive to it. Or Okay, he sent me this map. Oh and it's like it's in greens and reds and they've got like pretty much the whole country has decided. Okay, hawaiis that's one of those maps. Oh no, Hawaii is green. Okay, Hawaii, Alaska, you can have a dog on a leashan blood trail the holes, it's a weird thing. The West coast um is or the western the westernmost five states, and then one looks like New York. I wish I could zoom this bugger up. Oh here you ready. Massachusetts, Rhode Island

in Connecticut our no go. So the no go states are clustered and weirdly. Um the five most western states in the US, so Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona are still no go hmm. And then you have a little cluster in the northeast. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Massachusetts are more than more are pro blood trial and dog than than not. By my reckoning, forty two states are are okay with you pursuing game with leashed dog.

And what they were what they want to do is they want to get the rest of the place cleaned up, opened up because, like I said, just people that identify as United Blood Trackers members, So not counting all the dudes out there that happen to have a good odd for tracking. But these dudes that are in this group recovered over three thousand animals last fall. It's a lot of them. M yeah, yeah, how many How many animals do you think go unrecovered? Like? How many are there

stats on that? It's very contentious. In fact, you're encouraged to not talk about it because it makes things look bad. Um And it's hard to say, but it's not quite half of everything that gets arrow stuck into it, and it depends by species a little bit. But that, but they also got considered that doesn't mean they died. This is handy for stuff. This so that it's a much smaller percent. I mean a lot of things get stuck with arrow or nicked by an arrow or a bullet

that doesn't kill it. Just go to a guy that processes wild game that usually got coffee cans full of broadheads. They've been bullet and shoulders and just wewhere. So that's common that things just get wounded, just like people get wounded. I mean, you can cut your finger and bleed more than a lot of deer blood trails um. And so there's that which the dog isn't gonna find anyways because he's on a leash. And then there's the whatever percent of it is that it died. Um, it's much that

like lethal not recovered, but dead is much lower. But I would say significant. Yeah, And there's a lot of things that can happen. I mean, you could hit something and uh, you know when it goes into a creek and it washes, you know, washes blood away. Maybe it travels down the creek a minute, it comes out of the creek dripping wet. It makes it twenty yards before another drop hits the ground and you're looking look and never piece it together. We used to lose a lot

of dude. This thing called Mosquito Creek where I grew up. It was once a deer hit Mosquito Creek. Everybody got a bad feeling. Remember one time? Was it just because of how far it was away? Because and then it was in the creek, and then it was everybody just it really sucked the energy out of a blood trailing party when you Sito Creek. You know what's interesting about those blood dogs is there they're not always trailing blood like you you get the sense that they're smelling blood

and they are that's all that they're tracking. Because but that's why you need a blood dog is when the blood trail is sparse, and what they do is they they lock onto the individual scent of that animal, a good one. You know, you you put it on a track and you want it to smell some of the blood obviously, because that blood is connected with that scent

in that track. And what's amazing is that, you know, individual animals have individual scent, and so that dog is trailing that animal and then you know they're just think of five hundred yard blood trail through good white tail country. There's gonna be other trails, you know, scent trails that cross that blood trail, and a good dog is able

to lock on and stay on. Um. Yeah, And but it's also it's a it's a partnership between the handler and the dog because the handler has to understand what it dog, it's dog does when it's on a good blood trail. So like Damon will tell you, he might he can understand what that dog is doing and he may be like, hey, he's on the wrong track, and may scooch over twenty yards and get back on the right track. So you know, there there's it's a partnership. It's not just like the dog does all the work.

There's some human intellect going to it into it as well.

I've seen that with hounds chasing lion tracks, where they call it sorting it out, where everything just goes crazy and it's whatever, something happened a creek crossing, the dogs came up, the lion came up on another lion bed, whatever, and they waded in there and hooting and hollering and stomping around, and pretty soon they get everybody like lined out back in though, and a lot of times that means they're they're going in and they're finding the actual

track of the animal in the snow. If it's if they're in the snow, you know, coming out the other side, where they'll see their dogs just confused. They call it making a loss. Dogs make a loss, and then the houndsman goes in and maybe he finds a track three yards from that loss going the opposite direction. They hoop their dogs in and get their dogs going. This is

my theory to on on blood tracking dogs. UM. I don't know a lot about like drip patterns, but I imagine when something's dripping blood, UM, sometimes you're surprised, what you're pleased with yourself about how small of a droplet you picked up. I mean things that are like the end of a sewing needle, the thick end of a sewing needle. And you might be like, look at that. I'm a command master tracker. There has to be a

lot of blood droplets. Um, we don't, we don't, but but that that knows it's whatever, like thousands of times better than our nos um also find right, and then just ones that you just miss or their leaves flip over. I mean you know animals running droplet hits the leaf, leaf flips over when the animal passes over it. Have you met many people who are color blind? Yeah, there's some folks out there. I think Kenyan's old man or Kenyon maybe. Yeah, it has that red has like they

can't see red. And when you're hunting, you gotta have a plan, you gotta have someone to call because they can't spot red. My brother in law had that. He couldn't see red on the ground. So he he was like, you couldn't now, and then he'd see like a black you could see I think it was he could see like a big pile of it would just be recognizable by its pattern, but the actual stuff it doesn't register to him as red. Yeah, And you're at a real disadvantage. Clear, Uh,

this is not in your wheelhouse. What's that you've from with our song about Yanna? Well yeah, well no, okay, oh no, not reference. There's been many a song written about me. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not aware of it. I've I've written several. A guy found a song that he sent in a song from uh YouTube, he thinks is the real song. I personally think it's the worst song, and not because the song you're about to start singing to music here, I can't wait. I think it's the

worst song I ever written. Not because of why, not because of why. It's just it's it's almost offensive. So he likes deer meat with his minimum wage. But where Yanni gets excited the chorus fun, it's time to have a little fun, Time to have a little fun. Here's Yanni's part. Free man that's not worth a smile. I don't know what it is, the freezer, let's go skiing. He's like, this is the it's got a whopping. I've probably accounted for several That song was written a while ago.

Whopping four thousand, six hundred nineties seven, back when there were more true outdoorsmen running around these parts. That's when it used to resonate. Yeah, I'm just saying the era that it was written. But when oh, you mean it

was written in response to true outdoors been like me? No, okay, Now, back in the day, you can hear how Herring talked about it, um felt claim were briefly discussing how felt we respect a lot and you know, back in the day, like he says, it's like the true outdoorsmen did stuff with every season that was available. You know, there was a skiing that was trapping, there was um ice fishing,

which fishing now you do it all. So what was so this song was written like like a Westerner that would have filled this game tag and then when recreational scheme. David Walburn is the musician. Let's find out about him and you're gonna blow this YouTube be talking about cross country skin. He's got a song. No, you don't think so. The album was released in two thousand three. It's genre is easy listening. I can buy that. Um he has five albums. Where is he from? Colorado? Duckley, you're thinking

of Johnny Denver. Every state needs its own Johnny Denver. What is duck like he's up by white Fish, Montana. Gotcha, he actually runs, uh as I'm doing a little sleuthing here. He runs like a vacation home for outdoor enthusiasts and eco minded travelers. Meets in the freezer. I wish it was a heavy metal songs had a nice country and western field to it. See. I think if I think, give the meets in the freezer him and be like, dude, that's my ship from where ago, trademark that he's like,

I I thought that a long time ago. And you still think meets in the freezer and you live in Montana and there's snow on the ground and it's wintertime, you should go lion hunting. That meets in the freezer, Let's go be good and get some more meat. Would be a good shirt for Yannie meets in the freezer. Let's go skiing. Yeah, yeah, it would be a good shirt. I can see a little caricature of Joannie with his skis and its freezer. I can't tell Yanni's upset or not. No,

I think it's it's great. I mean, you listen to that course and everybody gets a kick out of it. Oh, I love it. I love it. We've got some really good friends of ours are trying to convince my wife and I had become skiers like they traveled to ski if you live in the American South, man, Hey, I was on the s bandwagon long before I knew you were on the spandwagon, Steve. But I am stier and I am not a golfer. Oh. I think I meant the bandwagon about how you don't live in the South. Well,

I mean technically technically I do. Uh, the upland South as it said, Oh, I'm thinking of Missouri. What's the quote. There's a quote about how they like the Southerners think they're Yankees, the Yankees thing through Southerners. Oh, who's like this like this mid South. I don't know that you heard that from me. No, I don't think I did not. I'm thinking about it. Uh. Here's our bit of feedback. So we had a very well received, very good podcast

episode with a meat scientist. Was then you guys there? I was not was absent, Krin was there. Very good episode of the Meat Scientists um and he made clear he let people know the parameters of his expertise and they did not extend into fish. But a Buddy Mine, Tony Kola Rossi, he's been on this show, rode in to share this. We're talking about rigor mortis, okay and the meat scientists. Just to refresh everyone or for people that didn't listen to catch that episode. It was very

I learned a ton talking to that guy. Um was adamant that you, uh, I need to let a carcass go through rigor enter into rigor mortis, and best to allow it to do it on the bone. He's not keen on immediately, even though now and then you have to be like you have no options. He's not keen on and advises against de boning a pre rig her carcass because rigor mortis is this like contraction and it's helpful when the muscles anchored at its points so that

it's contraction is limited. I'd like to plug. When it's freed up, it goes like go ahead, that's right, just turns into a ball almost. But I just like to plug. Alaska Game and Fish because everything that Steve just discussed can be found on the Last Game Fish website about that. They also have information about what they call cold shortening um, when a when an animals frozen too soon, when meats frozen too soon. It's all there. Man. Those guys got it dialed. They do. Man. They got a lot of

good information on that website. But no, I mean, I've been saying that stuff for years. I'm glad to hear that the meat scientists back me up. He probably stole your stuff. No, I doubt that. Skiing in the winter meat on the bottom, I don't have any getting stolen. It's like at night they're putting a radar going up to yan his head at night and just sucking out all the good ideas. Man. For my buddy, chef Tony Palmer,

he even feels the same way about our turkey. He'll let that turkey hang every time, a full twenty four hours before he removes the breasts off that breast bone. For the same reason, I have an immense respect for Alaska's Fishing Game Agency. They take the job very serious, seriously, and they I don't mean it's in a negative way. They um jealously guard their resources and you don't have to ever question where um you don't have to ever

question what they're getting at. You know, like they are just you know, they are like very they like to guard the resources and they like to let those resources that are able to support harvest be taken advantage of responsibly. Man, they take it's big business there. But just in terms of sharing information, they have a man they have like a little online magazine they put out like like a summation of research in the state, but made very digestible

for layman. But like what's going on? So people like stupid fishing game? Right, you can go and see like here's what we do, here's why we do it, here's how we do it, and here how it has implications

for you as an angler. And yes, um, we count things and measure things and make rules and change our rules because it's a dynamic environment that we live in and we're trying really hard to ensure for you an opportunity to continue hunting and fishing in the future, which now and then involves a little bad news all right. Back to Rigor Mortis, Oh, Tony Coli GRASSI, Uh, I have another digression? Should I hit it after I deliver the news or Prior's a Tony, I'll do it after

host choice. Um Tony was saying he was this was explained to him. He says, I used to cook sam in the day I caught the fish until my buddy in Juno told me that you should always let the flames sit overnight in the fridge to complete the rigor cycle. If you cook fish right out of the water, you'll notice the flames really scrunch up on the grill and just like your guests said about red meat, and the

meat is kind of chewy, almost a bit rubbery. I never thought much about it, always figured the fresh or the better. After hearing this from my buddy, I noticed a huge difference when you let the flames sit in the fridge overnight, then on the counter to room temp before grilling. He feels that this is especially true with bottom fish, him saying that I could picture what he's saying.

I want to scrunches up, it almost becomes thicker. Yeah, you know that's interesting because when we did uh, then he goes out and say, you probably already know this. I'll be like, uh huh, I bet Yoannie did. When we we cooked, we grilled small mouth filet's on the half shell, skin on and uh. We had caught him that day probably around I don't know, noon one and grilled him at six and they definitely had that like

they got short. It started off as maybe a ten inch file at and ended up being an eight inch fil a And it was an inch and a half thick, and when it was done cooking, it was two inches thick. It's interesting. Here's the digression. UM, Tony Collared Ross he does some deep drop fishing. They fisht of water for sable fish. And I just acquired my own deep drop rod and reel. And you know what I mean. Seth have our show on CBS called the Flip Flop Flasher's

First Shed Saturday morning program. No, it goes up against the nightly news. Um competes well against the nightly news. We're gonna start a new show called Deep Drop Boys and What it is boy Z. You see people would watch it. Deep Drop Boys and what it is to me? And Seth travel to all corners of the world where the water is deep, and Um we set my deep drop rod down there and see if anything's down there. You know what would make the show work is if you had a second deep drop round with one of

those magnets on it. Have you seen those treasures down there? Ye shall be the treasure guy. He'll be like his deal. He's like a big treasure guy and I'm a big fish guy. Like we argue a lot, We argue a lot, deep drop boys, that would go that would be on the History Channel. Our first episode is gonna be We're gonna call it, We're gonna need more line. And then

the second episode is called Antipities. And Uh, for your listeners at home, remember when you're a little kid and you thought that if you dug down straight through Earth you would be in China. Um, I think that's for most Americans. That is, uh, absolutely not true. But in the Antipities episode, we deep drop a spot. Okay, so let's say where we make our episode We're gonna need more line. Then we go to the antipities of that spot and deep drop that spot, which is exact opposite

place on the Earth. See how close the baits are if we snagged the hook. He goes all the way through. Yeah, what else I got? Then we get oh, this is interesting for people to hear about. Uh. People aren't aware of this, but there's an ongoing competition globally to know what is the oldest representational art in the world. Um, and it's always being you know, when it gets beaten.

This is I can see Rick get excited. This is guys, I feel like Rick, like Kave Payne's I do like so you just smiled and I said, oh, I just say Kate Payte's Rick smiling. I don't know much about him though, A lion figurine or something. Yeah, yeah, I'll get the No, no, no, it's not it's humans hunting way old, way old, but um it's not a great way.

Did you see Herzog something Kava Forgotten Dreams. Yeah. I went to that with my buddy Ben Wallace, he's a writer, and left and I said, I don't know how you can make a bad movie about cave paintings. And he said, I don't know how you can make a good movie about cave paintings. Just very different views on cave paintings. Um, it was shotting three D. We agree that we didn't like it. I mean, I loved the cave footage, but I didn't like the handling of it because I wanted

more anthropology. I wanted less like modern day her jackasses. No, I like her Zag he's one of the best, but modern day jackasses talking about what they think people were thinking, and I wanted more anthropology. I can see that. Yeah. I mean the skulls in that cave are unbelievable. Yeah, and the footage is unbelievable, like stillag tight stillag might crusted cave bear skull. I mean it was. It was cool, stunning,

stunning footage. Cave have forgotten dreams. Dude found the cave by This is a common cave hunter thing air drafts. I think it was a kid, but the main one. Two kids found it and they like guarded it until they could alert the authorities. Maybe that's remember no, I remember I'm talking about people would go on these rock faces because the cave mills over time will get covered by debris rock, and they go and they feel for air flow. I think it's cool air coming out on

a hot day. It's like cool air coming through the rock. To find that there's a recess. Uh So this new thing they found um for a while they thought that Europe had the oldest soul previous to this new discovery, which is an Indonesia. UM, there was a site in Europe that had where it's like abstract beings thrying thropes. How do you pronounce that theory? And popes Rick Theian popes I love that you would think, I know that m etherean folpe etherean thrope is a uh like an

abstract being that combines qualities of both people and animals. Um. And they feel that they arguably communicated like narrative fiction of some kind, like folklore, religious myths, spiritual beliefs. What's that data to They start finding evidence of that around forty years ago, and then that that type of thing disappears at the Pleistocene Hola scene transition, so around ten thousand years ago, UM. But prior there was a site in Germany where there was a human with a cat

head from about forty years ago. Now there's this new limestone cave in Indonesia, UM where they have human it's human animal hybrids. So these they and thropes are hunting wild pigs and a dwarf form of bovid so some extinct wild cow species. Probably a good fat on that thing. Forty three point nine thousand years old. Forty four thousand years a long time ago to hang out with those guys, man, what would have been that different? Didn't hang out? Yanni

meets in the freezer. Let's get more. No skin as far as we can tell, here's one. Here's a good one. This is like one of those ones I flagged. Just come trying to tell if it's really true. This guy claims. This guy, I don't know. This guy claims that they repaired the car. So they're out el cotton. They're in a Jeep c J and the lower radiator hose splits. They're so deep in the woods that they take the esophagus out of the elk and clamp it on and drive on out of there. P s I m hm,

he no, no, I messed up his mom. Okay. The dude rode in, saying his mom told him this about some other dude. And this dude's saying, like, do you buy that. Let's say the heat would break down and cook the esophagus and it would uh first under pressure eventually fall apart. He blames he blames his inability to test this himself on how hard it is a drawn elk tag in Michigan. He's got to put it out to other people to help him. I think that's a good,

good subject matter for Spencer's uh MythBuster. Well, Spencer is such a pain, and he asked about the MythBuster thing. He's a real pain, and he asked about it because every time I come to him with a thing that I know to be true, he says, but you're the only person that thinks that, or you're the only person that wonders that. And he he likes it to be a widely held belief now where it comes to pain and the ass is he does things that I didn't know about. So I'm like, if it was that widely held,

I would have heard of it. So it's like widely held as understood by Spencer. So I can't get I can't do the squirrel nut one do squirrels bite the nuts off other squirrels and castra? He goes, I feel that everyone who believes that heard it from you. But I think I finally got him talked into that. But I would love it. Don't just secretly put me on BCC or whatever and tell Spencer that it's a widely held belief that elkosophagus is you know how to say

esophagus isn't pluralosophic? Guy, uh can just be used to replace your right either holes and you drive around and he'll do his thing. Be a good problem to have to have a fresh elkosophagus Okay, you guys want can we do one last one? Two last ones? You're in the show. What do you think like if I started into another one, are you gonna be like, Oh my god, how good it is? Yeah. We recently shared a story where a listener got thumb cuffed by a fishing bait.

So he was like, I don't know how. I can't remember the exact details. Anyways, he like grabbed the thing out of his tackle box. He's he's like checking out or fiddling with a rapalla and tripped and got the trouble hooks in each of his thumbs in his phones in his back pocket. He couldn't even get at his

phone to get it out. And he went out to the road and he's trying to show people driving by, like holding his bloody hands up to try to help them understand that he needs assistance and couldn't get any Eventually had to walk to a bar uh to get some help. Nobody would pull over. No, he said, I'm holding my He said, I'm holding my blood profusely bleeding hands up in the Air's car strive fine, I would

have stopped. Was he yelling help me? Yeah? I don't know if he laid that if he went to a bar and got assistance, I'm not maybe I'm overestimated my ability to tolerate pain. I think if it got to that, I would just be like, just just you really, you can't just get it out plug Spencer's deal. Oh yeah, there's the article that I don't know yet for sure, but I think that because my wife came up to me very excited last night and said, look at this photos.

This is the title of the article. I like it already. That's my kind of article. Fish hook Injuries to meet eat Fans, And the the title page has a dude very much squinting, both his eyes kind of pretty much shut because he's got a trouble hook maybe two out of the three hooks in an eyeball, and I think another, the forward trouble hook is stuck in his hat. And uh, man, if you can bypass that and not click to go see the rest of them, you're stronger person than I am.

But I was saying how he probably broke the internet with that one. Oh that's like my like, if if you know they use that radar gun to get younis I p out if you were to use a radar gun on my head and be like, what does this person want most? It would be like he would most want a book of fishing hook stuck in people's pictures, r coffee table book. Would it have a little sub chapter of sleeve fingers? Yeah? I put it in like

an appendix in appendix about appendages. Uh. Well, another thing to plug isn't our new and our Wilderness Skills and Survival book, which will be available this December. You can go look at it now online. I think, yeah, I'm pretty sure you can go. You can go to Amazon right now and check it out. Gigantic book, humongous book. The Mediator Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival. We're talking here about how to get hooks out, best practices in

good tricks. I'm getting hooks out, but no, I had to go to I had to go to I still have us see that. That's when I was like eight or nine years old. I'm looking at a half inch scar on a thumb treble hooks hook. I picked up Chris Babcox crank bait on his rod to admire it, and he like gave his rod a tug and then when it didn't come and you're a little when a hook doesn't when your bait doesn't come, and your little kid, what do you do? Pull it harder? And he seated

it in there quite well. Um and I had to go and they had to cut it out of there. But when you're when your thumb coughed real good, you don't just like you'd probably watch to a bar. This guy's dog, This is a funny story. So these guys are fishing in Minnesota in a boat and it's wavy. The dog sits on a crank bait, gets tangled up into crank bait and gets both of its back legs firmly snagged by the crank bait. That's a bad day.

The dad is trying to restrain the dog and the dogs going ballistic as they do, and pretty soon gets its tongue thumb coughed to the same crank bait. Mm hm and nod to like to do the dog and get into the beach pound dog. Forty five minutes finally out at the beach and we're able to get some tools to get the dog's tongue and legs. I don't like. I don't like filming fishing for that reason. I get air that that thing is gonna I'm just gonna get up.

Even a little fly just right in my face. I snagged an ex girlfriend on top of the head once. She didn't handle it well, I pulled it out. Um well, when you when you film deep drop, boys, we're just sending it right down in use circle hooks which don't snag people. That goes. You'll be safe on deep drop bright perfect. Well he's I might do two z's. Can't decide one last quick thing? Um uh. This guy wrote in its an interesting story where he works at a

freight company. And this is a weird story. It's not something I don't think it's make believe because you wouldn't like make believe this story. It just wouldn't. It doesn't serve any purpose to make believe the story. He works for a freight company. We recently had some auto parts come in Okay and found a bird's nest in one of the parts. Not only were they live hatchling in the bird's nest. They took the problem to their operations manager, who told them just to load it up and send

it along to the next stop. So as last he knew, there's a live baby bird and a bird nest in a piece of auto parts headed from Salt Lake City to Billings. His curiosity about this event stems from are there any laws against transporting hatchlings across state lines? M anyone matters what kind of bird it was. If it was if it was a game species, absolutely clutch up quail or something, mity song bird. You can't. I don't think you can miss mess with him. You can order

up chickens and turkeys and stuff online. So if it was a chick it feels poultry. If it was a English sparrow, if it was a European startling, or if it was a street pigeon, I know you're cool. Yeah. If I was a member of like Peter or something, I would be scrambling to Billings trying to find them to resuscitate this baby bird. Save him. Okay, now we're ready. We're ready to go down to brass tacks. Do you know what that means? Clay brass tacks? I mean, I

know what you're trying to say. What I think it comes from? Um my understanding? Is it in surveying? Uh? When they do a corner post mm hmm, they'll put down a corner post and it's got a piece of ending it. When you get down to brass tacks, there's like a circle of lead that you can do to like mark a corner poster thing to get down to brass tacks. If you want to get super detailed when it really counts, where on the top of that you can you will drive a tack I think this is true.

You will drive attack into that circle to be like this is the spot, not this like two inch three inch wide thing, but this is the line property like it. So we're ready to get down to brass tacks. First, I have a quick listener. Note we did COVID. Yeah, it's been real pain. So we're going to have interrupt um on Wikipedia, which you know they have all the answers. There's four different versions of getting down to brass tacks. I don't even make a list there. You gotta edit

that entry, Steve. I'd go in there now. I didn't even make a list of four. I'm throwing out the earliest at t Station says in eighteen sixty three Texas was that um in a hardware store or a draper shop that used to measure used to measure cloth in precise units and rather than just holding down and stretching it out with your arm to approximately one yard, they would pin it with a brass tack so they can

measure it. I don't buy that for a second. There's also a practice of using brass tax to spell out the initials of the deceased on the top of their coffin. Another theory, adorning one's gun stock with brass taxes was common in the American West. True, but I don't buy it. Uh. And then the last one was nothing about surveying in there. Oh no, that's sorry. That was the third one. I was just a further explanation. So there was three. Huh,

we know what you're trying to say, Steve. We need to make a note, get in there and just to validate my stuff. What I'm gonna do is change it and then come back and edit this podcast. You don't I gonna write the whole thing before it comes out. How about this? How about this? Let's just get down to the nuts and bolts of it. Yeah, I like it. But before we do that, I gotta explained a thing

that happened. It was unfortunate. Um. So we had arranged to have Donald Trump Junior come in and record with us, but then we had a COVID scare on our end and the day of had to cancel. It was a physical visit in the studio, had a COVID scare on our and which turned out to be nothing. But like you know, I was. You know, everybody's had this, right, Like so and so was with so and so, and you know, and then you track it down caught up.

We got caught up in a web. I was positive for like the last night, yet the day of the three days prior to yesterday, I knew I was positive, but you weren't, just because they put that things so far off your nose at her No, it's I don't know what it is. But I was at a wedding. Oh you just yeah, you told me. And then and then like midweek I've never had allergies, and midweek I developed this like just slightly running nose and um, like a slight tickle in my throat like a scratch, you know,

like early in the morning. And then you know, late at night. I'm like, man, yeah, exactly. Or they're cutting the hay right now, and this they are cutting hay like a mofo in this valley right now putting some sanitized just here. What you're talking about, santizm, i'ner santized my lips too. Yeah. Anyways, Uh, when I got that test result back yesterday, I kind of walked out of there, my chest bopped down. Ray to go to the last guys because you got cleared. Yeah, yeah, this is a

COVID free room right here. Bro. Uh now what was I saying? Scare? And and I was like, yeah, you know, there's a tendency to protect your business and not tell anybody. But we told him and and they had to bail. Then uh, we rescheduled, and then he had a COVID scare on his end. It needed to be careful. So in the end we settled on a hotel. You call

it skype. We had a skype conversation yesterday for thirty minutes or so, and so one's left being like, what you know, because this is like a podcast that we record in person, but there was extenuating circumstances where we couldn't do it. We still had a conversation, which was I think is uh was worthwhile, So we're going to put it on here so when you get done with this, you'll get done with this and then natal happened. Wow. So if all of a sudden is different people talking,

don't be confused. It's not like he's sitting here the whole time we're ignoring him. It's just a It will probably sound different too, but that'll go on the end of this. So for you listeners one and like what happened, that's what happened. We didn't like, yeah, thirty minutes. This is like a ninety minute, two hour show. So we're just left scratching our head. So that's what we're gonna We're gonna put it on the end of the interview.

All right. Maybe a few people know who Donald Trump Jr. Is the reason I wanted to talk to you, among other reasons. Uh, and we'll get into this is one. I thought about him a great deal after he was on a hunting trip with Jason Harrison, who was a founder both Sitka and Cooe You Holding companies. They were on a hunting trip and um, yeah, Jason Harrison took his own life like days after the hunting trip and nothing hardly. I please don't think I'm trying to make

this about me in some way like that tragedy. But I thought about Don Jr. Because I had similarly had spent a week with a very close friend of mine and he went home and killed himself. And the amount of uh second guessing and analyzing everything that was said to you and reading into you know what I mean? And so having been through that and then knowing that he had that happened to him, I empathized with what that the kind of like burden that puts on someone. Uh.

There's a writer, Ian Frasier, who's a wonderful writer. You should read it. We should read his book Great Planes. But Ian Frasier was one time writing a profile on a steelhead fishing guide and um who people he was always out in the sun in Oregon and didn't wear a shirt and people he was he went by steel Head Joe, but people jokingly called him Melanoma Joe because, uh, he didn't do anything to protect himself from the sun. Anyways, Ian Fraser's profiling, I mean, while he's doing the profile,

the guy kills himself. And they had been on a river trip camping and h one night, Ian Frasier woke up in the middle of the night to take a whiz and climbs out of his tent to take a whiz and realizes that Steelhead Joe is up standing on the edge of the river staring into the river in the middle of the night, and then shortly after killed himself, killed himself, and he said it was like I got like a preview of him as a ghost, and you know, he left like untangled, Like what was that moment? Like

you know, mhm, which just hard. It's hard on people. So I want to talk to about that, and also want to talk to because I think that he's, uh, you know, he's probably the most widely known, outspoken hunter maybe in the world at this point. Really do you think? So, I mean, give me number, who's who's in competition with him? Well, Yanni next to Yanni, but he's already on the show. Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing that. Uh So, what do

you think of our trip this spring Man? It was great even't had a chance to catch up on it. We haven't to review it. We got the business done and got out pretty quick. But it was a it was a great hunt. I love spring bear hunting in Montana. That was my fourth you know, quote unquote do it yourself spring bear hunt in Montana. UM. The second time that I've brought my mules up and hunted, and uh, it's a tough hunt. It's a tough hunt. You can sure as heck go to Montana and not come home

with a bear. I would go so far as to say, um, if you're doing it for your first time, I would go so far as to say, play not not seen one. There's a little bit of there's a learning curve. Yeah, you know, the same way if like someone's gonna, like, you know, go out to Colorado for their first archery elk hunt, you'd be like, it might take you a couple, Yeah, take you a couple at bats to get that whole.

The challenges are so we're all now so connected to so many people, And so I started kind of connecting with some guys in Montana. And if you're a local guy in Montana and you can drive out every afternoon thirty minutes and you know, going spot for bears and and really know the country, that guy, as a bear hunter or as any kind of hunter is way different than the guy that's driving twelve hundred miles to spend six days that he picked out on a calendar four

months before. In hunting, you know, so I mean like there's a lot of local, local guys that I mean are passing up bears and are seeing lot of bear and so you kind of get this feeling about you know, this may not be that as hard as you would think. And uh but coming up here on your own and and I had some help, you know, the Springs, Justin and Rebecca Spring, they've been big allies of mine on

the barefront for all these years. I've kind of base camps. Yeah. Yeah, so they've they've they've they've kind of given me the you know, they're like, check out this area, do this. But overall it's been doing yourself stuff and I love it, man, I really do. You know, everybody talks about bear hunting and trying to compare it to elk hunting or mule deer hunting, your spotting stock in the West, And Yanni even said it while we were hunting. He said, yeah,

I'm sucking his injergy. The the there's not as much action, like you're not watching game all day. But to me, that's why it's so cool, because you set there for you know, and mean we can get into the details of what we were actually doing, but from an overall perspective. You know, you're sitting there for eight hours and see nothing, and so then when you do see a bear, it's it's I think that's an incredible feeling. I think it's uh. I think it's uh. I think that's actually what people

say they don't like a bear? What about BARRONI is, well, actually what I like about it? You know, uh, it's that's a good thing because from filming it, um I approached filming it with a high degree of skepticism. I sensed that while we're hunting, well, I um, I enjoyed the dickens of it. We we devoted years ago, my brother and I devoted ourselves quite heavily to it for a lot of years, and we would we would be that two of us, hunting very heavily, would kill a

bear every other year, hunting hard for spring season. And you guys lived here and there's yeah, and there's no other let me you see him and have missed opportunity. But like when it was like if you really went and looked at like this block of of ten years, um, when we like that was our spring thing. This is before we even got a lot of it was before we got into Turkey Hunt. It was like our our

spring thing. Um when when you really like laid it out, it's like that was our that was our pattern like two and I think you'd find that's pretty true like bear hunting partners that are kind of like low not not doing two week vacations but hitting and when you can hit it going on on the weekends. If if um, every other spring we get one. And so for filming, it's, uh, there's a there's a difference between hunting and hunting and filming, like there's an obligation to audience, you know, and so

you just want to make sure this stuff happening. Yeah, and and the ones, the episodes that we do where there's a lot of stuff happening just go together very painlessly. Yeah. You guys had two previous bear hunt episode or that you were working to make episodes, right, we'd filmed two other ones and well another No, we we've had great there's other states, like you know, you go to Alaska and you're gonna have action to Montana bear hunts that no bear you ended up. So this was the third

third go as a high country cameraman. Rick. Yeah, but also it's like like you're a bear enthusiast. Were you here? So? Are you conflicted? As a high country cameraman to be We're gonna go film a bear episode, are you? Are you like, I hope we get one because that will make a good episode, or you're like, I hope they don't get one because I'm a bear enthusiast. I'm conflicted for sure, walk me through it. Um, I'm a bar

enthusiast two, but just of a different flavor. Yeah. And I think there's I think with I mean, outside of my own confliction over or conflict over bear hunt. And I think I've talked to other hunters that also are like I've went on a bear hunt or I've shot a bear and are also conflicted. So this isn't just you know, I think it's some somewhat a universal to some degree that there's a a different uh issue versus filming an elk cunt. And and it's divisive. It's the

it's devisive and in my view, unnecessarily. So. Yeah, And I though, I mean, I've filmed bears just as like a wildlife filmmaker where you're just watching. I'm just watched bears more than I'm watched any other animal you explained with that, I'll do it for you. Like Smithsonian, Like there's a Smithsonian show right now, uh called Epic Yellowstone, And I spent multiple seasons, multiple weeks filming the same

individuals over the course a few years. Grizly bears interactions, yeah, interactions and behavior and they're all habituated to something a little facial expressions that they can manipulate to make it seem as though they have facial expressions. Well, you can watch the show and then I think they did a great job. Just there's some cool stuff like a coyote spooking up an elk calf and then that elk calf runs into a pair of grizzly bears that I didn't I didn't see that, but I got them feeding on

that carcass like right away. Really just cool stuff that you wouldn't normally see from less than a hundred yards. So that's a great job. You've got a great job. Yeah, it's totally cool. But so going on a hunt of a bear, it's definitely makes me think a good close look at him if it works out, yeah, which which

I'm not against. But ultimately I do this job because I like to get exposed to things that I personally wouldn't do, Like, you know, I'm not a hunter, but I get to like it's almost like I'm a an ethnographer, Like I get to come along and observe you guys, and you're basically culture and something that I I you know, I grew up in the suburbs and outside of Seattle that I was never exposed to growing up or even into my through my twenties, rickeys to have job restringing

tennis racket. Yeah, I've and I worked as a tennant to get the cat instructor you know, like very different than growing up trapping things like I didn't do that as a kid, but like going along trapping Beaver, Um, I mean I like Beaver and I like him not dead, but I really enjoyed going along seeing how it all tell everybody about your hat? Howest my favorite possession. So

there's yeah, it's fantastic in his pocket right now. And I mentioned this stuff at dinner parties and people look at me, like the room stops like what I'm like, Yeah, I got a beaver hat, but those beer are gonna get killed by somebody. And I normally don't get a hat. But if I go along and film it and I know the guy that's trapping him, and I have I get to participate. Like this stuff goes on whether or not we like it or not or whatever. But you

know what, I but you're you're arguably complicit. Definitely. Yeah. I don't think there's a conflict with you know, I like a lot bare other than I like a dead bear, you know, I mean really yeah, yeah, I mean you know, so if you can milk them for bear grease, would you yeah? You know. And the other thing that you you go along with people are like, well, you know, people always ask me, well does it taste good? And I'm like, I haven't had an animal that doesn't taste good,

so and the answer is yes. And then you get into the history of like now that we can manufacture fats so easy out of vegetable oil and whatnot, Like it's just this we are constantly basically like trying to get less fat as a society. But uh, that's not true anymore a hundred years ago. That's good for you now. But so I think that I predict that sugar will

become good for you soon. I love sugar. But but having Clay somebody that's very passionate about this activity explain kind of the holistic history of of bear hunting and the uses of of bear fat, and like, I'm I'm so into having more knowledge about a subject than being like I disagree with this or I'm just not gonna I'm just gonna pretend that and not engage. I don't think that's very helpful. So like I'm now, I can't imagine myself ever going on a bear hunt, but I would.

I would happily go film another one. I mean, there's three hundred thousand black bears in the US. I think there's thirty thousand in Maine. I mean there's a lot of black bears. I don't know what you would usually think it was from continental wide, you know, eight hundred thousand to a million black bears. Yeah, so yeah, I mean this, there's an astounding number of black bears. Um. So, you know, we kill a lot of other things, and we make arbitrary dividing lines about yeah, about what we

choose to kill and not kill. I mean, there is an interesting idea that that you know, because black bears are omnivores or prettors are more similar to us, and they potentially have diseases that we don't want um, which maybe is where some of the like we don't eat black bear thing came from. I don't know where people don't exactly. So it's it's interesting where we divide where we choose to divide those those lines. I mean, you know, bears are very humanlike, uh, much more so than I

would than a than an elk. Just their anatomy right that you like standing up. They they're like, you know, people think they're sasquatch. Tell people what you and Cal were doing for Cal's weekend reviews. So we're traveling traveling, Yeah, traveling grizzly bears last week with Idaho Fish and Game

and to pull like biometric. Yeah. It's part of the Inner Agency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which is a collection of of all the state agencies the federal agencies that the studies have been going on in Yellowstone since the I think late sixties, early seventies. The Craigheads who basically developed collar you know location call it radio colors and usually better as I think we're the only animals that could carry this thing around. At the time, it was

like a giant transmitter. But you guys worked two bears and one of them was seventeen and one of them and so that's a see. That's like the point I was gonna bringu because I used to argue, Like when when I used to try to understand when I used to argue with people who would be like, I don't know, it's not comfortable shooting a bear. I think, okay, what is it? And like, wow, they're very wide range, you know, they have such a big home ranger. We talked about

the wolverines too. It's like because they roll them all over, I'm like, well, caribou are the there they have the they have the biggest migration pattern um of any North American uh land mammal. And you don't have a problem hunting cariboo, right, Like, oh no, They'd be like they get so old and you'd be like, but there's been cow elk. They're twenty years old. You know a problem hunting elk? Right? No, Well that's that right, and you go down this path. But I was some of the

other day and they weren't. I didn't engage in this whole game with them, but they were pointing out that they just get so old. I mean, it makes it makes people think differently about it. Yeah, yeah, I think we just kind of choose things like we don't need horses, we don't need dogs, were just like, but other people do, and they might look at us like why not, why don't you eat your horses? Like that's crazy? So I mean, I I still you know, I mean, I have a

thing of bear lard in my fridge right now. That I didn't, I wouldn't think I would have had that. Like if I thought of my future self, I would be like, Oh, there's gonna be a point where you're gonna be making pies with bear lard. But I'm like, that's what I'm gonna do with it. Probably I gave that to you, didn't. I just remember I was like, where do you get large? No? And I was, it's

really an amazing, clean, real fat It's great. So you know, I think, I think, I think a big part of what makes no sense that that actually hunters, And I can understand a non hunter kind of feeling this way that way, but for a hunter man black bears are thriving. I mean, whatever is happening ecologically on the North American continent we can say all the different things that are happening.

Black bears are thriving. I mean almost every population of bears is for sure stable, but most of them are increasing, I mean and expanding in range and expanding the range. I mean southern Missouri. You know, I talked with the expanding south, the north. They're expanding north and the south. They're expanding west and the east and east and the west.

So I mean, even if you look at it from a position of of of logic and management, I mean, these these animals, there's only so much habitat the country is there's only so much suitable bear habitat in the country. And I mean, these animals are expanding, and you know, to be able to didn't want to just turn up in Iowa. Well, there was a bear that traveled from like Wisconsin down to down to Missouri and they've been tracking it and it's been on like a hundreds of miles.

I mean, I can't remember how far. Really saw pictures of it. It's just a big loop through Missouri as far as you can see. And there's like a black dot in the in the middle of it. Yeah, So you know, so why wouldn't we build this idea, which is very true, that bear meat is an incredible meat these animals, um, you know, I mean that's the foundation right there. I mean, the reason why we hunt these other animals for the meat and bear meats incredible. It's

a it's a resource that's expanding. It's a resource that we can take the cream off the top. You know, harvesting ten percent of the animals out of a population is going to typically stabilize that population. And if those populations aren't stabilized by hunters, those bears will die in some way. I mean they will, they be euthanized, they'll

be hit by cars, which is a surplus. It's gonna absolutely I mean when you think about it, like like in the like in the Arkansas Ozarks, Missouri, there's only so much habitat there and those bears are going out in every direction. So you know, the idea that hunters could come in and make this really valuable. Uh, you know, culture inside of hunting, keeping the meat, keeping the hide, bear fat, bear claws, bear chaps, you got genuine bear chaps,

now man hair out. The thing is that you run up against is that, as you brought up, there's a point at which there's there's a disconnect from logic, meaning you could go to Americans, like years ago when there was a big drought in uh, you know, a big drought in California, grain prices, hay was hard, hay was scarce. Right, people were trying to dump horses. Uh, it was expensive to keep them. Right, it was big problems. You could be like, dude, there's a lot of horses, they're really inexpensive.

UM meats great, they love it. In Japan they love it. And what's that country close to Russia they eat a lot of that's like the number one horse, Like Kazakh stigns the number one horse country horse eating place. But people wouldn't do it. And people are gonna be like, yeah, but I'm not really trying to have a debate with you about whether or not there's like a lot of horses around to eat. I don't want to eat a horse.

And I think that there's certain people that you're going to convince by saying that, you know, it's a wild game species. We have a harvesta bowl surplus um. People want it. Why not we let them have it? You know, we we manage all our other game species that way. Why should they be an exception. But some people just gonna be like, I don't need a horse, man um, and I don't care how many horses are running around. Uh, and you're just never gonna get there with them. Yeah, well,

I'm not putting this as your problem. Yeah no, But because the horse is just a farther extension of that, these arbitrary lines that Rick was just mentioning, and and bears are closer to if there's a scale, bears are closer to an elk than they are towards or they're like they fall between an elk and a horse right in most people's minds. And I'm very guilty of it. I don't know if it's not because I because I didn't grow up with bear hunting. Too many teddy bears

on my bed as a kid. I mean, all sorts of reasons. But the more I know about it, and like when you tell me, I don't forget which one of you two told me that back in the day, the settlers they didn't want to you know, dear meat, they want to bear meat. They just used the deer for the hides. Right. Well, I'm not I'm not saying I'm just a perfect example of someone that sort of for for an arbitrary reason, Like it was kind of

like uneasy about killing and eating a bear. And the more I know about it, the more I do about it. So I'm just getting drawn in and I'm big, I'm getting in. It's becoming more and more comfortable. You know. The problem for us if if our position is to you know, and I think it is, I think we

can say this is the Meteor podcast. If our position is to defend the North American model of wildlife conservation and and we're saying, hey, this is the most successful wildlife husbandry effort of all time, then there's a problem when there's a problem with one sector of it, you know. So the problem with it, you know, it's it's different than a you know, like making the analogy of it being like a horse is that. I mean, it just presents a problem when people don't And I'm not saying

nine hunters. I get that nine hunters may not want to eat a bear. I'm totally cool with that. No. Um, I am a bear hunter. I will defend it all day long. But I also think you might that it, Um, you must well like talk openly and discuss where people

are at on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that I guess I'm like that comfortable in my convictions that I can sit down and verbalize and imagine what a contrary viewpoint would be without like losing my ship, which a lot of people don't have like these like supposedly deeply held convictions, but they kind of fall apart the minute they're confronted with the obligations at least consider where someone else is coming from, and then you left to think like how much of they thought this through

that that makes them that uncomfortable. Yeah, we have we have the scale where like you know a lot of a lot of people are don't eat that much meat, but they'll eat fish. They're okay with fish dying. And

then they don't have eyebrows eyelash. Yeah, so there's there's they have a scale where they're like, oh, this sort of animal because teams furthest removed from my experience, And then you get to pray animals and you're like, I'm okay with the prey animal because they're kind of like not that aware or maybe not that like on the sentience scale. They're like, I don't know, seem seem a little more simplistic than as you move up and bears and pigs that would include in that same thing. They're

like fully emotional creatures. I mean in my view where and I think people would argue that they're they're more intelligent than some of the then some of the lower animals. Like have we told you the story of beans the pig? Yeah? I was there, Yeah, yeah no, But so in my mind, like people have no problem eating bacon, like in in the moment, I mean, in these pigs that are raised

in industrial food conditions, they're pretty horrific. But then they're real up in arms about a bear that lived its whole life in the woods doing its thing until that last. That's a good point because that's one thing people are like, that's that's the thing that like collapses vegetarians all the

time because they can't resist the bacon pop culture. Like people are like bacon, bacon, bacon, and it's all like from the like you see those videos of them being like squeezed together and those massive slaughter operations, and you're like, I need to not eat this stuff at all, but I can't stop. Yeah, you know, it's it's hard, but I would make the argument that people probably should not

eat bacon and go occasionally bear hunting. There you go, stop eating if you want to be ethically and philosophically, stop any bacon and start as they don't want to do either. I'm totally for it. I would I just want to throw here as a devil's advocate. If Americans, if America's bacon needs were to be satisfied with black bears, it would be impossible. I think that we would be out of them, and Clay would be out of a passion.

He'd be a passionless man within six months. And this is the other thing that we need to come to grips with. We cannot eat things like bacon for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's like made. It's like an American right, Like I deserve this much meat every day, all day long. I mean the world is basically wanting to do that as well, and it has serious ramifications. Did you notice me jokingly sanitize my lips without hand sanitizer. I do not recommend that. Man. It gave me instantly chapped lips

between the time said yeah, that's not safe. And I didn't even really do it that much. I just did it to make my joke. I felt that it was funny, and so I just did a little bit of it. You're taking to heart the ingesting, disinfecting, that's my COVID hot tip. This is a COVID hot tip off. Don't sanitize your lips. That's the stuff Perel advanced. You just

need some light therapy, Steve. I think what Janice was saying was just his his knowledge levels increasing and having some exposure to bear and bear hunting and people that are using bears like that, that is increasing his like he's seeing, he's beginning beginning to see it in a different light. And that's what I see happening all over

the place. I mean, I have people I'm not gonna say daily because that's not true, but constantly emailing me whatever, saying, man, I never even thought about bear hunting, but now I am. And and right in their home state or right within you know, some driving distance, they've got this incredible opportunity to bear hunt, and so they're starting to be And man,

that's what we have won. When I say we, I mean Bear Hunting Magazine, which is which is me and one other dude, Kobe moorehead uh we have wanted to reform and change the branding of bear hunting in North America.

You know, just bring bring it up. You know, so much opportunity, such great meat that people still don't understand, such history, such such challenge, unique challenge that's way different than hunting an ungulate, hunting an antlered animal, you know, which, not taking anything away from that because I love hunting those, but anyway, it's just this unique thing. So I think people think people are starting to see it. I mean I have seen a increase in or noticed an increase

in media coverage of you know, pro bear stuff. I mean just in an outdoor section, outdoor world. So but I also think it's part the opportunity is is and people are looking for a way to be a hunter year round, and so much of our traditional honey is just in the fall. And you can spring bear hunt I think in nine states and then all most of the Conti provinces. I think it's nine states and most of them, well, yeah, in Maine you can hunt on some uh uh tribal lands there in Maine there's a

spring hunt. But basically there's this opportunity to hunt big game in May and June and people people are you know, went back when and you know in the seventies eighties when my dad was growing up serious deer hunters, deer hunted for you know, thirty forty days and the well, they focused on it for three months during the year. The rest of the year hunting was just like not

on the radar. Now people are wanting to do stuff year round, so you know, bear hunting gives an opportunity to do that walk This is a little bit of spoiler alert because we're making a show about this, but Clay got a bear walk through because it's kind of a good example of like what walk through the bear you got, because it's a good example of how a spring bear strategy, how spring bear hunting works. And you know, every day's got different rules and wyoming. You can bait

bears in Idaho, you can bait bears. You can hunt bears with hounds. Um in this state you can't use bait, can't use dogs. Yeah, well, well we go through the unsuccessful Yeah, because that is thing that's almost maybe even more telling of some spring bear tips. Yeah, talk about the successful story is interesting. We packed back in on mules five miles. Steve and I were riding mules. Um stink Cole Creek. Stink Cole Creek. Yeah, that's where it was.

And we uh so we packed back in five miles and and we were what we were looking for is we were looking for green vegetation. Essentially, when you're spring bear hunting, these bears are feeding on green vegetation. We were looking for green vegetation. We hadn't seen any bears, so we didn't know what elevation they were gonna be. And the way that I like to describe it in the spring is that you're you're hunting the green up. So the higher elevations are not going to be green.

Lower elevations are gonna be green, and the bears typically want to they're coming out of dinn and High typically going down into the green, but they seem to want to go back up. So it's almost like they followed this green up line, the green wave. Yeah, and so we didn't really know what elevation that would be in but we me and you packed mules and uh and and I've got to I like not taking a pack animal.

Usually when people think about hunting with a mule or horse, like, usually you have a pack animal that's dedicated to just carrying gear, and then you have an animal that you ride. I like to pack light and pack enough gear for three days and go back in with one man one mule, carrying a backpack full of gear, saddlebags full of gear, enough gear for three days camping stuff, go back in and if you see what you like, you can stay

in there for up to three or four days. If you don't see what you like, you can get the heck out of there and go somewhere. So that's what we're doing. Went back in five miles within the first ten minutes of being at the glassing point where we could really see this country that we were wanting to hunt. I believe, honest, the eagle spotted a bear hundred yards away or now I was further than that it was. I think it was yards. I mean it was over

a mile, almost a mile away. I would been farther that. I want to say that we did the It was a long ways away, A long ass getting over there to get eight hundred yards away. Yeah, my vision only really becomes focused at about eighteen hundred yards, so I know it had to be your eyes are on the side of your head like a meal focus out way out there now. So we we found this bear immediately once we get back in here, and it's a big

it's a very nice big Montana bear. And I don't know if you remember our conversation, but I wanted to go up higher because I felt like we were about to really get into the good stuff. And to me, that bear was kind of I knew it gonna be hard to get too. It was late enough in the day where it was you were going to get over there, we weren't gonna get over there. And so I don't know how long of a version of this story that you want, but medium well, we we we camped out.

It was too late to go after the bear. We camped out the next morning. It's snow, yeah, snowed up there. We were at about hundred six thousand feet elevation where we camped. The bear was at forty feet elevation amidst another person's garbage pile. So we the next morning, rather than going after the bear, which may have been a mistake, I don't know, we we went way up to glass another area. That as a mistake, yeah, I think I did too. I just felt like if we could get

over there. We were gonna look down in and see a bear three yards away. I mean, that's where I've been wanting to go. Was back where I took you that bear in the hand. Yeah, I remember, you said, Clay, this is in Alaska, this is Montana. We just walk past the spar so at eleven o'clock eleven am. We get back down to the exact spot where Jana spotted the bear and we see him again. He is I mean, that bear was staying in probably an eighties square yard area on the side of that mountain um and which

which I think is kind of generally stays true. You talked to a lot of guys that have that experience. Early they just they find a spot, they have what they need, and they tend to not move around a lot. But as the as spring fades the summer um they the more options they have, the more they're they're gonna move. The later it gets into the spring, the more they're

gonna be driven by breeding. So that bear was and that's why I love that early that time, early in the spring is that if you find a bear, you can kill him, you know, if if you don't get winded by him. But so we decided to make a play on the spar we have to go down into the drainage. So we're looking across like three ridges, probably two ridges, and we see this bear. So it's not

like you can walk straight to him. So we drop off into the drainage, you know, probably walk close to a mile up a super thick drainage, then pop back up on the mountain. I'd call the willow choked hill hole. Yeah, it was so bad that it was preferable. The bottom is so bad that it was preferable to side hill across scree slides, which is not it's gotta be bad. When that's better than crick walking, that's a bad. We

had a game trail. I feel like I'm saying like generally I would rather walk up a stream bottom than side hill on scree slides. And the game trails were ephemeral. Yeah, that would come in, they would fade like here's a good trail, then like and also it's gone. Yeah it wasn't horrible, but yeah, just saying. So we we get down to about where we were using our onyx, so we we decided where we wanted to come back up

the mountain to get a viewpoint of the bear. So we're in deep timber while we're walking in this drainage. Then we come back up the hill at this certain place and I don't know if you remember, but we split up. Me and Dirt went probably fifty sixty yards up the mountain and you guys stayed down low, And within ten minutes we spot the bear, still in the same place, still in the same place, middle of the day. It's two o'clock now, so it's like twenty hours later

and he still hasn't moved. And at this point, I mean, we're in the chips big time. I mean we're yards away, eight hundred yards away. The wind is bad, but we're both were pretty confident that he's herd yards away so that we hold on, didn't we I thought we did this twice because we popped up like a thousand or eleven hundred, and then we didn't find him until we were right we found them at that point, and it

was like the wind was bad. We are so far away that it was just what almost went without saying, We'll just stay here until the wind gets good, because how the hell is he gonna smell us from here? Yeah? And then bad kind of wind, like not just like

lightly blowing up the canyon. It was a gusty afternoon like kind of like you know, honking, like where if someone was more than you know, ten yards away, you probably have to raise your voice to communicate, right, And we're kind of down in the v notch of the valley and it's just washing all that warming air from the afternoon warmth is just a's an noise it makes for people at home, this is like, what's that thing where you play with beads and talk? Yeah, my brother

likes SR. Yeah, it's kind of creepy. He was telling me he was listening to one where it's a someone cutting your hair. Dude, that's weird. That's real. D I almost feel should cut that out at you even know that's TV. Yeah, here's what it's like for people who like s m R. I what's it called MR? I think? Yeah, yeah, you're right, which is a s m R. Oh, I'm out loup here, boys, Oh, you don't know about a SMR.

It's like you listen to people have like a Russian woman playing with beads making noise, banging beads together and talking, and you listen to it to get your jollies, not that kind of jollies. Just people just listen to it because they like the way it sounds. It stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. It's like whisper, whisper. Do you ever hear something you like so much that it makes you get a tingly feeling in your head where it's like a wash, Like, here's what it sounds like. It's

like tingo, tingo, tingle. Uh, common triggers, whispering, other auditory sounds. Rick could do that, dude, You keep talking to you that that's the wind blown up the hill. Well, hey, I've I've evaluated. Well, so we're set up up the hill eight yards from this bear. I spot the bear, Me and Dirt were way up above. You. Guys were the same distance up from the creek as the bear is up from the creek, even though he's up from us, because the whole thing is up right, I see what

was extremely clear? Yes, yes, and there was a there was a wall, I mean the mountain opposite the creek of a steve. I've analyzed it since then. Why that bear smelled us if it had been like this wide valley. I don't think he would have smelled. It was a cliff face. I mean, any air coming through there was just gonna be going right to him. I honestly think that he was bedded down on the creek. Think he smelled us, and that's why he walked up When I

first saw him. He was moving fast when I when I first spotted because I thought it was never relaxed when we saw him. When I saw him, he was. He was steadily moving up the hill at two in the afternoon, which I thought was weird, waving his nose in the air. Well, Eventually that's what he did. He put his head in the grass a couple of times, but then both of us were watching him when he he turned and faced us, and he just started bombing his head and me and you, I don't think we

said it to each other, but I didn't. I I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. But it was just improbable. They catched the wind in the very um They catched the wind in a way that doesn't leave a lot to the imagination. Yeah, I mean they're like, he's like that bear is smelling like literally waving its nose around up high like he's sampling the wind and he We watched him for just a few minutes after that, and then he he didn't just turn and walk away, which I thought he might have done.

He turned and ran away, spent he spent twenty hours in one spot and then ran And it's not entirely fair though, if you're if you're trying to understand how big game animals smell, in their ability to smell, there were six of us there that all smelled terrible. If two people maybe we could have got away with it. What do you all think we could have? Certainly it takes take a rot and shrimp and throw that in your garbage, and take six rot and shrimp throw that

in your garbage. At a point you get something needs to be dealt with, ye, So I was still I want to clarify though, just two points that I think need to be clarified here. Point one is that um, I was extremely surprised that he winded us at that distance. Point two is I have absolutely zero doubt that that's what happened. What happened? What do you mean that he win us? Oh? Yeah, sure, that's what I'm saying. I have no doubt that he winded us. Yet I'm extremely

surprised that he winded us. Yep, I thought we were safe. I would have thought we were safe. And what's tough about old bear? And that's how you get to be a big old bear. He knew what to do. He don't hang out, you know that. And that's the hard part about committing to a place like that is we pretty much knew that the hunt was over. Like we might have been able to find another bear in that drainage. And maybe if we had stayed in there for five days,

I mean, we probably would have. But you guys, I don't know if you remember, but I went back out and got a turkey shotgun because on the way up steaining Cole Creek. Yeah. Yeah, we're riding mules pretty deep in. We're used to seeing these turkeys close to the edges of agriculture or civilization in Montana. That's kind of the way it works. Oh they're yeah, they're like they're close

to openings are so typically associated with human developments. They like ranches, they're like backyard feeders, they like cattle fattening operations. They like egg and they need and in the winter, you could one could get one could justify this statement in many areas of the state. They're not going to survive the winner without tapping into human resource. Mhm, fair. Fair. And so we found turkeys two and a half three miles back in on the way in, but we didn't

have it. So we both have turkey tags. We hadn't said that yet. This was a dual hunt. That was that we had spring Montana spring bear tags in Montana turkey tags. And I would come and tell people here's a hot tip. Don't first, don't put that hand santas on your lips. Two, beware, beware the man who um thinks he's gonna go do a whole bunch of stuff

all at once. Yeah, you could generally, generally makes sense to be like focuss just getting up in turkey hunting and then just picking in and like, oh, we're gonna do this and that, and then hell will fish too. It's just like a lot of times like it just it just leads to It can lead to some great experiences, but a lot of times it leads to some disjointed efforts. You know. I think the way that would work is if you we're successful at one very quickly, which sometimes happens.

That's what you're some percentage of hunts, you're gonna take an animal on the first day of the second day. I mean, you know, probably don't know thirty of hunts. You're gonna take an animal relatively quickly. And that's what I was thinking. I was thinking, Man, you know, if we if we get a bear on day two and we've still got three days, why wouldn't we turkey hunh

That's why I had attack. And then because I just know from my experience in Montana doing what I'm doing, Kylie, you gotta hit the ground running and pound the dirt hard to kill a bear. So I wanted a turkey hunt. But I was like you, I mean, I was like, man, I hope we can. I hope we can focus our efforts enough that we are successful. And but we spring

thunder on the way up. When there's one thing more enticing than a turkey, it's a turkey who surprises you with his whereabouts at That's it for me, that's it. It's it just has to be scratched, like like what because remember we passed that huge beaver dam. It was like the beaver dam of all beaver dams, the beaver Lodge.

It was like if you close your eyes, just imagine like a mountain scene with a beaver living in it, and then out across that that already speaks my soul has already stirred, and then out across that or, as Robert Abernathy says, you guys are so focused on that mayor he decided not to pack a shotgun as it was just so hard to It was just so hard to package shotgun. And we didn't think we're gonna see a turkey. And there's legal things here too, where you got a bear hunt, you got a orange on turkey,

and you don't want orange. So you're kind of like, you know, there's a little bit of like you gotta chance, you gotta kind of switch gears. There's a little gear switching. A plausible thing is that you're gonna hunt turkeys in the morning. If you were really in a honey, well, didn't you kill a turkey to bear in the same day? Seth? I didn't. I didn't personally. I didn't personally kill a turkey. My buddy Ford and Fawston, he works first like shot

the turkey and then I shot the bear that evening. Yes, I said, you look out one side of your tent and your turkey hunt. You look at the other side of your tent and your bear hunt. Nice, Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that's fun. No spoiler alert, but sort of what happened to us? Well, so you should we walk through the turkey hunt, I ride back and get our shotgun, I leave your truck unlocked and all that um, and then we turkey out that next morning and find a bunch

of birds called them right into the mules. Yeah, yeah, they know, they cold rolled into our mules. We we rode for an hour in the dark, parked the mules well ahead of where we thought the turkeys were, and sure enough, the turkeys were probably roosted a hundred yards from our mules. I mean, is that right. I don't know if they were already roosted or I mean if they were still roosted when we got there, because wasn't it a little after daylight? It was why we got there,

like right at gobble time. I felt like, I mean, it was dark. It's pretty funny because Seth and I, you know, turkey hunting and filming, the name of the game is usually like chopped down the crew as much as possible to just the minimum amount of cameras and for since you guys were hunting together, we had to have at least two. So it's you know, a big group as it is. So Seth and I are basically

just gonna hang back at the mules. Were like getting food out and getting ready to getting ready to make some coffee, you know, around to a coffee and just gonna sit there and watch the woods light up, you know, from the morning sun. And you guys are just disappearing around the corner down the trail, going to where you think the birds are gonna be, and then all of sudden the opposite direction, like not a hundred yards away.

Oh yeah. So Seth and I then just shut ourselves down and hit the dirt, laid there and waited for you guys started working your way. And it was like these turkeys kind of like walk into the mules and you can picture him talk and being like, dude, I don't mean to be paranoid, but there's a couple of meals with saddles, and though I do hear a hen calling from those mules, I just don't. As a matter of fact, may be on one of the mules, I don't know. I think we should gobble a whole bunch,

but still move out of here. Yeah. So we spent the whole morning chasing those birds around and probably were within fifty sixty yards um several times. It just never could They just just never could make it happen, which was surprising to both of us, I think, because these are like wilderness gobblers that certainly had I mean, I can't imagine somebody else being back in their mess. It might be exceptions to my rule. I don't know, because the turkeys will move a long way. Yeah. Uh, you

know what I'm just thinking of right now. For some reason. Um, we one time we're hunting moose and all laugh, twenty miles from the road and we killed a bull whose ass is full of bird shot. M hm ah. Healed up and I feel like gotten someone's garden. I mean, he could have got shot out in the woods. But I always you know, like you know, a nice thing.

Turkeys don't move, But you talked to the turk. What's what's the Chamberlain, Mike turkey doc, He's got plenty of evidence contrary, Like you know, they don't always move, but they will move. So I was gonna say that these turkeys could be contenders for undoing my observation about turkeys needing a little help hereabouts in the winter. But if you told me that those turkeys were spent the winter ten miles away, I would be yeah, yeah, well, in those turkeys were only a couple of miles from the

nearest house, from cabins and stuff. Yeah, that's true. They could you like onto a cabin where someone's just putting out corn for him, which happens. Yeah, yeah, I will say that Janice Patelis has a very impressive mouth crow call. Oh yeah, I hit it for him. Niow, wow, wow, can you believe it? Right? Man? Do the far off elk? Johnny? Do you hear this? This is what yannest is mostly famous for. That's some a s m R. I right there, man, that's an elk way far away. Do it again. I

haven't even farther away. He's Here's when you know you're boned because he's moving farther away. You're like smiling, trying to smile, and you're like, I swear her to bugle, I swear her to bugle. Then he gets a little farther away. Hit men. Then you're like, we're never gonna get him. Um. Yeah, he's got a really impressive crow call. So much so then when we were trying to work these turkeys, we at one point we're trying to figure

out where they were and wander down. Yanni stills hanging out by these mules we wanted way down the trail. Do like crow call, blue jay call, hybrid. I will call and then Yanni can hear us trying to shot gobble it up, and Yanni rips his crow call the bird gobbles bios. Yeah, what's funny is that we we pulled out everything we had to shot goblets. Bird didn't work,

Yannick goblets. I can't say it now because I don't want people to get onto this, but my brother had an epiphany A shot gobble of piff need this year, and it's gonna be very controversial, very divisive. But I'm gonna use it too, and I don't want to talk about what it is, Okay, So you just tells us that, so you could tell us. You can't tell us just I just want to rub people's noses in it. Very controversial,

very divine. Is it a wild animal. It's a way that I will uh in in in the shot gobble world. I will dominate m I look forward to it's a it's a I don't want to go into great detail. It will not be ignored by turkeys or people. Very controversial. But I think you need I think you need something Steve rather than your blue Jay call. No, dude, I'm like, I like, I'm not. There's a lot of things I'm not. I am uh. I regard myself as relative to I've

phoned out with some very good turkey hunters. I regard myself as if I had a turkey specialty. Besides like a certain level of gur which which I feel like I have when it comes to Turkey's enthusiasm, I have enthusiasm. I am a very effective getter of shot cobbles. Okay, I'm very good at getting shot cobbles. It's like, I'm not a good caller. I'm not a good lot of stuff,

but I am good at getting shot gobbles. Well, I can't wait until next year you can report back to us after you had a whole season with your new shot gobble getter. Because I don't know, I think there's a lot of things out there that people have already been doing that are very similar to that and don't say too much. I won't. I won't. I mean, we all know they shot gobble to all sorts are crazy, crazy sounds. Yeah yeah, m hm, so we so we chased these. I am not. I am. There's many things

I'm not even in the turkey woods. Many things I'm not. Many areas where I fall short, calling being one of them. But I am a good getter of shotgulbs that enjoyed hunting with you for a couple of days. Man, many things I'm not. Okay, tell us about those ship Clay looked at a at the clock. We don't have another time for that, okay. So you guys didn't get a turkey, didn't really quit just in the interest of time, I wanna. So then I got real in turkey hunt on this trip.

And then there was no stop in me on turkey hunting. And we started doing what is happens hereabouts a fair bit as we started hunting where um national forest land a butts the yards of people who love turkeys and feed them corn. All winter laws be damned, um. And that's like a that's like a it's kind of like a dirty secret. A lot of turkey hunt like Montana hunters opened up a lot of turkeys to find like sunflower seeds or corn, and there's like dogs barking doors,

slamming people yelling at their kids. But you're on National forest Land hunting turkeys, birds, and you're trying. You're like aware of turkeys because you see them in the person's yard as an as an example, trutting on their green lawn as an example of this. And a bird that was so comfortable in someone's lawn. We saw that one bird strutting like what ten twenty yards from that golden retriever. Like I got burned on Montana turkeys. A golden story

about those two and a golden retreat. Yeah. And here's the thing. Here's the thing. Like our hunt turkeys wherever they are. We get all kinds of emails and people be like, I can't tell if it's right that I'm hunting the golf course. I'm like, if those are turkey and you have legal access hunt the turkey, it's just the it's just the reality. But we are actively there's a dog, there's a turkey hanging out with a dog,

and we're trying to bring that bird up there. There's a guy cutting firewood too, and we're trying to lure his bird up as a different day and a totally different I just got all into I'm saying at that point, I was hunting turkeys. Yeah, So so we came out of this deep country where we were after Yeah, so we came back and that's when we said, hey, we need to split up. So I went bear hunting and

you went turkey. I'm saying, in their interests of time, in the interest of time, I'm trying to dispatch with my turkey on. I want to do a whole different zone where you can we're work of the edges, and we found this is a good edge hunting story. We found a area that was just really getting scratched up, really heavy, and it was kind of like where National forests sort of jutted out into that kind of stuff. You get where it's all used to be farm and

ranch but it's becoming housey. But so you got like like where we killed our bird. I mean, we had seen like white tailed deer, mule deer, a bunch of elk out in the field, Turkeys run around people's yards, um, and we're just kind of nudged out into it and we were in an area where they were really scratching

under some ponder rolls. So they had done a bunch of thinning projects, uh fire mitigation, and opened it up beautifully into like picture perfect turkey stuff, and they were just scratching like the dickens, and we heard a bird gobble and they that went back the next day and reworked him and got him the second time around. But it was funny while we're trying to get them. The first time we tried to work them. We're sitting there against the tree and got like we're like camoed up.

We're on one side of an old two track and the birds on the other, our decoys on the other side of the old two track, and all of a sudden ris filming me and also here Rick going ker And the reason he's not saying a lot her is she's already so close to us. That's like there's just no way to alert her to our presence without giving her a heart attack. Man. He's like, look, here comes a woman with walking her dog and the dog doesn't even know we're there, but like she's on and she's

in our lap. And so I do the old like slow wave because although she's got to see us, it's gonna be worse. Like every step she takes, it's only gonna be worse. So I'm like, pardon me there, you know, like give like a wave and she yeah, jumps back very alarmed. Dogs hackles instantly go up, and she's in the awkward position like being cool with it. But she was good luck, oh wow, and went about her business.

But I was pretty funny, man. I was like in my hand, like do we ride it out and just hope that she never notices us or notices why sir rubber turkey sitting here? And you had to make that split second call excuse me, ma'am. We're just out here enjoying the morning with a big camera and some shotguns playing. I ran into some horse for horse people riding their ponies, and we had somehow passed by him once already. Then we had gone and set up similar situation on this trail,

and then we hear them talking. They're coming down the trail, they're not seeing us, and the guy gets to like, I don't know, ten yards from us, and the horse the horse sauce, Yeah, the horse sauce. And I'm kind of leaning around the corner already starting to like make a waiver. And he looks and sees our decoys and he says to his old ladies, like, there's those birds and boys are looking forward. What did he cause boys?

I don't know what he said, but I don't know exactly his statement, but he basically said was a derogatory towards you know, not at all. He was just saying, like, there's there. He saw our decoys and said, oh, there's some turkeys. That's the ones they're looking for. Well, the horses threw their ears up and and that the reason they saw us is because the horse wouldn't go. The horse saw us, and that's what horses do. And uh and she couldn't get her horse to go, and that's yeah.

I didn't hear giddy up expressly, um, but that's why she was trying to get it to do in anyway, Yeah, yeah, said yeah, I'm not a fan of that kind of hunt. I mean, nothing wrong with it. I just would rather be out in the woods. Yeah, anybody listen what I'm saying. As a Turkey enthusiast, there's places where one just has to embrace. Yeah, you're like, this is where the turkeys

are I'm a allowed to hunt turkeys. I want to hunt turkeys, and you just got to embrace that that's what you're doing and and not doctor it up like it's something that it's not. If I lived in Montana, I would do that. I guess my thing was, I don't come to Montana to turkey hunting. Somebody's back here. Should you come to Montana? I don't. Yeah, I don't. Yeah,

but it's just it's just the reality. Yanni. He had to call some Uh they were roosted over a house like they were like basically in the chimney, and he had to work them. Yeah, but those birds had not been hunted and since they have been roosting above that chimney. And uh, but I tell you that. I mean an example of how a turkey gets real slick, real soon, and people are like, oh, shout, hunt him on the golf course. It's like, look, man, it may be easy a hunt or two. It may it may never be easy.

But just because you see him on the golf course or in the neighborhood and you have that special access, it's gonna allow you access to those turkeys. It's only gonna be easy. So many times we hunted those birds. It's gonna be easy one time twice, Yeah, once with just amazing ease and success. This next time was still pretty dang good. Their third time I went back, there were no more turkeys. Tell me fool me once, you know whatever, twice like whatever, fool me three times. Uh,

that's what I think turkeys think, Clay. How offensive would it be? How offense would it would it be to you? If? Since we this is gonna be a this is an episode of our show, right it's captured beautifully video, how offensive would it be if we left this as a cliffhanger and you didn't right now actually tell how you got your bear when you went off roll? Was that a bull far away? Would that be super offensive? Um? That's your call, man. It wouldn't be to me. It

wouldn't offend you. I mean, it wouldn't offend me. I mean, I think I think we could, uh, we could describe the hunt and and actually give people some meat to take home for how they could bear hunt in the spring to go. So I'll just I'll just walk us into the third day of the hunt. Janice and I and Dirt Myth went back into a new spot where

you guys stayed hardcore. I went weak, that's right. And we so we went to an area that basically, uh justin Spring had found on on X that just was a big, you know, kind of an opening in the

midst of a big drainage full of timber. And I would say there was an opening that was probably a half mile by a half mile and you could get on the opposite side of the canyon and glass that's big opening pretty easily and that and that's where the food is, that's where the green as emerging grass, that's right. And so we took the mules three miles to get to this vantage point. So this is way pretty far

back in there, and that's why I went there. And long story short, we got there the last hour of daylight and within five minutes of glassing, we spotted a bear. It was me and Dirt spotted it. The eagle was Dirt was within a lot of I love him. I love him. He's a lot of things. He's not a spodder. Well, he was within our he was within arms reaching me. When I spotted the bear, I was giving him some credit and so essentially watched this bear. It was too

late in the evening. He was eight hundred yards away across the super deep canyon. I mean to get over there would have taken two or three hours, probably two hours, I don't, I mean, there was no way to get to the bear. So we camped out right there that Janice and I and we all we set up camp exactly where we had spied the bear. And the next day we just woke up at daylight and the plan was to watch that meadow the whole day. So, I mean,

that's bear hunting. Find a bear, get in the spot where he can't smell you see you, but where you can see him, and you wait for him, and when you see him, you make a move on him. And so the next day we woke up at daylight and from camp we glassed and didn't see the bear. Didn't see the bear, didn't see the bear. But we were all pretty confident we were gonna see the bear before the day was over, and the intent was to stay there all day and camp another night if we had to.

And at eleven o'clock the next day, we saw the bear moving down an old, you know, unusable logging road through this clearing, kind of going away from us. Well, there happened to be a logging road that we were on that paralleled this bear. He's on this one ridge, we're on another ridge, and so we the bears moving away from us. Let's just say it was moving east. We start moving east on our ridge. The more the the as we both went east than the draw the

hollow whatever it's called the holler. We had a debate over what it was called upstream. Yeah, the holl of narrowed. So every step he took to the east and we took to the east. We're getting closer and closer. To imagine the letter V, you're both headed towards the point of that's right. But the problem is is that the direction he's going, we're losing open space. So there's just

this bush wall of timber. Yeah, so so we're watching, were watching, We watch him, and finally we get to the end of our road as far as almost as far as we can go, and basically we watched the bear come down the hill and disappear into a a block of timber that was three sides open, and one side of this little little you know, a little block of timber was connected to this vast, unfragmented forest behind it,

if that makes sense, absolutely, Okay. We watched the bear go into this little block of Tember, probably fifty yards by fifty yards wide, you know, not not huge, not huge. He We've got a seventy five chance that that bear, if he comes out of that block of Tember, that we're gonna be able to see him because seventy five percent of the edge is open. There's a twenty chance that he could skirt into the big timber and we'd

never see him again. As Yeah, And so what we decided to do, you honest, I think it was probably honest's idea was for us to go down even further and get as close as possible to that block Oftember where we last saw. So that's what we did. So we dropped off super steep, I mean very steep hillside, and we got within I want to say, five hundred yards. Yes, some some of the shots might even been closer well

the a word lower down from the block September. I want to say, we were five to six yards away, which is, you know, not in range. And but we just decided to wait. So the bear, we watched him, he bedded down at eleven o'clock and we sat there from eleven o'clock till five pm when Dirt saw the

bear coming out of the little block September. Dirt did it was pretty It was pretty cool because we're sitting It was funny because we're sitting there for so long that Janna says, where do you all think we're gonna see the bear? And so we all forecast, you know, I'm like, oh, I think he's gonna come out from here and he's gonna go up there. And Yanna say, I think he's gonna come out from here and go there.

And Dirt says, you'll see right through that little hole where there's a we're two trees of falling over and there's like an X in a little opening the canopy. And we were like, yeah, I don't Dirt wouldn't describe it like that. He described it. You see that uh tree? Well, hey, we got you guys been working on his spotting, describedies and and describe you see this this magazine covert saw it. Then when Dirt made the cover dip Aficionado, I took

that photo. Rick got a cover photo and dip Aficionado okay, we really okay, so you know what we're gonna do. Let me, let's just real quick, keep going. But here's the thing is, at this point it's a big we know, it's a nice big bear. I want to leave it like a cliffhanger. So when you get to go to get the shot, let's not tell people whether you got it or not. And they'll watch because this is what it'll be like what we call in this business, we

called a throw. It could be a throw of the episode. Well, the bear shows up exactly where Dirt said. Dirt was literally like he's standing over the log. I mean, well, you know, Yany's dad can conjure game. I wouldn't rule out that Dirt conjured it. It was it was pretty cool, and the bear could have done He had three sixty degrees that he could have gone. There was about a ten degree window that have what would have been the absolute most beneficial for shot opportunity for him to go in.

And the bear came directly down the mountain, and so we're on a vid hillside. So the further he goes down the mountain, the closer he gets to us too. You know, he's getting closer to us as he goes down. And the bear comes into three fifty yards and you'll have to watch meat eater blouch. Does he get it? Stay tuned all right now into UM that was good. People are gonna be, like really on the edge of their seats. I think we told him we killed the bear though he did, but they don't know what exacts.

People don't love you don't even pay attention. UM, stay tuned now for our our our the appendix of this episode. UM. In the appendix of this episode, one will find a brief online skype uh interview with Donald Trump, junior member of the First Family. Hey, how's it going. How's it going? Guys? Thank you very much for coming on. Um. You know, I first wanted to talk to you and and thought about you a fair deal after the death of you know, a mutual acquaintance, a friend of yours, which is someone

I knew professionally, Jason Harrison. After you had been out a trip together. That must have been that must have been pretty impactful. Uh yeah, I mean that that was a rough one for me. I mean he was really you know, one of my best friends. Uh, you know, we've we've done you know, sort of numerous sheep hunts together. I think it was an interesting thing we sort of had, you know, the commonality that you and I know about,

you know, just you know guys from hunting camp. But because you know, because he started sitcut, because he started COO you we also sort of had that sort of business mindset, so we we we had those two things in common. So we spoke, I mean almost almost every day. And uh, you know, like I said, I was on a sheep hunt with him. We did an incredible uh dollar sheep hunt up in the Yukon. Uh. We came out of that and he actually had a father's son

hunt to do. Literally the following week, I had the same. I took my son up into b C to do a goat hunt, uh you know, like a father's son goat hunt, and it was awesome. And he was up doing a cariboo hunt with cash, his son. And you know, I remember I was coming out of you know, British Columbia. I was in uh the airport at Vancouver after transferring through white Horse, UM and Kirsten, Jason's wife calls me

and and tells me this goes on. I'm saying, wait a second, Like we've literally gone back and forth all day by text message. I mean literally sharing photos of our hunt that day. We I mean that day, uh, we we literally booked a hunt for ourselves with our boys, uh and like set a date and so uh that that was shocking. I mean I was like, you know,

what's going on. I'm literally getting on a plane. She was actually in New York, so I was on a separate text matters with her and Kimberly, my girlfriend, because we were gonna have dinner in New York with Jason, and then him and I are going back and forth. I mean, you know, come to find out, you know, his last text to me it was, you know, sort of a buddy buddy. Uh. You know it's called a little slightly ball breaking type of text about eight minutes before he did that, and I and you would have

never known. I mean it was like literally an inside joke that we had going back and forth, just totally breaking chops. But like I said, within two weeks prior, I shared a tent with him for fourteen days on a on a sheep hunt. I mean it wasn't like, you know, we shared a base camp and saw each other at night or anything like that. I mean, we did a you know, a hundred twenty mile round trip track up at uh, you know, the Bonno Plume River, and you know seven was with him. I actually tagged

out on on day two. Uh, this hunch just you know, I'm just got lucky, so an incredible you know dollar ram and you know, tagged out and you know, rather than doing the usual okay, time to go home, I said, hey, let me, I'm gonna stick around, you know, do your hunting. So it was sort of nice to you know, leave the rifle back and camp, just go along for the ride, go along for the hike in the scenery. Uh. And man, I'm glad I did that because I got a lot

of good times with a great man. You know when I said, I wanted to how I had thought about you after that happened, as I had had something similar happened with a friend of mine who he was up at our fish shack and we were hanging out for a week and then he went home and and uh, it took his own life, and it makes it really makes you go back and and sort of reanalyze everything. And I think there's another guy. There's a guy I

do know. Nay, I think Jay Scott. I believe you know, Jay Scott and he was friends with Jason too, And I was with Jay Scott shortly after that, and Jay Scott said he was talking about how he's gonna start changing the way that he asked his friends how you're doing, meaning he's gonna be like no, like really, how are you right? Like I don't want to miss I don't want to miss something here, you know, Yeah, No, it's

it's really smart. And I mean again for me, I've seen it with you know, people that have been pretty close to in the last few years, like yeah, four people that I can think of that I mean again, uh, not one of them. You would have seen any outward signs. I mean, you know, hell, Jason, I thought he had the sort of the world by the Cajon is uh, you know when you think about everything that he had going on, I mean, you're just a successful company crushing it in every aspect of Lige gets to do what

he loves. I mean, you know that said, I mean with me, he did show, you know, some of that vulnerability, but it was more that you know, he understood, uh, you know, the potential ramifications in his case. You know, Cte from you know, a collegiate and professional football career. I mean he understood, uh, you know, the dangers of the head trauma. But like he was that guy that you know, hey, don if if if I had a you know, an injury, you gotta speak to this doctor.

You gotta speak to him about this. This is how you got to handle it. This is how you're gonna rehab it. So, I mean, this was a guy that was aware, uh you know, he was actively working to fix it. He didn't just take a shortcut. He was a really smart guy. You know, did all the research. I mean, I mean we spent hours talking about this stuff. So I mean he was preparing it such for later in life if this thing was going to manifest itself more. But you know, I guess it turns out it was.

It was manifesting itself much more than we would have uh known. And again, it doesn't take a lot, you know, it just needed someone else to be in the driver's seat for that that couple of seconds. And you know, there's no there's no taking back that decision. Yeah, it's it's it's horrible. Um, you know you've I was talking with some people the other day and I was observing how I feel like you're you're the most enthusiastic hunter who's like really in the public eye day in day

out in the country today. I would almost have to imagine in terms of like name recognition. But then you know, we have a lot of exposure into your your your father's passions and what he does with his time. Um, he's not an outspoken hunter. Hunting is so often this sort of you know I bring up all the time, it's this this thing that's passed along like patrilineal descent, but with you kind of skipped the generation, right, like

you got turned down to it through your grandfather. I did. Yeah, my, you know, my grandfather it was a blue color electrician from Communist Czech Slovakia. So he couldn't hunt. I mean, that wasn't for you know, if you weren't like Communist party elite in again, you know, Communist Czech Slovakia in the sixties and seventies and eighties, I mean, you couldn't

do those things. But he sort of saw the lifestyle that we were blessed with in America with the free m and he just sort of said, hey, you have to see the other side of this. So he had that conversation with my father. And you know, my father never got exposed to because he grew up in Queens, New York, and you know, he didn't he didn't get

the ability to have a mentor. And I mean that's what I always talked about with the outdoors, whether it's fishing, hunting, shooting, all like, they're not the easiest thing to just pick up and go do, Like you need to sort of take the time and you know, take a kid of field, take a you know, take a woman of field. They get exposed people, uh, you know to the great outdoors. And so he sort of did that to me. But

it wasn't like hunting. It was maybe a little bit of fishing, uh and woodsmanship, but he was you know, old school, sort of Eastern European guy. Brought me to then Czech Slovakia's like there's the woods. You know, I'll see you at dark, like okay, you know it, six seven years old, Like I'd go play in the woods where I mean and I honestly just I fell in love.

He passed away when I was about twelve, but you know, those the summers that I you know, I spent with him there, you know, six eight weeks doing those kind of things just really just off the lasting impression for me. And uh, you know, that was about the time my parents were going through a pretty rough divorce, all of that stuff very public, and I just said, you know, get me the hell out of New York City, like

I don't I don't want to be here. So I went to boarding school uh in Central Pennsylvania and Pottstown sort of you know rust belt p A. But you know, there were a couple of people there that, you know, one guy was just one of these, the dean of students actually just an old school guy. I mean the kind of guy that could run around to skeet clean uh you know, with an old Winchester fort, like just

real outdoorsmen. And you know, he got me into the sort of the shooting sports that way my grandfather got me into air guns and the stuff that they could do uh in Czech Republic, but not really any kind of center fire or shotgun type sports. Uh. This was an old school place that had a rifle range on campus.

It had skeeting trapped just off and so you know, I fell in love, and you know, I had a mentor that was willing to put in the time and one day, he just goes, you know, I'll see you in the parking lot Saturday morning, six am, dress warm. And I was like like today today you'd be calling a social services uh you know and the police. Uh. For me, I was like, okay, like what's gonna happen? And he took me on my first sort of like upland bird hunt, and you know, I fell in love.

And then you know, later that year just took me even I just like an apprentice watcher, uh, you know, Pennsylvania Opening Day deer, you know, with the sort of camaraderie and all of this, and man, they're just at that point, there wasn't a book I didn't read, uh, you know, a magazine I wouldn't subscribe to, just you know, trying to build up that wealth of knowledge as someone who didn't really have anyone else, uh, you know, getting

him into there. There was a similar story with a guy about flat fishing that got me into the basics of fly fishing. But like when I say basics, I mean I reeled in the line every time for the first two years of my fly fishing career, so uh it was pretty brutal, but you know, I fell in

love and just kept going from there. I feel like at this point, um, you're like your outdoor activities are so scrutinized by the media, and I feel like a kind of weaponize and taken out of context and some to some extent, I feel like you could have an impoverished grandmother who has a garden that's getting destroyed by rabbits, and if Don Junior shot one of those rabbits, man, it would be right, it would be You'd be crucified for it. Like, what was the earliest pushback you can

remember when you started to identify. You're like, I'm gonna I like to hunt. I'm gonna identify as a hunter and angler. What was your first awareness where you're like, oh, there's a price to be paid for this. Yeah. I never hit from it. I mean it was sort of you know, I'm kind of an open book for better or worse. I made it probably gets me in more

trouble than you know, I need it. But uh, you know, someone released or just you know, sort of release the pictures of me hunting in Africa with my brother back in like early early two thousands, you know, two thousands, tennish or something like that. You know, I didn't. I didn't put them out myself, and you know, the left just pounced on it, and you know, the anti hunting crowd just went nuts. Oh my god. I mean they literally wrote front page news for two weeks. You know,

they were poached in Zimbi. I'm like, where in Matesta. You didn't want to hear a perfect like but they didn't want to hear about permits. They didn't want to see, you know, all the documentation from zimbabwe fishing game. They didn't. You know, it was just he's evil. They were, you know, hunting inside a fence. You know there's no fence. That meant that it's literally millions of acres of open wild

African terrain. Obviously the meat is going to waste, and if anyone's been to Africa, you know that literally nothing goes to waste. Uh. And it was one of those I just saw it and I was like, man, these guys are they're trying to literally destroy his front page news for like two weeks, going after my brother and I and I just said, hey, listen, there's two ways I can go. I can do the usual. You know,

I don't. I don't want to consider myself a celebrity, but like you know, had a name that was recognizable and was able to be weaponized against me. I could do the usual I'm so sorry. I'll never do that again. I'll quit hunting and take up you know, croquet, uh you know, or I can actually try to use lives that platform uh that you know, they have helped at

that point you create to actually speak about conservation. Uh, the dollars that hunters put into uh, you know, saving animals around the world, but especially the North American model, and how it's been sort of imported and exported to other parts of the world where without hunting, you wouldn't have the fauna or the flora uh frankly, uh that you do in some of our incredible wild's places. So, you know, rather than doing the you know, I'm so sorry,

I just said, here's some facts. Here's the brutal, honest here, here's what really happens. And and it was interesting. I mean, you know, I may have gotten a correction in about ten percent of the magazines, you know, somewhere in the back page, or you know, a tweet at two am on a Sunday when no one's gonna see it, say, oh well, they weren't actually poaching, but it doesn't stop them from saying that we still were ten years later, you know what I mean. Like even with proof, even

it doesn't matter. But what was interesting about it is I was sort of unknown in the world, but I made so many any friends from sort of the hunting, outdoor even fishing community that we're like, hey, man, like, thank you for just standing up to the nonsense. Thanks

for putting out the facts. Like, you know, it's definitely cost me money as a businessman, whether that's in you know sort of you know, paid gigs that I did and you know now, but like, honestly, you sort of have to stand up for what you believe in it, and there's not enough of that these days. Hunting is you know, it's definitely a third rail. Uh you know, I think it's good that I see more of that

from you know, from different communities now. I mean even you know, I talked I've seen and talked with like you know, sort of hipster New York hunters that we probably don't share much in common other than you know, sort of the camp fire being the great equalizer, uh Like, and I love seeing that, you know, whether it farmed

a table, the organic movement, all of these things. I'm like, hey, guys, like you want to see that stuff in real life, like take up hunting, and so I think it's awesome and I it's just been a it's been a great community and I'm just glad I did it despite sort of the you know again, there there are costs, but the costs don't outweigh uh to me, the risk of you know, losing this sort of great American tradition, Uh, this great pastime, these great opportunities that I want to

make sure are available for me and my kids because I know, with hunting, with fishing, with shooting, you know, archery, all of these things that I'm just so passionate about spear fishing. I mean, these are things that kept me out of so much other trouble I would have gotten into as a youth with too much free time. Uh, it's sort of hard to get in trouble when you're

waking up at four o'clock in the morning. I'm not saying I was an angel, and anyone who knows me would would never buy that one, but like, uh, it was definitely a guiding force in life and continues to be. I mean, it's sort of where I go to escape the other the craziness of my day to day. Early on with the new administration came in, I think there's a lot of enthusiasm. Um, I'm a part of many hunters and anglers that it was like people were great

to have. We're glad to have lifelong practitioner such as yourself, like really close to the administration, right because you feel like, oh, you know, our our viewpoints and perspectives we have are gonna be voiced. Do you And I know you've taken pains to make clear that you're not an administration official, but do you imagine like when you heard that you knew that was going on, did you feel that that

was warranted? Was it kind of like a naive expectation of what sort of what what what a first family members role actually is? You know? Beyond that, I mean again, I think you know, if we're gonna be you know, candid about it, it's sort of like whatever I do is wrong in the eyes of the media. I mean, if I'm if I'm not loud enough, that's wrong. If I'm too loud, it's wrong. If I'm taking part of the administration I'll get killed on the press every day

that said. I mean, the only thing I wanted to you know, take part in, uh during the transition politically was the Department of the Interior, And you know I did that, uh and was involved. And honestly, they've done a lot of things that you know, you're not gonna get a lot of credit, uh, just because it's the

Trump administration. But when you talk about you know, public lands obviously being to me like a number one issue because you know, I understand how difficult it is to have access and I'm blessed to have you know, some of my own private land and friends with ranches and these sort of things. But for people you know who want to get their kids and do it. You know, if you used to be able to go out in your backyard and now you've got to drive four hours,

guess what you're taking up golf and the tradition is gone. So, you know, advocating for you know, public lands, which hasn't necessarily been a conservative talking point, but like this administration, by September one will have opened up four million new acres of public land. I think that's the most probably of any administration since Roosevelt. Uh, you know, they've created

that kind of access. They've put in more for like repair and maintenance to the national parks, which again less to do with hunting and fishing, but uh, you know, is a big part of it. I believe it numbers like, you know, sixties six percent more than Obama and Biden did in the same amount of time. So you sort of have these talking points that are out there in the sort of the outdoor community. I don't want to say hunting or fishing, but you know, they're selling off

public lands there. Like it's just not accurate, but it doesn't stop sort of some of these well funded you know, where the political you know could try to sway an outdoor group, and there's a lot of that sort of even in hunting, where it's sort of you know, groups in name only but really pushing a political agenda that's

not necessarily for the benefit of hunters and outdoorsman. I mean, you hear about, you know, coastal erosion, but you don't hear about like the literally the largest investment uh into the Evergladesh and like Okchobe by the Trump administration. You know, I think it's like seven x what the prior administration even looked at in there same thing with the Great Lakes. So you know, the administration is doing a lot of things to ensure that these things will do that again.

Now that I'm not part of the administration. Once you got out of transition, you know, hey, you know I can't get involved without sort of creating a catch twenty two where someone loses their mind that I'm saying something.

But that doesn't mean, you know that I don't voice my opinion when you know, if we're at a family dinner with various things that are going on that are important to me that I do understand better than most where I do have uh people and friends on the ground, I mean I sort of say, you know, for me, you know, when I have a friend in Montana, it's not a token buddy that shows up that day that I've never seen before in my life for the photo of It's like these are guys I hunt and fish with,

and uh, you know do these things with. So I think, unlike so many of the decisions they get made as it relates to you know, the Department of the Interior or the outdoors, where it's decided by you know, an emotional judge in d C that has no understanding of what's going on on the ground. Uh, no attachment to

the local community, no understanding of conservation period whatsoever. Uh. You know, I I think I do have a pretty good understanding of what's going on on the ground because that's sort of where I choose to spend my time, you know, for me, hunting fishes, shooting. It's not like the thing I then talk about at some cocktail party on the you know, bullshit like New York City rubber chicken dinner charity circuit. It's actually what I do every weekend,

whenever I have free time, I'm outdoors doing something. Uh. For me, it's actually my lifestyle, uh, you know, much more so than sort of the suit and tie of the day to day, whether it's business or politics. You know, that's what I want to be doing. I saw you and your father speak at shot Show, which would have been still the primaries were still going on, and I remember he got up and addressed the audience at an

awards dinner I was at. I've ever been really surprised because the public lands debate was really heating up, but it was it was it was still gaining a lot of awareness. I remember be really surprised that on his list of talking points was his acknowledgement of the public lands debate and him saying like, I'm not going to sell off your public lands. And I thought it was interesting that he that, assuming I'm assuming that was something that you had spoken about. I was just surprised that

it was even on his radar. And then I think that that's been an interesting point with the administration because, uh, you know, there's a lot of people that would criticize that the amount of fossil fuel exploration has been opened

up on public lands. They'd be like, um, that they feel that that's a move against public lands, but really there's been people have stayed true to the administration's trade, stayed true to not reducing, not selling off and getting rid of public lands, which uh was actually against sort of the party's platform at the time. Um, And I remember that I remember thinking of that as a pretty bold move to go in the direction of hunters and

anglers when it might be against party platform procedures. Do you feel that there are more places and ways that that has happened where you know, where there's a leaning end to hunters and anglers, maybe in a way that's adversarial to industry, in a way that's adversarial to the party in general, you know, I I think so, I mean that the conventional dogma was, you know, obviously states rights,

which I will believe in. But the problem with the sort of the public lands and states rights issue was, you know, you sort of give the states back the public lands, but then they use that land to sell it off to fund you know, a budget shortfall in an inner city that's never going to make budget, you know, so it's a one time, temporary fix. But those lands are gone forever. So I sort of, you know, I

made the point very clear. But at the same time, I also said, but as I mentioned in the prior point, was like, you still need state and local people involved in the management of those lands. Right, these guys understand what's going on. You look at what's going on in the West or California, you know, with forest fires, because there's the preservationist mentality of well, it's lands, but you can't touch it. You can't do anything with it, God

forbid you even walking it. You know, overgrown dead timber is probably the worst habitat for animals, for plans for anything right, no sun gets to the ground. And it's also a tinder box. It's literally just big, big, sap filled matches waiting for lightning, waiting for in some cases unfortunately bad actors, waiting for you know, irresponsible camper that doesn't know how to put out their fire or doesn't

do a good job doing those things. And every year then billions in destruction, lives are lost, homes are lost. But then you know, the same states that want control of those lands want the federal government to come in and say, well, give us billions to stop this thing, when you could have employed a bunch of people to you know, cut down some of that standing dead timber. There's economic value. You create jobs in places that actually needed.

You're creating new growth forest, which is a big deal. So, I mean there is an aspect of you know, whether it's even oil and gas. You know, it's not like there's an oil and gas plant from every ten yards. Uh. You know, if you say, well, we're gonna shut down the entire Midwest because you know of the stage ground, but you can't have a road to a platform that's

thirty by thirty. It's not realistic and it's not responsible, and we're still getting those you know that oil and gas from Russia or from Saudi who's gonna be much more relaxed in terms of their environmental standards. You're getting these things out of the ground. So you know, there's a way to have responsible stewardship over the land. I mean, in many cases you can actually create an economic output and economic benefit and still actually be better off four game.

Uh you know again, cutting standing dead timber all over the West is the perfect example of that. And it's certainly a better option to create some jobs, to create some economic output than it is to spend billions, uh, you know, fighting fires and losing lives uh needlessly, And so you know there's a responsible way to do it. It doesn't mean that it has to be done in a haphazard fashion, but you know, it's one of those rare instances where you can kind of get the best

of both worlds if you do it right. What happens when, uh, when you and your dad don't agree on stuff. I mean, you're obviously very loyal, um, but it's limits, right, and I imagine you don't want to throw down publicly, but do you guys, uh? You guys butt heads on stuff for you know, now and then you've got to be disappointed, right. Uh, listen, you know, I don't know that you know, disappointed. There's

definitely I don't know that anyone. You know, this sort of notion of sort of you know, bipartisan politics where everyone agrees with one aspect of something. You're seeing that's becoming more and more of the case. Unfortunately, you know, today the culture is such that you know, if you're not woke, you're canceled. I mean, you're gonna get canceled by some people for even you know, giving me a platform.

That's sort of how it works these days. So you know, I'll give you the disclaimer you had nothing to do with it, YadA, YadA, YadA. But yeah, uh that's a shame. So you know, we do. Just listen, I don't I don't think you could have my personality or my father's personality, uh and not be outspoken. I can do that respectfully.

If there's you know, bigger issues we disagree on. Generally speaking, you know, I agree with a lot of uh you know, his his policies, and again as it relates to these things, man, I think they're doing a very good job of it. You wouldn't know it from what you see about it, because you don't read about I mean, think abou it steve four million plus new acres previously inaccessible for sportsmen and women. I mean, you don't hear that even a little bit. But you you hear every day about, you know,

selling off public lands. And by the way, that when they talk about that, you know there's people that would complain about selling off public lands. If you sold one acre of public land here or traded it for an acre over here that allows people to access you know, ten thousand acres of landlocked public land. Because there's plenty

of those people too. There are public land hunters, but guess what, well, they're public land hunters because they're hunting landlock you know, public land, but they know the guy that owns the private land surrounding. It's so you know, there's a lot of bs involved in some of these things. And so you sell off a corner to create access to ten thousand acres where literally no one really from the public would have access. Oh my god, you sold

off public land. It's like no, no, no, you created access, even if it's a fair trade, even if you say, hey, I'll give you an acre for an acre, or I'll give you, you know, an acre for for two acres, even if you made it sort of a net gain in terms of public land. Someone's outraged and they're pushing a false narrative that's not really there. And I've seen that, you know, buddies places that I hunt in Montana. Uh. Yeah, man,

the the amount of stuff I see like that. That's like, well, it's not really public land and you're the only one that has access to it, you know what I mean? Like that, that's not uh, that's not the public land that I'm pushing for. I'm pushing for public land that's accessible by all, that we can get our kids into the outdoors, that we can get our wives and girlfriends into the outdoors, that we can teach them about those

experience and create new hunters, new fishermen, new outdoorsmen. In general, I'm generally, uh, just speaking personally, I'm generally very appreciative of the environmental the speaking as a hunter and angler, I'm appreciative of the environmental protections that we get from Democrats, and I'm appreciative of the cultural and hunting rights and gun rights protections that we get from the Republicans. So as a closing thought, here, hit me with a pitch,

like hit me with a pitch for real. Trump's reelection skewed towards like skewed toward a hunter and angler. Well, I mean, if you're a hunter, obviously, if you like firearms, you see what's going on. I mean, I don't know how you know Joe Biden can pretend to be a moderate on firearms, but say, hey, I'm gonna appoint bet Oh hell yeah, I'm going to take your a R

fifteen O'Rourke as your guns are. You saw him sort of, you know, verbally assault a guy I guess I was in Wisconsin a few weeks ago who literally asked him a couple of questions about the platform. There's no education on the platform. And again, if you see what he put out was sort of the the Biden Sanders plan you know this week it is a super left uh

you'll plan as as it relates to virtually anything. But that's certainly going to be an infringement on our Second Amendment rights, which is a big part of when I talk about the outdoors. I grew that in there. I mean I'm a I'm a competitive shooter. I was you know ranked, you know, high power shooter, did a lot in f class love you know, sort of the PRS stuff that's going on, do handgun, shotgun I I sort

of do it all, um. And so you know, this, the Second Amendment arguments is a really big one for me. I think as it relates to you know, public land for hunters, there has not been an administration that's created more access uh for for outdoorsman. Uh, that's gonna continue. Um, that is something that's been a big part of that administration. They get no credit for it, but they've done it.

And if you want to talk about preserving the tradition of the great outdoors, you're not gonna do it without access. And again, this is multiples of what I don't even know of. Obama and Biden opened any new land. They may have maintained what was existing there, but this is the largest since Roosevelt in you know, a century in

terms of new access. And when you think about that in perspective and over time, I mean, that's a lot harder to do now that it would have been a hundred years ago, just because of the nature of the world. In which we live. Uh you think about the thing things that they've done again ever glides for coastal erosion, Uh, great lakes for all the great sport. I mean I go up there every year to to go ice fishing, just because you know, it's pretty awlesome to catch at

twenty prown brown teat. You know, I'll travel to Wisconsin for a weekend to do that as a sportsman. But you've got to make sure you preserve those fisheries as well. So you know the reality of what this administration has done for the outdoorsman. Uh, it's often overlooked, but it shouldn't be. All right, Donald Trump Junior, thanks for joining us. I look forward to having you when all this chaos blows over. Man with the pandemic that seems to have a way of continuing. Ah yeah, to having you in

and for for an actual uh face face conversation. But it's cool to to get a chance to to hear from you a little bit. Um. Well, yeah, I know, we were scheduled last week and then I got the call from your guys. That's someone close to you guys tested positive. And then it turns out the next so we put it off for a week and then it turns out the next day my girlfriend and tested positive. I'm gonna say it's the super rugged outdoors been gene

that's preventing me from getting it. Uh but uh, you know so, Yeah, it's been a mess, but I'm sure I'll be back out there. We'd love to sit down with you guys, and uh maybe more importantly one day share a camp fire. Yeah. Well, we'll get through this and get a scheduled. And I appreciate you taking the time to to talk and have a nice civil discourse. Right. Sounds good man. We need more of that. Thank you.