Ep. 293: Snakebite

story that involved a man unloading a tractor tire. Is that fair? Yeah? Very fair. When I was in college, I took black and white photography. One in black and white photograph, you two. When I took black and white photography to the teacher had real world photography experience because he had a job at one point in time documenting

insurance fraud. His greatest work accomplishment was he was working a guy who was out on a permanent UH disability with a back injury, and so he stakes out right And it turns out that the man was a monster truck enthusiast, and my teacher got images of him loading and unloading an entire round of monster truck tires out of the back of his truck. That is not good

for your back. And he would approach the tailgate and he would grab he would bear hug the monster truck, lock his fingers through the rim, and then lean back in all the tires around. And that was that was his Uh that was his greatest moment as an insurance for aud photographer. Uh Phil, where that story? Yn? Uh Phil? Can you can you play a breaking news sound? Okay? As we're sitting down here, picture this. I'm in this.

I'm here in the studio. We're doing a little pre show banter and I get a text message from my friend guys U thirty nine minutes fresh. This is five minutes ago. So what's that add up to? Forty four

minutes fresh? Okay? A massive squirrel bust. Thanks to a concerned citizen, Missouri Department of Conservation Agent M d C. Missouri Department of Conservation Conservation agents Brad Hadley and Eric Long were able to make contact with a large group of non residents squirrel hunters in and around Current River conser of Asian Area sixteen non resident squirrel hunters. The group of sixteen had been hunting for two days and

harvested four hundred and seventy one squirrels. Anything of that, Karen, hundred fifty one over the over the possession limit. We did the math. It's fifteen squirrels per day, but the bag limits ten a day. How is ten a day not enough for you? There are five over each. That is a generous squirrel limit. I don't know what to say. The picture is what state was this? Miss Missouri? The the picture you'd think you were looking at. I initially thought I was looking at someone who was dying in

wax and traps. On closer inspection, just because of who it came from. On closer inspection, I would think I'm looking at a bunch of like mink. But they're the squirrels are all soaking wet. No, but they look like they're like they don't have their hair on them, like they've been I disagree. Those the tails are like pointy one secondary, Joannie, I'm gonna hand it to you. I have my own superphones. It looks like that kind of like careless, like cat or dog. There's like, no, no,

they're just stopping wet for some reason. Oh they might do that. Clay neew Camino the clay neew come deal where you dun't come in a bucket and then skin them. I didn't keeps hair down, keeps hair from getting well, as I proved, it's just as clean to skin him then dunk them. But he dunked them, and then and then that's what he's dealing with, is something that's unsightly as that. But their tails aren't poofy. Their tails are

like like rat tails. They're soaking wet. So they grabbed him by the whiskers and dunked him from the head in when in the morning and you look at yourself. So they're a hundred squirrels over the allowed possession limit. All were cited for possession of over limit of squirrels and warnings were issued for failure to keep wildlife separate and identifiable. Meaning that's my pile, that's your pile, that's your pile again. Laid out like a drug bust. Yeah,

oh yeah, laid out like a drug bust. Non resident squirrel slaughter in Missouri joined today by Jordan. But Jordan, what do you think about all that? Man? You know, I don't know much about squirrels. We're squirrel hunting haven't done it. Seriously, seriously haven't. But you're born in Nebraska. I know you guys got tree squirrels, don't you for sure when you were located. Yeah, but rabbits, Yeah, did the rabbit thing, and coyotes and then big game. Never

got a squirrel, Never got a squirrel even like squirrel curious? No, do you get a lot of money? Ah? Yeah, there's a lot of them out there? What kind of looking at I turned my attention to Janni just to read his facial expression. Oh, yeah, because we might have to go and do a little hot with d place if there's some virgin squirrel to be had there, definitely is. Do you know if they're grays or fox squirrels? I couldn't tell you. They rusty colored. They're rusty colored. Have

you ever got them all house cat? Yeah, they're pretty big, Jordan, Have you ever got an awesome invitation like that? Somebody do any of the favor of taking you out to your own place hunt your own squirrels will come up. We can show you like five different ways to skin them and clean them. We'll teach you the clay nukem duncan first method, the pants and the shirt and pants method, tail method, all the methods. Yeah yeah, pends, squirrels. You got over there, Cal cal Han's here, sir um Phil,

he was late Karen fresh Offer first Antelope hunt? Did you know that it was mildly controversial when I requested that that chair to be put in there? I never get over there, but I see people enjoy themselves over there. What was controversial? Just like one of those things like of you know, the opportunity cost of me going picking that chair up or whatever. I don't know. Listen, man,

I had to ask for that chair fifteen times. This guy's high on his own supply after after his dear Stand calendar was a huge success, and now he's just I was revisiting every time I've been wrong. You almost think it was that the calendar didn't do well, and I was going back to try to find other examples of being right. But this just inspired me to point out other times in my life and I've been credit about that. Uh oh my gosh, Yanni, a giant sheephead

is here? Yes, this one more being in the room. Oh oh a snort, Oh yeah. And Cal's dog fresh Off almost dying. Is that true? Or is he making it up. Man, I've been around a lot of dead and dying animals, and I was like, okay, we are I was like, oh, well, I guess it was a short run. But it was a good round type of thing. Oh yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to how that dog almost died. Um. But Yannie, big bighorn cheap school. Yeah, double be for Yanni Pete, and be stands for broomed,

double broom. But but but bighorns are as plainly what broom does. But I mean big horns kind of run broomed. I don't know if that's true. Really. I think some of the biggest ones still have their lamb tips of unbroom. No, they get to as certain they get to a certain size, and it just broomed. Okay, I didn't know. Um. I like the fact that what I've been staring at the most is this kind of chunk of gelatin, uh collagen, yummy nous that's still stuck to the nose of this thing.

And I keep thinking about, just if we were roasting this head right now. Yeah, it's freshly killed, so it's it hasn't been trimmed up. I just I got the eyeballs. As as far as that made it, it's nine years old. Nine years old? Which uh, in in your unit, your circumstance, where's that put this ram? Like if the biologist buddy said, uh,

where this lies in the in the pack. As far as population goes, there was one other ram that I saw that I hunted that was probably eleven or twelve years old, and then there was probably four or five that were in this sky's range, and then younger rams. So not that many. For how much country there was to look at. You put some miles on, did we? Yeah? I don't know if there was, Like I can't say, like, oh,

it's like a minimum of ten miles a day. But one day I did three seriously, But that was because I had to go out to the trailhead and pick up Charlie Williams, the photographer re stock food grabbed my rifle and then come back in. Yeah, and that might have been the mistake I made, which might have cost me the m the chocolate ram. Oh, the chocolate not mr big nuts. They all have big nuts, old kettle bell. It's like a pineapple hanging down there. Yeah. So there.

The approaches were long to get into the sheep country. Uh, there's a lot of private property in the area, and to just to get into where they are in this range, you've got to circumnavigate some private which makes the approaches long. When you were bouncing from like one peak to the next peak, did you oftentimes have to go down and cross drainages or was it just like a long ridge line that you're hunting on. Definitely, wasn't ridge line running

like we've done in Alaska um isolated chunks of habitat. No, the ridge lines are long with their unnavigable without like maybe like like a very skilled mountain climber like Garrett Smith could probably make it along there if he had his equipment with him. But like you just can't walk up on the ridge and then just walk down the ridge because it's just interrupted by spires and stuff. So yeah,

just steep loose rock. Your efficient line was like zipper, like a big zig zag, like going out to points to look back versus we're basically just going up into drainages, looking up, maybe climbing up one side to look across, and then coming back out the drainage, looping around ridge, going up the next drainage and repeating, Oh, that makes miles. Were they mostly in the alpine or were they in

the timber? They're definitely, um some One of the advice that was given them about that unit was to definitely keep your eyes like on the timber line and in the timber as much as you can. I mean, there's a certain point where you're like, you don't think they're gonna be down one of the elkar where there's aspen meadows and stuff, you know. So I think when people said looking at timber, they were talking like, Okay, the

top half of the ridge is rocky. The bottom if you split the bottom half half of it's like open timber, and then it goes full timber. Like look in that open timber and you might see them and uh, you know, because the vegetation changes so much just in there in a thousand feet right like in that lower timber where I found the rams before the season started. I mean when you look at the pictures, it's like they're feeding

in this like lush jungle, very green. You know a lot of you know, on them shoulder to head high vegetation. But then they climb a thousand feet and there's nothing over two or three inches tall, just rocks. So how how many days did you hunt? Well, I know that you found one before. Yeah, I found a group of rams before. Yeah, well a couple of days before open. Yeah. When I saw him, I knew it was too good

to be true. I'm sitting there looking at it ran that you could I mean, he was in the easiest spot of easiest spots that I saw all the whole week, and it's three days before season, and I'm just like, there's no way, there's no way that ram is gonna be standing in that little I called them pastures, you know, and elk I I feel like feeds in a meadow, and so does a deer. But when I was looking at these big green avalanche shoots, I couldn't call the metal.

I feel like it was more like a pasture because that's where like a sheep and a goat feeds, right, It's like feeding a pasture. I was just like, there's no way he's gonna be don't want to call a little grassy bowl. M they weren't bowls. When you were you were doing like the mental gymnastics, did you try to like reason as to why that group disappeared where you like maybe they got my smell, maybe they saw it,

maybe they were more nervous. That's the first thing your buddy Steve said when I said I hadn't seen him in a few days. Did you spook him? Well as much as I can. Uh, it was a text message. Yeah, so I think that you need to do a very neutral reading. Uh, did you spook him? That's better? But no, I meant it like the way you said it first. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the inflection I felt. I read the text. Are you fucking this up? Exactly? What? Yeah? What serie

reads your text messages? That's what That's what I think. What he's trying to say is did you get too anxious and decided to just, you know, go pretend shoot him and then ran him off the country. But I was getting at in my text. I wasn't getting at you. I was getting at like, is it probable that you'll find it? Yeah? Meaning if you spook the hell out of it, then you might have been like that it's never gonna work, you know. I feel like these sheep

don't get a lot of human pressure. They don't get hunted that much. Right, you have a couple of tags, A year. This year there was three tags in the unit. Um. Well, I think we often as hunters like to, you know, put on these animals that like, oh, they're so elusive. It's the most evasive species out of all of them. Where I think a lot of times, especially like these big corn sheep, they're not trying to hide from us.

They're just being sheep. They're doing their thing. They live up in the rocks where they are hard to find, probably not just for me, but probably for mountain lions and you know whatever other predators are out there too. That's like their safety, right. Um. So they just walked to the thing was he was hanging out with another fairly mature ram and then uh, five young rams. So I kept thinking like, man, if they stay together, one of those is gonna pop out, Like it should be

pretty easy to find seven rams somewhere. And they just went to a place that I don't think I looked

it was I would. I mean, I can show you some pictures right now, but this country definitely like when we were at the bottom in the drainages, sometimes you're looking over three thousand feet to the top, you know, and there's just so many boulders and little ledges and like almost like these canyons on the hillside that like or it's like a spire, like a little ridge that just forms in the rocks, and there might be a

little grassy bench back there. And if they're in their feeding for a day, you sat there for twelve hours and glass the hell out of it and they never

popped out. You just don't know. That being said, I feel like, especially you know, Charlie Williams was there taking pictures and he would grab the bind notes when he was done taking pictures, and at some point you gotta trust your glassing and just be like, you know what, we pounded this thing for a morning and evening another morning, and all the time in between, we're gonna have to move on and go look somewhere else. Maybe we'll come back.

Like my plan was to basically just do a circuit, because I knew roughly the ridge and maybe a half of another ridge where they should be, And after I cleared him out, I was just gonna restock, go right back into whatever fifteen miles and restart the process, you know, and just loop around or like that idea. It's a good, good good for the mental game too. It's like it's a good plan. Yeah, if you let enough time go

by where you can muster up some level of excitement. Yeah, you mean between looking at the same Yeah, yeah, because it doesn't. It never fails. As soon as you move to the other side of the ridge, you're like and you don't see him there. You're like, they're back there. We should go back. We know, I know they're they're they're out right now when we're not there and on the hill, if you'd never like hiked the country too, you'd be so much more confident in your glassing, right

because the glass it flattens out so much. And it's like those uh been using those eight those eighteen by fifty six is the big vour text ones. I love those things, and I just like glue into him and your eyes are relaxed, and man, you just get this feeling like, oh I covered it. But then like you walk something and you're like, yeah, you say, when he was glass and um, he imagined a laser sound those the noises vinals are making his glass and so how many?

So then what happened? You lost track of everybody? And then when I when I found that group of seven, there was actually a group of five that were only like four yards away and this was the interesting thing, and they were there has to do some college rams in the group. So this whole unit has less than a hundred sheep in it. And so when you start

doing the math, there's probably roughly rams in there. Out of there there might be in Colorado, they had to be half curl to be legal, and so there's probably a dozen to fifteen legal rams out of those, you know, six seven that are like this guy like seven eights or for full curl ish and um you know in that eight to nine maybe older UM range, So you're not looking for a lot. So yeah, before a season,

I'm looking at twelve rams. I mean looking at you're looking at half the rams in the whole unit, which is pretty cool. But I was asked, I know people that are UM work for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and doing my research for the hunt, I you know, talked to the regional wildlife biologists and the UM, the local game warden and everybody's like, have a great hunt and if you can, please don't shoot one of the collared ones. Like, we got a lot of time and money invested in it.

Five year collars were and they just started this study. We're gonna get a lot of data points off of them. And so of course this five pack has two collars in it. We started calling him the chain gang because there's other buddy with him has a scar on his chest, so you know what we nicknamed him. No, I don't scart, just just scar, keep it, keep it short and easy.

But I swear they were following me. I mean, we wouldn't leave one drainage and hike for a day, like we go and look at one another side of the hill and then hike all the way around, be looking, I mean and again to them, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to move a mile or two and go over the ridge. But like we're being a totally new zone and we'd be like, oh, she get all excited and you're like it's the gang five, you know, And uh so I would have because it's legal to

shoot a collard ram. Yeah, and there there was a nice one. But you know, we've talked about it. I was like, man, these things are tainted. You know, man has already touched these and shot these once. We've had this conversation many times, right, Yeah, I'm gonna bring up the important or important part unsolicited. So I was down in in uh y He County helping my buddy GM with his very you know once in a lifetime California

big horn, cheap tag and glass. This group of nine rams, this is an Idaho in Idaho yep, south extreme southwest Idaho and one of which and definitely like the oldest ram in the in the group both by just like body configuration and horn size is collared and um for you know, the second trip ever, I'm packing around that somewhere device and I'm sitting there like and and my buddy Jim's like, boy, that colored ram, that colored ram, you know, like he's definitely like got it his interest right,

he's starting to talk himself into it, right. And so I, unbeknownst to him, I like send a text message out to Idaho Fishing Game, a friend of mine, and I just said, hey, is it a dick move to kill this? This is where we are and this is and we're looking at a colored ram. And uh, you know, a couple of hours go by and I get a response it says not a dick move, kill it. Oh huh yeah, So just just a different program going on over there. But I don't know if you remember when we were

kind of covering the dues and don'ts of colored animals. Uh, Florida was doing the State of Florida was doing a mortality study and they're doing a white tailed deer mortality study. And they had a thing saying like, if you're hunting and see a collar deer, don't shoot it because it's collard,

But don't not shoot it because it's collar. Try to like ignore the collar and make the decision you'd make in the absence of the collar, and then do what you would otherwise do, because they're trying to determine like what kills dear, just considering if everyone just really badly wants a collar, you're gonna be, like, my goodness, just get whittled away. And if no one will touch it, you know, you don't get an accurate representation of how

do you die? So as we sat there, this buddy mind Jammy sixty seven years old, doesn't pay attention to a single thing we do, so he has not heard this conversation before, but unsolicited. He's like, after he gets excited about this ram and wants to like it's degrees wants to go across this god off O canyon up the other side and go like chase this group into the had a canyon, which part of your brain is like, oh, they just went in there and they're just gonna be

there waiting for us. Where the other side of your brands, like those things aren't gone. They're like, this is the end of the line. Boys, We're going to this candy. That's as far as we go. Uh and so unsolicited. Jim's like what do you what do you think about killing something with a collar on it. He's like like somebody already got to it first. There was like that argument of like, but it's tainted, Like you should have said, well, Jim,

people should do like shooting them banded ducks. Yeah, we can make a necklace out of that, or get a copy of that uh collar for you. You can wear it around your neck. Well, I was thinking these sheep also had double ear tags, so then I was going to take those ear tags and run a necklace take like a duck hunter. I like it. Huh Um. I'll tell you story of Ronnie Bam got a banded goose and when he turned it in it was it was banded where he got it. That's not nearly exciting. It

been like just banded where he got it. Jordan's as you're your sheep hunting experience, just been in Mexico, Um, Mexico. I filmed the stone sheep quite a while back, and then a lot of wilming bigcorns. Yeah, yeah, I just filmed the hunts. Yeah, I filmed and then I shot that doll sheep in August, and that's been my sheep hunting experience. Yeah, so you're pretty much the most prolific sheep hunter in the room. I would not say, did you see pictures of Jordan's doll ram the quietest and

most prolific sheep hunter in the room. What's that tell you? Um? All right, so yeah, get tell us what happened now? Um? So Yeah, we looked and looked and looked and kept running into that you know, the five pack, and decided to There's a couple of different ways you could have run. It was one was just we were gonna decided we're gonna push either push up way up into this drainage in the country we hadn't been into yet, and started

looking and it was quite pretty amazing. Man, like these mountains. I had hunted on them quite a bit um when I lived in Colorado, but just I hadn't been in these parts. And there was definitely parts where you're like, you felt like you were in Alaska, just like big subridges that were just crumbling, you know, hanging little glaciers all over the place, and like I said, country that

was you can't just walk over. You know. You're like, well, if you want to get back there, you have to go all the way down then come up the drainage and you know, really like route finding, you know. Anyways, instead of doing that, we decided to back out and then climb the net X ridge over and then just glass back. And it was a huge glass. It's like two miles. You're looking from point to point, which is you know, when you're looking for an animal, it looks

like the rocks that it's sitting in. It's a long ways away, you know. So we started, we did a lot of just one eyeball in through the spot and scope. Anyhow, we climb up there. We glass twelve hours whatever it is, daylight to almost dark, to the point where I'm like I'm done. We didn't see anything. Charlie let's go make camp. So we're walking across this We're kind of on our shoulder.

We're walking across a bowl towards the bench where I think we can find a flat spot, and I just happened to look up and like eight yards away on the horizon, like very dusky light, I see something out of place glass, like, holy sh it, it's a ram. And then right as I was I'm looking at him, another ram like pops up behind him. And then they quickly before we can get a spot and scope for anything out on him, they kind of dropped towards us and go left and disappear. So we watched the hills.

I told dark to make sure nothing. Pretty much made camp right there in the morning. UM washed the hillside for maybe the first thirty minutes. I wanted to let the light come up because we we had the advantage where the light was gonna someone's gonna come up at our backs, and I figured, if we're gonna walk towards them, it would be good, you know, maybe maybe we'll get into slight advantage if they got the sun in their eyes. Hike up pretty much leave the trees hike up from

I don't know. We must have been camping above eleven, because I ended up shooting him at like twelve five.

So we hike up a thousand feet to where we last saw him and see that there's they had kind of and looking at the you know, on X map on the phone, I could see that they had kind of fed into these draws would looked like maybe a little abbey shoots, and I figured there was grass in there, you know, And I figured that we had seen other sheep kind of doing the same thing, like feeding down into these abbey shoots in the morning, feeding back up and then find a play. It's amongst the rocks to

spend the day. So we get to the first one and kind of wrap around the hill through pretty big talents, you know, some stuff that's as big as a car. The smaller stuff if you get one of those little runs, you know, it might get a little smaller like baseball, you know size, and kind of creep around him. I can see like the first abbey shoot kind of opening up in front of me, and I'm looking for the grass, and you know, there's a roll of hill in front

of me. And I'm always preaching this like, you know, take your time, because they could just be just over that hill. So one step at a time, scan the whole thing, take another step, but I keep ranging the far side of the shoot, and then I'm getting to where the far side of the shoots like a hundred yards,

eighty yards, seventy yards. I'm like, this is gonna suck, because if they're in here, I'm gonna step on them and then we're gonna have a covey of sheep blowing out of here and I'm gonna be forced to make a decision, you know, which I didn't want to make one like that. Well, luckily they're not in that one, and right the country kind of opens up down below us. It's almost like two shoots kind of met and kind

of bowled out a little bit. And I figured if we went down just a little ways, like fifty yards, we would be able to kind of look into this other shoot from from down and kind of look back up into it. And that move is all it took. We got down there and I looked across and this ram was actually in quotes, you know, looking at me. He might have been like facing my direction when I first saw him, and uh then he had four other rams with him. Figured they were new rams. Well, part

of my mind saying they're new rams. Then the other part of my mind that really wanted to kill a big, big chocolate ram is like, that's him. He takes chocolate, he's by himself, he's got fairly good drop. It looks like it's going like I'm running all these things through my mind. But what really like just like completely flipped my brain was that I looked at the four pack next to him, and I saw a ram with the chip out of its horn. How you tell you this?

That the Okay? So the chocolate ram was running with another mature ram had a giant chunk missing out of his Yeah, like just very identifiable. So we named him Chocolate and Chip's cute. That's what I thought. We had all kinds of names. We also started calling the big one Willy Wonka and we're gonna go find him at the chocolate factory. And I happened to be running with a photographer named Charlie. So it's just really all you know, any who. Uh. At that point, my mind's like, dude,

that's it, that he's the that's the chocolate Ram. You need to kill him. And that kind of just went into like automode, and it was I wish we could have filmed that, uh because the next like two minutes that it took once, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna kill him. It was quite comical. So I go to jack around in and I have my mag just packed full, and sometimes I feel like when it's packed full, it just they don't want to feed quite right. And I'm I think I jacked it too slow instead of just

like you know, really running the action. And so I get the one halfway in, but then the one underneath it was trying to like climb in there with it, and I'm like that, and so I just dropped the mag you know, and just get all the bullets out of there. So then I pitched like whatever they holds four bullets, I think, off to my right, you know, in the rocks, and man, I'm on this rock that's

like it's a big rock. It's like I don't know half our table here, you know, it's like two by four ft, but it's kind of sloped to pitch against the hill and I'm trying to get my bipod on it, and I actually had to come back on it so that the bipod could drop lower, you know, but my gun could still clear the top edge of the rock.

My feet are way above my head the position I'm trying to get myself into, so I'm trying to like half like use my backpack to like support my ribs, but have it so that it's supporting my rear of my gun too. And all week we've been brushing, busting so much brush that every couple of days I was like clearing out my chamber and my barrel because I just felt like pine needles and stuff would drop been in there. So when I put a bullet back in,

I now go to close it. I feel it gets kind of sticky, and I'm like, oh, it's not going to close all the way, you know, So I pull the bolt back real quick. I try just to like you know, fingernail that cartridge, and it's like stuck like son of a bit, you know. So I got the bench made out, I'm trying to like, you know, wiggle it. I'm just turning the gun, you know, right side up, drop the bolt out, and banging on the recoil patch, trying to get this thing to come out because I

don't want to fire it. Thinking that they're oh man, it's like autopilot. And then just like full on flustered, and uh, Charlie's like up the hill a little way. So you know, I think he was excited to about it. He just melted into the rocks. And I didn't want to either help or make the situation worse. But it's been really nice to have someone there to be like, dude,

just chill out for a second. So the thing finally falls out, you know, and and I sit there and take the bolt out, flip the gun backwards, put a big puff of air through it, like blow whatever was in there out of there, put my gun back together, and every you know, ten seconds, some glass and just to make sure that the herd's not running off, and uh, get all set up. I just decided to put one bullet in there, right and I'm like, okay, just take

a deep breath. And when he gives you like a good bronze side shot, you know, it's like, of course, he just like immediately gives me a broadside shot. There was no like breathe into it. It was just like there's a broadside shop. But I did range and I did dial, which was really sweet. It was soon or twenty yards. I think I had to dial either. I think it was four m A. It was really nice, just a hold dead on um. But it was funny that I only had one bullet in because he kind

of spins. I get on him pretty quickly again, like in seconds, and he's now he's facing me, and I'm not seeing blood. I can't see him wobbling and like, you better shoot him again. Click because I had cycled, you know, there wasn't another bullet in there, and right when I clicked clicked it, he started tumbling down the hill. Huh yeah, And then it was solid thirty minutes and very emotional phone calls and uh celebration, you know, calling

the wife. But did you have like a little like because he tumbles away from you, right, yeah, kind of like did I make the right decision parallel or you were already like now you mean to make the right decision on shooting him, right, because not like you're once in lifetime hunts over. Oh yeah for sure. Now I was fourteen days into it, and so no, you're right.

I mean it's totally bittersweet, man, Like you're like because then you're just like looking around, You're like I might not stand on this mountain ever again in my life. You know what's gonna take me to twelve and a half thousand feet again, you know, in these beautiful Colorado mountains, and uh, it's bitter, sweet man, no doubt about it. In general, I want to touch on this. You probably felt it this summer, you know, going on in your first dollar sheep hunt I assume was your first one.

But just like the pressure from the moment we were all sitting in the airport together when I got the phone call from hunting Full and They're like, you've got a sheep tag, and like from that moment, that pressure mounts and it's you know, I thought it'll kind of go away once I'm in the field and I'm I'm in the hunt, but it doesn't. It might change, but it's still there. And so in a way, like killing him,

all of a sudden, the pressure is gone. Right, You're not You're no longer a guy with the sheep tag. You're just another hunter that now has an elk tag in a bear tag in their pocket. And it's kind it's kind of nice, but you do become a guy with the sheep. You do become a guy with the sheep.

Instead of a tag, you have v tag and there's a differenceround and so much advice, good advice that comes through, but pressure about finding the right one and if you're don even find one or be successful, you know, and sure, I'm lucky to have a job. That's like, yeah, in seasons a month long, don't take the whole month. But if you really probably because I don't know, Mils lengthy.

My my gal is awesome and she's you know, happy to see me go on big adventures like this, but you know, it's a that's a long time to take. So you know, looking back on it, I'd say that it all happened just right, you know, two weeks of spending man unreal weather like seventy degree highs forty degree nights. We were packing a tarp and didn't even set it up half the time. We would just sleep under the stars, you know. And that's I kept telling Charlie, who's for him.

It was his first time ever in any kind of alpine country, so he's just blown away by the whole thing, you know, and I'm like, yeah, usually when you're up here at eleven thousand plus, it's like when you see the clouds starting to form and build. At eleven am, You're like, okay, we have two hours and then we need to be descending. And you know, because anybody has spent an afternoon in a thundershower at eleven thousand feet plus, nobody wants to do that again. You're looking like down

at the lightning. Oh it sucks. Yeah, and when the thunder booms, it's like it consumes you. You know. But we had zero I mean we had like literally ten rain drops, a few clouds here and there. Um. Yeah. When I when I reset for the final push in there, which only actually ended up being a couple of nights, but I only went in with a bass layer and my uncompagret puffy. That was it for top layers. No

rain jacket, no mid layer. The only thing I've been used my mid layer force to build my little pillow like I like to do. And I'm like, I can survive without that, you know, no gloves, no beanies, just using the hood on the jacket. You know. Um, super nice. It's America for you, is I think they're doing that in Tehran? It's perfect. Yeah, forty pound pack you know when we were and that was with food in the end with five days of food. That's great. Um, it's beautiful. Yeah,

it's quite the experience. I'm on a high. I'm on like a sheep conservation high, coincidentally, which would be leading me to believe it won't last. Yeah. Well no, I did a thing called the Landmark Form, which I think I've mentioned to you and I was a kid. Yeah, you know about landmark landmark? Yeah? Was it good for you? Interesting? We'll have to discuss that. It's a it's a you know Tony Robbins. Oh, it's like it's a you know Tom Robbins itself. You don't know Tony Robbins with the

motivations of it. Um. So it's kind of like that there's a there's a choreographer something named that too, might be. I didn't know a bottom until zero when zero Dark thirty came out. They're riding a helicopter and someone asked someone what he's listening to, says Tony Robbins. I thought he's listening to like a choreographer. Then I looked it up realized that it's a motivational dude. Yes, So when you go do like a landmark form, thing at least

is how it was for me. You go there for like a weekend, and you leave there and you're like in a conk or the world, you know, and you're with a group of people that are all like very positive thinking at that point. But as you go back to the regular world and then regular you know, downers of the world, it kind of it slowly fades away. So that's where I feel like I'm at with the

sheep on. But um coincidentally that the town nearby where I was at is doing a big media project around uh, the sheep that live in and amongst them, you know, propagating them, keeping them around for the future. They've they see challenges like a lot of you know, western town, lack of winter range, too much development, et cetera. So they contacted me to get a interview for the like the hundreds perspective, which was great and I was, you know, happy,

happy to help out. That leads into we packed out the whole cape on this animal and a sense of great segue coming good from me or from you know, I feel like you're building one up right my original plan. You get you picking up on a Jordan's I don't think so he's laying groundwork for big segue. I'm not gonna let you guys down. It ain't about rattlers. My original plan with that we packed out the whole hide and Charlie and I are now experts in uh in

full sheep capes. But I'm just gonna yarrow the head because I've said this before and it just happened when Tracy, our colleague, was in here. People look at that thing and they're like, Wow, that's cool, you know. I'm like, yeah, pick it up. And when every it's it hasn't failed yet. When someone picks that thing up, they are in utter awe and then they feel the denseness and they the weight of it all. So anyways, I just want to have a euro amount. You can pass it, but you

want to be able to pass it around. Yeah. Through the little bit of sheep hunting they have done of come to know that sheepies are highly valuable. Once they're tan, you're allowed to sell them. I'm guessing that people buy them because there's got messed up because they're sheep tumbled a thousand feet off a mountain or whatever. Someone cut a bunch of holes in it as they're trying to make the hide, maybe the hair slip because you know, who knows whatever, but that like you can get thousands

of dollars sometimes with very little effort. I sold a doll cape for a thousand bucks or something like that. We sold a big orang cape. We only called one person sold the Bighorn Cape for six hundred bucks and that was like one phone call and no actually looking

for a purchaser. Yeah. So I was thinking if first well let's just tan it and then something we'll put it on them old meat Eater auction, auction House of Bodities and uh talking to Garrett Long and talking to uh the tax nermists, They're like, you know, we might be able to raise a little bit more money. We just turn it into a full sheet mountain to a replica, and I feel like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, same one.

It's very happy with us, mentioning him in the last podcast John Hayes Tex number tax rmy Yeah, and uh, anyway, so we don't know exactly what's gonna happen yet with that hide and all of it, but the plan is to somehow sell it for as much money as we can and then hopefully donated directly to like a wild sheep, you know, either habitat or reintroduction, whatever it might be. Projects. They make casts, so they make like replicate casts and

it's it's amazing, like the colors and everything. So anyways, get a replica made of it, get them stuffed with the replica head on there and sell them. Uh, pointing out the segwae thing. I'm gonna talk about that real quick. Okay, uh oh another item in the Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities. That's your segue. Yeah, it'll set up perfectly. Um. Meat Eater Season ten, Part one is on Netflix now. Starts out with I think the first episode is anelo

putting with Luke Hombs. So we're launching the Auction House of Oodities, uh at the same time as the new season comes up, right, because we've been talking about this Auction House of Oddities for a long time. It's a it's gonna be a rolling thing. And here's some of the things that will go into the rig. So as the Auction House Ofbities, it's live now. The Auction House

Ofbalities is live now. Money raised for the Auction House Ofbities we'll go into are like access Enhancement Initiative, what's been called historically land Access Initiative the Land Act, not Access Enhancement Initiative, the Land Access Initiative. We get there both ways. I think either way it'll go into that and that becomes a pool of funds that then CAL will look at various projects and figure out what to

do with the pool of funds access initiative things. So we've done the Shiloh Pon thing, UM done some stuff around, raise some money recently in a different thing around supporting our states, UM private land public Access program. We're gonna raise a whole bunch of money with this thing. If you go on the auction house. Now, Yannie's thing isn't

there yet. The sheep's out there. But we have a signed guitar from Luke Combs, and Luke used the guitar in concerts, right, So signed guitar from Luke Combs Country Star, the giant Bucky Bowl. So, Mike Buck Bowden, who's been on the show, been on this podcast, he was in the Close Calls audio book, he's been on Me Eat a couple of times. He made us a giant birch burrel bowl. Um. That bowl is in the auctionalite of odities.

Right now, we have a bottle of skunk essence that me and Seth extracted from skunks with a hyperdermic needle. I wasn't gonna use it in an act of vengeance. I haven't identified a target. So if you've identified Yanni hasn't starting never mind, it's too late. You'll have to be You'll have to be on it because right now it's pinned to the outside of my garage. I had in our guest house, but my wife could smell it there, so I pinned it to the outside of my garage.

We're gonna rebottle it and you can buy ounce of Pierre Montana skunk essence. UM. I bought a needle from you know, like a syringe for injecting cattle. You know what I'm talking about, Jordan Um. But instead of injecting something, we took something. By the way, suck that skunk smell

right out of there. A meatcraft or knife. Would that dude sell one on eBay f or we did a We did a limited run knife of the bench made called the meat craft, and there I don't know, people complaining about how expensive they were, but some dude just sold one on eBay and it had like forty one bids and went for fifteen or sixteen hundred bucks. There's something like it's crazy. He was excited to get the knife.

He had the knife, and then it was like, boy, I just have this nice knife sitting around I should just try to get my money back out of it. And then he felt so guilty with how high a price was. Right he wrote in a letter that you bad.

You wanted to donate the money. We talked about it and feeling guilty, and then you wanted to donate a bunch of the money to a conservation group was looking for guidance on how to spend which I'll tell you if that's not a good indication of the quality of folks we have uh intermingling with us, so that I mean, come on, those are awesome people. Also in the auction

house is the tale of Yanni's very first pheasant. If you're a fly tire, just I don't think that that's necessarily an old pheasant, because I only killed my first peasant and two falls ago. Yeah, and whoever get whoever buys that thing, you know you can check it out and put it on your wall off for a little bit, but you should also tie some flies out of it. I think press it to the front of your very own cowboy hat, you know. And there's the season ten package.

So if you if you watch the show the first five episodes, which you're up now, we pulled items from those episodes, okay, and it's in a package called the Season ten package. In that string of episodes, you'll see me and Yanni and Clay Newcomb hunting raccoons with the hound dogs Clay's dogs, and we get a raccoon val raccoons and mngus. That raccoons hide is back from the tannery.

That very raccoon is in the season ten package. The backpack I wear all throughout the stone graacier backpack I wear all throughout the season is in the season ten package. In the season I used to FHF bin no harnesses a brown one in a blaze orange one, both of their those are in the season ten package. Clay Newcombs ROSSI four ten wild West six Shooter four ten gun I thinks what they call it is in the season ten package. You'll see Clay shoot a squirrel off his

mule with that gun. Clay's Ratlin antlers from the Texas Deer episode is in the package. I actually broke a time off. If you're watching the show, you can see the time fly off into the bushes. Those ratlin antlers are in there, and we talked about those rattling antlers. And the antelope skull that I kill on the episode with Luke Combs is in the season ten package. And you'll know it's guaranteed because it's a weird ass look

at antelope. So when you watch, it's like, that's a weird antelope, and when you get the box you'll be like, that's the same damn antelope. They didn't like slip some the coon. I could see you being like, I don't know, man, maybe they've pulled a fast one with the raccoon. But I would look at bullet placement. The antelope skull is dead nuts. No fast one. No, there's no fast one anywhere in here. But there's no possibility of a fast one. I got you got my carving knives in there on

that list. They're not yeah, but they're down. It's it's a long refreshes, it refreshes all the time. I think it's important to know that there's uh as current's notes here say there's many auction phases. Yeah, so items go up, they sit for two weeks, and then another block of items goes up. We have original artwork, all kinds of stuff coming up. We have stuff clear into December. This is just like the initial thing, and then stuff comes in.

Peter Alonzo baseball player, He's sending in a bat and a helmet signed, batted jersey signed. Some dudes from the Pittsburgh Steelers are sending stuff signed Jersey. I have a commissioned piece of artwork that I'm getting of wolves ripping the guts out of a buffalo that's still standing in there. And when that's done, a print will go into the auction house of oodities. But we also have original artwork. Uh Kelsey Johnson original bighorn sheep painting that auto tickle

Yanny's fancy. You know, I'm thinking I'm thinking about, you know, people want to do uh mounts or replicas or whatever. I'm thinking about asking her to paint it, yeah, or maybe just sketch it. Maybe just do like a black and white of that ramp standing on the side of that. Then we'll put a print of that in the auction house and maybe you on that rock with your gun pointed in the sky, try and banging it live live

rounds laying next year. As for that guitar, here's a quick He's not in the studio with us right now, but um here here's a quick uh convo with Luke about the guitar. Just so you know what you're getting into when you go donate on this, Kayler, you tell everybody about the guitar. He man, we got some guitars in my manager's office. When somebody calls, go in, rip a couple of tunes on it, myself, sign it, send

it in. Uh So get away. Man. There you have to go to the meat Eater auction house of Boys and find a guitar been played by Luke holmbs up for auction now and remember the five dollars Neil and Chester comes and plays the guitar too, sings some Chester

who who poo poo there it is I remember. When the auction is closed, the winning bitter on Luke's guitar can decide to kick in an extra five grand and Chester the divester formally known as Chester the Tester, Chester, the mole Lester, Chester, the investor who then divested and became Chester the Divester. Chester will hand deliver the guitar to your door and sing that crazy coyote song he's always singing. Who Yep Woo Yep boo, and the cow Boys says, if that's not worth five grand, listen, it's

gonna be a quick trip. It's gonna be weird. It's gonna be weird for everybody. But Chester is gonna come into your house. He's gonna sit down. You can have any people you want to have over over. Chester will sing that song, and the cole says, who You're gonna have the nicest person in the world sitting at your house. If you got dirty dishes in the sink, I guarantee you'll do You'll probably do him. He's gonna walk out of your house. He's gonna walk out of your life.

He's gonna go back to the airport and go back to where he came from. But you can you'll know when he's coming. You can invite people over and Chester will play Luke Combs guitar and that's not the that's not the first time Chester has played one of loose guitars. That's right. You will see in the season if you haven't watched it already. That well, Luke played some music, but a bunch of guys sat around playing Luke's guitars, and Chester did John Prine's Uh, cal you weren't there you? Yeah,

we can't remember what it was. Fishing whistle, No it's um Oh shucks, Peabody's Coultrane. No, we'll come back to it, finger finger picking song, he picks it. Oh, we'll come back to her. Phil You know what, let's find out what it is. We just plugged that song in, yeah, and it plugged me in saying it like I've remembered gesture. Hey everybody, this is Chester the Divestor, formerly known as Chester the Investor, and this is the song It's all the Best by John Prine. Say you drive a Chevy,

Say you're driving Ford. Say you drive around this county. You just get bored, Then you change your mind something else to do, Then your heart gets bull you change It's man. Wish you happy, man, because I wish our very own Samantha Bates declared Chester the nicest person in the world. I think that prompts me to wonder who was second. I got to four and still hadn't made the list and I gave up. I'm like, okay, but who's the fourth nicest person that says that? Just like

did I made the top three? I'm sorry. That's why you have kids, at least for the first ten years of their lives. They'll always give you that number one spot on that subject. If you watch the new episodes and have a question about what you're seeing or about Chester the Divester, that's the beast. I wish I had thought of that. Who thought a Chester the Divester. That's actually Phil Listen. I wish I could take credit. It was not me. I don't know who. I mean, it

would have been bod Brand for you. I felt like we talked about that before I wrote it, But then I was like, I thought that. I thought that it was in my head. I thought Chester the Divester was brand new. That's great. Uh. If you have questions about what you see on the show, right in UM two to our our our man Corey to reach him meat Eater at the meat eater dot com. I don't know subject line, just put a question mark or something and then we'll get to that question. Uh, Jordan's what do

you think about that auction house? It looks pretty stacked. I like that. That should be a slogan for it. Stacked. Yeah sounds good. Here's a crazy ask news story, Um Hanks, Joe, We're gonna get to you big time. I don't understand this story. What about it? I just don't know, Like, I don't get it. So some guys just killed at five inch alligator pounds Eagle Lake, close to the Mississippi Louisiana border. They bring it to a processor. Okay, processor

goes to butcher the gator. This processor always likes to take a gander and see what is in the stomach. You following, kel, What are you doing something different? Are you not entertained? He likes to look in the stomach contents. Calory knows the story. Bone. He always finds bones, hair, feathers, and he finds stones. But in this one he finds some unusual stones. It just doesn't make sense. This alligator has in his stomach two stone projectile points. Well, no one,

they don't know that the other one is a projectile point. Yeah, but it's a sorry take away, Johnny, I was just just adding a little bit. But yeah, I think it makes total sense. Explain to me how that makes sense. Anthropologists estimates that that projectile points style was from five to six thousand years ago. Correct, And you should know that alligators don't live that long. But it says that they he's got no pockets. When he finds that he's got no pockets, where else is he going to keep it?

Maybe he was in the water bottom they of course it was. But they take in rocks for the same reason that birds do. If you read the whole article, right, they use it to grind up well, and I got talking. Were you not entertained? Listen, man, you don't I think that's true. No, I didn't have time to read the whole article. I got talking about something. So I think

it's it's coincidental that he happened to grab. But it's it's not so coincident with dental as because it might happen to a chicken too, that they picked up like a very small bird point right, and mistook it for some small piece of gravel and put it in their gizzard. But chicken only lives five years, right, alligators live? Come on, Oh, I was even thinking longer, like some of these critters are really old. Yeah, the one in the one in Florida that they've been pumping up. I want to say

it was like forty something. So he is he has ingested lots of rocks over the course of his life or her life. I don't know if it was a female um alligator, but uh so, you know, I don't know if it's hundreds or whatever, but like there's a higher likelihood that he's going to have a projectile point is belly than a than than a chicken? Right Here's but it's still it's uncanny. It is there's two of them, So you play like you're an alligator, okay, and you walk out and go pick up a handful of rocks

and then we'll check what you got. Okay. It's like, what are the odds gonna be? Like, Oh, look I picked up into the arrowhead. Yeah, it's uncanny. It's someone canny in fact that we're covering it here today. Well, it's really nuts that there's two of them. We hope no one lied, but you know, you'd want to know where he's hanging out Eagle Eagle Lake. I don't know what the the piece of it's like a tear drop shape. It's called a plummet, and uh scientists don't know exactly

what purpose is served, which is interesting. Fficient sinker, that's what it looks like. That's what you think. It's like an ancient You got two holes in it, but the holes don't go all the way through. It's very I should have read that article. Interesting. Did I be doing such a better job as a host right now? If I'd read that article, I'd be tearing it up. I'd be like, one would think it was efficient sinker, but the holes don't go all the way through. Instead, I'm like,

it's a fision sinker. Oh, you guys, remember what um so a stomach rock, which is what we're talking about, versus uh rock that's already been through the stomach, which is called what it's gastro light or gastro lift. And one one is currently in the stomach, well, the other one is passed through the stea. Did you know that from reading the article? No? I know. I knew that because old outfit or buddy of mine and I'm always talking about, had some gastro gastro lights. I can't remember

which one's which. That's the problem. It's like sleigh tights of slag mites, man right exactly, like hanging right and mites going up. So a rock that has passed through the stomach is a gastro lift or gastro light I can't remember, but yeah, that's what that's the name for him. Great story, though I read it afterwards, I feel like

I'm fairly checked out on it now. Yeah. So the American alligator, Uh, there's some odd balls to this, but we're typically like a max of years yeah, yeah, but yeah, you know, one thing I kicked around was like we always call them dinosaurs, right, it's like living dinosaurs, living fossils whatever, and they like, yeah, they do exist in the fossil record, but like the American alligator that was here during the time of the dinosaurs was like thirty

five ft long. It was a little Differently do they do, you know, if they travel far distances in their lifetime or stay relatively local, because then maybe Steve will go check out that water bottom. Yeah, no home bodies. Yeah, you know, they moved with high water, so they dispersed like kind of similar to beavers Eagle Lake. Ye, see me run around the arrowhead and necklace even though you know where I've been, I don't want those Meglodon teeth too, thank you. We covered I'm gonna try to do this

one quick. We covered how like seeing orange surveyor's tape out in the woods and how it's I think it's unsightly, so we guys like tear it off and put in your pocket. Got a couple of letters from people pointing out why that's a stupid idea. A surveyor so someone from the Forest Service, guy from the BLM talked about don't just indiscriminately ripped down surveyor's tape. It's often there because we're doing work. We're like marking timber, we're laying

out trail or corridors. We've paid people to go in and place said orange tape. And you responded with, well that's not what I was talking about, and that yeah, I yeah, so stand cracted um. And then they also had some examples of when they've put up a bunch of orange tape for a purpose and paid to get it put there, and then they come back and it is because someone done them the favor of taking it down. So bear it at mine only if it leads to

a wallow? Should you if it leads to a wallow, or you watch it for ten years and it sort of starts to fade and turn white and drip onto the ground something. But then there's also apparently biodegradable flagging tape yeah, which one person encourages folks to buy instead of the plastic. Way back in the hunter safety days, they always said consider using toilet paper for flagging because then that that degrades over time. People like, no, why would that guy poop up in that tree? Uh, Cal's

dog almost died? Talk about that call. So it's all controversial and like, the more I read into it covers yes, so like flat out from multiple sources, Oh, dogs don't die from rattlesnake bites. It's like, oh, it's an anomaly if a dog all my years of being VAT only had one dog die and that got bit right on the throat and it was an airway issue, not there's a swelling airway issue. And then um, the treatment side of and venomation gets uh even gets into some controversy

as well. It's like anti venom and the production of anti venom type products on the market are very limited and they're very expensive and do they work? And it's it's been pretty fascinating studying up on this stuff because it all comes down to these biological factors that like will never know. It's like the dog. So my dog, for instance, I've been around a lot of dead and dying animals, and I'll tell you I was seeing many signals and signs where I was like, Okay, prepare yourself,

this is this is, this is going this direction. I've seen kel lose a dog. Yeah, damn here, it's not it's not. I don't take it easy, and I'm assisty when it comes to those dogs. And um, so snort got bit right on the ear, uh, which is uh, it wasn't as bad as what's happening to it right now. It was less traumatic. I'll take the rattles. It was less traumatic. Um And uh So this dog made her

biological system. She may be like a little more predisposed to react to anti coagulants, which rattlesnake venom contains an anticoagulant, and she bled profusely like it's a highly vascular area. Ears bleed like crazy. But this like bled to the point where I had serious trouble stopping it bleeding out of the fang holes. Yes, or did it like swell up so much the blood was coming other places. Well, eventually both of those things. But I mean, think of

how tiny rattlesnake fangs are. Like we're talking like little tiny pin pricks. But the uh you know, necrotic uh factors and venom uh made the meat around those little tiny pin pricks start to deteriorate fast. And then the swelling was almost instantaneous. And uh she started bleeding out of another spot on her ear and developed like this giant puss pocket. And then the hair it was like like actively falling, like actively falling off, like sping off her ear. And this is on what kind of amount

of time. So she got bit just a little prior to eleven am, and she ran back to me at heel and had one little drop of blood on her ear. You didn't even know that she had been dead. I didn't. I walked over to confirm that it was in fact a rattlesnake, even though I was like, I know what this is because you saw her ear bleeding. Yes, So I was walking out. She was within my line of sight, but I wasn't paying attention to her. I saw her turn go yep, oh, I see and come back to me,

but yeah, in a very casual fashion. But the thing is like I was well within even my poor hearing distance of the snake, and the snake hadn't rattled or anything like that, which kind of leads into this other conspiracy theory of rattlesnakes. It's like people are selectively harvesting snakes that rattle. So if you're an indiscriminate rattlesnake killer, you're finding snakes that rattle and then killing those snakes, leaving the snakes that do not rattle, and they think

they're driving natural selection. Yes, there's all sorts of stuff out there. I would I would like you to take that one to half a finger. I will half finger will say like, it don't quite work that way. I will tell you. I will tell you man. There's there's an endless amount of people that care about their dogs. Um so there's a lot of service to be done on the house and wives of this stuff. I don't want to keep a pamphlet be like, so your dog up bit by rattlesnake? Yeah? Can I interest you in

a pamphlet? Because people love pamphlets. Um, So you started swelling up what you do or the standard operating procedure for a rattlesnake bite victim is make them calm, reduce the heart rate. Ideally you're gonna have that bite area below the heart. Um, and and like go ahead and use are below the heart, below the heart so it's not like you're the R E. S T type of

acronym or rice rather rest ice compression elevation. Um. Yeah, no one ever tells you to lower something down right, right, So you want to like use gravity to keep uh the venom far from the heart and the really yeah, so did you cut an axe and suck the venom out? Kal? No? No, I didn't. I mean part of me was like, do I just go full western here and cut this ear

off right now? Um? But then I determined that if the dog is going to die, I'd much rather here think that uh it was the snake that killed her than me. Yeah, she'd go to the gravy and like that. Friends,

we had a good thing going. Um. So yeah, so it took nine hours to get her to the vat and because you were away the hell yeah way, I mean way the way the hell I mean like gates and flat tires and busted trailers and all this like horrible comedy of errors that just like you know and just feel guilty because you know it's your job to

take care of these things. So by the time she got to actual medical care, she had kind of gone through these spells of being like very much not okay, two oh oh, the dog's gotta acting fine too, then very much not like oh, I recognize this, this isn't good. So then um, ultimately, how I got the bleeding to like subside a little bit is I got a a quick clot package like Doug that that was like my last thing. I used every bit of material in my first aid kit and uh and got that like plastered

to her ear, her ear plastered to her head. Ah, And keep in mind, like that ear is like if you if you like waved a feather on that thing, that dog would like scream as if she was being skewered. And it was just hor endous deal. But we had this situation where she was like kind of going into shock. So UH had a super highly elevated heart rate, had lost a bunch of blood. The her overall ability to coagulate.

Her blood's ability to coagulate was basically like not existing at that point and then like things just kind of got more complicated. We were nine plus hours out from when she got hit by the snake. A lot of folks that you talked to, you say, like an event AND's the most effe acted within two hours? And then you have this like law diminishing returns and it's very expensive stuff. Um, and a dog this size, she's forty

seven pounds. She she probably would have been hit with like four doses of antivenom and their four hundred and the type that she had is not like the crazy expensive stuff and it's still four hundred and some dollars a bag. So this is ivy um solution that's that's pre frozen. So we kind of have this this talk of like should she actually get this stuff? It's like hard to get some years. It's just like non existent. Um. It's it can be kind of controversial because it's like

places that have money, can you get it? Um? Because you know, but also it's like a supply and demand thing too. It's like places that don't have a lot of money probably don't have a lot of people that

are going to pay for it anyway. UM. And so you know, I got her up to sun Valley Animal Hospital in in Hailey, Idaho, where my previous dog that you mentioned, the big Fish, received care and I really liked those folks, so UM got her up there after calling going through towns and calling that offices and having people be like nope, don't bring her here, because I was just like, yeah, doctors went home. Really well, I understand why would they not want the dog in there?

I just don't. I don't know. I do not know. So you're like, my dog got bit by rattlesnake, it might be dying, and they'd say yep, they're like, oh sorry, it's so weird, like too much for them to deal with, too much for them to deal with too late in the day, like they must not take like whatever the Hippocratic oath is or something for dog people man um, And but I mean also keep mind, like there's a lot of folks that I've talked to you here like

oh yeah, dogs don't die from from rattlesnake bites. Right, It's like, oh, well, overblown. And I bumped into a cowboy on the way out, super nice dude who's like, hey, how's going because I told you we trespassed through this ranch to do that sheep hunt and uh, so, like I felt obligated to stop and talk to this guy, even though was the last thing I wanted to do. Like, hey, dog got bit by rattlesnake. He's like, oh, yeah, one

of my dogs got bit earlier this year. Um god, I wish I could remember the exact words he used, but they were fantastic. But little cow dog about the size of Snort anyway, got bit on the leg um, which, as he can imagine, the legs a lot easier to keep below the heart than the ear is. And uh, he's like, yeah, I got real serene for a while or something like that was interesting choice of words. But the dog got real, real mellow for a while. Then she lost a bunch of flesh, but now she's fine,

you know. And that he didn't even consider trying to get that dog all the way out of there to a vet. Um, and that that does happen quite a bit. Um, And everybody thinks they're dogs super special. I obviously think this dog is very special, but from what I saw special come on, so uh, I gotta take Snort home with an ivy bag full of fluids, uh, and my my place and catch him was vacant at the time, so I gotta run up there and camp out on the floor, which is exactly how I moved into the

police I would have slept at the bat. I was like, Oh, here's the deal. If you guys aren't gonna monitor overnight, I will. Um. So, but they sent me home with an ivy bag, gave me the MA math on what they wanted with the anti venom stuff in it. Not with anti venom at that point, because like we have this talk and there's this discussion of where she's at, like near shock. The number one thing that we need

to do is reduce your heart rate. There are some side effects that are possible with anti venom, and it could be negative enough to kill the dog. In the state that she's in. It's possible. Um. And then we had just like this horrible night where I was trying everything I could to make the dog comfortable, the dogs

like very much uncomfortable. UM doing like a lot of again like dying dead dog, things like trying to get up and move and then quitting and then like oh, remembering that it had to be somewhere and then quitting and all these things. So eventually I unhooked her from the ivy and she just crawled out laid on my chest and I was like, all right, like this is the way you want to go out, This way I want to go out type of thing. And we both

slept for like an hour and a half. And at this point, her head is swollen like all the way, like one eye is totally swollen over. Um. She's in a lot of pain, a lot of discomfort. Her neck is fully swollen down into her chest, and then anywhere where that adema is where that swelling is is also very very sore like, and she's like screams to the touch of it, and uh yeah, it was just just crappy.

But then I get up and the folks at the vet office were awesome and they're like, yeah, we just just come in at eight am, so brought her in and and then they gave me their phone numbers too. They're like, yeah, check her heart rate every hour and if it gets if it hits two, call me and we'll we'll come down and see what we can do

type of thing. And so, you know, dogs have fast heart rate and and I'm digging around for femeral artery trying to get her pulse and it's just like very feathery and just like not a good not a good strong feel to it, and it's just ripping. And so I'm spending like forty minutes checking the pulse right because I'm like trying to do averages to see like where we're ending up, and uh eventually get her down to the vat they have. It is the busiest VETS office

you've ever seen. There's people freaking everywhere. It's super busy, and they basically just like clear us out a spot in the middle of like this all purpose room where it's like business administration going on. In this corner, UH docs writing notes on there animal patients, in this owner there's a little uh clinic table and then like snort, and I just sitting there and every twenty minutes somebody swings in there like Okay, how are we doing? And um,

her body is not absorbing any of those fluids. She's not really drinking, she's really not want to eat anything. She's not she's got no outs, you know, No, she's not pn she's not poop on even though like they like ultrasound or bladder and she's like, yeah, she should really want to pee um to the point where they were gonna try to catheterize her, but they didn't want to, you know, like that's not a painless process, and but they can't put her under because that could kill her too.

At that point, and then they're they're constantly like analyzing her blood and what was really really wild is her blood becomes so protein to efficient that it's actually like sucking the protein out of her muscles. And so it is just the wildest thing man. In In twenty four hours, she has like lost noticeable muscle mass around her hips and it's and she's like a bony you know, like looks like a neglected dog and um. And at that point, the doc, uh, because as you guys know, I like

to ask a lot of questions. The doc comes in and she's like, hey, I researched this study on otters mustelids where they found uh, you know, benefits to anti venom out to the twenty four hour period. She's like, I think we have to try it at this point because her blood is just like not good and again, like her bodies not absorbing any of the fluids in the in the ivy, so like all the things, and she won't eat and drink and all the stuff, so nothing's really going our way. Um, so I'm like, yeah,

I don't know, let's give it a shot. And so it was just really really wild that one bag of anti venom um you could kind of see like almost

almost immediate effects. And it was really funny, like all the people at the vet clinic would like keep bringing by treats, like different dog treats, so we had like cat food and cat treats and super fancy like paleo dog treats, and oh you know, down to like just fat you know, like beef trim fat dog you know, like canned dog food stuff all the things, and everybody would be like, well, maybe she'll like that, and maybe she'll like this, and the dogs like not into any

of it, and then she starts like eating a little bit, and then you could kind of trigger with some Pavlovian type responses, so like if you drop dog food on the floor and your dogs like, oh, I gotta get that. So I could like drop some dog food in front of her and be like tink tink tink on the table and she'd be like ah and eat like a piece of kibble. It'd be like a piece of kibble and a piece of kibble. So then um, yeah, she started kind of coming around on that stuff. And again

like it's really wild. So she got bitten. Probably she got bitten by a great Basin rattlesnake, which the state of Idaho doesn't even recognize as like the snake for that region. But and and like the research that I did, you know, it was really like surveys from as far as rattlesnakes go. And and talking with Dr Bob Reid, who we've had on the show, Um, he's like, yeah, that's what those surveys would have set because we weren't quite into dividing out what rattlesnake is what at that point.

And um, so the anti venom that she got isn't even based off of the venom that she received, but like from what I saw, like that's the thing that like turned things around. Um, but that's you know, it's like a generalized serum basically, like you take this very general venom and this very general venom from these two different snakes, and then you combine them in a sheep, and then you take the antibodies that that sheep makes,

and then you create anti venom off those antibodies. But all that was just yeah, incredibly interesting and and uh, you know, it's like we had like this monumentous occasion when like myself and this vet tech Sarah walked the dog around and all of a sudden she peed and pete and pete and pete and bed and it was like a holy sh it moment, you know. I was like, oh my God, thank God, like something good happened, you know.

And then yeah, just like lots of rest, and then it was like a holy ship she ate something like voluntarily, and then um, it was just like this really wild recovery scene of like she's doing better than expected after doing worse than expected for like this big crash. And then it was like, okay, now we can worry about her ear, like the actual site of the women, and like it was like this attitude of like, boy, it would be great to save the ear, but if we don't,

who cares. She's got to And then one of the vets took took a look like this very seasoned that takes a look at it, and he's like, just cut it off. Just it's like, well, you know, there's a lot of good like I think there's some good stuff there. And keep in mind it. I mean it's black, like the ear is black. It's like crispy on the edges. Um, it's got this huge puss fluid pocket in the middle

of it. Um. It's you know, like really black around the bite wounds, like if you touch it with a little antiseptic cloth, like skin and hairs like sluffing off of it and h and the this vet Dr Heidi Wogue, who was awesome. Um, she's like, hey, you know there's there's some good meat here and stuff. The senior VT, the most senior vets, like, you can take care of that thing for a month and we'll still have to cut it off. It would be good for the auctions

of bodies. Man desiccated snort ear um, and uh. It was like, so like you gotta be a nurse for a month and you don't know. I'm like, yes, yeah, sign me up. So you're still in that phase right now, Still in that phase right now, but like obviously you're gonna keep the ear now right Yeah, Like that the pus pockets started draining. Um. There's a de bridament is

a super fancy word I learned for picking up scabs. Um. So there was a lot of like gently cleaning the ear and getting rid of like excess stuff and then um, yeah, I mean it looks awesome now and and it's just kind of like a big bald ear and uh bad dogs can't tell stories, everybody. Yeah, I'd be like, let

me tell you what this jackass put me through. Because the dog get to the part where like over here's you talked about cutting its ear off right right, It's like and then guess what cal uh so much better coming from the dog. So now like really right now, I'm like the most worried about having a bald eared Labrador Retriever and like freezing cold water and air tamps in January, put a mitten on there, a whole ahead mitten um which yeah, which all roads lead back to

Garrett Smith dirt Math. It was like, Hey, called this buddy mine and he's got this company called rex Specs, and uh, I'm gonna get a set of hearing protection, tactical hearing protection for her, which is like a head muff that has two big pads on it. And he said he can remove one of the pads for hearing and I can keep the other one on there on the bad ear for installation. Yeah, that's good. I wouldn't

thought of that. But yeah, if you go out and like you know, sub zero tamps, mad dogs, hear is gonna be cooked. Yeah, not cooked, the opposite of cooked, exactly exactly. Yeah, that's kind of the the saga snort. And then I got a call from cal uh while this is all going on, and he just told me to keep my mouth shut. Yeah, he's trying to control a messaging. Yes, yes, you got like three podcasts out of it. Well, I got I got text messages from Steve that are like, hey, call me. Hey you alive? Hey,

are you okay? Like, oh my god, it's a better call. Um. Yeah. So but you know, all I've been talking about is this dog, like going and hunting with this dog and stuff, and so it was like, oh yeah, man, so but now, so we had like our first like serious training day yesterday, and I got back to um letting her know that even though she's very special, that doesn't mean that she's

uh not going to be disciplined. And then the day before that, we took a real long walk and she found uh covey of three Hungarian partridge didn't have any shells in my gun for the first two birds that got up. Managed to get a shell in the chamber for the third one and shot at uh and she retrieved it and that was our first bird of the year. So awesome, youth youth duck coming right up. Yes, yes, okay, Jordan's hi, Steve, Um, you've been bit by rattlesnak. Let's

try not a good segue, I have not. But you grew up on a cattle ranch in Nebraska where there are a lot of rattlesnakes. Did you see a lot of Yeah? Yeah, I remember going like when I was little, we'd go over there was a couple of dens that were in like along the creek bottom. There's like some pine trees, like rocky outcropping type stuff and like, and there was a couple pretty established ins and I remember

going in and um and uh, yeah. Dad would just shoot him with like twenty two with the bird shop at Oh. That was like in the springtime. And then I think, are you folks still in the cattle ranching business? Yeah, they're still there on the family places. Yeah, we'll go back, I'll go back. I think like you become a cattle rancher. Yeah, I think, really, yeah I do. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Are your folks surprised he became a hunting guide? Yeah? I think my dad thought I was like maybe didn't

know exactly what I was getting into. And when I think when I told him, like, hey, this is what I want to do, he was kind of like, you like doing that, but are you gonna doing that for like a long time? And he was concerned that you wouldn't enjoy it or he was concerned that you were being frivolous. He was concerned I wouldn't enjoy it. I were liked hunting so much. He was afraid I was going to overdo it, burn myself out. Got it? Hunt? Yeah? What town in Nebraska is all this happened to? This

is in Rushville, northwest corner. So we're just spy Shadrin. How old were you started? How old were you when he started a hunt? Oh? Man, I shot my first year when I was twelve. I can't I couldn't even tell you how old I was when I like shot my first rabbit. It's a little twenty two, but I

couldn't have been I don't know eight. Is that too young? No, I think it was like then, yeah, eight, And then there's pictures of me with a cork gun when I was really little, like trying to shoot turkeys out the window and whatever. Any lots. Yeah, apparently there was. There was a time I was on a tricycle chasing turkeys down the driveway with a core gun over the handleboy. Yeah. So but but tell, like more clearly, tell folks about your guiding business before we kind of really cover off

and how you got into the whole thing. Yeah. So, yeah, it's called running water hunting. I started it basically when I was in high school, took a little hiatus over my college years, and then went back to it. Um based out of northwest Nebraska on our family cattle ranch at Lease, a couple of ranches that surround us as well. And yeah we just hunt deer, turkeys and not really antelope anymore. Um, but yeah, it's basically it. How did you get started in high school? So I kind of

just picked it up. So I grew up with always having other hunters around because like my you know, parents would have family friends or would ever come out and they were always from out of state. They would come out and there's like a yearly deal, and I think I would just annoy them mostly, um but I always wanted to go and they would reluctantly take me, I think.

And then we had an outfitter from town that leased the place for a little while, so then he was bringing to people and I would do the same thing. I would just go down and like hang out with him type of deal. And then were you bummed about that? That that was your hunting spot? But then now someone was leasing it. Yeah, that was an issue at one point, especially when I got older. But Dad was always very like, hey, this is a stipulation, like my kid's gonna hunt type

of the deal. Yeah, so are you the only kid? I have two younger sisters. Yeah, but I'm the oldest of three, so so we uh yeah. I started doing that, and then when that outfitter left, just decided it really wasn't his thing. Then I thought I can do this. And when I was a senior in high school, I booked hunters off of Craigslist, which sounds like a really

safe thing. What what year you talking about? This would be two thousand and eleven, yeah, and two thousand eleven, two thousand twelve, and so I remember there was like these two dudes I think from like Missouri, really nice guys. Book for like thousand bucks came out when you ran an ad ran a freaking ad on craigslist. Yeah, school, and I think it was just like five day white tail hunt in Nebraska with the high schooler called me up. I don't know if they knew that. Did you run

it like on the national Craigslist? I think so? Honestly, I don't even remember. No, I think it was just in the Nebraska Panhandle like section of the craigslist, you know. And then I said like five dayl white five day white tail hunt. Yeah, five day white tail hunt with a muzzleloader. Would you bucks? Did you put that down? Yeah? And they where your phone? Yeah, my phone number, and they called me You're going to be great yea, or this is gonna be really bad your parents. You know

that dishwashing deal? Uh? I got a business now I'm buying the dishwasher. Yeah. So yeah, they came out. How many calls, dude, I don't even remember. I think those were like the only two guys I think called and you're like, hey, is this legit? And yeah, I wish I remembered that more what you say. I just like told him to run down, Like, hey, I think this is what kind of what I told you, Like, this is what the doer like to do. This is how

we like to hunt them. Like you have a place to stay, meals are on you and yeah come yeah, yeah we have a this is my class schedule. Yes seriously that yeah that you had to play some serious hooky to do this thing. Oh yeah, well we so I started. I always started. Um. I tried to start the hunts on like get the guys in on Friday,

go like show them around. I would hunt with them Saturday Sunday and then they would kind of have the like kind of feel for the place and then I would send them on their own for like Monday, Monday, texting them in class and stuff. Yeah, like keep in track. It's very crazy. Yeah, it's like enterprising. Well, the scary thing is like I just didn't think there was anything wrong with that. You have any kind of I mean you have to like no licensing or anything. No, well

you don't have to have guide licensing in Nebraska. Were you ever in class and getting a text messages? It's like, hey, come help us track this thing. I don't think that happened. No, they eat shot a buck, I remember, and it died like right next to their like easy to get to. Yeah, they were super pumped. I still have them on Facebook, I think. So those are your your first two clients. Those are my first two clients. Yeah. Yeah. So right when I graduated high school, we had another like an

outside outfitter come in and offer us up. And that's when I just got displaced again. I did get displaced. And that's when Dad was like, you need to focus on college instead of probably this situation, and um, how do you argue with that type of deal? I guess? So I did that for went to college and then

studied what So I studied at business? Yeah, and so I went no. So then this is where it gets interesting because when I was in that same like senior year, when I was trying to start this outfitting business, I was also really intrigued with like filming and doing that kind of thing, and so I started writing for like a little self filmed website and so started kind of

my media business if you will. Then as well, and when I got to college, I started filming buddies and like just putting together a little videos and I was at a show and there were some guys like the Preferts that have like the blue like ranch equipment, like bucking shoots and stuff like that. At the rodeos Um they have a company producing ranch equipment. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's called the whole company is called Prefert And I have a cousin that it was a Rodeo judge knew them,

brought them in. They had just started their own TV show at the time for Hunting Um, and so kind of got in with those guys, and then they knew of this other company out of Cody, Wyoming. It's like a gun manufacturer and they I saw them at a show at a hunting show where we were actually trying to sell hunts for this other outfit or that at least our place, and I just went up and started talking to him and the guys like if we ever

looked for a videographer, we'll let you know. And of course I'm like, I'm never going to hear from them. And they called me in like August that year and wanted me to film start filming sheep hunts for the show in Wyoming because they were crazy. I mean, how

many how many sheep hunts they going on. Um that I mean, so that first year, I think I filmed three two or three, and then the next year I think I filmed like six in Wyoming and then yeah, just because those guys were guiding and they had clients that wanted it filmed or what was it. Yeah, So they had a rifle manufacturer and so they were sending uh, like their rifles on hunts with people. And one of

the guys that owned it a outfitting and outfitting business. Yeah. Yeah, and so there was like a big marketing Yeah, different hunters all the time. You started documenting those trips, yeah, yeah, So I started doing that. So I went through my first year of college and then my second year, I went through my see how this go? I started my second year, I was just about ready to start my junior year of college, my junior fall, and they um offered me this thing, like to go and like film

for the fall. Well, I'm like, I can't do both. I can't go to college and film. And oh I think Dad was very have you at first with that decision either, But I just like dropped all my classes in college really went and filmed, yeah, for the show for the first fall, and then I went back to college for that spring and then that's it. I've been back, your parents passed. I need to finish. No, I don't think so, not now that you're going to go finish Now I've done. Okay, No, there was a point. Now

probably nothing do it? What do you like if you get bored? Actually to sit in the class? Now once you got to Chase and not sitting there, you're sitting there. Yeah, So I yeah, I ended up going this does this goes back to the hunting a little bit. The air of the outfitting business. The that outfitter that came in from the outside, um kind of have how to fallen out and he moved on falling out Um just kind of some landowners in the area. It just like wasn't

meshing type of deal. So he moved on, and then we had didn't have anybody coming out to the ranch anymore. Well by that time, I had taken a full time position with that TV show and Cody, so I had moved And so then I started running water hunting like officially as an LLC, and I just booked people in

a semi guided and they would come in. I would like have all the tree stands, setting whatever during the summer and run cameras as much as they could, and then my dad would just kind of show them around, like, hey, this is where you park. Um. I would send him on xpins with UM where to go basically like where the stands were set. And then I just ran it as a semi guided for those couple of years. And then I ended up quitting the TV show and I moved back to Nebraska. And why did you quit the

TV show just to go focus on all this stuff? Yeah, it was just time to go, you know, Like I had been there full time for two years and actually filming with him for like four seasons, and it was just I'd run its course. You're like on a salary. Yeah, I was on a salary, Yeah, for a couple of years, and going to eight to five job kind of sucks.

That was an eight to five job, it was, Yeah, it was an eight five And then like I would film and then when even when we weren't filming, like I was still expected to be in the office puction and yeah, yeah, I would do like everything that I filmed. I pretty much did all the post on and then you know there's a couple of the people that worked in there as well, but yeah, there was a lot

of there was a lot of downtime. Then I didn't really need to be in there, you know, and I just wanted to get back, and I guess helped add with the ranch too a little bit, and just it was just to move on. So your folks play hardball with you at all, where they're like, now, Jordan's this is like a reasonable cut for your folks as far as like you don't get it, just charge money and we don't get a piece. Yeah, I know, they don't give you like a hand. They don't give you like

a friendship deal. Oh I think that I get a friendship Okay, but you're still paying. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't get a free ride for sure. And then like I go back now and I helped Dad, like hey, all summer. So then I think there's a little bit of trading that goes on for like work for you. But then you kind of like you gradually start doing like more guiding though, right, yeah, more more involved once

you were back more involved. Yeah, then that's when I started doing like fully guided, including the meals being there all the time and I mean essentially being able to charge more for that, and how you find and how did when you went back to start doing it more seriously, how would you find customers or clients? Honestly, a lot of it was word of mouth. UM still put some I've gone away from Craigslist, but I have put a few ads on eBay before and that's actually a pretty

good way of generating some some things there. And then there was just other like guide fitter I think is a website. Yeah, and a lot of a lot of that, but most of it's like repeat people or just word of mouth. How many people can you hunt every year? I take for deer, I take like twelve totals? What I like to take like twelve between twelve and fifteen between archery, muzzloader and then the rifle season. Have you got them all yourself? Sorry? Oh you're fine. I had, Yeah,

I had before. I do have a kid that's going to guide for me this fall to help me out a little bit. Last year was crazy. I just like I had still have the media business and then the hunting business, and it was all very much like back to back. I'd get back from a film trip on like a Friday, as the other hunters were rolling in and then we'd start guiding on like a Saturday or something like that, and it was just it was too much. So I got a guy into help this year. Some

of the legis logistical stuff. If you had to if you had to decide between doing the media business and the hunting guide business, what would you do? Well, let me, let me, let's do a three wak you had to do like cattle, yeah, hunting guide, show business, and whatever you picked you had to stick with the rest of your life. Oh. Man, I would say meaty business because I think so, go on, I don't know. That's a hard one, Steve. They're all pretty split. They're all pretty

split right now in my life anyways, evenly split. But yeah, the media stuff, I think mostly because that's where I do, like all my Western hunting, I got you, that's because it keeps you out and engaged doing new stuff. Yeah, It's like takes me all over, which is kind of cool. So yeah, so do you freelancer people know? I do? Yeah. So, my the ranch name is Running Water Ranch, and so I spun off of that with Running Water Hunting, and then I did the same with the media. So it's

running water media, got it? Yeah, how far into the future are you booked on the white tail hunts? Uh? This year's full. That's pretty that's pretty much it. Um. I've got some people that are always like come back year to year. So archeries usually fairly full, muzzloaders usually really full. And two years ago you killed some giant white tail there and muzzleloader bavery Yeah, yeah, he was like they scored. He's like one seventy eight or something

like that. It's a big white Yeah. I think be booking lots of folks with a hundred and seventy white tail coming falling out of your pockets. I wouldn't say falling out of my pockets. I really try to, like I really try to be like conservative with selling some of these hunts, like especially on the size and stuff. Just you know, like we do have some Muleteer two

and our tags are good for either. But there are some guys that have called me and said I want a one eighty Muleteer bust and I'm kind of like, yeah, you don't want to come here then, because it's not that's not fun selling things like that. I don't know, it's interesting like that outfitter that lesare placed at the time, like we would get handed. I guided for him as well, and like we would get handed people that you don't. It took me a while to realize you don't really

know what they got sold. You just know what you're supposed to be guiding and what's out there. And it's really awkward after they have a set of expectations that you would never give them. Yeah. Absolutely, it's really awkward. So I try really hard not to do that. Right, you'd be like, that's a really good deer maybe like what dear, Yeah exactly, they're like, well, we're all the big deer. I had that conversation. It wasn't very much fun. Yeah,

it wasn't good. So I try to stay very much in the We like to keep a small like tighten nit, you know group when we're there, like four people tops is all will take at a time. And intimately, yeah, I don't want like a huge camp. I wanted more to be like I want to say, more like family, but kind of more of like and you're in there cooking and everything too. I did cook last year a little bit. Yeah, I wouldn't say it was great. Steve but it got the job done. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah,

we're including all that. I saw a thing recently on me. It wasn't recently. I'll scroll into your social media stuff. You had the thing where you weren't posting trail camp photos anymore. Oh yeah, yeah, we had a deal. Yeah, we just had a deal. Whereas like, I think we're we're posting a lot of pictures and I think people people were like moving in on the neighboring ground that technically isn't supposed to be getting hunted, but they know

nobody's really out there, so they Yeah. So yeah, I don't know, because that's kind of like an advertisement thing for if you're a dear guide, right, yeah. Do you view that by putting up what you're seeing on trail games? Do you view that as like a marketing thing or is it just because you're interested in it? Uh? Pretty Yeah,

just like me posting trail camera pictures. Yeah, I mean, are you're doing that the show people like, hey, here's what's going on, Here's what's going on, like this year type of deal Like yes, um, but it does have a little there's another edge to that sword, which is you advertise, Yeah, you just then people like around know what's there, and there's places that you can kind of slip in from the back or whatever. That's I don't know the nicest way to say that, just like Poacher's trespassing,

what it is stupid things? Yeah, yeah it does. So story Big Deer make people stupid. Mm hmm. So now what uh who? When you're filming, who do you work for? Do you do do people? If do you have clients like that they're going hunting and they want to like document the hunt and you'll hire on and go document their hunt. Yeah, pretty much. So Yeah, there's like there's a lady of film for the last couple of years has bought like Governor Sheep tags. Um, I'll go film

her on those. Um Like Rockslide dot com is a website that I've written for for a long time and they wanted to start doing like, you know, just doing good films with their hunts to help I think with their you know, brand and image and stuff. So I'll go do those. Um. Crispy Boots have done some stuff for UM. But yeah, it's just things like that kind of whatever companies them I'm involved with if they need somebody to go with the murder, take product pictures or

whatever I can go. He Uh. I was gonna say, how did you flip that? Because normally sounds like you're behind the camera, you're guiding, but you just got done with a pretty special hunt where you got to be behind the gun. That got flipped. That I got flipped. Yeah, So that was a deal through Six Hour, who I started working with a couple of years ago. Yeah, and so they've got they've got a rifle coming out that

we wanted to do. It's, um, we wanted to do a hunt like kind of around with a rifle was intended for and it's just a really lightweight, packable rifle and so uh kind of threw a pitch out like, hey, this is what this thing is made for, like once you send me on a sheep hunt. And they're like, well, we might be able to make that happen. And it worked within you know however, Yeah, I still can't believe it. Still can't I believe it. So that's what we did

in the Brooks Range. Yeah, sound slope. Yeah, I got an outfitter that I actually found the hunt in January. He had had a couple of cancelations founded off Craigslist. Yeah, No, that one was word of mouth too. It was yeah, yeah, it was awesome. It's totally coincidental. But I was looking into some hunts in the Brooks Range talking to some people, and the Brooks Range right now is not in good shape. But the ship, i should say, the sheep in the

Brooks Range are not in good shape. There's a lot of not good shape sheep units in Alaska right now, just some bad string of bad winter. But you're like the sixth person that I've talked to that had an unbelievably good sheep in the Brooks Range. I don't know if I would say it was like unbelievably good. Well, it was basically the opposite of like yours for weather and whatnot. It sucked for most of it, but it was it was fun. Did you see any other rams

besides killed? I mean I saw probably six legal rams. Um we saw them all like two days before season, the day before season. Yeah, and then like we found one in the middle that we ended up blowing a stock on, and then the one that end up killing at the end was with another legal ram. So yeah, but we just had a bad string of weather. It

was yeah, yeah, for pretty much. The first day was good and we had a ram that we've been watching the previous two days give us the slip and thought, no worries, like we're right where their home is, Like we're gonna just pick through here and find him. And then the next day it was pretty much like zero zero on visibility and raining for I think until like five six o'clock that night, and then the next day

it was a whole day in the tent. The day after that was most of the morning and the tent we got to move a little bit and it broke that afternoon. We ended up finding a ram that was super cool, but we just like the way that we had to go in on him. Um, we couldn't see exactly I didn't think anyways, we could see exactly where they were bedded once we got around into the top, and just took a lot of time to do that

as just moving in that country as hard as you know. Um, And they ended up going through a saddle underneath of us as we were trying to go through the saddle to them, so we basically passed each other and I think we were like two yards from him, but it was so steep that you just couldn't see. You don't have those hills like have a lot of creases in them, and they ended up busting out. So that was and I told the guy that was like I've blown a lot of stocks. That one was the worst thing hurting

one that I've ever had. But yeah, then we spent the next it was like the next three days in the town and it was just the most frustrating thing on the planet. Oh man, Yeah, burned up a lot of in reach battery on that on that deal. So doing that one time sheep hunting and no one brought a book, but my brother bought. I had thought to bring a book, and there's three of us and he cut his book in thirds and since it was his book,

he got to read front to back. I had like start in the middle and then get my third later. So you had to read it like portions. You know, man, sit in the tense, painful. It sucked, but it's I mean, I don't know, I think we've done what three dollars she punts together, and I feel like that's been a part of every single one. But every time it makes you mad. Oh yeah, but you got to go in expecting it. You know. I mean that's why you go for ten days, because five of them you probably can't

see anything. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it it got to a point where like even if you wanted to, you know, like the guy told me, he said, I don't know most he said, most of my clients, like we would have left three days ago because it was just like they would have got burned out. Yeah, they would have got burned out. But where are you gonna go, like, you know, walk to the air strip. But it's still they can't come get you. We're just gonna like stare

at wherever that is. And uh yeah yeah. So finally it was like it was the eight Now it was the seventh day of the hunt. We woke up to snow, but everything was like clearing off and it was starting to get nicer. And made our way down the spine and we were starting to figure out our exit strategy because that was a that was a Wednesday, and we were getting picked up on a Friday morning from the air strip and we're still a ways away from the air strip, and so we're on this ridge like right

up in the rocks with the sheep. Our guide finds four rams across the valley on another mountain, and he's like, I think we can. He's like, I don't know if we can get there and back to the air strip, but that's kind of our only options. So he's like, it's up to you, Like, I think we can get there and get this all done, but at least get close to him, or we can stay up here and

keep picking around trying to find sheep. But he's like, either way, we have to be at the aer strip Friday morning, so at eight o'clock, so you like figure out, you know, kind of what you think we should do. And I'm like, I would rather go after those sheep, and all of our eggs were going to be in that basket too, Like it was a little bit lower on the mountain, um they were. They were probably the only sheep in that little that mountain that we could see.

So I was like, I'd rather go over there and screw it up and not get one, then sit up here and wish we would have went. So he's like, if it, we're going. And it was like we left there at five o'clock. I had to go through the brush line and then back up through the brush line and all that, and we got we were a thousand yard it's from the sheep at one am and they were still batted where we left the last time I

saw him, So that was nice. And uh so we threw out sleeping bags on a really steep hillside and just try not to freeze to death. And it was light enough that we could start like kind of moving and you could really tell which ram was which at

like four thirty in the morning this Thursday, this Thursday morning. Yeah, so we watched him for quite a while and it was like, of course, the coldest night that we had was when we just through sleeping bags on the ground and like didn't have any things like when the storm breaks, it's really clear outside. Nice. Yeah, it was cold, super cold, and uh so we watched him for a while. They ended up bedding out on this like rock cliff thing.

We weren't going to be able to make the approach we wanted, but it was kind of getting down to crunch time, like we need to move and do something. So we came up with this. We came up with this plan, moved in um and then are we had our packer we left back and he was supposed to be giving us hand signals and we never could see him. But it turns out he could never see the sheep either, so that I guess all worked out. Um, But we moved in and knew what do you think was going

through just doing good? Yeah, I don't know, um, but yeah. We just had like pretty a couple of pretty defined like rock outcroppings that we were pretty sure we could get to and be like two yards from the ramps or so. But we could never see him the whole way over. So we're just hoping that they were going to be there, and we like snuck through. And all those rocks are like you know how they are just that they don't have a home. They're like always you know, rolling,

making a lot of noise. So we just tried to be as quiet as we could. And I remember it was like this big rock slab that had a crack through the middle of it, and the crack was probably like two ft wide, and the guide poked his head through, and I remember being like he didn't have any he didn't, you know. I expected him to see him really fast, and he didn't move, and I'm like, oh, they're gone, like they backdoored us or whatever, Like they're out of here.

And about that time he put his head down and he said, oh, ship a hundred yards and I was like, all right, we're close, and and uh, they were just they were just moving out. And so it was four rams pretty much in a row, uh, in a line, and they were just like moving across the rocks. And it took the guide a little while to figure out like which one there was two legal rams, um, the one that I really liked and the one he thought was the oldest. His lamp tips really flared and that

was obviously, you know, that's super cool. So he finally told me what which one he was, and then he was just calling out I remember his calling out ranges. He would just be like one eighty, two hundred to ten to twenty, And I'm thinking, like that little fold that they were in was not really that big. I'm like, if they stay await, like pointed directly away from me the whole time, like I'm gonna I'm not gonna get a shot, Like we're gonna get this close, I'm not

going to get a shot at him. In about that time, it's like to twenty I think was the first shot. He just kicked a little bit, quartering away and I put it like right in the last rib and came out his armpit and then he was that was my sheep. Great man, it was super cool. What do you do with that? It's gonna be a full body that we're kicking a dog here, rocky Mount, bighorn sheep fighting a doll sheep, whole body mount. You could just knock it

out on the last day like that, have the whole adventure. Yeah, it was awesome. I mean that's really how everybody wants their hunt to like play out. There's just not in hindsight. They hindsight, not everybody. There's plenty of people I think that would say, you know, I'll kill him one day one blow the steam off my cup of coffee. Jordan. If you do, uh, if you do full body, how do you have to carry that animal out? You can't, you can't. I mean what do you do immediately? Just

a full body mount? So we just skinned him, like we just took all the hide instead of are they doing like you know, like a half like first shoulder, Um, we took the whole skinned him in the field and then yeah, okay, get it. Yeah, we packed him out and we got back to the airstrip at three am, really Friday morning, catch a little five our nap plane lands. Yeah.

It was pretty pretty tight. Yeah, yeah, and then the plane like, of course, the first like really nice day was probably the I shot him, But the next nice day was like, at least the plank could come in. The other option was we were gonna have to walk to the river, which was like, gosh, I don't know, it was probably like another eight miles from where we were, and then I guess hope that the clouds would be high enough there that they could get in. But yeah,

it was nice. They got in. The The guy landed at like seven in the morning, and he had brought the packer and the guy had like a bunch more supplies because they had somebody rolling in like a couple of days later, so they were just going to stay up there. And he brought him a half case of beer. And when he took off and took my camera, guy back um me and the guy just like cracked a beer and looked at whatever it was, and I was like, it wasn't that bad, but it was kind of miserable

in the moment. We're pretty beat up afterward, your feet and everything. Yeah, like I was, I was pretty good, but that no, I shouldn't say it was pretty good out that it beat the hell out of me. That just those last couple I don't think I lost a bunch of weight, but we weighed my pack when I got back from the pack out and there was like some other guys that I went with, and we all kind of got back at the same time. They were waiting their packs and my camera guys like, you better

weigh it, like just to just to see. And I'm like, I bet it was like eighty pounds, like it's it was heavy, but it was like whatever I made it, it was a hundred and two. I was like, yeah, no, wonder in my I couldn't feel my toes for like a week and a half. Pounds. Yeah, I don't ever want to do it against Steve hold the car. Yeah, just carry that much. That's smart. Yeah, that's for everybody.

Because I just hung out with my body and Colorado, who did not get to join me at all on my sheep on and one of the big reasons because he's battling bulge disks that are most likely from you know, years of pack and a lot of meat. So kids Jordan just did it. She made it out alive. Man, don't overpack your back and battle that for the rest of your life. Doesn't kill you to go back for a second trip. But so are you? Are you addicted and you're trying to, uh like work any every single

angle you can to get back up there for another one. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to see, like how the doll sheep one goes, but I'm gonna start putting in for Big Horn a little more seriously now. And yeah, I'm not sure where my sheep hunting. We'll we'll go. Now if people want to go check out, how do people go find the video? You know the video guys made, So that is gonna be I think that's gonna be out in January and that will be like a First Light uh six hour kind of combo. Great deal there.

So yeah, First Light sent the videographer, which was it was his first mountain trip ever to sending the season. Pros couldn't find any Yeah, you got a book. It was kind of short. It was kind of short notice, but he did fantastic and didn't complain. Probably kept me in better spirits. So so they can find the video through SIG's sour in first light. Yeah, yeah that it probably won't be done until like January, I'm guessing. And then, um, where someone wants to come book book a deer hunt

with you. So Running water Hunting dot com is a website. You can kind of get the full run down there, and then just really through my Instagram at Jordan bud. What's the Craiglist ad heading for the uh, I've moved away from Craigslist, totally away from Yeah, I have. I think that's probably the smart smart thing spell all the Instagram because you got like a little underscore or some shipping there, don't you. Oh you have a dot Jordan

dot bud. Yeah, people will find you, yeah, they should hopefully. And then and then you guys book Turkey Trips. Book Turkey Trips two is pretty full already. Yeah, pure bread Miriam's so that's native Miriams or yeah yeah, not the hybrids rather hybrid zone so it's cool. Yeah, super white tips. What do you like? What do you like better? The guy in Turkey Hunts are guying deer hunts. Oh, dear hunts for sure. Not a big Turkey person. No, No,

that's you don't like squirrels don't like turkeys. I never said it didn't like squirrels. I just haven't don't be into squirrels. I'm gonna come out and hit them squirrels. Do you like have your white tails on the ground more than in a tree? Where? How do you define yourself as a white tail hunter? Uh? Archery wise? Like from trees? Nice? I think, um, we can hunt them

on the ground where we're at. It's just we're hunting them a lot like coming from uh betting to like their food source and vice versa, and a lot of that is through open pretty open country like open roly. It's really hard to do, but it's doable to get to get close to them when they're when they're doing that. So like muzzleloader and rifle, Like absolutely, that's the way I'd like to do it. UM, Like we blind hunt

for muzzleloader, and we can for rifle. Honestly, we haven't really had two for rifle because we usually feel like on the first day or two, UM, But for muzzloader, like, I really prefer to be on the ground, but we'll put you in a blind if it's applicable, UM, and I think it is. It's like a very very effective way, especially with you know, a lot of our clients are

coming from back East. They haven't really stocked anything before, so it's all really like new and that like ambush style of stockings, really fast paced and it's trying to get yeah too much sometimes. So do you have do you do you know about deer that at the end of the year, even though you got all those clients, at the end of year, the deer gives you the slip like you never find it or usually if it's out there, you're gonna find it. Usually if it's out there,

we're going to find it. But like that dear that tanyevery shot that you were talking about. A few years ago, I found him. I had one trail camera picture of him, and then after I got the trail camera picture, I went in to try to to glass him and he popped out of a corn field and was walking along it. So I saw him. That was like mid August, and we didn't see that deer again until we killed him December. Second. There's a little mystery out there for you. Yeah, yeah,

for sure. They definitely like those big ones, especially like they know how to they know how to slip around, especially like right in the middle of the season. It seems like later season in December, when everything's really coming into the fields and it's like a major food source. It seems like they we get a lot of bucks show up at that time of year and a lot of new deer that I've never seen before, which is kind. But you guys also get some pretty good like still

get some rud activity early December, don't you. Yeah, yeah we do. Yeah, that can be a really good time, um for that rud activity. And then like you know, Nebraska's rifle season runs right in the middle of rud of the rut pretty much the third week in November, so yeah, we can. Yeah, we can hunt the the rut a lot. I mean it's pretty much September, September one, December thirty one, you can be hunt deer in Nebraska. Man, I think you're gonna book up. I think You're gonna

book up some trips man off the show. I hope. So it's really fun. I'm telling you, Like, the hunt's fun. Like we see a lot of deer usually, um, and you'll like you'll like cook him a burger or something. Yeah, I'll cook you a burger. The crop pod is my friend, what's the Jordan Bunn specialty where you're like, d on Tuesday night, You're gonna like dinner because I'm cooking my uh pulled pork. I would say, yeah, yeah, not bad. She'll throw in a free pulled pork sandwich. Yeah. Bo

a trip. Now, I think you're gonna books and trips up. I hope. So, man, when people come out, you help them, you get all their meat package up or to get it all sets so they can bring it home with a processor or whatever. Yeah. So last in the previous years we haven't had a processor around, so we usually just help them like quarter it and get it ready. However they can get at home with them whether that's like mostly it's just like we try to debone it and do like all the things for c w D

and whatnot. Um, but we just put it in a cooler and they check it on the plane with them or yeah, we've like got it frozen completely solid before and shipped it. Um do things like they want to do something with their head that you they bring it home or you have like a person you bring it to. So a lot of people have just been like do they like doing the euro Mounts. That's been really popular. So I've got a buddy I went to Freedom the Freedom Mounts. I like that. How they had to rebrand

French fries during the Iraq invasion. No, yeah, France wouldn't get on board with the Iraq invasion, so they rebranded French fries is freedom fries? Like call them euromounts. We really taught them. Yeah, oh no, that changed their tune. Yeah. I don't like calling your I don't like calling him your amounts. I like that Freedoms. So if you would like Freedom ount I've got a buddy I went to high school with that's in town, that does a bunch of them and then he'll he'll get them done and

ship them to you. So then we don't have to like worry about the brain matter and all that stuff. It can be kind of really easy, like a painless deal for the getting everything back to him great Jordan bud Man, Yeah, that would be honest. She doesn't overbook the place. It's good hunting, get you all scored away, it's fun. Yeah, you're not mean to him, No, not most of the time. She hesitated. If you moved too much,

she might be a little mean. I don't know, and and tell tell everybody again where he can go find you. Uh pray. Instagram is the best place at Jordan dot bud on the Instagram and uh, I think that's it. Running water Productions dot com is my media business until the outfitter business again. Running water Hunting dot com. Thanks for coming on, Thanks for having me. Man, he'll we get some business. Let's go people, all right, Thanks everybody,