This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast.
You can't predict anything.
The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I t E dot com. Everybody, here's a quick Camo news flash which Phil's just gonna jam into the episode. Camo's Phil's favorite subject. People don't realize that, so he's probably gonna
want to jam this in right up top. On social media, you might have been seeing lately that me and some of the other guys that hunt with have I've been working on testing a new camouflage pattern. And because of all kinds of stuff with how things go and you're developing an idea and working on it, people will ask about it. They'll be like, oh, hey, what's that new camo and is this going to do that and this and that, and we just couldn't talk about it. I'm
not trying to see them all cryptic. We just couldn't talk about it because we're still you know, working on and testing and developing the idea. Anyways, now I can finally explain it because so many people have asked about it. It's called Serka coming out from first Light, and it is the ultimate Western big game Camo pattern for you,
you know, dedicated Western being Gabe hunters. So if you think back on the history of Camo, well, not really the deep history, the recent history of Camo, Okay, you have all these conventional mimicry patterns which attempt to make the where it look like you're part of the environment. I think back to the old days when like Camo would be like sticks or leaves, you know, and you look good to the human eye on the shelf because
you're thinking, what's more natural than a stick. However, when you view that stuff at any realistic distance, those overly complex patterns, they just solidify into a into a coherent shape, okay, which just makes you more obvious to game. Because you look at it up close, you think it looks like sticks. But you get any distance away and it looks like a huge you just look like a dark human shape blob. So you're thinking it's sweet but it's it's not how
it works. Like a deer doesn't look at you and be like, oh, a big pile of sticks and leaves over there, standing out weirdly from its surrounding environment. Right, well, Sarica uses it's gonna sound fancy, but an optic field disruption to maximize concealment. It seems counterintuitive, the idea of it, until you consider it, like a tiger or a jaguar, right, and look how they blend into their environments. So now
they're gonna they're not covered in twigs and leaves. Sarka emulates the predator strategy by using that same like a limited palette, like you know, tiger two colors, a limited palette of strongly contrasting tones with these sort of these structures that appear to crack apart in order to break up your outline. Saraha does not make the wear look like a tree of rock. It makes you look like
nothing at all, no discernible pattern. It's great for you know, sagebrush country, alpine tundra, everything in between, especially those sparse landscapes with minimal cover where conventional cameos are really just going to turn you into that human shaped blob, so check it out. One a half second of confusion makes the difference between punch and a tag and getting skunked. You will want to reach for Saraha cambon and now
here's what you gotta do. If you want to find out more, go to first light dot com and sign up for notifications about when Sarica gear is available this spring.
Thanks.
Okay, everybody, we're in Uh, we're in our remote field studio in South Texas, maybe forty minutes from Brownsville, Texas, fifteen minutes from Raymondville, Texas, four hours and ten minutes from Austin, Texas.
In about four hundred yards from our last remote studio and four hundred yards from our last remote studio. And today we're in we're in what I would call a post rut environment. Deer seasons deer season is generally closed unless you have We're not deer hunting, but deer season's closed.
But I think that some uh, there's some kind of deal with depredation permits where depredation permits are still valid, but it's generally shut down to the point where we're watching a buck who is packing around one antler and we.
Just saw three bucks. One still had two antlers, two had zero antlers, And we're just basically going to run this podcast until that antler falls off, and then Seth's gonna run over and retrieve it. It's windy. Yeah, some gus will win. There's your one antler buck.
Yeah. He is like very curious about what's happening over there.
Yeah, he's probably never been to a live podcast.
He's not looking at us though, Oh.
Oh, he's looking their direction. Yeah, I can see a couple of buzzards. Just to set the scene, Krinn just tried to catch an armadillo, but ambassador.
Called Yeah, just called in. Have Alena. That about ran is over.
That was a voice of special guest Cameron Haynes, who felt that Karinn in pursuit of the armadillo. He felt that she hesitated.
You never see a lion mountain lion halfway chase something and be like, oh no, I'm doing it.
You know you're right, that's true.
When when the lion goes he's going, he's I mean, there's no hesitation.
I didn't want to hurt him.
He's like the lions like get hurt.
Yeah, lions don't have empathy.
So she hesitated, and then we earlier tested the metal of uh Seth and Max and found out that they lack metal. I think when someone's metal, you're testing their m E T t l E. Right, yeah, yeah, you're not testing their m E t A L.
I think we need to review the footage because I think Max.
Did a lot more jumping than I definitely did.
When you're doing an experiment where you play a just we're going to place more distress calls on him in here. We did an experiment where you play a distress call to a pack of Have a Lina's. And I was telling these guys that my experience, twenty five percent of the time they'll charge, and and I spooped him before I could get where I wanted to get, played the distress call and we got one to he didn't quite charge.
He was pissed. Yeah, And he came in again. And he came in and tested Max's metal and found it to be soft, found the metal to be malleable.
I'm just saying. I was filming and I was looking at the screen and then I look up and he's like right there, and I'm like, oh, okay.
His metal is aluminum foiler his M E T T L E S O F T.
Okay, this is probably not gonna work because we're making a shitload of nose.
But percent of time it works every time.
You know, we're gonna talk about a bunch of stop. First, we're gonna hit this. Let me see how loud this is. So we did squeaky Jack. That was squeaky Jack on the havevelina that responded, And right now we're gonna hit I'm thinking shelter beell max shelterbell, yeah, or TN T TN T praid of TNT, which would be a rabbit in distress. You know here this is a we're uh, we're using a Lucky Duck revolt caller, and we're in
the just the sounds that come with it. And I'm in the cotton tail folder, and within the cotton tail folder, I have cotton ball like bawl like b a w l, cry like you're crying, not like I have like your applying makeup. I have shelter belt, TNT, silly rabbit, high pitch on and on down to bugs, bunny and skid row. We're gonna lay out some TNT we're gonna do. We're gonna talk over it. I think I got it fire enough a way we can talk over it. We're gonna do Volume ten.
Just don't turn it towards us.
I'm not gonna do the turnaround. And we're gonna hitch TNT and see what we got. Oh, we can easily talk over that. That's ridiculous. Okay, We're gonna let that run a while. No, with that on, I need.
Stay ready with that long len.
There's no way if a Kyle comes ripping in here, there's no way.
What.
I don't think I can get on with that big ones.
You might maybe it's.
Like I was saying, Join the Day by Max Barta, Seth Morris, myself, cringe Schneider, Hog Hog Slayer, cringe Sneider from the last time we were in our studio down the down the row there and Cameron Haynes, and we're gonna do a couple of little quick talking points now, Sath. I don't know if you're aware of this. I've been
meaning to tell you this. A listener wrote in and and uh, it's afropros of being in the outdoor studio because when we were in our other studio down the way there, you did you were set in the scene similar to how we just set the scene now, and you set the scene with a rattling sequence.
Yeah, I remember.
The gentleman was, how's the wind killing us?
The wind's not great.
It's not great, but maybe we can just be cognizant of where we turn our heads sometimes.
A gentleman wrote in that he was listening to that episode and during your rattling sequence, a deer ran by. Oh yeah, sent that and I thought that it was really cool, And then I realized he was driving, which makes me think it was purely coincidental. I don't mean to not.
I don't mean well. When I was reading that, Karin forward that email on it. I had thought that I had rattled in a book either too. I read it twice before I realized you didn't rattle a lot, and then yeah, then realized he was driving.
I didn't realize that until after I forwarded it.
Another piece of listener feedback that's appropriate because we're in hog country is we reported repeatless. Let me walking back through some history on the pig called the lipstick Pig or floppy we are. A long time ago did a call out where we were looking for great trail cam photos, crazy trail cam photos. And a guy writes in and he sends in a picture of a pig with what I said, looked like he had his lipstick out, So a pig that was I felt that the pig looked aroused.
And we then did a clarification that not that krins particularly sensitive, but we did a thing that like a great trail cam photo, a crazy trail cam photo is not that the pig has his lipstick out. That's just you know, and we were trying to define what we meant by a great trail camp photo. He wrote in to say, you got it all wrong. It stuck out.
It's always like that. So we had a veterinarian on We had a veterinarian on the show Divina doctor Divina Spencer from Virginia Beach, and she told us all about an ailment.
Paramosis. Yes, she told us.
If you listen to that episode, you heard it. She told us about parafemosis, and parafemosis is that. And she has dealt with this frequently, as she explained on the show, She's dealt with this frequently, or I shouldn't say frequently. She's dealt with this with dogs and talked about how to treat with dogs and then worst case scenarios they've had to do like a penis removal on the dog and sort of cut things and tie things in place and basically makes like a little like a.
Little pee hole at the hide for it.
Well, then the guy writes back, once we clarified that, he then writes back that he is gone and shot floppy. The last photo we get a floppy is it laying on his garage floor? And when they skinned it and butchered it, he found that it's bladder was quote I want to get this right, very very quote hugely full of urine, really hugely full of urine. And he he he feels that it was so full, alarmingly full, that perhaps that he couldn't urinate unless he had a high pressure. Right,
you know what they call that? Uh?
P h O What does that mean?
Piss hard on?
Oh there we go, like when you wake up in the morning.
Sure had a piss Sure.
So here, guys, I'm looking at a picture.
I'm looking at a picture of him sitting here in the garage.
Yeah, for our audience, ptill put this up on video. But yeah, I think a measuring.
Stick, So I wrong I would have put that picture up. That would have done that.
Yeah, bad deal.
Yeah Steve, maybe you put this on behind you too, But.
I put it up and I put the wrong photo up.
I was going to do further reporting on my uh, phantom groin pain.
I'm not going to get into it. We've covered it.
But somebody wrote in about it.
Multiple people about my phantom grind pain, and I don't need to get into it anymore.
I'm all better.
Now here's someone rolled in and this is an interesting thing. I was telling the story of my father attempting to neuter his cat, fig the cat. He tamed a feral cat with fish heads and it became the family cat. And one day he wanted to get it neutered, and he took it to a hog farmer body of his who's neutered hundreds of hogs and figged and they put it in a gunny sack and cut a hole in the gunny sack and attempted to neuter it, and the cat fought him off, as you never heard you want
to talk about a distress call. And it only lasted like a short period of time, and they're like, never mind, And then the cat lived.
The rest of his life.
Intact, the guy wrote in saying that a veterinarian wrote in twenty seven years as a veterinarian, and he has neutered untold numbers of tomcats. And he also goes, I'm to say I have spent my entire career listening to men tell me. I've spent my entire career listening to men tell me they'll just stick that tomcat in the boot and do it themselves instead of paying me to do it. Usually the wife looks at him, then me,
then rolls her eyes and schedules the appointment. I have never once known a person from this generation or the prior, who could neuter a cat without veterinary help. Cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, horses, no problem, Cats, no way. It was refreshing to hear a more realistic take on the topic.
Man, it would be intimidated to do a horse. I feel like.
I wouldn't do a cat. Well, you're an honest man.
Also related to Texas, we have there's a news item, and this news item was reporting the Wall Street Journal, and it was about I'd be curious to get your opinion about this, anyone who's got opinion about this. I'd be happy to hear it. I'm undecided. A county in Texas, Okay, what county is this? Brizonia County, Texas, south of Houston. There is a plan from a biomedical research firm that owns a five hundred acre parcel. Okay, so, Brizoni County,
south Houston, Texas. Biomedical research firm Charles River Laboratories, all right. They own a five hundred acre parcel in what sounds like a quiet, nice little community. Their plan is.
To build.
A facility that will house forty three thousand, two hundred monkeys that then can be sold for animal research.
Locals.
I want you to take a guess locals are excited a or be not excited.
I'm glad I don't live there.
Forty three thousand primates Okay, Now, so you can guess that Pete is not crazy about it. The chosen site borders land owned and protected by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Nature Conservancy, and the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. Locals affected, including the locals affected, include veterinarians and directors of conservation organizations who are now speaking out
to voice their opposition to the facility. Locals in Brazonia County would be a little slice that think they have a little slice of Texas, solitaries away from the hub of of Houston, and they want to know how much racket? How much racket? I'm trying to curious about the sentence. How much racket does forty three thousand monkeys make? Wouldn't it be how much rackt it?
No? Is it right?
Yeah? How much racket is forty three thousand monkeys make? I'm sure they're not quiet. A shrimper had that to say. He owns eleven hundred acres nearby another neighbor. I thought this would be a place to get away from everything. Now a monkey farm is my neighbor, says a retired veterinarian who owns nine hundred acres. People were about their property values plunging. Now here's where you get into this whole thing, Like I would figure when I'm not a taxan.
Far from it.
But when Texans like to think of Texans, they like to think of people doing what they want on their own land.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Do mass of taxes, Republic of taxes keep Texas weird? No, that's not a thing. You know what I'm saying, yeah, So this throws you into uh the stosie into a bind because on one hand you might fancy yourself like a property rights person, but then on the other hand you get you throw the nimby thing into it. Not that's that the acronym for not in my backyard. So you're like, in theory, I'm a pro property rights person, but not when it comes to putting monkeys by my house.
This is just a private company doing this.
Yeah, it's a private company doing it. It's not a government research facility. But like, I don't judge nimby stuff because everybody has a little bit of nimby mentality, but it does it creates a problem because if you'd have gone previously and asked these individuals.
If you'd gone to this, you know, I mean, you know, I don't know.
The guy's probably great, the shrimper that has eleven hundred acres, the retired vet that has nine hundred acres. If I'd have gone and said knocked on dor and said do you feel like people should be able to tell you what to do on your property?
Data said hell no or no?
They would have said hell no, how they is that?
It probably a little deeper voice and like, hell no, mine.
He sounded like it wouldn't have been Biden.
That's not fine, hell little.
Man, No, it would have been hail no partner.
Yeah, hell yeah. I kept thinking of Parker Hall and he's like ship no man. Yeah he's not from Texas, I know, but he's South Yeah, and they all sound the same.
Yeah.
So uh so this is a stumber. But I can tell you that as much as I might be like a little bit of a you know, generally simple like generally sympathetic two, generally sympathetic to private property rights up to the point where you're doing environmental damage to like neighbors.
Like meaning, if I own a spot and I decide I'm gonna dump you know, arsenic in the creek because it's my property, and then the guy down the creek on the next property's like, dude, you just do arsenic in the creek and now it's all over my property.
Yeah.
Right, But the monkey thing, I don't know anything about that game. Well, how would you roll on that you're the neighbor of the monkey man?
I don't want forty three thousand monkeys in my neighborhood.
So you'd be no, i'd be now.
I mean, I just have a partner. I just think it's inevitable that some of those things are going to get out. Yeah, and then what Yeah, well you know what the planet of the apes. Yeah, it's not like they get out in Montana and they just freeze to death, you know.
Yeah, that's put in there because there's a good environment for Yeah, they're going to get out down here and like can establish a population. This is a This is an especially appropriate conversation to have here because if you sit here for an hour, you see a monkey, you're gonna see three things that did get out, Yeah, exactly, which is more than three new guy water buck, we saw it.
We saw a.
Red letchwa Is that?
Am I saying that? Right?
These are all animals that run around in this region, not fence from place to place, free range, So stuff gets out in Texas. Bigfoot question, is it real?
No, it's a reasonable question.
And it's based on that bear Bigfoot.
So yeah, we covered on the probably the we covered on one of the goofiest things ever. Not recap it, So listeners who already heard it bear with me. A researcher was looking at was trying to find correlations between prevalence of bigfoot sightings and abundance of black bears, which is fine, Sure, I don't care. And they pointed out that the higher density of black bears you have, the
higher density of bigfoot reportings you have. But then, as I postulated, their friend or a colleague or something said, I mean, that's kind of pointless that research. So then they said, with a seam, with a straight face, they say, this could be helpful for bear conservation because you could look and see a decline in bigfoot reportings and translate that to a decline in black bear numbers. So instead of counting black bears, why not just count bigfoot sightings?
Which felt to me like a stretch. Yeah, that felt to me like a I'll just say it. That felt like a dumb idea. So no offense to the you know, minor offense to the person. Someone wrote in, would you consider bigfoot to be a potential.
Vector for trichinosis? Oh?
Yeah, it depends that they're herbivorous. They gotta be then no, no, no, they're NONI they're omnivores. I would think like when you think of a bigfoot, you think of an omnivore.
Yeah, like he's gonna take a he's gonna he's gonna take a jack, He's gonna take a bite of a deer, and then like have a couple berries, do you think so?
Yeah? Uh so, then that would put him in the yes, but he's not gonna get it from a jack rabbit. He would have to be eating and he has another he'd have to eat another omnivorous animal. They don't overlap.
Eat bear.
What if those researchers came across someone who said they saw the bigfoot eating a bear, would the research.
Throw it off?
They're like, so, does this mean there's a lot of bears or not many? Yeah, they eat bear? Sure, And then that's a good question. It's just we need to have more research on bigfoots. And then they're saying, what if bigfoot is a hominid and it is, would the flavor profile be similar to pork since many cannibals have referred to human meat as long pig. Great question that was from Rob and Jason. They had to put their heads together, Rob and Jason, they had to co work that.
They had to work that.
One up together.
Yeah, took the two of them. They met over. They met over coffee.
That's great.
So we've been covering a little bit just just because it's fun, sort of like, uh yeah, odd little issues having to do with odd issues having to do with T. S A taking your guns, knives and ammo.
I just recently had to throw a knife in the trash. Did you go through? Yeah?
You hide it? No, Bush hide't know Potter, Well.
You know where it was in the Philadelphia airport. You weren't going back. No, I was deep in line and there was no Yeah, I wasn't going back. There was it was. You didn't say it was a bench made bunk.
Out in the trash.
Wow.
You could have said to someone like, hey, can you hold my place in line? I need to go bury my knife.
I was. I was running late too at the time, so I didn't have too many options.
This gentleman has this to say. I'm gonna skip ahead to his name. Oh Tucker.
Great interview Tucker with Putin.
Yeah, fresh off his interview with Putin, he has to say, I was listening to the episode that you were doing in the bus talking about T. S A stories. We'll get this. I like that the story where he says we'll get this. That guess my, that guess me me aens twenty nineteen. I got married, and I got married, ran out of alcohol, so one of the guys that was a friend of the family went and got more alcohol. Sounds like your way, needlessly say. I drank a little
too much four roses that night. So we got home about two am, and we had to get up at about five am to get to the airport. On international flight to Jamaica. He's like, ee Cummings, he is no punctuation on international flight to Jamaica. Now I say international because that's very important noted because five thirty am I woke up to my four forty five alarm blaring and phone blowing up, still drunk in my uber driver calling me since five am to see if we were still
going to the airport. So we jumped out of bed, threw our bags in the car, and raced down on an hour drive to the international terminal in Atlanta for a seven am flight, and realized that we're not flying to Jamaica. We're flying to Charlotte and then we're flying to Jamaica. So we're in the wrong terminal. So we hop a bus to the domestic terminal. By the time we get there, we've missed our flight. Then they got to find us the next flight to Jamaica two hours later.
So here I am still drunk in the airport, going through security, getting all this yep, yep, I got it. I throw my backpack on the belt. It goes through the X ray scanner and I'm watching the guy looking at the screen and his face turned sour. They move my backpack off the side of the belt. A lady goes and looks at it and brings my bag over so she can search it. I said, yeah, no problem.
She starts unzipping zippers and then pulls out a full clip fifty rounds fifteen rounds of forty five ACP that was sitting in an inside pouch of the outside zipper in my bag. So at this point, I feel like I'm about to pass out, because you know, obviously I'm going to prison. Look at her and I go, oh, ship, you can keep that to to it. She looks at me for a couple of agonizing seconds felt like minutes, and says, have a nice day, throws that mag in the trash.
And lets me go.
He said that that dose of serenade has an added point, this is something interesting, not serenade. Adrenaline sobered him up. Oh so if you ever I don't drink anymore, but if you ever feel like you're too drunk, something scared you.
Really.
I mean, he's a lucky son.
I feel like he would at least got pulled in the back and got like a question a pat down. You know.
Now, Now when that happened to me, I had the cops came. They took me in the back room just for AMMO one shotgun shell and they knew they they knew that. I was like, dude, I'm so sorry. I was hunting arm again with my brother, you know. And they're like, yeah, obviously, dude, but now we got to do all this stupid shit, you know.
And that was their attitude.
It was like, oh, come on, man, they didn't have to they get through in the trash.
Yeah now apparently I know true because I said, never mind throwing the trash.
So you had your shotgun shell in your chata backpack.
I was like using my day pack hunting, and then I like, unday packed my daypack and use it for carrying my stuff.
Because you can check shotgun shells. Cane I know, but it was in my carry on.
Yeah.
Oh well, I'm just clarifying you. Oh yeah, for sure.
Sure, I've I've flown to a place before and got there, started going through my carry on looking for something to realize that I had a knife in there that made it through security.
Yeah, I've done that with broadheads. Yeah, I had broad heads in my carry on made it through another jump Part two.
I know this has become a topic that has been revisited several times, But after donating a knife to a trash can, I think I found a better solution than has been mentioned so far. How are they coming in?
No, I think that's call Sorry, you're getting ready to run?
No, and Max was really trying to get out of the way.
I have charged the.
Solution two. After stepping out of the shuttle bus, I realized I still had two knives on my person.
Still.
He got rid of some, but still had too. I refuse to trash two perfectly good knives. He's like a he's like a gunfighter. I refuse to trash two perfectly good knives. So I asked the buster if he could take them back to my car and hide them for me. This technique may have been discovered already because he promptly produced an envelope for the knives and said they should be tucked under my windshield wiper when I returned.
Nice good guy.
Gave him a tip when he returned my knaves. My knives were safe and sound.
Oh so you were giving really helpful hot tips in America.
There's lots of options that I didn't know about.
Well, that was before he was at TSA, though he realized he had the knives. Yeah, so when you're at TSA, it's more of an airport.
It's more of an airport story.
So Cam, lay off me.
Your your what's your previous hog hunt experience? I gather you're not like a passionate, dedicated, lifelong hog hunter.
I know. I mean I've killed I've killed a number of hogs, but it was Yeah, I just like beow hunting, so I'll be hunt pretty much anything.
And where where would you? Where have you done your pig hun California? Okay, yeah, Northern California. It's a different seat. It's a much different pig hunting scene in California. I mean they run him, they run him more like a they run him more like a game animal. God, now I can't even remember, Like you have to get like these tags. Yeah, you get tags for him. I came some hurdles to jump through. Yeah, it was.
That was my first out of state hunt because it was really Yeah, it was in like ninety two maybe thirty two years ago.
Huh.
Me and Roy went down to wuy Rica and remind people who Roy is. Roy is my buddy who got me started bow hunting.
Roy Roth.
And uh, yeah, he passed away in twenty fifteen, but we did a lot of hunts in between from that time when I started in nineteen eighty nine to when he died in twenty fifteen. And that was our first out of state hunt. We could drive there from home in Oregon and you went there, two hunt pigs, two
hunt pigs. Yeah, we And that was with dogs actually, so we were they had them bade up in the brush and I was on my knees in the brush, dogs and pigs running around, and I shot this pig at about I don't know, I don't know, eight feet yeah, and then I went down before another, I mean other times and then spot in stock like kind of in the rolling hills kind of outside of one time outside of Sacramento, and uh, then another time more south of there.
But yeah, the first one I got was north of Sacramento.
Okay, spotings thought like green rolling hills kind of yeah.
Well in the right time year. The other times year was dry right, speckled with oaks, yeah.
You know, and a lot of poison oak.
So it's kind of a real hassle to hunt there.
And they had they been dug in where they were bedded, and you kind of stuck on. I'd get out early and it was hard.
It was like, I don't want to say it was hard, not hard hunt, not like hunting here. It was you had to like think yeah and try. And the trick was to catch them headed the bedding at daybreak or to catch him popping out of bedding in the evening.
And it was it felt more like.
A glassing spot and stalk deer hunt in this area to the point where a friend of mine from school, her dad ran cattle on a number of places, and she I said, oh, you can come on pigs. But he was to the point where he would sometimes wonder if he even had any pigs at on the ranches at the time, because of they were so subject to water and when when stuff was dry, he felt that they were gone. When stuff was wet, they were there.
So I never saw anything like what we saw today for some years because for a while that was the pig hunting I did. Yeah, was like, I hope I get one pig hunting in California.
I went another time with this. He was a pretty well known bow hunter. One time, Ray Howell and we were down and they were in like, uh, in the oats, like like a whet or a wheat field, and uh. It reminded me of hunting carp when the carp were spawning and they're like kind of in the water and you can see the grass kind of moving around, so you'd see the you know, the the wheat moving around
and you're like, oh God. So you sneak up there and you'd get i mean sometimes from me to Corin, oh yeah, because they're they just don't know, they can't see anything. They can't see anyway, but they couldn't hear, couldn't whatever. You get the wind right, you get right there and you just kind of almost shoot them like a carp. And I shot this one one time. We were filming it. I have the footage somewhere, but it it ran right at me and ran between my legs.
I went like this kind of raised one leg between my legs and we were had the We had got a big kick out of that. But for a moment, I felt like Max, I definitely would have.
Jumped up, and you felt like, yeah, yeah, so.
It was pretty fun. So I don't know how many I've killed, but I haven't done it in a while. This, you know, this invite came. You and Joe had planned on doing thestry plan of doing a deer hunt that fell through than this, and then you know you and Joe somehow invited me and so here I am and didn't plan on it, but I'm very thankful that i'm here.
When I asked Joe, I said, do you think Cam would want to go? Because Joe said, well, let's just go back for pigs. And I said, do you think Cam would want to go pig hunting with us? And he said I can one hundred percent say he would.
I've never turned down a bow hunt. I mean, people could ask you want to bow hunt anything anywhere and I'll be like, yeah, don't even have to wonder.
So okay, but let's say I want to get back in the pigs have turkeys. I want to get back in the pig on more and say this. Let's say I said, for whatever reason, I said, hey, we're going to go down to this place, but here's the deal.
On this ranch.
By declaration of God and man, you can't hunt with the boat.
You would have said, yeah, I'll stay home.
Yeah, I mean, I just I mean, I just don't like shooting. No, I don't have anything against it. I take I take people out rifle hunting all the time, and I'm I love seeing people be successful and being immersed in my lifestyle, which is hunting. I don't separate myself bow hunter, right, I think we're all together, but me personally, I just can't get excited about it. I can't. I just love the like this morning was perfect. I
love spawn stalking. Getting in there, you know, you got to look at the animal, the position of the animal. You know, these these bores they have shields on their shoulders, so you got to think about where that arrow is entering. You got to think about I just love the strategy of bow hunting and then watching that arrow, you know, find it smart, find a smart drop in and it's like I just have It's just I'm a bow hunter. That's just all. Yeah, that's all I am.
Man talking to you, hanging out, he makes you feel like I need to. I don't know, it makes you feel like I do like I do, like I do everything, which means you don't get good as much, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I like to go trapping, I like to go predator calling. I like to go deep dropping, shallow fishing, ice fishing, fishing, bow hunting, gun hunting, yeah, knife hunt, you know what I mean? Like whatever, Yeah,
And that's understand. It keeps you from ever being It keeps you from ever being where you're just an absolute.
Master at some pursuit, your jack of all trades, master of none.
Yeah, like you've dedicated yourself to water following.
Yeah right, I mean it just started getting into the big game.
So you know, you did ask if I ever I think bird hunt or whatever else, and I don't. This is all I do, big game, bow hunt. That's all I care about. So I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm missing out on experiencing these other, you know, pursuits, which I'm sure are great, and maybe I would grow in some way because of them, and maybe interact with people that I wouldn't otherwise, and that would be rewarding, but I don't care about that.
I mentioned knife hunting half joking, but then I realized on the subject of pigs, I've done the in New Zealand, in Hawaii and in Florida. I've gone out with guys doing the dog hunting where you just in the end, all you're doing is dispatching the pig with a knife, murdering it with a knife.
That's what it feels like to me. It's like, I mean, it feels like it's got to be like somebody somebody's stabbing somebody else. It's exactly what it is.
And the crazy thing about it is you think, like, if you imagine a arrow a broadhead as a it's a knife tip. You think nothing of delivering that knife tip that weird into the heart of that pig. But man, someone sticks that knife in your hand and you're You're like, no, I get it right in the heart. It feels you have to talk yourself into it.
Yeah, it's the the feeling of the pushing it in something. You know you don't feel that arrow. You're not controlling that arrow by by your hand, So feeling that cut in those times I did it, I like it.
Uh well, I mean the fact that I went and did it again and again and again, and I've done too much. But it really drew that question of like what, Yeah, with a bullet, you don't think about an arrow, You don't think about it, but then when you got to do it up close, it just makes you view it differently. Yeah, And that that's actually the thing I want to talk
about a little bit with with pigs. Earlier I made the joke that there's sort of no crime that can be committed against pigs, that some people would feel was gone too far. The other day, my little boy, my older boy, got he's now armed with the phone, which we have my wife and I have very mixed feelings about, but it just it felt like an inevitability. He now
has a phone. So my little boy, who's far away from getting a phone, comes to me all upset because the thing that his brother showed him, who likes watching hunting stuff. His singing brother showed him where they were some video where it's just they were out, sounds like
they were out with pistols, semi auto pistols. In a truck, and from the description My Little Boy game, he's like more or lessre's a video about running pigs over with a truck, running him down, running him over, and you see all kinds of things like this, and you go and it's it's it's a complex thing because there is
like state sponsored across wild pig range. There are state sponsored efforts to eradicate which is unrealistic, but I say that in some border states there's a plan to eradicate pigs from the landscape, and in some places are just a very concerted effort to control pigs. So you have like state sponsored pig killing where you're just trying to like reduce numbers, the same way they might go to an island and the galop aghost and try to remove goats by any means necessary.
Whatever.
The thing that happens with that cows, it's a thing that happens.
But I think kind of like from the fact that when I first started hunting, the first pig hunts I did were like it was big game hunting for pigs, and so I think that you fall into this thing like not living and growing up in wild, big country. It's hard for me to jump into. It's hard for me a little bit to move out of like game animal mindset amount pigs into like like like a basically a larger version of a rat, right, which for many land managers in place in Texas and other states, it's
like they are they are an overgrown rat. Yeah vermin, you know, yeah, they're destructive disease vectors play your.
Is that a heavy or a pig's heavy?
It is?
Sorry to interrupt, Oh no, you're.
Fine, You're fine.
We're here for what.
Was I hitting them with earlier?
Squeaky something?
But I'm telling you they don't come from that distance. It won't work. Try I'll try it, But I'm telling you now what I've found, Colin Haleine is is you gotta be not I didn't discover this, but that it's true. And it was the guy that makes J thirteen calls.
I mean, it's coming closer. How far away is that? What do you say?
Three hundred?
I can tell you it is.
No, he's just like obscured behind brush.
Let me get back to what I was saying. I'm gonna give all the arguments as as part of what I'm saying.
I'm gonna give you all the arguments against pigs, disease, vectors, competition for food with native wildlife, Destroyers of ground nesting birds so a wild native ground resting birds so, destroyers of turkey nests because they eat the eggs, destroyers of quail nests because they eat the eggs. They are agricultural pasts because they till up agricultural ground. They have a negative impact on water quality because they were rooting the
mud and denude banks of vegetation. What else. There's probably more bad things about pigs, bad old brace But I can't get I can't find my way into the I can't find my way into the pig eradication mindset.
Yeah, you know, I think when I was younger, I could easily. I didn't really care about Oh, I could kill, unbridled killing and never think one thing about it. Now, like even like if I'm driving and you know how a possua might run across the road or is like, I don't want to hit a squirrel apostle. I don't want to hit I will feel terrible if I hit something. Yeah, and that before when I was a kid, I was
almost cool. I couldn't. I don't know, I just yeah, I mean, I remember we driving down the logging road. Kyote would come out for some reason. They stay on the road and just driving and run them right over. I could never do that now.
So what do you think.
Made the change for you?
Just maturing, I think, and just you know, just growing up. The more you hunt, the more you kill, the more you care about It's the one thing that's how you respect life because you're taking it. You understand you know, life and death more and uh, you know more evolved mindset. So that's just part of it. And that's one reason I think anti hunters are so misguided. They haven't been involved in the circle of life. You know, they have because they're paying somebody to do their killing for them,
but they haven't done the killing themselves. So they don't really respect life. And that's why they threaten people and you know, threaten people's life for hunting and things like that, just because they don't get it. So it's that's a big advantage to being a hunter, is you you immerse yourself in this. We have blood on our hands, so it doesn't mean that we don't care. We care deeply,
but it's just part of what we do. So I think that's just I think it's just part of maturing and you know, evolving as a hunter.
I think one of the parts of the messes with me a little bit. The big thing is that they are there. They can be a little challenging to deal with, but they are edible. And when you go to the store, they're selling pork.
Yeah.
And so then if you do, you know, to do like eradication efforts, you can't help but look and think, oh, man, look at all that. Like I remember my buddy that works at a my body works at a place that supplies the grocery stores. And now and then they'll have a disaster where something will happen to a truck, you know, and you'll send me pictures like, holy shit, You'll send me pictures of some giant dumpster full of like food
that whatever got wrong, temperature, whatever got recalled whatever. You look at that and it strikes you're like, dah, what a waste man.
Yeah, you know.
And I remember one time I went to at one time, I went to a shark I went to a shark derby and what's that. It was like a like a fish fishing competition for sharks. And it surprised me because mako's are good, but a lot of the guys would bring in blue sharks, and blue sharks have a bad reputation.
Is food to have a lot of urea, so they.
K have a pissy smell and pissy taste to them. But seeing that volume of blue sharks in a dumpster just felt different to me than if I saw a dumpster full of rats, you know, and someone's gonna point out, well, you need rats, but it's like, I don't eat rats. Yeah, So that's like part of why the hog thing and even this spot, like this place for hunting.
This guy's they got.
Right now, too many hogs. I've never seen it like it. It sounds like he's perhaps never seen this many around. He's got too many. He's like, just try to get rid of them, and you still get up there. You're like, oh, man, I don't know if I can like just get a whole lot, like I can't jump out of big game mode on pigs, you know, probably largely from being from the north.
Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, even when I killed that that board today, it's like I feel the same as if I killed a bull.
You know.
It's just I still respect that life, and it still impacts me. I killed it. I'm I'm that was the goal, to kill a pig. I did it. But I still respect that. And it's like, I don't know, I don't know why I think that's just yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm I just know I'm getting softer in my old age human.
I just wonder why why we think of that as soft, you know, for example, as opposed to.
More thoughtful about it.
You know, I think it's I think it's because i'd say the same thing.
I think it's soft.
Relative to what you were, right, Yeah, soft relative to what you were.
Yeah, I feel better about it. I mean, it doesn't feel good sometimes, and I mean I don't it doesn't feel bad, but I mean I feel like it's a more honest approach than what I how I looked at things when I was younger. I think that when I was younger, I was immature and I wasn't seeing that the full scope of what it meant to be a hunter. It was just, oh, we just killed shit.
Yeah, I've noticed in my older age, I guess only thirty two, not old, but soft but not old.
Well, if this is as hard, if this is the apex of hardness and it only gets soft.
I don't know, this is not a good feature.
I've noticed, like dispatching animals in traps is like not as easy as it used to be. I don't know if you've if you ever got that way or feel that way. But like I'm don't get me wrong, I'll still I'm still gonna trap and kill animals in like feet away from me, in a trap where they can't get away. But it just like something about it feels different.
These das Man. That's interesting to bring that up because I noticed that, like I used to if I used to come up on something, if I when I was you know, high school, early college and really trap and hard and I came up on a fox that I caught, I couldn't get that thing dead quick enough, not out of like getting it over with.
It was just jubilation.
Oh yeah, zero thought.
And now there's a little bit of man, let this guy.
Go, like that coyote that we caught this year, just walking up on it and that thing like it ain't getting away from you. No. But with that being said, like I'm gonna do it again next year. Yeah, it is like a.
Yeah, kably allowing yourself to Uh. I don't know whether it's projection or accepting reality. Like you're looking at something that in the moment is helpless and you know you're just allowing yourself to feel it.
Yeah, my wife more and more thinks that. My wife more and more thinks that this sort of like overriding theory that that we're governed by, uh, we're governed by.
Fear of death.
As you get older, she tries, She tries to.
Pin a lot of stuff on fear of death.
I don't. I don't think about myself at all in those moments. I mean, I don't know if it's subconsciously I am, but to me personally, it doesn't feel like that's what's going on.
But yeah, maybe some I agree with that.
Yeah.
I just when I'm when I'm about to kill a kyo in a travel it feels like I'm not thinking about personal death.
Another thing my wife just told me has nothing to do with hogs or killing, is it? She said, there is no baby named Steve.
That's so true.
Yeah, she said.
You would never to a million years go to someone's house and there's a baby and they're going You're like, oh, what's the baby's name. They would never be a million years ago. It's Steve. That baby's name is Steve.
Yeah.
Oh wait, someone found Oh I should have put it in talking points because we have no reception. I won't be able to insert it. But someone found a quote I think it was from a Japanese author translated about the baby face old man face. Hmmm, someone wrote in about that they like identify the.
Youngest babies have the oldest face.
Yeah, there was, but there was a there was something similar, but it was a in a book by a Japanese author.
I'll show that to you.
So that's on my mind that the world's going to run out of Steve's.
So either you were born with some other name or you were born thirty years old. Which one was it?
When I was a kid.
When I was a kid, if you said Steve, if the teacher said Steve, six kids are going to raise their hand. Yeah, And if they said Jenny, six seven kids are going to raise their hand.
Now it could be boys raise their hand for Jenny.
You know, it's just or variations on Caden and then just know Steve. Anymore Steve's are gone.
The air of Steve's I hated.
I hated my name when I was a kid. I was like, why can't I just be like a Mic or a John.
Oh, you didn't want to be Cam.
Nobody's named caming you Cam, Cara, Cameron Cam.
Yeah.
I mean I guess maybe some girls would say Cameron, but yeah, Cam stupid.
I don't think it's I like it.
It's it's a little more accepted now.
But it's kind of so fitting though, because you're such a bow hunter. You know, cams on a bow. I don't know you ever think about that. You know, it could have been named Riser or something. You know, yeah, arrow, arrow, broadhead.
Passed through.
Dog stabilizer.
So Cam, what, uh, what's going on in the world of we kind of Uh, I'm familiar with what's going on in the world with you with huntings. We just hunted this morning. What's going on with your your running career? You're you're running passion.
M m.
Uh it's uh, you know, I'm not getting any younger.
Yeah, but you but when do you jump?
Like, uh, where do you sit within your age brack, because that's kind of thing is that's gotta be the things you start.
Paying attention to, right I don't know. I don't really like that. That seems like that. It seems like a cop out. It's like, you know, I still want to beat all the young guys. Okay, Yeah, Like being the fastest old guy would be like being I can't say it, yoused to be. There's a saying being the smartest. I can't say it now. It's like you get canceled if you say it.
Oh, I don't say that.
Yeah, so that's like being a fast old guys like, uh huh so I just you know I in my age group. Yeah, of course I do good because most people my age are dead.
How do the age brackets work?
Uh?
It goes. I mean Masters is fortying over, but then there's age groups within Masters, so it'd be like senior Masters. No, it'd be like fifty to fifty four, fifty five to fifty nine. So they caught it thin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is for like the what do you call them? The races you run?
Oh, the ultra ultras don't really have. Most good ultrarunners are old.
Okay.
Yeah, when you're young, you're faster and more able, but you're not mentally tough. So if you're gonna run two hundred miles, a young twenty year old is gonna usually ship the bed way before the end.
Really.
Yeah, so when you're when you're older, you're just you know, life has been You've been kicked in the balls a lot, you know, so you've been just a hard race is just like this is just I'm this is temporary. I'm gonna get through it. So you're just more mentally tough. Young guys just haven't developed that mental toughness yet, really you think so? Oh, I know for a.
Fact, that's why I jump.
You guys.
I guess it's like a different caliber of young guys.
But it's young guys that go through like the the the Ranger course and stuff like that.
You know, Yeah, there is it's a that's an extreme like those guys are they're in the special category.
Yeah, I'm talking in general, you.
Know, with you Yeah, there's of course there's tough like elite well special operator or what is that special operations? But yeah, I mean there's there's always freaks out there, and there's there's young freaks too. I'm just saying in general, when you're young, you're not mentally as tough as you are when you're older.
What is the prime age for the old What do you call? I mean, you don't call it ultra marathon? Like, what do you call marathon? You call Yeah, but there's an off road, but it's like off road, Yeah, it's trail.
Is there?
Like is there ultra marathon? It's it's on. Are they always off because the road's too hard?
No?
I mean there's your body. No, there's some on the road too. But that does beat you up for sure. I mean the mountains kind of give you. It's it's hard because you got the climb, but you are using different muscles at different times. When it's like there's a race called bad Water one thirty five and it's one hundred and thirty five miles in Death Valley. Most of it is on road which gets like one hundred and thirty degrees. You have to run on the white line
otherwise your shoes are melting. What yeah, geez. Yeah, it's intense. It's intense. So that on the road, very tough, and it's the same muscles for one hundred and thirty five miles.
Have you done that one?
I haven't done that one? Yeah, no I want to. So generally, ultras are in the mountains, but there they don't have to be.
It is my point.
And to answer your question, Seth, a ultra marathon would be anything over a normal marathon. So an ultra marathon could range from a fifty k which is about thirty one miles. That's a sh ortist ultra thirty one miles too. I've done two hundred the MOAB two forty is two hundred and forty miles.
ESZ and that how how long does that take you?
That took seventy eight hours?
Are you sleeping at all?
Two hours? So the clock doesn't stop the best people like Courtney, who I run with. She I'm trying to think how long she slept in that one she won that race. I got like maybe eleventh now I can't remember, but eleventh you count eleventh in your.
Age group or just eleventh eleventh that age with that age group.
Stuff hard man.
It doesn't that that doesn't work on ultras because I'm telling you there's old old in that race. There was like a sixty year old woman who beat me. Okay, really this freak Pam read she is so good. And women, I'll just say this, women and for for like elite endurance athletes. Women are I'm not gonna say they're better than they're better than most men. The toughest women are better than a lot of the best men because they're just so much. I think they're built for pain, for
because of child bearing. I think they deal with pain better than men do. That's why Courtney is one races outright over elite meno and she's you know, she's not gonna be faster. Men will have you know, will be faster, be stronger in general over women. But for endurance, it's women have an advantage.
So when you're doing that, at what point, At what point do you have a sense that you're gonna do well? You know in a given race, Like if I go out, if I'm out and I got a high up of mountain for whatever reason, messing around, hunting whatever out pretty quickly in the day, know that I'm going to tear it up or I'll be like, man, this is the should this should not feel like it feels.
Yeah, those races, because you got seventy eight hours to figure it out, so you can start off feeling like shit. I mean, there's a lot, a lot of time left to recover, so yeah, you just keep and in a race like that, I've went the first two hundred mile where I did the Big Foot two hundreds in Washington, which is freaking super tough. The trails there don't have many switchbacks like they do in a lot of the Western states for horse packers, a lot of those trails
will have switchbacks. In Washington for whatever reason, not many switchbacks, so you'd gain five thousand feet and it'd be just straight up the hill, just ass kicker. But in that race I went, and in most long races like this, you're up and down, up and down, problem solving, don't have enough salt, need more salt, need more, calories, need more,
you know, get dehydrated. And that one I was winning by hours, like I think three hours in the first forty miles because I went out too fast, got dehydrated, then freaking died, then came back. And by the end of the race, my brother was pacing me, who is an amazing runner. Taylor is his name. He's a he's one ultras outright. He was pacing me at the very end, and I was running so good. By the end, He's like, Cam,
I don't I can't keep up. I was running six something minute miles after two hundred miles after I could barely walk at some times during the same race. So you just learn what your body can do. But yeah, to answer your question, you can start off and like, I don't know how this is gonna work out, but you're gonna it's gonna be up and down no matter what.
You might start off great and then feel like, you know, after one hundred miles, which is you know, probably gonna be twenty four to thirty hours, you might feel like I can't take another step, and then you keep going and you do. Your body is incredible. People don't realize.
No, I mean, I mean, I like, I look at that stuff and uh, I look at that stuff like I can walk good, like good long distances. I look at that stuff with running and I just can't because even now and then I'll be like I'll run.
Back to the car and grab the whatever keys.
Yeah you know.
Then you get where you can see the car and.
All you're walking.
Yeah you know.
I mean, it's just like something something in my body is.
Like, what are we running for? Let's just walk fast? Yeah, I mean, you know, I just for me, It's given me so much confidence because when I was first hunting the Egle capital Ar, and this is kind of where I came of age as a mountain hunter. I was by myself, so I was scared, you know, I was scared back there sometimes and I was like, God, damn, this freaking these mountains are kicking my ass just mentally, physically, spiritually. It's like I'm thinking about my kids at home, you know,
little thinking about I should be home. I'm here. It's like all these and I just fit. When I got mentally stronger, I was like that wilderness was thirty miles wide by sixty miles long. It's three hundred and eighty seven thousand acres they called the Little Alps. It's very rugged. And I was like, I just what can I do to get tougher? So I started running and I thought, if I could run one hundred miles, finished this one hundred mile ultra first one I did was the Big Horn one hundred in Wyoming.
What year was that?
That was two thousand and nine. If I could run one hundred miles, I could get out of the all the way through the wilderness in one day. Why would I be?
So?
That gave me so much confidence I could go back there wouldn't think anything about being fearful or I just was felt so capable. So then I was like, instead of worrying about I got to make it back to camp, or or if I have camp on my back, how much water do I have? I do have enough food? What's this weather doing? You know, there was I didn't have a satellite phone or anything like that. But once I got that confidence, I didn't worry about that shit. All I worried about was I need to kill a bull.
And when when all you're one hundred percent focus is on killing a bull, not everything that can go wrong, all these things you can't control.
Not a yeah, like if I get it now, it's gonna be dark, right, you don't and then oh my god, I gotta cut it up.
And then what am I gonna do? It's gonna be warm. Maybe I'll there they are tonight, I'll come back in the morning. I'll make a plan. I just would go one hundred percent focused on killing. Every single time I saw something, I didn't care how far it was, I'd go and I killed. And it was just like it was that confidence, and that then that has carried over to everything. Now you know everything, but that ultra had that that ultra mindset I think facilitated that growth.
Did it change how you? Did it change you socially? Uh?
Yeah, I mean I pretty much look at everybody and think, yeah, you're a pussy.
He can now it.
But it does. When you hear people complain about certain things. I mean, I think anybody who does you know, fighters probably feel like they feel this way. Like my son who is a ranger, probably feels this way. You hear normal complaints and you're like, it's not really worth complaining about, you know what I mean, because it's really not that, it's not that bad. So it just gives you perspective over what's hard and what's not. Not really judging people,
I mean, I don't know. Everybody has their own everybody has their own threshold. I'm not I don't look down. You know, something that's hard for somebody, it's hard for them. I can't tell them it's not hard. It's hard for them.
What do you when you're in one of those megalong races?
What?
Uh?
At what point does it start to feel like it's it's one hundred percent metal.
Um?
It depends on you know, if you put in the mile So the general rule of thumb is the weekly mile mileage you get should match your race. So if you've been getting in one hundred mile weeks, you should be prepared for a hundred mile or this is roughly got it. So to get it. To get in one hundred mile weeks, you have to that's fourteen miles a day. So you run fourteen miles a day, you're getting a hundred mile if you can run fourteen miles a day. Because most people are you talking a seven day week,
seven day week, yep, every day. So you have to get your body used to those big, back to back days because in those long races, you're running for multiple days. Most people, if you go run a half marathon, I mean you're down for a while. Your body can get accustomed to day after day after day, and then like there's some you know, so I get one hundred miles a week, and then I'll do even bigger weeks like I'll try to do I go through stretches where I'll do a marathon a day, and that that would be
you know, two over two hundred miles a week. That's to me, I think that's what it takes to prepare your body to push like that, because in a race where you're not sleeping, you're not recovering. You might feel good for thirty miles, which is still a long ass run. But at thirty miles and at two hundred and forty mile race, you have two hundred and ten miles left? What are you going? So you're feeling like shit for
most of the race. You can't train And as soon as you start feeling like shit, stop because that's where most of the race is taking place. So it's just a matter of building your body up to be able to endure that that I mean, just what you're asking of it. It's at the end.
Are you towards the end?
Are you still doing that?
Oh?
You need salt, you need water, you need calories. You're at a point where you just you're just gonna finish it and not think. Can't you still got to be like can't you still like flying? You can still gotta be like flying a helicopter, paying attention to everything.
The whole time. Once you stop thinking about food or calories, hydration and salt, you're pretty much done. Okay, it has you can never Sometimes you get into groove and you don't take in that stuff every hour you pay for it.
Got it.
You have to keep those those three things up.
Yeah, on a different subject, you did.
They were mentioned to me that, you know, you like.
Still hunting and then moving into like stocks, right, and you're talking about hunting with a friend of yours who's a good caller. And when your friend says, well, let's try to call that bowl, you'll think yourself, let's try to, won't we to sneak down there and try to get it?
Yeah?
Yeah, talk about that a little bit.
Uh.
I think it's just used to I always used to growing up on public land in that wilderness, and everywhere I hunted, even before the wilderness, it was like twenty minutes from Eugenie or Springfield is where I would elk hunt. Very accessible, there's big bulls there. There'd be articles on the paper. We lived on that road, so opening day of deer season there'd be three hundred trucks going by.
So you get used to hunting amongst other people. When you're elk hunting amongst other people, you don't call because those bulls have been called so many times. So I grew up never calling because you blew on. I mean, even if you were good. Those bulls are probably not going to react. So I was just so used to and I gained a lot of confidence and I can just because to me, getting down on an elk is
way easier than stocking a big meal deer meal. Deer are so much harder to stock, just how they they're more aware how they bed because the bow hunter generally were way for them to bed, and then you plan your stock, you get the wind right, very difficult, and elk they're so noisy, they're so big, they're more of a dominant figure on the landscape, so they're not quite as skittish as I don't think it's as you're like
a white tail. Just to me, I had a lot of success and just got really good at stalking, and so I've never had to I hardly ever call. I've killed a lot of bowls and probably ninety percent of them were spawn stock.
When they're better, or you're doing them on their feeding or whatever anything.
You can anytime, yeah, just whatever they're doing. Uh Yeah, So it's just you know how hunting is is, you're just reading body language, You're reading body language terrain. You know that pig today you can eat pigs are you know, they're not very aware, especially now that I think they're so focused on feeding because it's been so dry. But you just you watch the animals. You see what you can get away with. You stay in the shadows, You
use whatever cover is available. You go very slow. You're not your arms aren't out kind of in line, your your legs aren't taking big steps, and that profile is barely moving if you're going right to them, and you just all that ways in and then you get into bow range. You wait for the right position and then you kill them. And that's just what I do on on everything, and elk are very susceptible to stalking.
I think, what what's your attitude or not your attitude, what's your approach when you're when you're in a big old like grab ass party with a couple of bulls and ten cows and everybody's running, you know, moving around, tons of eyeballs.
Do you just sit it out to wait or you get in there and.
Mix it up?
No, I mean it depends if the if the bull, if there's a dominant bull there, like usually I'm just gonna kill the biggest, oldest bull, so I'll get in And I mean I'm thinking, like a good example was two years ago.
I was.
I had somebody could have called for me. This bull. I could hear it was up on this bench, so calling it's not going to come off the bench he I could. I knew he had his herd up there. He's not coming off a bench to come to a call, right, he had elevation. They're always going to want to keep that elevation. So I'm like, he's not going to come to the call. I need to get back up on that bench. So I got up on the bench and it was really thick up there, and he came around.
He was going like working the bench and then going on the edge of the bench down towards the drainage. He would call there because they want to announce that they're badasses and they want everybody to know, so he would go to that edge of it. I was on the hillside edge where I came up, and I saw him come up and he raked this tree about I don't know, thirty five yards away but facing me, and
I didn't have a shot. And then he left and then he went back down to the edge of the bench over the drainage called and then he started to come back around in amongst or during this time, there's a couple of cows and they're feeding, and they would get there and there cows were like twenty yards. So in that case, I'm just saying, he's coming back. I know what he's doing. I just got to hope this wind holes wind was coming up at this time is mid morning, and I got to hope that this win holds.
I'm just gonna stay here, And so I stayed there Brandona Shock he was there filming me, and uh, I just stayed for probably I don't know, it was probably twenty five or thirty minutes. And eventually those cows fed up to about ten yards, and so I just knew that if this hole held, I was gonna, you know, wait him out. He would come up. And he came up to about twenty one yards, and I slipped an arrow through the brush and killed him. So it's, uh,
it just depends. That was just a situation where I was just weighing out what I thought was going on, what were the best odds for me to get that bowl killed, And then that's how it happened. You know, if there's satellite bowls around, it's he's going to run him off. I mean, he's gonna run, he's gonna come. He's not gonna let a satellite bowl get close to his cows without him coming in and let him know who runs the show. So it's just but as you know, as well as I do, and most of your listeners,
you're just every situation is unique. Oh no, and I you know, I kind of laugh sometimes when people, you know, they act like they got this species or this animal figured out. It's like, every single time is different. There's tendencies, but you don't have it figured out. You you you've developed and noticed habits. But every situation because of that, if that bench wasn't there would have been something else.
It would have been something else going. Or if that or if I was above him instead of below him, maybe he would have come up that bench to me. But it's like, I mean, it's it's a chess game every single time. I just love that part of it, and I've I don't have it figured out, but I have figured out good decisions to make to put the odds in my favor.
Well, that's that's part of what I think figuring out is is if you've exposed yourself to enough situations you start to put together a kind of probability calculator.
It's it's like.
Your crystal ball. I'm big on numbers. Oh I'm always running numbers, and I'm always like, it's it's probably. I was a purchasing purchasing agent for twenty years at the local utility back home, and I would look at everything like a calculation. So it was just odds and its numbers and just running and I just so I'm always looking at how much time I've been in this area, what the wind's gonna do with this, you know, just
like just running in my head. Like but yeah, it's just probability, I think, is kind of what you're saying.
Yeah, just getting in saying you're not you're not able to you know, you're not going well that one time this happened, another time that happened, an our time happened.
It's just I have a feeling, yeah, based on experience.
Yeah, I have a feeling that that thing, that thing's gonna come back up here again. Yeah, you know, and then they all run down the hill and you're.
Like, I guess I was wrong at that time.
I mean, it's not like it's you know, it's not like it's a slam dunk. But anytime, you know, people I do. I do a lot of elk hunting, so I get some balls on the ground. People say it's too much this or this or that, but but the point the point is, it's like, uh, oh man, Now I don't even know what point was. I'm sorry, Uh what what?
What?
What do you just say?
I said, well, you you think I was saying I was joking that you were convinced or thinking it's gonna come back this way.
But I said, then they all run down the hill.
Oh yeah, Actually, now I don't evenmember what it's gonna say. So sorry about that.
I don't know.
It's good dark out.
Yeah, sorry about the cameras, it's just running out of light.
No doing audio only.
We're just gonna have to like cut halfway and just one.
Problem we haven't thought of with our studio needs.
We need to be full moon only.
And only remember the bounce, the bounce bounce off that moon whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, but no, it's a oh no, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, people make it seem like, uh, you know, I don't want to say people have it figured out, and I don't, so I'll never say I have it figured out every time. But it's not like it's impossible. I mean, how many guys kill bulls every year?
Yeah?
A lot.
Were at the end the other day when it gets to be September and you see like the picture everybody's sending you and you're seeing you're like.
How was everybody? Yeah getting the ball?
Yeah? Well so I got to go look at people right around me, go did you get a bull?
No?
Okay, good, someone somebody did, somebody didn't. I mean, it's challenging and it's hard. It's ten percent success. I get all that, but it's not like it's impossible. So if ten percent of guys, some of them are prepared, some of them are prepared. But if if you can go out and you get lucky and kill, imagine what you can do if you focus your whole life on it. Sure,
you know what I mean. It's not it's not like we're saying, oh, you're gonna try to do this, saying no man has ever done Okay, it's gonna be tough. We're doing something guys do every year. So if if another man can do it, I know I can do it. So it's just good making good decisions, put yourself in position for success, and you know, basing all this experience you have, it can happen. It can happen often. So that's how it looks.
That used to be the only pep talk I knew was it only takes one. And then there's like another pep talk of reminding myself how fast things can turn around yep. And then the other pep talk is the old like, uh, well we're not gonna kill him in the truck. Yeah, that's you know, but you're all very pragmatic pep talks.
Yeah.
Roy used to say that all the time to my buddy Roy we started bow hunting, as we mentioned, but sometimes he would say, I don't know what to do, but I'm just going to be out there. You know, all you can all you can control is where you're at. If you're out there, who knows what's going to happen. There always a chance, and so yeah, he would just wouldn't know what to do. You know, everybody likes to think they have it exactly figured out. Any hunter knows
you don't always have it figured out. And you feel like I feel there's been hunts where I'm like, I don't know how I've ever killed anything. It feels impossible. But when you're out there, yeah, it can turn on a dime. Yeah, So it's a I think hunting teaches that optimism, that optimism optimistic mindset almost better than anything, because you have to believe. If you don't believe, you're at home, you're at home, you're talking on social media
talking shit about guys who killed Yeah. So if you're optimistic, you're not worried about any of that. You're out there and it's like, I'm going to make something happen.
Maybe I should combine those pep talk and it would be it only takes one. It happens so fast you can't get them in the truck. Yeah, it happened so fast it can happen. Yeah, it turn on a dime. Yeah yeah, I mean just like all of a sudden, there it is, you know, Yeah, how many times you have that feeling I've had, I've been You're.
Like, oh my god, I can't believe it. Well, we never I've more often had the feeling of please, please, could I just have a break please? I mean, I deserve I deserve this I've worked so hard, Please can I have a break. That's what I've I'm used to that.
I feel like that happens a lot of time, turkey hunting in the spring time, Like walking around not hearing a single gobble the whole morning, and then like you're walking back to the truck and one gobbles back where you just came from me. You're like, well, better go chase him.
Yeah, go ahead.
The one hunt that we do that every time, I'm like, I just cannot picture this is happening that.
Yeah, I can't picture. I uh, just just to close. It's a few years ago, me and Yan he went to Missouri for the turkey opener and it was the coldest, snowiest, windiest morning and it was like so winter time. I mean, you couldn't find it. There wasn't no bud on a tree. And we went out and split up. I went off one direction, Yeah, he went off in our direction. This this big chunkle of uh. I can't remember who administered it.
It was.
It was public land. It was like National forest land. It was some other kind of public land like county land or something. Either way, I'm out there and I've and I talked myself into that you just can't hunt in these conditions.
Sounds brutal.
Well over on the next over, on the next hillside, all sudden, son of a bit.
No, not a shotgun show. Okay, I was gonna say.
I'm over here saying everything like that would it's two windy, snowy spring and over on the next bridge, unbeknownst to me, Yanni's working a hot gobbler and kills it, and I'm like, dude, you know, like the mindset man, you know, yeah, you're determining that. It's like we might as well go home. And then he's working a hot gobbler around the next bridge, and talk about like the two different guys with the different.
Attitudes that that reminds me. I read I read this old story just on the podcast the other day, a solo podcast. I like, I like hearkening back on uh just good reading or good writers, or old books like Life of Full Drop, Chuck Adams, just old stuff that you know, people don't talk about these days. So I read this old article. Roy and Dwight shoe or honeying on Kodiak and they got stuck there for twenty three days.
They're supposed to be there, I think twelve. But the weather had the river froze and a plane is supposed to where we hunt on Kodiak. Plane drops us off on this river. They land on floats, but it froze, so they were stuck. But anyway, this nasty weather came in, and Roy always felt like he was going to be able to it didn't matter, It did not matter what the situation was. So Dwight said he was dry. Dwight Sheche wrote this article. He was trying to keep up
with Roy. Roy's going up the hill. And Roy's a big guy. I mean, you would look at him and you would think that this guy supposed to be a stud, biggest stud you've ever seen, or not ever seen, because you wouldn't think that biggest study I've ever hunted with. But anyway, Roy's going up the hill. Dwight, who's very capable, could barely keep up with him. And he said, while Roy was going up the trail and Dwight was struggling to keep up, Roy killed a buck in a red fox.
So and so then that sets the stage for this other one. The wind was howling so bad that they could barely see. Roy said, I'm i still got a buck tag. I'm going to go out. So they find this buck on this hillside just cover. The buck was getting covered with snow, but it was blowing off enough, or it was bedded down there. You know, these bucks on Kodiak are tough. Roy gets forty yards away and
Dwight said he couldn't even watch Roy. He's supposed to be filming him, but he had to look away because the snow was coming in, stinging his face so bad he could not and he couldn't show his hands, so he's turn and he said. Roy was sitting there bare hands because it's hard to shoot with gloves on if you're not used to it, and bear face and sitting there forty yards and I think for two hours. Finally that buck stood up and Dwight couldn't even face. He
had to have his back to Roy. But buck stood up. Roy killed it. Who the hell else would be out? You couldn't see anywhere snow it being you've been stuck there for three weeks. Basically, Roy still had that tag and went filled it in. So that's I mean, that's the kind of attitude it takes sometimes, Yeah, And that's what a lot of people don't have.
No, they don't.
I didn't have it when I was running after that.
No you did not? Well that Max next and Max facing down that Avelina.
Yeah, you guys faltered. Man. If you guys could could have hunted with Roy, Oh, I would give anything for that. He was like he made everybody better. Everybody's like he was so optimistic. It just changes it. It changes people.
Sounds like it would have been a bow hunter, now what you would have Yeah, if I got with Roy?
Yeah yeah, he uh yeah.
He was just no you speak of him fondly man. Yeah, all right, Well, thanks for joining Pitch black Out. We're gonna shut her down. This outside, dude, it needs four walls and some light.
Well, I want to say thank you, Thanks Steve, thanks meat Eater for allowing me to come here. It's an honor to be on the podcast. I told you yesterday we did Rogan's podcast. I think you and Joe are like the most powerful voices in hunting, and it's just it's an honor to be able to finally hunt with you man, spend time with your crew and all the guy you know. I mean, it's it's just I can't express how thankful I am oh.
Thank you very much, appreciate it. Thanks for including that.
It's been a lot of fun, learned a lot from your Thanks a.
Lot, Thanks Cam, Thank you, Matt.
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