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This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely beaten, in my case, underwear, less than half a Meat Eater podcast.

You can't predict anything presented by Onex Hunt. Creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Know where you stand with Onex. All right, we're here joined in part by Kurt, was it harder than Woodpecker Lips or Tufan Woodpecker lips?

Rascoe Harder and harder than harder than Woodpecker Lips, Roscoe. Out of Bozeman, Montana, did you know that that was your that's a guy wrote in, I remember you mentioning that last night Woodpecker lives. I don't think we had to say same right at that point. They've got to trademark that. Yeah. Yeah.

And I know now that you have I've witnessed it now. You're very you're monastic. Your.

Sort of monastic food regimen. Yes, pretty simple, it's put it all. I don't view it as simple, I see now. I'd call it hardcore. Oh, it's totally hard. It's harder than a woodpecker's. It is hard to do everything.

Everything about Kurt's shit is so dialed. Yeah, yeah. I was just taking notes all week. I felt like I was just a hot mess compared. Really.

Yeah, just everything is his pack, his foods. A feisty little fella, his likes, his clothing system, everything.

It's a fussy little guy. Just so fucking dial. Any time I was drinking hot liquids I was like, God, I'm weak.

Yeah.

Kurts from Kurzer designer stonebreaker and like a founder at St. Glaisher. Yep. Now started in 2012. Bought a sewing machine, bought a sewing machine half years before that, like a little old lady sewing away.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it explain this before. Is that you? Would modify your backpack so much that you eventually wind up with sort of a different backpack?

Well, that's really how it all started and it took a while. It took probably a couple of years. But, yeah, you keep tweaking on little things, started with the bags and started with the frame. And at the end of it, you end up with something completely new. So that was really where the whole company started.

I want to detail his monastic food regimen is.

And it made sense this trip because Kurt foregoes.

See, here's where it gets a little bit like. This is where I kind of got thrown off, I was telling the boys last night if I could. It's going to sound it's going to make you uncomfortable, Kurt. Well, it's a compliment.

It's a it's a compliment, but it might make you feel uncomfortable.

I was saying if I could vacate my brain for a while and go live in a different brain. I'd like I'd probably go live in yours for a little while, like and there's this very, very few people I would say this about, like if I could go occupy.

Like, I will live in my same house family, like same old stuff, but just have, like, be in your brain for a little while and be that.

That. Here's I'm trying to say here's an interesting. You don't like it when you're out, you drink coffee at home. Yeah, but you won't drink coffee out hunting. Because it's too inconvenient. And so you wake up and just energy bars and instead of coffee, you take a coffee, a caffeine goo. Yep. And then you're out the door of the tent. Yeah. But even in a situation where we had warm breakfast and had coffee and you didn't have to make it and it was there anyway and it was just there, you still wouldn't eat it.

Like, what are you trying to prove a point?

No, no, I'm just in a lot of the things I do in life and hunting being one of them, I just kind of get dialed in on my system. And and so when I wake up in the morning. Part of this I'm really hungry, so first thing I'll do is roll out of my bag and grab a bite to eat and then when I'm getting all my stuff packed and getting dressed, so, you know, in your bag.

Oh, when I'm starting to climb out, yeah, so by the time I have my boots on, my gator's on, I'm gone. So there's no cooking.

It's it's just kind of trying to be efficient and not having to get up earlier just so that you can make coffee that doesn't. I'd rather lay in my bed or in my bag and get more sleep and be warm, but what was going on when you you weren't even you snubbed our campfire.

I didn't know it's not your campfire, you know, that if you guys know or wouldn't go by the campfire, I didn't notice that.

I didn't notice that we were. All I know there was a there's a girl. She's just stood off in the distance. The fire didn't want to be corrupting. Yeah. The fire's too hedonistic. He didn't want to be.

He's like, I don't want to become soft by going by no campfire.

No. That second night, you were the last one by the campfire. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe he just didn't want holes in his gear. Yeah.

I was like one of those spiracles, you know, we're going to go back to that.

We could back some of that stuff. I want to I want to cover off on a couple of things.

You'll appreciate this. Remember how we were just in June, we hunted oryx at the white sands know. Missile range or not, the. I'll rehash ofthe range in New Mexico, you had a whole show about this, but explain to folks real quick, in New Mexico there's like two or exons, it's more complicatedness.

But just to simplify things, there's two arguments. There's a range, which means you get to actually hunt the White Sands missile range. And it's real handholding, like it's like a 90 some percent success rate. But real handholding, you've got to go to a little seminar.

They kind of tell you you can go over there, but you can't go over there. And at seven o'clock, you ought to be out of here and you can't start till it's this very like. You know, it's like being in the army, yeah, and it's on TV, it's that way because on a military base oh, top secret, they got unexploded ordnance all around.

Yeah, they got aliens locked up. It's like they got all kinds of stuff going on there.

Yeah. So it's real handholding, but you're going to get one like if you show up you'll get one and they call it a once in a lifetime hunts once you draw on range, can't ever draw it again. Meanwhile, the rest of the damn state is off range.

And that's a very low success rate. What was it I remember? I don't know either way, what's the 10 percent? Why do they fail? Just. Probably don't show up. Yeah, I don't show up or they want to hog right. I have no idea. And Unarranged got all this other shit, like they got a broken horn season. Where you can shoot one with the busted horn, it's crazy, but I'm trying to speak generally anyhow, when you're on off range, you know the whole damn state, but it makes more sense to hunt along the the fence line some bitch thing.

It's 130 miles north to south. We just kind of worked one the Western.

We kind of worked the western edge within zero within leaning on the fence, which I always felt guilty about.

When I leaned on that fence, I kind of lean flat handed so that my fingers didn't go into the missile range from leaning on the fence to five, what, five, six.

We killed one, what, five miles off? Yeah, five miles out of the range. You. You'll appreciate the story. Something happens there where footprints, thousands of year old footprints get solidified in that sand down there. Like, when conditions are right, someone can walk through and leave footprints in the mud. That's what it is when it happens to be wet. You leave a footprint in the way it dries and blows in. Things that happen in the mud get stuck in the mud.

Like what concrete sidewalk? Well, check this out. This is the coolest thing in the world. I like to think Rick could appreciate it, but he I don't know, you have to tell us, Rick. I wish Rick had one of those dial's. You could just tell how I want to get some dials installed in here where people that are in can turn up if they like what they're hearing and turn it down if they don't. Because it would improve the quality of the show so much.

Yeah, but you'd be looking at the dial. That's all I would look at right now. I just look at the timer. You know, if there was a dial in all the dials minute by minute ratings, that's what you want.

Yes. I don't know. Everyone in here had a dollar. And in all, those people don't know what they want. All those dials were collated into a single meter. So Kurt might be like zero zero zero. Doesn't like the story.

Yeah, it could be like I love it in responder's, like ten, ten.

So it's throwing me at whatever five. Yeah. That's how you get mediocrity.

I feel like when I tell you what, I'm going to now tell you this, that son of a bitch would be code red ten.

OK, they got some footprint's hear this out. They have some footprints that I know are at least ten thousand years old. In the white sands outside of the closed area, they can't follow the trail into the top secret part of the missile range. They're not allowed to follow the trail in it.

It's a long trail of a barefoot person.

They feel it was a young male or woman based on shoe size. Carrying a child on their hip barefoot, how can they tell that because. They think it was on it's carrying it on its left hip. Because now and then they'd set the kid down. Oh, and they would have the footprints.

So it's a youngish male or female carrying a child, occasionally setting the child down. The child walks with when the child's not walking, the gate of the person changes in their weight. They're putting more weight on the left hip.

No. Yeah.

And they walked one way. And then they came back on the same trail. And in the time. They were gone, a mammoth and a giant ground sloth stepped on their tracks. No, no way. And they're able to. Yes. Whoa there as mammoth and ground sloths tracks on the person's tracks. And then the person came back over the same trail across the mammoth and ground floor tracks, not carrying the child.

Oh, my through does not caring that you're not carrying the child. Oh, not caring. They brought the kid.

Oh, to wherever mammoth someone's like, hey, can you watch my kid? And you're like, I got to go to blog. Can you like whatever?

Can you watch my kid today?

We're having a date night, so if you don't mind, bring it back over to my camp later, what would the climate have been ten thousand years ago in New Mexico in that area?

Cold still call it. They're not. They definitely had there was mud. Yeah, there's mud. It's not like it wasn't frozen, but there's a mammoth. That's why they know the date. I think it's like it's obvious, like you got to think it wasn't the last mammoth. Yeah, but I highly doubt that it was the last mammoth that crossed her trail. Yeah, so. You know, the clock changes all the time, like the first humans to arrive here, the fashionable number used to be like thirteen thousand years ago.

Now, they got sites sometime around twenty thousand years ago.

Mammoths were largely gone by, you know, twelve, thirteen thousand years ago, so somewhere in that window. There's a theory that I'm really a theory that that you couldn't have peopled the Americas prior to the invention of the Eid Neidl.

Like, they had to have had tailored clothing because they came through Cyberia. Oh, yeah, so these are people that had to have that skill, had to have known how to make footwear, had to have known how to make parkas. Because of where, you know, they came from, yeah. Where's the major at risk now? Pretty high into it. Tell me more, Steve. He could go Roger Ebert and he'd be in a couple of films right now.

Oh, yes. Two thumbs up for sure. So Rik's meters.

Yeah. Like, hi.

So these tracks, just the sand eventually blew away and they walked in the mud.

I'm look, I got the thing right now. So it's like sanshin now. Yeah, well, no, because here's the thing. I'm looking at the article trying to not just have to read the damn article, but. They walked in the mud and were sliding a lot in the mud. Wishing and wishing they had some Chinese boots or something. Yeah, I wish they had crampons or something. They were sliding a lot in the mud. And dodging something.

Like now and then we're veering and hopping. They throw out mud puddles are mammoth shit, whatever, huh, they had some hops, so, yeah, they set the kid down and rest down, then Kitzmiller around. What happens is so there's 400 footprint's. And they would. Make a track in the mud and then things would dry and sand and blow in the problem, they've known about the tracks for a while the minute you excavate the track and reveal it.

It vanishes. Oh, man, so they film it or purposefully, don't, you know, go in and do them all.

But he said it's full of white sands national parks full of these old prince. That's crazy. That's really cool. And there's a slight shift in coloration that'll reveal the tracks when you guys are down there to comb ghost tracks. When you guys were hunting, did you? Was it that that climate that you left your mark? Oh, I'm sure someday they'll dig it up. And be like, they'll find me in South America. God, what really Vibram logo, some guy really knew what was up with some dude, kind of didn't really know what was up.

You can tell it's tracks. No, it's great. That's an interesting story now with your meters high. It's going to make your meters go lower.

I had a I was telling a story about my kid getting a nap, a red legged fly in his ear. You ever have that? No. That's horrible. I feel like you'd have that because you hunted in Alaska so much and stuff. Well, yeah, the little known that climb around but never want to get your eardrum. No, not with one that I couldn't get out. It sounds terrible.

It was in there and it was it was so bad. It was affecting his equilibrium and making them nauseous.

Oh, man, so how old was he when this was happening, just the summer hunt care? Oh, well, we were actually butchering Cariboo back at the airstrip at the not at the air carrier.

So was it alive in there and kind of moving around and freaking them out?

I was with this dude, this old roommate. I had this dude named Dan one time and he got a caddis fly.

We were fishing. He had a hell of a night that night.

He caught a bat on his back cast and he didn't like that one bit.

Then he got a caddis fly in his ear and full whip. Yeah.

Then he slept in his car and wouldn't get out the pigs.

He thought a mountain lion was going to get them. Wow, man. People tonight. Yeah. That reminds me real quick, I'm putting this to you to go a look on Instagram, you'll see this picture is due to send us a picture of a pelican. That. Goes down in his ditch and catches a carp. Tries to fly away with the cart, but it's such a heavy load, you can't get elevation goes into the power lines. Here's the power lines.

Catches on fire, God lands and starts a brush fire. Oh. And he sends a picture of the pelican laying there, hung up in a barbed wire fence with a big fire scar moving away from it across the ground.

Still the carp hanging out of his mouth. What was that kind of day that's kind of date is dude had. And we got it out with a pair of fish and he was like a hemostat, oh, you were able to go in and do a catus when this dude, Dan, had it happen to him.

Oh, and we practically had to pin him down. Yeah, well, my boy got someone's like put hydrogen peroxide in their. And we dumped hydrogen peroxide in there and holy shit, that bug come out in a hurry. Well, our resident physician here at Meat Eater, Adam Lazaar wrote in advising, don't do that.

He says, on average, he's an emergency room. He's been on the podcast when he was on the podcast.

The thing I remember most is that you remember like for our whole lives, for our everyone in this room, our age group. Car crash is where our lead cause of death, hmm had always been that when he was on opioid overdoses had surpassed car crashes.

As the thing that will kill you, jeez, man, is a cardiac arrest. No, that kicks in next.

Oh, so it's opio between 30 and 40 or 30 and 50. Yeah, it was like had always been like vehicular collisions would kick in like 18 or something like that or 16 and then up to a certain date like that's what that would be your lead cause of death. And then it switches to like heart disease and all that shit. OK, I got you. But opioid overdoses for males.

Opioids were killing more dudes than cars. She's it's a real problem. I got a bug ear thing I could add. Now, please hold tight, docs.

Let me finish my thing. That's why because I need to point this out because he's like he gives people four or five times a summer.

An emergency room, Maude's and whatnot in people's. You're canals. He uses a very vicious light, a cane to drown the bug and anesthetize the ear canal. Oh, so he does because he's a doctor and he has access to all kinds of cool stuff.

He like pain or leaves and wipes out the bug. He suggests if you're going to do this at home, don't mineral oil in their. It's hydrogen peroxide is too strong of an oxidizer. If you had a hole in your tympanic membrane. The chemical could possibly damage the inner ear on the other side of the membrane. Also, you don't want that bug moving around vigorously. So is your son OK round, you put that oil in there and he's like he's not like.

Is that why your kid ran into the truck with the snow blower this morning? Is he all right? No, he just ran. And he also he also just he doesn't look where the snout's pointing.

Oh, yes.

Was right in my face. Yeah. And it crashed into the wall. He's having a great time. Crashed into the truck.

And then he, like, sees the neighbor's shoveling and abandons our whole project to go over there and save the day or the snow blower.

It's like, yeah, it's like I go right at first and stuff does he does.

He got a match in many Jigen onesie like you.

You guys are doing he squidgy again once he got some of your bug story. Oh. Just on fire. And Seth may have known about this too, but firefighters mass in the air is common because if you're doing like nighttime fire line cut and all these bugs are flying around and you got headlamps. And so a lot of times, though, whatever for whatever reason, though, right into the air and all drawn to the headlamp. Yeah.

So we had our superintendent on the shot crew got one stuck in for. Like a day, just like you're saying, just drive animals it, make them nauseous. Yeah, yeah. He was like out. Have you been glad to be not firefight in the summer, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, I mean, you miss the camaraderie, but hell no, you don't get camaraderie hanging out with us. No, that's I mean, I got I got that.

And that's all that I got from firefighting. So that's what I liked about it.

Yeah, and yeah, do you mind real quick, Sharon, what's going on with you guys, little dip in like where you're at with the dip and right now the different products you guys are into? Oh, well, now you reindicted Kurts pass.

That's one thing, that fantastic bullshit that falls apart, dude. It's as a nicotine addiction. No, but he stuck to his Camaro today. That's not addicted. You haven't had one today. No performance enhancing out there. He's been around these guys. Yeah. And you still terrible influence. You stuck to not buying anything. Yeah. Stubborn about anything. Well. Oh, so that's how you draw the line.

Yeah. But it's a little chink in the armor, man. One soccer soccer person did. Yeah, yeah, what's the product you're using nowadays?

I mean, it's Zen, it's just it's straight up science, nicotine, it's nicotine powder. So there's no tobacco product.

So it doesn't make you have cancer. That's what they say. But again, as we're talking about at the trailhead, it's only been out for like a year or so, a couple of years. They they don't know it's worse for you than it hasn't.

Haven't we proven that nicotine can like nicotine itself, can cause cancer? That's what I had this argument with someone I don't know. But I just assumed that, no, I think nicotine alone is a carcinogen or whatever.

I don't know about that. Yeah, I. It's our fact checker. Yeah, fact checker.

I definitely be wrong about it, but it is less, it's definitely less abrasive and more convenient so. It's I started to quit chewing and I just double double the Dust Bowl at the same time. You're doing the low dose, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Years ago, it was down in South America with his quittin plan was that did you bring like a brand you were going to quit while you're gone?

Yeah. And the plan was to bring a brand you didn't like.

Yeah. So you weren't going to quit. Well, yeah, there was. Yeah. Is you're going to bring a brand you didn't like.

Well, and so you brought Grizzly, yeah, and then I ended up finding that when I ran out, I went a couple of days and then I spent a week focused on finding nicotine and finding.

Oh, yeah, actually, I found the general at a Norwegian hostel or something.

And then you got dip. Yeah. And then Garrett was saying he got back home and went into a gas station and the cans were talking to him from behind the counter. Yeah.

And by me. So.

OK, so you're flavor now. You like what.

Brand Skold classic long cut in but you also have some of that and then you just have straight nicotine and you have some more long cut. Well I used to put them both in at the same time.

I mean if there's beers involved sometimes but usually, usually I would go which you'll find surprising I'd only do to choose in the morning. To choose an afternoon and then, you know, cocktail hour is kind of game on cocktail hour, do you run one long one or you rotate it out between beers?

Yeah, one long one kind of is the to choose one right after another. At in the morning and oh, no, no, no, it's it's up to me, but so if I burn those to choose before 10:00, I got to wait till 12:00 noon so I can't get you something done in the engineering.

So he looks good. Oh, he looks great. Looks like so much more authority.

I know, I know about this. Whatever he said. But now I'd be like, oh, you'll tell me more. That's like I have power over this.

This board lights and knobs and sliders.

It's intimidating.

But now, now instead of having a break from nicotine, I popped in and dude, I read one of those things yesterday for like four I'd like disintegrated my lip.

We were talking all this deep stuff that I got all stressed out about.

I ran it for the whole day, which may or may not have helped. We were framed in our studio. Here is my favorite possession in the whole world is when Dirt made the cover of DIBP Afficionado magazine Rick's photo when we were in Wyoming and a little pony.

I think the jet was either gave Rick one of those ends.

Oh, I said, there's one thing about this that cannot be spoken. What? Who was doing what? Dipen Oh yeah. That was a top secret. Did my my division was not top secret. No records don't tell any stories about. Oh, only yesterday. Really wants to know. I know you thought I had it in for like a minute and I was like, oh yeah, I got all lightheaded. I'm not naked.

Yeah. Did you have to defecate all right? No, but I know people use it for that reason.

My brother, his colon has a anex.

There's a cold. His colon has an offshoot colon that needs nicotine to. It's always loaded.

Yeah. Because he's like I could have taken a growler.

Could be the last thing on my mind. Like, zero need to take a growler the minute he has a dip, there it is. Yeah.

So the only explanation is that there's a part of Anex to his colon that is activated, that's locked and loaded nicotinic receptors.

In the primer, the primer, the spark, the flint and steel, so to speak, is DIBP because then there it is.

No, that's true. Man Over time it is. You had that happen while you were having issues.

Yeah. I mean, definitely keeps me regulated, that's for sure. Yeah. Is that why you use it. Yeah. I'm kind of like Yenny when I think of the larvae implode. Yeah. Once you travel me and my brother one time we're on Alkane.

My brother is the same way and I swear we both didn't go for six days.

Good. Yeah. I was in the family but our stomachs don't blow it just like we eat.

And so it goes some way into the next burn it all up into the tobacco annex.

But that the the dip definitely helps the zins just for my wife listening and it doesn't cause cancer.

The research didn't say vaping was better for you to smoke weed like now. It's I don't know, last year I just looked it up.

Nicotine. They're doing some research about its role as a cancer causing agent. And if not itself, it imitable metabolizes into some chemicals that are cancer causing. So, oh, after you ingest it, just pure nicotine.

They always thought that the other substances were the the O, but some of the, you know, the gum and some other stuff could still.

Yeah. But when they get like if you go to like Cal like it can't be like the California kind of cancer. Yeah.

Because that's heavy. That's everything. That's everything. Everything I buy. The label says you can't see your nose in California and you get a chance to get cancer for getting on the airplane. Fish and fish and cancer known by the state of California to cause cancer. You can't use a sinker.

Yeah, but I think nicotine's probably in a more reasonable category of, hey, it's better than opioids.

So yeah. Yeah. About so I don't want to belabor the thing, but I was telling you, what I want to do is get into all the cha, the wisdom we're down in New Mexico.

I had to dip off of a tell everybody what that was. I liked a lot.

It was Morgan. Yeah. I can't remember that name. My girl had it. I'm going to remember because Daniel Morgan wrote the best Daniel Boone. Robert Morgan, the guy by the last name of Morgan Best Boonen biography song, I remember, I like Daniel Boone and you like him and I like that dip.

Clapping Morgan I remember because I used to buy what I used to dip or chew Levi Garrett when I was like in college and stuff just like sidesaddle. Was that a dude? Levi Garrett, I don't know.

Makes jeans too retro now and I don't know. And I know Strauss. You know what?

I'll tell you something, but oh God, I was like the Morgan shit was cheaper.

So if I was running low on funds, I'd buy Morgan Stanley instead of.

Oh, Morgan's cheaper than Levi Garrett. Yeah. So what does this do, Mike?

Rule. Quit Chu. But still choose. Has that work because he beat addiction? No, same thing, Kurt, he beat the addiction. So thoroughly. That he can now just have a recreational dip. And then not dip for weeks. It's kind of like a dude that quit smoking cigarettes, but like has a cigar every once in a while. That's exactly like that's a great way of looking at it.

Yeah, I'd argue that I'm a recreational dipper, though. Just timeline's different.

I know Ronnie Baim, who mostly go, yeah, Ronnie Baim got addicted to cigarettes through cigar smoking. He went the other direction. Oh, really? He started smoking stogies. He might tell you the story a little bit differently, but from my observation, he no, I think you'd agree.

He started smoking like old man types stogies. You know, like big fatties then. Started smoking like little Dinkas, and that was basically smoking stories that look like a brown cigarette. And then went to cigarettes. It's like one of those things like, you know, those like evolution charts are like a little monkey turns into a abreau.

It'd be like a dude turn into a little monkey is like path, you know.

So. So he's off because I remember on that.

I don't know where he's at right now, but he was he was chain smoking swisher sweets.

I know that man dude. He like, he like monkeys one off the other. Yeah. Swiss cheese. Like yeah. Yeah.

Like it's like smoke and cardboard roll like tobacco rolled and cardboard man.

Yeah.

Speaking of bone, here's here's another little thing I want to talk about.

This is this is a this is applicable to me and sad because me and sat there are going on a muzzle loader, flintlock, we're going to hunt with some flintlock, you know, old old style hunting on a recent podcast we were talking about.

Like. Did. Front, did you did users of muzzle loaders, not people who are like doing it for Fonzie's, but like people who are actually shooting Mazlo. Did they free pour powder or do they measure powder? And. And when you're watching old Westerns, there are always free porn, right? This guy wrote in and he said, there's this thing you need to consider about this. Part of measuring today is because we have standardized powdered. Back then, he said it was way more art than science, and you're like powder was all was highly variable and I'd forgot about this detail is Boon would even make his own powder.

How's that? Well, the first time he went over the Cumberland Gap, he was going on a year long hunt. He hunted and built up a small fortune to Hydes. Otter, beaver, deer hides the Pawnee, stole them, stole his stuff. Decided to stay an extra year, worked up another big load. They stole that. She came back empty handed. So he's gone two years. Ran out of gunpowder and he got sulfur. From deposit.

He got the charcoal and no, sorry, Centrosaurus burned Willow, so he got bat guano for phosphate phosphate, you know, bat guano for phosphate burned willow and had ash, which is some component of it. Got sulfur from like a lick, like a deposit. And then used his own piss. They would wet the mixture, they'd make the mixture and wet it with your own piss ammonia or one of the nitrogen.

Then you'd spread it out and let it dry and you'd make this pot.

So this dude wrote in talking about this insane artisanal that it was like all powder was different.

So the fact that you're like old Bessey shoots best with 100 grains of powder would be depends on it.

It just wouldn't even be like in there thinking it'd be that there's hot powders and shitty powders and powders that got wet too many times and you dried him back out and it would just be just very touch and go all the time.

So you'd figure out your powder mount for that batch that you had? Yeah, just a very fluid.

And I think he I think about now and dude's now when people hunt with. Muslim leaders who use any kind of like archaic, archaic technology. This is a thing I ponder all the time. It's like. You're dabbling in a thing that was just what people did in new. So if you're let's say you're Boonen, your father had one of these you had one of these shot, one of these from the start, it was regarded as a technological advancement.

Oh, yeah. It was a cutting edge piece of equipment. It wasn't like you weren't like fussing, you were like messing with something, you weren't like experimenting with something, it would be the same is like their relationship to that technology would be like your relationship to your phone.

Just very ingrained, you know, daily ingrained, highly intuitive, it's like it wouldn't you know, it's not like now like, oh, we have this date set, we're going to go shoot Flint Locks, you know?

And blow our faces off. It'd be just like you lived it all the time. Yeah. So it just didn't feel. Like how we think it felt. Well, I'm sure there was improvements within within each of those technologies that they're really excited about. Oh, totally. Like little small things like like Smoothbore to rifle barrels. Yeah, a big advancement. Yeah. What are you guys shooting? Is it rifled? Mm hmm. What's the range for you guys?

It's hot. I guess it depends on the person, but I'm. I'm looking 50 yards and then. Take liquor, what's your sleeve like clothes, like Bo do not in a bow, I wounded a bull and lost last year at the fair, not even a foot long.

Yeah, you didn't even have an explosion go off in your face, do that thing, hit the ground to that. Yeah, I just. So they lose their the. They just they're not hauling ass, yeah, yeah, they're not horniest. I think, you know, when I hit that bull's eye, they got, you know, hit it high up on the shoulder, like, knocked down. But he just got up and left me like, well, like, barely any blood either is like very little blood.

It was like punching him. Yeah. But no, like getting shot with a bulletproof vest on. So I learned my lesson on that ship and now I'm like Johnny tight when it comes to. I mean, granted, I think it was, you know, what was 600 pounds and. And that was like a. Bullet type, like whether they call it a Savitz. No, I think it's true, Tobor, wasn't it, we're we're going to be run patch ball.

Yeah, I'll agree to my shit beargrease to all do so you take like when you're shooting a flintlock, you got what? You don't believe me? No, no, it's just funny. You know, I totally believe you. No doubt in my mind, you get a little patcher.

It's a circle of cloth or you make your own. What do you what are you smirking about?

I just I this is all I, I've never heard of this.

You know, the you know, the old like talking to us that's killed all kinds of great ideas. We used to make my teachers very high. Right now we patches out of they call it bed taking.

Oh yeah. It was like that looks like a prison. It's like a prison suit, like blue and white striped shit.

And you cut I cut square patches. Not round. No, they're square patches. I learned all this from a good family friend. The your family.

That sounds like a Muslim. Your family. Yeah. That's, that's. Yeah. That's who got got me into it. Yeah. Because the feels like the Van Fossen burg's like I'd like for sure.

No better but yeah we cut our own patches and.

Grease them up and then they would use for grease. I think we use I don't remember exactly what it was, oh, you know, we could use beargrease would be swith on oil. There we go. I bet no one's doing that shit.

No man will bring python oil because I got a caught burning a hole in my pocket, a python oil.

Oh, we had the snake biologist on works and the pythons down in Florida. He gave me a call rendered snake oil. Well, what do you use it for? Grosses me out, not use it for anything. What did he say?

He gave it to me. Yes, he gave it to me as an oddity. Oh, not as like your cook your eggs with this.

No, it's like a thing that you have.

And then you when people come to your house you like see that he didn't he said to me without tighten the lid down very tight.

Oh yeah. So anyway, I think that's like utterly disgusting. This is smell gross. No, but just the thought of it.

Yeah. Snake oil. Snake oil.

Oh yeah. Medicine. You're talking about drink. Would you drink that. Absolutely not.

Unless it's foul if they increase your efficiency. Well I don't know, I don't know man.

But anyway they would, they would pour their own, they'd cast their own balls. The 50 caliber fatso's fatso's fatso's, yeah. Really, man, we're used to cars. No, I never cast my own balls, we used to go down to the gun range. We got to get to talk about what we're supposed to talk about, but real quick, I want to hear more. I want you to explain this more stuff, but we used to go down to the gun range.

And sift through the bank, the berm, get the lead, and we would cast our own sinkers. You know, cool and Ronnie Baim makes his own birdshot, yeah, which is cool as shit, you see that Duncker?

No, I haven't. It's through a drop. It's just formed through the air. That would be cool, like they use there's a thing called a shot tower. I've heard of that, but I didn't know how how tall does it have to be? Well, shot towers tall. You just like dripping little driblets lead and they fall down this shaft and cool it form into a sphere in the air like a raindrop.

And by the time they hit the ground, they're cooled.

Romney's little deal, was he doing it into oil? Water, I thought. Was it water? Oil?

I wasn't there. I just remember seeing it on the show. I think he drops them into.

I can't remember, but he's got this little thing, it's got a little aperture on it, you, Maillet, get cancer, don't dump the lead into this bucket and the bucket's got a little teensy teensy or a whole bunch, like a series of, I can't remember, 20 or a dozen little apertures like pinholes. And the pinhole determines the shot size, right, so you dump the molten lead in, have a cigar, drink a whole bunch of beer.

It's like the Rodney Baim recipe, sit in a closed area or whatever and out dribbles all of his butt. I mean, this is like a like a he's a tinkerer.

Like he's like he could make anything. He's like, remember, in the end of the ateam, they'd always find like a sweetshop.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like he did smoke those dudes from the ateam, like to rig up shit in a shop and out would dribble all these little dribbles and they'd fall through the air and land and I really cooled it with some liquid I bet water.

I thought it was warm. Tequila's water. Well water would cause bubbling in it.

He drifted to some kind of oil, but I don't remember dealing with a bunch of oily ashot. If Rick was any good at fact checking, he had this shit figured out. So failing go back to the fatso's.

Yeah, no, I'm just saying they'd cast their own their own balls and got their own patches and grease the patch. You don't know what they created, what it was.

I don't remember. I think we just some sort of oil, you just you stack a bunch of them up and dribble the oil on them and it's soaked through. Yeah.

So you take your empty bear, you got your empty gun.

Mm hmm. Pour a shot of powder down there, 90 grains for the pad. So we always pull a ball, then you got to see that ball. Yep. Then ram at home, yeah, so it's powder patch ball ram at home, and then if you're in a Western dude charges you and you don't have time to take the ramrod out, just smack and shoot them.

Right. That frickin ramrod man.

I always think of the last the Mohicans. When you talk about Flintlock, does he do that? Yeah, she's somewhat the ramrod. No, an elk or something. It's like an opening scene. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah dude. Yeah. He's like chasing it. Yeah. It's like very outmanoeuvre in it.

That's ridiculous.

When I did that, when I did that GQ thing where like called the breakdown. Oh yeah yeah yeah. That was covered that. Yeah, yeah.

Says the elk ass over teakettle with that flintlock like it does a triple somersault off a cliff so.

Yeah, and then there's a Frisian yeah. It's a prison.

Well, it's like this little it's hard, it's like a hard steel that the flint strikes caused the spark, you know, and there's a little buckskin you got a little square flint, like maybe three quarters of an inch.

Square. Half inch square. Yeah. And there's a there's a little gripper, a spring-loaded gripper. And you line that spring-loaded gripper with a little chunk of buckskin for grip stick. The flint in that little gripper cocked the hammer. The hammer goes forward, hits the prison.

What explosion now. Yeah, the explosion. No one because under that prison is a little teensy quarter teaspoon of fine powder.

Yeah. Like the prison's covering up a pan full of fine powder. So when the hammer comes down, hits the prison, it knocks the prison out of the way, but still causes the spark. And then the spark falls right into the flash.

It's like, oh, it's like the Rube Goldberg contraption Goldberg contraptions.

So it whap. Yeah, that's right. The Frisian flight is on a hinge.

Yeah. Flies forward, moves forward. This little quarter teaspoon of fine powder ignites and there's a thing called a touch hole. Which when your gun doesn't work properly because you touch holes plugged up with the fine powder, yeah, that little bucket, that little quarter teaspoon, the wall of that bowl has a pinhole. Through it, that leads into the breach of the flintlock. One of those sparks from that little thing going off hops through the whole. Think he's surprised and like he lights off everybody in their.

So it goes like Clarke. Boom, boom. So this and you got to hold steady the whole damn time.

Yeah, this is what you guys are doing, like tree stand is where it is.

Some little bit of both that sound set and then some do some Mooche and some driving.

You don't know this, but I'll tell you something, I. Didn't hunt it, but I killed a bull buffalo. Were the flintlock really well? No shit. Yeah, that's right. We were on a reservation and they had, like they do like these controlled harvest's on his reservation and like reservation members can go out, like, how they want to do it or go out and get one.

And just kind of I don't really there's a little bit like it's kind of like a weird sort of like like an experimentation with a live thing, I don't want you to sort that out right now. But anyways, we went out a shot at the heart.

Nice shot in 90 yards. Dang, that's pretty good.

Yeah, I was like Lucht is I remember when it took about eight minutes, went laid down and died.

No shit. Yeah. I remember one of the Primo's. Truth about how he won the election, he wins Will Shuta, he was in Colorado or somewhere I think it was with a flintlock too, but he shoots an elk with a muzzle order was either flintlock, a precaution, but old like old school.

I thought it was cool shit. Yeah, Chessler, you were going to say something about the Greeson. Well, it wasn't very important news just about land and water, I used to build boat anchors and any time land hit water, it was just like explode on itself, just not well.

Oh, that's right. Because remember, yeah, I was not explo, but it loses its form.

Yeah. Like pops and loses its form. It forms into weird shapes just like Yoni's.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we all had to throw the lead in the bucket to predict our future. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about this curse. No. What's that on. New Year's. Latvians. Mellops am led. And throw a job of it into a bucket of water. And that tells you and then you take that gob and it forms crazy shapes. Yeah. Then you get a light and shine it at a wall.

In hold that God lead, that misshapen garb led to the light and it casts a shadow. And you twist it and see what you see in their. And that tells you what will happen to you or it could inform your year. I generally tend to see old arthritic imagery. Oh, so it's kind of like a Rorschach thing, like what you see is what is going to what's coming?

Yeah, I'm going to try that.

I got a Latvian neighbor across the street from us. Someone tried it this year with her.

Now, you should test your knowledge about it. Oh, she knows she hangs out at some like Le Latvian camp. She like it's like the latter. How did you get together. Yeah. Her name is Enga. She has some questionable opinions, didn't she? Yeah, let's not forget that she's had to walk away from a couple of convoys yet because I was I was like, OK, well, you have a nice day there and go inside and lock the door.

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Right now. I got to tell you. Couldn't sleep last night, I slept by woke up many times. Understandable, just. I've never been so I have been. Just just distraught. And largely, I was telling these guys last night, too, I'm having three feelings. Anger and disgust at myself. Well, I miss the mountain go to I'll tell you, I just cut to the chase. I missed a mountain goat. Three hundred yards, nice, big Billy Kurt feels that it was an he of his life, tiny, big Billiam is there.

Oh yeah, I miss him out.

Go to 300 yards. Just missed. Right.

Like Nikodim, they're not from here. Often shot from here off its main.

I know we'll talk about why I think that happen not to like. I'll talk about why that happened, but but not that like I have like there's an explanation of the mistakes I made. Right. But the three feelings I've been having, one is anger and disgust, self-loathing.

Two is why am I not more disappointed than I am because I feel like I should be even more have more self loathing and anger and disgust and three is just like really feeling.

I let you down. Oh, no, because I started trying to draw him out.

I first applied for a mountain goat tag in 1998.

And finally in 2020. Jaru, Mountain Goat. I've drawn them in Alaska, but. Drew mountain goat tag and. We really poured the cold to it for five days. Under Kirk's leadership. Snow cold. Elevation terrain just struggles with visibility, but like I mean, like finding gold, but just like it wasn't like it wasn't like a walk in the park, you know, it was kind of like a fog and whatever.

Just the annoyance of cold.

And then. They're like. Just a chip shot. Yeah, I would have felt like. Yeah, the primary feeling I had was that the primary feel like if you weren't there, I would have felt not as bad as I felt. Just really horrible. Oh, waking up and just it's like burned in my mind. I don't know, man, that. Those those things are all there. I feel like they're part of the hunting experience. Yeah, you have to have the highs, you have to have the lows.

To kind of have the full experience, just like if we walked in there and found God on the first day. Walk up on it hunts over those 22 years you put in for a tag for one day. That's not much of an experience like, you know, now you have the whole process and it's not over. No stuff not over.

That's a good way to look at it like that. Yeah, it is, man.

But, you know, I mean a lot more. Yeah, but here's the thing I think about, though. I'm 46. I'll point out the year 48. Thank you for that. I was like the other day, I was like I was trying to like, as you're walking out, you know. Like the walk of shame, right, walking down the mountain after missing them. I'm like, man, really valuable lesson. Like, I'll point out harmful things, again, not excuses, but.

Like a guess at where I screwed up. They got their winter coats. Yep, and I failed in court later pointed out. When you're looking at the outline of that goat, there's a six inch buffer that's not a goat now, especially this time of year, because it's kind of that. Even though they're starting, as you could see, they're starting to come into their winter coat, especially on those billies, the hair isn't so long that it's falling over because when it starts to get really long, it kind of split down the middle like a hairline look on the wall and it starts to drape.

But right now, it's his hair down the middle. Yeah, yeah. No, like, right now it's it's like a buzz cut and everything's sticking straight up. So it could have been more than that. There's a bunch of golden it's not a goat, there's a bunch. Yeah, and I was when I killed one, the only mountain goat I got before was a nanny I shot in. Alaska and. When I hit, it had enough.

onTV left to take a couple steps and go off the abyss. Now, twelve hundred feet, you said, right? Yeah, I mean, I can show you like.

Yeah, where this happened and I remember like how could I was like, I show you exactly how it fell that me like like a face like you wouldn't believe.

And then. Got so much inertia going that when it did hit the slope below it, it just continued to go down the wet snow. Anyways, was demolished, it it's brain was gone. Its skull split open, the horns were gone, the brain was gone, one of its lungs was tucked up into its front right ankle.

Well, she's the hide came loose but didn't come off. And somehow in the chest cavity erupted in the fall.

It like sent a bunch of that stuff through. And so it was like up against its knee.

Dude, that's gnarly.

Oh, huge aways. Something to try to avoid. So then it's like, don't you don't want them. If you hit them, you don't want them taking a step. It's not like like jelly big game hunting. I just play it safe and give myself a huge margin for error and I typically.

Like, my typical hold is halfway up and down. Two or three ribs back from the shoulder is like, that's, you know, granted, it's going to what might take a step or two or whatever, but it's just generally, like, done me very well as a as a just, you know, general little A.M. spot, maybe a little lower than halfway.

But the way I was I got to. I was going to. Want to hit it in the high shoulder, hoping that it would not go off the cliff behind it or wherever. Walk off and fall off a cliff. And then. Zero. My rifle at a much lower elevation. In the higher elevations, as you know, there's less friction. So you got to cop, so that's going to make you a little bit higher, a shooting for his shoulder, not accounting for all that hair.

And dialed in, it was dialed for perhaps a little bit a tad longer than it was maybe. Maybe you just sent through two of them, like through its. Right over the top. So does that steeper angle to you're at a steep angle, sharp angle. Yeah, which becomes harder to get an exact range. Because it really depends on exactly where you're picking. Yeah, well, to have a factor that we were talking about last night is I mean, we're post it up for a while.

Wait in which in my mind, for me not being. Near success, successful or 10 years you is shooting would mess with me, you know, with scope on the animal for 30 minutes or whatever, that that wasn't it.

No, I was aware of we should back up my back up and tell the story a little bit, so.

But to get to that part, it was better than we were having to wait for it to get up. And I was nervous about. Getting chilly, yes, sitting in the snow and in the little gap of visibility was so narrow that you couldn't, like, go and start the process of trying to put a warmer clothes on because then you might get.

I killed a nice block, went down my pants down, not like what you think Putin trying to get my long johns on. Yeah. Try to get more before the Zippy's, before the Zippy's. Yeah, I hiked up to a spot, got where I wanted to be for the evening set, got to the evening sit, thought, I'm going to get born, looks I'm going to start freezing my ass because it's all sweaty. And got my pants off started, put my legs on legs around the ankles, and then kind of like had my legs up, was getting back into my pants.

And also I look and here's the I trying to find I got them to pull my pants up to run over there, but didn't want to do that because I was afraid the goat would stand up and move while I was like one arm in a coat. Yeah. So I was nervous that I would start getting shivery, but I never got I wish I could say that I got shivery, but I never got shivery.

Oh, my God, I feel like such a loser. Oh, I was trying when I was pointing out our ages. Let me get back to that now and walk through the whole story.

Pointing out our ages is when we're walking out is like, what a learning lesson. What a learning lesson. But then I'm like, I feel like learning should be about wrapping it up. I'm like my kid. He did his first two big game hunt, so he's 10, you got a mule deer in Aqaba this year. He's in, he's learning. Right, I did a lot of learning in my 20s. I feel like the learnin is about done now and never ends.

No, because at a point your performance goes, it's like. I should be at the apex you are I Apex. I still have my physical abilities. I love my cognitive abilities and I have like a tremendous amount of hunting experience.

That I've been able to get through my career. Right, so I'm probably I should be this should be like at late 40s, should be like like.

You'd think that right now would be this moment of just perfection and you don't make mistakes.

It was damn close, right? I mean, it was that guy that was in a real tough spot to get on. And it took us a lot of patience to work through that country. That that wasn't a slam dunk. That wasn't a let's climb up over this ridge. And as soon as you look over the top, it's done.

How long did it take us to get in a spot where you get a shot?

We started five hours there, but it was a five hour stall. He was five hours.

Yeah, in and out of view for a majority of it. So there's a lot that can go wrong in that. So, yeah, I mean, to your point. Yeah, we should. You feel like you should have every base covered, but then in hindsight, I look back. And given the information we had at the time, I wouldn't have changed anything that we did.

Oh, absolutely not. When I was sitting there, when we finally found him three hundred yards away and said, wait for him to stand up, I was in there being, like, astounded by the good fortune.

Mm hmm. Because there was a lot of ways when we were trying to put that little puzzle together, there was a lot of ways.

I also wanted to point I was called in the middle of the night when I was sitting there awake my time, my flirt.

Once we got up there and looked when I was flirting with storming his ridge top would not have been a good plan. And once I saw it, it was actually like up there. No storm in the ridge would have been, you know, you never know when you got Storm Ridge, it could go like. You never know, yeah, but wouldn't have been a great ridge storm, it would have been like you could have killed him with a knife.

It would have been like either didn't get them or got them with a knife. Yeah.

By the time you, like, popped in, it was when you when you arrived in his zone, you'd have been like and presumably he would not be there anymore.

But let's say he was sort of deprived of smell and let's say he has no sense of vision and no sense of smell or sorry, no sense of hearing and no sense of smell.

It would have been a knife fight and you would have gone off the other edge to your demise. So, yeah, I wanted to point out to you, Kurt, that you're feeling that storm in the ridge was not smart. Um. Was not. Yeah, you were that that perspective of yours was validated by the actual layout, which was not quite how I envisioned it.

It was a lot smaller up there.

Everything just looks a little bit larger. For example, we thought that he was 60 or 80 yards from that pinnacle. And you get up there and find out that man, I only 10 or 15 yards or 20 yards.

It's it's weird how perspective from that lower elevation as you're working up into that country, how it changed so much.

Man Dirt had pointed out on this billy goat, we are stock. And Dirda pointed out he was buried on a knife ridge.

So there's like kind of like the primary range, not even the range of ideas, like sort of the primary ridge line.

There's like a very steep finger ridge that comes off it.

And he's buried there. He can look everything to the right, everything the left and then straight ahead is just sky, but it doesn't matter because nothing come up. That thing and he's buried on a ridge is no wider than him. Yeah. He was like his body consumed the entire width of the ridge top. Was like laying on a knife. Yeah. That was impressive. And if you rolled the foot, you know. The opposite way that he was looking, he would have.

Fell several feet. I wouldn't be able to sleep up there, you know. No, you do all of those things like heights. Yeah, we slept on of goofy little ridge like that one time. She Pontin and my brother Matt said, if I'm not here in the morning, throw my boots off.

Can I ask her a question just to your point about you think you should get to a point where you're not learning?

I mean, you've accumulated so much knowledge there shouldn't be a learning process and experience. Did you learn something new this week?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the communication portion I thought about that where we were in the spot where you were set up and I was trying to one of the things that we hadn't talked about is shop placement, especially to your point about hitting them in the shoulder.

And when we are trying to kind of communicate back and forth that both of us are on the same page to try to hit in that shoulder. Afterwards, I thought I should have communicated more on the hair that you just had done, that you had done, that I'd be picking blood off my nose.

So, so, so really, it's my fault. I hope you woke up to in the morning.

Yeah, when I woke up last night, I was like I was up for a very long time and I remember looking at my phone being like, how the only two I'm already like, up, just up obsessing.

It just turned into anger for Kurt Warner, no answer my phone call. See how this is going. If it rings it to you this morning. Yeah.

And the end of Apocalypse Now, Kurts, doesn't he talk about a vision of a snail? Inching along a razor's edge. Mom, facture. That might have been redux, might have been the extended cut know he like talks about floating the Ohio River is one he's he's like out of his mind when Willard and Kurts finally meet. Yeah. Kurtz talks about.

Floating down the Ohio River and because Willard Catherine Willard from Ohio, Kurtz, talks about that, he floated the Ohio River as father and he remembers all the smell of the gardenias. Talks about a snail on a razor blade, talks about a concept hitting him like a diamond bullet. It's good shit, man, anyways, that goat was laying out there like a snail on a razor blade. Yeah. To back up describe the area, we went in to Kurt.

It's it's a very long drainage. I'm going to say the entire drainage is probably close to 20 miles long. There's a road that runs up somewhere in the 10, 12 mile range. So there is a major portion of the upper end of that drainage that. Doesn't see a lot of foot traffic. There's a lot of Cliff Barnes old growth timber where I wouldn't say old growth, more like dark timber patches that run down through. And then there was a burn that had rolled through a portion of it as well.

So. It's. It's really good goat country.

A lot of escape cover, and then because of the burn, there's a lot of feed because a lot more of it's open right now than, say, it was 20 years ago and it ties into the backside of a of a lot of roadless area as well.

So you see these goats being able to use multiple drainages and move between them where you have a fairly large circumference of area that doesn't see a lot of traffic, especially once there's snow on the ground. And most of it's in the nine to ten thousand foot range where the goats are living. And they're typically. Later in the year, like we're out right now, there isn't a lot of elk population or deer population, which also doesn't. You don't see a lot of hunters either, primarily because of that, and access becomes very difficult when the snow gets deep.

So it's it's real ideal goat country, but can get a little bit tricky late in the season.

The lack of other game is really noteworthy, man. It is.

It is. And I've been hunting that area for 25 years. And as we had spoken about before, I've seen a very noticeable difference in primarily elk populations.

It used to be phenomenal elk hunting and. I think that there's lots of different discussions about why some people would like to point the finger at wolves, there seem to be a transition somewhere along that line.

I can't for sure say that that's exactly what it is. But as we were driving into the area, I think something that was very telling was down in the valley floor in the farmland, there had to be 200 head of elk. Out there and out in farm ground that you had 25 years ago, you had never seen that. Mm hmm. And so whether. Migrations are changing or actual what they're preferring for habitat. It's kind of anybody's guess, but back to your original point.

It's really neat area in the fact that it doesn't draw a lot of people in after, say, September.

And so it's a pretty cool experience being able to go on these types of hunts where you're not seeing other boot tracks and you're just not seeing a lot of pressure. Yeah, it just takes 20 some years to catch 22 years.

And then we saw a number of big horns and it was like one tag. How many tags were in that?

Yeah, yeah. Like one tag and a unit. And that'll take a lifetime to draw. Oh, for sure, yeah, yeah, if you're lucky. We went in there and it's like.

There's the thing that happens this time of year, I guess it could happen any time of year to film hunts, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of logistics and crew and people got to plan for it.

Right. They need film permits.

And when you get a film permit, you need to, like, apply for certain dates. Right.

It's you wind up where you have you like settle on a date. Window. And there's a lot of that data establishes a lot of inertia, right? It's like like that's the date, you know, because so-and-so, we got, you know, a camera guys booked and we got our permits for that date.

And then as the date gets closer, then you kind of go like, oh, yeah, forgot about the whole whether part of this. And as the trips coming up, it just gets like.

Just the picture just gets bigger and bleaker of early kind of not, I want to say freak, it's a definite freak, but a significant early.

Snowstorm's, a series of early snowstorms, yeah, two winter storm warnings, yeah, while we were out like actual like weather service, winter storm like advisories for the area. Yeah. And like today, we shouldn't be sitting here right now. We should be up there. But it's supposed to get 15 inches of snow there today. And we already got like one foot in downtown.

Yeah. Overnight. Oh yeah. No visibility.

It would have been. And then the and as this as the as our go on, it's coming up and I'm looking at the weather, there's sort of like comfort. And it was a comfort factor which I don't want to sit and act like isn't a thing of like.

Of course it's the thing, you know, you can tough through it and you have the right gear and make it. But it's still like an issue comforts an issue. Not nearly as significant of an issue is difficulty in travel. So you're already in very precarious, just steep shit, right? You're in a lot of deep shit. There's a lot of routes that you can't take. There's a lot of places you'd like to get to that you can't just go in the way that would.

You know, just like go to it is a lot of like this and that and. You know, down when you should be going up and around, you should be going straight in order to arrive at these points you want to get to because the cliff faces and other things and you add snow on there and it just adds it's like little it's like a level of stress.

And even that level of stress is like a real thing. You can tough through it and have the right gear, but it's like just a thing that's there and it's it just changes the experience. But the primary thing is visibility. When I talked about getting that killing, that nanny that I killed some years ago. We went into an area and sat in the fog. Just got to our area, sat in the fog for three days, then all of a sudden, poof, it was gone, and we realized that rimming the canyon walls above us was mountain goats that had been listening to our conversations.

I mean, this week. Yesterday was the only day that we had visibility all day. It was, yeah, every other day. It was a window of of clear.

Yeah, we went in and hiked in and just right away we went in during good visibility. And right away, just like seeing goats.

And when you draw a goat tag, you're allowed to hunt a nanny or a belly.

You're allowed.

It's like a goat, right. A mountain goat. They would prefer strongly, I shouldn't say they. People that want there to be a lot of mountain goat hunting opportunities. And state game agencies would really prefer that you shot a billion, they'll actually make like make instructional videos I voiced I didn't like come up with the material, but I voiced a video one time, like read the script for a Rocky Mountain Goat Alliance video about how to.

How to tell a nanny from a bully they want you to kill the males and I read some statistic, ones that have got hundreds of mountain goat hunters only killed males only killed Billies. I don't know, this is a statistic I heard. I don't know if it's how valid is if they only kill Billies, there be four times as many mountain goats.

I don't know if that's. I don't know if that holds up, I read that somewhere. They don't want you shooting the females, I voice that video, which I'll point out like I voiced it, but I'm not good at it. I'm not like great at identifying. I sit there scratching my head, looking at a lot of goats.

For me, it's like when you see a kid, like a nanny with an offspring, I'm like, that's a female. Other than that, I'm like, damn that.

My mind tries to turn everything into a belly.

Well, I didn't realize which. I'm sad to say that the nannies had significant horns. I don't know how many people know that. They got a they got a horn.

I mean, they look, it was tougher than I ever imagined to distinguish other than their being, like you said, a group of them. Then it'd be like, oh, those are nannies. Yeah.

Kurt pointed this out. And it's actually I remember just being in the past is like another time I drew a goat tag on the key and I didn't get one because we passed up many opportunities to females.

But I remember, like every female you look at, you're like trying your hardest to turn it into a male, but then you see a billy. And it's like there's a Billy. Yeah, and I remember we had that same thing out of our friends, you saw Billy was like, oh, all the time we've been spending, trying to, like, talk these nannies into being billies. Like, that's some bitch and Billy, you know, and you just know it knows that was true on this one.

Yeah. But seeing all kinds of nannies. Man And then the second day the homie woke up and you couldn't see shit anything till like what time of day one. Two. Yeah.

That was one o'clock for three. And then you're just seeing parts and pieces.

What was funny, the funny thing about that day that really stuck sticks with me is that. We went to a little glass and look out and we just went there and we couldn't see any. We just went there anyways to see if we can get some clear windows.

And Kurt knew about another little looking spot. He wanted to go check out.

That was a 20 minute walk, if. Yeah, at most. Just like wrap a wrap across the ridge, top and upward direction, and you get a look into this other bowl that actually drains down into a different drainage and. At one point, let's go check it out.

Let's go verify that it's too foggy so we verify we walk up here like, oh, wow, it's foggy over here, too, just like we expected and walked back and we get in.

Here's a set of tracks solo. A single set, a mountain goat, tracks that not only walked. Through our. We're like literally walked through what we were sitting.

We later learned walked between two of our tents and actually followed our bootprints in our absence in the in the 40 minutes that we were gone, came through our tents, followed our boot tracks through our glass and spot, and then walked in, wrapped around a hill.

Yeah, well, literally, like if it was two inches to the right, it would tripped on my my guides from my tent walked like walked next to the tent within well within three feet of our firing.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Like I mean, there must have been so much set in that zone of us that it just it just walked right through it.

That's that's Murphy's Law. I know it's over done, but that is Murphy's Law. I don't think that's Murphy's Law is Murphy's Law.

What's your impression of Murphy's Law if if it could go wrong? Well, that's not wrong.

Actually, I'm just that if I go in my mind, Murphy's Law, if a goat were to walk through camp in a glassing knob, it would happen while we're looking. Oh, yes.

Bearclaw dude is a very bizarre. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

It is Murphy's Law that was never going to walk through when you're sitting there just minding your, you know, because I think that they like. I think the only thing they I think they care a lot about what they see. The smell isn't, as I think, like their whole groove of how they stay alive is based off. I'll see the problem and I'll go to a place where nothing is going to mess with me. Mm hmm, yeah, well, in that that saddle, that pass that we were in when I had the tag last year, the exact same thing happened.

It was just over a longer course of time. I had left camp, went up where we went, but then I'd gone up over the peak down the back side and was probably gone for three hours, came back and there were three sets of tracks that came right by my tent. Right through that, so it's a little goat magnet, it is, it is, and that that that bull that we saw was coming right up through there as well.

I think it's almost like a funnel.

It's a little like a little hot tip is. Were a bunch of ridges and whatnot, kind of like collide together in a Benji saddle, shit's going to come through. Yeah, it's just like a little funnel. Yeah, there is, what, three or four, three drainages that are, you know, the backside side, there was a lot come into that that saddle there was, um, but yeah, we lost a half day there.

Just don't add there, Chester. Yeah.

That happened actually multiple times. Not just that one time as I was going to glass that night, there were more tracks in our tracks. Going for the opposite direction, like four sets of tracks in our tracks, going right up past our camp again, right in our tracks.

So have you been telling a lot of people that you got to play guitar with Luke Holmes? You got to play Luke Holmes guitar and sing? Chester is nodding, no, no, haven't haven't told a lot of you haven't leveraged it socially. No, he's got a wife.

Yeah, yeah, I got a wife and I like being a little incognito.

Do you on real quick, how how you been enjoying your marriage?

You've been married. How long now. I've been married since August 29th and things are pretty good, haven't got kicked. To the couch, you enter the doghouse, so feel like I'm doing pretty good. You guys know Chester got married in a homemade bolo tie made out of elk antler? I don't know.

But I know Chester make it. I didn't make it. Oh, well, you're an artist who made it. You're like such a little craftsman. Seems like a little bird to one of Daniel's friends, like Little Bird made him for a Seth has one, too.

Yeah. Oh, he was in my wedding when I saw a picture of Seth.

He was basically I saw a picture of Seth in that wedding. And he was basically at the point where, like some uncle has his necktie tied around his head like a headband.

I'd better leave it right. There is a lot of chest hair out of that party late in the night.

It's like a cloud of smoke around him, like one eye open and probably just like, you know, he just it the garter belt.

I think if there had been a series of photos, like a burst of photos, it just would have been that picture. And then another following frames of Seth just slow it down on the ground.

If you had a necktie, would have been tied around your head.

This is like dance that like Seth was like ready to dance on a table. Yeah, no, I had been dancing very hard. He was like, oh, they play mony mony again.

I was ready to do anything at that point. Yeah.

He's like, oh if they could just play celebrate one more time.

If they turn on mambo number five, I'm a little bird.

This place to that, that's probably the most tuned up I've ever seen you that. Oh is that right.

Oh man. I'm bummed that it was a good reason to party man. Yeah. Just you get married. Yeah.

Seth is saying he wants to stuff. I don't know if you caught them. Seth was kind of forced to go to a bar with me. Oh yeah.

No. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well that's one of my life goals, is to go to a bar with Steve. But like we could sit around. We go to a bar. Does it. What do you do you mean that because you think that that would mean I'll be real drunk or just the dollar bill.

Just I just like going to dive bars and I think it'd be cool to just. But what would you want me to do there. Be drunk and start a fight. No. Yeah, I would like that.

I mean we about somebody with a stool. We could if you want to. But no, I just like chatting.

I go to dive bars all the time. Just have a beer.

Just oh I would love to go to the I want to set a date to go just after you get your go. Oh we're all getting shot. Yeah.

Oh yeah. I'll do that. Yeah. Right down, right down the street. You got it all picked out. Yeah. Just cross railroad tracks will be set. I can't. Perfect spot. Oh yeah. That place.

Oh yeah. Oh so is we want to get back to this thing though but no I'll go, I'll go. I don't go to bars but I'll go to a bar.

We could buffer you too but I don't want to get the one niner man which I don't wear my mask with a straw. See one nine.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. My brother thinks they ought to rebrand it to see one niner. He likes the sound of that better man. Sounds more aggressive.

We're going to get a mask and poke a hole in it and run a straw. That's drink my shots like that have to be mandated. Yeah, be like disease free drinking. How do you close the gap? You're going to have to like call like, oh, we're going to call Chester Korkut. He's he's a crafty guy.

It is a bummer coming back into town after being in the mountains for a couple of days, like, oh, you do forget about covid and like all the crazy stuff going on, you're like, yeah, that's all still here.

You know, it's better than a straw's big hood where you can do all your hand functions in a a bubble.

Yeah. Oh yeah. There's like a little pass through port where they can hang glasses. Yeah.

What's those ball rolling down a hill, you know. Yeah.

You grab one of those remember and eat like when he got all sick. Yeah. They put him in that thing. Right. Yeah. Be like go to the bar and then I'll go down there and get wasted. Oh yeah.

But I don't like the part of the reason I quit drinking a lot like the Padres.

I quit getting drunk. It was because I didn't think it was fair to my kids who didn't ask to be born right. They didn't like request to be born. I didn't think it was fair to them to be hung over in the morning.

Hmm. Yeah, that's that's good parenting. Yeah. You're.

I mean, and I found myself being, like, irritated on days that I'd be hung like on a Sunday or whatever, Saturday or whatever.

They'll be hung over and sort of like irritated by their presence. Mm hmm. When they were little because they were needy, we got together.

And the minute I had that feeling. And B, like to they didn't like ask to come live in the house. Yeah, it's like you had them and brought them here. Yeah. And now you're annoyed. I don't think I should have made some different decisions.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to quit being drunk. No, that's smart. Yeah, a lot of people don't do that sick of being hung over me. Yeah. But I had two little cocktails last night, yeah, I had a coffee that you had a little coffee. I had a coffee liqueur, yeah.

And then I had a giant rum coke from Berardi and coconut.

What do you call that? That was called a Jimmy Buffett.

Oh, I was reading an article one time in a magazine about like what celebrities like drink. And I took note that there was Jimmy Buffett was being featured and he was saying how you can't get hung over coconut water, coconut water and rum. I've disproven that.

I just proven that. But it's a safe bet. Yeah. Zero hangover this morning. Oh, yeah. Wait, hunters operate under a unique set of circumstances, usually up in a tree, so you have way different concealment challenges than spot and stock hunters who are working on the ground out west.

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A lot of me thinking nannies were billies. A lot of me trying to talk them into being billies. Just at least give them the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. But then what was it, the second or the third day that we ended, the third day that we spotted the one building that we believe that it was one that we got on? Yeah, three days later. So and there were a couple of goats, obviously, that were in spots that were so far off the by themselves that you would suspect that they were billies, but you just couldn't verify it, whether it rolled in on couple that were up high.

Do you think trusting that we can get it worked out? And you're able to adjust your schedule and go back out again. I feel that we would. If we if we spend and we should spend a day or two on this, I feel that we would find that again. Yeah. Yeah, I and as long as he don't know would make that my plan, but I wouldn't be surprised. You never really know. No, I wouldn't be surprised that you'd be like, oh.

He's like back in one of those zones that we know him to inhabit. Oh, that would not surprise me in the least, you know what you said when you spotted him, but yeah.

Because I don't think you can say it here. Oh, no.

Oh, we know you had just spotted Aram. And then you said bingo. Oh, yeah, yeah, which is totally family friendly, that is family friendly.

He said, bingo, you would you would know if if you shot that goat, probably if it was the same one, because there might be a little tough to hair missing.

You get a little ball streak like that there in the great outdoors at the ball but to the ball. But yeah. Oh my God, man.

There's six weeks this is there'll be a part two to this, there's six weeks of season left. I just really. M.. Just so disappointed in myself. I was really disappointed for you at the time, you all give me a hug. I would have to, I'd still do it, but I like that down.

Yeah, I think I think it's just a little bit of perspective, because back to when we were talking about earlier, when you put in for something like this or 22 years. I think it's safe to say that you don't put in for it because you want to go. Yes, I just like to make an exchange.

Yes, it is it is vastly about the experience that you have, the memories that you make, the things that you learn, and kind of at least for me and one of the things that I really enjoy about this style of hunting is that it's always pushing your envelope just a little bit, that you're you're staying out when it's cold or you're accessing country that maybe you don't feel 100 percent comfortable in.

And every time you push that envelope, your envelope becomes larger and you become more experienced and you become more confident and you don't I don't necessarily get that with other styles of hunting that you do with the Alpine style. And so. Where your experience putting in for this for 22 years could have ended at five days. It's almost like a gift.

You know, you get your tag again, you get to go again. You go have those experience because it's so much different than than any other style hunting, at least that I do. Well, sheep hunting is very similar, but. I don't know. I think that's why it's my favorite, favorite time in the outdoors and it's not always. The most fun at the time, it's often the most challenging I had been in a couple of one day go Untz, you know, a little bit of like my impression, my girlfriend Hassidim the Drew at once.

We got it in the day my brother Drewett got in the day.

Yeah, I feel like they can go either way. I've heard, I've heard lots of stories and the odds definitely go up. If you go in on the earlier season, everything's becomes more complicated in the late season and you have to have a different kind of gear travels different, obviously, whether locating them becomes, as we have seen, extremely tough.

What makes you want to wait just for people's awareness? What makes you want to wait is that they get that big crazy hair.

Yeah, because no one in the world is going to get a mountain goat and not have the rug hand. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it happens. But that's Jerry like. It's like a mosque outside, you know, like throw it in the dumpster. So hopefully not. No, it's like a thing of great beauty. It is, yeah, it's amazing. And especially this time of year, they get that thick wall because they end up with the longer guard hairs, the hollow guard hairs, and then they they get that real fine wool right next to skin.

And, you know, there's nothing like it. So it's beautiful.

Oh, Reg, are you willing to talk about your year? Oh, yeah. Talk to lay out your little decision making process here today.

Well, so yesterday we got into going up to get that go that we spotted and. We got into an avalanche chute and I don't really know what happened, but we got to a spot where.

We had kind of talked around this like pretty mellow climb, right?

Yeah, you could have gone up that in view of the goat, but that stretch was like wide open. It was almost like pastorelli, like very mellow.

But it was in view of where the go could have been, so to avoid going up that and getting spotted and blown the goat out, we wrapped around.

The edge of that which happened to be.

One side of a pretty steep avalanche chute and below is just like a river of timber and then a little creek below that and.

A river of downed timber river debris field from an avalanche. Yeah, like punji sticks of like giant braker. Yeah. And we started going up there and then I think Kurt spotted the goat, right? You guys are pretty far away from me and Garrett. I think Garrett was in front of me and then we had to down climb that.

I don't know what that was like, 70 feet. Was that too much?

That is pretty accurate. Yeah. And now I don't know.

What was the angle. It was Steve I remember looking at and be like, this looks damn near vertical, man. Yeah, you stick your arm out and you're touching the ground. I mean, if you stick your arm out horizontal. Yeah.

And we had crampons at this point and ice ax, we weren't on ice. It was still like soft soils. You had purchased snow, snow, the wet snow so slippery. And I don't know what happened, like something just gripped me and I just got like way out of my comfort zone and I've never had that happen on any media or shoot. I've been shooting the show for five years and I've never gotten, like, totally freaked out.

And just not I just felt like out of my ability to keep moving. And there's a thing like in climbing where you just, like, freeze and you can't you just like don't know how to make your body move. And that happened to me like multiple times on that down climb.

And it was just so weird. You're like a hummingbird's lips. Yeah.

Yeah. Not a woodpecker.

And so we I get down we get down to this little spot where there's this frozen waterfall.

And yeah, I was just like I feel totally out of my. Ability to do this and then you guys are all super, super nice and very supportive and and we're like, if, you know, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it. And I made the call to to leave. And it was a really hard decision. I felt very guilty, really. Extremely.

But then you shared with us that you'd had but then you'd had this feeling of this something bad was going to happen.

I didn't want you to feel great. I know I may have saved it.

And up until that point, I know the last thing you left us with was I'm feeling something bad's going to happen. I, I remember looking at you guys just be like be really, really fucking safe.

And that just felt fucking weird about the whole thing, man. I mean, I think it was totally in my head. But, you know, like, once you get in your own head about stuff, it's hard to get out of it.

But like, yeah, I noticed like I could see it was funny because I just haven't been with you in a lot of.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot of situations, including a bunch of situations of steep stuff. Wet snow. Yeah. And just skipping along. No problem. Happy go lucky. I it was like I watched you sort of have. I was like, you, you you're totally fine, like I've just seen you do this so many times. Yeah, but you just had like a thing entered your head. Something happened. Yeah, it was really weird.

And, like, not to not to say you shouldn't pay attention to that. No, no. You have to pay attention to it.

But to your point, like the day. The last day that we had camped before we rolled out because that big storm was coming in, we had gotten up on that one glass and that was like when we were out on the end of it, man, and if you had fallen off, you would have been toast. And we were skipping around of their film and shit and like and you were like you were disappointed that all that time in that area.

Yeah, we were like mindful of time. Didn't want to go down in the dark. Yeah. Couldn't really see any reason to keep going. It was like very dicey to keep going for like no reason was that wasn't like we were stalking something was just like trying to find the source of a mountain goat tracks. Yeah.

And you were, like, wanting to keep going. And in my mind, that would have been like kind of like borderline stupid.

Yeah. Because we weren't like after something and it was just to the point where, like, I would go if there was a thing, if there was like a shot.

Like if we're like, OK, there's ability, let's try to get a shot that I'm like, OK, let's just go. But I would never be like just to get another 20 yards of visibility over the top of the ridge. It just wasn't worth it to me. Yeah, yeah. It's cool. That didn't freak me out at all.

But then you entered a little mindspace there.

There's just something about I just kept looking down at that, that avalanched shoot and just like I could just like see my body all crumpled up like that fucking goat you shot.

My brain is fucking gone by your wrist. Longus by my wrist watch.

I just like, yeah, man. I just got like, so rattled and yeah. I don't we sat there for a long time and you got like we got to like the goats. I went around all day. It was a hard decision man. It was a really I came down bombed that came down and talk to these guys and they saw me come down the trail and they're all worried all day. Chester ran up and thought everybody died.

Not so fast. Oh, yeah. I like the look of on Chris's face, big, wide open eyes. Like I mean, in some ways it kind of has a symmetry to Steve's missed shot. And there's this sense of of like I let the the greater hold down. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So, yeah. I mean, yeah, you were obviously like very frazzled by not the decision but the fact that you made that decision and that makes it.

Yeah. And like I'm not afraid of like not I'm not trying to be macho and be like, oh I can just do it. And it was just like I don't care about that. The thing I care, I just don't want to not one do the thing that I'm here to do, which is to film a show and also not have this experience that I love having with all you guys. So like, yeah, it was just a weird man.

I'm going to be thinking about for a long time, much like your goat thing. Call me when you wake up 2:00 in the morning. Oh, yeah, well, of course. Let's talk about what occurred to me that scared him because I got to talk to him about that. Why don't you tell me about the hair thing. Go ahead.

We're going to we're going to wait and we're going to we're going to wrap it up because then we're part two man parts of the call.

That episode, the return, this episode will be the miss.

The reason why I think these guys all, like, passed away upstairs. Because you didn't hear what I said. You're walking down the trail, Chris, towards me. And I said, is everything OK in you? Kind of had this you shook your head. No. And had your head down.

And at that moment I was going for well, I tried to give you guys a thumbs up because that entered my head like, oh, they're probably thinking something bad happened. So I try to be like, no, it's all gone to heaven up there up.

Yeah, man, that was weird. Is a weird one. Long time left.

Yeah. I just so you know, when celebrities do a thing that they got to apologize on Instagram, they make the apology video. I'm doing a lot more listening than talking these days.

That's like one of the things.

And you also have to be like, I'm very humbled. I'm humbled. Yeah. But I didn't do anything bad. I didn't do, like, a celebrity mistake. I'm just humbled, humble, entering the whole deal is humbling. How about the missed you? I know, but it's all part of it.

Yeah, I know that Bezzina. Yeah. I say if you're if you're not learning you earning.

Oh yeah. Buddy. Put that on. That's not true. So how's that go again.

If you, if you're not learning earn and that's why I'm going to call this episode, that's a good one.

And then the next episode will be the second to miss, you know, or it'll be the fall of the goat. The lost the lost body would be like an Everest and Everest character.

All right, man, we'll be back with the dead goat. With Noble Steve so struck with grief and saddled with self-loathing, we knew he'd have to try again or else he'd risk imploding. So we mobilized the cavalry, the whole media crew, and sent Noble Steve back on the hunt. Here's the story of attempt number two. Kyra, back for part two, the only difference now is that you'll notice a slight sound difference because we're not in our studio.

And also you'll is part two of the Mountain Goat Deal and Chris Ridge Pounder Gil is not with us. Although that might refresh everyone's memory, who's here, I'm feeling a lot better. I feel a lot better.

I can't do. Rick, yeah, I'm I'm I'm happy that you feel better because when you feel better, that means we don't have to keep going out there because I know.

Yeah, people were worried. Chester still here. Chester still here. Saft, even though to you, the listener, this this part one just rolled into part two. But what? You don't realize that.

It's a long time later this summer came back, summer came back, winter just showed up. S girlfriend shot a testicle last year.

Yeah, real nice cactus but fatty right. Fatty dirt. Got it. Your body. Yeah. Kirk hasn't got shit. And he got a deer too.

They're good girls.

Good prospects though on a got guys. Yeah.

We'll get back to the mountain goat and conclude our saga. But but talk about the explain the Cactus book deal. I think people think that. Yeah. So this is a crazy story.

My girlfriend, Kelsey, she was like last week, you know, week and a half ago, we spent a week out in eastern Montana, deer hunting, first week of the season and. The one night we went out with Kelsey to try and find her book, and we were six miles. From our camp. And. We found this really cool. Cactus, Buckstone, Velvet. It's Rightside was somewhat normal, left side was just like a.

Just like six points sticking out of the base of its antler where like an antler should be. Yeah, this is like a hormonal imbalance, right? Yeah, and for whatever reason, we couldn't get on that. But that back that evening, we'd like Crest Hill and he'd be a thousand yards away and then go over a hill. We get to that hill. He'd be a thousand yards away. He's out trying to find his testicles maybe. Oh, no, he's not going to find them.

Oh, I you know, I stopped the audiotape, my allergies off. What? You know, how is it the other day I got hot and stopped at my long johns off the left, those sons of bitches laying there?

No. Oh, really? Yeah. Who walks away from their long johns walking away from a track ball? Yeah.

It's a really stand up and walk away from your long johns. Oh yeah. It's more priority's. So someone's going to be like, oh it's weird. For your long johns, maybe my long johns I start looking for the corpse.

Yeah. That would be the no sign of hypothermia anyway.

So we didn't go on that, but that even the next morning we decided to go on a quick bird hunt in the morning rather than deer hunt, because there's birds everywhere and we're back at our camp. And we left camp and walked over this one ridge and I glanced up on the hill and sure enough, there's that same buck. Six air miles from where we had seen him the night before. Who knows how how far, like with, you know, he could walk 12 miles that night.

Hard to say. And it was so distinct and it's without a doubt, yeah, because it's just like how many? Like a box in velvet with a weird growth.

Yeah. What's the weird thing was that area we had seen seven different box and velvet.

That is odd. There's a thing on coat. There's if you heard on Kodiak there's like an area that's famous for. These these hormonally imbalanced cactus bucks that, like you have weird formation and the velvet dries on the rack.

Yeah, when you say cactus buck, I mean I got the like, what do they get these thorny looking antlers. OK, these like clubby, goofy.

It's not like the whole time I've been alive, I didn't start here. It's like I never heard about this.

Now every other day I hear about it from somebody and just just by thumbing through Instagram, I've seen several deer that had been taken this year that are still in different states to Montana. Utah deer are getting less manly. Crisis of masculinity in the deer population.

And this deer, you know, this is a book about it. Oh, man. Some academic papers get all the books that we had seen that week. We're hanging out with other books. Up until this point, that was the only box that we had seen that was hanging out with those.

Well, I think you just thought you just wanted one of the ladies, you know, and in his berries, were I saying that he had lost them, but they were dwarfed. They looked normal there.

He had a intact sack, OK? And when I felt that, it just felt like there was nothing there. There's nothing in there.

Not descended or something like it had the same feel like, oh, you know what? Maybe that's what happened. It didn't even feel like there were any little raisins in there, you know, like he had the coin. But there is no change in drop.

So you can just go on and on with these metal bars. Endlessly amusing. Yeah, it's really interesting, man.

Anyway, if you want to read up on this, just go type in like Cactus Buckners, there's all there's way better explanations than we're providing, but it has to do with, like, it not having its.

The proper dose of its masculine hormones, yeah, and for somehow it like leads to weird antler growth and then the velvet tends to dry up on them, you could see a the funny thing is it's six miles that it traveled.

You could see like a really ruddy buck, you know, cruising, you know, that distance y but y y you know, hermaphrodite deer or whatever you want to call it traveling. That doesn't make any sense.

I don't know. I picked up and moved that far that night. He was look it was very important, poor choice on his part because had me getting pushed around and got other more manly books.

Yeah. Maybe he gets his ass kicked all the time.

Maybe he just doesn't have the same amount of one of the biggest body deer that I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah, that's a odd thing too. Just huge. Do you guys taste it yet? I don't know. We we didn't do a good job of keeping track of.

Well, once you got home, everything got all mixed up. Yeah, you know. So we went back like. Ended the mountain goat hunt and in despair. I had a midlife crisis and it was winter, it was cold. Cold. Yeah, I went through a midlife crisis. It's over now. I didn't buy a car or anything.

But I had a midlife crisis. It kept you awake at night, kept me awake at night. Not only that, my wife noticed the difference in me. She knew that the missing hurt me hard. I heard she was making fun of you for made fun of me. I felt embarrassed whenever I was around her. Well, when Jimmy really you go blue when Jim Bakker, if I only could know my wife is friendly with Kurt's wife.

So I'll eventually find out what Kurt all Kurt said about how he truly felt. What about your boy? That comedy? Oh, Jim is not there. You disappointed in your dad? My boy was not happy. Just very like what? Mr. Pierce doesn't understand how it can happen.

Turn into summer again. Turn back in the winter, you know, and.

We went back into the same vicinity and it was just like it felt to me like I mean, there was always it felt to me like a lot of mountain goats had moved into that valley for whatever reason.

Yeah. Or I don't know, didn't it? Oh, yeah.

They were just everywhere. They were everywhere. Yeah.

How many did we count that first day in the zone that we were in. Yeah. And we were only in one couple of dozen once. I mean it wasn't a small drop but it was just a fraction of the area what, 25. Yeah. So we went back, had a great, beautiful weather window. Got after one belly that laid up in a in a spot that made it very difficult to shoot at him, almost like he tends to almost like it was his notion.

Yeah, almost like he meant it. Didn't work out the next day went out and we realized something was happening that I didn't really even going into this didn't wasn't aware of, is that you enter into that you start getting close to the mountain goat rut, you know. So. The we found. Two bands like to groups of nannies, what, like six to a dozen, I don't know yet in each of them had a BILLI mixed in.

Yeah. And they were close to one another. They were only five, six hundred yards apart.

Yeah. Like definitely like. Like. The groups would like be aware of each other and, you know, like interacting in some way or another. Yeah, and it made it. After a lot of frustration and looking at buildings that were hard to get to, were wondering how you're going to get to them and wondering where you're going to shoot from if you do get to him. It was like.

It was as though one laid out. On a blueprint. You're talking our Saturday, what did I'm sorry for not being clear. Yeah, the one we got. Yup. Was. So perfectly positioned to where, if you imagine like a little crease in a mountain, it's like on one side of the crease in the opposing ridge, you could just sneak up, walk up, pop over, shoot across. Everything perfect? Yeah, when there's six of us versus just two people, you know, it's like a whole different footprint for for travel you have in that goat in a good position.

Otherwise, that's just like six people are going to say, you know, even sneak around pretty good. Something's going on.

Did you guys end up seeing another belly when you popped up? No, I did not look for it, too. Yeah. Huh.

I find that there's some poetic, poetic justice. Maybe that's not the word.

That the shot difference. It was the exact same shot. And I didn't have my struggles this time.

Oh, yeah, I did miss what was a little it was three or five or six, but I found out in the days after whiffing my shot in contemplating it, I found out a number of things, a bunch of little perfect, like a bunch of small things that added up.

I went in, I had a rifle that I had set at a 200 yard zero without actually. Making an actual 200 yard zero like I arrived at it through math. Well, my 200 yard zero is. In that process, screwed up so that my two hundred yards zero was already high anyway, then I had like a dope chart, you know, like a drop chart.

And I think that I think that when I pulled that chart up, I was being lazy and maybe even I don't know if it autofill that sea level or whatever.

I don't know. But I was already high. My little dope chart was off to make it more high. And then I was trying to shoot the mountain, go in the high shoulder, not accounting for the.

Massive amount of nothingness beneath the hair, so that. I was probably already kind of aiming at not even aiming at the mountain go anyways and yeah, just shot over his back. And this time I went back to normal and got them. Yeah, that was a good group. Yeah, I forgot what you said when we walked up to that goat. But when we skinned them, you said like. That's that looks like a pretty tight group right there.

Yeah, yeah, a couple shots, a few shots there that all seem to be like terminal.

But he didn't show like Curt confirmed first hit was a hit, but he sure didn't show the signs of that.

Yeah, he soaked up some rounds. Yeah. Surprised. Tough, tough animal.

Four and a half years old. In the Bible, I went I just this morning, took it to get it checked you with a mountain goat, you have to take it in to get it examined and they pull a tooth.

And by looking at the the tooth irruption. Well, looking at the annualise so you can count growth rings out of Macur, you had it pegged to four and a half years, but you can see the lamb to the kid tip, I guess, like its first year growth and you see the Angelie rings, pegged it at four and a half. The biologists also felt four and a half based on the annual eye and then the tooth irruption, the dental pattern.

Also backed up four and a half, but then they'll send it off for like a cement analysis and an old goat is like 10 years old. And Curt shot one. It was.

Yeah, I shot one of those eight. And, yeah, I've heard of multiple goats being in that 10.

And I think from what I've seen, very similar to what you'll see with sheep where they can get 12, 13.

Wow. But I know it gets it gets really tough to count those rings when you have a goat that old because they all stack up right there at the bottom.

And yeah, it's not like a sheep were spread out over 36 to, you know, 40 inches or whatever, you know. So this thing's horn.

It's long. Horn was nine inches and it's shorter.

Horn was, I think eight five eight six eighths or something like that. Eight five eight. I can't remember very, very sharp horns on it very long. Like long winter coat, but not old, like not a giant tasty. Very tasty.

And when I was down today getting my thing checked, the guy I don't know if I told you guys this guy was in there with two. Big horn, deadheads, very old, look the same vintage look like the same wear on them, one of them had a little bit of sheath on it still, and he was getting them checked in and so he could keep them for himself.

Oh, he just found them. That's gone, you know, brought him in to get them certified, like used to not be able to have it at all right now. Yeah.

Now if you find one, you can get it checked out.

And that change this year, last year it was either last year or the year before. Gotcha. It's just just a recent reason. I think this is the second hunting season where if you found something, you could take it in everywhere.

Because I was telling you guys, we found that one on Grand Canyon and you couldn't keep it state by state.

Yeah. And I believe it's it's it's obviously different between types of land, a national forest, but ground opposed to well, I wouldn't even say public ground, but I like parks and that that's that's outside of that realm. So enough to check that out one time. Did a thing at the New Mexico Fish and Game has this fundraiser where they sell.

They auction, it's like for the it's like for a group that's sort of I came here how it works, New Mexico Fish and Game Department, like some affiliate organization or them, they have an annual auction where they they auction off like tags and stuff.

Guvnors tags one I think they do about this, but they also auction off all the shit that gets hit by cars, all the potch stuff, all the stuff that people find. And they had all kinds of big horn heads down there. It was for whatever you found laying. Confiscated stuff. I heard about a guy one time that had killed a bear. In self-defense. And had to turn in the high school.

And then later went down to the auction just as an anonymous person and bought his bare back tenacity, and he had skinned it in some weird way.

So he had like the cuts in some unorthodox fashion so that he knew for sure it was the one, because they then got it tanned and he went down and bought it at auction and knew it was his because he'd skinned it in some way to leave his mark on it. So now he's got his own totally legal, but got his own thing back.

What are you with your ego? You're going to how are you going to have that finished out a.

Rug with the head in. OK, I had a I had a tar Himalayan tar like that that I gave to your body. Imagine like a classic bear rug with two horn sticking out top nice on the floor.

Is it going to be draped on the wall, the horns to sharp. Yeah. Danger who?

I got a mountain lion. I did like that. That's on the wall. I got like I said, I gave that tar away and then yeah, I'm going hang on the wall because the horns. Yeah. You kids can't be run around in that.

No, no tripping trip on that thing came over due to sharp. Sharp. I was surprised by that.

Yeah. You tack it to the ceiling, maybe so now Nogoa put it on the wall. Yeah, you don't get much wall space. I got a little spot for it. Oh, OK.

Real quick, you know that giant bug dog during all those years ago, but they call the standard. The dog took it down, dog took it down to the taxidermist. This story takes his book down to the taxidermist in a.

People are out dropping all their stuff off, like the Texan was like, you know, all these cars out of the way, you know, let this guy pull in and priority and a guy has done what he's going to do with it.

I like he never taken anything to taxidermist before. You know, his honor. I guess it's just like the. Get the head mounted and he said, this guy goes, that was my dear, I stuffed the whole damn thing and I got a place where I could put it.

We had agreed that wasn't it.

Also have a shot. That's Chester Chester's rule.

This is like like a like a Wisconsin celebration. Yeah, kind of.

Yeah. We were in Wisconsin and you shot it, but we'd have some kind of drinking celebration.

I'm sure that that conversation we were talking how we would like to go to a bar with Steve.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't go to bars. You don't go to bars. So I will.

And that it turned into Chet saying if you get one, we need to have a shot, you know.

Yeah. When I get see one niner it's not going to be good. I got it at a bar. Yeah. I wish I could say the same. I want, I don't want it to be that.

I was like oh yeah. He got c one liners at a bar. Yeah.

You know, what are you, what's the cheers. Johnny was here, he'd probably have a lap to a success. You got a good Skynyrd's year. To the good ships, the bad ships and ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships and may they always be big box, big box, big goals.

Oh, pretty sure that's an Irish thing. Now, my problem is I was going to slurp mine just to make a loud noise.

A few people had an experience with me, but holy shit, that's smooth. Is he's already looking at the bottle. Was that spoon and cracking whiskey and Crockett Club whiskey since 1887?

Seth gave me a bottle of that for my birthday. Steve was over there that day and I think we finished the whole bottle off that night.

And here's what we were saying earlier. I first applied for a mountain goat tag in this state.

1998. And finally, Drew. Kurt, you don't know what you probably played since you were a little kid, this is your first mountain goat tag last year or had you drawn before in Montana?

I was the first one. And you had you been at it for forever? I hadn't, because the whole time I lived in Alaska Federation.

So we just had to go to just. Yeah. So it wasn't until I moved back. God started putting and getting points. But you're prohibited after you draw. You're prohibited from even applying for seven years, correct? Yeah, so you're six, you got six years to go. I'm entering my seven year hiatus hiatus from even applying. It took me 22 years to draw. Last time. I'm forty six, so that puts me to I can't do that kind of that level of arithmetic.

Sixty eight if I wait the seven oh Engo go twenty two.

Who's good at math. Seventy five. Only twenty nine. 75 years old.

46 plus 29 bear there a little bit it easier, you know.

Well, let's see, even even if you only go 10 or 15, you're still you're still in your sixth decade.

Yeah. I don't know how many more years I got, how many more years of this I got left in me. That's a that's a tough for the I like it.

The Kurts older me because he's fine. Oh yeah. See he's better than I am. He's more spry.

You guys are both real spry.

I was real happy to hear that you were feeling bad because.

Well, that helps the guy diagnosed me not having enough oregano extract.

I got some on the right.

I'm telling you, Steve was complaining about jelly legs, as were, you know, going up three thousand vertical feet.

And I mean, you have to take your time no matter what. But that helps me out to long a camera. Yeah. Yeah. It was a big hike Friday. That was that was the biggest highlight of the trip, I think.

Yeah. No big slow el cause gain on Friday. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Know I buy that. Not Saturday. Yeah. Go on, have the rest of my shot. All right.

Everybody out there listening. Rest easy. My midlife crisis is over.

I got my mountain goat seven years.

I can be back into the game or like I said, get the get the kids. Take the kids out. Listen, man, I'm going to see how many how many points do they have?

My five year old has two points. How many points, Jim?

You have to. Oh, he does. Yeah, I'm for it's going to be a while. Yeah. Yeah. My kid will turn twelve when he's first able to apply for a limited permit, he'll be coming into the draw. I can't do that level of math. I don't know. He'll have nine points as you do it. Yeah. Is there an average on how long it takes us? Twenty two years.

Common. What this state does is they square your points. So let's say you accumulate a point one times. One is one. Oh, and so you're in the drawer once.

Let's say you're a feller like me who accumulated every bonus point you could get. I don't know when they put the system into effect, but a long time ago in the teens.

So you have like 15 times, 15 points. Dang, sure, odds are way better exponential. Yeah, so but then everybody's like that, so everybody's in everyone's name is in the hat like some odd hundred times.

Yeah.

You had two hundred twenty five name tags in there so I've sixteen points now to twenty five is a ways away.

Fifteen times.

What do you have. You have more than. Everyone sitting here, I don't know. Oh, yeah, you got 200, you got fifty six bonus points my kids got to. No, he's got two times two for Quatro. Yeah, so you still got slightly better draw than he does. Oh yeah, but still it's going to be a while.

All right, everybody. Rest easy. On my behalf. Oh, plus the mango tasted real good, man. Oh, yes, very good. Hot tip if you want to have a you being people out there, if you want have something good to eat.

Danielle, what's it called? A whiskey like Danielle Cruitt.

Go type into the your phone, not you. I mean, not you Chester, but I mean people.

He had it up on his phone type into your phone, Danielle. You just do this Prewett pre. Whiskey, butter, heart recipe, make that make that shit. But also put it on like backstrap, tenderloin, whatever, seared venison, I think here it is, here it is, a seared venison heart, whiskey butter recipe.

I'm the meat eater site, meat eater dotcom, Danielle Pruitt. She's kind of my, like, kind of becoming it's a little bit like a.

I'd never say this in front of Jesse Griffiths, but she's kind of become like my favorite wild game. Don't tell Jesse I said that I say to his restaurant the other night, so I feel pretty bad if word got out. He's been replaced. He's been replaced by Danielle.

I like Danielle better.

Just not like anybody listens to this podcast.

When I was searching out that thing, you know, I found that was surprising is there's like a thing that happens where if you like Autofill, if you write in Danielle Prewett, guess what?

The number one autofill is Danielle Pruitt husband.

Oh, I understand. All right. All right. Thanks.