00:00:11 Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. I'm Derk Durham and today Jason Phelps and I we're going to talk about bears, bulls and bs. 00:00:22 Speaker 2: It sounds like to me, I like it. 00:00:25 Speaker 3: I like it. 00:00:25 Speaker 4: You you made that PG on how we thought we were gonna do that intro, But no, I thought I was driving this podcast. You you gave a moment of silence and you just took off with it. 00:00:35 Speaker 3: So this is great, this is great. 00:00:37 Speaker 1: Well, you tried to tell me I was going to do it, and then then I said I don't want to do it, and then and I'm like, all right, it's just gonna do it. 00:00:44 Speaker 3: Oh that worked out great. This means you're responsible for this thing turning out. 00:00:47 Speaker 2: Now I have to ask all the questions, right. 00:00:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I appreciate it. No, no, we have. 00:00:52 Speaker 4: You know, last week we got together, talked about our dads, how tough they were, and yeah, we've been on some hunts. We haven't really did it recap on much of our Turkey hunts, much of our bear hunts, much of our plans this year, and so it'll be good to talk kind of let everybody know where things are at and maybe even sprinkling kind of these ELK category. You know, by time this comes out, I guess, well easy one will be out. But yeah, we'll talk just a little bit about everything going on and our hunts and hunts coming up. 00:01:18 Speaker 2: And yeah, it's been kind of a crazy busy spring. 00:01:22 Speaker 1: It seems like, man, I haven't had a chance to put my head up or anything. I haven't posted about my Alaska bear trip on social or nothing. I've just been just digging. It's been busy. 00:01:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, a lot of you know. 00:01:37 Speaker 4: Within we I hate to use the word corporate, but you know, working for a big company, you know, things are always changing and turning. Dirk's got a new boss, I've got new and so it's like processes changed, which always you're. 00:01:46 Speaker 3: Not comfortable with. 00:01:47 Speaker 4: And so yeah, Dirk's running a million miles a minute getting all our marketing stuff. And We've got a lot of ELK expansion this year. I've got a bunch of new processes, new power points, this and that, you know how, and so yeah, it's just been it just seems busy, extremely busy, and it's all work related. 00:02:04 Speaker 1: Well, you know what they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and that's that's wrong. 00:02:10 Speaker 2: That's that's a fallacy. Now you can mean that I'm an old dog. It's just not fun though. 00:02:19 Speaker 1: My old, poor old brain has to learn anything new, like a new platform to to make documents and stuff. It's just it just just seizes up and the little spinning wheel goes round and around and I kind of feel like, yeah, I feel like I've got amnesia or not amniesia, but dementia or something. 00:02:38 Speaker 2: It's it's it's bad. But you know, once you. 00:02:42 Speaker 1: Blow off all the old cobwebs, you know, things start working and he's got to dig in. And once you kind of it just takes a minute. Once you get the understanding, it seems like, okay, I get this, and it's just data entry at that point. 00:02:54 Speaker 4: Yeah, we've we've crushed it. Everything's going really good. All launches have went great, all the assets. So no appreciate that. But I also was on a spring bear hunt. I had the speaking of you know, dust and the cobwebs off. I had to run a camera again, which we've all we all know I'm not very good at hold on. 00:03:12 Speaker 3: I'm hold on. I opened this wide open for you, Dirk. 00:03:18 Speaker 2: You did. 00:03:18 Speaker 1: You stepped right in it. So back in twenty fourteen, our good friend Charlie, his wife Kelly, she drew an amazing ELK tag in Washington that was fourteen, right, yeah, and you know Charlie was the caller. You know, Charlie and Kelly are main diaphragm called builders here at Phelps and anyway, she had this tag. Charlie was calling, She was the shooter, and Jason Phelps was the camera guy. And as Jason and I watched this film together here I don't know, must have been like a year ago, He's just like, look at that, Dirk. 00:03:54 Speaker 2: I am a I'm like the best camera guy you've ever seen. Look at that. I'm getting all the shots. Look at that slow motion shot. Look at this. I even had a glidecam or something. 00:04:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, I had I had a glidecam. Ye run through the trees. 00:04:07 Speaker 5: That was back before gimbals, right, yeah, yeah, you had to wag him up and get them all balanced for the lens and just crushing it basically, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, so you know you told me you were like the best videographer ever. 00:04:21 Speaker 2: But then something changed. 00:04:23 Speaker 3: For Yeah, I Copps. 00:04:25 Speaker 4: I don't like to say I'm above something, but at times I'm like I just want to hunt, Like I don't want to run this turn this button on and have hit the red button and figure out all these settings every time. 00:04:35 Speaker 3: And no. But so fast forward to this year. 00:04:39 Speaker 4: Budgets, you're a little tighter, you know, you're trying to figure out how to stretch your money a little bit further. And so Tyson he's going to Idaho on a spring bear hunting and we're like, uh, nobody else is going. I don't have any So there I was, uh, the long lens, the ACAM, the BCAM, and yeah, I got to go on an Idaho bear hunt this year. I I don't I'm I haven't been there in this area and in springs past. But it seems like the snowpack was really really light this year, which changed where everything was typically at. We could get to areas that were further up the mountain than anybody ever said you can get to, you know, talking to people that were camped around us, people that turkey hunt in the area or you know, do bear hunt. So it it the density of bears was was quite a bit different. So got to go over there with Tyson and it was it was awesome. We I can't even remember the days we were there May sixteenth to twenty second or whenever the season was. 00:05:36 Speaker 3: There lots of bears. 00:05:39 Speaker 4: The best part was, you know, even though it's supposed to be a good area, you roll up and like within the first minute having my binoculars up, I spot a bear. I'm like, oh, this isn't going to be too bad. You know, pretty good density. We've seen lots and lots of bears, which was which was great. You know, our strategy is the way that this area is trying to back up. And this goes for any hunting. You know a lot of people talk about like, well, you know, how do you do this or how do you that? Like it's information gathering and and it's like that top of the funnel to start with, and then you start to hone in so now you like go to the mid funnel and then by the end you're putting yourself at the end of the funnel where like your odds and your success is very high. So we our first day was really just exploratory. If we went in to bottom of the funnel, I thought we if we thought we knew where the bears were and sat there the entire time. Our chances a kill one we would probably be very low because they may not have been there. So we we knew. We set up, we looked at on X, We knew for the first day we were going to do some traveling. We're gonna look at a lot of country, try to find where the bright green you know, grass shoots, onions, sunflowers, just kind of learned the lay of the land. 00:06:49 Speaker 3: We had never been there. 00:06:50 Speaker 4: Dirk knew the area a little bit, but it was for us to try to figure out, like where do we think these bears are going to be, look at the ground, and then get way back. Some people don't like to spot things for two or three miles away, But when I'm two or three miles away, I can now look at twenty times the amount of country looking into faces or nooks and crannies. So what lets us while we're trying to do that quote unquote top of funnel work, you know, just trying to figure out the area, figure out where the bears are, figure out where the concentrations are, which is now a little bit more spread out than springs past back out look, and we were seeing lots of bears. I think we ended up just to put a number on it. Twenty six bears in five days, I think is what we ultimately saw. 00:07:32 Speaker 3: Maybe more than that that we didn't. We tried not to double count. 00:07:35 Speaker 4: Bears that we knew we had seen multiple times. But the problem with trying to kill them was Number one, there's a lot of patience required because he usually had to go the way. This ground laid out a lot of timber, but your meadows where these bears were coming out to the green grass to feed, where you could actually get a shot and keep your wind right, you had to sit on these one hundred to three hundred yard tight meadows patients, which doesn't work good for most guys. For me especially, is a sit for four or five hours and just stay at the same spot the entire time. And so by day, by the second night, that was our strategy, right. We knew where we were seeing concentrations of bears, we knew where we've seen target bears. 00:08:20 Speaker 3: Go sit and you get restless. 00:08:22 Speaker 4: You know, your first hour you're kind of locked in, and then by hour two you're trying to make your back feel better, and by hour three or four you're trying to stay awake, and you know, by hour five you're talking yourself into going and checking out a different meadow. When you knew that that was kind of the hot spot. We didn't see a bear to shoot until the very last day. So everything we've seen was a cross canyon. 00:08:45 Speaker 3: And the funny part. 00:08:46 Speaker 2: Big enough ones they were, they were big enough, they were just too far away. 00:08:49 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, definite bores. You know, end of May, they were starting to chase so. 00:08:53 Speaker 4: Big bores, you know, big front shoulders, big, you know, short ears. Everything we were looking for in a where just by the time you got over there, those bears in the springtime. The other thing that we struggle with is everything we've seen was moving quickly. Besides a few sow and cub sets. You know, these spring bears are running either looking the big bores or running to look for sALS if they're not on one, or even when they are, they kind of push the sows through these feeding zones and they don't stay out there for very long. 00:09:22 Speaker 3: So it's something else you're working with. 00:09:23 Speaker 4: So every bear we'd spot, you know, it's a mad scramble a fire drill to load up your stuff, run, get around. Oh, I think we'd be there in an hour. Nothing's ever there when we would get there. The other thing that mess with us is our once again it comes to patients, is we would we'd get bored in that third or fourth hour. I'd get the spotting scope back out and spot it back across the canyon where we had spotted these bears from, and you'd inevitably always spot something over there, and you're like, well, that bear's not moving real fast compared to the rest of them. Let's let up our stuff. Hour and a half to get over there, and well, no, that didn't work, and now you're on the wrong side. Now it's another hour and a half to get back. And so you're like, well, we'll just sit over here. Well, sure as heck. Multiple times you'd be over there and you're like, you'll never guess it, But there's a bear two hundred yards when we were just sitting we're just not there anymore. So there was a lot of there was a lot of this like wrong place, wrong time on Tyson's hunt, looking at lots of bears, and finally on the last night we're like, we just got to go sit in the two best spots you could smell, you know, wild onions. The area reeked of wild onions. The area was as bright green as you could find on the hill. Went and just hung out at that spot. The first spot had a small sal moved through it kind of heading to the second spot. We sat there for three three and a half hours, kind of drove ourselves crazy, and then moved to the other spot. You know, one thing for us thermals bears ability to smell. We were very methodical on how we moved on how we didn't want to mess the area up. I feel like you know, on moose hunting, you know they talk a lot about just sitting still. You don't want to send up the area. Same thing with bears. Like we're in the hot spot where where we're all the action is. But how do you navigate this country without like laying a scent right down the ridge or you know where these bears are going to. 00:11:11 Speaker 3: Cross through, and how do you limit that? 00:11:14 Speaker 4: So we were trying to be really smart about that play the thermals play where we you know where most of the bearers went through, and tried to tried to pick a route that allowed us to not send up where the bears are going to come from, but then also not screw things up as much, you know, for the future. But on that last day, we knew we had a look that you know, you can go for broken the last day. We always talked about last day you can do things you couldn't do earlier because you don't want to mess an animal up. So we were able to take a little bit different approach, get in and sit down and how we made it for about an hour and a half and we had a sound a cub show up below us and in this area. To describe it is, you can't see it all. There's a lot of green around you, you know, acres and acres are green. You can see like one little shooting lane down in front of you, one little shooting lane you're right, and then like the upper part of a little meadow to your left. 00:12:06 Speaker 2: And so quite a bit of timber. 00:12:07 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's there's strips of timber, just chunks of just stuff in your way where you can't see it all that you'd like to. So I was of the opinion that sitting in being quiet, you know, bears don't have the greatest eyes sight. 00:12:21 Speaker 3: We were pretty good on the wind. 00:12:22 Speaker 4: We were getting up moving quite a bit, and uh, just just move five or six feet one direction opens up stuff you can't see, and as fast as these bears. So we were pretty active on our feet. Even though we were sitting. We were looking here, looking there. We spot h sitting this time, we spot a sow and a and a cub down below us. And you know, first last day, Tyson's like, well, if she doesn't have a sow or if she doesn't have a cub, we'll I'll take her. And sure enough, we watched for a while and a and a cub you know, comes out. 00:12:55 Speaker 3: It's like, dang it. 00:12:56 Speaker 4: We watch watch them for a half hour, and in about ten minutes into them feeding, she kind of snarls and growls a little bit and runs her cub back to the right. 00:13:09 Speaker 3: That's kind of weird. 00:13:11 Speaker 4: And then five minutes idah, she comes back feeding out in that little gap that we could see in and what's going on? And then out of the blue, the bear that Tyson ended up killing. We actually spotted this bear the night before chasing the sal around in there at about eighty yards down to our left. There's a little ravine in between where we're sitting in the meadow that we could see the top of. There's a little a little cut that we couldn't see when it rolls off that black the boar was going towards that sal which is now we're starting to think like she probably seen him or he looked at her, and she snapped and growled a little bit and ran her cub off. Now he's going towards her at a quick pace, a quick walking pace, and we know it's the boar. We've seen how he acted the night before as a bigger bear. And we do a once again another fire drill because we've been kind of standing up. We were standing up when this bear walks out, we got to kind of get I get back on the camera. 00:14:04 Speaker 3: So I couldn't. I could my pride couldn't handle another. 00:14:09 Speaker 4: You know, lashing from dirt telling me I missed this and that. So I'm flipping every camera on. I got I flip on the the a camera, hope, I just get a wide I flip on the just get enough time to get the spotting scope set up, and I when anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. So I hadn't did this the whole time. Got the Alans sitting on the thing. Somehow I get switched a photo mode in the kill moment, right, and so I'm calling Tyson off. 00:14:35 Speaker 3: He's like tell me when I'm like no, no, no, yeah, no, no, no, you know. 00:14:38 Speaker 4: And so I'm trying to relay this to him and finally get the thing back on video, get it semi focused and tell him yeah. And he had about four more steps before he was out of this little shooting lane. And Tyson made a great shot and. 00:14:52 Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, by the skin of your. 00:14:54 Speaker 3: Teeth, barely last night. We were going home the next. 00:14:57 Speaker 2: Day Indiana Jones style. 00:15:00 Speaker 3: Yep, yep. 00:15:00 Speaker 4: So made a good shot, probably a two hundred pound bore, one of the few true blackberries we've seen. 00:15:06 Speaker 3: Everything else was mainly color phase. 00:15:08 Speaker 4: I bet you we've seen five black phase and probably twenty blonde, cinnamon brown, dark brown, you know, something aside from straight black, nice black boar and the of course, we were in an onion patch where died. Tyson kind of anchored him where he was at, and Tyson, we were convinced it was just rolling around in onions, like in the fur. But this bear one of the things, the meat was onion, if that makes it like we skinned it out with yeah, preseason, Tyson got at home put it in the cooler. He's like, man, you open up the cooler. I took the hide out of there, so it wasn't that and just like when you smell the meat, it's just like all onions. But he said he's been eating it and it's been it's been awesome. So one of those weird things. I'm like, I don't know if it smells like onions, if it's good, bad, if you should I'm like, he's like, no, we tried it and it was all good. So you know that bear, the bear I killed back in the Blues and twenty twenty was in the onions a lot, but I didn't have that same like smell coming off of them. So that's a pro tip. If you're in an area that has wild onions, I don't know, like if you looked at one of those maps like where do I where are wild onions in the United States, I don't know where they're where they are at. But if you have an area that has sunflowers and wild onions kind of mixing in those meadows. As the snow snow line moves up, like hunt over the bright Green, which typically is onion shoots hunt over those wild onions because that's where the bears, the sALS, the bores, everybody's kind of feeding, and that's where all the high densities were. There were ridges there without onions, there were ridges with onions, but definitely way more bears in the sunflowers in the onions. 00:16:53 Speaker 2: Gotcha, gotcha? 00:16:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I've noticed that too, you know, and more people I talked to who hunt bears a lot, you know, they're they they are definitely focusing in on food sources. 00:17:07 Speaker 2: You know. 00:17:07 Speaker 1: It's you know, there's a lot of land out there to like try to hunt a bear in, but they're like just like they get that narrow scope like food source, whatever it is. You know, maybe you're in north western Montana and you don't have any wild onions, but you have all these other little flowers and stuff that that just pop up right after the snow leaves, and and if you're not seeing those flowers, you're probably not in the right spot, you know, because those bears are going to follow those those flowers and those little shoots as soon as that snow leaves and pops up. 00:17:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, and the elk there were a lot of elk in this area, and the elk were competing for that same feed, like it was the same spot he shot his bear from. We sat the night before or two nights before those elks. Elks, those elk literally looked at us and didn't care, like they wanted to stay, They wanted to bed there, they wanted to feed there that night. 00:17:53 Speaker 3: They they had no cares in the world. 00:17:55 Speaker 4: And we watched them in the same spot from two miles away, and and there would be elk and bear in the same meadow. 00:18:02 Speaker 3: And this lets me. 00:18:03 Speaker 4: Know that the the bear eating so much in this area that the cows they would stand up, but they would just watch that bear walk by. Like so it's evidence that like these these bear don't want to waste energy to try to kill something that's on four hoofs or at least a mature animal. Maybe when the calves drop, they would try it for a day or two, you know, three or four days, and then give up when they can't catch them anymore. But at that time, it's like you're just trying to like, oh, there's this is like the prime food for everything right now? 00:18:29 Speaker 3: Is that stuff right below the snow lion and the bears are. 00:18:31 Speaker 4: Well fed because they don't give a that it could give care less that they had elk, you know, eighty yards away from them. 00:18:48 Speaker 2: Do you think the elk eight the wild onions or were they on grass? 00:18:52 Speaker 4: It was mixed, Like I was trying, you know, the wild onion has a I'm gonna do my best to describe the flower. It's just kind of a white, wispy flower that kind of you know, it has vertical little shoots off of if that makes any sense. And there was grass and wild onions, and then there's a light purple wild onion in there as well, So I think the elk were maybe maybe eating it. I can't tell you for sure, but there was enough grass in there that that was also what they were probably going after. And you know, all all the three cows were all pregnant, and so I don't know if they were like getting into their zone where they wanted to drop calves or you know exactly why they like that area, but it seems like they just wanted to eat that that bright green. 00:19:29 Speaker 1: Now, were the bears getting the bulbs of the wild onion or are they getting just everything? 00:19:35 Speaker 3: Yep, yep, they go for the bulbs, so they'll I think they eat it all. I don't you know. 00:19:39 Speaker 4: We didn't go through a patch where you could see where they just pop the bulbs off, but definitely big sections when you'd go through the wild onions where they would dig and I'm almost wanted to like if I could tell the bears like you guys are over digging, like these bulbs aren't a foot and a half deep, but. 00:19:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're really shallow. 00:19:55 Speaker 4: It was crazy like I've seen I've seen areas, you know in the past spring bears, a lot of spring bear hunts in the blues where they'll roll rocks and they'll dig around a little bit. These bears, they you could see like there was a hole in the left and a hole in the right where they were like, you know, if you can imagine they're like trying to dig two tunnel where their hands are, you know, their paws are going to. 00:20:14 Speaker 3: Connect, but they would have You could see. 00:20:16 Speaker 4: Where like the left paw would pole in the right paw would pole. And we could figure out if a bear was left handed right handed by how deep each hole was. We had a big brown bear that was definitely left handed because he was pulling more with his left hole. But just kidding, but they were digging super deep, and I don't know if there's something else down there obviously they're looking for. 00:20:34 Speaker 3: But yeah, the onion bulbs. When you're trying to track those down, you know, you hold on and then you kind of dig around them and dig that up. They're only an inch or inch and a half deep. 00:20:43 Speaker 2: Typically, huh. So that sounds like a fun hunt. 00:20:47 Speaker 3: You know. 00:20:47 Speaker 1: I was supposed to go with you guys and be camera guy, and that didn't pan out. My Alaska trip was too close. 00:20:55 Speaker 2: Had had to bail. 00:20:56 Speaker 1: I mean, I could have went, but man, I had so much preparation and work and we've just been busy at work. There was no way to skip out of my work responsibilities and do both. 00:21:05 Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, So Derek his hunts more recent. He was up in Alaska a little bit later. So go ahead and give. 00:21:12 Speaker 3: Us a little rundown on on the Alaska Black Yeah. 00:21:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, So. 00:21:17 Speaker 1: I got invited on this hunt with Christians and arms up in Alaska. 00:21:22 Speaker 2: Flew into Valdez, Alaska. You've probably heard of that place. 00:21:26 Speaker 1: They I think they have like one of the one of the or one of the biggest, the biggest oil refineries in the world are at least the United States. There, it's it's it's Alaska. Man, it's beautiful. You fly in and you come into this big valley or kind of a big bay, and there's mountains and greenery and snow capped peaks and and ocean water and man, it's it's cool. And it's just a tiny little town. It's a pretty small town. My guide, Caleb, I think he said there's two thousand people. Four thousand people, But I was like, really, because it seems like there's like two hundred people. It's a pretty small town. But you know, I think you don't the way it lays out, you don't see like the residential area too much. 00:22:11 Speaker 2: But but anyhow, flew up. 00:22:15 Speaker 1: To Alaska to hunt black bears, and the initial plan was to get there and then fly in on a bush plane into this particular area to hunt. But there again, back to what you said about early spring here in Idaho and snow lines being high and bears being in different places and kind of spread out, That's exactly what was going on there. So our initial place that we were going to go, the snow line was so high that the guide in the outfitter were like, there's no way you're going to have a good bear hunt. They're going to be too dispersed. They're going to be at the top of the mountain. We got to go to a different area, so we had to We took a boat ride and got to an area that or the snow line, you know, you know, the face, the direction the mountain range was facing and such just kind of lended itself to having a better snowpack lower. 00:23:12 Speaker 2: So we got a boat ride to there, but still the the snowpack was still really high. It was super high. So we get there. 00:23:24 Speaker 1: You know, on a typical year, the snowpack's really low, so bears are going to feed on the shoreline. So as the tides go out, bears go down on the shoreline. They're looking for yungy stuff that washed up. They'll eat help, they'll eat. 00:23:39 Speaker 2: Other little things, probably molluscs I had imagined. I don't know, I don't know. 00:23:43 Speaker 1: Maybe that that may not come out very good on the on the backside when if you eat like little mollusks, I don't know, but typically that's the mode of operation. Hut on the shorelines, come down and eat the green grasses and shoots and stuff on the shore lines. But man, the snow level even where we were hunting was pretty high, so we had to had to hike around a little bit every day. And this particular part of Alaska, and I've heard about Alaska kind of being like this or different places. It's like walking on a big wet sponge. So every step you take, your foot sinks in till about the level of the top of your foot, and most of it water was over the top of your foot or real close. So every step is squishy, gushy and takes a lot of efforts. So man, I wish I'd have done more more step ups, some going on this, some lunges and stairclimbs and stuff, because man, it it was. 00:24:47 Speaker 2: It was hard. 00:24:48 Speaker 1: It's just like, man, you just put a ton of effort to go anywhere in this kind of in this kind of terrain. So every more, you know, And then i'd heard about this, but I didn't really know, you know, time a year and dates, but i'd heard about, you know, Land of the Midnight Sun or whatever. Man, it'd be midnight and it still wasn't dark. 00:25:11 Speaker 2: It was kind of. 00:25:11 Speaker 1: Dusky, So that would really screw with you at nighttime when you go to bed, you'd be like, all right, I'm gonna go to bed, and it's pretty light in my tent, and you wake up, Oh it's time to get up. No, it's two in the morning. 00:25:23 Speaker 2: You wake up, Oh, I got to get up. No it's four o'clock or three o'clock. 00:25:27 Speaker 1: And so, you know, we'd hunt and go to bed about midnight every day, you know, trying to you know, take advantage of those you know, late evening bear movements. But the first couple of days were pretty nice. You know, we had some rain flurries off and on, but for the most part there was some some nice sunny weather first couple of days two first two or three days, and the evening of the third day the rain kind of moved in and man, it rain most of the time the rest of the trip, so which I don't know, I bears are kind of like me, you know, one of us like raining that much. But it is what it is, right, so, you know, and I planned for ray and it took all rain gear and you just kind of like, we're just gonna get wet, and you know, it didn't. It didn't disappoint you know, we did get wet, so mode of operation was so since then we sat and watched the shorelines the first couple of days, and man, we did we're just not seeing bears. We saw one bear on the shoreline about a mile and a half away as the crow flies, but about three miles if you were to walk the shoreline, so there's no. 00:26:38 Speaker 3: Way to catch up to it. 00:26:39 Speaker 2: It was just it was on the movie. 00:26:41 Speaker 1: It showed itself for about thirty seconds and was gone. So it's like, well, we're gonna have to get up high and try to glass them up at a distance kind of figure out where these things are living. So we got pretty high and we could glass up this big, huge drainage and there was a couple avalanche shoots and we spotted a bear in that. It's like, okay, you know there's bears in the avalanche shoots. There was a few of them close to us that one. We're like, it was going to be a big trek through a lot of thick, nasty country to get to where we might possibly have a shooting vantage point. And I wasn't able to download any maps for my on X, so I could, you know, figure out shooting areas because it was like so last minute, like which place we were going to go, we didn't really know until we got there, basically, so we didn't we weren't able to kind of prepare with like, okay, well if we get on this vantage point on the map, you know, on on X, and be like all right, we'll be able to shoot across or glass across. We could just we were just kind of hunting like we did back in the olden days, right, So we're like, well, we'll save that one kind of like for a bond's eye, because that one's going to take a lot of effort to get there from a maybe or maybe not even having a chance to get on a bear. So we marked that one and we kept on hunting around. We found some avalanche shoots closer to us where we could glass into her. It'd be a you know, six hundred yard five hundred yard shot. And we've put some time in there. And on day three we'd hiked up and through the sponge the spongy country. It was it was kind of it was beautiful. Is this place is one of the most beautiful places you've ever been. We're sitting there glassing, we're watching I had to, like, I had to like focus really hard on looking for bears because I kept on gravitating to the ocean and looking at the otters, the sea otters and seals and stuff. We saw orcs swimming by. 00:28:40 Speaker 2: That was cool. 00:28:41 Speaker 1: I was like, oh, man, I hope those things get close and come up in this little bay we're in. But it was kind of a shallow bay whenever the especially when the tide would go out, so I don't think they came up in there too much. 00:28:51 Speaker 2: Maybe they did. We never seen him in there, but. 00:28:53 Speaker 1: Anyway, it's like, man, I was, I was enjoying watching the ocean life as much as any thing. But so anyhow, we hike up and get up to this spot. It's like, all right, we'll get up on this vantage point, Caleb, the guide tells the camera guy, and I hear you, guys hang out here for a minute. I'm gonna go look over on the backside of this ridge and see if there's anywhere I can glass over here too, and I'll get back. So he turns around. We turn around, all right, I see you, and he makes about twenty yards away and I turn around and look, and there's a bear right out in the open. Where did that thing come from? We just literally looked there. It's like we turned our back and he walked out. And I've never seen this before, but he came out. So we were like, hey, Caleb, get over here. And this bear he comes out of the woods and he starts kind of almost wallowing, you know, or wallering or wallowing however you like to say it. But it's not even hot out. 00:29:49 Speaker 2: It's overcast. It's pretty chilly. So I don't know why he did this, but he was. He started rolling his face in this marshy sponge sponge waterlow place. 00:30:01 Speaker 1: You know, he started rolling his face around. Pretty soon he's on his back, rolling around. He's rolling, but he paid a lot of attention, like with rolling his face, you know, back and forth. And I don't know if he just got stung by a thousand bees, if he got a b nest or something, or maybe he was just trying to freshen up. But we put a spotter on him and so we kind of kicked him back and forth. Yeah, he's a mature bear, you know, how big izzy. You know, bears, you just really got to study him. They're hard to judge. But he had a big, old punkin head and his ears were way on the side, they weren't on top. That's a kind of a tell tale judging bears. You know, if they're up the ears are positioned on top of the head and looked kind of tall or long, that's a young bear. If they're off to the side, you know, a long distance in between them and they look short, you know, that's a telltale that's more of a mature bear. So we sat there and watched him for a while and Caleb's like, I think he's a five and a half foot. 00:30:58 Speaker 2: Six foot type bear. 00:31:00 Speaker 1: So we're looking and he's like, you can take him if you want. But I wasn't sure, you know. I was like, wow, are we going to find a seven foot in here somewhere? I mean, you know there are big bears, that's the area is known for really big black bears. But this bear's no slouch, just pretty nice. So, man, that thing is out in the open for a really long time. And I kind of kick the can around a little bit and I don't know if I'll shoot him, I don't know. And then I started he's kind of wandering off. I'm like, I think I'm going to call to him. I'm like, hey, look, would it be okay if I call? He said, yeah, go ahead, knock yourself out. So I start calling to this bear with a bear cub in distress sound and stops in Deadney's tracks, and he turns around and faces us and comes towards us a little ways. I'm like, oh man, this is gonna work. And at that moment in my mind, I'm like, I'm gonna shoot this bear because I'm gonna call it in right. But then he kind of got so then I get on the gun and get tried to get ready and I'm arranging stuff. This time he was probably three fifty three hundred and fifty yards and getting all my scope dialed and everything, getting a good solid rest. It wasn't a great place to try to shoot for him, but I found a good solid rest. 00:32:13 Speaker 2: And I kept calling, kept calling it. 00:32:15 Speaker 1: And then I remember your podcast with Fred Eichler and he said, just keep calling, calling calls because bears lose interest quickly. So I just kept calling, calling it. And we were on a ridge that was fairly open. It wasn't a timber ridge. There was a lot of open stuff, and I don't think that bear seeing any black black blobs. 00:32:34 Speaker 2: Running around rolling around up there. 00:32:36 Speaker 1: You know, there was no motion, you know that he could see, and he's just like, I don't think so. So then he turned around kind of will started watering back off, you know, feeding here and there. 00:32:46 Speaker 2: And then. 00:32:49 Speaker 1: By the time he got into the timber, I had finally got a really good rock solid rest. I'm like, ah, dang it, I don't think I'm gonna get this thing. So we were watching him in this brush and you could just see little bits and pieces of black, and I thought, well, if I get a good clear shot, i'm gonna I'm gonna take a shot. So he gets He finally wanders around in there and kind of gets broadside and it's pretty open in the timber. 00:33:13 Speaker 2: It looks good. I don't see any major obstructions. So get on the gun. I'm on the gun. Squeeze squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. 00:33:22 Speaker 1: Gun goes off. Boom. I just know I just killed this thing right boom. CALLB says, you missed, And my what it was a really good squeeze, Like how there's no way, So of course, you know, I put another another round in and look and through the scope and he's gone like right at the shot, you know, as soon as the bullet hit then he ran. 00:33:45 Speaker 2: Caleb said, yeah, I seen the bullet impact. He's like, he didn't hit but we better go look, So we go over there. I'm like, man, stupid me. 00:33:54 Speaker 1: I'm just mad at myself because we had all the time in the world to shoot this bear in the wide open at three hundred and fifty yards three hundred and fifty to four hundred. I shot at for eighty in the timber, but it looked open to me. Well we get over there, Oh yeah, there's a pretty good older. 00:34:14 Speaker 2: Limb with a bullet hit it. With a bullet hit it. 00:34:19 Speaker 1: So that's what we're blaming on the myths. But I blame myself more than anything for not getting on the gun sooner, being a little more you know, decisive, and maybe making my having my mind made up a little better of really what I wanted to come home with. He was a beautiful bear, great bear. I would have been happy with him. I should have just made that decision a little earlier. And maybe I should have had that pre that decision made before we ever gotten the situation where I had to you know, you know, think about it, like I should have just been like, yep, if it's this, I'm going to shoot it. But I didn't do that, and I think, you know, I can only blame myself because I didn't get that bear. I'd blame you too, I know you would, Yeah, because that's what friends are for, right, they tear you down. 00:35:06 Speaker 3: I'm here to let you know. I'd blame you. That's a bummer. You a way to Alaska. 00:35:11 Speaker 4: You know, not that anything Alaska is necessarily a slam dunk, but you know an area like that that typically with snowlines in, you know, in the right place, you probably got high densities, and then just for it to come down, that's a bummer. And then I think you had what three or four days left where you just sat under a tarp and tried to see the rain for four days straight. 00:35:27 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:35:28 Speaker 1: So up until that point, right up until I pulled the trigger, the weather been pretty good. I mean we'd had a little bit of rain, but nothing to really be poopoo about. But right after I pulled the trigger and we go over there, it started raining and wind. It started blowing pretty. 00:35:44 Speaker 2: Good in it. 00:35:47 Speaker 1: Typical Alaska fashion, you know, it rained off and on a lot. For the next duration of the hunt, we saw probably five bears total in the area. I just think I think there's a lot of bears there. They're just not right in that very spot. But it's funny, you know, we that bear there, you know, we turn our back and a bear walks out. 00:36:08 Speaker 2: If we had kept walking up the help, we had never seen that thing. 00:36:11 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:36:11 Speaker 2: In another instance, same thing. 00:36:13 Speaker 1: We were walking to one of our perches that we'd like to set sit down, and Caleb's like, I'm gonna walk back to camp and get our freeze dried food, you know, our peak freeze dried food and my cooker. Let's just stay here for the day. So he turned We'd only been there ten minutes. He turns around, walks back, comes round back. There's a bear right here, like literally the same type of thing. It's like, we turned around, we're facing a different direction. If we would to walk twenty yards back the other way, we'd have seen this bear walking through the opening. And I we got over there and seen him and it was a really small bear. 00:36:47 Speaker 4: But yeah, we had a lot of that too, where just slight angle changes, like Tyson couldn't see the same opening that I could see and I couldn't see the same ones he could, And if you just weren't in the right spot at the right time, or if you weren't Like this is what drives me nuts because I'm a I'm a math guy right in a statics as you know, statistics stattician. 00:37:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a stattician while I'm out there. 00:37:18 Speaker 4: But what frustrates me is when you finally do spot a bear and you realize that you had like fifteen seconds of seeing it before it was gone and would have never been seen again. You're like, I can't even as I got my eye glued to a spotting scope or into my binoculars, Like, there's lots of fifteen seconds times where I'm not looking at the best spots right right, And you're like, so what It starts to drive me nuts and frustrate me, Like are there bears walking through the whole time and we're just not picking them up? 00:37:45 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I wondered that too. That was good because we had three eyes on stuff, you know, camera guy Daniel he was he was scanning stuff, and Klew was scanning. I was scanning. 00:38:00 Speaker 1: And then but you know, you know, if you're looking in the wrong opening at the wrong time. 00:38:04 Speaker 2: You're going to miss them. You're just gonna miss them, I thing. But yeah, there's the rain rolled in. 00:38:09 Speaker 1: So we would we'd hunt till eleven thirty, you know, get back to camp, eat something real quick, go to bed at midnight, and sleep in because bears aren't super active in the morning even there, so we'd sleep in and then we'd we'd have get up, have breakfast, sit around bs, shoot the breeze for a while, have something, have a top Brahmin or something, and then head out for you know, tell tell us bedtime. 00:38:38 Speaker 2: You know. 00:38:38 Speaker 1: We'd spend the rest of the afternoon, evening, night, you know, out and you know, up there you can hunt twenty four hours a day if you want. You just can't use artificial light, which is crazy to me, but it wasn't a slam dunk. By hunting late like that, you know, either they're moving or they're not. Usually a bunch of rain would move in and we just sit there under a tarp. Pro tip if you're hunting Alaska, carry an ultra light tarp with you at all times. That way, when it starts raining, you just pop that baby up and get under it and that way you can stick stick around. 00:39:10 Speaker 2: But man, we we. 00:39:12 Speaker 1: Logged some serious hours glassing and we hiked around a bit, you know. We we got to the points like, all right, we're gonna do that Hail Mary hunt to that bear and that and that shoot the avalanche shoot we saw, you know, a long ways away. So we hiked and it reminds me of pictures videos I've seen of like the Oregon coast or western Washington coast, you know, type of rainforest similar to some of the North Idaho stuff, except there was tons of Devil's club and uh and raspberry BlackBerry brush I don't know what it was, and it see no berries, but it was just poky, a lot of pokey crap, you know, and we just you know, I decided to wear waiters that day because my waiting pants because everything had been. 00:39:58 Speaker 2: So fricking wet. 00:40:00 Speaker 1: So we trudged through the rainforest and then stupid waiters, I mean they are awesome though they kept me dry the whole time. 00:40:08 Speaker 2: Shout out to the waiter people. 00:40:10 Speaker 1: But man, we slogged through that stuff and that forest and wind falls and up and down swamps and we got way over there and then we just found out that there was just no way to ever look into that avalanche shoot close up, and in fact, if you were even standing in it. You know, the brush is super tall, you know, someplaces ten feet tall. Some little openings are open enough where you could see, but there was no if you were standing on one side of it and the bear was on the other, there was no way you. 00:40:41 Speaker 2: Ever see it. 00:40:42 Speaker 1: So we turned around. That little recon mission kind of failed, but it was a good hike. You know, we've seen some pretty country. Was what was weird though. I thought I would see lots of little wildlife, wild creatures living, you know, But man, we saw one coyote and bears and that's that's all we saw in the land. A lot of seagulls flying around. And let me tell you what, if you don't like the sound of squirrels chirping, wait till you hear lots of seagulls squawking constantly. 00:41:14 Speaker 2: Man, those things are obnoxious. 00:41:16 Speaker 1: I almost like, I asked Caleb several times, can I do I get a seagull tag? He said, no, you can't shoot seagulls. But then things were so terribly obnoxious. But then, since we wanted to kind of branch out becoming The outfitter came and dropped off a boat for us, a little I want to call those a little zodiac, if you will. And we got on that thing and talk about feeling sketchy being out in the ocean on a little rubber rafts with a motor on the back, with a I think it was like a fifteen horse motor. 00:41:52 Speaker 2: It was a little bit unnerving for somebody's never done that, you know. Didn't like it, no, And it was it rains so much. 00:42:00 Speaker 1: We'd have to constantly bail the bail the boat out every time you'd stop and go hunting for a while, and we'd go hunt for a few hours. We'd come back that boat would be full of water, so then we'd have. 00:42:09 Speaker 2: To drain it and all that. 00:42:10 Speaker 1: And this one time we went up went up this cool river drainage and we get way up in there and we hunted for a long time. And this was like the second to the last day, and it was like, you know, we're in we're in go time now. It's like we're gonna hunt all day. Rain, shine don't matter. So we were out in the in the rain all freaking day and got soaked. But when we get back to the boat at eleven o'clock at night, then it's plump full of water. So we have to we have to drag it uphill to get it to where you can drain into the you know, drain the water out. So the bank is super super steep, so we drained uphill, drain it, put the plug back in, and then get in. It's like all right, everybody load up and we load up. Caleb starts ranking on the motor won't start. 00:43:02 Speaker 2: We flooded it. 00:43:05 Speaker 1: To the point where like, I don't know if it's flooded or maybe something else is going on here. So we're calling the outfitter and he's like, well, can I land my plane somewhere close by? And we're like no, cause he's not He don't have a he don't have a pontoon plane or whatever he's got the other kind of thing. There's nowhere to land and he maybe hoofing it. We'll give it some time here. I'm like, I bet it's just flooded. So we gave it some time and finally it started and we were able to go back. 00:43:31 Speaker 2: But yeah, it was cool. 00:43:33 Speaker 1: There was there was glaciers out there in the ocean. We could see you know, we're not too far from a giant glacier, you know that, but there are not glaciers. But there was icebergs out in the ocean, you know, floating around. And there was this little point during low tide that the channel got pretty narrow and man, there were fricking sea otters everywhere. I never you know, I'd like, how many sea otters are there? Oh, there's the pretty common man. There was a couple of hundred them. It looked like just black dots everywhere out there, and that's where the channel kind of got narrowing. 00:44:05 Speaker 2: Then things are weird. They're they're not that scared. 00:44:08 Speaker 1: You can just run right up to them, and you know, they're they're kind of a cool little animal. 00:44:12 Speaker 2: They're protected. 00:44:13 Speaker 1: You know, I think only people that can can shoot them, or natives, but these little guys, they just they they lay lay on their back most of the time and just kind of do the backstroke and paddle around like like they're just lounging around eat. 00:44:25 Speaker 4: Little shellfish off their belly like you see on the at the zoo. 00:44:29 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:44:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, and this one is like, what the heck's going on? 00:44:32 Speaker 1: We got up close and I got the by noose on it, and I was like, it's some weird there's two of them. 00:44:37 Speaker 2: Well, I had his baby on it. 00:44:39 Speaker 1: Well, the baby's head was almost as big as the mama's head, but it just it's whiskers weren't as whiskery. It's just kind of a real fuzzy head, but its body completely covered. The mom's body is like these things float around so good, but they're. 00:44:53 Speaker 4: Pretty fun to watch. Yeah, that sounds it sounds awesome. Yeah, definitely an experience bummer. On the the shop, we got to see a lot of cool stuff and got the spring bear and a new New state. 00:45:04 Speaker 3: They had never been to, so that's that's always fun. 00:45:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and we man the view from camp was amazing. 00:45:11 Speaker 1: You know, we could look across this big long bay, you know, look at the mountain range across you could see you could see where the glaciers have melted in the last thirty years where you know. Caleb was like, yeah, you know, thirty years ago that was all glacier over there, it's all gone. You could see how the vegetation had there's no trees, but it was all brushed. Now you could see that line where it had melted, and man, it was the most beautiful, one of the most well, it was the most beautiful camps. 00:45:39 Speaker 2: I'd ever I've ever had. 00:45:41 Speaker 1: And then then we get back to civilizations, like, well, the hunt's over. When we get back to Valdez and we're like, all right, it's time to go home. 00:45:50 Speaker 2: Cool. 00:45:51 Speaker 1: Well, the plane for a anchorage is like, we can't come. We got we have to delay. 00:45:57 Speaker 2: There's too much. 00:45:57 Speaker 1: Fog to land, and Caldi's and then okay, we're gonna come. So they fly and they get over there, they turn around, they can't land, there's too much fog. So the next day, too much fog. Same thing. It's like on day three, we're like, we got to get home. So the buddy that had the boat that took us out, he was a buddy of the outfitter. So the outfitter said, hey, you know anybody that's heading the anchorage driving the anchorage And he's like, yeah, I am. Actually he's like, hey, can we hitch or ride? These guys hitch your ride with you. So we hitched a ride. Is a five hour drive to anchorage, which turned out to be I don't know, I think it was almost better than the plane ride, because man, we got to see a lot of the interior. 00:46:41 Speaker 2: You know, just beautiful, beautiful, cry beautiful. 00:46:45 Speaker 1: Through the Copper Copper River area, which is you know, world renown for moose hunting, and it looks it's just you know, picturesque moose country. 00:46:55 Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say it's world renowned for its tasty salmon. Salmon. 00:47:00 Speaker 1: Oh maybe so and back. You know, Jason wanted to alask Was that last year? 00:47:06 Speaker 3: Last year? Yeah? Four? 00:47:08 Speaker 2: And you said the the state bird was the mosquito. 00:47:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, miss it is. 00:47:14 Speaker 2: I even't bought mosquito nets. I bought a mosquito net for my head. I bought a mosquito net for my body, like a jacket for your body. 00:47:20 Speaker 3: I want to see you. I want to see you in a mosquito net. 00:47:25 Speaker 2: That's all that was wearing, is a mosquito net. Yes, anyway, anyway. 00:47:33 Speaker 3: I heard. 00:47:34 Speaker 1: I only used it a couple of times, and it wasn't for mosquitoes, as these other little bugs that fly around and get in your face, try to fly in your nose and your eyes, but mosquito, like, I had way more mosquitos here in Idaho than I've had up there. I think it was just timing was off, you know, which was good because I I'm more scarce Mosquitos and the Grizzlies bearers. 00:47:52 Speaker 4: Honestly, Yeah, we got I was riding, you know, we'd be riding the fouriller and uh, you'd have the ding just after we killed the sheep. We hung around and things will be able to fly and keep up with you and still somehow get inside your you know, face mask or inside your hood or whatever you had on them. 00:48:09 Speaker 2: This is terrible, man, and I'm glad I didn't have it that bad. 00:48:12 Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, here's a here's a little plug, a little shout out that hunt is going to launch this Sunday, that is twenty second, So you're gonna be listening to this on the nineteenth. In three days, you can go check out that hunt on Krispy's Youth Chrispi's YouTube channel. 00:48:26 Speaker 2: Oh oh your sheep hunt? 00:48:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the one we're talking about. Yeah, just a little shameless plug there. 00:48:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, Sunday, the twenty second. I don't know what time did he ever say? 00:48:34 Speaker 3: Just probably in the evening, I'm guessing. 00:48:37 Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, if you go in the evening, it'll be there whether it's launched early, it'll be there by Sunday evening, So that's. 00:48:42 Speaker 2: A Saunday evening. 00:48:43 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:48:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, And just to let you know, if you want to win some cool crap, I think there's like thirty nine hundred. I think there's over four thousand dollars in cool gear. They're giving away sign up to win. 00:48:56 Speaker 3: You know. 00:48:56 Speaker 2: We got loop pulled Optics, we got I think there's a there's a there's a pack in there, there's there's some calls. I think we're gonna do a call package, carbon Tube. 00:49:08 Speaker 1: I'm gonna have some first like gear. We're gonna have f HF Bino Harness, some Crispy boots. 00:49:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be. 00:49:16 Speaker 3: A knife companies. 00:49:18 Speaker 4: We kind of did the giveaway what I used on that sheep, what I had on, what I used, what I wore, Yeah, sort of a package. 00:49:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, so that'll be that'll be really cool. Yeah, and I think and we both have seen the film, the final product. Our buddy Dusty Roup did the edit on it. 00:49:36 Speaker 1: David Frame filmed it, Dusty edited it, and it turned out really good. 00:49:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, really good. 00:49:41 Speaker 2: Made me look like a like a cool guy. 00:49:43 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, a guy that really knew what he was doing. 00:49:45 Speaker 4: Sheep, yeah, sheep expert. Well we we made it fifty minutes into this thing. I think we might need to save the bowls and bs for later. This might just be a Barry cap. 00:49:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, we might have to. Yeah, we have some pretty fun stuff planned for the all. I can't wait. And yeah, we should probably save that for another one. That way we can, we can, we can talk about death and yeah, a little bit more. 00:50:09 Speaker 4: Yeah, well yeah, no, it's I think draws are all done now besides Montana Antelope, which uh. 00:50:16 Speaker 2: I thought they just came out. 00:50:18 Speaker 3: No, so the nine hundred Dash twenty comes out in mid June. 00:50:22 Speaker 4: The actual like special units don't come out until early July. 00:50:26 Speaker 3: Gotcha, guys, all I thought. 00:50:28 Speaker 4: They came out to Some guys were posting like I do my Antelope tag? Will I go and jump on? I'm like Montana forgot me, Like, hey, you guys forgot to put my name in the. 00:50:36 Speaker 3: Draw, you know. 00:50:37 Speaker 4: And then I went to some reading just the nine hundred Dash twenty because it must be a really early start. 00:50:42 Speaker 3: That's right. 00:50:42 Speaker 2: I remember that now because I remember. 00:50:44 Speaker 1: The last time I applied, and it was like it was like almost antelope season when you find out like Montana likes to hold that money. 00:50:51 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I'm gonna sends you threw me under the bus a little bit. I'm gonna throw a Dirk under the bus a little bit. So Dirk's and Idaho resident. He has a lot of antelope points, and so me and Dirk build this like elaborate content plan right like where we're gonna try to get tags, like where we have good odds so we can start to plan this. So, Dirk, what are your chances to draw on your Montana antelope tag with your six points? 00:51:13 Speaker 3: This year? 00:51:13 Speaker 2: They're having a leftover drawing. 00:51:16 Speaker 4: So you're gonna be in the leftover drawing, not the And then so I know they they dropped a big early like Idaho for the first time, and ever decides they're gonna draw like in June and not in July and give you some time. So I Idaho surprisingly comes up, like however to get in? So I got in snuck in like real early, like dang it, not selected, not selected. I drew for the you know, shot for the stars. So I catch up with Dirk later like what do you draw? 00:51:44 Speaker 3: I forgot to put in. That's his own state. That's just like that's his back door. 00:51:49 Speaker 1: I know, I know, And like the last day was. Whenever I'm traveling home from Alaska, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll apply in Portland. When on my layover, I get to Portland and oh, my connecting flight is just in time for me to run over to the next gate. But this is like, this is all an excuse because that was the last day. I should have plied on the first day. 00:52:08 Speaker 4: But so so long story short, I've now built Dirk a calendar with all the reminders put in, and he'll never miss another date. 00:52:17 Speaker 3: I got blamed for all kinds of stuff. 00:52:19 Speaker 2: Hey, I got in for Colorado this year. You know that's last year. Last year he didn't hold my hand and tell me to play. 00:52:26 Speaker 6: And I I do feel a little bit guilty because of what I usually do is I'll tell Dirk like two weeks until such and such do and I know he's gonna forget, and so I should take responsibility and give him another reminder like three days away, versus like this year, I forgot to give that, like second reminder did you put in for Arizona? 00:52:46 Speaker 3: Deer? 00:52:47 Speaker 2: I don't think I have any points oh no, no, Arizona Deer point just out. 00:52:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the last one. 00:52:52 Speaker 4: That just I'm like, I forgot to remind you that too, because I think you were in bear hunting, which wouldn't be no good. 00:52:57 Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think I've ever applied for Arizona Deer. 00:53:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I had to. 00:53:01 Speaker 4: I have to give you a little bit of a hard time on your application strategy this year. It's real, it's real tough to draw if you don't put in dirt. 00:53:09 Speaker 1: Well, hey, listen, I don't know, I know, like in your world of work. I know, as a general manager, I know you're probably just sitting around drinking lattes and you know, you know, smoking cigars and having you know, at four thirty every day you have a bourbon, you know. For for us in the marketing department, we've been busy, all right. 00:53:29 Speaker 2: You know. 00:53:29 Speaker 1: I've been building, you know, filling in spreadsheets, been building building all this this marketing plan out. I've been making assets. I've been editing my butt off. I've been you know, that's good hunting. I've been, I mean. 00:53:42 Speaker 4: Just doing it all basically carrying the carrying, the carrying, the whole team I. 00:53:45 Speaker 2: Don't even sleep at night. I mean, I've been working so much. 00:53:49 Speaker 4: So no, no, no, you have been crushing on the marketing side. We're we're having a heck of a year and new products are doing good, so appreciate that. But I think I think we save all of our our upcoming hunts and this will give me some time to like dig up some dirt on you and cacheade over whatever you got going on, and how it's a rig season and if you do better than me, it's because of the hunts you got coming up. 00:54:11 Speaker 1: And yeah, I hope, so I hope we can do that, maybe maybe be really good. I mean, when we go moose hunting, you're gonna get to shoot first, as long as it's not big. 00:54:22 Speaker 4: So all right, well, no, thank you for for jumping on here doing the bear hunt recap. 00:54:32 Speaker 3: Thanks for running this show. 00:54:33 Speaker 4: So now you're responsible for the description and all the stuff that gets this thing to air. 00:54:39 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, and I probably have to wrap it up to hunts. 00:54:42 Speaker 4: I got a bourbon, I got a bourbon. Call my name here, so I gotta go get. 00:54:47 Speaker 2: The cigars and all the other you know, fat cat stuff. All you executives have yeah. 00:54:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, So we'll take everybody thanks for listening to cutting the distance, and until next time, we'll see it then