00:00:16 Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Meat Eaters gear Talk podcast. I'm the hospital. Tell us here with Jordan's bud. Jordan, what's been going. 00:00:26 Speaker 2: On on turkeys guiding turkeys. I've got a couple of guys sitting out right now that as of about eight o'clock this morning, they had a bunch of hens around that I could see, but uh I didn't. 00:00:39 Speaker 1: You can them from a distance and see what's going on. 00:00:42 Speaker 2: It's real nice, nice. Yeah. 00:00:44 Speaker 1: I like the still are the shotgun hunting the. 00:00:46 Speaker 2: Shotgun in it? Yeah? I think shotgun season opened just this last weekend, so it's been going good. Last week for the season, we had a nine year old and I think on the last podcast we had talked about it a little bit and I thought she was eleven, but she's she was actually nine and she shot her Marriams with us, which finished her slam. They got it done and it was like a month and a day. 00:01:11 Speaker 1: So that's incredible. 00:01:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:01:14 Speaker 1: I realized that I could actually if I kill it Eastern in Michigan, then all I would need would be a rio to get a slam in one season. It would take me a little bit longer than that because I killed that Asiola way back in early March, but I don't know. I had a quick, little fleeting dream of maybe zipping over to Kansas somewhere trying to get me a real but probably not going to. Oh, I'm gonna have an I'm gonna have a nice, a good, a good turkey season, especially after this weekend where Montana opened on the fifteenth. There must be a gazillion states that opened on the fifteenth of April, because it seemed like Instagram all sudden blew up on on dead Turkey photos. But yeah, I hunted with my buddy Zach Sandal from Onyx. We've been doing this trip now for I think this was our fourth year, and we head up to Region one in Region two Montana. Montana's got an interesting deal going. You can kill five gobblers in Montana. People, Holy cal five. You're gonna knock down the population. But Montana's a giant state and there's seven hunting regions. Four of those hunting regions allow you a region specific turkey tag, and that's Regions one, two, five, and seven. Then you also get one state wide tag, so that's how you end up with five gobbler tags. You can actually kill some hens too in some very places where they just have way, way, way too many turkeys. I think those are fall tags, but in spring is five gobblers, and so they really spread the pressure out right Region one. If you left Region one and went to Region seven, I'm guessing if you had a minimum seven hours, it's probably closer to eight or nine to drive from one of those regions to the other. So, like I said, the pressure is super spread out. And I've been trying now for at least five six years to try to kill the what I call the Montana Slam and kill birds in four regions plus a statewide, and I've not been successful. But this year, just coming off on the heels of this trip, killed a bird's Region one, killed two birds in Region two. So I use my Region two tag there and then my state wide and then now I've just got Region five and seven left, and I've got trips planned both of them with the kids with the family for both those regions. So it's looking good unless something unless as there's just a blizzard in all of May that might slow me down. But yeah, it was sweet weather. It was nice. Birds were flocked up, definitely kind of winter flocks like we worked one flock one morning that was sixty birds, which was pretty cool, one of the bigger flocks I've ever worked, and we got the whole flock to within I don't know, one hundred, one hundred and fifty of the deeks. Of course, once that happened, all the jakes came over like they liked to do, and just started pounding on the jake we had set up. And we had two gobblers looked like they were going to come in wide but then circle in and come into the spread. I don't I think that they had been out in the open for so long and our hide was were It's a big pondera, so both of us on the same tree, but a big one, you know, like a three maybe even four foot diameter tree, big tree, and we had built a kind of a brush blind in front of us, but they'd been out in front of us for it seemed like hours, and both of us are shaken trying to hold the position, you know, legs. I can look over see Zach's legs kind of shaking a little bit, and I'm shaking. So I don't know if the gobblers caught a little bit of movement and it just made him veer off or you know, maybe our high just wasn't quite good enough. But they were veered a little bit wide. But Zach was up to shoot. I already shot one the day before, and so I said, hey, if you think you can make it, shoot it, and he uh, oh, man, I can't decide if I shouldn't mention the which choke he was using. He had pattern has gone out to forty and at sixty shot at this Tom fifty five sixty, which is a little bit of a polk tony gauge TSS. But he that Tom ran away looking very unscathed, no like puffed up his feathers, no limping, no sort of nothing, just sort of did the old little like, oh what was that and ran off. He then proceed to shoot one of the jakes that was that was standing around two clothes. But yeah, goals show you. You gotta pattern it out too, as far as you think you're gonna shoot. He felt like the work he had done on the gun, or the other people had done on the gun, he was going to be dialed. And the only reason I'm not giving you more details is because I just feel like it's not my place to go. If it was my gun, and I had just it happened to me. I would go and I would go and tell you that. Being said, I had patterned my gun out to sixty, since I had shot that Osceola at sixty and I'm shooting the Bretta Ultima a three hundred. I believe what it's called. I just got it so hard to remember the name. It's got a Carlson's TSS choke in it, for it's a twenty gage. I believe the choke is a five five five, And I'm shooting nines TSS nines federals load and at sixty, I would say that my pattern is still Looking at my hands right now, trying to measure the distance I'm gonna tell you here, like it's not much over two feet, like the densest part of the I mean, sure there's a few flyers at sixty, which is expected, but the densest part of the pattern is still two feet. So yeah, when we went down to Region two, we I was just telling you, man, it was we were on the heels of the nice or the end of the not the heels. It was a tail of the nice weather. And about noon on Monday, the ship was going to come in. We're it was gonna be wet, and we're working these birds all morning, and they've gotten up on this timbered ridge that we couldn't really hunt. You could go over there, but it's one of those deals where you knew you're just gonna be working the private public boundary, and I just hate doing that. So we were on private that we could hunt. So I just figured, you know what, I'll to stay back here. It's only the third day season. These birds have gotten messed with that much. I'll keep making some soft calls. Eventually they want to be down here in these meadows. You know, there's you know, cow patties and horsepoop everywhere. You can see that they had been scratching in there, So I said, just we'll just be patient. Hopefully it happens before the rain comes. Anyways, Eventually, all four gobblers, I think three hens they actually flew off the ridge and flew down into this bottom with us maybe one hundred yards away, which is cool, but there was enough thick small ponder roses where they couldn't quite see our setup. But they were slowly coming our way, and eventually I could see it, maybe sixty I could see one of the tom's in there, and I just gave him a little I think it was just enough to make him veer to where he could see up the hill and look and saw our spread. And man, once he did, he just full strut and just marched from sixty to twenty and was just all up in the decoys. And I'm sure you see it a lot, and you got guys hunting nighttyr blinds over decoys. But it's kind of amazing how well those decoys work. Sometimes we had DSD Dave Smith decoy's UH had the posturing Jake upright hand feeding him. And man, that bird came in and I knew he was locked in, so I was gonna have all the opportunity that wanted, and and and Zach, it was my turn to shoot. So he comes by me at thirty, but he's in full strut. So I'm like, well, I'll let him get by another tree and get right up in the decoys and then I'll start calling out him a bunch and get him stretch his neck out and shoot. He gets in there, and I for a minute, full minute, I just got gout and he would just gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble gobble, gobble at everything, but not come out of strut. Just stuck as like puffed out, and it was almost he was like just completely stuck. He would not come out of it. And it's they get so locked in on the decoy thing that I mean, I honestly think I could have stood up and jumped around and that bird. It would have taken him a while to be like, oh, well, hold on, that thing's not supposed to be here, right, which it brings up the whole decoy thing. I want to get your opinion too, Like it's always weird just talking about this before we started. It's all situational situation dependent and how much I want to use him or don't want to use him, right, Like it's so much easier to run and gun without decoys. I like to hunt without him better because I just like to call him birds and fool the birds. I feel like I did more as a hunter and as a woodsman if I do it without decoys. But if you don't have that decoy set up in that situation, you make that call. He starts coming right when he gets up to forty or it gets to wherever he's gonna be. Where he can see where that call came from because he's got that bead on that tree where that call came from. And he sees that there's no hen or no other turkey. He's not sticking around long. You have to take that shot and make it happen in that moment, right, Well, the decoys, it like just gets you. Lets you see the show a little bit more, right, See the puffed up turkey up close, watch him gobble another twenty thirty times. I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to say I'm conflicted. Like I said, it's situation dependent, and I just feel like you got to choose what's right for you. In the moment, we only had three days to hunt. I was trying to kill at least two birds, and I was in that scenario where we had whatever it was, a couple hundred acres of private to hunt. I was going to use every trick I had, every tactic, I had every advantage I had to try to get those birds within range. 00:11:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that like a couple things I have started to set up. I'll start, I guess I'll start with this first. Eastern Montana is the same way, but here is very open, so it's not like it's super thick, and they just like they have to make it to thirty yards to probably be able to see even if there was a decoy there. They can see you from a long ways a way. And so I tend to like last year we had a lot of Jakes around and they were like beaten up on the Tom's i think, and so anything that had to do with like a a Jake decoy sometimes the Toms didn't like it and they wouldn't even pay attention to it. Yeah, So, and I think that that's why this year, I think I've seen like one Jake or two Jakes maybe, So I'm not exactly sure what that means, but. 00:12:41 Speaker 1: Uh, there's a lot of. 00:12:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we haven't seemed to really have that, but it always just makes me I always just try to start with one hen decoy and just start with one, and then sometimes, like in the earlier season, when they're all flocked up, you just need to put more out there to make it more enticing to come to you, or to at least, you know, half assed come your direction. We were having that issue last week. There were It's it's so funny how much those turkeys have changed just in this last week. Last week there was like a lot of toms. Their attitudes changed, and just how they're flocked up, Like there was a lot of toms with a lot of hens and they were still kind of flocked up, but starting to break up, if that makes sense right now. This morning I saw three different groups of hens, six probably six in a pack, and I heard a bunch of toms. I did not see a Tom this morning. I wasn't out there that long, but I didn't see one. So it's just funny how much they've changed there. But my second part of that, and I think I have started moving moving how I set up blinds and where I set them up. I know it's really hard sometimes to set things up where you can't see that far because you want to be able to see a lot. But I kind of related, and I think it relates to elk hunting as well. A lot of people relate turkey hunting elk hunting, but I was thinking of it more as like coyot hunting. When you're trying to call it a kyot, sometimes you need to put yourself in a spot where they have to be in range when they pop over the hill to look at whatever you're calling your whatever sounds you're making. To be able to even see where you're calling from, they have to be in range when they pop over the hill. And that's what I've started doing with Turkey blinds too, and it seems like it's started to make a difference. Sometimes you just can't do that, like sometimes the it just I don't know. We've got a couple of places down here that it just seems like where they like to be, they just I don't know if you're gonna call them like really into the woods to get them at least right now, to get them like thirty yards to shoot him. But I don't know, like a little depression or anything like that. I've just started trying to stick those blinds in where like they have to come pretty dang close to even see what you're chirping about. But it was kind of funny this morning. I was down. We had a really big windstorm last night, and I was worried about blinds, and for a good reason, because I went to three different blind locations and all three of them were like blown into a tree, So that was awesome. But there was some hens going crazy and like they were still I just snuck in to reset this blind and the hens like they were still in their roost. And if you didn't if you didn't know that you were on private ground and there was nobody else there, you would have thought, like that guy sucks at calling. But the hen was just going nuts, like, didn't even take a breath. It was kind of crazy actually to listen to. 00:16:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard multiple people say that over the years. The worst caller I ever heard was the old hen. Yeah, worst sounding turkey I ever heard was a hen. Yeah it's funny. 00:16:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got I know, I got a little ranty on that, but that's kind of mine. 00:16:28 Speaker 1: The decoy thing, there's a lot there's a lot of tactics and decoys that I don't study up on because you're thinking about, Oh, it's early season, they're flocked up, what kind of spread should I have. Oh it's mid season they're doing this, what kind of spread should I have. I'm still very much a beginner with decoys, and my game plan is, well, if they can see the decoys, usually gonna help. And that's not always the case. There's definitely I was in Wisconsin a couple of years ago and I thought for sure, strutter decoy. This same decoys I'm using now DSD shrutter decoy, a couple of Hens and usually that strutter with a real tail fan they can't resist. And Jake and Tom coming in they's got to within one hundred and fifty maybe, and we're like, nope, weird off already seen that. And I think that it was later in the season they had seen Deeks on that field and it just weren't getting fooled by it. And then maybe, like you're saying, too, it could be that, Oh, if it was only Hens, they would have come right like, you're not in the turkey, said you can't figure it out. So they're not. They're not foolproof by any means. But no, anyway, they sure worked On Monday for us. We ended up Zach shot one folded him at whatever it was, fifteen to twenty yards and because after he wouldn't come out of strut for me Zach, Zach couldn't take it anymore shot, which is goods. I was waiting for him too, yeah, and he was about to get up. I said no, no, no, no, no, say say stay, and I just started giving it to those all the three that were left God, and they circled wide. They kind wanted to come to the Deeks but didn't, and so they hung up and I hadn't quite ranged right where they were sitting, and I figured it was fifty to sixty one. Thing I'm starting to gauge a little bit. Is you know how they say when you should shoot at ducks or geese, you should be able to see their eye and then they're close enough. You ever heard that? No, No, I haven't. I think with turkeys it's very similar. And again, depending on what range, some people only want to shoot them out to forty, but I think that past sixty you're gonna have a heart, at least for me, in my eyes, I'm gonna have a hard time really picking up that eye and really picking out different features. I'm just saying this is it's ways to gauge distance. If you haven't, you know, use your range finder in that particular setup, you didn't have time or whatever. You might not be carrying a range finder, which I don't always carry turkey hunting, but it sure is nice to validate all that. Right, I shoot a turkey and you're like, oh, how how far was that? Boom? Thirty five. Oh great, great to know that thirty five was completely on or boy, that one was kind of long because I shot one folded him. I wasn't going to let the other two roll, but his buddy came back and started pecking on him. I thought, man, you know this is a I think this is a sign to give an opportunity to pass up. So I called it againy stretch his neck out and I shot folded him too. And I mean it was fifty nine to sixty on the dot to the tree that I was leaning up against. So again I just think that, you know, my choke was holding that pattern tighter better at that range, and what Zach was using this wasn't quite getting it done. Yeah. 00:19:56 Speaker 2: The quick note with the range finders, like I definitely only think, especially if you're going to a new area, you should really consider bringing one with you. That's one thing I see a lot here is a lot of you know a lot of our clients that are coming from back east. It's really heavily wooded. You know, you have a hard time seeing two hundred yards, let alone further than that, and you get to a spot where it's super wide open. You have a lot of trouble gauging forty yards, you know. Yeah, so things seem to be what the tending is or not tending. The trend seems to be that folks, things are farther than they think that they are away and just a simple rangefinder, right when you sit down, just to hit a few spots and get an idea, like so easy to do and it could, you know, get your bird. 00:20:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent agree. It's uh, it's a completely different turkey hunt out here, and I forget that every year. But the openness of the West. I mean, sure there are some places where it's where it's thicker, but the openness of the West just throws in a completely different wrench into it. It's a lot easier to bushwhack a turkey, especially if you've got hilly terrain, because you see them at two hundred yards. They go behind a hill, You sprint two hundred yards, get to that ridge and just start peeking over. Right, that's a hard thing to pull off. In Wisconsin's country. Leaves are too noisy. You just don't when you know, like you said, they get into the woods, it gets thick, you can't see them. So that can work for you and against you. Because again, if you just sit down and it's wide open cow pasture for four hundred yards and you're over there calling, and that turkey looks down there and doesn't see another turkey, I guess in his head he says, Nope, he pooled me once. They ain't gonna fool me twice. Yeah, all right, So anyways, good, good opener, I'm heading for my Montana slim not to be outdone by turkeys. Our cat Honey took a turn. Yeah, took a turn for the good old ming has got it done. Second to last day of season. Season ended April fourteenth. Turkeys opened to April fifteenth, So we hunted the thirteenth actually, and went back to the same spot that I talked about last time. It's a ridge. There was a bunch of cat tracks. I knew there was a cat living there. There was a bunch of kills. I took a friend of mine, a colleague, Christine from Meat Eater. She's our hr generalist, great gal. New to the West and was super stoked to go out. And this is the second time she came with me. We didn't cut a track the first time, and it was snowing since about five am that morning, so not a great morning to actually cut a track. But again I knew there was a cat there on this ridge. I figured, well, what the heck, We'll give it four or five hours a hiking and hopefully mingus will pick up something that's under the snow or win the cat or whatever. But hopefully something will happen. It'll be worthwhile to get out. It was the sheetiest walking I maybe have had all I had one or two hikes that were as bad, with snow shoes, breakable crust that was three or four inches thick, and a lot of times going mid thigh deep. Just brutal. Like you really get to be good at reading snow conditions because you don't. You take ten steps in that stuff and you go, okay, it's gonna take me, you know, thirty minutes to make it one hundred yards, and I'm going to be tired. You start to really gauge, like, oh, is is it better if there's a little bit of slope to it? Did that aspect get a little more sun? Should be close to the trees, away from the trees, and you really start to figure out where that snow is going to hold you a little bit better. But anyways, that was rough, but we powered through, had our hiking poles. I felt I always feel like a real tourist. And when I was living in Colorado, we'd rent snowshoes, rent poles, and you'd see people out on the trails, you know, having a great old time with their fanning pack, their poles, snowshoes, just tramping along. And so that's how I feel like when I'm out there with my hiking poles and snow shoes. 00:24:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:24:42 Speaker 1: But yeah, we're kind of working a little benchy. Yeah, there's a bench on this ridge. And every ten minutes or so, if I hadn't seen Mangus in a while, I pull out the GPS and kind of just check and see where he's at. And one of the times I pull it out, looked down and says that he's not moving, but he's still barking, which could could be, but he is barking. We couldn't hear him snowing too much a little bit of wind, So we walk over to the edge. He was only I don't know, one hundred and fifty yards maybe two hundred yards away from us, And once we got to the edge, I could hear him barking treed. But man, we've had a lot of false alarms this year. I could say one thing. I think after that day, I can trust him on his tree bark. Like, if I hear the tree bark, I know he's got something treat, probably a raccoon, bob cat, a lion. And because of where we were in our previous intel, I figured it was lying. But I told chrisine, don't get excited yet. Once we see the cat, we can get excited. But yeah, we floated down the hill and sure enough he had caught what looked to me like another one hundred pound cat, and it was in such a thick spot. If you look at my Instagram, you can see I've posted a couple of pictures, but all you could see was its face, its ears. I guess you can call that its head, but you literally couldn't see its neck. And that's all it was, was just its face sticking out. And then I went to the other side of the tree. You could just see, you know, most of his tail. So it would have been hard to sex it. We really would have had to ask a lot of that cat to move around just properly to sex it. And it really just didn't have that big look to it, just kind of a sleeker face, not scrunched up, and no rolls of skin. Not what I would call a bucket head or a pumpkin head, just a little sleeker, narrower. Just didn't give off that vibe of a cat that I was gonna, you know, try to harvest. So we hung out for fifteen to twenty minutes and took some pictures and had a snack and walked away. That's the end of lion season. People, I don't know if it's I mean, sure it is on the internet. People don't read the captions or don't listen to what you're saying all the time, and so everybody's always asking, well, why you just cheining them and not killing them? Did you kill it? It's like, dude, if I killed it, I would have had a picture for you of me and the dead cat one hundred percent. But to reiterate, I'm looking for a mature tom, and I don't know exactly what that is. By knowing, my buddy Jeff flood sends me a picture of a mature tom that he killed that was involved in some depredation. Uh, it's a different looking critter. Like, like I said, it's just got that dark crease in its forehead. It's got works kind of some roles in it's in its face. It's it's rounder chunkier head, and they just look bigger. I think when I see the right one, it'll be very appairent. You're going to Yeah, And but that's the thing. It's this whole business about hunting these cats, chasing these cats. It's I don't know. I mean, I guess if I if I treat a nice time every year, well I kill a nice time every year, probably don't see myself passing it up. Maybe things will change after I've killed four or five of them. But I mean, as far as I'm concerned, no reason not to write. There's a there's a there's a there's a quota, there's a season. Uh, it's a managed population, and the meat's great. So yeah, I'm still waiting for the big one. And I'm sure next year December first, first day of season, or this year, I should say December first, we're gonna go out and get ourselves a nice people of tom cap Heck. 00:28:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, when you guys were, when you and Zach were Turkey hunting. Did you how'd you guys camp? Did you like stay in a house or did you do you like. 00:29:00 Speaker 1: A car camping deal or what car camp? 00:29:03 Speaker 2: Nice? 00:29:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, mobile, we each have our own trucks. I actually took some pictures of the car camp and setups and it's nothing elaborate. And that actually brings us to, uh, you know a little segment that we were trying to trying to do and promote and repeat here on gear talk podcasts. But it's what's new, and this gear item isn't exactly new. I got a new version of it. It's the single wide. I've had the double wide I think for two full seasons, maybe even three. I know I had it with me sheep hunt. But it's the Nemo roamor a little bit spending. I can't remember the price, but I'm telling you we've lent out a couple My wife was just telling me she's lent out our pads a couple of times, or brought him with to these trainings that she does for work and let people borrow them and just sleep on floors or whatever. And man, I mean, it is like you're not sleep It does not feel like you're sleeping on an inflatable mattress whatsoever, and they're tough trucks. Back of my truck's kind of dirty. It's got drywall dust and crust from little projects we got going on at the house. I just didn't have time to clean it all out, which I normally like to do before I go sleep in the back of it. But I didn't have any qualms. I mean, obviously a screwer and nail is going to punch right through it. Right, it's an airpad, but anyways, super comfyed. I guess it's got some sort of our value for insulation. But the single wide is probably the size of a I don't know, not quite two basketball stacked on top of each other, basketball and a half something like that. And yeah, I just leave it. I have a inchin a eighth chunk of plywood is covered in like that green outdoor carpet. It sits on the deck rails, inside my top or in my bed, so that pad was underneath it and I wasn't using it. I would just fold it under that shelf. It would just be out of the way. Sleeping bags there, pillows there, So when you're ready, just PLoP that sucker out crawl was stick my feet in there, and I think two nights I slept in there, and then one night I just just yanked it out and said it on the ground. We had a nice grassy spot we were parked on and just slept outside. But yeah, other than that, I have a rubber maid kitchen a toe that's full of my what I call the car. It's labeled the car camping kitchen. We didn't even use that much out of it. I think we used one pot. I have those MSR pots titanium tefon coded right. They're more of a backpacking pot. But when you're just one or two people and all you're doing is warming up some water, heating up some sausages or what do we bring? I bought. I brought a court of a goose stew that I'd made, dumped it in there, warmed it up two minutes later and you got hot stew. We ate that. So yeah, that and then a cooler, some food, a few beers in there, uh what else? Juggle water perfect, and then my hunting gear gets. 00:32:36 Speaker 2: Me so excited for camping. Man. 00:32:39 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is the this is the my annual kick off to camping. And it's a nice break in right, because you're still pretty comfortable. We're driving around. If you want to stop at a cafe and have a burger in rural Montana for lunch one day, you can, but we're prepared to, you know, stay out. Yeah, it's super nice to sleep out. And it was chilly. I'm glad I brought the I brought the uh Nemo zero degree. I can't remember the name of it. It's the one that has the guilt you can open. Yeah, the one's got the first light camel on, nice warm bag. It's I feel like it's just a little bit big and bulky that I would if I I don't know if i'd use it for backpacking. I'm sure you could. It's just I don't know. I don't know the way Off the top of my head. I will say the one feature that it has that is super super sweet, and I think that I can't believe everybody else is gonna do this. I don't know what they call it or what it is, but I'll try to describe it. The zipper is got this rubberized sort of it's coating the zipper, but it also protrudes out in front of the zipper. Like the direction you're pulling it to close the zipper, and it's it's kind of like a wing and what it's meant to do is push the fabric away from the zipper so that you never get your fabric caught in the zippers. That makes sense. Oh yeah, you probably You probably have that same bag with that same I do. 00:34:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do. It's like a lot of people want to get away from zippers, and I just I don't know if there's any getting away with zippers, but they're doing stuff like that to them, which is really like forward thinking. 00:34:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's not like anybody's spend a lot of time at sleeping bag knows that. Sure there's a way. You sort of have to zip it up with one finger under the zipper, and that the finger moves the fabric out of the way so that as you're zipping you can close it up. That being said, doesn't matter. You climb in there, you forget to do it. You go to pull it up, you're tired and alsodden, you know, jams up and you're fighting it and piss because all you want to do is just is to zip it up and go to sleep. So someone's thinking about it, and uh, we're working for solutions, so I like it. Yeah, anything new and exciting for gear coming across your desk. 00:35:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of new things that are just getting ready to hit the market or have hit the market. A lot of folks in the last few days. I've probably seen the new h F HF binal harness, the fob. It's a forward opening harness. It's I've been used in it. I used it this whole last fall, and I believe you have two m and uh, it's great, great harness. I think, very well thought out, very modular if you want it to be, or you know, pretty sleek if you don't want it to be. One question that I've been getting in they have, I know they have been getting a lot is do the magnets in the magnetic closures impact the reliability of using a GPS or compass on your phone and everything. I talked to Rick from a FHF about this just to see what their stance was, and He's like, basically they found that it depended on the phone and even the phone case a little bit. But if you didn't have the phone within basically six inches of the magnet they didn't see any issues. They didn't find any issues with it, And this seems to be like a large point of marketing, if you want to call it of, Like some companies doing non magnetics, magnets can screw with your pacemaker if you have a pacemaker, So I think that's something you definitely want to make sure of. But as far as affecting your phone in compasses, like magnets on nyl harnesses, they're so there's such an efficient way to open and close one handed. They're pretty damn strong, and they're just like a really good way to do it. The little bit that you might have to maybe take it off or hold your phone out away from the harness to use a compass or to use your phone, I just don't think that it's really I don't. I don't think it's as big a factor as people make it out to be. I think it gets a little overblown. 00:37:31 Speaker 1: No, I've definitely seen it affect my phone. I like to I'm a person that likes to do the matt mind. When I set up my maps, I have it set up in north up so that anytime I use the directional pointer, the map moves to where to to where I'm pointing, right, so my phone is pointing at If I pointed at a ridgetop, my point point my phone should point that way whatever, So very quickly. If you're hunting along a river and you're pointing your phone and it's you should be looking at the river on your map, but you're not. It's behind you, you know something's up. It's definitely a I have the iPhone twelve I think twelve bro something like that. I've definitely seen it affect it. If I'm holding it right next to my by no harness, which people do. I think it's gonna affect it for sure. If you're six to twelve inches away, not gonna have any issues. Hold it up in front of your face, not gonna have any issues. So I don't know if that's going to make you, you know, not use that product. It hasn't been so bad that it's been annoying. It's just been something that you just get get used to. 00:38:51 Speaker 2: Right. 00:38:51 Speaker 1: If you see that it's tweaking with it, just move it away from your from your body a little bit more. 00:38:58 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I feel like I feel like we covered that pretty well. But that was a big question and I've heard that question a lot on magnetic harnesses, but man, they are nice. And another moving on another product that just came out. Our Golly just came out there, a white he one person tent. I actually used this tent one night for an overnighter. I swung by the the Our Golly store and Brad lives right in Boise there. So I was going on a mule deer trip. Just wanted to be super lightweight, and I knew he had this new proto one person and I asked him if I could take it, so he he sent it with me. I didn't double check to make sure that there were actually steaks with it, So I got all the way up to where I was going, went to pitch it out right before dark, and I didn't have any steaks, so I just tied it to rocks. Well, I I think it was Brad. Uh. Well, it was just like a prototype that they'd been bouncing around from person to person and it just got I just didn't double check it for steaks, which I feel like it was my fault, but we can blame it on Brad too. That's fun. 00:40:20 Speaker 1: So what's up with it? Single wall? Uh? 00:40:24 Speaker 2: It's yes, it is a It is a single wall. You can pitch it with one trekking pole in the middle and then the two ends. Guy out. You have a vestibule. They do have an insert that's like a bug netting insert that you can use. I used it with that and it worked well. And yeah, just a lightweight one person with the steaks. The outer canopy is they call it, and the insert. You're just a tick under two pounds with all of that, and you're you're fifteen ounces with the steaks and just the canopy only on the outside. So she's small. But uh, nice for running gun type, you know, if you're hiking with camp on your back, or if you just want to go super light weight, it's a good option. 00:41:15 Speaker 1: Cool. I better call Brad tell him to send me one. 00:41:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. 00:41:20 Speaker 1: I saw that that. Yeah, he's selling them now they're out there. All right. Let's move on to uh. We got a couple of listener questions we want to hit on. The first one comes from BTS Underscore BOUSHEETO. I don't know what that means behind the scenes in the bush. His question is frame like this inswerts for Honting boots. Question mark if yes, which ones, Jordan. 00:42:02 Speaker 2: Well, uh, it kind of depends on the kind of depends on the boot. I've found. I usually try to tell people to just go to like a try like a fairly cheap in soul first, So go to like a super feet. Super Feet has They're sold in a lot of places. They different models, thirty bucks, forty bucks. Oh well, I mean when you consider like a you know, the next step up, like an orthotic. 00:42:38 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I know that's yeah. Yeah. I think this fella is asking about something you'd buy at a hiking you know, ARII type sportsman's warehouse place. 00:42:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, super feet, I think, yeah, but those are the guides. The guides are what I usually try to use if if the inserts in the boots themselves aren't quite doing it for me. 00:43:05 Speaker 1: It looks like they're ranging from fifty to sixty bucks. 00:43:08 Speaker 2: These days, they've gone up. They have a Marino one too that I put in my pack boots. It was nice, Yeah, it is, it is nice. I've got them, yeah, in my pack boots. Now they you could put them in any boots. I actually think I moved them to another set of shoes now that packs are kind of out now that it's like sixty five degrees here, but packboots tend to be just a smidge and wide for me, and those things like filled up the space and really helped. But real quick, as we were talking about it before, I think we should do a podcast on car camping stuff. And so if anybody has any questions, they should send them into gear talk at the media dot com and we'll try to get that. 00:43:52 Speaker 1: That'd be a good episode, ye just going deep on the car camping. Oh yeah, but yeah, send your questions to gear talk dot com them that's the best place to send them to. You can also DM Jordan and I on Instagram, but we appreciate just send an email to gear talk at the meat Eater dot com. Yeah, I've used I think I've had every color super feet out there. Really, it seems like there's a lot of options if you look on their website, but the different colors for most of the time, they each color represents a different arch profile from flatter to medium to hire and they want you to go to a store and try take them out of the box, put them in your boots and see how each one feels. I think it can be tricky because everybody thinks, oh, I need art support, I need art support. Well, if you've got a flat arch, you only need that amount of art support if you go buy one of those. I think it's the green one that has uh, the most art support. I can't wear. Yeah, I can't wear that one because I I'm reading the Yeah, an excellent choice for those with high arches is the green one. So I think I'm usually a blue or a green which has lower arches. But it's all the support that I need. But I do like the Uh. There's one that's a little bit thinner and lighter, which I like mostly because it dries faster. And that's the Trailblazer. Comfort looks like there's yeah, there's two of them, one's and men's ones and women's and it's just thinner overall. So if you get your boots, sweat, sweat them out, whatever, there's just less material take. It dries out faster. 00:45:53 Speaker 2: Nice. 00:45:53 Speaker 1: If I had to buy one right now, that would probably be be the one. 00:45:57 Speaker 2: Yeah, A little bit of a just a quick follow up on this thing too. I've gotten quite a few questions on the sheep feet. There's a company called sheep Feet that's marketing to like the outdoor industry hunters. That's basically a customer orthotic. They basically send you this like a foam type thing and you press your foot into the foam and then you send it back to them and they make you a customer orthotic. They are expensive, and that would personally be one of my maybe last choices. If you can't find a super feet that works good for you, you could go to, you know, a customer orthotic like that. I do have them, Yeah, yeah, I do have them. It depends on the boots. Like every boot, even different models are the same manufacturer. They're all built just a little bit different with a little bit you know, as we talked with Kendall about in the boots, like a little bit different last or a different mid soul or whatever it seems to fit. They all fit a little bit different. So there's some boots that my arches hurt me with those insoles, and there's some that it's it fits me a lot better. So I don't know, it's all just like a trial and air thing. 00:47:18 Speaker 1: Man. Oh that's as it is with a lot of this gear stuff. Yeah, all right, what else we got for questions? 00:47:25 Speaker 2: We have what is your choice for backcountry cooking, stove in any utensils or cook where you like just underscore rhino. 00:47:38 Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know how people come up with. 00:47:40 Speaker 2: These uh underscore w I don't know with. 00:47:43 Speaker 1: Their Instagram handles, but uh, anyways, all good. Whatever you want to call yourself on Instagram, it's fine with me. I recommend you get off Instagram and go outside. Yeah for everybody, Even though I know you guys all look at Instagram a lot, watch my instagt I'd be happier if I knew that you weren't looking at my Instagram. Instead you're outside chasing a turkey or something. Man, He asked specifically about backcountry right now, I've got two main systems that I use, and it depends on if it's uh, just me or I guess I mean one other person, or if it's if it's two or more both systems from MSR, I really don't feel like they even have a Maybe I'm just not in the loop enough, but I feel like they don't have a real competitor in the backpack and stove space. But I need to look into that. My two right now, if I'm going solo, it's the pocket rocket. It might even be the pocket rock de Lux, which I think maybe is that the one that just has this. It has a clicker, right, it has a lighter and built into it igniter. Yes, yeah, it's that. So you have that, and then you have a canister with you, and then I have a single titanium pot slash cup. Okay, and again this is bare minimum. I want to be ultra lightweight hunting with my pack on. That cup is going to be used to do everything from mostly warming up water, but I'm also just gonna drink out of it. The one major drawback from having those just a titanium potter cup is that they can be extremely hot to your lips when the liquid or whatever you got inside there is warm. And then that because it's it's such a conductor that it can also lead to it cools off your food and your drinks very quickly. But again, I'm not usually out there to sit there and sip coffee for thirty minutes. I mean, you know, not being a caffeinated coffee drinker anymore. A lot of times I just skip it and whatever water I've left over from making breakfast, whatever it is, I just drink the warm water. Easy clean up and just put it all away and I'm on my way. I don't have to sit there and you know, warm something up. But that's my one to two persons set up. And then if I go and I think that the pot is from peak peak titanium, I believe. And then if I go more, I have the bigger size MSR reactor and it is a little bit heavier, but I can heat up more water at one time. It's more efficient because of the way that that the burner is basically attached. It just funnels the heat directly to the pot much better. And I'll run that so it's a little it's just slightly I mean, I don't know, quarter pound, four ounces or something like that heavier, but I'll use it the same way really well, I don't know. Sometimes I'll have a I just I have a I don't know, RII molded plastic cup that I guess. If I'm in a group situation, we're all going to have a hot drink, tea or whatever, then instead of using the pot to do that, I'll have my own cup with mem Yeah, MSR titanium long handled spoon. It would be the only utensil I'm usually packing and that's going to round it out. And so whatever food I'm eating, I can I can eat between my pocket knife, that and that spoon and one pot slash cup to heat up water. 00:51:38 Speaker 2: Here's any difference, man, pretty close. I've got that the same one MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe and atokes five to fifty milliter titanium cup. It is things that total set up is like six ounces. It's pretty pretty light, which is nice. And then I've got the same the the reactor. That thing is just so clutch for like melting snow if you have to do that, and then boiling water super fast. Another one that I have been using a bit just because Leah owned it, the jet Boil Mini Mo. That's I've been really happy with that thing, like super happy with it. I had the jet Boil Flash for a while and it just it is like their cheapest one, and I just had troubles with the It's not it's doesn't have a regulator, but the like where you turn your fuel on and off that little knob. It just seemed like I would just have some real troubles. It would just spit and spotter and I couldn't get consistent fuel flow. Through it. So I don't know if it was gumming up or what, but that Mini mo does have a regulator on it simmers really well, and I've been really happy with that. So that's been a good option. Pretty much same with you on utensils. Just so long handled spoon is basically all that I'm using. Uh, one little thing I do. I did start taking like from ARII or really wherever you can get a little uh, salt and pepper shaker thing you put salt and pepper in the same or just whatever seasonings you want. Just take a little seasoning packet with you. Man, A little bit of like seasoning in a mountain house or something is so nice after the you know third day. Oh yeah, dude, salt and pepper. I mean, I know a mountain house it has a lot of sodium and salt in it. Whatever. But I'll take even like a any kind of a seasoning, like a smoking, savory seasoning or whatever. Yeah, toss a little bit of that in a mountain house. It just gives it I don't know freshness is the correct term, but it gives it a little kick. That's like nice. 00:53:56 Speaker 1: I could see, I could I could see how you could call it freshness. Just ivens it up a little. 00:54:01 Speaker 2: Bit, livens it up. Yeah, yeah, I like it. 00:54:04 Speaker 1: What else we got here, We've. 00:54:06 Speaker 2: Got one super applicable to what's going on right now. What do you use for tick protection from SMIT twenty one? 00:54:15 Speaker 1: That one's easy. I just buy the Sawyer promethrone product, and I usually buy the spray on version. Uh, spray it on the couple pairs of pants all wear during Turkey season, and uh, the couple shirts, maybe more shirts, and then uh, it's it's good for I forget. They say a lot of washes, so it's not like you don't have to reapply, and it seems it seems to work. Dang good. I'll bring a squirt bottle with me, Uh when we go, say to different parts of Montana where the ticks are bad, and uh, spray down my boots. Maybe another time or two during the hunt. But it's probably unnecessary. They really say, you want you to spray it down and let the stuff just sit I think for four or six hours, let it dry before you start wearing it. But yeah, that stuff works great. 00:55:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much the same. Uh, we don't have a ton of ticks here. It seems like this is a high tick year for us so far, but we don't have just like, I've never experienced a time where I've sat down and just had you know, you'll hear people talk about hundreds of them crawling up their legs. Ye, that would freaking freak me out. But we don't have quite that here. But yeah, but basically the same thing, just that promethine and spray it down on your outerwear and roll out. 00:55:52 Speaker 1: Yep. Exactly. Uh, well, let's see here stocks a lot. I'll hunting with his kids. I'm hoping to get my three year old out to tag along on a turkey hunt and a whitetail hunt this year. Just wondering how you manage hearing protection with kids. You have them wear them for the whole hunt. I don't know why we didn't see a name behind that question, but yes, great question, and basically I would just bring along hearing protection. You can do full muffs, obviously those work the best, but I found that the Howard light I believe that's how you pronounce it E L E I g h T. They make an orange band that has the replaceable orange little foam pieces for your ears, and I've had a couple of these bands. I'm not kidding coming on twenty years because I had one from way back in the day when I was guiding and I would just leave the cabin or the tent in the morning and throw those suckers on my neck and when you get into the heat of the moment, they're right there and just you know, pop them in quick and easy and again the it's gonna be plenty to get the job done for that one shot at a deer or the one turkey shot. And at least they have them around their neck. They're not too cumbersome. I've had them. I've packed around muffs. My kids have also packed them around. Those seem to be uh just a little bit harder, just because they're bigger and bulkier. But that's uh yeah, that's how I've dealt with it, and it's it seems to have worked real well. Nice. 00:57:40 Speaker 2: When is that waterproof puffy jacket coming out that you mentioned on the bear podcast? Keep your ears open, our eyes open, I guess, and just like the next couple of weeks. 00:57:54 Speaker 1: Actually, I think from when when this thing drops, it'll be out. 00:57:58 Speaker 2: Oh it'll already be out. Yeah, good point. 00:58:01 Speaker 1: Uh, Yeah, it's called the uncle pahgre foundry jacket. Yep. 00:58:08 Speaker 2: Basically took an uncle pagreay jacket and melted a rain jacket over the top of it. 00:58:15 Speaker 1: So careful, be careful with that word. People are gonna get freaked out. Yeah, but it is uh attached the the insulation is attached to the outer uh durable face fabric. It's a very very durable jacket. That's probably the number one stand out uh characteristic of this jacket. You'll see that this sucker is made to bust brush the same way that you can go through any kind of brush you want with the omen rainshell. This uncle pare foundry is going to be the same deal. But it's basically got the same insulation as an uncle pahre on the inside. So that means one hundred grams in the chest torso area and then sixty grams in the arms. But just like like Jordan was saying, a waterproof, wind proof shell on the outside. That's just super super tough. 00:59:20 Speaker 2: Yeap, in my opinion. 00:59:22 Speaker 1: In the yeah, my opinion, not really a jacket to hike in, But it's a jacket that if you know it's gonna be blowing and nasty. And when I say hike, I'm talking, okay, we'll get out. We're at the trailhead. We're going up three miles in the dark. You know, before we start hunting, like, it's not gonna be for that. But once you get up there and you know it's gonna be a cold, snowy, windy day, you put that over on your you know, one bass layer, a bass layer in a mid layer, and you have that on, you're gonna have the insulation and the wind proofness for a nice comfy day in the mountains. So yeah, if you're looking for something tough, durable, that's gonna be a a pretty sweet little piece. Anything you want to add about. 01:00:09 Speaker 2: It, Yeah, no, no, it's just it's great for late season, you're talking high winds, some inclement weather. Great outerwear piece. But you can still pack it, which is kind of nice. You know, it's not going to pack down as small as like a down jacket or anything, but it's still like you can shove in your pack no problem. 01:00:31 Speaker 1: So yeah, it's like having two jackets in one. So it's gonna not be quite as heavy as a rain jacket and a puffy jacket, but definitely heavier than just one or the other. 01:00:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love it. I actually I got the first rendition of it two years ago and so I've been wearing. I probably have sixty days in it over a couple of years, especially using like using it late season Nebraska December. It's like open on the planes. It's always windy and cold, and it's a fantastic jacket for that. So yeah, I'm excited to get into some people's hands. 01:01:12 Speaker 1: Okay, last, but not least, how do you handle leather boots in the moisture. I'm from the East, but my friend that I hike with Shun's leather boots because he had bad expiry, had I guess a bad experience with them getting wet. I'm new to backpacking, but I've hunting leather boots for years, just never for multiple days on a backpacking trip. Is that just preference or just the individual gear? Well? 01:01:38 Speaker 2: H I feel like that's uh, some of its preference. I mean, I feel like a lot of its preference. I think the biggest issue with leather boots getting them wet is if you dry him too fast, they'll shrink. 01:01:51 Speaker 1: They can drink mm hmm, and they take a while to dry if you get him wet. So for me, you definitely just want to have well taken care of leather boots. I've never on a backpack and hunt packed along extra nick wax, but I've certainly had it in my duffel in a base camp scenario and a couple three days into the week. It all depends on the conditions. If every morning you've got that tall, dew covered wet grass, even if it hasn't rained, but that's when you're out there hunting, because you're out there in an hour or two before daylight, right at daylight, and a couple hours after. I mean some of these high country meadows in Colorado, I mean it can be mid thigh grasses, I mean everything. You might as well be wearing rain pants. It's gonna get wet. Right if you've got leather boots, your nick wax is gonna get worn off on the outside walking through that stuff and they could get wet. So coming in with some well, I say oil, but well waterproofed boots would be my number one recommendation. And you know, in Colorado, usually even after a wet, dewey morning like that, come at ten am, the place dries out right. So if you're taking your midday nap, put your boots out in you know, breezy spot, a little bit of warm sun on them, they should dry right out. If you come into that haunt with boots that aren't well taken care of and your leather is dried out, well, guess what the first hike you do in some wet, dew covered grass, You're gonna have feet slashing. Literally, I'm not joking, slashing feet. You're gonna feel like you walk through a creek even though you didn't. That leather is just gonna suck in that moisture and that's all on you because you just didn't take care of your boots. So I don't know. I think the nice thing about leather is it becomes breaks in, it becomes soft and malleable. It becomes a little bit more form fitted to your foot more than say the synthetics do. So I feel like you get a more comfortable boot, right. But yes, it's a thing that you have to think about to keep them waterproofed, keep the moisture off of them. If you can hear chirping in the background, I'm sitting next to oh one of them's out. That's why he's pissed and he's chirping a bunch because he flew out. We have I don't even know how many you're in this thing. There's probably ten five or I don't know, ten day old chicks right next to me. Let me put the sucker back in here, all right? Sorry, back to hunting and leather boots. So man, I've done both. I will say that the synthetics like I have those what's that the handwalk makra, No leather there, all synthetic, very quick drying boot. Been very happy with that boot. I just wore it over the weekend doing some turkey hunting, and I did notice that after that boot's been sitting since last fall, little stiff right, Just a different feel than the leather. I still love it. I think it's a great boot, but different field than the letter leather. But like I said, gets wet. It's gonna dry super fast, So yeah, you're gonna have to make up your own decision on that. But even that boot, even though it's synthetic, it's if you if I walked through dew covered grass for two hours, it's gonna get wet too. 01:05:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's tough. But one thing on leather boots too, not just stray too far from the question, but over synthetic, it just seems like leather just more durable, like more naturally just durable. So like you should think about that too when you go on hunts. I've talked about it before. I took parasynthetic boots to Alaska and a sheep hunt and was just in rocks all the time and just really shredded the sides of them down here in the lower forty eight. If you were in rocks slides and shale and stuff all the time, like the same thing would probably happen, but just trying to match those conditions down here. I use those boots all like winter, slash spring and all summer scouting and stuff, and I never had any issues with the most super confident going into that trip with them, but they just got tore up, and like a leather boot just wouldn't have done that too. So that straight away a little bit from the water proofing question or moisture question, but something to consider too when you're when you're looking at a boot. But I really like my I really like my other boots, especially like snow hits ground. 01:07:03 Speaker 1: Yep. Cool. Well, thanks for listening to another episode of the gear Talk podcast. As always, and we were saying earlier, think about it. We've gotta We're gonna do an upcoming car camping episodes and if you have any questions regarding that, send it to gear Talk at the mediator dot com or any questions related to gear Make sure to tell your friends how much you're learning listening to gear Talk podcast. Tell them to listen to if you have a minute, we'd appreciate it. If you went onto iTunes, found gear Talk there gave us a review hit the farthest most right star. That's only if you think it's a five star podcast. If you think it's only three and a half, you can do that one too. But yeah, do that. You can find us on Instagram, Jordan bod or Joannis. But tell us what else? That's it? You got anything else? 01:08:03 Speaker 2: Stage, Jordan, No, man, I don't. I'm gonna go pick up some turkey owners. 01:08:08 Speaker 1: Oh nice, Well, good luck to you and your turkey hunters. You listeners, get off the Instagram, stop listening to this podcast, go out and get outside and go hunting. Thanks