00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. You know. What was like a weird emotion I had the other day is I was coming back from a trip and and and I get a call with my wife and she's saying that my boy, my oldest boy, has been invited to go fishing with his body and that buddy's dad. And it was like, uh, it felt like my old lady is going out on a date with another guy. That's what you said, Yeah you feel Did you get over that? Yeah? I got over because I realized it's like, you know, it's like a totally unfair feeling, but I felt like I was getting cheated on. He'd never gone fishing outside, like fishing with my brothers. I think a little bit, maybe up in our shack or something. Um he'd uh yeah, he'd never fished with another man. And it like left me feeling, uh yeah, I was jealous. My initial feeling was like, of course, of course, but the back of my mind I was feeling jealous. Then he wanted up catching a fish, brought home to flay. He's all excited ate a bunch of it last night. Yeah, it's probably good for him to to uh have other teachers. Yeah, I was just hoping they'd get skunked so he'd be like, if you want to catch fish, you gotta go with the old man. And now he's like, anybody can catch fish. Did you come home with anything like oh we did this different or so and so. No, but he if you turn around, you'll see that rig right there. That's what he caught it. That's what he caught. A silver on. He caught a little he caught a little dink or like twelve inch king that he that they turned out and then uh, and then he caught a silver on. That sounds like the dude he was with, which is pretty nice. Like duty is with the way my kid tells it is the guy says, hey, hold this rode, I gotta do something. I gotta run an errand on the boat. And the way my boy tells it is the minute he held the rod, why I am a fish hit? But I feel like I got checked. I haven't chatted with him yet. I feel like what happened was he maybe he hooked the fish, which is just like move right to not be like, hey, Sonny, there's a fish on here, but just hand the rod and let him have like the discovery one being honored. So I feel like he was pretty shrewd, which makes me think he's a good guy. But then he brought the fish home. He brought one flay home. He said another family kept the other flay because it was like a couple of guys out there with kids. And uh, so he brought one flay home. And I took my Japanese bone pickers and uh pick the bones out and then the sounds growerty, But it's not man. You were just saying may oh, like take mayo and seasoning salt and lemon and herbs like parsley, whatever, mince it up, mix it all together, and just like layer that, spread that on the fish and then cook it and then broil. That's good ship man. But you tell people like you're gonna coat it, and yeah, it sounds weird. You just gotta say I'm coating in in the sauce ras and saying based on coating that something. Go back to Japanese bone picker. Oh, my Japanese bone pickers. I have genuine stainless steel Japanese bone pickers. I mean it looks just like a fans pair of tweezers. It looks like the like a fingernail clipper, but not sharp. Yeah. You know what's funny too about picking bones out of salmon is uh, when I'm talking about picking bones on top, about picking the pin bones right, like when you when you flay a salmon or any number fish, you can either like take the flay off with the ribs, then just rib it in one piece and just take all the ribs out comes off like a plant pain of glass, you know. Or you take the ribs off, or you either flay around the ribs and leave the ribs connected in their rightful place to connect it to the spine, or you take the whole damn thing off, ribs and all, and then rib it. But the pin bones um, particularly on a salmon, you just grabb with a pair of needle nose. But my Japanese bone pickers are amazing. Uh, I like them. But the funny thing is what I found is when that fish is in like a rigor state, even if it's just a flame, it's very difficult to pull those bones mm hmm. If you set it like the muscles hanging on. Yeah, Like if you freeze a fish and then pick the bones, they pick easy. If you catch a fish and go to pin bone it right away, it's difficult. You set it in your fridge overnight. It's easy to pick. So if you e k G made it would be easy to pay. I bet if your e k G made it, you the Japanese bone pickers would work even better. Yeah, but you can use these, these these pickers. You can pick all kinds of fish with them. Um. And the reason I'm calling them Japanese they actually came with There was no English on the package. I ordered them. After finding out about them, I was looking at a Japanese how to cookbook. A Japanese cookbook you gotta read from back to front. Um, it's just pictures of how to let cut up every fish on the planet, and in there they're always picking bones. And I was like, what the hell are those? So I got to sniffing around online and I found those bone pickers for nine bucks. Nice nine bucks. Yeah, but it's just one more thing you gotta worry about someone losing. Man, Like, when I see my kids, of those makes you want to kill them much as I like them, speaking of ordering stuff, I ordered a pair of fishing players, did you. Yeah, I got a new rule where I don't fish with growing ups who don't have their own fishing players. And now I don't backpack with growing ups who don't have their own sterry pen to sterilized water. I'll probably come up with more ship like this as time goes by, but that's where I'm at right now, with being rigid about people being mainly as fishing players. Man, yeah, it's depainting, but when you gotta constantly be finding yours, taking them off the land, you'red and pass them around. Yeah, and with saltwater, you know, like all the stuff is real heavy, so you can't get through it, you know. Yeah, it's not like you like I used to use. I wore a groove my teeth, cut line my teeth, but you can't cut my eighty pound plays out there with my pocket knife cutting through the eighty pound mono, And that's just not safe in a rocking boat when you just got that knife, you know, out and about all the time. Speaking of gear, not speaking of salmon flaze, not speaking to Mayo, but speaking to gear, what we're gonna do. We're doing a thing here. This is for all the mugs that our eyes right in, like asking like super specific gear questions, UM gear something like I like to think about it more than I really like to talk about it. Kind of that's kind of true. And I've even declared I've even got we used to argue so vehemently about geared for a while. I tried to have it be that I would not gay engage in any conversation arguing about the merits of various gear pieces. But we're gonna do a big major gear deal here because Yanni is going on um extracurricular uh hunting trip right now, So he's all packed up to go for how long a week? Yeah, roughly a week. So he's going hunting for about a week with his bone arrow four elk during the elk rut where he's a little background here where he's going. Um, it would if you were gone for a week, I would expect it to be in the seventies sometimes, and I would expect it to be dumping wet ass snow on you sometimes. Yeah, I think that's a safe and something. It's like you will have a morning, not not for sure, but like a very good chance you will have mornings where you wake up and there's six inches of just sopping wet slush on all your ship, and you will wake up and you will have midday periods when you're moving to a new area and you gotta hike three or four miles into a new zone. Um, when it's uncomfortably hot, right, yeah, and I expect you could have you know, not only that, I was thinking about it, because I was thinking about sun protection, you know, for those moments. Um, so you want to be like stripped down so you're comfortable, but you also need some protection. So you know, like long sleeve versus sunscreen. What kind of hat do you want for it? But uh, yeah, I can imagine, um, not just that, but like maybe possibly finding a betted herd, you know that's on a ridge or something, and you're moving in for the kill, you get within you know, shooting range, and then you're sitting there at two PM, known damn well that those probably aren't gonna stand up until six and you're just exposed and you need to be protected because it might be this beaten down sun or could be spitting sail and everything. To keep in mind, Oh, you're kind of in the you're in your you're you're dead center, you're dead center. Uh, in the in the population of about eight hundred grizzlies. So you'll see some little mentions of that. And there, give her take a couple of hundreds, give her take a couple of No, yeah, maybe more. Yes, it's been referred to as I've been planning for this trip, it's been referred to as the grizzly pit. Yes. Yeah, it's just like, well, we were in a zone that long ago and we saw six or seven and a couple of what we see seven seven in a few days, um, different bears, you know, seven different ones, including some youngsters in there. Now all right, talk about talk like like run through the duds you bring. And this this is like, like I said, this is like something that people pastor not pastor about, but just asked so much about. And uh. Also before we get into this, keep in mind the stuff we're gonna be talking about isn't just necessarily for this, but this is like what you use no matter what you were going to do. Yeah, definitely, I think you just really make adjustments. Um. Certainly temperature, you know, as the year goes on, it gets colder, you're gonna expect more snow. So that's when something like, you know, we'll make adjustments towards that. We can talk about that later. And uh, you might have a shooting iron instead of a bone arrow exactly, and you might have different optics, um, you know, or extra optics. Uh. But yeah, I feel like the base is pretty much always going to be the same. You know, little accessories here and there, But the little accessories add up to a lot of weights sometimes. So you only told you only told one like you got one pair of socks. No, So yeah, I broke down my uh, um, what does jump in with the duds the clothing? And I broke it down into like what I'm probably gonna be wearing of the time, and then what's probably gonna be in my backpack most of the time. So you're only wearing one pair, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I'll have basically one pair as an extra. Do you remember the old days and your kids, and you thought that like putting more socks on, yes, and then putting bread bags on them was like gonna be like the ticket to warmth holies. Yeah, Um, cotton socks on the last when you're putting your boots on. Trying your boots on, you need to make sure that you can freely wiggle your toes around, or else you will be a cold little hunter. Um. So you got one of them on and then you run Marino, well, Marino boxers. Yeah. See that's the deal man. This is like, you know, the old boxer's briefs thing. I'm not a boxer's man, and you're kind of stuck like boxers versus briefs, not boxer briefs. No, no, no, boxers versus briefs. Yeah, I'm not a boxer's man. I was, but I'm not. And um, that's a real Achilles heel for you. Cotton, it's the one cotton thing. Hold on, I know that there's companies that make non cotton briefs. Well, they make those weird synthetic e ones. Yeah, I don't like them. Those ones you can like washing the hotel sink and dry them out real fast. No, I don't like them. M yeah, man, it's an a killer. It's like the weak link in the gear. Is that one cotton thing? Yeah? Because they certainly I feel like those, um are the ones we I use and most of our crew uses the first light red Desert. I believe they're called boxer shorts, and they come down you know, you know, my long legs, like almost the tops of my knees, So I feel like with those, and then if I, you know, pull up a long pair of socks to the bottom of my knees, it's like you almost have a whole second layer covering you know, your legs underneath your pants. But doesn't get hot in the you know, the Marino they're not that loose right there, like tight fitting Marino will bob. They're not loose at all. Actually they don't fit, probably quite as tight as um as briefs, but no, and they actually can prevent chafing, right Like, I don't have that problems. I've got chicken legs. But if you got like I feel like a thick thighed fella, yeah, your thighs are rubbing, that can prevent you know, a little chafing down there. Oh yeah. But anyways, Yeah, I'm going like, and I'm gonna really try to stick to this list. I'm actually gonna pack probably tonight and finish packing in the morning and then go to and then I'm walking into the woods tomorrow. But uh, I'm going one pair of boxing shorts like the ones you got on, just the ones I got on that. Yeah, but that's a good move because people like the more stuff, you like, the more clothes and things. I feel like a lot of people bring too many socks, too many underwear. It's just stuff to manage. We'll manage. And like we we had the luxury like along a lot of our hunts where we like recently got flown in and so couple three, four, even ten pounds of extra gear, it's just gonna sit in my tent. I'm not really packing it around when we leave to go han or whatever. Now we're packing on plenty of other stuff because we're working, so there's cameras and batteries and whatnot. But here I'm really like, there's none of that stuff. It's this is purely for fun. And so there might be times when I'm actually having my whole camp and all my gear on my back and I might be chang sing elk. And I know from experience when the first time I ever did that, I walked into the woods where I think with a with all my water well with I think it was roughly three liters of water on my back. I was chasing elk around with like a fifty five to sixty pound pack. Very quickly after the first morning, I was like, I need to change. I need to like figure out a different system, because when you're like you're chasing a bugling bowl and you got fifty five pounds on your back, you're not like you're not the same hunter as you are if you have a little day pack on your back. It's a big difference. You know, your legs are getting smoked because in your mind you're like, oh my gosh, bugle and bull run, run, run, RNT run, and then an hour later your legs are like, dude, what's this all about? You? Yeah, I know that's that's heavy. But I think a lot of guys like just I don't know. I feel like some guys just like over do it and think about it. They do. But here again, I mean, we can go down this rabbit hole and go on forever. But if you really want to chase salk with your camp on your back and be able to stop at the end of the day and then just be there and not use the time and energy to go back to camp, you have to be fairly light, all right, so I got your socks, and you've got that far, so you might bring some sneakers or and or is this and or or you're you're running like mountain hunting booth. I think I'm gonna go and and this is a place where it's gonna be extra weight. But these high top sneakers I figured for my size. I think they I just looked up to wait, they're like fourteen ounces for a pair of nines. Okay, so under a back I'm sorry, Yeah, they were under a pound. Yeah, but for a pair of twelves, I'm looking probably a little bit over a pound, right, there's not that much more there. Um, and you want them for sneaking up a couple of things like I've got um Morton's neu roma in my feet, which is like Morton's neuroma. I know you got feet problems. Yeah, it's basically like nerves getting um agitated by metatursal bones, and it creates like after a while, usually around five or six miles, it can create some immense paint to the point where you just like want to stop walking and take his shoes off. Eat ibuprofen. It's bad. The softer than mid soul isn't a pair of shoes. The longer I can go without getting to that like, the stiffer that mid soul is, the more quickly it starts to agitate and it hurts. So having an extra pair of sneakers, especially if I want to trail, say i'm packing in or packing out, I'll carry my heavy, heavier, you know, mountain boots on my back, even though that's you know, four or five pounds back there, because I'm no at some point we'll be running across the side of a mountain on some shale, and I'm gonna want those. But so I can just bang out five, six, seven miles on a trail quickly, comfortably, I might not have my feet. Yeah, and then you put your then you put your barre tooths on and again. Oh. Something we didn't talk about is I'm going hunting with your brother, right, So we got llamas. Um, so I'm he's already in the woods. I'm going in there to meet him. I need to be self sufficient just in case, for whatever reason, we don't come together. I need to be you know, prepared. Um. But something like this, if I was only going by myself, I might consider just not bringing my you know, mountain hunting boots and just be going in myself. But no one that once you get way back in there, you might hook up and exactly put some on the llamas. Yeah, so I don't have to carry quite as much food in because he's already carried some food in. Obviously the lamas well, if we kill, they'll be packing meat out. So I wanted to carry as much out. So if I was doing if I was in your situation, depending on the weather, I would be running, I would be running. Uh my snais barre tooths. And if it was really cold, I'd bring my little down boot, my little down it's like kind of like a sock, kind of like a thing for at night if you want to like stretch out, but this time year, I would never bother with it, right Yeah. And then a Marino wool T shirt mm hmm. So this is all for your so just for like one's body on a mixed climate hunt, a base layer T shirt, base layer long sleep that's right, which is gonna be the Choma hoodie from First Light and no beanie cap because that's something has a hood. Yeah. Not only that, but I'm also gonna have my from my installation, I'm gonna have my And this is something I wanted to discuss and talk about because over the and again, we get so much experience by shooting the show that we get to try a lot of things and really think. You know, when you're just on long hikes back to camp, you're thinking about, Okay, you know my beanies in my pocket. I haven't worn it for two days, and I realized that I was having a lot to me where I'm just like, because sometimes you get that like ear ache, you don't even wearing a beanie too long, and uh yeah, I just wasn't using it because like like a lot of our gear has hoods on it, right, So between like the wool hoodie on the Choma hoodie, then the uncome progrede jacket which has the insulated hood, and then a rain jacket which has a hood. I figured, in some pretty darn right shitty cold conditions, if I put those three hoods on, I'm gonna be pretty comfortable. And I know that the beanie is it's ounces right, it's probably a quarter pound, but yeah, I'm leaving it, you know what. I flirt back and forth with his running what I call the Remy Warren, which is a baseball hat and then you just put the beanie over it. Yeah, because Remmy like has a trick where he doesn't always run a tripod with his binys, but he's got like like the Remy Warren. The move that I called the Remmy Warren is a three part move. Once insulation move. You always have a baseball cap on and you pull a large beanie over that to keep warm. But then when he's running his body, when he's using his binos, he holds his hands around his binos and grabs the bill of his hat. And I's if your hats tight and you're grabbing your binos and the bill of your hat, it works good. It's stabilized. And I think he also he carries a hike and poll a lot and he and uses that stable too, But like, I can't do that. But it's also kind of uncomfortable. Yeah could the ball cap. Yeah, beanie combo And for a long time, I wear like a lot of times I wear like that first light brand beanie. But that's not rigid. That's not like a rigid set up for stabilizing binos. No, that wouldn't work for that. Um, I feel like the only the real the one thing you're getting from a baseball hat, right is basically shade for your eyes, some some protection for your eyes, which is crucial. You gotta have something that provides you that. But the fact that most baseball hats are cotton, I feel like it's a pretty big They make them all out of goofy ship. Well yeah, I mean now they have like technical fabric baseball hat shouldn't say all, but yeah, there's a lot of bad material baseball hats out of there, the mesh stuff that chafes your ears. The Yeah, but I think since we're on hats, I'm also not bringing a baseball hat. I'm going with a It's like a lightweight, breathable. It's a booney hat, is what you call it, right, It's like a bucket with a I don't know, it's probably like a three inch brand that goes all the way around. Yeah, very lightweight, very pacable. Uh would dry super fast, but it goes all the way around. And I've noticed, especially when we're sitting around in the sun glassing, it's nice to have that protection not only on over your face and your eyes, but now my ears are covered part you know, hopefully at least part of the back of my neck is covered. Um, and for me it's more comfortable. Yeah, I've never been in the head guy. I don't like the feeling of that back brim rubbing against my backpack. I don't like when I'm leaning against stuff having that thing. Yeah, I would like him, But you gotta pat you gotta patta Gucci boony hat and again I'm I got such a love hate with that organization, right, Yeah, I love a lot of you. Anyhow, So Yanni's got on base Layer. So so you got your base Layer T shirt basically their long sleep in this case a Chama hoodie with a hoodie in place. You don't need to wear a beanie. Then a third layer is you got a Halstead fleece, which is a flea shirt quarters hip quarters hip flee shirt, and that'll cover you for like unless it's raining out. That covers you for a real wide array of temperatures exactly. Yeah, especially with the fact that you can, you know, the Choma and the Hallstead fleece, you can zip them down to like just stirring them or even a little bit lower really opens it up. And let's you get a lot of heat out, you know, if you need to dump some heat. Oh yeah, I find when I'm going up a hill and you got that on, I think this rolling my sleeves up to my elbows and then unzipping those couple of zippers. It makes a huge difference rather than stopping taking all that garbage off, you know. Yeah. And another thing with the hood and you know, and not having the hat. It's when I'm climbing up that hill and you're trying to dump that heat, just ripping that hood off, you know, on covering your head. There's no better way than to dump heat that everything off your head. Takes a big deep breath. And then the ubsidian field pants which are like not that synthetic e stuff, No, no, no, They're made out of same material as the cannabs were. Um, they just have a few extra technical pockets on them around the legs. Um, they don't that Like the cannap kind of has that cargoy pocket that sticks out a little bit more taser, a little bit sleep from off the side. The Cannap's got the pocket that kind of sits up front. I've always liked them. I liked those pants. Yeah, a lot, but um, so, yeah, it's a marino wool with like uh like a rip stop material in them m and then a couple like the crotch, the inside of the uh bottom of the pant legs where your feet can rub together. There's a little patch of synthetic material to give the pants a little bit of stretching a little bit, you know, wear resistance in the highway areas. And those pants are good for again huge temperature ranges. Yes, like running some lj's with him, you're good for like in the freezing below freezing mark. Yeah. I think where a lot of people mess up is they start to think about um and I did it for a long time and I actually learned this from skiing. When we sell ski clothes is we advise people to, hey, when you're in the lift line at eight o'clock in the morning, start cold. Yeah. Right, It's the same thing when you're like at your tent eating breakfast, It's okay be a little bit cold. Like especially elk hunting. It doesn't take but a hundred yards and like that's the tempionshure you're gonna be working with, you know, and your body temp that you're gonna be working with for most of the day, right, So start cold, start a little bit uncomfortable, and don't bring that extra layer of clothing, the big down jacket, just so you can have your coffee comfortably, you know. Yeah, I think people uh too, you know, in place of the down jacket, if you think about it, you could just stay in you're sleeping bag a little bit longer, eat your breakfast, and you're sleeping bag, then get out, get dressed, and go. Well, we've done in the past too, too, because you already you know, you've got your sleeping bag with you. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time on glass and tits in my sleeping bag, you know, whether like the weather, depending if it's just like cold and windy and just kind of miserable all oftentimes hop in my sleeping bag when I'm just posted up somewhere watching, I'll just do that to stay warm. Or like you said, let's keep your sleeping bag wrapped around you and eat your breakfast and then if you're carrying around a giant puffy like a giant down pants and down jacket for those like moments in camp, save that and just use your sleeping bag as an insulation layer instead of having all the more garbage with you. But at the same time, you can be super careful that you don't get your sleeping bag wet, you know, even you know it's like you know, down, a wet down bag is a real bad a wet synthetic bag. You still got good insulation, but it's just uncomfortable. It doesn't work as good and it's uncomfortable. So you gotta like keep your bag dry, but it is. It's gotta be really extremely cold before I start bringing uh, like down like down jackets and down pants and stuff with me. I mean, like way cold. So we got two pants, a couple of accessories that I have. I won't even I won't be wearing them, but I at least have them in my pockets at all the times. And it will be a pair of like work glove style of gloves and then um a Marino linery glove and the line of glove is probably more for like a um you know, just to kind of take the chill off. Or if I feel like I'm getting really close and I just want to cover up the shine the sheen in my hands, you know, something to do that. Um, So just practice shooting in those gloves, then yeah, I haven't done a way different feetle Man. That's a good thing we should talk about because in general I didn't shoot enough with sort of like like I'm always wearing my bino harness. I never shoot without my bino harness on and my range finder. Um, I try to like wear the hat that I'm gonna be shooting in. But over the last week, like a few days prior to lead on this last trip, and then the last couple of days, I started putting on like a twenty pound pack with my forty four on my side, bear spray on my side, you know, the GPS hanging off of me, wearing the shoes I'm gonna be hunting in, and just really you know, zipping up, like doing things like uh, putting a hoodie on and zipping it all the way up and then shooting. That feels a lot different, Like I have a kisser button on my string now, and when I have a hoodie on a lot of times that kisser button wasn't hit anymore, you know, just that little bit of extra material. It feels a little bit different. But I've shot enough to know that, you know, at fifty yards even if I'm not feeling that kisser button. As long as I'm you know, lined up through my peep and everything looks good, you know, I'm shooting fine. But yeah, that's very important to do. It's like all this stuff you need to be you know, at least hopefully towards the last week before you go on the hunt, is be shooting wearing all this stuff, you know, especially the backpack because it feels different. You really want to make sure that you're just not um impeding, like the string, whether it's on the draw or the shot itself. You're talking about buying the harts or bulky sleeves, right, yeah, yeah, experiment with it all. Uh so that's why you're wearing the Marino liner gloves. And then you got like a pair of like a pair of hybrid shale gloves which are kind of like a not not kind of like it had like work glove elements to them. Yeah, heavy duty leather palm, you know, breathable back, breathable will back. Yeah, good, like pretty versatile glove. And then I always use one to net gator. I love those things. Yeah, I like items that have I As I was building this list, I was thinking about how many items I have that have like our multi purpose And I was thinking, you know what that net gator if if I just fell, I'm like, all right, I want to be wearing a beanie. You can wear that thing like a beanie, and sure there's a hole on the top of it, but you do it. Sometimes you get on your all kinds of things. So I use it for its intended purpose as like a warmth device. I use it so you're not burned in the back of your neck, because amazing how many times, like you can burn your neck five times a year, right, Like it doesn't get you know what I mean, Just like it doesn't like tan up, kind of like how your lower arms do or you just like eventually it's become like impervious to burn. So you can even be out. You can even be out in October and like bake your neck all over again or your ears. So I'll just use it like that, um wan't a warmth sun protection. Sometimes I put it up on my hat when I get like when your hat just gets uncomfortable, I put that thing on for a while. And then the main thing I use it for is especially hunting in Alaska in the early season when you have so when you have like twenty hours a daylight or eighteen hours a daylight, I'll use it over my eyes to sleep and for nappy time too. So I'll just take that netgator and it's I just kind of folded up and wear it like a I peace and allows me to It allows me to conk out and sleep good. And then I do it enough where if I wake up and it's kind of like an emergency situation in the middle of the night or whatever, I'm not like confused by like I just noticed, like lift it up, you know, um, and it really helps me get uh, helps get those twenty minute and absent and it helps at night, especially if you're in the area when like this time you're in Alaska, you have these very prolonged periods of like kind of duskiness, it can be hard to sleep. So I was like to block my eyes so I can sleep. Yeah, So I use it for all that. And it's not uncomfortable to have on because it doesn't add a lot of heat to you when you just get running around your eyes. Yeah. But I think like within these lightweight Marino net gators, the weight to like gain ratio yeah, there's almost no weight and what you're getting out of that as a piece of warmth. I've had two instances that I can think of in my head where I was like in like a very cold stain and it's like a like a very important part of the hunt where there's like animals nearby, or I'm having to like glass it's like sea where an animals going, but like you don't want to, like you need to be staying there, but you're like very cold, like shavering cold, like it's coming. And I've remembered I've had these gators in my pocket. Put them on and put that on your neck, and I think it's almost like putting a beanie on, like just insulating your neck, keeping that blood flow, you know, warm as it's going to your head and back. Huge Also the main one I wear, I got a hole. I cut in one part of it. So when I'm turkey hunting, smoker, no mouth calls, so the whole you never even noticed there. It's a really small hole there as you keep it in the back. But when I spin that thing around and pulled up, like if I'm hunting turkeys, when I got when I'm trying to like work a bird all the times. Just pull that net gator up over my nose for a camouflage. And I got a little hole cup, so I just swing that hole around over my mouth and I can take diaphragm calls in and out of my mouth or blow calls, whatever, and put up in that hole and use it and the when I'm done, I just dropped the thing back down to my neck and spin it around. But fishermen wear the same thing though the buffs. Yeah, since it's a it's a synthetic material. But they were the same thing. Now because people are realizing you shouldn't just be like scorching your skin all the time. Yeah, sounds screen or not. Yeah, So pull that thing up to block your ears. It's so great. It's like a thing that not many people use. But it's like a real gem of a of an item. And you're not running any gators. No, I wouldn't either. Net are what it's it's for. That kind of stuff is too loud. Yeah, Usually gators for me are like a deep stone. When I say, you know, I find no I'm gonna encounter six plus inches, I'll probably put on gators. Or if you're in an area. It's just like like tons of creek crosses or lots of like mucky hell holes and stuff. Pretty nice for that reason, because when your pants are all wet on the bottoms, it just gets annoying. And if you want to climb into your sleeping bag, you got all that extra water. So when you do it, like in wet snow, when it's all just caked in, it's nice to take that off and have dry lower legs and just slipping your sleeping bag and night not to worry about taking your pants off. And that's a good point to bring up to something I'm gonna start doing is if I'm because I'm just gonna have rain pants. Right, So if we do have like a super dewey morning, or if we get that six inches of wet shitty snow that you were talking about, when I'm put on my rain pants, I'm gonna go out into very wet conditions, I'm gonna make sure that my pants are rolled up, tucked up, the pants underneath my rainpants somehow, because I feel like what happens is that that moisture like hits your cough like you're talking about, and it just it just it us to travel. Yeah, it wakes up and so then it goes to your socks and your socks wicket and all of a sudden that you know, even though you're completely covered, that moisture is like going up your pants to your socks and then down into yours. I never enjoy having gators on, Like when I put gators on, I'm I'm I'm only I'm playing the long game, right, Like I'm always annoyed by them, you know, I'm annoyed by where they feel. I'm annoyed by the noise. But in certain situations, it's so nice to pull them off and have your legs dry from the knee down when they would otherwise be full of mud, snow or whatever. So I tend to carry him more when I put them on. And it's one of those things like at the last minute, like I'm going somewhere, I got my duffel and my gators are in it. At the last minute, I'll oftentimes leave them in my duffle and they don't make the final like I can't trim them out in my garage, right, Like I can't cull it in my garage, but cull it at the last minute before loading my pack, I look at him like really, and then a lot of times I'm like, no, yeah, it might be something that I have in the truck to that would be it would be good, it'd be smart. I mean, I know that what the weather is coming up, right, I've got like a couple of sunny days and then we have some rain days and there's actually another forecast in a snow day. Not a lot of accumulation, but there's definitely gonna be some moisture. Um. But yeah, if I knew that I had to hike in whatever to three hours and I'm looking at doing that through four or five six inches of snow, probably worth it. Even if it was a couple inches snow, it might be worth to put them on just for the long game. Uh. All right, So in your so your pack, you gotta pack. This will give you a sense like this sounds like a lot of stuff that we're gonna be talking about, but it's not. Because you got a thirty pack. Explain that whole deal. Yeah, it's the same pack I used last year, and I know I know it works for this so um, the pack is a stone Glacier solo thirty. I believe it's the name and UM, so it's thirty inches. Um, it's slim, trim, tidy. UM. The pack itself only has one pocket built into it, and then you can accustomize it by adding their little pullout pockets that come in different sizes. So there's a little attachment points, like on the back side of the UM it opens like a clam shell and uh, on the back side of that, there's a couple attachment points and then UM on the what would be like the faces your back the back panel on the inside, there's a couple attachment points to for these super lightweight UM what would be the fabric, Oh, the little nylon pockets, yes, right, and um yeah, ultra lightweight. You know, it just gives you a little bit of organization, um, but for a couple of little like loose things. And we'll talk about that later. But anyways, yeah, it's not big. UM. The way I can do all this is that the all my gear will fit into the pack itself and then they have that system, the load shelf system with their UM dry cell bag that fits in that in the load shelf which basically fits between the pack and the frame. Right, so as it's like a little bag it's not quite like a dry it's not like a submersible dry bag. But it's like yeah, I think the only reason it's not submersible is because they seems aren't taped right, so there is some breathing. Definitely a rainproof yeah, like a like a rainproof bag, but not like a rubber not like we're not talking like what I'm trying to say. It's not like a rubberized dry bag. No, no, no, it's light. It's like pack it's like pac material with a roll top. So what I'll do is on the way in, all my food will go into this um dry cell bag between my backpack and the frame, and um, I'll pack it in. And it's nice about that is as soon as I get to camp, just grab my pecord, pull it up into the tree and it will act as my bare bag, you know, for the hanging food until you know, hopefully we get a kill and we have to use it to pack meat out. Um. So once I do that, also probably if we're you know hunting, like if we're gonna be coming back to camp, you know, I'll dump all my camp gear, my cooking stuff and whatever, and then that thirt it cinches down so nicely that all of a sudden you go from you know, basically carrying in a whole camp and you sent you down to where it looks like a kid's you know, school day pack. That's the thing about that, That's the key about these packs. It's like if you're ever trailing a bunch of elk through timber. Let's say you're trailing you got like five six elk going down through timber, and you notice that one of those elk keeps peeling off away from the group and then coming back into the group and peeling off away from the group. That's a lot of times a bowl who knows his antlers can't fit through the gaps in the trees, so all the cows can go screaming down, and he's always like playing in the head about where he can actually go and not go with a rack that's like the widest part of his body. I've used a lot of packs. There's like a lot of packs I like, but a problem with pack like I don't like a pack for for unless I'm hunting like open open country. I don't like a pack where the pack is any wider than I am, because you just never unlike a bull elk. You never get used to having things on you that are wider than what you're used to. It's so you wind up making a lot of unintended noise going underlogs through stuff, and you're just banging that thing all the time, not just banging it, but hanging it up. And these packs are actually like if you got a dude, like like the way the stone Glacier packs are if a guy's wearing when looking at you, you don't see the pack when it's snugged up, but you don't see the pack bulging out in weird angles. No, not at all. So it allows you to kind of move through without having to constantly be like remembering what the hell is going on in your backpack. And like this pack, like I said, there's only one pocket there. There's no lid, um, so there's nothing flopping once you set you down. It's just slim trim. Nothing's gonna snag. Um, there's just there is nothing to snag. There's there's there's like there's a lot of good packs. No pack is absolutely perfect, um, but I do like these freaking packs a lot, man. Uh. But yeah, the pocket thing when it's all snugged up you like, you love looking at how tidy it is, you know, But it's like this like trade offs. You put these big sleeve pockets on the outside everything, and just you get like a bulkier pack. It's more stuff floppy and hanging. That seems like you're organized, But again the tradeoff is when it's all loaded up, like how tight and confined and quiet is that thing? I remember reading a book about the LRPS and Vietnam, the Long Range of Connaissance Patrollers, and it would say that before they would go out, they would load all their gear on and then jump and you would keep jumping, and then they would use electric tape to to tighten things up and keep things so they didn't rattle or bang. They would keep jumping until they could jump and make no noise. And with a pack, with these kind of packs, once you snug them down, you can achieve that like noise free jump that you're never gonna get with a lot of loose, floppy pockets all over the place. So again it takes you gotta kind of rethink how you organize your gear. If you're like a big time pockets guy, you gotta rethink like how everything's gonna go. And the thing I found with backpacks too is I'll use a backpack for a couple of years and then my whole system gets conforms to the pack. Yeah, so then when I try a new pack, I might recognize something I like about the new pack, but then I kind of like dislike the pack for a minute because I gotta redo my whole system right down. Like when I go to brush my teeth at night, right if I've been using the same pack for a couple of years, like I just know like toothbrush, toothpaste or whatever within it, here's where my Like if I've got a paper map, where's that? Where's all my stuff? And then I get a new pack and I get frustrated and I blame the pack, but really it's just getting away to get dialed in. That's why I hate, like one thing, I hate changing around all times. I hate changing my pack all around. When I need a new pack, I'm trying to find a pack aroun I'm like, this is gonna be my pack for years, and I'm gonna hunt everything with this pack just to have it be that. I just know where everything is, you know where it all goes. No there's a lot of to be seven that because it's it turns into efficiency, you know, and if that means if it costs you that it might cost you just thirty seconds one time when you're going to pull out your spot and scope and your tripod, but all of a sudden that animal walked over the ridge, you know, and all of a sudden you all you needed was one glimpse to be like, yes, that was a bull, or it wasn't a bull. We're not going over there. Yes it was, we are going over there. And yeah, having that system dialed is there's you know, times when it's crucial. All right, let's go over to packed clothing, so you bring socks to put over your boots. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do this year because over your mountain boots or over a mountain boots especially, probably wouldn't need them in in stalking socks or socks, they're they're basically just a giant pair of wool socks, like not with a stalking pad. I'm just gonna pull them over. Have you tried it a long time ago? Yeah, last time I went quiet, we used those uh what do they call it? Sneak ease I believe like a ninja bot. It's like it's like a yeah, it's a thick fleece kind of soul with basically just um bungee cords going over the top of it and you put your foot into the bungee cords since it tight. Those things. Yeah, those things are incredibly you know, quiet soft. I just feel like again to trade off, like it's only gonna be used for while. I'm like, I have something like betted and I gotta like sneak in if you were stalking something on a gymnasium floor. Those are great, exactly. They suck when it gets Yeah, you're on a forty five degree pitch full of a bunch of rocks and stuff. They are not stable. They're not stable, and it makes a huge, huge difference. Um. We've talked about this before, but in Arizona it's like a lot of times you're chasing um it's down in the Unit ten where I had this experience, but you're chasing elk across stuff that has you know, because millions of like pebble sized rocks, it's sort of just like rub against each other. They look like because they look like pumics. They're a pumacy volcanic rock. That's like hunting on corn flakes exactly. It's like it's like the corn flake version of rocks. And when you're in a heavy souled mountain boot, like I think for humans it's sometimes imperceptible, but I noticed that, Like one day I was like, you know what I'm gonna my my feet? Is it? It was I've been in the woods for a while and my feet were starting to hurt. I'm like, I'm gonna go hunt in my run issues today like some trail runners. And I just remember like coming in on some elk and be like, oh my gosh, like how much quieter am I right now? Just because it was like a soft, malleable soul that was sort of sucking up the rocks as opposed to pushing against them. And that's saying in morning I noticed I'm like, I think what happens out there is that the bulls keep bugling right like that They've managed it to the point where like it's like very hot, good running action because it's very even like numbers like bulls to cows. Right, they keep bugling, but as hunters are moving around and closing the distance, the massive bugling sort of just kind of keeps his buffer away from you. You know, you're like, oh, the wind is good, everything's fine. But I think there's just that like that little bit of noise where they're like, whatever that is over there, and it's making that walking noise. It doesn't sound like us on the rocks. Let's just slide over a little ways, you know. And as soon as you take that away, whether it's by going running shoes or putting on some sneak eas or those you know, like socks over your boots, um, and it makes a difference what I'm thinking about trying in the futures. I'm talking about trying my uh just minimalists. They're actually called minimalists minimalist sneakers because there you could walk kind of steep pitch and have a lot of agility. It's not like running around and like like those things that go over your boots that are unstable. It's like walking on tussocks almost. But yeah, I might try that in the future, or those little ninja boots, not the bungee kinds, with a little ninja socks, you know. Yeah, No, I think those little minimal issues would would work well for stalking. Sure, I feel like I feel like that might be the way to go. I'll probably bring those down to Old Mexico and try them out because that's a lot of that gravelly crap down there too. Um. Okay, so you run a dry bag to keep all your extra gear. Yeah, and again like packed clothes, going to a dry back like a super lightweight. It's basically a stuff sack, but it's waterproof. Um. And in there will be an extra pair of socks, a pair of bass layer body, one pair of one extra pair of socks, so you have on you a total of two pairs of socks for one week of hunting. Yeah. If I had to, I mean if they got so crusty and crunchy, because I feel like that's what happens after a while up. Yeah that if I really had to, I could probably wash them in a stream or something and hang them up and in a day they'd be dressed. Hang them off the back of your pack when you're hiking around, um, and they get back nice again. Yeah. And I feel like if you do the right things, like take them off at night, put them into the bottom and you're sleeping bag. So so you're sleeping back, sucking the moisture out of them. Don't just roll them up and stick them into your boots which have a lot of moisture in them that you're that should be you know coming out. Keep that whole system dry and you're gonna get longevity out of it, you know, before those socks aret to get slicked up, crunchy, it's like not comfortable anymore. And then to keep mine. If you're hunting an area, you gotta cross bad creeks, bad you know, fast slick rock creeks. Uh, put your extra pairs, take your boots off, and don't cross barefoot though, because you you know, you slip on the rocks and bang your feet all up but across in a pair wool socks and then hang them out to dry out. But that way, you just it glues you to the rocks. Man, It's like wearing felts old waiters. Yeah. It protects you. Yeah, I mean unless you stay on top of the rocks instead of having your feet slipped down between the rocks getting all messed up. Basic layer bottoms. Maybe yeah, I think they're gonna go because I'm looking at the weather and it's looking like it could be cold. Enough where I could be hunting in those like actually wearing them. You know, I don't want to again like you're saying, I don't want to have those clothes are just for a few minutes or that you end up pack them around the whole time. But I feel like the base layer bottoms, it could be cold enough. And what I was thinking about is if somehow, like my pants, my regular field pants get soaking wet and I need time to dry them out, you can wear base layer bottoms and your rain pants, and that's a very comfortable system to go out and do your thing in. Right. It's not as quiet as just wearing your fueld pants, you know, but it's um you know, to hike out that way. You know, you can vent your rain pants if it's getting too hot, but it's it's a comfy way to go. And I'm old enough to now where if I had to, i'd probably just I'd would skip the rain pants just where you're you know, long Tom bottoms and go hiking like a Kiwi it's on New Zealanders hunt shorts and long John's, uh so puffy pants like a synthetic puffey pant. If it's super cold, you'll add a synthetic. Yeah, so I'm not bringing it on this trip. It's just not gonna be cold enough. And then a puffy jacket mm hmm yeah your na oh, yeah, that's coming for sure. And then you got the boundary storm pints, storm tight rain pants, and then the lightweight rain jacket. It's like a light, thin layer rain jacket. That's a risky move, but they do pack up real nice and tight and small. Man, Oh my god. And if you're on the fence about a rain jacket, go with the rain. Go with like, rather than go no rain jacket, go the lightest, little rinky dink rain jacket you can find. Yeah, it's a bold move to go no rain jacket for a week. Yeah, super bold. You know you're gonna have you're gonna have to do something, whether it's an umbrella or a tarp that you're constantly setting up. But yeah, it's a very bold move because all the texts is one storm and it's like sure, you're like, oh, I'm gonna go huddle underneath the tree, but if it blows and starts coming on their sideways, you're gonna be miserable. And then, uh, one thing I don't see here. You don't use a pack cover. Well you do you you're yeah, that'll that will be in there for sure, like a fitted like a fitted pack cover from the manufacturer of the backpack. Um, no tent, No, just tarping it, just tarping ten by ten tart, ten by temp tarp. Keep in mind when you're sleeping under the tarp if you're six ft tall, don't be like, oh, I need a six ft tarp. You got like like a tent by ten tart. Once you put a pitch in it, it's still like there is not a ton of room to be off center under that tarp if it gets bad, if it gets bad. Yeah, And I like, I like the whole bush craft of using the tarp. Like I've got a couple of pitches down. I set one up last week to cover up our meat, and um, we had some amazing wins. I mean we definitely had gales that were hitting I don't know, at least fifty maybe sixty plus, and uh, what ended up happened? Is this new This it's a Colorado I think it's called Colorado tarp from seek outside. But it has like the little tighteners already built in so you don't have to run like knots that you know used tightened. And the cord that I had was just a little bit too skinny. It was holding just fine when it was blown thirty and forty, but as soon as the gale hit it with sixty, I think that the line to slipped through the tensioner itself. You know, I had like a two mill cord just trying to be light. I think if I just bump up to three mill like it would take that. But I'm not expecting that kind of wind on this trip. You know. What I do that know the two thoughts on when you use the tarpet ista of tent. What I do that no one, no one agrees with me on is I make a six inch loop of bungee of small shot cord. On every corner and every every guy point on the tarp, I put a bungee in there. The reason I do that is I'll use mine a lot. If you're perched up somewhere glass and for the day and it starts raining or snow, and I'll often just put my tarp up just to give a comfortable place where you can stay dry and warm under there. I put bungee in all my corners because I can just wrap those bungees around little branches, chunks of brush rocks and set it up very fast. I'll run around trying to find stuff to tie off to. The Other thing is when I do tie it off, I tie to the bungee and that gives it some You can pull it tight, but it still gives it a little bit of flex which keeps the fabric from giving out and tearing or other problems you might have with trying to keep it tight and nice. And it keeps some of that flap noise down when you got a little bit of stretching there. So I like to do it to turn everybody else onto it, no one, no one else runs them, but I always put the bungees on mine. And when you do pitch out of tarp to sleep under, keep it low. You don't need to have your tarp like if you're sleeping under, not like a hangout tarper. To sleeping under tarp, you don't need to have it way up in the air. You should crawl into that thing like how you crawl into a tent, because then you don't have stuff blowing in from the sides right. Yeah. No, I think like if if like someone else and my m me, if I someone else under the tarp together, you probably had to go to like an a frame a frame style pitch right where you have a ridge running from one pole to a tree or between two poles, um, just to give yourself the room. But if it's just me, I'll run what's called like a diamond pitch, and so I'll run off of one of my tracking poles or a tree. Is even better because you can get a little bit higher and then basically run like a diagonal ridge from corner to corner to the ground, and then your two other edges just sort of like come men and conform to the ground. So you've only got one end that's open. And so as long as you pitch properly and don't have that open to the wind, you know, you've got amazing coverage and you can throw a fire, you know, right there if you want to, and stay dry and nice like you're always gonna be open to the elements, you know, from some angle. Um, there actually are pitches where I think you can completely close off of the tarp. I've just never done it. Um. Oh yeah, there's like, yeah, there's like if you have a huge tarp, there's the way that you're laying on the tarp. You got a back wall. You're laying on a little bit of the tarp for groundcover. You got a back wall that comes up, it goes across the lid and drops down as a as like a wall. That's a huge tarp. But you see an old timey books and you still have two open ends though, wouldn't you. Yeah, still got two open ends, but you position for the wind. Because here's the thing people don't like when you're ringing up. Like for instance, Alvish Mast took a picture of it when I drew my copy River Buffalo tag years ago. I remember I had a setup where I was sleeping under a tarp and I was actually burning buffalo chips in a little fire. And I remember reading about that when God, when you're setting the tarp up and you're actually heating, you know, you make a fire for warmth. In the old days, you didn't make it be that you're tarp shielded the wind. You want to draft through it so you could get heat under there, but not trap all your smoking there. Right, Remember getting up and thinking how much I liked it. Looks at how I had my tarp and my buffalo chip fire. I snapped a picture, walked over the edge and shout of buffalo after really coming to grips with the idea that I was not going to be getting one. Um. But yeah, that's that's like a you know, even like when you're reading really old ship about like old pioneers and old explorers. I mean they used tarps all the time. That was like their their tent material, and they got way ways of pitching them. Um. There's a book, God, what's that river book? River? Now you know the author? No, but it's a guy in Canada. I can't remember. Runting book. He they do a lot of hunting, a lot of trapping, river deception, I can't remember. Anyways, there's a great book where these guys, it's in the nineties and big fur boom going on, and they're trapping and cannon and working the rivers, trapping, and they always got to get to their site because they're they're out in the middle of the winter. And he describes their tarp setups. They got a plan two hours every night to get their tarp setups in such a way that they can survive using not using tense but making making setting up tarps in a way that you can burn wood to try to keep for freezing death. And you always had to plan on that two hour set up, and these guys weren't run around with head lamps. Yeah, so it really cut into your day, right, But I do like types. It's like there's like a tidiness to it that you just kind of like, man, yeah, and a versatility, you know. And again you've gotta be ready for you know, it's fine and danny when it's you know, seventy during the day and then it's like a starry, thirty five degree night with zero win, It's like who cares, don't even set the tarp up. You can just like sleep out right, Um, get your head into the hood of your sleeping bag. But if it blows and then there's moisture coming in, um yeah, you better like have like like some experience and a plan. And one of the things that's gonna that's allowing me to do this is I'm going to use a um nemo sleeping bag that has basically like a um like what they call like a bad sub floor in a tent. It basically has that built into the seating back, so you don't have to bring ground pad. It's built in or I'm sorry, a ground sheet or tarp that's built into the bag. And then it kind of curves around your feet. So a lot of times, like especially tall guy like me, you know, your feet are sticking out at the end of whatever, or even if you're in a tent, your feet are touching like the tent wall, which can cause moisture to come in and get your bag. So that sort of is protecting me from you know, the moisture that you didn't plan for. UM. And it's also a the sleam bag system is built so that you can slip your pad into the sleeping bag, so it kind of sits between the bottom insulation and then that bathtub floor that I was talking about, the waterproof floor UM, which is pretty slick. Keeps you on your keeps you on your path, you don't slide off. UM. Final thought on tarps if it's bad mosquito time, like you know, yeah, you know, if you're hunting like spring hunts or you're hunting late summer hunts, it just you gotta plan on that too. It just doesn't give you a break. No, if you got bad black flies, bad mosquitoes, and you're you're going the tar. It's like sometimes when it's so bad, you know, particularly Alaska in other places too, it just gets so bad it's hard to like, it's hard to maintain your sanity. Yeah, the bugs, and it is nice to have a mesh, just something and now and then get a break from that ship. When we were up at Bucks, we slept out a bunch my brother and I believe we're sleeping out and uh, well worked pretty good now and again it had it been too hot to sleep up and sleep to zip up the sleeping bag, it would have sucked. But we were just zipping up and then basically putting on a head net and that worked. I had a had a thermo cell on that trail didn't. But you still need something to can do well. It depends on whendy it is. Uh, here's the thing. I don't agree with you, and I know you'd like to use them as you use trek and polls. All again, a couple of things I need him for right, UM need him to build to pitch a tarp possibly using for a hiking, especially when I got meat on my back I think it, you know, saves your knees, saves your back, takes stress off your joints um and I'm not bringing a tripod, so I'm gonna use that pole for one of the poles for classing. Yeah, that's a calhan does tore right, Yeah, you know. And then so we already covered this. You gotta Nemo insulated pad, Tensor twenty pad and a Nemo are Galli fifteen degree bag no ground pad because you're sleeping bag has a waterproof brain. You bring your little blow up pillow. Oh man, I would not. Yeah, no, I'm not going to, but I gotta say we use these. I think they're called the it's called the philo. I'm guessing they took like fleece and pillow and made up this word called pillow. Dude, it's it's it's dream come true. Oh it's so nice. But it's just like on a backpack exactly. And again it's allance is. You're probably looking at, I don't know, not a half a pounds. Yeah, barely. No. I think when you put in the stuff sack, it's about your like Steve's giant fist. It's bigger than a powerful fist. Yeah, uh I love him, don't get me wrong. It's like phenomenal. Um. I hate myself for getting to that point in life where where I have like a little pillow, blow up inflatable pillow. But in this case, I'm not that old yet. No, if you have to carry around all in your it's a base camp thing. Yeah, and this is what I do. This is uh um how I build my pillow, and which was nice to have the Nemo pillow because I didn't have to spend the five minutes. Or maybe it's only to building my pillow. It's just nice to get in your bag and just go to bed. What I do, and it works good because it's as I'm taking off my layers. But basically would take my puffy jacket across the arms, folded hood in and then sort of rolled it up so you kind of have this like long rectangular role. And then I take my next layer off, which is usually my fleece, and I slide it neatly into that fleece all the way up to where the arms come out, like to the shoulders. I flip it over and then again cross the arms or no, I'll flip over the bottom of the fleece so that now you've um, you know, just kind of repeated that rectangular role, but the arms are still sticking out. And then I'll fold your arms and put like a one overhand, not trying to lay it as flat as possible, and that sort of contains the puffy jacket inside, right, and it's comfortable on your face because you're not sleeping on that nylon. And then I'll flip it over so that the knots on the bottom and then that gets kind of stucked into the um the hood of my sleeping back and it works fine a little making it's just like, yeah, it's it's a luxury for sure to not have to do that and to have your you know, bitch a little back country pillow. But I'm really I'm gonna leave those four ounces behind game calls, games, game call intensive hunt. Yes, definitely. I mean it's one of the reason I going on this hunk, because I love to you know, call elk um phelps bugle to four diaphragms, and um really two of them are extras probab bringing to their you know, sort of softer latex you know, you know, for sweet little cal calls. And then two that are double triple reads that are stiffer for bugling. You know, a bugle is such with you know, loud a lot of intensity that even those you know, triple read diaphragms, when you've been blowing on them for three or four or five days a lot, if you're really bugling a lot to whether it's to get responses or to get a bowl fired up or whatever, they can start to soften up over a while, and you know, you hate to have one that starts to break or something. You know, as you're bugling. So as light as the diaphragms are, you know, four diaphrams weighs nothing. The call I'll probably use the most over the course of a week is an external read type CAL call phelps. This is called the easy estrus and um. The read sits on a on a board and then there's a little castration band that holds the read to the board, and then there's the U I guess like the tone chamber, the sound chamber that's attached to that. And I love those because like you can make them loud, I mean so loud that I'll use them to locate bulls. Just make one or two big loud cal calls like off of a point and a lot of times you get a bull they answer to that. Um, he's just a good American man, Phelps Jason. Yeah, we like Jason. Um. And then your brother and I decided to bring in a montana El decoy this year. Yeah, I would probably have not brought it in. And again, definitely if we weren't using if we didn't, if I didn't have Lama was waiting for me at the other end, because it's it's a couple of pounds maybe even a couple of pounds plus um, And if I was hunting solo, it's like, I'm not gonna deal with it. That's a two dimensional Yes, it's basically it's it's like a printed picture onto like a stretchy I don't know, pol Yes or Nilon blend or something that sort of sits over this frame that you can just twist down and folds down into the you know, a small little twelve inch package. But the steaks are what have some weight to them. Um. That that's what definitely adds a weight to the decoy. But your brother's you know, fired up on using it, so we're gonna try it out, and you're bringing some you're bringing some eight by forty vortex knockers. Yeah, I'm going with the eights, tidy, little package, tidy. You know, it's probably not that much lighter, if anything, then then the tens I mean it's you know, it could be a percentage of anounce. Maybe I don't know. I haven't looked into it. But I like the larger field of view, the steadiness. I feel like with you know, uh, bow hunting, you're always in your like a lot of times you're scanning like a hundred to two hundred yards of you know, looking for elk in the timber and um using one hand because you got your bow on the other hand, or something bugle too in the other hand, whatever, you know. But it's just like it's steadier, yeah, more to steady than any else. Wider field of view. Um, And it's not like you're trying to count annually on a sheep or counting brow times on some moose two miles away. It's just like bowl or not able, yeah exactly, or where'd they go there's a patch of fur, you know, their head and left. UM on that note, not bringing um spotting scope or tripod and that's a huge wait you know drop that's um, I'm probably looking at like eight or nine pounds that I'm dropping out of the kid there um for me, you know, going on this archery elk hunt. I mean maybe it'll change in five or ten years, but yeah, I'm not I'm not even counting points. I'm like looking for a bowl and that's it. So I need to just find elk, see elk moving And even with eight three miles away, if I see elk on the hillside and I know they're elk, you know, and you keep and you keep your binyls in your range finder in uh in a f HF vinyl harness has got a little range finder pouch, so your range finder sits right next to your range finder sits right next to your binyl is easy to get at, and it's got little pockets on it, so you've got some wind, a little smoking a bottle wind detector. Basically, it's like taking a talcoum powder and squirting it out of a little bottle and shoots a little puff up near and you can see what's going on now invaluable. Yeah, when conditions right, it seems unnecessary right because you take your boot and stir up a little dust and see what it does. But oftentimes you're in a spot where you know, if you're an area, it's just like pine needle whatever. You can't get like a good wind detector, and bow hunting, especially trying to walk like sneaking on elk man. It's like the wind is the old not the only thing, but the wind is like the main thing you're thinking about all the time, all the time, and you gotta pick your moments. It's like a mistake we used to make. And this is kind of why I wish I could revisit a lot of the old go back of time and revisit a lot of the old hunts we used do. We used to just be like too eager to rush in and not like a lot of phenomenal opportunities slip through our hands from not taking time to just assess and be patient, wait for the thermals to switch. What are the thermals doing right, and like all that kind of stuff and just being like, wow, let's take our chances and go. Or you get into it there and the wind changes and you're like, wow, yeah, let's just trust our luck. Now it's like now, and sometimes you just get hold of this. Man, it's like everything's been going right for two hours and then there's just one gust that comes up, you back and then blows an out. But it is nice to have that constant, you know. I us just used dust and seed, grass seeds, anything like that. But and uh, you know northering I used to do, which I actually loved a lot. I had done this a long time. I out and know why. I used to take a bird feather. Does any feather? I'd fine, And I'd take eight inches of dental floss and hang it off somewhere in my bowl, want to say, spot. The only thing that kind of turned me off to it is you had to kind of manage it. You can still get wrapped off, yeah, but man like if you're going through brush and stopped between. Yeah, But it used to be like now and then I just love that thing because I'd had that little I'd kind of like pull it out and hang it down and on the limb of my bowl. I had that dental floss and that bird feather. Man, you can get an accurate reading, but it gets wet, it gets tangled. But when it's like up and running, it was nice. It's just constant information that feather has given you about what's going on. UM, and you bring a little cloth for your binos. I think that's pretty important. Oh it is, man, It's just like it. Maybe maybe you're not seeing any less with dirty glass, you know, lenses, but it just is like any time I haven't done it for a couple of days and you wipe them clean, You're like, oh yeah, It's like if you miss a day of brush in your teeth and then you brush your teeth and you get that same clean, cleansed feeling. Say things looking to clean binos. The boys of Vortex gave me these things. I think I know they're available to in drug stores, but they gave me these uh little white packets. And what I like about those is when you get sunscreen or something on them, it's a way to get them off. I'll usually carry one of those in my kit, one of those optics wet wipes for sunscreen or any kind of other grease or any kind of thing that doesn't want to wipe off off them, but you can usually with a clean micro cloth. You usually get them clean and back up and run in into normal. UM. I know that I like about the little wet wipe thing is when you get a lot of dust kind of in the when the I cups like spin in and out, you kind of use it to clean everything out and keep them up and running. Um butchered kit. Yeah, I wanna bring a bench made steep country. That's the ricking knife man. I love that knife. Um, and that's the only knife. Um. I'll be taken. No multi tool. What do you got with you for if you if you screw something up on your bow or need a monkey with it? Do you bring a little kid? Yeah, little repair kit which will basically have all any size uh you know Alan screw that's on the site or you know, you know any of that. It's all Alan. Yeah. But but I just feel like having like a little like the reason I carrying It's like how often you need a little pair of needle loaves? I see, I was thinking that when I was packing. I was like, not that often, especially when I'm holding that big, heavy multi tool in my hands. I like it because the little saw I don't, and all my the the Alans tooks for my stuff. I have an adapter, so all those little Alan's are on my right. But no, I get it. I get it. But I just oftentimes I oftentimes find myself like very happy to have needing those players even digging out in growing tonails and whatnot. I just use all the time. Man, Well, I mean it's that's what I mean. The fun part about this is, you know, you go out there and if I get worked over because not having my needle nose, then next time I'll be packing them. Yeah, but it is. It's heavy. It's a very heavy little item. Um, you got a little mini sharpener which kind of you don't need because you're only gonna be doing an animal. Yeah that's true to you guys. Yeah, yeah, but it's so small and so light that little bench made made me feel a sharpener that like, I feel like it's worth it. Yeah. We just said a trip where you chopped up three like doing a caribou a day and the sizeable animal. You're glad you got a sharpener. If you're going out and just like the most you're gonna do is you're gonna get like, oh animal, you're just gonna be doing a deer. I don't even you know, I don't necessarily worry about it because like if you got a honed up knife it's gonna get you through that plus more. But it is really small zip ties for what reason, They're just nice to have. I mean they're in my little butcher and kit section because, um, I like to put my tag on with a zip tie, you know, Montana. It's kind of a big carcass tag and I think it comes with holes, you know, pre punched. I mean obviously you could use peak ord or whatever. Um, but yeah, I just like a zip tie I carry. I carry a couple of zip ties in my emergency kit. Yeah. Yeah, And obviously fix all sorts of stuff with the Kala. They're strong. You can you can fix backpacks and stuff with them. Um. And then tag game bags I used to like, and I still like some aspects of Like there's a copy of Laski game bags I used to use all the time. It's like a disposable bag and it's like a cheese cloth in material, but flies can lay eggs through it. And if you drop that bag in the dirt, the meat stil gets dirty. It keeps out big stuff, but it doesn't keep out fine stuff. But they're inexpensive, which is nice, and you just they're disposable, which is like, well, it's just part of like the disposable world, right, everything that just gets thrown in the trash all time as a bummer. But you're not like messing around trying to clean them and getting blood out of game bags as a chore. So yeah, now I've settled it. Not using the reusables, the tag bags. It's almost like a silky kind of silky feeling and material and flies can't lay eggs through it. And you can bag up meat and drop it in the dust and the meat doesn't get any dust on it. I think, I think if you drug them through mud and like we're like, you know, somehow pushing that through the material, you it would eventually, like you know, it would permeate and get through. But no more more protection though more definitely more protection. Yeah, and reusable and um easy to hang strong and then you get but you gotta come home. And I to come home and take a five gallon bucket make a mild bleach solution. Yeah, so come or take some simple green soaked soun's a bitches a couple of times, wash them in the washing machine, give him the old smell test, hang them out in the sun. But it's hard to deal with Yeah, yeah, definitely, because you think you got it. You think you get it, you think you got your pat clean, and then it rains and it just reactivates that stuff and you realize you didn't get it clean. I just peroxide man, eats it up. Yeah, gets the blood out. That's the that's the key. I don't use it on game bags, but on the pack. I do it a lot. In a spray bottle. Yeah works good. Oh yeah, I hear people talk about it all the time. How much you gotta put on there. I mean, just spray it. You'll see it does the foamy thing and then rinse it off. Really spray it. Maybe. All this time about using hydrogen peroxide to clean blood out of backpacks, the one thing you'd be careful and I think it's it's actually, um it could be corrosive. I think a fabric. Yeah, you wouldn't want to like like like sprayed on there and leave it. That's why that's why my backpack. I don't like to use the bleach solution. Yeah, I'm afraid of dicking up the stitches. Uh fift of three millimeter pair cord as you carry, but I use that weird expensive I can't think of what it's called, but like makes it so it's like half the width now, dynema, Yeah that's what it is. Well, I got some of that ship's expensive, dude, but it's like, yeah, it's like the guy that's really counting ounces. It's like what's extremely strong, very thin in and I keep it because the thing is out depending on what kind of stuff I'm doing, if I'm really wait conscious and I'm not doing like if I'm doing like a not needing to be way conscious but in a very place where it's just very difficult to be and there's a lot of like bushcraft kind of factors at play, like river trips for instance, right like a river, like a river hunting trip where you just constantly rigging and fixing and trying to figure stuff out deal with big animals. I'll bring extra pair of cord, knowing that I might be cutting it up and doing various things with it, guying out stuff, rigging tarps. But the reason I bought that that souped up material para cord is I would never cut it. It's just like a little teeny's twenty five ft school that I keep always in my stuff. And then because I know I got one length for like hoisting stuff up or any kind of thing. And if I need, if i'm gonna know i'm gonna be using something, I'll grab some all their like more conventional six hundred pound parachord and carry it with me for for for just rigging. But keep that one emergency piece intact. Good plan. Uh yeah day, I'm forbidden for cutting it up unless it's a life death situation. Uh. Cooking and water you gotta jet boil one fuel canis I was gonna get. I thought of a little pro tip though, I want to come back to those tag game bags. They're drawstring is long enough where unless you're you're hanging branch or post is just you know, super thick. I'm guessing like over you know, six or eight inches. But if you've got something smaller you're gonna hang your bag off of. Um it's the length of chords long enough where you can do a And the pro tip here is that the not that I eventually found and now used for this and east of this, like he used to kill me, but I never had like a good quick release, not for like you know how some dudes or two people with an elk. Sometimes they're holding up an elk quarter and then you're supposed to be the guy tying, and then like you have a plan in your head for like the not to use, and so you be like you think you got something tied up, and they let go. The thing just hits the ground, or you do or you do a clove hitch and you gotta get back up in there and take all the weight off to get the hitch on done, yeah, or you end up cutting it. So I found a not called the Siberian hitch, or I think another name for it is the evank e v e n k hitch. But you can tie it. I can actually hold the weight as long it's not like a rear quarter on a elk, and hold it and then the way you tie it is it goes over and then you to create the loop. You basically keep two of your fingers out and then your tag in goes around the line and you pull a loop through the loop that your finger two fingers are making, and then you can just release the weight and it snugs up. But so it's slick because one Siberian hitch. Yeah, you can do it by yourself. Almost most of the time, and then it's a quick release, so it needs to come down. You just pull a tag in and it's out. I like that. I got to look out the Siberian hitch. Um. Yeah, so if you got but again, if you have a bigger uh you know, branch or log you're hanging it off of, you're gonna have to add some pecord. So cooking the water, you gotta jet boil. One canister cigarette lighter. Usually carry a regular cigarette lighter and then a mini dinky cigarette lighter that I tuck away somewhere, because it sucks to lose your lighter. Yeah, I definitely, Yeah, you gotta have to um. Another thing about lighters I like to do is I like to wrap, um tape all my lighters. Don't you identify your lighter so muggs you're with don't steal your lighter and just gives you like a little place to have some tape. Yeah, duct tape on one and maybe um we had a stuff called gaff tape uh in camera world and uh it's super tough, but like it's removable and you can write on it. Um, so I can have some of that stuff you know on it. And if you use a bright color, and you can always find your lighter. Uh, got your drinking cup? Long handled spoon. Now, anyone that eats house mountain house freeze dry you need a long spoon. If you eat out of freeze dry bags, you want a long spoon that where your knuckles don't get all full of a pasta sauce. Yeah, it's key, you can get one. I think I think it's seed of stomach makes it titanium on a titanium. Yeah. And then my little kid in my little back country organizer, like I organized all my small stuff in the outdoor Research back country Organizer, and in there there's like almost a spot that looks like it was made for long handle spoon. And that spoon is just barely short enough or the or the back counte organize is just barely long enough to hold that spoon. And I file two V notches into the handle of my spoon, and that spoon is called D double V notch, And that's how I identify my spoon. Yanni puts a bright piece of tape around his It's kind of a better idea because it's because titanium spoons are like the perfect camouflage. They disappear uh, one court size Nal Jean wide mouth type bottle so you can scoop up water in it. Um a dromedary. It's like a big collapsible water bag. And that's like a really essential piece of gear if you gotta go a long ways for your water. Yeah, you have to haul water at all. Um, if you know you're gonna be spending time, you know, away from your water all day hunting, you know, up on the side of a mountain. Um, it's key. I think that they make a smaller but I think the one I have is four leaders and it sounds like a lot, but obviously you don't have to fill it up. They make a lightweight, small bag, but it's not durable little burst yeah, but I think you can get it in the durable version. I think so, yeah, but that the same thing. It's like, I think mine holds two courts. It's like a black material. UM, very rugged. I don't like. I don't like, uh, water bladders in my pack. Do you drink out of a hose Because the hoses freeze, the bladders leak. You got like a frozen hole, so you can't drink anyways. And then all this stuff in your pack soaking wet because the badder bladder burst. I messed around with those out like those things, and I think what happens even more often, what happened to me so many times is that like the mouthpiece, live of them have locks on them, you know, you know, the open and clothes. But you leave it open and you set your pack down and the weight of the stuff the pack presses down onto your mouthpiece and it just slowly leaks out. Yeah, not only is everything wet, but then you're out of drinking water. Yeah. I'd rather think about hunting and think about that dang bladder. My pack man thinks driving crazy Now. The upside is, though, I gotta say, it's sweet to just always have that, you know, like a sip of water is handy. Oh listen, Yeah, I didn't talk about the I didn't everybody know is the upsides. I think the upsides are obvious. You stay hydrated because you're drinking all the time. That's the upside. And just you know, it's a big upside calling you know, you're getting you know, dry mouth, you know, and you're just like, oh the water you drink away, you go, you drink taken for granted, that drinking water is good. You drink way more water with a hose. But I've just had too many problems with those things to where I'm like, I just don't use them, and I don't drink as much water as most people. I find, Uh sterry pins, which are kind of like the only thing we even use anymore. M Yeah, we're always packing. I think it's Aquamera that makes the tablets, so we always have those case because the sterry pen, it's a mechanical device. Man, it's got like it's got UV bulb. It takes batteries, but you can keep the thing in your shirt pocket. I mean they're many, but it can fail. Yeah, ultra could fail. Yeah, pump could fail too. So if you like having super pristine clean water. Um. For instance, this last time we were just on we the whole camp drank out of a uh puddle, I mean it was a puddle. It's like what do you call that? Think it's like like a not a sinkhole, but a little hole in the tunder with some water in it. Yeah, like a little tunder puddle. Yeah, but like even your even your kids could probably jump over this right small like uh mushy, you know, muddy bottom, lots of stuff floating in it. So if you if you don't want to drink water that has floaters, you have to pump. If you don't mind that strypens awesome, or if you're just hunting near creeks and stuff you know that has clear water. Uh. You got a head lamp ye black diamond headlamp. Yeah, and I was gonna find the name of it, and I ran out of time. But super small, smooth, super lightweight, only runs on two triple a's. It's not like a megabeam headlamp. Um, but it's bright enough where I've run at night with it if I have a fresh set of batteries. But you can dim the light on it. Um. It's called Storm. No Storm is a bigger one, maybe called the eye on you're talking to you a little mini moment with retractable cord or that's just no, no, no, that's my emergency one. It's the one that's got a little it's like it's operated by by swiping and touching the face. Yeah, you don't like it, but it's super small, super lightweight. You can lock it so that doesn't come on in your pocket, which I like. Um, but yeah, it's nice. And since we're on head lamps, I carry one of those petsel Elites, which is I don't know the size of the three quarters of an ounce super lightweight it runs. If you took a stack of four or five quarters and stacked him up, that's about how big that little thing is. I keep one of my kit runs on two CRWO batteries and surprisingly bright like I've had. I think you've even borrowed at once. You could use it as your primary light. Yeah, but now and then you get into like when you're out, you just get into some like crazy nighttime situations and it's you know, it's nice to be all that if you need to work into the night, yes, and not have you know, not be button up against the darkness. Then you got an extra release. That's the thing, man, Like, that's a real vulnerability. Very and those things get lost, they do. Yeah. I haven't personally ever lost one, but I definitely had clients over the years that lost them and wouldn't even have a replacement. At camp. You know, I had time hike out and drive seventy miles by release there you go right there, carry the extra sevent to get a release and they're not. Like, I couldn't find the release I had, so I had to start messing around. Yeah yeah, and shoot it. You know, I was. I put in my notes here to shoot it because you know, up until a week ago, I hadn't shot my actually release for probably about a year. And uh, it feels very similar, but it is different than my regular release. And you're so here's a little redundancy. You're bringing some bear spray and you're forty four. Each of those things like, yeah, I see it. Uh, each of those things is problematic. Anyone who's been hosed by bear spray and a bear spray accidental discharge, which I have been done, it's like that makes you kind of hate that stuff. But I'd rather get hold by an accidental bear spray discharge an accidental forty four discharge. The guy in Colorado was just like, which doesn't even have grizzlies, So I'll never understand this. So I'm dude in Colorado. It's like Scared of black Bears, tripped over a tent steak in the middle of night. He's going out to take a growler in the morning, trips over a tent steak and blows a hole through his own wrist. What is his bear gun? I don't know. Yeah, everybody thinks they're rambo man. It's like, yeah, yeah, I feel it is redundant. But recently some there was He was one guy I ain't two guys from malled and they were together. Bow hunters are a high risk in Montana, and um, I want to say that one of the bear sprays didn't work and that was the guy that ended up getting mauled. The other his body, you know, sprayed the bear and eventually got the bear. Often, but the guy ended up with you know, some ridiculous amount of stitches, you know. Yeah, but again it's neither more perfect. No, never, it's probably good to have a little redundancy. Their thing is, uh, I can't remember the percentage of times, but oftentimes, when when a couple of guys are hunting together and one of them is getting mauled the other one of them, the guy that's getting mauled in addition to getting mauled winds up getting shot. That does happen because people get panicky and they're not trained up in that kind of handgun use. Yeah, there's there's statistics, and they just did this big metas. They just did this big like meta analysis of all these bear encounters over the years and what happened and who did what and what the what, and people hate to hear it because people want to think that, like people want to think the handguns are the answer to everything. Right, So when they did this thing and they come out and say, like, statistically, pepper spray is better, people get pissed because they act like you're like, people get pissed because they act like this finding is somehow meant to be an attack on guns. Yeah, so people can't even like hear it clearly, right. But they're both imperfect. They're both imperfect. I don't know that the answer is to have both with me, but they're both imperfect. Yeah, And speaking of I think being smart, trying in addition to everything else, trying to be very aware of your surroundings and also knowing how to behave in the initial moments of a bear encounter are very important, Like before it comes, before it's where you're shooting spray at them, before it's when you're shooting guns at him and whatnot. There's like ways to behave in that initial moment, right, Yeah, And we have a lot of luck. You know, we got false charged by a grizzly, but we have a lot, we run a lot of bears off. I think, yeah, just like being aware of the landscape that you're in, and I think those tight close quarters sometimes of like timber. You know, like if you're near a grizzly barrier or something you know about to happen, like give the bear space to move around you, right, Like, don't get caught in that spot where especially if you knew knew the bear was there, that you're in like confined quarters, you know, with it, like obviously you can just walk through the direction if you see one a couple hundred yards away, you know, create space. If you create space, if it's far away, if it's up close, create space. But not like a retreat. It's like the thing like the minute before. Things are too tight to establish a very commanding presence. Yes, a loud, big, tall, confident. If there's two guys, they're standing close together, establishing a very commanding presence. You do not want to come here. I'm not coming at you. Like the human is not going at the bear like he's gonna go wrastle him. The human is not running away from the bear like it's a wounded elk running off through the woods, but the human is being like I am here, I do not intend on moving right. Um, but it's also different, man. And then you talk to people that do get scratched, and uh, sometimes it happens. There's no time to think. It's not like they like tried this and tried that, which just all of a sudden's a bear chewing on them. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so you got your bear spray and you're shooting iron and your bow and arrow and your GPS. I'm still gonna carry it. I know that now we can all have our maps downloaded on our phones. I don't like the battery life on phone though. Yeah, that's the problem with it. You know, if I had this, if I was able just to pop in a couple of fresh batteries into my phone and again, I'll have a goal zero charger which has two charges, and I know if I run it in the airplane mode, I can get multiple days out of it. But I just don't trust it yet. I like being able to take a couple of lithium double a's and told my GPS and have that thing on for forty eight hours if I want, uh, you do use a paper map. Yeah, and again that's a redundancy. But you know, again the GPS could go down, you could lose it, and it's you know, to sit and plot with someone else. Yeah, and just look at a big picture. Yeah, it does help you get up. It helps you, like spatially, even though you can go look at everything on a GPS, it's like spatially, it's sometimes nice to get a big picture view of where you're at. Yeah. And you know, if I was hunting, um, like an area that i'd been hunting for five years and just like a general zone that where I had walked you know, almost every trail or over every knob and just knew it, I wouldn't need a map, you know, maybe wouldn't even carry GPS. No, there's yeah, there's a lot of situations where I wouldn't be hunting, like large new areas. I always like to have a paper map were the main place I think I'm gonna be hunting, I haven't built as the center of the map. Um, wet wipes, but no TP just wet wipes. And actually what I lies on this, that's wrong. Okay, you can't burn them, No, I know, I know you don't like that, but I bury him properly. And then you bring you bring a butt pad, like a sitting patch, sitting pad. Yeah, keep my butt dry, um. And I think it's multi use. You know, you could use it to put you know, food or you know, work some gear out on and you know underneath the tarp. It's nice to have like a second place. It's off the ground. Um. And if we're taking a nap, you know you could it's like it's a little extra cushion in the woods. If you're inter rock. Now, I carry one off. I just wouldn't carry one on that trip. If I was doing a glassing intensive trip, i'd like to carry it. Then it depends on the ground. I just had one up from the tunder and I never used it because the tongs are so comfortable to sit on. But it was dry, right, So yeah, I do, Yeah, I do like butt pads. I like that little outdoorsman's back, that little outdoorsman's butt pad. And I got just the place on my pack where I can kind of wedge it in perfectly. So you got your hunting license. That's smart. Um. Smoking a bottle. We already talked about that wind detector you are bringing your phone just for snapping pictures. You get a signal on top of mountain. You can check in and see how the kids are doing. You gotta recharger. Um how many charges can you get off on your phone off that charger too? So personal hygiene many toothpaste, toothbrush with the handcut off, which I think is something people do. It's silly, but okay, Uh, extra contact lenses and then a little thing of bond or salt. That pepperminty bond or salt. Dude is a Yeah. When you're getting like itchy head and stuff after four or five days, that stuff resets the clock. Yep. Yeah, And you could use it, you know, or if you had like a major you know, like a butchering session, you know, and you're just like up to your elbows and blood and you just want to clean up. Um. Yeah, And it's like it's a little bitty um it's like a one one use Like it's like I don't know, it's like cardboard, but the insides line somehow. It probably has I don't know, close to a tablespoon is soap in it, which for dr Bees is a lot. Man. You hit. Uh, you hit the nether parts and uh, and you're nogging in a little creek wash. You came away feeling like you've been back home for a couple of days. I love that stuff. So then then in your outdoor research a little back country organized er, you got a minimal first aid kit. Yep. My general first aid kit is uh, like I mean, general first aid kit is triple antibiotic ointment, handful of band aids, gauze, and med tape. Yeah, there's only so much you're gonna be able to do, you know. I do have like a big rap um in there, and I have some of this stuff called combat gauze where god we're saying someone did take a shot wound or a broad head you know, you know cross the armor like we basically have just like a major, major open wound. It's a um gauze that you wrap or or you know you or that you put on the wound and then wrap you know, your bandage around it. But the gauze itself has a clouding agent in it. Yeah. I used to carry the packets. Yeah, of the clouding agent stuff with that stuff expires pretty quickly, Like you'll have your pack for you then realize it's all crystallized to one. If you carry it, you gotta keep up on it. But yeah, if you had like a major blood incident, it's good to have. But if you're gonna do it, make sure that it's that you're renewing it all the time because they do go bad. Um sometimes I have to carry with me just depends is um depending on where I'm at, uh EpiPen panophlactic shock just because of certain insects and stuff. Good thing to mention, I think there's like the small drugs in that first aid kit or what could really help you and keep you out to or longer. Like you the other day gave me I had like I started to get a sour belly when we're on Prince of Wales and you gave me an emodium a D and one pill cured me. That's all it took. Yeah, I carry and for and I just buy boxes of the little single serves because they've got a good protective coating on them. I carry a handful of ibuprofen packs, just little single serving things. There's a pocket my organized your wedgement, a couple packs idprofen, a couple of packs of Thailand all an emodium a D type thing, and then a anihissed A means a good one type thing. And then I carry in my kid too. I was talking about in my little medicate and my medicate, like I said, it's the size of like it's smaller than a much smaller than a wallet, a couple of band aids, a couple of gauze strips, a really small thing of med tape, but also carry a handful of alcohol swabs to clean out cuts. And again it's like it's like nothing, you know what I mean. It was like sounds like a lot. Add it up. You put it all together just like a little it's like a little teeny plastic envelope. And this whole thing fits into an organizer. That's I mean, how big is the organized like a sandwich? Yeah, there's sandwich mine. Actually if you if you, if I overload it with things like, um, it won't be for this hunt, but let's just say for another hunt and put in like a choke wrench, and then the the boar snake for cleaning out a you know gun. If you have any channel in the mud or something, it can get over a pound like it can have to have some weight to it. But for this hunt, it will be roughly around a pound, you know. Um. But yeah, on top of the first aid kit, there'll be uh the emergency survival kit which you know firestarter um in there. Um I have and I'm running the h I have two fire starts. Actually, I do have some cotton balls of asilene, and then I also have these little just one these they're called Esbet fuel cubes, and you like, the guys will steal those. Yeah, so you gotta be careful if it's your main kid that ever goes everywhere with you, careful because they don't like them. Yeah, but that thing burns I think like twelve or fifteen minutes, Like it goes. It's supposed to be using like a cooking system, but it's a little cube and you just sit there and like I forget like the heat that it produced. It's a lot. But like in a shitty wet you know, fire building situation, you'd have like a flame that just basically sat there for twelve minutes as you try to like build a fire around. Yeah. Yeah, I know they're nice to have. My kid is like I take one of dirt myths chew tins. And that's kind of dual purpose because I take cat cotton balls, rub vast lene to impact them in there, then put a couple of seed or knots in there, and that's my like fire kid. And you got like a little vast lane backup, and depending on where I'm at, I'll pull that thing in and out, depending just general conditions like if I'm you know, if I'm hunting down in New Mexico, I'm probably not carrying them, right because the lighters all you need. Yeah, because you know you got you can be able to pull it together if you're in an area that's just like impossible. Southeast Alaska. I got a fire kit. Um. So it's just like, yeah, you got a lot of the stuff. You just gotta make calls on all the time. Yeah. I have like a little there's like a little super mini compass in there. Um. I don't carry a big compass, just you know, in my pocket, so it's in there. Um. There's like a little lot of fishing line a hook, um. But again it's super super small. Um. But the other things in the backcountry organizer that like my spare lighters will be in there. The stuff called tenacious tape, which is basically a little piece of that. It's like uh reinforced nylon tape that. Um, it's like a patch for if you rip it like your outer shell or you know. Yeah, I carry the back form where it's like basically it's like having a square of paper in your bag. It's just one patch. It's like a two inch circle that tuck somewhere in my little kit and you can fix stuff with it, and it's good to have. And again that's the kind of thing where depending what's going on, you pull it in and out. Um, I do carry a little teeny baggy. You gotta hear extra batteries. It's good to like line your stuff up, line your gear up to that. It all is using the same stuff as much as you can. Yeah, unfortunately I don't have that. I got triple a's in my head lamp. I got double as in my GPS, and then the stery pen runs on the I think it's a CR one Yeah, so I use a CR one to three flashlight. And then I got my head lamp runs on the c R one two three as well, So I'm sorry. My my head lamp and my sterry pen run the same battery, and I used to try. I always try to bounce around and get it right. You always bought it with some outlier item that they don't make that way by Jerry like to try to like duplicate up. So I got a couple of extra batteries with me that work for various different things. Um. Then you got orange flagging tape. Again, very small. You take like ten ft of that and roll up in the little ball. It's like the tip of your pinky finger. Great to have, especially hunting by yourself. You take a shot, hang that tape where you were standing, march over to where you know the animals standing, hang a piece of tape. When you find first blood, mark that with the tape, and again it will be redundant because now I pretty much do all of that with my GPS. But man, is it easier to look over your shoulder and be like, oh, there's especially when you're like on a shitty blood shilling you're trying to figure out like a general direction of travel possibly and you can look back and say, oh, I can see kind of like a corridor that the elk could run through, you know from where I am. Now you know stuff like that, Yeah, and if you're hunt, like like if you take if you take a three yard poke at something in rough cut ground, you like go running over there, which shouldn't. Don't run over there, take your time figure out what's going on. But you go over there, can't figure out what was happening where it was, and then you realize that you lost track of where you were standing or laying down. That's when trouble starts. Because when you mark your location with something to tape whatever you leave there ta I like tape, a lot, anything, a piece of clothing, mark that spot because then when you go over there and you're like, I think it was right here, but I can't find any hair, no blood, no nothing, And then you're like where where where was that Again? If you mark it, you'll go back there and you'll look and you'll remember it was right there. You need, like you have to plan on worst case scenario when it comes to reconstructing something. If you've got two guys is great because one guy stays putting, one guy goes over there, and the guy that stays putting direct you right to where that thing was. If you buy yourself, you gotta have a plan. Um. Then you got we already talked about a backup head lamp, and you can't A little minithing is super clue. Yeah, I just feel like that should be leaking everywhere, making my stuff all gluey. No, it's like a you know, it's always a brand new one, this unopened um and it's like a little mini deal. It's it says one time you used but I mean like there's nothing there where you could use it a few times. But UM cuts man, or even like you know, when you're working with blood a lot, your hands dry out and I'll get these just wicked cuts that will not heal and I'll just clean it out and super glue like cut. I've never tried it by no people made it works. Yeah, it works great. Alright. So run down, run down like your food for like bad country hunting. Yeah, super basic. UM breakfast is gonna be Uh. This is this new uh instant oman we found called Umquats and it's like a hundred times better than the Quaker stuff. Yeah, it's like not like all nasty sugary crap. Yeah this Yeah, the Quaker is like eating like a freaking candy bar or maybe even worse for breakfast. And it's just I always feel like with Quaker, it's like thirty minutes later, I'm like, oh, I'm hungry. You should eat a bar. These unquote oats or legita. You can get ones that have like a mix with like keen one other grains and stuff in them, but like a skeptical that first, but it's very good man. Um. But sometimes I'll have a bar in there too, or I'll have a bar soon on, you know, in the morning, and then the Starbucks via coffee um launch and snacks pro bars and snickers for for the Starbucks via coffee, I was like, carry little non dairy cream or two this kind of guy I am. Man, Yeah, yeah, like your coffee white UM Launch. So I'm not doing any kind of sandwiches. I'm gonna have like a sandwich for day one. It's gonna be like heavy and packed in, but no real sandwich is gonna be Launch is gonna be very snacky. Um. So I'll have like a little bit of slammy, some cheese, maybe like a banana and a baguette for the first day because it's something that's gonna be eating the first day and we'll be gone after that. It's gonna be bars, jerky Um custom trail mix. That's pretty much it. Yeah, I just got to survive on that and the Chicken Bully on cubes just for at night with hot water to drink, yeah, or yeah, if it's cold and shitty mill a day, Yeah, you heat heat up some water, put a little Chicken Bully on cuban there and it's uh, yeah, it's very nice. And then for dinner you're going with the house, going to the house, and then a should chase that with a candy bar. And then uh, I've been having a lot of cramps recently, and so I've been Uh I got this stuff called Noon Electro Lights. There's coming like a handy little vial. I think there's ten or twelve of the deals in there. So I'm gonna try to drink one of these electro light tablets every day. He dissolve in the water and you know, it gives your water a little flavor to which is nice. But try to keep my cramps down in my calves. And then a stick of salted butter. I'm packing that extra calories. Man, there's like a few things that have more calories. But yeah, and then also this time here you find a lot of eats. And it's nice to have a little butter because you find you find like legit clean bleats out there, you know, one of the better mushrooms out Um. Then you got your first day food. It was just your heavy jump just start out right. Yeah, so you know, yeah, it's like a it's like a heavier load. And I think you're roughly looking at to two pounds of food a day to get the calories that you need. Um, so yeah, I'll be looking at you know, fifteen pounds of food roughly. But yeah, that it's nice to have like just normal food one more day until you just go into full on like barn mountain house mode, you know. And we don't. I had to get into the depth here, but I figured just because we were talking about all this stuff, we're gonna be caring. I'm gonna be carrying in the woods. I know people are wondering, right what I'm carrying for my bow and archery, you know, other archery equipment. And uh so it's a prime centergy bow, um eastern full metal jackets, very heavy. Total airrowweight for me is like five thirty five um grains, which is you know, well over a hundred grains heavy than a lot of people shoot grains. Slick trick? What's that? The slick trick? It's just a it's similar to like the muzzy, which which muzzy is that? But it's basically like a imagine a field point with a sharp actually a sharp like chiseled point on it, and then it's got uh slots cut through it, and so you put a blade through it this way, you know, and then another blade crosses it like there's a slot in the yourself. Yeah, which is nice because it's got replaceable blades. So if I have so, I can carry like two sets of replaceable blades, which I will, and so in case that it's a four bladed, yeah, it's a four bladed fixed four bladed and um yeah, super super sharp and that's a nice thing I like about. And I happened to missing elk and you know, shot one into the dirt. I could just take out those two blades, replace it with two freshies, and I've got it, you know, super yeah, ready to go. And then he got your release. Yeah, so I think it's called the Eaty Beattie Goose Scott Release. It's old. It's you guys, used to have those, and not I got were spot hogs, but I used to have that. I used to use that Scott release all time. All right, that's Yanni's backpack. Man. Is that exciting? It is? Man, he's going on a hunting trip, hunting trip without Steve. He I didn't even I didn't even invite Steve. That's because I know his schedule. I look at steve calendar every day, so I know that couldn't invite him anyway. To bring it full circle, I feel as Uh is jealous as one of my kids went fishing with another man. All Right, man, thanks tuning in