00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, Okay, man, first and foremost, before this program starts, go to however you listen to this podcast, go on there and give the podcast is super good five star reviewer as high as the stars go. Just go all the way to the right and quick click the right most star so that you get all the stars. And then also while you're there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. What happens then is you don't need to go messing around every week getting it just comes to you. It's good for you, it's good for us. And go to the meat eater dot com. Check out the store. We got all kinds of branded first light apparel and solids and camel bitching hats shirts. You can also go and get the show notes for the podcast, where if we're talking about books, music, ideas, research studies, hunting info, fishing info, it's all there in the show notes. So if you if we're talking about something and you're like, man, I wish I knew what they were talking about. I wish I could find that book, go there and you'll find the book. Yeah, you can also read the weekly blog pieces that are often written by Henderson man Brodie and Henderson is often on this show, sometimes by you. He has a very relaxed, casual tone on this show. So do all that stuff and get it taken care of right away, and now for the show. Uh, dirt, I notice you're running like a like a like a chew that has a little package around like a school bandit. Why why not the normal kind of just where the little grip pieces get all over your teeth. Just keep it classy and that's nice. B and B Is that why? Well too, I don't have to spit as much, but you're spitting into that that juice bottle. Yeah, what gets me is just disgusting. Man, he's chewing gum, chewing chew and spitting in a bottle while trying to talk. Is that nicotine gum? No? No. One of my favorite stories of Dirts is he had a girlfriend um Don in Arkansas and he was down there spitting all over the yard visiting her family, and the old man took him aside. Were more liberal people who were barefoot most of the time. You don't think conservatives go barefoot. These guys, I have a lot of conservative views, and I like going barefoot in my yard. You wouldn't like stepping on wet grasp right then either. That's this guy didn't didn't like me spitting where he was stepping. But I don't think that has a That's not a function of his. Uh, that's not a function of his of his politics. That's true. They were. They were thinking like a conservative would be like, yeah, man, one thing I like is walking and choose spit. That's true. I do think politics influence people. For like you know I've brought many times, is that that um being gluten intolerance seems to be a left wing ailment. But I don't think a lack of a desire to walk around and choose spit is part of the political polite. It was. They were right on telling me not to do that. So they were right wing. They were correct. They were correct. Yes, I stopped. I'd spit out on the back forty instead, you'd take a little walk stood over the fence of the high grass area. Was courteous. Yeah, um, Dirk, did you know that? Uh? You know what the word ursus means. I know the constellation Ursus minor. Yeah, okay, Ursus is the bear family. I didn't know that. Did you know that? Of the that the the ursus with the greatest distribution is the brown bear slash grizzly bear. No. I believe it though, Yeah, because you know Eurasia right, connection just has the widest distribution of any bear. There's many versions of it now, it's you know, they used called the grizzly bear Ursus criblis, which is bad pr because horrible. Yeah. So when you get like a Linnaean name, you have I feel we talked about this before, like the Latin name, right, it's from Linnaeus, and Linnaeus came up with the way we name animals. So the domestic dog is you know can is familiaris right, that's its Linnaean name. Uh, we are homo sapien so self aware of human, self aware of homedan um. I don't think we have covered this. We haven't covered nan are we homo sapien sapien? Well, yeah, see that's like that's when things have h that's called trinomial nomenclature. So the brown bear slash grizzly bear is Ursus arctos. But there's ursus arctos arctos, or some people like like take take the American bison or American buffalo. There is there used to be this idea that we had bison bison, bison, which was the planes animal, and then bison bison athabaska, which was the wood buffalo of the boreal forest. And we used to just make the you know, these determinations were made oftentimes by morphological differences, so you would look and like, let's look at the structure of an animal, the visual appearance of an animal and draw distinctions. But then once we started getting once genetics got involved, it started showing us that things that we thought that measured by that parameter, by the genetic markers, things that we thought were very simple, Some things we thought were very similar are in fact not similar at all. That just happened to like accidentally arrive at a place where they kind of look the same, right, And an extreme version would be birds fly and dragonflies fly, So someone would go like they must be closely related, but in fact they came to flight through very different paths. Okay, so there you have a thing where like um convergent evolution. So yeah, like ideas about convergent and divergent evolution. But in those cases like they're similarity that there's things that we would see and someone would be like, oh, they're similar because they both blank. But we realize that doesn't denote like a close related nous. So genetics dispelled some of those misunderstandings, but it also showed us that some things that we thought were very different are in fact very close together. Like for instance, that the ABC Islands in Alaska, Admiralty bearing Off and what's that chick under the name, It's Admiralty Island bearing Off Island, and then uh, the Sea Island. They're together there. The polar bears that those okay, those bears on that island are like Ursus arctos. Okay, so they're like coastal brown bears. Will get more into this in a second. Chickagolf Chickergolf Island, Chickagolf Island. I think it's there's there's in both places. Oh alright, so that one anyway, polar bears are are a recent offshoot of Ursus arctos. So polar bears are if you're just from a genetic perspective, polar bears aren't are almost like a cousin of or almost like a clade of brown bears, and polar bears are very closely related to the brown bears of the ABC Islands, even though those brown bears tend to be darker than other brown bear, grizzly bears and other parts of the world. So coloration. If you're like, oh there, you're like you, you might look and be like, okay, the in the bears of interior North Alaska. So the grizzlies of the Brooks Range are tend to be blond. So someone might be like, oh so if if polar bears are shoot off of grizzly brown bears, I would imagine they're shoot off of those very blond ones that are already in the Arctic on the north slope of the Brooks Range, when in fact, those bears are not tightly related as tightly related to polar bears as are the brown bears of the ABC Islands. Now where is that going from there? Oh So, another added thing of that is this is the point I was trying to get at, because I'm trying to go way deep. I'm gonna talk about a grizzly bear semi attack, but I'm gonna go I'm going way deep because here's the thing. I just want to clarify a point that brown bears and grizzly bears are all ursus arctos. We used to have We used to have this idea that we had all these different subspecies of bears, all right, So we had like the Kodiac brown bear, which are the biggest ones in the world. Um. Then you have like polar bears that's their own thing, arctists maritimas or something like the artist maritimeas, something like that, like marine bear um is regarded as a different species though very closely related. And then you have like the grizzly bears of the lower forty eight and the interior Northern Canada. Those are all one species. And the way they talk about in genetics is they talk about it being clades, so rather than subspecies, they now talk about clades or like genetic groupings of bears that are all kind of the same thing. But in hunting Lingo and around, you'll be able to chime in on this, Okay, and hunting Lingo, when someone says a brown bear, what they're referring to is a coastal grizzly of Alaska. Correct, But now I've always understood though grizzly bears are brown bears, but not all brown bears are referred to as grizzly bears. See what I'm saying, A brown bear is a grizzly, So grizzly can be a brown bear or a grizzly, But you can't call a brown bear a grizzly because it's completely like you're saying. If you were in Wyoming, you would not be able to say, hey, I saw a brown bear, or you would be able to say I saw a brown bear. A grizzly is a brown bear. A brown bear is not a grizzly. The word grizzly is a delineation of where they live. So so you would be incorrect saying a grizzly on Kodiak Island by okay, but but but what yes, if we're if we're switching the hunting lingo, okay, then yes, but even normally you know, yeah, it's just the brown bears. Correct, Yeah, we're talking. Yeah, so yeah, I think that if you yeah, if you're talking like in nan like scientific lingo, it would be that a grizzly is a form of brown bear. Correct, Yes, but just to clarify because people always get that confused. It's like, well, is a brown bear. A brown bear is not a coastal grizzly. A grizzly is an inland brown bear. It doesn't go both ways, That's what. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at this point. So that that's that's a good clarification. Like if you want to go read about the whole broad general family of of of these types of bears of Ursus arctos, correct, that you would begin the top of the funnel, right, we're talking about the funnels earlier. The top of the funnel would be brown bears, and then from there you will find your way into the himlayan brown bear, the the interior rocky mountains, grizzly bears. These are all classifications of brown bears brown bears. So but in like in in the way we in the way that hunting type dudes use the term. Now when we're talking about a grizzly, we're talking about a a grouping of brown bears that that do not live in coastal environments and do not have access to salmon. Correct, they're not exploiting marine resources. They are in the interior. Those bears tend to be to have a grizzled appearance. They tend to be silvery blonde lighter and you're coastal bears tend to be coastal brown. Bears tend to be darker brown, running to chocolate. The bears the the largest of this whole group of bears which are many and varied from Romania and the Himalaya all over damn place. The largest ones live on uh the Kodiak Archipelago, which includes a fog Knack Island, Fog Raspberry, Kodiak and do we talk about this the other day? And the Alaska Financia did we talk about this the other day? That those bears, the bears on Kodiak and the fog Knack and Raspberry have been genetically isolated for ten thousand years to be cover this we touch it, ok. So they've been off doing their own on their own vibe for a long time. Big mo fosi, as my son would say, no bad mofos. He doesn't know what a mofo actually spells out Toobody knows that there are animals that are counted as bad mo fos um Uh that's I'm just laying a little unnecessary groundwork for for for what's gonna come next. Uh. Now, where we left off on the last episode, we were fixing to do some l cotton on a fognack and just as a primer, But if you watch television, you'll know certain television shows, after every commercial break, they they out of a courtesy, as a courtesy to the viewer and also as a courtesy to their budget, spend some minutes just recapping what they covered a moment ago, which saves them money in production and also like gives you, keeps you up to speed if you just joined in the program. We uh me and Remy Warren drew some elk tags on a fog Neck island. And the fog Neck Island is just separated from Kodiak Island by a narrow straight and I remember the name now that might not be the exact pronunciation, but and raspberry straight. Yeah, lots of out here has a Roosky name, a Russian name, Russian name. And then there's shellakof which is the big more open ocean between the mainland. That's the rough, real rough seas there. Since we did the real clumsy uh and since we did a real clumsy recap of of general Bear tax on, I mean, let's do a real clumsy recap of uh Coastal Alaska history. Now, the uh, the Russians were real heavy, worked real heavy in this area, and they were in the you know that they would use this area for fur trading so um seal and they'd come in here primarily targeting sea otters or buying sea otters from indigenous hunters, um wailing all that kind of stuff. And then we bought it. Uh, you know, Seward bought it for like five bucks, and people were real mad at the time that he got ripped off and turned out he got himself into a gold mine. Um So, that's how this place came into us ownership. It wasn't five bucks, but he got a scream. I'm being I'm being an extreme here in in my uh in my assessments of what he paid for it, But yeah, he gotta scream and deal on it. People were kind of piste. They called it the words folly. I thought he got ripped, but in the end, I mean he the guy did a great turn for his country. Um So in some of the areas in Coastal Alaska. There's like still kind of a Russian influence and names you notice in this area in particulars a lot of Russian names in this area from the long even the airport English and Russian. Is it really? Uh? Now, so we drew these these these these elk tags. Now a fog Neck Island does not traditionally have elk. And the elk they captured I think nineteen or twenty calves in the early decades of the d from the Olympic Peninsula. When I'm in my bedroom looking out of my bedroom window, I'm looking at descend, I'm looking at the home range, the former home range of the elk that now live on a fog Neck. And they did two releases. One of the releases was just calves. What you think would have just gotten wiped. The fact that that worked is mind boggling. Yeah, I can't. That just seems like, hey, what's this old boss cow right without some boss cow who's got some background and dealing with bears. Just surprising that they could have lived. And it wasn't even many. It was eight Roosevelt elk calves captured on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Nine and then they didn't even caught him loose till twenty nine, So somehow kept the sons bitches alive for a year, turn them loose on that hell whole. But the thing they had going for him is a familiar terrain like dank, just dank wet is. The Olympic PENNSA is pretty steep too, is it. I mean it goes from sea level straight up through this vicious it's viciously steep, viciously thick. Guys that can go, you know, guys that can routinely go in there on public ground and kill Elk in Coles, the coastal Washington. Yeah, it's like, I haven't done it once. I haven't. I haven't even given it a shot. I haven't been there that long and haven't really given it much. I haven't given it any shot yet. But I've know enough to know that a dude who can consistently fill it Elk tag in coastal Washington on public ground is a hunter's hunter. Bad mofo, Yeah, bad mo foe. That's consistently doing that. Jason Phelps, he cut his teeth on that. The game call maker, Jason Phelps, that's his world, man. So the fact that like that him and his buddies like do it is testament to It's just it's just like nothing like you got up on some glass and tits like spying on elk and then seeing over and getting them. You're just in there shaking hands with him for those dudes like you know, the whole like sixty yard pin. It's like if you're getting shot, it's ten yards yeah, top pin. Yeah you don't. You can't anyhow, So they got these out from there, kidnapped him. I got a question later on me and maybe premature that was a chair. Um, but did those the elk they got relocated to fog Neck have have their size and like general demeanor paralleled the native Olympia Olympic Peninsula elk. That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. Uh, Roosevelt elk are the biggest of the elk a body size, So so you have for elk man, let's turn into a tax on him. The episode for elk from Hunting Perspective, Elker, elk all got the same damn in name. But we break them up, um uh, we break them up in a different classifications. They're definitely not subspecies, but classifications Rocky Mountain totally Roosevelt. Yeah, and I guess now I could live in like two places, yeah well yeah, coastal California, the valley right, yeah well yeah, from like Bishop to the coast. But and then there's um that maybe they aren't around anymore, Manito Banilk, Manitoban elk, and they may have been larger than Roosevelt's but now currently in Roosevelt because what was the native elk of like Michigan in Wisconsin. Probably, I don't probably Manitoban. I'm not positive because those reintroduction efforts were all done with Rocky Mountains. Yeah, I think that elk was probably it was probably large. Was extrapated. Man a lot of like, yeah, hear you on this fact checking, man, I am. You can also like you can you can also throw in out freshwords that expensive. I really want to get my new sand volleyball court lines out. So you got your backlog down fact checking, honestly, just marriam elk. You could also throw in their um Manitoban. As Remy said, eastern elk Um, I'd had to dive a little bit farther to see what they think is still alive or not but the main species are the tool the rocky Mountain, and the Roosevelt. The Roosevelt or the largest bodied rocky mountain are the largest antlers, and just in configuration in size, I would say the tool oak or the smallest body and their antlers grow more like a red deer, which is a crowned effect at the tops. Just to get a picture. Yeah, now, just to make just so people, just so listeners don't think we're dumb for not knowing to all the answers here. A lot of the answers are unresolved. For instance, for instance, of all the types of big horn sheep, there used to be an idea that there was also the Audubon big horn. And the Audubon big horn was an eastern Montana in the Dakota bad Lands, Okay, and it had been shot out by miners and killed out by the introduction of domestic sheep and and through disease introductions from domestic sheep. Now there's questions of like is the audubon sheep, was it legitimately its own sheep, or was it just a rocky mountain. So when you get in all this taxon taxonomic stuff, it's like there used to be like a set of understandings that is just getting that is getting eroded by inputs of new information. Like for at a time, I think that people talked about thirty four types of cariboo or some crazy thing like that, and now that list has been greatly reduced to now all caribou and reindeer of North America, Europe and Asia are not regarded as the same species, different clades of the same species from a genetic perspective. So where we are we Oh yeah, So they take these caves and the Limpic peninsula, cut them loose out there, and then they do another introduction and eventually that herd on a fog neck gets built up. You might go like, well, why would you go and turn a bunch of animals that don't belong somewhere loose somewhere. And that's a great question because it's a practice that we were engaged in very heavily in the early nineteen hundreds that were not engaged in now. You would never get the green light now to go and establish a population of elk on an island where they were not native, because the fear would be that you were going to upset a delicate ecological balance. But in the early nine hundreds and prior to that in other places, there was just this idea that all animals should just be everywhere that they that it would kind of work, particularly big game animals. So on Kodiak they cut loose black tailed deer, which you're not native there. They cut loose mountain goats, which are not native there. They cut loose elk on neighboring a fog neck, which are not native there, as well as as reindeer they call reindeer because they were a domestic herd that ended up just becoming fairal so caribou. So you would never, like you would never in a million years get to go ahead to do that. Now. A lot of it too, yes, a lot of it too, I think has to do with the way if you if you lived on Kodiak Island during this time when they introduce these animals, you're looking around, You're going, well, this is a land of plenty, but there's not a lot of red meat running around. There's bears, and there's fish, and there is no way to get food to Kodiak Island. So everywhere else in Alaska you can set up a settlement and you can go shoot a moose. You can go shoot a but you're gonna get sick of eating brown bear meat, I would imagine, So they release these sick from it. So they release these animals primarily as a food source to get people. They come and go, oh, yeah, I can live off the land here. I'll start a settlement and I'll raise a family, and I'll do whatever, and we'll make you're you're act like I'm making a value judgment. No, no, no, I'm just saying I'm just yeah, the rationale of like why then it was even thought of. Now, okay, let me lay this one on you, because you're you're like you you you're at this point in news for for an American. You're an expert on New Zealand as far as Americans go, I'm not talking about Okay, New Zealand. When they were doing all these introductions, they were they were doing introductions earlier there than they are here than they were here. But there was committees called familiar like familiar familiarization committees who whose goal would be like sort of the equivalent of a conservation group today, called the familiar familiarization committee, I believe, whose goal was to establish the fauna of Europe into New Zealand to make it more like home. Yeah. So when you're in the park and you see a red squirrel running boy, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. So it was like people just then we're into yeah for for all kinds of motivations were into, like why not have more game animals on the land? Sounds good to me. The funny thing about it to me is that you would never get it to go today, probably not because now you need to establish that it was present and was extirpated by human causes in order to do in order to do and we don't do introductions, we do reintroductions. If you can establish it it was historically present and wiped out by people. This wouldn't fit though during the place the scene, there was an elk in interior Alaska, but they cut them loose here because like why not, why not have more meat on the ground. What's funny about it to me is that you have those those introductions that occurred and they manage them in perpetuity, even though they would never get the green light to establish it now. So they're like, well they're here now, now we're going to manage it. In a conservative fashion, like they don't want them to explode in numbers. And they were able to control the valve through how many hunting permits they issue, um, so inadvertently, I think I now believe they made the most difficult elk hunting on the planet, um by Cotton. These elk loose on a fog knack island. If I could go back in time, I would find the guy that came up with that idea and I would punch him in the baby. So where are we left that? We were fixing to do some hunting and it was foggy, Um, you couldn't see ship and ray, rainy and foggy, miserable camping conditions at times, miserable camping conditions. But Remy had done the hunt before on a fog knack and we were kind of like following our hunt play was the mimic Remy's previous hunt plan. Like Remy, just like I don't I can't tell you what's gonna happen. I don't really know if it works like it worked before. Um, and we can find them in a valley I found him in. It's just gonna come down to will we get a chance to like have a look. Will the weather cooperate? If the weather cooperates, it's not gonna be. It's not going to be that. It's a challenging hunt. It's just a challenging like set of experiences, right because you've got to get through the shitty weather to get to the point where you can shoot one. Then you have to get that one that you shoot back to camp. And the terrain lends itself very poorly to easily getting back to camp, No two ways about it. It sucks walking through it looks nice. You could watch the episode say I would make it there in an hour, not four hours later, you're gonna be slogging through stuff, really discouraged. Well, we can put some numbers to it. It took us five hours to travel two point seven miles, yeah, the way the crow flies two point seven miles as Yeah, so two point to cover two point seven miles as the crow flies, just you know, with your travel route deviating from that straight line from just from topographical features. Took five hours to travel and that's like, that's that's hard hiking. That was yeah, hiking for five hours straight, not doing during refers to as Jimmy Dicken. We were just very well could be double the actual distance. Yeah, I think, but you can't. You can't. There's no such thing as walking a straight line, and there's some major climbing involved in between, and that made you're climbing. I just the way that brushes. I feel like it's it's very similar to walking through knee deep snow or foot igh snow. The amount of energy going through that, I think it's even worse because like if you get if you get in a situation where the tall grass or like the authors grab your leg, then you trip, and you don't have that in snow, you know, so like you're expending energy trying to keep yourself up and like the brush gets too thick. It's like waiting through snow men. It's like, yeah, who can grab it? Tiny snow man? Who want to knock you down? The whole time? Um, hold on, I want to go back to the point about it being double. Let me explain. Okay, not only are you going zig zagging right, because we like you're going away from camp to get to a pass and then you go across the ridge up over the you know, the top of a you know, a small knoll to another pass to then go down. So you've got the zig and the zag. But then also you figure when you're going up, like you said, like Camp's only twenty over that pass, right, because you're at the top of the pass and you're looking almost straight down at Camp, and so that that um linear distance as the crow flies is only whatever, what is it, five yards? Eight hundred yards? Right, Like you can make the shot with a rifle almost you're actually going down twice that at the top of that peak we had to go over. You're at fifteen fifty and Camps at three fifty, and you could definitely lob a two round down into your tent, not lob you could shoot a twenty two round down into your tent from that peak. Yeah, because it's so steep. Yeah, it's it's is steep as you'd want to walk without ropes. Probably. I'm just saying that there's a lot of distance it's not accounted for. When you talk about it wasn't factoring in the zig or the zag. I was factoring in just the you know, up and down. Yeah. Now, on a trail, you're going several miles an hour. A good hiker is covering few miles an hour on a trail, so that's the thing. So anyways, we finally get like, you can't hunt. This is a generalization generally, with notable exceptions. One cannot fly in the hunt on the same day in Alaska um because it would encourage the practice of locating animals from the air landing you're planing and shooting at them, which they don't typically want. And in the places where you can fly and hunt on the same day, our places where that doesn't where the quarry isn't really conducive to that kind of approach anyway. Like generally, like hunting blacktail deer, it just generally doesn't line out that you would like find a blacktail from your plane, land and shoot it. That is a different kind of critter in a different kind of habitat caribou, it would work out real well, and you're not allowed to do it, and you to let have a night passed and you hunt the next day. So we couldn't hut the first day with it, not that we had the opportunities anyways. Then the next day just fog um and then we hiked up to a spot where we could look down into a valley known to be frequented by elk Um based off Ramy's past experiences and in conversations with pilots who fly over the area all the time. And then I just walked up, said wow, it's real foggy, walked back down soaked. The next day, walked up, said wow, it's real foggy, and walked back down so well. The next day walked up, said wow, it's real foggy. And then we decided to hang out. That was a third day or what day was the day that we walked through the real brushy ship. That was the second day. He was on our way up to see that it was foggy. Yeah, that was the third day we flew. We hiked up to the top direct. Third day was the lake hike. Yeah, we stayed low and then up, I'm just clarifying in my own mind, straight up and said, man, it's foggy. Start to see whisperings, whisperings of clearness coming and going. Devoted a lot of time to try and to start a fire, put up some tarps to get out of the rain, and then all of a sudden, I wouldn't make like an angel noise, but it wasn't like an angel like clearing it was like clouds would blow through. We're staying fog. You're not. It's not far rain. You're in the clouds. Clouds rain, You're in a cloud. It's not far white room. You're just like up in it. You're like in the thing when it's raining, the thing that's the rains falling out of your standing in that thing. Fog sounds nice. Yeah, you climb up into a cloud and then there's like rain happening around you. It's like a garden hose with a mist setting on all the time. Yeah, exactly. But these clouds would blow and there'd be gaps between the clouds. And during the gaps between these clouds, were looking down and lo and behold, um, two point four miles away, a bull is standing there like kind of like scent from the heavens. And then the bull promptly vantages and vanishes into a little thicket. And then we notice in a creek bed down below the bowl, we noticed what looks like two or three other elk that make a little real quick appearance, and they were they were quite a ways off, and so we started hoofing down towards these elk. Uh travel that distance, it took a lot of time. So now it's already into the afternoon, right yeah, late afternoon, and no time to stop for lunch, not even have time to eat food. And find the bull that we saw. Find the bull that was sent from the heavens to walk out of a walk out of a alder patch and present himself for view. Find him beded up on a little high spot, a little high grassy, a grassy knole, and get a and here in this area it's like all grass like, kind of like waste high grass, some chest high grass, some knee high muck. And then here and there a big gass spruce tree. We get a big gas spruce tree between us and the bull, and the bulls laying there and lays there for a long time, right up until the point where we get about yards away from it, and I'm getting ready to prop my rifle up and take a poke at him, should he stand up, and he just walks and vanishes. Crazy. At this point we start talking about how maybe it's getting a little late to be trying to do this. That was that like probably three thir for Yeah, we're saying it might we might, even though it's not dark, it might be getting into foolish territory. Hm. But continue on to be shooting because we have to remember we're still in that giant bear country, but we have yet to see a bear. Yeah, evidence of bears, like bears walk in the lake where camped down had had had what seemed like it must have been a pretty healthy sock i run, just based on the amount of carcasses strewn around on the beach, some bears feeding on them. And while we were in there, there was a lot of steelhead in there, and a lot of of cohos or silvers are in there as well, And so you'd see some bear tracks uh on the beach and then you'd kind of stop them out and find a new bear track on the beach. And one day on one of the trails up by of the pass, we had bear tracks on our tracks. So they're around, but had laid eyes on them. And but you're you're aware of their presence, and you're mainly wear of the presence because your whole life you've been like hearing about Kodiak bears, right, the bad mo fo's who endorned the you ten us what did you say, arsus used to be so they got tangled up with him a little bit um now, so we keep pressing on and kind of give up on the bull that we knew about. Remy ripped a few bugles, did some cow call, and nothing in the world was gonna stand that, or we didn't know what he did. He laughed, laid down, couldn't locate him, couldn't find him. Can I say something, please? Something that gave me a perspective on the like the heights of the ship you're walking through, was when that elk disappears. So it's like on any other hunt, you'll see an animal going to a small like timber standard tree stand. You're like, yeah, of course it could disappear. This elk which is massive, what like how many pounds he leased over there? We didn't cover that. We got okay, extremely valuable today they were. But so when this so you're looking at this elk and you're like looking at the landscape and it looks fairly close because it is two point four or whatever. And then actually when it disappeared, we were away and he literally in what looks like you know, like yeah, knee high bush anywhere else totally vanishes, like ceases to exist. Like you guys are glass and that small chunk, I mean it was tiny area, not a sign of them. But then not I would say, ceased to exist. But then all of a sudden he rematerialized later in fact, had not ceased to exist. He was just from our Yeah, the perspective had just like was no longer on the earth, was sucked up a phantom, a phantom helk. No, So backchack to dirts earlier point. Roosevelt's has Roosevelt elk are the biggest bodied of the elk. But the biggest versions of Roosevelt elk are here. I didn't know that. Yes, they are larger than the natives. They have bulls up there here where we are right now, they have bulls, or within a few miles where we are now, they have bulls that have tipped the scales at one thousand, three hundred pounds. Wow mm hmm, ridiculous. Yeah, Yeah, that's when you paish on the giants, right on the giants, Like they're saying that when you pack, when you could be packing seven hundred pounds of meeting and the school and alers, biggest of the big that'd be some that'd be some bone fish as seven hundred on average for bulls, which is it's quite a span there and that's but that includes the other islands as well, or is that just yeah, okay instantially so Fognac has the largest of the large Roosevelt. Yeah. But you know, you know, these weights like they're varied. But as far as like finding the biggest, you know, if you were going to go out and have like a find the biggest bowl thing, you would go here and weigh all these bulls and you turn up the largest specimen um. So you keep yeah, and you just look at that. It's like they're a stout man like stout. So we keep pressing along because up ahead of us we we got some cows. And then we hear a bugle rip out ahead of us. And normally when you're hunting out in most places in the Rockies or whatever, you hear a bugle rip out ahead of you, and you sit there with your binoculars for a couple of minutes. You be like, oh, there he is, but here I ain't gonna have And this mountain where walking across the face of there is I'm not exaggerating, there is a full on balls out creek every and I don't understand where it's coming from, and when you get to the creek it is a I would say at least a chest to head high straight drop with devil's clubbing minute. Yeah, so it's like ranging from Yeah, you're like ranging from a six to twelve ft goalie with a full on creek that you could like set up a gristmill in everything. Like I'm like, where is the water coming from. It's coming from that cloud that sits on top of the mountain all day long and all night long. Even trying to be like yeah, so I'll be like to yeah, it's like yeah, so you'll hit a spruce then across thirteen streams and the fourteen will be in the four stream bed well. And that's like a function to of the uh you know, direction to faces pointing, because I feel like on the other side of that drainage it wasn't like that, but you still have the same water. It just comes in the form of these like giant grassy, marshy meadows where the streams instead of being like that kind of cutty canyon feel to them, it's just like a stream that is just moving through grass and yeah, like it's like an alluvial fan where you might hike across two yards of water from like the rock guard on your boot up to your ankle. That's just kind of moving yeah, across a like an alluvial fan. It looks like just like a flooded field. I'm just walking in like a current well irrigated hayfield, but with yea with current, this slight movement of the water. Um. So we keep pressing along and we got these cows out ahead of us. And at this point I'm having a lot of trepidation. I'm like aware of the time. I keep looking at my GPS being like, no matter what happens, this is gonna turned into a late one. And all of a sudden, Remy spots pretty incredible spot. The real legalize spots a bedded one horned bowl and what he spots is the antler. So he spots a single antler before in a pile of Ye kind of couldn't believe it. Once you're like learning what you're looking at, like, wow, that was a good spot. Laying down, he's got one six point main one main beam with six points on it. And the way these elk look they kind of if you're familiar with the red deer where they get the crowns on top. The way these elk antlers look are so compact, they get like a red deer ish quality too. You get like a little three point crown on top. So he's got like a main beam that comes out of a base that's bigger than a beer can. Yeah, And I think the way their antlers grows just a function of their size, so big, and they've got so much weight that when they fight, you know, they need stout antlers at the base to keep from breaking off. So the bulls that have the bigger bases and the heavier antlers are going to be the ones that can plow through and fight. They do. So we we went up seeing three bulls. All we saw three bulls, Like, I think we saw more bulls who were missing. So this dude did bust up. So so the way these antlers work is like it's way bigger than the beer can when it girls out of his head. But then the eye guard is sort of mashed down into the base as well, so that it's like the eye guarden scenes almost kind of come out of the base rather than having like a chunk that you kind of put your hand around and in the eye guard. It's like the eye guarden the base. They're kind of mashed together, and it's just really like thick stout antler with very short times coming out of it. So he's got an eye guard and two times and like a three time crown coming out of the top, and the whole thing, the whole I mean, the whole main beam and three ft long. Yeah, yeah, probably um and then one of them he just snapped off above his eye garden. The thinnest spot is snapped off on it. But he's laying there kind of unaware of us, but facing us and kind of messed around. And I'm like trying to get lined out on a shot, but he's like facing us too much. Now. One time, years ago hunt with Ryan Callahan, I took a dead on shot on a bull moose, like a brisket shot, which should just devastate a deer, right basically that's the little colic that forms on their chest, you know. And I hit that and it just wasn't a lethal shot on a moose, just too much meat and bone and whatnot. And uh, I was lined up on him and I had some sticks in the way. Remy had a clear angle. I moved over. You called at the bowl a little bit to try to I was trying to get you to get it to not run off because he was becoming aware of our presence. He knew we were there. Stood up. Eventually he turned up where I could snake one in on like a quartering, a steep quartering to a shot, and and that shot would have done would have done the trick. You know, after an autopsy, I realized that that shot would have eventually it would have done the trick, probably within some number of yards. But he spun started running and I hit another one that shattered his front leg, but he already had his lung shot out. And he then tumbled down into one of the deeper creeks and landed smack ass in the water, and like in the water, formed a small damn and formed an embound. When he hit the water, he formed an impoundment. This creek is how far down from probably dirty feet and probably only ten ft wide. Oh yeah, maybe that's how steep it was. And there's a waterfall just behind him, picturesque, very very steep canyon. The worst place he probably could have fallen on that hill, dude. And the minute that happened in the minute I walked over there. You know, it's like if something's gonna be you know, it wasn't even like celebratory because you're kind of like, oh man, it is getting late. We are a five hour walk from camp and it's already like it's evening. Yeah, it's evening now. Such a big body too. Yeah, I don't remind listeners that this turns into a grizzly bear story, because this turns into a brown bear story. Um. So we start cutting on it and really pointed out that he did kind of like having the elk laying in a creek because it was easy, very easy to keep things clean. You would make a cut and like, oh man, there's some hair on my knife. Then you just like hold your knife in the creek and everything was like, looked, it's clean at the kill site. But um, there was no way to like move it around the maneuver. You just had to start working at what was exposed. So we pulled the you know, skin it down, the spine, work to hide off, got a back leg off, got a shoulder off, got a backstrap off, boned out the ribs with the guts still in the thing boned out the neck, remove the head, got a tenderloin out with the guts still in the thing, got it rolled over. Um, and these are a hundred pound quarters probably the shoulders probably not, but I think the back legs, I think, I yeah, the quarters of the front shoulders, I would say we're very similar to a back quarter of average size Rocky Mountain hilk. Yeah. And I think the back legs were like borderline like moose legs, like probably a hundred pounders when you say yanni, yeah, very hard to So then we got that the whole thing rolled over. Are you are you still conducting fact checking? Really? What's what's uh? What's what's what's what are you on? Well, I'm going through remember when we had we did the five questions from Frank van mannon Um talking about grizzly bear. Uh. So I just pulled that up and it it was just refreshing. So because I know we're probably talk about numbers about how many exists in the world two thousand oh no, the like percentages of bear spray versus firearms and that sort of stuff, all that all that stuff that I now know to be so Um flipped it over. Did the same thing all over again. Did you guys see the battle wounds on the first side of the Oh, that's what I wanted to talk about. We'll talk about he's a fighter fighter, so on everywhere on him is bruises, and like where he felt it wasn't rocky, so like he didn't get bruised up in his He took quite a total old old battle scars, some scar tissues, louising on his ribs. And keep in mind he had that broken antler and he didn't break that antler like you know, trash and broke. I was gonna make a point too about the broken antlers. Uh, you see a lot of broken times a lot of places right like where I've guided. Um you probably see broken times compared to broken main beams is probably I don't know, a hundred of one. It could be everyone we saw it was broken. Yeah, now there's competing I think there's competing um theories on why some areas have a lot of broken why elk in some areas have a lot of broken antlers, And I'm sure that there's someone that knows the proper answer. Maybe not. I've heard that it has to do with mineral quality that some elk antlers are inherently weaker. Some elk in some areas produce a weaker antler because of mineral quality in the soils. And I've heard that it's a function of and Remy shared this one with me that he believes a better explanation is that it's more of a function of cow to bowl ratios. Yeah, that they that that and he's at the time spent fighting to breed. Yeah. That in areas where you got you know, ten cows for every bull, a bull is able to stay out of skirmishes. But these areas where you have high bold of cow ratios, they're spending more time in the dominant struggles and they're just breaking more aislers. Yeah. I feel like that's the accepted theory down in Arizona trophy units is that they just they're managed very well for a you know, equal bowlder cow ratio, and the bulls just have to do a lot more fighting because you go to a neighboring unit that's got the same terrain and everything, but just managed different not as many broken anilers. Because of the three apps fishing fighting right, yeah, uh, they're not. They don't do one of them fish, but they spend more, they they're able to devote more of that energy to the one after the other. Uh So where was that the hole in his the hole in his rear ham he had. I'm skinning his rear ham and I'm like, oh, someone like I almost have shot a third time that I forgot about because he has a large wound on his rear ham. But when you skin the hide back, it's like a perfect inch diameter hole punched through his hide where a time punched through his hide and then went into his rear ham several inches. It was just an infected mess, just beat up. Yeah, he should take up fishing, so he probably do pretty good fishing there. Um. So that was weird triming that all out. So now now we're entering in like so, so so here you are. You got uh we got six guys because you know me and Remy and then we have our crew guys and and and a A perk and liability of this line of work is that you get when you come out like crew guys get equal cut of all the meat if they want it. Um, but they also carry it. Would we share if they didn't carry I would to expect it to be I also wouldn't want we would, but maybe not as much because we share with the office crew as well. Not on this one. When you carry do you feel uh, you're carrying your one sixth so rich? When you carry elk or when you pack me, do you feel like I'm packing me in order to get some or you like un packing me this because this is a sucky thing that needs to happen a little bit of both. I like, if I'm thinking I'm gonna take any home, I'm not just gonna watch you guys carry a bunch of weight in some shitty terrain. I want to like help out, but you guys already have a ton of gear with you. Yeah, and it and when we do get strapped up with me, well, at least me A Garrett is kind of a superhuman dude, so he can still charge up hills, but it makes me a little slower, so I can't like run out and get all the shots that I normally do when we're on we're unloaded. But I just like, especially this one, I just would I just couldn't sit and like hike out with an empty pack because we're in a we're in like a like just kind of uncomfortable city. Yeah, so we got always meet and we know that, um, because we're gonna be hiking in the ground so bad, like the walking is so difficult that and it's already and it's dark out now that we know, we're not gonna even though there's six of us and six people can carry like trail hiking, six people can absolutely move a normal elk with like not that big of a deal really, Like if you're just like, go ahead a trail wad for a few miles, you just picked the whole thing up and go. But this is kind of out of the question because we have so much vertical to gain and lose. We're not on any kind of a trail for the bulk of it, and we have a very large patch of brush. We should also mention at this point when the last meat went in the bag, it is pitch black. Yeah, I pitch yeah, pitch black. Yeah. So the first thing we need to do is go earlier I was mentioned and how now and then there's a big gas spruce we had before it got dark, identified a spruce tree that would be adequate to get whatever meat we couldn't carry up into the tree. And this spruce was directly uphill from us. So we get done butcher in the elk, and the first step is too because now it's dark and you got a nice gutty smell blown everywhere. The first step is to try to get some separation of the meat and the guts, thinking that I want a bear or any kind of predator really comes in and claims a kill site. They I'm anthropomorphizing a little teeny bit, but probably not too much. They know that they might lose it to the next thing up. Okay, so you find a kill and you don't you can't just assume that it's yours for the next five days. So what things generally do is devour soft tissue because you can just wolf fit down. It's high calorie food. They'll come in and mop up like the liver goes quickly the long just and then you can just soup right up and doesn't take a lot of work. They'd like to get on that stuff first. So the general thinking in bear country is if you remove your your meat, like your bone in quarters or whatever, remove them from the guts, there's a chance that a bear is gonna come in and the first thing he's gonna do is claim the thing with the soft tissue, the greatest amount of smell, all the blood. He's gonna pick that, and you might grease off with your meat if it's separate. So we move all our meat, not far but out of the goalie up onto a little grass, another grassy knoll, and then we take half of it, load our backpacks with half of it, and hike that up to a big spruce tree. Yeah, and hang half of that up in a spruce about probably twelve to thirteen feet up in a spruce tree, with the theory that nothing can get it. Yeah. Mature grid like cubs, brown bear cubs can climb a tree, but eventually that you know. A distinguishing feature, a morphological difference between black bears and brown bears is that black bears have a short, hooked claw. Grizzlies have a long, relatively straight, more sickle shape claw. And as a grizzly gets big and heavy, those claws, the way that they're long and straight, those claws do not lend themselves to climbing. They're more for digging. Yeah, they got a digging claw. They spend a lot more time flipping rocks, digging roots. It's just their their food resources are used differently. They tend to live in more open country, can live quite happily in a total absence of trees. You do not find black bears in the absence of trees. The old adage is to tell a difference between a black bear and a grizzly is if the bear climbs up a tree and eats you, it's a black bear. That's an interesting thing to bring up in these in in Coastal Alaska, the islands. There are some minor exceptions of this, but this is a this is generally true. It's a true. It's a truism. The islands either have black bears are grizzlies. So Prince of Wales Island is a black bear island. Right Admiralty Island north of there is a grizzly bear island. They don't commingle on islands. If it's a suitable habitat, I keep saying, if it's suitable habitat for a brown bear, that's who's going to live there. If it's black bears on an island, it's because it's not suitable habitat for brown bears. If it's not suitable habitat for brown bears. It's probably all heavily timbered and there's no open country. They tend to like open country, they use it better. So we get it up in a tree because because he's not gonna buil, climb to damn tree and get the meat up. Then we go back down to buy the kill site, get all of our meat and start hiking at ten thirty pm. Get to our camp at three thirty am. Yea, eat some freeze, dry, go to bed about four or thirty am. Fairly exhausting, chuck it out. It was a full day now by the time you get like a reasonable amount of sleep and also then wake up and regroup, Like you got a mess, right, you got stuff to clean up. We had to get the meat we brought home, um get it, you know, get it situated in the way that we're happy with. We put it inside a hot wire we have like a little portable hot wire fence. We put the meat inside there. But the next day we wanted to establish another hot wire fence that wasn't the same hot wire fence that contained our tents. Get the meat out of the ground in another tree. So originally like the night we got back all late at night we put the meat inside the hot wire fence that also contained tents, and the next day we wanted to get it up in a tree where it could breathe out and be up in the breeze and have its own containment hot wire fence around it. Um did all that, had some show business stuff to take care of. I had a bunch of fish catching to do. We're talking meat though, because it might be hard to come back to it. But since you guys dropped it off in your mouth, you see something I don't know. I thought you're chewing teeth and chewing us like some hard candy or something, which I thought was disrespectful. I do have a little pith stuck between That's fine, that's fine, um. But because we're the meat hung for what was it three days? Four days, and we were a little bit worried about the condition of the meat. But you guys take it to the process and I'm guessing I got to handle it and look at it and smell it. How was it? Did it farewell? They thought? Look good? I thought, look good? What? What? What? What? Yeah? I see now we're man. That was a way out of order. Uh, it was a way out of order. Thing to bring up. Look fine, look fine, Yeah, it's not cold here. It's like it's not like a normal you know. I mean you're in a coastal environment here and it's like always cold but never cold cold. Yeah not I only you ever got below forty Yeah, not great meat hanging weather. And when it's real what it's all this rain, right, So it's a lot of rain and never real cold old. So when we got back, uh flew out and got back to town, first order business is trying to find someplace to that we could get our meat chilled off because it was already borderline. And a thing that there's like a smell that that like bloody game bags. Wet bloody game bags take on a smell that is like a not a good smell, and it's a precursor to smells you don't want to smell. But it's not in and of itself a bad smell, but it's an indicator of bad things could happen soon smell. It's a little off putting. We were in the bad things could happen soon smell phase from having the meat not being able to dry out because of the rain. Yeah, everything's wet forty degrees like, and it was in a creek too, so nothing ever had a chance to dry out. But yeah, everything's fine. It look good. They thought it looked good too. Yeah, we paid some boys to Uh, I like that dude's hat. Retired drug dealer. We paid some boys to you. Uh two. Process and freeze are our thing for us. But to get back to where I was caught some fish. Um, how did we know the bare fence was hot? Is there a test or something? Yeah, I hold the I touched the wire and then see what And then I gauge what kind of jolt it gives me and whether I'm not satisfied with the joelt, whether I feel that it would be a deterrent or not. Um, and I'll satisfy with that fence. Point being the point all this being, we don't strike off to the hanging tree. Did you hear that Bob muldsong hanging tree? Should I throw myself from the hanging tree? You don't know that one? Oh, that's a story we ought to tell sometime, that story about that dude. Did we ever tell this story? The guy the spurned lover? What's that bighorn sheep hunting area? That that dude, Tristan is the guy. Then his name wasn't Tristan, was it? No, it wasn't. He looked like Triston. It looks like a dude named Tristan ledgend of the fall of his name, wasn't Tristan? Long hair, leather, cowboy hat? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, thank you. Remember the story he told us. Yeah, so he's the guy big Horn Sheep in BC. Yeah, in the McKenzie's. Yeah, but it had a name. It's like the blank. Yeah, what's a big horn area up there around me? Like rocky big horns? You know? Um the in BC or Alberta could be Alberta, the Alberta BC line. Uh, it's a W word white. No, I would think like there it was the Whitmore. I remember that because I was on that trip and there. Yeah, it's the area. I think maybe the area called the Whitmore. Yeah. But anyways, you're south the Stone Sheep country, in Big Horn Sheep Country. I think the spine of that the end of that range is the BC Alberta line. Yanni to look it up. The whit More wind more willmore will more. So just a quick digrection. This is an interesting story. There's a guy that the outfitter he used to work for used to have a horse packer, and the horse packer was in camp with his girlfriend. Okay, and the horse packer and the girlfriend getting a fight. He grabs a hunker rope, walks off, and a huff never to be seen again. It became like a mystery. Years later, someone is dicking around in that area and finds a skull and spinal column hanging from a rope. What did they obviously search for him, money, search for him when he huffed off, but could never find him, was assumed dead. Bad argument. Someone finds a skull and a chunk of spine hanging from a rope from a tree, and they excavate the ground beneath them, and they're able to match up his buckles from his boots and his rivets and stuff from his jeans with what he was wearing when he vanished. So anyhow, the next day we go back to find our way back. We wake up. It should be mentioned that the rest day was a glorious, glorious drying out close only day of the whole trip that was blue bird drying out close but the sun hooking fish like nobody's in the sky to actually ben always into rect son. I got a bass in it was warm enough, did you Yeah, dirt showered in the creek. Yeah, I didn't know that. Um, that was jealous, but yeah, the sun went from peak to peak on the same ridge. All right. So the next day we wake up right and early and strike off for the hanging tree. Um takes us. I think we had a better route. It took us four hours to get to the hanging tree. Now approaching the kill site. We the kill sites about a hundred yards up a small tributary from the main Stem Creek of the valley. We approached the kill site from across the main stem to get eye level with the carcass which is laying down in a tributary on the other side of the main Stem from us. And we're able to get a gander in there and see that at least the carcass has not been moved, right, And think of me, if a bear had claimed it quickly, he probably would have drug it off and buried it. It would look different. There's a bunch of magpies in there, and a lot of magpies making a lot of racket, right. That helps alert you know, predators to something going good going on, They feed off that information. But the carcass is there where we left it, seemingly undisturbed. But we still pick a route that goes clear of the carcass up towards the hanging tree. Now when we get up by the hanging tree, we do a number of things. Uh, we got pepper sprayed drawn, was your pistol drawn? Drawn? Pistols out, pepper spray out, making a lot of noise, yelling the whole way up. I was yelling to him, did I got some spice for that meat that he ain't gonna like? Because I had my pepper spray out? And then we're gonna We told him too that it was if if he did like it, he was gonna be followed up with some lead chasers. So we're being very intimidating in hooting and holland and yelling. We have not seen anything. Now, we just evidence to think anything. And we glassed that hanging tree, or at least I glass that hanging tree. I glassed it until I could account for everything that was supposed to be in that hanging tree. So at that point we've done everything as good as we could do. Now there's some hindsight issues. No, no, okay from that point. The one mistake, I would say, but there wasn't an option. The one mistake is the hanging tree is surrounded by very thick brush. But there were no other There was no clear hanging tree. How big do you think, Like the diameter around the tree was clear, Yeah, like around like from the base of the tree to the like circle of brush. I would say it was from the tree. It was a radius of maybe fifteen feet basically the canopy of the tree. It was a heavy, thick enough tree. And elk must take aid under there when it's sunny, like it ever gets sunny, it must get because there was I noticed when we were in there in the dark, there's a lot of elk ship and bedding, betting depressions under that tree. So on a hot day they most like to get under their same way cattle will do and get on there and bed up in the shade of that tree. I noticed that. So in hindsight, it was a shitty hanging tree. But there wasn't like a good version, right correct, which is bad? It was a bad choice among bad choices. Yeah, you could only have the foresight having I think been there before to like, as you pull the trigger and you watch you all die in the daylight at that moment, to then do a three or sixty degree scan and make a way point on the best hanging tree. And we did. Me and Remy argued about the best hanging tree. But our argument wasn't based on clearing. Our argument was based on proximity. It was based done. I was going for a tree in an area that I knew sucked for travel, a side of the drainage that I knew was sucked for travel, but it was a known suck. Remy was saying, let's go across. It can't be worse because I've traveled, and he's like, it's there are parts that are better. And I said, because it's dark, because we're loaded out heavy, I think we should go for the known suck instead of that. In hindsight, that would have his tree would have been a better tree. But so you guys didn't really consider the whole like open we were not talking about visibility under the hanging tree, but either side it would have been the same visibility both all their hell holes of lots of goalies. So now here's where things, here's where mistakes start getting made. I get up to the hanging tree and I noticed a smashed I noticed a smeared bear ship. And do you remember do they remember me getting down on my knees to examine that ship? Because I was I and my initial thought was did it look like a of ship that was smeared from a bear? A bear track smeared ship? And I got down to examine it, and I'm like, I don't remember that being there, but it was nighttime, but it was like nighttime and it looked like a boot. Then I was like, it must be a boot smeared it because it was all smeared out, and I was like, we were stomping all around and here we must have smeared that bear ship. And it was a salmon fueled bear ship. It was like that gray mush ship from when they were feeding on salmon looked like and it was smashed. And I looked at that and was like, is that a boot or a bear track smeared that? And then I looked at the tree and a lot of the stuff was hung up with para cord and I looked in the tree. There's like no scratching on the tree, no sign of disturbance, and also if something was in there really like trying to climb that tree, I felt that he might have actually like busted some of the pieces of para cord in trying to like reach around and do all of his business up there. That I saw no other evidence except that smeared chip. So then we make a giant mistake and decided to sit down and have some sandwiches. And we had a MSR stove with us at a pot, and I remember the pot got passed around and everybody was who wanted a quick uh Starbucks. Via was supposed to throw in a small amount of water into the pot. I dumped half my water bottle into the pot and there was like a little excavation dug out, and I was sitting by that excavation dug out, and there's six of was huddled on one side of the tree in a space seeing about like what we're in there during this, During this, packs came off. Packs came off in one area. Then I got up to grab the pot somebody had sat So now people are actually sitting by Paxson aren't there. So my pack is now a cross from us which has are my personal bear deterrent pistol and bear spray leaning against the hanging tree. Your pack is leaning against the hanging tree, because then you moved into mice. So we're kind of we did this weird shuffle where nobody was near their own pack the way that we sat, but still tight figured roughly like people in a living room around a coffee table, for instance. Yeah, maybe maybe even a tad tighter than that. I gotta say. Two, we were pretty whooped on the hike in, and that was a great spot, taken away any risk of bear perfect chill the sandwich. Yeah, it was like it was nice. Yeah, it was like walking into a bed. I have thought about lighting the fire for no reason, just because it was so nice under that tree. The first post hanging tree selection mistake that we made was that we got under the hanging tree and decided to linger unnecessarily long and let our guard down. Yes, what we did that caused us to linger unnecessarily long, let our guard down, and divorce us from our deterrens being pistols in spray was the idea that we would have some sandwiches and some coffee. So our desire to have sandwiches in an idyllic setting in the relief of having not had our kill site claimed by a bear, which the Alaska Department of Fishing Game says often happens on the first night. But we had allowed a night and a half to pass, and to be fair to us, how long was the hike into the hanging for? Yeah, so a four hour hike up and then down and through in one point five nights pass and one five nights passed. We got there. We were all pretty hungry, and it was like, thank God, a bear isn't here. Yeah, that's because based on my hasty bit of sign reading, backed up by Remy's hasty bit of sign who also said, it looks like a bear had been here. You said, it looks like I came up a little bit late. You must not have felt the same as me as we trampled it. But I that's why I looked at you and said it like, oh did you step? You know? Like was this? I got down on my knees to examine, but I wasn't there for that, and I did a faulty read on that. I'm taking full blame unsigned reading faultiness. I saw what I wanted to see, not what was there right. Second mistake was I and others did not say let's get while the getting is good. Not that that would have It wouldn't have mattered, wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter because it could have been Now now we could look and be like it couldn't have been any better. Every option from here on out is like it could have been worse. There's no way it could have been better because of what I'm gonna explained happened because our our act of eating sandwiches just the only the mistake of the eating the sandwiches was us letting our guard down. But when we got to the tree, our guard would have been down regardless our packs would have been off. We would have been disarray packing at meat. There's just maybe potentially more distracted by climbing and lowering stuff down, spread out in filming. Instead we were clustered. A break. So I get my sandwich. Pat makes me a sandwich. It's just I had come off the heels of having had a bad sandwich. Not just me though, this was Garrett and Chris helped out with the sand So Pat had made me a really bad sandwich couple of days before, and I was saying to him dry, very dry sandwich. And I was I reprimanded him and and and told him as much, and told him that when I send the pros and cons, this is going down as a bad sandwich. He sent, he hands over a spectacular sandwich. Sandwich, sandwich, heavily great sandwich. Did you have the the did you have the stove fired up stove this whole time? And I was eating my sandwich, and some folks were coming, and then why was my sandwich so nice? Looking at the sandwich, I noticed him actually looking at your sandwich. I'm like, I've been looking at that stamp sandwich too, looking at his sandwich, looking at my sandwich, and looking at the meat that was still in the bag, thinking you know this is And I was just opening my mouth and beginning to form a sentence to the effect of kiss my ass on the sandwich is because you didn't see my sandwich last time I had a sandwich, When all of a sudden, there was like, well, Pat, yeah, well stop, sorry, all right. I know not that I won't be interrupted. I'm like, like you act like that. I'm that I'm not going through this in a way that makes sense to me. I think that there is tension in the room. I'm looking around and I'm seeing what I believe to be sweaty palms and people gripping their shirt tails. You know, I feel like, you know what I want to do. I want to have someone No, I don't. I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna do this, but I have a slight feeling of wanting to have someone else run point on explaining how this went. I was actually gonna recommend that you tell the whole story from beginning to end. That's not how I'm going to do without anyone else. That's what I'm going to do, adding in and then we can this is all thought out how how I feel that this should be approached Unless someone else has really sat down and thought it out. I'm blocking it, reliving the experience, not thinking about how to tell people. I mean, has there We've taken people from the place to see epic up into the sandwich making. Yeah, like I feel like like I don't know that big mistakes have been made. Man, keep it going great? Uh? I register and explosion of holy shitness not over to Pat because Pat is the first person. Pat, what was the first thing amid the sandwich making. What was the first thing that happened. So I'm listening to everybody you know, praised me for the sandwiches and criticizing sandwiches and uh, and I'm sitting here enjoying my own pistronomy sandwich and thinking how how wonderful that pistronomy tastes in my mouth. And I hear off to my right some panting, some deep, you know, guttural breathing. Can you can you mimeric it? Uh? It sounded a lot like a dog panting at first, like from far away, like and just kept getting a little louder, little little uh deeper and scarier sounding. Sounded angry too, And at first it seemed fake because I was like, no, no way this is happening. There's no way when a bear attacks you, he actually makes such a nasty well and there's there's no way like a bear is actually gonna like run up in attacks right now. That's just that's just crazy. We're only sitting under three. I mean, it's gonna happen, but you never expect that to actually happen to you. And uh, and I mean it was something I was like prepared for on this trip you know, we knew there was gonna be big bears out there. We knew there's potential, but you never actually expect to be like straight up attacked by a brown bear. And so I'm sitting there, I hear these noises and it just like it's like, okay, this's happening. I think I was the first person to say something like, oh my god, what's that noise? And then all of a sudden, within two s aggins, there's a bear on top of us. All right, man, I hate to do this to you. I know that you are on the edge of your seat waiting to hear what happens when the brown bear that we've been alluding to enters this story. It is worth your weight. It's what I'm doing to you right now is awful. It's terrible. If a man did this to me, I would punch them, But I'm doing it to you. You're gonna have to tune in next week on the Meat Either podcast to hear the final culmination the resolution of the Fognac Island brown bear attack charge mayhem story. Are now smart like with a little bit of with a little bit of painting, and then sometimes not this time, and sometimes you also get this little treat right. We didn't get that this time. Tune in next week.