00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely fog bitten and in my case, underwear lessening podcast. You can't predict anything. Um, dude, I still like I was just telling Joanni about this, like Colorado is a weird like from a hunting perspective, is a weird state. How so I'll tell you why, Okay, Welle, It's just a weird place, right because here, well, I'll get to the running of some old hippies out in the woods later. So it's like that kind of stuff. But the main, the main, and I'll talk about that part of it. Um. The main thing that's weird to me is that you could have such like like Hodgepodgy landownership issues where where it's just like such a weird mixture of little teeny bits of public and teeny bits of private and it's real messy and public inside private it's messy, And that there are so many people hunting, so many people just out recreating out in the woods. But then which is not normal. That's not weird at all, Like that's just like normal, right, that's you find that anywhere like confused landownership and shiploads of people is like readily available in the United States of America. But you could have that but also just have huge, giant freaking bucks running around everywhere. Yeah, I mean, like how because it's just good habitat everywhere you look, I mean from you know, the entire tooth western tooth to the state is just mule deer habitat. Yeah. And I was gonna say too. You know, every buddy Jay has been checking out that new ranch down in like south central, and it's a big ranch, and he feels like there might be like it's like at Acre Ranch, and he feels like there might be fifty mule deer on the whole place. Poor habitat. Not quite the whole state, but like central western, northwestern, northern, you know a lot of mule deer habitat. And you keep saying as we drive around, you're just like, I can't believe. In every direction you look, you feel like there's just a great patch of woods that would hide mule deer. When you get up on a high spot, you look anywhere, just it's just like all mule It's like all mule deer country full of dudes looking for deer's but they can't. They don't get them all, there's still giants. The fact that I spent fifteen years trying to find a big buck of Montana, maybe not fifty tone of years trying to find like a just like a buck where you look and go like holy ship, that's a big meal, or you don't gotta think about it. It's hard in Montana. Then you get like somehow like in Idaho in Colorado and if you see him every day. But we talked about this, like Montana runs that late season and they're they're easy to kill on novemb you know, yeah, November whatever it might be. So yeah, I would say when it comes to growing big, huge giant box, if that's your goal, um, and I don't know that, and I'm not saying it should be because I like like the Montana I like the Montana system. You get a general tag, so you just go down to the gas station and buy your hunt license if you live there or online if you don't, and you got what five six weeks to hunt, including plus five or six weeks to archery if you if you want it. You know, it's like have ad a son go including the rut. Yeah. So, and I'm sure there's like genetic factors and habitat factors and severe winners and all that kind of stuff. It's playing into it too. But yeah, you can't be letting every time Dick and Harry go one and around out in the woods during the mulet your rut and think that you're gonna have bucks growing to be old, big, old huge bucks. And I don't really care because you know and that they they manage for opportunity. They manage for opportunity. Colorado like isn't short on opportunity, but they get you get a week to hunt, not six weeks. You get a week, and you gotta pick your season and whatever they're doing, it's just, man, I'm just glad you Most of these units around here only have a couple of hundred of these buck tags. Some units way less. That's I think they should make a rule that you need to wear a certain kind of hat, a certain kind of range hat, or a certain kind of flag on your hat if you're hunting the elk, and a certain kind of flag on your hat if you're hunting milder. Because if I'm hunting milder, in my head, everybody's hunting mulder. So anytime I see orange, which there is plenty to look at, like orange Blaze, orange off the you know, on the other side of the valley, you're canyon from you. I look and I'm like, ask some of a guy. He's hunting milder, but I'm like, he's probably hunting elk. And if you had a little flag system, then you know who you were hated and who you didn't really hey, who you could go talk to and say, hey, I know I noticed your all kin. You see any big box around? Yeah? And I could be like, just so happens. I was looking at a couple of bulls that once I started doing a little map reading, I realized those bulls around public Land. And I'll tell you about it if you're telling me about the box you've seen. But if a guy's on Muler, I'm not gonna go talk to him because I'm gonna lie to him. He's gonna lie to me, and no one's gonna get anything out of that. He like, see any box? Oh, you know his unit sucks not a little and two miles off. Yeah, So I went back toward the truck. So all right, we gotta back up now. If we gotta get into Yanni's how he's dying and we got to get into that. You don't want to cover that, no weekend. I'm comfortable covering it. Yeah, you should introduce your guests. Yeah, so Yanni Janni the lavin eagle who tells us and Brodie Henderson say something for yourself. Brodie, I love Big Bucks and you cannot lie. Um, Brodie Henderson lives who lives Um not terribly too far from here, that's big. Yeah, it's not terribly too far from here. We're nowhere near the I seventy quarter this year, you know. And Brody lives in the land of big Giant Bucks. But we're not even near there. Just to make sure you understand that we're not at Brody. We were sitting in a log cabin that is not owned by Brady, And if Brady lived by here, we'd be sitting in his house. So think about that before you try to get all sneaky figuring out what's going on. But come down here. I have a mulder tag. We're down here taking me and Yan you're down here taking care of various pieces of business. And um, I got a few days. We had how many days to hunt? Three? Four, four? Supposed before you miss one, miss one something that I'm not even gonna If you don't want to talk about how that happened, he can go ahead, But I'm not even gonna get into that paperwork problem. Forgot some paperwork at home, important pieces of paperwork having to do with whether or not you're allowed to go hunt or not. Um So lost a little time there and then go out and we get into our zone and go on in the evening hunt. And we have a friend who has been hunting this area for a long time. And this friend's got a spot he hunts. He hunts this he hunts a ranch, primarily in some in some public land that comes up against his ranch. But he's hunting there, and we're not wanting to crowd him, and he knows the area pretty well, and so he throws us a couple of tips about what we ought to be doing. And as a nice gesture too, he actually hikes back into a little glass and tip he likes and does a pre limb check before we show up. And he goes up there and and uh finds I think he found fifteen doughs from this glass and tip. This guy's strategy and he's he's a he's a very successful big giant buck hunter. This guy's strategy is he Well, Brodie keep explained the first, second, third, fourth and all that. Yeah, So Colorado has four different rifles seasons. First rifles season usually we runs somewhere like October ten through that's elk only, then five days long and five days. Then there's second season, which starts a week after the end of first rifle days. No that that one's only a couple of days. It ends on a Wednesday, and the next one picks up on saturd. That one runs nine days. Then there's a weak gap between second and third, and and third usually runs somewhere around the first nine days of November ish somewhere somewhere right in there. And then fourth season picks up a couple of days after third rifle ends, and that's a five day season. But there's all like to help people understand that because there might be thinking, so you can only hunt one week. Talk about all the tags you have and what they're all good for. Um, I had a third season buck tag, so I just I killed the buck a few days ago. Yep, pretty good one. And then I have a fourth season bull Tag which starts next week. And then I have a late season cow tag. What's that runs for a month like December fifteenth of January. And then you're walking around the black bear tag. That's good for like a whole long time, right that they have this like they just changed this a couple of years ago. You can buy and over the counter with caps, which means there's X number of over the counter bare tags available. And if you have to say you have a buck tag for third rifle season and you buy one of those over the counter bear tags, that bear tag is actually good for all four rifle seasons. In the unit, you have a deer or elk tag four huh. And then there's a separate like rifle bear season basically the whole month of September, which is a different tag. And then do you did you do your mountain lion certification so you're a certified Monday? I did. I'm gonna pack a mountain lion tag around during that that late season cow tag hunt. Who knows, maybe I'll see one. So the third third season, we're just focusing on a mule deer here, well elk elker rutten during first and second first they're like the tail end of the rut would be during first rifle um mule mule deer, third rifle mule deer is like what I would call like pre rut because like real close to the actual rut, and fourth which there aren't that many Like the fourth season muled your tags are hard to come by because it's route and they don't issue very many. They're very tight with those. It might be like instead of being might be like yeah, yeah, that's on a set. My slights for it say about enough points to get the fourth season. That would be like haunting in Montana for big bucks on November. Um sony help this guy that that gives us some intel, some hunting info. He is, uh, he really likes to hunt the third season and the third season depending on whether it can be like real rudding. His hunting strat his the way he finds Mulder is he hunts. He says, I hunt does now by that he doesn't mean that he's shooting at dos. By that he means that he is locates every little group of doughs he can find, and sometimes big groups are does, sometimes big groups are dose and wakes up every morning and goes around and checks all those groups of dos, because the box are like the dolls are gonna be there, and their little configurations kind of like consistency, consistently, but the box are like the hand. The deck of cards gets shuffled every night. So he checks those doughs, waiting to see who's gonna show up, knowing that these big groups of dos if they got a little buck with him, he knows that a big box is of find those doughs. So he finds bucks by watching does. He tells us about a little glass and tit that has some doughs by it, some on public, some on private. Our first night, we're going there and right away find the five five dos on private, No, they're on five dos on public. They're only like a hundred and fifty yards from us. But the stuff around us is like real thick, giant sage, so it's you could have three deer walking around there. You're not gonna see unless they have a Stepane's little teeny openings. But we got some where we know there's some you mean to say, giant painting point and juniper right, No, that stage in the bottom, real tall old stage down autom that that stage six ft high. So but here and there's little little grass patches in the stage and you have to catch a deer out in one of those, and you just realize, Man, there's a million places you can put more deer, and I wouldn't know they were there. So when I say there's five, you don't know really what's going on. It's just five that happened to be mingling around in a grass patch in the middle of all this stage, which hides deer real good. But what we're seeing is lots of deer, lots of elk on the private and where you're at. It's like if you imagine if you could just shoot, like imagining to shoot a laser at any land feature around you, I would say that of those laser shots are gonna hit private land if you had a laser pointer right, And you're just like, I don't know, there there's a fifty percent chance that there is gonna be private in at chance that there's gonna be public. You agree, And there's a lot of mapping technology out there where you can kind of look at overlays to see what's what, and you realize that from the spot you're looking at, we're looking at deer, we're glassing up a bunch of deer and some elk that are on private land, and we're glassing up deer that are on public But you would not be able to walk from your public patch to that public patch because between there is a big barrier of private land. Yeah, you couldn't do it in a straight line. You'd have to make a j and you're starting at the point of the j and go backwards. First swing around some private and then you couldn't do it in that. You couldn't do it in that hunt. Probably not like in the evening hunt. Yeah, but you couldn't because no evening hunt definitely not the hunt. If all sudden it gets started, starts to feel kind of like evening, like which I always know the minute it happens, just just like internally it just became evening, I just know. And all of a sudden there's deer um. You could feasibly be line it to him, but you have to go around, get down the road, go out to a highway and hike in two miles to get the right in front of you. But if you saw a monster, you could come up with some kind of plan to get there later. Well, that was our plan that we would glass up a biggin and then the next day go in there and for the sea cout. But what happened was we glassed up a biggin that was just absolutely like not on public land. It wasn't likely to become on public land. He's probably a mile away, right, Yeah, not for a while. What do you mean not for a while? Him coming onto public land, Well, he's probably gonna take some sort of change in the weather. Sure. I mean, what I'm saying is I wasn't gonna go and like make that my morning plan. Whether short Yeah, you gotta short him out of time because I would need to. I'm trying to explain, like this tip that we're on, and how this tip that we're on works, is that the chances of you actually taking a poke from the tip are slim. Yeah, there was a small piece of public that I mean, we're almost perched on the edge of the public looking at a lot of private. Oh and at dusk, that's right. And at dusk we glass up another bagin who was very easily walk table. But we all by looking at my GPS, we had four hundred and sixty yards of public in front of us, and that buck was at sixty and not not looking in our direction but going watching dolls the other drect so and that buck would have been nearly impossible to go after. There's no way you could have gotten up on a little perch to try to shoot down in there at om. He would have been very a difficult to chase after. Am I set in the stage here you are. I think you described a situation well. And yeah, if you sat there for seven days on that little and you were like, I'm just gonna shoot, I just want to meat buck. I'm here for a meat buck. I'm gonna stand this tip, you would probably every couple of days gonna meat buck. Yeah, because those does were right there hanging out, it would be like it would have happened. It was frustrating with me for me when I showed up, because we went back into that spot. I went in with you guys the next morning was we're looking at shiploads of deer, but most of them. You're like, well, I can't hunt those deer, drisking crazy and looking at deer's fun But and then you you glass up another big and that was indisputably on private, fixing the leave private. But we're looking at um the public land dear that you would have to go after another day, we were looking at over a dozen oh yeah with bucks with meat bucks. But if here too, my freezers jam packed. I'm like, you know, I like the hunt meat bucks, but I was not, and I was these couple these last few days, I have not been meat buck hunting. I'm okay going home with that one. Yeah, I'm looking at I'm looking for that one in a hundred, you know, like buck where you're like, oh my gosh, look at that buck, Like that's the buck that you gotta. You need to be a like have a special set of circumstances allow you. You know, that's like the buck you you strive to learn how to find. You know. The next morning we go back to the same tip and the same thing happens. Oh. Another thing happened that was interesting is at one point I see a dear, like if you're glass and mule deer and observing him, you can tell a lot about what is around those dear by reading their body language. And and a lot of times you'll find bucks by watching does because those are nervous around bucks during the rut, So a lot of times you'll see all the doughs, like just being very fixed staring into some little hellhole brush patch or something, and they don't like it, and they're always looking in there. And after a while you might start staring in out of the spot and scope and find what it is they're annoyed by, and it's a box. You find a lot of box like that. Because those will be up feeding around, they're kind of more a little more freewheeling about how they expose themselves and how much time they spend out feeding. And the bucks they don't get to be big giant bucks by getting shot, So there's a certain amount of like stealthiness that goes into being a big giant buck. And I don't think that it's I think it's a little bit learned, and I think it's a little bit like if they were not that way, they'd be dead. So I think there's some that just are skittish, Like when you when you scare melding, the meal is running away eight out of ten meal there are gonna stop if they're gonna crest the ridge and be gone. They stop and look back. They're kind of like, do I really need to run this far? Like is this thing really seriously threatened to me. Bucks that do that don't live to be big jaant bucks. Bucks that like decide I'm just gonna run over the ridge, just never stopped running and run way away from here before I stop or sneak just creep out of there. Yeah, or the real the ones that are really born with a gift, don't run with the dolls. The dolls book and they make a big show out of how they're booking, and then they get on the ridge shout and stop and look back. But that buck has taken some completely different route through a bunch of like brush without really running but kind of like trotting along, and he's just like, see you, ladies, I'll catch you after dark. Those bucks become big giant box What were the ones that lived behind us private fence posts for most of their lives. There's different Yeah, there's different ways. You could probably be a dumb buck who's always out, a dumb buck who likes to always be on a l f alfa field eating, but if there's no hunting, he's gonna Yeah, he might be just fine. Um Oh, well, I was getting at is. I'm watching this dough and I can't figure out why she is looking at So if you see a dough staring at something, it's like you know there's something there that it doesn't like, or it's staring at a buck and she's just But I see this dough with the look of a dough that's like annoyed and concerned about something's presence near her. But she's walking forward like she's walking at her object of interest. And that caught my attention. So I'm staring at the spot and scope and I realized that she's seeing a bobcat. I'm not chasing it, but like like making sure it, yeah, where it is. I'm keeping tabs on you just kind of like a like a like an old lady like yelling at some neighborhood kid, you know, like following him along sort of like like escorting him out of the area. This bobcat. Oh, so that happened, big bobcat. I got a question. I couldn't I couldn't judge him. I can't judge way off bobcats. Did you have you ever seen mule deer stomped their feet like white tails? Do? Yes? Yeah? Did she do that at all? Man? Have I I feel like I have? I feel like they don't but maybe maybe they do. Blow a long time to figure. But you know how white tails don't stand there and stomp their feet. Man, I want to say that I've seen them stomp their feet, but the more I think about I can't think of an exact can you, nny? I can't think of an exact man. Dudes are gonna be writing in like, dudes gonna be writing like a bad out of hell about this. Man. I kind of feel like they don't, but we'll find out if they do. It's not as much as as white tails. I made the mistake one time saying, how you know how antelope go under fences not over? Why is some go over fences? Right? So people hate? Uh? I think there's people that don't like generalities, and there's people that just want to be helpful. Yeah, an like to go under fences, but there's no absolution. You're gonna get ten videos of analope going over fences. Yeah. So Brody has to after our second So we did the evening sit on the Frustrating I'm gonna call it Frustration Tip. Did the evening sit on Frustration Tip did a more Me sit with Brody men Broty on Frustration Tip Brody has a split late morning mid morning and me and Yanni have to sign that we're going to travel into a new area and the landownership where we are so screwed that we almost like travel through what I would describe as a channel of public land that opens up to a bunch of publics too much. But we realized from our tip, from frustration tip, we thought we had to go back out like hike the short hike back out to the road, hopping a rig, go down the road and reacts. But you get looking at like there's like a little channel of a narrow wedge of land that you can sort of trapes through to get steep stuff. Yeah, it was not Yeah, it's not fun walking to get up into a big area of open public and start traps through theirfc you don't and falling you in it. A dophon unit in there, hike up gets talking about arrowheads and whatnot. Get up to the top and find a sweet looking area that you could only hunt with a hot air balloon or still hunting techniques, or if you had good wet ground you can still hunt it because you're always seeing these little like one hundred yard hundred and fifty yard open aspen patches, but you never are getting like the commanding view that I like. Is that where you saw the moose. Yeah, he saw moose like like him to shake hand. I couldn't see it. It was like one of those situations where I'm looking at it, but I wasn't like comprehending it. I remember, um uh, I can how the Africa or Tom McIntyre. No, yeah, McIntyre already says his name was my mess his name up. He saw about hunting being in Africa one time and the guys with the guy he's with all of a sudden stopping him and he's like, you know, it's the elephant. He's like, I look and look, I can't see an elephant, like nowhere. I look, honestly, trees, tree trunks. He realized that's like one of the tree trunks as he's peering under the brush, like one of the tree trunks is like a leg of an elephant. Some of the moose was just standing steep guys right there, right there, And I don't know what I was looking for, but I was saying, oh, yeah, I mean the moose standing there like little ship moose. He was obscured, but Um, I saw some rabbit sign went through some real nice open aspen grovy kind of stuff, entered into just a hellhole where it was a lot more like timber. Noisily bushedwag through this timber. Yeah, that's some nasty stuff up there. I didn't like to add at all. Squirted a bunch of meals you're out ahead of us. I't like that at all. And then bust out into and I could see it on my map, bust out into the like most picturesque gigantic sage flat meadow, like high elevation stage flat. Yeah, it was like it wasn't feet something like that. And the first thing I say is like like talking about like a glass is half empty. We're like, holy shit, this is like amazing up here. And I'm like, yeah, but everybody know about this spot. This has got to be like the spot everybody walks to look at it. It's amazing. And even though we just kick some deer out, I'm like all down on it because it looks too good. If it looks too good, there must be a problem with it. But I think at that point we were probably getting onto in three miles from the rigs from the road, from a trail, and that's like straight line miles. There was a lot up and down and we had climbed over a thousand feet. It's aways feeling pretty good about it. Yeah, you knew I was being pessimistic about it. About the meadow. We're gonna call it the meadow. It's like an elk and deer playground almost up there. Like it looks perfect. Yeah, it just has attleit of foreshadow. I later had occasion to sleep on that meadow, and I was laying in a bed instead of I had a sleeping pad. I didn't need it because I was laying in a bed of elk dropping. So we just crossed this thing and gets where we're overlooking, and you cross the stage flat and you went overlooking this big canyon that Broidery had told but he had you go off there hunting rabbits? Are you hunting deer? When I've been up there deer hunting before and grouse hunting rabbits down down low down by where the rig was any track of lion and a bar threw there. Yeah, So Brody told us about this this bitch and uh canyon full of aspens. That's good glass. And so we get the edge of that, and by this time it's like the evening hunt and I perch up on the edge. And before I even perch up on the edge, I really I was just too deer down below me, and they feed up towards us, and it turns into a three pack of doze feeds up towards us. I sit down and just start watching for more deer, and pretty soon I pick up twenty dos in a nice not a not a big giant bug, but a nice buck. And Yan He's like, I'm gonna go, uh do a little scout up and down canyon. Yeah, I just want to make sure it was like no real nice vista that we were missing. Yeah, did the thing? Did the weird shooting occasion happened before or after that? Before? Were you sitting by me for the weird shooting things? Okay, so a little bit of a weird shooting thing. Earlier I was talking about how Colorado's weird. There's always people around when we're on the edge of where we're on this canyon, rim glassing the bottom of the canyon in the other side, like you could see the other side was like kind of public but mostly private. Yea canyon might be as a little bit in mis leading because I start to think about grand canon when you say canyon. But there's no real like exposed steep rock cliffs in this canyon. It's just like a steep valley. Um. But it's like there's nowhere where you can't climb down and climb right back up the other side. Sure, and it's two you couldn't shoot across it. Yeah, it's a big one, too far to shoot across. But right, and we get up on our little perch, we're gonna start just observing what's going on below us. Yanni picks up two dudes perched up on the opposing canyon wall. I didn't know that valley wall. Yeah, I told you the story across that big aspen draw across it. But higher up than us are two pumpkins. And when I say pumpkins, I mean dudes wearing Hunters orange. There's two pumpkins, and then a while later realized there's another pumpkin below them with an orange cowboy hat. And Yanni commented how he has a blaze orange cowboy hat. And I speculated that it might be one of those covers that you can put I think there's like I'm like I said, I bet it's an orange cover. If he has an actual blaze orange cowboy hat. I like that ship a lot. That's what Steve wears too when he's in Colorado. When your in Colorado, you wear a big cowboy hat and you put the orange cover over it. That's how we do it. So see a cowboy hat would have got me thinking about what kind of hunter it was. Yes, Listen, my friend Ronnie Bam has a maxim. Never wear a hat that has more personality than you do. That is why I wear baseball hats, not flat rim base definitely not a flat brim hat, and I definitely keep my ears outside the hat band. About these stormy crombers that we like to wear, I was gonna bring that up. They work well. I don't have that much personality. They work. They work well for you guys. Yeah, But to stick to Ronnie Bams max and I wear his baseball hats. See, I feel is almost a baseball hat. It's real clothes, right, Isn't that how the story goes? That's written on the inside of the hate was wearing a baseball hat, but you're on an extra flap. They're nice. Well, I do wear the first light brim beanie, which is a radar hat that's like a trimmed down version of I have that level of person I have the personality to support that hat. I do not have the personality just support a blaze on the cowboy. So so there's two guys up high and we're having a conversation about whether or not these these groups, the one man group and the two man group are affiliate, like are they associates or not? And all of a sudden, bouch. One of them shoots. One of them shoots like from his canyon wall, like apparently shooting over to our zone, but not our zone because we're down value. But he's like shooting from his canyon wall across canyon. So those guys are like, damn near a mile away. Probably no, no, not, I could have walked over there in fifteen minutes. Yeah, And he was one of them was down low enough down that he could he could shoot across. So it's like bouch, and and I looked through my binoes and I can't tell what the cowboy had. Dude's doing. He's kind of like fidgetting around in some brush. But the two guys above there are just transfixed with binoculars to their eyes, staring across canyon, not even budging, And I'm like, they didn't they didn't shoot because they couldn't have gotten into positions they're in that fast. It must have been the lower guy that shot. So I started watching him, anticipating that he's gonna huh, you don't run down, do something dramatic and like, you know, a single shot, it's a good sign. Well, a couple of seconds later, he just picks up his rifle and walks back up the hill like, no, he wasn't. He didn't go over to check for blood. I don't know. I have no idea what clean miss he they kind of like. He starts heading up towards the other guys and I'm like, okay, so they are associates. They drift off and towards the setting sun, and that's when I see a deer coming. I'm like, oh, those jokers are spooking deer. But I realized that's not the case. And outcomes this just string a freaking dose and they come out and start feeding, and there's a nice box and in a day, and what I later learned was a dinker box because they were fighting for a lot. The two bucks are fighting for a long time. Yanni goes to take a look around. Tell what it happened in your little odyssey. Yeah, um, yeah, So I left just as if we can get if there was a better advantage of this Aspen canyon. And so I kind of you had perched maybe like yards down off the rim, and so I popped back up on the rim. I go not fifty yards up canyon, and all of a sudden, I'm looking at a doll and I look to my peripheral and there's a foaking horn, another dough, probably like a pretty spinley, but I don't know, two or three year old four by four, you know, like a bucket gets your attention, but you're like, probably not today, you know. And uh, they kind of see any kind of don't and they get close enough whre I could have shot with my bow. So it's a nice little, nice little encounter, a little wildlife moment. I could farther up, don't see much else, don't see a better risk to turn around, come back and walk all the way past where Steve sitting and start to look over more of the canyon, and uh, I think I saw between looking down in the canyon and doing at a loop, another two does and another fork at horn and no more mugs, no well way off in the distance. Because I was I was almost assuming it might have been the same guys that had laughed and they had just you know, done a loop and then pop popped out lower in the camp. Because it was you could glass up this over on private, you could glass up this little cabin. They had all kinds of trucks parked. They were headed down down canyon. Yeah, and just as some foreshadowing, boy that those boys get some shooting them later, just as foreshadowing. So Yanni comes back and then we got like an hour left when I get back to Steve's and you and you say, I'm all geeked out about these dolls that are way far away, and you say, um, there's not enough time. Even if we were to find a big giant buck, there's not enough time to put a move on him. Anyways, Let's take our little bit of and just do a little because it's a real nice trail, do a little still hunt down this trail. Since we noticed a bunch of deer starting to pop up top here and We're going along nice and easy, and it starts getting like borderline. Find some of the deer again. First, find some of the deer you saw again, keep moving, marveling at how amazing this area is up here, and all of a sudden spook some deer. It's kind of like borderline too dark, probably like borderline legal end of legal shooting light, like within minutes of the end of legal shooting light. Well, I mean I was watching the clock because I definitely wanted to get to those like to where I knew we could look over into stage flats and went about fifteen minutes left and it's a kind of light with it with your naked eye, yeah, you're probably not seeing real well. But you know, with optics you could eat cleanly kill an animal, no problem. Yeah, well, I'm not talking about I'm not talking about whether I could have, because I've been in a lot of situations where you could cleanly kill animals way outside of legal shooting light with optics. Oh, because the moon or something snow. Yeah, anyways, we're within I was watching were a full moon and snow on the ground like round the clock. That's true. So anyhow we jump I hear noise and see flashes a deer, and Yannie runs ahead to try to get a look at before to get away, and sees, yeah, they have kind of bailed off this edge, And so I run down the trail maybe I don't know, fifty yards, thinking I'll catch him just down below. I'd have been there just an hour earlier, and there's a big sage flat Well this was, you know now, HARKing back to how we're talking about bucks that grow to be big and old, is these I think a dough and two bucks. I think again, it's pretty pretty dark, a bucking two doughs throwing the other buck to in this talk about the buck who is not a contender to grow into a big, old, giant buck, all right, because well, yeah, I'll come back to him. But these two quickly put binoculars on. They have already made up probably two yards I'm guessing maybe more. And I mean they are just flat out. There's no stotting. And if you don't know what that is, it's basically when they pronged, then when they're hopping, they are just like flat ears, pinned back like rum slow, just burning sage, and they're like, I I catch him in my binos, and a half a second later they're into the timber and I just remember seeing like no anilers, a whole bunch of andlers and then a little bit less anglers on the rear one. I'm like, holy shit, they're in here, but we just bumped them. Then Steve catches up to me. We're overlooking the stage flat. He's like, oh, there's another dear, you know like that, Keep looking, keep looking, maybe there's more. And yeah, he's not a contenter for getting old, because what was he was forky? He was like yeah, yeah, he's like, I'm I gonna get all excited about these guys coming through here with a gun. Those guys look like trophy hunters. What could possibly happen to me? So he's not he doesn't have that special little thing. But maybe it takes time, Maybe that dude will get paranoid. That yeah, so that I was trying to Yeah, I tried to add that in earlier, that some of it's learned. He that, uh, you have a handful of your bodies get shot out from next to you and it probably starts to instill in you, Yeah, some of that paranoia. Then we just take a hike in the water, and then we take a long hike in the dark. And my only comment on the hike was that throughout the day we climbed Grant over a long period of time, quite a long ways and once you come instant all into just a late night in the dark march down the hill. See that we were traveling downhill longer and farther than I ever imagined we had gone, because we did a big loop. Yeah, you had me worried because he's like, man, it took like two hours to get down. I'm like ninety minutes. Ninety minutes. We were like practically running down the damn hill and then we hit the we hit the road and had always to hike back one point seven miles from the truck. But when he said it took ninety minutes to get down, I was like, I don't that long to get up. You got a little turned around the dark. Never ever been here before. It's dark. Yeah, it's not. It's not the best trail spots. Well, you guys did it in the in the light today, so can you follow it. There's a couple of spots where it what the trails is, uh like when you're on a trail. The trail is usually good in the shitty areas, and you're getting the good areas and people just fan out. So every time that trail hits the meadow, people are just like the kind of scatter. And then you gotta yeah, because that's the spot where you can actually talk to your buddy and walk with Soody walks up next to you. You guys talk about what you're doing. Yeah, And then you gotta get to the end of the meadow and you gotta like pace around trying to find out how the trail leaves enter some falls trails. And we got off in the dark on a dry wash, thinking we were on the trail, and we're on the trail. We're on a dry wash, and events you come down, find a little creek to get some water through out of water, there's five to seventy cartridges laying there, which I have no idea, some do, I don't know. Some dude crouched down and get some water and then dumped out of his pocket full am I don't know. Five to seventies shells laying there looked like Ramanton cor locks. Where are they still there? When you came back? Yep, I stuck them all nose into the mud, made like a little uh install Asian art with him in the mud, except some guy with a horse must have kicked him over, because three of them are laying off, but they're still there. Um hit the road and then Yanny walks it was one point seven miles and gets the rig and comes back and fetches me. Now we're staying in a little cabin, and we make a plan. We set our alarms for three forty five am. Right, and Brody, you're gonna come to meet us, And no, you weren't. You had bailed you take the kids in. No, he had bailed. Set our lars with three forty five am, so that we can get back up in the zone before it gets light out up on our perch, canyon perch. But all night I'm not sleeping well because like Yanni just rummaging around an e benu. I'm like, what's going on? And he's having like a heart attack. I wasn't having a heart attack. Thing goodness, but talking about your problem this is the way I'll being like an episode of Oprah, because we're gonna talk about like you having like a health scare and the triumph of finding out what was going on? We don't have that. Who's that guy that was always like, oh yo, take some rhubar backs track, it'll cure that. Garrett. No, doctor Oz, I was taking doctors go ahead. This is like a doctor Oz episode. Garret probably give us some that tinsture that he likes to put on his tongue when he's everybody's sick around him. Um. Yes, I've been dealing with these symptoms for I don't know, five to fifteen years fifteen years ago. It was the first time I remember having something that where I was in police um with my wife before we got married, angling angling, doing some bone fish angling, staying at my buddies place. Who owns the Blue Water Grill down there on what's that call Ambigas. Yeah, if you ever down there, it's the only place you need to go eat, go to the Blue Water And um, well real quick, Brody did used a guy down there? No, I just fished down there. Yeah, Brody used to do some hosted trips ye down there. Um yeah. So we had been angling in the hot sun, possibly gotten dehydra or whatever, and I sort of had a like a fluttering heart feeling, maybe like a miss beat something along those lines, and I couldn't kick it, and so I end up going to the doctor down there in the last which like it's kind of scary in him itself, just because you're in another country. Yeah, they speak English, so yeah, and um, they could really you know say what it was like, you needed to go check it out. They gave me something to call me down. I was fine, and uh I got home. When you get my heart checked out, had to e k G. I can't remember where the test they ran and I said I was fine, No, no problems. So like ten years probably went by, and um, one night just wake up in the middle of the night and sort of have like an increased heart rate and again sort of it like fluttering heart feeling and uh, and stuff's going wrong with your heart man itself? Again, is not that like there's no pain associated it's not scary. No, But I'm no doctor. I'm no doctor. But I told it. When your heart stops, when your heart stops working, that's not good. Nothing you can feel it. Yeah, So it it makes like something like an immense amount of anxiety when you feel that, you know, but there's no, like I said, no pain associated with it, you know, It's like, it's funny because I've had a lot of injuries over the years, and you know, I've had both knees blown out and fixed in the last few years, and none of that stuff really makes me nervous because you're just like whatever, it's like bones and muscle, and it's like they ain't gonna kill me, right, But when your heart's fluttering, you're thinking what's next? It might kill me. So but until until two nights ago, I'd always just call myself down, walk around, make a phone call to my wife. It's always seemed sort of like talking to people are engaging somehow sort of takes my mind off it, and I would get rid of the flutter, you know, because it would be like a every three or four breaths at the end of the next shale, you just feel like this little like extra just enough to be like what what was that? What the fuck? What was that? You know? And um So, so the other night it happened twice. We went to bed like nine early, and like ten, I wake up and feeling it. I'm like, fuck, well, Jennifer's at home butcher butchering my dear left her. So she's been sending me text like what about this? And what about that? So I knew she was up, so I called her and you know, so she's chatting me up and kind of talking me down and it goes away. It's fine. I like, all right, Cony, to get some sleep. We're getting up in like freaking three hours or something. So go back to sleep and at two am wake up. Same thing. And I don't know still to this day, like what's the um? Like what causes it? Like what what? What's the what kicks it off? Right? We're sleeping in a small cabin. Steve's got too many logs on the fire. It's like a sawny in here, so it's hard to sleep. My body might be stretched from that. We did a pretty big hike, so I could have been you know, tuck it out or or um just what's the word I'm looking for it, you know, just after some strenuous activity. Yeah, like in the past, as it happened, like mostly at night when you're sleeping. One time I had a UM during the day episode. I was actually elker deer hunting in Montana a couple of years ago, and the same thing. I kind of just started going back down the hill and got my mind off, and by the time I got to the truck, they're going away and I end up actually driving to a different different trailhead going hunting for the evening. But anyways, to night twice in one night, and I had had enough. So I've been there multiple times when I'm like, man, I should just go to the doctor right now, go to the hospital and get it checked out. So I'm sitting here. You want to catch it. You want to catch it where the doctor can actually see, because you couldn't even tell you were even entertaining the idea that it's just something that exists in your head. Yeah, right, because it's sole minor, you know. And this like after now talking to the cardiologists, um p A, I can now back that up because she's saying that, like, so, well, we'll get back to that um at two thirty in the morning. I'm like, yeah, Steve, I kind of feel like I want to go to the hospitals. She's like, well, let's fucking go. I'm like, all right, let's go. It's about a time. So we drive the nearest I proposed the hospital. Yeah yeah, well, well yeah, I'll just curiously what's happening to you. Yeah, but I think I had said that, Like I'm kind of like thinking about anyways, it's not important because I just I just had a morbid curiosity. I just wanted to have I just want to want to go nap in the hospital chair for a couple of hours. Yeah. It's funny. As I'm sitting there all hooked up to the machines, They're like, yeah, you're all set. If you want to, you know, buddy to come in and hang out, that's fine. I'm like, no, he doesn't need to. He's like, yeah, well he's sleeping out there anyway. Come on. Um. So yeah, we go and uh, you know, they just do the normal check up and ask me what's up, and uh hook me up to the machine. All the machines that monitor your heart rate. I don't know what. They're just a regular monitor it's called but you know, you get a couple of tabs on, you get a little pulse deally on your finger. Um. They hit me with the saline flush, which I think I've had before, but you know, it's really interesting. I she's like, yeah, you're gonna taste it or maybe smell it. I'm like huh, And she's like telling me as she's doing it, and immediately like my mouth is full of salt, like holy shit. Yeah, She's like yeah, it happens. And they gave you some add a van. Yeah. So well they also hit me with some liquids and then it kept It was good because the sentence kept going so they were able to see it on the monitor. They set me up with the e k G, which is basically just like the next level of hard monitors. So now instead of having like two things attached to you've got ten, you know, said have technacles. I'm in all off of you. And uh. Before they gave me the ada van, I'm like, but don't you don't want to do that to you because it's gonna melow me out and symptoms will probably go away. And she's like nope, no, that won't do it. So it's just like it's like in your head, um, yeah, as you're thinking that you're dying. Yeah yeah, which was odd because I'm normally having like a very nervous reaction to the symptoms and to have the symptoms happening and in my head just being like yeah, whatever, heart flutter, no big deal. Because when my old man was dying. Hospice gave us liquid ada van and liquid morphine to put with an eye dropper into his mouth when he was struggling for air. So I was familiar with that adavan when you told me that story. So, and they diagnosed you with something called three things, um, three possible things, well to for sure one possible. Later the when I talked to the cardiology um p A, she said that on my e k G report she didn't actually see the s VT, which is the acronym for superventricular a cardia, but she did see the palpitations and premature atrial contractions. What she also said, which is interesting, which backs up my um I thought earlier, my hypothesis that I had that it could just been in my head. She's like, in most rooms, nine out of ten people have palpitations and premature atrial contractions and just basically like fluttering or extra beats or misbeats. But they might only happen once a day or once a month or once a year, or they could be just like so slight that the person does never notices it. So she's like, it's quite common, but most people just aren't noticing the it's happening. To him, you just when it happens to you, you just have any very acute to that sense, and you're you know, and me that's going on and it wakes you up in the middle of the night. She also thinks that I might have shortness of breath. They kept asking about altitude. You know, what would cause something shortness of Belize is zero. Belize is zero, that's right. And I live at five. We're only at you know, six or seven? Now, Um, so yeah, I mean the the uh, we don't. We don't know exactly what's up now. She said that I do not had the SPT here at least she didn't see that. So she recommends that I go see the cardiologists. I'm hoping they have an appointment next week in Bozeman. But what's up? She did tell you? No more? Oh yeah, yeah. So here's the weird part. Because the paperwork says the lifestyle changes are a good idea, and it says the exercise right, yeah, they tell you. So they give a piece of paper that says exercise, but tell him don't do anything. Yeah. It's funny, man, because it's like it's it's always like that in the hospital because you look around and most other people don't look like you. What I mean by that is, you know, I'm knowing like you know, podium athlete. But just like, yeah, I tried his heart exploders. I do my part in trying to keep myself healthy. And when you're in the hospital a lot of times just surrounded by people that aren't that healthy. And it was the same thing two nights ago. And so I think this paperwork is sort of written most of the time for the average like, what the hell a little exercise is that what you're here for? It's not. Yeah, it's gonna help, you know, help you out to walk around a little bit more. Whatever. So, yeah, so the morning hunt is blown. Morning hunt is done. Yeah, because we come back and we're sleeping when we should be here. And they've told you any now that until he finds out what's actually going on with his heart, be sure to stay well, hydrated, rest, no strenuous activity. So what I was talking to the cardiology uh gal, the p A. I'm like, what exactly, there's no strange activity because we've got this hunt plan. It's gonna be you know, three to four miles, a couple of thousand feet elevation hopefully suss like probably not, you know, not a good idea. You need to go figure out what it is. So, um, we can leave it at this. She thinks that it's most likely benign. And then I just have the flutter like everybody else has, and I just feel it more and most likely a CARDIOIY is gonna give me some sort of a drug that so when I have these sort of episodes, I can take this drug that will basically like like smack my heart and knock it out. Really yeah, it's like a pill form of a defibrillator. So that's kind of what it sounds like. That's one word. And again all you doctors are nurses, don't need to write in about it. Um, I'm sure I'm not saying exactly what this isn't It isn't verbatim from what she told me, but I will we'll check back in on this, but I'm gonna go get checked out. There's two words I struggle with superfluous, which I just said that time, but sometimes I can't. That means like more than necessary and then what's the thing that app your heart with later? That word is hard for me to say. Um, So the morning hunt is ship bagel. You have a hard time with bagel? Yeah, dude, I just avoid it, like you know, you go to them around Doughey Deals, you know. Yeah, it starts with me. They you put cream cheese on them. Um, So you were waffling on your plan at that point, Well, yes, I was, because we've spent so much time on Yi's a little health scare that I didn't know if I really had. I don't know if I had time to get up into the zone. But and um, into the zone is set camp up. We'll get up in the zone and having like a reasonable evening hunt and then a reasonable morning hunt. And after much vacillation and trying to try trying to cajole Brody into joining me at my hunt, but but it was it was I was springing on him a little too sooner for him to make proper plans um with family and work issues and all that. So I rushed. I finally get pulled my ship to get enough from Okay and rush in and pack up my overnight gear and Yanni drops me back at the trailhead and I got my overnight gear and I want to get up into the zone. And I start hiking up and the whole time I'm following lots of horse tracks overlaid with two sets of boot tracks that were not there the night before. So I'm feeling like enormous amounts of stress that there's a bunch of mugs up in the zone and I'm assuming like horse hunters are out and boot hunters are out, and I'm like three quarters the way up to the zone and I find out who the boots belong to is I run into a couple of old hippies who are out hikings describe. I want to hear what two old hippies are bearded dudes or with like bandanas around their hands like Willie. No one had a Hawaii themed baseball hat blue with palm trees and suns on it and stuff like a Hawaii like I had that I wouldn't have the personality to support a Hawaii themed baseball hat in an orange vest. And one had an orange bandana tied around his head with hair, you know, long hair and a beard, like are you do you saying that I don't know what old hippie when I see one who just get a kick out of it, because when I say old hippiot mean that like a guy who was in the counter culture at the time when being in the counterculture was countercultural. So like he was in his twenties in the sixties, okay, And that if you embraced that lifestyle at that time, apparently it's very hard to shake and you carry with you visual cues in the old manness that kee me to that. And also you can't shake the lineup of the age, right, So you were in your teens in the late sixties and these things click and that look, and I'm like, I don't think you were a big conservative in the late sixties. I feel like you were left of center in the late sixties and doing drugs. That's my read on his facile smile, cheery. No, But they were talking to me aloud, So I was planning. I was hiking up listening to them up ahead of me and thinking their hunters and I'm thinking, like, it is it okay for me to say that you are b a h bad hunting And I said, hey, fellers, just generally keep it down. But I get up and it's just two dudes out enjoying the joining being alive in America. I don't like and it was a beautiful afternoon. It was, and he says me, is it hunting season? And I said yeah, and he goes, are you sure? And I said yeah, and he goes a good The guy wore this orange. They said. I got a friend one time hunted all day and it wasn't eve hunting season. Didn't know untill he got home at night. Then he said, it's good to see someone out hiking without horses, and um, I said, yeah, we do a lot of walking. And the other guy goes, well, even if you do have horses, you still gotta hike a lot if you're hunting. And with that we bid our farewells and they went down the mountain. Well it's nice to I mean, no negative input whatsoever. Nice, no we had. I'm glad I ran into Gladiated. I'm just like just a regular Colorado. Yeah. I feel like that um age hippie because there's like there's newer, younger hippies. You know, they might not have been they weren't in their teens in the sixties, but you know who I'm talking about. But I feel like that um era of hippie. Um, it's not anti hunting. These were guys that were hunting, probably because or who's relatives whatever, the old kind of that, like the old kind of hippie. Now okay, I have relatives that were hippies and they live the tepees and eight porcupines and stuff. They shot with longbows because there was like back to the land. There was like a back to the land element to being the hippie. And also you have you get a commune, you raise chickens and pigs. Animal the animal rights movement didn't really like, didn't really take hold to a little bit later, you know in Pete with Pete Singer. Well, yeah, we recently learned that it was almost an offshoot of the civil rights. Civil rights Yeah, so yeah, I don't when I see an old hippie, I don't go like, oh, this guy doesn't like hunting. I mean, some bitch probably as far as I know, used to hunt like the wasn't. He's not so avid that he keeps track of win's hunting season or not. But they like the connection to the land. Yeah, connections. I see those guys in some damn mountain biker or something like that. Yeah, of course, Anderson speaking, I love mountain bikers too, But I don't know I would rather run into non hunting old hippies on the trail than than dudes are out pounding the ground with with high end optics finding all the boxers. I was relieved to find out. The last thing I wanted was to turn out to be like two young whipper snappers out there like pounding the ground, and I'd be like, how man, I gotta deal with these guys. So you all you are old enough to call young hunters whipper snappers. No, no, but you know what I'm saying, Just get back from my point. All the time I'm behind boot tracks thinking that I need to overtake or whatever that I'm on tainted ground that's already been hunted. It was a rage building, No, it just was really eager to find out. I was eager to see when their tracks split from the trail. Turns out the tracks lead me to a pair old hippies were headed back downhill. So then I'm like a little bit excited because I'm getting up into the zone prime time. But our tracks in the night have been obliterated by up hill horse travelers, So I'm real worried about these horse guys. Now, see that doesn't usually worry me because they're usually going in further than Yes, that's what I was banking on. And I find that guys don't do good spot and game from horseback. There's too much there's you're you're you're paying attention to other stuff. Got horses. It's an unstable viewing platform. So movement just like a guy blasted you on a horse oftentimes not This is not general I mean this is not true cross the board, but just generally speaking, I think of a guy on a horse is potentially missing game. Well, you gotta make sure you're gonna stay alive on a horse. Number one. That's the weird thing I always see, like people are paranoid. Like I always kind of have a little chuckle about people who carry weapons because they're afraid of mountain lions and black bears. But you'll meet guys on a horse who have a pistol and they're not in a grizz country like and I look, I wish grizz has lived everywhere, but he Uh. When you see a guy on a horse with a pistol for grizz in or for black bear and mountainlin protection, I'm like, the safest thing for you would be to shoot that horse between the ears, because it's gonna wind up having this. That thing is gonna kick you in the head. Maybe maybe not this year, but next year or the year after that, you're gonna get beat That horse is gonna beat you, senseless man. Horses are dangerous. No, we were hanging out with a guy here. Um oh yeah, I think it was two days ago medical here broke five ribs and crippled up from Because I love horse, I'm not doubt I'm just saying, like, like if I was gonna say, like, what's more like it gonna injure me in my life? A horse or a lion, Absolutely a horse. So but now it's getting on towards the good time time, and I get up into the zone and I get to where we spooked the big box timber Bucks, timber Bucks. I get to where we spooked him, and I didn't realize quite how close that place was. And even Yanni felt active spood was we spooked him, but it was dark and no one shot at him, and the wind wasn't really in their favor. I don't think they spooked spooked. They were just think we bumped him. And Yoni was even saying I wouldn't be surprised at those bucks. He was steering me. He was steering me to go to that exact and watch the stage flat they were by. I didn't like that plan, but those just gives you an idea that yon He's take on it was that that buck isn't he didn't leave the county, but you were. You also needed a camp somewhere. Yeah, I could have slept anywhere. But Yan he's like he was, He's like the buck didn't like moved a wyoming or something like. He's around. And I get up to the big Queen mother, what is that what we're going to call the medal? And the horse tracks are still going, no sign any horses anywhere, and they could have been anywhere and all day long. And I get to the big meadow and I got maybe fifty minutes legal shooting light left, and I and I pondered the idea that I would still hunt the edge and reject that because it just seems a little bit like I'm gonna spoot game that I might want to be there in the morning. And I pond of the idea also of going over and looking off the piering ledge where we watched the guy who took a poke the day before his rifle, but decide instead to go into a little standard timber that's kind of like an island out in the middle of the Queen Mother of All stage meadows, and I'm gonna set up there. So I get up to where I'm gonna be, and I even make a plan on, get my tripod out and set my shooting v up on the tripod, and I'm just gonna sit for twenty minutes this medal see what all is going on. And but I'm getting cold because I got a sweaty clown up the hill. So I kind of hunker in and well, first I was like glass everything around me. It was like nothing there, and I kind of get down. I'm digging around my backpack. I'm gonna change my add some layers, and I even got my pants, my belts opened. My pants are undone because I'm thinking I'm gonna add a couple of things and talk add a shirt and tucking into pants and get all cozy for the evening. Six it's getting cold and I'm in the middle of side look up and all of a sudden, now where nothing was a minute ago is a very nice, A big old buck a hundred plus yards going directly away from me. He'd come out of this little finger of aspens. It was going away from me. And without even fixing my pants, I just raised my rifle and lean it on a tree. And this thing is just walk and walk and walking and showing no sign of like doing anything other than he's grabbing a bite now and then I think of grass. But he's not even kind of turning. He's just going dead away from me. And I think like, I'm gonna have to follow him and try to veer side to get a broadside shot, because I wasn't gonna take a shot going away shot on him. But I'm like, no, some minute I stepped clearer this timber, he's just gone like face me or not face me. He's gonna just sense my presence. So, in a I don't have buck fever yet, I don't think, but in a panic you had decided you wanted him, though, yeah, like nothing you've ever wanted in your life. Because when I see my scope up, I knew I could just see the frame. And when I see my scope up, I could see all these extra points sticking out of the points and little TV does it from most guys little teeny bucks. Little teeny bucks don't have little teeny points sticking out of their points. Generally, if you see a big frame and it's got little teeny stickers, as they say, which is a term I do not like extra people junk with. That would mean it stuff you don't want, Like you don't want garbage, right, you get rid of it. I want these things badly. I've decided to call them gold little golds. And I wanted shooting real bad. So I say to him, to the buck, I say hey, and it works like a charm kinda. He doesn't spend. I'm thinking, in the perfect world, he's gonna stop spinning broadside. But what he does is he looks back and turns enough. And this is the point where buck fever happens. I now officially have buck fever because he turns slightly and I think to myself, Oh, you can sneak one in there, Like I got enough exposure where I could sneak one in there that last rib and bou and the deer humps up like like jumps humped up and kicks like a heart shot. That's what I think happened. I think you're in the I think I put one in the boiler room. Because when you hit a deer in the heart, it humps up. If you hit him too far back, he slumps down out. If you see a deer arts like a cat, what's that moving yoga? Not downward dog, but upward it is? Can't cow cow cat cow. If you see a deer, do like a yoga move where you archer backup like or like a cat, hunch his backup fast. He's hit good. He does it. He does the thing that says to me, after a lifetime of watching such things occur, it says to me that he's hit good. And he turns at a ninety degree. He's like a hundred and probably like a hundred seventy yards out, spins at a ninety degree and starts just hauling ass across me, now broad side, looking at his right side as he's running, and I'm expecting him to tip over, and he's not tipping over, and he's not tipping over, and he's gonna vanish into an aspen patch. So, thinking I've already hit him and I'm now dealing with a wounded deer, I swings through him. I come from behind him, so that my cross theirs in my scope passed through the center of his body, and just like I'm leading the duck, I passed through and touched that trigger at the end of his neck because he's already wounded. And that way, if you're off on your lead, you have a whole lot of room to be off. Yeah, at that point, you're just trying to get more at that point, just trying to bullet into him and bouch and he just goes down like like down, like he's been hitting the spine. Yeah, And I go over there and sure enough, he's just like as Bryan Callan would say dead or a wedge, as Jerry Clower would say, graveyard dead, just dead. And he's got a hole in his neck and that thing doesn't have another scratch on him. I totally buck fever in my first shot. It's weird that he like, I wonder why I jumped where you were there? You skinned him. There is not a scratch on that deer. Maybe he felt the breeze. I don't know. I would have never like, well, maybe he jumped out of the way of the bullet. Yes, he felt the bullet coming. He could be that he could be like there's a certain bigness and the oldness the buck gets where not only does he know to run away when they run and when to sneak, but he also knows when to jump out of the way of bullets. I never, in a million years, I would never have taken a full on run shot at a buck. It's just not something I would do. I'll doing a wild pig, but wouldn't do it on like a a cherished animal that anyone, right, because the chances of you getting a bad hit are so high. But if you've already wounded it and you gotta go find it anyway, it's like, yeah, it's like you don't then you don't have like you know, like like pursuing wounded game. You don't talk about like ethical shots And was this wounded that? That's that's all out the window, and now was just get it dead? So I don't even deserve the buck. I don't know about that. Yeah, that's a little harsh. So I go over there, an area is dead and there's no cell phone stating anywhere. I don't have a vehicle because I got dropped off. But you've got a beautiful stage flat to camp in Yeah, so I uh got the deer, and there's something any that arts wants you to drag some part of you that Arts wants to drag ship over to a tree, like psychologically got him out to drug him over to a tree. And I didn't want to leave him there overnight because I thought Kyletes would get them. There's a lot of Coyle tracks around there, so I kicked a weigh all this out in my head and in the end, and I know that Brodie's coming up. Brody had made a plan to meet me up there around eight am for the day's hunt. So I'll just make a fire, cook some house, then go to sleep like ridiculously early, like sixty five or something like that, because this is like dark and I don't want to leave my deer to get eaten. So I just set my tent like literally like next like if I rolled up to like if like it would be like I could like spoon the deer through the tent wall and just kinda want nothing getting at him. Set my alarm for three forty five am, wake up three forty five am, make a cup of villa, and run down and actually catch Brody ten ft from his truck. Had up trail six o'clock in the morning. We have a cup of hot Cocoa's surprised, Brody, who's that guy with that? Yeah, because I got up so early, I knew i'd make it back. But way before got dayloight having a cup of hot cocoa and go back up and here's the thing. We get back up there and it's nothing but dudes. We were surrounded like how, I don't understand, and all down in the camp my beloved Aspen Canyon. I think they're actually below the like there where it opened up, but the same canyon, just down lower. It is just like it. Remember hunting that Dug Durns and opening day in Wisconsin that we had at least at least a box am and no one shoots once. No, it was three or four or five at a time, volleys of shots. And there's three dudes perched up magically who like somehow weren't there the night before. There's three dudes perched up on the big magic meadow. Yep, they must have been having a deer drive down. I heard like I heard one boom swap. Yeah, you could hear the pumpkin strike. But even that guy did a volley, but then he just shot some more just out of the joy of the general trigger happiness of American guys like her knelt back onto the private or something. For a while. They were shooting so much even that idea out. So there's three guys observe in the medal. Two were kind of together and once off in the air. So I just want to explain too, if it sounds like weird to maybe if you're an Eastern listener that were like so like upset about all these shots, because if you're like, if you're a dude from the other side of the Mississippi, you're like, yeah, it's like Opening Day or Opening two days. Like you hear shooting all the time in the white tailed deerwoods out west in the in the Greater Expanses. It's just simply not like that the shooting was so voluminous. Can I use that here, that there's so much shooting going on down And eventually we get to where the deer's all butchered out except for just skin in the head, and Brody has the just out of curiosity wander over to get to the edge of the canyon to see what's going on down there. All the cracking and bouching, and I sat up and so we got all the meat, like the meats all done. All the meats well, we kept So we had the four legs. Hole took the back straps off, Bondless took the tender loins off, just as tenderlines. The rib cages saw the rib cage off. So we just hauled out whole rib slabs. Took what are the neck we could because I, you know, done a number on the neck and then I was skinning the head out. You know, what I was thinking about today is like I used to take, oh, a multi tool, Like when you're skinning the deer's head off, it's hard to skin around the base of the antler. Is that getting this? Oh yeah, I mean it's chuck, no big deal. So when you're skinning at the pedestal, Yeah, when you're skinning around the pedestals, it's a bastard. I used to take a multitool screw driver and prior it off there. But on that now I used to Now, like my skin and knife, I used like a really and I see you like you use use a version of this too, a really like stout short blade that hidden Canyon bench made is like my new favorite knife. He might like a little bit different than short. Yeah, you're just like a short yeah, like you could stab and do with yours, And he'd be like, can that for like a very short blade? But it's like knights man, Yeah, and it's stout, like you said, yeah, and I got pride, you know, ball joints and stuff exactly. It mind's a little bit longer. It's called a steep country like. It's got a blaze orange handle on it, which helps you because when you got deer half time trying to find things. Very time, you get a leg free and you go, like take care of the leg and hang it at tree eight. You come back if everybody looks for your knife for a while. So it like cuts that down a little having a blaze arge handle on it. But with that thing, that short, stout, fat stiff blade, I can just smoke that hide off those antler bases without ruining the blade. And you can still pry a little without worrying about like just blowing your edge right off. You can kind of like you don't want to like get scraping it against But it's just like a more it's a sturdier, heartier blade. I like that thing a lot that that's my like kind of like favorite of of of the knives they make. But then cut his tongue out skinned him. You got back. We popped the eyeballs I had popped one eyeball, popped a second eyeball. Um, yeah, popped the lower draw. I told you about the Sika deer I killed. It was missing. An eye got poked by an antler, and Brody asked the same question everyone asked, was his Was his dead eye facing you? And I point out no, I was dealing with his live eye. I was not getting unfair advantage. Um, And that was it for chopping that deer up. As we're finally getting done skinning and loading their packs, here comes. It looks like a Western movie. Oh yeah, man orange like seven horsemen in a pack string come by. Don't even give me a broidery. The time of day one little buck on a saddle, six or seven six hunters, Well you had no ship. They didn't give you time. Today. You guys are the assholes in the middle of the magic meadow at daylight with a campfire. But think they were coming through like they were coming through like mid morning, and I get the feeling they had probably packed camp up early morning, like they were way like they were. One of my theorious, well, you're you're gonna say this, go ahead and say what you're gonna say. No, I just think they've gotten up for like, I think they're way in past hunting pass where we were. No, you know what My theory is, We'll never know. I think they were on the other side of the metal. I think they were. No. No, I think they're camped up somewhere, and I think maybe they packed up and rode down and on the way down decided to do a morning hunt. Slow slow roll. Yeah, it doesn't totally make sense, but I could you could have. I mean there was yeah, seven or eight hunters. I gotta say, though, Man, if they were rocking like full canvas wall tents that you had to almost be packing all night long to pull that off for the morning, it didn't look like they're geared up like that. When you guys were kids that they call all their tents. You had wall tens and pup tents, pump tents, I remember, Yeah, pup tents for what we called backpack intense. Yeah, dome shaped, Yeah, I feel like they were. I feel that they were hunting, like yeah, so then we just uh mosey down mosy down the mountain with my big old gacket, a couple of horse shoes. Yeah, found horse, but you know, yeah, Rody kept the lucky horse. Shoot. No, but you always be a point to that horse and be like, I tell you who didn't get a buck? Yeah, those guys, the guy riding them horses. But dude, I'm on like a mule. Your streak you are, is that three years in a row. Yeah, I'm just glad because I remember, like before last year, So you killed the big buck in Colorado last year, but before that, you're kind of down on Colorado, dude, way out because all I knew about was the parts about weird land land ownership and tons of mugs. I didn't know about the part about big giant bucks everywhere. Now I'm like, Joe Colorado, I'm gonna get the Colorado hat. I'm gonna get an orange cowboy hat that says of big bold letters like I heart Colorado. I'm a Colorado man. Yeah, I don't know. I think that you know, some people don't hunt here because of the mugs, and that's a you know, like it's fair. Yeah. I have friends that are like, look, man, yeah, I know you guys, are you know killing bucks? There of people do. I just don't want to deal with that stress of hunting big bucks during an open elk season. And I mean to be fair. Like the night you killed the buck, you didn't see a soul, you know, that's the thing. Yeah, it was like I was. It was like I'd flown into It's like I've flown in Alaska and last year we didn't have a bunch of dudes on top of us. Like if you walk here, you had because you got a lot of hidie holes. Yeah, but here's the thing. I hunt all kinds of places. I hunt places where you couldn't find someone if you had to write. Okay, So like we hunt areas in Alaska where you fly in and the pilot drops you off and if you needed to find help you can't, or even Prince of Wales, you're not gonna see anybody there, you know. And I hunt places where it's tons of mugs, but they can't they're not really mess with you because you're like you're on Doug's farm and and you know, all the neighbors and they're all hunting, but it's like it's civic, you know, and you kind of like you got like you tell dog like I want to go there, and dogs like what, I think you should go there? And then you go there and you know that you have your little spot right and if you stay in your spot, you're fine. There's people around, so there's there's all these extremes. This is just another Yeah, it's just a version. Like hunting comes in many forms, and hunting pressure comes to maybe just like another kind of hunting pressure. And I think here it's you know a large part of it is being able to buy over the counter bull tags. In second and third season, like there's just gonna be a lot of especially non resident hunters that are coming just you know, it's easy for them to get attacked. Yeah, So if it was that if you're hunting elk, you have to have on orange cowboy hat. I think they should wear yellow and we should wear orange, just so you know something. But I don't tell you, man, I'm fired up. What do you do if you have both? Like I had to roll in a lot of times with the o TC bull tag and my cowboy hat with a yellow stripe tight around the hat band. Maybe it'll be all feather. If you want to see my huge buck, um, we'll put it up on the show. Notes. Lots of meat on a buck like that, Yeah, a big meat buck. Big. That's what we're talking about today because someone's like, oh, you know, it's terrible the bigger the antlers, the more than meat, because it's terrible that you go out and try to find a big, huge buck when it's all about the meat. But we were observing today that um, the best play itself. He's got a ton of meat is to look for big, huge antlers, dark one with extra bling, because then you know that he's gonna be the size of a cow elk. Yeah, I mean three pounds easily. So if I see a big frame with lots of little stickers sticking out, I'm like, that is one meat rest and that's a big backstrap and a fatty ham big package. And for those of you out there saying that we don't know what we're talking about, low stinky, old ruddy bucks can't be eating. You gotta grind the whole thing, or if that's what someone told you, all I can say is learn how to cook, you learn how to take care of your meat. We Pepsi challenged last year. We Pepsi challenged a year and a half old meat buck or the big buck. It's like, it's such if you get a buck, but I think not only that, but you could Pepsi challenge it with an elk or a white tail or whatever. This whole like SG freaking out. Yeah, if you take that buck. When you're stripping the hide off that buck and you finally he's got an inch of fat laid out over his un it's like that deer's in good shape and it's gonna be good. Meat is the best meat. My wife rarely will flag meat. I could cook like played out housecat. My wife's not gonna like flag it. She has flagged. Moose is being like something's peculiar, like it's something about moose she doesn't like. Every time I served like big huge meat with the buck meat to her, she'll comment. She doesn't comment at all. She just eats whatever we make. She'll comment on moose is being like something's weird about it. Doesn't like click with her. When I cook like big old buck meat, my boy, so I was like, God's good. Yeah, it's just freaking good. But and I've shot bull elk and like mid November and had him like there's just something a little you know, a little tough, a little off about them that time of year. So it's you know, and elks arguably the best. But yeah, I think, yeah, elk has that reputation to being the best. And they don't make a bad tasting elk. You can get tough elk, but there's no bad tasting elk. I had a buck, the worst piece of wild meat I ever ate, was from amuly buck. But circumstances, circumstances, he slid down the mountain on the snow and landed in the sinkhole and boiled in the sinkhole. It couldn't get him out of the sink whole until way later got him out of the sinkhole, and he was in like like very insulated in a little dirt, coughing at the bottom of a you know, maybe he was alive when he went into the same Yes, I know that he was. And here's what happened. So it was like unbelievably cold. I shot a buck. He slid down the mountain and I order to try to find him. I can't find him anywhere. They was like a size that he fell into a sinkhole the size of a man hole cover. It was kind of hour glass shaped, and I could see down in there. I could see that he was moving a little bit, and so I blouched down in there in the shock wave of the sound came back and hit my ears to bead, And now my ears are freaking ringing. Man, and we're camped down valley from there, and now it's pitch black. I think I got him go down. We come up the next day with some ropes and stuff. We peeled off our canoes, like the bow lines of our canoes and tied them together, and my buddy held my ankles and lowered me down into the sinkhole, and I was able to get a lasso around his antler, and then we all got on the rope and dragged the deer up out of the hole and drug up. What it looked like if you had it looked like if you pulled Bob Hope up in his latest two years like this. It was like just but like frail, and his muzzle was just gray, gray, gray, and he had the rack when you know, you get a big rack and then you rack shrinks and it's like different than a like a rack. A deer's antlers on his way downhill in life are different than on his way uphill. So he could be at the same man, he could be at the same measurements, but just there's a different quality like softer, like they like softer edges. It's like a different like his like his. He was getting too old. He was still throwing racks off, but they were like bad old man racks emaciated and gray muzzled. So he was old and he'd been in the same hole all night, insulated with his guts in him. When we started butchering a deer, I mean, my brother butcher that deer, and it's the meat smelled bad, and then we started to think that it was getting in our heads and it wasn't the meat, but it was just like like other that what that the flavor is, just like something about the smell of the meat was MASSI I remember it got so bad at one point that we got we couldn't tell if we're like really smelling it or not. And we thought that everything to smell and couldn't tell like actual part what cuts actually smelled. It got to the point we were heating up butter in a pan, and one of us went outside to wait outside in fresh air. The other one of us cooked a piece of backstrap in a pan in butter, floated it in butter, cooked it, and took it to the outside. Person who has now been in a clean atmosphere. That person would eat that buck met and be like that buck meat is bad. Yeah, the only way this buck was in good shape. No, that was the only bad buck meat I've encountered happen to come off a mule there under extreme circumstances. So yes, if you shoot a buck and then let rotting the back of your truck, yeah, and then say that mule to your taste like x Y or z ok, you don't got it for you know, a couple of extra few hours because pictures are more important, you know. Cripple it up so it's been driving into a spot where you can get a good picture. Cripple it up so it like runs forty five minutes before you find it. Then dink around, don't get the guts of it. Drive it somewhere else to take a nice picture of it. Hot sun. Sure, I'm gonna have to grind it all into sausage all right. Thanks for joining,