00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me Eat podcast coming in you shirtless severely both bitten in my case underwear lessening podcast. You can't predict anything. A couple of quick questions, Dan, are those uh are those hippie prayer flags hanging in your window? Yeah? They are? Was that Is that really the message you want to send to the outside world? Yeah? I had nothing to do with that. That was an art project of I believe my daughter at school. So they indoctrinate children open anchorage to hang to betan prayer flags in their windows. Yeah. Does you know what? Does you know what it means? I don't know what lesson came along with that, but that it's a Yeah, that was an anchored public cool district art project. Yeah, m hmm yeah. Second question, real quick, how do you feel those bird featers? Uh? Karina? My wife walks out the window onto that roof right there every few days and pours bird seat in there. She risked life and limb for those birds. Yanni, do you remember the song I wrote, Um Yanny your money King of the cast a Ray? Do you remember that? Had I known at the time, Had I not just learned the other day that you where that you chewed chewing tobacco, you dipped too dog. Yeah, as a listener wrote in you were a chaw dog, you chaw dogged it for seventeen years. I would have written it into the song because the song captures your whole life. Right. You almost would have had to. You couldn't have admitted that important. It was brought up doing Latvian things, and now he wears the Latvian ring. I would have put a grandpa come from a lamp far away. Uh. I would have put in like a long passage bom about all that chewing tobacco and smoking. So why did you get out? Why did you get out of it? Why did you get away from chewing? For the health benefits? But there are no health negatives. Look at dirt, I feel great. I don't know. I feel it's like a thirty abuff thirty five year old. He should have easily beaten the senior in the arm wrestling contest yesterday, but it ended in a match draw, in a draw, and so I feel like he's a little he should be stronger than he is. You feel that the dip is what it was? Why you beat him? Armor assling was a draw that that wasn't slowed him down. I got him in the end. You guys, you guys quit a draw. Yeah, we're if you would have had a hat and turned it backwards like in Sylvester Stalloan's over the top. Either one of you, I think you would have. I don't know, man, that was help Chris, No, well, nothing would help me. I'm not I'm not putting anybody down. But no, both of you guys were turning purple. I haven't seen like dirt pulled the heart mustle. Yeah, a rassling sot. What age you to start? What did you start being a tobacco user? I probably started smoking cigarettes at I don't know, dabbling at twelve, and I certainly if you were running crettes by a time of like high school, I think I was smoking fairly regularly and you were distributing cigarettes at a young age. Yeah. I told you a story about how I got caught at Latvian Summer High School within the first two or three days of being there, because I had a couple of cards the cigarettes that some older kids bring in for me, and I got turned in. I got rad it out by a roommate for selling for selling cigarettes. Yeah, but I told my dad and the story. The funny part of the story is that we're Danny are talking about how it's you know, it's better to try to teach your kids, like gonna put everything on the table, you know, bring stuff to you as opposed to you know, finding it out and yeah, and then not get mad at him when they tell you, only get mad at him when they So I had to write. Most kids parents lived you know, who knows days away or flights away from Laban summer high school. But we're only thirty minutes away, which is good and bad, you know, because I had access to things that got me into a lot of trouble, right because we could just zip home and get into trouble. I do happen to know where there's a bottle vodka? Yeah, exactly, I'll be back at sixty. But yeah, So instead of waiting for the letter to get to my dad, I just told him and he's like, hey, well, you know, next time we want to sell something, you should sell like candy or something like that, not cigarettes. And he was off. So because you think I think he was, he must have been distracted because I was expecting a real talking to, real whooping, you know, but he kind of sluffed it off and left me kind of bewildered as he drove away. So you got out of smoking and then you transition. No, no, no, was there an overlap? Oh definitely No. I had a pro I had a program um because I sort of tried to remain an athlete even as through my like heavy partying years in high school. And so I would chew all day so that I could, like if I knew, I had a volleyball game or some sort of sporting activity in the afternoon, and then smoke cigarettes as I partied after that, I knew you guys in high school. Was the move when they're trying to cut weight for wrestling? Yeah, oh my god. They walk around with a giant one leader good friends of mine man wearing garbage bags around, filling bottles full of spin Johnny Merchant, Craig Christensen. That's not healthy for you dropping the weight bitness. Looks like they're skinning bones by the time it's time for a match. This is you're hearing the voice of of for your your first time around the show. That's true, Levi, I don't even know your last name is Meyer. Levi Meyer, fresh out of the military, kind of kinda lay out your lay out your military deal real quick. Uh. Yeah. So I joined in two thousand nine um in the Army, became a medic. Uh. I went to airborne school. Yeah, right out of the gate. Um went from medic training to airborne school to Iraq within like a one month period. It was just quick then. And then hung around Afghanistan. Yeah. Later later in my military career in defghagstand and then I got out of active duty the Army December of And you're having a chew right now. No, I spit it out for it doesn't bother me. Dirts, haven't you? He's spitting into a Starbucks cup. Do you know I hang out with the guy that manufactures the sleeve on that cup. I went turkey hunting win that you know? Yeah? Thinks so Yanni, you dip for all those years? Didn't quit? Yeah? Yeah, I think I finally was able to kick it like probably like done done late twenties. Oh earlikay, what are you telling me? He relapsed though at one point like you quit for in that time period that you can't rem did you guys? See me have that dip the other day? About five seconds out of it so I said, I spit it out quick cause I was able to suck the Maryland and that of stuff, dirt. Can you can you share with us that I'd like to follow up with You asked me why I'm not talking about go ahead, follow up? I'm not. Another big reason I quit is that eventually, and you know everybody battles this, you know, when when you're trying to quit, right, it's just like it's it seems so impossible. And eventually I came to a point, right, you know, I have like I have to be stronger than the stupid little thing that's in this little tin, you know, like I just like I can't be so weak that this little thing is going to control me. And so I just said that, and that that almost became more important to me than the health benefits, just being like being able to say f you two to the addiction. You know, the dirt doesn't feel that way. Well, like I said, I'm not. I don't want to quit quite yet. And a half a month ago you wanted to quit. Uh yeah, maybe the other day of dirt smoking up the mountainside, and I brought up, you know the way that the chew could impact that and he was saying that when they do start carving away pieces of his face, he's gonna have better air passed through, more row, be more aero dynamic, and won't have like all the wind resistance that his current facial structure gives him. Share with us what that lady was telling you who used to work on ski lifts with you. Oh, she said she was always she held cheers at a higher regard than smokers because all the cheers in her life were doers, like you know, ranching, fencing. What smokers are watchers. Smokers are watchers. That is so true, man, it never occurred me to you said it. Oh, yeah, it's so true. Dudes that dip are generally productive people because it's yeah, smokers are like watchers, and like, oh, you know the smoker, he's the kind of guys I would do it that way. That's never gonna work. Yes, that was you do that. I wouldn't do this, dipper. There is the anomaly though, of the guy or gal. They just can just lip it and just can like take that smoke going into their nose and eyeballs and it's like it's not even there, and they can work right next to you it's an anomaly. But I've seen them. They like they light it and it just stays between their two lips and they're just doing spodymine. Growing up, he'd viewed the whole world to one eye because he would working on his car. He would have a cigarette and tip his head close the close the upper eye or the down eye. I guess where he had a cigarette dangling off, just keep going. Yeah, you never hear of anybody taking a dip break, smoke break. Dipper can't afford to take a break. I really would like to get into it, and I would like to get into it, and no, I want to get into it. I'm afraid of I'm afraid of the transition period where you gotta throw up. But here's the deal. I went through that with alcohol without even thinking about that thing. Like if you say, like if you're younger, like hey, I want to start drinking, people aren't like, oh man, you get so sick at first. No one says that. No, but it's true. When you learn to drink, you have to throw up a whole bunch. But they don't talk about it. It's just a secret. It's like an open secret. With dip they scare you a boy being. Yeah, but you gotta get sick at first. I never did. You took right to it. Yeah, sam hool that was telling. Danny gave me my first two. I fished with him. Now, um to that point that we were talking about the memory loss of any type of suffrage, Like suffrage means the right to vote. That's the word I'm thinking of suffering, suffering. But like you know, like we're talking about like we're like, man, that was the craziest I we've ever done. It's like, oh no, was this one? That one? That one you forget and with someone brought up, oh you brought up childbirth. A lot of women will forget how painful the first one is rereminded when they have their number two or three year onward. And you're saying that you're learning to dip. Actually did cause pain, but other people you don't forget that. Drinkings and and maybe tobacco use initially had a rough start, was there system? Yeah. The only reason I'm drawn to dipping, uh, we would like to get involved in it, it's because there's no long problems and you know what, I gotta theory, it's just vanity. It's like do you want your face all carved up? Because the smoker not only is he useless because he's only got one hand and one of his eyes is blind all the time and can't be around flammable stuff. And yeah, and you gotta keep away from your amiables can't pump his own gas. Pretty soon, that same smoker can't do ship if he wants to because he's destroyed his lung. But you do, a dipper could keep on working, but you gotta watch your heart still with the dip. Yeah, restriction blood vessels, Well, there is a downside to do no, no, but you have a theory about it. Yeah, I tell you. I mean I've told you guys. I know I've told some other buddies. But I feel like, because I'm chewing often, yeah, my blood vessels like they're having to work. But when I like go ski touring or when we go on big hikes, I'm not chewing, and I like get that bonus regular blood vessels size. You know what I mean. It's like it's like training with the weight vest and then when you go actually do the activity, you don't have that weight vest and you're just like just ripping. Yeah, So when I don't have a chew in. I'm like, oh damn, this is what is it? Also like high altitude training with people, where are like exactly he's working out right now? Yeah? He is. He charged up the mountain man that one day. Just there's something to it because that man, that was the moment when I said, dipping, it's something I want to get involved because everything else is the same. Everything, all things are equal, except he dips the most. No. No, I brought up the point my time, I have much more spare time to be out doing cardio activities because I don't have a family or a house or pets or anything. Yeah, that's a good point. I think that's the that's the main thing. I mean, you know, doing something every day. They're day when I was thinking about, uh, how you gotta throw up a lot when you want to start, when you want to get into drinking. Even long after, I remember coming on why you're hiking your mind kind of wanders. I remember the coming home once I had to somehow I came in. When I was living in Western Montana, Missoula. I had this banana tree, and I remember a couple of times over the years coming home from the bar aren't puking into that banana tree pot. It was a giant pot like oat to my bedroom and just getting nowhere there and puking in there and just composting it in man, into the soil, into the body soil. Man, just com posting it in rather than trying because it kind of you wouldn't get to it until the morning, you know, and then it kind of filter, right because all the liquids go through and whatever. You're right now, Yeah, you com posted in. And I remember having that banana plant. Man. I kind of love that banana tree. One time I was moving it was ten below zero outside and I got like my van all heated up, and I wrapped it in plastic and took that thing just long enough to go outside down put into a vehicle. It froze to death that fast, just yeah, and then the leaves froze, it wilted and died. Was that you were transitioning and you're trying to No, no, no, no, it wasn't like it wasn't feeling like. It wasn't like the psychological trauma didn't get to the plant. Interesting. You drank some funky stuff though, like in Mad Dog and or was that well, yeah, because you know, like most people at that age, we didn't have any like a lot of money to like to really be putting into that kind of stuff. So we you know, you go out to the bar, you always drink before you go to the bar. At that age, everybody does that, you still, because you can't be going down and getting the whole project taken care of at like such a high rate of pay. You know, like, so you have drinks before. Yeah, yeah, we drink like Boon's snowberry. What was that stuff? Ice fishing? Oh god, no, berry creek, it was flavor. I remember coming home from work and drinking a bottle of Boons in the shower, a whole bottle of it, just getting cleaned up, getting ready to go out and just go on the shower shower of cold bottle of Boons. Fire and drinking. Are love drinking that. It kind of amazed me that I don't drink at all now because I used to love it. Yeah, it's funny. You'd be like, banana plant, this is for you. I'm doing this for you. Feed you later. I don't say never, don't say I never fertilized. You're baby burning the banana plant any and he will say he wants to add on this. If you could go back and never ever have a drop of alcohol, not a chance, man, not a chance. Um for a handful of reasons. Oh what I shared, Like, I was always very suspicious of people that didn't drink. I feel like, what's wrong with that guy? And um, no I'm not, but I was, And so it kind of lead me into like all my friends that I'm still friends with, we used to just drink. We used to fish together, drink together, and hang out together. And so if I wasn't drinking, like I don't know what, I don't know who I would want up hanging out with. Ye, I mean like our bonds were all formed around like shared interests, which included alcohol. So if I had missed all the night time stuff, who would I be hanging out with now? Bunch of lamos? I don't know? Right, Like a Dardo Garcia says, you're forged by fire, man, I think that all that being hung over and trying to fish and that's the fire that forges. So that for that reason, and too in the writing world, like alcohol is a real problem in the writing world. Um, you know. I mean it's like it's just no joke that like there's a lot of alcoholism among writers. But by being a avid drinker, I was able to associate with and and hang out with and spend time with writers because they would all connect around the act of drinking. So I formed a lot like good relationships with writers by being a drinker. If you weren't a drinker, I don't know who you who you like? I just you know, I mean I can't picture any of the any of the people that had a big influence on me. A look and what I think, like what was going on with like that was the whole thing. That's what you were doing. You're like going over so and Souls for drinks, going to the bar to drink, its ice fish, going ice fishing to drink. So it's like to say, like you never drank, It's like, okay, presumely that means you missed out on all of that and other people get in other places. But I don't know where I would have gotten it. You know, never drank in the woods ever, I mean an overnight backpacking trips, maybe like a little nip. Never went out on a backpacking trip around a backpack hunt and got drunk ever. Yeah, we are growing up, we always used to look down on the type of hunter that went to deer camp and just got sloppy, drunk every night, didn't get up in the morning and the on. You know, like there was like the beer drinking type of deer hunters, and then there was like the guys that are out there to shoot deer and when they were in town they got wasted, but not all the word's time and place. Yeah, so no, no regrets about it. I regret having quit it. We haven't quite equit me and I I do. I miss it. I miss it terribly, man, because everything's so funny, you know what I mean, Like Stuf's not funny anymore. No, we've had a lot of laughs on this trip, sober. Remember one night we were drinking and Danny's kitchen laugh about how he was afraid to touch his dogs penis. Like now, he just didn't like that. He just didn't like the idea of it, right, Yeah, Like if we weren't drinking it and we were drinking, it wouldn't to come up. It just came up. Now He's like, I just feel like I'm invading his personally. He's like, I don't want someone grabbing me there, or that one spot just too low in a belly rub Man. Yeah, he's just like I thought. Yeah, he was just explained it. So that's like the kind of insight that you just miss out on when you're like when you're just same all day long. Well, I tell you my my older brother has been sober for seven years. And when someone says that, then I think that they had a drinking problem. Drinking enthusiasm. Yeah, he just wrong time, wrong place kind of drinking. But now he is madman NonStop. He's got a hundred projects going on all the time and always getting ship done. But he doesn't think anything's funny. I bet nah. Yeah, I mean it's different, like you said, the social aspects different. But that's something I noticed watching him not drink, is his time management like is way different. Because if you drink, you can kind of sit in the backyard and like bullshit and drink. But if you're not drinking, you're like, let's do something. Yeah, you want to go fick something exactly, And yeah I can't relax, Yeah exactly, I need it. If I'm gonna relax, I need it have a beverage or something. Usually, Yeah, like that. That used to be the other thing too. Even at home with my wife we'd have a couple of drinks and relax. But not neither of us can relax. We just work, which is a good thing, and we just work and not laugh at anything. Make sure not to start laughing, no fun um anything else on that subject. Lee by you good? Oh you know we haven't discussed with you at all though. LEVI are you're fixing the quit chewing? Yeah? I suppose. I mean, I'm not really like dirt over there. He had to bring like two logs out in the woods. I only brought two cans, and one of them got washed out. The other one is still good. You lost one to a creek. Oh no, I think got rained on that alder grabbed it, the one that grabbed your dipping enthusiasts. Not an addict, I suppose do all do all shaw dogs run it along the bottom, or you'd never run along the top loop. I've known some guys do this. Yeah, I told you that. That nurse told me keep keep the cancer guessing, can just move it moving around? Did you ever run a double horse? A double horse? Shoe? Just really good glass and spots after you might run a double horse shoe. Have you run a horse shoe? Yeah? I mean in college we kind of do the how much you could get into your mouth? Yeah, I don't make a man sick. Yeah. Yeah. I remember being in the kitchen and like when on a slow night you start thinking of ways like just mess with people, and so it would be like, kid, you do a half cup of cayenne pepper on your testicles, you know, and everybody, everybody would start pitching in money. At a certain point, someone would say, Okay, for sixty bucks, I'll try it. And then one of the other things would be like, okay, can you get a whole tenancy in your mouth and keep it in there for whatever it would be a minute or five minutes, you know. And I don't think anybody could ever pass that same exact experience. Yeah you had it, you did it. You don't know. But I've been in those scenarios and that that came up and the buddy you did it got sick. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard for me to reconcile. You're what you majored in photo journalism with the activities that you engaged in in college. I was I was different than most class me and one other guy kind of chummed around. Like you, it's hard for you to picture photo journalism majors getting together to try to fill a two leader bottle with you spit. Well, those guys weren't in my program. My roommates that we filled did our science project installation art. Yeah no that yeah, that wasn't with my classmate says, it's with buddies, Mile City Buddies. Yeah that picture. Yeah exactly. Um, moving on, do you yeah? Yeah, and you feel we should just come out and like right away, just say rather than creating a rather than creating um, any kind of any kind of tension or suspense. Oh yeah, yeah, I don't think it matters. Just what why don't you say what I'm talking about? I think what you're talking about is to say that we just finished up an unsuccessful hunt, unsuccessful dolls, she punt, no lesson to be learned. If you're looking at success as a dead sheet. Yeah, that's that's how I'm That's what I'm talking about. So yeah, well we can also look at it as successful as we made it in there and uh, you know, cover some serious train and came out without any injuries and without any you know, major problems. Yeah, I made a TV show, beautiful TV show. We don't know that. Yeah, and found found some sheep, found some sheep. But if someone said, hey, was you was you hunt successful? Yeah? And then you go like, well defined success and I just think you kind of like playing around you. Yeah, yeah, you're you're being a little bit. You'd have to say no. But it was great. Yes, Oh yeah, okay, so what we what we did when dolls sheep hunt in the Alaska Range? And uh, the last range is check me if I'm wrong on this, Danny. It's like a southern Alaska mountain range or sort of like might divide the south southern you'd call that the Western Alaska Range. I think that's, you know, everything south of all that cheap country that's south of Denali Park. People commonly referred to as the Western Alaska I mean Western Range, but the Alaska Range in general, it's a big speaking of horseshoe dips, it's a horseshoe shape, kind of a shallow horseshoe. The on its eastern edge kind of go feeds into the the coastal ranges. Ye consider wrangles coastal. But yeah, it kind of blends into the wrangles over on the far eastern side, and then the on the western side. They kind of toe off down towards the Alaska Peninsula. Yeah, blending into into the Allusians down there in the the top of the if you imagine the Alaska Range is a very shallow you, the top of the U is the no, a very shallow inverted you. Yeah, the top of you is the most northern portion. Yes, yeah, and that's that would be like the central Alaska Range. That's how Fishing Department Efficient Game refers to that area, Central Alaska Range. And it's not narrow and it's not like giving away a spot to say we're in the western Alaska Range, because the whole thing is five miles long, huge mountain range. Um, we had hunted doll sheet before and other portions of the Alaska Range. I'd be so specific as to say the Central Alaska Range in this trip, we're going into an area to hunt. Um, let me, let me they groundwork piece down. What Alaska has is they have there's several species in Alaska you're not allowed to hunt without a guide if you're a nonresident. Basically, if it's white or has great, big long clause. You cannot hunt it um if you're a nonresident without a guide, without a guide referring to mountain goats, doll sheep, and grizzlies and brown bears. So but the a there's a catch. A resident, a resident Alaska hunter can hunt those things with family of second degree kindred. So if you're a fella in Alaska, you can take nonresident relatives, cousins, uncles, I think, even brother in law. It's pretty loose. Yeah, yeah, I can never remember where the line is drawn. But that's because I only ever hunt with my two full blooded brothers, so it's kind of irrelevant. Yeah yeah, but but it includes cousins, uncles, I believe it includes in laws. I think then you can then then those people can hunt with that. There was a little movement a year ago or so to get rid of that. There's a group called the Resident Hunters of Alaska who got a real beef with non resident hunters and they had put together something for consideration which would have ended the rule. Is that what I'm are you sure that's who that was coming from. I thought you told me that. Yeah, yeah, check me on this, But that might have been coming maybe from the guide industry a bit too. I'm not I'm not okay, so scratch that. That might not be true. I don't want to put I don't want to put blame or praise however you view it in the wrong place. But there was trying to They were trying to roll it back a little bit and not. They wanted it to be okay. So so whoever it was, let's take this case. Danny's my brother. Danny's a resident of Alaska. He and I go sheep hunting together. We can both hunt sheep at the same time. What the what the rule change that was proposed would be that if we're hunting and I shoot a sheep, we both have to like notch the tag. Yeah, that was the meaning I get I get a ram, it counts against your mars. Yeah, my and you a limit of one ram. So we could go together and if I get one, basically you got one. But that that thing didn't go anywhere. So I'm able to go hunt doll sheep in Alaska as long as I'm within as long as I'm with you, And they spelled out like you gotta be together, you're hunting together, side of by side. Um, we've done it quite a few times over the years. Not quite a few times, but before I think we've gone cheap hunting four times together. That sounds about right. And uh, this time we went into an area we had really no prior experience in because of a friend who's an outfitter turned us onto a spot where he guides some clients and kind of cut us loose in there. So we're doing like a trip that would be how would you put in guide language, Johnny, all of our own gear, right, yeah, all our own equipment and gear. But someone's saying go here. Yeah, we just called it a drop camp basically when we did it. Yeah, and sometimes we would actually supply some stuff with drop camp and I guess you know, Buck did Bucks apply this a little bit, A few things big tarpa X yeah, which was Hey, it was really nice to have that tarp pre set up. You know. Um, Yeah, I call it a drop camp for the most part. I mean, most guys I think they're going to do a drop camp if they get anything from the outfitter. It might be a basic shelter, but you're pretty much you're you're gonna be bringing most of your own gear in this area is like, so you come into Anchorage and then the last of works in the bush. And Danny can speak this a lot better, but the way it last works in the bush, especially like kind of mountain hunting and stuff, you're you're always using your You're not always You're typically flying in on super cubs, which can land on gravel bars, ridge tops, you can land them anywhere, but a supercup can only hold a pilot and one passenger. So oftentimes, if you're flying in the remote hunting locations in Alaska, you're getting you get staged up somewhere on some remote large air strip and then use superclubs to do the last little leg of bringing you in Like that, that's fairly common, but it could be from a strip along the highway somewhere too, you know, the Hall Road or one of the you know other highways around the state. We've done that before, to where we've driven to a place and had a plane meet us there and shuttle us in. You know, that's closer to the hunting spot than say Anchorage or Fairbanks or wherever the pilots coming from. Yeah, it or gets elaborate like there's a there's anywhere you're hunting if you're hunting like the Western Brooks Range, so basically up towards the you know, the portions of Alaska that seemed to be looking over into Siberia. Um, there's an area there where you you go to Fairbanks, drive up to a lake, No, a strip, you drive up to a strip or Alaska pipeline road. And not just talking about one air carrier that we've used to hunt caribou. You drive up to an actual strip. Isn't it a strip? So a landing place, get on a plane there and go land at another strip in a bush community, and like an off the grid community, and they're gonna float plane and take the float plane to go land up on lakes up in the Cariboo Country in the North Slope, tons of different configurations. Or we've also hunted sheep where you lower your stuff from your truck into a supercubin. Yeah, fly up on that too, But this particular area is a little bit of a hall and bigger, like a greater distance than you're gonna cover, um efficiently in in super cubs. So we flew out to a remote military air strip. Do we name that one? Not yet? No, should be remote military air strip. It's not military. I think it was built by built by the military. Gravel strip. There's a lot of those in Alaska. Yeah, they're scattering, yeah for sure. And we're flying there. We're all six of us, So we've got two hunters and four guys in our crew and we we we fly out to this strip and it's like a real hub of activity because it's a big enough airstrip. You can get big aircraft in there and bring in quad runners, side by sides, all manner of vehicles. And then there's an elaborate road network that leads out from here, and so it's like a place to fly in stuff, set up a camp, and then cruise around like on this whole isolated road network and trail network, and cruise around hunt this vast area of like like Moose Caribou country. I got a quick question, is that is that road system attached to anything if you were wanting to drive in or is it totally independent outside of that air stream. I think the Mountain, I think the Alaska Rang because it's on the other side of the Alaska Range, and I don't think the right dangers. No, yeah, yeah, you couldn't drive there. I mean you could you could snow machine there in the winter. Yeah, but there's not there's not a road. So people come in there and in large aircraft sometimes and the can fly and stuff like we just had we just land out there, so you land in the strip as a gravel strip. There was a couple of outbuildings the Alaska Troopers. Here's not an interesting thing people should know about Alaska. In Alaska, you don't have what's called the game warden, so you have all your game laws. Fishery and game laws are all set by the state and the Department of what do they call it house? The Board of Fish and the Board of Game respectively make those laws the laws. And then what's your like dn R here, it's the Laska Fishing Game Department. Yeah, we have a d n R two but they handle land in minerals and that sort of thing. But lasta Department of Fishing Game regulates hunting and fishing. But all enforcement of fishing game laws comes down to State Troopers. Yes, yeah, yeah, there's a I guess it would be like the Wildlife Division of the State Troopers does enforcement do you know if people don't say you don't say, I'm gonna report you to the game warden. I'm calling the troopers at this strip. There's a trooper's shack too, like a little shack at this strip, and there's all manner of oil, drums, gas cans, quad runners and just like the sort of general called detritus, but is general like in Alaska, if you can land a plane, there is gonna be rusty barrels playing around, and it has its fair share of rusty barrels. Yeah, because what goes in does not go back out easily. Yeah, And we'll talk about that when we talk about the pilot that picked us off, his just dismay at something that we would be bringing back to town. Um. And you get there and you think like, oh, man, like you could say here days and nothing would happen. But it's just constant activity, planes landing people up to all manner of things. And just like like we land there, here comes a couple of dudes on a quad runner. Uh. A Norther plane comes in and we help some guys unload a quad runner out of the plane and they're taking off to go to their hunting camp which is thirty miles away. One of them runs off and the bushes in a while later comes back with another quad Runner and they both take off, one on the brand new quad Runner and one on the old quad Runner and head off to their thirty mile away hunting camp. And um, yeah, it's it's a it's a rest spot. But we get there and then we then we got another guy who fights the super Cup and it's got to fly. The super cub is gonna shuttle us into our spot up in the mountains. And it's funny, is you gotta do because of our crew. You gotta do six trips and each trip takes forty minutes or so, so it's twenty minutes up into the mountains, unloads and stuff come back, and you're dealing with small weather windows. So when you're doing this, you gotta make sure the first guy that goes has his camp and gear and everything he needs to survive for the night, and then that anyone left behind also has so that the that the Ford people have all the stuff they need to survive and the left behind person has to have stuff to survive because at any given time, the weather window is gonna close. And we'd already missed the day and a half because of bad weather. So sure enough, five of us get in and the weather window ends and there are five of us are up in the mountains right to humble. Some guys still hanging out at the Yeah, which is the first time that's ever happened to you, to have to have to hop in interrupted. But other guys we fly with will bring in three super cubs. That's true. They got like a little wolf pack of super cubs and they just get it done. Like when there was a window. They're going. This is much more just one dude cliff and back and forth, flying a hundred yards off the ground, three tops. Yeah, dude, those flights are so cool though. That Did you ask him why he did that low? Yeah? At first I thought it was because it was so foggy, but then it was clear and he was flying just as low. I think he likes to look for moose antlers. Well, there's a bunch of reasons. Yeah, that that is one. Another one was that, um, when it is foggy and the ceiling super low, because he knows every single cut bank and down log and the way the river turns and cliffs and whatnot. From lying low so much, he can fly low even when the ceilings low. And be comfortable in there where he's saying, yeah, it's a beautiful day. And if I fly go up to a thousand feet right now and buzz along, I'm not gaining anything from that beautiful flight up there. I need to be down here continuing to become intimate with what's down here. I need to know every single gravel bar where when, if possibly the ship hits the fan, I can land, I can make a move. I'm looking for spots where I can drop people in the future. You know, he might scout. He's scouting, yeah, constantly, Yeah, bringing in information and and hunts. And he's a big shed hunter and hunts moose sheds from his plane. And he said that takes a special skill set because you need to fly along and you know where all the sheds are. And then eventually got to find a place of land and you gotta be good enough you can walk and pick. You can spend your time then walking and retrieving all the ones you found, and again landscape, knowing the landscape. Was he saying that he picked thirteen hundred or thirteen thousand pounds of these sandlers. I didn't catch that. Wow, Yeah, thirteen hundreds is impressive. Until you think how much moose antler ways. He might have said he picked thirteen thousand pounds and moved sandlers, but just just it must have been hundred pounds. Well, I think he said thirty aside thirty pounds aside on the big ones. Um, that's a lot of moves. He flies a ton. I can't remember the hours he was saying he does. But yeah, but he's probably picking him up in the spring because he's not flying and when he's when he's flying hunters, he doesn't have time for that. Yeah, he was ripping us, you know, like, yeah, he was go, go go, and then he finished shuttling us, and he had a bunch more guys, you know, in other places. So Mark kennyon walking around picking up those deer landers his pants. This style of shed hunting man shed hunting out of airplane. So he likes to do that. And he was saying that he also hunts snowshoe hairs because when he turned white in the ground the snow melts, he can go out and locate little pockets of white rabbits. And in fin a place Land is playing and go snowshoe hunting, and it's pretty cool. That's a cool dude. I didn't realize I asked him. He's going a hundred ten miles when he's empty. That's with the tail wind with it. I think eight is what the top speed. This dude's super Cup is stripped down so light like he likes to keep it real light so you can land on super short strips and carry more ship. We've never put in so much stuff into a super Cup like we did with John. He has the hands start, so he has to be like the old World War One flying aces who got to go out and yell contact and turn the prop because he tore out his starter in the battery. So he starts his super Cup by going out. He's gotta get the throttle just right inside to start it, and in one fluid motion it takes him like three or four turns, grabs the prop he called the prop right, Yeah, grabs a prop, turns the clockwise hand from big kicks, and he's got a fly back around. We'll put up a video of him doing this in the show notes. He's got a fly back around and then hit the throttle and pull himself up in the plane. Every time, I'm like, why in the world you do that, and he said, I cut seventy pounds out of the plane. He also got rid of the back seat and just put a little carbon fiber piece there. And he took a piece of took a piece of ridge rest and cut it out for a pad. So like that seat is ounces the paint a super cup has forty pounds of paint on it. What Yeah, forty pounds of paint. His paint his his plane is painted the same color as most the landscape. Yeah, the same color like a slate gray, same color as all the shale. And I told him, said, man, when you eventually buried this burled is playing a new mountainside, They're never gonna find you. And he said, well, that's not my tent for that to happen. But he said, but kind of, because I don't like the people know where I'm laying on my plane. Yeah, so I'd like to keep a camouflage. If that means they don't find me, That means they don't find me. Do you remember when we flew in on that that moose float on the in the north study lasta range. Remember that second pilot that helped shuttle he had that little tailwheel Sessna where he stripped the paint off of it. Remember this, No, I remember flying in a helio courier. I thought that was cheap hunting. That was cheap onunting. But this is on that moose float. Trip Um done that float anymore? You know? A friend of mine did it last year and he went up in that same hanging valley there he shot a bully so that that they're running all over in there. Yeah, we killed three bulls, didn't me. Yeah, But anyway, that one of our pilots had just stripped. He had a little Cessna maybe and he had no anyway, I don't know planes very well, but he Um had stripped the paint off of his plane and it and he had forty pounds he made it forty pounds lighter, and he had forty pounds more payload. Yeah, and it was just a it looked like a you know, it's a bare aluminium just like tinfoil plane. You know, it's nice, wasn't he saying? I'm just gonna say, if you want to look this guy up and fly with him, I don't do that. No, No, I don't like that's smart. Really No, No, I'll tell you later why Okay, he mentioned something about paint that slides better, right, wasn't he? On the thinking put on this boat bottom? What's that paint called bottom? I gets a few different kinds, but I the one, the one that I brand turned me onto it. It's called Gator Glide. It's just just really slick. But you know how grippy that aluminum is. Man on the rocks so grippy. So it's like a truck bedliner that slicks for the bottom of your boat. It's like it's it's like taplon coating the bottom of your boat. Yeah, and like the one of the you know, the rivers we run are super shallow. When you run up on a sandbar or grapple bar or whatever, like I can just go out there one finger now and pull my boat off. Makes that much of a different huge Yeah, Gator glide. Yeah, a lot of that technology comes out of the Southeast, I bet you. Oh yeah, my whole boats, My whole boats like a Louisiana setup, you know, but they work well, flat bottom, air cooled engine. You can run it across wet grass. Yeah yet boat out here yeah yeah, No, it's not jet it's a mud motor. You know like I think it inspired by the Southeast Asia, you know, cool long shaft and then that minds a particular ones a Go Devil, and that company was started by I think I'm pretty sure it is a Vietnam war Vett that came back from Southeast Asia and thought, oh man, that's a slick setup. Is this in Louisiana and started making them places that make them down. It's got like a Briggs and Stratton engine, like a five foot prop like if I have foot chaft. Yeah, it's just it's just an air cooled like a riding lawnmower engine. You know, my mind's twenty four horse and it's got a it's just a you joint and a drive shaft and there's no there's no clutch, there's no gears. It's just when you start the molder, the prop is spending and you lower that prop into the water and it goes and that's that's all. Because people don't dick around motors. What like Jenlly and outboard is water cooled, so you gotta have enough water where the lower units down and there's an intake thing in there and it's taken water up cycles it through the system and pisces it back out, so it takes some water to run it. Um. Their thing is these things you rocks and stuff, don't hurt them. They're they're starting to take a toll. I've been running that thing for he's fifteen years and rivers, you know, and and my my skegs getting pretty beat up. And it starts the skegs actually starting to unweld from the Yeah. Yeah, it's not going to take it apart and get somebody to reweld it, you know. But now that's taking a lot of abuse. Remember going duck hunting with you and the arc out here one time, going through a hole and feeling the boat as that thing hits Sam And yeah, that's an awful feeling, like a pot of sandwich. Yeah, I hate that. It only happened a couple of times. That's gonna happen no matter what motor you run. Yeah, depending on what's going on. Where were we the pilot, I messed up the paint thing, but we're breaking down. So I'm glad he brought up because dudes, I want to know about that, right, Gator Glade put it on the bomb of your boat. Um he was trimmed down though, our pilot trimmed down. Dude. He could. Like the one time he took off to go pick up another dude, he just like what looked like thirty and he was airborne. It was almost like a helicopter. Man, it was crazy. His rig is just super cool. Man. Those things got a way to crashing. Yeah, what's eating crazier is that when we got there, I looked at him like, man, I know that. Yeah. Yeah, he and I worked together for maybe three months. You in Colorado, right, Yeah, in Edward's car Autumn Ptarmigan Sports. He was a mountain guide. I'm I don't know for sure if he was a mountain guid him guessing he's done some guiding, but he was just a professional climber. Um. So we get to the spot and basically like the spot we start out where we land and we're just laying on a gravel bar in the river and we're about to get a sense of this. We landed probably not probably then we landed at thirty five ft above sea level the surrounding peaks or seven or so, the very very highest. Yeah, and we're about five, well six to seven river miles to what would be the head of this stream we land on the streaming landing has a big wide gravel bar. What do you call that, dan, big white gravel bar like the whole bed. How do you describe that bed? Oh, I'd like a braided river bed. Braided river bed that's a couple hundred yards wide. Um, and usually the it's braided. I mean usually the channel is occurring in multiple places. So it's got this big, like this big broad gravelly thing and everything's very shallow and just kind of meanders across and changes constantly, Like the channel gets rewritten every year from in most places that you know, any most spots along that river, the channels in you know, two or three places at once. You know, it's never in as rarely is it in a single channel. And to get a sense for it, like you'd cross it. When you got across, it's about hip deep and hall and ass knee deep and haul and ass. Yeah, when you got across the main channel. It fluctuates a lot though. That surprised me. Yeah, it's like someone it's like God dicking with the water belve in a shower because like over today, the glaciers are melting fast tons of water. It rains somewhere but not here, tons of water, and the silt load goes up and down where it looks like chocolate milk. Then it's clear chocolm milk, clear chocolate milk, clear, up down, up, down, changes constantly. UM. And we're like seven miles from the head of this thing. And this thing's headed by this probably has like three heads. Right, you go kind of like two two main channels of feed into it, and we're we get dropped off about seven miles from the head of these from the head of these two things. And the first day here here's another rule in Alaska. It gets thrown out a lot. You can't hunt with some exceptions. There are exceptions to this. Most of the exceptions are around deer in southeast Alaska and some caribou units. You can't hunt in the same day you fly in Alaska, preventing you um on a non scheduled flight. If you fly in a jet into somewhere you know that's a or even a smaller plane. If it's a scheduled flight you know, into wherever. Uh, that doesn't count. But but a charter or your own plane or whatever, the same day you've been airborn, you cannot hunt, and that speaks to um, what they're trying to prevent one from being able to do is I didn't find an animal from the air and land a plane and go shoot it. Instead, you got to find it from the air, land a plane, wait until what three am? Wait until three am, and then you can go. And the reason, like a lot of states have legal shooting hours, um, legal hunting hours, but you know, because of the peculiarities of at this latitude, the peculiarities of day length. Alaska doesn't do legal shooting hours with sunset sunrise except for waterfowl. Yeah, that's I think I assume that's federally mandated. When you land, you gotta wait, like because even if you're hunting, you could be hunting the very early season when it's twenty four hours a daylight. So it's not like you gotta wait till it gets dark and lighting or whatever. It's like three am. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that which darkest, even though it could just be dusky all night, like you can still see like when you wake up, even just now, when you wake up in the middle of night to go take a leak, you can check around for bears. Yeah, it's not that dark Matt. Matt and I have watched sheep all night long. We've kept tabs on sheep throughout the night, and never, you know, he would leave the spot ands go up on him. It never got so dark that you couldn't tell that they were there. Yeah, Mber that time caribou hunting. Matt went wandering way off and shot a bowl way off somewhere. Oh, he's gone late, butcher's it, he says. It starts to get kind of dark. He sits down for a while, it gets light. He said, Well, I guess it just stayed out all night and it comes wandering into camp three thirty in the morning. I think I do this out overnight. We kept the ripper could the big old fire going for him to thinking he was lost out, thinking he was lost out in the tundra. I'm so worried about him. Um, that was pretty like having GPS units and one yeah, and in reaches and no. I think he might have had GPS was before I remember his navigation thing was this. That's right. We were camped at the confluence, so he knew he was going up with water flowing back towards camp on the right side, and water flowing back toward the camp on the left side, and they eventually met at a V and he was canceled that V. So he said he knew he could wander around anywhere as long as he followed water, he would not as good. As long as he didn't cross the river and followed the water, he knew that he would come back and land back and camp. That's safe. Remember that same trip, Remember that grizzly come up the other bank and starts waiting across the river. Oh yeah, And Matt went out in his waiters and tried to scare it back up, scared back up in the air bank. What happened? Bear took off. Um, that was my good optics epiphany that I've talked about many times. Where we had a dude who had just come off a guide and our body chunk could just come off a guide and for moose on the peninsula or something, or had the year before and had been given some good spotting scopes and binoculars, and I've always had shitty ones. And we were watching the grizzly coming up, and I'm looking through his spot and sculpe and you can see the wind hit its side and make this little colic that kind of drifted around on his body and the breeze and I'm like, I'm getting some of these sons. Uh. And we landed. So we lent this river like what I think about six miles to the head of this thing. Then, Oh, I was getting how you can't hunt the same day fly? So because LEVI was the six guy in, he couldn't. A careful reading of the rule would be that he can't even hunt with us. I can't assist. Yeah, but by hanging out, by hanging out if he's like, hey, what's that white thing? Yeah, yeah, so he's ineligible to hunt the first day we get in. So we do like a little short John short being relevant, I feel like it was a John. We decided to hit a tributary, the first tributary upstream from our camp. We decided to explore out the tributary, and so we walked it from thirty five the mouth of that tributaries three thousand, five hundred feet and we started this tributary in the rain and climb maybe a thousand feet and then you can't see anything where your visibility is hundred yards um now, and then you get a little pockets where you can see, and I think we sat there. We set up a tarp in the rain, and there's no sets of plowing through a place you haven't seen yet. When you're in the right kind of country, you can't just plow through in the fog because you're not doing yourself any good. And we sat there for four hours. I think took a napp shivered, sat there under a tarp for four hours. Event she started to get a little bit clear, and we climbed up to a saddle that was att waited a while, got a couple of open windows in the fog to look down the next valley. I feel like we should plug the try that Sam Bartiya, Dude, I love that freaking tea man. Remy turned me out of that tea. Yeah, yeah right. There's a tea company talk about giving away the goods for free. Man, it's a tea company called Kobak. Not even for freaking charge a lot of money for that damn t Kobak something tea company you're giving away to plug for free to them. But I feel like you're sharing value. I'm sharing valuable information, but I'm only I'm doing it with the only the one hesitation that it just doesn't make sense how much they charged for the decaf version. Oh, sand bar stuff you guys are drinking was caffeinated, No, caffeinated as normal. Price decalf is twice as much. But I'd like to drink it at night as my hot drink. What's the process that makes it? Why they washed it with chemicals? Mhm danger, Yeah, yeah, don't eat it. Danny got swollen uvla maybe from eating the teeth. Yeah, Sandbar teeth from cobal Tea called me is the best ship in the world. Man, good man, Um, it's like, I don't know. It's like it's got all kinds of stuff in it. Man, it's got cloves in it, cinnamon, cinnamon in it. Oh my god, this is good. You had a spicy thing when you bit into it that one time you'd like a pepper corn or some well, someone from the Thai restaurant must have been over there, and it's like one of the little freaking peppers there just to screw somebody. It was. It was had a cinnamon flavor to it, but it was way hotter than eating like a pizza cinnamon. So I don't know what that was. You practically broke a sweat and I can handle some hot food. But that was insane. I don't even know what's in that ship man. But you buy at the Anchorage airport and up top they got the caffey and don low they got a little air with the decap. They charged too much for the decap to the point where to the point where after I got turned onto it, I went online and on their website to buy something and was so insulted by the price that I didn't because I'm like, what am I like growing up? When I was growing up, someone said to me, someday you will buy really expensive te online, I would be like bullsh Well, I'm saying they're drinking a bottle of Boone's fire from the shower, coming back from coming back from Weldon Weldon raw iron droppers to hang like conveyor lines on um. If you had told me someday, Sonny, you'll be buying little several three oun bags of tea for thirteen bucks online, out of punching the face. So I'll buy in the airport. Because if someone said, like, someday you'll buy a bag of tena airport, I've sure I don't know that's okay. I wouldn't have been I wouldn't have been like nervous about that revelation. So I can't bring myself to buy it online. Um, but yeah, that's it's good. Hits the spot. Yeah, up on this saddle. We're trying to weigh out, um, whether to sleep there or head back down? Sleep there, thinking in the morning you might get a better view. It wasn't like nine o'clock or ten. It's late. Yeah, it doesn't get dark til ten thirty, doesn't get dusky till ten thirty at night. And then but yeah, I can't tell what the hell time he gets light in the morning. Yeah, six, I guess it gets light at six. I felt like you had to use the headlamp from about ten thirty and till five, depending on what you're doing. Yeah, if you need it. Yeah, here's what I got to grab a ball. You didn't need it, but like fidget around camp and looking at your backpack. Yeah, um, no sign of sheep up there. Not that day. I couldn't really see that well though, right, But also signed, Yeah, those ridge often on those ridge we saw him in a few places. But on those ridge lines was you'll see a little beds where they kick out a little bowl, you know, and didn't see any beds, didn't se any fresh tracks, decided not to sleep up there, um drop back down and then walked in that that's said, which said was fifty ft back down to our little base camp. And Levi had come in that day so he was eligible to be out with us the next morning. The next morning we headed up to go explore the headwaters of this river that we're on. Dirtmth river, dirt, it's unnamed, no joke, I'm not being like, I'm not being cooit. The river has no name. This It's amazing that there are rivers in Alaska, Like any river that size in lower forty eight would have a road on it during thes No river that size and lower forty eight that doesn't have a roadhould say, know, but very few rivers that size and lower forty eight would not be would not have a road in the bottom of them, dude, even like little trickles have got names down in the forty eight. You know, here there's rivers in Alaska big enough to take a boat down with no name. Yeah, and those a lot of the smaller rivers that do have a name, they're all like mine related, you know, like mother Load Creek or or uh gold Finger flu Creator, bankrupt Creem, Yeah, hard Luck Creek, so uh um dirt Yeah, we go up Dirtmith Creek and we decided to explore first the right branch and that day that that's the day you know, we saw using lambs that day. So think about yeah by camps, I think about doll sheep is maybe maybe Danny knows what the answer to this is. Lands and us get the good spotts, they get the rich feed, you know, yeah, I mean they get the cush location. Yeah. I don't think they're excluding the rams. I I you know, I assume it's that those Is that that the that the lambs, you know, growing so rapidly at that point in their life, need that you know, highly digestible, high protein, really green diet. That's that's that doesn't require a lot of effort to get. You know, it's stick, it's lush, and and you know, the the rams can afford to be you know, a higher where there's just not as much food because they're not actively growing so fast, so they're taking the security. I'm just intuning that. Well. I heard a guy one time, stay this and I don't like because it makes the rams sound altruistic. But first of all, I say this so so running for dollsheet. Ovis Dolly. I think it's how you say it, like Salvador Dolly the painter, but it's Ovis And Doll was a natural US and explorer got the sheep named after himself. Um. Interestingly, Doll named the Alaska Range. He named the Alaskan Range and it became the Alaska Range. But the dude whose name was given to the doll sheet is the guy that named the Alaska Range. And the doll sheep is a pure white mountain sheet, big curly horns like a big horn. Um. You know. They run late actorally November, hang out up around the glaze like they're like in the imagination. They're associated with the rockiest, nastiest, highest, most glaciated stuff, Like they there's the highest mammal on the mountain, the highest hooved right. Well, you see caribou up in there sometimes too, Yeah, I mean, like for a year round living though. They eke out an existence up there, and they don't migrate down to the low country when the snow flies. They gotta beyond the wind swept they stay up in the windswevery. They they don't find they don't wind up living down in some dudes alf alpha field or like down in the valley bottoms. They stay up and they're just they live up. Yeah, yeah, but there's some interesting exceptions too though. I mean they're always on you know, they need to have escape covered nearby. They're always in rocky, you know, craggy terrain. But like you know, you drive down turning an arms off the anchorage and you know you're at sea level and you can look up a few hundred yards sometimes on the highway there at Dollar Sheep there, you know, and so in that in that circumstance, you're not high up, but you got the rocky nous and the cragginess that they Yeah, so they don't care about the number that they don't necessarily care about the elevation number. It's just like what you go hand in hand, where is that where they're preferred habitat happens to exist in those areas. Um, but we see a bunch of using lambs, and using lambs are kind of predictable because like if you see like a whole yo, you see like a dozen animals laying in kind of a meadow meadowy bowl up on a mountain side. You just know like like that's lambs and us. Yeah, it's real green and lush like there. Like that gives it away. And also the whole the number of them, because you can find big groups of rams. But like when you see like a dozen of something laying in a really green patch, like that's lambs and news um. But as we and we saw some lambs used in the morning. But as we press up, we see a single sheep way ahead of us, and I'm thinking ram only because he's by himself. He's laying in a U spot. But there's only one of them. And eventually we get up there and find that it's a way not legal ram, a legal RAM in Alaska. Is this universal or are there still any RAM units? Yeah, there's at least Yeah, part of a big chunk of the chewcatch a few years back went to from from you know, basically over the counter to a lottery and and in that unit they went to that lottery tag. Now they went to any RAM. Tell us why, because I was, yeah, that's interesting stuff. But there's this hypothesis. I guess it probably is or maybe there's don't say that yet, Okay, layout what illegal ramas and then talk about the hypothesis. So, yeah, so legal ramas is a well, it's a full curl ram. And so that's a ram whose horn has grown three sixty degrees from the base to the tip um or is eight years of age. So you would see eight growth annually that are formed each winter of the rams life um or if the both horns are broken off um I mean substantially broken such that the whole the whole lamb tip the first year of growth is absent from the horn and they grind, they scrape them off and break them off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's the mark of an old ram am. And you know it's so you know, a ram with two broken horns is certainly is well, it's very unlikely to be full curl, but it's certainly going to be old. So they've kind of um that. That's another way you can and those are those are still pretty rare though. Double broomers I haven't laid eyes on a double broom do. And then like big horns, virtually all of the double broom they get to a certain size. So those are the three ways to make a legal ram the most the most reliable ways, it is a full curl. You look at the side, the horn should form a six degree circle. Yeah, from the from the right angle, so when when when you're at the right angle, yeah, that that horn should be perfectly round. If you're too high or too low, it should be more of an oval oblong shape. As your sort of perspective on the horn changes, So when you're looking at exactly you know, think of it as a helix. And when you're looking straight down that helix, the perimeter of the horn should be perfectly round, and the tips should come swing all the way around and meet the base or exceed the base, and that would be the mark of full curl ram. There was cool tips that you pointed out as far as the angle and stuff of it coming out of this goal. Because looking dead on at you, yeah or no, no, when we when our perspective was elliptical, and it looked like a full curl maybe, and looking from down looking from down below, they look for the not full curl. Lamp ram looks for a curl when you're looking from down below. But you pointed out the angle at which the curl starts can be somewhat uh a clue at older that they look on a younger ram, it's not as like it looks more swept back up top, you know, I think I think that probably has something to do with the mass. But it looks like it like sweeps back in a more abrupt fashion. I because it just hasn't got as like heavy up top yet or something. You know, it hasn't achieved like its biggest diama because that's where it's growing from. So it seemed to have like it's like like he's been running real fast and it kind of mashes horn. The angle of the tip is telling too, because you know, the younger ram it's pointing more forward and as that curls more, it's you know, eventually it's pointing you know, more backwards or out, depending on the sort of configuration of the horn. So talking about talking about this area, they went any ram like talk about the thinking that might guide that. Yeah, I don't know all the you know, the details on up, but there's um, you know, there's there's this notion and it applies to you know, fish and wildlife and any managed species that if you are non randomly harvesting animals that you can potentially you know, he had the potential to drive sort of artificial selection, you know, against her for some natural feature, right and so, and some people think this is a laughable idea. Is really you know, there's there's certainly said. They think it's thousands of years. Well, okay, I know the fish literature a lot better. But you know, uh like size at maturity and fish, you know, a few a few generations in the lab of of artificially selecting the smallest breeders, you can drive size of maturity down and just a few generations. Yeah, I was saying, not me, I don't know if about it to have a good opinion by saying some people I'm they're talking about like do you are by by just picking big bucks? There's about white tails? Are you driving down white tail size? If? But to the extent, to the extent that it's genetic and not environment the potentials there, Yeah, but no, I think I don't think anyone. I don't think anyone argues the potential. But I think you'll say to effect, you would it would take thousands of years to affect that change. I think people are starting to realize a lot of evolution have it's a lot faster than I mean, this is an instance of evolution. And I think I think that you know, in recent years, people are starting to realize that evolution happens a lot faster than potentially than what you know, like the former sort of gradualism notion of evolution is. You know, that's what I crack up when people like are like, I don't believe in evolution, Like so you don't believe that if I went killed every adult that was over five feet, then you would see a movement towards shorter adults over time. Or you don't believe that corn us to be real small now it's big, or how about how about how about pesticide resistant uh insects? And yeah, yeah, so anyway, there's this notion that by you know, having a full curl regulation and effect, that you're selectively cropping off the rams with the greatest horn growth potential or those that have a horn configuration that tends to grow and a full curl. Um. You know, there are plenty of mature rams running around. They just and their horn grows in such a way that it doesn't curl into a curl. And I think the first three doll rams I don't know. The first of like the first gang of doll rams that you, me and Matt killed were all eight, none were full curl. That Matt's had a full curl. Matt's had one full curl horn that broke when it fell. Um My very first ram had one full curl horn. But you, yeah, you and I when we shot two rams together, they were both eight or older, and neither of them were full curl. And then really the guy that checked mine in wrote it down as full curl. Interesting, obviously not full curl, but obviously eight years. Yeah, there's there's some interesting judgment costs we made there to excessing people down at department fishing game haggling over age and full curl or not. And you know when you skip those horns checked and they're they're having a very hard time coming to consensus on some of those attributes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the Onny way, there's this notion that yeah, if you are, if you're you know, if you're cropping off all the horns that are growing to a full curl, that you're started driving the genetic genetics away from that type of horn configuration. And so, um, my understanding is that that that helps you catch any RAM. Uh set up was and and sort of an experiment to see, you know what the fact that's having and so giving a second, are you doing okay over there? It's like you're generating so much noise over there? You're right? Do you do unplug? You go ahead? So when they yeah, so when they when they went to that lottery, when they went to that lottery system, they just said, okay, let's just have a lottery and because let's let's try in any RAM scenario to alleviate that selective pressure um against a full curl or horn configuration. But then the harvest rate is gonna go way up, so we're gonna need to limit the amount of participation. And so they put a lottery on. Yeah. Yeah, And so I haven't been following that. I don't know what the you know, they're just certainly people at Laska Department Efficient Games looking talk very intelligently about that. Here, here's the here's the case example from the frank Church area and Idaho with bighorns. And again, like a regulation change will happen, and oftentimes they don't, like a state department will change a regulation and they don't say, here's why we're changing the regulation. Just the regulation changes and people are left to speculate about why it was the regulation. That's that's poor outreach there, I know, but it happens in like the case example of the guy a guy. We often get questions about this, why is it illegal for a nonresident to hunt in a wilderness area in Wyoming for big game without a guide? Okay, so if you're a nonresident Whoming you want to hunt a wilderness there, you have to hire a guide. I recently was asking some people that work at the state, like state employees, for like, hey, how did this rule come to be and what are sort of the decisions that were made? And they were demonstrating to me that or the stuff I looked at. And also what everybody says is it's like it's a service. The guiding industry has been driven by the guiding industry, right I could I could see jumping to that conclusion. Yeah, but there's no articulation of it anywhere as do they talk about safety. Same here. Yeah, that's that's I think that's the sort of the stated rationale for the guide requirement for grizzlies mountain goat mountain chief. But it has me to protect the industry, which is fine. But here's the thing with the Frank Church is they felt that they had a three quarters There was a big horn unit and it had to be a three quarter curl. So on a big horn, a way to tell three quarter curls you gotta take from the base of the horn and draw a line through the corner of the eye and if that line hits horn, that's a three quarter curl ram. They felt and is very very rugged, very very remote area, that there were too many cases of people in the back country making a bad call in killing rams that weren't legal and then not reporting it. This is what I heard, And so they just went to any ram thing to try to cut back on unreported mortality of rams because it was areas just too hard to police, too hard to monitor. Yeah, so that they presumably had looked restrict the number of permits at the point, but it was that's what I heard, like a problem, and I heard dad from a guy who guided the area that was his that was his understanding of what was going on. They fell as putting people in too much of a bind. So we walk up this thing and find this ram would be good on obviously not illegal ramp um does that morning we run it spent the night ran into a grizzly blonde, blond blonde, grizzly blonde, long hair, gorgeous, we're so long and shaggy. She looked almost What did I say? I thought it looked like something dead when it was sleeping. Yeah, I thought it looked like a old rotten because it was hagley like it was yack like, yeah, a blow in the wind. Yeah, it looked like I think our initial I guess was it was a dead caribou laying there inside of the hill. When Yanni told me he sees something, but it was funny because he's like, I see something like two little black things bobbing around by it. And I looked through my binocular is and I think I'm looking at something dead and mostly decayed, just because the way that was so disheveled. And he says, yeah, there's two black things moving around on it. And in my head, I'm like, well, it's gotta be those ravens feeding on some long dead caribou carcass. And it's kind of like looks like a bunch of hair scattered around, when in fact, it's a blond sow with two little very dark almost black cubs, which I hadn't seen that color difference. Yeah, striking. That's the thing people saying judging grizzlies like an interior ones is uh, Oftentimes the bigger males are darker brown and the female. That's not true in all cases. It's like it's like with with grizzlies, everything's like tends to right, tends to this, tends to that that. Oftentimes you find that the big males are darker brown, and oftentimes you find those real blond ones or females when you get the maturity. But she was blond, beautiful. Man just chow and the blueberries party mode. They eat them like they're pissed at them. They eat them like they're going to get away, like their exacting revenge on blueberries. Man and wash over. Quite a while feeding around, cubs were sleeping. Cubs kept taking naps, and they just take naps wherever they see fit Man, And then she took a nap short power naps. Yeah, they take power naps just wherever. Man. But I think they were napping too because it was like a little break in the weather and they were just like curl up. They'd kind of snuggle, they'd like spoon, and that's hour. She would take a little nap now and then just lay down wherever she happened to be, just lay down midstride and kind of doze. Me and Chris were saying it was cool observing that scene because that was the first grizz we've seen since a fog nack. Just kind of a nice, peaceful cleansing. Man. Yeah, I can appreciate grizzlies again and not be terrified. Yeah. Good. It's like when I get all mad at my kids and I'm yelling at them all the time, and I'll feel bad later and I'll go and give them big snug. Yeah, I got snug by that. It was a cute scene. Man, those clubs napping and that sud is kind of cruising around. It's hard to picture that. They just have such a ferocity. Yeah, you can picture, dude, if you walked up, If she's sleeping and those cubs are sleeping fifty yards away and you watched up, you walked up and grab one of those things, you can imagine her response. Man. Well, if we were on that side of the drainage, the wind, the wind was blowing in such a way that we could have popped up on him unexpectedly. I feel like they have been a good move man in this area is just pock marked with where they're digging up ground squirrels ship when they put a lot of energy and oh my god, dude, some of the ground that they dug up was insane. The sun little that they're just like, they'll dig holes big enough for you to climb into. The most surprising thing was the altitude that they were digging those things up at you. You know, you're like six thousand feet and they're still throwing boulders and it's just little snacks like they're up there for like it's like they got other for no really, no other reason to dig up marmots and dig up ground squirrels and dig holes like like I said, like foxholes. You can climb down into him. Can you imagine being that ground squirrel and I got nothing, nothing, dude. If you could imagine, if like a Peter person, right, you could witness that spectacle that they'd be so anti grizzly because the horror of that little ground squirrel family. Oh yeah, tucked away, keep his corner and they know that that thing just out there like throwing out head sized boulders and then eats them all alive. Yeah, that little squirrel family is just living out a children's story at children's fairy tale, laying in a little beds and the next thing, you know, it's just the roof of the house comes off them, swallows them all. And we watched them eat them. They eat them alive. They just grab them and throw their head back. Yeah, and that thing alive down the belly be like digested juices. Yeah, it's like Jonah the whale man. You know what Jonah Whale is there? Yeah. I don't know if you had Bible learning now, I was raised Catholic. Good for you. Um, yeah, she was eating berries though. We slept for the night tented out, and the next day I look up above camp and lo and behold a bunch of rams, but no freaking legal rams. Was four or three? That was two, three, four or five and six number one being the one youngster, the one youngster that was living on the u Lamb patch. Yeah, did he really liked And then five separate two four, and they later picked up a fifth. Yeah, two three, two, three, four and five rams number two, three, four five came rolling up above camp and we gave those good scrutinizing, and uh, they were kind of like really spread out in the age thing, you know, a few years old up to probably like seven enough for his ram looking from down below seems legal, but he's just like not you could. And I was like to give everything the band for the doubt, Like one time we talked about this for one time, me and you were hunt Mulder and here comes military that just gotten hit by a car. So as antler is, one of his antlers has busted off, but flopping down by his face. And when I first saw that, first thing out of my mouth was a buck of a lifetime because I give everything avant for the doubt. And I saw those times and I thought this must be a gigantic bus just and I realized, no, he's just a forky with I just saw. I saw he even had times by his jaw. You know. It's then I was like, oh, just a little buck to get hit by a car. Do doll sheep ever growing a non typical way or is it like you see something totally crazy, like just like a straight horn. Yeah, just some weird I've never seen anything besides the fact that they snap them off and braid them off they like or some of them. Some of them kind of spiral out from the head and some of them, know, some swing more into the jaws. There was some asymmetry between left and rock. They seem to be even though scene one that was very like funky deformed didn't even have like a curl at all. It just kind of really came out and just down. It's just like this big. It could have been damaged at some point. Yeah, it's a big mass of horn, and so a photo of it. Yeah, would that be sought after, just like you know shirt non typical sought after by me? The other side's legal. Yeah, the uh I killed the second one I got um was broomed on one side and full spiral on the other side. Room because it broke. It's a braided I was not snapped. I got another one that snapped, but it didn't snap all the way. But you can grab the end. You can grab the end and wiggle it. But it wasn't an abrasion. I bess they probably always maybe not always, but I think they may might snap them and intebrate them. But it seems that they don't like is they don't like it in some rams don't like it in their peripheral vision, it seems, and so they'll work on them. I've even seen big horns scraping there. I've seen big horns on you know, the wild Horse Island with a new world record one came from. I've seen big horns out there, just scraping, scraping his horn. I also watched one but a tree I was, I was out there. I can't remember. I think I think he if I remember right, he rammed a tree. He rammed the Ponderosa pine seventy two times in a row. Yeah, bad day. I was just counting how many times he's doing it. I even went down and examined that pine when he got done and plucks some hairs out of it. Nice. Yeah, he just kept he just was ramming the tree. It was like he's like in an insane asylum. Man, he stuck out. He's training. Is that what it is? It's just practiced for Then one time we were floating, we were floating the river hunting muled heer and I kept thinking someone shooting twenty two. I'm not, but you kept kept being like why what are they shooting at twenty two off up there? And then she realizes big horns. It was late October big or maybe early November and big they were in rout and the big horns are up there cracking heads. It sounds like we're going going off. That's story like a story always telling. My brother drew a big horn tag and we kept going down in this area to try to find sheep and couldn't find sheep. And I got to be like dismissive where I look up on this hill and I'm like, oh, it's Mulder way off on this mountain side. I'm like, oh, it's cut Mulder up there. And all of a sudden, two of these mules their stand up on their back feet, talk their front arms up, run at each other and smack heads. I'm like, oh my god, I want to see that bad. Yeah they do. They tuck their arms and remember that Mountain Dew commercial where there's a there's a dude who takes was it searched maybe it was surge and he takes a big goal of this soda pop and it Now you guys, uh, you like to dip, you like to spit juicepit in du bottles. No, I don't drink do because most guys dip. I noticed they really have a tendency to want to spit into a due. B just came up when we were talking about the redneck call guys they have to drink them mountain do and then they do the redneck and the rednecks come running in their direction. Uh where were we on sheet seeing? Yeah, so the band of rams man and I look at like, I said, I give everything the benefit of the doubt, you know, like I wanted to be legal, but it's just not legal. We got pretty close to him too. Later we got yeah, no, there's no doubt in my mind that we like. It's not one of those things where I'm like, man, I feel haunted. I remember hunt hunting dolls, sheep, but d any One time we'rehump with another buddy of ours and he put a stock on a ram, like we determined a ram, or like that ram is legal. He put a stock on the ram, got within rifle range, and comes back down the mountain. There's no shot. He's like, I don't think it's legal. Man. He had to leave, he had to take off, and we went and refound the thing all over again. We did a bunch of hunting first, couldn't couldn't find a bigger one, and like, oh, let's go back. And when we found that one and shot in those full ram so you found it, second guessed it, didn't think it was legal, and then someone else second guessed it. We were pretty convinced. It was harder than I expected. To be fair, that was a small ram. Yes, it's very small horned ram. Yeah, but he had a full crow horn. Yeah. So if you if you put one down, that is kind of right on the line of like legal, and then you go do you get it checked? Like what's your content? What are the consequences away from you? And I'd probably find you. Yeah. The last ram, the last ram, so I've only got like I've gotten too, So I say the last one, I mean the second doll ram I got was out of a special management area that has really big rams, and so there I was that had the luxury of a ram that was like well and excessive folk. I mean just you look at them, He's like that's some bitch way full curl right. Um, So then you all cocky when you go down to fishing game. So go down there and not having any apprehension about what you know, not having like even in the back of your head. There's no like, man, what are they gonna what if they write? And we get there and there's a dude checking a ram and they hold his ram and I come in the door. I'm thinking that think is that full curl? They hold his ram. A trooper comes in with another ram that he had confiscated. We're He goes to check a guy at an airstrip and he's like, do you get one? Yeah, I got one. Let me see the head. Oh, it's in the bottom of my pack, at which point he gets really interested to see the ramps. Not even kind of like this one's like, no argument you made for it. Finished check in my sheep. It's mandatory checker. You have to bring the head down to have a check. Finished check in my sheep. Here comes another couple of guys. They pull out a ram. I'm like, the way is that ram legal? And then the guys were already kind of getting like, you know, I didn't see where that one led, but they were already sort of in the seconds we had to look at it. They had you tell it wasn't gonna go well. For that guy. So it happens more often than you think. There was. I saw counting mine. There were four and three of them. Three of them one was not even under consideration. Two of them were like any I looked and I'm like, there's no way, And the and the guy in the biologists were definitely sort of on one head said we're holding it, one had already been confiscated, and one it wasn't going well for the guy. When they take that plug, that's that's the definitive like age thing, right, No, that plug is to market for uh, legal trafficking. When they plug it, they drill a hole and drive a plug into a metal what is that thing? A shell casing almost that they drow a hole and pounded in there. Yeah, just screen. You always got to look for it when you go to find it. Yeah, they put in a spot where it's kind of hard to see, but it's got a number on it. Yeah. Think he's just proving that you, you know, had your rams and field and if you have you know, a fresh ram head in your possession about that plug in it, then that's trouble for you. So if they if they confiscated, what happens to the meat, they auction the they auction the heads off, and then the meat does go to waster. What do they do with it? I don't know what they do with that food? Banquit? Do you get any like hunting right restrictions if you shoot an illegal ram? Like? Do they like? Yeah, there's a system, there's a there's a system in place that's people should know about. Um, there's a cooperative of states and it grows all the time where when you lose your hunting rights in one state. Yeah, for a while, it's like seven states in the West had this cooperative where if you lose your hunting rights in one state, you lose your hunting rights in the whole. And I think that that cooperative, you lose your rights in all states that are involved in the cooperative. And Yanni can maybe check us. I feel like it's up to like forty two states a lot, man, And I feel like I think I remember seeing that Texas isn't one of them. Texas isn't one of them. I think I've ever seen that. I could be wrong. We should check to make sure you might checking out? Yess that's interesting? So then all right, um, yeah, I think so, yes, But when you hear someone losing their hunting rights, it's agregious stuff. Oh so you could make a slip up and shoot like a seven year old ram, even if you think that you're not doing anything wrong. Bring it in and bring it in, right, You guys that lose their hunt rights, it's usually like like jit poaching, serial poachers, or you just did something, not like you made a mistake, but you did something like So I do remember a guy. I do remember a guy killing a grizzly. Did he mistook for a black beverybody? I think there was an attempt to cover up. I remember he had a ten dollar fine, seven years revocation of his hunting privileges. He was from Pennsylvania but lost his hunting privileges in a western state. And I remember, if I remember it was right when when Pennsylvania joined that that cooperative and I remember thinking, like, man, he came hunt at home? Noow man. But I think in that case too, I think that it involved some deception. Yeah. So is it fair to say that if you call yourself, you make a mistake, call in, report yourself, they're going to be more lenient on you. Or is that totally Yeah, like more lenient being. Yeah, just in terms like like in a relative sense, I would say, like yes, because there still has to be some punitive action, but you know, confiscation for sure, you might not get hit with finer. Yeah, you know, I can't really speak. I'm sure there's plenty of case scenarios look at. But I've had the conversation with quite a number of people, and everyone has always expressed to me that, um that that when you self report, it's a lot better for you, right the one you don't. And so like this dude that tried to hide the ram, and we actually got to talk to that trooper for a while. The guy that tried to hide the ram from the dude was seriously annoyed. Oh yeah, did you had to play that little game? I bet and he and we even I think I even asked him at the time. I'm almost certain I aske him at the time, Um if that like colors his impression of the case. And he was like absolutely, Man, when I got to like force you to let me look in backpack is a lot different than you let me look in your backpack. Right, there was a poacher at our around where we have a family cabinet, Seelye Swan night sniping big neely Bucks. I think I heard about this guy. He's from Pennsylvania. Okay, I didn't hear about this, but he got jail time. I mean it was bad enough, it was crazy. What states are trying to do now is since they're trying to do now, a thing that states do, and I think it's becoming a more popular idea, is trying to apply the right economic value to the resource that you've taken. Because it used to be that that you could shoot like a trophy bull elk, and it wasn't as you could poach a trophy bull elk, and the punishment would be worse if you stole someone's lawnmower out of their garage. Like so you can steal three lawnmower and it's you know, like this misdemeanor of fence that could come with potential a jail time. Right, But you can shoot a trophy bullell and we're just treating it like it's nothing. We're treating like it's just like essentially valueless entity. And you get like there's some of little slap on the wrist. So now when you're like there are several states possibly more that have gone in and said, like they apply the Boone and Crockett scoring system or take another scoring system and apply it to poached animals. And if you turn out to be like and it's trying to differentiate like your pot hunter from me from like someone who's like really going out to try to like harvest high end trophy animals and then coming in with a fine system if you're shooting like really valuable animals, like what does that animals value to the hunting community and what exactly have you stolen? You might have stolen something that's worth well that dude, that it should be treated as such, rather than you shot a cottontail rabbit out of season because it was getting into you know, yeah, just like that. It's not all the same thing that that guy in cuy Swan I was told or read that he poached enough big bucks that have did that entire regions genetics not genetics. But you know, they weren't breathing like he was. He was putting it. Put a hit on the who put a hit on the hunt? Yeah? Yeah, there was an interesting situation you're for Campbell in Kentucky where these guys were sneaking into the closed off areas on the base, like the impact areas, So like you know on any big military installation where you've got ranges and you know, aircraft ranges and things like that, we're shooting live ammunition. Basically, the backstops of those areas are just codd and like unexploded ordinance, and you just don't want to go back there. They're just completely closed off areas. So it ends up happening is he's you know, deer will never get hunted, and they live in those areas and they're licking like the sulfur off the rounds and stuff. They get huge, yeah, giant, giant racks with these guys who weren't in the military. They're just living outside the base. They were able to drive in through like one of the back gates, and they were sneaking into those areas that are full of like unexploded bombs and poaching year year round, and they got busted. They had like, you know, forty heads sitting in a barn somewhere in Kentucky with really interesting that they had like like parachutes um like flares, you know what I mean, Like like stuck in their antlers, stuck in there stuck in their antlers and stuff. There's you know, photographs in the newspaper. They're just these really unique heads, bomb range bucks, all kinds of stuff all over their heads. Yeah, and they got them all. I want to say, they got the seven year band. There's there's a I was talking to do a concert or like a game warden one time who was given a presentation and it was about his idea that the same he had this idea that was like there there's like cereal well put us a different way. He was adopting something that's well known in criminal criminology and applying it to poaching. What should be that you have serial criminals. So like like most law enforcement agencies, the FBI, they're they're focusing on like serial criminals, thinking that you could reduce by removing ten percent of the criminals, you could affect ninety scent of the crime. So that's why you put so much emphasis into like organized crime rings, because it winds up being there's like a ring of individuals and they're involved in extoration, prostitution, drug trafficking, auto theft, right, and if you can find these these core groups and take those groups down, you're doing more to eliminate theft than you are by going after all the petty individuals who are doing like onesies, twosies. And this guy had come to this opinion. He had all this data to back it up, the nine the ten percent of your poachers are doing your poaching, and and and he got into he was into this idea of like who are these individuals, what are their motivations, and what are their markers? And he was given presentations the other state agencies to try to describe what he would call super poachers, like what is their motivations? And um a thing he found again and again, it's like that they the garages and the sheds that they don't tell anyone about. They're just full of trophy animals, and they're motivated by the they're they're One of their main motivations is they have some criminal background. And one of their main motivations is a funk you to the state, like Freeman type, don't you you're not gonna be telling me? And they usually come out of some kind of that they usually have in their past, some kind of situation, they felt wronged, they've been in trouble with the cops, anti social and it's just like a point of pride for them to stick to. The man, I got all this stuff, don't you tell me what I'm gonna do. I hate those type of people. Yeah, the ground and he had a lot of pictures the garages and storage sheds packed with antlers, like a weird form of little trophy room, the secret trophy room. The only I know about me and my brother or whatever know about you know. Quick update on the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact. That what it's called, and now there are forty eight members, including sex. The two that are not um Hawaii and Massachusetts. Massachusetts is working to join right now. It doesn't say anything about what Hawaii's got going on. What are you hunting Massachusetts? White tails? Yeah, I mean there's a lot of stuff you hunt there for for big game. I don't know if Massachusetts. I won't be surprised here that they do not have a bear season. Definitely white tails and then all manner of small game foul upland waterfowl. Um, where were we on this whole thing? Oh? Why you can't go killing on the rams that aren't legal? And I'm telling you, man, um, it's hard to judge them. It's hard and when I say judge, you might be like, oh, you know, if you talking about judging the yielder, there's no legal ramification. It's just you want to find a big one. But with a ram it's like a tremendous amount of pressure to get to make the right call. And the handful of times I've been in a situation where you're like shooting, you're walking over there, it's extremely stressful because you're doubting your own decision making, even on the case of one where was like so clearly mass like, it's nerve racking. It's not fun. Oh there's nerve racking. The minutes that passed between you touch the trigger and you're getting over there is a not fun bunch of minutes. Man. Uh. And then we like that drainage up to the glaciers at the head of it. It's like a beautiful start kind of situation when you get up there where the ice is ripping the mountainto shreds, and there's spots you can stand where it's just like you can just stop and listen and just rock raining down everywhere around you. Big rock, small rock. It's just it's it's constant though the sound of it like the mountain getting ripped apart by the ice. It was. I had a few on a doom up that first drainage. It was like a death zone. Man. There wasn't anything living up there. Yeah, it was weird when you get the head of it. He came back and I saw green for the first time. I was like, Okay, it makes sense now, I feel better. But that was weird. We found a drop moose antler, not up in the glaciers, but way higher than any willow, you know. And he had somehow wand up there or it fell out of or it fell out that duds who hunts shed out of his airplane. I think he might have dropped. Bear in mind that that was that he shed that antler and what December January, that was crazy about it. A little later, sometimes February, our pilot was saying that the moves hang out out there in the flask right, and they hang out there until the snows get too deep and the wind piles up the snow, and then they'll actually move into that high country to find the wind swept places. Yeah, he was so high there wasn't any brows up there though, right, Yeah, he might not know because he's just digging to the snow. I don't know he was. He was a half mile above any willow. That was interesting. But yeah, you get up around the glaciers and it's like it's like the earth at work. Man. What was that Leopold quote you guys mentioned that was cool? You kind of Yanni should look at it. I want to hear that. Eldo Leopold's son, the author of Sand County Almanac, had a son who became a hydrologist. Who's got to be still alive. I don't know. I think it's his son, Luna Leopold. I'm gonna tell you what I think it is, and then Yanni's gonna tell us what it is. Rivers are the gutters through which run the ruins of continents. What's your guests that's pretty pretty spot honest fear as I know. Yeah, yeh, he's gonna tell us all that. So I think he was a he was a fluvial geo morphologist, So fluvial geo morphologist. He studied how rivers, you know, create landscapes, maintain landscapes. You have a good time up there, obviously you can't, Yeah, you can't have a fluvial g and more foulges that spends time around rivers. Yeah, what's interesting about the glaciers is, uh, it's like huge tall packs of ice, but they're filled all the way through rocks. It was like a giant rocks grow string to that one. All the sediment and the different freezing levels where you guys kind of stop. Yeah, I know you can see the accumulations and the melt accumulations. You're not find any annie. Rivers are the dre the gutters down which flow the ruins of continents. Okay, compared again, I said, rivers are the gutters through which flow the ruins of continents. But it's actually down, so you just missed. You just swapped through for down. It's pretty good, not bad. So from there, so at that point we've seen uh bandy using lambs, sal grizz, two cubs, six rams, yeah, some number rams. Then we running around to explore the other fourk of that thing and then drive eventually made our way day or two later, made our way up into saw those rams again. Considerable weather delay. Oh yeah, that's right. We got up, I went into another valley and saw the same batch rams and the rams kind of drift around in weird ways. Man, they're sort of like in the same area, but they're using different stuff. And this time they were down to the bottom of a big hanging valley. Got a real good look at them, but we saw the skyline. Yeah, they're hanging out on the ridge, but at the same the same ridge we initially saw them on. But then eventually they just popped over the other side. So you know, they're only you know, maybe what a quarter half mile from where we had seen them, but they're just in a different valley now, dropped down to a different place to feed. They like to go up to lay down and like to lay down on I don't know, man, it's hard to describe what it like to lay down. They love ridge tops, ridge tops, even to send finger ridges, rock piles on finger ridges, or just like the highest like flat spot, you know, the one, you know, I think a spot you'd say, like it's like two that's kind of the perfect spot where you have two rivers come together and like the ridge rises up out of that thing. It gets like real high and craggy, and he sits out there and he can look down and he can kind of monitor what's going on. And the two drainages blown. Yeah, I spent a lot of time looking down valley and laying a down valley direction because they know that nothing's coming from above. The primary predator. Though for the lambs, one of the primary predators does come from above, because one of the primary causes of land mortality is golden eagles. Eagles. Yeah, we saw fair fair number golden eagles all and they're always go soaring around those ridge tops. You know. Golden eagles grab the baby or knock them off and pick the carcasses up her feet on the car because after they knock them off and make them fall out of their death. I had a pilot one time told me that she saw a golden eagle carrying on the wing carrying a lamb, a doll ram. Golden eagles are hard on mountain goats. Lamb, lamb lamb. There's a a bill just wrote a there's a bill just wrote like Natural History of Alaska, and he had an eyewitness account of a lynx killing a doll ram. Oh wow. He eye witness account from another biologists of a lynx that ran a doll ram down a gully, jumped on its back, bit the back of its head and a single linx killing a ramn mean links and then wolverines kill them obviously, wolves kill them. Chris, Yeah, they kill him. Black beaters, you know black, I'm sure, dude, But they don't make the list as much as wolverines. I think the top are wolverines and brown bears from one area. Tony Rust talks about it in his books about hunting Dollar Sheet that they're pretty weak animals. Like you know, he's talking about it from like a projectile standpoint. You know, arrows hitting them in funny places, bolts hitting them in funny places. But it's not like an elk that soaks up the lead and then like two days later you're still tracking it. You know, three ridges five miles away. It's like a ram. Once he takes a hits, he's not going far. He's gonna lay down. Not tough, not tough in that regard. So you know, maybe a bite to the back of the head from the lynx, it just slowly starts to take the blood out of him and it weakens him enough. Yeah, I should say, I kept saying back in the head of the neck, but him on the neck killed him. Links We saw links print ye saw links tracks, but they're snowsh your hair specialist, man Grouse snows your hairs arm again, that's what they specialize in. Surprising to see you know that he would do that. Man, He's got a square meal laid out ahead of him after doing that. He's got protected though. He's like to dude with a nice car and a shitty neighborhood, just worrying about his Yeah, man, you dis imagined how stressed out he is. He's like something, someone's gonna take this from him. What am I gonna do now? Yeah, hopefully he did it in the Winner. One of the main things they're gonna take it from him aren't around when all the bears are underground. And then we worked out in the area that Dirt Dirt dubbed God's Penthouse as beautiful other head of the valley like nothing I've ever seen. Dude. At first when he said that, I thought you were being profane because I associate penthouse with the magazine, But then I remember, did its um actually like a type of room, like a nice room and hotel? Yeah, real, myth that's right. Yeah. And the color we're talking about, the colors like of the tundra that's like it's crazy, just variations like God, it was beautiful man, huge spires covered in snow. Yeah, and just huge, like you think it's like, wow, this area is huge, but then beyond it there's so you're trying to understand the infinity of space and you're thinking like, well, some wight there's a brick wall, but then beyond that there's something. Yeah, I mean if there wasn't. Right when you're there, like you sort of go like woh, you know, look all the space. You go like, but then but then up there it's like tens of miles. Well, Chris had an interest you could go without running into anything. Yeah, that point about if you could, if you could lay down a city block in that landscape perspective, Yeah, you just see so much country. When you're up high in there, you just see so much it's like hard to take in what you're really looking at. I remember taking a guy caribou hunting, and he hadn't had a lot of experience hunting like open country. Yeah, yeah, and we asked him how far Carriby Way. It was a way He expressed it in blocks, you know, three blocks. The way I've ever think of it it's gonna be a hard trip. Uh yeah, man, that place is pretty magical. But again, no rams using lambs. And by this point we're days into the trip. We've lost a lot of time to sit in and bad weather. A lot of time to sitting in bad weather because when it when it's foggy, just can't see cloudy. I kept debating, is it fog or clouds? What do you think fog is a cloud at ground level? Right? So is that what it is? That'd be a good thing for you. I need to look up. I think it's the same. I feel like it is some of the water man just yeah, because it we'd be like we're up in the clouds or will be like, oh, we're in the fog by the way, just like when when you can't see you just shut down. It's not like a lot of stuff where you just gotta plow ahead, right, or just wait for one to come along, yeah, or just wait because like a thick cloud of tiny water droplets suspended in the atmosphere at or near the Earth's surface that obscures or restricts musibility. Okay, so chemically they're the same clouds sitting in the clouds and there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do, at least that one when we woke up in the in God's penthouse, it was clear, blow freezing. It's just nice because you get to look at it all and go, yep, we've seen it all, We've cleared it. There are no rams in here. Let's move on. Yeah, it's nicer. You can have that thirtitude because a lot of times you're walking through and you're like, I don't know, Like we would just travel when it was when it was cloudy. We would also just travel like you're gonna walk three, four or five miles into a new zone and then sit there hoping that it clears up. Or you have to just kind of sit there as the clouds blow through and now and then you sort of keep a mental picture of a mental map of what you've seen or not as the clouds have come through, and you'd be like, man, I still haven't seen over in that area. Then also in that area clear up enough, you look, but it just doesn't feel definitive because you're trying to find a white animal in white clouds. You lose a lot of time. Danny was telling us something interesting, Uh, explain what you've read about the things that factor into hunter success rates. Oh yeah, that that The The Efficient Game has a cool publication now read before this hump. But one of the interesting things in there was that, uh, the number you know, they fly annual surveys to index cheap abundance And apparently it's not a relationship between the number of rams and a given area and hunter success that it has more to do with just the weather in any given hunting season. Like if you've got if you've got clear weather and good visibility, then you gotta hire success rates. Yeah, that's gotta be something that's that's gonna be something that's applicable in a lot of places, but probably nowhere is severe Like you think like weather, I think well not waterfowl is huge man like weather for waterfowl in some areas where you don't have local birds, right, the weather can like ruin the harvest for a particulars. Yeah, yeah, but in in sheep on it's just like so kind of it's so stark, right, either you're hunting or you're not. Yeah, it can be that you just there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do. Ducks would be like, man, it would have been a lot better had the weather been bad. We got a few right at daylight, but then they shut down because there's no birth moving through Becau. There's no there's no clouds, so they're flying too high or whatever it winds up being. But this is like, this is yeah, it's just like it's kind of almost like on or off to some degree being able to hunt and also up in God's penthouse there's care we run around. It's funny because like the thing about cares think about is how sort of um disorganized and like and not not deliberate. They seem like at one point in time when we were trying to go through that I remember we try to go above that canyon. Couldn't have to abort mission and go and sleep and then try another route through. Three bulls are trying to come down this hillside and they can't see us. The smells their way away. We watched three bulls and they come and they kind of get confused and they're clearly trying to go somewhere in a hurry, and then all of a sudden they're down feeding back kind of where they came from. And then they were there twenty four hours later it was like, so, what was it when you ran? They were doing the scene. They were trying to come down through the same stuff we were trying to go up through, and they realized it was too steep at the same time we realized it was too steep. They backed off and spent the night uphill, and we backed off and spent the night downhill. And then we and then we crossed paths with him again the next day on the other side of the valley where we could travel. I think they were doing the same thing we were doing. It's so because they seemed like, I want to h there's like the so the largest land mammal migration on the continent caribou. Right, they can pull off some really astounding feats of navigation. But when you're looking at a caribou, particularly up in the moullas, it's like, do you have any plan? He's just like, you know what I'm gonna do, man, he says, But I'm just gonna run, like holy hell over that way. In a while later I'll run back. It's so weird watching them. It's weird, what are they thinking? They also don't get as scared as other animals of people, like because we ran up on them just to film and just see them quite curious. And then yeah, they came towards us. And then you guys were down at camp and me and Danny were still up high and then that one bowl just like almost like it spotted you guys and then rent them running away. It started running uphill towards camp, and then it got really close through my range finder. He was twenty nine yards away when he finally changed his mind. He was like, oh, wait a minute, this isn't my crew. I can pick it out. He came to us looking at us. He's because I think that they're you know, they're so gregarious, and they're such they have such a herd mentality. Uh. I feel that when they see something that's like kind of the right shape, they think it's another cariboo that they're like, I'm not gonna go so close that it could pounce on me and kill me, but I'm gonna go under the assumption that I'm looking at a caribou. It's the only thing I think is especially like out on the Arctic, like out on the Arctic slope, where you see huge distances most caribou, that you're coming across landscape. Most carebl when they see something then in some way kind of skirt then in some way want to kind of come to you. To they're going, they have to be thinking, like I'm gonna rule out that it's a caribou. This is the first thing on their mind. And also I just think that they the way they travel move, I think a lot of them go through life having no experience with people. You know, it's not like like a like a white tail box to gets me five years old, and all that thing has done. His whole life is dodged getting killed, and he learns that when you see that shape, get out of there. You want nothing to do with it. Man, Because I've seen sixteen and my friends killed by those things. I think that I think that the caribool just for whatever it's like, it's more beneficial for them to find other caribou than it is to run the risk of that you're running up on something that's gonna do it. And I think a lot of them haven't don't have any human experience. That's pretty cool. I think in that country, I think a ten year old doll ramp has to have probably accrued some human experience. Yeah, we saw tracks in a lot of the drainages. We were in human tracks. I think that they at that age, I think that they've have had exposure or they just learned to be paranoid about anything, you know. But like caribou, it seems like there's like their success as a species has so much more to do with it's just like high fore coundity than it does anyone individual. Um becoming a real caging and wildly because I just never seen one that was like real caging Wiley, Well it hasn't hasn't worked its way into their geno, my guess. Yeah. Um, they'd like to land the snow a lot because they get away from bugs. And that's the thing I know, Like before hunting cariboo, you would see him now and then run. But you could tell because they would run when the wind died. Yeah, because when the wind died, the bugs are too bad. And so then they'd run and stop and feed and then you'd see you could watch it happened enough minutes would go by that they'd pick up their swarm of black flies and mosquitoes, and then they'd run and stopping, feed and run, and that was just there grazing off into the wind. To their grazing pattern was just like to get clear of your cloud. Eat, Get clear of your cloud and eat. And you'd sit there and I remember getting up in the good glasses about hunting cariboo out on the Arctic slope, and you get up in your good glass about nothing's happening. And then mid day of eleven o'clock start to get warm and started to get real buggy. And also in the lamb would just come alive with caribou because all those carribore just nestled into their little dips and valleys and stuff where there was good lush feed. And the mosquitoes get bad and he starts seeing rolling over all the ridge tops as they're trying to run away, and then it'd be like good, then the hunting is good because you can also see them all around. Then it cool off or to get windy, and the amount of movement activity would die down. Strange animals, man, I like to hunt them, but it's like generally if you get on when you're gonna get them. Well, the one broadsided itself at like fifty yards maybe to us, and I was like, dude, you're just what are you doing? Man, you're just asking for it. Yeah, yeah, we could have. We could have got Carriban that area. Yeah, I wouldn't want to carry one that far. That would have been along. So hunted out God's penthouse. Um, Triple Nip, went to Triple Nipple. That looks spectacular. No one shot at a tarm again on the way to triple that. Yeah, he shot out a tarm. We're getting using rat shot, Uh, which isn't You said that they're working on a better version of that. Well, I I picked up a box that was bigger. I mean that's slightly bigger. Shot was like maybe nine shot number nine. Yeah, it looks bigger. We're talking about the shotgun shells you can shoot out. So you got a bear protection you got a bear protection pistol. Just talk about what everybody what you have for bear protection? Yeah, Smith and Western mile twenty nine. I think that is. I don't know we got the exact same one. But it's the air Light p D super lightweight. It like doubles in weight when you load it with I think it more than doubles, but really rounds. It's got a bunch of aluminumous titanium. I think yeah, um, but Anyways, it's a real popular bear side arm. I think it's kind of made for that, right, what the so yeah hurts like holy hell sheet, definitely, man hurts your hand. Yeah, but they make a shotgun show or because it rat shot. Yeah, you're not getting many in there. And you know, we were talking about why why it's hard, Why it's hard, why you get to be a point blank ranging for it to work. And it's not really the velocity or anythink it's got to be the fact that there's no choke, you know, to that round. And so even at ten feet barrel, who knows what that pattern looks like. It could be spread out to five feet already. It's ridiculous that we don't know what the pattern looks like. Good, we're gonna pattern in the strip, but we didn't have a piece of paper. I kind of forgot about it. I never thought, dude, I just know that I've been. Um, I don't know, I've been. We had a lot of shot opportunities one time hunting. She remember just sometimes being like, how in the world did I not get that thing? Yeah, I think it's it comes down to luck. Eventually that patterns will lose. Remember, we're a time we were out in the weather was really nice and we weren't even setting up tents. We're just laying out into laying out in the tund or to sleep. I remember waking up in the middle of the night. Remember it was two in the morning, but it was earlier in the season. There was two in the morning. I remember waking up two in the morning. There was a group of time in amongst our sleeping bags. They're really active at night, Yeah, moving around in amongst our sleep bags. I remember shooting one of those of the rat shot but it was point blank you know. Um, But other times you shoot, you like, what in the world happened? I think the effective range of that, it's like stuff is maybe like tential feet. You're pretty pretty good. Outside of that, it's real hitting this. Uh So we tried that. That didn't work. Um. I went to a drainage called triple Nipple. Then went around finally and had all kinds of walking, all kinds of weather problems. Our eighth the day, I think it was our eighth day of hunting. Yeah, our eighth day of hunting. The weather got broke and got beautiful, and we happened to be in a valley where we could get up on a ridge. Got up on the ridge and it was like the like the perfect the world's most perfect ridge where you could look down into multiple drainages if you kept going along this ridge, and it was like just like you expected to be, and everything's great. We see a band of lambs across the valley. Far away use or bandy Use later watched the grizzly stumble into those us. I think he's just minding his own business, feeding on berries, but scared the ship out of those things. They left left the drainage in a single file running line on that thing showed up. I look out and there's just like sheep running and I'm like, if they winded us from two miles away, that's impressive, but it was. Yeah. Then I looked more carefully, and there's a grizzly feed on blueberries right in the little patch they'd been in. So I think, I don't I don't know that I didn't see what happened. Maybe he does. She's like, what the hell, I'm gonna run after him and see if anybody's injured. But I didn't see what happened. But they were not happy with that situation and totally left like gone, um and then Danny sure enough like kind of like I felt like, what happened when conditions are so good is finds a ram clearly legal? What horn was? It left a left horn that was curved in such a way. It was like that brand like no stressful, walk over there, it's still be stressful. Yeah, it was a solid ram as a really nice ram. Yeah. And he's perched up in a rock pile just like you described, man on a sub bridge that divided a valley in center ridge between at the confluence of two streams. That he's up, yeah, posted up on that center ridge line and a little and he knew what he was doing. Man, not far off the bottom, not for off the bottom, tucked into a little like it a little cubby that he had there with a bunch of rock around him, hard to spot from most of you kind of did what like white tails like to do. Man, I didn't went to most of my life not knowing this, but Ken you always talks about this too. Is like those like mature bocks like to lay with something with a backdrop. They like to lay where they can see out and where something can't see him. Good from behind to back up into something. He's like, I can see this way. Usually if it's if there's a bit too we can cover about to seventy and there's it rolls off on three sides and they're behind him. There's a log or a real thick, dense stand of You know, he wants to be obscured from where he can't he wants to be hidden from what he can't see, but then you know, within clear view site for what he can't see, and that's that dude had it dialed and that little spot he had. Man, there was very difficult approach. Yeah, I bet you a lot of rams and laid over it, laid there over a long and if you could somehow kill off every rand that lived there and then repopulate it, it would be like one's probably gonna find that. He's probably gonna be like, yeah, it's a sweet spot. Lay down, hard to approach. Yeah, So we're on the ridge. What what was I don't I don't even know what our elevation was. We topped out it, we tapped out again that like it was fifty where we topped out and I don't know. We did some up, we did some down but somewhere around that mark, and he was maybe six ft below us. Yeah, I think he's six feet below us. A couple of drainages. Yeah, he was at forty you know what he was at forty five? He was at forty feet. But just no, there's no you can't come from it was impossible to come from behind him. Um, little been no way to come from behind him. So the first thing, he's ways away and we spot him. Yeah, mile, Well, I say, a couple of thousand yards away. Um, And we realized that. So Danny watches the Ram through a spot because the first thing we gotta do is like, we gotta move somewhere, because we had gotten where we were in the fog and sat in the fogged way for the fog to clear, and all of a sudden it clears and there's a ram there. So we didn't know if we could move because we've gotten where we got obscured by fog. And then the first thing is like, well can we even move from where we are without him taking notice of us moving where we are? So Danny's watching him through the spot scope and I just start skirting down to the nearest goalie to get into to go downhill out of sight, and I moved across the hillside, not even a hundred yards, but just moved. And Danny watches him to see if he like takes interest in what I'm doing, but he doesn't take any He doesn't he can't see us. Then one time I told you to stop is because if he was pointed in our direction, like oriented toward us. And the one time I told you to stop, it's because he stopped chewing his cut. Oh ship, something's up, and he went back to human. I'm like, okay, we're good. He repacked. So we're getting this goalie that's gonna kind of like deliver us down into his zone, knowing that there's still gonna be a lot to figure out. But the cliff face he's on. You can see these bands, these discolored bands in the rock, and so you know he's like I just remember memorizing he's like blow the third band. No matter where you go, you can find that the cliff he's on and count the bands and kind of know like his little zone and start trying to go down. This goalie's very treacherous, scary in places there's a lot of player You spent a lot of time hunting dollar sheet in places where um, if he fell, Like let's say, if you like, if you're not gonna like people don't just fall all of a sudden, but like if you fell in some sort of you would die if you felt but it was not like some places you die if you fell and you could really pick youre falling. A lot of places you realize, Man, if you fell, you die, But why would I fall? It's usually that one. It's like yeah, if but like, how would you like people don't just fall over a fall over rolling down hill. It's usually like different where you sort of slip. Yeah, you kind of slip and cling down, But if you got rolling, there's no end of the role. I had it in the back of my mind when we were sidehilling and all that stuff, that like if for some reason with like the pack or whatever, if I just tipped the wrong way and you didn't fall into the hill, you fell, man, Yeah, that was the only time. Like if I slipped and like tripped and then you end up falling the bad way, that's when that's when you're not having a good time. And that's the thing I was telling myself, when you do when it does occur to you. It's hard to get out of your head. But I think, like, but all the times I spent walking where that's not true. I've never were falling that way. Yeah, I've never fallen away from the hill. It only takes once. Yeah, you fall into the hill when you fall. Yeah. Yeah. I think your natural inclination too, is to just air in that direction so much with your center of gravity that you lean into it. Yeah. I was trying to figure out also, like how I was going to self arrest with the camera if I did start sliding. I was just gonna be like, Bam, don't do that to our gear. I would expect that you set it. You'd find a place on the way down to set it above a rock or something, and then you just go unlook your cord and just go. You know, Steve and I were Steve and I were crossing. Uh uh you see, guy, was that shoot or an avalanche had ripped through right and it all went down to the bottom watching avalanches all that day was that wet snow. We're mountain go hand was wet snow laying out wet grass, and I had and Steve was below me. He had crossed that snowy shoot and headed down and I was above him crossing, and I slipped and I was going down, but I had ice axe and it was fumbling loose behind me, and I got the ice axe in both hands, and I was just starting to dig that thing into the snow like it was a pretty clear slope that I wasn't about to go off cliff or anything. I was just gonna go for a long ride. And oh there's one rollover that I couldn't see what was in there, but then it was clear again below that, and I've got my you swept by me. I kind of tried to grab Here's what happened, though. I don't know if I told you this at the time or not, but I had my ice axe in both hands. I was just starting to press that thing into the snow. And I see Steve running out and his ice axes dangled from his wrist and and all I can see is that ice acs like going into my face. I had to drop my ice axe to deflect your ice axe, and I totally lost my self arrest and rowed down for another I don't know what you got hurt. I got banged up, Yeah, I mean, it could have been a lot worse. But I got banged up. You could have died there. I'm saying, like that sort of sort of thing, if that's sort of thing where all of a sudden you're just going, yeah, yeah, that's certain that that circumstance was a relatively benign you know, it was a scary ride down the mountain. But if yeah, that was over a cliff or into a rock face, I mean it could have been. That's what I meant. I could have died like that kind of fall where you know there's an abyss below you. I had. I was totally real interesting example of risk management. And like, you know, we're all in the mountains a lot, so we can do that, like I said, safely and outside of like some freak, you know, weird fall, you're gonna be fine. And I was talking to this YOSAR guy Yosemity Search and Rescue about big wall climbing and people are always like, how can you do that? It's so dangerous and you know, how do you're not dying? He's like, well, if if you're good at do well, yeah they do, they all die. Well. His point that it was like he's like, if you're you know, you you're comfortable in your environment. Then it's it's an example of like I tell him, if you're walking down the sidewalk and you fall into traffic, you're gonna die, but you just don't fall into traffic. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, when you're walk into the man if I fell in, Well, dude, every time you drive on a two lane road with like a fifty five speed limit, you're passing another car within five feet of death a velocity of so you don't focus on you like, jeez, if I some in traffic to be dead, I do think that all time. Yeah, no, and then you do have this kind of thing I think. Yeah, I watched my kid, one of my kids recently sort of have the idea of the cooperation it requires for highway driving. He was like asking questions about you know that everyone needs to be on the same page out here driving, but we need to be abiding by the same rules and we all want to be alive self preservation. But all that said, man, there is like now and then there are some moments what we a boarded a hillside, we didn't do a hillside because the gap below you was there was like a high consequence. It be like you it's not like, oh, you're gonna get banged up. It's like you're done. Yeah, if you go, there's no way to stop. And then there's a then there's a canyon. And it was wet, raining and the hillside was coming apart and were and we were cold and tired and around here like these are new mountains, man, they're like very new sharp mountains and they're just falling apart. Uh. There's a term in geology, angle of repose. It's like when a hill relaxes mm hmm, like everything on the hill, like the hills achieved an angle that everything on the hill is going to kind of stay where these hills are not at their angle of repose. No, to demonstrate that farther, when we were coming back the next day on the easy slope side, looking across, you could see where boulders rocks you know, who knows what kind of size. We didn't see the boulders themselves, but where they had fallen off the mountain. They'd be on shale and screen for a while and then they would hit where there was actually grass gripping, and it looked like, um, I guess it would look like a golf DVD, you know, with someone kind of shanks and you get like a two to three term. Yeah, shank, it's not I guess it's not a what is it? When you make it? Did? What do you do wrong? You just dig into but you basically make like a big scar in the turf. It's a great example. And it was like hundreds of yards of this going down the mountains, so there's so much lo sitting speed and mass because it's just so steep and moving that is just ripping these giant divots as it's moving down the hill and skipping some big sections. Yea. Yeah. We saw several places where they were very fresh landslide, some of them big enough that there was like a whole new like side drainage that had just released and and all that settlement went down to the valley floor and all of a sudden, there's like a new valley, you know, catastrophically formed. I asked about that lake we saw. There was a lake on a very peculiar lake in a very peculiar place in the bottom of these drainages, and you can see where the whole hillside gave away, came down and formed a lake. And I was asking the pilot and he said, sometimes within the last third years. Because of the last few years. Yeah, the a landslide had just slept all the way to the valley floor and damned up the creek and uh yeah, and then there's a obviously a brand new lake there, not a lick of vegetation. Yeah, brand new. Yeah. Yeah. And the landslide was a different color. You know, all the other all the other rock around there had kind of a rusty orange color to it, and that new slide was gray. And I assume the ones that oxydizes turn to that same orange color. It gets a patina, sure, yeah, it gets pat neated. Um start on this goalie like trying to get in the ram zone not like clear kind of like obvious what the what the possible shooting perchase might be. But because you can't it the ram was too far to hit him with a range finder, and so you couldn't get you couldn't measure other points. Yeah, because if you're looking at like let's say you're sitting there and you're looking at you're looking directly at something you're trying to sneak up on, and you're like and then before you see like a little rise or like a little ridge, and you're like, man, I wonder if I could shoot from that ridge and you range find the object you're trying to get to, damn, and you're like, okay that you know it's eleven yards away. And then you range the hill or little knob or something your side of it, and you hit that thing and that thing is yards away. You're like, money, when I get to that spot, I'm in range. I can make my shop. But you couldn't hit the ram with a range finder. So there's a lot of questions about what needs to happen. And I was even saying, like this ram like I'm definitely not getting the old gut knife out and getting it ready yet. But we start down this this we start down this shoot. It's really steep and you're kind of like on this open screen side. But there's these rock bands, these a little like many Chinese walls that are crossing, and every one of those is a cliff and you kind of pick your way around one like dropping the next drainage you go down, it's another cliff, and then it's then as you go down it picks up where it's got a lot of flow. There's a lot of water coming out everywhere, and so then it's like these waterfalls. It just it just becomes like it just became hard to picture it working out. And eventually we get to one spot where you can kind of get up and look at the ram and he's over six hund yards away, bedded down. It took us almost three hours to make it to that spot. Three hours to drop down. That did not feel like that long. It felt like an eternity. I thought, man, dude, I thought it was like I couldn't believe he's still laying there. Yeah, because I was watching those using lambs and they're up feeding away. They were bedded when we found them, but eventually they're up feeding him. Like he's probably up feeding by now because they're upfeeding. But three hours later there he is still hanging out. And the wind had been like in the gully bottoms, the wind had been going up the slope, and we pop up on this little subridge where you're looking across, and we just go out there. We're up there long enough to even like really get serious about making playing that some bit stands up, which is never a good sign. Yeah, and I think he winded us at six hundred yards. He never looked in our direction. Yeah, at that moment, the wind was going. You know, we're sort of in the straight in the wind of the main valley at that point, and that was going, that's a good point the gully. Yeah, there's a little sub winds going up the gullies, but the main valley also has its wind direction. And you pop up on the ridge out of the gully and I'm like, and you hit. I feel that wind the back of my neck wheel so far away. I didn't think it mattered. And all of a sudden never looked at us. Somebody stood up and there's a look to him like they don't do anything fast. They don't do anything. Everything they do is leisurely and deliberate. And he got up, and I was like, I'm out of here, bro, I'm gonna get out here very slowly. Yeah, I'm not gonna go breaking my leg, but I'm getting out of here. And he got out of there. I don't think it helped that you had six no, six dudes who haven't showered for nine days, six hundred yards out, six hundred yards up wind. No, it's like a it's the thing. Man, it's like, uh, it's the camera crew effect, you know, and you can never measure it. I mean sometimes you can measure it, like sometimes you see something happen where you like, I'll be like, I'm facing forward and something happens where I know I wasn't the one that did it. We're all a sudden gets something, gets really interested in what's going on in our area. And now, my dude, I've been sitting here, man, I haven't moved a moving. That's when you get to, yeah, you're damn it, someone moved. Um. I feel like it's like a kid that did something wrong. That's the only thing that makes me mad. Man. And I feel like I've done like clinics and workshops and everything. I'm trying to be like, here's how to approach game. It doesn't matter because even Triple Nipple, we're growing up a little box canyon and we get through the last box canyon and all of a sudden, the whole Triple Nipple Valley and your sons of bitches run out. You guys, like run out like a couple like opening the door for a couple of dogs in the morning. You guys run out of that Box Canyon. I'm like, what are you doing? The whole point was this moment. This is why we've come up here, was to get here. And look, I think it's like what is going on? That goes back to your argument of like turning a hunter. Is it better to turn a hunter into a cameraman or a cameraman into a hunter, you know, because like in that moment, I was like, Oh, this is this cool thing and like this cool feature, and like it'll be a super cool shot if I'm out here and get the dudes coming around. But in your mind, both of your minds, you're like, this is our like secret zone to sculpe this whole thing out. Nobody moved, you know, So like the mindset is just you just gotta make that switch. Yeah, we're peering out from this little gate where we're hidden and tucked away, and it's like if there's something here at this point, it would not know that we're here. Yeah. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, like, oh, that's a cool wide. I was just reading an article. I was reading along article about when these uh white supremacist dudes were going to give a lecture at Berkeley, Like they've been invited by some student club to give a you know, one of their white supremacis Yeah, there's an article about how Berkeley was handling this, what they're gonna do, and um, one of the people who's in charge of one of the people that one of the administrators at the university is discussing this sort of dilemma. And she realized that the way that these people manipulate the lead up to the event and turn it into like a news event in a social media event, like all the lead up and it becomes more about the response. And she was saying, like, this person is saying that. The metaphor I'm starting to see is like I traditionally viewed a lecture and the digital recording of the lecture as being an object in its shadow m And I thought that this person is gonna come give a lecture, and the lecture that they're going to give is the object, and then out of this will come a recording that people consume, and that's the shadow of the object. What you said, what I've come to see when dealing with these people is the object is the digital the digital portion that's the object. The actual thing is just a shadow of it. And I was reading out there day at the airstrip, and it occurred to me, like there's this thing in recording hunting and making like a hunting show is is you like, in a perfect world, you imagine that the hunt is the object, okay, and the thing that we create is its shadow. But in a lot of ways, just out of the reality of it, becomes that the thing we're creating is the object, right, Like there were times when we were we had we sat still because there's no way that the cameras could withstand that monterrange, so like there's no sense of going, so we can't feel in that way, and so you're in this struggle where also the thing we're creating, the digital impression we're creating, becomes the objects and the hunt itself becomes its shadow. And you're always pushing and pulling on those two ideas, you know, So what is the object and what's the right It was like it was a good thing to read at the right moment. It was a good expression. That's a good metaphor for that's a good way to put it, for sure, and for the greater good. I think the object being the story digital digitally does does more for people than a successful hunt for you without the story. So that's why you make that call. But you're right, and it's it's like there's no end to it. It's an it's like this wrestling match that constantly occurs in your head. Yeah, And when I get pissy and frustrated in my head, I often think to like that the doing of this enables so much of the mean. But it's it's a it's a tricky thing that and I'm sure that anyone that turns, anyone that turns a passion into an occupation, And it's a situation you guys are in in as can because here you are. It's like when you come out with us, you're working. You work eighteen hour days, you work twenty four hour days. Yeah, there's no escaping it. Just sleeping in a tent in the mud. Even sleeping is a little work. You're burning calorie sleeping. It's hard when you gotta go like dig out, when you got to dig out the place to sleep. But when your passion is is doing that, yeah, that it makes it easy. That's what I mean. But you're like, it's am I at work or not at work? Working eight days ship one big long me and my younger brother, who's a photographer as well, went to our older brother who's a carpenter's house and was helping to move some dirt, and you know, like just manual labor. And we both looked at each other like, Damn, We're glad we do what we do. We're not out here doing a grind. You know, this is hard, and I've done those grinds too. That's why I appreciate what I do now so much. I remember in high school I worked for this late high school, I worked for this industrial painting outfit called Quality main Well two of them Pennington Brothers and Quality Maintenance contractors. And one time we were, um, I mean, this dude from high school, Craig Camp, had to like de grease all the like roof trusses in the auto parts manufacturing place so they could come in and paint them. I remember being up there and we were on these like scissor lifts, you know. I remember being up like working with the just this endless pile of rags and degrease. They're trying to get the stuff so it could be cold with paint. And when we showed up, like the first shift dudes were there. I me and Craig were out there. It was like such a tight deadline that were up there, and I'm still in high school. Man, It's like a weekend thing organic chemical degrease or press. Eventually, those sons of bitches were back again. The first shift guys were back, like I recognized that guy from me, and Craig started, that's how long we've been up there de greasing these things? And I'm like, the whole damn shift came through. And then one probably said to Craig like, gonna make it through. As if crazy Train comes back on the radio. I started playing like a radio and like crazy like it wasn't even a new song. We're there so long degrease and ship that crazy Train got played twice. So I was like, man, I don't know. I don't know about shift work. I don't know if I'm gonna making this occupation. That's that what was Edd's quote, that's that fire that forms us, forged by fire. We had another job. Danny worked this job, remember having a handship paint off a rail around a sewage treatment tank because they couldn't get You couldn't sand blasts or soda blasts because they couldn't have the sand or bacon soda getting into the sewage because mess up the sewage treatment. So you had to read up this little plastic tarp from bang out with a ball peen hammer. God dude, this is a huge tank and it was the three It was a three wrong guard rail around up vertical supports. We had to bing off every square inch of that paint. Man, we'd come back. We can after we can. And you guys like let them play crazy train on the Latin just tinking it off with hammers. That's so hard to that's so hard to the adend of the medal, but just hard enough to knock, just hard enough to knock off a chip of paint by half size your pinky nails. Yeah. Then when you're up there like your biggest problem is your camera, guys keep busting out into the open. You're like, I can live with it. I can live with this. Yeah, Man, that's all I gotta say about that sheep hunt. He got away, he got away, he's still out there. He's lucky. He'll be getting bigger. He's gonna be a real nice one like Doug during Nice Buck next year, Nice Ram next year. Yeah, maybe maybe a dead ram before before the end of winter. Yeah, they don't get old. Yeah. We found uh, yeah, we found it. We found a ram skull, a winter kill, presumably right right by camp. So yeah, when they get that age, they don't last a real long time, even in an unhunted population. Um, they just drop off like flies after ten. Yeah. Yeah, I think part of it, right, is that is that they're just not They work so hard during the rut, right, and they're not putting weight on, and they go from top of the heat to dead. They get up where they're the man and they rut in November and expend it's a tremendous, tremendous amount of injury and expose themselves to a lot of risk. Yeah, and they go into and then they go into the and they go into the winter not kicking ass. So you get these used it will be twenty and stuff, right, but then you get these rams and they and and like I said, even this unhunted population that they were doing that. Like, I think that when a ram gets thirteen, he's got a percent chance of not being alive in a year, and that ten, it really drops off. Yeah, they go from being the man and nothing, not like us. We have this long forty year period of watching ourselves go to ship Danny got the final things you want to Um yeah, we well we got we started talking about it yesterday, but um yeah we should find a time and try try giving it their go. So yeah, every time I'm hunting the last I come away just like obsessing about what I'm gonna do it again. Oh I know, you know, yeah, I was thinking about this morning. We're trying to go on a moose and caribou trip here and uh, hunting partners having boat trouble and everything else, and man, maybe we should just go back out pounder. Uh as a camera person, don't skyline yourself or bust out in the open at inopportune times. That yeah, getting the mindset of the hunt, that's right, the object and act in the shadow, not the cameraman. This outline the skyline shots to one of the better. It's a good shot, man, that's a good shot. Dirt myth um. I was thinking about all. It was really cool watching you guys as brothers hunt because I'm really close to my brothers and like you guys stories and that was just kind of neat, you know, different. Yeah, my other guests, I guess you guys. My first exposure to you and your brothers was being at your dad mom's house in my city and there was a picture of you and both your brothers on a mountaineering trip. Damn. Was like some interesting dude. You were right, you were right? So that Yeah, it was really fun hanging out with you guys and watching you hunt together and reminding me yea, my good times, my bros. Janice. I just had to reiterate, man, what a pretty pretty place that was. I don't We've been a lot of places the last five years together, and this one m topic first scenery, it's pretty dramatic. It is just yeah, every views, you know, brother taking when you get to see it. You know, we only had two real bitch and weather days out of eight in the field. In those two days, man was of something special. I'm really drawn to those glaciers, man. Yeah, Like looking at him, I mean yeah, you're kind of like you don't want to hang out near him for too long. Killed by rock or just lifeless too, you know, like lifeless from not lifeless. Yeah, it is. It's intimidating, man, But I like being where you look up and you're like, oh, there's like then there's like the n that's where this river starts, and the weather is so much squirrelier by him, too windy. Yeah, because the ice makes its own way. Definitely not lifeless. I mean really, it's the beginning of it all, is what you're looking at a good perspective. It's the beginning of its cold when you get up in there, there's no shaking it. Man, it's a cold. It's just going to your bone. Yeah, like they kick off their own little weather. They kick off, and they kick off a wind, like all that cool in air just rushing down off the ice and a lot of moisture condensing and that cold air around him. We've got snow down August. Yeah, that's the weird thing about Alaska's getting snowed out in August. But I already heard was my wife was just telling me a little snow in the mountains around our new house there. Yeah, alrights, Angeles Levi conclus I'm glad to tag along much appreciate it. Did you like that more? You like when they make you march all around in the military. No, that was a lot more fun. No, I had a good time. I appreciate the chance to come out and hang out, fun hanging with you, Levi. Yeah, that was good having you man. Thanks for the puke and rally especially. Yeah. Yeah, that was really to go up from puke and to better that fast, and it wasn't a drinking puke and it was a sick Yeah. So I went to bed one night and then woke up in the middle of the night and had to run outside the tent and trying not to peek on your honest, I wonder what you're doing out there. Yeah, it ran out they were having night tears and never thought that someone was throwing up outside tent, which is never a good sign. Ran out, and you know, I chucked up my dinner and then uh, Johnnie and I did a mega hike to book up three hours later and down another ten miles. You know, I had to run back to base camp for some batteries more than ten miles. Yeah, it was a long Johnt. It was a good it was a good huff, but definitely worth it. And uh, yeah, what we hope to have you back again when you're depending on what you got going on. I'd love to for sure. All right, thank you for joining us as always, assssssssssssssssssssss