00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X. All right, we're here, joined in part by um Kurt. Was it harder than woodpecker lips? Or tougher than woodpecker lips? Roscoe? Harder? Harder than Kurt, harder than woodpecker lips? Roscoe? Out of Bozeman, Montain? Did you know that that was your that's a guy wrote in I remember you mentioned in that last time harder than woodpecker lips. I don't think we had the saying right at that point, though. You gotta trademark that. Yeah, and I know now that you have. I've witnessed it now. You're very you're monastic, um your sort of monastic food regimen. Yes, it's pretty simple. I don't view it as simple. I will see now I'd call it hardcore. Oh, it's totally hardcore. It's harder than a woodpecker's lips. Everything, everything about Kurt's ship is so dialed. Yeah, I've just taken notes all week. I felt like my I was just a hot mess compared to Yeah. Just everything is his pack, his food's a funny he's like his clothing system. Everything. Guy just so fucking dial anytime I was drinking hot liquids, I was like, God, I'm weak. Yeah Kurts from Kurts a designer at Stone Glacier and like a founder at Stone Glacier. Yep. Yeah, started in two thousand twelve, bought a Sola machine bot asan machine ah years before that and like a little old lady sewing away. Yeah. Uh. Curtis explained as before is that you would modify your backpack so much that you'd eventually wind up was sort of a different backpack. Well that's really how it all started. Um, and uh, it took a while. It took probably a couple of years, but yeah, you keep tweaking on little things. Started with the bags and started with the frame, and at the end of it you end up something completely new. So that that was really where the whole company started. I want to detail his monastic food regimen. And it made sense this trip because Kurt Ford goes see. Here's where it gets a little bit like, this is where I kind of got thrown off. I was telling the boys last night, if I could, that's gonna sound it's gonna make you uncomfortable. Kurt's comment, it's a compliment, but it might make you feel uncomfortable. I was saying, if I could vacate my brain for a while and go live in a different brain, I'd probably like, I'd probably go live in yours for a little while, like, and there's not there's very very few people I would say. This's about like if I could go occupy, like I would live in my same house, family, like, same all stuff, but just have like be in your brain for a little while and be that um that Here's what I'm trying to say to honors. Here's what I understand. You don't like to when you're out. You drink coffee at home, Yeah, but you won't drink coffee out hunting because it's too inconvenient. Uh. And so you wake up and just energy bars and instead of coffee, you take a coffee a caffeine goo yeah, and then you're out the door, yeah, of the tent. Yeah. But even in a situation where we had warm breakfast and had coffee and you didn't have to make it and it was there anyway, and it was just there. You still wouldn't eat it, Like, why, what are you trying to prove a point? No, No, I'm just h and a lot of the things I do in life, and hunting being one of them, I just kind of get dialed in on my system. And and so when I wake up in the morning part of this, I'm really hungry. So the first thing I'll do is roll out of my bag and grab a bar to eat. And then when I'm getting all my stuff packed and getting dressed, so you're eating in your bag when I'm starting to climb out. Yeah, so by the time I have my boots on, my gators on, I'm gone. So there's no cooking. It's uh, it's just kind of trying to be efficient and not haven't get up earlier just so that you can make coffee. That doesn't I'd rather lay in my bed or in my bag and get more sleep and be warm. But what was going on when you, um, you wouldn't even you snubbed our campfire. I didn't know it snubbed your campfire? Do you know that. I don't know if you guys knows Kurt wouldn't go buy the campire. I didn't notice that. I didn't notice that we were there, stood off in the distance. Fire. You didn't want to be correct? Yeah, the fires too heatonistic. He didn't want to be He's like, I don't want to become soft by going by no campfire. That second night, you were the last one by the campfire. Yeah. Maybe he just didn't want holes in his gear. I want to have a ton of spark holes. Uh, we're gonna we'll get back to that. We'll get back some of that stuff I want to I want to cover off on a couple of things. Um, you'll appreciate this stuff. Remember how we were just hunting in June, we hunted orcs at the White Sands missile Range. We're not there. I'll rehash off range in New Mexico. We had a whole show about this, but I us explained it folks real quick. In New Mexico, there's like two RICS hunts. It's more complicating this, but just to simplify things, there's two RICS hunts. There's on range, which means you get to actually hunt the White Sands missile range, and it's real hand holding, Like it's like a nine percent success rate, but real handholding. You gotta go do a little seminar. They kind of tell you you can go over there, but you can't go over there. And at seven o'clock you gotta be out of here and you can't start until it's just very like you know, it's like being in the army. Yeah, and it's on. It's that way because on a military base secret they got unexploded ordinance all around. Yeah, they got aliens locked up. It's like they got all kinds of stuff going on there. So it's real handholding, but you're gonna get one, like if you show up, you'll get one, and they call it once in a lifetime hunt. So once you draw on range, you can't ever draw it again. Meanwhile, the rest of the damn state is off range. And that's a very low success rate. Um, what was it? I remember? What what's the ten percent? Why do they fail? Just probably don't show up up or their their day. Want a hog? Right, you have no idea? And on range they got all this other ship like they got a broken horn season where you can shoot one with a busted horn. It's crazy, but I'm trying to speak generally. Anyhow, when you're hunting off range, you can hunt the whole damn state, but it makes most sense to hunt along the fence line. Then some bitch things hundred thirty miles and the at the south. We just kind of worked one the western We kind of worked the western edge within zero within leaning on the fence, which I always felt guilty about. When I leaned on that fence, I kind of leaned flath handed so that my fingers didn't go into the missile range. From leaning on the fence to five what five six? We killed one what five miles off five miles out of the range. You'll appreciate this story. Something happens there where footprints, thousands of year old footprints get solidified in that sand down there, Like when conditions are right, someone can walk through and leave footprints in the mud. That's what it is. When when it happens to be wet, you leave a footprint, and the way it dries and blows in, things that happened in the mud gets stuck in the mud, Like what concrete sidewalkers. Check this out. This is the coolest thing in the world. I like to think Rick could appreciate it, but he uh, I don't know. You have to tell us Rick. I wish Rick had one of those dials. You could just tell how. I want to get some dials installed in here where people that are in can turn it up if they like what they're hearing, and turn it down if they don't, because it would improve the quality of the show so much. Yeah, but you'd be looking at the dial. That's all I would look at right now, I just look at the timer. If there was a dial and all the dials minute by minute ratings, that's what you want. Yes, I don't know everyone in here had a dial, and in all those dials, people don't know what they want. All those dials were collated into a single meter. So Kurt might be like zero zero zero doesn't like this story. Great, could be like I love it, and Ridge poonders like ten ten so it's throwing me or whatever. Five. That's how you get mediocrity. I feel like when I tell you what I'm gonna now tell you this, that son of a bit should be code read ten. Okay, they got some foot prints, hear this out? They have some footprints today know are at least ten thousand years old. In the White Sands. Outside of the closed area, they can't follow the trail into the top secret part of the missile range. They're not allowed to follow the trail in it. It's a long trail of a barefoot person. They feel it was a young mailer woman based on shoe size, carrying a child on their hip barefoot. How can they tell that because they think it was on its carrying it on its left hip because now and then they'd set the kid down. Oh, and they would have the footprints. So it's a youngish male or female carrying a child, occasionally setting the child down. The child walks with when the child's not walking, the gate of the person changes in their way. There a more weight on the left HIPO. They walked one way and then they came back on their same trail, and in the time they were gone, a mammoth and a giant ground sloth stepped on their tracks, and they're able to the mammoth and ground sloth tracks on the person's tracks. And then the person came back over the same trail, crossed the mammoth and ground sloth tracks, not carrying the child. Oh my god, not carrying the child, not caring. They brought the kid, oh wherever. Someone's like, hey, can watched my kid? And you're like, I slot, can you, like whatever? Can you watch my kid today? I'm having a date night, So if you don't mind, bring it back over to my camp later. What wouldn't the climate have been ten thousand years ago in New Mexico in that area they definitely had and there was mud. Yeah, there was MUDs. It's not like it wasn't frozen. But there's a mammoth. That's why they know the date. I think it's like it's obviously like you gotta think it wasn't the last mammoth, but that it was the last mammoth that crossed her trail. Yeah, so you know, the clock changes all the time, Like the first humans to arrive here, the fashionable number used to be like thirteen thousand years ago. Now they got sites sometime around twenty years ago. Mammoths were largely gone by, you know, twelve thirteen thousand years ago. So somewhere in that window there's a theory that not really a theory that you couldn't have peopled the America's prior to the invention of the eyed needle. Like, they had to have had tailored clothing because they came through Siberia. Oh yeah, so these are people that had to have had to have known how to make footwear, had to have known how to make parkers because of where you know they came from. Where's the meter at rick? Pretty high into it. Tell me more, Steve, he could go Roger Ebert and he'd be thrown a couple of thumbs right now, so rix meters? Yeah, like high. So these tracks just the sand eventually blew away and they walked in the mud. I'm looking. I got the thing right now, so it's like sandstone now yeah, well no, because here's the thing. I'm looking at the article trying to not just have to read the damn article, but it they walked in the mud, and we're sliding a lot in the mud and wish they had some schnaze boots or something. Yeah, I wish they had crampons or something. They were sliding a lot in the mud and dodging something like now and then revering and hopping. They throw mud puddles, are mammoth ship whatever. They had some hops, so yeah, they'd set the kid down and rest down, then kid a mill around. What what happens is um, So there's four hundred footprints and they would make a track in the mud and then things with dry and sand and blow in the problem with they've known about the tracks for a while. The minute you excavate the track and reveal it, it's it vanishes. Oh man, So they film it or some purposefully, don't you know, going and do them all. But they said, it's full of White Sands National Park. It's full of these old prints. That's crazy. That's really cool. And there's a slight shifting coloration that will reveal the tracks when you guys were down there called ghost tracks when you guys were hunting, did you was it that that climate that you left your mark? Oh? I'm sure someday they'll dig it up and be like, uh, they'll find me in South in there real vibro logo. Some guy really knew what was up with some dude kind of I didn't really know what was up. You can tell his tracks. No, that's great, that's an interesting story. Now with your meters high, it's gonna make your meters go lower. I had a I was telling a story about my kid getting a nap a red legged fly in his ear? Do you ever have that? Courts horrible. I feel like you'd have that because you hunted him Alaska so much and stuff. Well, yeah, the little no cms that climbed around, but you never one against your ear drum. No, not with the one that I couldn't get out. It sounds terrible. It was in there, and it was. It was so bad. It was affecting his equilibrium and making him nauseous. Oh man, So how old was he when this was happening? Just the summer hunting cariboo? Well, we were actually butchering carriboe back at the air strip at the not the air at the air carrier. So was it alive and there kind of moving around and freaking him out. I was with this dude, this old roommate. I had this dude named Dan one time, and he got a cat is fly. We're fishing. He had a hell of a night that night. He caught a bat on his back cast and he didn't like that one bit. Then he uh got a cat is fly in his ear and full whipped. Then he slept in his car and wouldn't get out to peaks he thought a mountain lion was going to get him. Um, that reminds me real quick. I'm putting this. If you can go and look on Instagram, you'll see this picture. Just dude to send us a picture of a pelican that goes down in his ditch and catches a carp. Tries to fly away with the cart, but it's such a heavy load he can't get elevation, goes into the power lines, hits the power lines, catches on fire god lands and starts a brush fire je and he sends a picture of the pelican land there, hung up in a barbed wire fence with a big fire scar moving away from it across the ground, still with the cart hanging out of his mouth. That kind of day. That's kind of day this dude had. And we got it out with a pair of fishing hemus like a hemostat. Oh you were able to go in and do the catos when this dude Dan had it happened to him and we practically had to pin him down. Yeah. Um, well my boy got it. Someone's like put hydrogen peroxide in there, and we dumped hydrogen peroxide there and holy ship, that bug come out in a hurry well. Our resident physician here at Meat Eater, Adam Lazarre, wrote in advising don't do that. He says, on average, he's an emergency room. He's been on the podcast. Uh. When he was on the podcast, the thing I remember most is that you remember, like for our whole lives, for our everyone in this room, our age group, car crashes where our lead cause of death had always been that. When he was on um, opioid overdoses had surpassed car crashes as the thing that will kill you man, cardiac arrests. No, that kicks in next between thirty and four year Yeah, it was like it had always been like vehicular collisions would kick in it like eighteen or something like that, or sixteen, and then up to a certain date like that's what that would be your lead cause of death, and then it switches to like heart disease and all that. Ship. But opioid overdoses for males, opioids were killing more dudes than cars. Jeez, it's a real problem. I got a bug ear thing. Could I didn't know? Please hold tight talks, let me finish my thing. That's why, because I need to point this out because he's like He gets people four and five times this summer um in the emergency room, moths and whatnot in people's ear canals. He uses a very viscous light of cane to drown the bug and anesthetizes the ear canal. Oh so he doesn't want because he's a doctor and he has access though, and of cool stuff. He like pain relieves and wipes out the bug. He suggests, if you're gonna do this at home, dump mineral oil in there. Huh, it's hydrogen peroxide is too strong of an oxidizer. If you had a hole in your tympanic membrane, the chemical could possibly damage the inner ear on the other side of the membrane. Also, you don't want that bug moving around vigorously drowned. You put that oil in there. And he's like, he's not like, is that why your kid ran into the truck with the snowblower this morning? Is he all right? No, he just ran he also uh, he also just he doesn't look where the snouts pointing, Oh yeah, just right in my face, man, and then crashed into the Oh, he's having a great time. Crashed into the truck. And then he like sees the neighbor shoveling and abandons our whole project to go over there and save the day with the snowblower. It's like, yeah, go over He's like that first and stuff does he does? He gotta matching many jigging ones. He like you you g um go tell me your buckstory. Oh just on fire and setsmate known about this too, But firefighters moss in the ears. It's coming because if you're doing like nighttime fireline cutting, all these bugs are flying around and you've got headlamps and so a lot of times though whatever whatever reason though right into the ear and they drawn to the headlamps. So we had our superintendent on the shot crew, got one stuck in for like a day and just yeah, like you're saying, just driving him make him nauseous. Yeah yeah, he was like, out, have you been glad to be uh not firefighting this summer? Yeah? Yeah, no, I mean you miss the camaraderie. But hell, hell no, you don't get camaraderie hanging out with us. No, that's what I mean. I got. I got that and that's all that I got from firefighting. So that's all he liked about it. Yeah, yeah, do you mind real quick sharing what's going on with you guys, A little dipping, like where you're at with the dipping right now? The different products you guys are into now that Kurt reunited Kurt's patch, that's one thing like that monastic bullshit that falls apart. Dude, it's Kurt as a nicotine addiction. No, but he stuck to his throwing a day. That's not added. You haven't had one to day performance and hancing out there and you've been around these guys. Yeah, and you still Terence. You're stuck to not buying anything, yeah about anything. Oh so that's why how you draw the line. Yeah, but it's a little chink in your armor. Man, a sucker person do Yeah, what what's product you're using nowadays? I mean it's zen. It's just it's straight up science nicotine. It's nicotine powder, so there's no tobacco product. So it doesn't make you have cancer, that's what they say. But again, as we're talking about at the trail Head, it's only been out for like a year or something, a couple of years. They don't know. It's probably worse for you than but hasn't haven't we proven that nicotine can like nicotine itself can cause cancer. That's what I had this argument with someone I don't know, but I just assumed that. No, I think, yeah, nicotine alone is a carcinogen or whatever. I don't know about that. Yeah the fact checker, Yeah, fact checker, I definitely be wrong about but it is less. It's definitely less abrasive and more convenient. So it's uh. I I started him to quit chewing, and I just double yeah. Yeah. Years ago, Garrett was down in South America with his quit and plan was, did you bring like a brand you were gonna quit while you're gone? Yeah? And the plan was to bring a brand you didn't like, Yeah, so you weren't gonna quit, yeah, it was yeah, it was you're gonna bring a brand you didn't like. Well, and so you brought Grizzly. Yeah. And then I ended up finding when I ran out, I went a couple of days and then like spent a week focused on finding nicotine, and I found the general at a like Norwegian hostel or something, and then you got dope. Yeah. And then Garrett was saying he got back home and went into a gas station and the cans were talking to him from behind the counter and buy me. Okay, so your flavor now with you like white brand it school classic long cut in uh um, but you also like have some of that and then you just have straight nicotine and then you have some more long cut. Well I used to put them both in at the same time. I mean, if there's beers involved. Sometimes but usually usually I would go but you'll find surprising. I'd only do to choose in the morning, to choose in the afternoon, and then you know, cocktail hour. It's kind of game on the cocktail hour. Do you run one long one or you rotated out between beers? Yeah, one long one kind of is the two choose um one right after another at in the morning and oh no, no, it's it's up to me. But so if I burned those two choose before tanna, I gotta wait till twelve so I can't get you seft me down in the engineering. So it looks great, it looks like so much more authority. I know, whatever you said. But now i'd be like, oh, you'll tell me more. That's like power sitting over this this board, lights and knobs and slide. It's intimidating. But now now instead of having a break from nickotine. I pop his in in. Dude, I read one of those ins yesterday for like four I'd like disintegrated my lips and we were loping all the steep stuff that I got all stressed out about. I ran it for the whole day, which may or may not have helped, you know, framed in our studio here is my favorite possession in the whole world is when Dirt made the cover of dip Aficionado magazine. Rick's photo when we were in uh Wyoming Anglo punning. Um, I think chat was that you that gave Rick one of those inns. Oh there's one thing about this that cannot be spoken. What who was doing? What dipping? Oh yeah, there's a top secret dipping. My My dipping was not top secret. Don't tell any stories about I had it in for like in it and I was like, oh, yeah, I got all light headed. I'm not a nicotine did you have to defecate? But I know people use it for that reason. My brother, his colon has a annex that there's a coal that his colon has an offshoot colon that needs nicotine to it's always loaded. Because he's like, I could taking a growler could be the last thing on my mind, like zero need to take a growler the minute he has a dip. There it is. So the only explanation is that there's a part of annex to his colon that is activated, that's locked and loaded nicotine and the primer, the primer that the spark, the flint and steel so to speak, is uh dip because then there it is over kind you had that happened at my oman camp. You were having issues. Yeah, I mean it definitely keeps me regular, that's for sure. Is that why you use it? Yeah? I'm kind of like Yanni when I think, yeah, once you travel. Me and my brother one time we're on an elk hunt. My brother is the same way, and I swear we both didn't go for six days. But our stomachs don't bloat. It's just like we eat, and so it goes somewhere. It all up into the tobacco annex. But that the the dip definitely helps the ends. Just for my wife listening, it doesn't cause cancer. The research didn't they say vaping was better for you than smoking. I just looked it up. Nakeotine. They're doing some research about its rolling as a cancer causing agent, and if not itself, it metabolis metabolizes into some chemicals that are cancer causing, so after you ingest it just pure nicotine. They always thought that the other substances were the oh too, but some of the you know, the gum and some other stuff could still Yeah, but when it get like if you go to like calor like, it can't be like the California kind of cancer. Yeah, because that's heavy. That's everything. Everything I buy you can't. He already knows in California, get airplane, you're gonna get cancer for getting on the airplane. Fishing. Fishing cancer known by the State of California to cause cancer. A sinker, Yeah, but I think nicotine is probably in a more reasonable category of Hey, it's better than opioids though. Yeah. So I don't want to be labor the thing. But I was telling you what I want to do is get into um oh the child. When we're down in New Mexico, I had a dip off of a tell everybody what that was. I liked a lot um it was. Yeah, I can't remember that name. Mike Rule had it. I'm gonna remember because Daniel Morgan wrote the best Daniel Boone, Robert Morgan, the guy by the last name of Morgan, the best Boone biography. So I'm gonna remember. I like Daniel Boone and I like that. I remember because I used to buy well, I used to dip or ch Levi Garrett when I was like in college and stuff, just like side hack? Was that a dude, Levi Garrett? I don't know, it makes jeans too write or no, I don't know, never mind, you know what. I'll tell you something. But if like the Morgan ship was cheaper, so if I was running low on fund said by Morgan instead of oh, Morgan's cheaper than Levi Garrett. Yeah, so what this dude does? This dude Mike Rule, uh, quit you but still choose. How's that work? Because he beat the same thing. He beat the addiction so thoroughly that he can now just have a recreational dip and then not dip for weeks. It's kind of like a dude that quit smoking cigarettes, but like has a cigar every once in a while. That's exactly That's a great way of looking at it. Yeah, I'd argue that I'm a recreational dipper though, it's just timelines different. I know Ronnie Bam, who mostly Ronnie Bam got addicted to cigarettes through cigar smoking. He went to the other directions. He started smoking stogies. He might tell you this story a little bit differently for both my observation. He's no, I think he'd agree. He started smoking like old man type stogies, you know, like big fatties, then started smoking like little dinkers and that was basically smoking stogies. It looked like a brown cigarette, and then just went to cigarettes. It's like one of those things like you know those like evolution charts or like a little monkey. He turns into a bro. It would be like a dude turned into a little monkey his like path. Yeah, so so he's off this because I remember on that. I don't know where he's at right now, but he was. He was chain smoking, uh Swisher sweets. Dude, he like he like monkeys one off the other. Yeah. Yeah, Like that's like smoking cardboard roll like tobacco rolling cardboard man. Speaking of bone, here's the here's an art little thing I want to talk about. Uh, this is this is a this is applicable to me and Seth because me and seth there are going on a muzzleloader flint lock. We're gonna help with some flintlocks old old style hunting. On a recent podcast US we were talking about, uh, like did front did you did? Did users of muzzleloaders not people who are like doing it for funzies, but like people who are actually shooting muzzloaders. Um, did they free poor powder or did they measure powder? And and when you're watching old westerns, they're always free porn, right. This guy rolled in, he said, there's this thing you need to consider about this part of measuring today is because we have standardized powder. Back then, he said, it was way more art than science. And you're like, powder was all it was highly variable And I forgot about this detail. As Boon would even make his own powder. How's that? Well? The first time he went over the Cumberland Gap, he was going on a year long He hunted and built up a small fortune of hides, otter beaver, deer hides. The pawnees stole him, stole his stuff, decided to stay an extra year, worked up another big load they stole that came back empty handed. So he was gone two years, ran out of gunpowder and he got sulfur from deposit. He got burned willow, so he got back guano for phosphate, phosphate batgwando for phosphate, burned willow and had ash which was some component of it. Got sulfur from uh like a lick, like a deposit, and then use his own piss. They would wet the mixture. They'd make the mixture and wet it with your own piss. Then you'd spread it out and let it dry and you'd make this poderway this dude wrote in talking about that's insane. Then it was like what all powder was different? So the fact that you're like old Bessie shoots best with a hundred grains of powder would be depends on it just wouldn't even be like in their thinking. It would be that there's hot powders and shitty powders and powders that got wet too many times and you drive them back out and it would just be just very touch and go all the time. Um, So you'd figure out your powder amount for that batch that you had just a very fluid. And I think you got to think about like now when dudes, um, Now, when people hunt with most loaders, do you use any kind of like archaic ar chick technology. This is the thing I ponder all the time. It's like you're abbling in a thing that was just what people did and new. So if you're let's say you're boone, your father had one of these, you had one of these, shot one of these. From the start, it was regarded as a technological advancement. It was a cutting edge piece of equipment. It wasn't you weren't like fussing. You weren't like messing with something. You weren't like experimenting with something. It would be the same as like their relationship to that technology would be like your relationship to your phone, just very ingrained, daily ingigrained, highly intuitive. It's like it wouldn't you know, it's not like now like, oh, we have this date set where we're gonna go shoot flintlocks, you know, and blow our faces off. It would be just like you lived it all the time. So I just probably didn't feel like how we think it felt. But I'm sure there's improvements within within each of those technologies that they're really excited about totally, like little small things like like smooth board to rifle barrels, yeah, or big advancement. What are what are you guys shooting? Is it rifled? What's the range for you guys? This hunt? I guess depends on the person, but I'm I'm looking fifty yards and in tick liquor? What's yours? Steve? Like close like the bull. I wounded the bull and lost it last year with the not even Yeah you didn't even have an explosion go off in your face. Dude. That thing hit the ground too, that bowl. Yeah, so they lose their the they're just not they're not hauling ass. Yeah, they're not hauling ass. I think you know, when I hit that bowl, I think got you know, hit it high up on the shoulder, like knocked down. But he just got up and left, like left like country. Barely any blood either, It's like very little blood. It was like punching him, but no, like getting shot with a bulletproof. Vest On learned. I learned my lesson on that ship. Man. Now I'm like Johnny tight when it comes to I mean, granted that thing was you know whatever, six hundred pounds and and that was like a bullet type like guess what do they call those sabbots? We're true to I think it's true to Bore, wasn't it. We're gonna be running patch and ball. Yeah. Man, I've greasing my ship with bear grease too. D So you take like when you're shooting a flint lock, you got well, you don't believe me, No, No, it's just funny. No, I totally believe you down in my mind. You get a little PATCHA it's a circle of cloth. What are you? What are you smirking about? I just this is all I've just I've never heard of this, you know, the you know, the old like talking him to it that's killed all kinds of very high right. We should make our own patches out of it, called a bed ticking. It was like a prison. It's like a prison. Suits like blue and white striped ship and you cut. I cut square patches, not round. Nope, there are square patches. I learned all this from um, good family friend, the FETs your family. That sounds like a old muzzleloader family. That's yeah, that's who got got me into it. Yeah, because it feels like the van fausen Burghs, I'd like, um. But yeah, we would cut our own patches and grease them up. And then they would you use for Greece. I think we use I don't remember exactly what it was. Oh, you know what we could use bear grease would be spython oil. There we go. Oh, I bet no one's doing that ship. No, man, we'll bring python because I got a court burning home in pocket. Python oil. Oh, we had the snake biologist on works in the pythons down in Florida. He gave me a court or rendered snake oil. Whoa, what do you use it for? The grosses me out? And not use it for anything. He gave it to me as he gave it to me as a oddity. Oh not as like here, cook your eggs with this. No, it's like a thing that you have and then you when people come to your house, you're like, see that he didn't he sent to me without tightening the lid down very tight? Oh yeah, Um, anyway, that's like utterly disgusting. Does the smell gross? No, but just the thought of it. Yeah, snake oil, snake oil. Oh yeah, medicine you're talking about drinking. Would you drink that? Curt Absolutely not unless if it increased your efficiency? Probably, I don't know. I don't know, man, Um, but anyway they would they would pour their own they'd cast their own balls caliber Fatskers, Fetzers, fetzers. Really, man, we used to have cast No, I never cast my own balls. We used to go down to the gun range. We gotta get to talk about what we're supposed to be talking about. But real quick, I want to hear what I want you to explain. It's more seth. But we used to go down to the gun range and sift through the bank the berm get the lead and we would cast our own sinkers, you know. Cool. And Ronnie Bam makes his own bird shot, yeah, which is cool as ship. You ever see that done, Kurt, No, I haven't. It's through a drop. It's just formed through the air. That would be cool. Like they used. There's a thing called a shot tower. I've heard of that, but I didn't know how How how tall does it have to be? Tower is tall? You're just like dripping little driblets of lead and they fall down this shaft and cool it formed into a sphere in the air like a rain drop, and by the time they hit the ground owned they're cooled. Ronnie's a little deal. Was he doing an indo oil and water. I thought was it water oil? I wasn't there. I just remember seeing it on the show. I think he drops him into I can't remember. But he's got this little thing. It's got a little aperture on it. You melt lead, get cancer, dump, dump the lead into this bucket, and the buckets got a little tincy tincy apt a whole bunch like a series of I can't remember twenty or a dozen little apertures like pinholes. And the pinhole determines the shot size. Right, So you dump the molten lead in, have a cigar, drink a whole bunch of beer. It's like the Ronnie Bam recipe. Sit in a closed area or whatever. Uh and Out dribbles all of his But I mean this dudes like a like a he's a tinker, Like he's like he could make anything. He's like remember in the end of the A Team, they'd always find like a sweet shop. Yeah, like he Ronnie smoke. Those dudes on from the A Team like to rig up ship in a shop. Uh and Out would dribble all these little dribbles and they'd fall through the air and land and where would hell? He cooled it with oh some I'm liquid water, water would cause bubbling in it. He dripped into some kind of oil. But I don't remember dealing with a bunch of oily ash shot. I was any good at fact check, and he had this ship figure out, so failing. Uh go back to the fencer's Yeah, no, I'm just saying that they'd cast their own their own balls and cut their own patches and grease the patch. You don't know what they what it was, I don't remember. I think it was just some sort of oil. You just you stack a bunch of them up and it soaked through. Yeah, so you take your empty bear, you got your empty gun, pour a shot of powder downs, put a patch, put a ball, then you gotta seat that ball. Then ram at home. Yep. So it's powder patch ball ram at home. And then if you're in the Western and a dude charges you and you don't have time to take the ramrod out, shoot him right with that freaking ramrod man always thinking the lasting Mohicans. When you talk about flint lock, did you do that in there? Yeah? Shoot someone with the ramrod. No shoots elk or something. It's like an opening scene, dude. Yeah, He's like chasing it or something. It's like very maneuver in it. And when I did that, when I did that g Q thing where it like called the breakdown, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be covered that um yeah, sends that elk a tea kettle, put that flint lock like it does like a triple somersault off a cliff. So uh yeah. And then the there's a frizzen up. It's a frien Well, it's like this little it's hard. It's like a hard steel that the flint strikes to cause the spark. And there's a little buckskin. You got a little square flint like maybe three quarters of an inch square half inch square. Yeah, and there's a there's a little gripper, a spring loaded gripper, and you line that spring loaded gripper with little chunk of buckskin for grip stick the flint in that little gripper cock the hammer. The hammer goes forward, hits the frizzen. What explosion No, yeah, the explosion number one because under that frizen is a little teency quarter teaspoon about of fine powder. Yeah, Like the frizen is covering up a pan full of fine powder. So when the hammer comes down hits the frizzen and knocks the frizzen out of the way, but still causes a spark, and then the spark falls right into the flash pad. It's like a rude it's like the rude Goldberg is contraption Goldberg contraption. So, yeah, that's right. The frizzen fly is on a hinge, flies forward, moves forward. This little quarter teaspoon of fine powder ignites, and there's a thing called a touch hole, which when your gun doesn't work, it's probably cause your touch holes plugged up with the fine powder. Yeah, that little bucket, that little quarter teaspoon, the wall of that bowl has a pinhole through it that leads into the breach of the flint lock. One of those sparks from that little thing going off hops through the hole. He's surprise, and then like he lights off everybody in there. So it goes like clack boom boom, and you gotta hold steady. The whole damn time is what you guys are doing, like tree stands. It's like we're gonna do some little to both that sounds setting and then some do some mooching, some driving. Uh, you don't know this but I'll tell you something. I didn't hunt it, but I killed a bull buffalo um with a flint lock. No ship. We're on a reservation and they had like they do like these controlled harvests on this reservation, and like reservation members can go out like however they want to do it, they'll go out and you can get one and just kind of I don't really, it's a little bit like it's kind of like a weird sort of like you like an experimentation with a live thing. I don't want you want to sort that out right now. Many ways we went out. I shot in the heart, shot in heart in ninety yards. Dang, that's pretty good. Yeah, it was like it was remember when about It took about eight minutes, went laid down and died. No ship. Yeah, I remember. One of the pretty most truth about Honey, one of the elk Anny ones Will shoots a It was in Colorado or somewhere. I think it was with a flintlock too, but he shoots an elk with a muzzle loader. It was either a flintlock of percussion, but old like an old school I thought it was cool as shit. Chester. You're gonna say something about the greasing. Well, it wasn't very important. It was just about lead and water. I used to build boat anchors, and any time lead hit water, it was just it like explode on itself. That's not well, oh that's right because remember yeah, I was not explode, but it it loses its form. Yeah, like pops and loses its form. It it forms into weird shapes, just like Latin Yanni's laugh. Yeah. Remember when we all had to throw the lead in the bucket to predict our future? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You know about this, Chris, No, what's that? On New Year's Latvians melt up some lead and throw a job of it into a bucket of water, and it tells you. And then you take that gob and it forms crazy shapes. Then you get a light and shine it at a wall and hold that gob will led that misshape and gob will led to the light and it casts a shadow and you twist it and see what you see in there, and that tells you what will happen to you, or it could inform your year. I generally tended to see old arthritic imagery. Oh so it's kind of like a roor shack thing. Like what you see is what is gonna Yeah, I'm gonna try that with I gonna lab be a neighbor across the street from us. I'm gonna try it this year with her. Yeah, she should test her knowledge about it. Oh, she knows. She hangs out at some like l a Latvian camp. She like it's like the Latin get together. Her name is Anga. Um. She has some questionable opinions, didn't she. Yeah. I think I had to walk away from a couple of convos yet because commos I was like, you have a nice day there, and he side and locked the door. Not talked to you for a week. All right now, Um, Kurt, I gotta tell you, Uh, I couldn't sleep last night. I slept by, woke up many times understandable. Just uh. I've ever been so um not have been just just distraught. Uh. And largely I was telling these guys last night too, I'm having three feelings, um, anger and disgusted at myself. Well, I missed the mountain go to three I'll tell people I just cut the chase. I missed a mountain goat three yards. Nice, Big Billy Kurt feels that it was an ex Yeah, I missed the mountain go to three hundred yards, just missed right, like nicktim not shot some hair off, shot some hair off. It's main, Um, I know, we'll talk about why I think that happened, not that like uh, I'll talk about why I think that happened, but but not that like I have excuse, like there's an explanation of the mistakes I made. Right. But the three feelings I've been having. One is anger and discussed self loathing. Two is why am I not more disappointed than I am, um, because I feel like I should be even more, have more self loathing and anger and discussed. And three is just like, um, really feeling that I let you down, Kurt, oh no, because I started trying to draw him mount I first applied for a mountain goat tag in nine and finally in twenty drew Mountain go tag. I mean I've drawn him in Alaska, but drew Mountain Goat tag and h we really poured the coals to it for five days under Kurt's leadership. Uh, snow cold Elevation train just struggles with visibility, but like I mean, like finding goes but just like it wasn't like it wasn't like a walk in the park, you know, it was kind of like fog and whatever, just the annoyance of cold, and then they're like just a chip shot. Yeah, and I would have felt like, um, yeah, the primary feeling I had was that, the primary like, if you weren't there, I would have felt not as bad as I felt, just really horrible waking up and just it's like burned in my mind. I don't know, man, those those things are all there. I feel like they're they're they're part of the hunting experience. Yeah. Yeah, you have to have the highs, you have to have the lows to kind of have the full experience. Just like if we would have walked in there and I found to gout on the first day, walk up on it hunts over. That was twenty two years. You put in for a tag for one day. That's not much of an experience. Like you know, now you have the whole process and it's not over. No, it's definitely not over. Good way to look at it. I like that. Yeah it is, man, but um, it don't mean a lot more. Yeah. Well, here's the thing I think about though, Uh, I'm forty six. I'll point out your forty eight. Thank you for that. I was like the other day, I was like, I was trying to like as we're walking out, you know, like the walk of shame, right walking down the mountain after missing him. Uh, I'm like, man, really valuable lesson. Like I'll point out a handful of things. Uh again not excuses, but like a guess at where I screwed up? Um, they got their winter coats, yea, and I failed. And Kurt later pointed out, when you're looking at the outline of that goat, there's a six inch buffer. It's not a goat. No, especially this time of year, because it's kind of that even though they're starting as you could see, they're starting to come into their winter coat, especially on those billies, the hair isn't so long that it's falling over because when it when it starts to get really long, it kind of splits down the middle like a hairline like on the moscot, and it starts to drape. But right now down the middle, yeah yeah, no, Like right now it's it's like a buzz cut and everything's sticking straight up. So it could have been more than that. There's a bunch of goat. It's not a goat, there's a yeah, a bunch yeah. And I was when I killed one the only mountain goold I got before. It was a nanny I shot in Alaska, and uh, when I hit it, it had enough umph left to take a couple of steps and go off. The abyss said, right, yeah, I mean I can show you like where this happened. I remember creepy like, how could it? I was like, I could show you exactly how it felt. That fired me like a like a face like you wouldn't believe, and then got so much a nurse, you're going that When it did hit the slope below it, it just continued to go down the wet snow. Um. Anyways, it was demolished. It Uh, its brain was gone, It's skull split open, the horns were gone, the brain was gone. One of its lungs was tucked up into its front right ankle gee. The hide came loose but didn't come off, and somehow when the chest cavity erupted in the fall, it like sent a bunch of that stuff through and so it was like up against its knee. Oh huge, anyways, something to try to avoid. So then it's like, don't you don't want them if you hit him, you don't want them taking a step. It's not like like generally big game hunting, I just play it safe and give myself a huge margin for air. And I typically, like my typical hold is halfway up and down, two or three ribs back from the shoulder. It's like that's you know, and granted's gonna whatever. It might take a step or two whatever, but it's just generally like done me very well as a as a just a you know, general little aim spot um. Maybe a little lower than halfway, but either way, I was like, I gotta I was gonna. I wanted to hit it in the high shoulder, hoping that it would not go off the cliff behind it or wherever walk off from fall off a cliff, and then zero my rifle at a much lower elevation. And the higher elevation is uh, you know, there's less friction, so you gotta cop. So that's gonna make you a little bit higher. I was shooting for a high shoulder, not accounting for all that hair um and dialed and was dialed for perhaps a little bit like a tad longer than it was maybe maybe, and just sent through two of them, like through its right over the top because the that steeper angle to your at appreciate deep angle sharp angle, Yeah, which becomes harder to get to get an exact range because it really depends on exactly where you're picking. Well to a factor that we were talking about last nights. I mean we're posted up for a while waiting, which in my mind for me not being near as successful or tenured as you is shooting, would mess with me, you know, with scope on the animal for thirty minutes or whatever. That that wasn't it. No, I was aware of we should back up. Well, I might back up and tell the story a little bit so, but yeah, to get to that part. It was better than we were having to wait for the get up. And I was nervous about um getting chili. Yeah, sitting in the snow and then in the little gap of visibility was so narrow that you couldn't like go and start the proble sense of trying to put a warmer clothes on, because then you might get I killed a nice buck one time, my pants down, not like what you think, putting trying to get my long John's on, trying to get more before the Zippies. Before the Zippies, I hiked up to a spot, got where I wanted to be for the evening sit. Got to the evening sit, thought I'm gonna get bundle luck so I'm gonna start freezing my ask because it's all sweaty, and got my pants off, started putting my l j's on lj is around the ankles and then it kind of had my lj's up, was getting getting back into my pants, and all of a sudden, looking, here's the buck I was trying to find. I got him too. I had to pull my pants up to run over there, um, but didn't want to do that because I was afraid the goat would stand up and move while I was like one arm in a coat. So I was nervous that I would started getting shivery, but I never got I wish I could say that I got shivery, but I never got shivery. Oh my god, I feel like such a loser. Oh point I was trying when I was pointing out our ages. Let me get back to that now, when we walk The whole story pointing out our ages is. When we were walking out, I was like, what a learning lesson? What a learning lesson. But then I'm like, I feel like learning should be about wrapping it up. My kid he did his first two big game hunts, so he's tanned. You got a mule deer in a cariboo this year, he's in. He's learning, right, I did a lot of learning in my twenties. I feel like the learning is about done. No, man never ends because at a point your performance goes. It's like, I should be at the the apex are apex guy? Still have my physical abilities, I stive my cognitive abilities, and I have uh like a tremendous amount of honey experience that I've been um able to get through my career. Right, So I'm probably I should be this should be like at late forties, should be like what like you'd think that right now would be this moment of just perfection and you don't make mistakes. It was damned close, right, I mean it was that goat was in a real tough spot to get on and it took us a lot of patients to work through that country. It that that wasn't a slam dunk, that wasn't let's climb up over this ridge and as soon as you look over the top how long did it take us to get in a spot where you get a shot five hours? It was five hours in and out of view for a majority of it. So there's a lot that can go wrong in that. So yeah, I mean to your point, yeah, we should. You feel like you should have every base covered. But then in hindsight, I looked back and given the information we had at the time, I wouldn't have changed anything that we did. Absolutely not. When I was sitting there when we finally found him yards way and his head away from the stand up, I was sitting there being like, uh, astounded by the good fortune m hm. Because there was a lot of ways when we were trying to put that little puzzle together, there was a lot of ways. I also wanted to point I was called in the middle of the night when I was sitting there, awake my Once we got up there and looked when I was flirting with storming his ridge top would not have been a good plan once I saw what it was actually like up there, umen Like you know, you ever know, when you go storm a ridge, it could go like you never know, But it wouldn't have been a great ridge storm. It would have been like you could have killed him with a knife. It would have been like either didn't get him or got him with a knife by the time you like when you when you arrived in his zone, you'd have been like on him in presume, but he would not be there anymore. But let's say he was sort of deprived of smell, and let's say there's no sense of vision and no sense of smell, or sorry, no sense of hearing and no sense of smell. It would have been a knife fight and you would have gone off the other edge. So, yeah, I wanted to point out to you, Kurt, that you're feeling that storm and the ridge was not smart Um it was not. Yeah, you were that that perspective of yours was validated by the actual layout, which was not quite how I envisioned it. Yeah, it was a lot smaller there. Everything just looks a little bit larger. For example, we thought that he was sixty or eighty yards from that pinnacle, and you get up there and find out that man that's only ten or fifteen yards or twenty yards. It's just it's weird how perspective from that lower elevation, as you're working up into that country, how it changed changed so much man um dirt head pointed out on this billy goat weird stock and uh dirt to point out he was bedded on a knife ridge. So it's like kind of like the primary range, not even the range, boy, it it's like sort of the primary ridge line. Andre's he's like a very steep night finger ridge that comes off it. And he's better there. He can look everything to the right, everything to the left, and then straight ahead is just sky. But it doesn't matter because nothing come up that thing. And uh, he's betted on a ridge. It's no wider than him. Yeah, he was like his body consumed the entire width of the ridge top. It was like laying on a knife Yeah. I was impressive. And if you roll the foot, you know, the opposite way that he was looking, he would have fell several ft. I wouldn't be able to sleep up there. No, no, you roll off those things like heights. Yeah. We slept down a goofy little ridge like that one time sheep hunting, and my brother Matt said, if I'm not here in the morning, throw my boots off. Can I ask her the question just to your point about you think you should get to a point where you're not learning. I mean, you've accumulated so much knowledge there shouldn't be learning process and experience. Did you learn something new this week? Oh yeah, yeah absolutely. Um. I think the communication portion. I thought about that where we were in the spot where you were set up, and I was trying to one of the things that we hadn't talked about his shot placement, especially to your point about hitting them in the shoulder, and when we are trying to kind of communicate back and forth that both of us were on the same page to try to hit in that shoulder. Afterwards, I thought I should have communicated more on the hair that you've just done that had done that, I'd be picking blood off from my so so really it's my fault. I hope you woke up two in the morning. Yeah. When I woke up last night, I was like I was up for a very long time. I remember looking at my phone be like, how is the only two man? I'm already like up, just up obsessing. It just turned into anger for Kurt. I wanted to know the answer on my phone now is if it rings it to this morning? Yeah, in the end of apocalypse now, Uh, Kurts doesn't he talk about a vision of a snail inching along a razor's edge. Fact check, that might have been re dux. It might have been the extended cut. No, he like talks about floating the Ohio River. Is when he's he's like out of his mind. When Willard and Kurt's finally meet, Kurt's talks about floating down the Ohio River. And because Willard catain Willard's from Ohio, Kurt's talks about that he flow to the Ohio River as father, and he remembers all the smell of the Guardinia's talks about a snail on a razor blade, talks about a concept hitting him like a diamond bullet. That's good ship man. Anyways, that goat was laying out there like a snail on a razor blade. Uh. To back up, describe the area we went into, Kurt Um. It's it's in a very long drainage. I'm going to say the entire drainage is probably close to twenty miles long. Uh. There's a road that runs up somewhere in the ten twelve mile range, So there is a major portion of the upper end of that drainage that doesn't see a lot of foot traffic. There's a lot of cliff bands, old growth timber where I wouldn't say old growth, more like dark timber patches that run down through. And then there was a burn that had rolled through a portion of it as well, So it's it's really good goat country. Um, a lot of escape cover, um. And and then because of the burn, there's a lot of feed because a lot more of its open right now than let's say it was twenty years ago. And it ties into the back side of of a lot of roadless area as well. So you see these goats being able to use multi pulled drainages and move between them where you have a fairly large circumference of area that doesn't see a lot of traffic, especially once they're snow on the ground. And um, most of it's in the nine to ten thousand foot range where the goats are living, and um they're typically later in the year like we're at right now. There isn't a lot of elk population or deer population, which also doesn't you don't see a lot of hunters either, primarily because of that, and access becomes very difficult when the snow gets deep. So it's it's real ideal goat country, um, but can get a little bit tricky late in the season. The lack of other games really noteworthy. Man, it is it is, And I've been hunting that area for twenty five years, and as we had spoken about before, I've seen a very noticeable differ prints in primarily elk populations. It used to be phenomenal elk counting, and I think that there's lots of different discussions about why, uh, some people would like to point the finger at wolves. There seemed to be a transition somewhere along that line. I can't for sure say that that's exactly what it is, but as we were driving into the area, I think something that was very telling was down in the valley floor in the farmland there had to be two hundred head of elk out there in out in farm ground that you would years ago you would never seen that. And so whether migrations are changing or actual what they're preferring for habitat, it's kind of anybody's gas. But back to your original point, it's it's really neat area in in the fact that it doesn't draw a lot of people in after say September, and so it's it's a pretty cool experience being able to go on these types of hunts where you're not seeing other boot tracks, um, and you're just not seeing a lot of pressure. Yeah, it just takes twenty some years to twenty two years. And then we saw a number of big horns and it was like like one tag. How many tags are in there? Yeah? I think one tag and that unit and that'll take a lifetime to draw, oh for sure. Yeah, yeah, if you're lucky. Um, we went in there and it's like there's a thing that happens this time of year. I guess it could happen anytime of year. Uh. To film hunts, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of logistics and crew and people got a plan for it, right, And you need film permits, and when you get a film permit, you need to like apply for certain dates. Right. It's you wind up where you have you like settle on a date window and there's a lot of that date establishes a lot of inertia, right, It's like like that's the date, you know, because so and so we got you know, camera guys booked, and we got our permits for that date. And then as the date gets closer than you kind of go like, oh yeah, I forgot about the whole weather part of this. And as the trip's coming up, it just gets like just the picture just gets bleaker and bleaker. Um of early kind of not I don't want to say freak. It's definitely not freak, but a significant early snow storms, a series of early snowstorms. Yeah, to winter storm warnings while we were out, like actual like Weather Service winter storm like advisories for the area. Yeah, like today we shouldn't be sitting here right now, we should be up there. But it's supposed to get fifteen inches of snow there today and we already got like what foot overnight it would have been. Yeah, and then the and as this as the as our goat hunts coming up and I'm looking at the weather, there's sort of like comfort and it was a comfort factor, which I don't want to sit and act like isn't a thing. It's like, of course it's the thing. You know, you can talk through it and you have the right gear and make it. But it's still like an issue. Comforts and issue, um not nearly the significant of an issue is difficulty and travel. So you're already in very precarious just steep ship. Right, you're a lot of steep ship. And there's a lot of routes that you can't take. There's a lot of places you'd like to get to that you can't just go in the way that would you know, just like go to it. It's a lot of like this and that, and you know down when you should be going up and around, you should be going straight in order to arrive at these like points you want to get to because the cliff aces and and other things, and you add snow on there and it just adds this like a little it's like a level of stress. And like even that level of stress is like a real thing. Um, you can tough through it and have the right gear, but it's like just a thing that's there, and it's it just changes the experience. But the primary thing is a visibility. Um. When I talked about getting that killing that nanny that I killed some years ago, Ah, we went into an area and sat in the fog, just got to our hunt area, sat in the fog for three days. Then all of a sudden, poof it was gone, and we realized that rimming the canyon walls above us was mountain ghosts that had been listening to our conversations. I mean this week, yesterday was the only day that we had visibility all day. It was every other day. It was a window of of clear Yeah. Um, we we went in and hiked in and just right away we went in doing good visibility and right away just like seeing goats and when you draw a goat tag, uh, you're allowed to hunt a nanny or ability. You're allowed just like a goat, write a mountain goat. They would prefer strongly, I shouldn't say they people that want there to be a lot of mountain goat hunting opportunities. UM and state game agencies which really prefer that you shot a billy. And they'll actually make like I make instructional videos. I voiced, I didn't like come up with the material, but I've voiced a video one time, like read the script for a Rocky Mountain Goat Alliance video about how to um how to tell nanny from ability. They wanted to kill the males, and I read some statistic ones that if goat hunters off mountain goat hunters only killed males, only killed billies. I don't know this is a statistic I heard. I don't know if it's how valid. Is if they only killed billies, there will be four times as many mountain goat tags. I don't know if that's I don't know if that holds up. I read that somewhere they don't want you shooting the females. Um. I voiced that video, which I'll point out like I voiced it, but I'm not uh good at it. I'm not like great at identifying. Um. I sit there a lats scratch my head looking at a lot of goats. Uh. For me, it's like when you see a kid, like a nanny with an offspring, I'm like, that's a female. Other than that, I'm like, damn that. My mind tries to turn everything into a billy. Well, I didn't. I didn't realize, which I'm sad to say. The nanny's had significant horns. I don't. I don't know if many people know that they gotta they got a horn. I mean they look and it was tougher than I ever imagined to just distinguish other than they're being, like you said a group of them that it would be like, oh, those are nanny's Kurt pointed this out, and it's actually remember just being in the past is like another time I drew a goat tag on the Key nine, didn't get a one because we passed up many opportun females. I remember, like every female you look at your like trying your hardest to turn it into a mail. But then you see a billy and it's like, there's a billy. Yeah, And I remember we had that same thing out of kena fence. You saw a billy. We're like, oh, all the time we've been spending trying to like talk these nannies into being billies, Like that's the sun bitch and billy, you know, and you just know what knows that was true on this one. But seeing all kinds of nannies, man. And then the second day of the hunt, we woke up and you couldn't see ship anything until like what time of day one too, It was one o'clock fourth things, and then you're just seeing parts and pieces. Well, it was funny. The funniest thing about that day that really stuck sticks with me is that we went to a little glass and look out and we just went there and we couldn't see anybody. Just went there anyways to sit and see if we get some Claire windows. And Kurt knew about another little looking spot he wanted to go check out. That was a twenty minute walk if at more, just like wrap along, wrap across the ridge top and an upward direction, and you get a look into this other bowl that actually drains down into a different drainage. And uh, at one point where let's go check it out, let's go verify that it's too foggy. So we very if we walk up the like, oh wow, it's foggy over here too, just like we expected, and walked back and we get and here's the set of tracks solo, a single set of mountain boat tracks that not only walked through our We're like literally walked through where we were sitting, we later learned, walked between two of our tents and actually followed our bootprints in our absence in the in the forty minutes that we were gone, came through our tents, followed our boot tracks through our glass and spot, and then walked and wrapped around the hill. Yeah literally, like if it was two inches to the right, it would have tripped on my my guides from on my tent, walked like walked next to the tent within well within three ft of our fire ring. Yeah, oh yeah, they're like, I mean, there must have been so much scent in that zone of us that it just was and it just walked right through it. That's that's Murphy's law. I know it's overdone, but that is Murphy's love. I don't think that's Murphy's Murphy, what's your impression of Murphy's lawder if it could go wrong? But that's not wrong. You know. Actually I'm gonna adjust that if a goat, in my mind, Murphy's if a goat were to walk through camp and a glass and knob, it would happen while we're looking. Oh yeah's you're right. You're right. It is Murphy's lost through when you're sitting there. Just I think that they like, I think the only thing they I think they care a lot about what they see. The smell is an so I think like their whole groove of how they stay alive is based off um, I'll see the problem and I'll go to a place where nothing's gonna mess with me. Mm hmm. Well, and that that saddle, that pass that we were in when I had the tag last year, the exact same thing happened. It was just over a longer course of time. I had left camp, went up where we went, but then I had gone up over the peak down the back side and was probably gone for three hours. Came back and there were three sets of tracks that came right by my tent, right through that. So it's a little goat mag it is it is, and that that that bowl that we saw, I was coming right up through there as well. I think it's almost like a funnel. Yeah, a little hot like a little hot tip. Is we're a bunch of ridges whatnot, kind of like collide together in a low benchy saddle, it's gonna come through. Yeah, it's just like a little funnel. Yeah, there was what three or four three drainages that or you know, the backside, there was a lot coming to that saddle. There was, um but yeah, we lost a half day there. Just don't add their chester. Yeah, that happened actually multiple times, not just that one time. Uh, as I was going to glass that night, there were more tracks in our tracks going for the opposite direction. Um, like four sets of tracks in our tracks going right up past our camp again right in our tracks um, have you been telling a lot of people that you got to play guitar with Luke Holms? You got to play Luke Holms guitar and sing? Chester is not even though, No, I haven't. Haven't told a lot of you haven't leveraged it socially. No, he's got a wife. Yeah, I got a wife and I liked being a little incognito. Do you real quick? How you how you been enjoying your marriage? You've been married? How long? Though? I've been married since August nine and things are pretty good. I haven't got kicked to the couch at or the doghouse, so I feel like I'm doing pretty good. Did you guys know Chester got married in a homemade bolow time made out of elk candler. I don't know that, but I know did Chester make it? I didn't make it. You're an artist who made it? You like such a little craftsman. Sounds like a little bird too. One of Danielle's friends made him for us. Seth has one too. Yeah, he was in my wedding. When I saw a picture of Seth, he was basically I saw a picture of Seth a wedding. He was basically at the point where like some uncle has his neck tie tied around his head like a headband. There was a lot of chest in the night, like a cloud of smoke around him, like one aisle open. He probably it looked just look like he just caught the guard belt. I think if there have been a series of photos, like a burst of photos, it just would have been that picture and then another following frames of Seth just slowly tik me down to the ground. If you'd have had the next time would have been tied around your head. This is like dancing like. Sethi was like ready to dance on the table. Yeah. No, I had been dancing very hard. He was like, can they play Money Money again? I was ready to do anything at that point. Yeah. He's like, oh, they could just play Celebrate one more time. If they've turned on Mombo number five, I'm gonna burn this place. That's probably the most tuned up I've ever seen you, Seth. Oh, is that right? It was a good reason to party, man, Yeah, yes, you're getting married. Seth was saying he wants to um Seth. I don't know if you caught that, but Seth's kind of wants to go to a bar with me. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one of my life goals is to go to a bar with Steve. But we could we go to bar, does it? What do you do you mean that because you think that that would mean I'll be real drunk or just that that will be just I just like going to dive bars, and I think it'd be cool to just But what would you want me to do there? Be be drunk and start a fight? Yeah I would like that, I mean somebody with a stool to But no, I just like chat and I go to dive bars all the time. Just have a beer. Just oh I would love to shoot. I want to set a date to go just after you get your goat, I thought getting the shot. Oh yeah, I'll do that right down right down the street. You got it all picked out? Yeah, just cross the railroad tracks. What we set I can't perfect spot? Oh yeah that place? Oh yeah? Oh so we want to get back to this thing though, But no, go I'll go. I don't go to bars, but I'll go to a bar. We could buffer you too, because I don't want to get the see one niner man. I's gonna wear my mask with a straw. My brother thinks they ought to rebranded to see one niner. He likes the sound of that better. It sounds more aggressive. Um, we're trying to get a mask and poke a hole in it and run a straw. That's drink my shots like that. That should be mandated'll be like z's free drinking. How do you close the gap? You're gonna have to like Chester Cocke, he's a he's a crafty guy. It is a bummer coming back into town after being in the mountains for a couple of days. You're like, you do forget about COVID and like all the crazy stuff going on. You're just like, yeah, that's all still here. You know. It's better than a straw. Is a big hood where you can do all your hand functions in a thing like a bubble. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's like a little pass through port where they can hand glasses. Yeah, what's those balls down a hill? You know one of those Remember when Et like when he got all sick that thing, right, Yeah, be like get to go to the bar and at I'll go down there and get wasted. Yeah, but I don't like having the part of the reason I quit drinking a lot like the part of reason I quit getting drunk, um was because I didn't think it was fair to my kids, who didn't ask to be born, right, they didn't like request to be born. I didn't think it was fair to them to be hungover in the morning. Yeah, that's some that I mean. And I found myself being like irritated on days that I would be hung like on a Sunday or whatever, Saturday, whatever, hell be hungover and sort of like irritated by their presence when they were little because they were needy in the minute. I had that feeling and be like, dude, they didn't like ask to come live in the house. It's like you had him and brought him and now you're annoyed at him. Should a made some different decisions, man. Yeah, that's when I wanted to quit being drunk. No, that's that's smart. A lot of people don't do this. Sick of being hungover. Man. But I had two little cocktails last night. I had a coffee that you had a little coffee. I had a coffee and then I had a giant uh rum cocon party and coconut. What do you call that? It's called Jimmy Buffett. I was reading an article one time in a magazine. It was about like what celebrities like drink, and I took note of that. There was Jimmy Buffett was being featured and he was saying how you can't get hung over coconut water drinking coconut water and rum. I've disproven that, disproving that, but it's a safe bet zero hangover this morning. Oh yeah, Mr. Half day because the fall m yep tons of Nanny show could have a lot of shot opportunities on Nanny's stock opportunities, a lot of me thinking Nanny's were billies, a lot of me trying to talk him into being billies, just at least giving them the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, But then what was it the second or the third day that we ended the third day that we spotted the one billy that we believe that it was the one that we got on three days later. So and there were a couple of goats obviously that we're in spots that were so far off the by themselves that you would suspect that they were billies, but you just couldn't verify it. Whether rolled in on a couple that were up high. Do you think trusting that we can get it worked out and you're able to adjust your schedule him go back out again. Um. I feel that we would if we if we spend and we should spend a day or two on this, I feel like we would find that billy again. Yeah, yeah, I I as long as he don't know, I would make that my plan. But I wouldn't be surprised, and it would you never really know, But I wouldn't be surprised that you'd be like, oh, he's like back in one of those zones that we know him doing the habit. That would not surprise me in the least. You know what you said when you spotted him. Huh, well, yeah, I don't think you can stay it here. Oh no, no, you had just spotted a ram and then you said bingo, oh yeah, which is totally family friendly. That is family friendly, he said, bingo. You would you would know if if you shot that goat, probably if it was the same one, because there might be a little tough to hair missing, like that bear in the great outdoors. Yeah, oh my god. Man. Um, there's six weeks. This is the will There'll be a part two to this. There's six weeks of season left. Um, I just really ah um, just so disappointed myself. I was really disappointed for you at the time. You give me a hog, I would have too, I'd still do it, but I looked that down. Yeah, I think I think it's just a little bit of perspective because back to when we were talking about it earlier, when you put in for something like this for twenty two years, I think it's safe to say that you don't put in for it because you want to go, yes, I'm doing this like it would make an exchange. Yes, it is. It is vastly about the experience that you have, the memories that you make, um, the things that you learn, and kind of at least for me, and one of the things that I really enjoy about this style of hunting is that it's always pushing your envelope just a little bit. Um that you're you're staying out when it's colder, Um, you're accessing country that maybe you don't feel comfortable in. And every time you push that envelope, your envelope becomes larger and you become more experienced, and you you become more confident, and you don't I don't necessarily get that with other styles of hunting that you do with the alpine style, and so where your experience putting in for this for twenty two years could have ended at five days. It's almost like a gift, you know, you get your tag again, you get to go again, you get to go have those experience because it's so much different than than any other style hunting, at least that I do well. She hunting is very similar, but I don't know that. I think that's why it's it's my favorite favorite time in the outdoors, and it's not always the most fun at the time. It's often the most challenging. I had been in on a couple of one day go once and it was a little bit of like my impression. My old girlfriend has to the molaster, drew it once and we got it in today. My brother drew it, got it today. Yeah, I feel like they can go either way. I've heard. I've heard lots of stories and and the odds definitely go up if you go in on the earlier season. Everything becomes more complicated in the late season. You have to have a different kid of gear, travels different obviously, whether locating them becomes as we have seen, extremely tough. What makes you want to weight just for people to weariness. What makes you want to wait is that they get that big crazy hair. Yeah, because no one in the world is gonna get a mount and goat and not have it the rug Tand yeah, I mean, I'm sure it happens, but that's generally like it's like a muskox hide. You're like throwing a dumpster hopefully not. No, it's like a thing of great beauty. It is. Yeah, it's amazing, and especially this time of year they get that thick wool because they end up with the longer guard hairs, the hollow guard hairs, and then they get that real fine wool, uh right next to skin and yeah, there's nothing like it. So it's beautiful. Oh, Rich are you willing to talk about your your Oh yeah, talk to lay out your little decision making process there day. Well, so yesterday we got into uh, going up to get that go that we spotted, and we got into an avalanche shoot and I don't really know what happened, but we got to a spot where we had kind of tucked around. It's like pretty mellow climb right, like you could have gone up that in view of the goat but that stretch was like wide open. It was almost like pastory, like very mellow, but it was in view of where the goat could have been. So to avoid going up that and getting spotted and blowing the goat out, we wrapped around the edge of that, which happened to be one side of a pretty steep avalanche shoot and below is just like a river of timber and then a little creek below that and the river of down timber debris field from an avalanche like pungee sticks of like giant break yeah. Um, and we like started going up that and then I think Kurt spotted the goat right where you guys were pretty far away from me and Garrett, and I think Garrett was in front of me, And then we had to down climb that. I don't know what that was like sevent was that too much? Pretty accurate? And that was I don't know what what was the angle? It was steep. I remember looking at Garrett and being like, this looks damn near vertical. Man. You stick your arm out and you're touching the ground. I mean if you stick your arm out horizontal. And we had crampons at this point and ice acts. We weren't on ice. It was still like soft soil, so you had purchase snow. Snow though wet snow so it's slippery. And I don't know what happened, Like something just gripped me and I just got like way out of my comfort zone. And I've never had that happen on any Meat Eater shoot. I've been shooting the show for five years, and I've never gotten like totally freaked and just not. I just felt like out of my ability to keep moving. And there's a thing like in climbing where you just like freeze and you can't you just like don't know how to make your body move. And that happened to me like multiple times on that down climb, and it was just so weird, like a hummingbird's lips, yeah, not a woodpecker. And uh so we find I get down, we get down to this little spot where there's this frozen waterfall, and yeah, I was just like I feel totally out of my ability to do this. And then you guys were all, you know, super super nice and very supportive and and we're like, if you know, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it. And I made the call to to leave, and it was a really hard decision. I felt very guilty, really extremely But then you shared with this that you had had but then you'd had this feeling of that something bad is gonna happen. I didn't want from that. I know the last thing you left us with was I'm feeling something bad's gonna happen. Well, I remember looking at you guys just bee like be really really fucking safe, and because something just felt fucking weird about the whole thing. Man, I mean, do you think it was totally my head? But you know, like once you get in your own head about stuff, it's hard to get out of it. But like, yeah, I noticed, like I could see it was funny because just having been with you in a lot of yeah, well, I mean there's a lot of situations, including a bunch of situations of steep stuff, wet snow and just skipping along problem you go lucky. Um. I it was like I watched you sort of have um like I was like you would you You're totally fine, Like I've just seen you do this so many times, but you just had like a thing entered your head. Something happened. Yeah, it was really weird and like not to not to say you shouldn't pay attention that you have to pay attention to it, but to your point, like the day, the last day that we had camped before we rolled out because that big storm was coming in, we had gotten up on that one glass and knob that was like when we were out on the end of it man, and if you had fallen off, you would have been toast and we're skipping around him there filming ship and like you were like you were disappointed that that in that area, we were like mindful of time, didn't want to go down in the dark. I couldn't really see any reason to keep going. It was like very dicey to keep going for like no reason. It was like it wasn't like we were stalking something. It was just like trying to find the source of a set of mountain goat tracks. And you were like wanting to keep going. And in my mind that would have been like kind of like borderline stupid, yeah, because we weren't like after something. It was just to the point where like I would go if there was a thing there, if there was like a shot operate, like if we're like Okay, there's ability, let's try to get a shot. Then I'm like, okay, let's just go. But I would never be like just to get another twenty yards of visibility over the top of the ridge. It just wasn't worth it to me. Yeah, that didn't freak me out at all. But then you entered a little mind space. There was just something about I just kept looking down at that that avalanche shoot and just like I could just like see my body all crumpled up like that fucking goat. You shot my brains, fucking goneng by my wristwash and I just like, yeah, man, I just got like so rattled, and yeah, I don't. We sat there for a long time, and you got like we gotta like the goatskin way around all day. It was a hard decision, man, it was really I came down bombed, and I came down and talked to these guys. They saw me come down the trail and they were all worried all day. Chester ran up and thought everybody died. Yeah. The look on Chris's face, big wide open eye is like, I mean, in some ways it kind of has a symmetry to Steve's miss shot, and that there's this sense of of like I let the the greater hole down. Yeah, definitely, uh yeah, I mean yeah, Chris, you were obviously like very frazzled by not the decision, but the fact that you made the decision of that make sense. And it's not like I'm not afraid of like not like I'm not trying to be macho and me like, oh, I can just do it. And what it was just like I don't care about that. The thing I care. I just don't want to not one do the thing that I'm here to do, which is to film the show, and also not have this experience that I love having with all you guys. So like it was, Yeah, it was just a it's weird, man, It's I'm gonna be thinking about it for for a long time, much like your goat thing when you wake up too in the morning. Let's talk about talking. Why don't you tell me about the hair thing? Go ahead, Chester, then we're gonna we're gonna wait and then we're gonna we're gonna wrap her up because then we're gonna part two. Man, I'm gonna call that episode the return. This episode be the miss the reason why I think these guys all like passed away up there is because you didn't hear what I said. You were walking down the trail Chris towards me and I said, is everything okay? And you kind of had this You shook your head no and you had your head down. And at that moment, I trying to give you guys a thumbs up because that entered my head that like, oh, they're probably thinking something bad happens. So I try to be like, no, it's all good, gone to Heaven up they're up. Ah, yeah, man, Yeah it was weird. It was a weird one long time left. Yeah, I just am So. You know what celebrities do a thing that they got to apologize on Instagram, They make the apology video. I'm doing a lot more listening than talking these days. That's like one of the things. And you also have to um be like I'm very humbled. I'm humbold. Yeah. If I didn't do anything bad, I didn't do like a celebrity mistake. I'm just humbled, humbling train the whole deal is humbling about the miss dude, I know, but it's it's all part of it. Yeah, yeah, I say, if you're if you're not learning you ain't earning. Oh yeah, buddy poetry, how's that go again? If you're if you're not learning, you ain't earning. That's what I'm gonna call this episode. That's a good one. And then the next episode will be the second miss or it'll be the fall of the Goat, the lost the lost body be like an Evert an Everst character. All right, man, we'll be back with a dead goat. With Noble Steve so struck with grief and saddled with self loathing. We knew he'd have to try again or else he'd risk imploding. So we mobilize the cavalry, the whole meat eater crew, and sent Noble Steve back on the hunt. Here's the story of Attempt number two. Okay, we're back for part two. The only difference now is that it'll you'll you'll notice a slight sound difference because we're not in our studio. And also you'll this part to the Mountain got deal and uh, Chris Ridge Pounder Gil is not with us. Oh than a remind refresh everyone's memory. Who's here. I'm feeling a lot better. I feel a lot better. Rick. Yeah, I'm I'm happy that you feel better, because when you feel better, that means we don't have to keep going out there because I know, yeah, people were worried. Chester still here, Chester still here, Seth. Even though to you the listener, this this part one just rolled into part two. But what you don't realize that, uh, it's a long time later. Summer, summer came back, Summer came back. Winner just showed up, Seth. Girlfriend shot a testicle. This dear yep, real nice cactus buck fatty right, fatty dirt got dere Kurt hasn't got shipped, Andrey got here too. Prospects though, um uh, we'll get back to the mountain, go and conclude our saga. But but talk about the explain the cactus buck deal. I think people think so this is a crazy story. Um my girlfriend Kelsey, she was it. Last last week, No, a week and a half ago. We spent a week out in eastern Montana deer hunting, first week of the season. And um, the one night we went out with Kelsey to try and find her a buck, and we were six miles from our camp and we found this really cool cactus buck, still in velvet. Its right side was somewhat normal, left side. It was just like a just like six points sticking out of the base of its antler, where like an aniler should be. Yeah, this is like a hormonal imbalance, right and um. For whatever reason, we couldn't get on that buck that buck that evening. We'd like crest the hill and he'd be a thousand yards away, and then go over hill. We get to that hill, he'd be a thousand yards away. He's out trying to find his testicles. Maybe I don't know, he's not gonna find him. Oh, I you know what you know, I stopped the other day, take my ljs off? What you know how I took the other day? I got hot and stopped and took my long John's off. Left. Those sons of bitches layd there. Who walks away from their long John's. Guess he's walking away from a track and bowl to stand up and walk away from your long john more priorities. So someone's gonna be like, oh, it's weird fair long johns. Maybe the long Johns. I started looking for the corpse that would be mum anyway. Um, So we didn't get on that buck that even the next morning, we decided to go on a quick bird hunt in the morning rather than deer hunt, because there was birds everywhere. And we're back at our camp, and we left camp and walked over this one ridge and I glassed up on the hill and sure enough there's that same book six air miles from where we had seen him the night before. Who knows how how far, like with you know, he could to walk twelve miles that night, hard to say, And it was, so it's distinct, and it's without a doubt because it's such a weird like how many like bucks in velvet with a weird growth? Yeah, which the weird thing was that area. We had seen seven different bucks in velvet that there's a thing on code. There's if you've heard of on Kodiak. There's like an area that's famous for these these hormonally imbalanced cactus bucks that like have weird formation in the velvet dries on the rack. When you say cactus buck, I mean I got that. They get these thorny looking antlers, these like clubby Goofy's not the whole time I've been alive, I didn't start hearing It's like I never heard about this. Now every other day I hear about it from somebody, And just just by thumbing through Instagram, I have seen several deer that have been taken this year. They were still in velvet, different dates to Montana, Utah. Deer are getting less manly. Yeah, crisis of masculinity and the deer population. And this deer, this man some academic papers. All the bucks that we had seen that week, we're hanging out with other bucks. Up until this point, that was the only buck that we had seen. It was hanging out with those like he just thought he was just one of one of the ladies, you know. And then his berries were I was saying that he had lost him, but they were dwarf. They looked normal there. He had a intact sack, and when I felt that, it just felt like there was nothing there. There's nothing in there, not the sender or something like it. Did you had, you know what, maybe that's what happened. It didn't even feel like there were any little raisins in there, you know, like he had the coin theres but there was no change in drop. So you could just go on and on with these metaporters. It's endlessly amusing. It's interesting, man um Anybody if you want to read up on this just go type in like cactus buck and there's all. There's way better explanations than we're providing. But it has to do with like it not having it's uh, the proper dose of its masculine hormones, and for somehow it like leads to weird antler growth and then the velvet tends to dry yep on them, you could see a The funny thing is at six miles that it traveled, you could see like a really ruddy buck, you know, cruising that distance. But why why you know, hermaphrodite dear or whatever you want to call it traveling? That doesn't make any sense. I don't know. I picked up and moved that far that night he was looking was poor poor choice on his part because and again pushed around like others. Yeah, maybe he gets his ass kicked all the time. Maybe he just doesn't have the same amount of one of the biggest body deer though I've ever seen my life. Yeah, that's odd thing too, just huge. Did you guys taste it yet? Um? I don't know. We we we didn't do a good job of keeping track of well, once you got home, everything got all mixed up. Yeah. Um, so we went back like ended the mountain go hunting in despair. I had a midlife crisis. And it was winter. It was cold, cold. I went through a midlife crisis. It's over now. I didn't buy a car or anything, but I had a midlife crisis. It kept you awake at night, kept me awake at night. Not only that, my wife noticed the difference in me. She knew that the missing hurt me hard. I heard she was making fun of you for it made fun of me. I felt embarrassed whenever I was around Kurt when Jimmy, really, you go blow Kurt? If I only could know, Uh, my wife is friendly with Kurt's wife. So I'll eventually find out what Kurt said about truly felt What about your your boy? That company? Oh, Jimmy was not so you disappointed in your dad? My boy was not happy, just very like what Mr Pierce doesn't understand how it could happen? Turned into summer again, turned back in the winter, and um, we went back into the same vicinity and it was just like it felt to me like I mean, there was always it felt to me like a lot of mountain golts had moved into that valley for whatever reason, yeah, or I don't know, didn't it. Oh yeah, they were just everywhere. They were everywhere. Yeah. How many did we count that first day in the zone that we were in and we were only in one couple dozen once. I mean, it wasn't a small job, but it was just a fraction of the area. So we went back, had a great beautiful weather window, got after one billy that laid up in a in a spot that made it very difficult to shoot at him, almost like he tends it, almost like it was his notion, almost like he meant it. Um didn't work out. The next day went out and we realized something was happening that I didn't really even going into this, didn't wasn't aware of. Is that you enter into that you start getting close to the mountain go rut. Yeah. So the we found two bands, like two groups of nanny's what like six to a dozen, I don't know, and each of them had a billy mixed in. Yeah, and they were close to one another. They were only yards apart. Yeah, definitely, like like the groups would definitely be aware of each other and and you know, like interacting in somewhere or another. And it made it, Uh, after a lot of frustration and looking at billy's that were hard to get to or wanting how you're going to get to them, and wondering where you're gonna shoot from if you do get to them. It was like, Um, it was as though one laid it out on a blueprint. You're talking Saturday, What did I'm sorry if I'm not being clear. Yeah, the one we got was so perfectly positioned two where if you imagine like a little crease in a mountain, it's like on one side of the crease and the opposing ridge you could just sneak up, walk up, pop over, shoot across everything perfect. Yeah, when there's six of us versus just two people that you know are it's like a whole different footprint for for travel. So having that goat in a good position otherwise it's just like six people, are you know something? You know even if you sneak around pretty good, something's gonna Did you guys end up seeing another billy when you popped up? Did not Kurt look forward to? Yeh? I find that there's some poetic poetic justice. Maybe that's not the word. Um that the shot difference, It was the exact same shot, and uh, I didn't have my struggles this time, didn't miss. It was a little it was three or five, right, three or six. But I found out in the days after with ing my shot and contemplating it, I found out a number of things, a bunch of little perfect like a bunch of small things that added up. I went in. I had a rifle that I had said at a two yard zero without actually making an actual two yards zero, like I arrived at it through math what my two yards zero is, and in that process screwed up so that my two yards zero was already high. Anyway. Then I had like a a dope chart, you know, like a drop chart, and I think that I think that when I pulled that chart up, I was being lazy and maybe even um I don't know if the auto filled that sea level or whatever. I don't know, but I was already high. My little dope chart was off to make it more high. And then I was trying to shoot the mountain go in the high shoulder, not accounting for the massive amount of nothingness beneath the hair, so that I was probably already kind of aiming at not even aiming at the mountain Go anyways, and yeah, just shot over his back and this time I went back to normal aim and got him. Yeah that's a good group. Um yeah, I forgot what you said when we walked up to that goat, but when we skinned him, you said, like, that's that looks like a pretty tight group right there. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of shots, a few shots there that that all seemed to be like terminal. But he didn't show like Kurt confirmed the first hit was a hit, but he sure didn't show the signs of that. Yeah, he soaked up some rounds. Yeah, I was surprised. Um four and a half years old and the bile I went, I just this morning took it to get it check. You have to with a mountain goot, you have to take it in to get it examined. And they pull a tooth and by looking at the tooth eruption, well looking at the annual I so you can count growth rings out him and Kurt, you had a peg to four and a half years. But you can see the lamb tip or the kid tip. I guess like this first year growth and you see the annually rings. Kurt pegged it at four and a half. Um. The biologists also felt four and a half based on the annually and then the tooth eruption. The dental pattern also backed up four and a half. But then they'll send it off for like a cementum analysis. And an old goat is like ten years older, and Kurt shot one. It was, Yeah, I shot one of those eight And yeah, I've heard of multiple goats being in that ten and I think from what I've seen, very similar to what you'll see with sheep where they can get twelve thirteen. Wow, But I know it gets it gets really tough to count those rings when you have a goat that old, because they all stack up right there at the bottom. And yeah, it's not like a sheet where it's spread out over thirty six to you or whatever. So this thing's horn, it's long horn was nine inches and it's shorter horn was I think eight and five six eight or something like that, eight in five eighths. I can't remember. Very very sharp horns on it, very long, like long winter coat, but not old like not a giant tasty, very tasty. And when I was down today getting my thing checked, the guy, I don't know if I told you guys this. The guy was in there with two big horn deadheads, very old, look the same vintage, looked like the same where on him one of them had a little bit of sheath on it still, and he was getting him checked in and so he could keep him for himself. Oh, he just found him, brought him in to get him, brought him in to get him certified. Like you uhould not be able to have it at all. Right now, if you find when you can get it checked it, did that change it this year? Last year? It was either last year or the year before. It's just just as I think this is the second hunting Sea and where if you found something you could take it in everywhere, because I mean I was, I was telling you guys, we found that one on Grand Canyon and you couldn't keep it. Yeah, and and I believe it's it's it's obviously different between types of land national forests or public ground post too. Oh. I wouldn't even see a public ground, but I like parks and that that's that's outside of that realm. So you didn't have to check that at one time. Did a thing at the New Mexico Fishing Game has this fundraiser where they sell they auction. It's like for the it's like for a group that's sort of supported. I can't hember how it works. New Mexico Fishing Game Department, like some affiliate organization or them. They have an annual auction where they um they auction off like tags and stuff, governors tags one. I think they do it at this, but they also auction off all the ship that gets hit by cars, all the poach stuff, all the stuff that people find. And they had all kinds of big horn heads down there. It was for whatever you found it, laying um confiscated stuff. Uh. I heard about a guy at one time that had killed a bear in self defense and had to turn into hide and skull, and then later went down to the auction just as an anonymous person and bought his bear back, and he had skinned it in some weird way, so he had like made the cuts in some unorthodox fashion so that he knew for sure it was the one, because they then got it tanned, and he went down and bought it at auction and knew it was his because he'd skinned it in some way to leave his mark on. And so now he's got his own totally legal, but got his own thing back. What are you with your goal? You're gonna how are you gonna have that? Finished out? A rug with the head in? I had a I had a tar him alan tar like that that. I gave you a buddy. Imagine like a classic bear rug with two horns sticking out the top on the floor. Is it gonna be draped on the wall? The horns are too sharp? Danger? I got a mountain lion I did like that. That's on the wall. Um, I got it, like I said, I gave that tar away and then yeah, I'm gonna hang on the wall because the horns of your kids can't be running around on that. No trip trip on that thing came over, dude, its sharp, man. I was surprised by that. You attack it to the ceiling maybe so now, Um no, I'm gonna put it on the wall. Yeah, you don't got much wall space. I got a little spot for it. Okay, real quickly. You know that giant buck dug during shot all those years ago, they call the standards. Doug took it down. Uh dog took it down to the tax and there I was. You know, this is a good story. He takes his buck down to the tax there was and people are out dropping all their stuff off. But like the text and it was just like get all these cars out of the way, you know, let this guy pull in. And and a guy asked Doug, um what he's gonna do with it? And dogs like you've never taken anything to a tax nervous before you noise? I don't know. I guess I just like to get the head mounted. And he said this, gaggles, that was my dear. I had stuffed the whole damn thing and I got a place where I could put it. All right. We had agreed that, um, wasn't it. We're supposed to have a shot. That's chester Chester's rule. This is like a like a like a Wisconsin celebration. Yeah, kind of we were in Wisconsin and you shot a buck, we'd have some kind of drinking that that conversation, remember we were talking how we would like to go to a bar with Steve, but I don't go to bars, but you don't go to bars. And then this it turned into chat saying if you get one, we need to have a shot. You know, when I get s one niner, it's not gonna because I got that a bar. Yeah, I wish I could say the same. I want. I don't want it to be that. I was like, oh yeah, he got C one nine? Or is that a bar? What are you? What's the cheers? Was Johnny was here, he'd probably have a laughing one to a success you got, you got a good sky each year. Um to the good ships, the bad ships and chips that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships, and may they always be box big goats. O. IM pretty sure that's an Irish. My problem is I was gonna slurt mine just to make a loud noise so people people could have an experience with me. But holy ship, that's smooth, right, he's already looking at the bottle? Was that booned Crocket Club whiskey seven? Seth gave me a bottle of that for my birthday. Steve was over there that day and I think we finished the whole bottle off that night. Okay, here's we were saying earlier. I first applied for mountain goat tag in this state. Uh, and finally Drew kurt you, I don't know what you You probably applied since you were a little kid. Is this your first mountain coat tag? Last year, or had you drawn before in Montana? I was the first one, and you had you been at it for forever. I hadn't because the whole time I lived in Alaska, so we just hunted gold up. Just yeah, so I wasn't until I move back. Got you started putting in getting points. But um, you're prohibited after you draw. You're prohibited from even a lying for seven years. Correct, So you're six years You got six years to go. I'm entering my seven year hiatus, hiatus from even applying. It took me twenty two years to draw last time. I'm forty six. That puts me the I can't do that kind of that level of arithmetic. If I wait the seven and then go twenty two, who's good a math? Seventy five years old SI plus twenty nine, sty're looking into an easier unit. Let's even if even if you only go ten or fifteen, you're still you're still in your sixth decade. Yeah, I don't know how many more years I got, how many more years of this I got left in me? That's a that's a tough I like it. The Kurts older me because he's fine. Oh yeah, he's better than I am he's more spry. You guys are both real spry. I was really happy to hear that you were feeling bad because it helps. Dirt diagnosed me not having enough of Regano extract. I got something. Steve was complaining about jello legs as we're, you know, going up three thousand vertical feet and uh, I mean, you gotta take your time no matter what. But that helps me out toning along a camera. Yeah, yeah, that was a big hike Friday. That wasn't That was the biggest hike at the trip. I think big and slow as far as gain Friday, Yeah, yeah, by that not Saturday. Okay, I'm gonna have the rest of my shot. All right, everybody out there listening, Uh, rest easy. My midlife crisis is over. I got my mountain go seven years. I'm gonna be back into the game. Or like Sid, get the get the kids, take the kids out. Listen, man, I'm gonna see how many how many points do they have? My five year old has two points? How manna ways? Jimmy f too? Oh he does? I have four? This is gonna be a while. Yeah yeah. My kid will turn twelve when he's first able to apply for a limited permit. He'll be coming into the draw. I can't do that level of math. I don't know. He'll have nine points I did do it. Is there an average on how long it takes is twenty two years? Comment. What this state does is they square your points. So let's say you accumulate a point one times one is one, so you're in the draw once. But let's say you're a feller like me who's accumulated every bonus point you could get. And I don't know when they put the system into effect, but it's a long time ago, in the teens. So you have like fifteen times fifteen points. Dang, sure, odds are way better exponential. So but then everybody's like that. So everybody's in there. Everyone's name is in the hat like some odd hundreds. Yeah, you had name T Eggs in there. So I have sixteen points. Now away do you have jet You probably have more than everyone's sitting here. I don't know. Oh so yeah you got two hundred. You got two hundred and fifty six bonus points. My kids got two. No, he's got two times two four. Yeah, so you still got slightly better draws and than he does. So yeah, but still he's gonna be a while, all right, everybody, rest easy on my behalf. Oh plus them and go tasted real good man, Yes, very good. Hot tip if you want to have you being uh people out there, if you want to have something good to eat. Danielle, what's it called whiskey? Like, Danielle Cruett, Go type into the your phone. Not you, I mean not you Chester, but it's mean people. He had it up on his phone. Type into your phone, Danielle true. Are you just do this? Pruett? P R E W E T T whiskey butter heart recipe. Make that, make that ship, but also put it on like backstrap, tenderloine whatever seared venice in heart Whiskey butter recipe on the meat eater site me dot com. Danielle Pruett. She's kind of like kind of becoming. It's a little bit like I would never say this in front of Jesse Griffith's, but she's kind of becoming like my favorite wild game. Don't tell Jesse I said that I just ated his restaurant here at night, So I feel pretty bad if word got out. He's been replaced. He's been replaced. Danielle. I like Danielle better than just It's not like anybody listens to this podcast. When I was searching up that thing, you know what I found it was surprising. Is it's like a thing that happens where if you like auto Phil, if you write in Danielle Pruett, guess what the number one auto Phil is. Danielle Pruett, husband understanding alright, by thanks,