Ryan Callahan and Kenton Kruth are the owners of First Light, a company that makes some of the best hunting and outdoor clothing in the world. In this episode, we talk about how First Light came to be, how they got their start in the outdoor clothing business, and how they came to create some of their most breathable and comfortable hunting and fishing gear. First Light is a great company and I really enjoyed this episode with them! If you're looking for some great outdoor gear to keep you warm and comfortable in the outdoors, you won't want to miss this episode. First Light's gear is breathable, lightweight, and holds up to the harshest of conditions. I think you're going to love it! Thanks to First Light for being on the show, and thanks to all the support they've shown throughout the years! We hope you enjoy this episode and keep coming back for more! Stay tuned for our next episode next Wednesday for another episode with a brand new episode of the podcast! P.S. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts! so we can keep sharing it with your friends, family, and family! other podcasting buddies! Timestamps: 0:00 - What's your favorite piece of outdoor gear you're wearing? 5:30 - What do you like about it? 6:15 - What are you looking forward to wear? 7: What would you like to wear for the next episode? 8:00 9: How do you think of your next outdoor gear? 11: What kind of gear do you would you wear in the next day? 13:00- What is your favorite thing? 14:30 15:40 - What s your favorite type of meal? 16: What are your favorite food? 17:20 - What type of food do you re looking for? 18:00 | What would your biggest piece of gear you re going to wear next? 19: Is it your first piece of food you're most comfortable? 22:00 +3:00 // 15:00 & 16:00 Are you looking for a new piece of equipment you re you would like to see me wear in a new place? 21:00 / 16:30 +16:00 Is it a little bit more? 23:00 Thank you for your feedback?
00:00:35.000First Light makes really cool hunting clothes, outdoor clothes.
00:00:38.000You started out with merino wool, which I think...
00:00:41.000Before I went with Ryan and Steve Rinella, I really had no idea about the properties of merino wool.
00:00:48.000I didn't know that it keeps you from stinking, that it really retains heat while you're wet.
00:00:55.000It's got so many awesome properties to it.
00:00:57.000Like if you go out, for people that don't know, that don't go in the outdoors, but if you go out and you walk and it's cold out and you hike like a long distance and you get sweaty, if you're wearing cotton, you're kind of fucked.
00:01:08.000If it's really cold out, once you start getting sweaty, your body starts shivering and you get in a real bad place.
00:01:15.000Wool has this really weird quality, and maybe you can help me explain that, where when it gets wet, it somehow or another still retains heat.
00:01:23.000So if you sweat in it, you still feel okay.
00:01:28.000Well, you know, it just naturally moves the sweat off of your skin and kind of tries to get it to the outermost layer, and at which point then it can evaporate fast.
00:01:38.000But, you know, sheep have to live in crazy environments.
00:01:41.000You know, it'll be hotter than shit in the summertime, and then...
00:01:47.000So, you know, over the course of evolution, they've got, you know, a coat that will deal with a massive amount of variance, you know, and wool is pretty much the same.
00:01:57.000It's like you can wear it when you're sweating bolts, it pulls the sweat off and then dries pretty quickly.
00:02:04.000But even when it's wet, it retains 80% of its heat.
00:02:08.000And is there a synthetic material that does the same thing?
00:02:12.000Well, every synthetic is trying to A, mimic down, or B, mimic merino wool, because those are the two most efficient, you know, temperature-regulating fabrics or materials out there.
00:02:27.000And that's how you got into your pre-Milofs and all your military testing, and that's where you saw synthetics really take off.
00:02:37.000Yeah, so like Primaloft for example or some of your fleeces, they basically combine something that loves water and something that hates water.
00:02:48.000So the thing that loves water is going to pull moisture off and the thing that hates it is going to repel it and try to push it to the outside.
00:02:56.000So it's like sort of a two-layer process where something's trying to keep you dry and something's trying to like literally suck up the wet like a sponge.
00:03:04.000And then somehow or another your body heat then can regulate it because your body heat, you're staying warm because the dry is close to your skin and then the heat comes off your skin and can dry out that stuff better.
00:04:25.000Using Merino that we found something that, I mean, you know, if you go skiing or snowboarding or sledding, snowmobiling, right?
00:04:32.000You're sweating bullets and if you get stinky, whatever.
00:04:35.000It's just how it always was, you know.
00:04:37.000But for hunting, it's really a big deal, you know.
00:04:40.000If you can possibly kind of, you know, shrink your stink footprint just by a little bit, it can be the difference between succeeding that season or not, you know.
00:05:06.000And at the same time, it started taking over, I would say, the traditional outdoor space.
00:05:11.000Yeah, and your company is really popular with public land, do-it-yourself hunters, guys who go out backpacking for long periods of time, and that's one of the reasons why they like that Merino wool.
00:05:23.000And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you guys on is to talk about what's been going on lately with HR 621 and now HR 622, these two recent bills.
00:05:33.000They pulled H.R. 621. Steve Rinello wrote a big article about it, but for the uninitiated, what these bills are about is they're about selling off our public land, giving the states the ability to do whatever they want with it.
00:05:56.000And there's very few countries in the world that have anything even remotely close to it, where there's millions and millions and millions of acres that are available for anybody listening to this to go on.
00:06:20.000That's such an important point for people because I didn't know it at all until I went with you guys, until I went with Rinella and the crew.
00:06:29.000We went to Montana, that first trip with Brian Callen, who's hopefully coming.
00:06:32.000That's why that door's open, folks, if you're watching this.
00:06:34.000We're leaving that door open because Callen is trying to make his way over here right now.
00:06:40.000I didn't know that this public land system even existed and I think most people are unaware they just don't they don't understand how unique this is and how Incredible like the the our forefathers like their their their vision to make something so incredible that no one Can go in and just fucking put malls up in it is an amazing thing and I think this is like the easiest battle in the world if we can Somehow tell people,
00:07:07.000you know, communicate even a fraction of our appreciation for it.
00:07:18.000Because you guys are, like, you're in the boondocks, man.
00:07:22.000I mean, you guys are in Idaho, and you're in a beautiful area.
00:07:27.000But you could literally, like, go out your back door...
00:07:31.000And make a straight line through public land for forever.
00:07:35.000Like, you could just go walk and disappear.
00:07:37.000Oh, I mean, we can walk straight north and cross two highways and one interstate and keep going across the Canadian border, cross two more highways and be in the Yukon,
00:08:00.000And, you know, it's an interesting issue because sometimes, you know, you'll get mountain bikers, you get after the equestrian people or the, you know, the hikers get after the motorbikers.
00:08:12.000But it's an issue for every single person because no matter what sport you do or how you choose to enjoy the outdoors, that's your land.
00:08:31.000But that set aside, man, there's some amazing country that you could just go get lost in, just go wander, pitch a tent, drink out of a stream, and you could stay there for long periods of time, and it's totally legal, it's totally yours,
00:08:46.000you're Tax dollars literally fund and support it.
00:08:50.000And all the money that comes from buying hunting equipment, from buying tags, from all that stuff is what pays to keep fish and game employed, make sure that people are monitoring the health and the populations of the animals that live there,
00:09:07.000making sure that no one is breaking any of the laws.
00:09:09.000I mean, it's really an amazing, amazing system.
00:10:23.000How did you guys become a company that's so connected in people that do go into the outdoors and people that do hunt and enjoy your products?
00:10:34.000You guys are really connected to public land conservation and these do-it-yourself public land sportsmen.
00:10:42.000You guys are very, very connected in that world.
00:10:45.000It's a very respected company in that world.
00:10:51.000You know, we do, we see it from all angles, you know, all of us have, you know, in the summertime, like I said, we'll ride mountain bikes, and in the wintertime, backcountry skiing, and it's all of a sudden, you know, and then hunting, of course, it's huge, but you just see it from all angles, like places that,
00:11:07.000where you recreate 365 days a year, all of a sudden, you start to get sucked up, and it's just like, wait a minute, wait a minute, you know, like, if this wasn't, if we didn't have public lands, we wouldn't have a business, right?
00:11:24.000Our board of trustees didn't say, it's high time we...
00:11:28.000Well, if you look at the United States being only founded in 1776, and you just look at the massive amount of land we occupy now, there's just the greater Los Angeles area where there's 30 million people, and you go up all through the Pacific Coast Highway and just see all the cities and see all the buildings and see all the stuff that you would encounter if you try to drive.
00:11:52.000The only thing that's stopping that whole fucking area from being covered with buildings and malls and gas stations and anything else they can stick in there...
00:13:07.000Everything's dry, and people are throwing cigarettes out their car windows.
00:13:10.000Kenton's a serious audiophile, so when we were driving up the road, You know, we opted to go over the Pacific Coast Highway and then come over that way out of LA. And Kenton's like, oh man, I bet Neil Young walked through that door a hundred times.
00:15:36.000Which is really interesting, like, now, because of social media, because of guys like you guys, and, I mean, there was a million people, the Gritty Bowman, Ranella, I got involved, there's a lot of people involved, and there's a lot of different, you know, you look at all the, if you Calculate all our followers up,
00:15:52.000of all the different people that were making posts about this, it reaches a lot of people.
00:15:56.000And then it gets people who might have been like me before I went with you guys to Montana, who just might have been curious, like, what is this all about?
00:16:03.000Then you read into it, and then you start looking into this public land system that we have and how unique and beautiful it is, and you just go, wow, they want to sell that?
00:16:12.000And Paul Ryan had proposed that as well, right?
00:16:14.000Didn't he propose selling it off to pay some of the land off to pay for the debt?
00:16:18.000It's something that comes up all too frequently.
00:16:23.000It's something that we've watched state by state by state do.
00:16:40.000You know, when you think about the possibility that this land could not be there for your children or your children's children, like it's been for us, and it's been for our grandparents.
00:16:50.000I mean, it's an amazing system that we have here.
00:18:02.000And there's nothing against county law enforcement here.
00:18:07.000The thing is, it's like, you know, you go grab your local sheriff or sheriff's deputy and say, hey, you know, how many mushrooms can I pull off of this burn on, you know, the Cibola National Forest?
00:18:20.000I mean, that guy's going to look at you cross-eyed.
00:18:22.000You know, ask him how many cords of wood you can go up and cut for your fireplace in the winter.
00:18:28.000You know, the guy's not going to have a clue because it's not his job.
00:20:30.000But we were hunting deer, so you would have to get away from the fucking cows to get to the deer, and the cows would sometimes spook, and then the deer would realize that the cow saw something, and they would boing, boing.
00:21:39.000Who go out and they say, this is how many days and how many, you know, animal cow-calf units can be grazed on this area for this long.
00:21:53.000And doesn't that affect local wildlife as well?
00:21:55.000Because I would assume if you're having your animals graze on this land, they're eating a lot of stuff that the deer would eat or maybe a lot of the other wildlife would eat.
00:22:06.000I mean, where we are, you know, in the lowlands, it's the antelope and the cows live pretty harmoniously.
00:22:15.000In fact, a lot of that, you know, if there's a lot of grain they use to a lot of cow feed, then, you know, it could help.
00:22:22.000When done properly, it works really well.
00:22:26.000Basically, our beef has replaced our bison, our buffalo.
00:22:31.000There was a major grazer out there prior to the beef being out there.
00:22:36.000Super dense grasslands are good for some things, but You know, oftentimes your upland birds need open areas for, you know, picking up scratch and it's better for the bugs and a number of reasons.
00:22:51.000So when that system's respected and done well, it's good for everybody or can be good for everybody.
00:23:01.000I'm sure you guys are aware of this whole American Serengeti project that they're trying to do in the Midwest of this country, in the middle of this country, which is really quite fascinating.
00:23:10.000They're trying to buy up private land and turn it into what they think was essentially like what America was before people came here.
00:23:21.000Yes, and I'm not super studied up on it, but yeah, that is kind of the nuts and bolts of it.
00:23:26.000And at the end of the day, if it's going to be privately held, and I want to say Nature Conservancy.
00:23:50.000I know it's been talked about in a number of different states, but yeah, I think it is, you know, kind of the traditional, you know, the...
00:24:19.000And they're also going to open up block management on that, right?
00:24:21.000So this is going to be an area like once it gets established and once there's populations of animals there, then people are going to be allowed to hunt those animals.
00:24:29.000Yeah, and if that's the case, that's great.
00:24:32.000Like I said, I haven't been super studied up on it, but I love the idea, man.
00:24:37.000It's fascinating that they're doing this and buying up private land that's right now being used for whatever, and they're going to turn it into public land, and they're going to allow people to go there, and you're going to be able to see great herds of bison roaming through some of these states.
00:24:52.000I mean, that's going to be incredible.
00:24:54.000That's something we always talk about on this land transfer stuff.
00:25:15.000Does the APR intend to reintroduce predators such as wolves, grizzly bears, which are historically present in the region?
00:25:21.000As a private, non-profit organization, American Prairie Reserve does not have the authority to reintroduce species to the area, even if those species were historically present.
00:25:31.000Species reintroduction falls under the jurisdiction of Montana Fish and Wildlife Parks and And or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and any decisions regarding the reintroduction of wolves or grizzlies in the region will need to be made by these agencies augmented by the will of the general public.
00:26:02.000Every other year or so, they catch some loner, typically a young male grizz, way out in the prairie.
00:26:12.000And it just looks like he's just kind of naturally getting funneled down to the Missouri Breaks.
00:26:18.000Which, you know, is the historic range for them.
00:26:21.000And somewhere along the way, he gets, you know, his hunger gets the best of them and he knocks over some sheep and that's kind of the end of them, but they're getting close.
00:26:30.000Wolves are going to come whether you like it or not.
00:26:33.000Yeah, how do you guys feel about wolves?
00:26:34.000Because you guys are in Idaho and Idaho has a really interesting relationship with wolves where it's a real love-hate relationship.
00:26:41.000Like, I gotta imagine, it's gotta be cool as fuck to be out at night and hear, oh!
00:27:18.000This is a really controversial subject among sports people and also among wildlife people.
00:27:22.000A lot of wildlife people completely support it.
00:27:24.000They think it balances out the ecosystem and that the undulates like the elk and the deer were running rampant and they were destroying a lot of the grasses and the plants that would...
00:27:34.000Like, provide homes for a lot of other animals, and this whole thing was kind of unbalanced.
00:29:59.000When they start pulling parasites, they catch a bunch of rats, start pulling parasites out, and they're like, well, this one will kill you if you have an open wound and this gets on you, you're fucked.
00:30:15.000And then at the end of it, they kind of explain, like, one of the guys who's an exterminator explains how smart rats are and how much they adapt.
00:30:25.000There's poison, or if there's traps, they literally, the smart rats, the older rats, will hang back, and they'll let a young, weaker rat go towards the food, and he gets his fucking head crushed by the trap, and they go, yep, I thought something was fucked up about that, let's get out of here.
00:33:20.000I mean that to people that are uninitiated.
00:33:22.000So what it is, is the wildlife biologists, and this is a really controversial topic, because when they reintroduced wolves, there was a target population that they wanted to reach.
00:33:30.000And they felt like we could reintroduce these wolves, and what's interesting is, they got them from Canada.
00:33:35.000And the guy that trapped them, that the legend holds, he just found the nastiest, biggest, like, oh, you guys want to bring wolves?
00:33:41.000Because in Canada, like, where I got this moose in BC, they have so many wolves that That Mike Hawkridge, my buddy who lives up there, one of his neighbors, took out a cow.
00:33:53.000And, you know, they'll just get these big packs and they'll just fucking attack things.
00:33:57.000They roll in at least like four to, you know, a pack of four is small.
00:36:52.000We should go back to the quota thing, because this is kind of a pet peeve of mine.
00:36:56.000I try to encourage everybody at the office to go to our local fish and game meetings and the town hall meetings and things that happen there in Ketchum, Idaho.
00:37:10.000One of the arguments that came up was just so backwards, but it came from a place of...
00:37:15.000I can see the logical sequence here, but typically if there's a really, really long hunting season on something...
00:37:23.000It means that hunters are doing a really bad job of filling their tags.
00:40:14.000And then they had shot like an alpha wolf and rubbed his scent and his glands all over the meat so that the other wolves knew that he had been there, so they thought it was okay to eat that stuff.
00:40:25.000And so they would eat it, they would get the strychnine, and they would die, and it was a mass kill-off.
00:40:38.000And the thing is, like, one of the hottest topics in our area was in the winter, especially a heavy winter right now, all your game animals get congregated in lower elevations typically on these south-facing slopes that get a lot of sun.
00:40:52.000Heavy winters like we're experiencing right now, these animals are basically pushed into that farm and ranch country.
00:40:59.000And those operators down there are feeding their winter livestock.
00:41:07.000And the wolves and the coyotes are right in on top of everybody in calving seasons right now.
00:41:14.000So then you get typically a very large mortality rate.
00:41:20.000Yeah, mortality rate spikes because you got animals that are in distress and there's, you know, afterbirth from the birthing process everywhere.
00:41:28.000You got easy pickings on the calves and hunters aren't knocking these numbers down.
00:41:33.000So the state and, you know, Cattlemen's Association will go together and fund helicopter Gunning, so aerial gunning to go out there and shoot those animals.
00:41:46.000I would love to hear the tiny dick argument.
00:41:51.000Well, you want to kill a wolf because you've got a tiny dick.
00:42:17.000The people are being told, there was an article about it recently, where people are being told to not fear the wolves that are in the streets of fucking Paris.
00:42:25.000Because they're only looking for four-legged prey.
00:42:28.000Like, these fucking people don't remember the story from the 1400s, this historical story where the people of Paris had to gather together with fucking spears and corner these wolves and kill them in the town square.
00:42:42.000You know, how much of it, you know, obviously when you're dealing with something from 1400, there's no, like, film, so we don't know how much of this is accurate, but it's a historical story that they had to kill a ton of wolves.
00:42:53.000And I'm sure you guys know about the story from World War I. Yes.
00:42:56.000The Russians and the Germans had a ceasefire because so many of them were getting killed by wolves in Russia.
00:43:01.000They decided, let's go kill these fucking wolves and then we'll go back to killing each other.
00:43:08.000I think, I mean, the populace at large, what they, I think, what could benefit the most from is there's people on extreme lovers and extreme haters, but in the middle, there is somewhere in the middle, there's a right thing to do.
00:43:22.000And I think that the government definitely puts their best foot forward via scientists and whatever to figure out that balance, you know?
00:43:31.000And I think that to say that, you know, we need to have You know, 10,000 wolves in Idaho is naive, because that would happen, for instance, if they were just let, you know, procreate at will.
00:43:44.000So, you know, these people are trying to be good, right?
00:44:19.000Like and and my kids are like those are wild like those are wild they go wherever they want and like that's like in their head like that's a wild that there's just giant furry fucking Star Wars beast yeah it's a wild animal never forget it they'll never forget it yeah I mean it was sinking in their head too that this is wild you know because it's one thing if you see something behind a fence and you go oh that's a cow you know we're at a farm that's a cow and I'm like no honey those things live in the woods they go wherever they want there's no boss no one tells them what to do they just do whatever they want Totally.
00:44:49.000Well, coming full circle, like the whole wild thing is that, you know, with public lands, people get to have these crazy wild experiences, i.e.
00:46:02.000And that's the other thing, like with the number of trail cams that exist today in the woods, people put up to scout to try to find out where the animals are.
00:46:10.000And then on top of that, the number of phones that people have that have cameras on them has gone through the roof, but the Bigfoot sightings have shrunk.
00:47:35.000You just don't see it because there's not a big difference in the temperature between your body and the air like it is when it's really cold out.
00:47:42.000I think that's why people are more hungover in the mountains, too.
00:47:53.000Like, the people that are pros, they'll pound booze, and then they'll have a fucking jug of water.
00:47:57.000A buddy of mine drank with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and he said, this is like way back when Jean-Claude Van Damme was a big movie star, doing all these big movies.
00:50:24.000You would just, you'd fall dead and everything would go, it's just the humble...
00:50:30.000The feeling of humility and the feeling of insignificance is so overwhelming and unavoidable that it's just this intense realization of your peace, like where you are as a person, where you fit in in this grand,
00:50:48.000And it's amplified the further you go back, you know, and you know you're a full day plus walk away, you know, or you get dropped off somewhere.
00:52:09.000Australian customs, they won't allow you to bring in meat.
00:52:12.000But if you're doing four trips, so let's say he did a little bit of meat and his entire camp out on the first trip, that's three loads of just meat.
00:52:27.000He brought it all back over four days.
00:52:28.000But, you know, when he described it, like how brutal the experience was by himself shooting this animal.
00:52:36.000And then he called a buddy to help him.
00:52:38.000This guy helped him pack out a little bit.
00:52:40.000So imagine your bones laying there on the prairie in eastern Montana.
00:52:46.000There's a good chance, because hunters do the same thing, right?
00:52:49.000And game kind of does the same thing, generation after generation, generation.
00:52:54.000Think about, you tip over dead, there's a very good chance in that country there's probably like a crow or a sioux set of bones underneath you.
00:54:05.000That's so important to post, too, because you didn't waste an ounce of that meat.
00:54:10.000You cut every, in between the ribs, you know, you were, I mean, and people were, like, commenting on that photo, like, that is the respect that you give an animal when you hunt it and you shoot it.
00:54:59.000The thing is, yeah, you should take every single thing, but there are little things that get wasted.
00:55:06.000And the rib meat chunks, especially later in the season when there's not a lot of fat on these animals, if it's going to take you some time to get out, that's the stuff that's going to get super dried out before you can even make something out of it.
00:56:12.000Unfortunately, maybe Jamie can find it.
00:56:13.000But one of the things that this guy did was he would put a liver in a downed animal.
00:56:19.000Like they would kill an animal, place it, put a liver in it, and he would eat the liver in front of the other wolves so that he would be the dominant male.
00:56:27.000And where he got fucked up is, he had to leave, because he's a wolf expert, there was a farmer that was being inundated by wolves, so they had set up this whole way to keep the wolves away from this guy's property without killing them.
00:56:40.000And one of the things that they did was they set up all these speakers, and they projected the sounds of these alpha wolves with these giant speakers.
00:56:47.000So like, look, bitch, this new fucking king just moved into town.
00:56:50.000Everybody get the hell away from these sheep.
00:56:52.000And they set up these big-ass speakers all over, and it worked, but It took a long time to keep these wolves away, like a couple of months.
00:57:00.000And so when he came back, there was a new alpha that had taken his place and he wanted to kill him.
00:57:06.000And it's a horrific scene where this guy is standing there whimpering in front of this wolf and this huge wolf is in front of him baring his teeth.
00:57:14.000And you're just thinking at any minute this wolf is just going to tear this guy's fucking face off.
00:57:33.000That he established a friendship with this wolf when he was the alpha, to the point where it's going to accept the changing of positions, and he has to show no resistance to this change.
00:57:42.000So it's a really critical moment in his fucking life, man.
00:57:45.000Because it might end right there with that wolf.
00:57:55.000Late in the season and food scarce, that would be a tough proposition to make.
00:58:00.000Early in the season when everybody's happy, lots of calves on the ground, easy pickings.
00:58:05.000Yeah, I was reading this article about bears in this one region of Alaska, where there's this salmon run, and we had a video of it where there's a guy, I'm sure you've seen the video, because it's a famous video, where this guy's sitting there, he's got a little lawn chair, and they're taking photographs of the bears,
01:01:38.000I think the one thing that people don't understand from the outside, that really don't understand the whole idea of hunting predators, I feel like you really kind of have to be there.
01:01:51.000I feel like you kind of have to like almost be Just really involved in that whole ecosystem.
01:01:57.000Just be there physically to kind of get it.
01:02:52.000It was earlier than that, all the way to, because I think, God, I think Roosevelt gave them Canada geese and the mallard duck in like 1905 or something like that.
01:03:05.000So what they did was they brought all these animals over there with no predators at all.
01:03:10.000And so they have wild stags and these red deer and all these different animals that are not native.
01:03:18.000And they're overrun to the point where they have to do helicopter runs on fucking stag.
01:03:23.000They have to fly over and da-da [...]-da.
01:06:18.000How, you know, I feel like you should, I mean, this is totally ignorant on my part and very biased, but I feel like you should have to be in shape to kill something that lives up there.
01:06:28.000When I see a fat guy that just figures out a way how to do it, I'm like, all right, fatso.
01:06:47.000What the fuck is wrong with someone that doesn't get fit and wants to climb Everest?
01:06:52.000I just think that they have no idea what it's like to be able to 8,000 meters.
01:06:56.000They might sit there and go on the treadmill every single day and I don't know.
01:07:02.0008,000 meters is what's really important, because 8,000 feet sucks.
01:07:06.000When I lived in Boulder, we were at 8,500 feet, and I would do my kettlebell routine at 8,500 feet, and it was just like trying to run through water.
01:07:17.000It was like, Jesus Christ, this is hard to do.
01:07:50.000Yeah, that was one thing that I noticed when I did live up there for, it was only like for four months, but when I'd go down to sea level, I felt like I could fucking run through walls.
01:08:34.000So, like, you go down for the training.
01:08:38.000Like, say, if you were next to Big Bear, you would drive down...
01:08:42.000And then train at like, you know, wherever down there and then bust your ass in San Bernardino or whatever and then go back up the hill and sleep and eat and do all your stuff at high altitude.
01:08:53.000So where your high workload is, like for the maximum efficiency of your training.
01:08:58.000Because you can get 100 reps in at low elevation.
01:09:04.000Also, for fighting, it's super important to not be tired while you're doing certain technical work.
01:09:11.000You're going to be a certain amount of tired, but you don't want to be exhausted.
01:09:14.000Because your brain doesn't work, right?
01:09:16.000No, you drop your hands, you develop shitty skills, you start making errors in your technique, and those errors in your technique will manifest themselves under pressure.
01:09:26.000So it's like, one of the things about fighting is it's super important that you do everything in training exactly how you would do it if your fucking life depended on it.
01:09:34.000And if you don't, you're gonna pay a price.
01:09:36.000Like, guys who slack off in training, They almost never become champions.
01:09:40.000Unless you're some physical freak who can get away with it.
01:09:43.000The reality is, in order to compete against like-minded people that are also phenomenally fit and motivated and understand the consequences of not being fit and motivated and well-trained, you have to do everything right.
01:09:57.000And especially now, like MMA, you can get away with a lot.
01:10:00.000When I started doing commentary in 1997, you could get away with a lot.
01:10:07.000I mean, just the level of competition just was not the same as it is now.
01:10:11.000But now the people are so good that the margin of error is so small.
01:10:15.000The difference between victory and defeat is so small that it's just so much high-level activity going on in MMA fights that you can't fuck around in anywhere.
01:10:24.000With your nutrition, with your recovery, with all the different things you're doing outside of training, like cryotherapy or floating or all these different things that people do.
01:10:35.000That's another thing a lot of guys do.
01:10:37.000All those different things are like hugely important because these little tiny edges, but also technique.
01:10:42.000Like your technique has to be efficient and has to be correct so that in the heat of the moment, you never think of doing things wrong because you've never done anything wrong.
01:10:51.000Every time you're training, you're doing things correctly and that might not even save you.
01:11:04.000When you're dealing with world championship level, a division like the UFC's 170-pound division, a very competitive division, so competitive that the last title fight resulted in a draw.
01:11:17.000And one of the first draws, there's only three draws in the history of the UFC in title fights.
01:11:22.000So this fight lines up in a draw, and then there's a bunch of other guys fucking just straight killers waiting in the wings to have their shot at the title.
01:11:30.000So on any given day, one of these guys might be able to beat one of those guys.
01:11:34.000Like one of these guys comes in a little bit sick, has a little bit of a cold from training, or maybe they're breaking up with their girlfriend, their head's a little fucked up, which happens a lot.
01:13:12.000It's just, I mean, it certainly would lower your testosterone a little bit.
01:13:15.000But I mean, if you're fit and prepared, it might relax you where you get a good night's sleep.
01:13:20.000You know, because that's one of the things about these guys is like anxiety, staying up late, you know, just trying to get your shit together, making sure you get a good night's sleep so you don't get sick.
01:13:30.000Don't let the, don't be overwhelmed by the pressure of the moment.
01:13:46.000Now, think about the anxiety of releasing a perfect arrow on a beautiful animal.
01:13:52.000You know, there's a lot of anxiety involved in that.
01:13:54.000And it's something that people on the outside...
01:13:56.000I've heard people say ridiculous things when it comes to hunting, but one of the most ridiculous things that people have to say is, you know, there's no skill involved in that.
01:14:04.000All you're doing is, you know, you're shooting a defenseless animal.
01:14:12.000It's so difficult to keep your shit together in that moment.
01:14:15.000And if you're a person who is compassionate and who understands the consequences of wounding an animal and what's at stake here, and the responsibility of making a perfect shot and a clean kill, it's a very anxiety-filled moment.
01:14:32.000And I'll tell you right now, I've been around a lot of death.
01:14:37.000Not necessarily by my hands, but doing the Gaiden gig and stuff like that.
01:14:44.000I did not ever think I was susceptible to that anxiety of being behind the trigger because I'd been around it so, so much.
01:14:51.000So what I'm trying to say is once you get that skill to be calm behind the trigger or on the string if you're releasing an arrow, it's not necessarily something that's going to stay with you.
01:15:49.000So you're going over and under, over elevation, climbing mountains.
01:15:54.000Yeah, basically, you know, big river crossing, big climb, try to follow a major drainage up, couldn't find anything or found very, very little.
01:17:13.000There were seven bucks chasing one doe.
01:17:17.000Seven mule deer bucks chasing one doe.
01:17:19.000And we were looking at these deer and we were so far in, you know, typically you're just not going to shoot a buck for meat when you're that far in.
01:17:30.000And When you say a buck for meat, you mean a small buck.
01:17:46.000But for people, for the uninitiated, which a lot of people listening to this are, the meat buck, you would think of like a young fork buck where it doesn't have big antlers.
01:17:53.000So you're talking about, you're looking for a big, mature animal.
01:21:42.000Because they say that that's a good thing to have, like, almost like a mantra.
01:21:45.000For sure with archery, like, the more you do it, the better you are.
01:21:49.000Like, the way you take your arrow out of the quiver, the way you put it on the string, like, you want that to be to where if you are just gripped, right, it just happens.
01:22:03.000Dealing with anxiety and having this pattern that you've carved so deeply into your mind and your body, your neurons, that your body just knows automatically.
01:22:16.000When I was competing, there was moments where I did something where I didn't even know I did it, and it was over already.
01:22:48.000I mean, you shoot one, like, maybe once a six months, you know, once a year if you're a busy person, if you're lucky.
01:22:55.000Maybe you go a year and you don't even get a shot at one because maybe you get this one trip a year and, like, you know, you go somewhere and, like you were saying, you didn't see anything until you saw that fawn.
01:23:32.000And they're just trying to keep that pin in the general area of that animal and pull through the shot.
01:23:37.000For those of you who don't know, this is like stepping into a place that you have never been before, you're not sure what's going on, and you whistle, and a six to eight hundred pound animal with Big chunks of sharp bone coming out of its head,
01:23:55.000and its dick slapping against its belly, spraying piss all over the place, wants to come in and either mount you from behind or beat the piss out of you.
01:24:43.000But all the ultra-marathon running and all the weightlifting, all the crazy shit he does and constant practice with archery, he just, like, when the moments come, he's so dialed in.
01:25:12.000He's the one-tenth of one percent of the hunters and he's out there being way more successful than anybody else doing something that's insanely difficult.
01:25:22.000But to the uninitiated or the people that just have never experienced it, it looks like he's an animal-hating monster who's out there shooting God's beautiful creations.
01:26:55.000And he's got this whole system that he's put together, and I actually paid for it and watched it.
01:27:03.000Very good stuff, very well thought out, very interesting stuff, but a lot of it is on the mindset because he was training police officers.
01:27:10.000He's training SWAT team members and how to keep it together in the middle of a firefight.
01:27:16.000And he actually was talking in one of the interviews that I saw him in about...
01:27:21.000A conversation that he had with a police officer that was in a firefight with a bad guy and heard his words and his instructions going through and executed correctly and did the right thing while this guy's shooting in his car window and glass is flying and bullets are flying at him and he stayed calm and killed this guy who was shooting at him.
01:27:41.000This process of having a thing, like a mantra that you relay in your head that relates to a physical action and that you drill it in yourself so it's unavoidable.
01:28:11.000You gotta, there's gotta be a thing in your brain that you can, like, press play on.
01:28:16.000You know, and then once you do that, you could, like, there was an article that I read recently about, uh, it was about choking in sports.
01:28:24.000And it was essentially, the article was essentially saying that what you have to do is figure out a process that removes your conscious mind from the equation.
01:28:34.000Like, figure out a process of training where you know what to do.
01:28:37.000Like, you have a basketball, someone's coming at you, you juke left, you go right.
01:30:10.000And according to Dan Carlin, if you've never heard this before, if you've heard me rant about this before, I'm sorry, just ignore me for a moment.
01:30:18.000There's an amazing podcast series called Hardcore History.
01:30:23.000It's by this guy who's a friend of mine.
01:30:48.000It's worth a hundred times more than that.
01:30:50.000But it's a five-part episode on the Mongols.
01:30:52.000And he said that their bows were like a 160-pound draw.
01:30:55.000They were just these sinewy fucking savages that were incredible archers.
01:31:00.000They had developed this ability to release the arrow as the horse was in its gallop.
01:31:05.000So when the horse was in the air, when there wasn't a disturbance, so they would time the release of the arrow to when the horse was actually in the air.
01:31:51.000And then you throw your finger over the top of that thumb ring, and your thumb pushes back on it, and your index finger closes over the top of your thumb.
01:32:02.000It's not dissimilar to a modern release, right?
01:32:29.000You know, the idea is you don't ever pull the trigger.
01:32:32.000You lock in, you pull in place, you put your thumb over the trigger.
01:32:36.000Then once you're in place, you concentrate on the muscles that are in the center of your back and you pull those and the release goes off and you get a surprise shot.
01:32:43.000So the idea behind that is there's never a moment when you're like, now!
01:32:46.000And you punch it and then you move the arrow or you move the bow.
01:32:53.000Because all you're doing in the shot process is pulling and concentrating on those muscles in the center of your back and your scapula and contracting those.
01:33:01.000And as you do that, the release just goes off because your thumb is pressing against that trigger.
01:33:06.000But you have to resist that urge that everybody has.
01:33:12.000So that's the difference between John Dudley's approach versus Joel Turner's approach.
01:33:16.000Joel Turner has the same approach and even talks about it when it comes to compound bows of using a thumb trigger of pulling and letting the shot go off But Dudley, he thinks that you should start off using a tension-based release,
01:33:33.000which the way that works is you actually hold the safety, you hold the trigger until you lock in place.
01:33:39.000Then once you're ready to execute, you release the safety and all it takes is like a couple extra pounds of pulling and it goes off.
01:33:46.000Yeah, so it's like a Carter Evolution, or he has one that he makes called the Silverback, that is a two-finger version of the Carter Evolution, so he feels like the least amount of fingers that you have on it, the least amount of tension.
01:33:58.000I mean, this is the point to try to, people are like, what the fuck are you rambling about?
01:34:02.000What I'm trying to rambling about is this thing is insanely complicated.
01:34:06.000So to the people that look at this and say, oh, there's no skill involved, and oh, you're just killing this defenseless animal, it is the most difficult way to get your food.
01:35:44.000Versus setting everything up and Plus, you know, you get to a point where a modern compound bow, if you practice a lot, meaning for years, right, you'll get to 90 yards, to where you are proficient all day.
01:35:56.000People are going to complain, and I don't know.
01:35:59.000It's not really that ethical for most people to shoot at 90 yards, but it is for a guy like John Dudley, or, you know, a guy like Cameron Haynes, because they do it all day, every day.
01:36:09.000This man is a very technically proficient shooter in anything that he shoots, and he won't say it, but...
01:36:16.000We used to sit in the ski area parking lot, Greyhawk parking lot, and 106 yards is as far as my adjustable sight would go on my bow.
01:36:26.000So he would stand there and he could shoot a lot further.
01:36:29.000But, I mean, the groups that he would put in at 106 yards were amazing because he's got that mind to do it.
01:37:05.000And if nothing else, you're going to get way better at hunting in the sense that you're going to hunt more because you're not going to kill shit.
01:37:12.000But, you know, having to go from, let's just say, 80 is a max yard, and I don't want to get into the argument about distance, but let's just say that was, you know, your max, max on a perfect situation.
01:37:39.000Even people that have no desire whatsoever to hunt, even if you're a lifelong vegetarian, you're never going to eat meat, just go shoot a bow and arrow at a target.
01:37:48.000It is so relaxing in some weird meditative way.
01:37:53.000It cleanses your mind in some strange way.
01:37:56.000Yeah, it's like fly fishing kind of same thing.
01:37:59.000It's like you're not necessarily I don't you have to concentrate but at the same time It's like taking a nap or something you go shoot for 20 minutes 30 minutes and you're done.
01:38:07.000You're like, okay What was I thinking about before?
01:38:10.000Oh, I love to do it when I've got like a business issue I'm dealing with or Something I'm trying to like sort out in my mind.
01:38:16.000I just go out my yard I got a big rubber elk out there at 85 yards and I'll just start shooting that sucker and And you don't think about nothing but that shot.
01:38:24.000You just center that pin, try to stay calm, relax your hand, let the bow go off.
01:39:59.000That's so crazy to have an animal that big, that close to you.
01:40:02.000It was crazy, but to Cal's point, the beauty was that it was hanging up out at 50 yards for five minutes, and that would have been the end of that experience, right?
01:40:12.000I would have not had that same experience.
01:40:14.000And then it comes up, and to Cal, it licked you, basically, right?
01:42:31.000Like a buddy of mine recently just did DMT and he had talked about it for a long time and then he finally did it and then he just sent me a text message.
01:42:43.000He texted me after it was over because he had been thinking about doing it forever.
01:42:47.000And then it's one of those things like unless you do it, whatever I say, the words that I'm using to describe, they're just not going to work.
01:42:54.000I think that's the case with so many experiences in life.
01:42:56.000Like try to describe being in love to someone who's never been in a relationship.
01:43:11.000It's like, you know, and I think certain intense experiences in life, like hunting, or just even forget the hunting.
01:43:19.000I mean, just being in the woods, like attempting to hunt an animal is an insane, almost psychedelic experience.
01:43:26.000It's one of the things that I describe to people the first trip that we went to the Missouri Breaks when I shot that deer.
01:43:32.000When I locked eyes with that animal, For the first time, and I was sitting on a pack looking down the scope of this rifle, and I was looking at this animal, and then I look at this animal through this rifle scope, and he's looking at me.
01:43:47.000I was like, this is a weird life form that's living in this very barren and desolate place where there's no people for miles.
01:43:58.000And I'm locking eyes with this thing and it was oddly psychedelic.
01:44:46.000And because you do look at things in a much different way.
01:44:52.000And, you know, kind of the point of talking about all this public land stuff is that I do feel like people who hunt and fish carry a big load of this burden, right, through the taxes that we pay.
01:45:05.000That are taxes that if you don't hunt or fish, you don't pay them.
01:45:08.000And we've highlighted that on the show, the actual amount of it.
01:45:12.000We've showed, like, from the Rocky Mountain Elf Foundation, their Instagram page.
01:45:15.000They have a really good Instagram page that has a bunch of different examples of different states of the sheer volume of money that comes in because, directly because, of hunting and fishing.
01:45:43.000It's amazing when you think about it that way.
01:45:44.000In that sense, this system that we have here with public land and with using these tax dollars to pay for all the wildlife biologists, to pay for the fish and game, to pay for the population management.
01:46:27.000But, you know, you are taking a trail, an established trail, and you're covering miles and you're getting to your goal, and maybe you're snapping a picture or spending a night, and then you're coming back on that trail, or maybe it's a different trail.
01:50:08.000This is good information for biologists because we're out there actually, our point in the woods is being out there looking for animals.
01:50:16.000Now, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you guys on is to really sort of discuss this public land issue and also to allow people to understand what's at stake and to give them options to look into and different resources that they can check in on,
01:50:44.000My mouth starts shutting down after two hours these days.
01:50:47.000But what they're doing is amazing, highlighting what this is and how important this is.
01:50:53.000What are the other things that people can do if they want to look into this stuff?
01:50:56.000Yeah, so BHA is Big Loud Voice, and I think they're one of the best groups out there right now to really just raise awareness on public lands and access issues.
01:51:08.000Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership does a phenomenal job.
01:51:22.000Now, so what the main issue is, and Kent and I, we talked about, you know, you have an incredible platform here, Joe, and we don't want to waste it.
01:52:22.000But, man, if you're buying beef or lamb off the grocery store shelf, those grazing permits that we talked about, a lot of that happens on federally managed lands, whether it's BLM or Forest Service ground.
01:52:37.000And the thing is, this is nonpartisan, again.
01:52:41.000And one of the things that ticked me off about old Jason Chavez on HR 621 is he said, hey, you know, this started under Obama.
01:53:45.000And use social media, because social media is an amazing tool, and that's what killed HR 621. It was directly killed by social media, and it was killed quick.
01:53:56.000You know, the pressure that they faced from guys like me posting it to 1.8 million people on Instagram, 1.5 million people on Facebook.
01:54:04.0003 million or whatever the fuck it is on Twitter like all those people add up and then those people to find out about it they jump in and they realize that this is a this is a This it's a really important issue.
01:54:16.000It's a giant issue and Rinello always points out that he's and by the way Rinello wrote a great article about all this and about how Killing HR 621 is just one battle in the overall war and we're not there's no not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination and that articles available right now if you go to His Twitter it's on I think it's on meat eater.com Is that where it is?
01:54:41.000Yeah, but no, that's not that's one but there's one that I tweeted today and This is the one from January 20th.
01:54:48.000There's one that I tweeted today that he just recently wrote.
01:54:51.000And he calls himself a political eunuch because he's like, look, he goes, the Republicans want to sell off the land and the Democrats want to take away your guns.
01:55:00.000He's like, I don't know where the fuck to go, you know, in that sense.
01:55:03.000Well, my point simply is that you can change, you know what I mean?
01:55:07.000It's like if you need, it's not a partisan, it shouldn't be a partisan issue.
01:55:11.000Your representatives are there to represent your interests.
01:57:35.000You know, somebody chopped all the trees down and put up a go-kart thing.
01:57:40.000I mean, so if you look at the state land example, right, these state lands are there to make money for the states, and like we said, state gets in trouble, they sell those lands.
01:58:03.000Oh, he had just panic, fear of God put into him because he had this realization that he's like, oh my God, the entire reason I am who I am today is because I had this opportunity to go out and chase animals.
01:58:16.000And if I saw a horizon line, I could go over the top of it because nobody owned it.
01:59:29.000And she's like, you're eating a steak.
01:59:31.000She's like, well, these animals are farmed animals.
01:59:33.000She goes, well, don't you think that that animal lived a horrific existence and then finally was killed?
01:59:39.000You think that's better than someone just out of nowhere, you're hiding behind a bush making cow calls and you blast an arrow through the heart of some wild beast and then take that thing down off the mountain.
01:59:49.000You have the experience, you have the food, you also have this wild encounter.
01:59:54.000With this magnificent beast that you have this connection to that every time you eat, like every time I eat a steak off of that elk, I think about the experience of hunting that thing.
02:00:37.000We talk about this at length all the time, and Kenton's got this, like, knicker analogy, and we're walking around SHOT Show, and there's this European hunting company down the road, and he stops me, and he's like, Hey, Cal.
02:00:49.000It's like, we lose all this land, this is what we're gonna be making.
02:01:08.000There's a thing called pheasant shoots, European pheasant shoots, and they literally release these birds, and the birds fly away, and guys stand there with guns, waiting for them to release from their cage and shoot them.
02:01:20.000That's how Dick Cheney shot his friend.
02:01:59.000On our side, we are constantly, like, analyzing our clothing and analyzing our days, and we're getting, to be totally truthful, man, life at First Light's pretty freaking good, man.
02:02:12.000We get to spend a lot of days in the woods, way more than your average Joe gets to, and...
02:02:46.000But the idea is to send them to people that use them in tons of different environments.
02:02:50.000Like, you know, we hunt in the Rockies, so, you know, we've got plenty of experience there, but it's cool.
02:02:56.000We'll send stuff to, you know, guys hunting in BC or guys hunting in AK where it's raining all the time.
02:03:03.000But that's the goal, you know, where it's hot.
02:03:06.000But being able to send stuff out and have it used in these tons of different environments allows us just to build better stuff, you know?
02:03:13.000Yeah, and it's a real trial and error thing where you're taking these super experienced guys.
02:03:18.000And when you said some guys are public, some guys are not, what you mean is some guys have public profiles and some guys, they just stay under the radar and just...
02:03:27.000You have a lot of guys like that, right?
02:03:44.000You know, sometimes very little experience, and sometimes their input is the most valuable.
02:04:09.000And I think that's been incredibly valuable on our line, too.
02:04:13.000Living there, too, it's living in the mountains.
02:04:15.000You know, you get to take stuff from all different sports, whether you're, you know, riding your bike or whether you're backcountry skiing.
02:04:23.000Like, a lot of that stuff crosses over, you know, and I think that allows us to round things out nicely.
02:04:51.000So you've got to approach it from kind of a different shift and how, you know, when you build stuff, it needs to be versatile, right?
02:04:58.000Like you can't have, you know, I don't know, the equivalent would be like having a guy that was a construction worker and he's got an eight-penny nail and he's got a 16-penny nail.
02:05:07.000Does he have an eight-penny hammer and a 16-penny hammer?
02:05:10.000It's like, no, you need to be able to do everything with You know, a certain amount of stuff because you're going out in the woods and, you know, you might be walking slow.
02:05:59.000There's a lot of it that's high fence and a lot of it is like over feeders.
02:06:03.000They have like these feed machines and these animals come to the feed machines and they're overrun with wild pigs and then they have these fucking weird African animals that you can hunt anytime you want.
02:06:13.000I mean, there's a bit from my last special, but it's true.
02:06:16.000There's more tigers in captivity in Texas than there are in all of the wild of the world.
02:07:03.000But yeah, man, you don't need the type of innovation.
02:07:06.00020,000 privately owned big cats, including tigers, lions, and cougars, currently living in captivity in the U.S. The exact number is unknown due to insufficient record keeping.
02:08:58.000I mean, they have tags when it comes to, like, white-tailed deer and indigenous species, but when it comes, and who knows if even the white-tails are indigenous there.
02:09:05.000I mean, they're bringing them in from farms, so they have bigger racks.
02:09:09.000You know, they have a lot of weird shit they do.
02:09:10.000So I wonder, it must be if you have a high fence, then it's, once that thing's, like, fully fenced, everything within becomes private.
02:10:09.000Texas is a very odd place, but what I wanted to highlight is, man, you don't want that to be the only way you can get a hunting experience, because Texas is fucking weird.
02:11:05.000I had a conversation with one of the Sitka, Harrison, Jason Harrison, who found Nakuyu, started out with Sitka, and then they pushed him out and they bought it out, and now the Sitka guys and the Nakuyu guys don't get along.
02:11:42.000I think it'd be real hard for me to believe that anybody's out there being like, listen, if you put this on, you fucking hate those people.
02:11:49.000Oh, definitely there's people like that out there.
02:11:51.000I think people kind of just pick it up and run with it.
02:11:54.000I'm sure some people are ultra-competitive and it comes from that.
02:11:57.000That's just the way it is in business, right?
02:11:59.000Instead of concentrating on what you're doing, a lot of people concentrate on the other people that are doing what you're doing.
02:12:03.000These fuckers are trying to get us and we need a fucking...
02:12:36.000It's a cool system in that, you know, generally speaking, you go to a few different shows, like the Outdoor Retailer and whatever, and you get to see all the best stuff, right?
02:12:44.000Like, whether it be from, you know, Patagonia.
02:16:16.000Yeah, no, but they're, you know, they're into their extreme sport, you know, they're skiers and mountain bikers, and, you know, inevitably, it's like, you know, there's a jump built or something, and first thing that gets called is, you know...
02:16:47.000They, you know, want to get after, you know, some nasty, gnarly-ass, you know, jump or whatever on their bikes, and somebody's got to guinea pig it, and sure enough, it's probably the one that got called a pussy first, right?
02:16:59.000Well, for me, when Donald Trump, that whole story came out, it was great, because then all of a sudden everybody, so many people are saying pussy.
02:17:06.000And it seems like this country is, like, backing...
02:17:10.000We had gotten to some weird politically correct phase just in the last couple years where people are so mad...
02:17:16.000That so many different groups are so mad at the way our culture is that there was all these words that you weren't allowed to say anymore.
02:17:24.000And there was all these new things like, you're not allowed to wear sombreros because it's cultural appropriation.
02:17:29.000They were getting mad at people for cooking other cultures dishes.
02:17:32.000Like, people got so politically correct that, like, the good thing about Donald Trump being in office is that I said that political correctness just took a missile to the dick.
02:17:41.000Because, like, that guy as the fucking commander-in-chief, man, that political correctness shit, it's like, it doesn't seem very effective.
02:18:35.000Well, the more you create offensive words, and the more you create words that you're not allowed to say them, the more you're going to give those words power.
02:20:42.000I need some experiences in my life to write about, to talk about, so I'm just gonna fucking stop talking to people and disappear for a few months.
02:23:17.000Competition is not a bad thing, and there's no more primal competition than you trying to go out and get your own food that's running around trying to stay alive.
02:25:15.000Yeah, I took them when they were just so little that they just pizza'd down the, like when they had the little connector with the two skis and they just slide.
02:25:31.000Yeah, kids are, you know, it's an amazing thing to have a little person that you're raising and you get to see them learning things for the first time, which will never happen again.
02:25:41.000You know, everything they learned for the first time, like the first time they went skiing, I remember this look on their face, like, they got the mittens on, like, this is crazy!
02:25:51.000They're so happy and excited, like, there's never gonna be a first like that again.
02:25:55.000And the more firsts you can have in this life, I think the better and more rich your life will be.
02:26:00.000The more first experiences, the more times you can learn things.
02:26:03.000And people Get locked into these patterns in their life and I don't know why it happens and I don't know what causes it but We get a job and we get a career and we get a path in a neighborhood and that's boom and then the first stop There's no more firsts and then it becomes the same shit over and over again life becomes mundane and life becomes tired and It's how you grow old,
02:26:36.000And hopefully, that's what happens to more people more when they listen to podcasts like this, and they hear you guys talk about your experiences, and they say, God damn it, I need some of that in my life.
02:26:47.000You know, I need to just go fucking camp.
02:27:59.000Jamie, cue up some elk bugle, because for people who've never heard it before, they don't know what the fuck we're talking about, you live in a city somewhere, you poor bastard, it sounds like an animal from the Lord of the Rings.
02:29:10.000Man, every time I've been elk hunting, and I've been elk hunting a few times now, you see one, and you hear it, and just your whole body, like, tingles.
02:29:17.000It's like, whoa, what a magical experience just to be around those things.
02:30:08.000Most people didn't even know that that was a real thing.
02:30:10.000They know that we killed off all the buffalo, but they don't really understand that back in the day before refrigerators, you know, you got to get meat, like, pretty much then.
02:30:54.000Sneak up really slowly on these big rafts of sleeping birds and touch this cannon off, shoot this cannon.
02:31:01.000And that's how the Chesapeake Bay Retriever was basically bred into existence, was they needed a big hardy dog that could withstand cold water.
02:31:13.000This dog would spend hours never getting back in the boat, but just constantly retrieving for hours.
02:31:49.000And people would try to keep them cool, and then people would try to buy them as quick as they could before they spoiled, and then they'd have to go right back out and do it again.
02:31:56.000And that process resulted in just a devastation on the wildlife in this country.
02:32:18.000We could put a price tag on it, right?
02:32:20.000And that's one of the major issues that, you know, we're seeing in Idaho is they want to, and with some of this auction tag stuff, is we're starting to put a dollar amount on our game.
02:32:31.000Where we're pulling tags out of the general pool.
02:32:35.000So like right now, let's say in the state of Idaho, we could all put in, you know, a thousand people put in for four elk tags in a prime unit, the unit that grows the biggest bulls.
02:32:50.000Well, in order to raise more funds, they've started to remove one of those tags and auction them off.
02:32:58.000So that's putting whatever we could all put in for $30 for the remaining three elk, But if we choose to, we can all try to bid on each other for that fourth tag.
02:33:10.000So if there's a limited amount of tags, people have to realize that your chances of drawing that tag are probably pretty slim unless you build up points.
02:33:19.000Every year you build up a certain amount of points and that makes it more likely that you're going to draw a tag.
02:33:24.000So people that don't understand the process.
02:33:26.000So one person, they'll take one tag and they'll put it off and they'll allow it to be auctioned off.
02:33:30.000And sometimes they'll go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
02:33:36.000One school of thought is, look how much money is going to conservation because this one rich asshole that wants to spend $400,000 to kill a bighorn sheep.
02:33:49.000And I get really frustrated with that because I'm like, well, aren't we as the remaining sportsmen in this pool...
02:33:57.000Supporting the rich asshole by giving him the ability?
02:34:00.000Why don't the thousand people in the pool just agree to spend a couple extra bucks on the tag?
02:34:06.000Well, that might help, but is it really going to get you the hundreds of thousands of dollars for that one tag?
02:34:12.000I mean, it seems like without burdening the regular sportsman who doesn't want to spend, like, didn't Montana, like, significantly raise their tags, the price of their tags recently?
02:35:56.000I was going to say, the reason we don't know the exact price generally is because you can buy a Sportsman's package, so I think it's for $105.
02:36:03.000Hunt and fish like basically anything that's not a draw.
02:36:08.000Everything over the counter as long as you don't go over the limit of what you could get.
02:37:21.000And these sheep are suffering from diseases that are coming from domestic sheep, so they're trying to figure out a way to breed a domestic sheep that doesn't catch this disease so that they can reintroduce healthy sheep into these areas and not have them be infected by these different diseases that they get from.
02:38:02.000And he identifies the conflict of grazing allotments mostly for bighorn sheep that could put domestic sheep that could potentially be carrying diseases in contact with these wild sheep herds.
02:38:16.000So he's looking to, you know, typically pay the rancher that has that grazing allotment.
02:38:23.000Fair market value for that grazing allotment, and he just turns it back over to the U.S. Forest Service.
02:38:31.000And that's a real issue with buffalo, right, with wild bison, because there's two schools of thought, and there's one school, it's about brucellosis, and that brucellosis will somehow or another be transmitted from the bison to cattle.
02:38:45.000But apparently a lot of people say that that's kind of a bullshit argument because it's really about the bison eating up all the grazing land and forcing out the domestic cattle so they're using the brucellosis as an excuse to say that this is the reason why we need to kill off the bison and get them out of the way.
02:39:45.000It's going to directly impact your livelihood.
02:39:47.000But I think just as we were talking about earlier, man, there's some happy medium there.
02:39:53.000And especially if we're looking at some of this oil and gas stuff that's getting scary right now.
02:40:01.000Especially with, like, all of a sudden we're saying that you don't have to clean up after yourself after you, you know, start a big mine somewhere.
02:40:09.000Like, I would much rather have bison out there than, like, let's raise funds through sportsmen or recreationists than digging a big pit in a beautiful spot.
02:40:24.000The Dakota pipeline, like what they're talking about there, it's just like, I mean, the amount of money that's going to come from that is just staggering.
02:40:30.000And so the amount of pressure that's involved in making something like that go through is also pretty staggering.
02:40:38.000But it's dangerous, you know, and what the disaster that could take place is, you can't put a price on it.
02:40:46.000Because what could be done, if they ruin a river system, if somehow or another this gas line breaks and you have oil flooding a river system the same way they had that BP oil rig disaster out in the Gulf, God, could you imagine?
02:41:21.000I'm truly not educated on the economics of it, and my brain says that, no, there's no warm, fuzzy, eco...
02:41:32.000You know, lodge that we could set up that would match the funds from, you know, oil and gas.
02:41:37.000But, man, yeah, I'm just trying to think long term.
02:41:40.000And, ew, boy, it just wrecked that landscape.
02:41:44.000And the landscape is what I've, you know, been in love with since a little kid.
02:41:48.000Yeah, you know, and nobody wants to be able to light your toilet water on fire either.
02:41:54.000You ever see this fucking Gasland documentary where it's coming right out of the tap and the guy sticks a lighter to it and his fucking water's on fire and people are like, well, they've always been able to do that.
02:43:05.000I mean, like, years like this, we've got, you know, right now we've got, I don't know, six, seven, eight feet of snow on the ground, right?
02:44:07.000Do you know, they did a study that showed there's a direct correlation between the amount of footsteps people take per minute and the population that they're in.
02:44:16.000And also, the faster they talk, if the population is higher, they will say their syllables faster.
02:46:42.000And we need to do the same thing we did to 621. We need to do that to 622 and contact that guy and start the whole campaign all over again because you just can't remove the resources that are going to protect those lands.