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1:41

tone on this show. So do all

1:43

that stuff and get

1:45

it taken care of right away, and

1:48

now for the show. Uh,

1:50

dirt, I notice you're running like a like

1:53

a like a chew that has a little

1:55

package around like a school bandit. Why

1:59

why not the normal kind of just where

2:01

the little grip pieces get all over your teeth. Just

2:04

keep it classy and that's nice. B and B Is

2:06

that why? Well too, I don't have

2:08

to spit as much, but you're spitting into that that

2:11

juice bottle. Yeah, what gets me is just

2:14

disgusting. Man, he's chewing gum, chewing

2:17

chew and spitting in a bottle

2:19

while trying to talk. Is that nicotine

2:22

gum? No? No. One

2:24

of my favorite stories of Dirts is he had a

2:27

girlfriend um Don in Arkansas

2:30

and he was down there spitting all over the yard

2:32

visiting her family, and the old man

2:35

took him aside.

2:37

Were more liberal

2:40

people who were barefoot most of the time. You don't think

2:42

conservatives go barefoot. These guys,

2:44

I have a lot of conservative views, and I like going barefoot

2:46

in my yard. You wouldn't like stepping on

2:48

wet grasp right then either. That's this

2:50

guy didn't didn't like me spitting where he was stepping.

2:53

But I don't think that has a That's not a function of his.

2:55

Uh, that's not a function of his of

2:58

his politics. That's true. They

3:00

were. They were thinking like a conservative

3:02

would be like, yeah, man, one thing I like is walking

3:04

and choose spit. That's

3:08

true. I do think politics influence

3:11

people. For like you know I've brought many times, is

3:13

that that um being

3:15

gluten intolerance seems to be a left wing

3:17

ailment. But I don't think a

3:20

lack of a desire to walk around and choose

3:22

spit is part of the political

3:25

polite. It was. They were

3:27

right on telling me not to do that. So they were right wing.

3:29

They were correct. They were correct. Yes, I stopped.

3:32

I'd spit out on the back forty

3:34

instead, you'd take a little walk stood

3:36

over the fence of the high grass area. Was courteous.

3:39

Yeah, um,

3:41

Dirk, did you know that? Uh? You

3:44

know what the word ursus means. I

3:47

know the constellation Ursus

3:49

minor. Yeah, okay, Ursus is the bear

3:52

family. I didn't know that.

3:54

Did you know that? Of the that

3:57

the the ursus with

3:59

the greatest distribution is

4:02

the brown bear slash

4:05

grizzly bear. No.

4:07

I believe it though, Yeah, because

4:09

you know Eurasia right,

4:12

connection just has the widest

4:14

distribution of any bear. There's

4:17

many versions of it now,

4:20

it's you know, they used called the grizzly bear Ursus

4:23

criblis, which is bad pr

4:25

because horrible.

4:28

Yeah. So when you get like a Linnaean name,

4:32

you have I feel we talked about this before, like

4:35

the Latin name, right, it's from Linnaeus, and

4:37

Linnaeus came up with the way we name animals.

4:40

So the domestic

4:42

dog is you

4:45

know can is familiaris right,

4:48

that's its Linnaean name. Uh,

4:51

we are homo sapien so

4:53

self aware of human, self aware of homedan

4:57

um. I don't think we have covered

4:59

this. We haven't covered nan are

5:01

we homo sapien sapien? Well,

5:04

yeah, see that's like that's when things have

5:06

h that's called trinomial nomenclature.

5:10

So the brown bear slash

5:12

grizzly bear is Ursus

5:14

arctos. But there's ursus arctos

5:17

arctos, or some people like

5:19

like take take the American bison or

5:21

American buffalo. There

5:23

is there used to be this idea

5:26

that we had bison bison, bison,

5:29

which was the planes animal, and

5:32

then bison bison athabaska,

5:35

which was the wood buffalo of the boreal

5:38

forest. And

5:40

we used to just make the you know, these determinations

5:43

were made oftentimes by morphological

5:45

differences, so you would look and like, let's

5:47

look at the structure of an animal, the visual

5:49

appearance of an animal and draw distinctions.

5:52

But then once we started getting once

5:54

genetics got

5:57

involved, it started showing

6:00

us that things that we thought that

6:02

measured by that parameter, by the genetic

6:05

markers, things that we thought were very

6:07

simple, Some things we thought were very similar

6:10

are in fact not similar at all. That

6:13

just happened to like accidentally

6:15

arrive at a place where they kind of look the same,

6:17

right, And an extreme version would

6:19

be birds fly and dragonflies

6:22

fly, So someone

6:24

would go like they must be closely related,

6:27

but in fact they came to flight through

6:29

very different paths. Okay, so there

6:31

you have a thing where like um

6:34

convergent evolution. So yeah,

6:37

like ideas about convergent and divergent evolution.

6:39

But in those cases like they're similarity that there's

6:41

things that we would see and someone would be

6:43

like, oh, they're similar because they both blank.

6:46

But we realize that doesn't denote like a

6:48

close related nous. So

6:50

genetics dispelled some of those misunderstandings,

6:53

but it also showed us that some things that we thought

6:55

were very different are in fact very close together.

6:58

Like for instance, that the

7:01

ABC Islands in Alaska, Admiralty

7:05

bearing Off and what's that chick under

7:08

the name, It's Admiralty Island

7:11

bearing Off Island, and then uh,

7:13

the Sea Island. They're together there.

7:15

The polar bears that those okay,

7:18

those bears on that island are like Ursus arctos.

7:21

Okay, so they're like coastal brown bears. Will get

7:23

more into this in a second. Chickagolf

7:25

Chickergolf Island, Chickagolf

7:27

Island. I think it's there's

7:30

there's in both places. Oh alright,

7:33

so that one anyway, polar

7:35

bears are are a recent

7:37

offshoot of Ursus arctos. So

7:39

polar bears are if you're just from

7:41

a genetic perspective, polar

7:45

bears aren't are almost like

7:47

a cousin of or almost like a

7:49

clade of brown

7:51

bears, and polar bears

7:53

are very closely related to

7:56

the brown bears

7:58

of the ABC Islands, even

8:00

though those brown bears tend to be darker

8:04

than other brown bear, grizzly

8:06

bears and other parts of the world. So

8:09

coloration. If you're like, oh there,

8:12

you're like you, you might look and be like, okay, the in

8:15

the bears of interior North Alaska.

8:17

So the grizzlies of the Brooks Range are

8:20

tend to be blond. So

8:22

someone might be like, oh so if if polar

8:25

bears are shoot off of

8:28

grizzly brown bears, I

8:30

would imagine they're shoot off of those very

8:32

blond ones that are already in

8:35

the Arctic on the north

8:37

slope of the Brooks Range, when in fact, those

8:39

bears are not tightly related as

8:42

tightly related to polar bears as are the

8:44

brown bears of the ABC Islands. Now

8:49

where is that going from there? Oh So, another added

8:51

thing of that is this is the point I was trying to get at,

8:53

because I'm trying to go way deep. I'm gonna talk

8:55

about a grizzly bear semi attack, but

8:57

I'm gonna go I'm going way deep because here's

9:00

the thing. I just want to clarify a point

9:03

that brown bears

9:05

and grizzly bears are all

9:08

ursus arctos. We

9:10

used to have We used to have this idea that we had

9:12

all these different subspecies of

9:15

bears, all right, So

9:17

we had like the Kodiac brown bear, which

9:19

are the biggest ones in the world. Um.

9:23

Then you have like polar bears that's their

9:25

own thing, arctists maritimas

9:28

or something like the artist maritimeas, something

9:30

like that, like marine bear um

9:33

is regarded as a different species

9:36

though very closely related. And

9:38

then you have like the grizzly bears of the lower forty

9:41

eight and the interior Northern Canada.

9:43

Those are all one species. And the

9:45

way they talk about in genetics is they talk about

9:47

it being clades, so

9:49

rather than subspecies, they now talk about clades

9:52

or like genetic groupings of bears that are

9:54

all kind of the same thing. But in

9:56

hunting Lingo and around, you'll

9:58

be able to chime in on this, Okay,

10:01

and hunting Lingo, when someone

10:04

says a brown bear, what

10:06

they're referring to is a

10:08

coastal grizzly of

10:13

Alaska. Correct, But

10:16

now I've always understood though grizzly

10:19

bears are brown bears, but

10:21

not all brown bears are referred

10:23

to as grizzly bears. See what I'm saying,

10:26

A brown bear is a grizzly, So

10:28

grizzly can be a brown bear or a grizzly,

10:31

But you can't call a brown bear a grizzly

10:33

because it's completely like you're saying. If

10:35

you were in Wyoming, you would not be

10:37

able to say, hey, I saw a brown bear, or you would

10:40

be able to say I saw a brown bear. A grizzly

10:42

is a brown bear. A brown bear

10:44

is not a grizzly. The word grizzly is

10:47

a delineation of where they live. So

10:50

so you would be incorrect saying

10:53

a grizzly on Kodiak Island by

10:56

okay, but but but what yes,

10:59

if we're if we're switching the hunting lingo,

11:03

okay, then yes, but even

11:05

normally you know, yeah, it's just the brown

11:08

bears. Correct, Yeah, we're talking.

11:10

Yeah, so yeah, I think that if you

11:12

yeah, if you're talking like in nan like

11:14

scientific lingo, it would be that

11:18

a grizzly is a form of brown

11:20

bear. Correct, Yes, but just to

11:22

clarify because people always get that confused.

11:25

It's like, well, is a brown bear. A

11:27

brown bear is not a coastal grizzly.

11:30

A grizzly is an inland brown

11:32

bear. It doesn't go both ways, That's what. Yeah,

11:34

that's what I'm trying to get at this point.

11:36

So that that's that's a good clarification. Like if

11:38

you want to go read about the whole broad

11:41

general family of of

11:43

of these types of bears of Ursus arctos,

11:46

correct, that you would begin the

11:49

top of the funnel, right, we're

11:51

talking about the funnels earlier. The

11:53

top of the funnel would be brown bears, and

11:56

then from there you will find your way into

11:59

the himlayan brown bear, the

12:02

the interior rocky mountains, grizzly

12:04

bears. These are all classifications of

12:06

brown bears brown bears. So but

12:10

in like in in the way we in

12:12

the way that hunting type dudes

12:15

use the term. Now when we're talking about

12:17

a grizzly, we're talking about a

12:20

a

12:22

grouping of brown bears that that do

12:24

not live in coastal environments and do not have

12:27

access to salmon. Correct, they're

12:29

not exploiting marine resources.

12:32

They are in the interior. Those

12:35

bears tend to be to

12:38

have a grizzled appearance. They

12:40

tend to be silvery

12:42

blonde lighter and

12:45

you're coastal bears

12:49

tend to be coastal

12:51

brown. Bears tend to be darker brown, running

12:53

to chocolate. The

12:55

bears the the

12:58

largest of this whole group of bears which

13:00

are many and varied from Romania

13:03

and the Himalaya all over damn place. The

13:05

largest ones live

13:07

on uh

13:11

the Kodiak Archipelago, which

13:14

includes a fog Knack Island, Fog Raspberry,

13:17

Kodiak and do we

13:19

talk about this the other day? And the Alaska Financia

13:22

did we talk about this the other day? That those bears,

13:25

the bears on Kodiak and the fog Knack

13:28

and Raspberry have been

13:31

genetically isolated for ten thousand years

13:33

to be cover this we touch it, ok.

13:36

So they've been off doing their own on their own vibe

13:38

for a long time. Big mo fosi,

13:41

as my son would say, no

13:44

bad mofos. He doesn't know what a mofo

13:46

actually spells out Toobody knows that there are animals

13:48

that are counted as bad mo fos um

13:54

Uh that's I'm just laying a little unnecessary

13:56

groundwork for for for what's gonna

13:58

come next. Uh. Now,

14:00

where we left off on the last episode, we

14:02

were fixing to do some l cotton on

14:04

a fognack and just as a primer, But

14:07

if you watch television, you'll know certain

14:09

television shows, after every commercial break, they

14:11

they out of a courtesy, as a courtesy

14:13

to the viewer and also as a courtesy to their

14:15

budget, spend some minutes

14:18

just recapping what they covered a moment ago, which

14:21

saves them money in production and also

14:23

like gives you, keeps you up to speed if

14:25

you just joined in the program. We uh

14:29

me and Remy Warren drew some

14:31

elk tags on a fog Neck

14:33

island. And the fog Neck

14:36

Island is just separated from

14:38

Kodiak Island by a narrow straight

14:40

and I remember the name now that

14:45

might not be the exact pronunciation, but and

14:48

raspberry straight. Yeah, lots of out here has

14:50

a Roosky name, a Russian name, Russian name.

14:52

And then there's shellakof which is the big

14:55

more open ocean between the mainland.

14:57

That's the rough, real rough seas there.

15:00

Since we did the real clumsy uh and since we

15:02

did a real clumsy recap of

15:04

of general Bear tax

15:07

on, I mean, let's do a real clumsy recap of

15:10

uh Coastal Alaska history. Now,

15:12

the uh, the Russians were real

15:15

heavy, worked real heavy in this area, and

15:17

they were in the you know that they would use

15:19

this area for fur trading so

15:22

um seal and

15:24

they'd come in here primarily targeting

15:26

sea otters or buying sea otters from indigenous

15:29

hunters, um wailing

15:32

all that kind of stuff. And then we

15:34

bought it. Uh, you know, Seward bought

15:37

it for like five bucks, and people

15:39

were real mad at the time that he got ripped off and

15:41

turned out he got himself into a gold mine.

15:44

Um So, that's how this place

15:46

came into us ownership. It wasn't five bucks,

15:48

but he got a scream. I'm being I'm

15:51

being an extreme here in in my uh

15:54

in my assessments of what he paid for it, But yeah,

15:56

he gotta scream and deal on it. People were kind

15:58

of piste. They called it the words folly.

16:01

I thought he got ripped, but

16:03

in the end, I mean he the guy did

16:05

a great turn for his country. Um

16:08

So in some of the areas in Coastal Alaska.

16:11

There's like still kind of a Russian

16:13

influence and names you

16:15

notice in this area in particulars a lot of Russian

16:17

names in this area from the long even the airport

16:20

English and Russian. Is it really? Uh?

16:25

Now, so we drew these

16:28

these these these elk tags. Now

16:30

a fog Neck Island does not traditionally have elk.

16:32

And the elk they captured

16:36

I think nineteen or twenty calves

16:40

in the early decades

16:42

of the d from the

16:45

Olympic Peninsula. When I'm in my bedroom

16:47

looking out of my bedroom window, I'm looking

16:49

at descend, I'm

16:52

looking at the home range, the former

16:54

home range of the elk that now live on a

16:56

fog Neck. And they did

16:58

two releases. One of the releases

17:00

was just calves. What you think would have just gotten wiped.

17:03

The fact that that worked is mind boggling. Yeah,

17:05

I can't. That just seems

17:07

like, hey, what's this old

17:09

boss cow right without some boss

17:12

cow who's got some background

17:14

and dealing with bears. Just surprising

17:16

that they could have lived. And it wasn't even many. It was eight

17:19

Roosevelt elk calves captured on the

17:21

Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Nine and

17:24

then they didn't even caught him loose till twenty nine,

17:26

So somehow kept the sons bitches alive for a year,

17:29

turn them loose on that hell whole. But

17:32

the thing they had going for him is a familiar

17:35

terrain like dank, just

17:38

dank wet is.

17:41

The Olympic PENNSA is pretty steep

17:43

too, is it. I mean it goes from sea level straight

17:45

up through this vicious it's viciously

17:48

steep, viciously thick. Guys

17:50

that can go, you know, guys

17:54

that can routinely go in there on public ground

17:57

and kill Elk in Coles,

17:59

the coastal Washington. Yeah,

18:02

it's like, I haven't done it once.

18:05

I haven't. I haven't even given it a shot. I haven't been

18:07

there that long and haven't really given it much. I haven't given

18:09

it any shot yet. But I've know enough

18:11

to know that a dude who can consistently

18:14

fill it Elk tag in coastal Washington

18:17

on public ground is a hunter's hunter.

18:20

Bad mofo, Yeah, bad

18:22

mo foe. That's consistently doing that. Jason

18:24

Phelps, he cut his teeth on that. The game call maker,

18:27

Jason Phelps, that's his world,

18:29

man. So the fact that like that him

18:31

and his buddies like do it is testament

18:34

to It's just it's just like nothing

18:36

like you got up on some glass and tits like spying

18:39

on elk and then seeing over and getting them. You're just in

18:41

there shaking hands with him for those dudes

18:43

like you know, the whole like sixty yard

18:45

pin. It's like if you're getting shot, it's ten

18:47

yards yeah, top pin. Yeah

18:50

you don't. You can't anyhow,

18:53

So they got these out from there, kidnapped him. I

18:55

got a question later on me and maybe premature

18:59

that was a chair. Um,

19:01

but did those the elk they got relocated

19:03

to fog Neck have have their size

19:06

and like general demeanor

19:08

paralleled the native Olympia

19:10

Olympic Peninsula elk. That's a great question.

19:13

I'm glad you asked it. Uh,

19:17

Roosevelt elk are the biggest

19:20

of the elk a body

19:23

size, So so you have for elk

19:25

man, let's turn into a tax on him. The episode

19:28

for elk from Hunting Perspective, Elker, elk

19:30

all got the same damn in name. But we

19:33

break them up, um

19:36

uh, we break them up in a different classifications.

19:38

They're definitely not subspecies, but classifications

19:41

Rocky Mountain totally Roosevelt.

19:45

Yeah, and I guess now I could

19:47

live in like two places, yeah well yeah,

19:51

coastal California, the valley right, yeah

19:53

well yeah, from like Bishop to the coast.

19:56

But and then there's um

19:58

that maybe they aren't around anymore, Manito Banilk, Manitoban

20:02

elk, and they may have

20:05

been larger than Roosevelt's but now currently in

20:07

Roosevelt because what was the native elk

20:09

of like Michigan in Wisconsin.

20:11

Probably, I don't probably Manitoban. I'm

20:13

not positive because those reintroduction efforts

20:15

were all done with Rocky Mountains. Yeah, I

20:18

think that elk was probably it was probably large.

20:20

Was extrapated. Man

20:22

a lot of like, yeah, hear you on this fact

20:24

checking, man, I am. You can also

20:27

like you can you can also throw in out

20:29

freshwords that

20:35

expensive. I really want to get

20:37

my new sand volleyball court

20:39

lines out.

20:44

So you got your backlog down fact

20:47

checking, honestly, just marriam

20:49

elk. You could also throw in their um

20:51

Manitoban. As Remy said, eastern

20:54

elk Um, I'd had to dive a

20:56

little bit farther to see what they think is still

20:58

alive or not but the main

21:00

species are the tool the rocky Mountain,

21:02

and the Roosevelt. The Roosevelt or

21:04

the largest bodied rocky mountain

21:06

are the largest antlers, and just

21:08

in configuration in size, I would say

21:11

the tool oak or the smallest body

21:13

and their antlers grow more like a

21:15

red deer, which is a crowned effect

21:18

at the tops. Just to get a picture. Yeah,

21:21

now, just to make just so people, just so listeners

21:23

don't think we're dumb for not knowing to all the answers

21:25

here. A lot of the answers are unresolved. For instance,

21:28

for instance, of all

21:30

the types of big horn sheep, there

21:32

used to be an idea that there

21:34

was also the Audubon big horn. And

21:37

the Audubon big horn was an eastern Montana

21:40

in the Dakota bad Lands, Okay,

21:43

and it had been shot out by miners and killed

21:45

out by the introduction of domestic sheep

21:48

and and through disease introductions

21:50

from domestic sheep. Now there's questions

21:52

of like is the audubon

21:55

sheep, was it legitimately its

21:58

own sheep, or was it just a

22:00

rocky mountain. So when

22:03

you get in all this taxon taxonomic

22:05

stuff, it's like there

22:08

used to be like a set of understandings that is

22:10

just getting that is getting eroded

22:12

by inputs of new information.

22:14

Like for at a time, I think that people talked about

22:17

thirty four types of cariboo or some

22:19

crazy thing like that, and now that

22:21

list has

22:23

been greatly reduced to now

22:26

all caribou and reindeer

22:29

of North America, Europe

22:31

and Asia are not regarded as the same

22:33

species, different clades of

22:35

the same species from a genetic perspective.

22:39

So where we are we Oh

22:42

yeah, So they take these caves and the Limpic peninsula,

22:44

cut them loose out there, and then they do another

22:46

introduction and eventually that herd

22:48

on a fog neck gets built up. You

22:51

might go like, well, why would you go and turn a bunch

22:53

of animals that don't belong somewhere loose

22:56

somewhere. And that's a great question because it's a

22:58

practice that we were engaged in very

23:00

heavily in the

23:02

early nineteen hundreds that were not engaged

23:04

in now. You would never get

23:07

the green light now to

23:10

go and establish a population

23:12

of elk on an island

23:15

where they were not native, because

23:17

the fear would be that you were going

23:20

to upset a delicate ecological

23:22

balance. But in the early nine hundreds

23:25

and prior to that in other places, there

23:28

was just this idea that all animals

23:31

should just be everywhere that they that it would

23:33

kind of work, particularly

23:36

big game animals. So on Kodiak

23:40

they cut loose black tailed deer, which

23:43

you're not native there. They cut loose

23:45

mountain goats, which are not native there. They

23:47

cut loose elk on neighboring

23:50

a fog neck, which are not native there, as

23:52

well as as reindeer

23:54

they call reindeer because they were a domestic herd

23:57

that ended up just becoming

23:59

fairal so caribou. So you

24:01

would never, like you would never in a million

24:03

years get to go ahead to do that. Now. A

24:07

lot of it too, yes, a

24:09

lot of it too, I think has to do with

24:12

the way if you if

24:14

you lived on Kodiak Island during

24:16

this time when they introduce these animals, you're

24:19

looking around, You're going, well, this is

24:21

a land of plenty, but there's not a lot of

24:23

red meat running around. There's bears, and there's

24:25

fish, and there is no

24:27

way to get food to Kodiak

24:30

Island. So everywhere

24:32

else in Alaska you can set up a settlement and you can

24:34

go shoot a moose. You can go shoot a but

24:37

you're gonna get sick of eating brown bear meat, I would

24:39

imagine, So they release

24:41

these sick from it. So

24:44

they release these animals primarily

24:46

as a food source to get people. They

24:48

come and go, oh, yeah, I can live off the land here.

24:51

I'll start a settlement and I'll raise

24:53

a family, and I'll do whatever, and we'll make you're

24:57

you're act like I'm making a value judgment. No,

25:00

no, no, I'm just saying I'm just yeah,

25:02

the rationale of like why then

25:05

it was even thought of. Now,

25:08

okay, let me lay this

25:10

one on you, because you're you're like you

25:12

you you're at this point in news

25:14

for for an American. You're an expert

25:16

on New Zealand as far as Americans

25:18

go, I'm not talking about Okay, New

25:21

Zealand. When they were doing all these

25:24

introductions, they were they were doing introductions

25:26

earlier there than they are here than

25:28

they were here. But there was committees

25:30

called familiar like familiar familiarization

25:33

committees who whose

25:36

goal would be like sort of the equivalent

25:39

of a conservation group today,

25:41

called the familiar familiarization

25:43

committee, I believe, whose

25:45

goal was to establish the

25:48

fauna of Europe into

25:50

New Zealand to make it more like home.

25:53

Yeah. So when you're in the park and you see a

25:55

red squirrel running boy, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes

25:57

sense. So it was like people

25:59

just then we're into

26:01

yeah for for all kinds of motivations were

26:04

into, like why not have more

26:06

game animals on the land? Sounds

26:08

good to me. The funny thing about

26:10

it to me is that you would never get it to go

26:13

today,

26:15

probably not because now you need to establish

26:18

that it was present and

26:22

was extirpated by human causes

26:25

in order to do in order to do and we

26:27

don't do introductions, we do reintroductions.

26:30

If you can establish it it was historically

26:32

present and wiped

26:36

out by people. This wouldn't

26:38

fit though during the place the scene,

26:40

there was an elk in interior

26:42

Alaska, but they

26:45

cut them loose here because like why

26:47

not, why not have more meat

26:49

on the ground. What's funny about

26:51

it to me is that you have those

26:54

those introductions that occurred and

26:56

they manage them in perpetuity,

26:59

even though they would never get the green light to establish

27:02

it now. So they're

27:04

like, well they're here now, now we're going

27:06

to manage it. In a conservative fashion,

27:09

like they don't want them to explode in

27:11

numbers. And they were able to control

27:14

the valve through how many hunting

27:16

permits they issue, um,

27:19

so inadvertently, I think I

27:21

now believe they made the

27:24

most difficult elk hunting on the planet,

27:27

um by Cotton. These elk loose

27:29

on a fog knack island. If I could go back

27:31

in time, I would find the guy that came up with that

27:33

idea and I would punch him in the baby. So

27:38

where are we left that? We were fixing to do some hunting and it was

27:41

foggy, Um, you couldn't

27:43

see ship and ray,

27:46

rainy and foggy, miserable camping

27:48

conditions at times, miserable

27:50

camping conditions. But Remy

27:54

had done the hunt before on a fog knack

27:56

and we were kind of like following our

27:59

hunt play was the mimic Remy's previous

28:01

hunt plan. Like Remy, just like

28:04

I don't I can't tell you what's gonna happen. I don't really

28:06

know if it works like it worked before.

28:10

Um, and we can find them

28:12

in a valley I found him in. It's

28:14

just gonna come down to will we get

28:16

a chance to like have a look. Will

28:19

the weather cooperate? If the weather cooperates,

28:22

it's not gonna be. It's

28:25

not going to be that. It's a challenging hunt. It's

28:27

just a challenging like set of experiences,

28:31

right because you've got to get through the shitty

28:33

weather to get to the point where you can shoot one.

28:36

Then you have to get that one that you shoot

28:39

back to camp. And the

28:41

terrain lends itself

28:44

very poorly to

28:47

easily getting back to camp, No

28:49

two ways about it. It sucks walking through

28:52

it looks nice. You could watch the episode

28:54

say I would make it there

28:56

in an hour, not four hours

28:58

later, you're gonna be slogging

29:01

through stuff, really discouraged.

29:04

Well, we can put some numbers to it. It took

29:06

us five hours to

29:09

travel two point

29:12

seven miles, yeah, the way the

29:14

crow flies two point seven miles

29:16

as Yeah, so two point to cover two point seven

29:18

miles as the crow flies, just

29:21

you know, with your travel route

29:24

deviating from that straight

29:26

line from just from topographical

29:29

features. Took five hours

29:31

to travel and that's

29:33

like, that's that's hard

29:35

hiking. That was yeah, hiking

29:39

for five hours straight, not doing

29:42

during refers to as Jimmy Dicken. We

29:44

were just very well could be double

29:46

the actual distance. Yeah,

29:48

I think, but

29:51

you can't. You can't. There's

29:53

no such thing as walking a straight line,

29:55

and there's some major climbing involved

29:58

in between, and that made you're climbing.

30:01

I just the way that brushes. I

30:04

feel like it's it's very similar

30:07

to walking through knee deep snow or

30:10

foot igh snow. The amount

30:12

of energy going through that,

30:14

I think it's even worse because like if you get

30:16

if you get in a situation where the tall grass

30:19

or like the authors grab your leg, then

30:21

you trip, and you don't have that in snow, you

30:23

know, so like you're expending energy trying to keep yourself

30:25

up and like the brush gets too

30:27

thick. It's like waiting through snow men. It's

30:30

like, yeah, who can grab it? Tiny

30:32

snow man? Who want to knock you down? The whole time? Um,

30:35

hold on, I want to go back to the point about it being double.

30:38

Let me explain. Okay, not only

30:40

are you going zig zagging right,

30:42

because we like you're

30:45

going away from camp to get to a pass and

30:48

then you go across the ridge up over

30:51

the you know, the top of a you know, a small knoll

30:53

to another pass to then go down. So

30:55

you've got the zig and the zag. But then

30:57

also you figure when you're going up,

31:00

like you said, like Camp's only twenty over

31:02

that pass, right, because you're at

31:04

the top of the pass and you're looking almost straight

31:06

down at Camp, and so that that

31:09

um linear distance as the crow

31:11

flies is only whatever, what

31:13

is it, five yards? Eight hundred yards?

31:16

Right, Like you can make the shot with a rifle almost

31:19

you're actually going down twice

31:22

that at the top of that peak we had to go

31:25

over. You're at fifteen fifty and

31:29

Camps at three fifty, and

31:31

you could definitely lob a two

31:34

round down into your tent, not

31:37

lob you could shoot a twenty two round down

31:39

into your tent from that peak. Yeah,

31:41

because it's so steep. Yeah, it's it's is

31:45

steep as you'd want to walk without

31:48

ropes. Probably. I'm just

31:50

saying that there's a lot of distance it's not accounted

31:52

for. When you talk about it wasn't factoring

31:55

in the zig or the zag.

31:57

I was factoring in just the you

32:00

know, up and down. Yeah. Now,

32:02

on a trail, you're going several miles an hour.

32:05

A good hiker is covering few miles an hour on

32:07

a trail, so that's the thing. So anyways,

32:09

we finally get like, you

32:11

can't hunt. This is a

32:13

generalization generally, with

32:17

notable exceptions. One cannot

32:19

fly in the hunt on the same day in Alaska

32:22

um because it

32:25

would encourage the practice of locating

32:28

animals from the air landing you're planing and shooting at

32:30

them, which they don't typically want. And in the

32:32

places where you can fly and hunt on

32:34

the same day, our places where

32:36

that doesn't where the quarry isn't

32:38

really conducive to that kind of approach

32:40

anyway. Like generally, like hunting blacktail

32:43

deer, it just generally doesn't

32:45

line out that you would like find a blacktail

32:47

from your plane, land and shoot it. That is a different

32:49

kind of critter in a different kind of habitat caribou,

32:52

it would work out real well, and

32:54

you're not allowed to do it, and you to let have a night passed

32:57

and you hunt the next day. So we couldn't

32:59

hut the first day with it, not

33:01

that we had the opportunities anyways. Then

33:04

the next day just fog um

33:07

and then we hiked up to a

33:10

spot where we could look down into a valley

33:13

known to be frequented by elk Um

33:16

based off Ramy's past experiences and

33:18

in conversations with pilots

33:20

who fly over the area all the time. And

33:23

then I just walked

33:25

up, said wow, it's real foggy, walked

33:27

back down soaked. The next

33:29

day, walked up, said wow, it's real foggy,

33:32

and walked back down so well. The

33:34

next day walked up, said wow, it's real foggy.

33:36

And then we decided to hang out. That

33:38

was a third day or what day

33:41

was the day that we walked through the real brushy

33:43

ship. That was the second day.

33:46

He was on our way up to see that it was foggy.

33:48

Yeah, that was the third

33:51

day we flew. We hiked up to the top

33:53

direct. Third day was the

33:55

lake hike. Yeah, we stayed

33:57

low and then up, I'm just clarifying

34:00

in my own mind, straight

34:02

up and said, man,

34:04

it's foggy. Start to see whisperings,

34:07

whisperings of clearness coming

34:10

and going. Devoted a lot of time to

34:12

try and to start a fire, put up some tarps to get

34:14

out of the rain, and then all

34:16

of a sudden, I

34:19

wouldn't make like an angel noise, but it

34:21

wasn't like an angel like clearing

34:23

it was like clouds

34:25

would blow through. We're

34:27

staying fog. You're not. It's not far rain.

34:29

You're in the clouds. Clouds rain,

34:32

You're in a cloud. It's not far white room.

34:34

You're just like up in it. You're like in the thing

34:36

when it's raining, the thing that's the rains falling

34:38

out of your standing in that thing.

34:41

Fog sounds nice. Yeah, you

34:44

climb up into a cloud and then there's like rain

34:47

happening around you. It's like a garden hose with

34:49

a mist setting on all the time. Yeah, exactly.

34:52

But these clouds would blow and there'd be gaps

34:55

between the clouds. And during

34:57

the gaps between these clouds,

34:59

were looking down and lo and behold,

35:03

um,

35:07

two point four miles away,

35:10

a bull is standing

35:12

there like kind

35:15

of like scent from the heavens. And

35:18

then the bull promptly vantages and vanishes

35:20

into a little thicket. And

35:23

then we notice

35:26

in a creek bed down below

35:29

the bowl, we noticed what looks like two or three

35:31

other elk that make a little real quick appearance,

35:35

and they were they were quite a ways off, and so

35:37

we started

35:39

hoofing down towards these

35:43

elk. Uh

35:46

travel that distance, it took a lot of time. So now

35:48

it's already into the afternoon, right yeah,

35:51

late afternoon, and no time

35:53

to stop for lunch, not

35:57

even have time to eat food. And find

36:01

the bull that we saw. Find the bull that was sent

36:03

from the heavens to walk out of a walk

36:05

out of a alder patch and

36:07

present himself for view. Find

36:10

him beded up on a little

36:12

high spot, a little high

36:14

grassy, a grassy knole,

36:17

and get

36:20

a and here in this area it's like

36:22

all grass like, kind of like waste high

36:24

grass, some chest high grass,

36:27

some knee high muck. And

36:29

then here and there a big gass spruce tree. We

36:32

get a big gas spruce tree between us

36:34

and the bull, and the bulls laying there

36:36

and lays there for a long time, right

36:39

up until the point where we get about yards

36:42

away from it, and I'm getting ready to prop my rifle

36:44

up and take a poke at him, should he stand up, and

36:46

he just walks and vanishes. Crazy.

36:50

At this point we start talking

36:52

about how maybe it's getting a little late

36:55

to be trying to

36:57

do this. That was that like probably three

36:59

thir for Yeah,

37:02

we're saying it might we might, even

37:04

though it's not dark, it might be getting

37:06

into foolish territory. Hm.

37:10

But continue on to be shooting because we have to

37:12

remember we're still in that giant

37:14

bear country, but we have yet to see

37:16

a bear. Yeah, evidence

37:19

of bears, like bears walk in

37:22

the lake where camped down had had

37:24

had what seemed like it must have been a pretty healthy sock

37:27

i run, just based on the amount of carcasses

37:30

strewn around on the beach, some bears feeding

37:32

on them. And while we were in there, there was a lot

37:34

of steelhead in there, and

37:36

a lot of of cohos or silvers

37:39

are in there as well, And so you'd see

37:41

some bear tracks uh on

37:43

the beach and then you'd kind of stop them out and

37:45

find a new bear track on the beach. And

37:49

one day on one of the trails up by of

37:51

the pass, we had bear tracks

37:53

on our tracks. So

37:56

they're around, but had laid eyes on them.

37:59

And but you're you're aware of their presence, and

38:01

you're mainly wear of the presence because your whole life you've been

38:03

like hearing about Kodiak bears,

38:05

right, the bad

38:07

mo fo's who endorned

38:09

the you ten us what did you say, arsus

38:12

used to be so they

38:16

got tangled up with him a little bit um

38:20

now, so we

38:22

keep pressing on and

38:27

kind of give up on the bull that we knew about.

38:29

Remy ripped a few bugles, did some cow

38:32

call, and nothing in the world was gonna stand that, or

38:34

we didn't know what he did. He laughed, laid down,

38:36

couldn't locate him, couldn't find him. Can I say

38:38

something, please? Something

38:41

that gave me a perspective on the

38:43

like the heights of the

38:45

ship you're walking through, was when that elk disappears.

38:47

So it's like on any other hunt, you'll

38:50

see an animal going to a small like timber

38:52

standard tree stand. You're like, yeah, of course it

38:54

could disappear. This elk

38:56

which is massive, what like how

38:59

many pounds he leased over

39:02

there? We didn't cover that. We got okay, extremely

39:06

valuable today

39:10

they were. But

39:13

so when this so you're looking at this elk and you're

39:15

like looking at the landscape and it looks

39:17

fairly close because it is two point

39:20

four or whatever. And

39:22

then actually when it disappeared, we were away

39:26

and he literally in what looks

39:28

like you know, like yeah,

39:31

knee high bush anywhere else

39:34

totally vanishes, like ceases to

39:36

exist. Like you guys are glass

39:38

and that small chunk, I mean it was

39:41

tiny area, not a sign of them.

39:44

But then not I would say, ceased to

39:46

exist. But then all of a sudden he rematerialized

39:48

later in fact, had not ceased to exist.

39:50

He was just from our Yeah,

39:53

the perspective had just like was

39:55

no longer on the earth, was

39:57

sucked up a phantom, a

40:00

phantom helk. No,

40:02

So backchack to dirts earlier

40:05

point. Roosevelt's

40:07

has Roosevelt elk

40:09

are the biggest bodied of the elk. But

40:12

the biggest versions of Roosevelt

40:14

elk are here. I didn't know that. Yes,

40:17

they are larger than the natives. They

40:20

have bulls up there here

40:23

where we are right now, they have bulls,

40:25

or within a few miles where we are now, they

40:27

have bulls that have tipped the scales at

40:29

one thousand, three hundred pounds.

40:32

Wow mm hmm, ridiculous.

40:37

Yeah, Yeah, that's when you paish

40:40

on the giants, right on the giants,

40:42

Like they're saying that when you pack, when you could be packing

40:45

seven hundred pounds

40:47

of meeting and the school

40:50

and alers, biggest

40:52

of the big that'd

40:54

be some that'd be some bone fish

40:57

as seven hundred on

40:59

average for bulls, which

41:02

is it's quite a span there and that's

41:04

but that includes the other islands as well,

41:07

or is that just yeah, okay instantially

41:13

so Fognac has the largest of the large

41:16

Roosevelt. Yeah. But you know, you know,

41:18

these weights like they're varied. But

41:20

as far as like finding the biggest,

41:23

you know, if you were going to go out and have like a find the biggest

41:25

bowl thing, you would go here and weigh

41:27

all these bulls and you turn up the largest

41:29

specimen um.

41:32

So you keep yeah, and you just look at that. It's like

41:34

they're a stout man like stout. So

41:37

we keep pressing along because

41:39

up ahead of us we we got some cows.

41:42

And then we hear a bugle rip out

41:45

ahead of us. And normally when you're hunting

41:47

out in most places in the Rockies

41:49

or whatever, you hear a bugle rip out ahead of you, and

41:51

you sit there with your binoculars for a couple of minutes. You

41:53

be like, oh, there he is, but here I

41:55

ain't gonna have And

41:59

this mountain where walking across the face

42:01

of there is

42:03

I'm not exaggerating, there is a full

42:05

on balls out creek every

42:12

and I don't understand where it's coming from,

42:15

and when you get to the creek it

42:17

is a I would say

42:19

at least a chest to head high straight

42:22

drop with devil's

42:24

clubbing minute. Yeah, so it's like ranging

42:27

from Yeah, you're like ranging from a six

42:29

to twelve ft goalie with a

42:31

full on creek that you could like set

42:33

up a gristmill in everything.

42:36

Like I'm like, where is the water coming from.

42:38

It's coming from that cloud that sits on top of

42:41

the mountain all day long and all night

42:43

long. Even trying

42:45

to be like yeah, so I'll be like to yeah, it's

42:47

like yeah, so you'll hit a spruce then across

42:49

thirteen streams and

42:52

the fourteen will be in the four stream

42:54

bed well. And that's like a function

42:57

to of the uh you

42:59

know, direction to faces pointing, because I feel

43:01

like on the other side of that drainage it

43:04

wasn't like that, but you still have the same water.

43:06

It just comes in the form of these like giant

43:09

grassy, marshy meadows

43:12

where the streams instead of being like that kind of

43:14

cutty canyon feel to them, it's just

43:16

like a stream that is just moving

43:18

through grass and yeah, like

43:20

it's like an alluvial fan where

43:23

you might hike across two yards

43:25

of water from

43:28

like the rock guard on your boot up

43:30

to your ankle. That's just kind

43:33

of moving yeah, across

43:35

a like an alluvial fan.

43:37

It looks like just like a flooded field. I'm

43:40

just walking in like a current

43:42

well irrigated hayfield, but

43:44

with yea with current, this slight

43:46

movement of the water. Um.

43:49

So we keep pressing along and we got these

43:51

cows out ahead of us. And at this point

43:53

I'm having a lot of trepidation. I'm like aware

43:56

of the time. I keep looking at my GPS

43:58

being like, no matter what happens, this is gonna turned into a

44:00

late one. And all of a

44:02

sudden, Remy spots pretty

44:05

incredible spot. The

44:07

real legalize spots a bedded

44:10

one horned bowl and what he spots

44:12

is the antler. So he spots a single

44:14

antler before in

44:17

a pile of Ye

44:21

kind of couldn't believe it. Once you're like learning

44:23

what you're looking at, like, wow, that was

44:25

a good spot. Laying down, he's

44:28

got one six point main

44:31

one main beam with six points on it.

44:33

And the way these elk look they kind

44:36

of if you're familiar with the red deer where they

44:38

get the crowns on top. The

44:40

way these elk antlers look are so compact,

44:42

they get like a red deer ish quality too.

44:45

You get like a little three point crown on top.

44:48

So he's got like a main beam

44:50

that comes out of

44:52

a base that's bigger than a beer can. Yeah,

44:55

And I think the way their antlers grows

44:58

just a function of their size, so

45:00

big, and they've got so much weight that when they fight,

45:03

you know, they need stout antlers at the base

45:05

to keep from breaking off. So the bulls

45:08

that have the bigger bases and the heavier antlers

45:10

are going to be the ones that can plow through and

45:14

fight. They do. So

45:17

we we went up seeing three bulls. All we

45:19

saw three bulls,

45:23

Like, I think we saw more bulls who were missing.

45:26

So this dude did bust up. So so the way these antlers

45:28

work is like it's way bigger than the beer can when it girls

45:30

out of his head. But then the eye

45:32

guard is sort of mashed

45:34

down into the base as well, so that

45:36

it's like the eye guarden scenes almost kind of come

45:38

out of the base rather than having

45:40

like a chunk that you kind of put your hand around and

45:43

in the eye guard. It's like the eye guarden the

45:45

base. They're kind of mashed together, and

45:47

it's just really like thick stout antler

45:49

with very short times coming out

45:52

of it. So he's got an eye guard and two

45:54

times and like a three time crown coming out

45:56

of the top, and the whole thing, the whole

45:58

I mean, the whole main beam and three ft long.

46:01

Yeah, yeah, probably um

46:07

and then one of them he just snapped off above his eye

46:10

garden. The thinnest spot is snapped

46:12

off on it. But he's laying

46:14

there kind of unaware

46:16

of us, but facing us and

46:22

kind of messed around. And I'm like trying to get lined

46:24

out on a shot, but he's like facing us too much.

46:26

Now. One time, years ago hunt

46:28

with Ryan Callahan, I took a dead

46:31

on shot on

46:34

a bull moose, like a brisket shot, which

46:36

should just devastate a deer, right

46:39

basically that's the little colic that

46:42

forms on their chest, you

46:44

know. And I hit that

46:46

and it just wasn't a lethal shot

46:48

on a moose, just too much meat and bone and

46:51

whatnot. And uh,

46:53

I was lined up on him and I had some sticks

46:55

in the way. Remy had a clear

46:58

angle. I moved over. You

47:00

called at the bowl a little bit to try to I was trying to get

47:02

you to get it to not run off because

47:04

he was becoming aware of our presence. He knew we

47:06

were there. Stood up. Eventually

47:08

he turned up where I could snake one in on

47:11

like a quartering, a steep quartering

47:13

to a shot, and

47:16

and that shot would have done would have done

47:18

the trick. You

47:21

know, after an autopsy,

47:23

I realized that that shot would have eventually it would

47:26

have done the trick, probably within some number of yards.

47:28

But he spun started

47:30

running and I hit another

47:33

one that shattered his front leg, but he already

47:35

had his lung shot out. And he

47:37

then tumbled down into

47:40

one of the deeper creeks

47:42

and landed smack ass

47:44

in the water, and like in

47:46

the water, formed a small

47:48

damn and formed

47:51

an embound. When he hit the water, he formed an impoundment.

47:54

This creek is how far down

47:56

from probably dirty

48:00

feet and probably only ten

48:02

ft wide. Oh yeah, maybe that's

48:04

how steep it was. And there's a waterfall

48:07

just behind him, picturesque,

48:09

very very steep canyon.

48:11

The worst place he probably could have fallen on that

48:13

hill, dude. And the minute that happened

48:16

in the minute I walked over there. You

48:19

know, it's like if something's gonna be you know, it

48:21

wasn't even like celebratory because you're

48:23

kind of like, oh man, it is getting late.

48:26

We are a five hour walk

48:30

from camp and it's already like it's evening.

48:32

Yeah, it's evening now. Such

48:34

a big body too. Yeah, I don't remind listeners

48:36

that this turns into a grizzly bear story, because this

48:38

turns into a brown bear story. Um.

48:41

So we start

48:43

cutting on it and really pointed out that

48:46

he did kind of like having the elk laying

48:48

in a creek because it was easy, very easy to keep things clean.

48:52

You would make a cut and like, oh man, there's some hair

48:54

on my knife. Then you just like hold your knife in the creek

48:57

and everything was like, looked,

49:00

it's clean at the kill site.

49:02

But um, there

49:05

was no way to like move it around the maneuver. You

49:07

just had to start working at what was exposed. So

49:10

we pulled the you

49:12

know, skin it down, the spine,

49:16

work to hide off, got a back leg off,

49:18

got a shoulder off, got a backstrap off,

49:21

boned out the ribs with the guts still in the

49:23

thing boned out the neck,

49:27

remove the head, got

49:30

a tenderloin out with the guts still in the thing,

49:34

got it rolled over. Um,

49:37

and these are a hundred pound quarters probably the

49:39

shoulders probably not, but I think the back legs, I think,

49:41

I yeah, the quarters of

49:43

the front shoulders, I would say we're

49:46

very similar to a back quarter of average

49:49

size Rocky Mountain hilk. Yeah. And I think the

49:51

back legs were like borderline like moose

49:53

legs, like probably a hundred pounders when

49:56

you say yanni, yeah, very

49:58

hard to So then we

50:00

got that the whole thing rolled over. Are you

50:02

are you still conducting fact checking? Really?

50:05

What's what's uh? What's what's what's what

50:07

are you on? Well, I'm going through remember

50:10

when we had we did the five

50:12

questions from Frank van mannon Um

50:15

talking about grizzly bear. Uh.

50:18

So I just pulled that up and it it was just refreshing.

50:20

So because I know we're probably talk about numbers

50:23

about how many exists in the world

50:25

two thousand oh

50:28

no, the like percentages of bear

50:30

spray versus firearms and that sort

50:32

of stuff, all that all

50:34

that stuff that I now know to be so

50:38

Um flipped

50:41

it over. Did the same thing all over again. Did

50:43

you guys see the battle

50:45

wounds on the first side of the Oh,

50:48

that's what I wanted to talk about. We'll talk about he's

50:50

a fighter fighter, so on everywhere

50:52

on him is bruises, and like

50:54

where he felt it wasn't rocky, so like

50:57

he didn't get bruised up in his He took quite

50:59

a total old old battle

51:01

scars, some scar tissues, louising

51:04

on his ribs. And keep in mind he had that broken

51:07

antler and he didn't break that antler like you

51:09

know, trash and broke. I was gonna make a point too about

51:11

the broken antlers. Uh, you see

51:13

a lot of broken times a

51:15

lot of places right like where I've

51:17

guided. Um you probably

51:19

see broken times compared to broken main

51:22

beams is probably I don't know, a

51:24

hundred of one. It could be everyone

51:27

we saw it was broken. Yeah,

51:31

now there's competing I think there's competing

51:34

um theories on why

51:37

some areas have a lot of broken why

51:40

elk in some areas have a lot of broken antlers,

51:42

And I'm sure that there's someone that knows the proper answer.

51:44

Maybe not. I've heard that

51:46

it has to do with mineral quality

51:49

that some elk antlers are inherently weaker.

51:52

Some elk in some areas produce a

51:54

weaker antler because of

51:57

mineral quality in the soils. And

51:59

I've heard that it's a function

52:01

of and Remy shared this one with me that he

52:03

believes

52:05

a better explanation is that it's

52:07

more of a function of cow to bowl ratios.

52:10

Yeah, that they that that and he's at

52:12

the time spent fighting to breed. Yeah.

52:14

That in areas where you got you know, ten cows

52:16

for every bull, a bull is able

52:19

to stay out of skirmishes. But these areas

52:21

where you have high bold

52:23

of cow ratios, they're spending more time

52:26

in the dominant struggles and they're just breaking

52:29

more aislers. Yeah. I feel like that's the accepted

52:31

theory down in Arizona trophy

52:35

units is that they just they're managed very

52:37

well for a you know, equal bowlder

52:39

cow ratio, and the bulls just have to do a lot more

52:41

fighting because you go to a neighboring unit

52:43

that's got the same terrain and

52:45

everything, but just managed different not

52:47

as many broken anilers. Because

52:50

of the three apps fishing

52:53

fighting right, yeah, uh,

52:57

they're not. They don't do one of them fish,

53:01

but they spend more, they they're able

53:03

to devote more of that energy to the one after

53:05

the other. Uh

53:08

So where

53:11

was that the hole in his the

53:13

hole in his rear ham he had.

53:16

I'm skinning his rear ham and I'm like, oh, someone like

53:18

I almost have shot a third time that I forgot about

53:20

because he has a large wound on

53:23

his rear ham. But when you skin the hide

53:25

back, it's like a perfect inch diameter

53:28

hole punched through his hide where

53:30

a time punched through his hide and

53:33

then went into his rear

53:35

ham several inches. It

53:37

was just an infected mess,

53:40

just beat up.

53:43

Yeah, he should take

53:45

up fishing, so

53:49

he probably do pretty good fishing there. Um.

53:52

So that was weird triming that all out. So

53:54

now now we're entering in like

53:56

so, so so here you are. You got

53:59

uh we got six guys because you know me

54:01

and Remy and then we have our crew

54:03

guys and and and a

54:06

A perk and liability of this

54:08

line of work is that you get when

54:11

you come out like crew guys get equal cut of all

54:14

the meat if they want

54:16

it. Um, but they

54:18

also carry it. Would

54:20

we share if they didn't carry

54:22

I would to expect it to be I also

54:24

wouldn't want we would, but maybe not

54:26

as much because we share with the office

54:29

crew as well. Not on this one.

54:33

When you carry do you feel

54:36

uh,

54:38

you're carrying your one sixth so

54:41

rich? When you carry elk

54:44

or when you pack me, do you feel like I'm

54:46

packing me in order to get some or

54:48

you like un packing me this because this is a sucky

54:50

thing that needs to happen a little bit of both.

54:52

I like, if I'm thinking

54:54

I'm gonna take any home, I'm not just gonna watch

54:57

you guys carry a bunch of weight in some

54:59

shitty terrain. I want to like help

55:01

out, but you guys already have a ton

55:03

of gear with you. Yeah, and it and when

55:05

we do get strapped up with me, well, at least me

55:07

A Garrett is kind of a superhuman dude, so he

55:09

can still charge up hills, but it

55:12

makes me a little slower, so I can't like run out and

55:14

get all the shots that I normally do when we're on we're

55:16

unloaded. But I just like,

55:20

especially this one, I just would I just couldn't

55:22

sit and like hike out with an empty

55:25

pack because we're in a we're in like a like just kind

55:27

of uncomfortable city. Yeah, so

55:29

we got always meet and we know that, um, because

55:31

we're gonna be hiking in the ground

55:33

so bad, like the walking is so

55:36

difficult that and it's

55:38

already and it's dark out now that we know,

55:40

we're not gonna even though there's six of us and six

55:42

people can carry like trail hiking,

55:44

six people can absolutely move a

55:48

normal elk with like not

55:50

that big of a deal really, Like

55:52

if you're just like, go ahead a trail wad for a

55:54

few miles, you just picked the whole thing

55:56

up and go. But this is kind of out of the question

55:59

because we have so much vertical

56:01

to gain and lose. We're not on any kind

56:03

of a trail for the bulk of it, and

56:05

we have a very large patch of brush. We

56:07

should also mention at this point when

56:09

the last meat went in the bag, it is pitch

56:12

black. Yeah,

56:14

I pitch yeah, pitch

56:16

black. Yeah. So the first thing we need

56:18

to do is go earlier I was mentioned

56:20

and how now and then there's a big gas spruce

56:24

we had before it got dark, identified

56:27

a spruce tree that would be adequate to get

56:29

whatever meat we couldn't carry up into

56:32

the tree. And this spruce

56:35

was directly uphill from us.

56:37

So we get done butcher

56:40

in the elk, and the first step

56:42

is too because now it's dark and you got

56:45

a nice gutty smell blown everywhere.

56:47

The first step is to try to get some separation

56:50

of the meat and the guts, thinking

56:52

that I want a bear or

56:55

any kind of predator really comes

56:58

in and claims a kill site.

57:01

They I'm anthropomorphizing

57:03

a little teeny bit, but probably not too much. They

57:06

know that they might lose it to the next thing

57:09

up. Okay, so you find

57:11

a kill and

57:14

you don't you can't just assume that it's

57:16

yours for the next five days.

57:18

So what things generally do is devour

57:21

soft tissue because

57:23

you can just wolf fit down. It's

57:25

high calorie food. They'll come in and

57:28

mop up like the liver

57:30

goes quickly the long

57:33

just and then you can just soup right up and doesn't take

57:35

a lot of work. They'd like to get on that stuff first.

57:37

So the general thinking in bear country is

57:39

if you remove your your meat,

57:42

like your bone in quarters or whatever, remove

57:44

them from the guts, there's

57:47

a chance that a bear is gonna come in and the first

57:49

thing he's gonna do is claim the

57:51

thing with the soft

57:54

tissue, the greatest amount of smell, all

57:56

the blood. He's gonna pick that, and

57:58

you might grease off with your meat if it's

58:01

separate. So we move all our

58:03

meat, not far but out of

58:05

the goalie up onto a little grass, another grassy

58:07

knoll, and then we take half

58:09

of it, load our backpacks with half

58:12

of it, and hike that

58:14

up to a big spruce tree.

58:17

Yeah, and hang half

58:20

of that up in a spruce

58:23

about probably

58:25

twelve to thirteen feet up in a

58:27

spruce tree, with

58:29

the theory that nothing

58:31

can get it. Yeah. Mature

58:34

grid like cubs, brown

58:36

bear cubs can climb a tree, but

58:39

eventually that you know. A distinguishing

58:41

feature, a morphological difference

58:45

between black bears and

58:47

brown bears is that black bears

58:50

have a short, hooked

58:52

claw. Grizzlies

58:55

have a long, relatively

58:58

straight, more sickle shape claw.

59:01

And as a grizzly gets big and

59:04

heavy, those claws,

59:06

the way that they're long and

59:08

straight, those claws do not lend themselves

59:11

to climbing. They're more for digging. Yeah,

59:13

they got a digging claw. They spend a lot more

59:16

time flipping rocks,

59:18

digging roots. It's just their their food

59:20

resources are used differently. They tend

59:22

to live in more open country, can live

59:24

quite happily in a total absence

59:26

of trees. You do not find black bears in

59:29

the absence of trees. The old adage

59:31

is to tell a difference between

59:33

a black bear and a grizzly is

59:36

if the bear climbs up a tree and eats

59:38

you, it's a black bear. That's

59:42

an interesting thing to bring up in these in

59:44

in Coastal Alaska,

59:47

the islands. There are some

59:49

minor exceptions of this, but this is a this is

59:52

generally true. It's a true. It's a truism.

59:55

The islands either have black bears are grizzlies.

59:58

So Prince of Wales Island is a black bear

1:00:00

island. Right Admiralty Island

1:00:02

north of there is a grizzly bear island. They don't

1:00:05

commingle on islands. If

1:00:07

it's a suitable habitat, I

1:00:10

keep saying, if it's suitable habitat

1:00:12

for a brown bear, that's who's going to live there.

1:00:14

If it's black bears on an island, it's because

1:00:16

it's not suitable habitat for brown bears.

1:00:18

If it's not suitable habitat for brown bears. It's

1:00:21

probably all heavily timbered and

1:00:23

there's no open country. They tend to like open

1:00:25

country, they use it better. So

1:00:29

we get it up in a tree because because he's

1:00:31

not gonna buil, climb to damn tree and get the meat up. Then

1:00:34

we go back down to buy the kill site,

1:00:36

get all of our meat and start hiking at

1:00:39

ten thirty pm.

1:00:42

Get to our camp at three thirty

1:00:45

am. Yea, eat

1:00:47

some freeze, dry, go to bed about

1:00:50

four or thirty am.

1:00:53

Fairly exhausting,

1:00:57

chuck it out. It was a full day

1:01:01

now by the time you get like a reasonable amount

1:01:03

of sleep and also then wake up and regroup,

1:01:06

Like you got a mess, right, you got stuff to clean up.

1:01:09

We had to get the meat we brought home, um

1:01:12

get it, you know, get it situated in the way

1:01:14

that we're happy with. We put it inside a hot wire

1:01:16

we have like a little portable hot wire fence. We

1:01:19

put the meat inside there. But the next day we wanted

1:01:21

to establish another hot

1:01:23

wire fence that wasn't the same hot

1:01:25

wire fence that contained our tents. Get

1:01:28

the meat out of the ground in another tree. So

1:01:31

originally like the night we got back all late at night

1:01:33

we put the meat inside the hot wire fence

1:01:35

that also contained tents, and the next day

1:01:37

we wanted to get it up in a tree where it

1:01:39

could breathe out and be up in the breeze

1:01:42

and have its own containment hot

1:01:44

wire fence around it. Um did

1:01:46

all that, had some show

1:01:48

business stuff to take care of. I had a bunch

1:01:51

of fish catching to do. We're talking meat

1:01:53

though, because it might be hard to

1:01:55

come back to it. But since you guys

1:01:57

dropped it off in your mouth, you

1:02:00

see something I don't know. I thought you're chewing teeth

1:02:02

and chewing us like some hard

1:02:04

candy or something, which I thought was disrespectful.

1:02:07

I do have a little pith stuck between

1:02:10

That's fine, that's fine, um.

1:02:14

But because we're

1:02:16

the meat hung for what was it three days?

1:02:19

Four days, and we were a little bit worried

1:02:21

about the condition of the meat. But you guys take it to

1:02:23

the process and I'm guessing I got to handle

1:02:25

it and look at it and smell it. How

1:02:27

was it? Did it farewell? They thought?

1:02:29

Look good? I thought, look good? What? What? What?

1:02:32

What? Yeah?

1:02:35

I see now we're man. That

1:02:37

was a way out of order. Uh,

1:02:39

it was a way out of order. Thing to bring up. Look

1:02:42

fine, look fine, Yeah, it's

1:02:44

not cold here. It's like it's not like a normal

1:02:46

you know. I mean you're in a coastal environment

1:02:49

here and it's like always cold but never cold

1:02:51

cold. Yeah not I only you ever got below

1:02:53

forty Yeah, not great meat hanging weather. And

1:02:55

when it's real what it's all this rain, right,

1:02:57

So it's a lot of rain and never real cold

1:03:00

old. So when we got back,

1:03:03

uh flew out and got back to town,

1:03:05

first order business is trying to find someplace

1:03:07

to that we could get our meat

1:03:10

chilled off because it was already borderline.

1:03:12

And a thing that there's like a smell that

1:03:16

that like bloody game bags. Wet

1:03:19

bloody game bags take on a smell

1:03:21

that is like a not a good

1:03:24

smell, and it's a precursor to smells

1:03:26

you don't want to smell. But it's not in and of

1:03:28

itself a bad smell, but it's an

1:03:30

indicator of bad things could happen

1:03:32

soon smell. It's a little off putting. We

1:03:34

were in the bad things could happen soon

1:03:37

smell phase from having

1:03:39

the meat not being able to dry out because of the rain.

1:03:43

Yeah, everything's wet forty degrees like,

1:03:45

and it was in a creek too, so

1:03:48

nothing ever had a chance to dry out. But

1:03:50

yeah, everything's fine. It look good. They thought it looked good too.

1:03:53

Yeah, we paid some boys to Uh, I

1:03:56

like that dude's hat. Retired drug dealer. We paid

1:03:59

some boys to you. Uh

1:04:01

two. Process

1:04:04

and freeze are our thing for us. But to

1:04:06

get back to where I was caught some fish.

1:04:10

Um, how did we know the

1:04:12

bare fence was hot? Is there a test or

1:04:14

something? Yeah, I hold the I touched

1:04:17

the wire and then see what And

1:04:19

then I gauge what kind of jolt it gives

1:04:21

me and whether I'm not satisfied with the joelt,

1:04:24

whether I feel that it would be a deterrent or not. Um,

1:04:28

and I'll satisfy with that fence. Point

1:04:31

being the point all this being,

1:04:34

we don't strike off to the

1:04:36

hanging tree. Did you

1:04:38

hear that Bob muldsong hanging tree? Should

1:04:43

I throw myself from the hanging tree?

1:04:45

You don't know that one? Oh,

1:04:48

that's a story we ought to tell sometime, that story

1:04:50

about that dude. Did we ever tell this story?

1:04:53

The guy the spurned lover? What's

1:04:56

that bighorn sheep hunting area? That that dude,

1:04:59

Tristan is the guy. Then his

1:05:04

name wasn't Tristan, was it? No, it wasn't.

1:05:07

He looked like Triston. It looks like a

1:05:09

dude named Tristan ledgend of the fall of his

1:05:11

name, wasn't Tristan? Long

1:05:13

hair, leather, cowboy hat? Yeah?

1:05:17

Yeah, yeah, thank

1:05:20

you. Remember the story he told us. Yeah,

1:05:23

so he's the guy big Horn Sheep in

1:05:25

BC. Yeah, in the McKenzie's.

1:05:28

Yeah, but it had a name. It's like the blank. Yeah,

1:05:31

what's a big horn area up there around me? Like rocky

1:05:34

big horns? You know? Um

1:05:36

the in BC or Alberta

1:05:39

could be Alberta, the Alberta BC line.

1:05:42

Uh, it's a W word

1:05:44

white. No, I would think like

1:05:46

there

1:05:49

it was the Whitmore. I remember that because I was on that trip

1:05:51

and there. Yeah, it's the area. I think maybe the area called the Whitmore.

1:05:54

Yeah. But anyways, you're south the Stone Sheep

1:05:56

country, in Big Horn Sheep Country. I think

1:05:58

the spine of that the end of that range

1:06:01

is the BC Alberta line. Yanni

1:06:03

to look it up. The whit More wind more

1:06:05

willmore will

1:06:08

more. So just

1:06:11

a quick digrection. This is an interesting story. There's

1:06:13

a guy that the outfitter he used to work for used

1:06:15

to have a horse packer, and

1:06:18

the horse packer was in camp with his girlfriend.

1:06:21

Okay, and

1:06:23

the horse packer and the girlfriend getting a fight. He

1:06:25

grabs a hunker rope, walks

1:06:29

off, and a huff never

1:06:31

to be seen again. It

1:06:35

became like a mystery. Years

1:06:38

later, someone is

1:06:40

dicking around in that area and

1:06:43

finds a skull and spinal

1:06:45

column hanging

1:06:47

from a rope. What did they

1:06:50

obviously search for him, money, search for

1:06:52

him when he huffed off, but could never find him, was

1:06:55

assumed dead. Bad

1:06:57

argument. Someone

1:07:00

finds a skull and a chunk of spine hanging

1:07:02

from a rope from a tree, and

1:07:05

they excavate the ground beneath them,

1:07:07

and they're able to match up his

1:07:09

buckles from his boots and his rivets

1:07:12

and stuff from his jeans with what

1:07:14

he was wearing when he vanished. So

1:07:18

anyhow, the next day

1:07:20

we go back to find our way

1:07:22

back. We wake up. It should

1:07:24

be mentioned that the rest day was a glorious,

1:07:27

glorious

1:07:30

drying out close only

1:07:32

day of the whole trip that was blue bird

1:07:34

drying out close but the

1:07:36

sun hooking fish like nobody's

1:07:39

in the sky to actually ben

1:07:42

always into rect son. I got a bass in it was

1:07:44

warm enough, did you Yeah, dirt

1:07:47

showered in the creek. Yeah, I didn't know that. Um,

1:07:50

that was jealous, but yeah, the sun went

1:07:53

from peak to peak on the same ridge.

1:07:55

All right. So the next

1:07:57

day we wake up right and early and strike

1:08:00

off for the hanging tree. Um

1:08:04

takes us. I think we had a better

1:08:06

route. It took us four hours to get to the hanging

1:08:08

tree. Now approaching

1:08:11

the kill site. We

1:08:14

the kill sites about a hundred yards

1:08:18

up a small tributary from the main

1:08:20

Stem Creek of the valley. We

1:08:22

approached the kill site from across the

1:08:25

main stem to get eye level

1:08:27

with the carcass which is laying down

1:08:29

in a tributary on the other side of the main

1:08:31

Stem from us. And we're

1:08:33

able to get a gander in there and

1:08:37

see that at least

1:08:39

the carcass has not been moved,

1:08:43

right, And think of me, if a bear had

1:08:45

claimed it quickly, he probably would have drug

1:08:48

it off and buried it. It would look different. There's

1:08:51

a bunch of magpies in there, and

1:08:54

a lot of magpies making a lot of racket,

1:08:56

right. That helps alert you

1:08:59

know, predators to something going good going

1:09:01

on, They feed off that information.

1:09:03

But the carcass is there where we left it,

1:09:06

seemingly undisturbed. But

1:09:11

we still pick a route that goes clear

1:09:14

of the carcass up towards the

1:09:16

hanging tree. Now when we get up by

1:09:18

the hanging tree, we

1:09:20

do a number of things. Uh,

1:09:24

we got pepper sprayed drawn,

1:09:27

was your pistol drawn? Drawn? Pistols

1:09:30

out, pepper spray out, making

1:09:32

a lot of noise, yelling the whole way

1:09:34

up. I was yelling to him,

1:09:38

did I got some spice for

1:09:41

that meat that he ain't gonna like? Because

1:09:44

I had my pepper spray out? And then

1:09:46

we're gonna We told him too that

1:09:48

it was if if he did like it, he

1:09:51

was gonna be followed up with some lead chasers.

1:09:53

So we're being very intimidating in

1:09:56

hooting and holland and yelling. We have not

1:09:58

seen anything. Now, we just evidence

1:10:00

to think anything. And we

1:10:02

glassed that hanging tree, or at least

1:10:05

I glass that hanging tree.

1:10:07

I glassed it until I could account for

1:10:09

everything that was supposed to be in that hanging tree.

1:10:14

So at that point we've done everything as good as we

1:10:16

could do. Now

1:10:19

there's some hindsight issues. No,

1:10:21

no, okay from that point.

1:10:24

The one mistake, I

1:10:26

would say, but there wasn't an option. The one

1:10:28

mistake is the hanging tree is

1:10:32

surrounded by very thick brush.

1:10:35

But there were no other There was no clear hanging

1:10:37

tree. How big do you think, Like the diameter

1:10:40

around the tree was clear,

1:10:42

Yeah, like around like from the base of the tree to

1:10:44

the like circle of brush. I would say it

1:10:47

was from the tree. It was

1:10:49

a radius of maybe fifteen

1:10:51

feet basically

1:10:54

the canopy of the tree. It

1:10:57

was a heavy, thick enough tree. And elk

1:10:59

must take aid under there when it's sunny,

1:11:02

like it ever gets sunny, it must get because

1:11:04

there was I noticed when we were in there in the dark, there's

1:11:06

a lot of elk ship and bedding,

1:11:09

betting depressions under that tree. So on

1:11:11

a hot day they most like to get

1:11:13

under their same way cattle will do and

1:11:15

get on there and bed up in the shade of that tree. I noticed

1:11:18

that. So in hindsight,

1:11:20

it was a shitty hanging tree. But there

1:11:22

wasn't like a good version, right

1:11:25

correct, which is bad? It was a bad choice among

1:11:28

bad choices. Yeah, you

1:11:30

could only have the

1:11:32

foresight having I think been

1:11:34

there before to like, as

1:11:36

you pull the trigger and you watch you all die

1:11:39

in the daylight at that moment, to then

1:11:41

do a three or sixty degree scan and

1:11:44

make a way point on the best hanging tree.

1:11:47

And we did. Me and Remy

1:11:49

argued about the best hanging tree. But

1:11:51

our argument wasn't based on clearing.

1:11:55

Our argument was based on proximity.

1:11:59

It was based done. I

1:12:02

was going for a tree in an

1:12:04

area that I knew sucked

1:12:06

for travel, a side

1:12:09

of the drainage that I knew was sucked for travel,

1:12:11

but it was a known suck. Remy

1:12:14

was saying, let's go across. It

1:12:16

can't be worse because I've

1:12:18

traveled, and he's like, it's there are

1:12:21

parts that are better. And I said, because

1:12:23

it's dark, because we're loaded out heavy,

1:12:25

I think we should go for the known suck

1:12:30

instead of that. In hindsight, that would have his

1:12:32

tree would have been a better tree. But so you

1:12:34

guys didn't really consider the whole like

1:12:36

open we were not talking about visibility under

1:12:38

the hanging tree, but either

1:12:41

side it would have been the same visibility

1:12:44

both all

1:12:47

their hell holes of lots of goalies. So

1:12:52

now here's where things, here's where mistakes start

1:12:54

getting made. I

1:12:57

get up to the hanging

1:12:59

tree and I noticed a

1:13:02

smashed I noticed a smeared

1:13:05

bear ship. And

1:13:07

do you remember do they remember me getting down on

1:13:09

my knees to examine that ship? Because

1:13:13

I was I and my initial thought

1:13:16

was did it look like a of

1:13:19

ship that was smeared from a bear? A

1:13:21

bear track smeared ship? And

1:13:25

I got down to examine it, and I'm like, I

1:13:28

don't remember that being there, but

1:13:32

it was nighttime, but it was like nighttime

1:13:34

and it looked like a boot. Then I was like, it must be a

1:13:36

boot smeared it because it was

1:13:38

all smeared out, and I was like, we were stomping

1:13:40

all around and here we must have smeared

1:13:43

that bear ship. And it was a salmon fueled

1:13:45

bear ship. It was like that gray

1:13:48

mush ship from when they were feeding on salmon

1:13:50

looked like and it was smashed.

1:13:54

And I looked at that and was like, is that a boot or a bear

1:13:56

track smeared that? And then

1:13:58

I looked at the tree and a lot of the stuff was

1:14:01

hung up with para cord and

1:14:03

I looked in the tree. There's like no scratching

1:14:07

on the tree, no sign of disturbance,

1:14:09

and also if something was in there really like

1:14:11

trying to climb that tree, I felt that he

1:14:13

might have actually

1:14:15

like busted some of the

1:14:17

pieces of para cord in trying to like reach

1:14:20

around and do all of his business up there. That

1:14:22

I saw no other evidence except that smeared chip.

1:14:25

So then we make a giant mistake and

1:14:28

decided to sit down and have

1:14:31

some sandwiches. And

1:14:33

we had a MSR

1:14:35

stove with us at a pot, and

1:14:37

I remember the pot got passed around and everybody

1:14:40

was who wanted a quick

1:14:42

uh Starbucks. Via was

1:14:45

supposed to throw in a small

1:14:47

amount of water into the pot. I

1:14:50

dumped half my water

1:14:52

bottle into the pot and

1:14:55

there was like a little excavation dug out,

1:14:57

and I was sitting by that excavation dug out, and there's

1:14:59

six of was huddled on one side

1:15:01

of the tree in a space

1:15:04

seeing about like what we're in there

1:15:06

during this, During this, packs came off.

1:15:08

Packs came off in

1:15:11

one area. Then I got up to grab the pot

1:15:13

somebody had sat So now people are actually sitting

1:15:16

by Paxson aren't there. So my pack is now a

1:15:18

cross from us which has are my

1:15:20

personal bear deterrent pistol and

1:15:23

bear spray leaning against the hanging

1:15:25

tree. Your pack is leaning against the hanging tree, because

1:15:27

then you moved into mice. So we're kind of we did

1:15:29

this weird shuffle where nobody was near

1:15:32

their own pack the way that we sat, but

1:15:34

still tight figured roughly

1:15:37

like people in a living room around a coffee table,

1:15:39

for instance. Yeah, maybe

1:15:41

maybe even a tad tighter than that. I

1:15:43

gotta say. Two, we were pretty whooped

1:15:45

on the hike in, and that was a great spot,

1:15:48

taken away any risk of bear

1:15:51

perfect chill the

1:15:53

sandwich. Yeah,

1:15:56

it was like it was nice. Yeah, it

1:15:58

was like walking into a bed. I

1:16:01

have thought about lighting the fire for no reason,

1:16:03

just because

1:16:06

it was so nice under that tree. The

1:16:09

first post

1:16:11

hanging tree selection mistake that we made

1:16:15

was that we got under the hanging tree and

1:16:18

decided to linger unnecessarily

1:16:21

long and let our

1:16:23

guard down. Yes, what

1:16:27

we did that caused us to linger

1:16:29

unnecessarily long, let

1:16:32

our guard down, and divorce

1:16:36

us from our deterrens being

1:16:41

pistols in spray was

1:16:45

the idea that we would

1:16:47

have some sandwiches and

1:16:51

some coffee. So our desire

1:16:54

to have sandwiches in an idyllic setting

1:16:58

in the relief of having not had

1:17:01

our kill site claimed by a bear, which

1:17:04

the Alaska Department of Fishing Game

1:17:07

says often happens

1:17:09

on the first night. But

1:17:12

we had allowed a night

1:17:14

and a half to pass, and

1:17:18

to be fair to us, how long was the hike into

1:17:21

the hanging for? Yeah, so a four hour

1:17:23

hike up and then down and

1:17:26

through in

1:17:28

one point five nights pass and one

1:17:30

five nights passed. We got there. We were all pretty hungry,

1:17:34

and it was like, thank God, a bear isn't

1:17:36

here. Yeah, that's because based

1:17:38

on my hasty

1:17:41

bit of sign reading, backed up

1:17:43

by Remy's hasty bit of sign who

1:17:45

also said, it looks like a bear had been here.

1:17:47

You said, it looks like I came up a

1:17:50

little bit late. You must not have felt the

1:17:52

same as me as we

1:17:55

trampled it. But I that's why I looked

1:17:57

at you and said it like, oh did you step? You

1:17:59

know? Like was

1:18:01

this? I got down on my knees to examine,

1:18:03

but I wasn't there for that, and I did

1:18:05

a faulty read on that. I'm

1:18:07

taking full blame unsigned reading

1:18:10

faultiness. I

1:18:13

saw what I wanted to see, not what

1:18:15

was there right. Second

1:18:17

mistake was I and

1:18:20

others did not say let's

1:18:22

get while the getting is good. Not

1:18:25

that that would have It wouldn't have mattered, wouldn't matter. It

1:18:27

wouldn't matter because it could have been Now

1:18:30

now we could look and be like it couldn't have been any

1:18:32

better. Every

1:18:34

option from here on out is like it could have been

1:18:36

worse. There's no way it could have been better because

1:18:40

of what I'm gonna explained happened because our

1:18:42

our act of eating sandwiches

1:18:46

just the only the mistake of the eating

1:18:48

the sandwiches was us letting our

1:18:50

guard down. But when we got to

1:18:52

the tree, our guard would have been down

1:18:55

regardless our packs would have been off.

1:18:57

We would have been disarray packing at meat. There's

1:19:00

just maybe potentially more distracted by

1:19:03

climbing and lowering stuff down,

1:19:06

spread out in filming. Instead

1:19:08

we were clustered. A break.

1:19:11

So I get my sandwich. Pat

1:19:14

makes me a sandwich. It's just I

1:19:16

had come off the heels of having had a bad

1:19:18

sandwich. Not just me

1:19:20

though, this was Garrett and Chris helped out with the

1:19:22

sand So Pat had made me a really bad sandwich

1:19:25

couple of days before, and I was saying to him

1:19:27

dry, very dry sandwich. And I

1:19:30

was I reprimanded him and and and

1:19:32

told him as much, and told

1:19:34

him that when I send the pros and cons, this

1:19:36

is going down as a bad sandwich.

1:19:39

He sent, he hands over a spectacular

1:19:41

sandwich. Sandwich, sandwich,

1:19:45

heavily great

1:19:48

sandwich. Did you have

1:19:50

the the did you have the stove

1:19:53

fired up stove this

1:19:55

whole time? And I

1:19:57

was eating my sandwich, and some folks were coming,

1:20:00

and then why was my sandwich so nice?

1:20:05

Looking at the sandwich, I noticed him actually

1:20:08

looking at your sandwich. I'm like, I've been looking

1:20:10

at that stamp sandwich too, looking at

1:20:12

his sandwich, looking at my sandwich, and looking

1:20:14

at the meat that was still in the bag, thinking

1:20:16

you know this is And

1:20:20

I was just opening my mouth and beginning

1:20:22

to form a sentence to

1:20:24

the effect of kiss

1:20:27

my ass on the sandwich is because

1:20:29

you didn't see my sandwich last time I had a sandwich,

1:20:32

When all of a sudden, there was like, well,

1:20:35

Pat, yeah, well stop,

1:20:37

sorry, all right. I

1:20:44

know not that I won't be interrupted. I'm

1:20:46

like, like you act like that. I'm

1:20:48

that I'm not going through this in a way that makes

1:20:50

sense to me. I think that there is tension

1:20:53

in the room. I'm looking around and I'm seeing

1:20:55

what I believe to be sweaty palms

1:20:57

and people gripping their shirt tails. You

1:21:01

know, I feel like, you know what I want to do. I want

1:21:04

to have someone No, I don't. I'm not gonna

1:21:06

do this. I'm not gonna do this, but I have a

1:21:09

slight feeling of wanting to have someone

1:21:11

else run point on explaining

1:21:13

how this went. I was actually gonna recommend

1:21:16

that you tell the whole story

1:21:18

from beginning to end. That's not how I'm going to do without

1:21:21

anyone else. That's what I'm going to do, adding

1:21:23

in and then we can this

1:21:25

is all thought out

1:21:29

how how I feel that

1:21:31

this should be approached Unless

1:21:33

someone else has really sat

1:21:36

down and thought it out. I'm

1:21:40

blocking it, reliving the experience, not thinking

1:21:43

about how to tell people. I mean, has there We've

1:21:45

taken people from the place to see epic

1:21:47

up into the sandwich making. Yeah,

1:21:50

like I feel like like I

1:21:54

don't know that big mistakes have been made. Man,

1:21:56

keep it going

1:21:59

great? Uh? I

1:22:03

register and explosion

1:22:06

of holy

1:22:09

shitness

1:22:12

not over to Pat because Pat is the first

1:22:15

person. Pat, what

1:22:17

was the first thing amid the sandwich

1:22:19

making. What was the first thing that happened.

1:22:22

So I'm listening to everybody you

1:22:24

know, praised me for the sandwiches and

1:22:26

criticizing sandwiches

1:22:29

and uh, and I'm sitting here enjoying

1:22:31

my own pistronomy sandwich and

1:22:34

thinking how how wonderful that pistronomy

1:22:36

tastes in my mouth. And

1:22:40

I hear off to my right some

1:22:44

panting, some deep, you know, guttural

1:22:48

breathing. Can you can you mimeric it?

1:22:51

Uh? It sounded a lot like a dog

1:22:53

panting at first, like from far away,

1:22:56

like and

1:22:58

just kept getting a little louder, little

1:23:01

little uh deeper and scarier

1:23:03

sounding. Sounded angry too,

1:23:06

And at first it seemed fake because I was like,

1:23:08

no, no way this is happening. There's

1:23:11

no way when a bear attacks you, he actually makes

1:23:13

such a nasty well and there's there's

1:23:15

no way like a bear

1:23:17

is actually gonna like run up in attacks

1:23:20

right now. That's just that's just crazy.

1:23:23

We're only sitting under three.

1:23:26

I mean, it's gonna happen, but you never expect

1:23:28

that to actually happen to you. And

1:23:31

uh, and I mean it was something I was like prepared

1:23:34

for on this trip you know, we knew

1:23:36

there was gonna be big bears out there. We knew

1:23:38

there's potential, but you never actually expect

1:23:40

to be like straight up attacked

1:23:43

by a brown bear. And

1:23:47

so I'm sitting there, I hear these noises and

1:23:50

it just like it's like, okay, this's

1:23:52

happening. I think I was the first

1:23:54

person to say something like, oh my god,

1:23:57

what's that noise? And then all of a sudden,

1:23:59

within two s aggins, there's

1:24:01

a bear on top of us. All

1:24:05

right, man, I hate to do this to you.

1:24:07

I know that you are on the edge

1:24:09

of your seat waiting to hear

1:24:12

what happens when the

1:24:15

brown bear that we've been alluding

1:24:17

to enters this story. It

1:24:20

is worth your weight. It's

1:24:23

what I'm doing to you right now is awful.

1:24:26

It's terrible. If a man did

1:24:28

this to me, I would punch

1:24:30

them, But I'm doing it to you.

1:24:33

You're gonna have to tune in next

1:24:36

week on the Meat Either podcast

1:24:39

to hear the final culmination

1:24:41

the resolution of

1:24:43

the Fognac Island brown

1:24:46

bear attack

1:24:49

charge mayhem

1:24:51

story. Are

1:24:59

now smart like with

1:25:03

a little bit of with a little bit

1:25:05

of painting,

1:25:07

and then sometimes not this time, and sometimes you also

1:25:09

get this little treat right.

1:25:13

We didn't get that this time. Tune in next

1:25:15

week.