November 14, 2024 • 44 mins
Dirk and Derek Miller from Eastern Oregon Outfitters recap Dirk's Mt. Emily hunt. Dirk quizzes Derek about being an outfitter with Pendleton Whisky's Q&A.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
I'm the host Dirk Durham today and I'm in the
beautiful blue mountains of Oregon, Northeastern Oregon. If you will,
I've got my buddy Derek Miller, who is an owner
operator of an outfitting business here in Oregon in some
(00:35):
of the big three units ELK units in Oregon, which, uh,
which are you? How many units do you guide in?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Here? I'm permitted to operate in all of the big
three that I primarily operate in Mount Emily and Wanaha.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Okay, yeah, nice, nice. We just wrapped up like a
what's a lifetime type of ELK hunt for me here
in Oregon here in one of the those big three units.
I don't know if do we want to tell people
where it's at or they'll probably figure it out, but
I always had to leave a little mystery.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, it doesn't matter to me. The availability of tags
is so small that it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
But right right, well, I had the opportunity to come
hunt with Derek through the Outfitter Tag program. So an outfitter,
the outfitters apply for an opportunity to draw a tag
one tag in these units tell us how that works.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So licensed outfitters in Oregon can apply for non resident
outfitter tags in the Big Three and if you're if
you're issued one of those tags, if you're lucky enough
to draw it, then they'll if you for service, will
issue you a operating permit for that hunt. I happen
to have a priority permit on part of that National
(01:54):
forest and a temporary permit year to year permit on
the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So yeah, that's coo. And then I was able to
have the opportunity to buy that tag. It's it's crazy,
you know, some people kind of poo poo on that idea,
which I kind of get. You know, it's there's a
lot of folks who will spend twenty plus years applying
as a resident in this state trying to draw a tag,
(02:20):
and and it's probably a little disheartening for them when
some jerk like me comes along and buys a tag.
But you know this is you know, the state, the
state does this, They allow it. Somebody's gonna buy the tag,
and and by gully, this time, it's just a good
old kid from we Ipe that I would have never
thought in a million years I'd ever been able to
hunt this unit, So I'm super thankful and fortunate to
(02:42):
come here. But man, I was really I've been really
looking forward to this this hunt all summer. You've sent
me pictures of some big bulls you've been scouting, and
then in September hit and you had some cool videos
on from from trail camps of bulls on wallows, bugling
and stuff, and that's really cool. I'm just I'm just wondering,
(03:08):
what is your normal what's your normal client base look like?
Is that? You know? I feel like some people get
this idea that like, oh, somebody went with an outfitter there,
they must not be a good hunter, or oh they
should have just did that theirself, or oh outfitted hunt
not for me. I don't want to even hear about it, right,
(03:28):
but I feel like there's some weird misconceptions about who
actually will book a hunt with an outfitter.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Right in the Big Three, it's kind of a unique
situation because it takes so long to draw, and the
average age of a hunter that draws the Big Three
because it takes twenty plus years to draw, is probably
fifty and above. So the age demographic is probably fifty
to seventy on average. Those are the guys that are
(03:55):
typically booking hunts. The guy that's, you know, twenty to thirty,
he's still he still thinks he can do it on
his own, which he can. There's no reason that he
can't do it alone. But we all know as we
get older, we have physical limitations and time limitations. So
the average guy is going to be fifty to seventies,
probably either retired or a business owner. He has the
(04:18):
disposable income to hire an outfitter. He doesn't have a
lot of excess time to come and scout like you
would want to for a twenty five year tag to
do that tag justice and do your due diligence to
find yourself a bull. So he's probably the average. Most
all of them are hunters of one type or another,
(04:40):
all different skill levels. There's some really experienced hunters and
there's some that have never killed a bull. The vast,
vast majority of my clients have probably never killed a
mature bowl. They may have spy hunted or cow hunter
or whatever, but they've never killed a mature bowl anyway.
It's not that they're new hunters, it's just that in Oregon,
(05:03):
our opportunities are somewhat limited to hunt big bulls. We
don't have a ton of units that have them, and
the ones that do have them, it takes a bit
to draw a tag, so the average hunter just wants
to maximize what he's got. You know, it took him
twenty five years to get the tag, and he doesn't
want to waste it, so he hires a guide. And
(05:24):
the benefits of the guide, there's a lot of them.
But the guide knows the country better than you'll ever
know it, even though you may have friends that have
hunted it with friends or whatever. The guides are hunting
that every single year, two months out of the year
between archery season and rifle season, so they're just they're
familiar with the unit in waste that most people aren't.
(05:46):
It Also, you know, maybe they don't have the equipment.
It's late season, we can end up with a lot
of snow. Transportation can be an issue. So sometimes it's
equipment they don't have. Sometimes it's the time they don't
have the scout. Sometimes it's maybe the knowledge. They don't
feel like they have enough knowledge to kill a ball
that they've been waiting twenty years to kill, so there's
(06:07):
a lot of reasons. I've found. Very rarely it's because
the person is inept. It's just they've weighed the they've
weighed the odds, and they think that their odds are
stacked better with help.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Absolutely well. One thing I've kind of noticed over the
years is when some people draw really hard to get tag,
whether it's Oregon or Idaho or Utah or whatever, they
may have a network of friends that like are are like, hey,
I want to go along and help. But not everybody
has a network of friends that want to or can
(06:42):
you know, some of us are friends just they work,
you know, they can't get.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Out, And a lot of times you have when you
draw the tag, you have a whole bunch of people
that want to help, but as the time approaches, they
can't get time off, or life happens like it does
for all of us, and some of those guys find
out that they're going to be on their own, and
if or maybe they have one or two friends. But
if you're fifty to seventy, your friends are mostly fifty
to seventy, and so they may not be quite the
(07:06):
help you need.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Right so right, yeah, and there, you know, it's nothing
beats boots on the ground, somebody that's been in the
unit a lot and familiar with the area and the
areas that help frequent and you know, it's it sure
saves a lot of leg work. Definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, it's nice that you can on day one because
it takes over twenty years to draw the tag. Most
people haven't scouted the unit and they think they're going
to scout the unit in the months leading up, but
they don't. Either they don't because of time constraints, or
even when they do. Where the elk are in June
and July and August and September, they probably aren't going
(07:46):
to be in November. So it's kind of you're scouting
country but not really scouting elk. And so it's also
nice that on day one you hit the ground running.
We've all gone places where we're not familiar with, really
a new place. We're kind of going in blind, maybe
with some scouting, but how many days do you spend
just kind of get the feel of the country, And
(08:08):
this way you don't have to. Your guy's already been there.
He's probably been there. Hopefully he's been there in the
days right prior to your hunt, so he already has
Elk spotted. You know, we knew exactly where we were
going this morning. We knew exactly where we were going.
We had videos of Elk that we wanted to kill
from less than twenty four hours ago. So I think
(08:31):
there's some real benefits to And it's not that a
guy can't do that. I'm not saying that they can't
do it on their own. They can, but it's sometimes
and for certain people, I think it's just a better
option if you have the ability to do it.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Right right or when it comes to like get an
animal out, you know, right, let's say once you're successful,
I mean, and Elk is a big animal and his
canyons are pretty steep, right and rugged here and a
lot of folks, you know, it's it's going to be
a big burden to get it out, and you know,
especially if you're diy do it yourself, and you may
not have that again, that safety rope or network of friends,
(09:06):
or maybe all your friends are back home, you know,
eight hours from here, and they just can't run over
to help you pack out an Elk man. It's sure
is nice to you know, have yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
A group of guys right there that can just throw
it on their back and get out.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, make it a one trip pack out and it's done.
And man, it's it's fun. Yeah, it's really fun.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
It makes it a lot more enjoyable. There's something to
be said for the suffering of packing a bull out
over several days by yourself, but there's also something to
be said for getting it done and sitting around camp
just visiting for a few hours afterwards too. Oh yeah, definitely,
it's both ways are great.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So my expectations when I came on this hunt, I've
always tempered my expectations for all hunting because I've been
hunting for thirty five years, you know, do it yourself
type hunting, so I understand what hunting is about. You know,
of course you're going to set your sights on the
big animal you can possibly find, and we would all
(10:03):
like to go home with that three fifty or three
eighty or whatever number type of bowl or just maybe
just I want a big, heavy six point or whatever.
So coming into this hunt, I always try to like
temper my expectations. I didn't have a number set on
a bowl. I just I wanted to shoot a big,
(10:24):
beautiful bowl. I didn't care if it was a perfect six.
I didn't care if it was a lopsided seven by eight.
I like, you know, with weird points. I didn't really care.
I just wanted a cool opportunity, a cool bowl that
I that I liked when I seen it. And sometimes
(10:44):
you find those on the first day. Sometimes a guy
don't find those at all in a season, or maybe
you find them on the last day. But today, man, wait,
the elk gods smiled on us, like they put one
right in front of us. We We've done a little
bit of due diligence the night before and spotted a
(11:05):
really nice seven by eight, And I'm like, oh, man,
I want that thing. And but I know hunting, and
I just know how it works to where just because
you see one the night before and they're and and
and you guys have been watching them for a for
a day or two, and it's like, it doesn't mean
it's a gimme tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That elker they have seen killing two different things entirely.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, yep. And then you have you have some other
things in the equation. We're not out here just this
is not like an exclusive private land place. You know,
there are a few uh mature bull tags, you know,
branch bull tags. But there's a lot of spike hunters
out hunting, so you know, it's public land, so we're
(11:51):
gonna out We're to be out here competing with those guys.
And you know, we always hope and that everyone's gonna
be respectful because we're going to be respectful. But sometimes
you just ever know what could happen till it could
you know, we could have the whole hillside to ourself,
we could be sharing it with twenty other people, right,
So I just kind of tempered my expectations, like I
(12:14):
just want to have a really fun hunt. I've never
hunted here for myself before. I got to hunt this
area with Jason Phelps here in twenty twenty one and
enjoyed it, and I thought it was a really cool experience.
And I just thought, you know, I just want to
have a good time and see lots of elk and
see lots of bowls, and maybe I'll get fortunate enough
(12:35):
to get a nice one that I want to shoot
within range.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right, And I think I think people should temper their expectation.
We all, I had wind Aha in twenty eighteen, and
of course I had high expectations. But as you go
into the hunt, you when you're thinking about it, you're
only thinking about the end result. I'm going to kill
a three fifty bowl or three sixty year or whatever
your number is. But you don't realize. And we talked
about it last when we saw that seven by eight bowl,
(13:01):
and we're like, we pretty much had that thing already
on our backs at that point. We were like, this
is going to happen on the wall, right, Yeah, But
then you start to realize and then, like I think
I said, anything can happen, we start to get these
wild card things that come up, and like last night,
we're watching that bull and all of a sudden, there's
(13:22):
other people that hadn't seen the bull but just kind
of showed up randomly looking like they're doing the same
that we were when we found the bull. And so
now you've got other DIY hunters with branch boll tags
that are watching the same bull. And like you said,
there was sometimes people are respectful, sometimes they're not. Uh.
We had spike hunters rolling on us this morning, like
(13:43):
walk right up next to us while we're glassing for
the bull. That was a wild card. We had wind,
We had snow, we had, fog, we had There's all
these wild cards that come in that you don't really
think about, and those are the ones that kind of
beat you down mentally to where a guy will either
settle for something way less than they wanted or or quit.
There's the success rate is high in these units, but
(14:04):
it's not one hundred percent, even though there's a lot
of ilk. And I think really my favorite clients are
the ones that say, well, I've never killed a big bull,
I've never killed a bull, or I've killed a bowl
three hundred inch bul and so they just want that
to be the best bowl of their life. And it's
not that I don't think they can do better than
that goal, but that's a realistic goal and you'll never
(14:28):
feel shorted if you can achieve that goal. Or maybe
they just want to kill a mature bull. That bull
you killed was a mature bull, beautiful bull. It wasn't
a seven by eight, no, but it's a beautiful bull.
There's nothing wrong with that bull, you know what I mean.
So I think it is important to temper your expectations
with reality. And if you talk to people that hunt
(14:50):
the unit a lot frequently, guides or other people. You'll
realize that there's not three eighty bulls around every tree.
You're not going to to see three fifty bowls every
day or even every week, right and so, and weather
is huge too. You know, the first week we generally
have pretty good weather, and in the area that we're hunting,
(15:12):
the first week there's no snow, and the elk are
still here. But by next week, if we've got a
foot of snow or six eight inches of snow, these
elk are gone. And so sometimes you shoot the elk
that's in front of you if you like the bowl,
instead of waiting and trying to hold out and getting greedy.
And then you know, later in the week it's snows
and there's nothing, and so you've kind of shot yourself
(15:32):
in the foot over some pride, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, And this is a short hunt. This is
a five day hunt. You know, it's not like we
have two weeks to enjoy these mountains and turn over
every rock and just be choosy and super choosy. So
I thought, you know, with everything considered, a lot of
hunters around with weather coming.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
In, it's snowing right now.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, you guys may hear the wind, and we got
the generator going, and it's snowing outside now, like it
could snow a couple of inches tonight. It could snow afoot,
it could.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, you just don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
We don't know what that's going to be, but we
do know it's going to affect the elk one way
or another, and probably not in our favor. And a
lot of times, well I was just glad, like where
we packed packed this bull out if I can't imagine
if that had been snow on the ground that we'd
have had it had been dangerous, like it was switch dangerous.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And I carry I carry a couple pair of crampons
that I can give guys that are like one inch crampons,
regular mountaineering crampons, and those help immensely on that really slick,
frozen ground. But luckily we didn't need it.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
But yeah, thank goodness. But anyway, I was able to
make a good shot. You know, we had some pretty
gusty winds this morning, and then right it when the
shot was when I was able to take that shot,
the wind kind of switched to be kind of blowing
right in her face, so you know, wasn't left or
right and made a good shot and then the I
(17:00):
hit him pretty good, but I ended up having to
make a follow up shot, which made a okay shot
when when I took the follow up shot it was
really windy then. So you guys will be able to
see all this whole. I shouldn't even I shouldn't even
spoil it because you'll be able to see the video
where you have the video come out and we'll let
you know when it's out. But you'll be able to
And if you want to go, check out my Instagram,
(17:23):
it's the Bugler and I'll collaborate with Philips game calls
and you'll be able to see the bull on there
the picture of it. But he was a beautiful six point.
He was every like I said, everybody comes here with
stars in her eyes, including me. It's like he never
know you might get a three eighty bowl.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
But that's the attraction to the Big Three.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
It is.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
It is the wild like you never know, you never
know what might walk out. You just don't know what's
going to walk out. We didn't expect that seven by
eight to be what he was when he walked out
last night. Either. We had seen him in the timber
the day before that, couldn't really see his whole frame
and everything he had, but he was a really cool,
unique bowl that anybody would have shot. Yeah in that unit.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, and the bowl I squeezed the trigger on. Yeah,
I'm so happy with it. I'm very happy. He's a
beautiful bull. If I was to draw a picture of
a bowl in my mind before it came, I would
probably draw a picture the shape of antlers like that.
It's just he's pretty, he's well proportioned. He's symmetrical, yeah,
which I was kind of laughing last night. I'm like,
(18:27):
I I typically, if you look at my horn pile,
I've got some asymmetrical stuff. It's like not like non typical.
It's just like one side's really good, one side's not
so good, or one side's a little different. And I
thought for sure it was like, oh yeah, I'll probably
get that seven by eight, But no, I got a
beautiful symmetrical six by six, which was surprising to me.
So really yeah, so that was really fun. Well, listen,
(18:50):
we're gonna shift gears here. We're gonna do the old
Pendleton Whiskey question and answer segment. And first question, Now,
this might be all sensitive and I and I think
a lot of people are thinking it, but not a
lot of people are saying it. But why are the
costs of guided and outfitted hunts so expensive?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
You know, there's a wide there's a wide variety of
costs for outfitted hunts. Bigger, more established outfitters charge a
lot more. They've got a history of maybe killing big bulls.
If your goal was to come in here and kill
you know, one of the top five bulls in the
unit that people know about, you're going to pay for
(19:31):
that opportunity. Yeah, and so those are some things, but
there's it's just like any business, there's costs. Every guy
that we have helping, whether he's glassing, guiding, cooking, whatever
he's doing, that guy's getting paid every day. And I
pay my guys for the entire week, whether we hunt
one day or whether we hunt a week. And so
that's an expense. Our permitting cost, money for service wants, there,
(19:56):
share insurance, you know, fuel for the rig, the side
by side, someone's got to pay for the side by side,
and you know, hey for the horses all year, even
though we use them for a few months out of
the year. So it it just is it seems like
a lot, and it is a lot. But you know,
if you if you break it down, it's it's not
you can you can justify every expense. It's just unfortunate.
(20:19):
It feels even as an outfitter, which is part of
why I started outfitting myself, because I was working for
other outfitters that were charging whatever they were charging. I'm
not going to say they were too much, but in
my mind, I felt like people were being priced out
of an outfitted hunt. And I kind of like the
idea of just being a regular, like every man's outfitter,
(20:41):
and so if I can keep my prices lower. It's
not a lot of people say raise your price, you
need raise your price. But I just feel like I'm
I feel like I'm not serving the clientele that I
want to serve. I want to serve the guy that
maybe I had to save five years to go on
a hunt, you know, or but they're expenses. It's just
all expensive. Oh yeah, equipment, you know, it's campus four
(21:05):
thousand dollars and it's just everything, oh yeah, food, the tents,
you know, how much? How many hundreds of dollars did
we spend? Like this hunt was planned for a week.
We have food for a week for six people, and
we hunted one day. Yeah, so it's just expenses, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, and that's not money, get you just you don't
get that very store.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, you don't get it back.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
No, no, no, that's a that's a great, great answer,
which I think. You know, sometimes it's easy to like
sit here and pick pick things apart, like or people like,
oh it must be nice, but like people prioritize in
their life what's important to them. Right, So one guy
might say, oh, it must be nice, but he drives
an eighty thousand dollars truck, right, And I drive a
(21:48):
truck that's been paid off since twenty twelve, right, and
it's not real pretty. But anyway, you know that everybody
has different priorities. You know. People say, like you say,
some people up for a long time. Some people maybe
they just have that extra income and like they're a
bonus or something that they can throw on a hunt
or something, which is cool too.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
But and it's like anything I would love to have
a house with five hundred acres, it's I can't afford it,
so it's just out of my reach. And there's going
to be things like that in life that are just
out of your reach. There's no reason to be jealous
or petty about it. Just is what it is. But
you shouldn't also fault the guy that owns that or
that can afford to go on a guide it hunts
(22:30):
if that's what he wants to do, right, there's I
think there's no shame in it. I also think for
some guys that I've hunted, that you'll learn you'll learn
more on a guided hunt than you want to admit
you're going to learn. But most of the guys that
I hunt, especially in archery season, at the end of
that hunt, they almost all say, I can't believe how
much I learned. And so how much is an education?
(22:52):
Not that guides are better than you, and you may
know more than a guide does, but if you're not,
if you're a new hunter, a fairly new hunter, how
much is that education worth? You can cram a lot
of learning into five or seven days, all them out.
So I think there's a lot of benefits to outfitted
and guided hunts.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Right Well, yeah, if if, if you maybe you're a
new hunter, or maybe someone who struggled for a long
time to be successful hunting, you can struggle for years,
like learning making all the mistakes. I know, I've made
all the mistakes, and it takes a long time to
figure that stuff out. And it's like kind of like
that shortening the learning curve. Really, it's like you go
(23:31):
somebody with that does things right, and you pick that
stuff up, You're like, oh, wow, I was doing this
wrong the whole time. I never had an idea that
this is a better, a different way to do it,
you know. So I've heard that a lot from guys too,
they've gone on outfitted hunts.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, I think I think it's the older you get. Also,
you realize that we all have kind of a finite
number of hunts in US. You've got, you know, if
you're if you're really really lucky, you've got forty years
thirty forty years of good hunts, you know, where you're
not just sitting on a stump watching for the young guys,
you know. And so if you can shorten that learning
curve five years, ten years, that's five or ten more
(24:10):
potentially more successful years of hunting. And so it is
a good idea. I think it's a good idea if
you have the money.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, absolutely, Okay, here's another question for you, what should
a hunter expect on a guided her outfitted hunt? Should
they how should they prepare for the hunt?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think what they should expect is these. These would
be a super basic list. Like if I was going
on a guide hunt. I never been, but if I was,
I would expect a quality camp with quality gear, quality
whatever is used in the camp. I wanted to be quality.
You know you, it should be quality gear. I would
(24:58):
expect my guide to be nulled, bligible, friendly, experienced. He
should know the country. He should be in as good
or better shape than I am, and he should be willing.
I think a guy should be willing to impart knowledge
to the guy that he's hunting with, Like you can't
just hunt tight lip because you're afraid you're going to
(25:20):
teach him and not get him to come back. You
should be teaching those guys, Like we should all do
that in our life, but especially in that position. That's
what I would expect. I wouldn't expect success if that's
what you're expecting that I'm going on a guide to hunt,
so it's one hundred percent I'm going to kill something.
I think you're misled and if that's your goal, there's
plenty of there's high fence and private land opportunities where
(25:42):
the success rate is really high. But on public land,
even in the Big three, it's not as easy as
what people think. And so I wouldn't expect success. I
would expect, I would hope for opportunity. I wouldn't I
wouldn't fault the guide if I didn't have opportunity, But
I should see animals also, That's what I would expect.
How they can prepare, it's pretty tough to say how
(26:06):
they can prepare. Like physically, it's really hard. If you
live it at sea level or five hundred feet, how
do you prepare to hunt at six thousand? And if
you have no way to climb sixty degree inclines? How
can you prepare for that? Physically? That's been pretty pretty tough.
But there's other things that you can do. And the
places where I see guys fail is equipment, personal equipment.
(26:30):
There's a lot of examples. I could site boots, clothing, binoculars,
those types of things, your own personal hunting gear, backpacks.
I know they're paying for a guided hunt, but that's
not the time to cheap out on personal gear that's
going to really affect the quality of your hunt and
the comfort of you during your hunt. And also some
(26:52):
of the like these guys that draw these tags, they've
got twenty five years. You know, when you're within four
three four five years of drawing that tag, that's it's
a great time to be able to start adding some
gear to your gearbox. Maybe binoculars one year and maybe
you know, boots, clothing, whatever it is that you need.
I think gear is one place where guys end up
(27:13):
shorting themselves, and ultimately they're the ones that pay. I
think being proficient with your weapon, whether it's archery or
whether it's a rifle, is going to be critical, you'll find.
I've had a lot of guys who, when the time
came to actually execute the shot, they didn't do their part,
and they were like almost heartbroke. And I thought they
(27:35):
were heartbroke because they missed the animal. But they would say, Derek,
you work so hard every single day to get me
within range and to get me a shot, and I
keep screwing it up, and I'm like, don't even think
twice about it. But you know, they feel that burden
because they realize that you're working really hard for him
and I think that would be a place where people
(27:58):
should spend some time shooting.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah. Yeah, And I always say, you know, I have
to always be shooting your high powered rifle right reps
behind a trigger, a twenty two, like I spent my life.
People probably don't remember know this about me, but I
spent my younger days as a kid. As soon as
I could hold a gun, I was shooting BB guns
and twenty two's, And I've probably shot about a million
(28:23):
bbes through an old piece of crap bby gun that
didn't even have a stock on it. I would like
improvise and hold that thing up as close as they
could and shoot BB's with that thing. And then I
finally got a twenty two. And I don't know how
many bazillion dollars I spent in twenty two shelves. But man,
I've shot my whole life, and then I shoot high
powered rifles from time to time. But I still shoot
(28:46):
twenty twos a lot. It's just being just being on
the gun. Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I think the part that where people fail is not
we think when we talk about shooting, it's just hitting
the target. Yeah, that's really not the biggest issue. The
biggest issue is probably target acquisition, where we see a
bull or deer, whatever it is we're hunting, and I'm saying,
he's right there, but you don't see him, and you're
trying to get him in your scope, but you can't
even see it because target acquisition. Maybe you've got your
(29:12):
scope turned the magnification all the way up or or
whatever it is, and you need to back out and
then find him and then turn up to whatever you
want to shoot at. But target acquisition is a big deal.
That's probably you think about it. You might get hopefully
we've spotted a bull, and you have all the time
in the world to set up dial if you're going
to use turrets or whatever. But sometimes it's not that way.
(29:34):
Sometimes you have maybe a five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen
seconds to set up and you've got to be able
to find that animal in that scope and get a shot.
It's not always about hitting it. That's not what I'm
talking about specifically. But target acquisition is a big deal.
And you need to be honest too with your guide.
When he asked, I don't always see guys shoot, and
(29:56):
so I'll ask him, you know, what are you what's
your comfortable rain, and a lot of guys are west
side guys, and they'll say, well, I never shoot more
than two hundred yards, so I don't really know. And
they'll say, well, I shoot a you know, a two
to three inch group at one hundred, and that's good
enough for the coast range at one hundred yards, so
it's no big deal. But out here, you know, two
(30:17):
inches at one hundred is six inches at three hundred,
and those shots are super common. You know, you shot
five hundred or roughly five hundred today, I guess. And
your rifle that you were using was dialed, it was
set up for it, everything was great. But not everyone
has that rifle, and so people just need to be
(30:37):
honest about their shooting experience, their you know, their rifle,
their capabilities. I need to know if I know that
you can shoot a one inch group at one hundred,
that gives me an idea of our maximum effective range, right,
So it's important to be honest with the with your guide. Yeah,
and I have I have rifles that clients can use
as well that are dialed and turreted and all that stuff.
(30:59):
It doesn't make sense for a guy to go buy,
you know, a six thousand dollars rifle to go on
this l hunt. That doesn't really make sense. So I
have those available that people use. I just let them
use them. I don't charge them anything for it, but.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Sure, sure, yeah, And sometimes, like you know, it lets
you know where you need to set them up too.
It's like, well, I can't set them up we're going
to shoot five hundred yards. We need to set up
further down the ridge, or we need to be on
a different ridge, you know, we need to set up
in the right places to shoot from.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So and I don't want to give the impression that
it's always a long range of fair because it's not.
They're sure. The average range, if I think back on
the bulls that I've killed in the Big Three with clients,
is probably one hundred and seventy five to two hundred
and twenty five yards. I'm an archery hunter myself, and
so my nature is to get as close as I can.
There's no reason to shoot at three hundred if we
(31:52):
can get to one hundred and fifty easily. Yeah, And
the potential to miss at one hundred or one hundred
and fifty is a lot smaller than it three four
five and greater.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, I was watching a video of Ryan Lampers. He's
an excellent hunter. If you talk to him, he doesn't
you know, if you quiz him out, he won't really
tell you a lot of a lot of times and
like when was the last time you missed? And he
doesn't miss very often, hardly at all. But I watched
him on a on a video where he was hunt
(32:23):
mulder hunting and he could have taken a shot and
it was probably I think it was like four hundred
yards or so. I might have this wrong, but he's like,
I can make that shot, but man, I just really
want to make sure I get this tier. So they
moved up and he snuck up and got he cut
the distance almost in half. Maybe he's not to two
hundred yards, and now it's a chip shot, right, And
(32:44):
it's just like that's sometimes by by just getting up
a little bit closer, it becomes a chip shot and
then you don't miss, right.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
So and I think too, it depends on your experience
that for a guy who shoots a lot of shoots
his rifle a lot is intimately familiar with that rifle.
I would say three and four hundred yards off of
a prone rest you know, calm wind conditions, it's almost
a chip shot. With the right rifle and with the
optics and the ballistic apps and range finding binoculars and
(33:15):
all that stuff that we have now, it's almost a
chip shot. But that's to the that's to a guy
who's doing that. To a guy who hunts the west
side in the you know, in that thick brush and
never shoots more than one hundred yards, it's not really
fair to put him behind a gun that can shoot
that and then say shoot five hundred yards. You know,
that's not it's not even truly, that's not even ethical. Yeah, honestly. So,
(33:37):
and that guy shooting your gun in camp for three
shots to make sure he can hit you know, a
one inch group or whatever whatever you think is acceptable,
that's not preparing him to shoot five hundred Right. So
I have guys who you know, you guys can shoot
five hundred yards, and I'm confident that you can do it.
I would let you shoot that. I would, And I
(33:58):
I'm not the guy who's also going to say, you know,
you can't take that shot. I'm not going to let
you do that. I feel like there's a lot of
that heavy handedness and outfitting. You can't shoot this bullet,
you can't shoot this broadhead, you can't. I'm not your babysitter,
Like my job is to get you within an ethical
range and then be a support to you. And you know,
(34:19):
we've all hunted, and we all know that stuff. Stuff
just happens. Yea, we miss, we make poor hits. We
all kinds of stuff happens, and your guide should be
your support system to help minimize the effects of that.
But if I felt like a guy could not shoot
five hundred yards, either because of equipment or because I
saw him shoot, I would just get him closer. Yeah,
(34:42):
I would always push that on him. Yeah, absolutely, Usually
there's no reason we can't get a little bit closer.
You know, we could have cut where you shot your bull.
We could have caught a cut one hundred yards just
by going down the hill further, and it would have
caused some other issues. We would have been shooting maybe
at a different incline, or you know, your support wouldn't
have been prone on the ground. You might have been
(35:03):
shooting off of you know, my tripod with a gun
saddle on it or something which wouldn't be ideal. But
there's options we can get closer. Sure, and if nothing else,
there's another day. We'd rather wait and hunt an elk
the next day than to wound it and lose it.
Nobody wants that over a marginal shot, you know, just
(35:25):
for the sake of saying I did it.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Sure, What's been your very favorite hunt? And in your
years of guiding and outfitting hunters you have, do you
have one that stands out that was like this was
like probably one of my favoritest hunts ever. I have one.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
It wasn't even a paid hunt. I was guiding. I
was guiding an el kunter. I told you guys this
story this weekend. I was guiding an elk hunter in
Mount Emily and we had gone down over a hill
after a bull to get a better look at it
before we committed to shooting it. And so we sat
on that bowl all day. It finally came out at
almost dark and just a smaller bull than what the
(36:04):
client wanted to shoot. So we were just sitting there
kind of killing time, so we didn't blow those elk out.
When we left and I looked down and I see
a guy and his wife and like a teenage daughter
looked like young teenage daughter coming around the hill below us.
And I'm not sure how I knew that they were
spike hunters. I'd hate the stereotype, but I just had
(36:26):
an idea that they were spike hunters, and so I
told that hunter. I said, I'm going to go down
and I'm going to bring the we were. Also when
we were sitting there, there was two spikes above us,
like one hundred and seventy five yards above us, and
I said, I'm going to go down and get that
guy and see if he wants to kill one of
these spikes. I'll help him. And so client wasn't super
happy about it, but we didn't have anything to lose.
(36:48):
We weren't going to shoot that bull. We were done
hunting for the day. So I ran down to the guy,
told him who I was, asked if he had spike tags.
He did or his wife and daughter did. I said,
if you want to kill two spikes right now, I'll
bring you up here and we'll shoot these two. And
so I brought him up to where we were, had
both his daughter and his wife prone, and they shot
both those spikes. Boom boom. Both of them fell down,
(37:11):
and it was the cool part was it was his
daughter's first big game animal, and it was his wife's
I think, first time hunting. She was a five year
breast cancer survivor. It was like her first time out.
And another cool part was it was their last last
day of their hunt, and he said, he told his wife,
(37:31):
We're going to go out on the face of this mountain.
And she said, why are we going to do that?
And he said, oh, I think we might see something
out there. And she said, we're not going to see anything,
and he said, oh, God will provide away. And they
went out there and it just it turned out amazing
that we were able to help them kill that and
it wasn't even a paid thing I had. You know,
(37:51):
we had nothing really to gain from it. That was
what my client said. He was a little bit upset
about it, you know, And I said, we have nothing
to lose and everything to We're going to help this
guy and his family and we're going to feel good
about it. And it's what we should be doing anyway
as sportsman, just helping each other out. We don't have
to gain on every single thing. Sometimes you do things
just for the good of doing them.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, yeah, doing the right thing feels.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Good, right, right, And even that guy reached out to
me months and months later and was so appreciative that
it just it fills your heart to do stuff like
that for people.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, well, Matt, I have had the best time
hunting here. I mean, it's been a short it's been
a short trip. I mean I kill on day one.
How great's that? You know? I always say, you know,
maybe it's not a real l hunt until you've had
to have the highest of highs and the lowest of
lows and then get back to the highest of highs.
(38:46):
But we had some highs and lows today with wind
and lots of competition, a lot of other folks out
there in the woods, and then we had a really
big high when I got that bowl.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, yeah, just going from we were almost sure we
were going to get a shot at that bull, and
then to have, you know, a bunch of competition from
DIY hunters coming into the same area and no one
really being willing to yield to the other. So we're
all kind of hoping to spot this bull from different
vantage points. But that was a low, Like I know,
(39:18):
all night long, it was a low for all of us.
We were all worried how it was going to turn out,
but it just turned out it wasn't that bull, but
we knew there were other good bulls in that same drainage,
and so we just put ourselves in the best spot
to hopefully have a shot when no one else would
and it just worked out.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
But yeah, it was really good to have you guys out.
It was great when Jason first reached out to me
about this tag, when I first drew it, and Jason
was trying to figure out a way to do it
himself and that didn't pan out. And then he said, well,
what what if Dirk? What if Dirk could do it?
And I said, man, Dirk would be awesome. Everybody loves
Dirk and Dirk is a great guy. And I feel
(39:55):
like the people that are mad about outfit or tags
go into I think what they're mad about is that
they just go to someone that has a bunch of money. Yeah,
and we don't like the sound of that. We don't
like the way it feels. It feels elitist, and that
these guys are just buying a deal. So to have
a regular guy like Dirk get that tag, I don't
I don't understand how anyone could really be mad about that.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I know I'm not. Yeah right, I'm happy about it. Yeah, yeah,
I'm appreciative for the opportunity. And man, i'd like to
say I can't wait to come back, But I don't
know that will ever happen again. But you know, who knows.
You know, maybe maybe maybe I'll get lucky again someday,
maybe I'll draw a tag. But but yeah, it's been fun.
(40:41):
It's beautiful. It's beautiful country up here. They call it
the Blue Mountains, but man, they're sure are a lot
of tamaracks that are bright gold, you know, foll so
beautiful and a lot of game. We saw a lot
of bulls. We saw like seven bowls last night, and yeah,
it was it's been fun. It's been fun. I I'm
that's that's the bad part about pulling trigger. The good
(41:02):
part and the bad part. The good part is like, yes,
I got one. The bad part is it's over. It's
over now, I don't I mean, we could have we
could have spent more time hunting, and it's it's not
easy haunting them. Like we sat there and about froze
to death today the wind and it was cold and
the wind just cut and then tonight with the weather
coming in, I could I can tell the rest of
(41:24):
the week would not have been easy.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
This was the best day to kill if you're going
to Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
But but we would have we would have dug in
and enjoyed every bit of it and suffered through all
the hardships. And but that's hounting, right, that's the that's
the fun part about hunting. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, And if it if you can look at a
bull and you even if it's just in that moment,
you think, man, that's this is a great situation. Sometimes
it's the guy's hunting with his son, his father, whatever
it is, and it's not. Sometimes the hunt isn't about
the size of the antlers. It's just about the It
might be the stock, it might be the country, it
might be the company. Yeah, it's just a lot of things.
(42:01):
So I wish people wouldn't get hung up on the
size of the antler so much because I think it
cheats us out of the experience really, And so yeah,
hopefully hopefully you're happy with that bowl. I'm happy for you. Yeah,
And it's beautiful, bul It was a great hunt, good
time in camp, you know, it's great. I'd have you
(42:22):
guys come back next year in a second. Yeah, if
I could get you to cut away and come help
me on that sheep hunt this week, that'd be great.
Your wife already thinks you're gone for a week, it
would be great.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
You could probably just like not send her any pictures
and be like, yeah, yeah, the hunt went the distance.
Hant honey, not knowing we want sheep hunting. That'd be fun.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Go help on that, right, Well, anytime you got time, yep,
I'll put you in camp cooking and washing dishes.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, that'd be good too. That'd be good too. We've
had good food here so far, so it's been great.
So tell everyone how they can find you on social
on website and stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
So my website is Eastern organ Outfitters dot com. I
have Instagram, Facebook, it's also Eastern organ Outfitters. Super easy
to find. You could google it. It's easy to find.
And I'm fairly active on social media. I kind of
when I get into a hunt, I don't post a
whole lot. I'm more collecting content that I can share
(43:25):
later when I have time to breathe. But you know,
this is a busy time of year. But yeah, you
can get a hold of me on Facebook, Instagram or
my website.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
That's awesome. Well, thanks a lot, Derek, appreciate you having us,
having us as a guest in your camp. Thanks for
coming on the podcast, and I look forward to seeing
what the rest of your hunters do this fall. Yep.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Thanks, I appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yep, keep back
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Most and the break the time
And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
I'm the host Dirk Durham today and I'm in the
beautiful blue mountains of Oregon, Northeastern Oregon. If you will,
I've got my buddy Derek Miller, who is an owner
operator of an outfitting business here in Oregon in some
(00:35):
of the big three units ELK units in Oregon, which, uh,
which are you? How many units do you guide in?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Here? I'm permitted to operate in all of the big
three that I primarily operate in Mount Emily and Wanaha.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Okay, yeah, nice, nice. We just wrapped up like a
what's a lifetime type of ELK hunt for me here
in Oregon here in one of the those big three units.
I don't know if do we want to tell people
where it's at or they'll probably figure it out, but
I always had to leave a little mystery.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, it doesn't matter to me. The availability of tags
is so small that it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
But right right, well, I had the opportunity to come
hunt with Derek through the Outfitter Tag program. So an outfitter,
the outfitters apply for an opportunity to draw a tag
one tag in these units tell us how that works.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So licensed outfitters in Oregon can apply for non resident
outfitter tags in the Big Three and if you're if
you're issued one of those tags, if you're lucky enough
to draw it, then they'll if you for service, will
issue you a operating permit for that hunt. I happen
to have a priority permit on part of that National
(01:54):
forest and a temporary permit year to year permit on
the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So yeah, that's coo. And then I was able to
have the opportunity to buy that tag. It's it's crazy,
you know, some people kind of poo poo on that idea,
which I kind of get. You know, it's there's a
lot of folks who will spend twenty plus years applying
as a resident in this state trying to draw a tag,
(02:20):
and and it's probably a little disheartening for them when
some jerk like me comes along and buys a tag.
But you know this is you know, the state, the
state does this, They allow it. Somebody's gonna buy the tag,
and and by gully, this time, it's just a good
old kid from we Ipe that I would have never
thought in a million years I'd ever been able to
hunt this unit, So I'm super thankful and fortunate to
(02:42):
come here. But man, I was really I've been really
looking forward to this this hunt all summer. You've sent
me pictures of some big bulls you've been scouting, and
then in September hit and you had some cool videos
on from from trail camps of bulls on wallows, bugling
and stuff, and that's really cool. I'm just I'm just wondering,
(03:08):
what is your normal what's your normal client base look like?
Is that? You know? I feel like some people get
this idea that like, oh, somebody went with an outfitter there,
they must not be a good hunter, or oh they
should have just did that theirself, or oh outfitted hunt
not for me. I don't want to even hear about it, right,
(03:28):
but I feel like there's some weird misconceptions about who
actually will book a hunt with an outfitter.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Right in the Big Three, it's kind of a unique
situation because it takes so long to draw, and the
average age of a hunter that draws the Big Three
because it takes twenty plus years to draw, is probably
fifty and above. So the age demographic is probably fifty
to seventy on average. Those are the guys that are
(03:55):
typically booking hunts. The guy that's, you know, twenty to thirty,
he's still he still thinks he can do it on
his own, which he can. There's no reason that he
can't do it alone. But we all know as we
get older, we have physical limitations and time limitations. So
the average guy is going to be fifty to seventies,
probably either retired or a business owner. He has the
(04:18):
disposable income to hire an outfitter. He doesn't have a
lot of excess time to come and scout like you
would want to for a twenty five year tag to
do that tag justice and do your due diligence to
find yourself a bull. So he's probably the average. Most
all of them are hunters of one type or another,
(04:40):
all different skill levels. There's some really experienced hunters and
there's some that have never killed a bull. The vast,
vast majority of my clients have probably never killed a
mature bowl. They may have spy hunted or cow hunter
or whatever, but they've never killed a mature bowl anyway.
It's not that they're new hunters, it's just that in Oregon,
(05:03):
our opportunities are somewhat limited to hunt big bulls. We
don't have a ton of units that have them, and
the ones that do have them, it takes a bit
to draw a tag, so the average hunter just wants
to maximize what he's got. You know, it took him
twenty five years to get the tag, and he doesn't
want to waste it, so he hires a guide. And
(05:24):
the benefits of the guide, there's a lot of them.
But the guide knows the country better than you'll ever
know it, even though you may have friends that have
hunted it with friends or whatever. The guides are hunting
that every single year, two months out of the year
between archery season and rifle season, so they're just they're
familiar with the unit in waste that most people aren't.
(05:46):
It Also, you know, maybe they don't have the equipment.
It's late season, we can end up with a lot
of snow. Transportation can be an issue. So sometimes it's
equipment they don't have. Sometimes it's the time they don't
have the scout. Sometimes it's maybe the knowledge. They don't
feel like they have enough knowledge to kill a ball
that they've been waiting twenty years to kill, so there's
(06:07):
a lot of reasons. I've found. Very rarely it's because
the person is inept. It's just they've weighed the they've
weighed the odds, and they think that their odds are
stacked better with help.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Absolutely well. One thing I've kind of noticed over the
years is when some people draw really hard to get tag,
whether it's Oregon or Idaho or Utah or whatever, they
may have a network of friends that like are are like, hey,
I want to go along and help. But not everybody
has a network of friends that want to or can
(06:42):
you know, some of us are friends just they work,
you know, they can't get.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Out, And a lot of times you have when you
draw the tag, you have a whole bunch of people
that want to help, but as the time approaches, they
can't get time off, or life happens like it does
for all of us, and some of those guys find
out that they're going to be on their own, and
if or maybe they have one or two friends. But
if you're fifty to seventy, your friends are mostly fifty
to seventy, and so they may not be quite the
(07:06):
help you need.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Right so right, yeah, and there, you know, it's nothing
beats boots on the ground, somebody that's been in the
unit a lot and familiar with the area and the
areas that help frequent and you know, it's it sure
saves a lot of leg work. Definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, it's nice that you can on day one because
it takes over twenty years to draw the tag. Most
people haven't scouted the unit and they think they're going
to scout the unit in the months leading up, but
they don't. Either they don't because of time constraints, or
even when they do. Where the elk are in June
and July and August and September, they probably aren't going
(07:46):
to be in November. So it's kind of you're scouting
country but not really scouting elk. And so it's also
nice that on day one you hit the ground running.
We've all gone places where we're not familiar with, really
a new place. We're kind of going in blind, maybe
with some scouting, but how many days do you spend
just kind of get the feel of the country, And
(08:08):
this way you don't have to. Your guy's already been there.
He's probably been there. Hopefully he's been there in the
days right prior to your hunt, so he already has
Elk spotted. You know, we knew exactly where we were
going this morning. We knew exactly where we were going.
We had videos of Elk that we wanted to kill
from less than twenty four hours ago. So I think
(08:31):
there's some real benefits to And it's not that a
guy can't do that. I'm not saying that they can't
do it on their own. They can, but it's sometimes
and for certain people, I think it's just a better
option if you have the ability to do it.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Right right or when it comes to like get an
animal out, you know, right, let's say once you're successful,
I mean, and Elk is a big animal and his
canyons are pretty steep, right and rugged here and a
lot of folks, you know, it's it's going to be
a big burden to get it out, and you know,
especially if you're diy do it yourself, and you may
not have that again, that safety rope or network of friends,
(09:06):
or maybe all your friends are back home, you know,
eight hours from here, and they just can't run over
to help you pack out an Elk man. It's sure
is nice to you know, have yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
A group of guys right there that can just throw
it on their back and get out.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, make it a one trip pack out and it's done.
And man, it's it's fun. Yeah, it's really fun.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
It makes it a lot more enjoyable. There's something to
be said for the suffering of packing a bull out
over several days by yourself, but there's also something to
be said for getting it done and sitting around camp
just visiting for a few hours afterwards too. Oh yeah, definitely,
it's both ways are great.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So my expectations when I came on this hunt, I've
always tempered my expectations for all hunting because I've been
hunting for thirty five years, you know, do it yourself
type hunting, so I understand what hunting is about. You know,
of course you're going to set your sights on the
big animal you can possibly find, and we would all
(10:03):
like to go home with that three fifty or three
eighty or whatever number type of bowl or just maybe
just I want a big, heavy six point or whatever.
So coming into this hunt, I always try to like
temper my expectations. I didn't have a number set on
a bowl. I just I wanted to shoot a big,
(10:24):
beautiful bowl. I didn't care if it was a perfect six.
I didn't care if it was a lopsided seven by eight.
I like, you know, with weird points. I didn't really care.
I just wanted a cool opportunity, a cool bowl that
I that I liked when I seen it. And sometimes
(10:44):
you find those on the first day. Sometimes a guy
don't find those at all in a season, or maybe
you find them on the last day. But today, man, wait,
the elk gods smiled on us, like they put one
right in front of us. We We've done a little
bit of due diligence the night before and spotted a
(11:05):
really nice seven by eight, And I'm like, oh, man,
I want that thing. And but I know hunting, and
I just know how it works to where just because
you see one the night before and they're and and
and you guys have been watching them for a for
a day or two, and it's like, it doesn't mean
it's a gimme tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That elker they have seen killing two different things entirely.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, yep. And then you have you have some other
things in the equation. We're not out here just this
is not like an exclusive private land place. You know,
there are a few uh mature bull tags, you know,
branch bull tags. But there's a lot of spike hunters
out hunting, so you know, it's public land, so we're
(11:51):
gonna out We're to be out here competing with those guys.
And you know, we always hope and that everyone's gonna
be respectful because we're going to be respectful. But sometimes
you just ever know what could happen till it could
you know, we could have the whole hillside to ourself,
we could be sharing it with twenty other people, right,
So I just kind of tempered my expectations, like I
(12:14):
just want to have a really fun hunt. I've never
hunted here for myself before. I got to hunt this
area with Jason Phelps here in twenty twenty one and
enjoyed it, and I thought it was a really cool experience.
And I just thought, you know, I just want to
have a good time and see lots of elk and
see lots of bowls, and maybe I'll get fortunate enough
(12:35):
to get a nice one that I want to shoot
within range.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right, And I think I think people should temper their expectation.
We all, I had wind Aha in twenty eighteen, and
of course I had high expectations. But as you go
into the hunt, you when you're thinking about it, you're
only thinking about the end result. I'm going to kill
a three fifty bowl or three sixty year or whatever
your number is. But you don't realize. And we talked
about it last when we saw that seven by eight bowl,
(13:01):
and we're like, we pretty much had that thing already
on our backs at that point. We were like, this
is going to happen on the wall, right, Yeah, But
then you start to realize and then, like I think
I said, anything can happen, we start to get these
wild card things that come up, and like last night,
we're watching that bull and all of a sudden, there's
(13:22):
other people that hadn't seen the bull but just kind
of showed up randomly looking like they're doing the same
that we were when we found the bull. And so
now you've got other DIY hunters with branch boll tags
that are watching the same bull. And like you said,
there was sometimes people are respectful, sometimes they're not. Uh.
We had spike hunters rolling on us this morning, like
(13:43):
walk right up next to us while we're glassing for
the bull. That was a wild card. We had wind,
We had snow, we had, fog, we had There's all
these wild cards that come in that you don't really
think about, and those are the ones that kind of
beat you down mentally to where a guy will either
settle for something way less than they wanted or or quit.
There's the success rate is high in these units, but
(14:04):
it's not one hundred percent, even though there's a lot
of ilk. And I think really my favorite clients are
the ones that say, well, I've never killed a big bull,
I've never killed a bull, or I've killed a bowl
three hundred inch bul and so they just want that
to be the best bowl of their life. And it's
not that I don't think they can do better than
that goal, but that's a realistic goal and you'll never
(14:28):
feel shorted if you can achieve that goal. Or maybe
they just want to kill a mature bull. That bull
you killed was a mature bull, beautiful bull. It wasn't
a seven by eight, no, but it's a beautiful bull.
There's nothing wrong with that bull, you know what I mean.
So I think it is important to temper your expectations
with reality. And if you talk to people that hunt
(14:50):
the unit a lot frequently, guides or other people. You'll
realize that there's not three eighty bulls around every tree.
You're not going to to see three fifty bowls every
day or even every week, right and so, and weather
is huge too. You know, the first week we generally
have pretty good weather, and in the area that we're hunting,
(15:12):
the first week there's no snow, and the elk are
still here. But by next week, if we've got a
foot of snow or six eight inches of snow, these
elk are gone. And so sometimes you shoot the elk
that's in front of you if you like the bowl,
instead of waiting and trying to hold out and getting greedy.
And then you know, later in the week it's snows
and there's nothing, and so you've kind of shot yourself
(15:32):
in the foot over some pride, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, And this is a short hunt. This is
a five day hunt. You know, it's not like we
have two weeks to enjoy these mountains and turn over
every rock and just be choosy and super choosy. So
I thought, you know, with everything considered, a lot of
hunters around with weather coming.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
In, it's snowing right now.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, you guys may hear the wind, and we got
the generator going, and it's snowing outside now, like it
could snow a couple of inches tonight. It could snow afoot,
it could.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, you just don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
We don't know what that's going to be, but we
do know it's going to affect the elk one way
or another, and probably not in our favor. And a
lot of times, well I was just glad, like where
we packed packed this bull out if I can't imagine
if that had been snow on the ground that we'd
have had it had been dangerous, like it was switch dangerous.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And I carry I carry a couple pair of crampons
that I can give guys that are like one inch crampons,
regular mountaineering crampons, and those help immensely on that really slick,
frozen ground. But luckily we didn't need it.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
But yeah, thank goodness. But anyway, I was able to
make a good shot. You know, we had some pretty
gusty winds this morning, and then right it when the
shot was when I was able to take that shot,
the wind kind of switched to be kind of blowing
right in her face, so you know, wasn't left or
right and made a good shot and then the I
(17:00):
hit him pretty good, but I ended up having to
make a follow up shot, which made a okay shot
when when I took the follow up shot it was
really windy then. So you guys will be able to
see all this whole. I shouldn't even I shouldn't even
spoil it because you'll be able to see the video
where you have the video come out and we'll let
you know when it's out. But you'll be able to
And if you want to go, check out my Instagram,
(17:23):
it's the Bugler and I'll collaborate with Philips game calls
and you'll be able to see the bull on there
the picture of it. But he was a beautiful six point.
He was every like I said, everybody comes here with
stars in her eyes, including me. It's like he never
know you might get a three eighty bowl.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
But that's the attraction to the Big Three.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
It is.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
It is the wild like you never know, you never
know what might walk out. You just don't know what's
going to walk out. We didn't expect that seven by
eight to be what he was when he walked out
last night. Either. We had seen him in the timber
the day before that, couldn't really see his whole frame
and everything he had, but he was a really cool,
unique bowl that anybody would have shot. Yeah in that unit.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, and the bowl I squeezed the trigger on. Yeah,
I'm so happy with it. I'm very happy. He's a
beautiful bull. If I was to draw a picture of
a bowl in my mind before it came, I would
probably draw a picture the shape of antlers like that.
It's just he's pretty, he's well proportioned. He's symmetrical, yeah,
which I was kind of laughing last night. I'm like,
(18:27):
I I typically, if you look at my horn pile,
I've got some asymmetrical stuff. It's like not like non typical.
It's just like one side's really good, one side's not
so good, or one side's a little different. And I
thought for sure it was like, oh yeah, I'll probably
get that seven by eight, But no, I got a
beautiful symmetrical six by six, which was surprising to me.
So really yeah, so that was really fun. Well, listen,
(18:50):
we're gonna shift gears here. We're gonna do the old
Pendleton Whiskey question and answer segment. And first question, Now,
this might be all sensitive and I and I think
a lot of people are thinking it, but not a
lot of people are saying it. But why are the
costs of guided and outfitted hunts so expensive?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
You know, there's a wide there's a wide variety of
costs for outfitted hunts. Bigger, more established outfitters charge a
lot more. They've got a history of maybe killing big bulls.
If your goal was to come in here and kill
you know, one of the top five bulls in the
unit that people know about, you're going to pay for
(19:31):
that opportunity. Yeah, and so those are some things, but
there's it's just like any business, there's costs. Every guy
that we have helping, whether he's glassing, guiding, cooking, whatever
he's doing, that guy's getting paid every day. And I
pay my guys for the entire week, whether we hunt
one day or whether we hunt a week. And so
that's an expense. Our permitting cost, money for service wants, there,
(19:56):
share insurance, you know, fuel for the rig, the side
by side, someone's got to pay for the side by side,
and you know, hey for the horses all year, even
though we use them for a few months out of
the year. So it it just is it seems like
a lot, and it is a lot. But you know,
if you if you break it down, it's it's not
you can you can justify every expense. It's just unfortunate.
(20:19):
It feels even as an outfitter, which is part of
why I started outfitting myself, because I was working for
other outfitters that were charging whatever they were charging. I'm
not going to say they were too much, but in
my mind, I felt like people were being priced out
of an outfitted hunt. And I kind of like the
idea of just being a regular, like every man's outfitter,
(20:41):
and so if I can keep my prices lower. It's
not a lot of people say raise your price, you
need raise your price. But I just feel like I'm
I feel like I'm not serving the clientele that I
want to serve. I want to serve the guy that
maybe I had to save five years to go on
a hunt, you know, or but they're expenses. It's just
all expensive. Oh yeah, equipment, you know, it's campus four
(21:05):
thousand dollars and it's just everything, oh yeah, food, the tents,
you know, how much? How many hundreds of dollars did
we spend? Like this hunt was planned for a week.
We have food for a week for six people, and
we hunted one day. Yeah, so it's just expenses, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, and that's not money, get you just you don't
get that very store.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, you don't get it back.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
No, no, no, that's a that's a great, great answer,
which I think. You know, sometimes it's easy to like
sit here and pick pick things apart, like or people like,
oh it must be nice, but like people prioritize in
their life what's important to them. Right, So one guy
might say, oh, it must be nice, but he drives
an eighty thousand dollars truck, right, And I drive a
(21:48):
truck that's been paid off since twenty twelve, right, and
it's not real pretty. But anyway, you know that everybody
has different priorities. You know. People say, like you say,
some people up for a long time. Some people maybe
they just have that extra income and like they're a
bonus or something that they can throw on a hunt
or something, which is cool too.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
But and it's like anything I would love to have
a house with five hundred acres, it's I can't afford it,
so it's just out of my reach. And there's going
to be things like that in life that are just
out of your reach. There's no reason to be jealous
or petty about it. Just is what it is. But
you shouldn't also fault the guy that owns that or
that can afford to go on a guide it hunts
(22:30):
if that's what he wants to do, right, there's I
think there's no shame in it. I also think for
some guys that I've hunted, that you'll learn you'll learn
more on a guided hunt than you want to admit
you're going to learn. But most of the guys that
I hunt, especially in archery season, at the end of
that hunt, they almost all say, I can't believe how
much I learned. And so how much is an education?
(22:52):
Not that guides are better than you, and you may
know more than a guide does, but if you're not,
if you're a new hunter, a fairly new hunter, how
much is that education worth? You can cram a lot
of learning into five or seven days, all them out.
So I think there's a lot of benefits to outfitted
and guided hunts.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Right Well, yeah, if if, if you maybe you're a
new hunter, or maybe someone who struggled for a long
time to be successful hunting, you can struggle for years,
like learning making all the mistakes. I know, I've made
all the mistakes, and it takes a long time to
figure that stuff out. And it's like kind of like
that shortening the learning curve. Really, it's like you go
(23:31):
somebody with that does things right, and you pick that
stuff up, You're like, oh, wow, I was doing this
wrong the whole time. I never had an idea that
this is a better, a different way to do it,
you know. So I've heard that a lot from guys too,
they've gone on outfitted hunts.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, I think I think it's the older you get. Also,
you realize that we all have kind of a finite
number of hunts in US. You've got, you know, if
you're if you're really really lucky, you've got forty years
thirty forty years of good hunts, you know, where you're
not just sitting on a stump watching for the young guys,
you know. And so if you can shorten that learning
curve five years, ten years, that's five or ten more
(24:10):
potentially more successful years of hunting. And so it is
a good idea. I think it's a good idea if
you have the money.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, absolutely, Okay, here's another question for you, what should
a hunter expect on a guided her outfitted hunt? Should
they how should they prepare for the hunt?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think what they should expect is these. These would
be a super basic list. Like if I was going
on a guide hunt. I never been, but if I was,
I would expect a quality camp with quality gear, quality
whatever is used in the camp. I wanted to be quality.
You know you, it should be quality gear. I would
(24:58):
expect my guide to be nulled, bligible, friendly, experienced. He
should know the country. He should be in as good
or better shape than I am, and he should be willing.
I think a guy should be willing to impart knowledge
to the guy that he's hunting with, Like you can't
just hunt tight lip because you're afraid you're going to
(25:20):
teach him and not get him to come back. You
should be teaching those guys, Like we should all do
that in our life, but especially in that position. That's
what I would expect. I wouldn't expect success if that's
what you're expecting that I'm going on a guide to hunt,
so it's one hundred percent I'm going to kill something.
I think you're misled and if that's your goal, there's
plenty of there's high fence and private land opportunities where
(25:42):
the success rate is really high. But on public land,
even in the Big three, it's not as easy as
what people think. And so I wouldn't expect success. I
would expect, I would hope for opportunity. I wouldn't I
wouldn't fault the guide if I didn't have opportunity, But
I should see animals also, That's what I would expect.
How they can prepare, it's pretty tough to say how
(26:06):
they can prepare. Like physically, it's really hard. If you
live it at sea level or five hundred feet, how
do you prepare to hunt at six thousand? And if
you have no way to climb sixty degree inclines? How
can you prepare for that? Physically? That's been pretty pretty tough.
But there's other things that you can do. And the
places where I see guys fail is equipment, personal equipment.
(26:30):
There's a lot of examples. I could site boots, clothing, binoculars,
those types of things, your own personal hunting gear, backpacks.
I know they're paying for a guided hunt, but that's
not the time to cheap out on personal gear that's
going to really affect the quality of your hunt and
the comfort of you during your hunt. And also some
(26:52):
of the like these guys that draw these tags, they've
got twenty five years. You know, when you're within four
three four five years of drawing that tag, that's it's
a great time to be able to start adding some
gear to your gearbox. Maybe binoculars one year and maybe
you know, boots, clothing, whatever it is that you need.
I think gear is one place where guys end up
(27:13):
shorting themselves, and ultimately they're the ones that pay. I
think being proficient with your weapon, whether it's archery or
whether it's a rifle, is going to be critical, you'll find.
I've had a lot of guys who, when the time
came to actually execute the shot, they didn't do their part,
and they were like almost heartbroke. And I thought they
(27:35):
were heartbroke because they missed the animal. But they would say, Derek,
you work so hard every single day to get me
within range and to get me a shot, and I
keep screwing it up, and I'm like, don't even think
twice about it. But you know, they feel that burden
because they realize that you're working really hard for him
and I think that would be a place where people
(27:58):
should spend some time shooting.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah. Yeah, And I always say, you know, I have
to always be shooting your high powered rifle right reps
behind a trigger, a twenty two, like I spent my life.
People probably don't remember know this about me, but I
spent my younger days as a kid. As soon as
I could hold a gun, I was shooting BB guns
and twenty two's, And I've probably shot about a million
(28:23):
bbes through an old piece of crap bby gun that
didn't even have a stock on it. I would like
improvise and hold that thing up as close as they
could and shoot BB's with that thing. And then I
finally got a twenty two. And I don't know how
many bazillion dollars I spent in twenty two shelves. But man,
I've shot my whole life, and then I shoot high
powered rifles from time to time. But I still shoot
(28:46):
twenty twos a lot. It's just being just being on
the gun. Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I think the part that where people fail is not
we think when we talk about shooting, it's just hitting
the target. Yeah, that's really not the biggest issue. The
biggest issue is probably target acquisition, where we see a
bull or deer, whatever it is we're hunting, and I'm saying,
he's right there, but you don't see him, and you're
trying to get him in your scope, but you can't
even see it because target acquisition. Maybe you've got your
(29:12):
scope turned the magnification all the way up or or
whatever it is, and you need to back out and
then find him and then turn up to whatever you
want to shoot at. But target acquisition is a big deal.
That's probably you think about it. You might get hopefully
we've spotted a bull, and you have all the time
in the world to set up dial if you're going
to use turrets or whatever. But sometimes it's not that way.
(29:34):
Sometimes you have maybe a five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen
seconds to set up and you've got to be able
to find that animal in that scope and get a shot.
It's not always about hitting it. That's not what I'm
talking about specifically. But target acquisition is a big deal.
And you need to be honest too with your guide.
When he asked, I don't always see guys shoot, and
(29:56):
so I'll ask him, you know, what are you what's
your comfortable rain, and a lot of guys are west
side guys, and they'll say, well, I never shoot more
than two hundred yards, so I don't really know. And
they'll say, well, I shoot a you know, a two
to three inch group at one hundred, and that's good
enough for the coast range at one hundred yards, so
it's no big deal. But out here, you know, two
(30:17):
inches at one hundred is six inches at three hundred,
and those shots are super common. You know, you shot
five hundred or roughly five hundred today, I guess. And
your rifle that you were using was dialed, it was
set up for it, everything was great. But not everyone
has that rifle, and so people just need to be
(30:37):
honest about their shooting experience, their you know, their rifle,
their capabilities. I need to know if I know that
you can shoot a one inch group at one hundred,
that gives me an idea of our maximum effective range, right,
So it's important to be honest with the with your guide. Yeah,
and I have I have rifles that clients can use
as well that are dialed and turreted and all that stuff.
(30:59):
It doesn't make sense for a guy to go buy,
you know, a six thousand dollars rifle to go on
this l hunt. That doesn't really make sense. So I
have those available that people use. I just let them
use them. I don't charge them anything for it, but.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Sure, sure, yeah, And sometimes, like you know, it lets
you know where you need to set them up too.
It's like, well, I can't set them up we're going
to shoot five hundred yards. We need to set up
further down the ridge, or we need to be on
a different ridge, you know, we need to set up
in the right places to shoot from.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So and I don't want to give the impression that
it's always a long range of fair because it's not.
They're sure. The average range, if I think back on
the bulls that I've killed in the Big Three with clients,
is probably one hundred and seventy five to two hundred
and twenty five yards. I'm an archery hunter myself, and
so my nature is to get as close as I can.
There's no reason to shoot at three hundred if we
(31:52):
can get to one hundred and fifty easily. Yeah, And
the potential to miss at one hundred or one hundred
and fifty is a lot smaller than it three four
five and greater.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, I was watching a video of Ryan Lampers. He's
an excellent hunter. If you talk to him, he doesn't
you know, if you quiz him out, he won't really
tell you a lot of a lot of times and
like when was the last time you missed? And he
doesn't miss very often, hardly at all. But I watched
him on a on a video where he was hunt
(32:23):
mulder hunting and he could have taken a shot and
it was probably I think it was like four hundred
yards or so. I might have this wrong, but he's like,
I can make that shot, but man, I just really
want to make sure I get this tier. So they
moved up and he snuck up and got he cut
the distance almost in half. Maybe he's not to two
hundred yards, and now it's a chip shot, right, And
(32:44):
it's just like that's sometimes by by just getting up
a little bit closer, it becomes a chip shot and
then you don't miss, right.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
So and I think too, it depends on your experience
that for a guy who shoots a lot of shoots
his rifle a lot is intimately familiar with that rifle.
I would say three and four hundred yards off of
a prone rest you know, calm wind conditions, it's almost
a chip shot. With the right rifle and with the
optics and the ballistic apps and range finding binoculars and
(33:15):
all that stuff that we have now, it's almost a
chip shot. But that's to the that's to a guy
who's doing that. To a guy who hunts the west
side in the you know, in that thick brush and
never shoots more than one hundred yards, it's not really
fair to put him behind a gun that can shoot
that and then say shoot five hundred yards. You know,
that's not it's not even truly, that's not even ethical. Yeah, honestly. So,
(33:37):
and that guy shooting your gun in camp for three
shots to make sure he can hit you know, a
one inch group or whatever whatever you think is acceptable,
that's not preparing him to shoot five hundred Right. So
I have guys who you know, you guys can shoot
five hundred yards, and I'm confident that you can do it.
I would let you shoot that. I would, And I
(33:58):
I'm not the guy who's also going to say, you know,
you can't take that shot. I'm not going to let
you do that. I feel like there's a lot of
that heavy handedness and outfitting. You can't shoot this bullet,
you can't shoot this broadhead, you can't. I'm not your babysitter,
Like my job is to get you within an ethical
range and then be a support to you. And you know,
(34:19):
we've all hunted, and we all know that stuff. Stuff
just happens. Yea, we miss, we make poor hits. We
all kinds of stuff happens, and your guide should be
your support system to help minimize the effects of that.
But if I felt like a guy could not shoot
five hundred yards, either because of equipment or because I
saw him shoot, I would just get him closer. Yeah,
(34:42):
I would always push that on him. Yeah, absolutely, Usually
there's no reason we can't get a little bit closer.
You know, we could have cut where you shot your bull.
We could have caught a cut one hundred yards just
by going down the hill further, and it would have
caused some other issues. We would have been shooting maybe
at a different incline, or you know, your support wouldn't
have been prone on the ground. You might have been
(35:03):
shooting off of you know, my tripod with a gun
saddle on it or something which wouldn't be ideal. But
there's options we can get closer. Sure, and if nothing else,
there's another day. We'd rather wait and hunt an elk
the next day than to wound it and lose it.
Nobody wants that over a marginal shot, you know, just
(35:25):
for the sake of saying I did it.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Sure, What's been your very favorite hunt? And in your
years of guiding and outfitting hunters you have, do you
have one that stands out that was like this was
like probably one of my favoritest hunts ever. I have one.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
It wasn't even a paid hunt. I was guiding. I
was guiding an el kunter. I told you guys this
story this weekend. I was guiding an elk hunter in
Mount Emily and we had gone down over a hill
after a bull to get a better look at it
before we committed to shooting it. And so we sat
on that bowl all day. It finally came out at
almost dark and just a smaller bull than what the
(36:04):
client wanted to shoot. So we were just sitting there
kind of killing time, so we didn't blow those elk out.
When we left and I looked down and I see
a guy and his wife and like a teenage daughter
looked like young teenage daughter coming around the hill below us.
And I'm not sure how I knew that they were
spike hunters. I'd hate the stereotype, but I just had
(36:26):
an idea that they were spike hunters, and so I
told that hunter. I said, I'm going to go down
and I'm going to bring the we were. Also when
we were sitting there, there was two spikes above us,
like one hundred and seventy five yards above us, and
I said, I'm going to go down and get that
guy and see if he wants to kill one of
these spikes. I'll help him. And so client wasn't super
happy about it, but we didn't have anything to lose.
(36:48):
We weren't going to shoot that bull. We were done
hunting for the day. So I ran down to the guy,
told him who I was, asked if he had spike tags.
He did or his wife and daughter did. I said,
if you want to kill two spikes right now, I'll
bring you up here and we'll shoot these two. And
so I brought him up to where we were, had
both his daughter and his wife prone, and they shot
both those spikes. Boom boom. Both of them fell down,
(37:11):
and it was the cool part was it was his
daughter's first big game animal, and it was his wife's
I think, first time hunting. She was a five year
breast cancer survivor. It was like her first time out.
And another cool part was it was their last last
day of their hunt, and he said, he told his wife,
(37:31):
We're going to go out on the face of this mountain.
And she said, why are we going to do that?
And he said, oh, I think we might see something
out there. And she said, we're not going to see anything,
and he said, oh, God will provide away. And they
went out there and it just it turned out amazing
that we were able to help them kill that and
it wasn't even a paid thing I had. You know,
(37:51):
we had nothing really to gain from it. That was
what my client said. He was a little bit upset
about it, you know, And I said, we have nothing
to lose and everything to We're going to help this
guy and his family and we're going to feel good
about it. And it's what we should be doing anyway
as sportsman, just helping each other out. We don't have
to gain on every single thing. Sometimes you do things
just for the good of doing them.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, yeah, doing the right thing feels.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Good, right, right, And even that guy reached out to
me months and months later and was so appreciative that
it just it fills your heart to do stuff like
that for people.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, well, Matt, I have had the best time
hunting here. I mean, it's been a short it's been
a short trip. I mean I kill on day one.
How great's that? You know? I always say, you know,
maybe it's not a real l hunt until you've had
to have the highest of highs and the lowest of
lows and then get back to the highest of highs.
(38:46):
But we had some highs and lows today with wind
and lots of competition, a lot of other folks out
there in the woods, and then we had a really
big high when I got that bowl.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, yeah, just going from we were almost sure we
were going to get a shot at that bull, and
then to have, you know, a bunch of competition from
DIY hunters coming into the same area and no one
really being willing to yield to the other. So we're
all kind of hoping to spot this bull from different
vantage points. But that was a low, Like I know,
(39:18):
all night long, it was a low for all of us.
We were all worried how it was going to turn out,
but it just turned out it wasn't that bull, but
we knew there were other good bulls in that same drainage,
and so we just put ourselves in the best spot
to hopefully have a shot when no one else would
and it just worked out.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
But yeah, it was really good to have you guys out.
It was great when Jason first reached out to me
about this tag, when I first drew it, and Jason
was trying to figure out a way to do it
himself and that didn't pan out. And then he said, well,
what what if Dirk? What if Dirk could do it?
And I said, man, Dirk would be awesome. Everybody loves
Dirk and Dirk is a great guy. And I feel
(39:55):
like the people that are mad about outfit or tags
go into I think what they're mad about is that
they just go to someone that has a bunch of money. Yeah,
and we don't like the sound of that. We don't
like the way it feels. It feels elitist, and that
these guys are just buying a deal. So to have
a regular guy like Dirk get that tag, I don't
I don't understand how anyone could really be mad about that.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I know I'm not. Yeah right, I'm happy about it. Yeah, yeah,
I'm appreciative for the opportunity. And man, i'd like to
say I can't wait to come back, But I don't
know that will ever happen again. But you know, who knows.
You know, maybe maybe maybe I'll get lucky again someday,
maybe I'll draw a tag. But but yeah, it's been fun.
(40:41):
It's beautiful. It's beautiful country up here. They call it
the Blue Mountains, but man, they're sure are a lot
of tamaracks that are bright gold, you know, foll so
beautiful and a lot of game. We saw a lot
of bulls. We saw like seven bowls last night, and yeah,
it was it's been fun. It's been fun. I I'm
that's that's the bad part about pulling trigger. The good
(41:02):
part and the bad part. The good part is like, yes,
I got one. The bad part is it's over. It's
over now, I don't I mean, we could have we
could have spent more time hunting, and it's it's not
easy haunting them. Like we sat there and about froze
to death today the wind and it was cold and
the wind just cut and then tonight with the weather
coming in, I could I can tell the rest of
(41:24):
the week would not have been easy.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
This was the best day to kill if you're going
to Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
But but we would have we would have dug in
and enjoyed every bit of it and suffered through all
the hardships. And but that's hounting, right, that's the that's
the fun part about hunting. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, And if it if you can look at a
bull and you even if it's just in that moment,
you think, man, that's this is a great situation. Sometimes
it's the guy's hunting with his son, his father, whatever
it is, and it's not. Sometimes the hunt isn't about
the size of the antlers. It's just about the It
might be the stock, it might be the country, it
might be the company. Yeah, it's just a lot of things.
(42:01):
So I wish people wouldn't get hung up on the
size of the antler so much because I think it
cheats us out of the experience really, And so yeah,
hopefully hopefully you're happy with that bowl. I'm happy for you. Yeah,
And it's beautiful, bul It was a great hunt, good
time in camp, you know, it's great. I'd have you
(42:22):
guys come back next year in a second. Yeah, if
I could get you to cut away and come help
me on that sheep hunt this week, that'd be great.
Your wife already thinks you're gone for a week, it
would be great.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
You could probably just like not send her any pictures
and be like, yeah, yeah, the hunt went the distance.
Hant honey, not knowing we want sheep hunting. That'd be fun.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Go help on that, right, Well, anytime you got time, yep,
I'll put you in camp cooking and washing dishes.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, that'd be good too. That'd be good too. We've
had good food here so far, so it's been great.
So tell everyone how they can find you on social
on website and stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
So my website is Eastern organ Outfitters dot com. I
have Instagram, Facebook, it's also Eastern organ Outfitters. Super easy
to find. You could google it. It's easy to find.
And I'm fairly active on social media. I kind of
when I get into a hunt, I don't post a
whole lot. I'm more collecting content that I can share
(43:25):
later when I have time to breathe. But you know,
this is a busy time of year. But yeah, you
can get a hold of me on Facebook, Instagram or
my website.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
That's awesome. Well, thanks a lot, Derek, appreciate you having us,
having us as a guest in your camp. Thanks for
coming on the podcast, and I look forward to seeing
what the rest of your hunters do this fall. Yep.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Thanks, I appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yep, keep back
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Most and the break the time
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