January 2, 2025 • 39 mins
Jason recaps his dream 2024 season, shares highlights from each of the hunts, as well as discusses some of the new gear he tried out and what will stay in the rotation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today's
episode will be the first year in twenty twenty five,
and I just wanted to take the time to kind
of recap my hunts from twenty twenty four, you know,
tell some stories and also talk about some of the
gear that we used on those and just kind of
how the hunts turned out. You know that we may
not have told those hunt recaps. So we're gonna start
(00:32):
like every podcast, and if you have questions for me
or our guests, feel free to email them to us
at CTD at phelpsgame Calls dot com and we'll do
our best to get them in here on the podcast.
But these are just some of the questions that I've received,
you know that that we get throughout the year. I
just got this one the other day. If you could
redo any of your hunts this year, which one would
(00:53):
it be? And I love every hunt this year. I
had had a great time, you know, from start to finish.
But if I had to go back and redo one
of my hunts here, it would probably be that New
Mexico archery out count with Luke Combs. For a couple
of reasons. Uh, you know, first, you know, he's he's
a blast to hang out with. You know, we're laughing
(01:15):
the whole time. But we had I would say, there's
some unfinished business on that one. You know, we had
lots of opportunities. You know, Luke passed on some bowls,
you know, some arrows were let loose, and uh, I
would really like a chance to get back there, and
you know the hunt was pretty short. Just kind of
redo that one and see if we couldn't, you know,
have have a different outcome. You know, found some different
(01:37):
areas there towards the end that that we're you know
producing you know, as far as beagles and had more
elk in the area. So that's probably the one man.
You know, the the Alaska doult sheep is is probably
a real close second, you know, one of my dream hunts,
the same thing. You know, if I could redo the
Idaho Mountain lion hunt. Pretty pretty good hunts and wish
(02:00):
wish I could you know, redo those. But yeah, for
for unfinished business reasons. In the Mexico tri I'll count
with Luke would would be probably the highest on the list.
The next question we get, you know or just randomly
throughout the year is kind of what's your favorite new gear,
or they'll see a picture, you know, in a in
a new backpack or using a new knife. You know,
(02:22):
what was my favorite new gear for twenty twenty five?
And I didn't get a whole lot. I'm basically gonna
give you the list of what I tried new, but
it did perform and I was really, you know, kind
of excited about how it works. So first off is
one of our our you know, kind of a inside
of our own companies doing Montana Knife Company and Steve
(02:44):
worked together on a new stubhorn knife. Before that, I
was using a bench made S NINETYV. I don't know
exactly what the model was, what was kind of my
go to I'd been using it for the last four
or five years. Really liked it. But the stubhorn not
to not to get too far in the weeds, uses
a new Magna cut steel. It seemed like it held
(03:05):
an edge a lot longer, it was easier to sharpen,
and and it has some really really good, you know,
characteristics of a hunting knife for me. You know, I
think when I was in Kansas, I used the knife
on three white tails, never even touched it up. You
have through elk season. We used it on three elk.
(03:25):
I think I touched it up a couple of times.
The knife is for me. It's the right weight, it's
the right length, and you know these little things as
you're breaking down animals, you have the efficiency and the
ability to kind of to move a little faster. I
really liked that that new knife. And then you know,
we we just did an episode on the muzzloaders. I
can't say enough about that Remington seven hundred muzzleloader with
(03:48):
the arrowhead breach. And then you take the rules changed
here in Washington where we were allowed to use a
one x red dot, so I topped it with the
loophole freedom alreadys the red dot site and that thing.
You know, usually when I'm out with an older you know,
let's say five years ago, we were out with a
(04:09):
Northwest Addition or style Northwest legal muzzleoader, open sites. You know,
I was comfortable to one one hundred and fifty and
very perfect conditions. Yeah, it should be a primitive type weapon.
Maybe that's where we should be limited to, but the
rules are allowing us to, you know, with modern ignitions,
(04:29):
with the use of one x sites, stretch our range
out and just confidence at closer ranges. I was able
to loan the gun out to a couple other muzzloader
hunters and they just said the confidence they had on
one hundred and twenty to you know, one hundred and
twenty yard shot one hundred and forty yard shot and
to hit the elk exactly where they wanted, and you
(04:50):
kind of take some of that air out of what
I would say the older muzzloaders introduced h like I said,
the the the another I got a new boat, but
really just for the Kansas white tail hunt, I hunted
with my my boat from last year, a dart and
Verocity thirty five in New Mexico elk and you know,
I didn't hunt a lot on that hunt, but I
(05:13):
did get a new sequel thirty five ST two prior
to the Kansas white tail hunt, and I just I
love the boat at draws great. It's you know, got
some tunability to get my broad heads dialed in real
quick if they're not hitting perfect with my field points,
so there's not a bunch of chasing with my sight.
Really really liked that that bow set up with fairly
(05:35):
heavy arrows. I'm not a I'm not that guy that
wants to be crazy heavy. I carried my arrows over
from my old setup, and you know, I was shooting
two and seventy feet per second. But the bow just
shot really really well, was really easy to tune, and
really really consistent. So I really, you know, like that bow.
You know. Yeah, some people may say it's it's a
little long, thirty five inches out of a tree stand,
(05:57):
but for for a guy like myself, you know, I
like the stream angle at full draw. Everything just fits
me well and it's comfortable to shoot. And then really
the only the only other thing I used this year.
You know, in the past, I was always using a
duplex frame from Kafaro. I did use that same pack
(06:18):
on the Dull Sheep Hunt. But in between the Sheep
Hunt and starting my all content between August and September,
I was able to get my hands on one of
the new Kafaro ARC frames with a new Hoodlum bag,
and I really really like that setup. You know, I'm
six foot three, I am all torso, so the frame
was a little short, you know, I think it's only
twenty five inch frame. You know, I've been used to
(06:41):
twenty six is. And then my buddy Aaron Snyder used
to make me twenty eights kind of custom for my
longer torso so I can get some lyft. But the
ARC twenty five, even though it's maybe a little bit
short for a guy like myself, I would say it's
going to perform great for ninety five percent of the
people out there. It did a very good job, you
know on some heavy loads, both on the White River Uh,
(07:04):
I'm reading off my notes here, you know, my White
River Elk tag. And it also did really really well
on the Idaho Meal Deer tag, you know, where I
had some heavy loads for long trips and it performed
as good as can be, you know, expected with heavy
loads that are going to be uncomfortable no matter what pack,
Yet you have on uh, performed really well. So I
was you know, those are really my only new pieces
(07:26):
of gear. It performed really really well. You know, I've
I did try some new crispies out, you know, the
Mountain bro in the brickstall line, you know, but I've
always the brick stalls have always fit my feet well.
On the sheep hunt, I've tried those. They they performed
really well. So it's not really new gear, but they
it was a kind of a new model, a taller
(07:47):
boot for me, and I really like the performance of
those as well. But that kind of wraps it up
as far as new stuff that I tried. I'm a
pretty simple guy. If it works, it works, I don't
need to be changing all the time. But but those were,
you know, kind of the standouts I do really like,
you know, from from first Light. I really liked that
three toh eight pant. I'm not just saying that because
(08:09):
they're a sister company in the know to Phelps game Calls.
I really do like that pant and I believe it's
a big improvement over what we've you know, what I've
had in the past from them. So like that. And
then if I had to pick a favorite hunt of
the year, what would it be. Man In this year
(08:30):
of twenty twenty four, I got to check some of
my my dream hunts, my bucket list hunts off, and
I would say it's a tie. You know. I was
probably more excited about the doll sheep hunt just because
there was such a long build up. I had booked
that hunt back in twenty twenty and it was one
I really looked forward to. So I had four years
(08:51):
of waiting for it to get here and prepare for it,
and then the Idle Mountain lion hunt was kind of
a It kind of sprung on you real quick. You
had you know you'd be hunt within a month or two.
But it was a chance to finally hunt. You know,
big mature Tom's behind the dogs. So I would say
it's kind of split the Idaho Mountain lion hunt and
then the Alaska doll sheep hunt, and then both of them.
(09:12):
You know, I'm not one of those guys that the
experience is important, but I also look at a hunt
and like, for how did what we what were the results?
And unfortunately for me on both of those hunts, you know,
I was able to take very good representations of those
species on those hunts. And so yeah, I really like
(09:34):
those those two as they'll probably be the only time,
maybe the only time I ever get to do it.
So favorite hunts of the year Idaho Mountain lion and
Alaska doll sheep. You know, Mountain lion hunt. I loved it.
The people year around, great people. Alaska doll sheep, same thing.
You know. Matt Snyder was awesome to be around, and
just the country that you get to see on that
(09:54):
you know, those sheep hunts, and it is pretty dang cool.
So those are my favorite hunts of the year. And
once again, you have questions for me or my guests,
please feel free to email them to us at CTD
at phelpsgame Calls dot com, or get a hold of
us on social media, you know, any of our accounts,
you know, shoot the questions there, you know, personal social
(10:17):
media accounts, and that's typically where I grab these questions from.
So yeah, so now we're going to roll right into
the twenty twenty four hunt recap. You I just talked
about this hunt a little bit. I was fortunate enough
to be able to hunt you know, mountain lions in
Idaho behind behind hounds. That's that's great. So you're kind
(10:38):
of you know, you're he's got some clients in and
so you're trying to look at the schedule. How's it's
all going to work and when can you know, we
hunt whenever we're going to have the right weather. Well,
as luck would have it, it seems like at times
everything that I do doesn't seem to go to plan.
I know, had a horrible winner with a little bit
of early you know snow in early January when we
(11:01):
could have got hunting, but you know, had some other
clients booked. And then we get into show season consumer
show season for both myself and and my buddy Bradley,
and so we were trying to you know, match schedules.
And one of the mornings, I woke up, you know,
I get up around six o'clock, get usually, get my
my kids up for school, and you know, kind of
(11:24):
get my morning started. I had a text as soon
as I woke up from Bradley says, I think this
is our window. You need to get over here. So
bless my wife who's able to quickly you know, pivot
and and put some more on her plate. Within about
an hour, I was packed up completely and uh leaving
for Idaho to go you know, chase cats for for
(11:44):
a couple of days. You know, we we get there,
you know, Bradley's Bradley's doing a bunch of running around
trying to trying to just locate a cat. As we
as we're pulling into Idaho, Bradley calls me he's going
back to get his dogs. You'd cut a track and
to meet us at a certain spot. So we all
get there. Yeah, the we I bring. I want to
(12:08):
use my bow, which is you know sometimes I kind
of chuckle, like, what's it matter to that the cat's
in a tree? Why do you know, why does it
matter if you use your bow or a gun At
that point, it's just pulling the trigger. But I like
it to bring my bow down. And it was in
a very steep location and a very tall tree, and
so it created all kinds of issues with getting you know,
(12:31):
a decent shot angle. And as we climbed up the
hill so that we could start to look more level
with the cat, his vitals were blocked and we just
had some issues. And thankfully we had brought a thirty
thirty along just in case the cat, you know, was
able to get out of the tree wounded, it doesn't
get any dogs or we can finish it, you know, quickly.
(12:52):
So we're we're getting ready, we're kind of walking around,
you know, the tree, trying to find a shot angle,
and and you can see the cat start to back
down the tree and ultimately gets about twenty feet from
the ground and bales out over top of everybody's head
and we're chasing again. We had run up let the
dogs We had already had the dogs, you know, leashed
(13:13):
so that the you know, they don't try to chase
the cat when it's wounded and everything. So we let
him go. We're we're chasing again. Well, it was pretty
awesome a turn of events. The cat ran away and
then came right back on its backtrack and walked right
under us, and we were able to see from the
garment that the cat was gonna so we actually got
to watch the cat kind of sneak through and slithered through,
and the dogs were, you know, twenty thirty seconds behind
(13:35):
it at that point, and came up. And then the cat.
If some of you haven't seen the video on YouTube,
the cat ends up, you know, just baying up on
a rock. The cat had enough. He wasn't going back
up a tree. He's gonna sit there. And then the
pressure was on, so the bow was out of the picture.
We needed to kill the cat. You know, I can
(13:57):
brad these, you know, it's like, hey, you got to
make a good show. You know, you can kill my dogs.
And so now I've got this extra pressure. And then
they hand you a thirty thirty that you've never shot,
and I don't know, you know, I instantly went back
to my younger days when I'm out in the yard
with my BB gun, remembering, like, man, there's a lot
of ways to kind of site these open sites in.
You know, did they hold you know, did they sight
(14:18):
in with the front the front post like level? Did
they you know, some guys would sit in with like
front post halfway through so you can actually see over
your target because when you you know, you kind of
block the bottom side. And so I start to ask
a few questions, and then I didn't want to overcomplicate it.
And then me and Bradley are also talking a little
bit about on the animal, like where we need to
(14:39):
hit it to grab lung and spine and do all
of this stuff so that we don't get any dogs injured.
So now I'm I mean, it's thirty degrees out, but
I'm sweating to death because I've got to try to
make a perfect shot on this cat that doesn't harm
the harm the dogs. And you know, so thankfully, as
I as I squeeze the trigger on that thre thirty thirty,
(15:00):
kind of made sure to just walk myself through, you know, Squeeze,
squeeze squeeze, was fortunate to hit the cat perfect on
a pretty steep uphill shot. We went in about mid
body and kind of just clipped the spine as it
went out the other side and caught the other lung
and the cat was thankfully dead as it fell off,
you know, maybe a hundred foot rock on the other side.
No dogs were injured. Uh, you know, everything worked out
(15:23):
great and it was a great, great cat. So yeah,
those hunts. I love hunting with Idaho whitetail guides, you know,
you know, Bradley Dammerman and Amy to do a great
job there and and it's just it's a fun hunt.
It's a lot of hard work for him because of
the dogs and getting up early and running tracks. You know,
we get up early, but we don't have to do
(15:44):
hardly into the work. We just ride around on the
side by side or what what be, you know, what
whatever it may be, but for that day. But it's
a lot of fun. I really enjoy, you know, drinking
coffee and hanging out and talking about you know, stories
of past for the areas that we're in and you
know what he's chased and what canyons. Yeah, so that
was that was an awesome hunt. You just got an
(16:06):
update from Phil Souse over there in Libby, Montana. He's
actually mountain back cat for me this week. So we've
been working back and forth on you know, how it
needs to sit and be arranged. You're really excited to
see how that one turns out. Then we kind of
you know, for us, we change gears a little bit,
we go turkey hunting. You know, we were able to
go to Kansas and Washington this year. I do want
(16:30):
to share one thing I'm going to talk about on
It's not necessarily gear, but it's kind of a new
system I've found to keep ticks off of me and
then away from me at least on my legs, which
is where I would get ninety percent of them. So
you know we would always put gators on. Well, the
one thing is if you have any loose spots on
your gators when you're sitting down or have your foot bent,
(16:50):
if a tick, you know ninety percent of them are
going to come up off of your your feet or
your boots that are touching their ground anyways. They will
climb up, get under there, get under your pant and
the majority of them, you know you have where your
gators will typically be tight at your shin I was getting.
You know, anything that I had latched on was right
at that line, because they would be able to get
up under my gator and under my pant leg and
(17:13):
go up. So I got on Amazon and they have
just these stretchy vell crow things that are made for
guys that write, you know, guys or gals that ride bikes,
to keep your pants out of your sprockets and whatnot.
So what I do now is I pull my pants
down over my boot as far as I can and
tighten that thing and I use two on each leg,
basically bell crowing or elasticking my boot, you know, my
(17:37):
pant to my boot, or you could also use athletic
tape anything that you could get extremely tight and basically
not allow anything up above that. And then I put
my gator up and over as well. And I was
able to hunt Kansas and Washington this year with no ticks,
which is a new record for me. You know, I
(18:00):
had a couple of lone star ticks from Kansas a
couple of years agoing Thankfully I must have not got
the old Alpha gal because I'm still able to eat
red meat. But it's just it's very nerve wracking when
you know that one in fifty, you know, to one
in forty of those things could potentially give you, you know,
alpha gal which I do not want. I don't want
to deal with not being able to eat red meat.
So this system worked, and you combine that with promethrone.
(18:24):
I wasn't you know, I don't. I didn't get any
ticks on me this year. You know, tuck your shirt
in at least your first layer shirt, wear a very
tight belt, you know, as tight as you can handle it.
I spray my net gator in promethrone and seems to work.
Didn't have any issues. The two states though, one thing.
(18:52):
You know, obviously you're hunting a different bird, and Kansas
were hunting Easterns and Washington were hunting Miriam's. Yeah. The
funny thing is is I enjoy them both, but they're
completely different hunts. And Kansas you will walk maybe two
hundred yards from wherever you park your buggy or your
side by side, whatever it may be. You know, I'm
joking a little bit. We will we will run and gun,
(19:14):
but a lot of times we're just you know, we're
we're setting up in the morning. Easterns are pretty stubborn,
so we'll sit and call, we'll maybe move ridge to ridge,
but we don't really want to bump these birds or
you know, mess with them too much. So a lot
of times Kansas will be a long morning sit. You're
typically on you know, gobbling birds and and yeah, you
know you don't kill anything by ten you go in
(19:35):
for breakfast. Washington, you're hiking all day. There were days
in Washington where you know, we'd put twelve, fourteen, fifteen
miles on and I had to had to laugh because
our buddies from Kansas that we hunt with their Randy
coy Brock, James Harrison, those guys all came out and
they joked. They said that for the one bird that
they killed, they'd hike more on that bird than all
(19:56):
their other birds combined. And it's just it's just that
different reference of you know, hunting public timberland ground. We're
you're gonna have to put miles on, you know, to
get into the good spots. Where in Kansas, you know,
hunting more ag ground, it's easier to get on the birds,
you have to move as much. And Washington, the time
we were hunting there, we were early in Kansas, which
seems to be better. And we were a little bit
(20:16):
later into May and Washington and so the hunting was
good all day, and so we kind of hunted all day,
put on a lot of ground and we're really trying
to strike those birds in the middle of the day.
But I was fortunate on those two hunts. I'm mounting
my first trick he ever. I was able to kill
a great four year old in Kansas. And the Washington
bird that I killed was probably the biggest Marriam I'll
(20:37):
ever kill. But it was later in the season and
he was you know, his uh you know, chess was
all you know, all the feathers were had fallen out,
and he was pretty rough, had a lot of pitch
on him, and so I elected that he was a
very pretty bird though. But probably my two best representations
of those birds that i've i've you know, will ever
kill or maybe you know they were good birds. Now.
(21:00):
I always joke where it's like, yeah, they're a little smarter,
but I don't know when I'm shooting. When I'm shooting them,
you I just know that they're they're a long beard
and it could be a two year old and they
just happened to be four year old, so no great
great turkey hunts I really enjoy. You know, some people
don't like turkey hunting. That's fine, you don't have to like.
I like getting out in the spring. It's also a
good reminder on how bad out of shape I am
(21:22):
from from the Christmas carry over in the in the
show season. So it's a little it's a good little
reminder to get my butt back in the gym, back
on the stair climber, and get ready for for fall seasons.
We had a quick little stop next in spring bear
in Idaho. It was later, you know, in in June.
So I just love watching the dogs work. You know.
(21:45):
Bradley started to give me a little bit of grief
that every time I show up we have long races
on bears that bay up and won't tree. So my
very first time with Bradley, we let off on a
dog and I think we till two or three in
the afternoon trying to get all the dogs back off
a bear that just refused to go up with a tree.
(22:06):
You know, a lot of his dogs were banged up.
So fast forward to this year, we let off on
the first bear we we get on and he takes
us into no man's land. There was no easy way
to get to this you know bear from any direction,
and he would never tree. He was just bouncing back
and forth and back and forth and roadless country. There
(22:29):
were roads on kind of each side, at least three
sides of them. Roads not so much on the other side.
And thankfully that bear cooperating didn't go out of the country.
But that you know, a bad bear ended up being
about a two hundred pound boar. And as I mentioned
on on the lion hunt, is there's some danger to
the dogs on wounded animals, and so me and Bradley,
(22:50):
we're able to get the fourlers close to these, you know,
to the dogs and the bear as we can. And
it was just a mad dash to some cliff country,
you know, sprint and running as fast seat can. And
we got down in there and Bradley, you know, I
was we were right behind him. But Bradley decided on
this one he was just gonna, you know, take the bear.
He doesn't like to as the guide, but he's always
(23:10):
got a tag and able to. The bear was so
beat he was just laying in a puddle in a
creak and the dogs were still being pretty aggressive on him,
and Bradley was able to kind of shoot down on
the bear and dispatch that one. And then you know,
for the next couple of days the dogs ran great,
but just long chases like some that took us way
out of the country and you know, just just long
(23:34):
chases with it, you know, hard on the dogs, you know,
moving a lot of ground. And then we were able
to treat a couple, but just some small, small, young bears.
But once again, you know, just getting to go over
there and watch the dog's work. I really really enjoy that.
Next up was the Alaska Doll sheep. Like I mentioned earlier,
booked it in twenty four I always kind of joke
(23:56):
I didn't think my wife would know how much the
hunt cost if I paid for it for you know,
over four years and just made installments and it wouldn't
seem as bad as that was my That was my joke,
and I wanted to selfishly be the first hunt of
the year with Matt. So the idea was, I'll book
far enough out that I'm the very first hunt of
the year. In my mind, it helps you with you know,
with a good summer scout and the sheep haven't been
(24:18):
bothered by every hunter that you know, the legal ram
has been pushed around. I was a little worried going
into the hunt because there was a time on the
third installment where they he said, just keep your money.
The sheep aren't looking good. We don't even know if
we're gonna have a season. So now I start to
get worried, like, because you're gonna have to refund my money?
Am I even gonna get the hunt? But Matt was able.
You know, anybody that's got to hunt with Matt or
(24:39):
knows Matt like he's he's determined, he's a hard worker,
and he was still getting his clients all shot opportunities.
So the year before I went twenty twenty three, all
three hunters got shots to hit. One missed the three hundred.
I believe a three hundred dard shot or a doable shot.
So I was excited. I had looked forward to this
one for a long time, gotten you know, really good
(25:00):
shape and uh the logistics the Alaska or an additional
you know, in addition to the experience, you know you
fly up there. For us, we were able to just
do a turo rental, which is uh, you know kind
of cool. I was able to, you know, find a
truck that had four drive, and you know, and then
it's a long drive in Alaska. You know, you've only
got a couple of airports, and you know, it was
(25:22):
a six hour drive from the airport. But then it
was time to sheep hunt. It was everything I could
dream of. It was the country you've seen, you know,
the steepness of the country, the ruggedness of the country.
The sheep are just absolutely you know, beautiful animals, and
I was I was stoked to get to hunt that way.
(25:42):
I also love the idea that it's a spike out hunt,
right I at times I missed those hunts, but you know,
I loved that we were going to load up food
for seven days and that was our hunt. Like we
were leaving with seven days and when that food was gone,
we were either gonna have a sheep or not. We
were living on the side the mountain. We were going
(26:03):
to live with them. You know, Matt had a pretty
good plan. He was able to go into this country
and make sure there were some legal rams and then
we just had to figure out how to hunt right
off the bat. I was a little nervous though, and
you could tell Matt's and experienced guy. You know, he
kind of felt us out and could see that we
could zip up through the rocks pretty well. But then
we got into these big screen fields and if you're
(26:25):
not from Alaska or haven't spent a lot of time
navigating that, when you looked across the canyon, then he
kind of showed us our route. I kind of questioned him.
I'm like, are we we really going to be able
to or are we gonna you know? And so we
we get across there and from it's not as bad
when you get there, and you when you finally get
confident enough that the big steep screen fields that you're
(26:46):
in are eventually gonna stop rolling and you're you know,
you're only gonna drop a foot. And yeah, I mean
there were a couple of little cliffy areas to navigate,
which which had some you know, risk involved, but for
the most part, once you get over there, you're able
to do a lot more in the rocks. And you
could think just looking across at him and it's just man,
I know, it's it's you know, financial, you know, there's
(27:10):
some financial constraints on everybody being able to do that.
Hunt in Alaska. But man, I'm I'm ready to go back.
I don't I don't necessarily say I've got the Alaska bug,
but I'm definitely looking hard at doing a moose hunt
or something of that nature, just to get back to
Alaska and kind of an experience. It's it's wildness and
just how big it is, and it's just it's I
(27:31):
liked that. It seems like it's kind of it hasn't
been touched. It's it's still fifty sixty seventy years behind
where we're at down here, you know, in the in
the lower forty eight. And I really like that about Alaska.
Well White River Elk tag. So I killed an elk
in twenty twenty three that had hoof. I was put
into a incentive draw. I was one of the Lucky nineteen.
(27:52):
And then within that lucky nineteen, I was able to
get the tag that I wanted, which gave me an
incentive tag which I was I was stoked about, was
the unit I wanted to hunt. So you get all
of your your trail cams out and everything where you'd
seen elk, and just the report from the trail cams
was a little bit dismal. Nothing big was shown up,
(28:15):
or we thought it would. Nothing as big as in
past had shown up, so we kind of go on
a little scouting mission. My whole idea going into this
is we'll just go up there on September first, and
you know, quickly kill an elk when it's patternable before
the rut really gets going. Well, guess what, there were
no mature big bulls to kill, so we basically spent
six or seven days up there walking and hiking with
(28:38):
nothing really worth hunting. I had to leave for the
New Mexico archrailll Count, which I'll get to in a
little bit, and then I was able to come back.
And one of the conditions of this tag is you
can hunt with any weapon when there's no other seasons
in this unit. So you know, before archery between archery
(29:01):
and muzzleloader. But if it's archery season, you have toent
with your bow. If it's muzzloader season, you have to
switch to your muzzloader for that time, and then you know,
you can alternate back and forth. So I had a
couple of days left when I got home from New
Mexico to hunt with the rifle. I'm thinking, all right,
it's September. I don't remember what day, twenty fifth or
twenty six. I had a couple of days left, chasing
(29:22):
bugles everywhere, bagland bulls in all over, but nothing with
any size. Starting to get pretty frustrated. Well, we end
the you know, it's the night before muzzloader starts, and
we sit on what sounded like a big bowl turned
out not to be a very big bowl. And so
now I've got to switch over to my muzzloader and
make things a little more different. You know, you got
(29:44):
Now you've got a lot more people out in the
woods with you, albeit only I believe eight or ten
or something, I don't know how many, but you've got
people with new energy, maybe more willing to get into
the areas that you wanted to. Once again, still nothing
showing up on my trail cameras. And so it was
a We spent you know, a couple of days with
the muzzle order looking for for elk and just couldn't
(30:06):
find big ones or big enough ones. And then finally
we hiked back into where we had heard the big
bugle the last night of the rifle and was able
to there was a new bowl in the area, you know,
a mature six point and it was it allowed me
to hunt the way I wanted to. You know, we
were two and a half hours in on a trail,
you know, in there pretty deep, and I just I
didn't want to in this unit. You could kill smaller
(30:29):
bulls or even decent bulls off the road or near road,
and this was the way I wanted to do it.
And so I was able to take a great bull
in some beautiful country, some rugged country and get that
one out. So we talked about that new Mexico archery.
I'll count with Luke. So the probably the if I
had the most you know, my most requested question of
(30:50):
the year is probably how is Luke in real life?
And I think everybody's, oh, you know, he's awesome because
he might be listening to this, but you could convinced
me that he isn't a guy that grew up right
alongside me in my town. Super funny. We always cracking jokes,
keeping everything light, which I really appreciate. And he's just
(31:14):
I want to hesitate using the word, you know, redneck
or you know, he's just a country boy that loves
doing country things. He was very interested and wanted to
know a lot so I like people that don't just
want to you know, it could have been just real easy,
you know, him tag along with me and Jeremy, but
it was really a He was asked a lot of
good questions, like he was paying attention. He wanted to
(31:36):
know why they were doing this or why we were
doing that. So it made for a really fun hunt
with a new hunter. And I have a ton of
respect for Luke because we talked about it. He could
have hunted anywhere, anytime with any weapon, you know, with
with his ability and resources, and he elected to come
(31:57):
do it on public land a lot side of a
bunch of other hunters, and we made the most of it.
You know. He passed on a couple you know, chip
shots on some legal bulls. We've had some chances of
some bigger ones. You know. I just really enjoyed hanging
out with Luke and then you know his buddy Carl
that was there. It was it was a lot of fun,
(32:17):
and uh, I hope to get to do it again
this year. We've got some plans in the work. So yeah,
in the next to ourcher. It was tough though, you know,
to recap the hunt. People driving side by sides where
they shouldn't, you know, areas where we had spent the
time and energy and effort to hike into and then
to get you know, elk bumped by, side by sides,
just kind of a kind of a bum deal. There
(32:38):
are a lot of people in those units, you know,
the elk were all kind of congregated to the water.
So typical typical public land elk hunt. You got to
deal with people. Just unfortunate that some of them weren't
playing by the rules at times. Another strong runner up
for one of my favorite hunts. So after all of that,
we go to Idaho meal deer. It was a had
(33:00):
a strong runner up for one of my favorite hunts
because we lived off of our back for eight days
straight on this This Idaho meal deer elk hunt was
a collab that we're going to do with tall timber productions,
focus on elk and we can find deer when convenient
or when available. And I would say it flipped really
quick when we were seeing elk everywhere without mature bulls,
(33:21):
and the bulls we were here in Beagle were still spikes,
and we were seeing some pretty good deer. And so
the Idaho meal deer or the Idaho hunt turned into
a deer hunt really really quick, and I just I
love hunting and on hunts that the logistics are a
little difficult, like you might have to drive here and
side by side to here, and then hike to here,
(33:42):
and then every morning you've got to pick a different
mountain top to go glass from, and you know, you
after day one you start to learn, you know what faces,
their aspects or have deer on it, and then you
know where's the sunlight. You don't want to glass into
the wrong spots. The hunt was unseasonably warm, so we
we also knew that our morning glass and you know
(34:02):
a little bit at night had to be we were
only going to see animals for for very short windows
in the morning and night. But I really really liked
that we were able to take two really good bucks
out of the area and just really enjoyed, you know,
hunt with my buddy Tyson and just meal deer in
the mountains where I feel like it's a real level
level field and uh, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Met
(34:23):
some great people in and around the area. Yeah, there
were a lot of people, but the deer hunting was
still pretty decent. If you worked for it. You know,
we we all took decent bucks on that hunt, and
you know, the tall timber guys, and you ended up
with a with a couple of bowls there Towards the end,
we ended up you know, leaving, but really excited to
(34:43):
try to do that one again this year and then
to finish up my season, uh, we'll go to Kansas
again and our white tail hunt that we do with
our buddy Randy and Brock and Koe every year. I've
really grown to like the white tail hunt for different reasons.
I said, I really like the Idaho Meal dear hunt
because we were backpacking in and then I really like
(35:04):
the white to hunt because it's the opposite. I sleep
in a bed warm house, you know, stoven of and
a barbecue, we got the you know, the the gas stations,
got pizza, we got breakfast when we want it. It's
the complete opposite. And it's really made by the people
in the place. Some of these areas of Kansas, the
people you deal with are just salt of the earth,
(35:24):
as good as they get. You know. Some of our
our friends that we get to hang out with are
just great people, great storytellers, and I really really like
it and you know, just being around them in the atmosphere.
And then there's just something about sitting in a tree stand,
you know in the morning when it's dark and kind
of letting the world wake up around you. I really
(35:45):
enjoy that. And just you know, the rustling of the
leaves and you know, hearing a deer come from one
hundred yards away because you can hear them in the
oak leaves. Just everything about it, it's just, you know,
it kind of excites your different senses than then maybe
sitting behind binoculars or a spotter all day when you
finally spot the one you want, it's different. And so
(36:07):
I was very fortunate this year that one of my
favorite stands, my favorite areas I get to hunt on
the top is what we call it. I was very
fortunate within an hour to have you know, my best
white tail come in and put a perfect arrow in it.
Uh touch on the My favorite gear from that that
(36:27):
Dart and sequel thirty five st two and iron will.
You know a lot of white tail hunters, I would
say the majority of them are shooting expandables nowadays, and
they they talk about you know, bigger entrance holes and
bigger exit holes and you know, quicker, quicker, you know,
the deer expires faster. I'm I'm gonna start hitting stop
(36:49):
watches or or go back and review some of this footage.
I ended up shooting three der on that hunt, you know,
one buck and two does, and uh, the iron Wheels
performed amazing, Like I yeah, I don't know if if
an expandable would have killed them any faster. You know,
the buck was dead within seven seconds, maybe seven to ten.
(37:09):
The dough I could, you know, within seven to ten
on a dead sprint, made it one hundred fifty yards,
and then the one dough you know, died on arrival.
You know, hit it, hit it kind of a downwards
frontel through the shoulder, you know, was able to kind
of just plant it and anchor it right there. So
I really like that set up. Iron Wills do great.
(37:31):
The bow was super comfortable to draw. I mean, I
can imagine even if it was you know, cold, and
people have trouble drawing their normal draw away. Like just
really easy to to make work on that hunt out
of a tree. But that's kind of my wrap for
twenty four. I don't know what twenty five brings were
able to, you know, secure some tags already. Well, we'll
(37:52):
see what Washington brings and then we've got I've got
some really good odds of drawing the tags that I've
been waiting for, and Montana, Colorado and Utah. So I'm
gonna have to kind of figure out what i want
to do. But I'm kind of you know, we're just
getting over with twenty twenty four and I'm already in
twenty twenty five planning mode. So if you have any questions,
is you know for us, you know, I kind of
(38:13):
nerd out on planning and I've got, you know, in
this state, I'm going to do this in this date,
I'm going to do this. If you have any questions
on the draws or applications, we'll probably throw a podcast
out on that coming up, just on how we think
about it and how we manage all of the applications
and what we're looking for in each state, and you know,
we can give our opinion on what each state provides,
(38:34):
but feel free to shoot those questions over to us.
But we hope you all had a great twenty twenty
four and here's do a great twenty twenty five. And
I can't thank you all enough for tuning into cutting
the distance, take care of the times wish
Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today's
episode will be the first year in twenty twenty five,
and I just wanted to take the time to kind
of recap my hunts from twenty twenty four, you know,
tell some stories and also talk about some of the
gear that we used on those and just kind of
how the hunts turned out. You know that we may
not have told those hunt recaps. So we're gonna start
(00:32):
like every podcast, and if you have questions for me
or our guests, feel free to email them to us
at CTD at phelpsgame Calls dot com and we'll do
our best to get them in here on the podcast.
But these are just some of the questions that I've received,
you know that that we get throughout the year. I
just got this one the other day. If you could
redo any of your hunts this year, which one would
(00:53):
it be? And I love every hunt this year. I
had had a great time, you know, from start to finish.
But if I had to go back and redo one
of my hunts here, it would probably be that New
Mexico archery out count with Luke Combs. For a couple
of reasons. Uh, you know, first, you know, he's he's
a blast to hang out with. You know, we're laughing
(01:15):
the whole time. But we had I would say, there's
some unfinished business on that one. You know, we had
lots of opportunities. You know, Luke passed on some bowls,
you know, some arrows were let loose, and uh, I
would really like a chance to get back there, and
you know the hunt was pretty short. Just kind of
redo that one and see if we couldn't, you know,
have have a different outcome. You know, found some different
(01:37):
areas there towards the end that that we're you know
producing you know, as far as beagles and had more
elk in the area. So that's probably the one man.
You know, the the Alaska doult sheep is is probably
a real close second, you know, one of my dream hunts,
the same thing. You know, if I could redo the
Idaho Mountain lion hunt. Pretty pretty good hunts and wish
(02:00):
wish I could you know, redo those. But yeah, for
for unfinished business reasons. In the Mexico tri I'll count
with Luke would would be probably the highest on the list.
The next question we get, you know or just randomly
throughout the year is kind of what's your favorite new gear,
or they'll see a picture, you know, in a in
a new backpack or using a new knife. You know,
(02:22):
what was my favorite new gear for twenty twenty five?
And I didn't get a whole lot. I'm basically gonna
give you the list of what I tried new, but
it did perform and I was really, you know, kind
of excited about how it works. So first off is
one of our our you know, kind of a inside
of our own companies doing Montana Knife Company and Steve
(02:44):
worked together on a new stubhorn knife. Before that, I
was using a bench made S NINETYV. I don't know
exactly what the model was, what was kind of my
go to I'd been using it for the last four
or five years. Really liked it. But the stubhorn not
to not to get too far in the weeds, uses
a new Magna cut steel. It seemed like it held
(03:05):
an edge a lot longer, it was easier to sharpen,
and and it has some really really good, you know,
characteristics of a hunting knife for me. You know, I
think when I was in Kansas, I used the knife
on three white tails, never even touched it up. You
have through elk season. We used it on three elk.
(03:25):
I think I touched it up a couple of times.
The knife is for me. It's the right weight, it's
the right length, and you know these little things as
you're breaking down animals, you have the efficiency and the
ability to kind of to move a little faster. I
really liked that that new knife. And then you know,
we we just did an episode on the muzzloaders. I
can't say enough about that Remington seven hundred muzzleloader with
(03:48):
the arrowhead breach. And then you take the rules changed
here in Washington where we were allowed to use a
one x red dot, so I topped it with the
loophole freedom alreadys the red dot site and that thing.
You know, usually when I'm out with an older you know,
let's say five years ago, we were out with a
(04:09):
Northwest Addition or style Northwest legal muzzleoader, open sites. You know,
I was comfortable to one one hundred and fifty and
very perfect conditions. Yeah, it should be a primitive type weapon.
Maybe that's where we should be limited to, but the
rules are allowing us to, you know, with modern ignitions,
(04:29):
with the use of one x sites, stretch our range
out and just confidence at closer ranges. I was able
to loan the gun out to a couple other muzzloader
hunters and they just said the confidence they had on
one hundred and twenty to you know, one hundred and
twenty yard shot one hundred and forty yard shot and
to hit the elk exactly where they wanted, and you
(04:50):
kind of take some of that air out of what
I would say the older muzzloaders introduced h like I said,
the the the another I got a new boat, but
really just for the Kansas white tail hunt, I hunted
with my my boat from last year, a dart and
Verocity thirty five in New Mexico elk and you know,
I didn't hunt a lot on that hunt, but I
(05:13):
did get a new sequel thirty five ST two prior
to the Kansas white tail hunt, and I just I
love the boat at draws great. It's you know, got
some tunability to get my broad heads dialed in real
quick if they're not hitting perfect with my field points,
so there's not a bunch of chasing with my sight.
Really really liked that that bow set up with fairly
(05:35):
heavy arrows. I'm not a I'm not that guy that
wants to be crazy heavy. I carried my arrows over
from my old setup, and you know, I was shooting
two and seventy feet per second. But the bow just
shot really really well, was really easy to tune, and
really really consistent. So I really, you know, like that bow.
You know. Yeah, some people may say it's it's a
little long, thirty five inches out of a tree stand,
(05:57):
but for for a guy like myself, you know, I
like the stream angle at full draw. Everything just fits
me well and it's comfortable to shoot. And then really
the only the only other thing I used this year.
You know, in the past, I was always using a
duplex frame from Kafaro. I did use that same pack
(06:18):
on the Dull Sheep Hunt. But in between the Sheep
Hunt and starting my all content between August and September,
I was able to get my hands on one of
the new Kafaro ARC frames with a new Hoodlum bag,
and I really really like that setup. You know, I'm
six foot three, I am all torso, so the frame
was a little short, you know, I think it's only
twenty five inch frame. You know, I've been used to
(06:41):
twenty six is. And then my buddy Aaron Snyder used
to make me twenty eights kind of custom for my
longer torso so I can get some lyft. But the
ARC twenty five, even though it's maybe a little bit
short for a guy like myself, I would say it's
going to perform great for ninety five percent of the
people out there. It did a very good job, you
know on some heavy loads, both on the White River Uh,
(07:04):
I'm reading off my notes here, you know, my White
River Elk tag. And it also did really really well
on the Idaho Meal Deer tag, you know, where I
had some heavy loads for long trips and it performed
as good as can be, you know, expected with heavy
loads that are going to be uncomfortable no matter what pack,
Yet you have on uh, performed really well. So I
was you know, those are really my only new pieces
(07:26):
of gear. It performed really really well. You know, I've
I did try some new crispies out, you know, the
Mountain bro in the brickstall line, you know, but I've
always the brick stalls have always fit my feet well.
On the sheep hunt, I've tried those. They they performed
really well. So it's not really new gear, but they
it was a kind of a new model, a taller
(07:47):
boot for me, and I really like the performance of
those as well. But that kind of wraps it up
as far as new stuff that I tried. I'm a
pretty simple guy. If it works, it works, I don't
need to be changing all the time. But but those were,
you know, kind of the standouts I do really like,
you know, from from first Light. I really liked that
three toh eight pant. I'm not just saying that because
(08:09):
they're a sister company in the know to Phelps game Calls.
I really do like that pant and I believe it's
a big improvement over what we've you know, what I've
had in the past from them. So like that. And
then if I had to pick a favorite hunt of
the year, what would it be. Man In this year
(08:30):
of twenty twenty four, I got to check some of
my my dream hunts, my bucket list hunts off, and
I would say it's a tie. You know. I was
probably more excited about the doll sheep hunt just because
there was such a long build up. I had booked
that hunt back in twenty twenty and it was one
I really looked forward to. So I had four years
(08:51):
of waiting for it to get here and prepare for it,
and then the Idle Mountain lion hunt was kind of
a It kind of sprung on you real quick. You
had you know you'd be hunt within a month or two.
But it was a chance to finally hunt. You know,
big mature Tom's behind the dogs. So I would say
it's kind of split the Idaho Mountain lion hunt and
then the Alaska doll sheep hunt, and then both of them.
(09:12):
You know, I'm not one of those guys that the
experience is important, but I also look at a hunt
and like, for how did what we what were the results?
And unfortunately for me on both of those hunts, you know,
I was able to take very good representations of those
species on those hunts. And so yeah, I really like
(09:34):
those those two as they'll probably be the only time,
maybe the only time I ever get to do it.
So favorite hunts of the year Idaho Mountain lion and
Alaska doll sheep. You know, Mountain lion hunt. I loved it.
The people year around, great people. Alaska doll sheep, same thing.
You know. Matt Snyder was awesome to be around, and
just the country that you get to see on that
(09:54):
you know, those sheep hunts, and it is pretty dang cool.
So those are my favorite hunts of the year. And
once again, you have questions for me or my guests,
please feel free to email them to us at CTD
at phelpsgame Calls dot com, or get a hold of
us on social media, you know, any of our accounts,
you know, shoot the questions there, you know, personal social
(10:17):
media accounts, and that's typically where I grab these questions from.
So yeah, so now we're going to roll right into
the twenty twenty four hunt recap. You I just talked
about this hunt a little bit. I was fortunate enough
to be able to hunt you know, mountain lions in
Idaho behind behind hounds. That's that's great. So you're kind
(10:38):
of you know, you're he's got some clients in and
so you're trying to look at the schedule. How's it's
all going to work and when can you know, we
hunt whenever we're going to have the right weather. Well,
as luck would have it, it seems like at times
everything that I do doesn't seem to go to plan.
I know, had a horrible winner with a little bit
of early you know snow in early January when we
(11:01):
could have got hunting, but you know, had some other
clients booked. And then we get into show season consumer
show season for both myself and and my buddy Bradley,
and so we were trying to you know, match schedules.
And one of the mornings, I woke up, you know,
I get up around six o'clock, get usually, get my
my kids up for school, and you know, kind of
(11:24):
get my morning started. I had a text as soon
as I woke up from Bradley says, I think this
is our window. You need to get over here. So
bless my wife who's able to quickly you know, pivot
and and put some more on her plate. Within about
an hour, I was packed up completely and uh leaving
for Idaho to go you know, chase cats for for
(11:44):
a couple of days. You know, we we get there,
you know, Bradley's Bradley's doing a bunch of running around
trying to trying to just locate a cat. As we
as we're pulling into Idaho, Bradley calls me he's going
back to get his dogs. You'd cut a track and
to meet us at a certain spot. So we all
get there. Yeah, the we I bring. I want to
(12:08):
use my bow, which is you know sometimes I kind
of chuckle, like, what's it matter to that the cat's
in a tree? Why do you know, why does it
matter if you use your bow or a gun At
that point, it's just pulling the trigger. But I like
it to bring my bow down. And it was in
a very steep location and a very tall tree, and
so it created all kinds of issues with getting you know,
(12:31):
a decent shot angle. And as we climbed up the
hill so that we could start to look more level
with the cat, his vitals were blocked and we just
had some issues. And thankfully we had brought a thirty
thirty along just in case the cat, you know, was
able to get out of the tree wounded, it doesn't
get any dogs or we can finish it, you know, quickly.
(12:52):
So we're we're getting ready, we're kind of walking around,
you know, the tree, trying to find a shot angle,
and and you can see the cat start to back
down the tree and ultimately gets about twenty feet from
the ground and bales out over top of everybody's head
and we're chasing again. We had run up let the
dogs We had already had the dogs, you know, leashed
(13:13):
so that the you know, they don't try to chase
the cat when it's wounded and everything. So we let
him go. We're we're chasing again. Well, it was pretty
awesome a turn of events. The cat ran away and
then came right back on its backtrack and walked right
under us, and we were able to see from the
garment that the cat was gonna so we actually got
to watch the cat kind of sneak through and slithered through,
and the dogs were, you know, twenty thirty seconds behind
(13:35):
it at that point, and came up. And then the cat.
If some of you haven't seen the video on YouTube,
the cat ends up, you know, just baying up on
a rock. The cat had enough. He wasn't going back
up a tree. He's gonna sit there. And then the
pressure was on, so the bow was out of the picture.
We needed to kill the cat. You know, I can
(13:57):
brad these, you know, it's like, hey, you got to
make a good show. You know, you can kill my dogs.
And so now I've got this extra pressure. And then
they hand you a thirty thirty that you've never shot,
and I don't know, you know, I instantly went back
to my younger days when I'm out in the yard
with my BB gun, remembering, like, man, there's a lot
of ways to kind of site these open sites in.
You know, did they hold you know, did they sight
(14:18):
in with the front the front post like level? Did
they you know, some guys would sit in with like
front post halfway through so you can actually see over
your target because when you you know, you kind of
block the bottom side. And so I start to ask
a few questions, and then I didn't want to overcomplicate it.
And then me and Bradley are also talking a little
bit about on the animal, like where we need to
(14:39):
hit it to grab lung and spine and do all
of this stuff so that we don't get any dogs injured.
So now I'm I mean, it's thirty degrees out, but
I'm sweating to death because I've got to try to
make a perfect shot on this cat that doesn't harm
the harm the dogs. And you know, so thankfully, as
I as I squeeze the trigger on that thre thirty thirty,
(15:00):
kind of made sure to just walk myself through, you know, Squeeze,
squeeze squeeze, was fortunate to hit the cat perfect on
a pretty steep uphill shot. We went in about mid
body and kind of just clipped the spine as it
went out the other side and caught the other lung
and the cat was thankfully dead as it fell off,
you know, maybe a hundred foot rock on the other side.
No dogs were injured. Uh, you know, everything worked out
(15:23):
great and it was a great, great cat. So yeah,
those hunts. I love hunting with Idaho whitetail guides, you know,
you know, Bradley Dammerman and Amy to do a great
job there and and it's just it's a fun hunt.
It's a lot of hard work for him because of
the dogs and getting up early and running tracks. You know,
we get up early, but we don't have to do
(15:44):
hardly into the work. We just ride around on the
side by side or what what be, you know, what
whatever it may be, but for that day. But it's
a lot of fun. I really enjoy, you know, drinking
coffee and hanging out and talking about you know, stories
of past for the areas that we're in and you
know what he's chased and what canyons. Yeah, so that
was that was an awesome hunt. You just got an
(16:06):
update from Phil Souse over there in Libby, Montana. He's
actually mountain back cat for me this week. So we've
been working back and forth on you know, how it
needs to sit and be arranged. You're really excited to
see how that one turns out. Then we kind of
you know, for us, we change gears a little bit,
we go turkey hunting. You know, we were able to
go to Kansas and Washington this year. I do want
(16:30):
to share one thing I'm going to talk about on
It's not necessarily gear, but it's kind of a new
system I've found to keep ticks off of me and
then away from me at least on my legs, which
is where I would get ninety percent of them. So
you know we would always put gators on. Well, the
one thing is if you have any loose spots on
your gators when you're sitting down or have your foot bent,
(16:50):
if a tick, you know ninety percent of them are
going to come up off of your your feet or
your boots that are touching their ground anyways. They will
climb up, get under there, get under your pant and
the majority of them, you know you have where your
gators will typically be tight at your shin I was getting.
You know, anything that I had latched on was right
at that line, because they would be able to get
up under my gator and under my pant leg and
(17:13):
go up. So I got on Amazon and they have
just these stretchy vell crow things that are made for
guys that write, you know, guys or gals that ride bikes,
to keep your pants out of your sprockets and whatnot.
So what I do now is I pull my pants
down over my boot as far as I can and
tighten that thing and I use two on each leg,
basically bell crowing or elasticking my boot, you know, my
(17:37):
pant to my boot, or you could also use athletic
tape anything that you could get extremely tight and basically
not allow anything up above that. And then I put
my gator up and over as well. And I was
able to hunt Kansas and Washington this year with no ticks,
which is a new record for me. You know, I
(18:00):
had a couple of lone star ticks from Kansas a
couple of years agoing Thankfully I must have not got
the old Alpha gal because I'm still able to eat
red meat. But it's just it's very nerve wracking when
you know that one in fifty, you know, to one
in forty of those things could potentially give you, you know,
alpha gal which I do not want. I don't want
to deal with not being able to eat red meat.
So this system worked, and you combine that with promethrone.
(18:24):
I wasn't you know, I don't. I didn't get any
ticks on me this year. You know, tuck your shirt
in at least your first layer shirt, wear a very
tight belt, you know, as tight as you can handle it.
I spray my net gator in promethrone and seems to work.
Didn't have any issues. The two states though, one thing.
(18:52):
You know, obviously you're hunting a different bird, and Kansas
were hunting Easterns and Washington were hunting Miriam's. Yeah. The
funny thing is is I enjoy them both, but they're
completely different hunts. And Kansas you will walk maybe two
hundred yards from wherever you park your buggy or your
side by side, whatever it may be. You know, I'm
joking a little bit. We will we will run and gun,
(19:14):
but a lot of times we're just you know, we're
we're setting up in the morning. Easterns are pretty stubborn,
so we'll sit and call, we'll maybe move ridge to ridge,
but we don't really want to bump these birds or
you know, mess with them too much. So a lot
of times Kansas will be a long morning sit. You're
typically on you know, gobbling birds and and yeah, you
know you don't kill anything by ten you go in
(19:35):
for breakfast. Washington, you're hiking all day. There were days
in Washington where you know, we'd put twelve, fourteen, fifteen
miles on and I had to had to laugh because
our buddies from Kansas that we hunt with their Randy
coy Brock, James Harrison, those guys all came out and
they joked. They said that for the one bird that
they killed, they'd hike more on that bird than all
(19:56):
their other birds combined. And it's just it's just that
different reference of you know, hunting public timberland ground. We're
you're gonna have to put miles on, you know, to
get into the good spots. Where in Kansas, you know,
hunting more ag ground, it's easier to get on the birds,
you have to move as much. And Washington, the time
we were hunting there, we were early in Kansas, which
seems to be better. And we were a little bit
(20:16):
later into May and Washington and so the hunting was
good all day, and so we kind of hunted all day,
put on a lot of ground and we're really trying
to strike those birds in the middle of the day.
But I was fortunate on those two hunts. I'm mounting
my first trick he ever. I was able to kill
a great four year old in Kansas. And the Washington
bird that I killed was probably the biggest Marriam I'll
(20:37):
ever kill. But it was later in the season and
he was you know, his uh you know, chess was
all you know, all the feathers were had fallen out,
and he was pretty rough, had a lot of pitch
on him, and so I elected that he was a
very pretty bird though. But probably my two best representations
of those birds that i've i've you know, will ever
kill or maybe you know they were good birds. Now.
(21:00):
I always joke where it's like, yeah, they're a little smarter,
but I don't know when I'm shooting. When I'm shooting them,
you I just know that they're they're a long beard
and it could be a two year old and they
just happened to be four year old, so no great
great turkey hunts I really enjoy. You know, some people
don't like turkey hunting. That's fine, you don't have to like.
I like getting out in the spring. It's also a
good reminder on how bad out of shape I am
(21:22):
from from the Christmas carry over in the in the
show season. So it's a little it's a good little
reminder to get my butt back in the gym, back
on the stair climber, and get ready for for fall seasons.
We had a quick little stop next in spring bear
in Idaho. It was later, you know, in in June.
So I just love watching the dogs work. You know.
(21:45):
Bradley started to give me a little bit of grief
that every time I show up we have long races
on bears that bay up and won't tree. So my
very first time with Bradley, we let off on a
dog and I think we till two or three in
the afternoon trying to get all the dogs back off
a bear that just refused to go up with a tree.
(22:06):
You know, a lot of his dogs were banged up.
So fast forward to this year, we let off on
the first bear we we get on and he takes
us into no man's land. There was no easy way
to get to this you know bear from any direction,
and he would never tree. He was just bouncing back
and forth and back and forth and roadless country. There
(22:29):
were roads on kind of each side, at least three
sides of them. Roads not so much on the other side.
And thankfully that bear cooperating didn't go out of the country.
But that you know, a bad bear ended up being
about a two hundred pound boar. And as I mentioned
on on the lion hunt, is there's some danger to
the dogs on wounded animals, and so me and Bradley,
(22:50):
we're able to get the fourlers close to these, you know,
to the dogs and the bear as we can. And
it was just a mad dash to some cliff country,
you know, sprint and running as fast seat can. And
we got down in there and Bradley, you know, I
was we were right behind him. But Bradley decided on
this one he was just gonna, you know, take the bear.
He doesn't like to as the guide, but he's always
(23:10):
got a tag and able to. The bear was so
beat he was just laying in a puddle in a
creak and the dogs were still being pretty aggressive on him,
and Bradley was able to kind of shoot down on
the bear and dispatch that one. And then you know,
for the next couple of days the dogs ran great,
but just long chases like some that took us way
out of the country and you know, just just long
(23:34):
chases with it, you know, hard on the dogs, you know,
moving a lot of ground. And then we were able
to treat a couple, but just some small, small, young bears.
But once again, you know, just getting to go over
there and watch the dog's work. I really really enjoy that.
Next up was the Alaska Doll sheep. Like I mentioned earlier,
booked it in twenty four I always kind of joke
(23:56):
I didn't think my wife would know how much the
hunt cost if I paid for it for you know,
over four years and just made installments and it wouldn't
seem as bad as that was my That was my joke,
and I wanted to selfishly be the first hunt of
the year with Matt. So the idea was, I'll book
far enough out that I'm the very first hunt of
the year. In my mind, it helps you with you know,
with a good summer scout and the sheep haven't been
(24:18):
bothered by every hunter that you know, the legal ram
has been pushed around. I was a little worried going
into the hunt because there was a time on the
third installment where they he said, just keep your money.
The sheep aren't looking good. We don't even know if
we're gonna have a season. So now I start to
get worried, like, because you're gonna have to refund my money?
Am I even gonna get the hunt? But Matt was able.
You know, anybody that's got to hunt with Matt or
(24:39):
knows Matt like he's he's determined, he's a hard worker,
and he was still getting his clients all shot opportunities.
So the year before I went twenty twenty three, all
three hunters got shots to hit. One missed the three hundred.
I believe a three hundred dard shot or a doable shot.
So I was excited. I had looked forward to this
one for a long time, gotten you know, really good
(25:00):
shape and uh the logistics the Alaska or an additional
you know, in addition to the experience, you know you
fly up there. For us, we were able to just
do a turo rental, which is uh, you know kind
of cool. I was able to, you know, find a
truck that had four drive, and you know, and then
it's a long drive in Alaska. You know, you've only
got a couple of airports, and you know, it was
(25:22):
a six hour drive from the airport. But then it
was time to sheep hunt. It was everything I could
dream of. It was the country you've seen, you know,
the steepness of the country, the ruggedness of the country.
The sheep are just absolutely you know, beautiful animals, and
I was I was stoked to get to hunt that way.
(25:42):
I also love the idea that it's a spike out hunt,
right I at times I missed those hunts, but you know,
I loved that we were going to load up food
for seven days and that was our hunt. Like we
were leaving with seven days and when that food was gone,
we were either gonna have a sheep or not. We
were living on the side the mountain. We were going
(26:03):
to live with them. You know, Matt had a pretty
good plan. He was able to go into this country
and make sure there were some legal rams and then
we just had to figure out how to hunt right
off the bat. I was a little nervous though, and
you could tell Matt's and experienced guy. You know, he
kind of felt us out and could see that we
could zip up through the rocks pretty well. But then
we got into these big screen fields and if you're
(26:25):
not from Alaska or haven't spent a lot of time
navigating that, when you looked across the canyon, then he
kind of showed us our route. I kind of questioned him.
I'm like, are we we really going to be able
to or are we gonna you know? And so we
we get across there and from it's not as bad
when you get there, and you when you finally get
confident enough that the big steep screen fields that you're
(26:46):
in are eventually gonna stop rolling and you're you know,
you're only gonna drop a foot. And yeah, I mean
there were a couple of little cliffy areas to navigate,
which which had some you know, risk involved, but for
the most part, once you get over there, you're able
to do a lot more in the rocks. And you
could think just looking across at him and it's just man,
I know, it's it's you know, financial, you know, there's
(27:10):
some financial constraints on everybody being able to do that.
Hunt in Alaska. But man, I'm I'm ready to go back.
I don't I don't necessarily say I've got the Alaska bug,
but I'm definitely looking hard at doing a moose hunt
or something of that nature, just to get back to
Alaska and kind of an experience. It's it's wildness and
just how big it is, and it's just it's I
(27:31):
liked that. It seems like it's kind of it hasn't
been touched. It's it's still fifty sixty seventy years behind
where we're at down here, you know, in the in
the lower forty eight. And I really like that about Alaska.
Well White River Elk tag. So I killed an elk
in twenty twenty three that had hoof. I was put
into a incentive draw. I was one of the Lucky nineteen.
(27:52):
And then within that lucky nineteen, I was able to
get the tag that I wanted, which gave me an
incentive tag which I was I was stoked about, was
the unit I wanted to hunt. So you get all
of your your trail cams out and everything where you'd
seen elk, and just the report from the trail cams
was a little bit dismal. Nothing big was shown up,
(28:15):
or we thought it would. Nothing as big as in
past had shown up, so we kind of go on
a little scouting mission. My whole idea going into this
is we'll just go up there on September first, and
you know, quickly kill an elk when it's patternable before
the rut really gets going. Well, guess what, there were
no mature big bulls to kill, so we basically spent
six or seven days up there walking and hiking with
(28:38):
nothing really worth hunting. I had to leave for the
New Mexico archrailll Count, which I'll get to in a
little bit, and then I was able to come back.
And one of the conditions of this tag is you
can hunt with any weapon when there's no other seasons
in this unit. So you know, before archery between archery
(29:01):
and muzzleloader. But if it's archery season, you have toent
with your bow. If it's muzzloader season, you have to
switch to your muzzloader for that time, and then you know,
you can alternate back and forth. So I had a
couple of days left when I got home from New
Mexico to hunt with the rifle. I'm thinking, all right,
it's September. I don't remember what day, twenty fifth or
twenty six. I had a couple of days left, chasing
(29:22):
bugles everywhere, bagland bulls in all over, but nothing with
any size. Starting to get pretty frustrated. Well, we end
the you know, it's the night before muzzloader starts, and
we sit on what sounded like a big bowl turned
out not to be a very big bowl. And so
now I've got to switch over to my muzzloader and
make things a little more different. You know, you got
(29:44):
Now you've got a lot more people out in the
woods with you, albeit only I believe eight or ten
or something, I don't know how many, but you've got
people with new energy, maybe more willing to get into
the areas that you wanted to. Once again, still nothing
showing up on my trail cameras. And so it was
a We spent you know, a couple of days with
the muzzle order looking for for elk and just couldn't
(30:06):
find big ones or big enough ones. And then finally
we hiked back into where we had heard the big
bugle the last night of the rifle and was able
to there was a new bowl in the area, you know,
a mature six point and it was it allowed me
to hunt the way I wanted to. You know, we
were two and a half hours in on a trail,
you know, in there pretty deep, and I just I
didn't want to in this unit. You could kill smaller
(30:29):
bulls or even decent bulls off the road or near road,
and this was the way I wanted to do it.
And so I was able to take a great bull
in some beautiful country, some rugged country and get that
one out. So we talked about that new Mexico archery.
I'll count with Luke. So the probably the if I
had the most you know, my most requested question of
(30:50):
the year is probably how is Luke in real life?
And I think everybody's, oh, you know, he's awesome because
he might be listening to this, but you could convinced
me that he isn't a guy that grew up right
alongside me in my town. Super funny. We always cracking jokes,
keeping everything light, which I really appreciate. And he's just
(31:14):
I want to hesitate using the word, you know, redneck
or you know, he's just a country boy that loves
doing country things. He was very interested and wanted to
know a lot so I like people that don't just
want to you know, it could have been just real easy,
you know, him tag along with me and Jeremy, but
it was really a He was asked a lot of
good questions, like he was paying attention. He wanted to
(31:36):
know why they were doing this or why we were
doing that. So it made for a really fun hunt
with a new hunter. And I have a ton of
respect for Luke because we talked about it. He could
have hunted anywhere, anytime with any weapon, you know, with
with his ability and resources, and he elected to come
(31:57):
do it on public land a lot side of a
bunch of other hunters, and we made the most of it.
You know. He passed on a couple you know, chip
shots on some legal bulls. We've had some chances of
some bigger ones. You know. I just really enjoyed hanging
out with Luke and then you know his buddy Carl
that was there. It was it was a lot of fun,
(32:17):
and uh, I hope to get to do it again
this year. We've got some plans in the work. So yeah,
in the next to ourcher. It was tough though, you know,
to recap the hunt. People driving side by sides where
they shouldn't, you know, areas where we had spent the
time and energy and effort to hike into and then
to get you know, elk bumped by, side by sides,
just kind of a kind of a bum deal. There
(32:38):
are a lot of people in those units, you know,
the elk were all kind of congregated to the water.
So typical typical public land elk hunt. You got to
deal with people. Just unfortunate that some of them weren't
playing by the rules at times. Another strong runner up
for one of my favorite hunts. So after all of that,
we go to Idaho meal deer. It was a had
(33:00):
a strong runner up for one of my favorite hunts
because we lived off of our back for eight days
straight on this This Idaho meal deer elk hunt was
a collab that we're going to do with tall timber productions,
focus on elk and we can find deer when convenient
or when available. And I would say it flipped really
quick when we were seeing elk everywhere without mature bulls,
(33:21):
and the bulls we were here in Beagle were still spikes,
and we were seeing some pretty good deer. And so
the Idaho meal deer or the Idaho hunt turned into
a deer hunt really really quick, and I just I
love hunting and on hunts that the logistics are a
little difficult, like you might have to drive here and
side by side to here, and then hike to here,
(33:42):
and then every morning you've got to pick a different
mountain top to go glass from, and you know, you
after day one you start to learn, you know what faces,
their aspects or have deer on it, and then you
know where's the sunlight. You don't want to glass into
the wrong spots. The hunt was unseasonably warm, so we
we also knew that our morning glass and you know
(34:02):
a little bit at night had to be we were
only going to see animals for for very short windows
in the morning and night. But I really really liked
that we were able to take two really good bucks
out of the area and just really enjoyed, you know,
hunt with my buddy Tyson and just meal deer in
the mountains where I feel like it's a real level
level field and uh, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Met
(34:23):
some great people in and around the area. Yeah, there
were a lot of people, but the deer hunting was
still pretty decent. If you worked for it. You know,
we we all took decent bucks on that hunt, and
you know, the tall timber guys, and you ended up
with a with a couple of bowls there Towards the end,
we ended up you know, leaving, but really excited to
(34:43):
try to do that one again this year and then
to finish up my season, uh, we'll go to Kansas
again and our white tail hunt that we do with
our buddy Randy and Brock and Koe every year. I've
really grown to like the white tail hunt for different reasons.
I said, I really like the Idaho Meal dear hunt
because we were backpacking in and then I really like
(35:04):
the white to hunt because it's the opposite. I sleep
in a bed warm house, you know, stoven of and
a barbecue, we got the you know, the the gas stations,
got pizza, we got breakfast when we want it. It's
the complete opposite. And it's really made by the people
in the place. Some of these areas of Kansas, the
people you deal with are just salt of the earth,
(35:24):
as good as they get. You know. Some of our
our friends that we get to hang out with are
just great people, great storytellers, and I really really like
it and you know, just being around them in the atmosphere.
And then there's just something about sitting in a tree stand,
you know in the morning when it's dark and kind
of letting the world wake up around you. I really
(35:45):
enjoy that. And just you know, the rustling of the
leaves and you know, hearing a deer come from one
hundred yards away because you can hear them in the
oak leaves. Just everything about it, it's just, you know,
it kind of excites your different senses than then maybe
sitting behind binoculars or a spotter all day when you
finally spot the one you want, it's different. And so
(36:07):
I was very fortunate this year that one of my
favorite stands, my favorite areas I get to hunt on
the top is what we call it. I was very
fortunate within an hour to have you know, my best
white tail come in and put a perfect arrow in it.
Uh touch on the My favorite gear from that that
(36:27):
Dart and sequel thirty five st two and iron will.
You know a lot of white tail hunters, I would
say the majority of them are shooting expandables nowadays, and
they they talk about you know, bigger entrance holes and
bigger exit holes and you know, quicker, quicker, you know,
the deer expires faster. I'm I'm gonna start hitting stop
(36:49):
watches or or go back and review some of this footage.
I ended up shooting three der on that hunt, you know,
one buck and two does, and uh, the iron Wheels
performed amazing, Like I yeah, I don't know if if
an expandable would have killed them any faster. You know,
the buck was dead within seven seconds, maybe seven to ten.
(37:09):
The dough I could, you know, within seven to ten
on a dead sprint, made it one hundred fifty yards,
and then the one dough you know, died on arrival.
You know, hit it, hit it kind of a downwards
frontel through the shoulder, you know, was able to kind
of just plant it and anchor it right there. So
I really like that set up. Iron Wills do great.
(37:31):
The bow was super comfortable to draw. I mean, I
can imagine even if it was you know, cold, and
people have trouble drawing their normal draw away. Like just
really easy to to make work on that hunt out
of a tree. But that's kind of my wrap for
twenty four. I don't know what twenty five brings were
able to, you know, secure some tags already. Well, we'll
(37:52):
see what Washington brings and then we've got I've got
some really good odds of drawing the tags that I've
been waiting for, and Montana, Colorado and Utah. So I'm
gonna have to kind of figure out what i want
to do. But I'm kind of you know, we're just
getting over with twenty twenty four and I'm already in
twenty twenty five planning mode. So if you have any questions,
is you know for us, you know, I kind of
(38:13):
nerd out on planning and I've got, you know, in
this state, I'm going to do this in this date,
I'm going to do this. If you have any questions
on the draws or applications, we'll probably throw a podcast
out on that coming up, just on how we think
about it and how we manage all of the applications
and what we're looking for in each state, and you know,
we can give our opinion on what each state provides,
(38:34):
but feel free to shoot those questions over to us.
But we hope you all had a great twenty twenty
four and here's do a great twenty twenty five. And
I can't thank you all enough for tuning into cutting
the distance, take care of the times wish
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