November 17, 2022 • 38 mins
This week on Gear Talk, Janis and Jordan cover their September and October hunts, Janis's race and September archery elk hunt, heavy arrows, New First Lite pants, Jordan’s mule deer hunt, and new boots.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Jordan, how are you good? How's it going? Yannie? Really good.
It's I'm a little tired. It's it's the middle of
hunting season, so I'm I'm sort of feeling like I'm
in that space where there's barely enough time to clean
up from one adventure, um before I start packing getting
ready for the next one. But I'm super excited about
(00:33):
the next one. I'm taking the kids, uh, antelope hunting.
They're not hunting, but they're coming along for the camping
in the adventure, which is what I really care about.
But today, uh, Jordan and I are going to run
ripped through a couple of recent adventures that we've had
and UH talk about some of the gear that really
excelled on those adventures. First off, I ran my first
(00:58):
I guess they call it an all to marathon. I
didn't know this until recently, but I guess anything over
twenty six miles or twenty six point two counts is ultra.
This was a fifty K, which is thirty one miles. Uh,
and it was It's called the rut run. Happened down
in the Big Sky, Montana, which is just about an
hour south of Bozeman. Here where I live and uh
(01:20):
it went well. Trained almost a year, I started training
in December, raced in early September, and uh, I was
nervous man thirty one miles and roughly I think it's
like somewhere between ten and eleven thousand feet of elevation
gain and loss, and it went well. My goal was
(01:42):
ten hours and I finished eighty one in my age group,
which whatever, I wasn't racing for the podium. It felt
good just to finish. It felt good to have a
good day out there. And now I'm in possibly the
best elk cunning shape that of ever been in at
the at the spry age of forty four. A couple
(02:05):
of pieces of gear though that I want to talk
about that really have excelled, not just in this race,
but like as I've been running a bunch this summer.
One is good. Or sunglasses. Have you seen those yet?
Jordan's I haven't, dude, twenty five bucks I think for
like their base model, and I've got a lot of
(02:25):
not a lot, but I've had lots of fancier pairs
of sunglasses that are upwards of like two bucks, you
know for a pair, you know, as a fishing guy
and stuff you know, we used to always have you know,
a pro deal with whatever Oakley and Coasta. But man,
running like the worst thing is when those suckers just
keep slipping off your face and you gotta keep putting
(02:47):
them back on. These goods, I kid you not, You
put them on and you'd never have to touch them
again until you're ready to take them off. Like they
just don't slip now, Bucks, I don't think you're getting
like the best lens quality obviously, and I think they're polarized.
I think not that matters when you're you know that
(03:08):
much when you're out in the out running or out hunting.
But like for for a good pair of Fueld sunglasses
for twenty bucks, man like incredible value there, Like everybody
I know that's try to really love them the other thing,
and you can get them. I've seen them, I think,
are I And then pretty much like any running store
I've been into seems to be carrying good ors. Its
(03:29):
spelled g O O d R. The other thing that
I used running the rut is spring energy gels. I
don't know how many, Like are you ever a consumer
of gels gel type products? I used to, and I
just don't really do anymore. I like the little choose
like gummy bears, you know, I agree, they're a little
(03:51):
more candy like and like they're a little more palatable.
The thing is is when you're running and you're like
under duress and and and working hard, it can be
hard to actually chew and then and then pull down
something like a chew like. There becomes a point in
longer runs, longer races where you just want to get
(04:13):
calories in the easiest way possible. And there's a lot
of you know, drink mixes now that you can just
add to the water that are getting calories, but sometimes
even that is not enough. And sometimes a lot of
times for me at least, even the drink mixes that
are marketed is not having any flavor and just you know,
basically being like your water, Even those start to get
(04:36):
just a little annoying and you start to get like
a syrupy kind of a sticky mouth, And a lot
of times late in the in the run, all I
want is just water because that's just like what my
body is craving. But there's a gel. A lot of
times with gels, so they're they're made so they are
easier to just you know, palate and take down than
say blocks or you know, other real food. They've always
(04:59):
been and syrupy and kind of heavy, sticky and just
a little too much to you know, to suck down,
and um, you're just working way too hard, you know,
to try to get those calories in. But these spring gels,
I don't know what they did, but they have like
one of the flavors they have, I forget what it's called,
but they did a bad job naming it because it
(05:21):
should just be called like tart apple sauce. Instead they
called it like cinnamon apple pie or some ship. But
it's it's literally tart apple sauce. And I like anything
that's tart and and whether it's bars or gels or whatever,
because it helps you create saliva which helps all that
stuff go down. But this, like these gels are not
(05:43):
gel like they are I don't know the best way
to describe it as just like super liquid e so
literally in like a squeeze, you can just suck the
whole thing down and one or two gulps and it's gone,
bye bye, and a little bit of water on top
of that, and you don't feel like you actually, you know,
put any thing like it's any anything that was sugary
or syrupy across your you know, your your tongue that
(06:06):
would then kind of stick with you and uh, you know,
make the next ten minutes of running or whatever you're
doing less fun. So anyways, Yeah, spring energy gels if
you're the type of person likes to hunting. I a
lot of times I don't carry stuff like that around,
but I do. I don't care around to have to
use every day, but I like to have one or
(06:27):
two of those for the late night pack out or
for just that day that goes super long and you're like,
oh my god, we're five miles in and we're trying
to get back to the truck. It's nice to like
halfway through that hike like, oh yeah, I've got one
of these things, and you shoot that and you drink
some water and it gives you that little boost in
(06:47):
those extra calories that help keep the pace up. Nice.
Can you feel it, like if you feel like you're
running down a little bit on calories, can you like
feel your energy pick up after you take one of those? Yeah,
you know, I don't do caffeine because of my heart.
There's there they have gels, you know, of all makes
and brands that have caffeine, and I'm guessing that you
(07:09):
would feel even more with that. For me, it's it's
probably more of like a gradual. Like I the goal
for me is always to never really let myself get
down and get tired, and just always keep my energy
levels up and keep my calorie in take up so
that I never never fall off. But I would say
(07:29):
that in that nine hours of running the rut, there
were times when I could feel sort of feel like
just a um, you know, a slower pace, kind of
like a block kind of coming over me, and then
thinking like, oh yeah, dude, like keep eating and keep eating.
I mean literally, for nine hours from the beginning to
the end, I kept telling myself just keep eating, keep eating,
(07:52):
keep drinking, keep drinking, keep eating, because you have to
have the fuel, you know, to make it that long.
And uh, there's probably some times where I didn't stay
on top of it enough. I felt myself slipping a
little bit, and then you know, twenty minutes later, you'd
be like, oh, Okay, I feel normal again, you know.
So I wouldn't call it like an energy boost, but
I would call it you can you can feel the
(08:14):
difference and sort of just feel like you're not you
don't feel like you're working as hard. I guess, man, well,
good for you. I sounded like a grinder and you
came in. It was fifty right one in my age group,
which is like one to fifty, I guess, um for males,
I think overall, out of like five hundred, I was
(08:37):
like a hundred and sixty if or something like that, which,
you know, it's fun to compete because every just everybody's
there going through the same trials that you are that day,
and everybody's on the same team. And that's what makes
those races fun. It is to be part of that
(08:57):
community because all season long we run by ourselves, elves
a lot of training by yourself, and then you get
to get together with five hundred other people that are
all gonna, you know, put themselves up against this pretty monstrous,
you know, hurdle and try to get through it. And
it was a hot day. I know quite a few
people that pulled themselves out of the race because the
heat got to him. Um And uh yeah, most surprisingly
(09:22):
was I give myself like two full days where I
thought I was going to be crawling around the house
because my legs wouldn't work, and I had like some
slight soreness in my lower quads, like right above my knees.
But otherwise it wasn't too bad and I was I
was archery l Cotton two days later. Yeah, and I
want to talk about that because you shot a big bull.
(09:43):
Well thanks for calling calling him a big bull. Uh,
he is one of definitely one of the nicer bulls
I've killed. We taped him and I think he ended
up going to seventy something like that. It's amazing how
the what at the what a person with the camera,
if they know what they're doing, how big, how much
(10:04):
bigger they can make a bore elk look. But uh, yeah,
he was a five by six. I was super stoked.
I got to hunt with our colleagues or colleague Corey Caulkins,
and then you speak colleague of ours, Michael Common, and
they're nice enough to invite me along to hunt their spot.
And they both were previous Montana Elk hunting guides and outfitters. Uh.
(10:29):
Mike actually used to outfit the Bob, which, uh that's
for another story. But I'm gonna try to get him
to take me into there because that's that's a bucket
list adventure for me is to go into the Bob
Marshall Wilderness on a on a on an elk hunt.
But yeah, when they invited me along, I was like,
you know, I could go out and you know, suffer
by myself and trying to figure it out by myself,
(10:52):
which you know I could do. But when to like
prior Montana elk hunting guys invite you to go hunting
at their spot, I'm like, yeah, it's probably gonna be
pretty good. Yeah, um so I couldn't pass it up.
And uh yeah, we had decent hunting. I'd say probably
half of the days we got into it. We found
(11:13):
a zone that was holding I don't know thirty fort
elk and enough bulls that they were getting each other
fired up and talking, and we got to work them
for about a day and a half until some other
hunters found that group as well. Um I killed my
bull out of that group. But once the applied, you know,
(11:34):
just that much more a pressure was applied to him
because it was a bigger group of hunters. They had
four six people. I don't know if they were all
hunting that same group, but it definitely was evident that
within twenty four hours of that extra pressure, those elk
either shut up and just started hiding in the timber
or they completely moved out of the zone. I can't
tell you exactly what happened because I'm not one of
(11:56):
those elk, but I know that they're hard to find
in there. And we ended up saying and just left
it alone and went and found other country to hunt
and found other elk after that. But uh, yeah, that
was cool. We saw the ball in the morning, um
that day. I think it was the second or third
day of hunting. It must have been the third day.
We saw the ball in the morning chasing a cow around.
(12:19):
It was funny because he was stuck on one cow
rutting her, and there was a whole another herd that
was literally on the same hillside as them, you know,
buglin going nuts. But those like that group and then
that single bowl and cow, they didn't never really interact it,
you know. So I guess my guess is looking at
it now, is that he just had a a you know,
(12:42):
a hot cow, had cut her away from the herd
and was you know, trying to read her, and then
it was gonna maybe you know, come back, because that
evening we we saw him go over a ridge and
so we basically hunted from the backside and we're kind
of watching this ridge and we hear the buglings start.
We find the bullet is bugle and he's got seven
(13:03):
or eight cows and it's like this young you know
what I would call probably a two year old five
point and he's bugling his brains out. We're like, that's interesting,
Like where's the big bull. Well, keep glassing glassing, And
a couple hundred yards down the ridge there's the bull
that I end up shooting, just feeding every now and
then he kind of picks up his head and he's
(13:23):
looking towards the action but totally not running, not you know,
not in the mix at all. And we saw that
a lot that week. Actually, I don't know if it
was just because it was early in the rut and
and so the young bulls were kind of having their
go before the big bulls were going to kind of
come in and take over the harems. But it was
it was just interesting to actually see that You've I've
(13:45):
heard about that, but it was interesting to see it
play out where literally these two year old bulls were
running around with ten twenty cows, you know, bugling their
brains out, pushing them around, hurting them, and then a
couple hundred yards away there's a you know, a bowl
much bigger, two or two couple of years older probably,
and he's not even messing with them, you know. Anyways,
(14:07):
we had other hunters in the area, and where we
tried to approach the herd, we had we heard hunters
ahead of us, so we backed out and our plan
was like, you know, they're kind of here, they're closer
to the herd, we'll just kind of play the periphery
and see what happens, you know, and we're kind of
we're we're actually working down towards the creek bottom because
we figured we'd have a good downhill thermal that would
(14:30):
be moving down the creek, and so we were heading
towards sort of the down wind down, you know, um
down current side of all this action. I'd say we
were I don't know, three yards away from where most
the bugling was happening, and we're getting down towards the
creek and just happened to look up and that the
(14:50):
this bigger bowl that we had lasted earlier is now
sort of angling down this hillside across from us and
and basically gonna you know, we're gonna oross paths in
the creek bottom. So we boogied got to where the
creek bottoms sort of had at least the side that
we were on. There was like a little bit of
a ledge like maybe ten ft up kind of a
(15:11):
steep bank, and then it went into the timber. So
I got right on that ledge and was looking over
the creek bottom, and I had lost the side of
the bowl. But as I sat there for I don't know,
it took me a couple of minutes. Like he popped
out from behind a tree and he was maybe I
don't know, hundred yards or so a hundred fifty yards
up the hill. But again he's sort of feeding working
(15:32):
the way are you know, down towards us. And sure
enough he comes in there and um comes straight down
the hill. And I pre arranged everything in the creek
bottom everything basically once he hit the creek, that was
forty and then everything else was closer. And he comes
right into the creek and this is a little bitty
creek like you know, you'd have to you struggle to
(15:53):
find a spot where you could easily, you know, dip
analogy and full of water. But he drops into the creek,
goes behind a tree. I'm not at full draw yet.
As he starts moving out from behind this fur, I draw,
and he's walking, walking, and he kind of goes up
the creek a little ways. He's so he's kind of
become he went from broadside to being quarter and away
(16:15):
because he went away from me a little bit. But
then he drops his head down to drink. At that moment,
I'm at full draw. I settle my pin, touch one off,
and as that arrows in the air, I don't know
if he heard the ball, heard the arrow or what,
but he lunges forward and instead of that bullet, but
(16:36):
then instead of that arrow going in behind his last
rib and up into the uh, you know, vitals, it
goes literally almost right up his key star. And the
first thought in my mind was, oh, my goodness, what
did I do? Like? Not good? Not good? But he
(16:57):
only goes like ten yards and it's kind stops and
I can see major blood spilling out of where the
arrow went in. And I can only see like the
very tip, like maybe a chunk of the fletching but
really I'm just seeing my knock and he just stands there.
And he's standing there, and I have enough time to
knock an arrow, and I'm pulling back on the string.
(17:18):
But then he starts walking and he walks parallel to
me and up onto my hillside and into the timber.
So I'm thinking, all right, well, having made a good shot,
I should have just back out of here, and we're
gonna have to come back and see what happens. As
I'm going through this in my head, I can hear
him sort of stumble a little bit up ahead. I mean,
(17:39):
he's only he's still only forty maybe fifty yards from you.
So I decided just to kind of hang out and listen.
I've got good wind. I'm just gonna listen see what happens.
Every just you know, thirty seconds to a minute, I
can hear like a heavy footstep, so I know he's
not like he's not moving, he's not continuing anywhere. He's
just in the zone. And I keep hearing these like
(18:00):
every now and just getting just like a heavy or
maybe like a little branch break. I'm like, huh, he's
he's moving, but he's not going anywhere. So I'm thinking like, okay,
maybe he's you know, he's injured pretty good. So I
decided to start creeping towards him. And a major reason
I started I wanted to get in closer to and
possibly get another arrow in him, is I could hear
(18:21):
the other hunters calling, like I said, a couple three
yards up the creek, and just being afraid that they
could bump him. Um, you know, something could happen out
of my control. I didn't want to leave him at
that moment. I still had like probably an hour before dark,
and so I start creeping in. Um, long story short,
it takes me twenty minutes to get in there. It's
(18:43):
just dead quiet. I'm trying to really be quiet, and
I just cannot get I finally see him, but at
twenty yards, but I cannot get an arrow, Like I
cannot find a window to shoot. When as I'm watching him,
he actually does like a circle and then beds down,
but almost like it was like halfway between betting down
and falling down, and he's sort of like just you know,
(19:04):
falls in a in a pile. Unfortunately, he's like facing
right at me, so again there's like no shot towards
the vitals. But I get close enough and I get
to a point where I'm like, okay, if I can
just take like two more big steps, I'm like, literally
less than ten yards. He's I think at this time
he's aware of my presence, but he's like he's kind
(19:25):
of trying to get up, but he doesn't have his
hind legs. So I'm like, okay, just get in there
and move to the side to where you can get
the angle and and get another arrow in him. And
so I come to full draw and trying to take
those steps, but that's enough to like spook him, and
he does get up on all fours and I just
can't again just get an arrow in him, and he
(19:46):
starts going back to where he came back towards the
creek bottom. So now I'm at full draw, sort of
following with him. He's crashing through the timber. I'm taking
some steps I should have let down, but you know,
in the heat of the moment, I stayed a full draw.
I follow him for I don't know, five or ten yards,
and finally the woods kind of open up enough and
(20:07):
there he is, and I shoot him again. That shot
that goes into the shoulder there actually dropped him and
he fell down, but he still had some life left
in him, and so I ended up putting another one
in his heart and that finally made him expire. So
the whole thing probably lasted, I don't know, twenty to
thirty minutes. It was pretty intense. Definitely not the way
(20:28):
you know you want to kill an elk, but it, uh,
you know, it happens, you know. Um, I still feel
good about that shot. Um. You know, it was quartering
away hard, but like I've taken that shot before, it's
a great way to get an arrow up into the vitals. Um.
(20:51):
But you know, animals jump sometimes, you know, So I
ended up with a dead bull. UM. Pretty stoked on it.
The the heavy arrow, I think played a part in
me getting that bowl. The sharp broadhead that I that
I had sharpened, I started a new sharpening I used
a new sharpening system this year. I started using bench
(21:13):
madees or sorry, not bench mades, but work sharps. I
think it's called like they're elite sharpening system. I can't
remember now, but it's basically like you you put your
blade in a clamp and then there's these bars that
are that you can adjust the angle of that have
the stone attached to them and you use that to
(21:34):
go up and down your edge. UM. Word great for
these broadheads. Um these were the tough head, single bevel broadheads.
But I think that those two things, heavy arrow, super
sharp broadhead like it helped me, even though it wasn't.
It was not by any means like the hit that
(21:55):
I wanted. It busted through some part of the pell
vic bone on the way in and then still got
you know, nearly thirty inches of penetration and and cut
you know whatever it cut in there to cause enough
you know, bleeding to happen where it slowed that elk
down to the point where he couldn't go, you know,
(22:16):
more than fifty yards from where I shot him. So again,
I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying to celebrate
a poor shot, but it does happen, and I'm happy that,
you know, I had the equipment that I was still
able to perform in the case of a bad scenario.
(22:45):
The only thing I want to bring up about this
hunt is that we tested You've been testing this pant too.
But over here first Light, we're working on a new
Ultra early season Ultra Lightweight breathable, haunting pant and we're
in like the first rendition of it. You can speak
to what you've seen about it. I like it so far.
(23:07):
It seems like it really does excel when it's super hot.
It's got some nice events in it that helped open
it up even more. Um. But this is a call
to action to all you listening. We want to have
you guys give us some input on what you guys
would like to see in the early season pant. So
(23:29):
you can go to the Meteor website, go to podcasts,
find this podcast, find this episode, and then comment underneath
it there on what you'd like to see in early
season pants. Geordan, what have you thought so far about
the early season pant? They? I really like him. I
use them pretty much most of September. Really lightweight, like
(23:53):
the venting options are pretty on point. I think I
even wore it the first week of October in Wyoming
for a hunt that that I went on with a
buddy and just putting wick bottoms underneath of it, Like
it really got me into that October season, especially if
you're on hot. I really don't, and that's one of
the reasons I wanted to take it on that hunt
(24:15):
a little later, Like the mornings were definitely cool, and
I wanted to see what I could push it to
and uh with bass layers on underneath, and then you know,
of course, if you really want to, you can just
throw puffy pants over the top of it. I didn't
do that, but um, it was really nice. It's really
nice pants, especially in in some of those you know,
(24:35):
October seasons like we're in now where it's it's really
cold in the mornings. In the evenings like it can
be like sixteen, you know, fifteen, twenty whatever in the mornings,
and then in the middle of the day it's like
six and seventy. So you really need to be able
to adapt to the changing temperatures. And I think that
I really like those early season pants and even you know,
(24:59):
pushing many of the colder months. Any like constructive notes
that you're gonna give to for changes on those pants.
The one set of the one set of zippers in
the front of the vent those are connected to the pockets,
so you can't really use your pockets if you want
those vented, which I think is a little goofy. So
(25:22):
that's definitely one thing I'm going to talk about. But
other than that, I don't really have anything that you
have something. Well, I think I had that same note
and other people have too. And so if you're at
home listening, we're talking about is that the cargo pocket
itself has a zipper down the edge of it, the
inside edge, so sort of like your inner thigh, and
(25:45):
it basically creates a like a kind of a baffled
opening into the pocket, which the pocket is mesh on
the inside, so it creates another vent. But like Jordan
just said, when you open that vent, it sort of
negates the pocket because now you've like opened the pocket
wide open, and if you had something in it, it
(26:05):
could possibly fall out. So I think that they were thinking, like, oh,
it's a good way to sort of get too uses
out of one thing. But I think pockets have to
be able to hold some stuff, you know, securely always,
because it's just gonna happen right where you're gonna forget.
(26:27):
You're gonna open it up and you're you're gonna forget
that you had whatever your extra release in there, I
don't know, you know, your head lamp, and it's gonna
fall out and then you're gonna be bumming. So Anyways, Well,
like I said, please help us make these early season
pants the best they can be. UM, tell us what
would be important for you to see an early season
(26:49):
pant by commenting uh in the comments under this episode
on the gear Talk podcast page on the Mediator website. Cool.
All right, Jordan, you got less than ten minutes to
tell me all about your how you killed that big
monster buck in Idaho. Yeah? So, Uh, I guess the
(27:10):
story really starts in September. We had hunted a bunch
found a big buck opening day of archery season, and
uh about a week later, so ended up finding out
that but got killed. So UM ended up backing out,
and more so, given that spot a breather, you know,
I just felt like we hunted it out really well.
(27:30):
I went to another spot, UH hunted with my wife
a bunch and she shot at a bucket forty yards
and missed just right over the top of him on
an awesome stock. And we're trying to figure out what
to do for a rifle season, like go go to
where we had seen some more dear but there's probably
gonna be more people, or or go back to where
we had archery hunted and probably see less people, a
(27:52):
little more challenging to get into, but it is like
a commitment and when you're in there, you're kind of
stuck in that one spot unless you're gonna completely pack out.
So ended up deciding, like the weather was going to
be pretty good, we decided we wanted to go back
into the high country and try where we did for archery.
So this is a bit of uh, it's one of
(28:12):
those right place, right time kind of stories, Johnnie. We
uh we packed everything from from the house, and what
we were doing is we're actually on our you know,
quote unquote we call it hunting moon, but it's kind
of like our honeymoon. Uh three weeks. There's like four
different states that we were hitting for for deer, so
Idaho was starting out. That was the first stop. So
(28:35):
we were packing stuff for three weeks and uh so
it just took us a little longer than normal, left
the house later than we wanted to to try to
get packed in. As just often happens. Driving to the
trailhead come around this little corner in this pocketed trees,
a buck bolts across the road in front of us,
(28:58):
and we see it for you know, a couple of
seconds but we think it looks like a good buck,
but we can't understand why he's down near the road.
Just didn't make much sense. So we talked it over,
because you're just thinking that all the bucks should be
up higher an elevation, yeah, more more so. And there's
(29:19):
just like that was a fairly major road that he
ran across. Like I just couldn't understand I guess why
he was that close to where pressure would be. So
we talked it over a little bit, and we're like, Okay,
we can pack back into this drainage. We don't know
what's back there anymore because I haven't got a chance
(29:40):
to scout it since we left during archery season, but
we know where a buck is right here, and he
looked pretty good. We should at least try to find him.
So that was the day before the opener Um opening
morning sets out. We get to a glassy knob that
is on the same drainage, So we're looking at probably
(30:01):
six yards and in about to where we had seen
the well at the upper end of where we've seen
the deer. I knew I didn't think he'd be like
right next to the road again, you know, I just
figured that was kind of a fluke deal. So I
started looking more up in the high country from there,
higher country, you know, up towards the top of the
drainage type of thing. And we glass opening day, there
(30:25):
was a lot of people around Glass, like across the
road that you that you were driving on. We actually
we didn't know. We we walked up the drainage quite
a bit, like more towards the top of just like
looking on on X where I thought a buck would
want to be, if you know, if we see him
in there, where do I think he would go? Like
(30:46):
I was thinking towards the top of that ridge, and
and there were some openings and things like that, but
still pretty timbered up. So we were glass and probably
six yards and in opening morning, there were a lot
of people around. There were people like you could hear
him down like driving the roads. There were people walking
down the ridges, walking up the ridges. There's a guy
(31:07):
who actually walked right through the middle of where I
really thought that there would be. And I'm kind of thinking, gosh,
how long do we give this before we just go
pack in and do our original plan? Well, uh, we
decided to give it the full day and the next
morning and then we were going to pack in, so
(31:28):
we I decided that instead of getting so close like
six hundred yards and in like that's kind of close
to a drainage if you can't see the whole thing.
So we decided, uh, that evening, we're just going to
back it up. So we just ended up taking a
little bit of the road system and then uh walking
(31:48):
out onto a big long ridge that kind of gave
you like a big picture of view of where we
had seen the deer. Like you could see a couple
of drainages, you could see openings pretty good, just got
open things up a little more, and man, like six o'clock,
six thirty in the afternoon, the only deer we had
(32:09):
seen was this buck and in a little opening actually
right underneath of the glassing point that we had been on.
And he's there feeding at six thirty in the afternoon
and opening the deer season. And you know, for where
we were, he was pretty like wide out in the open.
Everybody could see him, and I think we just happened
(32:29):
to see him first. So we uh kind of I guess,
drove back around the road system till we could hike,
and we took off climbing and hiking and got up
pretty close to where we thought he was. And it
was one of those places where like you were going
to shoot from six yards or you're gonna shoot from like,
you know, less than two hundred type of a deal.
And we got we got in pretty close to him.
(32:52):
We were I think my last range I got was
like one six and uh he was speeding on this
open hillside and it was pretty it was pretty uh
pretty tight with trees, like I really had to move
around a bit and find just a little lane to
shoot through, and uh man, that was pretty much. It
settled my crossairs and and shot him and he went
(33:16):
fifty yards maybe into his little like a little cut,
a little drainage type not really a drainage, a little
cut in the hill. And that's where we found him.
And that kicked us off for dear season the hunting moon.
I love that. I love that term. What was that
approach like? Because to me, when if it's like a
(33:37):
still evening, you're running out of time because you only
found him at six six thirty, there can't be that
much daylight left, and you're going to within two hundred
yards of of you know, nice mature buck like was
it a quiet approach, like when was that when you
were after you left him and you couldn't see him
anymore and you started the approach. How far was he
away when you've refound him? When we re found him,
(34:00):
is a two yards? Yeah, Like it was. Yeah, I
kind of had to make that. And it was really tight,
like he easily could have been over a little fold
or something, and you weren't going to see him until
you were on top of him, and that was part
of my worry. And we just hauled ass and tried
to climb up there as fast as we could, and yeah,
(34:23):
it was. It was just the only thing I can
contribute it to is a little bit like right place,
right time, Like things just stars aligned, you know, and
we could have I thought about trying to go on
the opposite side of the drainages him and shoot across,
but again that was I mean, it was probably gonna
be six hundred yards, and I was like, man, I
(34:46):
just really want to get I wanted to get closer
than that, and our only other option was to go
straight pretty much straight to him, and so I said,
all right, we're just gonna um. He was on the
shady side of the hill. So I knew the thermals
were probably pushing down so our wind would be okay.
And I said, we just got a haul ass until
(35:07):
we're close to where we think that little pocket is,
and then we're just gonna have to go slow and
you know, move a little bit in glass, move a
little bit in glass, and I could pick him up
through the trees and there was quite a bit of
like brushing between us. So, um, I think he looked
down our direction a couple of times, and it got
me a little worried because he could have just you know,
(35:28):
when it been in the trees and four steps. Yeah,
that's a that's a dream buck. Did you put a
tape on him? Yeah? So I wonder if our pictures
weren't kind of the same thing as you were talking
about on your elk. I mean, hold on, I'm gonna
I was gonna already send you a number via tacks
(35:50):
when he sent me the picture, but I'm gonna guess
did he's one? So we tapped him at one sixty
eight yesterday. Oh yeah, God, he looks like he looks
like you could tell anybody that that's a one eighty
buck and they'd be like, Okay, dude. I totally agreed.
And when I when I his main beams are twenty
(36:11):
and when I measured that, I was like, man, those
are I feel like that's a buck that would tricky
a little on on the Hidah. It's well, it just
goes to show you like that in buck is a
great buck. Yeah, and box are like unicorns. They're just
you know, they're they're hard to find. You gotta hunt,
(36:32):
you know, harder for him. But like, yeah, that's it's
a sweet, sweet buck, you know, um, and you should
be proud of it. Oh, I'm super proud of him. Man,
it was. It was awesome. We we joked a little bit. Uh,
you know, we hunt together. My wife and I hunt
together a lot, and we do the shooter gets first shot,
deal spot gets first shot. Yeah, yeah, And uh it
(36:59):
was funny because when we just sat down, she was taken.
She was taking a picture of something that would look
cool with like me and this but sunset or whatever
she was doing. Oh alright, real quick, we're running out
of time. But with any real like gear highlights that
popped out for you on your on that mule deer hunt, No,
(37:22):
not nothing really big. I was using a new pair
of boots from Crispy called the Altitudes and uh, that's
a really good light fast boot that I really liked
a lot people should look at. And and that's pretty
much it. There was nothing, nothing really big. Everything I
was using was pretty tried and true. Nice. All right, Well,
(37:42):
we're gonna be back soon to tell you more about
Jordan's hunting Moon and the hunts that I've got for
line up for the rest of the fall. And remember,
please comment on our the podcast web page on the
meat Eater site. Uh, not only about those early season pants,
but also just in general, what else you would like
(38:04):
us to talk about here on gear talk. Um, if
you even maybe personally know of a great gear expert
that can speak to a certain piece of gear or
gear technology, whoever might be, uh, comment let us know. Um.
You can also send an email into gear talk at
(38:25):
the meat eater dot com. Thanks again for listening. Jordan
is good catching up and uh yeah, good luck on
the rest of the Hunting Moon and we'll talk soon. Thanks. Yeah,
Jordan, how are you good? How's it going? Yannie? Really good.
It's I'm a little tired. It's it's the middle of
hunting season, so I'm I'm sort of feeling like I'm
in that space where there's barely enough time to clean
up from one adventure, um before I start packing getting
ready for the next one. But I'm super excited about
(00:33):
the next one. I'm taking the kids, uh, antelope hunting.
They're not hunting, but they're coming along for the camping
in the adventure, which is what I really care about.
But today, uh, Jordan and I are going to run
ripped through a couple of recent adventures that we've had
and UH talk about some of the gear that really
excelled on those adventures. First off, I ran my first
(00:58):
I guess they call it an all to marathon. I
didn't know this until recently, but I guess anything over
twenty six miles or twenty six point two counts is ultra.
This was a fifty K, which is thirty one miles. Uh,
and it was It's called the rut run. Happened down
in the Big Sky, Montana, which is just about an
hour south of Bozeman. Here where I live and uh
(01:20):
it went well. Trained almost a year, I started training
in December, raced in early September, and uh, I was
nervous man thirty one miles and roughly I think it's
like somewhere between ten and eleven thousand feet of elevation
gain and loss, and it went well. My goal was
(01:42):
ten hours and I finished eighty one in my age group,
which whatever, I wasn't racing for the podium. It felt
good just to finish. It felt good to have a
good day out there. And now I'm in possibly the
best elk cunning shape that of ever been in at
the at the spry age of forty four. A couple
(02:05):
of pieces of gear though that I want to talk
about that really have excelled, not just in this race,
but like as I've been running a bunch this summer.
One is good. Or sunglasses. Have you seen those yet?
Jordan's I haven't, dude, twenty five bucks I think for
like their base model, and I've got a lot of
(02:25):
not a lot, but I've had lots of fancier pairs
of sunglasses that are upwards of like two bucks, you
know for a pair, you know, as a fishing guy
and stuff you know, we used to always have you know,
a pro deal with whatever Oakley and Coasta. But man,
running like the worst thing is when those suckers just
keep slipping off your face and you gotta keep putting
(02:47):
them back on. These goods, I kid you not, You
put them on and you'd never have to touch them
again until you're ready to take them off. Like they
just don't slip now, Bucks, I don't think you're getting
like the best lens quality obviously, and I think they're polarized.
I think not that matters when you're you know that
(03:08):
much when you're out in the out running or out hunting.
But like for for a good pair of Fueld sunglasses
for twenty bucks, man like incredible value there, Like everybody
I know that's try to really love them the other thing,
and you can get them. I've seen them, I think,
are I And then pretty much like any running store
I've been into seems to be carrying good ors. Its
(03:29):
spelled g O O d R. The other thing that
I used running the rut is spring energy gels. I
don't know how many, Like are you ever a consumer
of gels gel type products? I used to, and I
just don't really do anymore. I like the little choose
like gummy bears, you know, I agree, they're a little
(03:51):
more candy like and like they're a little more palatable.
The thing is is when you're running and you're like
under duress and and and working hard, it can be
hard to actually chew and then and then pull down
something like a chew like. There becomes a point in
longer runs, longer races where you just want to get
(04:13):
calories in the easiest way possible. And there's a lot
of you know, drink mixes now that you can just
add to the water that are getting calories, but sometimes
even that is not enough. And sometimes a lot of
times for me at least, even the drink mixes that
are marketed is not having any flavor and just you know,
basically being like your water, Even those start to get
(04:36):
just a little annoying and you start to get like
a syrupy kind of a sticky mouth, And a lot
of times late in the in the run, all I
want is just water because that's just like what my
body is craving. But there's a gel. A lot of
times with gels, so they're they're made so they are
easier to just you know, palate and take down than
say blocks or you know, other real food. They've always
(04:59):
been and syrupy and kind of heavy, sticky and just
a little too much to you know, to suck down,
and um, you're just working way too hard, you know,
to try to get those calories in. But these spring gels,
I don't know what they did, but they have like
one of the flavors they have, I forget what it's called,
but they did a bad job naming it because it
(05:21):
should just be called like tart apple sauce. Instead they
called it like cinnamon apple pie or some ship. But
it's it's literally tart apple sauce. And I like anything
that's tart and and whether it's bars or gels or whatever,
because it helps you create saliva which helps all that
stuff go down. But this, like these gels are not
(05:43):
gel like they are I don't know the best way
to describe it as just like super liquid e so
literally in like a squeeze, you can just suck the
whole thing down and one or two gulps and it's gone,
bye bye, and a little bit of water on top
of that, and you don't feel like you actually, you know,
put any thing like it's any anything that was sugary
or syrupy across your you know, your your tongue that
(06:06):
would then kind of stick with you and uh, you know,
make the next ten minutes of running or whatever you're
doing less fun. So anyways, Yeah, spring energy gels if
you're the type of person likes to hunting. I a
lot of times I don't carry stuff like that around,
but I do. I don't care around to have to
use every day, but I like to have one or
(06:27):
two of those for the late night pack out or
for just that day that goes super long and you're like,
oh my god, we're five miles in and we're trying
to get back to the truck. It's nice to like
halfway through that hike like, oh yeah, I've got one
of these things, and you shoot that and you drink
some water and it gives you that little boost in
(06:47):
those extra calories that help keep the pace up. Nice.
Can you feel it, like if you feel like you're
running down a little bit on calories, can you like
feel your energy pick up after you take one of those? Yeah,
you know, I don't do caffeine because of my heart.
There's there they have gels, you know, of all makes
and brands that have caffeine, and I'm guessing that you
(07:09):
would feel even more with that. For me, it's it's
probably more of like a gradual. Like I the goal
for me is always to never really let myself get
down and get tired, and just always keep my energy
levels up and keep my calorie in take up so
that I never never fall off. But I would say
(07:29):
that in that nine hours of running the rut, there
were times when I could feel sort of feel like
just a um, you know, a slower pace, kind of
like a block kind of coming over me, and then
thinking like, oh yeah, dude, like keep eating and keep eating.
I mean literally, for nine hours from the beginning to
the end, I kept telling myself just keep eating, keep eating,
(07:52):
keep drinking, keep drinking, keep eating, because you have to
have the fuel, you know, to make it that long.
And uh, there's probably some times where I didn't stay
on top of it enough. I felt myself slipping a
little bit, and then you know, twenty minutes later, you'd
be like, oh, Okay, I feel normal again, you know.
So I wouldn't call it like an energy boost, but
I would call it you can you can feel the
(08:14):
difference and sort of just feel like you're not you
don't feel like you're working as hard. I guess, man, well,
good for you. I sounded like a grinder and you
came in. It was fifty right one in my age group,
which is like one to fifty, I guess, um for males,
I think overall, out of like five hundred, I was
(08:37):
like a hundred and sixty if or something like that, which,
you know, it's fun to compete because every just everybody's
there going through the same trials that you are that day,
and everybody's on the same team. And that's what makes
those races fun. It is to be part of that
(08:57):
community because all season long we run by ourselves, elves
a lot of training by yourself, and then you get
to get together with five hundred other people that are
all gonna, you know, put themselves up against this pretty monstrous,
you know, hurdle and try to get through it. And
it was a hot day. I know quite a few
people that pulled themselves out of the race because the
heat got to him. Um And uh yeah, most surprisingly
(09:22):
was I give myself like two full days where I
thought I was going to be crawling around the house
because my legs wouldn't work, and I had like some
slight soreness in my lower quads, like right above my knees.
But otherwise it wasn't too bad and I was I
was archery l Cotton two days later. Yeah, and I
want to talk about that because you shot a big bull.
(09:43):
Well thanks for calling calling him a big bull. Uh,
he is one of definitely one of the nicer bulls
I've killed. We taped him and I think he ended
up going to seventy something like that. It's amazing how
the what at the what a person with the camera,
if they know what they're doing, how big, how much
(10:04):
bigger they can make a bore elk look. But uh, yeah,
he was a five by six. I was super stoked.
I got to hunt with our colleagues or colleague Corey Caulkins,
and then you speak colleague of ours, Michael Common, and
they're nice enough to invite me along to hunt their spot.
And they both were previous Montana Elk hunting guides and outfitters. Uh.
(10:29):
Mike actually used to outfit the Bob, which, uh that's
for another story. But I'm gonna try to get him
to take me into there because that's that's a bucket
list adventure for me is to go into the Bob
Marshall Wilderness on a on a on an elk hunt.
But yeah, when they invited me along, I was like,
you know, I could go out and you know, suffer
by myself and trying to figure it out by myself,
(10:52):
which you know I could do. But when to like
prior Montana elk hunting guys invite you to go hunting
at their spot, I'm like, yeah, it's probably gonna be
pretty good. Yeah, um so I couldn't pass it up.
And uh yeah, we had decent hunting. I'd say probably
half of the days we got into it. We found
(11:13):
a zone that was holding I don't know thirty fort
elk and enough bulls that they were getting each other
fired up and talking, and we got to work them
for about a day and a half until some other
hunters found that group as well. Um I killed my
bull out of that group. But once the applied, you know,
(11:34):
just that much more a pressure was applied to him
because it was a bigger group of hunters. They had
four six people. I don't know if they were all
hunting that same group, but it definitely was evident that
within twenty four hours of that extra pressure, those elk
either shut up and just started hiding in the timber
or they completely moved out of the zone. I can't
tell you exactly what happened because I'm not one of
(11:56):
those elk, but I know that they're hard to find
in there. And we ended up saying and just left
it alone and went and found other country to hunt
and found other elk after that. But uh, yeah, that
was cool. We saw the ball in the morning, um
that day. I think it was the second or third
day of hunting. It must have been the third day.
We saw the ball in the morning chasing a cow around.
(12:19):
It was funny because he was stuck on one cow
rutting her, and there was a whole another herd that
was literally on the same hillside as them, you know,
buglin going nuts. But those like that group and then
that single bowl and cow, they didn't never really interact it,
you know. So I guess my guess is looking at
it now, is that he just had a a you know,
(12:42):
a hot cow, had cut her away from the herd
and was you know, trying to read her, and then
it was gonna maybe you know, come back, because that
evening we we saw him go over a ridge and
so we basically hunted from the backside and we're kind
of watching this ridge and we hear the buglings start.
We find the bullet is bugle and he's got seven
(13:03):
or eight cows and it's like this young you know
what I would call probably a two year old five
point and he's bugling his brains out. We're like, that's interesting,
Like where's the big bull. Well, keep glassing glassing, And
a couple hundred yards down the ridge there's the bull
that I end up shooting, just feeding every now and
then he kind of picks up his head and he's
(13:23):
looking towards the action but totally not running, not you know,
not in the mix at all. And we saw that
a lot that week. Actually, I don't know if it
was just because it was early in the rut and
and so the young bulls were kind of having their
go before the big bulls were going to kind of
come in and take over the harems. But it was
it was just interesting to actually see that You've I've
(13:45):
heard about that, but it was interesting to see it
play out where literally these two year old bulls were
running around with ten twenty cows, you know, bugling their
brains out, pushing them around, hurting them, and then a
couple hundred yards away there's a you know, a bowl
much bigger, two or two couple of years older probably,
and he's not even messing with them, you know. Anyways,
(14:07):
we had other hunters in the area, and where we
tried to approach the herd, we had we heard hunters
ahead of us, so we backed out and our plan
was like, you know, they're kind of here, they're closer
to the herd, we'll just kind of play the periphery
and see what happens, you know, and we're kind of
we're we're actually working down towards the creek bottom because
we figured we'd have a good downhill thermal that would
(14:30):
be moving down the creek, and so we were heading
towards sort of the down wind down, you know, um
down current side of all this action. I'd say we
were I don't know, three yards away from where most
the bugling was happening, and we're getting down towards the
creek and just happened to look up and that the
(14:50):
this bigger bowl that we had lasted earlier is now
sort of angling down this hillside across from us and
and basically gonna you know, we're gonna oross paths in
the creek bottom. So we boogied got to where the
creek bottoms sort of had at least the side that
we were on. There was like a little bit of
a ledge like maybe ten ft up kind of a
(15:11):
steep bank, and then it went into the timber. So
I got right on that ledge and was looking over
the creek bottom, and I had lost the side of
the bowl. But as I sat there for I don't know,
it took me a couple of minutes. Like he popped
out from behind a tree and he was maybe I
don't know, hundred yards or so a hundred fifty yards
up the hill. But again he's sort of feeding working
(15:32):
the way are you know, down towards us. And sure
enough he comes in there and um comes straight down
the hill. And I pre arranged everything in the creek
bottom everything basically once he hit the creek, that was
forty and then everything else was closer. And he comes
right into the creek and this is a little bitty
creek like you know, you'd have to you struggle to
(15:53):
find a spot where you could easily, you know, dip
analogy and full of water. But he drops into the creek,
goes behind a tree. I'm not at full draw yet.
As he starts moving out from behind this fur, I draw,
and he's walking, walking, and he kind of goes up
the creek a little ways. He's so he's kind of
become he went from broadside to being quarter and away
(16:15):
because he went away from me a little bit. But
then he drops his head down to drink. At that moment,
I'm at full draw. I settle my pin, touch one off,
and as that arrows in the air, I don't know
if he heard the ball, heard the arrow or what,
but he lunges forward and instead of that bullet, but
(16:36):
then instead of that arrow going in behind his last
rib and up into the uh, you know, vitals, it
goes literally almost right up his key star. And the
first thought in my mind was, oh, my goodness, what
did I do? Like? Not good? Not good? But he
(16:57):
only goes like ten yards and it's kind stops and
I can see major blood spilling out of where the
arrow went in. And I can only see like the
very tip, like maybe a chunk of the fletching but
really I'm just seeing my knock and he just stands there.
And he's standing there, and I have enough time to
knock an arrow, and I'm pulling back on the string.
(17:18):
But then he starts walking and he walks parallel to
me and up onto my hillside and into the timber.
So I'm thinking, all right, well, having made a good shot,
I should have just back out of here, and we're
gonna have to come back and see what happens. As
I'm going through this in my head, I can hear
him sort of stumble a little bit up ahead. I mean,
(17:39):
he's only he's still only forty maybe fifty yards from you.
So I decided just to kind of hang out and listen.
I've got good wind. I'm just gonna listen see what happens.
Every just you know, thirty seconds to a minute, I
can hear like a heavy footstep, so I know he's
not like he's not moving, he's not continuing anywhere. He's
just in the zone. And I keep hearing these like
(18:00):
every now and just getting just like a heavy or
maybe like a little branch break. I'm like, huh, he's
he's moving, but he's not going anywhere. So I'm thinking like, okay,
maybe he's you know, he's injured pretty good. So I
decided to start creeping towards him. And a major reason
I started I wanted to get in closer to and
possibly get another arrow in him, is I could hear
(18:21):
the other hunters calling, like I said, a couple three
yards up the creek, and just being afraid that they
could bump him. Um, you know, something could happen out
of my control. I didn't want to leave him at
that moment. I still had like probably an hour before dark,
and so I start creeping in. Um, long story short,
it takes me twenty minutes to get in there. It's
(18:43):
just dead quiet. I'm trying to really be quiet, and
I just cannot get I finally see him, but at
twenty yards, but I cannot get an arrow, Like I
cannot find a window to shoot. When as I'm watching him,
he actually does like a circle and then beds down,
but almost like it was like halfway between betting down
and falling down, and he's sort of like just you know,
(19:04):
falls in a in a pile. Unfortunately, he's like facing
right at me, so again there's like no shot towards
the vitals. But I get close enough and I get
to a point where I'm like, okay, if I can
just take like two more big steps, I'm like, literally
less than ten yards. He's I think at this time
he's aware of my presence, but he's like he's kind
(19:25):
of trying to get up, but he doesn't have his
hind legs. So I'm like, okay, just get in there
and move to the side to where you can get
the angle and and get another arrow in him. And
so I come to full draw and trying to take
those steps, but that's enough to like spook him, and
he does get up on all fours and I just
can't again just get an arrow in him, and he
(19:46):
starts going back to where he came back towards the
creek bottom. So now I'm at full draw, sort of
following with him. He's crashing through the timber. I'm taking
some steps I should have let down, but you know,
in the heat of the moment, I stayed a full draw.
I follow him for I don't know, five or ten yards,
and finally the woods kind of open up enough and
(20:07):
there he is, and I shoot him again. That shot
that goes into the shoulder there actually dropped him and
he fell down, but he still had some life left
in him, and so I ended up putting another one
in his heart and that finally made him expire. So
the whole thing probably lasted, I don't know, twenty to
thirty minutes. It was pretty intense. Definitely not the way
(20:28):
you know you want to kill an elk, but it, uh,
you know, it happens, you know. Um, I still feel
good about that shot. Um. You know, it was quartering
away hard, but like I've taken that shot before, it's
a great way to get an arrow up into the vitals. Um.
(20:51):
But you know, animals jump sometimes, you know, So I
ended up with a dead bull. UM. Pretty stoked on it.
The the heavy arrow, I think played a part in
me getting that bowl. The sharp broadhead that I that
I had sharpened, I started a new sharpening I used
a new sharpening system this year. I started using bench
(21:13):
madees or sorry, not bench mades, but work sharps. I
think it's called like they're elite sharpening system. I can't
remember now, but it's basically like you you put your
blade in a clamp and then there's these bars that
are that you can adjust the angle of that have
the stone attached to them and you use that to
(21:34):
go up and down your edge. UM. Word great for
these broadheads. Um these were the tough head, single bevel broadheads.
But I think that those two things, heavy arrow, super
sharp broadhead like it helped me, even though it wasn't.
It was not by any means like the hit that
(21:55):
I wanted. It busted through some part of the pell
vic bone on the way in and then still got
you know, nearly thirty inches of penetration and and cut
you know whatever it cut in there to cause enough
you know, bleeding to happen where it slowed that elk
down to the point where he couldn't go, you know,
(22:16):
more than fifty yards from where I shot him. So again,
I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying to celebrate
a poor shot, but it does happen, and I'm happy that,
you know, I had the equipment that I was still
able to perform in the case of a bad scenario.
(22:45):
The only thing I want to bring up about this
hunt is that we tested You've been testing this pant too.
But over here first Light, we're working on a new
Ultra early season Ultra Lightweight breathable, haunting pant and we're
in like the first rendition of it. You can speak
to what you've seen about it. I like it so far.
(23:07):
It seems like it really does excel when it's super hot.
It's got some nice events in it that helped open
it up even more. Um. But this is a call
to action to all you listening. We want to have
you guys give us some input on what you guys
would like to see in the early season pant. So
(23:29):
you can go to the Meteor website, go to podcasts,
find this podcast, find this episode, and then comment underneath
it there on what you'd like to see in early
season pants. Geordan, what have you thought so far about
the early season pant? They? I really like him. I
use them pretty much most of September. Really lightweight, like
(23:53):
the venting options are pretty on point. I think I
even wore it the first week of October in Wyoming
for a hunt that that I went on with a
buddy and just putting wick bottoms underneath of it, Like
it really got me into that October season, especially if
you're on hot. I really don't, and that's one of
the reasons I wanted to take it on that hunt
(24:15):
a little later, Like the mornings were definitely cool, and
I wanted to see what I could push it to
and uh with bass layers on underneath, and then you know,
of course, if you really want to, you can just
throw puffy pants over the top of it. I didn't
do that, but um, it was really nice. It's really
nice pants, especially in in some of those you know,
(24:35):
October seasons like we're in now where it's it's really
cold in the mornings. In the evenings like it can
be like sixteen, you know, fifteen, twenty whatever in the mornings,
and then in the middle of the day it's like
six and seventy. So you really need to be able
to adapt to the changing temperatures. And I think that
I really like those early season pants and even you know,
(24:59):
pushing many of the colder months. Any like constructive notes
that you're gonna give to for changes on those pants.
The one set of the one set of zippers in
the front of the vent those are connected to the pockets,
so you can't really use your pockets if you want
those vented, which I think is a little goofy. So
(25:22):
that's definitely one thing I'm going to talk about. But
other than that, I don't really have anything that you
have something. Well, I think I had that same note
and other people have too. And so if you're at
home listening, we're talking about is that the cargo pocket
itself has a zipper down the edge of it, the
inside edge, so sort of like your inner thigh, and
(25:45):
it basically creates a like a kind of a baffled
opening into the pocket, which the pocket is mesh on
the inside, so it creates another vent. But like Jordan
just said, when you open that vent, it sort of
negates the pocket because now you've like opened the pocket
wide open, and if you had something in it, it
(26:05):
could possibly fall out. So I think that they were thinking, like, oh,
it's a good way to sort of get too uses
out of one thing. But I think pockets have to
be able to hold some stuff, you know, securely always,
because it's just gonna happen right where you're gonna forget.
(26:27):
You're gonna open it up and you're you're gonna forget
that you had whatever your extra release in there, I
don't know, you know, your head lamp, and it's gonna
fall out and then you're gonna be bumming. So Anyways, Well,
like I said, please help us make these early season
pants the best they can be. UM, tell us what
would be important for you to see an early season
(26:49):
pant by commenting uh in the comments under this episode
on the gear Talk podcast page on the Mediator website. Cool.
All right, Jordan, you got less than ten minutes to
tell me all about your how you killed that big
monster buck in Idaho. Yeah? So, Uh, I guess the
(27:10):
story really starts in September. We had hunted a bunch
found a big buck opening day of archery season, and
uh about a week later, so ended up finding out
that but got killed. So UM ended up backing out,
and more so, given that spot a breather, you know,
I just felt like we hunted it out really well.
(27:30):
I went to another spot, UH hunted with my wife
a bunch and she shot at a bucket forty yards
and missed just right over the top of him on
an awesome stock. And we're trying to figure out what
to do for a rifle season, like go go to
where we had seen some more dear but there's probably
gonna be more people, or or go back to where
we had archery hunted and probably see less people, a
(27:52):
little more challenging to get into, but it is like
a commitment and when you're in there, you're kind of
stuck in that one spot unless you're gonna completely pack out.
So ended up deciding, like the weather was going to
be pretty good, we decided we wanted to go back
into the high country and try where we did for archery.
So this is a bit of uh, it's one of
(28:12):
those right place, right time kind of stories, Johnnie. We
uh we packed everything from from the house, and what
we were doing is we're actually on our you know,
quote unquote we call it hunting moon, but it's kind
of like our honeymoon. Uh three weeks. There's like four
different states that we were hitting for for deer, so
Idaho was starting out. That was the first stop. So
(28:35):
we were packing stuff for three weeks and uh so
it just took us a little longer than normal, left
the house later than we wanted to to try to
get packed in. As just often happens. Driving to the
trailhead come around this little corner in this pocketed trees,
a buck bolts across the road in front of us,
(28:58):
and we see it for you know, a couple of
seconds but we think it looks like a good buck,
but we can't understand why he's down near the road.
Just didn't make much sense. So we talked it over,
because you're just thinking that all the bucks should be
up higher an elevation, yeah, more more so. And there's
(29:19):
just like that was a fairly major road that he
ran across. Like I just couldn't understand I guess why
he was that close to where pressure would be. So
we talked it over a little bit, and we're like, Okay,
we can pack back into this drainage. We don't know
what's back there anymore because I haven't got a chance
(29:40):
to scout it since we left during archery season, but
we know where a buck is right here, and he
looked pretty good. We should at least try to find him.
So that was the day before the opener Um opening
morning sets out. We get to a glassy knob that
is on the same drainage, So we're looking at probably
(30:01):
six yards and in about to where we had seen
the well at the upper end of where we've seen
the deer. I knew I didn't think he'd be like
right next to the road again, you know, I just
figured that was kind of a fluke deal. So I
started looking more up in the high country from there,
higher country, you know, up towards the top of the
drainage type of thing. And we glass opening day, there
(30:25):
was a lot of people around Glass, like across the
road that you that you were driving on. We actually
we didn't know. We we walked up the drainage quite
a bit, like more towards the top of just like
looking on on X where I thought a buck would
want to be, if you know, if we see him
in there, where do I think he would go? Like
(30:46):
I was thinking towards the top of that ridge, and
and there were some openings and things like that, but
still pretty timbered up. So we were glass and probably
six yards and in opening morning, there were a lot
of people around. There were people like you could hear
him down like driving the roads. There were people walking
down the ridges, walking up the ridges. There's a guy
(31:07):
who actually walked right through the middle of where I
really thought that there would be. And I'm kind of thinking, gosh,
how long do we give this before we just go
pack in and do our original plan? Well, uh, we
decided to give it the full day and the next
morning and then we were going to pack in, so
(31:28):
we I decided that instead of getting so close like
six hundred yards and in like that's kind of close
to a drainage if you can't see the whole thing.
So we decided, uh, that evening, we're just going to
back it up. So we just ended up taking a
little bit of the road system and then uh walking
(31:48):
out onto a big long ridge that kind of gave
you like a big picture of view of where we
had seen the deer. Like you could see a couple
of drainages, you could see openings pretty good, just got
open things up a little more, and man, like six o'clock,
six thirty in the afternoon, the only deer we had
(32:09):
seen was this buck and in a little opening actually
right underneath of the glassing point that we had been on.
And he's there feeding at six thirty in the afternoon
and opening the deer season. And you know, for where
we were, he was pretty like wide out in the open.
Everybody could see him, and I think we just happened
(32:29):
to see him first. So we uh kind of I guess,
drove back around the road system till we could hike,
and we took off climbing and hiking and got up
pretty close to where we thought he was. And it
was one of those places where like you were going
to shoot from six yards or you're gonna shoot from like,
you know, less than two hundred type of a deal.
And we got we got in pretty close to him.
(32:52):
We were I think my last range I got was
like one six and uh he was speeding on this
open hillside and it was pretty it was pretty uh
pretty tight with trees, like I really had to move
around a bit and find just a little lane to
shoot through, and uh man, that was pretty much. It
settled my crossairs and and shot him and he went
(33:16):
fifty yards maybe into his little like a little cut,
a little drainage type not really a drainage, a little
cut in the hill. And that's where we found him.
And that kicked us off for dear season the hunting moon.
I love that. I love that term. What was that
approach like? Because to me, when if it's like a
(33:37):
still evening, you're running out of time because you only
found him at six six thirty, there can't be that
much daylight left, and you're going to within two hundred
yards of of you know, nice mature buck like was
it a quiet approach, like when was that when you
were after you left him and you couldn't see him
anymore and you started the approach. How far was he
away when you've refound him? When we re found him,
(34:00):
is a two yards? Yeah, Like it was. Yeah, I
kind of had to make that. And it was really tight,
like he easily could have been over a little fold
or something, and you weren't going to see him until
you were on top of him, and that was part
of my worry. And we just hauled ass and tried
to climb up there as fast as we could, and yeah,
(34:23):
it was. It was just the only thing I can
contribute it to is a little bit like right place,
right time, Like things just stars aligned, you know, and
we could have I thought about trying to go on
the opposite side of the drainages him and shoot across,
but again that was I mean, it was probably gonna
be six hundred yards, and I was like, man, I
(34:46):
just really want to get I wanted to get closer
than that, and our only other option was to go
straight pretty much straight to him, and so I said,
all right, we're just gonna um. He was on the
shady side of the hill. So I knew the thermals
were probably pushing down so our wind would be okay.
And I said, we just got a haul ass until
(35:07):
we're close to where we think that little pocket is,
and then we're just gonna have to go slow and
you know, move a little bit in glass, move a
little bit in glass, and I could pick him up
through the trees and there was quite a bit of
like brushing between us. So, um, I think he looked
down our direction a couple of times, and it got
me a little worried because he could have just you know,
(35:28):
when it been in the trees and four steps. Yeah,
that's a that's a dream buck. Did you put a
tape on him? Yeah? So I wonder if our pictures
weren't kind of the same thing as you were talking
about on your elk. I mean, hold on, I'm gonna
I was gonna already send you a number via tacks
(35:50):
when he sent me the picture, but I'm gonna guess
did he's one? So we tapped him at one sixty
eight yesterday. Oh yeah, God, he looks like he looks
like you could tell anybody that that's a one eighty
buck and they'd be like, Okay, dude. I totally agreed.
And when I when I his main beams are twenty
(36:11):
and when I measured that, I was like, man, those
are I feel like that's a buck that would tricky
a little on on the Hidah. It's well, it just
goes to show you like that in buck is a
great buck. Yeah, and box are like unicorns. They're just
you know, they're they're hard to find. You gotta hunt,
(36:32):
you know, harder for him. But like, yeah, that's it's
a sweet, sweet buck, you know, um, and you should
be proud of it. Oh, I'm super proud of him. Man,
it was. It was awesome. We we joked a little bit. Uh,
you know, we hunt together. My wife and I hunt
together a lot, and we do the shooter gets first shot,
deal spot gets first shot. Yeah, yeah, And uh it
(36:59):
was funny because when we just sat down, she was taken.
She was taking a picture of something that would look
cool with like me and this but sunset or whatever
she was doing. Oh alright, real quick, we're running out
of time. But with any real like gear highlights that
popped out for you on your on that mule deer hunt, No,
(37:22):
not nothing really big. I was using a new pair
of boots from Crispy called the Altitudes and uh, that's
a really good light fast boot that I really liked
a lot people should look at. And and that's pretty
much it. There was nothing, nothing really big. Everything I
was using was pretty tried and true. Nice. All right, Well,
(37:42):
we're gonna be back soon to tell you more about
Jordan's hunting Moon and the hunts that I've got for
line up for the rest of the fall. And remember,
please comment on our the podcast web page on the
meat Eater site. Uh, not only about those early season pants,
but also just in general, what else you would like
(38:04):
us to talk about here on gear talk. Um, if
you even maybe personally know of a great gear expert
that can speak to a certain piece of gear or
gear technology, whoever might be, uh, comment let us know. Um.
You can also send an email into gear talk at
(38:25):
the meat eater dot com. Thanks again for listening. Jordan
is good catching up and uh yeah, good luck on
the rest of the Hunting Moon and we'll talk soon. Thanks. Yeah,
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