March 9, 2023 • 56 mins
This week we dive into what Janis carries while turkey hunting from the mountains of Montana to the swamps of Florida. We also discuss Jordan getting stuck, new products dropped and a couple listener questions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome back to another episode of gear Talk. I'm here
be honest to tell us co host Jordan Bud Jordan,
I don't know how it is for you right now,
but here in Boza, Montana, it's negative ten and blowing
a gale. Not a nice day to be outside. No, man,
Boise is pretty nice. Actually, it's basically springtime here. You
(00:39):
wind down towards the end of February and it starts
getting real nice, like no snow on the ground. It's
getting starting to get kind of patchy in the trees,
like little tree tops are starting to stick up, and
you gotta start being careful. But yeah, I hear it's
I mean like Nebraska where the ranch is man, they've
been getting hammered since Samila to December. You. I've been
(01:01):
hearing that from my buddy that's over there in the
pine ridge too, and he says it's it's it's deep
and it's been a real winter this year. Yeah. Yeah.
My dad's like, from my predictions, we're gonna have snow
drifts in May. So well, you know what, I'd rather
have snow drifts and in May and have the snow
(01:21):
now in February rather than get a blizzard in May.
Once May it's here, I want it to be springtime
and looking into summer. I don't want to deal with
shelve and snow anymore in May, but I'll shovel snow
in February. Yeah, I don't blame yet. What else you've
been up to? Hello, man Um, Just been hiking. Been
(01:41):
trying a munch new packs, which has been really fun,
some new boots. It's been fun, like just going out
in looking at deer and elk and stuff on the
Winter Range. I like just like hitting hiking trails and
then glass and for him, it's fun to just watch him,
you know, then observe animals and such. Been shooting some
(02:03):
new content for some new First Light items that have
been coming out. The new furnace hoodie just launched that
you know, I've both been wearing for probably it's been
a couple of years now. I had that thing when
Steve came out, really yeah, that was like one of
the first ones. Yeah, So that thing just came out
with the new color Terra. So I've been out shooting
(02:24):
some content with that and I've been trying to get
into the snow to like show off some of this
new stuff coming out for late season, and it's been
kind of hard to find snow falling. It looks really
nice outside my pictures, um man, I was it was funny. Well,
it was kind of not funny at the time, but
I was out the other day and I drove up
(02:44):
this road that's like, you know, it's typical springtime, like
things are starting to melt and seem like maybe there
the roads are better than they are, but there's still
some snow around. So I like pushed it a little
bit when down this road I price shouldn't have went down,
and by the time I was like, yeah, I think
I should turn around. I got to a trailhead and
(03:06):
the parking lot was full of snow, but some other
people had turned around in it, and I actually got
out and went and like walked out in it, and
it seemed pretty powdery to me, so I'm like, all right, well,
I'm gonna give her hell. And I went to turn
around and like it had snowed. You know, it's just
like snow on top of snow on top of snow,
so there's like super hard spots and then there's spots
(03:28):
that are like powder. And I went around and hit
one of those hard spots and yeah, right, like I've
got good tires on my pickup two and like I
was just spinning. So I shoveled myself out a couple
of times, made it a little ways, and I just
kept hitting hard snow. And in the parking lot there's
this nice big Forest Service sign and it has huge
(03:54):
like you know, they're like corner posts, like really big posts.
I was like, you know, I have a winch on
my pickup and I could probably reach it from here.
So I had a toe strap. I put it around
the bottom of the sign posts. I hooked it to
my winch. Dude, winch myself right out of that thing.
It was like the best I thought. This thing just
paid for itself. Yeah, all it takes is getting unstuck
(04:17):
one time with your gear, whatever it is, whether it's
a winch, chains, those traction boards, a shovel that just
seems to just take up room in the back of
the truck. When you're in that moment, it is so worthwhile.
But I'm impressed at that sign. I thought the story
was gonna go that you tore down the Forest Service sign.
Now you owed the US government, all of us taxpayers
(04:38):
a little bit of money. No, I had this thought
of if it broke, it was gonna like come flying
back through my windshield. Like that did cross my mind
one time. But I'm like, well, I'm like way back here,
I don't have service. I had my in reach, but
like Leah's at work, can't leave till the eve if
(05:00):
she could even you know, come get me. So it
was kind of trying that or just sitting there for
a while. But gosh, I just like I would dig out,
make it just a little ways, and like I wasn't
even like nothing was really like touching the pumpkin or anything.
It was just like that hard snow gets so packed
(05:21):
down and it's basically like ice, you just like can't move. Yeah,
so frustrating. Do you carry chains, dude, I No, I didn't.
Usually I do. I didn't this year. Usually you can
like go to lush Swab and get a set of
chains and then if you don't use them, you can
take them back at summer or whatever. But I just
(05:41):
didn't do that this year because I was like, oh,
I mean all of our hunts are pretty much all
of our hunts are over. So I didn't do that,
and I should have clearly. Oh yeah, man. I remember
even at the beginning of this line hunting season in
December sometime, I was like, you know, it's probably a
good idea to throw the chains in, And it wasn't
a week later. I wasn't even lion hunting. I was
(06:03):
just going to take the trash out, and I have
my daughter in the truck with me, and it just happens.
Where we drop our trash is there's some dumpsters that
we pay for, and it's the way from the house
and the area by it, like the parking lot. I
don't know who maintains it. I don't know what the
deal is over there, but anyways, it was you could
I could see ahead of me someone had just snowed
(06:25):
a bunch, was like one of our big first storms,
and I could see tracks ahead of me. I'm like, well,
someone else drove in here. I can get in and out,
you know, And I just started, you know, kind of going,
and then as soon as I got past the last
driveway and kind of got into this more parking lot zone.
It's got a little slope to it, and all of
a sudden, my daughter's like, why are we moving sideways?
(06:47):
I'm like, yeah, pretty much like, as soon as my
wheel stopped spinning, work's gonna be stuck. So I hope
you got something to occupy your mind while I dig
ourselves out. And it was literally, like I said, a
week after, I had decided to put chains in and
the shovel, and I tell you what, it's kind of
amazing because I was in it was solid, knee deep,
(07:09):
you know, eighteen inches are more bogged just completely bogged down.
You could have shoveled a path all the way back
to the stuff that had been packed down, but that
would have taken me hours, and even getting another rig
in there to pull me would have been tricky. But
I threw those chains on my rear wheels and there
(07:29):
was no big deal. It just turns your truck into
like a little tank and just jam it and it
goes slow, but it just, you know, and pushed right
out of there. We dumped our trash and we were
had to take the chains off and we were on
our way. But yeah, multiple times this slide hunting season,
I want to say I've chained up because I've been
stuck I don't know half dozen times. A lot of
(07:51):
times I'm pulling my trailer with my snowmobile, and it
gets a little extra sticky because you're not just trying
to get your truck unstuck, you also have to do
that and then pull your you know, trailer out of there,
which it's not super heavy because you know, the snowbill
doesn't wait that much, but it's heavy enough where I
can't pick up the tongue by myself on that trailer,
(08:14):
you know. But anyways, I've been meaning to pick up
some of those traction boards too. I would try those. Yeah,
those seem like an especially if it's just a short
spot that you're stuck in or you don't have to
get far to get back onto level ground or dry
ground or whatever it is. Like chains take a little
a minute, you know, But if you could just jam
(08:34):
a traction board in there, one on each side, and
then make it the three feet and then maybe reposition
them and do it again, and all of a sudden
you're out and you just throw those traction boards back in.
And I think it could be just a little bit faster.
But my new bumper on my Tundra, I put a
coastal off road bumper on there after I smacked the
last time I smashed a deer. I just decided to
(08:55):
go big bumper that would hopefully protect my headlights next
time I hit it year And it's got a spot
for a winch, and you maybe just have just talked
me into it. Okay, Hey, before we go on, I
got a question about the furnace hoodie. Where are you
finding use for that thing in your outdoor life for
(09:16):
like a hunting application. M I use it a ton
when I was guiding in Nebraska because it's like it's
basically for me, it would replace like the Klamath hoodie
or something like that. It's definitely a warmer than like
a Klamath, so like a mid layer for Midwest type
hunting where you're like in and out of the vehicle
(09:38):
a lot. It's super cold temperatures like we were dealing
with late November December, like cold wind, like snow. That's
where I've seen like the most application for it. I
think like during Turkey season it's going to be an
option for me too as a midd layer where I'm
not moving as fast usually, but yeah, yeah, as fast
(10:00):
as far. I think that's uh, that's the place for
that thing, right because it's just it is so warm
that you if you're playing on hiking, you know, even
close to a mile. I think that yeah, for static
type hunting and in cold conditions, but you're in and out, yeah,
tree stands in and out of the truck a lot,
you know, getting dropped off at a tree standard a
(10:21):
blind where you're not gonna you know, get too to
heat it up. That's where that piece is really gonna shine.
And obviously that hood us as thick as the rest
of it. So you throw it on and covers your neck.
It's the breeze off your neck and it's like having
a loose beanie on your head insulating you. So yeah,
(10:41):
and it's got those couple of little buttons that like
can tighten up around your collar a little bit. Um,
I've thought those were nice. I've seen a couple of
comments of people wondering about that, but um, I've liked
that better than like having, you know, on a regular hoodie,
having the danglies own. Oh yeah. The first thing I
do when I get a new hoodie is I pulled
(11:03):
the string out. Yeah, get it out of there. Okay. Um.
Last no two episodes ago, we had Heidi Alan from
Nick wax On. We talked about uh DWR. How to
get your DWR back in action, basically just how to
We talked gear care, garment care. We also talked about
(11:26):
how to care for your boots and get the most
out of it. UM. I hope that most of you
now listening or washing your at least your outerwear more
often than you did. But quite a few people wrote
in asking if the TX direct washing type DWR revitalizers,
(11:49):
if they do that to the outside, are they then
not also putting that same sort of coating or layer
on the inside of your jacket would then diminish or
inhibit the breathability of the jacket. It's a great question.
I should have thought about shut thought of it during
the podcast. Heidi responded and sets it does not affect
(12:14):
the breathability the water repellent elastomers cling to the fibers
that can absorb water, I e. Won't coat the inside
or clog up the membrane. She goes on to say
the only time I would say not to use a
washing waterproofer is if the garment has a moisture wicking liner.
(12:35):
You wouldn't want to waterproof that or it would repel
instead of wick. So if your garment has a like
a fleecy liner, right, so probably a lot of soft shells.
Even though there's DWR on the outside, they have like
a fleecy garment on the inside. That's that's supposed to
(12:55):
help wick you know, moisture away from you. Right, That's
not something that you want to do with it with
like a washing product. You just want to spray the outside. Um.
So I hope that answers that question for everybody. Ye.
Next up, Yeah, we're gonna roll through some listener questions. Yeah,
what's the first one? So this from Instagram curs Parts
(13:20):
Unknown says our red dot's worth the upgrade from a
bead or true glow style barrel site. This is all
Yanni because you haven't used a red dot yet. You haven't. No,
no, no no, a shotgun. Um. I absolutely love it, but
there's a caveat or maybe a little explaining I need
to do because there's some that I like better than others.
(13:43):
I ran the Vortex Venom for two full seasons, maybe
even three, at least the twenty twenty and twenty twenty
one Turkey season. I was running Vortex Venom and it's
a very open red dots, all low profile. It literally
just looks like a one inch by one inch This
(14:04):
is very simple description, but a one inch by one
inch glass plate. It's vertical. There's a projection of a
red dot on there. I like it because it's a
very open field of view and the and the frame
around the glass. It's not thick, so you don't lose
sort of any like peripheral vision, like when you're looking
(14:27):
down through it or around it. It's very easy to
stay on top of the turkey. You're not losing anything.
Last year I went to the Spark Solar, which the
reason I wanted to try it is because the battery
life I think is something like five times longer. I
think that the Venom is approximately thirty thousand hours and
(14:49):
the Spark Solar is one hundred and fifty thousand hours.
Because when it is available, it'll use solar power. It
doesn't charge your battery but with solar, so if sun
is available, it'll basically use that to run the red dot.
So you're just extending the life of the battery that
much more. Like I said, fivefold, great idea, because there
(15:10):
was the one drawbat with the red dot is if
you don't stay on top of it and don't change.
If you change your battery at the beginning of every season,
no matter how many hunts you go on turkey hunt
in that season, if you hunted every day, I don't
think you'd ever wear out a set of batteries. So
that's my program. Now Turkey Hunty season is about to start.
I'm just gonna throw in some fresh batteries. I'll be
(15:30):
good one time. I seriously, even that morning I had
checked it, it was still working. It was good. My
wife and I got into a mid morning, late morning
gobbler and I was trying to get her to shoot it.
It just didn't happen. That turkey didn't come out where
we thought it was going to come out. I had
the opportunity and I drew on it and no red dot.
(15:52):
I panic, and I press buttons, no red dot, no
red dot, And eventually I couldn't say. I thought, well,
I'd just center his head in this little in my
frame and pull the trigger. Nope, missed him. He flew
flew away. So there are there are drawbacks like that.
Right if you mess up and your batteries aren't fresh,
(16:14):
you could have that happen to you. Um back to
the spark solar. That thing sits higher off of the
receiver than the vortex venom um. We all know a shotguns,
when you're aiming at a turkey, if you if you're
not down on your stock and bearing down and looking down,
(16:37):
especially if you're just shooting a regular bead, if you're
not looking right down the plane of your rib, it's
very easy to shoot over the top of a turkey. Well,
the sparks solar, it's it sits high enough where when
I was getting down, if I put my cheek on
my stock, I couldn't even see through the scope, so
I'd read to really lift my face off of the
(16:58):
stock to look be able to look through scope. I
could have built something on my stock to lift it
up a little bit to get better cheek. Well, never
got around to it, so it could be my fault.
But one thing I noticed, and again it cost me.
I still got this bird, but I missed him one
time because I had already hit him. He was injured,
and I was walking up to him. I see him
at I don't know, it's less than ten yards and
(17:20):
he's kind of over this little berm. I can just
see his head and neck and it's like a dusty
dirt kind of burm right underneath the barbed wire fence.
And I'm thinking, well, that's perfect because i can just
shoot and you know, even tho I'm at close strangers,
there's zero way I'm gonna get any pellets into his
body or his breast meat. I touched off a huge
(17:41):
dust cloud poof, you know, goes up in the air,
the wind slowly pushes it out, and the turkey's head
is still there. I'm like, what in the world later
thinking about it, because i know for a fact, I mean,
he wasn't going anywhere. I drew a nice fine bead,
and my gas is that the path of the shot
(18:04):
had not yet reached my aiming point by the time
it got to the turkey. Does that make sense? Yeah,
like it had it been on a target, same thing.
Even though my my red dot would have been spot
on in the middle, the shot hadn't crossed the plane
or the path of that red dot. It's not a path,
it's just the aiming point. But the shot hadn't risen up,
(18:26):
even because I had shot a plenty on paper. I
mean I knew that it forty five yards. It was,
you know, smack on but basically that shot when you're
when your site in your barrel, the farther they are apart,
you know, it takes a bit of travel for the
bullet to come up and actually hit the same spot
where the red dot's aiming. So I hit low and
(18:48):
I had missed it. Could that's one example of last year.
It could be coincidence, but I had a tough time
shooting turkeys last year. I still got my five or
six or whatever it was, but I just felt like,
one after another, I was like, God, Lee, like how
come I didn't just crush him, you know? Or I
(19:10):
just had these instances where I was like, I can
do better than this. This isn't this isn't my normal self.
And I don't know if it was because I just wasn't,
you know, my cheek wasn't down on the stock, and
I wasn't just getting like a good solid, you know, placement.
I was kind of floating around. Anyways, I'm going back
to the venom this year. As far as pros go
(19:33):
for the red dot, man, it kind of takes away
the necessity to have to be down on your gun, right,
I know, I just said that that caused me some problems,
but you can test it anywhere that red dot is
pointing if you're looking, if you can see the dot,
(19:54):
it doesn't matter what kind of crazy position you found
yourself in. One eye open, both eyes open, you know,
way off the side of your gun. You flip and
decide to shoot left handed because the turkey came in
on your on the wrong side. Whatever it is, as
long as you can see the red dot and the
red dot is on your target, you pull the trigger
you ought to hit what you're aiming at. I mean,
(20:15):
that's how it works. You don't have to be It's
not like a traditional bead and rib where you have
to be down on it and leveling that ramp and
then holding that bead right on top of it. You
don't have to you know, it doesn't have to be
like that anymore. Um So, I feel like it's allowed
me when I was a little bit more comfortable of
(20:36):
shooting that venom. Just target acquisition is a little bit faster.
It's just like I said, the whole picture is there.
You can see it all very clearly. It's very easy
to put that red dot onto your target. So yeah,
I'm a huge fan. I'm gonna be hunting hunting with
(20:57):
it this year, So yes, I do think it's worth it.
One other thing I like about it a lot of
times on a standard just a beaded shotgun, right, there's
no rear sight. It's just a you know, pick any shotgun,
there's a single bead on it. And to aim that
bead with a you know, to pattern it or to
(21:19):
shoot it accurately. With a turkey load, you look down
the vent vented rib, you make a real flat plane,
and then that bead sits on top of it, and
you basically but put that bead just under the bull's eye.
That way you can still it's called a six o'clock hold.
That way, you can still see what you're aiming at.
If you're trying different turkey loads and different chokes and
(21:44):
whatever you ordy, let's just say you go and buy
one turkey choke, and you buy a turkey load, you
come back home, you start shooting it. And if you
aim it just like that also, and maybe your pattern's
hitting low and left by eight or ten inches at
forty yards happens often. I've done enough patterning of turkey
loads to see that it can be off well with
(22:06):
the traditional bead and vented rib. There's no adjustment. There's
nothing you can There's nothing you can do other than
try different loads or different chokes or the combination of
the red dot would allow you to just adjust the
red dot position to dead center just like you're just
(22:27):
like you'd be adjusting as you know, a scope for
a rifle, and you know, put yourself dead dead nuts
on bulls eye. So that's a huge plus for me
because you know, just depending on how picky your shotgun
might be or the choke is, it could take you.
(22:48):
You know, especially with the price of AMMO these days,
it could take you hundreds of dollars to get dialed in.
Where if you had this couple hundred dollars red dot site,
it's like you shoot once or twice and you're like, oh,
I low left, you would just adjust the sight and
your spot on. That's where I see like the big
advantage with it. I got a new shotgun for ducks
(23:11):
this year, and I was having a hell of a time.
I kept shooting under him and I'm like, what in
the hell, And I think some of it is I
through high school, I shot trap shooting, and new my
trap gun. I have a rear bead front bead, and
the way you do that is you stack one on
top of the other, and then your clay is supposed
to be above that. I think I was so used
(23:33):
to that I was just shooting, kept shooting under him
because I wanted to see it. And I think my
shotguns patterning low, and so I have to like completely
cover the bird up when I shoot to hit it.
And so just like from Turkey, from a Turkey standpoint,
I feel like me throwing a red dot on that
it would let me. I could just side it in
(23:54):
kind of like a gun and then I wouldn't have
to worry about it. Guessing I've never shot waterfoul with
a red dot. You have to ask a shotgunner if
that's okay or not. Yeah, but yeah, if it works
for you, why not? Yeah? Yeah, So I wanna we
have another question. I want to roll through it real
quick because we got a ton. What calls do you
(24:18):
suggest getting for a beginner. I'm a new hunter and
there are so many options. That is from Megan Timmers
on Instagram. Um, I would say one for me. It
would be like crow call for locating. I used to
locate just with a regular call, and that bit me
a few times. Um, so I got a crow call,
and then I think like a slate or a box
(24:41):
call as far as like a hand call goes, I
personally like the sound of a slate over a box.
And then like after that, if you I feel like
a diaphragm calls, I usually just get a three pack m.
Like I think right now, I just have like the
meat eater Phelps three pack. It's like a good range
(25:02):
of sounds. And also sometimes like you know your call, Yannie,
I might have to it might just not fit me
very well as far as like how much air you
gotta blow through it or whatever. I think it's just
different for everybody, so being able to kind of pick
and choose those and then like, but I think as
(25:24):
far as a diaphragm call goes, if you've never used
a diaphragm call, like I don't think you have to
use one, and if you don't want to, if you
do want to, Phelps makes one's called an easy clucker
that's just like simple, clean, easy to use. To be
honest with you, I posted like a couple days ago,
I posted a reel of Leah shooting at Turkey with
(25:47):
her bow and I called I got in a pissing
match with that hen and got her to pull the
whole group to us. And I did that with an
amp elk reed. So there's there's options, I guess as
far as diaphragm calls go. But that's what I would do.
(26:07):
I would keep it simple. I would get like a
slate or a box kind of whatever and then get
a few different reads. But um, I don't know, keep
it simple. It's very easy to go overboard with turkey calls,
and as Megan mentioned, there's just so many options. I
was just this last week and I was at the
National Wild Turkey Federation Annual Convention, and it's insane the
(26:31):
amount of calls that are available to you there. I
would say this is my personal experience, and most I
use my wife as the example of this. But the
first time she ever went solo turkey hunting, I literally
just sent her out with a cheap fifteen twenty dollars
slate and a couple of pegs, and she got into
(26:52):
a couple you know, setups with gobblers and and I
don't she hadn't spent more than twenty minute. It's practicing
on this slate, so I feel out of all the friction.
I mean, you do have those calls that are like
I think they're called cackle boxes or something like that,
where you literally just push a little peg and there's
(27:12):
some sort of thing that creates friction on the inside
and it makes a yelp. You can go that route.
That's probably the easiest, but I think a slate call
is not that much harder. Another thing I'll say too,
why pot versus box is I got to watch some
of the Grand National Championships for calling at this convention.
(27:32):
I didn't get to stay for all of it, but
I think I was told that not a single competitor
uses a box call. They all use pot calls, whether
it's slate, crystal, because you can just get that much
more realistic with that call versus the box. One last
(27:53):
thing on the reads. Spend the money on good Reads,
whether it's Phelps wood Haven, there's I can't There's so
many good custom calls out there that are made here
in the United States, that are being stretched and made
by people that know how to do this, and so
(28:13):
the quality control is so much better than if you
go with I'm not going to mention any names, but
like the really big box store type brands, because they're
not being made here, They're being made in factories wherever,
somewhere overseas that they're just not being hand tuned, hand
stretched and just dialed in as much as an elk
(28:37):
hunner as an el khunning guide. I used to sometimes
buy twenty calls in August and start rotating them through
just to get four or five good ones. I would
just say, don't be afraid to spend the extra. I mean,
it's literally a dollar or two more from getting the
super quality stuff versus something that's just not as consistent,
(28:59):
like you'll you'll still get good calls from these bigger companies,
but not everyone is good. I feel like with the
smaller call companies you can trust them more that everyone
should be good. Yeah, got it, good good points. Um sweet,
Thanks everybody for the questions. If you have a question
you'd like to send in on anything, send it to
(29:20):
gear talk at the meter dot com and we'll try
to get an answered for you or our instagrams. I suppose,
um sweet, take a quick break, and then when we
come back, we're gonna talk about be honest. Is turkey
gear list all right, we are going to go through
(29:46):
Yanni's turkey gear list. Turkey seasons coming right up, and
uh yeah, what do you have coming up for turkeys? Um? Actually,
maybe even by the time this air is I'll be
in Florida hunting it an Osciola turkey with my buddy
Steve Ornella. He and I have been putting in I
think it took us four years to draw these tags.
(30:09):
Now you can buy plenty of over the counter turkey
tags in Florida, but they have certain WMA's and I'm
not someone else is helping us out with this, so
I haven't dove in. I don't know all of the details,
but basically the gist of it is is that we
have a zone that we can hunt that we applied
for four years to get. We're gonna be able to
(30:31):
hunt there, and there's gonna be other hunters, but many
less much less pressure. And for me, I'm traveling from
Montana to Florida, it was totally worth it to apply,
wait and get this better opportunity than to, you know,
just go down there three years ago on the over
the counter and maybe just get frustrated and have so
(30:54):
much more pressure to deal with. So I'm stalked on
the opportunity to get an osciola. I'm not a huge
slam collector type of person, but I do like the
idea of every spring, just because I like to travel
and see new places, like going to a new state
to try to hunt a turkey. Right, and even if
(31:15):
I didn't kill in a forty nine states, if I
could say that I hunted turkeys in forty nine states
by the time I die, like, that's a pretty cool thing,
you know. It's it's It's great about turkey hunting is
that it is available in forty nine states, which makes
it available to just about everybody. I know that it's
hard to get into turkey hunting because there is all
(31:35):
this stuff calling gear YadA, YadA, YadA. So there is
that barrier. But I think it's cool how there's a
very low barrier in the fact that most people, I
would say, don't even have to drive more than an
hour maybe to define a turkey. That's my only out
of state I think. Other than that, I'll be pretty
(31:56):
much hunting Montana. Sweet. Let's yeah, let's get in your list.
So first thing like vast backpack, like the million dollar
question for a lot of people. Yep. I used to
be a backpack only guy, and that's because I think
I was just a Western backpack type hunter always. It
(32:18):
was just easy because that's what I had. So I
just figured, off, I'm gonna go Jurkey, Honey, I'll just
stow my stuff in my backpack because I like a
butt pad. I like about pad that's attached to me
that's easily deployable. I have definitely started going more and
more vest. It keeps everything organized. I know where everything's at.
(32:43):
Most turkey hunts are a couple hour hunts, let alone
what you would call a full day hunt. These days,
I think the only reason I would really go with
the backpack and say, oh I need that is because
I'm thinking, Okay, I am for sure hike five miles
before I even get to the turkeys. I need to
(33:04):
carry all this stuff. I know I'm carrying lunch, there
might be inclement weather. I need to carry extra gear
for that. I really got to be prepared, and I
want the comfort of a backpack to carry that load,
because the big downfall is when you load down a
turkey vest, you're gonna feel that weight on your shoulders
after a couple of miles. Right. But again, I've become
(33:29):
a vest guy because I've realized that I can even
if I'm going we have a spot that we hunt
that it is probably two miles each direction to go
get to these turkeys. It's very worth it. Every time
we walk in there somebody kills a gobbler. At least
we get a shot at a gobbler. And even that hunt,
I can pack enough water, you know, a couple leaders
(33:50):
and pack a decoy if I want in my vest.
And sure I'm a little bit overloaded. But again, when
the hunt starts and I'm running and going and I
need to PLoP down real quick and start working a bird.
I sure. Do you like having that butt pad to
sit down on? And I like having all my calls organized.
I know where everything is, it's there. Um have you
(34:14):
used a chest rig? I have? Um? In general? Like
I obviously I love carrying my binoculars in a in
a bino harness turkey hunting. Yeah, just it wasn't for me. Um.
Some people love it for the minimalist approach. Yeah yeah,
I'm one of those for sure, especially in an out
of vehicle. A lot our hunts so short and a
(34:37):
lot of times I'm guiding, so it's just kind of
a I don't have as much stuff to carry, so
um yeah, it's been a good option for me. Um
are you a decoy guy? Uh? Yes and no. Yeah, yeah,
I'm one of those for sure, especially in an out
of vehicle. A lot our hunts so short and a
(34:57):
lot of times I'm guiding, so it's just kind of
a I don't have as much stuff to carry, so
um yeah, it's been a good option for me. Um
are you a decoy guy? Uh? Yes and no. I
got a lot of thoughts on decoys. They work, not
all the time, but they work. But a lot of
(35:17):
times when if I'm just purely running solo, I'm probably
gonna leave all decoys behind and just say I'm either
gonna fool you with my call or I'm not gonna
get you. And that's what it's gonna come down to. Now,
if I'm back in the Midwest and I'm limited to
you know, one hundred acre two hundred acres of of
(35:38):
farm that I can hunt you, I know I'm not
gonna walk that far, So why not having with me?
You don't have to set them out, but you can't,
right um, and a lot of times, you know, on
those farms, you're hunting bigger fields, so you still have
to call them into at least the range where they
can see the decoy. And then after that, once they
see the decoy, if it's gonna work, they kind of
(36:00):
takes over. Right. You don't have to call at all anymore.
They've seen the decoy. It's it's made them think something
and they're gonna come in either to breed it, to
fight it, to you know, show off to it, whatever
it might be. Um, or they're going to run away
like when I got yeah yeah, or one at a
(36:21):
one time every season they're just gonna bout face and
be like yep, seeing that one already and and take off.
So um yeah, that's that's what I have. You know
what I have them gonna try this year is I
have some collapsible bull on fold up collapsible decoys from
Montana Decoy. And they're actually three D. They're not two
(36:44):
D silhouette type decos with the picture. They're actually three
D and they have what seems to be like some
sort of a spring on the inside, and they sit
on a stake, you know, just like a other other decoys,
but much smaller, much easier to pass. So I'm definitely
gonna put some of those to use. When you see them,
(37:05):
compared to a Dave Smith's decoy, they're not It's just
not the same thing at all. But again, sometimes in
Montana we're hunting birds that have maybe never seen a decoy,
and so you know, anything might work. Yeah, I'm gonna
try those exactly. Yeah, or they see the redhead or
(37:25):
they see that, you know, shine glimmer of the turkey's feathers,
whatever it is, but it's enough to to tip them. Sweet.
What about clothing wise? What do you what do you
think in like Florida is going to be like Hodder
in Hell? Oh my gosh, Yeah I thought that since
we're going first to March, I was expecting seventies. Max. Well, no,
(37:50):
like it's still too far out to actually see the
day that we can get there. But right now that
three days approaching, our hunting dates are nineties, and I'm
sure it's gonna be humid. So yeah, I'm gonna go
from negative ten and snowy here to ninety. There'll be
one hundred degrees swing and it'll be a shock to
(38:12):
say the least. So first, I has new hot weather
gear coming out. It's still a little ways out, so
I'm gonna be using that. Now that being said, I
still am going to bring another set of clothes for
in case it gets cold, because the last time I
hunted down there, I wasn't hunting, but I was helping
(38:34):
Steve film the show. We got down there, didn't bring
any clothes because we thought it was Florida. Who needs
clothes for hunting turkeys? Down there? It was so cold
we were using socks for gloves and put in wrapping
socks around our necks forget net Gators like humid cold, Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
(38:55):
humidity is no good if it's cold or hot. Um.
So I'm gonna bringing down snake boots for the Florida
trip in. They're gonna be hot, but it's you know,
extra percrush, and I know a lot of people who
don't run with it, but I figure, why not. I
can deal with some hot feet for a couple of days.
You know. Again, clothing for Western hunting, it's gonna be
(39:18):
very similar to Western big game. It's gonna be layers,
you know. I like my wick base layer. Then I
wear the klamath fleece, and then I have a saw
tooth vest and that's enough just to keep my core
warm enough. I might have a beanie in there to
throw on if I need to add a little extra warmth.
That's enough to get me through that first hour. And
(39:39):
what I like about the vest, I'm not a huge
best guy, but in this particular scenario, I really like
it because when I take it off, it's small enough
that I can roll it up, stick it in my
turkey vest in the back pouch there, and I don't
feel like I'm lugging around a big puffy jacket or
something that just takes up a lot more room. Very
(40:00):
for me. I have a special pocket. It's actually a
water bottle pocket that I usually use for my face
mask and my lightweight pair of gloves. I just have
a special pocket where that stuff always goes into. As
soon as it hunts over i'm taking it off, I'm
putting it in there, you know. And that's the way
it's It's just always there. It's always in my vest,
and it's so so important because gosh, if I ever
(40:23):
get caught with no face mask, I just feel like
it one hundred yards they're gonna look over there on
the tree line and go, I see you glimmering sign um.
I think, like for mountain hunting, Like you're just wearing
the same boots, just like clothing. Like you're wearing the
same boots that you're wearing for like elk and deer
(40:43):
hunting and things. Are you a rubber boots guy? Uh?
Depends on the train. Obviously out West is a lot
more drier terrain, So it doesn't seem like I ever
really need rubber boots here unless i know for a
fact I've got some ditch or creek to cross, or
maybe I'm going to access the spot by walking up.
(41:05):
Like we've got a little spot that we hunt where
we'll kind of park and then actually walk right along
the bank of a river and sometimes even in the
river to stay hidden and stay below the bank until
we can get up to where we want to set up,
because we end up being real close to the roost
in this spot. So something like that. But usually I'm
wearing rubbers when I'm hunting the Midwest, where it's a
(41:27):
you know, frosty, dewey morning, And again I'm not walking
far because I'm only I'm limited to whatever it might be,
you know, hundred acres, a couple hundred acres just not
going to get that many miles in and not that
you can't do it these days in rubber boots that
they've gotten so much better. But you know, they get
(41:48):
sweaty compared to a pair of leather boots. But again,
I'd rather keep I'd rather be a little bit sweaty
and keep those feet dry then get them to get
them just super soaked from the morning dew and the frost.
So yeah, I do. I do like rubbers in that uh,
in that sense. They're so light now like those new
(42:08):
uh what are they called arrow sport? I think ero form,
I think arrowhead sport. That's it. Um, they're so light.
Um it's like walking around in a pair of crocs,
you know, except you've got knee high boots on. Yea, yeah,
that's my boot set up. Sweet. One reason I like
(42:29):
those late or those uh like rubber boots. It's a
lot of times I've got a set of those arrowhead
sports coming that are like the I think on they
say that they're for cold, they're insulated, they're supposed to
be like for negative fifty to forty degrees or something
like that. Um, insulation wise is what they're supposed to
be good for. And like where we're at short distance
(42:51):
walking in and then you're sitting in the morning, like,
it just seems like those rubber boots keep your feet warmer,
especially if they're insulated over like longer than insulated even
leather boots or something. So that's my big because those
those big lacrosses are like sixteen hundred grams or something
(43:12):
like that. Yeah, and as long as you can, as
long as you can keep your feet from sweating too
much on the way in, uh, it's not an issue
at all. And if they do sweat up, all you
gotta do, and I do this often for tree stand
hunting white tails, is I'll just bring an extra pair
of socks. Like I'll go in wearing a thin pair
of socks. I know they're gonna get a little bit
sweaty damp in there. When I get to the tree stand,
(43:35):
I just swap out my socks real quick and put
on some nice thick wool socks and I'm snug as
a bug up there. Love it. Hey. Yeah, Um, another
question we got a ton on I put a little
questionnaire out on the Instagram to gather questions, and one
we got a lot of that I thought we'd just
cover now is like what shells are using for turkeys
(43:55):
because you can really go crazy and spend a lot
of money on turkeys else. Yep, one hundred percent. And
here's my take on it. When TSS first came out,
a buddy of mine was actually starting to handload him
and he was starting to do number nine in twenty
gage and we were like, what, that's crazy. But the
(44:15):
more I learned about it, and when I learned that
like a nine has more energy at one hundred yards
than like a four lead at fifty or something like that,
those numbers are off a little bit. It's approximate, but
there's they're so dense, so heavy, so much energy, you
get amazing penetration. It was like, okay, I'm gonna go
(44:37):
that route too. Well. He was like, sure, I'll load
you up some and then and then I didn't have
that hookup anymore and had to go buy some and
I was like, holy moy, fifty dollars you know for
a box. And now, I mean, I think I think
that you can there's some federal TSS out there that
if you go you know, three and a half inches
for a twelve gage. You can be up to like
(44:59):
seventy five for a box for five of them, which
is a lot for five shots, which for hunting is
not that big of a deal because usually you're gonna
shoot once, maybe twice. But it's the patterning that like
really starts to burn, you know. But I'll be very
I'll be very clear here, transparent. I bought many boxes
(45:23):
of TSS before we started working with Federal. I started
getting the stuff for free. If I had to go
back to paying for it, I probably still will. But
I want to put it out there that if it's
the difference for you of going hunting or not, if
you can't afford it, go hunting with some cheap or stuff,
by all means absolutely, I am gonna Yeah, I'll probably
(45:47):
shoot nine or seven nine blend. I'm shooting a new
gun this year, Bretta a three hundred. I'm going twenty gage.
My same mentor that was shooting those number nine you know,
fifteen years ago, loading them up by hand. He's been
shooting a I believe he shoots an M two Banelli
(46:09):
with twenty gauge, and it's just with these new loads.
It's all the gun you need to kill all the
turkey out to the same distances that you can do
it with a twelve gauge. And what's nice about turkey
hunting and carrying these twenty gauges is that, like I said,
you're only shooting once normally maybe twice a day, right,
(46:31):
most of the time you're just carrying that gun around. Um,
So why not carry out something that's way easier to carry.
Like I'm looking forward to when when somebody makes a
twenty eight gauge turkey gun and we start in twenty
eight gauge turkey shells are available. Obviously, the four ten
is a big thing. I personally haven't done it yet.
(46:52):
My kids hopefully this year are going to get into
it and shoot turkeys with with the four ten. But anyways, yeah,
I'm going twenty I'm gonna mount the Venom red dot
on it. I'm gonna have a especially made four TSS
Carlson's turkey choke in there. I think it's gonna be
(47:14):
a pretty sweet little setup. Sweet one thing I wanted
to ask you about his blinds. It's one thing you
don't have in here, and a lot of people associate
turkey hunting with Papa blind h. I own one Robert Abernathy.
I think it's called the Doghouse by a Marastep. I
bought it years ago. I thought, Man, that's gonna be.
(47:35):
This is gonna be the ticket for my kids to
help them see the turkey show. But again, Montana, we're
just covering so much ground. Sometimes you don't know exactly
where they're gonna be. It's not like, oh, yeah, they're
in this field six out of seven days of the week. Right,
It's not that regular. And so I realized here at
(47:56):
least it's hard to get into one because they're just
getting bored and I'm not bringing the tablet or the
or letting them just sit there on the phone while
while we're waiting out the turkeys. So UM, I personally
have not spent much time in the blind. I think
if I was more into shooting turkeys with the boat,
I probably I probably would be, because you know, you
(48:19):
just need that more perfect setup, right, haven't come into
decoys staying there long enough and then the blind gives
you the cover to draw and get it get a
good shot off. So yeah, I haven't used them much.
Nothing against um if you like using them. But for me,
every time I step into a blind, it happens every
(48:42):
now and then deer hunting, it's like I just feel
like I'm missing out, Like it just seems like it
removes me from nature so much. And again, look if
it's like like I use it this year for deer
hunting with my daughter because it was hovering around zero,
We're hunting ridgetops in Wisconsin and the wind's blowing and
(49:05):
sitting out in the elements was just going to cut
our hunts way way shorter with a full wee. Don't
I forget. My dad just brought me the blind. I
can't tell you who made it, but the blind with
a little mister buddy heater in there. And it took
my daughter exactly five minutes to be back asleep once
(49:26):
we would get into the blind, which is fine, she's
out there, she's doing it with me. If if she
gets woken up with the sound of a gunshot, it's
the way it is. Um, But it got us out
there and it was able. We were able to stay
out there in the in that situation, in those weather conditions.
So um there, it's it's totally great. But if it's
(49:48):
the way if the weather is not nice and all
I have to do is conceal myself. I figured I
can do just as good of a job just sitting
still or getting up in a tree, even building just
a brush blind because I just I miss it. Just
seems like you're gonna miss birds flying by, or the
sound of birds, or you know, you just don't see
(50:08):
three sixty degrees out of those blinds, and maybe something
you know walks behind me at fifty sixty yards and
you don't hear it because the windows are shut or
whatever it might be. So in the right situation, if
it's gonna mean me staying out or not, I'm using one.
But I air on not sitting in a blind. Yeah, yeah, valid, man.
(50:31):
We use them a lot for like, especially with the
outfit and just the way that we run things. Even
with deer hunts, we use a lot of blinds. We've
gotten a lot of questions on blinds, and so I
think that I'll be doing some like I'll just keep
trying some more and be able to like kind of
update people on that. In short over the last man
(50:55):
seven years at least, I'm approaching maybe ten now. Just
seems like the double bulls. They're they're the ones that
stick around the longest. Um With like weather, we get
hillacious wins that just like break poles and do all
kinds of crazy shit with blinds, it just seems like
the double bulls are the ones that, um, I have
(51:17):
that I've had the longest. So I just wanted to
toss that out there. Um I didn't want to completely
leave people hanging with their questions that they put in,
So I think that that's a that's worth them to
spend like a little bit of the extra money to
go with something like that over you know, something that
could be one hundred dollars one hundred and fifty dollars cheaper.
(51:39):
But I am still going to keep like getting different
blinds and try to test them out and keep everybody
updated as much as I can. But uh, yeah, good list,
thank you. I had to write it while I was
packing for Florida, so hopefully that helped me make sure
I have everything and don't forget something behind. Something that's
(51:59):
a good turkey vest item too. I'd like to mention
is how I carry water. I use a thing called
a platypus bottle, and it's basically like a collapsible plastic bottle.
But what's nice about it is it's not it's not hard,
so especially since it's against your back and a lot
(52:19):
of times you're sitting down in the leaning against a tree,
you're not that Analogene or even like a plastic water
bottle of any kind can sort of be uncomfortable and
cause just a pressure point where this platypus is sort
of flatter and just kind of more flexible and tough.
I mean, I've had one for probably coming on two
decades that I wear like, I have it in my
(52:42):
ski jacket, like I just ride around with half a
lead a bottle and you need some water to drink,
and so they last. And I've never busted one by
leaning against it or anything. So it's it fits into
a turkey vest very nicely. You don't have to worry
about sitting against a tree and then having some hard
water bottle pushing into your back as you're trying to
(53:03):
work a bird. Hmm. Yeah, good points. As we wrap
up here, I want to plug you just had a
Mountain Lion episode come out. Yeah, that's right, go check
it out on Meeter's YouTube channel. Jake Gribb who's been
my main hunting mentor and Mingus's main hunt hound hunting
mentor over the last three years. We go hunting northwest Montana,
(53:29):
looking mostly for lions. We luck out and find the
track of a giant bobcat. Check out that episode and
see how it all unfolds on YouTube, and then I think,
right on the heels, it's probably gonna be out by
this time this episode airs is there's a Texas hog
(53:49):
episode where I go archery hunting with Troy Fowler, who
some of you know as the ranch Ferry, And so
we kill some pigs and we netcrop seat some pigs
to see what our arrows and broadheads did going through
these pigs. Very interesting stuff. Definitely tune in to check
(54:11):
that one out. Yeah, excited to watch it. Um all right, sweet, Well,
if you have any more questions, you can send them
into gear talk at the meat eater dot com. You
can get hold of us on our instagrams. Mine's Jordan
dot Bud. Your's is is it? Underscore patel Us. That's
really honest, Underscore patel Us. Yeah, and then uh yeah.
(54:32):
And then as these episodes roll, you can go to
the meat eater dot com and find the gear Talk
under the podcast show tab and click on the specific
episode you want to comment on. You scroll down to
the bottom and comment on it. And we've been getting
back to people and uh yeah, getting your questions answered
and getting them written down to do future Q and
(54:54):
A episodes. So with that, what I realized the other
day eight. What I realized the other day too, is
that when you go to the page, like like Jordan said,
you go to the main meter website page, you go
hit podcasts, you find gear Talk, and then right at
the top it says gear Talk and then it says
(55:15):
like the latest one is episode nine DWR and gear Cleaning,
and then underneath that you can click right there and
it'll bring you down into the comment section. And I
found that's the easiest way to get right to the
comments and participate. So yeah, we appreciate everybody that does comment,
that sends any emails or d ms us. I apologize
(55:38):
if I don't get back to your DM as fast
as you like. There's a lot of them. Sweet Well,
thanks Joannie, good luck down in Florida, and yeah, thank you.
See everybody on the next episode that's right, get out
there and go hunting. See yeah,
Welcome back to another episode of gear Talk. I'm here
be honest to tell us co host Jordan Bud Jordan,
I don't know how it is for you right now,
but here in Boza, Montana, it's negative ten and blowing
a gale. Not a nice day to be outside. No, man,
Boise is pretty nice. Actually, it's basically springtime here. You
(00:39):
wind down towards the end of February and it starts
getting real nice, like no snow on the ground. It's
getting starting to get kind of patchy in the trees,
like little tree tops are starting to stick up, and
you gotta start being careful. But yeah, I hear it's
I mean like Nebraska where the ranch is man, they've
been getting hammered since Samila to December. You. I've been
(01:01):
hearing that from my buddy that's over there in the
pine ridge too, and he says it's it's it's deep
and it's been a real winter this year. Yeah. Yeah.
My dad's like, from my predictions, we're gonna have snow
drifts in May. So well, you know what, I'd rather
have snow drifts and in May and have the snow
(01:21):
now in February rather than get a blizzard in May.
Once May it's here, I want it to be springtime
and looking into summer. I don't want to deal with
shelve and snow anymore in May, but I'll shovel snow
in February. Yeah, I don't blame yet. What else you've
been up to? Hello, man Um, Just been hiking. Been
(01:41):
trying a munch new packs, which has been really fun,
some new boots. It's been fun, like just going out
in looking at deer and elk and stuff on the
Winter Range. I like just like hitting hiking trails and
then glass and for him, it's fun to just watch him,
you know, then observe animals and such. Been shooting some
(02:03):
new content for some new First Light items that have
been coming out. The new furnace hoodie just launched that
you know, I've both been wearing for probably it's been
a couple of years now. I had that thing when
Steve came out, really yeah, that was like one of
the first ones. Yeah, So that thing just came out
with the new color Terra. So I've been out shooting
(02:24):
some content with that and I've been trying to get
into the snow to like show off some of this
new stuff coming out for late season, and it's been
kind of hard to find snow falling. It looks really
nice outside my pictures, um man, I was it was funny. Well,
it was kind of not funny at the time, but
I was out the other day and I drove up
(02:44):
this road that's like, you know, it's typical springtime, like
things are starting to melt and seem like maybe there
the roads are better than they are, but there's still
some snow around. So I like pushed it a little
bit when down this road I price shouldn't have went down,
and by the time I was like, yeah, I think
I should turn around. I got to a trailhead and
(03:06):
the parking lot was full of snow, but some other
people had turned around in it, and I actually got
out and went and like walked out in it, and
it seemed pretty powdery to me, so I'm like, all right, well,
I'm gonna give her hell. And I went to turn
around and like it had snowed. You know, it's just
like snow on top of snow on top of snow,
so there's like super hard spots and then there's spots
(03:28):
that are like powder. And I went around and hit
one of those hard spots and yeah, right, like I've
got good tires on my pickup two and like I
was just spinning. So I shoveled myself out a couple
of times, made it a little ways, and I just
kept hitting hard snow. And in the parking lot there's
this nice big Forest Service sign and it has huge
(03:54):
like you know, they're like corner posts, like really big posts.
I was like, you know, I have a winch on
my pickup and I could probably reach it from here.
So I had a toe strap. I put it around
the bottom of the sign posts. I hooked it to
my winch. Dude, winch myself right out of that thing.
It was like the best I thought. This thing just
paid for itself. Yeah, all it takes is getting unstuck
(04:17):
one time with your gear, whatever it is, whether it's
a winch, chains, those traction boards, a shovel that just
seems to just take up room in the back of
the truck. When you're in that moment, it is so worthwhile.
But I'm impressed at that sign. I thought the story
was gonna go that you tore down the Forest Service sign.
Now you owed the US government, all of us taxpayers
(04:38):
a little bit of money. No, I had this thought
of if it broke, it was gonna like come flying
back through my windshield. Like that did cross my mind
one time. But I'm like, well, I'm like way back here,
I don't have service. I had my in reach, but
like Leah's at work, can't leave till the eve if
(05:00):
she could even you know, come get me. So it
was kind of trying that or just sitting there for
a while. But gosh, I just like I would dig out,
make it just a little ways, and like I wasn't
even like nothing was really like touching the pumpkin or anything.
It was just like that hard snow gets so packed
(05:21):
down and it's basically like ice, you just like can't move. Yeah,
so frustrating. Do you carry chains, dude, I No, I didn't.
Usually I do. I didn't this year. Usually you can
like go to lush Swab and get a set of
chains and then if you don't use them, you can
take them back at summer or whatever. But I just
(05:41):
didn't do that this year because I was like, oh,
I mean all of our hunts are pretty much all
of our hunts are over. So I didn't do that,
and I should have clearly. Oh yeah, man. I remember
even at the beginning of this line hunting season in
December sometime, I was like, you know, it's probably a
good idea to throw the chains in, And it wasn't
a week later. I wasn't even lion hunting. I was
(06:03):
just going to take the trash out, and I have
my daughter in the truck with me, and it just happens.
Where we drop our trash is there's some dumpsters that
we pay for, and it's the way from the house
and the area by it, like the parking lot. I
don't know who maintains it. I don't know what the
deal is over there, but anyways, it was you could
I could see ahead of me someone had just snowed
(06:25):
a bunch, was like one of our big first storms,
and I could see tracks ahead of me. I'm like, well,
someone else drove in here. I can get in and out,
you know, And I just started, you know, kind of going,
and then as soon as I got past the last
driveway and kind of got into this more parking lot zone.
It's got a little slope to it, and all of
a sudden, my daughter's like, why are we moving sideways?
(06:47):
I'm like, yeah, pretty much like, as soon as my
wheel stopped spinning, work's gonna be stuck. So I hope
you got something to occupy your mind while I dig
ourselves out. And it was literally, like I said, a
week after, I had decided to put chains in and
the shovel, and I tell you what, it's kind of
amazing because I was in it was solid, knee deep,
(07:09):
you know, eighteen inches are more bogged just completely bogged down.
You could have shoveled a path all the way back
to the stuff that had been packed down, but that
would have taken me hours, and even getting another rig
in there to pull me would have been tricky. But
I threw those chains on my rear wheels and there
(07:29):
was no big deal. It just turns your truck into
like a little tank and just jam it and it
goes slow, but it just, you know, and pushed right
out of there. We dumped our trash and we were
had to take the chains off and we were on
our way. But yeah, multiple times this slide hunting season,
I want to say I've chained up because I've been
stuck I don't know half dozen times. A lot of
(07:51):
times I'm pulling my trailer with my snowmobile, and it
gets a little extra sticky because you're not just trying
to get your truck unstuck, you also have to do
that and then pull your you know, trailer out of there,
which it's not super heavy because you know, the snowbill
doesn't wait that much, but it's heavy enough where I
can't pick up the tongue by myself on that trailer,
(08:14):
you know. But anyways, I've been meaning to pick up
some of those traction boards too. I would try those. Yeah,
those seem like an especially if it's just a short
spot that you're stuck in or you don't have to
get far to get back onto level ground or dry
ground or whatever it is. Like chains take a little
a minute, you know, But if you could just jam
(08:34):
a traction board in there, one on each side, and
then make it the three feet and then maybe reposition
them and do it again, and all of a sudden
you're out and you just throw those traction boards back in.
And I think it could be just a little bit faster.
But my new bumper on my Tundra, I put a
coastal off road bumper on there after I smacked the
last time I smashed a deer. I just decided to
(08:55):
go big bumper that would hopefully protect my headlights next
time I hit it year And it's got a spot
for a winch, and you maybe just have just talked
me into it. Okay, Hey, before we go on, I
got a question about the furnace hoodie. Where are you
finding use for that thing in your outdoor life for
(09:16):
like a hunting application. M I use it a ton
when I was guiding in Nebraska because it's like it's
basically for me, it would replace like the Klamath hoodie
or something like that. It's definitely a warmer than like
a Klamath, so like a mid layer for Midwest type
hunting where you're like in and out of the vehicle
(09:38):
a lot. It's super cold temperatures like we were dealing
with late November December, like cold wind, like snow. That's
where I've seen like the most application for it. I
think like during Turkey season it's going to be an
option for me too as a midd layer where I'm
not moving as fast usually, but yeah, yeah, as fast
(10:00):
as far. I think that's uh, that's the place for
that thing, right because it's just it is so warm
that you if you're playing on hiking, you know, even
close to a mile. I think that yeah, for static
type hunting and in cold conditions, but you're in and out, yeah,
tree stands in and out of the truck a lot,
you know, getting dropped off at a tree standard a
(10:21):
blind where you're not gonna you know, get too to
heat it up. That's where that piece is really gonna shine.
And obviously that hood us as thick as the rest
of it. So you throw it on and covers your neck.
It's the breeze off your neck and it's like having
a loose beanie on your head insulating you. So yeah,
(10:41):
and it's got those couple of little buttons that like
can tighten up around your collar a little bit. Um,
I've thought those were nice. I've seen a couple of
comments of people wondering about that, but um, I've liked
that better than like having, you know, on a regular hoodie,
having the danglies own. Oh yeah. The first thing I
do when I get a new hoodie is I pulled
(11:03):
the string out. Yeah, get it out of there. Okay. Um.
Last no two episodes ago, we had Heidi Alan from
Nick wax On. We talked about uh DWR. How to
get your DWR back in action, basically just how to
We talked gear care, garment care. We also talked about
(11:26):
how to care for your boots and get the most
out of it. UM. I hope that most of you
now listening or washing your at least your outerwear more
often than you did. But quite a few people wrote
in asking if the TX direct washing type DWR revitalizers,
(11:49):
if they do that to the outside, are they then
not also putting that same sort of coating or layer
on the inside of your jacket would then diminish or
inhibit the breathability of the jacket. It's a great question.
I should have thought about shut thought of it during
the podcast. Heidi responded and sets it does not affect
(12:14):
the breathability the water repellent elastomers cling to the fibers
that can absorb water, I e. Won't coat the inside
or clog up the membrane. She goes on to say
the only time I would say not to use a
washing waterproofer is if the garment has a moisture wicking liner.
(12:35):
You wouldn't want to waterproof that or it would repel
instead of wick. So if your garment has a like
a fleecy liner, right, so probably a lot of soft shells.
Even though there's DWR on the outside, they have like
a fleecy garment on the inside. That's that's supposed to
(12:55):
help wick you know, moisture away from you. Right, That's
not something that you want to do with it with
like a washing product. You just want to spray the outside. Um.
So I hope that answers that question for everybody. Ye.
Next up, Yeah, we're gonna roll through some listener questions. Yeah,
what's the first one? So this from Instagram curs Parts
(13:20):
Unknown says our red dot's worth the upgrade from a
bead or true glow style barrel site. This is all
Yanni because you haven't used a red dot yet. You haven't. No,
no, no no, a shotgun. Um. I absolutely love it, but
there's a caveat or maybe a little explaining I need
to do because there's some that I like better than others.
(13:43):
I ran the Vortex Venom for two full seasons, maybe
even three, at least the twenty twenty and twenty twenty
one Turkey season. I was running Vortex Venom and it's
a very open red dots, all low profile. It literally
just looks like a one inch by one inch This
(14:04):
is very simple description, but a one inch by one
inch glass plate. It's vertical. There's a projection of a
red dot on there. I like it because it's a
very open field of view and the and the frame
around the glass. It's not thick, so you don't lose
sort of any like peripheral vision, like when you're looking
(14:27):
down through it or around it. It's very easy to
stay on top of the turkey. You're not losing anything.
Last year I went to the Spark Solar, which the
reason I wanted to try it is because the battery
life I think is something like five times longer. I
think that the Venom is approximately thirty thousand hours and
(14:49):
the Spark Solar is one hundred and fifty thousand hours.
Because when it is available, it'll use solar power. It
doesn't charge your battery but with solar, so if sun
is available, it'll basically use that to run the red dot.
So you're just extending the life of the battery that
much more. Like I said, fivefold, great idea, because there
(15:10):
was the one drawbat with the red dot is if
you don't stay on top of it and don't change.
If you change your battery at the beginning of every season,
no matter how many hunts you go on turkey hunt
in that season, if you hunted every day, I don't
think you'd ever wear out a set of batteries. So
that's my program. Now Turkey Hunty season is about to start.
I'm just gonna throw in some fresh batteries. I'll be
(15:30):
good one time. I seriously, even that morning I had
checked it, it was still working. It was good. My
wife and I got into a mid morning, late morning
gobbler and I was trying to get her to shoot it.
It just didn't happen. That turkey didn't come out where
we thought it was going to come out. I had
the opportunity and I drew on it and no red dot.
(15:52):
I panic, and I press buttons, no red dot, no
red dot, And eventually I couldn't say. I thought, well,
I'd just center his head in this little in my
frame and pull the trigger. Nope, missed him. He flew
flew away. So there are there are drawbacks like that.
Right if you mess up and your batteries aren't fresh,
(16:14):
you could have that happen to you. Um back to
the spark solar. That thing sits higher off of the
receiver than the vortex venom um. We all know a shotguns,
when you're aiming at a turkey, if you if you're
not down on your stock and bearing down and looking down,
(16:37):
especially if you're just shooting a regular bead, if you're
not looking right down the plane of your rib, it's
very easy to shoot over the top of a turkey. Well,
the sparks solar, it's it sits high enough where when
I was getting down, if I put my cheek on
my stock, I couldn't even see through the scope, so
I'd read to really lift my face off of the
(16:58):
stock to look be able to look through scope. I
could have built something on my stock to lift it
up a little bit to get better cheek. Well, never
got around to it, so it could be my fault.
But one thing I noticed, and again it cost me.
I still got this bird, but I missed him one
time because I had already hit him. He was injured,
and I was walking up to him. I see him
at I don't know, it's less than ten yards and
(17:20):
he's kind of over this little berm. I can just
see his head and neck and it's like a dusty
dirt kind of burm right underneath the barbed wire fence.
And I'm thinking, well, that's perfect because i can just
shoot and you know, even tho I'm at close strangers,
there's zero way I'm gonna get any pellets into his
body or his breast meat. I touched off a huge
(17:41):
dust cloud poof, you know, goes up in the air,
the wind slowly pushes it out, and the turkey's head
is still there. I'm like, what in the world later
thinking about it, because i know for a fact, I mean,
he wasn't going anywhere. I drew a nice fine bead,
and my gas is that the path of the shot
(18:04):
had not yet reached my aiming point by the time
it got to the turkey. Does that make sense? Yeah,
like it had it been on a target, same thing.
Even though my my red dot would have been spot
on in the middle, the shot hadn't crossed the plane
or the path of that red dot. It's not a path,
it's just the aiming point. But the shot hadn't risen up,
(18:26):
even because I had shot a plenty on paper. I
mean I knew that it forty five yards. It was,
you know, smack on but basically that shot when you're
when your site in your barrel, the farther they are apart,
you know, it takes a bit of travel for the
bullet to come up and actually hit the same spot
where the red dot's aiming. So I hit low and
(18:48):
I had missed it. Could that's one example of last year.
It could be coincidence, but I had a tough time
shooting turkeys last year. I still got my five or
six or whatever it was, but I just felt like,
one after another, I was like, God, Lee, like how
come I didn't just crush him, you know? Or I
(19:10):
just had these instances where I was like, I can
do better than this. This isn't this isn't my normal self.
And I don't know if it was because I just wasn't,
you know, my cheek wasn't down on the stock, and
I wasn't just getting like a good solid, you know, placement.
I was kind of floating around. Anyways, I'm going back
to the venom this year. As far as pros go
(19:33):
for the red dot, man, it kind of takes away
the necessity to have to be down on your gun, right,
I know, I just said that that caused me some problems,
but you can test it anywhere that red dot is
pointing if you're looking, if you can see the dot,
(19:54):
it doesn't matter what kind of crazy position you found
yourself in. One eye open, both eyes open, you know,
way off the side of your gun. You flip and
decide to shoot left handed because the turkey came in
on your on the wrong side. Whatever it is, as
long as you can see the red dot and the
red dot is on your target, you pull the trigger
you ought to hit what you're aiming at. I mean,
(20:15):
that's how it works. You don't have to be It's
not like a traditional bead and rib where you have
to be down on it and leveling that ramp and
then holding that bead right on top of it. You
don't have to you know, it doesn't have to be
like that anymore. Um So, I feel like it's allowed
me when I was a little bit more comfortable of
(20:36):
shooting that venom. Just target acquisition is a little bit faster.
It's just like I said, the whole picture is there.
You can see it all very clearly. It's very easy
to put that red dot onto your target. So yeah,
I'm a huge fan. I'm gonna be hunting hunting with
(20:57):
it this year, So yes, I do think it's worth it.
One other thing I like about it a lot of
times on a standard just a beaded shotgun, right, there's
no rear sight. It's just a you know, pick any shotgun,
there's a single bead on it. And to aim that
bead with a you know, to pattern it or to
(21:19):
shoot it accurately. With a turkey load, you look down
the vent vented rib, you make a real flat plane,
and then that bead sits on top of it, and
you basically but put that bead just under the bull's eye.
That way you can still it's called a six o'clock hold.
That way, you can still see what you're aiming at.
If you're trying different turkey loads and different chokes and
(21:44):
whatever you ordy, let's just say you go and buy
one turkey choke, and you buy a turkey load, you
come back home, you start shooting it. And if you
aim it just like that also, and maybe your pattern's
hitting low and left by eight or ten inches at
forty yards happens often. I've done enough patterning of turkey
loads to see that it can be off well with
(22:06):
the traditional bead and vented rib. There's no adjustment. There's
nothing you can There's nothing you can do other than
try different loads or different chokes or the combination of
the red dot would allow you to just adjust the
red dot position to dead center just like you're just
(22:27):
like you'd be adjusting as you know, a scope for
a rifle, and you know, put yourself dead dead nuts
on bulls eye. So that's a huge plus for me
because you know, just depending on how picky your shotgun
might be or the choke is, it could take you.
(22:48):
You know, especially with the price of AMMO these days,
it could take you hundreds of dollars to get dialed in.
Where if you had this couple hundred dollars red dot site,
it's like you shoot once or twice and you're like, oh,
I low left, you would just adjust the sight and
your spot on. That's where I see like the big
advantage with it. I got a new shotgun for ducks
(23:11):
this year, and I was having a hell of a time.
I kept shooting under him and I'm like, what in
the hell, And I think some of it is I
through high school, I shot trap shooting, and new my
trap gun. I have a rear bead front bead, and
the way you do that is you stack one on
top of the other, and then your clay is supposed
to be above that. I think I was so used
(23:33):
to that I was just shooting, kept shooting under him
because I wanted to see it. And I think my
shotguns patterning low, and so I have to like completely
cover the bird up when I shoot to hit it.
And so just like from Turkey, from a Turkey standpoint,
I feel like me throwing a red dot on that
it would let me. I could just side it in
(23:54):
kind of like a gun and then I wouldn't have
to worry about it. Guessing I've never shot waterfoul with
a red dot. You have to ask a shotgunner if
that's okay or not. Yeah, but yeah, if it works
for you, why not? Yeah? Yeah, So I wanna we
have another question. I want to roll through it real
quick because we got a ton. What calls do you
(24:18):
suggest getting for a beginner. I'm a new hunter and
there are so many options. That is from Megan Timmers
on Instagram. Um, I would say one for me. It
would be like crow call for locating. I used to
locate just with a regular call, and that bit me
a few times. Um, so I got a crow call,
and then I think like a slate or a box
(24:41):
call as far as like a hand call goes, I
personally like the sound of a slate over a box.
And then like after that, if you I feel like
a diaphragm calls, I usually just get a three pack m.
Like I think right now, I just have like the
meat eater Phelps three pack. It's like a good range
(25:02):
of sounds. And also sometimes like you know your call, Yannie,
I might have to it might just not fit me
very well as far as like how much air you
gotta blow through it or whatever. I think it's just
different for everybody, so being able to kind of pick
and choose those and then like, but I think as
(25:24):
far as a diaphragm call goes, if you've never used
a diaphragm call, like I don't think you have to
use one, and if you don't want to, if you
do want to, Phelps makes one's called an easy clucker
that's just like simple, clean, easy to use. To be
honest with you, I posted like a couple days ago,
I posted a reel of Leah shooting at Turkey with
(25:47):
her bow and I called I got in a pissing
match with that hen and got her to pull the
whole group to us. And I did that with an
amp elk reed. So there's there's options, I guess as
far as diaphragm calls go. But that's what I would do.
(26:07):
I would keep it simple. I would get like a
slate or a box kind of whatever and then get
a few different reads. But um, I don't know, keep
it simple. It's very easy to go overboard with turkey calls,
and as Megan mentioned, there's just so many options. I
was just this last week and I was at the
National Wild Turkey Federation Annual Convention, and it's insane the
(26:31):
amount of calls that are available to you there. I
would say this is my personal experience, and most I
use my wife as the example of this. But the
first time she ever went solo turkey hunting, I literally
just sent her out with a cheap fifteen twenty dollars
slate and a couple of pegs, and she got into
(26:52):
a couple you know, setups with gobblers and and I
don't she hadn't spent more than twenty minute. It's practicing
on this slate, so I feel out of all the friction.
I mean, you do have those calls that are like
I think they're called cackle boxes or something like that,
where you literally just push a little peg and there's
(27:12):
some sort of thing that creates friction on the inside
and it makes a yelp. You can go that route.
That's probably the easiest, but I think a slate call
is not that much harder. Another thing I'll say too,
why pot versus box is I got to watch some
of the Grand National Championships for calling at this convention.
(27:32):
I didn't get to stay for all of it, but
I think I was told that not a single competitor
uses a box call. They all use pot calls, whether
it's slate, crystal, because you can just get that much
more realistic with that call versus the box. One last
(27:53):
thing on the reads. Spend the money on good Reads,
whether it's Phelps wood Haven, there's I can't There's so
many good custom calls out there that are made here
in the United States, that are being stretched and made
by people that know how to do this, and so
(28:13):
the quality control is so much better than if you
go with I'm not going to mention any names, but
like the really big box store type brands, because they're
not being made here, They're being made in factories wherever,
somewhere overseas that they're just not being hand tuned, hand
stretched and just dialed in as much as an elk
(28:37):
hunner as an el khunning guide. I used to sometimes
buy twenty calls in August and start rotating them through
just to get four or five good ones. I would
just say, don't be afraid to spend the extra. I mean,
it's literally a dollar or two more from getting the
super quality stuff versus something that's just not as consistent,
(28:59):
like you'll you'll still get good calls from these bigger companies,
but not everyone is good. I feel like with the
smaller call companies you can trust them more that everyone
should be good. Yeah, got it, good good points. Um sweet,
Thanks everybody for the questions. If you have a question
you'd like to send in on anything, send it to
(29:20):
gear talk at the meter dot com and we'll try
to get an answered for you or our instagrams. I suppose,
um sweet, take a quick break, and then when we
come back, we're gonna talk about be honest. Is turkey
gear list all right, we are going to go through
(29:46):
Yanni's turkey gear list. Turkey seasons coming right up, and
uh yeah, what do you have coming up for turkeys? Um? Actually,
maybe even by the time this air is I'll be
in Florida hunting it an Osciola turkey with my buddy
Steve Ornella. He and I have been putting in I
think it took us four years to draw these tags.
(30:09):
Now you can buy plenty of over the counter turkey
tags in Florida, but they have certain WMA's and I'm
not someone else is helping us out with this, so
I haven't dove in. I don't know all of the details,
but basically the gist of it is is that we
have a zone that we can hunt that we applied
for four years to get. We're gonna be able to
(30:31):
hunt there, and there's gonna be other hunters, but many
less much less pressure. And for me, I'm traveling from
Montana to Florida, it was totally worth it to apply,
wait and get this better opportunity than to, you know,
just go down there three years ago on the over
the counter and maybe just get frustrated and have so
(30:54):
much more pressure to deal with. So I'm stalked on
the opportunity to get an osciola. I'm not a huge
slam collector type of person, but I do like the
idea of every spring, just because I like to travel
and see new places, like going to a new state
to try to hunt a turkey. Right, and even if
(31:15):
I didn't kill in a forty nine states, if I
could say that I hunted turkeys in forty nine states
by the time I die, like, that's a pretty cool thing,
you know. It's it's It's great about turkey hunting is
that it is available in forty nine states, which makes
it available to just about everybody. I know that it's
hard to get into turkey hunting because there is all
(31:35):
this stuff calling gear YadA, YadA, YadA. So there is
that barrier. But I think it's cool how there's a
very low barrier in the fact that most people, I
would say, don't even have to drive more than an
hour maybe to define a turkey. That's my only out
of state I think. Other than that, I'll be pretty
(31:56):
much hunting Montana. Sweet. Let's yeah, let's get in your list.
So first thing like vast backpack, like the million dollar
question for a lot of people. Yep. I used to
be a backpack only guy, and that's because I think
I was just a Western backpack type hunter always. It
(32:18):
was just easy because that's what I had. So I
just figured, off, I'm gonna go Jurkey, Honey, I'll just
stow my stuff in my backpack because I like a
butt pad. I like about pad that's attached to me
that's easily deployable. I have definitely started going more and
more vest. It keeps everything organized. I know where everything's at.
(32:43):
Most turkey hunts are a couple hour hunts, let alone
what you would call a full day hunt. These days,
I think the only reason I would really go with
the backpack and say, oh I need that is because
I'm thinking, Okay, I am for sure hike five miles
before I even get to the turkeys. I need to
(33:04):
carry all this stuff. I know I'm carrying lunch, there
might be inclement weather. I need to carry extra gear
for that. I really got to be prepared, and I
want the comfort of a backpack to carry that load,
because the big downfall is when you load down a
turkey vest, you're gonna feel that weight on your shoulders
after a couple of miles. Right. But again, I've become
(33:29):
a vest guy because I've realized that I can even
if I'm going we have a spot that we hunt
that it is probably two miles each direction to go
get to these turkeys. It's very worth it. Every time
we walk in there somebody kills a gobbler. At least
we get a shot at a gobbler. And even that hunt,
I can pack enough water, you know, a couple leaders
(33:50):
and pack a decoy if I want in my vest.
And sure I'm a little bit overloaded. But again, when
the hunt starts and I'm running and going and I
need to PLoP down real quick and start working a bird.
I sure. Do you like having that butt pad to
sit down on? And I like having all my calls organized.
I know where everything is, it's there. Um have you
(34:14):
used a chest rig? I have? Um? In general? Like
I obviously I love carrying my binoculars in a in
a bino harness turkey hunting. Yeah, just it wasn't for me. Um.
Some people love it for the minimalist approach. Yeah yeah,
I'm one of those for sure, especially in an out
of vehicle. A lot our hunts so short and a
(34:37):
lot of times I'm guiding, so it's just kind of
a I don't have as much stuff to carry, so
um yeah, it's been a good option for me. Um
are you a decoy guy? Uh? Yes and no. Yeah, yeah,
I'm one of those for sure, especially in an out
of vehicle. A lot our hunts so short and a
(34:57):
lot of times I'm guiding, so it's just kind of
a I don't have as much stuff to carry, so
um yeah, it's been a good option for me. Um
are you a decoy guy? Uh? Yes and no. I
got a lot of thoughts on decoys. They work, not
all the time, but they work. But a lot of
(35:17):
times when if I'm just purely running solo, I'm probably
gonna leave all decoys behind and just say I'm either
gonna fool you with my call or I'm not gonna
get you. And that's what it's gonna come down to. Now,
if I'm back in the Midwest and I'm limited to
you know, one hundred acre two hundred acres of of
(35:38):
farm that I can hunt you, I know I'm not
gonna walk that far, So why not having with me?
You don't have to set them out, but you can't,
right um, and a lot of times, you know, on
those farms, you're hunting bigger fields, so you still have
to call them into at least the range where they
can see the decoy. And then after that, once they
see the decoy, if it's gonna work, they kind of
(36:00):
takes over. Right. You don't have to call at all anymore.
They've seen the decoy. It's it's made them think something
and they're gonna come in either to breed it, to
fight it, to you know, show off to it, whatever
it might be. Um, or they're going to run away
like when I got yeah yeah, or one at a
(36:21):
one time every season they're just gonna bout face and
be like yep, seeing that one already and and take off.
So um yeah, that's that's what I have. You know
what I have them gonna try this year is I
have some collapsible bull on fold up collapsible decoys from
Montana Decoy. And they're actually three D. They're not two
(36:44):
D silhouette type decos with the picture. They're actually three
D and they have what seems to be like some
sort of a spring on the inside, and they sit
on a stake, you know, just like a other other decoys,
but much smaller, much easier to pass. So I'm definitely
gonna put some of those to use. When you see them,
(37:05):
compared to a Dave Smith's decoy, they're not It's just
not the same thing at all. But again, sometimes in
Montana we're hunting birds that have maybe never seen a decoy,
and so you know, anything might work. Yeah, I'm gonna
try those exactly. Yeah, or they see the redhead or
(37:25):
they see that, you know, shine glimmer of the turkey's feathers,
whatever it is, but it's enough to to tip them. Sweet.
What about clothing wise? What do you what do you
think in like Florida is going to be like Hodder
in Hell? Oh my gosh, Yeah I thought that since
we're going first to March, I was expecting seventies. Max. Well, no,
(37:50):
like it's still too far out to actually see the
day that we can get there. But right now that
three days approaching, our hunting dates are nineties, and I'm
sure it's gonna be humid. So yeah, I'm gonna go
from negative ten and snowy here to ninety. There'll be
one hundred degrees swing and it'll be a shock to
(38:12):
say the least. So first, I has new hot weather
gear coming out. It's still a little ways out, so
I'm gonna be using that. Now that being said, I
still am going to bring another set of clothes for
in case it gets cold, because the last time I
hunted down there, I wasn't hunting, but I was helping
(38:34):
Steve film the show. We got down there, didn't bring
any clothes because we thought it was Florida. Who needs
clothes for hunting turkeys? Down there? It was so cold
we were using socks for gloves and put in wrapping
socks around our necks forget net Gators like humid cold, Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
(38:55):
humidity is no good if it's cold or hot. Um.
So I'm gonna bringing down snake boots for the Florida
trip in. They're gonna be hot, but it's you know,
extra percrush, and I know a lot of people who
don't run with it, but I figure, why not. I
can deal with some hot feet for a couple of days.
You know. Again, clothing for Western hunting, it's gonna be
(39:18):
very similar to Western big game. It's gonna be layers,
you know. I like my wick base layer. Then I
wear the klamath fleece, and then I have a saw
tooth vest and that's enough just to keep my core
warm enough. I might have a beanie in there to
throw on if I need to add a little extra warmth.
That's enough to get me through that first hour. And
(39:39):
what I like about the vest, I'm not a huge
best guy, but in this particular scenario, I really like
it because when I take it off, it's small enough
that I can roll it up, stick it in my
turkey vest in the back pouch there, and I don't
feel like I'm lugging around a big puffy jacket or
something that just takes up a lot more room. Very
(40:00):
for me. I have a special pocket. It's actually a
water bottle pocket that I usually use for my face
mask and my lightweight pair of gloves. I just have
a special pocket where that stuff always goes into. As
soon as it hunts over i'm taking it off, I'm
putting it in there, you know. And that's the way
it's It's just always there. It's always in my vest,
and it's so so important because gosh, if I ever
(40:23):
get caught with no face mask, I just feel like
it one hundred yards they're gonna look over there on
the tree line and go, I see you glimmering sign um.
I think, like for mountain hunting, Like you're just wearing
the same boots, just like clothing. Like you're wearing the
same boots that you're wearing for like elk and deer
(40:43):
hunting and things. Are you a rubber boots guy? Uh?
Depends on the train. Obviously out West is a lot
more drier terrain, So it doesn't seem like I ever
really need rubber boots here unless i know for a
fact I've got some ditch or creek to cross, or
maybe I'm going to access the spot by walking up.
(41:05):
Like we've got a little spot that we hunt where
we'll kind of park and then actually walk right along
the bank of a river and sometimes even in the
river to stay hidden and stay below the bank until
we can get up to where we want to set up,
because we end up being real close to the roost
in this spot. So something like that. But usually I'm
wearing rubbers when I'm hunting the Midwest, where it's a
(41:27):
you know, frosty, dewey morning, And again I'm not walking
far because I'm only I'm limited to whatever it might be,
you know, hundred acres, a couple hundred acres just not
going to get that many miles in and not that
you can't do it these days in rubber boots that
they've gotten so much better. But you know, they get
(41:48):
sweaty compared to a pair of leather boots. But again,
I'd rather keep I'd rather be a little bit sweaty
and keep those feet dry then get them to get
them just super soaked from the morning dew and the frost.
So yeah, I do. I do like rubbers in that uh,
in that sense. They're so light now like those new
(42:08):
uh what are they called arrow sport? I think ero form,
I think arrowhead sport. That's it. Um, they're so light.
Um it's like walking around in a pair of crocs,
you know, except you've got knee high boots on. Yea, yeah,
that's my boot set up. Sweet. One reason I like
(42:29):
those late or those uh like rubber boots. It's a
lot of times I've got a set of those arrowhead
sports coming that are like the I think on they
say that they're for cold, they're insulated, they're supposed to
be like for negative fifty to forty degrees or something
like that. Um, insulation wise is what they're supposed to
be good for. And like where we're at short distance
(42:51):
walking in and then you're sitting in the morning, like,
it just seems like those rubber boots keep your feet warmer,
especially if they're insulated over like longer than insulated even
leather boots or something. So that's my big because those
those big lacrosses are like sixteen hundred grams or something
(43:12):
like that. Yeah, and as long as you can, as
long as you can keep your feet from sweating too
much on the way in, uh, it's not an issue
at all. And if they do sweat up, all you
gotta do, and I do this often for tree stand
hunting white tails, is I'll just bring an extra pair
of socks. Like I'll go in wearing a thin pair
of socks. I know they're gonna get a little bit
sweaty damp in there. When I get to the tree stand,
(43:35):
I just swap out my socks real quick and put
on some nice thick wool socks and I'm snug as
a bug up there. Love it. Hey. Yeah, Um, another
question we got a ton on I put a little
questionnaire out on the Instagram to gather questions, and one
we got a lot of that I thought we'd just
cover now is like what shells are using for turkeys
(43:55):
because you can really go crazy and spend a lot
of money on turkeys else. Yep, one hundred percent. And
here's my take on it. When TSS first came out,
a buddy of mine was actually starting to handload him
and he was starting to do number nine in twenty
gage and we were like, what, that's crazy. But the
(44:15):
more I learned about it, and when I learned that
like a nine has more energy at one hundred yards
than like a four lead at fifty or something like that,
those numbers are off a little bit. It's approximate, but
there's they're so dense, so heavy, so much energy, you
get amazing penetration. It was like, okay, I'm gonna go
(44:37):
that route too. Well. He was like, sure, I'll load
you up some and then and then I didn't have
that hookup anymore and had to go buy some and
I was like, holy moy, fifty dollars you know for
a box. And now, I mean, I think I think
that you can there's some federal TSS out there that
if you go you know, three and a half inches
for a twelve gage. You can be up to like
(44:59):
seventy five for a box for five of them, which
is a lot for five shots, which for hunting is
not that big of a deal because usually you're gonna
shoot once, maybe twice. But it's the patterning that like
really starts to burn, you know. But I'll be very
I'll be very clear here, transparent. I bought many boxes
(45:23):
of TSS before we started working with Federal. I started
getting the stuff for free. If I had to go
back to paying for it, I probably still will. But
I want to put it out there that if it's
the difference for you of going hunting or not, if
you can't afford it, go hunting with some cheap or stuff,
by all means absolutely, I am gonna Yeah, I'll probably
(45:47):
shoot nine or seven nine blend. I'm shooting a new
gun this year, Bretta a three hundred. I'm going twenty gage.
My same mentor that was shooting those number nine you know,
fifteen years ago, loading them up by hand. He's been
shooting a I believe he shoots an M two Banelli
(46:09):
with twenty gauge, and it's just with these new loads.
It's all the gun you need to kill all the
turkey out to the same distances that you can do
it with a twelve gauge. And what's nice about turkey
hunting and carrying these twenty gauges is that, like I said,
you're only shooting once normally maybe twice a day, right,
(46:31):
most of the time you're just carrying that gun around. Um,
So why not carry out something that's way easier to carry.
Like I'm looking forward to when when somebody makes a
twenty eight gauge turkey gun and we start in twenty
eight gauge turkey shells are available. Obviously, the four ten
is a big thing. I personally haven't done it yet.
(46:52):
My kids hopefully this year are going to get into
it and shoot turkeys with with the four ten. But anyways, yeah,
I'm going twenty I'm gonna mount the Venom red dot
on it. I'm gonna have a especially made four TSS
Carlson's turkey choke in there. I think it's gonna be
(47:14):
a pretty sweet little setup. Sweet one thing I wanted
to ask you about his blinds. It's one thing you
don't have in here, and a lot of people associate
turkey hunting with Papa blind h. I own one Robert Abernathy.
I think it's called the Doghouse by a Marastep. I
bought it years ago. I thought, Man, that's gonna be.
(47:35):
This is gonna be the ticket for my kids to
help them see the turkey show. But again, Montana, we're
just covering so much ground. Sometimes you don't know exactly
where they're gonna be. It's not like, oh, yeah, they're
in this field six out of seven days of the week. Right,
It's not that regular. And so I realized here at
(47:56):
least it's hard to get into one because they're just
getting bored and I'm not bringing the tablet or the
or letting them just sit there on the phone while
while we're waiting out the turkeys. So UM, I personally
have not spent much time in the blind. I think
if I was more into shooting turkeys with the boat,
I probably I probably would be, because you know, you
(48:19):
just need that more perfect setup, right, haven't come into
decoys staying there long enough and then the blind gives
you the cover to draw and get it get a
good shot off. So yeah, I haven't used them much.
Nothing against um if you like using them. But for me,
every time I step into a blind, it happens every
(48:42):
now and then deer hunting, it's like I just feel
like I'm missing out, Like it just seems like it
removes me from nature so much. And again, look if
it's like like I use it this year for deer
hunting with my daughter because it was hovering around zero,
We're hunting ridgetops in Wisconsin and the wind's blowing and
(49:05):
sitting out in the elements was just going to cut
our hunts way way shorter with a full wee. Don't
I forget. My dad just brought me the blind. I
can't tell you who made it, but the blind with
a little mister buddy heater in there. And it took
my daughter exactly five minutes to be back asleep once
(49:26):
we would get into the blind, which is fine, she's
out there, she's doing it with me. If if she
gets woken up with the sound of a gunshot, it's
the way it is. Um, But it got us out
there and it was able. We were able to stay
out there in the in that situation, in those weather conditions.
So um there, it's it's totally great. But if it's
(49:48):
the way if the weather is not nice and all
I have to do is conceal myself. I figured I
can do just as good of a job just sitting
still or getting up in a tree, even building just
a brush blind because I just I miss it. Just
seems like you're gonna miss birds flying by, or the
sound of birds, or you know, you just don't see
(50:08):
three sixty degrees out of those blinds, and maybe something
you know walks behind me at fifty sixty yards and
you don't hear it because the windows are shut or
whatever it might be. So in the right situation, if
it's gonna mean me staying out or not, I'm using one.
But I air on not sitting in a blind. Yeah, yeah, valid, man.
(50:31):
We use them a lot for like, especially with the
outfit and just the way that we run things. Even
with deer hunts, we use a lot of blinds. We've
gotten a lot of questions on blinds, and so I
think that I'll be doing some like I'll just keep
trying some more and be able to like kind of
update people on that. In short over the last man
(50:55):
seven years at least, I'm approaching maybe ten now. Just
seems like the double bulls. They're they're the ones that
stick around the longest. Um With like weather, we get
hillacious wins that just like break poles and do all
kinds of crazy shit with blinds, it just seems like
the double bulls are the ones that, um, I have
(51:17):
that I've had the longest. So I just wanted to
toss that out there. Um I didn't want to completely
leave people hanging with their questions that they put in,
So I think that that's a that's worth them to
spend like a little bit of the extra money to
go with something like that over you know, something that
could be one hundred dollars one hundred and fifty dollars cheaper.
(51:39):
But I am still going to keep like getting different
blinds and try to test them out and keep everybody
updated as much as I can. But uh, yeah, good list,
thank you. I had to write it while I was
packing for Florida, so hopefully that helped me make sure
I have everything and don't forget something behind. Something that's
(51:59):
a good turkey vest item too. I'd like to mention
is how I carry water. I use a thing called
a platypus bottle, and it's basically like a collapsible plastic bottle.
But what's nice about it is it's not it's not hard,
so especially since it's against your back and a lot
(52:19):
of times you're sitting down in the leaning against a tree,
you're not that Analogene or even like a plastic water
bottle of any kind can sort of be uncomfortable and
cause just a pressure point where this platypus is sort
of flatter and just kind of more flexible and tough.
I mean, I've had one for probably coming on two
decades that I wear like, I have it in my
(52:42):
ski jacket, like I just ride around with half a
lead a bottle and you need some water to drink,
and so they last. And I've never busted one by
leaning against it or anything. So it's it fits into
a turkey vest very nicely. You don't have to worry
about sitting against a tree and then having some hard
water bottle pushing into your back as you're trying to
(53:03):
work a bird. Hmm. Yeah, good points. As we wrap
up here, I want to plug you just had a
Mountain Lion episode come out. Yeah, that's right, go check
it out on Meeter's YouTube channel. Jake Gribb who's been
my main hunting mentor and Mingus's main hunt hound hunting
mentor over the last three years. We go hunting northwest Montana,
(53:29):
looking mostly for lions. We luck out and find the
track of a giant bobcat. Check out that episode and
see how it all unfolds on YouTube, and then I think,
right on the heels, it's probably gonna be out by
this time this episode airs is there's a Texas hog
(53:49):
episode where I go archery hunting with Troy Fowler, who
some of you know as the ranch Ferry, And so
we kill some pigs and we netcrop seat some pigs
to see what our arrows and broadheads did going through
these pigs. Very interesting stuff. Definitely tune in to check
(54:11):
that one out. Yeah, excited to watch it. Um all right, sweet, Well,
if you have any more questions, you can send them
into gear talk at the meat eater dot com. You
can get hold of us on our instagrams. Mine's Jordan
dot Bud. Your's is is it? Underscore patel Us. That's
really honest, Underscore patel Us. Yeah, and then uh yeah.
(54:32):
And then as these episodes roll, you can go to
the meat eater dot com and find the gear Talk
under the podcast show tab and click on the specific
episode you want to comment on. You scroll down to
the bottom and comment on it. And we've been getting
back to people and uh yeah, getting your questions answered
and getting them written down to do future Q and
(54:54):
A episodes. So with that, what I realized the other
day eight. What I realized the other day too, is
that when you go to the page, like like Jordan said,
you go to the main meter website page, you go
hit podcasts, you find gear Talk, and then right at
the top it says gear Talk and then it says
(55:15):
like the latest one is episode nine DWR and gear Cleaning,
and then underneath that you can click right there and
it'll bring you down into the comment section. And I
found that's the easiest way to get right to the
comments and participate. So yeah, we appreciate everybody that does comment,
that sends any emails or d ms us. I apologize
(55:38):
if I don't get back to your DM as fast
as you like. There's a lot of them. Sweet Well,
thanks Joannie, good luck down in Florida, and yeah, thank you.
See everybody on the next episode that's right, get out
there and go hunting. See yeah,
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