Ep. 172: Texas Turkey Success, Phil's Burner Account, Sit/Git versus Run/Gun, and Top Turkey States with Sam Soholt

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Clean your gun, JR. Bow Where the Uncollective show calling
Hunters new and all uncollective show with thanks or facts
and opinions are subjective. You're listening to the whole collecting

(00:26):
by everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective.
I am Benjamin Patrick O'Brien and I'm joined by Phil
t engineer Phil I bet hey, we're in the studio together. Good.
It's good to see you. When was the last time
that this happened. I can't remember we were with your
honest maybe yeah, we did, like an Ascal eagle. It's

(00:48):
been months and months I've seen in your face. Do
I look more accomplished? Do you? Uh? Do you want
the honest answer? Yes? Then yes, yes, you look awful
like you need a nap. I've just touched down last
night from Texas and it is officially I'm gonna need
some sort of sound effect like dirt Owner, something really cool.

(01:08):
It's officially. Turchi says that you're feeling it. There it
is I put I put the sound in. You feel it? Yeah? No, No,
I'm not. You're not feeling it. Maybe after I go
Turkey hunting, I will be feeling I'm I wish you
were with me in Texas. It was fantastic. So I
saw many many Instagram comments, Yeah, worse film, people confused

(01:30):
into the st that I wasn't and I wonderful. Like
the rest of my hunting career, every time I post
something about hunting, people like worse film. Why isn't Why
aren't you mentoring film? Why are you mesitor phase out
somewhere not being mentored by you and you're out hunting? Uh?
To do you know official pressure LEAs style? Phil? Uh?
Did not go with me? Would you hope? I know? Ben?

(01:51):
For the people that did comment, Ben did extend me
an invite, I did, but it's it was just it
was like only a week and it was like a
week in advance, and you know when I got I've
got a family and kids in daycare situations, and it's
just it's hard to organize something that last minute. But
Ben did invite me, So thank you Ben. No, no,
I did not join. I wish you had come. It
was it was tremendous. Shout out to to Greg and

(02:14):
Casey and to Marshall who let me hunt a place. Uh,
a new ranch. I guess. We hunted Friday and Saturday
and new little property. I've never seen um in a
wonderful little I mean it was like idyllic field. It
was idealic. It was like green grass. It's six eight
inch really like florescent green grass. A lot of open

(02:35):
timber for turkeys to eat, bugs and just you know,
gobble and open meadows, a lot of edge ground, like tall,
tall trees for them to roost in. It was kind
of unbelievable. And I killed beard Zilla. He's all a
picture beards at all. I did now his his for
everybody that were was at that the guest how long

(02:56):
his beard balls? On on my Instagram page? It was
eleven inches flat. Do you know that's good? Phil? I don't.
That's amazing. Okay, I don't know. I don't know what
the longest. Let me google like longest turkey beard ever,
but it's it's gonna be way longer than eleven inches.
So that's the longest. Let's see what it says. WHOA.

(03:19):
Cody May of New Boston holds the possible world record
for the longest bearded turkey ever. The bird has a
twenty two and a half inch beard twenty two and
a half inches. He's dragging on the ground. Yeah, let's
go to a rope rope dragger. There's a lot of
different names for for spurs and beards on turkeys, but

(03:40):
that's eleven inches. Is the biggest one I've ever killed.
So I'm gonna make a little broom out of it.
From my office, I'll come sweep off her, sweep off
your buttons here. But yeah, he came, he flew down.
We're doing a little uh shout out again to Marshall
Seardorf from Texas. He works at four some nature meach
Remember them, Oh yeah, of course they're awesome. Um, we

(04:04):
were hunting together. We sat up. There was eight gobblers
phil eight as far as I could tell. And a
gobbler is a turkey as a turkey, male turkey. I thought.
You know a lot of times you can tell the
difference between a Jake gobble and a Tom gobble, Tom
being a mature turkey two years old and older Jake

(04:24):
being a one year old, because, uh, Jake's gobble, it's
kind of like he's he's trying to like if you
were like, what's man that you're trying to sound serious?
But at Tom's gobble has this extra depth to it
to enough of them you can tell Tom went through
puberty in the eighth grade and his voice has dropped. Yes, yes,

(04:46):
and the jake. So so we set up I'd say
about two yards from a roost. And I've been saying
the night before, over a few beverages that I did,
I thought the best time to turkey and Phil was
nine am to eleven am. Yes, you said this. I've
said this the first turkey I killed down in South
Texas with my buddy DJ the day before. We literally

(05:06):
just sat and didn't move, and I told him, dude,
if we sit here untill ten, I think we'll kill
a turkey. So we sat in a spot where I
knew the turkeys wanted to be. We sat there. It
was in my ass was anxious. I was like, dude,
let's get out of here, let's go walk around. I
stood up, I stretched out as a god. I don't know, man,
I don't know. I haven't heard, we haven't heard a gobble.
We had a couple of hands come by and I

(05:29):
was like, God, no, no, even just go let's go
call just walk around. We're just gonna walk around. We're
gonna find a turkey. And then I told myself no, No,
you sit the fun back down and you wait. Do
what you said you were gonna do. When I sat
back down, Phil, fifteen minutes later, there it is. There,
it is. Came a couple of I worked him. He

(05:52):
started off probably three four yards away, came down to Sindaro,
cut it off straight into our little set up, and
then he died. Didn't hadn't heard a gobble all day
until nine in the am, right at my cut off time. Yeah,
and I shot him at ten oh seven, right cut
off time. So that's the biggest thing that you'll you'll find,

(06:13):
which is this is what we found on our our
next time where I killed the second turkey, is that
you're it's sit and get or run and gun. Have
we talked about this before? We talked about this Tony
Peterson a little bit last Yeah, I think we went
over it a little bit, or maybe that was with
Preston Pittman on Steve's podcast. I've heard I've heard about it.
This is the different turkey philosophy. Philosophical really debate is

(06:38):
do I sit and wait or do I run and got?
Do I go and find this turkey? I call it
trolling for turkeys because you can just you you basically
in the case of Texas, and you just walk us
and daro, or walk a road, walk a couple hundred yards,
call response nothing, walk to in a more yards call
response nothing. You're kind of covering. Think of it as
a bull's eye. You start in the middle. You kind
of work out as you're covering an area with your

(07:00):
you know, with with your calls, see if you get
a response. Or you could sit in a place where
that you know they want to be, or you know
they're going to pass through and you've got that extra
advantage that they want to be where you already are.
So in this case, the first turkey, which which method
have you have you found more success? We were talking
it sounds like to me, I feel like I'm the
kind of impatient person with other things that I would

(07:23):
want to like be moving around and do like I
feel like I'm doing something like I will actively take
a detour in in a town or like a highway
even if I like, I'll say that there's there's a
way where there's traffic, got it, and you'll still probably
get through it like more quickly than if you went
on the detour. But I'll take the detour just because
it feels like I'm moving, you're doing I'm doing something.

(07:45):
Sun't take me twenty more minutes. You're seeing exactly you know,
I um, you have to first you gotta think, like,
what is the what kind of day is it? On
the first or he has shot? It was a jury
day a little way in d the birds had the
day before. I called into Tom, a big old Tom
and his head. It's about three yards behind me, and

(08:09):
I worked at turkey. I called him right in behind.
He came through this ridiculous mesquite brush, came right up
behind me. Couldn't get a shot. He gobbled his way
off into the distance, and I called him back like
forty five minutes later. In that case and in the
in the case before, I knew there wasn't a lot
of turkeys around this ranch we were hunting. The ranch
manager told us they had such a rough time with

(08:29):
the big storm down in Texas, the big coal front
that moved through, and they had so little water over
the last couple of years that their turkey populations were
way down. So I knew we were hunting a limited
number of times. And I also knew where there was
one big creek where they all hung out. So if
we lined ourselves up on this creek and we just
sat in a place where turkey would want to cross,

(08:50):
we sat there all day, that turkey was gonna come through.
But that is hard to do for a lot of people.
It's hard to do for me because I just like,
I know that I know it's down that creek. If
I just bombed down in that creek, Ma, if you
calls coming out shooting in the face. But in that case,
it was like, there's not a lot of turkeys, So
if you bump one, you're kind of screwed. Because you
bump one, that's you know, that's nine turkeys. You can

(09:13):
hunt ten for that day because we bumped them out
of the roost one day and then it pretty much
turned out to be that So that there was a factor.
But I think that the biggest factor is what kind
of day is it. Are they goblin? Are they aggressive?
If they're aggressive, you can be aggressive. If there's not
a lot of talking happening, if they're not gobbling, if
they're not responded, you're not seeing a lot of movement,

(09:33):
then it's time to sit and wait. And at some
point it might just be that the sun hits a certainty.
It's funny because the way you're explaining it, I would
think it would be the opposite. Like if if they
were out there calling them being aggressive, then I it
would kind of make me want to just sit like
in park. But like, but if I wasn't hearing anything,
I wouldn't seeing any movement, That's when I would want

(09:54):
to get up and try to go to them. Yeah,
and again, this is a philosophical debate I think all
Turkey hunters will have for for the rest of time.
My buddy Jeff Johnson, who was a writer for n
R a American hunter when I worked there, wrote an
article called sit and get a run and gun that
that was was by far the best evaluation of this idea.
But you know, I don't know. I think you just

(10:15):
gotta have to been there. But I will just say this,
there's no replacing being in an area where Turkey wants
to be. There's no replacing it, whether or not you
run and gun to get to that spot, or whether
you determine the pattern and Turkey has been traveling and
get there. There's no better there's no better tactic than
to be in the place they want to be yeah,
which I think goes back to something that Jim Heffelfinger

(10:36):
has recently said on the Mediator podcast, which is that
like these turkeys have schedules, they have like certain places
they want to go throughout the day. They might not
get there like the exact same time every day, but
they will get there eventually. So if you know that
a turkey is gonna show up somewhere, if he has,
if he's done it, you've seen him do it a
couple of times, he'll do it again. You might have

(10:57):
to wait for a while, but he'll do it again.
And that's the first turkey that we It was exactly that.
You know, I had seen these turkeys about the prior
day in this little meadow, a little clearing. I had
seen him there. I watched him. I glass them up.
There was a two hands and a gobbler and they
were just just pecking around feeding. How he would strut
a little bit, they would kind of you know, they
were just doing turkey ship in this little meadow, and

(11:19):
I knew that what they would do is fly down
from the roost. We bumped them off the roost like
idiots that first morning. So they changed their pattern but
I knew that they wanted to fly down off the roost,
strut around in the road, get you know, be seen,
and then when the heat of the midday, they go
down in the creek in the shade feed, find some

(11:41):
tall grass, cool, cool place to be. Then they worked
down that creek all the way to this meadow. That's
what they do. So once you know that, then you
can make the call that's what you want to do.
You can go right to the roost tree and try
to call him down they pitched down the road, boom,
shoot him in the face. Or you can tuck yourself
in the creek and try to get them to come
by that way. Or you can ultimately just go to

(12:02):
the place you know where they're going to be, because
that's again that's a destination. Whereas the rest of that stuff,
you're trying to manipulate them and to do something that
they probably wouldn't do otherwise. Right, whether it's a slight
change in their pattern or to them it's a big change.
You're trying to call them to you, right, So that's
you just have to read the situation. But in in

(12:23):
the case of that the first turkey I shot, it
was just like, well, I was talking to a couple
of buddies down there. We were talking about this. I
want to move, Like when I sit down, I'm there
for an hour. I'm like, dude, I can find these turkeys.
I know where they're at. I'm gonna find them. I
know I can do it. I've got the confidence I
can go find these circuits and get them to get
it done. But um, ultimately, if you want to be successful,

(12:44):
I think you stay put more often. I'll probably change
that opinion next week. But it depends on where you're hunting, too,
and how much knowledge you have. If you have no
knowledge of the area you're hunting, it's hard to get
a read on what the turkeys are doing. You gotta
move because but if you have you know exactly. If
the turkeys playbook is pretty easily read, kind of have

(13:05):
to um read it and listen to what they're telling
you and go where they want to be. But anyway,
that second turkey that shot beard Zilla, he didn't have
a twenty two inch beard, but a man could dream.
But anyway, he was roosted. And this is one of
the first times I've seen this. And and again I
was round the fire with a bunch of a bunch

(13:26):
of guys drinking a little bit. Talk about my nine
to eleven theory. Al right, it had been buttressed by
the prior turkey hunt where I shot the bird at
ten and oh seven. So I'm like, you don't even
need to go out in the morning. Don't go out there.
What hapverage sleep in like it's nine am to eleven am,
you're gonna kill a turkey. Well, the next morning we
get up, we go out. We find these birds or

(13:48):
who sit there, like I said, probably five to eight
gobblers and a couple of jake's and a couple of hands,
all roosted together. So we sit down about two yards
and put our decoys outs, pitch dark, gobble, just a
gobble fest, boom boom, boom boom everywhere. And so we
start through some hen yelps. Marshall, my buddy's doing some

(14:08):
colling through some hen yelps at him, which I would
normally wouldn't do. When they're on the roosts like that.
You can do tree yelps, which is kind of a
softer hey i'm waking up yelp. But in this case
there was Hans the hands that were roosted. We're lighting up.
They're yelping. Yea, so we started yelping a little bit.
They're goblin beard Zilla decides, I believe to fly down

(14:34):
out of the tree in the dark to beat these
other tom's to the punch, to the you know, get
some action. Flies down out of the tree. Marsha goes,
there's a turkey in the field. Like, dude, it's dark.
Why is it in the field? I look and I
see this white head. It's like a hundred twenty yards.
I say, this white head in the darkness. I put

(14:54):
my bodos up, like, holy sh it, there's a turkey
in the field. It's twenty minutes before daylight. And he
just started his way across the fence and just never
broke strut, just spitting drummond. I don't think he ever gobbled.
He just kept coming, coming, coming, And he was so close.
When I first saw him, my shotgun was leaning against
my hip and the barrel was in the grass. And

(15:15):
so normally when it when a turkey comes, Phil, I'm
gonna tell you, like, get your get your gun up
and be like mounted and ready to go wait for him.
In this case, I wasn't ready to go at all,
and I had a bunch of cover we I had
set to my left, which is where the turkeys were gobbling. Well,
this turkey, let's say that the all my cover was

(15:35):
from like eleven o'clock to six o'clock. Well, this kid,
this turkey came at noon. He was coming right straight
ahead of me. I had basically no cover between him
and I, and he was coming right The decoys between
were between me and him, and he kept coming strutting.
So I was like, well, I'm basically gonna have to
keep the shotgut on the ground and whenever I want

(15:56):
to shoot him, he's either gonna have to be I'm
gonna have to raise my gun up when he turns
around and then kill him, or I'm gonna he's gonna
probably run when I put my gun up, and I
would have to shoot him while he's turning to leave.
He got right to the decoys, and I waited, waited, waited.
He just would not turn. He just kept looking at
the decoys, going back and forth. I was like, all right,
screw it. So I threw my shot gun up. I

(16:18):
don't even think I got it to my shoulder and
pull the trigger and he was already turning to run,
shot him back of the head. Dead beard, zillah gone.
And it was seven ten in the a M. And
So my theory, Phil, that the best turkey hunting happens
between nine and eleven is either complete horse shit or

(16:38):
there are exceptions. Cool. Is that exciting to you? Can
you feel my like pure? Yeah? I don't know if
or the turkeys, but Ben is vibrating, you know, I
am it's just the lifeblood. I was telling the guys
we were with that. Ah, it's just every thing is

(17:00):
better when when you have success. The turkey was I
don't want to make it seem like everything is better
when you kill something. It's not that. But like we said,
honey has a game like quality, and when you win
the game, pocket feels good. It feels real good. So
hopefully you get that feeling. Phil. I'll do my best.
I'll do my best for you. But yeah. So that

(17:22):
was three and a half days of turkey hunting, two
big turkeys, a bunch of meat. My boy and I
this morning woke up early and start clean all the
meat up vacuumsila, put in the freezer turkey nuggets Tomorrow night, Phil,
I bring some in for it if you like, and
then we're gonna if anybody has the ideas t C
at the media door, com what we want to do
for cutting these babies up and cooking them up. If

(17:45):
you have anything you'd like to see on the Instagram,
let me know and we'll do it. But that, yeah,
that was my Texas turkey hunt. It has begun, Phil
has begune. So if you haven't read the tenth Legion yet,
have you? I have not? Damn it, you have roughly
a month. I'm sure it'll be like the night before
we go out. I read the first two chapters. All right, Well, listen,

(18:09):
I was a procrastinator in high school and college. Uh
you know I did, all right. I was a stay
up until four am the morning that the papers do
kind of guy. Yes, well, all right, we'll moving on.
We got a lot to get to. Sure, that was
a long winded turkey story. I just meant to mention
that I had killed some turkeys. Um, But now here

(18:30):
we are twenty minutes later. Um, so sorry about that
next thing. T A C. Chapters Phil, have you have
you logged in Facebook yet? You know I have, and
I've done some lurking, have you I have been lurking
the Montana chapter. They have been asking about you, like
where is Phil? They they're looking every person that joins
the Montana chapter, they're looking for you. Okay, we'll keep

(18:52):
an eye out. Maybe do you have a Burner account? Can?
You're not gonna share what it is? Well, I mean,
once I joined, everyone's gonna say that's wise. No, So
I didn't go with mango. But I chose a very
generic picture of like a mountain at the end of
a highway on the horizon. This will be a game
like fine fill the engine exactly. But my name I
put it Phil, and my last name is t E.

(19:16):
Let me just say this, let's just do this. Could
you change? Could you create a more encoded version of
a Burner account that people will have to find figure out?
Maybe I don't know how let how often they let
you change your name. I don't think it's very often.
I might have to wait like a month or something.
I don't know. I'll see if I can. Phil is
going to create a burner huh uh. If Facebook executives

(19:39):
are listening, a lot of them, I think Zuckerberg listen,
it will just be like Rick Johnson, and it'll be
like like a camo. It's gonna be's gonna be something
Phil will. We'll leave bread crumbs for you to figure
out that it's him. He's gonna join one chapter and
if you if the chapter leader or so many chapter
figures out it's Phil, I will shower you with th
HC gifts. It's called Fine the Fine Film, Fine Film.

(20:02):
It's a new contest we just came up with Live.
There's gonna be some Illuminati style clues I'm gonna leave
in my posts and stuff. You'll have to figure it out.
I've been watching this Q and on documentary. It's gonna
be just like that they got the Cicada thing, not
just like that close. All right, let's see Michael, Now
is it canos k n A U S S. That's

(20:26):
it's now? I think that is definitely silent. No, or
now see is it two s is an e? No,
it's just two s. Alright, Michael canal h he is.
He's our leader from New Mexico. He made Phil. Did
I show this do you feel check it out? Yep?
You showed me. Describe what you're seeing right now. It's

(20:48):
almost like like a Patrick Bateman style business card. Business card,
yes with uh the Hunting Collective logo. Yes, it is
the Hunting Collective New Mexico Chapter. I won't read out
his phone number or email. Um he's says New Mexico
Chapter leader. And then it says th h C New Mexico.

(21:09):
Facebook dot com slash groups slash th h C New
Mexico And so he he wrote on our little Facebook
chapter admin page. I decided to make some business cards
to hand out to people I come across and start
talking to. Just thought it was a rather inexpensive, but
still a nice way of creating a flyer away to
get people to my group. Pretty badass. All these things

(21:33):
make me chuckle because they're just so uh. Are folks
in the in the actual cult chapters are very innovative
and very excited and are growing our little chapters in
amazing ways and with great passion. I just received an
email from Doug during this morning lauding the Wisconsin chapter

(21:53):
for their growth uh thus far, And so I'm excited
to report on that. And now let me find I'm
gonna find the last update that someone posted to where
we are in terms of we're over a thousand members Phil,
do you ever think we get there? Never? But I've
always underestimated you before, so yeah, I apologon't underestimate me,

(22:16):
son of a bit. Let's see, we got yeah leading
the way right now. California has been leading the way
from the beginning, but then of the last update, here's
listened as Q two one in the spreadsheet. I think
Patrick Ray made this from Alabama. Uh, California leading away

(22:37):
four seventy seven, Phil, California leading the way. Wow, four
seventy seven. Montana has shot up the leaderboard to number
two with a hundred and seventy three. One of those
is Phil's burner account and Colorado one thirty nine, Arizona
one seventeen, Wisconsin one thirty five, wash Enton one oh four.

(23:01):
Well done everyone, well done. A few have zero Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, Nevada,
Texas has zero sad days. Sad days for those places,
But get in. We're not looking to grow this year
cult all that. We're not trying to grow it just
for the sake of numbers. I wanna slowly, methodically bring

(23:22):
people in that are really want to to come share
in this hunting thing. Phil. I'm excited we're gonna keep
having some folks on on the show to talk about this.
Like I said, Nuri Hong in California. A. B. Rich
has been blowing it up, Patrick Ray, Riley Nelson, all
you guys out there that we call chapter leaders, thank you.

(23:43):
And one thing before we get we got say I'm
so old coming on remember him? Of course, I do
public land about one of my favorite people in the world.
He's got a new conservation issues we're gonna be talking
about just now coming up. But before we get to that,
I've got uh newman Landa wrote in he said, I
just wanted to share my ten year old project that
he's doing for his class. They were tasked with making

(24:04):
a presentation that demonstrates opinion writing. My son Jack chose
to talk about hunting and conservation. Attached is the draft
he just sent me. I've gotten with him to spruce
it up a bit, but I wanted you to see
it in its raw form. It was pretty impressive. I
just wanted you to see your young fans are fighting
the good fight and guarding the gate in elementary schools.

(24:25):
I hope you enjoy now. I hope this is okay
with Jack. When I'm gonna try to read most. I'm
gonna read it all ready, phil typos and everything. I hope,
so I don't think I don't know. I hope there
isn't any type. I read the first little bit of it.
It's maybe, I mean, look a look at me. I'm
just being I'm understating everyone. Maybe I'm sorry Jack. I
would love to he apologize to Jack all right. Hunting, hunting,

(24:48):
Why hunting is good for wildlife? There's a picture of
a mule deer in a turkey on there. It says
why hunting is good for the conservation. When a hunter
kills an animal, yes, he or she is taking a life,
but he or she also just help conservation because when
an animal is shot by a hunter, there's one less
animal to eat all the other grass or seeds or
even other animals. So whenever most people here that an

(25:11):
animal was just shot, they're probably thinking, oh, no, an
animal was just killed, and now that a species will
probably become extincts soon. But what they should think of
is an animals just shot, and now there's more food
for all the other animals. Also, when you go hunting,
you have to buy a tag. The tag is so
whenever you kill an animal, you put the tag on it,
and there are only a few tags, so you don't

(25:33):
over hunt an animal. Tags are also for another thing.
When you buy the tags, the money that you buy
the tags with goes towards the wildlife and conservation. So
that is how hunting helps conservation. What do you think, Phil,
You know how you are gonna buy out those billboards
in San Francisco? You should still do that, but then

(25:55):
just put that on the st jack on. There you go. Yep,
there's more you want to hear more. The history of
hunting Over two million years ago, cavemen started to hunt,
and they didn't hunt for the fun of it. They
hunted to survive and if they didn't get anything, they
wouldn't eat that day. But over the centuries people have
become smarter. They have learned how to farm and how
to cook. And when the first refrigerator came out and

(26:16):
then eighteen forties, people didn't need to eat right away.
Around the sixteen hundreds, people made laws on wind, where, how,
and what animal you kill and hunt over the over
the decades, people have started hunting just for the pleasure
of it, but also a lot of people still hunt
for fun and to get meat in the refrigerator. I
brought it back to the refrigerator there at the end.
I like what he's doing. Also, throughout the years, poachers

(26:37):
have been made, and often people mistake poachers for hunters,
which is true. Um, can I just go to the
conclusion um because he does the whole thing about the
difference between hunting and poach, which is very well. But
the conclusion in conclusion, I think that you should have

(26:57):
a different opinion on hunting. Now. I'm not saying you
need to start hunting. I'm just saying you should appreciate
hunters more for the things they do, like helping conservation.
The end, Jack, fantastic, great, well done. Yep, well done Jack.
In all series is this is about as good as
I could do, if not better. It had definitely better

(27:21):
than very clean introduction. Yeah, you had those those middle
paragraphs with you, with you, with your arguments and conclusion
and your conclusion bringing it all home. So I if listen, Newman,
if Jack somehow doesn't get an A plus on this,
you right in and you let me know, and I'll
I'll do. Whoever this teacher is, its elementary cool teacher,

(27:41):
We'll take it. The tack. We'll let the THHD Facebook
chapters take care of We'll take care of it. Don't worry.
We'll rough them up all right now from one uh
budding conservationist to a hardened one. Now we're gonna listen
to my buddy Sam Silver. So I'm so hoped. What's up, Funny?

(28:10):
How you doing? Man? I'm doing great? How are you doing?
I'm doing I'm doing fantastic. You look good. You've been
doing like a workout you told me? Yeah, like I've
been tell me about this workout. I gotta get in
Turkey shape? Is there? Turkey shape? Is that a thing
that sitting on it by a tree? Is that the
thing you'd get in shape for? I mean, I guess
I haven't perused like Instagram or anything, but there's gotta
be somebody out there with like I mean, there's every

(28:31):
other fit like you know, there's there's gotta be like
Turkey fit, like somebody was there there. There's ELK Fit, right,
ELK Fit, ELK shape, was there an ELK fit and
Elks shape probably and then uh white tail fit. Yeah,
I guess it would just be like, yeah, eating nuggets

(28:51):
and sitting against a tree. That's what you do. Yeah, yeah,
go through the Chick fil A drive through and then
get your nuggets and go sit by a tree and
eat them. Turkey Yeah, turkey show. Yeah. Well, depending on
where your hunt turkeys, I mean you kind of got
to be in at least pretend shape. It's true. Yeah, hunting.
Where are you do in South Dakota and the Turn?

(29:12):
We were just talking about the turkey tour um a
little bit. But South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska? Where where
I'm gonna be? Uh, Saturday? Are you coming to join us?
Are you coming with us? I won't make it to
the hills, but I might be able to sneak in
for a couple of days in Nebraska. Okay, good, you've
just live on the air. You've you've promised that you're

(29:34):
gonna be there. You sneak it. You sneak the hell
over there. We need I will. Yeah, I'll do my best. Okay, Um,
but that country man, You're up and down a good bit.
It depends. Phill and I just had a big conversation
about running, gun or sit and get. Do you have
any philosophies turkey philosophies that that starter end with sitting
and staying in one spot or getting up and run

(29:54):
around like a crazy person. I mean, I'm probably the
same as most people where you try to get a
close to the roost as you can, where you're you know,
you're in on them tight early, but then the rest
of the day, you know, I'm typically you know, unless
I find a spot where it has like a ton
of like really fresh scratch, scratching or you know sign,
I'm typically doing running gun type stuff the rest of

(30:15):
the day, trying to get something just to gobbles back
and try to you know, make a play on something.
I mean, that's certainly the most fun. Anyway, it is
the most fun. We were just talking a lot about
if you can pattern turkey, which in the West is
a lot of times hard to do. You just a
big chunk of public land, you find a bird, you
don't have time take pattern to sit and watch the
turkey and see where it's gonna go or pattern them,

(30:38):
and you probably don't know enough about the landscape. If
you're just you know, walking into a piece of public
and trying to find a bird, you don't know enough
about that landscape to understand how that turkey is going
to use that terrain. Yeah, it's different than you know,
having a chunk land that you've hunted for however many
years and you know like typically they're going to roost
in this area or this tree. You know, it's a
little little bit different. But um, I think over the

(30:59):
years could probably figure out a pattern, like if you
have like a consistent roost like area, a region or
like little pocket. But man, it's tough. Yeah, well the argument,
see what you think about this. I've come to believe
in the sitting, sit and get and run and gun
debate that if you know where a turkey it wants
to be, even if even if this is what we're
doing in Texas, even if you know where they're going

(31:20):
to roost and you pull off yards or find that meadow,
you know they're gonna want to be in once they
get once they fly down, that's a more sure bet
than it is trying to call them in and change
their pattern. I agree. Yeah, okay, but like you said
a lot of times, you don't have that knowledge. And
if you don't have that knowledge, you gotta run a gun. Yeah.

(31:43):
Now we gotta teach Phil all this man, because Phil,
he's got a month till his first hunt on the
Is he going to be on the Turkey tour. No,
he's not allowed to travel away from home. You've got
pretty much chained to the studio. We're gonna we're gonna
have the first week, gonna have the first week of May.
Phil is like a paid indentured service pretty much. I mean,

(32:06):
we feed him. He's healthy, that's good, but he can't
he can't like go more than a few hours away
from the office, and he'll often to get called back
by Rinella. You know, he has like one on a
little shock up bring him back to the studio. Anyway,
that's what we're excited for around here. Let's tell everybody
your your Turkey events for this spring. Yeah, let's see,

(32:30):
I've got South Dakota, North Dakota. I'm North Dakota resident now,
so first tag in North Dakota. That should be kind
of fun. But yeah, in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana,
and then uh potentially Minnesota. So I'm not right and
I'm not traveling you know, too far this year, too
many crazy states or anything. But um, I'm gonna be
able to get out and get after it. Um definitely

(32:52):
focused on I got my wife's got a tag, trying
to get her a bird. My dad's got a tag,
try to get him burg. Chris Ellis, who you know,
is actually flying out. We're gonna go chase turkeys together
at some point. So um yeah, good fantastic human. Um yeah,
fun with that guy. But you refresh my memory on
last year. I certainly had a tough turkey year last

(33:14):
year when COVID kind of crushed my dreams for turks.
How do you do last year? Do you feel like
this is any redemption for you? Because for me, when
I shot that first turkey in Texas, I felt amazing.
I felt like I had been through something. I you know,
I actually ended up having a pretty good year. I
didn't go nearly as many places I had originally planned,
Like you couldn't buy a tag in Nebraska, Kansas, you

(33:37):
had a quarantine for fourteen days. I mean, there was
always like stipulations on stuff. But I had a pretty
good year. I shot four birds last year, you know,
helped another three people get birds, So it was it
was fun. You know. I got to be part of
seven seven turkey hunts successful turkey hunt slash bring, so
I'm I was lucky do you think I'm ever gonna
get my goal of ten in one year? Have you

(33:58):
killed two already, haven't you? Yeah, I've got too. I
mean that's you're doing pretty good. I'm feeling it. I'm
feeling it. I feel like I've got a shot. I've
got Montana. Well, I only bought three, but I can
buy two more. I've got one in South Dakota, one
in Wyoming, and two in Nebraska. But I can get

(34:19):
a third yea, and so conceivably I don't have to
leave the Western I can get my tin. Yeah, but
I've been man, I don't know. I've got some backups.
If it gets to like the end of May, are
you gonna like travel to those states where like I
think Michigan has typically a couple of days in June.
Wisconsin is my spot. Uh. I haven't told Doug during

(34:42):
this we have talked about it. I haven't told Doug Dusty,
but have you to see if there's any leftover tags?
There is? Uh? In Wisconsin, I think you can. I
don't have any birds you can shoot Wisconsin. But it's
not it's not a small number. Well, so it's it's typically, Uh,
you can choose as many as you want, as long
as you have the tag. But I know that there
are way fewer leftover tags. This year there were like

(35:04):
sixteen thousand more people that put in for turkey tags
in Wisconsin. This spront bitch, Alright, Well maybe screw maybe
screws my backups. Maybe maybe, But I mean, you know,
I know I can get a tag in Idaho, um Oregon.
I know I can get a tag unless it's a
similar situation. So I think I could in the West.

(35:25):
If I was like one short, I would just get
I would just get real inventive with what I could
do in the West. But I can conceivably get real
close and then you know, I just need a little
extra levers to pull to get the ten number. Well
maybe I can call it, you know, if I if
I am able to eat out to Nebraska with you,
maybe I can call one in for you. Again, Dude,

(35:46):
I'm this is this is exactly the the equation that
I want. I'm happy to call in birds for other
people and calling my own birds, but I'm also happy
to have somebody to do all the call. Dude, I'm
not there's no you go in it for me. I
love when you call that birden for me and I
spooked it. Somebody, well, we spooked it. That was great.

(36:08):
I did that in Texas. Last week's had a bird
come into three yards, goblin's head off, spitting a drummond
like right behind my head. Basically he gobbled his way
off it kind of I think he knew something was up,
not quite understanding. Called him back into sixty yards two
or three more times, I think, and never just never
got a shot. But those are those are the fun
times when you know there's a bird that that that's

(36:29):
that fired up that you can pretty much put him
on a string and just kind of pull them back
in whenever you feel like it. Yeah, I think that's
one of my favorite things. And I learned this from
hunting with like Aaron war Britten and whatever. But like
you call a bird in, they don't quite come into range,
and you just let them wander off and then you
go to where they came and gobbled and calm, and
then they just come ripping right back in because they're like, oh,

(36:52):
I did call up a hen, you know. Yeah, that's
a good hot tip. That's a really good hot tip.
I've done that before, not even thinking about it in
that way, but just kind of like getting was for
cut the distance. But it's that's that's a really good point. Yeah,
that's a that's a great point. Yeah. I've used that
tactic several times now and it's amazing. Um, like what
we did it on your burden in South Dakota a
couple of years back, where called him up and then

(37:13):
he came up and kind of gobbled on this little
ridge and then went off. And then we went to
where he was and did you know, and then he
came right back up. So came right back up. Yeah. Yeah,
and and and again if you're able to if he
sees something he doesn't like, you're able to to know. Okay,
this turkey he's he's committed, but he's also not I mean,
he's not brainless. Some of these this turkey I killed

(37:34):
in Texas a couple of days ago, he was, he
was fairly brainless. He just flew down off the rust.
He flewed off the roost when it was dark and
came in to beat his other buddies to the punge
I for you, And so he is. There was kind
of anything you could have done just about anything to him,
and I think he probably would have came back in
certainly didn't give him that chance. But you know it's

(37:54):
it's again just reading that turkey. But that's a good
hot tip man, Aaron Warburton of The Hunting Pot. Look,
that's that's if anybody got anything from listening to two
hours I mean talk this week it's Sam so holds
hot tip the Errand that's that's another one. Do you
hunting in South Dakota and hunting other places? Do you
find that you that your strategies are different from state

(38:17):
to state, from terrain to terrain, and have you kind
of codified that in your mind where you know, like
I'm gonna go here and do this. You know, I'm
hunting Iowa cornfields, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna set
up a pop up line, or I'm hunting South Dakota
and I'm just gonna walk around. I probably haven't like
broke it down into state by state, but I'm guessing
you know, there's definitely tendencies like depending on where I'm going, Uh,

(38:39):
you know, if I'm hunting stuff where there's like gonna
be egg where I know, like turkeys are probably gonna
at least head too and scratch um and eating whatever.
Like you know, I probably use that to my advantage
if I know I can cut them off, like if
there's like a okay, they roost in that little cottonwood
stand there, but I know that they're going to be
working their way to this egg field because it's the
only egg in you know, the whole area. Um, Like,

(39:01):
I'll bring that into But I mean most of the
places I hunt are so wide open like that I'm
either like trying to sneak into where I think they're
gonna fly down to, um, and then if that doesn't happen,
then I'm looping away around trying to cut them off
on the way to something. So um yeah, I mean
I unfortunately, I'd like to do more of it. I
haven't done a ton of big like big woods hunting.

(39:24):
UM did a little bit back in spring of nineteen,
and I had a blast room. Like I was honestly
had more fun doing that, like you know, sneaking around
in big oak ridges and stuff and um yeah yeah,
mature timber right. Yeah, we were. I was talking to
the guys at FHF the bino harnesses and chess rigs,
and I was asking that, you know, how much let's
make a product for turkeys, which they are making some

(39:46):
inserts for their chess rig. I don't know if I'm
breaking news on that, but that's what they're doing. Uh. Sorry, guys,
if I'm breaking the pr release on now. One um,
we're and we were talking about using bino harnesses for
turkey hunting, and they were saying, listen, a lot of
guys just don't use binos for turkeys, and I thought
that's weird, because man, I use them as much as

(40:06):
as much as any other pursuit. I guess I'm thinking,
I'm not sitting in glass and all the time, but
I'm using them all the time in the turkey woods,
have you? And I imagine, I guess. And then I
started thinking, well, maybe if you're hunting in big timber
in the east or in the South, and you're in
a situation where you just literally can't see that far

(40:27):
um and you're calling turkeys through this thick timber where
you you really don't have a chance to get a look,
I guess I could see it then. But I mean,
you're you're carrying bins every turkey hunt, aren't you. Every
time there was one there was one hunt? Uh, three
years ago that I didn't have binos in the entire time.
I was like, oh, I just wish I had, but

(40:49):
I feel naked. So no, I use them all the
time turkey hunt. But again, like you said, like I
hunt pretty wide open stuff, so like any time I
see a black spot out in the field or whatever,
you know, constantly, like if I'm ripping around like trying
to scout, I'm definitely using them all the time. But
even when I'm hunting, I'm using them a lot early
in the season, you know, because it's not so thick
that I can glass up birds on the roost and

(41:12):
sneak into them. Um. So yeah, yeah, that's another thing,
glassing up birds. I mean, you're gonna capture more light
in a pair time by forty two then. But you know,
to see one you might be able to see with
the naked eye that there's birds roots, So you want
to see is it a time, is it a jake?
Is it a hand? You needed? You need that definition.
You need to have those. So if there's folks out

(41:32):
there that aren't carrying bins, shame on you. You should be. Um,
I wanted to do this with you. I want to
try to do this everybody here in the future. But
top how many Turkey states do you feel like you've
you've filled a tag? How many states do you feel
like you've too. I was trying to count the other
day and I got about thirteen or fourteen. Oh, I'm

(41:54):
not even close to that. Yeah, let's see, like seven
or eight, maybe seven or eight. Yeah, that's pretty good.
I feel like that's way more than most folks. Yeah,
it's most folks are probably one or two or three,
but they're definitely a diehard Turkey enters. This is starting
to become a thing that are trying to do the state.
You know, Turkey Slam. I don't know if there's even

(42:15):
a Slam. It's way more than a Slam. But that's
way more exciting to me than the Grand Slam or
the or the World Slam. Yeah, because it's called the
U s Slam, right, is that what it is? Yea, yeah,
I don't know. Yeah, so the U s Slam. I
think we should start thinking about that. We should started,
we should make it packed right now, we're going to
do it, yeah, I mean that'd be great, it'd be
great packed. That was a noncommittal packed. That's fine. I

(42:39):
mean yeah, like, yeah, caught me in. We we have
to tell our wives first. Yeah, business venture, you know.
And I've been you know a few of those states
I've hunted in where they're like right now the populations
are super low, like Arkansas. I mean that's just tough hunting. Um. Yeah, yeah,

(42:59):
the land to clay nuncomb a clay Nucomb kill one
over the weekend, probably one lass over there. Yeah, it's
one less over there. But yeah, that's that's uh, it's
becoming a thing. But do you have let's try to
name our like top five you could be the top
five states that you want to hunt in that you
haven't or top five states you've hunted in. Either one,
like in your mind, can you rank Let's start at

(43:20):
five and go to one load high. I can start
of that if you have your try to think about it.
Can I just think about this over the weekend. I'm
gonna go number number five Florida. Florida is have you
ever hunt in Florida? Number one? A lot of people
hunt there. One because the seasons are earlier, right, so

(43:41):
you can hunt in early March mid March. And two
you can get yourself an osciola, which is a subspecies
that really you don't have much. You don't have a
chance to get anywhere else in the in the US
that I that I can think of, or no of.
So those are the generally two reasons. But again, man
Florida is just a kick ass place to be, especially
in March when the weather the spring spring is sprung

(44:04):
and Ossola is in at least in my opinion, are
a little bit more cagy, a little bit tougher than
some of the other subspecies, definitely tougher than a marian.
So I'm gonna put number five is gonna be uh Florida.
Number four Oklahoma. Have you ever hunt in Oklahoma? I
love that place. Oklahoma has is becoming one of the

(44:26):
top turkey states, one of the most hunting turkey states
in the country here recently, it's kind of a trendy
spot to hunt if you're a turkey guy. Um, they're
everywhere and it's it's not really as much of the
culture as it is in places like Florida or places
like Texas, but it's an up and commerce. So Oklahoma.
Number three is South Dakota. That's it's gonna be your

(44:50):
It's gonna be on your list. For sure. The Black
Hills are an amazing place to hunt turkeys, not only
the terrain, but the conservation story, just everything about particularly
Black Hill. But I've also hunted them in the central
portion of the state and the plains, places like the
Rosebud Reservation, and so I've always had good luck in
South Dakota. So that's gonna be on my list. I

(45:12):
might surprise some people with number two, but I had
a kick ass hunt in Oregon. I feel like especially
eastern Oregon and a wonderful place to hunt turkeys. Um again,
you can do it a little bit later in the years.
Who're trying to schedule your turkey year? And the number
one is Texas. Texas is I understand our public land friends,
public Land Tis might not agree with my Texas is

(45:34):
number one. But the argument I'll make for Texas is
that not a lot of Texans give two ships about
a turkey. They'll say doesn't have antlers, and you say no,
They'll be like, we don't care. And so you can
get a lot of access to a lot of big
tracks a ground, or a lot of tracks in suburban
areas that are smaller but whole, a lot of birds

(45:54):
and there. There's over half a million turkeys in the
state of Texas, almost of turkeys. That's a lot of turkeys, man,
And so there's a lot of turkeys on a lot
of nice people. Probably bias because I just came back
from there. But if you can find a way to
get access to private ground there, which I think is
abundant in my opinion at least um, then Texas becomes

(46:16):
the top state because you can start in the southern
region hunt early and then you know, I was there
this last weekend. It was opening day for for the
northern part of the state. And so and you can
go buy and over the counter license and you can
get four tax um and that's so that again just
it's plentiful. It's a good place to be. So that's
my list. Hopefully I helped you, Sam. I know I'm

(46:37):
hitting you with this. It's corect I'm gonna at all, Okay,
knock at that. So my favorite place that I've ever
hunted turkeys was Tennessee. And it was kind of a
combo of things like just hunting, you know, big timber,
hardwood stuff, but like the way it played out, had
um like two days in a row, mishaps, like screwed
up on a bird. And then I had a bird

(46:58):
at like fifteen yards and had a bad shell and
like you know kind of like farted a look like
a little a little shot on shell. Like it was like, yeah,
I was just like there's kind of like lofted it
out there, and you know that one and then killed.
I'm gonna start prank with people with that if I
could get how that shell was creating. Just so yeah,

(47:19):
just like some grass and a walk. And then the
next day finally killed a bird but had to switch
on left handed, had to switch to shoot right handed,
and like like he was about to disappear over the
rise and like just like domed him off the top.
So that like this Tennessee was super fun. Um. So
that five or one, that's five, that's one the other
way you're dropping to that, Okay, it's fine, surprising surprising,

(47:42):
I know. Yeah. Number two South Dakota. South Dakota, like
you know, like have a blast hunting on the Black
Hills and stuff. Um. Number three trying to think like Nebraska,
I think just because of the abundance and uh yeah,
lots of turkeys called the called the turkeys in certain areas. Um,

(48:03):
you know, I had one hunt there a while back,
like we buddy and I killed the bird. He killed
the bird, but it was it was like nine degrees
and we had six inches of fresh snow. So like
watching a bird strut in. I think in the middle
of a snowstorm. Now, it's pretty cool. Uh, let's see
that's three Kansas is super fun. Yeah, and then Minnesota

(48:23):
is a cool hunt birds in. Yeah, the state of
Donny Vincent. He was up there shooting turkeys last year
when I last I talked to him. They're just smashing birds.
Tony Peterson up there, Yeah, we talked to him last week. Um,
that's a sleeper. I feel like Minnesota. Minnesota. Yeah, not
a lot of people talk about it, but there's certain
parts of the state that have lots of birds. Yeah.

(48:44):
I think that. I feel like that the categories for me,
the things I'm looking for is abundance of turkeys obviously. Ah,
and again I think abundance of access is always there,
but but a good structure for access. And my Texas
thing is is a bit goes us that a little bit.
But like I said, I just think that I just
know that there's a lot of landowners down there that
would let you hunt. They don't care. They're like, man,

(49:07):
there's no aler's on that turkey. They're in the backyard there.
You go on them. And then I think three is
how many tags you can get, you know, how how
much bang for your buck? And that's that's limited in
a lot of places. And again there's a few states
where you have to draw for certain areas or for
the entire state. Um, and so it's really I've been

(49:28):
I just went in and bought a General Wyoming tag,
a general a Black Hills, South Dakota tag, got all
my Montana tags as a resident, and then got two
tags on the piny Ridges of Nebraska. And all that
stuff happened, um, just over the counter and just sat
down one night, boom boom boom, got them done. And
so that turkeys. I think one of the reasons that

(49:50):
turkey hunting is so powerful to me because it is
so accessible and you don't have to I mean, you
could play in a turkey tour in the Western United
States three weeks before you left and you would have
Do you think that's going to shift a little bit
in the years to come, simply because of some of
the regions in the states that have diminishing turkey populations,
and just you know, the popularity of turkey hunting has

(50:12):
gone up, especially the popularity of traveling to turkey hunt.
And yeah, and I think it's that, yes, that accessibility
is always an issue, right, Look at Colorado Elk. I mean,
if you start to look at how Colorado Elk has
has ebbed and flowed over the years, you would open
it up to everybody, and then you you inevitably have
to start closing off portions of it. You have to
start taking those over the counter tags off, put them

(50:34):
in a lottery. You're putting them in a in a
point system, um, in a drawal system. So I would
say you're probably right about that. I think it'll take
some time, I would guess to matriculate into that because
even even states like Kansas, for a while there it
was a two states or a two bird state, and
then they went to a one bird state just because

(50:54):
of populations. Um. Yeah, yeah, I think it will become
the is something that as turkey hunters and people that
care about it. And this goes back to our our
recent conversation around Matt Ronelle's article about our three anti
R three, it's like, how do we handle We can
talk about that a little bit too, Um, how do
we handle this? Because even this podcast where I'm mentioning

(51:18):
I bought tags in this state, I about tags in
that state. This is where I love to hunt. These
are my top states I am making. I am actively
understanding that by saying where I love to hunt, I'm
other people will probably be there. And when the Black
Hills are pretty big place, but not that big, not
that big, and so I I know you probably run

(51:38):
into this. All of us that have like voices in
our industry have to think about it. Um, it's a
catch twenty two if there ever was one. In my opinion, Yeah, yeah,
I try to you know, like I try to generalize
like regions that I hunt a lot um, you know,
and a lot of people ask what state I shot
something in or whatever, and I, you know, it's kind
of a dick move, I'll be honest, but I tip

(52:00):
quickly respond with the state of happiness, because you know,
like I think, Yeah, in my my personal opinion, I
think everybody's going to have a higher quality hunt if
they do a lot more of the footwork themselves, figuring
out locations, figuring out states, figuring out regions, whatever, whatever

(52:20):
it may be. Like, I think you get a lot
more satisfaction out of a hunt if you're not like, oh,
he hunted here, I'm gonna go hunt here. Yeah. That's
just that's just my personal opinion. Though it's tough, man,
but I just you know, it was just in Texas
met uh a lovely couple, Greg and Casey. They let
me hunt their property. They were awesome. I'd love to

(52:41):
hunt with them as much as humanly possible. Greg is
a hardcore Turkey. Honor and shout out to him. He
had your public and tease sticker on his yettie and
he he was wearing the gobbler camp. Dude. He was
rock and publicly and teas hardcore. But I liked him
immediately when I saw that. He's like, I'm obsessed with turkeys.

(53:04):
I think we I got along with him. I don't know,
he might not like me. Enjoy the ship out of him. Um,
he was doing, uh, pretty much the exact same Turkey
to whether I'm doing a couple of weeks later, right,
And so it just becomes like a part of the
culture for people to travel and hit these states up
and is accessible and so yeah, man, at some point,

(53:26):
the more hunters that are on a place, the more
it has the opportunity to become a biological desert and
and have pressure and even make the hunting experience for
those that are residents are traveling non residents all the
more negative. Um, we're all more unsuccessful at least at
least the chances for that. So I think it's the
ultimate debate, it's the ultimate catch twenty two. Um, it's

(53:48):
funny for us to be in this position. That makes
me laugh because when I first got in the industry,
was like, hunting numbers are falling, What are we gonna do?
It's awful, Oh my gosh, it's and now we're we've
we've shifted somehow into should we let more people in?
Should we recruit new people that aren't already part of
our networks? You know, I had a buddy that made

(54:10):
a good analogy, like the recruiting should never stop. Like
think of a championship team whatever sport. You recruited those
players to come play there, and you're not going to
stop recruiting just because you won once. Like it's a
constant thing, Like you need, you need this constant flow
of people and like you're gonna have some that fizzle

(54:31):
out and some that you know re come back in.
But like we can't just be like, well we're good
and then wait for the next crash of hunters. Yeah. Yeah,
our our system of conservation depends on a rising tide.
It just depends on a rising tide in more ways
than I can count. Um. Often, hunter there needs to

(54:55):
be a hunter recruitment. I think it should be our
three plus a. Uh, and the A is approval. You know,
we need people to approve of hunting as as a
thing that's good for society. Um. And that's that's likely
more important than the actual recruitment itself. But the recruitment
isn't a zero sum game. You recruit a new hunter

(55:17):
who's in a family of non hunters, and that person
becomes a hardcore outdoorsmen and they love it and they
talk about it and that's all they post about, and
that's all that they do. Chances are someone in their
orbit is going to be drawn into that energy. And
so that's how it works. It's not just that we
are we're starting new there's you know, new cracks in
the surface that people can enter through. You know, there's

(55:39):
there's new gates that are opened by that. And I
just I have so much passion about hunting and I
built my life around it that I'm I'm unwilling to
turn that off. I'm unwilling to turn it off. I
will keep that going forever. And I'm you know, our
buddy Greg I mentioned that's a big fan of public

(56:00):
public lan Teaes. I told him, I said, I'm gonna
be up in those four states doing a turkey tour.
I'll drove some way points where I know birds are.
You're coming up there too. I want to share that
stuff with you. He shared his land in Texas and so,
you know, hunters are generally not apt to do that,
but uh, I think you can on a relational level, right, Yeah, Yeah,

(56:21):
I think I think at some point, like it's just
important to be helping helping others out to Yeah, it
really is. But again it's it's a conversation that we
have to have, especially around our three, Like it's gonna
the more that we have success with it, yeah, the
more it's going to become problematic. Turkey hunting is a
good is a good example, and I honestly I do

(56:42):
believe that COVID had like we're not going to know
the repercussions that it had like on this space for
a while, but like I mean, just how it felt
out hunting the last year, Like there were you know, okay,
you take professional sports basically cancel uh, college sports basically canceled,

(57:03):
most high school sports basically canceled. So you have all
of these people who you know, either used to or
did limited amounts of hunting on just on the weekends,
and now they're working remote. Like I mean, there's all
these factors that go into it, and all of a sudden,
you have all of these people with all of this
time that love to hunt, but may only get out
five to ten days of year total, and they have

(57:23):
all those time they go out, so like you know,
you definitely felt the added pressure, you know, and then
just looking at Wisconsin, like selling that many more turkey
tags and all this different stuff. I think it's going
to be interesting to see how it shifts back. So
like you know, we've done all this are three stuff
over the last decade or however long, you know, like
when it really started pushing and we have COVID hit

(57:45):
and then you see this massive spike in you know,
people in your spots and people at the trailhead and
almost you know, it's all these crazy things like is
that going to maintain or like how long is that
going to take to shift back? You know, as more
states start to open up hunter and people go back
to work and sports come back, you know, all these
other obligations that people have with family and all, you know,

(58:06):
all these things, it will be. I'm just curious to
see how it all plays out. Right now, I would
imagine that the coffer for all the Pittman Robertson funds
and all the state agencies have seen a massive increase
in their budget. I hope the hell so. Yeah, We've
we sold millions of millions of new guns and ammo
is at a h millions of new rounds of ammunition. Yeah,

(58:27):
so I hope that that money, uh, it gets into
that Pittman Robertson fund and that Man. I've done a
lot of studying on this, and it gets divvied out
based on at some percentage based on number of hunters
in a state, number of license sold in the state.
There's a there's a very complicated equation that I can't
I can't pull out of my uh jetlag brain right now,

(58:47):
But there is there is an incentive to have more hunters,
to get the percentage of robertson dollars state by state,
and that definitely happens. To your point, I think the
way I think about this is what I think we've done,
what covid has helped do, and what what I think
the youth movement specifically that you've led and our company

(59:10):
here media has been a part of is. And specifically
I say that because I know the age demograph that
listens to this show, and I know it's young, and
so I think what we've done is raised the floor.
I'm not too cons I'm not too worried about how
high the ceiling is, because I think the ceiling, as
you mentioned there, is higher than it maybe should be

(59:31):
right now, just because of covid um. But again, the
important part is how many of these new hunters or
new license um holders from this last year can we keep?
Right That's the floor. The floor is how many of
them do we keep year over year over year every year?
That becomes our floor. So I think our floor has
been raised to a level we're not really sure of

(59:51):
right now. State, state by state, we can look, but
we've raised the floor. And I'm not too not too
concerned about the ceiling because I think that is the fluctuation, right,
you may get a flood of new hunters for whatever reason,
um and the and it's it's about that retained the
retained part of that group. But I do think over
the last couple of years we have raised to raise

(01:00:14):
that floor to a to a. I don't know whether
it's millions, but I was just reading an article the
other day. I'll pull it up here so I get
the numbers right from Pure Trusts about this exact thing.
It's it's how do we retain these hunters Michigan's it's
a Michigan saw a sixties seven percent hike and new
hunting license buyers this year compared This is obviously compared

(01:00:36):
to a fiftent increase in female hunters and a moderate
growth in many younger age brackets. The state also sold
forty six percent more apprentice licenses, a discounted option that
allows new hunters to give the sport a try under
the supervision of a mentor. And then this is from
Dustin Eisenhoff, who is the marketing specialist for the d

(01:00:56):
n R. He said, we have over one hundred thousand
new hunting customers the year. That's a big opportunity for
us to work with those to keep those folks involved.
Um This says Nevada saw jump and hunting licenses. Um
main sold a record number of deer permits nine rise
on hunting in that state. On and on and on
we go. We can we can list off those numbers forever,

(01:01:19):
but there's obviously an opportunity there right and there's there's
an opportunity for us to have an interesting Turkey season
where we come back from our torn and be like, boy,
that was intense. There are a lot of people. I've
been thinking about that over the last couple of months, like,
what's the reaction gonna be if we get out to
the Black Hills and there's a hunter on every ridge?
You know, it's not a positive It's not a positive reaction.

(01:01:42):
I mean, I've definitely tried. I don't know how you
think about it. I'll be interested to hear that. But
I started thinking about it, like turkeys, elk deer, there's
as much chance of hunters on the landscape as those animals.
Like every time I see a hunter and I see
a deer. I try and my best version of myself
to think about those things in the exact same way.
Both are both of them are supposed to be there, right,

(01:02:05):
both of them are going to be there. Um. And
it's helped the way that that I think a natural
reaction every hunter, somebody's in your spot or a spot
that you've worked hard to kind of cultivate, there is
a negative reaction there. No, It's like last spring, I
saw more people out hunting in spots that I've ever
seen before. Um, And at first it was you know, frustrating,

(01:02:28):
like because like you said, like you you know, you
learn these areas and whatever, like you hate to be
hunting stuff that's super pressured. But at the same time,
like I try to just keep it in my mind
that all those people are out there doing exactly what
I love to do, and like, more power to them. Now,
I think, yeah, I mean we could talk about all this.
They are all the our three stuff and like all

(01:02:49):
of them. But I think, and this this might be
I have no science to back this up. I don't
know what hunter numbers are like as a whole, Like
if they're increased seeing decreasing maintaining. But I think what
is happening, and this has shifted a lot over the
last ten years, is because of social media, because of

(01:03:09):
people like you and me talking about the importance of
public lands and hunting up public land and like just
hunting in general and talking about our travels and you know,
the hunting public and whatever. I think the few the
people that are hunting are hunting harder and hunting more
species and hunting more locations than ever before. You know,

(01:03:30):
think about like think about you know, like every time
if I talk to my dad about growing up hunting. Okay,
he grew up in Wisconsin. He hunted Wisconsin, and he
would deer hunt for a week, and he would duck
hunt for a few weekends, and he would, you know whatever,
Like he'd do those things within the state, close to home.
He wasn't planning fifty days a year on the road,
you know, and and hunting ten different states and buying

(01:03:52):
tags all over the place and putting in for all
these hunts, um and so where it used to be
like you'd hunt small game and big game and upland
whatever like kind of locally. Now it's shifted where you
might have fewer hunters, but they're all hunting more species,
more of the time, in more places. Yeah. Yeah, I
think social media certainly has added to that quite a lot.
I mean the media across the board, whether it's podcasts

(01:04:15):
or social media, but I think probably social media being
the big change, um and the big driver, and like
the kind of media people are consuming on a daily basis.
I mean, you know what's more aspirational, right, Like, and
when we went through this with our company, we bought
a sixty four acre farm in Michigan and quickly figured out, like,
that's great and all, but boy, it's hard to tell

(01:04:36):
a story about that. And in the consistent fashion marketting
did a great job with that. But again it's just
a different deal, um. And so people when people come
content creators in the professional sense, you almost have to
strike out. You know, it's because you're chasing new experiences
all the time. Exactly, That's all it comes down to, exactly,

(01:04:56):
no offense to like Lee and tiffinitly Kassi, they're awesome people,
but they started off as white tail hunters and their
show now if you watch is very you know, Western,
big game heavy, big game heavy across the board, and
I think that's just a reaction to like, boy, we
gotta show a lot. We want to do different things,
and we got to show a lot of different things

(01:05:17):
because we got a lot of a lot of programs
put together, a lot of content we want to create.
So I think it has I guess the aspirational set
of Hunters, the people that are in the position to
talk about it and show it have kind of shifted that,
I think a lot. And that's no different than Jim Shocky,
you know, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. It's not
like it's it's it's totally new, um, But I think

(01:05:37):
it's it's kind of proliferated to your point in the
last who knows how many years, five to seven years
for sure. And I'm assuming some of that comes from
the age demographic that has grown up with like this,
you know, more available media, Like you finally have enough
money to go do these things, and you're like, I've
been watching this for the last five or ten years,
like people hunting all over the place, and now I
finally can afford it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's

(01:06:00):
it's an interesting that way. I run into people all
the time that are you know, I ran into a
couple last year and two years ago in Bozeman. Then
are just randomly booked booked a fire tower to stay
in for a week and they were gonna lcome for
the first time and they just they heard about it
on a podcast what you know. I don't think it
was this one. It was some other podcast, and they decided, well,
we're just gonna go and do that. I was like, man,

(01:06:21):
that's aggressive. How long have you guys had a bow for?
How long you guys been been in the archery game?
About six months? It's like, you're gonna find that ran
back into him. But but that's a tough one. The
fire tip where they were going to was not a
really great spot. But there again, they're doing it. Man,

(01:06:42):
you know, they're out there doing it. They're inspired to
do it, and they're gonna learn that way. Um and
and that I can get with. But it is, man,
it's an entangled we're in. We're in this kind of
entangled it sometimes real mucky situation where we're um. This
most recent conversation about R three's right in the crosshairs,
which is what do we do if hunting all of

(01:07:04):
a sudden becomes the most popular thing on the street
over the next five years, what do we do? Um?
But you know that's not something that our model of
conservation is really built to address. I mean at that point,
I think there would be a lot of restrictions and
then it ends up all coming down to like if

(01:07:26):
it explodes in that way, it would come down to,
you know, really needing millions more acres of habitat put
back into like wildlife habitat, yeah, and that's all there is,
and put back into you know, managed habitat. Yeah. Because
because going back to that catch point, to the more hunters,

(01:07:47):
the more funding conservation gets right just on a flat level.
And then as the point I saw you make and
you did to take over for n w T, at
the point you were making there was like the more
conservation group members there are, the bigger their cloud is
politically and socially, right, the more attention comes to the
issues around turkeys or elk if it's r d F

(01:08:07):
for whatever it might be. And that's a great point.
But I think also you have the catch twenty two
of the more hunters, the more dollars we get right
licensed sales. Pittman robertson the American system of conservation funding
is very much built to benefit from more hunters. Right,
So there's there's one side, but are on the ecosystem level.
From a wildlife management level, more hunters doesn't mean success.

(01:08:29):
More hunters particularly means more pressure on landscapes, more pressure
on on wildlife populations. Um. The dynamic that we're just
we're probably not ready for wildlife because the habitat can't
keep up with the funding because it takes so much
longer to you know, to raise habitat than it does

(01:08:50):
raise money. So exactly, yeah, the habitat is not something
you you know, you can replace. And the wildlife populations again,
while cyclical because of many factors, is predator, prey, win
or kill things. There's just happened in any ecosystem. That's
a natural ebb and flow. But you have this third
and very impactful things. It's hunter pressure. Um. And I

(01:09:12):
imagine if you would think about it this way, if
you own a piece of property, they have this idea
called block management, but let's just remove that for a second.
If you if you own a piece of property and
you are and you loved animals, you love watching them,
hunting them, you love being around them, and you wanted
your property to be a wildlife haven and to be

(01:09:32):
a healthy ecosystem, and you care to kind of on
an ecosystem level of every little piece of it is
their water, is their cover? You know, trophic cascade? Is
there a proper predator prey balance? And somebody came to
you and said, hey, uh, the government will give you
a subsidy if you allow hunter access and they and

(01:09:53):
the government also then says, people will sign. You can
set some rules and people will sign a log, but
you can't sit at the gate and approve each one
and shake their hand and talk to him. Right, would
you do it if you only were talking about if
you didn't care about the money or the subsidies or
the tax break you might get for that. Would you
do it if you just cared about the wildlife? I

(01:10:14):
think the answer often is it would be sketchy. Right,
It would be tough. I mean, that would be a
very hard decision to make. Yeah, because opening that gate
is the ultimate slippery slope argument. Unless you open that
gate and people start coming through, and the flow of
people start coming through, your kind of no longer in
control of the balance and the of the ecosystem, Especially

(01:10:35):
if you've done all of the work to help those
populations flourish, you know, just to open that up to
you know, stuff out of your control like it that
it would be it would be a very hard decision
to make. Yeah, And so that's the Catchwaney two. And
I think that, in essence is what the kind of
conversations we need to keep having because there is no
easy answer, right, There's no easy answer to it. And

(01:10:56):
it's not that, as has been stated in several articles
and rebuttal to Matt Ronella's article, you're an asshole if
you don't do this, you're an asshole if you do this,
or it's not that, man. People have to make their
you know, people have different sets, perspectives and value systems,
and they make their decisions based on that. And we
have to have an overall welcoming vibe in our community.

(01:11:18):
But we also have to when we let people in,
go like, listen, you're coming in. You're coming into this complex,
messy situation that has lots of factors not only on
the state and national level, but on on individual ecosystem levels.
And so even when you step into a place where
you've never hunted, as like a transient hunter that's just
looking for adventure. You have to understand. You know, you're

(01:11:39):
buying your tag, you're doing your part, but you need
to understand kind of the situation you're walking into the
best you can. That information is always available to you
at the time, so you feel like that covers off
on that situation. I mean, it's been something that's been
going through my head almost every night when I go
to sleep, because, um, it's one of those deals where
I understand all sides, you know, when when it comes

(01:12:02):
to how do we bring in new hunters, how many
of them and what's the impact? You know. And had
a big conversation a couple of years back with Randy Newburg,
who has been talking about public lands and hunter recruitment
and it stuff for a long long time, and I
need to I wish I could knew the numbers exactly
right off the top of my head, but he was
talking about our three and how we don't really have

(01:12:23):
a recruitment problem all that bad because if you look
at the numbers of people just coming out of Hunters
Safety every year, something like six hundred thousand new Hunter
Safety members, you know, with a hunter Safety card every
single year, and that's I mean, that's a lot of individuals.
And if you the problem is really the retention, So
you know, those younger people or whoever is doing it,

(01:12:43):
like especially the younger crowd, if they get hunter safety,
they might hunt for a year or two, but a
lot of times, as other obligations happened, they kind of
phase out. So it's hard to know which segment of
our three to really like put the marketing dollars towards
and put the fun towards two. Yeah, like which part

(01:13:03):
of that do you do? Like is it is it really?
Do we really need to be focused on the recruitment
or do we just need to talk about making sure
that everybody who's currently doing it is re upping their
licenses every year and like keeping those people to keep
the funding. So I don't know what the answer is,
but you could, we could talk for hours and hours.
You have to break it down, man. I think one
thing that's important to break down here though, and I

(01:13:25):
think a lot of people might if you if you
stop and think this will be maybe apply to you,
is what happens if you bring in a young hunter,
right you like me or probably you, there's a very
small subset of hunters. Once you become eighteen, you kind
of go out of your parents home and you go
out into the real world. Let's say you go to college.

(01:13:46):
You're in a new place, don't have a lot of money. Now,
you don't have your own you don't have your parents
to take you and pay for the AMMO and pay
for the guns, and pay for all the things that
that it takes, the tags, the licenses. You have college,
you have classes, you have new friends, you have parties,
you have whatever whatever things that you do. Socially, your
life changes. Has happened to me, your life changes in

(01:14:06):
a way that doesn't support hunting, and almost any facet right,
it doesn't financially, you're not supported. Um socially, you're probably
not supported because you're being transported into some new place
without your friends around, without your social structure around. And
so I think one of the things that I love
the most I know n WTF does this and and
b h A does this is college chapters, specifically at

(01:14:30):
universities and state colleges around the country, because I think
I know for a fact that we're probably going to
retain emergent hunters that that start hunting when they're adults
what at a way higher rate than than people that
start hunting when they're eight twelve years old. But just
it just is what it is that happened to me.
I don't know if it happened to you, but it
definitely happened to me. Um, because your focus shifts and

(01:14:52):
your support shifts at that time in your life. I mean,
it didn't happened that way for me. Just I if anything,
I hunted harder when I got to college. Well it's
like I know a lot of people no offenses like
people like me. I know a lot of people that
got to college and went harder because they were free
and the school thing didn't go as well for them,

(01:15:14):
but that they're definitely I mean, I said in bows
when we have hunting fishing university down the street, like
it's you know, that's what it is. So but I
was also to go to college somewhere where hunting access
was readily available, so that's a different Yeah. Yeah. A
lot of the major colleges are in in major cities
or major urban areas. So again I don't have numbers
on this, but I just that is one of the

(01:15:35):
vulnerable points. So it would be nice to understand, like,
what are the vulnerable points in retainment? One of them,
I think is is people having kids, young children like
I have. And I think one of the vulnerable points
in retention is I save retainment. That's not even a word.
I don't think in retention. I've been saying that. I

(01:15:55):
feel like for this whole podcast, retention is uh is
it exactly that? Like, well, what are the weak points
in in somebody's life? Not weak? What are the points
somebody's life where things shift and you can find ways
to keep people involved in their hunting, in the hunting
community locally, um, to support them during those times. And
because again what you you know, you lose your hunting

(01:16:16):
social structure and you may never go again. So I
feel like we've we've covered off of that. We can
talk about that forever, um, but we need to talk
about your new conservation initiative. And I'm gonna shower. I'm
gonna heap praise upon you. You You ready for it, You're
gonna feel you might blush, well, thanks for appreciated ahead
of time. You don't know what it's gonna be. Um,

(01:16:38):
I just feel man, Here's I'll say it this way.
Our generation me and you and I. I've we've had
this probably on this show before. I think it's fun.
It's been fun for me to track along with you
and others in kind of are a generational way, like
friends in the in the hunting space that are able
to track along in our lives and see how things

(01:16:59):
change ange over time. Right, we're we're part of I
feel like a brotherhood and like a bond of people
that are just you know, we're seeing it in real time.
But one of the things I think is important for
that there's people are being innovative and and not giving
a ship about the way it's done now or the
way it has been done. And I think what you're
doing with public and tease with your brother Josh is

(01:17:22):
one of those things and maybe kind of the a
stark example of relentless innovation, innovation in a way that
like not only innovation. T shirts are not an innovation.
I don't think I'm breaking for you, but the way
in which you guys are moving through the conservation space
and coming up with ideas that are not only pushing
you know, people that that buy your T shirts, but

(01:17:44):
also the conservation organizations themselves to to appreciate and pursue
their own innovation around all the things we're just talking about,
how we get people in, how we get more members.
Uh so, kudos to you for that. And I think, um,
I don't think you're gonna stop innovating, but but this
particular thing you're doing right now, I think is is

(01:18:06):
is a great example of the innovation that you've that
you've had since you started building a bus, or maybe
in your head prior to that. Um So there's my compliment.
Now you're gonna tell people why I'm complimenting you. Well,
thank you for that. Um yeah, you know. It's it's
been fun too for Josh and I to like kind
of as we grow the company, you know, and as

(01:18:28):
as as we're able to sell more merchandise, the more
money we raised for conservation. But it's been fun to
come up with try to come up with different ideas
and and do some things that aren't done in those
spaces and try to you know, we're both he owned
a business, we own this business together. We're both business
majors in college, so it's been kind of fun to
like bring a different approach, the business side approach to conservation,

(01:18:51):
to figure out ways other ways to raise money other
than banquets and other fundraisers and stuff like that. So
but yeah, this's new initiative is called Conservation Crossing, and
it is a collaboration between US at Public Land Tease
and five conservation organizations where if you buy a single
Conservation Crossing T shirt, you become a member of Backcountry

(01:19:13):
Unders and Anglers, Delta Waterfowl, the Mule Deer Foundation, National
Wild Turkey Federation, and Pheasants Forever, all for bucks. So
typically a membership for each of those organizations about thirty
five dollars, so that's a D seventy five and then
T shirts so so about a two value for a
hund bucks and you buy the shirt, we take care

(01:19:35):
of the rest. So we ship you the shirt and
the matching decal for the Conservation Crossing side of things,
and then we get all of the all of your
information to the conservation groups and then they will send
you your member packets, your membership card, your decals and
all like you know, the magazines and everything else that
goes along with being a member of any of those groups.
And one of the other things I'll say is is

(01:19:57):
I have all kinds of crazy ideas and it is
it's one thing to have an idea, but one thing,
it's the other thing to make it come to fruition
like you guys have here, and again, to make it
easier for somebody to understand the value of joining multiple organizations,
you know, I have to sit back and listen, like
all of the I get a lot of magazines to
come in to mail, and my wife pausble on my desk,

(01:20:19):
and that's kind of how I track the organizations I'm members.
I have membership in and again, like everybody, getting to
the point where you appreciate it enough that you want
to become a life member, because I think that's the
thing that that folks should be pushing towards. But you
gotta get in the door first, right yeah. Yeah. And
it's whether it's through something like this or just in general.

(01:20:40):
But again, there isn't another way that I know of
to join multiple organizations like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well
you should do it. I don't know why. Uh, you
gotta get the rest of the organizations involved. If you
need me to kick him in the kick him in
the ass and get him in on this, I can. Yeah.
This was just you know, round one. So I think

(01:21:01):
Conservation Crossing will continue to evolve and grow and we'll
figure out, um, you know, which organizations we can add
and how to do that and how to scale it,
like how do we how do we make that a thing?
So I think it's just the beginning for this whole project.
But yeah, just launched it a week ago and it's
been going great so far. I've raised a ton of
money for all the organizations and just gonna keep letting

(01:21:23):
it cook and keep you know, every every single shirt
we sell is you know, that's one more member for
each five of those organizations. So yeah, it's usually again
like we were we were saying earlier in the show,
and we'll continue to say, um, these these these organizations
are hurt, and especially ones that are really relying on
the in person banquets. Uh, it's it's it's it's a struggle. Man.
Have you found out some specific numbers or anything you'd

(01:21:46):
like to share from these some of these groups in
regards to to where they are. Yeah, I didn't get
actual numbers on like how many members they lost over
the last year because of you know, the lack of
banquets and that type of stuff. But I mean collectively,
it is millions and millions of dollars that did not
come in simply because the you know, both local and
national chapters could not have these events that they rely on. Now,

(01:22:09):
I think going forward it will be beneficial in the
long run because it probably forced a lot of these
organizations to learn how to do a lot of stuff online,
and now going forward, they're going to be able to
do both as states open back up, you know, and
after the pandemic, you know, you'll be able to have
in person and virtual events. And I think that'll that'll
be a big thing going forward. But man like in

(01:22:30):
a single year, the loss was catastrophic, So it's, uh, yeah,
this this was you know, this whole initiative was also
just a way to try to help them out, as
you know, as much as we can, and and really
just shine a light on all of the work that
they do. So the last week I did takeovers for
each of the organizations through the public land Tease page,
and I think starting tomorrow I'm gonna do it on

(01:22:51):
my personal page, just kind of like go back through
each organization and talk about like the membership benefits, what
those organizations are really about, how much your membership means
to those organizations, and why you should be even if
it's not buying our shirt and becoming a member of
all five, why you should be involved at some level. Yeah,

(01:23:11):
And I would say on a on a personal level,
on an even a selfish level, if you want to
put it this way, you are you become a member
of this organization, any of these organizations b h A.
I definitely know for sure you now have access to,
whether you use it or not, a local, state, and
even regional group of people if it whether you're a
new hunter or a a veteran, that you can now go

(01:23:32):
to and be a part of. Right there's you know,
even this podcast has its own state chapters. Um, and
that's I think that kind of community, that communal response
to conservation is as cool as anything and as useful
for your twenty five dollars or whatever how many how
many ever well you know hus in this case, to

(01:23:52):
join a bunch of organizations, you're able then to to
pull immediately, pull in a community of people that care
about what you care about immediately. I would just one
of the most powerful tools is just being connected to
all the people in your local area. And I would
pay bucks just to be just to have that, you know,
access to that community. And understand because there used to
be hunting clubs. When I was a kid, My dad

(01:24:13):
belonged to the hunting club, and it was it was
kind of about access to the ground, but it was
also about access to uh, you know, a bar or
somewhere and nowhere, or a bunch of people hung out
that that did the same thing you did. So this
is this is it that people don't forget about. Not
only are you giving, but there you have the opportunity
to get a ton back, but you just have to
go out and be active in that. Yeah, I was actually,

(01:24:34):
I mean, I've been a member of a lot of
groups for a long time now, but I'll be honest,
I didn't do a lot of like a big deep
dive into all of each organization's membership benefits. You know,
you get the member card and you get the decale
and you know, you remember, but most of them offer
discounts to their partners, like you know, like big companies
like like b h A. You know, you get a
discount of first Light and Philson and Vortex and different stuff.

(01:24:57):
So I mean, just like that's one example, but all
of them do it, and uh, yeah, it's it's it's
been fun to really take a deep dive into what
each of these groups is doing to help protect I
mean collectively, like hunting heritage for the future. Really yeah,
And to your point earlier, I remember talking to Lantani
about I was on a committee for b h A

(01:25:17):
about the rendezvous. Last year. We did virtual rendevous, hosted
a lot of events. It was it was fun, man, fun,
fun time, and we had the exact conversation that you
know what you just mentioned. I said to him, Listen,
this is gonna be hard to do, to to scramble together.
That we're gonna lose a lot of money not having
an in person rendezvous. It's gonna hurt. It's like a

(01:25:38):
gut punch right now. But what we're gonna be doing,
we'll be tougher next time, and we're gonna we're gonna
have modernized. We're gonna find new ways to innovate, find
new ways to get people together. And I remember having
that virtual rendezvous and thinking, man, that was cool as hell.
We should be doing that every single time, and I'm
sure sure we will be. Um And so again to

(01:26:00):
your point, innovation in in our in the conservation space
has been rare, you know, relatively rare. There was like
a bunch of established ways to get people together. Banquets,
as we mentioned, is one of them. Uh, conventions is
another one. And when those things get wiped off the map.
I've seen Wild Sheep had an awesome digital convention here recently.
U s c I has been doing some good stuff

(01:26:22):
and so we've seen you know, I guess you could
call it modernizing some of the ways we gather, um
when we couldn't gather in person. So I think that's
another big wave coming here. Connect to what you're doing
for sure. Yeah, definitely. All right man, Well, I appreciate
you as always, uh, thank you for joining our pact

(01:26:43):
to come to hunt with us this year on the
Turkey tour. You've promised on the podcast don't let the
listeners down. Um, as you can tell, I just need
to like convince Sam that this is top priority to
come hunt with me top already. Um. Either way, good
luck this season. It's Turkey season. There's nothing anybody can

(01:27:06):
do to bring me down. I am so hot right now.
I have two turkeys in the back. Just there's nothing.
I'm just floating on the cloud. Alright, Sam salt, thank you, sir, Hey,
thank you appreciate it. Alright, Tell everybody one last time
where they can go to get themselves a T shirt.
To go to public land tees dot com. It is

(01:27:27):
the first item on the page, the Conservation Crossing tea.
You can't miss it. There's more information about it there.
So yeah, go join all five organizations right now. That's
all I can say. It's got a bear, is that
grizzly bear, grizzly bear, buil deer, wild turkey, pheasant, mallard duck.
That's right, bamn, do it, do it. That's it. That's all.

(01:27:58):
Thank you too. Samuel Holts and his brother Josh so
hold public land Tease, public and Tease dot com, Public
and tease on all the social Media's really cool thing
that they've been doing, uh pretty much constantly. But this,
this particular program is as cool as anything they've done
thus far. So if you have a HD and you
want to support it, please do. It's important to to

(01:28:20):
keep folks like Sam in our industry working, being innovative
around how to get people to think about conservation. Um
and I'll tell you he's just all around good dude, regardless,
so sports Sam and his brother Josh and all that
they do. If you don't mind, we thank you. Uh so, Phil, Yeah,
we are roughly a month away from your hunt, Pee.

(01:28:45):
A lot of people were at like you said earlier
in the show, a lot of people were asking about it.
Where's Phil? Is he hunting with you? I'm gonna go.
I'm leaving Saturday to go on a two week long
Turkey tour again without you. Just I just I want
people to understand that Phil and I have scheduled our
hunt for the first week in May, and that every

(01:29:06):
time then nobody knows. But I'm leaving on a jet
plane and I'm gonna go a two week Turkey tour
with the folks at First Light for Van Fauston, Kevin Harlander,
our friends at First Light and All Star crew. The
n w TF is on board with our two week

(01:29:27):
long Turkey tour. We're calling it the Trek for Turks.
More Turkey telethon um stick in. You're gonna be pretty soon.
You're gonna be hearing a lot of details. We'll talk
about it next week obviously on the show. A lot
of details on how our Trek for Turks is going
to raise money for the n w TF. We've mentioned
on the show prior and we've had a lot of

(01:29:47):
fun with Cameo. How about the fact that we needed
to raise money for the n w TF. Banquet season
is going to be sketchy this there's a lot of
people getting vaccinated, so maybe there is a more robust
banquet season than we we thought earlier in the year.
But the lack of of large gatherings is hurting Turkey
conservation in a way that, um, it's very serious. So

(01:30:10):
part of my two weeks I don't want to want
to break all the news. I'll let First Light do it.
But part of the two week Turkey tour is basically
a telephone We're gonna be cranking out content while we're
in the field, throwing stuff on Instagram, asking people to
go to First Light's website and sign up to be
a member for some awesome benefits exclusive to signing up
on the First Light website. So all that's coming. I'm

(01:30:32):
excited about that. So, just so everybody knows the schedule,
two weeks of meter Turkey hunting sands pill which means
no fill unless he shows up in camp without fit
and then somewhere around the first week and maybe Phil
and I will we will be in the field, and
then we will have taken um our weather b e

(01:30:53):
t n out and we will have put some work
in with it. Okay, you're good, I'm great. Anything else
you want to say? No, how have you been? I
haven't seen you in a while. I'm good, feel good,
feel healthy? Did I look healthy? Yeah? I told you
look great. Alright, thanks? No, I feel good, feel healthy.
I've had a little long COVID symptoms. I've been telling people,

(01:31:14):
oh really yeah, but having that yep, little ringing in
the ears, fatigue. Man, you got hit. I got hit. Sucks.
It's not fun. But beyond that, family is good. It's
spring Turkey season. I'm telling you, dude, you couldn't. You
could tell me anything and it wouldn't ruin my mood
right now, literally anything, And I'd like, that's fine. Can

(01:31:34):
I turkey hunt? Because I look back to last year?
We look back to last year turkey and basically got
canceled pretty much. We're sitting around there like, oh, they
cancel it in South to go to Oh they cancel
in Nebraska. Oh they cancel it here? And I didn't
kill the turkey. And now that I'm two turkeys deep,
I spent the morning with my my son talking about
what a turkey breast is and a turkey tender and

(01:31:55):
turkey thigh and the turkey leg, and I was flying
around shooting turkeys in the face. It is. It feels
good to be back and I feel inspired phil as always.
So you wanna what do you want to say before
we go? Let's not drag this out. I don't have
anything to say. You could just say bye. I beat
Dark Souls three last night. Nope, say bye. It's a

(01:32:17):
pretty tough game. I was proud of myself. Nobody wants
to beat I've eaten four of the the Soul Scorn games.
You haven't directed by hit A talk of Miyazaki directed
by It's a video game, dude, How how does anybody do? So?
You have so much to learn? How does it? As
a co mentor? It's a mentor mentor relationship. Dark Souls

(01:32:41):
three and the Demon Souls direct a video game. It's
it's determined. First of all video games, so many different
art forms and and disciplines come into one product. There's
there's cinematics, there's game design, there's programming, coding, arts, art, direction.
All these things have to come together to form a
cohesive product. Doesn't always go well, but when it does,

(01:33:05):
you can thank the director of the video. The director,
I think you would come up with a different that's fine.
Take the title director, my title a mediators, director of hunting.
I've never directed to hunt in my life, so I guess,
I guess, uh the fellow, you just strip your title
and strip my title. Anyway. I'm I. I got I
got the first dose of the Fiser vaccine AG. I'm
two weeks in, feeling feeling good. You're feeling okay, getting

(01:33:27):
getting that second dose next week? Alright, feeling great? Alright,
phils vaccinated. We're moving on next week. More turkeys, more fun.
We're trying to recruit Robert C. Jones come back, talk
about more vegan, vegan stuff. But really, right now we're
thinking about his turkeys. Um So, if you want to
write into sc meter dot com, it better be about turkeys.
That's all we're gonna read for the next two months.

(01:33:49):
I'm gonna try to get ten. By the way, I
think I can get it. Yes, So I got I
got two in the bag. I got six dud. You're
you're you're going on a turkey tour. Honestly, I'll be mad.
I'll be mad if you don't get in town. If
I could just shoot ten and it wasn't like legal, really,
you know, I would just shoot ten. So it's a
numbers thing. At this point, I got two turkeys in

(01:34:10):
the bag, possibly seven tags on this Turkey tour right now.
I purchased only six I could. I think I could
buy another one in Nebraska. Have you ever gotten ten? No,
most you ever got seven? I think, But I never
started with I've never well, I guess I've probably had
two this early before. I definitely have. But this is
I just feel like I gotta I just it's I

(01:34:31):
gotta have it. I gotta do it. The turkey meat
will sustain my family, and if you know, God forbid,
society crumbles in the next six eight months, we'll be
living off turkey. You can come over, bring your turkey meat,
will commune, We'll have it. So everybody root for me.
I got I can get up to six, up to
seven on this Turkey tour, so it's possible by around

(01:34:53):
April I'll have nine and then it's just like then
we're just sweeping it in. Then we're just doing it
and we're living it. There's sailing right in so Um.
Everybody think about that when you go to sleep tonight,
Say bye Phil, goodbye bye Clean. You're gone and to
your bowl where the Hunt Collective show and calling hunters

(01:35:14):
new and all, the Hunt Collected show, working pick and
shuttle or working ben in hand, we conregate nice lovers,
ear Lane. I'm a land. We're focused. We're just living
for the searching, dreaming of the fire and a salty Gilburn.
But we ain't coming by till it's colden Lake taking

(01:35:37):
its slow so week shoes straight clean, You're gone to
your bowl where the hunclected show, calling Hunters new and all.
They ain't no cold time to

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