Ep. 917: Becoming an Old School Hunter with Donnie Vincent

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
the show, I am joined by big game hunter, outdoor
adventure and filmmaker Donnie Vincent to discuss his personal journey
to embrace an old school approach to hunting and what
the rest of us might be able to learn and
enjoy by embracing something similar. All right, welcome back to

(00:47):
the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First
Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative. Today we are
going old school, and we're doing that in a couple
different ways. And one I've got a guest today who
I haven't had in the show in a number of years.
Big mistake on my part. But back in I don't know,
probably like twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen, somewhere in that window

(01:12):
which feels kind of like yesterday, but it's actually ten
years ago now. Donnie was on the show in the
past talking about some of his previous work, stuff like
his films like The Rivers Divide, I think another one
called Who We Are. He's been a tremendous filmmaker in
the hunting and outdoor world. He has a wildlife biology background.

(01:33):
He has traveled the world, been to some of the
wildest places, has done some of the most wild, fantastic
things you could ever imagine as a hunter an outdoor person.
But he's also a terrific storyteller and I think a
representative of our hunting community. And he's someone who's taking
kind of a unique approach to doing this. While many folks,

(01:56):
myself included at times, have leaned into all the time technology,
all of the tools, all the latest greatest trends within
the hunting world, Donnie's gone the other way. He has
leaned away from that, and he's gone more and more
quote unquote old school with his approach to hunting and
his equipment and his his mindset and the trips he

(02:16):
goes on. And all this came to mind to me
and I was reminded of all this with the latest
film he released. This film on the Donny Vincent YouTube
channel is all about kind of an old school deer
hunt and deer camp in Illinois that he did hunting
from the ground without a blind camping out in a
TP you know, a hot tent, hunting with a muzzleloader,

(02:38):
not having a bunch of trail camp pictures of the
bucks he's after, but just getting out there and seeing
what's there, and that was.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Refreshing and kind of inspiring.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
And many of you folks might have you know, heard
my episodes we did earlier this year exploring ways to
bring adventure back into our hunting seasons. I think that
today's conversation is going to echo some of that and
kind of harken back to some of these themes ways
to get back to what hunting is really all about.
I've felt the need personally to re explore some of

(03:09):
these things for myself, and I have to believe that
I'm not the only one who's feeling that a little
bit of our modern hunting culture and technology and obsession
over certain things and the social media effication of everything,
it's changing the hunting experience in a way that I

(03:31):
personally am not fully comfortable with. And I'm still working
out what that means for how I hunt and how
I do these things and how I talk about these things.
I'm still personally figuring it out for myself, but I
feel like Donnie's perspective and thoughts on this could be
helpful to me as I try to sorrow that out,
and I think for many of you maybe as well.
So this conversation I thoroughly enjoyed it. Donnie has some

(03:54):
opinions and perspectives on you know, the way to do
things or the equipment. To you is that, of course,
might be different than many other folks out there, and
that's okay. We can all approach this in different ways.
Some of us might want to go more old school,
some of us new school. Some of us want to
use certain technologies and tools, others maybe not to each
their own right. But I think hearing Donnie's ideas on

(04:17):
this front, if for no other reason, is going to
be good food for thought. It's going to be something
for all of us to chew on. Regardless of what
decision or what way we decide to go about these things.
I think thinking long and hard about how we do
what we do is an important exercise.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
So that is the plan.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Today We're going to old school talking about how to
embrace this old school approach to deer hunting and bring
a new mindset to our year as a hunter. And
I think you'll I think you'll be inspired and refreshed
by this.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
That said, very.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Quickly, want to give you an update if you are
listening to this when this comes out, which.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Will be June. Oh jeez, bear with me here.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
June nineteenth, twenty twenty five is when this podcast will
first to be airing. As of today, when I'm recording this,
which is June twelfth, twenty twenty five, there is a
really significant update that impacts wildlife and wild places and
our public lands in particular, that I would be remiss
if I didn't bring up here today for.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
All of you. This is really important.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
The budget bill that we discussed two weeks ago with
myself and Tony.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Hopefully you heard that episode.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I brought the fact there's this whole budget reconciliation process
going on, which is basically a fancy word for the
House of Representatives and the Senate are.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Debating a big, beautiful bill, as I.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Call it, and it's got a whole lot of stuff
in there that's not related to hunting and fishing, But
what is are a bunch of things related to public
lands that they're throwing in. And just yesterday, so June eleventh,
the Senate version of the bill, the Energy and Natural
Resources side, came out and in that is some pretty
crazy stuff. We're in a big fuss a couple months

(05:57):
ago about the fact that the House of Representatives included
public land sales of more than five hundred thousand acres,
and they were doing this in a way that went
around the usual process for carefully disposing of maybe a
few public land acres and making sure those funds go
back to future public lands. That was a big problem.
It was dangerous precedent. But hunters and anglers and outdoors

(06:17):
people raise a huge fuss and we got it taken
out of the bill. Well, now the Senate gets their
take and they just released their language and it's much worse.
The Senate version of this bill is now calling for
the mandated sale of somewhere between two and three million
acres of public lands. They're also calling for mandated drilling

(06:39):
on the coastal plan of the Arctic National Wildliffe Refuge,
which we talked about last time. They're also talking about
bringing back this crazy proposed road called the Ambler Road
that would push a two hundred mile industrial corridor through
the wild wild landscape of the Southern Brooks Range in Alaska.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
A lot of stuff in there.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
There's just almost too much to even bring up right now,
which is a damn shame that so much is being
lost in the noise. But really, this two to three
million acres of public lands being sold through this process
without public comment and without us being able to really
influence it is really dangerous. It's the most dangerous threat
I have seen to public lands, probably since I've started

(07:22):
paying attention to this stuff in the last fifteen years.
They have the votes, they have the support, they have
the pathway to making this happen unless there is an undeniable.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Upwelling of outrage about this.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
So if you hunt or fish, or camp or climb
or backpack or do anything on public lands across the nation,
whether you live on the East coast or the West
or in between, this is serious.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
This is the red alert. This is the Code red moment.
This is it.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
This is the big one. This is something we really
need to take seriously. So it's in the Senate right now.
We need to all our senators. We need to give
them a shout. We need to let them know that
we aren't going to stand for our public lands being
sold off for quick money grab. It's as simple as that.
I'm going to give you a phone number right now,
and I'm going to ask you, practically beg you to

(08:15):
pick up your phones and give these folks a call,
because our voices do still matter. We still can make
a difference. If you call the capital switchboard and just
let them know, hey, I'm looking for the senator for
Michigan or the senators for Rhode Island or Montana or whatever,
they will forward you to that office.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
The number is.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
This two O two two two four three one two one.
I'll read that to you again in a second. But
you just call that number. You tell them what state
you live in. They will forward you to those offices
and then you're gonna get a voicemail, or you're gonna
get an intern or someone, and you just leave your message.
It's very easy. Nobody will argue with you. There's nothing

(08:55):
to be intimidated by. But let them know, Hey, I'm
a hunter or I'm an angler, I live in this state.
I care about these places, and we are not going
to support the sale of millions of acres of our
public lands.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
So please ask.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Your senators to oppose the sale of these public lands,
to pose the degradation of our wildlife and wild places
that are so uniquely special to us who here in
America and to those of us who hunt and fish
and explore these places.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
This one is a doozy, and I hate to have
to preach like this.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
I wish I could just talk about deer hunting, having fun,
chasing big bucks, catching fish, enjoying ourselves out there.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
I hate that we have to talk about politics.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
But if we want to keep these opportunities in these
places and these critters around, we have to engage. And
this is one of those absolute most important moments in
my lifetime ever to engage on this kind of stuff.
And if you care about these things too, that's the
case as well. So please give this number a call

(09:56):
right now, pause this podcast. If you can make this
phone call, it'll take two minutes. It's really easy. Call
two zero two two two four three one two one.
That's two o two two two four three to.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
One two one.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
If you're listening to this in the future and this
is going on, hopefully we won this fight. Hopefully we
still have our public land acres. Hopefully you can forgive
me for taking a few minutes out of this podcast
to talk about these things.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
But I care a whole hell of a lot about
our wildlife and wild places.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
I know that many of you do two, so we
got to stand up for them. So with that out
of the way, thank you, and here's my conversation with
Donnie Vincent.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
All right.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Joining me now is the one and only Donnie Vincent.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Welcome back, Donnie.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
How's it going.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
It's good, It's really good.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm glad that we can be sitting here chatting again
as we're just talking before recording. It's been a while,
so so thanks for making this happen.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Yeah, I appreciate the invitation. It's uh. I figured we
jump on another one of these things sooner rather than later.
But yeah, I appreciate the invite and look forward to it.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, it's it's uh.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
I've always appreciated your hunting and outdoor philosophy. I think
might be how I would summarize it. And we're in
a moment right now and it's not particularly unique, I
guess to right now, it just seems maybe amplified right
now in which it feels like our hunting culture is

(11:35):
is changing, and that might be for a lot of reasons,
but but something feels different. And I saw a recent
piece of content from you that seemed to echo a
different way of going about things, which which caught my eye,
which reminded me, hey, I gotta get downy back on here.
I want to talk to him about this kind of
stuff because I've been thinking about all this a lot

(11:58):
and so and so where I want to start it
is with a phrase, a little bit of something that
you wrote about yourself a while back. I want to
read it to you, and then I would love for
you to kind of explain or expand on this and
help us understand what you mean by it. All right, Okay,
So the other day I read you described yourself as such.
You said, I'm just a man who's obsessed with wild

(12:20):
places and the way the old boys used to do it.
So what do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 (12:26):
What do you mean? Why are you obsessed with how
the old boys used to do it? What do you
mean by that? And what's all that means for how
you live your life?

Speaker 4 (12:34):
Well, the first part saying I'm obsessed with wild places
is one of the things, one of the elements that
I think there's a disconnect today is I truly do
love going to the wilderness. I don't want to go
to the wilderness and be there just long enough to
shoot a boone Crockett caribou, or to shoot a boone
and Crockett elk and to get my picture back so

(12:55):
I can share it with people who back me, to fans,
to other hunter's friends, family, I truly want to spend
as much time as possible in the wilderness. I'm completely
enveloped by the weather, by songbirds, by reptiles, by the
game I'm hunting. It doesn't matter. I'm completely immerged when

(13:17):
I'm out there. And so that's the first part of that.
That's really what I meant is I love being out there.
And the second part of it is I think there's
not only a charm. You know, a lot of times
I think we look at old photos and we get nostalgic,
and it's very easy to get nostalgic and look at
things and remember stories that you had with your dad

(13:37):
or your buddies, and that emotion, that family emotion or
friend's emotion starts to kind of take over the essence
of the photo or the essence of the moment. But
I think there's a certain charm with how hunters originally
did it, actually chasing their food, actually chasings and skulls

(14:01):
for a slightly different purpose of you know, still having
them as ornaments and cabins and things like that, but
that being a portion of the hunt, the photographs being
a portion of the hunt. But how they used to
kind of enter into these wild places without every technological

(14:21):
advantage at their fingertips. They went into places that they
didn't know what was on the other side of the mountain.
They had maps, of course, and a lot of these places.
They looked at where the stream beds were, where major
river bottoms were, mountain tops and plateaus and things like that,
where there's forested regions and grass regions. They looked at

(14:41):
major demographics of ecologies and different habitats, but they didn't
know what was out there. And I think that is
incredibly charming. I think that is to actually go and
look around and to have that in your mind of
I actually have to go and scalt this place out.
I actually have to go, and where is the best

(15:02):
place for me to set up my tent? Are there
trout in that stream that I can catch and have
for dinner. Occasionally, Am I close to the elk? Are? They? Are?
They miles away? And just I think that having that
unknown and having that lack of technological advancement brings you
so much closer to the hunt and so much closer

(15:25):
to your quarry. Because back then, Mark, if you wanted
to kill an elk or a caribou or a moose,
you had to have an understanding, whether that came from
people that had hunted one hundred years before you through
wisdom or saying, hey, my dad always said, and I
love these things. You know, like you hear different things
about you know, the turkeys are gobbling, when the lilacs bloom.

(15:47):
You hear all these different timing things that old timers
tell you to kind of give you hints like hey,
morell mushrooms are growing, when oak leaves are the size
of squirrel ears. You know, you hear little things like this.
And so unless you had some someone mentoring you, like
you had to be as much of an expert as
possible on these animals to go out and find them

(16:07):
in experience and hunt them. And that's basically what I mean.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Why is that still important today? Why does that still
hold an appeal today? Because some folks might hear all
that and say, well, that sounds charming as you put it,
but maybe not terribly effective. Given the fact that we've
got this app and this tool and this other technology.
Why is that still relevant now in your mind?

Speaker 4 (16:36):
For me, it's the closeness as I learn more about
the area that I'm going to hunt, learn more about
the animal that I'm going to hunt, and all the
other elements that in body, at the weather weapons that
I'm using, things like that gear, the I'm going to
be bringing. It brings me closer to the experience. It
envelopes me more into that predator and prey relationship. And

(16:59):
it's just the experience that I value, the intrinsic value
the experience that I value so much more. I'm not
saying that using a certain app. I've used some of
these things, and actually I used an app and in
hunting the deer of the piece of the footage that
we just released, the film that we just released, and

(17:20):
I looked at kind of the lay of the land
and how I had seen this buck before, I'd been
in this river bottom before, and and I was just learning.
I walked and looked at everything, looked at all the sign,
looked at how the animals were moving around. But I
also want to see kind of the lay of the
land from bird's eye view, and so I didn't have

(17:43):
a paper map of the area, so I used I
used an app to do so, and so it you know,
there's still some elements of it. But just the more
you can immerse yourself for me, the more intrinsic, the
more valuable the hunt is to me, and the more
unknowns that exist, more rewarding they are as they present themselves,
kind of like fishing a lake that's never been fished before.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yeah, yeah, What were the early inspirations for you? Like,
you've described some things there that I'm curious where or
how this kind of infiltrated your life in your subconscious
I'm hearing echoes of the past and what you're describing,
and I'm curious what those things were, whether it was
stories or books or films, who or what kind of

(18:28):
inserted this parasite into your system that's grown and grown.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
It was books, man, I mean it's it's been a
few different things, but it was books. It's I talk
about it. We have a new film series that we're
coming out with. We'ren't a unique position at our company, Sigmanta,
So we've been filming professionally since twenty eleven, and we've
produced five films since twenty eleven, but we have filmed

(18:54):
like twenty films since twenty eleven. So we are not
launching a film series entitled Fantastic Places that are going
to launch the other fifteen films that we never launched,
from the very first one that is going to probably
come out probably two to three weeks, we're going to
launch that. It's an archery doll sheep hunt to all

(19:16):
the other places that we have traveled. But in that
kind of essence of laying out that new film series,
I talk about my dad had this bookcase when I
was little, and he had two things that really spoke
to me. He had a walnut bookcase and he had
a walnut gun case. And my dad's walnut gun case

(19:37):
had those two sheets of glass where you know, I
had that weird round and horizontal lock in the middle
of my dad unlock. The lock would slide together and
he could slide the glass either way and he would
My dad hunted very rarely, and almost always when he did,
it was for squirrels. Or he'd go out with a
buddy of his and they'd go help a farmer with
woodchucks or whatever it is. Because I grew up on

(19:57):
the East Coast. But my dad's gun case and I'd
look at the I'd look at the wood on the guns.
I'd see how he would oil the guns. And when
he'd open up the bottom drawer, it had his nineteen
eleven service pistol for money he was in the navy,
had his hunting knives, all these cool things that he
had collected. And then my grandparents got him a book
subscription to Outdoor Life, and so he had all these

(20:19):
Outdoor Life books, not magazines, but books, and man I
pored over those things, and I read how those guys
would describe traveling. You know, they would take steam train
to you know, they would take a ship and then
a steam train, and then they would take horses and
then they would or the horse would drop them off.
They'd and they talked about the horses having flour in

(20:41):
their boxes, penn air boxes, and they had flour and
sugar and like they're making biscuits. And they would talk about,
you know, the color of the doll sheep's horns, and
it was just they were going into uncharted territory, and
they're going for a big adventure, going for thirty forty
five days. And it's just how they wrote about the animals,
you know, they would describe everything from the sheep that

(21:04):
they were hunting to the wolverine that they ran into
along the way. And then he would, like Jack O'Connor,
would very eloquently pen about the personality of a wolverine
and what this particular wolverine looked like that he ran into,
what his attitude was, where he was going, what he
thought he was up to, and you do it so
in such a such a beautiful fashion that it just
was very inspiring. And the clothing they wore, how they

(21:28):
described it just was, you know. And they were headhunters,
like these guys were trophy hunters, like they ate the
animals they killed. They talked often about the very fine meat,
but they almost always described the very fine heads that
they were after forty inch sheep, there after seventy inch
bull moose, and it was all wrapped into one for them.
It was the entire experience, the meat and the and

(21:49):
the trophy.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
When you when you think back on those stories or
even when you're talking about them right now, about how
it used to be, does that create a sense of
sadness in you now when you recognize the difference of
them to today Or is it or is it inspiring

(22:21):
when you hear about how it used to be and
how that might inspire what you do today. Which of
those possible emotional responses do you have when you look
back and think about that.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
Both it's both. I'm terribly inspired by what happened back
in the day, and you know, it inspires me to
look at the areas that I'm going. Like years ago
in two thousand and nine, I hunted. I was archery
hunting stone sheep in British Columbia, and I was hunting

(22:53):
with a native guide and he and I were talking
about Jack O'Connor and his grandfather, I believe had one
of his cousins or one of his grandfather's cousins had
guided Jack O'Connor, and he was pointing to one of
the mountains, like I'm sitting on the top of the
mount with my bow. I just airwed a big pitch black.

(23:17):
And Jack would always talk about these really dark rams.
I just airwed this pitch black, really handsome stone sheep.
And here I am sitting there and he's telling me
about his grandfather guiding Jack O'Connor, and he's pointing to
the mountain. He's like, not that peak, but the peak
behind it, and I said, yeah, I see it. He's
like Jack would hunt that mountain often, and I'm just
like wow, you know, it's just incredible and not obviously

(23:38):
things have change, but when you go to the North Country.
It's one of the reasons people ask me all the time,
like why don't you hunt elkmore? Why do you go
hunt caribou and moosen? Because when I get above the
Arctic Circle, or when I get near as far out
as I can get in Alaska, it's like taking a
step back in time. I'm flying in in a super

(23:59):
cub that was built in the nineteen sixties or seventies.
I'm you know, I'm rolling out a down sleeping bag that,
while it is brand new, looks identical to the downsleeping
bags that were made in fifty years ago, essentially, like
they haven't changed all that much. And you know, my
tent is a little bit more modern and Obviously my
weapon is a lot more modern, but still it's very similar.

(24:22):
So when I head to the North Country, that's what
really kind of embodies me, and what distracts me or
concerns me, is that the you know, either the social
media aspect of it, or just how some younger people
or I don't even want to put an age to it,

(24:43):
but some you know, like you see some of the
waterfall of pictures of guys saying piles for smiles, you know,
and they're like, there's no one even describes their hunt anymore. Mark,
they don't even tell you what the morning was like,
the don't tell you. I recently saw a somebody sent

(25:04):
me a post and it was about this person killed
I don't know, it's a certain number of turkeys this year.
And they said, I drove this far, flew this far.
I hunt hunted Kansas for one hour, killed the bird,
hunted South Dakota for one hour, killed the bird. And
they had killed like, you know, ten turkeys in two

(25:26):
weeks and two Grand slams, and like there wasn't one
element about the adventure, not one element. It was literally
a grocery list of you might as well have been
looking at football stats of how many interceptions you threw,
how many touchdowns you through and and it was it was,
it was, it was. It was boasting. There wasn't anything

(25:47):
about to do on the grass. And I'm listen, I
met with a company yesterday and it was a very
positive meeting, and the meeting went great, and it wasn't
about it was on the A lot of people don't know.
I have two branches of my business. One is a
commercial side and then the other is is kind of
our documentaries and storytelling. And this company was talking to
me about the commercial side. We're going to be filming

(26:08):
some work for them, but they, you know, to my face,
they're like, we're we're not really interested in your in
your long form storytelling, old school type hunt. We want
to go to this new breath of fresh air, this
fast paced movement, this kind of exciting hunting is cool.
It's it's it's trendy, it's fashionable. Like that's the direction

(26:29):
that they wanted to go and and and that's you know,
that's their prerogative. But I just see these things and
I just am concerned about the same wisdoms that I
was telling you about a moment ago where somebody says, hey,
the moose move into this valley about the time of
the first snow. You know, you hear things like this.
I'm just concerned that we're going to lose that type

(26:53):
of wisdom, We're going to lose that type of woodsmanship.
William Altman is our director of fatal at Sigmantha. He
lives in Maine. He's a he's a bigfoot essentially, like
the kid is in the woods twenty four hours a day,
texting me deer tracks and texting me map images of

(27:15):
like look at this swamp, look at this crossing, Like
we text back and forth NonStop about look at this
rub that I found. Look at this grouse on his
drumming lot. I mean it is total immersion. And then
and then to even move over to Cody dia Cuisto
from Lone Wolf Gear, Like the guy owns a trail

(27:36):
camera company. I use more of Cody's trail cameras than
Cody does, and he owns the company. He doesn't hunt
with a blind, he barely hunts with a tree stand,
and when he does so, it's ten feet off the ground.
He doesn't stop a deer, he doesn't use a peep site.
Now he's using a recurve, but he'll go out. He'll

(27:57):
text me in the morning, Mark and he's like, hey,
what are you think of this track? He has no
idea what this deer looks like. He goes, what do
you think of this track? Am I wasting my time?
Or is this a good one? I'm like, Cody, I
think that's a good one. And then four o'clock in
the afternoon, he'll text me a picture of his bloody
arrow and I'll go what is he? And he goes,

(28:17):
I don't know yet. I just saw a huge body,
white til walking by. I came to full draw and
I shot him. And then an hour after that he'll
text me this picture of this seven and a half
year old you know whatever. And he did it all
off of nosing around and looking at tracks. I'll guarantee
you Cody's experience is tenfold. The guy that got a

(28:39):
cell cam picture, grab his bow that he can shoot
ninety yards with ran and got in his box blind
and then when that deer walked out at ninety yards,
he made a good shot. But like I'll guarantee you,
Cody is is h His experience is ten times with
that gentleman, and he'll remember his experience and that deer

(28:59):
a lot lifetime, whereas I fear that other one might
just be a number and a dry a trip to
the tax durmy shop.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
I've wrestled with all this myself in my own personal trajectory,
you know, as I grew up hunting since I was three,
so I've been doing my whole life. But in my
you know, after I graduated college and I kind of
had control of my own future, is when I really
really doubled down on the white tail thing and really
wanted to figure it out. And at that time, it
was it all seems so so incredibly challenging and daunting

(29:34):
that every little piece of technology that I could use,
or every tool that might be available, is like, oh,
I need to take advantage of every opportunity I have
because this seems so damn hard. Sure I'll try this
thing that eliminates my sense. Sure I'll try this camera
that's going to help me see. I'm sure I will
try this you know site that's going to help me
see you know, get my pin on him. A little

(29:55):
bit later in the evening.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, But gradually, over time there's been this kind of
crossing trajectory where I've seen my skill set grow and
then at the same time see my need for those
tools decline because of the compensation I have created within myself,
within my own capabilities.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
And so I've found now that my innate.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Tools that I bring to the table are just as
effective maybe as the technology that you used to supplement
me or be a crutch.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
And I'm realizing that you are.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Losing, as you've said, you lose a little bit of
the experience with every additional layer of technology put in
between you and the animal. And so while I've used
all these things, I've done all these things, every year,
I'm finding myself wanting to simplify more and more and more,
a little bit by little bit. And I can see
where it's headed, Like I know where I'm headed, I
can feel it.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
And I just don't know.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
I don't know how to make sense of this from
like a community perspective, When you think about the entirety
of our cutting community, I understand everyone's in a different place, right,
We're all at a different point on that personal journey.
We all have a different background and experience with hunting.
For some people, their tradition is is sitting in a

(31:19):
box line with Grandpa and watching the food plot. For
some people it was you know, track and deer in
the snow in northern Maine. And I understand everyone has
that unique connection and it's valuable in its own way.
But at the same time, I can't help but feel
exactly as you are, and that we are losing something
when we when we immerse ourselves so much in our

(31:40):
phones or in the gizmo and gadget, and lose sight
of what originally brought us here. When you look at
this is a long winded way of getting to how
you feel when you look at where we are as
a community, when you look at all of this technology
and all of this modern culture around hunting. Now, what

(32:05):
specifically is most alarming? Is it how we're talking about
things on social media? Is it the fact that you know,
sometimes people are hunting and the ways you describe they've
got the you know, the instant photo on their camera.
They sneak out there with a high powered rifle and
a night vision scope. Now and they can have an
app that dials in their scope for them. They don't
even even know how to handle windage they've got, you know,

(32:27):
I mean every possible thing that the military has almost
now it seems like we're using to try to kill
a deer. What of all of this stands out to
you is like top of the pile concerning that that
maybe is a community we need to start thinking about,
because there's a lot of examples we could dive into.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
What are those most glaring to you?

Speaker 4 (32:51):
I think, I mean, one of the things that one
of the elements that I dislike the most is sell camps,
right that if you're if we're like picking up product,
That's one of the things that I dislike the most.
I I I even I have a large lease that
I hunt on with some dear friends of mine in Illinois,

(33:11):
and I've been there for years and we have like
I don't know, sixty cell cams on the place, and
and not once ever and it drives my least partner's nuts.
Not once ever have I logged in. You know, we
have a log in and we all get to see
all the photos. I've not once. I have no idea
how to log in. I've not once logged in. And

(33:31):
and occasionally I'll ask one of my least partners, like, hey,
did you see have you seen that giant eight? Is
he have he? Has he been coming walking down that stream?
Have you seen him from Afar or whatever? And it'd
be like He'll just like go into the app and
you can look, yeah, look, look look yeah, like and
I'm not going to And so my biggest concern is

(33:54):
and I think like this goes towards every aspect of life,
from learning how to drive a car, to hunting to
painting to it doesn't matter two dentistry. Like I feel
like the technology is is really pushing past the human
element and in the hunting sense. The thing that I
don't really care for is a lot of the young guys,

(34:16):
a lot. I'm not not all, Like I've met some
really young guys that really have a fever for they
want to get out in the woods and explore. They
want to be woodsman. They want to know how to
build a shelter, how to build a fire, how to survive,
and then how to add hunting to the element, fishing
to the element, things like that. But it's it's what

(34:37):
worries me is the community as a whole, how they
talk the you know, every state making crossbows legal for
archery season absolutely hate that drives the deer populations down,
particularly you you add the crossbow to the cell camera,
to either baits or foot plots, and then a box blind.

(35:01):
I mean, you have zero disadvantages. You can shoot however
far across bow can shoot. And you know, I moved
from My dad used to be a rifle hunter and
he did so very very sparingly, and he was not
a good hunter too. I told my dad, I said, hey,
can I get you to shoot a bow? And he said, ah, Man,

(35:23):
I don't know, and I said can, I said, I
want to show you what I see in September because
when we go out on deer opener, as charming as
that is, and you're from Michigan, right, Mark, Yeah, see
that stuff? To me and I'm going to be a
hypocrite here, it's charming as hell, like you sitting in
a box blne a box line that looks like a
fish house with your grandpa. Charming as hell. That fits

(35:44):
for me sitting in the latest scent roof silent window
five thousand dollars that that's where it goes like this
to me and so like I live in Wisconsin right now,
if I drive around during deer season, you should see
some of the blinds and stuff that we see out at.
Like there're guys like lazy boys, like yeah, Green Bay

(36:07):
Packer painted stands. It's crazy anyway. But with my dad,
I said, can I can I teach you how to
shoot a ball? And he's like, I guess. So I
got on a bow and he could shoot only forty
pounds and he had to come to full draw and
shoot like he couldn't hold it. He had to come
to full draw, get the target. Shoot. He showed like
fifteen eighteen yards. So anyway, I I borrowed a haybail

(36:30):
blind when the original haybale blinds from double ble Archery,
I borrowed one from a friend. I went put it
out in the woods and I took my dad and
I was sitting with him and we were over this.
It was over like a little but not a food plot,
but there was a clearing that would grow just regular
like Kentucky bluegrass. But the deer would always feed on it.

(36:51):
They'd come out of this swamp ticket they'd feed on
and then they go out to a beanfield and I'll
try to make this story really quick. But I was
sitting with my dad and al asudden I saw antler
tips coming through the woods and I said, hey, Dad,
a buck is coming. It's like okay. And this buck
came out and he was like one hundred and thirty
five inches eight pointer, which is the biggest buck my

(37:13):
dad has ever seen in his life. At this point
he comes out, he's looking at me like his The
deer is already at twenty yards right of this area
of grasses, twenty yards away, and the buck comes out
mark and he starts making us scrape. And I know
you've seen this. I know most archers have. But he
is hitting the ground so hard with this hoof, so

(37:34):
dirt is flying like twenty feet and he's doing it
with his left hoof, and then his licking branch is
such that he has to stand on his hind feet
and stick his nose way up there. He's like whatever,
six feet seven feet off the ground and he's rubbing it.
He drops down, he goes back to and I was
washing the deer, but I'm watching my dad and his
and the deer come starts walking right at us, and

(37:55):
then at five yards he turns broadside my dad comes
to full draw, but the deer doesn't stop walking. He
just walked away. My dad lets down, which is totally cool.
And I he just looked at me and he goes,
how often do you see that? And I said, almost
every day, man, when I'm bow hunting, I see that
almost every day. And he was just flabbergasted. And and

(38:19):
those experiences like that type of experiences. And then when
I moved from that, when my dad finally couldn't draw
his bonymore and I said, hey, okay, I'm going to
get you a crossbow. He was sixty four years old
or whatever. I got him a crossboard sixty two years old.
That's what the crossbow is for to me, Like, that's
what that is for, and like uh, and so just

(38:41):
all the technological advancements like we obviously. I remember back
in nineteen eighty six, I was in northern Maine with
a buddy of mine's family. They were bear hunting, and
we went up there just to ride Honda etc. Three
wheelers in the woods wall My buddy's dad and his
buddy bear hunted, and I remember that old psc or

(39:03):
old bear compounds. They had the latest compounds on the market.
They were so cool, like tree bark, and I remember
they were so amped up because they had three brass
pins and they had just added a light to those
pins because they couldn't see the sides of the bears

(39:23):
at night. They couldn't see their pins on the side
of the bears. And you know, that's this kind of
stuff that starts right that's where all this kind of
But yeah, I just concerned that with a lot of
the young people that hunting to them is inches of antler.
It's a crossbow, it's a bait pile, it's a food plot,

(39:45):
and it's dare I say this if you took a
group of guys to five guys, you and your buddies,
and you say, we're going to go on a hunt
in Illinois, boot plots, box blinds, giant box everything like that.
You guys are gonna hunt for a week. You're gonna
go do that, and then we are going to go
to a giant area of state land or a giant

(40:09):
private property in wherever. In New York. We're gonna go
to ten thousand acres in New York and you guys
were gonna go and everyone's gonna have a tree stand
on their back. Everyone's gonna have a different section of
the property. In the morning, we're all gonna hands in
the middle. Ready break, and we're all gonna go our
separate directions. And then I'm gonna force you guys, you

(40:33):
have to come home at night to a cabin and
the five you have to sit down and tell me
about your day. I bet if we did that, the
New York one would be way better than the Illinois hunt,
way better because you'd be exploring. You'd find crick crossings
that you didn't even know existed. You'd set up your
tree stand. Ol Suden, here comes a buck, You're like,

(40:56):
holy man like, or here comes a little buck, and
then Ol Suden, here comes a bigger buck, and like,
I'm gonna shoot this dough. It's just it's just so
much more rewarding. It's no different than like when I
I'm moose hunting in Alaska this year, I have no
idea what's where I'm I don't even know where I'm
going yet, I don't know what I'm gonna see. I
might see a seventy five inch bolt loose, I might
not even see a moose. Like it's all adventure to me.

(41:19):
But that's my biggest concern is cutting the corners, making
the crossbows available to everyone, making sell cameras to everyone's
just looking at their phones. Like, and I know you've
experienced this, Like you go into hunting camps. Now we
used to all sit around and tell stories of the
hunts that we had done. Now we all sit on
our phone. So like, I'll sit in a hunting camp.

(41:39):
I looked around. There's ten guys in camp. Everyone is
on their phone. They're not even talking. That's what's that's
that's what's going away.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been feeling all this myself. And
and I did series on the podcast earlier this year
exploring the idea of how to bring adventure back in
to our hunts, because I think, especially in the white
tail world, it's become so there's become this this formulaic
approach that's become very popular. That's kind of everything we've

(42:09):
been describing, right, It's like, all right, get your food plot,
get your box blind, get your cell cam.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Uh. And again I say all this as someone who
has done all of this, so I've lived this.

Speaker 4 (42:20):
I have as well.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, but but that you know, for all the reasons
we've discussed that can grow stale, that can stagnate, that
can you can lose something there, right, And and so
I've I've been exploring personally, how do you, how do
you how do I still be a deer hunter? How
do I still be a white tail fanatic? But do
it in unique different kinds of ways that that stoke

(42:43):
a fire in me in a different kind of way.
So I've talked to people about doing float trips for
white tails. I've talked to people about doing backpacking trips
for white tails.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
I've talked to people about.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
You know, doing canoe trips on big lake systems for
white tails, different stuff like that. I'd love to hear
what it's looked like for you, and I would love
to hear about the Illinois example. But also if there's
any other examples you have of ways that you have
brought back adventure or this old school connection to our
hunting past back into your white tail life, because I

(43:16):
think there aren't a lot example of there are not
many examples today of how that's done. Most of the
examples for what deer hunting looks today is the antithesis
of this. So could you paint me a picture of
that or give me some examples of ways that you've
done this.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
So the last couple of years, for instance, when I
hunt in Illinois, Wisconsin, wherever it is that I'm hunting,
I've been hunting with a longbow or a recurve, either
one of those, mostly a longbow the last couple of years.
But and for instance, I'll tell you kind of my
system in Illinois is is it's we have one big

(43:54):
farm and we have like five or six little farms,
and so we almost always have some very large bucks
on the place. And so last year we got hit
with EHD pretty bad, so most of our bucks perished,
but there's there was still some really nice deer left over.
But I wait to see where these really really big

(44:16):
deer are going to be living, and then I stay
away from there because that's where everybody goes. That's where
all my partners go and hunt, because they all want
the two hundred inch deer, they want the one eighty
one And I never shoot those deer because I don't
I don't hunt those deer really, And so how I've
done it for myself is I went back to scouting
by being in the woods, by taking a look around,

(44:37):
by walking down crick bottoms and being like, Okay, here
is a crossing. Why are they crossing here? How are
they using this? Where are scrapes in the woods, not
just on the edges of food plots, but where are
the scrapes in the woods that really no one else
knows about? And how can I get to them by
a canoe? We have a river system that runs for
our whole property, so I've been looking at hunting by
the boat or waiting across the river. I've been doing

(44:59):
a lot of that stuff where I go in the morning,
hence the video that we just published. I way across
the river there to get in the back door on
that book and using traditional archery equipment, which takes a
lot of practice and a lot of understudy. With my
dear friend Joel Turner from sean IQ, I shoot underneath
him quite a bit. I learned from Tom clumb Out

(45:21):
in Colorado kind of the mechanics for shooting the bow.
And but that's an element. And then I I use
trail cameras mark And what I do is I set
trail cameras up in particular locations of where I really
want to see kind of movements, how animals are running,
but I set them up, and I generally set them

(45:43):
up at the end of August, and that I won't
check them like I haven't checked them this year yet.
I in fact, I've been too busy. I need to
go down to Illinois and pull all my cameras. I'll
look at all the videos and then i'll use that
information this year. I'll look at like, okay, bucks are

(46:09):
actually crossing, because if I find a really cool crossing,
I'll put a camera up there. And then I'll want
to understand our mature deer using this or is this
just a dough and fawn like highway and so, and
then I'll generally separate myself from the gentleman that I
hunt with. I'll separate myself and I'll go over to

(46:29):
one of our smaller farms that they really see not
a lot of value in the deer that are living there.
But I'll find a six seven eight year old, you know,
one hundred and forty in eight pointer and that looks
like a side of beef walking through the woods, and
I will love to hunt that deer. And so I'll
do different things like that. But it's just like what
you're saying going in with a stand on your back.

(46:53):
And I've been doing a couple of things. I've been
doing a fair bit of gilly suit hunting from the ground,
ye going in and just like and sometimes I get
just destroyed, right Like I'll find this little area where
the deer are feeding on a locust tree, and I'll
find this little spot that I'm gonna set up, and
I set up and lo and behold, because I don't
know this yet, Mark, Like all the does are coming

(47:14):
out behind me, you know, and I have my wind
blowing a certain direction, but all the dose are coming
out behind me. That I get just blown out that night,
and it makes me kind of laugh, like I didn't
realize they were coming out right there or whatever. But
I'll be doing stuff like that, or going in and
hanging and hunting. And I always thought saddles. I always
thought saddles were the dumbest thing in the world because

(47:35):
of who was using them, like the people like, you know,
kind of like it was very popular. And then I
met some of the guys from Tethered and they said,
let us send you one, and I said no, and
they said let us send you one. I said, okay,
let's set a watch.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Out for those guys. They're very convincing.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
Yeah, very convincing. And then I used it, like I
can't film with it. It doesn't work for our style
of filming. But when I go out by myself without
a camera, it's it was incredibly rewarding. The hell of
a tool, hell of a tool, and like sneaking up
into this little tree and sitting there, it just was

(48:14):
so rewarding. Like if I were if I weren't filming,
I would either hunt like Cody dia Cuisto. Because it's
also very difficult for us to film, uh, with a
with a secondary photographer. It's very difficult for us to
film like ten feet off the ground. It's just very
very difficult. Yeah, So like we generally have to be

(48:35):
higher up or further back or whatever it is. Like
we are very particular about where we pick our spots.
You know, picking a big silver maple that has a
lot of branches and you know we'll set up there.
We can't just sneak in and set up you know,
on a telephone poultry, it just doesn't work. But anyway,
but adding elements like that, doing some some saddle hunting,

(48:56):
doing some low low tree stand hunting, doing some and
then finding these internal internal woods food plots, like finding
the locust trees that they're feeding on, finding where the
real good concentrations of acorns are, where these little oak
flats are, just reading the sign, going in and and

(49:20):
looking for mature, mature box and mature dose. That in
the deer hunting element, that's what's really inspired me. And
I've even thought about lately, both for ducks and deer.
I'm going to the boundary waters and paddling in and
like going on some of these islands. And then I
there's a place I don't want to say where it is.
There's a place in Minnesota that I've been wanting to

(49:41):
hunt again. I don't want to say where it is,
but I know very few people hunt this place. And
it is freaking massive, and it's it's public land, and
it's very difficult to get to, and it's very far away,
and and but I know some gentlemen that have been
around this area and they're like, man, there's very few

(50:04):
deer there, but like we have seen some box there
that are like will melt your freaking mind. And then
so things like that, Just doing things like that, and
I've recently been reading about finding lakes that have wild
rice on them in the boundary water, so I can
go up and duck hunt in the fall out of

(50:26):
a canoe, which I think would be really sick. But
that's what I'm doing. I'm and it doesn't take It's
a mindset like you and I, because I think you
would enjoy this. Like we could go set up a
camp in Illinois, grab twenty two rifles and go out
hunt fox squirrels and come back, skin them up quarterum,

(50:51):
get them in the frying pan, and you'd have the
time of year. It's no different than hunting moose in Alaska.
It's the same thing if you have the same mindset.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
And the more difficult you make things, the more you
pay attention, the more interesting they are. And I've said
this many times on podcasts, but I took a photography
class in college, and my very rarely when somebody says
something to you that's all or nothing, is it true?
Almost always when somebody says the one hundred percent or

(51:20):
zero percent, all the time you can say no. But
my professor said to me one time, the closer you
get to something, the more interesting it becomes. And I thought,
is that true? I start thinking about like a tree,
Like you see a maple tree from far away, it's beautiful.
But if you really start getting close to looking at
all the bark and look at the venation and the
leaves and look at how it grows, and you really

(51:41):
understand the biology of sugar maple like acer sacaram Why
is it acer? What does that mean? Why is it sacarum?
Is that Latin for sugar? Like? Okay, so when is
the sap running? When do people collect sup? And you
become an expert on sugar maples. The next time you
see a sugar mate, well you're gonna be like, I

(52:01):
really appreciate that tree. And if you do the same
thing with the white tail deer, when are they breeding?
And why? Like I hear so much information out there
that's wrong, like what are they doing? What? And even
like I listened to your I don't listen to hunting
podcasts until the fall. That's when I'll start when I'm
road tripping and stuff. And I listened to your I

(52:23):
loved your series. I wish you did more of it.
Actually it's like seven days, oh, one week in November.
One week in November. Yea, I love that stuff because
I like chronological journal hunting. I don't care that you
shot a one eighty could care less, don't care if
it was on sugar beets, brassicas from this company or

(52:45):
that company, don't care. But if you're like I went,
you know, like this one time, you're like, I snuck
into this spot. I thought it was a good spot.
I heard of two bucks fighting, and then you realized
it was the neighbor rattling his face off. Made me laugh.
I was like, because that's a story that you didn't
kill a deer there, but it's a story. And then
and then you lament it on the one hundred and

(53:07):
fifty inch buck that you missed and all this stuff,
and like that you didn't you didn't kill a deer there,
But it was better than a story than if you did,
because you actually told the story. And I think about
those things and that's what's interesting to me. And I
hear this stuff also, Mark, I laugh about this all
the time. Come November, all these podcasts are talking about
the grind. How do you stay in a tree stand?

(53:28):
What little tips and tricks? What snacks a you're gonna break?
I sit? I like to hunt dark to dark. I
like to get to a tree stand about an hour
before shooting light, and I'll stay there until the gate
is good if it's if it's right at the end
of shooting light and nobody's around, I'll slip down and
I'll get out. And I take great care in how
I approach my tree stands. Very very often I'm going

(53:51):
through a crick bottom or something along those natures to
get into a tree stand. But I'll sit about twenty
five days thirty days every year, dark to dark. And
it's not a grind to me at all, from the
from the moment I get to the tree stand to
that when the sun goes down, it goes by in
a flash. To me. My alarm goes off every day

(54:13):
in November, my alarm goes off at three am. That's
when I get up. I get up at three every
single day. It's the same time. I don't want to
rush in the morning. I get up, I eat breakfast,
I drink a cup of coffee, I get my gear
together and I head to the woods. I do the
same thing every day. And when I sit there, when
I'm not coming out, I'm not going in. Sometimes i'll
come out if the wind's gonna be wrong and I'll
go to another farm. Or sometimes I have a plan

(54:35):
of like I'm gonna hunt this buck in the morning,
and I'm gonna slip over and hunt this buck in
the afternoon, things like that. But I'll literally just get down,
go over and get back up, or get down and
go whatever I'm doing. It's just it's just so rewarding
to see the birds and to watch the geese fly over.
And you know, I see the songbirds change throughout the
fall as they're going through their migrations, and the deer change.

(54:56):
And I know you appreciate some of this, but yeah,
I just want to get as close as I possibly
can to the natural world. And the older I get,
the more I hunt, the more I realize I wanted
to keep taking little mini steps back from from what
is popular right now and what is technology right now.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yeah, speaking of those all day sits, I do a
lot of that myself. And what I speaking of all
these different little crutches or ways that you know, the
outside world infiltrates your hunting experience.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
It's so easy today to be out.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
There and every time your quote unquote bored or things
aren't happening. You reach for your phone, right, It's so
easy to reach for that phone out of just instinct,
and then before you know it, you're looking at some
smut on your social media feed or whatever it is,
and losing sight of everything around you. And what I've

(55:54):
tried to do more often, I don't do this enough,
but I want to continue to do more of this
is you go out there and not bring the phone
or bury the phone in the bottom of your backpack
as just for emergencies, and otherwise, force yourself to immerse
in the natural world around you. Force yourself to truly
open your eyes in the ears and notice all the

(56:15):
little things going on. And the times I have done
that are the absolute best hunts. The most rejuvenating, refreshing,
surprising hunts are when you embrace the stillness, embrace the
lack of action, embrace the embrace what you might originally

(56:36):
call boredom, but if you kind of wallow on it enough,
it ends up being fascinating. Like you talked about, when
you go deep into something, you realize there's so much
more there, There's so much more intricacy.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
You know, this is a total tangent. But another way
I do.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
This is you know, you talked about really focusing in
on something specific like a maple tree, And I think
that by understanding the context of a place or a species,
you see it more closely too, and so not you know,
for example, I'm going to and I think you've been

(57:12):
here before. I'm going to the Arctic National Wilife Refuge
in three days, and I'm just reading. I'm very excited.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
I've just been reading every little bit.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Of history and natural history and everything about this place
because I know that when I go there, I know
it would be.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Incredible either way.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
But if I were to go there with this context
and with this history and with this understanding, I think
it will be as I've experienced other places, and that
it feels like I go from looking at the world
through a fuzzy pair of sunglasses to instead putting on
a picture perfectly clear, terrific prescription set of eyeglasses, and

(57:53):
all of a sudden, the world is bright and clear
and you can see and recognize, in a appreciate so
much more around you. And I think you can do
that in one way being developed that context, learn, learn, learn,
And then the other is to simply open our eyes
and not be distracted by the junk in our pocket
or whatever it might be.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
Absolutely, when I was younger, I attempted to bring a
book to the tree stand, and two things were glaringly
obvious to me. One, I can't believe how loud it
is to turn a page when you're paying it to
out was just like holy cow. And Two, I just
kept reading the same sentence over and over again because

(58:34):
I read the sentence and then I lift my head
up and look around, and so to your point, like
when you know, like I go to Alaska, right, I
get asked a lot, why don't you elk hunt? Well,
I love elk they are and I've camped in places
where elk live and I've listened to them bugle all
night long, and it is as I mean, I remember

(58:56):
the first time I saw a box canyon. And I
walked up into this mountain valley in Nevada, and I'd
heard the term box canyon before, but I walked up
in there and I heard these bolt bugling, and I
was like, oh, this is a box canyon. It's a canyon.
It's literally in the shape of a box, like and
I remember that popping in my head, like, oh, this
is really cool, and it looked like I took a
step back time because I hiked so far into hunting's elf.

(59:18):
But that's why I go to Alaska. That's literally when
I hunt Elk, I see people, I see side by sides.
I see ten guys standing around with ten spotting scopes
on tripods. I see all the hunting gear that I
don't want to see. I see all the outfits that
I don't want to see. I see it looks like

(59:38):
they fell out of a catalog, each guy. And when
I go to Alaska, the pilot that drops me off
doesn't give two rats ass about the hunting industry. He
doesn't care who's popular and who's not, who has this
many likes in this many followers. He doesn't care who
was on Joe Rogan could care or less. He is

(01:00:01):
a pilot in a very dangerous place, and he lives
there because he's a man that has enveloped himself, surrounds
himself with adventure. And he's going to drop me off
from the wildest freaking place he can think of, where
he may have saw moose last year, or he may
not have ever seen a moose, but he thinks it's
a good place to land his airplane. And I'm the
type of guy to take a look around, and I
love that. And when we like, we can't use our

(01:00:24):
phones up there right, the phones, there's there's nothing to them.
And we have our in reaches, which will occasionally use
for safety or even just to communicate at home. But
when you can be up there, and I've sat there
on the hillside before, Mark, I hunted moose in Alaska
three years ago. It hunted. I think it ended up
being the wettest year and recorded history in Alaska. It rained.

(01:00:47):
I was there for seventeen days. It rained dark to
dark for all seventeen days, probably about five hours it
didn't rain. Other than that it was downpouring, honest, because
there was a typhoon that was coming in. It was extreme.
What we saw. One legal bull moose. I definitely could
have killed it, but I passed it because I thought
it was probably about a sixty inch bull. But it

(01:01:09):
looked youngish to me, so I was like, I'm not
going to shoot it. But to your point, that boredom,
that leaving your phone tucked away, we ended up laying there,
sitting there whatever. And he talked like, you know, I'd
sit there. If you were there with me, I'd be like,
you know, tell me, tell me about the best hunt

(01:01:31):
you've ever had with your dad, or tell me. And
I would literally start asking you questions that I may
have already known, Like I might say, if we're sitting there,
I might say, like, Mark, tell me why did you
start wired to hunt? Like what what were you trying
to do? And then like what was your first hunting memory.
We'd start getting to know each other for the renversations,

(01:01:52):
and then we'd have like, you know, you've met William Altman, right, yeah,
So William would lay there and be like I tell
this to people and they just laugh. But hit later
there and be like, Okay, no bullshit, don't come up
with some fake answer. How many donuts could you eat
right now? Don't give me some stupid one hundred donuts?

(01:02:14):
Like how many donuts could you eat right now? And
I'd be and I'd sit there and be like, I
think I could eat eleven donuts. He'd be like, oh shit,
you cannot eat eleven, you know, like, and people wonder
and like he really likes goat cheese, so he started
talking about goat cheese and like, oh, we just but
you start having these conversations. Right, We've sat there and

(01:02:36):
we've been trapped in a tent for five days, where
we started reading all the packages and finding typos and
the ingredients and all this different stuff. Like people think
that you're lost, but I think that we're actually discovering.
And do you remember when Suckerberg started talking about the metaverse. Yeah,

(01:02:56):
and you were going to start having You're going to
meet be able to move to a house in the
metaverse and go shopping in the metaverse, and meet a
girl in the metaverse and have relations in the metaverse.
I actually got really excited about that because I was hoping,
and I'm sure it maybe will trend that direction, but
I was hoping about sixty or seventy percent of the

(01:03:18):
world's population was going to move into the metaverse and
just stay in their houses, stay on their computers, become
fat slobs, and just degrade into what it is to
be a giant blob of cells that lives in their
computer screen, and that they were going to leave the
woods to me. And I still kind of have that

(01:03:42):
hope for humanity, believe it or not, Like I hope
that a certain subset of people go and pour their
noses into their phones and into their computers so that
I have a little bit more room to rome outside.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
Certainly seems like it's happening for a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
It does. Yeah, yeah, but it's it's yeah. It's just
that everyone has their own way of doing things and
I don't. And I mean this, I don't want to
denounce anybody else's way of doing things. But there is
a right, and there is a wrong, and there is
a way of being present. And my only criticism is

(01:04:20):
if I could show you a slower, more in depth
way and you have a better time in doing it,
doesn't that maybe lend itself to being a better way
of doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
It's hard to argue.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
One element of this that I've noticed you lean into
even on your white tail hunts, would be what happens
after the hunt I've seen like in your recent Illinois film,
Pretty sure you were doing this in the River's Divide,
but like camping out, like I have a hot tent,
and even though you're in Illinois a stent, you couldn't

(01:04:58):
be too far from a road there, you're still camping
out on a tent, having it as wild of an
experience as you can have in a place like that,
can you can you just tell me a little bit
more about why that's been important for you, how you've
gone about that, what's the setup you'd like to use,
Because I think a lot of people look at this
and think, well, Okay, if I'm in Alaska or Montana,

(01:05:18):
sure I'll do some big wild camp out. But I'm
in Michigan, or I'm in Illinois, or I'm in Mississippi,
you can't do that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
But that's not true, is it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:27):
No, that's not true. And originally we started doing it
because it filmed better, right we we and we weren't
going out to look, this wasn't fashion. We weren't going
out to film Batman here. We weren't. We didn't have
a set. But we just thought, we will be more present,

(01:05:47):
we will be better on camera. We will be dirtier,
more beat up, more aware if we're if we're camping,
if we're immersed in the you know. And several years ago,
I drew I drew a tag in Iowa and it
just so happened during the rock that year that it
was like ten degrees and William and I were camping

(01:06:11):
in Iowa. You know, Ben Harshein yep. So we were
camping on Ben let us use his lease well from
drawing my tagging. So we were camping on Ben Harshein's lease.
And I was texting Mark Durry and I was sending
him pictures of my downsleep bag was frozen in the morning,

(01:06:31):
like covered in frost. Mike were in a we're in
a seek outside tepee an hate man TP with a
woodstove and the TP and Marcus texting me back. He's like, man,
I have a house that's not too far from there.
Just go stay in that house. And then he's like,
you know, he's trying to find me places to stay
with buddies his or or whatever. And I was like, no,

(01:06:53):
it's not it's not the point in Illinois, and and
and then one of the times we did this, and
you'll see this coming out. You and I have spoken
about the River's divide in the past. You've watched the
rivers divide. Well, there's a River's divide two coming out,
like almost the exact same story. Cool, that's gonna come out.
But this deer I arrowed him. It was like thirty

(01:07:17):
twenty five or thirty below zero. I arrowed this deer,
he's six and a half years old, and I hit
him low in the brisket and it's really funny. William
Altman and I were sitting up in the tree standing.
We're like, you know, Williams like, did you heart punch him?
I was like, I don't know. I felt It's like
a thirty five yard show. I'm like he felt really good.
We're talking and then all of a sudden he comes

(01:07:38):
running by with blood dripping out of him, dogging adult.
We're like, nope, did not heart punch him. He is
doing just fine, and if we watched him anyway, But
I ended up hunting that deer for three years and
killing that deer. If you recall the River's divide where
Steve was standing when I killed him, this deer by

(01:08:00):
the time I killed him would be nose and nose
with Steve if you superimposed the two videos, which was
funny because this deer lived like three miles from Steve
and was rarely down by where Anyway. I tell you
this because William and I camped that whole time, and
there's a house that's available to us right there at
the property, pot showers and everything. But we camp for

(01:08:24):
like seventeen days in like negative thirty degrees, and you know,
camping in that temperature is hard, like everything's frozen. You
have to get up in the morning it's thirty blowszero
in your tepee before you get a fire going. But
it is so much more rewarding to come home, paying

(01:08:44):
your bow up, take your backpack off. You know, your
your senter go, you're breaking kindling, you're getting it in
the We had this little titanium stove. You're getting in
the stove, lighting it and you hear the aluminum or
the titanium on the stove where we use this stove
from a company called winter Well, they're really good. It
just starts heating up and popping and then you know,

(01:09:08):
like the stove pike gets red hot, the box gets
red hot, and we're just you know. The beautiful thing
about that is when we're in north to go to hunting,
there there's a lot of firewood, and places that we've
been in Alaska moose hunting, there's a lot of firewood.
You will come to understand comfort as a as a

(01:09:32):
realm of the work that you have to do to
get it. And so like when you camp in a
place where it is very difficult to get clean drinking water.
You have to go very, very far. The next time
you camp in an area where there's a crystal clear
stream five yards from your tent, you will embody that
so much more. When you camp in a place where

(01:09:53):
you have to walk far and wide to get any
sort of firewood if you're going to have a fire,
the next time you camp in an area where there's
copious firewood, you will feel that that reward. You will
feel that, like man alive. We have so much firewood.
And several years ago, we were camping in Alaska and

(01:10:18):
there's we were camping on this spruce flat and all
the spruce trees, like their bottom ten branches were all
dead because they're all grown together. So the trees are
doing beautifully, but the bottoms were and we could just
go over there with a little saw and knock it
off and have like blazing fires. And it was an
endless amount of fire works. Like I'll never forget that,
you know. I ran out of water one time, Me

(01:10:38):
and the whole crew ran out of water one time
chasing this mountain caribou in the Northwest Territories, and we're
so dry, like you couldn't even lick your lips because
your tongue would stick to it like you could peel
your tongue off. One of the guys that was working

(01:11:02):
for me, Chris Kirkby, is a brilliant man. He's such
a wonderful guy. He doesn't work for us anymore. He's
such an awesome dude. He peed in his water bottle
because he thought he was gonna have to drink his
own pea later on that day, and he became so
dehydrated that he couldn't walk. He kept he basically fell
down the mountain. For us to get down, I carried

(01:11:23):
his backpack, so I double backpacks on. William carried all
of his camera gear and he just kind of like
figures his way down. But when we got to the
bottom of the hill, we were going through the forest
and mark we came upout this little It was a
spring coming up out of the ground. It was only
about two or three inches deep as crystal clear, ice cold.

(01:11:46):
The bottom was muddy, so we to be very careful.
We sat, we saw this thing, and the three of
us sat there and we'd fill up a bottle a
little bit, and we let Chris drink it down and
then it was, to this day, probably the most rewarding
thing I've ever drank or eaten in my entire life.
And so when we're camping, when we have moments like that,

(01:12:08):
if I come over to your house tonight and your
wife makes homemade pizza and you and I sit and
have homemade pizza, like that's not lost on me. Man.
Like I've been hungry, really hungry, and I've served long,
far and wide for drinking water and for firewood and
for animals, and I've walked into all my toenails have

(01:12:28):
fallen off, and I've I've been so cold and so beaten.
I've been so cold before that, I was certain that
I wasn't going to live this night. And I sat
down and talked to my good friend Frank Harris. I
was like, hey, man, I think we're gonna lose our
lives tonight. I just want to tell you like I
love you, like I don't regret a thing that we've
done today. Like we're very far from our tent. It's raining,

(01:12:52):
it's hailing. We're in the Chucatch Mountains of Alaska. I
couldn't feel my legs anymore. He couldn't feel his legs.
The only thing that I could feel, and I'm not
trying to be gross here, I could feel water dripping
off of my testicles. That's the only thing that I
could feel was when water would run down my back,
I could feel it dripping off my testicles. And like

(01:13:15):
we were going to lose our lives that night. And
we made a grave mistake, a terrible mistake of we
hiked a very very long way from camp without rein
gear and we got caught in a blizzard slash rain.
And then Frank said to me like, hey, you see that.
He was a super tough, macho guy. And he's like,

(01:13:35):
you see that rock up there And I said yeah,
and he's like, I bet you can't walk to that rock.
And we did that for about eleven miles until we
got to our tent and we actually made it that night.
So these experiences that I've had, I've been in the
Bearing Sea, where I thought during the Winds of Adac,

(01:13:57):
the film that we did for Benelling Colin, like William Oltman,
myself another gentleman, and then the two captains on the boat,
I I felt you it was about fifty to fifty
that we are all going to lose our lives that
night in a storm. And so I hate to say
it like this, but that's why I camp. Because when

(01:14:21):
you camp, when you listen to you know, in that
piece that we filmed, the coyotes were howling all around
us that night, Like you can't experience that in a house,
Like that's not gonna work. And then hanging the deer
in that in that big silver maple and having a
fire at night cooking the deer like that is just cool.

(01:14:41):
It's just the right way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Yeah, So you've mentioned a handful of different ways that
we could try to go about things in a different way.
We've talked about camping out. We've talked about, you know,
using more primitive weapon. We've talked about maybe stepping away
from from our cameras to some degree, at least changing

(01:15:04):
a little bit there. We've talked about, you know, maybe
setting aside our phone limiting distractions. Are there any other
really transformative ways that you're putting this into action in
your own life with your hunts? Are there any other
parts of this that other folks could consider, Like, I

(01:15:25):
gotta believe this is going to be resonating to a
lot of folks. These types of conversations keep popping up,
but people always like, well, how what, what was it?

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
What does it take?

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
What are there any other things that you would, you know,
want someone to take away from this conversation in ways
that they can reconnect with with the way the old
boys did it a little bit more.

Speaker 4 (01:15:43):
I'll say two things. One thing, I want to take
a little dive back into gear because this was something
that occurred to me last year. I didn't realize it
until I did it, But so I met some engineers
from a company called Q It's a rifle company out
in New Hampshire. I don't know if you saw the
photos from my caribou hunt last year Mark in Alaska,

(01:16:06):
but I'd killed my caribou with this very technological looking rifle.
Had a silencer. I'd never shot a rifle of silence
around it before, had a rail like you would see
on a military gun, ar platform, foldable stock. Not anything
I would ever shoot, like the opposite of what I
enjoy shooting. But I met these engineers at Q and

(01:16:27):
they invited me out to come out to New Hampshire
where their companies and build to a gun build. I
was like, oh yeah, okay, I'll do that. It's kind
of cool. So I went out there and built this gun.
I tell you all this because I ended up taking
that gun to Alaska, and for no other reason than
they kind of dared me too, because I sat in

(01:16:48):
their offices and talked to their engineers and met their
owner and met their CEO and the presidents, and and
I was like, this is this gun isn't for me,
this is this is not the type weapon for me.
I ended up taking this technologically advanced gun and on
this hunt, and I started to realize all these little

(01:17:10):
intrinsic pieces, like how the gun carried when I was
in really serious bear country, how I was able to
go through the alders with this AR platform. It was
apparent to me because I've never served in the military,
Its apparent to me now why our soldiers shoot an
AR platform, both for the grip, safety, all this stuff.
When I shot my caribou, I took the longest shot
I've ever taken on my life at an animals three

(01:17:32):
hundred and forty yards, and I stuffed the magazine while
into my backpack, and it was way more solid than
just resting my rifle on the backpack. These are little
things that really spoke to me. But in doing this,
I kept looking at this rifle and thinking, this isn't
me at all, but I very much enjoyed hunting with

(01:17:53):
this rifle, and in that this is silly to even
admit this, but in that I realized, it's not what
you're hunting necessarily, it's how you're hunting. And so if
you you know, we all choose different weapons, Like I
shot that deer with the muzzloorder. There are a lot
of very fancy muzzlelolders out there right now that company

(01:18:14):
Woodman Arms or Woodman Arms out of I think they're
out of New Hampshire. To me, they build the most
incredible muzzle around the market, this little petite thing that's
for carrying and for shooting. They shoot beautifully, they're super accurate,
they look like they're built in nineteen seventy five, and
they're just absolutely stunning. And to me, when I'm holding

(01:18:35):
that gun, it's really charming and really rewarding and looks
the part. But then I also ran into that when
I was holding this queue when I was in Alaska,
and I realized, like, this is a really cool platform
hunt with as well for different reasons, and so I
think people don't put enough stock in their mindset. Much

(01:18:56):
like I used to say, to experience fantastic things, you
had to go to fantastic places. Well, there's people out
there that are like, I can't go to the Arctic Circle,
and they're wrong. They can, but they're like, I can't
go to the Artic Circle. It's expensive and it's not
actually as expensive as they think, but like it's scary,
and it is scary. The weather will kill you, the
bears will kill you, the airplane crashes will kill you.
But you know, they can go do these adventures. And

(01:19:18):
so one of the things that I realized is you
don't have to go to the Arctic Circle to hunt.
Like you're in the Arctic Circle. You and I, through
mindset and through adventure, could go camping in Illinois and
go or Iowa or Wisconsin and go on a squirrel hunt.
We could go on an October squirrel hunt and still
appreciate the leaves, changing still appreciate seeing a big, plump,
heavy hooked buck slipping through the trees while we're squirrel

(01:19:41):
hunting and shooting some squirrels and you know, and picking
some berries and going back to the camp and having
a fantastic dinner and having a very rewarding adventure hunt
kind of a big adventure hunt in somebody's proverbial backyard.
So I think mindset is something that's very, very important.
But beyond that, I just think that if people go

(01:20:07):
to go do things that they've never done before. Go
go on a go on a wilderness hunt for elk
or moose or caribou, or go on a wilderness white
til deer hunt, or get out, go to someplace that
is just a little bit further out, go camping, don't

(01:20:27):
don't put much stock in the size of the antlers,
or you know, go on a doll hunt, even even
get together with your bodies and go dough hunting and
remove the remove the stress of the antlers, and say, hey,
we're gonna go onto this. We're gonna go on the
state land. We're each gonna we're gonna draw an area
out of the hat, and whatever you deal with you

(01:20:49):
have to deal with. If you drew the area where
there's a bunch of duck hunters, you have to deal
with the duck hunters, or you have to canoe it
or whatever and just get back to either hunting by
yourself or hunting with your body's hunting with your family
and kind of like taking a step back man and
looking at you know. We talked about the gear, We
talked about the the end result, like the size of

(01:21:12):
the animals, but really like, uh, what about the story?
What happened? Like what what what went down? And like
I shot this caribou last year. It's probably the biggest
cariboo I've ever shot in my life. And I've probably
shot I don't know, eight to ten cariboo. It's probably
the biggest caribou body I've ever shot my life. The
bowl was very, very old, just basically had hockey sticks or antlers,

(01:21:35):
but he had really big cool fronts. But like when
I got back into Camp Main camp, like a couple
of the guys had shot like Boone and Crockett bulls,
and like when I brought my bull on, they were
kind of like whoa, Like you shot that, and like
you know, but you know you didn't want to hold
out for a big Well, first of all, I shot
I shot this ball on the last day. I hiked

(01:21:58):
my face off looking for I'm mature bull that had
a really big, handsome rack and was heavy, hooked with
lots of good meat. I've got four pounds of hamburger
thowing right now on the counter from him, and which
is fantastic. Yeah, it's really good. But that is like
that bull was running an entire harem of cows. He

(01:22:18):
had pushed them to the top. He was in cheap country.
He pushed him to the tippity top of his mount
We hiked up there and I killed him, and it
was just so amazing. And I lost my dad last year.
I lost my dad in March last year. And so
I was sitting at this bull. I appreciate that, but
I'll sit at this bowl like like I just started, like,

(01:22:39):
you know, tearing up, and I was thinking about my dad,
and it was just like, yeah, it wasn't the biggest
antler bowl in the world. It probably was the biggest
bodied bull I ever shot. But I left there like
unbelievably fulfilled and unbelievably happy. And even if I didn't
kill that bull, I would have left there with a heart.
That was because I took my little one person hill

(01:23:02):
aberg tents camped at a mountain pass. I was camped
right next to this these legacy grizzly bear brown bear
tracks where they step into the same footprint.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
I saw those last year on Admiralty Islands, a very
different place, but yes, I've seen it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:19):
Does that not freak you out?

Speaker 3 (01:23:21):
Amazing?

Speaker 4 (01:23:22):
Like they're right right next to my tent and it
was cool. It's like, right next to my tent, there's
a caribou one that they've been walking in for a
million years, and here's the brown bear one. Like I
can literally see front pad, backpad, front pad, backpad, and
I can even see like I could go up to
these rock outcroppings where the snow cross over and I
know they dend there, and I'll go up there and

(01:23:42):
look and like there's like I can literally see somebody
dens there every year and I can see their footprints.
They've been doing it for ten thousand years. Man, And like, yeah,
whether I killed the bowl or not, I'm looking at
all this stuff. I'm washing the weather, I'm watching my
buddy come in and land is supercouver where he probably
shouldn't be landing a super cop picking me up and
dropping off the end of them mout like it was

(01:24:04):
just that's why I hunt man, that that I want
to share it with you. That's My biggest bane mark
is I want to share with you. I want to
share it with the guy down the street. I like,
if I was a billionaire, I would do exactly what
I'm doing for work right now. It's just that I
would take people with me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:23):
Yeah, I share it because that, I think is one
of the next levels. It's mentoring somebody. Like I didn't
kill a turkey this year. I just brought kids turkey hunting,
and uh man, that was awesome, so awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
That's so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
I think like this is a perfect place to kind
of tie a bow on things. And I love this
kind of There's there's a number of different ways of
doing this, but everything drills down to reconnecting more closely
with the place, with the people, with the animal, with
the experience. And you can do that vie removing all

(01:25:00):
these different barriers, whether that be technology, whether that be
where you stay, whether that be mindset. But there's you
know this, this is this is an opportunity available to anyone,
whether you can travel to a fantastic place or not,
whether you have a lot of money or not. I
think that's a really important thing to remember.

Speaker 4 (01:25:18):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Yeah, I've got I've got just a couple of really
quick questions for you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:23):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Number one, you talked early on in the very beginning
about some of these books that inspired you. Do you
remember the name of any of these books or a
book that would be one you'd recommend us seek out
and try to find for some of this kind of
wilderness old school inspiration to any standout still in your memory?

Speaker 4 (01:25:45):
Yeah, I mean I have. That's really funny. The most
inspiring book I have is literally right behind me, and
I've kept it all these years. It's called The Big
Game Animals of North America by Jack O'Connor, and it
just was in each chapter as a painting. So it
opens up with a particular animal, then as a painting
of the animal, and then he goes on to tell

(01:26:06):
you the story of hunting the animals, and then after
the hunt he describes the natural history. And so I
don't even know if that's why I became a biologist.
I don't even know if that's why the biology of
the animal is so important to me. But that's how
that book is laid out, and I absolutely love it.
Most of Jack O'Connor's books, Sheep and Sheep, Hunting, Desert Sheep,
Animals of the Desert. All those books are very inspiring

(01:26:29):
to me. And you and I have talked about this before.
I think before any hunter passes their hunter safety they
should have to read Elder Leopold San County Almanac, Like
that should be a prerequisite. I just had a friend
read it, a young man, he's probably twenty five, twenty eight.
He lives in South Dakota. He's a rancher in South Dakota.

(01:26:51):
He read it and he's like, I'm totally changing how
I set up my properties. He's going away from food
plots and going to not going away from food plots.
He's setting up more natural food areas. He's setting up
he's doing more grasses, he's doing more edge habitat, he's
doing things for wildlife, Yes, more things for wildlife. And

(01:27:13):
so Elder Leopold books, Jack O'Connor's books, I think that
stuff is And then you know, even the old school.
Have you seen the new field and streams that are
coming out? Yeah, they're great, Yeah, really well at don
and so like anytime you can jump on those old
pens and have an understanding of how those guys saw
wild places, I think is very popular.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more with you on that stuff. Okay, finally,
can you give us the scoop on on what's to
come with your films and your content? Where can people
see what you have out there already? How can they
connect with you and make sure they can see what's coming.

Speaker 4 (01:27:53):
So search for Donnie Vincent on YouTube, subscribe and follow
us there. That's where new work is going to be
coming out. We have two film series that we're launching.
Three film series. Actually, one is Unfiltered, which you just
saw on an episode of the on the Illinois Buzzlutterbuck.
The next one is Fantastic Places, basically fifteen to eighteen
films that we have done that we have filmed over

(01:28:15):
the last fourteen years. They're already filmed, they're already in
the can. We're editing and editing them now. The first episode,
which is an archery dollshy Punt, is coming out probably
in two weeks. It's probably thirty five minutes long something
like that, which is really fun. I sit down in
this cabin and I kind of tell the story. If
you've ever seen like True Detective with Matthew McConaughey, I

(01:28:38):
sit down and kind of retell the story in a chair,
and then we caught the old footage that was shot
back then and then old interviews back then. That's fantastic places.
And then we have basically what is going to be
our new film series, which is just things that are
currently happening and so we're putting together. If you've watched
our film The Other Side, which was a film about

(01:28:59):
multi will bear hunts, uh, this is going to kind
of be like the Other Side part too, but it's
going to be all about Cariboo and different character hunts
and the backbone of it. It's going to be my
latest my last two caribou hunts in Alaska that I've
done in the Alaska Peninsula, but it's going to be
Embody Mount Cariboo, Woodland Cariboo, Caribou in the Arctic Circle
and all the different places that I've that I've wanted character.

(01:29:22):
So wow, Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of work
coming out, and yeah, there's there's going to be quite
a we we've taken quite a hiatus from putting films
together because our commercial business gets quite busy. But somehow
we're finding by managing our time a little bit more efficiently.
We're finding time to do both.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
That's great, That's that's exciting. I can't wait to see
all that. I I appreciate you, know everything you've done
over the years down and you've been saying. A phenomenal
storyteller and and inspiration.

Speaker 4 (01:29:53):
And and and a role model.

Speaker 2 (01:29:56):
I think of sort for folks as as a way
of doing this a little bit differently than maybe what
we'll see everywhere else. So thank you, thank you for that,
and thanks for this conversation.

Speaker 4 (01:30:06):
Yeah, thanks Mark, I appreciate it. And hopefully you don't
wait so long to do the next one.

Speaker 3 (01:30:11):
I don't plan on it right on.

Speaker 4 (01:30:13):
Thanks man, all right, and that's going to.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
Wrap it up for us today. Thank you for joining me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
I appreciate you being here for this conversation. And until
next time, stay wired to hunt.

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Host

Mark Kenyon

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 917: Becoming an Old School Hunter with Donnie Vincent