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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
Backcountry Bulls and Cougars with Joe Lewis
Ever thought about turning an entire elk into jerky so the pack out would be easier? Joe Lewis did that. Ever wondered how to hunt cougars without dogs? Joe Lewis regularly succeeds. This guy is a no nonsense, tough as nails unconventional backcountry hunter. Check it out.
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these are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm james nash and this is the six ranch podcast, so I was trying to scratch out some math on how light you can get a bull elk. Yeah, but there are definitely times in uh and I think just about any successful elk hunters life where they they think, man, these things are awfully heavy you ever run into anything like that.
Speaker 2:That's an issue. That's an issue for sure. Yep, I mean uh, especially hunting out in the wilderness. You know that's, that's always on your mind. You know you're always at the limit of. You know where, where's the good hunting and where's my maximum amount of uh. You know I don't know where's your line on how much effort you want to put in to get this thing out of here.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, and you are a guy who is not only capable of, but puts out more, more physical effort than anybody. I know, yeah, and you know I think you've been like that for a very long time. You know I remember seeing seeing pictures of you hunting in the back country 10 years ago in shoes that looked like they needed to be thrown away a thousand miles earlier. And you know, living off very little water, going very lightweight, and you know staying out for long periods of time and then putting a lot of movement on. So where do you personally draw that line with elk?
Speaker 2:It depends, depends on the season, depends on the terrain. You know if you're going, you know if you can hunt on the front side of a ridge, you know, versus the back side where you're gonna have to pack them uphill right, you know that changes it um, a lot of things, you know. Sometimes, you know you try not to think about it and you just go where the elk are and and you just deal with a problem later. And you know if you think about it too much you won't do it yeah so what happened this year?
Speaker 2:this year, um, I had some big plans. I bought some pat goats and had high hopes for them, and so I didn't have a whole lot of time to get them in shape for the year, and so I learned my lesson on that and so I went out for archery archery season in oregon this year and, um, you know, we took them out, I think. Uh, it was almost opening like second day into the season or something, and uh, it's pretty hot. So I kind of give them that, you know it was. They were kind of dragging on the way in and it's like, oh well, they'll pull through it.
Speaker 2:And and they didn't, you know, they were laying down on a trail and they were panting. And yeah, it wasn't just, you know, after two and a half miles of that, we just kind of gave up. We were just like, well, let's just camp here and call it good, and I'll just, you know, I'll just have to hike farther every day from camp. And I was there with my wife and my new kid, my young or my one-year-old son was in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, new kid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I stumble a lot, Yep so.
Speaker 1:No, I think it's new to me. It's a good way to say it.
Speaker 2:Those are the right words. Yeah, so that hunt went pretty good, other than the goats. Luckily, they stopped at two and a half miles. There was elk there, so we're successful and we're able to make that hunt work.
Speaker 1:But let's talk about goats for a little bit. Yeah, Because I think that they are a very legitimate pack animal, but they require work throughout the whole year. Yes, so you know you had some lessons learned there. Talk me through that a little bit and like what it takes to be able to use goats as pack animals I don't know yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm learning, you know, I think I think they have a lot of potential. I see some people that are that are doing really well with the pack goats and you know, if you go through all the pros and cons of all the different pack animals you know, for for the country that I hunt, I think they're, they have the potential to do the best. Yeah, you know, but you still need really good goats and they need to be in good shape and and all of that. Um, so, um. So I'm working towards that goal. You know I was hoping to come right out of the gate the first year with a couple goats and pull it off, but I didn't. Um but um. But yeah, I've got. Um, I'm getting some new pack goats, better genetics this year, but that's that'll be know really be able to pack with those new goats for four years.
Speaker 1:Four years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a long-term, long game.
Speaker 1:So how old will these ones be that you're getting? They'll be.
Speaker 2:I don't know a couple weeks old. Okay, yeah, I'm getting them really young. They're babies, yeah babies.
Speaker 1:That'll be fun. You'll develop a lot of relationships with those animals over the next four years.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I think that'll be a big game changer. The goats I got, they're already four years old. I've got three goats. One of them is just 220-pound, just lazy big goat. That's why they got rid of him. I'm like, oh, he looks great, he's big goat, and he's just. That's why they got rid of him. You know, I'm like, oh, he looks great, he's big and whatever, and but he's useless. So then I've got two other goats that that are a little on the smaller side and, um, they, they, they work, they come back but they don't work very hard to follow me because I think they just haven't. We don't have that bond that we were with the the new baby. So, yeah, I think that'll go a lot better, raising them ourselves, and then they'll want to work hard. Then it'll be easier to get them in shape because they actually go out and work them hard before they quit every day.
Speaker 1:What, uh, what do you expect their capabilities to be once they're mature?
Speaker 2:Well, with uh, you know, with the goats, it sounds like it's like 25% of body weight. So if you get a 200 pound goat, you know you can put 50 pounds on them, okay, yeah, of body weight. So if you get a 200 pound goat, you know you can put 50 pounds on them, okay, yeah. So so it's just plenty for me, because my backpack are, you know, going into a hunts, normally around 40 to 50 pounds, and so you know, if I can put most of my gear on a goat on the way in, that's huge. If I could take them in empty and just have them fresh and ready to haul meat out, I'd be happy. Yeah, so all right.
Speaker 1:So I've. I've weighed a pile of elk at this point, live hanging um, bone in, bone out, and uh, a mature bull in september, at the beginning of the month, is going to be close to 800 pounds. By the end of the month he's going to be 700 pounds, potentially less, and then they don't seem to lose a lot more body weight after that. Another thing that I found is that even if I've got an 800 pound bull on his live weight and when I say live weight I mean guts in, in hide on hanging them up to see what they weigh before we take anything off of them and then we weigh them again as a hanging weight, what I found is I can take an 800 pound bull and a 600 pound bull and their hanging weights, which is heads off, hides off, guts out their hanging weights are going to be very, very close.
Speaker 1:So even if you've got 150 or 200 pounds of disparity, that gets eaten up in organs and skull and hide. But the actual bone and meat structure of the animal is fairly consistent and we see that end up in the 400s most of the time. And then once they're boned out completely, then we're ending up, you know, in the in the mid 200s, somewhere as far as boned out meat on a, on a bull elk. Now if you're packing out a cape or antlers, um you know, a full skull or skull cap, that's going to be additional weight on top of that. But there's a pile of weight there, so did you get a bull here during archery season?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got one during archery season and then I got one in my later hunt in Idaho. Yeah, but yeah it's a lot of weight. I think it was closer to like 200 pounds. Um, it just depended on you know the shot placement too. You know, like, if you accidentally hit a shoulder, you know the. The boy shot in Idaho I shot four times in the front shoulders so I did lose some meat there. I'm like you know I'm not going to risk eating lead fragments and stuff, so yeah totally, so you do lose some there.
Speaker 2:Um, you know if you're not careful there. Yeah, what gun were you shooting? I'm shooting a three-way, so it's just a kind of a Frankenstein gun. I just piece it together and and I like it. It's a small, compact folding stock gun and I shoot heavier, slower bullets and it gets the job done.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not not a long range gunrange gun, but I'm not really into long-range things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're kind of a long-range human. Yes, yeah, you do the moving with your feet.
Speaker 2:Well, my theory is, if you're going to have to go over there to get the animal anyways, you might as well walk halfway there, to start with. If you're 800 yards away, and it depends on the train, of course, but if you can, you might as well just close the distance.
Speaker 1:You know I like shooting while I'm hunting from close range for a variety of reasons, but one of the instant ones is that got to hike all the way over there. You cooked off all of your adrenaline and all those like self-congratulatory feelings and now you're just fatigued and going straight to work and it's pretty nice to just walk straight over to an animal that just tipped over and feel all of that.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, absolutely yeah, and I think that's just part of the fun just tipped over and and feel all of that you know yeah, absolutely yeah, and I think I think it's just part of the fun.
Speaker 2:You know, I built a long-range gun at one point and you know I went out with it one year and I ended up shooting my deer from 100 yards anyways, and I'm just like I, just I, and it was a clumsy gun at 100 yards and I'm just like this thing's stupid. I took it apart. Yeah, I just like I don't need a long-range gun. Yeah, just like you know, I thought about it. I'm sitting there looking at animals from a thousand yards and, like I know the gun, I can shoot that far I can. I can hit that animal, but but I don't want to. I was like that'd be, like it's too risky first off, like if it's an animal.
Speaker 2:You really want to shoot, like if you spend a week to find this animal, you're just gonna lob a bullet from a thousand yards away when you know when you could just walk up there for a slam dunk, you know yeah, and a wind call at that range is extremely difficult.
Speaker 1:And then there's the time of flight issue with a bullet, and even if you do have the wind call perfect, and you have a very precise hold and and you know you've you've aligned all the controllable factors that's still a live animal that could move while that bullet's in flight and it takes so little movement of the animal to make your shot become awful that that's a. That's a huge factor to mitigate. I shot at a bear at 390 yards a few years back and we actually had it on camera so you could see that the bear was there and static at the shot and the bear moved and was completely out of the impact of the bullet. On a 390 yard shot on a very fast bullet, 2,900 foot per second bullet. But yeah, I was. I was very, very surprised by that because I would consider that you know a medium range shot for sure it's not. It's not a close shot because I'm still having to hold high, but yeah, it's interesting. So how did your?
Speaker 2:Idaho hunt go. Idaho hunt went really well, yeah I got a pretty nice deer and a nice elk.
Speaker 1:Tell me the story. I love a story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that bull was. As far as shooting goes, yeah, that's, that was like at my max with that gun. It was like three, three, 30 or something. Okay, it's pretty close in there, but that was a 45 inch drop, so so, anyways, yeah, that's, that's. That's long range to me. I'm just like I can shoot, you know, really far, like some people do, but you know that that's like my. I sat there for an hour and have my gun all set up and like I still wasn't sure if I was going to take the shot, but the bullets just lay in there in his bed and you know. Anyways, I guess I'm. I'm back to the goats. Thought I was going to have help in Idaho. So when I realized during September that I wasn't going to have help in Idaho, I was actually a little nervous.
Speaker 2:I was like crap. You know, like I bought this tag, which is a lot of money yeah, you know, I didn't buy Idaho tags for a lot of years because I'm like the wilderness in Idaho is so big, like we're going to go in there and have to get an elk out by yourself, like that's, that's just a lot of work, you know, even if you know, in Idaho in September you can hunt with a rifle, so your odds of killing a bull are very high. So like it's just a matter of effort, right, it's just a matter of labor to go in there and get them and get them back out, you know. So like I'm like, okay, now I've got goats, I'm gonna make this happen, I'm gonna get the tag, I'm gonna go and do it. So I'm committed. And then I went out september goats didn't work, and so you know, I knew going into the that I was going to be on my own feet, yeah and uh, hauling all the meat myself.
Speaker 1:so so did that change your plan at all for where you were planning on going and stuff like?
Speaker 2:that no, no, not at all actually because, I uh, you know, kind of dug deep. I brought up another um another strategy I guess, you could call it that uh kind of had on the back burner for a few years and I think this is something a lot of us have thought about. Yep, yeah, it's um, we thought about it, but then you also think about how much work it is, because, uh, you know it's just, uh, the.
Speaker 2:You know you got to think the method through all the way right. You know, when you first think of jerky, I'm thinking you know small pieces. You know like maybe a you know four inch long strip of meat. You know you're thinking you need wire racks and you need a lot of a lot of you know a big smoker and all that and and that's normally how we do it right.
Speaker 2:But I stumbled on an old diagram and like one of these like native american books or, you know, skill books or whatever, and I saw how they're actually cutting the meat into like three to four foot strips and I'm like then it clicked. I'm like, hey, you know like this is an option, like you could hang a whole elk by a fire on like a pretty manageable size rack, and so I kind of I figured that out like maybe three years ago, four years ago, and so it's always kind of been there and I'm like, you know, a couple years they even packed out a little bit of salt just in case. I'm like I think I'll maybe need to do it on the sun and then you know, really the salt isn't necessary, but but anyways, I've kind of been dabbling, you know, thinking about it, and it just didn't connect until this hunt and I was like you know the weather's gonna be right and I'm kind of like you know I've got the time to burn. That's the other thing if you're gonna make jerky anytime and um, you know I had it for this one I had.
Speaker 2:You know I was planning on going in for 10 days. So if I spent half of that on on, just you know, getting out processed and out of the field, and I'd be doing pretty good. So anyways, so.
Speaker 1:So that was it. What day did you find your bull? On?
Speaker 2:the first day, first day yeah, first day found him and killed him first day. No, I found him the first day. Okay, you know how things go the first day. You know, if you find a big bull on the first day, you start to think like man, like maybe there's a lot of big bulls here. I'm like, I'm like shoot, I just, you know, I kind of raced in.
Speaker 2:You know, um, let's see, I drove all night to get there, yeah, out of the trail had like 2 aam or something, and I sleep in the front seat. And then you know there's actually somebody else breaking down camp at the trailhead at like 5am, you know, woke me up. So I was like, oh crap, well, now I'm up, I might as well go. So I started hiking and I get in there like five miles, and I and I just I just like crash cause I'm just too tired, you know. So I actually literally like lay down on the side of the trail and take a nap, yeah and uh, just, I was totally spent.
Speaker 2:So like I get up and you know, delirious and whatever, and I just started hiking in and and I and I wasn't totally sure I was going to go, because you know that when you look at the google earth and the maps and whatever. You kind of get a rough idea of the landscape in your, in your mind and where the trails are set and everything, but you don't actually know what it's going to look like. So I try to stay open-minded. You know, going in, yeah and that, and so you're always like trying to match things up because you know that country's so, so steep.
Speaker 2:You know, even hunting local here in the eagle caps, the frank church is where I was at and that that's, that's a lot steeper ground yeah, and so I wasn't totally committed to anything and I just was like going through and I was looking at kind of side trails or going up the you know the side of the mountain. I'm just like you know, just kind of waiting until one felt right and I was like, hey, this one looks good, it looks like it's going up into a nice basin. And so I ran up that trail and, uh, anyways, yeah, that evening I got up into a nice old burn. I just like burned out this little like bottom of this you know timbered basin and it kind of regrown in with you know buck brush and you know what, not all the first, first like kind of wave of plants that fill in, and yeah. And so I stopped there and I glassed a bit and I seen this bullies out in this meadow. It was actually right above the burn in the timber. Then there's these little grassy meadows, super steep slope, with some grassy faces on, and he was feeding in there.
Speaker 2:And so I I kind of I know I thought about it for a little while and, uh, I decided not to shoot him. Actually I was like man, he's big, he's a big, big, six point. It's like 330 bull, but it's opening, opening day and you know, like I've got so many places in mind, I'm like I've got probably 10 basins lined up. I'm like I can side hill through all these. If there's a bull here, there's going to be a bull in half these other basins, right. And so I actually just actually went the other direction and I I looked into the next basin and I camped up high so I could see him, and into another spot the next morning and, um, anyways, I realized pretty quick after the sun went down, I was like I'm an idiot, I should have shot that bull. I'm like I should at least try. I mean, nothing's guaranteed.
Speaker 2:He was still a long ways away it was hard to get close distance on it, whatever, yeah, but I'm like I should have at least tried. I was like that was dumb. He's going to be gone, so anyways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. All the things go through your mind right Like is he going to get bumped by wolves? Am I going to come back to that base and then see a couple of guys hunkered up over the top of him gotten him out? Yeah, Anything can happen, Sure thing could happen, sure.
Speaker 2:So the indecision that can set down on a guy at night is pretty tough, right. Yeah, I didn't overthink too much, because there's a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 2:I mean, still, I'm like, even if he's not there in the morning, it's not gonna be the end of the world, but it could be a long, hard hunt to find another one. And then you also have the the logistical issue of getting them out. So I'm like getting a bull early in the hunt's a lot better, and getting one on day eight and not having time to to make jerky and get them out. Otherwise now I'm running into, you know, I'm running out of. If I were gonna shoot something on day eight, I'm gonna be low on supplies, I'm gonna be, you know, probably 10 pounds lighter, I'm gonna be hungry and weak and all that you know. So, um, anyways, yeah, next morning, um, it's super foggy. So I just, you know, whatever 15 degrees and foggy, and so I just made a big fire and sat there and waited for the fog to break and actually it was probably 1,000 yards away and you know, some people would have just taken it from there and I guess that would have been convenient.
Speaker 2:But I moved in closer and I cut the distance to about 450. And then I was just seeing them through a couple little shooting lanes in the trees and I was still kind of across a draw. But I was looking uphill, pretty steep, so I was maxed out. I couldn't get any closer. I'd be in the timber, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I just kind of settled in there and I'm like let's not ruin this. You know, it's just like he was by then he'd bedded down and so I'm like, well, let's just take our time and try to like sort the situation out. Am I going to be able it closer or circle or anything? And but I could see the bulls so I could keep tabs on, know what he's doing and all that. So I set the gun up on some, you know, blow down big clean logs. It's nice because you know with the burn the blocks had no bark on them or anything. So I set up just like a bench rest and I got the gun all set up and crosshairs on them and look good through the scope and but it's still a long shot yeah I didn't get a chance to test fire the gun before the hunt.
Speaker 2:Which the gun? Always it shot. Good for me, I don't have any issues with it. But still, you know, I like that confidence of of test firing before I go out, yeah, but things were rushed and so I sat there for like an hour, I had lunch and, you know, thought things through, looked at the calculator and looked at my drop and looked at, you know, like you know all the possibilities for for the shot, and finally talked myself into it and and, uh, yeah, I shot him once and he, he, he couldn't get up and tried to get up and he couldn't.
Speaker 2:So the first shot he was, he was laying down in his bed and he was kind of rolled backwards and so shooting at him, you know, my kill zone was a lot shorter than it would be if he was, you know, standing up or something. So I angled through him and hit his spine and so he couldn't get up and um, but I could tell, you know, he still looked like he was really trying. So I just shot him again and and I'm like, and it sounded good, you know, I'm shooting a suppressor, yeah, so I know when it hits. I know it, you know. So the shot sounded good. He was acting like I hit him good and so I waited, like I don't know, probably a couple minutes and he was still at his head up like shoot me.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's going on and I didn't try this bullets at that distance either. I'm only shooting. You know, 2,700 feet a second and getting out there to 450 yards, they're slowing down. I 2,700 feet a second and getting out there to 450 yards, they're slowing down. I haven't. I don't know what the you know if these, how these bolts are going to open up and perform at that rate, what bullet is it? They're like a lead tip, like a pointed soft point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, but I hadn't tested them at that range or anything.
Speaker 1:How many? How many grains are there?
Speaker 2:180s. Okay, yeah, yeah. So I just shot him actually two more times, I did him four times until he finally put his head down. I'm like, you know, I wasn't going to take any risks. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah. So I had him dead and so that felt good and I'm like, okay, well, I got to start, you know, getting ready for the work, you know. So I actually set up camp right there. Right where I was shooting from was a really nice flat spot right in the middle of the burn, in the bottom of the basin. So I actually set up camp before I even went up there to get him because I'm like you know, weather's moving in and got a bull down and and, um, he was up on a super steep face. I'm like I, you know I can only do so much up there. You know it'd be hard to even find a spot for sleeping bag up there.
Speaker 1:So so did you get him moved back to camp that first day?
Speaker 2:not all the way, not all. Yeah, I did what I could. So, yeah, I went up there. I, I think first load, I took the head down to camp um, and actually you know some people aren't into this, but I cut the legs off and the head off and I rolled them down to the creek, you know. So from there he's really only. I don't know, maybe 150 yards from camp.
Speaker 1:And I think people have some misconceptions about animals rolling on a hillside. I've seen some pretty horrific falls that animals have taken after getting shot in some of these steep canyons and stuff. I haven't seen meat damage from it. Yeah, has that been your experience? Was there any meat damage from rolling down the hill there was, and it's not something.
Speaker 2:I've done a lot. But you know, in those situations, you know it's just it's just trying to trying to make it work, I'm like, well, this is this is, if I was ever going to try it, now would be the time. You know, like um, this is pretty, pretty tough. Um, you know a lot, a lot of weight just getting it down to camp. It's a big, big chore. You know you got five loads of whatever and it's super, like the like it's so steep, like it's so dang steep and it's soft ground too. You know I'm wearing uh, you know I'm wearing the um like chains on my my shoes and yeah all that, and I'm like I gotta give it a shot.
Speaker 2:So I rolled it down and you know there's nothing wrong with me, yeah it was it was actually super clean and you know, but I don't know I'm having problems with it yeah, obviously there's for for folks listening.
Speaker 1:There's limits to this, but if it's just like a steep grassy hillside or something like that, um it, it is a viable means of moving that animal a long ways without damaging the meat. I will say that if you can, don't gut him first, you don't want to necessarily have that open cavity because it's going to fill up with all kinds of trash and rocks and all kinds of just stuff that you don't want to contaminate your meat with. But yeah, it's a viable move in some situations. So, okay, so that's an experiment that we tried and worked out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that that worked out well. So now he's in the Creek, you know, down or you know, maybe really close to the Creek, you know, closer to camp, only got 150 yards. So I, you know, then I boned them out, hung, hung up the bags right there Um, there's a couple of nice branches, meat on, and I hauled, I think, two loads to to my tent and then it just got too dark and it's pouring on rain and you know that was turning into snow and so I'm soaked and whatever, and you know normal stuff and. But you know I was pretty spent after. You know it's just a long day, uh, just hiking and hauling and all that and, and so I just left the two bags over there to get them in the morning and and, uh, yeah, just threw those on a log at camp and and went to sleep, yeah so, and then I woke up in the morning there's six inches of snow and and a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2:So then what happened? Well, let's see, I think I I don't think I left the tent till 10 am, which normally I'm, I'm, you know if I'm a person that's up at 4 am and I'm ready to go, and yeah, you know, I was pretty comfortable. I'm like heck, I got got the bull killed. I'm just like I'm just gonna sleep in and recover and take my time with this. And so, yeah, I slept until, like you know, 10, and then I got up and went over, hauled a couple of loads of meat, the last couple loads of meat to the camp and, you know, had lunch and kind of just settled in. I wasn't sure if I was even going to start processing jerky that day. I'm like I got 10 days to burn.
Speaker 1:This is day two of the hunt yeah, so did you have any other tags?
Speaker 2:I did I did, which were on my mind.
Speaker 2:For sure, it would have been nice to go and fill six tags in one hunt, but you know I, I felt good with that bull and, like you know, I'll get him out and halfway through the hunt, even if I take my time and and have plenty of plenty of time still, so, okay, so yeah. And then that evening I built a big rack, um, decided to to do the jerky thing Right, and so I built a big, uh rack. It just did like uh I guess I could describe it as like uh, two teepees, I do like three poles, and tied them together like eight feet apart, and then I ran a ridge, pull across, yeah, and then I I took some, uh, some, you know, heavy, like what do you call it?
Speaker 2:dyneema, cordage or whatever it's really strong, doesn't really stretch too much, and I ran like, I think, only four rows across the one side of the um the legs and to hang meat on okay and then I built a big long fire under that and, um, yeah, got the fire going and then I start cutting meat and I think I processed half the meat that night and I guess, uh, describe how I do it. Um, the diagram that I found in that, uh, that book I don't even know what book it is. I should find that and and tell you what it is. But, uh, it was just this picture. I don't even think there was. I don't even know what book it is. I should find that and tell you what it is. But it was just this picture. I don't even think there was. I don't even know if there's a description in there. It just felt like a sketch of what they did.
Speaker 2:And it was like they took each muscle body. So first you bone the meat out, you take it off the bone, and then you isolate each muscle group.
Speaker 2:And then you take each muscle like cross grain cut and maybe like a two inch round, like wheel I guess, or big stake, and then I take that. And then I actually bought on my way out there because I decided to do this. I bought a brand new bony knife because I didn't want to do the whole thing in my havalon normally I do everything with havalon. I'm like I should have a little extra cutting power for this one right, and that that bony knife really made a job a lot easier. So yeah, on a nice clean log I just like rolled those out like a cinnamon roll.
Speaker 2:I guess you just kind of start them on one edge and you just, you know, cut it as thin as you can and roll it out and turn that into like a three or four inch strip long, or three or four feet long, and like two inches wide strip of meat, and then that only takes up two inches on your rack on the fire and so you can hang. I hung the whole elk on that rack, wow yeah.
Speaker 1:And did you do every bit of the elk? No, I didn't.
Speaker 2:Um, I could have. Yeah, I probably will in the future. I've got another hunt plan where I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going even further, even bigger, and whatever, and so that one I'm going to be a little bit more strategic and think through the process a little bit better to figure out how to turn all those smaller pieces into jerky. But for this hunt I didn't want to deal with it, I just I just bagged up all the small odd pieces and I and I just I had one game bag full of that. So I had one one load to hike out. That was fresh heavy meat. So the next day I hauled the fresh meat out, which is a whole day thing. I'm 10 miles in with the elk, so it was a 20-mile round trip, ran all the way to the truck and back, and then I came back and my jerky is already a quarter of the way dried and and that was all looking good. And so I actually kind of, actually kind of prepped that because I want to keep hunting, right, I'm like I could just sit here, right, I can man the fire. I could probably get it to dry out a little faster, but I'm also like this thing's gonna dry on its own.
Speaker 2:Anyways, the bears are most likely in hibernation. I wasn't seeing any, you know. I was like probably. You know the wolves are pretty skitzy, you know they're not going to come around the camp with a lot of human sin. I feel pretty comfortable, so I just actually left it. I kind of like threw a tarp over the top just to keep the, the ravens from having anywhere to land, and I threw the ashes, spread it out underneath, just so it's messier and just harder. You know things wanting to get in there, you know from underneath and and um, yeah, and then I actually went hunting looking for deer for a couple days and then I circled back to pick up the jerky later.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah so when you're deer hunting, were you operating out of that same camp or did you take camp with you?
Speaker 2:no, I um yeah, when I'm actually hunting I'm mobile, always moving camp. But okay, you know, in that bigger country I'm actually hunting.
Speaker 1:I'm on mobile, I always move in camp.
Speaker 2:But okay, you know, in that bigger country especially, you know, like I don't know it, just it's too big. You know the, if you're like had a base camp, like you can, you can really. Only I mean you just can't reach a new basin every day. You'd be hiking. Just the next basin is, you know, five miles and two thousand foot climb up and all that. You might as well take camp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think base camps are really limiting and people don't understand how, how big that circle gets around them, that all the animals are aware of their presence, like really quickly, as soon as you are in a camp and you're having fires and food smells and you know the just the noises and presence of a human. Now, that said, if you're in a migration area, a base camp can be terrific, um, but you've got to be. You've got to understand that your presence is affecting wildlife in a base camp situation. So if you can camp with, if you can hunt with camp on your back, that's definitely a good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been jammed up a lot of times because I left camp somewhere, even when I was capable of bringing it with me. I was just tired. You making comfort-based decisions and leave camp somewhere and then you finally find animals at the end of the day and you're six miles from home. Then you're walking six miles in the dark and then you you know you don't get very much sleep and you're like well, do I really want to wake up in an hour and a half and go do this again?
Speaker 2:Right. What I found is the base camp is actually more work. It seems like it would be easier, right? Maybe you can pack in a little more weight and have a little bit more comfort just sitting there waiting for you, but it is so much work in big country have a headlight on and be walking up a ridge, skyline or up you know, or up a base and whatever it is, you're flushing animals in the dark. They can see it really easy with a headlight on. So if you just lay low, I mean if you're off your, if you're your camp with, you almost never even need to use a headlight, right, you set up camp and you go to sleep with the sun when the sun goes down and you wake up when it comes up and you're right where you need to be and you got fresh legs. What does your camp look like? It's not much to look at. Yeah, yeah, it depends on the hunt.
Speaker 1:Every hunt's different.
Speaker 2:I am not married to products I'm not married to. You know this hunt was I brought a tent. A lot of hunts I don't bring a tent. Yeah, you know this is when? Was it November? This was the first week of November and we're going way in there and the odds of really bad weather are high. And you know, when I'm local and I have more, you know I can time it with the weather A lot of times. You know local, I'll just wait. If you have a storm, I'm just not going to go hunting. I'll just wait two days for it to pass and then I'll go out. Then I can pack less weight and the animals are easier to hunt and all that. But on this one I'm going for 10 days. So the odds are there's going to be some nasty weather.
Speaker 1:So I'm like I should bring a tent and be prepared.
Speaker 2:So, so, um, so, this is just like a little one-man tent or something. Yeah, one-man backpacking tent and this is definitely not, um, you know, a normal. You know most hunters wouldn't pack this. You know this isn't a hunting brand tent, it's just like a. I'm not sure does any hunting companies make any of these like freestanding, not freestanding, but like, uh, trekking pole tents yeah, okay, yeah, there's, there's a few that do okay, um but Um, but they're.
Speaker 1:They're starting to learn, like some of these hunting companies are starting to learn from the back country. You're always running the red line. You're always like, uh, trying to cut weight and stay alive, and not just alive.
Speaker 2:But you know, uh, effective. You know you want to be spent a lot of time setting up camp and breaking down camp. You want to spend. You don't want to be so uncomfortable that you don't want to get up in the morning to go glass and all of that. So anyways, that's different for everybody too. You know that's the thing, like if I told you exactly what my gear is, you know like you probably wouldn't want to go use it. I mean, maybe you would, but most people I tell wouldn't want to go and do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, but it gets the job done. Otherwise, you know, if I had a more traditional hunting you know backpacking gear I think, uh, you know I, I would have a hard time climbing up the mountain. You know, because I'm covered. You know, in that country there was some days I was climbing, you know, 4 000 feet straight up. You know the mountain. So that's a lot of a lot of steep ground. You know, I just and I'm not a big guy, I'm just, you know, 170 pounds and you know small frame, I'm not packing 80 pound packs up the mountain. I just think it'll happen. Yeah, just not gonna. Yeah, just not not doable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're built for speed yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 2:So anyways, yeah, everything's lightweight, actually on the disposable side. You know, actually I think a lot of the hunting communities hung up on stuff that lasts a long time and durability. I lean towards things being strong enough, for you know, durable enough for a couple of hunts. You know a couple of hunts. If you're, you know you're doing good. So shoes you know I wear tennis shoes. I'm very confident they're going to hold up, for you know, a few hunts and then get rid of them. They're only a hundred bucks a piece versus a $500 boot, and so they last just as long. The your dollar goes just as far, and they're not as heavy and stiff. They don't give you blisters and all that you know. Same thing with a lot of the gear. You know the tent you can have a super durable tent. It's going to withstand everything, or or you just have to be smart about it, right? You gotta? You gotta camp under, under the timber or something if you got really bad weather. You don't want to camp right on the ridge line yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1:Those are really interesting perspectives. Some of the best advice I ever found on how to lighten up your gear load came from books written by through hikers, people who are doing the continental divide trail on the appalachian trail, people who are putting on, you know, 2500 miles a year on these trails. They know more than hunters will ever know about cutting weight and what gear works. And they're going to see all kinds of weather. Especially if you look at continental divide trail, pacific crest trail, they're going to see all the weather. Yeah, which I've done, I did the PCT in 2013,.
Speaker 2:I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are some lessons you learned from the PCT that have carried into this hunting stuff?
Speaker 2:other than what you've already talked about. If you never stop moving, you never cool down.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You don't need as much gear if you just kind of have a more active you know if you're sitting for. You know I like to glass but like if you're sitting for six hours straight, I mean you need a fire, I mean, or you need just like crazy puffy clothes and all that. But you can really cut a lot of weight if you just have more. You're more mobile, you know, moving more.
Speaker 2:I think that's a big thing, you know, like through hiking you're. I mean, you're just hiking from sunup to sundown, you know you never stop. You need a very thin layer, maybe like a base layer and a rain shell in a bad storm. You do just fine, you know, if you're just moving. And also food, you know really rich food. When I first started, uh, the backcountry stuff, I was, you know, still in that kind of like lower fat sort of diet thing, you know and and that's just doesn't work in the mountains you know, like when I first started I was going trying to go, you know, be out in the mountains for a long time, my first several years out in the mountains, like even just scouting.
Speaker 2:I'd be out for a month or two, not straight, but, you know, back to back to back trips, you know. And one year my fingernails stopped growing. You know, like, literally after the season I had like a ridge line growing through all my fingernails. So, you know, and I was like you know, I had one time I passed out, you know, I was just like starving out. And then I learned how, you know, I learned how to eat more. Now I just, you know, just eat a lot of fat, a lot of protein and you just be a lot stronger and warmer. You know, I think a lot of people you think they're going to cut weight on food and it just doesn't make sense because in your you're weak and you're cold and you know everything feels heavy when you're weak and cold and you know you're better off packing, packing weight and food and having everything else super light. I'd pack more butter than a warmer coat any day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, I get a wrinkle in my nails during archery season every year. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's it's. It's a little bit different because I'm I'm probably eating 3 000 to 3 500 calories a day during archery, um, but I'm working 20 hour days and there's a lot there's. There's a lot that sleep deprivation and stress due to you that starts shutting stuff down and uh, yeah, just going going for for a month straight with that kind of workload. It's really tough, really tough. Yeah, pct, uh, is that 2600 miles?
Speaker 2:yep, that's right. Damn yep, and we actually do the whole thing. You know that's a a lot of people don't get to do the whole thing in a year. We met a lot of people out there. They're trying to do it for the second or third time and it's not necessarily their fault.
Speaker 2:But you have a lot of wildfires down in California and you can get some crazy snows up in Washington in the in the fall, and so the fall. And so, um, did you start in the south? Yep, we did. Uh, south the north, which is the way most people do it. Yeah, um, but you know, we just held a really good pace and we didn't screw off too much, and so we stayed right ahead of the wildfires on the way up and we got done right before the heavy snows in the cascades and and got through. So was it about six months? No, I think it's like four. You did in four months, four. I think. We started in april and I finished, um, I think I made it back like the second week of archery season here in september, so I came off the pct and then went straight out here archery hunting the eel calves straight into the woods.
Speaker 1:It was great. Yeah, yeah, it was great.
Speaker 2:I was in such good shape, I literally like ran the boat, my bull, down that year. Yeah, yeah, like you know, I was uh going up into the spa and glass the bull the evening before and I kind of hiked over there the next morning and and they, they, they were actually tucked into this little basin like above tree line and I couldn't see them. But I was kind of hiking up into there and then I heard I heard the bugle. You know in the morning that the bugles a few times, just a few casual bugles, I mean the herds on the move, right, you know they're probably going to start heading to bedding area and so there's such a tight little spot, you know, I know there's there's really only one good pass coming out of the top of it, and so I figured probably the way they're going to go, and so I just ran all the way up to that pass and by the time I got up there he was 80 yards away, which is a hoax.
Speaker 2:I do not shoot like that anymore. But this was when I was practicing a lot. There was a time when I had the ability, you know, I had a good place to shoot and I was really to archery and stuff. And now now I hate archery. I hate bows, but, but you have to hunt with them. To hunt in september, yeah, in oregon, so I still put up with it, but, um, yeah, so I was really good at that point. So I I took that e-arch and killed him and he died, piled right up, but but now my, my max is like 30, you know, I don the same way, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd rather just like not practice and just like get close to the bull now, because it doesn't take hardly any practice to shoot a bull at 30 yards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's more important things to practice than shooting Absolutely A lot more. So I think in 2014, fall of 2014, I shot a bull in Idaho at 71 yards. I shot a bull in Idaho at 71 yards. Um, this fall, when I was bow hunting in Australia, I had lots of shots at 40 yards and I was like too far, I'm going to get closer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I, no, it's too far yeah.
Speaker 2:And well, once you've done the longest thing, you know like I'm, I'm a better shot. Inevitably, inevitably, do have accidents. You know, like I had issues with a long range thing, like even if it could shoot that accurate, I had issues with penetration and so you know, I I think I shot a nice buck, like two years in a row where I shot him, you know, in the front shoulder. You know, and and same deer, no two, two different deer two different deer back to back years.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm really good at shooting, let's, let's do it. You know, and and same deer, no two, two different deer, two different deer back to back years. I'm like I'm really good at shooting, let's, let's do it. You know, and and then I was just, it just wasn't getting the penetration, they weren't dying, yeah and um. So yeah, I quit that. I quit that real quick. I learned my lesson.
Speaker 2:It was a, it was a bummer, but you know, like I know, after you, after that fails a few times, you're just like, nah, it ain't worth it. Just like, then, once you, once you're off the hook there, once you decide you don't want to shoot long range, well, that's pretty nice, cause you don't have to. You don't have to practice shooting your bow all year. You can just, you know, you can just warm up and make sure everything's on and shoot a few weeks ahead of time and just 20 or 30 yards, and just, you'd be surprised at how close you can get if you actually just like, don't have the option to shoot 70 yards and you just like, put an extra hour into the stock, you'll end up.
Speaker 1:You'll end up a lot closer yeah, yeah, I'm a better shot now than I was then. Oh really for sure, right, I haven't gotten worse, issue right, and I've been shooting my entire life and I shoot so many different disciplines. But my judgment has changed a lot. And, yeah, now I've seen so many archery failures, both, you know, through my own hunting and through guiding. I know that the closer you can get to 20 yards, the better. Less than 20 yards and the wheels start to fall off again. You know, I, absolutely Yep, I had issues with that too. To 20 yards, the better. Less than 20 yards and the wheels start to fall off again. You know, I, absolutely yep, I had issues with that too.
Speaker 1:Less than like yeah less than 20 yards is a big. I think it's a psychological problem, but it's it's it's a huge problem yeah, well, things happen so fast in there too.
Speaker 2:You know, like I had one time I snuck, stalked into this bull seven yards. Yeah, he was bedded down. I like stalked up, like right in front of him, right in front of his face, kind of on the um, I was downhill of him and he was kind of on this little bit of a little bit of a kind of a.
Speaker 2:His bedding was kind of flat right and then it kind of broke off, so I walked right up underneath him. You know, I crouched down, of course, and I draw back and I stand up. Well, you know, maybe five, seven yards, something like that, and he just spun out of there so fast. You never have a chance to get a clear shot of the vitals.
Speaker 1:You know, it's just things happen too fast and close yeah, yeah, 20 to 25 yards is a is a very good range, that's. That's a very, very good range where success rates go up substantially. Uh than 20 yards success rates start to go down. Over 28 yards, success rates start to go down. And that's just been. You know my experience doing this professionally for a long time. So take that for what it's worth, people, right? Uh, so how much weight do you think you packed out in jerky?
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know, I didn't have a scale, but you know meat is about 75 water. Yeah, so if you turn entire elk in a jerky, you know you're gonna end up with like 50 or 60 pounds. Yeah, that's pretty manageable.
Speaker 1:that's where my math ended up with too. I was like, I think, because I didn't know if you'd done the whole bowl or not. But I was like I bet if he did every ounce of that bowl, he could get it down to 60 to 70 pounds, because you're not going to dry it all the way out either. You don't want powder, right? But yeah, that's what I figured you were going to end up with.
Speaker 2:So I only ended up with maybe 30 to 40 tops, Because I'd taken one whole load out fresh which was probably like 80 to 90 pounds fresh.
Speaker 1:But still, if you add 30 or 40 pounds to a 40 or 50 pound pack, that's a very substantial load.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, that's still a separate trip for me.
Speaker 1:I'm small because I don't like to carry it.
Speaker 2:I'll do it.
Speaker 1:I had to do it on that I don't want it to end. It's more than half your body weight. But I didn do it. I had to do it on that, I don't want to have your body weight, but I didn't want to do it early on the hunt.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm not gonna take a hundred pound, load out more than half your body weight for 10 miles in steep country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyways, yeah, the jerky thing, did you bring salt?
Speaker 1:no, no salt, no salt.
Speaker 2:So this is there's a lot of things about meat I'm learning out here this is fun, right like how to, how to like. You've inspired me a little bit. You've been doing some of the long aging and stuff right and uh, there's a lot of things that, like modern people you know, growing up with freezers and stuff, you always hear, like you know, if you're, if your meat thaws out, you throw it away. Right, if you're on vacation, you come back, it's thought out, you throw it away because like it could be rotten. But like you know, like if meat freezes and thaws a few times, it doesn't, actually doesn't hurt it, it actually just tenderizes it as long as it's not thawed out and warm for a long time and then it rots or whatever. But like when I'm making jerky, like in the mountains, it freezes every night and thaws every day. Right, I did that for three or four days. It's actually really good jerky. It's probably the most tender jerky I've ever made. It's probably the most tender jerky I've ever made.
Speaker 2:I bet it's good jerky, yeah, so it's like no salt and I don't know, and sun dried and actually turned out really really good.
Speaker 1:Were you at all picky about what you used to make the smoke?
Speaker 2:No, no, and I didn't want to smoke it. Yeah, like I intentionally put the rack on the down or the upwind side, so I wanted some heat and of course you're going to get some some smoke drifting over there. But you know, in the mountains you only have so many tree species to choose from, so like it's going to be pretty rough smoke yeah if you smoked it with, like you know, spruce or like alpine fir or something. It's just gonna. It's gonna be awful.
Speaker 1:You don't want a lot of that on there yeah, anything that's got got sap is going to be a big problem. And, uh, I think a good way to tell um, like, if you if you're going to end up with a harsh product, is, if you're getting a lot of flame, then that's volatiles that are inside the wood and that's going to end up with a real bitter taste in that meat.
Speaker 2:So you were probably, by having it on the upwind side, um, I imagine that fire was was dehumidifying that area a lot too yeah, yeah, but it's pretty dry climate anyways, you know, sure, so after it rained a lot the day that I killed him, but after that we had just like sunny cold weather for like five days yeah, so. So he didn't.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know what the humidity was, but I'm sure it wasn't very hot anyways yeah, but if you take, if you take wet cold air and you heat it up, you decrease the humidity substantially, right? I? I see that here in in the sauna, right, we have a lot of very high humidity days here in the winter time. A lot of times it's 90 or higher, but that's with temperatures that are, you know, say, 20 degrees. So if I heat that sauna up to 170 degrees, the humidity drops down to 30% because I've expanded that atmosphere, right, um, so it's, it's a, really I don't know, it's fun, it's interesting, right yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know, like, even I don't know for the meat it has all day, so like, even if it only has six hours to dry in the afternoon when the sun's right on it, you know like, yeah, you have all the time in the world out in the mountains, so so what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:differently next time I don't know I need to think that through.
Speaker 2:I'm going to figure out how to get more of it dried. Yeah, all right, I'm going to have to pack whether that's just like a little bit extra cordage, or I'm going to have to think through, like, maybe building some sort of rack. I don't want it to be crazy amount of labor, right, I don't want to build some sort of big, intricate rack or something. But I'm going to figure something out, because next year I'm going to go in a little different area, a lot farther, a lot, a lot less trails and with more tags, and so I want to have a really big hunt and so I'm going to plan on doing a lot more jerky so what?
Speaker 1:what does more tags look like?
Speaker 2:more predators I'll have uh, let's see, it'll just be one deer, one elk, but they'll be. I'm going to do it in september. So next year I'm going to go instead of going the late. It's a split season, right? So for the wilderness tags, they'll let you hunt the second two weeks of september and then the season closes and then they'll open it back up in early november. So this year I'm going to go in september, when the bulls are rutting, so I'll go up in the high country instead of low, and then there'll be more bears and things to kill too, so the bears will be on the berries up high. So I'll have probably two bears, a deer or an elk and, if I'm lucky, a cougar or a wolf.
Speaker 1:Nice, give us a few minutes of advice on cougar hunting.
Speaker 2:That is a big, big can of worms, james it is yeah, I'm. I have been doing a lot of cougar hunting lately, yeah and uh. Advice wise, I don't know. I don't know where to start. Depends on who you are, where you live, how much effort you want to put into it. I think more people need to do it. I mean hands down. I think just we need more people out in the field doing it. We have we have limited methods.
Speaker 2:We have methods that work really well, but they're not really wide well known you know, and in, in, like in theory, like people know like, oh go, you know, play your predator call you just go call in a cougar, right. But then you go out in the field and it just doesn't work, right. You go out there for 10 days and just nothing comes in. It's because there's more to it than that, right, you got to think through the set, you got to think through what days you're going out and the time of the year and all this. So there's more to it. I would just say, like, put more thought into it, put more effort into it, right, like that's what you do when you're deer and elk hunting.
Speaker 1:So so do you think about it from the cougar's perspective?
Speaker 2:often, yeah, yeah, yeah, each different method will have different ways it interacts with a cougar's like natural tendencies, right? So I think, uh, yeah, as far as methods go like, calling is still really good. Um, I don't know how far into this you want to go, james yeah, I think we have.
Speaker 2:I have one method that I would love to share, but I'm afraid to because unfortunately I don't think our fish and wildlife agencies wants us killing cougars. You know, I had a method that worked really well. I was doing for a few years and then I started promoting it. I started telling everybody about it and then they banned it and um, so that one's out the door.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, moving on to new things, I've got a method that works really good right now. It's legal, it works super good, but I'm really afraid to share it because I think they'll ban it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well then keep it to yourself. Yes, keep it to yourself. I guess I get a huge number of requests from people to guide cougar hunts in Oregon, which I will not do, and the reason why is because I do not have any expectation of success in guiding somebody. I could do it and we could be successful, but it would have to be the right person and they would have to be willing to hunt for 20 days straight, and I think that if I had somebody who was skilled and dedicated and we could hunt for 20 days nonstop, that we could we could find a lion. But how many days on average? And you've been wildly successful at cougar hunting in Oregon, as much so as anyone I know you're on a very short list there. How many days of hunting do you have per lion? If you had to guess at it?
Speaker 2:it's getting better. Yeah, yeah, when I first started it was around seven and a half days per cat, and then, um, last year I don't know what is this year I'm closer to three or four yeah, yeah so I'm getting a lot better, but those are only hunting.
Speaker 2:You know I've been doing it for, I think, 10 years now or something close to that, and so you know now I know what, what to do, different times of the year and and what weather. You know, like that would be part of the issue with guiding right is you've got a client that's out of state or out of town or whatever and they're going to book a hunt for you know, whatever calendar days. Well, if you got bad weather, you might as well not even go out, like it's totally a waste of time. You know so, like if you've got a bad storm, like cougars they just bed up. You're not going to like go cut tracks in the middle of a snowstorm of a snowstorm, yeah.
Speaker 1:So here we are in january there's a little bit of waterfowl hunting going on. There's a little bit of upland going on. Um, people can hunt coyotes, but a lot of the big game stuff is winded down. But we can still hunt, hunt cougars here in oregon year round. Two tags per person. Tags are 16.50 for residents and non-residents. If somebody was to go cougar hunting in Oregon in January, they're all fired up. After having listened to this podcast, what would you tell them to? Go try, let's see.
Speaker 2:I think the best thing to do right now is cutting tracks. You know you got to wait for the right weather, so you have to have a flexible schedule and you got to watch the weather really close and you want to wait for the the right weather. So you have to have a flexible schedule and you want to watch the weather really close and you want to. You want to wait for, you know, good snowstorm. You know I want to want some rough weather for for a couple of days. Even that really helps. And then that first good day you want to go out and and cover as many roads as possible and cut fresh tracks, and then you can either just walk them out and and hope to, you know, maybe find a kill that they're feeding on or something.
Speaker 2:I know somebody that does pretty good doing that. He just follows a lot of tracks and finds a kill and then he hunts off the kill. You can also just, if the tracks look fresh, you follow them until you get into a good spot. You think you're close enough that cat can hear your call and you try to call them back, which I think is pretty effective. Yeah, can hear your call and you try to call them back, which, um, I think, is it's pretty effective yeah yeah uh, but you need, you know that's.
Speaker 2:You're gonna need a good machine to drive in the snow, like I've tried that one year and um, you know, I've just got a normal pickup and you're really, you're really pushing it.
Speaker 2:You're really getting stuck all the time and it's it's a lot of work just trying to find roads that that have the right snow depth. You can actually get around because you're not going to cut a cougar track in the first 10 miles. You might be driving for four or five hours all night long looking for a fresh cougar track to follow. So you got to have a lot of road, you got to have a machine that can do it. So I mean, you can, you can do it with a pickup if you time it right, especially the early snows where there's not like multiple layers of crusty snow that you're going to fall through and all that you can kind of pull it off. But but, like, definitely later in the year, you need to all sorts of machines. But you want, you know, four stroke. You go out there on it on a two-stroke. You know snowmobile, you're just going to scare them away anyway. So you need to track side by side, or you know, built up tacoma or I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a commitment. You need the right machine to start with and then you need, you know you need to be able to hike in the snow. You cut those tracks now you know you're gonna need to be physically fit enough to go pull it off. You need to be able to sit in the cold for at least an hour.
Speaker 2:Cougar sets are about an hour. So if you're going to set up and call, you gotta gotta give them time, because they're cats, they're just like. Even if they hear you, they're just like. You know, I've seen them before. I've spotted them before and then started calling and they still. It takes them a while just to to get out of their bed. You know they'll just be laying there. They'll look at it like I don't know.
Speaker 2:And then you know, one time I had a cat coming in from a long ways away and he bedded up two or three times on his way in. He was coming in and I just was watching him was waiting for me, closer and closer, and he just lay down and just lay down for like an hour at a time like, oh man, yeah, they're just, they're just not. They don't come running in like coyotes do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Now I think that all that is really sound advice for somebody to get started. But man, I just I couldn't encourage people strongly enough to just try it. Just try it. There's plenty of cougars.
Speaker 2:There is a lot of cougars. There are, like, for a lot of the units out here. I was doing the math on it. I've done it a couple of times just because it's kind of crazy, but there's probably more cougars in each unit out here than there are mature bucks. Yeah yeah, like I think numbers-wise you have a better shot at killing a cougar than you do a big buck. That's crazy to think about.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you look at the numbers, you know some of these units out here, you really are only like looking for like a handful of mature bucks. Yeah, because there's, there's, just like you know, if you look at the actual buck to doe ratio, look at the total number of deer and break it down to buck to doe ratio, so you only have whatever number of bucks and then then the actual percentage of those that are, you know, five years or older, it's less than there are cougars. Wow, yeah, wow yeah. That's not great. No, no.
Speaker 1:Not great for our deer. No, what about sounds? Is there a place where people can find sounds to purchase for their calls that actually work?
Speaker 2:sure, sure, I do sell some calls. I think cats are curious. You know they're going to come into all sorts of things, I think with the, with the calls. I think it's just as much on how you use them as what the calls. You want a good, realistic sounding call, but you also want it to be deployable in an effective way for cats. So for cougars. I don't want to be close to my call. If you're sitting next to your caller, the cat's probably going to see you.
Speaker 2:So, how far away do you like to be? I like to be at minimum 100 yards. I like to be 200 or 300 yards when I can, which takes a lot of legwork. It's really annoying. You're out there, you hiked all the way in somewhere and you're like gonna go set up and you're like man, I gotta go like hike all the way across this draw to set the call down and they'll hike all the way back, knowing that you're gonna have to go back over there to get the call later. Yeah, like it's a lot of legwork, but the cat's not gonna see. So like I think a lot of people calling cats and they and they just get busted and they just don't even know it, like if um their vision is very good.
Speaker 2:It's very good. And they're so slow. They're still so like methodical when they come in, they're just like walking slow and they're looking at everything. They're super good at spotting movement and stuff and like I've had me before and I didn't even know it. You know, I get up from the call set and I I start walking back and shit, there's a cougar like 20 yards behind me. I don't even know, yeah.
Speaker 2:So like, yeah, that just isn't working. You know, you can just keep doing the same thing and hoping to get lucky and it'll come in from a different direction or whatever and you'll see it, but probably isn't going to happen. So like I think it's way better to be far away from the call and, especially if you're doing a lot of calling, it's not going to come in on your first set. So you know each set's an hour long and if you're going to go and do five of those in a day, you're sitting there for five hours plus hiking in between and all that. So it's really hard to be all keyed up and like super still, and you know tense the whole time. So like, I want to be far away so I can run the jet boil and make coffee and make a meal and stretch out, like if you're 300 yards away from the caller and you're like across the draw, there's no reason for a cougar to be looking your way, yeah, and so I'd rather be relaxed and just enjoy myself and be out there all day, versus like going out and doing one or two sets and like, just like when would you come? Just like giving up, right, because you're just like this sucks I'm. You know, you just get right and I think part of that's just because you're close and you're and you're, you're working too hard. Right, you're like because you're trying to stay still and you're freezing your butt off, whereas like if you're far away, you can be sipping on a hot drink and, and you know, moving around a little bit, so and that's huge and you just gotta. So you want to cross a draw, you want to be able to see the cat coming in and you don't want him to see you. Of course, the issue with that is a lot of times that's outside of the range of your remote control for your caller. So I like a call that you don't have to do anything to. Once you push play, it just goes right. You don't have to touch it for an hour.
Speaker 2:So I made some calls that are around 10 minutes and they kind of naturally ebb and flow. That are around 10 minutes and they like kind of naturally ebb and flow. You know they speed up, slow down pauses and whatever, and so those play on repeat. You don't really hear when it cycles and so you can run those for an hour and it sounds natural. And you know, some of the calls out there were made for coyote sets and they're super fast paced and you're like you know, like it just sounds ridiculous to have like an animal animals don't have that much energy to like scream for an hour straight and it's just like and I personally I don't want to listen to them because they just drive me mad like they're just so, they're so intense, so like I like a slower pace call and I don't want to touch it, like I don't want to be like fiddling with my remote and moving for that and all that, I just want to just like just let it go.
Speaker 2:So I made some longer calls and, um, yeah, so you push play and you walk away. So even if you can't control you don't have to push pause, like so if you're playing a short, fast call. You might want to push pause. Just be like man, I gotta give it a break. Make it sound natural. So you're pushing pause and you're switching things and trying to make, trying to force all these fast little calls to sound natural right, but with with the slower pace calls it's more natural for an hour it's more. Sounds like so, like my deer in distress. It sounds like um, it sounds like a deer is just like hung up at a fence or something. Right, it's just sitting there whining, or like it's calling for its mom or something. That's not like. Doesn't have like a coyote on its neck, like for an hour straight and clearly it would be dead if it was right. What's?
Speaker 1:happening right? Yeah, some of those things sound like they're halfway through the wood shepherd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, so, um, I started using those. Of course, you know I started killing a lot of cats and people are like wanting to know what I use, so I did put up a website so people can can buy them. I'm not, I'm not married to it, like I'm not trying to make a lot of money with it. I just I charge a little money so I can pay for the server and whatever and um. So if you want the calls, you can definitely go to the website. I think it's catcallsorg.
Speaker 1:Catcallsorg.
Speaker 2:Yeah, catcallsorg, and you'll get them.
Speaker 1:There will be a link for that in the podcast description. I bought those sounds. I've got a line trip planned here in three weeks and I'm going to go out for a week and see if I can find one Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, hope it works out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, for for my life, that's just what I have to do, like I can't necessarily wait for weather conditions. I've got to pick a, pick a block of time and then whatever the weather gives me, that's what I'm going to do and I'll I'll work on it that whole time and, um, yeah, but I I do know that that making making efficient moves and smart decisions is best, but time, time matters, yeah, um, so if you can't be smart and efficient, just work hard, just get out there, yeah, grind away, yeah, but yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:you know the calm days. You know if you can get out there when it's not windy, the sound's going to travel a lot farther.
Speaker 1:Do you like the south or north? What To set the call on?
Speaker 2:Oh I don't care what to set the call on. Oh, I don't care, cats cats, normally they're, they can be anywhere, right, but they'd spend a lot of time running ridges and in canyon like creek bottoms. You know, I really like the canyons, you know sound travels get in there.
Speaker 2:All the animals are, you know, funneled in there for the winter um, once you get too much snow on top right now the animals are still on top. So there's no deer or cougars down in the canyons right now, but they're getting close. I think this next, next, you know, snowstorm or two and they'll be in there. But, um, yeah, you want more open ground that the sound can really travel. And you know, if you're like in timber, brush and stuff, like you know, especially if you got wind and you're in the timber, like that sounds just not going to travel very good. So it's really about just the numbers, right, you want to just like blink at the landscape, even, like when you're planning your sets.
Speaker 2:You know if you're going to go out and call, for you know, even if it's all day, you just want to like hike as far as you think your sound's going to travel, right, actually twice as far. So, like, if you're calling, you're like, oh man, this is a really nice day. My sound's probably traveling like two miles down the canyon, right? So then when I go do the net set, I want to be four miles down canyon because it's echoing back the other direction, right, yeah, so, yeah, so you want to. You want to try to like blanket the whole landscape and break it down, and you know so, you know each. I think, uh, cougar, uh, territories are like well, like 10 square low. Well, I don't know about territories, but density it's like one per 10 miles, Is that what it is, 10 square miles?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there can be a lot of lions inside that area too.
Speaker 2:So, doing the numbers, you're like how many cats are within this one square mile here that you're going to hunt or whatever it is for the day, right, and you just try to like I don't know. You just try to cover as much ground and you're like hope that the cat that hears you is in the mood and yeah, but cool, but yeah, definitely, if you can, if you can get all in the better days, it's it's way more time effect, you know, cost effective or whatever you want to call it, and folks if you want some visual for what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:Joe has a tremendous YouTube channel and he's he's showing a lot of the things that we've been talking about here, and I think that that is why you have been the most requested podcast guests that I've had in many, many months, and you know, you and I have talked about doing this show for a long time, but, uh, I'm, yeah, I'm I'm glad that we finally got it together and you were able to take some time. I know I know I'm pulling time away from your family and you're about to leave for work again, so I really appreciate you coming out and talking and, yeah, you're living it a grand adventure. I think all of us hit some point who have hunted the back country have thought, well, what if I just turned this thing into jerky and made it a lot lighter? What if I just stayed here until I ate the whole thing? And, uh, it's very doable.
Speaker 2:You did it. It's very doable. I think a lot more people can do it. You just got to learn more about me. You know there's I mean, it takes a long time just to like figure out how to just keep meat fresh, to get it out to the truck, right, like when you first start this sort of adventure, right, you know, if you go online, it's just like there'll be a hundred people ask the same question right before season how do I keep the meat cool and get it out of the mountains? You know, like that's the very first step, but once you you know just get a better feel for for what meat can handle and and how to take care of it. Like it's, it's very doable, yeah, yeah, I think it'll. I think it'll be a thing. I think now that I think I kind of broke the ice on that, I think we'll probably see more of that.
Speaker 1:I think so too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it'll spread cause that it gives people a lot of, a lot of um a lot more options on the mountains.
Speaker 2:You know you if I mean that's a big limiting factor, getting the meat out Right. So you know, if that becomes somewhat common, you know we're going to get guys a lot deeper. I'm going to be a lot deeper now. Now I'm comfortable with that. I think I can do it and and not just not just get the job done and get meat out legally, but actually have a good product that I want to eat during the year. I'm going to be going twice as far.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get older animals and get into that more remote stuff. So I think it'll be, you know, I think it'll click for a lot of people. I think people do it Cool.
Speaker 1:Cool Well. Congratulations on a successful year and thanks again for the conversation you bet.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on, james.
Speaker 1:Bye everybody the six ranch podcast is brought to you by nick's handmade boots, a family-owned company in spokane, washington. For many of my listeners, you've waited and prepared all year for this. Whether your pursuit is with a rifle or a bow, early or late season, big game or birds, another hunting season is finally upon us. Nick's Boots and the Six Ranch want to wish you luck as you head out into the field. This season I'm wearing the Nick's Boots Game Breakers beginning with the archery elk season. Having worn this boot throughout the summer around the Six Ranch, I continue to be impressed with how quiet the boot is. The rough out leather, leather laces and 365 stitch down construction create a simple boot that is supportive, durable, comfortable and, most importantly, quieter than most synthetic hunting boots. For 60 years, nix has been building work boots for wildland firefighters, tradespeople, hunters and ranchers, as well as heritage styles for anyone who values quality footwear made in America. Visit nixbootscom today to find your next pair of high-quality American-made work boots. Add a pair of boots and a work belt to your cart and use the code 6RANCH that's the number six and the word ranch to receive the belt for free.
Speaker 1:I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail? Who sent emails? Who sent messages? Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. By Celia Harlander, original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.