This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first like creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First light, go farther, stay longer. Al Right, everybody eight Grace. When I say Grace, not this time and next time, but not this time. When I say Grace, not this time, but next time, you fill in your last name. Okay, we're joined by Grace, an audiologist and the founder of auto pro. You would talk about, among many other things, Um, is it auto or Otto It's but I didn't want to interrupt you right off the bat. We're talking about souped up um, souped up hearing protection and what happens to your ears when you a lifetime a gun shooting or a few weekends of being in a duck blind and then your body rips one across your ear, and then for the next couple of days, it's like you're thinking, man, that probably did something, but I don't know, Like, what did it do? Do you want that? Now? I'm just teeing it up. I'll point out to the graceers. Just tell him that she's no stranger to microphones because he used to do what now? I hosted the midday Motown and sixties classic show and start any two point three FM Granada nice like Granada down in Mississippi. Also not where Noriega, nine miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Um was that a paid gigha And it was awesome because I sold ads for the radio station. So I'd go around all my friend's parents had small business something Grenada, and we put together some you know, cheesy fund commercials for him, and then I got residuals off that checking the mail in college for like the next year. Were you were you wanting to be a Were you wanting to be a media like a like a media professional. I've always been into music and growing up I was around like old music. I'm an Elvis fan, So I mean it was kind of when I heard about this gig at the radio station, I'm like, well, that sounds pretty cool. And I've just never been a stranger to the microphone and now you're definitely no stranger to the headphones. Yeah, so uh you being an Elvis fan? Was your face is there like a connection between your name being Grace and Grace Lane and all grandmother and on the other side of my family, I was named after a woman on my dad's side of the family. On my mom's side of the family, my grandmother, who's still living, is a huge Elvis fan and would take me to Graceland and she actually met Elvis once in his driveway. Um, what was the moment? What you're you're so you're doing, You're like a radio DJ, and then you're like, no, I'm gonna go to med school or whatever they call it. What do they call it? Audiology school? It's still a medical center at Vanderbilt. But what was that? What was that decision? That aha moment? Well, honestly, I do want to make some money. The radio gig was when I was in school at the College of Charleston, which my dad still calls my two year beach vacation. Um, I was, I was all. I didn't know what I wanted to do. At one point, I was biology, at one point I was communications. I did some music classes, and then, um, I as I got serious about my life what I wanted to do, I thought I wanted to be a speech pathologist. My mom is a speech language pathologist, and I've always liked just the way she's been able to balance her, you know, being a mom and working in different capacities, and I thought, well, I could do that. And then through those classes, I watched a documentary about a kid that received a cochlear implant who had been born deaf, and this little girl she was working with the audiologist. After about two weeks after her surgery, you meet with the audiologist who programs and activate and turns on the implant for the first time. And this little girl, who had never heard sound before, had never experienced sound. The audiologists got everything all programmed, and then this little girl's mom was standing behind her and the audiologist goes, Okay, everybody, be really quiet. I'm going to turn it on. Mam. I want you to say her name. And even though the kid had no meaning associated with that sound, as a mother, now I think about that and like, it still gives me chills because mom says the kid's name in the kid's head just like whips around and a mom of course it's like, oh my baby, but I can I mean, can you imagine? And so then that that just triggered it, and as in my anatomy and physiology classes like I'm still I will nerd out about the neuroscience of how we hear and how you hear with your brain. And this part on the that hangs off the edge of your your head is just the transducer. You gotta have it sent to the brain in a content, in a in a signal that has good integrity, and then your brain has to process it or else it's useless. As a UM, as a teaser for us to come, I'm gonna lay out are just for our just to protect our ip. Grace, Grace is going to develop um. We we're just doing a hearing test, and Grace is going to develop a thing called I try to think what we should call it to work. This is the working name, the gobble Tronka. I don't know, think you're stealing that from Parker? Oh no, I stole that. Inn't that either way. She's going to develop a hearing test thing where you have five six people are all able to put on headphones. And then she's gonna instead of doing the normal hearing tests like she's gonna put in like affiliated, you'll hear affiliated woodpecker, you'll hear a creek. You hear a bunch of peepers, you're here a green frog ripping. Okay, and then ever so faintly right, and it'll you'd be able to measure and test who's best at hearing gobbles and make it into like a game show, and make it into a game show. What do you win? That's a good question. Maybe some of those uh maybe a jar of Chester's forest floor foods, pickled baby corns. There you go. Or maybe maybe the winner gets to go hunting with you to help you hear the birds. Oh yeah, that'd be a great way for me to find good assets. My kid was we'll move on real quick. But my kid was getting good, like he can hear gobbles like a son of a bit James, Yeah him, after your book, they can all hear gobbles. He but he got drunk on the um accolade, got drunk on the what am I trying to what the woman trying to say, got drunk on the praise. So now he's off in the other direction of everything's a gobble because he likes to be the guy that her the gobble. So now he's a little trigger happy. So in our training test, when you clearly a piliated woodpecker. There's one. There's one, right, I'm like, oh, man, now you're like like everybody else. Now. So now when we're doing our auditory training for the gobbler and noise test or whatever we're gonna call it. If if he's in the room and when you press the button and there wasn't really a gobbler there, you get like a shock. Oh that's a great idea, like a negative reinforcement. You put on a shock bracelet too. So if you say you heard one and you didn't really hear one, man, put that in your next kids. But you could train some great kids with all this kind of equipment. Man might have a negative impact though, because if you really think you shock him one, No, you shock him if you play a real one and he doesn't tag it, he gets shocked. He gets shocked for false alarms. Oh you have a great turkey owner. It sounds like dog training. Yeah, I mean. And then when he gets older, you get him some therapy and he goes about his business. And yeah, Crane not here, but she has a note that we should talk about the flooding. No, she asked a question and I answered, yes, it is right now. But won't be when you're listening to this flooding. M h. It's the cfs on the yellow string right now is the highest it's ever been recorded, and last year was last year was one of the lowest years on record. Yeah, it's crazy. I think last year the Upper Missouri flows was like the low. Remember we were driving over it and we were looking up the flows last year because it lives like zero. The fishing went from like spring run off to like no water to no water and rocks not everywhere if you're if you're in Gardener, Montana right now, there's currently not a road that you can leave the town. Speaking of that might but the water started to drip like you either have to fly out of there in a helicopter or walk. You cannot drive a car toast my aunt coming down right, I think it fell. Yeah, So I'm looking at it right now on the U s GS site. UM in nine six it was the max um probably one cubic feet per second, and as of yesterday, I'm just looking at Livingston, So it was a little higher upstream at corwin Um, which doesn't really make any sense, but in Livingston right now it's um a scoche it's like right around thirty thousand cubic feet per second, and yesterday in Livingston it got up to forty cubic feet per second, which is just hard for people to understand, but I can explain it. Don't understand, it's unreal. Here's what it Here's what it is. I figured this out when I was working on a book one time. Just how to express it. What is it again? Cfs? Right now it's close to thirty thousand. Yesterday when it peaked it was around forty. Okay, that would be that in this amount of time between a me going this and this or this in this, thirty thousand soccer balls rolled past. That is crazy, thirty thousand soccer balls in there. It's like water is obviously heavier than a soccer ball, so it'd be like a soccer ball filled with rolling path. But it's down, okay, So I just keep in mind that at this point like this won't come out and this will be over. But keep that in mind when when you like, if we got our field like it, but our interest dial, right, the collective audience interest dial is just plummeting um because the flood is over. What was the highest I have a vested interest here because I'm very worried about our little property being accessible. What was the highest this year in Crested at what living in Livingston and Crests had around? Um is yesterday evening, so probably right before it started to cool off at night. Um, it was the highest, and it was due to all this water on the Yellowstone is due to we had a very cold spring late spring and a lot of snowpack late so it snowed a lot this spring, but raining like the Yeah. So it's like a combination of that cold spring and then all of a sudden warm weather and rain and run off from the rain and snow pack all hit at one big chibaang and it's not good for red lodge in some certain areas Yellowstone this summer we very impact acted with tourism. Um. The fishing on the yellow Stone could be really interesting because these boat ramps and an uh I always say. My father liked to say, don't curse the darkness. Light a candle. So I'm gonna point out, Um, this is my note here, and you point out yeah, on his note, did you know how Spencer likes to go rock hounding? Yeah, and how I like to find crazy bones are rolling out of the river banks. Tell you what, Sonny Boy's gonna be some new ship showing up the water drops and I'll probably find some of my stuff. I'll probably find some of my stuff from up and that I left up on my little property somewhere down river, Spencer. Here's my shovel. Yeah. And currently these reservoirs that are you know, twenty plus feet right now are starting to fill up, which is good. Yeah, you gotta look. And there's some positives for sure, but also some big negatives. And they had to evacuate the hospital. And let me say, yesterday like half of red Lodgers underwater. You know, it's people are getting hurt. So yeah, that I didn't really evacuated the hospital. Yeah, we were getting stopped going up Trail Creek by the sheriff. Um they had it close to any non essential, like if you didn't live on Trail Creek, you couldn't go through. Started trying to just keep the traffic down in case they had to evacuate through Trail Creek because it's the only other way out if shuts down. You know, yea, hopefully folks are okay, Well, I have I haven't heard of it. I haven't casual. Uh speaking of water, that was a good transition. You guys are kicking asid the Wallet tournament. Guess like genuine pro walleye anglers. How much money did you win this time? I forget what the total was this time, but we're our total up right now is a seez Louise. You don't even need to work anymore? Well, we can't. We're not. We're not keeping these winnings. We're done. Yeah, but you're donating all you're winning. You guys are like legit because on the show, just to give people a little background here, uh, South and Chester are aspiring amateur were aspiring amateur walleye tournament anglers fair and they decided to start out their tournament career by participating in the Montana leg of the Wallet Tour. So Montana has four summer attorneys and they roll into one mega Turney. How do you guys put that? Yeah, it's the Montana circuit. Montana has more than just four tournaments throughout the year. But there's like a four pick circuit where all Ford I think it's four tournaments or something like that, or on just Fort Peck there's the Montana circuit, which is Fresno canea Ferry, four Peck and tiber Um. So you guys are enrolled in the Montana circuit, but not any particular reservoir circuit. Correct, Yeah, we're in the Montana circuit. We fished, Uh it's the Crooked Creek tournament that was at Fort Peck this year because the water is too low to fish out of. And on that one, well, I want, I want to get more background. I was back where you were aspiring. Yeah, they were aspiring Walleye turn tournament fisherman. The problems I didn't have a boat, Yep. We um, can I take some can? I can not me? But can the show take some credit? Yeah? We lobbied quite heavily that to get you guys backing in a boat, and Ilumacraft hooked us up with awesome competitor sixteen or eighteen and a half footer um with one fifty mercury on the back. So they got a sponsorship pack, they got backed backing from a Lumacraft, back from Hummingbird Mindkota, got their boat fitted out. YEP went to their first tournament at fot Pack and finished Day one in eight, number eight, number eight, day one out of how many boats seventy three something like that, Yeah, just a little bit over seventy and then finished the tournament overall at seventeen. You were hoping to come in. I think you were hoping. You were saying, it would be great if we could land in the top twenty. Did the second turney at Fresno finished day one at can I start with back up a little bit? And are you gonna go all the way back to when it wasn't there? No know, just when we just uh just set and eyes thinking how this tournament really? Man? Yeah, And anyways, I won't come backrupt as far as you want. So you guys are all decked out, your pet yet a little uniforms. We just have the same clothes all the time. And anyways, I like the people that work here that you could tell dress off the free table, which includes me. I mean, yeah, everybody know wears free clothes. Oh yeah, it's great. Did you guys buy those shirts? Yeah, we bought them. They're nice. The new guy at Chili, he said that hasn't been here that long, dude, like totally decked out from the free table. I love it, like full lifetimes supply t shirts. Um, so we had an amazing tournament. I'm going to start with that, and uh, we were just everything aligned. But backing up to this Fresnel tournament, looking at waits prior, as far as the the total weight of fish people are catching for this tournament was around twenty pounds, would be right up there in the top five. And that is But explain it to me, because that's like, because you're you're bound by the bag limit, right right, So every day in these tournaments you can weigh in on your way card five fish. So two anglers. This is what confused me early on that I didn't realize two anglers are only fishing for one like state limit right five fishs between SETH and I, we can only weigh in five fish. Why is it not? Why is it that? Because they don't give a shit about the bag lim It's just like it's a five fish tournament. Has nothing to do with like the legal bag limits set by the stage kind of standard for tournaments, Okay, so that they don't like if you were allowed twenty wall eyes on some lake, it'd be five for the tournament boat. And there's two days so you can at the end of those two days, there's ten fish and usually the top five in this tournament that we just got done with, we'll win it with twenty around twenty pounds. So they're submitting ten, they're they're submitting fish at a two pound average. Yep. Roughly, It's like that strikes me as not impressive. Yeah, well it's it's not a it's not a lake where there is a ton of big fi like the Fort Peck tournament. Uh. I think last well, I forge out what this year was nineties six pounds for the over What was the overall for at four Peck? Not nine six? Was it? It was a lot. I thought it was nineties pounds. Some dude came in with ten nine plus pounders. Yeah, um, I thought it was eighty pounds somewhere on the last year was nine pounds one it four at Packer. Yeah, this this year was I don't remember what this year was. I thought it was up there in the nineties too, anyhow, ter um. So, Yeah, we we were going into this tournament up at Fresno being like, if we can get double digits each day, we're gonna be real happy. But the problem with this year is the water is so low up there, they're they're still in a droughte and it's not a very big lake. So we were going up there expecting there to be over fifty boats in a small body of water, and it was gonna be bumper boats. So it was gonna be meaning there's gonna be boats close to you the whole tournament, and historically first day people catch fish. Second day of the tournament it gets a little ufer because fish are a little burnout from people practicing before the derby, and then that first tournament day they really hammer them. So wanted this year, which is at Fort Pack. I'm sitting here and I'm getting confused with seventy four pounds. Okay, so I'm talking about Fresno here. So we're going up there thinking it's gonna be bumper boats. We're thinking we got to catch just in the double digits and we're gonna be happy. We show up and we pre fish or practice for two days, and we realized that there's a lot of fish in the lake. We found some spots um. We didn't really catch any big ones, but what we did find was a unique bite, meaning we headed north farther than anybody and we were fishing in the mud, meaning you drop your leach down and it disappears after about two inches. So there's about two inches of visibility in this little spot that we found, and which is great. We were catching some fish in there and there's no one around us. And now I can hand it on many how many boats? Uh, there's fifty six boats come tournament day. Now, I'll hand it off to Seth and he can over to you Seth. Um. Yeah, So tournament day, are we draw number thirteen and they started. Um, They like randomly pick a numbers, so you get assigned a boat number, um, and it's like one through whatever. However many boats are so one through fifty six we happen to draw, and then out of those numbers, they randomly draw a number to start. So it's not a shotgun start, no, everyone, it's like a single file line start. Um. So boat number fourteen got drawn to start first, so it goes fourteen, fifteen, seventeen, you got so we got our first day. We were the last boat out. And you don't get to stay longer than uh, no, you do on this one half an hour long, half an hour longer. Yeah, half half the field checked in at four on the first day and the other half checked in at four thirty. Um, when you're waiting that line, when you're at the end of a fifty six boat line up, how long does it take for everybody to like, like, from if it's a seven am start, when are you actually throttling up? Maybe fifteen minutes? Yeah? If that okayta um. So yeah, we're last boat to go out. And we were like, well, all of it's you know, small, small lake. All of our spots that were like mid Lake in the in the clear water. We were like, there's definitely gonna be boats on them, um. And there was this sweet point right next to the boat ramp right there that was throwing the mud line when the wind would pick up. And mud lines and while life fishing are like like when you see mud um that it's like a good place to start fishing because those fish they utilize that mud line to like you know, hunting whatnot. But you obviously just see it. Yeah, you can see it with your with your you know, with your eye, you can see it in the water. And uh so everyone takes off, all the boats start heading up um like mid Lake, and we just kind of go up, loop around and go right to the boat ramp, and we were there was people there was like kids right at the boat ramp the day before, like catching nice walleye off the off the dock. Basically, yeah, so we're like, well, we're just gonna hit that since all of our spots up like further north, we're gonna be taken. Um, what's the etiquette on that with spots being taken? Like how on a tournament like that, if it's you know, it's gonna be bumper both everybody's expecting bumper boats. How close can you get in until the dude's going to give you the scarecrow? Basically casting distance? I would say, people get pretty close, but it's bad. That's good, that's that's I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah, like that, you're you can't block someone's ability to work the water around him as how you guys go by. Yeah, And it's kind of like dependent on the lake, depending on the lake. It's kind of like ah, I would say, it's like an unspoken type role. But it's just like something like like Fresno was pretty like boats for close. Now let me ask you another ethics question. You were talking about kids fishing the dock. Um. You know you can't crowd bank fisherman, right, would you keep that in mind, even though you're in a big money tournament bank fisherman just like they're in a boat. You know it? Um? But anyway, we we UM. As soon as we passed the start boat, we loop around and just head right back to the ramp and fish that for a little bit. And there wasn't at that time of the day. The wind wasn't picked up, and there wasn't a mudline right there. We fished to check caut one fish that barely measured it was like point eight pounds. Um caught that fish? Ran do a different spot? Um, did we I think we might have caught a fish there? I remember? Anyway, it wasn't good. So finally we're like, you know what, let's just head up north to that muddy spot and try that out. We could see on side imaging there was a bunch of fish there. As soon as you dropped the megalive, there was fish all over the place. It was just yeah, you can see bait. Um. It was just tough because you had to get that leech. We're fishing, drop shot and leech and slip bobber and leech. You just had to get that bait within two inches of that walleyes face for the walleye to see the bait and eat it. Um, which was tough, and the only way you could do that basically was with using megalive or live imaging. Um, because you can when you're using live imaging, you can see the fish. You can see your bait go down to the fish. And like if I make a cast to a fish and don't see my bait go right down and like literally inches from that fish, I would reel in and cast again, because there's no point in letting it sit out there, and you're not spooking the ship out of it doing that. In that mud, they're not that spooky. So um, we decided to head up north to that muddy spot and we just start fishing. We can see fish and seth starts and I just kind of got it. Came on fire. I just got it a little dialed where like, like I just said, I would cast these fish and if I didn't see my bait land right in front of him, I would just reel and cast again. And I just kind of got this technique dialed in and yeah, I just started hammering on fish UM and we we got our five fish pretty early and then spent the rest of the day calling UM. And I want to go back to one thing with that in the mud, putting that bait two inches from the fish's face, Like it takes a tremendous amount of focus to be able to do that all day long. And one of the things that I think helped us is we got two guys in the boat making those perfect casts, and if it's not perfect, we're reeling in and we're staying on it all day, cast after cast after cast. So being able to have set doing that and myself doing that like it's hard to do. It was hard to do and stay focused. But that's one of the things that helped us. The way we're kind of doing it was like like the first day I was on the megal ive, and that that megalives mounted to a pole that's hanging over the side of our boat, and it comes up to like an arm that's at a ninety degree angle from the pole, and like wherever that arm is pointed, that's where the transducers pointing UM. So like I would it was basically like flipping docks for bass fishing, just like underhand cast um to these fish, and then Chester would like basically mimic. He would like try to land his bait right where I landed mine because he knew I was casting to like a fish right there, and we would communicate like, oh that was too far, Like if I saw the bait go over the fish, I'd be like, oh too far really and try like try it again, um, and you can't. If you too far, you can't just drag it in front of his face. You can, And we did that, but we found that you were more successful if you just immediately landed that bait right on the fish because those fish are moving a little yeah. Um. So we did that the first day. And the nice thing was there was not a single boat anywhere close to us because I think those guys, like the guys that don't have that live imaging, and they would have never been able to fish those to those fish like we were and catch them. They would have just been like kind of blind casting two areas where they knew they were fish, and you just had to get it so close to him that if you didn't have that live imaging and you couldn't really fish to him successfully. Like JT. Van's aunt puts it, you gotta put a mustache on him, you do. Yeah, I had to put a mustache on the So um we were we were at the end of day one. We went into Wayns with ten point oh six pounds in our minds and our minds were like, ship, we hit double digits. We're gonna be sitting real good for for day two. Go to Wayns, find out that we're sitting in seventeenth place, and we start seeing weights come in and it's like some fourteen pounds, sixteen pounds. One guy caught twenty pounds the first day. Yeah, so we're like ship, you know, like we have some like we gotta make up some some spots tomorrow. Um. But we're pretty excited because everyone was saying that with Fresno being so packed with boats on day one, those fish get pretty sore lipped, and there it's a tougher bite the next day, and we're thinking in our minds there wasn't a single boat around us. There was all these fish around us that never even saw a hook that day, So our fish up north weren't going to be sore lipped. Like, Day two's time for us to make up some ground and get get a little bit ahead of these guys that are gonna be fishing two more finicky fish. Um. So day two, first boat were the first boat to go out, UM seven o'clock hits. We haul ass up to our spot. Again, not a single boat there. I think throughout the day there was a couple dudes that would like troll past us with planer boards, but other than that there was no one. But you have the water was that you were fishing up there in the mud anywhere from like four to eight ft and the wind played. The wind was huge because it would pick up, the wind would pick up, the bite would pick up, the wind would lay down, the bite would lay down, so like it got pretty hot and heavy when the wind would and then like the wind would lay down. It would be like several hours where we would like maybe not catch fish. And it was also a morning bite, so we knew we had a better morning bite for bigger fish. We knew we had to show go up and take full advantage of that morning. So we show up on a second day and have our five fish limit by eight o'clock within it within an hour, and decent, decent fish too, and we just start from there. We just start catching fish. Did you talk about being catch capture release, so that this tournament is all these tournaments are catch, capture and release, which means you catch the fish you laid on a bump board, take a picture of it, and then release that fish, so you're not hauling them back for the big wigh in no ship. No. And when you turn your card in your SD card, you have to have only five fish on there, but throughout the day we might catch thirty fish. So you have to like constantly keep going through and deleting those fish, which is the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life, because if you buy, actually delete one of your big fish, you're screwed. It's like you slipped out of your hand. You've got to be making a copy or something. No, it's just snap a picture and they don't accept it like that. Do they give you the camera, No, we we it's our camera. They issue you an SD card though no r S D card too. Well they I'm assuming they've got all kinds of way to give you. They give you a bumpboard and you don't know what number you're gonna get the bump board has a number on it. Let's say it's number ten, so it's next day you might get number fifteen. Bard yea um, but yeah, we start calling. At one point I throw out a slip bob rig and the slip bob we just had to slip bobbers out there just because fish would just happen to run into them. You know. We weren't like specifically cast these slip bobbers to like certain fish. It was just like a bonus that thing, and we were catching a few fish on them. Real quick explanation of a slip bobber rig. A slip bobber rig is, so I'll start from the hook. You have a hook that goes up to a swivel right above that swivel as a weight too to drop the line down fast. And we're using bear hooks. We we found out that we're running the slip bobberie with a little light jig jake head and a in a leech. We found out that those fish would not eat it unless it was a bear hook. Um. They like when that leach free floats man, And those leeches were real lively, like look like little snakes in the water. So hook go. There's like a depends on what you want to run. I'll say a twelve inch leader up to a swivel above the swivel's weight, and then above that weight is a bomber that your line runs through, like your line runs from the top to the bottom of the bobber, and that bobber can slide on your lines. An inline bobber, Yeah, an inline bober that can slide freely on your line. Above the bomber is a little bead, and then above that is a bomber. Stop. This is not a nylon not, it's a nilon and you can just the depth of that and that that not will reel up into your reel. Yep, you can really can have a boer at twenty ft. But that means that that doesn't leave you trying to cast hanging off the endia exactly. Um, real fun way to fish. It's only found out about slip bobbers at like the ripe age of like forty one or something in boy game changer doesn't play into the fly fish and seen slip bober that sounds like a South Dakota bite. I mean that's textbook like glacial lakes four to eight foot of water, slip bober and leeches that brings back some um. But yeah, at one point in time, I throw out a slip bobber and I set that down on the on the edge of the boat, and I pick up, uh my dropshot Reagan. I'm putting a leach on it, and I start to hear the rods sliding against the gun of the boat, and I look over to see that rod just going over the boat into the water and it's gone like to the bottom fish pull it in. And you didn't have the drag set light enough that it could just pull it. No, I didn't have like this. I didn't have the bail open or anything where. It's just it's just that we're like rarely catching fish on slip bobber's, so I just like, you know, through it out there, and every once a while we look over just to make sure the bobber wasn't down or whatever. Um. So I'm like trying to like take the rod that I have in my hand and like hook it, just you know, try to doing whatever I can to like try to get this rod before it hits the bottom. And I didn't see it happened. So I'm like, what the heck is going on? I didn't see it happened. Everyone didn't see it happened. So they're like, what in the hell is this guy doing, like sticking his odd down in the water trying to Yeah, So I tell them what happened, and we're like going over the whole scenario. And I look over in that away fifteen yards away, that slip bober pops up to the surface and it's moving. So we like get get rods reeled in. It's a ship show and all of this is on camera for you guys to watch. Yeah, we gotta what do you what are you guys gonna call your Walleye show Musky and the mustache. Somebody thought, well that's good. Yeah, anyway, we can start thinking on that. We think about that. Um, we get rods reeled in, we get on the trolling motor and start hustling over to that where the bober is, and then by the time we get over there, that goes back down. So I'm like marking way points on the last on a on the humming Bird where like the last spot we saw the bober go down again and all over with my eyes just looking. Shortly after, it pops back up like another fifteen yards away, and I take the rods I of my hand. I'm like casting over, trying to like snag the line and whatnot. We're trying to get over to it. Sure enough, we get close to it, it goes back down again. Finally it pops up um and we get over to it, and Chet's able to get the bomber with the net, and I reached down grab a hold of the bobber and I could feel a fish on the end of the line, and I start hand lining in this fish and ends up being uh twenty and a half inch walleye, which is our big tournament rules by hand lining it. No, I mean we caught the fish, yeah, with the rod and reel. It just wasn't was that the biggest fish of the tournament at the at that point in time, it was our biggest fish. So Chett, that's it. We get it in. I pulled the rest of the rod up off the bottom, and he had been dragging that rod around on the bottom, so it's just like cake full of mud and stuff. Were you there when I U harpoon that hal But and it's still my harpoon booy oh yeah, never to be seen any Yeah. Um, so we get that fish and it was crazy, like the way we had cameras set up on the boat. Um, like that rod slipped right past a go pro that was rolling, so it's gonna be like the best footage. Yeah, it was crazy. Um, do you mind if I tell Yeah, so I'll tee it up just a little bit. We um that that bite slows down because of the wind dies, it gets pretty flat. Calm, I say, chat, let's run across the reservoir here and still in the mud. Let's run across where we had fished a little bit the day before and caught some fish. I was like, let's just go over there and try it, because right like at that point, we weren't catching fish where we were. So so we roll over there and this spot is a little different. There's a few more weeds, they're still bait moving around, we're still seeing fish. So it's perfect, actually more so than the day before. We start fishing, and we immediately start calling some more fish, meaning replacing smaller ones on our card with bigger ones, and we're happy. We're probably sitting a little over eleven pounds and it was our goal to just be consistent in keeping those double digits. And we knew we probably weren't gonna place top ten, but we would probably upgrade from seventeen. We're happy with how we executed it at this point, so we keep fishing and Seth, I just want to say something. Seth was on it. He was catching fish to the point where sometimes I'm like, I don't quite have it figured out like Seth does, so I'm just letting him do his thing. This is a team you know, it doesn't matter who's catching the field. You're not being like, hey, Seth, can you make me a sandwich? Right? Can you help me? This is like a very much a team effort. And it was actually really cool. Um. And I was catching fish, but he had it dialed. Um, So you know, I'm happy. I also want to contribute to like this as well. Right, Um, So we roll over there, we start calling those fish, and we had to be back by three pm. You want to stay his partner for next year too, right, because like, we have five tournaments like this in a row next year, so it's gonna be like well, and then thought about that Seth might Seth might he might become friends and find like a new partner. No. I caught some big ones on Fort Pack too. It'll be like a TV show when they replaced one of the actors in between seasons. It's like where's Chester this season? No, I mean communication is very key and like trying not to it's just like goes a long way in the boat. So anyways, Seth the two days, he's loading the basis in a baseball analogy, Seth is just loading the basis. Could give me a different kind of analogy. Uh, this this will work. That's because it's good because we got to talk about Yeah, we got par Pete. Yeah Pete. He bats in the middle of the lineup when the job the guys ahead of him at the top of the inning is just to get on the basis. So within Petche shows up, he drives them all in called bat and clean up. Seth is hitting singles. Yeah, because we got talked about baseball in a minute. So Seth loaded the bases and it was the bottom of the ninth inning. So the last inning of the game, we had to be in at three and we were happy with our weight and we said our last cast is going to be at two thirty five pm, and Seth was jokingly saying the camera, we are gonna just quick, okay, catch a bigger fish here to call out our seventeen incher. And this is at two thirty five pm, and then we're gonna head right in and race to the weigh ends. And I see a fish in the weeds on Mega Live, and I flip it out there, and not seconds after Seth said that, wham rod goes down and it happened to be the biggest fish that anyone caught out of any boat the whole tournament. And three quarter inches which is a big one, upgraded as five pounds and no ship. Yeah, put us up to like six over sixteen pounds for the day. Gave us another eight hundred and seventy five dollars towards our little fund going towards something. What did you finish do you? Because I know that goes by how you finished for the tournament, Like you finished seven for the tournament, which is fantastic, But what did you finished for the day or fifth? Fifth for the day. We ended up with sixty some pounds, And I kid you not, I was. I haven't been more excited about a fish. I was like, so, like, this is all on camera, Chris gill is filming this and he's trying to hold back his excitement behind the camera. He's his ridge pounder likes fishing. Yeah, he said it was one of the most fun things he's ever filmed. And those tournament walleyes hit different to man. They's like tournament day to day boys, you know how I like to do it on tournament days when you're just having fun, when you're just having fun fishing and catch a twenty inch while I like, that's a real nice walle I like, I love that wallet. You catch even a twenty inch when you're fishing a tournament and you are just shaking in your boots. I would I would see a fish on Megalalive and I would make a cast to it and my hand would be shaking because I was like waiting, like the anticipation. Yeah, you get exa austin from it to all day because just amped the whole time. What is a six inch wally weigh that was like six point something pounds? Um? You know the six might be closer to seven um. Time of years, A big deal on that, yeah, exactly. But they have on these bumpboards. They have a scale that is like relatively close after they spawn sot inch to fourteen inch fish is going to be around point eight pounds to a pound, right, Um, so that's how they measure these weights during these tournaments. But anyways, I was unbelievably happy. It was. It was incredible. I'm proud of you guys. Man, you guys are making everybody. You guys are making everybody proud. Yeah, you guys got seventeen right in the first tournament and now seven does everybody the competition has got to know, uh that there's an up and coming team. Yeah. People are people meaning you guys, because you guys are like newcomers and you and your filming and everything. No, everyone's great, and um, that tournament was run really smooth. Um, it is a lot. So I appreciate people letting us do this. It's a lot. I mean, we've got a chase boat, we got cameras around. Some people probably don't love it, you know, but I appreciate the Montana Walleye Circuit letting us do this because I think it's gonna be something really cool at the end of it. When we get this four part series out, I'll say this about that though, man, is if walleye fishing has ever had like a negative about it from the tournament standpoint is it's never had the cool videos and publicity that the bass side has had. And while ie guys like the old PNW series and all those that, even the and W T, it's like that's the thing they've always missed, is the actual ability to watch and outs. You know, as a walleye guy myself, I like that well going into it. One of the primary concerns these two had is it they would get caught cheating, but they've been able to keep it under wrapped in the bear right. One real quick question. How many of those fifty six boats had all the technology that you guys have in the boat? Um it's hard to say any Probably a quarter of them had it all. Maybe more, Yeah, I mean being conservative for sure, probably fifty. Um the guys that wanted had they were running live imaging and they found a cool spot that had weeds and bait and the fish were in the weeds. And did they have longer hair than you did? Stuff? No? No, Um, they did not. Uh Sean you jacked up? Yeah, Well I used to fish while I tournament. I'm talking about being jacked up for Shawn's duck report. Oh yeah, I'm pumped about that. He's jacked for both remove ahead of Shawn's. Okay, I want I want to I want to go back again and say, you guys doing a great job. Man. When you came on, Like when you came on and said you wanted to land top twenty, I didn't have a reason to think you wouldn't. But uh, I was like, oh, it seems like a reasonable thing. But um, that you're executing on it hard work. I mean like, yeah, it's just like two guys really trying to break it down and understand why why are these fish doing this? How do we catch you? And going I'll say, I'll say quickly growing into Fresno. We had never fished it before, I had never even laid eyes on it. So we had completely spent two days breaking it down, figuring it out. And yeah, trust your electronics. That's all I can say, because that's what that's what helped us. Mhm, it's great. Man, got one more to go. Can't do the four? I just point out, can't do the fourth because that's getting married and won't Uh won't not go. Spencer new Hearth was putting a bug in my ear. He's like, can mean you go out? Okay? You guys fishing? You could? I could, but I don't know if that's you want to go to his wedding. Yeah, I gotta go to the guy's wedding after putting on a performance like that at Fresno. Heck, that's luck man. I can't wait to get on that sweet boat now that all the rivers are gonna be so messy for a while, and I have to go fishing with you guys on the on the boat. I cannot wait. All you guys, Let's go fishing, all right. Sean's Dark Report? Phil, do you ever make like an intro for Sean Dark Report? Got anything else to shay? I shant Have you been dating much? I've been on the rut app. On the app he takes pto to go on dates like the high stakes dates. That was the first time I've ever taken PTO in my life for a date. I don't understand. I don't either. Please. My first date with my wife is three days long because we were living and I was living in Alaska, she was New York. We met and went to Librea tar pits. So why don't you understand that was unusual? Why do you think a fellow would have was PTO to go on a date. Why would he have to take pt Well, I mean it is personal time, right, that's a good point by definition that think it's a personal time unless But but in in your line of work, you know, the just take can you like take her duck hunting and then call it it was fishing? Well, I mean I would think maybe that he could tie that into his work here. You know, we offer unlimited PTO here. No, but that's awesome. Well it's kind of a lie because like you can go away, but then you come back, you still have a bunch of ship to do. It's not like someone else. Does it mean, Yeah, someone's on his date. I'm gonna do with the stuff he's supposed to do it, and you'll come back and be able to chill. So you just come back heling, Now it's screwed. Yeah, re entry is always hard. An there you are. But I don't want to get too deep. But I am curious, are you you're using a dating app or not using now? Not at all? Just meet him the old fashioned way wow, which I would would be a bar Instagram social garretts this is not fair. Well, just give me, okay qualities you're looking for. I'll find you a good MISSR girl. I think no, I think I'm I think I'm gonna plead the fifth on this one. This is not how I expected this to. Gon't expect this grace. You're married and got kids? How many kids? Three? I got three girls? Been married twelve years? How did you meet your husband? Blind date? It's actually a really funny story. I don't I don't know if your listenership will be interested in how I met my husband. But it was blind date and a lot of friends joke. That was an arranged marriage because our mothers set us up on a blind date. Yeah, it's pretty old school. Yeah, blind date's not something you hear about too often now. And we had both had some really bad blind dates leading up to our blind date, which you know, so we didn't have high expectations. You were blind date her. I was a blind date, and it was it's actually i'll tell you it is. I'll give you the short version. So this was while I was it was a unique chapter of my life. Um, I can't believe I'm about to say this on your podcast. But I was Miss Tennessee in the Miss American passiant and so I took a year off of graduate. You went all the way to Miss Tennessee to Miss America. If you want to take it to the highest level I went. You wouldn't competed in Miss America. I sure did. Do you want my autograph? Yeah, you're Miss America. Thing I was, What was your deal? What was your sort of like you like your specialty? I sang, which is how I met my husband. I was singing the national anthem at a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game, and our mom set us up. They had talked and they knew that I was going to be there singing, and neither one of us, obviously were dating anyone. And in Mississippi, if you're not married by the time you're like twenty five, people get concerned, especially if you're Miss Mississippi Tennessee. I was in school at Andy, So Miss Tennessee, right here in the studio. Yeah, as you live and breathe so so. So I was singing the anthem, and so I was not at all concerned about whoever this dude was I was about to sit with and watch the basketball game, and I had never sung in an arena that big before, so I had at the time, this is how long ago it was. I had my little iPod shuffle threaded underneath my dress, tucked in my tights so that at center court, when I'm surrounded all these seven foot tall basketball players and the lights go down, spotlight on me. I was terrified that I was going to accidentally change keys in the middle of this acapella song, which it sounds bad when you do that, by the way. So I was going to hear the accompaniment music in my ear that no one else could hear, but it would keep me into you see what I mean. But when I pressed that play button, it just so happens that Norah Jones is right after National Anthem on my iPod at this time, so I did not hear my accompaniment track. I heard come Away with Me, and I was like, oh, WHOA. So I jerked it out of my air and just pick a note saying it it was pre iPhone day, so there's no proof otherwise. So I will say it was the best it's ever been sung. For my story, and I'm sticking to it the same night that you met your yes, and he almost missed it. He came rushing it. He thought he knew I was singing the anthem, but he thought it was going to be as part of some big like miss and group ensemble that was then going to go work the concession stand. He really did not know that it was just going to be me singing, and so he like rushes in and he's like, damn, that's my date. And so then I finished singing, and of course I'm a little rattled from the whole like debacle that was my accompaniment track. And he but I looked down at my then BlackBerry because that's the time we were in and it's like, I'm the guy in the blue sweater and I'm going I'm in the FedEx form, Like all right, you're gonna have to give me a little bit more than that. But but anyway, we sat together, watched the game. He went he was living in Jack's, Mississippi. He had he had lived in Boston for school and then came back to Jackson. I was in Nashville. So we dated a long distance and now we're married with free kids. Was he like Mr Universe or anything like that, like, did he have anything? No, No, I mean he's a really great guy everything. I'm so sorry, honey. Um no, he sleep. He just wanted he just wont you over the good old fashion. No. He impressed me so much because he's so humble and he's really a pretty awesome person with a lot that he could brag about, and he didn't. And so we sat and had this great conversation. There was a lot that I learned about him after the fact that he didn't come right out with like trying to impress me. He was just trying to impress you. I guess held off. He held off, but then he you know what, it's funny, tied into the hole Miss American thing. So we met in November Miss America the finale there was in reality show that year, but the finale was in January, and he showed up in Las Vegas and like hung out with my family. We've been on three days at this point. That's when it was like, Okay, he's into me. I think, yeah, it's pretty cool. Is this the first time for you to have a washed up former pageant queen in your studio? Yeah, listen, there's a statute of limitations on these things. I really can't use that anymore. But yeah, that's the back story. Uh so Beck Shawn's day. That's good. So we're gonna okay, you know, you're being like a little tight lip. You're being like a tournament wallee. I mean, but it's like it's new enough that I don't want to jinx it. You know, I'm with you. That's that's probably the walleye Fisher. What I was leading towards. What I was leading towards is, um, what do you call it? When you got one guy batting, there's another guy over practicing. I was trying to get a couple more people on deck for you, right, Yeah, it didn't probably work very well though. Huh well, maybe you know, if you'd have had to play it harder school with the Duck report, Shawn dr port so um trying to remember how long ago that was that we talked about the age demographics of ducks. It was a couple of a couple of duck reports ago. But when we had talked about like how long ducks live you had said, you know, we had talked about that they you have some that get to be high twenties, you know, mallard that lives to be seven years old, blue goose that lives to be thirty years old, and you had requested an odometer. How how far they travel in their life? Well, there's so there's a few different conservation worcs all doing this now, ducks and limited delta, and then in Arkansas you have the Osbourne Lab and five Oaks Egg Research Center doing GPS trackers on ducks and man, it's crazy how good that tech has come along compared to like the radio telemetry stuff, because they know every single I mean down to the cornfield. These ducks are hanging out in all the way up and down the flyway. But anyway, so I had a guy named Ryan Askern from the Osbourne Lab give me some data points. Day've got forty five ucks with GPS trackers right now, and uh, that's that's they're glue in that in the feathers corrects on their back the backpack. Oh it is okay. Remember some Turkey guys talking about a little thing. Maybe they weren't maybe it wasn't as sophisticated, but um, they would just glue this little device up in their feathers. You wouldn't even see it no, you can see this. Yeah, yeah, you can see it. It looks like they're flying around with a backpack on. Um. So, anyway, he sent me data points for the averages of all the forty five ducks. But then he also sent me just like a random drake and Hen Mallard got it. And the drake Mallard on Avid on average flies eight point seven miles a day for a total of three thousand, one hundred and seventy two miles a year, and the hand flies eleven point six miles a day for a total of four thousand, two hundred and thirty four miles a year, which you know, it's kind of crazy when you think about that. Most of that's in the spring and fall, because they're pretty That does include migration, yep, because they're pretty idle. Because the annual average yep. Are you gonna hit us with some extraordinary days yep. So that's why Sean does such a good duck report. Um well, and I did. I did do a total of like based on the average of all their forty five ducks that they have, they fly on average of eleven point two miles a day. And if you remember, the oldest Mallard ever shot with a band on it was twenty seven or seven months. Applying the average to that duck, he would have flown a hundred and twelve thousand, seven hundred fifty miles in his life, which it's pretty good for for a duck. But okay, anyway, the and then what's really wild is the like the spring and fall migration of how far these ducks will go in one day. This spring in April, they had one mallard that flew six d forty two miles in a single day from Bismarck, North Dakota to Lloydminster, Alberta. No way in one day. How many times did he stop? See it only kicks the information back every twenty four hours, so they don't know exactly. Yeah, but you'd have to think of he's covering that distance. He couldn't have been doing wash except flying, and he's going north. I wonder if he had a tail wind. That's what's crazy too, is like you see these ducks migrate into the wind. Sometimes two snow geese will do it all the time, where they migrate into the wind, and you're like why you know, so they'll they'll like wait for a north wind and make a big push or something, or it just happens to be just kind of like I've seen the heart some of the hardest snow goose mic ration days going north into a north wind, which doesn't make sense. And then other times, you know, they have a great south wind and they're using it. But they'll migrate more based on and this is a different duct report will do sometime about how much of the migration happens based on moon and like like why you always here snowgies flying in the middle of the night yep, yep, because they're doing some work and research on like luminants too, And how much duct movement is happening based on moonlight? I think I think as much of it's based around that, even more than wind. Is like that it's warm out that you know they've got the right moon stuff like that. But that's incredible six he did one day, and that's like you know, when you're out and ducts are kind of giving you the snub, and also just some duct comes and just like boom bombs are dude, that's him, yeah, yeah, he just got done with a trap, you know, and he's like, dude, next duck, I see, I'm landing. Yeah, I'm ready for some food, some chill. But the you know, the ones that are real crazy is the snow goose migration. I mean, the duck migration is impressive, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't hold a candle to what the snow geese are doing. So there's a group called the Alberta Conservation Association doing GPS work on snow geese and they have one tracker that for whatever reason, has lasted longer than it was supposed to. Its lasted three years now, so they've been getting info on this one snow goose for three years and over from January to January. This snow goose has average twenty one five miles per day of flying, which like, okay, so it's double a Mallard's average. And it makes sense when you see how snow geese fly around and feed. They fly along ways every day to feed. But then on top of that, this snow goose flew seventy miles in twenty four hours and landed on like this little mountain creek up in the Yukon. Yeah, and so this so this goose, this exact snow goose is wintering in California. Then flying over to Boise and hanging out down in the Snake River bottoms, then flying to freeze Out Lake, Montana, then over to Edmonton, Alberta, and then ending on the north slope of Alaska. I missed my first snow goose that freeze all like really like the biggest chip shot. You could have just decoyed or passing over, you know, like eight ft over my head about a mile an hour, just too close, just whatever. I don't know. Um So, just for the sake of doing it, I applied that twenty mile a day average to the oldest blue goose ever, which you know, same thing as a snow goose, and that goose would have flown two thousand, five thirty nine miles in its life, which there's pickups dying well before that. You're not gonna get that much out of your Toyota tundra. I mean, that's impressives. Do you have have many numbers on the low end, like when they're just loafing golf course duck? No, I don't have anything like that, but I was I was thinking about that these these ducks are putting the GPS units on in Arkansas. Um you know, they those ducks in Arkansas are always kind of within easy he feeding distance of like where where they roost and where they feed is always pretty close, maybe a mile two miles at most. But then you get some of these Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska Kansas ducks that they have to fly a long way to get to a cornfield in western Nebraska. One time I followed flock ducks forty five miles to their feed and they were flying that every day, And so yeah, he's jamming ninety miles a day. I would think that this average of Arkansas ducks is actually, you know, maybe compared to some of the Central Flyway ducks and Rocky Mountain ducks maybe on the low side. Hit me again with how far that snow goose went one day, Um, eight hundred and seventy miles in one day. He's blown by whole entire states. Yeah, but you're flying north to south, you're passing states, had a bunch of them. He started in. He started in Alberta and ended like well into the yukon that day and on where he was in. It's it's really what's really cool to look at on this GPS And I'll I can post the website for this too. You can look at the GPS and see that this bird sat around Edmonton, Alberta for a solid month just feeding and getting ready to cross the forest. Because that's why, I mean, it's a there's no food for him as across the burial. You know, that's the largest This would be a good question for Spencer's trivial pursuit show. Um, the boreal forest is the largest biome on Earth. Really, it's the largest expanse of habitat type on the planet, is the boreal forest. Because like all that ship across the Yeah, like huge band across your age, a huge band across North America. That is a game poor environment, Yeah, and food poor. Why a snow goose would eat wheat for a month and a half before he flies across it in two days. That was a hell of a duck report. It's a fun one. Do Are you done? Yeah? I'm done? So I think that just just strow shan a couple of ideas. I think that about them moving at night would be very interesting. What do you guys anything grace? What is this thing you wonder most about ducks? Don't you have anything burning? I don't. I don't wonder a lot about ducks. To be quite honest, I'm I'm you know, I stay, I'm I'm an ears girl. You know, when you come back with that Turkey tester, maybe by then you'll have worked up a question for Sean, A question for Sean. Yeah, Uh, I got I got a couple of requests. Um. I think there's an emerging understanding about the role of iridescence and birds what they see when they see iridescence. Right, that could be interesting. Yep, Um, that's a good one. What else have you done, like mortality stuff? Like it's far like during the migration. I should say to narrow it down like hitting, because there is there like, uh spot on the map where it's like, holy shit, a bunch of ducks died, right triangle for dogs? That'd be interesting. How long did that that that goose live after the super long day? You know? Then? Does it just post up for a while? Is that the is that the last two raw? They do? Know? They? I mean they they do their migration real fast and they take advantage of it, and then they spend a lot of time resting and putting the fat stores back on. I gotta get another one for you too, uh, predator swamping you know what I'm talking about. There's like a reproductive strategy where a vulnerable bird or any kind of thing vulnerable species will synchronize birthing um so that rather than staggering it out where predators can just like whittle away, whittle away with a away with it away. It just all happens at once, right, and then you kind of overwhelmed the predator base. And there's examples of with with I know with snow geese the way they nest that the fox the Arctic foxes and whatnot will always whittle away at the edge, but it's just too much. Hits the ground all at once and they can't They'll never get them all. But if you'd spread that same thing out over months, right, letters will just be like keyed in on it, constantly, constantly doing it. That could be interesting. And then another thing that could be interesting is like why what factors led to the great explosion in snow geese um, Like what were the agricultural practices that change that led to the snow goose explosion and why did that become a thing of such concern to wildlife managers in the Arctic. I've actually been in touch with the guy that was waving the flag. I did. I called him for an article I wrote on the website about snow geese that, um, he was the guy waving the flag saying, hey, snow goose populations are about to explode. There's a lot of environmental differences, get ready. And he said that twenty five years before the Conservation Order actually got created. Yeah, that's a good one, talking snow Keep busy. Let's know how the dating goes. Okay, alright, Joyce seeing the national anthem? We should that. I didn't. I didn't warm up. I'm a little rusty. I'm out of practice. You want to talk about Pete really quick before we get Yeah, for Pete's sake, Pete. Okay, So our our friend Peter Alonso speaking of baseball, our friend Peter Alonzo, Um, go ahead, Chester. He he hits dingers. He's a hey, heck of a baseball polar bear. Pete plays for the Mats. Yeah, he's he's the official baseball player of this podcast. Yeah he Do you know what position he plays for the Mets? Yeah, plays first base. Nice first, I'm a loyal friend man first base. Read I'll read it when I see an article pop up about Pete. I'll read it and I'll send it to him as though he didn't know about it. My grandmother, you had a good game last night. My grandmother sends me articles cut out in the newspaper about Pete just because we did We did that. That's fun episode together. He uh, he's well known for a couple of home run derby wins. He can million bucks of pop. That guy can hit the ball when he gets it where he wants it, he hits the ball. He tells me that to be a good hitter, you have to have a high ass. And if you look at him, he has a high ass, which means a strong buttocks. His ass is positioned high on his body and it's big lot of in there. But I really like about watching him in the home room dirty I've mentioned this before, is like the zen space that you can see that he's in, just just chilling and smiling and just swinging away as calm as can be. Everybody else looks like they're just gonna smash the bat in their hands. They're holding it so tight and they've got be to sweat coming down their face and they're just and Pete's just that's a lot like, yeah, he's way off bugle and he loves the hunting fish. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe. Okay, so what what is? What is the Pete hasn't asked of everybody? Is it just about the All Star voting? Yes? Okay, yeah, voting is open for the All Star Game. Hey guy, what's up? Pete Alonso here? I just want to say thank you so much for all the love that you guys have been giving us, especially in the All Star voting. And as a thank you, you're truly I'm going to be giving away Jersey's helmets, hats, tickets, and some VP passes. Take a picture of your vote and time stamp that somehow. Make sure to just click the link in my bio. It'll take you right to the site. L f GM. What's the LGM mean? Phil? Uh? What? Met know what it is? Yeah? It's naughty mets are Yeah, so do that because Pete's great. Steve baby Corn coming your way? Did your baby Corn? I did? It's it's like a cousin of the pickled okra. Yeah. These come in the in the meat Eater Bloody Mary kit that meets selling on the website. Now, I didn't know I never got I never got one either. I got all the parts that has never got a package. You'll have to go to the meat eater store dot com and get away. You know what I basically now make. I make a lot of when I'm making, you know, I take like late, I've been taking a lot of n a beer and adding not only bloody Mary mix, but all the bloody but all the bloody mary fixens. I'm making a red beer with bloody mary fixens. What are your favorite fixings? Like? Just like all of pickle, asparagus, whatever. It's like a crazy gass drink. It's like beer boody Mary mix. And when you put all those all that salty stuff in there, the fizz is bye bye, It's just gone. Are you putting cheese in? You gotta have a little bit. I have been great in any cheese. There might start ready, bloody Mary. We're digging in. Now what happens? We tried to have someone explain it before. That didn't satisfy either of us. Now the stakes are high, alright, I will do a better job. Here we go a paint a picture. You're in a duck blind, okay, and someone shoots their shotguns six inches from your ear. What just happened to you? Well? A lot so gun bangs that loud? Okay, you think about if you think about um I talked about this a little bit in the generous article that Sam put out on mediator dot com here recently. I don't know if you've had a chance to peruse it. Sure, Okay, So when you when you think about decibels, you know you hear decibel, this decibel that, well you think think about it in terms of sound pressure level, and sound pressure is entering your ear at different intensities. Right, So a gun shot, like you haven't thought of that before? Well, there you go, So it really is. It is a sound pressure level. And um, so we'll we'll take it from a physiology standpoint. So the acoustic wave at a sound whatever sound pressure level, enters your ear canal, hits your ear drum, vibrates your ear drum, which then vibrates the tiniest bones of your body, the osticles, the smallest of which the stapes moves in and out of what we call the window into your cochlea, which is your hearing nerve, which is that little snail shell two and a half turn that houses your hearing nerve where there's these delicate hearing fibers. Now, I think this is pretty cool. If you were to unroll that snail shell, it's like a piano keyboard. So the little hair cells that get hit first and the hardest are coded for the highest pitches that you hear. And then as you move down towards the other end of the cocleus inside the coil, inside the coil, then you start getting down to the base tones. So it's a tone of topic organization like that. I want to ask a clarifying question about the pressure. Okay, early weird joke about Turkey Gowel's way off. That's creating a sound pressure. It's moving through the sound pressure level, moving through the atmosphere in the form of a sound wave. I guess. I guess never thought about what was sound is, whenever thought it makes told sense, whenever thought about it being that when you think about the sound waves, like when we're at the lake and you can hear conversations that are being had at a campsite across the lake because the water, there's nothing to impede the flow of those sound waves moving across the water. As opposed to if you're in the woods and you've got all these different baffles from the trees and the vegetation, that's going to interfere with how well that sound waves travels to your ear. The last morning of my turkey hunting season, I was on the edge of the lake and then about drove me nuts because they were turkey's goblin on all sides of that lake. Because the sound was traveling so well, I could not tell well and you can't tell trying to pinpoint a blue grouse on the lake. Oh yeah, yeah. We walked to the other side of the lake and he still sounded across the lake. That's right, he's back where we were well. And I'm I'm also thinking from your hearing test we took, if one year is better than the other, you're gonna have even more double pin pointing where that sounds coming from. So that was also to your disadvantage. I'm sorry, I just outed your hearing. So um, it's cool to me that the hearing nerve is coated like that for pitch because then, you know, like I've said before, we hear with our brains because it doesn't matter if if those hair fibers what has to happen is then that they have to transduce the sounds in it all the way up to your brain, where it's then processed by your auditory cortex, which is in each temporal lobe. And the auditory cortex is also organized ton of topically, so there's surface area of your brain that is dedicated to processing and interpreting all these different pitches. So for that gunshot, it's coming in hard and fast, and it's blasting those really high pitches first, and depending on how loud it is, it's it's getting the hair cells farther and farther down the cochlea. But that's why we see that high pitch hearing loss happen first as a result of noise exposure most typically and hunters will see what because that the the pressures damaging to the thing. If you picture it like almost like the little what is that right there, I'm looking turkey. If you look at the that's a very cool turkey feather photo, thank you. But as you referring to u um very detailed look at the end of turkey. It almost looks trapped. Yeah, But so you have these sillia and stereo sillia. These tiny hairs that are like this and they're waiting on a sound to hit them, so that then that activates an action potential that with the synapse that sends the sound to your brain. Well, you know what's interesting about all that, All that wiring in your brain is um and then it's like, then then that is somehow lining up with learned experience. Yeah, where you assign a right, it's doing all this and then instantly assigning memory where the minute someone talks, your brains are like, oh, they're over there, it's Bob. He's irritated. Absolutely, And so when you asked those hair sell fibers and they they kind of kill over a little bit. And so you know, sometimes you'll leave a concert your ears are ringing, or in this situation the pit blond, you might walk out, your ears might be ringing, and if you're lucky, after a few days or a few hours, those hair cells will recover and you're here come back. You'll think, oh, I'm great, I'm standing again. Yes, it's called a temporary threshold shift, and so those those hair cells will kind of stand back up again, but you've undoubtedly weakened them. But when they're bent over. What is the ringing? That's a great question. So because our brains are programmed to be looking for this this stimulation that's coming in through the auditory system. So when you have a very discreet pitch, like from a gunshot that's been damaged, even temporarily, the brain is receiving great input from the hair cell fibers right next door to the ones that have been damaged. And so it's getting all this great stimulation and it's searching for a signal that's not coming, and it manufactures this ringing. The best way I know to provide an analogy to this is like a phantom limb syndrome. Someone loses a limb and they perceive pain in a limb that's no longer there. Your your brain is searching for sensory input that's not coming. Which is why when I've written about I've got a good article on tenadus, I'm kind of proud of it. But in that article it talks about how sometimes in audiology and audiologists will work to program into whatever your level devices you're wearing, a background noise that's pitch matched in loudnessmatched to your ringing. If it's a pervasive problem, and that provides the stimulation that's missing right at that pitch tells your brain to calm down. Tenadus is a fascinating topic, and we could spend other than tenitus. Tomato tomato. Is it okay? It is okay? My doctor said, tendatives. I said, like, I thought it was tenitas. He goes, I don't know what it is the academic medical community, like if I'm at continuing at lectures that sort of thing, everybody talks about TIS. But for whatever reason, in the public realm, it's a lot, you know either way either way. But um, but anyway, you know, the limbic system is very involved in regulating ringing. If you have it pervasively, you know, you'll notice that stress, caffeine salts, lack of sleep. What's the limbic system. The limbic system is UM. You can kind of equate it to almost like a nervous system or an emotional regulating system. It's the system that, like when your cortisol levels are amped and you're really stressed, UM, there's an internal gating system that your your brain is working to try to overcome those things. And when that system is taxed because of stress because of lack of sleep, anxiety, um, too much caffeine. That's when you might notice that that ringing hits like a fever pitch. And some people are like, oh, that sounds like voodoo whatever. I don't believe in meditation, but that's why some of the psychological side of tenadis is the best man agement because once you learn that that there are these coping strategies and you kind of pay attention to stay in tune with what's happening, um with your body and kind of where you are in life. That sometimes if you are able to get a few really good night's sleep and just drink a bunch of water and maybe lay off the alcohol and caffeine, you'll get some relief in that ringing. You know what, now that I've started to struggle with it, and I haven't it hasn't been bad for months whatever reason. Um, it's self perpetuating in a way because it will get real quiet, Like it might just be you're out hunting or whatever, listening for goggles and then you're like, oh, wow, there it is because in a quiet place, and then that ship then your brains like why is it there? Why is it there? Why is it there? And then it becomes deafening and you're like, well, it wasn't deafening a minute ago. It's only deafening now because I'm so like fixated on it, and then and then I hear it for days. Yes, when you tune into it, I mean truly the focus and the attention. And so if you can like mentally get yourself into a mental space where you can distract yourself from it with either a masking noise or play some soft music in the background something to get your mind off of it, it truly does help. That's where I'm at scientifically. Where now I have, like in my little memory bank, I have places and in context, I know where I can be in and I know it won't be there. Yeah, Like you get in the car and go drive, it's not there. You think about it, noise from the road and the truck. Is it bad enough that you'll go, I'm here right now, But will you ever go take a step to make it go away? No, So it's never a bad enough You're like, I'm going to go for a drive. Can you pass the little pickled corns? There? Like I've had some people that are so debilitated by it. I mean they are they're not sleeping. I mean it's really affecting their lives. So these fancy new earpieces you got us though, Yeah, they got that little background noise, the background sounds. And that's because this particular product I've got you trying is um it may buy hearing a company, and so it's using a hearing aid chip, you know, just we connected through the hearing aid settings, not the Bluetooth settings, and so in the hearing aid world, we often use those settings to program in that background noise. So it might just help you with focus. You know, if if you don't have ringing, if you just want to go into a zin space in your office and like not only have the ear plugs in, but block out. But you know, if you have ringing in the ears, it can be a tool. That's exactly what it's there for. It's on the hearing aid chip. What does PRO mean your company? ODO is the medical prefix for ear. A nottologist is an ear doctor, and then PRO is professional protection. Yeah, I was tracking that part. Yeah, it came to me when I was sitting in church, so I decided it was divinely inspired. I get questions about it, or could that you weren't paying attention to church. Yeah, don't don't tell my pastor hey, it's gone really well, I'm here with you now, so maybe you know, maybe it was want to be maybe it was uh you went so now that we were, is there more you want to say about, like what goes on? Because that was my dyeing, that was my number one dying question. I'm satisfied with the explanation now, But what is it when you get like the wham? Yeah, but this part two, there's a part two. Then a couple days later you're like, oh, went away. Um, but eventually it kind of creep up. But eventually it kind of didn't write like you do that enough times throughout your life, or your shoot a suppressor and you're not being careful, or you're a little kid and you're burning up, or you're a little kid and your mom and dad give you those little milk cartons stow of twenty two shells and it's just like incessant all day shooting until you run out. Maybe we never wore hearing protection. It was like as unheard of as having a bike helmet. Why would you do? Yeah, but this is why I'm guilful about the future of where we're going with hearing health, because all of us sitting around this table did not grow up with hearing protection. But we're thinking about it, and we're sure as heck thinking about it for our kids. We're going to the range today. This is how trained people are when we're going to the rain change today. And then we got flooded out. Uh my kid, I was gonna bring him with. I had my older boy with me. I wasn't bring the other ones, but they were still sleeping. He um. He said, already you have my headphones. I was like, man, that's not a sentence I would ever said. Good for him. I mean truly, because noise damage is cumulative. I like to equate it to sun exposure. Like I wish I could go back to my I hate to even admit this now, but like my time I spent in the early nineties and a tanning bed, the amount of money I'm spending now to try to reverse that damage. With all the potions and lotions and facials and all that stuff. You know, you're being getting stuff cut off yourself. No, I just mean, like, you know, trying to smooth out the wrinkles and the skin clear and all that stuff because all the sun spots and sun damage from baking in the sun. But you know, at the time, I might get a little sunburned, but then it goes away and you think, oh it's fine, but it's damaging, and it's damage that might not show up until later. And you're hearing is a lot the same. You know, our our regulatory systems. You have got NIOSH and you've got OSHA on how much you want to get into that, But um NIOSH does the research, makes the recommendations, and then OSHA is what enforces the workplace guidelines. Okay, And so you know, with both of those systems there's a big problem because they're assuming that all of your noise exposure is during an eight hour work day. So they give you these doses and like time allowances for certain noise levels, but they don't take into account that you may go home and mow the grass, or go hear some live music, or just blast the radio in your car, you know, and or sleep with a sound machine on blasting like you're in like the rainforest cafe or something, you know, And so all of this enough to do something, Oh yeah, yeah, I mean sure, it depends on the lawnmower. I mean my dad was cutting grass with the big tractor, you know, and sit on the tractor idling and like nothing in your ears blower has got to be up there. Oh yeah yeah, And that's as like that. That noise is kind of like it gets to you, right, and the chainsaw gets to you well, and it'll get to you more and more as you're hearing gets worse and worse. Because an interesting, really interesting thing. One of us talked about this earlier. The more hearing loss you have, the less tolerance you have for loud sounds. So like I used to be able to stand front center at my favorite shows in Nashville, and I mean I was just enjoying it. Nothing ever sounded distorted or I didn't get that buzzy, rattily feeling. But I get that now, so I wear my little customers. That's so surprising that it makes you because you think you'd just be like zoned out. And that's why when you are ready to seek hering aids or hearing technology, I don't even want to hear calm hearing aids anymore because they've come so far with what they can do. But that's why it's really important to not just walk into like a Costco or Sam's. You need to find a qualified credential person to help you with this. Not only is in an ongoing relationship that requires some tuning and it's just not a one size fits all, but it gets really tricky because your dynamic range, your tolerable range of hearing, gets smaller and smaller, and we're trying to make things sound naturally while using a lot of compression to fit everything in that window, and that's tricky to do. We moved into a house. The first house my wife and I bought, it was like the whole ground floor was there's no walls, no divisions, like all the way open and man, my stress level with the kids echoing like you've been there trying to cook dinner and you've got some music on and they're like fighting about something or banging around, throwing balls around. Yeah, it would make me go mad, and the people around me weren't going mad, like it was like it's like a comphony, you know. Well, I feel like for me personally, I've also lost some tolerance, not not necessarily only of just really loud sounds, but of being able to focus in the midst of a lot of noisy chaos going on around me. Like I used to be able to study, you know, with friends in the apartment, music and people doing this, and I could zone in and focus. And now my ability to focus in the midst of a lot of that chaos has really decreased, which is interesting. You got some like frontal lobe executive functioned and I don't know, but is that is that necessarily related to hearing loss or is that just related to like your brain changes over time. And I think it's both. I think it's like what gives you like grumpy people, grumpy old people, grumpy old people. My dad jerks his hearing aids out. The grandkids come around. I've got three kids, My sister's got three kids. They're running around and he loves them. But oh man, I mean he jerks, says hearing aids out and puts them on the table. I'm like, dad, come on, come on. So because he feels like it's easier for him to deal without the aids because he just wants them to be quiet, and instead of asking them to be quiet, which he knows it's not gonna work. He just takes his hearing aids off or mutes them, or start streaming a ball game through them instead of listening to the children. You know, survival methan doesn't. What else you want to know explained? Like what the long term damage looks like? I mean, if all these things are physical structures, right, so you can presumably you could, uh, you could do what do you call it when someone dies apart? You're do an autopsy? Well, I don't know, I say, presumably. I don't know the answer to this. Could you do an autopsy on a on a dead person who had just was exposed like outrageous levels of loud noise and had hearing damage? Could you do an autopsy and say, like through a microscope or whatever, like, oh, this person, uh suffered damage from loud noise? Or is it that you can't because you can't see the inner workings of the brain. Well, I think there could be even a more interesting way to look at it. And that gives me a great segue. This kind of ties into how I why I started outo produ begin with. So I was working clinically and my clinical knee should kind of evolve to become an area where I was working with a lot of people who had dementia and hearing loss, and I was looking at how there was this negative synergy between the two. And there was a lot of good research coming out from John's Hopkins University of colle Rotto at the time looking at what's happening in your brain with auditory deprivation and untreated hearing lass. This we're seeing this, this negative synergy. So and I see that first. I only heard about that just recently, the link between. So I started kind of writing and putting together some articles for other audiologists, taking basically a lit review of what we know right now in research and how you can apply this to your clinical practice. And so then when our University Medical Center in Mississippi was chosen as a data collection site for this study out of Johns Hopkins looking at this topic, it was like I was the prime person to go work on this study. So did that, and so we're looking at we're this particular study was looking at whether hearing aid intervention could delay the onset or slow the rate of decline for dementia. And for example, I'll tell you like it's core, both of those things were positively positively correlated with the degree of untreated hearing laws. So with a severe untreated hearing loss, we were seeing an onset of dementia that was three point two years earlier than it would have been otherwise and five times faster right of decline then compared to the normal control. Is it like, maybe you're gonna get to this, But is it just because your brain is not like that level of activity isn't occurring in your brain. Well, there's two things to primary processes that really stuck stuck out to me. One was called cross moodal plasticity. The other was cortical resource reallocation. Well, I'll break that down quickly. So one thing is when you are struggling to hear because you're not getting that auditory signal, think about yourself like out of wedding at at sets upcoming wedding reception. So you're trying to talk to somebody, there's a band play and there's music. You are focusing in so hard to try to understand what that person is saying in the moment that there's less cognitive reserve left over to recall that information later. So you're much more likely to remember my name if I introduced to you during this quiet room podcast, and it's easy listening environment. Then you are when you are focused in and just trying to know in that moment, so there's less room for later recall of information. So that's one thing that's playing in when people are struggling to hear. They have a harder time remembering what they heard. All their energies to all their energyes is going to that. But to your point of how could we look at the physical aspect of what's happening? Um, it was the University of Colorado that started looking at this, and this was the the cross moodal plasticity thing. So we could put somebody in a functional mri I that had a bunch of hearing loss or even with mild and moderate hearing loss, play an auditory signal and then give some visual stimuli and we start to see that the areas of the brain specifically, what is the audio and what is the visual Um. I'd have to look back at the study to tell you exactly what the audio was. I don't know if they were playing like their favorite music or if they were playing clicks and beeps, but individual will be not You're not like watching a movie, you're just seeing something, You're just seeing something like images of something. But the but the moral is we're starting to see where that if if the area of the brain it's coded to process sound is not being used to process sound, it's going to get recruited by other sensory systems to process that input. So we would start to see your auditory cortex light up in response to a visual stimulus. Think about how, um, you know, people who have lost their vision have a higher alertness for their hearing, or people who are deaf might have a higher visual acuity, or you think about the ability to read brail, you know, And it's because the brain is able to devote more surface area to those processes because it's not being used for what it was intended, so that the neural connections start to reorganize. And so we could look at that and say, Okay, how much has your brain reorganized because of the sensory deprivation and so anyway I could go on for it, but hit me with why that might lead to why the hearing loss could like you explained it with the term that like you're working hard to hear everything you're not processing, But what is the what is the other one. What is how does that relate to hear? That reorganization relate to hear you like you're robbed, Like parts of your brain are robbing from other parts. Parts your brain are robbing from other parts. And that's part of what they're still trying to distinguish is exactly how those changes in their old processes are relating to that breakdown long term, like something that you need might be like neglected or reallocated or that's right, that's right, and so um, those are just two of the of the main points that I find really cool about how your brain is responding to that lack of input. And then that's why when if you have a really a big hearing loss and you put on these amplified earplugs or hearing it's for the first time, it all just might sound like noise, and you have to give your brain time almost like physical therapy for your brain. It's like auditory training. Um, just like learning to blow a duckt collum. You gotta you gotta give your brain time to readjust so that things can start to sound normal again. Uh. I'm gonna tell how we met, please do okay? So the reason Grace is sitting here is because I don't know who arranged this, I'll tell you. You came in to do a company wide You came in to do a company wide fitting. Yeah, and I was like someone I don't know who told me someone like, hey, if you want to get some uh custom your plugs, go to the downstairs at like noon or whatever. It sounds interesting. So I went down and you and I got to shooting the ship about hearing protection. And then like two hours later, you want to come on the Five Games said you should come on the podcast and tell everybody about what happens when this happens. So back to how we met. We met like how did it come to me that you came to do like for like, who invited you to come do that? This business has been so relational driven for me. Um, So because of all this research I was looking at, I wanted my own family to have good hearing protection. So I started going to people's houses after Yeah, Well, I was like, I want my own dad to be wearing good hearing protection, but he would not come into the medical clinic to do it. So I said, well, I'll just go to you. And then words started spreading, and then This was never part of the business plan. I never set out to create this national network of audiologist and be on this crusade for hearing protection. But it's organically gotten to that point and it is. It has been wild and amazing to just be in this journey. But I'm we met through chef Sean Paul, your guy that does Duck Camp Dinners the show. It's a great show, um. And I was introduced to him through this guy, Josh Raggio, who lives down in my neck of the woods. Raggio Custom Calls is his like duck call, Like these coutour duck calls, they're like art, They're amazing. That's first time anyone's ever used that word on this podcast. I've never even heard that word. Which it's like you'd be like, um uh, what will be a co tour brand? I don't know, like a like a high end designer, beautiful boogie, one of a kindre made for you custom could Um, I don't know. I think like in my mind, I feel it would be applied to like handbags, right, like very expensive hand isn't the handbag? And there's Juicy co Tour, right, there's Juicy Coe Tour which is like, oh you t you are? Yeah, what is juicy co tour being not co tour? Right? That's being juicy trashy. You said it, not me. What's funny about you making the comparison to handbags is her and I were talking about Raggio custom calls earlier and I said they are like handbags for dudes. He did say that, He did say that. But but so I met Raggio at a Duck's Unlimited banquet back when I was first getting started, and I'm like, hey, I'll just throw up a table and go talk to people about hearing protection at this du banquet. Oh no, no, backup, because is this still how we met? Yeah? Okay, so so that's how you got tied into the call? Yeah, the flow, You're laid out the flow. I'm at the Duck call guy at the d U banquet and how do you want the du banquet? Because I had started this little ODO pro business and people were interested, and I was like, well, I'll just go set up a little table and talk to people that come to the Ducks and Limited banquet and did you bring your little squirt gun and everything? For doing them? Absolutely? And I did it right there in the middle of the banquet, and so does. She takes a cock gun sticks that thing where it has no business going. It's like on my Instagram, I'm gonna put a picture up where someone took a video of it happening to me, and I'm gonna make a screen grab of the point where it got to where she wants it to be. To start filling your ear full of cock to get an impression. But I don't know if you're encouraging people to come to me, because let me tell you something. I a while ago, I don't want name names, but while I go Yanny and I had the opportunity to get some name and name no, I mean, I can eat your name who you were somewhere. They didn't do that. They didn't do the deep dive. It's like getting a COVID test for your ear. Yeah, I was gonna say, if you had one of the early COVID tests where it felt like they were tickling your brain through your nose, that's grace. This is similar to that, but through your ear. Now she gets deep. She's taken a deep she puts in a what is that ship? What are you? What are you putting in there? It's like a two part of POxy type goes in soft way couple minutes, pulls out it like makes a impression, makes a very detail impression, but she likes to the impression is it's deep. Yeah, it's deep, and it needs to go past the bend of your the second bend of your ear canal, because I want to make sure we're not shooting the sound right into your ear canal wall. I want to I want to point that sound right to your ear drum, and it's actually more comfortable and if you go run around, it stays in. Explain that more. I think you just said something that makes sense to me because we've been having this conversation. If someone's listening is like, what are they talking? What are you saying when you're saying I want to shoot that sound, not just that you're your ear canal wall, so you're most human ears have two bends. There's a first bend where it curves around, and then there's a second bend, which is why you don't want to put que tips in there, because you're pushing stuff around the second bend. That's where it builds up and that's where I get the Q tip needs to hire a better lobby, dude. People beat up on q tips, but there's still que tips. They're still qute tips. I use them with my to put some makeup on. What about using hydrogen peroxide? That's okay, that's good as long as you don't have a hole in your ear drum or anything, because I could get that, but it works. Have you ever done that? You put hydrogen peroxide in your ear, it bubbles up and they just basically then you take a syringe and squirt some water in there and flushes everything out. Man, I go careful. I go down periodically and have these chunks that ship that looks like the end of a pencil eraser. About that hard? What are you saying? Oh? But to this point? So um, you know, if if I don't accommodate the bins of your ear canal by by making a really deep impression and getting that full picture, then the sound is going to come through the ear plug. You mean the sound that you want to come in, right, It's going to come through the ear plug. And then if if the ear plug dead ends into your ear canal wall, that's not gonna sound very good. That's like putting a speaker and facing it toward the wall. You gotta back up because I feel like people might be confused you were fitting us for hearing protection that it's like, uh, it's it's flushed to your ear. The ones what are these call that I have? Those are the sound gear Phantom. It made a mold, but they're like little headphones but ear plugs, but ear plugs. When you say the sound you're talking about, that you can turn it on and control it with your phone and turn the volume up so that you can converse and be like, hey, here comes some talks at ten o'clock. And there's lots of different products. I mean, one thing I definitely want your listenership to know is that I'm by no means bound to one brander manufacturer. The big backpack full of full of loot I brought for you guys, there were like four different companies represented in that bag, So I'm not doing like a big push for one product specifically. In fact, you know, I want a bunch of you guys to try this product and then if it's not doing everything you wanted to do, let's swap it out and try something else. I mean, Otto pro is basically like an expert brokerage and customer service agency for your hearing long term. So like you have the sound gear FANTOM, if something breaks, you don't have to call that eight hundred number. You shoot me a text or an email, and myself or maybe Jennifer or somebody else on the team is going to reach out and be like, what's going on. I'll email you a prepaid UPS label. We'll get it turned around SAP. So it's out. O pro is built on a customer service basis where I am researching the globe for the coolest, best product. I brought a couple of things for you guys to try that aren't even rated in the US system for noise reduction yet, but I think they're pretty promising and you might really like them. How often do you go do like you did for our for us here? How often do you all to a place in Man? I've been to some cool places, and in reading your book, I kept thinking about this one really cool place where parents are raising their kids, like ideally, But anyway, I've traveled with some of the coolest gun clubs, shooting clubs, UM groups will call me, and of course I do some quick back of the Napkin math and I'm like, hey, do you have at least this many people interested? You know, I need a minimum sales amount to justify travel. Is it all gun people or is it other people to know it's it's guns, it's shooting, but it's also motorcycles. Music. I work with a lot of musicians because of my training in Nashville, I've got a lot of experience with in your monitors, and I can build out different cool products, Like for one of your camera guys, I've built out basically a dual driver in your monitor that can plug into his camera, but then also putting Matt gag. I didn't say it right. So also because that's one thing you've seen drive camera guys nuts going through the woods with the wires. Yeah, so like three all their bushes back. You know, that's in like this other product I made for you that has this specils she filter in it. I put that into his product as well, so that he can hear what you're saying in real life. He can hear leaves rustling, but then he's also plugged into his camera. You have to make a product called the camera dude. Let's call it the camera dude. I mean this is something that I'm just working with with my manufacturer to just custom build cool things. And then uh, and then I was complaining. Another thing that prompted us to have you come on talk about your services is I was saying how I had just gone to order a good swim ear plug and when I'm after to swim, anyone that suffers from where you you spend time in the water and then you have water your ear and it drives you little bonkers, or I've had and it's ever happened to people, But someone like kicks a fin close to your head or does a fast movement close to your head and pushes a wall of water, it's painful. Well, in your ear canals are quite bendy, as we found out with your Emerald impression process, so water can get trapped back there harder for it to run back. So I went online and bought some kind of like Joe Blow nineteen dollar thing and it made a big difference. But every time I get out of water, I'm missing one or both of them, and I would just tie them to the back of my mask and so I'd usually like recover them somehow, but they would never were they were when I started but I was having positive like I was. You call it body surfing my kids, right, and I had them in and UM made a big difference because I'm a really scared to do that kind of stuff because that sort of thing gets water my ears. But you made me a souped up one of those, and they're corded. And and now that I've got your ears molded in a digital file of that, if Heaven forbid you lose them, you just shoot me a message and I'll get you another set made, I don't have to mold your ears again, So that's nice. But you know one thing, you know, these custom products. I'm a big believer in custom for hearing protection, not just for comfort, but to achieve that perfect acoustic seal because any air leakage the sound waves can travel through. So to really protect you, I want you and custom ideally. But I also recognize that an entry price point of a couple of hundred bucks is not accessible to a lot of people. So one thing that I really took into account after meeting with you guys back here in March, I started really thinking, like, how do I create something that can be more accessible? You know, we said my job is to give you the most realistic tools that you'll actually wear. I'm not going to convince you to not shoot or hunt, nor do I want to, And you're not going to wear a full body armor to like have ideal hearing protection. So I started thinking, and I decided I can put these filters that are in this product I made for you where you can hear soft medium sounds great and then it blocks the blast of the gun. But those are out the door some odd bucks. I'm going to take that exact filter. This is going to be available beginning next month on my website, and I'm putting those into multiple size triple flange sleeves to make a universal fit version that's just fifty bucks, and then they're big. Plus they are upgradeable to custom later, so you could go to my website and you could order a custom fit sleeve later if you want to. If you want to save up, somebody get it. How do you get it molded? So I send that kit in the mail. No, no, because you can't do it yourself like I did it on you. So I've got this growing network right now, We're up to about a hundred and sixty providers across the country. And we're sourcing new clinics daily where I work with local audiologists to you down the street from wherever you live, and I talk with them, develop a relationship so that they know exactly how I want that molding process done, so we can communicate. You can check out on the website and then I send you the UPS label and facilitate that whole appointment locally for you to get your ears molden. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to get nice customs, which I now have owned for two hours. Um, I'm extremely lazy. I've gotten to the point where I'll go to the range and bring headphones, but I just won't do it. Maybe duck hunting. If I know it's gonna be a stellar day, I'll do it. But it still drives me nuts and I'll put headphones on. I've never found something that inspires me to do it. And my buddy Cal got some he said once he had him, and he's like, man, all that hassle, I'm definitely gonna wear him now like that like some pragmatics. Yeah, now he's now. Anytime you do anything with Cal, he's got those things hanging around his neck and he sticks him in and I just won't do it. And last year Garrett there did. He's got a little what's it called big, he had a big bastard bastard break on, that fat bastard break on shot three times. I kept thinking he was done shooting, and he kept shooting. Were like to I think I think it echoed off that pine tree. And I was sitting too close to you, and I didn't want to plug my ears because look at through my binocular. We both had our ear pro just sitting on our backpacks, you know, But it was typical thing. You're like, oh, we gotta move now, like we don't have time to put this in, and and you know, as I'm as, I'm like, I now consider myself your personal hearing coach. So you're here, we go. But as I'm as I'm talking to you guys, I'm really going to encourage you to try to wear these as much as you can, just to get used to them so that when you put them on and you're in the moment and you're in the hunt and you need to focus, I don't want you to have to remember in that moment, oh, I gotta put my ears in before I shoot because you're not going to remember. I'm committed to changing it because when I do, I've done two hearing tests. Each time I do a hearing test, the person conducting the hearing test says I'm a left handed shooter. I'll point out they say that in your right ear, which makes sense because that's the one tip towards the muzzle that I have hearing damage in my right ear. That is the type of hearing damage associated with like loud noises. So I know that I've whacked out my own ear. Yeah, absolutely, And I know that other people hear gobbles better than I do, a lot better. Well, I'll be to see, like you know, I'm I've thrown this this really high end technology at you guys to try as a starting point, but you might find that if you don't want to have to remember to charge something, then that's something we're gonna be talking about, like how these different features work for you, because I might need to swap it out for a simpler battery operated version, or you know, there's it's not a one size fits at Like you know, I don't want these listeners to be like, oh, I want whatever Chester has, or I want whatever Steve has because different people are gonna have different adoption rates for different technologies. I got an apology I gotta make to you. Okay, I want to mind read on the right. Do you remember this? And I said, because it'll be like I'm a boat red right returning. Do you know how's wrong? It's right. It's red right from the person looking at its stage right versus so your boat. If I'm the boat, the red is being my left and then you're looking at me and you think right. That's one of those situations where ignorance is bliss. Steve, just go with red right right. One of mine is red ones blue. I look, I'm like red right. I put that in my ear, and I know the other one that was red right too. Yeah. A lot of you guys did red blue. A lot of them did orange. I just did. There's you. I think you can't physically put the right one in the left ear. I mean you're gonna Yeah, that's so stupid. He did both red. I'll tell you why. Guy's never gonna figure it out. Tell you why. I lose things a lot, and I just wanted two things that I could see. I feel like the red sticks out a little more than the blue. Well, you're gonna be fiddling around by the time you get those in, the animals gonna be gone. You can just look and be like, oh, that one's right, that one's left. That might be a product you want to work into your fifty version, because the one I used to use a lot as a guide as I had those Howard light Um the band that would just sit on my neck and they're just those little foamies and then in the moment you can just you know, pop them in real quick. Anotherbody of mine has the little folmies that are on the cord and he ties them into his sunglasses that are He's always wearing them into the little flies. No. I mean, if if that's all you have, that can protect you really well, but it's just nobody wears them correctly. If I see someone wearing phonies correctly, it's like I want to go give him a high five. Listen, I've been preaching and carrying on your message about foamies since we last hung out. I bet you I've thinking at least a dozen people how to properly insert a phoney. Now, I love that because truly, at the end of the day, when people contact me through my website or social whatever. And if they're just not going to purchase anything else, then you know what, I'll at least show you how to wear foami or plugs correctly, and then eventually, when you're ready, you're going to come back and we'll work something out. But like my job is to help people protect their hearing. Everybody a hot tip right now, help him out there. You're gonna pull up that foamire plug to be just as narrow and skinny as you can tight tight. You're gonna pull back on the on the back of your ear to straighten out your ear canal, and then put it in just as far as you can stand it. You should like cough or not, because you would never do that with a Q tip. But you do that, you're wondering, like will I be able to grab the tip of it to pull it back? Will you will know? But in thou But the thing is, you got to be patient. You can't just let go real quick. You gotta hold it in that position to let it fully expand so that'll stay put. Because with those foamies, as you move your jaw around as you mount your gun, you're moving your head around it's gonna wiggle its way out. It's constantly kind of moving in there. It's amazing the difference when you do it right, that is how I used to do it. Yeah, yeah, well yeah, I always do it in the way that since I take one step, it's gone. The only the only problem with that is you do not have enough time to put those in in most applications in hunting, unless you're like duck hunting. You can like plan ahead, but you don't want to blow a duck call in solid ear plugs, right, I mean, Shawn like that you can't tell what's going on. Well, yeah, you want to be able to hear your duck call. And so even with these electronics where I get the I get the best response from my duck hunters with these electronics because they can still here. Because they can still here. But you still have to practice. Like some of my best duck calling clients have coached people to record themselves calling with and without the hearing protection in because we talked about this a little bit earlier. It's almost like a musical instrument. Um, I can play my eighth grade piano recital piece from just muscle memory, but if I'm learning a new song, it's auditory. You know, you're really paying attention to how it sounds. And with a lot of duck callers, it's a mix of those two things, and so you're you really need to get the muscle memory part down so that meanwhile you're still going to hear it through the ear plugs. It's not it's never going to sound the same. And that's a I mean, that's something that that was a way that I got to be, not just like a tall herbal or decent duck caller, but to get to be a real advanced duck caller is to record yourself and hear yourself from a different perspective, because it's never the same as how it sounds right here. The same thing with playing music. Yeah, yeah, you gotta record yourself into it back. And by the way, duck calls can get up to twenty decibles. So when you talk about you can damage your ears blown a duck call, absolutely sure I have. I mean, I think duck duck hunters are some of the most at risk because you are you're down in those sometimes like a metal pit blind you're blowing duck calls and then you're shooting a lot and somebody's all of a sudden shooting over your head close to somebody. Yeah, tell us how bad my hearing is and how good sets hearing? All right, you're hearing. We did a quick test before the podcast started. I'm not going to say I was surprised by your hearing test results though, honestly, I mean you've you've got a forty four year old that's done some shooting, some construction. All right, I'll show everyone. All right, this is honest is hearing tests. Uh, we're just going to assume that you've signed all the Hippo releases and I can talk about your medical hearing on the on the podcast, But you want everything to be above that black horizontal line you see there. And this this is this is an audiogram. It's arranged from left to right based to trouble like a piano keyboard. Top of the graph is really soft sounds, and then it gets louder and louder as you move down the graph. So these are your hearing thresholds. The softest sounds that you could detect were present. And so you can see in your left ear, which is blue in some of these higher pitches down his shooting ear is way down and the high yeah, and we would call this a noise notch from shooting, where like the those are the hair cells that we talked about earlier that have been the most damaged, and you've got some that's so wrong you might have to edit that out. That was so wrong. Um, you don't even try to be politically interesting. Goes back up like that's the that's the notch components. So a lot of times with with a with a blast, or like if a musician has like a big feedback exposure, it'll present as a notch where yeah, yeah, and you'll see a little bit of the left one is worse than the right. The left is worse, just barely breaks the lines. That should be a way where you can prove how much shooting you do. All right, this is seth. Look at that word he hears those gobbles beautiful dares where I hear the gobbles Where that one goes up like you wouldn't believe. I mean, he has excellent hearing and he's that jumpy, so he doesn't do false alarms. Is he younger than everybody? Let me ester, can you will you be able to send us those pictures? I can send them to you for sure, Chester, you're doing pretty good too. Everything's above the line. Left and right here are about the same. You can hear a wallet. Was I the closest to set? I think I was probably Sean, you're good too, I mean, you're look at that. I was really surprised by here. He is always acting like he hunts a lot of ducks. But the figures, did he honest go lower than I did? Then Garrett's got a bad shooting. Do let me see here? Hold on a sec Scarrett, Oh, yours is pretty bad. There's Garrett left here left ear down that body. That's a three gun shooter for you. Yeah, that's a that's that's like an AD. Yeah, that's an AD for muzzle brakes. Man. You're right here still looks really good, and you just want to make sure you protect what you've got, you know, like you can you can hold this steady if you can be really intentional out. But that shouldn't be only directed at Garrett and I just because we're already at a sad pointing. Those that have great hearing should be even more. We're all about, like I want to prevent and delay the problems that I spent so many years treating clinically because it is so preventable, and so much of the medical communities, like OH treat early with hearing aids. Hearing aids earlier. Well, I mean, the hearing aid industry is what it is. I say, move away, get out from under the dollar signs of the hearing it industry. If we want to be the hearing healthcare experts, we got to go to where people are, get out in front of the problem, start the relationship with an audiologist and a hearing care professional before the problem starts. As I was saying, where is your graph? Here's the thing. Did you want to finish the test? He did? I think he cheated. I think he cheated the system. This this this because I did better on that than I did on my other two hearing tests, which your other two hearing tests. It sounds like we're in the legit sound booth, the full diagnostic hearing test. And they were alarmed. They were just saying, you have some What I brought you, guys, is a hearing screening tool that's built into a headset. And while it does a very good job and I've seen some good consistent results, it's not as as definitive as what's going to be in a sound booth. Just as you say you can't trust a skinny chef, I don't think you could trust like someone in the hunting industry and it doesn't have some hearing laws. Ah, I'll leave it at that. You're very then you're very trustworthy. As I was saying, you're never going to invite me back, because no, no, no, you come back the minute you make the turkey gobbl thing. He's just mad at me. Now I'm just mad at Yanni. You've been great, You're gonna make the turkey gobbl thing. I just wanted to clarify a point I have like nothing in the game here. You came to provide a service to equip us with the hearing protection friend of a friend of a friend introduced. Yeah. I learned so much and liked it. I have concern for other shooters. I know how frustrating is to not hear gobbles when other people can hear the gobbles or elk bugles, what have you? And uh, I feel like people should um because you're you know, you're fun to hang out with, you know all the terminology, you've got the product line. People should call up and get some freaking ear plugs. Thank you. I appreciate that Pro Technologies dot Com. Grace something or another, Grace stirred of it, stirred of it, stirred events. Just call me Grace Score. My parents will appreciate it. Whose maiden name was Grace Score. My maiden name was Gray Score. Grace stirred event. You can call me otto pro Grace, Grace. I'll go. I'll be like share from man. Just call me Grace is Tennessee, Hey, not that long ago two thousand seven seven? Oh sorry, someone said I thought, how old you think? I don't answer that. No, we're talking about ninety was one that eellows don't peaked. Apparently I need to up my skincare regime already. I want to say it, but it's already happen to you call it. No, I really appreciate you guys having me. Never did I dream when I started this little business at my kitchen table in that I'd be sitting here with a national audience in this big network. And actually, I truly believe that I'm helping to change the conversation about hearing protection. So thank you to close. Yanni hit him with a far off bugle, wanna be able to hear that. Get some earplugs. You gotta reply. Can I give you something to read on the air. I think it's a great closing, very short. That's Phil at this point, Phil, all right. This is Jennifer who works with Otto Pro. She's our client coordinator. Hers on one of those kind of papers. Her son is such a huge fan of all of you guys. He knows all your names. He was so just I mean, he couldn't believe that I was coming here, and he went by their house to pick up something, handed me this to give to you, and I thought it was so well written. Okay, I'm reading from one of these pieces of papers. The piece of paper, kids, get where it's got all the lines so you can make your penmanship perfect. Dear Mr Steve Alex guy already. I love your TV shows. My favorite shows about bow fishing. I have never done that, but I hope I get to do that one day. I like to hunt and fish so I can be like my dad and grandfather. Listen to Miss Grace, so you can keep teaching me a few things. Keep keep teaching me new things. That's great. From Liam Stewart Age seven, and he included his address. Yes you want to send him a book, the line about listen to Miss Grace so you can keep teaching me. I think that's pretty sweet. All right, guys, thank you for tuning in. Thank you