The MeatEater PodcastThe MeatEater Podcast

Ep. 457: A Violent Game of Chess with Derek Wolfe

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Published Jul 10, 2023, 9:00 AM

Steve Rinella talks with Derek Wolfe, Bill Vanderheyden, Randall Williams, Spencer Neuharth, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.

Topics include: Elon vs. Zuckerberg; sacking Tom Brady; a fine for farting; putting an arrow into the monster cat; Derek's sports show The Drive, The Wolfe Untamed Podcast, and his new hunting show; the Phil Cam; Iron Will broadheads in the MeatEater store; Bill's tank of a black bear; the smell of the beetle cleaning room; arrow flight experiments and fishtailing; less drag with little ripples; Hooter Shooters; Michelle Bebber’s publication on the artistic merit of Clovis points; single vs. double bevel; the world's greatest lecture; howling for Wolfe; how low your chances are of fulfilling a childhood dream; when Steve passed out during the birth of his first child; confusing who the conservationists are; the inordinately complicated regulations around mountain lion hunting; what happened when there were no limits; and more.

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If this is the meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.

Listening toast, you can't predict anything.

Presented by First Light creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt, first Light, go farther, stay longer. You listeners are coming in late to a conversation. But I was just fixing to tell Chester here on the subject of finding arrowheads my kids had Did I tell you about this? They were a mess with the metal detector.

No, you didn't.

And they struck some metal with that metal detector, and on the way digging down to the metal found a piece of bit, big worked piece of black obsidian, and in their heads it detexts that. And I was trying to like, no, this is coincidence. We were something it want to be in an old hunk of barber wire fence. Was this in your yard? What's that? Where did this happen at?

Oh?

No, no, no, open the mountains out. Yeah, I want to be an old But here's here's the weird deal. That fencing was lower than it.

That's pretty wild.

It got worked. I don't know. Yeah, beautiful piece of worked black obsidian. Like how big about like the size of your film.

That little pocket. If I think it's the same place.

It's not the same.

Okay, well where we were it's loaded with flakes chips obviously, arrowheads stay out.

Of there, we will real quick. Who are you guys rooting for? On the when? Who guys rooting for? Between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Oh this is I've been talking about this a lot. I do a sports radio show and we talk about this.

On not not who's gonna well, I want to know who's gonna win, but who you're rooting for?

See, I'm rooting for Elon, but I think Zuck has just like a sociopath psychopath kind of So you know, he's one jiu jitsu tournaments already.

So well, I don't know how how much does either of him?

Way, Uh, well, Elon's definitely heavier than Zuck, so he's gonna have to cut if it's really gonna happen, I think. But you know, if you saw Elon's tweet, he said that his his main move is the walrus. He just lays on you See, I.

Don't use I don't like I don't even know why I'm rock but I don't know why because there's nothing he's involved in the interest me. I don't use Twitter, I have zero interest in Mars. I will never buy a Teslatle electric car. I've bought like a thing on PayPal in the last ten years going on Starlink that I would get in. Yes, Starlink, I like him.

Starlink is my favorite.

I don't know why I'm rooting for him so bad.

I just I just something about Facebook is just evil to me.

Yeah, you know Instagram, which I think you use daily. I do use that, but I don't think that my access to that if he gets whooped, it just that doesn't even matter that much to me, you know it is, I use one of his products. But you know what the problem my problem is is, uh remember that movie about Facebook Social painted like a very unflattering perspective. That that for me is that's that that's the story, Like yeah, yeah, and so you know, and I just have I have a friendlier. I have a friendlier. Yeah, I just like Elon Musk. I don't know the guy at all. Joy to day by.

That's so random.

I'm not spent on my mind. Man, we're not about what gonna talk to you.

I thought the I thought the fight was already called off.

No, no, I know they're trying to make it. No, you're thinking of progos ands. Uh, there is, there is, there's something.

There was something in the news about how Elon.

Came out and said my mother asked me not to fight, and.

So really yeah, see, I thought you were confused about the in.

This fight get the group and.

I've been I've been reading equal amounts about both.

Oh yeah, I talk about short lived coop. Yeah that so fast.

Nothing happened.

I know I could. I could like woke up in the morning like expecting, you know, the Kremlin, you know, and he's like, we've justed to just go home. I was like, man, the guys, I like that works.

He's a hot ruck, he's a hot tug vendor.

Yeah it works that way. Well way you go. Yeah, I know. But you know. Humble Origins joined today by former Denver Broncos defensive end Derek Wolf, who sacked I mean, how times if people point this out that you sacked Tom Brady, Price sacked all kinds of I.

Got Tom Brady. I sacked him the most though, he's the quarterback that I got to the most.

Here's my here's my first question for you. We're gonna come back to this more when if you talk to I don't want to. I'm not trying to equate military service, which I have no experience into athletic which I have no experience in. But uhle say continue, okay, if you talk to him. To military uh professionals, you're striving toward a like a dispassionate approach, meaning if you're going to like raid bin Laden's compound, you take the same mental attitude is all of the other dozens or hundreds of rage you'd been on, right, do you know what I mean? Like, like, yeah, you're aware, but when it comes to doing it, it's just that's out of your head.

Yeah, it doesn't matter who it is.

Yep.

It's like it's the guy with the ball, seatball, get ball.

Yep.

Like that's that's it's simple.

So but in your mind, are you like I am gonna I have the potential right now to sack this guy that people.

Say it's not how it doesn't You don't even care. You don't try harder because when you're out there, everybody's on an equal playing level, like everybody's on the same level. Like it just you don't think like that, You don't think like all is Tom Brady really just just you know, And I was maybe I'm different because when I first got drafted by Denver, Peyton Manning was my quarterback, so I had a relationship with Peyton Manning right away. So I wasn't like starstruck, you know what I mean. And then my first sack in the first game was against Ben Roethlisberg.

You know, it's like.

Guys you get nervous when you sack them.

Well, guys get seriously guys kind of get like that sometimes where they're like.

They get starstruck about a player.

Well they as I got older, like in my fourth season, I'd seen the rookie rookies come in and they'd see Peyton and they'd be like and then not realize that he's just like a normal guy that you know, drinks bud heavy and plays football and you.

Know, he's just a normal guy.

He'll sit down at breakfast to have a conversation with you about whatever.

He's just that kind of guy.

And Tom Brady's the same way as a competitor, you know, what I mean out there on the field, Like if you get him and make a good play, he'll tell you, like a good play, you know, oh really yeah, he'd like, oh that was a good play. You got me on that one. You know that was like he bat one of his passes. He'll lose his mind.

You know.

Quarterbacks hate that when he like bat passes, block balls and stuff like that. But you know, he's just a great competitor. Probably the best competitor I ever played against, honestly, because you could you know, AFC Championship game in twenty fifteen, the first series of the game, I buried him and this is when you can still land on the quarterback. And I buried him, like put all three hundred pounds on him and just buried him into the ground. And he just that's people forget how tough he really was. Like he jumped right back up like it was nothing, and I heard the wind leave him, you know, you know, And it was like the first like I think it was a third play of the game. And we ended up hitting him twenty seven times in that game. Oh so he got buried twenty seven times and he still almost came back and beat us.

They made a rule that you're not supposed to land on the quarterback? Yeah, what are you supposed to land on your elbow?

Oh?

They want you to like do everything you can so you can't hit him below the knees, you can't touch his head at all, don't even like graze his head, and you can't hit him with your own head. You can't grab him and whip him to the ground, dude, So it's got to be So.

It changed everything. It made it a lot harder to tackle him. So it's like you're like playing in the yard with your kids.

Well you like it, Yeah, it's like pick him up, Like, I don't know. So the first year they implemented them set him down. The first year they implemented that role. This is little off. So the first year they implement that. Ever, I missed like seven opportunities to have a sack, right, and these are you know this we could talk about because you're nervous. Well it's not even that. It's just that like, yeah, you're nervous because the fine, So I'm saying, like you're nervous breaking it's a fifteen to twenty five thousand dollars fine when you get those rough in the passer calls.

That comes out of whose pocket?

Mine?

Really?

Yeah, a pre tax too, and they're already taxing you. I'm already paying fifty percent. You know, I'm already paying half of my money to the gut to Uncle Sam. And then the you know, the league is like, oh, by the way, you had a penalty. So here's a fifteen thousand dollars fine that just shows up in your locker and you never you don't even write to check. They just take it out of your paycheck. It's crazy. So the first year of the implementary.

Watching football, they don't have the They don't like put that like.

No, no, like you Oh how many fines is he paid? You can find for all kinds of stuff. We had a guy that you know, weight finds it's a thousand dollars a pound.

What's that mean?

When you're when you you have a you have a weight that you're supposed to be at, and if you're over or under that weight, it's a thousand bucks a pound.

How precise is the weight?

It depends?

Oh why does the band so?

Underweight is usually like forgivable. But when you're overweight, that's when they start hitting you. Like if you'd one to two pounds over, they.

Might warn the band you're supposed to land in.

So all right, So for example, we had a guy that his his report his report weight was three hundred and thirty pounds. He's showed up at four of like four fifteen at training camp, and over that season he got fined three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars.

It takes body body shame into a whole new level.

Right, yeah, yeah, so you gotta every Friday.

Body shaming is that by the NFL or by the team that's by the team.

Didn't Von Miller famously get fined for farting in like a film session too?

Oh yeah, that was it. Yeah, So that's like a that it's like a position group thing. So every position group in their room. So we always had it was one hundred. It was a five hundred dollars fine for farting. We just the fun thing about those ones, are you guys self please?

Yeah?

Oh yeah, because.

You wouldn't like, well, you're plus one hundred for snitching. So if I catch somebody far like hey it was him, it was I got a hard bucks.

This right here is one of the many reasons I didn't become a professional football player.

But it's simply just get up and walk out and fart, you know what I mean. So the funny thing about Vaughn is Vaughn ended up bringing you know that fart spray. Yeah, he'd bring that fart spray and spray and just everybody would lose. Like it just cleared the whole room out for a couple hours. But yeah, the fun thing about those finds, those room finds, like the position finds, we get to take that money at the end of the year and go do something for ourselves with it, like as a group, you know, go to like a big dinner, go like go to Vegas or something. Cheese, go to Chuck e Cheese, Urban Air, do some trampolines, you know, all kinds of cool stuff you could do with it. But yeah, but the landing on the quarterback thing, it made it. I remember when the referees come in, they come in during training camp and explain the new rules, and they started talking about this and we were like, well, then, how are we supposed to tackle him to the ground? And the refs were like, I don't know, that's what they said. They said, we don't know, figure it out. Just don't land on him. If you land on him, we will throw the flag, like no matter what if your body lands on top of his. And there we were like, well what if we like sprawl out like you know what I mean, it's like sprang and like you know, it doesn't matter if you land on him, it's over.

And then so you're doing like a plank over him.

Yeah, so basically what they want you to do is like pick him up and like fall on your back with him on top of you.

That's kind of what they want.

And what was happening is I get the guys wrapped up and the go to spin them and they just throw the ball away. So I'm like, I'm missing all these sacks because I can't like bury the guy. And then it then you that's the other thing. The more you have to think out there, the slower you are and you miss opportunities and stuff like that. So yeah, it's a stupid role that is changing games.

And you see it.

Now where guys are You're like, how is that a roughing the passers? Because you can't land on the guy and it's insane. And then you can't you can't touch his You can't graze his helmet, Like, don't even graze it.

That's a fifteen yard flag.

Peyton Manning strikes me as a millerte guy. You said he drinks Budweiser.

Really he's what he's a hunter?

Oh yeah, sure, but that that doesn't mean that he uh no, he's exclusive to Budweiser.

He strikes you like a light beer if I had if.

I looked at Peyton Manning, knowing what I know about Peyton Manning, but like he drinks Miller Light, not Budweiser, Bud heavies.

Okay, Oh you don't mean because of I've had enough current events for.

Today, not even not even related to that. Just he looks like he'd be in a Miller Light ad.

Derrek Wolf came out just just for listeners. Uh, Derek Wolf was heavy duty on our radar and uh we even wrote a bottom, wrote a bottom at our website on the meter dot com because he got in one of those uh, one of those things that happens six times a year where a person well known in one sphere of the world goes hunting and then they uh and then they pay the price on social media with all the uproar and death threats. In your case, you did a mountain lion hunt, no.

Poaching, no, everything was by the book. Man, I did everything by the book. It wasn't even a paid like outfitting hunt. It was like a buddy of mine that runs hounds and was like, I said, hey, if you ever have an opening and you want to go, hit me up, like I'm just we can go forty five minutes outside the city and chase lions.

You know.

So this is actually my second time having PETA and TMC and all them guys on my butt, you know, over over hunting because I I went to New Mexico and did a bison hunt with my bow.

Oh they got him riled up, and that got them all rolled up. And what riled them up really.

Was the picture I posted because it was a perfect heart shot. So when we get when we opened that animal up, my ear was still buried in its heart. So I pulled the heart out, and I was.

Like, they didn't like that.

None.

They didn't like that. They didn't like that at all. So they made a big deal.

But they're like buffalo or they're going extinct. I'm like, they're not. Come on, no, they're not. They just people don't know.

It's so beside the point, like any kind of reality, so beside the point. It was funny is we could do that kind of stuff. Well, in fact, do do that kind of stuff all day long. But it's just like people don't like being surprised. They know someone somewhere and they don't like seeing that that. They don't like seeing that raw edge in them. Yeah, surprises them. Yeah, like if you're like famous for something, if you're like an attractive young lady, they're just not gonna like it.

Well, it's like, are you surprised I told Philip Rivers I was gonna eat his children? Like you're surprised that I'm out bow hunting?

You'd have to be hungry, yes, yeah, but.

That's I mean, that's another story that was That was That was hilarious when I said that to him, because he talked a lot of smack, you know, Phil did. But but with the lion hunt, the way it went down, man, it was. It was my buddy Alex Nessa, he runs hounds, and he was like, Hey, tomorrow we're getting in front, We're going to fresh now tonight.

You know, be on call.

I'll call you if we find When I said, listen, i'll be at your house at five thirty, we're gonna go out and do something regardless.

So he's like, all right, cool.

So I show up and we started, you know, trying to cut tracks, just driving back roads, and then found a couple of smaller tracks, nothing really worth chasing. A couple of females, a couple of cubs, a couple of smaller males, and which are really after is this big toms? Because the big toms are like, they're killing a lot of deer, they're killing a lot of elk, they're killing a lot of sheep, they're killing dogs, they're killing other cubs to get the females back in the heat, just like bears do, and bigger, and they're just bigger and cooler and harder to get.

So we cut this.

We come across this track and it was kind of going back and forth from up under the underneath this guy's cabin. It's going from from his cabin porch to under this tree. So we go over and look onder the tree. There's a half feet meal deer under there, big four by four, and we're like, oh, this is the one.

You know, his track was huge. I couldn't believe. I was like, I was like, these.

Things are out here roaming around just in you know, people's neighborhoods. Pretty it's not like a it's a mountain neighborhood, you know what those neighborhoods look like. But still it's a neighborhood. So so there's public land all around, but where the line had went.

Through, it was private.

So we had to get permis from this guy so we could go through there and and cut his tracks. So we're just like kind of hoping that this guy's not an anti hunter and is down for it.

Uh.

So we went up and kind of knocked. It was like six in the morning at this point, so I just kind of tapped on the door, and we're like, wow, hey, there's a line out here. You know, I don't want to do that, so I just kind of tapped on the door and he didn't answer. Nobody came to the door. I didn't see the lights on, so I was like, maybe he's just not a home. But there was a truck in the driveway, so I assumed somebody was home. So we left and we were trying to find a phone number to call this guy. On and with you know, with Google and with you know, all these online maps, now you can kind of figure out who owns what property. And we were able to get some of the neighbor's numbers, and we started hearing stories about how many lions are actually in this area causing wreaking havoc like this. One woman was talking about how last year a couple of dogs got eaten and her dog, her dogs are being harassed every night. She's afraid to leave her house at night because there's a line that comes up and looks in her window and just stares at stares in the window at her little dogs.

Pervert.

Yeah, like this little pervert lion, you know, yeah, peeping.

That was good, doctor Randall. We need a little scorecard. Yeah, but I think this podcast Randall.

But we turns out that that's like a dude ranch where this guy it's like the ranch manager. The guy lives there on this dude ranch. So, uh, we couldn't get a hold of anybody that owned the dude ranch. So finally we drive We just were like, let's drive down and see if we can get around his property and try to catch the tracks, which is gonna it's gonna suck because the hiking is like straight up and down. It's straight cliffs, two feet of fresh snow. It's going to be kind of miserable regardless. So we're like, well, you know, it's going to take us three miles out of our way, but you know, if we want to get him, we got to go now. So we started driving down and here comes the guy out of his out of his house, kind of waving at us. He's like, hey, you guys lying hunters and we're like yeah, and he was like, you see these tracks going across my Arner said, dude, we've been trying to get a hold of you for two hours.

And he's like, oh, is that you guys on the porch?

I said yeah. He's like, oh, I thought it was that lion.

So he thought the lion because he said he's like, there's this big line that keeps coming up onto my porch and looking in my windows and so so the track, I mean, the tracks went right by his steps, you know, and he's like, did you see how big those tracks are. We're like, he's like, he's huge. And he's like we're like, you care if we go after him? He's like, please go get him, Please get him out of here. So we so, you know, we jump out, I grab my pack, grab my bow, we let the dogs out, and we just go straight up and we and on the way up, I'm like, I'm starting to slip and slide already, and I'm like, this ain't good. This is going to turn in and I already know what it. Hopefully he's treated at the top of this this mountain already, Like hopefully he was just up there and he's treed already. Well, we get up there, and he wasn't. He goes all the way back down the other the backside. So we started like nine thousand feet or like eighty nine hundred feet and go all the way up to like eleven two.

Or something like that.

Oh really, and then drop back down on the other side, down into a drainage. And then he runs up this drainage. So at this point, I'm you know, I'm almost three hundred pounds out there, and I'm in good shape, but getting through snow and stuff like that, it just takes twice as much energy to get anywhere. So I'm like falling behind already, you know, on the way up, let alone the way down, which was just like might as well just sled down.

I was just going through snow and my skinny ass little body, you'd be loving it.

Oh, I'd be awesome.

I mean switch gears.

I was.

Cutting through that snow like you wouldn't believe.

Man.

By the time I got to the other side of that mountain and was like I gotta I was. I just was falling the tracks, following Alex and the dogs. I was just following their tracks. So by the time I get to to like halfway down that hill, I had to stop because I was like sweating already. I was like starting to like I don't know, I'm starting because I was like, this.

Is gonna be a long day. I already know it.

So I get down and I crawled up through all this dead fall and and uh and the snow at that down in that drain and you know, all rolls down there. It was up to my chest pretty much. So I just started crawling. I just crawled through, and he was like.

And the Lion's cutting across the top of.

It, yeah, so more or less floating on it. Yeah, he's just floating on and the dogs are floating on it. And then Alex is you know, he's not. He's like one hundred and sixty five hundred and sventy five pounds, so he's just kind of floating on it too. But me, every time I take a step, it's just like straight down. So I just started crawling. So I crawled and he keeps. He calls me. He goes, where are you at? And I said, dude, I'm I don't even know where. I can't hear the hounds anymore. I'm way behind you. And he was like, all right, We'll just keep following my tracks. He's like, I think they got him. I think they got him treated now about you know, two miles up here. And I was like, all right, cool, So I keep going and then he.

Calls me again.

He goes, hey, there's a spot where you're gonna see where I turned and went to go up the hill and came back down. Just keep going up the hill when you get there. And I'm like, okay. He calls it a hill. No, it's a it's a straight mountain. And so I just go straight up that mountain, crawl up there. I get to the top and start walking the ridge, following his tracks, and he calls me again. He's like, you gotta you know, he starts freaking out. I don't know if you've ever been onto these hound hunts. Oh, it's chaos. He's he's and in the background I can hear the hounds. He's like, we're gonna lose this line. Where are you at? He's huge, and I was like, dude, I'm coming, like, I'm doing everything I can. I'm going as fast as I can. At this point, I'm cramping. So I'm now my hamstrings, my quads and my forearms and my like rib cage is like starting to cramp up and I can't.

Like your rib cage is cramped.

Yeah, like all those like in here, like all those abdomen muscles are starting to lock up on me. And I'm like, oh, this ain't good. He goes, all right, I'm gonna drop you a pin. Come straight to the pin. I'm like all right, So he drops this pin and I just like hauled down. I just like roll down the mountain pretty much, just sliding and ripping my pants up and falling all over the place. And because I can't stand up and walk, because if I stand up a walk, I just cramp. I'm just like Charlie Horse Charlie Horse, Charlie Horse. And then like I'm like, oh, like, my whole body starts locking up. So I just like, I'm just gonna crawl. So I crawled down backwards down that thing and rolled down it and slid down it as much as I could get to the pen.

It's on the road. I'm like, oh nah, and he I called him.

I was like, dude, you drop me a pin on the road. Are you seriously goes Oh, you're you know, we're screwed now. You're never getting up here.

Oh.

And I was like, wait, He's like, you gotta come all the way back up. He's like, I told you to walk the ridge and drop down on the pin. I said, no, you didn't. You said come straight to the pin. I said, all right, I'm not arguing.

I'm coming.

And this is only like nine hundred yards that I had to go to get to him get or nine hundred feet to get to.

Where he was.

It's been like hours at this point.

Oh yeah, oh.

Yeah, it's yeah, we're four or five hours into this, like like it just took so long to get anywhere. And I look up and I still it's in this cut. So it's a big cut like this, and it's just deadfall everywhere and little cliffs and stuff, and I'm like, all right, here you go. So I just crawled my way up there. It took me about an hour and a half to get to get up there. And I get up there and I hear, you know right, he's got the hounds and he's like, you're almost every buddy, keep coming. Then I turn and look and I look up and there's a lion sitting right above me in a tree doing that.

And I was like, oh man, he's huge.

I was like, I can't believe how biggie is. And I was like, I just shoot him here, and he's like, no, he's gotta fall on you. I was like, I can't move, man, I'm done. And there's a video of me if you look on my Instagram or even on my YouTube channel. He took a veh had his phone out taking a video of me standing up in that moment, and you can see on my face I'm.

Just pale white.

I'm just look like defeated, right, And I'm like I just wouldn't give up, though, So I just kept going and I had to go like ten more yards to get to him, and I just got up and made my way up to him, and he was facing me. The lion was facing straight at me in that tree, so I had to do a frontel on him. And I was like, all right, it's time to send one. And he was like, put it right above this little white spot and I was like, all right, I put it right on that white spot. And he fell out of the tree and I just boom, fell to the ground and I was just like I'm done. I was like, I hope he doesn't come up here because I can't fight back right now. And he's like, all right, give him a minute. And we didn't hear any movement, so he's like, all right, I'm go down there and check it. So he goes down there, he's like, we got a dead lion, you know. He go starts freaking out and he's like, let the hounds come down. So I had to like unhook those and that took me forever because every movement was like and then I start thinking, how am I going to get him out of here? How manna get this line out of here? So I let the dogs go and go down there, and he's like, where, hurry up, get down here, and I'm just like trying to take my time, you know. So I crawl backwards down there. When I say backwards, I'm on my hands and knees, crawling backwards down the hill, slipping, sliding down, you know, and grabbing trees to hold me. And finally we get to it, and I couldn't believe how big he was. Could not believe. I was like, this thing could drag me by my neck up a tree if it wanted to. And he goes, we gotta get a picture of this thing. He's like, he's like, set your stuff over here, and let's take a picture of him. And I was like, dude, forget the picture. Man, let's get him out of here. And he's like, no, no, no, he's huge. He's one of the biggest lines I've ever seen. He's been hunting lines for, you know, fifteen years, so he's he knows what he's talking about.

And so I'm like, all right, whatever.

I go to pick this thing up and I grab it around a belly and I lift it up and I'm like, I'm like, dude, this thing is like two hundred pounds. He's like, nah, he's probably like one seventy one sixty five, and I'm like, dude, I know what two hundred pounds feels like. This thing's two hundred plus, telling you, and he's like, yeah, whatever, and I get him up and then he's in the head just like flops right onto my forehead and I'm like, che you know, you can't even see my face and he goes flop his head to the side, so I like like nudge his head over and boomy. That's the picture the famous bitch I snapped that he snapped of me right there, and then I just dropped him and he comes over. Let me feel this thing. He could hardly pick it up. He's like, oh man, he is heavy. So we gutted him out and I just laid him acry. I have a Kafaro Striker XL pack and has like a meat hanger on it, so I just like hung that line across that. So the tail it's eight and a half feet long, so the tail's hanging out one end and the head's hanging out the other end. And there's also a video of me doing that, trying to get over this dead fall, and you can see I'm just like wrecked. He goes heavy, huh, And I'm like yeah, it's heavy. I was like, I pack elk out and everything, you know, put one hundred and fifty hundred and sixty pounds of elk meat, you know, with a skull and antlers, and really don't have a problem. This is like I'm struggling with this. So I did the same thing. He's like, I'm gonna get the dogs down here because it wore out, you know. So he just takes off. He doesn't even help me, he just takes off. So I strapped my boat on my packs, you know, with the lion in there, and get in and I start crawling down backwards with this lion just like dragging on, you know, it's just dragging all over the place.

And I get to this.

I thought I was taking the same path that I took up, but I kind of went the wrong way, and I like I had to get across this little drop off. It was probably ten foot drop off, and I was like, I got to walk across this now. And when I say, I took one step and just foot feet came right out from under me shim. And I was like, I just put my arms across my body and accepted my fate. At that point, I was like, who knows what I'm gonna land on, And luckily I landed like right underneath this tree and it was just soft, and I was just super lucky that I landed right there, because like all around me is deadfall and I could have gotten paled or something.

But I fell off that thing.

And then I had to repack the lion on this slope, you know, I had to repack him in there because he was all it was all screwed up. So I repacked him and I come crawling down out of there. It took me like an hour and a half to get down out of that and finally got him to the truck, sat him on the truck, and was just like, oh god. I was like I can't I can't believe that took six It was like six and a half hours up there, just getting my just getting my butt kicker.

You're like, next time, I'm going to bring some electrolyts, right, Yeah.

Well I did. I mean I drank electrolytes and everything.

But the problem.

The thing is when you get to that altitude, yeah you know what I mean, it's like it just sucks it right out of you, you know. Plus you know it's cold, so you have to have, you know, some cold gear on. So I got a puffy on and and everything, but it wasn't like I couldn't really take it off because then I'm already sweating, so now I'm going to freeze if I take it off. So I just like accepted my fate at that point and we jumped in the truck. And the funny thing was is I I was I was like two hours late for my radio show that I did, sports radio show. I was like two hours late for my show, and They're like, where are you at? And I'm like, I sent him.

A picture of me plug the sh tell people what you do. Yeah.

So it's uh, it's a sports radio show. It's one of four three the Fan. We're the number one sports show in Denver. So we just talk at all things sports. I'm I'm doing that and I'm also doing a pod, my own podcast. I just launched my first episode. It's the Wolf Fun Tame Podcast. And then I'm doing a hunting show as well, and we just started launching episodes from my first fall out of football, you know, hunting, bow hunting and turkey hunting, stuff like that. That's called Wolf Untamed It's on YouTube as well, so you can check us out on Spotify. Then you can also on Denver sports dot com. You can watch you can watch the show. It's pretty funny, like we have a good time. It's really like a comedy show. We're just goofing around the whole time.

Oh, I should point out? Can I point that out?

Yes? Please?

Who said that?

That was Phil Man? I'll get a.

Drive me crazy? Is that a genuine question about who said that?

I could tell?

I can't tell. I used to look Phil dead in the face, dead in the face. I can tell what he's thinking. Now I can't see this. I mean, I asked the guy cannot see Phil? Oh, there's his hands sticking up. Cal was thinking we'd put a little like a heart monitor up in the corner, so least tell like his vitals signs.

Feel like a little live feed on the on the TV there speaking.

Of Okay, that's great segue. You can watch what we're doing right now on YouTube. Phil's got it all rigged up. It's become Phil's like passion project. This is being filmed right now. I wish we could see Phil's face because you think a guy, If you think a guy that was that like to do that was a thespian.

You know what that means, Phil, Yeah, an actor of stage and screen.

You think a thespian like Phil would be like jumping up and down at his big chance to like be broadcast on yet another platform. That makes me a little uncomfortable, But I do have there as a film doesn't want to he doesn't want to be as.

It's kind of fun to just imagine what.

The viewers can see. I just cut to the film cam.

It exists.

You guys, can you're on the film camera, film cam right now, go camera.

For You're actually wrong, Steve. He's he's the only one who has their own camera on him. So there is, and there is.

He's hidden back. There is because he's probably like got like his face powder on and it's like he's got his makeup on a little eyeliner. He doesn't want everybody to tease him. Uh, we're gonna, we're gonna dig back into Uh we're gonna We're I want we're gonna dig back into more of the more because we gotta get that was a good part of the story. Yeah, yeah, the other garbage is whatever part of the story. But that was that was the part? I like, yeah, well, you know, it just real funny. We just did a thing with the did you follow the blue marlin controversy? Those boys that caught that blue marlin down to North Carolina and won a big tournament.

I didn't follow it. No, I heard about it, so he pay much attention to.

Roughly, these dudes go out and they join a tournament and they're kind of like they're under underdogs in the blue Marlin tournament, but they win the blue Yeah, they don't win. They catch a big ass blue marlin. This episode's already out, people could check it out. Was that filmed?

No, that's that's not gonna be a video.

Uh, they catch a big blue marlin six hundred odd pounds, but it gets disqualified because it had a little bitte mark on it.

Oh because the shark got gone on shark bit it.

So they lost their three point five million bucks. We had them on and one of the things they were appreciative of this is like a little plug for our show, is they had done every interview in the world. Who are they interview with.

Krinn, New York Times, CNN, Washington.

Post, every local.

NPR was n PR.

New York Times is doing a piece on.

Them, UK Daily Mail and all that website, all that, and he says he's never gotten to talk about what he imagines is the cool part is catching the fish.

Yeah, talk about catching the fish.

And it's a crazy story about catching the fish. No one cares about catching the fish because we've probably got to tell about catching the damn fish, which was amazing, Right, that's a huge fish.

I actually now that you're telling me, I saw the picture of the fish, but I didn't see where that was like a superficial dude.

Where I had a bite on it. I didn't even see it.

You know what, if you go, folks can go back and listen to this. Uh, they didn't even know because when they pulled the they pulled the fishes. They when they pulled the fish up, I think they pulled up the the fish's starboard side and they couldn't see the port side of the fish. That's how it's like they didn't even know. Yeah, they've know, they pulled it up. You can't, like you said, you can't roll these things around. It wasn't even they weren't even then later that he was like aware of it, but didn't even give it any thought. It's just like a mark. Yeah, and he said about heartbreak it's great. Joined also by Bill vander Hayden. How's going man?

Good?

You missed a good transition there? Oh what should I have done? You should ask Derek will Broadhead. He used, I was gonna do that and I forgot about it.

I was using an iron Will you were?

Do you know Bill Pryor?

Yeah?

Yeah, Oh so you guys have met? You guys are Yeah, I was.

I've been shooting iron Wills for a while now.

Really, so we met at the Colorado Bull Hunters Hey, Bill Stake, we met at the Colorado Bull Hunters Association.

So how's thing's been going to Iron Will Man Good? Good?

Been busy? Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you guys have me on last year doing that podcast on physics Fate and physics and fatality. I think it was called but yeah. I got a lot of interest in and us from that, So appreciate it.

Oh that's good. You know, I wanted to ask you do you Uh? I guess you probably wouldn't know this because you can't tell that if people that listened to the show. This is like, I guess this is a marketing question. People that listened to the show and came to you from having heard the show, did they did they seem to be like mostly Western elk hunters or were you hearing from like white tail hunters and whatnot?

Yeah, good question. I think a lot of the Western like elk hunters had kind of already heard of this, so I think a lot of the people were more Midwest or even Eastern white tail hunters. Like we went to Pennsylvania Total Archery Challenge event. I had a lot of people come up to the booth there say they heard the Meat Eater podcast and also a dent we were down in at a Dallas show and a lot of people there as well down in.

Texas got it. Yeah, man, had I had an opportunity to use your broad heads hunting white tails last winter and phenomenal, and my my friend I was hunting with we were both using them and they work on EUT right. But what's cool about this is we're now you can now come and find in addition to coming to our store and finding first Light gear, finding FHF gear phelps, game calls soon to be DSD, you can also now come and find you know, those are those are like, those are our brands. This is not you. We were now able to carry iron Will broadheads on our website. Can you tell tell folks what they can find on our website.

Yeah, we're gonna launch here with our S series broadheads or S one hundred, which is what you and and Jason used on your Elka in New Mexico, along with our S one twenty five to our very popular heads, and then our new our new head for the year, which is a wide single bevel one hundred and fifty grand head, which is our one new broadhead that we just launched. So those are gonna get the three options that Yeah, and yeah, you guys have been using our heads for a while and we appreciate all the help you've done, you know, helping spread the words. So I think it's yeah, great partnership.

Oh it's great. Man, you got a big old bear to spring?

I did, Yeah, I got a giant bear. Sketchewan, what was going on with that?

You know?

I've been going there for a few years and seeing big bears occasionally, and and man, each year I kind of see a bigger one. And this this guy when he was coming through, so he weighed four hundred and seventy three pounds. Oh really yeah, twenty one inch.

Skull, just just a tank. And I see what's the boon and crocket cut off? Is it twenty one or twenty twenty for the yearly and twenty one for the all time? Has your has yours dried yet? No?

So he might not make the all time?

Might shrink? Just dry him in a bucket of water. That's trip Phelps, does it? I heard.

I'm sitting in the stand.

Films did not tell me that trick.

You could do the The Felts told me that joke.

Phelps told me that joke, not that trick.

The Beatles too, I guess the beat like there's a beetle process.

Yoh yeah, drifted. What's that beatle call? Dirmisted dirmistic beetle carrying beetle that shrinks it less?

Yeah, yeah, he'll drink it last.

Yeah. I used Beatles actually on this one.

Yeah. Man, I used to hang out with the dude that had one of them. Beatleworks. This just the like the like, and there's the ways to control. But that is a smell that you can't find anywhere else. Man, If you bottle that smell and squirted out of a can clear room.

That's funny.

The outfitter up there had beetles, so we really much he had his own.

He had his own, so we threw it in there right away, and then like a day or two later, we just went in there to check on it, and three of the guys that were there on the hunt started gagging just by going in that room.

So sure, man, it's an insane smell in that room. Man. Yeah, uh so what's gonna happen with that?

You know?

What? Do you know? Get a big old rough made out of it.

I think I'm gonna do a big bear rug, put it up in the in our shop there on the wall.

How far aparty you guys, because you're in Colorado.

Right, yeah, we're about an hour and a half. I'm I'm north. I'm near leveland up near Fort Collins esters Park area, and you're down a little south of Denver.

Well, when I did my book event in Denver the other day, I sure didn't see you waiting in line.

I didn't even know about it.

So this is marketing people's fault.

As an engineer, did you have extra interest in the submarine story or not?

You know, I did. I wanted to hear the just review kind of what went wrong there? Huh and yeah, from an engineering standpoint, I mean the engineers were involved. If there were engineers involved, they should have known. No, you shouldn't do that, you know, it doesn't mean a factor safety.

Well, he didn't want to He didn't want to hear about any of that.

Hee did he fire the engineer.

I get where he's coming from. Man, he was like an anti regulation guy, you know, which is one thing, but the minute you're el on the trip, it's a different thing.

Well, and it worked like forty other times. It was like the forty first seven.

You know how many times that Alvin you know, you know that Alvin submersible you know me trips the Alvin submersibles done four. It's a good track record. Yeah, so talking about how, oh we've done it times, it's like four and it can go deeper. Check me out, man, I'm like a sub expert.

I think that I was really curious to see if you actually had a number in mind.

The first thing, Like everybody else, like I was like the joke that like everybody Montana is a grizzy bear. Experts like everybody in America is a submersible.

And then there were a Russian coup expert.

Yeah right, oh no, but I am an expert on that. Okay, we're joined by two of them today. Great. You know there's that great quote that, uh.

How war war?

I don't know. I wish I remember how it went. War is how Americans learned geography. Yeah, tell me about the aeroflight deal you guys are working on, Bill.

Yeah, So I sponsored a study with University of Colorado. I've worked with them for quite a few years. I've been adjunct instructor mechanical Engineering, helping out with the senior design class for mechanical engineering. And this year got to prove to this past year got to proved to sponsor a project and direct it where we had a team of seniors and mechanical engineering and the project was on improved aero vein design for bow hunting, you know, for arrows with broadheads on the front. So there's really a limited amount of scientific research on aeroflight when there's a broadhead on the front, and the aerodynamics are are much different there than let's say a field point because.

It's cut in the air ahead of it.

Different right, Yeah, it's cutting the air ahead of it different there's different pressure on the size of it when when there's some angle of attack and it tips a little bit off off of straightforward. So and you know, I feel pretty strongly that a durable fixed blade head, sharp with good edge retention is such a better option than a mechanical. But there's a couple couple problems people might have, as one might be aeroflight long range with that, you know, they're not as forgiving as a field point or a small mechanical. And my own testing I found out, but you could be very effective shooting fixed blade has long range with the right aerow set up and a tune bow and a couple other things. But I wanted to sponsor a kind of an independent industry test where these guys weren't even you know, they're not even bow hunters. They're just following the science and setting up experiments and running them to really show that you can be very effective in accuracy stability with fixed blade heads at distance with enough aero vein. And we studied like six of the veins top veins in the industry, along with some prototypes. You know, I had some great results there we looked at drag, stability, accuracy, spin up, wind, drift and sound. And we had a computation of fluidynamic modeling, you know, so a computer model modeling the flow over the broadhead and the full arrow there and then and we could study all these things.

There.

We could tip the arrow at say five degrees, let's say the bow is not tuned, or you torque a little bit, and look at how much restoring forces there, How well do these veins pull it back on quickly back on track? And then we used a shooting machine and a lot of equipment. So we had labradar looking at speed and drop, so drag we could get from that. We had a high speed camera looking at spin up and looking at how quickly arrows got stabilized. We had a sophisticated sound system where we recorded sound of the arrow coming at it, crossing over it, and then analyze the frequency content like would it be allowed to a person, would it be allowed to an animal? So, resulting from all that, we found a particular vein that performed the best. And then I worked with Easton to get these machine in flesh at three degree hehlicles. So now we sell these as well, so we get so many customers asking, you know, what's a good arrow for us to use that for good accuracy, you know with your broadheads. So I can say, you know, we have this scientific study now that shows these do a great job of quickly stabilizing an arrow and giving you a good accuracy, you know with fixed plate heads.

That's a textured bank.

Yeah, there's like waves in it.

See I hate kind of stuff like this because now I want to have this. It's like Calv's bringing up like how he used to just love ice fishing, always had a great time ice fishing, and then better electronics come out and some guy shows up with that and you're like, we're fucked now, you know, like you're like, no, it's not now we're not gonna do any good because he's got something better. That's pretty cool though, m let's see that.

So was this study, did it like compare it against field points and mechanicals or what were the broadheads that were being used.

We we used Ironwald broadheads in the study, but we can pared him to field points. So what we looked at was like for accuracy, we use a bow that's out of tune, so you know, a bow intune means basically, when it leaves, your bow is going in a straight line, you know, at the target, the knox pushing directly in line er comes off straight. That's really what a tune bow means. Untuned bow, like we would take it out of tune so that it would come out, say, tail left right out of the boat.

Yu.

When we were young, we just thought it was like just the how it was that your arrow fishtails. Yeah, that your arrow fishtail for fifteen yards. It's just the reality. It's like a comforting feeling to see it just kind of fishtail out eventually straight out.

With like a long bow or something where you're not cut to center the bow is the arrow is going to have to you know, flex around the riser and there's a special Yeah, it'd be like a perfect stiffness to get that to go straight.

Is that the archer's paradox?

It is?

Yeah, we named episode that one time, right, Yeah, I listened to that one. Yeah, you had a problem with that one.

I did you wonder why whenever I hear things that defy the laws of physics, I got to speak up.

Something deep in your brain goes off.

A lot of a lot of those like modern recurves and stuff are cut like when I was building them, like an eighth past center or center cut. But then there's you know, problems with strong risers. You know, lot goes into it.

Yeah, with with recurves and using fingers, there's just a lot more happening there. You know, in a compound, you can really adjust your rest and you know your bow set up so that you're knocks getting pushed your strengths pushing your knock in a straight line and the arrows coming straight off the bow. Some people, some people teach different ways of tone, but I mean that's really the best, having your air coming perfect straight and you know that's how you can achieve the best flight. But really this study, I know, nobody's perfect, and a lot of people aren't great at tuning their bow. So part of this study was, okay, if yourro's not coming straight off your bow, it's actually coming out tail left. One of the tests we do is we'll just shoot a fletch shaft versus a bear shaft. It's say thirty and forty yards because a bear shaft and we'll add some tape maybe to get the weight the same, but a bear shaft will come out tail left and then it'll just stay that angle and it'll end up hitting right.

Oh, get out there, Yeah that's in yeah, of course, right, nothing's pulling it back.

Yes, that's a great way to test is my bow really tuned or not. Take a bear shaft versus a flet shaft just to feel points. I'd say thirty yards. Thirty yards is pretty good. Forty yards and you do it a few times. If they're not hitting like the same, then it means you know your form or something else is wrong with your bow.

But yeah, I don't know why it never occurred to me, but yeah, yeah, no, fletching is never going to recover, right right. Yeah.

So in this stuff we had it so that a bear cheft was hitting a foot right of a flat shaft at forty So this is way out of tune really even with that one.

In that case, is the knock on? Is the knock lined up? Or is the center of the arrow lined up? Like? What is on target? Mean? If you if you shot it, no fletching and it kicks left and it just says like that and goes in and then you're standing from your perspective, some part of your arrow is going to cross the bull's eye maybe like center when you're looking at it. Is that not true? Or is that true?

Yeah, it's kind of. It's kind of difficult when it's tip when it's tipped in an angle to like basically the the wind direction. At that point it ends up with the veins. It will just quickly get get put straight back on, you know, without it, it's it's probably tipping back a little bit towards it. But yeah, what part I mean, the whole arrow was kind of getting thrown at the bull's eye, but it's gonna end up drifting right, just because the way the airflow is in the.

Pressure, So the whole arrow drift right, not okay, I got you. That'll continue on that drifting path.

So what you see is your fletch arrow might be in the bull's eye, but your your bear chaft will be. In this case, it was a foot right, and you can see the back of the arrow is tipped tail.

I guess that's my question. The knock is right too, because it drifts because the arrow drifted. Yeah, I got you.

Yeah, yeah, you follow.

That question, doctor Randall. No, I didn't teach you that that doctor.

School archery is an area of profound ignorance in my world.

So what vein setups were all testing? Did you have like four veins and did you have three inch? Did you test any like of the fobs that have become sexy in the last few years.

We didn't test the fobs we had. Let's see, we had Blazers, Max Hunters, Max Stealth, Silent Nights feather into the mix just for fun. I've tested, uh feathers in the past, and they are so loud. I don't think people realize that it's funny. One, yeah, man, it's funny when.

I've watched the movies.

Yeah, it's funny when people will say like, oh, that's you know, that's a loudhead or something, and then you shooting feathers. I'm like, I can show you the data that shows that those feathers are so much louder than anything else.

Is that right?

Yeah?

How did you?

Uh?

What's the reason for the the textured? When I say textured, the veins rippled it looks like a sting ray file a for you just to draw very vivid in its what that looks like?

Would it be more drag?

Yeah?

You know, we to be honest, I don't know why that made this a little better. We're just kind of within without, but we looked at all the results and we we you know, we looked at drag dragon sound were reduced with these ridges and this particular vein material.

Are you guys selling just the veins? You gotta buy the whole Damn, we're selling the veins to like, bring a little pile of them.

I didn't. I could ship you some.

So it'd be it's less drag with the the little ripples in those veins.

Yeah. Yeah, and you know, like I'm not sure if this is applicable, but you know a golf ball has little dimples in it, it'll change like the airflow over it and the turbulence, and that's an improvement.

Sure.

Oh they play golf with no dimples.

Well, I don't know if they did, but I know dimples in the golf ball make it, you know, go further. It changes the airflow across it.

They did play with the smooth ball. I think it was an accident when they stumbled on that. The like dimples made a difference.

So we need those dimples to make it go straight. Now, if I can just keep the ball straight. I mean, I'll drive it four hundred every time.

Yeah. Uh, that's interesting though. So but when you got here's my question about the researchers, you had to fund it.

I did, yeah, but since i'm the directory, they pay me to to direct it. So it worked out pretty good.

And then, uh, because you weren't previously made, you weren't previously making a fletching, so you didn't have you weren't in there with a bias.

No, And I really just wanted to like be able to say to our customers, we get so many questions about what vein should I use and how will this vein work? And so I wanted to study them all in this testing And now I have all the data and I can say, yeah, this one man works pretty good. This one has a little more drag, but it's fine. So it was really that's that was the reason for the study. And then I worked with AAE that that made some of the veins that were in the study and just got ribbon material from them so that we could laser cut different shapes in them. And they sent me materials with different stiffnesses, different you know, with and without ribbing things like that. So we had a bunch of things a prototype and test as well, and we found this one that it did a great job with accuracy, stability, but then reduced drag and sound. And you know, I can have my bow out of tune. I currently have my bow out of tune. You know, it is hitting four inches right, fourty five inches you right at forty So just a little out of tune. Not terrible, But I can hit the same point of impact with broadheads and field points up to one hundred yards with a bow a little out of tune with this vein on it, you know, it just does a great job stabilize it. So when I was seeing that, I'm like, I just decided we're just gonna, you know, offer this vein as well as a fletched arrow to customers that want it.

How much do you shoot? How much you shoot field points? Man?

I shoot them. I shoot field points and broadheads typically, you know together like every day do.

You just by mean, are you shooting them just to save on because you know, I got a feeling you got a good line on broadheads. Are you shooting them just to save on targets?

It saves on targets. I don't shoot up targets as much. Yeah, and also I don't need to shoot well. If I'm shooting groups at distance, I still wreck I still wreck things. If I shoot three broad head, it's you know, some cut in veins. I'm hitting one broad hand to another part of it is if I'm going to shoot a group of eighty yards, I'll shoot one broadhad two field points.

Yeah, I know why I shoot them. I was just curious a fella in your position while you're shooting. But you still you stilln't like just destroy everything, you know, and all the time.

Yeah, right, I mean I want to. I like to shoot a lot just to keep in practice and be able to you know, I find just shooting daily or maybe skip a day here and there, but just shooting a lot. I just keep my form consistent. But yeah, there's no need to shoot broadheads all the time.

Did the college already have an arrow shooter?

No, No, so I supplied like a it's a hooter. Shooter is the name of the machine, but it's a shooting machine. We got the labradar, and so we got some of the equipment they needed there for the test.

You know Kent State University that we get the Yeah, we were talking to them about doing some other fun projects. They don't have one hooter shooter. They have two hooter shooters that they use for their experiments.

I always thinks that would be like a shot that you'd get at Hooters. If I heard that it could be speaking of you know, he just sent me Met and Aaron just sent me a pretty interesting academic article that has to do with like, you know, how how Clovis points why they're so mesmerizing and why people are so fixated on them, and and like, you know, for a fellow such as yourself, not that you have one, but tattoos, paintings, people, you can lay out a bunch of uh, you can lay out a bunch of stone projectile points, and people are going to point to that one. And it's it's what is the art like what is the artistic merit? Right? So, so they talked all these art and design people to be and then some people say it's so beautiful that it must have been part of its design. Must have been its beauty, Like there's aspects of it that don't make sense from a functional standpoint, like why would you go through all the hassle? It must have been that they knew that it was beautiful, They knew that it was art. So his paper I read the what do you call it up top? I read the abs distract? Yeah, basically, yeah, basically why are Clovis points? So like, why do songwriters want to write songs about Clovis points and they're not writing songs about I don't know all the other ones? Do you do you share that same sentiment? I've never written song about those, No, like.

Aesthetically, aesthetically the please I wrote a song about doctor Randall, Oh you did about Yanni.

My song about Dr Ranadal's about how he can't actually prescribe drugs, So it doesn't really matter.

Someone sent in another song based on your song to Roam and he shared it with me the other day.

But do I share the idea that there's something about him?

Like esthetically, they're the most pleasing absolute there's something there, there's something there, there's something that appeals to the modern there's something that appeals to the modern eye.

Yeah, Bill Man, I'm glad we get I'm glad you're letting us uh be a I don't know you called a dealer to use that word. Yeah, you're letting us carry some of your products on her site.

Man, yeah, you'll be the the one and only seriously, really that's selling them besides us, you know online? Yeah?

Yeah?

Are we going to sell the veins do you? Guys?

You can? Oh, I don't think it's set up to do it initially.

But hustle now because you're gonna be wanting those veins, right and if you want.

To, I'm gonna get some of those veins for sure.

Huh. Well, thanks for coming out, man, as always, tell me about the new Tell me again about the new head you got.

Yeah, so it's a wide, single bevel. We came out with single bevel broadhead.

Yeah, sell me real quick on so I know we've talked about this, but tell me again on when people argue about single or double is just mental masturbation or what? What do you think on it? Well, they are different, but you both perform really well. But when you when you do because you're looking at things, You're looking at things empirically right, You're not just being like I got a nice I got a huge bowl with this, so it must be the best. I mean. Tell me, yeah, So from a from a sign, from a from an engineering perspective, what are you getting and not getting what are you sacrificing and not sacrificing?

And also tell people what the hell single bevel means. Yeah, so a single bevel verus double bevel. The edge itself on a single bevel. It's all ground from one side of the blade, so the other side of the blade is just flat and all the grind is on one side.

Like some super fine, high quality sushi knives are single bevel. But if you open your knife drawer, all your shit's double bevel.

Pretty much, everything's double bebble and there's a Yeah, they grind from both sides of the blade to come together and make a sharp point.

Oh you know what your ice augurs? Single bevel? Mm hmm, yeah, it's about it.

Things that shave. I think there's like cheese shave, things that shave where they're just wanting to push.

Oh yeah, like your razor that you shave with in the morning, right, singler double?

I think those are I think those are singles. Okay, yeah, But like if you take a double bubble and put it down through a block of cheese, it's going to go if you're gonna like cut in half, it'll go straight. But if you have a single bebbel knife and put it down through it like a block of cheese. It's going to push off to the side because that pressure will make it when I push on.

When you get to the end of the block, you got a big old kurvy cheese. Right.

So what happens when that goes through an animal is all that pressure on one side and and you what you do is you grind you know, say, the left side on the top and the right side on the bottom of the blade, so that when it goes through an animal and all the pressures on those bebbles, it creates a rotation of the broadhead true the animal. So and you think that that's true, that is true. It's not just in theory, No, that's that's true. I mean we've we've done it with high speed video. We've looked at it going through different mediums, going through animals as well, and we do see that it does rotate.

There's some great YouTube videos where guys will shoot a single bevel versus a double bevel through like a shoulder blade of a critter. And when you see the maybe I'm understanding this wrong, but when you see this double bevel go through it looks like the footprint of the broadhead, Like, it looks like you could just shove that thing through there, and you know exactly what happened there. With a single bevel, though, it's like a hole. It's like a drill went through there, and you don't quite see the outline of the broadhead as much.

Right, Let's say you're passing that arrow through one hundred and fifty pounds white tail. Yeah, okay, you hit it behind the shoulder or wherever the hell you hit it anywhere you want. How many rotations that is it actually going to get done? That's a good question.

Much. Really, it's like maybe one. It depends a little bit what it goes.

It's not like a drill, so it's.

Not like a drill.

But when you look at the shoulder blade, one looks like is like the size of a shot glass, right, and the other one, like I said, it is like the footprint of the broadhead. Is how they look?

Well, we see this through the hide.

Do you believe you're right? Do you agree with him?

It does change the shape of the hole and we see this through hide. That with a single bevel or with a double bebbl you're pretty much getting a cross cut. Say you have bleeders, so you got a cross blade, you're pretty much just getting that that cross cut through the hide and through the tissue, organs, whatever with with a single bubbl with that rotation, and I like a single bebble with bleeders. And we also do that single belvel grind on the bleeders because I like a cross cut anyway to kind of open up holes. But if you do that and it rotates, now the entrance and exit holes through the high they're almost square. They are more rounded, even though as you mentioned, there's not a ton of rotation. It's not like a drill, but it seems like twisting the hide or tissue as it's cutting does change the whole shape like that God, and you can see it through through lungs, liver or whatever too. It's got a little different shape to it.

Correct correct me if I'm wrong. When you're shooting a single bevel, it's pretty important to match up. Like let's say you got a left wing feather. You want a left bevel on your on your single bevel broadheads so it doesn't spin the opposite way you want to spin the same.

That is very important.

Yep.

You want your arrow, well, you want it to be rotating to begin with, So you don't want straight fleshed. You want some I like two or three degrees offset or vehicle on your veins to create some rotation of the arrow.

You know.

That kind of helps average out in any asymmetries in there, if you can get the thing to spin on the way there.

When I'm throwing a big old spiral man on top right and then on spencer goes out for the bomb, and then.

On impact, you want to just keep rotating the same way it was going, I'd have to like stop and rotate the direction. That would lose energy.

Yeah. Yeah, we do have a video on our YouTube, so you got to be cognizant of that and line that up. Wait or is it always or is it always that same twist?

Yeah, you don't have to really line anything up. It's just the way you fletch. If you're like there as we sell our right fletch.

So I'm saying, but do you ever see a guy that has his deal rigged up where he's got a right spin on the fletching and a left spin on the bevel but doesn't realize it.

Yeah, once in a while, and we have some We have like a YouTube video just explaining how to figure out if you've got a right or left fletch and a right left single bowbel, just so people can make sure they match the two.

Yeah, was there a period in time, like the nineteen eighties when everything was double bevel? Did like single bevel become popular more recently?

I think there has always been some very thin, you know, cheaply made blades that were single bubbel because it's cheaper to make them that win, And a lot of those are made on these like real to real metal stamping machines where a coil of there's a coil of steel on one end, a blaze are coming out the other, and they if they can just grind one side, it's a quick way to do it. So there are some. I think it's always been used kind of an industry in some products where it's a very thin blade and it's going to be really cheaply made. So I think it's always shown up somewhat because of that.

Here's a dumb question. Could you have a three blade broadhead that's single bevel?

You could? There are a few author really do that.

Why why would you want to do that again.

You could get a little rotation with it.

That's it.

It's if you're doing a real real it's probably cheaper to make the blade, So it might be I mean that's a driving That's a driving factor for a lot of broadheads out there is how cheap can I make this thing? You know, just to drive the margins higher? So a lot of decisions are based on that.

Uh, speaking of blades, me and Randall are working on this project about the long hunters and then the beaver trappers.

Hm.

So it'll be like a book, but not a book. It'll be an audio imagine, like a matt like a lecture, like the world's greatest lecture, the world's greatest explaining everything about the long hunters, the deer hide hunters like Boone, you know, and in this work and I got to see in what they're what Boon's hatchet you'd hear like tomahawk and hatchet, tomahawk hatchet. The best guess at what his hatchet would have looked like. Yeah, And had that dude was a dude, people should check him out on Instagram. Riley Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick Ford. Can you look what is he on Instagram. Can someone look Kirkpatrick Ford Forge. I sent him the pictures he made me one of those, the hatchet. So it's just like a like just what Boon's hatchet probably would have looked like?

Is it a single buffler or don't know.

That's why I'm bringing it up, double bubble.

Is there a definition difference between a tomahawk and a hatchet? In my mind that tomahawk is thrown or is that not not that simple?

No, it's just a head shape difference my understanding. It's got that straight shaft and a different kind of head. And they used to make it with what they call it, Randall, that whole tear drop. I don't know what they call it.

I'm talking about like that, and you get a different Yeah, yeah, she get a different partner for this project.

Huh.

I can't tell you, Kirkpatrick Forge.

It is that good research? So did you know put that in your little notepad there? Randall? What is the official difference? It's like, what's the diference between a prawn and a shrimp? Depends who you ask?

What is the difference depending on.

So there's like, yeah, I've never found a satisfactory answer. People generally call huge shrimp prawns, and there's some regional variations. But there's also some stuff that I'm not sure about, how the plates on its body, on its abdomen, how the plates overlap. But I don't know if that's horseshit or not.

Another area of profound ignorance.

You know, in my mind. But my hatchet is bad ass, and I'm gonna post a video. He makes these videos, how he makes the stuff. It's pretty cool man. He makes like it's amazing.

So you know, Jordan Jonas, he won alone one of the alone seasons with them, he got a He shot a moose with a with his bow and then the wolverine was trying to get the meat and he killed it with a with an axe. Anyways, that's a single bubble axe. It's a traditional Siberian axe. And I got to be friends with him. He sent me, sent me the ax, so I had it for a while. It's got a notch in there for every day, I think seventy days he was there.

But he gave you the axe.

He sent it to me because I actually did a CAD model and we were thinking about get some made actually gotch But anyway, it's a single bubble. So they use that to like shave bark off of trees and things like that.

But where are they filming that that they can they can buy animals without needing tags? Do they pulled all in Nunovac.

Canada like Vancouver Islanders.

In different I think they get different places.

I think they get hunting licenses and they can just shoot, Like.

There's no way that dude that there's a guy that killed the muskox. He didn't draw a muskox tag. I can tell you that. And he wasn't hunting with a guide or he was. But it's like, I'd love to know whether I think that some of that was Nunavak. So they're like, actually they're able to buy the animals from the from the from the what do they call First Nations person? They're able to buy animals from the First Nations people because you're not You can't hunt big game in Canada without a guide.

Right.

Puzzled by that, I had a casting lady called me up about that show, remember.

That Chester, because Chester makes bows well quit.

Yeah, I recently got a message about out being on a dating show for rural folks.

So if we have anyone in the office here. You can put them on that well, and they wanted you to date. They wanted you to date. Yep, tell you're married.

I did like Farmers.

You know, I don't know it was around the time because you're the host of the trivia show. No, I don't. I don't think so. I think it was.

I would imagine a hundred folks on Instagram got this same canned message about being on this dating show for like hunters, anglers, farmers. Uh, just rural folks is how they described it.

Man, I'm not getting awkward conversation with my wife.

You do well on there.

I'm not getting any casting queries. I can only.

Hope I'd be like, you know, baby, we've had a good thing going. But I had an opportunities. Really all right, Darren, I want to jop Okay, So that was like that was we had, Like I want to get back to the.

Story after the nerd session is over.

Every time I talk to Bill, I feel stupid.

It's just like, you know, this guy's a genius.

Yeah, but that's why it's people. There's like people around and it makes it you don't have to think about stuff.

Yeah, it's perfect with me. Was like hey, he's like, hey, We're gonna make this arrow for you. I'm like, great, I have.

It's like I got like a lot of opinions about a lot of kinds of uh. I have a lot of well earned opinions about rifles, ammunition, knives, apparel. But for whatever reason, I've just taken for whatever reason, when it comes to archery, I have a you tell me attitude. I just know who I'm going to ask exactly I know, and I'm gonna go because there's a thing that I'm guilty of it. Other people are guilty of it. You have a great experience, right, Like you do something and you hit a ball and the bull takes two steps of tips over or whatever, or it's a really big bowl, and then the rest of your you're like, by god, you know, I like a right hand twist. Did you see how big my bull was? And you're kind of like yeah, but you could have run eight arrow Like I don't know, could you have run eight different aerow configurations through that bowl and the same thing would have happened or not? Like it's so there's so much anecdotal right or some guys like I'll never use that broadhead again I lost a bull.

Well maybe you should have put on me.

Like I don't know, do you know what I'm saying, Like, I don't know. And so you can get drowned by the unless you have just like experience after experience after experience after experience, you can get drowned in the anecdotal. Oh absolutely, So I just like to have people, I know, I always talk to Phelips. I like hearing what Bill has to say.

Yeah, it was the same way.

You know in football, everybody's got it, you know, there's always a different way to do something right, like especially past rushing, because it is ultimately football is a violent game of chess, is what it.

Is all the show. I saw the episode that man, Yeah.

It's it's just a violent game of chess. And it is like how you fail. It's that's why it's the relation between bow hunting and football to me is so it's so strong because, Hm, you fail so much, like you fail way more than you succeed on the football field. And in those failures you have to find like the weakness that like that you created. So I'm always like doing something to set something up later. Right, So when it comes to pass rushing, I'm gonna I'll bull rush a guy, right, So I'll just come off and just power him, just go put my head under his chin, put my hands in his chest and drive him back. Well, what's that gonna do the next time? Next time he's gonna be like, he's gonna probably bullrush me again. So I'm gonna still a little heavier. Then I try to get by him, swipe his hands, move, you know, do something, and then okay, that that that might have worked. So I kind of try to swipe his hands again, so he oversets. Then I spin off of that. So then you know, that's that's what it turns into. It turns into just like this dance. And for me it was the same way with you know, I grew up hunting white tail and in Turkey because Ohio northeast Ohio, so that's what I was primarily primarily hunting. So western hunting was so like I always wanted to do spot in stocks because you can't spot in stock whitetail in Ohio because it's good luck. You know, you're just like you're not going it's not gonna work.

You start out young.

Yeah, I killed my first white tail when I was thirteen, fourteen years old, and.

That was back when you had to know. That was back when you had to wait a while, right, It's not like now you just like start your kid hunting whenever you feel like it.

Well, I think, well I started. I started like pheasant hunting when I was like nine or ten. So you were like, I think it's like nine or ten is like the cut off that.

Yeah, a lot of that, A lot of that's changed so much. But I'm quite a bit older than you are, and you had to be like you couldn't you couldn't hunt deer with a gun to you're fourteen?

Oh wow, See I killed my first deer with the bow. Yeah that was a and it was I took a climber out and was on a buddy's farm, and yeah, I just like first buck that showed its fate, you know, showed its antler's This little four pointer just showed up and I just started losing my mind up there and yeah, put a good shot.

On me, ran fourteen yards and died.

But but you weren't hunting with your dad though.

No, No, I don't know my dad. I was hunting with friends.

Like, could you mind laying that out quick for me.

Yeah.

Yeah, so so I grew up. My mom married a guy when I was three months old, got married. It wasn't my dad.

Have you tracked your dad down though?

No, tried. I can't find she's going, No, she doesn't. My mom doesn't know who it is.

But have you gone done like the twenty three.

And yeah, we've done all that stuff and I'm upset now and they have now they have my DNA and I don't like that.

But they're not finding matches.

Ain't not finding any matches.

Cluster they found out like where I'm from, like the Scandinavian Fiking background and stuff, but it goes from Scandinavia to Ireland and straight to Appalasia.

Yeah, because I gathered sometimes they'll be it'll be that, oh in some neighborhood in Cleveland, right, there's a bunch of Yeah, that seems like.

You couldn't find anything.

Had a lot of leads that could you know, people like oh he kind of looks like you, or he's big or this that, and it's like.

You know, not Chester.

Yeah, it's just we could find it.

So so that's why you know, when I got intro I got introduced to hunting by my stepdad. But his idea of hunting was like he'd hand me it a four to ten and sit me under a tree and tell me not to move, and I'd sit there and freeze for four hours and then we'd leave.

That's not bad advice. Yeah, he was better than giving you four to ten and telling you to move. Yeah, exactly, it was good.

I mean he'd say, yeah, sit here, don't move, and then he'd go off and wander off somewhere and then tell me he'll be back to get me, and I'd be sitting in just shivering, like it didn't matter if a deer came, I couldn't move it anyways to shoot it. So that was my idea of hunting with him. So then I when I met a friend when I was in middle school who was really in a bow hunting and.

His brother was a little bit a little bit taller.

So when I was when I was like thirteen twelve thirteen fourteen, I was shooting like a probably like a twenty eight inch draw or something like that, so I could just pick up a grown man's bow and start shooting it. So I started shooting this old psc that he had. It was like his old bow, and I was just like it was just like a natural thing for me. It just had no problem put in the arrow where I wanted it to go.

It just made sense.

So I really like picked it up then and I was obsessed with it. The problem was is that football kind of got in the way of that because September and September, October, November is football season all the way into December, so you really you're getting like late season hunts or all that that are available. So once I got into the to college, I didn't get to hunt much at all. I was like every now and then type of thing.

Right.

So it's like if I had a you only get two weeks off a year in college football, that's all you get. So if it was like, you know, we were playing in a BCS game in January or something, we'd get like a little four day weekend where we could I could dip off up to northeast Ohio and hit somebody's farm and I would just you know, shoot the first thing it came, so I guess it meat. And that's kind of how it went. So, and I never had my I didn't have my own bow anymore. I couldn't afford one. So I like when I got draft, I had seven dollars to my name, didn't have a bank account, huh, didn't have I didn't pay I paid everything in cash because I had a pel grant. I just cashed that check and pay on my rent and everything out of that. I was on scholarship, so they just paid for all the other stuff.

You know.

So I didn't have any any concept of like, you know, buying like a fifteen hundred dollars matthews.

Around any kind of money.

No, No, there.

Was everybody's pretty The averaging come in my hometown is like sixteen thousand a year, so it's it's a pretty poor area, but a lot of hunters. Everybody hunts, you know. It's like we get the first day, the first day of opening shotgun season, everybody's off from school. Nobody goes to school that day. It's they just call it off. So it's a big deal where I come from. But that's also another thing why I didn't really like gun hunting, because we'd go out and to public land and and gun hunting it was like you had to dodge bullets the whole time because if a deer jumped up and ran. It was like five or six you know, different groups of people shooting at the same deer running across the ridge and you're standing on that ridge and you just hear the bullets whizzing by, and it's like, you know, those are big slugs, you know, So they're really only one hundred yards away from you, so they're not far.

They know that you're up there. What are you shooting up here for? So it was just dangerous.

So I just enjoyed bow hunting better because you're sitting in a tree stand, you're kind of you know, there's a strategy involved. So that's why like when I started l hunting, when I was finally able to l hunt, which was you know, I waited ten years in the NFL to living in Denver and seeing all my buddies getting to go and this and that, and I was like, man, I would love to go, but I had no idea about the point draw and all this and that. So my first time getting to go elk hunt and really like seeing how it's the same type of chess match.

It is.

Everything can go right, but if that bull decides he doesn't want to just take another step out of now from behind that tree, it's kind of over for you. Or if the wind switches on you, like all these factors go in go into it, and everything has to happen for a reason, like you're making these moves prior, Like, Okay, I've spotted this bowl over on this ridge, so how do I get there? I have to make all these different moves over hours of like four or five hours to get myself in position with the wind being right, so I can make a move on this bowl. And there's something about that that I just I love it, like I love the planning of it, and I love the even the failure. I always learned something in that failure. Right, It's just the same way on a football field, if it didn't work, I learned something from it. I'm not going to go out there and try the same thing, you know, I'm gonna let's let's switch it up and try a different route. And that's something I loved. And then what I also loved is, you know, I said this on the Go Hunt podcast. I was talking about, you know, when I was finally able to release an arrow on a bull. I've won, I've sacked quarterbacks and Super bowls, I've sacked Tom Brady in AFC Championship Games. Eighty thousand people screaming, howling, you know, because my last thing is wolves, so they howled.

So like that feeling is very surreal.

Like when you sack somebody and jump up and howl and then the whole crowd does it with you. There's something that goes that. But I've never felt the kind of emotions I felt when I was finally able to put my first bull down. I mean I didn't, I just is screaming.

I'm just like, just like you finally released it, you know.

But but when I was finally able to put an arrow through through a bowl and put my hands on him, nothing is I'm telling When I was listening when I was seven years old, I was I was six years old, I White were Bill and I were talking about this. I watched Reggie White and the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre win a Super Bowl go pack and I was a huge Packers fan, and I was like, I watched Reggie White grab that Lombardi Trophy and he put his Super Bowl Championship T shirt over his pads in Jersey and carried that thing around, and I was like I want to do that. That's like that was my vision, right, That's what I want to do. That's what like sparked it right away. And I started playing tackle football next year. So my dream was to do that. Well I got to do that, and I got to carry that Super Bowl trophy around and it was like I when you reached like a goal, it's like point zero zero one percent of people get to actually live out their childhood dream, right, Like It's such a small, small occasion. But I always dreamed of bell hunting. It seems so far out of touch for me, Like it seemed like something I would never be able to attain growing up in Ohio. Like I, like I said, it was poor. You know, how am I going to get to Colorado? How am I gonna get to Montana?

Like that thing?

These things seem so far out of touch. So when I was finally able to do that, it was a stronger emotion than I had ever felt in my life. Really, when I was finally able to connect with a bull and just like the whole the whole experience right here in a bull come in just screaming and just so you feel it rattling in your chest. It's an unexplainable feeling unless you've been around it, and you don't even have to hunt to do it. You just go out in the you know, take go middle of September, go down to New Mexico and see what that's like. It's like Jurassic Park out there, you know. So that was you know, my first my first bull was like the best feeling I've.

Ever had in my life, you know.

And I just feel bad saying, act I have a daughter and all this stuff, but like this, yeah, this is a different accomplishment, right. I didn't really do anything on that. On the child birthday, I just was there.

You know.

I didn't have to do much, you know, but do.

My When my first kid was born, I passed out, really because they got off that big ass spinal tap deal needle all for the epidural. Yeah, I passed out, man, That was I later told the nurse. I said, man, I could eat your arm and it wouldn't bother me, But you're getting ready to drive that needle in my wife's back.

Have you ever passed out before?

No, I don't run around pass No, I don't know. I kind of tried to spin it off and blame various things like I had sounds like your wife's fault, had nothing to eat, nothing like that, you know. But yeah, because they're.

So bad for my wife when she was getting at there, because she was having contractions while they were putting that into her spine, and I was just like.

I was, I was freaking out. I was so sketched out.

Yeah, and there was like there's some little complication while they're trying to get everything hurried along, you know, yep, because well they they're monitoring the heart, you know whatever. I can't remember the details now, it was it got stressful, and it's so like we're gonna it can't be one way, We're gonna do it the other way. And and I woke up out in the hallway and heading his nurse's lap verybody else doing. Did you miss the just envisioned Hi dragging him out, so my vision.

He wrapped up like a little baby, like.

They brought me that little.

Like this one's already circumcised.

My gosh.

Uh, when you got when you got blown up so bad about when you got so blown up so bad about the lion, did it change any thing about your behavior or anything?

Yeah? It did. It changed a lot.

I felt like a sense of responsibility, right, And the responsibility side of it was that, Okay, now I can see what kind of attack that we're really under as hunters. Yeah, is that what I saw? I could see it that it's a really planned out attack. And somebody, you know, a guy named Lou Webb, who's just an awesome guy, you know, he gave mid this analogy for me. He was like, look, he's like, as hunters, we have to be like an el curd.

What are the wolves try to do? The el curd?

They try to split them apart and pick out the week and kill the week. Right, They pick them out and they start and then that's how you kill them, as you you separate the herd, and then they follow one kill it and get another one kill it. So if we want to stay together and keep this lifestyle, we have to put aside all of our egotistical.

You know, garbage.

Really And it's like, Okay, who cares if.

You're a gun hunter or you're a rifle hunter, or you're a crossbow hunter, or you're a long bow hunter, or you're a traditional bow hunter or you're a compound bow hunter. I don't care. I don't care what kind of broadhead you shoot. I don't care any of that stuff. That stuff does not matter, because at the end of the day, if we don't, if we keep infighting and arguing with each other and trying to like take each other down, they're gonna win because they have millions upon hundreds of millions.

Of dollars back in them.

You know, this industry doesn't have that kind of money. We have to spend that money just to keep the wildlife safe and ready to go for us.

To hunt them.

You know, the amount of money that we spend on gear and stuff, like, they are spending all that money just on ending it, ending it. They don't want us to do it, like something about it they hate. They don't care that you can't reason with them. And I feel a sense of responsibility to try to bring us together as hunters and try to keep us in that tight little group and like stick together.

You know, so I did.

I felt a big sense of responsibility, But I also I also had this sense of like, you know, I don't want to get too vulgar, but fuck them. You know. It's like I did everything by the book. I'm not poaching. The amount of money that our money, all the money that we spend on hunting, goes straight into the keeping their trails going.

They don't. How do they not realize this?

Yeah, that you want to you want you want your lakes, and you want your trails, and you want your bike paths, and you want all this stuff taken care of.

Who do you think pays for that? Hunters pay for that.

So as a conservationist and hunters are conservationist, you know, if you do it by the book, that's what you're doing, right, you're out. I'm not out just looking for any lion to kill, right, I'm not out just looking for any elk to kill, or any bear, any deer. I'm looking for a big mature animal that is, and I'm going to eat that animal. And it's everything is used, I use everything.

Yeah, And you're you're in your opera. In your case, as we highlighted, you're operating within a very a very finely tuned state and federal sanctioned yeah activity.

Yeah. The North American model is the gold standard.

Yeah. And it's and it's and it's like this is how this elaborate team of biologists and land managers have decided to maintain and utilize a resource. I point out, like the wolf analogy is good, there's another one. People say, you know, we're all in this boat together, and I'll point out that now and then certain people will shoot we're in the boat together, and they'll shoot holes in the bottom of the boat, meaning people you know, you know, I'm talking about people who go and and not only operate outside of any kind of legal framework, but operate outside of any you know, they become unproductive, like they're not helpful, right, people who are you know, violating like like repeat violation of laws, willful violational laws give people a black eye. But I think that like you're saying, man, for someone to be operating in accordance with the law when we generally all agree on how these things are established, to then have that person be crucified, I think is also an attack on this very effective wild management system.

Oh yeah, and they'll put false statements out there. You know, there's an organization. We won't say their name, but everybody can probably imagine who they were. Starts with a p they put out that I that I I I poached They've said that I poached it or did it illegally, or that these animals are are like mountain lions are hit the only big cat thriving in North America. Like they are thriving. Go to California. The deer population is like decimated.

Yeah, they're expanding, They're expanding numbers. They're colonizing new territory and expanding numbers.

Because that's what they do, you know. And then they're like, well, why can't you just uh, you know, move it to another area? Well, where are we going to move it to? Because there's already lying in that area.

You know what if you'd done that, you know what you've been doing, You've been breaking.

Law, breaking law exactly. You know, you can't you just.

There lying in the bag of your truck. I decided to take it upon myself and move it to a new area.

I darted it, Yeah, darted like Ricky, Bobby.

Were you surprised by any of your allies in the football community or otherwise when this went down?

I was surprised by the lack of the allies.

Oh really, yeah? But uh, you know, I dealt with this in multiple things, right, So I refuse to get vaccinated.

And I uh a lot of trouble for that.

I got fined a lot of money. But yeah, but I just the science. Well, they kept saying, believe in the science. I'm like, well, the science isn't there, so I'm not gonna believe anything that you tell me. I also wouldn't kneel during the anthem, so I lost a lot of friends over that.

But I'm well, you lost friends for not kneeling.

Yeah, they I was so the there was a the wash I think it was a Washington Post front page put Derek Wolf tells they asked me, why aren't you gonna kneel? And I was like, well, because you know, I have a lot of friends and family and people that have served. And I remember, I remember, if even one person says that it offends them or like kind of makes them feel weird about it and they don't like it, I'm not gonna to do it. If even one veteran says that, I'm still I'm not gonna kneel.

And when I didn't know there was a pressure, I didn't know there was a I knew there was a normous there's.

Big press pressure. The pressure, yeah, big time pressure being very pressure. They pressured us heavy to just kind of jump on board and do it.

You didn't get fine for that.

No, I didn't get fine for that, but I did get labeled as a racist. So the Washington Post put on Derek Wolf tell us his black teammates to go back to Africa. When all I said was if you don't love, if you don't love this country. I had just traveled to Thailand, so I saw what these people lived like on the Bangkok River. I saw what you know, these little mountain towns in chang Mai, how they lived and they're happy as could be. But I realized how privileged we are to live in America, Like even the poorest of the poor living better than how they're living over there, and.

They're still happy.

But to me, I said, if you don't love, if you don't love this country, we live in the best country in the world. If you don't love this country, then why do you live here?

Yeah, that's all I said. It's just a simple question, like why.

Do you stay like you're well, you're free to go and come and go as you please, you know. So that was they interpreted that as and they put it in quotes too, so I had to yeah. And when I finally got them to take it down, the damage was already done. So now I got teammates of mine who had won a Super Bowl with looking at me like dude, I thought like, are you like, is he a racist? They're like my family's calling me, asked me if you're a racist, if you're this, if you're.

I'm like, dude, what are you kidding?

Me? Like really?

So, yeah, I had dealt with stuff like that before. So and then when this, when the lion thing came out, I noticed it even more. You know that people were like distancing themselves from me, and I was like whatever, man, Like, I'm gonna be who I am.

I'm a stick to my belief.

It's not going to change for for anybody, especially when I'm not hurting anybody just because somebody's offended, you know, by the lifestyle that I live, because I love this lifestyle and it's it brings me. You know, killing an animal, it's not the point. It's the journey. Like my favorite part of that hunt and and that story is the journey to get there. And you notice when I tell the story, it's a small, very small part of actually when I shot the animal. Most of the story is the grind to get there. It's the same with every animal, so they take they all, but all they want to see is that because because that's what happens is you post a picture, right, it's like, look, you know, check it out, you know. But the only reason I'm doing I'm not going to post a picture or something. I just walked up and was able to kill easy. I want to tell the story about how difficult it was and how much of a grind it was to get to that point. So so to me, if you if if you don't want to be friends with me because of that, then I don't really want to be friends with you anyways.

So that's fine, you.

Know, but even you know, people will still come up and be like, did you really have to kill that lion?

It's like who cares? Who?

What do you care? Why do you care? I did everything by the book. It wasn't like some somebody's pet.

Like are you is that an actual question?

Yeah? Like I really like why do you care?

You know?

But you try to educate it, educate them on it, you know. I did an interview on Tuck Carlson where I just started hitting with numbers because I knew I was gonna have a short segment, so I was like, I'm gonna take the opportunity to hit them with some conservation numbers about how many attacks on people happens once one a year every two years, somebody gets killed by a lion, and then what they do to the cubs and what that does to the population of the lions. So it's actually good for the population of lions to take out these big mature toms.

If your goal is to have more lions.

Right, if we were out there just wanting to kill lions, we've got there and just start shooting every line you.

Saw, But you still you do you would like to have a.

Healthy lion population because it's still cool to have those things around. But when it comes to like the wolves, that's what this actually segued me into this the whole wolf or you know, trying to keep the wolves out of different areas. Colorado's already kind of screwed on that one. But the least we can do is make it available to hunt them, which is still you're never gonna dent that population because it's important. I mean, look at the coyotes, you know, coyotes destroying.

You can definitely it's a good man. I think it's a good management tool to have like a sort of controlled growth of you know, I mean we've been doing it here, like we've been doing it well here Idaho, Wyoming. I mean we've been hunting out we've been hunting wolves now for years and still seeing expansions of population, healthy numbers. It's not like it's the way it's positioned as an either or as ridiculous. It's like either either can have wolves or you can have wolf hunting, which will result in no wolves. And that argument has been thoroughly I mean no one would know it, no one from Peter would realize it now, but that argument has been thoroughly put the rest that you can you can very successfully, you can very successfully have healthy, stable wolf populations alongside state managed wolf hunting. Yeah, and it's been There is zero cases with mountain lion hunting. There is zero cases where modern like regulated hunting of mountain lions, talking about back in eighteen ninety when they were poisoning them with strict nine. Yeah, regulated hunting the mountain lions having any appreciable impact on mountain lion numbers. It's like it's just not a thing.

Yeah, it's not.

You're gonna have roughly the same amount of lions, You're gonna have the same amount of lines, whether you know, if you're hunting them or not hunting, especially when you factor in that the line like you got would have statistically, however, it would have wound up being killed by a state agent.

Yeah, because it was in California. It's too comfortable around people.

California. As soon as they got rid of lion hunting. The number of lions they kill that state biologists kill goes through the roof. And now they're killing the same number of lions annually.

Is they always work when they could be that they're missing out on opportunity for people to hunt them.

People used to pay to go do it. Yeah, now you pay, you gotta go do it.

Yeah.

Do you think the lion you think when the lion gets killed, he's like, well, thank god it was a government agent exactly. It's like, of course not.

It's silly. Honestly, it's silly, and it's you know what I think it is.

I was just hoping.

I was just hoping it wasn't some local. Yeah, I hope it wasn't some guy out here. Bet or not have been just some guy, some hunter.

I'm glad he's got glad, he's got lights on it.

I think this is all to do with it. It's because they're not thinking. They don't want to hear the science or the rationality behind it. They're just thinking emotionally, which I understand that they're emotional about it and they love cats or whatever, like, but you know, at the end of the day, man like, you have to manage if you're gonna live in within the nature. Like if you're gonna build houses up in the mountains and you're gonna live in the mountains, you have to manage that that population.

It's Here's the other thing that frustrates me about this conversation is that at this point they're managed as a big game animal. The regulations are more strict. Yeah, h if you like, if anyone ever, if anyone who's like uneasy about mountain lion hunting from not in terms of that they feel bad for the mountain lion. If anyone's uneasy about mountain lion hunting in terms of that, it's like exercise in a reckless fashion. I would invite you to go and try. If you're not from a hunting background, I would invite you to go and try to understand mountain lion regulations. Yeah, in terms of how thinly sliced the map is and all the quota systems around males females, tiered season structures.

You have to take a test, dude, before you get your license.

It's like, you know, you get most places you get yourself deer license. It's like the most you gotta figure out is that you know, you get like whatever amount of time, and it's either got antlers or don't you know? You get into these twenty four hour forty eight hour reporting hotlines so that you have like a portion of a mountain range carved off and you're gonna allow one female and if that female gets killed, you have X hours to register it. The whole season shuts down within forty eight hours. There's like nothing like that now, I mean some big horn sheep stuff. There's really that level of detailed management. I shouldn't say nothing because there's a handful of fur bears that fall in that, but anyways, that's like that's a level of focus and precision that is not exercised elsewhere, now, not broadly exercised.

Del I could explain Montana's hunting eggs to just about anybody, with the exception of mountain lions, I wouldn't know where to begin to start.

Ye, Like, it's just inordinately complicated.

Yeah, and it's they it's it's managed as like a long term renewable resource. Yeah, and very focused and like that has not like I won't be clear that has not always been the case, but that's the case now, right. You know.

Well, it's funny because you always, you know, you talk about, you know, what they used to do back in the day. When you see those old timey pictures of guys, you know, I'd hunt camp and it's like five guys and they got like ten deer hanging in the background. Sure, you know, a bunch of ten deer, a bear, a lion, they got all these different animals. Because there was the rules weren't there. They could just go out and do whatever they wanted.

I'm going to post a picture from a guy gave me a picture from nineteen fifty four or of a bunch of dudes in Utah. I don't know what the rags there was rags in nineteen fifty four, but with a flatbed loaded with mule deer like you would not like bucks, like you would not just giant. You can't even tell how many you're in there. But it's just like some of the bucks in that truck are like what yeah, you know what I mean, daffy, Like there's like spreads in there. There's like a buccaneer that's got to have i don't know, thirty six inches, but they're just piled in there.

Yeah, piled. It's insane.

It blows my mind. You know, even these like old time duck hunters and stuff too. You see these piles of like no limits.

You know, I've got an old photo from my grandpa that I need to get in like maybe the podcast room. Well it's pretty full for my office, but it's big blown up photo of like what you guys are talking about, a bunch of deer. There's a couple of frozen foxes, yeah, hanging out the back. It's pretty cool.

It's pretty wild.

La La Huffman was it this great photographer that he, uh, photography is just becoming a thing that you could, you know, move around with a camera. And this dude named La Huffman made it out to Miles City, Montana and the winner at eighteen eighty one, so he got to do photos of the So the last big buffalo slaughter was the winner at eighty one eighty two. It was when the railroad hit Miles City and kind of tapped into the core of the northern herd, and they killed a couple of million that winter. No, that was the last big shoot, and he got to go. He took photos of some of these hide hunters, and there's this one photo he has. They used to make these dugouts. They just dig into a cutbank, and the amount of like stuff that they got piled up around there, right down to frozen buffalo fetuses as decorations. And then some of those pictures he took too, of like the mule deer heads and even now the white tail heads where it'd be like just one dude standing air with like a dugout canoe and fifty bucks. I mean, you look at it. You gotta be like that'd have been a pretty good time check that out. But on the other hair, like, oh my god, man, well they probably were, Yeah, these guys are shooting for the mining they're shooting for the mining camps. Yeah, shooting meat for the mining camps. And and like even just what what was their awareness about were they were they you know, Colonel Dodge of Dodge City. Colonel Dodge talked about what he thought was just this extraordinary mealder that was lost in a fire, and you'd be like, I would love to see what that guy thought, what that guy in eighteen seventy thought was just an extraordinary mealder.

It's probably just ridiculous. You'd love to know, right, Yeah.

These pictures, these pictures, these guys like nah, you're like, dude, like said two hundred inch buck. Yeah, those bucks ain't around, yeah, you know, and you got like six of them. It would have been great. It'd have been great to see some of that.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny you talk. I heard you say something I forget.

I forget what episode you were talking about it, but talking about like a time machine, like where would you want to go?

Mm hm.

And I think you talked about Daniel Boone coming through the Cumberland Gap.

Yeah, and uh that Like when you said that, that just stuck with me because I was like, man, I always thought that way too, Like I'd be walking, you know, walking in Appalachia and coming through these mountains and you know, what was it like out here before all these people came in here, Like, what was the wildlife like? Because I know how the I mean, there's deer everywhere.

Well, you'll have to listen to I was gonna say this, you know, a project just for you.

Stay tuned, stay tuned perfect.

Because we're gonna we're gonna tackle that question.

I just think that would be incredible.

No, we're gonna We're gonna get into a lot of that kind of stuff. What what were those guys? How did they hunt? What were they doing? What were they seeing? What was it like? Why was that area soul full of game?

Yeah?

Probably not what you'd expect. Yeah, you like, you know, it's it's a it's a crazy story. Uh, you can stick around for trivia, Yeah, building and play trivia. Did you play tribune to before I did? Did you lose? I did not win? Did she beat the Shelby Index? We'll talk about it on the show. How about that?

Oh?

Hey, I got a thing for you. What's up a stat? A guy proposed a stat? Can I tell you that now?

Yeah?

He thinks that you ought to do when I was doing the Oh you know it keeps. Here's the thing funny is I already told Krin this story. I got two things for you. Someone came up to me and said they couldn't figure out why Krinn did so bad at trivia. And I told Krinn that they said that they looked her up and she looks very smart.

Okay, uh huh, Just they.

Couldn't make any sense out of it. Yeah, can't you make any sense? I don't know what they're expecting. They're expecting to see someone that just looked like a poor performer at trivia. Here's the stat and it's a good one. Strong strong, strong closers and strong beginners like you know how people say you know that the right they start strong, they come back and finish strong. Is there anything to that? Well, we've seen with the overtime questions that Brody is by far our weakest performer. On the contrary, I think you're our strongest performer and overtime, Steve, does that make you feel good? Feel great? Yeah?

So I don't know because the ten questions are kind of random about how they're organized, But I think you can pick up a lot of a lot of intel about how folks handle overtime.

Uh.

One thing I wanted to add. We work with a guy, Garrett Long. He's gonna hook you up with a bunch of first light stuff.

Okay, cool, sweet, So.

He's gonna get you squared away on that, and then you're gonna stick around for trivia. Bill's gonna play trivia. You didn't win last time. Do you feel like you're gonna win? No?

Really, no, not a chance.

Here's a quick question. You know how you throw a bone to guests? Is there gonna be like a double bone throw? We have one for each of them.

What kind of categories are there?

We will talk about.

Play the drop phil.

A Ride on a seal gray, shine like silver in the sun. Ride, Ride on along, sweet hot.

We done beat this damp horse to death.

Taking a new one.

Ride We're done beat this damn horse today, So take a new one and ride on

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