Jason Hairston & Brendan Burns

00:00couple hours and yeah we got the gun what's up gentlemen how are you good thanks for having us for people tuning into this podcast I got Brendan Burns and Jason Harriston who run a company called kuyu which is uh the premier if if if you could look at your company like in comparison to a lot of other like sporting good companies and like if if people think about like a a hunting company you think about oh it's like some Duck Dynasty type you guys what I like about your company is there's not a lot of people that take what you guys do like make clothing and gear and take it to the most technical and most intelligent like what is the best you can possibly make that's it and go do that and but because of that this company's become this gigantic company I found out about you guys by from my friend um Martin pellis uh who works for meat eater he was wearing

01:00clothes like what's what's going on with that what you got there and he's like this is kuyu this is this uh new company that's out they this feel this feel this feel this this is ultra light it's the best kind of fabric so he started telling me about your company and I just love when people go for it I love when people like people wouldn't think that there's like this big Market to create the most technical most ridiculously engineered hunting clothes you would say well what the who's doing that like we who cares yeah exactly who needs it but then listening to you guys on a couple of podcasts I'm like these guys are sharp dudes super sharp intelligent people who just happen to be in love with hunting and so you've taken this mindset this this achievement oriented mindset and put it towards this company and it's fascinating to me yeah it's um you know I just got into it

01:50because I wanted to make stuff I couldn't find I wanted better performing products it's what you know we we created the category with Sitka back in the days back in 200 for cuz I was wearing all mountaineering gear and wondered why I was the only person that wanted that style that type that performance level of hunting I didn't believe that I was alone and came with the concept introduced it in ' 06 to the hunting market and exploded created the entire technical appar category and it's just it's now what everyone's chasing it's what everyone wants to wear and makes a significant difference for our customers in the mountains well there's a bit of this a lot of uh hunting people are kind of fashionistas like what you got there that under was that first light like they they they start like looking at your stuff almost like girls look at shoes and purses and it's it's really kind of

02:39interesting that way well no one likes to go to hunting camp be out geared right your buddies got the coolest latest stuff they're like what well what is that one of the reasons why I want to have you guys on is because I've done the best job I can of trying to educate people as to what I see when I talk to people that are really intelligent really ethical very very involved people that are Fanatics about hunting cuz I think there people have a distorted perception of what hunting really is totally do it's like yahoos beer drinkers bubba mean people think of hunters is Bubba rednecks driving around drinking beer shooting stuff out of the truck and it's so not that at least our customer base and what we do I mean it's a true lifestyle it's a Heritage it's been passed down in my family it's where we live and breathe it's why I'm I train every day uh it's what my focuses on my

03:30life and and what I've done for a career in a business and it's there's a lot to it and the places we go require that or you're going to pay huge huge price and so it's a way for me to test myself as a as a human being as a man as a hunter and in life and uh it's something that uh you know is a big big part of me it's been passed down from my father and I'm passing down to my kids and uh you know we've been hunters for 2 million years I'm freaking proud of it a lot of people shy away from it and it's something that uh is you know really really obviously a very important part of my life and well there's not a lot of high performance you know super skilled things where you also have a lowest common denominator kind of guy that that you're associated with I mean if Mountaineers you know had a guy that was wearing a white tank top and was down at the climbing gym falling off breaking

04:21his head every week people would perceive him slightly different I it runs you know the guys that are doing the most extreme stuff in the world and the per the perceive person that's down here so you know what people you get lumped in with the lowest common denominator guy which is not not the case at all I mean Point yeah and uh yeah I mean it's it's uh it's certainly what we're doing and we're testing our products I mean we argue that it's it's a different format than even outdoor gear I mean we're when the weather's bad and you're on a climb you stay in your tent when the weather's bad and we're on a hunt what do we do yeah especially if you're not bringing much food and you're counting on killing something and eating it up there totally it's it's an Endeavor that's a very very difficult and misunderstood Endeavor it really is and I think companies like yours and

05:08what you guys are doing and the the videos that you release on YouTube especially when you're going over the Extreme Engineering involved and your packs and your gear and all the different thing to me that stuff's fascinating it is cuz I I love people that are just going for it that are just engineering the out of things try you guys are chopping down toothbrushes to make them lighter and you all the stuff you're doing like was listening to one of the podcasts where you talk about your Excel sheet that you make the spreadsheet that you make everything go for every every hunt you weigh everything out so you know exactly what everything weighs before you're going onto a mountain you have to for what we're doing yeah I mean you look at any Endurance Sports you look at cycling is a great example I mean ounces they've Pro proven are huge if you're climbing

05:50on a bike and the bike weight and the and the body weight and all that leads to better performance and we found the same to be with with what we're doing on on backpack hunts I mean every ounce over a 10day hunt really adds up in calorie burn and calorie deficit which then turns out to be performance I you know it well from training well it's also you guys have engineered these clothing the your clothing line is incredibly quiet which is also a really important thing and there's there's so many different levels to getting it right when it comes to hunting gear getting it right when it comes to you know I mean it could be the difference between success and failure and this is one of the things that I wanted kind of highlight about this Pursuit I don't like to call hunting a sport or a discipline I mean call whatever you want but it's not you know yeah it's it's it

06:40is what it is it's weird that you have to lump it into this other thing but I think that people have a distorted perception of it because of what you said because of this lowest common denominator guy the the Bubba thing but what The more I've gotten into it the more I've met people like you guys or people like cam Haynes or Steve Rella or Remy Warren and you get deep in realize like this is a a really difficult discipline very very difficult that has many many many layers to it it really does I mean you look at the some of the Expeditions we're doing up north you know we go up to the Yukon or Alaska or Northwest Territories and we're going from point A to point B like normal Expedition but they were hunting yeah on top of that exactly and we got to manage the game that we take out on top of that and the weight and the extremes and the conditions in the weather I mean it adds

07:25to I mean you have to be really well prepared really uh physically mentally and also with the right equipment and gear yeah I mean you had in the mountains and some of the stuff we're doing I mean it's not like it's comparable with mountaineering but I mean you don't have to you know it's not a to B you just got to survive to A to B I mean you have to thrive in the mountains you have to understand what's going on with the animals you're up early you're up late you I mean it's it's even more in depth than than just getting from point A to point B and a lot of these places we're going there is no reason to ever go there unless you were hunting I mean there some random mountain in the middle of ice Glacier that not particularly tall not particular but like there's no reason to go there unless you had something to go there to look for and that's the cool

08:07thing we we're seeing stuff that nobody would ever go see yeah it's like a to B with a very complex biological puzzle totally it is it's so it's so different than like I said a lot of people think of it and one of the things I like about your company is you guys are represented by this big horn sheep I mean that is like a part of your logo which is one of the most difficult animals to pursue sheep huntings a pinnacle man and it's uh it defines for brenon and I and for people in the company and people associate with the brand I mean it is the ultimate dream it's what we all dreamt about growing up is someday I would be a sheep Hunter I'll earn the right to go sheep hunting because it's so difficult it is the opportunities are limited the and it's an animal that lives in places that we you know we can visit but we can't live there I mean they live in places that you just you

08:54know the normal we we only get to like a snippet into their into their life cuz it's place places you can't you just you just can't live I you can't go there and you can die absolutely absolutely I mean uh cam ha's good buddy Roy Roth died just this past season he did fell 700 feet to his death while sheep hunting I was hunting uh I had a tag in Alaska and the chwat um couple a little ways over from there and I mean we went 37 miles in up a up two two two forks of a glacier and I mean we got to where you could physically a human being without clim gear could not go any further where I killed my sheep as fall I mean 15-year-old Ram living up in the rocks and I mean like that that is some of the the that's some of the most that's some of the toughest country in the world I mean it's Brushy and ice and nasty and you know again it's not it's not pleasurable to go in there like you have

09:47to to to really go into something like that you you have to have a goal or a reason to be in there it's not like I'm going to go grind out this miserable brush and you know poor you know shitty rainy yeah just like why would you be there CU you go there cuz you want to see you know this is going to test me and you want to see if you can match which with this animal and you know you you want to go see if you're up for the challenge I mean that's what we've been doing for it's the world's oldest and greatest sport I mean if you're not you know you're either hunter or a berry picker you know yeah and the the level of intensity that's involved in that moment when you actually try to take that animal after that incredible hike in after 37 miles of risking your life to get to that point and then that moment's there just the extreme amount of pressure and intensity involved in that

10:35moment that to me is what defines the real challenge the ultimate challenge of hunting and this idea that it's a bunch of people that like killing animals or it's a bunch of fat yahoos that sit around drinking beer no there's way there's way more to this thing this is an insane like really Primal Pursuit it is we always say you're either a hunter you're like Brendan mentioned a berry picker it's in our DNA if you're a hunter and to be able to test that against the toughest conditions against the hardest animals to hunt in the most remote places is to me the ultimate test of being a human being and ultimate test of being a hunter and that's what drives me and what we do and why I train year around why I'm always thinking about gear about food about weight about uh you know what I what how I could improve from what I learned on last year's hunt to this coming season

11:30um and preparation of it is hey it's fun I love it I live it and breathe it and uh it's it's challenging it's really challenging well it it unfolded for me uh and it still continues to do so because I've only been doing it for four years I mean Rell got me involved and he he took me out to Montana in 2012 and uh you know I was like okay this kind to be interesting let's see what this is all about because I had watched shows and I read some stuff about it but one of the things that he said he's like man there's a steep learning curve to this there's a steep line and it goes long and I was like well how long could it go you find an animal you shoot it you kill it you eat it like what's what's so hard but then as you get into it you realize and then of course bow hunting which is the most difficult of the most difficult Pursuits and as you get into it you

12:14realize like oh this is like some crazy puzzle it's like some crazy challenge that you have to figure out that also involves a way to procure your food it does and it's a skill set you never quit learning on every time you go out I learn something new yeah there's a there's a natural progression you go through I mean it's like you're just excited to be there right and then you're and then you you and you see it with people you take out for the first time they're just like oh kind of what's what's going on here and you know then then all of a sudden they get a little click and it's like I want to get one you know and then you know that's usually a couple years and then and then yeah I want to get I want to get a nicer one than one I got last time and I want you want to do something a little more challenging and it just keeps progressing until like you know to till

12:58you get you know wherever it ends and it's it's you you're hunting the the toughest animals the biggest animals the oldest animals in the toughest conditions and being successful and a lot of people won't get there but it's it's it's always a challenge it's something that never gets old I mean it's it's you know it's comparable to any athletic event only you can do it for your whole life you know I mean there's lots of stuff you do athletic and then and growing up or whatever and it's like but it doesn't really translate you know I'm a college wrestler that doesn't translate that well to the rest of your life like if you're that dude down there at the inter mural wrestling like ah you you've missed you know so hunting is one thing that is just throughout your entire life depending on where you're at I mean you can you can always continue to learn and

13:43pursue it and you know sometimes you you know you don't have a ton of time you can do a short hun sometimes you know things are going well you can do something that's you know an epic adventure but it's always a challenge it never gets easy though I mean the the the animal you killed last time does not care the the the new animal you're hunting does not care what you got last time you have to go out you got to be sharp every single time you know yeah and everything has to be done right every single time and what I like about guys like you two is you take two dudes like yourselves who are both like real goal oriented Savages and you put together a company like this that pursues that one Ultimate Experience and says what is the best that we can make what is the best way we can pursue this we do um and that's why I built KU the way did Having learned from Sitka selling to retailers

14:31the limits of what we could produce and I was super frustrated the fact that I was walking away from the best materials and walking away from the best Innovations and when we sold that company to gortex I had the freedom to go start something new and to eliminate the retailers so I could go build a business platform specifically so I could go out and take these amazing materials amazing designs to Market that I couldn't do before and get them to Market through this brand kuyu which has made all the difference well isn't it interesting that this has all happened at the same time where the internet is kind of exploded in this way that people are doing massive amount of shopping online I mean I have a one of those uh mailboxes where they they get your packages for the company and uh you know when I used them 10 years ago I'd get like a package every couple days or

15:19something like that now every time I go there is stacks and boxes cuz I do like all my shopping online everyone does now yeah it's a it's a crazy thing how that's happened for you guys like right as your company started was right at the same time it's like you caught that wave right at the crest when I look back it's like we orcustrated it and timed it perfect and like we could see the future I could see the downfall he called it he called it I mean Brandon I talked about it I'm like I can there's a problem with retail when you can't produce the best products possible for your customers because they can't sell it they can't add the value any longer because all is are offering is price and selection so price wins in a sea of selection with no one there to explain why new products so much better than the old product there's a problem and I saw it coming and now you see it you know

16:06getting exacerbated every day with new reports about retailers failing malls going out of business retail is in big big trouble Amazon's you know made that happen faster the internet's made it happen and it's all looking back with kuyu timing was it's everything I mean as you know with business you know a lot of it is timing luck and being in the right place at the right time with the right Concepts and ideas and we we totally nailed it we we kind of came in at the exact same time with on it that you guys did with kuyu and with the same exact model selling directly to people getting the very best you can possibly get what is the like forget about cost what is the best most most nutrient dense foods most nutrient dense supplements let's figure out a way to get the best stuff find who's got the best protein powder who's got the best well it's cost prohibitive because of

16:54this and Retail gets marked UPA that's the issue right is like when you sell something toly a retail like a Cabellas or something like that they tack on a bunch of money on a ton right they make a lot more money than we did 100% so we more money than you guys no no I mean they tack on 100% 100% so a jacket that I'd produce for 100 I'd sell the Cabellas for 200 they sell it to you for 400 bucks wow for putting on a coat hanger and throwing it on a rack makes it convenient you know if you're like in a place and you need a jacket you left your jacket at home but it's it's a faulty model it doesn't make sense if you're a guy like you that does research and knows exactly what he wants and you can put a tape measure on yourself and know how big you are I mean I'm roughly an Excel and you could save yourself money and get a better product it's Nob brainer well also the amount of research

17:44that you can do like if you go to a store and you talk to the guy that's behind the counter what you know how many times I've talk to people like you go to a place that sells car parts or something like that and you ask a guy a question and he says something that's totally wrong you're like well I know that's not right if you don't know that how the do you know where this goes yeah I mean you have to be someone who's like deeply deeply involved in the product to be able to explain it to someone who becomes obsessed exactly like if someone is like like your packs the way you guys engineer the carbon frame of your packs like I I spent like a hour and a half the other night watching videos of how you guys make packs isn't it cool yeah the first thing he said right off the bat is like we're going to pull the curtain back I'm going to tell everybody what everybody

18:25has been afraid to tell everybody I'm if if if you educate the person to know what they're looking at and you're building the best stuff they'll end up back here and so he just like no one had ever said here's what Fabrics we're using here's where we're getting it here's where our Factory here's what we're doing I mean like competitors like are people going to seal it I don't care you build the best stuff and you sell it at a good value for what you have to and man yeah the whole transparency thing has been incredible to watch and being direct where you can communicate directly with your customers as you know it's so freaking powerful and they love it and we're able to build so much trust I mean we started I started blogging about kuu 18 months before it ever launched I talked about the Fabrics materials the factories the process of building a company and I really did it

19:11just to keep my name associated with the next brand as I left and transitioned out of Sitka I had no idea what it would create and it created this massive following people started engaging with me and asking me questions and I was uh listening to their suggestions on products and educating them on what great Fabrics what great design was and they just ate it up and the consumer loves it the retailer wasn't giving it to him any longer you know with back in the day I used to I grew up working in an archery shop in Orange California from Bob FR was a really really amazing archery shop owner and he was the guy right I mean you walked in and said Bob what's the latest greatest stuff and he could tell you all about it you go to Cabella's now like you were saying the guy on the floor has no clue the customer knows more than the than the retailer now and you know by and taking

20:01with kuu and going directly to that customer and giving them all that information giving them the power to make the decision they ate it up and then be able to be involve them through this process you know they uh they just build a ton of trust with you it's like they they understand the brand they understand you they understand how you think and why you're making those decisions and then they trust you and once you have the consumer's trust and you don't break it you know you can really build a brand off of that now well a guy like me who loves to geek out on too get obsessed with things that's what I I love that I can go and watch all these videos and read all this stuff about all the different engineering that's involved and creating your products and when I do that it gets people more excited that's why I think it was a brilliant move to blog about it

20:42in between the time of building the company it was I mean I look back now and it's like I had a blueprint on how to build a company today when we did that I look back and read the blog post and I look and I just go wow I can't believe I actually did that without really knowing what I was doing cuz it seems like I executed it so perfectly and I was just following my gut interacting with with the customers and it was it was so so powerful and such a big thing because as I built this business model which was the first of its kind in this industry and even the outdoor Market people told me cool idea but how are they going to find you how are they going to trust you to buy your product to begin with how are you going to get customers be soon enough before so you don't go out of business and run out of money because so many companies will go create a website launch and no

21:25one knows about it right well how do you how do you create that interest in advance um and create the demand well you can spend a ton of money you look like a warb Parker or a hay shave or Dollar Shave Club well they spend more money than they're than they're bringing in and they're burning cash like it's going out of style to create demand through high levels of marketing that's very very expensive or you can do like we did and educate the customer and and be transparent build trust in advance and then launch and then you've got your best Salesforce in the world which is your customer base CU they everything about your brand you guys have this advantage in that hunting because it's such a difficult Pursuit because it sort of gets in your DNA you become obsessed with it and when you become obsessed with it and you find a company that's also obsessed with making the very best

22:09possible and then you guys geek out to such a high level on the videos and on these descriptions of what you're making then then these obsessed people become obsessed with what you're doing and they go oh well if I'm going to do this right I got to do this this way they do and uh it and it's great I mean people we meet and Hunters we meet in or or at hunting camp or traveling I mean they it's amazing to me how much they know about our product and how much they know about the brand I mean they are like you said they geek out on it and eat all the little details up and which I love because that's what I geek out on when I'm searching for these amazing Fabrics they're learning about new technologies and I share it these people eat it up they love it well it's really a sort of a master class in how to do things the right way to follow passion and being obsessed with something but

22:56doing it to the utmost because if you do that then the word gets out the word gets out people talk about it and like I I said I found out about you guys through Word of Mouth completely well if you're actually doing it too I mean like the customers really see that you know like you know no one else that's running a company this I mean you know multiple hunts every year big like believes in what he what what we're building and takes it to the places that the are worst place our customers could ever go and use it and people respect that they love you like that's not only that that's what I want to do but I know that you know he's already he's done it too you know we we've used that stuff in those places well was it your blog that I read which which blog was it where you guys were sucking water out of the top of a rock it was one of the the blogs for your company one of the early on

23:43blogs you guys went on a hunt and uh you you were just talking in depth about all the different I don't know who who it was who wrote it but it was all kuyu stuff we were talking indepth about testing out the products on these like really remote Backcountry hunts yep yeah I mean it's how we figure out the shortcomings of our product you can look at all the laboratory data you can look at all the test results of of what that's given back to you but you really don't know until you put it in the conditions that we put it in we've like té who is my main fabric supplier is the most Innovative I mean they are the the bomb as far as technical Fabrics go and this is Japanese yeah the Japanese by culture build the best Fabrics in the world what are they what are they putting in them cuz like you guys use a lot of synthetics right they do I mean their so their quality standards in

24:30Japan are much higher than anywhere else in the world and they have a really high quality standard of the raw material then they have a really high quality standard of the actual yarn and then they've figured out how to make their yarn stretch and recover with no elastic it's why our stuff so light but because of that process and because of their high quality standards they incredibly expensive um but the Japanese just by their their their nature and their culture they don't do things things that cut Corners you look at the building of a samurai sword is a great example there's a lot easier ways to build a sword than a samurai does the samurai sword is built I mean it takes a lot of time a lot of patience and it's perfect I got one over there from 1511 so you know it right yeah that one sitting down it's the way Japanese do things and it's the same way of why they produce such

25:19amazing fabrics and materials and they're continuously pushing the bar as far as Innovation reducing weight and it's a partner for us that's just amazing I found té well before I started cuu I couldn't I tried to build a Tor product line with Sitka and it was just price prohibitive I took it to a couple buyers at Cabella's um one at Shield Sports and they said beautiful way too expensive so what are they doing to make this stuff so light and like it it it stretches a little bit and it and it snaps back but it's very light so they have a patent on how they make their yarn it's called Prime Flex yarn and if you look under a microscope it looks like a spring right and so it can stretch out and then recover without elastic everybody else has to put spandex or elastic or Lyra in their fabrics and elastic is super heavy it holds moisture it's also you know stretches and doesn't really recover

26:08until you wash it again if you wear a p a stretched pair of pants with a lot of velocity they get kind of saggy after a period of time you notice with ours they'll fit the exact same way on day 10 as they did on day one because of their fabric because of how they make their yarn the stretches recover that elastic so why are they making this fabric too it's like who are these crazy people that are out there like super engineering fabric it's a Japanese and they'll sell it into you know Japanese Market they'll pay for performance they're pricing on their performance apparel is much higher in Japan the European market as well for their climbing industry and some of the ski Brands run their their Fabrics as well um but it's nobody's really introduced their product line like we have in the United States because it's been cost prohibitive to up until kuu business

26:52model came out so they just decided essentially the same thing that you guys are doing just figure fure out what is the best way to do this that's how they do it yeah and they're a Tori as a as a company is a Japanese conglomerate which is pretty typical of Japanese companies and their their base the start of their company was chemistry so they're a chemistry-based company that makes chemicals and make carbon fiber but it's chemistry that starts with everything they do and understanding how everything is produced and made and it's that Foundation allows them to to put out these amazing Innovations to figure out Nano technology how to waterproof a down feather how to make membranes that breathe two and a half times out of gortex and still stretch and recover and are more durable it's that Foundation of who Tor is is a chemistry company that allows them to push these Innovations

27:41out and then you add in the Japanese culture of perfection and making things correct and having processes that continue to produce high quality products and materials over time and that's why té is so freaking amazing I dork out over like this oh so cool I I just love when someone's trying to figure out a way to engineer something to the very finest Edge they do and then what's great about them is always pushing and so they're coming to us with new fabric Innovations new um Technologies and Innovation and we're able to find their limits because of our customers and what they use it for and I'm able to go back to their Engineers now because I've developed a really big relationship with them where they're now their largest customer in the world and work directly with their team and say hey guys your me M brain works great except for in these certain situations

28:31for and so they go and they try to figure out how to rectify that and they will yeah I mean they'll commit themselves to fixing issues that we'll find the laboratory tests say they should never fail and we'll find the limits of it I mean not necessarily Bren and I but our guides that are spending 200 250 days of the of their life every year in the mountains they'll come back and say hey guess what this happened in this situation that's rare but it lets us go back to the their their development team and say hey we found limits on this thing and they're they listen and they go back and try to re-engineer it to figure out how how to push the bar further so those those failures don't happen I was listening to you on a podcast recently you were talking about um this new engineering that you're doing on your packs and how you're testing them so like when you

29:15when you have a new product say if you create a new pack or something like that and you before you bring it to Market do you get it to guides do you have them test it do you test it yourself exclusively yeah so it starts as a process inh house and we'll put it through certain tests depending on the product like the pack new pack frame we just introduced today earlier at KU live I don't know if you happen to see our my live presentation for flight down here um so you you do a live presentation like a product launch you did that today yeah kind of like a keynote thing like jobs does that's hilarious who the doing that with hunting nobody you guys are savages why I'm excited about this not doing not doing it well so you you you have this product launch and um what so so what did you what did you launch what is it well we introduced a new carbon fiber technology

30:02that just came out on the market a couple years ago introduced as far as ability to start developing product with a new fiber technology called spread toe carbon fiber you'll love this because you out and stuff like this so carbon fiber traditionally the fibers are put into yarn right so they take each each individual carbon fiber group them together and make a yarn those Yarns are then woven into fabric it's what you see of typical carbon fiber look right the woven uh the woven look you see on carbon fiber what spread toe is instead of round fibers they've figured out that if you flatten the fibers out so instead of being round they're flat and instead of weaving them they lay them next to each other and then sew they run sew lines across it which you can see in our new frame and by doing so when you mold it into a product because that fiber is now completely flat and it's running the

30:52length of the of the product it's much stiffer and stronger than if you weave it and it has the fiber has to go up and over other fibers it's not as stiff not as strong in the performance level you give up quite a bit compared to spread toe so spread toes all directional fibers and then what we've done in our frame is we now can determine exactly how many fibers run from the top of the frame to the bottom of the frame and then we can count the fibers of course and then lay in on a 45 how much stiffness we want and flex we want on the horizontal axis so view Warner packs you'll you'll notice that it carries a load really well because of the vertical stiffness but it's also comfortable like an internal pack because of how much fiber we have running on the horizontal axis that controls that Flex so you want to have a certain amount of flex yes have to but you you got to figure out

31:45what that amount is and the way to figure that out is by testing we went through 18 versions of our frame to get to where the formula is that we now and re reintroduced today that's hilarious who does that I do we engineers and with our development team Sean in in our office but do is there any other companies is going through 18 different versions of a carbon fiber frame in order to figure out we're the only one in the world that produces one so it's probably just us got a patent on our frame design now I know what carbon fiber is but I don't know what carbon fiber is you know what I'm saying like I like my car has oh look at this Jamie you're on the ball Dude Killing It Jamie's always on the ball um so it's a cloth I mean it's soft it's pliable um how does it be like I have a Porsche 911 GT3 RS that has a carbon fiber rear wing and I'm always like it looks badass but what the is that

32:35it lay it down as a fiber and then you put epoxy in it and that's what connects it so the epoxy so it starts out as a a carbon cloth it is it's pure cloth you could feel it flexes moves just like a cloth and okay here it is this is what it looks as a fabric so that's spread toe there in a bidirectional format and then from there you turn that somehow or another into the this really hard stuff with a heat activated resin so you saw if if you go back to the mold with a frame we're laying in there um right there so we're laying that into a into a mold so we have a bottom mold it's all aluminum cut and a top mold we lay that fiber in and then what he's doing is applying the resin and then we'll put the top mold on top and then we add a ton of pressure for how many thousands of pounds of pressure gets put on top of it and add heat and time and over I think it takes an A

33:28little over an hour we will um cure that mold or that that resin into a actual part and that becomes our frame and what is the advantage of that over like say any other very stiff or durable material uh it's half the weight of aluminum it's twice as strong as steel and then by twice as strong as steel it is it's amazing it's amazing material and one and then also how we engineer the mold and a big part of the Engineering Process of this is understanding how far apart you separate the fibers create stiffness so we have foam in between the carbon fibers in the center portion of the frame and that that for uh that foam creates what they call modulus which is uh separation of the fibers and that modulus creates the overall stiffness within the center portion of our frame and then how much of that we have within the frame determines how much Flex stiffness and then also where we're

34:24putting the fibers and how many so there's a lot to it the the weak point of carbon is the epoxy the carbon's the strongest part and so the with the new spread toe what it does is it it makes it tighter smaller yeah less less epoxy yeah and so what we got out of spread toe which we just introduced for no weight penalty we now have a frame that's five times stiffer and stronger than what we had previous which is still a really good performing product and we just got five times better that's insane isn't it and so when when you say five times stiffer and stronger how do you know what is there a too stiff or is it not a stiffness issue it's a flex issue is there are there is there a difference there yeah I mean there is and it's a challenge right it's finding that perfect balance and you can do that with carbon you can't do that with a steel or aluminum frame pack and you really can't

35:14do that with any other pack frame design which is usually some sort of plastic sheeting with aluminum stays put in the flex is kind of there you can add more aluminum stays but then what does an aluminum stay people are listening to this it's an aluminum bar essentially which you can kind of mold in a in a curve or whatever and it's sewn to a piece of plastic shoved down the back part of like an internal frame backpack has and it's to add some sort of support stiffness stiffness rigidity it's what will pull the weight off somebody's shoulders it will help carry that load versus just a duffel bag strap to your back which is uncomfortable as you know well that's where the the the interesting aspect of the engineering comes in when it comes to packs because the same weight with a different pack feels different totally different and that's something I think a lot of people

36:00are not aware of like you think oh if you're carrying 100 lb in your back you're carrying 100 lb in your back no no no it's it's dependent entirely upon the ergonomics how it sets on your body it does and geometry of how that load's transferred onto your back and the frame and and balancing it there's a lot to it and you know in the past before our frame came to Market you either had really stiff frames with external frame packs metal or aluminum and then you have this internal frame which was really comfortable until you had put weight in it then it would wouldn't be stiff enough and it would end up putting a lot of pressure and weight on your shoulders and your hips so how how do you engineer that do you have to try it out do you have to like take one of these packs and and wear it on a long Backcountry hunt and then say okay here's some I got a little bit too much

36:44weight on my shoulder a little bit too much weight on my hip or how do you how do you dis discern it's essentially that I do a lot of workouts with weight on my back in a pack on a treadmill um so I'm able I spend a ton of time on our pack with various weights and we do that um a lot of guys in our office do as well as well as my uh my pack developer Sean and brandan and then we once we feel like we're really close we then ship them out to Brandon's guys a bunch of guides and say test it for us put it through your world and what you're using it for I mean one of the challenges we have with our with our industry and backpacks is this huge as you know this huge uh swing of weight yeah CU once we get something down we've got got to get all that out so we're going to go from maybe packing them with 50 or 60 lb pack to all so now you've got 100 plus pound load and need

37:33to manage that so how do you get a a pack that can do both be comfortable with lighter weights and still have the ability to carry heavy weights it's an engineering problem and it's also an engineering problem that's handled a bunch of different ways like some some people pack it inside the bag some people the the pack separates from the frame you pack the meat to your body and then put the pack the rest of the pack strap that down on top of the frame how do you decide how to handle that just trial and errow as well well you want the weight closest to your back closer you can get the better it is and it is it the closest to you can get it like flatter to your back as well like you don't you don't want it like bulging out right like if you have a large yeah if you have 100 lb and it's sitting in a twoot square at the the lower part of your back that's not nearly as good as

38:18like flattened out to 6 in and going over the entire C you want to spread that out up and down the frame as close to the frame in your back as possible and how where do you where do you make it sit on your shoulders how you strapping it in to make sure that it's in the right place or you want to carry the majority of the rate with your hips so I mean you you start at the waist put it all in and then shoulder straps all that kind of stuff and stand up and then your your load lifters and all the way up but I mean you want it I mean it's it's individual thing how how it fits but you want to start with I mean your hips are your strongest your center of gravity that's that's where you want the majority of the weight to be carried as close as you can and this is all trial and error stuff that's been done through mountaining through all these different guys that are going on these long

38:57backpack hikes yeah it is and then it's it's fit and also I mean it's critical that you have a pack that fits correctly most people have a pack that isn't set up correct and we found that with our packs they're really easy to adjust the shoulder strap so we can get a perfect fit for each customer and and we put an instructional video out there of making sure the geometry from your load lifters which are the uh straps that come off the top of the pack down to your shoulder straps that geometry has is critical that it's perfect and it has to be at a 45 your angle and that will help take that load off your shoulders and transfer to your hips and help you manage that weight comfortably over a long period of time so you need like geometry you need like you need like a triangle set up to make sure this is where this is where the whole Bubba thing doesn't come in real while for our

39:41sport exactly that's why there's a lot to it I mean it starts at mathematics with the frame and designs and Cad and CNC machines and all that and the math and all through of it and then it goes all the way through and you build it and then all of a sudden you know then it requires testing and and and Tak it you know in real life settings and and and people vary on what they like I mean there's some guys like to carry things a certain way some people like fit you know some guys like their pack way up high I've I've fitted guys that like them way I mean you can only know by by by testing it by doing it by carrying some weight and how many different products are you individually overseeing see that is that's the most daunting aspect of it because you've got all this different going at the same time and on top of that you're doing a dozen hunts a year plus and you're you're out

40:30there in the field like how how the do you find the time to do all this well you know it's interesting when when you do something you love and you have a huge passion for it I never stop working I mean I work second I get up in the morning till the time I go to bed if I'm not sitting in front of my computer working on stuff specific for kuyu I'm thinking about it and that's it doesn't feel like it's a lot of work although I look back now and go that is a lot of work we put out some amazing products um and you know it's just it's a process and it's solving problems through finding materials and Technologies and designs that solve those problems there's a lot to be solved in hunting fortunately there's a big gap before Brandon pull that sucker up closer to you there um a big gap from you know some of the other industries were out there before Sitka and ku's come along

41:14so there's a lot of work to do and we've done a lot to take from where hunting apparel and gear was back in 2004 to where it is today in 2016 is a massive change and not everything's as in-depth as the pack all from start to finish I mean sometimes you have great fit on something and you have a new fabric well you know I mean how it it's got to get tested you got to see how you like it but it's not like 18 models of you know when you get a superior breathing you know membrane yeah me some you know it's not all as in-depth as that it's it's you know a lot of it's plugging in the right product to the right fit and then you have you have a winner right off the bat well I think uh what you were saying about the amount of work this is also like how we were saying that hunting isn't really a sport like gets called a sport it's sort of its own thing when work is sort of its own thing too

42:02because you can call it you can call it work but if you love something it's not really work like showing up at the garbage Depot and or the garbage dump and picking up cans all day garbage I guess you could love garbage could love garbage there's some people probably love being a garbage man there's some guy out there screaming I love garbage kill it in garbage yeah go yeah but when you find something that you become obsessed with that becomes a passion it's like it's a puzzle it's it's just like you're doing a game all day almost day and it's also in a lot of ways an art form I tell you what brand building to me is fascinating and it is an art form and there's no science there's no blueprint this is how you build this brand and I think it's the most fascinating work I've ever done it's truly figuring out a craft brand building is a craft never stops you

42:53never stop learning from it every day I mean you live it and breathe it every day yeah reflects you guys I mean that's one of the things that I found interesting about this is like you can kind of see when there's someone like you that's at the head of something like this and you're this driven focused guy you kind of see that when you when you see the the the actual brand itself it it be reflects you so this idea of like it being work it's really like a passion project it is it truly is um everything from the product to the brand building to the videos to the imagery I mean I've got my hands in everything and I'm super particular about the way our image is presented to the marketplace it's got to have I can feel I always tell people I can I can feel it I can taste it I can smell it everything with kuyu well that's one of the beautiful things about having a very small Center of operation

43:42like it's just you guys deciding how this goes down you don't have to meet with a giant Board of you know a bunch of different people you're not a public company you don't you don't have to there's nobody there to water down the Cheerios does that make sense it's not a democracy water down the Cheerios yeah no We R we I always say every day it's a dictatorship of cuu you know it kind of is and it works well that way and you know it's interesting because we get you know we've because of our growth and because of our business model we have we're approached all the time by private Equity investment groups you know throwing huge valuations of money at me and I'm just I just when I look at the opportunity yeah it's a lot of money but I don't want to change what we've got right you know as soon as I bring in outside capital or Prof Professionals in look in the business they're like well

44:26you need a professional like for who right what does that what is professionalize my team exactly well you need a CFO you need a CMO you need a CO I'm like for for what right so we can slow down our process so we can change the culture that's built a really special unique company you a bunch of other people give pieces of the pie away right yeah it's just such a broken traditional model as far as growing a business we're doing it just the opposite it's the same thing with podcasting there's a broken model that's there's a lot of podcasters today that are joining in with these gigantic networks and they think that being a part of a network is like being on NBC or being on CBS which it used to be a big deal back in the day like if you were run doing a play and NBC came along and said we want to turn that play into a sidom you be like we made it woo we're in but now if you have a

45:18successful podcast and someone comes along and says hey we would love you to be a part of our gigantic corporation like get the out of here we got to run we got to run away from these guys they're going to ruin it everything and they will they will they'll come in they'll tell you what to do they'll tell you what you can't do no more cussing no more cussing for sure yeah you can't bounce around you got to pick your you got to pick your topics you're you're way too spaced out like you know what does what does water down the Cheerios even mean you can't you certainly can't cover hunting yeah exactly that's way too out twice a week yeah yeah I mean had cam Hanes on on Monday and you guys on this way it's I just don't I don't think you should do anything other than what you want to do I think if you could live the best life it's like what what actually interests

45:57what do you actually enjoy doing well do that is it possible all the time no you're there's some obligations you're going to have to have there's a family stuff work stuff business stuff there's stuff stuff you have to deal with but do what you want to do the most that you can do it absolutely I always say if you can be an expert in something you love you can find a way to make it living in I mean Brendan's a perfect example he freaking loves hunting and he lives it and breathes it studies it look where he is now well when I met Brendan I met him this past weekend and Bose man and one of the things that struck me is you you and I were talking you have this crazy fire in your eyes you're like I wanted to be the guy that kills the biggest Bulls every year and when I killed one big bull I didn't want it to just be like oh it was just a fluke well now you got to be consistent and I was

46:41like all right this crazy I see where he's at and then when you told me that you had this gigantic bull down in schnee which is a store on Main Street in Boseman I went to the store just to see that bull I I was like we got to stop in I got I got to take a look at this thing and there this elk that looks like something out of The Lord of the Rings totally that doesn't even look like a real animal it's breathtaking it's massive isn't it I mean if you walk up to that thing and you look at it and you it literally stop shoo your tracks explain the weight of the antlers on that thing yeah so I mean it's obviously unusually big I mean most elk given their whole lifespan will never achieve that it's a truly special elk and like and people like it not just a number but I mean it is a Shaquille O'Neal of elk that's what it is it's that rare and uh yeah the horn it when

47:27when the skull plate saw off it weighed 54 pounds Jesus so which is two an I mean it's it's heavy and GI like unusually big they're just it just massive you know it the biggest cell killed in 30 years in state of Montana so it was you know what it looked like when it was alive right my God how much did it weigh on the hoof do you think uh you know a big bull elk could be 6 to 700 lbs I mean they get thrown 1,000 lb a lot but you know to weigh them like there are a few great big bulls that'll weigh a th000 it was a, pound he was 12 years old you know he was uh just a monster you know so the the Rosevelt Elks are the ones that have the biggest bodies right the the Roosevelt elk have the by far the biggest bodies yeah but not not the biggest not the biggest not the biggest anal but like how big their bodies get 1,200 so really big bulls I mean you can see in photos of them

48:17they're just enormous I mean they're unusually giant I mean especially really big bull you know and and a you know like not every elk is huge I mean right an old bull who's had good feed and lived a long time and was genetically big to begin with will be really big I mean they're not they don't all end up huge you know they're uh just just the on he hunts yeah what's a fascinating Pursuit you know pursuing the the the apex of the genetics you know finding the animal and it's also one of the things that's important about this like the pursuit of hunting is that this animal that you shot was probably like me how old do you think he was he was 12 years old yeah I mean that is an old old elk that is that's old age in the world of wild beasts it's the ultimate I mean like when you get to the level where you're consistently killing stuff and and and you're you know you've

49:09gotten the point the the ultimate level is to kill the biggest oldest most mature you know historically significant when on the on the chain of events in history of like all the guys have ever killed elk I mean not all elk are design are going to be huge but with any animals like when you kill something is super old super big super smart that is the Pinnacle of where your skills have gotten and and a lot of people never get there you know based on you know they don't have time I mean the biggest the biggest factor in in doing that and getting to that point is having the time you know just just having the time to you know I spent a decade of my life putting a boot track everywhere you could put one finding where every elk was in my state and looking for the biggest ones I mean it is like like the work it's consuming you you have to love to do it you it's not fun

49:57you just have to be driven to do it to to want to want to be able to do it but the results is fun I mean the photo that you sent you sent me some text messages photos of that thing on the ground you see the size of the antlers no that's another one that's another one you shot do you that's a pretty big one too but that's not nearly as big as the one you want me to send it to you Jamie I'll send it to you Jamie um should I email to you uh either way okay um the and that was you know at at that point in time actually when I killed that elk I wasn't at the skill set I am now I mean I got pretty lucky that was the third elk I ever killed right place the right time did the right thing and you know just lit a fire in me like I want to do that more yeah that's ridiculous that that was the third I saw when I first talk started talking to brenon about hunting elk he would hunt a

50:45elk and that was so different for me I mean I was just trying to find a bull to hunt any Bull and I would try to get a good one but Brennon would hunt and find an elk and spend the entire season trying to kill that sing SLE elk which I thought at least my experience elk honey was find hard to find that same elk twice that I'd maybe see in the morning and I would never see it again Bren had the ability to hunt it down and kill it well it's also the best thing from a conservation standpoint you're talking about an animal that has spread its genes for at least 10 years right for 10 years that thing has been spreading those Superior genetics and it's probably been forcing a lot of other males to get the off the mountain I mean would me yeah's huge that one did I I never saw I watched him for 3 Days morning and night before I killed him and he another bull never came near that

51:32thing that's like Brock Lesnar ofel yeah yeah or Alistar over yeah exactly when hey old like uber old Alistar aler when he's on the Mexican supplements yeah yeah yeah the new aler might be a better fighter actually it's interesting uh when you see an animal like that and you you you you realize how difficult it is to reached 12 years of age in the wild with mountain lions wolves I mean Montana it's like he's just got everything after him Grizzlies everything's after him and to be able to to be that smart to get to this position in life and for you to solve that puzzle and to get in and shoot that elk that's that's one of the things that sort of embodies the the the the really intense difficulty in hunting it it's it's one of those things where I mean it it's the ultimate Challenge I mean once you've you know killed a bunch of elk and you know I mean it it gets to where it is

52:33the ultimate Challen and you're not always going to win I don't always get them I mean that's that's the beauty of it I mean like you never get to the point where you're so good well I haven't got to the point where I'm so good where every great big one I get I mean I it's getting there I'm I'm getting closer but they do you know like you're learning stuff all the time and it's one of those things nobody can tell you about you you can't you know I'm I'm basically self-taught my dad taught taught me how to read maps and and until you figure out you know why isn't elk here what what's he doing you know and not just wander around like oh there's some elk over there but like why is he here why would he be here this time of year what is he doing where where's he going what's his next move like I mean I've had Bulls where I've hunted where I know what they're going to do before they do

53:15literally I know what that that bull was down here he was doing this and I was like I think I know what he's going to do and I go the other direction come around the other way and that's what he did I knew before he was going to do it um just it just comes from watching them spending thousands of hours and just data chunking yeah yeah and I mean you you you see the picture of the great big bulls and it's that's that's great but there he is right there the time the time that goes into that like nobody ever sees and they don't see hundreds and hundreds of days in between um yeah I was a young guy there man 20 22 years old there it's amazing yeah it is it is amazing and when you eat that animal I mean the amount of satisfaction that comes from sitting down to a meal that you procured in the most difficult way humanly possible I mean you shot that thing with a bow and arrow in the

54:04mountains and now here you are eating it 12 yards snuck right up on him yeah yeah it's cool I mean that the the thing about trophy hunting that's not understood is like it's the ultimate it's it's the Pinnacle of combining you know what you love to do and then this incredible skill set that you're developing to be better than you know I'm not saying better than anybody else but it takes a lot of work like better than you used to be to get better and better yeah and and you know the funny thing to me is always like that the thing trophy hunting has got this weird stigma with it or whatever it's like man I mean I eat the whole elk I love doing it I love the challenge of it I don't you know I don't shy away from saying I love to to to kill animals I mean like I love to hunt them I love the challenge of you know take you know of getting the biggest one I find it the most

54:52challenging thing I've ever done but um you know I always eat it I eat everything and you know and and I take the hide and the head I'm I'm using more than most people are you know people like ah just trophy huntting or whatever like that's it's it's it's the challenge of I mean the term needs to be changed it's the challenge of it I mean well the term is is kind of screwed up because it's applied to things that people shoot where they don't eat it and it which seems to be like a cruelty like a a Pursuit a vain pursuit of going out and shooting lions and shooting things that you're not going to eat the the weird thing about that is I was I was talking to a guy a guy was doing an article for the New York Times and he he said I don't have a problem with people with hunting you know as long as you eat it and I just said you don't have a problem with hunting I mean it's it's you

55:36legally have to take the meat um I mean the the amount of people that would shoot something and not take the meat is is you know the same as people that are thieves out on the street I mean it's it's so uncommon so like the perception of you know guys is shooting it you know just cuz 10 years down the road all I have in my garage is the head doesn't mean that I didn't use it and so that the perception again against the lowest common denominator guy you hear about one horrible thing going on or somebody that doesn't take the meat and and all of a sudden it's everybody's lumped into it I mean I grew up in rural Montana I never had a beef steak at a restaurant until I was on a recruiting trip in college I mean I grew up eating Wild game my entire life I never had my parents never bought meat ever that's probably why you're such a good wrestler yeah I guess right get that

56:22protein get that wild DNA in your system free range organic yeah yeah that's that's the real food but people it's like a disconnect they they don't understand like oh man they eat you know like you don't need to do that it's like I I'm not saying we didn't need to do it we that's just what we did I mean I grew up in an area where that's that's what we that's what I ate like I said I never my parents never bought meat perception hunting day is so screwed up it is but it's also because of cities I mean one of the things that's made us be able to be so comfortable and have air conditioning is technology and advancement but it's also allowed us to be completely disconnected from and that's what allows people to stand up on these pedestals and down at people that they think are doing something wrong when they're responsible for just as much death they're responsible for more suffering more

57:10suffering exactly yeah more suffering than hunters for sure absolutely but just as much death too and and even people that are vegetarians even people that are they think they by eating vegetables and plants that they're doing no harm the amount of wildlife habitat displacement that takes place in just growing kale is ridiculous and all the pesticides and everything else that goes into mind and the rodents and all the different death that is associated with combines and and and widescale uh grain uh when you're when you're U growing and harvesting grain there's so much death involved and there's no getting around that I mean we we are consumers in some sort of a weird way but to me the purest pursuit of it is what you're talking about archery hunting in the Backwoods in the most difficult environments I mean it is an unbelievably difficult Pursuit that

58:05somehow or another gets lumped into this idea that it's a bunch of dumb people and they're cruel if you're dumb you're not going to be successful doing that if you're lazy you're not going to be successful you're just not yeah that I mean I've been uh because of kuu been in New York doing a bunch of media tours over the last year and to be interviewed by these people that live in a big city that have no idea of what hunting is like or what it's about is really mind-blowing to me because it's been such a big part of my life and everyone I'm associated with and friends with typically hunts or understands hunting their perception of it is so amazing to me that we would just kill an animal cut its head off and leave everything I don't know anybody that's ever done it it's completely illegal and but that's what mainstream media has made out hunting hunting to be and it's a mission

58:56of M now to change that perception and mine as well it's it's a lazy it's a lazy perception of it that it's not real it doesn't happen not not for real hunting no it absolutely just never happens yeah I mean like this New York Times guy was just like yeah it's it you know I took him through like the want and waste laws and and all that and he was just like he's like wow that I mean you you you legally have to take it like it's not it's not something that's new you know like it's it's always been that way and there is this cool meat movement that's been going on but you know one thing is like don't get it lost that you know guys in the' 60s 7s all you know since you know aside from Market hunting back in the day which isn't real hunting it was just extermination for but I mean it's you know people hunt and they consume what they eat like anything else just like eating you know bread or

59:45anything else I mean you have you know it's like you know you got studs in your house they came from a tree just where they came from yeah exactly um I always say if you want to fix the health problems of the United States make everybody hunt the problem is there's not enough animals there's too many people and not enough animals know but it's like obesity overweight you know poor diet right make them all Hunters that all goes away it does all go away because they have to live a lifestyle to actually Harvest an animal yeah to change everything and hunting you know I mean God it's been our DNA for two million years yeah and it's the last hundred that people had an issue with it not actually the last 50 yeah it's it well it's when you see things like the Cecil the lion thing then everybody gets up in arms about hunting and it just becomes uh this really distorted version

60:28of what it actually is yeah but the stuff with Cecil that's not even true I mean it wasn't you know he wasn't living full-time in the park there's a new thing that just came out in the hunt report about the I mean the whole background of it I mean it's there's a lot more to it than that and and it's all how you how how it's said too it's like you know all the guy killed Cecil Li who's this super old male who had been kicked out of the pride apparently you know and his you know the whole thing with his brothers and the family and all that stuff hilarious and at the end of the day it's like a was shot him and beheaded him it's like well hey that that burger you got at McDonald's guess what it died and got beheaded it's all how you word it you could also say it was processed I mean like just beheaded is just a horrible thing it's like yeah everything that gets killed in processed

61:09gets beheaded but don't you think that part of the reason why people get upset about lions is because people generally don't eat lions so when someone says that someone goes and shoots a lion like why would you shoot this beautiful rare majestic animal just so you could stick it on your wall and and just think you're a badass cuz you've got this thing that could kill you if you didn't have a weapon and you got it on your wall now well I mean it it comes down to like Predators need to be controlled I mean it's it's not one of those things that's pretty and people really love to hear that but at the end of the day it it it is true I mean like you know I mean you were just down where I grew up I grew up in just north of the of of the greater Yellowstone elk you know between Gardener and Livingston that's where I grew up and when I was in high school there was 19,000 elk in that herd you go

61:52down there winter time and see 1,500 Bulls I mean it was it was amazing and they're down to 2 to 3,000 now because of you know the reintroduction of the wolf you know like you have to control Predators um anywhere wherever they're at I mean it's it's it's insane to think that we don't exist and these houses and fences and highways and stuff are not there and that you can just turn something loose and just let it run its course and you know I mean people are even appalled by the natural core I mean when you see a young lion take over the pride and Cecil gets chomped and destroyed by two other younger lions that came in and got them people don't even like seeing that right just that's just how it happen it's just Detachment just Detachment from the actual cycle of life it is yeah and the other thing that's going on is that people love to they they love to broadcast how horrible

62:41the people are that hunt these things and how these lions are they need to be preserved and it's so important like Leonard Di Caprio had something on his Instagram page the other day where it was like an anniversary of the death of Cecil and he was talking about how you know few of these animals that are left they have to be protected what he very conveniently ignored is the fact that Zimbabwe is going to kill 200 Lions now because no one's going over there to hunt those Lions so there's more of them so they're decimating the ulate population so now they're going to kill them and make no money so they're going to lose out on millions of dollars in Revenue what would you expect from a guy that got attacked by a CGI bear I mean he doesn't live in reality anyway a CGI bear he probably didn't even write it he's probably doing coke and banging hookers and called his

63:28assistant hey man put something Eco on my page C anniversary yeah now they now they can't now that's a ton of money they could generate to shoot those and I know guy I mean I know booking I talk to them all the time there's guy nobody will touch that with a 10-ft pole it's a great hunt it's a cool thing to go see they do need to be managed I mean and you know like a lot of things like it just is what it is very it's very inconvenient when you look at the actual facts of of hunting over there even hunting you know quote unquote for trophies that is where they get a massive amount of the revenue it feeds a lot of the people that are over there it makes a huge impact on their economy and a lot of people don't like that but I urge people to watch the Louis THU documentary about his trip to Africa where he spent he spent several weeks in this African hunting camp and you know

64:16it's the same thing was it was like a high fence operation where they had lions and they were throwing like Calves over the fence to feed these lions and there's like two fences separating him from the Lions and he got to see like in depth what's going on he's essentially saying that these animals the only reason why they're here at all like massive amounts of them is because they're worth something to to come over and if it wasn't they like this place is so poor and so crazy that these animals would have been wiped out they and they were on the verge just a couple of decades ago before they introduced hunting so it's such a catch22 because they have more animals than they've ever had before but the reason for that is because they're worth something to hun exactly they're economic resource and because of that they have value so they're protected and there's money to

65:00protect them and people get put off by the fact that people enjoy the pursuit yeah you know and it's you know it's one of those things like I I have a hard time explaining it to people that you know I mean what makes a little kid who when you're in the yard and there's a bird right there like some kids you know just look at it and some kids want to chase that thing down and it's like 10,000 years where the genetics that say 2 million actually or yeah you want to do like this is something that is built in you want to do I mean you felt that you didn't grow up hunting and all of a sudden now you you you you can't I mean you think about it every day that's all you want to do I'm sure yeah and so to explain that to somebody that doesn't have that it's really hard I mean you know especially while they're eating a hamburger on from their pedestal telling you how you know you shouldn't you know

65:46kill anything yeah well I almost think I mean I don't think anybody should be forced to do anything but I almost think that it would be good for everybody to have to kill something and eat it if you do eat meat just to experience it and I mean that's just killing something but to actually go out and Hunt something down and kill it and eat it I think would would open up a lot of of doors inside your your your mind open up a lot of areas of perception and give you this real understanding of what it means to consume life it's it's it's there's a there's a lot to it it's a very complex thing that's going on when you're eating an animal a lot to it it's like you talked about that disconnect I mean there is a massive disconnect yeah it's weird people think just cuz it's in a package at a grocery store under cellophan with a styrofoam thing underneath that it's not didn't come

66:32from an animal or something yeah but you should almost have to watch even if you're not going to do it you should almost have to be there while they kill the cow and then string it up and then cut it up and people how many people become vegetarians then right remember that whole cow thing that went on a couple years ago I think it was in a slaughter house down in Southern California and those cows are sick and they're falling over and they got video of it and it got out there about the processing of meat and all these people up in arms about it I'm like that's always been that way yeah and it just got public and people were appalled by it but that's the reality of beef and Industrial food complex versus the animals that we hunt fre have a great life you know most of them like the one Bren the animals Bren I hunt which are the older ones they've had a full life

67:14and they've had uh the opportunity to experience things in nature and um reproduce and and have you know what an animal's life should be like we're we're a cattle or you know any type of industrial type of uh food animal like chickens or or cows or or pigs I mean that's that I I mean it's like living in a concentration camp it depends on the situation too I mean like my my wife's my my wife's father has a big Ranch in eastern Montana and they you know raise and process all their own stuff and you know like people talk about you know like all the beef and meats horrible and stuff not where not where I come from I mean they take really good care of those animals and and it's very important and they don't go to the you know the giant stocking yards and all it just it just depend it's all relative you got to look at everything as it is you know like what you know where did that come from

68:01at least you know where it's more connected yeah when people hear about grass-fed beef they're one of the big complaints they go God it's so expensive but yeah it's not supposed to be that cheap to eat life exactly you know what I mean I mean like a steak can be so cheap it's ridiculous you think about the amount of effort that has to go for you to get this $5 steak the amount of effort that the animal has to grow it has to be fed it has to be taken care of has to be slaughtered cut up packaged processed sent to stores put on the shelves and then you go and buy like look at the prices like oh my God no of course try doing it yourself and you would value it you would realize like wow this is actually a pretty good deal and all and all the all the process it's not all the same either like I said I mean there's lots of great ranchers that that care about what they're doing

68:45and and and do it right and all that stuff and you know again you lowest common dynometer you get you know a place that's got 70 cows packed into one shoot and people are like oh my God we're up in army about it's like well that's not that's not the norm on everything either I think it's good though that people are being aware of this and I think it's good that people are up in arms cuz I think there is something really disgusting about factory farming undeniably disgusting and I think the education of people and getting to understand like yeah this is a system that you're a part of even like the really hardcore radical animal activists that you know risk their um their lives and makes these crazy videos and get inside slaughter houses and you know violate those AG gag laws I salute them I salute them out there I do too I mean it shows the other side of it that that you know the bad

69:30side of it people don't get to see it we shouldn't be shielded from the truth in any way shape or form and that's one of the things that's allowed this factory farm system to get so disgusting is the fact that people haven't been able to have their input they haven't been able to see it and protest against it and say like hey you know you you shouldn't be treating living things like this totally agree I mean that's that story doesn't get told enough and I think the reasonable people who love animals and maybe they don't have any desire whatsoever to eat them that those are the people that I think respect the pursuit of hunting and respect the idea that look a person it's not something for everybody but neither is Marathon running neither is weightlifting neither is so true football Jiu-Jitsu anything difficult wrestling these are not for everybody everybody's not going to do a

70:16lot of things that are hard to do but if you want to procure meat that's the best way to do it couldn't agree more and everything that goes into it yeah that's what I love about it well I think it's important to spread that I think um that's sort of getting out there as well is the there's this anti-meat movement and anti you know animal cruelty movement and I I respect that I understand where they're coming from but I also think unless you're driving the Lexus with the leather seats I mean honestly it's like it's like you know I me you see it all the time guy wearing leather shoes and a leather belt you know talking about you know his impact and how little you know being vegan or whatever it's like man that's just the hypocrisy is insane of people you know like living in a h like how much is animal byproduct from from everything you use and it's like well

71:04yeah but I just had a salad today it's like yeah that's I mean which killed 50 rabbits when they harvested it it madees you feel good but in reality you're just bullshitting yourself yeah but they don't even know they're bullshitting themselves if they if their perception of what they're doing was accurate then they would have a good point but it's a it's an ignorance to what what is actually involved yeah people I don't I don't believe in killing anything it's like every time you get in your car man I mean the most animal the most life I've ever taken is every time I take a 500 mile road trip I mean and I got to wipe those things off my window I mean like I mean people people are like oh you can kill the out of bugs you know you you know fish or cool or whatever it's like o we got eyelids involved now it's getting weird it's like wow where does it where is it yeah

71:47exactly I used to live in Boulder and uh I live next to an ashram and the lady that ran the ashram this Buddhist ashram she us to poison ants and I I said to her I go what are you doing I go you poison the ants she was like well it's inconvenient we really don't like to do it but they get in our kitchen I'm like oh yeah that's where you DW the boy you you guys are this is some weird gray area you vented You're a murderer later you're a mass you've killed thousands of beings just today but an ant's a weird one cuz like I've seen people like they'll see an ant on them they'll squish it and then they flick it on the ground in your house it's so little they don't care that it hits your kitchen floor yeah exactly but if it was a mouse like someone in your house stomped a mouse in the middle of your kitchen be like what the dude like Jesus Christ this it cuz it makes more of a

72:37mess and now you have to consider what's actually going on there totally people are weird they are weird yeah it's weird I mean but that's not really what I wanted to bring you guys in on that's like a a beaten to death subject on this podcast you want to talk about ants no I love ants by do you a big ant fan yeah yeah they're cool me when be amazing to be able to pick up that was that much bigger than you and walk around within your mouth yeah oh yeah pretty impressive when it turns to out when you start talking about what they're capable of yeah and well it's also isn't like an ant the size of a cat could be able to pick up a house oh yeah yeah and they no free will whatsoever there's no decision making they just do have you ever seen those ant death spirals no got to check it out Jamie pull pull something like that up the ants follow the fermon of the queen and

73:23when something when something goes yeah I get it too when something goes wrong when something goes wrong like their scent gets screwed up or the queen dies or the queen gets removed but the scent still there the ants will Circle they'll Circle each other and spiral yep like a hurricane until they all die and you're talking about thousands of them really yep and they'll keep circling no one knows what the going on that's the true power of PE right there yeah I mean look at this that's amazing and a few of them are going the wrong way they're like I can't do this there's are a few Rebels that looks like that looks that looks like the freeways in Southern California it looks like a hurricane it does I mean it really does that's the eye of the storm in the center there and they're they're circling around and they don't know what the going a dead Queen yeah well it's either a dead queen I'm

74:09I'm not exact Jamie see if you could find out the actual exact they can't really reason for it no they don't know they're following Fones in some sort of a way but when they're doing this um I mean this is this is just shows that this this being these uh ants have no you don't have to just find an actual explanation for it not a video but when these um these animals are doing this like they don't they don't have any free will they have this Des this this sort of directive this is what they do you know they they make the nest they build a beehive they do this they CH like uh a friend of mine was uh Ben O'Brien you guys know Ben O'Brien from uh used to be work for Peterson's uh hun magazine he was telling me about one of his friends had a queen bee somehow or another got stuck in their car and this Hive of bees followed them for 20 miles they followed

74:59the car for 20 miles cuz the bee was in the car like they they don't have any like man she's gone we got to let her go we can't we got to push on there's none of that like there's no free will what they do yeah there's no decision- making it's just what they do the queen follow they never give up no it's a it's a bizarre form of life and they they have these really weird things that they do if you've seen like like uh videos on different uh ant species where the females will chop the M's legs off I think is that leaf cutter ants that do that I forget which one but they chop they take the male when they're going to breed with him and they essentially cut his legs off so that he can't move and then they carry him to wherever they want they want to him and then they take him and breed with him I've met a couple girls like that before a't a bad way to go about it you can take my legs

75:50off yes lying there a stub yeah all the wiling pull come out of you it's like it's but and again no thought process there's no meeting they don't have a board where they sit down and decide how to do this with the the the mail they just go about the way they've always done it yeah what a trip huh yeah here go how to make ants commit suicide make it happen you can make it happen yeah it says like you can force them into a potted plant and they'll just start following each other and next thing you know yeah we should bring that in on the show we could put one right here it'd be rude people would be angry protest yeah right that's cruel but that's the thing like certain amount of death is okay I mean every time you wash your body you're killing Flora you're killing living living organisms that are on the surface of your skin there's no getting around it and there's no way to live a

76:40life where you're not killing other life it's there's this constant cycle that's going on in some sort of a weird way that most of us are detached from the way it's always been yeah it's bizarre not to be in touch with it and or or just to deny it like I mean like I'm not I'm not doing that hey man I mean and there are like there are few people that you know try as hard as they can and all that but most people like they always give up though they love the idea yeah but you know implementation is where it gets complicated think there's also a problem with entertainment like the anthropomorphizing of animals and Disney movies and things along those lines so like when when you think of an animal you think of this big furry lovable thing you don't think of this you know like what an elk is essentially a warrior it's this living Warrior that has weapons grown out of its head and

77:28they run around they kill each other when I was at ton Ranch you you've been to that place they found this huge like 390 class bull dead that had been stabbed by another bull he just ran them through he was lying there dead on the side of the mountain with holes in his body from from the other bull just headbutted him to death I'm I'm going through it right now I got a four-year-old son and he watched this little show called The Lion guard which is like and all these animals get together and they're all friends and and we started watching he would ask questions and stuff and and now I'm like we watch you know if you want to watch the LI guard that's fine and but I've explained to them like the cheetah and The Lion and the hippo they don't get along they're not buddies and we watched Discovery Channel and he watches you know like the day we just watched the

78:13wilderbeast a couple days ago we watched the wilderbeast getting eaten by the by the crocodile and he was just like whoa you know it's like and now like when it comes up he's like well that's just pretend but I want to watch that and I like that's fine I like as long as we know you know that's not really how it goes you know we'll go Discovery Channel and watch you know killers on the Savannah and he was like wow that you know the LI doesn't get along with anybody he eats everybody and you know I I don't want my kid to to think that you know well it's just big peaceful thing and they're all this big symbiotic relationship and they all love each other no man that Ain what's going on yeah it's weird the way we've chosen to distort these animals and like polar bears like there was a a picture that was going on on Instagram a lot of people were posting up of this enormous

78:54polar bear walking around with a a Cub's head in its mouth everyday occurrence they're cannibals 100% of the males are cannibals and most people have no idea this so they think of a polar bear like a kondik bar or Coca-Cola salesperson yeah there's the photo that's been going on and this is just food for them absolutely I mean in a polar bear he's not an omnivore no 100% he eats people he eat whatever he can get a hold of yeah I mean that's all they eat is meat they're not like a black bear or any other bear that can eat anything all they eat is flesh that's that's it that bear at the zoo is eating meat yeah you know you they don't let you see it but the the polar bear at the zoo just hammering away at it all that's one of the darker things about the zoo too is we take them away from their actual purpose I think if you're going to have a zoo it should be like you should have

79:41animals that have you ever see that zoo in Iraq that they had when before we invaded Iraq they um they had zoos where they used to just let like a goat loose and then they would open up the gate and let the lions come out and Jack the goat and there videos soldiers took videos of these things and people were like a gas like I don't understand why you think you should be able to keep a lion but don't let a lion be a lion like you're going to do all the killing for how do are you giving him some fake meat no you're giving him real meat okay so something had to die in order to get but you don't want him to do it why don't you want him to do it like what the are you doing exactly what is a zoo trust me the lion wants to hunt that's they live for here here's the the video so they have these goats and these goats are just wandering around they have no idea they let them loose and then they

80:32open up the gate and when they open up the gate the Lions apparently they do this all the time so they're hip to what's going to go on they're stretched out and ready to go oh yeah they're warmed up yeah they been doing sprints yeah they don't want to pull a hammy when they get the goat so they open up the gate and as soon as they open up the gate is just on like Donkey Kong I bet they got walkout music and everything they're just yeah this totally this queen is playing we will we will rock you here it goes boom they open up the gate I like that zoo and it's not that weird to be fascinated by that and for those guys to look at that and go wow that's you know that's that's Lions being lions like that's pretty w i mean they're going to eat today one way or the other and here's another interesting thing it's interesting for us to watch if we're watching and we're going whoa

81:24oh we're laughing oh my God but if we were there and we were laughing then people get upset like there's an instinct to like listen to those guys laughing while it's happening because they're filming it right through the fence and go wow a bunch of laughing at death but meanwhile it's okay to laugh at if it's on a YouTube video totally it's okay to throw a bug in a in a in a tank and and watch a fish eat it it's like o cool right but it's like a goat and a lion it's like whoa that's getting it's like watching a fight yeah I mean we want to see the guy get knocked out the next step is death right it is so take it as close as possible oh yeah I mean we find thrill in that well the guy chokes a guy out and he steps off of him and he's totally unconscious the only difference between that and death is time the amount of time he holds the choke that's it keep

82:09that choke on for another minute that guy's dead yep you know or not even a minute and we get millions of people that want to watch it yeah but at least that's they make a decision they both make a decision they're both going to enter into this and it's an extreme form of a competition with dire physical consequences that's why so to watch I mean I think the parallels when you're watching something like that a little different but but still it's that it's a Detachment thing it is yeah it's well you watch a movie you can watch a movie where 10 people get shot and they get punched and kicked and everybody gets their ass kicked but if they if they're naked they start F what are you showing me like what is this like people are weird we're real weird they like to draw the line on certain things for whatever reason no it doesn't make any sense whatsoever no it

82:54doesn't it doesn't that's why with the hunting thing you can't win at all no I mean you do a good you do as good a job as you can putting forward an educated you know opinion of why what we do and and and and at the same time being you know where I'm Unapologetic about it too it's not like somebody so there's not a conversation that could convince me that what I'm doing isn't what I was meant to do you know when it comes to hunting I mean you know you put forward you know we try and tell people about it and educate people as to what it is people are going to feel how they're going to feel but at the end of the day I mean nothing's going to change with us either how did you go from being a guy who is obsessed with being the best hunter you could possibly be and wanting to be the best hunter in the world how'd you go from that to working for a sitkka an

83:39apparel company a hunting company and then and going to kuu well I uh so after I killed that big elk I was in you know started writing some stories and and like like I told you I mean I I really you know there's a lot of guys that get something have a great stroke and luck in life wife and all of a sudden they kill one big thing or they win one small lottery or whatever and and you never hear from again and that was like that you know growing up being a hunter like to kill this huge elk was yeah was just I'm right place at the right time an amazing thing for me but I was at the time super conscious that I don't want to be oneit wonder I mean I I want to do it more I want to be really good at what I'm doing I mean like I grew up reading hunting books and like the the best hunters in the world I want to I want to I want to be defend his title yeah exactly right yeah I want to keep the

84:23strap after every year you know and so um I just you know put the work in and then was doing some writing I was at a trade show when I met him and I I didn't work at sit I was the first uh they had an athlete team in one of the first Ona first year not really an athlete team yeah whatever whatever was after I left Pro Staff we were talking about that on the phone it's it's a weird term today because you sort of buy a hat that says like Pro Staff the franchise is completely dead I mean like you said you know Pro Staff with everything it's like when you can buy a hat that says it it it's it's dead it means it means nothing it's it's been but back in the day it was I mean like back when print media and like at the at one point in time it meant you were vouching for a product because you used it and and you earned the right to vouch for it yeahh you had you had the photos you have the

85:12accomplishments you earned the rights not so much today you have you have the credibility to say this is this is good stuff or not and not because you did social media reps but because you actually had been out there using it and kill big stuff and had the had the track record so I I met him a trade show and uh you know like I said every now and again in life he have something that's just right place at the right time and I killed that big elk and it kind of was getting known and and I met him in the booth and he's like you're that kid that killed that big elk and uh looks exactly the same still does yeah and so we hit it off and I started helping him testing gear and shut a commercial for him down and stuff we just became really good friends and then um when the whole deal went down at Sitka um he you know it's like when your when your guy you know your guy is you know there and and and

85:59is leaving you know you have a choice you can either go with your guy or you can you know stay with you know what's whatever the the best thing you think is to do and and I was like man whatever you got going on next let me know I'm I'm down what did you think about this Pursuit that he's on to create the most finely engineered like to the extreme products like what he's doing it's it's fun I mean he's he's hit everything on the head that he told me I mean we flew down we went to a I flew down like I I want to say it was like in November or something the year before kuu started KU was already started but beforehand and he he basically is like Nostradamus in hindsight I mean was like listen he breaks out this he I remember I'll never forget had this briefcase and he pulled this thing out and it was a carbon fiber frame and he's like this is this is the

86:47backpack we're coming out with and the whole business model and all that and it's like I'm not the smartest guy in the world but when I meet a really smart dude that's got a really good idea you know I'm not that dumb you're smart enough to recognize smart people yeah yeah I was like I was like man I I don't yeah it's I mean when you see something you go dude I want to know more about that and that seems like it's going to fix a problem and uh and just you know the knowledge of what he what he knew about everything and you know we we were buddies and it's like dude why wouldn't you want to go you know work at a company where you're going to be able to hunt as much as you want your testing gear and and I mean truly living the dream and not just saying it like living the dream like you don't you wake up every day and you like what you're doing and you know it's it's

87:31it's been awesome I mean that's and so so yeah he said he's basically I'm looking for somebody to run this part of it and um and it's like he's like you'd be perfect I'm like well perfect well I think people like you are attracted to the pursuit of Excellence yeah and when you see the pursuit of excellence in in another form you go well there it is like that's how it is with me when I started seeing your company and I see a company that's trying to like deeply and and seriously engineer something I geek out on that I'm not even interested in buying like if someone's making the craziest grandfather clock in the world and I see this guy that's engineering these things so it's accurate to like one 18th of one second over 20 years I'm like ah and I I want to I want to know what what's going on this dude's brain that makes him want to make this unbelievable grandfather clock like I'm

88:20fascinated by Pursuit you know when someone's trying to do something better than the people that have done before it I'm fascinated by that so you must have seen that and that for for a guy like you and and I know what I I know what I like and I know what when I see a good idea um the one thing is like there I'm not I wouldn't say I'm necessarily the best at doing like super intricate things or knowing exactly how to get there but when you see somebody that knows how to get there and like it'd be a good combination and you can you know Assist in that in somebody that when they're headed on the on on the right direction it's like yeah I'm down with that and and then you know I have my input on what what we do but you know at the end of the day it's you know a lot of it is you know and how he how he goes about stuff it's cool to watch I mean it's like it it it's I I always tell

89:05people like at at what we do is it is it's exactly what you think it is like there's not like oh you step in the room and it's like oh yeah this is some other guy's stuff we're going to knock this out that's not going on I mean but that does happen in some companies you you were pointing that all the time yeah that's disturbing to me you know it's uh when when you look at the the future of this what how far can you keep pushing this I mean this is a fairly new thing that people have been like ridiculously engineering hunting and Outdoor Equipment and obviously exists in like uh the mountaineering world and the Reis and you know they try every year they're trying to come up with better and better stuff but how how far can that go like is there a point where you're going to have it done like this is the best backpack anybody could ever possibly make these are the best clothes I mean

89:52is there is there a point where that ends you know today Innovation happening faster than it ever has and with this business model we can Implement those Innovations quickly and we're always looking for the next greatest thing I always am I mean I search the globe on a continuous basis for what's new what's next align myself with the Innovation leaders for every single category whether it's Marina wool whether it's Leathers or whether it's for our gloves or whether it's carbon fiber for our B our packs we had our designer down at Stanford meeting with a carbon fiber scientist down there that's working on some Leading Edge Technologies around carbon fiber that won't even get to market for a few years we're that interested in seeing what's next because we can implement it because we have no price restrictions we take it's for us it's it's a never-ending Pursuit and

90:42there's always new ways to make things and this why I tag tag the line for the business of ultralite because if I can find a way to shave an ounce or a gram there's a reason to redo that product there's a reason to reinvent that product because that makes a difference and that was my focus with this is that you know tor's technology and how they make their yarn carbon fiber it all led to ultral light and ultral light means performance in the mountains and so my goal is to get our weights continuously to come down as far as our product without giving up performance and that's through using really in Innovative Technologies and designs that are all focused around that and I mean from where we started to where we are now I we've taken pounds and pounds of weight out of people's kits and packs and seen the results and it's been amazing to watch people that normally would walk

91:31into the mountains with a 70lb pack now leaving with a 40 lb pack and coming back and saying made all the difference in the world I can hunt now and I thought I was done because of pack weight now have you guys thought about implementing any sort of uh workout routines or um or Diet routines or things like that on your website and sort of shaping people's ideas about getting body prepared I'd like to do more of that I really would um we started developing our Mountain fit line that'll come out next year so using all of our fabric Innovations into a a performance fitness line for our Customer because they're all training for hunts and I have wanted to step in and help people get fit nutrition supplements and bring that to our customers as well we just haven't gotten there yet but I think it's absolutely something I know I want to do because I live and breathe it every day just

92:17haven't done it yet don't you think that's also another aspect that people don't realize like how much physical requirement is necessary in order to to hunt like especially Mountain hunting elk hunting you're going in the mountains of Montana you're at 9,000 plus elevation it's unbelievably difficult on the body and I think most people don't realize how much physical preparation is involved especially you two guys you former wrestler you're a former football player you guys have athletic backgrounds you know how physically demanding this is the hardest things I've ever done have been hunting without a doubt and I mean it like it's hard to say there's tough that's stuff that's tougher than college wrestling practice practices um I've definitely you know I mean you you got you push it to the Limit especially on some of these long Expedition H you I can spent 24

93:01days backpacking in the ball Marshall last year to find a sheep to find one ram and it's like until you've actually done that I'm I'm talking like it's not just you know how far or how long but it's sustained um it's at a sustained high level of focus also which you know like you can you can grind away at stuff and you can you know just go and go and go but I mean again when we get them we we don't just go from A to B we have to be you know you have to be on on point in the mountains too I mean you have to be sharp you got to be ready to execute the moment comes you can't be just sort of trotting along like a zombie yeah I mean when you get up early in the morning if you're not glassing every single time with with the same enthusiasm and and the same whether it's your grid system or whatever you have to be as intense on day one as you do on the last day because you could miss what you're

93:47looking for you can't you can't let up that's the beauty of it and I mean yeah you I mean physically fit I mean lots of different stuff I mean you know he he's got his whole training regimen and you know everybody's different but uh you know like whether it's yoga or you know cardio and you know how much you're eating and I mean it's it's it's it never ends you you there is no magic bullet the the puzzle you're always putting it you're always breaking it down and doing a new puzzle yeah I do it every year yeah and and everyone has different physical requirements there's some people that are older and you're just trying to kind of maintain the best possible shape they can get in there's some guys that are younger we're trying to get them into ultimate fitness when you're training and you're doing all these backpack things what you see you're carrying weight using weight

94:31plates like what do you what are you carrying around in a backpack so I've use we have these sand bags that are set up for putting over like the booms in our video room is now what I use you can buy them in 20 lb 25 lb 30 lb increments and that's what I put in my pack to train with and so like right now as we're rolling in we're about 45 days away from a sheep hunt in the Yukon I'm really stepping up my weight so I'm training with a 90 pack now and I'll do a 2 or three hour hike 1500 to 2,000 vertical feet and now I'm doing it in the middle of the day with the heat we're having because it adds another mental toughness factor to it plus as you know it adds a whole another level of Fitness to when you're training the heat so my goal is to try to train in situations with weight and conditions that are harder than we all experienced in the hunt just for the mental strength

95:16as much as it is the physical part of it because you get beat down on day three or day four and you just I've see a lot of guys just fold in the towel and say I've had it want to go home right just physically they don't have anything left nothing left right so there's a mental side of it too that's a big part of it that gives me confidence when I'm going on these trips cuz it's I mean they're freaking Grinders I mean I've had hunts where we walk for three freaking straight days with 70 pound packs before you even start hunting that's just to get into the area from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed and that can you know most people can make the phone sat phone call and get picked up and taken out and we hear about it all the time from from clients and customers so we try to help them get prepared lower that weight so that doesn't happen

95:57to them when you're doing something like that and you're preparing for something like do you start off with like 20 lbs and just do like how do you how do you do that how would you advise someone like say if there's someone listening right now that says hey uh I'm you know I'm going to go on a hunt this this winter or this uh this fall rather and I need to really get physically prepared but I don't want to blow it all out in one shot yeah you definitely want to build up to it and because I don't stop training I come out of hunt I'm go right back in my training but for a lot of guys are just getting into it ease into it right I mean you want to like you said start with 20 lbs and build yourself up over time cuz last thing you want you to do is go into hunt hurt I've done that before I've overtrained or done too much going into hunt and you have to be careful especially as you age

96:39I get tend to get tendonitis and joint pain more than I ever have and so it's it's managing your body through that process and and having something left when you leave and but being fit enough and having your feet in good enough shape and your boots broken I mean there's a lot to it besides just the cardio part of it that goes into a hunt yeah I think people would benefit from seeing like if you could make like a Blog on how you do it or outline outline how you start off and how someone would build into it and maybe consult with someone who's a an expert trainer and figure out what's the best way to uh get people prepared like to develop an actual workout for like for pack hunting or for even hiking any any any sort of thing where you're walking uphill in the mountain mountains with weight on your back it's like boy that is an unbelievably difficult thing to do all

97:29day every day for several days at a time and it's just a different biomechanical movement I used to trail run a ton before I hunted and that was enough and I've gotten older I've realized that I need to train more specifically for hunts and that's carrying a pack with weight and it hits different muscle groups as you've felt gets more up in your hips and more in your glutes and it hits a whole different muscle group than trail running does or that weight training does or training on elliptical uh stair m or whatever that is there's no substitute for spending time in a pack with weight there just isn't no there's no sub it's so different than anything else it's just it's so exhausting it is and it hits a whole different muscle group and your your heart and lungs may be in shape but those muscles aren't and it it taxes you yeah as much as I lift weights and

98:11workout and kettle bells and all this stuff I I packed 100 lb for like 3 quars of a mile in the fall and I was dead when it was over I was like oh my God I could imagine 7 pounds on my back for three days at a time walking all day just to start hunting yeah not I'm not in good enough shape for that so with if someone listening to this is there a resource is there any like sort of a website they can go to that can give them some good workouts for for something to get prepared for something like this yeah there isn't one specific to what we're doing and I I think it's a great idea that you have is is really laying that out I mean we T I mean we talk about all the time we take all this for freaking granted we've grown up doing it right these spreadsheets people like oh my God that's so amazing you do that I'm like I've always done it right how in the hell else you know what your

98:53pack away and you're not overpacking and that you have exactly what you need and how much you need of it we break it down to like calories per ounce and ounces per day as far as our food we bring I mean I go on a sheep hunt I don't rely on the outfit or to pack for me I bring all my own food and it's all weighed out it's all it's all calculated out to the exact calorie per day I'm going to eat what kind of food do you bring a lot of Whole Foods now I used to bring you know lots of bars and Cliff Bars and Power Bars now it's real food Bren and I have both gotten into that yeah nuts and whole grains and and um getting away from dehydrated meals so much and to have you know high sodium not a lot of nutritional value and really trying to focus on you know bringing Breads and peanut butters and and cheeses and things that will stick with you versus high sugars and you know

99:37quick Burns right when you have dehydrated food how how nutritious is that stuff I don't think it's very nutritious I think it's calories and if you really look at their calories they're not that many calories per ounce um they're light and uh some of them have higher calories per ounce than others but I brendon's come up with a really good recipe with your with peanut butter and some noodles and like stff you get really creative with it I've been I've been kind of building my own like my like stuff uh it wasn't my idea exactly but modified it a bit and couple things of ramen and peanut butter and fats and jerky and stuff all that's dehyd weighs about the same and has double the calories and and you know one the one thing I this is what I do a lot is advising people that are going on a big hunt you know it's like start today don't put it off don't get a plan like

100:22get a pack back on go for a hike start working out right now you know it's going to and and uh get all your gear in order and and at the end of the day it's going to be a grind you're you're not going to you're not going to be full the whole time you're not going to have all the energy you need like that's the beauty of it is like you can train all you want to do at the end of the day you're going to be working on a deficit you need to be sharp and you're just going to have to grind through it and you have to be tough you know that's the beauty of it you can't be a wimp and do this so how do you figure out how much peanut butter to bring that is well you can't bring enough right so you're going to burn what I mean a th000 2,000 calories an hour when you're carrying heavyweight altitude is it really that much yeah 2,000 calories an hour you'll do 1,000 calories on a treadmill an hour

101:06but is that is that even possible 2,000 calories an hour if you're hiking for 12 hours at altitude with weight it's possible done it it's why you lose a pound a day two pounds a day on these hunts if you if you're not in total shape going in which is your body is burning off way more than you're taking in yeah you're going to be a calorie deficit no matter what that also puts you at a mental deficit makes you mentally exhausted when your body starts using all its resources to part of it yeah the same feeling you get cutting weight you get on a huge trip when you're running out of food you're way back in there it's just like you just got to dig deep like how do you show up for practice when you're cutting weight you just got to do it and you you just got to dig deep and your body will your body responds I mean the cool thing is your body respond it will eat what it

101:48needs to eat and you just keep going you I mean it's it's going to be the the the beauty of it it's it's never easy I mean it's G to be it's G to be tough well that's one of the things that's so exciting about it right is it is this unbelievably difficult Pursuit test man now if you're going like explain to me a hunt like say if you're going to go on uh like a a mountain goat hunt or a sheep hunt where you know you're going to go into very difficult terrain and you have X amount of days how do you pack for that like as far as food yeah two pounds a day two pound per day yep and then you want to be ranging between 100 to 120 calories per ounce on your food choices that's how I break it down do you concentrate on um vitamins do you do you think about like I do yeah I'll bring I'll bring supplements um I'll bring uh you know uh whether it's um you know electrolyte replacement tablets or

102:40vitamins and that type of stuff and then the other part of is just Whole Foods making sure we max out that calories BRS high fat content and then the other thing I try to tell people is try it when you're not hunting totally you have to if you don't like it you're going to hate It on the Mountain like one year I brought these new prob bars have you tried a pro bar yeah I got those they're kind of nasty after while I mean there's a lot to it there's nuts and Grains yeah they're very filling and they're very big and dense but try eating one for 10 days or three of them a day for 10 days at the end of it you don't even want to eat it and so i' I believe now for me at least and what I recommend to our customers is bring food you like now that you love and focus on that stuff versus trying to get crazy on something new you haven't tried and thinking okay I'll go to REI and buy all these

103:24different type of exotic bars and that'll be my food source dude before I was on a ketogenic diet I was eating like 10 of those prob bars a day so I don't know what you're talking about peanut butter and chocolate ones I love those things man Jamie too even all time I lived on them for for 14 days in the mountains I couldn't if I ate another one I throw well you know that that expression find me the best looking woman somewhere there's a guy who's tired of yeah exactly totally yeah I mean a lot of it with the food is uh you you you got to try it out early you got to try it beforehand I mean I tell people like if if you've never eaten mountain house I mean it's it is it's like second nature to us and we've eaten so much of that that it's like I got I mean I got tell people Mountain House is dehydrated or dehydrated freeze dried or dehydrated free dried yeah whether it's mountain

104:06house or I mean there's a million kinds of it but I've gotten a whereare like I can only eat a certain some of them function better for me like I don't like any of the red sauce I don't like don't ever eat chili mac by the way why just try it once goes right through yeah your buddy anyone you're hunting with can to be bummed you ate it but if you if you got somebody you're hunting with you don't like feed them chili mac but if you a lot of Hang Time if you've never done it before and and you know you all of a sudden you go on this great big trip and you're you're stressed you know you're traveling and all this stuff and all of a sudden you know it's like throwing diesel into an unleaded car I mean if you've never ran on that before you don't really know how you're going to run on it that's why you got to go do it right you know and and a lot of people you know it freaks them out you

104:44know that's the thing leaving the outfit cuz you on a sheep hunt they'll provide the food right but you don't know what they're going to give you they they don't know what you going to like they always over pack you I mean the food bags will hand you'll be 40 lb for 10 days when you really need 20 lb cuz they don't know last thing they want is a client that doesn't like what they have to eat or runs out of food and so this is all part of it and then part of it you may not like what they provide you thing is super interesting and I'm I'm messing around with that actually as we you know as we speak because the thought of being able to go for 10 days with sustained energy while you're burning your own fat versus I mean that is that is like I would say that's cutting edge Ming around with that right now that's why I got the MCT oil and all that stuff I'm I'm going to try that this fall to

105:27see because I've been in places you know and it's kind of funny like I've had times where you run out of food or you have so little food that I think your body has switched over to where it's just stra certainly absolutely and then you feel fine like it's like it just goes away so well hunger goes away in some sort of a weird way and there's there's also a bunch of different people that are involved in this now that are coming up with snacks and different foods that you could take with you when you're uh that's one of the reason why I wanted ask you guys what you're carrying around but once your body's into ketosis you know then you just need high fat high fat content foods and you got to figure out how to keep them okay or keep them uh from going bad while you're out there in the mountain you know but almond butter things along those lines yeah we're bringing a lot more of that

106:08than Power Bars yeah and peanut butter the problem with peanut butter is most peanut butter you're going to get is going to be loaded up with sugar and just you get you're going to get the insulin spikes you're going to get the crashes when when you're talking about 20 lbs of food that doesn't seem like a lot if you tell me 20 lb of food for how many days for 10 days 2 lbs of food a day our panicking already I'm panicking I'm I'm I'm starving I'm going to starve you got to ration it out I you got you got to ration it out and and I mean it's not like you're sitting around like oh man I'm ready to get something to eat I mean you're you're doing stuff you're glassing like I mean it's just like here's you know it's it's bottom line is you're hungry too it's going it's like going on a diet it's it's it's it's basically you're in the mountains but you're meal prepped like there's your

106:51little meal you know it's like these guys that are slimming down to be on these compet you know it's like that's all you get and do you have them broken down to packets we have it bro I have it broken down per day so I have a Ziploc bag with my day how big is it what does it look like it's about this big I mean it's not very big that's so crazy that and then you know every day is broken down exactly that way so what's nice about it is you get back and that you're exhausted you take your empty bag out that you ate all day that goes in the garbage and then you pull your new one out of your food bag and dump in your pack so there's no guess work none can't be and are you eating this stuff like he's talking about before you go out there are you like trying to live off that for a few days I try everything year round so if a new something new comes out or we learn about something

107:31new I'm trying it during my training I'm trying trying it in the offseason to make sure I'm going to like it have you ever uh there's a new product that's out this uh friend of mine has uh put out it's called fat fudge have you heard of this no it's uh P see pull up um I think it's p h a fudge.com i think is her uh the website where she sells it but she's uh or it might be pale I chef.com but she's uh created this um it's like a snack it's very nutrient dense it's a fudge that has MCT oil in it very low sugar I think it's got like a little bit of honey in it um but they're they come in these small individual packets dude I live on this stuff it's fantastic but that's the type of stuff that is so powerful in the mountains yeah because it's a small packet you you know just rip the top off it shove it in your mouth and uh chew it down and uh you know you can see you see all

108:22ingredients are it's ketogenic and uh it's got got you know cacao it's got turmeric cinnamon sea salt Maca honey grass-fed butter it's all like super super good stuff but it's you know a lot of calories for like a little tiny thing but very nutrient dense and for someone who's trying to burn off nothing but fats it's a good way to go it is yeah the whole the the concept of burning fat versus using sugars was introduced to me we're doing some VO2 max testing in weight with our taxs on at a UC Davis performance lab and that guy trained uh worked with us cycling team and they were talking about this movement into burning fat versus using gel shots and sugars yeah and I've started to in our diets and what we bring that's been our focus and it's made a really big difference it's made a big difference with me it's made a big difference with a lot of UFC fighters Misha Tate

109:14switched over to a k ketogenic di before she won the title Brian caroway her boyfriend he's on it too he said weight cutting is way easier his performance level are higher and one of the things that I'm finding with myself and with a lot of my friends who've gone on it is your testosterone goes up noticeably and some guys it's going up by double really it's because the precursors for testosterone it's all about it's all about fats it's all about your body turns fats saturated fats and cholesterol all that stuff that you're eating from healthy fats turns that into hormones that's like what it needs and it's one of the the the big problems with going on high carb lowfat diets is that your body has a difficult time creating hormones through that I didn't know that really interesting and new stuff that's coming out is that these guys that are taking it they're finding

110:01that when they're doing their blood tests that their testosterone levels are higher their growth hormone levels are higher it's really interesting stuff like I think your body is designed to eat that natural food like plants and and vegetables and meats it is you watch a bear what he eats first all the fat off the fish before he even eats the meat yep I mean that's the number one uh food source or energy source is fat first I mean it's a wonderful thing just for for whatever reason our society decided that's what makes people fats really the sugars yeah it's the sugars it's 100% the sugars but it's this stuff changes all the time and if you go back five years ago and you read some of the studies that are done and what what people recommend like for as far as diet now today it's totally contrary to that it it's it's interesting how this the The Edge is always moving it's The

110:50Cutting Edge of this stuff is always it's always changing and people are always coming up with uh new studies that show better ways to eat and that's the fun thing about what we're doing is is we're you know we're always there there is no magic bullet I get guys call all the time like hey what what jacket do I need it's like dude it doesn't work like that yeah clear first of all what is the name what what does this mean what does it's an island in Southeast Alaska it's got the highest density of black bears in the world and I've hunted it and it wasn't doomed and I just like the way the lays out I like the way the balance the look and when I was hunting it and this is when I had Sitka I was hunting there with my ex- business partner and actually gortex before they had licensed us and invested in us and woke up one morning before everybody else was sitting on the back of the boat and I

111:36was like thinking about KU you the name and I was like that's going to name a next company and I don't know why that even came to my mind because we were in the midst of building Sitka but I I just like the name for whatever reason just my gut told me that was it go with the gut totally always every time every time yeah isn't it amazing when you follow it how powerful it is it's my whole life right I've always gone with my gut totally yeah it's there's no there's no other way you know and so many people are are driven or or their entire life is about fear and it's all it dictates everything they do versus following your gut and putting the fear aside and once you do it makes all the difference in life yeah fear's good it's a motivating factor yeah well it's also the lack of fear can be very d dangerous one of the things that I always say like people that are not scared when they're

112:26fighting like those people are in trouble you're in trouble man you should be F nobody likes to be scared but when I was competing the worst tournaments that I ever fought in I was not nervous I was too confident and I I just perform poorly but when I was terrified and like completely on edge then your body's just it's just Primal it's just like you get down to that that the the bare minimum amount of understanding of what what have to do of the thinking the rest of the world Fades away and all you're thinking about is that task you you're cutting out everything else there's no thought about bills there's no thought about the future there's just what's going on in front of you right now and if you can get down to that that's when you perform at your best but it's terrifying so nobody likes it nobody likes to be like when you see guys that are in like the UFC that are

113:17like like here's a good example now I'm a big fan of Luke rockold I think we just talking about on the way down was way too relaxed he thought he was going to kill Michael bisbing and Michael bisbing fought that fight like he was going in against a silver back gorilla totally he was terrified or not terrified but you know jacked up with nerves and like you always line yeah and that's how he W knocked him out such a great sport is that his first knockout too in the UFC it's his first KO like that that's I was tell him the way sto Jorge Rivera in Manchester he beat down Mayhem Miller as a TKO but the the TK Ko's yeah I mean he's also sitting down his punches better Jason PLO his boxing coach has really been working with him and and done a fantastic job with him and with Chris Cyborg and a bunch of other people that the buildup to that reminded me of Keith Jardine talking about Houston

114:08Alexander it it was like I kept thinking like man he's really dismissive like not even in my league and all that stuff and all of a sudden you're done yeah you can't when a guy's a professional fighter if you just stood there and let him punch you in the face would it knock you out yes okay so that it can happen it can happen yeah and the last thing you want to be is the guy that says this guy can't beat me I'm going to go in there and him up and then you wake up with a flashlight in your eyes like what what's going on the doctor standing over don't move you're like oh what happened and then you have to deal with that that ego that allow like the ego tells you that it's going to protect you from all this you know you're the baddest ever you don't have need to worry about I don't even have to worry and then blam and you're like God damn it ego yeah exactly and then your ego leaves

114:55you alone like where are you now ego's it's okay to say it just don't believe it yeah yeah and even if you say it you got to be real careful yeah you got be look who you're saying it to these guys are killers yeah I mean I just man that Sport's awesome it's a crazy sport it is Brandon's got me into it and I never miss a fight now have you come live yet I have yeah where have you been to live to the Thompson Hendrick I've been like 25 of them he was at Thompson H nice you know Lorenzo fatias nephew owns gohunt gohunt yeah yeah so theen and our buddies so he took me we got full access oh that's beautiful oh that's beautiful yeah the big one's coming up next weekend totally different experience though live oh than on TV oh yeah yeah I was like wait I need to BU able to hear Rogan so I know what's going on well they have these little things these little radios that you can

115:41get at the uh you know with the concession stand can you really yeah most Arenas have them now and you take these little radios and you you turn them on and it actually has a frequency that picks up the commentary really yeah it's excellent it's really cool I missed that part of it yeah well sometimes something's going on you don't know what happened yeah and like like they stop the fight like why they stop the fight you don't realize oh his leg's broken or ex takes a while yeah yeah commentary and it also uh I believe you can get I'm not sure about that that might just be Fight Pass one of the cool things about UFC Fight Pass is you can listen into the corners oh you can yeah so the corner guys are miked up so you can you can hear like someone saying oh you know his hands broke or oh you know uh this Insight that you wouldn't get you just get you get insight and you also get a

116:27sense of uh building up anticipation like if you know that a guy's got an injury and then he's trying to gut it out it makes it even more exciting to watch you know yeah I meaning awesome sport like I said I only have a couple hobes watching MMA hunting that's it and then they're very it's very they're very comparable like you know from going from being a wrestler I mean you I mean it's just it's exciting it's slow portions of nothing and this training and grinding and all of a sudden and then every now and again you get to step in and and and see where you're at I mean it's it's it's you know like you always say like two guys I mean that's that's a strip down of it gets you either win or lose 5050 I'm either going to win or I'm not and same with hunting I mean at at certain point in time in that hunt you either either get them or you don't like the the percentages work out like that I

117:11mean it's that's that's the cool thing about it well I think also like honey it's very it's not perceived correctly by a lot of people it's very misunderstood and a lot of people think of it as this barbaric awful thing involving bullies and when really they're incredibly intelligent difficult people who are pursuing one of the most one of the most difficult things to do with dire physical consequences if you fail those bullies and they don't have the dedication to get there those aren't the real guys well they don't have the understanding of who they actually are to to in order to face your own fears like a lot of the bullies and the like you can get a certain distance with that with physical power and genetic attributes I mean some guys just hit hard and they're just good at taking a shot and and and if you stand in front of them and whale with them they might catch you and knock you

117:59out and beat your ass and you just got beat by a bully but the reality is when those guys get to a Stipe mioi or C Velasquez or you know the best of the best they're going to get up yeah because those guys are just as just as physically strong just as K but also have their mental in order they have their ego in order they have their understanding in order and those guys are some of the nicest most down toe people you're ever going to meet because they get their ego checked on a daily basis every one of them I met we have some guys that are customers of ours um TJ and and Mendes and I mean they're really sharp guys very sharp and very nice very polite not very thoughtful I mean just great people to be around and they also recognize that same thing in hunting they do you know TJ and Chad are gigantic Hunters mean Chad lives for it I mean he wants to do

118:51that like now most really good athletes that you come across that are I mean like that's that's like their second passion they love doing we tons of baseball players and football players and I mean it's CU like man the intensity the same you get the same drug out of it well it's the DNA right I mean those guys same guys are the hunters of the tribe right or the athletes and it just it's a natural natural deal we had uh Carson Palmer is a customer of ours and he had never it's kind of like you never been hunting before who is he Carson Palmer is a quarterback for the uh cardal I literally don't any other sports I can tell you everything you want to know about MMA or kickboxing I love a narrow Focus I'm all about naral Focus apparently yeah so Carson won a thing called the Heisman Trophy you I heard about that Jamie told me about that yeah it's this metal trophy thing

119:37you get for playing football in college and then he's uh the quarterback for the now the Cardinals but then he was Cincinnati and he had a guy on the team that took him hunting during a off you know during one of their by weeks put him up in a tree stand he' never been hunting before he grew up in Orange County like I did and he said the first time a deer walked to his understand a buck he the adrenaline and the DNA of that process took over and he is just a dieh hard Hunter now and it's all he wants to do when he re when he's done playing football he only wants to hunt he wants to invest in kuou so he can be involved with hunting I mean it's just that happened for him like it happened for you yeah see it happens so much with athletes we have Brent Burns plays for it's game called hockey hockey that's on thing on ice with SK oh ice yeah skates they actually well it is water they

120:20freeze it freeze water right yeah and he's the same way he just got into hunting and he is just like this is the most amazing thing yeah just DNA it's intense it's it's it's unbelievably intense and again incredibly rewarding I mean like when I go to the store and buy a steak there's no reward it's like oh this delicious I can't wait to eat it but it's not like you know cooking up a deer backstrap that you know you had to get out of the mountains yeah I love your Instagram post of your elk steaks with the jalapenos yeah well the next day yeah the next day I went and cooked it up just like you did oh dude I sweat like P I got sweat pouring out of the top of my head everybody's laughing at me but I'm like it's so good isn't it amazing yeah oh man with jalapenos man have you tried it that way every way possible it's all you can't I've had it I've had it raw to Burnt anything you

121:08can put on it love it all yeah yeah it's the best meat you can ever eat it and my kids have been eating it for four years now I have a six-year-old that's been eating bear since she was three so awesome yeah it's it's the healthiest food it it's it feels better it feels better when you eat it it really does well it's flat out better for you too yeah um and I'm really into uh pursuing the art of cooking it in a bunch of different ways too and that's another thing that I learned from ranella I'm uh getting Hank Shaw who I think lives up your way too he's a a wild game cook a famous chef who's turned to becoming a hunter because he was interested in trying to prepare this food and being more connected with his food so then he started hunting and then using he uses a lot of local ingredients too a lot of like ingredients from the area where the animal actually lives really interesting

121:57too that is yeah do you cook I barbecue that's it just about sty fire and meat yeah uh that's all I do if I if I can't barbecue I won't cook it well that's the best way anyway it is you know especially no it really is um but yeah talking about chefs like guy Fier is a a client of ours you know who he is yeah sure yeah and so he's he's actually become buddies with with Brandon cuz likes to smoke meat and cook meat like you do and uh we got to shave his head yeah right it's not the 80s buddy he loves frosted tips got to go hold hold them down and hack that stuff off yeah we got a three yeah we got three haircuts for one this morning by the way yeah if you haven't noticed God damn your haircut looks good thank you very much yeah Locks of Love no hope here yeah kids are got to have to shave their head too yeah exactly yeah um like chefs like Anthony Bourdain he took me hunting

122:52in Montana recently we went on a pheasant hunt and uh you know he he's a big fan of doing that as well as cooking the animals you know that he he hunts himself and and showing you how to prepare it properly and he's done that a bunch of times on his show and he's very involved in it yeah yeah it's it's actually fun to put different marinades put different recipes together I mean I throw it on the barbecue but there's a lot that goes into it and then also you know something that people don't do I think enough of with Wild game they wonder why it doesn't taste right it's proper aging your meat I don't know if you do that with yours I do sometimes yeah but most of the time I just cook it yeah I mean it it's better if you age it you can do a quick age in your fridge where you put up like on a rack and like uh in like a pan or plate with like a wire rack that gets it off the the

123:35bottom of it and then put foil over the top and let that blood drain out and how long do you age it for I'll age backstrap for 10 days in my fridge really and it is so much better what does it smell like doesn't smell like anything really nothing how come it doesn't stink after 10 days in your fridge CU it's not rotting it's just aging they do that with beef right but then the outside of it is all black looks like but that's what you're supposed to do you you cut off the outside edges and that's you your back strap as well what you do with any meat yeah but that outside doesn't stink nope it just gets dry and it actually builds a crust and you trim off the crust and cook the middle million times better what is the temperature that it has to be at when you're uh doing that you can cook it medium you cook it medium no I mean um when your if you're going a quick age it goes

124:18in your fridge just a normal refrigerator temperature which is what I don't know 36 38° right but when they like dry age meat when you go to a like one of those they're hanging similar similar temperatures my brother went to colonary school he's the one that taught me that really he's like you need to age your meat because you'll get all the blood out of it the blood is what causes a g or flavor and also it also tenderizes your meat when you age it try it right because you take a piece of backstrap put it in the fridge with a little bit of soy sauce and some brown sugar or something on it I mean you're not eating sugar anymore but if you do that it'll I mean it's phenomenal I don't know if it would go bad it's never I've never left it long enough to where you couldn't eat it but uh I mean I've left I've left a back shot for weeks yeah weeks weeks wow it doesn't

125:01rot that's interesting is it is it more sustainable because it doesn't have all that fat on it like a beef steak they AG beef right but do you do that in a fridge it just seems weird cuz people don't do it but it's like like a guy I know that big African pH he'll take a whole hind quarter um gu Steve cini he told me this he'll take a whole Hine quarter and put it fridge in a fridge at his house for 30 days and then it's the best it is so a pH for people who don't know is a professional Hunter which in Africa is like a guide it is yeah yeah yeah do you know Steve cin no so he's uh bow hunter really cool guy big guy um he's basically killed everything in Africa with a bow I don't know that anybody else has ever done it like this guy is the real deal goes into the gnarliest places but he he takes takes people hunting over there and stuff but almost almost entirely bow hunter

125:52himself like stud and you know you I'll I'll introduce you to it it's really cool like everything in no one's killed more animals in Africa than him everything he's been everywhere to everything you know well just thinking the sink thinking of his meat sitting in a refrigerator for 30 days doesn't go bad try it's crazy yeah I mean it's like cover it in foil put a rack so the blood can drain out and it can sit there for it'll be you'll be amazed at how long you can age it and how good it is when you do is that the key because I've had meat that I let sit in like a like a bought a steak at a store and let sit in my refrigerator for too long then you open up the meat like oh it smells terrible well that's already been aged too and sitting on itself right that in that is that the key that it has to drain you have to get out of its blood so you got don't wrap

126:35it up don't put it don't don't contain it right yep you need to have air flow underneath and then you can the other way if you don't have a rack you can take I do is a bowl right or a pan I'll put foil over it and punch holes in it uhhuh so it suspends it in that blood and go through those holes in the foil and you put foil over the top and slide in your fridge do they sell like a a rack for Aging in your refrigerator buy they make little cooking racks that are just like screens with that are designed to go in a pan and get stuff off the off of a pan that's interesting I'm going to try that you got to try it yeah I haven't been doing that I just that it'll make a huge difference I marinate sometimes you know what I like to do I like to take Newman's Own balsamic vinegret yeah just put it in that for uh you know five or six hours Italian dressing is a great marinade yeah yeah

127:16it's excellent and then pull it out someone um served uh sheep how was that a um a camp it was actually at tone we were pig hunting and someone um brought by uh some sheep backstraps and they they had it marinated in Italian Gods right there there's nothing better than doll sheep or stone sheep backstraps yeah it's amazing how good they taste it's so good cheap meat is is that the best meat of all the meats is Big Horn the same as thin hornn uh big Horn's not near it's it's good and and like the harder you work for it the better it is but like a sheep tenderloin pulled right out one minute each side as hot as you can get it and I mean it's just that's it right you just want to sear it no one will ever know how good it is cuz they never make it out no critic will ever get a bite of that right cuz they never get it out of the mountain no never comes out most of the time you cook it

128:09while you're up there right yeah a lot of times yeah I do we we have a thing called man kebabs which is you got to hunt down the animal you got to kill it you got to bring it you got to pack it back to camp you got to start a fire that you create you got to harvest the willow stick that you're going to put the meat on and you chop it up you slide on the meat and the time we only had Top Ramen seasoning so we sprinkle the top Ramen Ramen seasoning out put it over the fire that's a man Kebab top Ren no vegetables it's kind of kind of funny though the top Ramen is the season but Top Ramen seasoning is good when I used to eat that stuff and I get some of it on just a little bit on the table put it on my finger it's delicious it's a good seasoning a good seasoning yeah get really creative if you don't have much it's probably a good idea too like to bring like in Camp it's a small

128:55packet it's already sealed up it's like a good size for seasoning is like a rub and then you put the kebabs on that thing granted you're starving to death by the time you kill this animal and put on the fire but it is off the hook well when we uh when I hunted with ryell the very first time and uh shot a mu deer and then we ate the liver that night we hung up most of the meat and tree because it was like pretty close to dark and we went back the next day to pack it out but when uh we went back to camp and ate liver and onions like from an animal that died 2 hours ago was like the most insanely delicious food I've ever had in my life you couldn't I couldn't believe how good it tastes yeah you were hunting did you guys you guys hunted down from the ferry up on the Missouri up there yeah hunted sheep in there a bunch yeah it a cool we saw a lot of sheep up there

129:38it's probably pretty hard to get a tag though right hardest place in the world yeah is that the brakes yeah yeah yeah hardest place in the world to get a tag that's interesting they're just doing a really good job of making sure the populations go up biggest sheep in the world and uh yeah they had Giant balls like we we spent a whole segment of the show concentrating on the balls of the sheep like Rella made a video put see you can find this it's pretty funny um we were we were there and ranella like is obsessed with these big horn sheep and their balls and he's like the moment I kill one of these things I'm going to I'm going to kill it and I'm going to take one of those balls and I'm just going to eat it are you eat eat it like an apple eaten them they're great they're huge they're they're the they're the biggest of anything though like you've eaten sheep balls oh yeah that

130:21you killed yep what is sheep balls tast I'm not eating sheep balls when I kill you're not going to eat it I'm not doing that I'll save it for Steve just me good like everything else you're like Cameron Hayes Cameron Hayes won't eat heart he won't eat liver he won't eat anything I'm like you're crazy when we shot an elk I was cutting the heart ey like you're going to eat that I'm like yeah I'm going to eat this around the hole I put in it oh yeah yeah you got to cut around the hole yeah depending it's a bow and arrow you don't even have to do that you know but it's rifle you get that weird funky lead in your mouth yeah exactly so uh look at this is uh him and I up there and he started he started obsessing about the balls right up there it's amazing how many we I know exactly where you guys are ex I mean exactly where you're at you go home and tell people what a bad spot I took you to and

131:10you say boy we did see a lot of Big Horns though what they're going to say is something like what kind of dumbass hunts mu deer in Big Horn Country you've never seen a scrotum you've seen the scrm big old really it's just it's a py b I'd love to show you if you turned right your hat on backwards no it's perfect it's just it's like a like it's like a church bell really this is like a church bell hanging down between his legs wow what animal AR they awesome sweet crazy animal yeah this is one of the you able to see that church bell on yeah it's impressive he I ever draw ping here it goes the first thing I'm going to do I'm going to when I kill one I'm going to punch my tag and I'm going to eat the contents of that sack just straight up just raw just right there like apples why no way I don't know why I don't know feel is a nut man I feel a calling to do it well

132:19he's another really important fact in educating people about hunting cuz he's a very well read very intelligent guy very educated and really very very ethical I mean is ethical and as driven as you can be did you read his book American buffalo yeah well didn't read that one I I read the other one the meteor one oh did you read the American buffalo I heard it's fascinating yeah he's got American buffalo is tragic yeah it is and he spells it out so well well um he had this guy on his podcast Dan Flores who is a wildlife biologist who Wildlife historian I should say it's an amazing podcast where he details the history of uh animals and European settlers coming over here and the the wiping out of the the various animals and what's being done to try to restore that they're they're trying to do something called the American serengetti where they're trying to put together

133:11like an area like a protected area like as big as Yellowstone but it's actually going to involve hunting really they're buying property right now in Montana I mean it's going on what's it going to be well I don't know I don't know that much about it I know they just bought a property that's not very far from where you guys were there that um that that they're it's in Block management you're allowed to hunt it but it's you know they're pulling I think they're pulling the cattle off it and it but you know that's that's a huge success story right there I mean those those sheep were planted back in there in 1970s it's probably the biggest herd in in Montana and certainly the best sheep hunting in the world they were planted in there in the 70s and started hunting in the about 1990 they restarted hunting again and I mean they were totally brought back from money from an auction tag put a

133:55transplant in there and they've exploded onto the landscape they were shot out by market hunting and and domestic sheep interaction you know years ago and then brought back and now it's the best place in the world you know and that wouldn't happened without Hunters yeah it is an amazing success story and that's that's an also an interesting thing these auction tags which is really weird where you let someone you give them this opportunity to hunt and a lot of times these guys are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars I got it the the most expensive tag in history $485,000 right there Missouri breaks yeah what 2013 yep he wanted he wanted those balls yeah so a guy paid uh so I mean there was a huge RAM that uh a couple there's three of us that that guided it and uh there was um yeah a guy paid 485,000 and the the money thing about that is really weird it's this

134:43perception of some rich dude buy like you're paying for an opportunity to bypass the system to do something that you would normally have to draw that's it's a simp simple as that it's not like I'm going to spend this huge amount of money and you know it's this huge head hunt and this ego thing and you got guys living I mean like there's so many misconceptions about what goes on with that type of thing that it's not even funny it's a tax write off it's a donation to Wildlife if you really care about wildlife and it gives the guy an opportunity to take you know and again if you're a billionaire if you've made a ton of money and you care about wildlife and you love to hunt why would you not do that it's not that weird I mean I mean it it's all relative it's all relative it's money a donation and yes we had we had this big sheep we spent 18 days hunting it's the biggest one ever

135:25been killed with a auction tag in the United States and was a phenomenal hunt the guy you know was glad to donate the money and it's you know it's it's provided new sheep transplant it's money for wildlife that would not exist if they didn't do it it's one tag and raise a half a million dollars well that's the big contradiction when people talk about hunting and hunting being for conservation how it helps conservation that that is one of the biggest examples of it is how much money goes into helping these animals and habitat preservation and reintroducing them to areas like what the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has done with reintroducing elk to a bunch of different sheep is the biggest success in in North America I mean they were shot basically into a few places and and they've they've brought them back through and it's strongly been through money by guys that are fortunate

136:08enough to to be able to do it and it is it's a total misconception I mean you are paying the guy is paying money as a tax donation and he's giving money to something he truly cares about that he loves and has probably grown up up doing is you know this guy was self-made started painting boards in West Virginia and started a bank and made a billion dollar you know like he he loves hunting that's what he loves he it's not it's not some rich guy paying to you know put a head on his wall and and and he was glad to do it and you're paying for the opportunity I mean the thing that's always lost in it is is the dead animal or whatever the guy's paying for the opportunity we we had no advantage over anybody else was the same season everybody else did and the guy um we end up killing you know a great big Ram which was you know obviously the goal but I mean one sheep raised a half a

136:52million dollars and that's incredible and and the guy it was he was paying for the opportunity he's not paying for you know you know it'd be a hell of a lot easier to buy a great big head to put on your wall than it would to be spend to spend that much money and then go out there and maybe not get them that but the the pursuit is is is what drives and how does that work like there's three guides so do you did you guys Scout in advance and find that was a unique situation we had uh so in in it's it's a basically a three-year story of following one ram this Ram we call B52 and in 2010 a friend of ours was with a guy who killed the ram um up in the brakes same deal exact same area you were in and there was a big Ram standing with it there was two big Rams together he killed one of them and and uh the next year when we were up there scouting we came across this Ram like that's the

137:40same Ram in the photo they took a photo right before they killed it and then we tried to hunt him in 2012 didn't get him and in 2013 it was like this this Ram he was really big and then he slipped through two years years nobody got him smart old smart old sheep I mean really smart and it it was all of a sudden you know we let a few guys know that hey there's not an unusually big Ram up here and if if you want a chance to hunt it it's Unique in the time frame and the fact that there's not always big sheep around I mean this is this is one year this Ram is alive right now and we told a few guys and and and five guys went you know there was five guys that were willing to pay half a million dollar that went to I mean there was Five Guys bid in over $460,000 for the opportunity to hunt this area look at the size of that thing oh my god there you go the horns on that thing are

138:32insane yeah Willie hinger Al mckin and myself and I mean we spent 18 days like rattlesnakes out there and it was uh it was an awesome hunt I mean it's a it's it was a smart old Ram it was a it was just a just a really cool deal and the guy we ended up getting it um how far did he take it from he almost killed it with a bow we I snuck him into 12 yards came over the top on it and a resident Hunter uh being a dick came down the Ridge and spooked the Sheep spotted us knew we were hunting a sheep and came down and spooked the ram but he he should have killed it with a bow we I mean a resident Hunter with a sheep tag with a sheep tag yeah did he do it on purpose yeah I I think so yeah oh my God I mean if you saw three guys and you knew that they had a guy with them that had paid $485,000 he knew all this you would probably think I'm probably in the right area

139:24right I'm going to follow these guys yeah no but that's what it gets weird with public land right it does that Ram bugged out we killed him 10 days later nine miles from where there and how far was the the shot when he killed him he shot him at 460 that's a different round that's another that's a different round God damn that thing's massive crazy that's that's so I was fortunate to be on both of those that's two of the top five sheep ever killed Montana in 10 days they are just Majestic beasts when you look at the what Nature has given them in their head like what a crazy animal that develop these gigantic battering rams out of the top of their skull and the photos really don't do those things Justice you put your hands on those horns I mean it is impressive both 11 and a half years old I mean that's that's the end of his life I mean he's you know he's he's run his

140:11full course that Ram actually did not rut at all that Ram had a broken shoulder and we had seen him for a couple years and he had a really small body and he was actually a non-dominant sheep and it was was just kind of floating around out there he wasn't he was physic physically past his prime yeah so did he like fall or something or hunting accident hard to say it's hard to yeah I mean they have a tough life yeah they do for an animal like that to live that long this nature is so incredible and its diversity that this is something that we have here in North America this incredible animal just a Strang looking I mean almost we're so used to them we know they exist so I I don't think we kind of appreciate them as much as if if you were just introduced to them as an adult if you'd never heard of her seen it before probably blow you away totally it's like

140:55what a crazy animal it's got a battering ram on its head it does I I always say like with desert sheep you know they have this tiny little neck and it's like when you see one out in the desert a desert sheep a big Ram it's like they wouldn't look any stranger if they were green like if they landed on Mars if they landed on Mars and all of a sudden there was a desert sheep popped his head up you'd be like that's about what I thought it'd be here you know it's Rocky and dry and his neck's this big and he's got a 50 lb head like yeah about what I talk have you ever seen the video with the RAM and the cow buttthe heads mm I haven't Jamie there's a video crazy video where this Ram starts moving towards this cow and the cow's calf and the cow decides it's going to headbutt this Ram watch this Go full screen no way check this out watch The Ram comes into into vision

141:41and the cow's like this so it sees it watch this knocks the cow out KO and he gets up I can't tell if that's a bull is it a bull or a cow I can't tell it's hard to tell it's a blurry ass picture or blurry ass video but just this tiny little thing that weighs about 150 lbs that cows much more than a thousand and KO it with a headbutt I've seen him I mean I've seen Rams that had their skulls broken entire horn torn off like that that the amount of power I mean they they get up and when they hit and then and then it's like this state of right after a guy you know right after you take a huge uppercut and then they just stand there and kind of go and then they kind of come back and like all right let's do that again I didn't get enough of that they've got they've got CTE yeah oh for sure yeah don't do a football study on them yeah exactly I kind of Wonder like what what what crazy

142:34design that nature has figured out a way to have all these various different here they go boom yeah and they just S stand there look at this Collision that's when to make your stock right then well one of these dummies needs to figure out how to dive under and get an uppercut going get some leverage yeah just like don't headbutt them Juke them you got to Juke them and then slide under you're talking about you're talking about the balls big horn sheep have two moves so it's this move right here and then when they're posturing and kicking each other around their other move is they get behind each other and smash each other in the balls the front kick to the nuts is a big horn sheep look at the balls look at the balls in these things watch this boom look at these nuts yeah look at his nuts look at his nuts hanging if I had nuts like that I'd never wear pants I'd

143:19be like everybody's just deal with what I've got here and you wouldn't be doing a podcast You' be doing videos yeah I'd be in the pawn business son and and that Echoes for like the the Sheep I hunted last fall that's how I actually found them is you could hear in the middle of the night boom it sounds like gunshots going off really and you get up I got up and yeah it took me four hours to figured out where they were because it echoes all over but you can about every 25 minutes you hear Boom and it just sounds just like a gunshot and it's like okay they're there and you start honing it in and boom there they were wow 10 Rams and they were button heads yeah it's pretty pretty cool like little things like that it's like you just so cool well being out there in the wild you get to experience firsthand the diversity of all these wild like mule deer with their incredible racks or elk

144:02or or big horn sheep and there's so many bizarre creations and so much diversity oh they hitting each other in the balls oh yeah how rude look at it he's just kicking him in the balls he's like you I'm going to get behind you and kick you in the ball he's like no no no no no I already know that move just spinning around each other every time he's kicking the other sheep in the balls yeah then get five minutes like you do at UFC if you get kicked in the balls oh yeah they got no timeout no time outs that what it's hilarious they know that they have balls so they go to attack them how the did they figure that out how do they know that balls are I guess they know that they have balls do you have balls that big you're going to figure that out you're going to sit on something's going to hit those things what a bunch of they're fascinating too they're like I mean when they're in the

144:49Rut they're they're totally different animal then than when they're when they're early you know when they're when they when they get late in the year and start chasing like there's nothing they just go insane isn't that also bizarre that they have a season where they have to have sex where you lose your mind yeah once I we got that too let's let's sort of yeah but we get to do it all the time and we can jerk off you know you can you could alleviate it yourself so you could think clearly but these poor bastards you know wait all year yeah all year no wonder they go nuts yeah just getting ready no wonder their balls are so so big and they're born with weapons yep you know and and as they get older the more dominant ones have the bigger weapons which is just what a strange system that Nature's figured out it is isn't it and it's also strange to me like how you see when it's all over they

145:34Bachelor up like when the rut's over like we we went moose hunting in BC last year and when the rut was over we we found these like Bachelor groups of moose that probably were trying to kill each other just a couple weeks ago know though you beat up somebody your best friend's after right I guess but you don't bang his girlfriend either yeah I anybody has a claim on any of them they're all just running around trying to trying to score but I think when it's all over they they're probably like what the was what were we doing just a couple of weeks ago yeah exactly what what what came over us yeah I think they knew I know but it's just strange that it comes over them year yeah and it's so strong yeah and the rest of the time like a a big Ram wants nothing like if you if you're sheep hunting the rest of the year and you see and use you're in the wrong spot they want nothing to do

146:18with them really I don't blame them yeah same same with big same with big bull elk they serve their purpose same same with bull elk you know I mean aside from the rut and a few times where they interact the rest of the time like if you're seeing tons of cows you're in the wrong spot dude well that's what I told you about uh when I was in Montana we saw a hundred elk together all cows this time yeah no no B all cows yeah or little spikes or something yeah exactly I saw like one Spike it's uh just it's so fascinating the diversity that that Nature's created so many different animals like that well hunting get gives us the opportunity to truly see it as it is I mean verus like a national park or Yellowstone yeah to see it as it is up close in its natural habitat when it's quiet and you get to see those things the way it's been for so long does it don't you feel like when when you sneak

147:06up on an animal too and you you you lock eyes with that thing it it you almost feel like you're in it almost feels like a different dimension or something like that because you're you're in this world that they exist in and there's there's no cell phone service there's no people anywhere near you it's a very strange environment it is it is and it's like everything else gets tuned out too it's like this laser focus of of what's happening right then all your senses go way up I mean at least for me as far as smell and like you can feel the slightest Breeze in your face and uh you know you can see that animal move really really close like you never would notice before because of that laser focus intensity just kind of takes over your whole system and there there's something about something there's something about tricking an animal that's whole focus in life is to not get caught that is a

147:54great sense of feeling like you do everything right you're in the right place and this thing walks by and like oh and and Arrow's already on the way it's done deal it's like you you did it I mean you you you outsmarted something that's 10 million years were the genetics and you got to Fig you know especially with bow hunting like you got in that close and and got them not only that we're clumsy our noses suck we can't see very good our hearings dog they have ears like satellite dishes they're SP around left and right looking all over the place trying to find you like a mule deer in particular those giant ears well on their nose yeah oh yeah Power of scent is crazy I've seen the craziest stuff at the farthest distances hundreds and hundreds of yards this done what yeah and you think the wind's blowing at your back or in your face and it's actually going around

148:41the mountain and ends up right back at it's just amazing people like like oh you're out there hun chasing a poor defenseless animal it ain't defenseless it was defenseless I have a way more big ones right you know I'd always get them if they were defenseless I mean they're they're they're a smart I mean they man they I've I've seen them you know i' I've I've hunted animals where they got one whiff you are gone yeah well and and like gone for days no gone never saw him again gone he figured me out gone they're around wolves totally you know Bears mountain lions I've seen yeah I've seen deer do some crazy things like lay down on the ground and like hide from hunters and let Hunters walk right by him like with yards wow and just do some really cool stuff sneak away from people and you go those guys never knew they were five yards away from a giant buck and that thing just totally outsmarted

149:29them it's the coolest thing yeah they're tuned in man dumb humans walking by he's like no problem I'll just lay down they'll never see me just imagine if you were a 300 lb animal that had to escape something killing you all the time that's your every day is try to get some grass in your system and get the away from everything that you once a year trying to get laid once a year polygamist definitely not you know you're sleeping outside in Montana you know in the winter yeah yeah yeah yeah would I think it's amazing and we're so lucky in this country that the people like Teddy Roosevelt and the people that founded these these areas for public land they they set them aside and allowed these places to to be established where these animals can live and we never have to worry about them being taken over and they build malls there I mean it's it's a really

150:18beautiful part of America even if don't have any desire whatsoever to hunt the fact that you can go up there and backpack and camp and be in that natural environment it's a really beautiful thing about America totally yeah I mean the perception of hunters were just out there to kill something it's for me it's a small part of the whole thing it's a good part though it is but it's being out there too and drive to be there and to get experience all that I mean obviously I wouldn't be there without a tag I get invited to go hiking or go to a park all the time or you know National Park I'm not interested but I mean it's a I mean being out in the mountains in the wilderness and seeing all this stuff is just awesome yeah it's not like if you go hunting and it's unsuccessful it's a zero it's like a SI it's like a six out of 10 if you if you get a big elk it's a 10 but if you if you go out

151:03there and nothing happens like hiking is a four so it's two points above a hike armed hiking we call it especially if you actually see the animals if you don't see the animals it's like a five if you don't see anything you're like what the are we doing in this spot if you don't see anything you need new friends yes somebody's somebody's been lying to you yeah yeah or just something happened you know you never know now these big horn sheep they're very difficult to get a tag for right in Montana like there's so many of them now though um yeah it's but I mean there's still not enough to go around it's it's the most it's the most exclusive tag in the world how many do they give out uh in Montana give about 150 a year I I drew one last year yeah I mean the odds and the best place are like one in 500 um it's a lottery system and then LDS in the like in the rough

151:50areas that have better odds are like one in 100 one in 500 that's incredible Brendon drew a sheep tag of Montana to hunt one sheep yep you had one entire unit yep he showed me the picture of it when he drew the tag goes I'm going to kill this sheep how did you know about the Sheep guess what you killed it the Sheep's dead yeah you're a Savage totally it's like I'm so glad I'm not that sheep right now when you drew that tag when they when they lose their mind once a year they come out to the winter range and a buddy of mine uh Robbie doctor found this RAM on the winter range and sent me a picture of it and said dude you know this is a huge RAM in an unusual area and uh applied for it I mean it's happened before like oh there's a big sheep nobody knows it we didn't tell anybody and then he showed up again the next year didn't draw the tag and then last year I drew it and it

152:37was like I I drew the tag and it was like he's on the outer edge of the life expectancy of a sheep you know it's a 500 square mile area I'm going in there as long as it takes 500 square miles to hunt one sheep mind blowing that's pretty crazy think about that well that is the ultimate Pursuit right we're talking about the most difficult challenge of hunting with a bow yeah how many yards you get him from uh just outside my effective range long shot like what you I snuck in I snuck into 15 yards for 20 minutes it took me 24 days to find him I I passed up 33 eighty old or better rounds how many days did you spend scouting too oh I mean I lost track a time I mean I put I put on I mean um a crazy amount of job do you have we all need one of those working for he said he said he said he's like he's when when when I was like dude I I drew the tag and like I was emotional I

153:28drew it like I mean people don't understand like oh you got a tag to hunt this thing it's like 25 years in a row of nose of no right well how many people put in for the tag and there's 150 tags available is that what you say 150 tags in the whole state the whole state and how many people two tags in this area two tags tags so you got one of two tags two tags 220 people applied for two tags and I drew one wow was like amazing and you know and I I had a picture of this RAM and like he had showed up on the winter range and then disappeared into this Abyss called The Bob Marshall Wilderness and it's like I'm going to go in there and find him and how many total days were you hunting oh I mean 24 days hunting I I 24 days how many scouting days you had was like ridiculous yeah so you going back and getting food and going back I was doing four or five days at a time and like all good things you

154:15know like all the most amazing things you know timing's kind of a we had a baby Doo in the middle of my wife would kill me out there chasing one if did you see any other Rams yeah but it wasn't quite big enough you piece of 33 I passed up 33 Rams before I push hold on c phone yeah yeah so yeah I mean I was after this one sheep and I I thought and and you know like when you talk about really getting to no animals he had showed up on the winter range and twice we had pictures of them two years in a row on the winter range and it's just like okay we got a picture of this big Ram well what you know I start looking at the pictures and comparing them and all of a sudden I noticed that in in one picture from 2013 or from 2012 and one in 2013 he had the same two young Rams with him a year apart 10 miles apart in distance and he had the same two sheep with him so all of a sudden I'm like you

155:13know most people would be like oh it's just a sheep there's a little half curl and then there's a young kind of unique looking Ram with him and I'm look like it's the same Ram so all of a sudden I got a ram band that I'm looking for they you know it's kind of a symbiotic relationship young Rams allow old Rams or old Rams allow young Rams to follow them around they show them kind of the hills and they they kind of tolerate them it's not like hey you're my buddy or anything they just kind of like when when the senses start to slip you'll see old Rams with young Rams and they're keeping an eye on their back for them and they kind of show them around see I figured out this Ram who was 13 years old which is the oldest so I end a killing him obviously and he was 13 years old which is the oldest Ram killed in the whole state out of 150 by 2 years so he's Beyond he's off the charts old

155:57so he had these two young Rams with him so I I I I you know basically have known enough about sheep Behavior I was like okay I'm looking for this old Ram in this massive area but I'm actually looking for three sheep because if I see either of those two young Rams without him I'll know he's dead it makes a big difference in 500 square miles look for three sheep versus one apparently huh I guess so still ridiculous so I went in there and I was like I'm going to go find every sheep in the entire unit and I went in there and I found I I thoroughly believe that I found every single sheep in the area I counted almost 50 more sheep than the biologist thought was alive in there and and and and so crazy isn't that nuts did you take photos of these oh yeah the bi the biologist yeah yeah yeah he's kind of changed his management plan in the area a little bit like he knows more about it I mean

156:43it's and it and it's was like I I went in there because you know for since I was a little kid it was like man that's something I always wanted to do and then you're going to get this opportunity like I'm not going to go do the easiest thing I mean I passed big Rams big Rams with my bow but I wanted this Ram I wanted to have like an epic hunt and just to see if I could do it see if I could find him and uh and I hadn't found those young Rams and not 23rd day I said I heard them popping heads started glassing cutting the timber apart and all of a sudden you know another key to the puzzle all of a sudden there's that little young Ram that was with him standing in the timber boom I got him go down there there's 10 Rams in there my Ram walks out that's him you know took me two days to kill him but I found him and you doing all this by yourself um I had a I had my buddy that originally

157:28found the Sheep when I found the Rams I called him he's he had a regular job and uh it was about a 10 mile uh it was about a 10-hour hike in he hiked in to help me hand signal and kill it that's a good friend right who hik in 10 hours for you my friends be like dude uh my wife just told me I got to go walk the dog something hiking 10 hour pack and pack it out for you yeah it's a good friend he found the ram originally and then yeah and I I called him and he he disappeared you know he he jumped off of work like like his wife was in labor you know Jesus Christ rolled out like I got to go are you guys on like the same breeding cycle like Rams no no his wife wasn't like he left like that like it was like hey my buddy found the ram I got to go and and it's where you know it's a Montana thing he like the guys that that he works with were like yeah go man you got to go your

158:17wife was ready to pop and no she had we had had the baby oh you I left yeah I left uh we had the baby September 11th so I had left uh like 7 Days um I we I went out and we had the baby everything was great and and then you left right after the baby was born well almost even worse I stay right you know you sleeping all at night honey I got to go kill her sheep yeah you don't know my wife I mean she was just like couple days like you we got everything settled back in and she was she was basically like get the out of here wow his wife's amazing that's amazing yeah she gets it well that's a good story to end this with because that sort of embodies what I appreciate about what you guys do that you guys are really like the on10th of the 1centers of the outliers of the crazy people that are pursuing this as a just an an incredibly difficult biological puzzle it is so awesome I

159:08appreciate what you guys are doing we got to get we got to get you on a sheep on you got to come do come let put one together let's figure it out let's definitely figure it out it's next level but listen uh thank you guys for just being you and thanks for doing what you're doing I I like I said I love when people are just going for it so this was a cool podcast for me it's life man and uh it's cool to watch you guys geek out and see all your your Innovation and uh I'm I just appreciate it yeah we appreciate it too love the coverage love what you do as far as exposing the world to hunting it's awesome man my pleasure so uh people want to get a hold of you uh kuiu on Twitter right is that the Twitter handle I believe so yeah and official on Instagram and in our website c.com all right only place in the world you can get it there it is folks good night didn't see like hour