Ep. 119: Elk, Deer, and Antelope with Josh Boyd
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And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. I'm Dirk Durham, and tonight my guest is my good buddy Josh Boyd. Josh is a Montana resident, a great hunter, and all-around good guy. Welcome back, Josh. Thanks for having me back, Dirk. It's always fun to chat. Yeah, yeah.

Our listeners might remember you from our earlier episodes we did last spring. One was on elk hunting and another one was on spring bear hunting. If you guys haven't listened to those, it's a must listen. There's a lot of good nuggets and good conversation there.

Um, Josh, I saw all of your success on Instagram and we just haven't had a chance to catch up, um, about, about how your fall went down. So I thought, you know what, what better time to, to get on the podcast and just kind of talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. You bet. It was a great fall. It just seemed to fly by. I don't, I really honestly don't know where the time went.

I just, it seems like it was just a few weeks ago. I was just putting gear together to head to Wyoming for, uh, early September elk. And it just, I cannot believe it's mid-December. It's crazy how fast time goes. That's crazy. That's crazy. Did you hunt, uh, in August at all or, uh, just September, October, November? September, October, November. I mean, we do have long seasons in Montana. Yeah.

And the antelope season, archery season starts October, uh, excuse me, uh, August 15th here. And I just don't have much time to get to the East side to hunt that time of year. I'm still busy with work field seasons going on and I just don't make it out in August. And it's, I hunt so much the rest of the year that it's just, it's really hard to

To get away that much. And I try to burn my, my family preference points later on September and October if I can. Yeah, that's a, that's good thinking. It's a little nicer to be a little nicer weather, I guess, in, in September, October, September.

than it is in August. I feel like those Eastern Montana August hunts would be pretty warm. Oh, it would be brutal out there, I think. And yeah, the only thing I have to hunt out East would be antelope. And this past year I had a rifle tag.

So I kind of like to wait till October and go, okay, it's a really fun hunt because it's kind of in between our archery season and our general rifle season in the state. Okay. So it's a great little like long weekend trip to head, head out there and enjoy the prairie. So I kind of try to see if I have a rifle tag, I try to save my antelope tag for that opening week of rifle, uh, antelope rifle. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, I've been applying for, I think this is year three, maybe, maybe four for animal, but I'd have to look at my points, but I still haven't drawn. I thought for sure I was going to draw this year and I still haven't. So maybe next year. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it. I don't know if I'm super like...

interested in shooting like a giant trophy one, maybe, I mean, if I see one, I'd love to shoot one, but, um, I just want to go and have the experience and, and just go antelope hunting. Everybody says it's so fun and you can do it all day. And, uh, it's not just a dog dawn and dusk type of a hunt, you know, like some hunts can be sometimes. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. It is a fun hunt. I, it, and they're easy to kill. So, um,

I make it into a trophy hunt just to drag it out a little bit. Okay. But it seems like every year I end up shooting a pretty good buck that first day. Yeah. But I go over a few days early and I scout and hike and glass and try to find a couple trophy bucks. And I end up just getting on them first thing in the morning. But sometimes there's a little bit of effort you have to...

Have to apply, you know, you have to sneak out and I'm hunting them out, you know, a couple of miles away from a road too. So that it's an extra effort for sure. So I take my backpack with me so I can shove that, the whole antelope in my pack and pack it across the prairie when I am successful. But, um, yeah, you can make it into a much of a hunt as you want it to, to be. So it's, it's super fun. Yeah. That's kind of what I found, um, with, uh,

Eastern Montana mule deer hunting. I mean, if you want to drive around your pickup and shoot them from the pickup, you can, if you want to spot them from the truck and then make moves, if you just want to go like, um, my buddy, Ryan Lampers, I think they'll go and, and backpack in and stay out there in that cold, nasty weather and, you know, suffer. And, uh, you know, you can make it whatever you want, I think, you know, uh, which is cool, which is awesome. Yeah. That's the beauty of it.

it's there's something there for everybody you know but yeah that was a man i i seen that i will say you know i i like i don't know if i don't really care if i shoot a big one or not but man i saw that one you shot and i was like oh wow i want one like that that was a nice buck yeah so the unit that i apply for

I haven't drawn one. It seems to be the pattern that I've fallen into is every other year I'll get a tag for that unit. And there seems to be some decent bucks in there. I don't know what it takes to get to be a big buck. I don't know if it's genetics, nutrition. I've kind of heard it's not necessarily old age. Hmm.

But anyway, I've been hunting. I've been seeing a lot of nice bucks. And so every tag that I've pulled from this unit produced really solid antelope.

And they're really neat. I just like the looks of those big bucks. They'll have that big dark nose and it kind of has a Roman bend to it. So it kind of droops and they get a little longer when they get bigger like that. Okay. And blacker and the face markings are more striking. And of course the horns stick up and are very impressive. Mm.

Um, so I don't know. It's just kind of fun shooting big animals. If you, if you can do it, not that I'm strictly a trophy hunter. If you look at a bunch of the elk I've shot, you can, I can tell you, I'm definitely not a trophy hunter when it comes to elk, but I'm the same way. I got it. Yeah. But I like shooting big animals, you know, if given the opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. And it looks like you found a big old deadhead too. Oh yeah. Yeah. It looked like a coyote.

Kill, potentially. I don't know what killed it, but it was, you know, the spinal cord or column was there attached to the head and still had its horns. But it had been pulled down into a gully. So I took my daughter over there for her first real hunt. She wasn't hunting. She just wanted to go along. And one of the, you know, she's 11 and she...

Had never really spent much time out on the prairie. So she was really into exploring the country. So one day before the season started, we just decided to walk down some of these big washes, these big blown out gullies. And she was looking for who knows what. Crystals. Dinosaur bones. Dinosaur bones. She was just looking for whatever catches her eye. And we walked up on that dead antelope and it was kind of stinky.

Oh yeah. She, it caught her eye, but she wasn't going to hang out much longer, especially when I touched it. She didn't want nothing to do with that stinky thing. Oh yeah. Are you able to retrieve dead heads in Montana? Uh, yes. Yeah, you can. Yeah. But I left that thing right there. Oh yeah. It's like, yeah, it's, it's, it'll be good staying right there. Yeah. It was pretty nasty smelling. I know. Um,

A lot of Western states don't allow you to pick up deadheads like Oregon and Washington, Wyoming. One year we were elk hunting in Wyoming and we could glass across this huge basin and we could see a big bull elk that was dead and there was a bear on it. I was like, wow, that looks like a pretty nice bear.

And we sit there and as we bugled and listened for other bulls and glassed for other bulls, we thought, you know, we kind of got caught up watching this bear. And it was kind of a cool, but far enough away for the can of cameras we had. We couldn't really video anything good, but we were watching and yeah, that's a pretty nice bear. And then all of a sudden he just jumps up and runs off like, huh? Wow. Something spooked it out. And then a big bear came out. This other bear was giant. Yeah.

It, uh, it dwarfed that other bear and it went over there and it like ate on the elk a little bit and then it would just lay right on top of the elk. And he was so big, he would just cover that whole elk. Like if you can imagine a bear that big, he covered you, he covered up most of that elk when he'd lay on it.

And he would just lay there and take a nap. And then every now and then that other little bear would kind of come around and like peek around and he'd get up and kind of flex a little bit. And that other bear take off, but man, it was cool. Um, the funny thing is the night before we were over there and we're bugling a bull and we're like, man, something's dead up here. We could smell it, you know? And, uh,

This bull was bugling right up there, right by that dead elk and just bugling. We were right on him, right at the last light. And we got up there and it's like, man, it stinks.

And all of a sudden you can hear a bear come down the hill and, uh, chased off my buddy and, uh, my two buddies that were up there putting the sneak on this elk. And, uh, so coincidentally the next day we're glassing over there, like, I wonder what was dead over there. And we could see that elk. And then we saw the bear, the first one's like, oh yeah, that's a pretty big bear. And then the other one's like, holy cow. And he looked, he was colored like a grizzly. Um,

we're like oh my god it's a grizzly bear holy this in this area of wyoming what at the time wasn't really known for grizzlies okay and we were like oh my god and you know grizzly and we watched that thing for a long time and finally determined it wasn't a grizzly it's just a black bear colored like a grizzly he didn't have a dished face and it took a lot of looking though to to like you know if he'd stand right it looked like he had a hump on his back and

But after spending a couple hours, you know, watching him, I was like, okay, that's a, that's a, just a giant black bear. Are those big male black bears? Yeah. If they're the right color. Hey, sometimes they are really hard to tell between that and a darker phase grizzly. Cause they will have a hump on their shoulder. They'll have a shoulder hump. It's not as distinct as a grizzly. And a lot of times the face will give them away. Yeah.

And the ear size and all that. But the last fall bear I shot up here, it was a big, dark, chocolate, male black bear. And I looked at it for a long time before I shot it just to make sure because it had a serious hump on his shoulder. And obviously it turned out to be a black bear. And I made dang sure before I pulled the trigger that there was no doubt in my mind. But it took me a little bit to really look at him. I watched him for solid days.

maybe 15 minutes before I determined for sure that he was a legal bear. But yeah, that's interesting. He was on that elk kill, huh? Yeah, man, he was just on it. And it was a nice bull. It was like a 300 inch bull. Anyway, back to the story, like you can't take deadheads. Then we're just like, man, it'd be cool to go back to town and get a bear tag and go shoot that thing and then get that elk rack. But

You can't keep the elk racks, you know, deadheads in Wyoming. So I was like, yeah, I did not know that. Yeah. So we just had to watch and enjoy it. But, uh,

you know, for guys like us, we, we hadn't seen grizzly bears really at that point, you know, in our lives to be like, oh yeah, you know, we're easily to spot a grizzly, you know, I think a lot of folks like us, maybe, um, first, the first thing you do is say grizzly bear, cause it's just giant and the right colors and stuff. But once you kind of chewed on it for a while, then it's like, nah, it's not a grizzly. So, but,

But, uh, so you talked about Wyoming. Um, tell me, did, how did the elk bugle this fall? Did you have good bugling? Did you have crappy bugling? Um, that's a good question that first time hunting this area. So don't really have a lot of, you know, background information on it. Um, the bugling was good first thing in the morning for maybe two hours.

They were, and all night we were just dealing with full moon. Okay. We laid there in our tents, listening to Bulls Bugle all night, all night, most nights. Yeah. And then they were still fired up for a few, few hours in the morning. And then by like say nine 30, 10 o'clock, maybe not even 10, they were done.

Um, as it got warmer, we kind of had that little heat wave kind of build it. That window in the morning got shorter and shorter, but we had great, great action for the couple hours in the mornings. And we had some evenings that were sporadic, but we had a hard time coaxing bulls to bugle in the day midday. We'd get it. We occasionally get one to bugle out of its bed, but it would not respond beyond just a little tiny bugle.

light bugle maybe once twice but just could not get him going midday okay which is kind of what we were after you know those midday bulls are just ideal yeah try to get one of those big herd bulls to leave his cows yeah this year we had a lot of that like midday we just didn't hear any bugles at all

They kind of experienced some of the same stuff. And we had the first day it was pretty warm, but then a huge storm came in. This is Idaho. A huge storm came in and man, it got cold and rainy and snowy. And the bulls picked up. They, they started bugling pretty good, but they weren't bugling on their own. They weren't, you know, unless we prompted, you know, unless we were started some doing some location bugles, um,

They didn't, they weren't out there talking on their own and it took a little bit of, you know, creative talking on our part to get them to bugle. But once they'd kind of bugle, they bugle pretty good during that cold weather. But, um,

But then after the storm had kind of passed and thing, I thought, oh yeah, once this storm passes, they're going to really going to kick things in high gear. No, it just went to a ghost town, man. It was, it was tough. In fact, you know, bulls would just, you get, if you got very close to them and didn't call and they would just run, they, they did not want any competition, um,

Maybe they thought we were hunters, but we just didn't in that particular spot at that time, we hadn't really seen a bunch of people. So I don't know that it was pressure. I just, and we've kind of been told that these elk in this area in general don't like calling and they made a believer out of us. Yeah. I'm trying to, yeah. I guess the first bull that my partner killed with this, we were in there.

When it was still archery, our first trip back in to the back country was still archery. And we had a, we had a little bit of a rough go getting bulls to bugle like the first day, but we've, we found some elk, got them fired up that evening. The next day it was dead silent in there. Um, but we still dropped down into this Canyon and made this big loop into this Canyon and around the top and our backside of this knob. And we got a bull to bugle, uh,

He answered consistently. It was noon-ish, 11. Okay. But he hammered a couple different times right away, and it was pretty warm. But as soon as he hammered on the bugle, I thought, yeah, this bull's going to come in for sure. And yeah, so we did call that bull in, and Trevor shot him.

Nice. So yeah, that was good. Yeah. We were both at full draw on him and he came in and I was, I mean, I was waiting for him to like, just move a front shoulder forward. Yeah. And just as he was moving that front shoulder forward, I had my pin Barry. He was under 20 yards, probably like 16, 18 yards from me. Oh wow. So top pin had that top pin buried in his shoulder. I, just as I released, uh,

Another arrow like smacked him from the other side and he's whirled and my arrow went right in front of his front shoulder as he spun away. Really? That's incredible. I know. I've never had that happen. I thought for sure. I was like, oh, this bull is so dead. And he was a half a step. He was moving his leg forward. You know how that shoulder moves? Yeah. They're stepping forward. I was just waiting for that to come to completion and I was just going to just peg him.

And another arrow hits just as I was squeezing. It was funny. Yeah. But anyway, we got the bull, but that was a midday bull. Yeah. Um, pretty warm out. And, uh, that was really our best midday action that we had was that bull. And he came in hot, came in all fired up. Oh man. God, I love that. I do too. Yeah. That was awesome. And that happened to be like Trevor's

Second archery bowl. I think it was his first public land bowl. So yeah, he was super pumped. We were all pretty excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. You said they, they were, they were talking really good the night before and then they kind of shut down. What, when elk do that, what's your opinion on that? Do you have any kind of a hypothesis or a theory of why elk do that? Because it's not uncommon for them. Like one day they're just boiling hot. The next day it's like,

Ghost town. Why is that? Yeah. Well, so we camped. I don't know what it is. This is maybe a, this is one theory. This week in that situation, we camp not far from where we heard these bulls bugle in that night. And they definitely didn't wind us. They didn't see us. We were very stealthy. We were on this little tiny finger Ridge back away, but we could hear in there and they bugled all night long. They went nuts down there. And yeah,

One bull, you could hear him round up his cows and he pushed them up past our camp. And we could hear him going through this meadow behind us, just away from us all night. The cows just fed into the meadow. And I think they just exited out the back end of the meadow and just kept going away from where the rest of the elk were. I just think they were so busy all night. They just wore themselves out.

And the next morning they're just like, we're done. Yeah. We partied all night. We're just, we're good. So I don't know. I think there's various reasons for it, but I think that in that situation, that was what was kind of going on. Yeah. I, I, I have a lot of belief in that same idea as well.

Part of me says too, sometimes they get to moving around too. And like, they'll like maybe one herd bull or grab the cows and make a mad dash and out of one drainage into another and every, the party moves. Right. I, I, I kind of think there's some of that, but I also think, I think a lot of it, I think a pretty,

A lot of it is, man, they party pretty hard and they, they rut that whole evening and all night. And the next day they're just licking their wounds. Maybe that cow is not needing more. They got the job done and it's just, we're going to take a break today, guys. It's going to be a lazy day in the Elkwoods. Yeah. I don't know. I have yet to have anybody. Yeah, I know. I kind of feel that way. Yeah.

I haven't yet had anybody, you know, explain it any different. Like, you know, but I'm always, I'm all ears. I'm always looking for, you know, the reasons why on these elk they seem to, you know, about the time you think you know something, you don't really know anything. No, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. How long have we been doing this and we're still learning? It's pretty, that's, I mean, that's part of the beauty of it. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. If it was just like fishing, shooting fish in a barrel, it'd be like, yeah, it's kind of boring now and probably something different. Yeah. But it's always a challenge. Now you killed a bull and there was quite a story, backstory for perhaps the area. And maybe, maybe you killed this bull in an area your grandfather hunted years and years ago.

Yeah. So it was an area that my dad grew up in and I'd been hearing stories of, and I actually went to their hunting camp when I was a little kid. Okay. So my dad, his father, and my dad's grandfather hunted elk in this mountain range forever. And my, so that would be my great grandfather.

And my great-grandfather's father, Hunter, I mean, they have native. They're enrolled Indians out of Wyoming. So they go way back, you know, 6,000 generations or so. So they've been traipsing those mountain ranges for years and years and years. And I was...

As a little kid, some of my first memories of hunting were up there in my great-grandfather's hunting camp. My parents would take me and my brother out of school, and we would drive all the way to Wyoming, and then we'd go up to this camp, and there would be a couple old trailers that he pulled into his cow camp slash hunting camp. And then my great-grandfather and my dad would get on their horses and go into the backcountry and hunt.

and shoot elk for themselves and the whole family for the most part. But it was like, I remember seeing story or hearing stories, seeing pictures, being immersed in the hunting camp, you know, in early October and just the sights and smells. And I just had never really got to

experience that mountain range as an adult yeah so this was an opportunity for me to go hunt that same mountain range and kind of get a feel for like how those elk act and

how they use the landscape, how I can navigate and get around in that landscape. And just to see if I can put the puzzles together with the help of some friends, of course. Sure. Um, of course. And I wasn't over hunting, you know, where in their area, um, where my great grandfather hunted, but it was just fun. And there's a picture on the wall of,

in, uh, the hallway of my parents' house. And I remember seeing it ever since I was a little kid of my great grandfather with a big bull he shot. Um, and my dad was with him the day that he shot it. They got into a herd of elk and this bull had some cows pushed up into these small pines and he ended up shooting it pretty close. They shot a couple elk that day. And I think they were packing it out and my grandfather's horse, like,

fell over on top of a log with my grandfather on it and crushed him, kind of injured him. And he had to go out early out of the hunting camp. But anyway, you hear all these stories and see these pictures and this picture of that big bull with my great grandfather was on the wall my whole life, basically. And I don't know, just always intrigued me, always drew me to that area of the state and just made me like get excited to go down there and just to see what it was like and, and hunted as an adult.

And experience it. So yeah, that was this trip, this fall was getting back to that country and just seeing what it looked like and seeing if I could kind of piece together things, um, from a, just a, a, a hunting on your own perspective. Did you, um, did that just happen?

hit different did you like have the did you have the feels did you feel the feels did you like have some like man the nostalgia like i kind of remember some of this or was it completely different and foreign from what you remembered as a kid well yeah it was a little different um you know where their hunting camp was on the one side of the mountain range it was a slightly different terrain it was still rocky it was just real rugged but there seemed to be

bigger like willow complexy meadows um yeah just slightly different terrain but it was still pretty similar um some of the smells like there's a certain kind of willow that grows down there it's different than the willows i'm used to having up here in western montana and they just have a slightly different smell in those meadows and i don't know if it's combined with some of the sedges that grow there as well and there's beaver dam complexes and the whole

you know, mess of the ecology, those wetland meadows that makes them smell that way. But they definitely, there's a distinct smell to those and, you know, smells are linked to memory. So when I first popped out into one of those meadows, like it just hit me as like, oh yeah, this smells exactly like it did at my great grandfather's hunting camp.

So it kind of gives you a little bit of the, the kind of the, those feelies as you were saying. Oh yeah. Yeah. My, my, my grandfather hunted an area here in Idaho at the time was full elk and my dad and, and my uncles would hunt there too. And let, you know, fast forward several years to when I was a young adult, I started hunting there and, and, uh,

There's some, there's some meadow grass, kind of those, those moose bog type meadows and that kind of tall yellow grass that grows in there. It's kind of that swampy stuff. And I can, I can just smell it right now. Just the thought of like, I can, I just triggers that, that thought of memory of, of going there as a young kid. And that particular smell for that area, I haven't smelled that anywhere else I've ever been. Um,

Um, you know, whether it's Wyoming or even way, way, way North Idaho or wherever in Idaho or Montana, I haven't smelled those same smells per se. There's just exactly what you say. You know, the willows had a different smell than what you're used to. And yeah, those like, just, just what you said, it did triggers little memories and things. And, um, you know, and this one drainage, my grandfather used to hunt and, um, and, um,

the year 2000, I called in the biggest bull I've ever seen in my life anywhere on planet earth, you know, hunting. Of course I, you know, you see pictures on the internet all the time. Right. It was, I would say it was close to a 400, 400 inch bull. And this area is not really known for the, that size of bulls. And when I seen this bull, I thought, man, I wish there was somebody with me because nobody is ever going to believe this.

And it was, it was, um, it was just such an amazing thing. And I, you know, the, it's classic elk hunting story, you know, the bull was screaming, just coming in on a string, like tension on the bow string, the brushes moving, haven't quite seen him yet. And then the wind hits you in the back of the neck and he takes off.

And it was right on this little ridge, uh, ledge and where it kind of opened up. It's kind of a timbered ridge and over on the, the ledge of the ridge, it kind of opened up a little bit. So I ran over there real quick and he ran off in the backside. It was kind of a little basin in there that was nothing but alder brush up in this flat kind of basin that graduate had a gradual climb up to a, up to another ridge. And I ran over there and I looked and I seen this bull and I'm like, well,

Holy cow. Nobody's ever going to believe this thing. And of course it's out of bow range and he goes over to the alders and he, and they're huge alders and he starts raking. I think, you know, he starts, he puts his antlers on those alders and just starts messing with them. Just starts raking. I'm like, Oh, maybe he's not that spooked. I can call him back.

And then all of a sudden he just kind of just lunges and jumps into the middle. He was trying to part them is what he was trying to do because they were so thick. He was trying to part them with these antlers and he jumps and he just jumps right into those alders and just kind of, just kind of, just kind of did this, this walkie jump thing, treading through these, all this alder patch all the way up out of this basin. So I watched his giant rack and head float through the alders all the way up out of this basin and,

and out of my life forever. And I'm like, nobody is ever going to believe this. So it was like surreal, you know, it was like, man, if I could have killed that bull, it would have been like the icing on the cake. But I, I had killed bulls in that, in that drainage that my grandfather hunted and which was really special. And my mom always said, she's like, this is her dad.

And back in the old days, he would, he would get like PVC pipes or, or like galvanized pipes and put the little plug in the end of them and, and blow on them. Remember those kinds of elk bugles people used to have, it was just like kind of a whistle thing.

And he'd mess around with that. And he's like, man, if I could just figure out how to bugle and sound good, like a real elk, man, we could really kill these things. And he was always messing with it and wishing and wanting to be able to bugle like a real elk. And unfortunately, you know, he passed away when I was really little. So he never got to see the progression of elk bugles.

that we have today or even in the 80s you know he passed away pretty early 80s so but that was always a really special place so um i can understand the nostalgia and the want to go hunt somewhere where you know you've and we we would always go up there as a little kid you know to return to those places for the nostalgia i can i can relate yeah no it was fun it was uh it it made my entire year

My entire season, regardless what happened after September, it was, that was like, it just, it just made everything perfect. But yeah, of course I still went and hunted more and had a bunch more fun. Matter of fact, as I was driving, I was leaving Wyoming. I got a text from my good hunting buddy back home. He, he's like, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Want to go elk hunting? And I'm like, well, yeah.

Let me check the temperature of my household when I get home and let you know. And he's like, oh yeah, understandable. Cause I was gone like, I don't know, 18 days down there. So maybe not quite that much, but close to that. And so I got home unpacked and looked at my wife and she's like, so you're going out this weekend? And I was like, yep, I am. I guess I'm going out. So we went out and yeah.

It was awesome too, because my partner here, he decided this year that he was going to hunt elk strictly with his recurve. He's never killed a bull with his recurve. Oh yeah. And so he's like, I'm going to take my recurve. I'm like, well, that's great. Let's go. Let's see what we can do. And we went out that morning. He'd shot his first bull with his recurve by like eight 30. Oh man. It was awesome. I'm so jealous. Yeah.

Yeah, it was perfect. I mean, the wind was perfect. It was that cold, crisp morning. I bugled off this little point and there's just this little, I don't know, 40 acre pocket of brush of just meafy and spruce and subalpine fir and huckleberry brush. And he just screamed instantly out of there. We dropped in, closed the distance a little bit.

Screamed at him a few more times, cut him off. And I could just hear him coming. And my buddy Jared went out in front and he got set up and I videoed the whole thing with my phone. And I just.

I could see Jared and I'd just pan over to the elk. I could see the elk rack in my phone. I could see the elk pretty well by, you know, I had my phone down low, kind of my bino harness. Sure. And, uh, I saw Jared come to full. I saw the bull move forward and then I heard a little squeak.

Like a little tiny light cow call from Jared. I'm like, oh, here we go. And then all I heard was this wet thud of that arrow just smacking it. And the bull whirled. I bugled. And then it was just silent. And I looked over at Jared. He was just frozen there. And then he like dropped his head. And he looked up and dropped his head again. I was like, oh, no. Did he just whiff it?

Oh no, this is not good. And then he just gives me that fist pump, you know, like, oh yes. Yeah. He's yeah. 20 yards. Perfect placement. The bull world went down the hill 30 yards and just fell over dead.

Rolled down the brush and just laying there dead or nervous. Oh, that's awesome. Wet thud. I love it, man. I've never heard anybody describe it as that. And as soon as you said it, man, my brain started going, that's exactly what it sounds like. Yeah, he didn't hit any rib, so he didn't hear that crack. It was just a thud.

Yeah, it was pretty cool. So that's awesome. What a, and then there was a bull, like as we butchered that bull and packed it out, there was a bull bugle and at the head of the base and he did not shut up all day long. He sat back there, bugled and bugled and bugled. We, we dropped down with one load to the truck and hike back in. And as we were hiking back in, he was still bugling back there, man. I know.

Isn't it always the times that you just don't have the time, opportunity, whatever that you can go after those that you got bulls that are just cranking like that? Yeah. Well, when we were starting off of there with the second load, I'm like, Jared, what do you think? Should we drop this load down there and go after that bull? He's like, yeah, okay, let's do it. But I was like, I'm just joking. Let's get this thing to the truck. Oh, man.

Man, what a feat. So yeah, that kind of finished out my, when was that? That must have been like the last weekend of September. Okay. Maybe, yeah, something like that. So that kind of finished out my September. So it was great. Lots of action in September. Did you rifle hunt at all? I, not for elk. I did not go look for elk at all with my rifle. I still had a Montana tag and

My freezer's packed with elk beat. It is to the brim. Because I shot two bulls last year. Sure. So I'm still working on some of that. And then I shot this Wyoming bull and I was like, I do not need to shoot another bull. I know it's not about need sometimes, but I was just like, yeah. And rifle hunting for elk is, it seems to be more of a chore at times than it is enjoyable. So I just took my time and hunted mule deer and

After my antelope hunt in October, I hunted mule deer and then I got beat down pretty hard with the, some of the deep, deep snow that we got in mid November. I took a break and hunted some white tails. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I really wanted to pick your brain on these white tails. Um, now you won't brag on yourself at all, but I'm going to do it a little bit.

You're kind of an old, I mean, you're an all-around hunter, like one of the best all-around hunters I know. You're a pretty dang good whitetail hunter, too. Now, it's been a while, but there was a time when you had a picture on the cover of a major...

outdoor publication with a giant white tail is that am i right yes yes you are what magazine was that and when was that so that was um uh eastman's bow hunting journal and that i well i killed the buck in 2006 okay so i i think the magazine came out in 2007 okay

Yeah, it was a cover. Like, it's not very often you get a whitetail on the cover of an Eastman's. No. It's usually an antelope or a sheep or an elk or a mule deer. I mean, your classic Western big game. Yeah, to get a whitetail on there. I mean, that's saying something. That was a big buck. Yeah, that was pretty fun. Yeah. And that buck was, that consumed my life for a while. I spent so much time.

Trying to put together the puzzle of that whitetail. I saw him at the very end of the previous hunting season. Okay. Like, so it was like right after the season ended. I actually went on a little, I was going for a trail run and I thought,

I might as well just run through this little area. I like to go whitetail hunt. There's kind of an old logging road that goes back there. It's all really grown in, kind of more of a two track now than anything. I'm like, I'm just going to go for a run through there. And as I was jogging through there, I see this deer kind of like drop into this little draw and pop out the other side. Massive deer. I mean, it was just immediately in my mind, like that is a giant buck. Oh my God, where did he come from? Yeah.

And how do I, how do I get him? How do I find this thing next year? So I spent, I don't know how many days just looking for his sheds. And I never did find a sheds. Apparently some dog Walker picked him up. I found out later. Oh man. He took his dog out down the soul logging road. And, uh,

They were just laying there, but I found a, uh, antler from the previous year. Okay. So it had been there, been laying there two years. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's like, oh, this is a big bucket. I was finding big rubs, trails, and I just, and it's just this weird kind of flat. And so I kind of put together a game plan and.

Had all these tree stands hung in this area. And I, you know, when you scout in the spring and you're shed hunting in the spring, you're seeing all this sign from the previous year. Yeah. You're seeing all the old scrapes and the trails are more observable and you can see the rubs and you can see the rubs that have been rubbed multiple years in a row, like big heavy trees. And I was like, well, that buck is definitely rubbing these trees over and over year after year.

So I kind of focused on that and, uh, man, I ended up sitting a few times. I passed up a pretty nice buck.

And I decided, here's the crazy part. I decided to bow on them. I don't know why it was rifle season. You got a screw loose, man. And I thought, you know, I just, I'd been reading a bunch of articles about bow hunting whitetails back East. And I'm like, I just, I want to kind of experience that. So I'm just going to do it. Sure. So I just did it. And, uh, yeah, I think the fourth time I was out rainy is after like a four day rain in November. Oh,

Oh, yeah. And everything was kind of hunkered down for a while. And then it just started to let up. And then the deer started crawling out of the woodwork and ended up kind of rattling. And I used a doe bleat.

And some other bucks came in, some smaller ones that started sparring out in front of my tree stand. Oh, wow. And they just sat there and sparred and sparred and sparred all evening long. Hmm. And I just kind of like let them do their thing. Yeah. And thinking it's going to, there's a big buck around, he's going to come in potentially. And I was really focused on watching those deer because I, there'd be like three of them sparring.

And then I looked up and I saw another one come out of the timber and join in. And I was just really focused on those deer. And I said, I better, and I thought to myself, I better keep an eye out behind me and off to my left. And I look over and I could see the top of this, this larch tree just whipping back and forth about a hundred yards away. I was like, Oh, what is that? And then out he walks.

Kind of headed straight down right to me. He was going to walk right in front of me to where these bucks were over to my right. And so I just stood up, grabbed my bow and got ready. He walked out at 15 yards right below me and I just stroked him.

And I didn't know how it was like the buck that it, that I was after, but I saw he was a big deer. He looked real heavy and his tines kind of look short cause he was so heavy. But after the arrow hit, you know, and he whirled and went out there and crashed. I was like, Oh man, that's a good deer. And I walked over and pulled his head up out of the brush. I was like, Oh, this thing is a giant deer.

This is the buck I was after. That's the one. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that was a great, yeah. But I'd spent maybe 25, 30 days in that area just scouting, looking, and also looking for his sheds. I was like-

My wife was in grad school in another state and I was living on my own. I didn't have a kid. I had nothing else going on. Nothing but time. Yeah. The good old days. Yes. Life gets in the way, doesn't it, sometimes? Yeah. You wouldn't trade it for nothing, but man. No, I wouldn't. But sometimes it'd be nice to just be able to have some of that time and freedom to go do that stuff again. That buck, I...

I just have a dull, distant memory of what it looked like. And I remember it being incredibly massive. If you don't mind, Sharon, what did that buck score? I never got it officially scored. Okay. But if I remember right, lots of people asked. So I put a tape on it and I want to say it was 182.

Yeah. Yeah. Nets are for fish, right? Yes. Yes. I'm not much of a fisherman. Yeah. That's yeah. It was a solid deer. Yeah. That was a giant, giant. So now this year you killed a great white tail deer.

I was so happy to see that. I seen it come across my feet on Instagram. I was like, Oh yes, my whitetail buddy is back. He did it again. Um, it was really nice, beautiful buck. Um, tell me, tell me that story. Um, boy, it's not as exciting as the, uh, the, the archery one, but it, uh, I have a, uh, a coworker who, uh,

He's just sort of kind of getting into hunting. He listens to the meat eater podcast all the time. He's always asking me questions about different rifles and how to hunt and where to hunt. Super curious about it.

but he's never really asked to go out hunting with me. And I was spending a ton of time earlier in, in November looking for mule deer. Oh yeah. And, uh, he kind of went after some mule deer for a little bit, but he wasn't super pumped on shooting one. Um, so one day I asked him, Hey, you want to, we should go, we should go out hunting some point together. And he's like, Oh really? You want to do that? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Let's just do a day hunt for white tails or something. Um,

So we put together a plan and there's a spot that I, I kind of know it's sort of a little, not, I wouldn't say it's a secret spot, but it's, it's not the most logical spot to go park and then go hunt. So it was a day hunt. I took, of course I always take my backpack, my big backpack when I go day hunt. Cause I never go in places where I can get a deer out.

like hole for the most part. You don't want to drag it. No, I thought about dragging this one out, but I, it was a way. So I'm glad I had my pack. But so we just split up and I was kind of give them the, the, the spiel about still hunting and sitting and watching like the edges of some of these clear cuts and some of these little brushy draws and just trying to tell them about the terrain that these deer like to use and travel through other, they feel protected. Um,

Yeah. And also it was middle of the rut and I was like, you can see a deer at any point, anytime, anywhere, just stay vigilant, take your time, don't move too fast. And so, you know, we split up before daylight and we had a plan to meet up on top of this, uh, ridge and it later in the morning. And so I'd hiked up this ridge and popped up

On some high points and I glassed some kind of some brushy clear cuts and the snow was still kind of on the brush at this time, but it was starting to warm up. We had a fresh snowfall the night before, so you can kind of see fresher sign. And I popped out on the edge into this clear cut and I could see most of it. And I thought, I'm just going to like work my way through it.

And it's kind of sat on this shoulder. So you could kind of see it's kind of on a ridge top. So you can see kind of both sides of the shoulder. So think of like a saddle on a horse. I was just walking right down the backbone and I got out there and I could see like a fairly fresh track that crossed the clear cut from heavy timber to heavy timber. And I thought, well, I'm going to follow that track for a little ways. And I worked my way down this track and I could see where it bedded and then it got really fresh.

And it went a little, I could see it kind of going down the hill towards this opening and I glassed down in this opening and sure enough, there's a deer. And it was a, it was a doe. So I just kind of leaned there against the tree and watched her for quite a while.

And she just fed and fed and fed. Didn't act nervous. You could tell she was by herself. Like there's nothing else around. A lot of times you could tell when there's something bugging them. Or they're waiting for another deer, be it their fawn or there's a buck pestering them. But she seemed to be alone. So I just sat there for a long time. It was a great vantage point. And I kept thinking to myself, like, you know what? You better watch your backtrack there, buddy. Because...

How many times do you walk back on your own track and see deer tracks that have crossed your own? A lot. A lot. So I, yeah, it happens to me all the time. So I just looked back and I caught a little glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. And it was a flash of a deer coming up out of that heavy timber into the clear cut. And I could see it was a buck right away just by its body language and size of shape of it.

So I, I kind of dropped down to one knee, looked at it through my scope and I could tell it was only 150 yards away. Right. And I could tell it was like, ah, it's a, it's a good deer, good deer. Something looks a little funky with him, but boy, it looks like a good buck. And then I could see him kind of walking around a little bit, nosing. And there was enough brush there. I just didn't have a clear shot at him, but I could just get glimpses of him.

And then I could see what he was after. There's a doe was right there in front of him. He just pushed a doe out into that unit and was just kind of hanging back. Well, she wasn't in any hurry. They weren't spooked. And I kind of lost sight of him for a second. So I just got ready, kind of dialed my scope power up a hair and probably like maybe 10 power and just rested on my knee. And as soon as he popped out and turned broadside, I just

Just, you know, squeezed my first round off first and only round off. I shot and he just disappeared. Like my rifle recoiled and he wasn't there anymore. Yeah. But there's enough brush and little roll there in the terrain. I just couldn't tell exactly if he just like jumped over the, some brush or just that roll that ridge. And I just couldn't see him.

But the doe just stood there and looked around and started walking away. I have a suppressor on my rifle. Okay. And it, I mean, she was not concerned at all. But I just stayed there and looking at the last spot I saw him thinking, well, if he's still up, I'm going to see him here in a minute. Yeah. I sat there for probably three or four minutes and I never saw him. Re-emerged, the doe walked off.

Like, well, he's either that shot hit close to home and he just hightailed it out of here or I killed him. And I walked over there and he's just laying there just spread out dead. I mean, he just dropped right at the shot. Come to find out. And so I hit him a little on the, he was quartering away a little bit. I hit him kind of right in the back of the ribs and it angled forward through his chest and it just swattered him.

And then I realized that that's a solid, I mean, he was as big as I thought he was, but he looked a little funky cause he had that, he had a broken tine on one side, that photo that's on Instagram. You can't really see it, but if you look close, you can see one of his back tines snapped off.

I noticed that I was like, something's not right here. And then I was like, oh, it's got a broken G2, which probably if it had matched, what was it? 10 inches? It was, yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe a little more. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty tall. It was a good buck.

Um, and yeah, um, and it was a fresh break too. So it seemed like it looked to me like it had been within the last couple of days. It was just like that fresh white clean break. It hadn't been rubbed and polished at all from, from rubbing on anything. So you could tell it was fairly fresh. So that was November 21st. Okay. I believe so. They were hot and heavy. Oh, right there in the middle of November. Yeah.

Man, I, we've been talking about this for a long time and one of these days, maybe next year, if I can get a tag, dang Montana, they hate me. But, uh, if I could get a tag, I'd want to come over and go hunt that North country up in the whitetail woods with you. Do the old wall tent camp and, um, yeah.

Yeah. It's the thing about that time of year is of hunting is the, the days are short and the nights are long and man, you gotta, you gotta be camp with somebody that you like, uh,

and enjoy their, your, your time with them. Cause if you're by yourself, I've, I've done this before. I've, I've done, I've done these hunts by myself and man, it is boring. The nights are long. Like they are, it just like, man, I'd like to go to bed right now, but it's six, six 30. Yep. Shoot. Yeah. So the last couple of years I've, uh, I've had this year, I didn't, this is the first year I didn't have one in a couple of years anyway, but,

I had some friends that come up and we put up a wall tent and wood stove, piles of wood, cots, the whole works and just hunt straight from that wall tent. We just leave. I just start hiking right from there. Oh yeah. Just leave in the dark, come back in the dark. It's great. Don't even fire up the truck. Just eat it. There's so much country to go hunt that you can do that. And a couple of these little areas that I know you can just,

Just anchor in and then just go find deer. And we've been pretty successful over the years doing that. And it's fun. It's just, you come back, you cook a good meal, you hang out, drink a little whiskey, tell some stories, talk shop.

Yeah. It's a good time. So yeah, you should come up. You'd, you'd, you'd, you'd enjoy the hell out of it. And I know you like to come hunt North Idaho for whitetails. It's real similar. Yeah. Yeah. It's my cup of tea, you know? Yeah. I love that kind of hunting and that kind of country, you know? Um, my wife and I came over two years ago. Um, I think it was two, three years, maybe three years ago.

um into montana whitetail hunting when we had a really short window to hunt and we only had like three days right so um the conditions weren't ideal but i ended up getting a deer i got a little buck but uh you know i was a little weirded out because in montana they they check for cwd right you have your cwd stations and they're checking for that all over it seems like nowadays even idaho

But they took a sample and, and the same thing I, I had to, I bone this deer out, you know, and packed it out on my pack and in the head. And they're like, oh man, you almost didn't get us that, uh, that little, what is that? It's a.

little thing in the throat there, in the back of the neck there that they keep, that's the lymph node. They sampled that for CWD weight by taking those lymph nodes there to see if it has CWD. And they were kind of making a big deal about it. It's like, oh God, I'm scared to death to eat this deer. And they're like, yeah, don't eat this thing until you'll get an email that tells you if it has it or not. I'm like, okay. So I get it.

I get the email and it was fine, of course, which I was thrilled because, man, I love deer meat. It's so, so good. But, um. Yeah, it is. I don't know. I got mine tested this year and it came back clean. Yeah. And I don't know.

You know, I've probably have an unpopular opinion. Maybe I might be wrong. I've just, this is kind of my gut feeling. Like, I feel like maybe CWD has probably been here for a lot longer than we think. And they're starting to find it more because they're testing more for it.

I know of people and I've shot a deer that was obviously sick and weird and had something wrong with it. And I know other people that have, and who knows, you know, that's been, you know, 20, 30 years ago even, but, but who knows, you know, it may have been around, maybe not, but yeah.

I guess we'll see. I mean, that's a pretty big hot topic among, you know, a lot of the different state game agencies. They're taking it very seriously. Yeah. And they're finding it in more and more areas too. And they have been testing some of these areas for a while, but they are finding it now. And I don't know how long it's been in our area, but we've been dealing with it for years.

I don't know, six or seven years now. Yeah. And it seems like a lot of deer are coming back clean from the test, but they are still finding it. It's never going to go away, unfortunately. Yeah. Their management strategies are questionable. I don't know. I'm not a wildlife biologist, but God, it doesn't seem like we're going to shoot our way out of the problem. But I don't know. It doesn't seem to have worked well.

in wisconsin they're still dealing with it right um well like yeah i honestly i am ignorant on management strategies and and how effective they are so take that for what it's worth maybe trying to do something you know let's let's try to do something to fix it um

Whatever that may be. And, or for, unfortunately, like in Idaho and some of the places they found it, man, they've, they nuked the deer off. They killed a bunch of them. Um, and the, the first, then the, in the unit where they first found it, um, they found it. And then that, that fall they had an emergency hunt.

which they wanted to, they gave out, I don't know, four or 500 extra tags, or I might be wrong on the number, but it was seemed like a lot. And, um, to, to go harvest some more deer. And then that way they could test those as well to see, you know, how bad is it? And then, um,

Man, they've just kind of doubled down on killing, you know, let's shoot our way out of this. I don't know if that's the right answer, but like you say, I'm not a biologist either by no means. But yeah, I guess time will tell, you know, how it all plays out. I think everything probably runs its course one way or another, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's just hope their researchers come up with some type of treatment that it can be dealt with in the future. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice to inoculate, like to, uh, I guess, I don't know. It's hard saying, I already know what they're even thinking about being in a prion disease. It's like, I don't know if it's preventable or if, yeah, I don't know. You think they would, they've got a long ways to go, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, like EHD and, and, uh, um, and blue tongue, you know, those are passed from the bugs or whatever, you know, gnats biting the deer and, you know, common, you know, I don't even, I don't know anything about anything, but I'm like, well, why aren't people spraying, you know, you know, insecticides around ponds and areas where these deer are getting, um,

getting congregated during a drought year, you know, the area I grew up in, you know, there's a lot of cattle ponds and stuff. Why, why aren't they going out and just spraying, you know, killing bugs? Obviously that's not the right answer or they would have done it. Maybe, maybe, or maybe that's just a foolish thinking, you know, armchair from the armchair. It seems like, Oh, we got all these ideas. Why don't you do this? But, um, yeah, you just don't know. Yeah. We, we, uh,

As a country, we sprayed a lot of stuff around with very negative results for other creatures from unintended consequences. So I think people are a little leery of that. Songbirds and everything else. Oh, yeah. Little critters and stuff. Who knows? Maybe the deer wouldn't like the spray. But yet they'll put all these other things, all these weed killers and crap on fields. I don't know. It's weird.

Yeah. We'll never know. Yeah. And I, it seems like those, uh, like EHD and blue tongue really, really happened when they're, yeah. Dry seat. It seems like dry years and, and warm falls. Yeah. When you start, like don't have a frost early on and those midges kind of can persist into the fall. Yeah. And, and I guess, I don't know, maybe they, they reach this, uh,

where it can start passing amongst the deer population and the midge population. But yeah, we haven't, we've not had it affect our deer up here. But I, it has affected the deer in the Missoula area. Okay. And I know central Idaho has had it.

But it seems to be more persistent on the east side of the state of Montana, in the river bottoms. Yeah. In Montana anyway. I know where I grew up then, in the agricultural areas and on the canyon breaks, those areas, which is always a little warmer. And I think there's more deer there too. And they had a, when it first hit, I think it was 94.

five or 97, somewhere in there. And man, they had a giant die off. You know, you talk to the farmers and they're like, man, we went out and there were dead, rotten deer carcasses everywhere. Wow. Um, picking up big deadhead bucks everywhere. Crazy. Um, then there, you know, the, the biologists say some of the deer will develop a, uh,

they're not affected by it per se or a resistance to it. Oh, and those deer will carry on and have more offspring that will have a resistance, but then a few years go by and then we have another big dive. So I feel like there's a lot of, I don't think it's a perfect science. Um, I might be right, but, um,

but yeah and it seems to come around ever since then ever since that year we've never had it before instance ever since that year where'd these gnats come from did they blow in on the wind i mean how did like idaho's had droughts before then right why all of a sudden we've always had a lot of deer back previous to that so what made it happen i don't know i'd i need to get a biologist on here and just really

ask all those questions and hopefully they could maybe shed some light on that for us. That'd be great. Yeah, that's a good idea. Um, yeah, that, those are good questions. Um, yeah, right. Cause you know, we've had those, those midges or gnats or whatever that, that transmits this disease. Um,

And why, why now and why so frequently? And if deer are developing resistance, are the, is the disease slowly changing or, or, or adapting? Is it this, this back and forth war between resistance of the deer and a, and a new kind of slightly different, um,

type of like just a little little change in the dna of this disease to make it penetrate the armor of the the deer i don't know those are all good questions i'd like to know more about that as well yeah yeah i'll have to start sniffing around and see if i can find a cwd expert that that would love to get on here and talk yeah just yeah like a wildlife disease or parasitology expert

Isn't there that guy on Instagram, Servid Nut or something? Oh, yeah. Maybe I'll reach out to him, see if I can pick his brain, get him on here. Heffelfinger? I think that's his name. Well, I think he's friends with the Meat Eater crew. Yeah. I'll see if I can look him up. Be a good looker, I think. That would be interesting to hear more about.

Well, man, I appreciate we're, we're, we wrote, we've gone over an hour here. So man, I appreciate you coming on. It's always like we could sit here for hours and visit. I'm glad we got to catch up. It seems like we don't get to catch up until the Western hunting expo in Salt Lake. So now we'll, or we'll have other things to talk about when I see you down there. Yeah, definitely. But appreciate it. How can folks find you if they want to look you up on social media?

Um, they can find me on Instagram. That's the only place I really exist. Um, uh, as far, I guess I'm on rock slide as well as a, uh, staff writer, but yeah, in my Instagram handle is Josh underscore Boyd underscore MT, something like that. I don't even remember what it is, but if you do, if you go Josh Boyd MT, you'll find me. Um,

I'll show up. There'll be a bunch of hunting pictures. That's about all I share is some hunting content. Yeah. And if you go to rockslide.com, you can find me over there as well. Mostly just review articles on the homepage for gear reviews. I do participate in the forums a little bit, but mostly it's just review writing gear testing.

Right on. So, yeah, it seems to be a busy place over there these days. Yeah, good. Well, thanks again, man. I appreciate you coming on and, um, yeah, look forward to more conversations down the road. Yeah, I appreciate it, Derek. It was a great, great conversation. Thanks for having me. Yep. Absolutely.