Ep. 125: The Misadventures of Randy Wise
01:29:36 Share

Hey, American history buffs, hunting history buffs, listen up. We're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition, titled The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith,

and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions.

We explain what started the mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the whitetail deerskin trade

which is titled The Long Hunters, 1761 to 1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audio books are sold. Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840 by Stephen Rinella.

Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. I'm your host, Dirk Durham, and today I have my oldest friend in the house. He's my oldest friend, he's my best friend, and he's my brother-in-law. Welcome to the show, Randy Wise. All right, thanks for having me, Dirk. This should be entertaining.

Yeah, I think it should. You're quite a character. Now, some people that have followed some of the films I've been in over the years hunting with different folks, I was on a hunt with Trent from Born and Raised Outdoors here a few years ago in Wyoming, and Randy came along with his goats. He had these pack goats, and he joined the hunt, and he was kind of filled in as a cameraman and

And, um, he, like he said, he's like, I'm not a professional cameraman. And I'm just going to say, Randy, we could all tell by the shots you got. Hey, I appreciate you taking notice. And, and for the record, I had no instruction or classes or even, Hey, do this when this happens. I was just left in the dark and I did what I could with what I had. Oh, I know. I know. Absolutely. And we could tell, um,

Trent's like, hey man, you want to run a camera? And you're like, I don't know, sure. You're like, what do I do? And he's like, push the red button and hold the camera towards us. That was the insurrection. And it turned out.

But, uh, we had a, we had a pretty good hunt. Um, killed a couple of bulls. We used your goats to pack one bull out across the river there in Wyoming. It was, it was fun. And then we used me to pack the other bull out in the river. Yeah. Yeah. We, we, I shot a bull and it died in the river and, uh, we had to break that thing down in the dark in the river, pack it out. It was probably the cleanest piece of meat we've ever had. Um, but anyway, uh,

That's all water under the bridge. Today, we're going to talk about the misadventures of Randy Wise. Me and Randy, we've been buddies since seventh grade. So if you can imagine, you know, we've had a lifetime of fun and goofy adventures and hunting trips and just, you know, and he's family too. So there's all the whole family aspect of it.

But I kind of wanted to rewind to back in the olden days, if you will. And me and Randy were high school boys. I would say we were probably freshmen, sophomores in high school. Yeah. Maybe. And we went hunting. Excuse me. We went camping in the back country of Idaho. We were way back then.

a hundred miles from, from the closest town where we're right off the Montana border in, in the Clearwater region of Idaho. It's some of the most beautiful country you've ever seen. The deer were so tame that we would literally,

Take a leak. We would urinate on the ground and a mule deer would, would come right up. They would come up and lick your, your urinated dirt. They would come up and lick that dirt like immediately. While you're there. Yeah. While we were standing there. I have a picture of Randy, um, standing there right after he peed and there's a deer licking the pee right, like one foot away from him. It's the craziest thing I've, I've ever seen. Um, but that, that was kind of a cool trip.

Um, we were up there with my folks and Randy and I were like, we're not going to camp at the truck with these old people. Right. We're teenagers now. We, we want adventure. We're going to go backpack. We're going to backpack into a cool place and, and set up a tent and, um, have a good time. So we, we, um, we backpacked down into this basin, uh,

And it was pretty easy going. You know, it was kind of steep, but no real trails. We get down, we could see this big flat spot. It was a big, beautiful, grassy flat. It almost looked like the old stone. And there was a lake down in there. It was a little lake, yeah. And we're like, oh yeah, that looks like an awesome place to camp. So we get down there and that grass turned out to be about waist high and full of mosquitoes. Yes. Remember the mosquitoes? They were so bad. The mosquitoes and...

the brush was, you know, looking down, you know, it didn't look nothing like that. We get down in there. Yeah. It's shoulder high. You can't see nothing anywhere. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's your, that, this is Idaho. This is Idaho one-on-one. Like it always looks good at a distance, but you get up close, you get into it. It's like, okay, that brush is over our head. The grass is waist tall and it's a marsh and it's like full of mosquitoes. So I'm like, oh God, we got to set up this tent, you know, and we had a few hours before it was going to be dark, but the mosquitoes were so bad.

We got to get this tent set up and get in the tent. And I told him, I said, okay, you go look for firewood. I'm going to set this tent up. So I start setting the tent up and you wander off and you come back and you have this worried look on your face and you say, you say, you got to see this. That's all you said. You have to see this. You have to see this, but you got to rewind just a little bit back to the lake. Okay. So there we are.

Like, you know, we're in the brush on the edge of the lake, and we walk up into the waters just a little bit, if you remember, and we could see bear tracks in the mud. And they were squished out like giant bear tracks. You remember that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, basically grizzly bear tracks in our minds. Yeah, in our minds. And I believe we were probably eighth graders.

This is in our first two years of our... We could have been. Yeah. It's unclear how old we were. I know we were young. We were pretty young. Pretty young. And so this is like Randy getting his first adventure with the Durham family. And that's how I remember it, you know? And so here we are, like Dirk said, back in the back country. Anyway...

Yes, it's time to set up camp. And we went miles from his parents. And we're kids. And there's this lake. We got cans of chili. Yeah. And like...

No sleeping pads and like this shitty little, like two man pup tent. Yeah. We got nothing. And we, I don't even think we have a pistol. We did have a flashlight between us. Yeah. And it probably was one of those survival knives. Yeah. And so we see this big pushed out bear tracks in the mud that go into the water of this little lake and,

And then we needed to hike up this Razorback Ridge. Remember that big ridge that we were going up? And then we got into the brush and the huckleberries and we're like, we need to set up camp here. Yeah. You remember that? And it was on the main trail. There's the only trail on this Razorback Ridge. Right. And I tell Randy, I said, you go get firewood and stuff. I'm going to start setting this tent up. So I start setting the tent up. He comes back and says, you got to see this.

So I'm like, well, what's up? So I walk over there to this huckleberry brush and huckleberry brush is about waist high, you know, and thick. You can't hardly walk through it. And it's all broken down. Like it looks like a bear is tore up. It's been just like wallowing and like tearing all this brush up, eating huckleberries. It just tore out this spot big enough. It looked like a couple of bears.

A bull elk had been fighting there. There was so much stuff torn up. Randy doesn't say anything other than, you got to look at this. And I go over there, I'm like, oh my God, we got to move our tent right now. It's a grizzly bear and he's been eaten. We got to get out of here. Right. This was an unintended consequence of...

Randy's shenanigans. Yeah. So the backstory is I went over there to take a leak and I seen all these huckleberries and I thought, wouldn't it be fun to break all these up and put the idea into a

head, me and Dirk, that there's a big bear and this is the only trail. So yes, Dirk comes over, he evaluates the situation and correctly evaluates that, yeah, there's something in here even

and rummaging and foraging, and we should not camp here. We're right on his trail. We should not camp here. Yeah. But what we didn't know is where we were, and we'd never been there before, and this trail had straight up this, on the left side, you remember you could look off, it would be like a chute in a snowmobiler's paradise. Like an avalanche.

Yeah, it was just straight off the left side of the canyon and the right side kind of feathered out into the brush and the aspirins and whatnot. So we were on this only trail, rocky. And at this point, my unintended consequence was the fear.

that I instilled in camp. Oh, I was scared to death. I am like, we got to go. I run down, I grab the tent, I throw that thing together, I throw that thing, tear it down, throw it in my pack. And my pack, we have these backpacks. I think we got them at the Goodwill or somewhere. These old aluminum frame backpacks. Yeah, the aluminum frame, the orange ones and the blue ones. Yeah, they were garbage. Yeah. And, you know, through all of our nice heavyweight stuff under our packs. And I'm like, we got to get the hell out of here. Yeah.

And I start hiking like a madman. We got to get the hell out of this place. He wouldn't let up. And I was like more leisure. Like, it's fine.

I know. We're going to be fine. I'm just like, what are you doing? We've got to get out of here. But now I'm hooked into this prank I've pulled, and I can't go back on it. So I have to kind of live what I've started. He can't let me know. He can't let me know that it was him at this point. Yeah. Because I'd bought it so hard. Yeah, he bought it. He hooked Lion's Inker, and we're in the dark. It's pitch black. There ain't even a moon. I don't remember stars or nothing. It's one of them pitch black nights.

And we're in the flashlight and hiking up a single little game trail. Cliffy game trail. That's in the, like...

The most backcountry Idaho-Montana borderline country you can find. Like, it's not a human. There's nobody around. Like, it's just us. There's no trail. Yeah. No, like, not like a horse trail. This is just like a game trail we're on. There's no GPS. No. There's no Onyx. There's no nothing. Like, it's on us to find our way up this, like,

very remote country. And, you know, we, we aren't worried about that. Like for some reason, our, our,

Internal GPS systems are working fine. We know when you get up this Ridge, we're going to camp on the top of the Ridge line. We're on a white hike, six, seven miles to the left, whatever direction that was at the time. And then eventually we'll hit a road. It gets us back to your mom and pop. Yeah. You know, so we, we climb up this thing and finally find a flat spot. Cause it's steeper than the back of your head. We finally find a flat spot. It's like, okay, okay. We're going to sleep here.

But I'm worried. I don't want to sleep in a tent because I don't want to not be able to see a bear come get us. So we just kind of propped our sleeping bags up against this old log. And we build a little fire and we drift off into sleep somehow. I don't know. It was very like, I was kind of like lucid sleep, you know, kind of like halfway in, halfway out. And I'm laying there and...

I can hear a noise coming down the trail. It's like I hear something coming down the trail and I hear like clippity-clop of like hoof beats and like a little bell tinkering. And it's like an old miner with some mules going by us in the middle of the night.

The next day, I'm like, Randy, what's up? Did you see that old miner and stuff? He's like, what are you talking about? And I don't know how it is when you're half lucid, if you're in and out of sleep. I'm pretty sure I dreamt it. We honestly were scared to death. Both of us. But we didn't get eaten by this make-believe grizzly bear. Yeah. Even though that was kind of a weird dream to have about the old miner 49er coming down the hill.

Um, you never seen that. No, but what I did see was we nested up against this log that was full of red ants. Yeah. Those things woke up and the things were all over us, eating us alive. They were in our sleeping bags. They were all over us. We had wounds everywhere. Yeah.

Anyway, it was a miserable night. A sleepless night, you could say. Yeah. Next morning, we're up and out of first light. We get up. We're like, okay, we're getting the heck out of here. We hike back to my folks. And I'm like, I think we'll stay in camp these next few nights. And Randy being on the prank, you know, here I'm like, now I'm kind of feeling like,

So Dirk immediately gets back. He tells his folk about the grizzly bears on the water and the trail and the huckleberries tore up. And now all of a sudden my prank turned into I'm a liar. And I don't want anybody to know. So I'm like. He just kept it to himself. Yeah, I just kept it to myself. I thought it was kind of funny. It blew out of proportion. And so I'm living with this.

thing inside me. How many years did you keep that? I, it's, it was years. It was years and, and it was years. And finally adults, I think. Yeah. Finally told me. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, you know, remember that time, you know, and we're laughing and, you know, having a beer or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, I tore up all those huckleberries. I'm like, what? Oh, I felt ashamed, but you know,

it was a fun joke at the time, but it kind of just got away from me. Yeah. Well, you know, that kind of happens in life. Yeah. Even though I feel like in high school you did some of those little pranks too. I think you're like, Hey, you see that guy over there? He wants to kick your ass. I'm like, why? I've never said a thing about it, but we've always been good. Like he don't like me. He's like, Oh, he hates you. He wants to beat you up. Remember that? I, I,

I may be guilty of some things like that. And I may read, I may be guilty of having girls write you love letters too. Yeah. Well, yeah, there was some of those, like, I'm like, man, somebody's writing me a love letter. Who is this? And you're like, huh? What? Oh, wow. Yeah. You should pursue that, you know? And,

Yeah. Or whatever. So, you know, we're dumb kids. I was a dumb kid, especially. I don't know. I feel like that sets the tone of who Randy Wise is. He's kind of a joker, kind of a prankster. Pretty funny. Loves to try to, like, get a reaction out of people. You know, will say and do things to try to get a funny reaction. For good intent. For fun. Yeah. It's all for good intent. Right. And, and.

Yeah, it hasn't always played out in my favor. But you know what? I can see myself in that. And then when somebody tells me something two years later,

you know, that they did to me. I think maybe it's a joke, but that's not always true too, which I think we're going to talk about later in this podcast. Right. Right. We'll get, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So I wanted to kind of set the tone with that little story. And, um, I wanted to kind of, um, shortly thereafter, Randy and I decide we're going to be bow hunters. Um, we wanted to bow hunt. Uh, I got the, got the bug, uh,

The year before we started bow hunting and Randy's like, oh man, I want to bow hunt too. So we worked really hard. We, we, you know, we didn't, we weren't just handed a bunch of money as kids, you know, back then, you know, we, we just had to work and make our money and earn our way, which was good. Cause you know, I feel like.

We had, yeah, we worked, we worked in the hayfield. We worked at dairies and we worked at dairies. We did hard labor laborious work, um, putting up hay all summer, saving that money. And I bought my first bow and all the gear. Randy bought his first bow and all the gear. And, uh,

We bought elk calls. We're like, all right, we're going to learn how to use these. And, uh, that was the summer between eighth and ninth grade. No, it was freshman year and sophomore year. We bought this stuff. So, so the summer between then is, so we were 15. Okay. You're a year older than me. So you must've been 16, but anyhow, um, uh,

We get this, these calls and we played with them and practiced them. And, and, um, we kind of liked, I think we both liked the same diaphragm, but then you had an external call. You, it was like one of those, uh, elk. Oh yeah. LK ink talk. It looked like two plastic, uh,

Almost like two plastic credit cards that were kind of melted and bent and had a rubber band in between them and you could kind of blow on it and make it a little. Wasn't that a cow talk? It was a cow talker, yeah. Yeah. But you had one of those and you were pretty like. I like that for cow calls. Yeah, you're like, I spent $12 for this. Well, I'm going to use it. I'm going to call some elk in with that. That's three hours of labor. So fast forward, we practiced with our calls. We practiced with our bows all summer. We got really good shooting bows.

Got really good with our calls for what we were. I feel like we were both really naturally gifted at picking up on calls and using them. And we get...

To opening day and our first spot, we wanted to go to opening day. Well, it rained the night before and it was just really brushy and thick. And we're like, oh man, we're going to be soaking wet if we go this way. So let's go up to this other spot. So this farmer said, Hey, you guys can hunt at our place. So we get up and park by his house and walk over the hill. And there's, there's elk in the fields, right? He's got these wheat fields that hadn't been harvested yet. Yeah. And.

They were right there. We were like, wow, this is awesome. And the bull was like bugling on his own and running around chasing cows. I was like, wow. Is this the one I think you're thinking about? How great is this? Well, yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, I looked down and I'm like, Randy, I forgot my bugle tube. Oh yeah, it is. And you're like, ah, I forgot my diaphragm. I'm like, that's okay. I said, give me your bugle tube. I'll call, I'll call for you. And you're like, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You'll, you'll call it into yourself. Well, we, we give me, give me, he's like, I've got this elk talk thing. Yeah. Well, there's a lot at that time, Dirk, we didn't understand about even calling out. Right. Like we didn't know a lot about calling out. No, we never called it up ever before. This is the first time in history of our history. Yeah. We didn't, there's a lot we didn't know. And, and,

We both wanted to kill elk. We both wanted to be successful. And the whole forgetting the tube, having reeds, and a cow talk on my end, it was very, I don't even know. It was a very pivotal moment, I feel like, in our hunting relationship as early day hunting. Because we both wanted to do our own thing.

But we didn't have the concept of working together necessarily. Right. I want to do this. You wanted to do that. Right. We had our own mind on what should be done to call these elk in. Yeah. We had differences. We all had our own opinions. And neither one of us knew what was right. But what we did know is we worked for the stuff we had and what we brought for that day. And we wanted to work that into the equation to each of our favors. Right.

And so there we were. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. So I start cow calling and I start bugling into my hand. Like I'm using my hand as like a tube with a glove on it. And it sounded, it probably sounded like a hog squealing. Honestly, it sounded terrible. And then you, you had your elk talk jabbed into the end of that tube and you were blown on that thing. And it sounded terrible.

Just as terrible. It sounded like somebody was killing a chihuahua or something. It was horrible. But just the same back in the eighties, you could whistle and call an elk. These elk run pressured, you know? Um, it wasn't that it was some exclusive, um,

ranch or something that nobody else got to hunt. Just nobody really bow hunted that area back then. It was just everybody else went to the back country. It was amazing time. We were in the front country, uh, close to close to home and you know, nobody really messed with these elk just because people thought we got to go to the mountains.

So we start calling to these elk and the bull starts bugling his head off and running around and chasing these cows around. And Randy kind of angles his way up and he gets to the edge of that field before me. I'm kind of stuck in this pin down in this like open spot down the bottom of this draw, but he kind of took a different line and had more cover. And he got to the edge of that field and that bull had kind of walked off and pushed his cows off away, you know, probably a couple hundred yards.

And all of a sudden I see Randy and he bends over and he put, he kind of hunches over and he puts his bow over his head. He goes, he goes, does this weird trot thing across the field with his bow over his hand and. Or head. Or his head. Like it's an elk. Like it's an elk. You're emulating the look like an elk. And this, this wheat was tall. It was like probably waist high. Yeah.

And you go bouncing across this field and then just, you know, you get out there like 150 yards and just disappear into the wheat. And I'm like, that's never going to work. And I look over and that bull had stopped and seen you and just made a beeline, just ran right. He charged me. He charged in. Yeah. And I'm like, and he just stops. I'm like, and I see the bull kind of fidget around. I'm like,

And then he kind of did it again. I'm like, what? What is going on? And then pretty soon he turned around and trotted back to his cows, round him up and took off. And I'm like, what the heck happened, Randy? What? Why didn't you shoot that thing? Yeah. Yeah.

Hey, American History Buffs, Hunting History Buffs, listen up. We're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition, titled The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith,

and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions.

We explain what started the mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the whitetail deerskin trade,

which is titled The Long Hunters, 1761 to 1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audio books are sold. Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840 by Stephen Rinella. So on my end of it, my perspective was exactly that, except I remember a calf following the bull.

And there is a draw before the ridge. I was up on top of a ridge in this. So Idaho has rolling wheat fields. We're not Midwest flatlanders. We have rolling ridges between out in our fields. Right. So I'm up on the, say, the high point of the ridge. And so playing with the elk originally, and I'm down in the...

the timber on a fence line, um, calling Dirk calling on his end, the elk all run. There's let's call it a 25 head herd, couple bowls, um, little five point, which is the herd bowl. And they're, they're 150 yards from me down on Dirk's end of the field. And me and Dirk went separate ways. And I,

I end up belly crawling and fighting my way through this terrible brush that we deal with all the time where we're from. And I get on the fence line, and as I break through this brush, I'm cow calling and bugling as best I can with these kind of half-assed calls that I got in my arsenal. And the bull would work from Dirk's end of this 150-yard field down to my end.

And I remember that bull coming probably 15 yards from me, but I can't even lift my bull, let alone draw back. I'm like in dead, broken brush. You know, it's terrible brush in there. Like I can barely get through it. Dirk Bugle's bull runs down 150 yards where the elk are, the herd, and I get out across the fence line and I think, all right, the herd spooked is not coming my way again.

and I need to cross this wheat field and work my way over to the southeast corner of the field. Get back into the timber. Yeah, get back into the timber. And I do know the country. We've been there. We know the area. There's a power line road through there or a power line that cuts through the timber where the power line utility is cut back for easement and whatnot. So my thoughts are I need to cross this open wheat field

and get to that power line road. And Dirk's going to get a chance to hunt and bugle and shoot this bull. But when they spook or whatever he shoots or whatever happens, they're going to have to go out that end because I've already basically ruined this end of the field. So that's their only exit out that way. So I want to kind of be in position to flank them.

So yeah, like Dirk said, I get out in the field. I put my bow over my head because I have no cover and I'm cow calling and I'm hunkering down like I'm some kind of elk. And that bull sees me and he charges me and there's a calf that follows me or follows him. And I lose sight of the bull, but I can still see the calf and the calf stops and I have no cover.

I'm in a wheat field. And then all of a sudden, I'm 20 yards or approximately to this bull for the first time in my life as a teenage kid to my first shot at an elk. And I'm scared to death. I'm honestly, I'm scared to death. My adrenaline is pumping. My heart's beating. You know, I've already, this thing's already came in on me. And I'm

He was a mad bull. You remember? He was mad as hell. Yeah, he was a mad. He was all worked up. Yeah, he was a mad bull. Well, he's seen you. He's seen that other bull, his rival over there. Yeah. And then you disappeared and he come to kill you. And he come in and I was scared to death. And I remember shooting that thing or shooting at that thing. And I watched my arrow shoot underneath its head.

His brisket, like between his right, right in that corner between his front leg, you know, it is shot through the graph, the wheat field and he rolled and turned and ran off, you know, and what a time the adrenaline was pumping. I was obviously, you know, brokenhearted. I didn't get it. Didn't kill him, you know, but he ran off. Help me out here. What happened next? Like he, so he ran off your direction, uh,

He ran off. And got the herd. Yeah. And I think they headed out that power line road I was trying to flank him from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was over at that point. Yeah. But the next day, I mean, every day, this was a Saturday or something, but every day we'd go back out there chasing things around. And I think it was a week later, maybe, we were back out there. Yeah.

We didn't like, we weren't into teamwork. We were like kind of every man for himself thing. We hadn't figured out teamwork. Like we need, I want to do it like this. And you're like, I want to do it like that. Yeah. And we're just like, okay, well, cool. Well, I'm going to do this. You're going to do that. We're going to try to get the same elk. Both of us are going to try our own little stories, uh,

So, but then one day we split up and I drop you off and you kind of went in that same area. And I, my brother and I, we drove around way around and come in from a different side. And, um, I'll say ready. I think you might be the only person I know that has shot every single arrow in his quiver at an elk.

And not got an elk. At a different elk. A different elk. In the same day. In the same day. Right. And not got one. Yeah, we're talking about the heydays of the 80s. When you could whistle or bugle or whatever, like they had had zero hunting pressure on archery or calling in where we lived. And it was so easy to call an elk. But in my defense...

I would get so wound up. My heart would pump a thousand miles an hour. My adrenaline would pump a thousand mile hour. I had one of them power mag bows. It was 110 pounds of pullback. Cause I thought that's what you needed. And that's what they sold me. And you know, like, so like 110 pound bow, uh,

Was it 110 pounds? What was it? Yeah, and it was no exaggeration. It was ridiculous. I know you got guys shooting 80-pound bows today, and most people shoot about 70, and you got camanes pulling a 100-pound bow, but this is no bullshit. Randy had a 110-pound bow, and I remember you told me the story when you went into the bow shop and to buy a bow, and there was a bow laying there, and the guy said,

Hey, don't even attempt to draw that. And he's like, I've only seen one other person draw it. And you picked it up and pulled it back like twice. Like it was nothing. Like 15 years old. Yeah. And he's like, what the hell? Right. And you're like, well, I want one of those things. Yeah. Like that's at that time, you know, poundage equals speed. Right. And performance. Right. And so if you could man up and get a certain pound bow, you're automatically at an advantage. Yeah. And.

An overdraw. You got to have an overdraw. You got to have an overdraw on your bow. That way you're just shooting the lightning fast. Oh my goodness. You know, yeah. At that time, you know,

I had what I thought was the cat's meow. Oh, yeah. I was jealous. All I had was an 80-pound bow with 65% let off, and I was a little jealous. And I can't remember really any of my friends being able to pull that thing back. I couldn't pull it. Yeah. And it made me so pissed off. I was just like...

I'm like, give me that thing. And I would try to pull him like, this is, this is bullshit. Like how, how can you pull this bow? Like it's, you know, not to brag up Randy, but he kind of had superhuman strength. He's got this superhuman grip and superhuman strength in, I've never seen anything like it. Yeah. Anyway, but anyway, back to it. So I had this, this, this bow. I had, you know, we worked hard, like you said, and we were anyway, uh,

I didn't know why I couldn't hit a freaking elk. Like that same day he's talking about him and his brother went this way. I went this way. I'm hunting solo and I have these bull, like I have a bull come in 20 yards. I can't hit it. I missed the one that I was pretending to be a bull with my bull upside down my head. He came at 20 yards. I couldn't hit it. Multiple times, time after time through that course of our first few years, like I couldn't freaking hit one.

And I don't, I didn't know what was wrong. Like, I honestly couldn't, I couldn't pinpoint it. I was so frustrated. I was disheartened. I, I was so far from hitting elk. I never even wounded one. Like it was ridiculous. What was the pivot? What was the pivoting point? Like, when did you figure out what you were doing wrong? Well, I was white tail hunting and I,

I'd been whitetail hunting on the ground. I had two, we'll call them brothers, whitetail, nice five-bys coming in. Ten point to the eastern folks. Yes. Yeah. And it's cattle country on the verge of a huge canyon, right? This canyon is known to everybody. All the locals is literally a hellhole.

And so I'm hunting the top of that where it comes out on top. It's kind of prairie land on top and there's a cow pond there and it's

um we hate we hate you dirk and i hate for everybody we knew all the farmers they let us have permission to hunt everybody we had special rights to some of this private land because of all of our effort pain right so yeah yeah we worked our our butts off for these farmers these farmers guys can yeah they fucking they freaking loved us you know that one guy's like hey if you want to shoot an elk you have to shoot two though they're like

no, no, we're not going to shoot one. It's the law. He's like, no, no, you have to shoot two of them. Yeah. They, they literally encourage us to thin the herd. They wanted these elk off their property. They're eating their food. Yeah. The pivotal point for me killing something with my bow was I was white tail hunting. I always enjoyed elk hunting in the morning because they were very active. They've, they called a lot back in those days. Um,

Um, but not so much in the evening for my, for my taste. And I honestly, I didn't care to hunt elk in the evening as much as I did whitetail because the whitetail in that country, there's some beautiful bucks. And I really wanted to get one of these big bucks with my bow. And I'd got busted a few times on the ground, um, where they came in out of this big Canyon to this cow pond.

And so I decided to build a tree stand, you know, so it was like noon to two o'clock in the afternoon. It took me a couple hours. Um, and I, I built, I, I had a little Makita screwdriver gun and I built me a tree stand out of two by fours and climbed up in it. And I had a burl sack kind of blind around it to block my motion. And so there I sweat is hot.

It was very hot. You know, I remember the heat and I get up in that thing and it's like two o'clock and I have to wait till like 730. So, you know, I got five hours roughly before the last 30 minutes when actually Whitetail come out. So I'm sitting there and two, three hours later,

Here comes a combine. You know, like it just happens to be, it just happens to be, you know, time to harvest. And so about every 40 minutes, this combine would go by two or three times before dark set in.

Um, he had come swathing by and wave at me in my tree stand. I'm on, I'm, I'm on the, on the cattle side of this fence line. And, you know, I'm eye to eye with this guy and he's cutting the wheat, he's cutting the wheat. And I'm like, oh, are you freaking kidding me? You know? And so, uh,

as it, you know, we're in the last half hour of daylight and I'm glass and I can see the deer coming out, but they're, they're 300 yards away, you know? And I'm like, uh, this, this guy in the combine, he's got everything fouled up where I'm at. They're not coming into this cow pond and they're going to come in out down here. And, uh,

I need to make a decision. Am I going to go try and sneak this fence line that has a brush on the bob wire and try and get in a position to shoot one of these deer? Because I'm literally deer hunting. But I have an elk tag, you know. So I'm going to move in on these deer. I take one look back down at this canyon that's literally a hellhole. And there's a herd of elk 30 yards from me coming out of this canyon on this trail to this cow pond.

And the lead cow comes up and let's call my feet 12 to 14 feet off the ground, off this homemade tree stand thing. And she comes in, she's at seven yards or less. Like it's a down, it's a downward shot for me. Pretty steep angle. Pretty steep angle straight. You know, it's pretty down, right? And she knows something's up. Like I can tell she's alert. She knows something's up, but I'm not calling. I'm silent. You know, I'm, I'm whitetail hunting.

And where we're at, it's, it's bulls or cows. And I have this, I have to reach over with my burlap sack covering to get my bow over the top of it to be able to shoot straight down at her. And right before I pull the trigger, well, it's like, I always do. I don't know. Let me, let me say I've shot at 15 elk at this time. Haven't hit one yet. You know, it was ridiculous back in those days. And, um,

Right before I squeeze on my release, I notice I'm not looking through my peep sight. Like I ain't, I see my pins. Right. You know, and my pins on the elk, but my peep sights clear off to the right side of my face. I don't even care where that thing's at. Not even close. Not even close.

And it dawned on me at that time. That's why I missed all those previous elk. Cause the excitement of the moment, I mean like this is a cow, like she's the lead cow and my heart's beating a thousand miles an hour. Right. And cause I, I've missed so many now I'm frustrated and I'm angry with myself and all this stuff's going on emotionally inside of me. And, but, but probably because I had the, the screen of this camouflage burlap sack and,

And I'm in a tree stand that like I have a few extra seconds before I pull the trigger. And I, I, for some reason I realized I'm not looking through that peep site. So I pulled the peep site in. I'm like, Oh man, that's where I've been going wrong. And I shoot that cow, which, you know, that's the extended story. I did get the cow. It was great. She dropped in her tracks, but yeah, dude, that's,

It's tough to hear that. Like, but some people go there like for even further, you know, years and years, like they don't diagnose their, their issue. They black out, they do whatever. Um, they're not, they, they just get so caught up in excitement, excited in the moment. They forget their shot process. So that was cool that you were able to finally catch yourself in that moment and be like,

Oh, I see what I've been doing wrong. That's what I've been missing. Yeah. So unfortunately for me, you know, I realize that, but that's probably...

eight years after I started bow hunting or somewhere in there. And Dirk been killing elk the whole time, you know, and I'm like, what the hell's going on? You know, and Dirk's just knocking tag after tag, you know, and I'm like, what the hell's wrong with me anyway? You had a pretty good run with a, with a tree stand hunting. Yeah. Like another time you shot a spike, uh,

out of a tree stand by a pond. Yeah. It's like, hey, if there's anybody in West End, you want it in the early season, hot season, places where elk need not a lot of water, but there's cow ponds or there's ponds around. It's a great place to put a tree stand. You shot a spike that had a broken skull. Yes. That was...

That was always crazy. I always like to tell that story to people when they're talking about weird stuff they found in the woods. Yeah, that was, that was interesting. So as you said, you know, so after that, I kind of got onto the tree stand elk hunting for a little while and,

And I had a portable tree stand. I put it on the same pack frame we talked about. You didn't just screw it two by fours into the tree with your Makita. Yeah, I went all out and bought me one of these portable tree stands. Wow, good job. It wasn't a self-climber. It was one you had to screw in peg deal. I was a screw-in peg tree stand guy. And so...

Yeah, I screw in, put my stand up, and the same pack frame we talked about, about me being prankster down in the backcountry, you know, same darn thing. The same backpack. Same backpack. You know, it was like...

I leave my backpack at the bottom of my tree because, well, I'm up in the tree. And I'm only 15 feet up because I'm over a pond. It's 37 yards across the furthest point from me. It's 5.20 in the afternoon. I remember it like yesterday. A bear comes in on the same trail.

That I'd hiked in and I could tell he's sniffing my trail and he's sniffing to me and he sniffs all the way to the base of my tree and he rattles the, the buckles and stuff on my little backpack. Oh really? Yeah. And, and it scared him. It startled him. And he, he pounced off, you know, kind of remind me of like a mule deer, the way he left out through the tall grass. Kind of bounced out of there. And so he bounced on out of there.

And then I sat there for another two hours. It was in the seven o'clock range now. And I thought, man, so why I'm here is because I seen 25 head and some bulls here the day before. Yeah. Of elk. So I decided I'm going to set up here and try and, you know, I know they're here. I know they come out just before dark. Yeah.

And so I want to get things fired up just a tad bit earlier because I'm hunting now. So I decide to do some calling from this tree stand. And two, two and a half hours after I've been in this tree stand, I do some cow calls and a bugle. And I'm not kidding at all. 40 yards across from me.

Spike gets up out of the brush. He'd been bedded down there the whole time. The whole time I climbed the tree, the whole time I set up my tree stand, the bear, the bear, the whole deal. He'd been bedded down with inside of me that I couldn't see because he was bedded down in the brush and whatnot.

He stands up and he circles over. And this to me was the first time I ever passed up an elk. He's a spike bull. And I knew there was a nice bull there because I'd seen him the night before. So I decide not to shoot him. He's at 37 yards. He's belly deep in this cow pond.

And he gets out of the pond. He circles around. He literally gets in the same trail that bear walked in. And he followed that bear's trail and my trail all the way up to the buckles. He's seven feet below my heels in this tree stand. Like I can see his fuzzy little elk horns. You know, he hadn't rubbed his velvet is the first two days of season, late August. And, um, yeah, I pass him up and then he turns wrinkles my backpack and

and he walks back, and he circles back around and gets belly deep in the pond again, and he's at 37 yards. I hit him with my rangefinder. I'm like, I'm shooting him. You had your chance, sucker. You had your chance to get away. And so I shoot him, and my arrow goes, you know, pass through, which I'm like, woo-hoo! You know, I'm super excited. Hell yeah. Pass through, and he runs 40 yards and piles up. But...

Yeah, he had spikes and his right side and his whole skull plate between the spikes were broken. And he would... I don't think he would have made it through the winter, honestly, because...

He had rot in his head and brain. Like he had an infection. You could see down inside there, inside the brain hole. Yeah. Something broke him. I don't know. How is he not dead? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you see a ton of bulls with broken pedicles. Yeah. And weird antler configurations and weird, like, like the pedicle in the complete wrong spot on their head. Yeah. But I wonder, do they reheal after all that? And then just like they make it.

I think this is a different deal, though, because, you know, you're talking about clear out on a brow tying and above to the whale tails or whatever. No, but like, but they're like the pedicle, right? It's like in the wrong spot on their melon, right on their skull. It's not in the right spot. His skull cap between his eyes were broken. Like where it's stitched together. Yes. Per se. Yeah. How did that happen? I have no idea. Did he get hit by a car or something? I always wonder that. I don't know. I mean...

Maybe. Who knows? But anyway. There's a road and a highway close by, you know, within a mile or two. Yeah. Yeah. It could have happened. The sutures in the skull was broken. Didn't you say it had maggots crawling out of it and everything? He had an infection in maggots down inside of his skull plate.

And there's no way he would have lived through the winter. So I got him. Yeah. You know, and. And the meat was good. Yeah. I got my wife's uncle, Uncle Fred, come out and help me pack him out, you know. Yeah. And we got him. And anyway, that was another, you know, early time elk killing for me.

That I realized my pins and yards. That's the first elk I'd ever effectively used a range finder on. Oh. Yeah. You know what year that was? 2001? 99 or 2000. Yeah. It was pretty, yeah. I remember you had your little shanty up there at that time, your little cabin. Yeah. I bought that in 99. So it was 99, 2000. I think it was that first year you had that place. Yeah.

So 25 years ago, whatever. You know, spikes are in trouble. Sometimes, you know, people are probably going to scoff like I would never shoot a spike. But, man, I've shot a ton of spikes. I know you have too. You know, sometimes, you know, well, most of the time, it's not about some...

measured out big rack that's gonna score xyz it's just about like well yeah fill in the freezer bring it home an elk um well our priority is meeting the freezer yeah and like i said that's the first that's the only time i ever passed up a shot and i ended up killing him anyway yeah but like for those 20 minutes till he got back into where i killed him yeah i was like i shouldn't have passed him

I know there's, you had enough time to reflect and be like, yeah, I should have done that. We need to eat before we decide anything else. Yeah. So that's really the heart and soul of what, why IELTS is, and I know you too is, we all want to kill big bulls. We all want to have the trophy on the wall. But if it, you know, if you're not 15 miles in the back country, you're,

Which is a different conversation altogether. It'd be hard for me to shoot a spike if I'm 15 miles back in somewhere. Right. But typical weekend warrior hunting, if it's brown and it's down. It's down. Well, I always, it's funny because people, I've been there. You and I have been there. We've all been there. Like you get into some damn hell hole and you're like,

do not shoot anything except for a giant bull. Like it's gotta be like a three 50 bull or we're not going to kill it in here. Right. But I feel like that's the wrong attitude. You should be like, do not kill anything but a spike or a calf because a spike or a calf is going to be a lot easier to get out. That's so good to eat. A three 50 bull is going to be hard to pack out of a place like that. Yeah. Um, and to your point yet, they're so good to eat. I,

I love spikes. They're so, they're so naive. I would take a spike over a cow. Oh yeah. And I've shot multiple cows and I've learned a lot with cow killing. Um, and I have learned that if they have a really black main, um,

Versus a lighter tan mane. The darker black manes are so much tender. They're so much. Is that a younger cow then? It's a younger cow, yeah. And I've learned that because I also hunt Washington and I get cow tags. Right. And, you know, I've shot.

say we'll call it 10 year, 10 out of 10 years elk of cows. You've experimented with that. And I've shot, you know, the, the ones that I believe were league cows versus the other cows. And if you can shoot a cow that has a really dark main from my experience, that will be the best one on the table.

Okay. A really dark mane. Dark mane. Okay. So as they get older, they fade. The sun beats them down. They get bleached out a little bit. And that's, I'll take that to the bank. And I believe that firmly because I feel like I've proved that to myself. So you guys all do what you want to do. But if you've got a cow tag, shoot the dark mane one. Yeah. If you want good food. I shot a cow.

In Oregon, I had a sled Springs tag in Oregon when I lived in Oregon for, I lived there for like five years or so back in my, my former life. I like to call it back in my former career when I worked slinging tires at Les Schwab. Oh yeah. And, uh, I, I, I put in, I drew, I had some points. I drew sled Springs back when it was easy to draw as a resident.

And, um, one of the local ranchers said, Hey man, you can come out. He's like, he, he's the one that encouraged me. He's like, Hey, you need to draw this tag and you can come out. We got tons out. Like I'm like, eh, I don't really want to, I'm really not into it. He's like, no, but in for the tag, get the tag. You can come out, you can hunt here. You can stay here, you know, just like beyond, uh,

Yeah. You know, uh, generous with, it's an opportunity to realize. Yeah. I'm like, okay. So I'm like, eh, whatever. Okay. I guess I'll put in for it. And the guys at work are like, yeah, you need to put in. That's, that's a really good, there's a ton of elk there. That's the one. That's the people would kill to go there. It's like a 10,000 acre place. So I draw this tag. I go out there and I hunt opening weekend. And I seen, I mean, there's elk everywhere. Hundreds. It'd be a herd of 400 elk.

I'm like, oh my God, there's too many elk. But they weren't really bugling too much. So I have a week off and later on I go and I chase these elk all around. And there were so many bulls and so many elk. Like when I would bugle, you might as well take your bugle tube and throw it away. They didn't give a shit. Like it meant nothing to the elk. There was 14 bulls bugling at all times. There was so many elk. There's just too much. I was just one other voice. Nobody give a shit. So-

I had to start, you know, spot stock, you know, crawl in, you know, try to get a shot. Open country. Yeah. And open is Ponderosa pine. And, um, he had a team of, of laborers there that would, um, clear the land. He was the, the landowner was like paranoid for fire danger. So he limbed every tree to like six feet.

Took all the limbs off of every tree to six feet. Took all the limbs, put them in piles, burned them every winter. Like this place, I could not find a freaking stick to rub a tree with. Like it was literally, there was no sticks on the ground because there was fire danger they were worried about. So it's so open. So time after time after time, I see a big bull, a big bull with a herd. You know, there's multiple bulls, you know, probably 14, 15, 20 bulls in this herd of 400 cows. And you do like,

You would crawl and creep and just like get as close as you can. You would, I would be like, okay, I'm in within range. And then some stupid fricking cows. There's so many eyes. It would pick me off. So I had a 10 day hunt. I hunted out there. My hunted, my little heart out. Um, I had some opportunities on some smaller bulls, but man, I really wanted it. I wanted a herd bull, you know, really wanted. And these weren't like giants. These were not like, you know, three 50 type bulls. These were like, you know, like the biggest bull I saw was probably like a three 20 bull, um,

Um, but I hunted all week and just got my ass handed to me all week. And on the last day, you know, and I, and I, you know, some people will probably turn their nose up to this, but on the last day I'm heading back, it just had just gotten schooled again. And I just pissed off. I'm like, I'm out, I'm going home. And I'm driving back to the, to the ranch house to get my crap and load up my stuff and leave. And

And there's these three cows laying next to the road, cow elk. And I'm like, huh? I pull over. I got a rattling diesel truck. And it's like running around. Yeah. And I stop and look at them. They don't pay me no mind. So I get out, stand there, my range finder, zap them like 50, 54 yards.

And I'm like, they're not even looking at me. So I'm like, huh? Open up the back door, grab my bow, walk over the side of the road, get off the road. Cause I can't shoot from the road. I don't want it. I want to be legal. So I get to 50 yards. I'm like zap again. And they're still looking at it. They're just kind of chewing their cud, not paying attention. Like they don't care. And finally I'm like, man, if that one, if they would stand up, I might shoot that one. I might shoot that biggest one.

So I started like, I started, I started making elk calls with my mouth. And finally they, they stand up in this one in the middle. I wanted to shoot. She, she started to get up, but she kind of like, she kind of like had a struggle and I kind of get up like, it really kind of hurt. Like she's like this old cow, right? Arthritis. So I'm like, I have my bow drawn back, put my 50 yard pin. I shoot and I see my arrow. It's like, it's all in slow motion. I see my arrow go high. You can see my arrow go high.

You can see it higher than her back. And then it just disappears. Drop in. I don't hear a noise. I don't hear nothing. There's no reaction. She don't even bat her ear or she don't even blink. I'm just like, how could I, how did I miss? I'm like, that felt like such a good release. So I grab another out, put it on there and I start, I'm like, wait a minute. Like if, if I didn't hit it on that shot, I have no business shooting again because that was like the perfect shot. Yeah.

And then, so I just, I don't, I stop. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to shoot again. And I look and she kind of like, she starts looking around with her head. Like something's, something's wrong. Like she, she's looking around like, Hey, what, what's going on here? And all of a sudden her, her knees get wobbly and she tips over dead. Like this is like 30, like not even 30 seconds. Nice. She tips over feet in the air dead. Like I've never seen an elf.

die with an arrow hit that fast in my life. So I get over there and it, and it shot and it passed through and the arrow was like 20 yards on the other side of her.

And, uh, the other, you know, the other cows they ran off, but anyway, we loaded this thing up with a tractor. I mean, you know, I feel even embarrassed, even admitting this whole story, you know, I mean, for all the, all the folks out there suffering and packing mean, I mean, you know, at least every now and then you get an easy one. Right. And so skin this thing out, you know, the arrow, it didn't even hit a rib, right. It was just a miracle. It just went through between two ribs on both sides in and out.

And anyway, just, it was a perfect capstone to that hunt. I got even with them damn elk. I got me a cow. It's screwing me over all week. It got me a cow. I got even. But back to your point, I can't remember. I wish I could. I didn't even get a picture. But I remember.

I don't know how old, I don't know what her mane looked like, but I will say like her ivories were like worn off to nothing. Like they were tiny and black, hardly nothing. And it was the toughest elk I've ever eaten in my entire life. It was like the worst. I mean, it tasted fine. It wasn't gamey, but it was tough. Like backstraps. You had to like beef stroke or you had to make elk stroganoff out of them. They were just like trying to. Cows are deceiving, you know? And, and me, I,

hunting. So I've been blessed to have basically two cow kill permits in Washington state for 10 plus years, probably 15 years. I don't know. I have to do some math on that. But so me and my son, Ryan, have both literally killed elk multiple years. And so it's taken away from my mountain hunting of Idaho and

bull hunting etc because i'm a mehunter like i said earlier and we get these that's fun yeah we get these cow tags but i've absolutely in my own world between his amount of kills and my amount of kills proven that if you can kill a cow which is cow only for this situation i

Um, can, if you've proven that you've killed the, the, the darker black or maned cows, they're so, they're so good. We've, we've missed early on. We've shot some of the, the brown or Tanner colored cows.

You can't chew them like you're talking about. They're like an old bowl. They don't have that rut flavor, but they're tough. They're chewy. They're tough. They're tough, man. They've been around for a long time, you know? And I'm like, as soon as I identified that, I'm like,

Don't shoot that one. Shoot that one. You know, burger meat and slow cooker. Right. And I don't like that. I love backstrap. I love elk steak. I love all that stuff. But, you know, anyway, to each his own. For you guys out here listening to this in Randy land, which is where I live.

Shoot the ones with the black manes. Write that down. Yeah, write that down. Well, now in Randy land, it's not always been.

um blue skies uh tweety birds lollipop trees all that like you know it's not hasn't been all this like great like like lucky opportunities and like all this stuff there has been some unlucky things happen um i know too um we're gonna we're gonna start on one um now

Back to your tree stand hunting. Yes. You were back trying to kill a white-tailed deer. Oh, yeah. Out of a tree. Yes. And you had a hunting partner at the time. For a white-tail. Yeah. Tell us about this. And this was a place you and I, for years, had seen big bucks. Yes. And I was a little jealous. I was like, you bastard. You're going in there and you're going to kill one of those big bucks. Yeah. All right. I know what you're talking about. And there I was.

So I've targeted, like I said earlier, whitetail in the evening out of tree stands. Elk hunting in the morning, whitetail hunting in the evening. So I'd had a tree stand set up where I'd seen some very beautiful bucks, whitetails, and I'm like, yes, I'm going to get one. So every time I sit in that stand, I see they don't seem to come out where I'm at.

They're on this other ridge. And so I've decided I'll put my buddy in this stand that I already had established and I'll pack frame in, put up my own tree stand. And so this country's super steep, like it's ridiculously steep. So there's a big bull pine. Ponderosa pine to the lay person. Yes. And so the game trail is,

is at the upper elevation and this tree is below downhill of it. And so, and it's in a slight angle, this tree's leaning because of the canyon country, et cetera. And so I put in these screw in foot pegs, you know, to climb up this tree. And I, so I get up there and I'm going to consider this part of this podcast, a safety talk for all you people who take for granted safety, right?

Or don't consider safety. Yeah. Right? I'm here to tell you, you need to think about it. And this is a real situation. So I'm higher in this tree, which the base of the tree, you can't get your hands around the base of it. It's a giant tree. You can't get your hands around half of it. It's a giant ponderosa bull pine tree.

And it's real dry country. It's a dry year. And when you go up these huge trees, they're 100 plus feet tall. You need to go up a certain, I needed to go up a certain elevation to get straight across from the game trail. Like to have literally a horizontal shot straight to the deer as it comes through this trail.

I'm 30 feet in the air because this tree base is below the trail. Right. It's steep. Yeah, it's steep country. It's like very steep country. And there's no limbs on these trees till 30 feet up. They're huge trees. And so a buddy of mine, which I had a tree stand set up, we'll call it 100 yards away roughly,

I'd already had a tree stand there and it was over a watering hole. The only water you could find between there and the river, which is 800 yards downhill. So I'm like, you go here. I'm going to go put up this portable tree stand here. And between the two of us, one of us is going to get one of these giant whitetail because there's a beautiful bucks here. So I get up, I screw in my pegs. I climb up the tree.

And I have some 550 cord, and I'm hoisting up my portable tree stand from the ground, and I'm straddling a four-inch limb, which is the first limb 30 feet up from the ground on a 60% grade, right? It's like a cow's face. Cow's face.

And I just, I get my backpack that has this portable tree stand and I set it on the next limb to my right and I'm straddling this four inch limb, huge limb, like you'd never suspect, right? And I set this up there and I start taking these little bungee cords off of this tree stand on the backpack to unhook it so I can set up my tree stand. And I have all these little screw and pegs that I got up to this elevation and

And literally, if you look to your left, it's level to where I need to shoot this white tail that I think is going to come out at me. And it's earlier in the evening. So as soon as I start unbuckling these bungee cords from my tree stand, the one I'm on, which is the first limb from the ground that I'm straddling, I hear this big, and it shears off at the tree. Yeah.

And I fall 30 feet. But because of the angles and everything, I thank God I don't gut myself on my tree pegs. Oh, yeah. On the way, you know. So I fall to the ground 30 feet.

When I hit the ground, I'm 15 feet from a property line where there's some fence line. You know, where we're from, there's a lot of different fence, you know, there's a lot of private properties and whatnot, and I have permissions to hunt there and et cetera. But there's a barbed wire fence. It's a four-strand barbed wire fence, and I pile up in a pile of rocks, literally. Like, it's decomposed granite stone that I land in.

And my heel is facing me. Like my leg is shattered. I can see my boot prints. My whole entire boot is looking at me from below, like not up, but down behind my kneecap. Like it's literally piled up. My back is in extreme pain. I'm, I'm broken. Like this is a safety situation here, right? It's a life, it's a life critical situation.

So I'm piled up. We do have two-way radios between me and my hunting partner. And, you know, I know without a doubt that my leg is entirely destroyed. I don't know what the other extents of my injuries are. And I get on this two-way radio. I get my pack off this pack frame that fell with me with the tree stand that fell with me.

And I dig this stuff out and I get on this two way radio and I called him. I'm like, Hey, I've fallen. I need help. This is emergency. Right. That's all I get that, you know? And in the meantime, I can feel my boot swelling, my foot inside my boot swelling. Like, like it's, it's bad.

And, and I, I kind of army crawl to this fence. I know I need to elevate, you know, I've been medically, medically trained. I was in the military. I know that like, it's almost, it's kind of weird, but it's almost like I know my legs screwed up and I need to just elevate it. And then I need to assess my other critical life components. Right. Yeah.

And so I get to a fence line and I flip my leg up over the bottom rung of this barbed wire fence and I can just feel the bones grinding and pouncing in there. And it is just like a J off the backside. It just flops off the back. My leg is destroyed. My ankle's destroyed and my back has severe pain. And so I'm in a bind, right? Yeah.

And he's not answering, right? So the message I'm telling you guys right now is you guys need to pick a hunting partner that you trust and you can have accountability for, and you know, he's got your back, you know, and I hate to say this, but my hunting partner did not have my back and, you know, he knows who he is. It, it, it wasn't relevant at the time. So anyway, moving on.

I'm broken. It's two hours, three hours before dark. And not only if my radio didn't work, I could holler and he could hear me. We're not that far apart. Not that far. Yeah, we're not that far apart. And he's not responding. No response. And I'm on my own. And so I lay there. I get myself in position. I do leave my boot on because I think from my military training that apply pressure and, you know,

Your boot's applying pressure. My boot in itself is applying basically a splint. Even though the heel was facing me, I kind of balanced it, and it would flop back and forth over this barbed wire strand. Jesus.

And I got it to where my body is downhill of this barbed wire fence and my head and chest is downhill. And so everything's elevated. And I know that's the best condition I have. And as long as I don't have internal bleeding or external bleeding, which I had no idea of. Right. Because I literally couldn't move. Right.

I moved enough to get myself in that situation, but it was like, it was like, I give up after that. Right. You know, this is, this is as far as I can go. Um, my, my back end up was broken in two places and my leg and ankle was shattered and destroyed. So I lay there for two hours plus and I'm hollering, I'm on my mic, I'm trying to get support and he's not come, you know,

And this is a guy we were like, fuck, we were good friends. And anyway, eight people. He comes to me after dark, surprised I'm alive. He's kind of chaotic and, you know, not everybody deals with trauma the same. He's out of sorts and he's going to drive to town, which is an hour and a half away.

I'm like, no, go to these people's houses. And I'm kind of, you know, I've had enough time to think. Yeah. You know what needs to be done. Yeah. You hike to this house that's over here and you use their phone and you call for an ambulance. So we get that going. He does that. The ambulance comes. It takes eight people to pack me out of this countryside. It's nasty. Right. So I'm on a stretcher. I get packed out. We go to the emergency room.

They is a small town, Idaho hospital. They send me to a bigger hospital in another town, you know, another 50 miles away. So anyway, we get fixed up years go by. It's kind of reminds me of this prank I pulled on you. Right. Years ago. Why? And you know, everything's good. And we've been friends this whole time. And then he tells me, he confides in me that he heard me fall.

And when he was in my stand that I set up for him and put him on, he got queasy and, you know, kind of sick himself. He thought I died immediately. And then he heard me squalling like a, well, he called me like a little woman. You know, he's like, I heard you crying like a little woman out there in the woods, you know, like he's some tough guy, but I'm the one out there in pain. Yeah. That he left. Right. You know? And so.

Um, anyway, we discontinued our friendship after that. He left me there hoping that I was dead by dark and it was, it was an hour after dark before he come to check on me. Yeah. And so lessons learned is, you know, you guys that, that, um, you hunt with and your brothers in, in the mountains and, um,

You guys need to really understand, you know, there's hunting advantages where you trust each other for hunting events and calling events and who's the shooter and all this stuff. But there's actually a safety aspect that really should be considered. Yeah. You trust your life with this person. Yeah. You know, you don't think about it because there's not an injury. Right. But these people that you're with...

They need, you need to trust them with your life and you need to kind of vet them. I would say, I feel like that you guys should talk about that before you go hunting. How are you going to handle this situation? If this happens, what are you going to do? You know, if you cut yourself or wound yourself or cut an artery or, you know, trip on a broadhead goes through your, your, your, you know, whatever the situation is, you guys that are out there hunting, uh,

Should discuss safety protocols and how to respond to them. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's very overlooked. Like we all talk about like, what's your expectations for hunting? We always kind of talk about that. Like, Oh, I want this. I want to do that. And who's going to do this. Who's going to do that. But we don't talk about the whole safety aspect enough. Like, Hey man, if something bad happens, this is, you know, our plan. Yeah. B whatever. I would have never guessed in a million years.

That this guy would have seized up because he got sick himself. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He seems like a pretty, I know him. I would have never thought that. Yeah. You know, and I don't, I don't really, I literally don't hold it against him. Um,

But he wasn't there for me. Right. You know? Yeah. And because of that, you know, we went separate ways. Yeah. You know? Well, speaking about people having your back. Yeah. You've also. I've had people have my back. Yeah. And now there's, when I started off, I said, this is the misadventures of Randy. So it's not just adventures, but there's been some misadventures too. Yeah. And this next story.

and we're, we're over an hour right now, but, uh, thank you all for listening. And I'm going to, I got to get this story out. Cause it's one of my favorite Andy stories. Um, you were, you were late season cow hunting. Yes. You had some of your, your buddies from work on your crew hunting with you and you get a, you, you shoot this elk and what happens? This is,

Yeah. Again. Yeah. I mean, if it can happen to anybody, it's going to happen to Randy, I think. Yeah. And out of all this, I'm a survivor. So there I was, like Dirk said, he kind of told me where we're at, but I did shoot an elk. You guys had to boat into this place. You guys used a boat to get to this place to shoot this elk. Yes. Yeah. We...

We were on a lake, north of Idaho. It was a late November hunt. Snow, sleet, kind of cold, misery, wet, foggy environment. And I saw a herd elk. I had a tag. The shot was good. I took it. It dropped. And we went after it. That's the summary since we're late in this. So we hike.

hundreds of yards, let's call it 500 yards up, up the mountain. And they had marked the timber and had brushed the lower brush for a future clear cut for this winter. So this November, a lot of times in Idaho, they timber fall in the winter months when there's, you can't, excuse me, you can't haul logs.

Because the roads aren't quite froze up, et cetera. So things have been cut. Timber had been cut. Timber had been cut. Well, the brush, the brush had been cut to get to the timber. The logs hadn't been dropped yet. So I shoot this cow. There's three others with me. We, we boated up into this Canyon country and we are hunting up way up in there. And, and,

life is good like success i'm the only one with a tag it's a special draw thing blah blah blah

get my elk it drops we hike way up in there and honestly we have to drag it down this huge we have to drag it down this mountain and we have to get it down to the boat and we have to load it on the boat and then we have to boat for miles down to the boat ramp we have to load it on the boat ramp and then we have to drive miles and miles to get back to even the local town which is still

An hour plus from the normal town that we live in, right? Right. So we're way back in there. Well, we get to the elk. We got the elk. Everything's good. And it's just snowing now. It's just coming down. It's slick. I don't know what the grade is on the hill, but it's plus 40 degrees. It's steep. And it's slippery. And it's wet. And it's miserable.

And I'm on the downhill side of this elk. And we've all decided instead of, because it's just a downhill slippery drag, we'll just drag it down, get it on this boat and we'll take it out whole. And so I'm on the downhill of the elk pulling on the rear leg. And it's just so cold and so slippery that I lose my grip on it. And I fall backwards downhill.

onto the ground. So if you guys need to picture an angle pulling and falling downhill, it's quite a drop. It's very awkward. Yeah. Even though you're not far from the ground, it's still a considerable fall. Yeah. So I fall and I get up and something's not right. I literally have an eight foot pine branch

hanging out of my buttocks somewhere. You've been impaled. I was impaled, yeah. I was impaled by something that was brushed by loggers. And so they have an angled, sharp inch and a half, inch and a quarter branch that impaled me. And I didn't know what the extremeness of it was at the time because it happened so fast. And I got these three other guys who were trying to work this out down

And I immediately stand up from this fall and I'm like, whoa, stop. Everybody needs to stop. Right. And I have this thing penetrating me, but we're so far back. Like, you know, they always say never, like never pull out.

If you're impaled. That's what they say. That's what they say. That's what they say. But they weren't in a place like this before. And agree. I was military trained. Like, I know that, you know, if you get something stuck in your eye, put a Dixie cup over it and secure it. This is not the same. This is an eight foot pine branch that is impaled me. And I don't know how deep it is. I don't know if it's an inch. I don't know how deep it is. I can't tell.

It just hurts. And I stopped the show, stopped dragging the elk. Everybody, whoa, whoa, whoa. Something's wrong. I'm hurt. And I'm on my feet. And this thing is sticking out of the back of me like a peacock tail. And I don't know what, you know, my instincts are, draw it out.

Right. So, cause to see how, I don't know if it tore through my butt cheek or my leg or whatever. I really don't know. It's pitch black. We're, we're by the time this we're whale into the evening, it gets dark at four 35 o'clock this time of year. And so I grab the base of it where it's touching my flesh and I draw it out and it's like 12, 13 inches. It went inside me.

And it went between my ass and my tailbone, which I didn't know at the time, but it shot up into my guts. And still, I didn't know what was going on. I call over one of my, my hunting buddies here and without humility have to drop my drawers and say, what's the injury. Yeah. What, what are we looking at here? You can't see it. I don't know what the heck's going on. I'm like, what's the injury. And he's like,

Oh, my God. Oh, we need to get you to the hospital. Oh, my. You know, you're going to die. That's his impression of what he sees. Yeah. Not good. Yeah. And we're so far from civilization. It's not convenient. Yeah, it is not convenient. And it's steep, as steep as a cow's face. And they decide as a team that to keep me from going into shock, they should feed me alcohol.

This is once you got back to the boat. No, no. They had it in their backpacks. Oh. Yeah. They were ready to celebrate a big hunt, you know. Oh. And we hadn't drank any yet. But they're ready. You know, they're backwoods fellas. And they're ready to party. You know, they're ready to celebrate. And so to keep me from going in shock, they decided to give me alcohol, which to whoever's listening to this is do not do this.

Do not drink alcohol if you've been injured in the backcountry. This isn't a Western movie. Right. Yeah. This ain't poor, you know, pull the bullet out of an old Colt 45 and dump the powder on you and, you know, set it on fire to cauterize. This is not what it is. It's not the situation. Right. So don't do this. But this is what...

Randy agreed to. I don't blame them. Nobody made me do it. Nobody knew. Right. And so, you know, we started drinking. They're going to keep me from going to shock by giving me alcohol. So me and one other guy, and because of the alcohol, my mind changes from survival mode to we need to get this elk out mode.

Like, you know, which is odd. It's weird. Yeah. This is weird. You got a potential like catastrophic injury. Yeah. And, but you're like, we got to get this elk out still guys. We can get this elk out. And it just so happens the boat that I have borrowed, um, the friend of mine who owned this boat was in Afghanistan and he trusted me with the boat. Right. So, um,

I didn't have a boat to send the, I couldn't go to the hospital and let these guys go recover the self the next day. Right. That's how I thought of it. And because I was, you know, unfortunately intoxicated at this point, I'm like, Hey, you, Bob, you're helping me down. These other two guys are going to continue to drag this elk out. We're getting this elk out tonight and I won't accept anything other. Yeah. Right. This is what we're doing. Right. So my butt's buckered. Like I don't want to spill a drop of blood.

My butt's pluckered. We get it out. We go to the boat ramp. We load the boat. We drive to town. We go to the local emergency room, which just by coincidence, my wife is a nurse there. And what the on-call ER doctor says to do, she just happens to disagree with.

Oh, I give my wife my life in this situation. She refused to let them do what they wanted to do to me. They wanted to sew up the wound. Um, so if you can imagine what happened is I had a plug of five layers of clothing that was missing like a muzzleloader patch inside me. Oh yeah. 13 inches.

And so she didn't know that. Nobody knew that. And when I got home, I literally took a shower first and I had her inspect my wound because she's a nurse. That's a lot of humility. Yeah. Which remind everybody listening is that's below my tailbone, but above my butthole, that little, that little chunk of skin is where this inch and a quarter branch went in 13 inches right up into my guts.

And while that happened, I lost material from layers of clothing, you know. Not to mention pieces of branch. Yes, and bark, et cetera. So I go home. I tell my wife I'm hurt. And I get in the shower. And I'm rinsing things. And I got pine needles. And I got blood. And I got everything going on. And I'm like, honey, I think I got a problem. We go to the ER.

The doctor says, oh my God, we need to sew this up. She says, no way. This needs, you need to dig stuff out. You need a blood spoiling. This is medical 101. Yeah, exactly. So we get shipped. What a quack. Yeah. So she, love her. Thank you, mama. She opposes the on-call surgeon decision. And we get another ambulance who drives me an hour plus to a larger hospital and

Who evaluates the situation and the next day does surgery and I'm in the hospital for over a week. Yeah. Yeah. It was a bad deal. So, but talk about got your back. Those guys, they, they got you out of the woods. They got me out of the woods. They got my elk out and that's what mattered at the time. And they got you drunk. And they got me drunk. Now here's the, here's the kicker about the drinking. Like, um,

You couldn't have anesthesia because of drinking the alcohol. Oh, my God. They wouldn't give me. I was so thirsty in the emergency room. I wanted to water. I wanted to, like, they're giving me drops from a ring drag just to give, you know, they would not give me nothing. So back to being alcohol affected, they will give you nothing. And maybe not even with alcohol, they will give you nothing before surgery, which was the next day. So, yeah.

Man, what an incredible story from, from people who failed you to people who had your back to, to back in the olden days when we had a lot of fun and did some, some crazy stuff. And these are just some of the, like some of our stories that we've had in the, in the, in the elk woods and,

And in the years that we've known each other, you know, we didn't even talk about the time we found a dead guy. But I think that'll be for another time. That's a whole other story. That's a whole other story. And if we try to fit it in now, it's not even going to fit. He's not just a dead guy. He was a murderer. He was a murderer. But we're going to have, we'll have that story again at a later time. But anyway, Randy, thanks so much again for coming on here. It's...

people, Randy is family, not only, not only from being family from the marriage connection, him, his wife and my wife are sisters, but I mean, we've, we've been together through thick and through thin. Uh, we've had each other's backs like since seventh grade and, and,

I can only hope that the other folks out there have had somebody, a good friend like Randy, to be able to lean on and can fight in and go through all their highs and lows of life. So appreciate you coming on here. Appreciate your friendship. And I look forward to the next adventure. Yeah, it was fun. More adventures to come. They never end, right? Especially with me. That's very true. They never end. Yeah, anytime. Anytime.

All right. Well, thanks for being on here and we'll catch everybody on the flip flop. Yep. Hey, American history buffs, hunting history buffs. Listen up. We're back at it with another volume of our meat eaters, American history series. And this edition titled the mountain men, 1806 to 1840. We tackle the Rocky mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith,

and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We

We explain what started the mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the whitetail deerskin trade

which is titled The Long Hunters, 1761 to 1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audio books are sold. Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840 by Stephen Rinella.