Ep. 81: Bulls, Gobblers, and Wolves with Ron Hewitt
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Now, Ron is a man who I admire and look up to. He's almost like a grandfather-type figure to me, or a fatherly figure. My dad and my grandfathers have all long passed away, and I feel like that's something that's important in a person's life, is to have someone like that to talk to and to talk about life and hunting and just...

You know, we've been bouncing ideas off each other all weekend here, you know, talking about just life decisions and things we did in life. And it's awesome to have that kind of a person to talk to. And I think society today kind of misses out on some of that. You know, there's such a big...

push with some political folks to take down the patriarchy and all this stuff. But I think that's an important thing we all need in our life because we can learn a lot from the people who've done things a lot longer than we have and have kind of learned, went through life, done some things, made mistakes, made the right choices. And here we are talking about turkey hunting and elk hunting. What am I doing in Oregon? Well, I'm over here at Ron's.

every year for the last four years, he's hosted me. He's like, you know, we, you got to come over and go turkey hunting. It seems like we're kind of hit and miss, you know, what one year I'll get one and one year I won't, one year I get two and one year I don't, you know, and kind of back and forth, but it wasn't the, for a lack of opportunity. Sometimes I'm just not the straightest of shooters with a shotgun. I'm like, how do you miss a turkey with a shotgun?

But anyway, welcome to the show, Ron. I've talked a lot about you on my podcast. I've talked about you on Jim Huntsman's podcast because Jim knows you. And finally, I've got you on the podcast to talk to you. So welcome. Thanks, Dirk. I really appreciate it and appreciate

I love talking with young people like you that are excited about, I call you young because I'm 22 years older, but I appreciate that and the fact that you want to mentor people and help them and that your love for hunting and life and your love for happiness and family, it really means a lot to me. Your friendship means a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy where people's lives intersect. Yeah.

Um, and we, we've been talking about your life. We've been talking about my life, you know, and non-hunting life and, you know, where we've lived, what we've done for work, all these different things, places we've been. And it's funny, we have these little places in our lives that have intersected and we didn't know each other. We still had never known each other or ever, um, knew of each other ever existed until, um,

I think it was a few, several years ago on bow site. There's a, there's a forum online forum called bow site. And I would always get on there and read people's comments on topics and questions. And I try to put in my two cents. And, and one day Ron messages me, direct messages me on there and said, so I think talk to something about, you know, uh, this area in North Idaho that I hunted and wondered if I hunted there is near the town I grew up. And, uh,

I wanted to kind of compare a little bit of notes and we kind of start talking there a little bit and then fast forward a few years and you start seeing me on YouTube hunting and you came by the booth in Portland at the Portland show and introduced yourself.

And we sat there in that booth and we talked a long time. And we were like a couple of little school girls, you know, and we looked nothing like school girls. But we sat there and talked and got excited and talked about those old places we'd like, we love to go and our experiences in those places, elk hunting. And we became fast friends. Yep. And then you started inviting me over. Yep. I said, need to come over and try turkey hunting the way I hunt turkeys in Oregon, not just sitting around.

Waiting for them to come to you. Right. But finding them. Right. Yeah. And, and let's face it, you know, there's people, there's the camp that loves turkey hunting. And then there's the camps that say turkey hunting is stupid. And I feel like,

people that say turkey hunting is stupid or whatever, and then they hear the comparison of elk hunting versus turkey hunting, and people say, you know, there's a lot of similarities. You know, they're kind of like hunting elk in the spring, and that will inflame some people. They're like, there's nothing. There's nothing that's similar. But depending on how you hunt the turkeys and hunt elk...

There are some similarities for sure. A lot of similarities. The way you and I hunt both of them. Yeah. Very similar. Yes, yes. And why I like turkey hunting... What I like about turkey hunting... Let's say this. What I like about turkey hunting is...

It's one of the best times of year to be in the woods. In the fall, I love elk hunting and deer hunting. The fall, like in September, is amazing. You're getting those last few days of summer, but you're starting to get those crisp mornings of fall. You still hear birds. You still hear bees. And then the woods transition into October, November, and it gets colder. Now the bugs are going dormant. The birds have left, and it's quiet. It's like...

The most quiet time you can have in the woods is in November when there's a little bit of snow to absorb any sound. There's not a bunch of birds flying around. There's no bugs. And the only sound that you hear is your breath. And you also may hear a wolf. You may hear a deer grunt.

You may hear some of these little wildlife sounds. You might hear a squirrel in a tree. But the woods get very quiet in November. And...

then that kind of sets the stage for me. If things get quiet, life kind of gets quiet for me after hunting season, I kind of go dormant too. I, I kind of hibernate once I've run seasons over, I've been go, go, go. And I've always been like this, you know, lots of driving to get to and from my hunting spots, spend tons of time in the woods. And then a lot of time away from family. And it's now time I'm going to hibernate. Now I'm going to

dedicate all this time to my family and staying home and and all winter long now i'm cooped up all winter and by the time spring comes i am ready to get the hell out of the house i'm just sick of looking at four walls i've got cabin fever i've done all my stuff whatever my winter stuff and it's like i gotta get to the woods now now contrast you go to the woods in the springtime

the woods are starting to wake up and year to year is a little different on timing. You know, sometimes in April, you know, it's a little slower to wake up cause it's been a little colder. You still have a little snow on the ground this year.

There's not any snow on the ground up where we were at to speak of. And it seems like we're a little further along in the seasonal aspect. The date aspect is the same, but the seasonal aspect is a little different. We got bugs buzzing around. We got birds tweeting. And you got a little bit of warm sunshine. Today. Today. But the last two days was this frigid, ice-cold weather.

wind that was blowing off the mountains and it's like man it's so pretty out but dang i'm freaking cold you thought it was the middle of november yeah right right is that cold but that's what i like about turkey hunting it just gets i get it gets me out there i get get to enjoy that the the woods waking up in the spring reconnect with nature yeah reconnect

And also I love spending time with good friends in the woods and turkey season. Um, it's, it allows me to do that. I can, I spend time with my friends and people I love and, um, enjoy their companionship. And guess what?

we're chasing this crazy thing called a turkey and they do some stuff that piss me off. And they also do some stuff that make me giggle and be happy. So they can be frustrating, but yet they can be pretty dang fun to hunt too. So what do you feel? Is that kind of how you see turkey hunting or what do you like about turkey hunting? Yeah, I think I started turkey hunting back in about 1991 or 92. And it was the fact that

I'd been hunting elk, beetling for elk, and I knew turkeys gobbled and you could make them gobble. Yeah. So I'm going, okay, I want to hear this. I want to experience this. And when I was a kid, I lived in Redmond and up deer hunting, a turkey flew out of a tree one day and just scared the daylights out of me. And I thought, man, I want to find one of those things and get it and eat it. Because I like to forage and take home things to eat. And when we lived in, where we move to now, it's like there's turkeys all around and

And I started hunting them and the gobble on the roost just excites you. But then when they start coming in, it's really exciting. And that was what really drew me to it is that the similarities between calling an elk in, calling a turkey in, the excitement of it. And like you say, the springtime, I love getting out here in the weather and enjoying the sunshine and

Not so much the wind. I don't like that because it makes it really hard hunting. You can't hear anything. It's kind of windy here. Oh, it's kind of windy here. But yeah, that's the draw for me is to, I just love being outside in the woods and I can get out there more. Yeah. I will say while I'm turkey hunting, then I'll be going along and we got these turkeys coming in or we're calling to these turkeys and

And the funny part, the elk hunter brain in me immediately says, the wind is wrong. They're going to smell me. I like the turkeys are coming from this way. They're going to smell me. Like, like immediately, that's the first thing that enters my head. Like the wind's wrong. We got to move. And I'm like, oh yeah, we're hunting turkeys. It's, it's that funny little hunter instinct. Like I've been hunting elk for 35 years. I've been hunting, I've been hunting turkeys longer than that.

If you can believe that. I've been hunting turkeys longer than that. Really? And I've been more successful hunting turkeys than elk. Or I mean, excuse me, elk than turkeys. I've killed more elk than I have turkeys. I've killed a lot of turkeys, but I've killed way more elk. But anyway, the little things that trigger in my brain while elk hunting trigger as well during turkey hunting.

The turkey's coming in downwind. We got to move. No, you don't. It's a turkey. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I have to remind myself of that.

And then as they're coming in, they're getting closer and getting goblin. And I start feeling that my heart start beating a little bit heavier and faster. And I start feeling my breathing change. And I'm like, oh yeah, I start to feel that same feeling when I'm hunting elk. Now, when I'm hunting elk, I feel like it's a little more drastic. It's a bigger heartbeat and it's a bigger labored breathing. It's a bigger animal. Right. I'm going...

Making that funny breathing while this bull's coming in. But I'm starting to feel some of those same things arise, those same emotions as the turkey comes in. So, you know, people pay good money for all sorts of, like, ways to get an adrenaline rush. You know, they jump out of airplanes. They bungee jump. They do crazy reckless driving. They do all kinds of weird things to get an adrenaline rush. And...

Those turkey hunting and elk hunting kind of scratch those itches. Now,

Of course, elk hunting is a complete, way bigger adrenaline rush. I got an 800-pound animal with swords on his head coming to kill me. Whereas a turkey, he might peck you and flog you pretty good. Spur you. He might spur me. That's not going to happen. Or the elk's not going to kill me once they find out I'm another animal. But they think, like the turkey actually is coming in to breed rather than to fight.

But the elk, he's coming to fight a lot of times. But anyway, it still triggers those same emotions. And I, yeah, that I like that. I like those feelings, you know, that you just everyday life, normal life. You just don't get them. You know, there's, there's not anything that really duplicates that unless you're doing daredevil, stupid stuff. And I'm too old for that at our age, at our age, we, we just don't do that. You know? Um,

But, um, part of it too is like in the morning when you, when you find them on the roost and you're moving in the dark, okay, where am I going to, just like elk, where am I going to set up? I need a path. I can get a shot in here and then you get all set up and give them a few little calls and they're gobbling away at you. And then they go quiet for five to 10 minutes before they fly down and they're, they're, they're looking for their spot, you know, where they're going to fly down, make sure there's no predators down there and,

They go quiet and you go, okay, what's going to happen today? Has he got hands? Are they going to take him away? Are they going to come to me? And then you wait for the drama to unfold once they hit the ground. Yeah. You never know. There's a lot of anticipation there. There is. Like I find myself, same with elk, I'll be like, oh man, please let this happen. Please let this happen. I have this little thing in the back of my little voice in the back of my head, please let this happen because I'm super hopeful that

they'll come in, I'll be able to shoot them. But knowing that it doesn't work that way all the time. And it's just like most of the time, most of the special. Yeah. Most of the time, even elk, it, it, it doesn't work that way, but, um, but there's always a chance. And you think, is this the one, you know, I'm like, I don't want to screw this up. So, um, yeah, all those same emotions. Do you think, so do you think hunting turkeys is like cutting elk? Oh, I think it is. I mean, I,

Obviously, there's a size difference. You can see elk coming in. Once the brush and grass start growing up, a turkey, all you can see is a head sometimes. It's harder to get a lock on turkeys that way than it is an elk. But the turkeys, like you say, they can't smell even to worry about the wind. Yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities there, and I just love it for the thrill of calling them in, to try to beat them at their game. Now, when turkeys hang up and elk hang up,

They I think this might be crazy opinion I think it's easier to move in on a bull elk that's hung up than it is a turkey that's hung up because elk are so big they make a lot of noise and

you can, they're standing, their face, their headgear, their bodies are at a level that is sometimes above the brush line. And you can kind of spot them a little easier than you can a turkey. Like a turkey, they blend in so good. And if they're not moving and where they're at, they're like, their bodies are a lot of times are hidden by brush. If it's a little bit, you know, brushy country, but they got that damn periscope head, they'll peek up over the bushes and

a lot of times you just can't see it until it's too late and you hear, and then, pow, gone. Away they go. Away they go. So I think, I think it's easier to like move in on a hung up bull elk than it is a turkey. I agree because the turkey's head's always moving. They're,

They're bobbing their head all around when their heads up and they're down feeding. They pick it up and jerk it around again looking. Like yesterday, we saw him in the sun. He's out there fanning for his hands. He wouldn't come into us because he had his little ladies already. And we started moving in on him.

while we get up close where we put the stock up to this one tree we thought we could get him there he had moved so now we have to move up again so we sneak on up and i'm kind of looking over the edge where it goes into the shadows and the shade and i'm going looking through this little fir tree i go oh i think i see him down there i thought oh there's his head it's red you know i get my gun up on my shooting stick and

dang it i can't tell for sure if it's a tom or what i'm sure it's the tom but i can't tell for sure and then he starts fanning okay so he's fanning and then he goes out of strut and i go well i can't see his head now you know we what we do that for five minutes at least yeah it was very intense yeah it was and then i'm trying to sidestep real slow so i can get a really good look at him and by the time i get over there where i can see he's not there so it's like oh dang it and

We head down the hill really slow. I'm looking in front of me to the right because that's kind of where he was headed, I think. And all of a sudden, I catch him off on the left, the hand of the tom, and they start moving. And that was the end of the story on that one. Yeah.

Yeah. But so close. And that turkey, you could have shot. I could have shot him through the tree if I knew what it was 100%. Right. And as a responsible sportsman, hunters, we identify our target. Yeah. You know, what if that turkey

that would have been a guy down there moving his hat brim and you thought oh yeah i see something moving and there have been turkeys there the turkeys had bypassed him but there was a guy sitting there you're like oh yeah i think i see something i see something red maybe bang you shoot that guy right in the nose yeah or you know it can happen people get shot every year hunting so there's that aspect it's not safe around other hunters you could shoot another hunter then also you

Just catching the right movement. You think you see red. You shoot this turkey. You get down there. It could be a hen. It's easy to make that mistake in a split second. Sometimes your eyes will play a trick on you. And I don't know if it's because we want it to happen so bad. Like, oh, yeah, that's the tom. And then you shoot. And then, oh, my gosh, that's not the tom. So that would be an unfortunate situation, too. So we have to be super careful.

mindful of, of what we're shooting at. And, and that goes for, for elk too. Yep. Elk, deer, you name it. I mean, that's, you know, you don't have to make sure it's the, the right, the right animal and not a person and, you know, get a good, good ethical shot. So. And like yesterday, I, you know, if I did shoot it and the hen was in and then I get two of them. And so I could not tell for sure where the hen was and I needed to know that. So yeah, it was just a.

It was frustrating to say the least. Yeah. With a scatter gun or a shotgun. I mean, there's blowback. I mean, you can take out two or three turkeys at once. At one time. Like those jakes that come in. There was one, we had six jakes come in the morning I shot my turkey. And if I had aligned them up just right, I probably could have mowed the whole works down. They were what, 10 yards from us? Yeah. Trying to figure out where the hen was. Yeah, that was awesome. Oh, yeah. And the two big toms strutting in the background behind them. Yeah. Yeah.

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Some of the mistakes, I'm going to talk about mistakes made the last couple days and what we did right. We didn't make a lot of mistakes, but I will say one mistake that I made is people don't, and I didn't, and I know, I knew better, but I didn't bring a range finder with me. You know, we're shooting with a shotgun and I didn't bring my range finder. And I'm like, oh yeah, I can judge yards pretty good out to 50 yards or whatever. I'll shoot a turkey at 50 yards with my shotgun. And

we had this these birds they come off the roost and they came up took a line a little higher than us and and we had to get up and sneak up sneak up sneak up to try to intersect them as they come strutting by they weren't coming to us they were going to kind of go over and they were kind of feeding along but they would strut every going to strut every now and then and then um but as as we start as we see what's happening we got to climb up this little hill just a little bit real slow and maybe try to intersect intercept them and

I get up there, get up there and get a position. I'm like, Oh yeah, I like that. I'm pretty sure that Turkey's close. He's 50 yards, you know, and I, I put my, my red dot on him and,

ka-chow, and I shoot. I watch my pellets from my shotgun fall about 20 yards short. And he just kind of like, kind of jumps up and flops his feathers a little bit like, what the heck was that? And then just kind of walks off. Him and the other turkey just kind of walk off. They might even have gobbled, I think, when I shot. They did. And another one down below us did too. And then they just kind of walked off and were like, dang it. So,

So after they got out of sight, I walk up there and I stepped it off and it's 75 yards. And I'm like, how did I, how did I misjudge 75 yards for 50 yards? Well, in all fairness on that one, it wasn't, it wasn't a bright morning because there were some clouds in the sky and it was only like,

20 minutes after fly down, you went into shooting light. Yeah. And when you did shoot, I saw the flame come out of your gun. So it was not a bright, you know, it wasn't really good light for judging. Yeah. It was really hard to tell on that one. And I'm used to judging elk. They're a lot bigger to judge. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, you're going to try to look at this little bird compared to an elk. Yeah. And you're like, I think that's close enough. No. Yeah, but when you shot, you thought it was a robin out there. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, shoot. But that is one mistake I made for sure. So fast forward, that was opening morning. Yep. And we had all this hope and all this. We felt pretty good about it. And then just our opportunity slipped us by. And then those turkeys, they kept gobbling. But man, those things will cover country. They took off. They took off. They didn't ever run, but they were at turkey just walking the normal pace. If they're not feeding, they just start walking. They will out distance you.

Kind of like an elk, easily. Yep. Yeah, we kind of followed them over until they dropped in the next canyon. And we could hear them over there at times, and they kind of disappeared. Hear some across the canyon, and then they shut up. And it's like, then the wind started picking up, which makes it just about impossible to hear across canyons. So we decided to bail out of there and head to another area I knew that was more sheltered and more

I have cameras set up there and I can, I kind of watch what time they come through these areas, you know, just to have an idea of when to be around, call them. Went up to another area and sat there and what we called for hour, hour and 20 minutes. Yeah. You know, Dirk's sitting under the tree all camoed with his shotgun up ready and waiting and

Ron's leaning against a different tree, kind of gazing around. Pretty soon he gets cold, so he slips out in the sunshine, takes his pack out there and lays down. He falls asleep.

I look over, here's Dirk still diligent over there. Yep. Yep. Since I had the shotgun, I'm like, as much as I want to crawl out in the sun and warm up, I was freezing to death. It was cold wind. I was not dressed right. I had my lightweight, warm weather turkey gear on, and it was frigid. Yeah. And like I said, we called for an hour and 20 minutes, and I said, you know, normally if they're going to come in or hear us, they'll be here by now. Yeah.

Yeah, let's go. We'll go up another little draw and hit, hit another hollow that's sheltered again. And what we get down there and walking along and Dirk goes, oh, there's a deer. And we look and it was really hard to see. They were betting all of a sudden six of them stand up and going, holy smokes. We only saw one of them. Yeah. And they look at us and they decided, okay, let's go up the hill slow feeding and they're all doing their duty after they stand up and start walking off. And I says, well, Dirk,

When I find deer, I always find turkeys. I said, turkeys and deer like to hang out together here. Oh, okay. We take about, what, five steps, and Dirk goes, turkeys! And there they were right in front of us. They were coming into our calls. Right behind the deer. They walked within five yards of the deer. Yeah. They were just hanging out like chumps. And what's funny is...

I was telling him about hunting in Kansas around deer and turkeys, a lot of white tails and a lot of turkeys and, and the turkeys they'll get over and get on the corn or whatever. And, and the deer, they don't like it when the turkeys are there. I think they can make a lot of noise and I don't know, maybe they, maybe the turkeys are mean to the deer. I don't know, but they don't seem to like each other too much.

they're competing for the same source yeah and i kind of i'll make some noise and make clear my throat or make some noise or wave my hand outside the blind or the tree and try to get those turkeys to see me and like spook off so the deer will be able to come in you know on with no reservations you know and ron was telling me he's like oh that's weird because my deer and turkeys they love each other i got pictures on my trail cams of these deer and turkeys hanging out together all the time like

like, well, that's weird. So we see deer take five steps. Oh, well, there's the turkeys, their best friends, the turkeys coming. Uh,

And Ron had just made some, some yelps with his, with his box call. And, and these, these Jake's were like on a beeline to us. And we're kind of standing right out in the middle of like, on the sunshine, like we're, but we're frozen. We're not moving a bit. Like we're not moving a muscle. And these turkeys are like coming right to us, got to like 10 yards. And then they didn't, they weren't paying attention that you could see. They're like looking around. Hey, where'd that hen, where's that hen out? I heard. And they're looking around and,

It's funny to watch Jake. They're all kind of grouped together. You call them like a gang of thugs or a gang of teenagers. They act kind of geeky, kind of nerdy. And pretty soon they don't see the hand and they go back. Well, off in the distance, about 60 yards, there's

a couple of Toms strutting, you know, they're fanning around back there. I'm like, Oh yeah, those things need to come. So the Jake's kind of go back over there and then they kind of run around. Jake's will do this funny thing where they run around in circles. If you haven't been around it too much, but if you have, you'll, you'll know what I'm talking about. They run around circles, chasing each other. It's, it's kind of funny. It's like animated, you know, they're running around in circles, chasing each other in a, like a, in a six foot circle.

Then they stop and go the other way. And then they stop and go the other way. And then pretty soon one of the big toms would come over and chase them off. Like, hey, get out of here with your nonsense. Kind of like an adult would smack the kids. Like, quit screwing around here. And...

Ron started squawking again with his box, and here they come again. Here they come right back over to us, the Jakes. And the Toms keep on strutting. They're not really making any ground. I think they're back there strutting, saying, okay, lady, here I am. Come to me. They were probably spitting and drumming both, and we just couldn't hear it with the wind. It was pretty windy. Yeah.

And then I would Yelp with my, with my, um, diaphragm. And I think it was a little too low pitched or something. Uh, I think when I heard them Yelp into it, and it's more like a gobbler Yelp and they would, they would cut loose and gobble the, the, the Jake's would gobble their heads off every now and then when I'd Yelp with my read, my diaphragm. And, but they didn't, it didn't really make them come. But when you hit that box, that real high pitch, then they're like, Oh, we better go back over there and check things out. Yeah.

And then finally they kind of, they come over, looked around, didn't see the hand, went back. And then those toms started like kind of pushing them off and then started working their way to us a little bit. And there was kind of a windfall there and some brush and stuff that we couldn't quite see them or have a shot. And then finally...

the one Tom got out and there was a gap. I was thinking, man, if he puts his head in that opening, it was a pretty good two or three foot opening and holds it still for a second. I might just shoot him and he did. I put my bead, I put a little high because I think that thing's about 50 yards. I heard Ron say, shoot! Bam! I shoot him and down he goes. Flop, flop, flop.

Then what happened? Oh, yeah. So then Dirk runs up there to get him. And I'm sitting there just watching the whole scene unfold. The deer up to my left and all these jakes are standing there going, what the heck is going on? And the other big Tom was looking back at his buddy going, what's happening here? What are you doing down there? And Dirk gets up there and his bird's flopping. It's on a hill. It starts flopping down the hill. He steps on the wing to hold it still.

pulls out half the wing feathers and it's flopping on down the hill and finally decided, well, I guess he's not coming with us anymore. Let's mosey up the hill. Had I had my wits about me, what I should have done is I should have just handed you the shotgun. Yeah. But the big bird, the big Tom, he wasn't really exposed real good at that point. No. Uh,

So like we could have played out, but as a, I didn't know like a 50 yard, it's a poke. I was like, I, you know, did I just stun him? I got to get over there and get, get my, my. Make sure he's down. Yeah. I got to put my foot on his neck and make sure he's down. Cause I don't want him to like get his wits about it and run off and then lose the darn thing. Shoot. Yeah. Have him die somewhere. You can't find him. Yeah. So then we giggle and have a good time. And, and yeah. And those turkeys are so pretty. Like.

you know, at face value at a distance, you're like, oh yeah, it's a big black bird. But up close, like the feathers fluoresce all these different colors, hues of green and blues and reds and oranges and oranges. And yeah, they're beautiful. They're so beautiful. So in the sun was out. So we sat there, admired these beautiful feathers for a while and took pictures and did all that and giggled a little bit, talked about what happened. And, uh,

You know, then the hard pack came out. We loaded all the, you know, the big turkey. Turkeys are heavy. Not like an elk though. I'd rather pack a turkey out than an elk definitely. But anyway, we packed the turkey out and then we had a cold beer and some lunch and that was a pretty good day. It was a fun day. And then the next day, it's Ron's turn and he's got his shotgun and

And we go out and just like elk hunting, you know, the day before, well, we had them gobbling. Yeah, we had them bugling. The next day we go up, we cannot buy a gobble on the roost. We're there well before light and we check all the spots. Like Ron's got this place dialed. Well, if they're here, if they're not there, they're over here. If they're not there, they're over here. And then all these different places have a lot of turkeys. We check all the spots. They would not gobble on the roost. Just like elk hunting. Yeah.

You have one fantastic day. The next day, it's like, what is going on? I can't get a boulder bugle. Yeah, went down and called across the canyon to see if those birds would gobble at us at least. Nothing. Nothing. And we're going, what the heck? Okay, let's head up further up the road and get up there about a mile right where we had stopped and called from in the morning. What's that in the road? That's a turkey. We get up there and it was like, I don't even know, five or six hens and Jake at least. Yep.

They went right back up where they were the day before and would not talk at all. No gobbles. Yeah. Yeah. There had to have been a mature tomahawk or something. There had to be something. Well, we saw some, I mean, the day before, but, but still even that Jake, you'd think he wouldn't, he'd, you know, bark a little bit, but he didn't say squat. He didn't say, and that was before we, before they crossed the road, even they were still on our side. Yeah. Yeah. So then what, we go up the road another, we go check it out and say, how many hunters are up there? And,

Going up the road another couple of miles and head into a spot and driving down the road and, oh, there's a, Dirk says, oh, there's a hand. And so we, oh yeah, yeah, there should be a Tom around here somewhere. So we get out and call home. He, somewhere off in the distance, Tom gobbles. Okay, let's go. So we go down and park in the bottom and get up on the ridge top and head down the ridge. And that was the one that we talked about earlier that I tried sneaking in on because he wouldn't, wouldn't leave. And then after they flew off,

Dirk said, oh, I heard one gobble across the next canyon. So we decided to go over there and check it out. And we went down there where that thing was. And by the time we got up there, the wind was that howling bitter cold. And our faces last night looked like we were sunburned from the wind. Yeah.

We were both red faced and our fingers were frozen. And that was with gloves on and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So we said, okay, that's enough for today. Yep. Yep. It's funny. The feelings that turkey hunting give you, the motions, right? So one day you think, I am the worst turkey hunter in the world. Like turkeys will humble you.

And I know other people are like, oh, turkeys are so stupid. You can shoot them so easy. And I've had days like that too. You're like, turkeys are the dumb. I'm like the best turkey hunter in the world. This is easy. Like, I don't know why this is not hard. Like I can go out any day of the week and shoot a turkey. And then the next day you go out and you can't, you can't even come close to like,

I don't think I'll ever shoot a turkey. You get those same feelings. It's like they don't exist out there anymore. Yep. And elk will do that to you too. Like you'll be like, man, I am the master of the universe at calling in elk. And the next day it's like, I'm like the worst suckiest elk hunter on planet earth. I cannot, I can't even get one to answer me. Yeah. I'll hike around. I can't even jump one, you know, I can't even find them, you know, but that's, I guess that's the, that's why they call it hunting. You know, it's not killing. It's not. Yeah. Yeah.

So back to, we'll talk a little bit about elk hunting because I know people like, I don't know, people like hear about elk hunting maybe more than turkeys, maybe not. It depends on who you are, where you live. People in the Midwest and East, they really love turkey hunting, but they probably really love elk hunting too. So I think we'll talk about some elk hunting too, about the good old days, you know, the love of the land that brought you and I together. Yep.

That part of Idaho back in the day, if you guys listen to an earlier podcast that I did with George Beatus. Beatus, okay. God, I can't. I'm sorry. I'm getting old. Sometimes I just go blank on people's names. That's a common occurrence as you get older. Is that a precursor for dementia? I don't know. I hope not because sometimes I'm just like, gee whiz, what's my own name?

But anyway, I'm sorry. So earlier on an earlier podcast, I talked with George Beatus and he hunted the famed Clearwater region of North Idaho back in its heyday. You know, at that time in the elk world, Idaho had the largest elk herd in the nation. Fast forward 40 years, however long it has been, it's probably been 40, well, yeah, over 40, almost 50 years. Yeah.

And it's probably arguably one of the worst places to hunt elk in the nation. And you and I sit around and talk about the good old days and the fun experiences we had in that country and then what it looks like now. But what was it like back when you went up there, back when you were a younger man and the hills weren't quite as big and steep? Okay.

that's for darn sure why do the mountains grow taller as we get older uh erosion it's got to be erosion no we started we started hunting it in 1989 my my good hunting buddy and my brother and i and it was like i hunted oregon a lot i mean that's where i hunted only was oregon eastern oregon so i'm hunting the lodge poles and the thickets over there you know and there's really no brush not much brush anyway and

We could call bulls in over there, but they just, there was enough people kind of put me off. So I said, let's go try Idaho. So I did some research and pick this spot in Idaho, went there and I circled spots on my maps. I had toppled maps in the day where I think, okay, it might be elk here and here and here. So yeah,

We get there the first night, set up camp, and head down the road a couple miles. And just, I don't think it was one of the spots I had circled. I said, let's go out here and look. So we just park, head out there. And we probably made it a quarter to a half a mile and said, this is ridiculous. We're beating ourselves through brush the whole way. Let's go back to the road and go somewhere else. So we did and went up on this other point. And before dark, threw out some bugles and got an answer.

Oh, okay, we'll come back here in the morning. This is cool. Went down there in the morning and, you know, chased them around to no avail. And we hunted, I think, for nine days. And we were in the elk every day, had them be in every day. And got some real good close encounters. And I don't remember how far into it, probably about day six we caught up with some. And I shot one, and he died right in the crook bottom. And that was our first day in there ever. And, okay, let's...

Took care of him, packed some stuff out that time and went back down with three of us to pack him out. And in Oregon, in Eastern Oregon, the brush, you know, the bottoms of a Crix aren't brushy at all. So we load him up and said, let's just head up the Crix, you know, big mistake. We're fighting through tag alder. We're slipping on the rocks in the Crix. And it was a mess, but we finally packed him out and got done with our hunt that year and came home and on the way home and said, man,

that was fun but we're never going to idaho again i i can't stand that brush yeah you know and the tag alder thickets you know you hear a bowl there and you just go plowing right through the middle of it and yeah or the i don't even remember what the other one is down in there the vine maples and stuff and little did we realize there were trails through there you know the elk use trails they just don't go plowing through like we did yeah we're dumb boys took us a while to learn and

So we're set on our way home now. We're not going back there. That was just too much work and too brushy, you know, so forget it. Two or three months later, well, what are we going to do next year? Are we going to hunt? I said, you know, we had a lot of bulls bugling in Idaho and had a lot of close. Let's go back there. So we went back for two weeks and that year we learned that there's trails that go through all this brush and, and we learned a lot more area that year and,

We hunted that from 89 through 2003 and just had a ball over there. We got to know the area well and we had multiple bulls in all the time and got a lot of bulls taken home with us. It was fun. It was just a blast. During some of those studies, I'm sure we

that I'm on this hillside and you're on that hillside and I'm beagling to you and you're beagling to me. And we're going, oh, there's hunters there. What the heck are they doing in here? There's some guy over there. And Dirk's over there going, what the heck's that guy over there for? Yeah. Yeah. I think we probably crossed paths in the mountains, but not close enough to know, to meet each other. Right. And we'd go by where you were camped and we'd go, oh, we'd wave at the camp on the way by. Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, things were different back then, definitely. There were a lot more elk. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you, the other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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Ron did a thing that's really cool. It's not unique. I mean, there's other people that do it. And I know as far as regrets in my hunting life, I wish I would have done this because I love interesting data and facts. But Ron has kept a journal log of encounters and call-ins and how many elk they heard seen moon phases and

From 1989 till the last? Till last year. Through this year. Through this last year? I just don't have the last five years on my data sheet. You haven't updated your data sheet. Right, the total data sheet. Your printed up one. Yeah. But yeah, so what kind of a trend have you seen from 1989 to modern times? So from 1989 through 1994-

We were seen on average of 20 bulls a year and had 25 close encounters a year. And to me, a close encounter is when the bull is within 60 yards, I can see him, and there's a good shot possibility. So for those however many years, we had that kind of stats. And then 95, it went down. And 96, we had the hard winters there. Yeah.

In 95, 96. Yeah. In 96 and 97, it dropped down to eight per year on bulls seen and 12 per year on close encounters. And then it started trending back up through about 2003, went back up to 14 bulls a year and six encounters or 15 encounters a year. And then the wolves showed up.

And they were starting to get there in 2003 even. Yeah. And one night we're in bed sleeping, you hear them coming down the road howling. And you get up the next day and there's all these huge wolf tracks out in the road. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, after that happened for the next, what do I have? 2003 was the last year we hunted that particular area. We saw six bulls and had six close encounters.

Said, okay, that's it. We're moving somewhere else in the unit. Yeah, you've moved from, you've went from 20 to 25 a year down to six. Six, yeah. Yeah, that's. It's discouraging. It's a stark difference. Yeah. And the vegetation hadn't changed that much. The feed, you know, the habitat hadn't changed. I mean, it changed a little bit, but not enough to do that to the numbers. Yeah. The only common denominator was wolves. Yeah. You know, and so we moved over east.

Further in the unit, we were seeing 14 bulls a year and 15 close encounters for the next four years. And then it went down to six bulls and six close encounters again. And there were wolf tracks all over the roads and they're howling at night again. Okay, you know, let's get out of here. So we went to another area and we were seeing up there, you know, it was our first few years up there. We were seeing nine bulls a year, nine close encounters, uh,

So we said, okay, forget that one. Let's go somewhere else. And we got another one that we were seeing 10 and 8 a year, closing counters, which –

The difference there is it was thicker. It was actually thicker than where we had been hunting. Yeah. And to see a bull and get a close encounter was a lot harder. We've got a lot of bugles going up there. We've got a number of bugles going up there. Yeah, you heard a lot of different bulls, but then the close encounters and then visual eyes on bulls went way down because it's just such thick country. It's only 20 yards. We were shooting 20 yards up there is all maximum. So, yeah, it definitely changed. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we kind of migrated down to this other area and I ran into somebody down there named Dirk. Yeah. And yeah, it's funny because I think the year that I seen you up there in the woods, finally, we crossed paths and we'd been hunting some of the same areas for the last 30 years and never run across each other in the woods that we knew of. We might even pass each other by and wave. Probably passed and waved. Never talked, you know.

but at the sports machine in Portland and what was it to, uh, let's see, like 2018, maybe probably something like that. Then we, you introduced yourself and what I kind of talked about. We sat there and talk like school girls and stuff. And, and we, we knew the places we used to hunt and,

But now we kind of, we didn't really talk a lot about where we hunt currently. Like we kind of left little tidbits, like, eh, kind of hang around where you hunt, but we didn't really say names or anything. You don't ever say names to somebody else. No, you don't. That's, we would laugh about it. Hey, hey, you guys see anything hunting? Nope. Nope. No, I haven't seen a thing. Okay. Man, I haven't heard enough. Of course, yeah, it's elk hunters, you know, talking to each, you know, one camp to another, you know, you never share or divulge your information because you

You don't want the other guys sneaking in there on your spot that they see your pickup, then they're going to be looking for that bull you've been bugling. So anyhow, fast forward. So that was 2018, the winter of 2018, we talked. And then met, finally, face-to-face. And then...

that fall during mouth tab madness that I if you guys haven't watched my YouTube channel it's called the bugler and I do a series of videos called mouth tab madness I injured my shoulder that fall elk hunting and I had to relearn how to shoot a bow with using a mouth tab had to bite on this little the tab attached to the string with my teeth and

and then push the bow forward with my left arm, line up my eyeball to my peep sight, and then shoot. And that's how I went hunting that fall. The rest of that fall was with this mouth tap bow. Anyway, we're up there, me and cameraman Dusty had just hiked up, had a wet bow.

day of bugle fest we'd been chasing these bugles around and we got just got back to the pickup and i heard vehicle coming i'm like quick dusty hide because i don't i don't like talk to people in the woods and i'm not trying to be disrespectful but i just i don't want them asking me questions you don't want to have to lie i don't want to have to lie to them be like oh i haven't heard a thing you know i just rather not talk to i don't want to pump people from information and i don't want them to pump me for information so i'm like come here dusty let's hide behind the pickup so we kind of hid behind the pickup and

this guy pulls up and I hear it and he just stops. I'm like, Oh dang it. Then I, his, I can hear his window go. He's like, come on, come on out guys. I see you hiding back there. I hear this voice. I'm like, Oh dang it. We're hit. We're had. And I walk around and into my dismay, it's Ron. And he, and he, I could see the same, the same surprise in his eyes. He's like, Oh Dirk, this is where you hunt. Oh,

I'm like, dang it. So we had a good, good, good visit there. We probably talked way too long in the middle of the road there instead of going hunting, but it was good to reconnect. And you told us where you were camped and we ended up coming out to your camp later on. But, uh, anyhow, that, that, that's when we finally ran into each other in the woods and, and I have some, we've actually seen each other just a little bit before that, because we were looking, we were road bugling one night and, uh,

we're standing beside the road, beagling down this drawn. Ron had nature called. So he's standing there and,

Here comes a rig around the corner a little, and they're coming by and they're just laughing. And I'm laughing because I know what I'm doing. They're laughing because they know what I'm doing. Well, we talked to Dirk later and he said, yeah, I was laughing because we were bugling each other. I go, I was laughing for a different reason, Dirk. Got caught with your pants down. Yeah. And then when we ran into them, after they were done hunting with

We'd heard the bulls be going up there that morning, but we had in mind we wanted to go somewhere else and hunt. So we did. And the artist made, there was nothing there. So we said, let's go back and go to that area where the bulls were this morning. So we went to the backside of it and there was a rigged park there. It's like, oh my gosh, let's go to the other side and climb the steep face. And that's when we found Durko there. He'd been up there chasing my bulls that morning. Yeah.

That's awesome. And it's funny, like my experience is like, I wish I had wrote them all down. That way I'd have that hard data. I just have to go on memory. But I remember, you know, the same kind of trends, you know, you know, you would hear lots of bugles, lots of every year, different bulls. And you'd have, you know, you would get eyes on bulls and then in close encounters. And a lot of people throw around, oh yeah, I called in 47 bulls last year. Right.

But did you really call in 47 bulls? In my mind, calling in a bull is having a bull either come in to within archery range or very close to it. So he's traveled a long ways from where he was at originally and he came to your calls and you almost get him. Or let's say...

A bull comes from half a mile away and stands on a hillside 100 or 200 yards away and looks back and paces back and forth and bugles at you. But then he don't come any further because he's like, he wants to see elk or he wants you to make a move. But then he kind of goes back. That's a call in too. But I know people that will hunt some of the same areas I hunt and they'll be like, oh yeah, we called in...

49 bulls last year. I'm like, but did you? I mean, I don't think you're counting call-ins like me. I think maybe you're

the amount of bugles you heard. Maybe they got 49 answers. Yeah. But you know what? Gee whiz. I guess if that's what makes you float your boat and keeps you going, going every day, I mean, you know, bless your heart. I mean, I guess you can count them however you want. Right. Yeah. Same as turkeys, right? Oh, he called in these turkeys. Called in a hundred turkeys today. Except they, when they got off the roost, they went the other way. And half of them were hens. And half were hens. Yeah.

Uh, but that, you know, that where, where we met you, we ran into you. If you, if the first year I hunted that spot there was in 2007 and that year, my buddy Brent and I, we'd heard 35 different bulls bugle in a week. And I was like, wow, this is great. Cause my old spot I used to go had been really good and then gone way downhill. Just like what you said, you know, you know, I think the last year I hunted there, I think I had.

two close encounters and I heard like three bulls the whole time. Yeah. And just heard them. And I got on, on, on,

almost all of them. I got on all of them, but, but you know, I guess out of, out of the three bulls, I got on two of them and had a close encounter, but anyhow, um, fast forward, you know, to 2007, you know, 35 bulls we heard in a week and had lots of close encounters. I didn't really count those up. I'd have to kind of go back to the old memory banks and write them down and kind of figure it out. But lots of close encounters, very, you know, tension on the string, drawn back a few times and almost got them to, to when we met you in 2019. Um,

We had, I don't know, we probably heard like maybe 10 bugles that year and had three or four close encounters. In 19? In 2019. Yeah.

And he's going to look at his Bible here, his elk hunting Bible. 2019, we heard a total of 33 mules and saw five bulls. Wow. And had four close encounters. Man, you sandbagger. When I talked to you in the woods, you said, oh, yeah, we've heard a couple bulls here and there. Well, you weren't being truthful. No.

Well, you probably weren't either. I wasn't. I wasn't at all. You guys said, oh, did you get into them up there? I'm like, oh, we heard a couple bugles up there. I know better. We weren't real truthful either. Yeah, little Gino and I sit down there and listen to him all morning before we left. Yeah. Yeah. But... Yeah, it was a good year. But just the stark contrast, you know. And then fast forward to like 2022...

Uh, that was the last time I hunted it up in that country. And that was the, the ghost bull video you guys watched. If you haven't watched it, it's on YouTube. Um, the ghost bull. Yeah. Uh, that was a North country. That was a good one. Ghost bulls of the North or something like that. Yeah. Ghost bulls of the North. That was the video on YouTube on the Phillips game calls YouTube channel. And, uh, I think I heard five bulls that year and had three close encounters. Yeah.

Um, as in, I was, you know, I was in within shooting range of bulls. So it's, it's even, it had even gone downhill from 2019 to 2022 in my mind, um, a lot less sign and, you know, a lot of hunter activity, but you know, I'm kind of going to some places. You don't see a lot of people, but, but still it's just, it's just that the elk numbers are not there. Right. There used to be a lot more in there. And in my mind, just from, um,

I feel like I'm about as educated as any biologist, probably more so than any biologists are out there now. Most biologists, they read things, they look at spreadsheets, they look at that kind of data. Ron and I are out there surveying the landscape, the countryside, firsthand experience.

Yeah. We're covering the country. We're digging in, I would dare say, way more than anybody that's like doing any kind of biology assessment of an area. You know, we're boots on the ground. We're walking in places people don't normally walk unless you have like an elk

calling to you. Like, you're not going to walk down in these crap holes if there's not a bull bugle in. Like, there's just, you're not going to walk down there to write something on a sheet of paper. To see what's down there. Just to see what's down there. You're just not going to do it. So anyway, I feel like we have a pretty good gauge on what has happened to Idaho's elk, North Idaho's elk. Certain parts of Idaho, elk are flourishing. Yeah.

Other parts of Idaho, they're diminishing. But where they're flourishing, do they have many wolves? Not as many. Yeah. No, or any.

you know, not as many or any, but wolves are starting to find some of those places. Now I have friends and, you know, in this Southern part of the state, you know, if you cut the skinny part of Idaho off and make a box out of, out of the Southern part of the state, you know, make a, make a rectangular box, um, the areas in that, those places, you know, I feel like they have better elk herds. I probably shouldn't say that, but, but I know on the fringes, um,

of the northern part of the box, I know people are starting to say, you know, man, we're starting to see more wolves and starting to see more wolves. And they'd seen wolves before and they kind of came and went, but now they're back and they're finding deadheads, lots of deadhead elk. They're starting to make an impact in a lot of areas, especially with the kind of winters we've been having last year. This winter wasn't too bad, but the winter of 2022, 2023,

was devastating to South Idaho. And I don't know if that's, you know, what got those wolves, you know, they just followed the herds down into the lower country as the time went by. But anyhow, some might say, like if we go back to Northern Idaho, some will say, you know, it's all about habitat, you know, the habitat loss. Because in 1910, there was a giant wildfire that went from North Central Idaho clear way up into the Panhandle.

And burned millions of acres of the national forest, which after 30 years, 40 years, when it grew back, it was amazing elk habitat. You know, the, the burnt had opened up the canopy, you know, grasses and small shrubs growing everywhere. And the elk and the, and it was a perfect storm because, you know, back in them days, you know,

not a lot of people in Idaho and then around World War II they'd even pre-World War II they'd even shut down hunting seasons in a lot of those units because they'd had some bad winters and they wanted the elk to come back and flourish and they did and they opened up seasons again anyhow the elk hunting was fantastic and George Beatus got to hunt onto the tail end of some of that there in the the 70s and early 80s of that fantastic elk hunting and it in

If you listen to that podcast, his stories were incredible. Oh, yeah. But to understand in the 40s and 50s, it was twice as good. It was, if you can even wrap your head around how good that was, it was twice as good. It had the nation's best elk herd in a relatively small area compared to like the whole state of Colorado now that has the largest elk herd in America. Right. So, but anyway, now that, now, you know, now we're in 2024. Yeah.

Those forests have grown up, they've aged, they've matured, they've choked out grasses, they've choked out, you know, the underbrush has matured and gotten really tall. So you don't have all the tender things to eat at more of a, just a little above ground level. So the feed has changed. So people will say, the experts will say, well, it's more of a habitat issue than a wolf issue.

And I think both sides are right to a certain degree. So if you have elk that should have really great feed, if they have really great feed everywhere and they're pressured by wolves, they just keep moving until, you know, okay, that's okay. We'll just go live over here. There's good food here. And they just keep following the food and the wolves follow them. They're probably going to stay more nourished and probably have less mortality.

But as it is now, you know, we have a lot of mature forests and stuff. There's less quality habitat. The wolves pursue, they distress the elk. They're not as in good as shape because they don't have a good as feed. And then they're easy, they're easier prey because they maybe find some good food, a good food source and don't want to leave it. And then the wolves go in and wipe them out. And this is all just my, my theory. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I agree with some of it that has grown up in the old forest, old growth.

But then you start out where you go back to where you and I first hunted over there. Yeah. And that is all burnt. That's all. There's been fires go through all that country. And so.

It's reforesting and it's got the open grasses. It's got the habitat for them. And you were back there last year, rifle hunting, and you found zero in there. Yeah. So, you know, there used to be tons of elk in there and now there is good food. If it was the habitat, there's great food for them in there, but there's still no elk. Right. Yeah. For the, about a decade ago, that country started burning again. Yeah.

between burning and then there's a lot of beetle kill timber that's falling, you know, and opening up the canopy as well, but you're still not seeing elk. And then, you know, uh, what George talked about, you know, um,

A good friend of his who is a biologist for the Forest Service in that area, a forestry guy, he said, you know, they need to prescribe burns in the winter habitat, you know, to get those, you know, those burns we're talking about, a lot of them are up on top. They're not in the winter range, but...

And conversely, you know, at the time, I wanted to hear George's opinion and I didn't want to, you know, take counterpoint on it. But I got to thinking and thinking about like, well, okay, that does make sense. That's a fair assumption. But then I look at the Frank Church Wilderness. All you got to do is go to Google Earth and look at the Frank Church Wilderness. It's all burnt from the river to the highest peaks. Most of it. It's a huge, vast area.

of burn, wasteland as far as like timber. But now there's grasses, small trees, you know, like jackfurs and brush, lush brush growing where the elk. They haven't made a return there. Nobody's saying, good Lord, you know, the outfitters aren't getting rich in the Frank Church wilderness because there's so many elk and they have so many clients coming in. There's a lot of outfitters that have gone out of business. And I'm

I haven't talked to too many people lately that said, Oh, the Frank church is on fire with elk right now. He actually asked people and they're like, yeah, there's elk, but they kind of tell the same kind of stories we tell about the places we've been hunting. You know, if you know the pockets where they live, you'll get into them. But if you don't, you're going to, you could spend a whole week there or a 10 day hunt and not see a dang elk or hear an elk. You can walk forever through the brush piles and just beat yourself to death. But anyway, yeah, I, I,

I don't know what the easy answer is because they have, you know, with trapping and stuff. Um, and then I know that Idaho fishing game of flown missions with their, their helicopters and, you know, to, to reduce numbers of wolves, you know, they shoot a bunch and, and to help certain areas where the elk are suffering or maybe cattle. Um, and then the trappers are getting a fair share of them. And I think, I think they're just kind of keeping them at bay. They've reduced some of the numbers, but they've kind of keep them at bay. Uh, and, uh,

I don't know. Something has to happen drastically to get those elk to come back in those places. So that takes you to the next thing is where the elk drop their calves. Yes. Guess what's down there? Bears. Bears. Yep. So has the bear population increased enough to where they're

Hurting the herds by killing enough calves? I don't know. I think they put a dent in them, definitely. Yeah. I think there's a lot of bears. I don't think it's like the bears we had in the 80s. Right. But we don't have the amount of elk as we had in the 80s. Right. And there's more cougars now too than there were. Yep. So, you know, everything's trying to, like a turkey we were talking. Yeah. A turkey doesn't have a friend one in the woods except for a deer. Yeah.

Everything else wants to eat them. It's on everyone's menu. Yeah. I mean, coyote says, oh, yum. Bobcat, oh, yeah. Cougar, yeah. Oh, yeah. But an elk is, you know, there's a lot of things trying to eat the elk too. Between the bear, the cougar, and the wolves. Yeah. You know, they're...

Yeah. Prime fare. Now, am I calling for the eradication of wolves? Nope. Or bears or cougars? Nope. No, but it has to be a good balance, right? You have to balance it out. It's got to be a balance and being a, I'm an animal lover.

I love all animals and I want to see them all do well, but not at the expense of the other one. You know, I don't want all the elk to be gone and I don't want all the wolves to be gone and all the, all the, the cougars and the mountain lions or the, the bears. And I don't want to see something disappear completely off the landscape. Not at all. But we have to manage them. It is cool to hear a wolf howl. It is. That is just a neat, I mean, it's an airy sound, but it's cool to hear. Yeah.

And I love dogs. People may not know this about me, but I love dogs. I have a black lab. I've had black labs. I've had dogs my whole entire adult life. And I love dogs. And I feel like wolves are interesting. Dogs are intelligent. Dogs are way smarter than people usually give them credit for. And especially, they're very in touch with their emotions. I think dogs are more self-aware than a lot of people are.

will acknowledge or understand. So you think wolves are very self-aware. They're very intelligent. They've, they've, they learn very quickly about danger, about food. They, they learn very quickly about everything. And so I,

I can appreciate that. That's an inner, it's very, they're an interesting animal. They have an interesting family dynamic. Um, they have a, just a different kind of way of life, you know, which is interesting, which should, should be appreciated. But also I can appreciate when they're overpopulated, then other animal species suffer. And, and I don't appreciate that.

Right. I don't want that to happen. I want there to be a balance. To go from 15,000 elk herd down to 1,500 elk herd, something's wrong. Something's wrong. And it happened within a two, three year period. Yeah. It just went boom. Is what happened. And the habitat didn't just fail.

As there's less elk on the landscape, think of this, you know, you say habitat, as there's less elk on the landscape, there's more food on the landscape because there's, it's not like all the grass and brush died in North Idaho. If anything, it's brushier than it's ever been. Everywhere you look is food.

Yeah, it is. It's a jungle. That's the best way to describe it. An elk doesn't have to walk far for food. They can walk three feet. Oh, there's something else to eat. Yeah, they love the huckleberry brush. They walk 50 yards. Oh, there's water. They have everything they need, except I think the wolves have done quite a number on them. And I think they do definitely need to restore a lot of the winter habitat by doing prescribed burns.

But as my friend George said, you know, there's, that's a politically charged thing. You know, um, we start burning, you know, there's a lot of folks who suffer from asthma and stuff and it makes it hard for them to breathe. Well, they get, they get pushback. The forest service gets pushback on, on air quality. Yeah. And you know, it's hard to make everyone happy, you know, um, unfortunately. Yeah. But, but you have to look at the money that

hunters put into the economy. Yep. And I think as hunters, you know, buying license and tags and all this stuff, you've promoted the game and built up the herds to where they were, you know? And so that was, and then to be managed responsibly at that level, you know, to keep the herds up and then something else comes in to the equation that doesn't, that wasn't there before and changes all everything. So you have to stop and re-examine how you're doing things. Yeah. And I don't know. I, I,

I don't have the answers. I wish I did. Well, here's, I mean, here's a, here's a, here's a topic we could spin off of this and go down another rabbit hole. Logging. You know, they've, they've ceased logging for the most part on, by and large, on national forest. Yes. Okay. We can't burn that. We can't burn these, these winter grounds. Can we log them? No. And I'm not saying we're,

put in new roads into these places, but people can helicopter log, right? That's a very effective tool. You're not scarring the landscape with roads. You make the roads that are existing roads better.

cut the timber, fly it to the nearest road landing and truck it out. Now again, we're stimulating the economy. We're creating dollars. We're getting people putting back to work. We're getting tax money that will help maintain the forest. Yet the same people who don't want you to log, they don't want you to burn. Well, some of them. But it seems like we don't want you to log the forest. But

what happens in the end is well, wildfire and it ends up burning anyway. Yeah. And it's worse because nothing's restored yet. Yeah. And it's the middle of summer. It's July and August. And now air quality all over, uh, the Northern Northwestern part of the United States, the skies are Brown for the whole month of August. You're spending money to fight the fires instead of making money by logging it. Yes. Which just doesn't compute for me. Yeah. Um, in areas where, um,

Um, there's a lot of different ownerships of land. You know, you have state, you have private timber companies, you have national forest in those areas. You definitely see a difference in elk numbers just because they've opened up the forest in those places. So I do believe habitat does have something to do with it. Yes. Because even with the presence of predators, the elk do better.

And the fires don't do as well because they hit these blocks that have been logged and they can extinguish them, you know, knock them down. Yeah. We don't have those multimillion acre burns like we had in 1910. Yeah. So anyway, I wish we could just, you know, I think we've just solved the world's problems here, Ron. Oh, I'm too old for that. Yeah.

Man, it's been really fun. As always, I appreciate you hosting me and bringing me over here. I cherish the time we get to spend together. I enjoy it a lot. It's fun. We talk about life. Laugh. Laugh. Giggle and laugh. And you cook good food for me. You love to cook. And I love to eat. I mean, anybody that's seen me knows I love to eat. That's a great duo.

We gave Dirk his first razor clams the other night. Oh, yeah, first razor clams. I've never had those before. Jason Phelps, thanks a lot for no invite. He lives very close to the coast. Yeah, I dig where he goes probably. Yeah, I had to come to my good friend Ron's house to get razor clams. I hope you're listening, Jason. If you guys have questions or comments, you can always email them in to ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com.

Yeah. Cutting the distance. Yeah. CTD at phelpsgamecalls.com. And send an email to Jason Phelps and say, hey, why didn't you have Dirk over for Razor Clams? I thought you guys were friends.

I'm starting to question our friendship. Make sure you use your razor clams and not mud clams. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, he'll probably eat the razor clams and I'm not there. He's like, Oh, we got some of these other, we call them M clams short for mud. But anyway, anything to wrap this up? Any last thoughts? Do you have any regrets or looking back at your, your long hunting life? Like, man, I wish I'd have done something that you just didn't do. And, and looking back, you wish you could have done something different. So,

So when I was learning the hunting, starting out in Oregon, and I got, I don't even know where I heard about bugling. I was excited. I thought, I want to call elk. I want to hear bugle. So I don't even know, I don't know if it was herders or what. Back in the day, I ordered some turkey diaphragm calls you can make yourself. And I made my own diaphragms and I used them for bugling. Oh, yeah. Or I was younger and my voice worked better and I could do a throat bugle with my own voice. Did you suck in or did you scream? Woo!

soaking in soaking in i try to do that i sell like i'm chronic i'm like i'm like a stuck pig or something it's so terrible yeah like i called a nice fly point in one day and here came a hunter down upwind from me gone got them both no you got you fooled them both oh yeah it was like oh my gosh you must have been pretty good but i made my own diaphragms and tried those and then they had you know i remember what calls out larry jones came out with them i got the squealer thing and

Got my first bull to really answer and come in later on. And he was ripping up a tree. And I thought, I'm sitting here waiting for him to come walking out in front of me. And he left. Oh, man. So it's like, oh, well, that's not how it goes. And then I taught myself. I learned it myself just by doing it. And like we were talking back in the day, there were enough elk in Idaho. If we blew this one, let's go to the next one a mile away and do it again. And that was how we learned. It was just trial and error. Yeah. And it ends up that you and I –

We've got a lot alike now. Yeah. I mean, it's like we're sitting here talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aggressive, aggressive. Aggressive means this, not this. And if the bull gets aggressive sounding, we get aggressive sounding. But if he's not, we're aggressive pushing him, getting closer and making him mad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only regrets I have, yeah, okay.

Not a whole lot. Just a few. Yeah. You know, I wish I had more patience at times. Yeah. That is one of the key things for somebody to learn. Patience. Just because he hasn't showed up within two minutes doesn't mean he's not going to be here within 10 minutes. Just like turkey hunting. Yep. If a turkey doesn't show up and he's quiet, he might be coming in quiet. Yeah. It's the same thing with an elk. Yep. So...

I've learned a lot of patience, especially now that I'm older. I don't like to move as much and it hurts to go. And so I learned to stop a lot. Yeah. Well, I think Kenny Rogers said it best. You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Exactly.

Oh, yeah. No, that's about it. I have just thoroughly enjoyed my time in the woods and learning about elk. Like, you know, I was telling you stories the other day, what I've seen with elk, how the cow falling in a bog, head over heels, calf getting beat on by a cow. And, you know, it's just, there's so many things you see. Watched an elk get spooked, you know, spike, grouse flew up at its feet and the spike just did somersaults trying to get out of there. So, yeah.

You see so many cool things when you were out in the woods getting to watch that stuff. And that's what I enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. It's all the times I've been by myself hunting and I didn't have anybody with me and I've seen some amazing things. Like nobody's going to ever believe this story. And it was long before you videotaped anything and it's by myself. And it's like, man, that was so cool. And it's one regret. I've hunted it by myself a lot in my life and I enjoy it. I love it. I prefer it.

But when something remarkable happens, I regret that I didn't have someone there with me to share that moment with. Like, can you believe that just happened? Yeah. That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. No. So. Yeah. Another regret is that we didn't run into each other back in the 1990s. I know. And then start hunting together. Oh. With our group, you know, it would have been a, it would have been. Yeah. Yeah.

I would have seen your license plate though. I'd have been like them damn Oregonian hunters with the out of standards. Get out of Idaho. No, I'm just kidding. But I wish we'd have like found each other back then and could have chased them same, those same mountains that we love so much together. It would have been so much fun. It would have been. And now you're not hunting or I'm hunting anymore. Yep. So.

I'll have to give you a report card this year after it's over. Yep. Yep. And we'll just have to, you know, we have turkey hunting, Ron. That's right. We'll always have turkey hunting. Yep. That's for darn sure. Well, thanks again. How can people find you? Do you want to let people know where they can find you on social if they want to follow you? I don't have any idea. Okay. You do. I don't. Yeah. I don't know if it's just Ron Hewitt on Facebook and Twitter.

Ron Hewitt on Instagram. I don't know. I don't post much on there normally. Just family stuff. Family stuff. I probably posted a picture of you the other day because I had 11 year memory or something on April 15th with me with a bird and it said add. So I put your picture on there. Whether it shows up, I don't even know how to find that. Right.

Right on. Well, again, I thank you for having me over and thanks for, thanks for getting on the podcast. You know, I know that was the first, I said, I was never going to do this. I know. I know. You told me I'm never getting on a podcast. And I'm like, Ron, you got to do it. Like I'm sweating and trembling and shaking. Yeah. That's, you know, one of my regret, life's regrets is not knowing or when my, before, when my dad passed away, before he passed, he passed in 2009. And back then I hadn't even heard of a podcast. I didn't even know what a podcast was. And,

It wasn't mainstream media by no means. And I regret that

I hadn't recorded. My mom always wanted my dad because my dad, he was a very colorful person. Crazy stories. Like he lived a hell of a life from, you know, storming the beaches of Iwo Jima to living and working in Liberia, Africa back in the 60s. And, you know, all the, hunted the Idaho's back country when it was the very best right out of World War II in the 40s and 50s. And just, he experienced such a wide range of experiences in life. Yeah.

My mom always tried to get him to like record something like a little tape recorder. And he, I think he kind of felt weird about it. He's like, I'm not doing that, you know, but if we had been able to sneak or, or something or sit down and,

I wish I could have had an opportunity to podcast and record all these wild stories he had and life experiences. I do regret that. Yeah. It was awesome. And that's why I really wanted you to get on here because I want to pick your brain and record you and hear your spin on life and elk hunting. So I appreciate that. Spin on life is enjoy it while it's here. We never know about tomorrow. It's all in God's hands. Yep.

Absolutely. That's the joy every day. Make the most of it. Make the friends and enjoy your friendships. I love that. All right. And family. Family too. And family. Yep, absolutely. Definitely family. Family first. Well, thanks, Ron. And we'll catch everybody on the next one.

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