Embark on a journey into the heart of archery elk hunting with the remarkable Jason Phelps, a true innovator who's turned his passion for the wilderness into a symphony of success with Phelps Game Calls. His story, woven from childhood hunts to the thrill of the bow, captures the essence of a tradition transformed by innovation. As we sit down with Jason, his tales of transition from rifle to bow and the founding of his game call empire strike a chord with those who seek not just the hunt but the deeper connection with nature it brings.
www.phelpsgamecalls.com
Instagram
Jason
Phelps
Hunting Stories
Embark on a journey into the heart of archery elk hunting with the remarkable Jason Phelps, a true innovator who's turned his passion for the wilderness into a symphony of success with Phelps Game Calls. His story, woven from childhood hunts to the thrill of the bow, captures the essence of a tradition transformed by innovation. As we sit down with Jason, his tales of transition from rifle to bow and the founding of his game call empire strike a chord with those who seek not just the hunt but the deeper connection with nature it brings.
www.phelpsgamecalls.com
Instagram
Jason
Phelps
Hunting Stories
Howdy folks and welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast. I'm your host, michael, and once again we got a good one for you guys. Today we're actually connecting with Jason Phelps. If you don't know who Jason is, he's actually the founder. I guess the president of Phelps Game Calls Usually connected with me either. Amazing guy, funny guy and has some amazing stories to tell today. So, jason, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. I really do appreciate it. Beyond that, guys, I do want to apologize again. I did about three episodes with a different mic and didn't check them until I completed them all, because I did them in very short succession and my audio quality is a little iffy. That being said, jason's stories are still great and his quality is great, so I hope you guys enjoy. That's it, guys. Let's go ahead and kick this thing off now and, with Jason, tell you his stories. Thank you, alright, jason. Welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast. Man, how are you?
Speaker 2:Good, good Thanks for having me on, michael.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I'm excited to have you as a new hunter. That like learned in the YouTube era. I've seen a lot of your face, so it's nice to get to meet you finally here. Man, you're definitely a big deal in the industry. And then I'm super excited to hear some of your stories because, despite you being a big deal, I feel like you're just the everyday man. Not everyone's hunted in the whole Kogan outfit, but mostly yeah, no no, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a wild ride.
Speaker 2:It grew up in a hunting family and when I say that it's like that's what you did every fall and on top of that, not just a family that did it like in our area did it very, very well. Right, we were always successful. We were always killing deer elk, as far as you can look back, descendant of loggers, and I was the first one to kind of break it. So these guys were always in the woods, always with the animals, known where animals were, and so it definitely kind of helped me shorten that learning curve. At least you're always on animals and you were getting kind of trained by guys or taught by guys that were good woodsmen that knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2:And it's funny, every once in a while I still kind of chuckle as I lace up these expensive boots we wear. We wear these expensive boots and like my dad and uncles they lace up their white new balanced tennis shoes because to them it was as sneaky as you could be. You wanted to sneak up on those elk in their bed or not. Know you're coming versus like you know. So I always kind of chuckle like they just did it different. You know they put on their logging attire.
Speaker 2:You know whether it was a hickory or whether it was their red and black plaid, you know jacket, or their tin pants or their you know black iron rain gear, whatever you want to. They just hunt differently than we do now, but those guys were very, very, very effective and it was. It was nice to learn from those guys and I just the evolution of you know, my hunting and what I wanted out of it just kind of changed. I learned, you know, primarily we were rifle hunters or we were muzzle loader hunters and it a lot of it mattered. So much on your alarm clock, like real, were you willing to get up early enough to beat somebody to a spot?
Speaker 2:Like that was. That was 90% of the game. Like, if you could, you know where I grew up. For some of those that don't know, I grew up in industrial timberland. So if you can imagine a company that basically farms trees, you know they've got them on a 35, 40, 45 year rotation. They log them, they cut them. Well, you know that, green up at you know, five years, into about 10 years, when you can see into it Like that was our, that's where you're going to kill your animals.
Speaker 2:And so you're, you're, you're racing in the mornings to these, these spots where you think you know or you know that they're going to be deer and elk. And I just didn't like that game and so I wanted more out of it. And uh, understandably, yeah, my dad had worked when I was real young, had worked at a sporting goods store for a little bit before he, like fully jumped into logging. My dad had a, you know, a choker, let go. A log slipped out of a choker comes rolling back down the hill At my dad and the choker said there's like ducks behind the stump.
Speaker 2:Had the log, kind of jump him. And my dad, my dad hung it up for a little bit. Went and found a different job, you know at a sporting goods.
Speaker 2:And then like everybody out here like back then logging paid really well and so he came full circle, um, you know, and it kind of had come back and uh. So my dad knew a little bit where I was going with that, knew a little bit about archery from running a sporting goods section of a and he's like man, you know, there's archery is always an option and nobody around us was archery hunting elk at that time. There were a couple guys and, and they were maybe you know, weekend warriors and like well, were the seasons separate back then like they are nowadays Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:So we had a separate archery season.
Speaker 2:Um, and I can remember, before I grabbed the bow, I'm like, well, I'm going to go to local sporting goods store and at least buy some calls right and learn how to do the calling and I was, I had always played with calls and felt like I was good with him. But I'm going to go buy a legit set and and actually I'm just going to go out and mess around in season, like I tell everybody not to do now, like don't go mess with the elk, don't go educate him but there was nobody back then, you know hunting, so I didn't feel like I was messing anybody up and and uh, it would have been our archery opener.
Speaker 2:Nobody was out there. And the very first night we went out and I called a bowl in the 30 yards you know, just just cranking. I'm like huh, this is easy. And next morning we go out and everybody do this, which would have been yeah, a Sunday morning and just like clockwork, like call a bowl in the 40 yards and and I'm like gosh dang it and I don't know.
Speaker 2:The first thing about archery right, I was a guy that would sit at the you know the reloading bench with my dad and we reload shells. You put your shell on your gun, you sighted in, you pull the trigger, like that was. I didn't know anything about archery. I didn't know about pro shops, I didn't know. But I did know that this big, thick Cabela's master catalog that got shipped every year had bows in it, and so I picked out one that I thought was in like my Christmas list price range and it was a, you know, a mail order bow, a kit. You know you got your site, your rest, everything that was that was in there, and yeah, that was kind of my introduction. Well then you get it all and you don't know how to set this stuff up. So that was my introduction to a pro shop.
Speaker 2:Very quickly thereafter, was you know happened to find somebody that could set this up and get arrows set up and realize that you know the bows you bought out of Cabela's weren't the best options, and you know. So you slowly upgrade and become a real archery hunter and from then on I never looked back. I had a lot of success. You know, archery hunting elk early on. I would say I had more success calling them in than I did killing them. One thing I didn't have under control was my nerves. I was I become a very good shot with my bow, everything, but I couldn't figure out like the nerves portion of it and I had to kind of work through that a little bit. I did end up killing a bull my first year archery hunting but then had to really like hey, but you missed four of them prior to that.
Speaker 2:And yeah it was really a retraining myself like go through the steps you know, create a process that I do every time and really kind of helped dial all that in and I, like I said, I've never really, you know, looked back on on the rifle elk hunting.
Speaker 2:I still loved rifle elk hunt. You know, as we apply every year, there's only so many days in the year and I'm willing to pick up a rifle and go elk hunt to fill in some time, and so I still love rifle elk hunting. But I'd pick, you know, archery elk middle of the rut every day, you know, over over rifle elk hunting.
Speaker 1:I said in the exact same way. I always say I'm a hunter of opportunity. Yep, I'm not good enough archery hunter to just go all in on archery. But, that being said, I'm going to take every chance I can. But if I get a tag with a rifle, I'm absolutely going to use it. But that's. That was a cool little backstory, jason. We forgot one thing. Let's, let's introduce you real quick. Just for the folks that maybe don't know who Jason Phelps is. They read the name on the on the podcast description, but who are you?
Speaker 2:So just a redneck from a little town in Washington a little town of PL, I think we've got 650 people here grew up, like I say, in a hunting family, went to school to be a civil engineer, which really kind of led to the game calls. But yeah, as I was a bridge and highway engineer and designing bridges and designing sections of highway that need replaced or improved throughout the state and then ultimately at the end of my engineering career was a grant reviewer I gave out grant money for transportation projects to small cities I slowly evolved into the owner, operator, founder of Phelps game calls. It was a dream of mine that some of the backstory I just told the ability to call elk and turkeys really kind of was my passion within my passion. I loved hunting, but I really loved calling the animals in and challenging them on a very close, getting them very close, and so it kind of led me down the path of creating game calls, which we started in 2009.
Speaker 2:Shortly after, about the same time, we had our first kid. So it was I don't know why. I'm a glutton for punishment Like, hey, let's have a kid.
Speaker 2:Let's have a kid and then let's try to like, get this, you know, get a company up and running. But at first, to be honest, it wasn't gonna be that time. It was just a hobby, it was something I was just, you know, doing is time allowed? And yeah, and then things took off and ultimately, at the end of 2020, so 2021 meat eater had approached me. We were working on a collab project already to do some turkey call stuff. And they kind of got brought up hey, would you ever be willing to sell? And it was no at first and no again. And then slowly we kept talking and so, yeah, now, even though I've sold the company, I'm still fully in charge, the GM, day to day management, basically still run the whole thing, do all the design work for that. So, yeah, basically the founder and GM of Phelps game calls. Yeah, I got a wife and two kids. They all love eating it. You know the daughter doesn't like to do any of the hunting. My wife and son do like to go on hunting trips.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, just a passion for it. They're all involved. My wife works here and then my kids are both in. They've always been involved kind of in the company and the event. So, yeah, we have a great time and never thought that, you know, doing something I loved for a living was a possibility but, you know, got lucky and made it happen.
Speaker 1:That's super cool, man, that's super cool. We'll dive into some of your stories here in a second, but I want to tell you a quick one. I don't know if you knew this, but I went hunting with one of your sponsored athletes this year. I went with Jermaine Hodg oh yeah yeah, and Pat Lucho was there as well, but I did put a bull down. But of course you know I'm with those guys, I'm not doing any calling. But he did give me one of those brand new Hodg calls. What is that line? I know you got one with Tony.
Speaker 2:Gilbert's hand, the All-American Three-Pack.
Speaker 1:The All-American Triple yeah. So he gave me one of the Hodg and I was out there the day after sitting the corpse of my bull hoping is that a bear tag? Hoping something would come in. I hear a bugle in the distance. Man Throw that call in. And the first time I've ever really called in the woods. You know I've called in my truck plenty but I've never really had the confidence to get out there. But I went out there and I called that bull into like 45 yards in the middle of a field just raking this one tree and he's just raking the hell out of it and I was like man.
Speaker 1:I should probably stop. He's about to run me over and I don't have a tag, so but your call's a great man, they're awesome calls. It was really. I didn't think it would be that easy to call a bull in Again. I've never really tried, so guess who did work.
Speaker 2:That may be the anomaly, Maybe the exception and not the expectation. I mean, it does happen like that at times.
Speaker 2:but man, you can go 20, 30 times and not have it happen in the first time. Like you just said, all of a sudden it clicks and it works. But yeah, that's really. You just brought up a good point. One of the things a lot of people talk to me or want to get into the hunting industry or want to. They have a business idea. One of the things for me that was always like my driving passion was stories just like that, where it was more about being involved or having a little teeny involvement in the experience, like I didn't do anything, I didn't teach you to call. I didn't do anything, but you used a call that we developed to then provide you with that experience. And being able to sit in South West Washington and somehow have a little tiny effect on everybody's success or their experience was like a cool thing to hear about or to have happening and I really honestly that is what drove me more to continue than the business side of this ever did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great perspective, man. That's beautiful. What's funny is that bull. So me and my buddy are sitting there hoping for a bear. We get this bull in here, we belly crawl out of the valley so that we can get someone else with a tag in there the next day.
Speaker 2:They're like get back in there.
Speaker 1:They're talking, but yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm okay.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to share that little side note there. But, jason, I know you came here to tell some stories. People don't want to hear my stories. I don't even have very many. They've heard them all. So what do you got for us? Well, I just set the stage, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and this is a story, I mean, if you've listened to other podcasts, but I'm going to go into a little more detail on this one that kind of the bull that kind of kicked everything off Four Phelps game calls for me as far as magazine bulls, and it doesn't really it's not because it was the biggest, it wasn't because it was the first, it was just the way it all worked out. So it was 2012. I was just getting in three or four years into making calls. So it's kind of important that we're finding success. And so I'm hunting just in my backyard. I had no plans to not just hunt. You know warehouse or ground and industrial timber lands outside and it's a hot, it's a very hot. You know, September there's always a chance of the woods getting shut down, but we're on bulls every day, Having some good success calling bulls in. Maybe things just not working out.
Speaker 2:I was with my buddy's dad, who my buddy, had to go back to work, but his dad had a tag and we're getting bulls to answer and I can remember we're maybe halfway through season. I think my buddy had killed a bull at this point, went back to work and it. So it was just me and him and I remember wanting to call him in a bull that we had bugling. He's like no, you just go ahead and you take this one, and so you know. I was shooting great that year. I called this bull in to 25 yards and I still to this day. It was divine intervention, whether you believe it or not, or something happened Broadside, 25 yards, nothing in my way and like with the thing.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I don't remember if I hit a stick, If, like, what happened, Like did something slap my bow? Was there a stick like wound up in the string, the cams, whatever it missed, and I'm like I don't remember telling Tony, like I have no idea how or why or what. So we looked for that bull and we heard him bugling down in the drainage, you know, after sort of like he's fine, and there was no blood. I found my arrow and everything was good and we couldn't get him to call back in. So we were you know we're like, ah, a little bit depressed. We hunted the rest of that day, that was in the morning, hunted all that day and then came out and that night when we came out there was a big orange sign on the gate closed for fire danger. You know there won't be any more reentry and we only had four or five days of season left, I believe, and so I'm kind of like gosh dang, what am I going to do? Yeah, there's, everywhere is closed down for fire danger. I did. There was one other industrial timberlands, like a different property owner that you know has a couple of hundred thousand acres that we went and hunted that for a day, got on a good Roosevelt there. You know, for some other reason or another it didn't work out. So here I was, they got closed down and so now I don't know what to do with four days left in season. So I'm sitting in him and hauling around.
Speaker 2:I had never really hunted outside of my backyard. I didn't know how to do it, didn't know what to do. I had, you know, two days of vacation left in the weekend and I remember telling my wife, like I'm going east, Like I'm not really set up to backpack I can, but I'm just going to go to the national forest because it's still open and loaded all my stuff up and called a buddy that I had never hunted with. That just a guy knew my our wives worked together at work and he was more of a hiker, you know. He knew more about hiking and backpacking. So I'm like, hey, do you want to go? He's like we never hunted together to this point ever, just talked and he's like yeah, was he a hunter before that?
Speaker 1:He's like you said he's a hiker, but yeah, much before he just hadn't found any success up to this point.
Speaker 2:Um, so you know, relatively, you know new to it, but I think he's talking with him. He knew enough. So we load up and and we just head for the mountains. Well, you know a few ideas. Um, I had hiked one of these areas, you know, a couple of years before and found elk tracks. So, um, we actually go to his spot first, though, and mess up, mess around up there, and, um, berry picking is is big in our mountain. You know huckleberries or blueberries. Um, our area, his area, was completely loaded. You know boom boxes on the ridges and literally people and all the alpine just picking berries.
Speaker 2:You know 20 people on one hillside and music and we're like this is not going to work. So walk up there, we leave, we come down, um, and I can remember that night like driving around, like aimlessly in the dark, um, trying to find a trailhead, and we were so you know, it was like 11 o'clock, we're both beat and we just randomly park at a spot that we didn't really know was the right spot. So we woke up in the morning as we kind of like all right now, all of a sudden, our, our, you know, GPS's and our on X makes a little more sense and hey we actually parked at the right spot.
Speaker 2:There's a little connector trail, um, right, well it's. You know, got up an hour early. Let's hike up in here. We don't know what to even expect. Um, so we hike in. It's about an hour hike into the spot and we, you know we're messing around. We're like trying to look as we get up, like we might have a viewpoint from here, like might be able to to be able from here, like just trying to figure it all out, and uh, pull my binoculars up and it was just, you couldn't have. I probably never do it again Like through my binoculars up and inside that field of view was a cow. I'm like whoa, there's an elk right off the bat.
Speaker 1:You know, after an hour hike, it's just getting daylight.
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, this is good spot. And as I was doing like watching that cow, out of like the other side of my field of view comes the biggest bull I had ever seen in Western Washington. Um, I'm like holy, you know, you, I don't remember exactly what emotions come over you, but it's a lot of like holy crap. Look at that thing, like instantly, you know, and he's chasing cows around, bugling and uh, you know, you're trying to check wind.
Speaker 2:Really quick, figure it out, and, not being in this area, you didn't know it very well, we, we, we try to. I'm like, well, if the wind's still going down, we actually need to go back around this little mountain top and come in on this side, uh, and so we quickly make a plan and, you know, we figure out, he's got about 20 or 30 cows, so we have to go back around, um, climb up, climb up, and then we get there and, like I said I had mentioned earlier, my buddy had never killed a bull and I'm like, in the back of my head, like this is awful big bull to start with but uh but uh, you're the, you're the.
Speaker 2:you know I'm going to, I'm going to do the colon Like you, go down, I'm going to set you up and get a shot. Uh, so we get over. We can hear him big on the whole way. Like everything's working good. The wind's about ready to switch and come up, um, the, the sun's hitting that face. Like everything's worked as we planned.
Speaker 2:So I actually am on a uh, somewhat old hiking trail and then I tell him, are we kind of pointing and say, all right, that bull is going to come up in this little. There was a little roll without trees and on both sides of the tree, or both sides of this dip, there were trees. So it had about a a 10 yard wide shooting lane that we figured the bull, I figured the bull would come to. And uh, he, he, uh, derek goes down and get set up. But I, we couldn't talk real well and he set himself up originally behind like a wall of 10 year old, 15 year old, like alpine trees. That basically makes an impenetrable wall, which is great for not being seen, not real great for getting a shot. And so now I'm like my only hope is to pull this bull past like the furthest tree and, and that's going to be tough because he's going to see where I'm calling from and not want to come any further.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know I'd been in this situation enough times that. Well, anyways, we start calling like we're running out of time and, sure as sure as I guessed it, like that bull comes right to that spot, knows he should be able to see a cow where I'm at, I'm tucked in pretty good, but doesn't see the cow. And then, um, this bull is 10 or 12 yards away from Derek, just rip and bugles. And this is when I first realized just how big and what caliber of a bowl this is. Uh, I'm like, wow, this is. You know, I wasn't as as privy to scores back then, but I knew if he wasn't the state record. He was very, very close to the state record bowl.
Speaker 1:Um, and is this a Roosevelt or Rocky mountain Cause I know you kind of were jumping around Washington that year.
Speaker 2:We we, we had the, the state or the record books painted a line, so they actually call these cascade Roosevelt. So it's like a, a strip of intermixing um where they just had to put a buffer to to Roosevelt. So it's in between I five and the Pacific crest trail.
Speaker 2:Um there's an area that they call, basically, cascade Roosevelt's. And, um, so we're, I'm watching, like the biggest bull I've ever seen in the wild, just cranking um bugle after bugle, and you can, you can hear some cows behind him and you can kind of see him looking and getting a little bit nervous, like you're just reading his mannerisms and and trying to get it all figured out.
Speaker 2:And I'm only what I'm guessing 52, 55 yards away, um, and I've got a wide open shot and I've got my bow in my hand, um, but I'm trying to get Derek a shot and not, like you know, just shoot too early and like ruin what, what is a slam dunk for him. So I at least knock an arrow, like as I'm watching the bowls, I'm trying to call this thing in, and you could see he's getting a little bit antsy. And so, shortly before I thought he was going to leave, I decided to draw my bow back. I hadn't had a chance to range him cause I didn't want to really poke out from behind the tree, but I'm like, oh, I've shot so much. Um, it's a little bit downhill for me.
Speaker 2:Uh, so I settled my 50, you know, slightly over on my 50. Yeah, and I'm like, well, here goes nothing like we're going to kill this bull. Perfect, broadside in this bull is giant body Like I can't miss. And I was one. I was one of the. I was one of the, I was one of the best ones right over his back.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, and he didn't really know what happened. And then he kind of rolls, maybe a couple of seconds later, trots off and like what in the heck? And after messing around it was steep enough downhill and I had guessed wrong by about seven or eight yards that I actually should have shot it for like 40 and shot it for 55.
Speaker 2:Um and went over his back, and so I was more frustrated my GoPro had died. We didn't have our any of our other cameras there, and so now it's literally the only story that is going to be told on this bull is how big I think I, you know, I've got to describe like no it was huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you had to score it. I'm not going to hold you to it, but what do you think?
Speaker 2:So I was thinking three 70, three 80.
Speaker 2:Um and so it had a kicker that um came off of the one sword, and I didn't know it at that time, I thought it was just a true seven point and they actually matched up on on the side, and so I'm very, very frustrated. We try to call the bull in for another 20, 30 minutes why he's bugling and chasing his cows, and finally we lose him just into a brushy, steep, rocky mess and like, well, let's, let's go back. I'm very frustrated. Um, we actually came out of the mountains, went down and had a burger, and this is the day before the last day.
Speaker 1:Um, we go back up like well we'll at least go listen.
Speaker 2:So we go down and have a big burger, hike back up and when we get to the trailhead there's a truck parked in our in the spot. Oh no, thankfully this this spot could lead to to other, so I'm keeping a little bit of optimism. Um, this night I don't bring my big pack, I don't bring anything. I put a pocket knife in my pocket and uh, like a water in my other cargo pocket and just kind of bomb up there, go to the spot we originally spotted the elk from not where we got a shot. And you know, sure as heck, there's a two guys bugling through the basin with that big bowl. Um, like, oh no, like, don't say a word, be quiet. You know he's pretty talkative.
Speaker 2:That morning he had lots of cows and uh, this is I don't want to get into calling too much, but this is maybe we're being a good loud caller could pay off, cause this you could tell they weren't very good callers and they worked their way through this basin and they actually come out right to the point where we're at, because it makes the way that this basin is shaped is that's like the low pass and that's their way out and uh, we get to talk into them and, um, you know, they're a typical hunter. Like there's no elk in here, the cats have killed them all. Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, if they just watch the bugle yeah, yeah, I just just shot up the biggest bowl of my life early that morning. Well, they noticed that I had an arrow missing and started to ask questions about that and I'm like, oh, I lost an arrow to my quiver. You know just, everybody's lying to everybody, um and uh. So you kind of we, we talked to them for about 10 minutes and they finally went back towards the truck with quite a bit of daylight left and uh, me and me and Derek just sat down there and I'm like all right, 15 minutes goes by, like I'm going to bugle and bugle and instantly get a response from him back. He's in that base and he's kind of working his way up the drainage, but it's going to get dark by time he gets up there. So we don't call anymore, we sit there and listen.
Speaker 2:But we end up playing kind of like guess the range game, like if he was to come out like that trades 55 in this meadow and and remember, this is real rocky, cliffy stuff. So we're on like 10, 10 foot, 20 foot cliffs, um, shooting down. You know we would shoot, have a downhill, pretty steep downhill shot and we're we're messing with ranges, just kind of buying the time. He's bugling a bunch on his own. So we, we decided all right, last morning we're going to come back up here. You know they moved, did your?
Speaker 1:rangefinder have a angle compensation, yet or is that not technology? It was there, yet it did.
Speaker 2:It wasn't the greatest for real steep, you know, but it did a okay job at it. So so we run back down. We didn't bring any spike out stuff, so we had to climb back up. In the morning we get up way early cause we didn't know if those guys were going to show back up or if they were going to leave us alone. We, uh, we get up there and uh, we, you're taking your time. You want to be in the, in the, in the good spot, but you don't want to rush there because you really don't know where these elk are going to be, and there's 40 plus of them in this herd.
Speaker 2:Well, we, thankfully, we can start to hear him be ugly at a very distinct, nasty bugle. We can start to uh, you know, hear him. And so it's like game on, like we know he's in the basin where we were at last night he never got out of that like rock cliffy basin. We're, we're working our way there. So now we start to put a giddy in our step, like we're moving a little faster than we were, we don't have to take our time. And we're, we're getting up there and he's bugling, you know, maybe every three or four minutes and there's a strip cliff that's maybe 50 yards long and that's where the meadows below this cliff and it flattens out and it's probably only a uh, you know 30 yards across.
Speaker 2:And I remember getting up, like slowly peeking up the rock, and I can see him standing there he's the first elk I see. And so we back up off the rock and I told Derek, like we're going to draw our bows, both of us, and we're going to take a step forward and shoot at this thing on three very quickly. So we get, we get back. We're all on the same page. And he's like this is where, like the stupidest things of like ranging the night before helped us, because I'm like he's going to be at like 38. He's right next to the little lone tree in the middle of the meadow, like he's we're going to shoot him for 38 ish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we, we get out there and uh, I'm wanting Derek to. Still, I don't know why, I'm just not claiming to be a nice guy, but I'm like I want to Derek to shoot, and then I would follow up. Um, we, uh, we, we get there, we, we get forward. You know it's a very quick three count because you could see this bull instantly go from looking forward to like. Now his horns are squared up to you, like he's seen us One, two, three.
Speaker 2:He's seen us come up, so it's like one, two, three, well out of the corner of my eye as I'm trying to like stay very focused, like don't screw this up. Um, I can see Derek over there like messing around with his, his grip, and it took me about a quarter second. He had one of those old trophy taker rests. I don't know if some will remember they were like a little teeny snake tongue that would like lift as you drew His arrow, had fell off the rest and was stuck between the riser and the rest. Oh no, and that bull I knew wasn't going to hang around for very long and so I shot without him. Um, the shot was.
Speaker 2:This is where I really learned to love frontals. But some may question, and I would actually advise people like I maybe let the emotions get the best of me I took a longer frontal than I recommend, like usually. For me it's like 30 yards and perfect. Um, this one was a little rushed but I did take a frontal at 38, but fortunately, um, I had been shooting really well and I I just buried the arrow um, right where I wanted it to. Um, yeah and uh, but the bad part was it's a real sandy basin and there are 40 elk and I didn't realize, like right below me, if I had a drop like a rock stuck in my handout and dropped a rock it would have hit like 20 cows were like right at the bottom of the cliff and then elk elk just erupted but he was the first one out, like well this is not great for blood trailing or finding tracks, Um.
Speaker 2:you have a million elk running so you can't really even listen to what you think. Um, but we got a good beat on the direction he went.
Speaker 1:Is this the same elk from the giant guy you saw earlier? It is. Oh boy, you found out. No, this is this is him.
Speaker 2:Um got a good shot in the. So we're sitting there. I have enough adrenaline. I run probably like 700 feet in elevation up a mountain all in one. I'll never be able to do it again. Like called my dad and uncles you know they're all at home on a Sunday because they don't archery hunt, watching football and I'm like, hey guys, I just shot the biggest bowl of my life. I want you guys to come help. Or blood trail, or I'll let you know when we find it. And so we get on the blood trail and there's nothing Like, oh, no you're, you're tracking like you know exactly where he went over.
Speaker 2:You got like broken leaves, like right, this is his track, and then he gets out into the sandy stuff and there's a there's, you know there's. There's really nothing for us to go on besides a main trail and we're hands and knees like we're not going anywhere fast, like slow, slow trailing, and finally we got like a speck of blood that's kind of mixed in the rocks, in the sand. It made kind of a clump and then we had like another little chunk of, you know, meat and blood. That kind of had Coagulated and made a little ball. So we're slowly I mean very, very slow going. At least we know we've, you know I knew I'd hit him and it should be good, but we're just not getting blood. Or he had ran so fast that by time the blood can get down. You know, on a frontal it's got to get down down his leg down to the ground With that exit wound, so no one spot for to come out, and with the arrow, and the and the knock and the veins and everything kind of blocking the hole.
Speaker 2:We're not getting any good good pumping and we so I mean we're we're an hour and a half into and haven't went 70 yards and we finally get to a point where it was like a little lookout Before it really dropped off steep and that bullet stood there for a while and he just had three big piles when I'm talking big piles, like you know Somebody had two gallons of like foamy blood. He had stood there enough in that blood. Either push your out a little bit or, yeah, something happening. From that point on it was, like you know, a blood trail that anybody could follow with you know walking speed, and turned around the corner after about 50 more yards and there he was piled up.
Speaker 2:And Now I was always a successful elk hunter but like I had never killed anything of this, not even like in the middle Close, you know, like I had always killed these little Roosevelt bowls and to kill this thing was just on a completely different level than anything I had ever did or ever killed. And I was able to get cell service and get out to my. My dad and a few of my uncles came up and we we went. We actually drove all the way back down. It was a cool morning in that base and he actually went steep enough in there. So we we just kind of put some brush on him and you know like they'll be here in an hour and a half Went down, grab those guys, like hiked back in and Got to like experience like the breakdown and caping it and like breaking the animal down with my dad and uncles along with Derek, and so it was just.
Speaker 2:It was cool for them to like be a part of it in the end. Yeah, I remember those guys weren't really like I said there. They were old vloggers at this point, so they were all in machines or driving log trucks or you know. None of them were in the brush anymore. So this type of mountain hunting, like I can remember them all being a little wore out. So I was like shuttling all the. I was shuttling every pack to the top, so nobody had to like pack the the you know heavy packs out and it was just a cool day like hiking off the mountain with the ball of that caliber with my family.
Speaker 2:You know the guys that had taught me how to hunt elk. You know my new buddy, derek. Yeah, you know it's for him to get to experience something like that and then.
Speaker 1:He wasn't changes. Rest the next year. I think we.
Speaker 2:I think we all went to full contain rest that it can't happen. But yeah, ultimately it was just. It was a cool experience. And then, long story short, and the magnitude of the bull doesn't necessarily change the story, but ended up being the third biggest bull in the state At the point I killed him. So there was a another one, that was, he ended up being 367. So my guess and I figured out once he was on the ground that there was like a 17 inch extra that came off of a sword. I thought that had matched up and so Anyways, regardless of score, like a great animal, a great animal for that area, and it was just one of the other thing that it doesn't have to be. Like I don't mind hunting special tags or private land, like no. But the icing on the cake was like this was a do-it-yourself over the counter, like anybody, not only anybody in the state, like anybody in the country or world could have bought this tag and like, went up and, you know, killed this thing.
Speaker 1:So that's cool it was.
Speaker 2:It was an awesome hunt. You know, a giant bodied bull. We had never packed that much meat off of a mountain ever and still to this day. Just those, those giant Roosevelt's are just at a different level, of size and and you know, makeup. But that was, that was one of the. And then that hunt really kind of kicked off my. You know I was already passionate hunter don't, but it really kind of kicked off my desire to like bigger adventures and and from then on it was more of alright, I now want to go like live on the mountain with these things, you know, the spike tents, the, the better packs, all this stuff kind of Started to happen. And that's really what kicked off my, my love for backcountry wilderness style hunting, you know, or at least Sprinkling that in more to my, to my normal hunts. Yeah, that's a good, that's a cool story.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you got that giant Ball. I was a little worried for a second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know this to my. I would have never bet on myself like to get a redo, especially on the very last day of season, but it worked out. Yeah, it's funny them.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't be surprised, but more often the stories that we hear about this epic stock and this giant bull, and then a miss, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:The ones that got, the ones that got away are always the ones that stick in people's memories, so I'm glad you got back on him. Did you ever get him aged or anything like that? Was he? How old was that?
Speaker 2:boy, I never did bull tooth. I mean he had, you know it's. You're speculating, but body size. You know my taxidermist and knew a lot about the the elk in that area. He had to be in that like seven, eight, nine range probably. You know he was definitely it is, it is prime. Yeah, and and I've spent a lot of time up in those mountain sense and only ever found two bowls that were even like in his category or class and none of them have, like you know, knocked him off of his top spot.
Speaker 2:You know since then, and I haven't been able to harvest or kill the other two, so it's like they're to find it in one day and kill it within two days, is? It was a pretty special little, you know, set of circumstances there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely giving your buddy the first shot twice. Yeah, you still get the.
Speaker 2:You hit the shoot twice, it would have ruined him for him to like kill that first first bowl. So Fortunately the next year he went up there with another you know guy and it was able to kill his first bowl in that same area, Just on the hillside just down from where we. I shot the big one so it was it was a better starter bowl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like a, like a 280. Yeah, yeah, probably yeah, that's awesome, jason. Well, that's cool. I'm glad that the Derek got back out there and it didn't discourage him to like have those malfunctions. Yeah, just like put himself in the wrong spot the first time and the second time the the arrow in the rest issues. I've had that happen to it Turkey hunting one time where my arrow fell off the knock.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I actually was like to my buddy, crawled over, grabbed my arrow and put it back on, but he was so distracted he forgot to let go of my arrow. So I'd like he's holding on to my arrow.
Speaker 2:Ridiculous that that bird let you get away with all that movement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, surprisingly it's in an area that in Texas that was not hunted much. We watched. I called him in from like a hundred and fifty yards just down a dirt road and he came right in and we had like a blind, like one of those. It's like two feet tall, eight feet long piece of camo cloth. Yeah so we're basically almost entirely hit. Oh, yeah, and yeah so the top of my bow and my buddy was crawling on it was beginning of COVID, so he's like eight feet away.
Speaker 2:We didn't, we didn't know, yeah yeah, how far from each other, yeah so he's crawling underneath that thing.
Speaker 1:So he was able to move pretty easily. But, yeah, and I actually was probably a bad shot, but fortunately the turkey Would lift at its head, drop its body and right in the neck oh dead bird. So can't be that. Yep, yeah, absolutely. Well, what else you got for a season? I know these transitions are always a little weird, but let's keep going, man.
Speaker 2:I'm actually gonna. I mean I got all. I'm very blessed I get. I get to go on all kinds of adventures and I could probably pick out you know Hundreds of different stories and some are gonna say I should probably tell my kids you know first buck story or this or that. But I'm gonna stay in the same year.
Speaker 2:You know, before my, my kid was hunting and this one was just more Of just overall adventure. Yeah, those don't know about the Bob Marshall. You know, largest Contiguous wilderness in the lower 48. It's just, it's an adventure and we had booked a hunt that was gonna start 10 days after I just killed this bull in Washington. So, mind you, I had never killed anything good, but we had kind of saved up and said, alright, we're just gonna go to the Bob, me and you know, my dad, one of my uncles, a couple of my buddies are gonna go in.
Speaker 2:So there's a bunch of fires in the Bob this year. We we originally had a 32 mile horse ride into camp and we ended up having to go 39 Cuz. We had to ride around the fire and then come in from a different direction, so To start like one of the most beautiful rides in every. You know you got the Flathead River, you got the runs through the Bob. It's just absolutely beautiful. You know a bunch of mosaic type burns, you know historical burns in there and it's just Absolutely beautiful country. And you're just, you're taking that all in. And this is sometimes I struggle with, like I take what we get To see as hunters for granted, but like on this trip just riding the horse, I knew I wasn't hunting that day, like I was able to just kind of take everything in all the sight sounds a crystal clear water, the, the old horse bridges that go across the Flathead.
Speaker 2:You know that the old outfitters have built and the Rangers have built. It was just. It was an awesome wild place. But then I get far. You know, we've been riding since it's sunup. We knew 39 miles is gonna take us basically dark to dark On a good day. That's, that's no. You know horsewrecks or you know, and nothing gets Western like a perfect day.
Speaker 2:And then, about halfway in, something changes in your mind where, no matter how far I've hiked in like even if it's nine or ten miles, I can always just grab my stuff and leave if it's too bad, right, as long as we're not injured bad enough.
Speaker 2:And something changes in your mind where it's like You're now more than a day's ride of what you know you're. You just can't hike out of this place now at this point. And it kind of changed my perception is like, or my outlook on the hunt. It's like, yeah, you're a long ways from the truck, like an entire day's worth of Riding, and it just it kind of added to the magnitude of the hunt. So we get in, we get into camp and and my buddy, who actually had moved from here, was guiding, so he was actually our guide, but he was, you know, a good buddy that was just working for the guy and he's like man. I think our best, our best bet, is to you get up early in the morning again, like remember we just rode for 18 hours get on the horses and then spike out another eight miles from base camp.
Speaker 2:So now we're you know, 40, 40 ish miles away, like all right, if that's what you think. So me and the guy I was going to hunt with to start with, we grabbed all of our stuff and you know everything to spike out and we took off in the morning. So we kind of missed that morning hunt and got up into an area and just kind of hadn't been in there for a year. So we kind of cruised the ridges, tried to get it all figured out and it was a very, very I mentioned you know the, the fire, you know danger here. It was also very hot in the bob and a lot of the food above timberline had burnt up. So really we were all kind of scratching our heads like, oh boy, like where are the animals going to move? Are they going to be down in the bottoms more? Are they going to be, like, right at the fringe? And so we did that.
Speaker 2:First day we got there we only had a half a day left we kind of did a quick run up the ridge and kind of did a let's just go up high see if we can hear any bugles, and we got back and really that first day we got nothing. So the next day. We're like, all right, let's go low. We right out of camp we're going to go down into the creek base and then we're going to go kind of up that creek until we we get to the ridge line and right out of camp, a couple of hundred yards away, there's a sow and two cub grizzly tracks. We're like, oh, this is awesome, you know, they were that close to the camp last night.
Speaker 2:And you, you're, you know John's like, oh yeah, those were last night. And he's like we're in it. They probably swung by the same water we're going to want to swing by, like there's a wallow. We're going to go see like if there's water in that and if the elk have been using it, and we literally follow those bear tracks all the way down towards the creek and follow. Now we're following them up to creek.
Speaker 2:I'm like I don't know a whole lot about grizzlies but I always thought you, you know, following them seems to be like the best way to have a conflict. But it was a way we had designed that hunt, and so we're occasionally bugling as we go up back and forth and we're following the grizzly bears and finally they kind of veer off to the right, which is good because we want to actually veer to the left and we're, we're going up there and finally we get a bugle and I mind you, this is a rifle rut hunt the Bob has rules where, once you're like September 15th, you can start hunting the Bob with a rifle for all species.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So we're, we're in there rifle rut hunting and these elk and the Bob haven't. They really don't hear anybody, especially when you're 40 miles in. Not even the outfitters, you know they only, they only get to go to these places with a few, you know a few clients that'll even are willing to get there. So they have clients and they have clients like us that are like all right, we're willing to go do whatever. So we get in and we get set up and and I'm, he's like I'm going to go 50 yards behind you and start calling. Well, we had called once or twice from there and before my buddy had ever got shot, like even close to setup, he's still walking away from us.
Speaker 2:This bull pops out on the other side of a meadow at 120 yards away and I, for a second I freeze because I'm I just come off of archery hunting and you're like it actually there's a little disconnect, like hey, dummy, you got a gun in your hand. Yeah, like shoot it now. So so I mean, the bull stopped almost broadside, I've got a, you know a seven mag and I pulled a trigger and my buddy yells and jumps like what the hell are you doing? And then he sees the bull running off. I'm like, hey, he was here already.
Speaker 2:You know, and so I was able to. On that second morning in the Bob you know he's probably I what I thought was a 300 inch bull, a great six point, had come strolling in and these bulls in the Bob, like I said, were just, they don't hear people, so they hear a cow on a on a year there. They were using full motion, you know, trying to come to come get it. That that you know, and so I shot him. You know he piles up and very hot still. So, my, we get them all broken down in grizzly country, like you're trying to keep blood off of you cause you have to spike out with 1,000 cubs 200 yards from your dang tent, and so I do a bunch of stupid stuff, like set the head down next to my tent, you know bloody neck and it's just like you just aren't thinking.
Speaker 2:Well, my buddy says in the morning I'm going to ride all the meat with the meals and horses back to base camp. I want you guys to hunt, you know, around this mountain and then down to the main trail and I'll pick you guys up, you know, around lunch, you know noon or one. So it was a very sleepless night cause I realized that all the dumb stuff I did with blood and the grizzlies being as close, and so me and my buddy take off, get a bull to respond real quick, sounded more like a donkey than an elk Like, and I would have never thought it was an elk if it hadn't responded like very quick to to my, you know, calls. And they did it again. We run down the hill, call him in. It's a very, a real small, you know rag horn. So we kind of let it go and we get, we get going around the corner and I get another bull to answer and this thing sounds big. But we, you know, even with rifles in our hand, we can't figure out like we got brush in our way and and we called him for probably an hour and we're like gosh, dang it. And so I can remember we we ended up taking a break, having our lunch and and messing around and we get going kind of there's a mountain like a knob, I would say, to our right and we're kind of working around it, keeping it to our right, and then we get to the edge and we got to go down.
Speaker 2:Well, we're kind of working our way too and we're as we're going, we see a big rock, maybe a hundred yards ahead of us, start rolling down the hill. And I say big like a, you know maybe a 50, 60 pound rock, you know maybe 10 inches, 12 inch type rock, and it rolls. I'm like gosh, dang it. There's a, there's a freaking grizzly up here right Rolling rocks up above us looking for bugs and stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm like I do not want to deal with this. So I told my buddy, let's just walk by real, real quiet Winds coming downhill, we're going to be fine, like, if he doesn't see it or if they don't see us, we'll just walk by. And we get to about that spot and I peek up and all you can see is the body of an elk. It had obviously like rolled the rock walking on the edge of the trail and this was I had just killed a 367 bull, so I was very, very like I understood what made a big bull, and this bull was just standing there broadside my buddy still has a tag and it was the biggest bull to this day I think I've ever seen in the wild.
Speaker 2:At a hundred yards broadside my buddy, if he listens to this podcast, is going to hate me, but he completely froze Like couldn't figure out how to shoot, couldn't figure out how to get a rest and I still had my gun because I had a Mildere tag and so I'm trying to use my scope to try to like look at horns and I just like, how steady are my? Like I would not miss this bull's vitals offhand at a hundred yards. Yeah, and I remember telling my buddy, like shoot like go.
Speaker 2:But this bull literally stands there for over a minute broadside and we don't get a shot off. And then we watch him turn and walk straight up the hill and he was all of my bull plus some just.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 2:And I asked my buddy he's like I don't know. I just I don't know. You know it was kind of the answer and it was. It was interesting, like to this day, like cause he's usually pretty confident and you know, normally it would be good. I don't know what happened there, but a legit big bull. And so we end up, we, our hunt was to leave that area and go try some other stuff. So we actually never hunted him again. I think we probably could have killed him if we had stayed there. But you know, long story short, my buddy had killed a bull, more of a raghorn, a couple of days later, you know later in the hunt. And then we I was able to go up and kill a really old, you know mule deer, way back in there, you know, navigating a bunch of cliffs early in the morning, got up into a crazy basin and it was just dead. Like they were really hesitant to have us go to this basin anyways because they had what they thought was like a state record type mountain goat in this basin.
Speaker 2:So they didn't really want us to go in there deer elk hunt and cause goat, I think started, you know, october or something, or maybe that's just when the hunter was going to come in, and it was like, well, we're not going to disturb this, because we hiked in here to look at nothing all day and we're glassing, glassing. Well, my buddy, who's the guide, gets up to take a leak and kind of just walk around the ridge. Well, in that very instant this, you can start seeing a buck down below us walking, and he's going to walk 50 yards below us when I spotted him and so we're trying to like hint to him, like stay there, like do not come back, like just hang out. And he's trying to like figure out why or what. And then, about that time, I just shoot the buck at 50 yards down below us and he's like what was a good one.
Speaker 2:Like I said, yeah, it was very mature buck and so, long story short, we we were, you know, shot a buck. I have this big giant long range rifle built, you know, for this hunt kind of not specifically, but I shoot an elk at 120, I shoot a buck at 50. And yeah, I ended up being a great mature, heavy horn, you know, bob buck. And thankfully that goat was never even in that base in that morning so it didn't mess it up. And that was the last day we could hunt. And yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 2:The bob is just I don't want to put any more pressure on it Cause I know it's downhill a little bit with, with grizzly and now wolves. But man, the bob is one of the few places that really kind of turned me on to. You need to take in, like the, the experience, the adventure, the sights and sounds more just as much as the hunt. Now, don't get me wrong, I can, I can see in it, you know, admire all those things just as much, but I still want to kill an animal at the end, like that's my main goal, but like, yeah, you, that that has some value or some benefit as well as just being in cool places where you honestly felt like hey, there's just probably haven't been a whole lot of people to have walked in this place before you know it stood where I'm standing or seen this site. You know all that stuff was was pretty dang neat and yeah, there was 40 miles back, man you.
Speaker 1:It's entirely possible that you stood on some ground. No one there stood on before. Yeah, and it's just cool it was.
Speaker 2:It was smoky in the area because out fire that we had to ride around, so it made for some really cool pictures and you know it was it was. It was an adventure that I want to do again, but I haven't got a chance. But yeah, it was my, you know. We ended up killing a few other elk. Everybody killed their deer and we had a. We had a good trip and, yeah, I I Think everybody should go on an adventure like that, that you can also tie in some hunting at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome and your story actually gave me some like some like flashbacks, because I know every time I've learned this lesson, I don't do it anymore. But like I get up to pee, take your gun with you. Yeah, take your bow with you, like when you. When you said he got up to go to the bathroom, I was like, oh no, he's blowing something out.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, that's funny that every time I've ever like left my weapon out of reach is I know an animal's gonna show up, so I've stopped doing it. I have a real short story.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna piggyback. I did the opposite. So my wife had drew it, I'll cut one year and I brought my buddy along the one that froze up on the, on the big bull there and they, you know we were glassing early into the morning, you know, later into the morning and they start to get tired and bear season. We had like three more days on bear season. There was quite a bit of bear signs. I said, well, if you guys are gonna sleep, I'm just gonna take the gun down the ridge and go look off the end where these bears you know have been in that brush and I'll just kill a bear during your elk hunt. I Get probably 250 yards down the ridge and they're up there sleeping, you know, kind of taking a nap.
Speaker 2:And there's an area in this unit where it goes from very, very rugged like wilderness country to the next ridge over is logged it. The country drastically changes. On the ridge we're sitting on and so 400 yards behind us is a clear, like an old, overgrown, clear cut. Well, as I'm down there dinking around looking for bear, you can start to hear like some animals like crunching around, breaking sticks and brush across there. Well, they kind of wake up. I finally get my eyes on it and it's two of the biggest bulls I had. You know these stories all around, but like legit, a Legit 350 bull, and then a bull that dwarfs him with like kickers coming out of both swords.
Speaker 2:So just like, and there I am 250 yards away from my wife with the gun oh no and she can see I'm going across the clear cut.
Speaker 2:I can see them going across the clear cut, but I don't have this special tag to pull the trigger. And we literally watched two bulls that were definite shooters. One, a own exceptional bull Walked and they didn't run this kind of meander through the clear cut. She could have got all kinds of shots at him. My wife's a great shot. 400 yards would have been a gimme with with the rifle, but uh, yeah it was yeah, walking away taking leaks, things like. Just sometimes have a way of working against you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as soon as you do something that's going to take the opportunity away, the opportunity is going to show up like this Is how hunting works, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but just crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, jason man, this was a lot of fun. I know we got limited time, so why don't we wrap this thing up, man? Yeah, hopefully we'll have you back in the future. I know that you have a million more stories, but why don't you tell the people where they can find you? Or, if you want to, you can walk off into the sunset, whatever works for you man, we're good.
Speaker 2:So we a lot of ways to reach me. We got the Phillips game calls Instagram page, which Dirk and I still manage mostly. I've got my personal Jason Glenn Phelps Instagram page. I've now got two active Facebook accounts after two years. Um, zuckerberg somehow let me back into the original, so now I'm that guy with two Facebook accounts. I'm not that big a deal, but I'm trying to manage them both.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, you know, through our web pages, very easy to get a hold of, try to be accessible for questions or, you know, product questions or just you know, shooting the crap. I mean I love to talk and BS hunting with you as much as I can, so yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. This is a lot of fun and, like I said, your calls are great. Um, called into some big bowls with that all American pack. I'm actually gonna be connecting with Tony Gilbertson here next.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna have a bunch of your your collars on here in the next couple of weeks make.
Speaker 2:Set Tony up. Don't tell him it's coming, but ask him how he likes the impossible burgers or the beyond, the, the beyond. Just surprise him with it. He, uh, he accidentally ate. He didn't know, but he had ordered an impossible Sausage challenge at Starbucks when we were at the last trade show just a couple weeks ago and it really said? Is it really said his life back? So make sure to give him some guff about that.
Speaker 1:We'll do. I'll make sure to fit it in somewhere, man.
Speaker 2:That's pretty funny, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks again, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time and then your stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were a lot of fun. Appreciate you, michael. Have a good one you too.
Speaker 1:All right, guys. That's it. Another couple stories in the books. I want to thank, of course, jason for coming on. The podcast couldn't have done without him and he had some very enjoyable stories. That had a lot of fun and I wish we had a little bit more time and I'm sure I'll have Jason back on again in the future, especially because I own one right, because my audio quality here is not good, guys, and I apologize to you as well I did record three. This is episode two or three that I recorded this way. I will have it fixed in the future, but I apologize and bear with me while we get through my transition through some tech. So that's it, guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure you go check out Jason Phelps on Instagram. Check out Phelps game calls. They got turkey calls, deer calls, elk calls they got everything. They're pretty awesome products. I've called in some animals with them and I am not a good caller, so please check them out. Everything's in the show notes. Beyond that, guys, get out there and make some stories here. Thank you.