The Hunting Stories Podcast
Elk. Bear. Hog. Turkey. Deer and More. Hunting Stories that will make you laugh or maybe cry; real life chronicles from the field.
The Hunting Stories Podcast
Bonus Ep: The Hunting Stories Podcast, 2023 Elk recap
Join us on a thrilling ride as we revisit the incredible adventures of September's hunting escapades. Brace yourselves as we dive into an unfiltered, humorous conversation and share a chuckle with my hunting companions Pat Littrell and Jermaine Hodge, who bring a twist of fun and camaraderie to our wild adventures.
From the anticipation of drawing the tag to setting up camp, and traversing rough terrains, every detail paints a vivid picture. Toss in Pat's infamous taco dinner, and the subsequent success at the "back camp", there's enough laughter to keep you entertained. So, if you're craving a hearty laugh and an exciting hunting story, sit back, grab a drink, and get ready to be transported to the wild!
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The Bow Hitch
Jermaine Hodge
Pat Littrell
Hunting Stories Podcast
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Howdy folks, I'm your old Michael and we got a bonus episode for you today. I obviously went hunting in September and put down my first archery elk. The way that I wanted to kind of tell that story was to get all the guys that were in camp and this all just reminisce on the amazing week that we all had together. So today we have Pat LaTrell on the podcast, we have Jermaine Hodge on the podcast you got my ass telling more stories than I actually feel comfortable doing, but that's okay and then, of course, we have Armando Martinez of the Bow Hitch as kind of our bonus host or co-host or guest host. So however you want to word it, either ways, guys, that's all there is today is just kind of recapping how September went for us Having some fun, having some drinks, swearing a little bit. So if you don't like swearing, this may not be the best episode for you, but it's just how it is because we were filming camp vibes. So hope you guys enjoy.
Speaker 1:If you haven't already, give Pat and Jermaine and the Bow Hitch all follows on Instagram. Check out what they're doing. They're all of the surprising stuff. I put links to everything in the show notes, but that's it, guys. Let's go ahead and kick this thing off All right fellas, welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast.
Speaker 1:How are you guys doing?
Speaker 3:Wonderful brother, let's go, let's go, yeah, man let's do this thing.
Speaker 1:All right, that's how I start every podcast. It doesn't work as well when I've got a bunch of fellas on the line here. But, man, we're here to tell the story of my first archery elk and because of that, we've got a special guest on the podcast today, someone who we're going to be telling the story to. Usually, I'm the person trying to stay out of the way and keep the story straight. Today we have Armando Armando, why don't you introduce yourself? We've been on the podcast before, but why don't you introduce yourself to the folks?
Speaker 3:Sure guys, my name is Armando Martinez. Pleasure to be here. I'm going to be moderating this mess we're about to have with each other. Just to let you know, we already did it. Cheers amongst the four of us. We're inviting you in to camp with us. We're talking stories. I'm going to call out some bullshit if I hear it.
Speaker 3:There we go, we're going to hear it, and I don't want these guys to say no, no, no, that's not what happened. We're going to hear Some guy cited the story and then we'll hear the other and you guys decide for yourself what actually happened. How about that? Perfect?
Speaker 1:Perfect man, perfect Well, armando, I'm glad to have you. Let's go next to Patrick Luttrell. You've never been on the podcast before. Why don't you introduce yourself, buddy? I am Pat.
Speaker 2:I follow Jermaine Brown.
Speaker 1:He is the Robin Jermaine's Batman. We can say that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I try to be that. Try to be that guy.
Speaker 1:No, pat, come on, give yourself a little credit. Give yourself some do.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest. I am, though Jermaine's my hunting partner, my battle buddy. He's taught me everything about hunting. So, yeah, that's it. I mean, a lot of my adventures and a lot of animals on my wall are on the wall because of the guy I hunt with. So the success I've had on my own it's been limited because of the amount of time I own. I'm always trying to be in the woods with my brother, so I have to give him mad props, and I got to give him credit because without him I wouldn't, like I said, have the success that I have had, especially without calling. I've been a whole new world as well too. So I'm not new to hunting, but hey, with our little education company of Colorado Haltitude Hunters, it's been an adventure. The last six years it's been fun. Yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all that is very true, but you're selling yourself a little short still. You did little something this past year. What did you do?
Speaker 2:I won the 2023 Rocky Mountain Up Foundation's Men's Division Elk Calling Championships. So there we go, there we go. That did happen in July in Montana, big sky Montana. So very lucky, blessed, happy and again, a lot of that's due to my mentor helping me learn how to do that, how to talk to Elk in the woods, and how to do it on the stage as well too. So I would be where I am today, at least in the hunting world, without my brother Jermaine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I'll agree with everything you're saying there, but you are something to fuss yourself. I saw you fall harder than anyone I've ever seen fall and you got up and kept going, man, during this hunting season. So you're more than you're giving yourself credit for.
Speaker 2:Remember that.
Speaker 4:I remember following with Jermaine.
Speaker 1:You felt twice oh man, I ate a pad with Jermaine up on that.
Speaker 2:Overlook Rock.
Speaker 1:Okay we'll get there, we'll get there.
Speaker 2:We're talking about when we came down from it was so bad. So yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, Jermaine, why don't you introduce yourself if Pat hasn't already?
Speaker 4:I think he's done enough for me. I appreciate it, Pat.
Speaker 2:Hey man, I got to get props to my brother.
Speaker 4:Yeah, michael, I think a lot, of a lot of the viewers probably already know me. My name is Jermaine Hodge, originally from North Carolina, and I think what? What are my number seven or six of your first seven and currently, second most downloads.
Speaker 1:So everyone listening, go listen to his. If you haven't, let's get your main to number one. You're number four, so let's also get people on there for Armando's episode there you go.
Speaker 4:I appreciate everybody, but you know, honestly, Elkutton is what I love to do. I love to do a lot of different hunts but Elkutton is what I love to do and hopefully some of these stories tonight inspire you to kind of get behind your fitness, get behind your elk calling, get behind the game, so you can improve yourself in the woods and not only that, learn a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 1:Perfect man. So thank you guys for coming on. Hopefully we have a lot of fun here. I don't know why we wouldn't, considering how much fun we had during elk season. But I'm going to kick this thing off.
Speaker 1:Normally I don't get to tell too many of the stories, but we're going to start this one off with when I tricked Jermaine basically into bringing me into hunting camp, because I've told us to Pat. I may have told us to to Jermaine but, like, hunting camp is a very sacred thing to me. I don't just invite anyone into camp and the fact that you invited me to camp meant a lot to me. But we're going to go back to when we recorded episode seven. So this is over a year ago, right, we recorded for like four hours. It took me a long time to edit that episode down to like an hour and a half. Either way, when it got all said and done, we were talking about units I didn't draw and just miscellaneous elk hunting stuff. We're just having a good time. I think you had probably 10 blue moons while we were talking.
Speaker 4:Oh hey, yes, I had plenty, but what I will tell you is, during the four hours, even though you're talking to somebody on the phone, you start to learn each other and you start, you know, kind of learning some something about somebody and their passion with it. And I felt that with you and that's why I was like you know what I'd like this dude to camp any day, and there it is. I appreciate that's the reason why Michael was at camp.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that, Jermaine. Well, so basically I told you what units I put in for and I had no reason to pick these units other than I didn't want to fall into the limbo of like in Colorado, past eight points to like 20 points, there's nothing. So I was like I got to use these points. So I found a unit, picked it Next thing. I know you're telling me that's my unit, that's mine.
Speaker 4:That's mine.
Speaker 1:And so Jermaine, being the generous man that he is, says hey, if you draw that unit next year, I will take you out and I'll tell you what. I wrote that shit down because I was like this guy is one of the world's most well-known championships.
Speaker 1:I was like I've had too much to drink too. Never mind Jermaine having too much to drink. I had too much to drink. I was like I'm not going to forget this. So you know, whatever I come to the Western Hunt Fest wearing the shirt today, show up, get you some. I think Jermaine brought you a bottle of whiskey, armando brought you a bottle of wine. I was just happy to know you guys. I was thankful for you guys, for helping me kick this podcast off, because you guys are not you were there, pat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you drank at least half that bottle. It was Eagle Rare, it was.
Speaker 4:It was. It was Eagle Rare, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was good. So you guys are beyond the caliber of what I deserved as a brand new podcast. So thank you guys. I just wanted to thank you guys.
Speaker 1:But next thing, you know, jermaine, I draw the tag, I hit you up and I'm like, hey, remember me, remember me. And I think the first thing I said to you is like you know, when we last time we talked, you promised this and I'm not going to hold you to it because I know how much you had to drink, but I would love to hunt with you, because I got this tag and you were like let's go, yeah, and we immediately jumped on some phone calls, we immediately started sharing pins and I started planning trips, because at this point, once I put in, I lived in Colorado and I drew in Colorado and then I moved to Texas, so I had planned a trip up. I was like I'm going to go scouting, You're going scouting, we're putting up cameras and you know it was everything I could have hoped for. It was awesome. So thank you for just keeping your word. Man, oh man.
Speaker 4:No, that's the least I could have done. I you know, honestly, I'm so happy that this one happened, because not only did I already knew you were going to be good at you know a good person at camp and stuff like that, but during the time that I was there to help out, you were all open ears. And that's maturity, because if you don't have somebody that pays attention to certain things, then they won't learn. If they know it all, then they never. They never learn anything, they just know it all. Right. But if you have a person that says I'm going to learn every day that I'm here, whether this happens or not, and then I'm going to take the best from whatever this comes out to be, and you, you were just a sponge soaking it all in I'm glad we were able to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun. Either way, let's fast forward a little bit because I want to start getting you guys involved with some of this story. That was just me tricking Jermaine and bringing me along. So now we come to hunting camp and so Jermaine's like hey, my buddy Pat drew a tag. The Pat, you got a tag for the same unit.
Speaker 2:I didn't draw, well, okay.
Speaker 1:Potato, potato. Right, yeah, you, you, you. You found it in the leftover drawer the, the, what is it called? What's the what?
Speaker 2:is that. Preview limited to transition, where the tags go from preview to the leftover, and you gotta be the fastest clicker, and that was the fastest clicker.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's the fastest clicker in the West and I've actually gotten that tag twice doing that, so I do have the bracket. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Your wife loves you for that.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So either way, jermaine's like I can't come up till you know the fourth. Or whatever. The season starts on the second. He's got work, he's like, but my boy, pat, will be there. So I'm like well, if Pat's hunting, I'm hunting like I don't need to acclimate anymore, let's just get up there and get going. So I roll into camp and man, I mean we met what five minutes before that. Like, what were you thinking when I rolled in man?
Speaker 2:Let's fight.
Speaker 3:Armando go, yeah, let's get this set up. So you guys are hunting in Colorado, right? Yeah? Yes, sir, okay, so you're hunting in Colorado. And then the other question that I had is what so? What's camp? You pull into camp. What is camp? Where are you at? You're the forest, you guys in a tent, you got a camper. What are you walking into?
Speaker 2:Well, I could, I could, I could tell you camp. How I got picked was just complete random availability. We have a couple of spots where we have a spot that we'd like to set up camp and we have the last couple of years we've had buddies get the same tag. I was lucky last year to pick it up on the leftover and then Jermaine also had a tag last year we filmed, you know his, his hunt, you know for for Phelps and them.
Speaker 2:But this year we tried to get that same location but we had to just kind of take what was available as opening weekends, like Memorial Day weekend, I think, is what it was. So we ended up picking a spot We've never camped at. It's very open, fairly close to one of the main drags or main roads that we would use to kind of hit different spots. So camp wasn't as traditional but it was pretty open, pretty open area. Backdrop you know you're looking kind of, you're looking East, so where the sun kind of comes up in the morning, beautiful landscape, open area. It was a grass that kind of roll into what would be the elk territory, these big, big mountains.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you're able to kind of see some of the spots that we've gotten into. You can kind of see the ridges where I was able to kill last year and Jermaine killed, and some other spots. We've had a lot of success and Jermaine's had success in the past was, you know, we've way before I even started hunting this area with them, so you know it worked out great open area for a starlink later.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was just a good camp. The only thing it sucked about it was that people always drove down into the dead end. They drive down with their little dirt bikes and four wheelers and turn around and dust up the area a little bit, but it is what it is. We made it work. We kept that spot for the entire season.
Speaker 3:So you set up camp, then Pat.
Speaker 2:Well, I just set up my camper, I just pulled my camper in, camper in, okay. And then we have some other guys that have been a part of the camp even well, well longer than I've ever been a part of the camp that they came in and set up their tags. We had a good friend named Eidelberg who you know I set up his. He had traditional stage in a tent and has camp kitchen stuff like that, and then the Abird and then of course Jermaine.
Speaker 2:Usually was set up a tent as well, but I've been talking and working on him over the years to stay in the camper, so he's turning slowly into a glamper now, kind of.
Speaker 3:That's what happens when you invite him into your bed in the middle of the night.
Speaker 4:That's what happens. That's what happens. He has nice room in there.
Speaker 2:He likes the furnace. He'll actually be borrowing the camper for this other of coming. So there you go, all right.
Speaker 3:So okay, so you roll into camp and you go in and you're going to meet this guy. You shook his hand once. Yeah, basically that was it.
Speaker 2:I actually shook his hand once. The Western hunt fest. So what?
Speaker 1:it was Western hunt fest we were at, yeah, very first. You remember it because you drank half that bottle of whiskey.
Speaker 2:It was me, Jesse and Jermaine. Yeah, I was like I'm not sure I'm hanging out, but yeah. When I first met Mike he was down to earth, just really you know open guy. We hit it off right away. Funny, just respectful, you know, expressed his value, you know and just happy to be a part of the camp. And you know we validated that and Mealed and went to bed and hit it hard the next morning.
Speaker 4:That's kind of what we deal with.
Speaker 2:You know he might me, michael and our camera guy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, man. So day one we get out there, we hike, we get into the main spot, which I know that Jermaine's mentioned the name, that he's called it, and it's not going to burn anything but Serena's Hill.
Speaker 2:Serena's Hill. That's his wife.
Speaker 1:He said that on his podcast and that you're not going to find that on any map, so we're not going to burn nothing here.
Speaker 4:No, we're not going to find that on any maps, so yeah, so we roll into Serena's Hill and Cricket's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really quiet.
Speaker 2:It was one of those spots that we wanted to check. We actually had some cameras in there and we saw some good, some good bulls early a couple of weeks, even up to a week before the season started. So we wanted to get in there and check it and that's kind of what we did the first couple of days. You know, jermaine always wants to brag about pulling a win. Put Jermaine Hodg and.
Speaker 2:but I'm just saying it took a little bit of pre-scouting to find the hell and then I was able to get it off, but yeah, but anyway we went into Serena's Hill and we started heading up and got up high and worked even back to what we call Jurassic Park and we worked a little bit of that as well Did the big loop came all the way down. Wasn't a lot of fresh sign in there and then we didn't hear anything. So we definitely had to change, change our game for the evening. But that was a good. About five, six mile loop we did, yeah, pretty good for a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some grouse scared the shit out of us, but other than that it was unbent full. Yeah, yeah, other than you needing some like blister band-aids Okay.
Speaker 2:We're going to move on. We go back to camp midday.
Speaker 1:We're like all right, let's find something more interesting. You take us to a place that you guys call back camp Again not burning anything, just what you guys call it. We get back there and we're calling walking. What happens?
Speaker 2:Was that one? The one sounded off.
Speaker 2:That was King Big Balls my guy, oh yeah, big boy, yeah. So again pretty quiet and we kind of work over a nice little saddle into and drops into this, these big drainages, moose kind of really moosey area, and I know from previous hunts that that's an area that we've seen a lot of elk especially just coming out naturally and just kind of feeding and watering. And I think we got to the top of the hill and I just just our normal you know cow, cow, cow, cow, cow bugle, he sounds off, we look out there and he's a big six by seven I think we kind of with a gnarly you know gnarly end of his one of his horns was all like rain.
Speaker 1:Well, let me slow you down. So we hear, we hear ripping. Right, we hear ripping, so we all get in place. Maybe we should have thought more about this, because he was 500 yards away and we set up across a giant field, right?
Speaker 4:There's no way he's coming.
Speaker 1:We can see him. He's in the field, he's 500 yards away and he's ripping and we're all talking and we're like, well, he's got this massive left side right and the right side. We're like, no, it's broken off. He broke off his right side and like, well, that doesn't make much sense because it's it's September 2nd, but he's not. He's not sparring yet. Why? Why would that thing be broken off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a spike running with him.
Speaker 1:So we don't really, we don't really know what's going on. We're like this is a weird looking bowl. So I I dropped down into the, the opening of the valley of the camera guys with me. You're up there just ripping mugles trying to get in him and he's, he's responding. You know he's calling back, he's having a good time. But when we get better eyes on him, it's that right side is like a. It's like a moose paddle, almost right it's a. It's super thick and like at one point, what eight is palmated, palmated, yeah, so it's a super unique like it's it's two, two, I would almost say two feet shorter than on the left side, but it's just as big. Like he was a monster, just a monster, and he was having fun ripping back at us, but he never really made any any movement towards us.
Speaker 2:I was trying to look at the picture of him. It was like kind of yeah, no, I can't see it.
Speaker 1:No, I'll put it on. Send it to me. We'll put it on Instagram. We're not using the video for anything anyways.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, big boy, we did try to make quick move and I think if we had a just a little more, it was like last light, last light. We saw him start to move off slowly. I don't know if he just didn't like. I think I saw her, saw, seeing him sound off. When I started breaking a little bit just trying to get him going. He just wasn't, he just wasn't having it. The wind we had good wind, so I know he didn't see us or smell us, but we tried to make a play and cross the creek, get down below him, you know, based on what the thermals were doing, and we tried to cut him off, very similar to what we did on success of your, of your hunt, on your kill. And we got close, I think we heard the spike but, like I said, we just lost light. So we figured, hey, we back out, you know, and try to get back on the next day. And that's kind of what kind of the game we tried to play.
Speaker 4:But again very early very early and you know, one we did kind of. Was that still the? Of course, for everybody that doesn't know that, I was not there until the fourth of September, so he's like no, didn't die, Just make sure I wasn't there Everyone knows, yeah, that awkward. What, uh, what date was this? The first was this opening day, opening day, opening evening. Nice, nice.
Speaker 2:So right, but first day we got lucky, as we were from one extreme to the other, from one side of the unit to the other, but to back camp, and that's kind of when we started realizing how back camp was really on fire the whole season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So then we go back to camp. We hike back in the dark, get back to camp. Pat makes me easily the worst taco I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 2:What. That was not a bad time it was. It was so bad. I love that.
Speaker 1:Like you didn't. You didn't even take the grease out of the pan, you just. You were like here's a tortilla, I'm not even going to warm it up, I'm going to throw a bunch of beef in there. It's going to grease all over you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Pat.
Speaker 4:I've been holding that one tight close to the chest until now, but I'm going to throw a bunch of tacos, tacos in camp or burritos in camp. It just doesn't work. Good, I'm just letting you know. Amanda might have something else to say about it, but I'm going to tell you right now for me, no man, I need that grease.
Speaker 2:I need that grease special to all the miles.
Speaker 1:That grease loops me up and that's where the problem lied.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to tell you right. I was sitting there. I'm just like all right, all right I don't want tacos for camp. I get it no no, we can do tacos. Let's just just put a little more loving care into those tacos. And I will say Pat cooked some real good meals throughout camp, but the tacos that night, that night after the night before I cooked you filet mignon. He did potatoes and onions Like that was pretty good, that was all right it was hard left to your tacos.
Speaker 3:But we're going to go on to day two.
Speaker 1:We're going to go on to day two.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you helped me remember all this stuff, man, okay.
Speaker 1:Suck a taco, all right. You don't suck a taco. You just had a bad day. You just had a bad day. It's tired. Day two we go up to the top of this pass and we hike all goddamn day and nothing. We don't see any hunters, we don't see any elk.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, okay, we don't see anything.
Speaker 1:I won't name the past because again, I don't want to burn the pot, but I will say that Pat put me through the most. It just sucks that they sucked you were. You took us through. Every patch of bare brush you could possibly take is through you took a bare brush of like baby aspens, where the trees are one feet apart and I'm not a one foot apart kind of guy. That was a tough. That was a tough morning.
Speaker 2:Well, again, like we're trying to, we knew where elk were. I said we weren't leaving out to find out, but we knew that that back camp was a good spot, especially for evening. Eventually you'll go back to back camp and you'll kill your bull in the morning, but it was kind of those things where it's like, hey, we kind of know where that's at. They didn't see any anyone really back there and it was kind of like hey. I mean, my mindset was, hey, let's go check out another spot. We've gotten into a lot of elk. We've had even success in killing a lot of elk. Let's just check it off the list. So when I knew when Jermaine got there, this was my logic when Jermaine got there, I want to give him as much intel. I want to give him as much intel as I possibly can. So that's kind of reason why we did. We hit that area on day two morning knowing we had back camp in our back pocket for the next evening, which you almost killed in two, you almost killed two.
Speaker 2:So we really stayed into. I don't even know what we want to call it, just the pass. Right, we call it the pass and we I really wanted to dive in there deep. Stay high Wasn't a lot of sign Usually that's that places on fire especially early and we even dropped down and started working the lower stuff too. We gave it some time to pass, let the thermals change, drop back down really low, and that's where we got into that nasty ask them to pass.
Speaker 2:We were actually down almost below where Brad killed and from years past Jermaine, but worked that whole area, Like I said, right right right, where a lot of elk, where all we see is a good sign and stuff, especially on the other side of that aspen patch, but we didn't have a ball out there.
Speaker 1:That was another good five, five plus mile day morning and this is actually Jermaine mentioned something, and this is where the first time I heard it which is you know, we we've been going for a few hours, five plus miles, and you look at your phone and you go God damn it. And you're like Jermaine just said, it's okay, it's okay that you're not seeing anything, cause if you want to win, you put your main in Text text that got.
Speaker 4:That's Friday night lights. That's Friday night.
Speaker 2:You want to win, you want to win.
Speaker 4:No, you want to win.
Speaker 2:You want to win First day first year we went to world Elkhon championships 2019. We had shirts made for Koha and on the back of his shirt he said mind guys, say you want to win, put Haji. And he ended up winning and wearing that shirt too. So I the saying is gold, the saying is gold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were like that's pretty good, Like you, that's son of a bitch. Like I can't you're like, but he's probably right. No, he's not right.
Speaker 2:We would have got it done. If you couldn't make it, I had you, dude, we were checking boxes, you almost got that evening night, the night of day two. You almost got it done.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, okay, well then, so we, we get out of the past, we head back to camp or like, all right, let's go back to back camp. We know, we named him. I wanted to name him King something. You want to name him something with balls? So we named him King. I don't know. We were like, let's go back, have a look at King big balls. Pat is big boy. Yeah, yeah, what, what? What happened on day two?
Speaker 2:Well, from what I recalls, we just basically we got in there earlier, so that way we gave ourselves some more time, cause, like I said, last time we were in there was like last last light when we're getting that one spot, cause we really worked the terrain Way before we got to what we call like our lookout point and I think we even saw, I think I we walked up on an elk, just kind of walked up on on three elk. We were walking in calling.
Speaker 2:We didn't do any setups or dry setups? You're nothing. Yeah, we walked in on like just like a rag horn and like two calves Right Just standing there, like it almost like they were standing sleeping.
Speaker 2:It was weird, they weren't moving. I've seen them Like that before on another spot where we just we walked past the cow just like at 70 yards and wind was good, she didn't smell us or see us, but just standing there like like a ghost, like they didn't even move or nothing. It was really, really weird. So a lot of elk in there, though, a lot of elk in there. We kind of we just bypassed him cause he was little. He did eventually move off and then we just kind of worked back to that same lookout when we saw a palethora of animals hanging around and we saw a lot of elk and we saw a lot of elk, and we saw a lot of elk and we saw a lot of elk, a palethora of animals hanging out.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. I've never seen more animals in my life in one particular draw.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, jermaine's big moose was hanging out in there. That big cow there was a.
Speaker 1:No, but it was a.
Speaker 2:It was a cow with a calf, but the calf was like huge, like it was huge, like full grown and the cow was massive.
Speaker 1:And then beyond that, then we were looking into the draw and we see what like a bowl and like three or four cows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, elk. And then then I think about seven or eight cows came out above them, so a lot of elk. And obviously we had good win and I didn't. I didn't call this time we. We came with the plan. I was like, hey, just get out there, work up on it, use the, use the terrain. You and our cameraman Zach went out there and it started working, working a bull, and it was exciting. So it was. I think it was me and Jared. We set Jared, I sat back and kind of commentated and watched the whole thing Kind of unplanned and unfolding, and the bullet kind of worked to the far right where other plan was maybe move around the right and try to drop it on, but the wind was, you know, the thermals were coming down, so that wouldn't have actually wouldn't have worked at all for us. So kind of what we did was kind of the best play and, I believe it or not, I felt like you would have killed that elk, which is he was a nice, I was, he was a bigger five by four.
Speaker 4:Yeah, five by five, five by four, five by five five by four, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know I mean definitely a shooter. I mean I would have shot him, jermaine me not. But you know, I definitely would have shot him. But you were working that bull and just kind of just working in closer and closer and let's, let's go into a little bit more detail, right?
Speaker 1:So, like this is a, this draw is what? 200 yards across and a mile long, so it's a big open draw and it is swampy.
Speaker 4:It's more. It's more than a mile.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, no, it's just a mile until it turns left right, it goes way but a mile as far as you could see, and then, who knows, from there Right, so at the top, where there's a whole herd of cows and to the left of the little stream that runs down the middle is the bull, moose and the cow.
Speaker 1:To the right of the river is the elk and the. That's like three or four cows. So we're like, well, let's go, let's be aggressive. So me and me and Zach, we just go straight. Like we're like we're not going to go any, like we're going to that bear brush is tall enough we can hide a little bit. So we just go straight to the bull. And it's probably 500 yards, you'd say yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean you guys worked in I know I think you worked in within more than 70 yards, 80 yards, of the elk or the bull.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think the last time I arranged him I was at like 80 or so.
Speaker 2:And the palest榭 is close to it. If you guys aren't finished 30 yards yet and your in the reaction to the bull. It was the way you're looking at it. Which was really interesting is Jared and I were sitting there watching this. We're sitting watching and we're just watching. We were filming footage of it, everything on our phones and so we actually were able to get still closer to get good footage. We're watching. He walked right by a cow that had no idea was there and she didn't even get up. I just see like this huge, big black animal coming from right, right behind where this big like cow and this bull is, and I'm looking up and I'm like, oh my God, that's that stupid moose and it's her calf. Or like walking in right on this bull and they scared the bull. The bull freaks out, the cow busts, the bull runs up the hill and I'm just sitting there watching going. I can't believe I'm watching all this.
Speaker 2:That same cow that was way over here to the left that big freaking loop and came all the way back around as you were working that, working to close ground on that bull and just drew in the whole thing for you. And then of course that's when I started calling to try to see if I could bring him back and maybe get a shot. I don't know, but that's when we had like this barking competition between me and this other cow and a calf that were all separated and it was kind of it was just awkward, it was a really awkward situation, hey.
Speaker 3:Michael. Yes sir, let me interrupt real quick. You mentioned a cameraman. Yeah, what's the cameraman recording for?
Speaker 1:I'll let Paddy Jermaine throw that one.
Speaker 2:They were just basically gathering footage for us, because we're just trying to get as much good footage as we can for COA for. Colorado Outdoor and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't any other purpose other than just getting some good footage for us. We have a really good editor, a main cameraman, that does a great job in producing film. He did our last film for us. So we're just, like I said, trying to get as much good footage for him to maybe put something together for us, for our own socials. So that's kind of what we were using before.
Speaker 3:Michael, had you ever hunted with a cameraman before?
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 3:OK, so totally different, right? I mean, it's a different ball game.
Speaker 1:But I'll also tell you this cameraman had never cameraman before. So we were like, whatever, let's see Him, and I were like let's just keep moving forward, like let's not let one of us had a clue what to do, but he did a great job.
Speaker 2:Yes, he is a hunter. Yes, ok, he stepped in for three days and he did a great job. He did a really good job for us and got good footage. He got a lot of elk on footage, even when Jermaine showed up. Even more elk on camera. So he had a lot more success than me being cameraman, especially more than Jermaine being cameraman. Jermaine's the worst cameraman ever. That dude can't film anything.
Speaker 4:I'm not.
Speaker 3:But, armando man, we got some footage, we got some footage of my friend, my hunting buddy.
Speaker 1:Jared got some footage and Pat he got some cell phone footage of them, like literally zooming in on me with a cow elk like 30 yards to my left.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's coming at me no idea.
Speaker 1:No idea and they're like oh no, like it's the commentary I'm going to hopefully we'll see, I'll post it on Instagram or something, but hilarious footage. Also, one of my favorite parts of the entire day was like Pat had a mic on him. I had a mic on me and Pat was so worried about what he said in that mic Because he forgot that he had the mic on him. So he's like I hope I didn't say anything. I hope I didn't say anything, but like I hope.
Speaker 1:I didn't insult Jermaine Because Jermaine's not there. He's like Jermaine's going to watch this footage. God, it was so funny.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is my word. I wonder how Jermaine would have handled this stuff, how he would have approached the situation. I was like, would he have let Michael go out there and not try to call in this bull? I'm like I don't think so. I think Jermaine would have tried to call him in and try to work him and maybe it'd have been too aggressive, I don't know. And I was like, oh crap, is this thing recording? And I was like oh no.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the yeah.
Speaker 4:Me-lead. Me-lead.
Speaker 3:Hey, hey, tough story guys. We lost all the footage. He didn't push record, Right.
Speaker 4:It's so funny.
Speaker 2:We found out because of how far they were away. I did a lot of this stuff, even with the funny commentary about like oh no, here comes the moves. So no, there's a count. Oh god they don't see the count Funny stuff here.
Speaker 3:Sorry guys, I just wanted to clarify what this guy was recording for If he had any skills no, no, man, it's kind of kind of to get the picture here so this guy's basically just following you. He's trying to record bestie cat.
Speaker 1:OK, yeah, yeah, literally I turn around every like 50 yards and I'm like I don't know, you OK.
Speaker 4:Like, should I keep going?
Speaker 1:Can you see, like I don't know what to do, and he's like I don't know, and so we both just keep pushing.
Speaker 3:They look back and I go keep going Wow, we can't see you.
Speaker 1:We're too far at this point. We're like hundreds of yards from you, but we're just like.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like the bull's still there, the cows can't see us and the next thing we know that one cow spooks from the sides, which again we have hilarious footage of Pat and my buddy Jared just being like no, she's right there. Because, they're slightly elevated, they could see everything. And they're having a great time. They're just laughing in these videos.
Speaker 2:Hey, we got an elk. Though, we got an elk.
Speaker 1:We got an elk.
Speaker 2:No, we got an elk.
Speaker 1:Never mind you, I get to 70 yards on this bull, and that's when the moose came in from the back.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Spook it. The bull pushed the cow to the other side of this little creek and all of a sudden I'm in dead center of four cows barking for like 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was super slow. One of those were me. One of those were me.
Speaker 1:OK, so three elk barking, and I've never heard more barking in my entire life?
Speaker 2:Well, because that one cow that busted was like a calf and it was talking to mama. Mama was way over on his side and I was talking, and another cow is on the other ridge. We're talking. So that was the most barks I've ever heard or ever been a part of in my entire life. Usually you're like one or two or we'll bark to stop an elk. My god, we got that all on footage and that was a crazy barking.
Speaker 1:It was 30 minutes of barking, never mind the 15 other animals that were there. There were at least two moose, at least three moose, there was two cow moose and one calf, and then a whole another herd of elk up at the top of the draw.
Speaker 3:And they were barking, so we're just sitting there barking, barking, barking barking.
Speaker 2:To me. We've been proud. We had a barking competition and I won.
Speaker 1:Whatever that means, whatever that means, he did win, pat won. Hey, my bark's on point.
Speaker 4:We really don't want to have a barking competition.
Speaker 3:But if you do, you better win, OK either way.
Speaker 1:So either way, we eventually meet the camera guy, stand up, walk out and we laugh and then we're like that was ridiculous. I didn't really want to shoot that bull anyways, because I wouldn't say it was a raghorn. It was like one step up from a raghorn. But if I'm hunting I'm going to be called a champion. Ideally I don't want to shoot a raghorn.
Speaker 2:I get it.
Speaker 1:So we go back to camp and as the kids make, said earlier in the day you want to win, put Hodge in and that guy showed up that evening. Was it that evening?
Speaker 2:or that morning.
Speaker 4:The morning.
Speaker 2:It was that morning, yeah it was the morning Because you fed us your Flamin' Yons or stage, make a jambalaya that night or something, because it was only night too it was night too.
Speaker 4:This is when I interject. I don't know what really happened that night. I do know what text I sent out and I said boys be ready. I said let them boys know that I ain't playing no games. If you want to win, put Hodge in and that's exactly what I told you, and that hits me with the damn.
Speaker 4:I plan to leave the house at a certain time and I ran a little late because I had to stop at the gas station and weigh in, because I wanted to fill up, and then I got there around 5, 15 to 5, 20.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little late start. Yeah, a little bit later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we actually were like let's go, we're going to go out and hunt, and we ended up hitting you out like 10 minutes out no, maybe five minutes down the road we ran into you and turned back to camp.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So then I already had a plan to kind of work Based off the intel that I was already getting over where I wanted to go, and we went on this long journey road. I mean, this road is rocky, it is all get out and we get back to. I was playing these guys. I said, but I want to bugle my way back in because a lot of these old logging roads they created a lot of ATVs and stuff can take them. And then if you dare, like I do, take your truck in some of those areas, you can. You can get into those roads. And then I wanted to hit some of the same areas that were hitting, but just some ridges over and I want to bounce over and run this ridge line until we found them. And then, I don't know, I said, well, I'm just taking a gamble. But based off the intel I already have, I kind of knew we were going to get into some. Milk is just a matter of you know whether we're in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 4:And we got back into an area, we worked it, couple of car sequences, nothing. And then we get back to this little saddle and we get one to sound off. And when we do get him to sound off, he sounds off like he's probably, you know, five, six hundred yards away, a little too far out of reach to call him in. But I was like, ok, we gather our info, we all get come together and by the time we start moving, one rips off. One rips off. He's like hey, where you at, and it just doesn't sound like this. It's like to me it doesn't sound like the same bull, but you never know. So we, at this point we scattered like roaches. I mean, if you cut the kitchen light on, well, that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, is this, is this the one that we tried, or is this the one? It went crazy Because we called it tried. It's the one. Ok, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 4:And we, so we're getting ready to move in the location where this bull sounded off, I'm like, yeah, send it off over this way, let's just move over this location, let's keep the wind up our favor. And then by the time we start moving and one sounds off and he's close. And I said to me in my brain I'm like this ain't the same damn bull. And but you never know. And I'm like hell and we all scattered like roaches because it happened so damn fast and I was like what? The shit and it is, you know, I remember checking the.
Speaker 3:You mean, I'm sorry. Is there five of you at this point? It's a three view cameraman and the other dude. Yeah, it's probably. Yeah one camera man.
Speaker 2:One camera man that I actually carried my bow that day. Me, michael, yeah, and then Jared came. Yeah, those five of us, ok, our interrupt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Jared was kind of this camera.
Speaker 2:Here's a little phone.
Speaker 4:And another thing people kind of shy away from is, like you know, it doesn't matter, like you can map it. Take 10, 10, 15 guys in the woods. If the wind is not right, the wind is not right, and they're also on, smell is right, but it doesn't really matter. So we got five guys out there and I'm just going to make sure I do everything possible in my power to make sure that the winds right and we can get these out. Come in and sure enough, this bull plays the game he calls. He's right there and I remember sticks cracking.
Speaker 1:He is, he's 70 yards. Yeah, not closer, I can't see him, but I can hear him.
Speaker 4:He's super close and I just remember when I checked the wind one other time I felt that wind change and it's getting not super late in the morning, probably eight ish, I can't remember exact time, like maybe seven, thirty eight ish, and I felt the wind hit the back of my neck and start blowing straight towards that elk and I'm like, wow, that helped shut completely up. But I walked over to Michael and we all come together and I was like I don't think that was the same elk. I said let's just head towards where we heard those elk on that one elk and let's just see what happens. So we start side healing, we let that out go by it didn't really sound like a big bull anyways and we let that go by him.
Speaker 1:I told Pat I said I want to pause you for a second. I want to do something out there real quick. Jermaine is is, you know, one, one shade off from a professional athlete and he shows up for rash.
Speaker 3:No, no, no no.
Speaker 1:Like this is important. This is important Like Pat and I. Pat and I, we are two thirty plus each.
Speaker 4:And Jermaine.
Speaker 1:Jermaine, what are you? One forty?
Speaker 4:One forty five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, OK, so right now.
Speaker 4:I'm probably one thirty Not right now.
Speaker 1:You ain't that, yeah, so so Jermaine shows up, fresh, fresh, fresh. Well, pat and I had put in twenty two miles in the first two days, or something like that, something crazy. And Jermaine's like all right, guys, let's go.
Speaker 1:So, never mind the fact that and this is this is for you, armando Like I remember the first morning hiking up, all I see is mountain and Jermaine's ass, because I am trying to keep up with him and I'm just thinking in my head like God bless the bow, hitch, because I am not keeping up with this man If I'm keeping the bow in my hand and like this isn't a pitch, guys, this isn't me soliciting, this is me literally being like carrying your bow sucks. It sucks, especially when you're trying to keep up with Jermaine Hodge.
Speaker 3:And I think we also need to say there's a lot of professional athletes and they have come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. What kind of professional athlete are you, Jermaine? I think this is important.
Speaker 4:Well, well, I could tell you, this is even like for me, like carrying that damn bow in your right or left hand, whatever hand you prefer, on your neck, your neck, whatever gets tired. And I don't at this point, for for the listeners, I don't have to carry my bow, I'm just helping. I just want to make sure we get coming in so these guys get an opportunity. So, yes, you're right, I come off the gate, rip it. But ours and you know Pat also I think he's one of y'all guys, if he didn't want to show him on him and I warned them, he warned us about how hard you would like us, but more so he's like when Jermaine calls, he don't talk.
Speaker 1:When you shut up, you shut up, you sit down. If he makes this look at you, he's making his look at me. He's like you. Better shut up. All right, I'm gonna shut up.
Speaker 2:Couple things like if you see him walk forward 10 feet. As we're all stopped, you don't follow him. He's just getting away from you because we're too loud, I know.
Speaker 3:I tried to teach him.
Speaker 2:So I have to Jermaine that. Look, I can see.
Speaker 4:Michael, I can see Michael doing it on the thing.
Speaker 3:So that's head tilted a little bit to the left and what my son would say is some bombastic side eye Like. You're looking at him, like do not follow him. I'm like I'm not following him. You're looking at him like do not fucking do that again, Do not. That's, that's what came across with that look.
Speaker 1:Yeah, never mind you, this is just Pat telling me this look like.
Speaker 3:I don't even know this look yet.
Speaker 1:This is just, pat, being like this is coming your way, this is coming your way, so all right, all right. So my goal of the entire trip was like there's a, there's a couple of us out here, like at any time there's four of us, sometimes five of us, and I was like, all right, I just I ain't got to be the fifth one, I ain't got to be that guy For me. I'm going to be the guy that's like not quite as loud as that guy.
Speaker 3:That was my goal. That's the answer. Don't be that. Don't be that guy.
Speaker 4:Well, I got to rewind a little bit, not just for this story. But when you're out there in the Elk Woods and you're calling me, you've learned to tune your ears into certain sounds, and it may be just a stick cracking, it may be just a moan, it may be just this little bitty cow sound. And when you start wrestling in your pockets or messing with your bag because this is that, this is that break I might need to get me some water. No, this is not the break that I'm giving you yet. This is the break of me listening, and I have. I have friends. No names Pat, that, whatever.
Speaker 4:I have learned I am the moment, finds the moments to. Oh, my God, this is the only break he's given us so far. So I'm going to dig through my pack and so I guess you're. Like that's where the cooker eyes come and I'm like I need you to be quiet just for a second because maybe the wind or whatever.
Speaker 4:But I'm listening for these little bitty hits of sounds that no one else is paying attention to. That I'm paying attention to and, yeah, that's where I get that from. And yes, pat is 100 with me for a few years, so he's learned and he gave a warning. I'm glad you gave that warning.
Speaker 2:Oh, all the details are. This is what they expect. These are the do's and don'ts. I was like, wait, wait till he bugles, and then an airplane flies by. Watch him freak out then to yelling at the airplane. I've seen this.
Speaker 4:I can't stand it.
Speaker 2:No down, because the damn airplane just kept going circles.
Speaker 3:That's how it is.
Speaker 4:So we, we bypass that elk and we start side healing and I'm like hey, we let's, let's get into where I thought this elk sounded off. And sure enough, we get over there and I sit back. I says Pat, you stay back here. You, you can't talk with me. I'll be the only one that that goes off any bugles. I said just can't talk with me. And man, the whole hill lit up. Oh the whole, the whole hill lit up.
Speaker 1:Well, let's let's start this off real quick with the first bugle we hear. I'm just going to say I point, I look at the camera guy, look at Zach, and I'm like yes. I was like where'd that come from? And he, he points, I'm going to say northeast.
Speaker 4:And I'm like well, you know what?
Speaker 1:I think Northwest. So I point that way. Now look at your main. Now, mind you, your main told me about 10 minutes ago If I, if we get an elk, get 30 yards in between me and wherever I point, so I'm like all right. So again, camera guy, northeast, I point northwest. I look back at your main. He's pointing southwest, like what, like now we have no idea.
Speaker 4:So Go ahead. So that bull, that bull Michael, that we passed, that we passed and we left alone. I heard him up at the top. He builds now this, now, now, now, remind you the listeners, we got a couple of different bugles going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a couple of them. Oh, not at this point. We had the one and we're all.
Speaker 4:We had one Different actions, we had one. So what?
Speaker 1:I what I do? What do I do? I run my ass straight to you Because I'm like your main says 30 yards, whatever direction I'm going, so I'm like I'm running that way, I'm running southwest, just like. So I run up to Jermaine and the next thing that happens is the craziest shit that has ever happened to me in the woods.
Speaker 2:I don't know about you boys, I was above you, so I got to actually see it.
Speaker 1:I don't think I saw so. So I get to Jermaine and, as you can imagine, jermaine's 140. I'm 240. That's I'm not just a big fat guy. I'm a fair amount taller in Jermaine, so I can see right over. Jermaine and three bowls come charging into us. The first, one stops the next to run into him.
Speaker 1:And you are like ten yards, ten yards basically, directly behind Jermaine, and so they. The first one stops when it sees something who knows what, and it just is to pile up on top of it. So three Elk are piled up on top of each other.
Speaker 2:And what you didn't see, was when the first bull stops, the second bull ran his horns right into the first bull's ass Possible Him job. And then the last bull come running in and he I don't. I didn't know if he hit him, but he got real close to running. It was like a traffic jam of Elk. I think it was like 10 or 15 yards right next to you guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like an elk centipede, basically right, so they just pile up right next to us.
Speaker 2:The first one in between.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first one then runs forward and that's the one Jermaine sees, and Jermaine whispers to me. He's like knock an arrow, shoot that bull. And I'm just looking at Jermaine and I'm looking over Jermaine and I'm going.
Speaker 1:I can't hey it's like what do you mean? You can't. And I'm like there are two more bulls, and the one that ran forward was the smallest. So I'm like, look at the big bulls, like probably two 300 inch bulls and maybe, you know, like a two. I don't know how to judge them. What am I saying? Either way, I'm like I can't do it. And he's like why? And I'm like there are two bulls directly behind you.
Speaker 1:Directly behind you. Jermaine, you know people can't see this, but he's like all of a sudden he's standing real tall and looking slowly to his left trying to see these elk, these elk Like ten years sitting there like I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do, jermaine, coach me coach me.
Speaker 4:Yes, hey, I cannot deny this. He says I can't and I was like what do you mean you can't?
Speaker 3:I'm like dude, this bull is right here and I he said I couldn't see the bull that you could see.
Speaker 1:We're, I mean, we're three, four feet apart. I couldn't, I couldn't see anything on that bull you told me to draw on.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and and sure enough, the the bull that was directly to my left is the one that Michael could see, and that bull was close to 300 inches. He was nice it was.
Speaker 4:And so I'm slowly turning my head to see what he could see, and I go eyeball to eyeball this elk. He's ten yards. I'm like, holy smokes, this elk is right here in our lap. And then directly behind him and this is accredited to the story that Pat was telling you like the centipede of the elk jam right behind him was another bull and I could barely see him out of court, like my peripheral view, and I'm like, holy smokes, these elk are right on top of each other. And I was like, oh my God, we got two hunters here and we can't make a shot on any of these elk. I was like.
Speaker 2:I was like I was 30 yards up, but I was just slightly behind you guys so I could have drawn, but then I would have to shoot right past you guys, so I was like, no, I didn't draw my bow. But yeah, we both were worst case scenario and the whole scenario like at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got three bulls in ten yards and we can't pull the trigger.
Speaker 2:The two guys of bows, three nice bulls right there, and it is just so either way, they all bust.
Speaker 1:They all bust, right.
Speaker 4:They all bust out, they all bust out. And then you know what's funny, Armando is they bust out, but they have no clue, like what we were. It smells like they had no clue. Literally minutes later, we start walking.
Speaker 1:No like one minute later.
Speaker 4:Yeah, one minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I go from Germain back to my bag, which again was like ten yards down hill, because, remember, germain points, I go 30 yards.
Speaker 4:that way, that's the rules.
Speaker 3:So I left my bag down there.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get my bag. So I dropped down to the bag and I'm picking my bag up and next thing I know I'm getting hit in the face with a pine cone from our camera guy. He's throwing pine cones at me. There's another bull that came in silent and so I turn around. This bull's like in the same spot as the other bulls. If Germain had a bow, germain kills that bull and this is a raghorn. Nothing, nothing great it's you know. But whatever, pat, what are you doing at this moment?
Speaker 2:Well, I moved down closer to Germain because I was like well, I'm going to stand right next to Germain. Because I'm standing next to Germain, I know Elk are going to come to him, if not, if you can cut him off. So I'm standing literally like maybe 10 feet from Germain, and sure enough, I thought it was two bulls.
Speaker 1:Was it just one? No, just the one, that time At that point. Here's the one there's one more coming, but just that one right then.
Speaker 2:Our bull comes down and he's at like 10 yards again and there's, I pulled my bow, I go full draw.
Speaker 2:I look back at Germain Germain's all excited you get it right there and I'm like okay, I'm looking and all I have is like this little window, like that, and it's just the black part or the dark part of his neck. So I'm like I don't got no vitals yet and he just needed to take like three more steps or like two more steps and he would have had a nice shot. Well, he ended up busting and ran path through my window. I could have sent it, but I was like I just didn't want to wound an animal, but anyway he ran up the hill.
Speaker 2:Germain stopped him and I had no shot. And all of that was in the matter of minutes. It was just two minutes total. All of that, and never mind the fact.
Speaker 1:If you had shot. I was on the opposite side of you and all I could see was his guts and I kept trying to rotate. But as I rotated he rotated, and so I didn't have a shot of that bull either. So next thing I know I'm dropping. Okay, go back to my bag, cause that was where I was going back to the first place.
Speaker 1:Everyone else is congregating cause they're like well, that was crazy. Four bowls in one minute, game over, like that was crazy. And I'm like shut up, there's another bowl and I see a bowl about 50 yards downhill Just chilling behind a bunch of brush, Like I can see his body, his head. I can't really see his antlers, I don't know, I just know it is a bull. But I'm like shut up, like trying to get everyone, like from 20 yards away, trying to get everyone to like calm down cause everyone's trying to pack out, and I'm like no, there's another bowl. So we had five. Jermaine and Pat with this like double cow call, buell fest called in five bowls in like what four minutes it was. It was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 4:Six bowls, six bowls, six bowls in less than five minutes. But you know what that was telling me right then, um, that all these these bulls that are, you know we talk about, like the pre rut, the rut in in post rut. It was telling me, um, that the rut has not yet kicked off. And so I was. I'm gathering all this information, I'm putting it all in my head. So, um, just formulate and a plan for futures, right, for the future hunts of the days in the in the future, because if you could formulate this stuff prior to the next day, then you can come up with a good game plan going into the next day. But if you ain't gathering all this information and learning something from it, then you, it is walking in the woods carrying your bow, but, um, the whole time it was, it was telling me that, all right, we're not in the swing of the rut yet. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the truth, by the way. So what we pack out, we we hike around the rest of the day.
Speaker 3:So so. So all these bulls come in. I want to hear what kind of trash talking like? How did we not kill a fight? What are these five bulls? Well, who was talking shit? Tell me there, somebody did I.
Speaker 4:Don't know. Honestly, we, we all kind of collectively gathered our head around everything, and this is just my side of the story. They could tell theirs. But I collectively let, gathered my head around it and I was like, wow, it should have been one bull killed out of that group, at least one. But then once you, you, you look at the whole like schema things, you're like there was no shot. There was no shot. Yeah, pat could have slung one across us, but I would have been so mad at Pat. And then, yeah, he probably would have shot that bull. But that's not the Right thing to do.
Speaker 2:It was good ethical hunting and you know we could have forced some shots, but I think we did the right thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right off yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, we yeah.
Speaker 1:We hike from where we are at the top of the ridge down to the valley and we see more sign that, like I've been hunting Belk for eight years, I saw more sign at the bottom of that ridge coming down to that valley than I'd seen the other seven years combined. It was absolutely.
Speaker 4:Oh, there's so many rubs, so many rubs at just everything you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 2:We hike out and I was that and I was all at back camp.
Speaker 4:Hey, yeah, so so check this out. Another thing, too is on our way out. We see these spikes. It's about 10 30. We see two more spikes in the meadow. Just chillin Was it three who ran off and then a smaller one? Yeah, yeah, that's right. So we seen three more spikes out in the meadows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:It was so many elk that day. And then I get back to the truck. We get back to the truck after actually hold on, skip a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1:Remember we found that giant pile of blood.
Speaker 4:Yes, I didn't remind myself. We walked up on this saddle and this saddle dives us down to the road and the road we have to walk the road back. And we walked back to this, get up to the saddle and, literally right where we're gonna take a break, I see some blood. I'm like a lot of blood. Somebody shot something up here and being that it was only two days in the season so we talked about the fourth of September, september 2nd is when season starts I was like, wow, somebody shot something up here.
Speaker 4:So we took a break and I kind of did a like a 360 Around trip around to kind of look, see if I could find any more blood. Blood was a very, very little, past the point where we actually found some decent blood. But somebody had shot something up there, but I don't know if they they found it or not, and the guys that we ran into up there Definitely didn't shoot anything. So no, it was a, it was weird. It was weird, it was really weird Because I, just, I, just I just I would have never seen a bunch of people up there hunting, and you know, of course that's a draw unit. So you talk about a certain amount of tags and kind of, where we were Like it had to be a special individual to be back here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now to go. I'm just gonna fast-forward a little bit. We get out of there, we get to the road, to the truck. And Jermaine, remember, he's a professional fucking athlete and he's fresh, he's like I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna run two miles up this road to the truck. You boys just sit here and we're like hell yeah that's the thing we've heard all day you go ahead, sir, go go get the truck.
Speaker 3:Well, we will right right here next thing we know you made all day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, that's yeah. He's been calling Elkin all day and this is the best thing I heard Either way. Within five minutes of Jermaine being gone, a caravan of drunk and I'm talking about drunk four-wheeler shows up like in cars of people that are just hammered and Pat, being the people person that he is, gets a ride I'm like sweet, he's gonna beat Jermaine up there. He's gonna save Jermaine some time. No, he doesn't know. Jermaine beat Pat up even though Pat got a ride.
Speaker 1:Because it's a professional athlete, so I would just want everyone to remember that, as we're trying to keep up with this asshole the entire week, From that point to where the truck was Just under a mile, just under a mile.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you beat and I sit to like and I say, I'm just gonna take. I'm just gonna take off running, I'm just gonna go and Take.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not a flat road, it's up its, it's Jeep trail, it's rough.
Speaker 4:And I just take our running and I get to the truck and whatnot and I get get truck cranked up and Start pulling out. That morning yeah drove about Two, three hundred yards down and I see this, these guys coming up, and I'm like, well, let me pull over and let them go, and then I'll follow behind. But they start coming up and this lady's waving at me. She's waving real hard and I said I wrote my one, or that says I got your buddy, I Buddy, and I.
Speaker 4:So they flag me down and then, sure enough, Pat pops out the truck and I'm like okay they gave me a couple beverages, you know. So, so we get down and swing, pick up the guys, man, and that was. And when I got to To the rest of the guys I said you know what? Now? That's how I like to start off my hunts.
Speaker 1:No, I believe what you said is if you want to win, you put and never mind. Pat just shake his head every time, every time that sentence is mentioned, pat's like you guys remember what we did that night Um I.
Speaker 4:Remember nothing.
Speaker 1:I remember nothing happened, but I don't remember what we did.
Speaker 4:No, I don't. We tried a different spot, um, and it didn't pay, not to be anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I have to go back.
Speaker 2:I think I left and you guys would sit on water, did you?
Speaker 1:know, did we?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we did.
Speaker 1:Okay, so then I To go back, to go back, to go back to camp and you got to go back home, pat and Jared's got to go back home and Zach's got to go home, so it's just me and Jermaine. This is a sweet little, you know. Yeah, we'll do some, and at this point I am I mean Jermaine, the. The biggest day we did, the biggest morning we did, was that morning. Jermaine showed up and so at that point I'm 30 30, 30 miles in day.
Speaker 1:Three so we sit we water and, you know, nothing happens, of course, like you'd expect, until Like, hey, I'm gonna go, what's that? Oh well, oh, yeah. Well, I'm gonna save that in a second here, pat, come on. So Jermaine's like I'm gonna go pull my camera. We're done here, let's get out of here. So Jermaine jumps up, jermaine runs across the little valley and as soon as he runs across the valley, I hear something to my left and there are three cows and a spike right there and they're probably 40 yards, but they sprint off to a hundred yards as soon as they see Jermaine and they stand there and they watch him. Jermaine Walks down, jermaine walks across, jermaine pulls his camera, jermaine walks back, jermaine like. They just stand there watching the whole time, like at a hundred yards. They watch him for five minutes. It was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then I get back in and Michael's like yo, there's elk right there and I pull my bite nose up. He could barely see through the bite nose because it was getting too dark. And sure enough I see him. I said, ain't that something? They? They gonna come in at nighttime, but but that's, that's typical for that area, because a lot of four-wheelers and dirt bikes ride up down these roads and these are like water troughs. These water troughs they feed the free-ranging cattle with, and this water trough, something busted on this water trough, but the water still down on the ground.
Speaker 4:It's a lot of water down there, but it's not shot off, like you, like, I think somebody shot that water trough and it leaked out, but it was still spilling water and it was still water all over the ground. So they were utilizing that water that was still there and it was continuous, in pumping water out in a.
Speaker 2:It was one of the springs that was still running, because I checked a bunch of other ones around that one.
Speaker 4:Yep, yeah, so they were definitely using that, but they were you more so, using it earlier in the morning or late late evening. But it's a gamble anytime you sit on that water hole, that that we like to sit on, and I told Mike. I said you know, we've killed lots of elk off this water hole, but they usually come in late at night or early in the morning. So we just taking a gamble, you know.
Speaker 1:Yep, and we set that water hole because I was tired. Oh, yeah, I was, I was tired. I put in a bunch of miles. At that point we're talking 30 plus. But yeah, man, then then we go back to camp. It's just me and Jermaine. Jermaine man, you are a special human item. Wonderful time hanging out at camp with you. Well, I'm gonna pass forward a little bit here, right? So like the next day we go out and you're like oh, we're going out all day, we're not going back to camp, we're gonna do this thing. And we go out and we go exactly where we ran into those five elk the nap, the morning, before nothing.
Speaker 4:Nothing, not it, not a damn heap.
Speaker 1:Well, I said we heard a couple bugles, but they weren't willing to come in. Just just just pipe it off a little bit and then we go, and we it's midday, let's take a nap and we could. There's either in the sun, where it's boiling hot, in the shade, where it's too cold to sleep. It was just a miserable experience. Either way, we hang out all day, we get into. I think we called in a cow, we called in a spike that came in silently but nothing really happened. We're just gonna go ahead and fast forward to what is it like? Days day six, yeah six. We go out in the morning, we go to the pass, which we did with Pat earlier, and we do a lot of hiking. We run into a bunch of grouse, but nothing else.
Speaker 1:You spend a lot of time, a lot of miles and nothing happens. So we go ahead and and You're like, here, I got all these plans, I got all these plans, they got these plans. And I'm like Jermaine, I'm tired, I'm tired, let's.
Speaker 4:I was like I know there it was the evening right. The evening after that we got done with the pass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the mean even after we got over the past you were like I got this plan. It's like we're gonna hike to the top of these ten mountains.
Speaker 1:We're just gonna go we're gonna go and go, go. And I was like, jermaine, hold on. I got an idea Because, cuz, I'm fat and I am tired, how about we go to where we've seen these other elk? And you're like, oh, that's a pretty good idea. So I'm like we got this rock, let's go to the top of this rock. It's hanging out there. And you're like, alright, let's do that. So we go up there and we're hanging out.
Speaker 1:We're like two and a half hours into this, right, and, jermaine, you call me if I'm not telling the truth here we're like two and a half hours in to sitting on this and it's, it's like straight up rock. You got a client almost rock climb to get to the top of the big is a great vantage over this big draw. That that was the same draw we did on day two, same draw we did on day one, like we just seen out there every day. So we're at the top of this draw and nothing. Oh, actually, you know what? The night before we actually got into an out there, either way got spooked by the bull moose or, no, the cow moose. So we, we made it, we made a play at that cow or that elk, cow moose busted.
Speaker 1:We're gonna go back now to today's seven and Jermaine's like alright, I'm over this shit. Jermaine, hans does not sit in one spot. He does not do it. He's like you see that mountain, we're gonna go hike to the top of that mountain and we're gonna call off that mountain in 10 minutes. And I'm like Jermaine, talk about that in 10 minutes. Hey, 10 minutes.
Speaker 4:He's like in 10 minutes we're going to top of that mountain and we're gonna call.
Speaker 1:And I said, yes, we will talk about that in 10 minutes. I was like I'm not talking about that right now. We're gonna talk about that in 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:That's Jermaine.
Speaker 1:Thank God, and elk showed up about seven minutes later.
Speaker 4:To to two bull show up to bull.
Speaker 1:I'm like holy smokes.
Speaker 4:There's elk right here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, jermaine's looking at me. He's like let's get. He's like get your fucking hiking pants on. And I'm like, no, no, right there, we don't got to hike up that mountain. There's elk right there, jermaine, we don't got to go up there. So either way, we drop off this rock, we drop across the river, we go like we're going for these elk and we we again bust the moose. That same moose is right there with her cap. So the where we're hiking in bust the calf, calf runs off. We're like, okay, the elk is still there, we can see them just, just, just, just a little up there. So we go a little farther. Mama moose jumps, she bucks it and like, oh crap.
Speaker 1:So at this point, the, the, the elk, which we only see one Jermaine says this too but at this point we only see one. It's, it's on high alert, you know, it knows something's up. It doesn't know what's up, but it's seen to moose runoff this whole time. Mama moose is 30 yards from us, just standing there just watching us, just like what are you guys doing? And and then that that is a. It's a huge five by five, probably like a 290 inch five by five, just really big. It looks weird how big this five by five was. And it just so struts into the woods and runs off and like, ah, damn it, there we go, we lost another opportunity.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden, another spike jumps out of the brush. This is like eight foot tall bear brush. He jumps up and he runs off. Damn it. Okay, well, you know what. We lost that opportunity. So let's go. We drop out of that valley back to the rock that we were sitting on top of which then that bar, that rock, is kind of a pinch point Between two different openings and we go to the next one and Jermaine and I are just walking out, we're walking to the truck and we're, you know, shoot the shit, not being quiet, not doing anything. I'm like is that milk? He's like, yeah, yeah, that's a big bull. And we're what, jermaine? What? Five minutes, five, ten minutes from the end of shooting light, like we're running out of light.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm about.
Speaker 4:We're roughly around ten minutes here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we're like, let's go. So we have a you know quarter of a mile and we're just jogging through the tree Like the edge of the tree line in the end to the edge of the, the opening. We're just jogging down there trying to get close enough and it.
Speaker 4:Jermaine I'll let you tell this part because I think you had a lot more fun than I did no, so we we seen that bull out there and he had at the point at one point we could only see one or two cows, and then he only had three. I think that night was it three, or was it?
Speaker 4:three three, I think three cows, and I said I'm just gonna get them fired up. I said, michael, just get down in that that bear breath stuff and just start sneaking in. And I'm just gonna keep keep working them. So I'm cow calling, cow calling. Then he just really wasn't responding to that and then I just started ripping booze. This dude lights up and he, he acts like a ruddy elk. He starts acting like a ruddy elk. It's just going nuts. And I got him fired up so much I was like, oh, this about to happen. And I looked down in the meadow and In Colorado you can, you could, you can use the luminos. And I look down the meadow and I see this red aluminum just oh yeah.
Speaker 4:I said, well, he must have punched that too hard into a string, but it wasn't a big deal. I was like I was just, I was waving them on. I was like keep going, you know. And and I stayed up on top of the hill, like you know, this bull that's just coming down to a meadow and, sure enough, it was firing him up. It was firing him up, he, he got to the point where he had closed distance quite a bit and and I was like man, we out of the light. I said, oh, you know, and Michael started pulling back and I was like let's pull out of here. I said we'll come.
Speaker 1:Jermaine's, give me too much credit. I put that my arrow on my bow and I lit off that luminoc and I was like, oh shit, I dropped down and I'm like what? I don't know if you've returned one of those things off. So I have to pull my broad head off, spin it off of the arrow, and I use the edge of my broad head, turn it off. Oh but, and do that. And so then, okay, back to it. And this bear brushes eight feet. I can't see shit.
Speaker 4:This stuff is so tall if I go in it I'm lost. If Michael goes in it, you might see his cap. Yeah, I see, but it's tall and that's that stuff that those, those believe it or not, those elk eat the tips off of him. But the moose love that stuff and up.
Speaker 1:So anyways, no it Jermaine, but here, man. So we run at, like I'm going over there and I'm like, okay, maybe he's coming and like, no, I can't see anything. We run out of shooting lights. So I go, I start walking back to Jermaine and Then I take my binos out you can see a little bit better through your binos, then you can't through your eyes at last light. And I'm like, oh shit, he's coming, that bull is coming. So I'm like, oh, get another arrow, get that same. I get the same arrow out and that Luminoc goes off again. So I drop down in the brush and I'm trying to like pull my broad head off and take my Like Jermaine gives me credit, but like I set that Luminoc off twice During this. Well, he's there just ripping their chuckle in their bugle in their doing their thing, and I'm just sitting here like an idiot with no broad head on my arrow, just trying to turn off the light on my knock. It was absolutely ridiculous, man.
Speaker 2:And this one he is like he was all like I Wasn't there, but I remember this is where you like video there. And he's like why doesn't everybody like to do this? This is the great.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, exactly man. So eventually I'm like okay, I can't see anything. I can't see five feet in front of me. So I'm gonna go back to one of these bugling bowls, which I know is Jermaine. I'm like let's. I was like what happens? I was like you know, I don't what happens tomorrow. Like, if we don't push this guy off, is he gonna be here tomorrow? Jermaine's like yeah, he'll be there tomorrow. I think he'll be there tomorrow. So, all right, well, let's get the hell out of here.
Speaker 2:That's when I came back up.
Speaker 1:Well, we hiked to the top of the ridge. Jermaine rips another bugle and man, he rips off again that big old bull. I'm just ripping right back at Jermaine Like they are worst enemies in the world and Jermaine and I.
Speaker 1:It was so far, I've never experienced a bull until a couple of days Later experienced a bull that fired up. And I mean, for lack of a better term, jermaine and I basically skipped back to the truck. This is what you're talking about, pat. We were like, yeah, we were like that was such a fun experience, from stalking the elk and then the moose, blowing it, and then going down and again the other bull so fired up. And that's when Jermaine was like why would anyone do anything else? Like why would you have any other hobbies than this? This is it. And we both just like we're just on cloud nine, cloud nine, right, jermaine?
Speaker 4:On the red.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Sorry, yeah, no, that was cloud nine. We cut a video and I explained to everybody. I'm like man, once you experience something like that, you never want to go back. You know, Whitetail hunting ain't nothing like this. You hear that dragon go off like that and you actually laid eyes on him. You're like, wow, to hear it is one thing, To see it is another. And so we're on cloud nine. But we also know that everybody else come back to camp. So we got to share this story with them and, sure enough, we get back to camp and I'll let you take over, Michael, while I'm flipping over these burgers.
Speaker 1:All right, man. Yeah, we get back to camp. Pat, you're there and Jim is there. Jim is another friend of theirs that had shown up into camp. Jim's an elderly gentleman, I don't know what.
Speaker 2:He cracked corn and I don't care, that's right.
Speaker 1:He cracked corn. He's, I'm going to say, 75. No, I don't know. He's got a 95-year-old in law, so he's an elderly gentleman, is all I'm saying. Either way, we get back there and Jermaine is playing at Koi. Jermaine's like you guys pick what you want to do tomorrow. Here's a couple of options. And he's throwing all these options at Pat and Pat's like I don't know. And I'm like well, if you're telling me that that big-ass bowl is going to not going to go anywhere, why would we go anywhere else other than right there?
Speaker 4:I'm going back.
Speaker 1:We're going back, let's go get that big-ass bowl. So we go back in the morning and this is probably my favorite part of the whole story, Pat, we're what? 100 yards from the truck and at this point we're like hey, Jim, if you're coming with us, you don't have a tag, you've got to film. So 70-year-old Jim's got his camera.
Speaker 3:He's got his, you know.
Speaker 2:Got my camera.
Speaker 1:He's got your expensive camera and 100 yards from the truck he eats shit hard.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, I was like is my camera OK?
Speaker 1:Dude Pat, we missed the entire day. We went up to that one spot that I hated Jermaine for. We skipped that whole day. That's not important, because nothing fucking happened other than you eating shit. You ate shit harder than Jim.
Speaker 2:But either way.
Speaker 1:Jim ate shit. Jim ate shit. So hard that all of us looked at each other like I think we're done hunting today, gentlemen.
Speaker 4:Like I mean, you guys all know we thought we were done and Jim stood up and went Dude, I look back and you guys I am going to interrupt you. I look back and Jim has bad vertigo. So if he gets on one leg he's done, you can push him over. And I don't know exactly what happened. And I let Pat tell like what. He was there. He was right there. And I look back and Jim just bit the dust and I'm like damn. I said here we go. I said I knew I should have left me camp cooking burritos. I said, but I'm fine with it. I said OK, and you guys helped him out and get him up and we made sure he was all right and I was thinking, boy, this hunts over before it even started.
Speaker 4:That's what I was going to do and we got a bull down here that we get ready to go chase.
Speaker 1:He got up, shook it off and later on, he said that tree came out of nowhere, that tree came out of nowhere, and he just, and he did not miss a step, he did not miss a step.
Speaker 4:No, it was back in the day. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:He can hike yeah he can hike.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either way, jim is a boss. He's amazing. I can't believe he got up from that fall because it was a big, hard fall. We hiked right up to that spot that Jermaine and I blew the last beagle the night before they got Jermaine all fired up. Nothing, not a peep.
Speaker 4:Not a damn word.
Speaker 1:Not nothing.
Speaker 4:Now remind everybody that these bulls are just starting to do the work. Activity Six, seven eight.
Speaker 2:First week of September eight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was early and you're getting them to talk.
Speaker 4:We're getting them to come in, so I wouldn't. I wouldn't too, too mad that he wasn't firing off. I was just. I really wanted to know that he was still there. And we get down to the edge of that meadow and we start glassing this dude. They must have been making some noise that night, because this dude gathered up quite a few more cows.
Speaker 1:Oh, we see one cow, we see two cows, we see three cows, we see four and all of a sudden we're like oh man, there are 10, 10 cows. And then all of a sudden this big old bull walks into that valley and Jermaine tries calling, but he's just looking, I don't look at it. Did you try?
Speaker 2:to call. I don't remember you calling, just a little bit he called once, yeah, I made it.
Speaker 4:I made a couple of sounds, but once he didn't answer, I kind of figured out the game. Like OK, not going to play this game with him. I said I'm not going to play this game with him. I said I know these type of bulls. I said we just go, we're going to play the silent game with this dude.
Speaker 4:And when I did that, it was more so it turned into and I'm ashamed to say this, I'm definitely ashamed to say this because I pride myself in calling them in and when this dude didn't want to play the game, I knew this was going to be a spot and start kind of hunting In or we move in close enough where I let out a couple cow sounds and then I bring them in close enough for us to get a shot. But it ended up turning into OK, the wind is not really conducive of going after him right now. And I said but if he gets at the edge of this other side? I said everybody's kind of looking at me like what's the game playing? And I'm checking the wind, checking the wind, checking the wind. And I'm like if he gets to the edge of that, I said we're cutting across here boys. So soon as his head pops across them trees, I said let's go, we haul, but to the other side.
Speaker 1:And to give everyone a quick visual. I'm just going to give everybody a quick visual. So imagine a T right, and so we are at the, the lower side of the T, but it is uphill. So we've got a long draw that goes from where we are downhill and that it hits another draw that intersects. He's right at the intersection of the capital T and he's kind of going from left to right. We're on the left side and we're like, well, the wind's going right to him, right to him, but if, but, if he goes across, we're hoping he'll go up the other draw. And so as soon as we lose sight of him, we've made that assumption he's, he's going up the other draw. And so that's when we cross over our draw. Hope that makes enough sense to folks. Give me a call. If it doesn't figure, I'll explain.
Speaker 4:I'll explain it more, but so basically, yeah, you're exactly right, it's a, it's a big T and we're on the leg of the T, not not the, not the cross member. He's down there. He gets over to the other side and I say let's go and boom. All five of us head over there. And I'm walking through this, this thick stuff, and I said I'm thinking in my head is no way that this is going to happen. No way, no way in in hell. I say the chances are is less than 10 percent of this happening? So we get over there. Me and Michael are in the front, pat's behind us, I don't know, it's only four of us.
Speaker 1:And then, Jim yeah we're kind of we're kind of hovering into the woods, we're hovering into the bear brush, we're like none of this is good, let's.
Speaker 2:We were kind of the transition area between the woods and the bear brush and we're just kind of, and I have to preface like all the time I was hunting with Jermaine, I've never seen him walking with windicator and checking every 30 seconds. I've never seen him do it that much. That's how sketchy the wind still was.
Speaker 1:I mean it's going straight to where we just saw it so we just saw that bull. That wind is going down the draw exactly like you'd expect it. Like the thermals go downhill, the draw goes downhill, everything goes right that direction.
Speaker 2:And then the face that we see for drinks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4:I'm not, I'm not like I was not liking the situation at all. And then, as I did and as I said, I said who? I don't think this is going to happen. But we get over there and I'm still checking the wind, still checking the wind, and we start getting, you know, kind of closer to where this may be. And Michael, you can take over me, but Michael says there he is, there he is.
Speaker 1:I just see legs. I just see legs and I'm like, jermaine, stop. And you know, when you stop short the car, you know you throw the hand in front of the person next to you. I just throw my hand on Jermaine and I'm like there are legs. Pat, pat's right behind me, pat can't Right behind him.
Speaker 2:That's how I realized how tall Michael was, because I never saw the elk Ever See around you guys. I had no idea what was going on. I was like, oh, there's some cows maybe in front of them. I'm just sitting there like, okay, I'm not gonna narrow, I'm gonna just cow bus, I'll step forward and get an opportunity. I had no idea that he was actually him 40 yards away.
Speaker 4:So when Michael, when Michael put his hand on me, I looked over and I seen times and I said oh, that's him, and sure enough, I'm not sure no one was really ready at this point. And I said, Rose, he kept walking into the window, kept walking into the window. And I said I looked over at Michael, no, I look back at Pat and I said stop moving, Stop moving.
Speaker 2:You were trying to mean you're trying to tell us?
Speaker 4:Pat has no clue what's going on because he can't really see. And so Pat stops moving and I look over at Michael and I said knock an arrow, knock an arrow, yeah.
Speaker 3:He said okay.
Speaker 1:Well so when you say that, jermaine, I look at this elk and all I see is behind its ears to its ass, like its head is directly behind two trees, and I'm like, yes, sir, yes, sir, jermaine, I will knock an arrow right now. And I knock an arrow. You never saw it.
Speaker 2:It was him. No, I know I saw it was him walking in because I was the first person to stop.
Speaker 1:But he walked up. He walked to a point where, when he stopped walking, he saw Jermaine, but he did not see me. He had his eyes pegged on.
Speaker 4:It was something up the hill that didn't look right, and remind you that when it missed him by inches, inches, I'm telling you it missed him. I'm telling you it missed him by inches because the way he was coming up, he was coming up to the side of the hill and the wind was blowing straight like the like, straight past him, and if he would have walked up and smelled us he would have been gone. I think it missed him by inches. And then so I'm, I'm coaching Michael through all this and he's like and I whisper, knock an arrow. So as soon as I see him knocking arrow, I said 40 yards, no time to range, but I'm typically good at 60 and down, at getting really close, and I knew he couldn't have been more than 40. So I was like 40 yards and he was like OK, he's like do you think I can get through that? And there was a tree down there, a lot of brush, a lot of brush A lot of brush.
Speaker 4:I said you can get through that. And anyways, Michael, you told, you told your story of this All right, all right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I'm like Jamey. Jamey goes 40. I go, all right. I'm like there's a lot of brush, he goes no, you got that, you got that. So I have an arrow knocked, I pull back and all I see is a tree branch. And so we actually got this whole thing on video because Jim, the man who ate shit hard, got the perfect shot of the entire thing. I'll share it. But either way, you see me pull back and I can't see anything. So I just lower, I just like duck down about eight inches and a little rip.
Speaker 1:And he's quartering two. Slightly and that quartering two slightly and it hits him right behind the arm and he runs off. That's all there is to it. Yeah, yeah. And Jermaine. Well, Pat doesn't fucking have a clue. What's going on at this point? No clue.
Speaker 4:But Jermaine's like.
Speaker 1:no, Jermaine looks at me and he's like dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead pull.
Speaker 1:And so I'm as fired up as could be. I got to again. As to the story of the day before Luminox. I got Luminox. We just see that Luminox disappear into its side and, man, it just feels so good and we're like Jermaine starts calling, pat's calling, Just trying to get it to calm down. Fortunately, we have a really high quality camera, so we pull the camera card, we put it on the phone, we're looking at it and then we spend. We're like, wait, we're gonna sit for an hour. We spent the next hour looking at this video and these guys are like oh, it's a little far back, oh, just like analyzing the shot for an hour to the point where we got it.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of similarities, though, to, like my line, my bull, the last year where I shot it was quartering towards you know, a little bit harder, I think, and we were kind of like, oh man, it could have mis-lung maybe and we're looking at the worst case scenarios. Yeah, we definitely worked you up a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's just basically two hours of these assholes just telling me how bad my shot was or how not great my shot was. You know, potato, potato. Either way, they're like from when I shot it to being like dead bull, dead bull to. I think, might be alive for 10 to 12 hours. So we all agree Basically, we're going to give it. We're going to give this thing two hours before we even take a look. Maybe now maybe now we're yeah, go ahead Tell me tell me.
Speaker 4:Oh, my God, he was sitting on this sweat. Now, remind you like we did look at the footage, we were like, ah, it was a better shot than we thought, but we still didn't want to. We, you know if, you, if you.
Speaker 1:you thought it was a good shot, and then you analyzed it and then changed your mind. You thought it was a good shot right off the bat.
Speaker 3:Yes, were you guys doing that on purpose, just to mess with it? No, because it feels like it.
Speaker 2:it feels like it, Armando, I took Jermaine on a 12 hour blood trail last year, so in a very similar situation Okay.
Speaker 4:And so it was kind of like, ooh, maybe no to be honest, like you know, they're big animals and they are very hardy. Man, you got to think of the winners and the predators that they deal with and you know, you think you hit them good. And then, next thing, you know you, you made a bad shot, or the shot just didn't penetrate well, or whatever the case may be. But after looking at the video footage I was like, ah, we need to get his bull a couple more hours. So we ended up staying there. What was two hours? Two hours and maybe two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, after one hour you went down and retrieved the arrow. We'll pass through. The arrow smelled a little bit like guts, but in general it looked like a pretty good arrow and you know for.
Speaker 2:I'm back so.
Speaker 1:Quartering towards air, quartering towards shot. You're expecting a little bit of guts Either way. We wait two hours and at two hours we're like all right, let's go check it out. We got four guys. We start looking. We go down to where we knew we shot it. Remember Jermaine said 40 yards. There's 37 and a half yards, so it's pretty pretty damn good. Close, yeah, or estimate, but yeah. And then also Jermaine was like oh shit, that that hole you shot through that was way smaller than I thought. Oh, it was.
Speaker 4:So small.
Speaker 2:It was small, but it was close to the out, though really close to the out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he gave me credit for that shot. So I hit the hole I was aiming for. I hit the elk and we started looking and Jerm or, excuse me, pat, myself and Jim are following the tracks. We see hard tracks when I hit it, no blood. But we're looking for tracks and we're all hanging out in the woods and again, this is right, when the woods hits that big open draw, we don't hear a lot of cracking when I shoot it, so we assume it's in the draw. So Jermaine goes straight to the draw and starts glassing, looking for antlers. We don't see any tracks, we don't see any blood, we don't see shit. Nothing, nothing, no blood at all.
Speaker 3:And you had a pass through.
Speaker 1:We had a full pass through the arrow iron will broad head like full pass through covered in blood, but there's not a drop of blood anywhere that anyone can find.
Speaker 2:And there really wasn't even like up to when we eventually do find it Like there wasn't a lot of blood, no blood.
Speaker 1:No blood. Either way, we look for like 10, 15 minutes and no one's finding anything. Eventually, pat and I are talking and I'm losing my soul Like I'm just completely lost.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, wanna throw up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's awful, it's the worst feeling of our experience. And I see Jermaine in this field walking real fucking fast, like real fast, and Pat's and I'm like Jermaine. Jermaine looks like he's got something. He's got something. I don't know what he's got, but he's and Jermaine just walking by nose, walking by nose. And I mean, jermaine, if you wanna tell it, but like he, you saw something weird, that was weird yeah so.
Speaker 4:So I so I was sitting at the edge, kind of when you come up through that middle, let me rewind a little bit. So I said this. I said I said this. I said well, I said best case scenario. I said he ran out into that metal and he's out there still alive and he's moving his head and we'll have to come up and make a five up shot. I said, worst case scenario you ran, you know, I'm thinking he ran across the metal and that's gonna be crazy, I said. But I was thinking if it was a bad shot, he ran out to the metal and just bedded him.
Speaker 4:But when I got to the edge of the metal and we was looking for blood and stuff, I got to the edge of the metal and I was looking, I glassed the whole metal. I walked out deeper in the metal, cause I couldn't see nothing. And I seen this rock, this black furry rock, but it looked like with my binos, like a rock that had moss on it. So I said I got to get a better look at this and I get a little closer out there. And this is what Michael was saying, I was pulling up my binos. It was just really weird. And I said, man, I got to get closer. I cannot, you know, even with my binos, I cannot make this out. And I'm getting closer and I'm like, dude, that's his belly, that's his belly. All I could see was black and that's that dark, that dark. But also, when he was bent over and his son was hitting it, you could see his skin. So it looked like a rock. The shine was coming off his skin, but there was black on there and I was like, dude, I got to get a little closer and a little closer. Finally I was like, hey, that's him. And I'm waving the boys over and I'm like, come on over here, because we got a dead out.
Speaker 1:The best thing I've ever seen in my life was that guy waving us over.
Speaker 4:After looking at him piled up. The way he piled up, that was weird. He didn't last minutes, he was done. He flipped over Armando, he flipped over backwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah backwards.
Speaker 4:We did a flip, yeah.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, horns are buried in the dirt. Yeah, it took a little bit of work to get him right-sided so we could just process him.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 4:I got out there before Michael and them and I tried to move him Just so Michael didn't see him the way I wanted to see him with his head laid, and I said, dude, I'm gonna stab myself with his horns, I'm gonna need help with this one. And so then we both, when he got out there, high-fiving, celebrating and whatnot and talking about like Hugging.
Speaker 1:Hugging, we hugged Hugged cried cheered.
Speaker 4:Him not he's not nasty to you the whole game. Oh shit. I said well, you grab that side, the horn, I grabbed this side so we don't get stabbed here because he was dug into the dirt.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like he straight up reared like a horse and then just fell backwards on himself.
Speaker 2:I got a great example. Oh, what's interesting too is I'll send you there was a cow, we remember that did this crazy bark moments after you shot, and I think that was a cow barking at him Like what the hell? Like what are you? Because it flipped over and he died really quick. It was just a weird bark. Yeah, that was. I remember hearing that, that meadow, and that was right after, about a minute after you had shot. So I remember that too, like hmm, yep. Awkward way to go.
Speaker 1:Shot him at 6.30. We're going to guess he was dead at 6.31. Yeah, found him at 8.30. And we were back at camp by noon like fully packed out. Yeah, we cornered him up pretty quick. Yeah, you know what I mean, michael. Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:As you're seeing, the wave in Germain is waving you over. Like, explain that, walk up.
Speaker 3:Like this is your first archery outcome. You've already had the experience. You had the pressure of having two world champions with you. You've been close to numerous animals and now you think you just made a poor shot on an animal. Like explain that, because I don't know that everybody who's listening has walked up after feeling you know, like fuck, I really don't know. Like it's a feeling that until you've done it you don't understand and you want to throw up. And I want to throw up thinking about it Because I've been there too.
Speaker 1:But when all?
Speaker 3:of it changes and you're looking over this field and you want to throw up and then you see him waved to you and you know in your mind what this means. Start from.
Speaker 1:There.
Speaker 3:Start from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brother, and I know I'm going to start actually one step farther back, which is I was hunting with two world Elkhon champions, yes, and the best opportunities I had were spot and stock. I'm going to throw that out there real quick.
Speaker 2:That happened on two hunts.
Speaker 3:That happened on two hunts, yeah at least two different times.
Speaker 1:I was like I looked at the camera guy and I'm like this is some bullshit. This is some bullshit. I'm with two of the best callers in the world. And I'm stocking like on day two. I'm stocking 500 yards on this Elkh. Call this thing in, pat, call this thing in. No, I'm kidding of course, that's the truth, that's the truth.
Speaker 4:We're making you earn your way Come on now, I got it.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm telling you.
Speaker 4:You have to adapt out there. You have to adapt out there. I'm kidding, of course.
Speaker 1:I'm kidding. First off, both Pat and Jermaine, I couldn't have gone. I couldn't, I would not have killed this Elkh without them, for a hundred different reasons. But Armando, to answer your question, man, like I've never felt so uncomfortable, I've never felt so sick, I've never felt like like when I shot that bull I was like I did it, I did it, we've done it. And then we watched that video for two hours.
Speaker 1:We watched the 30s of 50 second video for two hours like literally 30, 40 times watch this video and I just felt like, oh, maybe it isn't a good shot. And I've shown them that video since and they're like yeah, it's not a good shot, and I'm like that's a great shot, screw you. But, go ahead, Jermaine.
Speaker 4:No, you know what, armando? The entrance was really good. Yeah, what was very important about his entrance is that he entered in and hit both lungs.
Speaker 2:He did hit both lungs.
Speaker 4:Both lungs and then when he exited, he exited out of the guts and that was the scary part of the whole thing. But if you go back I'm going to tell you you won't run far if you can't breathe. So his entrance was really good. He just shot through both lungs, pierced the diaphragm on both ends and then he exited on the far end, which was concerning to us. After we got there to the animal and we seen where his entrance was. That was evident of where, like, how vital that shot was. But if he was, let's say, you know, seven inches to the left of where he shot, it wouldn't be a different scenario where he only got one lung and then he exited out of the guts and then that bulls out there or maybe hit him in the liver and the bulls out there still alive. But his entrance was really good. I went back and looked at the video. I went back and looked at, like, the shot placement. It was really good, really good.
Speaker 4:No that bull didn't? That bull wasn't even alive in the middle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either way, armando, like man I don't know, I've been through. I live in the corporate world, I've had corporate layoffs and like I felt more sick when these guys were like maybe it's dead, maybe it's not. Then when I was like sitting there for an hour waiting to find out whether or not I got laid off from my job, like it was awful.
Speaker 1:It was awful and you and these guys are like nah, we're just like, we're shivering and then we're going to the sun and then Pat's farting like all sorts of stuff's going on. Like it's just absolutely. Oh, by the way, we skipped this whole part, but the morning we were driving in to shoot this bull.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was hilarious.
Speaker 1:So funny and this bull's name is Plato because Jim the elderly, gentlemen, he's putting sunscreen on, and for I don't know what kind of sunscreen he's got. My sunscreen smells like coconut, his smells like Plato. Either way he's putting that on and in the meantime Pat's Pat is ripping ass and so all we smell is ass and Plato, and we're like what the hell's and Germain and I are in the front, jim and Pat.
Speaker 2:Well, jim was doing the same in the campers, so everyone already started out knowing a Jim. Jim had gas, but then I happened to have some, some gas. So that's kind of how we all. We blamed it all on him.
Speaker 4:So let me tell you my story, cause that shit's funny. Yeah, go ahead, please Listen. We start off by waking up in the morning and Pat blames Jim.
Speaker 2:That was Jim. That was a me in the morning.
Speaker 1:Pat, no, pat, he's blaming Jim.
Speaker 2:No, no, the first one in the camper, jim shit in my Jim like farted right there in my, in my girl Like what?
Speaker 4:So Pat blames Jim for for for letting it go, right, no? I don't smell it, I don't smell it, but I'm like Pat, calm down man. And then it reminds you that Jim, Jim can't, Jim can't smell very good. Oh, it's not at all. So this makes a whole lot more sense now, cause Jim could rip his eyes and not even know that. You know, he, he, he farted.
Speaker 3:He knew he farted, but he didn't know what it smelled like.
Speaker 4:So then we get in a truck. After hearing Pat complain a little bit, we get in the truck and we start driving and all of them bumps. You know, I tell everybody I said, if you ain't got to, if you ain't got to crap by the time you get done with this, then something's wrong with you, cause it's going to shit.
Speaker 4:And we we're going down the road and all I smell was was these straight old smelling crap and I'm like. So I rolled my window down and I'm laughing. I'm thinking Jim can't smell him farting himself. I said he won't see right now. I said he, he got to do something better than this.
Speaker 2:So I'm dying laughing cause now I brought up, cause I used to be a kindergarten teacher when I was first trying before I came to school teacher and it reminded me of that. You smell farts and kids. You know farting and pooping and then Play-Doh. So that's how I brought up the whole scenario.
Speaker 4:And then every time he would smell.
Speaker 2:He'd be like hey, we have this playground and smell like preschool.
Speaker 4:Oh, it was so awful, but it was funny because I don't think Jim was catching on and I was like he ain't catching on but I'm dying, laughing, I'm. I'm to the point where I'm crying, laughing. And then everybody exits the vehicle just to know another kill. Everybody exits the vehicle and they dispersed like roaches again, cause everybody got everybody's got a crap Like boom. And then we come back together, okay, and then Jim, jim, I don't even know if Jim went and used the bathroom, but if if he did, he lighten his load which made him, made him better when he went over that log and tripped, yeah.
Speaker 3:I wait let's.
Speaker 1:It's very important to mention that it was Pat ripping ass the whole time, and Pat was firmly throwing it at Jim firmly thrown at Jim. Jim didn't care, jim didn't care.
Speaker 2:That's why I was laughing.
Speaker 1:He's got this sense of humor that he enjoyed taking that blame.
Speaker 4:Oh, jim couldn't smell nothing and he was like I don't know what you guys are laughing at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, we man, we got off, we got off. Subject yeah, yeah, Tell me, mike.
Speaker 3:So so he's waving to you and you're like holy shit Back to the yeah, yeah, he might have. You're like, well now, now you kind of know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it was, it was the best it was, it was the best germane's ever looked, as far as I'm concerned. Waving.
Speaker 3:Okay, how, how far were you from him? So I'm in my mind, I'm picturing you're kind of on the edge of this timber and then like a meadow maybe, or a field.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, the bull made it to where I shot the only dry spot in the meadow. Yeah, First off. Yeah, a swamp there's a swamp and it landed in the only dry spot. Thank you, mr Play-Doh. Yes, but it was about 150 yards from where I shot it. Okay, so I want to say 120 yards is where it was in. Germane was maybe 70 yards from us.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect Okay, and we're just like hell yeah, and Pat and I are like let's go and I'm just like I just want to like throw everything. Man, I'm ecstatic. So, first off, I've shot an elk before but it ended up not being my elk so I lost a lot of the thunder to it, but it was my first archery kill. It was really my first elk, cool, and we had put in, I think, 80 miles over eight days, something like that.
Speaker 1:It was absolutely insane and it was a huge bull. It was a much bigger bull than I was expecting I would have shot any bull in, you know 300 plus. We don't know exactly. Haven't gotten these scores back on it. But more than anything, more than anything, I'm just glad I didn't injure it Like. I've heard that from many hunters before and I never thought much about it until all of a sudden these assholes, for two hours told me how terrible my shot was.
Speaker 1:And that was hard. That was really, really hard. But when I knew that bull was dead I was like, yes, thank God. And then when I found out that he had lived for maybe a minute, maybe two minutes before like it didn't have time to calm down in bed it ran out there, reared up and then fell on itself. That's cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When we got to it.
Speaker 4:Go ahead, jermaine. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I was going to say when Jermaine and I finally flipped it over, the only blood we found the entire time was about a one foot by one and a half foot little patch.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:That's insane.
Speaker 4:I was about to say the same thing. It was right where it was upside down. Yeah, go ahead, jermaine. All the blood Armando was in his cavity. It was so much blood in his cavity he didn't, I think he took off. He didn't even have time to bleed.
Speaker 4:He took all green out, that metal and just piled up when we basically tried to if the guy, dude, we didn't find a drop of blood, but it was all in his cavity and it was just out up in his cavity. So it happens definitely, but usually those bulls don't run too far at all. So long as you look in the area, you'll find those bulls. But yeah, the concerning thing was is was no blood and I was like, ok, either a, a it was a real bad shot or B he he did within you know the area and it just so happened he was dead within the area and it was. Look, it was a magical moment, it was, it was perfect, yeah there's nothing like that, dude.
Speaker 1:It was pretty awesome. I gave everybody hugs. Uh, you know, pat tried to make out with me a little bit. He's not here right now, so I can say that I get farmed in pretty good. It was like no man.
Speaker 3:You would remain.
Speaker 1:That's your thing.
Speaker 2:I have to stop my son from burning down the house.
Speaker 1:Sorry, by the way, it was it was one of the best moments of my life, you know, like getting married, having kids. They are better. I'm not going to lie, they are better. But I have not ever done anything in my life that I've tried as hard as I have to kill elk. And you know, 80 miles later, meeting up with these gentlemen, it was. It was an amazing moment. And here's the thing Uh, good hunting buddies are more important than anything.
Speaker 4:If I had not killed anything.
Speaker 1:I had the time of my life Jermaine and Pat like Hunting camp. Looking at Jermaine run up a mountain and me trying to keep up was the most fun I've probably ever had. Like that was so great. So thank you guys for inviting me. Even if I tricked you, thank you for having me. It was, uh, it's it's. It's about who you're doing it with. It's not necessarily about the harvest, that's what we're all going for, but really it's about the bonus.
Speaker 4:That's the bonus experiences you have.
Speaker 4:So thank you guys, that's the bonus when you get, when you get to harvest an animal, that's a bonus. When you go out to, when you go out there and you spend time with good friends and you have, you know the biggest thing is having fun. Uh, not not trying to, you know, um, not trying to be mad or angry at you know, the elk I mean Elko doing what Elk do and uh, you just trying to fool them at the game and uh, the biggest thing is having fun doing it. And if you can laugh more than you've been sad, then you're golden. I promise you you will look back at those camps and be like I have to absolutely love being with that person. I absolutely treasure every moment of that. But if you look back and can't be like man, that sucked, then you got to change the environment. Now you can look back and say. You can look back and say, man, every moment of that sucked, but I loved it. Yes, and you, you're golden.
Speaker 3:Jermaine, I have a question for you because I think and I think I know the answer Um, I've hunted with a lot of people you know, guiding hunters and taking other people out and stuff like that. But, to Michael's credit, like, you've been out with a lot of other hunters before, you've taken hunters out and all that stuff. Like, um, you know, if you're taking somebody out, new who you know, michael, you didn't trick him into it. Like, obviously he did this out of the kindness of his heart and knowing, like, hey, I do like this man, like let's give him a shot, let's let's try to make this experience special for him. Um, jermaine, like, give me some some reasons that validated why you did what you did and why it was special. Like, what are you looking for and this is mostly for the listeners Like, hey, if somebody invites you or they're willing to spend, you know, some of their vacation accrual on you and to help you, like, what are the things that Michael did that made it totally worth it?
Speaker 4:No, yes, I got a great answer for you and if they don't like it, then then well, I'm telling you from my heart. Um, number one is when he asked me to be on the podcast and we spent literally like four hours with some drinks involved. But I was telling him genuine stories and we laughed for hours and I said if a guy like that can listen to me for hours and still be laughing to the end. I said, man, you know, we definitely got to shake hands at one point and then we met outside of the phone and phone conversation and podcast and we genuinely, like, looked at each other and was like, yeah, it's just a good guy. And I met that when I was on the podcast with them. I said, hey, man, let's go. You know you draw the tag, let's go. And sure enough to find out that he drew the tag or was applying for the tag. And I told him I said, hey, if you draw the tag, I knew I was out of the game this year. I wasn't going to draw a tag, I was going to be playing a reissue list. And, um, I said these are my dates and this is when I can come.
Speaker 4:And then some things kind of changed because we had an Idaho hunt going on. I said, well, all right, this is how my justice usually for me at the beginning of season. I'm usually killing a lot of good bulls in the beginning of season. So I told him, I said, let's go to the very beginning of season because if you go to end of season I'm not going to be able to help you. And he took his days off to do that and I took my schedule, my stuff around, everything else to do that. Of course, shoot, it's been a, it's been a long time, shoot, it's been a. I've been on a two month hiatus right now. And.
Speaker 4:But to go back, the reason why I did that and I try to do that on a yearly basis is because because genuine people like like Michael, like Pat, like yourself, I love to spend time with those guys at camp, because I laugh more than anything, and that that you know they say they say this in a meeting. I mean well, by it. But laughter will keep you young. Even though you see me running up the hill all the time, you're like hi in the hill is because I've been laughing at them the whole night. And and and my energy levels through the roof was what's going to happen this day. So that's the you know. That sums all that up, and that's why I do and I'm grateful to do something like that, for for someone like him and anybody else that wants to endure the pain that I'm going to put them through, love it, love it.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think, I think you know, for me, when I take and I wasn't on this hunt, this is just kind of an interjection is just the effort Like from what I hear from this story is the effort, michael, that you put in, like you know you're not, you know, a professional wrestler. You know, like your main, and you're still out there working as hard as you can. And if he says we're going, then we're going. You know, the effort to me is, you know, when, when I'm guiding a hunter or taking somebody out and they don't want to give it to me, I, I, you know it's hard for me to put all my energy into the thoughts and what's the next play and what's the next spot and how do we approach it and what's our setup and all that stuff. Like all that stuff could deteriorate pretty quick. So if you are that guy that gets taken out, give that effort. That's the least you can do for the person that's helping you out. You know absolutely.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Pat, pat, you could tell that you take advantage of every lesson that your main is giving you and you're able to utilize that Like that is so important. I take out a lot of people who kind of use me as a crutch, like, well, whatever you think, let's go. Whatever you want to do, you know. And I'm like, well, fuck, man, use your brain a little bit, like I'm teaching you and you're just picking it up, you're just following me, I'm trying to teach you. So kudos to you too, pat, because you know you don't become a world champion by by not putting in the effort and the time, and you know, and then being willing to share that I just think it's a, you know, a beautiful experience for three, you know kind of random people to come together and be able to do it on the mountain. So kudos yeah thanks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all you guys, yeah, yeah, I found though you got a cover ground and be willing to drop in anywhere, everywhere, it don't matter. You can't be thinking about how you want to get the elk out. You just got to get in there and go, you got to kill it yeah.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:Jermaine always says if you don't go, you don't know.
Speaker 4:That's right. That's right. That's right, that's right. That's my. That was my experience in Idaho this year, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And we'll talk about that in a minute. Oh God, but I told myself when I came on this hunt I was like just be positive man, just like keep moving. And then I told Jermaine and Pat when I got there I was like I'm not fast, but I will not quit, like I will be there as long as you're willing to wait long enough for me to get to where you're going.
Speaker 3:You were kicking my butt.
Speaker 1:So like, and that's how I am, I'm just like I was always pot, like Jermaine's, like, what do you think about this? I'm like, let's go, let's do it, like I had nothing but positive vibes. When someone takes you out hunting, cherish it. It's a big big deal, like I said, the first thing I said in this podcast was like you guys invited me to your hunting camp, which is mind blowing, because I'm very hesitant to invite people to my hunting camp because I've had bad experiences. It's a big, big deal to be brought along, especially with someone of your caliber. Like I'm sitting here with three amazing hunters and just to be in your presence is amazing. So take advantage when you get those opportunities to the listeners, because it's a big deal.
Speaker 4:It's so true. Any, any, any of that, hey, one.
Speaker 3:One other point I'm going to have to get off here in a minute, but I think probably one of the most important points about this whole story that happened. You know, world champion, you know, moving to a different state, having to come back drawing a tag, like all this stuff was great. We did not. And I think a lot of people get, get, get, I don't know. They they draw focus on the size of the animal.
Speaker 3:You shot a giant animal. We didn't even talk about it, we never brought it up. It's a, it's over 300 inch, six by six, right, and it's a stud, and that that doesn't matter. It could have been a two by two, and the story and the and everything else that happened is what's important. So, um, as you guys are hunting and as you're learning and as you're growing, you don't have to set a goal or a. You know there's not a marker or a benchmark to make something. A special trip or a special animal, like the experience is what it's about. So kudos to you guys for not bringing that up. That was badass, yeah.
Speaker 4:Oh, it didn't even matter, amando, it was a whole story behind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it doesn't. You said, yeah, his giant horns are stuck in the mud, being stuck in the mud and knowing he was dead before he knew it. That's what's important, you know. But I just wanted to say that would have killed any bull, that was cool, I would have killed any bull that showed up the entire week.
Speaker 1:That being said, we do have a friendly bet on how many inches that bull actually is, which I, first off, I think is bullshit, because it's Jermaine, me and my buddy, jared, jared, oh, and Pat and Jared and I have no idea, pat, who's Pat? Yeah, I didn't know you were in there, pat, but either way, jared and I have literally no idea how to score a bull. So, like we're like whatever, like, give me a number, I'll say that number, that's what I'm guessing.
Speaker 4:Well, Jermaine and Pat actually yeah.
Speaker 1:Either way, it's like I'm losing money, whatever.
Speaker 2:I was somewhere near 323.
Speaker 1:That's what.
Speaker 3:I guessed. Jermaine has it all typed up 330.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Jermaine's got it all typed up. Maybe I said 330. I can't remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, armando, if you got to run man, I appreciate you listening to our story.
Speaker 1:I think it helped, just to let us tell you a little bit. I know Jermaine may want to tell a little bit, so we're going to hang out One more quick one for you. Pat, you weren't here for this, but it's the funniest thing I can remember from the entire hunting camp Jared, my main hunting buddy, and Berg, who's the camp chef awesome guy. He had a tag as well. I don't know if did he fill his tag, pat, or no. He didn't.
Speaker 2:He had a couple of close encounters. When my son and I came back because I went to Idaho with Jermaine for eight days, nine days, and then left Jermaine up there to finish up his season in Idaho I came back and I took my son out and Berg was back at camp and he had a lot of close encounters. He had set up a couple of spots where he'd gotten close to Elk. He didn't play outright. We got into a lot of Elk.
Speaker 2:My son and I ended up hunting 100 yards from my camper. Oh no way, the Elks were going crazy. See that big hill behind camp. There was a hill right behind where the fire pit was. It goes straight up the hill. That's who they were.
Speaker 2:There was multiple bulls up there multiple cows and my son walked around the road and we got in them a couple of times. I had about 100 yard shot at one, but I didn't sling an arrow to 100 yards. But it was a good way to end the season too. So unfortunately we didn't get to fill, but we made it. It was good and it was special Okay.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you my favorite memory of beyond killing a bull. That trumps everything. But let me tell you my favorite memory from camp Jermaine, when you were telling people how to call, berg was telling Jared, my buddy, and I've said this in the podcast before Jared is a terrible caller, absolutely terrible caller, the worst caller I've ever experienced in my life. I've Tom, what's his name? Tom Deesing, with mile high hunting calls or whatever. Tom did a lesson with Jared and he's like I don't know what you're doing wrong, couldn't figure out what this guy was doing. He's like you're just bad. So Berg tries to teach you. And so Berg and I saw you do this Jermaine. But like you go like, can you elaborate on like that, like through the teeth breathing, that you do?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So a lot of people say that they'll say you want to make a EU sound or something like that. But if you put the tongue, you put the top of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and try to blow air through that you can't and it won't make a sound. But if you pull your tongue off the top of your roof of your mouth, you start, start slowly hearing air come across the top of your tongue. That's all you're really doing. So you're taking it from your diaphragm and blowing it over your tongue to hit that latex, to blow it off, and it sounds like this. It's really like that simple, and once you're able to do that, man, you're going to be money, you'll be able to make a sound, and that's where we want to get perfect, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about stories, and so here's the rest of my story, right? So Berg is explaining that to Jared. He's explaining exactly that. He's like I know, I know the Germain Hodge recipe for calling, like what you do. And so Jared goes OK, I could do that, but puts, puts the Germain Hodge Delft's game called in his mouth and tries to do that and inhales it and it's stuck in his throat and he, what, what's happened what?
Speaker 4:I didn't hear that one about this Berg.
Speaker 1:It was just me and Berg. It was me Ask Berg, Ask Berg. It was me Berg and Jared. And I'm like talking to how, like Jared, we could do this, we could do this. We don't need world of calling champs, I just spot and stock that bull anyways. But if we are going to call, you got to learn. And he just like, he takes a big breath in, like he's going to do exactly what you just said, germain, and he just chokes on the call.
Speaker 2:Are you talking about Jared? I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Berg, I'm talking about Jared.
Speaker 2:Oh, jared choked on it, oh, ok.
Speaker 1:Jared choked on the call and like he spits the call out onto the floor and his coughing, and Berg and I are rolling and laughing.
Speaker 3:That was awesome. It was the funniest thing.
Speaker 2:How could he say that story? He choked on a hodge.
Speaker 1:He choked on a hodge. He choked on the hodge, which is something Pat's done before, I think.
Speaker 4:No what.
Speaker 1:I'm confused right now.
Speaker 3:Ok, Thank you man, andré, no, hey, you guys. I'm really happy for all three of you guys, all five of you guys that took part in it. But for the three of you, kudos to each of you for having such a. You know, it wouldn't have been the same without all three of you being there.
Speaker 4:You know, I know that.
Speaker 3:I'm so I'm really really happy for you guys to be here to hear this and to kind of share a little moment of it. So thank you guys. Thank you, yeah, I appreciate you coming on too, man. Yeah, wonderful. Well, you guys, I'll catch up on the side a whole one later, ok.
Speaker 2:Jermaine, did you drop that bull off? Or, michael, did you take it down?
Speaker 1:No, I dropped it off.
Speaker 4:It's over there OK.
Speaker 1:And, like I said, boys, like honestly, if, if, if I were to pick whether I had the eight days with you boys in camp versus harvesting the bull, I'd pick the eight days with you guys in camp because that was, that was fun as hell. And then that's what's about. To the listeners it's like who cares if you harvest anything? Have a great time. Great people, work hard, work hard. It's not about just getting drunk and messing around, it's about trying to accomplish the harvest. But doing it with great people is more important, I think, than anything.
Speaker 4:That's right. 100 percent, man, 100 percent.
Speaker 1:Now that we're done with my elk kill, because screw that, you know, whatever that guy's gone. Jermaine, do you want to tell us about Idaho? Do you want to tell us about your? Your Colorado moose, like what else you got, oh.
Speaker 3:Lucy.
Speaker 1:Bonus episode.
Speaker 4:Let me. Let me start off by saying Idaho was. I'm going to blend both of these stories in and I won't go into super big details, but what I will tell you is, idaho is humbling. If you haven't been up to the north northern Idaho and hunted, you will get your, your butt kicked up there. And it's. That country is steep and deep and it is thick and nasty. And you know, the first day that I was up there I was like, wow, this stuff is nasty and it ain't high like Colorado where we're going to walk miles, and we're going to walk miles at, you know, 10,000 to 12,000 feet. It ain't that it's. We're going to get a drive roads and you're going to dive into something so nasty that you wish you was back in Colorado hiking at 12,000 feet.
Speaker 2:I can tell you right or something crazy there's some stuff.
Speaker 4:So it's only a couple of places in Colorado that I can compare that to and one would be like tell you right, tell you right, steep, veils, steep. And then you get into some of those deep canyon areas like your, montrose and stuff like that. But I tell you it was very humbling. Well, it started off where it wasn't going very well. We wouldn't get in a lot of bulls answering, and it's super hot there, very hot. So then we had three, three other guys there outside of me, tony and Eric and I said, hey, we need to split up and this is how we're going to do this. We're going to find these elk and then we're going to come back together and we're going to conquer this together.
Speaker 4:Well, the first, the first morning that we did this, I went in with one of the camera guys and, sure enough, I find a road. I mean, I find a bull, basically right off the road and man, when they tell you these bulls, when you call them in, they're going to be on your lap. They're not lying, they're going to be in your lap because they can't see through that stuff. So if the wind is right and everything's good, they're going to be in your lap and reading windows were like 10 yards 10 yards super, super close 10 yards, michael, I missed two bulls at 10 yards.
Speaker 4:To miss them, missed a branch, hit a branch.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, it's thick, thick and it's like our dark timber with bare brush under the dark timber.
Speaker 4:Yeah, lot of, lot of.
Speaker 2:Highest elevation was 5000 feet. We were at 4000, 5000 feet.
Speaker 4:Camp was at 2700 feet.
Speaker 4:So I was hunting with my good friends Eric and Tony, and I'm going to tell you right now my aggressive style was not really jelling with them. They were more of. They were more of let's call these these up to the road, which I was perfectly fine to if that happened. But these elk were in these deep nasty pockets and we didn't get into a lot of like super bugling elk. We got into a group of bugling elk that were sounding off really good.
Speaker 4:I've been in the rep fest where you know you can't it doesn't even matter what you say but these elk were rutting and they were rutting hard in this one area. And I get in there and man, it's elk everywhere and I tell the boys about it. And then Tony had a stomach bug for some, something you know might have ate wrong or whatever. So he stayed at the camp. The next morning I took Eric back in there with me and we didn't even get out the truck and they were bugling like crazy. And then I'm just skimming over the surface of this whole story.
Speaker 4:But then we get into those elk and we get into a lot of elk. That that morning and that evening we I think we took that evening off and went back in there the following morning and they were just still going nuts and Tony was like I must stay up here and call and I just dove in and went nuts, I'm not, I know my aggressive style, if they bugle in, I'm going. And we got into so many different elk in there and anyways, well, they wanted to change plans and go down to some lower country that we heard about and I didn't want to leave elk. I didn't want to leave elk.
Speaker 1:That we've already found out right.
Speaker 4:But I wasn't going to argue with, it is new to me. I said, all right, we packed up camp, we went down lower and now we're down to one camera guy, because Pat and Jess had left. And now we're down to one camera guy and you know, I said, well, I'll go with him. Well, the camera guy with you, two guys. And sure enough, I found one elk, that one play, and man. It happened like it was man. I forgot my phone, I left my pack, all I did it was my bow and release and I go that I cal sound off this logging road. And I grabbed my bow, I cal sound again. He bugles again. And I got down after him and that that was some old, old logging stuff that they had logged already some years ago. But it was a lot clearer so I could make it like a 30 yard shot. And that's what I ended up doing is making a 30 yard shot on that bull. And he he wasn't the biggest bull in the woods, but I wasn't really caring about that. I was caring about can I get it done up here here in any ways? I shot this, this dark horn, four by four and he played the script how it was supposed to be played and I was second guessing my shot. So I pulled out that evening.
Speaker 4:We went first thing back in the morning and found them powered up by 150 yards, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe 125 yards. I clipped the bottom of his heart and he bled. Just he know he bled the whole time, but it it, it wasn't enough to kill him on spot or kill him you know really quick, but he went up and powered up. I don't imagine he he lived more than maybe an hour past when I hit him. But but I'm going to tell you, man, that country is tough. And then we hunted 15 days straight and I did everything in my power to make sure that the groups morale stayed really high because the bulls were not acting like normal elk, they were not in the rut, they were not doing. You know, we found one pocket of ready milk and that was it, and it could have been a one cow.
Speaker 4:Yeah, one, one cow or two in there hot and it fired up everything in the area. So but I will tell you, man, that country is tough. I turned in burnt from there after the 15 days. I left on the 30th like after the morning hunt. I drove through the night 21 hours. My last two hours were tough, I bet man, that's a long drive. You know, on the first the camera guy was flying in on the first to meet me here in Colorado.
Speaker 1:A new guy for a new right for your moose hunt.
Speaker 4:Exactly. And I got here and I called them guys, I said I was calling Pat that morning. But then that evening I said I told, I told, I told Alex and Pat. I said, man, I'm going to need some rest. I got here and it was light outside and I got my second win and I started working here because I knew I had a reset and I was like, no, can't do it.
Speaker 4:I got about to about I don't know, maybe 10 to 11 o'clock in the morning, after a 21 hour drive. I got here around 7 am and, dude, I said no, I got to get a few hours naps, a few hours, it was probably four hours. I got up and started working again and I called them and I said man, listen, I want me some rest. I'm not sure if I'm going to get up in the morning or or wait to the evening. I said, but I'm trying to shoot for getting out on the second of of October. Anyways, I said just get on out, pat, take care of Alex. Boom, and I'll make. I'll make everything happen. I shot Alex a text message. I said I'm on the way, 24 hours rest, I'm on the way. And I said I'm a pick you up, we're going to do this.
Speaker 4:And anyways, we got up there on the second of October and I said, man, we got everything out of the camp and got everything set up. Pat set that camera up for me and I shot the rifle to make sure it was good. And I was like, well, let's just go out here and look. And he said, well, if you want good footage, we probably going to have to wait because the storm started rolling in. I said, man, we're just going to go out here and look, put everything in the truck. A look turned into a hunt because you remember when we went back to that camp. You remember when we went to that camp and we park.
Speaker 1:Near or at my foot, I actually want to remind the listeners real quick of day two of my elk hunt when a moose spooked my bull. Also was it day the day seven. The day before I shot my bull we were made a run on an elk and then a moose Spooked another bull on me. That same bull is the bull we're taught, or, excuse me, excuse me, same cow, that moose. That moose cow blew up two of my hunts and that's where we are Same area, same area.
Speaker 2:Remember where you tried to hold your mains hand.
Speaker 4:Remember when you tried to hold my hand early in the morning.
Speaker 2:That's where the cow was. You want to try to hold your hand?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I say what are you? Trying to do? Hold my hand. Oh, what are you trying to do? Hold my hand.
Speaker 1:Oh, I was the first morning with everyone was dropping deuces and you, and apparently you poop with your your headlamp off, so I didn't know you were out there.
Speaker 2:He uses the light of the moon.
Speaker 4:So. So we had full moon like that one morning and I said, well, I don't need a damn headlamp, all I gotta do is make sure I'm clean, and sure enough, I go out there, no headlamp. And man it probably it probably was about I don't know. Five minutes later I hear crunching through the woods and I'm like who's sneaking up behind me?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm trying to find my. I'm about to go. I'm trying to find my spot, jermaine, I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to go.
Speaker 4:I didn't. I look back and I said hey, you trying to hold my hand.
Speaker 2:I'm just laughing, dropping the deuce, leaning back on a tree.
Speaker 1:Every everyone's out there pooping is four of us.
Speaker 2:Everyone's laughing, that's damn, that's damn near right right in that spot. So that metal, that's right there.
Speaker 4:That's exactly where she was and you were laying for her that night.
Speaker 1:It turns out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we just baited her up and that that metal where we we parked that truck, that's where she was. And we pulled up there and I said, oh my God, that's her, that's her. So from where we originally seen hers, about a mile away. And I said that is her because I remember the calf, the calf being so big, and I was like that's her. But this time she had a bull with her. And man, I said, alex, this is about to happen. Right now you better be rolling. And so we pulled past her, stayed on that logging road and went up there and parked higher kind of where we walk in, and we parked and got stuff out and whatnot. Sure enough, man made a 75 yard shot on her. I dropped her right there in the middle on day one, not even one hour and 30 minutes of hunting 30 minutes of hunting.
Speaker 2:Yeah for a man that put in 30 days of elk.
Speaker 1:You know, I was like I'm not sure he's a elk. You deserve a one hour moose hunt.
Speaker 4:That's how I was. I was hoping for that and it happened and I was like, oh my God, I got a little emotional. I said, man, people don't understand the work that I put in all leading up to this point. I was, like you know, between elk hunts and I said I'm crushed. I went up to Idaho and, freaking Jack knife my trailer twice. I just beat my truck out of death. I was like I said, oh, transmission, didn't you or the something?
Speaker 3:like radiator.
Speaker 1:That was right, and that's it, yeah, right.
Speaker 4:The radiator went on me, I jackknife my truck twice up in Idaho, I went in the lip. I went in a lip mode on the highway because it was, you know, user error. I had to pull over, reset everything and then go back and it was just a nightmare. And and then, the top of it all, I come back within 24 hours and I kill a moose within hour of the hunt. And I wasn't even hunting, we were just going to look. So it worked out Well. You know, we'll be able to share that story later on, but it worked out really good.
Speaker 4:And then that night, oh oh yeah, and I got to use my winch on my truck for the first time. I've had that winch for like three years now and I got to use that winch for the first time and I drug the winch out probably, I don't know 50 to 75 yards and I went stir up to this old, that old logging road that we we drive on. I went stir up to that old logging road and we were able to take care of her on the road instead of in the weeds. And and then it just poured down, raining on us. It was so cold. It snowed that night on the mountains. Next next day we woke up it was just snow all over the peaks. So some of those peaks that you were walking, michael, they were covered with snow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Covered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that's awesome, that's such a good. I couldn't have been happier Like I was, like I knew you were hunting the beginning of October and like the fact that, like October 3rd, you're like done. I was like you deserve it, man.
Speaker 4:You deserve it, especially the amount of days you put in for me.
Speaker 1:The amount of days you put in for Idaho, like occasionally just need an easy one. I haven't found that easy one yet, but you deserve it more than anyone I know.
Speaker 2:I can't believe you're talking about Dead Man's Gulch.
Speaker 4:Oh man.
Speaker 2:Oh God.
Speaker 4:That's a, that's a.
Speaker 2:Idaho.
Speaker 4:I thought for sure you'd talk about Dead Man's Gulch, so hey, michael, we went into an area and it was fine getting in there. Hold on, everything happens for a reason, right, we went in there. The cameraman, one of our camera guys, paul, was in the creek with the camera it was like.
Speaker 3:It was like it was.
Speaker 4:It was so horrible. And then at the very end of all this, we got to get out of this nasty mess and it's Elkin here and all this, all this shit, and we get down to the point where I'm leading way on out of here and I get down to this cliff where we're going to try to get back down to the trailhead and I'm like stop, do not come this way, do not lift out, and was straight down off rocks. I said we got to go back hard right. We got to go back hard right. And then my buddy Eric, he took the lead on the hard right side and it still was so nasty, sketchy, hold on. And then we get down to the very bottom of all this. Basically, all of us are out of water. I grabbed my canteen, fill it up in. My filter was was the old filter and six years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was not good. And I feel, to this water, I drink this water. And that night we get we still got a mile and a half hike out of here we get through this nasty stuff and we get to the trailhead straight up. We get to the trailhead and that night, all right, we're cool, we like we just got to go back in there. We got to find a better way to get back in there and up and that night I ran a fever, so bad it was, so it was cold. At nighttime it got cold where you could see your breath really good.
Speaker 4:I woke up and I was stripping clothes off. I was like, oh my God. I said what is going on? And I didn't feel sick, but I was running a fever and I said I was just sweating. So then I told everybody about the next day. Being Pat was like man, I bet it was that water. And then I said, guarantee, you had to be that. I thought I had COVID. I was like where did I get COVID? We put out here in the bush. And sure enough, the next day I was just praying that it didn't happen again and I ran a fever. The next night it was like, okay, I ran this fever for roughly right around two nights and it broke over, but I think I got it from the water. I got a little bug from the water. No, no, no, no, no, no shookies.
Speaker 4:No, nothing none of that crazy stuff. I just ran a old that beaver fever, yeah, beaver first off, like the whole hunt though and let up.
Speaker 2:We had a lot of people that were like, oh, I'm going to be in the water, so it led up. We had to drive the truck for like 45 minutes to get to the spot and then we unloaded the ATVs. Then we had to take the ATVs like seven miles in, and after we got the ATVs then we had a trailhead and then we had to hike in about a mile and a half and then we had to drop down way to cross this river like three times, and every time someone crossed the river, everyone fell in the river. Everyone fell in the river except for me and everyone.
Speaker 1:Jermaine fell in so the important point Pat didn't fall. Yeah, I didn't fall.
Speaker 2:But then we start getting frustrated Like what do we have to do here in elk? But there was nothing more eerie. We're sitting up on this trail before it drops down and get in the river and Jermaine just starts doing a little setup real quick and you know, cow cow, cow cow, you know cow cow, those are the bugle. And then all we hear is we hear a bugle in the distance, but then we all hear is a pack of wolves howling and it was like ooh, and I'd never experienced that because we didn't got wolves yet here in Colorado.
Speaker 1:But you know. Thank you, Oregon, we will soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, oregon, but it kind of, and that I think that played a big part too. You know like these elk were, you know they were talking, but those wolves definitely played their role as well and they were in some nasty, nasty, steep, steep stuff. So I think it gives them the advantage to maybe be able to get away. You know, and the elk definitely took, took control of that area, but we went straight up a freaking hill, vertical climb right up on an elk trail, jermaine, into finding two sheds. We get into a huge bull and then we're starting to lose light and we have to get out of there. So and we're on an elk trail, we're not even near the dang trail anymore. So we, that's why we dove straight down and he, he sold it short.
Speaker 2:We're like I was sliding on my butt for like 30 to 40 yards and couldn't stop. That's how I'm grabbing tree branches. Our poor buddy, jesse, just had knee surgery, or one of our other cameraman, and he's like he got his leg kicked out, he's got he's. I mean we're sliding down this hill and I mean it's, it's far. I mean we're going down and like Jermaine's yelling, don't come left. I'm just sliding down a hill.
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, I'm going wherever I slide and we eventually get down off this thing, down in the water and it's clipped up up from the river so we can't go up to get closer to where the trail does go. So the only way out is a straight vertical climb, like literally climbing this thing and we're grabbing little tree branches, praying please, little tree branch, hold my body. I mean literally climbing hands and knees. It's not a joke. Like it was, like I didn't have to say please, god, just let us get out of here. Like this is like step one person falls, they could take us all out. Like people could die. It was bad.
Speaker 1:And then we get to your explanation. Versus Jermaine's, it's like it was humbling.
Speaker 3:It was you know.
Speaker 2:Jermaine's always your main was behind everyone. He was so worried about everyone in the group that he wanted to make sure he was the last one out of that, out of this hell hole. And then of course we get to the top, and I had to do just like I did for you we had to put some rock music on the last two guys that came out.
Speaker 1:You didn't have to do it, but you did and I appreciate it because, it was a trick.
Speaker 4:We were sliding down this hill to the creek bed, oh my God. And luckily, when we went down the hill we went left. So one person would go down and go left. So Eric went down and left. I was. I think I was behind Eric right away. I went down and went left. By the time I went left I heard boater and this giant boater. A giant boater. It probably weighed 45, 50 pounds.
Speaker 1:I could have said boater isn't like a, like a rowboat.
Speaker 4:But boater boat. I'm actually coming out, sorry.
Speaker 1:Go back to North Carolina, jermaine.
Speaker 4:All right, keep going. And this, this boater was rolling down the hill and I said I'm clear. And I seen that thing run down the hill and crash into some other rocks. I was like holy smokes. If that would have hit one of us, that would have took us out.
Speaker 3:Game over.
Speaker 4:It could have been game over and they called that. They called that place dead man's goats for one reason you better know what you're doing. You going in there.
Speaker 2:Well it's. The key is you stay on those trails and you fight to get back to those trails, because we went off the trail to get out of there and get back to the trail and it was the hardest. One of the hardest thing is top five hardest stints I've ever had. I mean I could breathe mostly, but if I was in Colorado not, it had to come get me I wouldn't have been able to pose an 11. There ain't no way I would have got out of that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's how bad it was. And then we had another mile plus hike back to the ATVs and about five to six mile around the ATV and back to the truck. Then we got to load everything up and then my pack got run over that day too. That was. That was fun. So I had a pack, the guy destroyed by someone's truck, yeah. So that was an interesting, interesting one dead man's gold season, man.
Speaker 2:That was a rough day. I ain't going back in there after and I never heard Jermaine said and there was oak in there.
Speaker 1:There's at least two places. I would germane that I was like I ain't going back there, but it's funny to hear Jermaine say that man.
Speaker 2:But hey well, we had a couple of rough days where it was kind of we split up then, and then Jermaine's like we may have to go back in the man's gold yeah. So it was a good experience seeing new terrain, new elk. Yeah, I'm with different people too, other world oak champions. You know, it was fun, it was different.
Speaker 1:It's a cool experience, man. I was jealous, I was. I was like come on, guys, get better self-reception and post something, because I'm living vicariously through you boys, because when I left the oak woods, I was missing it immediately. Yeah, I was happy to be back my family, of course, but you know, september is fleeting. You only have so much of it. So, but, boy man, this was a lot of fun. I've taken up way too much of your time, but what do I expect from any podcast with Jermaine besides three plus hours?
Speaker 4:For sure You're going to expect that from me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, gentlemen. Well, you know why don't we? Why don't we do this? We'll wrap this thing up. Let's start with Pat. If you want to share any Instagram social stuff, that's, they can follow you, and then we'll go to Jermaine after that.
Speaker 2:I don't even know what my tags are.
Speaker 1:Let's just go with Colorado high altitude hunters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, colorado high altitude hunters. That's different buddy. Yeah, colorado high altitude hunters. Follow us, like us. You know we're we're looking to add a lot more some really good footage on our YouTube, so we're trying to grow that a little bit more so there's some good stuff coming out. We're going to repost a video from a hunt we did, you know, last year on there, plus this year's footage of our elk hunt. Your elk hunt will be put on there and Jermaine's moose. So we're excited to, you know, to get that out to you guys and we'll we'll start sharing that as well and, of course, follow Jermaine. He's, he's the, he's the man, he's our guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'll put links to the Pat's Instagram, whether or not he knows what it is, or every post there and Colorado high altitude hunters and. Jermaine, and so Jermaine. Where do they find you man?
Speaker 4:Well, let me it's. It's at Pat the trail 1313. But if you want to find me is Jermaine hodge, underscore, colorado, and then you can always. Yeah, you can always. You can always find us on Kohar too, as well.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect. Well, gentlemen, thank you. This was a ton of fun.
Speaker 2:It was a lot of fun. He, let's go. He let's go 1313.
Speaker 1:That's what he, let's go Okay.
Speaker 4:Well.
Speaker 1:I'll make sure I get it right. Show notes. Don't listen to either one of these guys. The show notes got it right. But thank you guys. I appreciate you guys taking a ton of time tonight, nevermind the eight days you spent in the woods and you had to put up with me. I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I was fun man, you made it fun.
Speaker 1:It was. It was the most fun Elk Hunt. Like I said earlier, regardless of harvest or not, it was the most fun Elk Hunt I've ever been on. So thank you guys.
Speaker 4:Oh, absolutely, man, We'll do it again.
Speaker 1:I hope so. All right, thanks guys.
Speaker 1:Have a good night guys. All right guys, that's it. Another couple of stories in the books. I want to thank you guys for tuning in. I really really do appreciate you. A little bit of an experiment here. So if you feel like letting me know how you feel about this one, with kind of a longer format, a little less, a little more impromptu, more people, let me know. Hit me up on Instagram, shoot me an email, go to my website, whatever. I'd love to hear what you guys think and I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I have enjoyed telling it. Sorry if we had too much to drink or, you know, have a little bit of a dirtier mouth than you expected, but it is what it is. So, thank you guys, appreciate you again for tuning in and look forward to putting many more stories out for you in the future. Thank, you.
