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The Hunting Stories Podcast
The Hunting Stories Podcast
Ep 110 The Hunting Stories Podcast: Jason Wilson
Jason Wilson, a lifelong hunter from Georgia, is on a mission to mobilize hunters to make their voices heard at the ballot box. Join us as Jason shares his passion for hunting and fishing, with a special love for spearfishing. Learn about the gravity of low voter turnout among hunters, with nearly 10 million unregistered to vote. Jason, alongside his colleague Baker Leavitt, is dedicated to raising awareness and encouraging hunters to participate in elections to safeguard their interests and the future of hunting.
Gear up for a thrilling recount of my first archery elk hunt in scenic Craig, Colorado. Experience the anticipation and strategy that goes into tracking wildlife in unpredictable conditions, from navigating shifting winds to hearing the haunting elk bugles at sunset. The episode culminates in a high-stakes encounter, where the critical timing and stealth play pivotal roles in a successful hunt. Whether you're an experienced hunter or a newcomer to the outdoors, this story of patience, perseverance, and pulse-pounding excitement is sure to captivate and inspire.
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Howdy folks and welcome to the hunting stories podcast. I'm your host, michael, and as usual, we got a good one for you today. Today we actually connect with Jason Wilson. Jason is a lifelong hunter out of Georgia, but he's doing more than just hunting these days. In fact, he's trying to get more hunters to vote. Turns out there are actually millions of hunters that have licenses to hunt but didn't register to vote in the last election. So he's on a mission to change that. I won't go too deep into it, but please, guys, check out the show notes. There's a link to vote for America down there. Check out what he's doing.
Speaker 1:Listen to the podcast. He'll tell you more. Let's just do it, man. Let's kick this thing off. Jason tell you some of his stories. Thank you all. Right, jason. Welcome to the hunting stories podcast, brother. How are you great, man, thanks for having me. Dude, it's uh, I'm glad to have you on. We've been. We've been texting for a while. Baker connected us. Baker leavitt, who was on the podcast previously, man um, and I really do appreciate you taking the time especially I think you might be the farthest away person from while baker connected us. Baker levitt, who was on the podcast previously, man, um, and I really do appreciate you taking the time especially. I think you might be the farthest away person from me right now ever to be on the podcast. You are in columbia, which is awesome, and it looks like a beautiful day behind you absolutely gorgeous man.
Speaker 2:Uh columbia is an amazing place. The fishing here is to die for their saltwater fishing and uh fish col Columbia. They have tours in the Amazon. You can catch piranha peacock bass. You want to catch a 14, 15-pound peacock bass? You can do it in Columbia.
Speaker 1:Relatively inexpensive. I don't really know.
Speaker 2:I don't really know.
Speaker 1:I've told this story once before. Well, let's take one step back and then I'll tell you the story. Jason, why don't you introduce yourself? Let's start there. Let the people know who they're going to hear some stories from today.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm Jason Wilson. I'm a South Georgia redneck that figured out a way to get paid to hunt and fish for a living. So, on a social media company, we work with a lot of the personalities that you guys see all the time and we help companies pair with the right personalities. So personality. So I spend a lot of time traveling around hunting, fishing. Spearfishing is probably the one thing that I enjoy the most, but, uh, if you can catch it, call it or kill it, I'm probably your man, uh. So but yeah, that's it, man, just love, love the outdoors and, more importantly, I love introducing new people, women and children to the outdoors.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, awesome. Well, nice to formally meet you, jason. Um, now go back to my story real quick, just because I want to tell it. But I had I don't remember if it was columbia or argentina, but we, we had someone staying with us and they're like, oh, hunting yeah. And they're like, oh, we hunt parrots. And I'm like what? I don't think yeah I think, there's a translation error here. And she was like no no, we have parrots.
Speaker 1:I'm like like the blue, green, red, yellow birds. They're like yeah, we hunt the shit out of them.
Speaker 2:Apparently. I think this is.
Speaker 1:Argentina. There's just so many of them and what they do is they like land on cattle and then they peck out the cattle's eyeballs, so they're like this huge menace. So instead of like ducks, like we have in America, or geese, you go to Argentina and you just have the most colorful, like water hunt or waterfowl hunt I guess it's not a waterfowl hunt but bird hunt you've ever had in your life, which is pretty crazy. So I always am curious what else in South America they're doing down there, because it's so unusual.
Speaker 2:Not only do they shoot the parrots, they like to eat the parrots, the parrots are pretty good. Like you go down there dove hunting, they'll leave the doves laying all over the ground, right, but you shoot a parakeet down.
Speaker 1:they're pretty tasty, I'm not going to lie, I had them man, they're pretty good.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to start things off a little bit differently because, jason, you're doing something really cool. You and Baker are kind of combining your efforts to basically increase the voting of just hunters. It doesn't matter who you vote for, just get out there and do it and think about who you're voting for with your lifestyle and make those smart choices. But I want you to maybe fill us in a little bit on what you guys are doing and maybe some of the statistics that you guys have, because it is really important, especially with the election coming up here in a few months.
Speaker 2:So Vote for America targets a couple of different groups military, police, hunters, part of fishing, female collegiate athletes, country music but the numbers in hunting are staggering. Most people don't realize it, but we have nearly 10 million hunters that aren't registered to vote and there's a plethora of reasons that you get for it. And that's an amazing number for me when you take into account how hunters are affected by these crazy laws. And you guys are in Colorado, right, and they're trying to pass this mountain lion stuff right now and no trap. But like if hunters actually voted, there's enough of us to change things by ourself. We vote at a 31 to 33 percent rate when the national average is 42 percent. If hunters just voted at the regular rate, we would literally control and dominate the election and we get a lot more attention paid to us by politicians. Politicians don't care about hunters because they want to mind their own business, live their own life, and you got these little 3% groups over here screaming to the top of their lungs and that's the people they pay attention to. But if hunters actually voted at the regular average, where we voted, and they could see our power, we would have a lot more power and not get ignored, and I get it. I get it.
Speaker 2:You want to live your life. You want to be left alone. You want to raise your kids. You can do all of that. You can do every bit of that. You can sit out there, as long as you take one hour every two and four years to go to the polls and absolutely destroy these woke ideas that are attacking our way of life Absolutely. These people hate everything about our way of life. These people hate everything about our way of life. So you know, if you're a hunter, it's not enough to just register to vote and vote anymore. You want to change America. You want America to feel like home. Find one of your friends that didn't vote last time and take them. You know, go eat. Go eat a sandwich afterwards. Go drink beer. Go to the range I don't care, don't take no for an answer. You know, don't. Don't carpool with somebody that votes anyway. You save some gas. Go find your grumpy Uncle Steve that thinks his vote doesn't matter and take him to the polls.
Speaker 2:And again Colorado, man, y'all have crazy people there. Everything to the west of the mountain is our people, everything to the east, and if we actually voted like we should, we could make a huge difference nationally and at the state level 100%.
Speaker 1:I've actually, since talking to Baker, I've been trying to talk to more people in my circle and I actually try and talk to non-hunters Because I think hunters the ones that I know in my circle they understand the issues and they understand what's going on there. But I'm trying to bring up like the mountain lion thing specifically and I'm like, hey, if we don't put this down, here's what's going to happen. We're not going to hunt them until they start hunting our pets and then they're going to hunt them.
Speaker 1:But instead of getting money from tags and people asking to do this for the government, the government is going to hire people and they're going to spend our tax dollars because they're going to kill these animals. They did it in California right they, they banned mountain lion hunting in California, but they have killed, since banning them, over 3,000 mountain lions and, instead of being hunters, being like here, take my money and let me do it.
Speaker 1:It's saying hey, we're going to hire this assassin to come in and do it. So I'm like, just think about that, they're going to do it regardless. Same with Catalina Island, right? They banned hunting on Catalina Island. Now they take helicopters out there and mow down mule deer because there's too many. So, like you have to manage the populations. And I try and explain that to my, my non-friends and I've actually, I think I've probably converted like five or six non-hunters to the idea of like, yeah, no, this, this all makes sense, these, these are crazy ideas that these people are coming at. You know the old I live near Boulder. Every corner there's an old lady asking me to stop. You know trophy hunting. And I'm like you don't understand what's going on, old lady.
Speaker 2:Lady, I can trophy hunt or they're going to hunt Fluffy. That's your choices. And it's like Oregon where they made using drugs not illegal.
Speaker 2:Who saw that coming that maybe that was a bad idea and now they've had to have an emergency and what would have happened is they'll ban it and then Fluffy gets eaten and Fluffy gets eaten and then some kid on a trail somewhere gets attacked and I'll say, oh my God, we didn't know this Like. This is terrible. And like you said, instead of hunters controlling the population, then they'll pay people to go out and kill these animals. And it's utterly. You and I see it, we all see it. But for these people in the suburbs, right, they're just, they don't think like us. That's why it's important for our people to get out and vote in numbers like never before 100%, 100%.
Speaker 1:I even try and remind people that ballot box biology is a bad idea. I shouldn't be able to vote on what you should do with your dog. You manage your own stuff. You're the expert of your dog. That's what the wildlife biologists do their job. Yeah, it's a slippery slope we're playing on right now. So hopefully, to all my listeners, get out there, take Jason's advice Not only vote, but find one friend to do it with you. That didn't vote last time. So that's a pretty important message. But now, jason, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this podcast right.
Speaker 1:Let's tell some of your favorite hunting stories I have a feeling you've got some good ones.
Speaker 2:Man, man, I've got some good ones. But in honor of you being in Colorado, I'm going to tell the first elk that I ever killed. Story. Craig Colorado like home of bushes right.
Speaker 2:And you see all these pictures of Colorado and everything. I never thought it was like eight foot bushes everywhere. But my first archery elk ever was in Craig, colorado. It was on private land next to a coal mine with reclamation land. So the private land was awesome, it was an over-the-counter archery tag. And the first day we flew in they got us out to a waterhole late in the afternoon and there's lots of mule deer coming in, cows, whatever, but spikes, nothing with any size whatsoever. So great, awesome food, great fellowship that night.
Speaker 2:The next morning we went and got in like a box stand waiting on the animals to come back from feeding on the reclamation land Maybe they have alfalfa or something planted on like thousands acres over there and all the, all, the big, all the there's not really big elk. You know in Craig so much, but all the bigger elk had already passed through and I told Levi, I'm like dude, let's go get back up on top of that mountain and let's see where the elk were coming from that were drinking the water. So we went and, you know, took the ranger, went around, got on top of the mountain and you could see all the elk going back up the mountain. You know. So like, all right, so that's 1,700 yards from the waterhole. They're not going to make it there. So I need to be up this high dark.
Speaker 2:You know, I was trying to do the math on how far down the mountain the elk were going to make it. And there's a little draw, I think quakies you know you'll call them the little quakies the trees, whatever aspen trees there was a little draw on the side of this mountain and it was like a delta where it all came together. And I'm like Levi, I think if we get to that delta this afternoon, the elk will make it to us in time. And he agreed with that and they didn't go on top like where the elk chilled and laid around. They didn't go up there and mess with them because they didn't want to run them off, right, so that was kind of their sanctuary on this private property.
Speaker 2:But we went up the next day no action, no action. It's the first time I found out about how the wind changes in Colorado. It was a lot different from Georgia you know so.
Speaker 2:I'm like Levi, we are not like this is a terrible wind dude. Like that wind is blowing right where those animals are at and like this is he's like, don't worry, by the time they get here, and sure enough, as the sun starts to drop behind the mountain, the wind, over five minutes, changes 180 degrees and it still had a little bit of back and forth.
Speaker 2:But when the shade hit, all of a sudden the mountaintop comes alive and you start hearing the elk bugle. And they were a long ways away and he was calling. I thinking nothing's gonna happen here. And uh he called and kind of like maybe he's answering us. I don't know if he's answering us or not. This is the first time I've ever been elk hunting. Yeah, then it's a little bit closer, like all right, and uh, the mountain went up and there was like a little little draw there that went down on the other side. And then mountain went up and there was like a little little draw there that went down on the other side and then it went up again and all of a sudden this elk is over that draw and the bugle sounds completely different. Right, like oh, wait a minute, this thing is coming, this thing is coming.
Speaker 2:So I'm set up on a very narrow path in the middle of the bushes whatever y'all call those bushes there, and I mean this, this path isn't two yards wide and I'm looking down into the draw where there's a bunch of trails and stuff. So you know, we're thinking the elk are going to come down on those trails in a little draw. It's gonna be about a 30 yard shot. And, uh, this elk comes over the top of the ridge and he's not walking like he's running and you can hear the rocks under his feet and stuff and the rocks are falling. Levi's back behind me.
Speaker 2:I'm like Holy crap. And then I, then I look up the side of the hill and you can see him turning his head left and right to get his, to get his antlers through the bushes, as he's coming down the mountain like half speed run. And now my heart is running about a thousand miles an hour like holy crap, right. And um, there's a spot where he gets about 60 yards from me coming down. He's not where I thought he was going to be. He's literally on the trail with me and, uh, he goes behind the thing. I get drawn back and when he comes out, he, I'm wearing leaf camouflage, full leaf camouflage. I'm down on me in the middle of this super narrow trail.
Speaker 1:He comes around the corner.
Speaker 2:Like a ghillie suit.
Speaker 1:Not a ghillie suit.
Speaker 2:You've seen the little slide-on pants that you slide on over your. That's got the little leaf pattern on them and you pull the little leaf camouflage shirts on. I use it a lot.
Speaker 1:It's textured, it's textured, it's textured.
Speaker 2:It is a textured suit that slides on and I use it a lot when I'm bow hunting, like I don't really gun hunt anymore. I'll never shoot an elk. I've killed seven elk now. I'll never shoot one with a gun. Yeah, so I look like a bush. This fat boy from Georgia looks like a bush in the middle of the trail. And like a bush this fat boy from Georgia looks like a bush in the middle of the trail. And this elk is still coming right. He is still coming running, like here I am at full draw and I'm thinking I'm about to have to let this arrow go and jump before he runs over me. And at the last second, at the last second, levi calls and he is 13 steps for me, face directly, facing me, straight on, like and I know how they the day before I'd had some win me and like those things leave, like a Volkswagen Bug or an S10 truck.
Speaker 2:right, if they win you, they leave.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, yeah, this isn't going to go good, I'm not going to get the side shot and Levi called to him and he shifted his body just a little bit, kind of at a quarter, and I shot him right in front of the shoulder blade and it ran across and it buried the fletchings up Like you could see the fletchings buried up and it was a Rage 3 blade broadhead. And he spun around and Levi called to him again and he stopped and it literally looks like a water spigot pumping blood out and I had another arrow and he's facing directly away from me and I think he got.
Speaker 2:I think he got a little dizzy and he staggered and started to run and as he ran I shot him, quartering away from me and uh, he fell 33 steps from where I was at. So he might have ran. He might have ran 20 yards and, uh, he took three or three or four breaths and my heart is going like a million miles an hour and this is about like a 260, 270 inch elk, right, but from Georgia, that is the biggest Boone and Crockett elk you've ever seen in your life.
Speaker 1:And I mean like literally.
Speaker 2:Levi comes down and we're high-fiving, going crazy and he only took a few breaths and he was dead on the ground. So we got over there. I mean we're just super, super pumped and I can't believe it, can't? I mean it's a five by six, which is great for for uh, craig, you know I thought it was awesome and uh, he's like all right. Well, you know, now, now the work starts and uh, you know, we filled dressing and the arrows actually on the inside, both arrows were on the inside of the elk and they crossed over one another. They were almost touching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of them, one of them, went through right, right in front of his heart and a little bit above, and the other one came through the other way. So all of your arteries right there at the front, I mean it, just the pump house was destroyed. Yeah, and you know, we, we it was the one, two Like we needed to get him to where we could get the range or two and the elevation. I am at 230 feet in Georgia. There is nothing like taking a redneck to elevation and you'll find out just how out of shape you are. But we maybe moved this thing like 30 yards and Levi's let's go down the hill.
Speaker 1:Oh like before we field dressed him and 30 yards and Levi's, let's walk down the hill. Oh like before field.
Speaker 2:We field dressed him and it was one, two, three pull and we would move him about two feet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was terrible.
Speaker 2:And again we're on private land so we can get a ranger or whatever. And Levi's like, let's walk down the mountain a little bit and lay our stuff down and catch our breath. And we walked down I don't know 100 yards or so and again we're pulling him through thick stuff there. Once you get him to the trail, you know it would be a lot easier. And we put our stuff down and he said, yeah, if we can get him to here, we can get him with a ranger. And I'm like, dude, if we can get the ranger to here, we can get the ranger to there. He said, oh, no, no, no, the ranger. When you turn the ranger sideways, you know it'll tip over. I said we're not going to do that. I said when we get to here we're going to turn the ranger around and we're going to back up this trail. We're not going to turn around. So we went down, got the backwards and I heard his horn hit the back of the ranger.
Speaker 2:That is the best part about elk hunting and craig on private land, not having to pack him out. And uh, you know we taught we tied him to the back of the ranger, drug him down and they had these like 1970 pickup trucks with the, the roll bars on them, with the kc lights across the top, and then they had a winch at the top right. So the KC lights across the top and then they had a winch at the top right. So the winch was at the top and you literally hooked the winch to the elk, let the tailgate down and you pulled him up into the bag and then they had a place that they hung him for the night to let him air out and whatever. And so that was my first experience elk hunting and it was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2:But we had some other guys and I helped them hunt some more. But the best part is the next day, the next morning, um, we were going to take the elk to the processor and Levi's kid had a football game and he's like, yeah, telling his wife he may not be able to see the football game Cause we're going to take it in. He had to get me back and I'm like no dude, like I'm all about watching some little kids play football. So we went in, dropped it off at the processor and when we got there and Craig did, there must have been two or three thousand people at the football game from the surrounding community.
Speaker 2:It was like an event, and it was. It was really like America should be, because, like the 13 through 16 year old kids were watching all the other kids play and the bathroom was out to the street, down the sidewalk, like 300 yards away, where no adults could see or anything, and the other kids were just monitoring. I'm like, oh my God, this is fricking awesome. Right, this is, this is the way America should be, and you know, none of the craziness that we have today where you're scared to let your damn kid out of sight, uh. But yeah, we sat there and watched, like peewee, little league football.
Speaker 2:It was great and uh went back and then, you know, I, I helped the other guys scout a little bit and uh, you know, one guy, don, shot a nice elk and didn't get him, and the other guys but that was my first elk hunting trip and because you can see the elk from one mountain to the next, I'm like if you haul me bullets out here, I will kill everything in Colorado in like six months, because you literally can shoot from mountain to mountain.
Speaker 1:And I'm like you know what?
Speaker 2:I don't think I'll ever shoot an elk with a gun and I've stuck to that, and that's been 20 years, you know at least 20 years. But that was my first elk hunting experience. I wish I was a good enough hunter to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I have a. Typically every season we'll get an archery tag and a rifle tag Because I'm just trying to fill the freezer and I'm not good enough to commit fully to archery. But it is my end goal to be a 100% archery hunter. But man, that's a great story. One thing I went turkey hunting once in rifle and this guy took me out. We had just met and we were going all over the place and in the middle of the day he's like, all right, we got to go to town. I'm like, okay, let's go to town. We hit up McDonald's and then we go to a Little League baseball game. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it was awesome. It was exactly like that. It was great. It was great. This is great.
Speaker 1:We're just laying in some grass in our camo. Everyone's coming by and he's not getting any birds and I'm like, no, no, sir no birds yet, but we'll get there, and I did end up pulling a real nice tom.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I know exactly that colorado except mine was rifle. The cool thing about rifle is there's a well I don't know, it's probably it's cooler now than it used to be, but there was a mine fire, so, like the mountain steam, so it was a cooler, cooler day and just sitting there watching a baseball game with the mountain just sort of steaming next to you a memory I'll have forever, man, um, but that's a great story. And then I I have another one for you, um, about, uh, thermals.
Speaker 2:Right, so you were saying those wind switch on you that was the hardest thing for me to learn and that I mastered, and you know we went back again. But that that that was it, and I'll tell you a story about my second trip in colorado. But the, the thermals. Once I finally mastered the thermals, figuring out the thermals a little bit, the bow hunting got significantly easier absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So I'll tell you a quick story. It's a funny one. But my buddy that I started hunting with in Washington, he never mentioned the word thermals to me, and so when I moved to Colorado, I started doing my own research and I was like, okay, this is apparently a big deal. So I started paying attention to these things and I got myself a wind checker and I was like, no wonder we didn't kill anything in washington, right? Um? But I get a wind checker and, uh, we spend the most of the day chasing this one bull.
Speaker 1:It's. It was after, it was 2020, after like a foot of snow. So there's tracks. So we're just track, following his tracks, following his tracks, hoping he'd bed down. Never, never got up on him. But another buddy of mine had hurt his hip, so he's at camp just glassing. He's like, hey, at the other end of the range that you're on, it's 40 elk just bedded, and we're like, let's go. So, after some persuasion, I convinced him to go that way. So we get to the other side of this, like draw, and they're on the other side of this mountain and I'm like, okay, here's the plan. I'm going to drop down this draw, go up and around the mountain behind them and I'm going to come up and over. You just wait here for like 45 minutes and then you go up to the same elevation as them and then you come in side mountain and I was like if you blow them out, they'll go to me. If I blow them out, they'll go to you, like it'll be perfect, and so.
Speaker 1:I get down and I climb up and over and I'm walking through and it's like a nice warm day. So the snow is silent, perfectly silent, no crunchies or anything like that, because it snowed like the night before. And I get there and I realize, oh, I see an antler and it's a raghorn. But this is my third year archery hunting so I'm like ecstatic just to see an elk. So I drop my pack and get everything ready and I start sneaking forward and I get to about 50 yards and I realized I could see like 15 elk and I'm like, sweet, it's like a spike cow, cow, cow, cow, cow.
Speaker 1:One bull and he's bedded right in front of the log. So all I see is his head like I can't, I can't take a shot. So I'm like, okay, well, I'll just stand here, try, I can move maybe another 15, 20 yards forward. So I'm going to sneak forward just a little bit of the time. I'll eventually get there. And little do I know that my buddy, he had been moving at this point. And he gets him and he starts to see the elk and he's just like, oh, there they are. Well, I'm running out of cover, I guess I'll start crawling. So he just, he doesn't think about the wind, he doesn't do anything.
Speaker 1:And they're just waiting for this bull to stand up. Basically, everything's perfect. The wind's coming like right up and over the mountain right into my face Like this. Couldn't be better, except for the fact that my buddy was crawling in the open field, the other buddy's watching on glass being like no like trying to text him, being like stop, stop, stop, stop.
Speaker 1:He's crawling into this herd, um, with no idea what the wind is doing. And eventually I'm standing there kind of looking at my sight, and I look up and 40 elk stood up so I only saw 15, but also there's 40 and they all turned their heads at the exact same time right to where I told my buddy to be, and, rather than being patient, he just kept moving forward and, yeah, basically he blew the entire herd out. And this is also another lesson that I learned is like they then spun around just slightly to the side of me and I was like I don't know what range they are, but I've never seen an elk before hunting, so let's try this. So I just take my 50 pin because I had a five pin non-sliding site and I will and I just let it rip basically into the herd. Like you know, flock shooting for elk and I was like that as soon as I let it go, I was like that was dumb terrible idea terrible idea.
Speaker 1:Fortunately they were like 120 yards out right, so my arrow my, my arrow didn't even make it halfway there and I was like okay phew, I'm glad that I like it was just in the moment I was like oh, no, no, no no no, no oh, I let it rip.
Speaker 1:And yeah, by the way, uh, my buddy, I was like here, I went back to camp and I handed him my extra, uh, like wind checker, and I was like, from now on, we're paying attention to the wind like you. Just, yeah, stop me from killing my first ever elk. So, um, they're, they're a real thing, those, those wind thermals and, yeah, very, very much a real thing.
Speaker 2:So my second trip to Colorado was to the St Angles National Forest or something. Does that sound right? It's like down below Colorado Springs, near New Mexico. That does sound right. But I don see this monster bowl up in the national forest and I mean you're glassing 160 170 inch elk but like you gotta walk forever to get to these freaking elk like freaking forever, and it's a 40 minute drive. And then you gotta walk like seven miles uphill, downhill, whatever. And it was private land.
Speaker 2:So I did not learn my lesson about the pack, the how heavy the pack can be by the second day. Like leave this 45 kimber at home, let the bear eat you. And I started just like throwing all the stuff out of my pack that I didn't need. Uh, but we got. We got in a perfect position on the elk one day. Like I mean we were up there, they were coming back up and a hailstorm. This is like 10,000, 9,000, 10,000 feet or something. It was hot, but a hailstorm. Like we could hear this noise coming, like this crazy noise. And the next thing we know it's like I don't know three-eighths inch, half-inch hail just out of nowhere and we're hiding under some big fir tree or something, and the wind changed because it was in the middle of it. You know, the wind was coming up the mountain and then, all of a sudden, there was an inch of hail all over the ground and it carried our scent. It changed the direction and this entire herd that was coming to us when. You know, they just chilled during the storm too, but then the wind changed direction and it blew everything out. We were literally where we were supposed to be.
Speaker 2:We'd put in three extra hours to to walk in over a mountain, through the backside, and all this and there was an old ski resort there that was closed and it was maybe, it was maybe 12 miles. You could see, like you could see the town where we were at, but from where we had walked, you had to go back up the mountain and down the hill and up another mountain, like seven miles up, and it's like you know what f this. We're going down like we get in that ski resort. We're going to follow the slopes all the way to the town. At the bottom we'll get somebody to drive us back and get the car, and that's what we. It was so much easier walking the 12 miles downhill and we only had to walk like a mile to make it to the ski slope or where the walking got better and it's just knee high grass Cause the thing hadn't been used in forever.
Speaker 2:But that's what. That's what we did. From that point on, we would drive up and then we would, you know, we would walk back down and somebody else would take us back to the. It made a little bit easier. Uh, it's a little bit more aggravating on the car, but I would do that a thousand times over and clint clint ended up killing a really nice bull he killed about a 340 inch bull.
Speaker 1:So on day six, yeah, I can tell why you got bad knees. You're going 12 miles downhill that's.
Speaker 2:That's tough on the knees but uh, it does sound easier than a crazy uphill, you know so the bio accelerator, one of the things that I had treated when I was here two years ago. I'm here in medellin, I don't know if we recorded that or whatever, but they treated my knees. My knees were terrible and uh with that. Without having that treatment on my knees I wouldn't be able to do what I do today. But last year a friend of mine drew a tag in arizona. She lives in arizona and her dad got got diagnosed with stage four cancer and she had a rifle tag. She wasn't going to go. Her friends, you know, were hunting and I'm like, no, no, I'll fly out there. I think we walked 46 miles in six days and Jason, jason, even if I was shooting a rock I would have killed four trophy elk and one of the problems was her fight. She didn't tell me this until after the hunt Like we got her on a 360-inch bull.
Speaker 2:You know the guy that works for A3 came in and he killed out with his people. He knew the area so he came in. We had one at 300 yards to 600 yards and she was trying to lay on the ground but she couldn't see over the hill when she went to lay down right and there's a pine tree there that you just put your hand on it, put the gun on it and prop at 300 yards with snow on the ground, just shooting, I could track a field mouse in snow. That one got away and we're eating sushi. It was a great trip.
Speaker 2:She did pass on about a 300-inch bull at 100 yards. She could have easily killed, but she wanted a bigger one. She killed a lot of elk before. But the day that I'm flying home we're eating sushi and she tells me I'm like you know, you're awesome, you didn't complain, you walked, you carried your pack, you put in the effort. But the one thing you've got to get a lot better at is from the time that you acquire the animal to the time that you get on target. You've got to get faster at that. You to the time that you get on target, you've got to get faster at that. You're not always going to be able to lay down or whatever. And I said especially with whitetail, you may have split seconds, a couple of seconds to shoot an animal that you've never seen before, that you don't have a picture of and that's your chance.
Speaker 2:You've got to be able to, you know, go to one knee, use a stump, use whatever, and so that's the one thing that you could work on, you know, to be a better hunter. And she says you know, I've been thinking about that and you're right. And in the past, you know, daddy's always we've had the mats and daddy always got him in the scope and everything, and then we just traded places on the mats and you know I shot him. And I'm thinking that would have been some really nice information to know before we went hunting, because she's got mountain lions on the wall, she's got elk on the wall, she's got bears. She's been hunting her whole life and she loves it, she's passionate.
Speaker 2:Little did I know that her dad is setting the rifle up with the bipod and all that and then trading places and she's shooting. So as far as her transitioning but. But I could have killed. Had I wanted to shoot a rifle, I could have killed four stud elk there and that is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. So Anderson Mesa near Mormon Lake is just absolutely gorgeous in Arizona.
Speaker 1:That's my long-term hunt. I've started collecting points in a couple different states and so, like 15, 20 years from now, arizona is my end game. That's where I'm hoping to get the biggest bull I ever saw. So we'll see. There's some giants there and beautiful, beautiful country, absolutely. One thing I want to go back is for the people. I know I have a lot of East Coast listeners and I was hoping to just real quick explain thermals to them because they're like what's going on with the wind in Colorado? They don't necessarily understand If you guys haven't hunted in big mountainous areas before. Um, basically it's the temperature of the ground. So in the mornings or in the evenings, the wind there's prevailing wind, of course, but the the wind goes downhill, so it just rolls downhill. What is it? What do you say? Like nine, ten o'clock, when that sun starts to hit that hillside, it just starts to swirl and then, as soon as the ground heats up, that wind, wind is going to shoot uphill, and so that's why it's weird hunting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the peak times to hunt are obviously in the morning and in the evening, when that thing starts to swirl. The animals do it on purpose, but you know, the midday the wind's always going up, and in the dark the wind is always going down, but those peak hours it just swirls, and that's what makes the Rocky Mountain hunting and the wind paying attention to wind really, really important. So I just wanted to throw that out there. We normally don't do much learning on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Coming from a Georgia boy, it was a culture shock for me and it was the single most difficult thing for me to figure out, because you've got to figure out what time that animal is going to be where and what the wind is going to be doing. What time the animal is going to be where and what the wind is going to be doing, you may be in the perfect spot, but if you're off by 30 minutes, one way or the other, it's over. You just put all that work in for nothing.
Speaker 2:And so the thermals are something that Georgia people don't deal with a lot. It's very difficult. Now we are big on scent. Now, scent's a big thing in Georgia, but it's nothing compared to an elk. And in Georgia a deer can smell you. They'll put their head up, they'll stop their foot a little bit. They'll, you know they might get curious or you know, they don't necessarily just break and run when they smell you. When an elk smells you, he breaks and run and tears down anything in his way, like when he catches the slightest whiff of you, he is gone.
Speaker 2:There's no putting his nose up in the air. There's no nothing when he gets. He's gone, it's over.
Speaker 1:You know it's over at this point. That's what I've heard. It's like it doesn't matter what you smell like, because they're going to as soon as they do smell you. That's the only option you got for elk. Um, all right, jason. Well, that man fun story so far what else, what else you got for us, man?
Speaker 2:let's, let's keep going what you want to hear about, man. You want to hear about spearfishing. You want to hear about, uh, whitetail hunting georgia, dove hunting, dude, we do it all whatever stands out to you.
Speaker 1:If you got my favorite type of story is somebody doing something really stupid. So if you can think of one of those real quick.
Speaker 2:Oh, I've done a lot of that, but I'd probably go to jail if we tell those stories, the one thing that I personally enjoy doing these days. I've killed thousands of animals. Unfortunately, in Georgia we have a population problem, we have a hog problem, so this year already I've killed 67 whitetail shooting them on permit. So that's part of the reason that I don't like shooting animals with a gun anymore. And the hogs are the same way. I'll shoot 100 hogs this year in farmer's fields.
Speaker 2:So bow hunting is the thing for me. But in Georgia we've got this wonderful thing called college football that's coming up. It is my favorite time of the year because Labor Day weekend is when dove season comes in and it's a really big deal. In Georgia I have a lot of friends and instead of everyone shooting their own field, it's expensive to plant a dove field, it's very expensive Fertilizer seeds et cetera. But we take turns shooting the field. We give each other spots, so we have fields that haven't been shot every day of the season, when the season first comes up, and then you get corn fields or whatever.
Speaker 2:But dove season and the fellowship that goes along with dove season is dove and duck hunting especially doves, is my favorite thing in the world to do, because you get together. You're you're boiling peanuts, you're grilling, you're eating peanuts, you're grilling, you're eating lunch. College football zone you got that little Christmas in the air, uh. And then you're out in the field and you don't have to hold still, you don't have to be quiet, you're picking on one another. You know, dear Lord, you go to missing right Cause your friends are going to ride you like a pony, uh.
Speaker 2:But uh if, if, if, you never had the opportunity to go on a good dove shoot in a sunflower field, it's something that I would tell all of your listeners to do. Like hands down, because it's a lot of shooting. It's a tremendous amount of shooting.
Speaker 2:So my favorite thing to do in the world is spearfishing, and I'm going to compare spearfishing to bowhunting in a dove field, where you may go bowhunting eight or nine trips and never let an arrow fly. In the dove field, you're constantly shooting. So spearfishing is like dove hunting underwater with a bow, but it's a speargun and there's lots of shooting.
Speaker 2:And it's one of those things that the fish all behave differently. You know, a hogfish will swim away from you and at some point he's going to turn sideways, you know. So you get to shoot him. But an African popinot, if you swim directly at an African popinot or you look at him, you're never going to kill him, right? You got to ignore him. Look the other way, maybe pop a band. But the spearfishing is something. And yes, there are sharks. They don't normally mess with you. So I tell everybody the biggest sharks in the world are in Georgia, because I don't want them coming to Georgia. Like, spearfishing is great in Florida, Go down there, Don't come to Georgia and mess up my stuff. But I had a streak four years ago where I killed 12 African pompano over 50 pounds. Most people, if they kill a 30-pound African pompano, they've done something. And I killed 12 over 50 pounds. One was 59 and three-quarter pounds.
Speaker 2:So he was like a quarter inch short of the world record. So when it comes to spearfishing thing, my that people know me for is the big african pompano, and I've seen one pompano. I've seen it four times. It was in the mid 60s and I mean just just massive and I never, never got remotely close to shooting. Yeah, look up what african pompano looks like I am.
Speaker 1:I'm doing it right now. That's a big fish it's a big.
Speaker 2:It's a big silver fish and believe it or not, they're very, they're very difficult to see, right that silver, when they're straight on in the water. They can be 20 yards from you if they're facing straight at you and you not see them. And when they turn to the side is when you get the flash. But the one thing I really noticed about pompano is they're extremely curious, like you wouldn't see them, you wouldn't see them, and then all of a sudden, um, you would shoot a fish and it's like, oh, there they are. You know they're out of nowhere. They're. They're there because the action but it wasn't just the shooting the fish, it was the sound of the band.
Speaker 2:And uh, you know, I use a koa fatback a lot. So what I started doing is, uh, you know, once I got there, there's a lot of fish there I'd look, I'd look, I'd pop a band. I just popped one band because I had two other bands and sit there and and here they would come, they would come running and that's, uh, you know, we've tried chumming them, we tried all kinds of stuff, but you see a lot of people that shoot cobia off of bull sharks. The bull sharks have gotten used to hearing the sound of the band and they go harass the spearfishing whoever's spearfishing and get a fish right and the bull sharks are kind of mean ones.
Speaker 1:Is that right? Yeah, they are.
Speaker 2:They can, they can be, they can be a little testy, uh, but if you'll, if you'll, pull up a free diver or pull up my, uh, pull up my instagram page, yetiman10, pull that up really fast, okay, doing it, yeti man 10. And on the top row, there you're going to see a girl me and a girl together with a big African pompano. That is the world record African pompano for a pole spear for a man or a woman, and Freediver staff is amazing at spearfishing. And we talked about the trip for three years. You know the weather was bad or whatever.
Speaker 2:She finally came up. We made a plan, what we want to do. She had a couple people from South Africa that were amazing. We had a videographer and I'm like, listen, let your friends just keep shooting the fish and you just sit there and be patient, like I know you're going to have cobia swim by you, I know you're going to have all this. Just be patient, let them shoot the fish. And I said at some point, I know the pompano were here, but at some point, when they shoot that fish and sure enough, hilton shot a big amberjack that went to fighting. And when they went to fighting, like five African pompano swam in and she dove down on that one and shot that one. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:This is the thing she is basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, with spearfishing world records, no one can touch the fish. They can't touch your line, they can't touch you in any way. And so she had it on the buoy. She was able to fight it for about 20 minutes, got it up there and then, once she gets to the boat and goes to hand it to you at the boat, you know, then you can help her, you can do whatever. But uh, the spearfishing is something that I know. People in colorado don't get a lot of chance to do it, but it's even if you don't even if you don't.
Speaker 2:You know when you have a great day hunting and you're in the woods and you didn't kill anything, but you saw a cubby, a quail. And you're in the woods and you didn't kill anything, but you saw a cubby of quail and you saw a bobcat do something crazy or a fox do this. The thing about spearfishing and diving is I've never had a bad day diving never, and the things that you see can be out of this world.
Speaker 2:I dove down in Georgia twice a year. We have world-class bull red fishing and in the spring it can get messed up a little bit because of the salinity of the water. If you've had a lot of rain, the females won't come in because their eggs won't fertilize. If the temperature's cold, they won't come in. So in the spring it can be weird, right, you can get the big run split up over two or three months, but in the fall we call it the hunt for red October. In the fall they're coming the first full moon. In October they are coming in by the hundreds of thousands, and I'm talking about 20 pound.
Speaker 2:20 pound males, 30, 40, 50 pound females, and it's not unusual to go fishing for a day and by lunchtime you've caught 50. You haven't caught one under 20. But I don't do it anymore. I take people to do it because it gets tiring. It's like once you've done something. But it was in the spring and the water that day was terribly, terribly clear. We don't dive public numbers either, maybe at the beginning of the season once or twice, or if you're trying to shoot a cobia. Public numbers is not something we dive, but that particular day the water was so clear we were going to see if maybe there were some cobia. It was a little early and you could see parts of the Liberty ship, you know, 77, 80 feet down underwater, without even getting like the water was that clear.
Speaker 2:Wow that's cool. I didn't charge my GoPro that day and I was like whatever. And Wesley was like go down, take a look. And when I jumped in the water I looked at the bottom and it looked weird like there was bait fish. There was acres of bait fish everywhere and I'm thinking you know, the water temperature's not right for these bait fish to be here. And I swam a little bit further and I was scuba diving this day, by the way, we were actually scuba diving, not free diving.
Speaker 2:And uh, I swam a little bit further and I got spooked because it was weird, it was. It was like watching I don't know poltergeist or something. The whole floor of the ocean was moving for as far as I could see. And uh, at 50 feet, at 50 feet, the deeper you go, the more colors you lose. But at 50 feet you lose the color red. Right, red's not a color. You're not going to see that color. When you get to 70 feet, you're seeing in black and white. You're shooting fish based on their it's black and white, silver. You're shooting fish based on their color or, I'm sorry, based on their shape, not their color.
Speaker 2:But I go a little bit further. I'm getting like really, really spooked and, uh, all of a sudden I'm here. All of a sudden I hear mmm, mmm, mmm, it was the males, it was the male drum. The bull reds were stacked up 20 miles off the coast getting ready to come in with the next cool moon.
Speaker 2:And I went down to the bottom and I literally like hundreds of thousands and I got on my knees on the sand and I sat and I slowed my breathing down and they just passed over me.
Speaker 2:They made a bubble around me and it was anywhere from like four feet to eight feet as bull reds, 20, 25 pounds, just rolled over me for 30 minutes and any spot pattern that you could imagine you would see. And then occasionally there would be a golden colored one and the golden color for some reason would actually show up, so he wouldn't be gray and into black and white. But that was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had and I didn't shoot a single fish, the entire dive. And you know, my air is running out. I get back up, I'm telling Wesley what's happening, so Wesley gets down down and he gets to see the tail end of the school as they're moving off. He's like, dude, that that was absolutely amazing, but spear fishing is one of those things there's no such thing as a bad day and, um you know, you never know what you're going to see.
Speaker 1:So yes, I have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, yeah I have been in the water with the great whites before too. It was a little unnerving the first time when the shadow comes over you, but the other times weren't so bad. But the bull sharks you hit on it. The bull sharks are the only ones that's ever given me a problem.
Speaker 1:Okay, man. So I lived in Washington, in Seattle, for a little while and I have a couple of amateur buddies that did it in the Puget Sound and they said the same thing, even though they don't do it all that often but they said it's just the most amazing thing ever, even the water's frigid. But the Puget Sound has a crazy diversity of fish up there. But yeah, it's something that's been on my list for a long time, I've just never gotten around to it.
Speaker 2:I don't know why I should try it out.
Speaker 1:I'm sure my wife would love to go somewhere with warm water.
Speaker 2:It's very addictive. I would compare it to crack or meth, so I don't recommend that you do it, especially if you're not near the coast and it takes a while. The other thing, too, is that you know I have over 3,000 tank dives and probably 20 or 30,000 free dives. You know I'm 53. I got certified when I was in college. I didn't have any money to do it until I got 30, right, you know?
Speaker 2:where you could actually go and do it. But you know this time of year, if it wasn't for Vote for America, you know, this time of year I'm fishing spearfishing three, four days a week, but it's very, very addictive. You love it. We'll go and shoot sheephead once a year and fill up our freezer and vacuum seal it. We'll go and shoot the flounder, uh, once a year, one trip a year, and again we have the different species that we shoot.
Speaker 2:So I'm not opposed to eating beef from the store or buying stuff from the store, uh, but most everything that I consume, protein wise, is something that I personally harvested. And you know the deer. We make our own sausage. We, you know, we do whatever. And you know, when I do order beef, I normally order it from a guy in florida that you know the deer. We make our own sausage. We, you know, we do whatever. And you know, when I do order beef, I normally order it from a guy in Florida that you know raises the beef. But for me, knowing where my food comes from is a big deal. It's a really, really big deal no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Just I'll get this done. But whenever it comes to like I had some friends over the other day and I shot some axis deer in hawaii and I was like I made axis deer tartar and I made a bolognese and I spent hours in the kitchen just preparing this meat for these people, being like this is what it's all about. It's just there's something different about it. So I get that and I hope to eventually get to the point that I don't have to buy protein from the store anymore.
Speaker 2:So we'll see if I can get that.
Speaker 2:That's the end goal um, I'll give you all something so you can actually see what I'm talking about. So, kelly young island, allen key, she's a big youtuber, south florida youtuber. I'm probably in, uh, probably in 10 or 12 or her different videos that she made. But uh, she came the last weekend of turkey season this year to georgia and, uh, the first day, the first day, it rained all night, it rained all day or whatever, and we're trying to make videos, right. So I take her to the most beautiful turkey hunting place ever and you know nothing. There's no birds gobbling, nothing, and there's just you know, and this, this place is beautiful. Yeah, so you know, we drive around, we check my 700 acres, no luck.
Speaker 2:I call a friend, so we go over that afternoon and, and, tori, she had, she got a new baby, her mother-in-law's been sick, her husband hurt his foot so she hadn't been. So we got to go that afternoon and, sure enough of me, we're in Appling County and there's just gobblers all over the field. The Sun has come out after three days of rain and they're strutting everywhere, so perfect. And we, this big long field, they don't know how to get there. My'm like, all right, we're going to get the branch, we're going to go around and I don't ever use a strutter decoy. It's very rare that I use a strutter decoy. Tori, tori had one that day and um, kelly, we got in position and there's like 10, 10 gobblers in the field. I mean, they're a couple hundred yards away.
Speaker 2:I'm like, all right, this last weekend, give me that strutter decoy. I want to ease out in the field, see if I can't get them to come down here. And, uh, sure enough, I get in the field. They come running. Well, kelly gave me her gopro right and the gopro is already filming. I turned the gopro off, so my fat butt is out in the field and I can see all. I can see all these gobblers coming running. Well, at the angle that they're at, they can't. And you know, as soon as the first, as soon as the first gobbler comes by, he's all right, he's got like a six or seven inch beard. And the next bird comes, you know, boom, they're blasting. Two birds go down, whatever, it's great. And then here comes like five gobblers in jumping on the other birds and everything. So it's good. And in Georgia you can only shoot one, one gobbler per day. So that's, you know, everything's awesome, everything's great, you know, until we realized that the GoPro wasn't filming all the footage, you know. So Kelly's like terribly depressed.
Speaker 1:She just had a great hunt. They doubled up or whatever. So you turned it off because you thought you were turning it on. I thought I was turning it on, so you know we absolutely destroyed that.
Speaker 2:And so we're riding around, james and Tori. They own about I don't know 3,000 acres and here's some massive gobblers in this field. I'm talking about studs, like complete studs. I'm like, all right, this is what we're going to do Tomorrow morning. We're going to come here, we're going to set up, they're going to be roasted over here, they're going to come down, they're going to come across the field to us. We're going to be in the truck by 7 o'clock. All right, they're all laughing at me or whatever. So we get out there short and we were a little late and got in the field.
Speaker 2:Birds are gobbling, call them, they come down. These birds came from 500, 700 yards and they come all the way across the field. You know, they heard me, they're watching. I'm telling tori and and uh kelly, like you know, be quiet, because they're on top of the hill, 500 yards away, like looking over where the decoys are set up. But these birds come in just as hot as they can be and you can go type in uh kelly, young island key or whatever georgia, turkey, hunt, you can actually see this. So those birds get up there and uh tori shoots first. He shoots first and misses, then kelly shoots and kills her britain. It's. It's hilarious, right. I mean it's complete chaos breaks loose and I mean it's a nice bird. I mean kelly kills a very, very nice bird. It's like at 6 30 in the morning and, uh, it's great, everything's perfect.
Speaker 2:Tori's all depressed. I'm like, hey, it's gonna be fun, you know, whatever, I'm gonna go back. She's like I'm gonna go back and get my gun with the, with the I don't know, with a red dot on it. So we drop the bird off at the house, we go to another. We go to another spot in a field. There's a big gobbler in the field and two jakes. We get set up there. They come right us. That's the last day of the season. Those girls were just as happy as they could be Talking about hunting stories for me. I was laughing pretty hard about the whole thing. But I was very disappointed when I turned the GoPro off, because that's what she does she's a YouTuber and I was a little depressed but I was confident that we'd be okay. But that's a good episode for your listeners to watch and see some Georgia turkey hunting firsthand.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I'll make sure to put a link to that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Next year's turkey hunting is going to be a lot better. We probably had I don't know 30 gobblers that made it through the season, you know, depending on which property we were at, and you know, 70 to a hundred Jake. So I'm really excited for turkey season and I'm terrible at I am a terrible turkey caller. I'm a very good turkey killer.
Speaker 1:And then the number one.
Speaker 2:Mistake the number one mistake people make um with turkeys is they over. Call them right You're. You're trying to get the turkey to do the exact opposite of what he does in nature. Right, he gobbles. They're supposed to come to him, and I define turkey, I define a gobbler as like the ultimate narcissist, right Like here. I am.
Speaker 2:I'm beautiful, come see me and the one thing that the narcissist can't stand is the person, the, the, the girl that doesn't pay them any attention, right? So you need to pay them enough attention to let, let you know. Let them know that you're there and, uh, if there's a bunch of hens in that area and you call that gobbler aggressively well, hens are the most jealous things in the world they're going to immediately take your gobbler the other way. So number one mistake, I would say, is over calling. The number two mistake is calling hard at gobblers when there's hens in the area because they're going to cut you off and they're going to take your gobbler the other way. So I would tell you, your listeners this is my turkey hunting tip to everyone that you will kill more turkeys calling the hen and throwing sand with your hand. Take and throw sand on the leaves where it sounds like another hen that's feeding. If you sound like a hen that's feeding, she doesn't pose a threat to the opposing hen and the hen will come over there to see what's going on, what they're eating, and they'll drag the gobbler. They'll drag the gobbler along behind them. So, jason Redneck, turkey hunting tips.
Speaker 2:So I think I've had one person, miranda Adams. She was on, naked and Afraid. She's never been hunting before. She's the only person in five years that I've taken turkey hunting that didn't kill the turkey. And we're afternoon turkey hunting and she's sitting there and I can't see she's blocking me in the tree I know that they like to be in these shades. And she turns over to me and says Jason, there's a turkey right there and literally the gobbler was like eight yards from her on the left. He had come up behind her.
Speaker 2:I'm like you can't, this girl doesn't hunt, right? So she didn't know you can't do that. And he takes off running. If you're going to have to shoot a turkey running from you, like running straight down the road away from you, is absolutely perfect. And you know she did not get a turkey and I think like two weeks later I went back and killed that gobbler.
Speaker 2:But yeah, turkey hunting I do like it because you don't have to be quiet and you're doing it with somebody a lot of times. But taking those new people is really what I'm passionate about and every new person that I bring into hunting, you know, is somebody else that helps us vote and preserve our heritage and what we like to do. But every girl that I introduce into hunting or firearms pretty much guarantees that her kids are going to be raised that way, right? Yeah, I think a lot of husbands probably owe me a gift certificates on like wedding day for the amount of new hunters that I've brought into hunting and fishing and introduced that they like it. But but yeah, man, that's pretty awesome, that's it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, any story if shooting the hogs one of the guys actually, this is one of the guys the Trump assassination that happened a couple of weeks ago and you'll see the Secret Service guys laying down on top of him or whatever. And you're going to see this big, tall dude, this big tall SWAT guy, that comes up in the middle of the stage and he's looking like both ways or whatever. That dude's the head of the SWAT team and he came down with some ATF boys and went hog hunting with me this summer.
Speaker 2:So that guy that's standing in the middle of the stage. I'm like, wait a minute, that's freaking, ben he can't kill a hog. Those dudes were horrible at shooting man. We don't, those dudes were. Those dudes were horrible at shooting man like. They showed up in georgia wearing twenty thousand dollars a piece, with something like binoculars thermal binoculars and at 1200 yards you could see a coyote lick his paw like no, they showed up with every, every toy imaginable in the boat and um, and were absolutely horrible at hunting Did they get opportunity.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, they got opportunity.
Speaker 2:They ended up killing some. But if you're a SWAT guy or a hostage negotiation guy, you have hours to adjust the dope on your scope and this, that and other have hours to adjust the dope on your scope and this, that and other. And the first night that we're taking them like, hey, let's shoot a couple coyotes first and they go get your stuff together, get ready. We pull up to this field. You know there's coyotes in it like swack them, man. The first field we pull up to there's like two coyotes at 200 yards. You can't ask for anymore. It's South Georgia, you know. Throw it out, lay it on the mirror, shoot him, man. They get out of the truck and start opening cases and putting this on and that on and, believe it or not, the coyote stood there for like 45 seconds, which is unheard of. You know it took it took them like 20 minutes to get all their stuff together, like you know, to get ready to go.
Speaker 2:I'm like all right, all right, that was a practice run. We got all our rifles away. Well, don't put your rifles back in the case, get your.
Speaker 2:You know have your tripods, all this stuff we pull up to the next field and we're, we're looking and there's nothing there. But we look across the dirt road in the other field and, like 400 yards, there's three coyotes out there and they start blasting at these coyotes and, uh, I don't know what was wrong with the scopes or what they were meant. I mean mean they shot like 10 times and the coyotes are sitting there looking at them like a Taliban. You know it's a surprise. The coyotes kind of run off. And we pull to the next field and there's a big coon in the field. Like 200 yards it's big coons in the field and they all get out like, hey, you'll shoot this coon, you know they go down to the chicken houses where they start blasting at the coon and they keep messing with their scopes, like they're just constantly messing with their scopes.
Speaker 2:I've had all I can take right, hey, y'all move that stuff out of the way behind my truck. I crank my truck up, cut it around, get my deer rifle, lay it on the thing and shoot the coon and just coon parts go everywhere. I'm like, listen to me, y'all set y'all's rifles on 200 yards. Do not touch them again. Do not touch them if the animals at 300 yards know that you're roughly going to be four inches low or whatever, so compensate from there. I said I don't want to see anybody touching a scope unless the animal's over five or six hundred yards away. Everything, everything, 200 yards or less, just shoot him. Right, it might be an inch high at 100 yards. So by the second night they got a little bit better and you know they killed some hogs the second night, the first time they came up and they shot at like six pigs. I don't know, they might have been 10 pounds apiece or whatever.
Speaker 1:And they are so happy it's.
Speaker 2:It sounds like the streets of fallujah and pigs going, whatever, and they kill two like they. There's three of them. They one, two, three of them and they kill two. Right, they're shooting all over the place and just thrilled. I mean they are excited and I get it. You know they don't have hogs up there and they're really, really excited over the pigs. And then when we actually we actually they killed. They killed a couple of 200 pound hogs, so it's great.
Speaker 2:The next night so the third yeah, third night I take them to a plantation. Uh, a friend of mine and he's got a bunch of old, like 65, 70 year old dudes with hip replacements in. You know, they come hunting with him every year and there's hogs all over this 1,000-acre field and Ben the guy, the SWAT guy, said oh me, they're all wanting a single-file line military. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down, it doesn't do us any good. You've got these old dudes behind you. They can't go as fast as us. They've got to get up there in in the line. They're like Brett, I want to take my truck and we'll go around to the road and see if I can't push these hogs back to you.
Speaker 2:And sure enough, you know it's a big field, right, so they didn't spook. They start feeding back and anyway they're in line and Brett calls out you know which ones to shoot. And one, two, three, they go to shooting. He's got five, four old dudes. There's the five of them. They go to blast and one hog runs around behind the line. Brett swings around and shoots it like a 250 pound sow and um, you know, I call them.
Speaker 2:I go around there, the old dudes with the hip replacements, every one of them killed the first one, but the hog that they shot at they have like 900 therm, you know, and some of them are suppressed, some of them are not suppressed or whatever, and my my guys that came in again. There there's a big difference when you have split seconds to shoot at something versus getting all day long to play with your scope and watch it.
Speaker 2:But they had a lot of fun and they ended up killing a few more hogs. But I told him I said, listen, if the Taliban had thermals, none of y'all would have ever came home. I just want you to know that, like none of y'all would have came home if the Taliban had thermals, they shoot a little bit better than this. But yeah, man, I picked on them, rode them like a pony, but that was a lot of fun. That's a great story.
Speaker 1:I love it Especially these highly trained guys with their amazing setups and just struggling. It makes me feel a little bit better about when I struggle.
Speaker 2:But no, you do not want to shoot against any of those guys on a course. We shot a course at the plantation that afternoon and they were just freaking phenomenal. It did not matter 1,200 yards or whatever, but going down, laying down on a rock, ranging the target, sitting there stuff, absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenal. I mean they did not miss, they were freaking lights out, that's cool, that's what I'm saying, but there's a big difference.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, they were. They were 100% lights out right, yeah, but there's a big difference between when you just have split seconds and you don't know where it's going to be, and it's in the dark and you're doing whatever you know. Sometimes you got to do that redneck adjusting don't touch the scope, leave the scope alone, because the time that you're touching the scope, that animal's gone. Just know that. All right, your bullet, your bullet, at 400 yards, is going to drop you know this many inches or whatever, and let it fly um.
Speaker 1:But that was eye opening. So, yeah, that's interesting, man. Well, jason man, this has been a lot of fun. I know I've actually taken up more time, I think, than I originally scheduled, so I think I'm going to have you back at some point, because I have a feeling a lot more stories for us. But let's wrap this thing up with two things. One, why don't you tell people a little bit more about Vote for America? Is that right?
Speaker 2:Vote the number for Americaorg. You can go there. You can register to vote in less than two minutes. It's optional. You don't have to put in your email address. You don't want to put in your phone number. We could care less. We're not in the data collection business. We're in the getting people out to vote business.
Speaker 2:It is not enough for hunters to vote by themselves. Every single one of us knows one person that didn't vote last time, and you don't have to go with in the Walmart parking lot or dollar store parking lot to find that person. It's a church member, it's a hunting club member, it's someone you served with, it's a relative. You know one person that didn't vote last time. It's your grumpy ass Uncle Steve that thinks that his vote doesn't matter. But you want to make america feel like home again. Find one person and take them with you, and and when we show up, it's going to be the hunters, the gun owners, the uh, you know the veterans that set this country on the right course one way or the other, I prefer we do it at the ballot box, right? So you know, find somebody and take them with you to vote that's awesome, man.
Speaker 1:here's what I'll do to my listeners. If you talk to someone and get them voting, send me a direct message. I'll pick one person and I'll give them like a gift card or a hat or something. So get out there, guys, and invite some friends that you know don't hunt or don't hunt, but don't vote to vote this year. Get people out, so, jason. Thank you very much, man, thank you. Finally, let's give them your. You said it earlier, I think Yetiman10. Yetiman10, yeah.
Speaker 2:Any other socials you want to share. No, I've had 300,000 follower accounts canceled, deleted because I don't keep my views to myself, so Yeti is my 15-year-old German short hair, so I just went to you. I swapped over to using his Instagram page. We set up years ago but Yetiman10, name for my dog. You can scroll through there and see a lot of the fishing and hunting pictures from around the world.
Speaker 1:Perfect man. Well, I will. I will try and find that Georgia hunt to put in the show notes. I will put your Yeti man 10 in the show notes and, of course, vote for the number four, america. I'll put that in the show notes. If you guys are listening, please check those out. Click on them all and uh, jason man, thank you so much. I really really appreciate your time and your stories today yeah, thank you all right, guys.
Speaker 1:That's it. Another couple stories in the books. Again, I want to thank jason for coming on the podcast, especially all the way from medellin, colombia, um. So thank you, jason, really do appreciate it. Some great stories, especially some of the stuff there at the end with the FBI guys. That's pretty funny stuff. But really what's important here? Guys, go to voteforamericacom. Register to vote. If you haven't already, find one person that didn't vote last time and just say, hey, promise me you're going to vote. Don't care who you vote for, but I have a feeling that their values probably align with yours. So get people out there, get people voting and let's make a difference. Beyond that, guys, if you have some stories for your own, please make sure you reach out to me and let's get them recorded. Other than that, make sure you review the podcast on whatever you're listening to. That's it, guys. Let's now get out there and make some stories of your own. Thank you.
