.png)
The Hunting Stories Podcast
The Hunting Stories Podcast
EP 111: The Hunting Stories Podcast: J. Alain Smith
Feel the bite of the Arctic wind as Alain takes us deep into his polar bear hunt, facing the harsh realities of the icy wilderness. From navigating treacherous fissured ice with dog teams to setting up Spartan camps in bone-chilling temperatures, Alain's vivid storytelling brings the Arctic to life. He shares captivating stories about the unpredictable behavior of sled dogs and the constant challenge of shifting ice. The sheer determination and survival instincts required for such a hunt are palpable, making this tale a testament to human resilience and the wild beauty of the Arctic.
J Alain Smith's Links
Youtube
Instagram
Facebook
Website
🔭 Upgrade Your View with Vortex Optics! Experience unparalleled clarity and precision with our top-of-the-line binoculars, scopes, and more. Check out our full range at VortexOptics.com
Visit SummitBowstrings.com or call 210-701-7399 to gear up with the best. Summit Bowstrings – where excellence and innovation meet in every string.
USE CODE: HSP10
Howdy folks and welcome to the hunting stories podcast. I'm your host, michael, and we got a great one for you today. Today we actually connect with Jay Allen Smith. If you don't know him, he is the host of Rugged Expeditions. He's a hunter, a writer, a musician and, most of all, an adventurer. And he actually reached out to me and said hey, I, I've got some fun stories for you. I'd love to come on your podcast. And he didn't disappoint. In fact, tonight we have our first polar bear hunt. So super, super fun stories and I guarantee we're going to have Alan back on the podcast, because we only touched just a very small portion I think three or four stories of what has been a very long and exciting hunting career.
Speaker 1:So I want to say, first off, thank you to Alan for coming on the podcast. Super excited to connect with him and excited to have him back For you listeners. Thank you, guys for tuning in. You know what? Let's just jump into this thing and let Alan tell you some of his stories. Thank you All right, alan. Welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast. Brother, how are you?
Speaker 2:It's a great day in the Northwest. It's summertime here, so we've got, you know, 89 degrees. The Seattle area of the Northwest gets trashed a lot for raining all the time and we tell everybody from other places that, yes, it rains every single day. Don't move here.
Speaker 1:But we actually have good summers.
Speaker 2:We got no snakes, no tornadoes, no bugs. It's pretty good. It's just that you don't want to be here January, February, March.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I told you briefly before we started recording. I lived in Washington for almost five years, from July 5th to like October 30th the most beautiful place in the world Just absolutely spectacular. But the rest of the time it's just gloomy and it doesn't rain that much. You know that New York City gets more annual rainfall than Seattle does. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that it's just always gloomy. It was too much for my wife, who's like a Texas bird. She just needed sunshine and heat, so that's basically why we moved away. But that summer there in Washington there's nothing like it. So I bet you are having a beautiful day. I'm in Colorado now. It's been 90 for like a month, but today we're having a cold front, so it's rainy. I got your Seattle weather down here in Denver, so it's rainy and like 60 degrees. It's definitely up north. We need it for the duck fields. There you go, there you go All right.
Speaker 1:Well, let's kick this thing off. Why don't you introduce yourself, mr J allen smith, so that people know, if they don't already know, who you are? Um, can you know know who they're gonna be hearing stories from today?
Speaker 2:so, uh, let's see where I start. I'm a big game hunter and, uh, musician writer. Uh written some novels and some hunting books and uh, I've got a YouTube channel that's doing really great uh for my show rugged expeditions. We're also on carbon TV and uh, we're also on Amazon prime.
Speaker 2:You can see us on there as well, and so we started doing the filming, for that about, uh, 13, 14 years ago, okay, that about 13 14 years ago, okay, and uh, the show was one of those things where you're sitting around the fire with a bunch of buddies complaining about whitetail shows you know how many times can you watch a guy shoot a whitetail mouthful of corn from a tree stand with a bow, you know, yeah, and not that there's anything wrong with that, it's fun and hell and love doing it.
Speaker 2:But you know every show was pretty much the same. So you know we got trashed. And somebody said you know, well, maybe if you think you don't like him you should do it yourself.
Speaker 1:And I said well, maybe I just will, and there you go.
Speaker 2:One thing led to another and all of a sudden, you know, I got a TV show. We were originally on a sports channel, okay, and then switched to a streaming, about six, seven years ago, I think. Now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's been way more productive and a lot more views. You know you reach the whole world that way.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You have some great episodes. I've been diving into it. I think the first one I clicked on you're like we haven't been here in 18 years ago. In 18 years ago we got in a plane accident and I'm like what am I getting into here? You've got a lot of really fun stuff. So for the viewers or the listeners, make sure you guys go and check it out. I'll put a link to everything in the show notes. But you, you have, you do have a fun show. So, uh, thanks for putting that together, especially for as long as you've been doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the classic uh when, uh that show you're talking to specifically. I love being in Tanzania. You know, favorite place in the whole world and you know shooting Cape Buffalo is the most fun you can have with your pants on on.
Speaker 2:so, uh, we had been there years ago and I had my brother and my nephew and some other friends on this plane and the pilot brought it in with the wind at the tail yeah and you know which, for anybody who flies or has ever flown a kite knows that that nothing flies that well doing that, and we were heavy, we had 11 people on a navajo and so anyhow, we hit the end of the runway because he couldn't put it down, and into the trees and brush we went. You know, we had it filmed actually. Uh, my brother was recording from the front seat and uh, it goes well, you'll see in the show. But it goes from hey, we're going really fast and a bunch of yelling and cussing, and then boom, and then everything goes black, yeah, just and everything.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and then you just hear everybody okay, everybody, okay, and it was a fun episode. And then, of course, it's a water buffalo episode and then the next thing you're doing is shooting dove in africa and I was like man, that looks like a ton of fun. So, yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to steal too much thunder from the episode itself. I recommend everybody go out and check out all of your episodes, because I'm sure you have a big catalog. I have plenty more to catch up on.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was fun to watch. Yeah, thank you. We've tried to go with a variety too. It's not all just Cape Buffalo and Africa. We've got some sheep from around the world, we've got ibex, some bird hunting, fishing shows. You know, we tried to mix it up. Uh, there are a lot of african shows on there, but there is central asia and stuff like that, pakistan and some other exotic places for, uh, wacky animals.
Speaker 1:So that's amazing little variety, something for everybody, hopefully a lot of those bucket list hunts for everybody, the the stuff that everybody wants to go do at some point. You're just out there doing it so that I'm jealous, but, um, yeah, let's, let's talk about your favorite stories, alan. What, like, where do you want to set the stage here? Let's, let's just dive into it. Um, and, and it doesn't matter why it's the story you want to tell, as long as it's one you love telling- for starters, I'd like to start with my worst hunt ever perfect those are always my favorite and
Speaker 2:and it's kind of sad because it was one of the ones that I'd really looked forward to. And I went polar bear hunting up in and this was in the uh late 80s and they, you couldn't bring them back at the time, uh, but you know it was a bucket list thing. So I went up to the uh end of the perry peninsula and had it with some locals there and I got there and they were supposed to have those caribou skin clothes for you, you know, the hood and the parka and the fur around the edge, and I'd sent the money in advance in my sizes to, you know, make all the stuff and but having been in a lot of indigenous areas before, I made sure that I brought my own stuff just in case. And thank God I did, because when I got there none of the stuff was done or even started, so that was just for the cool clothing that was going to keep me warm. It was minus 35 the whole time we were there. What month of the year were you there?
Speaker 2:That was in late March, early april, okay, uh the idea being that that's when you still have hard ice, but you have enough daylight that you can get out and hunt okay, so how long were the days um? Uh, I want to say they were about nine, ten hours. Uh, then that bracket okay they weren't.
Speaker 2:it wasn't like short, like it is uh earlier and uh they in those days you'd only use a dog team, you couldn't use snow machines. So we got hooked up with the dog team and you know, that was the whole cluster, uh road snow machines to the end of the land, and then they had a little cabin there and then we got all the dogs hooked up and you know, you just go out on the ice and you start looking for tracks.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:And we had two dog teams, two sleds. I rode in one with one guy and then another guy followed us, the guy followed us. So our total camp consisted of one four-man pup tent with three of us in it. We had no heater, oh my God. We had a Coleman stove and that was the only heat that we had.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't be at negative 35.
Speaker 2:That propane might even freeze right like that. Oh, it's amazing what happens. I mean, you know steel breaks and stuff like that it's so literally, when you spit, it freezes in the air before it hits the ground.
Speaker 2:Jeez you know that kind of cold, uh, your nose is, you know, your snot's frozen all the time, so, and you're all covered up and you got face masks on and all this stuff to try, and you know, get by. Uh, and sunny the whole time that was, you know. The good news is, uh, you know, the Arctic is a desert, uh, not a lot of rainfall or anything or any snowfall, but, uh, anyhow. So we got up there, started, uh, started looking for tracks and talk about real adventure. One other thing that people don't realize about the ice is that it's not smooth Like you would think. Oh, the ocean, it's just this big, fast, you know, flat as a football field in any direction, and it's not because of the tides and the wind. The ice is actually breaking up and has fissures in it, and when the wind blows it, it crushes together and forms ridges these pressure ridges they call them.
Speaker 1:Huh, I never thought about that. You're right, I did assume it was just this big flat tundra. Basically, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's not. And the problem with that is that, of course, when you're on a dog team and you come to this big pressure ridge, that's, you know, 20 miles long or however long it is, you don't go around it. You got to try and find a way to get through it.
Speaker 2:So, you got a dozen dogs that are all tied up and you're trying to pull the sled over it, unload all the crap, carry it over the pressure ridge to the next flat area. The good thing is you warmed up really quick from sweating, with all the clothes you had on and everything. But the good thing is you warmed up really quick from sweating, with all the clothes you had on and everything. But it was a nightmare. And these dogs that they use are just wild. They're like trying to hook up wolves, these dogs. They wouldn't even let me go in and help them hook them up, because these dogs are just full tilt. They'll bite your arm off.
Speaker 1:I mean, just mean, what's the distance between these pressure ridges, right, so like is it every 10 feet you're having to hop over one, or is it like they're maybe a quarter mile apart?
Speaker 2:yeah, really no rhyme or reason. There might be none for two miles, and then you hit three in a row and then there's, uh, you know, a half mile between this one or the other one, or you just go around the smaller ones with the dog team, but but even turning them and you know, trying to do anything, it's just. And then every night, of course, you got to take them all off there, peg them to the ice, you know, feed them. They fed them fox carcasses, because they're trapping foxes up there all the time, and so they take the skin off and then they just throw them a frozen fox and they that's what they have for dinner every night.
Speaker 1:No, on it all night long. That's crazy. Do the, the dogs, have any kind of protection from the cold, or are they just bred up there and that's just what they do?
Speaker 2:that's. That's where they live, and animals are hardcore, that's they roll up and put their tail over their face and make a you know pile of snow that they kind of run around in a circle, get this little bit of up in the air and then they lay down and it comes on and covers them up and the cloud of snow and they're all covered up and that's where they sleep.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Okay, sorry, so many questions. I've never had a polar bear hunt on my podcast before. This is cool, keep going.
Speaker 2:So the other thing that was really weird is, as I was talking about, where the ice is broken up. You would be going on the ice and you'd come in a crack, you know it might be a couple inches long or something like that, or wide, so you just go right across it and the ice is real thick so you're not afraid of it breaking or anything. But one time we were making this big circle and we went back to follow our track back to had left, the some of the camp and the one guy, and when we came back following our own track, there was no track beyond the crack, because the ice is moving all the time and our track had moved, you know, a couple of miles away, and so you came to the crack and it just dead ended. You're like what the hell happened here, but that shows you how much the ice is moving while you're out there.
Speaker 1:Wow, I had no idea yeah.
Speaker 2:A whole nother added twist. Now the local guys, the Eskimos, I mean, they're so hip to their environment. You know, they knew where to go, but I was semi-panicking going uh-oh.
Speaker 1:Right, so you left a guy behind. That guy could be two miles away just because the ice shifting.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's crazy. Okay, yeah, just moved away. So anyhow, we did that and uh, but we got back to camp and then on, finally, on the eighth day, uh, we found a good bear. You know, uh, you look for the track and if it's a small track you don't bother, or if you see this, you know mother and a couple cubs, you don't bother with them. But we finally found a good track and we followed it and followed it for about six, seven hours and finally jumped the bear. He was laying in a one of those pressure ridges, kind of out of the wind, and he got up and he ran down the length of the pressure ridge, looking back over his shoulder, and uh, it was weird that you forget also that that bear has never seen a human being.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting yeah he's never seen it, you know, other than maybe a wolf. You know he's out on the ice and he's eating seals, that's all they eat they rarely come to, uh, the mainland or to soil, especially the big bears.
Speaker 2:So he was kind of running then he'd be kind of curious. Well, they turn a couple of dogs loose, they just cut them loose and they chase after him, try and bring him to bay. Yeah, so I. So I get off the sled, you know, with my rifle, thinking, you know I'm going to whack this thing If he stops. When he runs too far away, the dogs are running after him. He goes down to the end of the pressure range and now he's coming back down the other side of the pressure range and I'm standing there and he's coming full tilt but he's not charging, he's just running charging.
Speaker 2:He's just running and he's looking back at the dogs. Finally, like 30 yards I'm going hey, you know I need him to stop and and literally straight at me. So he comes to this greeting hall, he stands up as bears do and is swaying on his back feet and I'm looking at they're like 12 feet tall, right, yeah uh, call it well, yeah, from toe to head, yeah square out for about nine to ten feet.
Speaker 2:You know when you flatten him out but, yeah, huge, you know, they're as big as a brown bear. And so he stands up and he's doing that weaving thing. You know where. He's waving back and forth, he's trying to smell me and I've got the wind so he can't.
Speaker 2:But he's looking and he can't figure out what I am. Then he looks back and he sees these dogs coming, so he gets down on all four and he starts pounding his feet on the ice like a barrel, huffing like this, trying to scare me which he did a good job of doing, I bet and the eskimo. Now he's come up over the top of the ridge and he's yelling shit. And it was one of those deals where the animal was so cool. I'm looking at him going. I can't believe this.
Speaker 2:It's a polar bear right there and now he's at like I don't know 20 yards, something like that, and he's blocking back and forth and he's turning around and like I didn't really want to shoot him. You know what I mean. It was such a cool sight to see.
Speaker 2:I'm there yeah hunt, and I wanted to, but I just sat there and looked at him and this ester was. So finally the bear got down and he'd had enough and he just started to come. You know, he put his head down and just started running at me. So I put one right above his head into his hump, and then he spun up and I stuck another one in the center of his chest, and so what?
Speaker 1:caliber were you using 375. H&h Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, best caliber ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did it just drop him in his tracks, or what happened after the second shot?
Speaker 2:The first one clipped his spine, so he's in pretty rough shape.
Speaker 2:And then when he was getting back up and he had his head up. Then I put another one in the center of his chest. Yeah, he was, that was it. He didn't go five feet.
Speaker 2:But uh, then of course, the other thing weird about that with this, with how cold it is that you never think about is at 35 below when you're skinning.
Speaker 2:You've got to skin as fast as you can and get that thing off the hide because or excuse me, off the body, because the body's warm. So we took maybe like it's, the least amount of pictures I've ever taken in my life. Thank God one of them turned out nice, but it was, you know, so cold that as you're laying the skin down it's freezing into a piece of plywood. You know you can't fold it, you can't do nothing with it. So as we were skinning, they would roll it at the same time. So one guy was rolling it and me and the head guy, tony, we were, you know, skinning the thing out and fleshing it as best we could. And then, when we got it back into the village later the beautiful town of Polotuk there, we put it in his garage and warmed it up again and then we finished all the flesh and got all the fat off it and everything else.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's the craziest thing. Do people eat polar bears? I know that like brown bears yes, absolutely. Or, excuse me, black bears yes, absolutely. Brown bears, not so much. Does anyone out there eat polar bears? Yes, absolutely. Or, excuse me, black bears yes, absolutely. Brown bears, not so much.
Speaker 2:Does anyone out there eat polar bears?
Speaker 1:No, no, but they taste pretty gross yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we took a couple of pieces off of it just to say we did. They want nothing to do with it. They did take the meat to feed the dogs. Yeah, we didn't leave it, but they eat seals. Yeah, it's pretty gross and seal meat for all of you out there that have never had the pleasure of eating seal oil or seal meat or muck, tuck or seal fat. It's an acquired taste.
Speaker 1:Let's say yeah Gosh, how much does that cape and head and paws all weigh? Because I'm just thinking now you're miles out here, you've got to go over these ridges, and now you've got this. What 200-pound.
Speaker 2:Exactly 300-pound cape with you that you've got to get over there too, I want to say, because we had to leave the skull in it. We couldn't get it off fast enough. It was over 200, 210 or 215, something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jeez 200 210 or 215, something like that. Right we uh. But the good news is, two years later, fish and wildlife us fish and wildlife opened it up to where you could import polar bears again, and it was just a window for a couple years I want to say it was 92 ish and so I got the skin back from it. That's interesting and, uh, in that short window that they were open. So that was great, that's funny.
Speaker 1:That reminds me of a story my father-in-law. He passed away last year but he lived in Canada and I don't remember all of the details, but what you just mentioned reminded me of this. He had a hunter who had killed two polar bears and had two polar bear hides and the guy was like here's the deal If you can somehow get these to America, you can have one of them. So my father-in-law had a polar bear hide. I don't remember, I don't recall how he got them to the States, but he did manage to get both the hides across and the guy was, you know, honored his word and gave him one of the hides. I do think he eventually sold it. But yeah, he did it during that whole time frame that you couldn't bring that kind of stuff across the borders, but he somehow did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who knows? Yeah Right. I got to ask his wife and see if she remembers any of the details, because I had completely forgotten about that story until you mentioned that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, that was a great adventure, but it's one of those hunts that you're not going to do a second time. That but yeah, that was a great adventure, but it's one of those hunts that you're not going to do a second time. Like that's my question. Would you ever do it again if they were giving away a million dollars to go do it? No, I'm out. It just was not. There was nothing. It was the challenge and one of the coolest things you ever done, but it's just everything. You, from the food to freezing your butt off. I never took my clothes, my boots, nothing off. When you get in a sleeping bag, you just pull it over your head and you know, warm up. Finally and you know it was great Ended up getting some frostbite on my nose and you know stuff like that, but it was. But anyway, one of those adventures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's funny. I'm thinking about, like how did you even like go to the bathroom, like that must've been the worst time of your life? The trick is it's a timing issue?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you can't pull them down and sit there and think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You gotta be ready to go. And when you take all those layers off to get to those bib pants, all of a sudden you know you want to make sure, but you don't want to go too soon, you know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, cause you can't get. Yeah, oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's a real problem. Five minutes and read the you know a magazine while you're waiting for the action to start. I can tell you that, yeah, that's a problem I hope I never have to deal with, I guess. Well, thank you for that story. That was great. What else do you have for us? I'm sure you've got a bunch of other good ones.
Speaker 2:You know, probably the most exciting thing I've had happen is with Kate Buffalo and we had one that charged like a legit charge. You know, you see some of the stuff on TV and blah, blah, blah, where they really charge and yada, yada, and I've had lots of them that are kind of coming, but this one was, you know, one that was full blown. But the story behind it is the long story which isn't really in the video. There is a video on YouTube about it. But we had gotten in tight on this buffalo that was sleeping on this mountainside in Tanzania and when he got up I had to yell at him to make him stand up. And when he got up he was quartering away and he was only at 18 feet, Excuse me, yeah, 18, 20 feet, okay.
Speaker 2:And when he got up you can see in the video he's quartering away and I'm shooting a 577 nitro. So I figure, you know he's toast, I'm giving him two boom, boom. You know he's not going to go very far and that's a pretty deadly shot, typically um, rather than straight away. So when he gets up, I hammer him off, he goes. So I'm figuring, okay, we'll give him 10-15 minutes, he's dead somewhere in the brush up ahead, and this is thick jungle it's not open plains, like you might think where buffalo hang out. These old douga boys, they'll go into that thick stuff and lay up and just spend, you know, their days after they're not breeding anymore or anything like that. So anyhow, off he goes well, we've been breeding.
Speaker 1:They get big right. They don't lose all that weight chasing girls exactly big, that's those big heavy ones, you see the same with hogs. I saw a castrated hog one time and he was like a 700 pound hog. I was like holy crap. And when we killed him, like oh, that makes sense, he doesn't have any balls, he's just eating. He's not. He's not chasing any ladies.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that'll when you cut that part out of your life. I suppose that would really make you put some weight on yeah, I'd be a lot bigger right. Continue anyhow so we start following the blood and there's pretty good blood, but there's also a lot of grass and, and you know, stomach content because, as it's angling away, you know which is expected yeah and we go back and we look on the video to make sure and, yep, it's, the shots are perfect, boom, boom.
Speaker 2:We follow this thing for an hour and a half in this thick stuff and he hasn't even laid down yet you know he's still moving along and now he goes into this whole thicket.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like alder brush if you know what that is from alaska or places you know montana, massachusetts just thick vines and stuff. Well, the buffalo have made tunnels through it so you can't really stand up. You're kind of crouching and I'm following the tracker who's got a spear. The ph has gone up around to get a high point to see if he can see it. Uh, down in this cut that it's in and we weighed, weighed in and I'm, you know, going along with my 577 and you're dragging it through the dirt on my hands and knees, look over the thing and we keep finding pools of blood. So I'm thinking at any point he's got to be here somewhere, seven hours later of doing this.
Speaker 1:What was the total distance you think?
Speaker 2:uh, not a mile okay you know.
Speaker 2:So it's inch by inch, thinking he's gonna come at any minute. So, uh, in we go, plus got a cameraman who's coming along behind me. We get to this point where it kind of opens up a little bit so we can get out, stand up, and I'm like, oh my God, you know, I can finally stand up and stretch. So we're there and Skulk Tate my PH. He's up on this Ridge and he's with his arm going like this, pointing down in front of us. So you know, after being with him for 20 years, I know that means that Buffalo's somewhere up in front of us as we step forward. The other tracker, nakadana, had come in and he finds blood that literally is, you know, steaming fresh. It's right now blood. And just as he looks down this buffalo, it wolfs. Before they come and that's typical of buffalo, they'll make like a like that. The good news is they're so heavy that when they're coming it sounds like a freight train.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a lot of noise, you know, warning or bull coming and that gave you that nanosecond to come up and know where he's coming from, cause it's so thick we couldn't see him and unfortunately on the video I let him have it.
Speaker 2:As soon as this head came through the brush, I wasn't waiting for a full body shot at eight yards that this thing was going to be, you know, coming full tilt. So luckily I hit him between the eyes with the first one and the second one, you know, just in his skull plate, and here again with the 577. Yeah, and it was one of those deals that it took about an hour for it to sink in, and then your guts didn't feel good. You got the shakes.
Speaker 2:You know, it was an emotional event in your life that was uh, it's kind of hard to describe. You know when it happened. Everything was fine. You know whoo took pictures and all that by the time we got the truck in and started skinning the thing up and everything else, my hands started shaking.
Speaker 1:I bet the guy holding the spear was like what am I doing here with just a spear? Like what am I doing here with just a spear? Like what am I doing? What do I think I'm going to accomplish with this thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I kept looking at him like what are you going to do if it comes down this tunnel? And I'm trying to tell him luckily I can speak pretty decent Swahili, but I'm telling you, you get out of the way. Huh, Move, Because I'm at the bottom from a crouch, you know, but yeah that was a pretty uh cool event, one I don't want to happen again, by the way I bet, I bet.
Speaker 1:So let me ask did you get a look at what happened with the first two shots, like, how do you make it for seven hours? You said he was like 20 feet, so interesting story uh.
Speaker 2:I was using at the time the uh, with the 577 being an old rifle and the caliber I was using at the time, with the 577 being an old rifle and the caliber. I was using these old soft bullets and I'd had a little bit of a performance issue with them before because they were opening up too much.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so imagine that you know, 577 is about the size of a 20-gauge shotgun shell. Yeah, a 650-grain bullet, and it was opening up. So it was about you know, this big, which is what? Silver dollar, yeah, almost a silver dollar size. Well, the bullets, when they went in, they expanded and they never left this paunch.
Speaker 1:They expanded and they never left his paunch.
Speaker 2:So where a normal solid or like a Barnes triple shock or you know, not expanding so much bullet, it should have gone through to his far shoulder and that would have crippled him from there. And but these bullets opened up so much that we found them both in the guts. They, because of all that mass of you know, a grass and everything else that's in them. So, as I say, it was a good shot. There's just bad bullet performance and, needless to say, that's the last time I ever used those bullets.
Speaker 1:All right, do you think that it was like, given enough time, the amount of blood that he had lost, maybe he would have where they were kill shots, or do you think that he probably would have been able to sort of, you know, walk that one?
Speaker 2:off. Something had been clipped because there was quite a bit of blood, yeah, but, and I'm sure eventually, with him getting weak, you know, lions would have gotten for sure at some point, or hyenas, but uh, yeah it was, there was enough blood you could follow it. If you can follow blood for seven hours, my guess is the animal is going to die sooner or later. And you know, just felt, and of course you feel so bad, you know, when you wound something like that, such a majestic animal.
Speaker 1:But I guess when you shoot a broadside. You never thought about it because that opening, you know behind the shoulder, you didn't mind them opening up because it's devastating all kinds of stuff as a bullet goes through them. They're very interesting. Let me ask, so I do, more archery hunting. Would you ever suggest? Have you seen people kill a water buffalo with a bow? Or would you just say big caliber guns are really the way to go?
Speaker 2:No, cape buffalo, there's been quite a few of them killed with bows.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, miranda, ricardo, longoria, guys like that, uh, okay now I'm talking about, you know, wild buffalo in tanzania or zambia, that kind of thing. There's a lot of them that get shot in South Africa with a bow, but you know those are fenced. Most of the times South African ones are fenced. They're still loud and crazy and I'm not saying don't go do it, but it's a lot harder to get them out in the open, especially if you're hunting them in the hillsides or in the open plains, worse. Yet you can't get close to them because if they're like, say, in moya waski, where it's grassland as far as you can see, that's knee high it's pretty hard to sneak up on them, you know, with a bow.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I imagine, so okay cool talk about sporty yeah right, he's sticking with a bow.
Speaker 1:I'm I mean, it's not the same animal, but I'm I'm really trying hard to get a archery antelope, pronghorn, and so it's like you know, just far as you can see, flat ground and the grass isn't even waist high. It's, you know, ankle high, and I'm trying to chase after these animals. I'm like I don't know how I'm gonna get this done, but I'm determined to eventually get an archery antelope and hopefully not just sit in a blind somewhere. That's, that's my goal. That's a bucket list. Uh, accomplishment for me. But we see I'm actually going out a week from today.
Speaker 2:So we'll see, and I think we used to have some at my ranch in Montana, and if you can find a ravine or something that'll get you close, at least you got a chance to, you know, do the sneaky sneak and or if you see them coming and going from water and there's a place you know where you can, you know waylay them in a cut or a wash or something like that. You know a guy has a pretty good chance. But you know, those old bucks seem to be hip to the program that they ain't going anywhere near a cut Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, uh, man. It's so funny Cause whenever I've done it a couple of times before and it just seems like the antelope hang out at about 130 yards, they're like, oh, he's got a bow, we're good. They just won't let me. They won't let me quite into bow range. I'm like man, if I had a rifle. They're just standing there Like why? But it just seems like they just know exactly what I'm trying to do and just stay at the perfect distance so they can keep their eyes on me and I can't do anything about it.
Speaker 2:And when you got a rifle, they know to stand at 500 yards.
Speaker 1:Probably stand at 500 yards, probably. Probably. I've never done that, but I wouldn't be surprised. So, oh man, well, that was another great story, man. Um, let me ask you, do you, uh, have you, do you have many stories of like? Just because I know you do a lot of the around the world stuff, do you have anything more domestic any, any memorable, like north american hunting stories? You know, elk, moose, pronghorn yeah, moose.
Speaker 2:Uh, I'm glad you mentioned moose. I had the pleasure of hunting up in northern bc okay, or, this is not one that we have filmed, this is before filming days. But uh, we were. I was helping out a buddy of mine up there that has the concession and he's got stolen sheep and all the other. You know caribou and all those things. But he said, you know, I've got some areas that we never get anybody into where we've got really good moose. But you know it's going to be a bitch. You know to get there, to get out of there, there's no easy way to do it. But you know you're young and dumb, you know you'll, you'll do it. Yeah, I go, don't? We have one where you can fly an airplane in and drop me off, and you know we can shoot him from the shoreline or something, and you know so anyhow.
Speaker 2:So he dropped me off on this lake with a you know kid, and then there was another guy that was there too, that that was a professional hunter or guide, and their job was to round up these horses for the last hunt of the year and move them down to the low country where they have their main corrals and stuff to keep them. So the horses are, they catch them for the winter, and so, unfortunately, I have quite a bit of experience with horses, yeah, and so, unfortunately, I have quite a bit of experience with horses. So we were rounding up all these, you know, basically wild horses that they saddle up every once in a while, maybe twice a year, so we get, get a hold of them, put some bells on them and we got grain. So, you know, you kind of bait them up. All you horse people out there will appreciate that. So we moved the horses and it was a five day deal to move them from where they were down to where we're going to go.
Speaker 2:And as we went through this area, about halfway we got into an area where you could hear the moose bellaring back and forth and it was, you know, perfect time of year the rut was on and where they were were at, there was so much blow down of big timber and stuff there was no way you could get horses in there. But now we've got to hobble all these horses to. You know, if we're going to go in there and try and get one of these moose, we gotta get all these horses together again, rope them up. You know, and it's a nightmare, right, they're going to get loose, they're, they're going to disappear. So it's you know.
Speaker 2:But anyhow, yeah, all of a sudden we're sitting there deciding what we're going to do and this one lets out a call. The guide with his hands does the call back. You know that that kind of a noise and this thing lights up and it starts coming towards us and we can see his horns in the sunshine, even in this brush it, you know, I don't know what he was eight, nine hundred yards at that point wow, but that's so cool and you're like holy crap, you know, I mean, that's the moose that dreams are made of, and the bc moose typically are smaller than the alaska yukon moose.
Speaker 2:You know it's body size, antlers or both, both okay, this thing and I've shot a lot of moose in alaska. I used to live up there, but it this is the biggest moose I've ever seen. Oh, wow, okay yeah, so even.
Speaker 2:Long story short, we tile these horses up real quick as best we can. We leave the one kid there to keep an eye on him. Keep the binoculars on this bull. We start going through the brush and the more noise we're making as we're climbing over these logs and stuff, I guess this moose thinks that we're a competitor for these girls.
Speaker 1:So he just keeps coming and coming and coming.
Speaker 2:We did have to go in about 300 yards before we got an opening where you know he would at least come. But, you talk about exciting. When you got that big Moose, you know it looked like one of those Jim Shockey shows where the Moose comes right to you and starts making a big. You know ruckus in that making a big. You know ruckus than that. And all of a sudden, you know, in the timber he just came out, gave us a wide open shot. You know 375 in the shoulder.
Speaker 2:But now that's amazing, that 300 yards of getting what they weigh, 1500 pounds or whatever it is, and of course you got to take everything you know, except the guts I mean, of course yeah, strip the ribs, all that stuff yeah, all the meat and except the hooves and the, you know, the back skin, but uh, cape them out and all that. So two days later we finally get all the horses. You know, loaded up with all the meat, had a big fire going, we made a great camp. You know, loaded up with all the meat, had a big fire going, we made a great camp.
Speaker 1:You know you had all this low-down timber.
Speaker 2:So we had a fire that, you know, would have set New York City on fire had it gotten loose and raining on us. But, man, you know, I just kept walking over by the fire and looked at these antlers going. Holy crap, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you could take a bath in them. They're just so big, just giant balls. That's an amazing visual. I'm jealous. I have a cow moose tag this year which I'm pretty excited for, but someday my bucket list is to get up there to the Great White North and put down a Yukon moose of some kind. I don't care if it's BC or Alaska. You got a Colorado moose tag, colorado cow moose tag. Yep, hey, great eating.
Speaker 2:One of the best meats on the face of the earth. Congratulations, that's a hard take.
Speaker 1:Thank you. In the same unit I shot a bull elk in last year. I tell you what at least three different stocks on elk. A moose spooked the elk out. I'm feeling pretty confident. I don't want to feel too confident but frankly I owe it to those moose at this point.
Speaker 2:That's good. Hopefully you get him somewhere near a road or at least point. Oh, that's good. Yeah, Hopefully you get him somewhere near a road or at least a decent trail you can get a nag into.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I've got a couple of friends. I invited one gentleman there's in Colorado, here there's like a pack out challenge and they do them like they did one on the Western Slope and they did one in Denver and they did it in New Mexico and they basically throw. You have to pack out the weight of a full elk and it's a race, um, and this guy won it at every single event and then they had the championship, like two weeks ago, and he's like he's a littler guy, Like he's not not huge by any means, but he just has this motor. So I was like hey, buddy, you want to? You want to come with me on my moose hunt? So I'm bringing some, some help, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:No, that's a great idea. Yeah, well, I know I only booked you for an hour and we're coming up on that and I want to be respectful of your time, sir, but I will listen to your stories all day if you'll let me. So it's up to you if you want to tell some more stories, if you have any more in mind, or if you just want to wrap it up and maybe tell the people where they can find you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's been great to be on the show today. Hopefully we can do it again and uh put some more together. I love your podcast, by the way. It's been some great stories and uh, I know everybody's tuning in and the show's doing great and I hope everybody will tune in to uh rugged expeditions on youtube and that or you can go to our website you know jayallensmithcom, and remember alan is spelled like elaine, my mom's french, so I got the french version of it.
Speaker 1:That's where the that's how the a-l-a-i-n came in, but uh, yeah, looking forward to the next adventure and uh, this has been great yeah, this has been fun and I'm sure I'm sure I'll get you back on again sometime soon, uh, because I I have a feeling you have more than just three great hunting stories. So, alan, thank you so much. I'll put links to your show and everything I can find in the show notes. So, guys, please go check out his YouTube channel. If nothing else, like I said, a lot of fun episodes on there, comment Hunting Stories Podcast. So he knows that, uh, we sent you. Uh, but, alan, thank you man, I really appreciate your time and, uh, good luck with all the break-ins in washington. Hopefully we can get that nipped in the butt and get you back to hunting. Sounds great. Good luck this fall. Thank you, sir, appreciate it all. Right, guys, that's it.
Speaker 1:Another couple of stories in the books. Again, thank you so much for Ellen for reaching out, for taking time from your busy day. I know that we had a lot of craziness when we were trying to kind of schedule the podcast. Thank you, sir, I really do appreciate you. As for you listeners, please check him out. Go to his YouTube page. I got a link to it in the show notes. When you're there, put hunting stories in the comments, so he knows that we're sending people his way. He's got some fun stories plane crashes, crazy animals, everything you'd ever want so it's a lot of fun, and if you haven't watched Rugged Expeditions, you need to start now. Make sure you subscribe to him as well and while you're doing that, check us out on whatever you're listening to now. Make sure you subscribe, make sure you share, and that's it, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now get out there and make some stories of your own. Thank you.
