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Welcome back to the Ridgeline Hunting Podcast, brought to you by Phelps Game Calls, with
your host, David Crane and David Sandana.
Alright man, we're back in studio.
Seems like it's been a minute.
Yeah, it actually has been a minute. We preloaded a bunch of podcasts, so we haven't really
been in the studio in a few weeks.
Well, we were hitting it pretty hard. We were for two weeks straight, sportsmen show events
and interviews. So we thought we got this under control. We're like, oh, there's no
problem. We can just, let's not do it this week. And so then we had our snow, right?
Yeah.
And shut down a little bit. And then, yeah, my daughter had a play. If you see a play,
you go to a play and you're like, oh, that was a nice play. I watched it five times in
ten days, which is a lot. That was a lot of watching, but it was good, man. It feels
good to be back here.
Yeah, definitely. I think being back in here and trying to put out an episode, I think
it's going to be good.
This is, so it is March 6th or 7th?
It's a sixth.
March 6th.
It's a little bit easier. And it's cold. It's cold.
I'm ready for some warmth, man.
Yeah, we had a buddy heater going. We have the head-to-head heater going full blast.
So I was like, I don't know, this room is connected to my garage, so it's not really
insulated that well.
Yeah. So, I mean, it does the purpose.
As soon as it gets up to temperature, it's fine. But, yeah, I mean, we'll be screaming
that it's too hot in here during the summertime. So, I mean, whatever.
No, I'll get an AC eventually. Look it up.
Well, I wanted to talk about, you know, turkey season that's coming up, it's right around
the corner.
Yeah.
You know that everybody that's been watching or listening knows that Dave and I are, we
love turkey hunting. That's like our...
It's a lot of fun.
Close to... I mean, it's a top... I mean, if we said it's a top five, I mean, really,
I mean, hunt like five different things. So it's in... Yeah, it's like... It's automatically
in there.
Yeah, I would say it's in number two for me. Number two.
Number one is...
Elk.
Elk hunting, okay?
Number two is turkey.
Yep.
Then what?
I don't know. So, for me, I hate deer hunting. It's like a love-hate relationship. I do pretty
good deer hunting. I usually get a deer every year except for this past year. But it's extremely
difficult and hard.
It's not easy. Deer hunting here in Washington State, you know, a lot of people... They just...
They got it down. They know their spots. They know where they want to go. For me, typically,
I try to do a different spot every year. But usually late season, I always end up going
back to like the traditional spot and shooting whatever is legal. Just put me in the freezer.
But it's an animal that doesn't really call. So there's no like response, really. You can
rattle them in. You can snort these them in and stuff like that. I've never done that.
Spot and stock for me. Running gun. That's how I do most of my hunting. And yeah, man,
it's just difficult. It's rough.
I grew up black-tailed deer hunting. And there was a period in time where I thought, I'm
never going to kill one of these things. Because I had missed so many opportunities for silly
things. I know we were going to talk turkey, but here we are, right? Yeah. So I was... I
don't remember how old I was. Probably 16 when I killed my first black-tailed with a bow.
But I had been hunting since I was hunting them for 13. You know, since I was 13.
13? Yeah, with a bow. When I started hunting, I started with a bow. And I've never killed
anything with a rifle. It's been archery only. So, you know, I've hunted with a rifle before,
but I have only for bears. There was one time, I did hunt elk with a rifle one time. And
that was about a 30-minute hunt. And my buddy shot a six-by-six bull. But all those circumstances,
you know, and I was young. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. But my friend of mine, he
was in some financial bind. And he pawned his bow for 50 bucks. And then he had this
308 rifle. And he was like, hey, Dave, let's go rifle deer hunting or rifle elk hunting.
So I was like, okay, cool. Yeah, let's do that. It's gonna be super easy, right? This is...
This is 2003. So... I remember... I remember the year specifically. So 2003, we have rifle
elk season coming up. And I went to the pawn shop, the same pawn shop where he had pawned
his bow. Instead of getting his bow, because, you know, I didn't think that well back then,
I was like, oh, I'll just buy a rifle. So I bought a 303 British bolt action.
Thick sights. I'm like, I'm just gonna go out. I'm gonna shoot on these suckers with the
thick sights. No problem. I still have the gun. You know, I still have the gun. It's a
it's a Lillian Philmark for badass, super good shooter. Love the gun, World War II model.
But yeah, that was the one year. And that day we went out freaking whacked the six by six on our
first walk. And we went through this little, little row of trees is probably like a hundred
yards thick. And we ended up in this meadow. And there was a bull. I saw one. It went off to the
left. So I kind of circled the tree line this way to the left. And then my buddy was, he was
like a hundred yards away from me. And also, I heard a shot. I was like, what the heck's he doing
unless I heard him hooting and hollering, right? I go over there and he's standing next to this big
bull. And it's like literally he shot it with a 308 savage and lever action. And I can't remember
what model but anyhow, the bull jumped up in the air straight up in the air, buried its antlers in
the dirt. And it was trying to get its antlers out of the ground. I mean, it was because we're
in a marsh. It was like a foot deep. So when we when we got up there, I saw him stay next to
him. It's lurching. So I put my rifle towards the elk. I was like, get back from there. Still moving.
I figure it's going to it could hurt him. So we got over to it after it stopped moving back down
after it stopped moving. We got over and we're like, Oh man, it's awesome. We got a six by four.
Oh man, that's freaking. Oh, you know, high five and all that. Now they fist bump. Oh, you know,
all that. Well, we got the maneuvering in. The rest came out of the ground. So it buried half
its rack in the dirt. Oh, that's crazy. It was buried buried. But yeah, so that's my rifle hunt
experience. So but the black tells me I've I had a love hate too. It's one of those things where
I had had so many opportunities that just went by and I screwed it up and it took like two years
and then there was an opportunity and I screwed it up. And finally, I was like, you know what,
I just got to go for it. My main reluctance was shooting. I was waiting for a perfect shot.
Broadside perfect close, you know, and so I had other shots. And then finally, I was like,
you know what, I'm not going to get a perfect shot. Not going to get that broadside perpendicular
shot. And freaking shot dude and whacked them. You're went down after that. I was like,
can you start figuring them out? Yeah, I was like, if I get if I get a pretty good
broadside shot, like broader side shot, I'm taking the shot. It doesn't have to be perfectly
square with me. You know, so that was my that was my turning point. And after that, I was like,
yep, I was freaking whacking one year, like a three one year, I think two, three years in a
row, I whacked, you know, three of them a year. But it was, that was good. But I feel you on that
deer hunt in the black pill, the Midwest guys and all those other areas where they can.
And it's just different, you know, every every hunting style is different, right? So I mean,
those Midwest guys are even far East Coast, you know, hunting out of a tree stand or or blind or
whatnot. And they're just, you know, picking out that perfect wrapped deer, you know, for the most
part. Well, I think that's probably more rare than you think. I do envy that style of hunting.
Depends on if you have the property or not. Obviously, if you don't have the property or not, like,
I mean, Luke did it the hard way, our friend loop. And he needed to find out that there's an easier
way to do it. Because our West Coast style doesn't really work very well where he's at in Tennessee,
right? And he can shoot. I don't know how many deer he can take for a resident. I'm not sure
what that is. It's a lot. And he wasn't shooting any. The East Coast thing. So when I lived in New
Jersey, there was a ton of white till deer. I didn't even know, like I was moving to a hunting
capital of United States. One of turkeys, they have tons of turkeys. They have tons of deer.
I mean, turkeys on the freeway, you know, right next to the turnpike. White till deer, like crazy.
A lot of hunters there. But my friends, when I was in high school there, they all had these,
like, branches. And, you know, I just moved there. I only lived there for 12 months. But
I made friends with some of these guys. And they were, they were telling me about all the deer hunting
they would do. But we would drive around Jersey, like where I lived in South Jersey. I lived over
in Burlington County. But when we would drive around, just go to a random store and cross like
a sod farm towards the evening time, there's 50 deer. That's a lot. I mean, they're everywhere.
We had them in town. We had them all over. But the problem that Luke encountered was the noise.
So all the leaves would fall. And I'm not even sure what those are oak trees, right?
All those leaves, we had the same in New Jersey. We had these big pine barns or
be leaves and nettles and all sorts of stuff on the ground. You really couldn't walk in there
quietly and sneak up on anything. The cool part about it for me is when I would be traveling
through there, if I thought something was following me, I would just stop moving.
Here at crunching behind you or wherever? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They moved the country down to the country.
It's just a different strategy, you know, and I mean, that's how it is anywhere.
Anywhere you're really going to have a different strategy. Kirk down in Arizona,
I guarantee he has a different strategy, you know, for hunting, whatever he's hunting, he
hunts everything. There's some wide open spots. There's a little bit of timber spots. I mean,
it all just depends. I mean, for us, Washington, Oregon,
thing near the same state, your strategy is probably going to be close to the same.
But as you go down south, it's going to open up a little bit more and stuff's going to change.
But whatever with that, I am looking forward to this year, though.
I'm looking forward to this year, just in general. I mean, and we're going to start off with
turkey hunting, but I mean, we have fishing going on right now Saturday. Yeah, fishing.
And then we have a sturgeon fishing trip set up. Yep, that we're going to hook up with my buddy.
Rich Eaton, he also has big bank fishing on YouTube. So check that out. If you want to see some
just fantastic sturgeon fishing, it's insane. The giant dinosaur fish that he's pulling out of
water. I can't wait to be a part of that and look for a video on YouTube once that happens,
because that's going to be good. Bring your back brace. You know, those suckers.
They'd tear you up. He was like, if you need help, get in there and get like, no, you'll end up
catching the fish. I'm not doing that. No breaks for crane over here. I love it. It reminds me of when
I had first gone sturgeon fishing on the Columbia River. We had always seen TV shows of these massive
fish and we didn't know it's so cheap, you know, it wasn't very expensive. As a, if you were just
going to go by yourself, it was probably like 1200 bucks because you had to have a boat minimum,
right? Yeah. Yeah. But we had five guys we'd go with. The first year we went,
we were just the night forward dreaming about it. We're like, oh man, I don't know what's going
to be incredible. If we catch just one sturgeon, it's going to be all worth it. You know, and
we get to the dock early in the morning. I think it was, you know, it's like August or
September. So I think it was August we would go, but it would be almost dark still, like just
barely lighting up to run a boat upriver because you don't want to run to navigate at night, right?
Right. It's a shipping channel. I mean, they have boats come down big massive freighters and stuff.
So you wait for light, you get on the boat, start heading up River Jar, our spot we're going to
anchor and fish from. But the very first time we got on the boat, we're probably doing 40 miles
an hour on the water in this jet sled. I mean, he has, it's like a 23 or 26 foot sled. I think
it's 26 or maybe it was a little bigger 28, 26 somewhere in there. Anyhow, he had a motion marine,
I think it was a V six or a V eight outboard or an inboard killer. So I mean, this is a big motor
for this boat, you know, cruising up river. All of a sudden he's like, hold on flips a U turn.
I was like, Oh, great. He forgot something at the dock or into truck. No, yeah, you just told
this story like six times. I tell it on here. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So he nuts the frickin
shads and all this stuff. Yeah, he nuts a shad. Well, we're fishing with the shad. Anybody's been
listening. You know what the heck he's talking about. Anyhow, all fast forward. I'll save everybody
at the time. Okay. I was like you the first chip. I was like, Oh, we're not going to switch poles.
We're going to catch our fish. If we catch one, but first we were like, let's switch poles because
we might only catch one. Well, we ended up catching 13 that day. Oh my gosh. And they were all eight
feet or more. And it was a nightmare the next day because all of our backs, the next year,
the very next day after the first trip, we were like, you know what we're going to do next year?
We're going to hand off the pole at about every 10 minutes.
Yeah. So Rich was saying, um, it was like you can take a break. It's okay. Because sometimes you'll
fight a fish for two hours, depending on how big it is. Um, but yeah, he was like, we usually go
on Saturdays. So you have a day to recover because he was like, you're going to be hurting.
It does. And it's a different type of muscles. I mean, it's, it's crazy the different.
Yeah. I don't know how you train the.
Well, the wrist is not a problem. You know, you're just real on the real, but it's the, well, you got
a pivot, you know, pull everything. Yeah. And it's like, and it's not like, I've never done it before.
So it's going to be fun. You know, when you lift weights and you have like the effort motion,
and you're like, okay, there's really little thing. It doesn't take a lot to hold it. But then when
you go into like the negative and then you go into the effort, it's all effort because your body
is trying to stand up while you're trying to lean over to reel down and stand up. So it's a controlled
effort. That's what's nice about riches, um, polls too. He has like custom polls made to where he,
you can stand and reel. He has it to where you basically plan it on your foot. And you can stand
up and you're reeling. So I saw that. Yeah. So so I'm super excited to just see this whole setup, man.
Well, it's going to be good. The pole, but I thought it was funny was he was telling us about
the polls at the sports show. They have a really big handle section that that touches the ground
and the reel is up about waist to middle the middle of the stomach high. So everything is right here
in the, the butt of the rod is on the ground. You, you put your foot behind it, and then you can
just do like this, you know, I started thinking I was like, I'm surprised you didn't come up like
a ninja turtle shoe. You know, like the thing in the little, you can man, the ninja shoes,
they got those little holes right at the little spreader. Yeah, toes spreader. Be perfect.
It's not be hilarious. Feet would be frozen though. So that's why we haven't really done it yet.
It's been cold. It did hit a couple weeks ago. We were going to go, but we were kind of just out of the
the show season. So we're, you know, trying to take a break and a, and a fan of like a family
weekend. So we didn't end up going with Rich and they were slaying them. They caught like 22.
Some fish, they caught a lot of fish and they're all, you know, six and a half feet and larger.
I think the largest one he said was like 82 inches or 83 inches or something like that. So I mean,
they're massive. So that's coming up. That's going to be a lot of fun. And we'll also have Rich on
the podcast as well after we go on the sturgeon trip. So he's a talker. So yeah, it might be a
long one, but he's awesome though. He's actually been listening to the podcast since day one. So,
and he was actually the one that encouraged us to start filming it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I seen some of his, his footage and videos are pretty cool, man. Yeah. Check him out. Big
bank. Yeah. Big bank. Big bank fishing. Yeah. And it's usually him and his daughter that are out
there just smashing them. So yeah, it's cool. Rich is a cool guy. He's funny. He's funny, dude.
Looking forward to that trip. So turkey hunting. Yeah. Let's get into our topic. How about that?
Yeah, turkey is a side show. Yeah. We're 20 minutes into this thing. We haven't even really
talked about it. Are we 20 minutes in? Well, of course enough. Yeah. Damn. So we looked at,
in the sports, we showed we looked at tents and stuff. We looked at canvas wall tents.
Yeah. We looked at like bivvy style tents with heaters. And we pretty much decided that we're
just going to roll with what we have. Yeah. Yeah. I've been looking into purchasing a
shelter with a with a stove in it. More for your backcountry style. And for right now,
my setup works. I have plenty of different things I can choose from, depending on what style of
hunting that I want to do. If I want to go solo or, you know, if someone else is kind of going solo,
I have a hammock that I can use. I love the hammock. It's really nice during that warm weather season.
And then I have a whole bunch of different tents. I have TP tracking pulled pants, but nothing
that can really have like a heater in it. Or at least a stove. Only because I want to make sure that
my son is comfortable when we're out turkey hunting. That was pretty much the whole thing behind the
getting a different shelter and something that can have heat in it. But I have a heater buddy,
and I have a giant, I call it the tent, my hall. It's a big old tent. It's a
easy up pants really. I mean, it sets up in a couple minutes. Yeah, super nice. It's like the
size. I mean, it's probably like 10 by 12 at least. Yeah, it's good size. Yeah, it's good. I mean,
Dave and I used it last year during our turkey hunt. And I would say I'm probably just going to
bring that along anytime I'm camping out of the truck. I mean, it's a no brainer. It's super easy.
So Dave kind of convinced me he was just like, dude, don't waste your money. It was kind of like,
it was kind of, excuse me, it was kind of like I came to that conclusion for myself and just
expressed that. Yeah, yeah. It didn't take it didn't take much to convince you because it was,
I, you know, I'm tempted all the time to get the new thing. I always want to have
the right gear for every occasion. But there's so many so much gear that crosses over into every
other thing. It's like at what level of discomfort are you going to endure for what you're doing?
Right. And it's not very discomforting in that. And then my hall is awesome.
No, especially when we grab the heater buddies and stuff like that. I mean, it gets really nice and
it's cozy. Devin and I suffered the first week in that we went because I was testing out
a TP tent and it's a trekking bull TP tent. It was not comfortable for him. It was comfortable for me
just because I've been in the suck. I know like what sucks. And it was just a little bit too tight
for him. He just didn't, he didn't like getting dressed like all hunched over like sitting down,
you know, he. Yeah, he's a fool. He's a fool. He's a fool man. So it's like,
realize like what you need to do. It's just like, Hey, we're only in this tent for a small part of
the day. So yeah, you know, it's mainly to keep us dry and then keep us warm, but mainly keep us
dry because you have your insulation, you have your sleeping bag. The one thing I did come to the
conclusion is I'm going to buy a better sleeping bag. And I've been eyeballing them stone glaciers,
man. I don't know if they had a very serious like, I know they probably had a very serious ad
campaign, but I'm not doubting the quality of the sleeping bag. But I am questioning, especially
after watching the the XO presentation with those quilts. You know, actually we haven't
well, we haven't done anything with that. But we have so exo and born and raised did a
like almost like a what's in my pack type of thing with the new K4 from XO.
And they dove into some back country stuff. Yeah, I would. I would call it like the
back country gear list, what they have. Yeah, pretty much not like a we will be posting that up on
our YouTube as well. We just haven't had time to like look at it and chop it up or if we even need
to, they haven't really looked at it. What I thought was like a genius idea, like you're in your
sleeping bag, right? You got your zipper on your left side or your right side, and you go in your
roll and anything on zips. And it's like cumbersome. You have to kind of roll the whole thing or
into sliding off you if you try to maneuver your slide off your little, whatever you're sleeping on,
right? Slip free and you move off, right? Well, they had these really nice sleeping pads. So they
start with a sleeping pad and they use these quilts, which is basically like a foot sock
with an open back and it goes over you like a blanket. But your insulation pad is the other side of
that. So that was like, I was like, Oh man, like a eye opening moment because I was like,
I never even thought of that. Like I wouldn't have thought of that on my own. No, I wouldn't have
thought of that either. And a lot of that, I mean, everybody, if you've been in the backcountry or
camped on a pad, your heat and the warmth is in the pad. So I mean, if it's cold on the ground,
the cold do you come up to the pad? So why not insulate that? Yeah, make sense.
And they had some really nice ones they were talking about. We'll get into all that stuff
when we do the video. So I think upgrading my sleeping bag is my number one upgrade
possibly to a quilt. I know they're probably equivalently as expensive as a sleeping bag.
Right. So why we're kind of getting into this during like our kind of like
intro to our turkey talk is because it's still frickin freezing cold during turkey season.
So we want to make sure that we have the right proper gear. So if you're new and you're getting
into hunting, turkey season is a great way to get into hunting. It's an interactive animal.
You can get on them. You can usually have multiple tries or multiple. I don't know.
Some days make it sound better than it is. Some days suck. Let's just say that hunting
hunting can have your bad days, but turkey season is a fun way to get out and start hunting.
But you want to make sure that you don't freeze the death at night and you have the proper gear
and you're safe and all that stuff. So number one thing, you're probably going to get in
to camp. You're going to set up your camp. You want to have the right stuff. So one of the things
that you're going to need is a nice sleeping bag and sleeping pad because if you don't get a good
night's sleep, the next day is going to suck. You know, we learned through the our conversations
with folks at sleep and I'm guilty of this as anybody. You know, like we'll stay up late.
Yeah. And the guys next to us sometimes they sleep that they go to sleep at 6 p.m. You know,
and that happens a lot because we like to get excited. You know, it's like one of those times
and in the first two days, we're like in a celebratory mode. We're not thinking like,
oh, yeah, we're going to hit it so hard. We're like, yes, finally September's here. It's nice.
It's like till 10 p.m. That's what makes it difficult too because it's like you're hunting for
that last hour, you know, like the golden hours at 8 30 into 9 30. I mean, I don't, I'm not sure.
I'd have to look at the regs. I'm not sure when last shooting light is, but we're pretty much
putting them to bed. And by the time we get back for elk season, yeah, and you back to camp, it's
super late. So then we like to talk about the day and we go over maps and all this other stuff.
And I mean, by the time we look at it, we're like, dude, it's one o'clock. We got to get up in three
hours. It's time to go to sleep. Bad news. So, I mean, that's one thing I learned is, you know,
get more sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Your body needs to rest. Your body needs to recover. And it's not going
to recover in just a couple hours. I mean, maybe if you're young, you can, you can do that. You
might be able to sustain. But if you're out on a eight or nine day elk hunt, your body ain't going
to do that the whole time. You're going to be suffered. And then then if you actually make it
to the to the show and you get one on the ground, then you're in for a rude awakening.
Then the pain kicks in. Yeah. So get some rest. We're going to do that. Sleep more. Also eat more.
We were we go. I mean, you try to eat, but it's you're you have to intentionally eat more, right?
So you have like calorie deficiency. What are we calculate? I think we're like 1400 calories a day.
We're doing 1414 to 1600 calories a day. I think on our bad on our bad times, like when we really
started well, when I started hunting with Dave during elk season, we were probably only doing like
800 to 1200 calories. And that was on like a good day. Yeah, you run on a camp. You grab a little
nibble. Yeah. And we were barely. Yeah, we're barely eating. Like, I remember telling my wife
during the summertime, like, Hey, I got to bulk up. And I'm in the gym a lot anyways. And she's
like, what do you mean, you need to bulk up? Like I'm, I'm a small guy. And I was like, I need to
put on like 20 pounds. And she was like, what are you kidding me? Like that's impossible. And I was
like, well, I lose like 10 to 15 pounds out elk hunting. And it's because I didn't freaking eat
enough food. Like I was not bringing in food. And this goes for any type of hunting that you're
doing Turkey hunting could be the same way. So at least the way that Dave and I hunt,
we, we do like a little running gun. We hunt Turkey's similar to how hunting elk, very similar,
definitely not the same similar running gun style, spot and stock on turkeys. And we're not
hunting turkeys on like flat fields and mountain range. Yeah, we're hunting mountain turkeys.
Funnest thing you'll ever do in your life, but
so then again, we're up a ridge downer ridge, up a ridge downer ridge, up a ridge downer ridge
all day long. So nutrition is huge. Water intake, you need salt, you need all these things. So
they would, what did you get at Costco? Oh, yeah, you're actually drinking one right now.
Right now, yeah, some freezing my butt off. So you can buy them probably in other places,
but Costco has these bone broth, little packets. And you, I mean, a lot of people have seen the
liquid IV instant. You like ripped a little tab board in there has your vitamins and
electrolytes in there, you mix with water. This is a little pack like that's bone broth.
And it's good for sipping. It has 10 grams of protein, sodium, potassium, a lot of potassium.
And it's just a good little thing to sip on. I mean, it tastes great. And bone broth,
there's 50 calories and 10 grams of protein. So it's basically protein, but it's bone broth. So
I pack those now just to make, you know, a little sip and sip and juice. I can use my, my,
what's that thing called? Jet boil. Jet boil, yeah.
Peed it up and, you know, heat up some water and you're good to go.
And doesn't have to be boiling either. Just warm enough to be warm.
You know, nice and nice and hot. It'd be good, good for this turkey season that we're getting
right ahead into. We're about a month out from youth season. We're about a month and a week out
from our regular season. It can't come any faster. Jesus. Like, we did just get some recent snow.
So, you know, I'm kind of concerned about that. It'd be an issue.
So this year, I'll be, I'm hoping to get my son out turkey hunting. So things have changed
since the last three weeks or so. My son is really diving into high school football.
Huge into football. Like, he never liked football growing up until like two years ago.
He's like, Oh, Dan, I want to do football. He's pretty good. He's getting there for only two years.
And he's already, you know, he's going into his sophomore year of high school.
He's turned into into a really good football player. So we started getting him into some
different programs and everything. And right now they're doing a seven on seven.
Goes through May right through our turkey season and it's on Sundays.
So we might try to get him out for like a quick weekend hunt and a buddy of the podcast.
On the YouTube channel, my friend Matt, he has some property in an area that's really close to
a spot that has turkeys. So we might try that out. It's a little bit closer to home.
So hopefully that might be our new turkey spot. And it also might be a new deer spot.
Meal deer spot. Yeah. Yes. And it's state land. That's cool.
Yeah, it's, it's awesome. There's some, there's some big smasher bucks out there. You know, I'm,
I'm, I'm going for a nice typical four by four. Milly or seven by seven either way.
Yeah, whatever, you know, whatever pops in there could be picky.
But that would be nice. So, um, yeah, there's, there's turkeys there. So we're, we're going to try
that out. See what happens. If not, we're going to go back to old trustee and go for the jaunt
like way out in the middle of nowhere. So that spot we're talking about is actually the spot
Billy's uncle and dad took me before I got married to Randy. So that's the first spot I ever
turkey hunting was up there. It was crazy. That was, that was a wild weekend. Super fun.
The first time they went, they said they had turkey's gobble from every direction.
Well, it's hard to bring in, in new hunters besides like our kids.
Mike, my friend Mike really wants to get into turkey hunting.
But I don't want to take them to a spot that I was showed by somebody else that said,
don't ever take anybody here. I'm new, you know, number one rule is, you know, don't do that.
But if he wants to go turkey hunting and take them to our spot, you know, the, the hard part is you
need to, you need to take the opportunity to access that and see what you're doing anyway, right?
Take use the first year and go there. And if, if it's not, you know, if it doesn't pan out for you,
then go back to the other spot. But I would, you know, definitely not bring them there.
You know, say, check it out. You know, that's, oh yeah. There's probably plenty of people over
there in his state land, but the lodging is already taken care of, you know, so adding somebody
that and all this other stuff that'd be probably quite a bit of a challenge. Yeah. How's that?
How's the broth, man? It's good. It's cold now, but it's still good. It's, yeah, it's kind of chilly
in here. I would turn the buddy heater back on if I could. Yeah, it's, uh, it's chilly, but I mean,
we're managing. But yeah, so yeah, when you're out, if you're new to turkey hunting, you know,
make sure you have the right equipment. The next thing I would like to talk about is gear.
You know, not only do you need a good sleep system pad or if you're not even doing that at all,
you're, you get a, um, what the heck? Can't even think of it. What does it have to do with sleep
it on a caught? Yeah, there you go. Okay. I couldn't. Yeah, I don't know. A caught, if you get a
caught, you want to make sure that it's not just like some thin nylon, because if it is just thin
nylon, you're still going to want to use a pad or something to shelter you from the cold that's
going to be coming up through that nylon. And that does happen. You will freeze your butt off.
Yeah, I was pretty close. There's a lot of space in between there. So the cold is just,
that's where the cold is going to sit. You're going to freeze. Yeah, beating no matter what,
have insulation on the underside, because your back gets cold and you're flipping it and flop it
all night long. And then next thing, you know, bad sleep, bad hunting day, you know, miserable trip.
Do everything you can to make yourself comfortable as you can be when you're at camp.
That's probably the biggest thing. And you know, eat enough and all that. And then also too,
we got the Phelps website up here. Phelps has new turkey calls coming out.
Yeah. So check out their website, Phelps, game calls.com, and you can check out their new inventory,
make an order. They have small batch turkey calls and specialty items there. So make sure you use
some of those. The other thing I wanted to get into today was like, how do you survive the
wild? You know, it's been, it's been recently, you know, drawn to my attention, because a local
guy here, I won't mention him because of his family and stuff. But a local guy here,
passed away this weekend, he was fishing on the Sol Duck River. And somebody had called and they
spotted a body on the bank. And his, he was wearing his light, he was wearing his fish invest,
but they went down there, found the guy deceased. And his pontoon boat, he went out fishing on
a one man pontoon boat was found in a log jam, one mile above where his body was recovered.
That's pretty far. Yeah. So I'm not sure, you know, all the circumstances, you know,
I've been thinking about it because I know the guy, I met the guy, you know, but my brother
knows him pretty well. Yeah. Other people that I know know him very well. And so the
questions through your mind is like, did he, you know, did something happen to where he was,
did nature bring him to that position? Or was he trying to get out of there, right? What did he
get out of the boat somehow after it went into log jam and get on the bank and start to
try to escape? Was he trying to go go for help and succumb to hypothermia? It's been cold here.
The soule duck, uh, soule duck river comes right off of the Olympic peninsula, right off the snow
melt in mountains. So it's not warm, probably 34 degree water and, um, succumb to nature, you know,
uh, friend of mine had a similar incident happen in his one man pontoon boat. I'm not sure if I
had mentioned that story on, on, in the podcast yet, but I was witness to what had happened.
And when it took place, I was like in this weird euphoric, I can't believe this was happening. At
first, I thought everything's going to be okay. He was going toward just big sweeper log. If
anybody doesn't know what a sweeper is, it's a log that it basically sweeps across the top of the
water. It's not submerged. It's about halfway. It can be a little submerged, but you can see that
it's there, sweeps across river. He was kind of on the far bank trying to hook a fish, got
on close to the sweeper in the water directed down. So it created a big suction and he had to
roll, you know, pretty hard to try to escape it. And then at the point where he realized he wasn't
going to escape, he just stopped rowing. Like, I don't know, like what in your, what in his brain
said, don't row anymore. He was probably just getting exerted. He knew that if maybe he kept on doing
it, he was just going to, it was just going to be, it was just going to happen anyways.
You know, Smitty. Oh, yeah.
Smitty was with me and my two man, Von Toon. And we literally watched him roll like across the river
getting closer and closer to the sweeper. And then he just stopped rowing. And we were sitting there,
I'm on the oars and Smitty's in the front. And we're sitting there looking. And all of a sudden,
he just, his logs across here and he just stops and he just pops up on it. And he starts doing like
this. And it, the river started pushing the back of those pontoons and it's just jumping. Then his
pontoons went under and it went like that. He was dumped out the back like a buck and bronco.
And then he was dumped out the back in the pontoons, you know, they're on the pontoon boat. There's a
frame and there's two pontoons are side by side. His pontoons were like this. The frame was completely
twisted on that log from the water pressure. So he disappeared. Smitty and I were still in water.
And I had to roll over. Smitty just about jumped out in 10 feet of water. You know, he was like,
Oh, sure. You know, freaking out. I was like, calm down, stay in the boat, stay in the boat.
I rode over to the bank. We got into like six inches of water and he jumps out and he's running
towards the log jam. And he's yelling for him. I mean, in this whole, I don't know how long it was
in this whole incident. What went through my mind was like, how am I going to tell his parents
what happened? Because I know his parents. Two was like next steps. Okay, we need to get down
river. We need to call 911. Three was like, how are they going to recover his body? Because this
log jam he wanted to was very large. And the water was high. And I was like, they're gonna have to
wait till summer or get a crane to disassemble this pile of logs. And so I was in a matter of
seconds developing a plan on how this was all going to go down and assuming the worst because
it looked like the worst. Yeah. A guy I've known since elementary school, you know, and to watch
that happen. So 20 seconds maybe went by. And we hear this big yell from down in this log pile was
probably 40 yards long. We heard this a lot. We heard this big yell. And he comes down and
smitty runs down there. Grabbed some by the car. What for you doing? Why would you do that? You
know, yelling right in his face. And he's like, what man had under control? And he's like,
you're freaking just got out of a log pile. Nothing's under control. You know, so.
Well, then you don't know what the undercurrent underneath that. I mean, you could have just
got smacked up all the way down that thing. I mean, he could have been unconscious.
Easily the after he said everything's under control and smitty and yelled and like nothing's under
control. He just like broke down. He's like, dude, almost lost my life. That was the scariest thing
ever. He's like, when I was down there, he's like, I couldn't see and then I was being spun around
and I got stuck on this branch and then I opened my eyes. It was like a fire hydrant,
like a fire hose in my eyeballs. Like he's, he says like two parachutes open on your face.
So then his mouth got blown open and water's going in stomach. He's like, you know, he's like
freaking out, right? And then somehow it just spit him out the backside.
But now we have to deal with reality. You know, that story that he told us like,
this is what happened is how I felt. This is all the things that took place underwater. You
couldn't see. Those are what people, those are some of the things that happened that you would
never imagine. Yeah. That water pressure is enough to bend a boat in half or twist it almost 180
degrees. It's a lot of pressure. You know, being cautious and I guess where I'm going with this is
like when you're in the outdoors, you know, obviously Billy thought he had things under control
until we told him that is not under control. Right. He's he's in this euphoria too, right?
So next thing you know, I had to deal with the reality of that. Like he's in now he's in a
dangerous position because he's totally soaked. It was probably 30 degrees that day, but the water
was, you know, 33 degrees, 30 34 degrees. And now we have three or four more miles to go out of there,
right? But it was sunny and cold. So my only thought was like, we had to get you out of these
clothes because he was completely soaked. I mean, everything was gone. He wanted to salvage his
stuff. I was like, forget that we're not even trying to get anything off that boat. It's toast.
You've lost all your, you know, we could still see it, but there's no way we're going to get it.
Basically what happened was I ended up leaving there in, in a t-shirt with my waiters on
and my fishing jacket. And he had my all my insulation. We took him down to his, his skin,
but all my insulation on him, we took three men out on a two man pontoon,
like three miles out to the takeout. But what do you do in advance of that situation? How do
you prepare for that stuff? Right? How do you make sure that you're making sound decisions before
they happen? You know, these are all like before the accident happens. What have you done to prepare
for that? You know, like simple things, sleep and path, right? Make yourself comfortable.
Simple things. Notice hazards before you get close, right? Don't pretend, don't think you're
strong enough to roll out of a hazard because you don't know the strength of that hazard.
Yeah. You know, those are the things like get your mind right. Don't, don't.
And it's kind of, to me, it's emotional because the guy that passed away was somebody that was
pretty, pretty well known and happened to a friend of mine. And it was a, this instance with my
friend was avoidable. And the after thoughts that happened is not yours to deal with. I mean,
you're putting everybody else in the situation too, you know? Yeah, it's not just your life. It's
also, you know, your, your, your friends, your family, your kids, if you have my wife,
girlfriend, whatever, they have to deal with that too. So I mean, don't think that your life is not
you know, worthy. Well, like, oh, I can do all this, you know, there's no consequences with this.
There is, there's a lot. And it, it's sad. It really is sad. And in most situations, it is preventable.
Um, no before you go, it's like one of the things in, in Hunter's Ed, no before you go, it's not just
the animals that you're hunting or the area that you're at. It's the terrain, the weather.
Where, where do you go if something goes bad? You know, do you have an in reach or a spot or
cell service? You know, all those things need to come to account when you go into the outdoors.
And it doesn't even matter if you're going for one day or if you're going for 20 days,
you need to know these things to make sure that you come back home. Yeah, be cautious. Um,
the number one, um, you know, there was a couple of years ago, a country music star, he was going
on a duck hunting trip. He was, I think it's from Texas or something. I heard about this on the news
and he didn't come back home and his family hadn't heard from him and they, you know, they went,
they went duck hunting. I think it's an Oklahoma. They had gone duck hunting, but they went duck
hunting into a snowstorm that they knew was coming, but they figured they would be okay.
And they, both people that went died, you know, so it's like,
having adventures great, being confident in your environment, that's good. Being overconfident,
and underprepared is terrible. That's like, now you're, now you're not just having a good time in
surviving something that you normally would be able to survive if you were prepared. Now you're
trying to survive because you're not prepared, you know, and I guess my whole thing here is just
to make sure that you're prepared because you're, your head and your body, and this may not be
scientifically proven because, you know, what I, what I think about it is like my head,
in my body are two separate things. Like my brain says, I'm, I can do this. I'm still young. I got
you know, I remember how things used to be and I could do these things. I'm ready to go.
My body says, okay, brain, I'll go along with you. You're telling me what to do. But then your
body says to your brain, Hey man, I can't operate. My hands don't work. And your brain says my hands
aren't working. I can't actually do this thing. I can't like this lighter. Like those are the
disconnect between the brain and the body. You have to recognize those limitations.
You need to recognize that before that happens. And it's hard. It's hard for humans to do that.
It really is because if you're an outdoorsman or woman or whatever it is, you're, you're
testing the limit. And sometimes you need to be able to like, oh, we need to take a step back and
we need to realize that we're in trouble. And you're, and you're putting yourself in a situation
to be, to become in trouble, you know, yeah, and it's simple things. Like I'm, my buddy's
mom who's always tells every day grab a coat, grab a coat, grab a coat. We would never grab a
coat. We'd always be like, man, I know the freezing cold. I was like, that's a jacket.
But you survive it because you're, you're just going somewhere. You're going to the mall, but it's cold.
You're not going to die at the mall because you're cold, right? To kids, it's like, that's,
but that's the same mentality. Like, oh, I don't need to bring that raincoat. I don't really need my
extra precautions, you know, those type of things. We have situations. What happened to your buddy
with the broad hit? Yeah. My buddy Scott hopefully will be able to have him on the podcast and actually
talk about what happened and how he got out and everything. But he was out. I'm not sure if he was
out hunting or de-hunting or whatever, but he was out archery hunting and an arrow went, came out of
his quiver and stuck him in his leg and he needed to be airlifted out. So hopefully, Scott, if you're
listening or watching, you'll be able to get on the podcast and tell your story. But yeah, it's
dangerous, man. I've thought about, I sell a lot. I mean, you know this, Dave usually knows exactly
where I'm at. I usually send him something. I usually send it to my wife and Dave and I've,
I go into some sketchy stuff, but I'm always conscious about where I'm at. If I have service,
you know, how can I contact somebody just in case I get hurt? Now I'm looking more or less like,
I trip and fall and break an ankle or, you know, bust my knee up to where I can't do anything
anymore. Like I can't get out. Those things are always crossing my mind, especially when I go out
solo. I mean, there's a lot of people that go solo, but you know, sometimes I'm 15 miles in the
backcountry. Yeah, you know, it's deep. There's nothing around. There's nothing around. There's
no roads. There's, there's nothing, you know, so it's like going over dead fall and all this other
crap to get back out. Like, try to do an elder broken leg. It's rough. It'd be rough.
And you had an incident too with an axe, you know, where you'd. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If I was,
he had these. That's a, yeah. Let's save that story. That's a different story, but
it was a good, it was a good day. I'll open until the axe went in my leg. So
watch out for those Gerber axes. They're super sharp, especially when they're brand new.
People are going to be like, what the heck is that? We'll tell you a star. Yeah, we'll tell you the,
yeah, it looks like a shark bite. You can tell everybody you did get the advice.
A shark. I do sometimes scuba diving in future sound, maybe a dog fish bit me.
Sand sharks. I was, yeah, man, on the beach, you know, sand sharks. What?
You know, watch out. They're in the sand. I didn't want this to be a downer, but I do want to bring
awareness to the environments we put ourselves in. It's not really a downer, man, but yeah, we're,
you know, you want to bring awareness to people that are going out or you're new, you want to get
into hunting, man, just use your brain. Like talk to people that have hunted before and just pick
their brain on like what equipment they've used or, you know, this, that and the other thing. I mean,
you're going to have a laundry list of things to go through. Yeah, there's, there's plenty of
people though that have been out there and, you know, tested and tried and true stuff. Like,
this is what you want. Usually if you spend more, it's going to work better. I'm a budget guy,
so I try not to spend a whole lot of money. But then you run into you've bought three or four of
these things and they all suck. And then you just spent, then you're like, okay, now I'm at the
expense of end of things. Exactly. So hunting is not cheap. Let's just put it that way. If you're
getting into hunting and you're thinking like, oh, this is a cheap way above. Nah, it's not cheap.
Can I get one of these cars without any airbags in it? Yeah, exactly. Like spend the money,
save if you have to buy it the first time, cry once, you know. Yeah. Well, let's, let's, let's
take a little break. We do have a giveaway. Yes. And let's go over that. We get back from break.
All right, that sounds great, man. All right, everybody, we are back from our break.
That's only like a blip of a second for you guys. All right, so we do have a giveaway. We're
going to wrap this up. We're going to have a giveaway, but I want to just go over one thing.
This is just what I use. This isn't something that, you know, we're affiliated with it anyway.
I have a spot device. This spot is a, it's a two way communicator or sorry, it's a one way communicator.
You can have sent text messages and updates. It also sends people your location. If you have a
check in time and there's a cool little SOS button on there. So it's a subscription service.
The cool thing about this is, you know, they're about, they're a couple hundred bucks. So they're
not cheap. If you go to sportsman shows or sporting events or I don't know what other
shows there could be in another state, there's a sporting show. If spot is there, they had the
special at the sportsman show and they may not offer it again. But when you did a subscription
plan, they gave you a free $200 spot device. Yeah. So that's a little, you know, trick in the back
of your mind. If you're thinking about getting a spot and you don't want to spend the money and
you want to just wait it out, go to the sporting show, spend 15, 20 bucks to get in. If they have
spot there, go talk to them. They were doing this special at the Portland show a couple weeks back.
But I thought I was about to get another one. I was like, oh, it's cool. I can get two, you know.
But yeah, they're, they're a couple hundred dollars for the device. The subscription's pretty
cheap. You can do it by the month. You can do it for a year. You can do it for just a short period
of time. It's cheaper if you do a 12 month deal. It is cheaper, but you also are not,
uh, subject to, if you do a month a month, you can cut it off at any time.
So if you only want to do it for the amount of time that you're going to be hunting
three or four months or whatever it is, you can just have a plan for the three or four months
and cut it off. Yeah, you're not just awesome. Yeah, you're not locked into like a plan unless
you do the 12 month, but you're paying for that. So the cool part about it is if you do have an
emergency, um, right here, I don't know if you can see that there's a little SOS tab
on the mouse's move. Maybe you want to point it up with your finger Dave. I can zoom in probably
right here. So there's right there. There's a little, yeah, you can see that on the screen.
This little SOS tab, you flick this thing over. It flips one way or the other, but it's locked
in pretty good to protect the button underneath there. There's a little red button. It's the SOS
button. If you press and hold that thing, it enters emergency mode. Emergency mode,
the helicopter is coming. They're going to send search and rescue and they're going to get you.
So this is what I use. I bring this with me pretty much everywhere. I mean, when I go fishing, I
keep it in the truck. If I go out and I'm going on a road trip, I keep it in the truck because,
you know, not only with the on satellite help or whatever, with the on star, you know, I have that,
but I use this because we'll get out and move on a hike. You know, we're going to learn a hike.
I bring that with me. But there's just one thing that can help you survive an incident if you were
to have one and it's chief insurance. I think it's good to have. I actually need to get one,
speaking of being safe and all this other stuff. I don't have one, but we do when we go out, you
know, yeah, when we usually when we're out hunting, we have one. And yes, I go solo and I don't have
those, but when I'm out solo, I usually have cell service. I haven't found a spot where I usually,
so where I go solo, I go all the time. I go to that same spot and I go to that same spot
because I have cell service. So one of the mountains up there actually has a cell tower on it. So I'm
kind of lucky in that way that I found the spot where I always have cell service. Yeah, cool. So
this is just one way and there's other companies you can get whatever you like. But just something
help. Yep. You know, something something to keep you safer, give you some extra way to survive a
situation. You just never know. You just never know. I was thinking about that after this weekend
because, you know, that that wreck with the boat in the log jam and he's a mile downstream from
where the log was, you know, he had one of those with him. Would that have made the difference?
It could have. My my my bed is yes. Yeah, it sure it sure could have
one of those situations. So let's get to our giveaway. Yeah. Now that we're all teary-eyed.
Yeah. Well, before we do, let's hear from the sponsor that's actually given away
the price for the giveaway. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever.
Section of the broadcast is brought to you by burpah. burpah.com. Use Ridge 15 at checkout to
receive a sweet discount. Use Ridge 15 at checkout. But for our listeners and the people watching at
home on YouTube or wherever you, you know, I mean, you can watch YouTube on yourself on anywhere, but
we are giving away a burpah. That's right. So what this is, it's actually pretty cool. You put it on
like an oven glove. And if you have any burrs or you can actually use this for your dogs as well,
or pets, you just take it right on there and it pulls the burrs right off. Pretty simple and easy
to use. Yeah. From burpah.com. I'm trying to pull it up here if there's a little video.
There might be one on YouTube. Yeah. Here's one right here, man. We got it. Let me unfreeze this.
Sorry. It's taken a second, but oh, here we go.
So you walk through the burrs, get a bunch of stuff stuck to you. But before I get back,
I'm going to get my burpah on white my legs off. I had a nasty bur incident one time. I was hunting
over Moses Lake, duck hunting. And I had this. See, this guy's just working. Use it anytime.
This camouflage I had, man, able to track burrs. I mean, it didn't have to be much. As soon as it
got up, I picked them all off one by one. And then I turned around and they were all over me again.
Yeah. At the truck. I was like, God, you got to be kidding me. Like I just spent half an hour
digging these things out. So these are real handy. I wish I had one back then. It probably saved me
some time. I can remember a time I was in a hunting spot that we used to go to for deer.
So here's how you use it right here, Dave. You got the burrs on you. Take your burpah out.
See, see how just wipes right off? Boom gone.
Burrs, wipe them right off. Up here's a pet.
You just wipe it like that and they roll off the burpah too. So all right, let's do the giveaway,
Dave. So we're going to do it. How are we going to do it on Instagram?
Um, yeah. So we'll have it on on Instagram.
And we'll tell you how to win. So we'll do a post staying, you know, the burpah giveaway and we'll
show you how to win. And that's it. Easy. So if you're not watching, if you watch us on YouTube,
and you're not, you're not subscribed to Instagram, go ahead and do that. It's Ridgeline hunting
podcast on Instagram. Yep. And then we're going to have instructions on how you can win this burpah.
Yep. Awesome, man. Yep. That's it. Well, it's going to be that easy. And, and trust me,
we'll have a lot more giveaways coming up. Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching.
This has been an awesome adventure for us and it's only going to get better.
Yep. One step at a time. Next time you hear from us, we should be back from a fishing trip.
Yes. So yes, hopefully that happens this weekend, but well, if I know me like I think I do,
I'll have a big picture of a fish. Yeah. So watch for that on Instagram too. So if you do not
follow us on Instagram, please do so because that is how you are going to win these giveaways.
We will have a special giveaway at the end of the year on, on YouTube. Oh, that's a big one.
It's a big one. If we can hit a thousand subscribers by the end of the year,
or actually if we just hit a thousand subscribers, it doesn't matter when it is.
If we hit a thousand subscribers, we are going to be giving away a bow.
That's a nice bow too. Was it an elite? Yes. It is an elite. It's an elite compound.
Yes. So I saw the bow. We're going to actually do a video with the bow and show it on the Instagram.
I will probably post it to YouTube as well, but it probably helped to have it posted to YouTube.
So yeah, we are going to do it to YouTube because I mean, that's where we're pushing it up.
Yeah. So we're trying to push our YouTube channel. We're going to have a lot more films coming.
We're going to have obviously podcasts on there, usually every week. Yeah.
Awesome, man. Well, let's wrap this baby up.
All right. Well, thank you everyone. Please hit that subscribe button, hit the follow button,
hit the little check mark. However, it is for you to make sure that you do not miss out on
that on an episode or a video. Please check us out. And thank you very much and have a good one.
Have a good night.