Archery Hunters Listen Up. If you find yourself in the heart of King County, do yourself a
favor and stop in at Rock Creek Archery, located in Tukwila. If you have everything you need
if you're just beginning to the sport or you've been shooting for 20 years, even an
indoor shooting range, or check them out at rockcreekartry.com.
This section of the broadcast is brought to you by Burpah.
Burpah.com. Use Ridge 15 at checkout to receive a sweet discount.
Hey everybody, if you are looking for a game call that is elk, turkey, deer, predator calls,
waterfowl calls, we highly recommend phillipsgamecalls.com. Professional grade game calls made for every
hunter. Welcome back to the Ridge Zion Hunting Podcast,
brought to you by Phelps Game Calls with your hosts David Crane and David Sandana.
Alright everybody, we are jumping in to our turkey season. You're not going to see this
till Monday or listen to it on Monday, which we would have already been turkey hunting.
So not only are we jumping in, we're 24 hours from going ahead first.
Yeah, yeah. Full submersion and we're excited what we're going to find. This is, this is
like fifth year hunting turkeys somewhere around there.
Yeah, yeah, I would shoot. Might be even longer than that. We don't count the blip.
Yeah, the three year the COVID blip. She's, I hate even the word.
I know man, that's why I call it the blip. It's like, I was just start calling it the
blast for me or something like that. Yeah, it's, I want to say, we're probably close
to seven years. Well, our experience in the Northwest and
Washington especially, our experience through the pandemic was different than a lot of places
in the country. It wasn't your typical, I mean, we had, we weren't allowed to go fishing
well, technically, and we weren't allowed to go hunting technically. Yeah, you could,
I think they shut down Department of Fish and Wildlife's website. So you couldn't even
buy a license. So it wasn't like, I mean, if you were doing it, unless you pre purchased,
you probably were illegally. Well, here's the thing too, is that they
opened it right at the kickoff. So you were able to do it.
But it was like last minute, because that was the year that Devin shot his first turkey.
Crazy man. It seems like yesterday, but I'm glad it was three years ago. We don't know
how I'm going to talk about it anymore, but it kind of messes up when you're kind of thinking
about time. It just kind of messes you up. I think that's how we got on that subject,
but we're going to start calling BC for COVID. Oh shoot. Like, hey, remember hunting BC?
That was a different era, man. You didn't have to worry about anything. Oh my gosh.
Do what you do. And like, nobody had any sort of account of time. You know, now we have
this BC AC after COVID. So now we can like, yeah, yeah, we can, we have a good designator.
Like, it's on an even year. So that's cool. 2020. Done. Year's, girl. So yeah, but we're
jumping into our turkey season. We're going to talk today about several topics. We're
going to talk about how you're going to find a bird, locate a bird calls we're going to
use and calls people can use to bring them in when you do locate them. Yep. We're going
to get specific to our state, how things are kind of broken down in different programs
they have available for first time hunters and experience hunters or someone who just
wants to try, you know, how the state is actually split. So we have a east and west side.
So we have some weird, we have some weird rules. In other states may have them too, but bag
limits very based on the division of the state. Yeah. Also, sometimes the county in
the state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically one county. And then we're going to talk about,
we're going to talk about our gear gear set up kind of briefly. You know, I'm wearing
this cool vest mainly because it's cool. Secondly, because it holds my turkey stuff, you know,
and I wanted to look cool. I talked about it. And so we're going to jump into it. Here
we have, we're on the Phelps game calls website who is our primary sponsor for this show.
And we have here Turkey locator calls. So the number one thing people here, I've heard
people say we're not a huge turkey state compared to lots of states. Yeah, I would,
I would say usually during the spring, people get fired up for bear season, to be honest.
And now we don't have that season. Yeah, we, you know, the, the not to get too far in the
weeds, but the bear, the bear situation here in Washington is that we have a spring bear
hunt traditionally. And there's only so many tags given out. So some people will get fired
up for it. But a majority of the people I feel are more into the other things going on at
the time. You have the lake openers for fishing. You have the turkey season, which is nationally
probably one of the largest game species hunted besides deer. Yeah, I would, I'd agree with
that bird hunting is something that I'm keenly keenly in tune with. Not, not something I'm
a super experienced, but I do have, I love waterfowl. We've talked about it. You know,
I won't say a hundred times, but 45 episodes in, we've talked about it 48 times. Yeah, yeah,
everything that I basically got to go bird in there here and there. It's like my thing,
you know, when, when that's like your, I don't know, when you're really passionate about something,
you're going to bring it up, you're going to find a way to bring it up. The, the way that
the, you have people that will get like binoculars and like compound telescopic lenses and they
take a picture of a bird like at the refuge, the boat of the Billy Frank refuge and my buddy's
uncle, he was always like, I got this new camera, this new lens. We're going down to the Billy
Frank refuge. I got a picture of this certain kind of bird and like, I don't want to say
the R word, but I'm like, that is not my thing. You know, I'm not, I'm not like a bird picture
taker. Yeah, I do appreciate a nice, awful head. And for those that don't know, a Buffalo
head is a, is a, is a waterfowl. But when you have them in your hand, or when you have
them up close, they look black and white. But when you have them in your hand, they're
purple. Hmm. Their wings are like pearlescent and they have, when the light hits them, they
turn purple. So the scientist in me is thinking, I wonder if the ducks only see the purple.
Like the shiny shimmery purple. Oh, kind of like an Edward colon esque type thing. Well,
their eyesight is so good too. So I guarantee they probably do see the vibrant colors. I'm
sure. I mean, every single, every single bird species has those type of feathers that
reflect light and they change colors. And sorry, everybody see me moving them. Fixing
the light and the camera. It's all good. So I think, I start thinking about those things.
Like what is, what is attracting birds from a distance? Because they see a long way. I
just had like a, just, just a tangent in my brain here, just thinking like, yeah, we're
going off in the weeds. You have a, you have a turkey decoy, right? Yeah. Jake's up here
just chilling. Mm hmm. He's always watching us in the studio. Yeah, he's always here. He's
got some bravo on. He's hanging out. We'll have to bring him in. We'll bring him in the
second half. So Jake has just painted flat paint, basically. It's a little shiny shimmery.
What if they could figure out how to paint in the iridescent scheme that bird see? Would
that be like a next level decoy? Would that be a next level? I mean, I, I, well, I've seen
some decoys where they, they try to do that. Geez, what the camera? Um, but you're spending,
you know, $150 for one decoy. I mean, it's, you're spending the money for it. They have
some, I don't know if they're like to the exact, but. Be a lot closer. Anyhow, I don't
want to go down that rabbit hole. So you're going out tomorrow. I'm going out probably
Saturday. What's, what's going on? Don't worry about it. We have technical difficulty.
Yeah. Sorry. If we had a Jamie, can you fix the lighting on the camera? Yeah, exactly.
Oh, yeah, that's me. Um, yeah, we'll just, we're just going to kick it like this. I'll,
I'll fix it. Yeah. If I have to. Um, yeah, I am leaving tomorrow. Actually, our season
starts Saturday on the 15th. Um, but yeah, we're heading out tomorrow after work. I'm
going to load the truck up and I am out. Um, just a, basically a one and a half day hunt.
Uh, we're going to be pretty much weekend warrior in it the whole season. Um, for me,
for the least for me, I don't have any PTO extra PTO to take. Uh, we have a family vacation
coming up and then I'm taking a lot of time off to hunt bears. Um, never tagged a bear
and I am a huge focus is going to be on bears this year for me. So well, it's going to be
a weekend warrior event for turkeys and it's going to be hard hunting and it's going to
be a lot of fun. I can't wait. Well, hopefully the bear thing turns out really good. We'll
see. Um, I have a lot of faith. We're going to go into an area. I don't want to go. Let's
not get into that. We're not going to go. We're talking turkey. Let's, let's do the
turkey. We'll do that. We'll do that some other time, but this is how things go. You
can really get down and down the tangent rabbit hole to infinity and beyond. It's crazy.
So let's talk about some of these locator calls. So here with Phelps, we have the Harrison
Hooter, the owl call. There's a couple of crow calls and, um, to be honest with you,
locating a Tom is basically just like shock gobbling him when you're kind of using these
calls because they get freaked out when they hear something like any types of those birds.
So they'll all of a sudden they'll just gobble and that's a very easy way to locate a Tom.
Just say there's a bird this way. Yep. You know, and, and what I was talking about earlier
was people I've heard say a lot of times is I went turkey hunting and I couldn't even
find one. You know, so the location call could be a key ingredient to locating birds
first. Yeah. And once you do that key in under location, I mean, okay, I'm trying to get
like this, this zone right here. So let's start heading that way. And then once you've
done that and you close the distance a little bit, I would not use it again.
But when you're if you get too close, they won't do anything. They will shut up.
Yeah, you could well, I don't, I mean, just calling them in, you know, once you get once you find
it where they're at, you don't know how close you are to them actually. No, not yet because
they can turn they can turn around and the the volume of their gobbles completely different than
them facing you. So yeah, it's a tricky game. You start playing chess with them, but this is
definitely a good chess piece to have in your in your arsenal. Do you think it's fair to say
that if you could hear a turkey, a turkey can hear you? Oh, yeah. So if you're within earshot of a
turkey, you do you do your locator call and you hear it and it's very faint and far off. And you
can move, you know, quite a distance and then start trying to call them in. Hopefully you get
responses. That would be the tactic that I would use. So once I've located it with a hooter or a
krill, I start moving towards the direction of where I think it is. And then I'll start
using the box call or mouth diaphragm or a pot call. That's what I would do. Other people could
use different tactics, but that's what I do. And it seems to work. So we're trying to we're trying to
find the bird and then close the distance a little bit and then coax them in. Yep. Yeah, that's good.
So in coaxing them in, there's different calls we're going to use. We talked about box calls,
pot calls, mouth reads. Okay. I don't want to we'll show you some reads, but I don't want to go
over all the reads at this time, just because there's so many. Oh, it has a lot of diaphragm
reads that you can use. And they all have their own little frequency or raspiness to them.
Geez. Yeah, I just a whole different variety of them. And each call can actually, you know,
get raspier or you can tighten it up and get a real crisp call. So I mean, every single one of
those diaphragms has a totally different range just in one. Yeah. So we experienced that the
other day in the living room. Yeah, we're Davis messing around with them. And I'm just like,
yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Flip it over. Flip it over. It was clean. Yeah. So you're the calls
there. So mouth reads, we'll talk about briefly, we'll just touch on it. They're stamped out of
the latex. And I'm not keen. I don't know the specifics of the type of latexes, but
they have like bat wings and little different V's notched into them. And all those things act
like a flicker and snake tongue inside there when you're calling. Yeah. So that's going to give
you your resonance in the call. But every little different punctuation in there is going to make
it to where it sounds a little different. I'm a I'm a read guy. You know, I like when I elk and I
have four or five that'll keep with me all the time. And I know I like this one the best. And
here's my second. And if this one doesn't work, I'm going to squealy. You know, like, oh, trusty.
I'm Doug Flutie. Yeah. Go to Doug Flutie. But so we're going to get all these different calls.
And you know, maybe if we don't have a call response, we'll switch the call. Yes. And Kirk,
we've had on the show several times him and I, I bought these calls seven years ago, let's say.
And I went to his house and I was like, Kirk, check this out. I got this call. Do it in my mouth.
Blue on it a couple of times you get to leave that shit home. Yeah, put that in the car. I was
like, Nope, not going to do it. I put it in my pocket. Tell Kirk I was like, yeah, I'm keeping
these suckers. I didn't say nothing to him. I was like, well, maybe I sound like garbage, you
know, so I, any I practice a little more. And we went out and he was doing his box cutter. And then
he looks at me and he's like, point to his mouth. So he got the reads. I was like, yeah, go ahead
and do it. As soon as I just do the first little, he's like, keep going, keep going. You know,
that's the greatest thing about turkeys and turkey calls too, is that one might not work.
So, you know, you need that different variants of sounds to like get them going. And man, you know,
once I hit, boom, it's on fire. And we've talked about this many times in L.
cunning, because you have calls, you have a call where, say you're hunting in area, there's
however many guys are say there's 10, right? And eight out of 10 have the same call. And there's
not a lot of variation in tone. So, I'll have memory. And I think these guys, they live together.
You know, you see them in bachelor groups after the season ends or three or four running together,
they know like, if you called me on the phone, you said, what's like the Budweiser commercial?
What's what's, you know, that's Fred. This Dave calling me. That's like their caller ID.
They know like, oh, this guy, I got to worry about him. He's got no girls. This guy over here,
you know, he's probably going to come over and try to take my girls. He's a tough guy.
But you get that new call, they're like, who just came into my zone? And so that's, that's kind of
the thing I think with with turkeys is the females, if you, and maybe this is too deep, you know,
but I think the new girls get a lot of attention. Maybe. And that's, that's, you know, I'm trying
to relate things, my scientific side of my brain, right? Maybe. I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I mean, how the turkeys work. I mean, they go and mingle around once they go, you know,
sit on the, on the rooster, you know, or if they're, you know, on the ground laying eggs or whatnot,
Tom's are out. They're looking. So having the variation in the call,
as long as it sounds like a turkey, I think you're doing good. And if it sounds like a different
hand, maybe something that's not in that area, that's even better. In my opinion, maybe not
factually in life, but yeah, my learning experience with all or not biologists or anything like that.
So we're not going to be able to really tell you the, you know, how it really works. But in our
experiences, this is what we come up with. And to be honest with you, it works. It's not a bad
theory. No, it is not because we've had success with that. And we've had success with trying
different things. We've also had some non experienced stuff where we don't, we know there's turkeys
in the area, but we can't call them in. They, you know, there's different, different things going on.
So I like to call it the hen shield. You know, last year we experienced this hen shield where
we were calling them in. And I'm not even sure if they saw us. I'm pretty sure they had like a
weird yo-yo effect. It was, they would only come to a certain point and then they would go back,
come to a certain point and then go back. And it would seem like we just couldn't close the
distance. And it didn't matter what we did. Well, that spot we were in, the hill kept rolling.
I mean, it wasn't like a good slope. It was like a rolling pitch, you know, convexed.
We needed more concave, convector, concavature. I don't know something like that. We needed
to be a bit flatter. Yeah. We needed more flat. So these turkeys, their little heads pop up,
and then they can see in their heads are the size of an egg. Yeah. And so their eyes are kind of
towards the top half of that egg. So really, they just need the top half of that egg to be above the
sight line to see like there's really nothing up there. And they come into that zone and then
maybe they've turned around. You know, that's, that's kind of what we had. But there, I don't know
how many hens we had close. They were. Well, when you can hear eight or nine, ten, maybe.
And then they're putting around and stuff like that. They're close. That is not like a sound that's like,
like really projection. Yeah, projects far. They were close. They were close enough to where,
if there was a tom, we could have shot them. I was ready, man. I was, I was ready so long
that my legs started to hurt, like my hamstrings. Yeah. Because I had to, I had to, I did what you
did. I used my, the ball, my foot to raise my knee a little bit. And next thing, you know,
I started to feel like this weird little, that's a bad, that's a bad move. You gotta have,
yeah, you gotta have some shooting sticks. Yeah, exactly. So I had, I was in a position where
I was ready that the direction they were, they were coming from, but I couldn't quite get
on my gun well enough. But they were so held up to where the time passed and it took a lot,
it took a lot out of me, you know, to sit there like that and lift my foot. And so,
bad strategy next year, I'm not gonna, or the end couple days, I'm not gonna do it that way.
Yeah. But yeah, using, using a box call, actually Dave has the Phelps one right here.
The box call, to be honest with you, that is like a universal call. You can do a bunch of
different things with the box call. You can do purrs. You can do whatever you want with the box
call. A lot of people do like using the mouth reads, but as long as the box call stays dry,
because once it gets wet, good luck trying to use the box call only because you have to chalk
the upper plate and the side sound boards. And that's what gives it the good crisp sound. So
once you start losing that, make sure you chalk that back up. I'm gonna give it my best.
No, don't judge me on my call on a billy, but oh man.
Yeah, these Phelps game calls, to be honest with you, if you are a beginner, you need to pick these
up. They are super easy to use. They sound great. And there's just so much that you can do with them.
And also, Phelps on their YouTube channel, you go to Phelps game calls on YouTube,
they show you how to use every single call, every single one, which is good. Yeah. So I mean,
you have your own free class that you can basically take from the experts at Phillips. I mean,
it doesn't get any better than that. Yeah, learning how to use a box calls is
it's not terribly complicated. Once you once you get down the basics,
what you can change the tone just by how you pitch the boards and how you hit the second sound board.
Like when the sound board runs across both sides, I like to call them rails. But once you run across
the rail and hit the other one, click, click, click, click, click that sound, it really claps
that call. I think it just kills it to enough to where it sounds just like a hand. Yeah, it's perfect.
The second type of call we're going to be using is a pot call, which you use a striker plate.
This is the glass turkey pot call. It's this guy here. Yeah, we're using the aluminum. The one.
Let's bring this up. Yeah, right here. Aluminum over glass. This is
another call that is very, very easy to use. I mean, if you watch us on YouTube, obviously,
if you're listening to the podcast, go to our YouTube channel and we
basically open up these calls and just start playing with them. We had never touched them before
and we're making turkey sounds like instantly out of the box. Yeah, I mean, it's that easy.
I mean, I like my box call, but I think I'm going to be using this. Yeah, and having the varieties
good too. The either one will work, but you got to have a willing bird. So that's
Yes, that's the other thing too, is that you need to find the tom that wants to play.
It's very similar to elk, very similar. You got to find the tom or bowl that wants to play the game.
Dave, I'm getting excited man. I can barely sit still. Yeah, and it's an awesome chess game.
I really love springtime only because it's really, if you're not out predator hunting,
if you're not out predator hunting, you know, during those early parts of the year in the snow
and stuff, this is really your first time back in the woods. Going against an awesome animal.
Turkeys are really cool animals. Just how they interact, they have like a, I don't know,
like a hierarchy, you know, like how they go back into their roost and the trees and stuff. There's
like a hierarchy of like how the hands go in and it's really cool. They're really cool animal.
And they're just extremely fun to hunt. They're, I don't know about everybody, but
I believe the turkeys here in Washington, they're not stupid. At least the ones that we hunt in
the mountains, they're hard to hunt. And it's fun because you're playing a chess game with an
animal that all they're trying to do is survive. That's surviving eat and procreate.
You know, is that the word? Yeah, procreate's the clean word. So we, we, we met these guys last year,
they were from Alabama and we talked about them before on a previous episode.
They were talking about the difference between the birds here and the birds in Alabama.
Yeah, and they mainly hunt Easterns. So they basically just drop out of the roost, eat and go back up.
Yeah, and it was shocking for them when they started talking to us about, you know, what their
experience was. They were saying that in Alabama, they have a lot more predators that would kill
a turkey, like water moccasin, alligator, bobcats, coyotes. And I came here, what else you were saying,
but basically saying I was like, you're on the ground floor with these things.
Oh, thank you. No, thank you. Yeah, I don't want to be down by any snakes. No. In the under,
the underbrush there, he was saying, was so thick, you can't really maneuver through. Yeah,
just because it's like, it would be like sitting on 40 bags of Dorito chips. So imagine trying to
just barely move and just, that's, that's all it's going to do. Yeah, and he was saying that
the birds are more susceptible to a predator in thick brush because they can't escape. Yeah,
so they'll come down from their roost, they'll land basically where they're going to eat.
And then in his area, they'll land there, they'll do the little milling around just where they can
see. They're not going to venture off into anything where they can't see. And then they take off.
They go, they go basically, he said, if they land on the ground, that's where they're going to be.
And then they, they fly from there straight back to the roost. They don't, they don't do any milling
around. They're not going to march, march to the brush. They're not going to be very adventurous.
So that's why it's important for them to locate where the birds are, set their ground blind,
get there before light, bird come down, call them in within a certain distance, reasonable distance,
and ambush basically. Yeah, so there's a couple different ways that you can, so once you've
low, you can also locate birds or toms at night. So it's like putting them to bed. So you can try
to find their roost and then come back early morning, set up, you know, not, not far from the roost,
and you can hunt them that way too. I don't necessarily do that. Only because it seems like
when the birds that we hunt come out of the roost, they actually just fly. So they,
they could be a hundred yards away from where the roost is. So you could be set up
waiting for daylight. And all of a sudden you just hear B-52s flying over your head.
I think they only, you know, our birds really only have a couple predators to worry about,
mate throughout the year, you know, either it's either coyote, or it's a bobcat or a cougar. You
know, probably not as many cougars as bobcats, maybe a house cat, maybe. I mean, I've never heard
of it. Haven't seen that before, but you never know. Farm cat? Yeah, you never know.
They don't have out there. You know, there are snakes, but not like back east.
Yeah, we don't have a snake infestation. No, no, no. There's no, there's, if there is a snake,
there's only one kind, it's a rattlesnake. And I've only seen one in the wild and it was
about as thick as your thumb, you know, it was not very big. My buddy over in Ellensburg,
he kills him every year, like four foot long ones, man. So my uncle Mike, he's in the northeast,
he has him underneath the porch and he does like a bird shot loads and is, and as a revolver and he
just blows him up every summer. Yeah, he has him underneath this porch. I was like,
dude, you should have told me that. Good old uncle Mike. Yeah, man, he's awesome.
That's funny. I would not be very happy to have poisonous snakes around my house, you know.
I think I told you that when I was in Florida, I actually stopped at someone's house and knocked
on their door and told them, Hey man, you got the snake in front of your house? Because like,
I've seen rescue 911 since I was a kid. I know all the danger signs. I'm like, Oh, this is a danger
sign. This snake is curled up because it's always that thing. You know, it's always like,
the thing is like, it was just there. I put my foot down and jumped a bit me. Yeah, instantly in my
head. That's what I'm thinking about. I tried to warn the folks and they were like, Oh, it's just a
king snake, you know, king snake. That's the good one. You don't want to mess with them. So,
I learned a little lesson that day. So it was, it was intriguing to say the least,
but the Easterns down there in the south, they're just a little different than ours here. And I,
and coincidentally, this weekend, I'm probably going to end up hunting Easterns and you're going
to be hunting Miriams. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is nice that we have the three species in
Washington. Yeah. And we're going to get into that. But before we do, we're going to take a little break.
All right, everybody. Nice little short break. We're back in action. Yeah. And we are talking
about the spring turkey season. We're going to talk about our rules and regulations for Washington
State. This is, this is more specific for us, you know, and people interested in coming here.
It is a unique place. It's beautiful in many aspects. We have rainforests, oceans, sounds,
lakes, high mountains, alpine lakes, alpine hunting, deserts,
desert, flat toe shrubs deep. I mean, you name it. I mean, you can fish everything. There's bass,
there's trout, all your little pan fish, coffee, walleye, catfish, sturgeon, salmon,
Pacific cod, ling cod, green ling cod. I mean, there's so many different things you can do.
Well, that and just the hunting is, is outrageous as well. We don't really get a whole lot of credit
for hunting here in Washington State. We have three three species of deer, two different elk.
No, four, well, four. Okay, one protected one. Yeah, so three that you can hunt.
Columbian white till deer is a protected species in Washington State. It's in
southwest Washington on the Columbia River. There's a little zone. So what they did was the
white tail from the east basically followed the Columbia River all the way to the west coast.
And there's just the Columbia white tail. Yeah, protected. I've never even seen one. I haven't
either. There's a spot you can go where they have viewing. Like it says it's on, it's on, I want to
say it's what the heck is it's next to the Bear River unit. No, it's not Bear River. Anyhow,
calf laminate area, there's a spot that there's a wildlife viewing area. They're supposed to have
the Columbia white tail there. I've never seen one. If you're like their cousins, staying visible,
they're hidden. Yeah. Unless you got a cornfield. So we do have a lot of wildlife.
Dream that Washington one day will become what it was. And we can, you can go to our
sportsmen's events here in the northwest. We really do have an incredible wildlife opportunity.
We have some world-class animals and everybody knows how species are mainly nocturnal,
the ungulates are nocturnal animal, but they're out during day times occasionally. You're going
to kick one up or see them. They'll be out eating or whatever. But they survive well at night. So it's
white tail do the same thing. Yeah. They say, oh, they're nocturnal. They went nocturnal.
They hunt all year waiting for that time. They come out in the daytime.
Hopefully they're there when they're there. But it always seems like your trail camp catches
pictures of animals when you just left. You're like, oh my gosh, if you go to our Instagram page on
Ridgeline hunting or the Ridgeline hunting podcast, I or actually on YouTube as well,
I did a short, I have a giant six by six bowl that was there two days after I was there.
Yeah, that's the, that's the, what are they called dichotomy of hunting? It's like during like
the day where I would have been there. That was my spot. I would have been there had it been
three days from now, you know, you could see the tree where I was standing.
It is funny and we do have, you know, you can look at the, the record books. We have
world class size animals and just like anywhere, I'm not sure where they go. But they're around,
even to the, oh yeah, they're all out of the place. I mean, what was it? Four or five years ago,
we went out late season. We was a during late season. There was an area that we went to that was
like, Cal only all of a sudden we see like four bowls coming out of the snow and up this hill and
we're just like, we're talking about the triple main beam. Yeah, that was crazy. Yeah. We saw a bull
that had his right side had two main beams. And I'd never seen one of those there before,
but that, that second main beam, three and a half feet long on the right side. It looked like a
it just looked like a thick as a baseball bat just just the biggest ball I've ever seen in my life.
Like that was that was a big one. That was a big sucker. And I've seen some big ones,
but that one was the biggest bull I've ever seen. He was easy 400 non-typical.
And this is this is a rosy we were talking about. Yeah, this is a rosy. Yeah, he was monster.
And all I could think about is God. Dang it. You know,
where was this guy? I've never seen. I've hunted here 20 something years, you know,
and there's this sucker and I have, you know, speak, you know, the time when we did this,
we were filming with a, um, there was like a Sony handicam with had an SD card. Yeah, it was like
the first ones of like SDs. Like you could still put the the film. Yeah, like a set little baby
cassette in there, but we're like, no, no, no, it takes SDs. We got one gig. That's enough.
It seemed like it seems like that, you know, tech technology wise, it seems like those cassettes
were a long time ago, but they really weren't. No, dude, it's like 10 years ago.
Yeah. And if that, and I, you know, I don't know if they still sell them, probably not now,
but they don't. It seems like it was a long time ago, but just, just, you know, it was the other
day, you know, in time, in all aspects. But we have a good time and I, and I, I wish
that Washington state will become what it used to be. You know, I had growing up with elk and stuff.
We've seen a steep decline in our elk populations here, but it's still good. And I, I hunted at the
peak and I saw it fall off to where we would not see an elk for days and days. I mean, one, we used
to see like 40 or 50 a day. I mean, it'd be nonstop craziness during archery season and,
you know, I've, I've witnessed so many bull elk being taken on opening day or rifle season,
where the game warden stopped checking tags. He was like, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I've seen you
up. Yep. Yep. And you're, I don't even know how to describe that, but it went down to a low
and I now it's on the upward swing and I've, and the game is starting to come back slowly.
I'm not sure what the catalyst of all that stuff was, but it, it was heart wrenching to live through
and hunt through because you went out really realizing I'm probably not going to see an elk
today. Now, when you did it crazy though about what Washington state with Turkey is that it
started very small. And now it's like exploding what we have Turkey all over the whole state now.
They're everywhere and it's, it's awesome. So if you're a turkey hunter, you want to come and try
a different state to hunt. Turkey tags are not expensive here in Washington state thing.
Non resident tag is like 66 bucks or something like that. And then you can buy an additional tag.
I don't know what that additional cost is. Probably the same. But
it's not, it's not very expensive to come here and hunt turkeys if you want to come.
Obviously, Dave and I met some guys from Alabama last year. I mean, they came all
away from Alabama to check this out and they hadn't a blast. And they, yeah, they said they'll be back
and they, and they, they got six birds between the three of them. Yep. And they were there for
five days. But they said that the most impressive thing was the scenery. They were like, I've never
seen a place like this. Yeah. So the area that they were hunting in, I'm not going to say specific,
but it's just huge, it goes huge mountains rolling hills. I mean, there was like a,
a bunch of different landscapes just in the small area.
It's incredible. Washington has some of the best topography of any state, just in the variation of
environments. And if you want to come here and check it out, I would say, I would tell everybody
to come here and check it out. I mean, people love to come here, especially in the spring and
summer times. The falls can be very beautiful. The winter time, it's kind of just gray overcast.
Yeah, I would say from November to January, late, late April, it starts getting kind of nice.
It's a bonus January, in May. But, um, yeah, don't, don't visit during those months.
Unless you just want to the gray days. Yeah. I, I do love it. So seeing the turkey population,
when I was a kid, nobody turkey hunted. It wasn't something that was like, it was almost, I wouldn't
say it was tabooed. It just didn't exist. People just didn't, there were turkey hunters, but it wasn't
like top of conversation, right? It wasn't like today, you know, the National Wild Turkey Federation
and other groups have done a tremendous job here in the turkey population has just exploded
to the point where now it's a mainstream hunt. It's just a lot of fun. Just get out and try it.
Just do it. I know there's a lot of people that are like, oh, I'm not going to hunt those stupid
birds. You're probably going to be the one that's going to be coming back every year after you hunt
that first season. You're going to be addicted. It's, it's, it's so much fun. And it's, it, you know,
last week we had Dirk on and he said turkey hunting is as easy as you want to make it or as
difficult as you want to make it. And you could have great, nice leisure time doing some turkey hunt.
If nothing else, you get to go to camp with your buddies, get to hang out, talk shop, you know,
just kick it in the woods. What's better than that? Enjoy some fresh air.
Yeah, definitely get away, disconnect, you know, be one with, with the woods,
listen to all the different sounds and all this other stuff. I mean, it's freaking fantastic. I love
it. And it's a good, and it's a good shed hunt. If you wanted to find some sheds, you can do that
during turkey season. Also, it's a good scouting trip. See, like what's changed since last year,
you know, you can just take a peek around, you know, enjoy the hike, you know, check it out. But
Washington State has a lot to offer. And things are improving. They've introduced antelope.
You know, we have antelope that's been introduced. I'm excited about someday being able to hunt
antelope in Washington State. That'd be maybe not in our lifetime, but we'll see. We'll see.
Not gonna happen in two years, you know, who knows. But yes, they right now, I believe they're on the
Yakima Indian reservation to where they're they're actually managing everything.
Yeah, maybe we could have a hunt in 10 years. I mean, we won't be that old. Well, they had them
up in the Northeast as well. Now, what I would like Washington to do is bring back the caribou.
They used to be there in Washington State. Well, that would be cool. It'd be cool just to have
them here. I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily, you know, it'd be cool to hunt them. Could you imagine
like a million Woodland caribou up here? Well, I know about a million, but I think 70,000.
I'm dreaming big. We're gonna dream do a big, you know,
aim for the moon shooter star, you know, that goes. But yeah, what's what is what is our next
deal here? Are we going to the map? So Washington State has a division line. So our state has a
mountain range. It's the Cascade mountain range. It basically flows down between regions, our
regions here are states broken regions. It goes between four and two down here. And then it goes
between three, six and five and then five cuts across this click attack county down at the bottom.
I don't know if you could see that mouse, but click attack county. You know, they have statistics
on the birds that have been harvested from there, but that's roughly 10% of the birds that are taken
in the state, every turkeys. So you compare that to the east side, you know, this is 60% the
northeast. I mean, they're they're this little place has a lot of birds. The easterns, you're
gonna find on the west side, which is kind of counter counterintuitive. But they're
yeah, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. Our easterns are on the west side.
And to be honest, the west side is like the hardest part of the state to hunt.
For anything. It's just thick. It's yeah, the jungle. Yeah, we call it the jungle. I mean,
moss hangs from the trees and goes to the ground. So I mean, it's like a beaded curtain. You just
walk in the house. Hello. If you ever seen the very first predator movie with Arnold Swartz
and Ager, that's what we hunt. So our state's divided in half, basically by the Cascade. And
there's a Pacific Crest Trail, which is the the the the the mizing line. And that thing goes all
the way down to Mexico. Yeah. And all up into Canada. So the if you're a hiker, you've heard of the PCT,
that's our devising, the mizing line between east and west side of the state. So you can hunt
either side of the state and in Washington state, you can get up to three birds per year. Yes.
The reason is because we have east and west. Now they have rules and I'm just going to read
this straight from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. It says a total of three turkeys in the
spring season with the falling restrictions. Only two turkeys can be killed in eastern Washington,
except three can be killed in Spokane County. So that's that's a Spokane County answer. Now,
now, yeah, you can go to Spokane County. But we have something called the Turkey Slam.
You're not going to get the slam if you shoot all three of your turkeys in Spokane County.
Yeah, there's that's another. We'll talk into that here in a little bit, but
it's important. Don't put your eggs in one basket.
Because there's there's an upside to this. So you can kill three turkeys in Spokane County.
Only one may be killed in Kitatas and Yakima County. And then you have to move on. So if you're
going to take if you're going to take two on the east side, and you take one in Kitatas or Yakima
County, you can't hunt there again. Can't fill your second tag there. So don't go to Kitatas or Yakima
with two tags in your pocket, shoot a bird on opening day, and then plan on hunting the rest of
your five days. Yeah, either you are a guide for your buddy, or if you're hunting solo or
something like that, it's time to move on. Like you've got to go somewhere else.
So one turkey may be killed per year in western Washington.
Outside of Click-A-Tat County. Now, Click-A-Tat we just showed on the map.
That's just county down here. Click-A-Tat County. This is point two. Would you click-A-Tats on the
very bottom of our screen? I'm not sure if you'll be able to see the mouse, but Click-A-Tat County,
you can take one bird
in western Washington outside of Click-A-Tat County. So they're just drawing a straight line
basically down here. There's a little carve out, but basically from west side over, straight down,
you can take a third bird. That would be your third bird. So one turkey may be killed per year
in western Washington outside of Click-A-Tat County. Two turkeys may be killed in Click-A-Tat County.
Now that's crazy. Well, because there's a west and there's a east.
But Click-A-Tat and Click-A-Tat. Well, the game unit wise, but not region wise. Yes, but not region wise.
Yes. So Click-A-Tat would be considered a, I don't know, homogeneous, what they call homogenous
zone or something like, because there's an east side of Click-A-Tat and a west side. Yeah.
BCT runs through it. Yeah. Now, are you going to get easterns in Click-A-Tat? I don't know.
I have no idea because we've actually hunted that area before, but on the east side.
So. And I've hunted the west side of it in Chaut Lake.
So. There's not- For birds though? No, but it is elk, but I saw turkeys there when I was. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So there's two sides to it. Now, here's where it gets kind of interesting.
Because you can have, this could be your very first hunt, right? You go out your turkey hunting,
you get a bird. That's cool. Everything's great. You're going to do your fan display. Maybe
you got some big spurs. You do that stuff. Washington State will give you a certificate
for your first bird. They have your first turkey program. So if you harvest your first turkey in
Washington State, you send in the information, it's on the website. Here's all the- You know,
we got all the stuff listed here. I mean, just go to wdfw.wa.gov and then you can check out turkey
hunting. And then it tells you about this program. If you're taking children out, it's a nice time,
nice thing to commemorate that first bird. And it's an incentive. So you're going to have this,
this turkey certificate about your first turkey harvest. You get this National Wild Turkey
Federation coin. It's first turkey. So that's something that, you know, a first-owner will be
able to have forever. It's pretty cool. When I took my first bird, I didn't even think this existed.
It didn't. So it's like, it'd be cool to have that. This is a new program. I believe it was a
couple years ago that they started doing this. They've had the slam coin and certificate and
all this other stuff, but they haven't had the first turkey one. And I don't know when it started,
but I noticed it in the pamphlet probably three years ago. I didn't know about it when Devon got
his first turkey, which would have been in this timeframe. So I'm almost going to try to call
fish and wildlife and say, Hey, I'm going to try to get one for my son, but I'm not sure how that's
going to work. So we'll see. Yeah, but that'd be really cool if he could, he could have one because
man, I, to be honest with you, he might not be hunting again until he's done with college.
Well, they have so it just says email the following information first and last name,
date of harvest. So species, and that's it. I don't think you have to kill it in the year.
You get this. You just have to say when you got it. So I just submit it, see what they say.
Yeah. They're going to say no, then you're going to get a certificate in the mail and get this
thing. And I'm sure they'll hand it out, man. It's promotion. You know, I just think it's really
cool. I think it'd be cool for Devin to have that. We did a DIY fan. That's on our YouTube channel.
It's further down down in the, in the video list, but he was super excited. I mean,
now, I mean, when he shot it, he was small. And now the kids taller than me. So
time flies. Dude, it's only been a couple of years then kid grew like three feet.
So get out, get your first bird. And when you do go to the first turkey program on the department
efficient wildlife website, submit your information, you can get this right out. It's right here.
Outreach at dfw.wa.gov. Easy as pie. This is where I'm, this is what I'm interested in for me.
Now, if you're, if you're more experienced turkey hunter, or you're just a turkey hunter that
has aspirations of something like an achievement you're looking forward to, you're going to jump
from the free throw line slam dunk in barely touching that slam. Oh, okay, slam. We're going
all the way. They have what's called the Washington slam. Now this is harvesting all three subspecies
in a Washington state. It's an Eastern. It's a Miriam. And it's a Rio Grande. Rio Grande.
So they have two different categories for the slam. So you could do all three subspecies in one year,
or you could do the three species taken in two or more seasons. So I mean, you have some wiggle
room, but if you can get it done in one year, that's that free throw lines dunk.
Well, here's the catch for me. When you look at the, when you look at the year, so they've apparently
had this running for five years since 2018, there's three people in 2018. There's five people in 19,
five people in 20, eight people 21, five people in 22. In the whole state of turkey hunter, so
that's how many people have harvested all three in one season. It's because it can't shoot an Easter.
They're the hard birds to get that. I mean, if you're going to, if you're saying like, if,
you know, what's your odds of getting an Eastern, you know, they haven't on here and slim the none,
like it unless you know where they're at, like you pinpointed where they are. Good luck.
Well, they're a sketchy bird. You know, they're the guys in Alabama, they're saying those birds
are keenly aware of everything. And the Easterns are in Southwest Washington and Northwest Washington.
So the amount of percentages of harvest is 1%.
That's only in certain spots. It's like minus a percent in some other ones.
It was less than 1%. Yeah. Yeah.
So is that even feasible? Yeah. Well, there's enough hunters that can make it down to the decimal
point if they want. So getting those three subspecies in one season, incredibly difficult.
Yeah. So they recognize that they give you your Washington slam.
You're going to get a pin. But all you got to do is get out there and do it, you know.
Yeah. And the challenge, they're basically daring you to do it.
So are you turkey hunter enough, Dave? We are accepting the challenge from Washington state.
We are going for the slam and not only are we going for the slam, but we're going to try to video
all of it. Yeah. We're going to try to video the whole slam starting this weekend. Yep.
So I'm going Easterns. You're going Mariams and Rios. You check out a new area. Yep.
Brand new area had never been there before. Which coincidentally, coincidentally is the first
area that I have ever hunted for turkeys up the hill from you a little bit. But same basic,
well, same city. Yeah. If there's a city right there, it's within proximity of that place.
It's in Eastern Washington and within 15 minutes of where I was hunting the very first time.
And I'll be taking a new hunter. So maybe he can get his first turkey coin. First turkey
spin, first turkey slam. You can spoil this boy, man. Yeah, so be looking out for more turkey.
He's not a boy. He's a grown man. Yeah. He's a grown man. Mikey P.
So we're going to try for our turkey slams this season. Here's the kicker. If you look at the
multiple season award winners, there's only seven in five years. And there may be more people
that did it, but didn't know about this program. Yeah, they probably didn't do the program. But
why not? Why not go for the challenge and challenge yourself and go for the slam?
I mean, we have a month and a half of weekend warrior.
Man, I really may not do my motocross race. It's like taking away a weekend from turkey hunting.
It's on the list. We're going to try to complete this thing and we're going to record it when we do.
If in here's the kicker, I'm not going to only shoot if I have it on film. You might just see a
turkey down in film because I'm going to try to get the slam over getting the shots on film. So
we'll we'll go for that and see what it looks like. Well, here's the thing with us filming as well.
We're not pros. We're not professionals. We don't have cameramen. We're doing it on our own.
So it's basically solo hunting. So if we can't get the shot on film, you know, we're very sorry.
But we're going to get everything leading up to it. And then, you know, maybe after it. If we can
get the shot, awesome bonus. But if we can't, hopefully you'll still see the animal on the ground.
And, you know, we'll make it look good. We'll have a good present, uh,
presention to for the video and everything. So yeah, it's going to be good. So I'm looking
forward to a man. We're going to we're going to go out there. We're going to give him all we got.
And that's a that's a country that I'm kind of going to kind of looks like we're
I was thinking that's the same spot. Some of the guns on our hill. So we're going to we're going
to give it our best and we're going to try to do that this year. Let's jump into our gear.
I know you're excited about your your setup. Yeah. So I've been running this for two two seasons
now. Actually, this is going into the third season. I've been running this chest rig. I'm going to
grab it real quick. All right. This is the marsupial. This is their their actual like fishing
rig here. So I'm actually going to take everything out. So I have the GoPro set up.
Got my pot call from Phelps here in the front.
I have all my strikers in here. So this pocket's pretty large too. I mean, it's yeah, it probably
expands out inch and a half in the front pocket. If we can see how big that is, have a knife. I'm
not going to take that out. And then I also have since we hunt turkeys in the mountains and we're
not just sitting in blinds and all that I have a set of binos. So I have my binos set up. And then
if I don't bring binos, which I normally never do, or I never leave home without them,
I would put my box call inside this other pocket here. But I have it off to the side.
Yeah, it's nice to have that little carrier to keeps it quiet. Yeah. So it keeps it from
rattling around and walking. Yeah. But I have plenty of room to have all my calls. You can
actually have two different pot calls. If you want, you can have one on each side here. You can also
run one of your strikers right here in front, right through here. But I am throwing my GoPro in
there just to give a different camera angle. And you know, maybe even get a shot. If I can't get my
large camera set up because I have it will be set up on a tripod. If I can't get that set up,
then it will be filmed through the GoPro. So, and this is kind of a pain to get in here.
It's a little tiny gap in that GoPro connector. So, yeah. Well, I am using my, you know, I talked
about this vest earlier. This vest, it not only does it look cool, but it's functional. So it's
pretty sleek and I got it on sale. I think it was like 50% off when I bought it. So I was like,
I got to get it. And I didn't know how I was, how I was going to use it. But I knew I probably
going to use it at some point. What happened was, you know, when I got all my gear on, I throw this
little vest over the top of what I'm wearing. And it's not long. It's kind of short. It goes
about to the bottom of your rib cage. But it has these pockets where everything kind of fits in
there. I have my turkey pot call. And this goes right here in this little pocket slips in.
I have a bunch of little compartments. If I want to have reeds, I have, I call this my
snack pocket right here. I put snacks in this pocket. If I want a little snack, I can put them
right in here. Also, I can keep my, if I wanted to condition my pot call while I'm in the woods,
I have these right in there. You got to have those in case some things don't sound quite how you want
them. On this side, I keep my striker. And it also has a second snack pocket up top.
Now down the bottom here has these nice little pockets here. They're just, they're like
ventilated little pockets. I like to keep my reeds in there. So I have my Phelps Black Bat
in this pocket. And then I have this one here. This is Sassy V. I got this here. So third read,
we have, like we were talking earlier about having multiple reeds. This one is called the
green viper. I have this one in here so I can just separate those in the pocket. I don't have to
look around. I can put my hand in there. I know I can have my green viper, the black bat or Sassy
V right here where I need to get them without taking my stuff off and looking down low.
It just kind of makes it easy when I get the camp. I take this off and all my turkey stuff is in one
spot. I don't have to really search my pockets and see how different these are. We're not running
the same stuff, which is cool. A little bit of variety and how different David and I actually
have our gear. Yeah. So the main thing is having everything accessible to you.
Make sure you have your loadout where you need it to be. Whatever that looks like,
put it together. Make sure you're comfortable with your setup. Yeah, whatever works for you.
This guy's got a turkey vest and looks like he's got a decoy in the back. Everybody runs
things differently. I don't do a turkey vest. I just don't. I don't run around with the big old pad
thing. That's just not for me. I do a little bit different hunting style. I call it running gun.
I'm pretty sure if you've been listening to the podcast, you've heard us talk about the running
gun. That is a style that we use for turkey hunting and how my setup is is setup for the running
gun. So it's very fast, very light, just flying. Yeah, get in position. All you're on the move,
locate, call, and bush, man. Yeah, constantly moving. It's a lot of fun. I like that style.
Don't get me wrong. There's millions of different styles that you can use, but that's the one that
we use and what that we are successful with and how we have our setup is setup for the running gun.
It's awesome. If we were in an area that called for different type of hunting, we would just adapt
to that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, when we go here in the near future, I guarantee we're going to be
in Tennessee, I mean with our friend Luke. It's going to be completely different than what we're
going to be used to. And we're going to have to adapt to that style. Same with when we head over
to Florida, we're going to go to Florida at some point and hunt turkeys over there. That's going to
be different too. Number one, I'm going to be on high alert because I hate snakes. So it's going to
be fun. You know, the one thing I learned about in Florida, turkey hunting, what's that? So when you
see a wild hog, it instantly becomes a hog hunt. Oh, yeah, that's like with any hunt. Like when I go
bear hunting and shoot coyotes, I mean, turns into a coyote hunt. But yeah, that's just how it goes.
And this is our setup. And we can't wait to get out in the woods. Dave's going to be hunting.
We're both going to be hunting Saturday. We're just going to be hunting on different
sides of the state. And Dave, good luck. And yeah, that's by the time you watch this,
if you're following us on Instagram, you'll hopefully you see some birds before the podcast
even comes out. Yeah, you're going to be seeing that on our Instagram channels. So
yeah, Rizline hunting and the Rizline hunting podcast. But we have one more giveaway that we're
going to be doing. It's we're going to be moving into the season. But we have three
diaphragms that we're going to get away. So we'll have three different winners.
Is it a three? It's a three packer or three? No, three three separate ones. We'll have three
separate winners. And that will be the end of our folks Turkey call giveaway. Awesome. You know,
I'm looking forward to what's that Turkey car need is. Oh, oh, yes. Go go to the website to have
they have a recipe. They have recipes on the Department of Fish and Wildlife website.
You probably can look them up in other places too. But mead eater, don't get mead eater. They
probably got something. Yeah, I got the mead eater cookbook. You don't want to miss out on the
Turkey car need is man delicious. Can't wait. Anyhow, get out, knock them down and have fun.
Yeah, that's right. And you know what, get them close.