EP.48_Cam Spires from the east to the west Turkey hunting
Let's go.
Come on, Angel.
Let's go.
He's coming right to the left.
There he is right there.
Come on, right to the left.
Here my dad was for him to make.
Just like real life, you know?
Yeah, another for real.
Yeah.
So we're looking for this turkey coming in on the right side of your screen here.
Right to the left.
So exciting, man.
Like reliving the moment.
I'm so glad we have this footage.
Now, these are eastern, eastern turkeys?
Yep.
South Carolina eastern.
It looks so different than where we hunt, you know?
Yeah, I wish there was a kick.
You came in quick.
Yeah, baby.
Go get it.
Get your foot on him.
Get your foot on him.
I don't want him to fly off, you know?
That's the classic dad right there.
No, Kirk says the same thing.
Get your foot on him.
Yeah, don't look.
Don't look him out.
Yeah.
Did everything up to that point and then if you don't take the right precautions, they can get up and run away.
They'll get up and take off.
Yeah, they'll get up and start running away from you, so.
Yeah, they'll fly like they ain't even been hurt.
It depends on the location they get hit, but that looked like a good one, man.
Yeah, that TSS apex ammunition does a push of hammer on them, you know?
Yeah.
It's worth the money you pay for it.
So, today we're here with Cameron Spires.
We got the privilege to hunt with him this last weekend.
We left on Friday.
We hunted Saturday.
We hunted Sunday.
And Cameron had, I don't want to say a rude awakening, but a realization of the differences between what we just watched, South Carolina.
Swamp bottom.
Yeah, Creek bottom hunt versus what we do in Eastern Washington.
And today we're going to talk about that and just see what his experience was like and see how we did.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
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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.
Crazy.
All right.
Man, this last weekend was exciting for me.
This was our second weekend turkey hunting.
Yeah.
So, last weekend we went out with Cameron, but the weekend before that you and I went out alone.
Yeah.
You may have seen the video. You may have seen the video is not even out yet.
No, so we do have a short where I asked David how his morning was going on YouTube and he kind of explains what was going on.
And yeah, we had a successful hunt and it was a lot of fun.
And that's the video will be out here soon. I actually just got done exporting it.
We all just watched it right before we started the podcast.
And I pretty much got two thumbs up. So I exported it and it will be coming out.
I'm going to say next Friday. So when you guys actually hear this, it's going to be that Friday.
We're going to have a new video out and it's basically David Sandana going to work.
Hey, I couldn't have done it alone. You know, it's a group thing.
No, it was it was excellent. It was a lot of fun.
I finally got to show Sandana that I can call turkeys.
That's got a big fill of shit.
Well, we've been just him and I when we go out turkey hunting, we've been sconed and it sucks.
Yeah.
And finally we got it done and it was it was exciting for me.
It was definitely exciting for for Dave and it was awesome.
Yeah, I still like you can just sit there and re-imagine like every emotion you went through.
Every little thing you're thinking. We just watched Cam's video and I could see that he was like into it.
Like he's like, man, I remember that day like this, you know, and then his dad's in there.
He's like, go put your foot on me. That's my dad.
What to do, you know, you know, just walking around.
Walking around. So why don't you introduce yourself and let everybody know where you're from and what you do and how you got here.
Sure.
My name is Cameron Spires. I'm from South Carolina.
I live there for pretty much all my life.
Hunting Creek Bottom, just like that for deer, turkeys, whatever you name it, squirrels.
I joined the Navy and I got out here in Washington and then I actually moved to Virginia.
Then came back to Washington because of my wife and her family.
Then I met a crane, David Crane, over at a shooting range in Tacoma and just kind of hit it off from there, started listening to the podcast and then eventually got to meet San Dana last weekend and just been kind of hanging out since, you know.
So we're officially on a last name basis now.
Yeah. Well, it was on the car drive over and he's like, well, when I met Dave and then they'd Dave this and then I was like, what?
It's just crane and San Dana. I never, I never knew which David to say.
No, you get confused.
It was funny.
So the, this last weekend we took you out to our spot in Eastern Washington and it's public land so anybody can go there.
What was, what were you expecting on the way over?
I mean, because you said, I'm not even going to sleep tonight and, and yeah, I don't think you really did, but.
I didn't.
But he was up before us.
Oh, yeah, he was up walking around. He came back and he's like, you guys playing on hunting yet or like what's going on?
Um, you know, and it was like five thirty.
Yeah, I, I woke up at four, uh, probably four. I think we got in camp. What one, one a.m.
Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
I woke up at like, you know, I didn't really sleep, but I got up at four, four twenty five.
Oh, first got first guy, I heard four twenty five and then I was like, oh my God, I ain't going to be able to sleep.
The same day as over here.
No way. And I was like, come on, man. And my, and my hand. I'm like, dang, that goblin right now.
And then that one gobbled and then three more fired up.
And I was just like, there ain't no way I'm going back to sleeping outside.
I got up, brushed my teeth, put on my clothes and I was just walking around the truck freaking taking videos.
Just listening to them because, you know, it's a different gobble than what you hear with an Eastern.
So it's just cool hearing them talk, you know, here to do their thing.
It's a completely different experience.
Yeah, that was cool, man. I felt bad because I woke up.
I heard, I heard the gobble like, you know, that's the alarm clock because I had set my alarm clock, but maybe I didn't switch it to on.
You know, and so I was like, all of a sudden I sprung up. I was like, oh man, there's goblin.
And I look over and work, and I was sleeping.
Sandeil looks at me and he's like, crank, hey, get up, man.
Cam is not in the tent. I was like, what? And Cam walks in. He's like, you guys plan on getting up?
They are firing off. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Yeah, pump the brakes, pump the brakes.
I felt bad. I want to let you guys sleep. We got there super late.
Oh, it's all right, man. I understand when you want to hunt and something's going on and things are firing off, like the blood starts going and the thoughts start going in.
I was on the next, like, okay, well, they're gobbling there. We can get to this ridge and that high point and cut them off there.
And then I'm texting my dad. I'm like, there's like four turkeys gobble right now, man.
Just fired up about it.
It was good, man. So when we started out, we were on a relatively flat terrain.
Right. Yeah.
And then we started going uphill. What was that like for you?
So as you can clearly see from the video, South Carolina is fairly flat. It's got some drainages, like, and some hills.
But compared to what we were hunting in this past weekend, it is amazing to me that turkeys live in that, that they just, they thrive in it almost, you know, like,
Eastern Washington's got one of the best turkey populations probably in the whole United States for compared to most places. But just the steepness and the elevation gain and the vastness of it, you know, you could see it.
You could hear a turkey from three miles away. You know, you get up on top of one of them hills and there's no wind. He could be gobbling three miles away, but, you know, you ain't going to get to him because you're going to have to climb out Everest.
That ain't a joke, people. I'm telling you, it is a hike. But it's a different experience, you know, like, I love doing this stuff, but also I love experiences.
And that is an experience that you don't get hunting down there, you know, which is what's cool about coming out here and meeting people and being able to experience stuff like that.
Well, the hunt was full of excitement as well, because we didn't take long before we were actually on birds. And, you know, we came over the top. There's this little fence line. We like to say this is like where this is where the hunt usually begins.
Because once we cross that, we know there's going to be turkeys over there. And we got over the top of that fence and Cam was calling. I think you did the first calls, didn't you?
I've got over the hill. Maybe I can't really remember. Honestly, I have two focus on the goggles, but you were, you, I'll tell you, I was watching you and you were like a bird dog. So you're here.
That way.
You're like, right down there. Here's what we got to do.
You know, it was, it was, it was super funny because the birds are, they're a little different, you know, and I, and I have nothing to compare those two with what you're doing.
But to see your excitement, to see how, how the, you're just instantly went into like this tactician mode of like, here's the ambush. Here's what we're going to do.
You know, we got down, we set up and I thought the birds were going to come right to our lap. I mean, it was, I thought you were going to get one for sure.
Yeah.
The first setup we had was, it was really good.
It's always hard when like, that's one thing I noticed about the elevation because on this terrain, it's real easy. I mean, I won't say it's real easy, but it's more noticeable about the birds.
It's more noticeable about where the turkey's kind of located. Like, okay, he's on this side of the creek bottom, raise on that side, or he's behind some thickets. You know, he's behind a briar patch.
So we got to get around there and go around him. But when you're up high and there's all that topography, it's real hard to actually locate where they're at.
So like, Pranekep mentioned in like, well, dude, they sound like they're right there, but they're actually on this other piece of private.
And to me, it was hard to like, kind of like, start really grasping that because, you know, there you hear a gobble. He's in shooting range almost like he's coming in most of the time.
So it was real, the first morning was real difficult for me to understand the difference in the topography and having to really pay attention to what the gobble sounded like if it was echoing at all, stuff like that.
You know, it's kind of hard to pick up on it first.
You do get a lot of echoes, you know what?
Especially in those bottoms. Yeah, because everything just comes off those ridges, man. And it'll bounce off whatever.
It'll sound like they're close. And then all of a sudden, when you really start glassing it up and you see like, oh, that tom's actually gobbling for like 900 yards down this way.
And then all of a sudden you hear another one, like, oh, that one sounds even closer. But then it's on another ridge and another goalie.
You know, and it really just puts into perspective that the terrain that you're in is not a guarantee of like where this bird is actually at and where it's coming from, which makes it hard, right?
But it also gets you to play that chess game with the bird, which we played a lot of chess.
A lot of chess. Yeah, a lot of chess. And then we were on the losing side.
I was actually discouraged because the weekend before that, the birds were just coming in two by two all over the day in place.
And it was just like, yeah, so we were like, yes, the weather's going to be better. It's going to be a little bit warmer.
Blah, blah, blah. Well, the weather. It does not mean that.
Yeah, it had nothing to do with what the birds were going to do.
So don't depict your hunt on what the weather is like because that doesn't matter.
Yeah. I've come to find that out. Yeah.
Because it's all about what the hens are doing and what the hens want those to do because from this hunt, what we found out was that the toms were not leaving the hens for nothing.
It didn't matter. Like they were not coming off the hens and we hunted from early morning till at night and the toms were just sticking with the hens the whole time they were not breaking off and that made it extremely difficult.
I think we would have been able to stay till Monday, Tuesday, so today's Wednesday, if we would have been able to stay for that whole time, I think we would be tagged out all of us.
We had good opportunities. This weekend would be a good one, but I'm leaving that town.
We had a really good chance. It was like the first day, I thought they were coming up.
It was weird because you'd have three guys on the same little knob and hear a gobble and everybody's pointing a different direction.
Yeah, you ever see all the little spider-man's?
No, it's over here. I swear it's down this way. It was just so confusing because depending on how that sounds deflects off the topography of the hillside, if there's a bunch of trees over to the right, it was really weird.
We had a similar thing, but we had the Tom came in that I ultimately bagged, but that was by himself.
I guess we didn't have that. There wasn't not many toms by themselves.
No, not at all. We did see lone hens. That wasn't a lot of that.
We saw some birds at night. We didn't really know exactly what they were. We think there were hens, but one of them could have been a tom.
It was like three of them, right? Yeah. We were trying to get them to go into their roost to try to figure out a game plan for Sunday, because we were doing just a weekend warrior hunt.
Man, we were just striking out. It was a serious chess game with these birds. We were just on the losing side of it. It was really frustrating.
I was actually just frustrated because I wanted to get Cam out here. He's not going to be here in Washington anymore.
He's moving at the beginning of next year. He's never been able to experience this type of hunt, which he got to experience it, but it would have been a little bit better if he would have been able to experience a tom coming in.
If we would have got a shot on one or not, who knows, but at least he would have been able to see a nice mariam strutting in with the white tips, man.
He didn't get to experience that, but hopefully here in the next couple of weeks, we'll be able to get him out again and try again.
Number two. Yeah, try again. I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be fun.
In our last podcast, we were talking about us trying to go for the slam, which, that ain't happening. We're running out of time.
At least for me. The hard, I mean, the Easterns here, they're not really prevalent.
It's like under a percent. One percent of the state harvest. Yeah, it is an Eastern.
That's difficult. You almost need to get your mariam and your rio very fast.
Then all your other timings be on Eastern, which I don't even know where they're at. I've seen some feathers here and there. That's about it.
Well, the hard birds in the spot that I can't hunt. Yeah, time and distance. They're probably 250 miles apart from where you're going to hunt them.
Yes. The time and the distance is one issue we're running into. The second one is I know where to find Eastern because we hunted down where the Easterns are.
We've found the feathers of Eastern. Yeah, it's just actually finding them to shoot them.
The tag one is a whole other thing, but I have zero idea where to find a rio. I know they're northeast Washington someplace.
To me, it seems like the hard one. If I was in an area, it wouldn't be as difficult if I knew where to go.
Now I'm doing research. I know where to get an Eastern. I know where to get a mariam. I have to do the rio investigation.
I have to find out where that's at. Yeah. So if anybody is watching and you hunt turkeys in Washington state.
DM me. Yeah, DM. Any one of us. It'd be good. We get some good information.
Yeah, we don't need to know like a exact pinpoint, but you know, it would be nice. The county would be great.
No, no, it's hilarious. Don't say the Okanagan. It's a huge count. Yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah, man. So this next weekend, Dave will be out of town. Yeah.
Cam, what do you got planned? I really don't know. I don't want to say anything because I don't know what my wife might have planned for us.
Yeah. So I don't like just saying I don't have nothing planned. Yeah. Cause then I'll tell her I got plans and she'll be like, well, I had this plan. So what the heck?
Well, I'm thinking I'm thinking I'm going to get back out next weekend. The following weekend? Yeah.
Yeah. So just to let you know that's Mother's Day weekend. So I already got the A.O.K. for that weekend. So.
Oh, shit. Yeah. I know you guys got more in 10 years. Yeah.
You guys got kids. Cause that was like my plan as well. And then I was like, when is Mother's Day this year? No. Like, if it's that weekend.
No, a bone. Throw us an extra weekend. So. Yeah, I know exactly. So we'll try to get that game planned. If that doesn't work out, then we'll have to pick a different date.
One of these weekends, maybe we got two weeks left. Like a wife with me.
Yeah. Bring her up. Take the kids camping or something. Yeah. So I think, I think, you know, what we experienced was, you know, as you had said, they were handed up.
The weekend we went, the initial weekend, they weren't handed up. But see the weekend before that, they were handed up. The opening weekend. So.
Oh, cause you went over there? Well, no, I was in a different area, but I mean, in the spot that I was in there, I ended up to. And they weren't, they were quiet and everything.
So we almost had that kind of experience except for our first day that were hot, bothered, ready to go. But they weren't committed to coming in.
Which was okay. Which is fine. We hunted that whole day. You know, we hunted Saturday. We heard some gobbles and the morning was fired up and then like mid afternoon or mid morning, I would say closer to 10, 11 o'clock, they were fired up again.
And then all of a sudden it was just, there was nothing. Yeah. And then it made for a very frustrating Sunday. So we heard one gobble. Mm. One.
Well, you know what's crazy? I told you this, I don't know if I told you this this weekend though, but my first season hunting public land, I didn't hear a single gobble, not one.
So just hearing like even one gobble to me on public land is like, you know, awesome. Like there's birds on the public land that you're hunting. That's available.
And that's why I feel like North East Washington has like one of the better turkey hunting opportunities because there are birds on public land.
You know, in Virginia, some of the public land I hunted on open and day, there'd be like 80 trucks in parking lots. Like not even joking.
We had one year me and two of my buddies went out. We had like six guys walk up on us. I mean, that's just how it is over there because the parcels aren't as big.
You know, we weren't hunting like super big parcels, but there was enough land available to where, you know, someone's at that gate. All right, I'll just go to the next gate, you know, over there in Virginia, it wasn't like that, man.
And the only way I killed a gober that first year on public land was sitting up where I had new turkeys, had been cruising, hanging out and just, I think I sat there for like five total hours.
Eventually two of them came walking by and popped one of them, but no goble was my entire first season on public land.
So how many people did we see this weekend, would you say? Less than ten. And that was in a pretty big area. Yeah, we drove to a bunch of gates. So the pressure was definitely more spread than what I'm used to.
Well, we only saw two people on the ground. But we saw like trucks and stuff. Yeah, yeah. There were other people hunting around the general area.
Yeah. When we were in the woods, I mean, we only had those two people that we run into, but we were cruising to a new location where we spotted them and they were traveling a road on foot.
Yeah. So it wasn't like if we were sitting there up on the hill still, then we wouldn't have seen anybody. No, there wasn't nobody up on top of that hill.
Because ain't nobody want to log up there.
And now you know why we do that.
Yeah, no, that's the way you got to do it is to get away from them, get where other people want. That's interesting because, you know, all these turkey hunting TV shows and things you see on a lot of times, it's a lot of private land.
And one thing we take for granted, I feel, is that we have so much public land and opportunities, even though even in some instances, it may not be the best opportunity.
At least we don't have 80 trucks at one gate, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I've never seen that before. I've seen quite a bit of trucks at gates, but usually, so in that area where we used to hunt, or we still hunt elk, that's the main gate, but you're looking at like hundreds of thousands of acres to hunt.
So it's like 80 trucks can be there and you still won't see somebody when you get to your spot. Yeah, there's like 380 some thousand acres or something there.
Yeah, it's nuts. It's ridiculous. The piece I saw with 80 trucks was like 1500 acres and it was nothing but swamp. So it's like...
So you're only held up in a couple spots because the rest of it's like un-hountable. Yeah, it's pretty much, if you go in there, you got all hipwaters, you know.
And there would be people, so it was like, the way they had it lined out was a gravel road and then three gravel roads that kind of went down off that gravel road and there'd be gates.
And the main gravel road there was probably like 20 trucks and they had like a soybean field. There was like 12 ground blinds in that field.
And then each gate had like 10 or 12 trucks. I wonder where people get shot all the time, man. It's ridiculous down there.
You know, if you're not using the right shot, like you're gonna... You're not paying attention? Yeah, you're gonna get wasted.
Well, then we had people, like the people walked up on us like they were like wearing 100 orange, which I get for safety reasons, but like...
You ain't seeing no turkey. Yeah, I was like, come on, man, you turkey hunting? You gonna wear orange? What you... You was ruining the hunt for everybody else.
You know, walking up to the woods with orange on them. Yeah, just looking like a highlighter just walking through the woods like they know they see in color.
They gonna see you a mile away and they gonna go to the next county.
It was on the border of North Carolina, so I think a lot of them birds just... Because there was another agriculture on the other side.
So I think a lot of them birds got pushed up out of there and on the North Carolina land.
And obviously we can't hunt that without a license. So a lot of us were just screwed on that area.
I did know one guy who got a bird there, but the way he did it was remember how I was telling the guys, like, maybe we should do like some soft calling and stuff.
And that's kind of why I get that way, is because I'm used to heavily pressured birds where they just like a little...
Little just soft stuff. And that's what that guy told me he did. He just said he just sat down for like eight hours and was just...
And eventually had one goblin come in. So sometimes it's just different birds like different stuff.
Yeah, and that's... It's actually depending on pressure.
And that's the chess game too, right? So like the birds that we were hunting that weekend, for some reason they like it frickin' loud.
Like ear piercingly loud. It just gets them going.
Yeah. And I noticed if you do any putting they're not gonna come around.
It's like the hands that put means that there's something wrong over there.
Well, it's like a... So it's all about the turkey language. It's like learning a new language. It's about how you put.
If you just did like a putt, putt, putt, putt.
Yeah, that means you're alarmed. Something's wrong. But if you do like a...
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Yeah, yeah.
That's just a turkey talk. That's just them mingling around.
So that's why when like I had the mouth call I would do like a couple of putts and a couple of yelks and a couple of clucks just to keep it like a conversation.
You know, and that's what I was telling the guys up in Hody Project Guy. That's what I learned from him. That's something I learned.
It's like when we be walking around I just be doing this soft like...
He says to do that because then it sounds more realistic. Like when you're walking through the woods.
Something's moving along.
Mm-hmm. Because if a turkey just heard like crunch, crunch, crunch, they're not gonna believe that that's a hen.
You know, when you sit down 10 yards later and you start calling. But if you're a soft, yelping, clucking, even trying to throw in some pears.
If you can mouth call... If you can put on a mouth call kudos to you. I can't figure out it out yet.
But if you can master all those things and figure out like how to approach the turkey with being quiet and act like a hen and figure out the turkey language.
That's like a big key to success. You know, it's figuring out how in there... Because they're a social group, you know.
They've got a hierarchy. They've got dominant thumbs, dominant hands. They've got the subordinates. They've got the younger of Jake's and Jenny's.
So if you can figure out how all those kind of mingle with each other in a flock and then incorporate that into your hunt.
I feel like that's when you just take yourself from like a novice turkey hunter to a knowledgeable turkey hunter, you know.
It's a difference in a... In the chess game, you know. You go from losing every time to, you know, you might get a checkmate here and there.
Yeah, and those come in. They happen. I mean, we experienced it two weekends ago and... Yeah.
We were one turkey thought away from having all this frickin' smack of turkey.
There was enough turkeys out there. We all could have tagged out twice.
Yep. That was the plan. But, you know, it just didn't happen and that's hunting. I mean, that's just one of those things.
But that was the other thing I was going to get to with hunting with you. We hunt with a lot of people that are very new to any style.
It doesn't even matter what it is. It was great to go out there and have someone that knows how to call.
Yeah. Like, he basically took over calling. And it was great for myself to learn some of these other things.
And even for Dave, he was learning some new calls with the mouth reads because he really likes using the mouth reads.
Yes, it's fun, dude. And I'm just not good at it. I can... Oh, call. No problem.
We're gonna get you figured out with it. I'm gonna buy you like a six pack and then we're gonna sit down and you're gonna go with the river single one and we're gonna figure it out.
You'll get one that just sounds real pretty and that'll be the one you use.
Yeah. But that was awesome. That was something cool for me to sit back and learn from someone that's half my age.
Literally. Almost. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Pretty close. Wouldn't just call it half.
It was really cool. It was an experience for me and for Dave as well to learn something new that we can use in our arsenal for future turkey hunts.
And turkey toolbox, man. Yeah, you gotta keep it going. Yeah, you gotta keep it going.
You gotta always be learning. You know? And that's what I love about turkey.
Like, if I had to give up all hunting and just do turkey hunting, I'd be fine.
It is the one thing that springtime comes around. That's the only thing. I don't always think about a year round, but springtime especially, there's not a day that don't go by. I don't think about it.
So that's why I'm kind of like... I mean, I really didn't dive into it until about three years ago.
And that's when I really started figuring out kind of calling them like the slate calling stuff. That's my favorite one to use.
I'm sure y'all learned that at a really good slate call. But I just would sit there. I mean, my wife eventually got so pissed off. She'd tell me just go sit in the truck.
Because I'd just be sitting there for hours. I would watch like live-in audio. And then I would like play it.
And I'd sit there for an hour and just mimic it as best I could until I got it to kind of where I wanted it.
And I'm no expert. I still got a lot to learn. But it just takes practice. It just takes time. Especially the best learning is experience.
And failure is always a good opportunity to learn. So this weekend, we learned that, end up turkeys, no gobble at you. They'll talk to y'all frickin' day.
But they're gonna come to you. You're gonna have to either figure out where their hands are taking them. Or you're gonna have to figure out a way to sit there and stay still
for hours and wait for them to work their way back. Because it seems like not every bird, but most birds have a habit. Especially you guys have been hunting there for a couple years.
And it seems like they kind of got a little routine down. So if you just figure out a routine, it's not gonna be down to the tree. No one's gonna do that. You'd be a freaking god if you could do that.
Yeah, turkey wizard or something. But if you could just figure out kind of like you found all that fresh scratch and then we drove that road and we saw a hen going up the hill and the other side of the road.
If you just figure out little things like that and that's playing the chess game, that's moving your pawn to spaces or moving your knight up and over two.
And now you're in a better position to get to their king, which is the dominant Tom in this situation. So you just put all those little pieces together and eventually your miles are figuring out.
And once you learn to think like a turkey, which is the hardest part because we're not freaking turkeys. So it's hard to understand where their logic is coming from and stuff.
But that's like, I feel like one of the big keys is figuring out how a turkey talks, their social hierarchy situation, and then just kind of where their habits lie in that area that you're hunting.
Yeah, it's pretty interesting that you said that we do have a routine in where we hunt. We always like we have that fence boundary.
And then we know like this is our first spot we're going to call from and then we're going to go over the top and we're going to go over here and we're going to call.
It's interesting because these birds, they have a lot to learn from them. And if you spend enough time where they're at, you have enough opportunity to do that type of patterning or recognize some sort of signal.
You know, like this is a clue of this is going to happen here because it's half four times a row. What are we going to happen the fifth time?
Yeah, and let the turkey, the only way a turkey will change up what they're doing is if you shoot and miss or they like a wolf spook some or coyote spook some.
But if they're fine and happy and nothing's spooking them, those are the same thing. I mean, that's what's easy for them, right? They feel safe, they feel comfortable.
That's why we saw them three birds going back to the roots on top of the hill because we didn't spook them all day. You know? So they were like, I like roosting up there. Nothing's up there. Let me just go roost.
In that previous weekend on Sunday, that's where they were going to. So I was like, when we went back over the ridge and you went down along the road or whatnot.
Cam and I were like, I was like, Cam, we got to try to get to this spot because I know they come up from this hill and they start coming up. But we just, I don't know exactly where we're kind of on the ridge that they were coming up from. So, yeah, they definitely have a pattern.
They definitely have a pattern and we kind of have it figured out. Kind of. Yeah. But what would you say is your biggest takeaway from your experiences last weekend?
Oh, let's, before we get into that, let's take a quick break. Okay. Cool.
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All right, everybody. Welcome back. We had just a teeny break. I know for you guys, it's about 45 seconds just because of the.
The little the sponsorship clips that we're using. But yeah, we were getting into Cameron. What was your takeaway from this weekend's hunt, your first turkey hunt in Washington state?
They gobble a lot and that's not just as I know it's a stereotype for Miriams, but it is truthful. We had what those four birds in the bottom just they got with what 1000 times at one point.
The crows and the ravens went off. I felt like I was in a gobble fist, you know, because with Easterns, it's not as often they gobble.
They will every now and then they call it like the double leak or something like that where a gobble or we'll get another one fired up and they'll just go back and forth like they're yelling at each other basically.
One of the bigger takeaways is if you're not prepared to go where the turkey's at, you're probably not going to get the turkey. There's a lot more walking involved.
Mainly because it's steep and vast and there's a lot of land compared to back east like the parcels just aren't that big. I had walked like 20 miles on one day on some public, but you know, I covered every section, you know, it wasn't like I just went straight out.
I went out back stuff like that.
That's probably the biggest one honestly is just the terrain difference in the learning the topography stuff like that and the openness, you know. There's like that little bit of like less than five foot tall underbrush, but that's it like in the Appalachian Mountains and honestly kind of looks like that's where they're at right there in the picture.
There's that mountain laurel they'll call it and it may it is just so green that it's a turkeys from me to you. That's the only time you'll get to shoot them. You know, it's just so thick.
Leafy.
A lot of green leaves, a lot of thorns. You know, the oak trees are all green. It's just harder to see. And out here, you know, it's just open for the most part in Eastern Washington, you know, with those big ponds and just a little bit of underbrush that helps you out a little bit.
It helps you out in a lot of cases because the turkeys got to get around that, get through that, or, you know, to be able to see where you're at, where he thinks the hint is.
Yeah, we have some opportunity to get some good ambush spots. Yeah.
And that's like that. I mean, it could be like that anywhere really, but from from going from, you know, hunting the states that you've hunted in the east, coming to where we were, because we do have some areas where you can hunt flat.
I don't know where they're at.
But we do have the farm fields in the valley. Yeah, the farm fields in the valleys. Yeah.
They're there, but you know, the style that we, how we hunt, it just, I don't know, makes it that much fun.
Or to mix it that much more rewarding because like it's a challenge. Yeah, these are mountain turkeys. Like this is mountain goats, bro.
Hey, these things ain't turkeys. Way that hand. I'm telling you, I've never seen a turkey run so fast upwards in my life.
Like even in the Appalachian mountains, they don't run that fast. You know, it was crazy to see how like agile she was.
I mean, I've seen turkeys run obviously, but it's been on like flat, you know, dirt roads. They just get going.
Yeah, they just get going or they'll fly, you know, 95% of the time you speak of Eastern, he's gone. He did the next county.
So it was just cool seeing stuff like that and the terrain, you know, the stuff you were saying, like there are places that are flat.
You know, we saw the turkeys, or you saw it's like what 80 turkeys in a field?
So it's crazy like that. It was a bunch. Yeah, that was our second day.
Actually, the first day, the evening. That was at the end. First evening.
So we split up and I went up to a northern section of state land and then there was this farm field.
There was probably like 20 cows in there, but they were on the backside. I saw a white tail first.
I was like, I'm going to look at this white tail because right when I got to the gate where I was going to park,
I noticed that there was a white tail in the field. So I walked over the edge and I looked at the white tail and I looked at it.
I was like, oh, there's a bunch of cows over there. And I looked and I was like, there's a shitload of turkeys too.
I got my binoculars up and I looked and they were, I mean, I probably at first saw maybe 20 toms and then it's crazy.
And they were all together. I mean, they were, they were, and I heard the hen's yelping in the back in the corner there.
And they just kept going. And it was nonstop. I was sitting there, I was like, damn, I got to get them to me.
I was like, I bet you I could call them across this field because they're all, you know, they're not with the hen.
So I get out my box call and I start yelping on it.
And they started coming my way, but they moved like 20 yards maybe towards me, maybe three or four of them.
And they started messing around, kind of doing a little half strut. And then I was like, it's going to take them a long time to get to me.
So I gave them some more yelps and they'd move a little closer and maybe maximum, they moved in maybe 40 yards.
And there was a bunch of water though in that field. There was ducks and geese in there.
So they would have to go unless they went, decided to go through it, right? But I figured that water might be an obstacle to them.
They'd probably select like to go around it or not do it at all.
So I thought I might be calling a turkey in from behind me too, because that's where I was going to go.
So I decided I'm going to leave these guys alone. I'm just going to go with my plan, get in here, set up and call from in there.
And if they make it over to me, that'd be fine. But as I was heading in, the road, like this little road you have to walk in on, it kind of made this arch like a bridge.
And I got down maybe like 80 yards and I saw this tail fan stand up on the road.
And that's all I saw was the top of the fan. And I didn't, you know, at first I thought, holy shit.
I was like, that's what happened. And then I think, so I crouched down real quick and he was just down there strutting.
You know, he was strutting and so I had decoys with me so I laid them both down.
So, Sandin, you're not going to be able to see this if you're listening to podcasts, but if you want to see what I'm doing, you can head over to YouTube.
He has two keys in his hands.
Baby cradle.
Shotguns over the shoulder and he's just like coming in.
Like, oh shoot.
Yeah, this big sucker man. And so I just basically threw the jake, I set the jake down and I took the hand and I put her up on a stick.
And I thought he was going to come over. So I put him like, you know, the road was pretty hard.
So I was on the side of the road, I'm trying to get the stick in the ground. And I can't see him anymore.
So I know he can't see me because his fans up. And so I'm like trying to get this thing in.
I finally found some soft enough ground. I got in maybe like four inches and I was like, she's probably going to fall over when he comes over.
She's just going to go right on her side.
He's like, please don't fall. So I put that next to the road and then I scooted off the road maybe six feet.
And there was some brush in front of me and I was on my knees. I was just kind of bent real low.
You know, I was waiting for him to come over and when he did, I was just going to pop up and shoot him.
I was waiting and waiting to the point where my back started like really throbbing from being like on my knees bent down.
And he didn't come over and I was like, curiosity got the best of me. And I was like, I should peek over that hill.
You know, I went to peek and I was moving maybe a centimeter at a time, maybe just like a half an inch.
You know, I'm looking, look, look, I'm getting up, taller and taller and look, look, I'm like, that little sucker ain't even here anymore.
So I moved over to the left side of the road. I crawled over to the left side of the road where the berm was and I started working down the berm,
staying low because there's like the berm and then brush. So I had maybe four feet of, you know, I guess they call it like a cover.
And then, or at concealment, actually, that's concealment, right? So I'm concealed by four feet and I start going down this little ditch and I go down and I see him.
He's like 40 or 50 yards down the road from where I was at. So I was like, that little son of a gun. So I gave him a couple of yelps and he turns around and he does a full strut in the middle of the road.
He's spinning around and then he does a gobble. Next thing you know, he goes up into the trees and he's inside the tree's strut.
And that's the last I saw. I didn't even see where he went after that. After he was in those trees, I thought he was like, he's going to come up to me.
Then my decoy was back there. I'm like, I should go get her and put her up on this little hill and it makes me think. He can see from there. I know I forget that I can take her and stick her up slow and then stab her in the ground right there.
He's going to come this way. You needed a camera roll in my hand. That would have been some awesome footage. Having him strut in the road.
That would have been our only footage of turkeys. Yeah. He was crazy.
So I came back to camp that night and you guys were, I was there before you because I didn't want to get there at dark. And you guys came in just before dark.
And I want to tell everybody what happened to you guys up on the hill though because we had an incident last weekend or the weekend before last.
And then last weekend you guys had some sort of running up there.
Oh, oh, and we're coming back back to camp. So, well, before that all that happened, we did run into some turkeys. We had three hands or whatever go scooting up right past us.
They didn't want to give us the time of day. They were a came in silent to be honest. Like, that we had no idea.
Camp just kind of saw him out of the corner of his eyes about turkeys and we're in like mid conversation. We're, you know, we're both, you know, squirrel.
We dropped down the ground. We're getting ready and nothing happened. So we come up over this ridge and we're heading back down to camp and we're coming down.
And all of a sudden we started this here and just just a weird noise and we didn't really know what it was really.
We were all in a room. We were trying to just do something sparked up. And it was a growl. We started hearing something growling.
And we both were kind of just like, something growling at us? Like, what is that? And it wouldn't stop. It was a definite growl.
No idea what it was. And never heard of coyote growl before. So I'm pretty sure it wasn't that. We did hear wolves. You know, the couple weekends that were out there.
We heard wolves howling. Both times. I'm not sure if it was that. There are signs of cougars out there. Big cats. I don't know what it was.
Definitely. I don't know. Earlier in that day though, when we were coming back from our long hike, you saw some sort of animals take off.
There was like three of them, you said, Dave?
Yeah, yeah. So we saw.
I'm on mute. I thought I saw some type of dogs.
But there was somebody walking an animal, but they had it on a leash. So I'm not sure if they had two dogs off leash or whatever.
I don't know. All I know is it wasn't a bird because it was on four legs. And it was scooting. Yeah, they were running pretty fast.
I never even saw them. We were right behind each other. Four feet apart.
So yeah, I came back to camp and I was waiting for you guys and all this transpired.
When I got there, I was like, so what happened? I figured you guys were going to get birded.
You know, they're like, oh man, nothing happened. You know, those birds, they've just gone and we saw these hands in this ground and stuff.
And so I was like, well, tell you what, I saw about 80 columns and they were everywhere over there. They was like a rut fest.
I mean, they were wild. So that's our plan for day two. We went over there.
And we saw them right away in the morning. They were right down from where I had spotted them last.
The truck spooked them a little bit and then they went back up in the woods, but they were right there, you know, right where you had said.
It was like one time and probably what, six hands? Yeah. Yeah, there was only, I think there's two tall.
You said say you saw a second one then. Yeah, but he wasn't strutting. He wasn't doing nothing. I think he was a little...
Yeah, I think it was a Jake. He was not trying to like do anything with that tom.
Yeah. Like he, I know he, yeah, he's like, I'm going to get Molly walked it by.
Yeah. So my, we come up to a theory that after that, after that, Tom was with those hands almost exactly where I had had a tom the night before on that road is that he, he was with those hands, but it was curious, but never wanted to commit because he had all those hands with them.
Yeah. You know, I never did see those hands, but they were in, they were within a hundred yards of where I had spotted them last.
And, and so they have that, that ended up being our investment for the day.
We did split up and I went to the other side of this big field and I had one gobble back down in the canyon when I went around the back side of the hill and a million prairie dogs.
Everywhere out there, man. You guys had, you guys had one gobble back way up high. Yeah.
Yeah. It sounded like he was super close. So I, so Cam and I actually split up. He, he went up kind of high and I split off on another road and just what, what we mean by road, it's not a road, but it's walkable.
Yeah. But we cut off and I'm heading down this way and all of a sudden I hear a gobble and I'm like, Cam, you gotta get down here.
For me, he's the shooter, unless there was two toms coming in. So I was just trying to get Cameron on a bird.
And finally we have a gobble and it sounds like he's close. So I was just like, dude, you gotta get down here. There's a bird. Like he's sprinting down the hill. He drops the decoy.
Like, you shot the decoy and I ain't carrying this extra weight, man. I gotta go.
He comes running down and then, you know, like he sees me and starts slowing down and stuff and then we try to get a game plan going and, man, we thought we had this guy coming in.
He was getting louder and louder and louder and then all of a sudden he just shut up and we're like, all right, let's try to ambush him.
And then he just never gobbled again. And it was just like, dang.
Well, you know that road, so we, when I met up with Crane, we were sitting there and we ended up getting on the side of the road on the hillside and he was gobbling what sounded like up high, right, like up above us.
And there was a road that went straight up, basically straight up, you know, when you're walking on and it feels straight up.
No, he came back and I was like, dang, this is Steve.
Yeah, it was a workout.
So he was gobbling up above us and this, so the first gobble Crane heard, I didn't get to hear, but the second time he gobbled, I heard, and he still sounded kind of up there behind stuff, maybe looking away from us or something.
But then he gobbled a third time to some calling and it sounded like he had turned the road and was facing us.
You know, he sounded a lot closer, a lot louder.
You could kind of feel the energy in the gobble was like there.
Like he was responding to you, alerting you that he's like acknowledging you, you know, talking to you.
But then after that, you know, he just, I don't know if he saw us like walking the road, but I don't know how he would have.
He just vanished like a ghost, you know, like a turkey ghost.
We were haunted by a mountain turkey ghost.
Yeah, it was weird.
Because we walked all of it.
I mean, we got up so high that we could see him waiting at the parking spot waiting on us.
You're up so dang high.
I don't know what happened to him.
Yeah, I was supposed to pick you guys up.
I think it was 1130 or something.
Yeah.
At 1230, I was like, well, I better go back to the list.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I took a picture and I sent it to David and he drove away.
He was like, oh, that's going to take a while.
I didn't have any service.
You know, I just ran out of patience.
I was like, well, they probably got something going, so I'm going to head back out.
I was hoping you had, because you know, we couldn't text you because you have service.
I was hoping you'd be like, oh, maybe they just sort of burned.
Oh, they're trying to get on something else.
He's sitting there waiting for us forever.
I can up this mountain.
That's exactly what I thought.
Yeah.
So I went back down and I was going to hike up to the other hill and then I ran through a
service zone and you're like on the way to the truck and I was like, okay.
Dang it.
I just got all my stuff back on.
I was halfway up the hill.
I think it was like 84 degrees.
It was hot.
It was hot.
So which I think was another issue was it being so hot that the turkeys didn't want to be
in their normal areas where they were last weekend because they could be on the open and
be cool.
So this past weekend, like the weekend, you guys got one, I think this past weekend, they
kind of changed up their routine.
And that's why, you know, you guys were saying like, man, I don't get it while the birds aren't
gobbling over here because they always gobble over here.
I think that's what happened is the heat pushed them into a different kind of like loafing
area and a hangout area and we just weren't in that area for the rest of the day, you
know, until you've stumbled upon like a freaking flock of 100 of them.
They were, you know, they were in the shade and they were, they were just on the edge of
the, I mean, on the light, you know, I had to look through the shade to see them.
So they were just on the edge of the forest.
Yeah.
They were ready to go back in those trees.
And that's all the turkeys that I saw were like on the cusp.
You know, they, I didn't see any really in the open at all.
So there's that field that that field always has turkeys in it.
And then that other field that we were went down into the bottom.
There's usually a bunch of turkeys in there, which we never got to see because they were
on like the back side of that, that property.
So that like rolls kind of down like that that we can't really see.
And then there's like a, the creek bottom.
That's like if we're facing where the quad was.
Yeah.
We're facing it.
There's a, there's a finger that comes down like this.
They go into this like little goalie back on the back side of that and they kind of hold up in there.
And it's, you know, it's private.
We can't go in there.
Yeah.
And even just to get up and around, you know, your climbing another mountain.
That's what I'm saying.
It's crazy hunting these turkeys and you're like, you're getting a workout in, you know?
I mean, you can, like there's some places back east, you know, people hunt up.
They're like, you know, steep and they got cliffs and bluffs and stuff.
But I had never got to do that.
You know, I funded ridges and stuff and nothing too crazy.
But stuff like that we hunted in this past weekend.
I mean, that's not stuff you get to hunt every day being from South Carolina.
So it's just like, I keep going back to the, it's cool seeing turkeys live in that, you know, and thrive.
It's cool seeing the different because that's where my original love for turkeys is is a habitat management.
And so seeing the different types of landscapes and habitats, they thrive in and what they eat.
Like you guys are showing me, well, we've seen this turkey eat, you know, this, this little yellow flower and stuff like that.
It's cool for my brain to like pick up on those kinds of things.
Cause that's where my original love is for turkeys is habitat stuff.
Yeah.
Last weekend we were out there.
Sorry, I keep saying last weekend, but cause I have this weird thing, you know, have people say next Friday?
Anything.
It's like two days from now.
I think it's like a week and two days from now.
Like in last, last weekend isn't the one we just left.
It's the one before that to me.
I don't know.
I've always been that way.
But so two weekends ago, there was no flowers, basically anywhere.
We had so many of them out blooming or anything.
When we went back, there was no snow.
It was way hotter.
And there was a bunch of flowers bloom, you know, so.
Everywhere and like fields of them too.
Like when we'd only see like like one.
It was just like a whole different.
50 yards or something like that.
Now it was just like they're all like all over the place.
Well now that we're talking about it, I could also have been another reason why they acted different.
Cause they had feed in different areas.
The weekend prior to when we went, they had feed in certain areas.
And those were the areas you guys are in.
But once everything bloomed up and all the bugs came out and everything.
Now they're like, oh, I don't have to just sit here and eat all day.
I can go to the next ridge and it's got the same amount of food and sunshine and stuff I need to thrive over there.
So that's why they just kind of wandered off.
I feel like to that area, you know, when they went around that goalie and we couldn't get to them.
Yeah.
Never heard of them again.
I think they just moved off to a different area cause they got feed everywhere now.
Yeah.
And they got to eat every day.
Yep.
And one thing I want to do is get better at dissecting the birds when you, when to harvest them.
I've been doing some more research on, I've never took a bird down as far as I did on the last one I got.
But we took the bird, I watched the video.
It was on meat eater, on Netflix.
And they went hunting in South Carolina.
And this guy stripped the bird down from the neck, killed the feathers all the way down.
Was able to get almost all the meat off the bird.
And so I was like, oh, I'm going to do that.
So when I took my bird, we did that back in camp.
We stripped it completely down.
Got the leg meat.
Cam had a turkey melt tonight on the legs.
Had I like 10 or well now about an hour ago.
Hey, good.
I'm Tony.
And so I'll never leave another turkey leg in the woods.
That sucker, I mean, it's perfect.
But stripping the bird down completely, where you can see the full anatomy.
And then I had it down to just this little tiny rib cage and the neck.
The neck is kind of scrawny.
Not like it when you get from Thanksgiving.
Yeah.
And in this, I don't know if they would even call it, you know, but basically the rib cage
and their intestines and all that entrails are in there.
You got to get into that crop, you know, you got to see what they're eating because if I
had a gnome off that bird, like, hey, they're eating, they're just browsing things, right?
And now if we would have took another bird, like, okay, now they're eating flowers.
We could make it further.
Chestnut.
Yeah, a conclusion saying, hey, when we see flowers is what they're doing, they may be
doing less cruising and they're just hanging out.
You know, and the time of year you kill a bird too and you dissect him like that, then you
can figure out where their feed habit changes, you know.
Is he more in a field turkey?
Did I kill a field turkey that came off the field and I caught him in the timber?
Or am I killing a high elevation turkey that's eating those flowers, you know, which would
be cool to kind of like figure out, say you killed one of open and weekend?
What is eating on?
Kill one two weeks before season goes out.
See what he's eating on.
And then you can make another chest move to figure out your game plan.
It's like, okay, well, no, he's eating.
It's May 15th.
He's eating flowers.
So now I'm up high eating hunting flower beds or flower meadows and stuff because that's
what they're eating on.
That's a good one.
Every little bread crumb is like, you know, another turkey toolbox to what you putting
in there, you know.
Fascinating.
Some people will have millions of them.
That's like the dudes, like we were talking about this past weekend, they got like six
box calls, six slate calls, two box calls, seven different reads because they're like,
well, you never know what kind of call turkey likes that day.
You don't know if he's going to like sassy, raspy lady or soft, sweet, little Lucy that
talks to you real nice.
All your honey at the diner.
That's why I just love it so much because you never stop learning.
You know, I learned stuff from hunting with you guys this weekend.
Like coming back from East, you know, like I was saying those pressure birds, they like
the soft stuff.
And then you kept telling me like, well, the birds, I hear like this stuff.
And sure enough, they responded to what you were telling me they liked.
And so it's just, it's just always good to be learning, you know, especially from other
hunters.
It's just fun.
Every single state, every single terrain and, you know, individually every single bird
has a different preference.
Yep.
And to get, to get them to respond and get them to come in and commit, the one thing I
will say, you know, I'll derive this from elk hunting experience is that, and I can't
remember who said this first and probably everybody's somebody heard someone say at
some point or another.
But if the turkey's doing what you want, don't do anything different.
You know, once they're doing what you want them to do, keep doing what you're doing.
You know, because you could turn them around.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
We've wondered that first hand.
That's my, that's my elk calling thing is, you know, people switch a call during elk
calling and then you'll be like, oh, they're coming into cow calls.
I'm going to switch back to a bugle and then that's gone the other way.
You're like, why did I do that?
If they're coming in, just let them come.
Don't fight it.
You know, and to me, it seems almost like when things get to a point, it's like destiny.
It seems like everything that you've done and prepared, it almost becomes like it was
never going to not happen that day.
Yeah.
I got up at this time.
I did everything, you know, the right way and I got out there and I did some calls and
I just stuck to that.
And next thing you know, the gobble came and I did the same call gobble gobble again.
Oh, okay.
Sounds good.
Let's do it a third time.
Oh, it gobbled again.
Sounds closer, right?
Don't do anything different.
Just let the bird do what the birds going to do because you could change their mind.
Yeah.
You change to another call and they could be turn around and go the other way.
Yeah, every surface, every striker is going to have a different little tone, a little
different personality to it, especially the way like our call on sounded completely different,
but you've called in a bird and killed it, you know, and that's just another thing that
we're touching on as far as like turkeys in their preference, you know, maybe the turkey
didn't like my call on any like your calling.
Maybe he likes San Dana's call him.
Maybe he didn't like no call him.
Maybe he likes scratching, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, you just seriously never know until you're in the moment with that turkey, you know?
It was amazing, man.
Every time I head out, I learned something new and having you in camp, here in your
call and I really was impressed by your call and it was just
No, it was good.
When you first started going, I was like, some bitch, we're going to the first three.
This guy's going to get us all bird.
I looked at San Dana and I was like, this guy's going to kill all the birds.
I try telling him I take this serious, man.
I see there's not a week that goes by the whole year that I don't think about a turkey.
There's a book I got to get y'all both got to read it.
It's called Illumination in the Flatwoods.
This dude, I forget how the book tells it, but he gets a turkey hatched like a turkey,
what do they call them?
But like a pluet?
Yeah, a batch of turkey eggs basically.
The way that the turkeys associate their mom with the babies is the eye contact.
You probably know that from birds.
I think it's the same way.
All birds when they hatch from their egg, the first thing they see and they make eye contact
is like their mom.
The imprint.
The imprint.
He got to imprint on this hatch of turkeys and it's like all his journal entries from
like raising these turkeys and literally learning how their social group.
That's where I learned a lot about turkeys and how they interact with each other and how
they even like establish the pecking order and stuff like that is from that book.
So I got to get that both of y'all.
It's so good and so informational.
And if you love turkeys, I mean, you're going to be interested in it in the whole time.
What's that book called again?
Illumination in the Flatwoods.
There you go.
Yeah, if you live out on Amazon, I don't get nothing from it.
But I'm telling you right now, if you love turkeys and you love, you know, just reading,
it's only like a 200 page book too.
And it is full of information.
I mean, it talks about like the group of him and the group of turkeys are walking through
a creek bottom and there's a rattlesnake over to the left or right or something and they
start putting, you know, one of the lead hand would be like, and the rest of the turkeys,
like they all pop up and they start looking, you know, and it's just a little stuff like
that.
He goes into a lot more detail, obviously, but it's a really good book and it's only a quick
read, you know.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
I mean, anything to learn, you know.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what we're all here to do.
We're here to learn.
We're here to learn from other people, you know, get better, become better, hunters and
better stewards of the woods.
And it was awesome hunting with you.
Yeah, it was a blast.
I'm glad you guys took me out.
You know, I appreciate that a lot.
Well, I wish more people would do that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
You were kind of like, didn't you want to come up and talk to me?
Like, when we first met, he was like, I don't know, man.
It's just, you know, especially being from the south, you know, a lot of people are more
open and talkative and stuff, not necessarily about hunting, but just more open and talking
and stuff.
And Washington people have a stigma of being kind of like, well, I don't really want to
talk to you.
I don't know you.
So when I came out here, I was like, well, I don't know if I really should approach a
lot of people, you know.
But then you meet guys like you and it's like, there's normal people out here.
You know, there's people like...
Well, you call it normal.
You know what I mean?
People that got the same ideas as you and stuff like that.
So it's cool.
It is cool to feel some normalcy, you know, in a state that's so far away from where I
grew up, you know.
Yeah, it's hard, man.
Living across the country, you know, I did a deficit from you.
I went and lived in New Jersey.
It was kind of strange how the difference in cultures and the difference in people and
how they interact on a daily basis.
So I understand what you're saying.
It is kind of like, how do I act and what should I do and what do I say?
Yeah, what do you have in common?
One thing I realize is like most people have the same interests you have.
Most people have the same goals as you have.
And it's just always you have to make that reach, you know.
You can't just make assumptions on where you're at.
Just, you know, approach it fresh and go from there.
And then you'll see like there's a lot to offer everywhere you go.
And you know, there's a lot of people out there that are jerks, but that's not the majority.
And you're going to have a great time if you just go forward and just be yourself, man.
I mean, we would have, like I've been with you for a long time, you know.
Yeah, I know.
I've been with this podcast.
I feel like we've been hunting together for like years.
You have to cut our hands and shake hands and be blood, brother.
You know.
It's funny.
Yeah.
Well, it's been great.
Cam, we're definitely going to have another weekend of hunting coming up.
We're going to try to figure out an iron out some dates for turkey season.
And then basically for the rest of the hunting season, if when you're going to be here in
Washington, you know, we definitely want to, I definitely want to go out with you and
hunt with you some more.
And I love it.
Yeah.
Let's iron out some dates and make sure that happens.
And then when you move, you got two brothers to call up to.
Yeah, I'm coming back to if I, especially if I'm going to get one this next time we go
out, these turkeys in Washington ain't seen the last of me.
I'm telling you, I'm coming.
I'm getting one.
At least you don't buy a tag for no reason.
That's right.
Well, if you need a good tab suit, tag suit, breastfeed, you can just ask Dave.
Oh, I got the best.
You just got hot in here.
I'm sweating out.
I do got some tags.
I got some Tabasco on it.
That's right.
Catch up.
Alright.
Well, I think that's where we're going to conclude the evening.
Yep.
It's been great.
I mean, I feel like we're just back in camp.
Yeah, just hang out, man.
It's awesome.
Yeah.
So I appreciate you guys having me on.
Oh, yeah.
And you're also on Instagram too.
You have a page on there.
Yeah, it spires outdoors.
It's nothing crazy.
It's me kind of posting whenever I go out, just having fun.
You know, if you want to follow it, you can or not.
Well, that's what it's all about, man.
That's what it's all about.
We're out here just having fun doing our thing and, you know, showing people our story.
So, yeah.
That's true.
Alright, well, everybody, have a good night.
It's been a pleasure.
Alright.
It's next time.