Ep. 757: Surviving and Thriving (and Finding a Dead Man) in the Alaska Bush

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Randy Brown https://www.fws.gov/staff-profile/randy-brown. Topics discussed: Steve and Randall's latest audiobook is available for presale; MeatEater's Tailgate Tour https://www.themeateater.com/pages/tailgate-tour is back!; our favorite First Lite Navigator Hoody https://firstlite.com/products/mens-navigator-hoody?utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=&hsa_kw=&hsa_acc=8907735528&hsa_ad=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_src=x&hsa_tgt=&hsa_grp=&hsa_mt=&hsa_cam=21843035504&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21836612064&gbraid=0AAAAADmdwDnTLBdv2i4_rkc7k1OTn21Ph&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5c_FBhDJARIsAIcmHK9r41fgKTg6F2oaczOjpzMzn7bVjL5gdxnwxMyFhsSwRIPJ6ogxA-EaAvlyEALw_wcB; sprouting weed out of dog shit on a roof; digging in other peoples' gut piles; what do harvest off a bear; frying caribou tongue; hunting wolves; Tolkien people; the biggest lesson; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Steven Rinella?

  Anywhere worth going this holiday season is better in comfortable boots. You can find the perfect pair for you or them if you're shopping for someone at Tacovus. My Tacovus are so comfortable, it's a problem because my high schooler is always trying to steal them. I love the feel of quality leather boots because then you know you're ready for anything. And Tacovus delivers that feeling with confidence and quality. I love them. And if you go to Tacovus store, prepare to be wowed by the customer service. Tacovus boots are handcrafted with over 200 meticulous steps for broken-in comfort right out of the box for the whole family. It's time to bring on the holiday cheer in classic fits and comfortable styles with a new pair of Tacovus Western Boots.

• 0:50Steven Rinella?

  From cowhide and goat to exotic leathers like ostrich and caiman, whether it's your first pair or your 50th pair, Tacovus has your new favorites. Right now, get 10% off at tacovus.com/meateater when you sign up for email and text. That's 10% off at T E C O V A S dot com slash meat eater. Tacovus.com slash meat eater. See site for details. Tacovus, point your toes west. Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco.

• 1:29Steven Rinella?

  Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours working alongside American farmers to build a tobacco alternative that actually dips like the real thing. Long cut ampouges made from barn cured leafy greens with no tobacco leaf or stem and wintergreen mint straight and more. Check your local gas station or C store or hit blackbuffalo.com and use code MEAT for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative is everything you love about dip, nothing you don't.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Americans own 640 million acres of public land together. Right now, it's being torn up and privatized at the greatest rate in history. On Common Ground: An American Inheritance is a six-part documentary podcast about the immediate threats to America's public lands. It's the story of people refusing to let it happen quietly. Featured by Apple and a Signal Awards Gold Medal winner. Listen to On Common Ground: An American Inheritance wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:54Steven Rinella?

  You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Lite. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Lite builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlite.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com.

• 3:19Steven Rinella?

  All right, man, Randy Brown is back. Uh, no, not debut, it's the opposite of debut. Return, repeat, encore, performance by Randy Brown. Cause, cause Randy came on, what, what, what the hell do we call that episode?

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Fifteen years of living.

• 3:37Speaker 06

  In the woods, living off the land.

• 3:39Steven Rinella?

  Fifteen years living off the land. Randy Brown came in some time ago, I don't know. And it was spectacular. We couldn't, we didn't scratch the surface. We talked like, just to recap, to tell people the years you lived, the years you went out and lived off the land in Alaska.

• 3:56Speaker 06

  Well, it was about 15 altogether.

• 3:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 3:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, and.

• 4:00Steven Rinella?

  This is recap, just, yeah, we're gonna recap.

• 4:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, and so I went out on the Yukon and was, you know, mush dogs and built cabins. Was able to persuade Karen, the love of my life, to come out there with me, which was, that was probably one of the tougher things to do. But yeah, it was and then and then she would teach in a few times out in some of the rural communities and that was fun, too. You know, taking as I would mush dogs and fish and hunt.

• 4:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 06

  Seeing new places in the States, so.

• 4:36Steven Rinella?

  And you did a lot of lot of fur trapping.

• 4:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:38Steven Rinella?

  And when you came on, we told the story of you finding a body.

• 4:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:42Steven Rinella?

  Of a guy, tried to find out the identity of that body.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:45Steven Rinella?

  I even brought it up on Rogan's podcast, thinking that him having such a huge audience would turn up some stuff. We'll check in with you in a minute there.

• 4:54Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 4:55Steven Rinella?

  To find out if we found out any, if you've ever gotten any intriguing hints about the body you found. The guy you called Smiggle.

• 5:03Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 5:03Steven Rinella?

  Called himself John the Baptist.

• 5:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:06Steven Rinella?

  Um, and then the reason we wanted you to come back on is because we never, because we talked about all this big picture stuff, like timeline and all that, but we didn't get into a lot of the nuts and bolts, tactical stuff about living off the country in Alaska. Um, so I want to get back into a bunch of things with you, but the minute we got done recording, I was like, man, that dude's got to come back on and, um, our audience as well wanted to come back on because we didn't, we haven't fully extracted all the usable information from your brain. So we're gonna, we're gonna continue the, the, we're gonna, we're gonna dive into the, the Randy Brown brain extraction, um, and find out more about just kind of like a, a life that's like, uh,

• 5:50Steven Rinella?

  staggering in its boldness. That'd be a good blurb. Yeah, that's a blurb. Staggering in its boldness.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, there you go.

• 5:57Steven Rinella?

  Uh, before we do that, here's a couple of things.

• 6:03Steven Rinella?

  Um, Randall and I, Dr. Randall and I work on this, this series. I'm telling the audience, it's not you, but you can listen. We work on a series called Meat Eaters American History. So, uh, as you guys know, because we used to do podcast episodes when we launched these different volumes of Meat Eaters American History. So, the first Meat Eaters American History we did is we did one on the long hunters. And so, the most famous long hunter being Daniel Boone. So, we did a Meat Eaters American History, The Long Hunters, and that covered the years, I believe it was 1763

• 6:42Steven Rinella?

  to 1775. And it was about the deer skin trade primarily around Appalachia, um,

• 6:52Steven Rinella?

  the Kentucky region, but the American Colonial Frontier Deer Skin Trade. The second volume of Meat Eaters American History we did was called The Mountain Men, and that covered 1806 to 1840, and that was about the beaver skin trade of those years. Well, Volume 3 is coming out. Um, pre-sales are available now. It's an audio original, so it's not a print book. It's an audio original. Volume 3 is available now, and it's called Meat Eaters American History, The Hide Hunters. And it's about the buffalo skin trade. And it covers 1865, so it starts

• 7:33Steven Rinella?

  at the end of the Civil War and covers up until 1883, which was the last great shoot. At that point, they were gone. They were effectively gone. So, Meat Eaters American History, The Hide Hunters, tells this story of the buffalo hide hunters. Predominantly dudes kind of spun out of the chaos of the Civil War. Um, the big hide hunt starts down in Kansas. First, it moves south into Texas. Then it moves north into Montana. Um, and it's that story of kind of the wind down

• 8:12Steven Rinella?

  of the Civil War, the chaos and catastrophe of the Civil War, the American government, the federal government, turning its eyes westward after the Civil War is over, turning it westward in two ways, railroad expansion.

• 8:29Steven Rinella?

  And the Indian wars and how those efforts kind of opened up the great plains to the Hyde hunters who very quickly put themselves out of business by killing all of their target animals. Um, it's a story about leather production. It's a story about combat between whites and Native Americans on the southern plains. Um, and it's a story about just really not understanding the finiteness of a resource. So Meat Eaters American History, The Hyde Hunters, 1865 to 1883, available for preorder now. Uh, another little news bit here. So the Meat

• 9:13Steven Rinella?

  Eater Crew is hitting the road again this fall. Last year, a bunch of our guys headed out to do tailgate tours. A bunch more guys are heading out to do tailgate tours this year. Uh, Meat Eater Tailgate Tour presented by Dometic. If you have a camper,

• 9:30Steven Rinella?

  um, like an RV unit and you look at the fridge in your RV unit, there's a high likelihood it says Dometic on it. They make all kinds of camping gear, uh, electric coolers. They make all kinds of stuff. Um, tons of great products. So presented by Dometic, uh, got free food. You can hang out with the crew. Texas at Ohio State. That's on August 30. That's Randall and Yanis. Kansas at Missouri. That'll be Clay and Bear Newcomb. That's Columbus, Missouri, September 6. What's UTEP mean?

• 10:05Speaker 05

  University of Texas, El Paso.

• 10:07Steven Rinella?

  Huh. At Texas. That's easy.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  In Austin.

• 10:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's Texas v Texas. Austin, Texas. Saturday, September 30. Jesse Griffiths will be there slinging some grub. And then Maryland at Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, September 20. That'll be Spencer, Chester, and Garrett Long. Garrett Long. Yeah. They're slinging grub at the tailgate tour. So any of these places you go on the tailgate tour, you're going to come out, you're going to see their tent and you can go get, hang out and get free food. Meat Eater Tailgate Tour. Oh, I missed some. Seth and Brody. Oh, this because this is like Seth's little home spot.

• 10:50Steven Rinella?

  Oregon at Penn State, University Park, Pennsylvania, September 27th. Our two, our two big Pennsylvania guys, Seth and Brody are going to be running that tailgate tour. And then Boise State at Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, Saturday, October 4th. That's going to be Mark, Yanis and Garrett slinging grub for the tailgate tour at that game. Stop in and see those fellas. Uh, no, quick thing. Does that think we're off to the races? Oh, no. Yeah. One more thing. We're off to the races. Is that correct? No, two more things. Oh, you guys have been seeing us like everybody, a lot of the guys that come on the show kind of live in this first light navigator Hoody.

• 11:36Steven Rinella?

  These are out and available. I didn't know they made them in this color until I got one the other day.

• 11:42Steven Rinella?

  I know. And I'm supposed to tell everybody about all the wild, uh, crazy hunting and fishing trips I've done in mine. My fleece lined hoodie, but I just wear it all the time. I wear it on the plane. I wear it when I'm yelling at my kids. I wear it when I'm having dinner with my wife. It's just my main like garment. Check it out at firstlight.com. It's the most comfortable thing I own. I live in it. Oh, the last thing, if there's any people out there, this could be you.

• 12:11Steven Rinella?

  Who are like wizards at GE freezers. Listen to this problem I have.

• 12:23Steven Rinella?

  I have a brand new GE freezer at my fish shack in Alaska. It's not, it's one year old. The first year it worked.

• 12:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay. First off, when you get a freezer to a place like that, it's not coming back. It's like it came out on a boat, right? You're not going to like bring it in for service. This isn't going to work.

• 12:45Steven Rinella?

  Brand new GE chest freezer.

• 12:50Steven Rinella?

  The year I get it, it works fine. Come back up in May, it doesn't work anymore. But get this, it's like it's possessed. On this freezer, this is for someone, it's a GE like, I need, I need your help. If this thing's on, the on light doesn't come on. If you turn it off, you follow me? If you turn the dial and click it off, the on light comes on. But it doesn't turn on. If you open the lid, the on light goes off. This is like an electronics problem. No, again, if you turn it off, the on light comes on. But it doesn't turn on.

• 13:35Steven Rinella?

  And if you lift the lid up, the on light goes off. The compressors do not run. It's possessed. If I call some 1-800 number, I'm, it's like, no, there's no person on the planet that you're going to call on a 1-800 number that is going to be like, oh, what you need to do is blank. You follow my problem?

• 14:04Steven Rinella?

  Do you understand what I'm saying? What could cause that?

• 14:11Steven Rinella?

  If you're out there and you are like a wizard at freezers, send a, go to [email protected] and write like freezers in the subject line. I will like, if you have, if you know, I will, I will call you and we will talk about it. I feel like it needs like a new, it's something electronic, man.

• 14:35Steven Rinella?

  But it worked. It's probably under warranty. But what do you do? I can't haul it out of there. I'm not going to bring it to town. No, it's 800 bucks down the drain.

• 14:51Steven Rinella?

  You want, yeah. You'd have to burn all the insulation out. You can't even get rid of a freezer like that.

• 15:06Steven Rinella?

  I just like, that's a moment of silence, like in speech, there's a moment of silence to like, have people meditate on something. I want people to meditate.

• 15:15Steven Rinella?

  To meditate for a minute on this.

• 15:20Steven Rinella?

  There.

• 15:23Steven Rinella?

  If you know a lot about freezers, man, I need to talk to you. Because I know that like, calling the 1-800 number isn't gonna do it.

• 15:32Steven Rinella?

  It's gonna be a dude that barely speaks English and I'm like, oh no, check this out. You turn it off, you know, it's just like, it's never gonna work.

• 15:42Steven Rinella?

  So what'd you find out about, can you recap the John the Baptist story for us?

• 15:46Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 15:47Steven Rinella?

  Just a quick recap, because I want to find out if we found out anything.

• 15:52Speaker 06

  Okay, yeah. So, so John the Baptist, that's what he called himself, uh, came down and got, uh, abandoned.

• 16:01Steven Rinella?

  Came down.

• 16:02Speaker 06

  Came down to Yukon.

• 16:03Steven Rinella?

  Between the towns of?

• 16:05Speaker 06

  Eagle and Circle.

• 16:06Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 16:07Speaker 06

  So it came down from Canada, that's what he claims, and I think he's, I think that was true. And then, uh,

• 16:13Steven Rinella?

  With his buddy?

• 16:14Speaker 06

  With his buddy, and his buddy then shoved their raft off and, uh, um, and left at one point in time, and he happened to be near the mouth of the Kandik River where this, uh, uh, fella, uh, Fred lived, and Fred, uh, took him in for a while, and, um,

• 16:32Steven Rinella?

  Can you remind everybody what year this is?

• 16:34Speaker 06

  This is, um, I think it was 1978, 79.

• 16:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 16:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, um, and so then, um, Fred ended up going back east to visit family. He hadn't been back east in a bunch of years at that point, and, uh, and told him he had to leave, and he didn't. And he just stayed and, and, uh, Had his way with all of Fred's stuff, his food, his fur, his uh equipment. And um actually moved a bunch of stuff uh from his cabin that was out the mouth of Candy to a place about uh three miles up up river, up on the Candy.

• 17:23Speaker 06

  And uh smoked all his weed and uh ate most of his fish and.

• 17:29Steven Rinella?

  Was there a lot of weed smoking in those days up there?

• 17:32Speaker 06

  No.

• 17:32Steven Rinella?

  Were could you grow it? Or did you have to bring it in?

• 17:35Speaker 06

  Some people did, but it it's uh it it it requires, you know, some sort of a of a of a night day period that you don't have up there. So it was uh, I don't know, there were there were people that grew it, but.

• 17:50Steven Rinella?

  Also, like if you're trying to grow weed and it's daylight 24 hours a day, the weed doesn't like that.

• 17:57Speaker 06

  It doesn't, it doesn't grow well, no. And uh and I don't, I didn't grow it at all. I didn't do any gardening, but um but uh yeah, so so Fred did though, but it was kind of rudimentary. He would throw uh dog shit and and seeds up on the roof of his cabin. And that's how he grew it, which is just, you know, these.

• 18:19Steven Rinella?

  He'd grow it right in a medium of dog shit.

• 18:22Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, that was the that was the fertilizer.

• 18:26Steven Rinella?

  See, that's not even uh, that's not even ditch weed, man, you know?

• 18:30Speaker 06

  No, but for Fred, that was better than nothing, right? And so uh, except that this guy then.

• 18:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. I I mean, I don't know. I mean, what like, you could tell me that it was, I'm not like a, I'm not a connoisseur. I don't even partake, but you could tell me that

• 18:49Steven Rinella?

  you could tell me that the best weed in the world grows out of dog shit and I wouldn't know. I wouldn't refute it.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  I don't know either.

• 18:56Steven Rinella?

  No, no.

• 18:57Speaker 06

  But, uh, but, uh, anyway Fred Fred got pissed off and told him that, uh, you know, when he did come back in in November, that he had to get out of there. He had to leave, go to Circle or go to Eagle when the river froze up and he he, uh, took a different tactic and he said he's going to go to Chalkitsik, which was way north and all, um, you know, through the woods and everything and and.

• 19:20Steven Rinella?

  How many, how many miles would that be when he, when this guy says he's going to go overland?

• 19:24Speaker 06

  Well, it would be over a hundred miles.

• 19:26Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, the way you'd have to walk and and through, you know, forest or in a windy, uh, uh, old, uh, Black River, you know, that's, uh, now it's called the Dragic, uh, name was changed not too long ago. And, um, yeah, but, but, uh, we didn't think that he could make it. There's not a chance in hell that he could, he could, uh, do that.

• 19:51Steven Rinella?

  He, he. Cause he didn't have, you could make it though.

• 19:55Speaker 06

  I don't think so.

• 19:56Steven Rinella?

  Oh, why could you not make it?

• 19:57Speaker 06

  Well, it's pretty barren country, you know, I mean, I, I would, if I went, I, you'd still have to shoot a moose or shoot a, or shoot some caribou, but there weren't very many caribou there. Um, there were caribou near the border because that was where the Ogilvy Mountains stopped, you know, and that it was wintering ground porcupine caribou that we would get, um, in the Upper Kandig River, Upper Nation River and in the, uh, in the Black River, but close to the border because the, then it gets into flats and the caribou just didn't go there very often. So it'd be unlikely that you could run across caribou going straight, uh, to Chalkitsik.

• 20:38Steven Rinella?

  Now, I, I haven't done, like, I've never done these kind of walks up there.

• 20:46Steven Rinella?

  But 100 miles, why, I understand, like, why couldn't you just, like, with a pack of food?

• 20:54Steven Rinella?

  I mean, how many miles a day can you get in that kind of stuff?

• 20:57Speaker 06

  Well, you know, you could probably go, you know, six or eight miles, 10 miles, maybe. If you were, if you were good, you had a good pair of snowshoes. Um, you know, when, when the country is, uh, is covered in snow, you know, three, four feet of snow on the ground, it's tough, uh, breaking trail.

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  It's not a simple matter.

• 21:19Steven Rinella?

  I wasn't factoring in, I wasn't thinking about it in that way. I wasn't thinking about it being the winter time, cold as shit, tons of snow.

• 21:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it's a lot easier to walk on the, uh, on the rivers than trying to bust across country and, you know, when you got all sorts of brush and, and, uh, you know, different, some, some areas have burned and have downed trees and it's, uh, it's, it's pretty tough, you know? So, so you got, there's a lot of different issues, but, but part of it is feeding yourself. He had a 22 that Fred lent him, a 22 pistol. He had, his buddy had left, uh, left him with this, uh, 20 gauge, double barrel, 20 gauge Rossi shotgun, but he didn't have any ammunition for it, neither did we. And, um, and so he, he, um, he had a 22 pistol.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  Well, you're not going to shoot a moose or, or anything large with it that could actually feed you. And even if you did shoot a moose, you wouldn't be able to take it very far. So it's possible that you could, that you could, uh, I mean, if, if I were to set off on that kind of a journey, you'd have the equipment that you needed to, to do it. You know, you're going to either, either poke holes in, in a, in a pond or near a beaver house on a, on a river and snare or trap beavers, you know, to feed yourself. Um, have some dogs along, uh, help you with moving stuff, but that.

• 22:48Speaker 06

  Breaking across country like that is is really tough and you know and you'd have to feeding yourselves and everything else. So you know, you just don't have that much small game that you could feed yourself very easily with in the winter. So.

• 23:03Steven Rinella?

  What what was this dudes? If he had easy access to go on the ice to two different towns on the Yukon. What was his draw? Like, why did he want to travel across country to the north?

• 23:18Speaker 06

  I have no idea.

• 23:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 23:20Speaker 06

  I have no idea, but that's what he that's what he told Fred. He took off.

• 23:27Speaker 06

  And and he ended up finding this little cabin that we had built a couple of years before. It's just a safety cabin about 10 miles up and we.

• 23:37Steven Rinella?

  So he only made it 10 miles.

• 23:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:39Steven Rinella?

  Out of 100.

• 23:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  And and that's where that's where he stayed.

• 23:48Speaker 06

  And and he did. He did get some things. You know, there was a ball jar in there that had a a Martin skin in it and and he had he had peed in it, too. It was a urine in there with the Martin skin. I think he was trying to. I think he was trying to tan it or something. I don't know. But.

• 24:08Steven Rinella?

  Just soaking it in piss.

• 24:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I mean, that's what he did. I we.

• 24:13Steven Rinella?

  You don't know what was in his mind. Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 06

  Have no idea what was in his mind, but that's what we kind of thought.

• 24:18Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:18Speaker 06

  But but that was he got that with a 22 clearly, you know, and and but, you know, Martin are bold, you know, they'll come down a tree and yell at you and.

• 24:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  Other things.

• 24:30Steven Rinella?

  Did I touched one one time?

• 24:32Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 24:33Steven Rinella?

  I I was able to touch one one time.

• 24:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, a live one, huh?

• 24:37Steven Rinella?

  Just real. Yeah, he's real curious. I was bow hunting. He's real curious.

• 24:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:40Steven Rinella?

  And he was kind of on a tree and I just wanted to see if I could. And actually, he was so I mean, there's not many animals that let you do that.

• 24:47Speaker 06

  No.

• 24:47Steven Rinella?

  I was actually able to put my hand on it.

• 24:49Speaker 06

  I don't think they fear anything.

• 24:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 06

  Really. And I think they they feel they're pretty on top of it.

• 24:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 06

  And deal with whatever. They're a bold animal and and so as are, you know, the the erms, the weasels.

• 25:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 06

  They're they're. They're pretty scary, actually. When you, I caught one one time and I, I was trapping voles at our place in Fairbanks and feeding them to our, I had a bull snake for a while. And this was after we had moved in there and, and I would feed it the voles. Well, I catch this, this, and it was a live catch trap, you know, little have a heart. And, and I caught a weasel and, and I, I had this little bird cage and I could open the door on the bird cage and let the, the ermine into the cage and close the door and then wire it closed. But you know those cartoons where they have the cat running around on the wall sideways?

• 25:52Speaker 06

  You know, that's how this guy was in that, in that bird cage. And he would take a moment off every once in a while and jump to the side of the cage closest to me and scream, you know, and then go back to running around. I go, well, this guy is gonna get out of this. This won't hold him for very long. And so I went out and turned him loose. Cause he'll probably kill the snake who I put him in with the snake. But they're, they're a trip. Yeah. But anyway, we're back to Smiggle, right? So he's, he's in this, in this cabin that we had built back in the woods, cause we didn't want airplanes to see us. Actually, since I, you know, what started flying with my job,

• 26:38Speaker 06

  it's, it's amazing how easy you spot something that's rectangular down in the woods. It's, it's almost nothing can hide, but.

• 26:47Steven Rinella?

  Why were you trying to hide it from planes?

• 26:49Speaker 06

  We just, we didn't know whether somebody would try and come and kick us off.

• 26:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 26:54Speaker 06

  So we would, we just built our cabins as deep into the forest as possible.

• 26:59Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  And he found it.

• 27:01Steven Rinella?

  And then later you learn that that's not an effective strategy.

• 27:04Speaker 06

  It's not an effective strategy. They, they'll, you can see it.

• 27:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 06

  You know, almost always. So, so anyway, he found it. I don't know how the heck he found it. And, and, and stayed there. You know, whether he, whether he froze his feet or whether he, he, you know, I don't know what, what drove him. But, but he was there and, and dead when we found him the next spring.

• 27:33Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're going to be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy.

• 28:17Steven Rinella?

  At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. You need credit to buy, well, pretty much any big thing. So how do you get started? Easy. The OnePay Builder Card. It's simple and smart. OnePay is the banking app trusted by millions of Americans and the OnePay Builder Card is an easy way to build credit.

• 28:59Steven Rinella?

  Just use it to make everyday purchases, build your credit history, and then you can work up to the big milestones, buying a new car or a new house. Or hell, maybe something I'm always thinking about, which is another boat. Those moments start with small, consistent steps with the OnePay Builder Card. Download the OnePay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 29:26Speaker 07

  OnePay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder Card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through OnePay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 29:42Steven Rinella?

  So you were wondering, um, yeah, and then just to, just to remind listeners a little bit, some of this backstory. Yeah.

• 29:51Steven Rinella?

  You you found him dead. Was he so was he rotted down or just frozen?

• 29:56Speaker 06

  No, well, I think he had froze, you know, but you know, a cabin is is insulated in the winter so that you can build a fire and keep it warm inside. And then, once, once the fire goes out and it turns cold in there, then that cabin insulates it from the spring, you know, and it started warming up. So I don't think he'd been thawed for very long. Um, because he wasn't rotten. And, um, um, he was just, he was just, um, just dead. And his hair was slipping just a little bit on his forehead.

• 30:29Steven Rinella?

  And you said he was just skin and bones?

• 30:31Speaker 06

  Skin and bones, yeah.

• 30:33Steven Rinella?

  And you picked him up and left him out on the tundra?

• 30:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, we thought about trying to take him down the circle, but it was, uh, that would have been a several day endeavor and the and the sides of the Yukon at that point, uh, not long after breakup, were just packed with ice. Uh, breakups are different every year on the Yukon, you know, and sometimes they flow over the banks. Sometimes they just slush out and it's not a big deal. Um, that particular breakup, though, had put ice packed onto the the banks. And so it was, uh, difficult to to actually get someplace off of the river to park and walk into the woods or

• 31:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 06

  or do other things. And so we we just figured that it would put us, um, uh, just in an uncomfortable position, not being able to feed ourselves and things if we had gone down there.

• 31:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 06

  But we didn't have any money or anything, and so it was, uh, we just, we just, uh, took him out in the woods and left him.

• 31:33Steven Rinella?

  And then never heard another thing about it?

• 31:37Speaker 06

  No. Never. And so, so after The last podcast where we talked about that, there was a fella from, I got contacted by a couple of people.

• 31:49Steven Rinella?

  Who might, who had tips, who potentially had tips.

• 31:51Speaker 06

  Well, so one, one fella was a, is a French Canadian and he wanted to know whether he was a, a native or a, or a, or a white man.

• 32:01Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 32:02Speaker 06

  And if, if we could tell, and he was, he was a white guy. And, and they said, well, you know, in, in French Canada, uh, some people, um, you know, might have the name Juan Batiste. And we may have interpreted it. I mean, he wrote it. So it was, he was calling it John the Baptist, but.

• 32:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, and he wrote it on what?

• 32:24Speaker 06

  He wrote that note to Fred on the door.

• 32:27Steven Rinella?

  And signed it John the Baptist.

• 32:28Speaker 06

  John the Baptist. Yeah. And.

• 32:31Steven Rinella?

  Who's got that note now?

• 32:33Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 32:33Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I'd like to have that note.

• 32:35Speaker 06

  I don't think it's, I'll, I'll bet it isn't around. I don't know.

• 32:39Steven Rinella?

  That son of a bitch be hanging around the wall here if I had it.

• 32:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, so, uh, anyway, he was looking through, uh, missing persons, um, uh, uh, records in Canada.

• 32:53Steven Rinella?

  Based on our conversation?

• 32:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  And I, I don't know whether he found him or not, but, uh, he contacted me on that and we talked a little bit.

• 33:02Steven Rinella?

  So when you told him that it was a white guy, what did he say?

• 33:05Speaker 06

  Well, he said that, that's one of the, um, one of, one of the, um, I guess, pieces of information that he used to search the records.

• 33:17Steven Rinella?

  But you haven't heard anything more about that?

• 33:19Speaker 06

  No.

• 33:21Steven Rinella?

  Huh. And that was, that was the only kind of tip?

• 33:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:25Steven Rinella?

  I don't understand how a guy in 1978, 78, 79, how there could be a person

• 33:34Steven Rinella?

  that vanished, that starves to death in the woods and not some.

• 33:40Steven Rinella?

  Effort from his family or people.

• 33:46Steven Rinella?

  To sort of like formally be like, has anyone seen this guy?

• 33:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:50Steven Rinella?

  I mean, he must have burned all his bridges.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  Well, that's, that's possible. You know, his, his, uh, whoever he was traveling with, uh, took off.

• 34:02Speaker 06

  I don't know, but that could have been that guy's problem too, but. I don't know.

• 34:07Steven Rinella?

  And no idea who the other dude was that abandoned him.

• 34:10Speaker 06

  No.

• 34:13Speaker 06

  And he could have. So, so one of the interesting things is, you know, going down to Yukon between Eagle and Circle. It's not, it's not necessarily an easy matter to get to Circle. You know, and if they're doing a log raft, which is what they had.

• 34:29Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 34:30Speaker 06

  That's even more tough, you know, to try to navigate different channels.

• 34:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  And you start getting into the, uh, this really braided region of the upper Yukon flats upstream from Circle. And it gets way more interesting if you go downstream of it. But, uh, it's possible unless he had a map and understood where he was. That he could have gone right past Circle as well. That guy.

• 34:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 06

  And, uh, and not even known it perhaps, but, uh. Cause it's, it's kind of on a, on a, it's on a south leg of the river there. And there's different islands and shallow places.

• 35:08Steven Rinella?

  I wonder if that dude even lived.

• 35:10Speaker 06

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 35:14Speaker 06

  We had no other information on that at all.

• 35:17Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm. I don't know why that stuck with me so much, man. I was like, kind of dying to know about that guy.

• 35:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know.

• 35:23Steven Rinella?

  I don't know why.

• 35:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:25Steven Rinella?

  I'm over it now.

• 35:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, I didn't really think about it very much, you know?

• 35:29Steven Rinella?

  It was a temporary deal for me, but it's all I could think about for a minute.

• 35:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:34Steven Rinella?

  You know, you sent me a story after we talked.

• 35:40Speaker 06

  I gave you a book.

• 35:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I want to talk about that too.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:44Steven Rinella?

  Cause we talked about starving to death.

• 35:46Speaker 06

  Right.

• 35:46Steven Rinella?

  And that journal of, I've talked about that book since.

• 35:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, there was a guy.

• 35:52Steven Rinella?

  Journal of those guys that starved to death.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, there was a guy that wrote to me and said that he had heard you talk about it and didn't know what the, what the book was and wanted to know the title of it, so.

• 36:01Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 36:01Speaker 06

  I sent him information on that.

• 36:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tell people the name of the book.

• 36:05Speaker 06

  Well, that was, uh, uh, Death in the Barren Lands.

• 36:08Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it was about these three guys, uh, John Hornby, um, and then the two, one of them was his nephew, I think, another, maybe a friend. And they went out into the, uh, you know, to the, to the east of Great Slave Lake, over to the Thelon River, trains into, uh, Hudson Bay, I believe.

• 36:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I had a hell of a time finding that. I had a hell of a time finding that on Google Earth.

• 36:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's a confusing tangle of water up there.

• 36:40Speaker 06

  It is, it is, and, uh, and it's pretty flat country.

• 36:44Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:45Speaker 06

  And, uh, and then there's these caribou that, uh, the barren ground caribou that are moving around, um, in that country, but not always in the same place. And they were unfortunate enough that, um, they, while there were, um, caribou here, here or there, and they caught a little bit of fur, but it wasn't enough to keep them, keep them all going. And they, they all ended up dying.

• 37:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and the one, the youngest one keeps a meticulous journal.

• 37:16Speaker 06

  It's a.

• 37:16Steven Rinella?

  Chronicling his death.

• 37:18Speaker 06

  Extraordinary piece of work, yeah.

• 37:20Steven Rinella?

  You know.

• 37:21Speaker 06

  And then the people that ended up finding, uh, the cabin and, and the people there that had starved out, they found his, his journal in the stove. He had, he had put it in there.

• 37:34Steven Rinella?

  And left a note saying, "Look in stove."

• 37:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. So that, so that somebody was going to be able to get it and know what, what went on.

• 37:41Steven Rinella?

  This main explorer that we're talking about, Hornby.

• 37:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:44Steven Rinella?

  He had found on one of his journeys.

• 37:49Steven Rinella?

  Traveling the Canadian Arctic.

• 37:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:50Steven Rinella?

  He had found a stand of spruce.

• 37:56Steven Rinella?

  That he, he felt in that area was the northernmost stand of spruce. And he realized you could go into this, this is way above tree line. Go into this stand of spruce and build a cabin and make a go of it in the way far north. You know what he reminds me of later, though?

• 38:11Speaker 06

  Who?

• 38:12Steven Rinella?

  Hornby reminds me of Stockton Rush. The guy from the Titan Submersible.

• 38:18Speaker 06

  Oh. Yeah.

• 38:20Steven Rinella?

  Because, uh,

• 38:23Steven Rinella?

  because he knew what he was getting into. Like, he knew what he was doing.

• 38:28Speaker 06

  The other two didn't.

• 38:29Steven Rinella?

  He knew the risk. He knew what he was getting into. He'd had close calls.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:34Steven Rinella?

  He knew how dicey it was. And he like brings other guys along who are sort of trusting in his expertise. And then later it comes out, you know, like with Stockton Rush, later it comes out, Stockton Rush had almost like, I wouldn't say a death wish, but like incredible hubris.

• 38:53Steven Rinella?

  And not a death wish, but definitely knew where it was headed. And didn't care. And this Hornby guy, I mean, he basically offers these people up to the tundra.

• 39:06Steven Rinella?

  I mean, he serves them to the god of the tundra. He serves them on a platter.

• 39:11Speaker 06

  I think he thought they were gonna do alright. But, um, but it was a hungry country. And the caribou didn't come.

• 39:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. The thing that the most

• 39:24Steven Rinella?

  upsetting part of that story of starving to death like that is that they start eating, um, hides.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah.

• 39:33Steven Rinella?

  And for some reason, like a lot of hair and their bowels get impacted.

• 39:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:39Steven Rinella?

  By hair. And so toward the end, the three of these dudes

• 39:44Steven Rinella?

  are trying to give each other enemas. And they're trying to claw out of each other.

• 39:51Steven Rinella?

  Plugs of leather and hair. And rigging up different ways to try to get their, their colon or whatever the hell clear of hair. And the guys that find the bodies remark on this. Cause some of this excrement, some of this solidified excrement of hair and hide are littered around the cabin. Just a shitty way to go.

• 40:15Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, it was, it was bad.

• 40:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But that really brought to life, reading that book, and that's probably why he gave it to me. Reading that book brought to life what that John the Baptist dude, like what his days were probably like.

• 40:30Speaker 06

  I think so.

• 40:32Steven Rinella?

  To starve up in there.

• 40:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:35Steven Rinella?

  But there's a story you told, you sent me a, a video clip and you telling a story about getting a bear out in a river one time.

• 40:46Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 40:47Steven Rinella?

  And you, and you had mentioned a thing that hadn't really occurred to me in it. That, um, but, but I've seen it, but I didn't really thought about it. Like a deer floats.

• 40:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. And a moose will float even with a big set of antlers.

• 41:03Steven Rinella?

  But a bear don't float good.

• 41:05Speaker 06

  It doesn't float.

• 41:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Do you mind sharing like the sort of the implications of a bear, like tell that story? And the implications of a bear not floating?

• 41:12Speaker 06

  It's one of my favorite stories.

• 41:14Steven Rinella?

  Cause they swim, they sure swim pretty damn good.

• 41:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, they swim. So, so we used to sometimes find them in the river, uh, swimming from one side to the other and, and, uh, and we'd follow them and, and wait until they get out, you know, on the bank. And then sometimes, you know, sometimes they're running too hard when they get out and you don't get a good shot. But, um, but most of the time you're able to get them on the bank. But we knew that they didn't float because there were several people that shot bears up on bluffs that come right down to the river and a bear rolls down and into the river and they're gone.

• 41:47Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:48Speaker 06

  They go away. And, uh, I mean, they don't really, but they go away as far as you were concerned. So we knew that they, that they, uh, that they sink. You know, and it may be that a cub would float. I don't know.

• 42:01Steven Rinella?

  Well, you know, a part of why that there's air in the hair, I mean, you know this, like in cervids.

• 42:09Steven Rinella?

  That hair is kind of hollow.

• 42:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:11Steven Rinella?

  Imagine they got a hair, right? Bears got more of what we call fur. But it's.

• 42:18Speaker 06

  It's more like guard hairs.

• 42:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so I guess that's something to do with it.

• 42:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, so, so August is kind of a tough time to make a living out there. You know, the king salmon in that part of the river come in July. And it's just wonderful time, you know, you can sit in one place and process, process king salmon. And I mean, not right now because they're desperately low levels right now in the Yukon. But in those days, we could fish and hang a gill net and process, you know, five or six fish a day and jar them up and dry them and put them up for later. As well as eat wonderful food the whole time there.

• 43:05Speaker 06

  But August, it comes and there's no fish really. I mean, you can get pike or you can get some whitefish or a shefish or something. But, but the salmon have gone through and, and the fall chum salmon are not there yet, you know. And, and so we would, we would usually try to look for a bear because bears start getting, getting pretty nice fat. And this guy Seymour and I, we both fish the same place, Glen Creek Bluff there. And we went down to the, to the Candic. So we were about 15 miles upstream from the Candic River where our fish camps were.

• 43:46Speaker 06

  And he and I took some dogs and we went down to mouth of Candic looking for a bear. There's some good bluffs down there that you might find them on or sometimes just, you know, walking down through the, you know, walking the riverbank or something. Anyway, we went down there, didn't find anything. We were lining back up the river and we would, which is, you know, walking the bank and pulling the canoe. And, and during, in places where the, the bank is really nice, you know, where you have the same kind of angle going into the water. We'd hook dogs up, we'd hook a couple of dogs up and they would pull the canoe up.

• 44:28Speaker 06

  Uh, well, you can sit in the, in the canoe and ride during some of that. And so we were, we were in that sort of a situation, uh, going upriver on a big, um, inside of the bend. So we could see the, the shoreline only for a couple of hundred yards. And then it kind of disappeared around the corner to us, right? And at one point, we saw this bear that had taken off somewhere upstream of us and had been swimming out and he got into our view, even though it was around. He was, he was probably, um, uh, a hundred fifty, two hundred yards out into the river.

• 45:08Speaker 06

  And the river at that point was about five hundred yards, we estimated, uh, across. So we pull, we pull over because we're going to try to get him when he comes out the other side on the, on the bank. And we, we unclip the dogs because we're going to have to go, we're going to let him get half or three quarters of the way over and then we'll paddle over there. That was how we were figuring to do it.

• 45:33Steven Rinella?

  Why not just take off after him right away?

• 45:36Speaker 06

  Well.

• 45:37Steven Rinella?

  Cause you'd spook him back to his own bank.

• 45:39Speaker 06

  You never know. Yeah. Where he'd go. And, and so usually we would try to, to follow him. And, um, a- at some point, and, and once they're close to that bank, they're going to go to that bank. They'd probably go anyway, but, um, but we also had dogs. We had five dogs that were now loose on the bank. And they hadn't seen the bear at that point. And, uh, we're trying to, um, we're trying to get their attention looking downstream a little bit so that they didn't see the bear. Cause, um, cause dogs swim a lot faster than bears. And so, um, we didn't want them getting out there and messing the situation up.

• 46:23Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 46:24Speaker 06

  But, um, but we did have this one dog that, um, he would, he would, um, look at jets going by in the sky. And so he had really good distance vision and, and he spotted it and they, they, um, they really loved to, uh, swim after beavers. And I think he probably thought it was a beaver, but. It didn't matter that it was a bear and they, the dogs all ran up the bank to where they were, um, you know, straight in from where the bear was swimming and they start barking at him and he turns around and looks back at them and uh, decides he's not going there

• 47:04Speaker 06

  cause you know, I think all the animals living out in the woods think of the dogs as wolves. I don't think they, I don't think they know what they are other than that they're just like wolves.

• 47:16Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 47:16Speaker 06

  To them. And so that bear turned and stuck, kept going in the same direction while the dogs all jumped into the river and started swimming after it. And we're, we're sitting there, Seymour and I are sitting there going, this is, this is not good. They're gonna catch him out in the river.

• 47:33Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:33Speaker 06

  We have no idea what's gonna happen then, but it's possible that they could drown him and, and um, you know, just by climbing on him and biting him and, and things and then he would go away cause he'd sink. Or it may be that he could drown the dogs just by turning around and grabbing him. And we didn't know how big a bear it was. And, and um, so, so we started thinking about how do we deal with this? You know, we're, there's no way we can go and catch all these five dogs and, and haul them into a canoe out in the river and not tip over. And so Seymour, who was a, he was, I don't know, he was close

• 48:13Speaker 06

  to 10 years older than me, right? And so he says, he says, here's what we'll do, Randy, and I'm just like 20 at that time. And, and uh, maybe 21.

• 48:24Steven Rinella?

  How old's Seymour?

• 48:26Speaker 06

  About 10 years older.

• 48:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. So he says here-

• 48:29Steven Rinella?

  He's the leader.

• 48:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. So he had, he had brought a 22 along on this trip down to the Canada cause we were shooting squirrels to feed the dogs and things. And so I had the, I had the big gun, the, the 243. And so he says, you get in the front, we'll beat the dogs to the bear, you pop him right before we come upon him and then grab him.

• 48:50Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:50Speaker 06

  That was, that was his solution to this thing. And so- Being just a bit younger than him, I like, yep, I think that's, I think that's how we need to deal with this. So he and I took off and we beat the dogs by about two canoe lengths. We beat him to the, to the bear and I popped him and grabbed him and he's a summer bear, you know, he still had, he didn't have a lot of fur, but enough that I could grab him right above the tail. And, and of course, we're, we're really moving with the canoe. And so it almost dragged me out of the canoe on the backside and Seymour is there just

• 49:30Speaker 06

  laughing in the back of the boat. The bear's, you know, nerves are, are still active and he's kicking. And then the dogs caught up with us and they grab a hold of him and shake, you know, and, and I'm had this paddle and I'm swatting at him, trying to drive him away. So they don't pull him out of my hands because then we lose him.

• 49:50Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 49:51Speaker 06

  And, and so we tried, Seymour and I, after we got the dogs to leave us be a little bit, we tried hauling the bear into the canoe, but he was too big. And, and you know, it's an aluminum canoe, 18 foot aluminum canoe that we were using there. But, but we didn't think we could bring him in without swamping the boat. So we tied him onto the side and, and paddled. I think we lost about a mile, you know, getting him back to shore. But it was a, it was a nice big, about a 250 pound.

• 50:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  Um, cinnamon face bear.

• 50:29Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 50:30Speaker 06

  And, and nice and fat. You know, he wasn't super fat like going into hibernation, but he was fat enough to make it really good eating.

• 50:37Steven Rinella?

  So in those days when you're living off land like that.

• 50:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:42Steven Rinella?

  What do you then do? Like, walk me through how you handle the bear? Like, what all do you? Take from the bear.

• 50:49Speaker 06

  Everything.

• 50:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, walk me through it.

• 50:51Speaker 06

  Okay, so, uh, pulled him up, we, uh, cut around, uh, under the feet and cut down across and then from the anus all the way up to the chin and skinned him out.

• 51:03Steven Rinella?

  Go.

• 51:04Speaker 06

  And, um, and we, we usually will skin half back and take a, a arm off, you know, a, a, a front leg and then a back leg, um, cut open the guts, pull the guts out and, um, and then turn them over and skin the other half and, uh, and, and take it into quarters and plus your ribs and, and the head, pelvis, all of it and the guts as well because the dogs eat anything, we don't.

• 51:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, what, what are, what out of those guts will those dogs eat?

• 51:36Speaker 06

  Everything.

• 51:37Steven Rinella?

  Do you boil that so they don't get trichinosis or the dog doesn't, he's gonna get it anyways, I'm sure.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  We, I don't remember, uh, boiling that.

• 51:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't think they would even, they probably just all have it, it doesn't affect them.

• 51:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I don't know that they have trichinosis, but.

• 51:51Steven Rinella?

  There's no way they don't. All this stuff they're eating?

• 51:54Speaker 06

  I don't think so. I never heard of it.

• 51:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, all the bears have it. Not all, but I mean.

• 52:01Speaker 06

  I think they're, they're, they have the capacity to have it.

• 52:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, they're like, so just as a point of reference.

• 52:10Steven Rinella?

  This state used to take samples.

• 52:12Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:13Steven Rinella?

  And, and the northwest corner of the state where they were taking samples, 100% of bears.

• 52:21Steven Rinella?

  Six years old and over were positive.

• 52:24Speaker 06

  Oh, well, you have more information than I do on that.

• 52:27Steven Rinella?

  I just think it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't affect them. I mean, they might, they might not feel good for two days or something, but they probably just have it their whole life and, you know.

• 52:34Speaker 06

  It'd be interesting to know the, uh, the, uh, pathology of that in Alaska, but I, I know that, that, um, everybody advises cooking them because they're potential for, uh, trichinosis, but I, I've never heard. Or read on the details of that.

• 52:52Steven Rinella?

  I got it from a bear in Alaska. You know, but I'm just, I'm just saying, I, I bet you if you test it, if you pull the tissue sample from those dogs.

• 53:01Speaker 06

  It's possible.

• 53:01Steven Rinella?

  That it's got the cyst and there's no way it doesn't.

• 53:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:04Steven Rinella?

  Cause they're just eating whatever they find out in the woods.

• 53:06Speaker 06

  They do.

• 53:06Steven Rinella?

  Anyhow, like what, like out of the bears innards, what do you guys want to eat and what do the dogs eat?

• 53:13Speaker 06

  We would, we would usually take the, the heart, some of the liver, the kidneys. And that would be what we would eat.

• 53:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  And, and after I had that run in with that, um, uh, grizzly. Liver, I think the vitamin A poisoning.

• 53:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 06

  With it, um, I wasn't, I didn't eat any, any liver after that.

• 53:36Steven Rinella?

  Uh, off bears.

• 53:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:38Steven Rinella?

  You know, I don't eat bear innards, man.

• 53:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:41Steven Rinella?

  I eat the meat, I eat the fat, but I don't eat the innards out of them.

• 53:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:44Steven Rinella?

  I can't explain why. It's like a personal, I don't know if it counts as a taboo when it's you. It's a personal taboo, dude.

• 53:52Steven Rinella?

  I don't know why.

• 53:52Speaker 06

  We, we did and, uh, and that was, uh, that was actually after little John and I had, had, uh, gotten that, um, vitamin A poisoning off of that grizzly. So, so undoubtedly I did not eat that liver.

• 54:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 06

  But, um, but the dogs do, uh, they think it's great.

• 54:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 06

  And, um, don't seem to be impacted by it. And, and so, um, this is August though, right? So it's, uh, we don't have a freezer or a, you know.

• 54:25Steven Rinella?

  That's what I'm curious about.

• 54:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, our freezer was broken because it doesn't come on until October.

• 54:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You got like, yeah. You got like meat bees and flies and.

• 54:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:34Steven Rinella?

  It's hot during the day.

• 54:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. So you hang it up and it gets dry on the outside. Bears, bear meat doesn't keep for very long. And we just, we just eat it and, uh, if it starts turning bad, the dogs get it.

• 54:47Steven Rinella?

  So you couldn't, you wouldn't, with the bear meat, you're not trying to, you can't, you're not trying to smoke it or air dry it. You're just eating it.

• 54:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And then, and then what, how do you handle the fat? You render it out?

• 54:58Speaker 06

  No, I just, uh, leave it on the meat and eat it with the meat.

• 55:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 55:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. Cause bears, bears, uh, you know, they have it marbled.

• 55:08Speaker 06

  It's marbled, not with moose. Moose isn't, you know. Well, the ribs risk it. But, uh, but the, you know, like the back legs or the, or the shoulders on a moose is not marbled in fat. It's got a layer on the outside.

• 55:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 06

  If you get a fat one. Yeah, but, uh, and then it's got the intestinal fat. Bears have, uh, fat kind of marbled through the, through the meat and, uh...

• 55:32Steven Rinella?

  Which is part of why that meat doesn't freeze super good.

• 55:35Speaker 06

  Right.

• 55:35Steven Rinella?

  It goes rancid a little bit. Like the fat goes bad, yeah.

• 55:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:41Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out. American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 56:21Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. You need credit to buy, well, pretty much any big thing. So how do you get started? Easy. The One Pay Builder Card. It's simple and smart. One Pay is the banking app trusted

• 57:02Steven Rinella?

  by millions of Americans, and the One Pay Builder Card is an easy way to build credit. Just use it to make everyday purchases, build your credit history, and then you can work up to the big milestones, buying a new car or a new house. Or hell, maybe something I'm always thinking about, which is another boat. Those moments start with small, consistent steps with the One Pay Builder Card. Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 57:34Speaker 07

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through One Pay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 57:49Steven Rinella?

  So if you got a bear in August, you're not doing anything to save.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  No.

• 57:53Steven Rinella?

  You're not saving bear lard.

• 57:55Speaker 06

  It's just food until it goes bad.

• 57:58Steven Rinella?

  But, but why not, like, at, at that time, why would you not render it and save jars of it or save bags of it?

• 58:06Speaker 06

  It'll go rancid.

• 58:08Steven Rinella?

  Cause you can't refrigerate, cause it's not refrigerated or frozen.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's really hard to, to jar it in a ball jar. I know we've tried it, we've done it, but it, it gets in the seal and it doesn't, um, it doesn't seal really good.

• 58:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:22Speaker 06

  And some people may have had other, other experiences with it, but that's what.

• 58:26Steven Rinella?

  At that time, you're jarring salmon.

• 58:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:28Steven Rinella?

  So you know about the mechanics of jarring.

• 58:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:31Steven Rinella?

  But you're not jarring bear meat?

• 58:33Speaker 06

  No.

• 58:34Steven Rinella?

  Just.

• 58:34Speaker 06

  Some people do.

• 58:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 58:36Speaker 06

  Some people do, but usually it's fall and they jar it and then it's frozen and they eat it later in the winter.

• 58:44Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it.

• 58:45Speaker 06

  But, but, uh, it's, it's a hard thing with a, with a really oily, uh, piece of meat to jar it and have that seal work for a ball jar.

• 58:57Steven Rinella?

  Huh, okay.

• 58:59Speaker 06

  And then I didn't, I didn't like jarred meat as much as, I mean, jarred fish is great. Uh, meat, I'd rather just eat it straight.

• 59:06Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 59:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:08Steven Rinella?

  But you're also trying to account for, I mean, you're trying to find 365 days worth of food.

• 59:14Steven Rinella?

  So in the summer months, you eat fresh meat.

• 59:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:16Steven Rinella?

  And then once things freeze, you just eat frozen meat.

• 59:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, because um you know, you can't keep you can't keep a big piece of meat, a moose, you know, shooting them in August. You can't do it. You know, it's gonna go bad before um before you've finished eating it.

• 59:35Steven Rinella?

  What was the date at which you'd want to kill a moose then?

• 59:38Speaker 06

  Anytime, you know, around fifth, uh, 10th of September.

• 59:41Steven Rinella?

  Uh, at that point, you could keep it.

• 59:43Speaker 06

  You can keep it right into freeze.

• 59:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 59:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, but you gotta you gotta be careful. You know, if you got those cuts that uh, you know, where there's two surfaces that flop back on each other, those are gonna those would go bad over that period of time. So there there's a process.

• 1:00:00Steven Rinella?

  Tell me what that mean. Well, hold on. I'm gonna go back to the bear. One last question on the bear.

• 1:00:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Steven Rinella?

  So I understand the meat and fat and the guts.

• 1:00:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Steven Rinella?

  At that point in time, were you keeping the hide or selling the hide or or it's useless because it's August? Like, how would you view the bear hide? What what good use that would you put that to, if anything?

• 1:00:18Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, we'd we'd keep them. Uh, and it it would be stretching out on a on a frame and uh, fleshing it.

• 1:00:26Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:26Speaker 06

  And scraping the oil off. Sometimes, uh, you know, really fat bear, that's pretty hard to do, but uh, but you can do it, you know, with a scraper.

• 1:00:37Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:00:37Speaker 06

  And uh, clean it off and uh, dry it as a a rug, a a seat cushion, um, a lot of different things.

• 1:00:45Steven Rinella?

  You wouldn't sew any garments out of that stuff?

• 1:00:48Speaker 06

  I didn't. There were people that did. Um, but it, you know, if you like, put it on the top of a mukluq, it'll get uh, snow packed into it. Uh, so it's not, you know, like a beaver is is uh, almost waterproof.

• 1:01:04Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:01:05Speaker 06

  You know, beaver fur. And and that was that was a really good thing for like the top of a mukluq or mittens, but it would never uh, get um, snowballs or ice balls forming it, but bear fur does.

• 1:01:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  So it was it wasn't a uh, a desirable piece of clothing for most people.

• 1:01:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I want to hit you with one that I was reading. It's not from your area, but I wonder if you ever heard of this. I'm reading that there's this book.

• 1:01:35Steven Rinella?

  The hell's it called? Oh, The Landbreakers. You ever hear of that?

• 1:01:37Speaker 06

  I've never heard of it.

• 1:01:38Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I was obsessed with this book for a while. The Landbreakers. I sent it to my buddy, Bubly Doug. He loved it too. It's set in the 1770s. It's just about the first families moving into the seven, sorry, set in the 1780s.

• 1:01:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Steven Rinella?

  Early American. It's a novel, but it's like very, very well done. It's about the first families moving up into the mountains and Appalachia. And they're landbreakers because they're clearing the ground to grow corn. In this book,

• 1:02:08Steven Rinella?

  uh, they talk about that, you know, you know, groundhog. It's like a ground squirrel, close relative of a marmot, right? A groundhog.

• 1:02:15Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:16Steven Rinella?

  And this book talks that that's the best rawhide

• 1:02:22Steven Rinella?

  for bootlaces.

• 1:02:24Speaker 06

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:02:24Steven Rinella?

  Which I'm, I'm gonna make some. My kid got one the other day, but it was just a juvenile. So I didn't do it yet. But I'm gonna make my own rawhide bootlaces from a groundhog. But, um, if you think about that, man, like, think about a squirrel's hide. Like, you take a rabbit hide, you can just with your hands, tear it off. Dude, a squirrel's hard to get through. Doesn't it make sense? That that would be like a phenomenal rawhide strip? Tough.

• 1:02:53Speaker 06

  How do you get the fur off? Or does it matter?

• 1:02:56Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. I'll figure that out.

• 1:02:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna probably just soak it for a while and then scrape the fur off.

• 1:03:03Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. I haven't, I haven't done it yet. Fix it too, though.

• 1:03:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Tough ass bootlaces made out of groundhog.

• 1:03:09Speaker 06

  Huh.

• 1:03:10Steven Rinella?

  Well, this would be a marmot, but either way.

• 1:03:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Around here, they call them rockchucks.

• 1:03:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Steven Rinella?

  But you never had any exposure to that because you had dealt with so many leathers. You guys didn't have like a thing of making like rawhide from marmots or anything?

• 1:03:23Speaker 06

  No. There were marmots, um, in the mountains on the south side

• 1:03:27Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  of the, of the Yukon up there. I never saw them over in the, uh, in the Oglesbees.

• 1:03:34Steven Rinella?

  Never where you hung out?

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  Never where I hung out.

• 1:03:36Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:03:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. Um.

• 1:03:38Steven Rinella?

  So tell me about moose. How you handle moose? Because this, now we're into September.

• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah. So, so moose always, we skin back one half and take a shoulder off.

• 1:03:48Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:49Speaker 06

  And, uh, I I never got into the game bags. I think we mentioned this a little bit previously, but it didn't matter because there's going to be a crust on it. And and when I've taken game bags off of meat that's, you know, sat in a boat or something for a few days, it's pretty, it doesn't let it dry out.

• 1:04:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  And so.

• 1:04:13Steven Rinella?

  If you're dealing with water and stuff, it's just, I'm with you because it like, it makes, it just holds moisture in a way.

• 1:04:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Steven Rinella?

  If you can hang it up in the air, what's nice about it is you don't get, you don't get fly eggs on it.

• 1:04:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, which didn't bother me at all because flies, you know, once you've got a crust on it, they don't bother it.

• 1:04:30Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:04:31Speaker 06

  But they will go and lay eggs if you have, say you make a couple of cuts on the, you know, the bottom of the back leg, you know, between it and the, and the pelvis bone, you know, and and you might have a couple of different cuts that when you hang it up, those two, um, there, there's a cut in there where the two pieces of meat flop over and touch.

• 1:04:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, when you say that, do you mean that you take like an intact muscle, but you're saying you you inadvertently slice it? So now you've sliced it open and the two pieces of meat are touching?

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  That that's going to rot.

• 1:05:05Steven Rinella?

  Why do you think that is?

• 1:05:06Speaker 06

  Because the bacteria grow. It doesn't dry out. That's exactly why it.

• 1:05:11Steven Rinella?

  Because it's a, it's an exposed surface that won't dry.

• 1:05:14Speaker 06

  It's an exposed surface. Yeah. It's, it's been inoculated with bacteria and it stays wet. See, bacteria aren't going to grow if it's dry. And so you get this moose and and you hang it up and over the next few days, you know, you, you, you work at it, you pick at it, you know, the bottom of the, of the, of the back leg and the, the neck, you know, the, the, the back straps, anywhere where there's, um, you know, a cut that exists there that doesn't dry.

• 1:05:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, this is something I've never thought about or heard, man.

• 1:05:47Speaker 06

  Well, so it, it allowed us to hang moose in the beginning of September and have it make it into trees.

• 1:05:54Steven Rinella?

  Because you just keep, you're, you're letting the crust form, making sure there's no spots that hold any moisture.

• 1:06:00Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:06:01Steven Rinella?

  And then it's, and then you can hang it and you're just basically hanging it. It dries and then eventually

• 1:06:08Speaker 06

  Well, and so at that time, you know, of the of the year, you tend to get cooler temperatures at night and and so it's and then as the moisture from that ham or the shoulder works its way out to the crust and evaporates off. It's it's going to cool that way as well.

• 1:06:29Steven Rinella?

  Like evaporative cooling.

• 1:06:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Steven Rinella?

  Are you leaving, are you harvesting the fat off it? Or leaving all the fat on it?

• 1:06:37Speaker 06

  Uh, I take the fat off.

• 1:06:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:06:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Steven Rinella?

  And you handle that how?

• 1:06:41Speaker 06

  So the ribs, the ribs and the brisket. That's hard to take the fat off of, so that stays, but those are the those are, you know, some of the things you you might eat first.

• 1:06:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:06:54Speaker 06

  Right? And

• 1:06:56Steven Rinella?

  It's got all those layers of fat in it.

• 1:06:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, and so like the belly fat.

• 1:07:02Steven Rinella?

  You mean the inside fat?

• 1:07:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, I hang that too, so it gets dry and it'll dry fast. So, you know, you get the the kidney fat and you hang it over a pole. And and you you shift it every every once in a while, you know, every couple of days you move it. And of course, you got to protect it from gray jays because they'll come in and

• 1:07:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 1:07:26Speaker 06

  And damage it pretty bad. But but I would hang little gill nets, little two inch stretch mesh gill nets around the meat to keep the gray jays off.

• 1:07:36Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:07:38Speaker 06

  So, yeah. Yeah, it's a process, but but then you got this wonderful piece of meat and as you go into the winter.

• 1:07:47Steven Rinella?

  If you, let's say you're, you got a cabin where you know you're going to spend your winter.

• 1:07:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53Steven Rinella?

  And you're mostly doing stuff off at that time of year, you're operating out of your canoe.

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:07:58Steven Rinella?

  Are you moving that carcass? You're trying to move that carcass first back to your cabin.

• 1:08:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Steven Rinella?

  And this work is happening at the cabin.

• 1:08:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. That's right. It not always, but that's, that's what you, that's what you try to do.

• 1:08:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Ideally, it's back at the cabin.

• 1:08:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Steven Rinella?

  And then how are you protect, how do you safeguard? So if we, if we go through this drying process and that, what date does it, at what date would you say it's going to freeze roughly?

• 1:08:25Speaker 06

  Um, the end of September, beginning of October.

• 1:08:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:08:28Speaker 06

  That's when it used to up there. We've had some, uh, we've had some years where it doesn't freeze till mid October lately though. So.

• 1:08:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Speaker 06

  It's a, it's a different environment right now than it was.

• 1:08:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Um, and at that point, the only thing you gotta worry about, uh, once bears are down underground, the only thing you gotta worry about is like Wolverine getting at it. Whatever kind of, you know, whatever things chewing it up, odds and ends. Um, how do you secure it?

• 1:09:00Speaker 06

  You know, I've really haven't had any trouble with a moose once it freezes.

• 1:09:06Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:09:08Speaker 06

  You know, we're, we're there. Um, I just have never had a Wolverine. Usually I would, I would, uh, put some sort of a trap there for Wolverines, but they're not gonna, they're not gonna be able to deal with a moose, you know, they could. I, I always hung it high enough so that my dogs couldn't reach it.

• 1:09:27Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:09:28Speaker 06

  You know, at, at some point, if we were traveling or something and, uh, and that, and the wolves, they never bothered it. I never had them bother anything of mine.

• 1:09:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:09:39Speaker 06

  And, uh, so.

• 1:09:41Steven Rinella?

  And you just hung it clear of a Wolverine where he can't jump up and he can't climb up and get it?

• 1:09:45Speaker 06

  Well, the Wolverine can, but, um, you know, they just, they weren't, um, there weren't enough of them that it was an issue.

• 1:09:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Speaker 06

  For me.

• 1:09:56Steven Rinella?

  If you went into the year, if you're just by yourself and you kill a moose in September.

• 1:10:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Steven Rinella?

  You kill a bull. These mostly bulls you're killing?

• 1:10:03Speaker 06

  All bulls.

• 1:10:04Steven Rinella?

  All bulls. You kill a bull in September?

• 1:10:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Steven Rinella?

  How long can one guy live off that moose?

• 1:10:11Speaker 06

  Um, you know, if that's all you're eating, um, you know, probably three months.

• 1:10:16Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's not going to take you all the way through the winter.

• 1:10:23Steven Rinella?

  So what else would you have to figure out to make the winter?

• 1:10:26Speaker 06

  Well, so up there on the upper Kandig River where I lived, it was caribou.

• 1:10:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:31Speaker 06

  The, every year we were up there, there were, uh, there were wintering caribou from the porcupine, uh, caribou herd.

• 1:10:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  And, uh, and so, and so, uh, we would take those and, uh, they were almost always, uh, bulls. Big bulls that had lost their horns, uh, their antlers and, and, um, and they were skinny. Uh, they might have just a little bit of, uh, fat on their, on their brisket. Um, their tongues are, are spectacular.

• 1:11:05Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:05Speaker 06

  You slice them up and fry them. They're wonderful.

• 1:11:07Steven Rinella?

  Would you boil them first?

• 1:11:09Speaker 06

  Not, not with caribou. Uh, with moose, I did.

• 1:11:13Steven Rinella?

  So you just slice it, trim off the outer part and fry the center?

• 1:11:17Speaker 06

  You don't need to trim it off.

• 1:11:18Steven Rinella?

  On a caribou?

• 1:11:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Steven Rinella?

  Just slice it and fry it?

• 1:11:21Speaker 06

  Slice it and fry it. It's one of the best things anywhere.

• 1:11:24Steven Rinella?

  Huh. Wh- wh- but why does that not work with a moose?

• 1:11:27Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:11:28Steven Rinella?

  I always boil them and then slip the skin off.

• 1:11:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, with moose.

• 1:11:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Speaker 06

  That's true. Uh, with caribou, you don't need to.

• 1:11:35Steven Rinella?

  Huh. Like they got a thin shell or something?

• 1:11:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, thin shell and, uh, and the muscle there is just, uh, it's got a lot of fat in it. It's, it's wonderful.

• 1:11:44Steven Rinella?

  Just raw sliced?

• 1:11:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, it's fried.

• 1:11:47Steven Rinella?

  I'm sorry, but not, not pre-cooked in any way?

• 1:11:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:11:52Steven Rinella?

  To soften it up. It's soft enough.

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  No, you fry it right in a pan.

• 1:11:55Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 1:11:55Speaker 06

  Just like it is.

• 1:11:56Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:11:56Speaker 06

  Slice it, fry it.

• 1:11:57Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:11:57Speaker 06

  It's wonderful.

• 1:11:58Steven Rinella?

  I've never done that.

• 1:11:59Speaker 06

  It's one of the best things anywhere. Karen, in fact, in Non-Dalton, we, uh, I had gotten, uh, three caribou, uh, up on this, uh, mountain and I went and was butchering one. And this, uh, this older fella from Non-Dalton stopped and, uh, cut the tongues out of the other two. And, and took off and I go to butcher him and, and like the tongues are gone and I'm going like. This isn't right, you know?

• 1:12:27Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:28Speaker 06

  So I, I butcher them up and go home and Karen says, oh, good, three, uh, three, uh, caribou tongues. I said, well, I've only got one because, you know, this guy got the other two. He said, well, go get them from him. So I go and I talk with him and I say, you know, we, we really like those. He says, you're white people. You know, you don't like caribou tongues. I said, no, we do. I said, Karen sent me to get them back. He says, I'll give you one of them back. I said, okay. Yeah. It's funny, yeah, but no, it's a, it's a delicacy.

• 1:12:58Steven Rinella?

  My old man used to dig around other people's gut piles.

• 1:13:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Steven Rinella?

  Deer gut piles. He'd, he'd go get the heart and liver out of other people's gut piles.

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Steven Rinella?

  For sure. Like, didn't even, he didn't even think anything of it.

• 1:13:11Speaker 06

  Well, so the heart is, uh, off of a, off of a fat animal is wonderful. And they got, you know, you got this big, you know, cluster of fat around the top of the heart. And, and slicing that up and frying it is one of the best things. Yeah.

• 1:13:24Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:13:25Speaker 06

  Moose, caribou.

• 1:13:26Steven Rinella?

  So how would you handle a moose tongue?

• 1:13:29Speaker 06

  So I'd boil it and, uh, and then slice it and, um, and fry it.

• 1:13:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Now, help me understand, why, why does it, why, why can you fry a caribou tongue sliced? Without doing any prep?

• 1:13:45Speaker 06

  It's tender.

• 1:13:46Steven Rinella?

  But, so if you do it to a moose tongue?

• 1:13:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Steven Rinella?

  Is the center still tender or is just this, even the center is hard?

• 1:13:53Speaker 06

  It's tough, yeah.

• 1:13:54Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:13:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Steven Rinella?

  Have you ever monkeyed around just frying deer tongues up without cooking them first?

• 1:13:59Speaker 06

  I, I've only, uh, had anything to do with a couple of deer. And that was from down in south, southeast.

• 1:14:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Speaker 06

  When, uh, my father was living down there and we went out to this island called Pleasant Island in Icy Strait. And, uh, and got deer. But those are the only ones I've had, um, any direct, um, knowledge of.

• 1:14:21Steven Rinella?

  Would you eat bear tongues?

• 1:14:23Speaker 06

  I never tried it.

• 1:14:25Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:14:27Steven Rinella?

  Um, would you go up in the mountains for sheep?

• 1:14:30Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I did.

• 1:14:32Steven Rinella?

  What time of year would you go do that?

• 1:14:34Speaker 06

  August, usually.

• 1:14:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay. And how would you handle those?

• 1:14:38Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:14:40Speaker 06

  You know.

• 1:14:40Steven Rinella?

  By the time you get up there, you gotta eat it just to get out of there, probably.

• 1:14:44Speaker 06

  Well, so, a lot of people, they, they get into this crisis, right? Cause they, they shoot a sheep, it's blazing hot.

• 1:14:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Speaker 06

  And they gotta pack it for miles and then get it to a freezer. What I did is I just sat up there and ate it.

• 1:15:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  Because a sheep is not that big.

• 1:15:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 06

  And, um, and they're wonderful. And so it would, uh, it would feed us and we'd go exploring.

• 1:15:14Speaker 06

  Cause you're not gonna keep it in, you're not gonna keep a sheep. We didn't, we didn't ever hunt sheep at a time when you could put it up for the winter, right? It, it's.

• 1:15:24Steven Rinella?

  Too early.

• 1:15:24Speaker 06

  It's too early. And it's, and it's, um, you know, not close enough to anywhere that we would, um,

• 1:15:32Speaker 06

  you know, that, that we would, uh, uh, have a cabin. It's, it's a, it's a long ways out. But, but by not having to transport it to a freezer back in town, three or four days after you, you kill it, um, we just had, we just had a wonderful time in the mountains.

• 1:15:51Steven Rinella?

  How many days would you be able to eat that sheep?

• 1:15:53Speaker 06

  It, they'll go for a week.

• 1:15:55Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So you just sit there and eat it?

• 1:15:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it'll keep for, for longer than that. So you process it the same way, hang it, cut the places off that are rough, that are gonna attract, uh, blowflies. Cause blowflies are not that big a deal. As long as you're paying attention to the meat. You can always cut a chunk off that has blowflies on it and throw it to the dogs and they think it's fine.

• 1:16:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Speaker 06

  You know? You gotta be on top of it, but, um.

• 1:16:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, but the sheep were wonderful. They're always fat, always good. And they're a small. So you were talking earlier about the bear, you know, what do you do with a bear? Well, you eat it. It's in August. You're not trying to keep it into the winter. You're trying to have a good piece of meat to eat for the next couple of weeks.

• 1:16:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  And you can do that.

• 1:16:44Steven Rinella?

  You mentioned to Corinne something about seeing a ram, a doll ram. How like, you know how they broom their horns?

• 1:16:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Steven Rinella?

  Did you, have you, I've observed them, I've observed big horns scratching their horn.

• 1:16:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Steven Rinella?

  But what did you see?

• 1:16:59Speaker 06

  So, so I never understood how they broom their horns, you know, but, but so in Alaska anyway. A legal ram is one that has two broom tips or that's a full curl.

• 1:17:13Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:17:13Speaker 06

  Or more, right? And, and there may be some differences in places. It used to be one and a, one and an eighth or something like that, you know, but.

• 1:17:25Speaker 06

  A curl, but, but, but that's how it's been everywhere I've hunted.

• 1:17:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like most, yeah, I would say most, you, you hear of exceptions like any ram, whatever. And someplace in the Brooks range in the old days, but yeah, full curl or two broomed. And they used to not define broomed very clearly, but it has to be now it's defined as the entire lamb tip is gone.

• 1:17:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Steven Rinella?

  So his entire first year's growth.

• 1:17:46Speaker 06

  Well, it always bothered me. How the heck do they break those, you know, because.

• 1:17:49Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 1:17:50Speaker 06

  You know, hitting two big rams hitting, you know, even if it did connect by the tips, you know, they're, they're, they're just really tough.

• 1:17:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they're hitting the boss.

• 1:17:59Speaker 06

  They're hitting the boss. It's a round thing, hitting a round thing, right?

• 1:18:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 06

  It's, it's not going to break it. But so I was up there with my older son in, in some of these mountains and big limestone mountains on the north side. And of the Yukon. And, and we saw these three sheep walking on this one scree slope across this, this.

• 1:18:22Speaker 06

  Um, it was a, it was a valley, real steep valley, both sides. And they were walking a scree slope and we charged up, down and then up uh to meet them on this uh, on this scree, well, the uh sheep trail across the scree slope. Because you could see it where it goes, you know?

• 1:18:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Speaker 06

  And we knew they were gonna go by this one place. So we climb up and we get to this place where we thought they were gonna come out in front of us. But they had already gotten by and there was one that was on the next, it, it, it uh, it has these big ridges of uh, of limestone towers, you know, that would come down. And they had a trail that would go through and then scree between them. And we were about three hundred yards away, but we hear this banging and we look over there and here's this sheep. And he backs up and he gets up on his back legs and crack, he hits his, he hits the rock wall with his horns. And he goes back again and gets up there and bam, bam, he's just one after another, he's practicing.

• 1:19:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Speaker 06

  You know, hitting this rock wall. And I realized that's how they're, that's how they're breaking their tips.

• 1:19:32Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 1:19:32Speaker 06

  I know it, yeah. And so, so what's the first thing that's gonna hit? When you have a full curl, it's the tips. They're gonna hit.

• 1:19:42Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:19:42Speaker 06

  They're gonna hit the rock wall.

• 1:19:43Steven Rinella?

  I watched.

• 1:19:44Speaker 06

  And that's a flat enough surface.

• 1:19:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I watched a bighorn one time ram upon a rose pine. I counted, he rammed it seventy-five times.

• 1:19:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. But that's a soft thing, that's wood.

• 1:19:54Steven Rinella?

  But no, I get what you're saying because you can see that they abrade it like, I think they don't like it in their peripheral vision. When they abrade it, because sometimes they wear, like bighorns wear them smooth. They're like, like, like my fist, like smooth and round. And I think they abrade it.

• 1:20:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 1:20:15Steven Rinella?

  I'm telling you, dude, I, they don't like, they don't like it there. I think they see it.

• 1:20:19Speaker 06

  I don't disagree, but I, I think the mechanism, you know, because when you get one that is, is, you know, not broomed, but a big full curl, um, they're tough. It's hard.

• 1:20:31Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm with you, man. I don't, I can't account for him being snapped off and I, I, yeah. Snapped off, I know, I, I like what you're saying.

• 1:20:38Speaker 06

  It's a theory, but I.

• 1:20:39Steven Rinella?

  I pictured him, I was like, there's no way he's sticking in a crack in the rock and prying it off. I don't know how they break them off. I, I think, I'm sure you're right.

• 1:20:46Speaker 06

  They're whacking them.

• 1:20:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm sure you're right, but what I'm getting at.

• 1:20:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Steven Rinella?

  Is and it's more common in bighorns like you never see on a big like a eight, nine, 10 year old bighorn.

• 1:20:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:58Steven Rinella?

  That some bitch never has his lamb tips. But they're smooth.

• 1:21:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Steven Rinella?

  And I have watched sheep, I have watched sheep rubbing them.

• 1:21:10Steven Rinella?

  Rubbing them.

• 1:21:11Speaker 06

  On a, on a rock.

• 1:21:11Steven Rinella?

  On a rock, on a cliff face, just rubbing it.

• 1:21:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Steven Rinella?

  Like cat, like the same way you'd watch something scratch itself. Same way you'd watch it scratch itself on a tree. He's sitting there like rubbing.

• 1:21:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I'll bet the, I'll bet the break, the initial break.

• 1:21:25Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm not contesting it on the break, man. I think you're right. I'm just talking about the rubbing. I, but by theory, and I don't know, I never talked to a guy that knows a bunch about sheep. I know like a teeny about sheep, but my theory is. And no, no guys ever corroborate, like, I don't know. This is maybe totally not true.

• 1:21:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Steven Rinella?

  My theory is.

• 1:21:45Steven Rinella?

  Had been.

• 1:21:47Steven Rinella?

  It gets in their peripheral vision and it bugs the hell out of them.

• 1:21:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Steven Rinella?

  And so they're like, what is that? And they're.

• 1:21:54Steven Rinella?

  They don't like it. I don't know. You have to interview one.

• 1:21:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:22:02Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got weather tech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in weather tech. Cause that way when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put weather tech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out. American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay, they laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com. In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy.

• 1:22:46Steven Rinella?

  At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. What if you could save up for that new car or vacation just by buying the stuff you're already buying? With the One Pay Banking App, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending in categories you choose. So it's easy to save. So what are you saving for?

• 1:23:30Steven Rinella?

  Maybe you've got your eyes on a new truck, or a new boat, or you're saving up for your first house. Download the One Pay App or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 1:23:43Speaker 07

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 1:23:59Steven Rinella?

  Bears see a dog and they think it's a wolf.

• 1:24:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Steven Rinella?

  What's a wolf think when it sees it's... What's a wolf think a dog is?

• 1:24:07Speaker 06

  So that's an interesting thing, you know? So I used to travel quite a bit on the Kandig River and the dogs would be running loose, you know? Because how do you go up the river with a canoe and not have them run loose, right? You can't ride them in there. So there was a lot of things you see, you know? They'll drive a moose into the river. The river is safe country for a moose, right? And the moose thinks the dogs are wolves and they'll run right into the river where they can stand and the dogs gotta... Dogs or wolves gotta swim. And then they'll pound them if they get close.

• 1:24:47Steven Rinella?

  They pound them with their hooves in there.

• 1:24:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:48Steven Rinella?

  If they can get them in the water.

• 1:24:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. And so... And so the the dogs sometimes, you know, because they're not quite as savvy as wolves. Uh, they would swim out trying to get to the moose and so the moose will just pound them. You know, and and none of our dogs got damaged in that that I that I recall. I mean, they it didn't it didn't kill them. It didn't break them up, but but I think that sometimes they do that with wolves, um, but but probably not in the water because wolves probably know you can't get them when they're in the water. But um, but wolves.

• 1:25:25Steven Rinella?

  So wolves would more or less give up when that would happen?

• 1:25:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, they might. They might sit around. We've had times when we're lining up the river and and the dogs chase a moose into the river and it's not big enough for us to get past while the moose is in there, you know, so we're we camp sometimes.

• 1:25:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:25:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, because it's not going to get it come out, you know, we get the coax the dogs back to us and get them tied up and sometimes it's still, you know, hours before the moose is ready to to get out of the water and go somewhere. And uh, and then we can continue up, but um, but one time, uh, I was walking along the river with the dogs and um, and and I hear them barking back in the spruce woods.

• 1:26:12Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:12Speaker 06

  And and I'm thinking that's that can't be a moose because moose usually won't uh, bay up, you know, with the dogs chasing them back in the woods. They go to the water, you know, and I'm so I think this they may have a bear up a tree, right?

• 1:26:25Steven Rinella?

  So what can you tell? What what breed? I mean, I'm sure they're mixed, but what are these dogs? What do they look like?

• 1:26:30Speaker 06

  They're they're great big huskies. They were, uh, you know, we had some that were as much as a hundred and twenty pounds.

• 1:26:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:26:37Speaker 06

  And uh, um, they're as they're they're the same size as wolves.

• 1:26:43Speaker 06

  Uh, up in that part of the country. I mean, a big wolf would be bigger than the biggest dog, but um, but a lot of people bred these big dogs because they can pack and they're, um, um, you know, when you're mushing around on a, on a trap line and you say, whoa, they'd stop and you know, where's, you know, the little hyper, uh, race dogs, they tend not to.

• 1:27:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's what, that's what I was trying to picture. If you had that new kind of souped up race dog, or if you had the old stylers.

• 1:27:11Speaker 06

  Old style.

• 1:27:12Steven Rinella?

  But when you say bay, they'll still do that though. They'll get something cornered and they'll raise hell.

• 1:27:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. So they're barking back in the woods and I think that's gotta be a bear, you know? So I start, I'm sneaking back there with my rifle, looking up into the trees and I realized I, I look where the dogs are and they've got a wolf bait up. They've got a single wolf, same size as they were, and his hair is sticking straight out from his, from his whole body and his tail. And the dogs are seriously as close to me, uh, to this microphone, right? And they're barking at him, but they're not biting him. But, but wolves, you know, if there's a wolf from a different pack that comes and gets surrounded by a pack of wolves, they'll more likely than not kill it.

• 1:27:57Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:58Speaker 06

  And so that wolf was spooked that he was in that situation where he might get nailed. And the dogs, you know, it was, I don't know how many I had then, four or five. And, um, and they're, they're same size as this animal, but they are, they are barking at him like seriously this close, you know? And, uh, but the wolf spots me, took off.

• 1:28:21Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  Yeah. Hauled ass. And the dog's right on his tail. And, uh, the dogs came back in about a half an hour. But, uh, I'm sure the wolf got away because the dogs, they were just interested.

• 1:28:34Steven Rinella?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:28:34Speaker 06

  You know, they weren't trying to kill him or anything. And he might've been able to defend himself too.

• 1:28:40Steven Rinella?

  But they knew, but they, but they knew he wasn't a dog.

• 1:28:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. He was different.

• 1:28:47Steven Rinella?

  Man, I'll tell you, like, on that canine to canine thing.

• 1:28:50Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:51Steven Rinella?

  We had this little, I don't like, I don't know how big it is, maybe it's 35 pounds, this dog. And, um, if I even so much as skin a coyote.

• 1:29:01Steven Rinella?

  Okay, that dog smells that death.

• 1:29:05Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:05Steven Rinella?

  That dog knows. Like it's never been beat up by a coyote. Something about the smell. And if there's a coyote laying there, it is no way. Gonna go up. There's not a dog in the world. My dog's not gonna run up and try to play with.

• 1:29:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:29:23Steven Rinella?

  Or, you know, they smell each other's butts, whatever. Like, there's not a dog in the world my dog's not gonna be excited about interacting with. A coyote, it knows. Like it knows that is not a dog. It is death. And I always wonder how it like, how they put that together. It knows it's death.

• 1:29:43Speaker 06

  There were times when, uh, like, uh, this guy Dick Cook. We talked about Dick Cook, you know, on the Teton River. He had, um. His dogs sometimes interacted with wolves. And, uh, and they didn't kill each other. They didn't fight. But, um. The dogs would run out if the wolves were crossing, crossing paths with them. But, um. I don't really, I don't quite understand why, but that I think they both understand they're different.

• 1:30:17Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:30:17Speaker 06

  And, um. I never had, I never had the, uh. Wolves bother my dogs. Mostly they stayed away.

• 1:30:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:27Speaker 06

  But, um. But sometimes I, uh, I've shot them. Uh. Big wolves because they're hanging around. Uh, one time it was in the fall and we had a moose hanging. And our dogs were chained up. But they would, um, at night. Um, they would start barking. And I didn't know what was going on because I never saw anything. Um, until it snowed. And then I realized, oh, this is wolf. A wolf is casing our place.

• 1:31:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 06

  Going all around. And, uh. And, and at the time, uh. Jed, I don't know how, how old he was, um, five or six. Uh, maybe. And he wanted to, he always took great glee in going doing things by himself. So he wanted to walk this trail back to a, a big beaver pond. That we had a ski plane land in every once in a while in the winter. And, um.

• 1:31:28Speaker 06

  And uh, and we never did let him go by himself, you know, cause there's a, I don't know what it was, a half mile or so on this nice trail. But, but uh, we didn't think he was old enough at the time to do that. And, and I think in retrospect, I think that wolf would have taken him if he'd been down there by himself. But um, but anyway, I, I decided I'm going to take this, this wolf. And, and there were times when he would walk up along the willow bar, right? Uh, right between the house and the, and the river. And I got down there and hid out in this uh, a piece of driftwood and, and waited for him. And he came right at dusk and shot that, that um, that wolf.

• 1:32:11Speaker 06

  And he had a, he had a busted up jaw from a moose cracking him. And uh, teeth that weren't there. And then the jaw had, had healed, but it just kind of in a, in a big glob. So his uh, his jaw didn't work quite so well. So he was um, couldn't keep up with the pack perhaps, couldn't feed himself. He was trying to figure out how to get some of our moose up there.

• 1:32:39Steven Rinella?

  My buddy in Alaska, this is last winter. He's a trapper, does some trapping. His wife calls him one day and she's got like a, she's with her dogs.

• 1:32:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:50Steven Rinella?

  This is just right behind his house. And there's a wolf messing with her and he doesn't believe her. He's like, that's gotta be a dog. She's like, I know a wolf, I'm looking at a wolf, there's a wolf, won't leave us alone. And he's still dismissive of it.

• 1:33:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:33:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, later he goes and looks in the snow and it's like, sure enough. And in the morning, it's all walking around his house. So he makes a set for it and catches it right away.

• 1:33:18Steven Rinella?

  Right away. I think he said it was about 20 minutes or something.

• 1:33:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Steven Rinella?

  I mean, it's that hard, it's like that desperate.

• 1:33:23Speaker 06

  That wolf wasn't afraid of people.

• 1:33:24Steven Rinella?

  Well, he showed me a picture. Its face, its teeth were gone. I mean, freshly gone. It's, it looked like it, you, if you to put that dog, if you to put that wolf, if you to turn that wolf sideways.

• 1:33:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:33:38Steven Rinella?

  And set it on a, on a, on an anvil.

• 1:33:42Steven Rinella?

  And pulled his lips back and had your buddy take a sledgehammer and bam on his teeth. You would have got something that looked like what this thing's face looked like. And the only thing you can think is somehow it got just stomped.

• 1:33:58Speaker 06

  By a moose?

• 1:33:59Steven Rinella?

  By a moose.

• 1:34:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:00Steven Rinella?

  Stomped like he's, I mean, I, it wasn't a great picture, but you look at it, it's fa, it's, it's face, it's teeth. On the one side are just crushed.

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:11Steven Rinella?

  In.

• 1:34:11Speaker 06

  That's how this one was.

• 1:34:12Steven Rinella?

  And somehow something got the perfect shot. A moose, has to be a moose. I don't know what else to be up there.

• 1:34:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Steven Rinella?

  Got the perfect shot.

• 1:34:22Speaker 06

  Well, so I got, I would rarely get um adult wolves in any trap or, or snare. Couple of exemptions, but mostly you get the first year and then all of the pups uh from that litter. Would see one of their own get into a snare or get into a trap. And they were from that point on, they wanted nothing to do with anything that people had going. And, and um it was, it was really rare to get the old ones unless you shot them. And so I did a couple of times in the winter, they would, a pack would run by the house going up the river.

• 1:35:02Speaker 06

  And uh, and I, I ended up shooting, I think three altogether um over the years.

• 1:35:09Steven Rinella?

  Adults.

• 1:35:10Speaker 06

  The biggest, the adults. And, and they're all broken up. They're all, they got broken ribs, they got broken legs that heal. Um, that one had the jaw. Yeah, all of them had broken ribs. And uh, some of them had healed. Um, most of them had not and it was just, you know, the.

• 1:35:33Steven Rinella?

  Flopping bones.

• 1:35:33Speaker 06

  Flopping bones. It's just incredible and, and it's, I'm certain that it's uh, it's moose. Um, they're gonna, they're whacking them. They get close enough and, and it's just a consequence of what they eat there because they eat moose. And they do, they go up and they, they bite them and they get kicked and uh continue on, but it damages them.

• 1:35:55Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. I, I, I got one, one time and um.

• 1:36:02Speaker 06

  And I was skinning it, uh, and it's a casing, you know, so you go hang it up and go from back legs down to body and pull it down, working your way down to the, to the face eventually. Well, I get to the area right around the, the back of the shoulders and, and the hide just comes off. It separates right there and I look a little-

• 1:36:24Steven Rinella?

  Like the hide fell in too?

• 1:36:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so I, and came off the head. And so I'm, I'm sitting there and, and the hide-

• 1:36:31Steven Rinella?

  I'm not following what you mean.

• 1:36:32Speaker 06

  So, so I start looking, it's got this scar all the way around-

• 1:36:37Steven Rinella?

  From a snare?

• 1:36:38Speaker 06

  All to, to the bone. Yeah. From a snare. It had gotten caught and it drew right down to bone and-

• 1:36:45Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:36:46Speaker 06

  And the snare had, had, um, eventually rusted away and dropped off.

• 1:36:54Steven Rinella?

  Damn.

• 1:36:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. It went right to bone, all the way around.

• 1:36:58Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:36:59Speaker 06

  Crazy. It had carried that snare for a couple of years.

• 1:37:05Steven Rinella?

  But it was fine?

• 1:37:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Steven Rinella?

  I mean, like, seemed to you fine?

• 1:37:09Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, the hide never, never bonded again, right?

• 1:37:13Steven Rinella?

  But the animal like is up and about.

• 1:37:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Steven Rinella?

  No way.

• 1:37:20Speaker 06

  Oh, they're tougher than hell. The, the wolves are, are outrageously tough. Yeah. If you catch one in the, with a foot, it's like a bomb went off, you know, there's moss hanging in trees, smaller trees are chewed down. It's, uh, they're, they're, uh, they're extraordinarily tough.

• 1:37:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You know, a friend of mine had a, he had spent some time with Wolverine trappers. And he told me an interesting observation this Wolverine trapper shared with him was like, in trap and you approach the animal and the animal's always as far away as it can get on the chain.

• 1:37:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Steven Rinella?

  You know, he's trying to go the other direction. If his foot's caught, his legs outstretched and he's trying to get away. And this guy said a Wolverine is always, the Wolverine's always coming to you.

• 1:38:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. That's right.

• 1:38:12Steven Rinella?

  He's, he's stretched in your direction trying to get at you.

• 1:38:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:15Steven Rinella?

  Huh. That's pretty crazy about that wolf though.

• 1:38:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Steven Rinella?

  That it just, that it wasn't like a fatality for him.

• 1:38:23Speaker 06

  No, it didn't kill him. He, he survived it.

• 1:38:26Steven Rinella?

  We had a wolf researcher on the show.

• 1:38:30Steven Rinella?

  And there's like, there's a real paucity of like, level-headed wolf researchers. Cause they get, it gets emotional for them. They, they lose their,

• 1:38:39Steven Rinella?

  they, they lose their ability to see things clearly.

• 1:38:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:42Steven Rinella?

  Especially the park, like the park kind.

• 1:38:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:45Steven Rinella?

  She becomes like, it becomes too familial. They kind of become like celebrities, the people and the wolves. They just, they don't see things clearly anymore. But this woman, Diane Boyd, she, she's very clear-headed.

• 1:38:59Steven Rinella?

  She's never lost her ability to look at things smartly, you know?

• 1:39:07Steven Rinella?

  She also, she likes bird dogs a lot. She's a big bird hunter, so she raises bird dogs. And I was asking her, how smart are, like are wolves smart? Like what's their intelligence?

• 1:39:19Steven Rinella?

  And this is a woman that loves dogs. And she said, it's not comparable.

• 1:39:25Steven Rinella?

  Like a domestic dog's intelligence

• 1:39:29Steven Rinella?

  can't compare.

• 1:39:32Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:39:32Steven Rinella?

  They, they, they can't compare to a wolf. A wolf is like, you know, I can't remember how she put it. Infinitely smarter than a dog, than a domestic dog.

• 1:39:41Speaker 06

  Well, this.

• 1:39:41Steven Rinella?

  It's sense of space, right?

• 1:39:45Speaker 06

  This goes back to Charles Darwin, fitness, you know, the survival of the fittest. And, and wolves are on the chopping block every day, every generation. Dogs, we feed them.

• 1:39:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Speaker 06

  We take care of them. They're not on the chopping block. So I think she's probably right.

• 1:40:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:03Speaker 06

  About that.

• 1:40:04Steven Rinella?

  You remember the Unabomber?

• 1:40:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I remember the, the story, yeah.

• 1:40:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. In his manifesto,

• 1:40:14Steven Rinella?

  when he's trying to talk about what happened to society, like when the Unabomber is griping about where society went wrong. He's like, survival.

• 1:40:25Steven Rinella?

  You, he grades, okay, he, he, he, he has this scoring system. It's like a zero to five or a one to five scoring system for difficulty.

• 1:40:33Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:33Steven Rinella?

  Difficulty of a task.

• 1:40:37Steven Rinella?

  A one, like level one difficulty, I think is how he lays it out, is that if you try your absolutely hardest, you have a slight chance of success.

• 1:40:53Steven Rinella?

  Up to, you don't even need to try at all and you'll succeed. Okay. His gripe with technology is that

• 1:41:04Steven Rinella?

  human existence has become a five. You don't need to do shit. You don't need to try at all. You're gonna survive. And that's where all of our neuroses come from. We have nothing to focus on, right?

• 1:41:19Steven Rinella?

  It's just, it's all this, like staying alive is just bullshit. It's like it just happens. So that's why we have all these psychological, emotional issues. Cause our main thing has been taken away from us.

• 1:41:29Speaker 06

  Well, Smiggle, um, he did have some problems.

• 1:41:34Steven Rinella?

  He had a five. He encountered a five.

• 1:41:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Steven Rinella?

  But domestic dogs are in it. Humans and domestic dogs share our thing.

• 1:41:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Steven Rinella?

  You don't need to try at all. You'll be fine.

• 1:41:47Speaker 06

  That's domestication.

• 1:41:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like us, them.

• 1:41:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Steven Rinella?

  Right? And you're right, a wolf, man, that's, that sucker, they're living their lives in the two. Well, if you try really, really hard, you have a reasonable chance of success is where they're, where they're at. You know, and it probably does drive a level of intelligence, man.

• 1:42:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. What the, you know, I think the, the, in recent times, you know, when they're looking at how far back was it before we domesticated or became symbiotic with wolves?

• 1:42:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:22Speaker 06

  Probably 10, 15,000 years ago.

• 1:42:24Steven Rinella?

  That was our first domestic.

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  Right. And one of the best. And for a lot of different reasons, because they did help us, you know, they could smell, they could bay a moose up, they could find the seal hole on the ice, you know, a lot of these.

• 1:42:38Steven Rinella?

  You hear as well, that's a good point, is the early warning system.

• 1:42:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:42:44Steven Rinella?

  Like imagine how much better you sleep knowing that anything comes near here, those dogs are gonna go nuts.

• 1:42:49Speaker 06

  But it's over that period of time that we've kind of bred out the, uh, the intense nervousness that, uh, that wolves have. And, and there was, uh, somebody up in Central um, had caught a, uh, a wolf and brought it into their dog yard. How they did it, I don't know, but, uh, it seemed that that would be a really fraught thing to try. And, and they bred her with dogs and the progeny, the first, uh,

• 1:43:21Speaker 06

  The first uh um group of pups that she had um couldn't be handled.

• 1:43:30Speaker 06

  They weren't they you couldn't turn them into a sled dog.

• 1:43:33Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:43:33Speaker 06

  Right? Even though they were half dog and half wolf. And then they would breed those and they had got the uh quarter wolves, right? Off of the the pup, you know?

• 1:43:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:46Speaker 06

  And and this guy Fred, he had one of those quarter wolf pups. He called it Strider. And uh.

• 1:43:53Steven Rinella?

  Was he a Tolkien fan?

• 1:43:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, all of us were.

• 1:43:57Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:43:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. We named mountains.

• 1:44:00Steven Rinella?

  Cause you guys had, because you guys had the books.

• 1:44:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. We were, we were all.

• 1:44:06Steven Rinella?

  Why were you guys all Tolkien fans?

• 1:44:07Speaker 06

  I don't know. It was, it was that time of of uh of the world, I guess. I don't know. But but yeah, we got, I mean, it was uh Tom Bombadil was this guy that used to paint the, this uh had a big garden that had the, you know, the ends of his logs were painted red and various.

• 1:44:27Steven Rinella?

  Someone needs to do, just real quick on this subject. This is like a sociological experiment. When I was in high school, there's a, I had a teacher, a beloved, beloved man that that kind of in in some ways. Um, his name was Bob Heaton. When I tell my story of how I became a writer.

• 1:44:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Steven Rinella?

  Um, it's, it's him. He he's a major point in that narrative.

• 1:44:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:51Steven Rinella?

  The the first point. He's the first point.

• 1:44:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Steven Rinella?

  In that narrative. He had a class you could take in high school called Modern Mythology. All you did is read Lord of the Rings.

• 1:45:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Steven Rinella?

  It was a whole damn class.

• 1:45:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Steven Rinella?

  You read Lord of the Rings.

• 1:45:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:05Steven Rinella?

  And he taught it. But um I wonder if you could go and do a thing about

• 1:45:12Steven Rinella?

  Lord of the Rings people.

• 1:45:15Steven Rinella?

  What their sort of moral perspective is, their work ethic and all that.

• 1:45:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Steven Rinella?

  And compare them to Harry Potter people. Like, are they tougher? Like, what? You know what I mean? Like, Harry Potter spun off. What kind of person did that spin off?

• 1:45:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:30Steven Rinella?

  And what kind of person did Lord of the Rings spin off?

• 1:45:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my kids, my younger boy, anyway, read Harry Potter and loved it. I haven't read him.

• 1:45:40Steven Rinella?

  Is he tougher than you?

• 1:45:41Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:45:42Steven Rinella?

  He is?

• 1:45:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:43Steven Rinella?

  You're lying.

• 1:45:44Speaker 06

  No, I'm not. But, but, uh, he works out. He works out.

• 1:45:50Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that kind of tough? I'm not talking about that kind of tough.

• 1:45:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:52Steven Rinella?

  I'm talking about like grr.

• 1:45:53Speaker 06

  No, he's, he's tough that way, too. But, but, uh,

• 1:45:59Speaker 06

  I want to go back a step, though.

• 1:46:01Steven Rinella?

  Sure, no, I got off on this whole Lord of the Rings thing.

• 1:46:05Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech, because that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off, and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy.

• 1:46:49Steven Rinella?

  At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.

• 1:47:14Steven Rinella?

  Listen, we're all trying to save up for something. I got buddies saving up to buy their new house. I got people eyeing a new boat. I know buddies that are trying to switch out trucks and get an upgrade in their truck, whatever. People are always saving up for stuff. In reality, though, we see that it can be hard to actually save money. But that's what's great about the One Pay app. It makes saving money easy. First, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending. You choose categories, okay, like Walmart, gas, or dining, and then get rewarded when you spend in those categories. So you're rewarded for what you're already buying. And with high-yield savings, your money keeps growing.

• 1:47:56Steven Rinella?

  Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 1:48:03Speaker 07

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 1:48:19Steven Rinella?

  Why did I bring it up? Oh, because his dog was Strider.

• 1:48:21Speaker 06

  His dog was Strider. So Strider was, was super nervous about everything. And he would, if he was inside the cabin with Fred and his other dog, I forget what her name was. But, but he would know that there was something going on outside way before anybody else, you know. And if there were neighbors came in, if we went to visit and he didn't have it on a chain, he couldn't catch it. It would go around in the, in the shadows of the woods. You'd see him, but he wouldn't come to Fred or anybody, right?

• 1:48:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And his whole life, his parents' lives were captivity, his life was captivity, but he still had that caginess.

• 1:49:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. He didn't lose it. And, and dogs lost it over 10,000 years, right? I mean, the selective breeding of those that don't bite, that don't run away, that, you know. Are are are nice, are are friendly to people, whatever. And and one time, this guy, you're trapped there, reminds me of this time. Uh, there's this guy Charlie, Charlie Edwards, he was, uh, he was up at Shade Creek, a little ways down. Eight or nine miles down from Eagle, right? And he used to set a bear trap. Um, cause the bears would come off of this McCann Hill and and Hilliard. Uh, up Shade Creek, where his cabin was at the mouth. And there was two little streams that came by and he would set a bear trap.

• 1:49:46Speaker 06

  At that spot every spring and sometimes get two or three bears.

• 1:49:51Steven Rinella?

  He just had one little pinch point where he knew a bear was gonna put his foot.

• 1:49:54Speaker 06

  And one time he caught him, he caught a wolf. It was a, it was a female wolf.

• 1:50:00Steven Rinella?

  Can you explain the pinch point again? Like, he's putting it where?

• 1:50:02Speaker 06

  So, so there's this.

• 1:50:03Steven Rinella?

  Is it a bait set or is it a blind set?

• 1:50:05Speaker 06

  There's this bluff along the river and Shade Creek comes out about a quarter mile in. Two forks of Shade Creek come together and there's a ridge that comes down right at it.

• 1:50:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm with you.

• 1:50:16Speaker 06

  He would set it right there where those two streams came together.

• 1:50:18Steven Rinella?

  It's a trail set?

• 1:50:19Speaker 06

  It's a trail set. Well, it wasn't a trail set, it was a baited set.

• 1:50:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's okay. I'm with you. I understand. I understand.

• 1:50:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. So he had this, he had this big trap there. And this wolf got caught and it was a female and he, he, Charlie was, he's kind of spiritual, you know, and had all these visions of. You know, moose giving themselves to us or whatever, you know?

• 1:50:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:50:44Speaker 06

  And and so he thinks, this, this wolf is sitting there. Looking off in one direction. And its foot is in the trap and he comes walking up. Its ears move, but it, it doesn't, it doesn't turn or growl or do anything. It's just sitting there. Freaking out, I'm sure. And he decides he's going to, that he's got some connection with this wolf and he's gonna. Try to capture it and take it back to his place, right?

• 1:51:15Steven Rinella?

  To keep it.

• 1:51:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, to to breed it with his dogs. He's thinking he might do that. And so he sits down to some, somehow commune with this wolf.

• 1:51:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:27Speaker 06

  In back where he doesn't think that the wolf can get to him, right? Cause its leg is out that way, head's out that way. And he sits there for a little while and then he reaches out and touches it on, on the flank. Bam, that wolf goes grabs him right by the hand and looks at him right in his eyes. And sort of, it didn't crunch it the way it could have. But he bit, he put some pressure on it a couple of different times. Looking at him right in the eye and then let him go.

• 1:52:03Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:52:04Speaker 06

  He thought, he thought he was gone and the wolf could have killed him. Could have caught, could have killed him right there. Didn't let him loose. So he's got some teeth marks, but he didn't crush his hand, even though he could have.

• 1:52:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Speaker 06

  And, and, uh, and he was, he was just about, he was just totally, totally wiped out at that point. He rolled away. He didn't feel he could shoot the wolf, but there's no way to let it go. Can't let it go. You know, it's not like you could just say, hey, wait a minute.

• 1:52:34Steven Rinella?

  You could have yourself really bit then.

• 1:52:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so he, he realized he had to kill it and he walked back to his place though, and calmed down before he went back up. Um, but you can't, you can't get close enough to ever try to, to let it go.

• 1:52:49Steven Rinella?

  What was his takeaway from that?

• 1:52:52Speaker 06

  Well, it didn't dissuade him of, of, you know, his, his spirituality type, you know.

• 1:53:01Steven Rinella?

  Did he keep that trap set?

• 1:53:03Speaker 06

  I don't know if he kept that trap set. He, he had it set on the river one time when he moved down river from there. And, uh, and we ran our dogs right past it and they didn't, none of them went to it. But, but we were pissed off that he had it set in a place that we would have our dogs. He goes, I'd kill a dog, you know, break their, break their foot. But, uh, you know, those big, big bear traps, but anyway. Yeah. So, so wolves, wolves and dogs actually have really strong, uh, bites because they've got a cranial ridge. You know? And so your, your jaw muscles have more leverage.

• 1:53:43Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:53:44Speaker 06

  Uh, than say a bear. They got a smooth sick, smooth the top of the skull.

• 1:53:49Steven Rinella?

  I never thought about that. Yeah.

• 1:53:50Speaker 06

  And, and their jaws are not near as tough.

• 1:53:53Steven Rinella?

  That cranial ridge on a skull that ties into bite strength? I didn't know that.

• 1:53:58Speaker 06

  Yep, yep, exactly. And, and our dogs killed a number of black bears over the years when they would catch them where there wasn't trees.

• 1:54:10Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:10Speaker 06

  Cause if they couldn't get up a tree, they couldn't defend themselves.

• 1:54:13Steven Rinella?

  And the dogs be able to take them down?

• 1:54:15Speaker 06

  Take them down and kill them.

• 1:54:16Steven Rinella?

  Did you have a lot of dogs get killed doing that?

• 1:54:18Speaker 06

  None, none of them even got hurt.

• 1:54:21Steven Rinella?

  It's that easy for them?

• 1:54:22Speaker 06

  It's that easy. And I think that, I think that any wolf pack would kill bears anytime they see them. Maybe because of size, they might shy away from some, you know, like grizzlies. But I think, I think that they, wolves are the reason that black bears don't occur up on the North Slope or Seward Peninsula where it doesn't have trees, Yukon Delta, Alaska Peninsula, none of those places really have, have enough trees for black bears to go up.

• 1:54:54Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:54:55Speaker 06

  And I think that wolves would kill them anytime they come across them. Cause our dogs did and they didn't have trouble killing them. One time, first time that happened, I was with Little John and we tried to get the dogs to back off so we could kill the bear. Cause what bears do is they lay on their back. When, once they're, once the dogs grab them, they lay on their back and they try to, to swipe at them with their claws and stuff. And, and they try to bite too, but the dogs don't seem to get hurt at all by it.

• 1:55:27Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:28Speaker 06

  And they kind of turn them to, to burger, bloodshot, uh, pretty quickly.

• 1:55:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, how, how, like if you did an autopsy on a bear that your dogs killed, what would the autopsy say?

• 1:55:40Speaker 06

  Well, they just got, they got bite marks all over and their, and their chest and their neck.

• 1:55:46Steven Rinella?

  But they never think to like, they don't know enough to like crush the throat or something. They don't, they're not strategic.

• 1:55:51Speaker 06

  No, they're, they, they would, you know, bite the inside of the back legs and the belly. When we would open them up, they'd be all bloodshot. It was a.

• 1:56:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but it just doesn't seem like that would add up enough.

• 1:56:06Speaker 06

  Well, they did it with black bears, um, three times that I remember.

• 1:56:11Steven Rinella?

  I wonder if like the stress is also real bad.

• 1:56:15Speaker 06

  Oh, I imagine it's enormous.

• 1:56:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like also. Leads to mortality.

• 1:56:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. They killed one grizzly.

• 1:56:24Steven Rinella?

  Your dogs killed a grizzly?

• 1:56:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:56:25Steven Rinella?

  And that grizzly didn't get any of the dogs killed?

• 1:56:27Speaker 06

  Uh-uh. I, I think that it was a, it was a young grizzly and um, I think what happened is it broke its back. It, it flopped on its back on a rock as it was up in the Sheep Mountains. And uh, and we saw the dogs chasing this bear over the uh, over a little ridge. And when we got up to the top, they were all just laying around next to it and it was dead.

• 1:56:50Steven Rinella?

  These dogs are real menace, man.

• 1:56:53Speaker 06

  They're, in body, they're, they're wolves.

• 1:56:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:57Speaker 06

  Right? In mind, they're not, but, but in body, they are. And of course, they, they behaved kinda like a pack when they would encounter something.

• 1:57:06Steven Rinella?

  They're bold.

• 1:57:06Speaker 06

  They were bold. Yeah.

• 1:57:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. What do you, what's like, what's kinda the biggest lesson you took away from um?

• 1:57:17Steven Rinella?

  Like what's the biggest life lesson you took away from living in the bush?

• 1:57:23Speaker 06

  Oh, God.

• 1:57:24Steven Rinella?

  Like something you realized about people, you know?

• 1:57:30Speaker 06

  Biggest life lesson?

• 1:57:32Steven Rinella?

  Um, or like a valuable lesson, you know, whatever?

• 1:57:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:35Steven Rinella?

  I don't know what the hell, never seen a valuable lesson and a life lesson is, but like, what's something you carried with you from it?

• 1:57:40Speaker 06

  I don't know. I, I, I guess I always um, in doing that, I realized I can, I can do anything.

• 1:57:48Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:57:48Speaker 06

  You know, I can, I can persevere. I can uh, navigate whatever comes up.

• 1:57:56Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:57:59Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't really know, but it was uh, you know, there, I look at, for example, I look at the folks clustered, you know, homeless folks um, in town and I think, if it were me, I'd be out the road.

• 1:58:15Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:15Speaker 06

  I'd be out on the river because I can make a living there.

• 1:58:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:19Speaker 06

  In town, it's a lot harder. But uh, I don't know, just thinking, I mean, I, I realize there's a lot of different reasons that people might be homeless, but, and, and I wouldn't degrade that at all, but, but for me, I really think, you know, being out on the country is a.

• 1:58:39Speaker 06

  It's a neat place.

• 1:58:40Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:41Speaker 06

  And there's ways to go about feeding yourself there.

• 1:58:45Steven Rinella?

  What did you see? You had to have encountered guys in that time. You had encountered guys that were gonna go do it, but just didn't work. Like it wasn't gonna work.

• 1:58:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:58Steven Rinella?

  Did you have? Would you be able to gauge when you met somebody? Would you be able to gauge?

• 1:59:05Steven Rinella?

  Off your own intuition?

• 1:59:08Steven Rinella?

  You have what it takes, you don't have what it takes?

• 1:59:12Steven Rinella?

  Like, would you know someone was headed for trouble?

• 1:59:16Speaker 06

  I don't know that I would. Um, at least not right away.

• 1:59:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21Speaker 06

  You know? After you get to know somebody, you realize, you know, these guys, they they need their motors, you know? And and be able to move places really fast. And and that's not something that we did. We.

• 1:59:35Speaker 06

  We didn't. So so by having motors, you need a lot of money.

• 1:59:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:59:39Speaker 06

  Right? I mean, it's just the way it works. Snow machine or a a big boat to go up and down the Yukon.

• 1:59:49Speaker 06

  And that's a lot of money is really not to be had out in the woods. At least it it certainly wasn't for for us. Even if you have a Goodyear trap and you're not gonna buy a snow machine and spend it on that.

• 2:00:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:00:03Speaker 06

  You know?

• 2:00:04Steven Rinella?

  So you would view reliance on motors at that time, reliance on motors was a deficit?

• 2:00:11Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, I felt it was. I mean, I didn't wanna go to get the job. You know, there were a lot of people that went and worked up on the pipeline. You know, when that was happening back in that period of time. And and it was good wages and everything, but they that's where they lived.

• 2:00:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:00:25Speaker 06

  You know, they were.

• 2:00:27Steven Rinella?

  And you were never you were never drawn to that.

• 2:00:29Speaker 06

  I wasn't.

• 2:00:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Were you running into guys at that time? Were there guys coming out of Vietnam? Coming, coming home and going into the bush. Were you encountering that?

• 2:00:42Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:00:44Speaker 06

  I think out, there were to, to the, to the communities there like Eagle and, and Circle.

• 2:00:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:00:52Speaker 06

  You know, Tannenaw and.

• 2:00:54Steven Rinella?

  Like returning veterans were going into those communities to live, but you weren't seeing them off, living off the land out in the bush.

• 2:00:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't know if you. There, there definitely was that happening. I don't know whether it was a movement or state, but it was, there were some people that were ex-Vietnam.

• 2:01:13Steven Rinella?

  Your circle of guys. What was the commonality, if you had to think of one, in your circle of folks? And you're, when you say, because you often use the term we, we would do this, we would do that.

• 2:01:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:01:25Steven Rinella?

  In your circle of folks, what were they, what was pushing them? What was pulling them? What was pushing them? Where were they coming from?

• 2:01:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. You, you know, a lot of it was just back to the land type. You know, adventure, going out and trapping, living in the woods.

• 2:01:45Speaker 06

  I think they liked what I did, which was the ability to go out and, and get my own food. And I, I did a lot of tanning. I sewed my own clothes, the winter clothes, anyway. I tried leather for the summer and it didn't work so well. It just got wet.

• 2:02:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:06Speaker 06

  Because it's always gonna rain at some point, you're gonna walk through bushes and have your leather pants soaking wet.

• 2:02:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't know. I like the idea of, of building things.

• 2:02:23Speaker 06

  What's there?

• 2:02:24Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 2:02:24Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, and being able to feed myself. I mean, there were things that we were buying from town, you know, the rifle, a gill net.

• 2:02:36Speaker 06

  Plastic eventually for the bottom of the, of the toboggan, you know, so it slid better than just straight birch boards, which is what I used for a few years to start with.

• 2:02:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, aluminum canoe, you know? Yeah, there were a lot of things that we brought. We weren't, we weren't in any way like.

• 2:02:58Speaker 06

  You know, uh, uh, previous times with the, the native folks, there's, they, they truly

• 2:03:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:04Speaker 06

  made everything.

• 2:03:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:06Speaker 06

  And, uh, and worked it and it was, uh, was, it was pretty great. So one thing that happened when I was down in Chivak, I mentioned Chivak, I think when Karen was teaching, we had gone out to there on the Yukon Delta, right? And, uh, and I remember one time when I was going downstream, I had fixed this old double end canoe. It was a fiberglass canoe and this one, uh, uh, woman there, uh, let me use it because I patched it up for her. And, uh, and I would, would take the tide out from this river and, uh, and hunt ducks and things. And I had a gill net in for some, for some fish. And one time when I was down there, I don't know, 10, 15 miles away from

• 2:03:51Speaker 06

  Chivak, I started coming back in with the tide and this, uh, this old man waves me down. And, uh, I pulled over and, and, uh, wanted a ride. I said, jump in. He had all skin clothes. And he had these, uh, hip boots that were made out of seal skins and sewed with this, uh, grass.

• 2:04:14Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 2:04:15Speaker 06

  In the thread. It was, it was, uh, it was, it was, uh, some sort of sinew.

• 2:04:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:21Speaker 06

  Um, thread, but they would put in a, a blade of grass with it. And that would, my understanding was that that would swell when it got wet and help to

• 2:04:31Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:04:31Speaker 06

  seal it. Yeah. It was outrageous. And he just sat there with his feet in the, in the water, just like me with my rubber hip boots.

• 2:04:40Steven Rinella?

  Guy had you out badass.

• 2:04:42Speaker 06

  Totally, totally. Yeah. No, it was great. It was cool to see. And so, I mean, we did that sort of stuff with the, with the, you know, tanning hides and, and, uh, sewing clothes with them and, and various things, but not like that.

• 2:04:57Steven Rinella?

  You know, when I was talking in the beginning of the show, I was talking about these American history things we're doing. One on Daniel Boone and the long hunters, then the mountain, the mountain men like Jim Bridger, and then the buffalo hide hunters.

• 2:05:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:05:11Steven Rinella?

  So it's funny because those buffalo hide hunters are a hundred years before you were living in the bush. Like they were, that sort of peak hide hunt was 1874.

• 2:05:22Steven Rinella?

  And you were around, you know, century later. But one of the observations we have in that Hyde Hunters piece we got coming out is that the long hunters, the Boone and the long hunters, Jim Bridger and the mountain men, those guys lived off the land. Okay, they could produce their own clothes, source their own food. It was the part of the whole plan, right? That you like a part of the whole mountain man plan is that you're going to have to source your food there. It was baked into the system. Boone, they'd source their own clothes, their own shoes, everything. In a pinch, um, they could make gunpowder. Okay. The Hyde Hunters by 18, by, by 1870,

• 2:06:08Steven Rinella?

  the Hyde Hunters were, they were the, these first, this first breed of market hunter.

• 2:06:16Steven Rinella?

  That they didn't live off the land. They had wagons. They carried bacon. They carried flour. They ate enormous amounts of buffalo meat, but they didn't make clothes. Like they, they, these were guys that would write letters and order shit. Right? And it's, and so it's like, uh, they, they look, they would, if you saw them, they would look like gunfighters in their attire. Right? They were no, at that point, 1870, they're no longer living off the land. You feeding yourself.

• 2:06:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:06:50Steven Rinella?

  Some, but you're not responsible for all that anymore. Maybe that's why they're more effective killers. There's no time, like they lived in tents, man.

• 2:07:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:07:02Steven Rinella?

  They had, they had access to canvas tents. They had wagons. Um, they had to reload ammo, but they wore cotton, they wore wool, they wore linen. Um, didn't make tools, just bought tools. Carried extras of everything, you know, that was a century before your time, though.

• 2:07:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:07:20Steven Rinella?

  So the fact that a century later, you were still doing what you did is remarkable.

• 2:07:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, and and you couldn't really do it in in lower forty eight, me, you sort of could.

• 2:07:28Steven Rinella?

  You'd be laying in jail.

• 2:07:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, you'd get chased away eventually. There were people in the mountains in northern New Mexico who would live in some of the caves and and do gardens and things, but they were the the forests, as I understand it, would go and chase them away every few years so that they didn't have the adverse possession thing. In Alaska, the adverse possession was, um, uh, they made it so that it it it didn't apply because it was such huge land masses that, um, they couldn't afford to keep track of them all.

• 2:08:02Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:08:03Speaker 06

  And, uh, so it never was an issue and we didn't, we didn't own property either out there, you know. Some, some, I mean, it was in that transition period, you know, and, you know, the the native claim settlement had gone on and there were, there were, um, you know, a lot of the time was, uh, well, some of the time was before Anilka, but even then, you know, nobody knew what land would become what, um, ownership.

• 2:08:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 2:08:35Speaker 06

  For for quite a while.

• 2:08:37Steven Rinella?

  There's places you can still make a pretty good go of it.

• 2:08:40Speaker 06

  You could.

• 2:08:41Steven Rinella?

  Cause, uh, you got all the non game squirrel, porcupine, stuff like that, very long waterfall seasons.

• 2:08:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:08:48Steven Rinella?

  Like you, you know, you extended camping periods, like this place is in a canoe just rod and reel, you're not gonna be on that, but like there's places you could make a go of it for sure, if someone had the audacity.

• 2:09:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. It'd be easy in the summer and easy if you moved, uh, pretty regular.

• 2:09:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:08Speaker 06

  There's nothing stopping you from doing that, but.

• 2:09:13Speaker 06

  There's a few private land holdings that somebody could pick up and then make a go of it. You know, so that you couldn't get, you could build something that was.

• 2:09:22Steven Rinella?

  And no one can run you off.

• 2:09:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, man, I got a get, but man, I'm so glad you came back. I had a lot of these questions I needed to clarify.

• 2:09:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. We didn't get to fish, though.

• 2:09:34Steven Rinella?

  I know. It's next time. Next time you come out, we're gonna just talk about fish research.

• 2:09:38Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:09:40Steven Rinella?

  Like, just to titillate people ahead of time. I'm gonna tell them how you can tell what's, uh, well, the whole thing with salmon sharks and salmon.

• 2:09:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:48Steven Rinella?

  That's interesting. What do they do? We're gonna do the fish episode next. It'll be a three-part.

• 2:09:54Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:09:55Steven Rinella?

  And next time, we're not gonna do any recap on John the Baptist.

• 2:09:58Speaker 06

  There you go.

• 2:09:59Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna dive right into fish.

• 2:10:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:01Steven Rinella?

  Fish research. Because, just to, just to remind folks, in, in preparation for Randy's next visit, when he quit the bush,

• 2:10:13Steven Rinella?

  you became like a full-on fish researcher, a fish biologist.

• 2:10:19Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 2:10:20Steven Rinella?

  Your second life.

• 2:10:21Speaker 06

  I know.

• 2:10:23Speaker 06

  And that's been really rewarding, too.

• 2:10:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:26Steven Rinella?

  All right, next time. I'm serious.

• 2:10:29Speaker 06

  All right.

• 2:10:30Steven Rinella?

  Next time's the fish episode, the final episode, the fish episode. It'll be like, how many, how many installments are there in Lord of the Rings? Three?

• 2:10:37Speaker 06

  Well, there's The Hobbit.

• 2:10:39Steven Rinella?

  And I don't count The Salmarillion.

• 2:10:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:42Steven Rinella?

  Not counting The Hobbit. It's a three-pack. It's a three-pack. Or we'll go back in time and hit The Hobbit later.

• 2:10:48Speaker 06

  One last thing on, uh,

• 2:10:50Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 2:10:50Speaker 06

  On the Lord of the Rings.

• 2:10:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:52Speaker 06

  So when we were, when we were living out, it was, there was a, a time when we, we felt like we were the good guys, you know, we were, we were, uh,

• 2:11:00Steven Rinella?

  The fellowship.

• 2:11:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were, we were, we were fine, right? And then we started reading these, uh, these, uh, passages in Lord of the Rings, you know, with, with, uh, what was it? The, uh, the orcs or something with, with these areas where there're just all these dead bones from things that they'd eaten. And we start looking around and we go, well, that, that looks more like us than anything else. But it was true, you know, because you can't get rid of the bones. They're always gonna be there. Dogs chew them.

• 2:11:30Steven Rinella?

  And, um,

• 2:11:30Speaker 06

  They're there.

• 2:11:31Steven Rinella?

  That's a part about, uh, that's a part about Death and the Barrens?

• 2:11:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:37Steven Rinella?

  As they're dying, they get to digging out all their old bones.

• 2:11:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:41Steven Rinella?

  And trying to boil them and all that and that left more trouble for them.

• 2:11:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:45Steven Rinella?

  You know what I did after reading that book? Cause I was curious about it. I took some rawhide and boiled it and ate it.

• 2:11:49Speaker 06

  Did you?

• 2:11:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:50Speaker 06

  Hair and all?

• 2:11:51Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. I just boiled the rawhide. I boiled it, boiled it, boiled it till it turned into like a gelatin.

• 2:11:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:58Steven Rinella?

  I didn't eat enough to clog my, uh, you know, I didn't have to have the missus doing enema on me.

• 2:12:02Speaker 06

  She might say, hell no.

• 2:12:04Steven Rinella?

  I ate a couple.

• 2:12:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:06Steven Rinella?

  Couple strips just to see. It kinda had a like, uh, it had like a noodley, like a very gelatinous noodley quality to it. Um, but I didn't eat enough to, to die or anything, you know? As evidenced by my presence.

• 2:12:20Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 2:12:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:22Steven Rinella?

  All right, dude, I gotta run.

• 2:12:23Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:12:24Steven Rinella?

  All right. Next time, Fish.

• 2:12:25Speaker 06

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:12:26Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Thank you, man.

• 2:12:54Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there. You're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out. American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. Timeout in the field is not free. Okay, every time you go out in the woods, there's a trade off happening.

• 2:13:39Steven Rinella?

  Like you leave work early, you miss your kid's game, whatever. You forego some family gathering. If that applies to you, what you gotta do is you gotta learn how to spend the right time out in the woods, the right time in the tree. An OnX Hunt's deer movement forecast tells you when deer are most likely to be on their feet based on real conditions. So you're not missing the kid's game or burning paid time off on a day that's not going to produce. The deer movement forecast means missing fewer of the moments that matter, whether in the stand or back at home. Try it today in OnX Hunt. In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education.

• 2:14:24Steven Rinella?

  If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.

• 2:14:43Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.