Ep. 880: Janis' Manitoba Caribou | 12 in '26

Janis Putelis gives behind-the-scenes details and answers viewer questions about his “12 in '26” rifle and archery caribou hunts in Manitoba. Watch the film now on MeatEater's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbPY9PibTi8 Connect with 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, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAaa0mleeU128Ad5iM1RFIg, and YouTube Clips https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterClips Subscribe to MeatEater Podcast Network on 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

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:50Speaker 03

  We don't know if they've never seen a human, but there's definitely plenty of caribou out here in this landscape that haven't seen humans.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  It's kind of what makes caribou hunting fun, right? It's like you get to hunt unpressured animals. There's no whitetail buck ever that would do this. No. No. Oh, there's probably not an elk in the lower 48 that would do this either. No.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  I hadn't even seen that clip yet. That was beautiful. Mm hmm. Trailer, whatever that was. All right, welcome to the 12 and 26 podcast. This is a companion show to our 12 and 26 hunting fish films coming out this year. Hopefully you've already seen my Manitoba Bear Hunt and Clay and Bears Alaskan Bear Hunt. And Utah Mountain Lion. Utah Mountain Lion with Clay, where they tree a bunch of mountain lions. Um.

• 3:12Speaker 04

  Today, I'm joined by Corey Calkins. Calkins. I always forget when I read it. I know it's Calkins. Yes, it is. And Phil the engineer to answer your questions about my combined rifle and archery caribou hunt. Thank you to everyone who wrote in or posted questions on YouTube and social media. To give us something to work off here. The great Corinne Schneider is also in the house. Although she says she's gonna not say anything. We'll see what happens. Corinne, you need to weigh in if there's something that really is pressing. You have a question about something.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  Well, now there's no avoiding it.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Phil, I sent you a message late last night to have a question too, so that you're more of a part of it.

• 3:54Speaker 05

  Oh, that was very kind of you, but um

• 3:56Speaker 04

  You didn't have a chance to watch.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  I didn't have a chance to watch it at 10 o'clock PM and then

• 4:00Speaker 04

  You didn't get up at four this morning to watch it?

• 4:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Son of a gun.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  All right, right off the bat, I want to clarify something that Steve has been giving me shit about. Not just me, gives the whole world shit about this. I told him I was taking my bow and my rifle on this trip and he assumed I'd be bow hunting while carrying my rifle as a backup. In case I couldn't get the job done with my archery equipment. Not the case. My plan was always to rifle hunt first, get some meat hanging. And then focus on killing one with the bow. That way, you know, you do what I wouldn't have that, you know, hanging in the back of my mind as I'm trying to bow hunt being like, oh. I should just like quit this and get my rifle out and shoot one of these things at 200 yards.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Um, I brought up with Steve yesterday in the regular podcast and even, even though I explained to him my new thinking, it was still wasn't enough for him. Although I don't think he actually, in the moment yesterday, he like, thought through what I presented to him. Um, but we'll give him, we'll give him some, a while, maybe he'll come around to it. Uh, yeah. So anyway, I was in Manitoba with Samong Yang of Samong Outdoors and Craig McCarthy of North Mountain Adventures. And we had a great time.

• 5:19Speaker 06

  Well, the video clip we opened up with there, and if you're only listening, go to their YouTube channel and watch this podcast. It gives us a minor glimpse of how wild and pristine that part of the world looked. Uh, you also described how the area is largely untouched by people. How did this factor of virgin caribou set the grounds for the kind of hunt you'd have?

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Um,

• 5:45Speaker 04

  yeah, I don't know if I exactly understand your question there, Corey. I did want to touch on though, in that opening bit, how we're talking about how like, a whitetail deer would never do this, or an elk, bull elk would never do this. What had happened is that we were like, this was after Samong had shot his bull with the, or shot that bull with the arrow. And then like, we're standing around, you know, doing our thing. And then literally like a half an hour later, and more caribou just across the pond, like just start walking and feeding by. And they're like, looking over at us, like they can see us, we're not hiding, but they're just like going about their business, you know?

• 6:22Speaker 06

  Acting pretty tame.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  To, yeah, totally. We're just like unpressured animals.

• 6:25Speaker 06

  Unpressured.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  I later found out, well, while we were there, that there, this place isn't quite as unpressured, maybe as some of the places that we've hunted in Alaska. That, Alaska is a little bit more remote because I think there's more mountains that are harder to get across with different, you know, whatever types of, um, You know, vehicles. So we've always done fly-in hunts. And it's just like, it's rough enough country where you can't snowmobile into it. You can't whatever. In Manitoba, Northern Manitoba, the, um, the, the locals, the indigenous have like special tags, right? That they can hunt these caribou herds, pretty much all winter from I understood.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  So, once the snow comes, like they hunt them on snowmobile. So they're definitely a little more pressured. What we realized too with these caribou, we were hunting them mostly on foot. One time we got in a boat. And when they hear an engine on a, on a lake, they're out.

• 7:25Speaker 06

  Really?

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. They know what that means. They like hear that little skiff engine coming. And they know that there's hunters coming that are probably gonna make loud noises.

• 7:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it reminds me of that snowmobile engine too.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe, but like, if you think about it, that's how you access this caribou country. You land on a lake. You drive around a boat on a lake. And for a lot of people that don't have the physical capability just to hike, you know, 10 miles a day on tundra. Like the way to get close to a caribou is gonna be to see one that's like getting pinched by a lake somehow. And then, you know, motorboat over there, pop out of the boat and then hopefully get a shot.

• 8:01Speaker 06

  Cool.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  Um, but yeah, I wanted to do this hunt because when we were down there for our la- a year ago when I was down there, uh, black bear hunting, Craig was talking about possibly getting into caribou hunting and he had this camp that he wanted to check out. He had never been to. And he was looking for like a group of guys that would sort of do an exploratory trip. And as soon as I heard exploratory trip, I'm like, man, I'm all over that. Like that sounds like a good time. Going into the unknown.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  You know, I mean, stuff's always unknown for me, going to someplace the first time. But when everybody there is on kind of the never seen this place before program, it just makes it more fun.

• 8:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, more wild.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  More adventure.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  That's cool. Well, our first, uh, submitted question comes from at Hunter Shut.

• 8:49Speaker 06

  He asked, did you see any bears and where there's supposed to be any in the area? He gave it a Google search and learned that that far north in Manitoba has polar, black and grizzly bears.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 9:00Speaker 06

  Did you see any bears?

• 9:01Speaker 04

  We didn't see a single bear. Um, but uh, the pilots that we talked to were like, oh yeah, sometimes we just instead of going straight down to Churchill, we'll fly over to the coast of Hudson Bay and then fly south and it adds like, you know, 30 minutes to the fly or whatever. And they're like, it's nothing to see, you know, two, three, half dozen polar bears walking around.

• 9:23Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  So like, we're far enough away from the water that we're probably not gonna see a polar bear, but had we seen one, no one's gonna be like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. They'd be like, sure. They, they come through there.

• 9:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  So yeah, they're around. When we put, I posted a video on my Instagram of when we closed up that shack. Um, you literally cover the place in boards that have nails screwed or hammered all the way through them. Like you basically just take a piece of plywood, fill it full of nails that are sticking out the far side, and then put it on the windows, on the deck, like anywhere a bear could try to like pry something to get through. Like you literally cover it in, in, you know, like you fortify, it's good to make it into a fortress. And a lot of people commented like, oh, you guys are just leaving too much food in there, the stink of, you know, food.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  It's like, you're in there, living in there, you're, you're cooking in there, you can't get rid of that smell. I don't care if you had a whole 55 gallon drum of baking soda, it's not gonna get rid of all the human smell.

• 10:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  And bears are curious, they're gonna wanna get in there. When you're in that kind of remote place, the same thing happens in all remote places where bears are. Like you have to protect your buildings because they will just shred them, you know? And they'll get inside and then just make a giant mess.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. Like you said, beyond just the smell of food and caribou meat and blood, that they're just curious. They love to get into stuff.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I think that's the, yeah, I mean, that's just a, a super small fact. Factor of like while they're getting in there would be like the dead meat smell around there.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  Yep. Uh, all right, next topic. A lot of folks asked about how to plan their own caribou hunt. Uh, if you need to apply for tags as a non-Canadian, do you need to use a guide or an outfitter, etc. Uh, I won't read the individual questions, but can you address the tag system for caribou in Canada? Uh, and can you do it yourself or do you need a guide as a non-resident?

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've only hunted, um, trying to think now, hunted B.C. And I personally haven't hunted. It was when Steve hunted and Cal hunted and I was just there. As part of the crew and then I've hunted Manitoba twice now. And I believe that across Canada, there is no DIY option. Like you're gonna, as a non-resident, for residents, sure, have at it. But as a non-resident, you're gonna have to go through an outfitter. And basically the outfitters have like these zones, concessions, they call them. And they're allotted so many tags in their concession. And then they can do what they want with them and sell them to whoever.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  There is a limit though, like for, for, let's just say Craig had, I don't know, 50 caribou tags for that concession up there. Even though he has 50. If you, it's just you and I for the entire season and we paid him as much money as he needed to be happy. You and I couldn't each kill 25. We're still limited by the government to two.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  Gotcha.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Um, Craig, uh, this year is charging, uh, sorry, if you're gonna book, it'd be next year. So it's gonna be $14,000, uh, for one caribou and $2,500 if you want to shoot a second one. I honestly don't think, it worked out good for us because we again wanted to get some meat. And then we wanted to have fun bow hunting, but like, I really don't feel like you need to go on this trip thinking you need to kill two animals. I think caribou hunting is kinda sometimes had that.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I don't know, just like you know you're gonna hopefully go see a bunch of animals and like you hate to like kill one the first day and then you don't have anything else to hunt for the rest of the time you're there. But like honestly, now that I've done it a bunch, like one tag is plenty.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  Really?

• 13:13Speaker 04

  It's like if you, yeah, sure, if you are trigger happy, you're just gonna have to really control yourself or have a good wingman that can be like, nope, it's not the one you want to shoot Cory, there's bigger ones out there, let's wait, you know? Um, but anyways, uh, yeah, so if you're gonna do it in Canada, you're gonna have to go through an outfitter, find them. These prices are definitely still, uh, well, it's cheaper for a guided hunt, I still, I think in Canada than in Alaska for a guided caribou hunt. But in Alaska, you can still do DIY, because caribou is one of the species that in Alaska you don't have to have a guide for. And so, you know, I'm guessing if you just go with a transporter, you know, you could probably still do a caribou hunt for

• 13:57Speaker 04

  five to eight DIY style, you know, counting everything. Um, obviously you'd have to buy a tag in Alaska, but if you're gonna do Canada, like you just gotta book with the outfitter, he's gonna, they're, he or she, they're gonna have the tags for you covered.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, make it more streamlined, more enjoyable too, going with an outfitter.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, it just depends on what you wanna do.

• 14:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  You know, I think for, there are a lot of us that, like, the reason I did that with Craig is because, one, you had to, but like it sounded like a good, it sounded like an adventure, you know? Had he been like, oh yeah, I also had this caribou hunt that I've been doing for 10 years, we go to this lake, you're gonna catch a bunch of fish, and it kinda told me what's gonna happen, maybe I wouldn't be so interested. You know?

• 14:44Speaker 06

  True.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Um, but I think a lot of people like the, you know, the possibility of going on a DIY adventure because it just does add adventure. You know, you don't know the outcome. Where when you go outfitted, I don't wanna say you're guaranteed, but you know.

• 14:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, get to look at a brochure and see the terrain and potentially the animals. Yep, both sides.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  Less unknown.

• 15:05Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  It was interesting watching you guys spot caribou, which didn't seem too difficult to find caribou.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 15:14Speaker 06

  Then to watch you guys strategize how to stalk and close the distance in that terrain, in the tundra, and decide when and if it was worth pursuing those caribou you saw. Uh, here's a clip from Phil. There's some caribou right over there. Right to the left of that.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I see her.

• 15:31Speaker 06

  There's a whole herd.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

• 15:39Speaker 06

  Man, that's the longest it's ever taken me to spot an animal. Thirty seconds.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you can see, we're looking at caribou in the distance, you can, every direction we look, or the camera looks, you can see there's water around. And so, you can, you can never really walk in a straight line to the animals that you're seeing. Um, and I think this is, this is just what we were calling day zero.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  It was like a 400 incher, I'd say let's go, but I mean, we had to like swim a couple of lakes to get to them.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Well, I think we can go right through the middle here. To get around it. But don't you think, I mean, that's like an hour. Yeah. Bus trek, I think, right? Probably.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  We hadn't, um, well, we're still watching. Craig and I are debating how far we want to walk here. Does this one keep going for a while, Phil?

• 16:31Speaker 05

  No, it's over.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Alright.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  So yeah, like, there, tundra comes in many different forms. This one didn't have the dreaded tussocks that can be so, um, just, uh, tiring.

• 16:46Speaker 06

  That the spongy bottom?

• 16:48Speaker 04

  No, it's, the tussock is, the best way I heard someone describe it, it's like taking a, like a three quarters inflated volleyball, tethering it to the ground, and you grow some grass on top of it. And they're just perfectly spaced where you're like, you can never decide if you're gonna step on top of it and possibly have it move a little bit, or step between them. And it's just, it just wears your butt out. Like, we'd once, we're on a hunt with Steve and Brent. And we were going to another, we were just going to another glass knob that was in the distance, just because we want to see some new country. And we got halfway there on the tussocks and the whole crew was like mutiny, we just quit. We said we're going back to

• 17:30Speaker 04

  our original one because no one wanted just to do tussocks for the next hour or whatever it was, you know?

• 17:35Speaker 06

  And what boots are you wearing? Are you in like muck boots most of the time?

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Well, um, it just depends on how wet it is.

• 17:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  I brought both on this trip.

• 17:44Speaker 06

  It looked like I saw a lot of muck boots.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I ended up wearing the hiking boots more.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Um, because again, this stuff, when we first were looking at it, I thought, man, it's going to take a long time to cover the country. It didn't end up being quite so bad. So we actually ended up some of that stuff that originally we thought might be too far for like, you know, a poke, didn't end up being that bad. But we were easily going like two miles one direction, like for a stalk. Um, it's tricky. It's also pretty flat out there. And so you're always just trying to find some sort of terrain undulation, you know, to get between you and the animals to, you know, to hide you so you can close the distance.

• 18:26Speaker 06

  And you mentioned all the water. You guys had a boat, but the water was probably not all connected.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 18:32Speaker 06

  So you had to pick a route around it.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Now, the one I ended up killing with my bow, that one, it was close enough to our lake that it made sense to get in the boat, motor up to the end of the lake and then get out and stalk from there.

• 18:46Speaker 06

  Nice. Made for an easier pack out, too.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 06

  Here's more of that strategizing on the spot and stalk from Samong's rifle hunt. It also seems like you guys really have been seeing tons of caribou at this point.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  The caribou race is on.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Maybe if we get along that shoreline, we'll get some cover.

• 19:20Speaker 06

  So this is still day zero, you're calling it, right?

• 19:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, day zero.

• 19:24Speaker 06

  For stock.

• 19:24Speaker 07

  I saw another one that was still quite a ways.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  And what happens often with caribou is that like from the knob you're sitting on at first, you can't see them all.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  You think you can, but the little folds and creases just hide animals. And so you start moving towards one group and then like a different group pops up, which is what these are. So we're like, you know, just running into other caribou.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, these younger animals that haven't been on the landscape as long, they maybe haven't seen people. And so a lot of times when they see you, especially when you just duck down and kind of get low, they're like, oh, what's that?

• 20:04Speaker 06

  Kind of curious.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  And actually come towards you.

• 20:05Speaker 06

  Really?

• 20:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, they're coming this way.

• 20:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, whenever, whenever you can.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  I think we can cover off on some of the gear questions too. Uh, a bunch of people asked about the binoculars. I was using the Sig Zulu 6 is the image stabilized, which for hunts like these.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  When you don't need to know exactly, like you're not counting inches. You just need to know if it's like a bull or a cow, or if it's a caribou or a rock. Um, it's hard to, hard to beat those.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  Now, how close were you guys able to get on Samong's caribou?

• 20:53Speaker 04

  Man, it's, it wasn't far, couple hundred yards.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  Beautiful.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember I kept, he was dialing, he was using my rifle and I kept having to retell the distance and he kept having to back it down. Um, the bipod, a lot of people asked about too. That's the MDT triple pull, which is, it's kind of a mega bipod. You've used one too, I'm sure.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  I've shot off one, yep.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, it's great for what I would consider like front country or country where I really know that there's not going to be. Anywhere to get prone because the brush is going to be too too thick and tall, you know, and there's not going to be other things to lay on to just give you the, you know, a prone position or anything else to rest on. And like Tundra is classic, like just brush country, right? And so having a super tall bipod like that, it allows you to, you know, shoot from anywhere and you're getting a really stable position, you know, you can shoot from your knees, you can shoot from your butt. I mean, and obviously if you want, you can get low enough to shoot prone too with that bipod, but it's heavy.

• 22:03Speaker 06

  They're stout.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  And I'm not going to carry it in a backpack overnight, but like with my kids on a front country hunt, I'm always carrying that thing.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 06

  Good stability.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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• 25:10Speaker 04

  As you can see there too, Samong's first caribou meant a lot to him. I was happy for him and I was excited about him cooking a Mong meal for us. In all the years of MeatEater shows and books, we never cooked stomach or tripe. And we finally did it in Manitoba and it was great. Here's another clip.

• 25:30Speaker 06

  Oh, with that though, yes, I do need to keep the stomach. So gut him out you would, but I'll, once you get the stomach out.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Oh shit, man. He's going next level. Craig was like, wait, what? The stomach?

• 25:42Speaker 06

  You said traditional, so I'm like, that's the most traditional thing I know.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  Samong hadn't told us what he was gonna make.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  Okay, nice surprise. More generic than you might think. It's a stew, but when it comes to this stuff, it's your stew, but you just. Throw the stomach lining into it. Try. I'll clean the stomach and we just only eat the stomach. We're not going to eat the stomach contents. Yeah. Normally, if you want to, like you would pack the stomach, you'd pack liver, you would basically take this whole thing. Yeah. You would just obviously dump the contents. Yeah. Now, normally, I would try to keep the stomachs organized. I'm assuming a caribou is like a deer where they have four stomachs.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  If you're just listening, Samong's over the gut pile explaining this to Craig.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  They have four different stomachs. Four, yeah. So, if you really want to be technical about it, you separate all four stomachs. To me, a stomach is a stomach. I don't really care, they taste the same, I don't know the difference. Yeah. So with this one, because I'm only taking just a little bit just for us to eat. Yeah. I'm basically just going to start here, just somewhere here, so that I don't take anything else. Then I'm just going to take a little bit of a lining. So this one's already coming off pretty easy. I use a completely different knife for this situation, which is why I'm using mine and I'm not letting you use yours. Right. So basically, this is it. You would take this stomach, and I've never done it with caribou, so I'm actually curious to see how this goes. Now, you would just take this and just wipe off as much as you can, but you can see how this caribou's stomach is really, really soft.

• 27:05Speaker 06

  I just did that and it comes off. With a deer and elk, it's a little bit more hardy. Yeah. So, clean this out, rinse it out. Yeah. And then when you boil it, you boil it by itself, just pure water. And this top membrane right here will just peel off. Right. And then you have the white, actual like stripe in the bottom. Right. And then once you clean that, wash it again, then you can just throw in your soup. Throw it in your soup? Throw in your soup. That's it.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Samong's now rinsing the stomach lining in the lake. And then he just dropped it into a pot of boiling water. Now he's prepping some vegetables for the actual soup.

• 27:52Speaker 06

  And did I hear he rinses and repeats numerous times?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, with the boiling part.

• 27:57Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  You, yeah, you're boiling the green kind of out of it and then replacing the water and going again.

• 28:06Speaker 06

  Quite a process.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  I don't think it really took that long.

• 28:09Speaker 06

  No, okay.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:13Speaker 06

  Looks like mushrooms.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  Man, it looks, it looks different, but honestly, it's, it's like flavorless. All it is is like a, it's just a texture. This is like a weird, you know, texture.

• 28:25Speaker 06

  It looks just like morel mushrooms.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely does have a morel mushroom look to it.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  So do I rice it with the tripe or just eat the tripe? Yep, everything in one bite.

• 28:38Speaker 06

  I'm a fan. This is good.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, it just tastes like the, uh, it tastes like the bone broth.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  It's just the texture, really.

• 28:47Speaker 06

  That's what it is. I mean, it literally is just broth. It's just, a lot of times, the flavor will favor whatever meat you're throwing in there. That's what we call it, deer stew, elk stew, whatever it is, because that usually drives the actual flavor of the broth. Meat's hard to come by in Laos way back then and even today.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 29:05Speaker 06

  And so if you kill an animal, when you're trying to feed a village, or in this case, your seven kids, which was very common to have multiple kids back then,

• 29:14Speaker 06

  one piece of steak isn't going to feed a whole village or a whole family. So the best way to distribute the amount of quantity of food that you might have is just stew.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Okay, a couple of questions came in around the flavor of caribou. Like, somebody asked if it tasted, Manitoba caribou tastes different than Alaskan caribou. I don't think so. They all eat lichen. So they taste the same as far as I know. Um, I don't have that, uh, I guess discerning or a, uh, high level palate.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  Caribou meat is extremely lean. Everybody's like, oh, well, deer's lean. This is even leaner. Like they'll say out there, to survive the winter, you can't just have caribou meat. You have to have the salmon to have the fat. You'll die. Um, so yeah, super lean. I don't know. Very, very venison like. I don't know if it has, if there was a lineup of, you know, elk, deer and caribou backstraps. I don't know if I could really pick them out. This on flavor. I'd pick them out more on chewiness. Cause I always think the elk are more chewy than the other ones.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Um, clarification too. Uh, Samong said four stomachs. The stomach actually has, it's one stomach with four sacks in it. You know, like four compartments that sort of do the business of, um, of, uh,

• 30:43Speaker 04

  what's the word, Corinne?

• 30:46Speaker 04

  Digestion. Thanks.

• 30:49Speaker 06

  Like all ruminants?

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. And Corey asks, how was the tongue? No boil. Uh, it was great.

• 30:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, looked good.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Just like Randy Brown said. So we had him on, which I think are some great episodes. Although I feel like Steve missed a whole bunch of questions when we had him back. I wish I'd been in there for that.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  Need him on again.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  About living in the bush in Alaska. Great episodes. But he told us that like caribou tongue was a real delicacy and like you could eat it immediately. Like no, uh, slow and low prep needed for it. And so we gave it a shot, like just washed it basically, sliced it up. I don't know, half inch. I maybe could have done the slices a little bit thinner. But again, I didn't mind it. And then we just fried them up in a pan with some butter. It was good.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Did you peel?

• 31:36Speaker 04

  No, no, no peeling.

• 31:38Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Just ate it all up. It just wasn't like, and it must have something to do with their diet, right? That they're just eating the lichen and they don't have to, they're not like browsing as much as moose or, or elk, I guess.

• 31:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  Elk don't really browse with deer and maybe that's why it makes it the whole thing more tender, but, no, it was good. I would do the same thing again.

• 32:00Speaker 06

  Well, good work. Tongue to stomach, eat it in all. Why not? Let's see, we're gonna show some of the footage from Yanni's rifle stock. It almost looks too easy. Real quick though, someone wants to know, what about your rifle and the caliber setup that you guys were using?

• 32:18Speaker 04

  That was the Sig Cross that had a proof barrel on it, which is kinda custom. I got it done super short. I think it's like a 18 incher. Um, cuz I like to run the suppressor on it. And we can't, we couldn't use suppressors in Canada, so I had to just have the brake on it.

• 32:34Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  But uh, the caliber was 6.5 PRC. Um, and yeah, it was great for this, you know? I was expecting a longer shot, but I ended up getting a shot so close, I was wishing I had my bow with me at the moment.

• 32:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, let's see that clip, Phil.

• 32:53Speaker 07

  They're walking literally towards us. Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we're packing out Samong's bow on our backs right now, going back towards camp. And all of a sudden, these bulls just show up and they're, like, we got the wind in our face and they're coming at us. And I was kinda almost like, eh, let's just like, let him be, let's go back to camp and we'll, you know, deal with Samong's meat, we'll reassess. And then I started looking at the bulls, I'm like, oh, a couple of them are pretty nice, you know? And then I thought, yeah, if I get one killed now, I get more time with my bow, so.

• 33:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, we got in ahead of them.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  And it's funny too, man, like, these guys are, seem just oblivious to us. Again, it's not just the three of us, there's two camera guys there too. And we're not like, super well hidden, we kinda get into this like sparse cops of uh, evergreens. And there's some bushes around. Um, but like, compared to some of the other caribou that we ran into later in the week, that would like, you know, at 200 yards, see us and be boogying, these guys just were like, no care in the world, like, not.

• 34:06Speaker 06

  Walking towards you.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  Not, not, yeah, like, the whole time, I'm wish, I'm like, I wish I had my bow, wish I had my bow.

• 34:12Speaker 06

  Cuz how close is this?

• 34:13Speaker 04

  Oh, like, right now, they're maybe 80, 90, and uh, like, I think I shoot him at like, I shoot him at bow range. I forget what it was, it was like 40 yards or something.

• 34:23Speaker 06

  That's incredible.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Maybe 50 yards.

• 34:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, look at him.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  And you can see, I shoot a hard horned one. Samong shot one that still had his velvet on his antlers. And part of that group of bulls also still had velvet antlers.

• 34:42Speaker 07

  Are you kidding me?

• 34:43Speaker 04

  The uh, the velvet, some people just get a real kick out of velvet antlers. For whatever reason, I don't find them sexy, appealing at all. Um, we've, all the caribou hunts I've ever been on, if they had velvet on them, we would peel it. It's hard to uh, preserve it in the field. Like if you want it, you know, for your mount at home, you gotta like, take real good care of it. Uh, and if it's early in the hunt, it's gonna be warm, the flies get to it and they start laying eggs in it. You end up with maggots in the velvet and it's gonna just be a mess.

• 35:19Speaker 06

  And it looked like you were late enough into here, what, were you there in August?

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Uh, I think it was September.

• 35:24Speaker 06

  September, that they were about to lose their velvet anyway. Obviously that one you shot had already rubbed his off.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Both the ones I shot were hard horned. So yeah, they were just like, they were in the process of it.

• 35:34Speaker 06

  Bound to come off soon, anyway.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  Um, I think the bigger ones had maybe do it a little bit earlier, cause it seemed like the smaller, younger bulls had more velvet, so.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Well, you mentioned in that clip that that was a first for you to shoot an animal while packing out another one.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, have you ever done that?

• 35:50Speaker 06

  Twice.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  Antelope hunting.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  Oh, I could see with an antelope.

• 35:56Speaker 06

  Shot a buck and was, had it on my backpack and was walking out and I had a doe tag with me. Shot a doe really close to the truck, which was great. Opening day, you know, they're all running around like crazy. And then another time was uh, just on a cow hunt on a ranch I used to work at. Shot the cow, was actually just dragging it down to the truck. And more elk came over and a buddy was able to fill his elk tag, so.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  So what happened?

• 36:18Speaker 06

  Wasn't quite packing it out, but dragging it out. Yeah, it happens. Rare though. Yeah, pretty cool.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  We, we again, I'm not gonna like, try to uh, you know, hide it. Like, we have five people there. And so, if it's only two of you, you might be like, eh, let's not shoot one because we still gotta deal with this first animal.

• 36:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  And then gonna have to, you know, pack the other one out. But with five people, it's like, pretty easy to, you know, to pack out two carib- bear, caribou. They're not giant, huge animals, you know?

• 36:48Speaker 06

  Like how, how heavy was all the meat and antlers, would you say?

• 36:51Speaker 04

  I, I think very similar to a mule deer.

• 36:53Speaker 06

  A mule deer?

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a mature mule deer. Like, you know, you know, 10 to 20% bigger than a whitetail buck. They're just, it's, I don't know what it is about a caribou, but even when you're glassing them and you've seen them on the hoof, they look huge. And I don't know if it's like the, like the crazy coloration of them compared to like our deer, or if it's their, their antlers are obviously a lot bigger. But when you kill one, you walk up to it, it's a little bit like, oh.

• 37:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  They're not that big, you know? Oh, I don't know.

• 37:25Speaker 06

  Where are we at here on this script?

• 37:27Speaker 04

  Uh, let's see.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  Talked about velvet.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Life on the island drive said, uh, wanted to know first sighting in the wild, do they look bigger or smaller than you expected? It's kind of what I was just talking about. It's like when you see them, they look huge and you walk up to them when they're dead and they're not quite as big. I mean, the antlers are big.

• 37:47Speaker 06

  They are.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  But the, the body itself, like I said, is not, it's like maybe calf elk.

• 37:53Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  You know? Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Like you're gonna probably yield, I don't know, 50, 60 pounds, 70 max off a big old giant bull.

• 38:06Speaker 06

  And you talked about velvet.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 06

  Mitchell Horner asked, how come the velvet was cleaned off when back at camp? Did you guys clean it off at camp or out in the field? Just strip it off?

• 38:16Speaker 04

  Camp.

• 38:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, the next day. Yeah, it comes off super easy.

• 38:20Speaker 06

  Really?

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 06

  It peels off?

• 38:22Speaker 04

  And the thing is, that's why I don't like shooting them in velvet, because if you're gonna peel it off, it doesn't have that cool coloration that a hard antlered one does.

• 38:29Speaker 06

  Is it real bleach white under there?

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's kind of like, it's like bloody and bleach white, you know? And you kind of, you want to make it look brown, you gotta kind of do it yourself and it never looks quite right.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  And so, um, I much prefer one that's, uh, you know, rubbed his blood with, you know, the stains of bushes and dirt and all that and just, I don't know, looks way cooler.

• 38:54Speaker 06

  Let's see, moving on, Graham underscore McCutcheon asks if you can explain how to properly age a caribou and how old were the caribou you and Samong harvested?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  No idea. I guess you'd have to send a, on the hoof, aging them?

• 39:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  No idea. You could send a jawbone in, I'm sure, to some biologist in Canada and they'd tell you how old it is. But Samong's is definitely on the younger side. You know, I'd probably guess it was no more than, you know, two or three years old and, I don't know, just guessing, mine might have been a couple of years older than that.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  I noticed in the video that mostly bulls that were, made the film, did you see many cows and calves wandering around too?

• 39:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. But, you know, they aren't as sexy, so the editor, you know, doesn't want, doesn't put them in as much.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  The cinematographers did some, did a beautiful job out there with you. Okay, so you both killed caribou with your rifle, then you turned your focus to hunting with a bow. You got your legs under you with more lay of the land and how the caribou around there were behaving, but now you have a harder hunt in front of you in terms of getting within bow range and trying to find enough cover in that open country. Play the clip, Phil.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  We have this group of bulls that were bedded. As we got closer, they all started getting up and feeding around. We don't have a lot of cover, so we decided to get into this ban of tree that kind of goes right directly towards them. But it ends probably about 100 to 150 yards to where the caribou are. They're not really in a spot where we can make any immediate play on them. So kind of just going with what they're giving us.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Yep, not a lot of cover. Um, you know, I've learned with any of these animals, when you're bow hunting and you're just trying to get in tight.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  Or you're shotgun hunting a turkey or whatever, you just like patience pays so well because eventually, like if you're looking at a situation and it's not in your favor, don't push it. You just, it's just, sure, you might pull it off. But hopefully you have time and you can just be patient and let the animal move into a position that is way more favorable for you to, you know, get in, get in tied on.

• 41:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree. Odds of letting nature do its thing and the animal potentially getting close to you are probably higher than you pushing it, bumping the animal, never see again.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Just like stay in the vicinity, you know, shadow them, watch them. And then next thing you know, there's just like the perfect little hill and all you can see is the top of his antlers and, you know, you just literally walk right over to the hill and at the end you gotta crawl maybe 10 or 20 yards and you're within range. As opposed to just trying to belly crawl across some hundred yard open expanse. It's just like probably not gonna work, you know?

• 42:00Speaker 06

  Take it away, Yanni.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Oh, what's our next one?

• 42:05Speaker 06

  Running into the caribou much closer than you thought.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 42:08Speaker 06

  You had to back up to make sure bulls wouldn't see or smell you.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 42:12Speaker 06

  And then Samong dove in for his opportunity.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, again, with caribou, man, you just can't, you never know which direction they're going. You think they're all kinda moving south and then they're all kinda moving north, south. And they're just all over the place. And so you're just kinda in the zone until it just like works out. And Samong was up first and so he kinda was ahead of us. And we actually ended up like mirroring him and then kinda coming back together right when he was actually like getting into it. And what happened is that these bulls sort of fed and got pushed up against this lake. And I don't, and one was bedded when we finally got to him. So I don't know if they were there because the lake had maybe reprieved from the mosquitoes.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Cause it was like a little wind blowing across it. Hard, hard to say. Maybe they were just there to get some water. But that edge, you know, and having some woods nearby allowed Samong to get within bow range pretty easily.

• 43:11Speaker 06

  Cool. Well, here's a clip of Samong's archery stock.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Yep, Samong's.

• 43:32Speaker 06

  Hats off to Max and Eli for capturing.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  That's a nice shot, isn't it?

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Beautiful. I mean, the foliage helps, but man, they just nailed it.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  Samong just drew on his knees and he stands up. He's got the perfect cover. Both bulls have their heads down. He takes the shot. I think he said it was 40-45.

• 43:50Speaker 06

  Runs right at him.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Runs at him and then into this shallow lake. And then out the other side.

• 43:58Speaker 06

  Just did a big loop.

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Blood pouring down the side. At least it looks it. Swimming through the water.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 44:11Speaker 06

  And he gets out and looks pretty unscathed at that point, other than the hole in the side of his.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, then he's running.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is, uh, you know, we can talk a lot about, about what happens here. You know, Samong decides.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  It's like a bunch of blood, but especially when you see that shot right there. You're like, oh my God, his side is, both sides are literally painted. I think a lot of that, the reason that it got so painted, the water helped with that, right? It sort of lubricated the fur, lubricated the side. Like, I don't know what it would have looked like had that not happened, but I don't think it quite would have been that dramatic. Um, but it's very clear to see anybody that's, you know, hunted long enough and shot animals' bows or rifles. Like knows that that shot there, it does not kill animals.

• 45:14Speaker 06

  Call it the no zone.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  The no zone. Yeah, I often used to think, I thought for a long time that it was actually this thing called the void where like you're between the spine and the spine and the lungs, which is not a thing. I now believe.

• 45:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  It's not a thing. The, the, the, the body does not work that way. There is no room in there. But what there is, above the spine is a whole bunch of a thing called the backstrap and the loin and meat and fat and fur. And I think a lot of people that think they hit the void actually probably ran it through, you know, the hump on the backstrap. And uh, so yes, Samong chooses because he drew blood to, to basically notch his tag. Um, Craig tells him that, yeah, that's actually, it wasn't Craig's rule, but a lot of outfitters in Mont- in Manitoba, and I think a lot of outfitters in general will have that rule. That like, if you draw blood, that's, you know, your tag, your hunt's over.

• 46:10Speaker 06

  Yep. Really makes you think about your shot just a little more.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, hopefully. I mean, I think that would be the goal that like, you know, make sure you're gonna get it done when you take the shot.

• 46:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Um, but a couple of things to address. I think in the YouTube comments, and I feel like this, it gets a little arm cherry here with the, with these comments. That people are like, telling, telling you what you should have done afterwards. And like I said, like the shot itself, that one in particular, did not kill that animal. Like I'm a hundred percent sure of it. Those animals will take wounds like that from the tines of other animals. You know, it could get jumped on by a wolf and the, the teeth of a wolf could, you know, make a, a wound like that.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  It's just, it's not a vital hit, you know, you're not like, and, and that's like a classic, when you're, as an elk hunting guide, you too, you know, for a, a dozen years I did it. It's like a classic muscle hit. And it doesn't matter if it's in the backstrap or like straight in the shoulder and you don't get the penetration to get into the vitals. Or it could be in the rear ham. It's like the first hundred yards, maybe 200 yards, you're like, hell yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Like, nice blood trail. And then the next thing you know, it just starts going less and less and less. And then it's pin drops and then it just disappears because it's like, it'd be no different than if it happened to you. Like you could like gash your, your forearm right now and then start running towards downtown. And for the first couple hundred yards, it's gonna be pretty easy to follow you, but eventually it's gonna coagulate. Start drying up and I'm not gonna be able to track your blood anymore.

• 47:50Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  And you're not gonna die from that wound. But the first hundred yards, I'd be like, holy shit, Cory's going down.

• 47:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  But it's just not gonna happen. Like even if you lost a couple pints of blood. I don't think it's like, you're not gonna go down.

• 48:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  Um. People ask too about why didn't we go after it with like a with the rifle it like it honestly didn't cross our minds. We didn't have a rifle with us. Yes, we could have gone back.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  Let me go back to one more thing.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  Before we eventually, because we stand there long enough, we're talking, we're filming, we're discussing the situation. We were at first, we were like, okay, we'll give it a couple hours and then we'll start tracking him. The bull pops up on a distant hillside. You can tell it's him because you can see the dried blood on his side and he's feeding.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  When I saw that, I'm like, he's fine. Like, like one that's gonna die that night, or that you're gonna sneak up to because he's wounded and get another arrow in is not just like chilling and up and feeding anymore, you know? Like, again, that arrow just went through muscle. Like, it's just not, it's like, he's not losing enough blood to die.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  So, yeah, at that point in time, we could have been like, oh yeah, let's go back to camp and get a rifle and we can maybe go refine him and kill him.

• 49:18Speaker 04

  It would have been a thing to do, for sure. Honestly, it just did not cross our minds. Samong was like, not to my tag, I'm done.

• 49:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  That was, that was, that was the end of it. Would have been nothing wrong with going after it and trying to kill it. We may or may not have been able to find it. I don't think we would have found a wounded animal and been able to sort of do like a follow-up shot, you know?

• 49:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, were they migrating through at that point? Like, give it overnight, a day later, and that group could maybe be sticking around, but?

• 49:48Speaker 04

  He could be, but yeah, like, we never saw him again.

• 49:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, you never did.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think we ever saw the same caribou two days in a row. And probably not even from morning to evening. Like, they're just moving that much, you know?

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Um, all right, on to my archery hunt.

• 50:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's see. kegsraj underscore O nine asks, which arrow broadhead did you use? How heavy was it? And similarly, at Hunter J town wants to know what site you were running. So what was your archery setup there?

• 50:21Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, it was the, the ball was the, uh, Matthews lift X. I was running a rip TK O arrow with a 200 grain iron will single bevel with bleeders on it. Total arrow weight's about 500 grains. Um, Kyle Davidson from DCA arrows builds those arrows for me. Um, if you, if you, if you want a really sweet built arrow, I highly can't recommend Kyle enough. Uh, he dials it in specifically to, you know, all of your specs. And, uh, my arrows really fly good every time I get them from him. Uh, the site was a, uh, three pin Matthews bridge lock, uh, UV slider is the model.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Um, it's not made by Matthews, but it's like a collab with, uh, I guess UV is the company.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  Um, but yeah, I usually run pretty simple, just three horizontal pins. Uh, Western and Caribou, something like that. They'll have my pins at 30, 40 and 50. And then when I go into the whitetail woods, I'll, I'll crank them back so that my pins go 20, 30, 40.

• 51:37Steven 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 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 weather tech.com.

• 52:17Steven Rinella?

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• 53:00Speaker 03

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• 53:14Steven Rinella?

  I get sent all kinds of products and snacks, and the truth is, most of them come and go. Every once in a while, though, I find something I keep reaching for, and Wiley Wallaby is one of those things. I first tried it because someone just handed me a bag and said, "This isn't like any other kind of licorice you've had before." And they were right. Wiley Wallaby makes authentic Australian-style licorice that's incredibly soft and chewy. It's not like that weird, tough, waxy, cheap junk you get. And it doesn't have that artificial taste that turns a lot of people away from licorice in the first place. It's one of those products that's hard to explain until you've tasted it yourself. I keep some in my truck, I keep some in my fish shack, I keep some in my camper. They've got more than 10 flavors. And whether you like classic flavors or something a little different,

• 53:58Steven Rinella?

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• 54:24Speaker 04

  A guy said that we're giving Samong a little too much love and that he seemed like a really good guy, but he wounds a lot of animals and makes poor short shot choices. He then normalizes it by saying that it's a part of hunting, in quotes, is a major problem with YouTube hunting influencers and there's a whole generation of hunters growing up thinking it is okay and normal to occasionally lose an animal. Yes, it happens, he says. So I feel like he's sort of,

• 54:51Speaker 04

  um, what's the, what's the word for that? Not dialing back, but he's like saying one thing, but then saying it's okay. Yeah, contradicting himself. Thanks, Corinne. Um, and he says it's too often for hunters like Samong and the portrayal of it is just off, again, in quotes. If a hunter is losing animals as often as Samong does, he needs to take a step back and seriously analyze and make changes, not blow it off consistently with, in quotes, that is part of hunting. Um, I disagree with this person. Um, I think that the reason it seems like Samong is showing more of this, and I've had people say

• 55:31Speaker 04

  the same thing about me watching my videos, it's because we show all of it. I could very easily not show all of my poor shots and the misses and all of that. And you'd go, oh, man, Yanni just kills shit left and right. Man, that guy's a good shot. It's just, it is a part of hunting. No one, nobody out there is perfect. And that's why we're always talking about like, when you're not perfect, what bullet do you want the animal to hit? What arrow and broadhead do you want the animal to hit? When you're not the best that you can be and you didn't make the perfect shot and you hit into the shoulder. That's why I shoot the heavy arrow, right? So hopefully it still does go through the bone and whatever. And again, I think it's because he's

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Like, open enough and humble enough and confident enough to show everything that happens out there, that you get to see the highs and lows. And then to act like only YouTube hunting influencers, yes, is he, do he and I hunt more than the average person? 100%. But I think like, as a percentage of our hunts, I don't think that either one of us are like, losing more animals than, than anybody else. Like, it happens. Like, growing up, like, in deer camp, people wounded deer, every, you know, deer camp, you know, there'd be one or two, probably, I don't know. Um, especially doing drives, which we grew up doing, when you're shooting at running deer.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  Like, yeah, you're always trying to follow up on them and get them, but like, it is a part of hunting. And if you have some unbelievable record, where you're right now in your head saying, "Well, I've been hunting 12 years and I've killed this many animals, I've never lost one," I'm like, "Well, good for you, I applaud you, I think you've had some luck on your side," and like, it's gonna happen to you.

• 57:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh, as an ex-hunting guide, 18 years, like, average eight clients a year, it'll make you sick, the number of wounded animals that.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, both rifle and bow, it's not just an archery thing.

• 57:28Speaker 06

  Yep, 100%.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  It's not just an archery thing.

• 57:31Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  So, um, yeah, I think it is completely normal to occasionally lose an animal. Um, it does happen. And, and again, I think you're just seeing it more, in Samong's case, because, yeah, he does hunt more, and he's like, cool enough to actually show you that, uh, it goes both ways, you know, that he makes mistakes.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  Yep. Hats off to that.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  All right, now we can do my stalk, Phil.

• 58:12Speaker 06

  Right out there. Through here.

• 58:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, which is good because the wind's in your favor.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  Still rocking that lucky Wired to Hunt hat. Hmm. That hunt was good to me, or that hat was good to me last year. Came backwards.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  I went 150 yards from the same two bulls.

• 58:41Speaker 04

  Wanted to. So I'm stalking the same two bulls that I had played cat and mouse with for hours in the morning. And we had bumped them enough times and they kind of ran off that we left them and went back to our cabin. Went up on the glass and knob and then refound them and they were bedded. And we really had nothing better going. So we're like, well, let's go back and give them another shot.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  I could see that one was bedded for sure. I couldn't tell what the other one was doing. And basically I'm just trying to figure out.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  How to get there and.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  It would have been interesting to see, you know, you're never going to know, but there was a little pointed trees. I think that I leave to get into this next clump of trees that they're on the other side of. I probably could have just sat in those trees and I think they maybe would have fed by me just by the way they got up and what they started to do. You never know. Um. This obviously ended up being the right move.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  The one caribou gets up. I think it's the one that I end up putting an arrow into. And I just kind of get into this little clump of trees that they're on the other side of. And the one surprisingly just like comes right at me. And I thought I was going to end up with a frontal shot. And I don't know if he saw me or if it was just like the path through there was too thick, but he decided not to do it and kind of went around me at like. 15, 20 yards and I thought I was going to get a shot in this, that one lane you can see just left to my back there. And.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  I give him the old meh and instead, instead of stopping.

• 1:00:39Speaker 06

  He didn't like that.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Uh uh, like he had stopped, but I had brush and then he takes a step and I and I and he like just trots out into the open a little bit. Luckily, I had one, you can't really see it from the camera's angle, but I had a opening the size of a football and he just happened to stop where I could ju- just see his, you know, lower vitals and um, let him have the shot, so.

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  Timber.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Speaker 06

  You could feel your adrenaline.

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Well, it's like, it had been long, because this was really our last day to hunt and um, the uh, you know, you hunt long enough with the bow that you start to think like, oh, it's never gonna happen, it's never gonna happen, but you just keep pushing on and keep pushing on and then all of a sudden, it's like, all of a sudden, the you, it just gels and the universe is like, here you go, here's a caribou at 25 yards and you know, and it happens and I think like, after four days of trying, you sort of get this like, pent up energy, you know, and so when you finally release that arrow and it's a good shot and the animal tips over, yeah, it's a pretty big flood and it's uh, it's good stuff, man.

• 1:01:54Speaker 06

  Looked like a hell of a shot. He didn't go 20 yards, 30 yards?

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  Something like that. I mean, just enough to trot out there. It actually was, I don't want to say grotesque, but the uh, the footage, we actually cut it a little bit sooner because he trots out there, stops and almost like tips and puts his nose on the ground and when his head comes back up, the amount of blood that comes out of his nostrils and his mouth is like, it looks like gallons. I mean, it's, it's pretty um.

• 1:02:25Speaker 06

  Real.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  Gruesome, real, it's just raw, uh, you know, and it's just like.

• 1:02:30Speaker 06

  YouTube algorithm wouldn't have helped, helped us out.

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't care about that, but it's just like, there's a little bit of respect, you know, for the animal to show too. It's like, do we really need to watch that? I don't, I don't, it's like, you know, made a good shot, ran out there and he, and he died, like, um, yeah. So anyways, uh, yeah, it was sweet. It was like, just what you hope for. It was beautiful lighting, late in the day.

• 1:02:55Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  You know, then you can actually sit back and just enjoy the view, you know, because the, the work is done.

• 1:03:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then how far were you from camp there? You, you had the boat?

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  We had the bow. It was short. It was like half mile to the boat and, and then.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  Beautiful.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, and then, you know, a nice ride back.

• 1:03:12Speaker 06

  Get to pack out every ounce. That's easy.

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, Corinne just dropped in a, a question. He said that a couple of folks criticized me for holding my bow by the string.

• 1:03:21Speaker 06

  They've never bow hunted before.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  I've never, like, I've asked people about that, like, um, Phil Larson, um, who built a bunch of strings for me over the years. I asked him about it. He had no problem with it. I've asked the guys at Matthews, no problem with it.

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I can't imagine with the amount of tension that those strings go through, that you holding it by the string is.

• 1:03:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 05

  Does anything to it.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  Exactly. And actually, when you store a recurve bow, you're actually supposed to store it by hanging it from the string.

• 1:03:51Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Like right over where the, the riser meets the limb. That's sort of like the recommended method of, of storing a recurve.

• 1:03:59Speaker 06

  I know when I'm bushwhacking, I like to hold it by the string. So then my string's not, I know exactly where my string's at. It's not as exposed to get hung up on something, every little stick or twig.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:04:08Speaker 06

  Get hung up on a root.

• 1:04:09Speaker 04

  I mean, you carry them so much that I end up carrying them. A lot of times they're up on my neck.

• 1:04:14Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Sometimes I'm hanging it by the riser, sometimes by the handle and, and all different ways. So, yeah, I mean, we, I just pack that thing around for miles and miles and miles every fall. So anyways.

• 1:04:26Speaker 06

  Speaking of so, the John Fox 007 asks, how many miles do you think you hiked on average?

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  A day, I don't know. Five to 10, somewhere in there. It was like decent hiking, but not like crazy. Like enough that we were tired at the end of the day, you know, crossing that tundra. There's no trails you're, you're hiking on, you know?

• 1:04:49Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  It's kind of half squishy. It's kind of, you know, not great walking.

• 1:04:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 04

  But, uh, yeah, it wasn't mega hiking.

• 1:04:58Speaker 06

  Another question from Austin Bariclo wants to know, what is harder to do archery elk or archery caribou? And what's the difference?

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  Hmm, I would say archery elk hands down would be harder in my opinion.

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  One of the major differences is that the, uh, the, like, the caribou are just less pressured. Even though they have pressure, like I said, we realized that as the week went on and the things that we learned. But they still are not getting the, I think, the average pressure of an average public land bull that I'm hunting. Now, sure, if you're gonna go hunt some really cool ranch that like you used to guide on, then I might say it's maybe half dozen, you know, one to the others.

• 1:05:44Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:05:45Speaker 04

  It's kinda, it might be the same.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  But, uh,

• 1:05:49Speaker 06

  But public land elk.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  I think it comes down to pressure and I just think that like a public land elk is just, you know, it's getting way, way more pressure. And, uh, and the thing too with elk versus caribou, and again, it's not always like this with caribou, but hopefully if you're in the right spot and you get dropped in the right spot, like you're gonna get opportunity after opportunity after opportunity, where with elk, a lot of times you get like an opportunity in hopefully a day, sometimes three days, sometimes five days, you get one shot.

• 1:06:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  You know, like, and I'm not talking about a shot like with, like, where you release an arrow. I'm talking about like a shot to make a stalk to get close. And if you mess that up, it's like they run over the hill and who knows? Maybe they stop on the other side of the mountain, maybe they go two drainages over, you don't know. And you gotta like restart and for caribou restarting meant like go back to the high point, get up top and like find the next bull that you wanna stalk and usually within pretty short order.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  So yeah, I would definitely say that archery elk is harder. The terrain is harder.

• 1:07:00Speaker 06

  Terrain.

• 1:07:00Speaker 04

  You're at altitude, there's definitely more vert involved.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  But yeah, you, you're not getting the amount of opportunities, you know?

• 1:07:08Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  I think caribou is like, I don't say it's perfect for archery hunting, but like.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  If you hit it right, like if everybody ever watched the episode of Meat Eater with Doug Durin and Mark Kenyon, like that was one of the coolest caribou hunts we've ever been on. And I mean, we just were in it and every day was just so many caribou, you know? And everybody, I think, shot their caribou pretty close probably to bow range. Like, I don't think anybody made a shot over 100 yards, you know what I mean?

• 1:07:41Speaker 06

  And in it lining up the migration and just being obviously there with the caribou.

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, and I think that's up to your outfitter or your transporter and where they drop you.

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  And you definitely hear stories of like dudes getting dropped and they don't see a caribou for a week, or they see a calf and a calf in a week's time, right? Like, you wouldn't, you'd hope that the outfitter just didn't take your money and just dropped you somewhere. But I mean, that does happen. So that's why it's always worth like getting some referrals and checking with prior clients and, you know, make sure you're going with the right people. They're gonna do their best to get you ahead or right into the middle of a, of a big wad of them, you know? You know, there's another question, somebody was, a couple of people asked about us not wearing camouflage.

• 1:08:28Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  And how the outfitter was wearing camouflage. Listen, like, we sent Craig, he probably requested what he wanted. We sent him a bunch of first light, you know? You probably sent it to him.

• 1:08:39Speaker 06

  Yep, that's one of my jobs.

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  And he probably, he probably requested the camo.

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  You probably didn't choose it.

• 1:08:44Speaker 06

  No, that was all.

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  And I think Simone got to choose whatever he got to, camo or not. And like, it's, like, for me, camouflage, like, it, it matters a lot in some situations. Turkey hunting, duck hunting, although you see a lot of duck hunters wearing solids now, too.

• 1:09:05Speaker 04

  Like, we were limited on how much we could take. I just didn't feel like it was like gonna give me that much of an edge to be, to be doing camo. Like, I still, I still don't now, like, what gives me an edge is like picking the right place to hide, being in the shadows, not moving.

• 1:09:24Speaker 06

  The wind.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  The camo, yeah, exactly. Camo doesn't help you smell any better, you know, you just got to be a good hunter. And um.

• 1:09:31Speaker 06

  And I'll say you looked extremely broken up. You got a vinyl harness, it's a different color, your backpack straps, everything.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Color blends in to that tundra, real, real nice that I was wearing, so.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't, I don't feel like I, I sort of like was making it any harder on myself by not wearing camouflage.

• 1:09:51Speaker 06

  So Craig didn't give you a hard time then, like some people thought? Like, oh, this is gonna be a long week, you guys. Not bringing camo.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:10:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 04

  No, not at all.

• 1:10:01Speaker 06

  To each their own.

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  Phil, no more questions? Corinne, no more questions? Phil is gonna probably watch this episode at lunchtime now, I imagine. After that little teaser. Um, thank you guys for, uh, listening and watching. Um, hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't watched, uh, now you know kind of all the ins and outs and the, the, the backstory, the behind the scenes a little bit. Um, so you'll have a different, uh, experience watching the episode, but I thought it came out good. Yeah, Max and Eli really, uh, filmed it well. Um, they did a good job capturing the landscape.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was great.

• 1:10:46Speaker 06

  It's amazing.

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  It's, yeah, and we didn't even talk, just now, we didn't even talk about the fishing.

• 1:10:51Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:10:51Speaker 04

  We had some incredible fishing and, uh, I think the fishing was so good that Max and Eli put down their cameras and did some fishing and we, um, for as many pike as we caught, like, we couldn't find a pike that was actually caught on camera. But we had one evening where it glassed out. And we, every little back bay we would go into, like the first cast, top water, you could see the wakes coming.

• 1:11:16Speaker 06

  Little Vs.

• 1:11:17Speaker 04

  As they crashed the top water, uh, whatever you were fishing. It was, it was, it was rad. And like I said in the episode, you can't go to a place like that, that has world-class fishing. It's like not pressured, not pressured, and not do a little bit of fishing. Like, you just have to go out there and go, oh, wow, this is what unpressured fishing's like. Like, it's almost every single cast.

• 1:11:40Speaker 06

  I'd love to go out there just to fish.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. They're into it, too. They do the fly rod thing up there for the pike.

• 1:11:47Speaker 06

  Do they now? It's fun.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, totally. Corinne, anything else I need to plug?

• 1:11:55Steven Rinella?

  That's it. All right. Thanks again for watching and listening. Stay tuned. What's the next 12 and 26 coming up?

• 1:12:02Speaker 06

  I think it has to do with a giant shotgun.

• 1:12:05Steven Rinella?

  Ooh, okay. Stay tuned for a giant shotgun. For those of you that know, you know, it should be, uh, should be exciting, I imagine.

• 1:12:15Speaker 06

  I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:12:16Steven Rinella?

  I'll watch it. See you, bye.

• 1:12:25Steven Rinella?

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• 1:13:53Steven Rinella?

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