Ep. 641: 15 Years of Living Off the Land in Alaska

Steven Rinella https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork talks with Randy Brown https://www.fws.gov/staff-profile/randy-brown, Ryan Callaghan https://www.instagram.com/olcal406/, Janis Putelis https://www.instagram.com/janis_putelis/, Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/, Seth Morris https://www.instagram.com/sethismorris/, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics discussed: When polite texts are potentially hunter harassment; eating deer meat shot with lead; when John McPhee offers you the river water you've been drinking for years; when you're sorta in "Coming Back To The Country"; a different Mike Potts; rendering moose fat; state vs. federal ownership lines for Alaska; when Smeagol takes all of your stuff; always looking at tracks; skin on bone and starved out; making a concerted effort to find a win over a woman; being born and raised by wolves in the Alaska wilderness; and more. Outro song "See You Next Season" by Brandon Gardner @brandon_lee_gardner 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

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 1:29Steven Rinella?

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• 2:42Speaker 02

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• 2:49Speaker 03

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• 2:54Steven Rinella?

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• 3:13Steven Rinella?

  Joined today by Randy Brown from Alaska's Fish and Game Agency. And Randy, I'm gonna, you're gonna, I'm gonna embarrass you a little bit, but not bad. It's in the, in the kind of way you want to be embarrassed, where you hear a bunch of good stuff about yourself.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Not, not where you hear stuff bad about yourself. It's good stuff.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  You do know it's Fish and Wildlife Service.

• 3:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Federal Fish and Wildlife Service.

• 3:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh, because that's where my brother works.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:39Steven Rinella?

  That's why, okay, okay. I'm sorry about that. That was Corinne's problem. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And that, that helps. That, that's a good tea into how, why Randy's here. Randy, my brother Danny, who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has never once in his life made a recommendation of someone that should come on the podcast.

• 4:04Steven Rinella?

  Ever.

• 4:06Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to say he's stingy with respect, but he just like, you know, he, uh, you know, he, he called me and said, you know, who you need to have on this show is Randy Brown. Cause he like in the seventies moved up and lived in the bush in Alaska and lived off the land up in the Yukon and ate like a strict meat diet, raised his kids up there, had all these adventures. Later decided to become a fisheries biologist, got himself educated, is doing all this cutting edge work on, on these kinds of mysterious fish in Alaska.

• 4:42Steven Rinella?

  He's like, that's who you should be talking to.

• 4:45Steven Rinella?

  I had to convince you to do it.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, you did.

• 4:51Steven Rinella?

  So thanks for coming down, man.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  Hey, you bet.

• 4:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I wish we had you here for like three, two shows, cause I'd want to do one show about living in the bush, living off the land in the bush, then want to do another show about fish.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:03Steven Rinella?

  But we're gonna have to condense it.

• 5:06Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Well, I'm amenable to it.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay. We gotta do two quick things, three, a couple of quick things before we get there. One.

• 5:18Steven Rinella?

  Um, man, you weren't here for, we had this guy on about quail. People got mad about that.

• 5:27Steven Rinella?

  So, I don't know if you know about this Randy, but down here, there's like a huge problem with bob white quail, just vanishing across their range.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  I didn't know that.

• 5:36Steven Rinella?

  A host of problems with bob white quail.

• 5:40Steven Rinella?

  So we had a guy in who had developed, um, it's like a dewormer. They have, they have a high parasite loads in some areas, particularly in Texas, they have a high parasite load. So a guy comes in, we call it the episode, what happened to the bob white quail? A guy comes in, he's like, oh, there's all kinds of things that are happening to bob white quail. One of them is a high parasite load. So he gets the first. FDA approved drug for wildlife that is publicly available, meaning any Joe Blow can buy this, this quail feed with a dewarmer in it. Okay. And you can put it out and, and, and try to reduce parasite loads in your quail. And he has found anecdotally and otherwise

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  through research that it's helpful to quail in some areas where they have high parasite loads to deworm them. But man, oh, man, oh, man. The whole world, the whole quail world's very upset that he came on because they're like, it distracts from the main message of habitat. I disagree because he talked about habitat a whole bunch. But anyways, we're going to have another quail, we're going to have a better quail, not a better, we're going to have a different quail person on to explain why it's bad. Among other things, like, it'll be like, what re, that episode will be called, what really happened to the Bob White Quail? And in it, I will press the individual to explain why it's bad to deal with, if there's

• 7:07Steven Rinella?

  a big problem with 10 parts to it, why it's bad to deal with one of those parts.

• 7:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'm guessing that the ratio between the, the size of parts is going to be.

• 7:21Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I'm doing a great job of articulating all of the consternation. Cause yeah, a lot of consternation in the quail world. What was the world before we found was, remember we talked about there was a world, oh, the beekeeping world. Uh, beekeepers get.

• 7:40Speaker 06

  Oh, very, very particular and.

• 7:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 06

  Sensitive.

• 7:44Steven Rinella?

  And this was our first, that was the first time we ever weighed in on the Bob White Quail. So we're going to have a follow-up episode about Bob White Quail and we're going to talk about that Bob White Quail episode. Um, quick question from, from, uh, to, to put to the people in the room. This is from a fellow named Christian.

• 8:02Steven Rinella?

  Um, so he's, check this out. What state's he in? New York. Oh, okay. He's in New York. He gets a, this is a letter. He's thirty-three years old.

• 8:16Steven Rinella?

  Odd that he told us that. He's thirty-three years old and owns thirty acres. Maybe he likes it how, how close his age is to his acreage. It says, "I'm thirty-three years old and own thirty acres," um, with his brother in upstate New York. His father bought the land in the eighties.

• 8:36Steven Rinella?

  He said, here's his letter. Here's his question. Here's his ethical conundrum. "Over the last few years, we've been dealing with a landowner who owns the property next to us who is strongly against hunting."

• 8:48Steven Rinella?

  Now, keep in mind, these guys have owned this place since the eighties, okay? Um, "While we are respectful neighbors and hunt by the book, she harasses us every year." "Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with such an issue?" So, on the day before the opener of New York's gun season, he receives this text. He cleaned out the names because he doesn't want the person to get harassed.

• 9:11Steven Rinella?

  Um, his name and her name, he cleaned the names out. This is in New York State. She texts him on the eve of the opener, of the deer opener. "Good morning. Here we go again, much to my dismay. You are back to kill the deer." Oh, sorry. "You are back to kill the deer I love and for whom I provide a sanctuary that for you becomes a killing field." "It is a nightmare for me." "So before you tell me not to text you again, I'd like to remind you that we share a property boundary." "I encourage the presence of deer, and you can take advantage of this. It is not right."

• 9:50Steven Rinella?

  "And as we still live in a partially civil society, I'm asking you with all civility "to please stay off my land and not take, and not take advantage of the preponderance of deer "that are here because I provide protection and a sanctuary for them."

• 10:08Steven Rinella?

  "Best wishes."

• 10:10Speaker 06

  I'm so curious about what her sanctuary looks like.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  She signed off with best wishes?

• 10:15Steven Rinella?

  And started with good morning and ended with best wishes.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. Pretty civil.

• 10:20Speaker 06

  But he, but, but he's not moving on to her property. He's on his property.

• 10:25Steven Rinella?

  He's not on her property.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  And it seems like she's been doing this kind of thing for a while before you tell me not to text you again.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  Right, yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Um, I think Yanis had the right approach. We talked about it earlier.

• 10:38Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 10:39Speaker 05

  Lay it on us.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Oh, maybe just go pay her a visit with, uh, with a warden on your, on your hip.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Well, she hasn't done anything illegal.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Just have a chat with her. Well, I don't know at what point it becomes hunter harassment.

• 10:53Steven Rinella?

  A text that begins good morning and ends best wishes to a neighboring property is not harassment? She didn't threaten him.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  No, it wouldn't be in there going to like threaten to put her in jail. Just have the warden give, give her a little like education.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  If this is all she's doing is sending texts like this, then Christian should just reply to her and say, hey, we're not going to go on your property. We're going to continue hunting. We do everything by the law, et cetera, and it's over and done.

• 11:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  But if it's a, if there's something more than what we're seeing here, because we're getting just a little snippet of this world, then I would say go and pay her a visit.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  For sure. But I would think at this point, um, I, I feel at this point, it's like no one wants to get that text. But, I mean, she's asking him to do something. He just would reply and say, um,

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Respectfully.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  I mean, Yanis.

• 11:43Steven Rinella?

  I respect you.

• 11:43Speaker 06

  I'm going to hunt my property. Thank you very much.

• 11:45Steven Rinella?

  I respect your, I respect your private property. Um, but I'm gonna use my property, uh, in accordance with the law and I expect that you'll behave in accordance with the law.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:56Steven Rinella?

  And, um, sorry that we don't see eye to eye on this.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  Yanis had a.

• 12:01Steven Rinella?

  And then I'd say, have you seen any big ones?

• 12:03Speaker 03

  It'd make you not want to hunt that border though, because you'd be all worried about a deer running onto her property.

• 12:08Steven Rinella?

  If it runs onto her place, then you're screwed. And he's only got, see, he's, he's only got thirty acres.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:14Steven Rinella?

  So, I mean, not only, that's great. It's more than I got. But, um, Uh, not more than Yanni's got.

• 12:21Speaker 05

  That's a nice chunk for a back east.

• 12:23Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Well, I feel like Yannis has some, uh, experience here that most of us don't with the psychological burden that, uh, overbearing neighbor can put on you.

• 12:33Steven Rinella?

  That's right.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  So, uh, if there is more here, because it does, it just weighs on you. Like, oh, yep. Every shot that goes off, I'm gonna get a text. Every truck that comes up our driveway, I'm gonna get a text. Every, you know, that does suck.

• 12:47Steven Rinella?

  Had that very similar situation around a raccoon.

• 12:53Steven Rinella?

  So he's scarred. That's why he's ready to get, he's ready to get the law. He's ready to throw down.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, if this lady's giving him heartburn, it's like.

• 13:02Steven Rinella?

  Here's another listener question. So that, so, so my official answer, I mean, if anyone, I don't know. It sounds like from around the room. No, Yanni wants to get a game worn and go over there.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:11Steven Rinella?

  Like a preemptive. He wants to do a preemptive strike.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  I like it.

• 13:18Steven Rinella?

  Yanni proposes a preemptive strike. I propose, uh, I propose saying, uh, sorry, we don't see eye to eye. I'm gonna.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  I can see just doing nothing also.

• 13:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Just go on with your life like it never happened.

• 13:32Steven Rinella?

  Justifiable to do nothing.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Definitely justifiable to do nothing. Um, yeah, that's totally fair. Here's another question. Listener question.

• 13:46Steven Rinella?

  We got talking recently about pre-chewing, uh, deer meat to give to your kids. Like when our kids, all of our kids, when they turned, like, pretty much the day they were nine months old, I would chew up deer meat and give it to them. Just as like a thing, like to, like a symbolic gesture. And then they would start eating meat at that point. I don't know what they say nowadays. This stuff always changes, but a decade ago, you're supposed to give them meat at nine months, or they could chew up meat at nine months.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Randy, does that apply when you're living out in the bush in Alaska?

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Well, I'll tell you what, what we did is take, uh, moose ribs that had been boiled up so nice and soft. And I'd give it to the kids and they would chew on it, just like the dogs chew on it.

• 14:24Steven Rinella?

  At what age?

• 14:25Speaker 05

  No meat.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, there's some meat.

• 14:27Speaker 05

  Some meat.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Not a bunch.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:29Steven Rinella?

  But you, you know roughly what age?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Well, they were still riding in a backpack for me.

• 14:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  I, I took them around with a, a jerry pack.

• 14:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  You know, and they loved it. I had two hands to work with and they had, uh, they got to look at everything.

• 14:44Steven Rinella?

  Sit back there gnawing on ribs?

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  And if they dropped them, the dogs would take them.

• 14:52Steven Rinella?

  So this guy's wondering, he just shot a deer.

• 14:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay, he's a new father, so he had his first kid, shot his first deer. With lead ammunition and now he's wondering if, if it's okay to have his kid and his wife eat it.

• 15:10Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's worried about the lead. Come on. Like, no. First off, when you cut it, just cut around the wound mark. Cut around the wound. And then go satisfy your curiosity that, that, that when people look at lead levels, there's not any evidence that, that hunters that eat a lot of deer meat have elevated levels of lead. There's also a lot of things about inert lead and lead that's like in shot form, but just cut around it.

• 15:41Steven Rinella?

  I mean, pause, if you go and buy, what makes you think the stuff you're buying is so like

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 15:46Steven Rinella?

  Different. I mean, okay, I don't want to feed them that, but we're gonna eat ocean, uh, big ocean fish.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  I think, man, if it's really weighing on him, just make the switch to copper bullets or tungsten shot for small game, whatever, like

• 16:00Steven Rinella?

  Sure, that's the other solution.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Bugging you that much.

• 16:04Steven Rinella?

  But I would cut around it and I mean, that's the main, the, the main thing we, you know, the main thing we eat.

• 16:17Steven Rinella?

  I got a whole bag full of, um, all the lead shot we pulled out of birds.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:24Steven Rinella?

  You know what I'm gonna do with that?

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Reload it?

• 16:27Steven Rinella?

  No, woman, I was at this event, we did this book event and a woman came and she had this pendant that was like a dish, like a dish. And it was full of all kinds of shot. And I was admiring it and it was all the shot from her first turkey. And they sent, and her and her husband sent me a kit to make them. So I'm taking all the shot we've ever picked out of all of our food, cause I always put in a bag. And I'm making my wife a necklace and it's got like this resin, so you take the dish.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:56Steven Rinella?

  And you put all the shot in the dish and it's like a pendant. And then you squirt this resin in there and then hold a black light on it. And it makes like a necklace of all the shot you picked out of your food.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  That's cool. Does your wife know she's getting this necklace?

• 17:10Steven Rinella?

  I told her about 10 times, it's 178. I got enough for two necklaces, so I'm gonna have one for my wife, one for my daughter.

• 17:17Speaker 06

  There's another person who wrote in about pre-chewed food. He says that his mom was a dentist. And when he himself had a kid, uh, his mom was like, no, no, no, don't do the pre-chewed food thing. Because, or a dental hygienist, because she said cavities develop, I don't think I, I don't think the logic is sound, but cavities develop because of bacteria. So if you take food and you chew it up and then you give it to your kid, that might increase their likelihood of developing cavities.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  But all their teeth are gonna fall out anyway.

• 17:52Speaker 06

  That's why I didn't put it in the notes, because I thought that was like, it didn't make any sense.

• 17:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that is, they barely have any teeth. And there's nothing on your mom's mouth that isn't getting on you.

• 18:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's why I didn't include it, but I thought I'd.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  I think the pre-chewing food, food thing has been played out. We need to move on.

• 18:11Steven Rinella?

  Well, with that said.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  At least until we get another email.

• 18:15Speaker 06

  Or put it on a t-shirt.

• 18:17Steven Rinella?

  Uh, so Randy, what, uh, what drew you to Alaska, man? Like, how'd you wind up in Alaska? Where'd you grow up and how, and what drew you up there?

• 18:25Speaker 04

  So I grew up in Santa Fe, uh, New Mexico. And, uh, so that was, uh, Southern Rockies where my stomping ground as a kid. Used to fish and, you know, it was more like hunting for those little, uh, little rainbows up in the headwaters.

• 18:40Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  And, uh, and I just, uh, I don't know, I just, uh, wanted to, I wanted to live out in the woods. I'd read some of these, uh, you know, books like, uh, The Big Sky and some others.

• 18:52Steven Rinella?

  A.B. Guthrie's?

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  And, uh, and I always felt like I was born about a hundred years too late. But, um, but so, so that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go out into the woods. And, and, uh, I had a ten speed was my transportation at the time. So I, um, when I finished, uh, high school, I had gotten accepted up to university in Fairbanks and came up for one semester and quit and went and milked cows for the rest of that year and then moved out. Who was up onto the?

• 19:23Steven Rinella?

  Who'd you milk cows for?

• 19:25Speaker 04

  It was, um, they had a few dairies up in that Palmer Wassila area, just north of Anchorage, that were partially subsidized by the state.

• 19:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  And they never did, um,

• 19:37Speaker 04

  They never did make it so they could compete with milk being shipped up from Lower Forty-Eight because they, um, I think just with the cold and the inability to grow a lot of the grains, they had to ship grain up to increase milk fat and in the dairy world, it's my understanding that, uh, milk fat content, uh, that was what determined the price they got from it. And so, uh, so they were always on the edge.

• 20:05Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  But, but, um, I worked at this one place, uh, room and board, seven hundred bucks a month and, um, you were there milking, it was about two hundred cows twice a day. It was pretty wild.

• 20:21Steven Rinella?

  They fed you, housed you, gave you seven hundred bucks?

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 20:26Steven Rinella?

  And you milked two hundred cows?

• 20:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  How long did that take?

• 20:31Speaker 04

  Well, it was about, uh, four or five hours of milking, if I remember right. You'd milk them in the morning and then milk them in the evening.

• 20:40Steven Rinella?

  And at this point, you're eighteen years old roughly?

• 20:43Speaker 04

  I was eighteen.

• 20:44Steven Rinella?

  And when you say you went to live in the woods, how's that even begin? Like what, what, like what?

• 20:49Speaker 04

  So there was a buddy of mine, um, that came up with me. He and I used to kick around in the mountains and winter camp and everything. And so, um, so he and I had, had picked out off of a map that we were gonna go up onto the Teton Dick River downstream from Eagle.

• 21:06Steven Rinella?

  What, what, uh, like what year was this?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  So it was nineteen seventy-six.

• 21:11Steven Rinella?

  So was the, the Homestead Act still in play there?

• 21:15Speaker 04

  No.

• 21:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  So, so the deal-

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  I might be jumping ahead, but I just curious.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  So, so the deal, there was a Homestead, uh, Act opening in the late sixties, I believe, and another one in seventy-three. There've been some state land dispersals as well, but those, those two acts were, uh, before I ever got out there. And um, and then the state gave away, they, they would have these land lotteries, you know, in various places, but it was kind of screwy, I thought, because, because you were gonna have a bunch of people going out into the same place and nobody could've, could've made a living with that many people in those places. And a lot of, a lot of them didn't really survive, you know, they would go out there, build a cabin and then realize, I

• 22:03Speaker 04

  gotta get in here with an airplane, there's four other people with places and, and a lot of people left or never proved up on it, you know, so.

• 22:13Steven Rinella?

  So too many people trying to draw from the same resource?

• 22:17Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah, so, so out on the Yukon, uh, people were, you know, organized ten to twenty miles apart, um, down the Yukon, up the side creeks, and so that was sufficient distance, you know, provided they could, you know, establish trap lines in different places that they could make a living off of the, off of the country there. They weren't stepping on each other's toes.

• 22:44Steven Rinella?

  So when you, when you tried to pick a spot, how, how did you know, how did you know that you wouldn't be crowded in with other guys? Or didn't you?

• 22:53Speaker 04

  We didn't. And in fact, we went down to Teton River and there was a guy named Dick Cook who lived there. And, and Teton River, so, so this is right up near the border with Canada, right, where the Yukon comes in. There's the Town Eagle, it's got a road to it, and then Circle is downstream about a hundred and sixty miles. And then there's several of these tributaries that are canoeable. And, and so, so Teton River was the farthest upstream of those tributaries. Um, well, actually Seventy Mile River was, was, that was from the south. But, but the Teton River flowed for about nine miles in Alaska before it plunged into the Yukon.

• 23:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  But you had big mountains there, the Ogilvy Mountains, that's a big range, goes from, um, you know, Dawson area, all the way over to the border, between the Yukon and the Porcupine River, you know, all along that border is the, um, the, the western side of the Ogilvy's. Big limestone mountains with sheep. And, of course, we didn't know any of that, but, um, we knew there were mountains there. But Dick...

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Dick let us know that um that he lived, he had a place five miles up to Tondic and a place down on the Yukon and that that there wasn't enough room for us. And so, and there wasn't.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Did you just run into him or you knew he was in the area or like how'd you make contact with him?

• 24:25Speaker 04

  I made, we made contact on the river. We were lining up the Tondic River.

• 24:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, to go establish a place to live?

• 24:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  You're like, damn, there's a cabin here.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Well, we didn't see the cabin. He was downstream of that, but we pulled over. He was talking, well, he, he saw us on the way in and this guy Charles was about six and a half feet tall and I was just about six. And, um, and so, and so when we came back down, even though we realized we weren't going to be able to, to make a place there, we went up and explored around and fished and walked in the mountains and things. On our way back down though, Dick was talking with John McPhee. That was the hero John.

• 25:05Steven Rinella?

  See, that's, yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  John McPhee came out there.

• 25:06Steven Rinella?

  I'm aware that you had to run in with McPhee while he was, while he was writing coming into the country.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 25:12Steven Rinella?

  So you pull up and he's literally talking to John McPhee?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. And John McPhee, and John McPhee dips his cup into the river and, and offers it to us and we're like, we don't need that. We've been drinking the river.

• 25:25Steven Rinella?

  To the hell did he do that for?

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Because he was amazed that there was a river that was clean enough that you could drink out of. That's what it was. And so he was, I don't know, offering it to us. We would kneel down and, and drink water and whatever, but, but, uh, yeah, but, but as it turns out, Dick was, uh, when John was with Dick, Dick was, was looking at our tracks and he was telling, he's telling John, okay, well, you can tell one guy's really big, you know, because of the stride lengths and everything. So John ended up, um, what did he call Dick? The Grand Swami of trackers or something like that. But, but Dick never told him that he'd seen us before. So.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  So anyway, yeah, what a deal, but.

• 26:16Steven Rinella?

  So you're, you're sort of in coming into the country.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Sort of, not really, but sort of. And, and then we headed back to Eagle because we didn't know what the heck we were going to do. And, and when we were back there, there was a fire that was taking place. Um, on the Canadian side of the border, just, uh, uh, north of the Yukon. And, and the Canadians and the US have, have, um, they have these, these agreements. And so the BLM put the fire, uh, they went out and, um, and worked on that fire. And they hired me and Charles out there. And so we went and worked on a fire. And during that period of time, I met this guy, um, Mike Potts. And Mike Potts had, had, uh, uh, he lived in the village.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  He married a gal in the village and, and he had a trap line.

• 27:07Steven Rinella?

  Was that his real name?

• 27:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Mike Potts.

• 27:10Steven Rinella?

  You ever hear of John Colter?

• 27:15Steven Rinella?

  He was a, he was a, they used to call it, well, Yellowstone Colter's hell.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 27:22Steven Rinella?

  He was over by where Seth lives in 1808. And he was with a guy and, uh, they got caught by the Blackfeet. And that guy's name was Mike Potts.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 27:34Steven Rinella?

  And they cut Mike Potts all up in little bits and smeared him all over John Colter. And then Colter, and then they made Colter start running and that was Colter's run. That was Mike Potts?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:44Steven Rinella?

  Different Mike Potts.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  That's a different Mike Potts.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:51Steven Rinella?

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• 28:36Steven Rinella?

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• 29:18Steven Rinella?

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• 30:02Steven Rinella?

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• 30:43Steven Rinella?

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• 31:19Speaker 04

  Well, so Mike, Mike always, well, he, several times he had people come out to his trapline south of Eagle back on the north work of the 40 mile and, and help him do building projects or, or haul meat and various other things. And so he invited me to go out there with him that, that winter. And he had a dog team and a couple cabins and wanted help with hunting. And I went with him. Charles got involved with, with gold mining. He, he

• 31:53Steven Rinella?

  This is six and a half foot Charles.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so he went gold mining and I went trapping and it was kind of like an apprenticeship, you know, building cabins with moss chinking and, and which is a wonderful way to go just with materials that you find out there in the woods. And then, and then taking care of meat. We went and ended up getting a bear and a big moose that was really fat. You know that these animals go through these cycles of fat and lean and big bull before they go into rut has enormous amount of fat on it. And so Mike showed me how to, how to, how to cut that

• 32:38Speaker 04

  stuff off and be able to render it into, into oil.

• 32:42Steven Rinella?

  So rendering moose fat?

• 32:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:45Steven Rinella?

  And he was using that moose fat as a frying medium or like for baking or what was he doing with it? The rendered moose fat?

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Well, yes, um, it was, it was to, uh, for frying, but it was also just to eat with your meat.

• 33:02Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  And then there was cracklins that was left over. And, uh, those were also, uh, so, so the, the deal with eating straight meat is you gotta eat meat and fat. And, um, and we would use it that way. Sometimes we'd render as much as, uh, 12 gallons, I think, was the most we rendered off of a single big bull.

• 33:23Steven Rinella?

  Damn.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  That's kidney fat, kidneys, kidney fat that can fill a five gallon bucket. Once you take the kidney out, jam it in there, and then all sorts of other fat in the intestines, the ribs, the brisket, the back.

• 33:36Speaker 07

  So you were using primarily internal fat, not the external fat, not the back fat?

• 33:42Speaker 04

  We used the back fat too.

• 33:43Speaker 07

  Did you have separate uses or was it all just one oil at the end of the day?

• 33:48Speaker 04

  One oil.

• 33:48Speaker 07

  Okay, got it.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  And moose fat is hard, so you know, when you, if you're taking it root temperature, it, it'll crack off in a chunk. You know, it's not like, uh, butter or anything like that, you know, it just, it breaks off in a solid chunk that you then throw in the frying pan. Melt it out, fry the meat, and then when it starts cooling off, you can dip it and get a big swath of the fat on the, on the meat.

• 34:14Steven Rinella?

  So that was our main. Then you take your thumbnail and, and scrape it off the roof of your mouth.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  There is that, but, but, uh, but the good thing about moose fat is if you render it clean and, and decant it and pour it off into a bucket, um, it will keep through a summer. So you can have it without spoiling. Bear fat, on the other hand, will go rancid if it's not kept very cold. So it's very different, you know, bear fat is, is more of a, of a. Liquid, almost liquid at room temperature. But it won't keep, you can't keep it for over, over a summer. I mean, you could if you had it in a freezer.

• 34:54Steven Rinella?

  Throw it in the freezer, yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  We were dealing with whatever the temperature was outside.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  I feel like I've had it survive just in the pantry at the house for a year plus, but.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  It goes, it goes rancid. Yeah. Well, my experience was that it went rancid. And then it becomes dog food because they don't care.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  Sure, sure. Can you give, you're talking about some pretty specific places on the map. I think you're, you're doing a good job for people that know that area of Alaska. But can you give just a little bit bigger of a geographical context? Because I think Eagle sort of as like the jumping off point of, for a lot of people that went to do what you did. And just kind of where that lies and why it's there and why people that are drawn to that are drawn to Eagle. I think that's important.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, so that's right at the border with Canada. I mean, it's like 10 miles downstream of the border.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  And back in those days, anyway, um, the, that was after the Native Claims Settlement Act.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  And before Anilka. And so there was kind of a void and all that. A lot of the land in Alaska at that point was, uh, just sort of managed by, by BLM.

• 36:07Speaker 05

  Didn't we do a podcast on that? Native, native claims?

• 36:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 05

  And Anilka?

• 36:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  That people are wondering.

• 36:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Can I, can I do it real quick?

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, go for it.

• 36:17Steven Rinella?

  Um, and correct me where I'm wrong here. During, it was during the Carter administration, they finally, they finalized a lot of it. But for a long time, Alaska, a lot of the land in Alaska was in a sort of managerial limbo.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 36:29Steven Rinella?

  Right. And it was, they knew that, that, that, that native Alaskan tribes would, would claim some. And some things would become park. But for a long time, it was just in a, in a limbo. And then during the Carter administration, and then leading up to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and oil and Prudhoe Bay. They started to figure out with greater clarity, this land is, is, this land is going to be park. This land is state land. This land is native land. This land will be BLM land. Is that fairly accurate?

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, they discovered the, so the Statehood Act laid out basic acreages of land that would become part of, of the state

• 37:18Speaker 04

  ownership versus federal ownership. And, and that there had to be some sort of native claim settlement. But it wasn't figured out. They didn't have it all sorted out on where it was going to be or

• 37:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  or other things like that. There were some parks, you know, like the Denali was already there.

• 37:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  And the Arctic.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  They called it National Wildlife Range. And rather than a refuge.

• 37:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 04

  And, and that, so there's, there's things that were already sorted out for the, for the federal system. When they, when they found oil and they were looking for a way to get it south. They, the Secretary of the Interior at the time is Udall, and he, he essentially stopped everything, put a hold on everything. And, and so that was the incentive to get the native land claims settled, right?

• 38:22Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  If you're going to put a pipeline through, we better figure out what land it's, it is.

• 38:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  As it goes out.

• 38:28Steven Rinella?

  Who's going to end up owning what?

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 38:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  And so, so that took place and, and it also laid out the, the D2 lands, which were the federal lands. Conservation areas, refuges, parks, other things like that. Not necessarily where they were or, or how big each plot was going to be, but that there would be these parks and refuges in various places.

• 38:55Steven Rinella?

  So in this area that we're talking about,

• 38:59Steven Rinella?

  like what Yanni asked about, we're basically where the Yukon River flows out of Yukon Territory into Alaska. At that time in the seventies.

• 39:08Steven Rinella?

  A lot of people were moving into that area because you could just go live, right?

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it was, so the deal was that BLM, what I heard was BLM had gone up into the forty mile country and gone down and burned two cabins they considered to be trespass cabins. And they got taken to court over that and, and the legal response was that they had to consider any cabin they thought was trespass, they had to deal with it in the courts before they did anything with it. They couldn't, they had to treat it like private property. And so they were just like, hands off, we're not going to deal with it.

• 39:46Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  And so there were people that went down onto the Yukon and there were people doing this in a lot of different places, but that was where I knew about at the time. But, but there was, it was sort of a, you just had to kind of negotiate with neighbors, with other people that were living there, for, for a place that wasn't going to step on somebody else's toes or, or interfere with their trapline. And that's what Dick did with us, you know, he said, you can't do it, you know? And we're thinking Santa Fe time, I would say, we'll be at least a mile away.

• 40:25Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  No. Twenty miles, you know?

• 40:30Steven Rinella?

  So when you spent that, when you did that apprenticeship with the guy, did that lead you to find a place you could go set up in?

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there was a, he did it the year before with this guy named Little John, Little John Gaudio. And, and Little John was out there on the forty mile trapping at a different cabin, that same winter that I went out and helped Mike, I helped him finish a cabin in the snow and then took care of, we had a moose and a, and a bear. And so I took care of those out of his main cabin while he went back and then came back out later in November or something with his dogs. And during the winter, Little John and I spent a lot of time together and we decided where we were going to go, well, we were initially going to go up the Colleen River.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  The next, uh, the next year. And, um, when we started down the Yukon though, Colleen is, is a big tributary of the Porcupine River.

• 41:29Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  So to get there, you'd have to go down to Yukon, couple hundred miles and then up the, um, up the Porcupine, couple hundred miles and then up the, the Colleen River. And, um,

• 41:42Speaker 07

  How were you guys, were you guys getting in by bush plane or were you like traveling by boat? Or like, how were you getting into this remote stuff?

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Double.

• 41:49Speaker 07

  And how were you and Little John hanging out together? Weren't you 20 miles apart?

• 41:54Speaker 04

  It's double in canoes.

• 41:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  And we were lining. We had no motors.

• 41:58Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  And, and so, uh,

• 42:00Speaker 07

  And then the winter dogs, of course.

• 42:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Little John had dogs. I didn't at the time, but I ended up getting a couple of puppies.

• 42:07Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  And, uh, and, uh, off of litter. And so, and so when we started down to Yukon though, we had, we had two canoes. He had a canoe and I had one. And we got down, uh, partway down and, and found out that nobody was living on the Kandik River. Kandik River is a big, uh, big tributary of the Yukon there, um, between Eagle and Circle. So it's about 80 miles, the mouth is about 80 miles downstream of, of Eagle. And it also head watered in Canada and flowed for over a hundred miles through, through Alaska. And we decided, there was a guy living at the mouth, uh, of the, of the Kandik River. And, uh, it was a guy, uh, named Fred Beach. And, um,

• 42:53Speaker 07

  And he told you, no one's upstream of me?

• 42:56Speaker 04

  Well, several other people did too. They knew that there was nobody up there. And, and he, he reiterated that and said he rarely makes it past three miles up. He had two dogs. And, um, and so we decided we're going to go up there and, and check it out. And so we started lining up the river and, uh, feeding ourselves along the way. We had a gill net and we had, uh, we would, we would, uh, shoot beavers and, um, feed us and the, and the dogs, uh, in that way. We'd shoot squirrels sometimes for the dogs. And, um,

• 43:31Speaker 07

  What was your lining up process and, uh, what type of mileage could you make? Going upstream like that.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  So, so lining is a process where you have about a hundred foot long rope. And one end's tied to the front of the canoe, one's to the back. Canoe, they, lining is, is more easily done if they got a little keel on the bottom. And so what you're doing is adjusting these two lines so that that canoe stays offshore. And, and tries to stay parallel with the current. So a big gravel bar, you just walk up on the gravel and it's out in the water pulling it along. And then when you want to create a cross, you jump in it and cross and go up the other side. If you have to get by a drift pile or by a big cut bank, you might use a pole. About a ten foot spruce pole and just push yourself off the bottom to get past.

• 44:22Speaker 07

  So are you kind of walking backwards when you're lining them?

• 44:25Speaker 04

  No, it's not that much, uh, well, if you were hauling a moose, you might.

• 44:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, not enough drag.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  Not enough drag, it just goes real smooth.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  So by adjusting the two lengths of that rope, you're just adjusting the angle of the canoe? And that's, it's basically faring in the current.

• 44:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you can have it that it's straight out from you.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  You can, just about.

• 44:45Steven Rinella?

  Down river, yeah, yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Just about, yeah. And so there's boulder fields on the Kandik River and so you could, you, it's, if you had got a keel, it's like power steering, you can go around between rocks and everything, so. Whereas if you don't have a keel, it kind of bumps against shore. It doesn't go very well at all.

• 45:02Steven Rinella?

  And how many miles were you making on that big river?

• 45:05Speaker 04

  You know, sometimes, uh, ten miles, more often, six or eight.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  A day.

• 45:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and you got.

• 45:14Speaker 04

  So we get, so, so I don't know if you know this, but, but when the Second World War came along, the, uh, the government ended up, when we got involved in it, um, they shut down materials that could be used for the war effort, uh, from going anywhere else. And all of the mines in Alaska, with a couple of exceptions, got shut down. And what people back in the thirties and early forties were doing is trapping in the winter and then working the mines in the summer. And so the, the, the fur industry went down too. And, and they left. And so that was, all the cabins that we found on the Kandik were of that vintage. You know, so we were coming there forty years after anybody had been there.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  And, and so, and so we would, we went up river with one canoe. And one of us would walk the spruce groves looking for cabins. And the other would line and switch off here and there. And, and we found a few, a few cabins, but none of which were functional. They had, cause back then they didn't have, you know, a lot of the waterproofing tarps and various other things. And so they would develop a leak somewhere. They had, they used tar paper on the roofs and sometimes dirt over that or moss. And, but if they ever got a leak, you know, then you'd get a rot going on and the roof would fall in or a wall would crash out or something like that.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  But what we did see was big piles of moose antlers and then in the upper river, big piles of caribou antlers too.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Piles?

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Well, what do you do with them?

• 46:53Speaker 05

  I mean, from the people that were living there?

• 46:55Speaker 04

  From the people that had lived there.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  Ah, I see.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  And they wouldn't, they wouldn't do anything. They'd bring them in, but they wouldn't do anything with them. So they'd throw them in a pile.

• 47:03Speaker 05

  I see.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  And they would last for a long time. And so porcupines chew them and squirrels and things like that, but, but they, they, they were still there.

• 47:12Speaker 05

  That was a good sign because you're thinking.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Why go to the coaline? We're gonna come up here. And that's what we did.

• 47:19Steven Rinella?

  And then when you were seeing all those antlers, it would show you where people had lived and also show you where places that might be good hunting.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Exactly. And in almost every case, there was a, a thin area, open lead or something in the Kandig River that would, for water in the winter. They were, they were great places. Dry, dry spruce woods, um, and, and good water.

• 47:42Steven Rinella?

  And you found a guy that had starved to death, right?

• 47:44Speaker 04

  I did, yeah. Me and, me and Fred, we found him. He was, that was.

• 47:49Speaker 05

  He was nowhere near a big pile of antlers.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  He was not.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Well, so, so Little John and I had gone up and we had built two cabins, or mostly built two cabins. And then we went back to Eagle and got traps and things and, and, um, stoves and we came back down. Um, and, and Fred came with us and a couple of other folks who were interested in having, um, line cabins, just cabins, emergency cabins. You know, if you get wet, because these rivers, they'll overflow. And sometimes you need to get past anyway, and so you get wet. And, uh, having a cabin in various places, uh, was, was beneficial. So, so Fred wanted one about 10 miles up the river.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  And, and he, he's the one that kind of designed this, a little, it was a, wasn't a very good cabin. It was about five feet tall on the inside. And, um, there weren't any windows. And we, the door was just a piece of plywood that we had found in a drift pile out on the, out on the Yukon. And, um, and it just had these leather hinges on it. So that was what that, and, and then a bunk. It was about six feet wide by nine feet long. Just somewhere to survive. Somewhere to get out of, out of the cold and have a fire. And, uh, and that's where Smiggle ended up going. We called him Smiggle. Well, so the deal with him, he came down-

• 49:16Steven Rinella?

  Who's this guy?

• 49:17Speaker 07

  This is the dead guy.

• 49:18Speaker 04

  The dead guy, eventually.

• 49:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  So-

• 49:21Speaker 07

  Eventually, he's not there yet.

• 49:22Steven Rinella?

  You knew this guy before he died?

• 49:24Speaker 04

  I did not, but Fred had, Fred had seen him. Fred was this gregarious guy that lived at the mouth of the Kandig. And a lot of different people would come in there. There was a slew that you could catch pike and, and things. And so everybody had it on their, on their, on their maps, you know? They would go in there and he would go over and, um, trade things, you know, a beaver hide for a sleeping bag or various things like this. And, uh, and one year, this guy, um, that, that we called Smiggle, he, he called himself John the Baptist. But he and a, and a buddy of his had floated down from Canada on a raft, on a log raft. And there was a big cabin, just like a mile upstream of the Kandig.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  And they had seen that and gone to spend the night there. And his buddy during the night shoved the raft off and left. And so he wakes up the next morning-

• 50:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no shit, he ditched him.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  He ditched him.

• 50:17Steven Rinella?

  Ditched Smiggle.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  And so, and so he- He had the clothes on his back, the sleeping bag and, and, uh, and a shotgun, a 20 gauge. You know, those Rossi's with the external, he had a 20 gauge shotgun.

• 50:30Speaker 07

  You just gotta wonder, how much background have you, have you tried to do any background? Like the ditch and the partner, is that bad character of which one?

• 50:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Who was the, who was the, who was the sort of dick, you know?

• 50:42Speaker 07

  Right, exactly.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  I have no idea. I have no idea. But, but, um, this guy wandered down and he didn't know Fred was down.

• 50:50Steven Rinella?

  John Baptist.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  John the Baptist, yeah. Wandered down to, uh, and this is like early September. He wandered down to the mouth of the Kandig and saw that there was somebody in this cabin across the slough. And Fred came over and got him. And Fred was always like, you know, happy with the, the system, you know? Always wanted to show it to somebody. A canoe back on a lake where they go to hunt ducks and muskrats and, you know, and various other, you know, a cache here or there, you know, and, and, um,

• 51:19Steven Rinella?

  Me, uh, just so I'm clear, like he had a sweet setup and he'd share, he'd want to share.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  He'd share it, yeah, yeah.

• 51:25Steven Rinella?

  Like I catch Pike here, I do this there. Okay, yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  And, and he was not very ambitious. So he only, he might get a links or two, you know, in, in trapping or in eight or 10 Martin and, you know, that would be enough for him. He, he just didn't, uh, wasn't very ambitious. And so anyway.

• 51:44Speaker 07

  A not very ambitious guy out there though, he's gotta be fairly ambitious.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Maybe. He didn't build the cabin. They called it Morrison. It was from back, uh,

• 51:54Speaker 04

  yeah. But, but anyway, he, he, uh, he decided that he was gonna go back east that fall and he told, he told this guy that, um, he had to catch a ride or build a raft and go to circle. They couldn't stay there. But the guy stayed and Fred got a ride. There was a, there was a, a barge called the brainstorm that ran out of circle and it would go up to Eagle and Dawson.

• 52:18Steven Rinella?

  I, I got, I got interrupted just cause I'm, I got lost from it.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  So Fred.

• 52:23Steven Rinella?

  So Fred's living there.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:25Steven Rinella?

  And, and, okay, let's just stick with just calling him Smiggle. Fred's living there. Smiggle comes down. Smiggle's been abandoned by his buddy.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:33Steven Rinella?

  Now, now, who says they're going back? They gotta go east?

• 52:36Speaker 04

  Fred Fred has Fred had his plan to go back east. So he had he had a bunch of food stored.

• 52:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, and he says, but he says, you can't stay here at my house.

• 52:43Speaker 04

  You can't stay at my house. You have to find a ride to circle.

• 52:47Steven Rinella?

  Get out of here. I'm gonna be gone. I'm gonna be out of town. And when I'm out of town, I don't want you here eating my food.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 52:53Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  And and

• 52:55Steven Rinella?

  Sorry about that.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  And Fred got to town by by hailing this barge. The barge would pick people up. I mean, it was a big enough barge. It could haul like a dump truck, you know, on its deck and and building materials and things. And it would go down and go to Fort Yukon and then up to Okro on the Porcupine in Canada. But that was that barge's route, right? And the and the road that would, you know, where supplies were loaded was Circle. And so anyway, Fred got a ride up and went back east, hitchhiked back east and spent till it was early November when he got back to Eagle and put his

• 53:36Speaker 04

  it wasn't frozen yet. There were there were ice flowing, you know, but he he went downstream in his canoe in amongst all these ice chunks.

• 53:45Steven Rinella?

  In November.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, in November.

• 53:48Steven Rinella?

  Not ambitious.

• 53:52Speaker 04

  Well, he knew how to do stuff.

• 53:53Steven Rinella?

  When I hear not ambitious, let me take what I'm picture.

• 53:57Steven Rinella?

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• 54:43Steven Rinella?

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• 55:29Steven Rinella?

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• 56:13Steven Rinella?

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• 57:16Speaker 04

  So he gets down almost to the Kandig River when the river is just jamming up a little too much for even him. And he pulls his canoe out, walks to his cabin, and it's about 20 below. And, and Smigle has moved his lamp and his sleeping gear to this cabin up at Three Mile Creek, three miles farther up. And Fred was, he was pissed. And then he left a note on the door. I'm up at Three Mile Cabin. John the Baptist, you know? And so, and so Fred goes up there and this guy, this guy has been eating his jarred fish. He's been eating the moose that he had and has sewn clothes out of furs that Fred had.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  He's loaded all of our ammunition. We, we had, Fred had this metal box bolted to a tree that would, kind of like an under, under bed box on a truck. And, and it was back in the woods behind his place. But of course he'd shown this guy that. And that was where all of us, me and Fred and Little John, had reloading materials there. And so he had loaded everything. We, we all shot 243s. And so he had loaded it all. But with different, you know, you shake it and it's, none of it was consistent. None of it was consistent. We're like, this is not good. And we had to get a bullet puller then eventually.

• 58:41Steven Rinella?

  Undo it all.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Undo them. Yeah. We weren't going to shoot them. We had no idea what he'd done.

• 58:47Speaker 07

  Right, you're like, this one's good for grouse.

• 58:51Speaker 07

  This one's might, might take down a moose.

• 58:53Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 58:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 04

  So, so, uh, so anyway, um, I had left my snowshoe, I had store bought snowshoes, but I left them down there because I wanted to, um, I wanted to build a pair and I knew that if I had a store bought pair, I wouldn't.

• 59:10Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  Right? And so I had left a pair down there and built a new set and, but anyway Fred, Fred is, Fred is pissed off at this guy. Fred used to grow pot on the roof of his, of that cabin. He would, he would throw dog shit up there and then he would throw seeds. It wasn't, it wasn't any good.

• 59:29Speaker 06

  That's psychedelic weed. That's like mushrooms.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. It wasn't good weed? What? It wasn't good weed? No.

• 59:35Speaker 07

  Not like not for the area? Good weed or not good weed in general?

• 59:38Speaker 05

  Beggars can't be choosers kinda weed.

• 59:40Speaker 04

  It was.

• 59:43Speaker 04

  It, it, it would give you a headache more than it would give you a high. But anyway, this guy had smoked all his pot too.

• 59:52Speaker 05

  He was living high on the hog while you guys were gone.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  And Fred got pissed about that and he says it wasn't any good.

• 59:56Speaker 07

  He had the gall of sticking around.

• 59:59Speaker 04

  Anyway Fred says, you gotta go. Circle or eagle after it freezes up. You gotta go because I'm gonna kill you otherwise, right? And so, and so this guy says, I'm not going either. I'm going to Chalkitsik. So Chalkitsik is on the Black River flowing down into the Porcupine and, um, and it's, it's a long ways, uh, north and from the Kandig River. But that's what this guy says. And so. Further into the bush. Further. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so, uh, Fred outfits him with, with some, some grain and, uh, some rice and some beans and. Some stems. Gave him, gave him a 22 pistol.

• 1:00:39Speaker 07

  Holy cat.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  And, and this guy takes off with my snowshoes, right? And.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  And cruises up the Kandig River because he's going to go up the Kandig and over into the, the Black River Drainage and, and, and so I came down late, he left, uh, late November and, uh, and I had, so I-

• 1:01:00Steven Rinella?

  Frickin' dark too.

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  I was, yeah, I was staying in this cabin, uh, above Johnson Gorge, so about 30 miles up the river. And, and so I would line a canoe up there and spend the winter, but I, there was a pass you could go over, uh, some mountains and down to the Yukon. And I preferred to do that than run the river because the river would, would, uh, overflow and then your trail would be gone and things. So you could, you know, get to a place that it was all water. So I, I came down-

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Overflow meaning that you get water flowing on top of the ice?

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. So, so once a river freezes over, you get snow on it. Sometimes the, the, the flow is, is enough that it, it doesn't have enough room underneath the ice as it starts thickening up weight on it and things. And it'll seep up into the snow, um, over the ice. And then it's, it's, uh, it's slush for a while until it reaches the surface and refreezes, you know? But, uh, but anyway, so, so I had come down over this pass and come down to get my snowshoes because the ones I built, I broke and I had to splice them or, um, anyway, I had, I had, uh, I got down there in early December,

• 1:02:11Speaker 04

  like 10 days after Smiggle had left, uh, Fred. And Fred says, uh, well, he, he took your, he took your, uh, your snowshoes. And I said, let's go and get him. And so we, we, um, we started walking up the river, but that was a really big snow year and it, it was, uh, we, we went about five miles up and I decided, yeah, heck, he can go wherever he wants. But, uh, you know, I'm like, he's not going to make it to Chalk Heathicke, no way. And, and it actually became a topic among all of us living on the river. And, uh-

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Where is Smiggle?

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Well, we all, we all knew from being out there that you can't make a living with a 22 pistol in the winter. You might shoot a grouse or a, or a squirrel or something like that here or there, but you can't feed yourself that way. And he didn't have enough food to start with.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  Something tells me his buddy had a reason to abandon him after hearing this story.

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  I think maybe so.

• 1:03:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we've honed in on who's the dick.

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think maybe so.

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  So just to pause here for a second.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 07

  It became a topic amongst everybody on the river.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  What would happen to it?

• 1:03:17Speaker 07

  I imagine this is mostly in your heads with little bits of being together. Cause keep in mind, right now, we're in the days of instant gratification. Point being, right there. Cell phones, text messages, right?

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  Hey, sorry about that.

• 1:03:31Steven Rinella?

  No, that's over here.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Oh, it is?

• 1:03:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 04

  Well, I should put mine on airplane too.

• 1:03:35Speaker 07

  So, uh, yeah, Phil will tell you not to have that thing on the table either.

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:03:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, sorry to get interference sometimes.

• 1:03:41Steven Rinella?

  Throw it on your coat over there.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  I'm gonna turn it off.

• 1:03:45Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:03:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're doing great. Um.

• 1:03:50Speaker 07

  Large preamble, just to ask, how often are you all getting together to have conversations in person?

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  Hey, we had good dog teams.

• 1:04:00Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  We cruised around and, uh, and we did talk and we did have big gatherings of their, you know, Christmas, New Years and various other things. No, we, we talked a lot.

• 1:04:11Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  There'd be people traveling, um, just to say hi or to share some meat or, or whatever. Um, but there was, there was discussion. Everybody uniformly said, there's no way he can make it to Chalke. But there were those that said, he probably waved somebody down, an airplane. But we didn't have hardly any airplanes ever go by us there. And, and some people thought, well, maybe he went up a little bit and then walked around Fred's place and got onto the river and walked a circle or, or, or whatever, you know, and it's like, no, we, we pay attention to tracks. You know, us living out in the woods in the snow country, you're always looking at tracks. There's nothing that gets by you, tracks. And, uh, and so we were like, nah, he's gotta be dead. You know?

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  And so the next spring, so, so. So, uh, you, the Kandig River is great in the fall, has lots of moose and, and other, um, You know, bears and things like that, but in the springtime, the Yukon's the place to be. Because there's the flyway, you know, you get all the waterfowl coming into Alaska is going by there. And then there's these big south facing bluffs um on the on the mountains that uh butt up against the the Yukon and they call them step community, you know, because they're just at that angle, they'll they'll drain all their snow really early in uh March sometimes and you get all this

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  new new growth coming out, even though everywhere else, you know, there's still three feet of snow laying around. And and the bears would come out early there, so it was the Yukon was the place to be in the spring, feeding yourself. And so that left me with my canoe up at my upper place, at thirty miles up. And so I would have to walk the ridge and down and then canoe down to get my canoe back in the spring. So that's what me and Fred did, we we went up and walked in and get my canoe and we're coming down. And when we come to where this cabin is back in the woods, we come around this corner. I see my snowshoes hanging in a tree right there. We're a couple hundred yards up the river, you know, we came around and I say,

• 1:06:21Speaker 04

  Fred, Sméagol's here.

• 1:06:22Steven Rinella?

  Mystery solved.

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  And and we get up there.

• 1:06:26Steven Rinella?

  And you knew he wasn't alive?

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Well, he couldn't have been alive. We didn't have any food there.

• 1:06:31Steven Rinella?

  And the snowshoes were still there.

• 1:06:33Speaker 04

  And the snowshoes were there, he didn't walk away. And so we get up there, we got five dogs, okay, I had three and Fred had two at that time.

• 1:06:40Steven Rinella?

  All in the canoe with you?

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  No, they're running the pace.

• 1:06:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see, okay, they're just keeping up.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and uh and so we get there and walk up to the cabin. And the dogs are all running around, you know, and they are just really, they they focus on dead things, right? They really like, you know, if you shoot a bear out of a tree or or get a moose, you know, they want to be there. It's just like that's the thing of interest. So so so I open the the door and of course I knock on it just in case, but and uh and there's this sleeping bag. On the bunk, the bunk had been nine feet long and three feet wide. And it was just these little black spruce, um, back and forth, big ends, back and forth. And then, um, you know, on, on two poles that were notched into the walls.

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  And so, and so all of those poles, except about three feet of them had been burned. Had been, he had a saw in the, in the house. And so I picked him up and he was light and I brought him outside. He was in.

• 1:07:41Steven Rinella?

  He's in his bag.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's in his bag. And so we, we took him out. In Fred's bag. Fred's bag. And, um, and, uh, and it was, it was, uh, he was so skinny. His, his eyes were sunken into his face. And, and we took his clothes off because we just wanted to see what had happened there. And he was seriously skin on bone. There was no meat. He had starved out. And, uh, and the 22 was hanging on a nail in the back wall. And so he definitely didn't kill himself. Yep. And, um, and the dogs, they were like 20 feet away looking the other way. Whoa. They wanted nothing to do with this. Wow.

• 1:08:25Speaker 04

  You could see their ears are turned back to us. So they were paying, paying attention, but they didn't want to be anywhere as near. It was almost like, you know, one of the, what we were thinking was the, one of the gods has fallen, you know? And, cause I, I don't know what they think of us, but I think that may be.

• 1:08:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's what the dogs would think, yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  Oh, that's interesting. They didn't want nothing to do with it. They didn't want to be near it. They didn't want to smell it close, nothing. And so we, we debated.

• 1:08:51Steven Rinella?

  How long at that point, how long you think he'd been dead?

• 1:08:55Speaker 04

  I really don't know.

• 1:08:56Steven Rinella?

  Was he froze?

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  He had been froze, but he was thawed then.

• 1:09:00Steven Rinella?

  Thought out again.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  And, uh, hair was starting to slip

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

  on his forehead. But he didn't smell rotten. And, uh, And so, and so, we were thinking, what do we do with this guy? You know, we don't have a shovel, the ground's still frozen, we can't bury him. Do we try to take him somewhere? Do we take him to Circle? That would be at least a three or four day process to get down there. The Yukon was packed with ice on both sides at that point in time. You know, breakup, it put a bunch of ice on the banks. Neither of us had a, had a penny. And we were making our living day by day going down the river.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  And, and if we went down to Circle, we didn't know anywhere where there would be, where to go for food, whether we could get him down there without him. You know, we thought we could put ice in, have him in the bottom of the boat with ice. But, but that would put us out because we would get down there and we wouldn't, we'd have nothing, no way to make a living. And so, we just decided we didn't leave him here. And we put him back on some tundra a little ways away. And, and we took off. And then he was, I went back there later in the summer and he was gone. So something had.

• 1:10:25Speaker 07

  Did you guys eventually get word out to like some authority?

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  We told people, but there wasn't anything anybody could do.

• 1:10:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 04

  We didn't know who he was.

• 1:10:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. As far as you know, has he ever been identified?

• 1:10:37Speaker 04

  Not, I have no idea.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  Probably, probably, a lot of people, that happened to a lot of people up there.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 07

  Uh, yeah, I don't think he was out there because he wanted to stay in touch with his family, right? So.

• 1:10:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:52Speaker 05

  We should probably skip forward to what a fella does when he gets lonely and he figures he's gonna need a companion out.

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  Living this life.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, we could go on this forever.

• 1:11:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, because otherwise we are gonna be here all day. Which is fine with me. I'll just cancel a couple upcoming calls.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Speaker 07

  No, I mean, that's, that's amazing. I, I mean, if you guys thought about it that much, I think it's longer than I would have thought about it. Would have been like, well, hopefully that 22 isn't rested.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 07

  Did you reuse the sleeping bag?

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  Fred took the sleeping bag.

• 1:11:28Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  And you got, you got your snowshoes.

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  I got my snowshoes.

• 1:11:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was just thinking too, like if he was that emaciated, had you guys found him alive, probably wouldn't be anything you could have done for him.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Ooh, I think that would be hard. Yeah.

• 1:11:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Steven Rinella?

  Where, where did you wind up, um, you eventually found your territory. So did, did your whole time in the bush wind up being in this river system that you're talking about now?

• 1:11:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:11:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Steven Rinella?

  And you eventually got to where, like Yanni was saying, you eventually got to where you wanted a companion.

• 1:12:02Speaker 04

  That's absolutely true.

• 1:12:04Speaker 07

  And the dogs weren't cutting it.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  Dogs weren't cutting it. Well, they, they were great, but it wasn't the same. Yeah. Yeah, and, uh, and I wasn't running into, uh, single women out there.

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  How many, how many years have you been doing it before you decided to head into, to Fairbanks?

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Uh, I think, uh,

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

  I think three.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  Okay. So you're still young.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 07

  Were there some couples out there or was it mostly single men doing this thing?

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  No, there were couples out there.

• 1:12:37Speaker 07

  There were.

• 1:12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, most, most of the other people out there were couples.

• 1:12:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, they would, they.

• 1:12:45Steven Rinella?

  So you were third wheel?

• 1:12:47Speaker 04

  Well, not really. I wasn't there. I was, I was a one wheel.

• 1:12:52Speaker 07

  When, when you say most of the people out there, like, how many people are we talking about?

• 1:12:56Speaker 04

  There were about 20 people or so that lived between, uh, um, Eagle and Circle.

• 1:13:01Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Steven Rinella?

  And how many miles is that?

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  It varied. Hundred, 160 miles.

• 1:13:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 07

  And how often would you see, like, how long would you go without seeing people?

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  Well, so, um, when I was up the Kandik, it would be months.

• 1:13:17Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. My father, he, he came out to visit the first year that I was out there, that I spent on the Kandik River. So I'd been out on the north fork of Forty Mile. And, and it was funny, cause he, he was, um, he was working for park service. He got, uh, he was a historian down in southwest region out of Santa Fe for a while. And then he got a, offered a job in Alaska to deal with the D2 lands, which became the park lands. Uh, he was park service, so that's what he dealt with. And he was up in Eagle, um, dealing with stuff relating to the Yukon, what became the Yukon Charlie, uh, preserve.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 1:13:58Speaker 04

  And, uh, he got buried in effigy there by somebody, cause the Eagle did not like it. That his federal lands were coming around.

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  But, you know, they were kinda laid out in statehood and they were laid out in the native.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  That's crazy that your dad ended up like right near ya, you know?

• 1:14:14Speaker 04

  So I didn't, I had no idea he was there, but when Little John and I had gone up and gotten the traps and everything, we were, we were at our canoes, ready to shove off, and my dad pulls up, right? And he says, he says, Randy, where, where are you at now? And I said, well, at the Indian Grave Creek, that's one of the tributaries of the Kandik. And, and that was sixty miles up the Kandik, and that was the cabin I was gonna be staying in. And he says, he says, I'm gonna come and visit you for Christmas. And, and when I say, fine, you know, and we took off and he took off, and, and come, come that time of year, and so I didn't have a calendar or a watch or anything, you know, out there, so I don't really know when that was gonna be.

• 1:14:57Speaker 04

  But Little John had been at the, at the lower cabin near the, near the pass to the Yukon, and he, he had, he had made a trip over there and found out they were doing a big Christmas shindig at this one place on a lake, uh, beside the Yukon. So he came up to get me, and I said, I said, I can't, I can't go, what if my dad comes? He says, he's not gonna come. That's, you know, how's he gonna get up here? You know? And I said, I, it would be horrible if he came and I wasn't here. So I stayed. I was getting caribou, and I was the only one getting caribou out there at the time. And so, um, um...

• 1:15:35Speaker 04

  Little John leaves and goes over to this party and, and I'm hauling caribou in from a place that I'd gotten a few and at the time, the, the limit was no more than 10 a day.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  No more than.

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  No more than 10 a day. And, um, and so anyway, I'm hauling, I'm hauling this caribou back and, uh, with the dogs and I hear this airplane come in and circle around and land and it was, it was Ron Warble who ran, um, they had a, uh, an air service out of Toke and he was in a 185 and on skis and Ron was not going to leave and be at my place unless it was warm and fresh tracks, you know, and which there was. So I come back, I hear that plane leave and I come back and, uh, and my dad is there and he, he has a number 10 can of cookies

• 1:16:35Speaker 04

  and, and, uh, a thing of cough drops and he didn't bring any other food. He thought I had a bunch of food. I've got just moose, moose fat, moose meat and caribou meat and that's it. And I had no coffee, no tea, no nothing, right? And he's, he's going to try to quit smoking. So he's got-

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  Did you have salt?

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  I had salt. And, and so, um, so he has, he has Copenhagen because he'd been a smoker pretty much all, all his life that I had known him. And, uh, so he has Copenhagen there to try to ease things up. But he had, he had a few different things he was dealing with. One, and you know, the eating just meat and, uh, and all I would do is fry it in a pan and then eat right out of the pan and, and, um, and then go dip buckets of water. So I had, I had water and, and meat and fat. That's what I was eating. And then for light, I had a, a moose fat candle, you know, an old, like a tuna fish can with a, with a

• 1:17:35Speaker 04

  bent piece in it and a bit of, uh, of old Levi as the wick and you'd have to set it on a stove. You'd have to set it on the stove to melt it and then you could light it and it would keep going mostly and, uh, and give off just a candle, a candle light. So that was my light.

• 1:17:54Speaker 04

  And so he, he ended up, he ended up asking me to carve him a pipe at one point. And um, because he's gonna start smoking his Copenhagen.

• 1:18:06Speaker 04

  It wasn't doing enough for him.

• 1:18:08Steven Rinella?

  But uh. Man, when people do that move, when they do the, when they do like the, they're gonna quit something.

• 1:18:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Steven Rinella?

  And they're gonna be like, well, I'm gonna take advantage of this remote or out of the country thing.

• 1:18:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Steven Rinella?

  They never fix, but they never, they never factor in the people that are around them.

• 1:18:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:18:27Steven Rinella?

  You know, and then they go in like, well, I'm, I'm, I decided I'm gonna quit drinking.

• 1:18:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Steven Rinella?

  You know, I'm gonna quit smoking while you and me are away.

• 1:18:35Speaker 07

  I just talked to an outfitter who they, they had to fly a guy out.

• 1:18:41Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:18:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, DTs.

• 1:18:42Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's like, this is the perfect opportunity for me to stop drinking.

• 1:18:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. So.

• 1:18:49Steven Rinella?

  I bet those cookies your dad brought were good.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:18:51Steven Rinella?

  We finished them immediately.

• 1:18:55Speaker 04

  I had, I had, you know, I, I, I was adapted to the meat at that point in time, uh, to just meat. But I still enjoyed some other things, you know, and, and so, yeah, I, I gobbled them down.

• 1:19:07Steven Rinella?

  Did you ever lose your salt tolerance? Like, did you ever lose, did you ever get to the point where you didn't even want salt on the meat?

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:19:15Steven Rinella?

  You always wanted it salted.

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  I liked it salted.

• 1:19:19Steven Rinella?

  You ever, have you read, uh, Stephenson's My Life with the Eskimo?

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:19:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. He would, when they would go, when they would go into these, in with these groups, in with these Eskimo hunting, they would find that to keep your supplies from getting diminished, they would salt everything. Cause they hated salt.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  Oh, that was a protective measure against.

• 1:19:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So you'd have your stash of food, right?

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Steven Rinella?

  They would just salt it. Yeah, and then no one would touch it because they salted it because they had they didn't do they didn't do dietary salt.

• 1:19:50Speaker 07

  Eskimo didn't.

• 1:19:51Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:19:51Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:19:52Steven Rinella?

  And he says, if you salted meat, they don't want nothing to do with it.

• 1:19:54Speaker 07

  Don't you think they were getting salt from seal fat and stuff like that?

• 1:19:58Steven Rinella?

  They weren't using it. They weren't using it as a seasoning. I mean, you know, if you eat a fish out of the ocean, he's not salty.

• 1:20:04Speaker 07

  No, but right, just your body chemistry. Don't you need like a certain amount of iodine?

• 1:20:08Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 07

  Right? So.

• 1:20:11Steven Rinella?

  He mentions it like multiple times that just they don't want salt. And then he he eventually arrives, Stephenson arrives at a point where because he has to go without for months and months. They run out of salt. He goes months without salt eventually. And then gets where it ruins it for him. He doesn't want any kind of salt on his food. And he talks about it being like a it's a learned that that eating all that salt is learned. It's a learned taste and you get if you go without it for a couple of years or whatever, you don't you can't eat salty meat anymore. No, that's what he says. He was wrong about a few things.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  So he did mention that that they considered polar bear liver to be toxic, that you couldn't eat it without.

• 1:20:56Steven Rinella?

  Toxic amounts of vitamin A.

• 1:20:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:58Steven Rinella?

  That's a widely held belief. Is that not true?

• 1:21:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it is true. So but it's also true for grizzlies. So me and little John at one point after eating dried moose meat for a week.

• 1:21:12Speaker 04

  We ended up getting a grizzly and and cut him up. And we're frying a heart, liver and kidney in a full pan load. And we both got headaches that just pounded us for a couple of days.

• 1:21:26Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:21:26Speaker 04

  We couldn't get up. And I think it was vitamin A poisoning.

• 1:21:30Speaker 07

  No kidding?

• 1:21:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so I think that it's not just polar bear, but it's the predator livers.

• 1:21:37Speaker 07

  Did you get that griz with the two forty three or in a tray? Yeah, two forty three, yeah.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Your gun, huh?

• 1:21:43Steven Rinella?

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• 1:25:04Steven Rinella?

  Talk about, I'm not trying to move you along, I'm just curious. How old were you when you decided that I'm gonna make a go of it and I need a wife and kids?

• 1:25:13Speaker 04

  Well, so, it must have been, I must have been 20 or 21 when I decided I was gonna make a concerted effort to, to find a woman. So I, so I built a raft and I floated down to Circle and I hitchhiked into Fairbanks. And I had been at the university for one semester, so I knew there was these personal things. So I left a personal note on there. I don't know exactly what it says right now, but it was something about a trapper.

• 1:25:47Steven Rinella?

  You went, you made a raft, go to Circle, hitchhiked to Fairbanks and then make like a, like a little flyer for yourself?

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Steven Rinella?

  With the little tear off tabs?

• 1:25:56Speaker 07

  Little advertisement.

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  No, there were no tear off tabs.

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, that was my first attempt.

• 1:26:02Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you know, you know what's the cutest thing in the world is, uh, Paul's daughter, Paul and Jen's daughter, Brooke, at the meat eater store downtown, she's got a tear off tab.

• 1:26:14Speaker 07

  Oh, nice.

• 1:26:16Steven Rinella?

  I was bummed the other day, I saw only one thing was tore off, so I don't know if it was there that long. I was gonna tear a couple more off. Just to make it look a little hotter.

• 1:26:23Speaker 07

  Well, maybe that's representative of folks not killing stuff walking into the meat eater store.

• 1:26:28Steven Rinella?

  Well, could be that, or it could be that, that, that social media is her preferred

• 1:26:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Steven Rinella?

  mode, too. Um, anyways, go ahead. So you make an ad. What does it say?

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  So not only that, but I had a dog with me and a rifle. So I had the double strap rifle, right? And just because then it's like a little backpack.

• 1:26:45Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 1:26:45Speaker 04

  And that's how I I carry my rifle to this day. And um, and then the dog had a dog pack. And so what we did is we would walk down the road and I would shoot. It was big rabbit year then. And I would shoot rabbits on the road and for our food as I was hitchhiking. Finally got a ride all the way to Fairbanks and then ended up getting a ride on the other route going to Eagle and then built another raft and came down, down river from Eagle. In fact, that was, I ended up stopping at Dick Cook's place. Uh, and in the spring that year and he wanted to go hunting sheep.

• 1:27:26Speaker 04

  And so we took off into the mountains there and he gave me a two fifty seven Roberts that he had. And with, with different, he, he had different bullets loaded up for different purposes, right? There was, you know, for a moose load or to a goose load or to, you know, all these different things. So he's got like five shells and, and we go up after sheep. And, and I get a shot at this, this big ram and it, and it, it was a poof. And there's this bit of sleeping bag, um, fiber that comes out of it. So it's a download, right? But it hits him in both elbows. Boom, and he's down.

• 1:28:10Speaker 07

  Hold on, um, what's a download? Like a birdshot load type of deals? You was using the, the ticking for wadding? Is that right?

• 1:28:21Speaker 04

  That's right. So you, you're not putting near as much powder in. And so it's a slower, um, so it's a bullet that's not gonna. I mean, we did that for squirrels and grouse too, you know, we used full metal jacket in two forty three.

• 1:28:33Steven Rinella?

  And you just stuff the X, you fill the excess space with down?

• 1:28:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, because if it's laying there and the powder is just spread across the bottom, it can, they say it can, it can back, back pressure.

• 1:28:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  But, um, But Dick had not kept track. This is a Sméagol, you know, with all his things. That's what we would have run into if we'd have started using those. But he had assured me, Dick had assured me that these were all big loads, which they weren't. So this ram gets up on his back legs. I don't know how he got up and ran on two legs over the edge and Dick ended up dispatching him down the hill a little bit. But, um, but, but that was a, that was a crazy situation there. But, but then I got in my raft again after, after we had come down off of the mountains. Dick.

• 1:29:22Steven Rinella?

  How long, how long was this sheep hunt?

• 1:29:24Speaker 04

  One day.

• 1:29:25Speaker 07

  I gotta tell you, this is the most interested I've been in a getting a lady story in a long time.

• 1:29:30Steven Rinella?

  And meanwhile, you set your trap. You baited the trap with this note.

• 1:29:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I never got any. It was a, my mailing address was P O Bach, uh, uh, General Delivery Eagle. Right. And I never got anything. So that was a failed.

• 1:29:45Steven Rinella?

  What did the note say though?

• 1:29:47Speaker 04

  Um, trapper living up on the Yukon is, uh, seeking a woman. I think something like that.

• 1:29:54Steven Rinella?

  Nothing about any kind of criteria.

• 1:29:56Speaker 07

  Young and handsome trapper. Yeah, he said, yeah, 21 years old.

• 1:30:01Steven Rinella?

  You didn't put anything about like, you didn't put down any parameters that you were hoping to like achieve here.

• 1:30:07Speaker 04

  I did not. No.

• 1:30:09Steven Rinella?

  Did you put your age down?

• 1:30:10Speaker 04

  I don't think I did. I, I think, see, it was a failed attempt. Okay. It was my first attempt, but it was a failed attempt.

• 1:30:17Speaker 03

  Let's hear about the successful one.

• 1:30:20Speaker 04

  So, so I went in again the next summer.

• 1:30:24Speaker 04

  And so, but, but there's a, there's a problem, you know, to get to, to have a, to develop a relationship, you know, I was going to have to move into Fairbanks and get a job and, and everything. And then, and I just couldn't do that, you know, you were going to miss, you know, the, the king salmon season. You were going to miss, miss the moose season. You're gonna, you know, it, it doesn't work. So, so I went in and happened to be there during the solstice fair. They have a big party on solstice every year. And, uh, and Karen, my, my wife of 43 years right now, was sitting taking care of somebody else's dog. And in front of a live music band. And so I.

• 1:31:06Speaker 04

  I sauntered over there and we struck up a conversation. Well, she was taking classes up at the university to go out and teach. And, um, and I asked her if she wanted to, to come and join me. And she said, when are you going? I said, tomorrow.

• 1:31:22Steven Rinella?

  Was she kind of a hippie?

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, Birkenstocks.

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 04

  Everybody called us hippies on the river.

• 1:31:30Steven Rinella?

  The whole thing, watching a dog at a music, music thing.

• 1:31:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Steven Rinella?

  But back then hippies were kind of hard. Like they'd go live in the woods. Different than.

• 1:31:38Speaker 03

  And they shoot, they shoot stuff.

• 1:31:40Speaker 05

  Plenty of them in Alaska. I call it, it's the hippie redneck of Alaska. Like they're, they're rough and tough, but kind of hippies at the same time.

• 1:31:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I suppose. I didn't, I didn't, uh, if they were hippies, I don't see anything wrong with them.

• 1:31:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. They, they, they were great people that lived out there and high functioning, doing a lot of different stuff.

• 1:32:05Steven Rinella?

  Sure, man.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  I mean, taking care of dogs and putting up food for the winter and dealing with salmon and building cabins and traveling all over. Yeah, it was, it was a high functioning group.

• 1:32:16Steven Rinella?

  When you met her, um, how, how, like, how abruptly did you lay out what the, what the proposal was?

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  Oh, within a couple of hours.

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  And, uh,

• 1:32:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, he said he's, he's got one day to make a decision, right?

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  Well,

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  Or you're leaving the next day.

• 1:32:33Speaker 04

  And she says, I'm not going to go, but give me what, where do I write you? So she would write me and then, and then the postmaster in Eagle would, would, uh, give these letters to people to go down river. And so I would get a letter from somebody when I was down on the Yukon. And of course I had to borrow stationery, you know, right back. But, um, but we exchanged, I don't know, three or four letters.

• 1:32:59Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:59Speaker 04

  During the course of that, uh, summer and fall. And, and then I was up the Kandik River and didn't get any more mail until, until I went down to the Yukon one time. And, and she had, uh, she had put in her note that she was traveling down to, um, San Francisco where she had gone to college. And, uh, so I came down and met her at the airport. In Anchorage. So, so get this, I've got a beaver coat. And, uh, and moose hide pants, mukluks with beaver tops to them, beaver mittens and hat.

• 1:33:44Speaker 04

  And I get on an Alaska Airlines jet out of Fairbanks and they take me just like that down to Anchorage. Right. And my dad meets me down there and he's like, Jesus Christ, Randy, you can't

• 1:33:59Speaker 04

  dress like this in the city. So he takes me out and gets me new clothes and boots and stuff like that. And so I met her though, at, uh, at her airplane and I had a ticket to go with her. So, so I went down to San Francisco with her and spent a couple of weeks. And then she was teaching in Acciak, which is down in Lower Cusquem, a village down there.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  I don't want to diverge from your love story, but when you got to San Francisco, was it like, holy shit, culture shock kind of thing?

• 1:34:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  I mean, I'd grown up in Santa Fe, you know, so I mean, I, I mean, it isn't like San Francisco, but

• 1:34:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:34:37Speaker 04

  No, it's, it was, uh, yeah. It was, it was culture shock.

• 1:34:42Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:34:42Speaker 04

  She took me to New York one time because she grew up back on the East Coast and I'm like, oh, that's Martin, or that's, you know, Muskrat, there's, you know, Fox Fur, you know, all these different fur coats that people were wearing. And, uh, and I also said, don't let go of me because I don't think I could make it out of here.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  And so anyway, we've had a lot of great adventures, but, uh, but I did go down there with her. And, uh, we got married the next year out on the river.

• 1:35:10Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 1:35:11Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:35:12Steven Rinella?

  And you've been together, you've been together how long?

• 1:35:14Speaker 04

  Forty-three years.

• 1:35:16Speaker 05

  And when you got married, did she move up on the river with you?

• 1:35:19Speaker 04

  She did. And, uh, and I took her to one of, of our cabins that was about a nine by 10 cabin. And, uh, showed it to her thinking, this is, there it is, this is the place and she's. Going, I don't really think this is a good place for me. But we'd already been married, okay? And, uh, and so, and so, uh, I says, or we can go up river a mile or so. And there's this old cabin, uh, that was there and we could build a new one. And that's what we did and we built the biggest cabin that was out there on the river.

• 1:35:57Steven Rinella?

  How big was it?

• 1:35:58Speaker 04

  It was eighteen feet, uh, square inside. And two story. Well, it wasn't full two story, it was a two thirds loft. Yeah, mansion.

• 1:36:09Speaker 04

  It was a big one.

• 1:36:10Steven Rinella?

  Were you peeling those logs or just leaving them and letting the bark fall off eventually?

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  Um, I, I left them. They were dry trees though.

• 1:36:20Steven Rinella?

  Like fire killed trees or?

• 1:36:21Speaker 04

  No, they weren't fire killed. It was a big grove, a spruce tree that was growing along the Canuck River. And there was a, there was a, a, a green, uh, swath that was maybe fifty yards in, uh, in width. And then there was a dead one. And I think the permafrost just came in underneath them and killed them.

• 1:36:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:36:41Speaker 04

  But they were big, big trees, big dry trees, all of them. So firewood was not a problem ever.

• 1:36:47Steven Rinella?

  At that point, were you building with a chainsaw or all hand tools?

• 1:36:50Speaker 04

  Uh, both saw and an axe. And a two inch auger for pegged work. No, I didn't have a chainsaw for a long time.

• 1:36:58Speaker 07

  Were you moving them on the snow or how, how are you transporting big logs like that? An eighteen foot, what, what's the diameter?

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  They were twenty feet long and the big ones were probably twelve inches at the butt. And, uh, you know, nine or ten at the small end. They're real uniform. I just would grab them and haul them in.

• 1:37:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:37:19Steven Rinella?

  You know how like normally if you're married it'd be,

• 1:37:23Steven Rinella?

  you know, like you might get in a big old fight about, I don't know, like, oh, we should stay home this Christmas. Or no, we should go to so and so's this Christmas. And that might be like a thing.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Steven Rinella?

  As you were married, living out in the bush like that, was there like a major version of that? A major version where it was like, we should live like this, living off the land out in the bush? Or we should go live in the town?

• 1:37:52Steven Rinella?

  I mean, is that like a constant source of tension?

• 1:37:54Speaker 04

  No, it really wasn't. Um, I think the biggest tension initially was, um, when we were leaving Eagle with our supplies in our double end canoe, getting ready to go up the Kandig for the winter. Karen, um, came up with this industrial sized box of toilet paper.

• 1:38:11Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:38:12Speaker 04

  And I'm like, we can't fit that Karen, we can't fit it. She goes, it goes or I, or I stay.

• 1:38:18Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  And so.

• 1:38:19Steven Rinella?

  Laid it right out.

• 1:38:21Speaker 04

  She laid it right out. I says, there's moss Karen, and she goes, not gonna use it. This toilet paper goes or I'm not going. And so the toilet paper came. That was, that was, I mean, it didn't last for very long, cause uh.

• 1:38:36Steven Rinella?

  Cause you started using it all.

• 1:38:38Speaker 04

  No, no, no, I didn't. I didn't use it. She did, but, um, but, uh, but she, she, she made her position known.

• 1:38:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:49Speaker 04

  So, so we went out into the woods and built that place and stayed there a couple of years and then she wanted to go and teach again. So we went, um, together out to, uh, in that case, it was Chivac out on, uh, the Yukon Delta. And, um, and that, that one didn't pan out very well. Cause they had, they had financial problems. That was a BIA school and, and, uh, they hadn't accounted for all of the funds from the year before. So BIA was withholding funds. So none of the teachers got paid for like four or five months. And we, we had, uh, she had student loans, various other things and couldn't go that far.

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  So she quit and got a job in Non-Dalton. So I'm dealing with moving dogs, sleds, you know, all this other stuff. And, uh, Non-Dalton was a wonderful place. That's over near Lake Clark, um, southwest of Anchorage. Um, beautiful place and we were there for a couple of years and then back.

• 1:39:48Steven Rinella?

  Did you set up a trap there too then?

• 1:39:50Speaker 04

  No, I hunted, but I didn't trap.

• 1:39:54Speaker 04

  I hunted and I fished. I put gill nets under the ice down there and would catch twenty or thirty of these great big humpback whitefish and some lake trout virtually every night and in Nondalton, once the lake froze up. And so the town, the folks in the town there would come down with these sleds because they knew I was using it for dog food. So they would trade dried sock ice for fresh whitefish. And we did that all winter for two years. It was wonderful.

• 1:40:26Steven Rinella?

  And you were making no cash money at that point?

• 1:40:29Speaker 04

  None.

• 1:40:29Steven Rinella?

  You personally?

• 1:40:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, none. I did build my first birch bark canoe there, though, in Nondalton.

• 1:40:37Steven Rinella?

  Just for fun?

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  In the teacher's housing. Yeah, well, yeah.

• 1:40:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, to learn to do it.

• 1:40:44Speaker 04

  I wanted to learn to do it, yeah. And so these three, these three old guys there would, when they heard I was, I was starting to build this, they knocked on my door and I opened it, they walk in, took seats, and they would sit there pretty much every day and just watch. Every once in a while, they'd say something about how they used to do it. But, but nobody had been making, making birch bark canoes up there in the old ways since about the, sometime in the 1920s, they stopped building them. They would, they had got canvas then, and they started doing canvas boats that were a bit easier to build. But, but

• 1:41:26Speaker 04

  anyway, that was, that was great. And they, they gave me suggestions, like to mix caribou hair, cut up small into, into the pitch for doing the sealant on the birch bark canoes.

• 1:41:40Steven Rinella?

  And makes it more like a fiberglass or something.

• 1:41:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And, and like straw in, in adobes and things like that. Yeah, holds it together.

• 1:41:50Speaker 05

  Did you continue to use that skill in your lifetime?

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  I, I built, I think, eleven or twelve birch bark canoes.

• 1:41:57Steven Rinella?

  You're shitting me, really?

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Athabaskan style ones. I like, I built two eastern style. But the Athabaskan style is a little different construction. And so I just thought, we're in Alaska, we'll do them that way. Yeah.

• 1:42:14Steven Rinella?

  Damn. Well, uh, at this point, you've gone to school one semester.

• 1:42:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:42:22Steven Rinella?

  So why did you like, how, so you're, how educated are you now? I mean, you got a lot of school now.

• 1:42:31Speaker 04

  A lot of school.

• 1:42:34Speaker 04

  I, I've got-

• 1:42:34Steven Rinella?

  Did you go to graduate school?

• 1:42:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did. And, uh, that, so that was really one of the more traumatic things was moving into town. Traumatic things for me. So, so we went back, let me, let me-

• 1:42:47Steven Rinella?

  Please?

• 1:42:48Speaker 04

  So we went back in the woods, we, we, we went out a couple of times. And Karen taught in Eagle and, and, um, for a little bit, and I would go out on Trapline then. But, but at one point, um, you know, that, remember the Native Claims Settlement Act happened and NILCA happened? And, um, and, and all of a sudden, you know, people were, um, there was a, there was a desire to start claiming land or getting land that would go to one entity or another. And in the interior, Doian was the big regional corporation. And they had selected the land that our cabin was on. It had been BLM land prior to that.

• 1:43:30Speaker 04

  And, uh, it was just outside of the, um, Yukon Charlie Park,

• 1:43:34Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:43:35Speaker 04

  Um, boundary. And, and Doian said that they hadn't figured initially, because we, we communicated, um, they had not decided, uh, how to deal with trespass cabins, uh, how to permit them or, or not and everything. Well, finally in 1990, they, they sent us a note, uh, telling us that we had to leave. That, that, um, we couldn't be out there anymore.

• 1:44:01Steven Rinella?

  The tribal corporation did.

• 1:44:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, the Corp- yeah, Doian Native Corporation. And so, but we were getting ready to go anyway because we had one dog team and it couldn't take all of us on a big trip into Eagle or to visit other people. So, so, you know, we had like five or six dogs at that time. Great big hundred pound, hundred and twenty pound huskies. They were wonderful animals. And, um, but, but it, in order to have, uh, you know, the kids with their own teams or, or Karen with her own team, so you have, you can travel as a family, it would have been really costly. You know, you can't fish in the Yukon but go thirty miles off to live, you know? You can't move that, that much stuff.

• 1:44:47Speaker 07

  And you gotta feed those dogs, right?

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  And you gotta feed all the dogs.

• 1:44:50Steven Rinella?

  You mean like you can't move all that fish?

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  Can't move the fish. You know, if you, you live on the Yukon, that was a, that was a resource that people used, but we didn't. And so, I wasn't willing to go and try to manage a couple of dog teams. How would we even go along the river, you know? As, these guys already ran the banks and, uh, and, um, you know, the Yukon, we would run them for a while until they got tired and then throw them in a canoe and they would, you know, we could manage it that way, but, uh, it, it just wasn't gonna work. And so, we were getting-

• 1:45:19Speaker 07

  Did you, did you have no fishing on your, on your river? No char or grayling or?

• 1:45:25Speaker 04

  There were grayling. There were grayling, there were, uh, suckers, long nose suckers, there were, um, you know, round whitefish. There were a few, uh, species, but you couldn't feed a dog team with them.

• 1:45:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Speaker 04

  You know, you might feed them overnight, you know? In the lower part of the river, there were northern pike, uh, not in the upper part of the river. They, they didn't go up there. Anyway, we were, we were, we were getting ready to go anyway. And so, we just asked for a year, um, leeway from Doian so that we could come in with a ski plane and move some things and, uh, take care of the cabin so it wouldn't be a trash pile at some point. So, so they, they granted that to us and, uh, and then we went into Fairbanks. And, uh, that was, I hadn't worked a job since I was in high school, well, the, the milking the cows period, you know, just out of high school.

• 1:46:22Speaker 04

  And, and Karen had, uh, she, she was a full out teacher. She, she could go into Fairbanks and boom, she's teaching. And, uh- And I was, I was struggling. What the hell do I do now?

• 1:46:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:35Speaker 04

  You know, and uh, there was this one log yard and I thought, well, I do log stuff. And so I walked over there and asked if there was any work and this guy has these giant logs, you know, that big, big uh, uh, scribe log houses get built out of, you know, forty, fifty feet long, you know, and dirt and bark and stobs and everything. I'll give you ten dollars a log for peeling them, you know?

• 1:46:57Steven Rinella?

  To peel.

• 1:46:58Speaker 04

  Well, that isn't even, even uh, enough to, to do our rent on a monthly basis or uh, pay for the kids daycare or whatever, you know?

• 1:47:08Steven Rinella?

  You know, I, I had a gig for a while doing those logs and it was, I feel like it was thirty cents a foot.

• 1:47:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:13Steven Rinella?

  Is what we would get paid.

• 1:47:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Steven Rinella?

  That's a miserable job, man.

• 1:47:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I peeled a lot of logs and, and when it's your own, you know, it's, it's one thing, but peeling them for ten bucks a log. So, so then I, I, I said, I'm gonna go to college. And so I went back to college.

• 1:47:32Steven Rinella?

  Just walked up, walked over there?

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And uh, and, and so I had, I had one semester of credits and um, and, and, and went there and was gonna go into uh, biology. Because I thought, if there's anything I can do, it's, it's these, some job in biology where they go out in the field and do stuff, you know, cause we met, we met people out on the Yukon taking care of peregrines. We met people that were doing fisheries work or forestry work. And we thought, I can do that. That would be something I'd.

• 1:48:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you'd run into professionals out doing their jobs?

• 1:48:10Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:48:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so, and so that's what, that's what I did. And, and, and my first job was with BLM, a seasonal job. Uh, this gal Randy Jant, who was a biology, um, uh, biologist with BLM, was doing waterfowl brood surveys and uh, wanted to hire somebody to be able to do that, but they had to know the birds. And, and I knew all the birds. All of the ducks and the geese and everything. Uh, you could see them from a mile away flying and know what they were, you know? And, um, and so she took me out to test me around these, there's two lakes by the airport when

• 1:48:51Speaker 04

  they get a bunch of ducks in the spring and, and of course I could identify them all. No problem. And she's going, okay, well, you might work. And, and they were really nervous because here's this guy, I don't know how old I was, thirty-three or something like that. And, uh, then didn't have a job since he was a teenager. You know, it's, it's, it made him a little bit nervous, but they,

• 1:49:15Speaker 04

  they, uh, they, they took the chance. And, uh, and so I was going to college in the, uh, in the winters and then working for, for her doing waterfowl brood surveys. I started to do fisheries work with BLM and, uh, and, uh, finished a, uh, bachelor's degree in, uh, nineteen ninety-six. And, uh, one of the guys I had worked with at BLM was, uh, running a big project on the Yukon for Fish and Wildlife Service. And I walked into the office and he says, you're the man I want. And he, he hired me to, uh, work out on salmon down at, uh, Rapids, which is down near the mouth of the Tannanaw River.

• 1:50:00Speaker 03

  Did you kind of like, did you fall into the fisheries thing? Or was that something you were like interested in and wanted to hone in on yourself?

• 1:50:10Speaker 04

  Um, that was really opportunistic.

• 1:50:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Speaker 04

  So in, in my undergraduate work, I had done mammalogy and, and ornithology. And I did, uh, um, fish biology, you know, there were these different, uh, but I'd also done microbiology and, and, and genetics. And I liked them all, cell biology. I thought that they were all pretty fascinating. And, um, and did physics and chemistry and math and everything too, but, um, But, uh, but so I started there and, and the first year, you know, we have this big fish wheel running and we're tagging chum salmon, fall chum salmon at 450 fish a day, putting these spaghetti tags in them. We were doing a mark recapture project, um, trying to estimate

• 1:50:59Speaker 04

  the population upstream of the Tannenau. And, and, uh, while we were catching all of those chum salmon, she fish were coming through in, uh, in August and September to the tune of, you know, 60 or 80 a day going through the fish wheels.

• 1:51:15Speaker 03

  Can you describe a she fish for people that don't know what they are?

• 1:51:19Speaker 04

  She fish are a, are a great big, uh, fish eating white fish and they can be as much as, uh, 30, 40 pounds or more and, and, uh, well over a, a meter long. And, um, and they're, they're a, they're a really great fish.

• 1:51:37Steven Rinella?

  It's like a tarpon and a white fish had sex.

• 1:51:40Speaker 04

  Right. Exactly. It's kinda like that. And, uh,

• 1:51:42Steven Rinella?

  Not that I've ever caught one. They just been described to me.

• 1:51:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think that tarpon, uh, give a much, uh, more profound fight than she fish do, but, but she fish are, uh, they're a wonderful fish.

• 1:51:58Steven Rinella?

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• 1:52:43Steven Rinella?

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• 1:52:50Steven Rinella?

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• 1:54:15Steven Rinella?

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• 1:55:18Steven Rinella?

  When you got into this work and got into school and all that, like, did the whole time, did you know that you were real bright, like, that you had like a book learning ability? I mean, you had to felt so feral and wild, right?

• 1:55:36Speaker 04

  Well, there is that.

• 1:55:37Steven Rinella?

  But, but like to come back to it, were you surprised to be like, oh, I can be in these classes and get A's on my tests and write papers?

• 1:55:46Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:55:46Steven Rinella?

  Or did you feel that that was there all along?

• 1:55:49Speaker 04

  I didn't really know. So there were several of my friends that told me, there's no way you're going to be, keep up with these, you know, late teen, early twenties, test-taking machines, you know?

• 1:56:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:01Speaker 04

  And, and, but I ignored it and, and I did just fine.

• 1:56:06Steven Rinella?

  My dad hung out with this, my dad was fought World War II and a lot of his buddies were all World War II guys. And there's a guy that lived across, like, across our lake and then over to Ismus and across the next lake. And he had been a pilot during World War II, but he was kept in a POW camp. He got shot down, was kept in a POW camp. You know, the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh?

• 1:56:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Steven Rinella?

  This guy was Charles Lindback.

• 1:56:33Steven Rinella?

  He was telling me that when he got home from the war, he, he just assumed he'd go to school on the GI Bill. And he said that he's, he went and sat there one time and right off the bat, he's like, there's no way.

• 1:56:48Steven Rinella?

  And just walked out, like, couldn't do it. Couldn't do it, you know? That's what's hard for me to picture, like, that you went off and got, like, indoctrinated and went wild, but then came back and got redoctrinated, like, redoctrinated.

• 1:57:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I suppose that's, that's true. I don't know. It's, it was a wild time, but it was, it was really hard. To to come to grasp the the the change coming into town. And I struggled for a while trying to figure out what what the hell am I gonna do?

• 1:57:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because you're living like you're living like kill a rabbit, eat it.

• 1:57:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:31Steven Rinella?

  Catch something, sell it, cut a tree down, make a house.

• 1:57:34Speaker 07

  So many efficiencies.

• 1:57:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, also you're playing this like long game like, oh, if I do this for four years, I'll get like a tech position. And then maybe I'll get like a job.

• 1:57:45Speaker 07

  And the things that you have to do in school, right? Where you're like, okay, I know this doesn't matter.

• 1:57:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:51Speaker 07

  But they're making me do it anyway.

• 1:57:53Steven Rinella?

  Ask me this as long as I live.

• 1:57:55Speaker 07

  Whereas like, jump back to last year, if you didn't do what mattered, bad things could have happened.

• 1:58:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:05Speaker 05

  But I imagine just doing homework wasn't necessarily what the the challenge or what the irk was, right? Like, what was the the biggest thing that you sort of that you had to come to grips with or face head on when you made the change? Like, just in general in life, like, what was it that confronted you that really made it difficult?

• 1:58:28Speaker 04

  That that's a that's a good question. I I guess, you know, that that had been my identity for so long, being out in the woods. Coming in, it was like struggling and and our our older boy, he struggled with it, too.

• 1:58:42Steven Rinella?

  Did he?

• 1:58:42Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, he he did. And he he just saw himself as being the woods person that that he was. And he got over it. Although, he see, he's he teaches, um, he teaches applied math at University of Colorado Boulder, right? And on his webpage, it says, Zed Brown was born and raised by wolves in the Alaska wilderness, you know, so he.

• 1:59:15Speaker 04

  So he encompasses it. He likes it. And likes that that was what he did for the first, pretty much, eight years of his life. And he's still, we, he and I had gone out sheep hunting and things for several times. And that's all really fun.

• 1:59:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess, you know, when I, when I realized that if I'm gonna get into a job that I'm gonna like, I gotta go through this, the university. And once I kinda came to grips with that, I just, I would just go there. I'd just do it. And, and it, it wasn't all that hard. It was just, I mean, there was time element to it, but...

• 1:59:59Speaker 05

  Was it tough being around people all the time? Going from like not seeing people for months to being around people every single day?

• 2:00:09Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't really... That's probably, probably true.

• 2:00:17Speaker 04

  That's not something that I remember as, as a, as an issue, though.

• 2:00:21Speaker 05

  Gotcha.

• 2:00:22Speaker 04

  I did, we did get a place that was kind of, you know, kind of by itself and there was woods around it. And I really liked that. And we had a bird feeder right outside of the, this window. And so, so I would, it was definitely a good place for me, because I would come in and decompress if there was decompressing to do.

• 2:00:44Speaker 03

  So was it, was it all fisheries research after that first job at the fish wheel?

• 2:00:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I got into the, I got into the, um, the honors program as, as an undergraduate. And in the honors program, I did work, um, out in Coal Bay. I did a small mammal survey, uh, following after, um, Muri's work in the 1920s. And that, that got put into what they call an honors thesis. The honors program, uh, paid my way, essentially. They paid my tuition, and which was a good thing. But it also, there were classes you had to take in that, that were, I don't know, maybe, maybe...

• 2:01:26Speaker 04

  A little more philosophy. And anyway, it was, it was, it was a good thing. And, and so, once I went, once I got into that fish job, though, I've had that same job the whole time. I mean, I wasn't hired permanent initially. It was a, it was a technician. But, but the shefish work, there was a fellow, John Burr, that worked with the fishing game department at the time, and he came by to see us at work down there, and he said, "You guys really should do something with these shefish. We've been working to try to figure out where they go and where they came from for a long time." And, and we were doing telemetry work with the, with the chum salmon as well, not only the spaghetti tagging, but a telemetry program with it.

• 2:02:10Speaker 04

  And so, we just, with towers that were, you know, up in the drainage, so you could tell when they would swim by these towers, they would get a record. And, and so, that's what I did for my master's degree. And, and I, I, I put out radio transmitters three years in a row, and also did that odleth chemistry, and was able to show that these fish spawn in this big braided region of the upper Yukon Flats, right in the main stem. Nobody had a clue. And, and then, when they finished in mid-October, they head back down to sea and, and spend the winters in the estuary, or perhaps nearby coastal areas, I don't know.

• 2:02:55Steven Rinella?

  And no one knew, no one knew what the hell they did.

• 2:02:57Speaker 04

  Nobody did.

• 2:02:58Speaker 07

  And like in brackish water, like high saltwater content?

• 2:03:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:03Speaker 07

  Really?

• 2:03:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:05Speaker 07

  I didn't know that.

• 2:03:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and those, they go down, they're feed all winter. Whereas, there was a lot of them, since then, you know, telemetry programs with, with the shefish, a lot of them just sit in the Yukon. And I have this vision of them with their pectoral fins in the gravel, and their mouths open facing upriver, and just spending the winter that way.

• 2:03:28Speaker 07

  Not feeding, just, just sitting?

• 2:03:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:32Speaker 07

  Dorming?

• 2:03:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And so...

• 2:03:37Speaker 04

  So that was, that's one of the, one of the papers that I just sent off to a journal. We'll see how they, how they accept it, you know, they sent it out to review and, and everything. But, uh, but I think it's, it's an important piece because not all the populations do that. Um, you know, spawning populations of, of the she fish, they, some of them don't go to sea. And some of them do. And why, who knows, but that's for somebody else to figure out. But so, so that's what I did initially for my, for my master's degree. And, and because I had done, uh, odalith chemistry work, the professors up there, anybody else who wanted to go into odalith chemistry would get me tagged to, uh, be on their committees.

• 2:04:20Speaker 04

  And so I've been on, I don't know, 12 different graduate committees with people doing odalith chemistry work. And, uh, and I think largely because of that, they, uh, the university gave me an honorary doctorate.

• 2:04:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 2:04:36Speaker 04

  A few years ago.

• 2:04:37Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's cool, man.

• 2:04:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, so yeah, I got PhD, so to speak, more or less.

• 2:04:45Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I got another question for you about the living in the bush versus coming into society. When you're on the bush, like, I'm trying to think of how to put this. You know, being alive now and, and, and today's atmosphere, you become very aware of all the cultural conversations, right? And, and you become aware of like how you, who you identify as, you know, you're like, okay, I identify as, you know, an American, identify as a member of my family, I identify as a member of my community, right?

• 2:05:29Steven Rinella?

  When everything's so stripped down like the way it was, and you're not aware of all the, like every little thing in the news, or every little societal fracture that's going on, every blow of campaigning, like the presidential campaign season, right? Where do you sort of land in terms of what you are, or what you identify as? Do you mean, like, do you feel like, like, well, I'm an American, you know? Or like, where do you land at what you are?

• 2:06:05Steven Rinella?

  Are you a community member of the Yukon? Like, what, it's sort of, if someone says, like, who are you? Like, what are you? What would you have said?

• 2:06:16Speaker 04

  You mean now?

• 2:06:17Steven Rinella?

  No, no, sorry, when you were living in the bush. Like, what would you have said if someone asked you, sort of like, explain yourself to me, you're a what?

• 2:06:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, um, it was, it was much more as a, as a resident of the, of the woods.

• 2:06:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember my brother came and visited me one time, flew in on a, on a ski plane. And we mushed around, it was in the winter. And he, it was during Reagan administration, right? And he's going, like, how can you, how can you sit out here, you know, when the real world, there's so many things going on? And I says, I think this is the real world. That's how I felt. This is the real world. I didn't know that Reagan was president, right? I had no clue.

• 2:06:59Steven Rinella?

  That's kind of what, that's what, that's what I'm getting at.

• 2:07:00Speaker 04

  And I didn't care.

• 2:07:02Speaker 05

  It didn't affect you?

• 2:07:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:07:05Speaker 04

  And, I mean, maybe it did, but, but I didn't know.

• 2:07:07Steven Rinella?

  It did, it did in a macro way.

• 2:07:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:10Steven Rinella?

  Like, it did in a macro way, meaning, you know, like, like, oil prices.

• 2:07:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:07:15Steven Rinella?

  You know, I mean, like, these things would come, these things would come for you.

• 2:07:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't buy, I didn't buy any gas, because I didn't have any motor. But, yeah.

• 2:07:24Steven Rinella?

  You know, like, eventually it'd be that you got a letter saying, you gotta move off the land. And that is, in a macro sense, all this global stuff is impacting you. But it's like, but when you're out there, like, that stuff falls away. And you're just, you're a guy in the woods.

• 2:07:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:37Steven Rinella?

  You're not all pissed off about who's using what bathroom.

• 2:07:39Speaker 04

  Not even a little bit.

• 2:07:41Steven Rinella?

  You're a guy in the woods.

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  Not even a little bit, yeah. Yeah.

• 2:07:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've tried to bring it into, I mean, it was definitely a big part of, of who I am and how I think about things, you know? You know, that, that all, I don't know, some of the, some of the social issues that are so, so much conflict right now, it's like, I don't really care what somebody else does.

• 2:08:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:04Speaker 04

  You know? I just, I just don't. And, or who somebody is, you know, I just, I, I try to, I try to treat people just like people.

• 2:08:15Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 2:08:16Speaker 04

  Men, women, gay or straight, whatever, you know, I don't care. It's not my business. I have a hard enough time taking care of myself. I'm gonna take care of everybody else too.

• 2:08:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:26Speaker 04

  Or try to, uh, define their problems. I don't think so.

• 2:08:30Steven Rinella?

  Do you have, do you have any regrets about the timeline? That you spent, how you, how you spent your life?

• 2:08:36Speaker 04

  Not even a little bit. You know what was weird? All my friends at college, when I said I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna go and live out in the woods, they're going, oh, you can't do that, you gotta finish college, you know, you're gonna ruin your life and everything. Neither of my parents told me that at all.

• 2:08:52Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 2:08:52Speaker 04

  They, I don't know what they thought I was getting into. But they didn't discourage me at all.

• 2:08:58Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:08:59Speaker 04

  Not even a little bit. And, and I find that surprising, but.

• 2:09:03Speaker 03

  Do you still do like field work where you get to go spend extended periods of time, like out in the woods, or?

• 2:09:10Speaker 04

  Two falls ago was my last, uh, field project.

• 2:09:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:13Speaker 04

  Over the last, uh, a few years, I've been, uh, losing my central vision. It's a genetic mutation that doesn't, uh, usually affect older folks, but it is with me. So I have a, I have a, a hard time right now. I'm not driving. I can't read a book. I can read it on a computer with high contrast and stuff. But that last, uh, project, I was, we were fishing for she fish. And that was big enough, I could see it.

• 2:09:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  But, but, um, um, but I, I wouldn't drive a boat.

• 2:09:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:09:44Speaker 04

  Right now, and, uh, and I wouldn't be the one taking measurements and things like that.

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  And so my, my functionality in the field has, has declined to, to the point where I, I won't, I'm not gonna be going out anymore.

• 2:10:00Steven Rinella?

  How, how old are you now?

• 2:10:01Speaker 04

  Sixty-six. Give me sixty-seven in a couple of weeks.

• 2:10:05Steven Rinella?

  What, give, give me a piece of marriage advice.

• 2:10:09Speaker 04

  I don't really know. I just, I just, I, I treat Karen like a princess.

• 2:10:20Steven Rinella?

  I haven't tried that yet.

• 2:10:25Steven Rinella?

  That might be where I went wrong.

• 2:10:27Speaker 03

  You started out right with a toilet paper move.

• 2:10:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's not princess treatment.

• 2:10:33Speaker 04

  And the new cabin.

• 2:10:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's princess treatment.

• 2:10:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, don't, yeah, no, I, and, and I just love her to pieces and, and always have and always will. Yeah.

• 2:10:45Steven Rinella?

  That's been your attitude.

• 2:10:47Speaker 04

  It's been my attitude, yeah.

• 2:10:48Steven Rinella?

  You're not like, well, I'll see next year. I'll see the next year after that, how I feel.

• 2:10:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:10:54Steven Rinella?

  That's good, man. Dude, there's a lot of people that view the world like that, man.

• 2:10:59Speaker 03

  I get it, but. Are there any plans to live in the woods again?

• 2:11:04Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know. I don't know.

• 2:11:08Speaker 04

  I, I don't think so. I mean, we kind of live on the outskirts. We have a, we have a forty acre plot of land with nice birch and spruce on it where the latest cabin, big, big scribe log place that, that I built.

• 2:11:27Speaker 04

  Let's see, I started in, I started that one in my late forties, finished it in, in mid fifties. We've been living there for.

• 2:11:36Speaker 03

  Gotta let those things settle, you know?

• 2:11:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, so I love it. I love it. It takes a little work to man, maintain, but got a great big sauna, maybe wood fired sauna, which Dan, he helped get the stove for out of, out of Wasilla.

• 2:11:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:11:55Speaker 04

  He and his boss went up and picked it up.

• 2:11:57Speaker 03

  He's still feeding yourself with wild fish and game?

• 2:12:01Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, to some extent. Yeah, yeah. I went moose hunting this year, but we didn't, we didn't get anything, which is rare. So, so my, my moose hunting adventures have been to go up to that same place where we lived, up on the candi.

• 2:12:14Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 2:12:15Speaker 04

  And there's just some good lookouts and open country and, and you know, when you live in a place for long enough, you know where the moose are crossing and, and so we've always seen sometimes several bowls and, and.

• 2:12:30Speaker 04

  We go up, a couple of my buddies and I go up there and and we've never come back without a moose, except for this time, and we just never saw a bull.

• 2:12:40Steven Rinella?

  Do you guys call?

• 2:12:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, we call.

• 2:12:42Steven Rinella?

  Can you rip a call for me?

• 2:12:44Speaker 04

  Okay, so I have been around when cows call.

• 2:12:48Steven Rinella?

  So this is a real call?

• 2:12:50Speaker 04

  And it is very similar to a cow, regular dairy cow, uh, bawl. It's a

• 2:12:59Steven Rinella?

  Mmm. That's your call?

• 2:13:02Speaker 04

  It's a cow call.

• 2:13:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you don't do any of that crazy cow call like

• 2:13:07Speaker 04

  No, but they do that.

• 2:13:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:09Speaker 04

  And, and, and so if it's a small bull, you want to do a cow call. Cause a big bull, um,

• 2:13:17Steven Rinella?

  Hit me with your normal, like, okay, get out there, you're there, okay, all right, boys, we're gonna start hunting, everybody be quiet. You're gonna do what? Hit me with it.

• 2:13:25Speaker 04

  Well, if it's, uh, if you're looking for a big bull, you know, it's gonna be a grunt.

• 2:13:32Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no, no, I don't mean the bull noise, I mean the cow noise.

• 2:13:36Speaker 04

  I did do it.

• 2:13:37Steven Rinella?

  That's your main Mmm. That's your main, that's your main cow call that you're using.

• 2:13:44Speaker 04

  It is.

• 2:13:44Steven Rinella?

  Okay. You never do the big, long plaintive like

• 2:13:48Speaker 04

  No, my buddy does, uh, this guy Scott McLean, he goes up there, he's got a fiberglass accelerator type thing. And, uh, and he'll do that, and then do a couple of grunts afterwards. And it works too.

• 2:14:02Steven Rinella?

  And, but you were saying cow call for small bulls, bull grunt for big bulls.

• 2:14:06Speaker 04

  So if you do a big grunt and it's a small bull, he doesn't want to be anywhere near a big bull.

• 2:14:10Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Yep.

• 2:14:13Speaker 04

  And if we see a small bull around, we would always do cow calls.

• 2:14:16Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:14:16Speaker 04

  And they'll come. And, and one of the beauties of this particular place is that you can see how these bulls are responding.

• 2:14:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:24Speaker 04

  I mean, they could be even a mile away, and then you'll see this, this big antlers turn. And they'll start walking your way, and if you do it too much, they'll, they'll go away. And so you just want to let them do their thing.

• 2:14:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, man, why do you, uh, don't worry, we're gonna wrap up pretty quick here, but I've got a couple of technical questions for you.

• 2:14:44Steven Rinella?

  In your mind, why would a bull walk two miles to come and do like walk like he's just coming, there's not, nothing in the world's gonna stop him. And then all of a sudden, he's like, but I'm gonna lay down then walk away.

• 2:14:59Speaker 03

  Lay down for a couple hours, then get up.

• 2:15:01Steven Rinella?

  And then get up and go the other direction. Like, what is he, what is in his mind?

• 2:15:06Speaker 04

  Well, I have no idea to tell you the truth. I, I, I think that there are some bulls that get really damaged in fighting.

• 2:15:17Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:15:18Speaker 04

  We were watching, there was a big bull and a little bull, well, a, a kind of a bullwinkle, um, walking along this one open hillside at one point, and they were not responding to us at all. And, and the big bull would, would hit this little bull every once in a while. And finally, the little bull turns around and nails him in the butt with his horns, and then hauls ass across this hill. And we watched them with the big bull after this little bull, go over a couple of hills, across a stream, and then up another hill until they disappeared. But that little one had to know that he was gonna be on the run. Because that bull was going after him. Yeah. And I think, I mean, we've, we've got them when they're punctured.

• 2:16:04Steven Rinella?

  So he's coming in and he's like, man, I'm not going in there and fighting. I'm gonna linger on the outside and see what's happening.

• 2:16:10Speaker 04

  Or, or he doesn't hear it again, and, and thinks it may be not there anymore. I don't know.

• 2:16:18Steven Rinella?

  It's hard to get in their head, man.

• 2:16:20Speaker 04

  I know. But I do know that if you, if you grunt too much, or if you call too much.

• 2:16:25Steven Rinella?

  Turns them off.

• 2:16:26Speaker 04

  They're gonna turn off, yeah.

• 2:16:28Steven Rinella?

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• 2:19:47Steven Rinella?

  You know, you mentioned that, that little bull hitting that big bull in the ass. Me and Seth last year, we're messing around with, um, we were messing around with, uh, there, there's a company, Dave Smith Decoys, and he makes a posturing buck. So it's a buck that's kind of all bristled up. And you'll see other bucks come and you always think, when you see bucks fighting, you associate them being antler to antler, nose to nose, of course, right?

• 2:20:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:15Steven Rinella?

  Cause they're squaring off. But here he is, he's looking at a buck. But the buck doesn't move. So you get to see what he would prefer, how he would prefer to fight in a situation where the buck isn't always facing at him. He would prefer to fight, come in behind it, get alongside of it and drill it right in the rib cage. Like that's what he wants to do.

• 2:20:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:41Steven Rinella?

  So you mentioned that little bull hitting that little bull in the ass or something like that. Like I imagine when they can get the jump on each other, they probably do. And that's a way different hit than hitting antler.

• 2:20:51Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20:51Steven Rinella?

  When you're driving those tines into something.

• 2:20:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Every once in a while, these big bulls will lock their horns together.

• 2:21:02Steven Rinella?

  You see it get stuck.

• 2:21:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I've never, I've never seen it in practice, but I've seen those, the, the sets of antlers that are put together. Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks has one sticking, hanging up right over their information thing and, and where people come in to get hunting license, fishing license, things like that. And there's also one in Eagle. This helicopter pilot had spotted these two bulls stuck together. It has to be a desperately bad situation for them because any, any wolf coming around or bear coming around would just start eating.

• 2:21:40Steven Rinella?

  One dude, yeah.

• 2:21:40Speaker 04

  Eat them alive. Yeah.

• 2:21:42Speaker 03

  You still shooting 243 when you go moose hunting?

• 2:21:45Speaker 04

  You know what, I changed to a 6.5 Creedmoor. And the reason I did that is so I could shoot copper. Because despite what people's views are with lead, lead in the oafel of deer down in California is what almost put California condors over the edge.

• 2:22:05Steven Rinella?

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:22:05Speaker 04

  And when they found out how that was going down, because they were testing these condors, and they had lead poisoning. But they're eating that stuff where all of that lead fragment is sitting and scavenging all over the mountains there.

• 2:22:22Speaker 03

  And the acid in their guts can break that lead down to where it becomes toxic.

• 2:22:26Speaker 04

  I suppose so.

• 2:22:27Speaker 03

  I think that's what the issue is.

• 2:22:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. But so, what I headshot with the 243 was a 100 grain Hornady bullet. And bullets, I think, are everything. A lot of people say, "Oh, it's not big enough for Alaska King." They don't know what they're talking about. But that 100 grain Hornady hunting bullet is, it rolls back, it stays together, and usually on a moose, if I shoot it just behind the shoulder, it'll be either in the ribs or the skin on the other side with a lot of bleeding through the lungs. And if you shoot it right in the ear, it'll just shatter that big vertebrae right behind the head. So, it's a very good bullet.

• 2:23:12Speaker 04

  And I've tried a lot of other bullets like Nosler Partition. Nosler Partition do not work in a 243. And the reason for that is that that back part of it doesn't have enough mass by itself. Once it explodes, the front part explodes.

• 2:23:28Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't carry through.

• 2:23:29Speaker 04

  Doesn't carry through. And I shot a couple of caribou with that load. And you have this grapefruit-sized, you know, damage on the outside, but it never went into the lungs. And it killed them. But it would not be a good bullet to have. And so, right now, though, I wanted to go lead-free. And if you go down to copper in a 243, you're down to 80, 85 grains. And I didn't want to go there. Because there were people out there that shot 22 250s and 70 grain bullets. And they won't break the neck.

• 2:24:09Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 2:24:10Speaker 04

  They will kill a moose and um but they're they're uh you know getting down there closer to the edge. And uh and the two forty-three hundred grain that I was using will break any bone in the body, no matter what angle you're you're dealing with. Some people say, well, yeah, but you've got to be really precise. You do with anything, you know?

• 2:24:30Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:31Speaker 04

  You've got shoot a moose with a thirty-eight-six, it's uh gonna run for a long ways. And uh yeah, so so I I change to a six-five Creedmoor, same rifle, Winchester Model seventy. And um um but it can shoot a twenty, a hundred and twenty grain copper bullet.

• 2:24:53Speaker 04

  I like it.

• 2:24:55Steven Rinella?

  Uh this is my last question for you.

• 2:24:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:24:57Steven Rinella?

  Then maybe the boys got more questions for you too, but uh how do you feel? What's your general attitude about

• 2:25:08Steven Rinella?

  protections of Anwar, about the proposed Ambler Road? Um.

• 2:25:17Speaker 07

  Pebble Mine.

• 2:25:18Steven Rinella?

  Pebble Mine, yeah, Pebble Mine. Like, are you at with the time you spent and is more and kind of the equity you've built up in that place?

• 2:25:28Steven Rinella?

  Do you encourage? Do you do you encourage that development around job creation? Or do you just want or do you have a view that you just want the wild to stay wild? Like, what what's your personal take? As much as you're able to comment on that with your position at work?

• 2:25:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes I I I can't. I did. I was part of the um the biological team on the uh EIS for the for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the coastal plain. And and one of the big things that's um that's an issue in that, and they they they put their opinion out. Um, I think it was last week uh on that, the uh the SEIS that was uh taking place. But but there's there's there's no water. Out there. None of those rivers flow during the winter. And um, and the, the oil production depends on that water a lot.

• 2:26:27Speaker 04

  For ice roads, for the drilling, for the camps, everything. So there's, there's a big hurdle for um, any of these companies to go and, and develop that. In that they're gonna have to figure out how they're gonna get water. There's 600 meters of permafrost. There's a handful of these perennial springs that come from the south side of the Brooks Range, hit these big uh, uh, fault zones and go down and muscle their way up through there somehow. And, and so there's this water in certain places that will provide a couple kilometers of uh, of uh,

• 2:27:12Speaker 04

  habitat, water, that all of the fish in those streams, like the hula hula uh, or the uh, saddle roach that, that have um, that have fish in them. All of them are there. And the rest of the river goes dry in the winter.

• 2:27:31Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 2:27:31Speaker 04

  And that's true all across that coastal plain. Where they get water? I have no idea. Some people have thought, well, maybe they'll melt snow, maybe they'll do a desalate plant, maybe they'll truck it, but you know, you can't truck water across an ice road. You'll break it up and then you'd be just continually doing that. So there are some, some steep hurdles to doing that, but um, there are, and, and the last time that there were sales there, it was this uh, development group with Alaska, Ada, that bought most of the um, most of the plots and two companies from somewhere else that didn't have any capacity to develop them,

• 2:28:15Speaker 04

  bought the other two. I think just on a speculation that if one of the big companies decided to go in there, they would have to buy those leases from them or something. And that was what Ada was doing too. Ada can't develop it either. And so it's, it's uh, I mean, they've showed from over in Prudhoe that, that they can develop without uh, the oil, without ruining places, but they got all the water in the world over there.

• 2:28:44Speaker 04

  So I don't know how they're gonna do it. I don't, no big company bid on the last group. And I think they probably also thought that, okay, this is, this is too fast, you know? And we gotta see what happens. And so they have that ability right now. It's opened up for 400,000 acres of, of lands that people could, companies could bid on. I'm not sure when they're gonna do that. But, but they'll have to figure out, they would, they would only want to bid if they have some sort of thought on how they would go about doing that, how

• 2:29:28Speaker 04

  they would get over some of these hurdles.

• 2:29:31Steven Rinella?

  It's money out of pocket right off the bat for them.

• 2:29:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So you can't, because of your involvement, you don't, you're not, you're not in a position to say like what you hope happens or what you wish would happen, except that would compromise your...

• 2:29:49Speaker 04

  So, so I, I don't, I don't really see it quite that way, because I'm not, I'm not a player in where the, whether it should or shouldn't.

• 2:29:57Steven Rinella?

  Understand.

• 2:29:57Speaker 04

  And, and the, the mining is, is a little bit of a different issue. I, I wrote a piece in our, a community perspective for, for the Fairbanks Daily News Miner on some of the mining prospects around in the interior and, and just laid out the, the dynamics of acid mine drainage and, and the, the longevity of it, you know, how far into the future it will continue to have to be taken care of. And the newspaper, and I just, everybody else puts just their name and where they live, and that's what I did, but the news miner looked me up. I mean, they've, they've, I, I write letters to the editor every once

• 2:30:37Speaker 04

  in a while. They know who I am. And, and they, they put my affiliation with Fish and Wildlife Service, and I got a little bit of a spanking for that, even though I didn't do it. And I didn't put it on there myself. But...

• 2:30:54Speaker 04

  But Pebble is one of those that has not been approved.

• 2:30:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:58Speaker 04

  And but they're gonna, as long as the minerals are there, somebody's gonna come back over and over and over until maybe the politics are right to be able to do it. But that's in Bristol Bay, right? And it's it's on that pass going over one side down to the New Shagak, great big fish river, the other side down to Lake Yolayamna, the biggest of the Sakai runs in all of Bristol Bay. Bristol Bay is booming. It's been booming for a long time. And and that is.

• 2:31:25Steven Rinella?

  Meaning that fishery's booming?

• 2:31:27Speaker 04

  The fishery.

• 2:31:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:28Speaker 04

  And and.

• 2:31:29Steven Rinella?

  It's kind of the hottest fishery in the globe.

• 2:31:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:31:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:32Speaker 04

  And and that Pebble Mine is an acid mine, and it would require taking care of for thousands of years.

• 2:31:43Speaker 04

  How does that work?

• 2:31:46Steven Rinella?

  I don't know, so that's pretty young.

• 2:31:50Speaker 04

  I don't know how the hell that works myself. So I I wrote a piece, you know, detailing that for the for the Mancho Mine. The Mancho Mine out near Tetlin is is also an acid mine. And the state and and the tribe have and the companies involved have have gotten through without having an EIS done, and nobody knew it was an acid mine. And I had gotten some of the some of the documents from somebody that had gotten it through a public records thing and saw that it was. And and brought that to light.

• 2:32:26Speaker 04

  But they're doing it anyway.

• 2:32:30Speaker 04

  And and how it'll play out?

• 2:32:34Speaker 04

  Maybe they can take care of it. They think they can, but it hasn't been looked at from a broader audience. But Tetlin will rue the day they did that if it if it isn't going to be contained on their end.

• 2:32:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:51Speaker 04

  It's a big deal.

• 2:32:53Speaker 04

  We've got a bunch of them in lower 48 here that are, you know, I call them, you know, oozing sores on the landscape. My geologist friend of mine said he thought that was kind of over the top, but like.

• 2:33:04Steven Rinella?

  Well, has he been to Berkeley pit?

• 2:33:06Speaker 04

  I know.

• 2:33:06Steven Rinella?

  Down the road here.

• 2:33:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. No, and that one is gonna go on.

• 2:33:12Steven Rinella?

  It'll outlast humanity.

• 2:33:13Speaker 04

  It will.

• 2:33:14Speaker 07

  And that's like an example I always use, Rick, because people are like, oh, well, technology's changed so much that you're thinking about this old stuff. And I'm like, okay, well, so the Berkeley pit, as an example, where like a bird lands on it, it dies.

• 2:33:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:33:31Speaker 07

  Is that taken care of in your mind? Like, technology has made that okay?

• 2:33:38Speaker 07

  Like, I don't, I don't understand the argument, right?

• 2:33:41Speaker 04

  Well, so the state has a, has a policy that if somebody's opening up the, the earth in a, in an acid mine, that they have to put aside a huge bond that will take care of maintenance on, you know, in, in perpetuity, they call it. And, uh, I mean, I, you know, I, I don't think that societies are gonna, are gonna, you know, there isn't an investment fund that you could guarantee that it's gonna be true for very long. So.

• 2:34:15Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. And that's why, like, a lot of these companies, uh, they have working permits in the state that they're in, but they're not based there. They're based internationally.

• 2:34:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:34:24Speaker 07

  To give them a little more protection, should they just so happen to default on that.

• 2:34:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the way it is in Alaska. Most of these big companies are Canadian or Australian or something. So.

• 2:34:36Steven Rinella?

  Well, my kids were real little. I made the mistake one time of explaining to them this idea that the sun will burn out, you know? Like, the sun's kind of like in its midlife crisis right now, you know? And that there'd be a day when the sun, like, it's not getting recharged.

• 2:34:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:34:55Steven Rinella?

  You know, the sun, like theoretically, will burn out. And the solar system will.

• 2:35:01Steven Rinella?

  Die. And that messed them up. Because they couldn't, they couldn't picture the geological time I was talking about. You know, so I kept trying to walk it back. Well, probably not, won't really happen, you know? But now I've taken to now they're older. I'll tell them, I said, man, someday. Like all people are gonna be gone. People are gonna be gone. And a bunch of time's gonna go by and the earth's gonna be full of all these kind of new crazy animals. And it's gonna be sweet here. You know, so don't worry about the future.

• 2:35:34Speaker 07

  They're okay. They like that version better.

• 2:35:37Steven Rinella?

  They like that better than the sun going out.

• 2:35:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a hard thing to grapple with, even as an adult.

• 2:35:44Steven Rinella?

  When you're talking about these mines, a thousand year mine, yeah.

• 2:35:48Speaker 04

  But it, yeah.

• 2:35:50Steven Rinella?

  And then, you know, it's like you're stuck with the contradiction, right? Like we all got these phones and, you know, titanium fucking coffee mugs when you're camping and shit. You know, I mean, it's like, it's, you know, it's a mess, man. Being alive is hard.

• 2:36:06Speaker 04

  Well, that's true. Yeah, yeah. No perfect situation. Yeah, but, but the responsibility, the financial responsibility of the, of the public to take care of these places. After these mining companies take it. You know, I, I don't see the oil in the same way, you know, there's other issues with oil, but it's, it's not. You know, poisoning the landscape in that way.

• 2:36:32Steven Rinella?

  Well, so. Man, I appreciate you coming down to talk. My brother was right. Danny was right. I should get you on the show. I feel like you gotta come back again someday, though.

• 2:36:46Speaker 07

  Oh, I got so many questions. We just don't have enough time.

• 2:36:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. What a deal.

• 2:36:55Steven Rinella?

  So you're going from here to see that boy of yours that you raised up in the woods?

• 2:36:59Speaker 04

  That, yeah, yeah. I am doing that. His daughters, uh, so his, his older daughter is, uh, is, um.

• 2:37:09Speaker 04

  Jewel, J-O-U-L-E. Right?

• 2:37:13Steven Rinella?

  J-O-U-L-E, like the vape?

• 2:37:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:37:17Speaker 07

  No, no, no, like an electric, like an amp.

• 2:37:20Speaker 05

  Like energy.

• 2:37:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:37:22Speaker 05

  Measure, measure, energy.

• 2:37:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, not like that company that makes vape pens. That shows where my head's at.

• 2:37:28Speaker 04

  Some of his friends, some of his friends were trying to talk him out of it. Say, oh, she'll have to tell teachers how to, how to spell it and everything like that. And, and I think it's a great name, but you may have to pay for it.

• 2:37:42Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 2:37:43Speaker 04

  So, anyway, yeah. And then Neve, their younger daughter, she's wonderful too.

• 2:37:49Steven Rinella?

  That's a pretty name. How's that spelled?

• 2:37:51Speaker 04

  Uh, N-E with an accent, V-E with an accent. So that's a certain kind of a snow on high altitudes.

• 2:37:59Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:37:59Speaker 04

  In mountains, yeah.

• 2:38:01Steven Rinella?

  Sounds like you raised your boy right.

• 2:38:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I hope so.

• 2:38:07Steven Rinella?

  Well, man, thanks so much for coming on, man. It's been great.

• 2:38:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, you bet. Yeah, there's, I still have a story or two to tell, but.

• 2:38:13Steven Rinella?

  I can tell that, man. You're an interesting guy, man.

• 2:38:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, we didn't even get into like fish, grizzly bear, like, oh, I want to hear more about the dogs and just weird stuff. Having run-ins with grizzly bears and, yeah.

• 2:38:26Steven Rinella?

  I wanted to get into staying real warm when it's 40 below zero, no tent, but what the, you had to come back.

• 2:38:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, we did that.

• 2:38:34Steven Rinella?

  Will you come back, will you come back on the show just for a technical, purely technical questions? Backwoods know-how.

• 2:38:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:38:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd do it.

• 2:38:43Speaker 05

  Nick, can we just coordinate it with your next trip down to visit the family?

• 2:38:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:38:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:38:49Speaker 04

  Well, I'd definitely do that. It's like a family in Albuquerque too.

• 2:38:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:38:53Speaker 04

  And so, one way or another.

• 2:38:55Steven Rinella?

  Do a little Rocky Mountain loop?

• 2:38:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:38:58Steven Rinella?

  You're gonna run the spine of the Rockies all the way to the end?

• 2:39:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what it, that's what it would be.

• 2:39:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh, man, well, thank you very much.

• 2:39:07Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:39:07Speaker 07

  Thanks.

• 2:39:08Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me. This has been great.

• 2:39:09Steven Rinella?

  Appreciate it, man.

• 2:39:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:39:16Steven Rinella?

  Where the Hyundai is over and it's time to pack it in.

• 2:39:24Speaker 03

  Stevie got another and I got skunked again. But that Rocky Mountain sunset this afternoon was pleasing. But it's my last day in camp, so I'll see you next season. There's nothing like a sunrise over mountains in the fall. And I hear a distant bugle, he's answering my call. And we may see the warden if we give him a reason.

• 2:40:09Speaker 03

  But it's my last day in camp, so I'll see you next season. And if I draw another, I'll be back here again. We'll find out in the summer when the lottery comes in. Well, fingers crossed, my friend. Well, I wish everyone good luck. I'm headed home this evening. Cause it's my last day in camp and I'll see you next season.

• 2:40:51Speaker 03

  I'll see you next season.

• 2:41:00Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house, they all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you've got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of A person like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set.

• 2:41:45Steven Rinella?

  Visit weatherTech.com for your holiday shopping today.

• 2:41:52Speaker 03

  Someone once said, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. I did. Mike Tyson. Oh, well, Mike Tyson and Boost are here to tell you that your mobile plan is punching you in the mouth with prices that can knock you out. That's a low blow. Totally, but you can do something about it. You have to punch back. No, Mike, you gotta switch to Boost with a plan that's $25 a month forever. Oh, that's a great plan. Maybe you can do both. Boost Mobile, what's your plan?

• 2:42:21Steven Rinella?

  Hey, let me tell you, when the hunt is over, the work isn't over. You've still got all the grinding, stuffing, slicing and sealing. Turning your harvest into meals takes the right tools. L E M Products offers grinders, stuffers, slicers, dehydrators, vacuum sealers, and more for hunters and home meat processors. For more than 30 years, L E M has been helping people bring their harvest from field to table. Visit L E M products.com and use promo code STEVE15 to receive 15% off plus free shipping. That's STEVE15 at L E M products.com.

• 2:43:04Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.