Show Notes
On this episode of The Western Rookie Podcast, Brian has guest Dan Pickar on to talk about some of the craziest adventures Dan’s career has brought him.
Dan is a writer, editor, and producer for both Eastmans Hunting Journey and Beyond the Grid TV. Dan also hosts his own podcast under the Beyond the Grid brand. Throughout his career, Dan has had the opportunity to go on some of the wildest hunts and adventures possible – from Marco Polo sheep above 16,000 feet to monster bull elk. Brian and Dan talk about some of these crazy stories and a few hard-earned tips and tricks for your next adventure. Check out Dan’s social media and hunts at the links below!
Connect with Brian Krebs
On Instagram, TikTok and Online
Have Questions or Comments? Send an email to Brian@westernrookie.com!
On this episode of The Western Rookie Podcast, Brian has guest Dan Pickar on to talk about some of the craziest adventures Dan’s career has brought him.
Dan is a writer, editor, and producer for both Eastmans Hunting Journey and Beyond the Grid TV. Dan also hosts his own podcast under the Beyond the Grid brand. Throughout his career, Dan has had the opportunity to go on some of the wildest hunts and adventures possible – from Marco Polo sheep above 16,000 feet to monster bull elk. Brian and Dan talk about some of these crazy stories and a few hard-earned tips and tricks for your next adventure. Check out Dan’s social media and hunts at the links below!
Connect with Brian Krebs
On Instagram, TikTok and Online
Have Questions or Comments? Send an email to Brian@westernrookie.com!
Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!
Show Transcript
Brian Krebbs: Welcome back to another episode of the Western Rookie Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Krebs, and I'm super excited because today's guest, as from what I can tell Don, almost all of it there is to do in the outdoors. He's a writer, editor, and producer over at Eastman's Hunting Journal, as well as Beyond the Grid tv.
Dan Piar, I hope I didn't [00:01:00] mispronounce your last name, but how are you doing today, Dan?
Dan Pickar: I'm doing good. No, you nailed it. It's funny growing up through school and college, you should hear the pronunciations of my last name. You can imagine Dan Picker, picker. No there's no pickers here.
There's pi cars here. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. But yeah, no, doing good. Cool.
Brian Krebbs: Cool. So from what I can tell by looking up at your social media, you have already racked up probably more experiences and adventures than us average sportsmen and women will probably do in a lifetime. Is there anything left on the dream list or are you just circling back for seconds and thirds at this point?
Dan Pickar: I'm the type of guy that I like to chase adventures that are economically friendly to my wallet. Yeah. And so that's how it all started, out of college and being a hunting guide and then just wanting to become a better hunter and wanting to become a better bow [00:02:00] hunter.
And so I sought out just adventures that I could do that didn't cost me a ton of money. And, like I started in Hawaii going there over a decade ago, bow hunting, and I started over there by going over there and bumming it and sleeping out of the car a rental car and, making contacts.
And now over the years, going over, over there. Yeah, I think that's my 13th trip I did this year was number 13, but making great connections and meeting great people and it's evolved in, into a lifestyle of hunting in Hawaii every year and some of the great properties that I go back to.
So I, I'm not bumming it anymore. I have a family now too and some great connections and so it's really evolved into yeah, just an awesome lifestyle and just something that I do every year. It's just who I am now. So that, yeah, that's just a little snippet. But it all started probably in 2008 when I really just wanted to become a [00:03:00] better bow hunter and gain experience and just keep trying to get better and better.
And, there, there's so many, that's the cool thing with bow hunting. Is there so many benefits to it that more than just, the hunt or, flinging an arrow the connections that you make and the relationships and the lifestyle and the adventure and the journey and just everything that it encompasses just has really attracted me since the beginning.
And that's probably why I love it so much is just the big picture of it.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. And it it, there's so much you can do with bow hunting, especially like the access for tags and hunts and it, it's just so much easier to come by than rifle. Unless you're in Colorado doing like over-the-counter rifle.
And it's, a majority of bow hunters in America are whitetail bow hunters, right? The hunting industry really is the Mississippian, Missouri River valleys for whitetail hunters. And you don't, like you said you don't meet a ton of people when you're [00:04:00] just going to your own farm and sitting in your tree stand.
But when you start traveling for bow hunting, especially like out west, you're meeting people in all these little towns. You're stopping for gas and you got, if you got antlers hanging out of your truck, people are walking up and asking you about the hunt and where you were and where you're from and you just slowly start meeting people on every trip.
I don't know if I've ever gone on a western hunt where I didn't make a contact that I like could talk to now. I could reach out, give 'em a call, give 'em a text, see what's up, how their fall is going, and you, like you, once you start expanding past the bow stand, whitetails, it really opens up the landscape of what's potentially an option for you.
Dan Pickar: Exactly. It just snowballs your connection like that. And the more you do it, the more it snowballs and before you know it, the more hunts you're going on and maybe you host a couple guys that come out, you have something to offer back. And that's probably some of the best hunts I've been on.
And the best experiences we're basically like they're hunt trades, but they're not really, cuz we're [00:05:00] buddies, but it's okay, I'll take you hunting and I'm gonna take you to some of my good spots and then, I want to experience, it reciprocated and go hunting with you. Maybe you know, it's Arizona or who knows where it is Alaska and experience something new for me.
And that's the beauty of it right there.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah, for sure. I mean it's, there's a lot of things you can do. And I noticed you. It doesn't seem like you have any type of discriminatory preferences when it comes to outdoors activities. I've seen you, you're doing the big game, you're doing sheep and tar and access deer, some of these nuanced species.
I've seen lots of fish seen some waterfall. Are you, would you say you're a big game hunter that takes advantage of opportunities or are you just a equal opportunity hunter?
Dan Pickar: Yeah, I'm definitely an equal opportunity hunter. And it's just because of the way I was raised. My dad got myself and my brother out in the outdoors early and hunting and mostly [00:06:00] rifle, hunting as kids.
And my dad wasn't a big archer. He wasn't a big bow hunter. He would sit the tree stand in Montana where I grew up, maybe a couple nights of bow season and hope for a white tail or something to come by. But Bow hunting for me came in my teenage years and I picked it up myself, but as a kid, I love the squirrel hunting with 20 twos and I was a competitive shooter.
My dad taught me how to shoot, and we took it very seriously. And a big part of my upbringing was gopher hunting and prairie dog hunting. That's how you're developing that aim, small, Ms. Small mentality. And, still shooting, moving targets an animal. Just it's so much different than shooting a target as and, those are the building blocks to becoming, a great shot in hunting situations. And so that's what my dad really taught us to do at a very young age. Probably like when we were six, we started
Brian Krebbs: Yeah that's early. I was trying to plink Squirrels off of my mom's bird feeder at an early age, but all I [00:07:00] had was the pellet gun cuz we kinda lived on a lake and there's neighbors and they didn't really want me running around at the 22.
So I'm trying to knock these squirrels down with the pellet gun. And the pellet gun wasn't accurate at all. And but eventually you get one, like the kids, like when you're that young, like you could do it for hours, right? You could just sit there all day long, set up on that bird feeder waiting for your squirrel to come by and yeah, eventually you knock one down and that feeling like, I did this on my own, like I did
Dan Pickar: this.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, no I was lucky enough to grow up in the country and kind of the same mentality. And my dad as a kid, he'd be like, okay, no squirrel hunting by the house. I like the squirrels around. I was like, really? I'm like eight or nine or 10. And so he would go to town or whatever in the summer I'd be home and I would go squirrel hunting and I'd shoot him by the house.
And I don't know if my dad thought I was like, A little angel or something because he actually asked the biologist at Montana, f w p if there was like a tree squirrel shortage, if there was a disease going through or anything like that, because there was no squirrels left [00:08:00] on our property. Okay. It sounds
Brian Krebbs: like he actually did the squirrels, if he has that.
I was thinking more so he was telling you he liked the squirrels, but what he really wanted was you not to shoot the windows or the house. Exactly.
Dan Pickar: Exactly. And I did that too. I was a bad kid. No, I wasn't a bad kid. I was just very adventurous.
Brian Krebbs: When you have that much freedom at that age, you're gonna, you're gonna find the line multiple times.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So you transitioned to bow hunting in the teens? That's what I did. I don't know if it's like a product of you get into hunting and then you get into it so much, you're like, I want more. And that's like the, that's the easiest option to get more hunting. Or if it's like a little like rebel my dad rifle hunts, but I wanna do something different, so I'm gonna bow hunt.
It seems like that's pretty common for the teenager to pick up the bow and start chasing deer or whatever. Squirrels. I shot a goose, a banded goose with my bow when I was a kid oh,
Dan Pickar: that's awesome. Yeah, no, it's very similar. I actually, I got more into waterfowl hunting first, and my dad was not a water fowler growing up.
But [00:09:00] I got into waterfowl hunting in my high school years and my early college years. I was pretty into waterfowling and for me, it, it turned into something that I really enjoyed and I just couldn't get enough of. And then it turned into, it's not as much about the challenge anymore, it's about hunting with buddies.
It's like a social type of hunting and then I took bow hunting more seriously from there, just the desire to have a bigger challenge. And maybe it's just your classic American male of, the next thing to conquer. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. I did that. Now I want the next
Dan Pickar: level. Yeah.
Yeah. And so I still love waterfowl hunting, but I don't do it as much anymore. And here at Eastman's we have wingman, which is our waterfowl sector, and I'm heavily involved in that. But I truly en enjoy waterfowl hunting, but I definitely took the bow hunting to the next level because I just was looking for that challenge, that next level
Brian Krebbs: challenge.
Yeah. My, my problem with waterfowl hunting is twofold. One, it's a completely different set of equipment that [00:10:00] also is not cheap. Yep. And two, it happens right smack dab in the middle of elk season, and I would rather chase elk with my bow than geese. And and so yeah, I would love to go, but it's just one of those things where I made a choice.
Like I'm gonna double down on the big game and then I'm gonna, I maybe go sit waterfall if my brother's got something lined up or, but I don't have any of my own gear other than a shotgun at that point. That's the level of waterfall. Or I am I'm the, I'll bring snacks and drinks kind of guy and cook up breakfast in the blind, but because I don't have any gear or any knowledge, or I haven't scouted any fields, so I'll bring the food.
Yep.
Dan Pickar: Yep. No, exactly. It's a teamwork thing. It's a, yeah. You do it with your buddies and it's a social thing and Yeah. That's why I love it. It's, and yeah, it's so expensive. I remember when heavy Shot came out when I was a kid and it was the next best thing and I got a couple boxes and it was so expensive.
Cause I was so used to, spending $10 on a box of, [00:11:00] steel, 25 rounds of steel for 10 bucks. High, I can't remember what it was. High speed steel. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: Federal Blue Box or the Winchester
Dan Pickar: we shot. Yep. We shot some of that. We had how the Remington stuff too High speed or whatever it was.
Yeah. Yep. But yeah, had a heavy shot that was like, oh, we gotta save up for Heavy Shot. It's $30 for 10 rounds. It's so crazy expensive. And yeah, it's it's just funny how. Life has, and hunting in general has just changed so much over the years. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. Now it's black cloud and doesn't get any cheaper, but it, it does work.
Yeah. But I've always been like, man, who I'm gonna miss anyway, so why would I spend money at the expensive shelves?
Dan Pickar: Exactly. And I still buy steel. I still buy. Yeah. Kent Fast Steel. That's what another one that I shot when I was a kid. I like my Kent fast steel. I sh I shot back in the day cuz I'm so cheap too.
And I'm, miss half the time anyway. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. I just wanna make buddies with better collars and better set spread setters so that way they're close and then I can save my [00:12:00] money on my shelves. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So on, on the. On the big game front. What has, if you had to pick your favorite experience or hunt so far that you've done, what is your, what's like the favorite?
What's the favorite adventure that you've gone on?
Dan Pickar: Yeah, bigger adventure, the better. There's still a lot of things out there I haven't done that I want to do. But probably the greatest adventure that I've been on is guy, my boss, he went Marco Polo, sheep hunting, Tajikistan, and I went with him Oh boy.
On that hunt. To film it and talk about just remoteness in the other side of the world. And high altitude. I ended up with a terrible case of a high altitude pulmonary edema, and I'm at 16,400 feet, like spitting up fluid, coughing up fluid outta my lungs, yikes. Wondering if I'm gonna make it down.
And the last thing I want to do is end up in a taiki [00:13:00] hospital dying. Yeah. From altitude sickness. And so that was like, at that point in my life, I'm sitting up there and just digging deeper and finding that next level of strength. And I really believe that, building character is a huge thing.
And suffering is a big part of that. Being uncomfortable and a little bit of suffering. You build character, I think you become a better person and it gives you a different perspective. On life. Like after that point of being up there coughing up all that fluid, wondering if I was gonna make it, all of a sudden, 99% of things in everyday life are not a big deal.
It's nothing. But when you're in a foreign country wondering if you're gonna live or die, that's a big deal.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. I've said that a lot. Like stress, misery comfort, it's all relative and it's not relative to anyone else but yourself. What have you done in the past? And like you said, like after you did that, that 16 plus, you'll probably never bat an eye out a fourteener again [00:14:00] or a 12, oh yeah, those elk are way up high.
They're at 11,000 feet and you're like, Let's go get 'em that's baby food. Let's go.
Dan Pickar: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Pushing yourself to those extremes makes everything in the middle or just outside the middle. Nothing, it's not a problem. Yeah. It's the same
Brian Krebbs: concept to why guys shoot a hundred yards with their bow to make that 40 yard shot a chip shot.
It's, yep. You do something harder than, prac practice harder than you're gonna play. And then the game won't even be that hard. Yep. Yeah,
Dan Pickar: exactly.
Brian Krebbs: Exactly. How do you train for a, how do you train for that hunt? You just,
Dan Pickar: yeah, you can, I, around here in Wyoming, we have 11,000 foot peaks.
That's probably the highest that we have. There might be a couple that hit 12,000, but 10 to 11,000 you can, hit the altitude and be cardiovascular wise in great shape. And I was, oh, yeah. And pulmonary, like altitude sickness is weird because it can hit. The most physically fit [00:15:00] individuals and it can hit the most outta shape individuals.
And at that time when we went, it was in November, so I just came off of hunting season, September, October, where I'm extremely active, extremely physical hiking all fall. And out of that whole entire camp, I mean there were guys that could barely walk from their vehicle to the house in normal life.
And altitude sickness didn't affect them really. Nope. No. Not one thing. It did not affect them. But what I found out through research is with that altitude sickness it really affects individuals that are cardiovascular healthy And what I took out of that is if you're have a healthy cardiovascular system and your heart and lungs are in good shape and your body is really efficient at transporting oxygen throughout your body, all of a sudden your organs, your vital organs and your stomach and kidneys and liver doesn't need as much oxygen [00:16:00] to operate.
And so your body isn't produc or isn't distributing this oxygen to all your organs at a rate as fast as somebody that's not cardiovascular wise in shape. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. And so then I go from and that's the big thing, like to acclimate and when you get to elevation and like guys on Everest, like if you're hiking Mount Everest, you're not like, Just going from 12,000 to 16,000 to 22,000 feet.
Like you're walking and you're so much better off to walk and slowly ascend to those elevations. Whereas, we drove and we went from 8,500 to a town in Tajikistan called Hoog. We drove to camp at 14 five. So we went from 8,000 to 14 five by vehicle. And that's like a pretty big, punch a shock to your system and Oh, yeah, altitude.
Yeah, it can really screw you up. Now [00:17:00] if I were to hike from 8,000 to 14,000 over the course of two days, you, you probably wouldn't really, yeah, you're gonna be short of breath and whatnot, but it's probably not gonna affect you like it did. To me when I drove in a matter of four hours to, yeah, 14,000 from 8,000, that's a big shock to your system.
Yeah,
Brian Krebbs: no, I hear you. Because even when you said yeah, I'll train to 11,000 on the peaks around here. 11 to 16 is the same jump as six to 11. And I, you, I a lot of outdoorsmen, we don't even bat an eye at six. 6,000 is flat. Yeah. When you're thinking of doing like a mountain hunt, you're like, oh man, nice.
We found a spot. And guess what? It's only 6,000 feet. That's how you talk about it. Yeah. And so to jump a 5,000, like that's a big deal. And so to even to train at 11, that's like drastically different than 16. And yeah, so that is weird. I've been on, the highest hunts I've ever been on was a solo, I did a solo rifle hunt.
Elk hunt, second rifle in Colorado. And cuz I was the only one with points. [00:18:00] And then I got a bunch of free points from Colorado Game and Fish. And so I thought I'd better use 'em before I, they find out they made a mistake. And so I'd cashed in and that was, we camped at, or I camped at about 11 five and I shot my elk at 12 five.
And I noticed, I felt like crap, but that's because I remembered, oh yeah, I'm not eating anything. I haven't eaten a full meal in two days. I'm probably dehydrated. And so I was starting to feel crappy from that. And then I went to town, got a hotel, stocked up on energy, went back out and I was fine.
But what I've noticed is, I can't remember a single time, 12,005 is the highest, usually we're at about eight to 10 that I've ever really noticed. Like altitude sickness, like sure I get winded faster going uphill with a pack on than I'm used to at home. But I've never felt like anything was wrong other than my lungs just got.
Behind faster. Yeah. Versus my dad, he'll get like legit altitude sickness, so that's like kind of a big deal for him. He plans when he goes out west, he [00:19:00] plans for that. Are we gonna take a day or two to acclimate before we really start hunting?
Dan Pickar: Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's, it affects everybody differently.
And if I went back to 16,000, it might affect me completely different on, on, my next trip. You just, you can't really predict it. Yeah. And you can take meds, to. Prevent that. There's a, I can't even remember what the pill is called that you can take that helps you acclimate to elevation and essentially you won't get really, alt altitude sickness.
Yeah. Interesting. But yeah, once, once you get over 9,000 feet is when that's the threshold is when it can like really start affecting you is that 9,000 is the magic number when oxygen just exponentially starts to decrease as you go up from there, like at a rapid rate and especially higher than 12,000.
Just like down to Yeah. Very
Brian Krebbs: minimal. Yeah. That's a big part of people that do like tall peaks, like Everest as they. They wanna acclimate, but that once they hit that threshold or that [00:20:00] elevation, now they're on like a specific clock. Like you need to come back down within, I don't remember what it is, but it's 48 hours or else you will, your body will be under like the maintenance level of oxygen for too long.
And you won't make it. Like you, you only have so much time to go up and come back down. And a lot of people, they don't make it to the peak cuz they're halfway up and they're like, we're not gonna make it. We're no, we don't have time. We don't have time to finish this. If we keep going higher, we're gonna get, we're gonna run out of time and we're gonna stay on this mountain.
Yep. Yeah.
Dan Pickar: Yep. Exactly. Here's a trick for you. Last year I went on a Colorado hunt and this also actually saved me into Stan. I'll get to this in a second. But I talked to my doctor and was like, Hey, will you prescribe me some Cialis? Yeah. And he's and I'm like for Elevation? For Altitude.
And I, I text him that, and he text me back like 10 minutes later and he's yeah, actually I found [00:21:00] a lot of literature and peer reviewed studies of Cialis being used for altitude performance. And so what doctors are doing is they prescribe Cialis to athletes. Like from, if you're in California and you go to Colorado and compete, what it does is Cialis is like a slow release compared to Viagra as a fast release.
But Cialis is a slow release and it dilates your capillaries. Yeah. And so your body everything moves more blood faster. Yeah. And it just, every, your body just works more efficiently and you can your vital organs, all of your vital organs just absorb oxygen, get more oxygen, and absorb it more efficiently.
And so like it really is steroids for the mountain. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: You just have to make sure you ha you don't have any awkward trophy photos of are you just excited cuz you shot a bull? Or, what's going on here?
Dan Pickar: Let's not pitch any extra tents. Yeah, that's,
Brian Krebbs: that would be like, someone's doing it hardcore when you can look [00:22:00] at their photos and be like, yeah, you must've been at a high elevation.
Cuz we can tell
Dan Pickar: he is really excited. But no that's what saved me. That is a cool tip. It saved me Tajikistan.
Brian Krebbs: Did you take them going in and still had problems or did you have problems? And you're like, all right, I'm gonna take one. And then they kinda went away.
Dan Pickar: I in reach, actually, I sat, phoned out to a doctor in Maryland.
It was the Outfitter's doctor and talked to him on the phone and he is you have basically two options and maybe a third. The first option is if you can take this steroid and you can recover at elevation, which nobody had the steroid, I can't remember what it was. So that was out. Your other option is to get down below 9,000 feet.
That's an option. And your third option is to take Cialis if somebody has it. And lo and behold, somebody had it in camp, one of the other hunters had it. And so I started taking Cialis and I hung out at camp and hit the sauna and took a day and a half, but I [00:23:00] got on Cialis and that's what brought me out
Brian Krebbs: of it.
Brought you out of the, brought you out of the death plunge. Exactly. That's funny. That's funny. So you go around, I don't know man, there's so many, there's so many jokes about that in hunting camp. We've all heard 'em and probably not appropriate for the airwaves, but you score on hunting camp, start asking for Cialis, and some people might start giving like, what are you, what do you have in mind Exactly Whatcha trying to get at?
I didn't know it was this kind of hunting trip.
Dan Pickar: And full disclosure you're not gonna get a hard on in the mountains, like when you're on it. It just doesn't work like that. Especially like in Tajikistan, I feel like I'm dying. It was never a thing. So it doesn't affect you that, that's
Brian Krebbs: not quite as hard of a hit as Viagra.
Exactly. That's funny. So yeah, that is a pretty cool tip. Is it relatively hard to get, convince a doctor to get you a prescription
Dan Pickar: for it? No I'm on, the relationship with my doctor, he knows what I do for work and yeah. Go Google it and you can find tons of literature on it.
So I think [00:24:00] any doctor that has half a brain, if you were like, Hey I'm headed to the mountains and Yeah. I want some Cialis for altitude performance and Yeah. He, you're gonna get it prescribed. It's, and it's cheap. It's like nothing.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. My issue is I don't even have a doctor, so that'd be a great first conversation.
Hi, nice to meet you, excited to be, on your service, blah, blah, blah. Need a family doctor. Oh, by the way, can you write me a prescription for Cialis? Don't mind that I'm a healthy 28 year old, but,
Dan Pickar: oh, there you go. That's an icebreaker right there.
Yeah,
Brian Krebbs: that is an icebreaker. So the Marco Polo sheep, I was, I thought about this right way when we got onto the hunt.
But that's the one that. If I recall correctly, it's like a long-haired or a longer haired big horn. But the, is that the one that does almost like the two x curl? Like it goes around almost
Dan Pickar: twice? Yeah. Yeah. You get like a curl and a half is pretty common, but yeah, you get more than full curl.
The [00:25:00] hunt's on YouTube, you can look it up. It's like hunting world record class, Marco Polo a couple rams taken on there and one of 'em that is number, it's either number 14 or 29 in the world, I can't remember. But the ram is 63 inches, so like a 63 inch horn. Wow. And guys was 56 inch horn. And for like reference, like a really long doll sheep is like 43 inches.
Brian Krebbs: And dolls are, the dolls have the most curl of the North American sheep.
Dan Pickar: Yeah, I would say so. There's some big horns out there, like a 41 inch big horn is a big one, but yeah, like they're heavier though,
Brian Krebbs: right? Like a doll Sheep is a little bit lighter horn than a big horn. Yes, thin horn, like a 35 inch big horn might weigh more than a, like a 45 inch doll
Dan Pickar: for sure.
Yeah. It's like a big horn compared to a thin horn. Like a thin horn ram is like a doll and a stone sheep. And so they don't, yeah, they don't get the mass. We're talking like 13, 14 inch bases, but you get some length and that's the peeling look of the doll sheep is that curl and a quarter or [00:26:00] curl and a half.
And then yeah, the big horn, they tend to broom their tips off more. And you get up to 18 inch bases. Yeah. Is like a giant. Yeah, it's wild. And and then here's the other thing though, is like at Marco Polo, they're like even the neck size bigger. Than a big horn. They're like the size of a spike elk, like 450 pounds.
Like they're big. Oh, body size. They're body size. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's a lot. And then
Brian Krebbs: you chopped off. Hopefully they taste better than a big horn, cuz that's a lot of meat. Oh
Dan Pickar: Yeah. No, it's, it is a lot of meat for sure. And they don't taste great. They're pretty tough. We're shooting old Rams Yeah.
Rams that are, 10, 11 years old and it's tough living out there. There's a ton of sheep though. It's just like a weird place because they do not hunt those sheep over there even close to what they need to be hunted. So there's sheep dine of old age all the time over there. Oh my gosh.
Brian Krebbs: And do they, so if they're a bigger bodied animal, do they have the mass that's repre, like relative to a big horn since their whole body's just
Dan Pickar: bigger? [00:27:00] Yeah. I would say that the mass is comparable to a big horn. Yeah. Oh my gosh. 17 inches. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: That's huge. I don't, I have a buddy Al acquaintance, I don't know if we're buddies.
You could ask him. He's gonna come on the podcast. But he's done his grand slam with a bow, his sheep slam, north American sheep slam with a bow. And he had all four of his skulls lined up and it looks so cool. But I've heard a lot of people, they're starting to do more and more replica horns for their shoulder so they can keep their euro.
Cuz once you mount your, once you mount your shoulder mount to your full body, like you're never picking it up again. Yeah. And they miss, like that weight, that feeling of like magnitude when you pick up a skull. And so they want, they do the replica of the horn for the mount and then they can like, when someone comes over, they're like, here, pick this up.
Feel this is crazy.
Dan Pickar: Yep. Yeah, no they're definitely a different animal, prehistoric. And that horn is so dense and that those horn cores, it's so dense. Have you picked him up?
Brian Krebbs: It's crazy. Have crazy not seen his in person. I'd love [00:28:00] to pick one up. I don't think I Maybe at a show.
Yeah. I picked up like a sheath or something. And even then you can tell this is hollow and it stills waves more than an elk shed.
Dan Pickar: Yeah. Super heavy, super dense. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: No, I don't think I have yet. But I was gonna ask for the people that hunt sheep a lot, so if you're like me, I'm a guy that if I shoot it, I want to eat it.
I like, I don't like shooting things that aren't edible. Unless it's like a predator, like a obnoxiously, high populated predator, like a coyote that's causing damage or an invasive that's causing damage. Like carp, like I'll bow fish, carp, but I'm not eating those. Yeah. But for the sheep I don't, I would want to eat it.
And I'm sure most sheep hunters do, but can you make, is there anything you can do with it where you're like, yeah, this is good. It's not Angus or herford or beef or, satellite bowl elk, but it's good. I can eat
Dan Pickar: this. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, sheep is good. I've had rams. I, when I was a kid, I shot a big horn u they're excellent eating.
Really very excellent eating. Yeah. Like maybe some of the old rams they can be [00:29:00] tough of course, but anything old and old bull elk and old mule deer buck, they can all be tough. But you can let it hang for a few weeks as long as you're, you have climate control. And what I, what also I have found that helps is doing the twice freeze.
So freeze it, let it thaw, and then I'll cut my steaks and then freeze it again. Okay. And Then before you cook it, make sure you let it thaw and let it relax for quite some time. You never want to cook a half frozen steak or anything like that. So if you know you have a tough animal, let it relax for two, three hours at room temperature before you cook it.
But you can, you really can take a tough bull elk or a tough bighorn sheep twice, freeze it, and then let it relax and it's pretty good table fair for sure. Yeah. The
Brian Krebbs: steaks is the hard one. I was like, I've heard this, that sheep and goats don't, and I know they're two different animals, but sheep and goats don't taste good.
And so I'm like can you make a pressure cook stew or like taco meat's gotta work, right? Like you Oh
Dan Pickar: yeah. Is that true? Some mountain goats too, then? Oh [00:30:00] yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent no. Another good example is UD ad and I went to Texas and I shot some UD ad and brought it back, and that stuff was tough.
That was the toughest meat I've ever had, but, You can still eat it, you pressure cook it or like I'll do pulled pork sandwiches, so I'll put it in a crock pot and then just slow cook it for a long time and mix it with barbecue sauce. Yeah. And it, it falls apart. So it's not like you can waste, you're not wasting anything.
Yeah. Yeah you can make, roadkill taste good if you pressure cook it. Yeah. So that's all it comes down to. Halina too, that's another one. Most people don't like halina or most people that do like it, they make like sausage or there or something like that. And so yeah. You definitely not wasting anything and make it, yeah.
You just gotta know what to do with it, because I've heard
Brian Krebbs: the same for brown bears or grizzlies, in Canada, in Alaska, that a lot of times they don't eat those and, and you're like, why not? And it's, I think that one, it was more of a taste than a toughness. Yeah.
Dan Pickar: Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: But it's man, to shoot an animal that magnitude and not eat, it just doesn't sit right
Dan Pickar: with me.[00:31:00]
Yeah. Yeah. It's, and I don't know, I know the guys, there were the brown bears that eat salmon and eat a lot of meat, like the meat's greasy and blah, blah, blah, and like fishy and just, it's not good. Table fair. But yeah It's a cultural thing up there. I feel like most guys don't eat grizzly bears or brown bears because of that.
Yeah. But, I don't think they have a higher rate of kinosis say than like black bears or anything like that. And it's not like it's an unsafe meat to eat, but I don't think it's very good for
Brian Krebbs: sure. Yeah. I would at that point it's I'm just gonna do taco meat. I'm gonna Yeah.
Grind it up. I'm gonna cook it to plenty high temps. It's gonna have maybe double this portions of taco seasoning than my elk, but I'm going to I want to eat it. If I'm gonna Yeah. Do it. I don't like that's one animal where I just, I know they gotta be managed, because anything uncontrolled doesn't usually go well.
Yeah. But man, to just shoot it and, because that's where it seems to me like you definitely cross the line between [00:32:00] like conservationist, outdoorsmen, and trophy hunter.
Dan Pickar: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's I would agree. I would agree. And there's, it's just weird because there's half the people like eating bear and other half the people are like, no, I don't eat predators.
It's disgusting. I had
Brian Krebbs: some coyote, a coworker shot a coyote, turned it into some breakfast sausage, brought it in, and, sorry. And I, that was one where, like predators, like you gotta, there's special care to cook a predator, right? Yeah. From the kinosis and all kinds of different things.
And to have a co coworker bring some up to you at your desk at work and be like, Hey, you wanna try this? You're like instantly going through all the scenarios does this, do I trust this person enough to cook a predator for me without seeing any part of the prep or the cook and know that it was done well and I'm like, all right, let's go for it.
So I ate it. I don't know, maybe I got kinosis, I didn't get sick. I know people like, obviously the famous case is Giannis and Steve got [00:33:00] trinos from eating undercooked bear and they're alive, but I think they got sick, like they knew something happened for sure. And so if anyone ever eats them, they gotta cook it to a full
Dan Pickar: temperature.
They, there's a anti worm, pill that you can take that kills it in you, from what I understand anyway, so you can at least get rid of it if you have Trinos.
Brian Krebbs: I thought I heard that they like carry it now like that, like something is permanent. But I'm sure they're healthy and fine and.
Dan Pickar: Maybe some of the after effects. If you let it go too long, I could see how it could damage you. I have to look that up. I haven't That's good to know. I haven't got trinos, but Yeah. You gotta cook. Yeah. Cook your stuff thoroughly. I'm weird because I'm like indifferent on bears.
If it's a nice spring bear, it's usually good eating if it's like a or even fall bears. It depends on how fat they are or what they're eating, but usually it's good eating. Yeah. But like dogs I'm just I will not eat a dog, whether it's a wolf or coyote, just not, my thing won't do it. And cats either.
But I have eaten mountain lion. It's not bad. [00:34:00] Yeah, I've heard
Brian Krebbs: it's like a pork, like a light colored chicken or pork meat. Yeah. It's
Dan Pickar: quality meat. But I know guys that like, nope, I won't eat it. I don't eat predators. And so it's okay. And it's a weird, it's a weird place to be because there is a fine line there of, being, wasteful and, Disrespecting the source.
Yeah, the food source to a degree. And yeah I eat my cats. I've only killed one cat, but I eat it and I bring it out and I do give some away that, that's the other thing. Like it's not, I'm not necessarily gonna eat all my bears or all my cats, but I will give that meat away if buddies like to try it or whatever, I'll give it away, but it doesn't sit right with me, like leaving in the field either.
So I'm I don't eat dogs. No coyotes, no wolves, nothing like that. And I don't eat prairie dogs. I'll eat squirrels, but I don't eat prairie dogs.
Brian Krebbs: Prairie dogs would be a stretch. Yeah. Even to me, even with squirrels, it's like you're really doing a lot of work for a little payoff. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. You get a limit of [00:35:00] squirrels and that's enough for an hor d'oeuvre. But yeah, the, I don't think I'm gonna make a habit out of, I've never shot a kay out myself, which is probably, I have to turn in my man card for that. But Never shot a coyote. It's, I don't know, it looks fun. I would like to do it someday.
I've never been big on it. I don't think I'm gonna make a practice out of eating coyotes. I would be surprised if I ever shoot a wolf just cuz where I live, you can't shoot them. So I'd have to travel quite a bit for it. And that's not high on my dream list. Yeah. But the bears I really wanna do like a spring high elevation, black bear hunt.
The ones that are eating more blueberries than fawns type of, I've heard delicious. Those are delicious bears. I would love to eat that. I don't know what I would do. Little concerned about making like a cold smoked sausage or undercooked steaks, but probably more crock pot meals and tacos and yeah, I think that'd be really fun.
Dan Pickar: Yep, for sure. I, when I was my bears, I don't, it's all crockpot meals. I don't eat steaks and Nah, it's not worth the risk. You can't
Brian Krebbs: like, yeah, like with a predator, you, if [00:36:00] anyone's tried to eat a steak that's cooked to one 60 or 1 56, good luck. Yeah. And And you can't do it, really do it under that.
So yeah, that's what I would probably do there. Yeah. Why
Dan Pickar: risk it? Yeah, it's not worth it. I just don't, although I will. No, I was gonna say, I will say like in Montana, they used to test your bear for trico noses, so you could send in a tissue sample and they would test it. That would
Brian Krebbs: be nice. So you could know.
So that's pretty cool. If you could do like snack sticks or summer sausage with it, because none of that stuff, you usually bring it up to a temp, like 1 52 or 1 56 depending on what you're, but you're riding a fine line, a gray area, cuz it's time and temperature to kill most things and every, everything is different that you could potentially get from it.
But what I've read pretty much one 60 everything dies. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah, you gotta, but then if you cook like summer sausage to one 60 or smoke it to one 60, usually that's not good summer sausage. That's not how you make that. And so it would be nice to know If I have an issue. Same with c w D, like I think a lot of people like knowing, [00:37:00] some people would maybe eat it anyway, but it'd be nice to know like maybe they wouldn't give that away or maybe they wouldn't encourage their kids to eat that as much.
Dan Pickar: Yep, exactly. That's the one thing I will not feed bear or anything sketchy to my kids if, as, if it's not like well done. Yeah. Like
Brian Krebbs: wide, do pull apart. It's been sitting at 208 degrees for two hours.
Exactly. It's just not worth it. Everything that you can catch in here is dead.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good part of it cuz it's a big part of what I do. It's the food aspect of it. I haven't bought red meat unless it's like something special that you just don't have in the freezer. For years now, I've, I'm, I need to actually do better about getting rid of everything from last fall before this fall starts.
But then you run that risk of, I, I go heavy on the meat, empty the freezer, and then I don't have a very successful fall and now I'm outta meat. That's that fine line. Yep.
Dan Pickar: Exactly. Exactly. Awesome.
Brian Krebbs: I asked you what your favorite adventure was so far, and you really hit it out of the park on that.
But if I had to ask you what your, if we [00:38:00] could only limit you to one hunt a year, what hunt would you go on? What's your Oh, your all time. What's the, you're not gonna Marco Polo hunt every year. So what's like your, every year, the thing you look forward to most each fall?
Dan Pickar: Yeah. Bow hunting, elk.
Yeah. During prime time. Yeah. That's
Brian Krebbs: number one. What's prime time for you? Everyone's got like their different
Dan Pickar: prime time. Yeah. It depends on the state, the region, the elevation. And usually it's, areas that I've been in before. I'm familiar with Elk habits. Yeah. I like early season, I like to catch those bulls right before they're cowed up and right off, right after they're coming out of like their summer range.
So they just rubbed their velvet they rub their velvet in the middle of August, but they're like in that transitional stage before cows. They're aggressive, they're territorial and they're looking for cows. And so I do love that early season timeframe to, to find a big bull by himself.
Cause
Brian Krebbs: So you're probably talking [00:39:00] like first, second week of
Dan Pickar: September. Yeah. Yeah. Anytime before September 12th. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: So really first week. It's funny cuz I ask everyone, and everyone's got their preferences, we're big third week elk hunter, especially this year. We're going as far south as we've ever been.
We're on the southern Colorado. And so we, we picked the third week for multiple reasons. None of us we're all from Minnesota, so none of us like the heat. We don't wanna be caught out in a hundred degree deserts. We had a local that we went shed hunting with. He said yeah, that third week's my favorite.
And I'm like if you hunt this unit and that's your favorite week, we'll go that week. But what I wanted to get at is sometimes everyone sees YouTube and they see the bugle fest with bulls running everywhere. And the shooter shoots a bull. The collar turns around and shoots a different bull and then there's two more bowls coming through and it's just wild, right?
And they think, oh, I want to elk hunt that, where there's just bugles everywhere, just peak of bugling activity. Cuz it is when you're archery hunting, like you live and die by those [00:40:00] bugles a lot of times. But that's, to me, I feel like that's sometimes not your most successful period because there's herd, like that's usually like third.
Week of September, like September 20th to the 25th is when you have that ultimate high bugling. But that's when the herds are established. There's lots of competition of elk, just elk alone. Also lots of human competition in the woods. And so it's yeah, you might hear the most bugles then, but that might not be your most successful week to
Dan Pickar: go.
Exactly. Exactly. It's, yeah for me it's all that is calculated in and all my big bulls and hunts I've been on that aren't my hunts, but hunting with my brother or whatever have all been early season. But I would say on, on hunts that I expect trophy quality to be high. I go early season on hunts that, like general tags that I want to hear a lot of elk and I'm not as picky on the quality of bull.
I like third week. And that also depends on if it's a [00:41:00] desert hunt or if it's a hunt at 10,000 feet. There's a lot of other factors. Yeah. But just to fill your tag, I think the third week is fantastic. Yeah, more pressure third week cuz everybody's going third week. But like desert hunting, if I'm a low country hunt, I like October, like Montana there, Bo season goes into October and so I enjoy hunting late season and so yeah you build this schedule in your mind after you hunt all these western states and these regions and the locales, whether it's a high elevation or a low elevation, and then the style of hunt and maybe also it's a thick area. If it's really thick, then I gotta rely on bugling.
I'm probably gonna go the third week if I have some more open country and I can glass then Yeah. Second week, maybe fourth week, maybe first week. Yeah. And yeah, it's always, it's all situational for sure. And very calculated because it does make a big difference.
Brian Krebbs: I think I, it's funny how you said if I'm just looking general unit, got a tag, [00:42:00] just want to bring home some meat third week, cuz that's where we're at.
We are the first to admit we're the rag horn brigade any legal bowl with us, cuz we do, we get one week a year. A majority of our group has not shot an elk themselves. They've all, we've shot elk almost every year, but. Not everyone has shot theirs yet. I haven't shot one with the bull. I've shot two with a rifle, and so that's the week we go and we usually live and die by the bugles.
But I wanted to ask you, so like you mentioned certain terrain types and states you, you like October or like fourth week, are you then trying to pull a bull in that last cow that's still coming into estrus or are you mostly doing like spot and stock, putting 'em to bed, sneaking in close?
What's kinda your favorite way to archery hunt elk? Are you the Corey Jacobson I'm gonna run in bugle until one charges me Or are you more of a stealthy assassin? Brian Ryan Lamper?
Dan Pickar: Yeah, I would say that you have to be adaptable. Okay. You can't be a one trick pony. Those guys they [00:43:00] have their methods and that's fine.
If you live and die by the bugle, you can go home empty. If you get into a bowl, it's not cullable because I've been there and you can't get 'em called in. And so yeah, you gotta be able to transition and go to spot in stock. And I think that's the biggest thing is knowing when to apply those tactics on any given hunt that you're on.
Yeah. And that right there, if you can really figure that out, you will go home every year with a punch tag. Yeah. If you can put everything else together and make the shot and everything. But I'm not, I've been doing it a long time and so I've had a lot of practice with it.
And just like anything, the more you do, the better you get. And like you guys are saying, if you're on the Rag Horn Express, that's what we call it out here. That's great. If I were you, if you haven't shot a elk with your bow yet, I would shoot a cow. That's how I grew up. I'm a hundred
Brian Krebbs: percent like I will shoot a cow.
I had one last year at 60, but they were spooky. I didn't have a range, like a [00:44:00] good range. I trusted and she was locked onto me and it was, we were hunting a place in Montana where it was just tough to archery hunt cuz it was so open. I mean there was, yeah, if black timber is the standard, this was white timber.
This had full sunlight and so there's not a twig in between us and I'm just like, I don't feel comfortable with this shot. It's already at my max comfortable range on an elk and it's, she's onto me. The whole herd's onto me. There's, it's, we were busted before the encounter took place, we got dive bombed really is what happened. And so yeah, I didn't take the shot. Good thing cuz we had a flat tire on the Ranger and that turned into a whole mess. And then it was thunderstorming that night. We got rained out on the mountain and. Yeah, it was a disaster. So to imagine doing all that and having to take care of a cow on the mountain and find a cow on the mountain, I was like, eh, probably better.
I didn't shoot that cow.
Dan Pickar: Yeah. No, that's, yeah, you said it right there. That's what makes it so tough is because there's so many factors that have to be right. Yeah. For it to all work out and all happen. And
Brian Krebbs: the funny [00:45:00] thing, I was thinking back, I've gone on seven, I believe, seven or eight archery hunts now, and I've had an elk within 40 yards on every single hunt, I believe.
I don't think there's ever been one where I haven't been in the game. I've launched an arrow at an elk and I realized hindsight. It's always a good idea to check that there's no sticks in front of your arrow, not just in front of your sight. Cuz there was a stick at two inches from my Broadhead and I couldn't see it in my sight housing because I was looking through the other side and as soon as I touched off the tree next to me exploded.
My light had knocked, went about 40 feet over his back. Oh. And off the side of the mountain. And my brother stepped out and got him. So we got the elk, but Oh, cool. Yeah. Wow. I mean it's pretty easy. It, I won't say it's easy. Nothing about elk hunting is easy, but it's pretty high odds that if you do your work, you prep, you practice.
It seems like you can get the elk within BAU range, but that's when the real
Dan Pickar: game starts. Yeah, exactly. There's so many other little things that [00:46:00] you have to be, dialed on and not get tunnel vision and be able to think and move and adapt. In the zone in the moment. Like just learning how to move when an animal is close is difficult.
Yeah. Because they pick up movement and you're trying to time it with their eyes, whether they're looking this way or that way, or some trees that are covering their eyes. Like it, it's very hard to be calm and then get your timing dialed on making your movements and knowing what you can get away with.
For sure. And that, that can take a lifetime to dial really well.
Brian Krebbs: And it's tough when you don't live out there, so like you said, yes. You can't be a one trick pony. You can be, Corey Jacobson can be a one trick pony when he has the entire month to get the job done. Yeah.
And but we got nine days, a lot of times we need to, take a couple days of travel, something happens, you're taking a half day off to go fix a flat tire, or you shoot one early and it's so hot, someone's gotta bring it down to town to get it to a locker. And and so we only get one week a year.
And it's hard to, it's like it's iterative. You just need to go through the game and the [00:47:00] cycle over. It's like batting practice. Like you just gotta hit a lot of baseballs to get good and when you only have five days a week or nine days a week or a year to, to hit baseballs, it's hard to turn into, Barry bonds.
Dan Pickar: Yep, yep. Exactly. But there's things that you can do too. Yeah. Hunt squirrels with your bow hunt groundhogs, hunt, coyo hunt everything all the time. For sure. For sure. There's always prep that you can do. Tar shooting targets is good. It only helps you so much. It doesn't really prepare you for hunting season obviously.
But yeah. It definitely allows you to get comfortable shooting at, something other than a bullseye, which is a thing in itself and it's good practice to do, is to shoot at a 3D target and, not have that white.to aim at. You know what I mean? Because it's a different style of Yeah.
Skill for sure. I
Brian Krebbs: have found I'm terrible at shooting at Beded Animals. Yeah. With my bow. And it's I understand it, like I'm a smart dude, I understand how the [00:48:00] body is oriented when it's laying down and I need to aim different. And I try and it's gosh darn it, I ended up in the same spot I did last time, standing 3d.
No problem at all. Everyone, but for some reason, like I always, my arrow always comes in too low on those beded animals. But yeah the person I spoke about earlier that's got the sheep slam, he said, one thing that I like to do is every time I shoot my bow, my first cold arrow was a hundred yards.
That's, I don't warm up at 20 and then 40 and then get to a hundred. I shoot the first one cold at a hundred. And that really changes like your dot process. Like you're like, I, a lot of things could go wrong. I'm cold. Then that's what's gonna happen when you shoot your animal. You're gonna be hiking.
His example, he put in 47 days of hunting before he got his first shot opportunity at his stone. Yeah. Yeah. So I believe it. That's four years of hunting this one game, four trips and so it's obviously he was cold. Like he wasn't practicing, he wasn't carrying around a Ryan Hart 18 and one up on a backpack on.
Exactly. Exactly. And not a lot of [00:49:00] things to shoot on up there to practice, let me see if I hit that rock and waste a $40 arrow.
Dan Pickar: Yeah. No that's great to do. And I do that too when season gets close. One arrow. Yeah. Going cold and shoot one arrow, whether it's 40 or 80 or whatever. Yeah.
Just one arrow and then put the bow down and go do something else for a while.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah, that's I wonder if working from like the work from home culture is gonna make bow hunters a better. Archer because you can just like, I'm bored. I got five minutes before my next meeting, my target's set up, my bow's sitting next to the patio door.
I'm gonna shoot one arrow and then come back and work, and then I'm gonna shoot one arrow and come back to work. And I do that all the time. I need a break at 1130 in the morning. I go out, shoot 12 arrows, and then come back in and take my next call.
Dan Pickar: Yep. Exactly. That's the way to do
Brian Krebbs: it. Yeah. Awesome.
We covered a lot. We covered Cialis and altitude sickness. We offered cooking predators. What I was gonna ask one more question and then we got a couple of things that you were working on that you're really excited to share with the audience. But before we get there what's the [00:50:00] next maybe dream hunt or the big adventure that you're thinking in the future?
What's next on your list as an outdoorsman that you'd really like to punch or
Dan Pickar: check off? Yeah. There's of course the hunts I want to do again, New Zealand. I've been there once in Australia, hunting fallow and red deer. That's a hunt. The next hunt that I want to do, that I've already done as far as like a new hunt I probably next on the list is Yukon moose with my bow.
Yeah. Just big animals. Ideally, I don't know if you've seen Kacha, a moose. The Russian moose over there, they're just prehistoric, gargantuan. Obviously that probably won't happen anytime soon, going to Russia but that's probably my ultimate adventure on the list. Is Kacha a moose with a bow?
Are they,
Brian Krebbs: I've never heard of that one, which is surprising. Are they bigger than a Yukon even?
Dan Pickar: I would say body size is fairly comparable to a big Yukon moose. But Kichacha moose, I would say they're shaped a little different. They get a little bit bigger. [00:51:00] They're front. Area, there're palms up front.
Brow times, I guess you'd call 'em. It's all a lot of those moves, it's all very palmated everywhere. And, we're talking 70 plus inches. Just huge prehistoric. I don't know if technically they're any bigger and genetically, they're just across the ocean from each other, so I'm sure genetically they're identical.
But yeah, for reason, whatever
Brian Krebbs: more like just something in the environment that causes
Dan Pickar: them. Yeah. It, yeah. It could be. It could be. And it could be an age thing. Cause Yukon moose do get that big, but there's, it's not like there's everybody in their brother running around Alaska hunting kichacha moose or running around in Russia hunting kichacha moose.
Like people run around everywhere hunting Yukon moose in Alaska. Yeah. There's just, there's some hunting in Kichacha, but it's not anything like, Alaska.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. When you get that figured out and everybody decides to be friends again in that part of the world and you need, if you need like a camp, cook camp camp manager would [00:52:00] probably be the politically correct way to say the same thing we're thinking of.
I'll volunteer, I'll do it. I'll do it for half the price you were willing to pay. Anyone else? There we
Dan Pickar: go. Make sure you just have your will figured out before we go over there and bring your, be ready to drink some vodka maybe. I don't know. It gets pretty wildly
Brian Krebbs: over there. Hey, you know what?
If we need someone to take the grenade and become friends with the locals and maybe take a little liver damage on as part of the trade I'm qualified for that too.
Dan Pickar: Okay. You're the man. You're the man for the job on that. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Krebbs: Like the Burke Chrysler machine. I'll be the, I'll be the machine story for that that hunt.
So making friends with all the locals and Yeah, so that's the dream hunt, that it's a pretty common one I've found since we've been doing this podcast. A lot of people are really looking at that moose, that Alaskan Yukon. That's, it's on my list. I don't know if it's next, but it's definitely on my list.
I'm right there with you. But with that you had a couple things we talked about before we got started that you're really excited about a couple projects you're working on your side of things. Why [00:53:00] don't you share some of those and where our listeners can go and check those
Dan Pickar: out for themselves?
Yeah, for sure. I'm, I do a lot of things here at Eastman's from writing for the Hunting Journal and the Bow Hunting Journal to YouTube videos. Myself and Brian Barney built the Eastman's Online Mule Deer course, which is an A to Z how to on. Hunting mule deer. Whether you're new or you're a seasoned veteran I guarantee you there's something to be learned.
We're running a special right now too. It's 10% off and you get a free knife and a free set of game bags, and your name goes in the hunt. Your name goes into the pot to win a free hunt mule deer hunt with guy. That's pretty cool stuff. And then yeah, if you haven't checked out beyond the Grid, that's our online video series that I'm the producer of.
It's on our Eastman's Hunting Journals YouTube channel. Check it out and check out my latest hunt that I just released. A super giant bull that I killed last year in grizzly bear country. Griz grizzly bear surrounding my camp, stole my elk. Just the ultimate [00:54:00] adventure that YouTube video's called grizzly Bear, stole my giant Bull.
But if you YouTube search that it'll come up and it. I could tell you after you watch this hunt, you're gonna be moved. And I don't know in which way you're gonna be moved scared of grizzly bears or just hopefully just the epicness of what the hunt really was and how big of a bull it really was.
But yeah, it's beyond the grid. Super passionate about bringing hunts to video that the everyday guy can do d i y style, just out there working hard. That's what I'm passionate about. That's how I was raised, and that's what I am blessed to, to continue to do. And now I just film it. Truly special stuff.
It's, I haven't worked in 10 years. It's just been a great job and I love what I do and I love the pressure and all the stuff that comes along with it. But yeah, you can find that on our YouTube channel and all the updates on social media course beyond the grid tv, Eastman's hunting journals on Facebook and Instagram.
And [00:55:00] yeah, it's lots of content out there and we do lots of western hunting stuff, so it's free for the taking. Awesome.
Brian Krebbs: And you have a podcast platform along with the Beyond the Grid tv, right?
Dan Pickar: Yeah. So that's a new one that myself and Brian Barney started the Eastman's Bow Hunting Journal podcast, life of a Bow Hunter.
It's just me and him talking about in depth on skill sets and gear and how-tos and just good information that we reveal a lot of things in this podcast on our tactics and tips and where we hunt. And yeah, we just want to take our content to the next level. And so yeah, you can find that anywhere that podcasts are available.
Brian Krebbs: Awesome. Great. Go finish this episode out and then go listen to the Beyond the Grid podcast and check out some of the great hunts. I was, you won't be disappointed because I've already done some scouting on this whole adventure and the bulls that Dan's talking about are truly, world class bulls.
Some of the biggest bulls I don't think I've ever [00:56:00] seen. I take that back. I did have the opportunity to scout a near 400, but I didn't shoot it, so I, it doesn't count. But yeah, they're huge, massive bulls, bigger bulls than most people will generally find on their Colorado over the counter tank,
Dan Pickar: yep. Yep. And these are hunts that anybody can do. Yeah, general hunts easy to draw but just different areas and of course having some knowledge helps and the remoteness, right? Yes. That's a huge thing. If you can find areas that don't get pounded by other hunters you're gonna find that next age class of animal.
Brian Krebbs: Yeah. Yeah. Go places you do things that are different, right? That's the definition of a sanity. If you do everything that, it's a little different, but if you do everything that everyone else is gonna do, you're gonna end up with the same results everyone else has. Exactly. Maybe that's good.
Maybe that's what you want. Maybe you just want to go and punch a tag and you're gonna go to the high population, high pressure areas and you're gonna do just that. But yeah, if you'd like us and you'd love Big Elk, gotta do a couple things differently to increase your chances. And it sounds like that's what you guys really showcased, is how [00:57:00] you can do that without, selling your first and second born children.
Exactly. Exactly. No, absolutely. Awesome. Thank you for being here today, Dan, and thank you for listening folks.
