Show Notes
In this week’s [UNCENSORED] podcast by GoWild, we talk about total solar eclipses, bears, and the GoWild x Federal Ammunition sweepstakes weekend! We open the episode with Dan talking all about his upcoming plans for the 2024 total solar eclipse. He talks all in detail about his first time experiencing a total eclipse and just how amazing it was. Listen in to hear his favorite parts about it. He gives some pointers on finding out the perfect spots on where to experience this for yourself and how he believes everyone needs to experience it at least once in their life.
Next up Derek tells all about his recent trip to Tennessee to scout for bears and fish! While bear scouting he found an absolute gem of a fishing spot that yielded an awesome time catching small mouths. Judging by the map this spot is rarely ever fished and he could definitely tell by how they reacted. The fishing was good enough that next year he’s already planning a two-day float trip down the river. He also spends some time talking about the tooth data of his bear he harvested in Colorado last year. Super interesting information on the average age of bears that were harvested in Colorado last season.
Closing out this episode Jacob talks about the trip with Craig Arnold the winner of the GoWild x Federal Ammunition sweepstakes and their weekend with Jim Gilliland. Talking about an eye opening experience learning tons of information, Jacob definitely has some easier ways to sight in his rifle this season! Jim gave some awesome tips on using a tripod in various shooting situations to create a shooting bench as well as some long range shooting pointers for Jacob and Craig.
If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a rate and review!!
[UNCENSORED] by GoWild kicks off your week with shameful nonsense, inappropriate convictions, and unfiltered tales from the woods, waters and whatevers. [UNCENSORED] is a behind the scenes look at our adventures, failures, wins, embarrassing moments at trade shows, hilarious tales from the warehouse, and a good rant or three about the most recent tyranny from the Dark Lord of the Sith himself.
The show launches every Monday morning. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
JOIN GOWILD AND GET $10:
Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant, outdoor content!
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] Busy weekend for us crew. Some of us. This side of the table. Yeah, the cool side. I did cool stuff. Yeah, you did. It's really just Dan. He's just like sitting around looking at like, oh, solar eclipses. Oh God. Should we get that? Yeah. Go ahead and get it outta the way now. Stuff outta the way. Yeah. Make it quick.
Kinda like the, yeah, he's swallow. Swallow the frog. He's like, are you talking to me? Making my phone down. Solar Eclipse, April. Eighth, 2024. April, eighth of ninth. I don't think that's the date that you said. It wasn't until everyone is called yet. I said, I said April 24. Is it the 24th or the eighth? What if I really wanna go now?
I don't know. I said April. April, the year 24. Okay, go on. Yeah. The day, as of right now, if you're listening to this, it is August of 2023. Yes. And Amanda and I were, we did the last eclipse, which was six years ago. Today, I think clearly [00:01:00] Amanda and I, Amanda, Amanda and I, and I, my wife. My wife, a man, my wife.
Very nice. Um, no, we did it six years ago today, uh, in Carbondale, Illinois. We camped out and it was like a life-changing experience being in totality, which is where the sun's totally blocked. It's wild 'cause you don't realize how much thermal energy comes off the sun. So as soon the sun will be like 80% occluded and it's normal, and then all of a sudden it just goes.
Like dusk, all the birds stop chirping, all the animals thinks it's nighttime and you just feel this cold wind come over you and you look up and you can't see the sun proper. So you see all the rays that usually can't see coming off the sun. So it kind of looks like it looks wild, like you're like, oh, I can see why Aztecs would like sacrifice people when this happens.
But how did they [00:02:00] know when it was gonna happen? They had a solar calendar. Yeah, they, they based timing off of moons. Isn't that weird though? Quickly. I don't know how they did that. They quickly realized that the earth was round, tecumsah totally new. He wasn't Aztec, but Yeah. And they would plan. They would plan sacrifices.
Uh, kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge. The new eclipse would happen and they would be like, Hey, we should have a sacrifice on this day. And then when the eclipse happens, we can act like, oh, whoever the emperor is knew, like we sacrifice someone and then God responded, therefore we're doing the right thing. So, oh, wow.
But yeah, so anyways, so we're like, we need to get on. On booking this before everyone books everything up and we're looking at, it goes kind of from Maine in an arc through Illinois and then down through Texas. Like the where the, the path of totality. Totality. And there's maps. It sounds like a cult. And there's maps you can get and it'll say, if you're in this spot, you'll have totality for three minutes, four minutes, whatever.
Dan is on the path to [00:03:00] totality. Yeah. So we're trying to go south 'cause it's in April and. South has the least likely chance of having cloud cover. 'cause it'll be springtime and they'll stink if you planned a trip up to, you know, the Great Lakes area and then it's a cloudy day and you miss it. So we're going down to Texas.
And so we were thinking, well, maybe we'll go outside of Austin. So we come to Airbnb and put in the dates and literally it's like camp in my backyard for, for the solar eclipse, $450 a night. Like literally, they're already preparing, like literally you're like, the Holiday Inn is like $600 a night already.
And so we called a couple places that like their online systems, smaller places or online systems that they had availability. And, um, but we couldn't book and like this one place we called and they're like, yeah, we we're not taking reservations for those states. Like they're holding those days, I'm guessing for family and [00:04:00] friends and stuff.
Mm. Or until they get closer and they'll charge $2,000 a night or something. Um, so I shared it in Slack with work and I'm like, Hey, if you wanna do this, but I'd suggest you do it. 'cause I mean, it's going through Paoli and. It is an hour away, you'll, you get totality, like the path to totality. So why are you gonna Texas, if it's called Paoli?
'cause the 'cause of the cloud cover. Oh. And we're gonna use that as a little excuse for vacation. Mm-hmm. Like we, we've got Amanda's grandfather's in Texas and we'll do like a little travel thing, but we did Carbondale last time. We went to Garden of the Gods state park and got up on a, it's one of those parks where you can back country camp wherever.
Mm-hmm. So we hiked up to the top of a mountain and, uh, It was amazing. That does sound cool. Now that you, I thought you were just like standing out in a parking lot like, uh, on Independence Day and they're like, take me. No, it's cool being in nature. 'cause like I said, it's, you can practically see the sha if you're up on a ridge line, you [00:05:00] can see the shadow coming.
From off, from a distance, you see the shadow come and then you just get hit with this cold wind and all, you just start noticing all the birds, everything, just stop. There's a wind, and then all the birds just stop chirping and you look up and it's just like, end of days sort of reaction. Just the subconscious, like your brain's being reprogrammed about like what, what, uh, like daytime can be.
It's wild. It's wild. So, And plus like, I don't know when the next time this will happen. 'cause it happens I think every year somewhere. Somewhere on the planet. Yeah. But the chances of it going through the us, uh, are pretty rare. Mm-hmm. As far as the whole us you know, sometimes it'll clip an edge of the US or something, but Well you should be able to look it up, right?
Like, they'll know when the next next one's going to be. 'cause it's a so lunar calendar that. Uh, it's fairly defined. Yeah. I mean, there'll probably be another chance in your life, but like I said, the last time this happened was [00:06:00] seven years or six years ago. I went just out to our property for that one.
'cause I, I think when that one came through the area, it was kind of like the further west you can get, I think like Western Kentucky area had some pretty good. Yeah. But, so our property's just a little west of here. We went out there and I mean, it was cool, but we didn't have the totality. Totality, like you're talking about.
It just for a little bit kind of got darker and a little cooler, and then it was. Sun shining in. Yeah. It was like in the middle of summer, if I remember right. Yeah. Yeah. It was hot. Yeah, it was hot. We went camping with some friends and my friend was dating this girl who was not outdoorsy. Mm-hmm. And like we were in our tents.
It was, it was very similar to our. North Carolina trip as far as temperature at night. Uh, but no rain. It was just hot. Yeah. And humid. And I was in my hammock, and I think Amanda was in the hammock, and him and and his girlfriend were in a tent. And we were like, all right, goodnight, everyone. Goodnight. And it was like five [00:07:00] minutes went by and then he just heard her like softly sobbing.
And then like the couple's argument of just like, I'm not having fun. This isn't my, we're just like, this is. Fuck course. I just started crying. Um, but no. Yeah, so it's, it's fun, fun thing. And if you're gonna do it, I'd suggest you start planning now. So did you book something? We haven't found anything yet.
Oh, well, and now you just told everyone else to do it too, so good luck. Well, and we were saying, I was telling Amanda this, I said, If we were looking for, um, 'cause we want to do like, oh well we'll go there and then go in and get dinner somewhere in the city and see Austin stuff. And I was thinking if there was like a city that would be the worst city for this sort of hippie shit, it would be Austin, like Austin, San Francisco, Albuquerque.
Those are probably like the three, 'cause everyone in Austin is gonna be all over. Like, you know, that sort of young, rich. [00:08:00] Wanna be hippie granola people. So I need to find someplace like, I think it's going through like Little Rock. I bet people in Little Rock don't even know what the moon is. You have. It was wild.
Was just in the last two minutes. Pissed off please. A good portion of the United States of America, just so you know. Yeah. Please find me at Jacob Knight on so, no, but, but uh, I should say people in Little Rock would not pay $450. To camp out in someone's backyard where people in Austin probably will. So maybe we should find another part of the country to go.
Paoli. Paoli. Yeah, I might. What do you have to say about Paoli? What do you have to say about those kind of people? It was just up in Paoli doing the will helm. It's wildlife. Oh yeah. Thing. But what, okay, so like, if you're maybe, uh, 15 miles from Paoli, like are we talking about, there's gonna be like 99% totality they've mapped out, and I put [00:09:00] a link in Slack, but they've mapped out exactly the borders of where totality will be.
It's like a stripe. And the closer you get to the middle of that stripe, uh, the longer the totality is, um, Because you think about it like it, well, it's like the moon's crossing the sun. So the more you're in the middle, the more time you'll be blacked out. Mm-hmm. So on the maps and NASA makes these maps, you can click on exactly where you're gonna be and it'll be like, oh, it's gonna start at 10 27 and last for three minutes and 33 seconds.
So you know exactly how long. But the closer you get to the middle, the longer the totality will be. The longer the blackout will be. Hmm. All right, well, so there's that. I'll be in Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah. I'll probably just do a, just, I think that's on a Monday. Just take your kids, drive up to some outdoor park an hour away.
I'm telling you, it'll be, [00:10:00] I'll probably be doing something worth the drive Turkey related. It might be going through your farm this year. It's slightly closer to us than it was last year. Maybe I'll go to Texas to Turkey Hunt. Yeah, if you want, yeah, if you, and like all a sudden it just blacks out in the middle of the day while your Turkey end turkeys.
Yeah. What are they? It's like the best roost. It's like I get That'd be cool to see. Yeah. The turkeys are all confused and I just start walking out in the open like zombies and it turns out that's what I'll do. I'll find a spot when it's happening. I'll find a, a roost tree. Mm-hmm. I'll just sit right under it.
Right after they come out of the roost. And then are you day when they're going back to the tree to go back to roost? 'cause they think it's nighttime. There it is. I wouldn't be works every time. They might all just like shock gobble, right? When totality happens, that would be pretty cool to like shoot a long beard.
Going back to the roost in the middle of the day, the clips during a, here's the clips, the while it's just gobble in its head off. And then you tell all the other ones when like the Schiller Clipse [00:11:00] happens 'cause it's right before it hit the total. But is that technically shooting the, the gods a Turkey at night if there's no sun?
That was the sacrifice. Yeah, that was the sacrifice. Well, I don't, I don't know Dan, I'm not. It's a little legal quandary. Let's, let's look in. It's, it's like, it's the amount of lights, it's sunset. Hmm. It's not, it's not. Uh, yeah, but you can't lightness. It's sunset Sun. Sun up sundown. I know. I'm just being funny.
But the reason for that is for safety reasons. We don't joke about legal things. Dan gets you in trouble. There's a loophole there. This might be the only, you've podcast, you can hunt Turkey at night, but it's really not. It's like you can see. Yeah. It's like twilight. Yeah, it's dusk, dusky. Anyways. It is cool.
I haven't been in totality, but it is cool to see. Yeah, especially in your, the areas where it's, you get like the little, the, uh, crescent Yeah. On the ground through the leaves and stuff. The shadows. Well, and you get that too in the totality. You get, you, you can see the shadows and you can see as the time gets closer, [00:12:00] but it's, you know, 20 seconds before totality.
It is full brightness. You can't even look at the sun. And then it's just, once the sun's fully covered is when it gets dark. So it's amazing. It's like 1% of the sun peaks out and it's like blinding to look at. Yeah. Um, do you have sunglasses? Did you have special glasses? He probably has special ones.
That's real. No, I didn't have special glasses. Did you look up like when totality came, did you take off your sunglasses and look up? Oh yeah, definitely. That's when you see all the cool stuff are supposed to. Yeah, 'cause there's no sun. All you see are the rays like the ever seen, like those satellite pictures of the sun and there's like big like.
Mass Ejections coming off the sun. What it kind of reminded me of at the time, and this is gonna date me a little bit, do you guys remember the God Godsmack, uh, logo and it was like everyone got tattooed on their arms and stuff in the nineties. Do you remember that? No more of a seventies child. I. No, I like Bret boys back [00:13:00] then.
Um, sorry. Uh, no, that's kind of what it looks like. Like twice the distance of the sun are these big rays coming off just snaking that usually can't see with the naked eye, but you can. It's crazy. It's, it's literally hard to explain and it's nearly impossible to photograph. I tried taking some pictures.
Oh, and it doesn't pick it up. It's too, it's too faint. Hmm. I mean, I guess if you really had some, you know, big time neutral density filters on your camera and did some, you know, Photoshop had one of those sensors that could probably pick up infrared, you could probably do it, but. So you guys thought that that totality would not be something worth talking about on the podcast.
It was a little more interesting than I thought it was gonna be. Spending 10 minutes talking about. Yeah. We, we still have any listeners left? 14 minutes of that We kept moving on to something else now. Alright, tell us about your fishing. Oh no, I wanted to hear about Derrick's Baron. Deer. I did a little bit of everything this last week because I have questions about deer [00:14:00] scouting.
So you go into it and then I'll ask questions. So went back down to Tennessee this last week for a couple days to visit my dad again, and while I was down there, met up with Caleb and we spent one day scouting for Bear and Deer again for this hunt that we're planning and uh, what, like close to a month from now?
A little over. It's coming up quick. And um, so we. Went same, same place and obviously, and, but we went a lot further in on the road. That takes you in to this. This is it like public land? It's all public. Okay. So did you set up trail cams the last time you were there? Nope. Not trail cams can last time. Can you give us a G P Ss pinpoint also?
No, I cannot. Is it in the path of totality? Uh, I don't know. And I'm, I'm trying to be fairly vague in where we're hunting. Anyone can find this information out, but they, they need to do their homework like we did. So anyways, right. Um, So we, we drove a lot further in mm-hmm. And scouted a lot further back.
And I [00:15:00] would say same distance from the vehicle, but just a lot deeper into the W M A and, um, I mean, we, we found some cool spots. We found some spots that like definitely would work in a pinch, but everything we found the first scouting trip is still kind of better than what we found this go around. Um, but while we were down there, we found.
Somewhat easy acts. I, that's all relative, right? Depends on how hard someone's willing to try. But we found a section of a river that you can get to if you wanna put in a little work. And I'm thinking to myself, 'cause I didn't really have anything planned for the next day and Olivia was on the trip with me and we were gonna plan on doing some fishing the next day.
It was like, Let's come down here. It'll be a bit of a hike, but let's come down here tomorrow and fish. 'cause I bet this section of this river never gets touched. Mm-hmm. No one in their right mind's down here and the other side of the river isn't private either. Um, so it's not like people [00:16:00] are living on the other side of this river and just walking out and fishing on the other side, like, People are working to get in here if they're fishing.
But anyways, we scouted that day, uh, found one big old pile of, uh, Bearcat. Um, found some spots, like I said, that would work in a pinch for deer. Um, and then a little sidebar or whatever. Caleb actually ended up going back out. I. Yesterday, no, Saturday after I was already back here. Kayla went out Saturday and found some pretty hot bear sign in a different spot.
So what is, what is Hot Bear sign? Like she found like fresh still steaming and smelly bear scat. Oh. And a couple nice decent sized prints. Okay. In in the sand. And we're figuring. Mm. A little over a hundred pound bear probably based off the footprints that he saw. So not a huge bear by any means, but a legal bear.
It's probably not a cub anymore, you know? Um, does a bear have to be a certain size before you shoot it? Uh, every state's different. I can't remember the verbiage that Tennessee has, [00:17:00] but it's basically, you can't shoot a cub. Oh, okay. Um, and that's pretty much across the board. Every state that has bear hunting is you can't shoot cubs or you can't shoot sows that have cubs.
Mm-hmm. Um, some states have even more stringent. Regulations, but that's kind of the rule of thumb for most states that have bear seasons. Mm-hmm. Um, and we're, we're looking for a needle in a haystack out here. And we know that like this is an area that has bear, obviously they have a bear season. We have found bear sign.
We know of people that have seen bears out there. They're out there. But we're kind of more or less going into this with the mindset of like, we're, we're deer hunting and if we're lucky, we will have a chance at a bear. Um, So that was that day of scouting, and then I. I can't remember how many miles we did.
Five or six, maybe a lot of elevation change. Um, good, good day of scouting. And then the next day we went down, me and Olivia went down and I mean it, like I said, it's a bit of a hike and you gotta do some, some bush wacking and then you gotta go through some logging trails that have [00:18:00] prob. My guess is this area's probably hasn't been logged since the sixties.
So even though you still have these logging roads, they're still very growing up and there's trees that have fallen over it. And then the last section, you're cutting through some. Laurel and Rhododendron and stuff to get down to this river, but we finally get down there and. When we got to where I could hear the river flowing, I kind of was like, Hey, I'll meet you down there.
I can't wait anymore. So I like busted down there and there's one big hole right there at the bottom and I didn't even take the time to like look at the water and be like, this is what would work right now. I just threw the first thing that I had already on my line out there, which was just a um, zoom U tail and motor oil and chartreuse and just tossed it out and just let it hit the bottom of this hole.
Popped it one time. Reeled small mouth. Nothing huge. I mean it was probably a nine or 10 inch small mouth. And for probably the first hour just fishing this one hole about every other cast I was catching anywhere between like nine and 12 inch small [00:19:00] mouth. Whoa. And it was unseasonably Cool last week. It was in Tennessee.
Yeah. So that's had to have helped. Yeah. I mean so I think it got down in like the mid fifties at night when we were out there. Yeah. 'cause we're at higher elevation too, so that helps a lot. And then, um, We waded down. We really didn't go too far down this creek. Just a small section of it and fished a few other holes.
I caught. I was gonna ask you about this. I don't know if you saw it on, I saw that picture. Yeah. Okay. So have you heard of a red eye bass uhhuh? I'm not. When I, for the listeners, when I say a red eye bass, I'm not talking about a rock bass. 'cause a lot of people will call rock bass, red eyes. It's actually.
You might know more about 'em than I do. I've done a little reading since I caught that one. Yeah. And um, there are a lot of black bass species that people don't realize, and I don't even know the, the total number, but there's Alabama, but Alabama Bass, Sowan, bass, uh, the rock or the, uh, red eye, red eye bass.
There's tons of these little strains down south. [00:20:00] Um, And when you, I looked at that picture and I, I thought Red eye too. But then there, there also is an Alabama strain. Mm-hmm. That is invasive, but I don't know. If it's there. Yeah. Like you'd have to know like, have they gotten to that area? Yeah. But yeah, that's what does mean.
It, it was wild. I mean, I pulled it out and I'm looking at it and I could tell before I even had it like landed that I'm like, this is not a small mouth. It just colored different and, and I'm looking at the fish and I'm like, what is it? And my initial thought until I talked to Caleb and he said it was probably a red eye, was that it was some kind of hybrid, um, Small mouth, large mouth, hybrid, small mouth, spotted bass, hybrid, something like that.
But he said red eye, I've read about 'em a little bit, saw some pictures, and I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty certain that's what this fish was. Um, but it was wild. We only had three or four hours to fish roughly. And then, I mean, it's probably a 25, 30 minute hike in and out to this spot. Um, and so, I mean, I was talking with Caleb about it that night.[00:21:00]
Because he, I told him, I was like, I'll let you know how the fishing goes. 'cause I told him the day before I was gonna fish down there and he. Sounds pretty excited to go down there. And we looked at the map and saw how much of the section of this river is probably not touched by anybody. And we're already kind of tentatively talking about next summer doing like a two day float on this whole section.
That's why you were catching 'em so consistently. Oh yeah. 'cause nobody's fishing this. How was Olivia doing? She did really well. Um, she had, um, I'm wearing my waiting boots and all that, which helps me on the rocks and it was, So the river was up from where it normally is, but still wadeable. I'm interested to see what it is when it's kind of at its normal levels.
If we do a two day float on it next summer, like it's definitely, there's gonna be parts where you're pulling the boat, kayak, whatever you're using. Um, I. But it was kind of rocky, some slippery rocks, some sand and all that. Um, but still very wadeable if you're wearing waiting boots. She does not have waiting boots.
And that was giving her some [00:22:00] trouble. At part, she was having issues kind of getting around, whereas I didn't. Um, so I think if she had some waiting boots like that, she'd, she'd do a lot better. But that was her only issue. I mean, besides that, she was doing real well. She caught I think two small mouth, which.
Pretty good. I mean, she just started fishing in the last couple months, so Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's awesome. So she was doing real well. Um, rewind to, um, You talking about the bear and the deer? Mm-hmm. So when you go for your hunt, are you taking the bow and the gun? It's an archery hunt only. Oh, an archery for bear.
Mm-hmm. Gosh, that sounds scary. And speaking of what you just reminded me, I saw Brad's bear skull over here. Um, I just got the tooth data back from my bear from Colorado this last year. Oh, that's cool. And it was a younger bear than I thought it was. They estimated its age at about two years old, which.
That seemed to be about the average. 'cause when they release that data, it's not, you don't just get [00:23:00] yours and really all they're doing is aging the bear. Um, they released like a whole document that's got every bear that was harvested in Colorado during the 2022 season. So you just find your seal number and then it's got the estimated age.
And I would say majority of the bears that were killed in Colorado last year based off what I was seeing, was between like one and five. Mm-hmm. Mine was two. Um, there was a few old ones on there. There was one, a few seal numbers above mine that was like 20 estimated age of 20. Holy moly. Are those seal numbers, are they the order that they are harvested in?
I'm not entirely sure how they do it because you know, you, you get your bear and then in Colorado and then you have to take it to a check station, and I just don't know how all those check stations statewide could like, Give numbers in order, so to speak. So I'm sure that they're just given, like you have this stack and that's what you give to the bears that come to this.
Like it might be an indication of, well that would be county or that would be even crazier. 'cause if, if it was your check station had the stack mm-hmm. Then that means someone in [00:24:00] your area. That's very true. Yeah. That 20 year old bear. Yeah. And then they're male or female. Uh, it was mail, which, I mean, we knew that No, the 20, oh, I can't remember if the document said, or I can't, it'd take me too long to find it.
Right now. I can't remember if the document said if it was bore or Sal, but because the, the sows are usually bigger, right? Uh, of the two, I would assume, but I honestly don't know about that. I didn't know they lived that long. Yeah. I mean, so I know black bears can live up to like 20, 25 years old. Um, I don't really know what like the average is and I'm sure it's well in the wild it's, yeah.
And I'm sure it's also regionally different. I'm sure you know, an average age of a bear, one area of the state's gonna be different than another area of the state. So where we were in North Carolina this weekend, they have Black bear and. The guys that were there, they live about an hour and a half from where we were.
Mm-hmm. But in the, the lodge where we hung out a lot, there were two, two mounted [00:25:00] bears and a bear ruck. And so they hunt 'em down there in this, this, it's not really a ranch, but you know, like this property. And the guy was saying that is, The number one county, I guess, for Black Bear and that they have some that get up to a thousand pounds.
That's a big bear. And that's like, I, I didn't know Black Bear got that big. Mm-hmm. Um, I haven't done a ton of research into 'em, but when he said that was like, are you serious? Because that is huge. They definitely can get that big, the, the rug itself that was on the ground was massive. Oh yeah. You might've thought it was a brown bear.
It was so big. Yeah. Was it cinnamon phased? No. Okay, so it was, it was black. Yeah. Okay. So you could hunt a thousand pound bear with your bow. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Would. Okay. You there's a thousand pound bear with your bow. It doesn't see you yet. Are you taking. I guess you're taking the shot. Yeah, absolutely.
What [00:26:00] if it does see you and it's like charging you? Oh, you're saying like as far as range? As far as like, no, like I don't know. Is it gonna kill it? You're thinking, oh, it'll kill. Well, well you brought it, it'll go through it. I think like in time for it not to like charge you. I think most people have.
It's black bear have, you'll have a side arm. Yeah. You would have a side arm if it charged you. Oh, okay. But as soon as you shot it, it would probably run off. I mean, they're, they're black bears. I mean, yeah. They're gonna be, maybe they're more aggress aggressive like than Kodiak bear a bears whitetailed deer, but I'm not out there.
Yeah. Hunting a polar bear, you know, it's, oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm not worried about it. Heard here first Derek Hunts Polar Bear, but the little cute ones from the Coke commercial. Right. That that set Coke cans out. So how was the rest of your trip? Oh, it was good man. So, um, those listening, we. We did a sweepstakes with federal, uh, when did we do that?
The summer. We started, kicked it off the summer like in June? Yeah. Ish. [00:27:00] So, um, Craig Arnold from Go Wild to find him on there. Um, he was the winner of the sweepstakes and so the prize was to go and spend a weekend, you know, a full day with, with Jim Gilland, who is a former army sniper, wrote the training manual for the.
Army sniper, super smart guy. Um, I mean, I've, I have never felt more dumb about guns than being around Jim because you, we've talked about it before. Most of the guns that I have are very utilitarian. Mm-hmm. Carry. Shoot an animal and that's it. And so my scope has never been, or my rifle mm-hmm. Has been shot further, but my scope has never been used to shoot a deer outside of 110 yards.
Most of my shots are 25, 30 if we're being realistic here. And that's standard for our area. Yeah. Yeah. So, I, I just don't use my scope for what they're capable of doing. And so it was really cool to, to be there. And Craig got to walk through some questions that he [00:28:00] had about his rifle. Um, and it's the first season he's gonna be hunting with this rifle.
And so, you know, it was fun to like, Go through the zeroing process with Jim and see how he very quickly, but methodically does, like when we went to c our guns last year as a comedy of memories, I learned some things this year that will be helpful. Uh, not nearly as many rounds will be fired. Um, but so like it was, it was that kind of stuff that like little nuggets constantly from just being with Jim through this whole process.
And he did a lot of things in, in coaching Craig, on. Body positioning. Um, you know, Craig was most interested in deer hunting situations in Illinois where he lives, where just recently rifles were added to the gun season. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, he would, he did this whole demonstration on, um, The, the zeroing practice.
Then we went out to the long range part, which goes out to [00:29:00] 950 yards and did some shooting out there. And so he really helped kind of coach him through the shot process on, you know, with, with distance and, and dialing the, the scope and everything. And then this really, the most interesting part to me was.
Using a tripod in different shooting situations. Mm-hmm. You know, you see videos of people going out west and they're on the side of a mountain and they've got a tripod, they've got their gun in the tripod and you know, all that stuff. But Jim is like, People don't realize what you can do with a tripod to basically create a bench in the wild.
And so he sh he was showing us all these positions, like how to use it if you're on a fence post and two legs down, one leg up on the fence, and use that as a rest. And he really went through all this, you know, all these different shooting positions on a bag, um, without a bag using a tree, or, you know, just squatting how to set yourself in the, the best position.
Um, and. The, this [00:30:00] ranch that we went to was a really sweet property. I, I definitely shout out to John Lee, um, and his buddies who were actually some of those guys were on site really taking care of us, making sure we had everything we need to find out what we needed. They, um, they used this as a, a deer hunting property.
They do hunt black bear down there, and so it is cornfields everywhere. And, you know, sunflowers. So a few ponds for water. Um, really, really cool property. And I think Zach and I both would agree that the way this place is set up is the ideal dream scenario. If you've got a hunting lodge, you know, there's the, the garages for the side by sides, there's little hangout area, couches, and a big table for everybody to sit there and eat.
Um, Sleeping quarters and stuff in the back. And then there was a separate bunkhouse where we slept where it's just bunk beds and room to sleep. But they, [00:31:00] um, It was cool hanging out with his buddies that were there because there's a very small group, three people that actually hunt this big property, but his buddies all lease farms in the area, and so they'll go hunt.
And then this is like the rally point that when people come back, they bring their deer. And so you could just feel that and I mean, these guys were there hanging out. Mm-hmm. And John's not even like at beer camp, sort of. Yeah. Yeah. John's not even there. But these guys come and hang out there and he lets 'em come and use it and lets, you know, of course Jim and us come out and shoot guns and hang out.
So it was a, it was overall, it was a great hangout experience. The time with Jim that, that we all got is invaluable coaching and training. You know, um, Craig, Craig was really happy with what he got out of it, and I think he'll be better prepared for this deer season. He felt like he was gonna be good going into this se this season and setting up shots and.
The whole shot process and everything. So really, really interesting, really fun thing. I'm glad we got to do it. [00:32:00] Was Zach having a good time? Did he learn a lot? Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Zach, Zach has shot to a thousand yards before. So out of the group of us, he had the, the most experience, long distance shooting.
Um, besides Jim, of course, but so he sits down and he's, he's blinking the targets pretty quickly at, at distance. That's awesome. Sounds like a good time. You, you would've loved it. Did some. I love doing everything, but yeah, in general, we did some fun gun stuff too with pistols and got to shoot some of Jim's awesome toys.
Play, play Battleship again like we did. We didn't play Battleship. Yeah. Had to my place. But, so Jim has this, how fun it was. He has this 22 that is like a competition rifle. Mm-hmm. And. It is stupid, accurate, like you don't feel the gun move when you fire it and you can literally pinpoint where you're shooting.
It's like a laser beam. Yeah, it's crazy. We were shooting it out the 350 yards, [00:33:00] easily hitting targets and so at one point we're messing around. We had some empty 2, 2 3 casings up on this thing. Or just shooting them, knocking 'em down like you would've can. Yeah. Um. But then Jim's just messing around and there's a target out there that has words across the top.
You know, something for zeroing target or whatever. He shoots through the O on zero, like could not be more perfect than the center of this, this o uh, it, it was an absolute tack driver. It was, uh, it was fun to shoot. That's awesome. Yeah. Good. Is he white tail hunt, Jim? Yeah. Yeah. I just wonder. He's like, well, that was a mile away.
Boom. No, he does. I mean, he doesn't And was this in North Carolina? Yes, it was in North Carolina. What, what town? Uh, the nearest town is Murfreesboro. Oh, right, right, right. It's really cool. There's all, there's like old cotton plantations from, you know, 17, 18 early, early United States, [00:34:00] uh, settlement kind of stuff.
So it was really, really neat driving through there. Um, Yeah, he does whitetail hunt. Jim, Jim will admit that he's not like a huge proponent of extra long hunting shots. Hmm. He doesn't necessarily encourage that, even though he's capable of Right. Shooting very, very far. And we were, we were talking, I asked him, I was like, do you, do you still whitetail hunt very much?
He's like, you know what? There's probably more days now that I just take a book and I go out and sit and the hunting is my excuse to get away from everything. With no phone signal. Read a book. Mm-hmm. Hang out. So he's gotten to do some cool stuff. Hunts in Africa all over the place. He's never Turkey hunted, though.
Blew my mind. Does not want or waterfowl, does he not want to? Does it not interest him? He just never has. I mean, he has the, the dude could literally call up almost anybody and be like, I want do this. Yeah, I'm sure he could. He could go Yeah. With it. Blew my mind. He is never Turkey hunted. Hmm. I wanna go down there and bear hunt now here.
And I know I'm talk [00:35:00] about all hope you find this county just so you can research and look it up. Unfortunately, I can't get you on this preference. That's fine. That's fine. But yeah, so, uh, we love the place. You guys would love it down there. I mean, It is, it is heaven for, uh, if you like shooting and just spending time outside, um, Jim was, you know, if, if y'all can find an excuse to use this again, you just gotta go through me and do something down here.
So we might be back in that, back in that area. There you go. Or something. And it's two hours from Red Fish. Jim caught a 47 inch red fish the day before we went. Oh wow. Like hugging it. Oh, is that the one you posted in slap? Oh, I didn't see that dude. Yeah, you posted that. Unreal. The size of this fish man.
I wanna go back to North Carolina now. I do. I love that state. Yeah, that's a fun, fun state. That's a good state. Yeah, great state. I've never been, you ever been to North Carolina? I don't know. I've been in Myrtle Beach. Is that the same thing? Nope, South Carolina. That's South Carolina. It's close to North Carolina.
[00:36:00] That's the thing with North Carolina is. The neighborhoods and environment on the coast totally different than the neighborhoods environment and the mountains, which is totally different than Charlotte, Raleigh, Winston, which is the Piedmont. It's like three totally different ecosystems. It's kind of like the difference between like upstate New York and New York City.
Like totally different people, totally different economies, totally different scenery. Um, these guys, it was really interesting. So, His four, four or five buddies that were from the area was still an hour, hour and a half away from where we were. They have this interesting accent that is not south southern drawl.
It almost, I was telling Zach, like, to me it almost pulls like a Creole type influence when they're, when in their accent. Yeah, but it's southern mixed in it's Are they, are they actually from that area? Oh yeah. Like they grew up there. Oh yeah. It's not like they just live there now. No. Okay. [00:37:00] Its down there, it's, it's definitely got its own sort of dialect.
And on the coast, on Okracoke Island, it's not so much anymore, but back in like the seventies, eighties, when it was still somewhat remote, they were like an untouched population for, I. Like 200 years and people would go to this island and talk to the locals and it literally sounded like you're talking to someone from Scotland.
Hmm. It was like its own dialect that was like untouched from the settlers and now there's been so much tourism and stuff, it's kind of faded. But you can YouTube okracoke accent. Mm-hmm. And literally you'll need subtitles to understand what these people are saying. It's like its own diaspora. I mean, the, the couple days we were there, I, I picked up on it pretty quick, but at first it was, it was different enough that I had to take a second, second.
And some of those communities, like they say, the poorest parts of America are that Appalachian Mountain Range kind of going up through West [00:38:00] Virginia and stuff. And once again, maybe not so much anymore, but you could find people that. Literally were 90 years old and never owned a pair of shoes in their life.
You know, like cabin homemade cabins with dirt floors, sort of people. Yeah. Like there are some definitely. So I could see how some of those accents could really stick around and get reinforced and get kind of strange. But I mean it, you would be hard pressed to find a better group of guys. To just have four random dudes.
Yeah. Show up with guns ready to hang out. And they were so like we'd known 'em for years. Just great people. Great Salt of the earth people. Sounds like a good trip, man. Dude, it was. It was unreal. Wish it could've been there longer. Yeah, I get that. Yep. I bet you're going to end up living it in North Carolina at some point in your life.
I hope so. That's the goal. If I'm ever fortunate to have enough money, it will be a house on the river [00:39:00] somewhere in North Carolina. I already lived there, but I was younger and we were in Charlotte area. Not, not quite as fun. Didn't you live there too? He's from there. Grew from there. Grew. Grew up in Winston, went to school in the mountains, went to college.
In the mountains. Oh yeah, that's right. Never fly fished in the mountains. I was, I was broke, man. Me in college was not the time to start picking up hobbies. I was so broke. I was, I was just doing. I was working for the newspaper in your book and waiting tables, and I would borrow money from people, like for meals or buy me a, you know, a case of beer or whatever, or borrow money.
And then when I get paid, it would literally just go to paying everyone back for the last month. Your creditors. Yeah. And then I'd. Be like, I am broken. Any mind spotting me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was so broke, college man, broke as a joke so I could not afford but my school and I wish I took advantage of it, had a rental, outdoor equipment.
Program and you could [00:40:00] rent rock climbing gear or you know, whitewater rafting gear, or I'm assuming fly fishing gear. I just never took advantage of that. You know, never fly fished before, so. Yep. Yeah. If in hindsight, and that's probably one of those things I. Where you're talking about the, the locals around this property that are just salt of the earth and super nice people like you grow up around that.
You don't realize how good you have it. Like you, that's just what you're used to. Yeah. Everyone's got, you know, four at least 40 acres and can hunt and shoot guns and whatever. And you get some, some city folk like us coming down and we're like, you guys are like, like this is amazing property. And they're like, what?
This is just all they know. So yeah. Yep. Very cool trip. All right, we'll wrap things up. Make sure you all log these episodes, get your points, tons of cool rewards and stuff. Uh, like we keep talking about coming out with gun broker. Um, some really sweet collab projects that we're gonna be dropping with them.
There's should be a new one coming [00:41:00] here soon. Uh, get those points and then we will see you guys here next week. See you. Bye.
