The Reasons We Hunt

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks with Josh Plummer and Devon McDonald about their passion for the outdoors and the reasons that they can’t stay out of the woods.

Josh Plummer grew up in the cornfields of Indiana as an avid outdoorsman. After high school, he attended Purdue University before joining the Marine Corps. He retired in 2019 after seven deployments and currently lives in North Carolina where he is finishing law school at Wake Forest.

Now, he spends every chance he gets hunting and camping with his wife and family. In addition to hunting, Josh is passionate about Veterans Advocacy and the role that hunting plays in helping veterans heal and connect with each other. To help spread that message, Josh and Devon recently started Reasons Hunting to share their passion and talk about the many reasons why we hunt.

Devon McDonald grew up hunting the fence rows and woods of central Indiana. After high school he graduated from Indiana University before joining the US Army. After the Army, Devon attended law school and earned his law degree in 2012.

Devon still lives in Indiana where he spends every minute he can in the outdoors camping, hiking, fishing, and hunting. He is also passionate about Veteran Advocacy, especially veteran suicide prevention and how the outdoors can help veterans overcome adversity. Devon co-founded Reasons Hunting along with Josh to help spread the message of how hunting has helped them as well as to share all the fun that hunting and outdoors have to offer.

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[00:00:00] All right guys. Welcome to you today's show and joining me on the show. I've got two buddies, Devin McDonald and Josh Plumber. Now both of these guys are diehard whitetail hunters, although they hunt a bunch of other things, honestly, one of them like to hunt with bow more, the other with a rifle. And since they've converted each other to using both pieces of equipment while hunting, now, they also hunt hogs and coyotes and a whole number of other things.

Bottom line is these guys are outdoorsmen that just like to get out there and pursue adventures outside. So I'm really excited about this episode. Let's jump in.

Like he was doing things that were just badass. That was one of the coolest moments of my life. I was really scared, but knowing that Dan had the gun, I did have the rifle, like we would be okay.

All right guys. Welcome to today's show. I am [00:01:00] joined by two outdoorsmen, two buddies who are fresh off a couple different hunts. It sounds like Josh Plumer, Devin McDonald. How are you guys doing? Good. How are you? Evening. Yeah, we're good, man. Good. It's been a wild week around here. I left to go shed hunting down in New Mexico part way through.

My wife called me and said, Hey, how do you feel about me being gone for Florida when you get back? And I was like, oh, wait, without me. And so I came back, picked up the kids, and yeah, it's just been quiet around here since I got back. But going from hiking 10 miles a day in the mountains to just sitting around and shuttling the kids back and forth to school is a whole different pace.

One's probably a lot more tiring than the other and it's probably not shed hunting. Exactly. Yeah. The amount of snack requests and, oh, I'm still thirsty. Can we go do this? I'm like, listen, just cuz mom's here doesn't mean we get to do whatever we want, although we do have quite a bit of fun. So yeah, [00:02:00] that's how it should be there.

Yeah. Puts, puts those 10 mile hikes in perspective. Sometimes they're not so bad when you're juxtapose them then taking care of kids for real. Why don't you guys start out by sharing with the listeners a little bit about yourselves, maybe how you got into hunting where you guys are at now and then, you guys are friends and you started reasons hunting together, so maybe touch on that a little bit.

Yeah, sure. I'll start off. So again, yeah, my name's Deb McDonald. I've been live in Indiana, grew up in Indiana for the most part. Not too far south or from, I guess where you're from, Dan up in Wisconsin. Yeah, a couple hours away, but yeah. So it just, grew up out so outside in the outdoors playing sports.

Josh and I played sports together for a long time, a couple years. Grew up hunting. My dad got me into hunting when I was young. It kinda, him and his brothers hunted when they were, I. Kids hunted with their dad and kind of went on from there. And been doing it ever since.

Probably like a lot of guys took a little bit of a hiatus, through the college [00:03:00] years, a little bit time in the military. It's hard to hunt when you're not in the country. And then after the military kind of got back into it. And bull hunting for the most part is my preference really.

I've gotten far more animals through the old stick and string than I have through the rifle. But yeah, I just grew up hunting, hunting birds and I think I was recent podcast you had, you guys were talking about shooting the old Daisy 88 and Nail and Sparrows. I remember having hitting starlings out my bedroom window or, doves off the power line or whatever for stuff you're probably not supposed to do, but ended up doing it all the time anyway.

And it just went from there and progressed. And here we are now, just honing in your skills, man. If you can shoot, if you can shoot a little dove or a Starling or a Cardinal or whatever, You're probably gonna be a pretty lethal shot when it comes to big caliber stuff. Yeah, it's it definitely teaches you a lot.

You don't realize it when you're a kid. You're like, man, this is fun. I'm gonna tag that sparrow from, whatever, I don't know, 20 yards or whatever. And you don't realize that yeah those small shot placements [00:04:00] really do make a big difference. That's awesome. So when you got started in hunting, was it with a bow right away, or did you learn with a rifle and then switch over?

Yeah, it was with a bow. My first hunting trip. I, I remember my it was baptism by fire. My, my uncle was a 3D archery shooter and did really well with that. And he got my dad into shooting a bow. And then of course, I grew up, I, my first bow was like the fiberglass with a string, and started shooting with that and graduated, and I think it was either my 11th or 12th birthday.

I forget what it was. I was. Big enough and strong enough to pull the, state minimum. I think it was what, 35 pounds or something like that. So my dad got me a bow for my birthday and, come October 1st it was, oh, it's, Friday afternoon, first weekend of bow season. I'm leaving school at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Dad's picking me up and sits me. We were hunting an apple orchard I remember, and puts me under an apple tree and says, stay here. Don't move till I come and get you. And [00:05:00] so yeah, that was my first hunting trip with a bow. Dang. That's the way to do it. Josh, what about you? Yeah, so like Devin. So I grew up in corn fields of Indiana, born and raised, I was an outdoor kid, so I didn't really grow up in a hunting family.

A lot like Devin, I think a lot of my, what you could call hunting experience was, really running around the woods with friends, with a BB gun, probably, shooting birds, hit some fishing. You had a little bit of coyote hunting, but that's really probably about it. I hit my stride later with hunting, but the seeds were sown real early with being an outdoors guy.

I was in, was in Boy Scouts, always camping, very involved with ath athletics. I've known Devin since we were in seventh grade, playing sports together all through high school, through college, then right after college, I also went into the military as well.

Didn't intend to make a good career, but, passed forward 16 years and, seven deployments later. And it had all taken a toll on me. I was actually in the process of getting med board for medical retirement. And a a good buddy of mine who had also been medically retired [00:06:00] shortly before I did it, started a, an outfit, a hunting outfit.

His name is Ryan. He's actually the guy we just recently hunted with. And he hits me up. He's Hey, man. He's are you want to go hunting? There's this nonprofit called Combat Marine Outdoors. They do these hunts down in Texas. They bring in, wounded Warriors. He's it's four, five star, accommodations.

They put you out there. And I'm like, you know what? I hadn't thought about hunting in 16 years, but I was like, that sounds great. And I'm in. And so I signed up and ended up being a great trip. They fly down to Texas. We were at a place called the Wao Ranch was a huge ranch down there. They hunt a lot of exotics, but they got everything down there as well.

They pair you up with this host family who ends up being like your hunting guide and your host for the weekend. There's eight veterans total. And I got paired up with a Vietnam era veteran who was down there with his family. He sets me up, he's Hey, here's what I got. He's got it all planned out for me, just like any great guide would.

He's I got, he's have you ever hunted black Buck antelope? And I'm like, [00:07:00] I was like, aside from like Devin, like sparrows, I haven't really hunted anything. So I'm came for anything. He's I got this, little opening. He's we're gonna set you up 200 yards. And I'm like 200 yards, but okay, sure.

He set the bar high and he's at 7:00 AM every morning they come out. So I'm like, all right, cool. So we get out there like hour before the sun's up, 6 55 in income, two big old Texas hogs. First time I'd ever seen Wild Hogs. And I'm like, okay, this is cool. He's don't worry, they're coming and like literally 7 0 2 on the dot, like in comes this herd of black buck antelope.

I'm like, holy crap, this guy was right. Take my time, look for the right one. Black Buck Antelope or Austin, they got the cool spiral horns and everything. Pick out the right one. Line him up. One shot does a 180 drops, doesn't take a step, and right there, so 7:06 AM like, of the very first morning of a three a hunt, I'm tagged out, and it was a pretty cool experience though.

Cause for me, like that was probably where I would say like [00:08:00] the fire got re-lit with hunting. I, like I said, I was not in a great spot really in my life, like physically just everything had taken a toll, but it was great, so I came back almost re-energized, loving it immediately hit up my buddy Ryan, like the next month went hog hunting with him, bagged like two hogs, and then from there it was just on like Donkey Kong, the next, whitetail season went into it full bore, really ever since, I've have expanded their, repertoire, whitetail and, now trying to get in Turkey hogs and really everything.

But yeah that's a little bit about me and how I got into it. Dang. That's, I see a lot of organizations and I actually get hit up by a lot of people on social media about being guests on the show with veteran organizations, taking them out hunting. What do you think it is about hunting specifically that just becomes a release or therapy or whatever it is that these men and women coming back from service are connecting?

With, Yeah. So this is something Devi and I [00:09:00] talk about a lot. It's something you and I can both relate to. I think there's a couple aspects to it, but I think it's for us and you use the word therapy, and I think that's probably actually the perfect word for it. It's a hard life.

It's a tough life, and I think the biggest thing with being in the military is it gives you this deep sense of purpose that's hard to recreate anywhere else. And with hunting it is it's it's that purpose, it's focus. It's an opportunity to do something productive almost like a constructive hobby, right?

It allows you to focus. Of course you're never gonna recreate what it was in the military, but it becomes this thing where, it's almost like planning a mission, right? You go out there and you execute and it's and there's, we'll be, you gotta be a little honest about it.

There's this part of it that kind of, it touches and quenches the. Kind of the caveman in ya. It hits this on this the party that, that is a little rugged. And then the, I think the other big thing too is particularly with these veterans haunts these events, I think they're great cuz it's camaraderie.[00:10:00]

You get together with these guys who, I've been on two of these hunts now with the C M O organization. They're great. Each time I've gone I'm hunting with guys I've never met before, but we've all served. And like one, like the second time I went, I wasn't in the truck at the airport for 30 seconds and these guys are just bagging on me.

Like we'd known each other for 15 years. But that's that's like what it's like in the military and it's that instant camaraderie kind of sharing, the hunting and kind of trading stories. And it's the same thing, like just, the last hunt I went on with Devin and my, buddy Ryan had my boys with me this time.

And it allows you to slip away and escape, I guess to a degree. Into this life that kind of, when you transition out, you to a degree have to leave behind because I think you develop some habits and some some personality traits to get by in the military that are not they're not so highly cherished by the rest of the world.

A dark sense of humor, for example. You get brash. I say these things to Devin and some of my other military buddies that my wife just cringes about. She's ah, how could you say that? But,[00:11:00] that's just the way it is and it allows you to escape for a little while.

So I think that's a huge part of it. Yeah. Yeah. I would definitely say, to. To, to Josh's point there, the camaraderie aspect of it. That's a lot of what, what we're trying to do here with the company as well. But, when you're in the military you make friends with people that you've known as Josh said for 30 seconds.

And you've got your, you've got their back, they've got yours. You depend on each other. It's your life. And you think about it, you think, you talk about hunting trips, you've gone on with your buddies. You think about what's your friendship like with your hunting partners, it's different.

Yeah. It's different. It's different than your everyday I'm gonna go watch the flag football or, football on TV or whatever else, buddies. But your hunting partners are different. It's just like your buddies in the military, everything about everybody and you've all got each other's back.

And if, if we were in, we're unfortunately don't live next door to each other anymore. But if it was one of those things where if I downed a deer and Josh was around and I said, called him and said, Hey man, I got this buck down in a a [00:12:00] gorge or a, or whatever you wanna call it, and he'd be there to help me in an, in a, in an instant.

Just like I'm sure any year hunting buddies would be as well. That's a real big piece of it that I think a lot of us associate with hunting and it and that we get from it that we had in the military, that it's hard to find elsewhere. Yeah, that makes sense. The camaraderie side of it is probably my biggest draw to hunting.

Like I absolutely love even on the private properties that I've got access to. If I'm out there, I'm gonna send four or five messages out. Hey, who wants to come out? They might not have access to it, but through me they do. And I just love knowing that I've got a buddy out there with me, whether he's on the same 40 acres or a mile and a half away, we're both out there with the same goal.

We know that as soon as we hear a gunshot or get that text like, bucked down, we're gonna be coming over. It's like a group victory in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. And I've found him absolutely my life. For sure. It's all of my closest friends are hunting [00:13:00] buddies. There's guys that I play basketball with.

There's guys that I do flag football tournaments with, maybe that I work out with any number of things, but I know that if I'm in a jam, I can hit up one of those guys that I go hunting with all the time. And they're gonna be there to help out no matter what. Yeah, it's more like family than they are anything.

Yeah, they really are. And it's always fun because, hunters can all relate to each other. Being married while you're a hunter. That's always some fun topics to hit on. And yeah, there's just something about it, man. And then Josh, I know you mentioned even the caveman aspect of it, oh yeah.

Oh yeah. We've been doing this forever. Oh yeah, humans have been doing this forever. And I find it funny when people are like, they come out and they're just so shocked at how quickly they get into it, and I'm like, it's in your dna. Yeah, absolutely. You're making love, like you've been doing this.

We as humans have been doing this as long as anything. And oh yeah. It just makes sense that you're gonna connect with it right away. [00:14:00] Yeah. And we'd be kidding ourselves if we didn't deny that. There's just this pri primal nature to man, and I think there's some people that are naturally just a little more inclined to, I don't know, maybe let it creep in or just be in touch with it.

But I think, next to the military, I think hunters are right there, and it's, and it's an interesting. Concept too, because, we're absolutely in touch with our former cavemen selves. But the other thing that a lot of people, I don't think realize about hunters is it's not just about the killing for us either.

Don't get us wrong. There's a part, we love the hunt, the chase, the, but there's, it's also a very, I hate to use it, but almost, very intellectually stimulating activity as well, and it's a lot more complex. And a lot of people understand too. Hunters are, conservations, something, so an extension of the camaraderie.

I've got 15 year old twin boys now that are now really starting to show an interest in hunting. So the camaraderie that I share is really now starting to spread to my kids. And one of the big things that I'm spreading to them is, yeah, there's a primal aspect of this, there it's, coming into manhood.

But it's also there's a [00:15:00] responsibility with this too, so you talk about ethical hunting, ethical shots, making sure you're making good kills. And then there's like a respect for the prey that we're hunting, right? You're not just out there. Now, granny, you, we just talked about, we were shooting, sparrows and stuff off the power lines and stuff when we were kids.

I think everybody goes through that phase, but when you start to become a, hunter, it's yeah, we're out there as cavemen, but we're doing it right and we're doing it for the right reasons. We're wanting to put food on the table. We're wanting to, fair chase hunting, and there's a lot of respect for it.

It's a really kind of emotional feeling, when you down, it doesn't matter whether you're doing it for the 80th time or the first time, when you walk up on a, something you just harvested. It's a, it's an adrenaline rush and there's this extremely.

Extreme feeling of gratitude, where, you just had a, an arm wrestling match, match with Mother Nature and of course I won cuz I've got a rifle. But, it's, it, there's a, I think, real [00:16:00] hunters have an extreme amount of respect for that for that situation.

I think that's a really great balance with kind of the amen aspect of it as well. Yeah. So with this recent hunt that you guys went on, y you went out for hogs now for people. Like you said, you had not seen a wild hog up until that hunt. They're crazy animals. It's not like a whitetail deer.

It's not oh, you put a shot on 'em, they're just gonna drop in their tracks like they are hardy animals and. I've talked to multiple people now from Texas recently, and I'm like, dude, it's a huge problem down here, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a huge problem. If you could get rid of all of them like that because they're such a problem, would you?

Oh no, absolutely not. They're way too much fun to hunt. I get that answer from everyone. No, I haven't talked to somebody who like specifically makes their living farming, because I'm sure I'd get a different answer from them, but [00:17:00] hog hunting is taking off. There's no seasons, no bad limits. You just go out and you kill hogs.

You're solving a problem and it is good meat. I talk people all the time. Wait, you eat those things? I heard they're bad. I heard they're tough. You put anything on a smoker long enough, it's gonna taste good. And I haven't had a bad hog yet. Yeah, I haven't either. Hunt, go. Where'd you guys go? I. So we were down in this most recent one.

We were down in North Carolina. Was it Calabash? Yeah. Yeah. It's about, it's basically, it's pretty much right on North Carolina, South Carolina border. Between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach. Okay. Yeah. Like I said guy that worked with me in the Marine Corps, Ryan Paris, he runs hunting Carolinas.

He's got, he had an outfit down there for a couple years and he took a little break, and then just recently he got back, started up again. I've haunted with him, for years and so we went down there and hunted with him. But it, it's funny. You're right, hogs, it's the best part is, with hunting, you want to do it year round and you can't, but hogs, you can, so I know for Devi [00:18:00] Devin, and I think this is the second year we've done a spring hog hunt, it's a nice little it's something to get your fix in between in between whitetail and Turkey season.

And then you gotta find something to get you through the summer till whitetail starts back up in the fall. But I know, I think, last spring we went down to Texas and Devin hunted hawks for the first time, and up until then, I think he'd only hunted whitetail and he it was a good baptism by fire for him.

Yeah. It's, you're right. And you said, it's just totally different. You're used to a deer and you hear, I, we can't, Indiana, we can't bait or anything, so you're not used to sitting over a feeder. So you're sitting down and, I don't know, a cut or a drawer or whatever, or a ridge, and you're listening for that, methodical rustling of the leaves as the deer comes through in between the 83 squirrels that have decided to drop the acorns on your head all day.

You mean The hogs are just totally different. It's one second, they're there, they're not there. And the next second they are. And you're trying to pick out outta that 42 that are underneath the feeder, which one's the one you want to drop. And they just, they don't stop, man. They just don't stop.[00:19:00]

They constantly move. They're constantly twitching or bumping into each other. It's just, it's a totally different ballgame. I love it. It's so much fun. It's definitely I won't say it's better than deer hunting. That's what we grew up, what I grew up on, and that's what I love for sure.

But man, yeah it's a good time. I'm pretty hooked. I'll be honest with you. They're just such a crazy animal to think that, captive pigs got out and just became feral like almost overnight, and they reproduced so quickly. And I don't know, statistics on what animal is most likely to attack a person, like what wild game.

But it, they've gotta be up there. They're nasty. They have no fear at all. Obviously, if they sense danger, they're gonna bolt. But if you get 'em cornered, if you come across 'em at the wrong time, those things will come after you. And there's no, aside from shooting 'em, like even with a knife, you stand no chance against a 150 pound hog.

Much less at 350, 450 pound hog. All right, guys. If you've been listening to the podcast, I'm [00:20:00] sure you've heard me talk about the helicopter hog hunt that I did down in Texas. Now, I went down there with rope Texan Outfitters and Landon and Brandon, the owners put us on the animals. We killed 150 pigs in 19 coyotes, just from the air.

On top of that. We went out thermal hunting at night and got up close and personal to more hogs. I didn't have to worry about bringing guns or ammunition because all of that was provided for me, and it is to this day, the most action packed day of hunting I've ever had. I stand by what I've said in the past, and that's that helicopter hog hunting is the funnest thing that you can do with pants on.

In addition, they offer Sandhill crane hunts, and predator calling. So if you're looking for the most exciting hunt of your life in something that you're gonna want to come back and do year after year, go check out rogue texan.com and book your hunt today.

Oh yeah. And what's crazy is a lot of people don't realize they're actually incredibly intelligent animals. So I grew up on a, I grew up, around [00:21:00] farms, hogs, how to, grew up raising hogs and they're incredibly smart animals, they figure out how to escape the pen, all kinds of stuff.

But, wild hogs in particular, you can tell hogs that have been hunted cuz they, they turn nocturnal, and then you gotta hunt 'em with thermal or night vision and sometimes they get wily. You hear about hog, a sounder, they'll send out the little ones first, they'll send out the little ones and the big ones will wait back in the tree line, be like, all right, it's been 10 minutes.

I haven't heard a gunshot. And then the big ones will come out, and it's but at the same time, it's also hard to know. So I know, this trip we went on most recently, like I said, we went down to. Eastern North Carolina, mainly hunting hogs, but it was also youth Turkey seeds. So I had both my boys down there with me.

One of 'em, ha ha has not hunted before the other one. He's bagged, dispersed buck, and he had his first pig last summer, so he was actually looking more for Turkey. But the other one, we took him out, so we got down there, got in the blinds only four or five o'clock.

We knew they were gonna come out at dark, and it was funny on the way down there. We were actually listening to one of your recent podcasts and you were talking to a guest about, and you take somebody out hunting for the first time and like [00:22:00] within 15 minutes, all of a sudden some, big monster butt comes walking out while I'm sitting there, with my son Connor, and teach em, be patient.

I got 'em prepared to be a long sit, Hey, we could be here till late, and we're just sitting there and all of a sudden I look up and it's still daylight. I think we had literally been in the stand for 15 minutes and there's a group of flags, six pigs on the feeder, and they're what we call, so they're not, they're what we call Weber size.

So a Weber size pig is about a two to three month old pig, not a piglet. They're old enough to get by on their own, but they're not quite a big and they're just about the right size where you could skin 'em out whole and cook 'em whole on a Weber grill. That's why we call 'em Webers. So about five or six Webers, and I'm like, Hey, bud.

Hey, there's a. There's pigs on the feeder, so he gets all fired up, of course we've got a thermal rifle, but it's daylight, so he doesn't really need it. But, it was a great experience, cuz he's, they're not going anywhere all of a sudden, you can tell.

All of a sudden I'd hear him, breathing. I'm like, all right, breathe. Hey, put it back on. Safe finger, off the trigger, anyway, he, we [00:23:00] probably watched him for five or 10 minutes, and I'm making sure he knows, Hey, wait for one to step out. Don't shoot through a group, wait till one steps out, wait till he turns broadside, he finally gets one, squeezes off a great shot, a hundred yards, dumps it right there.

15 minutes into the hunt, we've got our first pig on the ground, and. It was, from there, Devin ended up having a great first night too. Long story short, we ended up, like between me and my son, we ended up dropping five on the first night right there at that same feeder.

He dropped one a little wire later, another group came in, I dropped a, another Weber and a South, and he dropped a Weber. And then I was like, all right, we dropped four fours enough. And we're sitting there and all of a sudden he's dad, big pig. Big pig. So I pick up the thermal binocular.

It's dark by this point, and it's a big old bore. I can you, you can just tell it's a big old bore. And he's can I shoot it? And I'm like, man, we've already dumped four pigs tonight. But a big pig like that walks out. You're not gonna tell him no. So I'm like, all right dude. Yeah. You can drop the big boar again.

Same thing. I think we probably watched it for about 15 minutes, cuz [00:24:00] he was pretty wily. He was moving a lot. He was amongst the little ones, he finally waited for a great shot, squeezed off a great shot. First time, first night hunting hogs. He ends up dropping a trophy sized boar, I think it was, for that area.

Maybe 180. But that's a good size boar, oh yeah. We end up finding it, drag it back. I'm like, Hey buddy. Thanks. That was a, that's gonna be a nice taxidermy bill right there, but it's gonna be a great wall hanger. Dang. Yeah, so he had a great first night. That there's something about like thermal hunting also.

There's so many things that you can do with pigs that you can't do with basically any other animal unless you go to Texas. Then it's like the same thing for all non-natives. But yeah. Those pigs with thermals or chasing 'em in a helicopter or, yeah. Most people who are shooting pigs have thermal setups.

They've got suppressed rifles. Yep. And most hunters have never used either, yeah. When you show up with an AR 15 or a AR 10 or whatever it is that they're using, you're like, [00:25:00] oh, I'm hunting with this. Okay. Yeah. Like I don't have to rack one every time. Oh yeah. Especially. Have you guys done helicopter stuff yet?

Helicopter hog hunt? No, we haven't, but it's definitely on the list. I'm telling you, I love shooting pigs. There is nothing is fun in the outdoors. As helicopter hog hunting now it's short-lived, like you're not gonna be up there for a whole week at a time. So there's definitely pros and cons to it.

I love going out to Elk camp. It's nine days in the back country with my buddies, but as far as like packing as much fun into an hour as you can, or into one day as you can, you can't beat it. Yep. Yeah, it definitely looks like a good time. That's for sure. So between the two of you, with your experience and with your kind of different journeys into hunting over the past couple decades, right?

Getting back into it Josh, you're, are you bow hunting as well, or are you doing more rifle stuff? Yeah, [00:26:00] so it is funny we're, so Devin's the bow guy so obviously me, so I, I think I had a bow and arrow when I was young again, just literally out shooting stuff when I was a kid.

But, so I'm primarily a rifle hunter. However, probably within I, I think I, I got, I picked up a bow two or three years ago, shooting a little bit. I'd say probably within about the last year, I've really have gotten dedicated myself to it. Now I have not harvested anything with a bow yet, so I cannot call myself a bow hunter, but I picked up a bow.

I'm in the process. I've actually got two bows now. The second one, I built myself, ret strung, it going through the whole nine yards. So I'm actually going through the paces. Now I will admit, I, Devi and I think we have this divergence all the time where I'm like, look, if I ever have a choice between a rifle and a bow, I'm picking the rifle every time.

Just because, this is a game of odds that I'd rather, I could shoot something out, two, 300 yards versus, waiting for him to get in 25, 30 yards with a bow. But, I, I do like it and I'm looking forward to it. I've actually, I'm waiting for the Wyoming elk draw here to come out.

I think May 5th [00:27:00] or so, it's supposed to come out. But the goal is to hopefully get out in archery hunt elk, this fall. And then that'd actually be a, that's gonna be a pretty steep learning curve, Wyoming archery elk for the first bow hunt. But but, I'm looking forward to getting out there with a bow and and doing something with it.

Talk about a game of odds. You picked one of the lowest odds out of everything chasing after elk with a bow. Yeah, but I guess if I could do that, then then it'll be easy anywhere, it's and I had a few opportunities this previous whitetail season. I've got 30 acres not too far from here.

But I've actually, the part I left out in the beginning is after I got outta the military, I hadn't had enough pain and suffering, so I thought I'd be a great idea to go to law school. So I've been a full-time law student for the last two and a half, almost three years now. I finally graduated in May, thank God, and I blamed Devin a hundred percent for not talking to me those crazy crap before I even started.

But, I had fully intended to get out in archery, hunt whitetail this year outta my property. But yeah, I just, I had zero time. It, it's a lot easier to [00:28:00] get out there, when you can sit in a blind, it's a lot of work, setting up lands, setting up your blinds, doing your work, and figuring out, where they're gonna be.

And unfortunately for me, the land's not great for whitetail. It's really wide open and, the deer don't like getting out there in the daylight anyway, so it was hard to pattern 'em. So I just, I never really did. But Gonna try to change up a few things this next season. Get out there as well.

Nice. Devin have is. Elk cunning, something you've done or are you sticking primarily with whitetail? No, I would definitely love to Elcon. That's definitely my goal. Western hunts for sure. Yeah. My primary prey I guess whatever has been whitetail, just cuz that's what's around here, the big game.

Around Indiana. But yeah, definitely archery, elk hunting is like for me, the, everybody's what's that one haunt you wanna do? What, what was like, if you could do anything, no price or whatever. I'm like, archery elk, 100% archery elk hunt. Yeah. They're like, oh, you don't want like a moose?

No, I don't wanna moose. They're great. Trust me I'd go on a moose any day. Don't get [00:29:00] me wrong, but I don't know, something about elk, man, I've never been, but just something about that's just always gotten me fired up. And that is the one thing. We're doing the process of trying to bank points here and trying to bank points in this state and that state and play the odds and whatever else.

So it's gonna happen probably here pretty soon, but yeah elk for sure is definitely on the list. Yeah. Are you now the progression seems to always go more primitive with weapons. Have you picked up a rifle for other things other than hogs? Or are you just yeah I've taken a couple deer with a rifle.

When I say a couple, I, it's maybe four or five maybe. So not many. All my deer have all been bow. I always tend to get 'em that first or second week of November, which is still archery season here right before the rut that, chase week or whatever you wanna call it seems to be when they like to hit the ground.

But yeah, no rifle for deer. That's about it. And then hogs we're, and then this fall, so the plan is if he gets his Wyoming hunt, I'm gonna meet him out there and we're gonna do we're planning a diy [00:30:00] probably depending on how it goes, maybe some black bears. So that'll definitely be a rifle for sure.

Not quite up to boat hunting a bear yet. Something that can eat me just as easily as I can eat it is yeah, but you're talking a black bear. The odds of a black bear coming after you are pretty slim, right? Yeah. Every now and then people get killed by black bears, but I feel like it's very slim.

I think your odds are more likely to run into a grizzly while you're elk hunting Wyoming than they're to get 'em all by a black bear while hunting a black bear. That's actually, go ahead. I was gonna say, that's actually what I was getting ready to say it. I'm not really too worried about getting attacked by the black bear while I'm eating or while I'm hunting them, except, maybe if he's, not a great shot with the era, but it's, honestly, it's the grizzlies out there cuz especially out there in Western Montana and Idaho, that's black bear and grizzly bear country. So yeah, I have this irrational fear of mountain lions. I've never been around one, we don't have 'em here, anything that can jump on me out of a tree and then drag me back up the tree, I got a healthy respect [00:31:00] for.

Dang. I actually just, I didn't have a mountain lion encounter necessarily, but hiking around the maces in New Mexico, I glassed up what I thought was a shed. My buddy glassed up what he thought was a shed, so I was like, dude, I've got just enough daylight. I'm gonna bomb down the side of this mountain out into the valley.

And it's not wide open, but there's enough open ground to where you can see where everything's been. It's like sandy soil and I'm cruising and I look down and here's a cat track that's now, just a tea plate, right? And I'm like, oh. So I hit him up on the radio. I said, Hey, just a heads up, I got a cat track down here.

We're like, Bobcat. And I was like, no mountain lion? Nope. Full on murder mins. Oh yeah. We were I think it was day three, we were looking in dark timber for sheds. And we're split up to where we can't see each other. Typically if you yell, you can hear the other guy and all of a sudden my buddy Brian comes over the [00:32:00] radio, he's Chris, is that you behind me?

And I get back on the radio cuz Chris's radio or we were hunting together and so I just had mine on. I was like, no man, we're all the way at the back of this canyon. I think you're still out on the point. He's okay, I thought you guys were following me. There is definitely something following me out here.

So we skirted around the canyon and tried to glass over there and he said whatever it was, he quit hearing it and it was gone. But I'm like, dude, yes, no thanks. Very well it could have been a mountain lion. Man. I, here's. You've gotten the irrational fear of mountain lions. I have an irrational desire to get attacked by a mountain lion, survive it with no life-threatening injuries, but just have an awesome scar and a cool story there.

You, yeah, I could get that. I've heard those stories. What, whatever. You hear those ghost stories, you know that there's that one, I forget where it was, what state? Where there was this mountain line was like stalking this guy, but the guy was in his cabin and it ended up like coming through the window of the cabin and attacking the guy.

And I'm [00:33:00] like, if they're gonna do that, I'm good. I, I don't need to, I don't need to mess around with them, dude. It, the element of danger just adds to the adventure, oh, that's true. Yeah. It can take you out. And I've had some run-ins with grizzlies. Nothing even close to dangerous for me, it could have turned dangerous pretty quick, but I. Where I've hunted in grizzly country, it's the salmon run. So they couldn't care less about mammals at all. Yeah, they don't want big game. Yeah. It's just way too easy. Yeah. And that would be the nice part about Wyoming, Montana, if you could elk hunt during the salmon spawning, then you would never hear about people getting attacked anymore.

A aside from like randomly walking up, they're not coming on the elk kills when they've got a whole river full of salmon and they can eat, 30 in an hour. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. So yeah, if you get drawn, what ha have you been studying up on it or who's taking Yeah.

Do you know two out there? Yeah. So for, so a [00:34:00] again, a little spoiled, but, so the elk trip is actually my be a graduation present for my wife. So it'll be a guided hunt. I found a linked up with a good outfitter out there. It'd, like it'll base I think unit 59, so it's like just, I think just outside Yellowstone be one, horse back in, seven days.

So it's, like a so I I'm lucky I'm spoiled getting that dream hunt up out of the way early. But yeah I can tell you this much. I think I've probably been, about five solid years of hunting now. I think I've progressed pretty well, but I can tell you this much, if I wasn't hunting with an outfitter, I wouldn't be going after elk with the old stick and stringing, I can tell you that much, and I'd be looking for I'd be looking to stretch the legs with the rifle a little bit.

But yeah definitely go on that route. But looking forward, so there's that. And then obviously looking forward to the kind of the DIY hunt on the back end, with Devin. So I cannot wait to get out and chase elk with a bow. That's like my buddy asked me the other day, what's your next hunt?

Not like what's your next in order of time, but what's [00:35:00] your next big hunt that you want to do that you haven't done? And that's number one. I wanna hunt a moose with a bow that's top of my bucket list. But realistically, my next is to chase Elkin. Before this show, I was actually sitting there watching YouTube, watching people just going after 'em with a bow and hearing 'em bugle, seeing their breath in the air.

They're coming in ready to fight. Oh my gosh, man, they're, I can't imagine, I can't imagine that feeling. Yeah, it's gotta be pretty spectacular. I like you, I, I've never el or elcon it at all, let alone El archery elcon. And yeah, I just, that's one of the big things I'm looking forward to, to, to this year with that is just getting out and seeing the scenery.

But man, you're right. Seeing some six by six or larger, a 300 plus inch elk coming in, stomping bugling, whatever else, and I'd be shaking like a leaf. I know that for an absolute fact. I don't even know if I could draw my bow, let alone shoot one. But yeah, that's gotta be just absolutely amazing.[00:36:00]

I will say, you guys, being from Indiana, bump that range up on your bow, get used to shooting way out. I've talked to so many guys out there, and again, I haven't done it just going on a mule deer hunt with a friend of mine last year with a bow. That was my first like even tag along hunt, and everyone's oh, you'll be lucky to get within 40.

And I'm like, dude most of us Midwestern guys, like that's the bottom pin. Like we don't really cite in much farther than that. I gotta figure that out quick. Yeah. Most of mine have been, I've shot a few, maybe around the 30 yard range, but, and these hardwoods around here, unless you're hot in a field or something like that, you're not hitting anything over 25 yards.

It's just not happening. There's just, it just can't. Yep. Yeah, I'm gonna have to stretch the legs on the old boat. I, right now I'm shooting I'm shooting 30, and pretty solid there. But I also live in a residential neighborhood I've not got a great place where I can really stretch it out to 40, 50 yards, so I'm gonna have to get out and get out to the land and stretch it out.

But but yeah, it, [00:37:00] and quite honestly, going going archery elk, that's pretty varsity move right out of the gate. But it's actually not our first attempt. We, dev and I, we actually drew tags in Colorado last year. Or this past season it was, it would've been rifle, rifle four.

But that was actually having you, we, that was a good good lesson in doing your homework before you entered the draw.

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It's pretty crazy the difference between rifle and archery. Not just like the range that you're shooting at, but the strategy and going after 'em. Because, I've got buddies that archery elcon all the time, and the goal is to get on the same hillside as them or call them over to your hillside.

Whereas with rifle, my buddy Sean, [00:39:00] who got me into it, he's dude, don't ever be on the same hillside as the elk. I'm like, why? You like cut that distance down. He's you can't see 'em. The country that we're hunting in, you just can't see 'em. If you're anywhere on the same plane as them the scrub oak is too tall.

You're never gonna have a shot at the vitals. And so all my shots on elk have been 300 plus to close that distance into under, I was shaking at 300 plus. When I see elk on a hillside a mile and a half away, I'm shaking. I can't imagine, you know those bulls that come in bugling and you draw back at 25 yards?

Oh yeah. You hear, I don't know, you've listened to stories like guys like Remy Warren or whatever. He is oh yes, I stalked into 12 yards to this world class el How does that happen? I just, I don't even understand it. Yeah. And we think like a buck's chasing a couple doze around, that's a couple extra sets of eyes.

You're talking, you might have 75 elk in there. Yeah. And all those [00:40:00] entire bird. Oh dude, you don't even have to worry about spooking the bull. You gotta make sure you don't spook the cows before he shows up. Yeah. Yeah, it's a different ballgame for sure. That's definitely gonna have to do a lot of research on that one.

Yeah. That's why you use Remy Warren though, right? We're always Dev and I are always, of course, like I'm sure with all your hunting buddies, you're always sending memes and Instagram posts and stuff back and forth and, of course I think Remy went through that thing recently where he had like wrist surgery, so he's using the mouth tab for his bow, still just drilling stuff at four, so we're sending these things back and forth and Devin will send me one and I'm like, you know what? That's awesome, but f this guy, I'm over here, I'm over here hoping I could, hit my 3d, a whitetail target in the vitals, and this guy's out here shooting 50 yards with a mouth tab, just dropping stuff.

And I'm like, I swear guys are either getting dumber or just way better at everything because with Remy, it's okay, you film your own hunts. That's tough. Filming a hunt is tough, much less when you're the one who has to [00:41:00] shoot. Then you're thinking, okay, now you're doing it on public land.

Okay, there's strike number two. Now you're shooting with a bow strike number three. Oh, that's not challenging. And he's not doing it to make it more challenging, but yeah, shooting a mouth tab. I'm like, how? How is it possible? Yeah. The success rate's 3%. Most places it's less than that with archery equipment to shoot a bull, and he's going out there and doing it with all of these other factors added in.

Can you imagine just putting a rifle in his hand and setting 'em out to one of those western states? Like he'd come back with a world record every other year. Yeah, he's dropping what he got what, like a caribou and foul of deer and red stag and all, all with a mouth tab and he's, nah, whatever.

I don't have that kind of time. It's also a prime example of why the guy's making a living at hunting too though. So I think that's a difference, guys like us, so these guys like me and Devin, we got day jobs to pay for our hunting hobbies and Yep. And I think that's the difference between doing it for a living and doing it as a very expensive hobby.[00:42:00]

Yeah, he's crazy. Why don't we, why don't we jump into talking about reasons. Tell me a little bit about that. How did that come about? Was that kind of a brainstorm between the two of you? Did one of you come up with it? How did this all happen? It it is really started out just a joke.

We were talking about, sending those memes back and forth to each other, so it would start out, Josh would send me something to be like, I don't know, he is got like a, some guy's got like a flame thrower mounted to the front of his truck and he'd be like, oh, I need one.

What are you gonna do with that? I don't know. I need it for reasons. You don't need it. There's no reason why you need it. So it started like that, we were just talking about it, whatever, it really started out, like I said, as a joke and it was maybe we started a conversation of, cuz we had talked about, maybe doing other ventures like a nonprofit type thing to, to benefit veterans in hunting specifically.

And That may one day still be the goal, but right now we're doing this and having fun with it and why not? And then it branched off and it, why do we hunt, reasons, the reasons why we hunt and it [00:43:00] just stuck and we went with it.

So that's really how it started. Yeah. Just like what Devin said, it started out as a joke and then, as we talked about, getting, doing whatever I guess we're doing now, we decided, that it's, that even though it's like reasons, that we don't, reasons is the only excuse you need, right?

But more than that, like everybody has a reason why they hunt. And I think. If you want to connect with people and if you want to share with hunting, I think, I think there's a lot of commonality between the reasons why we hunt. Just the three of us here found a lot of commonality, the camaraderie and kind of the challenge.

But everybody has their own reasons and I think, the goal was really to just make that a platform for kind of talking and sharing about it, we're a couple Gen X guys, we're not necessarily the greatest with social media, but we're blindly feeling our way through this thing.

But, the big thing that we know that we can all connect with all Hunters is talking about the reason why we do it. So there's obviously a lighter side to it. So we do talk about, the, hey, why do we need this brand new gun? Because reasons are, why do we hunt all the time?

[00:44:00] Or, but really it's, talking about and sharing with people the reasons why we do it. And it's everything from the lighthearted, maintain my sanity to the, talking about the other kind of more. Things with a little more gravity, we touched on the veterans piece.

That's a big thing, a flavor. We try to like, to try to add with everything or at least touch on, cuz it is it's a big reason why a lot of, especially veterans hunt because it's that connection to each other. It's that connection with our primal nature. And it's just a great way to have a, maintain a sense of purpose in our life.

After you left a, a group where, you had a sense of purpose every day. Yeah. That's cool. I love hearing when guys come up with an idea, and even if it is just a joke to start, turning that into something, whether it's making apparel or getting guys out there to experience the same thing that you guys have, because hunting, although like it's deep rooted in us, a lot of people are losing touch with it.

They have no idea. Where [00:45:00] their food comes from. They have no concept of death, like a loved one dies, and it's just, what do I do with this? I'm, I've never been around anything dead in my life and for for my kids, it's funny because they talk about death. It's, oh they've watched me butcher pigs before we, we've killed chickens, piglets die.

They get rolled over on their, by their mom, and the kids are just like, oh, okay. And now my kids are like, dad, are you gonna make that thing dead? And I'm like maybe when season gets here. But it's like getting people reconnected with that and understanding more about nature, more about where we came from, more familiar with these things.

No matter how you go about it, no matter how the the company or the business started it's always fun to. To get people out there and help them experience it. Oh yeah, for sure. And that's, we, like we were talking about reasons, and we talked about, you're putting food on the table and, good.

That's a good reason why I do it. I'm a, don't get me wrong, if I [00:46:00] 180 inch white tail walks along, it'd be my day. I've never shot a deer like that, to be honest with you. I've never seen a deer like that in the woods let alone gotten a chance to shoot at one. But, I love it. Part of the reasons why I do is, I feed my kids is once all my kids eat, they're like, oh, they asked for deer steaks.

I had an incident freezer incident. My youngest son, Decided he needed a Popsicle and left the freezer door open too long. And so like part of the meat thaws out, which is just it's awful, right? Like I can see the look on your face right now is just horrified. It's gut wrenching, man.

So I lost I had Four backstraps from a coup, from a couple of deer thaw out. And it's now I gotta cook 'em. And so I gave two to my sister and her family. She's got, my sister's got four kids, and so she's constantly running to the grocery store. So I gave her, a couple backstraps.

I cooked a couple, and like I walk in the kitchen and my oldest son's just literally standing over the stove, just cutting slices of back strap off and just eating them as they're cooling off, that's what they ask for. They want steaks. They ask for deer steaks or deer meat or [00:47:00] whatever else or hog.

Now they ask for hog, they've grown an affinity for pulled pork and whatever meatballs they call 'em, dad's famous meatballs. I do I usually do venison and ground pork, mix that together and make meatball today. They're pretty fantastic. I'm not gonna lie. So there's that.

And and my. Girlfriend, she came over one of the first times she came over and we were gonna have dinner. And I was like, we'll just go out to the freezer and grab a little white package. It's ground meat, it'll be fine. And for her, it it really sunk in. And I remember the comment, it was talking about food insecurity, like during the pandemic, you couldn't find your lockdown.

You go to the grocery store and you couldn't buy meat. Yep. And it was like, I didn't care. And water went out to the garage and opened the freezer and bam, we're having backstrap for dinner. Or steaks, or, I don't know, tacos, who knows, whatever. And she's is it always like that? And I'm like, Yeah, if's always if I do my job yeah. If the season works out the way it should, I drop a few deer and whatever else. Yeah. We're putting up a coup, a hundred, [00:48:00] 150 pounds of meat every year and in deer meat and or benison and yeah, it's always like that. As soon as, that's another big, big thing for me is one of the reasons why I do is, it's not only a passion and a lifestyle really, but it's, it's a way of life of putting food on the table, feed my family.

Yeah. It's weird growing up in a hunting family and then thinking about people who haven't because what person, aside from a hunter has a hundred pounds of meat, like a year's worth a year's supply of meat, they bought an extra freezer just for it. Nobody does. And I didn't really think about that with the pandemic when the pandemic hit.

I lived my life exactly the same as I always do. Like all my, I had a couple buddies that were. They were staying inside. I was like, you need anything from Walmart? I'm heading there right now. They were like, dude, you're going out. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going out. And so I would be the grocery delivery guy dropping it off at their door, but I never thought about the meat side of it.

Because I don't buy meat. If I go to [00:49:00] the, to like the meat section or the deli section, it's to get my kids maybe some sliced Turkey for a snack. Like they'll eat Turkey crackers and cheese, right? Or I'll make Turkey sandwiches for them after school. But other than that we don't buy meat.

I don't remember the last time I went and bought a steak or bought hamburger or bought any. I do, unfortunately, cuz I also had a freezer incident that was like two years ago and, oh, that's rough. It's your worst nightmare come true. I still like, when I talk about it, I get sick to my stomach just thinking back to all the meat that I had to pull out of that thing.

There's not much worse like that. And, Wounding an animal and not being able to recover it. It's basically the same thing. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's, it really is. It's the same thing. Yeah. It's awful. Yeah. That is one of the, yeah, that's a horrible feeling. I've been fortunate enough that you always, eventually you hunt long enough, it's gonna happen.

Like you're gonna shoot a deer, you're gonna shoot whatever. I've only ever had that [00:50:00] happen one time where, it was actually two seasons ago, I had a mechanical failure on my, and I hit the deer with the arrow, but with the mechanical failure it didn't, it hit super high and just basically I shot the back straps basically is what happened.

And, you watch the deer run off, you know it's not gonna die. More than likely it's not gonna die. It'll heal up and move on, man. You talk about an animal that's got a. Desire to live. There's nothing much, nothing else really much comes on a whitetail when it comes to the desire to live.

Yeah. But yeah, it's a sick feeling when you see that happen. And it's the same when that, your freezer incident or mine, you're just like, oh my God. That's just, it's the worst thing ever. Yeah. It really is. What what do you guys have coming up next? Are you guys in Turkey season?

Yeah, almost. Yeah. Yeah. So it's Turkey season here in north. So I'm actually in North Carolina now. I've been in North Carolina for quite a few years. Grew up in Indiana, but I've been in North Carolina for a long time. So it was Youth Turkey two weeks ago. We've been, I think [00:51:00] we're now into our second week of Turkey here yeah, so Turkey's what we got lined up.

Like I said, it's it's first year really hunting Turkey hard. Really going for it. So I'm planning on getting out this weekend with my son again. Gonna look, gonna try. So I have a, here in North Carolina, I have a love-hate relationship with public land in that I love to hate it, when it's what you got I've all, I've seen pop up out on my, I've got turkeys out on the land, but really all I've seen out there is a couple of hens poking around.

No, Toms running around. I'm gonna hit up some public land this weekend with my with my son and then maybe try to get out one more weekend after that, or maybe during the week next week if I can get away, see if we can put a Turkey in the freezer, that'd be a great little Thanksgiving feast Turkey harvested.

But and then and then I know in a couple weeks it starts up in Indiana and I'm gonna head up and hunt with Devin up in Indiana. Go after Turkey up there. Nice. Yeah. We'll start in what is the last week of 26th of April, I think is when season comes in here and it's short. We've only got like a three week [00:52:00] season.

That's it. It's pretty short and it ends I wanna say Mother's Day. Yeah. I've gone Turkey hunting on Mother's Day more than once Hey, that's all right. I miss my wife's birthday every year for elk season, so it's all right. Necessary sacrifice, right? Yeah. If you don't have that, if you don't have that kind of relationship with your wife or you even a hunter, where you hunt, she hates it.

But, I know Devin's got with his girlfriend, I've got it with my wife, it's of course they're not big fans when we're gone all the time. So you always gotta try to, you always gotta try to even things out with a nice trip. Devin and I were talking, we were gonna take our significant others to Hawaii, for a week, but then, we're gonna make sure we like.

Get away for three days and go after, the feral goats or the feral pigs or maybe the axis or something there, it's four days and, you put in our good boy points and then, we get to go hunt feral goats. I've had conversations with probably eight guys in the past year about this exact thing, and I'm beginning to think there's a market for it and we just need to start a business where [00:53:00] it's like you have your getaway, it's like a couple's retreat, yep. You get four friends together and then, my wife would plan something for the women. I would plan something for the guys. Yep. Everybody likes going to Hawaii. Yeah. Guys, I'm, for me, if I'm on the beach, like I can only lay on the beach so long, like I just don't really care. I'm like, I don't care how tan I am.

My wife probably does, she hates a farmer's tan, but I'm like, I really don't care. At the end of the day, she could sit out there for 25 days straight and be. Content as can be for me, I'm like, I need to be throwing a football, throwing a Frisbee, boogie boarding. I gotta be doing something else. And if I can go out and hunt while she's hanging at the beach, we're both real happy.

Oh yeah. See what we gotta do is we got, build a hunting lodge with a spa for the ladies. There you go. And a shuttle, to like them all or whatever, extremely stereotypical of course, but let's be honest. Yeah, I think brilliant business idea. Yeah. I think even better would [00:54:00] be like two separate lodges.

You got the ladies lodge. The guys lodge, and then every third night we all get together and hang out. There you go. And that way they're happy. We're happy because the other part is like nobody wants girls in camp, right? Not to be sexist, but like at a guy, like you're hanging out with five dudes and you go on a hunt somewhere, whether it's whitetail, Turkey hog, and one of 'em is like, Hey, can I bring my wife?

What's everybody's answer? Dude that's not really this trip. Like we're all hanging out and getting back to the dark humor like my wife. Exactly. Exactly. My wife made the mistake of looking at my phone during my guy's night group text, and she never would. She'll never pick it up on a Thursday again.

Yeah. No. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And we're we have a rule, Josh said he took his boys when we went hunting this last time, and there's a rule, there's certain things that are said Yep. When you're in the hunting camp or you're in the hot party that, certain things fly then and there's conversations we have that most people don't wanna be a part of.

Oh yeah. [00:55:00] Was you president guys? Sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, yeah, I actually had to have a conversation on the tail end. Just make sure that you're like, Hey boys, you are now in the mans circle of trust. There, there are certain things that went on that we just do not talk about when we leave here.

We can talk about it here, but, I, that's that's kind of part of, bringing him into the, bring him into the circle. And that's a good age too. We had a guy bring his son and I don't know how old this kid was, maybe seven or eight to Elk camp last year, and he might even listen to this.

He's gonna get a kick out of it because his son came and the dad was like, dude, listen, anything goes at elk camp like, you're here, mom's not here. Say whatever you want. And this kid had the worst mouth out of any of us by the end of the, by the end of the week. Oh yeah. He's just cussing for the fun of it.

It doesn't even make sense. He's just throwing words out there. You'll ask him something and he just turns and flips you off. I'm like, Listen, you punk kid, I'll still slap the crap outta you. And his dad's Hey, just so you know, you say something to the [00:56:00] wrong person, you might get, something thrown back at you.

But I was like, I think at 15 they could handle it. Yeah. If I took my six year old son, he's not gonna be able to turn that off when he gets back to school. No way. Yeah it's taken me a few years, obviously, kid, my kids have being 15, they've been in the teenage years for a few years, so it's been a little, a little up and down.

They had bad mouths. We've got been hard on it now. They're okay. They know. But going into it, I was like, all right, when we're hunting, it's cool. I was like, I was like, no, don't abuse it. Don't you know for the heck of it, but, and it was I was sitting in the blind with my other son, the one who had already got a hog and a deer before, and he was sitting there and.

He was really wanting a big hog cuz his brother had already gotten a big hog. But we're sitting there, we'd been sitting there for a while and in income's a group, I think it's four, but we'll call 'em Weber plus size. They're a little bit bigger than the usual Webers. And I'm like, Hey bud, there's some hogs on the feeder.

I was like, totally up to you. You never know if another group's gonna come out, if you wanna go ahead and take one. So he, picks up the rifle. He is siting through. I think he [00:57:00] probably thinks about it for a minute or whatever, and then he just says, you know what, fuck it, I'm just gonna shoot this one.

And I'm just like, all right, yep, you got it buddy. It's all you. Go for it man. And that was just the, that was absolutely probably what I would've thought. And it's probably a good thing you did cuz we ended up sitting there another couple hours, didn't see anything else come in, but Yeah.

I was like, yep, absolutely. Good. And then, but on the way home there's a reminder. All right guys, cuz I, I think I caught one of 'em dropping an F bomb on the way home in the car. I was like, all right, just so you know, hunting trips over, start to transition back into, start to transition back into the real world.

Let's watch that. Man, that's funny. And I love Weber. I'm gonna have to start using that one when I'm pig hunting. It's, I just need a write-in section where people can write in and respond to episodes. Cuz I would love to get a full list of the different size descriptions for pig. Yeah.

Because when we're helicopter hog hunting, it's all sports, right? Yeah. Oh, hey, here we got a couple softballs. Oh, hey, there's a football Footballs. Yep. Basketball. Yeah. [00:58:00] Obviously it's relatable in 95% of men, but yeah, throwing that out there. The Webers. Yeah, the Webers. Yeah. And for the record we can't take credit for that one.

I, I, and I don't even know, I know it was Ryan, but I think it might, I don't even know if Ryan could take credit for that one. I think there was another guy that Ryan was telling me about that would come hunt with him quite a bit. He is like, Hey, he loves to shoot the Webers. Every time he comes out here, he is he doesn't want the big ones.

He want, he's just gonna shoot a Weber and take it home and grill it up whole. I was like, all right, man. It works really well though, I can tell you that. Yeah, dude, those things are tasty, man. Yeah they're holy cow. You don't get the big layer of fat, which that's one of my favorite parts.

When you're cutting up a pig and you just have that like inch and a half of fat on it that you can, oh, you're talking about the shield? Yeah. No, I'm not even talking. Oh, no. Oh, you're talking about that. Oh yeah. The, oh, actual body fat. Yeah. Body. Fat. Fat. Farm pigs get it.

Some places the actual, like wild boars don't get it. But when we hunted down in Georgia this year that's one thing you guys should look out for is Cumberland Island. Cumber Island. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's on our list. Yeah. July one. [00:59:00] For July one to hit that draw. Hey, maybe we'll just see you down there.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Those pigs down there. I started cutting into 'em. I'm like, dude, what's up with the fat? And they're like, all of 'em are like that. And I was like, they all have a good layer of fat. And they're like, they do. All they do is eat acorn acorns all the time. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so I was like, shoot, man, I've never seen, out of all the pigs that I've killed in the wild, I've never seen wild pigs have fat like those ones do you?

Yeah, I know the ones we got they're pretty lean, they move around a lot. They're eating pretty lean diets. But, we talked about the shield. You know what's crazy is trying to explain to people about the shield, especially on the bores, but sometimes even the sows will have 'em, people think can't necessarily wrap their heads around this concept of hogs on a shield.

And then, when you start trying to explain to people why hog hunting's tough, why shot placement is so key, and how some of 'em can literally some of 'em will eat a bullet and they'll, they'll go and throw themselves down in the mud, pack some mud into it and keep on going. And, sometimes you just gotta show 'em, you're dealing with a board, it's got like a inch and a half of [01:00:00] cartilage, surrounding his shoulders.

And it's a, that's sometimes, people tend to be pretty surprised when they see that. Hey I watched a guy, so one thing is I've gone on a couple hunts with like different vets or vet organizations. I'm not a vet, but I've been, just invited by those guys. So I go down to Hunts for Heroes with these guys from Texas or go down to Texas with these guys for, from Hunts for Heroes.

And I'm standing across a slew and I'm watching this guy and he was just another buddy that came with, and he's literally running backwards from this pig just dumping 10 mil rounds into it. He empties his full, he had a full size Glock, 10 mil empties his whole clip, and then just turns and starts running from it.

Meanwhile, the other guys are circling trying to get a clean shot on it. Yeah. And they end up killing it. I bet you that pig had 13, 14 bullets in it by the time it died. And I'm like, dude, [01:01:00] This is crazy. Not only that, it just got shot. Most animals would run from pain. This thing's like, all right, now it's my turn.

And yeah, hog hunting, you gotta go with the right guys. But also some of those guys are crazy going on with knives or spears trying to kill 'em. Ha. Have you ever hunted with dogs? I've not pig hunted with dogs. Okay. But that's on the list also. Yeah. That's on our list as well.

It's funny. It's we follow a couple pages where they're guys that they're, and it, it's like, there's like a pecking order in hunters, and I think amongst hog hunters, the guys that run dogs, they definitely feel like they're a step above. And, and part of me gets it, and honestly, I don't blame 'em.

I'm honestly jealous. I'm like, Hey, invite me. They invite us. We'll go catfish. They're the catfish noodlers of the Huntington. Oh yeah. There you go. That's a good analogy. That's a great analogy. Yeah. I really appreciate you guys ho hopping on and I feel like we definitely need to do a hunt together sometime, whether it's coming island or somewhere else, man, we should, yeah, absolutely.

Get together and do one. Yeah. [01:02:00] Sounds good to me. That'd be awesome. Before we hop off, where can people find you? Where can they find reasons outdoors and see what you guys have coming up? Yeah, so we've got mostly on Instagram. Mostly it's reasons underscore hunting you can look us up there. We got a link to our store.

We've got some t-shirts and stuff like that we've put together. They're mostly just yeah, bad jokes that we've come up with and put on t-shirts is really what they are. But they work and they're funny and people seem to like 'em so far. But that's the big place. Try to do mu it's all.

Hunting related for the most part. Occasionally something else sneaks in cuz it's life. Yep. Some pictures of haunts. We got some pictures from our most recent hog hunt up there. We're both doing some testing with some different arrows different veins and stuff for arrows. So there's some stuff like that on there right now.

That's the best way right now. We've got a I think we've got what like. One Facebook post or something like that. Yeah. I don't know. Weve got a Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. You guys don't seem like much much for being TikTok ERs. No. So you know what? We actually tried TikTok and then we had [01:03:00] two, two posts taken down in 24 hours.

And honestly they weren't even really that bad. It was, and after that I was like, you know what? Okay, I'm done with this. They never are, you like tame back and they still get paid. I know. It's ridiculous. And I was skeptical on TikTok to start with, and like I said, we're a couple of Gen X guys, so it's like almost sacrilege even get on TikTok.

And I felt like we really put ourselves out there just by doing it and we put, like some pretty, probably not G-rated, but it was, not bad at all. And and yeah, they got, two of 'em got taken down in 24 hours and I was like, you know what? Nah, we're done. Yeah. The TikTok experiment is over.

That's funny. Guys, I really do appreciate it and it's been a pleasure. Devin, Josh, thanks for hopping on. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks. Appreciate it. And that is gonna wrap it up for today's episode. Now, if you haven't already, go hop on YouTube, search the nomadic outdoorsman and check out the newest episode on YouTube.

It is the first full length episode. It's 20 something minutes [01:04:00] of just shed hunting, chaos, and awesomeness. There is a lot of great content in there, and if you guys are into shed hunting, even if you're not, you should go check this out, because up until this point, I could not say that I was a shed hunter.

I was a shed looker. I tried to find him. I just really sucked at it. But the episode is up live now. Go check it out. Thanks for listening.

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