Ep. 53: Jason and Zeke Thurston
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Today's guest is a Canadian professional rodeo cowboy who specializes in saddle bronc riding. He's a three-time 2016, 19, and 22 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion saddle bronc rider. Additionally, he spent some time in the fall hunting a little and everything that Canada has to offer, whitetail, elk, mule deer, moose, coyotes, whatever he has a tag for there on his place. Welcome to the show, Zeke. Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm really excited for this.

How's it going here for you at the Pendleton Rodeo? It's been really good. Yeah, we showed up Monday. Slack started. We was in the team roping. Didn't have any luck there. I rode my bronc on Wednesday. I was 86, so we'll be back for the finals on Saturday. Perfect. Yeah, it's...

So when you come to these rodeos, are there guys that only do single events, or are there a lot of guys that do a little bit of everything like you, like roping, riding? Kind of a little bit of both, but mostly any more rodeos gotten to where it's kind of every event's pretty specialized. One guy's kind of...

kind of throw all their eggs in one basket, you know. But there are all-around guys, obviously. They give away an all-around world title, probably the most coveted title to get, which is Stetson Wright's been winning it the last few years. But there are lots of time to vent guys crossover from calf rope and a team rope and stuff like that. We enter this one every year. Just gives away a really cool all-around saddle, and it's just pretty fun to run one down on the grass. Yeah.

So normally at this time in the podcast, we would take listener questions. And if you have listener questions of your own, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com or hit us up on social. But today I'm going to take this 15 minutes or so and just ask Zeke some questions about the rodeo, you know, kind of his life and how you get here. So we're going to do a little pivot and then we'll get back to our normal recordings in future episodes.

So how do you become a pro rodeo cowboy? I'm having kind of second thoughts on what my career choice should be in, so I'm really curious for myself, how do you become a pro rodeo cowboy? - Yeah, it's kind of an unconventional way to make a living. There's lots of different ways to become a rodeo cowboy. Some of the guys that we ride with

just fall into it and see it on TV or something, you know, catch it somewhere and think that's one of the cooler things I've ever seen and somehow get involved. For me, personally, both sides of my family have always been very deeply rooted in rodeo and stuff, so I just grew up in it. I grew up on a ranch in Big Valley, Alberta, and, yeah, just pretty...

pretty well just grew up in it. It's all I can ever remember. - Yeah. So does that start like at a very young age? Like when, what's the progression? It's like, you know, at our local fair, there's like mutton bus, you know, they throw them on a sheep. So it's like, how do you progress through like when you're ready to get on an animal? Like how, how you finally get on a bronc and you know, how does that go? - Yeah, it's a little different for everybody, but obviously, you know, being, being ranch kids, we rode anything that, anything that we could get on, you know,

goats and bottle calves and everything that was around the place. But yeah, there are stepping stones. Obviously, the sheep riding, I think that's more for the parents' enjoyment. But you go that route and then you obviously probably start riding a saddle horse and learning to ride and things and then progress into, say, steer riding if you want to go that route or you start roping. And yeah, just kind of go through the steps until you're

Where do you want to be? Yeah, this is not meant to insult anybody, but I was talking with Garrett Long with Meat Eater. He's here at the Roundup with us. And we were talking about the Extreme Bowls, the bull riding versus bronc, and kind of the tradition and where that came from. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Like the bulls have kind of maybe been for a little bit more show and entertainment, where bronc really has their tradition rooted into it. Yeah, so the bronc riding is what they call the event that started it all. It's kind of the very first, you know,

150 years ago, there would be, you know, say cowboys like at the Pendleton Roundup, you know, when they'd have a roundup, they'd get everybody's cattle together and brand and then sort them off and then you'd take your own cattle and go sell them. That's how they used to do it. So at the roundups, whoever had the bronchiest or rankest horse that they were riding, you know, obviously they would start putting wages on it and bets being cowboys and seeing who could ride the longest on the rankest horse and that's

that's kind of where it started and uh the bull riding I think it came around after um yeah kind of more as a WWE type yeah yeah yeah because I mean what you guys were doing was you know trying to break you know crazy horses pretty relevant to the ranching type yeah western where there was no reason you should jump on a bull and never try to stay on there's nobody riding a bull around in a pasture gotcha makes sense so uh

You know, for me, maybe a little bit of an outsider, like we know there's this local circuit, you know, I've got the St. Paul Rodeo close to me, you know, the Pendleton Roundup. So there's, but when people typically think, you know, rodeos, they think of the NFR. They think about the pro rodeo, but the PRCA rodeos all lead up to this actual NFR. And can you tell us how that goes? How many of these, you know, I don't want to say minor events because they're not, but how many of the PRCAs do you hit in order to,

to make it to the NFR. And then can you tell us how you actually qualify for the NFR? Yeah. So they're what you would call like a regular season rodeo. I think the PRCA has somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 and some regular season rodeos every year. Our season starts October 1st and ends September 30th. And so...

you just for us mostly we start in January um we kind of when the building rodeos big winter rodeos start and stuff so that's kind of when we start and we'll go all the way to the end of September um in the bronc riding you uh you're allowed to use 100 rodeos towards your um count and qualifications for the NFR um NFR is strictly uh top 15 in the world off money one so um

the 15 guys that win the most money in that event are seated in to go play at the finals. So the most, I mean, if you happen to go to 100 events and win money at it, they're taking your top 100 winnings

calculating that. And then that's what determines a 15 that get to make it to Vegas in December every year. Yes, sir. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um, so I was completely, you know, hopefully everybody knows it was a joke. I belong, never belong on a Bronc or a bowl ever. Um, but, uh, you know, another thing that would keep me off, I'm not tough enough. Um, you know, one thing that, uh, people think about with rough stock is injuries. Um, how's your career been in that sense so far? I think, I believe you're 29 years old. I'm 29. Yeah. And, uh, as far as injuries go, I've been, I've been really lucky. Um,

it's a, it's a pretty rough sport. Um, all three of the rough stock events, you know, you're, you're dealing with an animal that, that outweighs you, uh, 10 times, you know, and so it,

You can get banged up, but that's kind of part of it. If you're going to jump dirt bikes or ride buck and bulls, you're probably going to get some bumps and bruises. Yeah. And one thing, the injuries seem to differ between broncs and bulls where they twist you off. You go flying typically and they want to stomp on you. Where watching yesterday a little bit, it seems like you guys fall off a little more graceful. I mean, they can be some pretty bad tumbles, but there's a big difference between...

kind of how you crash on bold versus how you crash on the on the bronx yeah yeah the bronco and it's uh it's pretty um you know it's all timing and balance all the events are but the bronco and they they say it's kind of like poetry in motion i guess is what they call all the time so it's when when it's working it's really smooth and uh um it looks really good it's really not rough at all you uh obviously you will get banged up and

and get into some, some wrecks and situations where you, you know, it's unavoidable. Um, for the most part, it's,

you're not really going to get too big of wrecks, but knees, ankles, and groins are pretty hard for brown cradders. Yeah, they go a lot. Yeah, I think I've seen more people get banged up off of a dismount. You know, they get the rescue horse or whatever it is. Pickup man comes and gets them off his horse, and then they seem to tumble off the other side or end up on their knees. Yeah, that's where I usually get all my injuries. Trying to get off safe. Getting off safely, yeah. So as far as the crossover, you know, I...

make my living as a hunter, you make your living as a rodeo guy. Do you think there's a big crossover between the two groups? I personally, I've seen a huge crossover my whole life. Most everybody that I know through the rodeo world is involved in hunting or fishing, some sort of conservation of some sort.

whether, you know, it could be just even just ranching, you know, taking care of their place and stuff. But huge crossover. A lot of the contestants are big hunters. Some of them have their own outfits and guides. And yeah, there's a lot of hunting goes on in the rodeo side. Yeah, it seems to be a lot of crossover in the two genres or whatever you want to call them, the two lifestyles definitely have a lot of crossover. Yeah, I think they complement each other quite well. And

Um, you know, a lot of people that come from Rody, not everybody, but, uh, comes from like a ranch or a farm or, um, you know, some sort of agricultural background. And a lot of times with that comes, you know, um, you know, harvesting animals off your own land. Yep. Yep. Um, yeah. And, uh, one of the, one of the things that, you know, here at MeatEater, we're, we're huge public land advocates, you know, and, and I love it, but one thing we need to do is tip our hat to, um,

you know, a lot of the private land, you know, these ranchers, these cowboys that run big chunks of private, they seem to take care of the animals maybe better than we can on the public, you know, and give them the things they need, you know, food, water, you know, all that. And there hasn't been too many places I've went where the private land hunting wasn't maybe a little better than the public that's adjacent to it. So, you know, I think we always talk about conservation, but it's like,

these private landowners, all the work they're doing for their livestock also benefits wildlife in an incredible way. Oh, for sure. Lots of our neighbors and people around us, you know, they...

run cattle and do do all that but they also uh you know sell hunts in the fall and like to take care of their deer and animals because they you know it's also another source of income yep yep uh so what's your biggest and favorite pro rodeo moment if you had to pick one oh my biggest my probably last year i would say it was my favorite moment uh 10th round of the nfr a uh

I had one ride that it won me a lot. Set a season's earning record, tied the average record, won the world, won the average, split the round.

and was the Top Gun winner at the NFR. So that was pretty cool. I don't know if that'll all happen ever again. Yeah, one good ride. Just kind of checked all the boxes there for you. That's awesome. So now we're going to jump in. We're going to transition a little bit from the rodeo into hunting. So as I mentioned earlier, it sounds like you hunt a little bit of everything up there. And that's one thing I love about Canada is you got everything on the table. You've got elk.

You've got mule deer, whitetail, moose. You've got predator hunting. What would be your favorite of the species to go after? Do you have one? I don't know. My favorite is probably hunting elk, obviously. When you're running around, they're all screaming and

and stuff, but I just like it. I really just like to be outside and enjoy it. But yeah, it's mule deer hunting. They're all different. It's fun to put a stock on a mule deer. You sit in your tree stand, wait for your whitetail to come by. Yeah, I like them all. - So how are you able to, we'll get back to the rest of the species and strategy and all of that,

How do you balance your schedule with being on the road quite a bit? Because the rodeo one stops at the end of September, so you're about to have a little bit of a fall break leading into the NFR then? Yes, sir. Yeah, we'll still have a few more to go to, a few more events and things, but that is our slowest time. That's perfect. So you have a little bit of your fall to hunt if you need to and take care of the place while you're there. So...

end of September, you're still riding through then do you get to catch some of that elk rut or are you typically hunting them with a rifle or a bow up there? How does that, like, how do you guys, the season structure set up there in Canada and then what, you know, how do you hunt elk whether screaming, whether it's with a rifle and

Kind of what's your fall lookout? Yeah, so I kind of usually miss most of the good part of the rut by the time we get home from this. But yeah, we'll go after them with our bow. For an antlered elk, it's a draw tag in our area for a rifle. Me and my brother, my brother had one last year. He killed a pretty nice bull there. And yeah, so then we'll, I got a draw tag for a mule deer this year. Oh, nice. Yeah.

I imagine we'll try to go kill something. When's that season run? So that's, I can archery hunt him, and then November 1st turns into a rifle tag. Oh, nice, nice. So where you're at in Canada, are you in mountainous ground? Are you hunting them up in the mountains, or do you have some foothills that kind of surround the place? Yeah, so where I'm at, I'm actually kind of right in the,

start of the prairie. So I'm in the prairies that kind of runs through the southeastern side of Alberta. Lots of little rolling hills, little bluffs of poplar trees and willows. Lots of, you know, we've got so many hills, we've got lots of little, we call them sloughs or whatever. You know, they dry up on dry years, but lots of years they hold water. And yeah, it's actually, it's a pretty cool country. Right off the river, Red Deer River runs there. It's got big river breaks and

Kind of badlands, you know. Nice. I love that country. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty. So whitetail as well. Now you can hunt whitetail every single year up there in Canada. So what's your go-to tactic on that? Are you guys more spot and stalk? Are you sitting in a tree stand, a ground blind? Like what's your go-to? Are you patterning on them or like what's your...

What's your go-to there? Yeah, so for us, it's mostly you just kind of get in a stand or in a ground blind or wherever and you just kind of hang out. Like where our whitetail are, it's a few miles north of our place where it starts to get quite a bit, you know, you start to get into quite a bit more cover and brush and stuff. The country gets a little tougher, you know. So they're not as visible where...

I think the mule deer have kind of pushed them out over the years because it seemed like you used to catch them out in the open a lot more. But we just, you know, you just sit in a stand or whatever. Sit in a stand.

Dry ears so you can sit on water. Yeah, do you do you play the whitetails during the rut? Are you trying to do like that pre-rut and pattern them or you? Yeah, we hunt them during the rut. We'll try to rattle them in. Do you do any calling as far as like grunting, bleeding? Just a little bit mostly like I'm not confident enough in my calling to you know if I need to stop one or something. That's about all I use it for.

I'm pretty new to whitetail hunting. I always kind of, everybody still kind of jokes with me because I always said I would whitetail hunt when I turned 70 and couldn't walk around in the mountains anymore. But I got to go to Kansas last year. You know, all the listeners have heard this before, but I was surprised, you know, with some of our new grunt calls that we had put out, you know, hunting around blacktails. We have blacktails here on the coast.

And just how effective it was, almost as effective as calling elk. You know, just a little grunt, you know, some popping grunts, some tending grunts. And we had bucks come flying at us. And then a couple of times we would get up. We had some elevated ground blinds. We weren't down on the ground. But to hit the rattle bag and just to have bucks come running like out of multiple directions, you know, kind of like sprinting by us.

um it was a lot of fun so i was yeah and i honestly i'm not telling you how to hunt but i think if you picked up a grunt call like it's super easy to use show me how to you know i know a guy i don't know what i'm saying to them with it yeah i don't think you have to there's some popping grunts some little short ones and then you get that longer tending grunt um

That's all I ever did and had great success with it. - Nice, nice. Yeah, I'd love to get on that. - Yeah, I know a guy. I'll get some sent to you. - There you go. - And you can give him a run this year. Mule deer, you all spot and stalk or what's your approach there? - Yeah, usually, and most seems like if we do, if we're hunting mule deer, it's usually with a rifle. We'll just buy a landowner's tag or something.

just to have something to go hunt. But yeah, usually just spot and stalk. Me and my brother actually, we killed a pretty good mule deer a couple years ago.

And, yeah, it's just kind of fun. We've got family close by, and, you know, we get up in the morning, go out for a couple hours, and same in the evening. Yeah, yeah. So kind of a long family tradition. You guys have hunted that country for a long, long time. Yeah, I grew up with two brothers, and so all three of us boys were pretty close in age and obviously had the same interests and stuff. So were you guys, and I might...

this might lend to me not knowing exactly how Canada's laid out. Some of those areas in Alberta and Saskatchewan just got giant mule deer. You see the giants that lay down on the wheat fields or the corn fields. Are you guys in that part of the country where they grow just the giant Canadian bucks? I mean, they get pretty big. So my uncle last year, just north of us,

He lives north of Stettler. We live south of Stettler. He killed, I want to say, I didn't hear of any in Alberta going much bigger, but he killed the mule deer that went 213. Jeez, that's a giant. Pretty good. The one me and my brother killed last, the year before last, he went 198.

So, like, pretty good deer. You get east of us over there, kind of along the Saskatchewan border and stuff, they can run into some big mill deer and big crankers down there. So I have to ask, maybe you don't want to... The hunting's pretty good everywhere in Canada. Like, you...

It's not really that bad. It's not that bad. Is there just not as much competition? Maybe you don't know our atmosphere down here. It just seems like the competition for the good takes is just crazy down here versus up there. It doesn't seem to be as much for the... I think it's just the population size and things. Like, you know, you go to Alberta, there's 4 million people in Alberta, and it's got a bigger landmass than Texas. You know, where you go to Texas, there's 30 million people. You know, that's a lot more people after something. Yeah.

uh, you know, I just, yeah, I think that's kind of what it is. Bigger is, is a vast country and lots of animals. Yeah. You might not want people to know this if the, if the answer is what, what you're going to tell me it is, but how do, how would a guy like me being down here in the States, how do we hunt Canada? You'd mentioned, you know, neighboring property selling hunts. Is there like, yeah, you just, you'd have to go through a license guide of some sort. And, um, yeah, there's over the counter tags and different things you can buy. Um,

probably not a lot different than me coming down here. - Gotcha, gotcha. So you can go up there, you can get an over the counter tag, but you just need to find property to hunt or you need to do it with a guide? - Yeah, you would have to go, I think there's some sort of regulation on having to go through a guide and you, you know, like to have proof that you're up there not to go mess around. - Yeah, you're not up there without reason.

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It sounds like you maybe do just as much of that as big game and you enjoy that. What's your go-to there? Are you using e-calls? Are you using, are you? Yeah, hand calls, electric calls, Fox Pro, whatever. We, yeah, we kind of hunt them, kind of hunt them however we can. There's, Alberta's littered with coyotes. There's coyotes everywhere. Yeah.

you know, the last, whatever, few years, the fur trade's been pretty poor. So there, I mean, it seems like there's becoming even more of them because, you know, they're not really in demand. And, um, but that's something my dad got us boys into when we were,

we were quite young and uh you know took us out and called her called us in a coyote and uh we all got hooked and so it's it's pretty fun uh wintertime past past time you know yep yep um did that come out of the the farming ranching lifestyle like take did they harass your animals or was it not that bad or it just kind of keeps them off the landscape or was it oh you gotta you gotta control them um to some extent you know um it

for us it was never that, you know, they were hard on livestock or, you know, every, seems like every year they get in my wife's chicken coop and wreak havoc on the chickens. That's about it, you know, but just did it, you know, for something to do and, you know, keep the, just keep them in check, keep everything. The decline in the fur trade is a big issue with depredation everywhere because,

you know back in the day you know when I say back in the day maybe just 20 or 30 years ago when when the you know the hide prices were high you know raccoons beavers um you know coyotes you had a lot of guys out there with dogs you know spending time willing to put gas in their gas tank um you know which like on the wild turkey population is huge to keep those raccoons out and you know all of that and it seems like with the the fur trade and the fur prices being driven down you know nobody's on the landscape anymore keeping the

keeping the raccoons off of there or the coyotes and it just nobody's willing to spend that kind of money oh it seems like there's a select few that are still out doing it um and yeah you're kind of doing it at your own expense uh anymore that not not not too many ladies in new york wearing fur anymore so yeah it's just just a few yeah it you know which is kind of a shame because there is a place you know for it but um you know we just we just hunt them for fun and uh

You know, there's a lot of them around. Yeah. Not by us, anyway. Yeah, it seems like any time you get around an ag-rich environment, there's just, it's overran, what I would consider overran. You know, I don't claim to be a biologist, but just more than what's needed on the landscape. Just opportunist hunters, right? Yeah, there's more on the landscape. Get somebody with a feedlot that's got a dead pile out back. It's a pretty easy meal. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, we're going to switch all the way back. We're going to come back to elk hunting, rutting elk. So you're going to get back kind of at that tail end, but what's your approach to rutting elk? Are you running ridges to locate them? Are they in the bottom lands? Are they just like in set area? Because you guys are pure Rockies where you're at, right? No rows at all. Yeah, so, but where we...

Um, yeah. So where we hunt the elk though, like I said, we're in the prairies there. So it's the, it's pretty tricky. Wide open. Um, yeah, it's, uh, you gotta kind of get, you gotta get up and get in some sort of cover and, uh, hopefully get across one and get them coming by you. Um, we don't have, we don't get a ton of area to hunt them either. And, uh, they move so much, you know, back and forth and, and,

and stuff, but, uh, they're, they're tricky to hunt around us for sure. But, um, you know, with the rifle, you have a pretty, pretty decent yet, even then it's still, it's not easy. Yeah. And so we talked about it on, on, uh, episode, I believe it was 49 with Corey Calkins. He used to,

guide on some private land. You just mentioned you guys have a pretty small area. So where a lot of what I teach in the mountains here, where you've got endless public is we put quite a bit of pressure on them at times where in the situation where you are, or even if you find yourself in a public situation where you don't want to move these elk out of that area, you guys are probably a little more reluctant to put a bunch of pressure on them during archery season because you need them to be on the piece of land you can hunt. You want them to feel comfortable there. You want them to know that you're not existing.

so that you can hunt them day after day and they're not moved on to the neighbors or a different piece, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then once we get into October, you know, you can...

you still get, you know, there's kind of a second phase to the rut and stuff. Or, you know, at the end, you might catch two or three bulls that are kind of hanging out, you know, starting to group back up. But it is tricky. It's not like you can just go hike four miles and get around them and stuff, you know, because that's your neighbors and your neighbors over there hunting too. You guys might all be buddies until it's elk season. Yeah, yeah.

You guys are all buddies until it becomes elk season. The elk are on his property and he doesn't want you over there. Yeah, no, they're all pretty good. Everybody's... Actually, last year when we killed that bull, the neighbor was across, you know...

about a mile away on his stuff and he was watching him too. He heard the shots and come over and he was all excited we got one. That's awesome. They're hunting the same thing. So one thing that, you know, as far as archery elk hunting, you know, wind is kind of king, right? It controls everything. What does the wind, like a prairie hunting would seems to be frustrating because in the mountains I've got thermals

I've got some prevailing winds. I've got stuff that's pretty, I can set my watch to it, you know, where when you guys are out in the prairie, is it, is it more sporadic or is it pretty, is it pretty predictable? Uh, wind, wind, wind blows usually pretty good. Um, usually out of the north, northwest, uh, a lot, but, um,

If you get down in one of them low spots in like a slough bottom or something, you know, usually got two or three hillsides around you, you know, you get in there and the wind change direction on you all the time, swirls and stuff. So, yeah, I need to go with somebody like you and have them get one in my lap because I haven't had a ton of luck yet. Yeah, yeah, we might have to plan that. I love hunting in the mountains where I can use the terrain and the vegetation to like

mass my movement. I'm a little bigger than you. So it's like, I need all the advantage I can get. Me sneaking around. I haven't even got to go to the mountains and do any elk hunting. Yeah, that would be so. We'll have to talk to Garrett and see if we can't get something scheduled. That's right. So Prairie, is there any cover at all? Like, are there tree rows? Are there, you know, fence rows? Do you have anything or is it just wide open and you know, there's, there's lots of like, so like,

little pop like they're a variety of poplar tree but they don't get they don't get super tall um they're more of a weed they like the root systems are all connected they grow real fast take on lots of water and i don't think they live real long um but there's some little poplar tree so they they get like 30 some feet tall so there's a lot of those around you can get in those and the willows and um you know yeah there's cover for sure that's where that's where those so they'll come out

Correct me if I'm wrong. They'll come out, feed in the prairie and the ag, and then they're going to go back in bed in these small brush thickets. So off the river, so we live about four miles off the river, and the river valley, the river breaks are huge. Like it's a mile to the bottom on each side. And so the milk will get down in the river, and then they'll come up out of the river, and then they'll come across to anybody's alfalfa or oats and barley, whatever. They get up there and get...

get a feed and that's when we hunt them yeah and then they usually drop down so when they're up there in that feed you're just trying to get find little crevices and stuff where you can make movement and get close it just seems like a very very tough way it's a tough way to hunt elk especially if they're in a really tough way and then you get down in there and um get all them little hills around you and stuff and you can't hear where yeah or where the eyes are gonna be yeah you don't know

What herd sizes do you guys run up there? Because it varies where we hunt. Where I'm from, we have Roosevelt on the coast. The herd sizes, they used to be until our numbers are so down right now. They used to carry herds of 20, 25 elk. And where you're at, I can imagine all those eyes on you versus somewhere out in the mountain sometimes it's one bull to two or three cows.

Yeah. Like what's the herd sizes there and then how many eyes do you have to deal with as well? Yeah, like the elk that my brother was, he was in the middle of last year when he killed that bull. Like I would say there was, I took a video, there's probably 40, 40 some head. Oh, so they're running pretty big. Right around 40, yeah. So there really didn't used to be any elk around us around Big Valley, say 15, 20 years. Like when I was a little kid, like there wasn't really any elk, you know, in the last whatever year.

amount of years they've come back you know they used to be but hadn't been for a long time anyways they're back and i would say i don't know like there's a couple different herds of you know you can see 60 70 elk at a time and there's two or three different herds run around so um did the do i call ranchers farmers whoever whoever farms all the country there were they are they happy they all care there is it are they becoming kind of a pain with with the the population growing like it is for you guys yeah for us they're not they don't um

you know, really, really cause too much havoc. They, uh, they're pretty good. I think some of the neighbors, they might get in some of their silage pits and stuff, uh, eat on a little feed and stuff, but I don't, uh, I haven't really heard. It's not like you get down there and like shared in Wyoming or somewhere, the Elker half team, you know, and they get in people's stack yards and,

wipe out tons and tons of stuff. So you guys, with the reintroduction, I say reintroduction, there may have been some around, but with them showing back up in bigger numbers, it hasn't been like a... Yeah, they say the wolves moved them off the foothills of the mountains and they've come east and stuff. Gotcha. They're finding better country where the wolves don't necessarily want to be. So do you guys have wolves where you're at or not yet? No, you wouldn't see wolves around us, no. Gotcha. The odd bear, you see the lion and stuff on the river. Yeah.

I was gonna ask about bears. Do you guys have much bear that no? You'll see like the odd barrel fall that River up, you know traveling whatever but never really sticking around. Yeah. Yeah Moose is that I'm assuming that's a drawer. Can you guys hunt those every year? How does your your moose moose is a draw tag? I think you're an eight on that. I

So yeah, you put in for eight or nine years before you get a moose tag. But yeah, lots of moose around, some pretty good moose.

Me and my brother killed a pretty good bull in 2019. I think, gotcha. You know, for a prairie moose, he was like 52 inches. Nice, nice. So you guys, and I don't, I'm going to also expose, since I've never moose hunted, you've got the Yukon way up north, you know, your big Alaskan Yukon moose. And then, you know, I know we've got our Shiras here in like Washington. Now you guys have like, what,

what they consider Canadian, or you just mentioned them being prairie moose. Those are like a shiris, I think. So you're a shiris as well. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, so 52-inch bull is a really good bull for that. Yeah, it's not huge by no means, but for around us, those are pretty decent moose. Yeah, cool, cool. On those, are you guys hunting them during the rut, or are you guys spotting and stalking those? Or on that sort of hunt, are you limited? Yeah, it's usually a rifle tag, so you're just...

you're just spotting stock November hunting them. Gotcha. Are those on your property or when you draw a moose tag, do you start to get permission from some of the neighboring properties? Yeah. Cause they come around so, so rarely. Like you pretty well, you ask your neighbors and whatever neighbor that year has the tag, you know, you kind of have permission. It's a community permission where, cause you know, not everybody's going to have one. You know, who's got the tag in it. And yeah, you, you got full, full permission to shoot wherever you want.

So if you could only hunt, what's your favorite? We've talked about everything you get to hunt in Canada. It sounds like maybe this one. I would have to say elk. I would say elk would probably be my favorite, but I don't know. I like it.

I like it all. It's all pretty fun. Yeah, I love elk just for the interaction. Just the, yeah. The rut, being able to call these, you know, have a 7, 800-pound screaming animal coming in, you know, pissed off at you specifically. It's just so vocal, and yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. I'm chomping at the bit. You know, we're here. It is September 15th, and, you know, we're here at the Pendleton Rodeo. Getting excited talking about it. The bulls in these hills about three minutes behind us are just cranking, and...

I love the rodeo, but there's a piece of me that really wants to be in the mountains right now. So I'm trying to balance this issue I'm going through right now.

So it sounds like, as we talked about, you get to hunt a little bit of everything in Canada, have a lot of fun doing it. There's definitely a correlation between the cowboys, the rodeo fans, the ranch lifestyle and hunting, which I really admire and kind of I like that. Like I say, the rodeo seems to be full of good people. Everybody you meet here, somebody would give you the shirt off their back, you know, good, wholesome, quality people. Salt of the earth. Yeah, salt of the earth type of people.

So I'm going to roll back. We're going to kind of close with back to the rodeo cowboy and stuff. So Garrett Long here with Meat Eater was telling me that his uncle back in the day kind of hired you when you were younger to do some trick riding. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what that is? Yeah, for sure. So when I was about nine, I

We started, me and my two brothers started this little trick riding kind of western show type act and we'd go around to the rodeos and do it. It was a little trick riding, little trick roping, you spin the rope and do tricks with it. Whip cracking and then Roman riding, which is where you stand on the back of the two horses and you go around, we'd go over a jump or whatever and

Anyway, so we had a little show, and we went around all over North America performing at rodeos. And yeah, Garrett's uncle hired us. We did the Wolf Point Rodeo. Did some really cool things. We got to perform for the Queen of England and for the Princess Kate and the Prince and Medellin.

met a lot of cool people and uh yeah I got to got to do pretty cool things as a 12 year old boy yeah that sounds pretty cool and so when did the when does trick riding like give a give way to the real real rodeo stuff is there was there a point like all right I'm done doing this trick right I need to get on a bronc yeah it was it was it was pretty cool when we were little and then uh as we we we did it from the time I was nine till about 14 I think or 13 somewhere in there

But, you know, so we did it for three or four years there, and it was really good. But, yeah, once we started getting a little older and going on to some different things, we kind of phased out. Yeah, yeah. So one thing, my wife thinks I'm on the road a lot, but I have to imagine listening to your schedule, you're on the road a whole lot. How many days a year would you say you're traveling to rodeos or doing, you know, at rodeos and then between being on? Yeah, between, I would, it's somewhere between 200 and,

Between 230 to 250 days a year, you're probably gone. So you're home 130 days a year? I spend a lot more time with my family than a lot of people. I have a place in Texas that we go and spend the winter at, and they come with me when we're at the winter rodeos. But...

if it wasn't for that we'd get about 60 days yeah so what's the balance i know your kids are here with you at this one so and and garrett really commended you on like you know taking your kids to a lot of these things and having them kind of live the lifestyle so are your kids traveling with you on most of these or now that school like is are they school age yeah they don't go a lot um my family they catch quite a few in canada like i said they go to all the winter rodeos for the winter um

And then, yeah, I'll take the kids one or two times a year, just me and, you know, one of the kids, and they'll go with me for a week or so. But for the most part, they're at home and we're out here doing this. But get to bring them with us for this week to Pendleton. And, you know, it's a pretty fun 10 days. Bring the family and hang out. Yeah.

do this with you guys. I'm gonna have to let my wife know when I, when I get back and talk to her that you're gone for, uh, 250 days a year. See if, see, I don't know if it'll help at all. It'll make your week long elk hunt look a lot better. Um, so we, we talked about injuries earlier. One of the questions I asked, um, so how long into the future do you foresee yourself doing this? Do you have like a set date? Is it just until your body holds up or what are you thinking? Yeah, I don't, uh, I don't, I don't really have any set date. Um,

I think my body will probably always be there. I don't think the bronco ride will go away. It'll probably be a matter of just getting over the travel and not wanting to be gone from my family and wanting to be home and do that thing a little more. Will there be any competitive decision? Are you that guy that wants to be able to compete? Is that going to aid in the decision if you're not at the top of your game like you are right now? Is it going to?

Yeah, I want to go out on top for sure. I don't want to fizzle out and go out, you know, somebody that they didn't remember used to be good, you know. Yeah.

So here at MeatEater, we encourage everyone, go follow Zeke's journey to the 2023 NFR. Where are you sitting at currently on points for this year? I think I'm like right there, third, second, flirting with second and third. Second and third. So if you go in second and third, there's still a way you can win. Does it start fresh, the 15 guys? Yeah, anybody, if you make it, if you show up there, you have a chance. Last year, I come from 116,000 back and...

So it's basically the aggregate of everything you want up until September and then what you add on at the NFR? Yeah, so 10 rounds, $30,000 a round. The average pays $72,000, I think. The average is the highest score on 10 head or 9 head or whoever has that. Yeah, so there's some money to be won out there, and we're qualified, so if we get out there and...

Yeah. Get it going. So follow Zeke 2023 NFR. Um, if you want to root for someone who's a hunter, open the door for your mom, just be a great salty earth guy. Uh, Zeke, Zeke's your guy to root for. Um, Zeke, tell people how they can find out more about you. Follow you. Um, yeah, you can, uh, catch me on Instagram. I think it's official Zeke Thurston. Um,

I got a Facebook page. I don't run it a lot. But yeah, we're on social media. Check us out. Look us up. Give us a follow. Yeah. Well, we wish you luck here on Saturday. I'm going to get terminology all wrong. You're in the short or how does it? Short round. The short round. Short round or the finals or whatever you want to call it. So that was like 120 of you have rode throughout the week. And then they take the top 12. Top 12 guys come back. 12 scores. And then you all get to ride again Saturday. Yeah.

Well, good luck on that Saturday. Wish you the best of luck. Really appreciate it having you on the show today. And we'll be here rooting for you. Hey, awesome. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And this was a lot of fun. Thank you. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you. The other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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Welcome back to a special edition to Cutting the Distance. We're just going to do a quick recap here. Just got done here in Oregon, hunting one of the big three, I guess. But it wasn't as easy as everybody liked to make it out as. It was a pretty tough hunt. I'm joined here with Brian Sanders, Oregon Backcountry Outfitters, and David Frame, who is my camera guy in this hunt. We're just going to kind of go through the recap, try to figure out the...

The positives of this hunt and then a lot of the negatives and some of the difficulties and struggles we had on this hunt. Welcome to the show, guys. Hi, Phelps.

Thanks, Jason. So Brian, you, you guide in this unit as well as the Winawha Walla Walla kind of all across Eastern Oregon. Um, I think it, I mean, it's, it's a good hunt. It's got good bulls in it, but it's not necessarily what it's made out to be. It's a, it's a lot more difficult than, than just getting a tag in the, the, the big three thinking you're going to find a big bull behind every corner. Kind of what's your opinion on this, this unit and, and kind of, um, what people can expect if they are to draw this tag?

Um, I'm Oregon backcountry outfitting, by the way, folks, but Outfitters and outfitting. It's close. Kind of similar in Jason's world. Um, I think that the reputation is a little bit false on how great the unit is, how many quality bulls there are, how much privacy you're going to have in the woods that other hunters, all of the things, um,

I personally think Mount Emily is probably one of the worst because of the access. You can almost access everywhere in Mount Emily. You can go to the same point that every other hunter can. You can bugle in archery season and get an answer below you, behind you, beside you, what have you. I just think that it's a little bit...

I don't know. It's pretty tough. And the quality of bulls is a little bit tough too. You know, we think of Oregon's big three and everybody's thinking 380 plus bulls. And the fact is you're looking at 320 bulls nonstop. You know, they just are cookie cutter bulls. Every time you hear a bugle, he comes in, he's 315, 320. I mean, you get the 340s.

on occasion, but it just starts getting fewer and fewer. There's some amazing bulls killed in each of the units in the big three, but far less every year with the impact the wolves are now having. It's just, it's tough. Yep. And that was one of the things we noticed right off the bat on this hunt is you're kind of balancing...

quantity of bulls in some areas in this unit, it seems like a lot of the bulls want to end up in the same spot or you go deep to some of these spots that might have fewer elk, less people, but then you're, you're getting maybe one play a day because you're not on as many elk. And in those spots that have the high quantity, typically easier to get to, it seems like.

And then there are guys everywhere. Some of the stuff that, you know, we hunted back in 2019, um, there are trucks and people everywhere. There's no way. And there's no way, as you mentioned, this unit, there's roads everywhere, at least where I could hunt on this tag. There are some conditions on the tag that I had specifically, you just cannot get away from, from the people. And, um, it was very apparent right off the bat, these elk are call shy.

You could do everything right. And they just, they're not going to come in. They've been called to, they've been called to and been winded. They've been called to and been seen. Um, and you're kind of fighting all of this is the hunt goes on.

Yeah, I agree. I think that most of the real big cow groups are in those areas that are easy to access because the cows are kind of using that easier terrain. You know, the deep canyons, the kind of pockets that hold eight or 10 cows, there's one bull, two bulls with them instead of there being eight or 10 bulls that's working 70 cows. So that's the tough end of that. And like you said, they are call shy. I mean, and I think that

There might be a few factors in that. I think that the wolves have changed their habits a little bit over the last few years because you'll be on bulls that are just screaming one night. The wolves come through that night. The next day for two, three days in a row, you don't hear a peep. I mean, they're still communicating, obviously, body language, but they just kind of get paranoid for a few days. But I agree. The hunters...

you know, it takes so long to get this tag. I think that you get a few hunters that are less experienced than other hunters that go over the counter every year, year after year, they're avid bow hunters. They don't maybe have the call experience that yourself does. And they do, they, they sound a little bit off as far as elk sounds go. And they, uh,

They get call shy. They get winded. They get seen, like you said. So it makes it tough. And, you know, I had to refer to Dave multiple times on this hunt. Like a guy that's supposed to have all these answers, right, when it comes to calling elk. I would look at Dave like, do you think we should cow call to this one or should we bugle to it? Because we were just getting beat so many times. It's like when you thought in a normal situation that we should get in close and bugle because it's a herd bull.

he would take his cows and then it's like, all right, next time we're going to go on in this herd bull, we're going to cow call. That didn't seem to work. And so it had me even questioning these bulls were so call shy. Like, how do you approach these? You know, I asked you on the phone because you had some success earlier in the week calling in quite a few bulls. And I'm like,

Brian, what are you doing to get these in? We were just kind of talking back and forth. You were playing the game the right way. You started with a calico and they answered, but it seemed to be few and far between where you'd actually get the Bulls to play the right game. Me and Dave had a couple good

hunts um more of the remote stuff where people hadn't messed with these elk but you were only dealing with one bull maybe one herd bull no satellites or the one herd bull that we did get on had a few satellites and it it just made it tough um you're you're either in not very many elk or you were in um you know a bunch of elk with a bunch of people and so you're trying to weigh that that decision on be in the middle elk or be by yourself um and and like dave can

Dave is, I love Dave as a camera guy because he's a very, I mentioned in the last podcast, he's a pretty smart elk hunter. He gets it. He's a great guy to bounce ideas off of, but there were just times where, you know, there were days where we dropped 1500 feet into a Canyon or a thousand feet and like we were going for broke. Um, and then there are other times where, um,

We just didn't know what to do at times. And, and, uh, we kind of had to change our mentality here the last couple of days when we finally got it done. But, uh, what do you think, Dave? What was your takeaway from this hunt as far, you know, of course you're behind the camera a lot, but you get to make the same decisions and be in the same, same scenario as I am. What's your opinion of the big three? You grew up in the blues, but on the Washington side, um, it's a special place to you, but the elk hunting, I don't want to say it's overrated. It's, it's a great spot to hunt elk, especially in comparison. So I'm not sounding ungrateful, but it's just maybe not what

it's, it's made out to be at times. It can be good, but. Yeah, these Oregon, Oregon units are a little different than the Washington side. Just a lot, a lot more hunters. Um, you're definitely hunting pressured elk, um, super call shy, um, and then throw in inconsistent winds in there and, and it's pretty hard to hunt. Um, yeah, towards the end there, we were,

We were pretty much just going silent and trying to get as close as we could, almost hunting them like muleys. Yeah, we definitely had to change our tactics there a little bit as the hunt went on. It's like, dang, my calls sound good. They would locate, but when you would get in tight, I didn't know what the right answer was. And so ultimately, we went to a little bit of spot and stalk with maybe a few cow calls in certain situations there.

And it just made it rough. And the other downside is, and my numbers might be a little bit iffy, but there's about 55 tags given in Emily. Is that right, Brian? I think 50, 55, yeah. Somewhere in there. And that's, so 55, and that's big bull tags, but then they give out 300 spike tags? Yeah, they give out a bunch of spike tags. So that doesn't help things. And we're, and these spike guys don't,

you hunt spike bulls you find spike bulls just like you do big bulls right you're locating the herd bulls the satellites and you're moving on these herds trying to call these spikes away so in my opinion you've really got 355 guys out in the woods plus or minus a few you know state tag holders you know guys with tags like mine um you've got 350 people in a unit that's it is a big vast unit but a lot of these guys are concentrated and you've got a lot of guys going after you know a

fairly small amount of bulls when it, when it all boils down to it. And it just makes that pressure really, real tough. Yeah, I agree. And the, the Winawha Walla Walla I think is a little bit better, but yeah, it's, it's pretty tough. You get all them guys attacking the same herds and they get call shy fast. Yep. I'm going to, I'm going to back up a little bit. Cause I think the audience needs to like,

dial into what you call big bulls. So you, you know, as an outfitter, you're trying to kill the absolute best bull for your clients, right? And you're a guy that's been lucky enough to kill a lot of big bulls. So, um, I don't want to discredit the unit for not having what most people would consider like bulls of a lifetime, you know, at that three 20, three 40, but you're talking about trying to find those bulls that are at a very upper end. You're, you're looking for three 50 plus, and you're even trying to find a few of those three 80 to 400 type bulls in some of these units. Um, but

So, so break that down, kind of, we've had this conversation a lot because my definition of a giant is way different than yours. A guy that gets to live here, see a bunch of these bulls. Um, so explain that a little bit, like the percentages, kind of what you can expect to see if you come to Emily, like you're probably not going to lay eyes on a 400, like explain that hierarchy, you know, the amount of bulls you're going to see, what you can expect to see if you're just a Joe blow that doesn't do a whole lot of scouting, maybe a couple of weekends and, uh, you know, just take it on in September.

Yeah, that's all. I guess I kind of know what you're asking here. But in my opinion, the very first thing I tell my hunters is you have to come with realistic expectations. So your abilities have to align with your expectations, number one. Number two, you're exactly right. When I say big bulls, you know, in my head, just because we work hard and we're a little bit spoiled at being able to be out in the woods all the time. So we are looking for that 350, 360 range.

And even a lot bigger, like you say, for some statewide auction tags, things like that. But when you come to this unit, you're going to see that 320 bull. And as Jason said, that is a bull of a lifetime. I mean, that is realistic expectations for all these big three units. I always tell my hunters, you know,

This is our goal, but this is realistic expectations. You come to this unit and 320, 330 bulls are the big bulls. They're genetics, especially on the Mount Emily side or some of it. You're not going to get...

different genetics that get a lot of inches so you need to come looking for a mature bull that that you're happy with don't come looking for inches you know don't get stuck on inches because they have to have a bunch of extra stuff and some of these units don't have it the genetics just have straight sixes straight seven whatever i mean

Is that kind of what you're asking? Yeah. Yeah. Just, just what, if a, if a hunter puts in draws Emily, you know, you, you see a lot of these, you know, everybody's coming over here. It seems like everybody, if you look at the internet comes over here and kills a 360 bull, right? It's what it seems like or what they make it seem to believe, but being in the unit,

twice three times now i've hunted with you twice this year i didn't hunt with you um but the reality is you guys are working your tails off to find a few of these 350 360 bulls and the the normal guy probably should come over here expecting more realistically and i think a lot of guys you know the ones we've talked to here this week um they're happy with those 320 bulls but

But I think where a guy may go wrong or a gal, whoever's here, is passing on what they would see as a 320. Because you might not get another chance at something better is the reality. Like a 320 bull is probably what most people are going to have a chance at. Those bigger, mature satellite bulls. Yeah, I would agree 100%. If you got...

a 320 bull and you have this tag it's a shooter i mean nine out of ten times unless you've done your scouting or or you have a target bull in mind which as you said we work our tails off so we have some target bulls in mind and we're we're targeting those bulls specifically and we're not going to shoot until we kill one of them unless we're running out of time or just capabilities so

You come to the big three, I would say any of the big three, a 320 bull's a trophy bull. And I mean, it wasn't very many years ago, a 300-inch bull wasn't even heard of, really. So, I think just you're right on expectations need to be more realistic. It's just a little bit blown out. And I think that a lot of people even sell it as that, but it's...

It's definitely a three, three 40 and under unit. Yeah. And with a few exceptions that the hood above that mark, and it's got the ability to grow them, but it takes a lot of age. It takes some special genetics. All of those things have to kind of add up, um, to, to get that bull there. And then they're like you say, they probably make up what one or 2% of the bulls in the entire unit. I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

um i'm gonna jump over and talk to dave here a little bit about kind of what we went through on this hunt um a lot of ups and downs um we we had good weather to start with but we it seemed like we were in an area some of the spots we wanted to hunt right off the bat very very over pressured um we thought we were in there deep ran into two you know two firefighters from from eugene area it's like dang it you know we thought we had all that and then you know later in the hunt we went

more, more isolated way out into some deep stuff, long drives, just getting away where, where we could hunt in the unit. And, um, a lot less bulls. We, you know, that one day I think we did what, 14, 15 miles. And I, we got on what, two bulls that entire day. Um, so a lot of boot leather to find just a few bulls. Um, and it's new country. We hadn't been in there. We didn't really know how the wind laid in and then progressing through the hunt.

we hit it weird where it was nice one day rain the next day nice the other so we had all these different systems moving in and and i i'm this is all joking but at one point i about threw my bow down the mountain because we would literally try to walk 360 degrees around the bull and you could or where you were trying to get to you maybe heard a bull beagle or whatever you were trying to get to a spot and you could not keep the wind right um

I know one time, you know, cause you can feel the wind in your face as you walk. You know, we've all did that before, but I would puff my wind and be like, all right, we're good. I'd give Dave a thumbs up. And then he would 10 minutes or 10 seconds later, he would look at me and then he'd puff his wind and it was hitting us in the back, you know? And, and we fought that all week long or 10 days long. Um, and yeah,

How frustrating was that for us? Because I know you could probably sense the frustration with me. You were getting frustrated because as a camera guy, you have to take all the same steps I do. And so have you ever played with fickle winds to that extent that we did? No, I've never seen winds that inconsistent before. It was pretty frustrating as a cameraman, like bulls and elk all around us. But all week you're just...

They're just out of arm's reach as far as getting footage of them and stuff. Yeah. Filming them here and there at half a mile away with long lens, but those Collins are pretty sweet to get on film, and it was just hard to get those. I feel a little bit responsible because Dave...

Dave has talked about this, you know, behind the scenes with me. He's like, I love it because I have always got a tag, but he doesn't necessarily have a tag to kill the animal. He's got a tag to photo it, you know? And, and I felt bad because we would get on bulls, we could work them, but it seemed like right at the last second, they would bump or we would get the wind wrong. And Dave, we just weren't able to capture footage. No, no fault to you. It was just, it was a rough hunt. And I, and I feel responsible for that. And then I feel even more responsible at times where we're climbing, you know, thousand feet down to go chase a bugle. Maybe a bad decision I made, um,

blows them out and then we're hiking back out and you're you're there with me you're kind of getting pulled along but it's all part of the game and we were just we were really really struggling with that wind I think we were on elk every morning every evening we were playing it right just could not seem to get everything to work yeah we were able to locate elk every day but just getting them to play with us played the game was was a struggle

Yep. And one thing we, another takeaway, which a lot of people need to recognize is elk aren't necessarily dumb. Where we were finding the majority of the elk, they seem to be in these pockets where that wind was 360 or there was no way to approach any direction you went. You weren't going to get in on them because the wind was eventually going to get to them. It was kind of,

It's kind of interesting, you know, something we've always known. They always seem to bed in areas where they can't, you know, where you can't sneak in on them. But a lot of these areas seem to be really, really, you know, in flats or pockets or bowls where the wind would just swirl and hit them. And then yesterday...

A lot of these hunts come down to a series of decisions, right? Are you going to take the day off? Are you going to take it easy? Are you going to go hard every day after day? And one thing we should talk about is just like the physical demand that this unit will put on you. There are some easy spots to hunt, but if you're going to get into some of the steep, breaky country,

it's going to wear you down and you need to be able to come to this unit and do it day after day. And, you know, you're in great shape. We were able to make it. But, you know, there was a lot of effort put in for some days that just didn't really pan out or materialize anything. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of vertical in this country. And, yeah, just a lot of work, a lot of miles. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. And then going back to that decision-making, all these little decisions yesterday, you can kind of, I don't know if it was a sense of urgency. We had what, four days, five days left. But yesterday, if you look on, you know, you've got a smartwatch, I've got an iPhone. You start to look at what we did yesterday. We were to the point where we weren't, we weren't,

we needed to like hit that turbo mode, right? We needed to just go. We needed to give more than we had been. And so we started bugling off into the steep country and we were chasing every bugle like, Oh, that one's too hard to get to. We're not going to go chase that. So we went after every single bull we heard yesterday. Um,

and and just kind of gave it our all you were even and this is where having you're not necessarily a hunting partner you were more of my camera guy but we were hunting together you know sometimes i would pick you like hey i think we should do this and then you're like hey phelps we should definitely go bugle off here and there was a lot of that back and forth kind of keeping each other positive and like hey we need to go try this um that really kind of added to our success yeah yeah no it's fun getting to help out on the hunt in this hunt and uh yeah

Yeah. And, and so I'm going to, I'm going to kind of wrap this up with how we ultimately killed this bull. I can't remember a bull that I've never called in with archery equipment. And as we were grinding last night, it was just before six o'clock. We had literally an hour daylight. We had stopped down one little side road, you know, we're driving down the road, looking at Onyx. Dave's like, well, this kind of gets us above that one area we'd been hunting or we had checked out the first day and never been back to, um, we, we, uh,

you know, hurry out there. We, we check for bugles and we get two different bowls bugling and we drop pins and we're like, well, the wind's bad. We're above them. Let's, let's boogie around. And we were kind of calculating like, all right, we can get back to truck in five minutes. We can get down there in 10 and it's going to be tight, like real close to dark. And so we made it, we, and then, um,

We're able to kind of fly up the ridge, especially for my pace, you know, get there fairly quickly, got parked, made it all the way to the bull. And the nice thing was this bull was bugling on his own occasionally, not very, you know, feverishly wasn't bugling all the time, but he would give us just enough. We knew about where he was on this, on this instance, I elected to not make any calls.

We were just, we had a lot of wind. The wind was blowing down. It was, let us be pretty quiet, go undetected. But we were able to follow this bugle and we

We get up to this meadow, beautiful meadow. And I spot a cow maybe 120 yards away. Yeah. And we're kind of like, all right, we got to slow down. We got to kind of get our heads, you know, our bodies out of the way. So she can't see us. And about that time, um, we spotted some horn movement. This bull was bedded down and thankfully he was on our side of the meadow, not the far, not the edge. He was, he was right in line with that cow. Um, at that time it was about what, 70 yards away maybe. Yeah, I think so. Uh,

fortunately had a pine tree and me and Dave do some real quiet talking and hand motions. I'm like, let's get behind me. We'll walk in a single file line and thank God this tree was big. So I'm a fairly big guy and I was able to just keep that bull's head behind a pine tree. Um, we had a couple of loud ass sticks we had, you know, and, and trees and stuff to get over. Um, we were, we were able to see the bull's head and a lot of times when a bull's bedded,

You can't really tell real easily if he's looking at you or away from you. You're trying to figure out what's going on, which direction he's...

He's facing and we kind of get in a straight line and we just start moving towards him. And the nice thing was you could see his horns out one side of the tree as you were walking. So you could tell if he was picking up on your sound, your noise. We get through the sketchy section of that tree and he's still everything's good. I'm ranging it. We're at 44.

And I'm like, I want to get to 40. That way, when he gets up out of his bed, we had about a half hour of daylight left and wanted him to get out of his bed on his own without having to make a cow call. And we get to just under 40 of the tree, but I figured he's bedded past the tree. So he's going to be a little bit, maybe right at 40, maybe just a little bit over when he gets up.

And we were in a section of pine trees and anybody that's hunted pine trees knows if you drop to your knees, you're now able to shoot under him. And he was under a pine tree. We'll be able to shoot under the limbs to him. And I wasn't as graceful as I wanted to be going to my, you know, down on my knees. And that, that bull kind of caught some noise, but just like we've talked with Brian multiple times, he almost thinks that just walking around at times and letting that bull hear you walk.

He bugled as soon as I got to my knees, like he turned our way, but then he bugled, like it didn't scare him. It didn't bother him. Um, he bugled at us and then slowly got out of his bed and walked to his left. Um,

I remember the wind a couple of times was on our back and there's like, Oh, well count down to five seconds and he's, he's going to be out of here. Yeah. I was very ready to shoot quick. And, and I, I remember looking back at Dave, like, gosh, dang it. We just need this wind to hold. But it was one of those times where the wind was predominantly down slope the whole time. But,

we were getting uphill pushes because these systems were moving in, kind of changing the wind. And I think we got lucky because the wind would blow up, but then it would switch and come back down and wouldn't let that wind get to him. So we risked a little bit. That bull gets up. I had a very narrow shooting lane, probably 12 inches wide at the bull.

Um, I, I was able to get drawn and settled. Fortunately, very quick. Um, Dave, I was able to rewatch the footage. Dave is able to like time it perfectly as I get my bow drawn. Dave, like he's perfectly, we're perfectly in line. Cause we were both behind the tree. Dave just like inches out to the right. Um, maybe eight inches and gets, gets the shot and everything on film. Um, had a little bit of a rough go, no blood for 150 yards. Um, hit the bull really well.

We finally start picking up blood. We follow his tracks to the point where we've got blood. And we made a bad decision at this very point in our night. I'm going to blame it on Dave. As we were getting ready, Dave's like, are we leaving the packs here? I'm like, yeah, let's go. No, I take all responsibility. I said, let's leave the packs here. I hate, you know, it's just nice sometimes to be able to go light and nimble. Beagle tube bow. Dave grabs his camera and a change of batteries. And we're just, we're out.

Um, we realized that searching for blood with your iPhone light is not the greatest, um, the greatest solution to tracking blood. We get on some real good blood. It's got, it's got bubbles in it. We know we're either in lungs or heart. Everything's looking real good. He bleeds great for a hundred yards.

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. A hundred, 150. Yeah. I'm kind of down in the dumps. Um, even though I, I pride myself in blood track and intro, I, I, Dave took the lead because I was a little bit just, I was a little discouraged with the blood trail and a little just like, Hey, this is best just to let Dave, um, Dave lead it. Like you're doing a great job. I helped a couple of times where we'd lose some blood. I, my light was a little bit brighter, um, was able to pick up some blood and, uh, we get to a point where we got our last few specs and we're, there's just nothing.

Um, and my good buddy, Brian Sanders texts me and I, we didn't have very good service. It just somehow randomly got through like, Hey, update. And, uh, I was able to get a call out real quick to him. And, uh,

it wasn't a great call if he wouldn't if you would have been quiet and let me talk for he asked me why didn't you shoot the bull he asked me why i didn't have my bow drawn back if i could get my bow drawn back he asked me all these dumb questions and by the time i lost reception i couldn't give him a pin or tell him where we were at so then we needed to back out anyways because we were we didn't have good lights and it was supposed to rain at 11 this is about 8 30 we

We climbed back up to the meadow where we shot him, had good service, was able to get a phone call into Brian and he was going to come up with lights and cause we, and maybe bring our packs up. But I couldn't tell if I could get my truck unlocked from up there using the old Ford, you know, Ford password. We're going to use technology like, Hey Brian, I'm going to, I'm going to unlock my truck for you. So we, we just, I call him back like, Hey Brian, we'll just meet you at the truck. It's only a mile walk down, maybe, maybe. And we'll just meet you at the truck. We're going to charge our phones, get our packs and we'll meet and come back.

So we asked for some water because I was pretty low on water. And I'm almost positive that Brian set me up here. So I'm dying. I needed some water. And Brian's like, no, don't take it out of this plastic jug. Take it out of this black thermos. He's like, that one, it's heavy. I don't want to pack that. I pour this into my water bottle and almost burnt my hand. It was so hot. And he swears he didn't do it on purpose, but I'm positive he did.

I didn't, uh, I won't say either way. I would say Jason and I have a special friendship. So I had back up on the mountain with boiling hot water, but we regroup. Um, he brings his brother, me and Dave go back up. We now have our headlamps. We've got bright lights. We head back in there and I'm never, me and Dave are never, ever going to live this down. He thinks we set them up. We had already found the bowl maybe, and just call them up there to help pack. But we get to the last blood and,

And there's an obvious, I mean, when you track bulls, there's an obvious direction they're going, right? And we were kind of on it and, and, uh, we were sitting there. I hadn't even put, I was still standing at last blood trying to get my pack all situated. Brian walks down, he makes a,

He first, he's complaining, which is typical of Brian. Not really. He's about as he's tough as nails, but Brian's like, is it all this freaking brushy down here? He gets, I think he got to that edge. Right. And you're like, is it all this crappy? And I'm like, yeah, at least in that pocket, you can go left or right of that. And, uh, it wasn't less than a half a minute later. Brian's like, your bull's right down here. Dead.

Explain your theory and how you stumbled into it. Well, I kind of told Jason that they have hooves and the hooves make tracks. And if you just follow the tracks from Last Blood, you'll find your dead bull. But he kind of disagreed with me. He claims that he did. I claim that you didn't follow its tracks. You just stumbled into it because you came a different direction and found the blood later. But regardless, there were elk tracks. And if anybody knows me, I'm like...

The littlest human compared to Jason. And he couldn't see me through all that brush. So he has no idea which direction I came from. And not, I'm not trying to, I didn't find the bull. So I'm not trying to like make excuses for myself, but Dave, we were probably five yards away from that. We thought that there was a bear. I thought he had tumbled, which he didn't. He never did tumble. He went to his bed to lay down and died. But right above that,

there was an old log tore apart and I'm like, Oh, it looks like he tumbled through here, Dave. And I went down there with my little iPhone light earlier, like there's nothing. And it was literally, you push that brush and he was laying there dead. No. Yeah. You guys were right on track. It's just, you didn't have lights and it's nice to have fresh eyes and a positive attitude and all the things you bring, you bring a positive attitude. Yeah, no, it was, it was awesome to have you guys there. Um, Brian's pretty damn handy with a knife. Um,

His brother, Justin was awesome. Dave's Dave's a pack animal. Um, he's always, uh, you know, taking care of the situation. He's grabbing bags, you know, legs, taking video pictures, doing his job while we're trying to cut up meat. So it was an, as an awesome little team there to, to finish that up. And Brian asked if I could tell everybody how much weight he packed out on the pack out. Cause he's, uh, he's wanting everybody to know how tough he is, but Brian took, uh,

We don't need to tell anybody anything. Everybody packed a bowl out. It was fun. We all packed a bowl. It was a great night. But Brian, for being at, what, 150 pounds? Maybe? Soaking wet? He probably had 150 pounds on his pack. I really appreciate all the help. Dave, Justin, you guys all packed Heinz. I had the head and a front shoulder. And we made pretty quick time out. From the time we left the truck, 9.45, we were back at the truck by 11.45.

It was a hustle in, we broke them down really quick. - We beat the rain by like five minutes. - Yeah, so it was a great hunt. Had to change tactics a little bit. So we always talk about being aggressive, getting close.

In the situation where it's just not working, I encourage anybody to change up tactics and do what you have to do to find success. But I can't thank you enough, Brian, for helping your pack. Thank you for coming on here today and talking about the big three. And as always, Dave, you take twice as many steps as I do on these hunts and don't ever get to pull the trigger, but you get to hit the record button and really appreciate you having me.

having you here. So thanks everybody. That was just a real quick add on to cutting the distance. Just wanted to give a quick update from the, from the field on my, my Oregon archery elk hunt.

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