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Limitless Outdoors
211 Plays1 year ago
It was a privilege to sit down and talk with Justin and Colton Gibbins of Limitless Outdoors. Not only are these two incredible hunters they are also incredible men. Utilizing their hunting videos to spread the gospel Justin and Colton are able to evangelize to thousands hunters around the world.
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Transcript
Introduction and Spiritual Opening
00:00:07
Speaker
You are listening to the Tricer Podcast, where we talk all things hunting, gear, and the great outdoors. Before we begin, let's start things out right and put God first. Lord Jesus, I thank you for Tricer, and I ask that you can use this podcast as a way to bring joy to all of our listeners. We lay Tricer and this podcast at your feet. Amen.
Guest Introduction: Colton and Justin Gibbons
00:00:31
Speaker
All right. I am so stoked today to have Colton and Justin Gibbons on from Live with This Outdoors to solid Christian dudes. When I first started Tricer in 2020, I made a list of companies I wanted to work with. And you guys were on the top of it, not because you're awesome hunters, which you are, but because you guys are incredible men of God.
00:00:54
Speaker
And I so much respect for what you're doing and the way you use hunting to disciple people and just welcome on the podcast. I'm excited to have you here. Thanks for having us. We're excited. Let me know this outdoors. You guys started this thing. Have you guys are Christians your whole life?
Justin's Conversion Story
00:01:10
Speaker
No. So we, I came to the Lord in 2013.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yep. And we had been filming, I was just telling this story the other day to somebody, but Colton and I had this old camera that we filmed with when we were little kids. We'd go up behind our house filming with that thing. And one day we were up there and we'd found this nice white tail deadhead and a couple things. And we were reviewing the video on top of this cliff and the camera slipped out of our
00:01:37
Speaker
My hands, yeah, out of Colton's hands and endoed down the cliff. So we've been videoing for a long time, but we started Limitless Outdoors in 2013. Okay. And did you start it when you got saved? Yeah, yep. Okay. It was instantly like, I just, so I know like when I got saved, because I did not grow up as a Christian, I grew up in a broken home, drug addict parents, alcohol father.
00:02:04
Speaker
domestic violence, the whole nine. I got saved, radically saved when
Faith and Hunting
00:02:08
Speaker
I was 20 years old. I was an atheist 19, 19, 20 years old. It was a process to get this guy saved. I was just like at that point on fire and I was going into bars. I did a year of Bible college. Like I just was just tearing the world apart. So it sounds like that. Is that kind of what happened? It seems 2013 is not that long ago. That's 10 years ago. You, so you got saved and just went into it.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, it was all in right from the beginning. Colton's story is a little bit different than mine. I definitely led the way in that. But yeah, I was, it was all in. But you said we had, all we knew that was that God was real, and we wanted to tell people about him.
00:02:44
Speaker
I believe out of the gate, I believe that everything that we do should glorify the Lord, like even in our hobbies. And so that's where it started. It really escalated from there, but that's where it started. It was just like, Hey, we're not just going to church and telling people that we're close to about Jesus, but we have this. It was a small platform at the time we were making DVDs, but we have this platform and we're just gonna, we're just gonna be faithful in that. And that's where we started.
00:03:08
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, I think there's nothing more beautiful than someone when they first get saved and that you just see them like, and I think it's almost because you're not as calculated. You're just more just like shotgun blasting out there and just telling everybody about God, you're just running around. Oh my gosh. That's like the guy getting healed in acts, right? He's just getting up and jumping and sprouting and telling everybody or the guy who gets healed and there who healed you and Jesus healed me, but it doesn't even care who he's talking to because you got healed. It's a beautiful thing. Colton, you came later through Justin?
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah, he started pushing me along and I, while I was here in North Idaho for a while afterwards, I really, I loved it and I was part of church and everything else. And then I ended up leaving to go guiding and things got dark for a while for about three years. It got really dark for me. And then met my wife and just.
00:04:01
Speaker
flip to switch again and got on fire again. So it was a rough patch, to say the least. But yeah, it was what? Probably about six years ago now is when I full on gave up my myself and went headfirst. So. Yeah, I feel like it's pretty awesome, too. Obviously, I don't recommend you should go screw up a bunch.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah. The type of people. Yeah. You should go do all this bad stuff. Cause then you still have all this healing. You mean sanctification is this constant process from the time you get saved till the time you die. Right. And even the most godly person still trying to be like Christ, but you have a testimony now where you can actually go out and meet these guys where they are. Yeah.
Masculine Role Models in Christianity
00:04:44
Speaker
For sure. The door industry where they are. And I'm sure like when Justin got good and saved, you were probably like, really?
00:04:51
Speaker
the first time that he told me he thought he was going to be a pastor, I laughed in his face. Yeah. I had a very similar experience, Justin, so I got saved up until last Sunday when my sister got baptized 20 years later, they thought I was crazy. I got saved and they're like, it's just a fad. This is just like when you got into whatever hobby it is, you're just going to drop it. I've never stopped. I got saved and it's been
00:05:20
Speaker
whirlwind for almost 20 years now of just pushing for Jesus, believing in God. I fully believe that Tricer is God anointed, and everything I do is focused on growing the kingdom of God. One of the hardest things for me was I've led a lot of people to the Lord. I've discipled countless people through my Bible studies, through men's conferences, whatever, you name it.
00:05:49
Speaker
And I never let any of my family to the Lord. And my sister just got baptized. She got saved. I'm going to baptize her husband and their kids. And it's awesome. So it's cool. And they finally pay off after 20 years. So talk about that. Why use
00:06:09
Speaker
I know you guys do
Sin and Satisfaction
00:06:10
Speaker
epic hunts and you guys do some of the most hardcore stuff, borderline crazy. Some of the stuff like you guys rafting, you guys, I want to hear about you guys almost suffocating in that tent this year. You do some epic stuff and you have a pilot's license, Justin. Um, why beasts push God so much in your stuff? What is reasoning behind it? What are you trying to, why are you trying to glorify God in what you do?
00:06:35
Speaker
It stopped being about hunting animals for me quite a while ago. I sure enjoy hunting, but I think when you really have an encounter with God, so the reality that we believe about God as Christians is that he upholds the entire universe by the word of his power.
00:06:53
Speaker
A god who's powerful enough to uphold everything like you look outside right now and we're thousands of miles apart like he's upholding everything sustaining everything like when you run into that kind of power. It has you have no what option but to change right it's like getting hit by a freight train you might have looked one way before the train hit you but after that power hits you look totally different.
00:07:14
Speaker
And that's what we're talking about earlier, right? Like when you're truly born again, as Jesus says in John chapter three, like you're just a little kid again. Like there's that youthful zeal. And I think in a lot of ways, the one thing I don't want to lose is that first love. Like when you're young, when you're first converted and you're born again, you don't know enough to get super technical. All you know is that Jesus is God, that he is real, that he loves you, that he's willing to forgive.
00:07:40
Speaker
that you're held down without him and like from that simplicity that child like faith you're just proclaiming it powerfully effectively you're not at some phd level you just talking like a normal person to your friends and that's what we saw was a like.
Hardcore Hunting and Evangelism
00:07:57
Speaker
I don't know. I can't say we saw that right out of the gate, but that's what we saw as a massive gap is you go to these churches and as a hunter, I wanted nothing to do with churches. Like when I looked at the average guy that went to church, he just seemed like a soft dude. His hands were soft. He didn't have calluses. He just talked weak.
00:08:15
Speaker
I don't know. I don't want to harp on these guys too much. But still, when you look inside the average Christian church, the guys aren't super masculine. But when I read, like just opening the Bible, reading it from cover to cover that first year, I'm reading about these guys that were just total savages, right? Like the people in our lineage of God followers were total savages. And I can get behind that, right? These guys weren't weak. They were strong men.
00:08:40
Speaker
And so as limitless evolved and grew as god just guided it we started realizing there's not a whole lot of guys out there that. Non believers respect one of my big problems with christianity in the production world is like you watch all the movies and videos and stuff and it's just always second rate like it's just.
00:09:01
Speaker
The movies are not good, like the storylines, the acting, it's just some of them are getting better now. But as Christians, we should be top of the line. And one of our core values of Limitless Outdoors is hardcore hunting. And it sounds silly, I think, from the outset, but it has really defined everything. We don't hunt turkeys, really. We don't hunt whitetails.
00:09:21
Speaker
We want to hunt in a way that when somebody watches us on YouTube or on TV, they're like, who are these guys and what fuels them? What keeps them going? And then we share the gospel with them and they're like, okay, that's what separates. Like our goal is to be in a whole nother bracket, a whole nother level that's inspiring everybody behind us. And when people wonder what is it that separates us?
00:09:44
Speaker
It's super clear through our entire ministry. It is Jesus that separates us from everybody else. So you wonder why we're up here and you want to be up here. It's Jesus that changes that. So that's where we're at with it.
00:09:56
Speaker
That's awesome. I'm glad you spoke to that, too, because I'm reading 2 Samuel right now, and I was thinking this morning, I'm like, oh, dude, David's mighty man. I want to talk to Justin and Colton. It's cool that you actually brought that up. You didn't say that, but it's what I was like instantly when I was thinking this morning and I was praying and reading the Bible. Speak to that. Speak to a soft generation. There is this weird, this effeminate movement across the country, not just in the church, but in everything, right? Even in the church,
00:10:23
Speaker
these guys with the skinny jeans and the girl shoes, like it's just, I don't understand it, right? It's just, it's not masculine, right? And I don't think, I don't think it's biblical. I don't, I think it's this thing where the world's, they're trying to conform to the world and all it does is just continue to degrade us to get to a point where now we have guys wearing dresses. And if you do say anything against it, you're a bigot, right? I think the world wants mighty men. And even though we,
00:10:54
Speaker
even though people would be labeled as a bigot or labeled as somebody who's toxic or whatever, really they want it. Even women who might say that still want it because God naturally put this drive in us to kill things, hunt things, be the man, be the protector, right? My wife knows that no matter what, I will die for her.
00:11:20
Speaker
Right. In a heartbeat. It's not even a question. Women want that security. They want a man who's... This whole new air conditioning and nice house thing is like a new experiment. Up until 100 years ago, we were out there with our hands, plowing the field, working from sunrise to sunset, hunting and providing for our family. And I don't think that changed.
00:11:42
Speaker
I think you can dress it up, whichever, there's a lot of different flavors. I think, okay, so there's a couple things. First off, you're not going to win any of these guys over by making fun of them. We got to love them into the kingdom. It's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. And I think it's easy to build barriers, but
00:11:57
Speaker
However you dress this up whether it's the transgender stuff like all of it or women like going after soft guys it all boils down to the essence of sin and the essence of sin i heard john piper say this once was it is it is believing something else can bring you more satisfaction than god and then pursuing it.
00:12:17
Speaker
And that goes all the way through God's order, like
Critique of Modern Masculinity
00:12:19
Speaker
God's order is one woman, one man. And all of a sudden, I believe, you know what? That's great that God says that. But I believe that there is a different combination of man and man or man and woman or man and thing that can bring me more satisfaction than God's ordained order. And then I pursue it. And that's the essence of sin. And C.S. Lewis, I quote this all the time, but C.S. Lewis said, human history is the long and terrible story of man trying to find something besides God to make him happy.
00:12:46
Speaker
And that's what we're dealing with in this generation. A woman thinks that this, I don't know, a feminine, non-God-fearing man is going to bring her satisfaction. And it might itch some pleasure scratch that she has or whatever for the moment. But in the end, it's the long and terrible story of man trying to find something besides God to make him happy. And that's what we're dealing with. It's just sin 101, just coming out in different ways at different times. But it's the same problem from the very beginning.
00:13:17
Speaker
And I, someone who reached in to talk to me, I was talking about you guys and teaching and stuff. And they're like, I don't know if that'll relate to everybody. And I'm like, man, you're kidding me, right? Every dude loves watching The Gladiator.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah. Not good gladiators. Every dude loves watching Braveheart, right? Because they have that warrior inside of him. Even though they try and pretend, oh, I'm not this thing, you can't mask what God created and God has inside of you. That's why when you put a rifle in someone's hands, you put an animal in the crosshairs, people love it. They love that feeling, right? This is masking. Or you go out there with your buddies and you endure the suck. We love that. More than the kill,
00:13:55
Speaker
That moment of that eight mile pack out with a heavy pack in the rain, and it's just, you feel like you're not going to make it and you finally get to the truck or whatever it is. Like that is, there's something there that men are drawn to and want. And I think that's why when you guys do this stuff, people love watching it. Justin, I put it into a phrase years ago when we started hunting together again in Colorado, it's used the phrase passion over pain.
00:14:25
Speaker
Because what we love to do is share the gospel and how we go about doing that is pushing through the pain and doing what's hard. There's countless times where through our YouTube and everything else, it's yeah, we'd probably be bigger if we didn't share the gospel all the time. But you know what? It's what we're called to do. And we're going to do that because it's what we love. Even if it has its own setbacks, like we're going to keep on doing it because it's what we're meant to do. It's what we're put here on this earth to do.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. What are the correlations between, I had this conversation with Cody last week about the correlations between entrepreneurship and hunting. What are the correlations between hunting and your walk with God? In what way could you specify exactly what you're looking for to that? Enduring, pushing through, going through hard times, patience. I feel there's a lot of things that kind of can be replicated in the hunting space as your walk with Jesus.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think the number one thing that just comes to my mind when you ask the question is my friend Shane. He always says we've got to give God a chance to do a miracle.
00:15:34
Speaker
And what that looks like in our hunting and in our faith is we keep going. You're not going to kill a big bull elk sitting on your couch. You got to just keep putting in the miles and you keep going ridge after ridge after ridge. And sometimes in our walk with the Lord, things are not going great. But the second you give up, it's over, right? And one thing I say all the time is if you're not dead, you're not done.
00:16:00
Speaker
And just that combination, hunting is all about giving God a chance to do a miracle. We just keep going ridge after ridge. The reason why we kill stuff consistently, number one, we're blessed to have quite a bit more time than most people get. We have a lot of time to hunt in the fall.
00:16:16
Speaker
But also, we just keep going. When other people fold after two days of hardship or three days of hardship, we keep going. And we've given up on some hunts before, and when you give up, it's over. But if you just keep giving God a chance to do a miracle, it's been amazing how many last days that you could come up with every good reason to not go out, you go out and God does the miracle. So give God the chance to do a miracle.
00:16:45
Speaker
That's good. So you guys do kill a lot of big stuff. Is that because you're just more blessed and anointed than us? A hundred percent, a hundred percent. No. And I feel like God just says, I don't want you to kill big things because then you'd probably never do ministry again.
00:17:02
Speaker
yeah i think we kill some good stuff for sure no doubt about it but honestly i'm really coming to terms with this lately we do not kill that biggest stuff like you go to the salt lake expo and you see the stuff that the mossback guys are turning up and killing down in the
00:17:17
Speaker
Premium units they're killing big stuff, but that is not what we're about or not about killing big stuff. We're about the adventure experience. It's the total package, right? We don't have 10 guys watching a single bull for us and we're not moneying it to death. We're going into an area that we've never hunted before. We're going in honestly with stuff that just about any guy could afford. Our rafts are $300 rafts.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, we're just send we're just sending it and it's the adventure for us. It's just like when you're just hanging on by the by your fingernails on this sucker and you just don't know. Like you gotta rely on everybody on everybody on the team to get through this situation and you're just going as far out there as you can into uncharted territory and that's our style. It's not. Colton says it all the time and I should let Colton talk more, but Colton says it all the time. He says it's not about the size of the trophy. It's the size of the experience.
00:18:07
Speaker
And that is really I'm really verbalizing it here in the last couple weeks. That is what that's what differentiates us. Yeah, we're not killing 400 inch bulls all the time. We kill some nice stuff, but we hunt in a way that's I think very unique. It's all about the adventure. I think on that Colton just nailed it on that. It's you do go through like the Salt Lake show where we just were. People have insane animals. They've got 300 inch bucks and they've got 400 and something inch bulls.
00:18:38
Speaker
We've never even come close to touching that. Justin's best bucks, what, 202 and 5'8", my best bull is, what, 350 and he's missing 20 inches of main beam. So, like, we're talking about good animals, some really good animals between Justin and I, but overall, if you add up our average, it's not a great average, but we're literally, we're going on hunts and two places in our desire, our literal desire is to go to places that,
00:19:06
Speaker
Very, very few people will see or touch and we want to enjoy the place and the place where the animals live because at the end of the day, nobody, and I literally mean absolutely nobody is beating the animal out there in the woods. The animals live out there. The only thing that you're doing is you're going out there and you pull the trigger. What you're doing when you're in the woods is you're beating yourself.
00:19:35
Speaker
And you're pushing yourself farther than you were, or to be better than you were before you stepped out the door the first time to go out there. It's just, yeah, I I've used that analogy with guys with hunting mountain goats before I guided a mountain goat years ago and it was literally one of those things where like, wow, these are animals are really hard to hunt. Mountain goats aren't hard to kill. You can sneak right up on a mountain goat. They're pretty dumb animals, but where they live,
00:20:05
Speaker
it's hard to get to. So if you can beat yourself and push yourself through the obstacles that are gonna be thrown in your way, then you can come home with a little bit of reward. But honestly, the true reward is the fact that you're better than you were. And it ties into the gospel also, honestly, is like every day you're just trying to get sanctified and become closer to Jesus. If you don't do that, and if you're not getting closer to Jesus,
00:20:34
Speaker
Every day you wake up, then you're stagnant and you're even going backwards.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, and I think what Colton said about we're going out there and we're going where nobody else will go, or very few people have gone. The funniest part about that is we're going to places that nobody goes, but everyone can go. So I think the distinct difference between us and even growing up, like I love the Primos guys, but they hunted with guides and on ranches and stuff like that, where not everybody could go.
Hunting Industry Growth
00:21:05
Speaker
But
00:21:06
Speaker
Every one of our tags, except for I think we've drawn one. I've drawn one special tag ever in Colorado for deer and it was only one preference point. Other than that, like all the hunts that you've seen us do are all do it yourself over the counter tags.
00:21:22
Speaker
So literally, anybody could do them. And people would go, oh, you got to have all this money. What people don't realize is that when I first started hunting moose in Alaska, my wife and I would go and pick huckleberries. I was making about 30 grand a year at the time. And we would go pick huckleberries all summer and sell the huckleberries. And that would pay for my moose hunt. And we were pulling off moose hunts for $3,500 in Alaska.
00:21:45
Speaker
That's what we were doing and it's just a lot of people excuse it or don't understand it, but the hunts that we're doing, we're going where most people don't go, but anyone could go, which is cool. Are you in Alaska full-time? Yeah. You live up there full-time. How long have you been up there? I just moved up here in August. August 1st, I'll be resident, so I'll be hunting brown bear.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's awesome. And mountain and doll sheep. And you could bring family members that are. Yeah. If you like them though, that's the thing. So I don't have any family I like. Yikes. It only costs you 10 grand, Colton, instead of 27 to go on. Yeah. That's awesome. So speak to the adventure. Cause you guys do, you've obviously had the Alaska bug. So what gets your goat? What is your adventure? Justin, what's your favorite adventure?
00:22:37
Speaker
I don't have one. It's all about, for me, once you cross that day 10, day 11 out there anywhere in Alaska, it's just such an adventure. You become really hardened to the place. And I was just looking through pictures this morning and
00:22:54
Speaker
When two years ago, Colton and I were in a place we call Valley of the Bulls. And it was like day 12 or something like that. And we just walked around with a shotgun all day, like six miles back this drainage, shooting ptarmigan all day. And then we aired up our raft and floated down through this glacier water all the way back to camp. Pass the grizzly on my bear. Pass the grizzly on his bear. It's just that's where it's at. There's nothing like it. There's so much cool stuff here. We're going to
00:23:21
Speaker
Like you said earlier, we've got a plane now and I'm a pilot and we're going to be hunting some crazy stuff, coastal bears, landing on all the beaches, doing all the coolest. I don't know. It's just, it is endless up here. The challenge is endless. The land is, it's bigger than one guy could hunt in his whole lifetime or a hundred lifetimes. It's very cool up here. Where in Alaska are you?
00:23:45
Speaker
So I'm in Homer, which is Southwest of Anchorage by about a hundred something miles as a bullet flies, maybe 500 miles as a crow flies as Colton would say. As a crow flies as a pet peeve of mine. If you, whoever came up with the saying and obviously never watched a crow fly, because if you watch a crow fly, they just do circles. So I say air miles or as a group, as a goose flies is even acceptable. As a crow flies is completely Honexa.
00:24:30
Speaker
I will be. I never really, I never gave any thought to him because as a non-resident, by the time you, like if you were to go to Kodiak or whatever, by the time you get a boat or get flown in, it's just as expensive to kill a black tail as it is to kill a moose. Like it becomes silly at that point. But I'm about an hour, just over an hour from Kodiak right here. So on good days, we'll go out there and we'll hit up some of the other islands too.
00:24:41
Speaker
I don't know what it's about crows, but they have that noise they make when they fly too, that wind sound. You don't hear any of the bird that like, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
00:24:56
Speaker
for deer. And as a resident, you can shoot them and you can shoot them same day from the plane. So you just have to be, you only have to be 300 feet from the plane, which is pretty cool. So you can't shoot them from out of the plane. You can't be flying and shoot them. It's 300 feet from the plane. I have a friend who was like, I don't know what the whole title was, but like basically he did all the depredation for San Diego.
00:25:19
Speaker
And they would fly in Cessna's and use shotguns and shoot running coyotes. And he said you have to shoot six feet in front of them to hit the coyotes. But he said it was the coolest thing ever, just like coming in on dogs and shooting them on the run. But don't do that. Yeah, we're not going to do that though.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, definitely don't. So now that you're up there full time, you're not being where you are, you're not that far from the lower 48, the wreckage itself. So it's easy to jump over to, I assume you guys had a whole lot, you guys had a Colorado lot, so you're able to jump over and still hunt those hunts. You're not going to leave the lower 48, right? And you're still going to hunt down here? So what we've talked about, we've been putting in for preference points, all of us for a long time now, and we're ready to start drawing some tags. So I think what we're going to start doing
00:26:01
Speaker
I don't want to beat a hobby horse here, but hunting in the West is really a massive decline. It's just honestly getting frustrating to me because growing up, you'd hunt these places and it was just incredible. You wouldn't see people for a week and it was just the way it was. It's just not that way anymore. We've had some real hard winters. We've had a lot of things change. Honestly, unless there's a massive reformation of how we manage our wildlife, it's just
00:26:29
Speaker
We talk about conservation, but at this point, conservation's for the rich guys to be able to buy governor's tags and shoot stuff down the road. Conservation used to mean the average guy would get to go out west and shoot a nice mule deer or a nice elk. I don't know what kind of radical reformation would have to happen to even ensure, because that'll even be a reality for our kids, because the hunting industry has exploded. People realize they can make money on it.
00:26:58
Speaker
It's just crazy. It's crazy. There's a lot more guys from back East coming out West too. Justin and I talk about the Salt Lake show, but like looking back 10 years ago when we were first there versus now, it's five times bigger. So if you can imagine, essentially, if you take that metric and apply it to the hunting industry, it's five times bigger now than what it was.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I'm glad you brought up the decline of hunting. I feel like everyone feels it. I've owned big game hunting since 2016. I've hunted most of my life. I got my license when I was 12 and just started going hunting on my own for birds and stuff. But really got a big game bug in 2016, 2015. 2015, not 2016. But getting into points and I've seen units where it should have taken me three points are now
Preference Points in Hunting
00:27:48
Speaker
eight points. I can't catch the creep in all these units.
00:27:51
Speaker
Had jayden bales on a couple weeks ago jayden is and i gave i propose this to him and i made this title is called king game commissioner. So if you get to be king game commissioner right now. For the whole country what do you do with the preference points what do you do the whole situation to resolve the problem.
00:28:11
Speaker
The problem is everybody's been spending all this money on the preference points. I think what they didn't foresee was that there was going to be such an uptick in interest. I mean, you're not an outlier. Many of the people that I talk to, especially in the hunting industry, I hate using that term, but that's what it is now. We're just at Salt Lake and these guys are telling me they've been hunting big game for three years.
00:28:37
Speaker
And I'm just like, I don't even know how to process that. I'm a little bit of a purist and maybe a snob because I've been hunting since I could walk, but I don't think, I don't know if there is a good answer. That's why I say a radical reformation. So if I was king, how I would do it is.
00:28:52
Speaker
You just have to objectively look at everything and people got to bite the bullet and go without for a little while. That's just where we're at. I'll give you a solid example. So Idaho doesn't have preference points, but the population of Idaho, my numbers might be slightly off, but between five, 2000 and present day, the population has doubled in Idaho. And a lot of the people that are coming to Idaho are into the homesteading and wanting to provide for themselves and do a little bit of hunting.
00:29:21
Speaker
So, every resident automatically gets a tag in Idaho, which means that, let's just say 100,000 people, 10% of the population hunted. We'll just say that in 2000. That was 100,000 people. And today, if it doubled, that's 200,000 people. Our animal numbers, they fluctuate all over the place. I don't know exactly where they're at, but I guarantee you they're not doubled from the 90s. In the 90s, the hunting was
00:29:44
Speaker
Extremely good especially with elk in a lot of areas and mule deer or phenomenal and now we have double the resident hunting pressure that we had back then like this stuff that's not even sustainable so i would have right out of the gate pretty much.
00:30:03
Speaker
And I think this is where it's going to go, too. Everything's going to be a draw. It's the only way to sustain what we have for the future. Quotas, draws, something like that. And as far as preference points go, I think that's going to be the greatest failed thing in all of history here in the next 10, 20 years. And everybody will have to go back to Idaho. It's a lottery every time.
00:30:29
Speaker
It's too bad that you can't do it. Montana's got a terrible system. In Idaho, you can only apply for one thing, as far as the special stuff like Bighorn Mountain Goat Moose. You have to pick one of them to apply for. Montana, you can apply for all of them. So you get all these people in every pool, and it just drives your chances way down. So I actually think Idaho has a lot going right for it that they never bought into the preference points. And I think that they'll end up being done away with. There's going to be a ton of mad people who have invested a ton of money.
00:31:00
Speaker
at the end of the day, like you got to do what's right. Not what's, not what's easiest for everybody or makes everybody happy. When everybody has 25 points for a big one sheep in Arizona, what do you do? You don't draw. So even when, so I love your answer, Justin, cause that's the same answer I gave. I would just rip the bandit off right now and be like, sorry, you're done. Cause even with met 28 points, there's like, you have 1% chance to draw a sheep tag. You're not going to draw. You have, Oh, you have the random. You have the random of what, one in 10,000. It's just no.
00:31:30
Speaker
I think you rip that bandit off, bring everyone to the same level and you do that. That's why I moved to Alaska, to be honest with you.
Hunting in Alaska
00:31:37
Speaker
I'm just, I'm done with it. You can see the future. You can see the writing on the wall. It's already, do you go for a once in a lifetime Ram or do you hunt them every year? That's what Alaska offers. If you're a resident, you can hunt them every year.
00:31:52
Speaker
And I believe even that's coming to an end. We're at the tail end of the good old days right now. You can mark my words on that. We can watch this in 10 years and you'll go, oh yeah, he said that. There's going to be a lot that changes in Alaska. I guarantee you, non-residents won't be hunting moose DIY. They won't be hunting caribou DIY. Everything will be guided in Alaska before long. They already annihilated the, they dropped the quotas on deer.
00:32:15
Speaker
for non-residents, especially on Kodiak in the last year, because it blew up. It got super popular. Everybody and their dog were going out there killing deer. Yeah, it's just one of those things. Go ahead, Cole. They were about to shut down the Caribou, too, up in Alaska for non-residents. Yeah, we did. I have a 2000 lower deposit from three years ago, and I can't get it back. Crazy. So we were flying to Kotzebu, paid the Outfitter. I think it was like four grand. We paid him two grand each.
00:32:44
Speaker
And it's some native thing they put in where they said, oh, non-residents can't hunt. No, keep in mind, whatever, not in Alaska, whatever you want to do, natives can kill as many as they want, calves, everything. Non-residents who pay a ton of money can kill one bull. They shut it down for non-residents. And so we thought, okay, shut down, we'll get our money back. The guys, oh no, it's an act of God that you don't get your money back.
00:33:11
Speaker
We're basically perpetually going on a caribou hunt every year in Alaska and who knows when it's going to end. I want to go to Alaska so bad. I love the adventure. I love the idea of flying in. I want to do a float moose hunt at some point in my life. I want to go and that caribou hunt is supposed to be like the first one. It's like you go to caribou in Alaska and then you go do your moose and then potentially brown bear if you want to kill brown bear. It gets a sequence in my mind. I don't know why.
00:33:38
Speaker
but it didn't happen. So yeah, I got to try and get up there and do it because now you're freaking me out because I see it already with down here with mule deer are getting, I don't want to say impossible to draw, but much harder to draw.
00:33:49
Speaker
And it's hardly going to get worse. It's only going to get worse. And I have been that no man's land with my points, right? I have, in most states, six to 12 points now, six to 10 points in most states. And I feel like I'm not going to draw for another 10 years on some of these tags. So it's almost like I'd rather just burn them on a unit that takes three points and go hunt every year. Like you said, go hunt an over-the-counter unit than just wait. Because now the Arizona drawers today, and I have nine out points.
00:34:15
Speaker
Rather than put in for a unit run, no, I can kill a bull. I'm like, I don't want to do that. I want to go hunt unit nine or unit 10. Right. Cause why would I wait 10 years and not go on unit nine or 10? I didn't draw. Right. And it's just gonna be the same thing over and over again, unless I get lucky. I'm in a little bit different place. Cause I've been hunting for quite a while, comparatively and killed a lot of stuff. So where we're all at in our heads with this thing is we're saving our points for like once in a lifetime stuff. And so if that takes us another 20 years, but still just once in a lifetime and.
00:34:45
Speaker
I think that if you blow it, if you're wanting to kill something super special, if you blow it now, you'll absolutely never catch back up. So you just got to weigh that. There are still, honestly, if there's good over-the-counter stuff, Colton killed that 370 bull over-the-counter. And that was a fluke, but not that much. It can be done, maybe not 370, but 330s, 340s, 350s, pretty doable on over-the-counter tags still, if you hit it right. Like that, you can't do it every year, but every year we've killed good bulls.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think the difference between that hunt though, and like a Unit 9 or Unit 10 hunt, where you basically, I think everyone wants it because like, when you hunt Arizona for a bull, like in Unit 9, I don't want to say it's canned, but it's a much easier hunt.
00:35:29
Speaker
That is a flat area, rolling grasslands area to go kill a bull versus you going out. I think a lot of people are drawn to that. That's where everyone's putting in for it. They just grow giant bulls. They have low tag numbers and they're growing these 400-inch bulls, so everyone's drawn to that. Not a lot of guys are drawn to
00:35:50
Speaker
enduring the suck that you guys endure to kill that 370 bull, right? Um, was that the home where you guys had the whole like, uh, almost suffocating your tent? No, that was just recently. So the 370 bowls last year. Okay. All right. Yeah. I have a piece of advice though on that. So we have a style of hunting where we don't want to money stuff to death, but at the same time,
00:36:17
Speaker
If you're going to put in for the next 20 years, here's a couple considerations for you. So if you're going to put in for the next 20 years to draw something, number one consideration is I'm 30, almost seven right now. If I'm putting in for another 20 years, that makes me 57. That's my first consideration. When I'm 57, I'm not going to enjoy the hunt near as much as I will right now from a physical standpoint. Like it's just going to be brutal.
00:36:39
Speaker
In 20 years, the hunt might not even be there. We don't know what kind of god disaster is going to happen, like the winter that hit Northwest Colorado and Idaho and Wyoming. And then on top of that, there's a whole bunch of things. So my point is in there is that you might as well start planning on hunting it in five years and save up five grand a year and pay 25 grand and go kill the thing.
00:37:05
Speaker
And as much as it pains me to say that, that's where the state of hunting is right now. And if you want to experience some of these things, I think that may be the only viable option for a lot of guys. Like you've been religiously putting in for these points, you need to just start saving up. And I know it's a big nut, but 25 grand, 30 grand, you can buy
00:37:26
Speaker
You can buy a real hunt of a lifetime for an elk. And if you're only looking for a once in a lifetime thing anyway, it might not be a bad option at this point because the other options truly may not exist because we could get legitimately if that Band-Aid does get ripped off and they just give up on the preference points, all of a sudden you're going to be 20 years into it and they're going to say, oh, sorry, Drew, we don't even do we don't even do preference points anymore. So now you're just entered into a lottery and now you're 57 years old and you can't go kill this thing.
00:37:57
Speaker
Yeah. Just some thoughts. You're sure? There is- Don't crush people's dreams, Justin. I get it though, man. Because I'm born in 86. I'm 38.
00:38:10
Speaker
I'm 37. I'm going to be 38. My wife's 38. I'll be 38 in June. And I'm already hurting now. I don't feel the same after I've driven by. I stole it riding dirt bikes, and hunting, and football, and all the sudden growing up. I've always lived it. And I can see 57 just not being a fun elk hunt. I'll do it. I'll figure it out. I'll go by freaking llamas or whatever at that point. But I can see that.
00:38:38
Speaker
Don't get llamas. Don't buy llamas? Don't buy llamas. Don't buy llamas. I'll rent them. But even the pricing you said earlier, like it's a rich man's sport, it really has blown up and it is
Financial Aspects of Hunting
00:38:54
Speaker
hard. Like I have five kids. Like if I told my wife I was going to go on a dollar sheet punt, like that would be a very, very tough conversation to have to be like, Hey, I'm going to spend 30 grand on a dollar sheet punt.
00:39:05
Speaker
probably more than 35, but I could do it. It just wouldn't happen. She'd be like, no, I don't care. You're not going to, you're just not doing that. Go kill an odd ad for four, or even an odd ad. Odd ad used to be cow elk. Geez, cow elk are four grand now. It's just crazy. The price people will pay for stuff. I mean, it's supply and demand, more power to these guides and these outfitters making all that money. I'm not knocking guys and outfitters, but it has gotten really expensive.
00:39:31
Speaker
That's a tough nut to crack. Five grand is a lot of money for a dude to save every year just for a hunt. When you got to try and buy a house and gas is in California, 450 a gallon. That's a hard thing to justify when you can just go hunt over the counter and deer or something. It also depends how many states you're putting in preference points for. You think about it, I don't know exactly what we spend, but we've got to spend over a grand on preference points every year. No doubt about it. That's what I'm talking about. I think
00:40:00
Speaker
At a certain point, you've got to decide what's your strategy. I was sitting on a mountain this year, and I was like, if I killed 10 really nice, so five really good mule deer and five really good elk the rest of my life, I would be stoked.
00:40:17
Speaker
I'm talking exceptional ones and so what is my strategy to go about doing that. And I think if we start thinking a little bit longer and this comes back to really the Lord and. When we're going through life we look at everything like the here and now gratifying our flesh right here right now like what is best for me right now instead of what's best for me eternity or really taking a moment and thinking about what does my next 20 years of hunting look like.
00:40:43
Speaker
And so if I start saying, okay, in the next 20 years, I want to kill 10 animals. And then I break down where I would like to experience that for those mule deer and elk. And then I can break down, okay, what's my strategy to get ahold of those tags? Because
00:40:58
Speaker
I think preference points might be the only option for some guys. Honestly, for us, it's been the only option this far. We can't just throw down the money. The reason I moved to Alaska is because I can't throw down 30, 40 grand for a brown bear. I have to live here so I can hunt them for free. But if it is in your budget, it might be a much better thing to say, you know what? I'm going to start putting away five grand a year. I'm going to buy a landowner tag.
00:41:22
Speaker
on a hunt in this area, I'm going to go try and get an auction. I might put in for a lottery tag. And I think just developing that strategy is really important, but it all comes down to a longer perspective than here and now. And we're so nearsighted always with this stuff. Yeah. And I do think that you have to be putting in for some of these hunts too. If you don't have the five grant year, you have to be putting in for some of these things in New Mexico that are random draws, right? Or Idaho where it's a random draw.
00:41:51
Speaker
Cause you never know, you could get lucky and draw that tag. Someone's going to draw it, right? And we had a guy on, had a guy on last month who drew a pick or sheep tag with 10 points.
00:42:00
Speaker
had a guy on, he drew a Bighorn sheep tag with six points, right? Both of them killed. When I was one guy, he killed like a 184. It was just a monster. It was an awesome ram. He was afraid of heights and he killed a sheep. It was awesome. Such a good story. It was an awesome dude. But that's all good. So we went through the whole point saying, I don't want to bring everyone down.
Authentic Storytelling in Hunting
00:42:21
Speaker
I love watching you guys hunt films. I love what you're doing. I think that your walk with God's gone from, right? Like you said, you're in the beginning stages and you're like all over the place. Oh man.
00:42:30
Speaker
And as I've watched your films, they've gotten noticeably better. Not saying the early ones weren't good, but like these ones this year were next level, you guys. Like it was like some of the stuff I'm watching, they were just really good. Created really well and it's cut better. Everything about them was just really good. Speak to that. You guys growing? Can you continue to do this? Yeah. So there's a tension that we talk about a lot between
00:42:58
Speaker
keeping it real and authentic. Half of our problem, honestly, is we just destroy all of our equipment. People don't even realize we are so hard on everything. We destroy every one of our cameras every year.
00:43:11
Speaker
Like we're going through phones. There's just nothing safe when you're out there because the elements just beat everything up and what they don't beat up, we do. And from that standpoint, I don't know. We want to be excellent, right? One of our other core values is quality experience. We want to be excellent with everything that we do. One of my personal values is always becoming better at what we do.
00:43:33
Speaker
But at no point want to lose the authenticity. The thing that we're really driving out is we want to get better at storytelling. I think that's what really draws people in and holds people is hearing the story behind like how did we get here? And that's what I want to do better at because people look into our lives and they see this little sliver.
00:43:53
Speaker
of where we are right now and they have no idea the backstory. They don't understand all the seasons when I was growing up hunting with holes in my boots because I didn't have enough money for new boots and snow is just piling in there. That passion that just drives you year after year and all the junk that we went through as kids and all that stuff shapes you and what people look at is they look at like right now and they see, oh, you're hunting moose.
00:44:16
Speaker
don't see that you're picking huckleberries to go hunt moose they see that you have a plane and they don't understand like everything that goes into it and so we want to really get better at storytelling and so that's what you're i think that's what you're seeing is there's this drive with us and it's been there for a long time and we're just getting better at it and i'm hoping lord willing we continue to get better at it and the storytelling aspect of it
00:44:39
Speaker
that really draws people in, captivates, educates, all of that. I hope that keeps getting better, but I think that's what you've been seeing is that just desire of us to really communicate better, to reach people with the gospel better, and to produce things that are really true to what's happening out there. And I'll add that I've edited two videos, two different times this year, because Justin specifically is, no, I know you can do better. So it's one of those things where, like you said, we are,
00:45:09
Speaker
beyond pushing ourselves to do better on our actual physical hunting, we're pushing ourselves to really get the shots that we really want to get and put them into a story format. Well, so, and then I've got my older brother telling me it's not good enough. So never, never be good enough. Never good enough. It's actually a good thing to live by. You can never be good enough. So I always say I'm always chasing perfection.
00:45:39
Speaker
So yeah, you should be as a Christian. Yeah, with all my products at Tricer, I'm always chasing perfection. Even if something's like, I've had things come out like an LP panhead where I've actually made three changes to it the last year because I'm always chasing perfection. You never, I could have left it as it is and never changed it.
00:45:56
Speaker
People thought I was the greatest man I'd ever, but I'm constantly changing and tweaking because you can always do better. It does reflect into your walk with Jesus, with your business, with your hunting, with ever just continue to try harder and always do better. One thing I do appreciate about you guys too is that you are authentic. On your hunts, it's not like I'm watching
00:46:15
Speaker
this perfect hunt or these perfect hunters or it's not always like the perfect $20,000 camera the perfect shot like it's just it's not I feel like I'm there with you guys and it's an authentic experience hunting with you guys right like in my mind I'm thinking right now this hunt where you guys did where you ended up hiking like
00:46:34
Speaker
I think your family goes down low and it looks like you're somewhere. I don't want to say where. And you hike all the way up to the top of this ridge, like thousands of feet and you've killed this elk. It's just like you felt like you were there, right? And is that something you guys are trying to do? Is it bring you into it or?
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's the ultimate goal. I think it's a natural byproduct though, the way we hunt and the way we film. Filming is always secondary. From a standpoint of we don't slow down to stage shots, we're not protecting our gear. We're just trying to capture it the way it is.
00:47:10
Speaker
I think it spawned out of I'm just sick of turning on videos and I see the 100 sponsors that people are sponsored by and then there's a commercial break every two and a half minutes and these guys aren't breaking a sweat. Everything's staged and there's various combinations of that. I'm not saying by no means am I saying everybody's fake. There's a lot of great hunters out there. All the best hunters I know aren't on video though. Like I know some
00:47:37
Speaker
Guys that are just absolute savages and you'll never know their name you'll never see a picture of him with a deer they kill bigger stuff better stuff and they kill it more often than anybody else and they can care less about who knows about it and i think that i'm reaching work combination of that.
00:47:54
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I do like that. This kind of plays into something I want to talk to you guys to that whole hundred persona thing you're seeing online where you got to kill big things. And I even talk to people who are in the hunting space who tell me like, yeah, I don't even like to talk to people because they don't make fun of me for not killing big enough stuff. Cause I'm an influencer. I have 70,000 followers. I don't kill anything big or we don't want to work with you because you don't kill anything big. And he's done working my butt off. I'm teaching myself how to do this. There is this like persona, you got to kill big things and everything has to be perfect. Right. Every video you watch.
00:48:23
Speaker
And I think this is a detriment to hunting. They're taking 900 yard shots and the deer is falling for a shot. I guarantee you, you're missing a lot of those shots. You're not seeing them because it just no one's not perfect.
00:48:36
Speaker
Now it's painful to, it's painful to show the misses. I think that because so many people edit it out, we find ourselves in this time now where it's become the expectation is if you actually show missing something or wounding something with an imperfect shot, it's, oh, you're a terrible hunter. When I know a lot of the stories behind some of the videos that I've watched and it's one shot and the elk dumps over.
00:49:00
Speaker
I know the real story how that actually went down and that is not how it happened. But I think in some ways, the atmosphere that's been created by the guys that have come before us is there was a time in hunting, especially when I think back to the 90s and early 2000s, when I was getting my license, all the hunters, the instructors were like, don't wear camo in public. You don't want to be a bad witness to non hunters and stir things up. Now camo is a fashion statement.
00:49:30
Speaker
Like back then, those guys didn't want to show stuff because they didn't want to tarnish the name of hunting. I think it started with a really pure heart that they didn't want to tarnish people's perception of hunting and see an animal like languishing or a leg blown off. But what happened is it created this idea and it's really a fantasy idea that hunting is this clean thing where you shoot an animal and then you let it wander off and die and you go check it out like four hours later after you shot it with a rifle or maybe even the next morning.
00:49:58
Speaker
when it's 75 degrees out and the thing is rotted. And this weird stuff like it created this weird dynamic that now we have to deal with. So whenever we put out a video and you show the real deal, and it's not every shots perfect, sometimes just stuff happens. And we're aggressive. And sometimes we don't make the right decision to you get excited, you pull the trigger, all those things happen. So it's hard to do that. And for us,
00:50:23
Speaker
There's a real balance. We want to be real, but because we're trying to share the gospel, we do hold back a little bit with our videos because we don't want to turn people off from hearing the gospel.
Sponsor Integrity
00:50:37
Speaker
One thing I tell the guys all the time is we're not putting anything in the video that's going to stumble somebody from hearing what we have to say about Jesus.
00:50:47
Speaker
This kind of goes into sponsorship and stuff like that, too. Jesus is what we're all about and what we're selling. And we don't take on any sponsorship that diminishes Jesus. So we don't promote anybody. We have two major sponsors that are behind us. We've talked with lots of people.
00:51:04
Speaker
But we have two major people, and the reason that we have them as sponsors is because they're all about the mission of advancing the kingdom of God, and they don't ask for anything from us in return. We use their stuff, we love their stuff, but mostly we love our partnership with them as we advance the gospel.
00:51:23
Speaker
Like for us, Jesus has to be front and center. All of our videos are always going to reflect that, always have, always will. And it's important for us to be putting out content that's authentic, but ultimately nothing that hinders the gospel, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I think too, like when you talk about the don't wear stuff in public, don't do this.
00:51:49
Speaker
I think there's a false misconception there. The same thing goes for the separated church and state, which is a joke. Churches can't talk about politics.
00:52:00
Speaker
The more you give that, the more you're going to be silenced. I think that's what you have to remember. You don't shoot, you said you shot an animal. You don't shoot an animal, you harvest an animal. No. When I pull the trigger, I'm trying to kill that animal. I might shoot in the guts and I'm going to shoot it sometimes four more times because it's running and I have to try and get this thing down because now I've injured this animal, I have to kill it. Sometimes it is a savage experience.
00:52:25
Speaker
Right, but that's how it just the reality of it, right? It's not this, and maybe I'm just, this doesn't happen every time, but it's happened to me. I would be lying if I didn't say that I had to shoot an animal up the butt to kill it because I didn't have a great shot. By that point, like once you pull the trigger through the tee, it's just you have to finish. You can't take the bullet back.
00:52:43
Speaker
You can't take the bullet back. I tell my kids all the time, you can't take that shot back. So make sure you're stable when you pull that trigger to give the animal. And by no means do I disrespect animals. I love animals. I want to be like, there's no more like sickening feeling when you lose an animal, like you shoot an animal and you know, it is, it should tear you apart. It's you didn't do your job the bottom line or you rushed it or you just,
00:53:09
Speaker
Sometimes things go wrong.
Ethical Hunting Practices
00:53:11
Speaker
So, I was going to talk to you guys about this. I want your opinion on it. With this whole, the long range shooting, polymer guns, this whole chassis rifles, I had some really bad experiences with dudes shooting 1,000 yards on a few hunts this year. Going back to the truck and getting more ammo, shooting top for ridge. Guys, you couldn't even make it down and get it out. I have decided,
00:53:37
Speaker
to... This isn't almighty, but I'm buying a Browning 30-06 Woodstock. I'm putting a Leopold on. I'm hunting with that all year this year. What are your thoughts? Awesome.
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's awesome. I, I'm not going to bash anybody. I, we spend a lot of time out hunting and every year we witness a handful of horror shows of guys shooting from one ridge top to another. It's a thousand to 1500 yards. They watched a video where somebody did it and they hit it in the first shot and they're not experiencing the same results. 15 shots later, the animals limping, they're limping up the other hillside or whatever.
00:54:21
Speaker
There was a point, I remember when long range hunting first became a thing in the early 2000s. I could not wait to get a gun because I was like, everything is going to die. I'm going to be able to shoot stuff in a thousand yards. It was all about just murdering something. To me, I've seen so many posts of guys and they're like, oh, 1,500 yards was as close as I could get to this thing.
00:54:47
Speaker
This is getting out of control, guys. You could say I shot it at 1500 yards, but don't tell me 1500 yards is as close as you can get to this animal. That's just a joke at the end of the day. I really value the experience of stalking animals. I love making good shots on stuff. And everything that we've been talking about, if you're listening to this podcast, you're like,
00:55:06
Speaker
Oh, they shoot animals and they don't hit them perfect. They're horrible human beings. And in the next breath, you're saying, oh, I want to do some long range shooting. You're going to be doing the same and worse long range shooting. You just will. And long range can be 400 yards in the wrong conditions. Long range isn't much about a distance. It's about all the variables. When you get out to 1,000 yards, things are just unpredictable completely. Especially in the mountains. Yeah, in the mountains, you have updrafts, downdrafts.
00:55:36
Speaker
You have everything going on. I'm putting a six power scope on my rifle this year for all my brown bear hunting and everything, a one to six power, and I'll be shooting all my moose and everything with that. Honestly, I haven't counted it up, but in the last 50 animals that we've killed, we've only killed maybe one out there past 600 yards.
00:56:00
Speaker
Every once in a while, I'll still utilize some long range. I can shoot pretty good out to 600. I will not shoot a deer past 400. That's just not my thing. Colton's a little bit better than me shooting long range. But this is recorded, right? Yeah, I like shooting stuff up close and personal. Yeah, I am like a lot of people think that we're shooting stuff long range. And we'll blow something over 80 yards and somebody will comment on the video. Oh, shooting everything at 500 yards. I'm like, I don't even know what to do about this.
00:56:29
Speaker
Yeah, super shooting stuff so close most of the time. For the most part, I think most of the animals that we've killed in the last few years have been
00:56:41
Speaker
like 300 and under. I killed my bull in 2022 at 650. That's the longest shot I've made in a hot minute on an animal. Everything else has been really close. And I always hear Justin's voice when I'm about to pull a trigger on something, get closer. So he said that to me years ago and it just, it's stuck with me as just get closer. Yeah, that quarter mile mark, which is like 420 yards, 425 yards. I feel like once you get past that,
00:57:10
Speaker
Things can go hairy. It really can. And I don't care how good of a shot you are, like, especially on deer. Like, I'll go and take my buddies down the desert, and I'll put a deer target. I make these silhouettes. Shoot that deer at 600 yards. You're shooting it in the neck. You're shooting it in the guts. You're shooting it. It's just hard. And the thing is, like, I get it. The elevation thing is almost turnkey now. You can get the elevation right pretty much perfectly. It's the wind side of it, and the animal moving, and all of a sudden, it goes wrong.
00:57:36
Speaker
and you're not shooting off a bench you're probably not shooting perfectly prone you probably have a rock up your butt or a tree you know stabbing you in the side right or like my kid's deer this year he had or deer his first year two years ago uh we had ants biting us for shooting his deer um yeah i really do in general try and get
00:57:57
Speaker
to under 400 yards. That's my goal. And under three is really my goal. If Coos you a little bit harder, sometimes you're going to be in that 400 yard range because you're just hard to get on. Some of the places I hunt, we're just not covering. You're in wide open country trying to hunt them. But I do think
00:58:12
Speaker
that in this, and I have the wacky guns. I have the custom 5,000 dollar rifles. I got a couple of them. I was just talking to my partners about it. I'm like, I want to shoot a wood .30-06 because it's funny. That is taboo. A wood stocked .30-06 is a taboo cartridge now. Yeah, I think you just got to be careful which voices you listen to. There's a handful of, that's just crazy.
Firearm Preferences for Hunting
00:58:36
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, you're right. You're right to a level.
00:58:39
Speaker
You have to be, and I'm not knocking like the PRC stuff and you have to have this crazy cartridge or six eight Western. No, six eight Western. I'm buying one. It's a two 70, but you can't shoot. You got your grandpa's gun, but you got your six eight Western, right? It's just weird thing. I'm excited for that this year. I don't know what I'm going to call it. I'm going to call myself a trad hunter now, like a trad rifleman. Cause I'm shooting at 30 at six. That's funny. Dial on it. So I'm going to be a trad guy this year. I'm going to try and try and get it all done. My goal is.
00:59:09
Speaker
No other, no rifle, except for that rifle. It was a .30-06 across the board. I talked to Ben Dettimani about it too little bit, and he's going to do .270 for his all years. He's doing an old Mauser .270 that kind of a made for him. So maybe it's a thing that we're going to see this like return to the grandpa cartridges and they're not going to put cartridges and they're phenomenal cartridges. It's just, they've gotten pushed in the side because if you don't have, I think there's this feeling that if you don't have this rifle or this thing, you're not going to kill it, right? You have to have this stuff.
00:59:38
Speaker
It's become that way. Years ago, we hunted in New Zealand. So this is 10 years ago. And we have some good friends over there. And they say that Americans are all into their gimmicks. That's just what they all say over there. They're just like, the Americans are into their gimmicks. And my friend specifically said, he said, all you need is a good shooting rifle and some ambition. And that is true. It doesn't matter what rifle you have in your hands. People have been killing stuff with a spear.
01:00:05
Speaker
for all these years. And when you go to Alaska, when you're hunting Alaska for these moose, killing the moose is not hard. It's enduring out there for the whole time getting there. It's all the logistics, all that other stuff is tough. But once you get the moose in front of you, you just blow it over. That's just the way it is. And most of the animals up here, it's not about how tough the animal is to hunt for the most part. It's just the it's the adversity of everything else about Alaska that's difficult. So on the cartridge topic,
01:00:33
Speaker
What cartridge are you guys shooting? What's your go-to for Alaska, for moose?
01:00:37
Speaker
I've been 300, any combination, anything 30 caliber and bigger is good. To be honest with you, we haven't bought guns for a long time. Like we've been shooting guns that have been given to us. And so we've been really blessed in that way, gotten to shoot some really cool, nice guns. I've shot, from the beginning, I've pretty much shot 300 Ultra mag and then got 300 Weatherby mags for a long time. And then I've been shooting a 300 PRC.
01:01:04
Speaker
And this year I'm going to be shooting a 375 Ruger, uh, everything up here. Yep. I'm building that gun out. That's going to be pretty much my, I told you I'm putting a six one to six power scope on that sucker. Like I'm shooting everything close and I'm going to blow a hole through it. The size of Texas is my plan. Is that going to have the open sites on it as well? Like underneath the scopes, you can do both, or is it just going to be just scope on top?
01:01:30
Speaker
Now, just that one power scope when you're getting in close. And then if things really aren't just working out just from the hip. That's right. That's where I want a 45 70 just in case things go completely sideways. So do you do you guys carry it? Like what do you guys carry for side arms? You're hunting up there and then bear country.
01:01:50
Speaker
I try not to carry a sidearm. I try to carry nothing but a rifle in my hands. Most of the time we do. I've had a 10 millimeter. I'm getting a bigger gun this year. I don't like anything semi-automatic. It is like inevitable.
01:02:05
Speaker
the one shot that you're going to need it, it will not go off. Like a little jam. Like I handed it, I handed my 10 to my brother when we were hunting and he shot at a tarmigan and it jammed. I'm just like, that would happen right when a bear is charging you. It would jam right then. So I'm a revolver guy.
01:02:21
Speaker
I've always had revolvers except for the last couple of years I had that 10 and I'm going to be going back to a revolver. But honestly, I've shot a lot of stuff with pistols, bears specifically finishing them off. And I'll never forget there was this one bear. I shot it six times with a pistol and the thing was still moving and it was a black bear.
01:02:40
Speaker
And I was just like, I have never shot something with a 300 ultra that didn't just die at close range. It is done for, but you shoot a bear with a pistol six times and it's still wiggling. I'm like, what happens when you get a 1500 pound brown bear coming at you? I just feel much more comfortable with a rifle in my hands. I just know when I pull that trigger, it's going to be feeling 300 grains of lead going through it. Is that how much I think?
01:03:08
Speaker
There's no comparison for, I've been packing a 44 for years and the best energy I think I get out of it, it's 1200 foot pounds of energy. When you compare it to like that 375 Ruger, I think at the muzzle, it's got 5,000 almost, like 4,800 foot pounds of energy. You're talking four times the energy hitting something.
01:03:32
Speaker
There's no way to compare that. So honestly, most pistols, unless you get up into a 500 Smith and Wesson, even that's underpowered for a lot of circumstances. You don't want a pistol in your hand when a bear is charging you. I'm going to be running a 500 this year and like a pistol is better than nothing, but I'm just saying if at all possible, I want my shot. If I have one shot at a bear, I want it to come out of a rifle.
01:03:58
Speaker
You know what I mean? Pistol, in my mind, the pistol is just last resort. Some friends of ours, you probably have seen the, you might've seen the hunt, but they wounded a brown bear a couple of years ago and the rifle jammed. And thank God he had a big pistol on him, but then the pistol fell off in the snow and it turned into this total cluster and the bear comes all the way down to him.
01:04:19
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's a snow, right? And they'd go up on the rocks and yeah. Yeah. And you end up shooting it with this pistol. That is where a pistol shines right there when every, like you got to have redundancy. Like anytime you're doing anything extreme, it's like with flying, everything's redundant. You got two mags, you got two fuel tanks. Like you have every, there's this redundancy so that if one thing goes wrong, you're good.
Safety in Dangerous Hunting Conditions
01:04:42
Speaker
And so we'll always carry pistols, but
01:04:43
Speaker
My preference is, even when I'm packing, I try to have a rifle with us just because when you walk into that bear, you'd rather shoot it with a rifle and a pistol 10 times out of 10. Do you have bear spray as well? Sometimes. I think bear spray is super effective. I've gotten hit with it and it's miserable.
01:05:03
Speaker
My, not bear spray. My kid when he was little, we had pepper spray up on top of this like China cabinet in our house. And I remember him getting up there in his ear and him just gagging and watering eyes and throwing up. I'm like, oh, that stuff works, doesn't it? Probably never do that again. Hitting himself with it. Kind of getting towards the end of this thing. What hunts do you guys have coming up? What videos you guys have coming out? You got anything crazy planned for this
Upcoming Adventures and Content
01:05:26
Speaker
year?
01:05:26
Speaker
We've got three more major videos coming out this year. We're going to release some shorter stuff as well, but we got an awesome caribou hunt coming out and then some Montana mule deer and another good elk hunt. The caribou hunt turned out top-notch. That one's done and ready to roll. I'm hearing about a week and a half, but as far as hunts coming up, we're going to be, we're doubling down on Alaska this year. So really.
01:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, unless I draw some killer mule deer tag, I'm going to be hunting nothing but Alaska and Colton will be up here with me. So that's our plan. We'll get some brown bear. You're going to see brown bears this next year. As long as we don't die, as long as we don't die, Lord willing, we're going to, we're going to kill some brown bears, some sheep, goats, and moose for sure. Maybe some caribou. So lots of good stuff up here. Dude, that's so awesome. Now what about blackberry? Do you have interest in doing it up there or no? I've killed.
01:06:22
Speaker
A lot of black bears were a little bit over black bears at this point in our lives. So just big moose and the, the mountain goat seems really intriguing to me. The sheep sounds really intriguing to me and you've never killed a sheep, right? I've killed three. Oh really? Yeah. I've killed two doll sheep and a big horn in Idaho. Oh wow. Yeah. So she were actually cheaper on the bottom of my list personally. Yeah. I want to kill a doll sheep. I haven't killed a doll sheep. I killed my big horn last year.
01:06:50
Speaker
Oh, you drew the tag. Okay. And, and so what's on top of your list then brown bear and. Brown bear. If I killed one thing this year, it'd be a brown bear. Second thing would be a goat. And then I'll go for everything else. But my folk, I'm going to be pretty laser focused on harvesting a harvesting, not shooting. Hey, we're going to go pluck it out of the ground. Big brown bear. That's there. Be careful. It'll harvest you if you're not, I could do careful. And so what's your plan for the blonde bear? Are you going to do a life size mound or rug or what's the plans of that?
01:07:19
Speaker
I, it'll depend on how good it is. I'll definitely, if it's a, if I end up not getting a great one, then it'll just be a, I'll just stay on the hide and hang it. But if it's good caliber, I'll probably rug it. And if it's really big, I'll probably life size it. We'll see. That's over 10 feet. I'll probably life size it. Just so you can have that giant thing in your house somewhere.
01:07:40
Speaker
Yeah. I'll have to save up. I'll have to save up for a while, but I'll life size it. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. I'll bet you that's a $10,000 amount. I don't know how much it's costing. I don't know either. Can't be cheap. No. But that's awesome, guys. Thanks for coming on, man. Where can we find you? Where should we follow you? Tell us about that stuff.
01:07:57
Speaker
That's what Colton does. I'm not even on social media anymore.
Limitless Outdoors' Online Presence
01:08:00
Speaker
So he has to answer that. So we have our limit. We have our limitless outdoors YouTube channel. We're also on the pursuit channel and that airs Sunday mornings as well as I think Friday's Saturday or Saturdays is another airing. And then our Instagram is limitless outdoors official. And our Facebook is just the most outdoors. Those are all of our things.
01:08:20
Speaker
Then we also have a Patreon where we release videos and just a little bit more insight into what's going on with us and things ahead of time.
First Mile Discipleship Program
01:08:29
Speaker
So yeah.
01:08:31
Speaker
what we do and then we do another major thing that we do that maybe a lot of guys aren't aware of is that we do a first mild discipleship program. We have our book that we release or we give out for free completely for free to people and it's just a it's just to help guys walk through and learn who Jesus is and how to walk out there
01:08:51
Speaker
life with Jesus. So that's a huge thing that we do. We're about to start up another first-mile discipleship class and we really sign up periods occasionally for when we can fit guys in. It's a seven-week course that we go through on Zoom and
01:09:06
Speaker
We have a bunch of leaders doing it now and we're about to start one up in less than two weeks, I think now. So we're looking forward to that. That's honestly, that's one of the highlights of what we do is seeing people's lives change through Jesus, through us bringing Jesus
Impact and Personal Stories
01:09:25
Speaker
to them. It's a huge thing for us. The messages that we get of support for what we do far outweigh the
01:09:32
Speaker
amount of YouTube comments hating on what we do. But it's really, that's the whole thing for us is seeing lives changed. Because like me personally, Justin, all of us, we were once at that point where our lives were, our lives were a mess and it completely got changed through Jesus. So that's
Closing Prayer and Podcast Conclusion
01:09:55
Speaker
the whole thing for us. Amen. All right, Justin, wrap us up in our prayer here. We'll get out of here. All right.
01:10:03
Speaker
Lord, I just thank you for this day and I thank you for all that you've done in our lives, your provision and your power, your leadership and more than anything, Lord, I just thank you for your grace, for saving us, for forgiving us, even when we still make mistakes, Lord. And I just pray that you would watch over us, watch over our families as we continue to go out there and
01:10:24
Speaker
take on the world, Lord, that You've given us to steward and tend to. I pray that anyone who is listening to this, Lord, I just pray that You'd be encouraging them in their spirit, Lord. I pray that You'd take them to a whole other level in their relationship with You. And Lord, I just pray that You would prosper both the ministries of limitless and tricer, Lord, and just pray for Drew and his leadership and Paul there as well. And Lord, we just pray that You'd be glorified by everything that we say, do, and think, and we commit all this to You in Jesus's name. Amen.
01:10:53
Speaker
Amen. All right. Let's do it again, guys. All right. Love it. Thank you very much. Thank you.
01:11:03
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Tricer Podcast. Do us a favor and like and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. Give us a follow on Instagram and Facebook at TricerUSA and go and check out all of our innovative gear at www.tricerusa.com. Until next time, shoot straight, have fun, and always put God first.