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Ryan Sapena – Seek Outside
187 Plays1 year ago
This week Drew has Ryan Sapena from Seek Outside on the Tricer podcast. Ryan talks about the origins of Seek Outside and developing the tipi style tent. Seek Outside has a lot to offer the outdoor industry from tipi tents to backpacks and lots of great gear in between. Ryan and Drew discuss the “hot tent” idea and how to stay warm in a tent as well as what size stove works best in different situations. Also check out the Seek Outside Podcast and the gear on their website.
RYAN SAPENA – SEEK OUTSIDE
Website - https://seekoutside.com
Instagram - @seekoutside
TRICER USA
Website – https://tricerusa.com/
Instagram - @tricerusa
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/tricerusa/
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Transcript
Introduction to The Tricer Podcast
00:00:01
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.
Meet Ryan Sapina: Marketing Director at Seek Outside
00:00:22
Speaker
All right. Excited today to have Ryan Sapina on the Tricer Podcast.
00:00:28
Speaker
Ryan is the marketing director at Seek Outside. If you don't know who Seek is, they are like the industry leader in teepees and ultralight shelters for backpacking with a big hunting focus.
Passion for Glassing and Observing Wildlife
00:00:41
Speaker
So Ryan, how are you doing? I'm good. Thanks for having me on, man. I'm super excited. Glassing is probably my favorite aspect of hunting. So I'm stoked to get in and talk with you guys here.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, we could talk about glassing a little bit today if you want, but yeah, I have a thing for glassing if you can't tell. I typically spend eight to 10 hours a day in the glass when I'm hunting, so I absolutely love it more than anything. More than anything I do, I like to glass. I would probably never kill an animal again and choose glassing over killing an animal.
00:01:21
Speaker
Dude, that is so funny. I'll even take my setup out with my wife when we're just going on a hike, going fishing or something like that, planning on having a little picnic. I'll just bring it and there's a nice basin or a vista that I can check out. I will be on that. Yeah, it's awesome. I just love seeing stuff. Yeah, isn't it shocking when you go and do something like that? How many people are hiking right by animals? I don't even know they're there.
Understanding Animal Behavior for Better Hunting
00:01:52
Speaker
right in these areas. So I'm like, I go to the gym pretty much every day and I ride my bike almost daily now, but I'll go mountain biking and I always just throw a tripod on my backpack.
00:02:05
Speaker
and I'll ride out in the hills, find a spot, read my Bible, and I'll glass for like 30 minutes in the morning, couple days a week. And this is like an area that you can't hunt, but there's deer in there, right? And it's just fun to sit down and look for animals. And it's just like anything, right? It's like shooting your bow or shooting your rifle. It doesn't hurt you to glass. It actually helps you get better. The more you do it, the better you're gonna get at finding animals. And honestly, I kind of like looking at those unpressured ones and kind of understanding a little better too. You can see they're natural.
00:02:34
Speaker
see how they're acting naturally and stuff. That is a good point. There's something special about just observing an animal, especially if you're looking at mule deer, the glass in an area for
00:02:48
Speaker
30 minutes or whatever, 30 minutes, six hours.
Challenges and Joys of Hunting Cooz Deer
00:02:52
Speaker
And, you know, in one spot that you've been looking at constantly, an animal just, you know, you just see, just see a butt or you see the side of an animal pop out. And it's just like, for me, it's super cool to just look at animals, observe them. It's a bit like glassing to me is a very Zen thing, right? You're not thinking of anything else. It's very similar to like shooting your bow.
00:03:15
Speaker
without the mechanical aspect of it. But yeah, you just, it's really cool. It's awesome. And having a good tripod makes all the difference. Makes all the difference. Have you, have you owned a cruise deer yet? I have not, no. Oh man, you got to go hunt cruise deer. Yes. Those are my, by far my favorite. And that's kind of what sparks everything Tricer does is cruise deer.
00:03:40
Speaker
But you haven't glassed until you glassed looking for coozier, man. Those little boogers, it's so fun. You got to go do it. It's like the, my number one, like pick one animal would be coozier for me. And you get up there and you're looking for this little deer. Talk about something that you could, not only like you look at some area and also there's one there six hours later, you can see one standing on its feet, blink.
00:04:03
Speaker
It'll disappear and you won't see him for three hours, but he was sitting right there. And you're looking at him with 6,000 more BTX and you don't see him because he's just, they just blend it. They call him the Grey Ghost
Judging Deer Size: Tips and Tricks
00:04:12
Speaker
for a reason. Yeah. Like the size of a rabbit, essentially. They're super small. Um, yeah, like around a hundred, 110 pounds. The ones I've been hunting in Sonora, I've been going to Sonora now, they're about 120. The big, the mature deer. It's been really cool getting to hunt down there a little bit too and kind of learn about them.
00:04:30
Speaker
You start realizing a mature buck is about 120 pounds, a buck over four. I think the reason why the deer are so small in Arizona is we're killing deer that are three years old and younger. They start putting on some mass and I have some friends who are really, they guide down there and I've been learning from them and you start measuring the width of the ears and the head and you start realizing like, wow, that head is bigger on these animals and they get more mature. I think the same thing goes for meal deer too, right? I mean, the older they get, the bigger their body's going to get.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, like, especially body size, I feel like that's the, that's the big one for me. Uh, get into November. I mean, obviously the extra fur that they got kind of helps, helps make that a big difference. But me and my buddy were mule deer hunting this year. And, um, he, he shot one that was, I don't know, it was probably three, three and a half, you know, three and a half years old, you know, not, it was a, it was a good buck, but.
00:05:28
Speaker
I shot one that was probably past its prime start to regress, but the body on that thing was, I mean, it was, I don't think I'd ever like hunted with somebody else and killed two deer, like on back to back days to where you can really, you know, kind of see the size difference, but it was, it was shocking. It was like, man, this one's got a body on it. And it had a, you know, it was,
00:05:55
Speaker
definitely worn and weathered, but it was, it was crazy to see that, that size difference there between a younger, young buck and the old guy. Yeah, it's a good way to judge, especially, I mean, mule deer are a little bit easier, right?
Seek Outside's Product Range and Philosophy
00:06:10
Speaker
Cause it's just like the racks are just much bigger. Yeah. With a coozed deer, 110 inch buck, you shoot them pretty much every day. That's a huge, that's a, that's a bit of a crock of buck, 110, right? Um, so it's like,
00:06:24
Speaker
It can get really hard to field judge a difference between 100-inch and 108-inch buck. You can do your best, but the body size really does help, looking at that stuff. Everything adds to it. There's measurements you could take from the shoulder to the brisket and the neck length and neck girth. There's just things to look at.
00:06:44
Speaker
When you start falling in love with these animals, you start to understand their anatomy, it really helps more than just like, oh, look at that rack. It's just another tool. Another thing to have in your quiver when you're trying to judge an animal and see how big it is. So nothing about deer. Tell you about Seek, man. I have your silver tip tent. I'm probably going to get one of your Cimarons this year with a stove. And they talk me into a different one.
00:07:10
Speaker
I love it. I've used it on a bunch of plants. I've used it on some extended like eight to 10 day fly-in hunts. Great tent or great. You guys call them tents, teepees? Both? You know, I feel like we call them shelters. Shelter. Okay. Great shelter. There you go. It's a great shelter. So tell me about Sikh. When did you guys start? Where are you guys located? You know, what's your, who are you guys making stuff for?
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. So we, uh, yeah, we're seek outside. We're based at a grand junction, Colorado, um, on the, on the Western slope here started in 2010. So we've been in business for about 14 years now. Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, shoot, man, we just make, we make shelters, tents, whatever you want to call it. We even make tarps. We can't, it's tough because we, like when you say tent, most people think of like your traditional half dome.
00:08:03
Speaker
you know, it's got aluminum cross stays going through it. And, you know, there's there's a floor sewn in and all that stuff. So I think that's why we tend to go with shelter because ours are a little bit different. You know, we make teepees was kind of kind of how we got started, which was, you know, creating a floorless teepee, running a titanium stove in there was kind of the impetus for that was
00:08:28
Speaker
Really our founders, both Kevin and Angie, they are big hunters and they got to a point where they just wanted to be a little bit more comfortable back there.
00:08:38
Speaker
And obviously the TP has been around for a long time, but we were kind of on the forefront of getting that titanium stove, the ultralight titanium stove that you can throw in that shelter. And you know, for like with that Cimarron, for example, you got a tent and a stove for, you know, five and a half, six to seven pounds, depending on what stove you get, which
00:09:04
Speaker
I always say, you know, the weight savings there are relative, right? Because if you're running like some ultralight, Dyneema, you know, Durston tent or something like that, it's going to be a little bit heavier. But if you're running your typical half dome tent before you switch over to like the Cimarron and stove, you're actually probably going to be saving weight. You know, that TP design
00:09:28
Speaker
allows you to have a lot more square footage for the weight just because you're running the one center pole. The floorless aspect of it is great for hunters. The shoulder seasons that you're typically going out, you're dealing with moisture, you're dealing with snow, you're dealing with mud. In a standard tent that's got the floor sewn in there, you have to take your boots off before you crawl in and it's just
00:09:55
Speaker
you know, I personally think that the floorless route is much more conducive to hunting.
Innovations in Ultralight Backpacking and Hunting Gear
00:10:02
Speaker
And, you know, like when you're hunting, man, the last thing you want to have to worry about is being clean out there, right? You're spending long days, early wake ups, you don't want to have to worry about keeping your tent floor clean. So that's why I really enjoy the floorless. But however, a lot of people do like that floor. So we do also make flooring options for all of our shelters, I just
00:10:25
Speaker
typically prefer the floorless. So yeah, we make our stuff for back country hunters. We make our stuff for, we also make backpacks as well, hunting backpacks and recreational backpacks. But primarily we make our stuff, you know, hunters kind of picked it up in the early days because it was a way to make those late season mule deer hunts, make those, you know, early spring bear hunts, elk hunts, whatever you want, make them easier.
00:10:55
Speaker
Um, one of the best parts about having a stove in there is the morale boost you get, right? You don't have to worry about, uh, you know, I mean, back in the day we used to, when I was a little kid, we used to stay in a tent trailer, um, that didn't have propane or anything in our hunting spot. And then later we kind of did some more tent camping, but that was like the one thing that you always dreaded.
00:11:17
Speaker
at the end of the day was getting back into that tent and having to crawl into a cold sleeping bag. And in the morning you wake up and you're cold and you got to, there's like that 10 seconds in between putting your pants on or you have to get out of the sleeping bag. So I think Hunter's picked up our hot tent because of that reason, because it just makes it so much, much more comfortable in the back country for you at a weight penalty that is very minimal. Yeah. I'm definitely.
00:11:46
Speaker
going to try the stove, like a tippy of the stove this year. It's kind of my one of my things I want to do.
00:11:51
Speaker
I think it definitely has its advantages in a lot of places. I am mixed on the teepees because I do feel like I get dirtier in there. I'm just using a tarp. We should talk about that a little bit, what I should be using. I'm just using some cheap Amazon tarp that I got, and I feel like I'm just constantly getting dirty, which on an eight-day hunt, you're going to get filthy anyways. You smell so bad and you're just filthy. There's this dirt on you that's caked on. One of my favorite parts of the teepee is
00:12:21
Speaker
having no floor and being able to cook in there. Like I just lay in the tent, get on my sleeping bag for a long day and I cook right there on the dirt, right? And it's just easy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the floorless, it's got a lot of benefits.
00:12:38
Speaker
The one downside is you can end up getting a little bit more condensation if you're like pitched up on grass because you do get a lot of that moisture coming up from the grass. And, um, but yeah, I mean, doing things like cooking right in there, like right in your sleeping bag. Like one of the, especially with the, when you have the stove, one of my favorite things to do is, uh, just keep a little Tinder ball right by the stove. And in the morning, just throw that thing in the stove, get that thing ripping.
00:13:07
Speaker
First off, if you do have any condensation, it's going to burn it off immediately. But it also just makes, when you are cooking, when you're making coffee, it just makes it so much easier. You're not trying to bundle up in your sleeping bag and do the one arm thing to get your jet boil going. But yeah, no, that's definitely a big benefit. Being able to cook right on there and not have to worry about
00:13:31
Speaker
I have to worry about pouring boiling water on your $300 tent footprint. I will say just one thing, a lot of guys, you mentioned bringing a tarp to put it down. I would say probably the most popular way to have something almost like a footprint, what a lot of guys do is just Tyvek or house wrap. Yeah, the house wrap stuff.
00:13:57
Speaker
super light, super cheap. You can beat it up. And it's also a little bit more like, it typically doesn't, the dirt doesn't stick to it as easily. So I find rigid too, right? Like it's not as like, uh, I feel like my tarp kind of like this will like kind of bunch up on me a little bit. And that's why, how I get so dirty. Exactly. Yeah. Tyvek is a little bit more structured to it. Maybe it just stays out. I don't know. That's what it seems like looking at. I need to try and get some of that and try that out this year.
00:14:24
Speaker
But like I said, it's in my quiver. I have a thing for tents. I love tents and I have way too many. So I run it and I'm going to be running a florist on a few different hunts this year. Another thing I love about a florist tent or a teepee style, I'm just focused on teepees right now. We can look at the other stuff too.
00:14:43
Speaker
is there's a lot of room. You're basically in the vestibule. I'm a bit with hunting. If it tends to have a vestibule, you could take your big Agnes tents and it's like they're useless to me because there's no vestibule. It's not just you. It's you, your rifle, your bow, your backpack, all this stuff. You need a place for that to be because putting it outside, it's going to get hammered in the mountains. It's going to rain. It's going to snow. It's going to get
00:15:10
Speaker
You need a place for it. And with a teepee, you just have such a big footprint to keep your stuff in there. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of them.
00:15:20
Speaker
Not the silver tip, but some of the bigger ones you can stand up, like to put your pants on and stuff like that, which is nice. But yeah, they're basically just a big vestibule. They're kind of designed like a circle, right? That's the general shape of them. You can do so much with that space. It's a very useful kind of design.
00:15:43
Speaker
with the teepee, like I kind of mentioned earlier, you're getting that style is the best space to weight ratio out there, just because you're eliminating so many, so many ounces or pounds, whatever kind of tent you have in those poles in the extra fabric that it takes to make the loops to put the poles in. So you're getting so much more space for both the price tag and the weight that you're carrying in.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, and one thing I love about the teepee is it's literally just one fabric, right? There's no windows, there's no zippers, there's no, I mean, there's zippers on the outside, obviously, two zippers, but it's not like, there's no cover, it's just no floor, it's just a teepee. And I, where my system is, I don't run bags, so I just stuff it. So I'll take that teepee and I'll just stuff it in like the side pocket of my XO, right in the bottom of it, you know?
00:16:37
Speaker
and you can just shove it in there and it just packs really nice. You're able to stuff them really nice in my experience. Definitely. Yeah.
Exploring Shelter Options for Spike Camping
00:16:44
Speaker
Well, and here's the thing, man. I mean, the teepee was literally created by Native Americans for the mobile hunter. Like before the horse got to North America,
00:16:57
Speaker
There's a lot of wigwams. There's a lot of mounds. They didn't, at least to my knowledge, they didn't necessarily have the teepee. That was specifically a, an innovation so that they could have something that they could just take down real quick. It packs up small. They don't have a, to haul around a whole structure so that they could chase the bison herd. So it's in essence, I mean, it is like really the hunter shelter. Yeah. And they are light. So like I have.
00:17:25
Speaker
We actually have the same elk tag this year. I won't say the unit or what state we're in. We both have the same elk tag in a state together this year, unplanned. I will like maybe spike camping that hunt. Would the silver tip be the way to go with that? Or would I use one of these new structures? You guys don't only do TPs. You have a bunch of really bitchin' stuff you're coming out with. And I really love some of your new drawstring. I haven't got to hold one in hand, but some of your drawstring style,
00:17:53
Speaker
openings, like no zippers on them. What would you run for that for a spike camp?
00:17:59
Speaker
I mean, it's it's really just a weight thing, right? I mean, that silver tip is about as light as I think it's about the same as our current two person shelters that we have. Yeah, yeah, the new system that you're talking about is our zipperless design. So basically, we just turned one of the guidelines into the zipper, we actually have a patent on it, which is pretty cool. It it, you know, zippers out in the woods are the one thing that will 100% fail. There's no zipper that's fail proof.
00:18:28
Speaker
you always got to get them repaired and take using that zipperless design kind of kind of mitigates that a little bit but uh really i mean i don't know man that silver tip is pretty sweet the really the only reason we have that one discontinued right now is just because we had a couple other in that two person range and with us being like all we make all of our stuff here in grand junction it you know it's hard to find sewers sometimes so if you have a bunch of different products in your production it it slows
00:18:56
Speaker
you know, certain things down. So that silver tip, a lot of people like it. I mean, you can run the trekking poles with it. I it's pretty sweet. I will say like, our new our new war shelter, the Guardian is is kind of what took its place. It's a it's on that zipperless
00:19:15
Speaker
design again it's designed to have you know make your trekking poles kind of the two center poles if you want we also have carbon poles that you can you know buy if you don't want to replace if you don't want to have to be taking your trekking poles in and out.
00:19:29
Speaker
But that one, it's 32 ounces with the stove jack. The stove jack sits in the vestibule of it. So it doesn't take like in the silver tip, if you were to have a stove jack, which the silver tip used to be our two person teepee. If you had a stove jack in there, it would turn that shelter into a one person.
00:19:50
Speaker
Whereas this new one, the Guardian, it is a true two person. So you can have two people with the stove, 32 ounces. It's a, it's a pretty sweet one, especially for that time of year. Um, you know, if you're doing archery season, we gotta, we have a nest for it that sits inside so you can, you know, if you got ants or, or even, you know, if you're, if you're pitching up at high altitude and you're worried about condensation, um, you know, that, that can help.
00:20:16
Speaker
Um, but I don't know. The silver tip is sweet, pretty sweet. And I think, um, I think we are going to be doing some limited releases of it here, here coming up throughout the next couple of years. But, uh, yeah, it's tough, man. It's tough. So on the guardian, I don't know what their proper name is. Would you call it like an eight, an A-frame tent? Is that what you, what would you guys call those tents? They're almost like the scout tents, right? They kind of, the poles on both ends come down.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of like almost like a tarp tent, right? Trekking Pole Shelter is a common term that you'll see for that style. And it's very common in the ultralight world. You know, ultralight backpacking through hikers. Yeah, I want to talk about that too, next. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's like, if you were to look it up on Google Trekking Pole Shelter, you know, the Guardian style would come up.
00:21:17
Speaker
Okay, gotcha. Yeah, and that's I wanted to kind of I was leading that way with that question is how much you guys are really innovative stuff. How much of that is coming from you started the hunting world, which can be a little bit more grit and Barrett like burr hunting, you know,
00:21:39
Speaker
Now, how much of your influence is coming from this through hiking, right? Cause you're bringing that in. And I think, I think that through hiking and backpacking has had a tremendous impact on the hunting space. That's why I say that. Right? Like it's like, we're not carrying canvas tents around. We're going ultra light, but it's coming from this other space, right? And bringing it in with the dynamo and all that stuff. So how much influence is coming from that market? Cause you didn't start out in that space, right?
00:22:02
Speaker
It's a huge influence. And it's becoming more common amongst just outdoor companies in general, right? This whole ultralight movement. I need to think about it, especially nowadays with onX and some of these big advantages that us as hunters have. You gotta go in farther, you gotta go in steeper, get into steeper stuff. And being able to shave two and a half, three pounds off your pack
00:22:30
Speaker
Ideally, you'd be able to shave more, but if that's where you're starting with your tent, that's huge. That's a big step when you are looking at ultralight backpacking. A lot of the weight cuts that you're seeing, if you look up a gear list on outside magazine or whatever, a lot of the weight cuts are you're saving three ounces here, you're saving four ounces here. Well, if you can save
00:22:56
Speaker
like a pound and a half or two pounds on your tent. That's, that's giant for hunters. So yeah, there's, I mean, there's a lot of influence and actually outside magazine, uh, they actually hit our founder up Kevin, uh, to do an article talking about how your next great. Backpacking backpack is going to come from a hunting company. And that is because like with, with hunting, right? You want to, you want to go as light as possible, but you're also trudging through Oak brush through down timber.
00:23:26
Speaker
Bad weather conditions. Some of that ultralight backpacking stuff is not designed for those conditions. So kind of a big portion of what we do and our ethos as a brand is trying to make the lightest, most comfortable and most durable thing that we can, right? And so yeah, there's a ton of influence that comes from that. We have a lot of ultralight backpacking, you know, friends of the company.
00:23:53
Speaker
And to be honest with you, a lot of the people that work at Seek Outside, at least on the customer-facing side of things, they're not primarily hunters. They're primarily mountain bikers or
00:24:08
Speaker
Um, ultra runners or, you know, rock climbers, but the common thread that we all have is hunting. So it, I think that aspect allows us to take, you know, little pieces of information from this. Subsect of the recreational crowd, this, this piece of gear here, this would work great in a hunting platform and apply it there. So yeah, we have, we have a lot of influences from, you know, not just the hunting space there.
00:24:38
Speaker
I like what you said about ultralight versus durable because with my tripods, they are ultralight, but they're not the lightest, but they're stable. When it comes to durable and stable, it's interchangeable for me. I want my tripods to be light, but I want them to also be ultra stable as well. You could obviously go and buy a tripod that's lighter and has super thin legs, but it's not going to be stable.
00:25:02
Speaker
Right. So you could go and buy like, I don't know. I'm not picking on big Agnes. They made great stuff, but a big Agnes tiger wall and it weighs nothing and it's paper thin. But man, get yourself into a, you know, a freak, you know, thunderstorm up on, you know, 12,000 foot elevation and you're going to have some trouble in that tent. It's so like there has to be. When it comes especially to hunting, we're not as a general rule, we're not hunting off a trail. We're not hunting off of like,
00:25:32
Speaker
International Park where it's this kind of paved roads. Yeah, we're hunting in the middle of nowhere and stuff can hit the fan and you need to have a way to You know stay alive. There are some good stories this year from Colorado of some very experienced dudes getting in some very serious trouble Because storms came in And your guys stuff holds up to it I mean the teepees like the design of them like it's like you said it's been around for thousands of years and
00:26:00
Speaker
And it just holds up to wind and snow and rain really well. Yeah.
00:26:07
Speaker
That's one thing that we'll never compromise on. Our litmus test, I would say, for our new gear is Alaska, right? Would you take this on a flying trip to the north slope of the Brooks Range, where if you get a big windstorm coming in, 50 mile an hour gusts, 60 mile an hour gusts, snow,
00:26:30
Speaker
rain, whatever, whatever have you and a pilot can't get in for, you know, three, four days, is this shelter going to be able to hold up to that? And if it doesn't like, you know, fabrics are a big topic in the tent world right now, and they always happen, right? We're always trying to get something that's a little bit lighter, a little bit more waterproof, a little bit, you know, less sag, durable, all that stuff. And we
00:26:54
Speaker
I mean, shoot, we we have rows and rows of that's one of the great things about us being made in America, like controlling all of our production, is we are able to test all these things, like on
The Role of Tarps and Stoves in Outdoor Comfort
00:27:06
Speaker
a whim. So like, you know, new fabric comes out or we see a company that is using this certain fabric, you can be like, Okay, let's let's test that out. And to be honest with you, like, we've we feel that the stuff that we use is about as good as it gets. But
00:27:24
Speaker
If something else comes along that can stand up to those standards, we will happily change. We just want to make sure that if you're going in on a seven to 10 day flying hunt in Alaska, that this shelter is not going to fail you. Something like the center pole, we designed those to break before the tent does, so you might have to be able to find a log or something like that or a ridge pole to put in the middle.
00:27:49
Speaker
We don't want that thing to be able to fail and leave you in an SOL situation. Durability is something that we're not willing to compromise. It's not canvas, right? If a heavy tree branch falls on it or something like that,
00:28:11
Speaker
You know, I mean, I would say that we've had some pretty gnarly stuff happen to our tents and they're fine, but it's not Kevlar, but for what it weighs and be able to take it on a back country trip, it's about as good as it gets. No. So I think mine is still nylon, right? Is that correct? Like this, the regular brown, still nylon? Yep.
00:28:37
Speaker
What are the fabrics you guys are running your tents in now, your shelters and shelters? There's a couple of things, a couple of things here. So not all Sil Nylons are created equal, right? And Sil Nylon is kind of known as around the industry is that's the most durable. That's what Hilleberg uses. That's what Faroo uses. It's super durable.
00:29:07
Speaker
but not all of them are created equal, right? So just like in cars, right? You can make a car that looks just like a Toyota Tacoma, but if it doesn't have the same parts, it doesn't have the same frame, it's not built the same way, it's not gonna hold up, it's gonna look the same, and it might have the same name, but it's not gonna,
00:29:27
Speaker
function the same. So there's a couple things there, just a note for anybody that's looking into Tense. They're not all created equal. We use Dyneema and we also just released a Silpoly Tarp. So Dyneema is, like you had mentioned earlier, that's common amongst ultralighters. It's about as strong as you can get.
00:29:52
Speaker
It's got the tensile strength of steel for something that is super light. It's sub one ounce per yard of fabric, which is extremely light. The downside there is it does run into durability issues long-term. The thing about Dyneema and Silpoly,
00:30:21
Speaker
to the fabrics now that are being used heavily. And they're great fabrics for smaller shelters and for more casual journeys and adventures and stuff like that. But they don't have stretch. And that's one of the big things that still nylon is knocked for. But you think about stretch and going back to the truck reference,
00:30:48
Speaker
Truck frame is built with to have some flex in the frame right anything that is is designed to Take to absorb shock or to be rattled around you want to have some stretch to it So that's that's one of the great things about so now on is it does have some stretch and now it you know It can be saggy in the morning. You just click your pull up and it's good to go Dyneema it
00:31:14
Speaker
I kind of compare it to like the Ferrari, right? It's light, it's fast, it's super comfortable, it's not going to be flapping around in the wind. But you do need to kind of baby a little bit more, you got to store it a certain way so that the weave doesn't get, you know, over a long period of time, if you don't store it correctly, it can, you know, create little holes in the fabric. Do you hang them? Is that how you store them?
00:31:41
Speaker
Ideally, yes. If you have the time and the space to hang those things to where there's no crunching, no folding, nothing like that, that's going to be the best way to do it. We tell people if you roll it up, if you fold it neatly and then roll it up, you're going to be good. It's minimizing that abrasion there. That's the only way to store it. If I'm hunting, I can still stuff sack it, right?
00:32:11
Speaker
For sure. Yeah. It's really only over long periods of time. And Sil Mylan doesn't have that issue. Sil Mylan, because of how it's made, it's designed to be essentially just mashed and punched and whatever you want to do to it. So you don't have to worry about it with that. You really just have to worry about that with Dyneema. Sil Poly, you don't have to worry about that either, just because
00:32:35
Speaker
of the way that the fabrics are made. Doneem is just a little bit different because it's like a big sheet instead of actually, you know, not to bore people, but it's a fabric differences there.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah. I think hanging things, like I'm looking at, you have your sleeping bag behind you. I have, I'm looking at my closet and I have like five quilts and sleeping bags hanging right now. Hanging stuff like that is just the way to go and keep it, keep it not getting messed up and not getting, you know, you don't want to keep it stuff, especially just sleeping bags. You know, you leave them stuffed up in a ball and they're not going to be as warm when you go use them this fall. That's for sure. That makes sense. The tent. I never even, I never knew that. Now, so Paul, I did see this tarp. I want to try one of your tarps. I do. People love those tarps.
00:33:19
Speaker
Um, I typically carry just like a REI, like I think it's a quarter dome, it's only weighs like a pound tarp, but I always have a tarp in my pack, no matter what, no matter what I do, there's a tarp in my pack because there's just, you can make a shelter with it. You could keep yourself out of the sun with it. You can keep yourself out of the rain with it when rain happens. Um, there's great to have. So that tarp is with, so Polly, your shoulders aren't so Polly, right? Or some of your shoulders sell Polly as well.
00:33:49
Speaker
No, none of our shelters are so so Polly we've kind of been toying with stuff that the thing with at least the types of sale Polly that we've been able to get our hands on is Like yes, it doesn't stretch but when it fails it fails pretty catastrophically just yeah, like here in Grand Junction we have we've had a freakin windy spring and we're
00:34:12
Speaker
We're kind of putting together a video, like a hardcore intense study on a bunch of different fabrics that we've tried over the years and that are out there right now. And that's what we've found with silk poly, but on a tarp, it's a little bit different, right? Because you're not... And the big thing is just like the tension on the seams.
00:34:31
Speaker
With a tarp, you really, just because how you use it, you don't run into as many issues. So yeah, the tarp is still poly, no sag. It's a little bit lighter than our still nylon. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. That still poly tarp is nice. You save, I think, three, four ounces compared to our standard one. The standard one's like 20 ounces? How much did your standard one weigh? Yep, 19.5 or something like that.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, I looked at getting one. I think you might have been sold out or I couldn't get it fast enough. But I ended up buying this other one. I haven't run for a few seasons now. Cool thing about a tarp too is there's like no wrong way to do it. So I mean, I've put tarps in some of the weirdest positions. Like you can tie it to a rock and over to this tree and then take a stump and post it up on this side. And you could really form fit them to any situation to cover yourself and make a shelter, which is kind of nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, a tarp is a staple in
00:35:29
Speaker
If you're not carrying a tarp, I don't know what you're doing, but like, especially this time of year, like if you're going out for spring bare man, like it's basically guaranteed that you're going to have some sort of deluge come through and, and mess your day up. And, um, if you don't have something light that you can just throw up in 45 seconds to a minute to, to get a little bit of a shelter, you're, you're again, SOL, but yeah, that, that is the great thing about tarps. That's why all.
00:35:58
Speaker
Alaskan guides if you check their pack they're gonna have they might even have two or three of those things Put in there in their pack just because if you need something I mean you can use them as a meat shade you can use them as a Sun shade if it's super hot you got shade there I'll even take mine out like I said earlier
00:36:16
Speaker
you know, when I'm going with my girlfriend, we take a tarp and we take actually one of our, we have like a half nest, which is basically a little bug shelter. And we'll set that up right by the lake and stand up there, you know, stay up there all day. And it's kind of the perfect combo. So tarps are very, you can use them as a ground sheet, you can use them, you know, to collect water if you need to. So they're great. Yeah, I mean, I typically
00:36:44
Speaker
I'll use them for storing gear as well sometimes, almost like a vestibule type thing. I'll just make a little A-frame, two trekking poles, staple that thing down, you're done. When I'm in the back country, if I'm wearing a glass and it's raining or snowing, I'll just run two trekking poles in the front and then do a lean-to style right down to something in the back.
00:37:03
Speaker
I always have a hundred foot of paracord on my pack, no matter what. 50 foot is not enough, especially when you start hanging quarters and doing stuff. So you just take some paracord and find something to tie it to and run that, I don't know what you call that. Like I call it the Boy Scout knot, like the slide knots, and you can tension it up and tarps are phenomenal. If you don't have a tarp, like you said, I don't know what you're doing, you need to get a tarp. You will not regret having a tarp when it's raining. Rain gear is cool, but it's not cool to sit in the rain.
00:37:31
Speaker
No, especially like in Alaska or something like that, where you can be, you can be sitting up in the rain for three days straight. And if you got good rain gear, it's one thing, but I mean, you're still getting that, like you got the hood on and you're hearing the droplets hit your head all day. It's like, it's mentally tolling, man, to be sitting out in the rain. And you still get wet. I mean, you're the best rain gear in the world. I mean, I've got a bunch of gear. I've got
00:37:57
Speaker
some, I think some Sitka stuff. I've got some Kuyu. I've got some first light. You're still going to get wet. It's still going to come in. It's still going to come into the neck somehow. You're going to, it's just not, yeah, it's nice to, it's nice to hike in, but sitting in the rain sucks. And then with a tarp too, you can get the tarp built. You can sit down in glass, still have a fire next to you. It's just, it's just like, it's like usually in the beginning, we talked about having like that, uh, the mental side of having, having like a, having a stove in your shelter.
00:38:23
Speaker
Having a tarp is like mentally just awesome. Especially because you have a six to eight hour rain day, you know. Exactly.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah. And we also, we have a shelter called the Sylex. It's kind of like our one person tarp style tent. It's basically just a diamond and I've kind of resorted to taking that out as my emergency shelter because I can, I can set it up. It only sets up with four stakes. And if you got two tracking poles, you know, between you and your buddy, you can set that thing up real quick.
00:38:53
Speaker
And it's an actual, it's like actually structured, right? So if you got some sideways blowing rain, you don't have to worry about which way do you position your tarp, you just crawl in there. And so that's kind of what I've resorted to is more of like a tarp tent that's ultra light. But yeah, they're important, man. I mean, like I said, all the Alaska guys have them. So if the Alaska guys have them, you should too.
00:39:21
Speaker
That Sylex, is that a spike camp style tent you would run or no? It is, yeah. It's a one person. It's small, but yeah, I mean, it's like 17 ounces. Really? Then literally sets up in 45 seconds. I want to look at that too. It's something similar to running a bivvy but bigger, right? Exactly. Yep. You can get your gear in there with you? Oh yeah. Yeah, it's got two vestibules.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's something I can look out to. Um, the hard thing is like, I'm typically always have someone with me, right? So I'm like, like this year I'll have a freaking camera guy on like the majority of my hunts. I'm gonna be hunting like two to three weeks. So I'm bringing someone along all these hunts. I got to have a shelter for him or I'll have like one of my kids with me or a partner. So like, it's like, I'd love to have a single person tent, but I can't pretend like there's other people not there, you know? So I like the idea of the Cimarron and getting other guys in there and doing that.
00:40:15
Speaker
Let's talk about the stoves and the best way to use them, all that stuff. I would love to hear from the experts because there's a bunch of keyboard warriors that'll tell me about it, but I want to hear from you about stoves and how you run it and what your thoughts are.
00:40:32
Speaker
Of course. I mean, so before working at Seek Outside, I'd never run a stove. The first time I heard about Seek Outside, I was hunting with my buddy and he had a Seek Outside tent with the stove. I think it was a four person teepee or six person teepee. I can't remember. It was a while ago.
00:40:51
Speaker
But, you know, he invited us over into his tent. We were kind of at a little campground just at night. We got in that tent. It was super warm. It was like, oh man, that's awesome. Ended up, I was living in Georgia at the time and then moved up to, just happened to pick Grand Junction of all places and seek outside was here and I was like, oh.
00:41:14
Speaker
be awesome if I could work there so. But yeah the the stove I mean that's what we're famous for man I mean and that that's why the hot tent specifically is becoming so common amongst hunters because it really does it really does change the game and it's like
00:41:33
Speaker
You can, it's kind of like Gators, I think, right? Like having a good pair of like storm worthy Gators. You can hunt without them. And if you got a good pair of, you know, calf high boots, you know, you can hunt without them. You're going to get wet eventually, especially if you're trucking around in snow all day.
00:41:54
Speaker
When it wicks down into your socks, there's nothing worse. You're sloshing around in water. I had it happen this year. It sucks. Yep, exactly. I think of it like that. It's not a necessity. Our stoves, with the exception of the two biggest ones that are more designed for our big Outfitters tents and stuff like that,
00:42:21
Speaker
They're not going to go all night. They're more for warming up when you get in the tents. I always reference November mule deer hunts because you got the time change, you're getting in the tent at like 5.30, 6 o'clock. You have a lot of time to hang out with your partner if it's just headlamps and jet boils.
00:42:47
Speaker
It can, yeah, I mean, you can survive, you can deal with it. But if you have a stove in there, especially we just came out with a new glass door that provides a lot of light. You get sitting in there and it's just truly a morale boost. It's something that makes it so much easier to get up the next day at, you know, 6.30 in the morning and truck another, you know, 10, 12 miles, whatever you're doing, looking for mule deer or elk.
00:43:16
Speaker
I really do think they're game changer. Probably the best thing that they provide is being able to dry your stuff off, right? Because it's a dry heat. Exactly. It's not like using a propane where it's a wet heat, it's a dry heat, so it'll really take the moisture out of stuff.
00:43:34
Speaker
It does. If you get that thing ripping, so we've had a couple customers. There's a guy that I kind of work with. He's one of our close friends and he's got a little kestrel and he always takes that thing out with his, he's got a 16 person teepee and a Cimarron. He's got the big boy. He's a guide.
00:43:57
Speaker
But he'll all he guides out of Wyoming and Utah and he is always sending us pictures of his kestrel In the tent like up at the top, you know for anybody that doesn't know kestrel is you know your your weather station your portable weather station and you know, he'll have that thing rip in it if you put it up at the top of the tent where all the heat kind of consolidates and
00:44:21
Speaker
you can get that thing up to 100 degrees. And that's when it's 10, 15 degrees outside. So you can really get that thing ripping and just being able to dry your stuff off. I mean, you can dry some wet socks out in 45 minutes to an hour if you have a nice line going across the stove to where you can drape those wet socks right over the top of it.
00:44:47
Speaker
doing that. If you're hunting in the snow, man, and if you don't have a stove, I don't know if anybody out there has ever tried to put on frozen solid boots in the morning, but it is horrible. I've been to the point where I didn't have that. When I didn't have a stove and you're trying to breathe on it, you're trying to
00:45:05
Speaker
throw your Bic lighter to it. You're trying anything just to get that thing to crack open. So being able to dry stuff off, morale boost and warming your boots up is probably the three things that I use that most for. Gotcha.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, I got to try it out this year. I do have a November meal deer hunt. I don't know that I'm going to backpack that hunt because I'm bringing along one of my kids, my buddy Jake and a film guy. We might backpack a little bit. I feel like those November hunts, I need a little more mobile. So I don't know if I want to pigeonhole myself into a backpack. I might be a little more mobile than doing some day stuff. Maybe some overnight stuff like hike in a few miles. You're going to find the deer, right? Because they're moving.
Hunting Stories and Lessons Learned
00:45:51
Speaker
So I don't, I don't know. We'll see, but that'd be a great tent for that is using that teepee with the, with the stove. And I definitely want to do some spring bear stuff. I know it's great for that. Um, with that, you guys make how many size stoves? So we make, uh, we basically make like eight. We have like our standard, cause we have, we have two, uh, versions.
00:46:21
Speaker
that are the ultralight version, which is like our U-turn. Basically, it just takes some titanium foil and wraps around the side for the sides. If anybody's ever used a cylinder stove, like a titanium cylinder stove, it's very similar to that. But then yeah, we go all the way from like our medium, large, extra, short, extra large, extra large, and then our big mama is kind of the biggest one. So yeah, we make a
00:46:51
Speaker
I mean, shoot, we make a stove jack for that Silex, that one person. So you can throw like a medium stove in a Silex and you got a hot tent, a solo hot tent for 16 ounces or sorry, 32 ounces with the stove. The stove only weighs 16 ounces? The stove itself. And then, you know, you had the stove pipe and it gets a little bit, it gets a little bit heavier. So 32 ounces, you're three pounds all in, 10, around three to four pounds all in for a tent, stove, everything.
00:47:21
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. That's slick. Yeah. But then we go, you know, we have our big mama and we have our heaviest tent is the courthouse, which is kind of like our wall tent style shelter. And you can get that set up for, you know, 15 to 17 pounds, again, depending on what stove and what size stove pipe you want. So I made, I actually just left my father's company, Duck Manufacturing Company. So I built my own stainless steel wall tent stove.
00:47:51
Speaker
Nice. But it's out of eighth inch stainless, and it probably weighs 150 pounds. So what you're telling me sounds appealing, even though my stove will, it will, it will outlast the apocalypse. You know, a nuclear bomb hits, this thing's going to last. But what you're telling me sounds pretty nice. So when you're running these stoves, so like, what's, let's look at the Cimarron. So I'm looking at the Cimarron this year, what stove am I going to get? Like your, I call you up, what's over my button?
00:48:19
Speaker
I feel similar is probably your number one seller I imagine, am I wrong? Yeah, yeah. Similar on Red Cliff and eight person, which is like basically the two person hot tent, the three person hot tent and like the four person hot tent. Maybe I'll do the Red Cliff because that's a three person. Maybe I'll do that. You can fit four in there if you need to. Not with the stove though.
00:48:39
Speaker
With the stove, yeah. Maybe I'll do the red cliff instead of the Cimarron. I already have the silver tip. Let's say I get the red cliff. Then I can fit my kid, a film guy, and me in there with the stove. I get the red cliff. What stove am I buying?
00:48:55
Speaker
So I'd probably try to talk into the SXL. That's honestly my favorite stove. It's the S stands for short. So it's basically our extra large stove, but we just cut it down a little bit just to end up saving. I think it's like seven, eight ounces. But you get a very similar sized burn chamber to our extra large. And that thing you can keep it going.
00:49:17
Speaker
You can keep it going all night if you want to. You got to stoke it. You got to add wood. Whereas opposed to some of our smaller stoves, it's not realistic to keep them going all night. You're burning finger-sized wood. Is that what I'm getting? The SXL, I can actually get some bigger logs in there. Not logs, but bigger two-inch diameter or something versus with the smaller stoves, you're running smaller wood.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah. So the smaller stoves, you could probably fit like a two to three inch diameter piece of wood in there, but it's going to be like, you know, six, seven inches long. Okay. That SXL, if you go to the gas station and you get a bundle of wood there, right? Most of those, like most of those wood pieces are cut to 17, 18 inches. You can take like that diameter
00:50:07
Speaker
You just have to trim it down to closer to like 13, 14 inches to be able to fit in there. So you can fit like sizable wood in there. Like wood. Yeah. You can get like actual branches in there. Not just the stuff you're breaking with your hands. Like exactly. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So SXL red cliff. What does that cost to me?
00:50:27
Speaker
What are my weights? Yeah, so a red cliff with an SXL stow. So we have like a thing called the hot tent combo, right? Which is you get your liner, which basically makes the shelter into a double wall shelter, which is pretty important to protect against condensation late in the year.
00:50:48
Speaker
So we have that hot tent combo, which is what most people end up going with. If you have the red cliff, the SXL stove, and call it a full liner, you're looking at probably, I think like $1,200 would probably be in the price range there, just off the top of the head. It'll depend on some of the options that you go with.
00:51:17
Speaker
And then you're looking at probably eight pounds for that whole setup there. And you split that up. So the Tetway, where's the Tetway? The Redcliffe way. So we have two different versions. We have the light version, which just has one zipper door. And then we have the standard version, which has two. The light is going to be four pounds, 14 ounces. And then the standard is going to be five pounds, three ounces.
00:51:41
Speaker
The SXL stove, again, depending on how much stove pipe you want, is probably gonna be sub three pounds, and then the liners are that extra pound to get you there. Okay, now what if I wanna do the Cimarron? What am I looking there? Same stove or different stove? You'd probably wanna go with a little bit smaller stove, probably a large. Now, and the Cimarron is,
00:52:09
Speaker
So I was explaining earlier, we have our U-turn, which cuts like on the large stove, you end up saving about a pound in between that standard and the U-turn, which is pretty significant. A lot of people don't like the U-turn because it's a little bit more difficult to set up. I shouldn't say a lot of people. The complaints on the U-turn are that it's a little bit harder to set up. And I think it, a lot of it comes from,
00:52:36
Speaker
people take it out for the first time in November on a mule deer hunt and they're trying to set the thing up with like cold hands and a headlamp and all this stuff. If you burn it in at home, which basically, you know, the thing about burning it in, if you start a fire in that titanium stove, all that metal is going to get a memory to it. So it makes it so much easier to set up that second time. And so, uh,
00:53:05
Speaker
Getting back to your question, if you, I would probably say like Cimarron and large U-turn is the ultralight option. And you're looking at for that whole stove is like two pounds. So Cimarron is three pounds, three ounces. Um, you're looking at the stove for two and then the liner probably another pound. Um, you know, you're, you're looking at six pounds for that whole setup and then it's going to be closer to a thousand bucks for the whole thing.
00:53:33
Speaker
Okay. So you're saving, you're saving two pounds though. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Now I don't know. I don't know. I don't know which one I get red, clever. I want to go the other way. Yeah. This is a, this is some good stuff, man. You got me excited about the teepees. Cause I'm thinking about these hunts now. I'm like, Oh, that'd be really nice to have on a few of these hunts this fall. Yeah. So one other thing to get you going here is we just came out with this new shelter called the twilight, which to me is probably the most, um,
00:54:00
Speaker
the most, in your words, bitchin' shelter that we have. SoCal, dude, bitchin'. Oh, I love it. No, I love it, man. I was a big fan of the Sandlot back in the day when I was a kid, and that's where I first heard that word. But the Twilight, it's kind of...
00:54:16
Speaker
really the first of its kind in terms of the shelter. So it's basically, it's, it's a two pole design, you got one taller pole, one shoulder, shorter pole up front. It's got the zipperless design there. So you save a lot of weight. But
00:54:32
Speaker
It's probably the most storm-worthy shelter that we have. It's got a ton of guy-out points. It's very similar when you're thinking of storm-worthiness. It's very similar to how Hillebergs work and some of those super hardcore four-season shelters work just with the shapes, the design of it, and all the guy-outs and stakeout points that it has.
00:54:59
Speaker
It's lighter than a red cliff by about 12 ounces, 12, 13 ounces. It's got the zipperless door, but you can literally set it up to where it's essentially a wall tint in there. So the two-pole design, you got so much space inside there for, again, I keep- Right, so much space for activities.
00:55:20
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I keep harkening back to the November mule deer hunt. First off, because I love hunting mule deer, but also because that's like, that's the, that's what these tents are made for. Um, you know, you're getting in there, like, it's just so nice to have that space. You can run a guy line in between both of the poles to dry stuff off. And I'm looking at her.
00:55:46
Speaker
I would definitely look at that one because it's pretty sweet. So is that a three person with a stove? Yeah, you can fit three in there. We call it, we like to call it like a luxurious two, but you could definitely fit three in a stove in there. Okay, so but I could definitely fit like me and my 10 year old and somebody in there. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's for sure. Yeah, that's a picture. It is more like a Walton. I like that design. That is really cool. I'm looking at it right now.
00:56:15
Speaker
One thing I like about it is it doesn't have, which is a good plan I have on teepees, is they're steep walled, right? This one kind of comes out and then goes down. So you have that almost like that wall tent design where you have like the two foot coming up and then it tapers in. So it goes straight up and then comes in. So you're going to get that space up against it because with the tarp, with the teepee, yes, they're roomy. But my experience is like to get that room, you're slipping up against the wall and then you're getting wet.
00:56:41
Speaker
Sometimes because you're sleeping bags touching that wall and then the conversation is coming down on me and it's getting me wet. Yep. Now, go ahead. I was just going to say this Twilight, we kind of came out with a new floor system for it that you can run a stove on top of. On top of the floor. Yeah. I don't know if any other companies have this, but it's got basically a low liner.
00:57:10
Speaker
that protects you against drafts, helps mitigate condensation. We designed that tent to where you can pitch it all the way down to the ground if you want to, but you can also elevate it two, three inches up off the ground to get air flow through there. And then you have this floor system with these walls on it that blocks the drafts so when you're sleeping at night, you're not getting that draft in there, but it airs the tent out and minimizes condensation
00:57:40
Speaker
more so than any of our other shelters. All right. So now I've switched four times on our tents I'm buying this year from you. I'm going to put the whole closet full of Sikh tents. Again, I have a thing for tents. I probably have as many tents that I do guns now. I love tents. I love testing gear and using them. So now, okay. So now I'm buying this Twilight. What is it way?
00:58:05
Speaker
So that one, I believe it's four pounds, two ounces. That one has a bunch of different options because you can actually run it like purely on trekking poles. So the back. One pole holds it up or do you double the poles in the back? So it's two trekking poles in the back and then one up front if you want to. But again, you can get the carbon poles so that you don't have to worry about running with trekking poles there. But yeah, I think it's four pounds, two ounces with maybe the back pole. So yeah.
00:58:36
Speaker
Which if it wasn't, no, I make a bitchin' tracking pole adapter for teepees and for this thing here. So I, in my mind, I'm like, wow, I can take my kids out. Cause I would probably want to run this this summer and try it out. Take my kids out tracking poles. There's our tent. There's our tent poles. Um, so it weighs four pounds. What stove am I running this? Am I running that smaller one, the large, or am I running the big guy?
00:59:00
Speaker
That one, you basically have the choice of any stove you want. It's lower, it's not as tall, so you probably don't need much of a stove right to warm it. You know, I typically, I have an SXL stove, and that's what I use for, honestly, the majority of my hunts and trips. But the great thing about the size of that one, and like you mentioned, it's a little bit shorter.
00:59:24
Speaker
the heat kind of piles up. Um, it's not like an eight person teepee where it's eight feet off the ground where that heat is kind of condensing. Um, so you can use like a small stove in there if you want to, like a large or a medium, it's going to heat it up the same. Um, but yeah, I really liked that. That's XL. I mean, it's a little bit heavier, but you know, you said three pounds, right?
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Your average, I mean, like I full disclosure, I'm a big fan of Hilleberg. So I run, I have a few of their tents. I run them a lot. They're heavier by nature and I, but I don't care because they're just nice tents. Um, they're on four pounds. So if I'm splitting it up and I'm taking this four pound Twilight in my pack and then I'm giving the three pound stove to my partner.
01:00:11
Speaker
Um, we're still less than carrying a tent or right there. The same, right? It's not like, you know, so it's not that three pounds is not terrible. And if you're saying that that'll burn a lot better and be more enjoyable, why not have that stove? Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's why I like talking to the experts.
01:00:27
Speaker
All right, so now I'm going to Twilight and a SXL stove suite. Well, dude, I kind of talked your ear off for an hour. We'd like to end this thing with, anything else you want to talk about before I bring you into the hunting story? No, man, I think that's it. I mean, just shoot. There's a lot of tents, like you were saying, there's a lot of tents out there.
01:00:53
Speaker
So do your research, but I do feel like in terms of hunting tents, we make about the best there is out there. There's a lot of great brands and every brand has their different lane. But yeah, if you guys have any questions, give us a call. We'll talk you up and we'll try to sell you the thing that you need for your shelter, for your hunts.
01:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, one thing I can say is you guys hit the bar. You guys are the bar by which every other teepee is measured. Every other floor of the shelter is measured and I appreciate that about you guys and I appreciate that you guys are not
01:01:32
Speaker
done with just having the Silvertip, the Cimarron, Redcliffe, you guys said, no, let's continue to innovate and do things. You continue to do things which is pushing the industry further and further forward. Being stagnant kills companies and you guys are continuing to evolve and you could have stopped at those tents and you didn't.
01:01:50
Speaker
awesome on that. So, dude, we like to end with a hunting story on this podcast. It could be any hunting story. It doesn't need to be like the biggest bull because if it was my story, it wouldn't be the biggest bull because I'd never kill a giant bull. It could be just be your favorite hunting story. It could be a funny story. It could be a story with your dad, your grandpa, or just, you know, an all-around story where we just killed a monster. I don't care. Just give us a hunting story. Do a little rip. Yeah. All right. Let me think for a second here. Let me
01:02:17
Speaker
Got a few that I could go in on, but that's the one. So as a person, I was kind of raised in hunting. My dad was a big hunter. My grandpa was a big hunter.
01:02:33
Speaker
A couple of my uncles, big hunters. So I kind of was always blessed with, I mean, I was ingrained in me at a young age. I was three years old sitting in my, my dad was a big waterfowl hunter. So, you know, Georgia, no, Colorado, Colorado. I moved to Georgia after high school there. Um, but, uh, but yeah, big waterfowl hunter. Um,
01:03:01
Speaker
But long story, to not get into the weeds there, I mean, I was blessed to have a great role model in hunting and kind of showed me the right way to do things. We got after it, got a lot of knowledge from him. So I personally always try to kind of pay that forward.
01:03:24
Speaker
One of the things that I like to do is take out new hunters and people that are interested in it. I wouldn't say that I'm going around recruiting people, but if I'm in a conversation with somebody and they're super interested in joining and becoming a hunter and getting their own food and just experiencing nature out, it should be experienced. I'm happy to oblige and help out.
01:03:54
Speaker
The, uh, this story takes place, I think it was in 2021. And it was actually my first year back in Colorado, um, after I lived in Georgia and you know, I, I had been doing a lot of scouting and I had all these areas that I'd wanted, wanted to check out. Cause I, when I was living in Georgia, I came back every year to elk hunt and, but you know, it was just one spot and I did some hunting in Georgia, but not nearly.
01:04:21
Speaker
the amount that you can do here in Colorado. You could hunt squirrels and turkeys and deer and pigs, but it just wasn't the same. I had all these areas that I wanted to scout out. I ended up getting like three or four, I guess it was six of us, five of my buddies who were from out of state, just old people that I knew, high school acquaintances, people that I'd met throughout the years.
01:04:51
Speaker
A few of them had wanted to do an elk hunt and a couple of them lived here in Colorado. But I had this one spot that I really wanted to get into and it was a hell hole. It was one of those spots where, but here in Colorado, if it's over the counter, that's where you got to get into to get into elk. And so all these guys, they had been
01:05:22
Speaker
They had been training for, for years, you know, for not for years, but for, for months to get in here, they'd been doing the whole, you know, getting acclimated to high altitude and, and taking the, the Vasio dilators. They were, they were super prepared. At least you'd think that, right? There's an amount of preparedness that you just, that you plateau at when you're never prepared for an elk hunt. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
01:05:52
Speaker
Um, so anyway, we, we get into this spot and it's, it's like, uh, just a treacherous drive in. Um, I had never been down this specific road and just looking at on X I was like, Oh, you know, it'll be easy to get in there. It looks like a nice four wheel drive road. We got, we got trucks, we got, you know, some built out rigs to where we can, we can make that happen. It wasn't.
01:06:20
Speaker
It turned into more of like a rock climbing type thing. But anyway, we get into the spot and man, we had a great hunt for the first couple of days. Got into elk, you know, it's six people, taking six people on an elk hunt is not always the most productive way to kill a bunch of elk.
01:06:44
Speaker
You're loud, you're trying to figure out everybody's kind of what their level of how hard they can go, where they can hike into, what they're wanting to do. Anyway, we've been hiking down this drainage basically every day for like three days straight.
01:07:07
Speaker
And, uh, cause it's, it was the spot where all the elk were. And I ended up going with two other guys, cause we kind of ended up splitting the groups up so that we weren't all covering the same ground. And, um, we ended up going into this, this area and I don't know for anybody that's hunted in, in certain parts of Colorado, there are certain parts where Oakbrush
01:07:31
Speaker
is the primary vegetation, oak brush, chokecherry, service berry, all those like- Just tearing you up. Oh, tearing you up. And it's like five feet tall, so you can't like get under it. You can't go over it. It's just- Push through and cut yourself. Yeah, exactly. Now, the great thing there is I've found elk in those type of areas are super vocal, right? Because they're not able to just see each other.
01:07:58
Speaker
They know that they can come to within 10 yards or something of a hunter and he might not even have a shot to put an arrow in him. But anyway, we get down to this drainage and at this point, you're waking up early and putting a lot of miles on every day.
01:08:19
Speaker
I should have kind of known the situation and been able to gauge these guys better to see that they were kind of wiped out and didn't have the most energy. But anyway, we go down this drainage for this afternoon hunt.
01:08:34
Speaker
And this one guy, we get down there and he is just, he is shot, man. And he's from sea level and obviously props to the guy because he was, he was busting his, his behind to, to keep up with us. And he was not complaining, but he just got to the point where he was like, I gotta go up to camp, man. I gotta chill for a day. And, um, so.
01:08:59
Speaker
We're like, all right, cool, man. Let's walk you back to this little trailhead, this game trail, so that you at least know where to go. And so we walk him over there, set him off on his way, and me and my other buddy go to sit over this wallow to hang out for the afternoon. Well, we're sitting there for like 45 minutes, an hour, and we hear this bugle. I was like,
01:09:25
Speaker
Was that a bugle? I was like, no, it's such a weird time for them to be bugling. It was like 2.30 in the afternoon. It wasn't like it was prime rut. It wasn't like September 21st or anything like that. And so we're sitting there and he bugles again. I was like, that can't be an elk. That's just for highly pressured Colorado elk. I could not see them bugling two times back to back just like that.
01:09:54
Speaker
So it must have been a guy. And so we kind of ignore it and we're sitting over this wallow and all of a sudden we hear, we hear, help!
01:10:04
Speaker
And we can't really, can't really tell what it is. We're like, is that because the other group that we were with had, there was like a T in the trailhead and they had gone right and we had gone left. So I was, I was kind of wondering, I was like, are they just like trying to signal us to, to get back to them? Like, did they get an out down or something like that?
01:10:26
Speaker
Because, you know, we all had garments, but, you know, sometimes it's tough if one guy's got a Zolio, one guy's got a spot, you can't always communicate. So we end up, we're kind of just chilling there and we hear it again. And we're like, oh, shoot, like, I bet they're calling us, you know, it's all distorted. We can't hear exactly what they're saying. But we're like, they must be calling us to get back to this meetup point. So we go back to the
01:10:54
Speaker
to the meetup point and nobody's there. And sure as day we hear more clear because we were closer, like a for sure help. And we're like, okay, that's not good. And we don't know who it was. We're kind of like, oh man, does that sound like this guy? I won't use his name, but does that sound like this guy? They're like, nah, I don't know. It doesn't really sound like him. Let's go check it out. Obviously somebody,
01:11:23
Speaker
is, is, you know, need some help here. So we spend probably an hour and a half trying to get from this trail through this, I mean, is the thickest part of this mountain, just crawling under chokecherry service berry. We I mean, we almost had to like, pull the machete out we were trying to use our knives to like cut little twigs and branches to get through this area. And all the while we're hearing
01:11:51
Speaker
this help get louder and louder. And we finally get to the point where we're like, all right, that's that's our boy. So we're like, yelling back to him, hey, man, we're coming, we're coming. And we end up, like I said, it was about an hour and a half to get from this trail. I mean, it was probably a half mile to where he was at. Well, this guy had ended up taking a wrong game trail.
01:12:17
Speaker
from that that main trailhead and he got cliffed out and it was it was like a combination because he the way he described it was he was trying to crawl through this oak brush and you know like down on his hands and knees and in doing that he got cliffed out on this this mountain side here so so we end up you know having a freaking bushwhack to get to him crawling over logs and stuff like that and
01:12:48
Speaker
And we finally get to him and he looks up at us and he's like, thanks for listening to my bugle. We're like, oh man, we had just spent so many calories trying to get to this guy. We ended up bringing him back and we kind of ended up
01:13:08
Speaker
Following the trail that he took to get to this mountainside, but it was a it was a good kind of lesson on just you know, especially when people aren't familiar with an area and they aren't
01:13:23
Speaker
you know, I mean, you get if you get altitude sickness, even if it's a low degree, that can really mess with your your mindset, right? It you kind of get disoriented and all that stuff. And even though people have on x sometimes it's hard to find your way out. So it was a good lesson on just, you know, making sure
01:13:41
Speaker
that if you're taking a new hunter out, somebody that's less experienced, just make sure that you are with them, man. Because that could have easily turned into a super bad situation if we had gone even like 200 yards on the other side of this mound, we wouldn't have been able to hear him. So I guess that's not necessarily a hunting story. It's more of just kind of a funny story now that it turned out all right.
01:14:09
Speaker
but it could have gotten real dangerous. So anybody taking new people out, just make sure that you are on them and you help them out and not to overestimate all the effects of being in a new spot. Yeah, 100%. There are no shortcuts in the backcountry. Yeah. Sometimes there's a point of no return and it's better to turn around before you get there.
01:14:36
Speaker
Right? When you start pushing into something and you're like, I don't know about that. It's, it's like you trying, like, I'll go this way instead. Cause I don't want to go the way I just came. Going the way you just came is probably the right answer. Like 90% of the time. Like I swear, like you go, it might take a little longer to go back the way you just came, but when you try and go a different way that you don't know, cause you didn't like the way you came cause it was hard.
01:15:00
Speaker
I swear like nine out of 10 times, you just end up screwing yourself. It just sucks. For sure. Well, that's kind of one of the things with Onyx now is, yes, it's great because you can scout out areas, but you can also, it's so much easier to look at your computer and be like, oh yeah, that's a hillside I can get onto. And then you get there and you're like, there's just no possible way that I'm getting to this spot.
01:15:27
Speaker
in a situation where you planed your whole hunt around that, getting into this one area, you know, say you're backpacking in and you get to that spot and you're like, well, that's not happening. That can be a wasted day. That could be a big waste of calories, big waste of energy. So you got to be careful for sure. I'm taking Mark Levisay, you know Mark Levisay? Yeah. Tree line pursuits. I'm taking Mark's east counting course right now.
01:15:54
Speaker
I'm going through the whole thing. I want to learn. Even though I consider myself good at e-scouting, I want to learn from that. Because there's so many times like you said where I've Googled it, I've looked at it, and it's like you get there and you're like, that is so much bigger than I thought. You go into the Frank, or you go into Hell's Canyon, Oregon, or even Colorado, it's just bigger than you think. This is steeper than you think, nashier than you think.
01:16:23
Speaker
And Mark has some really good tips on that and being able to really evaluate and use all these tools to figure it out. So that was a good podcast, dude.
Resources and Community at Seek Outside and Tricer Podcast
01:16:33
Speaker
You guys have a podcast yourself, right? I really enjoy that podcast. What is it called? It's just the Seek Outside podcast. Yeah, you guys are as creative as I am, the Tricer podcast. But I actually really enjoy it. I listened to it a bunch last hunting season. It's a lot of...
01:16:51
Speaker
really helpful tips and the stuff that's this like common knowledge to you guys might find a common to everybody else. So I really enjoyed that podcast. You guys check them out. Where else can we find you guys?
01:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, the website is seekoutside.com. Again, pretty creative. But yeah, we got Instagram, we got a YouTube page, which has a lot of good... First off, we do a bunch of like kind of expedition type films, you know, and not just hunting, we do a lot of stuff that's not hunting.
01:17:21
Speaker
that kind of showcases how you can use the gear. But then we also have lots of informational stuff, how to set up tents, you know, comparison videos, if you're looking at buying something. So definitely check that out. Instagram, our email, we have a customer service team that is right here in Grand Junction. And they all use our stuff, like every weekend, that's kind of a requirement of getting that position. So everybody there is super knowledgeable.
01:17:52
Speaker
So yeah, hit us up, man. I mean, if you got any questions, we're happy to talk and we have a, you know, it's kind of how I started was just in customer service, kind of getting to know the product. And we have a lot of guys that just call in and talk hunting or fishing or whatever. So if you got any good stories to share, give us a shout. Awesome, dude. Let's do it again. Go check out Seag outside.
01:18:21
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Tricer Podcast. Do us a favor and like and subscribe on whatever platform you are 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.