Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Johnathan McCormick
293 Plays1 year ago
Such a fun podcast with John from Red Beard Outdoors. We were all over the pace on this one and didn’t want to stop.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Outdoor Enthusiasm
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 - Jonathan McCormick
00:00:31
Speaker
All right. Jonathan McCormick from Redbeard Outdoors. He's hard to miss because he named his company after his beard. Welcome to the podcast, dude.
Conversational Flow and Interview Challenges
00:00:42
Speaker
A little intimidated. You've been doing this a lot longer than me. I don't know about all that, but you make some awesome gear. So I appreciate you having me on and being able to chat with you on your podcast. It's always weird to be on this side of the microphone. Yeah.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's I find that with guys like you, though, I almost just with most of my guests, I just sit back and let them talk and you guys make it easy to hold a conversation. Sometimes you get someone on here and you're just like trying to pull teeth through the screen.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah. Come on. Come on. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was watching something the other day. I think it was the Lancaster classic. And I was going back and watching some of the clips and the kid that goes on to win the bow hunter division. He was like 16 and it was cringy cause like they'd ask him a question and he'd give him a one word answer. And they were trying to get the conversation out of him up on the stage. And he was just like, yep. Nope. Yep. And I'm like, Oh man. Yeah. So I get it. It's hard sometimes to hold a conversation with people like that.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah.
Motocross and Supercross Insights
00:01:40
Speaker
Do you watch a motocross at all or supercross? I don't. I should, but I don't. Oh man. Yeah. So that's, it's very similar to that, right? Like a lot of guys were like, the bike ran good today. Qua thang, a Motul and Renpho bars and blah, blah, blah. But then you got Brian Deegan's kid and he's out there now and he's just dominating and Deegan is a, you know who Brian Deegan is from Metabolisha. Yeah, I've heard. Yeah, I've heard the name. Yeah. So.
00:02:08
Speaker
He's winning races at 18 years old and he's out there. Welcome to the danger zone, baby. That's what you need. You need that flair, right? He's out there like this kid crashed in front of me. I really hurt him. I don't think he knew it, but he's like, yeah, you couldn't handle the pressure of me. So you're getting that, like those good bites. Right.
Tricer's Unique Gear Approach
00:02:25
Speaker
And I can relate to that because I want my company to be that way. Like I like having flair, like having style, like we're a silicone company in the hunting industry where we're.
00:02:33
Speaker
surfers, motocross guys, skaters, and now we're making hunting gear. So I like that. I like that style of Deegan. I like bringing that, bringing a little change, a little difference, something a little different to the industry than the status quo.
00:02:46
Speaker
No, I agree. I agree. There's definitely, it's cool to see. And we talked about this off air. We first chatted on the phone, just you've been doing this for years. Right. And I love to highlight things like that. When I bring people on my podcast, the fact that I don't know how many people realize, man, that you've been doing this for four or five years.
00:03:06
Speaker
before things started to blow up. And people saw me post just the one story that I posted about the tripod and they were asking me about it. I was like, I haven't really used it yet, but what I can tell you is a stupid light and really sturdy. So whatever you're doing, man, back there, your creativeness, you did an awesome job with it.
00:03:26
Speaker
You know what I've been seeing now a little bit too is like people hammering us because everyone's using it. So everyone's using it now. And that's not because I'm giving them to everybody, but just everyone's using our tripod. So it's like some people are hammering us like, Oh, it's just influencers. Like, bro, like, no, that's not it.
Tricer's Product Design and Reception
00:03:42
Speaker
So people use it. And then they're like, Oh, wow. Like I had a guy post it. It was pretty cool. I was wearing shields now. Um, all the shield stores. Cool. Big deal.
00:03:51
Speaker
He's like, man, I thought this thing was a gimmick in a holy smokes. This is the real deal tripod. And it's yeah, man, because it's actually a hunting tripod, not just some freaking tripod, you know, made for my photographers to chase Bambi around. This is made to find animals and kill them, dude. And when you when you build them with the hunting focus, they're better. Right. Like, like a photography panhead. That's why our panhead is the best selling panhead in the country. I don't even know how many sold now. Ten thousand, probably something up there like that.
00:04:20
Speaker
A photography panhead is not made for sitting behind and moving back and forth all day long. It's made for setting it and taking a picture. My panhead is made to sit behind and glass behind it all day long. Typical tripod is made just to hold something up and stand there. A hunting tripod is dynamic and being used and being moved and being adjusted. And that's what we did with the Tricer system. It's like putting them in reverse legs. Everything's at the top. You can make your adjustments. Your panhead's right there. You can go and spend 12 hours behind our tripod and enjoy it.
00:04:48
Speaker
you get comfortable and that's the most important part to killing something or finding something so you can kill it as being comfortable. Oh yeah. And I couldn't agree more. It is, it's definitely different because I've had other tripods and I'm not nearly as experienced as some of the people out
Tripods and Product Naming Humor
00:05:02
Speaker
there. My bow shop is Wild Arrow and they work with Brad Hunt, Brian Call. And so that's where they first were introduced to your tripods because they were saying the same thing. Oh, Tricer's blowing up and their marketing is really good, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.
00:05:16
Speaker
And then one of the guys who's, he's a glassing snob. He got behind Brad Hunt's BC and he was like, all right, I'm sold. And he's one of the guys too. I was telling you off air that there's a lot of people out there saying that they prefer a fluid head over a pan head.
00:05:31
Speaker
And he grabbed one of your panheads as well. Cause he was like, I'm a fluid head guy through and through. And then he's, but this pan head it's what six ounces or less. And, and it moves so smooth and then it locks into place and there's no wiggle and whatever, again, whatever you're doing, it's awesome.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. Everyone's a fluid head guy, which I have a fluid head coming out. It'll be out here next month, and it's the best fluid head ever made. It's 12 ounces, and you can put a freaking brick on it, and it will not move on you. But our pan head isn't, by all intents and purposes, just as smooth as a fluid head. Again, the problem isn't that they like fluid heads. The problem is that the best thing available up until then was a VA5 fluid head. So I like fluid heads. But when you create something for hunting that works, you're solid, and so that's what we got.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, man, it's a sweet panhead and it does what it does. You have 4.3 ounces. My buddy, Darrell, his handle is Lung Popper. I don't know if everybody knows his story or not. He's my hunting partner and it's a really all around great dude. And we were hunting for him here in San Diego. And he goes, I bet you couldn't make a six ounce panhead. And I was like, hold my beer. And then I created the panhead and I named it the LP. Everyone thinks it means a little pan, but it actually means lung popper. It's a kind of a little shot at him. I like to have fun with some of the names.
Marketing Strategies and Brand Identity
00:06:49
Speaker
you went into your metal shop and just took some of the mustache beard hair and you just sprinkled it. That's what popped out, right? That's it. Yeah, dude. I've been joking around with my partners that the bigger Tricer gets, we're going to have to get an insurance claim on my mustache, like the life insurance policy for the mustache itself, because it's starting to become the brand, dude. I don't want to... Yeah, I haven't shaved since 2017 or 18. I think you saw a picture of me you were saying earlier. And the mustache hasn't gone. I haven't seen my upper lip, dude.
00:07:18
Speaker
He's going on almost eight years. So that's a long time. That's dedication right there. Yeah, for sure. We got some cool, we have some cool mustache shirts coming out too later on this year. We'll probably offend people, but I don't care. You got some really bitchin' shirts coming out.
00:07:35
Speaker
That's the thing too is your base. And like you were saying with the tripods and the heads and things like that, like there's a lot of good ones out there, but they're not specifically for hunting. So they do what they do well, but they're not as dynamic. Like what you were saying your tripods are and your base with that, but also the things like the making fun of Trump and Biden that your base and you don't really care about pleasing the masses. You care about getting it out to your base. And again, the tripods are very dedicated to hunting specific.
00:08:05
Speaker
which I'm sure they could be used in photography, but it's very hunting specific based tripods. And again, you're great with what you've created because you're base. I think that's a big takeaway for a lot of people. Yeah. And my, don't get me wrong, like my marketing team, like I caused them to sweat, like burning those and that's last weekend. Facebook shut it down within the first. It's pretty gnarly dude. Like normally it's five bucks a click or five bucks to get a sale.
00:08:34
Speaker
We were getting charged in the first two hours, like 27 bucks. That's how much meta hammered us for, dude. Those freaking liberals over there, meta. And then the two hours, they shut my ads down. But I could told them, like, don't worry about it. We got martyred because of it and everyone started sharing it.
00:08:48
Speaker
So that President's Day sale was our second largest sale in the history of Tricer, direct-to-consumer. We've had some bigger sales going out to retail and stuff, but direct-to-consumer is our second largest sale. So I know my base, dude. Everyone wanted to go use code Trump and nobody wanted to use code Biden. Weird. I was going to say, did anyone use code Biden just to see what happened? I mean, full disclosure, I couldn't get it to work. Like I had them on it, my team model, I tried to make it work to add 20% to it. So it didn't work at all. So yeah, we'll just say we forgot.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, we forgot some free chocolate chip ice cream or something. They came with some ice cream and some bike bag or bike helmet, which gives you fall down. But but yeah, I know my base student, I like comedy, right? Like, by no means my comedian, but I like making fun of Trump. And I like making fun of conservatives. And I like making fun of liberals. I think you have to
00:09:38
Speaker
This
Content Creation and Management
00:09:39
Speaker
weird point we are with comedy in the world is it has to align with my values or it's offensive. That's why I love Dave Chappelle. He doesn't care. It's like how I want to model my business. Really, people will be like, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? Lose all the liberals who don't hunt anyways? There might have been a few guys. I get it. There's the guys who are Democrats you hunt. Dude, I have Democrat friends who I hunt with all the time. They're good friends of mine. They have a sense of humor.
00:10:08
Speaker
I'm not out here like I literally if I saw you I'm going to punch you in the face because you're an a-hole, not at all. I'm a Christian, I'm a foster parent, I run a foster ministry.
00:10:18
Speaker
All in all, pretty good dude, but I also like to have fun. And you should be able to have fun both ways. I take it
Evolution of Redbeard Outdoors
00:10:25
Speaker
both ways and not get so offended, but the world is just so thin skinned. It gets so offended, man. It's this whole, everyone gets a trophy generation, but it's just, I mean, I know people hear it, but jeez, it's, yeah, it's hard. It's weird, man. It's weird. People just don't want to have fun. They just want to get angry and upset and get, what's that word? Triggered? I want to get triggered. Like I want you to,
00:10:44
Speaker
my buddy works for one of these big liberal companies. And once you do it, that's the issue too. Once you start doing it, you're screwed.
00:10:51
Speaker
So we have an influencer who works for us, and actually I'll say who was. So Danielle Halverson does some work with us, Danielle. And she's awesome, dude. She's a freaking killer. I wanted to have a woman on staff with Tricer because I feel like it's an important demographic I want to hit. But I didn't want to have, I refused as a Christian to have some woman who's out there just shaking her freaking ass and wearing a thong. That's not what I want. I don't want that. If I have to get some of my tripods,
00:11:20
Speaker
It's not what I want. I want somebody who's actually killing and Danielle is out there actually killing like lions and she's an Africa. She's across the ocean right now, isn't she? She's over in Africa. I'm going to try and go with her next year, I think. So she's running hounds. She's killing coyotes and she's shooting gear, shooting out. And she's hot and hardcore. That's what I want to have representing Tricer is a woman like that. But we joke around, like we hired her, like we did the whole, like,
00:11:48
Speaker
We actually had our wives look at her account like, Hey, what do you think? Or Christians want to make sure she's not like doing anything flashy. And they're like, no, she's good. She's clean. And so we put it, we were joking with her about, you can't go liberal.
Filming Hunts and Content Quality
00:11:59
Speaker
So in her contract, it, she wrote back to us promises never to change pronouns or go woke in her contract that we signed with her. That's awesome. So that's a fun, that's fun though, dude. That's, if I'm going to run a business, dude, I run a union sheet metal shop and it is a beating.
00:12:17
Speaker
I mean, you're just dealing with freaking dealing with the union and this is just them in your business. Like you just can't, you have no privacy. Everything's out there. It's just.
00:12:26
Speaker
This is fun. Tricer is a blast for me. I have having so much fun creating stuff, and that's why I'm creating so much stuff, because I'm just enjoying myself. I'm in this creative workspace where I can go and even do stuff like this, go to a podcast with you and talk to you and get those juices flowing, and then get out in the field and go hunting, create stuff. I don't want to try and conform this thing to some liberal ideal or this PC
00:12:51
Speaker
I just know my thing, man. Yeah. No, not at all. And that there's enough of that out there. I think things are starting to swing back towards center a little bit more, just the way I'm seeing things. And maybe that's just me and the people I hang out with. But I would agree that it's, you should be able to joke about things and take a joke. And I know this is take two. So people that didn't get to hear take one, we had about 10 minutes of picking on gingers and Mormons and all that good stuff. But I grew up.
00:13:19
Speaker
that way. In North Carolina, that was one of two Mormons in my high school of 2000 plus kids. And I was the fat kid until about ninth grade. And I was a ginger.
00:13:29
Speaker
So you throw all that in with South Park, like I got all the jokes, trying to ask people if people ask me if I shaved my horns every morning. People ask me if Mormon ran hell, if I read my Bible out of a top hat, all of these things. If I stole souls, if I had a soul, like all of those things. And at first, as a kid, you're insecure. Generally in junior high, you're going through those awkward phases, but I just leaned into it. And once I leaned into it, man, it's so much more fun when you can joke about yourself
00:13:58
Speaker
and also throw jokes back at other people. It makes for a better life in general. You get to smile more, you're not so uptight and triggered and all this other stuff. You get to enjoy life a little bit more. Yeah, learning to brush it off for sure. Did you see on SNL this weekend they had Shane Gillis back on?
00:14:18
Speaker
But I've loved his stuff. His stuff is hilarious. He got kicked off after one episode because they put him on the show and stuff came out of him talking about gay people and stuff. They kicked him off the show. They canceled him. And it made him a martyr. It's how he got so big.
00:14:33
Speaker
So then he just went back this weekend, like four years later and dude, just hammered, like made gay jokes, made black jokes, made all this stuff. And like, it was awesome, dude. It was just funny. Cause it was like, we're going to point out where comedy is. I think it's a lot of it has to be chappelle just out there. No, you guys got it. You got to bring this back. Right? Like we're so tired of every joke just being
Hunting Stories and Gear Adventures
00:14:52
Speaker
about how much Trump sucks. And that's it. So you're starting to see like comedy come back and have fun with things. Right. I'm sick today. I'm drinking this prime. Have you ever had these things?
00:15:03
Speaker
My kids try and talk to me about it all the time. Yeah, it's my kids and he put it in my fridge because I have an office. He put it in my fridge so my four-year-old wouldn't find it. It looks a little gay. It's pink. I found it because I came home and took a nap for this thing. I'm just feeling a little crappy. I know they have an energy drink. It tastes like sugar. It tastes like sugar. I don't know. Jake Paul's, I think, or one of those guys.
00:15:32
Speaker
So what are their drinks? I don't know. I don't follow Jake Paul or anything like that. I've never bought one of these in my life until yesterday. We went to the gun shop and my kid wanted to go to 7-Eleven. So I got him some primes. I got myself one of those new monsters and threw this one in my fridge and I stole it. So he's going to come back and I'm going to be like, oh, your four year old brother took it. I'm sorry. That's awesome. That's funny. No, but that's why you walked out of the, you walked out of the gun shop with two guns when you were just looking for ammo. Yeah.
00:16:02
Speaker
Kind of, dude. California sucks balls. So there's a 10-day wait period when you buy a gun in California. So we signed up for two of them. And now they passed some new law where you have to wait 30 days to buy another gun.
00:16:14
Speaker
Which really sucks. Cause I'm getting a, I'm getting a 30 out six from Browning that I'm going to run this year. And you should be posting a lot about it. Cause it's like my thing that I've talked about every episode. So I'm pure, I get tired of me talking about it, but I'm going like leather sling 30 with 30 out six, just a Leopold on top shooting reloaded brass H four, three, 50, nothing crazy. Not like a super formants or RL 26. And I'm going to kill every animal this year. I killed it. I'm going to shoot coyotes with it. Shoot deer with it. Shoot.
00:16:41
Speaker
Hopefully go shoot an antelope up with what don't hide up in Wyoming with it, you know, shoot deer in Mexico with it. Like I'm just, yeah, it's the round I'm going to use for everything. But yeah, so I went down there to buy some bullets for that. I'm trying to get a load developed and I'm working on between a bait between a copper bolt and a lead bullet. And then I brought, I have a, I bought in a 20 gauge semi auto probably 10 years ago for my older boys.
00:17:06
Speaker
And that thing, it's an escort, and it is a piece of crap. And it is jammed since day one. It's the worst. It always jams. So I brought it down. I was like, you haven't fixed it. And then they're like, oh, it's 75 bucks an hour. And I'm like doing the math. And I'm like, what do you give me for it? We'll give you 175 bucks.
Importance of Reliable Gear
00:17:24
Speaker
And I was like, well, give me that monster 500.
00:17:26
Speaker
So I spot it on Mossbrook 500 because those things, you can literally piss down the barrel and they'll shoot. I, my first shotgun was a Mossbrook 500 and up until I wasn't able to buy nice guns. So probably four or five years ago, I just shot the crappiest cheapest rifle I can get and cheapest shotgun I get. And I still have that thing in the safe and I can go and take and pick it up. And I probably haven't cleaned it in 10 years and go shoot that thing a couple hundred rounds or have not an issue. So figured I could get a Mossbrook 500 and we're going to go out and hammer some turkeys here. Hopefully a few weeks. There you go.
00:17:54
Speaker
I like it. I like it. So with that browning that you're doing, the wood stock and everything, you need to need to do like a wrap for your tripods. That's like a wood. It looks like wood grain. A woodleg tripod. That'd be funny. Just go out and get some sticks, just some sticks and plug them into where the legs actually go on your tripod and be like, hey, this is the new Tricer M, the mustache. Yeah. Let's get some wooden dowels down at Home Depot and
00:18:20
Speaker
some hinges and to screw it all together. That's literally how this stuff started, dude. My first tripod that I came up with out in 2017, I literally just went in my shop. I took a Primo tripod, cut it all apart, started welding, and put it all together. That works. Then it sat for almost two years. Then I finally had the nerve to go out and try and do it. That tripod pretty much failed miserably.
00:18:43
Speaker
Why did you choose to flip the head? That's interesting. The legs. Yeah. The fat parts on the bottom, which is more stable. It's way more stable. And then also ergonomics, like glassing is all about comfort for me. And so everything on all your knobs are at the top. It's so much easier to move everything around. Right. Yeah. That way you can have bigger legs and have a smaller head as well. So when you have the legs on the other way, the heads bigger, see the heavier tripods where it was like, Oh, so light, but so stable. Yeah.
00:19:13
Speaker
If I flip this around and the head was going with the inch and a eighth leg on the top, the head would be twice as big, which means it'd be twice as heavy. By doing this, you can keep that small head and then your legs out there. It's bitchin'. It's obviously working, man.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah. And just setting it up in the living room and messing around with it and shaking it and getting my kids to mess around with it. The same height, even fully extended compared to other ones that I've had. It blew my mind. I was like, there's no way it could be this stable and this light. Cause in your mind, you're thinking it's like the heavier it is, the more stable, but it just, it works. Again, I'll have to take it out on the mountain, but in the living room and shaking it around, it's a lot, it's a lot more stable than some of the other ones.
00:19:55
Speaker
good, good products sell themselves. So like anyone out there and saying, Oh, influencers, all this about Tricer, dude, these things sell themselves. Yeah. Go mess around with one. Go mess around with one. Use it. They just, they're crushing, man. They really are. They're selling like that for a reason, man. Cause they're just really good. And like you said, like on the bow shop, it's that's just really getting us more sales is everyone's going
Tricer's Expansion Plans
00:20:18
Speaker
into camp. And then they're like,
00:20:20
Speaker
I want that. Like you're going to find more, like my goal is for you to find more animals with my stuff and you will. Like you will find more animals with my tribe, but you're going to stay behind it longer. It's going to be easier to glass. It's going to be smoother. It's going to stop. Like it's just a better glassing experience. That's what I want you to enjoy using my stuff. So they were flying off the shelves at hun expo. Oh, dude. They, we had to, when you put, we moved Tricers. The Tricers now a Wyoming company.
00:20:50
Speaker
I don't think anyone knows that. It's official now. We still live in San Diego, but we just wanted to get out of California. If we're worried about making all this gun stuff we're making, we wanted to come and sue us or something. But we moved all fulfillment to Salt Lake, so we had to re-up them five times at the show. This kept selling out of everything.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah. So they had just a banner weekend for us. We're going to be there next year. I'm going to make a sick booth and I'm going to cause a bunch of waves. I'm going to have fun. Like we're going to come in there and we're going to raise some, raise some hell, man. It's going to be fun. I have some really good ideas for hot expo. I don't know if it's like PC, but I don't care dude. Work balls to the wall, just going for it and everything we do. And.
00:21:28
Speaker
No, take no prisoners at Tricer. So we had some fun. So we have some fun ideas for the hot expo to really get some, some free marketing. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love it. I don't want to announce it cause I just want to steal it or the, or, or worse off, they'll call me and say, I heard you're going to do this. You can't, I tend to like a lot of things. Yeah. That's one of my life models. It's better to actually give us permission. So I don't want to say anything. I'd rather do it and get it going. And then I could then, I don't know if you noticed what I mean. I like to talk.
00:21:58
Speaker
Most of them might talk my way out of anything. Like we start doing something like, oh, come on, we're doing this here. We're giving this, we're helping, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then people will just get so tired of me. They just want to, okay, do it. You know, all right, go for it. Unless you're meta. If you're meta, you just say, screw you. I'm shutting your ads down. Tell me about Redbeard Outdoors, dude. When do you start that? Where are you guys out of?
Redbeard Outdoors Community Building
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm in Utah and it's just a one man show. It's just me. I, so basically I got started because I was working a desk job and I had one random day off during the week cause I didn't work Sundays. So the Saturdays that I'd work, I'd have a day off during the week. And during those days, I'd go out and at the time my kids were toddlers or babies. And so we'd go out for a hike. I'd go take them. I'd throw them in the backpack or if they could walk, they'd walk a little ways and then I'd carry them.
00:22:46
Speaker
And I just got them outside and I'd come back to the job and everyone's, oh, what'd you do on your day off? Oh, I binge Netflix and blah, blah, blah. I got some errands done. And I'm like showing them these pictures of these hikes that I did with these little babies. And they're like, how did you do that? I'm like, guys, we live in Utah. You can drive 10 minutes and there's multiple trailheads. Most of them are kid friendly for the first mile at least. And then just carry your kids. It's good workout.
00:23:13
Speaker
get outside. Sometimes I would check my older kids, I'd check them out of school. I'd take them for a hike if I knew they were having a rough day or whatever. And then just started taking pictures and then sharing those adventures because I realized like, there's so much stuff that's been brought inside that people don't realize that you can take your kids outdoors and go have fun with them and get off your phones and go and enjoy things. So that's really where it all started was just an Instagram page. And then I realized I didn't want to get into
00:23:43
Speaker
the full YouTube editing stuff, because kudos to those guys that do YouTube videos and long form content, because man, that takes some work. Not only work, but it takes good quality gear, good money, lots of time, like all of this stuff to be able to get into that. And I was just like, I just like having good conversations with people. So I'm just going to start a podcast.
00:24:05
Speaker
and bought a microphone, a little cheap microphone off of Amazon, USB plugin right to the laptop and just started recording podcasts and then started inviting guests on and then just fed into, I'm a gear nerd. So sharing my opinions of gear. Sometimes I do first takes of it. Sometimes I do after I've used it, the full review on how I use it and hopefully provide value to people. But that's really where it started back in the end of 2019, 2020 was when it started.
00:24:34
Speaker
Wow, and you've got a pretty good following now, right? Yeah. Yeah, things are going really well. Like 25,000, 30,000 people or something like that following you? Yeah. Yeah. So Instagram, we got 21,000. Then we got the YouTube, a little over 2K. YouTube started, I just started putting it on YouTube just over a year ago. So that's a whole nother beast to figure out, but it's fun. Again, I love having conversations with people and
00:24:59
Speaker
When people reach out to me, whether it be via email, Instagram, whatever, I love just talking to people and again, not taking offense to any corrections or anything they provide because I'm like, I never put myself out there as an expert. I'm just a guy that enjoys getting outdoors, going hunting, shooting a bow, getting back into rifles now, trying to figure out how to put that out there without getting hammered. That's just what I do and I just enjoy it. It's fun.
Challenges in Filming Outdoor Content
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah. The producing stuff, like I don't produce any of my stuff. Like I have a hard time. Like I love this. Like even when I get off with you, like trying to write a two sentence, I don't do like a long description of what we talked about. I split something together because I feel like people just don't read it anyways. Like I'm just like, Jonathan from Redbird Outdoors, gear reviews, likes to kill stuff. Yeah. Like I've already been writing that out, let alone producing one of these episodes. So I actually, I use a lot of AI and then I have a producer as well.
00:25:53
Speaker
So I have a producer who goes and puts all his on YouTube and publishes them, right? And then everything's recorded, obviously, through Zencaster and gets out there. But yeah, I could not imagine. I've tried to film, except for my hunts and stuff, and I'm just like, dude, this is a painting. Even trying to film, it's hard. I am not an influencer by any means, but they want content from me, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, this is stupid. But that's why I guess it's my stick, right? It's just be a means. Saying it's stupid. So yeah, I don't do the cut. The long videos,
00:26:23
Speaker
I want to film a hunt this year. I've had a few guys who are talking about filming for us. I don't know what tag I'm going to draw yet, but I'm probably going to film a hunt because me trying to film it myself, it's never going to happen. I want to hunt and find things. I want to enjoy myself. I don't want to be working. I'm hoping to get someone out there to film for me because then you can get a taste of me and taste of what I'm about and just have fun.
00:26:47
Speaker
But no, I'm not going to cut it. I don't have the creative eye for it. I can barely take a freaking picture. You know what I mean? I'm good for a grip and grin, but that could bring us nowhere near as good as a grip and grin that like Brian called to our Brady mill. They take a grip again. It's I was there and the animals coming out of this picture. You know what I mean? I'm just like, okay, get over there. All I can think about is I have to process this animal, get it off this freaking mountain. So just hold the head up. Cool. Turn it sideways picture done. Let's go.
00:27:12
Speaker
No, I definitely understand that. It's, it is really a whole, like people don't understand when they go on YouTube, click on a video that's 20 minutes long or 30 minutes put together by again, call or Pedro. If anyone knows him out there, he's a guy over in Spain. He travels the world, goes hunting. He's big Cuyu, PSE guy, but he puts
Storytelling Through Video
00:27:33
Speaker
on some amazing productions and
00:27:36
Speaker
The hours of film that go into making just like a 20 minute video is it blows my mind. Like talking with some of these guys, how they put these things together. I'm like, I don't have the patience for it. Plus you got to put the music in the right spots. You're got to make it flow. You can't just cut from scene to scene. There's so many things that go into it. And then on top of that, if you're self filming, that's a whole nother. I don't even
00:27:59
Speaker
care about getting into that ballgame. But I definitely think the route to go is to have someone else film you and put it together. I think that's a safer bet because then you can be, you can focus on what you want to do. You're not carrying the camera, getting it set up right, hoping you get the shot, hoping you don't have to worry about all that. You just have someone else focused on that and you're able to focus on what you do.
00:28:21
Speaker
Dude, I had Brad Hunt on from Gritty and he said that it takes Brian like a minimum 40 hours to edit one of those videos. So it's a full-time job. And he said that it used to be a lot longer, but he's gotten a lot better at doing it. But to cut a 20-minute film, he spends 40 hours going through all that stuff to get that content.
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah. And then like for me too, like I suck at the B-roll stuff. Like I'm good at get the kill shot. Bam. That's it. Like I'm like a, I just went to Sonora and I felt all my kill shots. We were in a blind. It was like a nineties, like Primo's hunt film, right? And then here he comes, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew,
00:29:10
Speaker
I feel like I'm there. Same thing with the guys that live in this. I love living in this outdoors. When I watch a live in this outdoors film, I feel like I'm there. I feel like I'm part of this adventure. I can feel those guys, I feel like they get hard on themselves sometimes when they just do crazy stuff. I can feel their misery. It's awesome. When I see them out there and they're wet and cold, I'm like, feel that. With me, I forgot to pull the camera out and do it.
00:29:35
Speaker
No, I hear you on that, man. You want to be able to focus and be in the moment. It's hard to do both, to share with other people and also be there in the moment. So again, people that sell film, I have a whole other level of respect for. But it's not easy when you get a good production together. I wish people understood that more rather than it's just another YouTube video. These are full blown productions. And the time that it takes to put into these, it's borderline Hollywood film.
00:30:04
Speaker
editing and sitting in a dark room, making sure everything flows. It's crazy what they go through. So my hats are always off to the guys that put out really good productions like that. Yeah. And they love doing what they do. So they really enjoy it. I have Luke Duesenberry coming on this week. I'm really excited to talk to him because he films like all Brady stunts. So he's got a screw loose then, right? He's going on some of these wild things with Brady. I'm excited to talk to him, but they just love to film. That's what they love to do. It's their passion. I love to create cool products.
Authentic Gear Reviews
00:30:34
Speaker
They love to film stuff and create art that way. I look at it like that. I look at what I do as art. I look at the things I make as art and designing things. And that's how they look at making films. So talk about the podcast. So you do like a sit down talk like this, but you also do like gear review stuff too, right?
00:30:50
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. A lot of my stuff right now I'm moving away from it, but at first is talking head, like I show the product and I don't really do a lot of B roll cutting away any of that stuff. It's just like the way I format is more of if I'm sitting in the room with you, this is how I talk with you, a friend about the gear that I've used or what I'm excited about using things like that. Just like I do with my buddy prior to having the podcast. And even now I'll go over, I'll take a handful of new gear that I've got because he,
00:31:19
Speaker
He runs a CPA firm.
00:31:21
Speaker
the guy that got me into Western hunting. And so now I've become the gear guy of the group. And I'll go over once a month or whatever and be like, hey, this is the stuff that I've run. This is the stuff I'm excited to run. Do you want to mess around with any of these things? And we'll just sit down and have a conversation there in his barn that he's built out into a gym slash sauna and all this other stuff. And and that's how I format my gear reviews. It's a little bit different than a lot of people out there do it. And I just that's how I like to do it. That's a lot of fun. I enjoy doing that.
00:31:51
Speaker
Now, are you a, do you backpack hunt as well? Yes. So are you reviewing things outside of the hunting space then? Yeah. So when you say outside of the hunting space. I mean, I like, one thing I appreciate about go hunt is they were able to go and sell hunting gear and they also start to bring in like the REI type stuff.
00:32:14
Speaker
like the jet boils and the pads and sleeping bags. Like, so are you reviewing that stuff as well outside of, I guess it's within the hunting space, I guess, I wouldn't say outside of it, but it's not like our traditional stuff. So are you looking at all that stuff as well?
00:32:28
Speaker
Yes, so not just from hunting specific companies, but definitely tools of the trade when you go out and go hunting. And again, I'm no expert, so I'm learning. So as I like pop a pad or things like this, try new things, I'm not much of a, I don't cut my toothbrush down and save weight that way. So I appreciate the fact that I don't really have to focus on saving weight with your tripods, because it just does it for me. But yeah, I'm usually the heavy packer when it comes to my group, I usually bring out more things that I need.
00:32:56
Speaker
things like that. That's just my, that's my role. Everyone laughs at me until we get to camp and then they all want to eat my food. But, but yeah, no, it's a mix of things. I would consider all tools of the trade for the outdoorsman. Come a piece of gear that I would never have considered. Now I'm almost 40 that I'm really liking.
00:33:14
Speaker
One of them is that Helinox chair, the fold-up chair, the Helinox chair. Having that chair, for one, for glassing is awesome. Seeing that thing, you can glass all day long. It's comfortable. Your back doesn't hurt. And then sitting around camp, it's awesome. Another one, I'm going to give you two. I'll step back and let you go, is one of those air pumps for your air mattress. Oh, yeah. Those little electric air pumps. And I thought they were a gimmick
00:33:40
Speaker
And then a bunch of my friends who backpack were telling me they're great. And then I listened to Remy Warren and he say sort of carrying one. And then Remy Warren is like an idol of mine. I hope that someday I can talk to Remy Warren. I don't know. We can just switch from Vortex over to Tri-Surfer for his tripods. We'll see. But he talked about it. I listened to his podcast. He has this wealth of information. I really love everything that guy does for years. And he talked about it. I was like, I'm going to try it. And that was a great piece of gear. It was just so nice when you are
00:34:06
Speaker
especially when you're spike camping and you've got 10, 12 miles on you and you got to set your pad up, you just plug that thing in, blow it up. Have you tried either of those things? Yeah, the little flex tail, I think is the name of the company. Yeah, I don't know which one I got. Yeah, that thing's awesome. I haven't tried out that chair. I'm usually a ground sitter kind of guy with just a pad, but I might have to look at that chair. You said it's the Halo Knox? It's the Halo Knox. I think it's like a 350 pound rating.
00:34:31
Speaker
It's the Hillinox, it's expensive, it's 150 bucks, maybe a little less, but one thing I've learned with gear is you probably could go buy an Amazon brand one for 50 bucks, but you're probably carrying it back all messed up and broken, just buy the nice one. So I try to buy the nice stuff now. So yeah, the Hillinox, and I ran it, for all intents and purposes, all season, I believe. I think I had it before season started, so I put a lot of hours in that chair, and it's nice, and like you said, everyone's jealous.
00:34:59
Speaker
You're out there glossing and you're sitting on a rock. You're sitting on cactus and you got that thing set up. Oh man, it's bitching. So I might actually have something that just looking it up. So apparently NEMO makes one for $10 more that is a recliner.
00:35:15
Speaker
Oh man. How is it heavier though? I don't know how much heavier. I'll have to take a look, but it looks like it's the same kind of mesh seat. And it's $10 more. And it's got this little pulley system that you can lean back in it and then sit forward in it.
Nutrition and Performance in the Outdoors
00:35:32
Speaker
And it sits up with you. It's called the Nemo, the Nemo moonlight elite reclining chair.
00:35:40
Speaker
Gotta try it, dude. Yeah, now you got me wanting to try these different chairs. Dude, I read a glassing pad forever and it's just really nice. Dude, like I said, I'm almost 40 and I'm in the gym four or five days a week and I'm just tired. I'm sore. I get out there even though I'm in the gym and I'm in shape and I run, my body just isn't recovering like it used to and sitting down for all glass, no joke.
00:36:10
Speaker
Sunrise to sunset. And if I can get as comfortable as possible, that's why I like my tripods. And if I can get a chair, whatever it's gonna take to make that happen, to where I can keep looking for animals, I will keep looking and I'll find you and I'll kill you, right? But I have to be comfortable to do it. I like it. That's a, now I'm not quite, I'm 30, 31 going on 32 this year. Maybe the chair will be a five year investment for me when I'm aching. You won't be able to go, you won't be as sore as me.
00:36:38
Speaker
When you get there. And by no means am I like dying. It's just like my knees freaking hurt my back or sometimes. The knees are the thing for me. Like I don't run on, I can't do a lot of, I saw you do some like some supplements and stuff too, right? Like I don't do, I won't run on concrete. It messes my knees up and even like box jumps, my knees just start swelling up. So like everyone I'm hunting, like that's what gets me is my knees now. They just start swelling up and hurting, but I'm a, I'm no puss man. I don't stop. So if I'm in pain, I just.
00:37:04
Speaker
the whole time and that's what my issue is. I'm all going on. I did 14 days in Arizona this year and I just tore myself up. I felt like it took me like almost until Christmas to recover from that hunt. We went so hard on this elk hunt and just up and down wicked mountains trying to kill these bulls and didn't kill one.
00:37:23
Speaker
It is what it is, man. It's like I said, I work out all year, right? So I'll gain, I'll probably put on 15 pounds by season, by working out, putting on muscle, and then I'll lose it all. Work out all year just for the reason I do it. I'm going to go out there with my kids and keep up. I love it. And yeah, you brought up supplements. So yeah, I work with First Form Outdoors more specifically. And it's all about things like what you're mentioning right there, where we're not a company that
00:37:50
Speaker
wants people, everyone to have to take supplements. Obviously, that's what makes the company money. But behind all, or I guess even in front of all that, it's more about education. And the reason why we started the First Form Outdoors branch of First Form is to meet the outdoors men and women where they are rather than saying, hey, you need to come to the gym. Most outdoors men and women are in the gym anyway, because like you said, you train all year to go hunting, right?
00:38:17
Speaker
There's people that understand and are starting to link it more and more to weightlifting and cardio equals better hunting experiences. But what we talk about even more so is why is it important for you to have the proper nutrition even during hunt season so that you can recover quicker?
00:38:37
Speaker
And it's not always supplements. It's really not. But there are times where it's easier to have some form of supplementation versus whole foods. Whole foods is the better option. One hundred percent will never say anything different because that's that is the truth. But if you're not eating enough fish, you might need to take some omegas for example, for the swelling. If you're not eating enough of your micronutrients or your greens. So we've got a greens formula for it. It's a lot easier. It's simpler. And the way we take care of
00:39:07
Speaker
the powders or the protein, greens, etc., things that are cooked in the facility, we do it all at a low temperature process. What that means is for people that get maybe protein farts or have bubble guts after drinking protein or things like that, it's because the protein most of the time, unless you're just allergic to whey or whatever it may be, but if it's just the protein powder, it could be because it's processed at a high temperature.
00:39:36
Speaker
The best analogy for that is if you're going to have a chicken breast, you throw it on a grill for 400 degrees for two hours versus eight hours in a crock pot, which chicken breasts are you going to want to eat? The one in the crock pot. It's more digestible. It's not going to be a brick. It's not going to be overcooked. The same thing with protein. If you overcook it just at a flash, high temperature, it's going to be denatured.
00:40:03
Speaker
So when it goes into guts not going to know what to deal with it versus a low temperature process protein It's more like that chicken breast that's been in the crock pot for eight hours. It's gonna fall apart It's gonna be more bio available and you're not gonna have the issues in your stomach So that's just one example with the protein and the greens powder But we have a wide variety of other things as well. You see if you're into energy drinks got energy drinks We have protein sticks
00:40:30
Speaker
a bunch of jerky things like that for people to take up in the mountains so you're not dealing with a melty protein bar, things like that for you to be able to, while you're glassing, have a good snack and make everyone else jealous around you. Yeah, I need to look at the supplements more. I started to get collagen. I don't like the powders so much. I'm doing pills, but it depends what they taste like. I started doing collagen pills every day. It seems like it's helping. It could be a placebo. I don't know. But I do, because I do meal preps every day.
00:41:01
Speaker
I actually pay a company like $120 a week. I get 10 meals a week for breakfast and lunch because it's just cleaner for me to eat that way. But I do when I get on the mountain, throw that out and I wish I did it because then it's like I go to the mountain and I'm like Snickers bar, gummy bears, peaks, refill. When you're hiking like that, dude, there's nothing better than some Sour Patch Kids. Maybe I'm wrong. Dude, I want some Oreos and some little Debbie's when I'm hiking like that.
00:41:28
Speaker
that you're burning 7,000, 5,000 calories a day and only taking in 2,000. I don't know. Yep. So I just- So a couple of things and we definitely, I definitely understand that. I'm a fat kid at heart and there's some things that I can't and can't eat. But with that being said, like at the end of the day,
00:41:46
Speaker
Something that we always recommend that you have up in the mountain and it's easy with powder, you bring a shaker bottle or just a water bottle, whatever, is we've got that post-workout stack that we have, it's called Ignition and Formula One and that's something that we bring up on the mountains. You could just put it in Ziploc baggies, whatever, however you want to pack it and you get the carbohydrates that you need for recovery, you get your electrolytes
00:42:11
Speaker
You get a full-spectrum micronutrient, all of that in your ignition part of the mixture. And then with Formula One, you get an isolate protein, so it's not going to be heavy on your stomach.
00:42:21
Speaker
and there's so many different flavors out there you pick your poison and and then take that at the end of the night so you can recover better overnight because I agree the peaks refuel something nice and warm peaks is a great one just because or peak refuel I get peaks and peak mixed up all the time but the peak refuel in my opinion is one of the better ones as far as nutrition goes but also it tastes better it's got actual food in it it's not like a mush. It's got a ton of calories can you get like I was showing some other day because
00:42:51
Speaker
In my office, I have a kitchen, and it's all the cabinets are full of just dehydrated meals from Peak and Mountain House. I just buy them throughout the year, so I've got, you know, you can see them in there. And it's 1,100 calories in some of those things, dude. It's gnarly, but you can just hammer one. It's just, I hate when they're like, two servings, 600 calories. Dude, these bags are one serving. These are not two servings. Yeah, exactly.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah, one serving bag and I've never, I don't, I can think of a time where I didn't finish eating one of those things or wanted to grab my kids and finish theirs too. You know what I mean? Because I'm just freaking starving after coming out of some hill hole chasing elk. Exactly. So that's what we don't recommend that you swap out the new, the food, like the whole food for that post-workout stack. But we do recommend that's up there with you along with Omega's. Those little pills are easy to pack away.
00:43:36
Speaker
to take with you. We make little individual day packs of like your micronutrients that you can just throw in there as well and your backpack and you just grab one out, rip it, throw it back with some water and your meal and you're good to go. All of those things, I will tell you they do make a big difference.
00:43:52
Speaker
when you're hammering away, like you're saying, where you're 14 days out there in Arizona, you can't get enough nutrition in, you're eating other people's peak refuels. It's something that will definitely help you recover.
Mountain Hunting Experiences
00:44:04
Speaker
It's not gonna be a magic pill, obviously, but you will feel a difference. You'll be less sore than maybe you normally are. You'll have less swelling, things along those lines because we messed around with it this year. We went to Colorado for elk and we had our group out there
00:44:19
Speaker
And you could tell like this year, I really made sure to keep that nutrition on track during the hunting season as much as I could. And I definitely noticed a difference in my energy level, my recovery as far as being sore the next day, being stiff. And we were going up some gnarly, steep stuff. And I can tell you that just in our group alone,
00:44:39
Speaker
we all felt that difference as we were making sure that we stayed on top of nutrition as much as possible. Obviously, you don't have a kitchen. You don't have your meal prep guys delivering your meals via helicopter. Maybe you should. You don't have all that. You depends on how much I sell this year. Maybe we'll get a meal prep guy dropping it off an Uber.
00:44:58
Speaker
There's a video for you right there. Yeah, dude. You're up there glassing with your tripod. You just have the helicopter come in behind you, drop a care package. Well, I'm just such a killer. They're typically only eating backshops anyways. After day one, I'm just eating deer. I was never killing them out of way. Love it. Not really. Typically, it's day seven, and he's small. I just shot him because I felt bad that I spent so much time driving and trying to kill a big buck. So all right, dude.
00:45:28
Speaker
I like the nutrient stuff. Give me a, give me like a piece of gear. Give me like a new piece of gear. A piece of gear you're just like this. Besides that awesome tripod you got. I know you got an awesome tripod the other day. Besides that, I know that's number one. Give me a piece of gear. It wasn't a piece of gear. Everyone's kind of flying with the radar. Everyone should get. What are you thinking?
00:45:46
Speaker
Just looking over here at my stuff, I've got to do a review on still. The one that I'm really excited about honestly is the peaks sleeping bag. That's one that I'm really excited about. We got it and my son almost immediately took it over. He got in it and started doing his little, I did a little video where he was like doing the worm dance because you could stick your arms out of it.
00:46:08
Speaker
I think I like when companies innovate things, but I also like when companies have used other products and they're like, I like this about this one. I like this one about this one. And they combine it all together and still throw their own twist to it. So I'm really excited about that. I don't know. Have you had a chance to look at it or get your hands on their new sleeping bag? I've seen it. I run enlightened equipment quilts. I've seen their thing. I'm intrigued. It's like a hybrid. You can run like a quilt and you can also keep your arms out and sitting in glass in it.
00:46:38
Speaker
So I saw Brady was really stoked on it. And then obviously the Grady guys are stoked on it. I really have to try it. Like I'd have a hard time.
Gear Debate: Sleeping Bags vs. Quilts
00:46:45
Speaker
Like I'm such a creature of habit when it comes to my system. I've had the same thermos sleeping pad now for eight years, never popped. And I just use it, right? Like I've used the same pad forever. Same sleeping bag. I use a 10 degree lightening equipment for pretty much every single hunt. If I don't use that, I'm jumping into a 50 degree for like real warm stuff.
00:47:04
Speaker
But I am intrigued by the peaks. I saw it. I see we're using it.
00:47:09
Speaker
And I'm like, I wonder if it's worth all the hype. So I got to check it out and see. So you like it. And like you said, you can run it as a quilt. And I think that's interesting too. You can tuck the hoodie away and actually tuck it away to where it's out of the way and then unzip it, flip it over, and use it as a quilt. That's one of the features that they have for it. But yeah, I like the idea of being able to be in your sleeping bag. I don't do a ton of cold weather stuff yet. But being able to be in your sleeping bag
00:47:37
Speaker
in your teepee or tent or whatever, being able to manage the fire if you've got a stove going or eat while you're still in your 15 degree sleeping bag. Along with, of course, I know the technology has been out for a little while, but the water resistant down so it doesn't get soaking wet in case there is some moisture that gets through the tent or whatever. I do that feature as well, but it's really comfortable from laying in it in the living room. It's super comfortable.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, I got to check it out and talk to them. I want to try out their teepee, too. One thing I can say with the quilts where I can see this would be a benefit is that somebody is really windy and quilts suck in the wind, especially for a teepee, because you're going to get that draft. You get that draft under the quilt. So it would be nice to be like, OK, I'm going to have to go to a zipped-up sleeping bag and then zip it to a sleeping bag. But you still have the access of, you know, and then it's a center zip, too, which I like that. Yeah, I saw that. That's not a side zip. And now what is the weight on that?
00:48:37
Speaker
Hmm. I don't have that memorized off the top of my head, but I know is comparable to the other 20 degree bags that I've had. It's a lot lighter. So I ran the climate.
00:48:48
Speaker
20 and 15, I've run those and it's a lot lighter than that. And then the Thermorest 20 degree, I want to say it was just a smidge heavier than the Thermorest 20 degree bag because it's five degrees colder rated. So it should be a little heavier, but it packs down really tiny as well. I think it fits in like a, it's either a 10 or 13 liter dry bag. Gotcha.
00:49:14
Speaker
That's one thing with the quilt, like my online equipment, I custom made it and I think it weighs like 18 ounces. It's a 10 degree. It's so light and so small. If you run your stuff in a dry bag, your backpack, or do you shove it in there?
00:49:27
Speaker
So it just depends on how long I'm going out for. If I'm looking to save some space, I'll take a dry bag, just a compression dry sack to be able to get it down as small as possible. Other times I don't. So this, I just barely got the peak sleeping bag. So I haven't really run that with my other gear yet, but I'll probably put in a dry bag. So I'm a big fan of, um,
00:49:51
Speaker
Market XO and those guys and I have a couple of their packs and they always say I used to run the bags too But they always say it's like putting trying to put bowling balls or rocks in and there's space in between those balls So they don't run
00:50:04
Speaker
any sort of bag system. So I've gone away from bags too as well. Even with my tent, like I'll take my tent out and I'll shove my tent down the side of my pack. And then I'll shove like my, I'll unfold my sleeping pad and fold that in front of the ball of my bag. And then put the, then I put the sleeping bag on top of that and just shove it in there and then everything presses because it's down. Then they say you get more space taken up in the pack.
Choosing the Right Backpack
00:50:24
Speaker
That makes sense. I'm looking to make a switch this year on the pack. I'm not sure if I'm going to, I love the XL, probably to stick with XL, but I want to go to a bigger, I've learned a 4,200. I have their 3,200 and their 4,400. I want to get a bigger, like a 65 from someone.
00:50:39
Speaker
6,000? I don't think it'd be hard for me to switch from XO because I just love what they're doing and Mark's an awesome dude. Plus, you just know the system like a similar creature of habit. But there's a few pack companies out there I'd like to look at before I make the switch. I can just get a bigger one because I'll use the one I have right now.
00:50:55
Speaker
I'm not going to stop using it, but for some of my hunts when I'm backpack hunting, it gets tight, especially if you're bringing a camera. So it's already carrying a camera around or if you're bringing like the whole pack. So I need that extra space, an extra couple thousand liters for the BTX. So I don't know, man, if anybody listens to this and they have a pack recommendation that I'm just going to love and should make a switch to, let me know. But as of right now, I'm probably just going to go back to XO because I have had no issues whatsoever with their packs and I have packed out a
00:51:25
Speaker
A lot of animals and petrics, not out of them. I've heard really good things about their packs. I've never run an XO. I've run a couple of different ones, but my favorite is the initial ascent, which I'm sure you've heard about them. They have, it's either 52 or 5600. They just launched this year and that might be more up your alley, but then the next step up from that is like an 8,000 cubic inch bag. So that might be a little too big.
00:51:50
Speaker
I was thinking about looking at the initial sense as well. They look a little similar to the Exos, so that's why I was like, those are intriguing. I'm pretty abusive on everything, but I'm doing this Woodstock rifle and I'm planning on beating the crap out of it. I don't take care of it. I like to beat things up, so I throw my pack down to throw it down. I can't do these really thin packs. I want some that's thick and heavy duty.
00:52:17
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. I would definitely take a look at those. And if it makes sense, as far as the space goes, I know they have a pocket trying to think it's on their 52 or 50, whatever their 5,000 plus bag is.
00:52:33
Speaker
I think they said it will fit a 115 Swarrow. That might be something you might look at, but yeah, they've got a spotter pocket on one of the sides that'll fit a 115 Swarrow on it. That's a 95 millimeter Swarrow with a BTX on it. Yeah, it should definitely fit. You got to see. Maybe it will. That'd be cool. I'm looking for something like that to make that change. If that would fit on the outside, I'm putting it inside of my pack. It won't fit on the side. It's just taking up. That thing just takes up a lot of space. It's a big spotter.
00:53:03
Speaker
and you see so many animals, you just never go back. I tell people all the time, just don't look through it. Trust me, don't look through it. You'll understand why it's $6,500 and you'll understand why people who have these find a lot of animals, it's just they are awesome. That combined with that new JC tripod with that micro panning.
00:53:20
Speaker
It is my favorite thing to do in the world, is sit behind the JC tripod and use a BTX and just like, creep.
Mindset and Skills in Hunting
00:53:27
Speaker
Just sit there all day long. And I'm like, that's all right. I'm always like a glass half full guy anyways. I'm just like, I am going to find you. Like mid-day, you're going to stand up. You're going to make a mistake. I'm going to find you and I'm going to kill you. What are they taking?
00:53:42
Speaker
Yeah. I have a special set of skills. I will find you and I will kill you. And that's like my, me every time I'm in the Hills, I don't find them at harvest them. I find them and put a bullet through the lungs. Exactly. You're in that hour Mark, bro. Hit me with the hunting story. Oh man. Okay.
Jonathan's First Elk Hunt
00:54:00
Speaker
So this guy back here is actually my first bull elk.
00:54:04
Speaker
and got him this last year. And this was on the hunt. So we went out to Colorado, my first out of state elk hunt. We went over the counter. A lot of the guys were coming from the east. This was the first form outdoors group that we got together. And we spent almost all of the, I want to say it was 10 days.
00:54:25
Speaker
hunting a couple different areas and we'd seem to melt, but there's a lot of people in this one area. So anyway, we bounced around. I won't go through that whole story because that's coming out in a video, but basically they had to leave my drive was maybe six hours. So I was able to have an extra day and a half. Uh, they had 13 to 20 hour drives depending on the people. So they had to leave, you know, a day early. So I'm out there by myself and I wake up one morning and this area had been cleared out by people. They were all gone.
00:54:55
Speaker
And I get up and I'm glassing, of course, the furthest mountain top on this area that I was in. And I was like, I found, I saw one white butt and I was like, okay, well, maybe it's a cow. I don't know. We're just sitting there glassing. And then I saw antlers pop up and I said, all right, I'm going. So I don't care the line distance. I don't care what this is a Hail Mary. I'm going up that mountain and I'm going to find an elk and I'm going to kill an elk.
00:55:22
Speaker
Make it up there by midday. They're all bedded down.
00:55:27
Speaker
And I popped my head over this, this little hill. And I just see just that silhouette, just the dark brown or black silhouette of a spike staring at me. It was like maybe 50 yards away. And I just froze. Right. And my wind was good. Everything else was good, but he had seen movement, wasn't comfortable with it. So they stood up, they stretched a little bit and I'm archery hunting here at this time. And so I had my trekking poles and.
00:55:56
Speaker
I had something else in my hand, my bugle tube, I think in my hand. And so I went to go set those down as slowly as I could. They ended up walking away and they weren't too spooked, but I just kind of let them go. And again, I'm no expert guys, but I know enough that I was happy that they hadn't run off and I kept my wind in my face and I waited for the wind to shift to where it was blowing uphill so I could follow them downhill.
00:56:22
Speaker
And I was checking my map and I saw there's this one little strip where there was like a cliff face that would have been to their back, the wind blowing uphill. I figured that would, if they were to bed back down on the same hillside, that's where they would be. So I waited about two hours. The wind shifted and started blowing straight uphill. And I just start making my creeping my way down to this little flat area.
00:56:48
Speaker
And you being a Christian, you'll understand this. And I just, before I peeked my head over, I was like, I said a little prayer. Lord, if it's your will, I would love to walk away with an elk, tack filled. If not, great. I understand I screwed up my one opportunity that you provided me. If it's in the cards for me, let them be right here.
00:57:11
Speaker
into that prayer, peeked over the edge and the spike and the four by five, which is legal in Colorado, was right there. So I was like, okay, they were bedded, faced away from me. And the one that I was going for, his head was behind a tree. So it was like the perfect scenario.
00:57:29
Speaker
And then I arranged it and I'd set a limit to myself at the beginning of the hunt. I said, I'm comfortable shooting broad heads on a live animal at 70 yards and in. I'm cool with that distance. I'm comfortable with it. I know I can kill at that distance. That's my limit. If I'm further than that, I just have to let them walk. Unless it's a follow up shot. And so it happened to be with the cut, it was like a 30 degree angle.
00:57:57
Speaker
and it was 70 yards on the dot. Like you couldn't have written any better. And I saw that number and I was like, all right. And I just took my time because again, he's sleeping. And he's quartered to me ever so slightly. He's bedded? Yeah, he's bedded. He quartered to me just ever so slightly, bedded, head behind a tree, and the spikes. I couldn't really see the spike, but I knew he was in the area. I didn't want to creep down any closer because he might spook him.
00:58:26
Speaker
And so I just get my arrow knocked, ranged again, dialed, went through my process. And it was weird. Like I drew back and it was almost like a,
00:58:35
Speaker
a shot at total archery challenge because I had this window. It wasn't narrow, but it was a window of trees into his vitals. And I aimed for the back rib just because I know with their anatomy and et cetera, it would be all scrunched up as like a freaking armor plate up front where I would normally want to shoot them. So I aimed a little bit further back and just drew back.
00:58:58
Speaker
went hinged down. And it was almost like the wind died, like all of my senses went numb. Except for like just horse blinders focused on that one shot buried the pin in them. And the shot broke as clean as any shot I've ever experienced. And I just watched it was like slow motion watching that arrow just sink bury into him. And he popped up and I could see the fletchings buried into the dirt behind him. So I knew it was a full pass through.
00:59:27
Speaker
He ran 40 yards and then he hunched over and piled up. That's awesome. I couldn't have written it better for my first elk kill. I've been out looking for elk probably with a bow anyway for the last three years with a tag in my pocket. It was awesome to be able to have that. Then I texted my buddy who happened to live just an hour and a half away.
00:59:56
Speaker
I was like, Hey, how do you feel about packing on elk tonight? And he was like, you didn't. And I was like, Oh, I did. And it was, this was all on the Garmin. And so he comes in and he saved the day with the four wheeler. We were able to get it down to about a mile and a half away from the.
01:00:12
Speaker
the elk and we went up the next morning and quarter them out and packed them down but man that I could replay I wish I could plug my head into a computer because I didn't have a camera but I wish I could just replay that over and over again on a big screen because that experience was just is awesome and that's when the nerves hit me was after the shot had gone through them
01:00:34
Speaker
That's when I just turned into a boy. I was crying. I was texting my wife. I was shaking. It was awesome. I want to do it every year. That's what I aim to do. That's rad, dude. Things that keep you going back. I know, right?
Conclusion and Further Content
01:00:50
Speaker
Yeah. That was a good podcast, dude. Where can we find you? Where do you want us to find you?
01:00:57
Speaker
Anywhere on, I've got my podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, just Redbeard Outdoors. And then of course, Instagram, Redbeard Outdoors. And then if you want to come over and join us at the First Form Outdoors community on Facebook, just go over to First Form Outdoors Facebook group. I think there's two or three questions and let them know Redbeard sent you over there and we'll get you in. So that's where you can find me. Just about any of those places. Awesome, dude. Let's do it again. I'll strip on your podcast now.
01:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, we're gonna have you on and when you launch are your new your your wood stock tripods and everything else that you've got Yeah, I got my lunch the wood one. I'll send you commissions. It's in the works Awesome, awesome. It's like all those guys tripods are for pussies walk around a glass. So all right. Thanks guys. See you later
01:01:51
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.