Testing New Products while Hunting Kodiak Island – Episode 21

Today, Dale is joined by Mitchell Kukson and Adam Grenda, coming off a fun week hunting Kodiak Island in Alaska. The guys had the opportunity to test new products, before release while chasing Sitka Blacktail deer, Mountain Goats, and more! This is a fun recap, as we learn more about Adam, the guys give hints to new product launches, and tell how weather is always a factor when in Alaska.

You’re doing all these interviews. All these interviews. Mhm. All right. Welcome back to another Barnes Bullets podcast. Today we are floating around in the what? What is this? The Gulf of Alaska, I believe. Yeah, I’ve got I don’t think it’s the Gulf. Yeah, it’s close to the Gulf. I was looking at it on Pacific. Um, what? No, check this out. Specific or Pacific? Pacific. the specific. We’re We’re on Kodiak Island. Yeah, exactly. Gulf of Alaska right there. Bam. Got it. Okay. Um I’m joined by Mitchell Cooken and Mr. Adam Grena. How are you doing today, buddy? Not sick yet. Not sick yet. I had to kick everyone out of the cabin, go to their rooms. Hopefully everyone doesn’t start puking. Yeah. Um, we are headed back from a pretty dang fun trip that we just just embarked on um about 6 days ago now, right? To hunt sick of blacktail and mountain goats for those residents in this group. Um, and then some guys shot some Zucks, right? Yeah, absolutely. Shooting everything. It’s a pretty fun trip. There’s a lot of stuff to kill on Kodiak as a resident. I can shoot goats. Everyone else is deer hunting. Everyone shot bucks. Yeah, I shot a really healthy, mature-bodied spike, the smallest of all the deer. But I had to get the party started. And then every day was horrible besides one day. Yeah. And torrential downpours and rain. and then hunt a little bit of ducks yesterday cuz it was pretty nasty fighting storms. I was thinking about it this morning as I was kind of like getting packed up. It was kind of funny that we killed, you know, we had six people that had tags on this trip and we killed two bucks every time that we would kill bucks. So, it was pretty pretty interesting cuz like we really didn’t have like you were saying uh really quote great days to hunt other than one one and a half if you want to call it that. That one day started really nice but then it got progressively worse throughout the day. Yeah. The crazy part is the day in was absolutely beautiful. Like wind was calm, no rain, and then today it’s maybe a little windy but not really and there’s hardly any clouds out. But they do say that once that we get out of these peninsulas here or bays that it’s going to get pretty nasty on the ride back. So, we’re going to rock and roll for the next two hours. I can see the waves though. They’re pretty big. Yeah, they’re they’re starting to rock the boat pretty good. We’ll see how long this podcast lasts. Yeah, before somebody has to puke. Yeah, we flew from a Kodiak to a village and then took the boat out. It’s a 67 foot boat. We with a company called Kodiak Pursuit Charters and uh super awesome group of dudes and like I was really impressed. But they have to be up in like back into a bay. They can’t just anchor in the middle of the ocean cuz right you’re really susceptible to weather. Yeah. Um let’s kind of talk about how this all kind of came together when I I believe we kind of started talking about it. What uh Hunt expo time frame potentially? Yeah, I think so. I had a buddy go I’d always heard about the boat transport and you can do Kodiak a couple different ways. You can go on a tent. Um you can rent some forest service cabins. I’ve done that before but as you can imagine the game around the cabin is super super limited. Yeah. And then the boat thing’s cool cuz you’re based on a floating cabin and they take you they don’t guide you or outfit you or anything. They just take you on a big boat. They run you to shore on a skiff and you say, “Hey, I want to hunt up here. I want to hunt up here.” And um they drop you off and they pick you up with a radio at dark and it’s super nice. Yeah. And I’d heard about this company from a buddy who had talked to him a bunch and they were kind of a newer company and I called a few references and everything checked out and that’s kind of how this came to fruition. Yeah. Um and then we started talking about like what type of products that we’re going to have for 2026 um and how we could utilize those on this hunt. So unfortunately we cannot talk about those right now until January. Um, but we were able to test some new products. I I killed a deer with a new product. Mitch killed a deer with a new product. You killed a deer with a new product. Your gun? Yeah. Yeah. With with my gun. Yeah. Some say a 338 ROM with a 250 LRX is a little heavy for a tiny pygmy deer. That’s 80 90 lbs. So, yeah, we saw that deer and I just grabbed your gun. Yeah. So, that worked out well. Carter killed um a buck with new product as well. So that was super cool um to kind of be able to use that in the field um here what a month and a half before it’s actually launched. Two months before it’s launched. Yeah. So um all of Mitchell’s hard work over the summertime came to fruition on this hunt. Yeah. Yeah. I’d say we had pretty dang good results. Yeah, granted we were shooting magnums, but I was planning on bringing a a baby cartridge and decided against once I started watching videos and seeing brown bears and stuff, I was like, uh, you know, where I ended up shooting my deer would have been fine, right? But just with brown bears and wind and everything else, it just it’s not that you have to kill them with the big magnum, but you got to buck the wind, too. Yeah. I mean, a lot of times it was blowing 20, 30 miles an hour. So, right, shooting a little bit lighter bullet, lower VC, slower velocity, makes sense to go with Magnum. Yeah, absolutely. So, so there’s your hint as to what some of these new products are. Yeah, it’s in the Magnum family. And we have a little guy, too. We do have a little guy there. We’ve got quite a few new products coming out, which will be I think it’ll be exciting for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. It fills in a lot of the gaps we have and Right. Yeah. I think I think people be jacked when they see what’s coming out. Absolutely. So, Adam Grinda, um, let’s talk a little bit about your story because this first time that you’ve been on our podcast, um, you told us earlier that you don’t really even listen to our podcast. So, sorry, I got six kids. That’s my fall back for everything. You might have six kids right now. You don’t even know. I know. I I’ve got three kids right now, but um, yeah, we never know how many will be allegedly at home when I get there. Um, it is kind of nice talking about that. Like I have been able to check in with the family um this whole entire time, right? Yeah. Cuz the boat has Starlink, so I’ve been able to FaceTime the family every single day. And that’s kind of a really cool little added nicity. I have not been able to do that. Yeah, because that first day, the first day was the hardest day I’ve ever hunted in in the rain. And I think I got the 16 iPhone 16 Pro Super Duper Max. Not anymore. Yeah. And Carter’s like, “Isn’t it waterproof to 6 mters?” And I had it in the all-in case and I was filming um camera guy Branson got his uh got his buck and we put him in front of the camera and it just it like sat into the alling case and leeched into the back of my phone and so my phone was toast like there’s no amount of rice that was going to save it. I thought about putting it on the stove like on a simmer but it was it was smoke. cuz I got a new phone waiting in Kodiak. But yeah, that was super cool for everyone for emails and work and stuff. And it’s late in the year, too. I think we should mention like it’s mid November, so like you don’t have a lot of daytime. We had from 8:30 maybe to like 5. Yeah. A lot of time. And it was short days. When we were going out, it was pretty dang dark. Like you could shoot, but trying to spot something more than a couple hundred yards is pretty tough. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and you know, go back to the weather and everything else, right? the overcast and all that, it makes it even more difficult, plus all the tall otterters, you know, we can we can get deeper into the hunt and everything, but I would like to give a little background about Adam Grinda, like how you got to Alaska, like what you do now, like, you know, just give us a little brief backstory. Yeah, I don’t feel like my story is that crazy. I just always had a had a dream of like going to Alaska. I thought it was really cool and I started as a fishing guide when I was 17. And then um that kind of rolled into unloading flow planes and I just thought that was like the coolest thing ever. And I told my folks, I said, you know, in my next life, I want to do that. I’m like, well, you’re 17. You can still like pursue a career, you know, it’s not like your life’s over right now. And so I started learning to fly at a really young age. And I did it all really fast from like private pilot’s license through a flight instructor in 9 months. And then I started working with the right people to build a skill set to learn how to fly. Worked every summer in Alaska since I was 17. And then did a little time Willist, North Dakota on the oil field. Didn’t like that, but I like the production level of work, like 100 hour weeks. And then 2017, I moved to Alaska full-time. I got a job for the Feds. I was flying for them. Had a couple thousand hours in beavers and stuff. sides. I was marketable and moved to Alaska, was married. And that’s the hard part to like I moved to like a rural community like King Salmon, Southwest Alaska is like it’s there’s like 500 people that live there. Not a lot to do. But if you have an airplane, it’s awesome. And so I bought a Super Cub. At that point in my life, it made sense to own my own airplane instead of just fly other people’s. And this April, I think it’ll be like nine years. Wow. eight or nine and I’ve accomplished a lot in eight or nine years. I feel like I’m kind of starting to like slow down where I don’t have to just hunt my ass off all the time because I’m like making up for lost time if that makes sense, right? And I worked for the feds for 5 years flying for them out of King Salmon and I didn’t really like the government going in and then the more that I worked for the government and then co hit it was just it was Pandora’s box of opening and I just I had to leave and finally my wife just told me you need to quit cuz you’re just miserable. Yeah. and I quit and I became um what Cody Rich calls an entrepreneur. And I think that’s just taking a bunch of stuff, putting it together and hoping it works. And so have a few rentals in real estate, couple rental cars in King Salmon. We have a big brown bear viewing summer season. Um make a very small amount of money in the hunting industry, but not a whole lot. And um I run some retreats, like I got one coming up in Costa Rica here, a couple weeks. and it’s kind of a bunch of stuff. My wife has a couple different businesses. She writes children’s books. I got six kids all through foster care. Um I think that’s a pretty good story about my life. Did I miss anything? And uh Elite Hunt Club. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I’m part owner of a business called Elite Hunt Club where we uh we buy I mean we t thought about doing something for this boat and we talked about it like an hour ago. Yeah. Um, I’ll buy either a package of six hunters for the boat like this for deer and mountain goats if they’re eligible or I’ll buy a brown bear or a moose hunt or we just did a brown bear moose combo and I’ll buy an outfitted hunt. We’ll sell tickets usually like 1,500 or 2,000 tickets so it’s limited and kind of our slogan is you always know your odds because a lot of raffles out there that I put in for like oh I want to hunt a stone sheep and I’ll put in 500 bucks but there’s no cap. So, it’s like unlimited number of how many tickets they’ll buy or they’ll sell to folks and stuff like that. So, I also do that just like I think I counted one time like nine or 10 revenue streams. I trap in the winter, sell some fur, pick up some moo sheds. Well, and I mean I think that that’s kind of a perfect uh way that for people that live in Alaska, I feel like almost everybody has to do a little bit of everything to be able to make do because there’s no way to have I mean, yes, you could have a full-time job working at, you know, the local sporting goods store or something like that or the grocery store, whatever that it is. But in a way, it’s like if you want to be able to experience Alaska to the fullest extent, you almost have to be able to do a little bit of everything. So then you can take time off when you want to go hunt, all that. So, um, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, everybody that I’ve talked to between outfitters or guides or fishermen or whatever, right? It’s almost like depending on the season depends on what they’re doing that, you know, that time of year. 100%. Yeah. And I tell people to be to be able to hunt the most you possibly can. And you guys will get this. You got to have like three things. You got to have enough money with a job that lets you do that. Yeah. On the flip side, you have to have a job that lets you have time off. You can’t make half million a year and then never be able to take time off, right? And then you have a wife that’s like, “Sure, you can go.” Not like, “No, we’re going to spend your vacation going to my in-laws or going to Disneyland.” They just they just get the hardest part. Yeah. They just get it. Mine grew up in a hunting family, so she’s like, “It’s not a question.” She just wants to go. That’s the coolest thing about my wife. Yeah. But yeah, you need all three of those. And I think as an entrepreneur, you can really pick your schedule and you don’t have to be like, “Let me see if I can get time off.” You know, like we’re talking about doing something in May and it’s like, “Oh, let me see if I can get time off.” Like you’re probably going to be able to get time off. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously working within the hunting industry and, you know, working for Barnes, stuff like that. Um, luckily Mitchell and I are pretty pretty special um in that in that regard. I’m very special in a different way, but yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, at that time, right, it’s just like making sure that the the wife’s cool with it and everything. I uh Mitchell’s done what, four or five hunts this fall, give or take. H I mean with your general stuff and Utah and um I’ve done quite a few this year. Really only one of my own. Um I did my buddies deer hunt, buddy’s mountain goat hunt. Oh yeah. My elk hunt, Jess’s elk hunt, my buddy’s elk hunt. Yeah, we did general season muzz loader. We struck out and then muzz loader deer and then this hunt. So that’s eight. Yeah. Quite a bit. I mean and some of those are just like quick like weekend trips, right? like versus just weekend. You just drive through the night, kill yourself and kill an animal and then kill yourself getting it out and then back to work on Monday type of thing. Yep. Yeah, those are rough. Weekend warrior. Yeah, that’s the way you got to do it. You got to get got to make time make do with the time you have and drive through the night and not sleep. Take naps during the day, right? That’s cool. How are your goats doing? Don’t How many goats do you have now, Mitchell? I have eight goats. See, he’s he’s beating Grinda on how many kids he has. We bought Dale a goat. It’s currently It’s currently in his garage. Mitchell was looking at Facebook Marketplace like we should just buy that and just have it sitting in Dale’s garage when he gets home. Happy birthday, Dale. Little baby Jamal was only 100 bucks. Jamal was the goat. Little pygmy goat. Yeah. Oh, it was only a pygmy goat. You could carry Dale’s dayack and a gene. Oh my god. Maybe just an algaene. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty small. Jamal tries hard though. He does. He’s a lover. We we talked about that up the mountain. Fun fact uh on the Facebook on this on the goat goat finders uh Facebook page that you use. Yes. Uh fun fact is he likes goat food. So that’s Well, they should. Yeah. So that’s a good thing. All right. Well, let’s um you guys want to talk about the hunt a little bit and like kind of give people some sneak peeks of We We did film this hunt. It will come out um again in later January, I think maybe even into February type of time frame. Um just because of product releases and and all that. So make sure that we can have that out there. But we did film this hunt. It will be on the YouTube channel. Um but yeah, let’s let’s talk a little bit about the hunt. We flew up here to Kodiak. Um had to get an Airbnb. Grenda was very adamant that we had to be there here the 13th instead of the 14th. So Mitchell and I had to change flights um just for us to have to sit in Airbnb for a day and a half. You guys could have went with us. We drove 4 hours to go shoot pistols. That was ridiculous. Well, I’m just saying like usually it’s a good idea to get in early cuz a lot of bags get lost. It’s happened to us in Kodiak before and I was trying to get out a day early with these guys, but I mean it’s understandable. They were like, “Yeah, we might be able to do it, but it would be like us getting back today and them turning around and the next group if the next group came in on the flight that’s leaving and picking us up.” That was the original plan. And yeah, I kind of dropped the ball there. Tight. Yeah. Yeah. Too tight of turnaround. So, we basically killed a day in Kodiak. And I’m sorry, Dale. It’s all good. Hope we can move hope we can move past this. We’ll try to. Um, so yeah, we ended up uh having to make the jump to the little small uh village as you said. Um, and then got on the boat and it was couple hour boat ride that afternoon. You forgot to mention the chick that picked us up in the truck charges $100 for the onem drive each way. So $100 to drive you up there for a mile. Not to us, but the captains and $100 to drive you back. Yeah. I didn’t even get a seat either. I sat on the tailgate. So did I. I was out in the cold. That’s extra if you want that. The full experience of Yeah. Then we jump on these guys. Uh these guys got on their boat. Uh they had just lost a freshwater pump, just like a freshwater pump inside the boat. So they had to fix that real quick. And that weather was like perfect. I was like, man, if it just this is great. We could probably kill some today. But then we had to go down to a bay and it was like 2 hours away. And by the time we got there, it was dark. And we saw goats on the way in, tons of deer on the way in. We were glassing from the boat. It was really exciting. And then we anchored up in a bay and woke up to it was really nice all night. And then right as we started to get first light just starting to rain a little bit and a little bit became a lot of bit. Yeah. It just rained in like it rained in like sheets of rain all day. I went out shot my deer first thing and then got the camera guy his deer. That’s my phone broke. That wasn’t really the plan though. Like we seen one baby deer. I’m going to call it. Are you talking about my deer? Juvenile deer. Yeah, that’s a full deer. That spike was going backwards. It was actually going downhill. Yeah, he was in regression. Yeah. Um anyways, we seen the one deer and four guys go out in the pouring rain. I’m like, I’m not I’m not going I’m not going to be the fifth guy to go shoot this baby deer. They’re not bad enough. I guess not. But they kill that and then all of a sudden they’re hiking up the mountain shooting another deer and they got and that was probably one of the biggest deer on the trip too. And they could have killed another mature deer that was like right with that deer. I almost shot that one with my pistol. I was really close. He was raking like four yards away. The dough was bedded like six yards away from the buck that was shot and they’re just like kind of like sheep hanging around like what do I do? And I almost got to shoot with my pistol but then he she kind of blew out and he was like too far. Yeah. Well, next time. Yeah, next time. It was cool. But yeah, it was pretty efficient trip. We we uh you guys just set out for the one deer. Came back with two and one ended up being a freaking nice deer. Yeah. Branson’s first ever large or big game animal. Yeah, it was either an eight-point, a 4×4, or a three-point with guards. We’re not sure with a little kicker. Yeah, it’s got a kicker. We Yeah. So, drop time. I think the purist called a three-point guards. He might have just shot the new world record. We don’t know. 100%. Yeah, we haven’t put a tape on it so we can’t confirm. It’s a world record in my book. He was super happy. Got that on footage. Phone died. But probably the coolest part of the trip when I came back and I was just like I thought about a little bit when you come back and you actually take your clothes off and I was like, “My clothes are soaked.” Yeah, they’re just as wet as if they came out of the washing machine. But then I looked to the dryer and I’m like, “Oh my goodness, dude. I can have these dry in 45 minutes.” Yeah. Came out like ready to go. And I’m like, “It’s still pouring, but I could go do another hunt this afternoon.” It was too rain. It fogged in that afternoon, that first day. But I was like, “This is insane.” Like that mental shift for me of just being on a boat and having a dryer was I was like, “This is worth it.” We kept uh joking around this the best tent that we’ve ever stayed in. Yeah, exactly. To be able to come back to uh a nice warm hot meal that the that the guys Cole and Bo uh made for us. Great food. Like I did not expect it to be this nice. I expected like we were talking about like spaghetti every night, you know, and just like oh, shepherd’s pie third time this week, you know, just definitely was not that dehydrated eggs. No, they had good stuff. Everything was different and they had some like really good food. Yeah, great food. Um, you know, and kind of to even allude more to that, right? Like we were talking about you you look at uh like coastal bear hunts or you know, sick of blacktail, right? Like that’s a lot of times very like entry level type of hunts for someone that wants to come to Alaska for the first time. Oh yeah. Um because there is a lot of logistics that that go into it. Um you know going on a hunt like this where you’re at least using a transporter doing the boat thing. They basically taken care of everything for you. Yep. Um there’s a ton that gets into getting to the village and stepping on the boat, right? You know, like listening to Dale complain about extra night in Airbnb and everything, but like once you’re here, I almost felt guided. Yeah. You know, even though it’s not even though it’s not like I just I didn’t wash dishes. They’re like here. Sometimes they put the plate in front of you. You didn’t have to eat like put your hook. Yeah. He tried to bait my hook and I’m like, I can bait my own hooks. I’m a grown-up, you know? I’m not like the little kid holding the bluegill up at the pond. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. He’s like, I don’t want you to get herring hands. I’m like, “It’s fine. I I can get herring hands, you know.” Well, the great thing is you could turn around and just wash it off. You have a sink right here. Yeah. We had a sink. We had uh two different bathrooms or heads as they refer to them on the boat. You had a shower, which I don’t think anybody in this entire entire trip, but we did have shower if we needed. We had the option. Like, you can’t use it every day, but I just use baby wipes. I figured I’ll shower at the motel tonight, but I don’t I didn’t take a shower. Did you guys? No. Did anyone wash clothes or just go outside? No. Just go outside. come outside and get rained on. Yeah. I mean, I I used the dryer like I used dryer every day. Um Yeah. The only downside we told him is they had one boot dryer and we had like it had the glove attachment below and so we have like one boot there and just kind of rotate through stuff. I get said get a couple more boot dryers and we could not have given them any higher praise. Like it was awesome. Yeah. To do their stuff. Super super cool. We didn’t really get into the fishing too much just because we were super focused on hunting. And I think to get to good fishing grounds, we needed some better weather to like get outside to some more structure on the bottom. And right, we just didn’t have that. Yeah. But we still caught fish. We caught some cod and souls and black rock bass. Yeah. Um you got a halibet. No, that was Carter. Carter got a halibet. Carter caught one small halibet. We tried a little bit. I mean, we were Yeah. jigging here and there and it just never picked up. We catch a fish here and there and it just I think what Adam’s kind of getting at right is we didn’t get to like the Sure. The the primo type of fishing spots that they wanted to get to if you want to try to catch halibet or something like that like regularly. So yeah, like they’ll read a nautical chart like we’ll read onx and they’ll figure out the perfect topographical features underwater just like we’re looking at like where a bench where an elk would bed down and stuff like that. They do the same thing and we just didn’t have the weather to get there. And they’re like, “Hey, do you guys want to like b possibly give up like a half day for fishing?” Like, “No, we want to tag out.” Yeah. And then once we were tagged out, we had basically a day and a half of sitting on the boat, right? Yeah, because the crappy weather. But day two kind of came around uh pretty quick after getting those two deer back, getting them hung up. It rained basically the whole rest of the day pretty dang hard. Like you said, it fogged in. Um day two came and it started out pretty nice. Um I had dry clothes. Yeah, you had dry clothes. Um I don’t even think it was raining when we got off the got off the skiff. Mitchell and I went one way. Branson, Brandon, Carter, and Grena went the other way. Um because you had seen some mountain goats. Yeah, as a resident I’m able to kill goats here and um they kind of wanted to move. Remember that? So they’re like, “Hey, let’s stay one more day.” Y and we kind of looked the weather. The weather controls everything in Alaska, especially Kodiak on a boat and they’re like, “Let’s give it one more day.” We had seen goats up on this bench the whole time, but it was way way up. Ended up only being like 1,700 ft above the ocean, but it looked way higher as it always does. It’s just steep. And like to just tell people like in a nutshell, Kodiak just sucks. Like there’s lots of game, but the brush it’s I don’t know what it is. It’s like deer brush or whatever. It’s like these sticks the size of your pinky. And like when it’s vertical, you can’t like move going up it. And so you try and stay on a bear trail, but then it’s rainy and muddy and you’re going through alers that are 10 foot tall. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then you’re like, “Let me try the alders.” And there’s no brush in there, but then your gun’s getting hung up on the alders and your pack and then you’re high stepping everything to get around it. Yeah. and then you go back to the brush and hate your life. So, that’s the hard part. But, we finally got up and uh got close to some goats, but they weren’t in a good spot. One, walked through a good spot at 300 yards. I had the gun dialed. And um I just brought my 338 for this because my theory is like, hey, if there’s a bear, if there’s an issue or something, goats can take a lot of lead and it was either 7 PRC or 338 ROM. So, I brought that uh 250 LRX and you want to anchor a goat, especially you just went on a goat hunt and it’s like you want to not have them kick. You want to hit them in the shoulder and like Yeah. put them down where they’re at. Not let them move at all because they’ll be on a little ledge sometimes. And these ones just weren’t in a good spot and then we’re sitting there trying to make a plan. I’m like, I don’t think it’s going to work. We got like two more hours before we’re going to start going back and like what are we going to do to get these goats? They’re they’re just the very top, you know? Like you could shoot one and it’ probably roll the bottom. There wouldn’t be much left. The guts would be smashed and uh they’re not stout like a sheep where they’re going to hold on to their horns. They’re going to just have nubs nubs at that point, you know, and just be cut up. And then I look above us and I was just actually calling the boat to give him an update. I’m like, “Hey, here’s our plan.” Cuz we kind of keep keep in touch with the boat. And I saw a belly right above us like 193 yards. He’s like, “Shoot him, shoot him.” I’m like, “That is not a spotty skyline.” Yeah. And I’m like the bull’s probably not going to go through the goat and hit the boat behind him. Like the slim odds, but I’m like I don’t know what’s behind the goat, you know? And it’s like I think it’s flat, but I’m not sure. And I don’t just want to take the maybe. And then like a sheep would stare at you all day till it was dark, but that goat just we had a glassing dar set up and everything. And um he just kind of looked at us and Carter moved around a little bit, just kind of looked and they don’t have great eyesight. And then he just walked up the hill and there was like 10 other goats up there where we were trying to shoot and there was a Billy up there rutting all these nannies. And I said, I bet he is going to go check those nannies cuz he was pretty big and I think it might have been the one that crossed before. And so I hustled up the hill, grabbed my gun that was set up to shoot the goats at 400. Mhm. That was dialed to shoot the goats at 400. But in the panic, you don’t think about that. I just looked at Brandon. I’m like, what do you think? He’s like, we need to go as soon as that goat goes behind that hill. We need to run straight up, kind of cut him off. And to run uphill to cut a goat off that sideing is like stupid, but you have so much adrenaline at that point. You know, it’s like you don’t have pack to scrap the gun and like you’re using your gun as a walking stick in the snow and all kinds of stuff and got up to 140 and then I was able to go in a little ravine. I got to like 80 yards. I was super close and he was broadside but he was kind of like I’m too close to those whatever those are. I don’t feel comfortable. So he starts doing the moderate speed uphill walk away, you know, that just like you know he’s on to you. And um he gets broadside at like 90. I shoot and I don’t hear the bullet hit. I’m like how can I miss at 100 yards? I’m laying on top of a rock and I’m like huffing and puffing but I’m like the crosshairs are not moving more than like 4 in. And so I rack it right away and then he’s going up to the left and I shoot him like perfectly quartering. I hit him high again and it hasn’t registered in my mind that my gun’s shooting high because I’m dialed for a 400 yard shot and the goat’s at 100 and not that much high but still it like it matters. Goats aren’t that big. They look big. Um and he kind of walked up into that shot like I was showing you on the on the footage and uh hit him really hard and then I shot him a third time and I basically hit the goat everywhere you could hit him without killing him. like just backstrap and it just wasn’t good and sometimes stuff happens and I don’t like to sugarcoat stuff and I was rushing the shot and um yeah walked up there had to finish him off one more time and it was almost like 8 and 3/4 inch Billy. Yeah, super cool. Well, he died like in a pretty only a 45 degree slope instead of like an 80° slope. And so he didn’t roll down the cliff and in the video I’m yelling him like stay, don’t move, stay, you know, cuz they just have like these aftershocks and they keep wiggling. And uh yeah, we were really overzealous. We’re going to come down the mountain in like an hour and we were back 2 hours after dark, right? How long did it end up taking you to get down? About three hours. Yeah. And then like you keep your Onyx tracks on but you don’t like start your Onyx tracks. So you’re like, “Ah, we’re up the hill.” until it starts to look nasty. And then when you get to where they’re off, you’re like, “Man, I really wish I had them on.” Cuz we got to one point and Carter said it was the only time that he was actually like worried. We got to a spot and I’m just looking. I’m falling the ground. I’m like, “Oh, we shouldn’t go anymore cuz it’s like black abyss and I was about to walk off a cliff.” It wasn’t bad. It was only 20 footer, but I mean it would have hurt. It probably would have hurt. Yeah. I hit terminal velocities about 8 ft as big as I am, you know. And uh then we just kind of sidehill to the left a little bit, but you’re just looking. You’re falling this brush. It’s foggy. You got steam rolling off your body. You’re hot. And I’m like, “Oh, we shouldn’t go anymore.” Carter’s like, “What’s up?” I’m like, “Pretty sure that’s a cliff right there.” And it’s like, when you’re coming from Kansas and just not a thing, you know? Jeez. I was checking you guys out from the boat cuz you guys radioed in. I was looking. You could see your headlamps and it was so thick you could only see them, get glimpses of them, then they disappear. And you guys said you were on that saddle about the waterfalls like, “Oh, we’ll be down in an hour.” I check an hour later. I’m like, I think they’re still there. They haven’t moved. Like, they’re going slow. Yeah, there was there was some issues. There was some times we took breaks and everything like that and Yeah, it was it was tough. Yeah, but it was really cool. Me and Dale were just drinking hot chocolate on the boat watching you guys. I knew you were there. We’d made a big loop that day. Yeah. What did you guys do? That’s when we went, you know, we went across the bay from where you guys went. Uh kind of close to where Branson had killed his buck, but then we were like, “Okay, we’re going to go in this back uh that northwest corner.” Yeah, kind of in the head of this bay, if you will. Um, and we went back up in there and I think we saw like eight doe’s. Did not see a single buck that day for whatever reason. It I I don’t know. I mean, these deer are so small again like it’s so brushy and everything. I think that we were just overlooking deer or you know like we were also trying to being that it was our first time on you know on Kodiak and like walking around and everything. I think we were just trying to cover country and just thinking that you’re going to pick up deer faster instead of just like sitting down and just being like, “Okay, we’re going to give this an hour to like just blast it over.” Yeah. And almost, you know, in a way it’s very similar to hunting coups deer, you know, like that. It’s just really thick country. They’re small animals that you just almost have to pick up a flicker of an ear or something like that in the altars and then all of a sudden you find a whole deer. I mean, at one point I think I picked up a dough. She was literally just standing under a tree or alder or whatever that it was in the wide open and I’m like, “There’s a deer right there.” And Mitchell was like, “What are you talking about?” And and I basically like told him exactly where it was and he looked over it multiple times. I I went to go from my binos to the spotter, couldn’t find her again, and she never moved a soul for like 15 minutes straight just because it’s like they blend in so well. So, we’re in a brushy part of the island, I feel like, too. If we have had better weather, they said we could have got further around the south end there. I feel like and gotten to just Well, just like where Mitchell ended up killing later in the week. It was just more more open, more grass, and I feel like Yeah, it was. Yeah, we were definitely in some thick stuff. There was deer there. Just super hard to see, right? It was definitely lower density in that in that bay we were in, too. For sure. But I don’t know. It’s It’s tough. I think earlier in the year, I think you’re right. you should kind of stay put and glass harder, but Right. You would think like right now they should have been rutting pretty well. And that’s why I wanted to like just all right, just move. Yeah. You know, 20 30 minutes like, “All right, we got to go. Let’s go check something else out. Let’s go over this next knob and the next one. Next knob, next knob.” And every single knob takes you like even though you’re only moving 150 yards, it takes you 20 minutes to get over there. It’s kind of crazy just because it’s so thick. But yeah, we did that that day and then, you know, we ended up obviously you guys got back and everybody’s excited and soaking wet and gets to get dry and have a good meal. And that was nice. We ended up moving the next morning and that’s when I think that’s when everybody was on the verge of getting pretty pretty sick when we moved to that next bay, right? Yeah. We were we were kind of fighting it, but it was weird because the swells were coming sideways on the boat. Like for the for the direction that we had to go, the swells were coming sideways, so it was rocking the boat left and right versus, you know, forward and backward type. Yeah, you’re going north and the wind swells hitting you from the northwest or the west. And so you’re going straight, but you’re rocking like Right now, we have a tailwind, but the swell’s not bad. This is This is pretty good. But yeah, I woke up in the bunk because I see some whales out there. The generator. Oh, yeah. There are sails out there. Same place. Yeah. The generator has like that constant hum, but when they start the engines, it’s like, “Okay, now it’s it’s loud. At 6:00 in the morning, we were going to move and try to be I got scared.” And we’re like right by the engines, so it kicked on. I was like, “What is happening?” Like, “What were going to go down?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah. We’re moving. Titanic, we’re good. Hold on to me, Dale.” Um, yeah. And so, we moved. The plan was to be to that bay at first light. Everyone had an empty stomach. They’re making breakfast, the heater’s on in the morning. It was like perfect storm of just like and like you said, I’ve been on boats a lot. You grew up on boats. I don’t do well when people like start talking about getting sick and then they’re like, “Oh, just try one of these ginger things, these ging things you suck on.” And I’m just like, “Dude, no.” That made me like good. I started feeling like mouth my mouth like salvate and reminded me like college party days and I was like, I need to go outside right now. Yeah. and went outside, held it together, and then like we got kind of protected water, got some food, and usually food is the last thing you want, but it’s like it actually helps settle your stomach because you just have just stomach across. Yeah. Yeah. We uh we took off and we went with Brandon and Branson. Mitchell and I did. Yeah. Um I took the flatlander. Yeah. You took the flatlander up one way. Um wanted to kind of walk this bench and everything and then we went to another cool bay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super grassy. Um just looked better for deer, didn’t it? Like when we got like Absolutely. This looks more like deer and bear country and no mountain goat country. Yeah. So um went up there. We decided that we were going to be Seal Team Six when we uh jumped off the skiff cuz Cole had told us, you know, this is going to have to be pretty quick because of this little beach that we were hitting was extremely rocky and and no delay. Yeah. No no delay at all. And it was pretty uh pretty deep where we stepped out. He couldn’t get close enough and then the the waves were rolling in. So the waves would they’d suck back and you’d have like a a one two second window before the next wave crashed in. So that was your time. So you had to time it perfectly and there’s still like 6 in of water. So you kind of got to take a big step, time it, and then hustle out over and you’re going off the front of the skiff which is sitting up higher than the rest of the skiff. Right. So like you actually have a 5 foot drop off essentially from the skiff. So you kind of like Yeah. And for the listeners, skiff’s a Zodiac. So it’s an inflatable boat with a hard bottom. It’s like what 13 14 ft long. Yeah. Give or take. You got a bunch of dudes. You got a pack, you got a rifle. And like you said, you have to time it. So like when the water’s just starting to come in and where it kind of peaks, you need to almost jump in the water. So it’s just rushing out. But like you said, you have a 5ft drop to like jump out with your pack and rifle and everything and like get good footing on slick rocks. How’d that work? Um, well, so Mitchell decided that he was going to be the first person off the boat. We let the camera guy out, which is always important. So, he’s going to get a cool shot. So, we’re all thinking we’re going to be badasses rolling off this boat. You know, we’re all like, “Oh, yeah. We’re so cool.” And, uh, so I’m the first one off. You know, I’m acting tough. I’m, you know, leader of the team obviously pretty apparent, you know, quarterback, right? Um, I’m calling the plays. I’m going off the boat. And I time it what I think is good. And the rocks were they’re big rocks and they just for whatever reason they just they’re all stacked on each other. They give away. It’s like this big boulder field and they’re all slippery. They all move. So I took a spill off the front of the boat. I go down. The wave crashes over me. I’m soaking wet. My whole glove is filled. I didn’t get it too bad cuz I was in full rain gear. Yeah. So I struggle. I get up. I fall again cuz then the the rope in front somehow gets wrapped around my leg. wrapped around the leg. So, I fall twice. Oh, the bow line wrapped you up. Yeah. After uh our skiff master told us like, “Watch that bow line. It’ll it’ll catch you. It’s happened a lot of times.” I’m like, “Okay, I’d jump off.” Well, so I fall twice. I’m soaked. Everyone’s laughing at me. I’m like, “Whatever.” Like, it’s funny. He got on camera. If it wasn’t on camera, I’d probably be pissed, but it was pretty funny. Dale’s laughing the hardest to you. He is. So, Dale’s next. I No, I wasn’t next. Brandon’s next, which he’s like six foot six, like former NFL defensive end guy. He’s high. Yeah. He literally steps and like it’s just like this little step for him. Huge, you know, and he just gets off and just walks off and I’m like, “Okay, cool.” And I was like, “Oh, I’m going to go this way or whatever.” Cole’s like trying to move the boat around and I don’t know what happened. I basically just like I just fell flat on my uh back like when I fell. I You starfished. Yeah, I just straight starfished. I still had one hand on the on the boat like I’m just like holding and about that time like a wave just like crashes over me. So like I literally got soaked from like I mean basically my chest down and I could as soon as I stood up like I could just feel water running inside of my pants and everything else. It was So you’re laying like your head’s uphill, your feet are in the ocean and a wave breaks over your face. It broke like into my chest and just ran down and I was like, “Well, this is a great start to the day cuz it was actually pretty cool that morning.” Nice weather day though. Yeah, it was nice weather, but because of it being clear, it was actually colder. Yeah. So, um, so I end up getting up and I’m just like, I cannot believe this happened. Everyone’s laughing. Yeah. Everybody’s laughing at me this time and we’re just like, yeah, are we going to freaking die because we’re freezing to death? Obviously, you do have a nice boat to come back to if needed. And Cole immediately is like, “Hey, if you guys get, you know, too cold up there because you’re wet, like just call me. I’ll come grab you or whatever.” Yeah, he was great. And Brandon like just stays in the moment and he’s like looking around. He’s like, “All right, there’s deer right here. Right here.” So he’s trying to like get everybody’s mind like back in the game, right? Um so we end up kind of like going up the going up the beach a little bit. Cole takes off and uh immediately I think Brandon said something like, “Okay, there’s some doe’s right here.” and he looks over and he’s like, “There’s a good buck like right here above us.” So I, you know, me being like extremely soaked from my chest down, I was like, “I will shoot this buck and be done with it.” That’s a great That’s a great deer for me right now. Yeah. I was like, I was like, “That is the perfect deer that I was looking for on this trip.” Um, so I get in position. Yeah. Uh, I get in position, get 300 yards, get prone. Um, I think it was like 298 or whatever. He stands up and But it’s like not prone. You’re like pretty steep angle, isn’t it? Yeah. I mean, well, I was prone, but I had my pack and then a Rockman pack um like stacked on top, so I could I could throw it out on a bipod. Um and even though yes, I was prone, I was like still shooting up at a probably a 30 35 degree angle um up at the shooting at the deer on the beach. No, absolutely not. Yeah. I mean, it was 200 yards off the beach, literally straight uphill. um less brush but still wicked steep where we went. Yeah, wicked steep. So anyway, I, you know, docope or whatever, like, you know, get my range, um, dial the scope, shoot the buck, and just like absolutely smack him, like shoot him in the shoulder, drop him in his tracks. But where the goat didn’t do this, the deer decided to play the part of a goat. I think he identified as a mountain goat, actually. Um, shot him with the special super secret sauce ammo. Yeah, the special super secret sauce ammo. Uh, actually, unfortunately, I wasn’t the first deer that got killed with that since you had shot one, but it’s okay. I I wanted to be the first guy, but I I let my buddy do it first. So, anyway, um yeah, did did get to shoot him, but he identifies as a goat and decides to do one of those last last two raw like kicks off the mountain. Brandon was the only one that noticed. We were all high-fiving and celebrating. He’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, watch it, watch it, watch it.” And all of a sudden, it disappears. which is really important because if if we didn’t notice, we would have hiked up there what 600 700 feet, right, for nothing. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, uh he goes back and he like kind of falls into this crevice and literally rolls that complete uh 200 plus yards probably down the mountain, down the hill and lands on the beach. So, picked up some speed. Picked up a lot of speed. Um, but with that also, you know, kind of started blowing up inside because of of doing multiple flips and and everything else. But anyway, yeah, got to shoot a really nice buck. I mean, you know, it’s a whatever 3×4, 2×3, I don’t know how however you want to call it. Five point. Well, it would have been more than that because it would have been a sevenpoint. Call a seven point, you know, if we were talking whitetail world, but uh, you know, 3×4 uh, buck and yeah, just cool buck. I mean, again, these things aren’t very big. It’s like this was well, for you’ve been to Kodiak before. You’ve shot sick of Blacktail before, but I think for everybody else, it was there first. So, I don’t think everybody was going to be very picky and and I knew I wasn’t going to be. I mean, the other really important thing you got to think about, too, is we’re watching the forecast, right? And so, it rained like crazy the second day. Yep. And the following day from where we were hunting, we were looking at the forecast, it was supposed to rain more. like 99% chance and the wind was supposed to kick up a lot and then the next day didn’t look a whole lot better. So, we’re like we kind of gota this is we got to get some [ __ ] done today. Yeah, we we knew that we had like a very short weather window, right? I mean, and when you come to Alaska, I think that that’s kind of the thing, right? Is that you, you know, I’ve been joking around all year because now this is my fourth hunt that I’ve done up here this season. It’s like you have to make, you know, make hay when the sun shines, right? because you only get like certain days that it’s going to be like super sunny and and really nice or whatever. I mean, yeah, you can hunt during the sucky times, but if you can if you can kill on the days that like you know are kill days, like you just get it done. So, and this boat allows you to do that cuz like other days we wouldn’t have got out of the boat, right? In normal days, like if you’re on a goat hunt and it starts raining like that, you don’t leave the tent. Yeah. Cuz you will everything will be soaked and you’ll be tapping, right? Or a moose on or sheep on or whatever. Right. For sure. At least this one you can go out, be miserable for 5, six hours, come back and have this thing called a dryer and some warm soup and like reset. Yeah. Which is really cool. And the weather isn’t it’s it’s cold out. Yeah. It’s barely above freezing. But as long as 45° keep moving. Even if you’re wet, you’re going to be all right. If you if you’re wet and you stop moving, it’s going to be an issue. But right, you can get wet and you can keep moving. You’ll be all right. It just stops and you’re wet and it’s horrible, but you won’t die. Yep. Um, so I end up going down there and as we’re doing that, um, like I go check like find the buck that he’s on the beach. I come back and I tell these guys, um, that I’d found him or whatever and I’ll go ahead and start taking care of him. And they’ve already like glassed up like two or three more bucks like further up the drainage. So they’re like, “Well, we’re just going to take off after that.” So that’s when Mitchell and Brandon and Branson took off that way. I went and took care of my buck and called Cole for a pickup. Yeah. Yeah. We seen gosh it was five or six bucks. They were kind of they were all over the place. It was a really great area because it was enough grass you could glass them and see and they were rutting doe’s and running around but then they also had the thick alders to go bed in. So it was really good area for us and we kind of picked through. I was going to shoot the first one then we seen another one. It’s a little bit bigger and like all right we better we should check all these out before we go make a play. So could you see them in the alders? Not really. Even without leaves. Yeah. I mean, you could if you could catch them in the open and then go into the alders, you could track them through sometimes, but yeah, just glassing the al there is no way. Gotcha. Um, but anyways, we we finally found one we liked, went after it. Um, I think it was about 900 yards where we’re at, and then I glass a null and that was 350. So, if I could get to that null, it’d be in range. Yeah. So, we get up there, hike through the thick alers, get up. Um, get in range. The buck starts kind of getting nervous. Um, he’s looking at us and I get dialed. I’m set up. We’re on him, but he he beded down. So, I couldn’t shoot. He gets up. He’s walking directly away. And then he gets behind brush. And then the camera’s not on him. And then he he’s walking away again. And I never felt comfortable with the shot. There was just never a a good clean shot. And the last thing I want to do is go track a wounded deer up in there because then I’m wasting the other guy’s time. Yeah. My time. We’re in grizzly country. We don’t have, you know, brown bear country. Same thing. Is it though? But yeah, I I didn’t want to shoot. So he walked over the hill and was like, “Okay, well, let’s go find another one.” And so we we didn’t have to go that far. We were seeing other bucks. They were further off, but we kind of get to another point where we could see another portion of the of the the drainage and uh seen a a buck. We didn’t think it was that big, but I was like, let’s let’s get closer. Let’s get an eye on him. We’ll get the spotting scope. So, we get to about 300 yards and yeah, look at him. I was like, okay, yeah, that’s a that’s a shooter. Yeah, he wasn’t with any doese’s. He must have been running around checking him, but he was alone and we got set up and made a good shot about 315 yards. Nice. Um, quartering away, so I hit him a little bit uh back behind the ribs and then exited through the shoulder and he still took off another 50 yards, but he was a dead deer running. We got pretty cool footage of it. He ran, tumbled, and then did like a backflip and Yeah. started doing gymnastics over there. Mhm. Yeah. He didn’t go far. Yeah. So, we uh we got over him, cut him up. Um we just got him out. We didn’t have to quarter him. It’s a nice heaven NFL guys with you. He put the whole deer on his Rockman pack. Yeah. And uh he carried it out for me. He even gutted it for me, too. I didn’t gut it out. He gutted my deer and then packed it out. I think I think he did, too. Yeah. Hell of a guy. So, even when you uh don’t have your packs, you still have a pack. Yeah. Exactly. And they’re He’s kind of cooler than than the goats. He eats a little more than the goats, but Yeah. It’s true. That’s the downfall. You got You got to keep him fed. But didn’t snuggle as much as your goats do, though. No, he wasn’t about the snuggling. If you can bring an NFL defensive end player with you, do it. That’s 6’6 or 6′ n, I don’t know, gigantic and will carry deer out hole. I highly recommend that. Yeah. Yeah. That was kind of a cheat code for us cuz that able that was able to like expedite things. And then we were deer hunting and we saw a bunch of doese’s saw some bucks way high like higher than the goats were but they were in deer country just it would have taken forever to get to them. And I’m like Carter do you really want to go all the way up there? Cuz I didn’t want to. Nah, you know they’re not that big. They’re like two point guards. And I’m like looking down the beach. I’m like kind of looks like a Harley Quinn down there and the spotter goes give me the spotter. Really looks he’s like we we should just go for ducks. have never seen someone so excited over a bird, but he came up here for the whole experience and the harlequin was like his bird and we went out that afternoon and set up on this point and it was just it was lights out. Yeah. I mean for for Carter, right, like this is his first time in Alaska. I mean it’s Mitchell’s first time as well, but like for Carter, right, as a water fowler growing up in Kansas and the Midwest and everything, like the Harley Quinn’s like the holy grail. Yeah, 100%. I was just also thinking like he got to experience so much in Alaska in such a short amount of time. Like do deer hunting, uh, duck hunting, but then also like be on a mountain goat kill. Like he got to do so many things. Like that’s really really cool. So many activities. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It was really cool. He really impressed me too. He did good. And I was, you know, I was a little worried cuz like you’re cold, wet, and miserable. Even a lot of guys can’t just do it even for a day, you know, and even coming back to the boat. And he didn’t complain, whine, or whimper. And he was right there. He whimpered. He didn’t complain. He didn’t whimper. Like, he whimpered a little bit. He did really good, man. I was I was really impressed by that guy. He was just He was just happy to be there and just like, you know, it still mesmerizes me and I live here. But just to be like, man, look at these mountains and there’s goats and there’s deer. Never saw a single bear. I think bears are getting pretty sleepy. It’s mid November. Even though their season is still open right now, we just didn’t see a whole lot, right? And uh yeah, I don’t feel like we ever saw a single bear track this entire time. We smashed ducks, tried to do a little fishing, caught a couple rock bass, those Irish lords. You caught a few of those, didn’t you? The red like driving fish. Yeah, like a little mini. They scared me. Scared me. Goofy looking. And then Yeah, we had like we had to get into a bay cuz another storm was coming. So we went back to the first bay we hunted. It was pretty protected. And then it was like we had one morning left and it was like this is your last chance. And and Cole and them were pretty adamant like hey look you can only hunt till noon because you guys need to be back on the boat cuz it’s about to get nasty. Yeah. And it got nasty. But yeah, we were able to go up and uh Carter had a tag. Brandon had a tag and we’re on this deer and we were close and then it walked over to this ridge and so we went up to the top of the ridge where we saw the deer and then the deer moved up to like borderline goat country. They’re like right at the base of the cliffs where you like can’t go up anymore and um it was a team effort. I was filming you were ranging Mitch and uh Carter was the first shooter and I’m tracking this deer through the spotter and through the alders and trying to like describe where he was. It was hard. We were back and forth of 20, 30 minutes just trying to find it. Yeah. Like, “Do you see that rock?” And then someone would see it and then the shooter have to see it. Everyone would have to line up and finally I got to a spot and I’m like, “Okay, do you see that rock?” Go down the triangle rock below it and then go run one rock width to the left and there’s like a horizontal piece. That’s his back. And then you can start making out pieces like there’s the antlers, dark face, you can see the throat patch and Carter shot him um like 400ish or whatever. But the cool thing is that buck led us to what I thought was a dough. And Brandon’s like, “No, that’s got got throw patch. Got to be a buck.” But I’m just like, I’m trying to focus on the first deer here because I can’t take my eyes off that one. He shoots that one, rolls it with super duper secret ammo and then look above and that thing had kind of taken a step out like, “Hey, what’s going on? We’re all shooting suppressed, so it’s not you blow out the whole canyon, right?” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s a buck.” And I’m like, “Brandon, come over.” And he’s like, “See? Told you so.” And I’m like, “That’s a pretty good buck.” Yeah. Yeah. And I looked at him like, “You need to go kill that buck right now.” So he land he lays down and he shoots that deer. And so we had, like you said, feast or famine. It was like 22. So he’s shooting, he was the only one that didn’t shoot a new product. Can we talk about he shoot? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was shooting the 65 PRC with the 127 grain and he did a a Texas heart shot. That was the only shot we had. And with Barnes Bolt, you can do that. So it went through the butt and it which is really impressive. So, it went through the butt all the way up through the body and we were searching for the bullet. Um, nicked a rib. It hit the rib and the wave front and cracked the rib in half. It didn’t exit, but it went the full length of deer and had enough energy to smack that rib like one of the forward ribs, too. The thick ones and crack it. Yeah. So, that’s that’s why you shoot barns, right? Yep. That’s why you even on these little deer, you can do that. After seeing that and Branson shot his deer with that and just sacked him for the first big game animal ever, like that was probably the best combo I’d see. That 65 PRC with the 127 LRX, that was like that’s a really good combo if you’re just deer hunting, you know? Brown bear. I mean, these blacktails are, you know, they’re stocky though, right? Like I mean, even though they might not be that big, like they’re not like a normal white tail. I I would say like, you know, southeast uh type of white tail. I mean, these things are pretty damn stocky and tough animals, right? They they live in this harsh conditions, everything else. So, I mean, you know, you you say that like, yes, they are like shooting quote little deer. It’s like, but they’re still pretty damn hardy for sure. Yeah. I mean, we dropped a few, but like mine quartering away, hitting the opposite shoulder. It still ran 50 yards. I was a dead deer running, but Yeah. 100% bullet. Yeah. With a magnum, right? Pretty impressive. Yeah. Um, but that 127 grain, I’ve said it before, that’s my favorite bullet. Um, I’ve killed a lot of elk with it at a higher velocity. 65 PRC is moving, but I was shooting the 65300 and I’ve killed five or six elk with it and 127 is enough. I’ve only recovered one bullet and that was at 600 yards. Really? Cuz it’s blown through. Yep. Yeah. Um, so I’ve since upgraded to the 7 PRC. I’m kind of on Adam side. Shoot bigger bigger bullets. Yep. because why not, right? For sure. But, uh, that’s a mean bullet. Yep. It’s pretty sweet. Well, it looks like we’re we’re almost to town. Almost back to town now, which is kind of nice. Village. The village. And then we got to jump on a little charter over to the main portion of the island and uh start getting gear together to fly out fly home tomorrow. I don’t like going back cuz then it’s like then I’ll I have to do stuff, you know? What? When you fly home? No, this like I have to get my meat. I have to take it to the smoke house. We got to check in a motel. It’s like here they just have it all done. Kind of in lazy mode. It’s like a I got to like all the logistics start again. We got to find a you know get his truck, maybe rent a second truck and like call the airport shuttle, like all the logistics just to get all your stuff from here back. That’s the challenging part of Alaska. That’s the cool thing about the boat like to kind of bring it back like they handle all that stuff. Yeah. I felt like once you got on the boat, all your worries just went away. Yeah. It was just like you just worry what the weather’s going to be. But I mean, you you you have to go with dudes that are like you can’t be type A and just dialed in like we’re going to go to this bay tomorrow. It’s like yeah, I got the flow. I got on the boat and asked captains. I said, “Hey, cuz they can’t guide you.” And so you have to know like, “Hey, these are the places we want to go.” We had a couple pens dropped some buddies down here like what does the weather look like and where are you able what bays are you able to go? And then we’ll tell you where in each bay we want to hunt. But yeah, you just got to be able to kind of roll the punches. Yep, for sure. Pretty much any Alaska hunt, you just got to roll the punches and it’s all part of the adventure. Yeah. Well, um I appreciate your time on this podcast. Uh I look forward to doing more podcast, potentially more hunts. We’ll see if we renew. Um but saying there’s a chance I might I might listen to this one. Mitchell talked a lot. He talked more in this whole podcast than he Yeah. So, uh, Mitchell’s slowly slowly becoming a better podcast co-host, if you will. I’m an expert. An expert. You’re something for sure. Expert blacktail hunter. Yeah. Mhm. So, uh, yeah, if you guys want to, um, check out cool sick blacktail hunting, maybe black bear hunting or something like that, go check out Kodiak Pursuit Charters. You can find them on Instagram. They also have a website as well. Um, but yeah, I hope that you guys enjoyed this podcast and be looking for new products to be coming here soon. Talk soon.