EP 180: Alaska Moose Drop Camp Hunt, Wyatt and Devin Report

We went in there and headed in towards the Alaska Range there and it's just dense fog. Flash of a paddle and I could tell it was a good bull. I put my mag out, put an extra shell in, got to Anchorage and booked the quickest flight out of there. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast today. We've got Adam Bronson, John Peterson, Chris Peterson, Devin Archibald and Wyatt Bowles. They made it back from Alaska. They got married and promptly left for Alaska as we've all very eloquently documented what it was going to be like getting married right going into hunting season, but they made it back and we're going to find out how it went. It was pretty awesome, I think. But anyway, Devin, I see you've got a nice fresh bottle of Nestle there. One thing I was going to ask you there, what did you think of Alaska snow melt water when you were up there? Well, we had a good filter. It worked good. We went through a lot more water than we thought. We were constantly grabbing water out of the creek. Did you have one of those bags that you just hung and grabbed Katadyne?

Katadyne, yeah. Katadyne filter. Wyatt picked up a clear pop-up. What was that? Just a gallon jug or five gallon jug of water and we just kept filling that over and over to cook with our mouth. It wasn't too bad, but yeah, definitely recommend. I brought Crystal Light and we had some Propel for electrolyte stuff, but we almost ran out. I was pretty tired of the same flavor, so if you do that, get a couple different flavors. Mix it up. Yeah, mix it up. Gotcha. I don't know. When I'm after pure water, at times there's nothing better and sometimes you got to have something more than pure water. When it's only pure water every day, you got to, like, I don't know. I remember when we went sheep hunting together in the Escalant. You just got to have something. You can't drink that water. Some of that water has, tastes like pine needles and you got to mask it, but even just

pure water that's good, I don't know. You can, I can drink more water and stay more hydrated if I have some flavor in it. So I ended up drinking more. I mean, it was better than Arrowhead, but. Yeah, it was a super cold, glacier-fed stream or river that come down by us. So the water was pretty, pretty clean, I think, as it was, just a little bit of sand in it. But the plastic from the filter, then that plastic jug, plus our Nalgene bottles, it had a little crystal light help. Well, let's boil it down. So this is a trip that put together in this last year. Up there's the Dillinger River Outfitters Bunch, kind of a drop-off situation there. Tell us about your trip. Tell us about, I don't know. I don't know how you want to go from day one to day 15 or whatever it was. I know you guys spent some time. You guys each, you know, can grow a pretty good beard.

You had a good one when you left and you came back. They were pretty thick. Yeah, we probably ought to start with, you know, how it all came to be with, you know, the guys here at Epic kind of surprising. Devin and I, with the trip, we were, you know, just minding our own business, working. Of course, these guys are, you know, in their meetings, getting things going, and they call us in. Thought we were in trouble, maybe, or something. Kind of thought we were. Principal's office. A little bit of trouble when we get called in there. And they're just like, hey, how do you think about, or what do you think about going moose hunting this fall? Like, we've got a trip set up for you. And basically just give this guy a call and work out all the details. And it happened to be with Aaron DeRosa, with Dillinger River.

He's been a friend of ours for a few years now that we've, you know, dealt with and talked to at shows. And worked out, you know, pretty good. So we were, you know, both pretty excited about it. It's been a bucket list animal's mind for a long, long time. And I think it quickly became one of Devin's top two as we, you know, got researching and looking at them and everything like that. Yeah, a lot of research. We looked at videos about how to judge a legal bull. And I'm like, that thing looks legal to me. 50 plus, you know. How to call them. Something you've never done in your life. I didn't try that. I tried wolf howling with my voice with the SUU megaphone. You know, like you take it at the ballgame. I took one of those up there and howled through that. Everybody laughed. I'm like, sounds pretty decent. But moose are just a little bit.

It's not one of those you just want to cut loose with film rolling for the first time. See how you're going to sound. You volunteered me to be the designated moose caller before we even left. I'll tell you, I tried it. You know, driving solo in my truck would give it a shot every now and again. And I'm just like, I'm terrible. I hope Archie's got it figured out. And then I nominated myself to be the raker because I just figured I couldn't screw that up. Yeah. So it looked like you found a piece of bone up there when you got there, huh? On site, all natural. Yes. Scapula. Yeah, we're walking the riverbed and ended up picking a scapula up. And that was our raking tool that we ended up breaking about day, what, seven, eight, nine. Ten, I don't know. And we just had a lot of raking going on and ended up breaking that.

We picked up a bull magnet call at Walmart when we got there, which was a great idea. Because to carry that sound, it's just like you said. Just a tube, basically. Just a tube. You can use it as a raker. Fiberglass tube just kind of carries the sound. But anyways, well, I guess we can start with getting to Alaska.

Yeah. How was any – I heard you had an interesting dinner at the airport, Archibald, with a nice woman. Yeah, a nice old elderly lady. Share her pizza with me. The first time he told us he didn't say the word elderly. He said, yeah, me and Wyatt had to get something to eat. And I sat down, started chatting with this lady, and every soon we decided to have dinner together. And I'm like, whoa, you're going to say this on a podcast, huh? All right, you just got married. But then he added the word elderly, and things somehow – it kind of became – you don't just get some merit. This lady was traveling alone or something, and pretty soon you're eating – finishing off her vegetarian pizza. Yeah, where did you get that pizza? It looks good. And she's like, well, I'm only going to eat half of it. And I was like, oh, I'll just get my own. And then she says, well, I won't touch it.

And I was like, no, I'm fine. And then I watched her, and she tore half of it, let the other half on the box, tore the box in half, and handed it to me. I looked at Wyatt, and I thought, what the heck? So you shared a dinner with a lady at the airport? Yeah, veggie pizza. Here we are in what Jason would call a COVID environment. That's right. That's right. A total stranger. Did you even know where she's from? Yeah. She picked the tomatoes off and ate it. Archibald's got a vegetarian pizza he's sharing with some random lady we had just met. If you pick the vegetables off of a vegetarian pizza, what do you have left on there? Pure cheese. Cheese and dough. And then another hunter sat by us, and we started talking moose hunting and stuff. Were they going up moose hunting at the same time? She just disappeared, yeah. The vegetarian was gone. She went and sat a couple rows over.

Oh, the vegetarian. I gotcha. But you got there all right. Your gear all arrived in Anchorage. Yep. No that. No surprises. You guys did have a little bit of, had some friends, Justin Schaefer of QU. Wyatt, you've known him for years. I think he made a pit stop there. He gave you a few pack frames just so you didn't have to flap with quite as much stuff from Utah at least. Yeah, so a few of the logistical things that were going to be a little bit tougher to get in our carry-on bags are the bags, check bags that we did take. You know, we borrowed a tent, some pack frames, just things like that. But you took your food up. Yeah, we did take our food up. And you mainly freeze-dried for meals, right? Right. Yeah. What type of food? Let's, like, what was your, I mean, you're going for, you got a plan for two weeks, two of you, and, you know, you're not.

We were lucky and we didn't have a weight limit. Well, I mean, we didn't, yeah, we didn't, I mean, obviously not over 100 pounds. Yeah. But we had peak refuel, mountain house. We flew up there. And then, you know, we went and got some peanut butter. Stopped at Walmart. You know, kind of got some peanut butter and jelly, some bagels, tortillas, just to eat with our breakfast skill. What was breakfast? We could have some Oreos. What did you have from breakfast? We had breakfast skillets or the granola peak refuels with tortillas. They were actually really, really good. Shockingly, I didn't think I'd be a granola fan, but it was really good. Oh, the cereal? So you are a granola cruncher. Yeah. I mean, it was great. I was kind of, you know, questioning it for sure when Archibald brought plenty of them. They are pretty good. Yeah. So, yeah, we were good there. He was a lot of help.

Big thanks to him. Pack frames, which are not the easiest thing to, you can't collapse them really. So he had some meat haulers for you. Yeah. And an Alaska guide tent, you know, just a big old tent. It was basically bomb proof. We'll tell you a little bit more about that later. We'll get to that later in the hut. It's a little two-man Walmart tent in Alaska. It's not going to cut it. We would have been in trouble. Yeah. But, yeah. So we got to the, let's see, we got to the Lake Hood, right? Lake Hood? Lake Hood, yeah. And we bought our pilot lunch. We had a big old bacon burger. We're supposed to take off at 6 a.m., and then it switched to 10 a.m., and then pretty soon it's 1 p.m., I guess, in the afternoon, and we still haven't taken off. The guy's just watching the cameras like crazy, just saying, you know, we can't fly through this yet. We can't fly through this yet.

But I'm going to get you there today. There's no doubt we're going to get in there today. By dark, you'll be on the ground. Yeah. Just got to wait for the fog to lift. And I asked a lot of people questions about these moose hunts and flying, because this is my first time to Alaska, and no one told me to get Dremamine pills for the flight. Did you get sick? So we hop on this. What was it? A 185? What was the plane called? You could fit four people, but it was still pretty small. And that was taking you to base camp? Yeah, into the camp. Dillinger River base camp? Dillinger River base camp. And about 10 minutes in, maybe five minutes in, I started to feel pretty sick. Oh, yeah. I was like, please don't be that guy. You know? Did you have a gallon Ziploc? No, I should have, because I thought I was in trouble. Sat there until like 1 p.m. And you'd eaten lunch probably, and then took off.

Just went and had lunch, and then we get back there, and the guy says, let's go. Giant bacon server. Right after you just bellied up to something greasy. When we came home, we didn't eat, which was good, because we were both sick, too, on the way back. So bring Dremamine pills if you ever fly up there. But, I mean, those pilots up there, they're amazing. He just, let's go. And we went in there and headed in towards the Alaska range there, and it's just dense fog. And he's just finding little holes just to bounce through these peaks. Every time we get a little break there, we're looking out the window like, oh, there's a peak, and it's a lot higher than us. So we better be super careful. But he knew what he was doing and got us in there. And I mean, he's pretty awesome pilots. Those guys are up there. They've spent a lot of time flying.

And so did you spend the night there at base camp after he dropped you off and just kind of get gear situated? Yep. So we spent the first night there at base camp. The weather had, you know, socked back in, and we didn't know if they were going to get him out of there or if he was going to get back out of there. Once he got in there, the pilot that took us in, and he ended up taking off and making it back out of there just fine. And they couldn't get us out of base camp that night to get us into a hunting area. So we spent the night there. And it was good, I mean, just to get everything organized and, you know, meet the guys and the crew that, you know, would be hunting, you know, in the same kind of area as us. And then the next morning, let's see, we woke up, you know, super early. And actually me and Aaron flew in first just kind of, you know, trying to build a runway.

Just it was a place they hadn't hunted much before and had not actually, you know, figured out a runway or anything like that. So we spent probably, what, an hour and a half? Yeah, you said he made probably 30 or 40 loops right there trying to find. I always like those stories when they're like, yeah, we're going to go land somewhere. I've never landed. There's no runway. We're going to put down. We're just going to find a runway. That sounds like a great spot. Exactly. Yeah, we're sitting there circling. And Aaron's like, you know, I typically don't ever bring anyone with me when I'm building a runway. So just bear with me here. Yeah, because you got an extra, let's say, 200 pounds of guy plus his gear. So let's say 300. And if you've flown in a Super Cub, you know, 50 pounds a lot of times puts you over certain thresholds that they don't.

I mean, it's amazing on that line of what they like to put in those. Those planes are light. And 50 or 100 pounds is a lot of weight. You know, they don't even put starters in those things. You know, they hand crank them to start. So you know they can't put a starter that's this big in there because they want to lighten them up. They're counting pounds. So anyway, but you got down and. Yeah, made it down. It's kind of cool. A little rough. Flight in, making all the circles. You know, ended up spotting a bunch of moose paddles and things out of the plane. Sheds. Really get a, yeah, sheds really get a guy kind of, kind of excited about being somewhere for, for a little bit. At least I had, you know, sheds to go pick up and look at and keep, keep me busy for a little while. So, you know, we landed and ended up, you know, I know actually when we landed, figured out

the runway and went back to camp. Devin had been back there. You were. I was shooting rifles and everything like that and getting things organized. Then we threw our stuff in the plane and headed into, headed back to that area. So actually Devin went in first and. Yeah. And we were kind of surprised, which it was smart because he probably knew. I mean, we were in a really flat, it was flat as a pancake and we could see what. A riverbed. A riverbed where we landed and that's where we camped. We could see what, 500 yards up river and about 1100 yards down river. That was our world. And I mean, like the tree line just felt like the end of the world, didn't it? One to 200 yards wide. Yeah. Yeah. In the wider place, it was probably 200 yards wide. And then it was just, just thick, thick trees.

Like you couldn't even, I mean, you couldn't pick anything out of it even if you stared into a pineal. I brought his spotting scope. I never saw it one time. Yeah. It stayed in the backpack the entire time, hoping I would get to use it sometime. So we couldn't really glass, you know. So we just, and Aaron told us, said just call, call, call, and they'll be walking through here. Kind of could be migrating, he said, when we landed. From summering to rutting. He kind of had an area where he'd figured the water bulls had spent the summertime and then they'd be working their way up towards the benches and hills to where they would actually. Where the cows and stuff were. Where the cows were. And it was more open to where they could rut the cows and, you know, work the cows, things like that. So as the rut went on, he figured they would be working that direction and, I mean, he was spot on.

Did they all come from one side to the other or did you get them going back? Every single moose we saw came from one side. Came from one side going the other way. Yep. I'd almost say, what, north to south? Yeah. That kind of is north. So that, we couldn't hunt the first day and it was kind of, it was raining that day. We set the tent up kind of in the rain. Yeah. So light rain. It wasn't terrible rain. But, yeah, we got down, got the tent set up and camp kind of set up. And we just kind of hung out around there that day. For the rest of the day, what was left of it, just a couple hours. Because we, you know, couldn't hunt until the next day. All right. Then what was the routine? So how early, I mean, you got pretty, a lot of daylight. You know, I mean, sometimes feels like too much. I mean, what do you mean by that? Did you get up at all? It was getting light, six or something like that.

Yeah. We got up, you know, early with, you know, the break of dawn there. And the first couple days, we're just, you know, gung-ho and like, let's hike. Yeah. The first day, we did exactly what we were not supposed to. What? Left the river? And we, first we went up river and we'd go around the corner and why'd say, well, let's just go around this bend or that point. Then the next one. Well, let's just, we can see more from this point. Next thing you know, we're two miles, over two miles walking up river. Yeah. Well, you get in a river there and always the next bend's got to be where the moose is. Like, you've checked this bend, so it's got to be the next one, right? So, it's only, and every bend is only, you know, 200 yards further, 250 yards further. Like, if we just walk 200 yards, we're going to see a whole new world. Are you seeing moose sign a little bit? Yeah, that's weird.

Kind of just getting our bearings, really. Yes. Checking for moose sign and, I mean, the grizzly bear tracks we saw. Yeah. We were running into, what, grizzly bear tracks, wolf tracks, moose and moose tracks. All within, like, five yards of each other in one spot. It's pretty cool. Yeah, we were just kind of all over each other. And it got to the point to where we'd walk up the river one day and the next day come back up the river and there'd be wolf tracks over the top of our tracks. I think the grizzly bears were still pretty nervous about us. We never saw a grizzly bear. And a couple fresh tracks, and it kind of seemed like they got to the point to where they could wind us or whatever, and they were out of there. So we didn't have any encounters with those. The second day was bad weather. I remember it was pretty bad weather. It was tough to hunt.

And then day three, it cleared up a little. And what was it, mid-morning, we saw a little bull come out? Yeah, yeah, mid-morning a little bull came out. Well, we were just kind of sitting outside the tent a little bit. Devin was still out kind of in the riverbed. I was back in the food box trying to get me some breakfast. Trying to grub up. Yeah. Yeah, and we could tell there was – I knew there was another bull there because there was something. The little bull kept looking back, and about 30 minutes later, a bull come out. It was a good bull. He had heavy brows, but on his left was only, what, two split ones? Yeah, he had two brows on the one side, four on the other, and just not as strong in the paddles. So that early in the hunt we decided to – Yeah, Wyatt passed him. It was a good call. Let him go. So how did you guys – when you say Wyatt passed him, why didn't you –

like how did you decide? You're up there. You're good buddies. He's, for all intents and purposes, lifelong friends, you know, since teenage years, whatever. How did – was it alternating days? Like, hey, today if we see one, it's mine. Tomorrow it's yours. How did you decide? No. Who's going to shoot? The day before the hunt, well, we were just kind of getting everything ready. Devin just looked at me and said, you're shooting first. And I said, well, I guess I'm good with that.

You said, well, hey, have another helping him out now, Devin. Let me take care of your dinner tonight. And it works out for him really well because he doubles up, so. That's right. Yeah. And in the end, it kind of works out. So you just kind of decided. Wyatt was shooting first. We just, you know, just decided. So. But, yeah, that was tough because the bull come out. Wind is terrible. Those two bulls you mean? Every morning we go downriver. Yeah. And the first bull crossed. This other one come out. We're trying to decide and look at it. And, boom, he hits our wind. Takes off like a mule deer. Gone. Gone. Just run. And I'm like, holy cow. We saw the thing for, what, eight, ten seconds? Yeah. And we didn't have a ton of goose experience, you know. Did we just make a huge mistake? You know, we didn't know. That would surprise me a little bit.

But not, I mean, only because, like, I don't know. Have they ever even seen a human where you were? Probably not. They weren't rutting stupid like you see or hear about. It was a pre-rut. But they obviously knew you weren't something they ever smelled. And they just didn't like it. Yeah. It was still, you know, super early. Probably pretty pre-rut type days there. This was a week early probably for the rut. And then later that day we decide, you know, we've seen these two moose come out. So we're going to, you know, work our way down the river and we're going to set up. You know, there's a couple little lines of trees that are inside the river corridor. Little brush piles. Yeah, little brush piles out on the river. Islands or whatever. Just to rake us up. We're sitting in the shade, you know. Yeah.

So we decide we're going to, you know, get to one where we can see basically 500 yards up river and probably 600 yards down river. And just calling my guts out. Call and sit there and rake and call and rake and call. How often would you do that? Or 15 minutes or so? Or a half hour? Or just whenever you like. 20 minutes? Half hour? Every first? Every year's the board you had to do something different? Every 20 minutes or so. So we, I brought two books. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Lucky for us, Devin brought books. I didn't bring anything. He's like, I'm usually glassing or usually got something to pass the time when I'm up there in Alaska. But glassing wasn't going to happen on this hunt. So we were both reading. They're in a series. Wyatt's reading the one next. He's reading them backwards. He's reading the one where everybody dies at the end.

So he knows the result of the book I'm reading. So I tell him, don't say nothing. So we're both sitting there reading the book where you can go ahead and tell we're stretching a little bit. Yeah, so we're just sitting there reading the book. And, you know, you get sitting there for long enough. You have to get up and stretch every now and again and just kind of look around and see what's going on. Get your blood flowing. We were each, you know, reading a page or two and then looking around, reading a page or two, looking around. And finally, you know, we'd been there for a few hours and just stood up and started stretching. I mean, we'd only been up for a few seconds. And Devin said, moose paddle. I could see a moose paddle. You turn and sure enough, you can just see this moose paddle just coming over to the top of these little willows that kind of went out into the river.

Miracle I saw him at the edge. And you just kind of see the top of him. And I threw up my binos. It kind of turns up river and looks at us. I said, that's the bull I'm killing. That fast, yeah. It was a split-second decision. But we only had a, you know, 20-second window maybe. So your guns are already. I said, I'm shooting him. And he was ready, which was good. Your guns slammed with a bipod there. So I got kind of around in front of Devin there because he was on the other side of me. So I just got around in front of him and kind of bellied down. And Devin said, you know, should I film it? I said, just get me a range. Yeah, I said, I need a range. And I just, 465. Yeah, I hit it 465. And you weren't calling or anything, right? Well, we were, but he did not. But not for half hours. Like, you didn't initially, like, you didn't call and boom, he stepped out. No.

It was like he was just moving through. 20 minutes earlier, half hour earlier, he didn't. He was traveling fast. Yeah, nothing was stopping him. I mean, we made some noise trying to get him to stop. You know, cow called, whatever. And he wouldn't even turn to look at us. I just think he was just kind of migrating through and just happened to catch him. In his mind, he knew where he was going. I gave way to range. Next thing I did was cow call as loud as I could. Didn't even phase him. Yeah. But in a matter of five seconds, they can cover 20. It's like, it was incredible how fast they could cross that corridor. Just take a step. So, yeah. Anyways, I threw down real quick and just put the crosshairs on him, pulled the trigger, and luckily it dropped him right there, right where he was. I mean, there was kind of a river right in front of him that he was walking up to.

And he just folded and dropped right there on the sandbar. It was over like that. That was about it. Yeah. I mean, it was pretty quick. And I bet it was like 15 seconds, 20 seconds from the time we saw him to the time he had to die. Or the time he died. But there was still no like, well, I hope he's what I thought he was. I mean, we've all seen the pictures after, and it seems like a no-brainer. But, like, in that amount of time, you've been there three or four days, it's like the first legitimate maybe big moose or whatever that you might see. But it was, you were still pretty confident. We saw, well, that first bull you passed. So, that was our one comparison. And this one just blew it away. I mean, you couldn't have looked at that bull for more than four or five seconds. We could tell he had big fronts. Big fronts. Plenty of fronts.

You know, we were looking in an area where it had to be four fronts or, you know, 50-plus inches wide. So, we were in that area there, and we just told, you just tell that, I mean, he was easily over the 50, and he had just a bunch going on in his front end. Just range and plug your ears, Archibald. Exactly. So, and that was, what, the 7th of September that I had killed that bull. So, you walked up on him and what? He grew as we were walking up on him. I mean, he just kept getting bigger. The body kept getting bigger, and it worked out. Crazy mass. I couldn't believe the mass. Got pretty lucky. He was, you know, ended up being just a hair over 66 inches wide. Oh, yeah. He had big old palms. Yeah, big palms. Had five fronts on one side, three on the other. And we'd been told by people that, you know, moose quarters, you can barely physically take them and stuff. But it wasn't terrible.

Yeah, we didn't think this one was too bad. We kind of, you know, threw it on our backs and packed it out. I mean, it was up a riverbed, so it was pretty easy. I mean, we only had to get about 1,000 yards up to get back to our camp and hang them in the trees there. So, got them all, you know, hung up in the trees. And then the next day was... So, now your camp's a bait pile. So, now we're covered in blood. Yeah, now you've got the attractiveness going. So, we ended up having, you know, another little island of trees. It was probably 150, 200 yards from our camp where we ended up, you know, building a meat pool. Yeah. So, it was right out in the wide open river so we could watch it. And it had trees around. We could put a tarp over and keep it shaded. It had a tarp, everything to keep it pretty shaded. So, we didn't feel too, I don't know, too paranoid about the meat being there.

Too vulnerable because of, you know, bears or anything like that. Just because it was out there far enough to where we could watch it. Right. And that's where they were going to come. If something's coming, it's not coming to your tent probably. They're going to hit that. Or your carcass is right up to Canyon too. So, or the river. So, I mean, you got. We took all our clothes down instantly after we killed it too and washed them all out in the creek real good. We were super cautious about, you know, the scent and everything like that. Just for both moose and bears. Because you got another moose to kill too. I mean, you're wanting to kind of. So, that was day three you killed yours and then we had the next day we still were packing a little bit. Yeah, the next day we were packing a little bit. Then the weather got bad. Yeah. It started the wind. Oh, yeah.

Was that the, yeah, that was the fourth. The night of the fourth. Yeah. We get a text from Aaron or an in-reach and it said. Get ready. Button down the hatches or something. Button down the hatches. It's blowing gale. 70 plus mile an hour wind gusts. And we're in this river corridor and I'm watching water get sucked up off the, you know, the river. And just, I mean, it's like, it was scary wind. Just peeling it up out of the water. Dust. I mean. And so, yeah. When we set the tent up, luckily we didn't. Now is when you're thinking you wish you'd have been back in the trees even more, huh? Maybe. Well, we were kind of right on the edge of a little cove. So, I think a lot of the wind, you know, just kind of skipped past the one side of us. I don't think it really, we don't, really didn't get hit, you know, head on or it would have been a whole different story. Yeah.

And luckily that when we initially set the tent up, we put it, we did the stakes, we did it right. Or we, because it happened like that. Yeah. I mean. We got up in the night, restaked the tent. We used every stake we had doubling up and I mean it was just crazy. Holding it down. We were. What was the analogy you said? What were you like? What marine animal were you? Laying there like a starfish just holding the tent down. I had my arms and legs spread and my feet were coming off the ground. Yeah. It was blowing pretty good. You know, we got out and any extra stakes we had, we just put in there as a precaution. But we were pretty, pretty well bomb proof. I mean, that tent held up really, really well to the. Didn't you guys or through Aaron or the neighboring outfitters here that some of the gusts even hit 100 miles an hour in other parts of Alaska Range that night?

Other guys that had weather stations had over 100 mile an hour gusts. And it wasn't really in a storm, wasn't a storm event, was it? Wasn't like raining and all that? Was it just mainly a big front, windy front? A little bit of rain with it, but not like hard, hard rain. It was just, just mostly wind. But yeah, another guy that was within probably 10 miles of us had a clock of 105 mile an hour winds up there that night. I think we, you know, we, from the guys we talked to that were being guided around us, we were the only one who didn't lose their tent. Our tent. Everybody else. We lost their tent, had to wrap up in a tarp and make a lean to and just wait it out. Just started shredding them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It collapsed and then you're just wrapping up like a burrito for the night. Yep. Yes. We, we fared pretty, pretty well is from what it sounds like.

And then the next day it was nice and sunny and we just did the same thing. Walked down there, set up. And, and the thing was, is we, I think the, we had had, was the meat picked up by then the next day or? No. So the next day it was windy up there, but it had stayed calm where we were. So they couldn't get a meat flight in. It actually took the following days when they, they came in and gathered up the meat. So we hunted for one full day. I believe it was kind of still kind of a little windy and stormy a little bit where we were that day. And then they brought in the plane and picked up the meat the next day. Three days, three days after Wyatt killed, we had, we could, the one spot we sat, I could barely, barely see the gut pile and the spine. That's all that was left. Cause we had to take ribs, bone in meat. You know, the only thing left is the spine and the guts.

And I could, I had my 15 set up cause I had, had in mind, you know, we're seeing so many wolf tracks. Like I'm going to be ready. I already had a plan. But the wolves had cleaned it up that much? No, nothing touched it for three days. I mean, birds had started three days after and yeah, it was, I don't know, 10 o'clock in the morning. I looked down and I, same thing with his moose. I thought it was a paddle. I saw a flash of something. I looked at my 15s and I saw a tail go behind the bush, a white wolf. Down by his carcass. Yeah. Probably 30 yards from it. Would you say? Yeah. Devin's in his camp shoes, got his, got his Crocs on. Got his running shoes on. I have my Crocs on. We both did. I would, we were probably making a breakfast skillet or something. That's what happened. Every time we were trying to cook a meal or do something different is when, when things happen.

So we're cooking a meal there and Devin's got the camp shoes on. I got the camp shoes on and just sitting there just kind of staring down the river in the middle of the day. And that wolf shows up. And I was, yeah. Devin was like a fireman. Had his boots on in seconds. Like, kind of tracks laced up and down the river. I ran, yeah. I ran through the trees. And you left Wyatt back there just to watch? Yeah. I stayed, I stayed back and was going to kind of signal or whatever to try to try to help him out a little bit. But he worked through the trees to where I couldn't see him. So he was kind of on his own. And I was just catching glimpses of the wolf down there as Devin was stalking on it. Yeah. And I popped out of the trees. I knew the wind wasn't great. That's what, that was my big concern. And I could get bits and pieces of the wolf. It was kind of traveling, going back and forth.

Just being nervous. Didn't dare go all the way to the carcass, you know, the spine. Didn't dare, it was close, but it was going back and forth. And I just had four or five bushes and I was gaining 100 yards at a time in between bushes. And just finally hit that last bush that I knew of, laid down, and she was still there. And I'm like, thank goodness. And I couldn't range her. I couldn't, it was so flat. It's like antelope. I couldn't get it. So I hit the trees next to, that I knew were right there on a point. It was 320. Yeah. Dialed the turret, laid down. And she was running so fast, I thought maybe she winded me because the wind, I could feel the wind on my back. And I just howled. She stopped and poof. And I just put another shell in and she was spinning. Shot again and I hit right or she spun and I missed and just takes off. Gone. And you know. I thought, oh no.

You know, I didn't know. So I stood up and I'm thinking, well, I guess, you know, we're going to have to track this thing through the trees. And I look up river and here's Wyatt just strutting fast with a packed frame on. I thought that's a good sign. Did you see a good look at it all? Yeah. I couldn't see it bits and pieces. But right after he shot, I watched it, you know, whirl out of the trees. And I could see, you know, blood coming out, you know, where he'd hit it. And I knew it was hitting good. And as I'm watching it, it runs and tries to jump the little river there that we're in and just lands just right in the middle of it. And I can just see it splashing up water and it's dead. Stop. It's tipped over right there. And I'm 40 yards. Like we got to get there because that river is going to take it down. So that's why you're sprinting. You laced up your crocs.

Yeah, I laced up my Kinetrex and grabbed the pack frame and just took off kind of just hauling down there. And Devin was still pretty unsure what had happened when I run into it in the river. I mean, it felt good. I mean, I couldn't hit her any better. No. I couldn't have. But they're tough, man. I mean. Well, seven mag. Yeah, and I've shot a lot of coyotes that spin like that. But to see her run that hard, that fast, gone. She didn't go. Just out of my view was where she died. That's awesome. Got a white one. So that was the wolf day. That was two, three days after your moose, Wyatt. Yeah. So you had just enough baiting you in to keep you guys archibalds in the game now. At that point, Wyatt had a great statistic. What was the statistic at that point? We had killed 50% of the animals that we had seen. The mammoth. Mammoths.

So you'd kill the moose and the wolf, and you'd seen two other smaller bulls. Yeah, two other moose. So, yeah. Those were the four mammals. We had a great ratio going. 50%. You guys, that could be viewed as extreme over-harvesting. There you go.

Killing half the living creatures. So then the next day, I actually. Same thing. Yeah. It was just glassing kind of the middle of the day. We got doing other things. Price started to cook breakfast about that time. Took our boots off. Looked down the river. We were. We were making a breakfast skillet that day. Remember, we had to worry about it getting cold. Yeah, that's right. We ate it when it was cold. Yeah, looked down the river, and there's a wolf in the exact same place. Another one? Devin had killed his. Yeah. I mean, the exact same place. So I'm like, oh, the stock worked yesterday. It's going to work again. So did you take off this time? Yeah, I took it. We both took off this time. We had our boots on this time. Yeah. Devin was right behind me, and we went down there and got to the same bush he shot from,

and the wolf just must have got a little tired of walking, just circling the thing, and went back in the trees. So we sat there for an hour, you know, waiting to see if it'd come back or anything like that, and it never showed up. So that was my opportunity. You had to go have a cold breakfast after that. Yeah. Yeah. My opportunity gone right there, and then the cold breakfast. And from that point on, we were there a lot longer, but from that point on, everywhere we would walk, the next day there was a wolf track on our track. Everywhere. Everywhere. So at night, they were active at night. I just think they kind of got, you know, more used to us being there, more confident with our scent that they, you know, should have been scared after Devin killed the one, but I guess they weren't. Yeah. So then, all right, now you're in a grind. Now you're in a routine. Now you're in a –

I told me, he said, he said, this is kind of a grind, you know, and I was like, no, that's not that bad, is it? Just all day, just – More mental. Yeah, yeah. Staring into the river, you know, it's more of a kind of a whitetail hunt, you know, where you're going to just sit there and wait for something to happen. I'm not used to that. I'm used to making something happen. Yeah, Western guys, we don't hunt like that often. It's just we've got so much country to go look at. You move, you glass something else. There's more country that you can ever hunt. And up there, there's more country than you can ever hunt, but there's also more country than you can ever kill a moose and get it back out of. You just keep hiking. We have no glassing knobs, no points of view. So, I mean, we can't make – Wyatt's already finished one book. Anything happen. I mean, it's just like – I'm impressed.

I mean, I'm not a big reader. I put some audio books in my phone the last couple sheet punts I've got on because you can get trapped in a little two-maner, not a big bomb shelter or a big outfitter series Cabela's tent where you can stand up and do some cardio and jumping jacks if you felt like in one of those. But I've been in tents like that before in a few years. You can only talk so many hunting stories in a two-man tent for a certain years. Like, oh, okay. Let me add it. But anyway. We'd already been there together. But I'm not a big reader, so I get the audio books because I'm like, all right, plug it in and somebody can just read to me, you know. I also had some stupid games on my phone, some puzzle games just to kill the time, you know. Keep your mind. Got lucky. We took a solar panel. A solar panel and then one of those last light battery chargers up there.

For your phones and batteries and everything. It had a solar panel on the one side and it charged itself and just kind of kept us – at least our phones charged up and our in-reaches. In-reaches. And keep your wives that are long ways of home and know they've been married for three weeks. That's another problem. Got a story about that. Oh, really? I didn't mean to tear any scabs off. I didn't know that. I am 100% not getting husband of the year award for 2020. And I've only been married two months. Almost two months. So I would text her every day, once or twice, an update, you know, and she wasn't replying. But I – this is another regret. I didn't do the maximum unlimited – Unlimited plan? What were you on? Emergency only? I had 40 texts because I didn't want to just text. Like I wanted to just be there, you know. I don't know. And that was regret. Enjoy the moment. Yeah. Like I didn't –

So they weren't – you thought they were going through and they never went through? Yeah. So I was texting her and I'm thinking, oh, she's just not replying because she doesn't want to use up all my texts. Oh, she's – What a thoughtful wife. She's just letting me text her, but she's saving the text for not coming back. And so then after, you know, 10 days, I'm like, hey, text back if you get this. Nothing. So then I – See? I had said, Wyatt, will you text, you know. Did you get the unlimited? I text my wife on Wyatt's thinking maybe, you know. I said, hey, this is Devin. This is Wyatt's in reach. Just going through or not? Nothing. Not even from yours. Was yours on the unlimited plan? Yeah, mine's on unlimited plan. No reply. But I've been texting, you know, Carl. I've been texting you guys getting you a little update. I text you off Wyatt's. Everything's all working.

But, yeah, my wife didn't get it. And so jumping forward a little bit, you know, 10 days later, we kind of – we'd finished and, yeah, we got a text from in reach saying that all AT&T customers' messages have been blocked since this day to that day. Why? It happened to be the 20-day window or 15-day window that we were there. Why? Why? I still need to find out. But, well, the one night your wife texted you and said, hey, Devin's wife Miranda's asking if – You guys are alive. Are you alive? Yeah, if Devin will text her because she's been getting updates, you know, Carly's been getting updates, but Miranda – So far as – Oh, this is bad. Yeah. Two guys together, both married within days. One guy's giving his wife all the love and attention. I miss you, da, da, da, da, da. And the other one, silent. Silent. Because you're Verizon or what?

And then my wife's texting his wife, you know, kind of like, hey, you know – Yeah, they're doing good. They're eating good. Yeah, so I had told my family everything. Like, I'm going to text Miranda. She'll update you. You know, so my family's calling her. Hey, have you heard from Devin? She's like, no, not for six, seven days. Are you Verizon? Yeah, I'm Verizon. So yours are fine. Yeah. And that was the problem? Yeah. AT&T customers? So, yeah, when she sent – when I got that message about, you know, my wife asking, hey, will you have Devin text me? It was like 9, 30, 10 at night. Yeah. I was just sick. I was like, oh, my gosh. She's not getting anything. She's thinking for a week. She hasn't heard from me in 10 days. Oh. And then the next day, I walk out and just pick up my inReach and look at it, and it's

got a text saying, you know, message from inReach, you know, if you text anyone with AT&T service, try texting them again because they've blocked our service for the last 10 days. I told Wyatt, screenshot that. Can't screenshot off of Garmin, but they sent emails. Like, when I got home, I got an email, the same thing, but I haven't found out why. In case Devin went to spousal court or whatever over this, he'd have some. He's got some evidence. She's a tough gal. Wow. She was good. Yeah, I called her when I got home. It's almost like Carter. If you remember Carter, back in the day, he got married. Of course, this was 1995 or 6. No inReach, no SAP phones, and he went to Brooks Rains, and Jan is just kind of waiting by the phone for updates. Well, you don't call from the Brooks Rains or the Alaska Rains. Yeah, I mean, it's just. It's like, what are the odds?

Jason obviously didn't make that completely clear that I'm not going to be able to check in with you, probably. But, yeah, she thought, you know, it's a matter of days, and she's like, oh, I got a terrible wife. My husband doesn't even care about me. I'm here all alone. And then she has to answer my family's questions, like, hey, have you heard from him? Blah, blah, blah. No, nothing. So since she got home, before we get back to the story, have that been patched up? Oh, yeah. It's all been blamed on Garmin. Garmin. Yep. Or whoever. Garmin or AT&T. I mean, who knows? AT&T. AT&T. I don't know the story, but yeah, she's tough. She was good. Yeah. So then we. We killed the wolf. The next day had not. I mean, this is the highlight of our day. We saw a wolf, which is awesome. But then after that. Which kind of made our percentage drop, too, seeing the other wolf and not being able to kill it.

Now you're below 50%. Now we're bothered. Okay. And then at some point, you saw a porcupine, I know. Well, that. Yes. One. We went. So now you're at 33%, right? You're two out of six. I mean, I'm just doing quick math in my head. It gets a little worse before it gets better. Okay. Okay. I can't remember the days, but after we, after that last wolf, it was sunny a couple days. So it was the 11th when we killed the wolf. That's four days after you're a man. So the 11th. The next day we saw the other wolf. And then we had two days. Three or two or three days. A solid sunshine. Just warm Alaska, Alaska temperature. I mean, we were bathing in the creek. It was that kind of temperature. 65 or something like that. Nice. I got sunburned. But no animals, huh? Yeah. No animals those two days. And we'd sat out and done the same thing we'd done. And I mean, we're talking all day. Sitting there.

So like six or seven in the morning till eight or nine or roughly at night or whenever it gets dark. And poor Wyatt, you know. I mean, he's got a great bull. And I was sitting there thinking, like, this might not happen for me. Like, I'm thinking, they've migrated through. You know, it's like hunting the Poncegon on October 20th up high. You're up at Tropic Reservoir. Exactly. Or October 25th. That's exactly what I told Wyatt. Hanging on to a hope and a prayer. Yeah. Like, this is going to be, you know. So mentally, it was so hard for me. I mean, it was because I'm thinking we got our camp. We have the runway where we had the meat. We have the meat pole. And then the carcass. Plus us going up and down. And we've lived here for 10, 12 days. And we lived there. And every morning, the wind was going right where we seen all the moose. Down river. I mean, right through the corridor.

So we'd try hunting up river in the morning. And it was just dead. And so it was just mentally. And then you'll sit in the midday and afternoon, evening, the other way when it was drawn back the other way. Yeah. And so I'd tell Wyatt, like, okay, we're going to sit right there all day. Middle of the day. This is when you told me he started to assert his hunting technique authority, right? Is that when? Yeah, yeah. Because you're like, well, you're the only one with the tag left. I guess you can call the shots right now. One second, he'd be like, we're going to sit here all day, not going to move from this point. You know, you turn around 20, 25 minutes later, 30 minutes later, get your stuff. We're going up river. We're going down river. Like, we're going to go past everything further than we went before. Because the scent. We're going to make this happen. Yeah, that's what I told him.

I said, we got to do it. Because in my mind, I thought, you know, that wind or just something. Because, I mean, it was dead. Dead, dead. And we couldn't see anything. Yeah, we put our packs on and go down river further than we've ever went before and call and call and call and nothing happens. So finally, we had overcast. And it was a little cooler. I mean, it was colder because it was, you know, we had frost. It was cold those clear nights. Woke up at 3 a.m., by the way, to check for the northern lights. And that was a cold mistake. You didn't see anything. No, no northern lights. But it was cold and we were hoping for the best. The next day, they were out and we just missed them, I guess. It's true. So, yeah, it finally was overcast. And we'd been calling. Like, you know, Aaron and people said, you'll call, call, call. And then one day, they'll just be at your tent.

You know, that's what we kept hoping for. So, like, maybe they're hearing you out there at half mile. Yeah. So, now I'm second guessing. I know you're over there. I'll come in a day or two when I'm ready. I said, what? I said, we got the river noise. We got a wall of trees. And it's just flat. And I'm like, I mean, I was calling as loud as I could. I mean, I probably sounded terrible. You got some of this on video. There's probably some video of this show. Good. I mean, I just, I'm glad I wasn't the one being videoed for my first time calling. I think I got pretty decent after 10, 12 days of calling. No, I thought you were great from the start at calling. That's why I nominated you as the caller and I was the raker. We went through a scapula. We found a scapula why it was rubbing trees with. It was nothing but like a bone. Like a fistful of bone by the end.

He had rubbed the scapula to nothing. It looked like a shin bone of a moose after that. Yeah. So, it finally was overcast and we're sitting there. And you had to do something like with your tag. Yeah, they'd introduced me for my tag number. Yeah. So, I'd gotten my backpack, was digging through my backpack trying to find where my hunting license number was. So, he's turned around and I'm looking at him like, what's he doing? You know? And all of a sudden I hear, oh. And I was like, why did you hear that? The first time we'd ever heard a moose make a noise. Did you hear it? Yeah, I'd heard it as well. And I turn around and the moose is standing. Where? 100 yards behind me. Not even up here. Behind the only bush. The only bush. You know. In the river bottom. Hundreds of yards. Yeah. And I look up and he just, all I saw was, you know, antlers. And I looked and I just said, nope.

Because he was kind of narrow and his fronts just, I wanted a bull with big, cool fronts, I guess. Oh, yeah. Width wasn't huge for me. But it just looked narrow and then it walked away. And we kind of looked at each other like, that's a pretty good moose. Yeah. It had giant, giant paddles and palms and points, but it just, it just wasn't wide. It was probably, you know, 50, 53 inches wide. Maybe. I don't know. But it just had just huge paddles with lots of points. I mean. So now I'm thinking, well, that's the first moose we've seen in days. A week. Since the third to the 14th. So, yeah. And he just let him go. I just let him go. And he was on the runway. Literally standing on the runway. And so, and I'm just like, you know, I thought I was prepared. I got everything laid out. And this moose completely surprised us. Snuck up on you, bull.

And if I would have shot, if I would have, you know, killed and shot him, it would have been a scramble. I'm just like, man, I got to be more ready. You know, I put my book away.

And so there you go. There you go. Your thumb's on the safety at all times. I was like, yeah, scope covers off, ready to go. And then we had a porcupine come by. And that was exciting. Yeah. Because, I mean, we literally hadn't had any action. Yeah. So then what? An hour later, I look down and I see, same thing, flash of a paddle. And I could tell it was a good bull, you know. And then I had my 15s. Cutting through the river? Just perpendicular crossing? Yeah, he kind of came out. It was like he was sniffing something. Yeah, he was more bruddy acting. And he came out and was, you know, kind of doing his little walk and, you know, kind of coming across the river pretty slowly. But maybe he, how long after the other? He was still coming. He stood there for a minute. Then when they decided to walk, I mean, they cover ground. I couldn't. I could tell he had awesome fronts.

And that's really, I was like, okay, this looks like a bull. The side view, so you really can't see width or any of that. And he come out. And so I'm getting, I mean, I got, I'm getting my gun ready. I put, I put my mag out. I put an extra shell in. Like, I'm ready, you know. And I just was like, I just want him to look at me. And Wyatt got a range of like 588. I mean, when he came out, I thought he was 250. I'm thinking, I'm going to shoot from right here. Yeah. And he says, 588. And I'm like, oh, boy, I got to get close, you know. So I kind of took off and, and I, and I mean, as I'm going towards him, he's walking. And he comes out and he rakes this tree. And I'm thinking, sweet, I'm going to have plenty of time if he rakes this bush. And he turns, looks at me. And that's when I was like, yep, I'm shooting him. You know, he's, I'm going to shoot this bull.

And then he tried, and then he started walking again. So I arranged that. Like to cross the. Yep. Like he's not going down the river. He's going straight across. Crossing it, just like Wyatt's. Crossing it. Yep. And, and I mean, I just had to lay down right there. And it was, my bipod was too long. I'm trying to get comfortable. And, and I started, you know, he goes behind that bush. And I only had, from my line of sight, I had about a, what, 20-yard window? Yeah, 20, 30-yard window right there. As soon as he comes out that other side, I'm on the gun. I'm yelling, hey, you know, like trying to stop him. I'm yelling. Wyatt's yelling. I mean, and I just kaboom, shoot. And then it, you know, I just started belt feeding rounds, man. Yeah. He whipped and looked at me. How far did you get? It was still 500. It was about 500, 520 maybe.

I might have been, yeah, I might, I might have been not dialed. High fours or good ones. But, yeah. Might have been dialed too high. But, yeah, he whipped around and, and, you know, my crosshairs land right on his chest. That's all I had. And I shot and I looked like I hit him. Hindsight, I shot through a brow and through the paddle. So a little character. Tell people he was a fighter, you know. Yeah, he faced you head on. He faced me head on and I was just, you know, I mean, we didn't want him to get in the trees because you can't see. I mean, I want to anchor him right there. And he's not. You have the river too. He's not in the river. No. Just wanted to anchor him right there. And then he turned and one more shot, two more shots. And he was, he was down right there where, where he stopped. I mean, it was awesome. I mean, same thing.

A couple, maybe a minute since we saw him to where he was dead. I mean, it happened so fast. That's hard when you're there for 10 days, roughly, whatever it was, 10 or 12. And it's only a 60 second window or, in your case, 15 or 20 seconds, Wyatt. It all comes down to that. You're there for 10 days. I mean, are you, what if you had your eyes closed? What if you literally were taking a nap? It wouldn't have happened. They could cross there. I mean, I know what it's like to sit there that long glassing or whatever. And sometimes you just got to close your eyes for a minute when you're, especially on these earlier season hunts in August and at daylights, you know, you know how this bow hunt is. We were right in the middle of mixing up a nice cereal raisin. Granola. Granola. At the time. See, every time we'd make breakfast, something would happen. Yeah. It was weird.

But, I mean, it was, you know, if we would have been in a good part of that book and not just saw that, you know, it's just. Yeah, if you have your, that's crazy. I don't know. It happened so fast. Different way to hunt anything, one moose or whatever. Just awesome. He was 65 inches wide. Yeah, 65. Five brows or six brows on one side and five on the other. Yeah, we get down to him and, I mean, like that day, the rut had started. We had another bull come in to us. While you were taking care of him? We were sitting there trying to take care of that bull. Then the bull from that morning that he passed shows back up. I mean. Just dumb. Yeah, dumb. Just do fence posts. We were packing meat and as we come back, this bull comes out just grunting at us, the one I had passed earlier. I just heard you're walking on the gravel or something, figured you were a moose. It was weird.

Comes, you know, 35, 40 yards from us. Huh. So we went all those days and then three more bulls showed up that day. That was the 13th or 14th or something. Yeah, the 14th. So, yeah, it was not a, it wasn't a physical, physical grind. It was just 100% mantle. But as we walked up to Devin's bull, that thing just grew and grew and grew. The body size, like, just, like, this is the kind of moose these guys talk about. You can't physically move these quarters. It was a huge difference. The cables. Really? And they were both giant. Atler-wise, you'd put them in this very similar category. But body-wise, they weren't, huh? No. Like, Devin's, I bet it had 25, 30 pounds a quarter on mine, probably. Wow. Yeah, Wyatt says, what the heck is this? It looked like the Michelin man later. I'm like, what do you mean? And he said, look how fat it is, you know? Fat rolls. Fat rolls in his neck and his legs.

When you skinned it, was it actual fat or was it just a bigger frame and muscle? He had about the same amount of fat as yours, but, yeah, he was just bigger. Just, like, just bigger. Wow. The cape was, yeah, they said at camp when we were, I was turning the ears and lips, and they said, that cape is ginormous. Almost couldn't fit it in the belly pod. Yeah. Yeah, that's when they were coming and picked it out, like two days later, he's like, I've never had a quarter that I couldn't fit in the belly pod. This is the first one. Wow. Yeah, he was trying to, you know, get it up on the shelf in there and just couldn't get it in there. I think it made him look a little, just like any animal when they have big bodies, you know, it makes it look. And as we break it down a little bit, and Wyatt's like, dude, he's wide, you know? And I'm thinking he's maybe 60, you know?

Yeah, we're not used to measuring moves. Yeah, and then you get it next to a couple other bulls, and it's like, holy cow. Like, it is, I mean, the skull plate was way bigger. I don't know. Kind of interesting, but he was 500 yards from the meat pole and runway. Yeah. So, yeah, lickety-split. That's where you want him in a nice dry gravel bed. Five o'clock that afternoon, we were at camp eating Orioles because we'd killed finally. We saved the Orioles for celebration. Oh, my gosh. Really? Wyatt caught me stealing one once. Did you get disciplined? He had your nose in the corner of the tent? Yeah, I mean, that was the highlight of our day. Like, hey, I know we were going to save these, but you want two Orioles? Yeah, we'll get up to, you know? And then Wyatt checked them, and I had snuck one, and he knew. There's three gone?

So I had to give him a hard time, called him out on eating the Orioles before we were done. He said, I'm going to ask you this once. Did you eat an Oreo? I was like, yes, I did. Pretty funny. A lot of the world have a different, you know, little spicy-type beverage when they kill something good. You guys had a double. Was it even a double-stuffed Oreo? No, it was just regular. We had chips ahoy for when I killed mine and Oreos for when Devin killed his. All right. Well, whatever works. Whatever's that carrot dangling out there that keeps you going. Got to drive them. Yeah, and then we had a weather day. We were stuck in the tent, and then another couple days at the lodge waiting for clouds. Get it back out to McGrath or wherever. We got us out of there. That was fun. We got to hang with Aaron's crew there, and they were great guys.

Other hunters as they were kind of getting ready to wrap up, too. They cooked us back strap. Wasn't that good to have just meat? Yeah, it was way good to show up and have meat after all the mountain houses. I asked you if you guys took a fry pan, and you said you didn't. I'd have foundered on a little bit. I'd have had a little thing of olive oil in a pan. Looking back, that's the one thing we probably should have done for sure is took a pan in there with us. But, yeah, Aaron and his crew, I mean, they were all top-notch. Stayed there at the cabin with them for two days. We were weathered in there waiting for another flight out, and, I mean, it was awesome to get to know those guys top-notch. Helped us flesh the capes and just an awesome crew. Good deal. What else on gear? I mean, frying pan and some oil. Okay. Yep. Dramamine pills for flights. Okay.

When we went home, I looked back at Wyatt because he hadn't said a word for, like, half an hour. Leaving the lodge back to— I got to sit in the front on the way home. Yeah. That makes a big difference. It didn't help me. I tried to look out the front window, and I was like, yeah, that's worse. So I just looked out and just tried to look for moose out the window to keep my mind because, yeah. We got out, and Wyatt says, it's a good thing we didn't have grilled cheese because— Yeah, they offered us grilled cheese right before we took off. I'm like, no, I'll eat something good when I get to Anchorage here in an hour. Which I was glad you did that because I was kind of hungry, and I'm like, why doesn't he want to grilled cheese? And then I was like, okay, yeah, we're flying out of here. So Dramamine pills I would have took. Tent steaks, bring extras. Stake the tent down right the first time.

Yeah, we'd done our research enough, and we were pretty— Geared up. Pretty geared up. I think there wasn't a lot of things that I wish I would have had that I didn't have there. We definitely had enough to make it work and be pretty comfortable. A lot of cordage. We went through a lot of cordage. It was good to have. Hanging meat. Hanging meat. Just, yeah. Definitely. Don't bring sequel books. That's maybe something because that was a read the end first was, you know, bring books that are standalone books, right? Not one where you've got to read the sequel before you read the first one. Something like that. Yeah, I mean, lucky enough, it was a series that really didn't go hand in hand. It referenced a few other books, so it wasn't as bad as— It's not like Star Wars. Knowing the ending before, you know, every book was its own book, so. Well, I'm just proud.

I mean, it's been a while since I've read a book. I mean, I'm not a reader. It had been a long while since I've read a book, too. Not a reader. It was a good book. It was a really good book, so. So, what else? Tell me real quick about the Outdoor Edge Knife. Like, what would you recommend you kind of run out of— Yeah, they were great. We both had two or three knives, just backups, but— Because you— I had two. He accused me of stealing his one, you know. How do you tell them apart? I had two, yeah. But we went through a lot of blades. I mean, you know, they're great, but moose are big, and we were in that sand, and so— Hyde's got a lot of that in it, probably. It's just a lot of sand, and the blades were, you know—yeah, they last a while, but bring plenty of blades. And we did just learn that you can resharpen them. So, take a sharpener.

You can sharpen those Outdoor Edge blades, and then use them a couple times, and then replace them when you need to. Yeah. It's good to have that auction. Have a little diamond steel or something. Yeah. So, we definitely had that, and it was a key to the success for sure, and getting those things cut up and getting them out of there. Gotcha. So, we just made it home without a hitch pretty much after some bad weather. It kind of delayed you getting out of Alaska, but not terrible. Yeah, we were ready to get home. The ladies were— That's for sure. Was both your porch lights on when you got home? Well, they were both at the airport for us. Oh! Even better. So, we— She said, I want to pick you up so we can go to lunch and stuff, and we'd been up for like 24 hours. Well, that's when I called you. I don't even hardly remember that day. I didn't know.

I just knew you were back, but I ended up calling Archibald something, because I was— I was out hunting, and I had somebody that was asking me about optics on our shelf, what we had, if they had a certain optic. And I'm like, I don't know. I haven't been there in 10 days or two weeks. So, I called you first. You didn't answer, so I called him, and he was just about to sit down to real food, I think. Have some lunch. Yeah, I was—we both got to Anchorage and got on our phones and booked the quickest flight out of there, so we flew all night. 1 a.m. We left. 1 a.m. You left Anchorage at 1? Got here at 9 a.m. Utah time, so we landed here, and Devin's girl wanted to take him to lunch and take him out on a date, and I just wanted to go home and just take a nap. I did get a glorious nap in that afternoon. She drove you home? Yep. Oh, that's good. Still married. Good.

That's definitely a good thing. Yeah. That's awesome. Yep. Yeah, I joke around with Devin about every day about all the—you know, Carly just drove past your house, and there was some cardboard box in the driveway. I don't know if that's she moving out or you're moving out. I don't know which one. I thought you guys were fully moved in when you left. I thought there shouldn't be any stacks of cardboard boxes in the front yard, should there? Bunch of hunting clothes out in the front yard, too. Should I have her go look and see if it's guys' clothes or girls' clothes? Yeah. That's awesome. Well, that's awesome. Awesome adventure. A couple giant bulls, and that's cool just to hear stories. I go back to that. If you added up your sighting shooting time for both of you, you're both under two minutes, and you're there for, what, two weeks? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's like—I mean, yeah, literally, you could take a nap or go to the trees and use the bathroom. I mean, in two minutes or three minutes, a bull crosses. After seeing what Wyatt's bull did, we never once were both not watching. Together. Yeah. I'd go back and, you know, do something, get some food or water, whatever. He'd stay. We'd switch. Yeah. It's just— It's like guarding an armored truck, huh? You guys want to—somebody was awake. Yeah, it was an incredible experience, and we definitely just have to say thanks to, you know, you guys, all the guys here at Epic for setting that up. Sure. And, you know, sent us on that hunt, and then, you know, as well as Dillinger River Outfitters, Aaron DeRose, and, you know, making— Great guys. Making our dreams come true up there. It was incredible. Well, they've had a good year, and I know we got maybe just a hint of an announcement.

I know we're giving away a sheep hunt with them this next year, so stay tuned for that this coming winter. But that's awesome, guys. Well, we appreciate you guys. You guys work hard at what you do, obviously, in the license application and booking in an outfitter-type division here at Epic Outdoors. And, obviously, we're all big hunters, and, you know, you'd mentioned this at one point about wanting to be a—as a bucket list item. And we'd actually talked to Aaron. He had benched it to some passing, and just kind of one thing led to another. So I'm glad it worked out. I'm glad you had an awesome trip. Thank you. Couldn't have been better. Thank you.