EP 61: A Life Built on Hunting with John and Jen Rivet

Going out to the trapping cabin to live. How are you going to provide for your family? I found out she could flesh a hide, she could skin a bear, move a deer. For us, we actually live off of it. And decide, okay, this is a hunt for the population. Anything to do with western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter here with the Epic Outdoors podcast. Brought to you by the Expo. We're here at the Expo with John and Jen Rivett today. Super awesome people. Can't wait to do this. Been waiting for a year, or maybe even over a year, to visit with these guys. But anyway, before we get cranking, we do want to have a little shout out to Under Armour. Good people over at Under Armour have really supported us. All of us here at the table, John, Jen, and myself, as well as the Epic crew. You know, back in the day I was doing the Ridge Reaper TV show on the Outdoor Channel. And of course that's moved to YouTube, but still with them. Just appreciate them and their support. Hopefully we'll be with them forever. It's down to the wire here with our Epic Outdoors Winter Membership Drive.

Deadline to enter that is February 28th. You have to join our service by then, or refer someone that joins our service, Epic Outdoors, by February 28th. Both the new member and the person that refers them will receive a name in the hat for that. There's no way to purchase tickets. The prizes are either an Alaska Doll Sheep Hunt, or a Utah Deer Hunt, or a Utah Elk Hunt. Both the Utah Deer and Elk Hunt will be guided by us, the Epic Outdoors crew. The Alaska Doll Sheep Hunt is fully guided and outfitted by one of our Epic Approved Outfitters, Litsen Guide Service. Great outfit. It's for August 2019. Fully paid for by us, as are the Utah Deer Hunt, Utah Elk Hunt. Will be fully paid for by us. Whichever one you choose. Something kind of for everybody. Whoever wins will get their choice. So one of those three hunts. Again, February 28th, coming down to the wire here. You cannot buy tickets.

If you join online, just make sure in the Referred By box, you put the person's name that referred you. If you referred by somebody, we'll make somebody happy. Here, shortly after the 28th, we'll get that drawn and out. Probably put it on a podcast or on YouTube or something like that. Get it out there for everybody to listen to. So, don't miss it. Got a few days left. Well, as we get started here, I just, John and Jim Rivet, our special people. Anybody that knows them or followed them on social media, I think think the same. They're just down to earth, good, good people. And, in fact, the first time I think I was ever introduced to you guys, you were doing a little selfie video clip on the Taylor Swift song. And I hit you on the side. No way. Yes. What song was it? You probably remember. Probably Blank Space or something like that.

It's the same video that they had the police officer singing it in his car. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Waving his finger and dancing. It's on my workout list anyways. Anyway. I work out to Taylor Swift. Yeah. And I was like, oh, my gosh. These are the freaking happiest people I've ever met in my life. We've got to have some balance and balance. Because Jen's got the heavy metal on when we're working out. Really? Yeah. I'm a little bit the opposite that way. Yeah. Are you? Well, good. Anyway. So, you guys are awesome. I don't even know where to start. There's so many things I want to pull out of you guys as far as I know you're hunting everything you can in Canada. You're guiding. You've done many, many things. I know you were just in Texas. I know you're going to head back to Texas. You're trying to kill everything here in lower 48 as well as in Canada. Our new Hoyt RX1s are set up for Monday.

So, we're taking them with us Wednesday to Texas. And we're going to kill something before we get back. I'm not embarrassed. Do you guys ever get tired of killing stuff? We actually don't. No, because we're hunting with a purpose. Like, I don't like to kill something. But everything that we're killing is for a reason. Like, I shot a doe in Texas last week. Yeah. And I was hunting with a purpose. There was one of our friends at Hoyt that doesn't hunt but loves to eat wild games. So, I had a purpose to kill a nice doe for her and make a clean kill and get the harvest and butcher it up and bring it here with us. And they're trying to manage, right? Totally. Yeah, they need to. Yeah. It's just a whole management practice down there. Yeah. And so, anyway, well, tell us. Just, I know. You've been on other podcasts. But for my listeners, tell me how you began. Start from the start. Why hunting?

Yeah. All right? I'm in Canada, I guess. I don't know. Were you born in Canada? The start is, yeah, the start's a long story, but we'll do little pieces of it. I think for both of us, you want to look at, if I joke to people, if you check our DNA, it's in there. Like, the hunting, the fishing, the outdoors, the trapping, the living off the land. Because both of our families go back so far doing that. Oh, yeah. Our grandparents, you know, well, back then you didn't have any choice. There was no supermarket. No. You ate what you killed the moose, you know? And my great-grandparents moved out to, or first actually in Saskatchewan, Canada, and then they moved out to Alberta. So they actually broke the land where they lived and everything. So when I was a little girl, my dad wasn't a, he would take us fishing and everything, but he didn't really think playing hockey for girls was cool.

And he didn't really take us big game hunting. So that was something new when I got a little bit older. But when I was young, I worked on my grandpa's farm, went trapping with him all the time, got to shoot guns. I got to be his oldest grandson. So that actually exposed me to that part of the world besides just hunting. And we call it chicken hunting, so like grouse and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, Jen's actually as much or more of a bushman than I was. Really? Because part of my life was maybe half of my youth was in the city, and she was in the country. I mean, our first date when we met, I was 18, she was 15. Guess what it was? She took me for a ride on her four-wheeler. They probably had three-wheelers back then. We did. Yeah, but they'd just come out with the Honda TRX 350. So she had her dad's four-wheeler. So now you know how old we are. Yeah, I'm going to Google that.

In fact, before we get off this thing, I'm going to Google, figure out how old you get. But for me, being in the outdoors and living off the land, I mean, for my parents, I mean, they made a decent living. But if it wasn't subsidized by, like we had a huge garden, we did all of our own canning, our own, like all of that stuff. Put everything in the freezer, we did, you know, moose, bear, elk, deer. Or all the wild game, all the fish, all the, you know, birds that you could get, ducks, geese, whatever, whatever it was. That's how my parents filled the freezer to help us afford to live. Yeah. So, and my grandparents, my mom said when they were young, like if my grandpa didn't get a moose over, before winter, they're borderline starving during the winter. Wow. Because they're just, he logged, he trapped, and he had a little dairy farm. And it was just, you did what you had to do.

Sometimes you'd be gone for months working just to supply for the family. So. Holy cow. Wow. So for me, for like, because I cook and I love to hunt and I love to be outdoors and camp and do all these things. It's not just, oh, it's a fad thing. It's just. Well, that's what we did. It's ingrained in me. And if you go back when you check out your heritage and your history, because I know that's big. Everybody wants to know their heritage and their lineage. For me, as far as you go back, it's like trappers, hunters, fishers, farmers, harvesters. Wow. Just living off the land. It's in me. Like, it makes me excited. Yeah. If I see old barns, old farms, old history, then I'm like, you can ask him. He's like, stop, stop, stop. We've got to take a picture when we're traveling. And we actually live up there where Jen's from. Really? We live right there. Like, her mom's up there.

My great aunt's where my grandparents homesteaded and stuff. Yeah. Her uncle's still got the trap line. And he teaches trapping and all that kind of stuff. Holy cow. Yeah. So you probably don't have a Walmart up there that makes meat like we do here. I don't know. People seem to tell us, oh, why do you have to kill so many animals? Why don't you just go to the store and buy it? I'm like. People actually make that comment on social media. Yeah. Why don't you just go to the supermarket and get meat instead of killing something? Yeah, I know. And what do you say? Well, I'm actually very, because a lot of them, it's just lack of knowledge. So you have to, some are just because they want to be rude and they don't want to know. Yeah. But there's actually a great part of the population that have no idea. Like, they're so disconnected from where we all came from. Yeah.

Because you go back 100 years, everybody had to live the same way. Yeah. Unless you were ultimately rich or some royalty or something. Yes, exactly. So it's like you had to have a garden. That's the way my heritage is. They did. You had to make your own bread. Yes. You had to sew your own clothes. Well, a lot of them, they couldn't even afford, they couldn't afford, even if there was available, they couldn't afford it. You know what I mean? Yeah. My mom remembers as a little girl getting once a new pair of shoes. Once. Wow. And their Christmas gift would be like, they would get an orange if they could actually get them. Yeah. I'm not even joking. And like, an orange for Christmas or in a little bag of candy. Yeah. That was Christmas. That was Christmas. That was huge for them. Wow. You know, it would be nice if we could go back to those days. I like those days. We are disconnected. Yes.

Yes. I've been talking to guys even about these cell phones, social media. Of course, we are all on social media. I get that. Jen was definitely born like 100 years too late. She should have been born in the Wild West. To be a pioneer woman or whatever. Yes. Well, I would say 90% of my would do good in a pioneer woman. She likes the washer. Yeah. The electric washer. Those women are spoiled, John. Yes. Yeah. But the outspoken part of me where I, you know, because back then, women were put in a box. Yeah. This was your place. This is what you do. This is what you do. That's it. Yeah. So for me, I've always been a little bit of a rebel that way. Somebody tries to put me in a box. I can't imagine that. I just can't imagine that. It's like, you shouldn't be a girl guide. Yeah. You shouldn't be guiding. You should be cooking. And I'm like, you should probably.

We're going to chase some of your guys. Not say that. Yeah. Yeah. You should probably check yourself. If you want a big bear, I'll take you and get a big bear. Well, I don't know. I'm like, okay then. Okay. Yeah. As a girl guide, we're going to chase so many rabbits on this podcast. I know. Let's do it. As a girl guide, before people, you know, kind of knew who she was, they come up and they're like, okay, I'm going to be guided by a girl. Yeah. Does she really know what she's doing? Does she really know what she's doing? Does she really do this? Yeah. This is my 27th year. Wow. And I mean, I've had my licensing and stuff, but I guess I'll pedal back a little bit is when my, when we started having our kids and stuff, I didn't go out. I didn't guide. I didn't like, I'd go help out in camp and stuff. But for me in my heart, my purpose was being at home with my babies. Yeah.

I didn't want other people to raise my babies. I didn't want to miss a moment. So until they got older, probably our youngest got into like seriously grade two and we have four children. So once he got about seven, eight years old, then I'd take all of them with me and do a week here or two weeks there. And I do it that way. I just, I just felt that God blessed me with those babies and I love my babies. And life became so nice. Once the kids were old enough and Jen could guide with me full time, man, life is good. And now, well, she was probably sassy. You know, you stick her in the house with kids. Yeah. I just, you know what? It's funny. All of our kids are in their twenties now. We'll get into all of that, I guess, in a bit. But, um, I really miss when they were little. I love just seeing all their growth and all the development and all the, all the fun things. And I'm, I'm waiting.

I'll say patiently for grandbabies. My kids don't think I have kids. Like now we're seeing little babies here with people like, and then Jen will go shopping for baby clothes. Like people that she barely knows, you find out somebody's having a baby. She'll go shopping. Hopefully that's coming out of your tip money. Yeah. John's like, Hey, that ain't coming from the family budget. Cause we don't even have grandkids yet. Well, it's like the whole, going back to the hunting aspect where people, you know, like we had a comment on social media here, what, two weeks ago. And because they're, we're actually posting a couple of things that we have shot in Texas and that, and somebody says, well, aren't you being a little bit gluttonous with all of the things you're killing? Like there's no way, no way you could consume all of that meat. It was pointed at me. Wow.

And I looked back and thought, I barely killed anything this year in Alberta. Like I'm usually guiding clients and this year we really want to. You either guide or kill. You don't do both generally. We want to take a lot of time to hunt with our kids this year. After 29 years, the kids are like, dad, we barely have time to hunt together. People think you're an outfitter. You know, your kids get to hunt all the time. No way, man. We're in prime time. What I see is nonstop vacation. Now it is. The last two, three years, we're making up for all the years we do. Jana and I, my wife and I talk about it all the time. They have got it made. And it doesn't come without 29, 30 plus years of sacrifice. Those are the years of sacrifice. But Jana and I are looking at it going, at some point we've got to pull our heads out and go, what do we really want in life?

Because nose to the grindstone, 12 months out of the year isn't working, right? I mean, life can. Life is short. Yeah. And then to watch you guys, you work hard. You work dang hard. Yeah. And then you play hard. Yeah. And it doesn't mean you have to spend all the money in the world. No, no. You guys are traveling and doing things. We're so blessed and spoiled with all the clients we have. That's it. People that are very wealthy, well off. Invited for the last 30 years. Been inviting us to go visit them. Go hang with them. Yeah. You guys are staying in people's places. They're hunting their ranches. We can be gone. Yeah. But this has only been, like everybody says, oh, you know, you get that phrase. Oh, it must be nice. Well, it's only been really the last two years that we've actually, we could have done it a little bit before.

But you've got to allocate what you want to do and how you want to do it. And health and parents' health. And I mean, family comes first. So you're always doing that juggle. We are becoming snowbirds, though. Yeah. And it's a little bit more of a year. A little longer period. It's been between minus 39 Celsius and wind and just nasty weather at home. So it's not really that enticing for us to go back. Yeah. So the U.S.-Canada government says you're allowed to come spend six months down here. So eventually. Is that what they say? I didn't know. There is a rule. Yeah, you can go for six months. Oh, okay. So eventually. Six months and one day, they don't want you back? No, he would be cheering at the border. Yay! Who wants to adopt me? If they don't let me get back in. Well, my passport actually expires. At the end of the month. At the end of the month. So we have to be home before that.

So I thought, what happens if I go back a couple days later? What happens if you get really sick? You're stuck in a hospital in the U.S.? We might have to have you forever. We might have to have you forever. Yes. Now I get to carry a handgun. And you get to apply for bear tags like the rest of us.

That'd be terrible. That'd be terrible. That's so funny. Wow. Well, that's awesome. I just think it's great that you guys are able to do that and to be able to do everything that you're doing. So I started off. So me. Here, go back to John. Well, I was going to go back a little bit. She's chasing you at 15 years old. Oh, yeah. I'm seeing her on a four-wheeler running you down. I was chasing her. On your bike. Maybe with one wheel freaking out of air or something. You know what I mean? No, he was the stalker. I wasn't really playing that game yet. We just moved up there. My dad had retired. Probably back then, if she'd have had trail cameras, she'd have a video mode down in your driveway or something. I had a Honda three-wheeler, and we moved a mile from where she lived. Okay. And that three-wheeler got some miles in that year. Boy, I was back and forth to her place all the time. I'll bet.

It's funny. When I drove by, though, and I seen her standing in the front yard, I thought, that's my wife. That's my wife right there. You did not. I did so. I knew it was her. Now I have to figure out. At what, 17? I was 18. 18. So now I have to figure out how to get it. Do you guys have the 18 rule? Yeah, they did. You do? Yeah. Okay. So did you have to explain that to her? Look. Three more years, huh? Yeah. So I had to figure out how to go see her. How am I going to go talk to this girl without making it awkward? So a couple days later, I'm driving around. There's a horse loose down the road. It's just running all over the place, and there's very few houses up there. Yeah. This is way up where we are now. This is bush. This is in the bush. This is bush, yeah. She lived in the bush. At the end of the road, and there's like five families that live well there.

So I see this horse running around loose. I thought, perfect. I'm going to go to their house because her father was a grater operator, so the grater is parked in the yard. So it's kind of the house. So he's grater all over. I figure you can go visit it. Yeah. Because he knew everybody and who everybody was. I pull up, and I'm like, hey, there's a horse running around. I don't know whose it is. We just moved up here and ended up meeting her. And next thing you know, we're going on a date on her four-wheeler. Oh, my gosh. She drove to work. So wait, you're dating her at 15 or 16? 15. That's what I'm gathering. 15. 15. 15. Okay. Okay. We didn't go by the book, what people think the book should be, but life doesn't always, you can't always follow the book. No. So she drove down. I'm sitting behind her. I get to hold on to the rack. Yeah. This is his version. Yeah. Okay. This is his version.

And on the way, we went to the creek down in the bush, and then on the way back, she let me drive her four-wheeler. Wow. That was cool. Big deal. And I think she let me drive so she could hang on to me. Yeah. That's for 100%. Oh, she didn't hang on to the rack. She hung on to me. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You got to let these foundaches stay alive. He's getting older now, so, you know. And the rest is history. And the rest is history. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, I have a really good friend. I have all the respect for him in the world. Unbelievable. But when he took his wife out, they went to a steak dinner, which he was the similar, very similar. One of the first steak dinners he's ever been to. You lived in the middle of nowhere, yada, yada, yada. Took his wife out, and he says, she pulled out her pocket knife. And opened it up to cut her steak instead of using steak knife.

He's like, I knew that. She was my wife. Yeah. Exactly. You know what I mean? I mean, I could picture skin. Same with that, too. I found out she could flesh a hide. She could skin a, like, come on. With my grandpa. I mean, that was the thrill of when you're little. You know, you got to do all of that. You got to skin it. You got to flesh it. You got to stretch it on a thing. The beaver hides. The weasels. All of that stuff. Go check traps. Yeah, we did all of that. I was probably really thinking in the back of my mind, I won't have to hire an extra guide. That's it. Because she's really never been paid yet. I've got friends that do, you know, use their wives as cook, camp cooks, and all this. Yep. And Jan. That's abuse. That's abusing the labor. Outfitter's wife. Outfitter's wife is the cook, right? She doesn't do no guiding. She's guiding.

Kind of like the preacher's wife plays the piano. Yeah. The typical stereotype. The stereotype. Oh, it drives me bananas. Because they'll come up and they'll talk to you. Oh, I want to talk to the outfitter. So they'll start talking to him and they kind of disregard you a little bit. It's getting better over the years. You're like, hey, by the way, I own more than half of this. Oh, I own 75%. Truth be no. You do not. This is our little joke. Oh, let's get into this. This keeps them behaved. She owns 50% of the corporation and then 50% of mine. Something goes wrong. Oh, that's a good point. We're just kidding. We're just kidding. You are not. She's stuck with me for life anyway, so it doesn't matter. This year is 29 years being married and we've known each other for just 30 years, I guess. We're aging ourselves. Wait. We have a boy that's turning 29. You got married at 16. Yeah. What?

I left home. Things weren't as great at home as they should have been. Okay. Kind of jumped through some hoops. Probably didn't do... So the four-wheeler was the family vehicle? First family. Probably did stuff not the way it's supposed to, but you look back and I think it was God's plan on everything. I mean, maybe a little bit then we didn't recognize it as much. But now we look back and it was like, yeah, we were... You know, there's people destined to be together. Yeah. And... But even saying that, us being together for 29 years, it's not been all magic and easy. I mean, there's been lots of ups and downs, money problems. You guys don't fight. It's not much, actually. Every day it's work. It is? Yeah. All I see is what social media shows me. Yeah. And that is phenomenal. Yeah. We make it look good on that. Think about it, though.

In all reality, in 29 years, we really haven't really had any... Well, one or two... Real good ones. Yeah. We built a house together and people are like, you're going to build a house together? You're going to get a divorce. You guys are going to be the general contractors? You guys are going to get divorced through that? People argue with building programs. We communicate. And we... His grandpa used to tell him, his preparer said, you never go to bed at night angry at each other. You talk about it. You pray about it. Yes. And you resolve it. Even if you're still upset about it, you got to get over it that night. Because once you carry it over to the next morning, it just builds and builds and builds and builds. Yeah. And we always kind of do the principle of we forgive each other pretty quick. Yeah. I don't forget sometimes as quick as I am.

You know, that's the key to success in a marriage, really. It's like there's that 24-hour period of grace where you forgive each other and you don't go to bed angry. Yeah. Don't carry it over. Yeah. Because then it stews overnight and it's... Be done with it. And then, of course, you get more thoughts and all these other things. Well, and you get to our age. You get to our age and you're not going to change each other. No. You just got to learn how to work around each other a little bit. It's all about what you focus on, too. Like, man, I'll tell you what, the last few years, I just... I'm walking around. I'm just checking her out all the time. It's still after this long. And I'm like, Jen, you're so hot. I love you. Actually, a couple weeks ago, we were hunting and I'm like, you know what? We're sitting in a little cabin in Illinois and I'm like, I'm just happy being with you.

I used to love being...

I'm just happy being with you. Yeah. How nice is that? It just took them a few more years to realize that than me. She almost got a cheer in her eye when I told her that. She's like, oh, really? You've never seen her cry before. She's hard. She's tough. Unless it comes to my kids and babies and stuff. Yeah. But other than that, I'm pretty... Pretty tough. The way I grew up, I had to be pretty tough. I mean... Okay. So let's set the stage. I'm a baby. 15, 16 years old. Got the four-wheelers, a family car. Yeah. Going out to the trapping cabin to live. How? What now? How are you going to provide for your family? What are you doing? What's school like up there? What it was is... I mean, what do you... Do you guys have normal high school? Oh, yeah. What's it like? Yeah. A little tiny school where she... Yeah. He was doing...

So how I end up leaving home, it's kind of corny, and it's not the greatest story, but life is life. So home life for me wasn't as great. I mean, you look back now, and you can't expect your parents to teach you something that they haven't done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my mom was really abused, and you know, all that down. Yeah. So physical abuse and stuff like that. Yeah. It wasn't horrendous. I mean, mine's peanuts compared to a lot of people and friends I've talked to. Sure. Sure. But still, when you're in that world, that's all you know, right? Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And if you don't know any way to deal with it, well, you just get out. So anyways, I left home at 16. It's totally legal. You can be on your own. I left home. So we started... I was a fly tyer at the time. Yeah. I was a fishing tackle manufacturer. Really? So I started tying trout flies when I was 12 years old.

Dad bought me a fly tying kit. I started tying flies. By the time I was like 14, I was tying 14,000 trout flies a year. Oh, jeez. There's very little money in it. Back then, the fly was... Like a dry fly, wet fly was 50 cents. Yeah. And a nice pattern, like a streamer or a nymph, was 85 cents a piece. Yeah. Do you remember how long it... Like, how long does it take to fly? Oh, it was like... To tie one. I have no idea. Five minutes of fly. He was fast. He was good at it. Pretty quick. You have certain patterns you like, or do you... I mean, you knew. So back then, I used to go to a sportsman show like this. I'd get a booth, me and a couple guys that tied flies, and we'd sit there and tie flies and sell them at the show. Wow. And that's how it started. I've been sitting at trade shows for a long time. Under fluorescent lights, you'd be bug died after like five days of tying little flies.

And then after, when you're about 1920, I guess, we moved into, like to Edmonton because I was in rural. Yeah. And when we moved there, we started getting into more tackle manufacturing. So we'd start making our own bell weights and fishing tackle, like all of the lead jig heads, all that stuff, and really expanded. And we always had moose, birchbark moose calls that we've made. Lead. Lead's not good. You guys probably inhaled a lot of lead. I did. I did. And ate it. That explains it all. I remember when I was a kid, I'd put a whole, my whole cheek was full of lead pellets. Yep. My dad did too. For shooting the birds. I know. And I'm like, what? That explains it for you. It is not true. I know. As they say, the monsters aren't good for you. That is not true. They're fine, right? They're fine. I know. I say it's my vitamin supplement. It helps my hair and nails.

This is not being filmed, so you're just getting the voice. But we're sitting here with each a Monster Energy, and Jason's got a rock star. Well, it's colored. It's white. It's white. It's a white rock star, because where I was, wasn't selling them. I've never actually had a white rock star. And these American monsters are so weak, it does like nothing for us. So at home, the vitamin B12 is like 680%. Oh, my gosh. These ones are 100%. You can drink three of these to. Well, look at the first ingredient is carbonated water. Yeah. Yeah. Makes me feel good. Yeah. Drinking my water. Actually, Jen's nails and hair grows better now since she drinks these. Oh, my gosh. Because of the vitamin Bs. Oh, yeah. So we could say it's healthy. It's healthy. All right. That's our story. We're sticking to it. So we're going back to lead pellets in our cheeks.

You guys are dealing with lead jig heads by the thousands. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So the fishing tackle and the hunting product manufacturing is what kept us busy outside of the guiding season. Yeah. We'd guide spring and fall. All winter, we'd produce all our fishing tackle. Yeah. So we'd make tackle from January till April, and then we'd hit the road, and we'd sell it all over the country. So you'd have multiple things because guiding at that time was just, it wasn't enough to supply for the family for the whole time. So you had to divide. So we'd have the fishing tackle season. We'd do live bait for a while. We did all of our hunting products, like a homemade birchbark moose call, which is tradition from his family. So he's been doing it for 40, I think in a day to 35 years. Wow. Yeah. Because his dad did it and his prepare did it. He has a bit of French in his background. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Our birchbark moose call even sells at Cabela's in Canada. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Right now to this day? Yeah. It's all handmade. And now our girls. Our daughter Julia. Our daughter Julia is now the moose call maker. Yeah. Come on. It used to be all of us. That's like the child labor. Yeah. It is. I did that. We had a wildlife call business. It was called Garth Carter's Wildlife Calls Incorporated. Yeah. And we sold the Bass Pro and Cabela's. And I remember as a kid, I was like eight years old, nine years old. We had to test them with AA batteries and then pre-tested labels. We got paid by the piece. Yeah. They came in boxes of 100 from Taiwan. And we would get up at four in the morning. We got paid by the pieces. Yeah. The more you worked, the more money you made. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted guests and Jerbo and Birkenstocks and whatever else was popular at the time. Yeah.

That's how we pay the kids. Yeah. And I wish we had something like that for my kids. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be. You really learn the value of money when it's piecework. That's right. Yeah. That's right. They realize that everything is like, yeah, there's value to it and a work ethic. Yeah. For my oldest daughter, like we did live bait for quite a few years too. Yeah. So, you know, the night crawlers and stuff. Yeah. Nighttime. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, she'd hire them after school and she'd be, you know, because we had basketball and volleyball and youth group and all these different things. And it was busy. Yeah. But she wanted to do it. And we're like, okay, we're going to hire you at this time because the money we're making, we started her at 10 cents a pack and then it moved up to 25 cents a pack. Yeah. 25 cents. She was making, she was like at 20 bucks an hour.

And she's going to school. Well, we didn't get that luxury. My mom and dad were like, let's do it as fast as we can do it. Times it by two. Yeah. Because they're kids. Yeah. And go from there. Yeah. And we still make, well, I mean, we, and that's not really true. They treat us very fair, but we made good money as kids. Well, she was like, okay, so if I do this at 10 cents a pack, and I mean, instant, she's a brainiac. So it'd be like, okay, this is the shopping. This is the shoes I need. This is this, this, this, this. Yeah. So she worked. All of our kids. She never equaled that work to money. She equaled it to a new pair of jeans or a new shirt or something. That's what you do as kids. Yep. And for us, it's what, a new bow or a new, a new a-ro suit? It's rent. The electricity bill. It's kids. It's vacations down in, you know, Utah, Texas, wherever, you know, it leads.

But I think with all the kids, even like a little skip of a rabbit here again, the working, the peace working and all that stuff and helping us, and they helped me bake and, you know, to get prepped for camp and all that. Yeah. But doing all of those things between chores and that, it really gave them an idea of, okay, this is life. This is, you know, I need to work because there's too many. Not all, but I've seen quite a few families with kids that they don't have to do anything. Sure. Mom, get me a sandwich. Right. You're 16. You can make your own sandwich. Mom, do this. Mom, do that. Mom, do this. Yes. Bring me a glass of water. And I'm like, okay, you know what? As these kids get older, I mean, I blessed the heck out of my kids, and I did probably way too much for them. Yeah, I probably did. But anyways, but they all knew, they all had their chores. Yeah.

And they knew they had to, they all had responsibility. So I think mentally it helped them grow, helped them know that they needed to do things, needed to know that, you know. It's so healthy. Oh, yeah. And I feel bad. I even spoil my kids too much, you know. I'm applying them for tags. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We did too. And my dad was like, yeah, I'll apply it, but son, how are you going to pay for that? I don't know, dad. But more than trap calls, let's test them and freak, I'll get up at 4 in the morning and do more piece work. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know. But anyway, you want the best for your kids. Oh, yeah. And I think that's hard in our day and age. Life's better for us too, right? Yeah. Life's better for everyone right now. It's amazing what we're blessed with and what we can do compared to what we, everybody. Oh, yeah. Everybody in life.

I look back at Jenna when we had to package night crawlers, and we had a walk-in cooler that would have like 100,000 worms in there at a time. Wow. And so every Friday we'd make deliveries and drop off to fishing stores in our area. Number one store would order at least 300 dozen every Friday. Yeah. So Jenna had to get all that ready the day before. Oh, my gosh. And she hated the wiggly, crawly things that would move. So she'd put on a latex glove and she'd be, good work. She'd put on her music and just do-do-do-do and she'd give her and she'd do it. That would work. Yeah. So we're tying flies. Now how does that go to where you're at today? So we realized tying flies doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't make enough money. So we started pouring, making fishing tackle, like lead stuff. We started pouring lead jig heads and paint. Bucktail jigs. Oh, really? Heating it up? Oh, yeah. Everything.

So bucktail jigs. So a bucktail jig is a jig head that's painted. Okay. And you'll use a whitetail deer tail. Okay. And you can dye them all different colors. And you'll tie hair on the back of that jig. And it's made for catching walleye, pike, all kinds of different fish. So we would tie, like, thousands and thousands of those. So I got fed up of buying a deer tail at a fly shop that was worth, like- So you gotta kill more deer. No. No, I couldn't kill enough. Okay, okay. Deer tail at the fly shop was, like, four or five bucks for a white one. And then the dyed ones were, like, seven, eight bucks a piece for, like, fluorescent greens. We're talking early 90s here. So we're way back. That's when I was in high school. Yeah. I got smart. I found out that the tanneries, Alberta, had a program where the fish and game clubs would collect hides from all the hunters that are part of the club.

Okay, there you go. And they would get them to the tanneries. The tanneries would pay the club, like, five bucks a hide. So it raised money for the clubs. It was great. So now they ended up with all these hides. Thousands of hides had a tail on them, and they're gonna go in the garbage. Oh, my gosh. So I got a hold of the tanneries. They're like, yeah, we'll sell you the tails. I'm like, you're gonna throw them away. So I ended up, I was paying. Kid, we're gonna teach you what life is. And they were from 25 cents to 75 cents a tail. They were banking. And I'd buy, like, 1,000 of them. And I would dye them all myself. I learned to dye all the colors. Oh, yeah. You'd boil the tails in hot water and clean all the rolls out of them. Add vinegar. Like tie-dyed t-shirts. Oh, yeah. Our life has been part of a science project.

I remember one time, one of the big tanneries that had several hundred tails waiting for me, and they said, you gotta come pick them up Monday. So I'm like, okay, I'll be there Monday. And they're like, if you're not there Monday, we're gonna throw them in the dumpster. I'm like, yeah, but I'm paying you for them. If you throw them in the dumpster, I can pick them up for free out of there. Oh, did you do that? No. No. Why not?

That was a bad decision business-wise on your part.

So we started pouring out. Up until 2009, we were making, like, half a million pieces of tackle a year. What? That's what you did until 2009? I could produce. You weren't guiding bear hunters? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All of it. All of it. That was all winter months. And then we tried to make enough through the winter to keep going for the whole summer with tackle. But it never was enough. There'd always be orders in the summer. And then in the summer, it's like 90 degrees outside. Yeah. And you gotta pour lead. You gotta pour lead furnace cooking. And you're at 100 and something degrees now. You're cooking. Wow. So that sucked in the summer. It's so the whole different seasons of the year, we do different things. So guiding season. So spring and fall was always guiding. So you guided even in the early 90s. We're going back. Yes. When did you take your first client?

Like, how did you decide we're going to guide you? As soon as I was old enough to have a guide's license. Which is? You gotta be 18 to guide. Okay, so about the time you get married. Yeah. So he actually guided for other outfitters when he got his start. Yeah, I started off working for other guys at first, you know. Learning the ropes. Yep. Bear. Bear and moose. Bear and moose, deer. Bear and moose, white tail. Waterfowl, everything. Yeah. Yeah, everything right out of the start. Jump right in. And I grew up in it. What part of Canada? My dad had been a guide in Ontario when I was a kid. Alberta. Like, northern, southern, where were we? Well, when he first did, he did a lot southern Alberta and some north, depending on what he was doing. Because I've hunted out of high level clear a long time ago. Way up. That's not as far as we are. Yeah. Brent Rye. We were doing bears.

And people think the further you go, the bigger the bears are going to be. And it's not true. The opposite? The availability of food is what's going to decide how big the bears is. Is determine the size of the bear. Oh, okay. You know, like a coastal bear where they're eating salmon all the time and eating a lot of protein. They get bigger and it's almost like a subspecies. Yeah. Same thing with the bears. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Okay. So, spring and fall, guiding. Summer, we did a lot of fishing tackle, live bait, all that stuff. And then we also have another business that we were doing. And we're actually just revamping everything right now. So, all of our own line of hunting products. So, the moose call, the handcrafted moose call. We also did, like, hunting scents, cover scents, lures, all that different stuff. We have all that of our own lines. There's a lot of stuff we do.

People don't know we do. Oh, yeah. We're still doing that. Yeah. Right now. How many employees you got? Us. Well, it depends on how many kids we got. Well, Julia and Jordan work full-time for us. Yeah. So, we have two full-time at home. So, it's nice. And then the other ones, Jen and Jonathan, they take their holidays when it's our busy time. Like, spring bear, when we have a week, say, your buddies and our buddies are there hunting with Cam and that. All the UA guys. We've got eight people in camp. The kids will make sure that's their holiday and they'll be there for that week. So, the last three years, like, three years ago was my most fun spring I've ever had in the 30 years because all the kids were there with us. Yeah. And they take their vacations. Yep. And donate it to that week. Yeah. They actually donated because I haven't paid them. But they want to be there.

That's how you make a higher profit margin. So, Jenna's work is seven days on, seven days off. She works 12-hour shifts. For the company? For the family business? No, for her own thing. For her own thing that she works at. Great job. She makes a pile of money. I think she makes more money than me. Really? Yeah. So, then on her weeks off, so every week she's got seven days off. Wow. So, she works seven days, then she's off seven, then she works seven nights. And so, then when she works her seven days off, when she has her seven days off, she's coming to work. She wants to come dating. She wants to be with us. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Is she married? She's got a boyfriend right now. He better lock that one down because she's a workahaller. I think he better. Well, we could dive into that in a whole other podcast.

I accused him the other day because he came with me and he shot his whitetail doe and his whitetail buck in one morning. And I accused him of, do you really want to be with Jenna or do you actually want to be hunting with me? Yeah. Is there a little tear your motive to this? That's some funny stuff. But, yeah, so we always had stuff to keep us busy because you always had to make money. Yeah. And, I mean, you had four. It goes back to eating. You had four kids. It goes back to, it's just eating. It's providing. In those beginning days there, it was like. What are you going to do to make? What are you going to do? You made a bunch of tackle. You loaded up the car and you hit the road and you went from town to town. And you sold it. In Canada. Where did you come into the States? It was just all in Canada. Mostly Western Canada. Alberta.

So, and then you'd take that money, you'd get home and you'd buy some diapers and you'd buy some milk. Pay the bills. Deer tails. You'd buy a case of macaroni and cheese. Like, you didn't have the best of stuff then. A pack of bologna. Put five bucks of fuel in the truck. I remember lots of times fueling up and it was five bucks. Rolling into the gas station and not really, it's, are you going to get into the gas station? You could see through the floorboards. Yeah. It's crazy. If rain water would come in. I remember when I was a kid, gas was like 25 cents a gallon. I don't know where it was for you guys or even the Canadian U.S. exchange rate or whatever. But it's time to change. Five bucks you could actually put in, like we had a Chevy pickup back then. You could put it in there and you could actually go for quite a while on five bucks. Now in my new diesel, it's like five bucks.

It goes, um. Five bucks. There's nothing. It's like two drops in the tank. It's expensive in Canada. We pay five, six bucks a gallon for fuel. You guys are so lucky. Don't complain. Yeah. Yeah. And we make it there. That's a good point. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's all tax. Even just traveling and stuff, seeing how, I mean, to most people they don't, it doesn't fizz them, but you look at the food prices and all the different things that you're doing, it's like a lot of stuff up there is more expensive. Crazy. And so how does that get us to where we're at today? 2009. I think we ended at 2009. 2009. Family businesses. We decided to, I figured, I poured so much lead, like tons and tons and tons of lead. Probably shouldn't be eating lead. Probably shouldn't be doing. But I actually, I got my blood tested and everything and I had nothing in me. Well, we'll rewind a little bit.

A little bit back in the mid-90s, we, he had worked for quite a few fitters for quite a while and made okay money and stuff. But it would be like, my kids, one example is he came back from guiding after three months. Jenna was just little and she loved her daddy. When he came back, she was like, cause he's like, oh, Jenna, hi. And she ran behind me and she started crying, mommy, mommy, because she didn't recognize him. It had been three months. Oh, no way. When I worked for somebody else, you had to be gone for two, three months at a time to make enough money. Cause you're making wages, you know? We can't do this anymore. So in the mid-90s, middle of. The outfitter life is way better than the guy life.

I believe it. Just to be honest. I made a lot of money for a lot of people for a lot of years at the beginning. Yeah. I think it was in 95 or 96, we went on our own. We started our own outfitting and started doing it, you know, still working with other people that were helping us out, but all on our own. So then we got our own clients and we started doing everything that way. And it's nice now. It's, it's mostly repeat clients. So every year there's the same people coming back. They're bringing new people with them. And you were talking about doing, yes. And you're talking about doing shows and stuff. It feels like social media has changed that for you guys. Social media is how you're getting your clients. Or like me, I feel comfortable with you. If you're good now, everybody's going to know about you. And if you're bad, they'll all know about you too. So you better be doing a good job.

Wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So that goes to another whole side of everything that I look at. It's like, okay, so let's talk social media for a minute. And let's talk how the hunting industry is on, you know, everybody, like everybody wants to be famous. Everybody wants to have their TV show. Everybody wants to be a superstar. Everybody wants to do all these things. And for us, we have people that even want to hunt with us or even want to come work with us. And I'm like, we always have this conversation. I says, for me, for people I want to be around or I want to be associated with, or we work with, it's like, we want to know who's behind it. We know, you know, a bit of their story. We want to know who they are as human beings. And just because you say, oh, here, I want you to use this. And it's a great deal.

And I'm going to give you money to use it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to use it because if we don't agree or we don't feel right about it, it'd be like, thank you very much. We're very flattered, but, you know, we'll pass. And then there's companies that we do work with that it's just like, it's, it's, you're talking sponsorship wise. We have people offer stuff all the time, you know, cause we're in this business and sure. Or even clients coming. I want to accept product unless I like the company, first of all. Yeah. The product's got to be really good. And the people got big in. But unless I like the people behind the company, I don't want to be involved with them. Well, and when they get the rivets, they're going to get the Traeger grill. They're going to get, you know, cookouts. They're going to, you know, sleep at each other's places and, and really involved.

You guys are very involved. Yeah. It's hard for us to separate like business and pleasure families. Same with all the clients and everything that we've had all this last 20 some years. It's very hard for me because it's, it's very family orientated. So when you come in, it's like, I'm bringing you as a guest into my home and I'm going to treat you like a guest. Like I want to cook for you. I want to make you happy. Like I want to make sure everything's good. And then you build that relationship. So after a little while, it, it is hard for me to separate the, okay, this is a business. This is a client. This is a friend. Because if all of our friends were like, why don't you just give me a hunt? Like everybody tells us that. So if all our clients are our friends and we gave it free to them, we wouldn't make any money. I love you, but this is how we make a living.

It'd be like, we'd be like this. We need help. But yeah. But I mean, with the whole, what I was getting at with that is it's, it's, I have a little thing that I tell a lot of people and it's kind of corny, but I think it's good is when you look at people, when you want to get involved with or do business with, or even sponsored, whatever, you're going to promote them. Do they have consistency of character? Who are they? How do you know that? Where do they come from? How do you know that, Jim? Well, with social media, it's like everybody. So you can scroll 400 posts down and you're starting to see who they, at some point the true colors are going to come out. I don't know. What are you saying? You know where the true colors really come out? You spend a week in the bush with someone. Oh yeah. You know that as a guided outfitter. Yeah. You can only fake it so long.

In the bush, you can't fake it anymore. That's right. With no sales in this. Could you imagine? I should have been a private investigator part of it because I love to research and I love to dig. Like I am really, he'll say, Jen, even family history and background and stuff, it'll be like four in the morning. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I can't help it. I'm reading this and it's going to revay here and do that. And then like, I get caught up in it. So here's a little secret. You know how people, when they're going to book a hunt with an outfitter, they check out the outfitter. They do the research. They get references. We do that to the client. Oh my gosh. Some of them get, I've had a couple of them get mad. Why are you asking me questions? I'm supposed to ask you the questions. I'm like, hey, you're coming into our family. You're coming into our home. This is a big deal.

This is an equal opportunity client. I'm going to spend a week with you. I'm going to spend a week. Now that I'm getting older, I realize you've got to make every day count. Okay. We have our kids there. And yes, now they're older. Like I said, they're all in their twenties, 21 to 27 right now. But they're still my kids and I'm there and I have other clients there, my business, our reputation, what we stand for. So we've had very, very few incidents over the years, but we've had a couple of little things come up where after like we had one client message our daughters and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This ain't going to work. No, no, no, no. Yeah, exactly. So it's like when we say, hey, we want to know who you are. So the consistency of character part, even like even in the industry, I see so many young people and they come up to us. Oh, how do you get into the industry?

What's the secret? And we're like, to me, it's a, what's the word? It's a non-concept for me. I said, I don't get it because for me, it's, oh, I want to be in the industry. It's like, this is who I am. You guys didn't say, I want to be a social media tycoon or whatever. It's not like you start with that. You're like, no, we're just guiding. We're just doing what we do. Yeah. What's the secret to get into the industry and get famous? And I'm like, people ask us that all the time. They walk up, John and Jen. And I don't get it. Tell us, what's the secret to breaking into the hunting industry? And we're like, what do you mean? You want to be famous, you mean. Is that what you're saying? How do I get famous without working hard? I know. That's the American way. Yeah.

And for us, it's like, for me at first, it caught me off guard because I'm like, I don't get being the industry. Like, I mean, this is our job. This is our life. It's, and people are like, oh, you just guide. I'm like, no, it's how we feed our family. Like literally the guiding money. Yes. But also all the animals, like, cause most of the time we're not hunting. So if the client don't take everything home, I mean, that's what we're feeding. Like I said on a post the other day, it's like, that's how I feed my family. My, my extended family, like my mom and stuff, we supply her. My dad's gone. So, and she loves it. So we'll bring her moose, deer, whatever. Yeah. Neighbors. We help out neighbors all the time. We help out. Uh, I mean, everybody, I don't want to sound like the, oh, I'm chiming my own horn here. But I mean, it's like in Vegas, when we go down there, they are shortage of meat.

We'll gather up a whole bunch and we'll bring a hundred pounds of meat. We'll go do dinners. We donate. Like we're going to go to Texas. We're going to lay down a hundred. Yeah. And we're going to divvy them out. But I mean, that's the misconception of, oh, I want to be famous. And, oh, I want to get into the industry. And I'm like, maybe that's your, your ideal of the industry. For me, it's, it's the hardcore or the, the grassroot of it. It's like what you're. Well, and I don't want to be famous. Like it would be nice. You don't want to, but when you do get a little bit of fame and, you know, God's promoting you and raising you up and then it's for a reason. Yeah. It's not just for your own thing. It's with you. You're promoting the industry. You're promoting hunting and good things. But family and having fun and conservation and passing on traditions and all that.

What do you do with that fame after? Yeah. Are you going to do good with it? Yeah. Yeah. Or is it just about an ego trip? And I'm like, for us, it's like. Well, I would like to just hunt and kill big stuff. Yeah. And not show anybody. You know, not because, not because I don't want to share it, but I just. I don't know. I get to where if you look at my social media, I don't post a lot right now. I'm kind of having aversion to it because I see so much of it. Yeah. You know, and so it's actually, I see the social media thing kind of backing off a little bit. Like. Yeah. And you get the guys that quote want to be famous, I guess. But anyway, cranking harder and harder and harder to get to that point. Yeah. And, and, and I'm like, uh, you know, I don't, I just kind of, I want to withdraw a little bit, but I don't know what it is. I hear you.

Because we, we've had people come to us and it's like, if you guys would do this on social media, you got this and they, you know, promote it like this or do like this or do these type of all this different stuff. And I look at it and I'm like, it's not really who I am. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, we could. You're not going to change her. She's kind of setting her way. Yeah. I mean, you could do it and stuff, but I'm like, honestly, how I believe this is what we do for a living. This is our lifestyle. This is how we chose to be. This is, this is how we live. Like, like I said earlier, the DNA, I joke, I'm like, take me to the doctor, draw it out and they'll look in there and like, oh wow. They'll see like, you know. You're a hunter gatherer. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And a social media person now. Yeah. Yeah. And that's fun. Because you've got to advertise. I love people. Yeah. I love people.

So. But I mean, we could, like, even with me, I could grow and I could do all this different stuff. And I'm just like, he's like, did you, did you post your picture yet of your deer? Like that I got in Texas. And he's gorgeous. And I'm like, yeah. And then people were like, okay, I finally posted it. And they're like, what did it score? And I'm like, I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I'm guessing, you know, he's probably going to be high 160 to 175. I mean, and John's like, well, don't say that. Maybe I know what it's going to score just by looking at him. And I do this for a living. I have a guesstimate, but I didn't go put the tape on it yet because that's what it wasn't to me. It was just like, this is my first. You care about a mature animal though. Harvesting the most mature animal that you can. He's lived a long life already. I hunted hard. I mean, I hunted hard.

It was, it's not easy as people say. And I did a good shot. We found him quick. I mean, just. So she is very competitive though. Talking about, you know, a bigger animal though and stuff. Definitely. No, not really. Well, not really. You know what she told Cam yesterday? So she told, she told Cam Haynes yesterday. So we're getting our new bows on Monday. And should I say what they are? Yeah, go ahead. I was going to have a contest for people to try to guess what my bows. They're going to know. Anyways. Okay. Because of Cam, right? We got to keep hammering. We got to keep hammering bows to make, to keep Cam happy. Right. And I just said, you know what? If we ever like, I don't like him as much or I'll just take white out or something. But I, I mean, I love him. We love him. You guys know him very well. Yeah. So she told Cam yesterday that, hey Cam, guess what?

No, I said, so when are you coming up to hunt with us? And we're thinking about, I was telling him. You mean this year? Because it's every year. Every year. So with the new bow, I says, I got something for you. And he's like, what? I says, I think I know who's going to kill the first bear with the keep hammering bow. And he looks at me and I say, it's going to be me. Could you imagine? It's going to be Jen. It's going to be me. Because she's hunting before they come up. That's hilarious. I think she actually killed the first. Yeah. I think Jen killed the first bear with the carbon defiant the year it came out. Oh, okay. Wow. I mean, that's what we do, right? So I was out there. Yeah. So I'm bugging Cam about that. She just killed the first buck with a, our broadhead company is Wasp Broadheads. And they came out with a new head this year. That's a four blade head. It's a dart. It's a dart.

Awesome. She killed the first buck. There you go. First whitetail buck. It's because you guys are hunting 24-7, 365. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cameron's going to kill a Kyle or something to beat you. He's got to kill a bear, though, to beat it. Because it's going to beat the first bear. Oh, I see. Your first bear. He's already hunted. I think he's already killed a buck or an elk or something with it. But it's just, just the bear because. All right. First animal versus first species. It's a bear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm like, I'm the, I'm supposed to be the bear lady. So I'm like, yeah, we were doing the, we had a Akubo challenge over here yesterday. And so it was a little thing that they had going on where they had us and a few other people shooting. And then some people in the audience would shoot. And if they beat us, they would win an Akubo. So they're like, what do you want to shoot?

And I'm like, well, of course I want to shoot at the bear target. Yeah. You know? So, yeah. So I shot at the bear target and got a nice vital shot. And, and they're like, everybody's like, well, cool. And somebody commented, well, she should. That's what she does for a living. I wounded mine. And the guy won an Akubo because he beat me. Really? You could say you did it on purpose because you wanted somebody to win one, but that would kind of be lying. I wish I could say that. Well, I screwed up. So let's see. Let's move forward to 2017, 18. Still have all the family businesses. Yes. Or is it more just you guys are doing the guiding? No, we're actually, more family businesses extended a little bit. We're revamping. Right now, a lot of our hunting products aren't out because we're revamping packaging, labeling, you know, doing that rebranding right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because we've used it for years and it's great and we just want to, you need a new look. Yeah. You can't have the same look as 20 years for us anyways. Yeah. Yeah. So we're doing that. And then. So this coming in, you'll see like all of our stuff that we've made for 30 years and then a bunch of other stuff coming out too. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We'll have body wash and all the. All the different things. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. The minerals we've always done. Yeah. Minerals for making, you know. Yeah. Wherever they can bait for deer with minerals and stuff. Yeah. Exactly. And then another. You guys bait up there? For bear. For bear. Not for deer. No ungulates. Yeah. Wolf. Okay. You can't do for any ungulates or anything like that. And then another business that my daughter and I started last fall, we're just starting to break open. It's called Antler Rose Jewelry. Okay.

So it's all the wildlife inspired, like the little bullet earrings and the antlers and, you know, bear prints and all that stuff because we love it. And we were having a hard time at that time, you know, we're like, we're having a hard time finding it. And I mean, eventually she wants to get married, you know, and she doesn't necessarily want to work where she wants to work. So we're trying to grow that too as well. So some really cute stuff. And she's got it out on Etsy and we've been, it's been fun making it. It's been fun seeing it. It's fun seeing people wearing it and loving it as much as we do. So just something else. Like we want to, everything outdoors right from the cooking and we call it the killing and the grilling all the way to all of that. I mean, there's niches everywhere. So that's, that's always been what we focused at. And so let's talk about the bears.

I know you really, we're really known for bears. Cause that's you're known for bears. Yep, for sure. So tell me about like hunting. I'm into the big stuff. Anything, not just deer, but you know, anything that's really intriguing. And I mean, for the last 20 years, we've done tons of moose guiding, elk, or not elk. We've hunted elk a little bit for ourselves. We've breezed over all that. But like whitetail mule deer, moose. Big whitetails. Yes. Like the gnarly Canadian. Yes. Big time. Yeah. Dark antler. It's just been. Boone and crockets. Really? Yeah. You yourself or guiding? Guiding. Like giant. Anything 200, like 190s, 180s. At home right now, if I'm going to hunt whitetail, if I have time to hunt whitetail, which we're going to make more time to do it now, but usually I'd have a day at the end of the season when the clients are all gone. That was it.

So, but I like to get a big trophy one, a big, but we eat it. We live off of it, but still, if I'm going to shoot one myself. Do you have specific bucks in mind? Not really. Are you running cameras? I like big eights. I love big eights. I just shot a big eight in Texas. So. Really? Jen was actually up to bat. And when he walked in, she goes, I know you like big eights. Take them. You go for it. Have it. Oh, yeah. That was nice. You'll take a 12. Oh, yeah. Well, no, I just, I've seen the non-typical and I was like, well, I've never shot a non-typical. So I was like, I'll take that. And he was mature. He was really old. Yeah. And, and, and people like, oh, it's all about the antlers. No, he tastes really, really good. We've had him on the trigger. By the way, it's not new that we eat our game. Yeah. So when people say that, it's like, okay, you can obviously tell by our feed.

It's not just a. Yeah. I mean, if people like it, that's cool. I think that's totally cool. But for us, we actually live off of it. Yeah. Like when the doctors say you shouldn't eat too much red meat, they're not talking about the red meat. We eat the elk and the moose and the deer. They're not talking about me. No, no, no. That's the way Jan and I feel. When it comes to moose, like we live off of moose meat. Moose meat is our favorite. Moose and elk. It's awesome. Elk we don't have a lot of, so it's hard for us to get an elk up there. But we're going to start hunting some of your states. You're going to help us on picking tags, applying for tags. Absolutely, I will. But moose, like when we guided a lot of clients to moose, there was some years we'd do as much as 12, 20 moose. So that would be our meat for us to live and to feed other people and the food banks and all that.

And with us as residents, catch this, as a resident, you've got to wait to get drawn. You've got to apply and apply and it takes five, six years to get a tag. So it was a good thing we were guiding so we could get all that meat because the clients couldn't take it all. They can. It was too much meat. Yeah. So he didn't have time to hunt. I didn't have time to hunt. So these clients would get all the, you know, they'd get their game and they'd leave a lot of their meat. Because a lot of them. They might take a quarter home and leave us three quarters. Because they're all flying. I like it. Thank you. When they book a hunt and they'd say, I'm flying up, I'd be like, yes, you can come. When they say we're driving up, I'm like, crap, they're going to take all the meat home. And we'd work our butts off because that would be the meat we'd get because we knew we didn't have time to hunt.

So the fallacy of us hunting like crazy every year for the last 25, 30 years. No, when you're guiding, it's, you know. So you mentioned food banks. Do you guys have FDA stuff? Like, do you have stuff like we have to do with them? So in Alberta, a lot of it's been set up through like. Butcher shops and stuff. Like Safari Club has set up a lot of butcher shops that'll butcher it for free. So you bring the meat there, they'll butcher it and it goes to a food bank. And it's an approved butcher or whatever. Licensed, yeah. Okay. Just as outfitters in Alberta, about 30,000 meals a year. No way. People in need. So it's pretty cool. I mean. Hunters are givers. Yeah. People think, oh, you're just a killer. No. Hunters are givers. Look at the auctions here, how much money's been raised for conservation. It's unbelievable. Last night was retarded. Yeah. It's unbelievable what tags are selling for.

I don't know how much they raised. I didn't stay to the very last tag. I've seen some stuff on social media that was like. The Anthrop Island mule deer went for like 290. I know that. It was insane. And that's all for conservation. That's great. Yeah. We had a lady in the elevator coming yesterday or the day before. Yeah. And there's a bunch of hunters in the elevator coming from the mall. So she's like, what's been going on here the last couple of days? All these people dressed like this. And I go, oh, there's a hunting show on. And then Jen's got her camo coat on. And I'm like, she's going to a tree hugging party. She goes, hey, I am one of them. She did not. Yeah, she did. You did not. Yeah. So then all of a sudden, instead of, I told her it's a hunting show. Then I turned to her and I said this. I said, it's actually a conservation expo. And she goes. Hunters are conservation.

Yeah, right. Yeah, right. She said that. Did you get into it? I said, you don't know that hunters are conservation? Conservationists? And she says, no, all hunters. And I just, I'm very polite. Because I feel you've got to be very polite. I says, no, maybe some hunters you've heard of. But I says, that's not us. I says, we live off of it. We manage it. We conserve it. We love and respect it. And she's like, oh. Wow. Oh. Never heard of that. We have one on the plane on the way here from San Antonio. Sitting beside us on the window. Jen's in the middle. I'm right here. Like, she's one of the ones that's like over in wherever, helping the gorillas and, you know, which is conservation in that area. But, I mean, totally, you don't need it. All this different stuff. So she's asking us what we do for a living. We're outfitters. Well, hello. We outfitters. So we started talking.

We are mercenaries. Yeah. We eat it. We're showing her pictures of elk steaks and how lean it is and how good it is. And she was like, oh, I had no idea. Wow. See, sometimes it's just, it's like on TV or media or whatever when you see something. Well, and all they know is who they associate with. Yeah. But they tell each other. She kept talking to poachers, poachers, poachers. And she associated that with hunting. So I explained to her that, hey, hunters, not necessarily poacher, you know. Yeah. That's right. It's too different. Those are criminals. There's a big difference. Yeah. But she accepted all of it after. She said, I want to thank you guys for educating me. Come on. Yep. She's 73 years old. She's probably thought that for the last 50 years. Yeah. But it's lack of knowledge again, right? It is. Yeah. Well, and we're not talking to them, right? Like, it's weird.

And they're not talking to us because they don't want to. And then back to that fame part again. I'll chase a rabbit there again. That's why when you, now you have a light on you or you have any amount of attention, it is your absolute responsibility to do everything in a proper manner to portray it. And people say, well, I shouldn't have to be fake. I should show the guts or I should show it dying. Do what I want. Take me as I am. You know, and flipping, the deer flipping around. We can't anymore. No, that's crap. We have to portray it in the right light. Yeah. Because this is our life. Number one, you need to have respect for that animal. So you need to portray it. So let's do this example. Well, you guys of all people, I know, have dealt with some of that. Well, we've, like with Joe Rogan, he's our buddy and he's hunted with us. And he says, here, you always got to look at it this way.

He says, you have a housewife in LA. She's never been hunting in her life. And she is watching a TV show or seeing a video or something like that or on the news and it's portrayed to her. Yeah. That one portrayal is going to decide. Because she's that gray area in the middle. Hunters are a minority. The PETA people are, you know, the antis are a minority. And that great portion in the middle, those are our decision makers. So if we're not portraying it. We need to keep them on our side. Yeah. If we're not portraying it in a way that's, you know, edifying and wholesome and all that stuff. Like even me on some of the shows that I watch on TV on some of the big channels or on YouTube or whatever. And they shoot something and it's and they're showing it and it falls. Okay, that's fine. I understand that. But when it starts, you see it suffering or flipping or whatever. I'm like, come on.

And sometimes those are just the things that happen in the field. But we don't have to show it. But you can edit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like today after this thing, if I say something and you're like, oh, Jen, you probably shouldn't have said that. We can edit it. Yeah. You know, you can edit it. You can. And it's not that we're trying to be fake. It's not that we're trying to portray something that it's not. It's just why? What good does it do? Yes. What good does it do? I don't like seeing it myself. Okay. You know what I mean? Am I going to go? I don't want to see something. We've got to get past our own ego of what's making us look famous or what's making us happy. Yeah. And look at the whole picture. What's this going to do for hunting? Yeah. Do we want to be responsible for hunting getting shut down? There's many other things that are legal, right?

Because you guys have seen that. Yes. There's many other things. Yes. Grizzlies now shut down in British Columbia. I know. I know. And they went against the scientists. They went against science that says a grizzly hunt needs to happen to manage them. Crazy. The numbers are crazy. There's as many grizzlies almost as we have black bears. Yeah. And they shut it down because of politics. The Canadians. Are you guys? Everybody's just up in arms over it. Yeah. So now they're coming after it. It's moving over to Alberta again now. They're coming after it. So with the bear hunts and the cougar hunts, they're really trying to shut down cougar hunting with cows. Because of your livelihood. Yeah. And what they do is they put the coin trace trophy. It's a trophy cougar hunt. Trophy. Trophy. Well, with the grizzly bear.

They said, they asked the public, are you in favor of trophy grizzly bear hunting? Well, that middle people that aren't into hunting or anti, them and the word trophy is there.

It shut down, you know? So the survey is biased. That's how they did it. It is. Wow. It is. So it's shut down. And you guys are literally overrun with black bear. Could you imagine if they shut that down? Well, so bear hunting has been, they've been allowed to bait in Alberta since the mid-80s. And the reason that they opened up baiting, and back then you could shoot two bears in the spring, two bears in the fall. There was one time you could shoot three bears at one time. And it was because there was too many. So a farmer that was growing 160 acres of oats could have as many as 30, 40 bears in there. Yeah. And they would wipe out the crop. Wow. They would eat everything. And roll in it and flatten it all out. So then it's worthless to the farmer. And it's that type of country there. Apart from those oat fields, it's all bush. So how do you manage? How do you go hunt a bear?

How do you hunt a bear? Yeah. You're not going to glass them. They opened up the government, the scientists. So that's the other thing. People think hunting tags or hunting licenses just pulled out of a hat or something. No. These are scientists. These are biologists that manage and calculate and count and decide, okay, this is a huntable population. We can take this many out of percentage, you know? And that's how it's managed. It's not just people are shocked by that when you tell me this is done by scientists. I don't think they're... It's not just pulled out of your butt. Yeah. I don't think they're always exactly right and they're a little bit behind the time sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, sure. But they are the ones that are putting the data out there for the laws to be made. So it's like you have to respect them. You have to follow them.

And if they're saying, okay, it's a baitable population. Okay. So let's get into the baiting part of bears because that's a big controversy. Yeah, right into the bears. Here we go. Let's right into the bears because that's our life. So the baiting controversy. Baiting's not fair. I don't think baiting's fair, they say. Right? Okay. So I ran into some locals last year just in a little diner where we gas up. There are two old grandpas there and they're having... And they're like, oh, are you a hunter? Yeah, I'm out hunting bear. Are you one of those baiters? And I'm like, yeah. Before I used to kind of back down because I didn't like to do... I do like confrontation to a certain extent. Jim. It's funny that we're on this podcast. It's good that you level her out. There's no cameras filming us, right? It is.

If there was a camera here and you could read body language and facial features, you'd get a whole other perspective of how this is going. So the bear thing. And he asked, are you baiting? And I'm like, well, yeah, we do. And he started being really kind of rude about it. And I'm like, whoa, do you understand why we bait? And I mean, this is like 70-year-old locals. And so I started talking to him about it. And I says, the purpose why we bait, I says, we want to do a selective harvest. Oh, yeah, we've heard that all before. I says, okay. I says, you're gone hunting and you want a bear and you see a bear walking. I says, do you know what size it is? Well, no, it's just a bear. I said, do you know what sex it is? Well, we don't know. I said, do you know if it has babies or not? Because it's illegal to shoot a sow with young cubs.

So I says, when I'm sitting in a bait and I sit there, I says, I can observe every bear that comes in. I can sit there for as long as they're observed them. I can tell you what sex they are because I'll teach our clients on how to judge sex, how to judge size. Because if the sow doesn't have cubs, she actually is legal to hunt. But we tell all of our clients, don't shoot a sow. And we had a little differences with some clients. And I said, well, this is the reason. When the mating season is on, those sows won't bring their babies into the cubs into the bait nine times out of ten because the boars are there. Those boar bears are just like lions. If they can kill those babies, they're going to bring that sow back into heat. So that's why they keep them out. So they'll say, oh, the sow came in. She's got no babies. I'm like, no, she's treated them 50 yards, 200 yards.

And you can hear them sometimes, they'll start bawling and stuff way out there. So I'm like at our place. And I mean, there is a mistake once in a blue moon. We had one last year. That's cool. I mean, it happens because it was really, really hard to tell. And it was a sow. Not that it had babies or anything, but just a female bear. And it's legal to shoot them. You can hunt females. You'd rather not. But I mean, that's your population grower, right? Yeah. And our sows are having three, four, five cubs. So of course you want them. Yes. And then they said, well, it was a big sow. And I said, okay, guys, do you want a big boar? Well, if you have big, big, like we'll get up to seven foot sows, like they're huge. Who do you think she's going to, this is a whole nother topic. Who do you think she's going to allow to breed them? It's going to be the big, big boars.

So if you have sows and he's probably a little bit too in depth, but in the breeding season and they're in at your baits, that's when you're going to get your mature old boars coming through is when they're there. If you take them out of the equation, guess what? Your chances of seeing a big old mature boar go way, way down. So it's a lot of management. People say, oh, they just come and you shoot them and you take boo-boo and you're done. And I'm like, no, the way I do it, like he'll tell everybody. I mean, I'm meticulous. I'll look at every little piece on their face. I'll know this one has a scar, like all the baits I sit at. So I will actually know who's coming in and who's doing what and stuff. So that's been the key to our success. That's why we do so well on bears. It is because we manage our area really well. Yeah. It's totally managed.

And we want it managed well because we want longevity. So do you name them? Like we name Mulder. Like do you have like just Scarface? Yeah. Like Scarface, something like that. I have one named Scar. The bears you're looking forward to seeing this year. Yeah, for sure. There's some that you've seen on camera or that a hunter's seen. Or like I have this one big sow. I just call her, oh, I just call her Big Brownie because she is like massive. Yeah. And she's a beautiful cinnamon. And the guy, one guy, many hunters like, I said, okay, if I put you at this bait, this is the bear that's there. You are not allowed to shoot her. If you shoot her, I'll probably beat you up. Like I would be totally frustrated. Yeah. Yeah. Because she's a huge sow. You might cry even. I probably would because she's amazing. She has three brown babies every two years. Three to four. Jeez. Well, three to four cubs.

Yeah. She had four. Every couple years. For years. Yes. You guys have watched her for years and years. So like a spot like that, those bears become personal to us. Yeah. And we would not even leave a hunter there by himself to hunt that area. Wow. Because of the chance that you might take that one. You know? Like I get a little. We sit with them. We make sure we're managing right. We're taking the right boars out. I get a little possessive when it comes to those bears. I do. You know what's crazy about hunting bears? The way we hunt them by managing and taking out the big boars. We try to average seven foot boars. By taking those out, your bear population skyrockets. Your moose population skyrockets. The moose population. The deer. The elk. Yes. Yes. All of that. So here's a little story with the bear things. People are like, oh, they would never do that.

So I was guiding at one spot and then I changed spots and my son went into this with some other clients. So my son actually witnessed. Some of your listeners might have heard this from Joe Rogan. He told this story. A lot of those bear stories from Joe Rogan are from our place. Yeah. So you'll hear it from a couple different podcasts. So at this one spot, he's sitting with clients, this sow, and we had been seeing her for quite a while. Sorry, she's a lousy mom. She would leave her baby crying and the baby would be crying in the trees. Oh, yeah. Just a little, little thing. So she came in, left the baby in the tree right behind us and started feeding. And then finally baby came in and she shot him up a tree above her. But then she took off and she was gone for like 45 minutes or whatever. And it's crying and crying. And it's just a wee little thing.

And so this other bear started to come in and it's like, oh, he doesn't know. Like, I mean, I'm talking cat size, like tiny. Starts to come down. Yeah. And, oh, didn't know whatever. And my son witnessed this all. This was actually a young boar that came in, jumped up, grabbed that off the tree. Come on. Ripped it apart. In front of you. In front of us and our clients. This is like a. First time bear hunter client. The size of a cat. Yeah. Bear cub. Ripped it. Ate part of it. It's gruesome, disgusting. But this is nature. People want to know nature. This is natural. This is what happens. So this is the freaky part now. So the boar is eating half of it. And then he takes off. Mom comes back in looking. Oh, where's baby? Oh, what's that? She ate the rest. Come on. Our hunters were horrified. My son was like, mom, I can't believe it. Why did you switch me places?

Like, I can't believe what I just saw. That's how it is. Just like Africa. Now I want to kill that style. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it was just like how, but she was, and I think, honestly, looking back, I believe she had three cubs at the beginning. Yeah. Okay. And I think she lost them all. She was, she just wasn't meant to be a mom. Generally, they're really good moms. They'll die. They'll, they'll fight a seven foot boar to defend their cubs. Yeah. They'll do anything. Yeah. Wow. Well, that's awesome. Well, is there anything else as far as bears? There's such a science. You could go on for hours and hours on stuff like that, but anything else as far as bears? It's interesting. Did you know we got Joe Rogan, his first animal with a bow and arrow? No. I didn't know that. It was a bear. Yep. Really? Here's the next thing. Here's the next myth. Bears taste amazing.

People think it's all trophy hunting and you don't eat bears because a lot of people claim they eat bears. I've seen that on social media. Bear meat is amazing. They do. If an outfitter tells you they don't taste good, it's because they're too lazy to deal with it. Or they don't want to. Because, okay. Do you have to eat it up there in Canada? No. You don't. No. Because they can carry trichinosis, but so can cougars. Cougars, wolves, bears in Alberta, you don't have to save the meat. You can feed it to the wolves or the bears. So can you cure that by just cooking it fully? Yes. You cook it. Okay. So you guys eat pork? You're not Jewish or something. No. You eat pork. Non-stop. Or chicken. I'll eat it every day. Would you eat pork rare? No. No. Same with bear. So don't be scared to eat bear. But just don't eat it. Don't order bear rare. Yeah. And then there's a fallacy too.

The other fallacy she'll tell you right now. It drives me nuts because there's people that say they've had bear and then people ask, well, what does it taste like on their posts on social media? Oh, it tastes just like a pork. And I'm like, actually, it doesn't taste like pork. It doesn't taste like pork at all. It is very dark red meat. The only reason why somebody might say it might be a bit pork-like is because it can have fat. Yeah. But it doesn't taste the same at all. It's a dark, dark red meat. Like, I'll do a stir-fry. So the ones you hear say that, they've probably never had it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll do a stir-fry in camp. Bear Lawrence. So at the end of it, you know how everybody goes to restaurants and they have surf and turf? Yeah. But we don't have that in Alberta. So my. The ones that said that are probably going to listen to your podcast. That's okay. That's okay. So anyways.

Now discover it. At the end of the week, we'll do, I call it Jen's Land and Lake. Yeah. Land and Lake. So we'll do a bear stir-fry, which is totally amazing. And the lake will have fresh walleye. That's every Friday night in bear camp. Wow. It's my favorite night of the week. It's something that I try to do because a lot of people have never tried that. Some people have never heard walleye. Like Joe actually caught his. And it turns all of our hunters into loving bear and wanting to take the meat home. Yeah. So that's another reason why we have more bear hunters now is by educating them that the meat is good and letting them taste it. Now we have people come that years ago were like, oh, I'd love to go shoot a bear with you, but I won't eat it. So I'm not going to shoot something I don't want to eat. So now that they're like, oh, it's good meat. Okay, I'm coming.

These guys are taking it home. Like I've been doing recipes on the Traeger and stuff. And they've been taking it home and they've been doing like roasts and ham and brisket and like burger and sausage. Yeah, that's awesome. One of our friends, Lisa and Wayne from the Bulwark in Oregon. Lisa came up a few years ago. That's who just set up our new Hoyts. Yeah. Hoyt shipped them to them. Wayne set them up. Shipped them back here. They're going to be here Monday. Well, they took back their bear. He's one of the only guys I trust. I got a couple of guys in Edmonton. You guys must know some people. Wayne, they trust their bows. That's it. Well, anyways, they took back their bears that they got her and her daughter. They canned it all. And seriously, within a couple months, it was all gone. Wow. Like it just, they wiped it out. Yeah.

And those girls that came up, Lisa and their daughter and their friend, they butchered everything themselves. Like these girls are serious. They're the real deal. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They were deboning. Filled up their coolers. How many hunters do you take a year? Depends. Depends. We're winding down now for fall stuff. We're trying to save time for us finally after 29 years. So at one time, you know, you'd do 12, 18 deer hunters. 20 or 30 bear hunters? 12. 40. Yeah. 40. Up to 40. Depending on how we arrange everything. Yeah. You guys are going hard. I was trying not to do any moose hunts this fall. Yeah. And I got seven coming. Oh, my gosh. And they're bear hunters turned moose hunter. Yeah. Yeah. That too. Yeah. That's a thing. People come with us for a certain. Well, they come and they taste it because I asked them all, like, would you like to taste wild game? They're like, do you?

I says, I'm going to make a moose roast or a moose spaghetti. Or they're like, moose spaghetti. I'm like, yeah, we do. We don't buy ground beef. No. Like everybody else, you know, you go to the store. Everything that's got ground at our place is usually moose. Moose or elk. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just a way to live. Taco Tuesdays. Taco Tuesdays.

Hey, Kobe. Bear tacos. Hey, Kobe. How about Taco Tuesdays? Yeah.

Well, good. And so. You'll hear it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. When do you guys start? April? April. So the bear season in Alberta opens April 1st. And that's when Jen starts. That's usually there's no bears out yet. Bears dead by April 2nd. No. No. Not usually. They're still sleeping. They're usually in the den, depending on the snow. Usually. Sometimes we'll get some out. We'll see them on camera 11th, 12th, 13th of April. Yeah. Okay. But the majority will be like around the third week of April. That big blonde that Jen got last year. Yeah. That big blonde color face. That one was one of the first ones out. And he was on a camera on April 11th. Wow. That's early. Normally, it's like from the middle to the third week of April. 19th, 21st somewhere. That's the average. So when do you bring your clients in? Beginning of May. Okay. Yeah. May 1st. You're starting. Yeah. May 1st to June 15th.

That's right. Yeah. That's right. Okay. Yeah. And then even the sows with the young cubs, you don't see them around out much for. Yeah. It takes them a little bit longer. They're the last ones out of the den. Usually the first ones out are the bigger boars. They're coming to look for food. Yeah. So if you want a giant, come early. Yeah. Oh, here's the next thing. Or at least it's easier to know. So have you ever heard of this on a bear? Because this is something that people have never dealt with bears or some of them that say they have, they have no idea. So you know, on pork, you render fat. You render their lard. So on the bear, especially the spring bears, the big ones, they still have fat from the den. That's how you know they've been in really healthy. Then there's some in the fall we'll take. We'll take all that fat and we'll render it down. Yeah.

I mean, and make it, you know, like your tender flake, your Crisco, all of that stuff. Yeah. So we'll have that. And we'll use it for baking, for making pies. I cook my eggs in it in the morning. Deep fry my eggs in the pan with it. Really? We'll deep fry French fries in it. Like you can use it for everything. No way. And it's beautiful. White, pure, just like your lard that you buy at the store. So the next step in this process I just want to touch on. So we hunt where there's a lot of native population. A bunch of native reserves up there. Sure. So they don't hunt bears, but bears are very sacred to them. And we talk with them and we're friends with many of them. Because you're in the same area. You can't have an idea on better. They know that by us hunting bears in the area where they are, that their moose population goes up. They see it.

I mean, bears kill 40, 50% of the calves every spring when they're giving birth. So by us hunting those big boars that naturally go do that, we're saving that many moose. So it's great for them. So they don't like to kill the bears, like Jen was saying. So they ask us, could you bring us fat? We need fat. Well, yeah. So we'll actually render it and we'll bring it to them. I put them in the cute little mason jars and everything and you give it to them. And when they take it from you, it's like you've just given them like a brick of gold. It is. Because it's a traditional healing thing. This is the elders we're going to. These are the elders. And the chief, you know, we're giving it to them. We're not that disconnected where we realize we're sharing this land together. Even if we don't agree and they don't agree with all of what we do and we don't agree with

all of what they do, we still understand we're sharing this land. And we have to honor their traditions, even though it's not all of them are mine. I mean, we both actually have native in our background when you go back a bit. Probably a lot of us do. But anyways, it's just to give honor and respect them. And they really, really appreciate it. Like they brought us to meetings when they have meetings with the government so we can sit in with them and listen to them. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. And so is it a two bear limit? Yes, it is. And do you let your clients kill two bears? Yep. Yeah. If they want to, if they buy two bear tags, then they can shoot two bears. Trophy fee or whatever. Yep. A little more. And we always strive to get a bigger bear. And then it all kind of depends, too. If it's a person on his first bear hunt, we're not going to try to hold out for that massive. Yeah.

Some people we will because, I mean, they just want the massive. Yeah. But. Well, anything else as far as, do you guys have any openings? You guys are jammed. The spring, no. Yeah. No. People are like, oh, I wish I could go with you this spring. Booking in advance. Four years out for a bear hunt. You know what? I was going to make a post the other day and say, I wish I could say I had room for you guys to book a hunt because I'm seeing so many right now that are really good outfitters, too. But I'd like to say I could take you, but I have no room. Sorry. Wow. Isn't that great? That's a great place to be in. And we're thankful. We're thankful every day for what we have. Yeah. Word of mouth, friends. Every time I get into our new truck, I'm thankful. I don't take anything for granted. We're very thankful. I remember the days when it was an old truck with four boards. We had holes in it.

I think that's a big thing, too, is where if you're not a thankful person every day and you don't thank God for what you have and where you came from, I think you get disconnected from... You do. Your head gets big. Yeah. That's an easy way to say it. That's one of the keys to success, being thankful every day. Well, that's what a lot of guys have quizzed me and my wife and I, you know, lay in bed talking about it at night. Like, how... You know, some... The mule deer, right? Yeah. Because that's what I'm really into. You have... We need to talk mule deer here, too, eventually. No, we don't. But... Okay, I won't start on. Not on the podcast, just after. Just after. Yeah, we can talk about it. But anyway, but so blessed. Some of these deer, some of these deer, I didn't earn. You know what I mean? Yeah. Some of them, some of them happen. Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah.

And I'll be like, I'll tell Jenna, I'll be like, you know, if I had a crystal ball, and she knows it, too. Yeah. Of course, you know, a lot of these deer I owe to her because of, you know, all the sacrifices she does. Yeah. Staying at home with the kids. Yeah. And me being gone a lot. Like... Yeah. Like, I owe my success to her. Yes. In large part. And so, anyway, I tell her, if I had a crystal ball and I could dictate exactly, you know, what I would harvest this year. Yeah. We exceeded that. Yeah. You know what I mean? We exceeded what I would wish for myself. Yeah. And that's not by accident. That comes from blessings. Yeah. That's true. And I look at it that way. You know, and yeah, do we work hard? No, but I feel like the Lord blesses you if you work hard. Yeah. You know what I mean? The harder you work, the luckier you get. Yeah. That's true. I mean, it's not just going to...

Sometimes accidents totally do happen. Yeah. But he does expect work on our part. Oh, yeah. And we see it so much. Through our whole life, we've seen it. I mean, there's things that happen that I really didn't work for. We work a lot for what we have, but there's things that come from... Blow your mind. Blow my mind. Yes. Like, I couldn't have dictated that. I had nothing to do with that. Things can't... Everybody says, well, it's just... What do they say? It's just a coincidence. Coincidence? I'm like, I'm sorry. I don't believe in coincidences anymore. No. I'm sorry, dude. It's true. That many coincidences don't happen. I know. But I mean, for us, it's like God, family, and outdoors. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's... And you take that all wrapped up in one package? And I can't separate it because it's all wrapped up together. It's all wrapped together. It's all together.

Well, why don't you stop talking... Like, our friends... So, Mike Fisher, Carrie Underwood's husband, and his brother have... Bud, yeah. Bud, they're doing some filming. They're filming some hunting stuff right now. Sure. And they've got the catching deer. They started that brand. It's a cool, fun line. You know, just catching deer. Because they're like, hey, did you catch any deer? So, it's always a joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's been a joke since I was a kid. So, did you catch anything? I know. Okay. And they'll post stuff about God on their page and stuff. And people are like, why don't you just stick to hunting? Why don't you just not mention the God stuff? I'm like, sorry, we can't. Yeah. It's all part of what we do. It's part of what we do. Well, for us, how do you think... I mean, even with Joe Rogan, we'll be talking. He'll do these little quizzes when we're driving.

He's like, so how are you guys still together? You know, we all... I mean, we're friends. We talk.

You never put up with me that long. Right. I mean, you look at the divorce rate. More vice versa. Yes. You look at the divorce rate. It reminds me, I'm listening to Larry King Live one time. And it was Billy Graham, famous preacher, and his wife. And they were married forever. Like, I don't know how many years it was. 40-something or 50. Longer than most people have been alive. Yeah, 50-something. And Larry King said to her, through all those years, have you ever thought of divorce? And she says, nope, but I've thought of murder. Oh, my gosh. She was kidding, of course. Oh. Well, good. Well, I sure appreciate you guys. We could go on for another few hours. I know. But the show's starting now. I know. The show's starting. And you guys have got to get going, too. We'll have to do it again. And you'll have to come up and visit us. I would love to. I'd love to.

I'd love to bring Jenna up and come home with you guys. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. You know, if you ever end up getting an opening or something like that. We'll make room. We always say, like, we are full, but there's always ways that we can move stuff around where we can squish. And we always can fit in somebody that we want to be there. Doesn't that sound bad? Let's do something. You know, up in Alaska this May, but maybe we do something next year. Yeah. I would love to do that. It'd be awesome. And that's the thing. Even when we're guiding, like, people say, well, you can't be picky with your clients. I'm like, this is, I mean, this is our life. We love to have fun with the people that come in. And, you know, it's really fun when you have a good group of people. And, I mean, for the last long time. Oh, I'm going to say this before we're done, too. And you can edit it out if you want.

But, you know, like how we said, where we get people that want to throw product at us and sponsor us with stuff. And unless I like them and unless the product is the best there is, I won't do it. Like, I love Hoyt. Hoyt makes the best bows on the planet. So, that's why we're with them. And we love all the people at the factory and in the office and everything. So, we love being involved with them. But I'll check out the people. I'll check out the company before I make a decision. We had lots at ATA this year that want to hook up with us. And I'm not sure yet. I'm checking them out. It might take another year before I decide. Or maybe I never will. That's awesome. And I hope that doesn't come across as arrogant or anything like that. No, but you've made your own way. You're not relying on it. All the companies right now that are listening to this. We're watching. That are marketing.

The marketing people. Really? I'm telling you guys this right now. Be careful. Before you go pick somebody to represent you, to represent your company and your brand, check them out. Find out what they're all about. Don't just pick them because numbers. Well, they've got a big following. Let's bring them on. And you have no idea what's in their background or what they do or what they're going to do to you or how they're going to represent you. If you're hiring an employee, you do what's their previous employment, all that type of stuff. When it's this, this is bigger than that because, yeah, you're hiring them. But now, see, for us, it's like when we're with somebody, we're representing, of course, what we believe in. We're representing our family. We're representing my kids. Now we're representing all of these people.

So when I'm doing something, when I'm hunting in Texas, which is all new to me, and I'm like a little kid in a candy store, it's like, well, you could do this. But I'm like, okay, so what are the rules say? How do I depict this? Like, I want to make sure I am spot on because I never want to look bad. I never want to make our God look bad. I never want to make my family look bad. And I especially don't want to make, you know, the people that believe in us or have their name attached to us. I don't want to damage them. You already hold yourself to a high standard. But now that you're representing other people, you hold yourself even higher. And I think all these people that have been in this industry for 20 years, some of them, you know, they got it. They know it because you just see their character. I mean, one of my favorite shows, I don't watch a lot of hunting shows, but I still watch,

I'll watch Uncharted. Jim Schaaf is Uncharted. It's great. Brand produces. And it's just, I like how they just incorporate everything. It's not just hunting, but it's the culture. It's the culture. It's the lifestyle. It's the tradition. It's the travel. It's the everything. And I mean, educational for me. And that's what I like. And Brandlin's such a nice guy. I could shoot him a text and he'd answer within minutes right now. He's awesome. Yeah. Well, good. Well, we sure appreciate you guys. How can people get a hold of you? Living the Dream Productions. Or actually, just on Instagram is probably quickest. Yeah, so we say we're living the dream. And we own the company. We can actually really see it. Living the Dream Productions Incorporated. Good. Awesome. So on Instagram, he's Johnny Rivet. Simple Johnny Rivet. And I'm going to laugh. I'm Girl Guide Jen Rivet.

Because people used to say, oh, you need a corny name. Don't put your real name. And I'm a girl guide. I'll put it on. Yeah. But I don't sell cookies.

I make some darn good cookies, but I don't sell cookies. Yeah. Well, let's get together again soon. Thanks for inviting us. All right. All right. Sounds good. Sure. Appreciate you guys taking the time. And we'll go from there.