00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's another episode of Hunting Collective. I've been o Brian today. I'm joined by the great lot for an Eagle. It teaches me how to say the word Latvian. In the podcast is stag around for that Janice but tell Us and we're talking about bears. We're talking about bear attacks, We're talking about the bears in Latvia, We're talking about bear protesters, We're talking about um bear personification, things of that nature. And then we're gonna be joined in the interview segment. The interview portion of the show, we're gonna be joined by todd Or. Todd Or is probably the most uh, at least in a modern sense, famous bear attack victim, you'll ever hear from. So we have uh Johannae tell Us, who has a lot of famous experience with bear attacks, and todd Or as well. Here on the podcast. We're gonna get into some segments with Todd what's in your medical kit? And we're gonna ask him about his first rifle and other things, other firsts the Montana native had before we get to the show, I wanna talk to you about federal premium and unition. They are we we announced the first Light last week. This week, we're gonna talk to you about Federal Premium, another new partner for the show. Um and I've been shooting Federal Premium ammunition since I was man about twelve years old. I love the brand, I love the product that they make, and I'll be happy to give everyone here the results of many pools of the trigger uh and many downed animals as a result. And we're especially we're gonna go on the hunting Collective Turkey Tour. Man. We're gonna start that in a couple of weeks here. We're going to Texas, We're going to We're gonna do of course Montana, Wyoming, possibly Nebraska, definitely South Dakota. We're gonna do a little Oregon and possibly then back to Montana on the Turkey tour. So look for that for the rest of April. You're gonna love it, and look for more conversations and chats with and about Federal Premium Ammunition in the future. That's it, hit it. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pared to the medals. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new closed a game second hand from the rich kid's next door, and I grew up baths. I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen. And now I just wanted to a real bad dream or being and like I'm coming apart of the seams. But thank you, Jack Daniels. All right, welcome to another episode of the Honey Collective. I've been O'Brien and it is four nine nineteen today. That's a podcast about bears, and I'm joined by j Honest. Tell us Yanni morning, then I'm great. We're sitting in the Bozeman Offices meat eater offices here, and we're sitting on a table that has a bear rug as a what do we call it? That like a tablecloth? Uh? Yeah, we're usoning as a sound dampening device. Yes. And if you check check the instagrams and you'll see the video we're gonna put up, you'll see this table on this beautiful bear. That's which I believe a shop I want. Stephen Renelic, that's right, that's right. I watched him shoot this bear. This bear was we watched this bear. We think it was the same bear mowing down blueberries and other berries in British Columbia for numerous days. Um, the mount should have his mouth just full of blueberries and purple juice dripping out of it. Because what do you feel about like this? If you could describe this mount, this bear is, I would say snarling. Yes, his top lip is rolled back, his teeth are showing. How do you feel about the fact that most bear rugs look like that? Don't understand that. That's how I feel about it because you feel an idea of why they do it. You feel that the bear spends most of its life and other states of like other states of mind like this bears ears or pin back like he's getting ready to go. Oh yeah. I mean the only time I think that a bear has to get into that is like when he comes against someone like another rival bear or you know that's in its territory of This one's the one that wandered into the rival bears territory. Um, Because I mean, if it's a chriz, this dude's just running unless unless if it was a she, this was a male. But if it wasn't she, maybe she had cubs. She would stand and defend it and make that kind of face, but any other credit running around out there, it would just you know, the other credit is gonna run. Yeah. Yeah, and when we he didn't, he never saw us, but he never would make that face at us. And he certainly wasn't making that face at the blueberries that he was. He was more doing licking his let his mouth open like that a lot. But yeah, he didn't quite have that gird. You feel like we just wanna it's probably just I'm sure there's some history to why we do that. I'm sure there's some taxidermy lore as to why we we display bears like that, or we just like to that seemed like we took down the tough beast. We should look into it. But no, when I'm gonna kill bear one day, and uh, when I get the rug done, which would be very similar to this rug, I'm just gonna have uh, mouth clothes and just have the rug kind of work into it like it's the top. Yeah, just like a resting resting face, resting bear face. Well yeah, but it won't even be like a tax german. It'll just be like are just the hide is there. It'll have some form or shape to it. But yeah, all right, well we got a lot of bears to bear subjects to cover here, Joannie, let's let's let's get to it, and and today we're joined by You'll hear later on in this episode an interview with Todd Or, who I believe was involved in maybe the most famous modern bear attack here in on him. Uh you said you have some an anecdote about that attack. Yeah, Well, Todd has done a few other interviews over the He told me five hundred he's done five. I was like, how many times you told the stories? Like man, probably five hundred times? WHOA? So I was like, so, so what, We're five first person to hear the story. I feel good, but it's it's a good one. It's well worth listening to again. But I had watched him do an interview. It was on YouTube, and I listened to him tell the story, and then coincidentally a few days later, a week later, was on a plane and ended up watching The Revenant, and I felt like those guys whoever made The Revenant did an amazing job with the bear attack because I had Todd's story fresh in my head, and like the way that bear was working over Leonardo was very similar to the way that Todd or described being worked over and it sort of gave it was like another level of intensity for me, and it was giving me a little bit of goose bux because I was like, damn, Like, that's exactly what I was talking about, is like this bear is on you, it's attacking you. And then he talks about it just kind of like test biting him to see if he's still alive, like the pressure of its jaws, the breathing in the back of his neck, the smelling him, the walking away, the you know, the testing to see if anything else is around. It's that way. Um. I've heard people criticized that the that scene with Leonardo DiCaprio in the in the CG I Bear, and I always I thought as a piece of cinematic, a piece of filmmaking, that it was great. Uh. It certainly got me and it got me a drawn in. So I don't know what the Christmas were, but you're right there very much is a lot of similarities. And so hang on. We're gonna talk to Todd later on, but for now, UM, I think the first and most pertinent thing to talk about here is bears in lat For you, what do you know about bears in Latvia. Zero nothing. I didn't even know they were there, didn't even know. Yeah nothing. I don't really have a whole lot of it. Like as of um, last year, there's an estimated ten to fifteen brown bears that reside in Latvia. And I'm gonna correct you a little bit on your pronunciation because somehow it happens often. But it sounds like there's an F when you pronounce Latvia and it's with a V. So what am I saying? Latin Via? Isla? What I'm saying latin Via? Yeah? There you go, latin Via there? Yeah, who put a question mark on the teleprompter? Lat Via Latvia? You got it? Is it lat Via latte? I mean, if you're in latin Via, you would say lot Via. If I was in Latvia, I would say hot Via Latvia. All right, this is probably pretty entertaining a lot Via, right, you got it? There's ten of f teen brown bears. Um, it's a protected species there. And there was one found dead on the beach in western Latia last year in June. Really yea. It had evidently drowned after making it too far into the sea. Yep. Wow. Yeah, But there's no you couldn't find a story about a mauling that would have been the perfect, that would have been great, that wasn't perfect. But I couldn't find any sort of No, there's the accidents, nothing nothing. This is I'm gonna try. Okay, there's a national park where this bear was found. It's it's called boy. I'm not gonna slit Terry. No, that's not I can't be it s l I with a line over t R E National Park. The long eye makes like an E sound, so it's E. So sleet slit there not via interesting? Yeah? Yeah, have you ever been to that national park there yet? You know, I've never been to Latiah all right, very high on the bucket list. You'll get there, Yeah, of common. So now you'll be able to tell people that if they ever ask you, they're brown bears in Lavya. And I'm I just pronounced it right on the fly of you. I nailed it. Um. Next on the list of things to chat about? Um, what do you know about? You know, what's your opinion on New Jersey bear protesters? We have a long history here mediator with people in New Jersey, and I'm sure you know a lot about anti hunting and animal rights activists that are there protesting there, So, like, what's your take on on that? On them protests protesters bear hunts, Yeah, I don't know. I think they're missinformed, probably first and foremost being led by some group of individuals that have a agenda that they're not really being truthful about, and uh, yeah, they get people riled up. Do you feel like the bear? I did a thing not long ago on my Instagram where somebody was asking me, you know, why do you think we care so much about bears? What is it about bears? And and of course Ronella has coined the charismatic megafauna term um or, popularized to death very at least. And my feeling is that we're so inundated with bears in our culture, especially bears that have been personified, that it's almost ingrained in us, but before we know, uh what the animal is, you know. So then I went and I was like, yeah, my son's two and a half years old. I'll go into his room and I'll see how many bare things I can find, books, stuffed animals, things that are bear related. And I quickly, with not even trying, found like a dozen bear things and books he has to bear stuffed dolls, He has Winnie the Pooh he sleeps with. He has a bear that his grandfather bought him at Yellowstone that he carries around with him. He has all this bear paraphernalia, if you will, around how many mountain lion stuffies or not a single single lions were popular um as well. But bears just seem to be this thing that we you know, whether it's just a popularized characters like Winnie the Pooh and Paddington Bear and things like that, whether that's the reason because those things have been popularized, or it's just the way that we treat bears. And I can't, you know, there's no way for me to articulate how that came to be. I'm sure there's many threads you'd have to pull to get there, but I think that has something to do with it. Do your kids have a lot of you feel like your kids might have as many bear related items in their rooms. I mean I could rattle off probably well rattle a half dozen, but I bet you go find it a google dozen books that have bears, is you know main characters. One of my favorite wants to read when they were little was the bear snores on. Yeah, that was a that's a good one. Um, what do you think about that would affect They live in bear country, right, They live in a place where it's a reality that bears are around, you know, not everybody does. Although there are a lot of bears in this country. Almost every state has has a bear of some kind. Um, but not we pound into them the species versus individual concept, you know, with regards to animals with humans for that matter. I talk a lot about it too with them, but uh so, yeah, I don't I don't think that they at least at this point at five and seven, they don't have like a real like, oh, why would you don't know, need to go sheet bears? You know, why would you do that? You know? But their mom's always talking about how she wants a dead bear because she wants the lard to make soap and to cook with. So it's a more practical approach. Yeah, it was interesting us all last night. Does your kid have Richard Scarry's Great Big Word Book? I think that's what it's called. It's like a big, large format, every page like a different scene. There's just words all over the place. I don't know the newest We have a really old version that was it's been handed down to the family. But in there there's a like the pig families in the supermarket and mom pig has baby pig or maybe just baby pigs, and somehow Molon's gone, but baby pigs in the car by himself, standing in front of the butcher counter, and like three or four out of the six things up behind the glass are pig pig. Me and I went, I took. I saw that. I was like, oh, you want to see something funked up? Girls? Check this out? Did you explain it to? Oh? Yeah, we got into cannibalism. They had never heard that terms. We talked about animals being cannibalized, and on their own, they're like both the humans ever eat humans? So we had to get all into that next the next thing, you know, are you comfortable with getting into that? I gotta learned why would someone eat someone else? Well, let me tell you your plane crashes. But yeah, I mean I think that again. And pigs and farm animals are are personified all the time. You know, anthropofor anthropomorphizing, I can never say that word. That's what a tough one is an issue And I think that leads to things like what happened, Um, maybe we should start starting to keep cutting you off here, but maybe we should start start anthropomorphizing or is it antithromorphization if you do it with like a carrot, Yeah, I think so. Maybe it's a different term. Yeah, it might be a different term. But maybe we should start putting out books about like carrots, talking carrots and celery stocks. There are some out there, I know there have to be, just exactly just be pushing that narrative a little bit more and then see how the vegetarians feel. Like the counter narrative, well, big a counter narrative of really happy and healthy carrots that are just getting yanked out of the ground. Because that's my take on it. I don't like draw a line somewhere where all of a sudden, something is more sentient than another. It's all life and energy, and it seems like the like the anti hunters, especially in the terms of in the Bears, I think it's easier to do, but it seems that the biggest argument is to rise to the level of the sentience, rises them to the level of our rights. They are us, We are the same thing. You know. We've had those protesters out in front of our Sacramento Live podcast and Cal and I went out and talk to him, and that's what they were saying. They're like, you know, they are they they're on the same playing field as you. They're listen, man, They're not um because they're not governed by the same moral, moral and ethical boundaries as we are. If like bears don't function like we function um though they will eat their young, they will, there's just things that they do that we don't do. So we can't be governed by and have this have similar sentience. This is not It doesn't make any any sense in a natural world. Do they want us and just start acting like bears? I don't know, but it's gonna be a violent world. You were gonna get eaten probably, Like yeah, the number one calls a bear, mortalities bears um and so it's just a twisted world. But there's a young lady, why not a young ladies. She's fifty, her name is Katherine McCartney. She was actually she's a well known New Jersey bear protester um. In fact, there's you know, at least three instances where she has been arrested and a couple of those were going to the opening day of bear season and standing out and screaming and holding bells in search of such things. UM. But she was arrested for releasing a bear from a trap that was set by the State Wildlife State wilife officials. And this wasn't the first time she got in trouble. She is. They there's a quote in year UM that just says she is not getting the message that the law is the law. She certainly is. This is isn't her first time that she was either arrested or charged with something in relation to this, but this time she got fifteen days in the Sussex County jail for this, for this particular one UM. And it's just it goes back to what we're talking about. I mean, this person here, um is is about aggressive a animal rights person I've ever seen. If you you start to read some of the stuff she's been involved in UM and New Jersey seems to be a hotbed for it for whatever reason, whether it's just that, you know, the proximity to urban populations and the mentality of that area of the world, but certainly has been UM has been the epicenter of some of this stuff. And this was a bear that was um caught in a trap earlier this fall, after a woman reported that there was an aggressive bear around and they went and put in a trap and caught um. I believe this was a bear cub. And then McCartney is quoted saying the sound of the bear crying to his mother was truly horrible. So I made the moral decision to let the bear go so that he could run back to his mother. It was the right thing to do. The judge, of course, did not agree, and she was fined uh one thousand dollars um. What do you think I mean that she certainly hurt this this lady in the division of wild the fish and Wildlife New Jersey do not have a good relationship. I would feel bad in that situation too. If I was hiking through the woods and I heard like a distant like scream, how pleading, and I went to it and I saw a bear cub that was freaked out inside of a trap, yeah, my heart would sink for you know, and and be worried for that bear. But it's like, I'm sure the trap was marked with New Jersey Fishing wild Life markings, and it's like they're out there doing something and you don't. You can't mess with it. It's gonna walk away. Make a phone call. Yeah, yeah, I mean they said. The State Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said at the time of the release that a biologist with within the division was going to go and take a look at this bear in question, and they said that the bear was probably young and not the aggressive bear they were trying to trap, and they would have just let it go, right, They would have let it go anyway. Um. So it just goes to show you that this, I mean stuff happens all the time. Um. And there's a lot of these animal rights groups that are that are you know, centered in New Jersey in these areas, and you know, Mrs McCarthy, they should, like, instead of just the seven days in Sussex County and that fine, maybe she should be forced to go take like a bear biology class to learn a little bit more about the species and about how the species being managed and researched. And then maybe she'd come away from that with like a better idea of what like she can go do to actually help bears. Yeah. Well, and like you said, like a pragmatic look at what a bear is, you know, and how cohabitation works, and the challenges of urban populations and suburban populations of humans running up against wild populations of bears, and what the Department Fisher and Wildlife has to do to manage those interactions, and what they steps they have to take. And it's not always I'm sure for her, you know, I want to speak for her, but it seems like she is, you know, so concerned with the bear that she's lost the ability to reason, you know, any harm to any bear, which I think is certainly an issue, um, for this lady. And she's caused a whole lot of trouble and in returns of it. So we'll just tell her to maybe calm down and she gets out of jail, try to calm down, learn a little bit more about the process that you know, not the Department of Fishing Wildlife ever, there's always right, but you know they're not always wrong. That's not always the bear first in that situation, I feel like, um, before we get to Mr. Or, I want you you know, you've been a part of what we'll call a bear attack. Would you call it a bear attack? I mean, nobody was hurt, so What's what's the definition of a bar attack? I don't know. Do you have to get like actually scratched up for it to be an attack? I would call it a full on charge, like a mix up. I was charged another time. Um, so I've had two pretty close encounters, one being a lot closer than the other. What's your feeling now about you know, not about bear attacks, because if anybody wants to go listen to the accounting of the fog Neck bar attack, you go listen to the Meitri podcast from the Mediator podcast. Um, you can go listen to that. But we want to go into that. But what do you feel about how bear attacks are reported on? You know, how they're covered in in the media, how we use a hunting community love to you know, to gather around them, because like it's the old train wreck analogy, Like, what do you feel about that? Having been through that, do you have any perspective on on how we talk about these things and why we talk about them so much? You know, they're one of the greatest stories out there. That's the story everybody wants to hear. It is is I don't know, We're all, yeah, we have an innate fear. You know of being in that position, and if if you know somebody across somebody that you know has gone through that, you want to hear about it. So yeah, it's just it's entertaining. You know, our brains love to think about it, and you know, live through other people. How do you think about it now that that you've been through it a couple of times? How do you think about bears? How do you think about bear country? How has it changed you? There's it's it's one of those things that it definitely deadens, uh the longer you are removed from when the last time it happened. And what I mean by that is that just like the next hunting season after a fog knack, I was definitely just way more on edge, and then I had another one and it's just as slowly. I'm still definitely way way aware, you know, And I'm like I've changed what I do as as far as just my protocol procedures, you know, and where I'm you know, the way I'm looking around, where my bear spray is and where my pistol is, etcetera, etcetera. Um, but yeah, I can still go and sleep out in grizzly country on my own. It's not like a great night of sleep. It's worrisome, toss and turns as well it should be. It's hard to like. Even though you get comfortable with myself. In my head, I feel like my ego, which I just I just called the ego, like the like the little voice that is in your head. Sometimes it will keep me awake, even though I'm totally have been just like, dude, you're fine, you're cool, You're tired, and go to sleep, and you get to a certain point of sleep and then all something like that ego, your brain, some something in there that you're not in control of. It is like, no, you can't sleep. Huh. I can imagine those have been involved in a plane crash. Right we get on. I get on a plane. I feel completely safe. I don't think about whether the engines are working. I don't think about whether pilots sober or drunk. I sit in my seat, I watched my movie, I do my work, and I'm just being transported. I'm sure if I was in a plane trash that would completely change my mentality. Yeah, that's I'm sure it's the same in this case. Ten years after the plane crash, you probably would be close your original baseline, get back to oh well, probably what happened again? Totally. I hope it won't happen again, all right. The biggest thing for me now is with the kids. Man. You know, it's one thing if you're out there by yourself and you can always sort of like you have a plan for yourself, like I know I can quickly. Just That's why I do pull ups, man, because I know if I can at least jump up and grab that one branch, I can get up onto it and the grizzly bear hopefully if you can't, if you don't get there by the time I get my feet up, I've got like an escape plants because there is a tree with a horizontal branch. Let's let's rewind that a bit. Give people your advice for for bear, for how many pushups? How many push ups and pull ups does a man need to do to survive the bear attack? Tell us give it to us. But like most people should know that grizz an adult grizz can't climb trees because of their the structure of their claws, right, they're long and they're meant for digging, slashing um but not climbing. Trees. Do you ever see a black bear in grizz country? If they sense danger, first thing they do is up the nearest tree um And so black bear does that to get away from a grizzly. Might be a good idea for you know, black bears a tree climbing suckers' humans do the same thing. So I don't know, dude, I recommend the Armstrong pull up program. Do you pull ups? Do your pull up now? I don't know if Todd or did pull us before you got jumped by a bear, but we're about to find out, and we're gonna go all the way over to the other. We're sitting in the conference room right now. I guess we call this the podcast studio, soon to be podcasts. We're gonna transport all the way other across the office to where Todd and I sit down and talked about his bear attack. I don't know that we broke any news on this one, but it's, as Yanni said, it's one hell of a story, and if you've already heard it, listen to it again. I think it's probably one of the the most notable bear attacks and modern times. So without further ado, Todd or good how's it going excellent today, having a good day. Well, welcome to the Mediator offices here in Bozeman. Thank you appreciate the offer. And you're a Montana man yourself, right, I am. I grew up over in Ennis, Montana and Madison Valley, grew up fly fish in the Madison River and hunting the mountains around there, and just camping and hiking and just life in the outdoors. You're a lucky man Madison Valley. I killed my first elk in the Madison Valley right there by in its lake. That's great. I've killed like thirty over there. And and I you know, I'm from I'm an East Coast kid. I'm from Maryland originally in in. In my head when I build up hunting in the west, it was the Madison Valley. I don't know why I couldn't connect with anything, but when I got there and I saw the place, and I saw the elkom like yep, You've got the blue sky, the mountains, the rivers, the streams. It's a little bit everything. A little small town of Ennis there. It's a good place to grow up, a good place to be. And you've got a little knife shop over there. Well, I live here in Bozeman, but I grew up over there. But build custom knives. Sky Blade knives use the best stainless steel available and on my own designs and using uh different exotic hardwoods for handles, all different you know, design, shape, sizes, made to use, and I have a lifetime warranty on them as well. That's awesome. That's awesome. I mean we're talking about you sit around here and stair computers and put the headphones on and talking podcasts. I would much rather be a craftsman. It's nice to be out there building something in the shop. But at the same time, I've got a respirator onto for the dust and the metal filings and all these like safety equipment that some days I'm just over it, like I tear that off. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get back outside. What's your favorite kind of knife to build? What's you have like a signature knife that you build like thirty or forty different models, different designs and shapes and sizes. So I don't know if they really have a favorite. I've got a couple of favorites that I like to use, but the white Tail model is my best seller and it's the four inch blade and does just works pretty well. So you have a degree in fish and wildlife management. I got a degree from Montana State University and fishing wildlife management, and I don't really use it directly, but I do all the trails engineering for the Forest Service right now. So any new trails that were building on the Gallatin Custer National Forest, I do all the design, the survey of the flagging, staking GPS, any contracting that we're doing from startup start to finish on like new trails, trail reroutes, repairs, bridges, the whole work. So I'm in the woods from about April until November hiking, you know, daylight to dark, usually by myself. So I was gonna say, you spent a lot of time in the wilderness, a lot of time in the woods, typically around this this general area. And that leads me to the thing that you're I don't know if you're reluctantly famous for this, but famous for anyway is a bear attack that happened um a couple of years back now, And what's interesting to me about it, Hopefully people if they know your name Todd or and they've seen the now famous video of you walking out with with the rather fantastic my scalpaying saying yeah, so we'll get to that. I want to get to that, that whole story obviously, but it's more interesting to me that what happened afterwards, right. You upload the video to Facebook, correct, and it gets millions of yews within a couple of It was like thirty nine million views in forty eight hours or something like that. Yes, that's unbelievable. And I didn't even know what a viral video was at that point. I was just like, I have it, or take this video to show a couple of buddies. You know, I had pretty crazy weekend, and then you know it was crazier than you. Yes, And then a couple of days later, I'm like, Okay, I guess there's probably six or eight guys that I'll want to see it, So instead of trying to send it separately to each one, I'll just throw it on Facebook and I'll have fifty people look at it. You know, I didn't realize it would be thirty nine million people looking at it, but so get Let's let's go forward in time. A little bit forty eight hours after you posted in you and you see what it's become. What where's your head at? Like what? You know? Well, within a couple of hours of posting it, I've my phone starts to blow up, and I'm getting texts and emails and phone calls and messages, and my voice box fills up and and I delete them all because I'm like, I don't know what all these numbers are from, you know, and start realizing that people are trying to contact me. Pretty much every news you know, radio show, news station out there is like wants to do an interview. And I've got people like, hey, this is so and so from CNN and New York and if we can get you on a plane in the morning, you know, to get you out here for a live interview at eight am. And I'm like, I still haven't even washed the blood out of my hair yet, you know. So it was kind of crazy. You have to go to surgery the next day on my arm, and so it was kind of out of control. And I'm not the kind of person, or wasn't the kind of person that would want to sit down and talk to people. I'm kind of do my own thing. I don't want to be in front of a camera and just like no, no thanks. So I didn't respond to anybody. I've got hundreds, probably had five emails, and yeah, you know, phone was just blowing up. So I just didn't respond to anybody, just deleted everything and just kind of trying to heal up and do my own thing. But then eventually it's like, okay, it wouldn't end. People keep knocking on my door at the local news stations, so okay, it's time to do an interview and just get them off my back. And then I was like, Okay, it's not too bad. I can do one more. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh podcast, and before I know it, it's kind of just on a regular thing. Now still two years later, here we still here. We are I love knives. We're here to talk about that. Yeah, that's the most interesting thing to me about it. What if you had to look back on the last couple of years and what's going on. Because I have a list here of stories on Fox News, CNN, CBS, Huffing, The Post, Daily Caller, New York Post, Men's Health, and then pretty much every local news channel you can enlist. Many hunting podcasts, including Randy Newburgh and others and now here we are. If you had to look back on that, what do you what do you think it was? It just a sensationalist like the video that started it, and all the sensationalist were around it. You know, how do you examine that? And you're you know, looking back, well, looking back, I think a lot of people, you know, I mean I always kind of wonder why did this happen? You know, why did just blow up like that? And it's like, well, a lot of people like the gore side of it and my bloody arm with tendons sticking out, but then just being attacked by a grizzly bear is pretty rare. And then having the video an hour later, as soon as I got to the truck into safety, and you know, and just the whole story together. And I think people are like, how could you even take the time to take a video? Why weren't you at the hospital? And I'm like, well, you know, I spent an hour hiking out. I've assessed my wounds. You know, I know I'm not going to bled to death. I'm not going into shock. My body's calmed down. The adrenaline rush is starting to fade, and it's like, well, another thirty seconds for a video really isn't gonna matter. I still have a half hour drive to the hospital, and so I think people just I don't know, it's just something so different, people off guard and they I gotta show my buddy, And it just exploded across the world. I mean, different countries offered me to fly me to Australia for UH News interview. Australians would like something like this, would like that'd be a great I'd love to do, but not until I heal up. I don't want to sit in a hotel room with bandages all over me in Australia for a week. But thanks anyway. Do you have any crazy stories from all that attention that came up along the way that just that shocked you even more than just the normal, just more of the thing that people would think that, you know, Okay, the next morning, I'm going to get on a plane and fly somewhere when I've got tendons sticking out of my arm, you know, and my scalps hanging off. I just surprised at how much the media was like trying to get me to do something, you know, and to commit to something and it's just like I have surgery, I have a healing to do. I can't go anywhere for weeks. I've got a brace on my arm that I have to wear for six weeks to keep the tendons from tearing out again. And so just a little crazy how quickly that went. And so what you're saying, they didn't really care about you the story? Yeah, yeah, So I mean I think it boils down to I always say, like I think news is always butcher spy, like things become more controversial, more attention when there's video involved, especially in social media. So I think this boiled down to a lot of a lot of the attention boils down to the fact that you you had the mindset to take the video. You know, I think most people I remember watching the first time, going he took a video. This guy is and he's talking like, hey, how's it going. Half my head's hanging off, you know. So let's let's we gotta cover that. We gotta take people through like the moment that you picked your phone up and started to record, like you you're kind of already going over that, but take us a little deeper into you know what you were thinking, Well, It wasn't until I got back to the truck, you know, after the whole the both attacks, and I've got an hour hike out, and the whole time hiking out, I'm just like paying attention. Okay, I could run into another bear here or something. So I'm looking at my wounds and I'm watching got bear spray in my hand and a gun in this hand. And and it wasn't until I got to the truck and I finally finally felt like, Okay, I'm safe. You know, I'm not gonna bleed to death. I'm not going to get attacked again. I'm at the truck, and my first thought was there's going to be other people coming up here on Saturday morning of both season to go hunt, and so I need to like warn people of this aggressive bear. And so I was thinking, well, I'll put a note on the bulletin board and try to warn people, but you know, dripping blood all over and I couldn't get my arm to move, so that didn't work. I'm like, Okay, I guess it's just time to go to the hospital. And I'm like, God, I better record that's real quick. I don't know. I just was like I gotta show a couple of buddies how crazy my weekend is. And there's a couple of friends of mine that we always at the end of the weekend would share a hunting stories. Two guys are kind of like my best friends, and it's like we always like, hey, what did you see? How did you do this weekend? And it was kind of those two guys were on my mind, and it wasn't until like the next day when I'm like, well, there's a couple other guys that I'll want to see it. And I really had never even thought about, you know, putting it out there like this is going to be some great video people want to see. This is just like well, And that's why I think it came across as pretty real, because it was it wasn't me like trying to set something up. You were trying to drive. I didn't even that it wasn't my things. It was just like, take this video to show some people that are friends. You know, stuff can happen out there. Got to be careful and were you fairly acting on social media before that or posting a lot. All I ever did was post like photos like about once every six months, Like maybe I went to southern Utah hiking. So I just put an album up with thirty photos just so my friends could see photos. And that was it. I never posted anything and talked about anything or zero. If you go back and look at the history, there was like nothing except some pictures posted for like five years until two years ago. Then it all changed. I still don't do it a lot. I try to just keep up with a few things and let people know what's going on, but not a daily poster. Usually it's hard to be when you live a life outside. Yeah, well let's get into the actual story if for those who don't know, we'll try to get as much detail into that day as as possible. Um. October one, I would like I would say this is probably, you know, in the modern era, or at least in the social media, probably the most famous bear attack that there is. I mean, I've thought about this, and I thought about other bear attacks and other attacks that we've known of, and try to compare like the iconic image of you walking out I'll being at your truck there, um, And that's what that would be my take on it. Just just how much people were drawn to that and we're drawn to like what the words you were saying as you're filming in the videos, right, So I think it's important that people understand from soup to nuts exactly what happened. So, you know, October one, I think let's first set the scene, like what are you hunting? Where are you and why? Why are you there? Okay, it was during both season, and it was a Saturday morning. I've been working for the Fourth Service for the last couple of months, like sixty hours a week, trying to get all of our trail work done. So I finally had a day off and I'm like, Okay, I got these things done. I can go out and just do my own thing and hike on my own time. And I thought, well, it's you know, hunting season, the regular general seasons coming up in a couple of weeks, so I'm just gonna get out and start get up in the high country and look around and see if I can locate some milk and get an idea where I might want to go hunting later. So I got up early in the morning and drove over to Annis and hiked up by Sphinx Mountain is where I was at over in the Madison Valley, and I got to the trailhead hit probably an hour before daylight. And it's usually when I'm hunting or doing anything, I'm always up early. So I'm up there early, get up to the high country at daylight when I had when I would have the best chance to see some milk. So i get my pack on, my bear spray of my pistol, and and I had a wolf tag. And I've never shot a wolf, and I thought, well, the wolf season was open, so I'll carry have my pistol with me in case I get a chance at wolf. But otherwise I wasn't hunting at all. That was just more of a scouting for elk pistol you carry at this time. I've got a ten mm it's a nineteen eleven Rock Island Armory tenem M and I've got a scope on it. I made a scope mount for it, a regular pistol. I really long, I really scope on it. So it really wasn't a good bear protection. It wasn't fu because it's this big heavy thing that you can't really a good round. Yeah, but you'd be point and shoot with the scope if something's charging you, and it's not a quick draw. I had just a shoulder holes her, but really wasn't concerned about bears. I mean, I know they're out there. I spent a lot of time in the woods. I see bears all the time, but usually they go the other direction or they kind of watch you and they kind of meander off. I didn't think there was going to be an issue, so that wasn't my concern. Had my bear spray just in case as well, and took off up the trail in the dark, and just a little flashlight out there, and just every you know, minute or thirty seconds, i'd just be like, hey, bear coming up the trail, just in case. It's like, I don't want to run into one of the dark for sure. I'm it's one of my life out there, so aware of it. I know there's bears in the area. I see the sign a lot all the time. And so I'm working my way up the trail and it's about three or three and a half miles up and just starting to get daylight, and I step out into this opening and I'm kind of in a hurry because I'm trying to get up as far as I can by daylight. So I'm I'm just moving along pretty fast pace, and I step out into this opening and look up, and at the other end of the opening, this sal grizzly and two cubs just step out and we see each other at the same time. Both of us stop and I'm like, well, there's a grizzly bear. And she turns immediately and runs up the trail and over the ridge and just just far away when she when you first saw her, this is like eight yards away. Maybe yeah, well, I mean it's yeah, not not something that's really concerned about this point. I'm like, okay, I don't need to even have bear spray out yet. It's clear up there. She's running over the ridge, not too worried. So I wait about a minute and didn't see her. So I'm like, okay, she's gone. I'll never see you the rest of the day. So I'll just go the opposite direction and do my thing all day, no big deal. And so I took a few steps up the trail heading the other other direction, and I heard something and noise at branch or something caught my attention, and I turned and looked over my left shoulder, and she had dropped her cubs and had circled around the ridge and came in behind me, probably down wind to get my scent. And as I turned, I see her out of the corner of my eye and she's coming over the ridge, wide open charge, and her ears are laid back, and she's just screaming through the brush. Stuff's flying, and she's just full charge. And so I have my bear spray hanging right I on a chest holster, and I just instinctively pulled my bear spray, pulled the safety clip out just in case, look back up, kind of expecting a bluff charge. And look back up, and there she has like thirty feet She covered that distantantly two seconds. And she's not slowing down, she's not bluff charging, she's not checking me out. She has her ears laid back in a full charge. And I just took a couple of steps back and started spraying, and I just gave a blast of bear spray right in her face, and immediately she just came right through it. Her just her momentum at that speed just carried her through the bear spray, all that weight and coming down and it just took only, you know, a couple of seconds, and she was right there on me, and I just turned and went down on my face with my hands behind the back of my neck, and she pretty much knocked me down and uh, the bear spray you know, didn't affect her immediately, but it took with like three or four seconds, and she started coughing. But she was able to bite me four or five times on my right arm and my shoulder and then she started making this coughing sound and took off just that quick, she was gone. I didn't know where she was. I picked myself up and like, wow, I got some puncture wounds on my arm. But you remember it ever slowing down at any point like I've had. I had another guy on the podcast that was attacked by baron a falk neck, and he talked about a flow state, you know, being being having the ability to move, but his mind was slowed down to the point where he could, yeah, it's two or three seconds, but he can remember every you know, every motion, every little thing that happened. You get feeled at in the second attack that did. But the first attack, it just happened so quickly that it was just like boom, bite, bite, bite, It's over. She's gone that quick. You didn't have time to kind of like just know. It just feels so fast, it was just done. I'm just surprised, and all of a sudden it's over. So I picked myself up and I'm like, wow, that was crazy. Just got attacked by a grizzly bear and I'm alive. That's good. Bear spray worked. Just took a couple of seconds, you know, And I looked down. I got some puncture wounds and I'm bleeding, and like, all right, nothing's broke. I'm just going to head down to the hospital and get some stitches. You know, it's kind of a crazy morning, all of a sudden. Did you think about what her intent was at that point, Like was she just giving you a warning shot or she just well it just you know, most bears will, you know, they'll stop and check you out and see what you are, bluff charge or stand up, snap their jaws or something, or maybe blow by you, but they rarely actually attack you. And so this is I thought it was kind of rare. She was more aggressive than most bears have seen most bear behavior, and apparently I was just too close to her. I was a threat to her cubs. And even though it was a hundred yards from her cubs, at least, you know, still I was still a threat, and she got my went down wind of me, got my wind and decided that's it, I'm getting him. So it was. It was pretty rare, I think for a bear to come in that quick and not even hesitate. But I just picked myself up and said, all right, I got a head down the trail and go down and get some stitches. And I thought that was the end of it. Yeah. Do you remember immediate pain or did it? Was? It just was there a pragmatic nature because I've again talked to other folks have been attacked by bears, and it always seems like I got to this point, then I went to this point, then I went at this point, a very formulaic way to approach after the fact. Yeah, well, the first bite. I remember that, that first bite, the excruciating pain right was right in my shoulder, I think, the first bite. So I remember that. And then, you know, like I said that, that first attack was so quick that it was just four or five bites and just like three seconds and then it was over. And so all of a sudden, you're like, wow, okay, yeah that hurts, you know, you you know, big inch and a half canine buried into your arm muscle and if you definitely feel it so, but your adrenaline is going to so you're kind of like, wow, that's crazy, and you're not really thinking about the pain. You're just making sure you're not going to bleed out. And then got ahead to the hospital and get some stitches and call it a day, you know, get it was all over, Yeah, okay, and then you uh, you got going to the truck and then and then so about five minutes down the trail and the trail kind of goes right across the crosses the creek there, and so I'm a few hundred yards down the trail and I can't really hear too much because of the water in the creek there, and all of a sudden something just got my attention to a little noise or something. I turned and here she was right behind me, ten feet at this time, coming wide open again, and I've got bear spray in my hand, and there wasn't even time to do anything. It was like I caught her out of the glimpse, out of the corner of my eye and boom, I'm knocked down on my face right in the rocks by the creek. And immediately she is on top of me, and this time she's really mad and she's her first bite was in my left forearm. I had my hands up behind my head again protecting the back of my neck. And the first bite was in my left forearm, forearm, and it ripped two of the tendons out and broke my arm the all on the bone of my arm and just crushed it right there. And I remember that the immediate pain and just the feeling in the sound of that, and I just kind of I winced. I kind of went and pulled my arm away, and that motion in that sound just triggered like a frenzy, and she just grabbed ahold of me, picked me up and she was shaking me. She'd slammed me down. She bit me times in my right arm and my shoulder. At one point she bit me in the side and it kind of turned me. And I remember just seeing her head like a foot from mine, looking right in her eye, and I'm just like, no, pull it back in, and I just used every bit of strength that I had to hold that face down position, protecting the sides of my face and my eyes and my vital and trying not to let her flip me over. Are there any real visceral memories like the smell of her breath or the feeling of her claws or is there anything? Yeah, this this attack, you know, I remember the pain of that first bite, and then your adrenaline kicks in and it's that will to survive, and I just I don't remember anymore pain after that. But it's like all the other senses are heightened. It's like I can remember how bad she's stunck. Just the smell of rotten death at whoever she had been eating or rolling in, you know. And then just hearing I could hear, you know, every bite. You could hear the crunch of that big canine buring into your arm muscle. It's like you hear this crunching sound, you're smeller. I can feel her like breathing on the back of my neck, and that was probably the aerius part, was just hearing and breathing the sound in this the feeling that breath on the back of my neck just inches from my spine, and I'm just like, you know, one bite in there and that's over. That could be paralyzed or bleed out or whatever. So I just kept telling myself don't move, she's gonna leave, she's gonna get she's gonna go check on her cubs. You just got to ride this out. And that was my whole focus. I told myself that a hundred times. In my head. It was like, don't move, she's gonna leave. Just just hold it down. And at one point I remember a clock caught the side of my scalp and that's what ripped that big five inch gash. And my scalp was hanging over my eyes filled with blood, so I can't see anything. You know, She's just a crazy situation. Just she's picking me up, slamming me into the dirt, you know, my face into the dirt, just shaking me like a rag doll. I was just helpless, and as helpless is something I think that when you listen to the accounts of attacks of this nature, there's nothing but helplessness. I mean, I think when all of us think, oh, the bear is gonna attack me, I've got my bear spread, I've got my pistol, I've got my wits. But in most cases, and in a lot of cases, especially yours, that you are helpless and all you can do is lay there and what it what interests me the most is as you're laying there, that the thought process that you have, because you're not at me that I'm gonna die. I'm dead. I'm dead, I'm gonna die. You're thinking through, Okay, if this white Lands here, this this happens, what's the next what's the next result. You're talking about an animal that can, you know, kill an elk with one bite or squatter bison, you know, whatever they can. They're just a killing machine. And so I have absolutely no chance to fight back against this thing to grizzly bear, especially a big grizzly bear. So I knew my only the only thing I could do was to just play dead and hope she would leave. I couldn't fight back. I thought about trying to get to my pistol, but I didn't want to get flipped over on my back and then have her ripped my face open or my throat or something. But I think it's, you know, one of the things that that will to survive and knowing that there's nothing you can do. And so I had people ask me it's like, oh, did you did you see your life flash before your eyes? You know? And when I first start doing interviews and everybody asked that. I'm like, yeah, I thought I was going to die, but then I got to thinking about it, you know, more recently, it's like, I don't think that ever crossed my mind that I was going to die, because you're in that survival mode. You're not in the dying mode. You're like, what do I do to live? How do I live? I gotta get through this. I don't want to die. You don't give up. You never seem to. You know, people don't give up when it comes to something like that. You keep fighting back somehow. Yeah, I always think that, I think, And again, it's it's cool to hear you say that because I've heard it from other folks similar in similar situations. You think about your death after, like when it's calmed down and you can be able to then reflect on how close you came, But during it, I think it's important for people to know. I think it's important to have these conversations so people can can hear these, because if it happens to you, you have to have some perspective that it is, that it is always about survival, and that's that's your survival instincts are real and they do kick in, and that fear and that angs about death. It doesn't have time to kind of poke its way into your thoughts, right, Yeah, absolutely, I think. And the more you think about your situation prior to, like the attack, having you know, practiced my bear spray, having thought about, okay, what happens today if I run into a bear? What am I going to do? And the more you think about that and are more aware of you know, bare behavior and bear safety, then if that situation does happen, it's muscle memory. You just autumn radically you do something. I didn't think about pulling my bear spray. I automatically pulled my bear spray because I've practiced it five times. You know, I didn't think about, okay, go down and protect the back of your neck. I just did it. All of a sudden, I'm in curled up in a ball, face down, playing dead, and it's like I didn't I didn't have to go through my head. It just happened because you've been I've thought about it before I'd practiced that, I knew what I needed to do to survive the situation. And so I think that's important to tell people's like, you know, you can't just go buy bear spray off the shelf and then go out there and start hiking and I'll send a bar charges you and expect to do everything right. You're probably gonna panic, scream and run as your fall down on something you know or not or forgets you have it on you. You You know. It's like you have to practice those things so it becomes a muscle memory and becomes instinctive and you do it and that's how you're going to survive. Yeah, I feel strongly. I mean it's a very practical thought process and survival survival nowadays if you read the books and watch the TV shows will come about survival skills like being able to start a fire with a bow and stick. To me, it's less that's like how do you think about where you are and what you're doing, and how your thought processes lead to preparate you know, being prepared with something like this does happen. So it sounds to me like you you had done that work. I think spending my life in the outdoors, you know, ever since a kid in Montana and bear country, and I had seen bears as a kid and talking about it with my my dad and my parents out camping and knowing what to do and want not to do. And then thirty almost thirty years with the four Service, and I've taken bear awareness and bear safety classes and bear identification classes. I've carried the bear spray. I've known what to do, and I think that's that makes a difference for sure. And you can't just plan to go out there without any knowledge or any practice and and you know, succeed at something in that situation. All right, Well, let's let's get back to you know, the bear is mauling you, Like, there's a quote, Let's go back to that. Yeah, okay, Yeah, we'll come back to that. Then that's great. Yes, there's a quote that I read that you said the weirdest moment of the whole thing was feeling her alls on my lower back, all her weight on me. She was panting and sniffing the back of my neck. Um, So what happened after that? Yeah, so she's got me pinned to the ground. I got I got a little scars right below my belt line where she had me, just all her weight on top of me, and I can barely breathe, but I'm trying not to make any noise. I'm trying to breathe quietly, and and then this crazy situation, so she doesn't keep chewing on me, and she'd sniffed the back of my neck and then she'd like bite my shoulder, and then she'd stopped and she'd sniff again, and then she'd bite. And it was more of like this last few seconds as her like nipping on me, it was more like testing to see if I was incapacitated, if the threat was over, if I was dead, So instead of like just trash me around, it's just checking me. And it's like I had all these like bruises that were in like marks that were like dog bites or something that didn't just put the pressure, yeah, just pressure and just testing me, testing me. And she did that a dozen times probably, and then she just stopped and she was just standing there and it was like dead quiet. I'll remember that. It was like so quiet nothing. I'm like I could feel her weight, but she's not even breathing, you know nothing. I'm just like trying not to breathe myself. And I think she was probably just looking around to see if there was any other threat or where her cubs might be, and checking the situation out and then all of a sudden, she just stepped off me and I remember just that I can take a deep breath again, and she stepped off and disappeared. And so I just held that position for like thirty seconds and like not moving. Okay, is she ten feet away? Is she gonna bite me again? I'm just waiting for that attack again or that bite and nothing, no sound, And I'm like, okay, maybe she's gone. But if I, you know, make a movement or something like that and she's right there watching me, I'm gonna get attacked again. So I just held the position, and I got to thinking if she goes back and checks on her cubs and they're still up a tree or wherever she put him, and then she's like, okay, let's come back and see if the threat still here, and I'm still there, She's gonna attack me again because I'm still a threat to her. So I decided I gotta protect myself. I gotta get out of here, I gotta do something. So I really slowly pulled my my arm down from I had my arms behind my head still, pulled one arm down and reached under from my pistol that I had in a shoulder holster, and I remember reaching in there and it was like, where is it. It's gone. I can't find it. So I'm like, okay, relaxed, Todd. Just reached for your pistol that's right there under your your armpit, you know. And so I reached again and realized that it had been ripped off during the attack. And so I don't know where the pistol is. My bear spray is gone. I can't see anything. I'm completely helpless. So I really slowly reached up and kind of wiped some blood from my eyes and looked each direction, kind of under my arm, and I didn't see her anywhere, but my pistol was laying over there, about ten or fifteen feet away, and I just gove for the pistol and pulled it out of the holster, hammer back, like okay, I'm ready now, and she was gone. She wasn't there anywhere. So I I'm like, okay, I gotta get out of here. I need to put distance between her and I and my left arm, broken arm with tendon sticking out. My wrist is all curled under and it's just useless. So I tucked the pistol under my armpit right here where I could grab it easily, picked up the bear spray in this hand and just kind of with this arm against my side and just took off down the trail and just said, okay, I gotta get distant down there. And so I went far did you have to get to the safety. It was about three and a half miles, like an hour hike out there, and it's a trail down the canyon, across the creek a couple of times, and it's bear country, so you know, it's like you could run into another barrit eight o'clock in the morning on the way out, and I was thinking about that, going, oh jeez, this is the third time. So after like fifteen minutes of hiking, I'm down the trail like a mile or something, and then I, you know, I'm starting to calm down, going okay, she's not going to attack me again. You know, she's way back up there with her cubs. I've got nothing to worry about. So I stopped and just checked my wounds and you know, to see if I need some you know, bandaging or turniquet or something. How bad am I bleeding. I didn't want to, you know, bleed out on the way to the truck kind of thing. And so I got to think it about that now that I'm calmed down a little bit and everything, you know, I still had blood dripping off my elbows and soaking through my shirt into my pants, but I could tell there was no severed arteries. I'm not going to bleed to death. And I'm like, okay, just keep going, get to the truck and then you can do some first age. So you were trying to traveling and assessing at the same time. I was, yeah, I would like be hiking, and I kind of stopped, kind of looked down at my elbows, my arms and just make sure there was nothing, no no guts hanging out, you know, anything like that. So I'm okay, And I stopped I think twice on the way down, and took me about an hour to hike out of there, and I finally got to the truck at the end there and right to the trailhead, and it was just like a relief, like, Okay, I've made it to the truck. I'm not in shock, I'm not bleeding out. I didn't get attacked again. There's bears, your mountain lions waiting for me down here, and I'm good to go. I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna survive at this How much of that hour do you remember, like what was going through your head during that time? Was it still was it still very pragmatic or had it kind of scattered a bit at your thoughts? I think it was still, I mean, trying to think back at it, I remember that constantly thinking about what was going on around me. I mean, I like watching behind me, watching up on the hill, just to make sure I wouldn't run in. You know, like I said, there could have been another bear, and it's like if there is another bear, I gotta make sure I avoid it because there's no way I can fight back at this point or protect myself. I can't hardly hold a pistol or anything, and this arm is useless. So I remember watching that constantly around me as I'm hiking out, and then at the same time kind of assessing the wounds as I'm going. And beyond that, it was more of just like over and over in my head, like you're almost there, here, almost there, You're almost to the truck. It's everything's good to go. You're gonna make it. You're gonna survive this. And I wasn't really thinking about what I was gonna do when I got there. I just knew I had to get to the truck and get to the hospital. Yeah. Well, yeah, if there's any time in your life you know what you have to do, it would be that, get in my truck and go. I wasn't looking for elk or anything at that point. I wasn't scouting out any elk or anything. But if you saw like a big bull, really don't get a photo of him. But I can't hold the camera, so skip that. Today that would have been a view said, well, I stopped to glass first, I saw a bullet, stopped, didn't go that farm there. When you get back to the truck and you know you're in safety. Um. Other attack survivors I've talked to you, they talk about you know either I've heard it a couple of different ways. I've heard like the shakiness of the adrenaline and kind of the feeling of the jitteriness. And then I've heard like the the the intense calm, and like the stiffening of posture, and like the forcible. I will live through this, this is not it for me, Like or you where were you in that well it had been it had been like an hour since the attack and I've had all this time to think about it and what just happened, and you know, running it through my head and then just the relief of getting to the truck and getting to the trailhead out of the canyon, I would, you know, to safety, and I felt I think, you know, that a lot of the adrenaline and war off by then, and I was feeling a lot of pain. My left arm was just excruciating pain, like it was in advice from the tendons sticking out and the broken you know, all the nerve damage, a lot of nerve damage, and so the I felt pretty calm. I didn't feel like I was in shock or had that adrenaline rush anymore. It was just like, Okay, I survived this, you know that, you know Plan B here, next step is to get to the hospital. And really hadn't you know, I wasn't nerv anymore. I wasn't I don't know, I've I've probably could have joked about it at that point, if there was someone else there, I could have been like, how do I look? You know? An So it's a bad hair day, but because you know, because I felt so relieved that I was I was okay, I survived this. I'm not you know, it's just it's it's it's it's not over. I've got a lot of rehab to do, but the death, the life threatening situation is over. And that was just a complete relief during the whole you know, from the time of the attack until you get back to your truck. Were there any you know, people that kept popping into your head, voices or experiences. Were there anything that you called back to, you know, during I guess what I would image would be a lot of terror and just a lot of you know, craziness. Were there things that you called back to in your life or people that you thought about? Um, I don't really think there was much at that point. It was more of, you know, everything. My whole focus that entire time was on that survival mode. And I you know, it's like, you know, people had asked me, it's like that, you know, your life flash before your eyes and you remember these people and you know that in your life and wish you had said something or all that, But that, like the I told you that never happened because you're in a survival mode. You're not thinking you're dead at this point. You're like, you're still gonna make it somehow. So it was all about just getting back, getting to safety, and then like, Okay, I gotta get to the hospital. You know. I knew I had to call my girlfriend and let her know what was going on that was going to be something, and let my parents know. My parents were on vacation, you know. So I'm like, well, I'm not going to bother them until after the whole day of surgery and getting switched up, and then I'll give him a call. But I did on my drive out, I did uh call my girlfriend and just say it was like eight thirty in the morning now, And so she answers the phone. It's kind of funny. She answers the phone like oh hi, and I'm like, hey, how you doing. She's like, oh, I just getting ready to go have coffee with her girlfriend, and and I'm like okay, and and she's like, well, why are you calling me? Aren't you? I thought you were gonna be up on top of the mountain all day. And I'm like, well, I had a little situation. And so then I told her I got attacked by a bear. And she was a nursing school, so I knew she was going to have a lot of questions. And so I'm like, I've got a broken arm, I've got tendons or something sticking out of my arm, I've got a big cut on my head, but I'm not bleeding to death, and I'm driving myself to the hospital. And and so she had a couple more questions, and then I said, all right, if you can meet me at the hospital with some some clean clothes and uh, we'll see in an hour or so. And other than that, I just was like heading to the hospital. That was my focus. And then when you get to the hospital and you said you kind of list out all your injuries. Um, I read that the doctor spent eight hours stitching up, you know, twenty six inches of different parts of your body. Yeah. Well I was. I was driving to the hospital, and I well, on the way down to the hospital, I ran into a rancher that was getting into his mailbox that morning, and and uh, I kind of flagged him over and he saw the bloodle over me. I told him I was attacked by a bear. And I said, hey, can you call the hospital? And just give him heads up that I'm coming in, so I don't walk in looking like this and surprise everybody. And he had asked if I needed a ride, and I said no, I've now already got a mess at my bloody mess in my own truck. I don't want to make a mess eagers too, And so I went ahead and drove myself in. And when I got to the hospital about thirty minutes later, I pulled into the emergency entrance there and there was a sheriff and a doctor and a nurse all standing out there waiting for me. They'd got the word, and so I pulled up there and tried to put my truck into park. But at this time, it's almost two hours or an hour and a half since my attack, and I can't hardly lift my arms. All these wounds are really starting to cramp up, and I'm just kind of immobile. And I did have enough strength in my arm because of a big tear on my right shoulder, I couldn't even lift the truck or the put the truck into park. So I kind of motioned at the sheriff and he came over and got the truck in park for me. And then I couldn't get the seat belt off, so he had to help me get the seat belt off, and I remember he was like, I'm surprised you took time to to buckle up, and I was like yeah. I was like, well, I just survived two bear attacks. I didn't want to die in a car wreck on the way to the hospital after all of that, So the lecture of precaution there. But anyway, so they got me. I walked into the hospital and I remember everybody that was in the hospital I heard about it now, So all the nurses and even I think of the patients were all kind of lined up along the main hallway on each side. So I kind of had like this parade first evidence. I see what this looks like, you know, so we'll go in there. And then they did X rays everywhere I'd been bit. They took X rays to see what are the broken bones. I had just had the one and my my on the bone, my arm, And then about seven or eight hours with a doctor on each side just putting stitches in, and all the puncture wounds were really deep, so they put a stitch down like halfway in to make sure it was closed. And then a stitch at the top and then took quite a bit of time on my head to make sure they stitched that really well. I don't remember how many stitches, but I think it was like twenty six centimeters of stitching they put in total on my my arm, in my head, and then my left arm where I had the tendons sticking out. Remember the doctor he was like, well, I think those are tendons or something. He's gonna you're gonna see an orthopedic surgeon. Sir, I would wish you'd be more specific. I think those are tendons or something. He's like, I think you're gonna have to see an orthopedic surgeon. I'm like, all right, but he's like, I'll just push I get that stitch back over and closed up for now, you know, to stop the bleeding. So I remember remember him trying to push the tendons back in my arm, and they're you know, they're kind of rigid, so they're sticking out, and he'd push men and try to stitch and they'd pop back out, and he has was having a heck of a time, but finally got me all closed up and sent me home that night, and it was the next day. Then I had to go into the orthopedic surgeon and they spent about I think like four hours doing a bunch of kind of exploratory surgery. They had to reopen all the wounds that the dock the day before it stitched up, and clean everything out and look to see what kind of nerve damage or tending damage, and and uh. I remember sitting in there and I got I wanted to watch it all. He's like, well, if we can, you know, give you some drugs or whatever. I'm like, just do the local. In my arm, I had the big, big screen TV right there above my head, and I'm watching the whole thing, and he's like, okay, this is your all on the bone. He'd tap on it and I could feel like the vibration of my shoulder and he's like, okay, this is the tendons that are ripped out. And then I'd be like, I can't quite see it, and he'd lift up the curtain a little bit right down at my arm. You're a bad look right into my arm. They're like, oh, that's pretty cool. So anyway, they he'd had to figure out how to attach the the two tendons again, because one was from my wrist, one from my these two fingers, and so he would sit there and find something to get my fingers to move, and then finally stitch that in there and just give everything back to where it would work for me. And took a four or five hours, and put other boy, i'd have been out, like I'd been like, put me out, okay, I don't want to know. I didn't want any kind of medication at all. I wanted to be totally so I could watch the whole thing and well, and so you know, at this point in the story, everything's okay, like like as okay as it can be. In this situation. You feel like you're you're going to mend. The doctors are saying you're going to recover. No real long lasting effects other than the memories of the of the attack. Tendons were kind of questionable. That there was the muscle in my farm was ripped in like three different pieces, and so he kind of stitched all the muscle back together and reattached the tendons, but it was like hamburger in there, and it just ripped up so bad. He was having a hard time getting a good solid point of attachment so they gave me a brace to put on my arm that would keep my wrist turned back up and my fingers up just so I wouldn't put any pressure and tear that out until it healed well. So I had to wear that brace seven for six weeks and just until we had a good you know, sure that everything was good and solid in there. And then a lot of rehab. I had like three or four months of three or four days a week a rehab, just every day going. And they're trying to get motion back in my hand and my wrists and fingers to work and be able to to move them and all different in separately, independently moving my fingers and grabbing things and picking things up. And it was a slow process to get all that to come back, just the amount of nerve damage. And I still don't have any feeling in my forearm here is all numb. And then right up here where my arm was broke when I when I touched right there, I can feel it down in my fingership. So it's really weird just from the nerve down me still, but everything's working pretty good. I mean it's it's a little slower. I can't quite open my hand all the way. I don't have all the strength there. I've got a pretty good hole in my arm or the muscle was just shredded that just never healed up. Well, just no muscle there anymore. And so it's it's not but I'm doing most everything I need to do, and I don't even think about it anymore. What about the grizzly like, what well, what happened to her? The fish wildlife and parks, fish and game and the Grizzly inter Agency, you know, steady Grizzly bear. Steady team went back in I believe the next day on horses, and as far as I know, they did not see her at all. And so she's probably still out there. And I think about that every time I go back in the woods in that country. It's like, is she gonna You know, bears have the best sense of smell of any of the animals out there. So if she's a couple of miles on the other side of the canyon or up the canyon and the winds carrying up there and she smells me, she's going to recognize that, just as if I was there, because her sense of smell is so good. So I was wondering. It's like, it's that mean she's gonna come back. She like, I don't want to have anything to do with him. He didn't taste good, and she's gonna go the other way. But I always think about that, So as far as I know, she's probably still out there. Yea. And did they ever did you ever think about her age or or her weight or her size? How much do you recollect? It's it's hard to say when that's such a quick situation. But she was definitely a full size bear, you know. And you know, female grizzly might way up to four hundred pounds, you know, three or four hundred pounds if for a big bear. So she was definitely big. And I remember she was just crushing me when she was on top of me, that weight, and just you know, I was a rag doll picking me up and would literally just shake me back and forth and then like let go, and I would like roll like ten feet and then I just roll back face down again protecting myself. And so I was at just a rag doll head. I was helpless, unbelievable, And and I think I know the answer to this because it almost always is the same. You have no resentment towards the animal or or you know, she was protecting her cubs, and you know, in that situation, I think she was all over protective because they were a hundred yards away and she actually left them and circled around to get my wind and then came in. But you know, every every bear is different. Some bear could tolerate you at fifty feet, some more won't tolerate you at hundred yards. I guess. So she was more aggressive than any other you know bears I've been around. I probably see a dozen bears every year, a couple of grizzly and a lot of black bear. And usually they're going the other direction and they might run away or they walk away like whatever. It's just another person. I don't care. You know, she was definitely more aggressive and a little bit different, But I don't I don't blame her for what she did. I don't want to go out and get revenge on her or something, and you know I do. I do believe there should be some you know, grizzly bear management. There's been a lot more there's a lot more grizzlies out there than there used to be. In a lot more people in the woods, and I think we need to manage that population. Um, if they do get to go through with that and put out you know, licenses, I have no desire to go shoot one. I you know, I can't afford it. Plus I don't really care. It's not a big deal. I don't need revenge and I don't need a grizzly bear. But but I have nothing against the hunting season. And you know, you know, as it's meeting the freezer still even a bear, that's right. Um, is there anything you would do different? Uh? Looking back at it, the preparations you had, I mean you were prepared. I was prepared, you know I had you know, like a lot of people asked, well, you know which you have pulled the pistol first instead of the bear spray. And in my situation, so working for the Four Service, I'm not allowed to carry a handgun because I'm not law enforcement. So all i have is bear spray for my protection. And so I've practiced and thought about that time and time again, year after year, and so that became muscle memory. So even though I had a pistol with me at that point, I didn't think about draw your pistol first. It was the muscle memory. I just pulled the bear spray just in case. And so you know, had I drawn the gun, I had probably got off one or two shots. And like I said, it wasn't a quick draw easy to get to bear a gun it uh, you know, had a scope on it, so I could have barely see underneath the scope to shoot. You know, it would have been more of a point and shoot. And there's no guarantee you're gonna do any damage to a bear with it. You mean, TENEMM could kill a bear easily, but you got to hit it in the right spot. You know, you got hit in the brain or the spine to drop in its tracks and the brains in the back half of a bear skull, so you know, a lot of muscle, a lot of hide, So that may not have helped, That may have made might have made the bear more aggressive, and she's now fighting for her life as well. The only thing I really could have done differently, which if I had been hunting like actual hunting season, I would have stopped at the edge of that meadow and like glassed and looked first before I stepped out, because I don't want to surprise an elk or something that might be their feeding. And in this situation, I wasn't hunting, and I was just trying to get I was in a hurry to get up as high as I could have buff timber line at daylight. So I was probably ten steps out into the that opening before I saw her, and it was too late. She saw me at the same time. So looking back, you know, I should have just been paying a little more attentionally, going a little bit slower, stopped I put it, probably would have seen her, could have just stayed in the edge of the trees, she would have went on by. We have never had the encounter, and but then I wouldn't be here. I mean, I think, you know you're continue to hunt, obviously, can you do what we love to do? Can you spend time with the wilderness? Um? How has it changed how you act when you're when you're in bear country? I mean you're obviously, like you said, probably a little bit more cautious, I would imagine. Yeah, it's definitely different. It definitely changed. And I knew that I needed to get back out there right away because my my life is in the woods, my job. I'm working in the woods every day every weekend I'm out there, hiking, hunting, camping, doing something. I don't know what I would do without being in the outdoors. So I knew I had to get back out right away. So after, like the day after I got the brace off my arm, I still had four days of hunting season left. So I went out, had a buddy with me two of the days and went out and actually went back to that same site right where the bear attack was and told, you know, stood in that's that location and told my buddy the story. And uh, I just knew that I had to get back out there and get over that fear. And it was definitely different. I think every day I'm out there that I don't get attacked, it's it's it's a little bit better, but I am more anxious out there. My head's kind of on a swivel. I'm alwa was paying attention. It's like if I if there is a bear in the area, I really want to see it and back out of that situation instead of having a counter again. And it's I remember the first day of that next spring back at work with the four service and I was heading up to a trailhead and a sow grizzly and a cub ran across the trail in front of me, and I was in a vehicle still right before the trailhead, and she stopped at like fifty yards and stood up and looked at me and then took off. And I remember the rest of that day, I was just like on edge. It was like I just sweating, anxious, like, oh my god. Just a reminder that this could happen any day. You know. People are like, oh, it will never happen again. You know, you got attack twice. You could it's once in a lifetime. But you're in that situation every day in Bear Country for work, for play. It's just the odds. You know. It may not happen for twenty years or ever. It may happen the next time I'm out there. You just don't know. So it's just a reminder that you have to be ready. You have to be prepared, you know. I'm I'm always have a pistol. That's you know, I carry a forty four magnet revolver or tenem M that I can get too quickly now that doesn't have a scope on it, you know, and uh, just in just in case, I always have the bear spray and just like try to tell people it's like, take your headphones off or your earbuds out and pay attention and watch up a front of you, watch the head ease you can see what's coming or here's something coming, so you're not surprised, and know how to use your bear spray. Practice pulling it out of the holster if you have an old bear spray, or get the a nert bear spray and practice shooting it and see what it feels like to actually squeeze the trigger on the thing. And if you use a handgun for your safety, make sure you're efficient with it and you know what you're doing, because you never know when you're get in this situation. It can't happen to you, and it happens quick. One of the other thing I imagine would be the understanding of the animal, right, understanding of what's bear trying to do? What's that bear trying to do, Being able to read it's it's activity and realize it's trying to eat me and kill me or trying to defend its cubs. Like how would you tell people to kind of think through that? After well, I mean, yeah, the bare behavior when that bear first sees you. What is it doing? Is it like, is it curious and wants to come see what you are? Is it recognize you and just kind of like, Okay, I'm gonna wander off, or is it scared runs away? You know, that's the best situation. It's gone. You know, it isn't like people. It's used to people have seen him before. So and then also bear identification, whether it's a black bear, whether it's a small black bear, a young black bear, and he's probably going to run any's scared of you, whether it's a big old grizzly that's like, you know, he's the king of the woods and you're not going to scare him off, you know. So knowing that bear identification, what to do? Paying attention and you know we're that bear, go to it run over the ridge now circling behind me, or you know, pay attention even though that bear left. It's like be watching your back because you never know, Yeah, you never know. I think that's that goes to another thing I was thinking about prior conversation was I'm new to Montana. I'm from Maryland. I lived in Texas. Nowhere i've lived, has there been grizzly bears. I've been around him on hunts around the country, but have I've never lived in a place where I had access to grizzly country on a daily, weekly basis, in a place where I want to go hunting that was a reality. I've got a little kid, you know. Sure, So there's that. But there's also the non resident that comes to Montana who wants to hunt the country you're in, who wants to go hunt to Madison Valley. He wants to go up bear trap cannon and run around and do these types of things where they're going to invariably, you know, either encounter a grizzly or being in a place where that's happening. And how do you think through that for all these new people moving to Bows And I think, yeah, I think so many of them just you know, they pull into town and like, oh, I'm in bear country and they stop at bob Wards there's you know, Sportsman's warehouse, and they go, where's your bear spray? Okay, good, got it, you know, and they throw it in the backseat and they go get to the rest of their gear and they head up there and they're like, Okay, where's your yeah, there's my bear spray. Okay, let's see. I'll just clip that on the side of my backpack over here behind my shoulder, you know, where I can get to it if I need it, you know, And it's like you can't get to it over here, You're trying to reach over your shoulder to grab They see so many people hiking with spray hooked on their backpack somewhere, and it's like, I keep it right here where I can look down and see it, and if something hangs up, I can still get to it. I can. Well. And if you take if you're running a pack and you take your pack off and set it down, and you're going to gut an animal or you're going to your whatever you're doing or handling meat or whatever you're now removed from. If you if you haven't hooked on like a backpack strap or on our waist or something like that, you know, if you do take your pack off, then take the bear spray or your pistol off and hook it to yourself to like you're saying, so you need that with you. All of a a sudden something attacks you and you're separated from your pack and yeah, f h F gear has the only one I've ever used that the holster that a side holster than the one that amounts to your amounts to your by no harness. So there's those options. But again, I mean, we have guys in this office, Sianni Pitelis and Steve Ronella who got a who got a sacked and fog Neck Island, and they'd say, hey, we were separated from our defense. One of their main learnings, Um, what do you think about solo hunting and Gris country and like, what what should someone is there a level of hunting experience and wilderness experience to to to go and venture alone. Well, of course, you know, the more people the better in numbers, you're gonna you're safer, you know, But a lot of people don't hunt that way. I've never hunted with somebody. I'm always by myself. So I'm back out there by myself in bear country. But the guy's got to be prepared as far as you know, what are you going to use for safety? And like we talked about bare behavior and bear awareness and knowing all of that before you get into the woods. I think it's good to have some kind of a background in first aid and just knowing that, okay, is that you know how bad am I bleeding? You know, if you have to assess your wounds? Can I do I know how to banage myself up? Can I do I have the stuff with me? Do I have duct tape that I can tape some sticks around my arm or my leg if I need to have a broken limb and I need to hike out, So I think some first aid, well lenness back country type first aid is great. Having that bear awareness, bear safety, general knowledge of animals and their behavior is great. And just survival in the back country. Knowing what to take with you, you know, that's a big thing. It's like, Okay, you've got your backpack. What do you have in your backpack? You know, besides candy bars or what ever? It's maybe that's all someone my care makers, a bunch of snickers, you know, But it's like there's more you might need, Like you know, your duct tape, you always need that, you know, There's different things. If I'm incapacitated from an attack, or I fell off the mountain and broke my leg or whatever, and I got to spend a night or two up here, do I have something to start a fire? Do I have dry clothes, you know, a dry fleece top or gloves or a hat, or I fall on the creek and I'm soaking wet, what do I do? It's cold out. You know, there's all those things that go with backcountry wilderness survival and just being able to live out there for days on end if you need to. And that's something that people should should read about, be know what they need to take, talk to people about, or take a class or something so you're aware of what there is, and then get out there and actually use it. Get out in the woods and put yourself in a situation and just pretend. I remember. I remember when I was a kid and I would go hiking in the woods and I would randomly just stop and I'd be like, Okay, if I was hurt, right here, can I build a fire? And I would actually a couple of times I would just like close my eyes, take a few steps, stop, sit down, and then leave my eyes closed even and be like reaching under like branches and trying to find like dry tinder and dry sticks. And then I'd be like okay, and then try to build a fire within my reach, like if I could not move at all, can I build a fire right here anywhere in the woods. I used to practice that. I very much remember the first five I remember the first fire for Bill. I remember getting a bunch of little twigs and putting them in the thing, and then getting find a little like magazine that was wet and trying to light it with a lighter and thinking like dude. So there's a lot of suburban at that point. There's a lot of things that you need to practice and to look into and to have some knowledge before you're out there in bear country or in the woods in general. I mean, the weather can change in a hurry, and it might be like, like people hike the m up here up to the college m right above town. There will be a hundred vehicles in the parking lot, and there's dogs and kids and strollers and puppies and and I've actually been up at the m before and turned around and started hiking down and had a bear coming up the trail towards me, a black bear. He just came off the hill, didn't know there was a bunch of people around, hit the trail started coming up. All of a sudden, he sees me. I got a picture of him he turns, runs back up the hill, and thirty seconds later, here comes a couple of girls with a puppy coming up the trail. I'm like, I don't want to scare you, but there was a bear here one minute ago, and just keep track of your puppy. And they're like, okay, I think we'll turn around, you know, and they left. But you never know where that can happen, a mountain lion or a bear or whatever the situation might be. Yeah, we were very much. We're doing a lot of work here at Mediator on that, like practical not survivals, like said, not surprival skills, but practical survival like getting back to the truck, you know, not not bear girls being able to jump off a waterfall and that's not a good thing, or to jump out of a helicopter. That's this the practical win. We thought a lot about, hey, like gas station survival. If you if you're going on a day trip and you stop at the gas and he's like, wait, I don't have a lighter, I don't have a this, I don't have I don't have this, this and this. There's there's so many things that you can carry and in ways that you can approach, you know, practical survival, just to make sure they always have these things on you. So it's super interesting. I have all that stuff in my truck. I just like like three or four of everything in my truck under the seat and behind here in this cubby hole. And it's like, so no matter where I go, I've got something. It's like I'm gonna go here, and I end up at the trail head, I'm like, okay, I have it in this pack. Can I have this over here? And I just loaded all up and I'm ready to go. I mean, there's just certain things for me. I have like a Pelican case that has all my backup stuff in my truck. But then I've always got my medical kid and and other things that I know I have. For whatever reason, I'm always even if it's summertime, I always carry hot hands. Always carry like handwarmers and their light and you can shove them in a spot and for whatever reason if you're cold warming up, always have a fire start, always have a lighter, those those types of things. Always put lighters in different spots around again in case you lose your pack. So there's a bunch of that that goes on that that I find as a bunch of interesting as anything else. I always have your sky Blade knife on you always sky Blade dot com. Is that sky Blade knives dot com knives dot com. Um, So, I got a couple of segments I want to do with you. Um The first one is perfect because it's called What's in your pack? But this case we're gonna change it to what's in your medical kit? Because I feel like that leads right into what we're talking about. Um, what do you carry today in your medical kid? What's it look like? You know, what is it? And what's it? You know what exactly is in that for my medical kit? If I'm just out for the day, I'm I'm very basic. Basically, I have duct tape. I love that, dude. We're talking about the the uses for duct tape. Duct tape can work for just about anything. Worked in the bar attack. You could just I could take my head back together, my scout back up. I think duct tape is very important. I carry, you know, I carry a few bandages in case you just have you know, some minor cut or something and it's just irritating all day. But you can still a little toilet paper and duct tape does the same thing, so that's usually what I'll carry. Um, I've got some of that. I don't know what the heck it's called, but it's like that that stretchy kind of horse wrap stuff that you see him wrap and like horses and use that for medical stuff too. I have a keep a roll of that my pack because if you's some kind of a wound, that stuff can just wrap really tight around itself and it's you know, you can still flexible can also, Yeah, So I carry that, but pretty minimal stuff really as far as my first aid kit. More of it's uh uh, you know, I know that I can I'm gonna get out of the woods. I just gotta tape to stop the bleeding. So it's like some minimal type thing to stop the bleeding or to put a bandage around something or a splint on a leg or an arm and get myself out of the woods. And it stays that way even if you're like, hey, I'm going on a six day backpack trip, it stays that light. I mean, if it's if it's for like a week, I'll just maybe add a little bit more of the same kind of stuff or just make sure I've got enough. Um. But you know, the longer you're on a backpacking trip, the lighter you want to be too. So I don't want to get too much in there make me feel the minor. When it comes to medical stuff, I'm like, this is gonna this will help me survive, but it may not be comfortable, but it'll get me out of the woods. My wife one time she was looking. She discovered that I had a medical kid and was looking what was in there, and I remember her looking in then I remember the nex hunt. I went in and I needed to get something out of their band aid or something to open it up, and there was like disinfecting lotions and ship that ship put there. Yeah. I was like, that's a big medical kit in my truck, you know, when you're you need to get back to a truck or if your car camping or something. But on myself, yeah, fairly minimal. Um. If I'm camping like for a week, I might have some kind of first aid ointment or something like that. In case you do get something, it's a little more comfortable for five or six days out there in the desert when you can put something else on there, you know as well, Oh good, um, the only other you know. I think we've learned a lot about this attack and then um, kind of the aftermath of it, which was a lot of attention, but learn a little bit more about you. So we've got another statement called first times where when I actually, like some firsts in your life, we won't get two personal like first love or first two. Won't go there more hunting related, but like first first rifle, what wasn't who gave it to you? My first rifle? My first rifle was a Winchester Model N dirty latter action that my grandpa gave me when I was just a kid, and I had it for a couple of years before hunting season. And I remember, right about a week before hunting season, we went out to site it in and realized that it was just open sites at this point, and the front post on it had been broke off clean and it looked like it was a regular front sight but had been broke off. So we're shooting and everything was shooting really high because the front site was broke off. So we tried to find my dad tried to find a front site for this old model ninety four and we couldn't find anything around Bozeman or a US you know, forty years ago. So we're here in Bozeman like a hardware store and the guy's like, now, we don't have anything like that, but he's like, I know a guy with a TO seventy for sale out in Belgrade and so he's like pretty cheap. He's moving or something. So we drove up to this guy's house and we're like, us, here's this. It was J. C. Higgins Sears and Roebuck to seventy rifle, and it was it had a mouser action on it, so it's a really good action everything, you know. And he wanted a hundred bucks for it with a two to seven power red field scope and a sling and like two boxes of shells. So I never actually hunted with the thirty thirty because we couldn't find a site before hunting season four it. So my first rifle I started hunting with was the TO seventy. So how long did you hunt with it? I still have it. I hunted with it until I started bow hunting and pistol hunting. So I started bow hunting when I was fourteen, and UH shot at Elkin High School nice six point both with my bow, and then I got into my I got into snowboarding, dislocated my shoulders snowboarding quick story, and so then I couldn't pull the bow. So I'm like, Okay, I need to do something besides going back to the rifle, because I was pretty easy to hunt with. So I went to pistol hunting. So I've been pistol hunting for thirty years now, and I shot twenty eight bull elk with a that no. I shot twenty seven of them with forty four magnum. It's a Ruger Super Red Hawk revolver and a half inch barrel, got a scope. One of the first pistols I ever shot. As a little tiny kid, I was I don't know my neighbor. I think my neighborhood have given it to me or handed to me at the range. Pull a trigger on this thing. I was like twelve years ahold. I was a tiny human. Oh it didn't work out. So I shot most of them with that, and then the last bowl that I shot at the pistol was with the tennant man. The one that kid was carrying that day actually had a scope on that as well. So well, that leads me to the other first time thing first elk. Let's hear that story first alluded to it. Okay, so here the full ten years old and opening day Saturday, opening day of hunting season, and it was with my dad and we hiked up on the mountain and he's like, okay, the strip of timber, I'm gonna kind of circle around the backside and see if there's any elk in here, and you just kind of hang out along the edge where you can watch. And so I just kind of on a little stand there. And opening day of my first year of hunting, I hunted with my dad a lot, just following him. But this is actually where I could kill something. And that's a big deal, right because I had the same thing like hunting my dad a little bit. You never got a rifle and never to hold the rifle. And then yeah, it's like the first time you sting there watching like okay, what's gonna happen? And all of a sudden Dad had made the circle through the trees and like four or five elk came out. One of them was a really really large five by five bull, and he came out at about a hundred yards in front of me, and I put a couple of rounds into him and dropped him dead right in the opening there. And so another fifteen minutes later he came back out and we were able to actually had an old jeep trail that came down the ridge right there, and able to back up and throw it in the back of the land Cruiser jeep. He was opening day and then then so we got that home pretty easily, and then then we got it hung up. And the next morning Sunday, second day, and we went back kind of the same similar kind of the same area within a mile the same area, and hiking with my dad and his nice buck comes out on the ridge and Dad's looks like He's like, it's about three yards kind of uphill, it's a long shot, Like do you want to chance it? I'm like, I'll try it. He's like, okay, hold, He's like, hold right above its neck, so you're gonna be hit in the neck and kill it or you're gonna miss it. I don't want to wound it, you know. And so I remember just holding above its neck and squeeze the trigger off and it just fell dead in its tracks and shot as a twenty four inch five by five Mealy wide. So the first first weekend, I'd killed my bowl and my in my buck, and I remember going back to school on Monday morning, and you know, everybody's like, oh, did you get out hunting. It's like, yeah, I got out and filled both my tags, and now everybody's like, oh, you know, wow, how did you do that? You know? And I just felt like that was easy. And then, you know, I learned years later that it's not always that easy. I was just lucky the first year and put a lot of time in to get him. After that, I had the opposite. I had the opposite experience. I very much. I missed I think like three or four deer with I mean I was on with a to seventy. I think now I forget what I'm saying that. So with a center fire rifle, I missed the first three deer. The fourth theater, my buddy had reloaded. My next por neighbor that was was kind of a hunting mentor was reloading cartridges. I pulled the trigger and click nothing at all. You know, a nice little four point buck just stand right in front of me. I'm a little kid, I'm like, this is perfect, and I was I remember leaning over a log, and I was looking at this deer through the scope like, oh, this is nothing bummer. Then I said, I was, you know, twelve, and I said, oh ship in the deer I saw that turned off and ran. And so it turned out that the log that I was laying across was then for forever, for then on called the ship log. So I ended up over the years killed a lot of deer over the ship. Okay, that's good. He's ever named the ship log for years after that? Um, what what else? For? First? First, what's your first truck? First vehicle? That's a good one. That's always a good first vehicle. Uh, it's in high school and the neighbor had this old seventy five Plymouth Grand Fury. It was it was a lawn ex law enforcement car and had like an Idaho law enforcement sticker on it. It was like the gold color with the white vinyl top and thing, and it's like the big boat. You know. I had a three sixty Chrysler engine in it, and it was an old auction. He got it from a government auction for insult to me for five dred bucks. It's perfect. Being in high school and you got this, you know this like car. That's just so much, so much power, you know. And so I had the whole trunk full of all my camping gear and all my guns and everything in the back seat. Had lots of room in that thing, like a pick up, the whole stuff around. But that was my first vehicle. And then I got some V bar chains for the back and I chained that thing up and I could go just about anywhere pickup to go because that had so much power and he was a heavy I could see you rolling down a track road. Yeah. Yeah, that was my first vehicles. That a lady Killer. The ladies like that vehicle. They did, Yeah, yeah, they did good. I always start with saying, like I drove a van. Drove a van for a while, so there's nothing you could say, No, I was if I was sure, you picture this be like, there's nothing worse. Yeah, in a sixteen year old driving creepy. Yeah, it's very creepy, a lot of like I said, a lot of room for camping and sleeping. That was my first vehicle. But then after like a year or two, I was like, okay, I need a four wheel drive. And my dad had had a Toyota land Cruiser cheap and so I just said, I need a land cruiser cheap as well, because they'll go over and through anything. So I went and bought a like a yeah in nineteen seven was a seventy five or some seventy six land cruiser jeep, one of the blue ones we see around the classics. And had that for a few years and good and afford that had to go to a Subaru for a while. And I've been a pick up guy for the last twenty years. Well, regardless of you're you're living in in why I would call God's Country, Oh yeah, absolutely, well as yeah, it's my first first winter here. It's snowing right now, uh in April or whatever it is, um, but it's it's it's been great to chat with you, I think again, I think you were a part of maybe the most famous modern you know, recorded bear attacks. That's not how I wanted to get famous, that's what I figured. So there's been some positive sides, you know, thanks to it. I've you know, I've went from like not wanting to do any kind of talking to not having any problems sitting down now and been on how many times you figured you told this story that hit there's a lot of five hundred times more probably done, maybe done like thirty interviews. But I've told so many people over the over a beer this exact story. Well we're That's what I'll get to get people excited the five first time. Todd right here his bearer sex story right here on the Hunting Collected. Thanks Todd Man. I really appreciate it. Thank you appreciate it all right, brother, that's it. That's all. Another episode of the podcast in the books. Thanks to Todd Or thanks to jannest but tell us. Thanks to all you bears out there. Um, we do love you. We do love you, even though you attack us every once in a while. But a good podcast. And again thanks to everyone listened and commented on last week's episode, which was Bryan Callahan talking about his love life that seemed to be popular, Cam Haynes talking about social media and Adam green shreet poaching case and all those other things. We love the new format, the new music. Um, I hope you love it too. We're gonna keep on rolling, keep adding new partners, keep adding awesome guests. And next week we're gonna be joined by Miles Nolte of the Mediator Crew and also how Hering, who was the writer, conservationist and the host of the b h A podcast as well. So you're gonna like what how has to say next week, So stick around with that next Tuesday. We'll see you. Thank bye. Jack Daniel's Oh number seven Tennessee, who whiskey got me dragging in heaven? And uh and just stop it looks good to me. They're gonna have to department to the far red, oh far red heaven s.