← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep. 227 | Island Feast
00:49:00
Remi Warren shares his recent Hawaiian hunting and fishing trip, including spearfishing adventures, reef conservation efforts, and lessons learned from off-season hunting. He offers practical tips on range estimation, practicing in the field, and preparing for big hunts, emphasizing the importance of repetition and adaptability.
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Foreign. I'm Remy Warren and I've lived my life in the wild as a professional guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days perfecting my craft. I want to give that knowledge to you. In this podcast we relive some of my past adventures as I give you practical hunting tips to make you more successful. Whether you're just getting started or a lifelong hunter, this podcast will bring you along on the hunt and teach you how to live wild. This podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. Now for those that don't know, Mountain Tough is an online based training app that's designed for hunters to train you both mentally and physically for the mountains so you can go on. And there's programs designed with workouts that are specifically made to get you ready for the things you're going to encounter out there in the wild. And while a lot of you probably know that their programs are designed to get you ready, they also have programs designed to keep you ready during the season. It really is a year round process to help you be the best you can be on the hunt. If you're looking for a great gift this holiday season, Yeti has you covered with their Rambler Drinkware. It's a leak. Fruit, stackable, ton of different colors and everything for drinking water, coffee, wine or beer. They even have shot glasses and flasks. They're great stocking stuffers and an awesome gift to give this holiday season. Well everyone, welcome back to LiveWild podcast. Now this week we're going to have an island feast as I share the story of a recent trip to the island of Hawaii where we speared and caught some fish, including a giant ahi. Then I head up the mountain to chase some feral sheep with my buddy Justin Lee on their reforestation project to get some meat for a cook up for our Uncle Rick. I'm going to break down our backyard barbecue today and go into a little bit of the cooking and then try to explain why you don't get side dishes when the guys are in charge of the meal. And and then after that I'm going to break down the mistakes I made on the short hunt. There were definitely plenty, but first let's quite literally dive into the hunt. So I say dive into the hunt because that's exactly what we got to do. This this past week ended up doing a little bit of spear fishing and when I started thinking about it, I mean spearfishing, something that I've enjoyed doing, I would say I would consider myself like a beginner novice in it, right. Like, I, I'm not a professional. I'm not an expert at it. It's just recreational for me and something that I enjoy doing. I did quite a while back, do some free diving lessons and courses, and actually I'd done some spear fishing, like with three prongs and some other stuff as a, I guess like a young adult with zero experience, and just did some stupid, dangerous things as I learned more knowing what I should and shouldn't have done. But anyways, on this, on this previous trip, one of the things that I wanted to do was gather a bunch of different kinds of food, fish and meat, because my wife's uncle was having a 70th birthday and so we've been. So we're gonna throw. Throw a dinner party for him. And he always enjoys us going out catching and hunting some food and then cooking up something really special. So I ended up going out with a good buddy of mine, Justin Lee, and another friend, Ryan Myers. And now, if you aren't familiar with these guys, these guys are the absolute. In my opinion, they're the goats of spearfishing. Like, they are the best world champion holders. If you're like thinking of people that spearfish, these are. These are the guys that represent Team America in any international, like any international spearfishing competitions, things like that. These are world champion spear fishermen. So I was definitely in good hands. Justin lives there. Ryan actually was just there doing some filming and other stuff, and he, he was able to jump in with us. He took his, his GoPro and I was filming. If you've, like, do any social media or whatever, you've probably seen some of Ryan's stuff on Facebook or YouTube. He has some awesome videos of spear fishing and just some really cool encounters with sharks and catching octopus and shooting all kinds of different stuff on the reef, cleaning the reef from invasive species and then shooting food and different things. And then Justin, I've known Justin for quite a while. He's just an incredible human, awesome guy. You've probably seen some videos. He's got a bunch of videos that he's done for YETI and Decked and other companies. So there, there's some, some really good dudes. Not only that, but incredible at what they do, which is spear fishing. And so, you know, as me, I, I'm kind of like the guy, the land lover that gets to go dive in with these dudes. And when I was thinking about it, I'm like, man, I, I love to get in the water and jump in and, and shoot a few fish. But then I started thinking about it. I was like, man, I really haven't done any actual, like, serious diving in years. It just seems like yesterday. But really, I mean, it's been a while because I was thinking when my daughter was born, you know, I jump in, but mostly it just be like something by myself, so it'd be close and not diving down deep or anything like that. So. But they brought. We took out Justin. He has like this little zodiac center console Zodiac thing is pretty sweet. And we headed out just close to shore. Cool thing about this island is like, man, it just drops off right away, like right off ashore. You go not that far off ashore, and it's hundreds, if not hundreds of fathoms deep, I guess, which makes it a cool fishery for some, like, really big sport fish. Like, probably one of the best places for sure in the islands. One of the best places in the world to catch blue marlin and big marlins. And so, you know, we were. Our plan was just to go fish some of the reef. And the first fish we were going to target was with the three prong. It's called a Kolei or yellow eyed Cole. It looks like, I guess it's in the Tang family, but it looks like, I don't know, something you'd see in an aquarium. You know, you don't think of it as, as this awesome table fair or a target fish, but they're. They're definitely like the beginner's fish, right? I remember the first time that I went out with some friends in Hawaii many years ago. That's what we were targeting. Kohei and Manini, another one. It's like that one's kind of yellowish color with some black stripes on it because they're sort of dumb, I guess. They're plentiful in a lot of places. And not only that, they taste incredible. So the way that you prepare them, you. You gut them, you keep. Cook them whole, slice them, scale them, and then just fry them, like pan fry them. And so we just did some of the near shore stuff for that. It took me a little bit. I felt like to just get. Get my water wings under me, you know, Like, I don't know, I kept hitting them, but not, not necessarily getting him on the spear. I. I shot a few, but it was good to just kind of get. Get that feel back for the water and, you know, just figure out what the heck was going on. But man, it's just so much fun. Like spear fishing. It's one of those things where every time I do it, I Go, I need to do more of this. I need more of this in my life. Just. Just an absolute blast. And then, then we ended up about mid midway through when went back and swapped out the three prong for a spear gun. And it was awesome to be able to watch Justin and Ryan. Ryan was just kind of following me around, acting as safety and making sure I didn't do anything, you know, stupid and just giving me pointers because, man, it's so cool to be able to learn from people that really know what they're doing. And I've never. I've just kind of always you know, recreational at best. Like, never really dove too deep into it. Not, no pun intended, like, tactics and strategy and just to have someone be like, oh, yeah, try this. And you go, oh, yeah, that, that works. And then got. Getting to watch Justin, where I'm the type of person, like, I can get down. I could probably dive pretty deep. I mean, the deepest I've ever dove was, I guess, 30 meters. So that's close to 100ft. But that was like on a static line in a very, like, controlled environment thing, doing like a free dive assessment. I think that was, if I remember right. That was in fresh. That was in fresh water. But anyways, it was a. Like a line deck maybe that. I can't remember where that was at, actually. Yeah, that wasn't. It was like in a. It was in Florida somewhere. But anyways, so, like, if I. If I want to dive deep, I guess I can. You know, I've done it before, but for me, when I'm spearing, maybe, let's say it's 30, 40ft deep by the time I get down there. I got a little bit of hang time, not much, and then it's back up to the surface. These guys, you know, just in like watching a pro, it's like they get down and then they're. They're legit hunting. They're on the bottom, they're waiting, they've got strategy, they've got all this stuff. So that was really cool to see. They're, you know, obviously really good at it. It was cool to just pick up some tips and some pointers. So I swapped the three prong for a spear gun and there's this fish on, which is actually a species of groupers called. They call it the rowie, I guess that's right. Yeah, it was kind of a like a Hawaiian grouper, right. But it's not native, so it was. Somebody brought it over, I guess, thinking like, you know, grouper meats incredible. Maybe just creating a fishery, I don't know. But what ended up happening with this fish is it just eats all the reef fish. It's invasive, it's eating all the native fish and you can't eat it because it gets cigatera which is from. It's like bioaccumulation in this fish. Then if you eat that fish you can get the ciguater which I. I guess from what my memory recalls you get like these massive fevers and it's just a terrible. It's almost like some kind of poisoning in your body. So fish can't be eaten. So one of the things that you want to do is when you see these fish, take them out because it cleans the reef and kind of restores that. Hopefully you know, do your part. When you see them, shoot them. There's quite a few, so picked up a spear gun, dove down, shot one of those and then I actually shot quite a few of them with the spear gun. It felt like speargun. I was, I don't know, doing a little bit better with. We fished around, it was just. It was a lot of fun. Ended up shooting a parrot fish which are good and then. Or I guess what do you call it? Like uhuh, I think. And then right before we left, one of the. One of my favorite fish on the. On the reef is a uku or like a gray snapper. And there was one just out a little bit. I don't know how deep it was, maybe like 30, 40ft, something like that. Wasn't crazy deep. And so I, I saw that and Ryan pointed it out actually and I was like okay, one last dive before we head back. Incredible fish to eat. Like one of my favorites, I've had them before and dove down for that and dove down and just kind of. It got a little curious. Came up to the spear, made a good shot on him and got. Got the snapper. So we had some good fish. Justin shot a lot of good fish, got a few octopus as well. So that was going to be you know, dinner for us for the night. I had a bunch of friends and family there too, so did a little bit of a fish fry, saved a little bit for the party later on that week. And then one of the other things that we did while we were there, my buddy Josh and I and then so my brother in law Tom and my nephew Charlie, we all went out just deep sea fishing standard, you know, just did like a charter. Got a recommendation from Justin from the company is called Kraken Fishing. And this Guy, the Captain Cyrus is actually. He's. He actually had won the World Bill Fishing tour at one or championship, whatever. I mean, when you talk, it's awesome to talk to people like that, because it's just a completely different world than what I'm used to. You know, that kind of fishing is kind of. You know, it's one of those. When you're somewhere where you can do it, it's cool and it's fun. But to talk to a real professional about it and just, like, hear about those tournaments and the other things, it's pretty cool. It was a cool, cool experience. Got an awesome boat. And so we went out and did that, and it was just a slow day. Like, we caught. Charlie caught an amberjack drop down before we moved. We were. We got some live bait drifting, and those guys were just working hard to catch some fish. And we kind of put it into overtime a little bit. And it was like, last pass, how it always goes. Last pass. We're going past a buoy at the end of the day and just one last drift. Cause they marked a fish and hooked onto a fish. And so my buddy Josh got in the chair and was fighting it. And we're like. We figured, you know, some. Some kind of tuna and. And ahi, yellow fin, whatever. And so he's fighting, and I'm like. He's kind of struggling, and this fish is acting funny. But we. I don't know, we're just thinking maybe, like, you know, hoping to pick up a small tuna or whatever before we go back in. Turns out he landed. It was a big yellow, especially for Hawaii. Like, it was 160. I think it was 165 pounds. So we had a lot of ahi, and that was gonna be part of the party. We were gonna make sashimi, pokey, sushi, all of the above. So that was exciting. That was a fun little thing to add to the mix. And then got the opportunity as well, before the party to do a little bit of a hunt with Justin. So he's got this really sweet, like, reforestation project with his family. So they took this piece of property that had been cleared for, I guess, like most, you know, cleared for cattle. And all the trees were gone. And the one thing about an island is you need those trees to collect the water and kind of rebuild the health of. Of the landscape. So they went in, they started planting a bunch of native trees. Like, not. Were they ironwoods, man, now. Oh, sandalwood, sorry. And these native sandalwoods. And so they actually have this thing where they take the, they take the dead sandalwoods and. And then they turn that into like an essential oil. And then they've got this whole process for like reforesting. And you can see just how lush this area is compared to neighboring places that you drive through to get there. It's a pretty incredible thing. Pretty cool thing to see. Now in this particular area as well, there's a bunch of feral sheep. So as they start to rut too, I think more come on and come off. But we're hoping to maybe turn up a ram. No real pressure. I was just kind of going out for the morning, doing a, doing like a half a day hunt kind of thing. The real goal was to shoot a lamb or a ewe for a big birthday cook up. So we went up there, started just kind of walking around still hunting tunnel, ton of sheep running around. You know, my thought was like, oh, there's so many sheep. Was just kind of wait, there's some ewes and some lambs and stuff that we had kind of shots on. Wasn't being like super aggressive with it. It's kind of like, let's look for a ram. And then on the way back we'll shoot, shoot a lamb or something. And then kind of working through maybe a little bit later, before the wind started to shift this, there was this kind of you and lamb together. So I was like, oh, I'll just shoot this lamb, draw back, do my thing. Pretty sure I arranged it. Shoot and just shoot. I just shot over it, Just straight up airball. And I'm like, dude, what the hell? If I knew that. I was like, if they knew what was the day, how the day was going to pan out, probably would have, I don't know, I don't know, focus a little bit more, what have you. But I don't know if I just like, you know, I was really pulling through the shot. Maybe just I don't really know what happened. A small target, but I mean that's like not smaller than the targets that I'm like not smaller than a dot on a target at 30 again, 30 or 40 yards. Can't remember what it was. Just whiffed it. And so I was like, well, that sucks. Okay. And then just continued to hunt on. We had some other stocks that got blown and they, the sheep actually just started giving us the run around. It's one of those things where you go out and you think like, oh, this is easy hunting, okay. I mean really like super target rich environment. And you just keep getting school. I Don't know if it's like, not taking it as seriously as you would something else. I don't know. But I had another shot at a ram, actually like hit a tree and slowed it down just enough to. To go under it. So I was like, man, I've shot two arrows. Like, missed two animals. Like, what the hell is going on, dude? And. And I. And it's not like things weren't off, it's just. It's. I don't know. Sucks to suck, I guess. I was like, what's going on? So finally had an opportunity at, I don't know, a U. That walking back, you popped out and. And my like, dude, my range estimation in this country was bad. So, like, sometimes you get a quick chance, you draw back, you're like, yeah, that's 30 yards. And it'd be like 50 yards. So what's going on here? So this U came out, shot it, ended up hit it a little back. So we just waited a little bit and moved up, found it again, and put another arrow in it just to speed things up. And of course, it was like an ancient. You some. Some old mutton for. For the feast. But we ended up cruising up the road, and there's a ewe and a lamb that Justin got out and shot. And so we ended up with some. Some good meat and just a lot of fun. Honestly, like, I felt like that day. I don't know what it was, man. I was just struggling. Like, there's just times where nothing lines up there. I felt like, okay, I'd move in on something and, you know, you'd arrange one animal, that one would move off. The ones in the back looked like they were right with it, and they ended up being 10 yards past it. You know, the way that this terrain was. Do you got. My range estimation was just off, like, absolutely horrid, you know. And so I like, I shot, I think four arrows or something like that. Shot all my arrows, whatever. I ended up with a sheep. But, man, it was just a struggle bus for me that day. I don't know. That's just. Look like that. It happens, you know, I was thinking in my head, dude, it just sucks when it sucks. Like, I don't know what was going on, but I was not doing great. You know, I ended up with a sheep, and that's all good, but I had a blast. It was like, you know, short morning hunt. We came back with some meat, went back butchered, like, skinned, and I kept the lamb whole. Cause the plan was to just like spatchcock that and slow cook it. And we went back butchered up the. Cut up the big ahi from the day before and. And then put the, you know, the lamb wasn't going to do anything crazy with it. Just cleaned it up and put it in the fridge for the, for the party the next day. So also, oh, Ryan and Justin went out the day that we were on the boat. They went out spearfishing and shot some ono as well. So we had some of that. You know, I've had cooked ono or you know, some people might call it wahoo. I don't. To me, I'm like, man, not a great fish cooked. It's a little dry. It's white fish. People love it. Some people love that dry white fish. You know, I'll say some things that might be controversial. I'm not like the biggest fan of halibut or cooked wahoo rono. I mean it's just like a dry white fish. However, have those sashimi and raw. Phenomenal. Like I've had. I've sashimi, halibut. I've sashimi'd this. This is the first time I had the ono sashimi and it's phenomenal. Like that's how that fish should be eaten. Just uncooked. That's. Or make it into some pokey or something like that. That's. That. That's as good as it gets. So we had all that stuff. We had a lot of makings for the feast and so for the birthday dinner and the next day for Uncle Rick, we ended up. I ended up taking that lamb and I didn't do. I. I just did kind of like a Mediterranean style. So I got some garlic. This is like my favorite way to do lamb, any kind of lamb. And I've shot a few, you know, mouflon and other wild sheep. And I've done this even with like venison one time. Oh, I did this, this with a, like a. I shot a real young white tail doe or even just a like white tailed dough. I've done this with hindquarters. It's a really great way to cook stuff. So whether you've got lamb or sheep or wild. Whatever the wild lamb's like, it's, it's more. I don't know, it's just phenomenal. I think it was really good tasting. So the plan was I was gonna. I spatchcocked it. So that's where the whole thing is pretty much whole. And you split it so it can lay on the grill flat. So I did that and then I got garlic, olive oil, lemon, rosemary, thyme, and like salt and pepper and Dijon mustard. So what I do is I take like two whole clove, like a lot of garlic, two whole heads of garlic, maybe four heads of garlic, whatever, depends how much you got. And strip that down, put it in a. I just put it in like a blender or food processor. I'll throw in quite a bit of Dijon mustard, olive oil, and then like rosemary and thyme in with that, and then a bunch of lemon juice, like maybe four, three, four lemons, whatever. Then I'll. I'll blend all that together and make like. It kind of makes like this paste marinade. And then I coated the whole lamb with that. And so then I take that and then just salt and pepper on the top. And then aside from that, I also took a knife, poked some holes in, in the meat and. And then slid whole pieces of garlic in there. So this thing is, is primed, it's ready. So I did that with the lamb and then I did a piece of the U as well, like the hindquarter, just because they had extra room on the grill and quite a few people, so. And to just kind of compare the two, then I put it on like a pellet smoker and I just smoked it on like low for probably two hours just to get that kind of smoky crust going. And then cranked it up to like 450 and put it in for another hour and a half, something like that. The lamb being like so tender, it essentially made it like almost like a pulled pork texture where it just shred off the bone. The U came apart, but it could have used more time, I think, but it was cooked enough where you could slice it and then take those pieces. It was just a little bit tougher, but it turned out incredible. So for the birthday dinner, we had, we took some of that ono and ahi and made sashimi. I made a couple like spicy tuna roll or spicy tuna hand rolls and some other things like that. Justin made an incredible poke and we put that. We had some rice and just essentially did bowls with the fish. Oh, and then I think we had some of that uku or that gray snapper as well. So we had fish, we had the poke, we had rice, and it was just like poke bowls with that lamb and that rice. We had some, you know, wasabi and soy sauce to add on the top, some hot sauce. And it was just, it was phenomenal. The one, the one thing that we never thought of because it was like myself My buddy Josh Justin did the poke and then our other brother in law, you know, helping out. And it's like the dudes were in charge of dinner. And the girls were like, you guys think of any sides? Like, no, We've got meat, we've got fish, we've got wild sheep. Why would you need any sides when you let the dudes plan the dinner? There's never sides, man. That's like. I think that every time I make dinner, I always start cooking the meat and I go, oh, I probably should have maybe put those potatoes in. Oh, maybe I should have cooked that broccoli. Oh, I guess I could have started a salad. But I think that's just how I, that's how I go. We at least had the rice. That was a, you know, that was the fourth out because we made, we were making sushi. So we had a plenty of rice for the bowls. I think that was, that was plenty of topping enough. You got the fish, you got the meat, you got the rice. It was an incredible meal and so much fun. It was, it was, it was really just a fun family trip. And my wife was there, the kids were there, A lot of my wife's family was there. So we just had a blast. Just kind of share that, that portion of the trip with you and. Yeah, and I think one of the other things that, you know, it was like a vacation hunt. You know, that's one of the cool things about hunting on Hawaii or Maui or whatever is you've got so much around and so many ways to collect food. And one of my favorite things. Oh, there's the place where we were staying at. There's like a orchard back there. So we ended up picking some fruit and like everything that we made in that meal, for the most part, the limes, the, the citrus, all the anything that we had throughout that we just picked there. So there's fruit that we can pick, there's meat that we shot, there's fish that we caught. It was just a really cool way to experience it. And we had, we had an awesome time. That trip was a little bit of a pit stop for my family, my wife and Danielle and my kids renting kit because we were continuing on to New Zealand to do a little bit of fallow deer hunting as a family. So I'll share that story next week. There's. We got, we had some great, awesome hunts, Some fun stuff. I got to me and the little guy was like, dad. And it was. The boys went out hunting one day and he's only three but dude, he, he hiked like three miles. And I'll tell, I'll share that story, but it was, it was a ton of fun. Got a good buck, and man, it was just fun. So. But the, the Hawaii trip was incredible. Like, I, I mostly because my grandma lived on Hawaii for a long time, so. Or Maui. Sorry. So most of my hunting and fishing stuff is around Maui, so it was cool to experience another island and also get to do some hunting and fishing and stuff there. And especially in this like, off season time where I, when the day that I left, I was like, I just finished plowing my driveway, like massive amounts of snow. And then the next day you're in hot weather, spearing fish in the ocean. So it was a lot of fun to do this time of year and just a really incredible trip. The one thing that I do want to, I guess, assess is like the point of this podcast. I like to share stories. I also like to share tips and tactics to help make you a better hunter. And one of the things that I am constantly trying to do is analyze things that I do right, things that I do wrong, and, and assess that. I felt like, you know, there are days, sometimes there are seasons, sometimes there are hunts, sometimes there are days on the hunt when you just feel like it's off, you're off. It's all off. Like, it's just struggle bus, right? I mean, I experience it. Everybody experiences it. I've hunted with guys that I know, or they're like, these dudes are absolute legends. And like, I've seen, it's like they're like, dude, I just suck today. And I'm like, yeah, dude, it happens. It happens. It happens to me. Happens to everyone. There's days where you just can't. It's like you can't put it together. I don't know what it is. I don't, I don't know what it is. You always fear those days. You never want those days to be on those, those hunts where it's just that epic day or that once in a lifetime tag, right? And for me, that's what I always try to do. At least a couple hunts, if I can, that are where you aren't. It's kind of maybe a no pressure hunt, but you're just getting in a few reps. Something like this where it's like an off season hunting wild sheep, feral sheep, you can do it for. On stateside, for like white tail does. You can do it for ducks during the Archer, like during the duck season, like hunting birds during the season with your bow, just getting out and getting some reps in and getting those days where it's like cool. I made, I made some awesome connect or yeah, I made some mistakes. It happens. And I think that just getting out and getting some time in helps no matter what. When I think about the upcoming fall in some of the tags that I've played for. So I, I actually, I ended up drawing burning my Arizona points on a late season archery elk tag. So gonna be a spot in stock elk hunt. I think it's in November, should be a decent year for it. But like anything, you know, things can change. But also I was like, you know, I had a lot of points but not enough. I accidentally, many years ago, I guess, like I probably would have had 20, 20 some odd points for Elk. I think I had 13 when I cashed him in. Now I think when I had 10 points, I put in for an archery tag that I figured I was going to draw back then. Woody drawn somehow randomly. I think when I highlighted the box, I'd scrolled with my mouse to scroll down the page and must have just put it on some random box. And I burned 10 points on a. Some random archery cow tag in a unit. I was like, what? And that was the year before they had the point guard for so you could get your, your points back. So I accidentally drew a cow tag with my Arizona points and then had to start over. Finally got like 13 points again and decided, you know what, I'm just going to, I'm just going to cash them in because really I'm going for random anyways on some of these tags. It's like, I don't know if these points even matter, but I can use them to draw this particular hunt, I think. So I, I did that. I actually guess I. It was my second choice. So I did. I guess I drew it in the random anyway, so I don't know. I don't even know if the points mattered. So I ended up cashing those points for a late season. But when you think about it, you're like, okay, I probably won't draw that tag again. Whatever. It's. It's a hunt that's coming up and it's one of those where, you know, I might get one opportunity. Maybe I'm gonna, I'm gonna scout and hopefully find a good bull. That's gonna be the goal. Find the good bull. And you want that opportunity that. To go out without a hitch, right? And I think that with bow hunting, there's that thing where you can practice, you can practice in your backyard, you can practice wherever. But there is also that time in the field to make mistakes, to do things right and wrong, to. To just go through the motions that really help when something really important comes down the pipe. And that really important thing might be a doe, whitetail, it might be a big bull, elk, it might be a once in a lifetime sheep tag. It doesn't really matter. I've always been a big fan of just getting out with the bow. So if it's off season, okay, this time of year, yeah, you can, you can travel and you can go places. Like I, I go to New Zealand, you know, I've done that for years and hunted with my bow. I go to Hawaii and hunt with my bow. But that's not accessible for everyone. But there are hunts around where you're at that are accessible that are almost year round. One of the things that I used to do a lot this time of year, hunt and call predators or coyotes, foxes, coyotes, whatever's legal where you're at, man, to do that with a bow is fun. It helps out the, the deer populations for sure. Especially in the springtime. I primarily target predators in the springtime. Go to areas where deer dropping fawns and start calling and hunting coyotes. You could do it with a rifle, you could do with a bow. You can do it with header, whatever, but it gets you out in the field. I feel like that there's kind of a lack of predator hunting lately. You know, maybe kind of when I was growing up, it was a big thing and I just feel like it's maybe, maybe I'm not paying as much attention to it, but I feel like I've been out hunting places. We used to not see as many predators. You see a lot more deer. I don't know. Call what you will. I believe that there's a strong correlation between the two. So there's something you can get out and do or even during the season, late, later in the fall when maybe you've got a big game hunt that's later. Some of the things that I do a lot is like, hey, when bird season's open, I'll spot and stock ducks on the river and with my bow or on the in creeks. I'll go hunt quail like with my bow. Just put on like a blunt tip and go do that. I'll hunt grouse in the mountains with my bow. Just different things to get those repetitions built. There's other stuff around like pig hunting in different places. You know, I, I live Close to California. So that would be a place that I would go do pig hunting, chase, chase pigs. And just to get out and things is like, it's not maybe as much pressure. It doesn't cost a crazy amount to do some of these things. Even just like non game, you know, whatever. I don't know. Ground squirrels. Like, dude, I've chased ground squirrels with my recurve a bit in the springtime. Like just because it's something to do, it's something you can do. Maybe I bring my recurve or my longbow out when it is like late summer, whatever, looking for sheds and shooting at ground squirrels or pine cones or roving or whatever. That kind of practice does a lot, I think, on this, on this pass, on this hunt that I just did, you know, I think one of the things is like, you kind of take it easy, breeze. I was just like, oh, we're just looking for some using whatever and rams. And maybe you aren't in the same like focused headspace as you are on something else. And that was probably a mistake, right? Like I get. When I'm on some other kind of hunt, I'm. It's like so focused on it. I think you almost just got to take it all serious, really, if you want to. I'm the type if somebody's like, it's super easy. I will absolutely struggle every time someone's like, this is impossible. I will excel. That's just like my friends joke with me all the time. Like if I tell you it's impossible, like I'll go do it. Like I remember with somebody and they're like, oh, there's these deer out in this flat. They're absolutely impossible to kill. Like it's just too open. Four hours later, I came back with like a big buck from this big flat. Just crawled all day and shot one, right? It was like, if it's impossible, I'll do it. But I take that kind of mentality. Someone's like, oh, it's so easy. Like you will do every time. It's easy. I swear to God, I struggle. Maybe. Maybe it's just the amount of focus. So I think that there's something to be said for that. I don't know. The other thing is one of the things that, you know, really got me on that, on that little she punt. The range estimation. I. I feel like I. I do rely on pretty good range estimation, but when you go to a new place and you're hunting a new animal, oftentimes it's like maybe your. Your Your perception of how big that animal is in that particular landscape can be off. It seemed like everything looked a lot closer, maybe because it was still hunting, forested. And then there would be like these dips in the. So like the lava rock would come down, right? And it would look like flat terrain, but there would be a gap of space in between. And that's what was throwing me off. It's like, oh, it would drop down and would go across this little canyon that I couldn't see from my eyesight. It looked like it was just flat and straight. And yet there's 10 yards in this little canyon draw that you can't see, and the animals on the other side of that, or there's a group split up and one's close and then one's further back. So I range the close one, it moves off. Okay. I just pivot to the one that was ne looked next to it. It's actually 10 yards behind it. You know that that can trick you. And range estimation is, is a lot like, is huge when it comes to bow hunting. So I think in one of the things that I do when I have more time as, as I'm walking around in any new area, and I really wasn't doing this, and I probably should have been, is when I'm walking around in a new area, I actually have my range finder out. But before I get into animals and I'm like, guessing, how far is that? How far is that? How far is that? And I start to build that, and we saw a lot of animals. I should have been ranging more of them and guessing, oh, oh, that's actually. So then you can start to build that calculator out of like, oh, it looks 30. It's actually 45. Huh. Okay. Now I can kind of recalibrate and sometimes it takes a little bit of time. But if you're going out on a western big game hunt, you're from somewhere else and you're used to hunting in a tree stand or whatever. One of the things that I always tell my hunters is like, yeah, just as you're walking around, guess things and start ranging. If we encounter any animals that we aren't going to shoot, cow, elk or something like that, guess the yardage range it, you know, whatever. And if you're continually off, you know, make sure you get a good range first before shooting. Because a lot of times when I'm hunting or whatever I do, I, I always like the range is very important. But sometimes things happen, especially when you're still hunting and you just need to be ready when you go, like, oh, it's 20 yards. That's close. Like, that's the top pin. But it's actually not. It's 30 yards, it's 35 yards. Okay, that makes a big difference. And I. And I do like. I like my setup with a heavier, slower arrow. So for smaller animals, it makes a bigger difference. I probably will. I think what I'm going to do this year is I'm going to make another archery setup. Going to make, like, a lighter, faster arrow for just smaller, smaller animals and for a different style of hunting. But, yeah, I think that that's one of, like, the takeaways is. Is building out that calculation when you're somewhere else, a new species, a new animal, a new terrain really builds that out. It doesn't matter if you're rifle hunter, bow hunter, whatever. It's a good habit to get into, especially, like, if you go out west for the first time or even if you're just in an area that's like, big canyons. And as I'm hiking up range across the canyon, so you can get that depth perception, go, oh, this canyon looks 400 yards across, and it's 800 yards across. Or this looks like 800 yards across. Oh, it's 350 yards across there. Sometimes that drop where you have, like, a big canyon between you makes things look further than they are. And sometimes when you don't have that drop, makes things look closer. Like I was saying on that caribou hunt that I did last year, everything looked super close because there was. It was just like a big caribou and nothing. You look at, you go, oh, that's gotta be 50 yards, 98 yards, 120 yards. What's going on? Like, there's no depth perception. So you just start to recalibrate that, that guess. Because it makes a big difference in scenarios where you just have to draw back and shoot, or you've ranged something, it's moved off, and now you got to guess on that next animal that comes out. And I think that that, like, range estimation is huge for making a shot on target where you want it to be. So my tip or takeaway, I think, from what I learned or things that I know and maybe just kind of do lackadaisically, is when you're out there, as you're moving around, do that range estimation. Do that like guessing. And then for bow hunters, for rifles, get out in the field like before you're your tag and go chase something, whether it's, you know, Feral pigs somewhere, wild hogs. Whether it's birds, during the art, like during the season for upland game, waterfowl, later in the season, like before your big game hunt, maybe it's coyotes, you know, predators, squirrel, ground squirrel, whatever it is, get out and, and just get some, some repetition and move or even like another, another thing that I do a lot, especially with my like if I'm gonna. When I kind of switch from say I'm gonna go, I've been hunting with my compound bow and I'm like I'm gonna go on a recurve longbow hunt, I take it out and as I always carry like a practice blunt tip arrow with me and I'll just for the day even, maybe it's during that hunt, whatever. I'm just walking around shooting pine cones, guessing yardages, just flinging arrows, man, in the terrain and field where I'm hunting. Because it starts to build that muscle memory back. So when that bull elk or that doe white tail or that mule deer buck, whatever comes out, I'm ready for it. And there is that. That practice in the backyard makes a big difference. Building that repetition. And that's what we're going to start talking about. As we start talking about like we go from tag draws and things like that to planning and preparation for the season, especially for our tree hunting. There's a lot of things and ways that you can practice to build that muscle memory for the hunt. But it goes so far, right. I think that it's very important and that's like building the basics. But if you can get out in the field in the springtime, maybe you're shed antler hunting and you can bring your bow around and shoot some pine cones or you know, maybe chase a few coyotes, whatever. Like that kind of practice, that kind of repetition really builds that skill set. So when you've got that tag that's down the road, that once in a lifetime tag or whatever it may be, you're ready for it because you've done those things already. And I think that that's. Sometimes we, we've got all that. We put all this time into applying. We put years and years of points and planning and preparation for the hunt. And to be realistic, most hunters might get one opportunity a year, one opportunity every four or five years. Right. So how do we get more opportunities? Well, it's chasing things in those off seasons. It's expanding what you might be hunting. It's getting out in the field and just getting that like infield practice, range estimation, shooting, drawing, whatever it might be and that can be really valuable lessons learned from for that one we're gonna call it more important or more rare opportunity. So we're using repetition and other opportunity to practice for those other opportunities. And it's a great way to just get prepared and get ready as we look towards some of the spring season. Some of the things to chase out there. I know a lot of people really enjoy chasing turkeys this time of year, especially depending on where you live. If you live in the Midwest or eastern part of the US it's, it's one of the things that you get to chase. You know, for us out west, often spring bears gets a lot of focus. But even just chasing turkeys can be a lot of fun. Now as somebody that says that can be a lot of fun, it is not elk hunting. Okay. You know, everyone should know my stance on that. But I do agree that chasing turkeys can be fun. One of the great supporters of this podcast, Vortex Optics, they've got their Viper shotgun enclosed micro green dot, which is a dot sight for your shotgun. This came out and it just, it, it's a low profile. You can also use it for like wing shooting. I'm actually going to put one on mine for duck hunting and, and some other stuff I actually, I just picked up, I'm finishing up my application process on it, but I picked up one of those banishments. Was it there, the banish 12 that like, it's a, like a horizontal suppressor for a shotgun. I'm excited about that and I think I'm going to throw like a, one of these green dots on that because I feel like it'll help me kind of focus on that shotgun for, for some waterfowl hunting later on in the season. But I think I'm going to try to get out and do a little bit of turkey hunting as well. So I've got a little bit of time here and I was like, ah, you know, it's been a while since I've seriously chased any turkeys. I, I, I'm kind of, I, as much as I love bow hunting, I've got too many friends that are like, you don't turkey hunt with a bow. They're hardcore boners. And like turkeys are meant to be shot with a shotgun. So like I'll, I'll adhere to that. Like I'll, I'll go hunt them with a shotgun. It's all good. I tried to draw my Nevada turkey tag. I think I got more points for a turkey tag in Nevada than I did for sheep but didn't went unsuccessful for that. So maybe I'll, I don't know, I'll figure something out. I got maybe go to Montana or something and chase some turkeys there. But yeah, that, that's, that's new. And then for those of you that are maybe more like into some tactical shooting, I noticed that they also had a new Strike Eagle 10 or so. It's a 1 to 10 by 24 first focal plane like rifle scope. I had a similar scope to this on like a big bore rifle. But if you're, if you're into that tactical shooting, that looks like an awesome scope. I haven't shot it yet but it looks, it's set up for you know like an AR platform rifle or whatever. I know a lot of people like this time of year it's fun to go out and shoot and if you got, if you're looking for something new that's new there as well or if you're just trying to stock up on any Vortex optics whatever this time of year, prepare for spring bear hunting and stuff like that, feel free to check out my website Remy Warren dot com. We've got some of that stuff in the store. We don't have everything and, and there's always other, you know, any of your local retailers or online retailers that have a lot of this stuff as well. So thank you guys so much for all the support. Oh one of the things I was going to mention before we go, I've got if you think it'd be fun to do a little bit of an archery shoot with me, I am auctioning off through the Nevada Big Horns Unlimited. So go to my website Remy Warren dot com. I'll have this information up on the main page. A link to the, the auction. So for those of you joining us at the NBU dinner banquet dinner. I'll be there. And, and the auction's going to go. I did a package with my day six Arrow company so we've got a yet to be released broadhead which I'm pretty excited about. This might give it all away if you want to kind of know what's coming up and what's in the works. We're going to, we're going to launch it here pretty soon. But the new broadhead, the, the winner of this auction will get the new broadhead. We've got a brand new Matthews Arc. We've got Montana Knife company knives, we've got Vortex Rangefinder. I've got Schnee's Boots in there like day six Arrows. I'M gonna get you all set up. It's an incredible gear package. Like, I don't even know what the, the gear itself's worth. Like, probably $6,000. Some first light gear. Like, just a bunch of gear. And then I'm going to do a private 3D shoot. I've got. I'm gonna set up a bunch of 3Ds on the mountain and do a barbecue for the winning bidders, like them and five to 10 friends. So it should be an awesome time. It's all, all that money, 100 donation going to Nevada Wild Sheep Conservation. So I'm excited about that. If that's something that you might be interested in and you want to bid on it and you aren't at the auction, you can bid online. So that's, that's going to be cool. I'm excited about that. We raise a ton of money for Nevada Bighorns Unlimited at that, at that auction and dinner. And then just as another thing, if you're like, sheep hunting sounds fun. NBU has a Rocky Mountain bighorn tag that they're raffling off so you can buy raffle tickets. The link will be on my website as well for that. And that's going to go. I guess it's February or, sorry, April 4th. So Friday. Good. That'd be good. Friday. So Friday, April 3rd. So it's coming up. It's like essentially almost two weeks from now. So you could be, you could have yourself a sheep hunt coming up. So that's going, that's raffling off on the third. So if you, if you're there or you're coming or you're not coming, you can still get a raffle ticket for that to try to win that sheep hunt. And then I've got that auction item going off. So if this, if you're listening to this podcast, you're like, that sounds like a cool little experience and you get some cool gear as well. That might be for you. We're gonna try to, try to raise some money for conservation, so appreciate that. Thank you guys so much. And until next week, I'm just gonna say, don't suck. Sometimes you gotta tell yourself, don't suck. I was, I was telling myself that the whole day I was chasing those silly fuzzy sheep around. I'll catch you guys later.