Ep. 880: Janis' Manitoba Caribou | 12 in '26

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast – Ep. 880: Janis's Manitoba Caribou | 12 in '26

Release Date: May 25, 2026
Host: Steven Rinella
Guests: Corey Calkins, Phil the Engineer, Corinne Schneider

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Overview

In this episode, host Steven Rinella leads a comprehensive discussion about the recent Manitoba caribou hunt featured in MeatEater’s “12 in ‘26” film series. The crew—joined by Corey Calkins, Phil the Engineer, and Corinne Schneider—digs into the adventures (and misadventures) of combined rifle and archery hunting for caribou in the wilds of Canada. The conversation covers everything from the unique behavior of relatively unpressured caribou, the finer points of hunting logistics and regulations, the thrill of eating uncommon cuts like caribou tongue and stomach, to the ethics of wounding game and behind-the-scenes details not shown in the films.

The tone is honest, irreverent, and full of practical wisdom. It’s a must-hear for anyone interested in North American big game hunting, wilderness adventure, and the real-life ups and downs of the hunting lifestyle.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Wildness of Manitoba Caribou Hunting

• Unpressured Animals: The crew emphasizes that many caribou in the far north haven’t encountered humans, making for a very different hunting experience than whitetail or elk in the lower 48.
  • Steven: “It’s kind of what makes caribou hunting so fun... you get to hunt unpressured animals.” [03:09]
  • On caribou acting tame: “We’re not hiding, but they’re just going about their business.” [07:04]
• Remoteness and Indigenous Hunting: While Manitoba is wild, it experiences some pressure from indigenous hunters using snowmobiles in winter, yet the area is less pressured than regions accessible by road.
• Physical and Logistical Challenge: Much of the hunt happened on foot. Motorboats used for access alarm the caribou, which are hypersensitive to engines due to frequent hunting from locals. [08:44]

2. Planning a Caribou Hunt: Tags, Outfitter Requirements, and Costs

• No DIY for Non-Residents:
  • “As a non-resident [of Canada], there is no DIY option… you have to go through an outfitter.” [12:41]
• How it Works: Outfitters have concessions with allocated tags; even if they have many tags, individual hunters are generally limited to two animals.
  • Costs cited: $14,000 for the first caribou, $2,500 for a second. [13:44]
• Contrast with Alaska: Alaska still allows DIY hunts for non-residents (with far lower costs), unlike much of Canada. [14:34]
• Corinne: “It makes it more streamlined, more enjoyable, too, going with an outfitter.” [15:31]

3. Gear and Terrain: Strategies for Spot and Stalk

• Spotting Game: Caribou are visible but reaching them is tough due to endless water and tundra. “Every direction… there’s water around… you can never really walk in a straight line.” [17:01]
• Tough Walking: Tussocks (grassy mounds) can make walking miserable—like “3/4 inflated volleyballs,” but the ground in this hunt was more forgiving. [17:58]
• Boot Choices: Hiking boots vs. muck boots—flexibility depends on wetness, but hiking boots were often preferred. [19:02]
• Binoculars:
  • Steven: “A bunch of people asked about the binoculars. I was using the Sig Zulu 6 image stabilized, which for hunts like these… hard to beat.” [21:36]
• Notable Gear: MDT triple pull bipod is praised for stability in open country. [22:05]

4. Game Care, Bears, and Camp Security

• Bear Encounters: While polar, black, and grizzly bears are present, none were seen, but pilots reported frequent sightings from the air.
  • Steven: “You have to protect your buildings because [bears] will just shred them.” [10:54]
• Camp Fortification: “You literally cover it in boards that have nails screwed through them... like a fortress.” [10:53]

5. Field-to-Table: Cooking Caribou Offal

• Caribou Stomach/ Tripe Stew:
  • Simong prepares traditional Hmong tripe stew, boiling and cleaning the stomach in multiple steps.
  • Phil the Engineer, on prepping tripe: “[Caribou stomach] is really, really soft... just boil, clean, and throw it in your soup.” [28:49]
  • Steven, on taste: “It’s like flavorless… just a texture.” [29:45]
• Caribou Tongue: Fried up, no prep needed. “It was good. I would do the same thing again.” [32:35]
• Meat Quality: Caribou described as “extremely lean, venison-like,” with similar flavor regardless of region due to diet of lichen. [31:01]

6. The Ethics and Realities of Wounding Big Game

• Blood Loss and Non-Lethal Shots:
  • In a key moment, Simong draws blood with a bow on a caribou but the shot is non-lethal (“the no zone”).
  • Steven: “That shot there, it does not kill animals.” [46:19]
  • The episode discusses the policy—if you draw blood, you notch your tag, and the hunt ends.
  • Steven, reflecting on tracking and ethics: “It’s not a vital hit… that’s a classic muscle hit… you could gash your forearm and then start running; the initial blood looks dramatic but it stops.” [47:59]
• On Wounding and YouTube Culture:
  • The crew pushes back on criticism of showing wounded animals, explaining they don’t hide failures for TV.
  • Steven: “It is a part of hunting. No one is perfect… I think [Simong] is open enough and humble enough and confident enough to show everything… you get to see the highs and lows.” [55:42–59:29]
  • Corinne (ex-hunting guide): “It’ll make you sick, the number of wounded animals… both rifle and bow.” [58:53]

7. Successes, Strategies, and Lessons Learned

• Shooting Caribou While Packing Out Another:
  • Steven: “First for me to shoot an animal while packing out another.” [37:21]
• Rifle and Bow Shots:
  • The rifles used were modest magnums (6.5 PRC cited), with concise, close-range shots (often at “bow range” due to tame behavior). [33:57]
  • For archery, patience and reading caribou movement is critical. “Patience pays so well, because… the animal will move into a position… way more favorable.” [42:24]
• Archery Kill Recap:
  • Steven recounts the pent-up anticipation before finally arrowing a caribou at close range, with vivid detail:
    • Steven: “You hunt long enough with the bow that you start thinking ‘it’ll never happen’… then the universe just gels… it’s a pretty big flood [of adrenaline].” [62:48–63:34]
  • The team choose to edit out “gruesome” moments from the archery kill out of respect and YouTube policy. [64:05]

8. Comparing Species and Tactics

• Archery Elk vs. Caribou:
  • Archery elk, especially on pressured public land, is considered “hands down” harder due to fewer opportunities, harder terrain, and elk wariness. [66:45]
  • Steven: “For caribou, restarting meant… glass and find the next bull… usually within pretty short order.” [68:30]
• Camouflage Debate:
  • The team wore mostly solids; Steven argues it’s less about camo, more about movement, shadows, and wind.
  • Steven: “Camo doesn’t help you smell any better.” [71:18]

9. Final Thoughts, Notable Quotes, and Fishing

• On the landscape and the adventure:
  • Steven: “Going into the unknown… just makes it more fun.” [09:56]
• On eating it all:
  • Corinne: “Well, good work. Tongue to stomach. Eat it all. Why not?” [33:39]
• On the trip overall:
  • Steven: “You can’t go to a place like that… with world-class fishing… and not do a little bit of fishing.” [73:16]
• The crew laments having no footage of their incredible pike action because the camera guys were too busy fishing.

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Notable Quotes & Moments With Timestamps

• On unpressured animals:
  • Steven: “There’s definitely plenty of caribou out here... that haven’t seen humans.” [03:09]
• On caribou tripe/ stomach stew:
  • Phil: “It’s just a stew... but you just throw the stomach lining into it.” [27:26]
• On ethics and losing animals:
  • Steven: “It is a part of hunting. No one... is perfect.” [55:42]
  • Corinne (ex guide): “It’ll make you sick, the number of wounded animals that... both rifle and bow.” [58:53]
• On patience in bowhunting:
  • Steven: “Patience pays so well… let the animal move into a position that’s way more favorable.” [42:24]
• On the adventure:
  • Steven: “Going into the unknown… just makes it more fun.” [09:56]
• On archery vs. rifle:
  • Steven: “You hunt long enough with the bow that you start to think like, ‘Oh, it’s never gonna happen’... and then all of a sudden, it gels.” [62:47]
• The realities of terrain:
  • Steven: “Tussock is like a 3/4 inflated volleyball, tethered to the ground, and they’re spaced just so you never know whether you’ll step on or between them.” [17:58]
• On camouflage:
  • Steven: “Camo doesn’t help you smell any better. You just got to be a good hunter.” [71:18]
• On fishing at camp:
  • Steven: “You can’t go to a place... that has world-class fishing... and not do a little bit of fishing.” [73:16]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:09] – Opening reflections on unpressured caribou
• [04:40] – Janis clarifies his hunt strategy (rifle first, then bow)
• [07:04] – Discussion of the “tameness” of the caribou
• [10:19] – Local bear activity and the need for bear-proofing camp
• [12:41] – How to hunt caribou in Canada, outfitter requirements, costs
• [16:32] – Spotting and stalking strategies; difficulties of terrain
• [21:36] – Discussion of binoculars and gear choices
• [27:08] – Hmong-style caribou stomach stew cooking lesson
• [33:57] – Rifle details, shooting caribou at close range
• [42:24] – The patience required for archery success
• [45:08] – Simong’s near-miss bow hunt and wound etiquette
• [53:15] – Steven’s archery gear breakdown
• [55:42–59:29] – In-depth discussion about wounding and ethics
• [62:47] – Steven’s archery kill; emotional payoff
• [66:45] – Comparing archery caribou vs. elk
• [71:18] – Camo talk – why Steven often skips it
• [73:16] – Recap: world-class, unpressured fishing in Manitoba

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Recap & Takeaways

This episode is a goldmine for aspiring caribou hunters, wild food enthusiasts, and anyone intrigued by true wilderness adventure. The discussion is candid—celebrating the fun and beauty of untamed places while confronting the practical, ethical, and sometimes painful realities of hunting. There are detailed how-to moments, gear breakdowns, strong ethical stances on showing hunt failures, and celebration of adventure for its own sake.

For a full immersion, watch the companion “12 in ‘26” film on MeatEater’s YouTube channel—but this episode ensures you’ll get all the wisdom, humor, and context behind the hunt, whether you watch or not.

Transcript

[Steven Rinella]

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[Steven Rinella]

We don't know if they've never seen a human, but there's definitely plenty of caribou out here in this landscape that haven't seen humans. It's kind of what makes caribou hunting fun, right? Is that, like, you get to hunt unpressured animals. There's no whitetail buck ever that would

[Corey Calkins]

do this, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, there's probably not an elk in the lower 48 that would do this either.

[Phil the Engineer]

No,

[Steven Rinella]

I hadn't even seen that clip yet. That was beautiful. Or trailer, whatever that was.

[Corinne Schneider]

All right.

[Steven Rinella]

Welcome to the 12 and 26 podcast. This is a companion show to our 12 and 26 hunt and fish films coming out this year. Hopefully you've already seen my Manitoba bear hunt and Clay and bears, Alaskan Bear

[Corinne Schneider]

Hunt and Utah mountain Lion.

[Steven Rinella]

Utah Mountain lion with Clay, where they tree a bunch of mountain lions. Today I'm joined by Corey Calkins. Calkins. I always forget when I read it. I know it's Calkins.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yes, it is.

[Steven Rinella]

And Phil the engineer to answer your questions about my combined rifle and archery caribou hunt. Thank you to everyone who wrote in or posted questions on YouTube and social media to give us something to work off here. The great Corinne Schneider is also in the house, although she says she's gonna not say anything. We'll see what happens. Corinne, you need to weigh in if there's something that really is pressing. You have a question about something. Well, now there's no avoiding it. Bill, I sent you a message late last night to have a question too, so that you're more of a part of it. Oh, that was very kind of you, but you didn't have a chance. I didn't have a chance to watch it at 10:00 p. M. And then I think you didn't get up at 4. No. This morning to watch it. Yeah. Son of a gun. All right, right off the bat, I want to clarify something that Steve has been giving me about not just me gives the whole world about this. I told him I was taking my boat and my rifle on this trip and he Assumed I'd be bow hunting while carrying my rifle as a backup in case I couldn't get the job done with my archery equipment. Not the case. My plan was always to rifle hunt first, get some meat hanging, and then focus on killing one with the bow. That way, you know, you do what. I wouldn't have that, you know, hanging in the back of my mind as I'm trying to bow hunt, being like, oh, I should just, like, quit this and get my rifle out and shoot one of these things at 200 yards. I brought up with Steve yesterday in the regular podcast. And even. Even though I explained to him my new thinking, it still wasn't enough for him. Although I don't think he actually in the moment yesterday, he, like, thought through what I presented to him. But we'll give him. We'll give him some a while. Maybe he'll come around to it. Yeah, so anyway, I was in Manitoba with some Mong Yang of someone outdoors and Craig McCarthy of North Mountain Adventures, and we had a great time.

[Corinne Schneider]

Well, the video clip we opened up with there, and if you're only listening, go to their YouTube channel and watch this podcast. It gives us a minor glimpse of how wild and pristine that part of the world looked. You also described how the area is largely untouched by people. How did this factor of virgin caribou set the grounds for the kind of hunt you'd have?

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know if I exactly understand your question there, Corey. I did want to touch on, though, in that opening bit how we're talking about how, like, a whitetail deer would never do this or an elk bull elk would never do this. What had happened is that we were like, this was after Simone had shot his bull with the. Or shot that bull with the arrow. And then like, we're standing around, you know, doing our thing, and then literally, like half an hour later and more caribou just across the pond, like, just start walking and feeding by, and they're, like, looking over at us like they can see us. We're not hiding, but they're just, like, going about their business, you know, acting pretty tame. Yeah, totally. Or just like unpressured animals. I later found out, well, while we were there that there, this place isn't quite as unpressured maybe as some of the places that we've hunted in Alaska, that Alaska is a little bit more remote because I think there's more mountains that are harder to get across with different, you know, whatever types of, you know, vehicles. So we've always done fly in hunts and it's just like, it's rough enough country where you can't snowmobile into it. You can't whatever. In Manitoba, northern Manitoba, the. The. The locals, the indigenous have, like, special tags. Right. That they can hunt these caribou herds pretty much all winter from. I understood. So once the snow comes, like, they hunt them on snowmobile. So they're definitely a little more pressured. What we realized, too, with these caribou, we were hunting mostly on foot. One time we got in a boat, and when they hear an engine on a. On a lake, they're out.

[Corinne Schneider]

Really?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah. They know what that means. They, like, hear that little skiff engine coming and they know that there's hunters coming that are probably going to make loud noises.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Reminds me of that snowmobile engine, too.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, maybe. But, like, if you think about it, that's how you access this caribou country. You land on a lake, you drive around a boat on a lake. And for a lot of people that don't have the physical capability just to hike, you know, 10 miles a day on tundra, like, the way to get close to a caribou is going to be to see one that's like getting pinched by a lake somehow and then, you know, motorboat over there pop out of the boat and then hopefully get a shot.

[Corinne Schneider]

Cool.

[Steven Rinella]

But, yeah, I wanted to do this hunt because when we were down there for our la. A year ago, when I was down there, black bear hunting, Craig was talking about possibly getting into caribou hunting. And he had this camp that he wanted to check out he had never been to, and he was looking for, like, a group of guys that would sort of do an exploratory trip. And as soon as I heard exploratory trip, I'm like, man, I'm all over that. Like, that sounds like a good time. Going into the unknown. Yeah, you know, I mean, stuff's always unknown for me. Going there someplace the first time. But when everybody there.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Is on kind of the never seen this place before program. It just makes it more fun.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

More wild, more adventure.

[Corinne Schneider]

That's cool. Well, our first submitted question comes from @Hunter shut. He asked, did you see any bears and where there supposed to be any in the area? He gave it a Google search and learned that that far north in Manitoba has polar, black and grizzly bears.

[Steven Rinella]

Totally.

[Corinne Schneider]

You see any bears?

[Steven Rinella]

We didn't see a single bear, but the pilots that we talked to were like, oh, yeah, sometimes we just. Instead of going straight down to Churchill, we'll fly over to the coast of Hudson Bay and then fly south and it adds like, you know, 30 minutes to the fly or whatever. And they're like, it's nothing to see. You know, two, three half dozen polar bears walking around. Wow. So, like, we're far enough away from the water that we're probably not going to see a polar bear, but had we seen one, no one's going to be like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. They'd be like, sure. They, they come through there.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So, yeah, they're around. When we put. I posted a video on my Instagram of when we closed up that shack. You literally cover the place in boards that have nails screwed or hammered all the way through them. Like you basically just take a piece of plywood, fill it full of nails are sticking out the far side, and then put it on the windows on the deck. Like anywhere bear could try to like pry something to get through. Like you literally cover it in, in, you know, like you fortify, it's going to make into a fortress. And a lot of people commented like, oh, you guys are just leaving too much food in there. The stink of, you know, food, it's like you're in there living in there. You're. You're cooking in there. You can't get rid of that smell. I don't care if you had a whole 55 gallon drum of bacon soda. It's not going to get rid of all the human smell. And bears are curious. They're going to want to get in there. When you're in that kind of remote place, the same thing happens in all remote places where bears are like, you have to protect your buildings because they will just shred them, you know, and they'll get inside and then just make a giant mess.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Like you said, beyond just the smell of food and caribou meat and blood, that they're just curious. They love to get into stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah, I think that's the. Yeah, I mean that's just a super small fact factor of like why they're getting in there would be like the dead meat smell around there.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yep. All right, next topic. A lot of folks asked about how to plan their own caribou hunt. If you need to apply for tags as a non Canadian, do you need to use a guide or an outfitter, etc. I won't read the individual questions, but can you address the tag system for caribou in Canada and can you do it yourself or do you need a guide? As a non resident?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I've only hunted Trying to think now. Hunted BC and I personally haven't hunted. It was when Steve hunted and Cal hunted and I was just there as part of the crew. And then I've hunted Manitoba twice now. And I believe that across Canada there is no DIY option like you're going to as a non resident for. Residents, sure, have at it. But as a non resident, you're going to have to go through an outfitter. And basically the outfitters have like these zones, concessions they call them, and they're allotted so many tags in their concession and then they can do what they want with them and sell them to whoever. There is a limit though, like for. For. Let's just say Craig had, I don't know, 50 caribou tags for that concession up there. Even though he has 50, if it's just you and I for the entire season and we paid him as much money as he needed to be happy, you and I couldn't each kill 25. We're still limited by the government to two.

[Corinne Schneider]

Gotcha.

[Steven Rinella]

Craig this year is charging. Sorry. If you're going to book, it'd be next year. So it's going to be $14,000 for one caribou and $2,500 if you want to shoot a second one. I honestly don't think it worked out good for us because we again wanted to get some meat and then we wanted to have fun bow hunting. But like, I really don't feel like you need to go on this trip thinking you need to kill two animals. I think caribou hunting is kind of sometimes had that. I don't know, just like, you know, you're gonna hopefully go see a bunch of animals and like, you hate to like kill one the first day and then you don't have anything else to haunt for the rest of the time you're there. Yeah. But like, honestly, now that I've done it a bunch, like one tag is plenty. Really. It's like if you. Yeah, sure, if you are trigger happy, you're just going to have to really control yourself or have a good wingman that can be like, no, it's not the one you want to shoot, Corey. There's bigger ones out there. Let's wait, you know. But anyways, yeah, so if you're going to do it in Canada, you're gonna have to go through an outfitter, find them. These prices are definitely still. Well, it's cheaper for a guided hunt, I still, I think in Canada than in Alaska for a guided caribou hunt. But in Alaska, you Can still do diy because caribou is one of the species that in Alaska you don't have to have a guide for. And so, you know, I'm guessing if you just go with a transporter, you know, you could probably still do a Caribou hunt for 5 to 8 DIY style, you know, counting everything. Obviously you'd have to buy a tag in Alaska, but if you're going to do Canada, like, you just got to book with the outfitter. He's going to there. He or she, they're going to have the tags for you covered.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Make it more streamlined, more enjoyable, too. Going with an outfitter.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, I mean, it just depends on what you want to do.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah, sure.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, I think for. There are a lot of us that like, the reason I did that with Craig is because, one, you had to. But, like, it sounded like a good. Sounded like an adventure. You know, had he been like, oh, yeah. I also had this caribou hunt that I've been doing for 10 years. We go to this lake, you're going to catch a bunch of fish. And it kind of told me what's going to happen. Maybe I wouldn't be so interested, you know.

[Corinne Schneider]

True.

[Steven Rinella]

But I think a lot of people like the, you know, the possibility of going on a DIY adventure because it just does add adventure, you know, you don't know the outcome where when you go outfitted, I don't want to say you're guaranteed, but, you know.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Get to look at a brochure and see the terrain and potentially the animals. Yep. Both sides less unknown. Yep. It was interesting watching you guys spot caribou, which didn't seem too difficult to find caribou.

[Steven Rinella]

No.

[Corinne Schneider]

Then to watch you guys strategize how to stalk and close the distance in that terrain in the tundra and decide when and if it was worth pursuing those caribou you saw. Here's a clip from Phil.

[Phil the Engineer]

There's some caribou right over there. Right to the left of that.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah, I see him.

[Phil the Engineer]

There's a whole herd.

[Steven Rinella]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

[Phil the Engineer]

Man, that's the longest it's ever taken me to spot an animal.

[Steven Rinella]

30 seconds. Yeah. So you can see we're looking at caribou in the distance. You can. Every direction we look or the camera looks, you can see there's water around. And so you can. You can never really walk in a straight line to the animals that you're seeing. And I think this is. This is just what we were calling day zero. Which is like a 400 incher. I'd say let's go. But I mean we had to like swim a couple of lakes to get to them. Yeah. Well, I think we can go right through the middle here to get around it. But don't you think. I mean, that's like a hour. Yeah. Plus trek, I think. Right. Probably we hadn't. Well, we're still watching. Craig and I are debating how far we want to walk here. You know. Does this one keep going for a while, Phil? Yeah, it's over. All right. So, yeah, like there. Tundra comes in many different forms. This one didn't have the dreaded tussocks. That can be so just tiring that the spongy bottom. No, it's. The tussock is the best way. I heard someone describe it. It's like taking a like a 3/4 inflated volleyball tethering it to the ground and you grow some grass on top of it and they're just perfectly spaced where like you can never decide if you're going to step on top of it and possibly have it move a little bit or step between them and it's just. It just wears your butt out. Like we once were on a hunt with Steve and Brent and we were going to another. We were just going to another glass and knob that was in the distance just because we want to see some new country. And we got halfway there on the tussock and the whole crew was like mutinied. We just quit. We said we're going back to our original one because no one wanted us to do tussock for the next hour or whatever it was, you know.

[Corinne Schneider]

And what boots are you wearing? Are you in like muck boots most of the time?

[Steven Rinella]

Well, it just depends on how wet it is.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I brought both on this trip.

[Corinne Schneider]

It looked like I saw a lot of muck boot.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. But I ended up wearing the hiking boots more. Okay. Because again, this stuff when we first were looking at it, I thought, man, it's going to take a long time to cover the country. It didn't end up being quite so bad. So we actually ended up some of that stuff that originally we thought might be too far for like, you know, a poke. Didn't end up being that bad. But we were easily going like two miles one direction. Like, for a stalk, it's tricky. It's also pretty flat out there. And so you're always just trying to find some sort of terrain undulation, you know, to get between you and the animals to, you know, to hide. You so you can close the distance.

[Corinne Schneider]

And you mentioned all the water. You guys had a boat, but the water was probably not all connected. Exactly. Pick a route around it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. Now, the one I ended up killing with my bow, that one, it was close enough to our lake that it made sense to get in the boat, motor up to the end of the lake, and then get out and stalk from there.

[Corinne Schneider]

Nice. Made for an easier pack out, too.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

Here's more of that. Strategizing on the spot. And stock from Simong's rifle hunt. It also seems like you guys really have been seeing tons of caribou at this point.

[Steven Rinella]

The caribou race is on. Maybe if we get along that shoreline, we'll get some cover.

[Corinne Schneider]

So this is still day zero, you're calling it, right?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, Day zero.

[Corinne Schneider]

First stock, I saw another one that

[Steven Rinella]

was still quite a ways. And what happens often with caribou is that, like, from the knob you're sitting on, at first you can't see them all. You think you can, but the little folds and creases just hide animals. And so you start moving towards one group, and then like, a different group pops up, which is what these are. So we're like, you know, just running into other caribou. Two small bulls. And they're youngsters, and they're very curious. Yeah. These younger animals that haven't been on the landscape as long, they maybe haven't seen people. And so a lot of times when they see you, especially when you just duck down and kind of get low, they're like, oh, what's that actually come towards you?

[Corinne Schneider]

Really?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

They're coming this way.

[Phil the Engineer]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

Whenever. Whenever you.

[Steven Rinella]

I think we can cover off on some of the gear. Questions, too. A bunch of people asked about the binoculars. I was using the sig zulu 6. Is the image stabilized, which for hunts like these.

[Phil the Engineer]

Okay, I'm on him.

[Steven Rinella]

He's fourth from the front. When you don't need to know exactly. Like, you're not counting inches. You just need to know if it's like a bull or a cow or if it's a caribou or a rock. It's hard to beat. Those

[Phil the Engineer]

just killed my first caribou.

[Corinne Schneider]

You did that now, how close were you guys able to get on Simong's caribou?

[Steven Rinella]

Man, it wasn't far. Couple hundred yards.

[Corinne Schneider]

Beautiful.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I remember I kept. He was dialing. He was using my rifle, and I kept having to retell him the distance, and he kept having to back it down the bipod. A lot of people Asked about too. That's the MDT triple pull, which is. It's kind of a mega bipod. You've used one too, I'm sure.

[Corinne Schneider]

I've shot off one.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. Yeah. It's great for what I would consider like front country or country where I really know that there's not going to be any way to get prone because the brush is going to be tooth thick and tall, you know, and there's not going to be other things to lay on to just give you the, you know, a prone position or anything else to rest on. And like, tundra is classic, like just brush country. Right. And so having a super tall bipod like that, it allows you to, you know, shoot from anywhere and you get in a really stable position. You know, you can shoot from your knees, you can shoot from your butt. I mean, and obviously if you want, you can get low enough to shoot prone too, with that bipod. But it's heavy.

[Corinne Schneider]

They're stout.

[Steven Rinella]

And I'm not going to carry in a backpack overnight, but like with my kids on a front country hunt, I'm always carrying that thing.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Good stability.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

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[Steven Rinella]

can see there too, Samong's first caribou meant a lot to him. I was happy for him and I was excited about him cooking a Hmong meal for us. In all the years of meat eater shows and books, we never cooked stomach or tripe and we finally did it in Manitoba and it was great. Here's another clip.

[Phil the Engineer]

Oh, with that though, yes, I do need to keep the stomach so gut. Amel, you would, but once you get the stomach out.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh shit man, he's going next level.

[Corinne Schneider]

Craig was like, wait, what? The stomach?

[Phil the Engineer]

You said traditional. So I'm like, that's the most traditional.

[Steven Rinella]

Simong hadn't told us what he was gonna make.

[Corinne Schneider]

Oh, okay. Nice surprise.

[Phil the Engineer]

Generic than you might think. It's a stew. But when it comes to this stuff, it's your stew, but you just throw the stomach lining into it.

[Corinne Schneider]

Try it.

[Phil the Engineer]

I'll clean the stomach. And we just only eat the stomach. We're not going to eat the stomach contents.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

Normally if you want to, like, you would pack the stomach. You pack liver. You would basically take this whole thing.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

You would just obviously dump the contents.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

Now, normally I would try to keep the stomach so organized. I'm assuming a caribou is like a deer where they have four stomachs.

[Steven Rinella]

You're just listening. Simone's over the gut pile, explaining this to Craig. Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

So if you really want to be technical about it, you. You separate all four stomachs. To me, a stomach is a stomach. I don't really care. They taste the same. I don't know a difference.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

So with this one, because I'm only taking just a little bit just for us to eat.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

I'm basically just going to start here, just somewhere here so that I don't take anything else. Then I'm just gonna take a little bit of a lining. So this one's already coming off pretty easy. I use a completely different knife for this situation, which is why I'm using mine and I'm not letting you use yours.

[Steven Rinella]

Right.

[Phil the Engineer]

So basically this is it. You would take the stomach. And I've never done it with caribou, so I'm actually curious to see how this goes. Now, you would just take this and just wipe off as much as you can. But you can see how this caribou's stomach is really, really soft. I just did that. And it comes off with the deer and elk. It's a little bit more hardy. Yeah. So clean this out. Rinse it out.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Phil the Engineer]

And then when you boil it, you boil it by itself, just pure water. And this top membrane right here will just peel off. And then you have the white actual, like, stripe in the bottom.

[Corinne Schneider]

Right.

[Phil the Engineer]

And then once you clean that, wash it again. Then you can just throw it in your soup. Throw it in your soup. Throw in your soup. That's.

[Steven Rinella]

Simone's now rinsing the stomach lining in the lake. And then he just dropped it into a pot of boiling water. Now he's prepping some vegetables for the actual soup.

[Corinne Schneider]

And did I hear he rinses and repeats numerous times?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. With the boiling point apart.

[Corinne Schneider]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

You. You kind. Yeah, you kind of. You're boiling the. The green kind of out of it and then replacing. Replacing the water. Going again.

[Corinne Schneider]

Quite a process.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't think it really took that long. No. Okay. No, Looks like, man, it looks different. But honestly, it's. It's like flavorless. All it is is like a. It's just a texture. This is like a weird, you know, texture.

[Corinne Schneider]

Looks just like morel mushrooms.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Definitely does have a morel mushroom look to it.

[Corinne Schneider]

So do I rice it with the

[Phil the Engineer]

tripe or just eat everything in one bite?

[Corinne Schneider]

I'm a fan.

[Steven Rinella]

Looks good. Yeah, it just tastes like the. It tastes like the bone broth. It's just the texture, really.

[Phil the Engineer]

That's what it is. I mean, it literally is just broth. It's just a lot of times the flavor will favor whatever meat you're throwing in there. That's why we call it deer stew, elk stew, whatever it is, because that usually drives the actual flavor of the broth. Meat's hard to come by in Laos, way back then and even today.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure.

[Phil the Engineer]

And so if you kill an animal when you're trying to feed a village, or in this case, your seven kids, which was very common to have multiple kids back then, one piece of steak isn't going to feed a whole village or a whole family. So the best way to distribute the amount of quantity the food that you might have is just stew.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. A couple questions came in around the flavor of caribou. Like, somebody asked if it tasted Manitoba caribou tastes different than Alaskan caribou. I don't think so. They all eat lichen, so they taste the same, as far as I know. I don't have that. I guess discerning or a high level palate. Caribou meat is extremely lean. Everybody's like, oh, well, deer's lean. This is even leaner. Like, they'll say out there, to survive the winter, you can't just have caribou meat. You have to have the salmon to have the fat. You'll die. So, yeah, super lean. I don't know. Very, very venison. Like, I don't know if it has. If there was a lineup of, you know, elk, deer, and caribou back straps, I don't know if I could really pick them out. It's on flavor. I'd pick them out more on chewiness because I always think the elk are more chewy than the other ones. Clarification, too. Someone said four stomachs. The stomach actually has. It's one stomach with four sacks in it, you know, like four compartments that sort of do the business of. Of. What's the word, Corinne? Digestion. Thanks.

[Corinne Schneider]

Like all ruminants.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Then Corey asks, how was the tongue? No boil. It was great.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah, look good.

[Steven Rinella]

Just like Randy Brown said. So we had him on, which I think are some great episodes. Although I feel like Steve missed a whole bunch of questions when we had him back. I wish I had been in there for that. Need him on again about living in the bush in Alaska. Great episodes. But he told us that, like, caribou tongue was a real delicacy and like, you could eat it immediately. Like, no slow and low prep needed for it. And so we gave it a shot, like, just washed it. Basically sliced it up, I don't know, half inch. I maybe could have done the slices a little bit thinner, but again, I didn't mind it. And then we just fried them up in a pan with some butter. It was good.

[Corinne Schneider]

Did you peel?

[Steven Rinella]

No, no peeling. Okay. Ate it all up. It just wasn't like. And it must have something to do with their diet, right? That they're just eating the lichen and they don't have to. They're not like, browsing as much as moose or. Or elk, I guess.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Or elk. Don't really browse with deer. And maybe that's why it makes it the whole thing more tender. But no, it was good. I would do the same thing again.

[Corinne Schneider]

Well, good work. Tongue to stomach. Eat it all. Why not? Let's see. We're gonna show some of the footage from Yanni's rifle stock. It almost looks too easy. Real quick, though, someone wants to know, what about your rifle? Rifle. And the caliber setup that you guys were using.

[Steven Rinella]

That was the Sig cross. It had a proof barrel on it, which is kind of custom. I got it done super short. I think it's like a 18incher because I like to run the suppressor on it. And we can't. We couldn't use suppressors in Canada, so I just have the brake on it. Okay. But the caliber was 6.5 PRC. And yeah, it was great for. For this, you know, I was expecting a longer shot, but I ended up getting a class shot so close. I was wishing I had my. My bow with me at the moment.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Well, let's see that clip, Phil.

[Phil the Engineer]

They're walking literally towards us.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah. So we're packing out Samong's bowl on our backs right now, going back towards camp. And all of a sudden these bulls just show up and they're like, we got the wind in our face and they're coming at us. And I was kind of almost like, eh, let's just like, let him be. Let's go back to camp and we'll. You Know, deal with some hongs, meet, we'll reassess. And then I started looking at the bulls. I'm like, oh, a couple of them are pretty nice, you know. And then I thought, yeah, if I get one killed now, I get more time with my bow. So yeah, we got in ahead of them. And it's funny too, man. Like these guys are seem just oblivious to us again, it's not just the three of us. There's two camera guys there too. And we're not like super well hidden. We kind of get into this like sparse cops of evergreens and there's some bushes around. But like compared to some of the other caribou that we ran into later in the week that would like, you know, at 200 yards see us and be boogieing. These guys just were like, no care in the world, like not walking towards you, not not. Yeah, like the whole time I'm wish I'm like, man, I wish I had my bow. Wish I had my bow. Yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

Because how close is this?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, like right now they're maybe 80, 90. And like I think I shoot him at like I shoot at bow range. I forget what it was. It was like 40 yards or something.

[Corinne Schneider]

That's incredible.

[Steven Rinella]

Maybe 50 yards.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Look at him.

[Steven Rinella]

You can see I shoot a hard horned one Song shot one that still had his velvet on his antlers. And part of that group of bulls also still had velvet antlers.

[Corey Calkins]

Are you kidding me?

[Steven Rinella]

The.

[Corinne Schneider]

The velvet.

[Steven Rinella]

Some people just get a real kick out of velvet antlers. For whatever reason. I don't find them sexy appealing at all. We've all the caribou hunts I've ever been on, if they had velvet on them, we would peel it. It's hard to preserve it in the field. Like if you want it, you know, for your mount at home, you gotta like take real good care of it. And if it's early in the haunt, it's going to be warm, the flies get to it and they start laying eggs in it. You end up with maggots in the velvet and it can just be a mess.

[Corinne Schneider]

And it looked like you were late enough into here. What were you there in August?

[Steven Rinella]

I think it was September.

[Corinne Schneider]

September that they were about to lose their velvet anyway. Obviously that one you shot it already?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I mean both. Both the ones I shot were hard horn.

[Corinne Schneider]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

So yeah, they were just like they were in the process.

[Corinne Schneider]

They're bound to come off soon anyway.

[Steven Rinella]

I think the bigger ones had maybe do it a little bit earlier because it seemed like the smaller, younger Bulls had more velvet, so.

[Corinne Schneider]

Well, you mentioned in that clip that that was a first for you to shoot an animal while packing out another one.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Have you ever done that?

[Phil the Engineer]

Twice.

[Corinne Schneider]

Oh, antelope hunting. Oh, I could see a bun and was. Had it on my backpack and was walking out, and I had a doe tag with me and shot a doe really close to the truck, which was great. Opening day, you know, they're all running around like crazy. And then another time was just on a cow hunt on a ranch I used to work at. Shot the cow was actually just dragging it down to the truck, and more elk came over, and a buddy was able to fill his L tag, so. So it wasn't quite packing it out, but dragging it out. Yeah. It happens totally rare, though.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Pretty cool.

[Steven Rinella]

We. We. Again, I'm not gonna, like, try to, you know, hide it. Like, we have five people there. And so if it's only two of you, you might be like, eh, let's not shoot one, because we still got to deal with this first animal.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And then gonna have to, you know, pack the other one out. But with five people, it's like, pretty easy to, you know, to pack out. Two Caribbean bear caribou. They're not giant, huge animals.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, like, how.

[Corinne Schneider]

How heavy was all the meat and antlers, would you say?

[Steven Rinella]

It's, I think, very similar to a mule deer.

[Corinne Schneider]

A mule deer?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, like a mature mule deer. Like, you know, you know, 10 to 20% bigger than a whitetail buck. They're just. It's. I don't know what it is about a caribou, but even when you're glassing them and you're seeing them on the hoof, they look huge. And I don't know if it's like the, like, the crazy coloration of them compared to, like, our deer or if it's their. Their antlers are obviously a lot bigger, but when you kill one, you walk up to it, it's a little bit like, oh, yeah, they're not that big, you know. Oh, I don't know.

[Corinne Schneider]

Where are we at here on this script?

[Steven Rinella]

Let's see.

[Corinne Schneider]

Talked about velvet

[Steven Rinella]

life on the island Drive said, wanted to know first sighting in the wild. Do they look bigger or smaller than you expected? It's kind of what I was just talking about. It's like, when you see them, they look huge. And you walk up to them when they're dead and they're not quite as big. I mean, the antlers are big. They are, but the. The body itself, like, I Said is not. It's like maybe calf elk, you know? Yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, you're going to probably yield, I don't know, 50, 60 pounds, 70 max off a big old giant bowl.

[Corinne Schneider]

And you talked about velvet. Mitchell Horner asks how come the velvet was cleaned off when back at camp. Do you guys clean it off at camp or out in the field?

[Steven Rinella]

Just strip it. Camp.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. The next day. Yeah, it comes off super easy.

[Phil the Engineer]

Really?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, Heels off. And the thing is, that's why I don't like shooting them in velvet, because if you're going to peel it off, it doesn't have that cool coloration that a hard antlered one does.

[Corinne Schneider]

Is it real bleach white under there?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it's kind of like. It's like bloody and bleach white, you know, and you kind of. You want to make it look brown. You got to kind of do it yourself, and it never looks quite right. And so I much prefer one that's, you know, rubbed his blood with, you know, the stains of bushes and dirt and all that and just, I don't know, looks way cooler.

[Corinne Schneider]

Let's see. Moving on. Graham underscore McCutcheon asks if you can explain how to properly age a caribou. And how old were the caribou you and Simong harvested?

[Steven Rinella]

No idea. I guess you'd have to send a. On the hoof aging them. Yeah, no idea. You could send a jawbone in, I'm sure to some biologist in Canada and they tell you how old it is, but. So mom's is definitely on the younger side. You know, I'd probably guess it was no more than, you know, two or three years old. And I don't know, just guessing, mine might have been a couple years older than that.

[Corinne Schneider]

I noticed in the video that mostly bowls that were made the film. Did you see many cows and calves wandering around too?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, they aren't as sexy. So the editor, you know, doesn't want. Doesn't put him in as much.

[Corinne Schneider]

Those cinematographers did some. Did a beautiful job out there with you. Okay, so you both killed caribou with your rifle. Then you turned your focus to hunting with a bow. You got your legs under you with more lay of the land and how the caribou around there were behaving. But now you have a harder hunt in front of you in terms of getting within bow range and trying to find enough cover in that open country. Play the clip, Phil.

[Corey Calkins]

We have this group of bulls that were bedded as we got closer they all started getting up and feeding around. We don't have a lot of COVID So we decided to get into this band of tree that kind of goes right directly towards them. But it ends probably about 100 to 150 yards to where the caribou are. They're not really in a spot where we can make any media play on them, so kind of just going with what they're giving us.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. Not a lot of COVID You know, I've learned with any of these animals when you're bow hunting and you're just trying to get in tight or you're shotgun hunting a turkey or whatever, you just like patience pace so well because eventually, like if you're looking at a situation and it's not in your favor, don't push it. You just, it's just sure you might pull it off, but hopefully you have time and you can just be patient and let the animal move into a position that is way more favorable for you to, you know, get in, get in tight on.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah, I agree. Odds of letting nature do its thing and the animal potentially getting close to you are probably higher than you pushing it, bumping the animal.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

Never see again.

[Steven Rinella]

Just like stay in the vicinity, you know, shadow them, watch them. And then next thing you know, there's just like the perfect little hill and all you can see is the top of his antlers. And you know, you just literally walk right over to the hill and at the end you gotta crawl maybe 10 or 20 yards and you're within range as opposed to just trying to belly crawl across some hundred yard open expanse. It's just like probably not going to work, you know.

[Corinne Schneider]

Take it away, Yanni.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, what's our next one?

[Corinne Schneider]

Run into the caribou. Much closer than you thought. Oh, you had to back up to make sure bulls wouldn't see or smell you.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

And then Simong dove in for his opportunity.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, again with caribou, man, you just can't. You never know which direction they're going. You think they're all kind of moving south and then they're all kind of moving north, south, and they're just all over the place. And so you're just kind of in the zone until it just like works out. And Simone was up first and so he kind of was ahead of us. And we actually ended up like mirroring him and then kind of coming back together right when he was actually like getting into it. And what happened is that these bulls sort of fed and got pushed up against this lake. And I don't and one was bedded when we finally got to him. So I don't know if they were there because the lake had maybe reprieve from the mosquitoes because it was like a little wind blowing across it. Hard to say. Maybe they're just there to get some water. But that edge, you know, and having some woods nearby allowed simong to get within bow range pretty easily.

[Corinne Schneider]

Cool. Well, here's a clip of simong's archery stock.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep.

[Corinne Schneider]

Hats off to Max and Eli for cat.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a nice shot. Isn't it beautiful?

[Corinne Schneider]

I mean, the foliage helps, but, man, they just nailed it.

[Steven Rinella]

Simong just drew on his knees, and he stands up. He's got the perfect cover. Both bulls have their heads down. He takes the shot. I think he said it was 40, 45. Runs right at him, runs at him, and then into this shallow lake, and then out the other side just did a big loop.

[Corinne Schneider]

Blood pouring down the side. At least it looks it swimming through the water.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep.

[Corinne Schneider]

And he gets out and looks pretty unscathed at that point, other than the hole in the side of his.

[Steven Rinella]

Totally. Yeah. Then he's running out of him. Yeah. This is. You know, we can talk a lot about. About what happens here. You know, Song decides.

[Corey Calkins]

That does not look good.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like a bunch of blood. Especially when you see that shot right there, you're like, oh, my God, his side is. Both sides are literally painted. I think a lot of that. The reason that it got so painted, the water helped with that. Right. It sort of lubricated the fur, lubricated the side. Like, I don't know what it would have looked like had that not happened. But I don't think it quite would have been that dramatic. But it's very clear to see anybody that's, you know, hunted long enough and shot animals, bows or rifles, like, knows that that shot there, it does not kill animals.

[Corinne Schneider]

I call it the no zone.

[Steven Rinella]

The no zone. Yeah. I often used to think. I thought for a long time that it was actually this thing called the void, where, like, you're between the spine and the spine and the lungs, which is not a thing. I now believe.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Smells like it's not a thing. The body does not work that way. There is no room in there. But what there is above the spine is a whole bunch of a thing called the back strap and the loin and meat and fat and fur. And I think a lot of people that think they hit the void actually probably ran it through, you know, the hump on the back strap and so yes, among chooses because he drew blood to basically notches tag. Craig tells him that. Yeah, that's actually a. It wasn't Craig's rule, but a lot of outfitters in Mont. In Manitoba, and I think a lot of outers in general will have that rule that like, if you draw blood, that's, you know, your tag, your hunt's over.

[Corinne Schneider]

Really makes you think about your shot just a little more.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, hopefully. I mean, I think that would be the goal that like, you know, make sure you're going to get it done when you take the shot.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But a couple of things to address, I think, in the YouTube comments. And I feel like this, it gets a little arm cherry here with the, with these comments that people are like, tell telling you what you should have done afterwards. And like I said, like the shot itself, that one in particular did not kill that animal. Like I'm a hundred percent sure of it. Those animals will take wounds like that from the tines of other animals. You know, it could get jumped on by a wolf and the, the teeth of a wolf could, you know, make a, a wound like that. It's just, it's not a vital hit. You know, you're not like. And, and that's like a classic when you're. As an elk hunting guide, you two, you know, for a dozen years, I did it. It's like a classic muscle hit. And it doesn't matter if it's in the back strap or like straight in the shoulder and you don't get the penetration to get into the vitals. Or it could be in the rear ham. It's like the first hundred yards, maybe 200 yards, you're like, hell yeah. Like, nice blood trail. And the next thing you know, it just starts going less and less and less. And then it's pin drops and then it just disappears because it's like, it'd be no different than if it happened to you. Like, you could like gash your, your forearm right now and then start running towards downtown. For the first couple hundred yards, it's gonna be pretty easy to follow you. But eventually it's going to coagulate, start drying up, and I'm not gonna be able to track your blood anymore. And you're not going to die from that wound, but the first hundred yards, I'd be like, holy, Corey's going down. Yeah, but it's just not going to happen. Like, even if you lost a couple pints of blood, I don't think it's like you're not going to Go down?

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

People asked too, about why didn't we go after it with like a. With the rifle? It, like, it honestly didn't cross our minds. We didn't have a rifle with us. Yes. We could have gone back. Let me go back to one more thing before we. Eventually, because we stand there long enough, we're talking, we're filming, we're discussing the situation. We were on. At first we were like, okay, we'll give it a couple hours and then we'll start tracking him. The bull pops up on a distant hillside. You can tell it's him because you can see the dried blood on his side. And he's feeding. When I saw that, I'm like, he's fine. Like. Like one that's gonna die that night or that you're gonna sneak up to because he's wounded and get another arrow in is not just like chilling and up and feeding anymore, you know, like, again, that arrow just went through muscle. Like, it's just not. It's like he's not losing enough blood to die. So, yeah, at that point in time, we could have been like, oh, yeah, let's go back to camp and get a rifle and we can maybe go refind him and kill him. It would have been a thing to do for sure. Honestly, it just did not cross our mind. Simone was like notching my tag. I'm done. Yeah, that was the. That was. That was the end of it. Would have been nothing wrong with going after it and trying to kill it. We may or may not have been able to find it. I don't think we would have found a wounded animal and been able to sort of do like a follow up shot, you know?

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah. Were they migrating through at that point? Like give it overnight, a day later and that group could maybe be sticking

[Steven Rinella]

around, but he could be. But yeah, like, we never saw him again.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah, you never did see. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't think we ever saw the same caribou two days in a row. Yeah. And probably not even from morning to evening. Like, they're just moving that much, you know, so. All right, onto my archery hunt.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah, let's see. Kegs. Raj9 asks which arrow broadhead did you use? How heavy was it? And similarly at Hunter J. Town wants to know what site you were running. So what was your archery set up there?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it was the. The ball was the Matthews lift X. I was running a RIP TKO arrow with a 200 grain iron wheel, single bevel with bleeders on it. The total arrow weights about 500 grains. Kyle Davidson from DCA Arrows builds those arrows for me. If you, if you, if you want a really sweet built arrow, highly. Can't recommend Kyle enough. He dials it in specifically to, you know, all of your specs. And my arrows really fly good every time I get them from him. The site was a three pin Matthews bridge lock. UV slider is the model. It's not made by Matthews, but it's like a collab with, I guess UV is the company. But yeah, I usually run pretty simple, just three horizontal pins, Western and caribou, something like that. They'll have my pins at 30, 40 and 50. And then when I go into the whitetail woods, I'll, I'll crank them back so that my pins go 20, 30, 40.

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Steven Rinella]

This spring, a guy said that we're giving Simong a little too much love and that he seemed like a really good guy, but he wounds a lot of animals and makes poor, short shot choices. He then normalizes it by saying that it's a part of hunting in quotes is a major problem with YouTube hunting influencers, and there is a whole generation of hunters growing up thinking it is okay and normal to occasionally lose an animal. Yes, it happens, he says. So I feel like he's sort of. What's the. What's the word for that? Back. Not dialing back, but he's like saying one thing but then saying it's okay. Yeah, contradicting himself. Thanks, Karim. And he says it's too often for hunters like Simong, and the portrayal of it is just off again in quotes. If a hunter is losing animals as often as Theong does, he needs to take a step back and seriously analyze and make changes, not blow it off consistently with in quotes. That is part of hunting. I disagree with this person. I think that the reason it seems like Simone is showing more of this and I've had people say the same thing about me watching my videos. It's because we show all of it. I could very easily not show all of my poor shots and the misses and all of that. And you go, oh man, Johnny just kills left and right, man, that guy's a good shot. It's just, it is a part of hunting. No one, nobody out there is perfect. And that's why we're always talking about, like, when you're not perfect, what bullet do you want the animal to hit? What arrow and broadhead do you want the animal to hit? When you're not the best that you can beat and you didn't make the perfect shot and you hit into the shoulder. That's why I shoot the heavy arrow. Right. So hopefully it still does go through the bone and whatever. And again, I think it's because he's like open enough and humble enough and confident enough to show everything that happens out there, that you get to see the highs and lows and then to act like only YouTube hunting influencers. Yes. Is he. Do he and I hunt more than the average person? 100. But I think like as a percentage of our hunts, I don't think that either one of us are like losing more animals than. Than anybody else. Like it happens like growing up like in deer camp, people wound a deer every. You know, deer camp, you know, there'd be one or two probably. I don't know. Especially doing drives, which we grew up doing. When you're shooting at running deer, like, yeah, you're always trying to follow up on them and get them. But like it is a part of hunting. And if you have some unbelievable record where you're right now in your head saying, well I've been hunting 12 years and I've killed this many animals, I've never lost one. I'm like, well, good for you. I applaud you. I think you've had some luck on your side and like it's gonna happen to you.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh.

[Corinne Schneider]

As an ex hunting guide, 18 years, like average eight clients a year. It'll make you sick. The number of wounded animals that.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Both rifle and boat. Oh, it's not just an archery.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yep. 100.

[Steven Rinella]

It's not just an archery thing.

[Corinne Schneider]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

So yeah, I think it is completely normal to occasionally lose an animal. It does happen. And. And again, I think you're just seeing it more in Simone's case because yeah, he does hunt more and he's like cool enough to actually show you that it goes both ways, you know, that he makes mistakes.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yep. Hats off to that.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, now we can do my st.

[Corey Calkins]

A white rock.

[Steven Rinella]

You see the.

[Corey Calkins]

Oh yeah, I see it right there. But you could crawl right up there through here. Yeah. Which is good. Cuz the wind's in your favor.

[Corinne Schneider]

Still rocking that lucky wired to hunt hat.

[Steven Rinella]

I see that hunt was good to me or that hat was good to

[Corey Calkins]

me last year back within, I don't know, 150 yards. Those same two balls.

[Steven Rinella]

So I'm stalking the same two bulls that I had played cat and mouse with for hours. The in the morning and we had bunked them enough times and they kind of ran off that we left them and went back to our cabin. Went up on the glass and knob and then refound them and they were bedded and we really had nothing better going. So we're like, well let's go back and give them another shot. I could see that one was bedded for sure. I couldn't tell what the other one was doing. And basically I'm just trying to figure out how to get there. And it would have been interesting to see. You know, you're never going to know. But there was a little point of trees, I think, that I leave to get into this next clump of trees that they're on the other side of. I probably could have just sat in those trees and I think they maybe would have fed by me just by the way they got up and what they started to do. You never know. This obviously ended up being the right move. The one caribou gets up. I think it's the one that I end up putting an arrow into. And I just kind of get into this little clump of trees that they're on the other side of and the one surprisingly just like comes right at me. And I thought I was going to end up with a frontal shot. And I don't know if he saw me or if it was just like the path through there was too thick, but he decided not to do it and kind of went around me at like 15, 20 yards. And I thought I was going to get a shot in this. That one lane you can see just left in my back there. And I give him the old man and instead, instead of stopping,

[Corinne Schneider]

He didn't like that.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, he had stopped, but I had brush. And then he takes a step and I and I map and he like just trots out into the open a little bit. And luckily I had one. You can't really see it from the camera's angle, but I had a opening the size of a football. And he just happened to stop where I could just see his, you know, lower vitals and let him have the shot. So.

[Corinne Schneider]

Timber.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

You could feel your adrenaline.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Corinne Schneider]

Watching it.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, it's like it had been long because this was really our last day to hunt. And the, you know, you hunt long enough with the bow that you start to think like, oh, it's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. But you just keep pushing on and keep pushing on, and then all of a sudden it's like all sudden the un. It just gels. And the universe is like, here you go, here's a caribou at 25 yards. And, you know, and it happens. And I think like after four days of trying, you sort of get this like pent up energy, you know, so when you finally release that arrow and It's a good shot. And the animal tips over. Yeah, it's a pretty big flood.

[Phil the Engineer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And it's. It's good stuff, man.

[Corinne Schneider]

Looked like a hell of a shot. He didn't go 20 yards, 30 yards, something like that.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, just enough to trot out there. It actually was. I don't want to say grotesque, but the. The footage, we actually cut it a little bit sooner because he trots out there, stops, and almost like, tips and puts his nose on the ground. And when his head comes back up, the amount of blood that comes out of his nostrils and his mouth is, like. It looks like gallons. I mean, it's. It's pretty real. Gruesome real. It's just raw, you know, it's just

[Corinne Schneider]

like, YouTube algorithm wouldn't help. Helped us out.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I don't care about that, but it's just, like, there's a little bit of respect, you know, for the animal to show, too. It's like, do we really need to watch that? I don't. I don't. It's like, you know, made a good shot, ran out there, and he. And he died, like. Yeah. So anyways, yeah, it was sweet. It was like just what you hope for. It was beautiful lighting late in the day, you know, then you can actually sit back and just enjoy the view, you know, because the. The work is done, you know?

[Corinne Schneider]

And then how far were you from camp there? You. You had the boat.

[Steven Rinella]

We had the boat. It was short. It was like half mile to the boat, and. And then. Beautiful. Yeah. And then, you know, a nice ride back.

[Corinne Schneider]

Get to pack out every ounce. That's easy.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Oh, Corinne just dropped in a. A question. He said that a couple folks criticized me for holding my bow by the string.

[Corinne Schneider]

Bow.

[Steven Rinella]

Hunted before. I've never, like, I've asked people about that. Like Phil Larson, who built a bunch of strings for me over the years. I asked him about it. He had no problem with it. I've asked the guys at Matthews. No problem with it. Yeah. I can't imagine with the amount of tension that those strings go through that you holding it by the string is. Yeah. Does anything to it. Exactly. And actually, when you store a recurve bow, you're actually supposed to store it by hanging it from the string, like, right over where the. The riser meets the limb. That's sort of like the recommended method of. Of storing a recurve.

[Corinne Schneider]

I know when I'm bushwhacking, I like to hold it by the string. So then my strings not. I know exactly where my strings at? It's not as exposed to get hung up on something. Every little stick or twig totally get hung up on a root.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, you carry them so much that I end up carrying them. A lot of times they're up on my neck. Sometimes I'm hanging it home by the riser, sometimes by the handle, and in all different ways. So, yeah, I mean, we. I just pack that thing around for miles and miles and miles every fall. So. Anyways, speaking of.

[Corinne Schneider]

So the John Fox 007 asks, how many miles do you think you hiked

[Steven Rinella]

on average a day? I don't know. Five to ten somewhere in there. It was like, decent hiking, but not, like, crazy. Like, enough that we were tired at the end of the day, you know, crossing that tundra. There's no trails you're. You're hiking on. You know, it's kind of half squishy. It's kind of, you know, not great walking. Yeah. But, yeah, it wasn't mega hiking.

[Corinne Schneider]

Another question from Austin Barriclo wants to know what is harder to do archery elk or archery caribou? And what's the difference?

[Steven Rinella]

I would say archery elk, hands down, would be harder, in my opinion. The. One of the major differences is that the. The, like, the caribou are just less pressured, even though they have pressure. Like I said, we realized that as the week went on and the things that we learned, but they still are not getting the, I think, the average pressure of an average public land bull that I'm hunting now. Sure, if you're gonna go hunt some really cool ranch they, like, used to guide on, then I might say it's maybe half dozen, you know, one to the others. Sure, it's kind of. It might be the same, but I think. I think it comes down to pressure, and I just think that, like, a public land elk is just, you know, it's getting way more pressure. And. And the thing, too, with elk versus caribou. And again, it's not always like this with caribou, but hopefully, if you're in the right spot and you get dropped in the right spot, like, you're gonna get opportunity after opportunity after opportunity, where with elk, a lot of times you get like, an opportunity in hopefully a day, sometimes three days, sometimes five days, you get one shot, you know, like. And I'm not talking about a shot like, with, like, where you release an arrow. I'm talking about, like a shot to make a stock to get close. And if you mess that up, it's like they run over the hill. And who knows, maybe they stop on the other side of the mountain, maybe they go two drainages over. You don't know. And you gotta, like, restart. And for caribou, restarting meant, like, go back to the high point, get up top, and like, find the next bull that you want to stock. And usually within pretty short order. So, yeah, I would definitely say that archery elk is harder. The terrain is harder, you're at altitude, there's definitely more vert involved. But yeah, you're not getting the amount of opportunities. You know, I think caribou is like. I don't say it's perfect for archery hunting, but, like, if you hit it right. Like, if anybody ever watched the episode of Meat Eater with Doug Duran and Mark Kenyon, like, that was one of the coolest caribou hunts we've ever been on. And I mean, we just were in it. And every day is just so many caribou, you know, and everybody, I think, shot their caribou pretty close, probably to bow range. Like, I don't think anybody made a shot over 100 yards, you know what I mean?

[Corinne Schneider]

And in it, lining up the migration and just being obviously there with the caribou.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I mean, and I think that's up to your outfitter or your transporter and where they drop you.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And you definitely hear stories of, like, dudes getting dropped and they don't see a caribou for a week or they see a calf and a cow in a week's time. Right. Like, you wouldn't. You'd hope that the outfitter just didn't take your money and just dropped you somewhere. But, I mean, that does happen. So that's why it's always worth, like, getting some referrals and check in with prior clients and, you know, make sure you're going with the right people. They're going to do their best to get you ahead or right into the middle of a. Of a big wad of them, you know? You know, there's another question somebody was a couple people asked about us not wearing camouflage.

[Phil the Engineer]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And how the outer was wearing camouflage. Listen, like, we sent Craig. He probably requested what he wanted. We sent him a bunch of first light, you know, you probably sent it to him.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yep, that's one of my jobs.

[Steven Rinella]

He probably. He probably requested the camo.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You probably didn't choose it. No. And I think Simone got to choose whatever he got to camo or not. And like, it's like for me, camouflage, like, it matters a lot in some situations. Turkey hunting, duck hunting. Although you see a lot of duck hunters wearing solids now, too. Like, we were limited on how much we could take. I just didn't feel like it was, like, going to give me that much of an edge to be. To be doing camo. Like, I still, I still don't now, like, what gives me an edge is like picking the right place to hide, being in the shadows, not moving, the wind, the camo. Yeah, exactly. Camo doesn't help you smell any better. You know, you just got to be a good hunter.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And.

[Corinne Schneider]

And I'll say you looked extremely broken up. You got a bino harness. It's a different color. Your backpack straps, everything, like, everything that

[Steven Rinella]

dry earth color blends in to that tundra real, real nice.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That I was wearing. So, Yeah, I don't, I don't feel like I, I sort of, like, was making it any harder on myself by not wearing camouflage.

[Corinne Schneider]

So Craig, didn't give you a hard time then, like, some people thought, oh, like, oh, this is going to be a long week. You guys not bringing camo?

[Steven Rinella]

No.

[Corinne Schneider]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

No, not at all.

[Corinne Schneider]

To each their own.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, totally. Phil, no more questions. Corinne, no more questions. Phil's gonna probably watch this episode at lunchtime now, I imagine.

[Corinne Schneider]

Oh, absolutely.

[Steven Rinella]

After that little teaser. Thank you guys for listening and watching. Hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't watched now, you know, kind of all the ins and outs and the, the, the backstory, the behind the scenes a little bit. So you'll have a different experience watching the episode. But I thought it came out good. Yeah. Max and Eli really filmed it well. They did a good job capturing the landscape. Yeah, it was great.

[Corinne Schneider]

It's amazing.

[Steven Rinella]

It's. Yeah. And we didn't even talk. We just. Now we didn't even talk about the fishing. Oh, we had some incredible fishing. And I think the fishing was so good that Max and Eli put down their cameras and did some fishing. And we. For as many pike as we caught, like, we couldn't find a pike that was actually caught on camera. But we had one evening where it glassed out and we. Every little back bay, we would go into, like, the first cast top water. You could see the wakes coming, little V's as they crash the top water. Whatever you were fishing, it was, it was, it was rad. And like I said in the episode, you can't go to a place like that that has world class fishing. That's like, not pressure. Not pressured and not do a little bit of fishing. Like, you just have to go out there and go, oh, wow. This is what unpressured fishing's like. Like it's almost every single cast.

[Corinne Schneider]

I'd love to go out there just to fish.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, they're into it too. They do the fly rod thing up there for the pike.

[Corinne Schneider]

Do they know it's fun?

[Steven Rinella]

Totally. Corinne. Anything else I need to plug? That's it. All right, thanks again for watching and listening. Stay tuned. What's the next 12 and 26 coming up?

[Corinne Schneider]

I think it has to do with a giant shotgun.

[Corey Calkins]

Ooh.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Stay tuned for a giant shotgun. For those of you that know, you know, this should be. Should be exciting, I imagine.

[Corinne Schneider]

I'm looking forward to it.

[Steven Rinella]

I'll watch it. See you. Bye.

[Corey Calkins]

Foreign.

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