#43 - The Heart and The History of The Marine Corps: with James Nash

Ever stood at the crossroads of hesitation and action, wondering what could happen if you just took that leap? Join James Nash and I, as we dissect the swift decision-making that separates the doers from the dreamers. Drawing inspiration from an old Japanese proverb, as well as discussing the significance of timing, readiness, and the importance of leadership and camaraderie within the Marine Corps. Dive in deep with us as we go back in time to how the Marine Corps came to be and why!

Our journey takes us through the heart of the United States Marine Corps, where tradition and resilience thrive. From a young hopeful's unexpected detour from West Point to the vibrant life of the Marine Corps, discover the tales of grit, pride, and adaptability that define this esteemed military branch. Through personal anecdotes, we delve into the emotional and moral challenges faced by military leaders, revealing the complexities of leadership in high-stakes scenarios. Listen as we navigate the Marine Corps' storied history, its legendary figures, and the innovative tactics born from past conflicts.

As the episode concludes, James and I tackle the poignant transition from military service to civilian life. Uncover the emotional struggles, identity crises, and the resilience required to navigate this significant life change. We offer insights into the stigma faced by departing military members and the challenging yet rewarding path of forging a new identity beyond the uniform. From hunting ethics to future political aspirations for wildlife management, our discussion rounds off with practical advice for outdoor adventures, ensuring an engaging and insightful experience for all enthusiasts.

James's info: 
Instagram: @6ranchoutfitters
Podcast: @6ranchpodcast
Buzzsprout: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1040695.rss

Chapters

• 0:10 Get Started and Seize Opportunities
• 11:18 Choosing the Marines
• 19:29 Pride and Tradition in the Marines
• 29:26 Combat Replacements in the Marines
• 43:37 Purple Hearts
• 53:10 Transitioning From Military Service
• 1:03:34 Military Stigma Towards Departing Members
• 1:11:56 The Reality of Marine Corps Life
• 1:22:30 Leadership Challenges in the Military
• 1:29:28 Identity and Transition in the Military
• 1:39:25 Marine Corps History and Advancements
• 1:52:47 Battle Experiences in World War II
• 1:57:04 Marines' Haunting Stories and War Memories
• 2:04:37 Marines' Historic Heroics and Unique Missions
• 2:16:53 Hunting, Wildlife Management, and Future Plans
• 2:26:29 Hunt Tipping and Client Expectations
• 2:31:49 Improving Archery Hunting Success
• 2:39:17 Archery Challenges and Ethical Hunting
• 2:51:05 Dry Aging and Hunting Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Well, james, thanks for joining man. Thanks Again, I know it's a fun one. You're actually still one of our highest downloaded episodes, nice Still holding strong from last year, and that was the first one, right, very first episode Getting started Out the gate.

Speaker 2: 0:26

It's so important to just get started, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 0:30

it was my biggest fear. It was my biggest fear for the longest time, yeah, just getting started, because we literally talked about it for like four or five years, a long time. I bought the stuff. I was gonna do a mobile podcast on travel and I just I found every excuse in the book and very grateful for the Brothers Rabe to get me going on it and so, you know, got us that kickstart and then obviously them, those guys got. So I mean they're just crushing life with business and our only option was to take it in-house. And yeah, I mean, but now it's. We're looking at it. I look at the growth, I look at the work that she's doing. I'm like God, why didn't we do this years ago? We'd be so much farther ahead. I'm happy where we're at. I'm more than grateful of the growth we've had just in 40 episodes, you know, and not even being a full year years old.

Speaker 2: 1:17

I think it's the nature of success, though, if, if you start doing something and you're successful at it, you're going to think why didn't I get started sooner? But if you start something and it's a disaster, you just move on from that right. You don't think why didn't I start this disaster sooner? So I think with any successful endeavor, if you put some thought into it and it wasn't just circumstantial that you're going to have that feeling of like why didn't I get started sooner? But because of that, anytime, anybody, I don't, I don't care what their plan is If they say you know what I'm thinking about doing this, what do you think I'm like get started tonight. Like order whatever you need to order, get it going, get started right away. Like just just go.

Speaker 1: 2:02

And the thing that I've noticed, especially in, like, the business world, dealing with venture capital groups and guys, that when they what I've always seen when they have the idea and they and it's they want it to happen, it happens, it just okay, things are filed, cool, we need this started. Hey, this has been implemented, can you grow this, can you build? And it just go. And those are the type of guys you're like God, how is this guy always in something? And they don't just, oh well, I'm thinking about it. I've been sitting on this idea. I never hear that from anyone. It's like hey, I already got the attorneys drawing up paperwork, I need this to go live. Then, and it's just one after another and they just make it happen.

Speaker 1: 2:49

And so, with this, finally, like like son of a bitch should listen to you, should listen to everybody. But hey, you know what I think timing is. It was one of those things, man, we're so distracted with so many pokers in the fire that we've had over the years. I mean, you know everything that I'm involved in and now that we're cutting back on some of that stuff and clearing up some bandwidth, I think it was perfect timing the transition out of some old chapters and into a new one, this being being one of them. I think it was absolute perfect timing.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Well, one of the old Japanese sayings is that when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and I think it's like that with opportunities like this too, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Something that I do different on this show is I ask for veterans, law enforcement, first front, anybody that has like a small business. I give them an opportunity to send us stuff that I way I can give the guests. So I got uh platoon cigars. He's a marine, actually became a cop in chicago, got shot in the line of duty he's doing. He makes the partnered up doing his cigars. Now he calls it the war machine and so I want to be able to. I know you know I don't know how big of a cigar guy you are, but but I like them.

Speaker 2: 3:43

I know.

Speaker 1: 3:45

And then C-State Coffee. He's a recon marine as well, local guy here, hilarious. He's been on the show, one of my favorite dudes to talk to, so he wants to make sure everybody gets some cold brew. If you're traveling and you're in Vegas I know you're leaving and going through for a little vacation take the cold brews. They're liquid meth with how many grams?

Speaker 1: 4:03

of caffeine are in those. So yeah, so no, it's just something I like to do to give opportunities for, you know, smaller companies. If somebody hears it and wants to support a veteran or law enforcement brand, I just think it's cool, something for that I can do for now and get people an opportunity. So cool, thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 4:21

I've actually had C-State before and it's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 4:23

Good yeah, good Huge fan. Good, I'm glad you didn't trash him, because we're not editing anything out if you did.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Also heard he makes a heck of a campfire.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Did you hear this story? Oh good, yeah, yeah, I actually got the videos of his camp burning down and shells going off, and so I actually we could probably play some of the audio. Yeah, he sent me that. Yeah, that was expensive. Oh, they lost everything, everything in their packs. I don't know who's exactly at fault. I'm sure there's a lot of fingers that get pointed when Light beer, when a whole camp gets burned to the ground. I'm sure there's a finger that's pointed in every direction except for your own. I'm going to have them on and we're going to talk about it. I think you should. Yeah, it's a pretty funny story, yeah, so well, dude, let's um, I mean for people, I guess let's give a little background who you are, for anybody that didn't listen to episode one, and then go back through and do that. But, um, a little questions from some, some of your fans, some of ours, that listen, and I think we just jump right into it. We just kind of talk some military history.

Speaker 2: 5:27

You have one of the longest kills I do ever, so I want to get into that.

Speaker 1: 5:35

I don't I don't think we touched that on the last one you know, I've never brought that one up publicly before really yeah, oh cool.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So give a background, let's go into it. So I mean, james nash Ranch Podcast You're the host of that. You got Six Ranch Outfitters. You're a guide. You've done rafting guys, you've pretty much done it all. You received two Purple Hearts while serving your country as a Marine Corps captain I mean, I'm throughout the time, but you got out as a captain tank commander. You've done a lot. Man, like I said before, you're one of my best friends. I look up to you as a mentor, especially in this world, and you know all the questions that you've answered for me. So if you want to kind of recap, then let's just jump right into a couple questions.

Speaker 2: 6:13

Yeah, I mean, the feelings are very much mutual. I mean I'm I'm in your ear all the time and have been for over a decade now. Uh, yeah, asking you all kinds questions, and we've always been there to support each other throughout all the craziness that we get into. But yeah, I'm James Nash. I grew up on the Six Ranch. It's one of the oldest businesses in Oregon. It's a family ranch that was founded in 1884 and is now into its sixth generation.

Speaker 2: 6:40

The number six is our brand. Really beautiful place. Very grateful to have gotten to grow up there and live there. Still Went to high school there in Willowa County in northeast Oregon, moved to Norway for a year, spent a year as a foreign exchange student. I got to wrestle when I was in Norway and got to compete in a bunch of other countries. Came back. Finished my senior year, went to college in a bunch of other countries. Came back. Finished my senior year, went to college at the University of Montana Western. I was on the rodeo team for a little while. I graduated with a degree in literature and writing and a minor in creative writing.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Went off to officer candidate school, became an officer in the United States Marine Corps and then got selected to be a tank officer. And then I ended up serving five years, which was longer than what my contract was. But because I got hurt in Afghanistan, I was at Wounded Warrior Battalion and they kind of don't let you go until they're ready to kind of give up on you or fix you. So I got medically retired. They're ready to kind of give up on you or fix you. So I got medically retired, came home I'd started guiding when I was 14 and that was something that I could continue doing. I wasn't really physically able to do the ranch work, so I started a little fly fishing business. That grew into many other things and now Six Ranch Outfitters encompasses a huge number of different things and that's a that's a big part of my year. I've also been hosting the Six Ranch podcast for five years now. We're at like episode 252 or something which is crazy crazy.

Speaker 2: 8:17

I I've never missed a week and it's it's gotten close. It's gotten very close, but I've always managed to get my stuff together and get another episode out, had some brilliant conversations with incredible people and I learned so much Like I'm the biggest recipient of anyone who's involved with that show just because I get to be so involved with that conversation once a week and I think, it's so healthy.

Speaker 2: 8:46

It's so healthy to have a long format conversation every once in a while. And uh, yeah, we're we're not built for for small talk, you know. We're we're built to exchange knowledge and information and develop questions, and and that's what longer conversations can do for you. So, yeah, that's me in a nutshell yeah, there's a lot, a lot more yeah, that's the elevator pitch of the old james nash.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Yeah, um, I guess let's just jump into. We'll start with. Why did you want that was a question that somebody why did you want to join the marine corps?

Speaker 2: 9:19

why did I want to join the marine corps? That's a great question. So I knew that I wanted to serve, even in high school, and that wasn't necessarily like a 9-11 reaction Got a bottle of water too, thank you. That wasn't necessarily a 9-11 reaction like it was for a lot of people. In fact, when the, when the Twin Towers went down, I wasn't even aware of what the Twin Towers were. It's a long ways away, it just wasn't part of my life. Um, you know, I might have like seen them in movies or something, but didn't know any of the significance there. But I felt that attack, you know, I felt it. And then when I lived in norway, that's when we went to war, oh right, so I got to see this perspective of the world from the outside in when we invaded Iraq.

Speaker 1: 10:08

So you're not seeing. I'm going to say propaganda, the US propaganda right, right.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I'm seeing Europe. You're seeing the real European propaganda.

Speaker 1: 10:17

European version of the war and what's going on, not Al-Qaeda, taliban. You know it's completely different for you Right.

Speaker 2: 10:24

So I was hearing stuff from home like WMDs and you know all these things, and if I had been at home, I would have just been surrounded by, you know, like-minded people that were like all right, you know, we got hurt, let's go get them. So to get a little bit of a balanced perspective on that from from a European country that really didn't want to see the US invading Iraq was interesting. It was also interesting to me because there were plenty of Norwegians who are still alive who would probably be speaking German if it weren't for US involvement in World War Two, probably be speaking German if it weren't for US involvement in World War II, right? So in less than a generation they'd forgotten that sometimes countries need to like, go elsewhere and do harm in order to prevent something even worse. So I was like man, I got to do something. I've got a good life. I need to give something back in order to deserve how good my life is. And that meant in high school senior year I was applying for all the military academies.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Okay.

Speaker 2: 11:37

And I got into them magically Like I had. I had the lowest GPA that West Point had ever accepted Right.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Good for you.

Speaker 2: 11:49

You were cut out to be a Marine from the start and then I got this opportunity to rodeo in Montana and I was like, yeah, I'm going to go do that. Right, that sounds better.

Speaker 1: 11:58

You'll hear, West Point is like God, all right, we'll cut some corners, We'll make this happen. You're like I'm going to go Red Road instead. They're like fucking should have known.

Speaker 2: 12:06

Yeah, Should have known, you have to get congressional approval to get into a military academy. So for a kid from Wallowa County to even figure out how to reach out to a congressman was a major accomplishment. Yeah, grateful for all the support and faith that those folks gave me. But I didn't take them up on it and I'm very glad, like very, very glad that I didn't take that opportunity, because I had a great college experience, I learned a lot and I think literature has really helped me have a rounded view of the world.

Speaker 2: 12:39

I look at literature as the history of thought, okay, and you get to really dig into what, not only what was written, but what was that author trying to do and what were the conditions like that they were writing in, like what was the historical perspective? And you can take any piece of classical literature and if you dig into what the world was like around that author, then you start to understand maybe why they were writing what they're writing and not just the what of it, and that's fantastic. I loved developing a deeper perspective on all that stuff. So I still wanted to serve and after college it's like, yeah, I'm going to go do this, I'm going to try to be an officer somewhere and being a little bit older now I had more balanced and refined perspective about what I wanted to accomplish and I'd been working as a repeller, as a wildland firefighter, repelling out helicopters into wilderness areas to fight fire without water, which is a silly job Heck of a lot of fun, very hard, very challenging. But it developed a lot of small unit leadership skills in like hostile, remote environments I'd say so With a lot of problem solving and as I got into what I thought these different service branches were, it just made all the sense in the world that you know, if I want to, if I want to be a combatant, if I want to fight, then it's Army or Marine Corps, and Army's big and Marine Corps is small.

Speaker 2: 14:21

So I start looking at fighting tactics, at strategies, history. I'm like well, the Marine Corps is much better suited to the skills that I've already developed, like as a guide, as a firefighter, small unit leader like I'm going to be much better off in like being able to take what I already have and bring it to the Marine Corps which is a crazy perspective. The Marine Corps does not care what I already have and bring it to the Marine Corps, which is a crazy perspective. The Marine Corps does not care what you already know.

Speaker 1: 14:48

You are 100% a number.

Speaker 2: 14:50

At all Right, but you're really idealistic at this age in your life. You know you're 22,. You're 23 years old. You want to like change things and do good.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Make a difference and you think that what you've learned and experienced so far matters a lot? It doesn't. It doesn't to the Marine Corps at all, but that's what I was thinking. So that's what it came down to. For me, it's like the Marines are the toughest branch by a lot. They're fighters and they work in small units. That's for me, and that was it. Huh, that was it. That was the deciding factor, yep.

Speaker 1: 15:21

That's for me, and that was it, huh that was it. That was the deciding factor. Yep, I mean, I love hearing people's whys, because most of the guys that I've asked like, first officer I walked in. Or there's this first guy I ran into. He came to my high school, you know, to the fact that you actually broke down immediately eliminated. Okay, navy Air Force, they're gone.

Speaker 2: 15:43

No, yeah, big no. The Coast immediately eliminated. Okay, navy air force, they're gone. Because, no, yeah, big no. The coast guard was an option.

Speaker 1: 15:47

For me it was an honor I had the coast guard for me which I don't ever really admit it's too many people was my number one pick because where I'm from in upstate new york, there's a station 40 minutes in each direction of our house there's one on the st lawrence river, there's one on the great lakes. So and those guys never did. They don't do anything in the winter time. They drive around these little like two-man hovercrafts. Yeah, I was around on the ice some occasionally. Some will fall through the ice and they don't do anything. I was like this is even as a kid, I'm like this is a skate-ass job. These guys don't do shit.

Speaker 2: 16:16

They play xbox.

Speaker 1: 16:17

They're playing playstation xbox all winter yeah, and so I literally I was going in to get my paperwork and then I sent my girlfriend at the time and she walked into the you know, like they're all in the one building. What are you doing here? Oh, my boyfriend wants that. He's like come on in, give me his information.

Speaker 2: 16:32

There's a bunch of pretty cool jobs in the Coast Guard too. There's a lot of really cool jobs and there's a ton of bases Really cool areas. There's small bases, really cool areas. So it's a lot of small, small unit stuff and, like I said, there are cool jobs. The navy doesn't really have cool jobs. It has like two cool jobs, neither of which, uh, are important for the navy at all. They can go away right now. Yeah, they could totally go away. I think they're only there, and the two jobs that I think are cool in the navy are aviators and SEALs. What about SWCC? Yeah, that's kind of a cool job. Yeah, yeah, that's probably the coolest job actually.

Speaker 1: 17:11

I honestly think so yeah, they just don't get the credit.

Speaker 2: 17:13

They don't get the credit. But if it weren't for naval aviation and SEALs, I think the Navy would have real recruitment issues. Really yeah, because what else is that enticing or that appealing about the navy? There's absolutely nothing, I mean.

Speaker 1: 17:29

I've been fortunate to do two muse, you know, and to leave, drive our our tanks off to the coast of pendleton to the back of a naval ship and we took them to kuwait, kuwait and iraq. So I've spent a lot of time. I have I've most navy dudes I've talked to. I have more sea time on ships than they do. Yeah, I've got a lot of time. I have I've most navy dudes I've talked to. I have more sea time on ships than they do. Yeah, I've got a lot of time.

Speaker 1: 17:49

You couldn't pay me enough money to ever join the navy ever. Those dudes we pull into a port like, oh, we're in, we're in perth, australia, see you later, see you in five days. Marines, and here's the navy with this. I didn't even know this thing existed a nail gun Just busting rust off of a bolt while we're in port, or these dudes that don't even they're working down on the engine in the boiler room and they don't even see daylight for months on end, rugged, just breathing fumes. No, there's nothing. Degreasing a steel cable by hand, where you're pulling all the grease off of it by hand and then regreasing this thing while in port.

Speaker 2: 18:28

No, and I'm not trying to shit on the Navy here, because they're very important 100%. Marines need the Navy and the Navy needs the Marines. Yes, but the Navy doesn't have a lot of cool jobs. No, they just don't, no, and Air Force, I I mean enough said, but the coast guard, the coast guard actually does have some cool jobs and small bases and I did think about it but yeah, um, but I wanted to go fight and the marines is is the obvious choice okay, so now that we're on kind of comparing branches, this was a question I'll pull it up on my list here.

Speaker 1: 19:02

But one of the questions that wanted to do wanted me to ask you was what separates the Marines from the rest of the branches. The Marines are small.

Speaker 2: 19:13

So the slogan is the few, the proud, the Marines, and whoever wrote that really understood the Marine Corps. They really did. That was beautifully written and succinct and it's all words that Marines can spell.

Speaker 2: 19:27

It was fantastic To the point. Yeah, so there are more lieutenants in the Army than there are Marines in the Marine Corps. I did not know that. That's fascinating. That's how small the Marine Corps is. Oh my God, I didn't know that.

Speaker 2: 19:41

We are tiny tiny compared to the army, and it's really tough to get into. The Marines are a difficult service branch to get into as an officer. The Marines and the Coast Guard are very difficult to get into. The Air Force has a high academic standard, but their physical standard is not there. It's just not. And getting into the Army as an officer is also not that hard. You definitely need a college degree, you need to be able to pass the PFT or whatever they call it, have a pulse and you're in. Yeah, it's not nearly as hard, yeah, so. Yeah, the Marine Corps is very small, and they need to be, because their task is to be agile. They're an expeditionary force in readiness, and expeditionary means that you can get your stuff together and get someplace else and either help out or break everything and kill everybody as quickly as possible. And you have to have a small, agile, rugged fighting force in order to do something like that, because big moves slower than small.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Oh yeah, it's just how it is, you know why do you think it's so that they ingrain like obviously you know. You see all the army commercials like join the army, get a degree, you know, get an education. Why is it in just ingrained in us from day one, especially any like combat units, support units? I'm talking, what makes the marines marines? Why is are we just hammered into us and we're just crayon eaters, trigger pullers? I mean it's so, and then it becomes such a pride thing for us. Is that just part of? I mean, you hear the general speech or the commandant speech this year? I mean that was the hardest video that any branch I feel has ever dropped out of the history of the military and it just we're always. I don't know how to say this without getting crucified by all the TikTok warriors.

Speaker 2: 21:45

What are they going to do, right?

Speaker 1: 21:49

Nothing bitch Like. We're just. The Marine Corps is always especially. As Marines, we just set ourselves so much higher as far as pride. I guess that's what it comes down to. Why are we so much more prideful than the rest of the branches?

Speaker 2: 22:06

It's because of what the Marines before us did. Okay, yeah, and we can look at these incredible stories throughout the history of the Marine Corps and look at the things that these individuals and these small units were able to do, and now we know that we're a part of it. I often hear that you know you're fighting for the guy on your left and right, right. You know everybody has said that With Marines. I think that you're fighting for the guys that came before you, like you're fighting to carry on this tradition and do so in a way that, anywhere you go in the world, if somebody finds out that you're in the United States Marine, that changes the way they look at you 100%, and it should 100%.

Speaker 1: 22:52

And do you think that comes down? I mean, because obviously the Navy at one point had some hard dudes back in the day, I mean the Navy had hard guys. I mean the Army's obviously been fighting side by side with us forever, so they all have the roads have all been paved before them. Do you think it comes down to our customs and courtesies and traditions that we as marines, I mean I just get goosebumps even thinking about the marine corps ball.

Speaker 2: 23:20

yep, I mean, that alone is a national holiday we stopped fighting wars to celebrate our own birthday and we cut the cake with a sword do you see what I'm saying?

Speaker 1: 23:31

yeah, so do you think a lot of that comes from? Because you, I mean you make you bring up a really good point, which 100? I mean like as as a young recruit, dan daly, svely, veler, ch Puller I mean those guys are just ingrained and ingrained and ingrained and ingrained. And then when you get to the fleet, you have these NCO nights and you have these these nights where you bring everybody together and you're learning about medal of honor recipients and you know these, um, what are those? I mean we call them tie-ins in these classes, but you know these little mini warrior culture studies that they would teach us. You think that is what helps keep the pride. It's not just my left and right, but like this is these were the men before us that we're always constantly learning about and hearing about you think a lot of that comes from that?

Speaker 2: 24:17

I do, I do think so, but we also continue to hold the bar up there. Okay, right, so like we didn't peak in World War I or World War II, or Korea or Vietnam or you know, Iraqi freedom or enduring freedom or the Gulf War or anything else, we've constantly been able to hold that bar up and say, look, no matter what I have, no matter how many of them there are or how few there are of me, we're going to get the job done. You may not like the way that it happens, but we're going to figure this out. We're going to accomplish the mission with, with so little, with so little, and it could be without food, it could be without ammo, it could be without fuel, like the things that stop armies and have stopped armies throughout history, for whatever reason the marines are. Like I'll figure it out, like we're just gonna go anyways, make it happen, yeah, yeah, that is so I mean there's been.

Speaker 1: 25:17

I mean there's how many stories of guys there was guys I've had on here that are talking about they're just rolling through felugia, softback humvees with doors ratchet-strapped shut and no armor and they're just hooking and jabbing in these things. Yeah, and it's just mind-blowing that, you know, because the biggest joke is that the Marine Corps always gets the hand-me-downs from the Army, which I feel is really true.

Speaker 2: 25:39

It's 100% true. With tanks, artillery.

Speaker 1: 25:42

Guns. Yeah, true, with tanks, artillery guns.

Speaker 2: 25:49

Yeah, a lot, of, a lot of weapons ammunition. They say it's all handed down from the army. The base 29, palms base, was an army base first and the army said this place is not habitable for humans and the marines are like so we can get it for cheap you know, so we can trade out here, drop bombs and let these dudes rot away out here.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Perfect, where do we side? I mean, that's such a Marine Corps thing.

Speaker 2: 26:06

Yeah, All of my tanks were used Army tanks that they had said these tanks are deadlined and will never function again. They sent them to a depot in Georgia. They part-swapped until they could pass a test and then got them to Afghanistan. My tanks were freaking green. You had green tanks in Afghanistan.

Speaker 1: 26:26

Yeah them to afghanistan. My tanks were freaking green. You had green tanks in afghanistan?

Speaker 2: 26:30

yeah, hilarious, yeah, did they at least cover up like the?

Speaker 1: 26:31

army, like it said usmc on it. Oh, it was the m1a1.

Speaker 2: 26:33

Like it wasn't even a model they used anymore really right and the army as big as they are, like they have, you know, armor divisions. How many tanks did the army deploy to Afghanistan?

Speaker 1: 26:47

No shit. Ever, Really, it's just Marines. Really, yeah, I didn't know that.

Speaker 2: 26:55

They're like well, you can't operate a tank in Afghanistan. Marine Corps is like watch me.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Here you go, boys, figure it out yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:04

With used tanks that they deadlined. So yeah, it's it's such a very much true, such a mind, I think even some of our uniform items were like army hand-me-downs that they didn't want to wear anymore, and we're like we'll. We'll make it look better than you did always yeah, I mean it happens.

Speaker 1: 27:18

Yeah, what are the questions we got? Somebody wanted to know the history of the purple heart. I think first, before we get into that, I think it'd be awesome to be able to, if you're willing to share. Obviously you earned two purple hearts, yep. So if we wanted, I would love to hear these stories and then go into, or vice versa if you want to do the history of it and then go into how you uh got the enemy marksmanship badge twice. Yeah, times two. Well, I'll.

Speaker 2: 27:44

I'll talk about it a little bit. I don't want to get into it a ton.

Speaker 1: 27:46

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:47

But I did one deployment to Afghanistan. Early on in the deployment, during a mission Mortar hit in the middle of me and my Marines. It killed my gunner. It badly injured several other Marines, including limbs, amputations terrible stuff. One of my Marines actually had his forehead ripped off by part of this mortar and I wiped his brains out of his eyes and he stayed conscious through all this and he lived, still alive today, doesn't have the frontal lobe of his brain, but he survived it. I taped an MRE box over his forehead to keep dust out of it. Still alive today, doesn't have the frontal lobe of his brain, but he survived it. I taped, uh, an mre box over his forehead to keep dust out of it. Right, um, I I took a little bit of shrapnel from that, but more than anything I I got this big blast wave.

Speaker 2: 28:39

And for folks who don't understand the physics of what's going on there, there there's pressure waves that come off of an explosion and they move in waves because that's the way energy moves. The speed that this energy is moving at is about 6,000 feet per second off of a mortar. So think of this as like twice as fast as a fast hunting bullet. And that's the speed that this energy wave is moving through you. When that goes through your brain, all those places where the synapses line up get shifted and now these connections get lost and it takes a very long time to heal from that and in some ways I don't think that you ever do.

Speaker 2: 29:26

And then you compound something like that, which is a traumatic brain injury, with post-traumatic stress disorder. They have about the same symptoms, really, right, ptsd and TBI often have a lot of shared symptoms. Right, ptsd and TBI often have a lot of shared symptoms. Now, if you have both of them, if you have both PTSD and a brain injury, how do you treat these symptoms? If you don't know which side is causing it, or both sides causing it, it gets really complicated. That's why the VA slams you full of drugs and you get all zombied out.

Speaker 2: 30:02

Okay, so I was at a um, I was at the hospital and then a concussion recovery center for about three weeks. The uh, the commanding uh officer of the of the AO, came and visited me, knew a little bit about my background and he's like you know, if I gave you the metaphor of getting bucked off of a horse and needing to get back on, would you understand that and I was like, yeah, yes, sir, I totally understand that. And he's like look, they're probably going to send you home, um, but you're an officer and you can check out anytime you want. So I I left.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Do you think that was a smart decision?

Speaker 2: 30:40

looking back on it now, yeah, because I knew who was going to replace me. Okay, and the thought of um, of somebody else coming and taking over my unit, who, who hadn't trained with them, who didn't like, know and love them and and like I, he couldn't have done as good of a job as I could. So you did it for your boys, a hundred percent, okay, million percent, okay. Not for me, but it's like okay, my and this is one of the reasons that that I don't consider myself to be a good officer A good officer should put the mission first, missions first, marines always right, but it's mission first. I could never stomach that. So I was looking at my job as like get the job done to a satisfactory level, bring all your boys home for sure, and I'd already fucked that up, right, my gun had already been killed literally in my place, so I make it back.

Speaker 1: 31:40

So you have the option sorry, I'm gonna interrupt you. You have the option Sorry, I'm interrupting you. You have the option You're an officer, you can just wave a pen and you're on your way home. Or you're given the option like hey, you got bucked off, we need you to stay in the fight, and you chose that path for your troops, not in every situation, but that was what was placed before me there.

Speaker 1: 32:03

I mean, that's the difference between the good ones and I. I feel like you're just your typical officer or even staff ncos. There there are there's. I mean I know you've probably seen those guys that are. They're on that first log train out of there and home and you're dealing with a fucked up brain from getting blasted by a mortar round and you just lost some of your guys and you're like, no, I'm staying in this yeah, and look, I'm not going to blame anybody that that wants to go home and and get that medical care that they need for sure.

Speaker 2: 32:34

Um, you know, I, I, if it was for me, I should have, but it it wasn't. It wasn't about me. Yeah, you know, I wasn't there to get anything for myself. I was there to serve my country. And then, as soon as I learned what the job actually was of being a Marine officer, it's like, look, I'm working for these guys, I'm working for my platoon and they're my boss in every way. That mattered. So it's like, yeah, I'm going to continue doing this job. That mattered. So it's like, yeah, I'm, I'm going to continue doing this job. Anyways, uh, I, I punched out and went, went back to my unit. How long? How?

Speaker 1: 33:11

long were you in the hospital there?

Speaker 2: 33:17

About three weeks Okay.

Speaker 1: 33:17

Which is a long time in Iraq, I mean without Afghanistan. Yeah, I'm sorry, I can't say without your guy. Were you guys grounded, were they operating or were they waiting for you?

Speaker 2: 33:21

They're still operating. So so my my staff sergeant was was still out doing the job, okay. Um, my, my boys were still doing it, okay, and uh, yeah, so about the time that my combat replacements showed up at uh, at camp leatherneck is when I was like, all right, let's go. So I I flew back with those guys so you.

Speaker 1: 33:41

So the combat replacements for people listening was if you take a loss in your platoon and you don't have enough bodies to just fill, they'll bring in a combat replacement, which hopefully was is in country already. If not, they'll fly guys a tanker over. Yeah, so you met your combat replacements for your, your guys. Yeah, as you're walking out of the hospital and flying back right. How was that?

Speaker 2: 34:03

so it was actually. It was actually pretty incredible because the combat replacements that I got um, because I'd lost a quarter of my platoon in one mortar jesus, um, the, including my wingman right. So within, within the tank platoon, there's four tanks and one recovery vehicle that's full of a corpsman and mechanics. Tanks operate in sections, so I've got my platoon sergeant who's in charge of one section, and then I've got my wingman. And because as a platoon commander as well as a tank commander, I've got to be talking to my hire, to aircraft, to adjacent forces, stuff like that, my wingman really needs to be able to function as a section leader too. And then whenever we go places, he's first, he's the first one down the line. So it usually goes the two tank who's wingman, and then the platoon commander, and then the three tank and then the four tank who's the platoon sergeant. So I cannot overstress the importance of the platoon commander's wingman.

Speaker 2: 35:08

The guy that showed up was Jack Ramson, and Jack had been one of my instructors at tank school. He'd been an advocate for me. He's a guy that I respected and appreciated so much, just really, really admired this guy. He was a master gunner, phenomenal marine, so this dude knew how to operate. He, he was fantastic. If I could have picked anyone in the universe, I would have picked jack, really, and when it happened, when it turned out that that was who was coming, the, the sense of relief and confidence that that gave me is impossible to describe like. It was just incredible that that it ended up being Jack and we're still very close friends to this day. Um, and he should be retiring soon, I hope, but, yeah, phenomenal human. So Jack showed up, uh, and dude, what a tough job to be a combat replacement. And for these junior Marines who showed up with him, I mean, they've got to slide into a new platoon that doesn't know them, like they'd been sourced from a different tank company. Um, they hadn't trained up with with any of us.

Speaker 1: 36:14

So how's the atmosphere as far as obviously you're involved with your boys quite a bit, is there an acceptance or is there kind of like a wall? Because I those workups are what build a platoon. You know your minimum six months and you're in, obviously, maybe in tracks. It's a very close environment. You know everything about everybody in those vehicles and now you've got some boot marine that's jumping in the seat. Were they brought right in or was there kind of you've got to pay your dues on the road? Or was it like hey, got to pay your dues on the on the road? Or was like hey, we're just we're in the middle of this fucking buckle up.

Speaker 2: 36:48

I think there was a little bit of resistance for them, okay. And there's also there's also that thing where it's like look we just we just lost great tankers. Yeah, you're, you're fresh, like you're, you're fresh, like, am I even going to like, but, you know, develop a relationship with you if you're the next one to get blown up, you know. So I think that there's some fear that that creates some distance there too. And you know, I think Vietnam and world war two were probably the examples where combat replacements were showing up into established units quite often and people were like look, you're the FNG, I'm not going to be your friend, I'm not going to bring you into this family, because I can't take the risk of the heartache of what it would be like if another one of my friends gets killed, for sure. So there's some distance there, but they end up gelling right in.

Speaker 2: 37:45

It's a small unit we had we had fantastic NCOs, great leaders and you know we we became a new platoon and immediately went out and started doing the job again. And then I got an, a real tough mission that we talked about previously, where we burned all that heroin. I ended up getting hit by two IEDs and a recoilless rifle in the same day.

Speaker 1: 38:13

What's a recoilless?

Speaker 2: 38:14

rifle. For people listening, it's like a giant RPG that shoots really long ways, so think of an anti-tank rocket, something like that. The dude who shot it was a freaking hammer, because we think the shot was from a couple miles away, which is way outside the capabilities of this thing, but it hit the ground Like a piece of it that was like the size of a coffee mug hit me in the back, so that, plus the pressure wave brain injuries from earlier in the day, was a problem. At that stage my tank had already been mostly destroyed so the turret couldn't turn anymore. I think close to 50% of our vehicles were nonfunctional.

Speaker 2: 38:59

We were having to like truck and road train everything out. We were hitting all of these IEDs. Everything was getting blown up. I was down to fighting with my rifle. You know I, as I'm, as I'm in my recovery vehicle, towing this tank, my tank that's broken. Um, I saw a dude pop up with an rpg, killed him with my rifle. Uh, we had officers using hand grenades from tanks, like it was. It was real fighting. It was real tank fighting, but that's not that's fury, that's like fury fighting.

Speaker 1: 39:28

I mean for real, yeah, I mean you don't hear, hear about you, feel like when you say that's tank fighting, I mean you just think main gun maybe the coaxial, and you're mowing through some buildings. I mean, if you're throwing grenades from a tank, you are in, you're in it, you're in it. That was our xo dude, your xo was tossing grenade.

Speaker 1: 39:49

Oh my god bro, I mean let's, let me. I want to hear some of this because I mean, you don't, I'm seriously. It's like if you, that's like when you're like, oh, if I have to mag change, we're in some shit. I mean you're throwing grenades and you shot a guy from your turret with a rifle because your turret, you can't even engage any other way, right, and uh was this a whole day of?

Speaker 2: 40:15

just as many days. So at and even after I got hurt, it was like another 40 something hours before we got back to base and and we had, we had no more space for medevacs. When we got back, an entire third of our unit got. Medevac Of our company got medevac?

Speaker 1: 40:34

What was the environment you're fighting? Is this like foothills, town cities? Where are you?

Speaker 2: 40:39

Yeah, foothills, uh, big desert basins went through lots of, and we're like 70 kilometers into, like beyond friendly lines, like into Taliban world. Okay and dude, every single little valley that we would come to would have a totally different culture, like they're different tribes. Some of them lived in these igloo, like white mud structures that were totally different from like the straight wall structures of the other places. It was like the planet that Luke Skywalker's from. Yeah, that's kind of what it was like. Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

Speaker 1: 41:19

Why do you think they haven't evolved?

Speaker 2: 41:22

Access to information. They're a landlocked Asian country that is at the crossroads of trade routes where they actually can't produce very much themselves. So they've just been fighting the outside world for thousands of years and they beat everybody Like nobody has ever won in Afghanistan. And even the concept of Afghanistan today is a conglomerate of many other nations that has become one country because the British Empire drew some new lines and said that this is Afghanistan. So where I was in Helmand Province, they didn't consider themselves Afghans. They didn't consider themselves to live in Afghanistan. So where I was in Helmand province, they didn't consider themselves Afghans. They didn't consider themselves to live in Afghanistan. They were Pashtuns who lived in Pashtunistan.

Speaker 1: 42:13

And they hated the or no, I don't know if hated, but they disliked the Afghans, right? Wasn't that too different? Yeah, the.

Speaker 2: 42:20

Afghans, the Tajiks. Like Afghanistan, as we know, it is built of all these different things. Pakistan is an acronym right, the P in Pakistan stands for Pashtun. I didn't know that. So when the news channel was like fighters are crossing the Pakistan border, like they don't think that's their border, they think that that's their country. That border was drawn up in the early 1900s.

Speaker 1: 42:48

And to them, everything being so in stone, there's no changing. You can draw as many borders as you want, they're not going to just accept anything like that. So for them, pakistan, afghan, that whole entire, they're just defending it, because, oh, they're pouring in from Pakistan. Yeah, are they really? Or are they just coming to help fight another part of their country, right?

Speaker 2: 43:10

Yeah, it's a mess up deal. That's been like that for a long time. But Afghanistan, as we know it, has turned back Genghis and Kublai Khan Yep.

Speaker 1: 43:30

Alexander the Great, the Russians, the US, and now us back. Uh, gangas and kublai khan. Yep, alexander the great, the russians, the us, the us. Yeah, like you can say what you want. That was a we 100 got defeated in afghan. Yeah, we got beat. It's just hard to, it's a hard pill to swallow, especially probably for a guy like you and and everything that you've been through then to see like this withdrawal so quick. It's just everything I feel like and correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm not trying to speak for obviously, all the men and women that lost their lives over there, but it was like for what? For?

Speaker 2: 43:57

what I think mostly for nothing is the answer that I've had a hard time coming to. Nothing is the answer that I've had a hard time coming to. But in another way, I think that for the 20 years that we were there, if somebody wanted to kill an American, they didn't have to come to America to do it. Yeah, you know the amount of terrorism that occurred while we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here at home, next to nothing, right. If they wanted to fight, like I'm on your doorstep, let's fight. So I think that that that did an unseen good. Okay, but mostly, yeah, I think it was for nothing.

Speaker 2: 44:36

Now, we haven't won a major conflict since the Geneva Convention, which was when at the end of World War II. There are several geneva conventions, but basically, since we establish a set of rules that we're going to play by but our enemy isn't, we haven't won. And I think if you take just about any game and you say, all right, I'm going to have these rules, you can make up your own, it's going to be really tough to win any of those games. Yeah, right, and uh, yeah, afghanistan is a great example of that, because if marines would have been allowed to just be marines go fight, then it would have been an entirely different thing than what it was, because in order for me to use a main gun, I had to get approval from a general officer, and that might take six hours they're expecting you to be out there, out of the wire, risking everything, and in order for you to use your main gun.

Speaker 1: 45:34

It could take up to six hours to get approval.

Speaker 2: 45:36

Sure, because look how many phone calls and time zones have to get made, waking people up in the middle of the night. And they have to be apprised of the situation. And it's all because of the fear of of consequences and civilian casualties, which are real fears, but because of that, because we were really fighting with handcuffs on, we weren't able to to fight in a way that we could win that's so frustrating but also I don't know if we could have like.

Speaker 2: 46:06

If you would have just turned us loose in afghanistan and did like, yeah, there's there's no rules of engagement, do your worst. Afghanistan would still potentially beat us, because they beat everybody else. They just can't deprive them of their poverty.

Speaker 1: 46:19

No, so the history of the purple heart, history of the purple heart. Now you've been awarded two purple hearts within a month yeah, a couple months, but yeah, a couple months same same deployment and I was in the hospital for a while again.

Speaker 2: 46:33

I I did the same thing, came back to my unit. I finished the deployment. I was the last guy on the plane when we left the country did you take any more blasts after your second purple heart?

Speaker 2: 46:43

I did not. I got shot out a lot more, um, but I never got hit, just just my tank. Okay, yeah, I did have. Uh, I I had a titanium coffee cup that was very precious to me and I would make coffee on my jet boil on top of my tank when the sun came up if I was on a night mission and I got that shot out from in front of my face one time and it spilled hot coffee on my face and broke my cup and I'll never forgive Afghanistan for that.

Speaker 2: 47:09

I really like that cup.

Speaker 1: 47:10

That's when you swing that main gun over and just fire for effect, I'm going to jail Somebody. Stick their head up, motherfuckers.

Speaker 2: 47:20

It was the best part of my day. There's like two really good parts of my day Coffee in the morning, and then we were talking about cigars. Earlier I had a cigar clip that was machined to mount on the side of my .50 caliber machine gun you would.

Speaker 2: 47:37

yeah, somebody sent it to me. They gave it to me as a gift. So when I left the wire or came back in the wire, I had a lit cigar me as a gift. So when I left the wire, it came back in the wire, I had a lit cigar and if I had to put my hands down, I had a cigar clip on my 50 caliber machine gun on top of my tank. And god, I don't know if you can ever feel like more of a man than that, or american. Yeah, it's pretty awesome, but uh, yeah, purple heart. Okay, so two, two purple hearts. Um, you'll actually get a star for the second award. So you're not going to wear two Purple Heart medals, you'll see a star. So if you see anybody with medals on their chest and there's a star on it, that means that they were awarded that medal for a second time.

Speaker 2: 48:16

Yeah, the first Purple Heart came from George Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War, and it was the only awards that he issued after the revolutionary war.

Speaker 2: 48:28

Really, he issued two of them and it was a piece of purple felt that was cut in the shape of a heart, and the reason it was purple is because that was a color in England that was only allowed to be used by royalty. It was illegal for other people to use it Really, so that was another like F you to England, england, okay, and it was for military merit, and I don't know the stories of of the gentleman who received it, but I imagine that they were hard men. Oh, yeah, right, uh, there's been periods where the purple heart shows up and goes away. I think think it wasn't until World War I that it showed back up again in force, and at that point it started to get used for service members who were wounded or killed in combat, and the definition of wounding has changed um over time as we've learned more about what wounding actually is. So early on in Iraq and Afghanistan, marines were not getting purple hearts for traumatic brain injuries that came later.

Speaker 2: 49:36

Uh, now, and I'll get this mostly wrong, but if you receive an injury from the enemy that requires medical treatment or significant medical treatment, then that rates a Purple Heart Medal. I feel weird about wearing it, which I don't wear it, but I keep it. I have it Because to have this medal now, as a person who's alive and know that it's the same medal that is given to widows and mothers on top of a folded American flag that is wet by the tears coming off their face, it doesn't feel right to me. Yeah, them off their face. It doesn't feel right to me, but it is what it is and in a lot of ways it says look, we recognize that you got hurt, we recognize that with millimeters of difference you'd be dead, and I think that that recognition is important. Um, I do think that there maybe should be a distinction between wounded and killed, for sure.

Speaker 1: 50:50

I think so. Yeah, just to separate the two, yeah, you?

Speaker 2: 50:54

know, but now, um, there's it, it's, uh, it's a gold and purple metal with a purple and white ribbon. Above it, there's a golden emblem of George Washington in the middle of it and on the back it says for military merit and they're like yeah, thanks for your service and ultimate sacrifice when I got awarded mine.

Speaker 2: 51:16

This is a very marine corps thing. Uh, it's an expensive medal and, as you know, like when you go to buy your medals which you have to buy to wear your dress, uniform and stuff it can be a lot of money, it can be a couple hundred dollars for you to go, um, get, get your medals put together. And the purple heart is is the most expensive medal that I ever saw. Um, maybe the Navy cross or the medal of honor is more expensive, but I assume those guys don't have to pay for it. You have to pay your your purple hearts, uh, but you get the one that you're awarded. And they gave me two boxes and I was like, sweet, you know, I've got this one. I can sew this one, um into my uniform and be good to go. The second box is empty, bro, the marine gave me an empty box.

Speaker 1: 52:00

Did you ever say anything, or?

Speaker 1: 52:01

was it just say that it's a record thing. Hey, hey, hey, army didn't give us enough of these. Yeah, I could see that. 100. Yeah, how long was that ceremony? I because? The other reason I ask is because when I was a boot marine, like bravo company had just gotten back from iraq, from fallujah or wherever, and I remember standing through a purple heart ceremony and there was like four of those fold out black tables and I mean the stacks were, yeah, there was dudes passing out, yeah, locking their. The ceremony lasted hours of them reading off purple heart citations. Was that how, I mean, you're talking about how many guys you got?

Speaker 2: 52:45

this was just for a tank company. Okay, um and uh, yeah, there's. There's actually only a few that they got okay, so was it a battalion thing yeah, okay, because you know we were only sending a company at a time, yeah and uh, yeah, so it didn't take that long. But I do remember, like you go through the line of Marines afterwards and shake everybody's hand, or they walk past you and do the same or whatever. Nobody knows what to say, like if you win, congrats.

Speaker 1: 53:13

Yeah, totally. What do you say to a Purple Heart recipient?

Speaker 2: 53:16

Yeah, Glad it wasn't worse.

Speaker 1: 53:18

Yeah, good job. Way to not die.

Speaker 2: 53:22

Yeah, I remember that whole thing and, um, just, you know feeling, feeling awkward about, about all of it, which I still do for sure, because you're also racked with with survivor's guilt and all the things that come along with it. So it it's a complicated deal, it's a complicated deal, but ultimately it puts you. It puts you in this group of people who all said at some point I believe in this so strongly that I'll put all my chips for it, I'll bet my life that this is important enough to get involved in. Interestingly, my granddad also got two Purple Heart medals in World War II. Really, yeah. So I guess being bad at warfare runs in the family. Yeah, kind of crazy.

Speaker 1: 54:10

So I I didn't have his medals I don't anybody have them? I, I don't think so.

Speaker 2: 54:16

That would be cool to be able to find those, but if, uh, if there's another family out there, that's got that history like, hit me up because you know I'd like to hear about it, because I think that the odds are probably pretty small I'd say they're small, but there's a lot of father, sons, there are third generation I'm sure they're out there have served. I'm sure they're out there.

Speaker 1: 54:34

I'm sure there's some army dogs out there that like grandfather, grandfather's father's son, I mean they're all in it. I've talked to some guys like that, so. Totally so yeah, it would be interesting to see. Yeah, okay, I got a question from a buddy of mine. He actually just pinned on Major like two days ago. Oh nice, yeah, he went the Mustang route, good for him.

Speaker 1: 54:53

Yeah, he's doing it, man. He's one of those guys I can't wait to have him on, but he would like to hear about your experiences transitioning out of service, because he's coming up on it soon and he's been in it for a while. What was that like going from military taking care of troops? Every day you have a purpose and something to look out for, and then the next day you're gone.

Speaker 2: 55:30

Well, it's tough, and it's tougher than anybody will tell you that it is. It's really hard and it was easier for me than it will be for him, because now most people have forgotten right that the love that veterans got to experience 10 years ago it's faded. It's faded. You know. Try and find like your, find somebody on the street and ask them to name one battle in Afghanistan. You're going to look for a long time. So it's going to be harder for him in those ways. So it's going to be harder for him in those ways. My first job when I got out was guiding whitewater again and I was rowing a gear boat, so I wasn't dealing with clients and part of my job was was packing buckets of their poop like to and from the boat, and I would get criticized in any decision that I made by people who had no business criticizing me about anything.

Speaker 2: 56:31

So I went from having like so much responsibility and decision-making authority to no decision-making authority whatsoever and doing tasks like carrying tourist poop in hot climates.

Speaker 1: 56:44

Who's criticizing you? Other guides or clients Guides Okay.

Speaker 2: 56:47

Yeah, so they didn't know Like trip leaders you know?

Speaker 1: 56:50

Yeah, so they didn't know your history, or?

Speaker 2: 56:53

No, I think that they did. But you know how could they understand? And look, man, I was hurt, like you know, I was physically hurt. My back was a mess still is but was really bad. Then my brain was just not working at all. My short-term memory, my long-term memory, a lot of these things had suffered so badly that I was in a bad way bad way, and it was really, really tough. It was really really tough and I think that my way out of it was to help other people and to make my own thing. Like I could tell that working for somebody else was going to be an endless source of pain and frustration. So I needed to build it on my own and I didn't have any of the knowledge or tools for how to do that. But I did have support from friends and family and I had access to the Internet. You can figure stuff out. And I still had that from being a Marine, like, okay, you have next to nothing, go ahead and build something with it.

Speaker 2: 57:58

So I started my fly fishing company with $600, and most of that went to an attorney and insurance to create a business. Winston Fly Rods out of Twin Bridges, montana, loaned me rods and reels. In line, I tied my own flies and I got support from local fly shops to send clients my way. And with something so small, because I had no money, I was able to just keep one business tenant in mind which I'd made up and that was make more money than you spend, but always spend some money reinvesting into the business. So when I had made a little bit of money I would think about what I could do with it.

Speaker 2: 58:46

And I remember like early on in that first year I'd taken a few trips, I'd paid some stuff off and somebody had given me a decent tip and I was like all right, what can I do? What can I do with a hundred bucks that'll actually help this business, bucks that'll actually help this business. And I ordered a bunch of beer coasters that said Six Ranch Fly Fishing on them and I took them down to Terminal Gravity, to the brewery, and I was like, would you guys use these? And they're like, yeah, we don't have to pay for them. Of course we'll use them. And any tourists who showed up that's sitting there, they tear apart their koozie. Well, these were nice ones that you couldn't tear apart. People were taking them.

Speaker 2: 59:25

I was putting people in a boring environment where they had to think about what else they were going to do with the rest of their trip. And I got booked for the rest of the summer off of $100 worth of beer coasters Good for you, you know worked great. I was like woohoo. So I just kept doing stuff like that and and pretty soon I was getting requests to do things that were not part of my business and I was just like, yeah, sure, I'll do that, like I'll do that for money, I'll, I'll do this, and just saying yes to every opportunity. And pretty soon you've built something of your own, and the more you build it, the more you can. You can take that and use it to help other people, and that's where I got the healing from. That's what got me on my feet. So that's the advice that I would give to your major friend is be really, really humble and gentle with yourself. Understand that nobody is going to respect what you've done. Yeah, and build something of your own. Do you think it's harder?

Speaker 1: 1:00:31

now getting out of the military, or do they have a lot?

Speaker 2: 1:00:38

more tools and resources. I think there's a lot more tools and resources now than there was, like one of my transition classes, when I got out I just input my, my MOS. It was like a tank officer and there's this like generator that would tell you all the jobs that you would be eligible for. Right, there was one and it was driving an armored truck for banks.

Speaker 1: 1:01:02

Really that's it. That's what you were qualified for.

Speaker 2: 1:01:10

Well, I mean For for what they're they're putting in front of me. At the time I'm like, look, we don't have that. Um, and I was getting told like I was getting told stuff like don't lift anything over eight pounds ever again. Um, you know, I understand that you come from a family ranch and that your family's been there for five generations, but you're just not going to be able to do that ever again. So, maybe find an office job. And I was having really smart people, doctors and and all these like career developers tell me this stuff and I was starting to believe it. Yeah, and and why wouldn't you? Right, there there are people in positions of authority who should know. But, yeah, you're going to have to come to a point where you have to figure out what you're capable of yourself and then just get after it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:55

So I posted a video of why I got out. It was that aha moment and boy did I get crucified on it and it it's funny to me, right? Because I mean, obviously they don't know my story and they don't know the background, they just see the clip and but you get all that. You get. You get one side of the marine or marines military. It's like you're a quitter, you couldn't handle it, you should have stayed in to make a difference. And then the other side's like holy shit, this is everything that I've got through and this is why I got out, or should have gone out.

Speaker 1: 1:02:30

Why do you think you could be the most stellar marine in the world, most squared away guy, but the second you get out, or thinking of getting out, why are you automatically labeled like the? You become the enemy immediately. I mean, I know that you are. We're obviously a different leader and I know every mos is different. That's why, when these people come in, oh, you quit and you gave up, well, what was your mos? I, I, that's like my, my number one question back to most of them like, oh, I was an administrative clerk and I'm like shut the fuck up. Like, yeah, you know nothing to them against it. But yeah, you're off every day at four o'clock. You're having barbecues every friday. You weren't especially, I couldn't even talk on like a grunt unit, but I feel you and I probably had very similar yeah, experiences tanks and tracks right yeah it's miserable, they're rated, I think the like two and three worst mos in the marine corps.

Speaker 1: 1:03:23

There. I mean they're obsolete now. I mean we, we literally our jobs don't even exist anymore. Facts and so. But I just why is that that you, the second? Anybody wants to get out of the military to better their life, they're automatically labeled like the turd or the bad guy. Do you think it's a a jealousy thing? Because that leadership, because that leadership never took the leap when they had the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 1:03:49

Yeah, I think it's jealousy and fear, because they've probably had similar thoughts like maybe I should get out too. I feel every person in the military has that thought For sure. And if you're not having that thought, you're just not just not thinking enough. Right, you need to be thinking about your life. But it if they had that thought and then they didn't, well, now they need to sort of come, come back at anybody who makes the other decision, because they need to convince themselves that they were right. So I think it's just coming from a place of their own insecurity for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:04:23

Yeah, yeah, and it's funny to me because I respond and the guys are like oh, you quit, you should have made a difference. People don't understand. When you're in a job field like tracks, you can't make a difference. I mean, there's master sergeants that are that are trying to play the game, feel that with the military, the higher ranking you pick up, the more rank you get, the more you stop focusing on troop welfare and start focusing on politics to try to focus on that next promotion, the next four years, and so it's like well, you should have stayed in to make a difference. If I stayed in to make a difference, if that's the, if that's the mindset, why isn't everybody staying in and why isn't there a difference being made? Why is it still the same bullshit? We're here on a Friday at eight o'clock at night scrubbing rust off of bolts and cleaning heavy machine guns that we've had all week to do Like. Why are these decisions being made today when we've had a history of people staying in to make a difference? And that's what it's funny to me, because it's just these guys.

Speaker 1: 1:05:30

I feel like the ones that are making those comments are the ones that are staying in that are miserable, having the messed up relationships and marriages and failed this and failed that and they hate their lives and they don't want to go home. They're the ones that are on. You're a quitter, you should have stayed in, like why? So I could have that mentality and that mindset. It's just, it's funny to me, because there's so many good guys, you can have the most stellar Marines in the second year. Hey, I'm done, I'm going to go better myself. It's like, oh my God, you're going to what? And then now you're automatically labeled. It's just, that's always cracked wrong decision?

Speaker 2: 1:06:01

For sure, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 1:06:10

I always thought it because my getting out experience was horrible. I had the absolute most dog shit. I mean getting my ass chewed by our sergeant major and throws my orders on the floor after he signed them because I was getting out. He thought I was going to 29 Palms or 3rd Tracks and he was my final signature. And I walk in his office and I was the first Marine Division color guard for two years, color sergeant for two years. Then when I went to the schoolhouse I was a color guard there. Then I pinned on, missed being a six-year staff sergeant by a day. So, like everything, I've never had anything negative.

Speaker 1: 1:06:51

And I walk into that sergeant major's office and I'm like, hey, sergeant major, I need your signature because at that time all the staff ncos were going to lejeune and like I am not a lejeune marine there's no, not, I wouldn't have made it. So I was like, all right, I gotta get out. And so I put my orders down on his desk and he's like, oh, you got orders, huh, staff sergeant, like all smug and shit. And I'm like, yeah, can say that. And he's having like small talk with me and he opens my orders up and he sees it's my final checkout list and he's like he looks me dead in the eyes, he goes shut my fucking door.

Speaker 1: 1:07:15

It's like okay, and I've never had any problems with this guy. Like I close his door and he just you mean to tell me you fucking took a slot from a good staff NCO and we wasted it on you. And I'm like wait, I'm there, I didn't ask anybody to pin me on, I just did what I did. And you, you all gave it to me like not, this is my fault, he's chewing my ass and he's just you're the reason why and all this stuff. And I'm sitting there like what the fuck? Like I'm just I'm just getting out, like what that's?

Speaker 2: 1:07:43

that's just shitty. That's just shitty leadership 100 I had. I had an interesting experience that was very different and that was with General Fox, and I think he might be a Medal of Honor recipient. He was a pipe-hitting dude, great, big like barrel-chested guy. He was overweight, he was battle-worn. I'm sure he hadn't done a legit PFT in a decade. 300 every time, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:08:08

But, a, but a very, very respected Marine general. He had also, uh, gone to college on a rodeo scholarship in Montana Right, and somebody else is. This is at an award ceremony. Somebody else is asking me what my plans were, and at the time I was thinking about going back to college studying history, becoming a professor. And I was starting to explain that to this other officer who'd asked me, and General Fox came over and grabbed me by the back of the neck and he said young man's going back to his ranch and you?

Speaker 2: 1:08:42

could hear in his voice that he'd had that opportunity at some point and had not taken it, and that changed the course of my life.

Speaker 1: 1:08:50

See, and it's it. That's where it comes down to. I feel the good, the amount of good core leaders in the military are shadowed by these absolute, just horrible piece of shit, human beings that they can never amount to anything outside of the military. That's their life and that's all they know. So that's what stays in, driving out the true leaders in the military, that getting their guys out of there taking care of their troops when they're having hard times, financials, they're walking them through their finances and things like that. That's where I feel like there's not enough of that. I mean, the guy signs my back to the sergeant, major signs my orders, closes them and throws them on the floor. Yeah, and I bent down and I picked them up and I go you're the exact reason I'm fucking getting out and I swing his door. He's like get the fuck back in.

Speaker 2: 1:09:42

Here I was got on my motorcycle. You already signed it.

Speaker 1: 1:09:46

I ripped a wheelie through the front gate and he didn't know I already went, you know temp and tap or whatever they had already. This little pfc screwed up and gave me my dd214 yeah, like three months early. So I already had dd214 in hand when I was getting my final checkout from him. I was like fuck you, I'm out. It was like that fuck you, fuck you, you're cool. That, like that, was literally me getting out. I had buddies calling me like bro, where are you? I haven't seen you at the ramp in like weeks. I'm like I ain't coming back, I'm done.

Speaker 1: 1:10:11

And that solidified it for me, because you know that there's that's a very vulnerable position to be in, especially you have a family, you got a little kid starting off and I'm like god, am I making the right decision? And when he threw those orders on the floor, I was like thank you, jesus, that's all I needed to see. That's the right, right decision for me. But that, like that, that was my going away gift. After eight years, two deployments, travel with the color guard, I mean did everything that I was ever asked for for the core. My sergeant major signs those orders and threw them on the floor and that was my going away because I was a. I took a slot from an end a staff nco that that deserved it, that was going to career it.

Speaker 2: 1:10:47

Yeah, I've got two funny stories about that One. I'm not a Jocko guy. I've never listened to one of his podcasts, I've never read any of his books or anything like that but I did hear a story about him, which was when he was checking out and you get this long, long list of all these offices you have to go. It's like the worst kind of treasure hunt. You're just navigating the entire base trying to find somebody who's not on maternity leave or lunch or something to just put a little stamp next to a little box. And it takes days, if not weeks, just to like navigate the base and figure all this stuff out so you can get your little rubber stamps. When it was his time to leave, he just left. He didn't do the checkout procedure, he just left. Really, I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:11:36

I mean, what are they going to do?

Speaker 2: 1:11:37

Yeah, you're gone, we're going to stop paying, you All right, cool, I'm out. You're going to do that anyways.

Speaker 1: 1:11:41

I mean it makes sense. The reason we do is because we're told to just like everything else. Yeah, you're not going to. Okay, here's all my gear. Do you take your gear or not? Send me a bill, dude, what are you going to?

Speaker 2: 1:11:50

do the gear thing, man. I can't say enough bad things about SIF. So for folks who don't understand, you get issued your gear from a bunch of civilians in a warehouse and they give you your stuff. It's probably going to be the wrong size, it's probably going to be broken. When it's time to turn it back in, they inspect that shit with a magnifying glass and if there is a thread pulled out of place, if there's any dirt, blood whatever on it, then they will either reject it and you have to go out in town and like go to go to a pawn shop and buy some that's an army navy surplus, yeah right. And you have to bring all that stuff back in for my marine and go to a pawn shop and buy some At an Army-Navy surplus store, yeah right, and you have to bring all that stuff back in.

Speaker 2: 1:12:34

For my Marine, who was killed, they took the value of his flak jacket and sappy plates out of his life insurance before they paid it to his wife.

Speaker 1: 1:12:43

See, that's the shit I'm talking about Stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 1:12:47

I love Marines and I always will for the rest of my life. See, that's the shit. I'm talking about stuff like that, you know. So, like you can like, I love marines and I always will for the rest of my life. I will also hate the marine corps, and those two things can happen at the same time, and it's because of stuff like that I've never heard it put like that before, but I feel like that's how I have felt for a very long time.

Speaker 2: 1:13:02

Yeah, at the time that that I was in, they were going through something with officers called career designation and they were really trying to downsize the Marine Corps. Was this the whole Obama era? Yeah, so you had to apply for career designation and they were only going to take something like 30% of first lieutenants and promote them to captain and then it was like tenure for a professor like you were in at that point. You know, you your career designated, you're going to go through the major or lieutenant colonel and that's going to be your deal. Uh, I I actually requested to not be considered for a career designation. It's like I'm planning on getting out. I only planned on doing one tour. I'm all jacked up now. So that way you don't have to take the slot from somebody else. Right, okay, because there's, you know, 60 or whatever. Um, 70 percent of the marines there you know might have wanted to stay in, so I wasn't going to take that spot. I had a lot of buddies who didn't get it, who wanted to stay in, and I got career designation, even though I'd submitted a letter to not be considered, because Lieutenant Colonel Louder, who's the commander of the tank battalion, he was on this career designation board I, and I respect this a lot. It's interesting he said look, this guy's asked to not be considered, but I see here also that he is a recipient of two purple heart metals for brain injuries. Maybe he just needs some time to think about it, because this is the type of leader that we want to give the opportunity to Really.

Speaker 2: 1:14:36

Hats off to Colonel Lauder, I mean Because that was the right decision. Yeah, that was the right decision for his part, and that took a lot of courage for him to take that opportunity away from somebody else. But he was thinking about the Marine Corps and he was thinking about me when he made that decision. There you go. Yeah, there's some good ones. There's good and bad, right For sure. You know, the Marine Corps is a slice of society and it's incredibly diverse in the backgrounds of the people that come there. And just because they go through training and because they're a Marine, it doesn't change the fact that you're going to get a full spectrum of people and you're going to get incredible humans and you're going to get absolute scumbags that shouldn't be alive.

Speaker 1: 1:15:18

Which is wild to think. I mean, dude, I've dealt with dudes that were straight-up gangbangers from East LA and they'd go home on the weekend and bang on the weekend and they'd come back and you're like, oh, some of them were wonderful marines and they're stellar marines. And they go home and they throw on their colors and they're representing their hood and they come back on monday morning, clean, shaved haircut. I'm like, dude, I don't even want to know what went on. They're like no, you don't like. I had two guys that worked for me, two of my marines. They were it's been 10 years, these dudes, these are two of my. It's my sergeants. I'm a staff sergeant. Yeah, two of my guys come to me one day. They're like yo, staff sergeant, we need to talk. And I'm like what's up? Oh, they're like listen, we've been working for this. These, this group of guys, these gentlemen that we, they fly us to a certain location and we just drive cars for them and we drop them off at a used car dealership in Oceanside. No ifs, ands or buts, but they're like the problem is we can't say no when they call. And I'm like all right, fuck it. Well, just tell me, give me the heads up. These dudes would get a text message within 72 hours as long as we didn't have if they could find another instructor to take the replacements, if we were in the field. But at this time we were in the officer class, so it it classes were very few, like maybe two a year, so we had a lot of downtime. These dudes would come to me and they'd be like hey, staff sergeant, we gotta go. So they get a flight, try. They'd fly to new york, land at jfk, they would have get off. They'd get a text message of the terminal, like the parking structure where the car was parked. They'd get in the car, there'd be an envelope of money and they would drive and they would be tailed until they hit the New York border and they said the car would break off there and they would drive these cars from JFK to Oceanside and they never asked any questions. Like that's the shit like Marines are doing. And you would think, like you know, civilians are like oh my God, the military, they're squared away.

Speaker 1: 1:17:17

They had, I mean, there was meth labs in the barracks that they were turning up. I mean, especially when the whole battalion was deployed, dude got caught. He had a whole chop shop. He was stealing people's motorcycles. They were all because you know how the barracks are, everyone's covered in dust. You know the dudes deployed or didn't come back. So this guy's out there just piping bikes and bringing them in his barracks room and chopping them down and swapping out parts. I mean they found, they found a whole entire scorpion rattlesnake ring in the barracks. Sure these dudes were out in tango t just flipping over boards and shit collecting rattlesnakes and they had. They had cages of these things in the barracks. I mean, marines, are the the wildest human being or the wildest creature to ever walk the earth?

Speaker 2: 1:17:56

I feel like yeah, they're, they're incredible animals, incredible animals. Man, I had this. I had this driver and I can't remember his name. I'm I'm almost happy that I can't remember his name, but I couldn't. I couldn't get along with this kid at all and and my driver really needs to like be able to drive a tank on his own and it's super hard to see like you're, you're, you're laying in this hammock, you're looking in a periscope, um, it's very, very hard to see and you definitely need help from your tank commander on where to go left, right forward, back, faster, slower, all that stuff, especially in an ied environment. But this, this kid, couldn't figure it out. He couldn't figure out left and right, um, and he just seemed dumb, he seemed, he seemed stupid, and I actually, uh, sent him to the battalion medical officer. It's like, hey, can you give this guy an evaluation? I think he might have like skirted through it. It's just something's not clicking right. I don't know if he's got a brain tumor, what's going?

Speaker 1: 1:18:56

on.

Speaker 2: 1:18:56

It's this bad I think something's wrong with him and the guy's like nah, he's good to go, so fuck I. I sent him. I was like I, I can't, I, I need a different driver. So he went over to my staff sergeant, my platoon sergeant. Sure he loved that. He's like I'll take him.

Speaker 1: 1:19:14

I was like thank you not by choice, but because he's that's what he does for his lieutenant or captain.

Speaker 2: 1:19:21

So I got, I got lance corporal felder as a driver fantastic driver, hope the kid's doing well wherever he is. And then this other kid I've forgotten his name. He comes to my office one day and asks permission to get married. I was like, well, you really don't legally need my permission anymore. But tell me what's going on. Turns out, met a stripper very recently, like this classic Marine Corps story, 100 yep and. And he wants to get married. I'm like this is a bad idea. I'm gonna, you know, strongly recommend that you do not do this. He goes, goes ahead and gets married. Of course, one of the last things that we had to do before deploying was go to a rifle range. So we go to rifle range, I think. Day two, day three, he doesn't show up for a few hours, a few hours late, and he drank too much the night before and slept in. This is before you're doing workups. We're leaving in like a week.

Speaker 1: 1:20:22

And he's missing the range.

Speaker 2: 1:20:24

And he missed rifle range, right. So first sergeant lights him on fire and I'm like God, I don't know what to do with this kid, but I've got other problems. And then we get shrunk down right before we're about to leave and they say look, you're trying to deploy with 109. You only get to take 105 guys. And it was all this like spreadsheet numbers game coming down from obama and my company commander was like all right, everybody's got to get rid of one. And I'm like, well, this guy made made a pretty easy choice for me. You know, I I can't afford to get rid of anybody, like no matter what their skills are, but if I've got to get rid of one, I'm going to get rid of the guy who's too drunk to show up to shoot his rifle. And yeah, whatever.

Speaker 2: 1:21:10

When we got back from that mission in october the second time that I got hurt, you know we drag all our busted vehicles back into base uh, start getting helicopters in to cycle people out for medevacs I find out that this dude had found out that his wife was pregnant and had killed her and then killed himself. So that's like that. That's scum of the earth stuff, right? Um, and obviously there was something wrong with this guy. I was right about that the whole time. I was very right about that, but that's. That's. What I'm saying is you're gonna get a full spectrum of people and you're gonna get people who who they should make statues out of who are the most heroic and selfless and intelligent people that the united states of america has ever produced, and then you're also going to get people who commit double homicide yeah, I think that's a fucking and and as a young leader straight out of college, that's the kind of stuff you're going to have to deal with if you're an officer in the Marine Corps, right?

Speaker 1: 1:22:12

How do you so? How are you prepared? I mean, you're a kid yourself Totally, and just because you got some brass, now the whole world's put on your shoulder. Fortunately for you, you're in a smaller platoon size, so it's easier to manage. I couldn't imagine being some how. I mean, how old are you when you're graduating?

Speaker 1: 1:22:34

I was 20, 22, 23 yeah 24 year old green ass lieutenant given to a crusty ass infantry unit. Could you imagine that responsibility and trying to fit in yeah, oh my God and then dealing with grunts. Could you imagine the?

Speaker 2: 1:22:55

it's also very easy. It's it's easy if you let it be easy Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:23:00

And so you just have to be humble, okay, and you don't have to act humble, you have to be humble, and I think that that's. That's something that a lot of young leaders fuck up is. They're like, well, I'm just going to act humble, but really in the back of my mind, I'm going to be thinking I'm the only one here with a college degree, I'm the officer I have the ultimate say. Anything that I say becomes a legal and lawful order, like my word is the law, but I'm going to act is the law, but I'm going to act. I'm going to act humble. No, you got to be humble.

Speaker 2: 1:23:30

You got to understand that you don't know that these guys have been getting deployed for 10 years and that they've seen it, and that they've got problems in their lives, and you need to figure out, like one, how to help them with all those problems, how to protect them from any type of bullshit that's going to come down from higher, how to learn from them as much as possible so that when you have to make a decision, where there isn't enough time to ask everybody, that you have the best odds of making the right decision, and when there is enough time, you need to ask everybody and you need to listen. And then you need to make the decision. And if you take that route which is not hard to do then you'll make good decisions. And if you make a bad one, you need to have the most genuine humility to recognize that the decision you made sucked. And then you need to make a new decision, really quickly and don't fall in love with your plan and just change as the situation changes around you. It's not hard to do, but you have to be genuinely humble and not put on an act about it.

Speaker 2: 1:24:30

Yeah, I think that's the hardest part. But with situations like that, what could possibly prepare you of coming back where you guys are hurt, your tanks are broke, you're hurt, you just got your brain re-scrambled by a recoilless rifle and IEDs and you just had to kill somebody, and that sucks and all these things. And then you find out, oh, that guy that I left behind just, uh, just killed his young wife and himself. It's like, well, don't have the capacity for that. Fortunately that's in a different country I'm going to deal with that one later on and you know, you just have to understand that, while that sucks and that's horrible and that's going to screw with crew morale and everything else.

Speaker 1: 1:25:12

You're just going to have to deal with the problems that you can deal with I think that's also it too, is realizing like, okay, out of your hands, yeah, like how you can't dwell on that. Yeah, what are you gonna do, hey, if it resurfaces later on when you're sit around the campfire and spark something Cool, handle it then. But I mean, you know, I had two employees of mine. I was out of the military but I hired a bunch of National Guard. I had a bunch of them working for me and two of them one of them came home and his best friend was with his wife and he shot his best friend, shot his wife, shot his wife first, shot the best friend as he drove out the window and then shot himself. And I was like that's what I mean, I had to deal with that shit. Yeah, obviously not an officer, not in the middle, but these two guys were still in, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:25:56

And then the best friend that got killed comes from hispanic family. He was the breadwinner for two, three generations in one home, yeah, and it was like you know, and even the kid that killed himself. Same exact situation was providing for his mom, family, grandkids, all of that. So now they have these two families and neither one of them could. Even the army clearly was paying for the military, for the one, but the one that committed the crime. You lose all you know benefits and everything. Then, and I said we, I personally covered, I mean for our, from our company, because I felt, I mean felt horrible.

Speaker 1: 1:26:28

I mean then you just get left with nothing. And the mom called me crying and she was like I don't even know how to pay for any of this, I don't know how, so we ended up doing it. But it's like as as a leader or a boss or Lieutenant, whatever. I mean you're the situations when you're dealing with troops or anybody. I mean it's, it's. You don't want, you don't ever expect to get a call like hey, so-and-so, just murdered his wife and his best friend and himself, and you're like what the fuck I've got?

Speaker 2: 1:26:51

a another one like crazy leadership challenge that I had to deal with. It's a little bit more lighthearted. This, uh, this corporal, I think he was a gunner. Uh, he was a gunner, and he was a good gunner. He had a girlfriend who was insisting that he get circumcised, right, okay.

Speaker 2: 1:27:09

But what he came to tell me was I need to get my wisdom teeth removed. I was like, well, I've had a bunch of guys get that done. I know how many days to give you off. We're going to the field next week. Take the week off, hang out in the barracks and recover. Well, I swing by the barracks on Friday and I see him walking across the commons and he's limping with both legs. And I grabbed my platoon, sergeant, and I was like, hey, staff Sergeant, what kind of dentist did he go to? And he tells me this story. Right, he'd gone, you know, as a 20-something-year-old adult, to get circumcised and he was going to need a longer recovery than what I'd given him. Well, we're going to the field now. I don't have time to replace him. So I was like, look, you lied to me.

Speaker 1: 1:27:54

So what did he just tell?

Speaker 2: 1:27:55

you, he was embarrassed. He was embarrassed about the whole situation. He probably knew that it was stupid and it was. She broke up with him always yeah, always Uh. But yeah, I made him go to the field and he had to have a little step ladder to get up onto the tank. The Marines were horrible to him, as you might imagine they would be. He had stitches. It was a terrible situation. But that was another thing where I was thinking to myself in the lonely position of being a platoon commander, which is a very lonely spot like. Did I miss this slideshow presentation on what to do when your marine gets a circumcision instead of his wisdom teeth removed?

Speaker 2: 1:28:33

there's not enough slideshows in the world, to prepare you for what a young marine will come back to the divorces and the duis and just all the drama, uh, that that marine wives and dependents bring to it. And you're just like trying to get your tanks running and get your Marine cell go to the dentist and get qualified at gunnery in the rifle range and the pistol range, and like you're just trying to do the job. And then there's all this static. But your ability to deal with the static, to enable your NCOs to go deal with the static, and then if they can't, if they can't fix it or if they're working on something else, you need to have a good enough relationship with them that they can be like hey, can you help out with this? And it doesn't feel like they're a failure as a, as a small unit leader, because they needed help from their lieutenant. Right, it's like, look, we're all just trying to get ready to deploy so that we can go do the thing. Yeah, yeah, was you said it was lonely.

Speaker 1: 1:29:32

So I was a lieutenant's driver, yeah, and I loved it because him and I had we had a really really close relationship. We were on a first, I mean as you would, so this is my, my question to you is being that lieutenant in your tank, we're so personal.

Speaker 1: 1:29:47

I mean, you're on the comms all day Is it hard to separate that leader to just getting to know these boys and being their friend? I mean, do you have to feel yourself, reeling yourself back in that situation, or is it just a hard line drawn? How does that function as a leader in your position in such a close?

Speaker 2: 1:30:10

quarter environment, right, I mean, you're inches away from the Marines who are inside your tank, literally inches away. For long, long periods of time You're living inside of a tent with your NCOs. But fraternization isn't just frowned on, it's a crime, right, like it is straight up illegal for me to have a friendly, like fraternizing relationship with enlisted Marines. And it's extremely hard because, like Jack was my friend, you know, and we're in this stressful situation together, he's my wingman, I'm his wingman. We'd get back from missions, smoke cigars, go to mission planning. Same thing with the other tank commanders, with these other Marines. Like I would get eaten by piranhas every day. If it meant that my Marines could stay alive and be happy, I'd do anything for them because I love them so much, I'd do anything to protect them. Anything for them because I love them so much, I would do anything to protect them. And that that's a. That's a relationship where you would love to be part of these, these other aspects of their lives. Like you want to be their friend but you can't be.

Speaker 2: 1:31:25

And then, if you get like, for a lot of my deployment, I was away, uh, attached to a different unit with just my platoon. Well, now I have no one. There's no other platoon commander that I can talk to, right, because that's my only peer is another platoon commander. I can't go to problems to a superior officer, right, and be like, hey, you know, I've got this drama going on, like can't do that. You certainly can't take your problems down to the Marines that you're in charge of, so you're alone. You're so alone and just having to internalize everything that's going on and, yeah, like crazy, crazy missions would come up and I'd have to go up to a major and like figure out how to talk out of it Because I don't want any more of my Marines to get hurt and I think this is stupid. I'm trying to figure out a different way to get this job done while still also obeying the tenets of being a Marine officer where it's like you will accomplish a mission.

Speaker 2: 1:32:22

Yeah, it's a tough job, but it's just a job. Right it gets. I think the military gets put into this category, where it's not a profession in people's minds. It's like this entire entity and it's a weird job, but it is just a job. Like you're doing a thing for a paycheck and you know it's got some. Like you wear weird hats. Like you wear weird hats.

Speaker 1: 1:32:45

I'm glad you said this because I've brought it up on, you know, talking to other vets and stuff, of how some of these guys they're not healing, they're not getting over the trauma and the demons that they're facing on a daily basis. Because that is who they are, it's their identity, it's who they've become. Is this disgruntled, wounded veteran and I've talked about it and you see these guys and it's like for me I left my uniform at work, I never wore at home and it was a job to me. Then you know, then you get the other half. That's not you're. You're signed up and this is who you are and you need to be by the book drill and it's like cool when you're at work, but like I would try not never to bring it home. Do you feel that's a problem with a lot of the veterans that we're dealing with today? Because some of these guys have been out 15 years and they're it's the same.

Speaker 1: 1:33:39

They talk about it like almost like they were wounded last year, right, yeah, I think a lot of that happens is is the mental state of where they are in their life as far as finding a new identity. Because you're not Captain Nash anymore, right, six Ranch Podcast, you're starting a family, you're fishing, you have all of these things. It's like me. I have all of these different things, so I'm not just Staff Sergeant Marshall anymore. I've talked about it. We're prideful. I love my Marines. I'm not the biggest fan of the Marine Corps, but that's who we are. That's part of who we are. It's who it's in our DNA of being a Marine, but it's not who I am.

Speaker 2: 1:34:23

You see what I'm saying.

Speaker 2: 1:34:25

Very much so, and it can take some time to recognize that. When I was at Lejeune for a long time, I lived on Emerald Isle and there was a bridge that I had to drive over to get to the island that I lived on and that physical feature was really nice for me, like I cross a bridge and now I'm home, yeah, and I can be home for a few hours. So I'm getting home nine, 10, 11 o'clock at night and leaving at you know three, three, 30 in the morning, but the time in between, because I had this bridge, it's like, okay, I'm at work, I'm not at work, so I'd cross the bridge on the way back and then immediately I'm thinking about PT, everything that needs to get done that day, and going to go through everything until I'm done. So it was really nice for me to have that physical feature. A lot of people talk about having a switch and I think law enforcement talk about this a lot, but what they don't realize is the psychologists say it is impossible to have a switch.

Speaker 1: 1:35:28

Really.

Speaker 2: 1:35:29

Yeah, psychologically we can't do it. Our profession is part of who we are, so we might be tricking ourselves a little bit if we truly believe that, but I think that you can fake your way into a healthy place with it, for sure. And after you get out, like where I'm talking about building something that will help you expand your identity. Yeah, and you won't have to rely on what you were to understand what you are.

Speaker 1: 1:36:00

That's actually a really good point. Yeah, that's a, I mean, but at the same time it's like they can study it all they want. They're not in our brains is how I kind of look at it. Sure, but also, when it comes to tricking, it's like cool, like great time. Had some of the best years of my life, some of the best friends I will have till the day I take my last breath, but it's not yeah, close the chapter, move on, start the new chapter.

Speaker 1: 1:36:31

And I know it's much easier said than done. I'm not telling guys like, hey, just get over it, move on from it, but it's when I feel like you're constantly dwelling on that time. You're, that's all you're thinking about. Your whole life is in, is consumed with that period of your life. You never get out of it, you never start to evolve, you never start to grow, you never start to change, because that's it. And then it's like this hamster wheel, and then they're, that's their military life.

Speaker 1: 1:36:50

And now it's for, like you know, the, the varsity jock that still wears a letterman jacket, down to the bar yeah same aspect, you know, is how I kind of how I would compare it to the civilian world it's like, oh, he went to state champions and won this championship, and it's like he graduated 20 years ago.

Speaker 2: 1:37:10

And there's a few jobs out there in the civilian world that take everything that you've got just to do them, and those jobs often take over people's identity. Cowboying is one of those. Oh, yeah, right, you'll see guys that cowboy for a few years or for a decade and then they start doing some other job, working in a bank, and they're still wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and it's like, oh, like you think that that's your identity. Now, that's just a job. Cowboying is just a job. Being a cop, that's a job.

Speaker 2: 1:37:40

Yeah, you have to think about it all the time. It's part of part of your personality. It affects your thought pattern and in the way that you navigate life and you see a bunch of crazy stuff that changes your perspective on everything. But it's just a job. It doesn't have to be who you are and if you move off to something else, you're not necessarily a cowboy anymore. You're not necessarily a cop anymore. Marines are always marines. Right, there's there's no such thing as a former marine, because the brainwashing and and the trauma body is like so freaking strong trauma body that's what it comes down to.

Speaker 1: 1:38:19

It's not like when you see another marine you're like oh, hey, brother, it's like yeah, I know what you've been through. That's what it comes down to.

Speaker 2: 1:38:28

They hurt me too. That's exactly it.

Speaker 1: 1:38:34

Yeah, we've all. Could you touch on the chart of where the Marine Corps has completely fucked you?

Speaker 2: 1:38:38

Yeah, Everybody but like let's talk about, like what, how the Marine Corps came to be in the history of it a little bit yes, to help people understand why it becomes like such a vampire bite so the marine corps you're.

Speaker 1: 1:38:56

You're a historian and a writer and know a lot of more interesting things than I do, but let's just start. Where in the hell did the marine corps even get established?

Speaker 2: 1:39:07

yeah, so it started in a bar, in a tavern in Philadelphia called Tun Tavern, November 10th 1775. So it's older than the United States.

Speaker 1: 1:39:19

From the start. I know I'm biased, but from the start Born in a bar.

Speaker 2: 1:39:23

Born in a bar. And the original purpose of the Marines was to provide a military element on ships because there was all this piracy that was going on, especially around northern Africa. And the sailors, the ships didn't have extra people. So the people that were aboard the ships were there to do whatever job. That was right. They work on sails, they're navigators, whatever, whatever. I don't know all the jobs on a sailboat.

Speaker 2: 1:39:51

But when, when pirates came up like we didn't have, we didn't have fighters right, so the pirates were having a really easy time. So the first task of the marines was to establish a military element on these ships to protect them. And then the problem continued and persisted and that's why we marched across the desert in northern Africa to fight the Barbary pirates on the Barbary coast. And when you talk about the Marines' hymn from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, well, tripoli was that first campaign, that first amphibious assault.

Speaker 2: 1:40:32

Got out of the boats, we hiked way across the desert in a way that they could never expect us to come from, because it was stupid, showed up, took the place, and that Mameluke sword, that officer's sword, is a replica of that sword that was surrendered when the Marines first took Tripoli, really Right. So that is the oldest military weapon in the US arsenal, because it started in the 1770s and is still carried by Marine officers today. That's pretty incredible, yeah, so that's kind of cool. Yeah, and when we cut the Marine Corps birthday cake at the Marine Corps birthday ball every year, it's cut with a mamluk sword and the first piece of cake is given to the oldest marine present, who's the wisest and the most battle-worn of everybody, and then the second piece is given to the youngest marine present, and I love that, yeah it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 1:41:24

Yeah, that that's the stuff that I love about the Marine Corps. I mean, I don't know how deep other branches get into their history. I don't think sailors even know their birthday.

Speaker 2: 1:41:35

I would put a bet on it. Yeah, not the same way we do.

Speaker 1: 1:41:38

Yeah, my grandma used to call me every Marine Corps birthday and scream seeing the Marine Corps hymn. I love it.

Speaker 1: 1:41:49

In my phone, yeah, every from the day I joined. Every year after that until she passed. Even if it was a voicemail, I'd hit it and she would just start. I mean the whole, all the whole thing from start to finish. Yeah, and so it's like those are the things I feel like that separate us and put us on such a different level or shelf from the other branches is just the traditions and customs and courtesies. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if you know this, but the, the furl or whatever that's on top of officers hats, yep it's called quattrofoil was that put there for the marksmen when they would be fighting on ships?

Speaker 1: 1:42:25

people would be invading. They can tell who was who at some point.

Speaker 2: 1:42:27

Well, right, okay, so on top of the marines officer like dress hat, um, and and the service hat so the green one and the white one um, there's this little spinny like four leaf clover looking thing. It's called a quatrefoil, and the quatrefoil was originally made out of rope and it was put on top of their hats so that the marines who were up in the rigging of the ships that were shooting everybody that was scrambling around swash buckling on board could tell who was who from the top down. Because that's tough man and this is, uh, this is the days of black powder. There would have been smoke everywhere. Um, we're using a lot of edged weapons. People are screaming, there's cannons and splinters and chaos, like you really need to know who you're shooting. So don't shoot the guy with a fancy hat, and that's how it started. So we still have a quatrefoil what other?

Speaker 1: 1:43:19

what other fun facts from old marine corps history?

Speaker 2: 1:43:24

well, uh, I think one of the things that's interesting about warfare is how much it advances all kinds of technology. So I've heard from doctors that medicine was advanced 100 years in four years of the US Civil War. Really Right, and we see that. I've seen that just in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since I've been guiding since I was 14, that meant that I've been having to take first aid CPR every year since I was 14. Before I left they said if you apply a tourniquet, you can kiss that limb goodbye. It's an absolute last resort and we shouldn't even do it. The classes as soon as I got back. We're like you know what we're like, you know what we're thinking about starting to use tourniquets. We are carrying them in our kits now and then, after I was back for just a couple of years, it's like, hey, if it's bleeding go ahead and put a tourniquet above it, put it out, tourniquet, yeah, and that's just a small example of a way that a lot of lives have been saved by a piece of technology that the military figured out.

Speaker 2: 1:44:31

Korea was a huge leap forward in that, and one of the most famous and interesting battles of the Korean conflict was Chosin Reservoir. Okay, all right, the frozen Chosin, the frozen Chosin, and I think this was First Mardiv Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, all right, the frozen chosen, the frozen chosen, and I think this was first Mardiv Mm-hmm. Yep, okay, so it's about gosh. I can't even remember how many Marines it was, but it was early November of 1950 at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. We were there to try to make Korea one democratic country so that we could prevent communism from spreading.

Speaker 2: 1:45:11

South China had entered the war in secret and had sent huge numbers of troops down to fight. The 1st Marine Division got surrounded by between 120,000 and maybe 600,000 to 700,000 troops. They were outnumbered at least 10 to 1, if not much more than that. It was 30 below zero. The Marines were wearing cotton jackets, wool shirts, uninsulated canvas boots. They had fingerless gloves and 30 below zero.

Speaker 2: 1:45:52

This campaign lasted not for hours or days, but they were there for weeks. A lot of the fighting occurred at night. Right Ammunition was scarce for both sides so it was a lot of bayonet charges. This is at 40 degrees north, so in november at 40 degrees north you've got about 14 and a half hours of night at 30 below zero.

Speaker 2: 1:46:19

It was so cold that the grease was freezing and their machine guns wouldn't work. It was so cold that mortars were getting stuck in the frost of the mortar tubes. It was so cold that they couldn't open the pouches of their ammo belts because the brass had shrunk and the cotton had gotten wet and it had frozen. They were stacking bodies of the Chinese that they'd killed with bayonets to make little cabins so that they had a little bit of insulation. And I know somebody asked about if the Marine Corps had ever been involved in a retreat and this is kind of an interesting example. Some people consider the Marines retreating from that situation where they were surrounded 20 to 1 by Chinese. But Chesty Puller had an interesting thing to say about it. He said this actually simplifies our situation because now the enemy is in any direction that we go and we know where to go to find and kill him.

Speaker 1: 1:47:26

What a Chesty Puller thing to say yeah, um.

Speaker 2: 1:47:30

And then another officer there said uh, you know, retreat, hell, we're just attacking in another direction, which is very much true, and people who don't understand military maneuver would say, okay, if you're leaving the scene of a battle because it got too much for you, then that's a retreat.

Speaker 2: 1:47:52

But if you're surrounded and you're the Marine Corps the Marine Corps is a maneuver element, right, we locate, close with and destroy the enemy with superior firepower and maneuver. You cannot stay in one place and fight. There's no kind of fighting where staying in one place ultimately ever works out, and we're going to get to more of that later. So attacking in another direction means that you're consolidating your effort, you're consolidating your direction, and there was actually a medal of honor that was written for the Marines that held Fox Hill so that they actually had a place to attack through to get back, and they saved 100,000 troops by making that assault out through the Chinese lines to get back to the coast. Really. So if you want to call that a retreat, you can. If you talk to any Korean war vets, you might want to choose your words a little bit more carefully.

Speaker 1: 1:48:48

Yeah, yeah, no, I wouldn't consider that at all.

Speaker 2: 1:48:55

But after that conflict we'd learned several things. We learned that we needed to insulate boots in cold weather situations. It was the first time that we used close air support. Oh really, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:49:05

How were they doing that? I mean, since it's the first, with the very first helicopters, really, yep, can you imagine just hooking and jabbing?

Speaker 2: 1:49:14

And probably no ground communication.

Speaker 1: 1:49:19

Are those ours? Yeah, spraying and praying at that point. Shoot the little ones. Yeah, the ones with the weird helmets on.

Speaker 2: 1:49:26

Yeah, and I mean mean, you're talking about hand-to-hand combat, I think was. That was a lot of that trench where they trenched in, or I mean they were fortified, but they were also at a terrain disadvantage because, um, the reservoir, of course was was down low, so there was a lot of high ground around them. Um, so, yeah, it was a very, very difficult situation. I.

Speaker 1: 1:49:47

I imagine that. I mean, that goes back to why we do. You know, it's not for the left and right, it's for the history of the guys that paved the way.

Speaker 2: 1:49:54

Am I going to do something that might disappoint? That might disappoint somebody who was at chosen reservoir and and had to stack the bodies of the enemies that he killed with a bayonet, so he had someplace halfway warm, stacked the bodies of the enemies that he killed with a bayonet, so he had someplace halfway warm. They had over 10,000 amputations from frostbite and kept fighting.

Speaker 1: 1:50:17

I mean Tough, super tough, built different man, yeah, and a lot of these were kids.

Speaker 2: 1:50:23

Yeah, Children At Iwo Jima. This is another interesting one. I think when a lot of people think of Iwo Jima, they think about the flag image getting tipped up the most famous part of it, I guess.

Speaker 2: 1:50:41

Tipped up at the top of Mount Suribachi. Who was at and who was in charge of the defense of Iwo Jima said it would take a million years, a hundred, or it would take a million troops, a hundred years and they would never take Iwo Jima. And how many hours was it? It took three weeks, Okay, but it took I think four days to make it to the top of Mount Suribachi. That general died in the last charge of his troops. A lot of the troops ended up killing themselves but Marines took that island.

Speaker 2: 1:51:16

There was over 11 miles of tunnel on that island. It was like a honeycomb of this dormant volcano and the slopes of it was just ash like loose ash. So imagine trying to fight uphill into entrenched positions under machine gun fire, under machine gun and mortar fire, where those troops had had months to prepare for you. You've got to climb up loose ash hill with no cover and route all these guys out of all these tunnels and caverns and caves. Absolutely brutal. 70,000 Marines landed on Iwo and it was the first time in the Pacific where we had more casualties than the enemy did. So I think we had like 9,000 killed, 16,000 wounded and there was about 20,000 Japanese troops there, I think we only captured around 100 of them. A lot of them committed suicide. Yeah, they're not.

Speaker 1: 1:52:18

I mean, that's kind of what they're built.

Speaker 2: 1:52:20

They're not going to go out like that and we went in there with demolition, flamethrowers and rifles, with demolition flamethrowers and rifles.

Speaker 1: 1:52:28

Could you imagine being the troop that gets handed this tank strapped to your back and you're in charge of the flamethrower? I heard I couldn't. I don't remember now maybe you know like the life expectancy of a flamethrower troop was like. I want to say it was like seven seconds or something like that. I mean, you are the biggest target. Imagine being this kid I'm gonna defend my country 17, 18 years old and you got a flamethrower and not even just the pure fear that you are now public enemy number one for a whole entire battlefield but you're walking up to a bunker and just torching dudes and having to listen to that or or doing it in a cave and now, because you're carrying the light, you have no vision at all.

Speaker 2: 1:53:13

Yeah, you're blind because you got a.

Speaker 1: 1:53:15

You're completely blind um I mean, imagine them today trying to tell troops to do this. I feel like half of them be like, no, fuck this, I'm out dude, imagine trying to carry the damn thing up the hill.

Speaker 2: 1:53:26

Yeah, it's just going up a I mean, how many gallons? An ashy volcano, while you're getting shot at and you're carrying a tank of stupid, of explosion this giant handle you're just dragging around angry weed sprayer.

Speaker 1: 1:53:41

Oh my god crazy, absolutely insane, what we put troops through back.

Speaker 2: 1:53:45

Yeah one of the one of the things about ewo, though and you got to give the nod to the japanese for this they actually knew that they couldn't hold it forever. We needed it to increase the range of our bombers, and especially for the escort fighters, for the bombers, because the bombers could carry more fuel and had longer range than their escorts. But bombers need escorts, so we needed iwo for those escort fighters, so that we could eventually deliver ordnance to japan. So that was a pretty strategic. It was huge. We had to have it.

Speaker 2: 1:54:21

Their goal was to grind us down and kill as many of us as possible and really attrit the Marines at Iwo Jima, and they did an excellent job of that, right Like you got to give it to them. But fighting somebody in an entrenched position is extremely difficult. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but there was times in training where, if I was in a building and I had 20 Marines, there were times that we could defend it against 150 Marines pretty easily and not take much in the way of casualties. So fighting anybody who's entrenched is very, very difficult, because you have to move to get there, you have to expose yourself to get there. They can defend in depth so that you've got all these barriers and obstacles and you know different angry things that you've got to go through to get there. It's just incredible what those guys did at Iwo Jima, but they didn't have as much of a contested beach landing as they did on places like Guadalcanal and some of the other Pacific islands where the fighting was just like getting to the beach.

Speaker 1: 1:55:27

I got to go and visit Guadalcanal.

Speaker 1: 1:55:29

Yeah, it was crazy. It was one of the most incredible experiences that I had in the Marine Corps was going there and cause it was for the one of the anniversaries and they flew back a bunch of the vets that stormed the beaches. And here I am as some Sergeant and I was the first Marine division color Sergeant, color sergeant, so obviously you know 1st Marine Division being founded there and all those crazy experiences. But it was very humbling because I'm sitting on this bus with a bunch of old men and they were younger than me when they stormed the beaches and to hear the stories from like red beach you know where I'm sure you're familiar with that and to be able to be there with a machine gunner that this guy was a kid and he said that when they told him that they couldn't shoot until they could see the, the whites in their eyes, he's like that was that was it, and he said that they they killed so many enemy that they couldn't even see sand if they tried, like the bodies were so thick, it covered the beach.

Speaker 2: 1:56:33

Yeah. And then, psychologically, what does that do to you if you see enemy continue to come at you in those circumstances, wave after wave? If all you can take from somebody that you're fighting against is their life, like that's it, that's the maximum you can take from them, and then the guy behind their life like that's it, that's the maximum you can take from them. And then the guy behind him like that's not enough to deter him, that's like well, what do I have to offer? Yeah, you know, yeah, that's that's an insanely difficult enemy to fight against. Yeah, the japanese were super tough, super.

Speaker 1: 1:57:02

yeah, it was it was pretty, it was wild. They would tell me these stories. There's a monument there on the peak of this mountain and there's just sheer cliffs on each side and it's the missing soldier monument or tomb and one of the gentlemen they had a machine gun post up there and that was where he was. And he calls me over to the edge and he's like you want to hear something crazy. And I was like absolutely. He said at night, when it would be dead still and calm, they can hear the Japs climbing up the cliffs at night. So they would shoot the flares out of the mortars. Yeah, he said flares at the time I'd imagine mortars, but they'd shoot flares up and they would try to look and see where the Japs were. And he said they got so good at milking, dump it and then wait and then they would drop them, so that way, as the grenade was passing, these jabs that were climbing the cliffs, it would explode. He's like you would just watch bodies peel off the cliff all night. Those are brave men.

Speaker 1: 1:58:02

He said that, uh, this guy's name was earnest. He told me a story and I don't know the truth is, maybe you'll know. He said the original marine corps mascot was the doberman or that was the dog that they were looking at adopting as the Marine Corps mascot. And they said he said he would go on patrols and they had him in over in Guadalcanal and he was telling me this story how they found these prisoners of some of the locals and they got them untied and the locals were telling them where these Japs were hiding out of. So they went back and they got this dog team and they used to run teams of dogs, not like canine sniffing, now these were hunting Dobermans and he said that they would go on patrol and just turn these and they knew when they were getting close they would turn these dogs loose. And he's like in this old man I'll never forget, he's like you know how we knew we were on him. He's like we would just listen and start listening for screams. He said the japs were terrified of these dogs and he's like, as soon as we heard it was screams, he's like we would go running in. He goes, we would go on a patrol. And he's like we can kill up to 20 guys on a patrol and never fire a shot. I was like well, how did you kill him? He's like I personally couldn't slit their throats. He's like that wasn't my thing, but he goes. I got so good at hitting them with the butt of my, the buttstock of my rifle. He's like if you hit a Jap, just right, you can sink your buttstock to their jaw. And I was like I didn't even know what to say. And here I am, like marching this little fucking flag around and he said he's like until that point the Marine Corps was looking at adopting the Doberman, but it got such a bad rap on the island hopping campaigns they scratched it and ended up really pushing the bulldog. How much truth to that is, I don't know. But he said that I mean, this guy was the real deal.

Speaker 1: 1:59:45

We actually went to the beach that he stormed as a 17-year-old kid and they were told that they would lose 75% of his platoon before they even got to the wood line. And he said they landed Because we went to the beach and he was standing there. He's off by himself and you could tell he was weird. And I went up to him and was like hey, ernest is everything good. And he's like I stormed this beach when I was 17 years old. This was the very first place that I put my boots on this island. I was like, really, what was that like? And he's like they told us that 75% of us would die before we hit the woods and he goes. We hit the beach and he goes. All I remember doing was screaming and running, and running, and running and running and not one shot was ever fired.

Speaker 1: 2:00:32

The Japs got intel that they were landing on a different part of the beach and they landed and there was no enemy resistance there. And I asked him what was different. He said from when he was a kid to now I think he was 80 something years old or whatever. He said the beach was much farther back, the forest had grown a lot closer in, but yeah, he said that they all thought they were going to die on the beach. There wasn't anybody there, yeah, to resist them. But yeah, it was pretty cool. I was.

Speaker 1: 2:00:56

I got to go in the first marine division headquarters that was in a tunnel that they had found like the day before we got there. They've been looking for it ever since had gotten buried and uh, this little, this little local, come running out of the woods. We're on this bus, like we found it. We found it to the tour guide. The tour guides, found's found, what they're like we found it. We found it. I was like what did they find? He's like we think that they found. We've been looking for the 1st Marine Division office like headquarters office. Wow, that was buried in the side of a little hill mountain.

Speaker 2: 2:01:26

Sure yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:01:27

And we go down there, Some these little locals come crawling out of a hole like the size of a steering wheel. I have all these photos. I'll dig them up for you. I'm like this is the 1st Marine Division headquarters. They're like this has got to be it. We knew it was in this area. We've been looking for it and I'm like I'm going in and this tour guide's like you're not going in there.

Speaker 1: 2:01:49

I look at this guy, I go, I represent the 1 on these fucking islands. I'm going in that hole and he's like I don't recommend it. I'm like I don't care what you recommend and I climbed in this hole and all I had was a wind-up camera with the flash, so I would just wind it up. You could see the little orange light and I'd take a picture. It was hallways cut in in rooms that branched off. I mean. So yeah, to be the first marine to go in those headquarters since the war and they found it like that day or the day before, yeah. So that was cool, being able to travel with a bunch of old-timers that got to storm the beaches.

Speaker 2: 2:02:27

A Marine that I grew up looking up to is this guy named Jim Zam, a Master Sergeant, and he was at a couple different islands, but at tarawa he ended up getting shot and was in the water for about eight hours in the seawall with the rest of the bodies and then, you know, made it, made it back to the ship. They had already shut his payoff and it took him like six months to start getting paid again because he just automatically wrote everybody off yep, yep that is a that's a marine thing, right.

Speaker 2: 2:03:02

So like, how do you deal with the admin details of losing that many troops at once when it's it's world war ii and your budget is extremely tight? Anyways, it's, it's stuff you've got to think about. He ended up basically founding the Marine Corps sniper program. Really, he was the one who taught Marines how to shoot a pistol with both hands. At the same time. He ran the sniper program at Quantico. He testified at Lee Harvey Oswald's trial no shit. And when they asked him about Oswald's's marksmanship he said, uh, a very marine corps thing. He said compared to civilians, he's excellent. Compared to marines, he's average, no shit, yeah I love that.

Speaker 1: 2:03:46

Yeah, but yeah uh what is? There's gotta be some pretty cool. If you know any incidences of marines being called in to do some crazy things that are not like marine corps related, uh, like we've been used and pimped out over the years yeah, I'm, I'm involved in one right now that I can tell you about offline.

Speaker 2: 2:04:06

But okay, um, yeah, might be doing some stuff for another government here pretty soon. We'll talk about it later. But yeah, no, I I think that there's there's a lot of that, for sure. There's a lot of that out there well, dude, we could wrap this up.

Speaker 1: 2:04:20

I know we got dinner yeah but uh, is there any last saved rounds that I mean you mentioned? Hold on real quick.

Speaker 2: 2:04:28

There's a couple guys we got to talk about.

Speaker 1: 2:04:29

If we have I feel like dan, yeah, chesty puller probably being one of them, I'm not going to talk about chesty.

Speaker 2: 2:04:35

No, we've already talked about him a little bit.

Speaker 1: 2:04:37

All right, I want to talk about Smedley Butler and Dan Daly. Okay, because every Marine knows those names Smedley.

Speaker 2: 2:04:44

Butler. First of all, okay, what a name. Yeah, what a name, such an old-timer name too, yeah, and one of his nicknames was like Old Gimlet Eye, different times. Do you know how freaking hard this dude was? No, yeah, I didn't either. I knew of him because I knew that he was one of the Marines who had received two Medals of Honor. He's the only one of two, correct? Yeah, dan Daly's the other one. Yep, so Smedley Butler won them in 1914 and 1915.

Speaker 1: 2:05:17

Two years in a row Wins a Medal of Honor. Yep.

Speaker 2: 2:05:21

So one of them was at Veracruz, mexico, which we'd fought in Veracruz multiple times Spanish-American War starting in like the 1840s, and that's what secured Texas and California as part of the United States. These are very important conflicts. Well, we were concerned in the early 1900s that Germany was going to get a big influence in Mexico and that would have been great for Germany as they're gearing up for World War I. So we wanted to stop shipments of arms from the Germans into Mexico. But we also don't really want to piss off our southern neighbor that much. Well, it gets to a point where Woodrow Wilson, president at the time, says no too much, go take Veracruz. And this is one of the first times that we had room-to-room clearing of a city and Smedley Butler, as a major, was at the front of it as a major as a major this dude's kicking doors as a major Kicking doors in Mexico in 1914 with a bayonet.

Speaker 2: 2:06:31

Just lacing hands, hand-to-hand combat all through Veracruz took the city. What are they using as weapons then? So they were using the 1911, which was fairly fresh. Of course, they were using the M1903 Springfield .30-06. Some of them still had a .38 Special pistol. They carried knives and bayononets.

Speaker 1: 2:06:58

got it done yeah, and what did he do? You know?

Speaker 2: 2:07:00

his, uh, his a little bit of his medal of honor, like citations I don't know the citations, but basically led from the front hand-to-hand combat, clear the city room to room. Oh shit, yeah. So think of, think of fallujah, but in 1914 in mexico, yeah, yeah, fallujah now yeah right hard as nails.

Speaker 2: 2:07:24

Yeah, yeah, uh. In 1915 he was fighting in haiti and it was against mexico to haiti, yeah, and it was against this, this rebellion that I think was called Keiko C-A-C-O, and they had a fort that was on top of a mountain, that that commanded this huge area, and he climbed the mountain with 24 Marines, found a crack in the wall of the fort, went through that crack, found a crack in the wall of the fort, went through that crack and killed everybody inside, with 24 Marines, again hand-to-hand fighting. God bless as a major.

Speaker 1: 2:08:05

Yeah, I was going to say this is the year after.

Speaker 2: 2:08:07

Another thing that's interesting, and I don't think Marines know this about him in the 30s he became a very divisive public figure for speaking out against the military industrial complex really, and he had he called himself a gangster of the state and and really wanted to end the war profiteering that he'd seen go on um throughout all the wars that he'd fought imagine that all the way back, then, right, nothing's changed.

Speaker 1: 2:08:33

I bet you he's rolling his grave watching the wars that he'd fought. Imagine that all the way back then Right. Nothing's changed. I bet you he's rolling his grave watching the wars now.

Speaker 2: 2:08:39

So you've got a guy who is a field grade officer, who's operating as a small unit leader, who's getting engaged in hand-to-hand combat in ways that are so significant that he's two times in two years awarded the Medal of Honor and then, after he gets out, he speaks against the profiteering that occurred from large corporations and large conflict for him. That's a marines marine. That is a marines marine.

Speaker 1: 2:09:03

We love that guy so what about dan daly?

Speaker 2: 2:09:05

dude, dan daly. Um, so dan daly was also in haiti, um, and one of his medal, medals of honor, was from Haiti. I'm pretty sure it was called the banana wars, um, and I can't remember exactly what went on there. Um, his, he didn't get and a lot of Marines get this wrong he didn't get a medal of honor for his actions at Bella wood, but I think Bella wood, as much as anything, made the Marine Corps. So that was our first engagement in World War. I was in Belleau Wood in France and there was this mountain that the Germans had entrenched themselves into with mortars and machine guns and artillery and they were very good at artillery.

Speaker 2: 2:09:53

And they were very good at machine guns and they were very good at artillery and they were very good at machine guns. We had to cross a wheat field just to get to the woods before we could start scouring the woods. This is also when small unit decentralized command started to occur. So previous to this, we moved armies and military units in big blocks with centralized command and military units in big blocks with centralized command. But in Belleau Wood the woods were so thick and the underbrush was so thick that that's when we really had to break into fire teams and trust fire team leaders to make decisions. And that was unconventional to that point, very unconventional Throughout the history of warfare. It was unconventional to that point.

Speaker 1: 2:10:35

Imagine being the first squad leader, platoon sergeant. You're like, hey, these are your guys. Now here's your AO, go yeah, and having to figure that Because they weren't training for that.

Speaker 2: 2:10:43

Right. So when they're starting to approach, they get pinned down by all this artillery, all these mortars, all these machine guns in this wheat field. And in this wheat field and this is another way that the marine corps stepped up is they were fighting mostly with rifles. And this was the first time that the world started to understand that there's nothing better than a marine and his rifle, right, there's nothing scarier in the world. And marines were making 800 yard, thousand yard shots with peep sights, with 30-06s.

Speaker 2: 2:11:13

I believe it, I 100% believe it. And, dude, I would, 10 to 1, rather go up against a machine gun than a rifleman. Oh, like, for sure, 100%. Yeah, like, if you want me to try and fight a platoon of riflemen, I don't want to go, I just don't. But if it's a couple machine guns, I like my odds a lot more, a lot more right. So, yeah, they get pinned down. His troops hesitate a little bit and Dan Daly very famously says come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever? And then they charge across the field. Three weeks later, the commanding officer sends out the message there is now nothing in the woods except Marines.

Speaker 2: 2:11:59

God just the messages and things that were sent out there were.

Speaker 1: 2:12:03

So just on point of who these guys?

Speaker 2: 2:12:06

were. Yeah. General MacArthur in Korea said the safest place in Korea is behind a platoon of riflemen of Marines. I believe it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:12:14

I mean it. Then it all comes like the little start of this whole entire conversation, like that's, that's what separates us from.

Speaker 2: 2:12:21

So I've got one more and then we can do it. No, dude, I'm cool. Okay, so little known fact, I love, I love these things. Little known fact In 1946, there was a bank robber and three of his buddies on Alcatraz, alcatraz Island, in prison, and they wanted to escape. But during their attempt they couldn't find a key to get out of the prison yard. But they'd already broken into the armory. They'd already fought the guards and won, but they couldn't actually make it through the prison yard because they couldn't find this freaking key. Okay, so they start a riot and take over the entire prison of Alcatraz. What year is this? 1946. No shit. So the FBI gets involved. The Coast Guard gets involved, local law enforcement Nobody can figure it out. Local law enforcement, nobody can figure it out. The president has the authority to use the Marine Corps without an act of Congress. Okay, and there was a Marine base nearby, at a place called Treasure Island. This is 1946. These are the dudes that routed the Japanese out of Iwo Jima with flamethrowers.

Speaker 2: 2:13:33

Oh no, like these are the dudes that made it through Tarawa and Guadalcanal and like, slugged it out across the Pacific and came back and have been twiddling their thumbs a little bit. Well, we're wondering if the Marine Corps is even going to continue to be a thing. And they're like hey, the prisoners just took over Alcatraz, you guys busy. Guess how many Marines they sent 20. 20 just hard chargers. They had the entire prison balled up in four hours. No, there was so much structural damage from all of their demolition and small arms fire that it took weeks of constant construction before the prison was functioning again.

Speaker 1: 2:14:14

I mean, that is the most Marine Corps shit. I love stories like that because it's just. You could say they're as fabricated as you want, but true Marines will never question any of that, just because that's just who we are Dude. This is facts.

Speaker 2: 2:14:33

Here's another thing. You know why there's not a movie or a book about it? I've been thinking about this a lot, like why aren't Marines out there writing books Like it just doesn't happen that much? No, why aren't there Marine Corps movies and popular fiction Like that all goes to SEALs and Rangers. Yeah, the marketing department of the Navy, which is the SEALs. Yeah, I think it's because Marines don't have anything to prove.

Speaker 1: 2:15:00

I mean, you're 100% right on that. Not a thing. So, yeah, here's a thing that'll piss me off. That would make a great movie, it'd make an incredible movie, but we don't even know about it. Yeah, it's because, at the end of the day, it's just a job. Yeah, we don't even know about it. Yeah, it's because, at the end of the day, it's just a job. Yeah, these guys are just want to go and get it done one marine got injured, zero casualties.

Speaker 2: 2:15:25

Probably got stepped on a nail or something stupid. You know, cooked his grenade off a little bit too long or something.

Speaker 1: 2:15:28

Yeah, yeah you go in there like hey guys, can you go help us? And they just demo the whole entire freaking alcatraz. Yeah, oh perfect, okay cool. I mean we got time, if you want to keep going um, you got any other questions? Fuck dude, we got some questions. I mean most. I mean the most elephant in the room is your mustache. People want to know how long and what are you using in that yep?

Speaker 2: 2:15:51

okay. So I had to shave my mustache this spring because I was doing a bunch of spearfishing and I was getting all this leaking around my mask, especially at like 50 plus feet, because there's so much pressure, and I was like I'm drowning down here, like this mustache might kill me, so I shaved it off. I can't tell you how traumatic that was for the people in my life Really.

Speaker 1: 2:16:12

To see me without a mustache Really yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:16:16

My poor friend ricky forbes from canada, like wouldn't talk to me for several months to get personal yeah so it it takes, uh, six or seven months to to grow it out, to get to where you're at, what we're looking at right here, really uh-huh and what are you putting in that?

Speaker 1: 2:16:28

is that a beeswax? Or yeah, yep, okay, yeah people.

Speaker 2: 2:16:32

the people want to know bees, beeswax and a little bit of oil, and you can also use a little bit of a pine sap too.

Speaker 1: 2:16:38

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: 2:16:39

That's, that's.

Speaker 1: 2:16:40

That's the cowboy wilderness version of you, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:16:44

But uh, yeah, just keep your, keep your face clean and uh, it'll just grow right out of your lip. It's pretty crazy Old cliff.

Speaker 1: 2:16:53

He says ask him about this goal of riding a marlin and stabbing it to death goal for the year is this year, for 2025 this year. Where is this going to?

Speaker 2: 2:17:03

happen. It's going to happen in mexico, okay, and I'm going to hawaii in march for, uh, for about 10 days, and I'm going to be diving every day to skill up for this. And then in November there's a place in Mexico where the striped marlin really show up and I'm going to get in the water in a bait ball out of a small boat and I'm going to shoot a marlin with a spear gun and get on top of his back and stab him in the brain until he's dead.

Speaker 1: 2:17:35

Yeah, that's the goal for the year. I, I mean 100. I feel like you're gonna. This is I'm not even shocked by this. Yeah, I do. I feel like this is something that you either you or I would 100 do some dumber shift than this if, if you were to condense all hunting and all fishing into one thing, it would be spearfishing, right?

Speaker 2: 2:17:55

Really, it's a condensed version of everything in the outdoors that you could love and it's put into such a tight timeline because of your breath. And then you get put in this foreign environment, which is the ocean or underwater and freshwater or whatever. And then with a Marlin, you've both got spears and I can shoot about 15 feet. And then with a Marlin, you've both got spears and I can shoot about 15 feet. That's your max range. Yeah Well good luck with that buddy.

Speaker 1: 2:18:25

Yeah, good luck with that.

Speaker 2: 2:18:27

I'll send you pictures. I hope you do?

Speaker 1: 2:18:32

I got some Oregon dog questions. Do you ever think they're going to bring back dogs? Yeah, okay, so let's go to that. Do you ever think they're going to bring back hunting dogs? Also, will Oregon be able to hunt wolves?

Speaker 2: 2:18:45

Eventually Oregon will have to adopt a wolf management plan that includes harvest, because the state can't do it. They don't have the capacity to be able to do it and wolf populations grow as they enter new environments. So there will be a time, after the cycle of lawsuits and things like that, where wolf hunting will be a thing in Oregon.

Speaker 1: 2:19:07

It'll come to a money thing, then just costing the state too much money.

Speaker 2: 2:19:11

And social tolerances and pressure. Okay, yeah, and it'll just become an imperative for the management strategy and it's part of the North American model and, despite the polarizing feelings that people get from wolf hunting, eventually it will just be something that we have to look at. With dogs and lions in 1993, a bill was passed that people voted on that said that we would no longer be able to hunt cougars or bears with dogs. So that wasn't a decision that was made by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. That was something that the people voted on. It's a law. So in order for that to change, we need to have a new ballot measure that people vote on.

Speaker 2: 2:19:58

There's going to be a bill that is run in the next long Senate session which will make it so that counties can individually vote on whether they want to use dogs for lions or not. This bill has been proposed lots of times, maybe 20 times or more but it's never made it out of the Natural Resources Committee. I'm confident that it will at least get a hearing this next time, because the vice chair of the Natural Resources Committee is a freshman senator named Todd Nash, my dad, and he's going to propose this bill. He's in the committee, and I think that that's given us as good of a chance as we've ever had.

Speaker 1: 2:20:45

Good, good. Hopefully the old man can make some changes and bring some things back.

Speaker 2: 2:20:50

Yeah, and there's a precedent for counties to vote individually on what they want. It was like that with recreational marijuana. So some counties said, sure, yeah, we can do that, and other counties said, no, we don't want that and that's perfectly fine.

Speaker 1: 2:21:07

I think it's more than reasonable to allow each county, because you can take somewhere like California or New York, or from upstate and the canadian border. We're getting ruled and run by what's going on in new york city, sure you know.

Speaker 2: 2:21:20

I think it's a great idea to be able to allow counties yeah, to be able to make their decisions and they understand their own problems and situations better.

Speaker 1: 2:21:27

There's so much I mean, you could be dealing with a forest in this county and you're dealing with sand dunes and desert in another. Yeah, I mean, they're in there. They're completely two different, sure, worlds, but they're all being controlled by one. I feel like the smartest way, the smartest thing you can be able to do, is break it in the counties yeah, and just like we're talking about with bella wood, this is decentralized command.

Speaker 2: 2:21:49

Yep, like, don't, don't tell this entire battalion how they're supposed to act. Let each fire team be able to make decisions, and then you'll be able to get the job done much more efficiently.

Speaker 1: 2:21:59

So, leading in from your dad, another question is when's he going to run for office in Oregon? Because you gave it a go with Fish, a Game that didn't go over too well.

Speaker 2: 2:22:12

Well, I was appointed by the governor to be an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife commissioner.

Speaker 1: 2:22:18

Which would have been probably one of the greatest things that happened for Fish and Game and the hunting conservation side of things in that state would have been bringing you on.

Speaker 2: 2:22:27

I personally feel. I think that I could have done some good there and added a perspective from somebody who participates in it a lot a perspective from somebody who participates in it a lot. As far as running for office, I've been asked before to run as a representative, as a county commissioner. There's been talk in the past about Congress. It's not the right point in my life for it right now. I feel you, but that time may come Nice.

Speaker 1: 2:22:52

I hope it does. I think you'd do incredible at any. Any I personally don't want to see on Congress. So you're just your whole life is just strung out, and I mean you and I both know Eli pretty well.

Speaker 2: 2:23:04

Yeah, I'll just go hang out with Eli, exactly. And we can be like man. They say some dumb stuff around here, don't they? Exactly, exactly, and so it's just like you know, I know who you are as a human being and such a great guy and, like I, just when you step into those roles you gotta be where that makes sense and I can do some good to help people. Then if politically is the right route for that, then that might just be a grenade I have to jump on.

Speaker 1: 2:23:46

Well, you know, I'll support you.

Speaker 2: 2:23:48

Thanks brother.

Speaker 1: 2:23:48

I got some hunting questions. Oh nice, shift gears a little bit, since this pretty much consumes your life most of the year In archery season, how does he locate elk when they're just not talking cameras?

Speaker 2: 2:24:01

yeah, yeah, cameras and tracks. Man, like, like, use your wood skills and look at the ground and look at tracks. Know the difference between a bull and a cow on a calf track? How old old that is? How long it's been since there was a dew or a rain? Like, use those skills. That's not that hard. Elk are really heavy, you know. In early September, when they're not talking that much, bull's going to weigh almost 800 pounds. Cow's going to weigh something around 600 pounds. They leave a mark in the earth everywhere they go Not that hard. And cameras dude, use cameras where they go, not that hard. And cameras dude, use cameras like I. I use reveal cell cams. I know what the hell is going on because I've got my little robot spies out there taking pictures of anything that moves. Yeah, it's the 21st century, so use the old skills, use the new skills. It's not that hard. There you go I love it.

Speaker 1: 2:24:51

You know, yes, I'm out there, just gotta grind and call, do this I. I guide on a place with my buddies ranch and I'll be out there. Just got to grind and call and do this. No cameras. I guide on a place with my buddies Ranch. We'll be sitting in the camp and the phone will go off. We'll be like shit camera 16, get down there. He'll send you the picture of the bull and you sneak in. It's so nice. Technology is incredible. I guess. Now we're on hunting. How does one go about guide booking a guided elk hunt with you?

Speaker 2: 2:25:15

they don't okay. Yeah, so I I'm under retainer with two clients, so I guide two people and their friends. I also I I do give away several cow elk hunts every year and I give those away to to veterans and first-time hunters. You know people in my life, but currently there's not a way to book an elk hunt with me. I do get requests almost every day. Whenever I see other outfitters who have availability and they're outfitters that I trust I always post that so that people who want to hunt elk can get that opportunity. But right now I don't have anything open.

Speaker 1: 2:25:56

So the best bet would be to ask you your opinion on who to book with, and you'd get some reputable guys, because not all outfitters are made the same Right and I get $0.00 from saying like, go here, If you use a hunting broker, they're getting paid to send you on that hunt right.

Speaker 2: 2:26:18

There's no incentive for me to lie. There's every incentive for me not to Yup yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:26:22

So guiding yeah, let's talk guiding really quick, we should or clients? First question this is the age old. If I'm a client and I'm booking you to be my, you're going to be my guide for the week. Five day hunt, muley elk, whatever. What is the right amount for tipping? What's the etiquette? Okay, so let me rephrase that you and I I'm the client, you're my guide. We just spent five days chasing whatever. What is the etiquette as far as industry standard when it comes to tipping on a guided hunt? I'd say it's.

Speaker 2: 2:27:04

It's similar to a restaurant, but you should consider 20 kind of as a minimum. Okay, yeah, and that's that's a fairly good way to go about it. Also, think about where the guide is at in their life. It could be that tipping them gear might mean a lot more to them than tipping them money. So give them your spotting scope. Or swing by the outdoor store on the way home and put money down on a pair of boots for them. Something like that. Like that stuff is meaningful and helpful. If it's a young guide, you might consider something like that. If it's a more seasoned guide, then cash talks. Yeah, I think 20% is nice, although I would kind of consider that a minimum.

Speaker 2: 2:28:00

Also, a lot of my clients don't tip at all, and and I think that that's perfectly fine. I did have a client this year, though, and I thought that this was just one of the most gentlemanly things I'd ever seen. He, he, he gave me a tip, he gave me a note, a thank you note, and it was on his own letterhead that he carries around with him. It's like that's classy, and I've still not made my own letterhead yet, but it's on, it's on my list of things to do, like if I just have something that says you know, james Nash, six French outfitters, wild chaos, you know has an emblem, you know, embossed on that paper and you write a small thank you note, that would just mean a lot and it's such an easy thing to do, yeah, so yeah, hats off to that guy.

Speaker 1: 2:28:46

As young clients are coming out west. Oh, I got so many questions. Okay, I want to get into archery clients eventually. Real quick touch on that subject. As a young client booking hunts for the first time, what's the etiquette that I should be looking for? I mean, because we deal with so many different ranges of human beings that come out as far as wanting to kill something. Yes, what are the do's and don'ts, from your opinion, of what you've seen? It's different because obviously you have some guys that are coming out. They're, you know, same, probably clients every year, but you've been around the game long enough to deal with different clients and things like that. What are some of the do's and don'ts of when you're coming out and going on a guided one-on-one hunt? Do?

Speaker 2: 2:29:36

be honest about what you want and expect and communicate that as early as possible, preferably before booking, but certainly when you show up and understand that if your guide says that that thing isn't available, that they they mean that, like your guide wants your version of success more than you do. For sure, like I promise you that and you know I used to and I still do it I say how would you define success on this trip and for fly fishing? I'd have people sometimes say well, I want a 26 inch rainbow trout. I'm like sick me too. We don't have those. But what we can do is go try and catch the biggest fish in the river. That means we're not going to catch as many fish. We might not catch any fish, but we're going to go try and catch the biggest one we got. It's like cool, we recalibrated. Now we're back on the same level.

Speaker 2: 2:30:25

If they say I want to catch as many fish as possible, going to gear up differently for that, I had one guy say you know what? I don't even like fishing. I just want to sit with my feet in the river and read a book. Perfect, like beautiful. I'm so glad you told me that, otherwise we would have been fishing this whole time, you know.

Speaker 2: 2:30:42

So be honest with with your expectations and understand if your expectations are out of line with reality. The other thing that you absolutely should do is be very honest about your capabilities and how much you've trained, because your guide is going to know almost instantly whether you exaggerated or lied about that or not, which happens most of the time, a lot most of the time. And also, I don't care like if you say, man, I can barely hit the broad side of a 3d elk target at 10 yards, like awesome, that, what? What a relief that I know that let's go work on this Right, cause I can get you to 20 before that sandwich is made, you know. But if they say I'm good to 50 or I'm good to 60 and they pull their bow out and all their pins are still at the factory setting and they're evenly spaced, I know that you just lied to to me and I now know that I can't trust anything else that you say and that's gonna, that's gonna really put a damper on a relationship that's founded on communication. Absolutely yeah it's.

Speaker 1: 2:31:49

It's fun sometimes, especially when I can shoot this far, you know, and that's comes down to okay. I'd always ask, okay, what are we comfortable to? What's your max, what is your absolute max that you're most comfortable at? Oh, this, and I just learned over the years I'd cut it in half, yep, and even with a rifle, oh, I can shoot 600 yards all day, okay, or 300 max, yeah, and it usually helped quite a bit because you know, and it usually helped quite a bit because you know, very, very seldom do I trust guys shooting anything long range 500 plus, especially with their firearms. I had one client it's actually that buck behind you. He shot that deer there. He just got off a sheep hunt in Alaska. He had the film, shot it at like 750, 750 yards. Like put three rounds in this thing all stacked in. I was like, okay, and this, this, and he shot a coyote. I want to say it was like in the 600s out of the truck window dialed. I was like I had confidence in this guy.

Speaker 1: 2:32:51

The biggest problem I have in the hunting industry is archery hunting. I personally feel and I'm going to get so much shit for saying this I feel that archery hunting should either be banned or there needs to be stronger regulations on archery hunting due to how many animals are wounded and are wasted. It's disgusting to me as as a hunter, I'm all about nature and all this other bullshit we could say we could whatever we want. It comes down to me it comes down to animal suffering in the waste. That's what makes me sick about archery hunting. Yep, I don't know your opinion on it.

Speaker 2: 2:33:31

But so my best guess is that 60 to 70 percent of bull elk they get hit with arrows are not recovered.

Speaker 1: 2:33:40

60 to 70 percent yes and that's disgusting to me and I hate the fact that you get all these guys and they're watching these cameron haynes videos and they think that they're out there. I mean I have guys, oh, I shoot. I shoot a thousand reps a day, shoot thousand arrows a day, 500 arrows a day, whatever.

Speaker 2: 2:33:56

10 yards broadside bull screaming your face and you gut punch it yeah, I'd rather have somebody who spent 10 minutes a day studying wind than spent 10 minutes a day shooting their bow.

Speaker 1: 2:34:07

It's it's just, it's just gut-wrenching. I mean, especially I had a season, a couple years ago, where every client lost a bull, every, every bull that was hit. We lost every bull. Yeah, and it's just like it wears on you and you see that year after year and I know I'm gonna there's gonna be so many of the uproar for that comment it's the reality yeah it's the reality of being a guide in and watching people, especially in these whitetail guys, come out, yeah, with the absolute worst setups yeah, light arrows, expandable broadheads, single pin sliders like they're not they're.

Speaker 2: 2:34:46

They're very well set up for doing what they do back home, but that doesn't transfer out here. So the the gear is wrong, but they have confidence in it that there's a couple of things that really need to change to improve archery, because archery isn't going to go away. One is we need to understand shot placement and anatomy much better than we do. There's all kinds of myths out there and the myths get perpetuated by people who should know better. People still think that there's space between the top of the lungs and the spine the dead space. Right, yeah, it's not the way lungs work. They don't understand the bone structure of a shoulder, they shoot stuff way too far back and they don't understand how quickly they run into guts on those shots. If you're shooting for the crease or behind the crease, you're dealing with inches on an elk and less on a deer before you get into a gut shot. So understanding anatomy is incredibly important. Don't do it off somebody's drawings or interpretations. Just go through the work of actually seeing scientific documents. It's not that hard.

Speaker 2: 2:35:52

Using the wrong gear is a big deal. So I really want to see people using heavier arrows, sturdier, broad heads Um, I want you to have a multi-pin site because these animals move around, and I also want you to figure out how to range find before you're getting into your shooting sequence. So you need to know the distance between you and all the trees around you so that you don't have to have this movement of using your range finder right before you shoot. Like. Those are some of the really big things that need to change. And then we also need to understand broadside much better than what we do. Almost every single hunter that I have will tell me that their bull was was perfectly broadside. And then we line up the holes on each side of the elk and then stick the arrow out there and they're very, very angled on what they think are broadside shots.

Speaker 2: 2:36:49

If you think it's a quartering shot, it's probably quartering way too much, way too much. So you need to understand shot angle, shot placement. You need to understand gear much better than what you do. I'm going back to that humility thing, like, just imagine that you know nothing and you have to start over. Just try that and see if you're wrong. You have nothing to lose by going through that experiment. You have nothing to lose by going through that experiment. I will also say that I got to shoot a bunch of animals this year with a bow. Got to go to Australia and hunt for months straight down there. I shot big stuff, small stuff, all kinds of stuff with a bow.

Speaker 2: 2:37:37

I can honestly say, I had quicker kills with very good shots with my arrow than I did with very good shots with my rifle. For example, I shot a mule deer in Montana this year with a six MM Creedmoor I. I hurt his heart so bad it was almost unrecognizable. It was split into four different pedals like absolutely exploded, and that deer went 40 yards before he went down. My water buffalo went half that distance with a shot in the same place with an arrow. I had wild boars in Northern Australia die in 10 yards from good arrow shots.

Speaker 2: 2:38:12

But marginal shots with an arrow are awful. They're absolutely awful, awful. So you need to have your good gear, your shot placement. It has to be broadside and you have to make a good shot, and that means that you need to get as close to 20 yards as possible, like that's where good shooting occurs is at 20 yards. Less than that, it gets a lot harder. More that, it gets a lot harder. More than that, it gets a lot harder. Just be a good hunter. Get that 20-yard shot, Get it broadside, put the right arrow and broadhead in the right spot and you're going to get a splendid result. Here's another thing that people are not going to like Right now. The idea is, after you shoot, you wait half an hour to an hour before you start to track, and I have a massive, massive problem with that. And this is coming from 23 years of guiding experience with way more elk than most hunters will ever see in their life. Like I can, I can really honestly say that.

Speaker 2: 2:39:10

Um, I think I've cut up around 150,000 pounds of elk, like I've been around them a little bit here. Here's the thing about the waiting time on a good shot they're going to be. They're going to be dead in about 20 seconds, or at least on the ground, passed out and and dying in about 20 seconds. If that didn't happen, an hour isn't enough, makes sense, and that's a really hard thing that people are going to have to wrap their minds around. If they don't die in seconds in front of you, in less than 100 yards, then you probably need to wait at least four hours and good luck at that point, because they're very hard to turn up on a bad shot, especially elk. They move, they move, they get bumped by other bulls. As soon as they're wounded, those other bulls pick on them and won't let them lay down oh, I never even considered that, huh yeah, so there's.

Speaker 2: 2:40:08

There's just factors outside of you being there, but a wounded bull is going to go to cover and he's gonna. He's gonna bed down in a bedding area. Um, I've I've yet to find a wounded bull is going to go to cover and he's going to bed down in a bedding area. I've yet to find a wounded bull that went to water. I know that that's happened, but that's a common thing. It's like, well, he's wounded, he's going to go downhill, he's going to go to water. Haven't had that experience yet. I've seen wounded elk go in every direction, but I do find them going back to bedding areas direction.

Speaker 1: 2:40:40

Uh, but I do find them going back to bedding areas and uh, yeah, you need, you need to wait a good long time before you go in there, cause how many times you gave it an hour, went in there and blew them out.

Speaker 2: 2:40:46

I mean, you hear that so much and dudes continue to do it because they believe that that's the prescription.

Speaker 1: 2:40:51

You just got to let them get sick.

Speaker 2: 2:40:52

Get sick, I mean, that animal has to get it well in in bleed from an area where their blood vessels are really small, so it's not going to bleed them out. An elk has about six liters of blood that they can lose before they lose consciousness, which is a lot a ton. If you don't think that's a lot, go take three two liter pot bottles and then see how much of a blood trail you can make with them, like you can pour that stuff out the window of your truck for a mile. Um, so yeah, those are some things that need to change about archery. But yeah, the wounding is is the hardest thing about guiding it's. It's not dealing with clients who are unpleasant, it's not the long hours, it's the mental anguish of not being able to find wounded animals.

Speaker 1: 2:41:43

Well, especially, you know, you take archery season. Then I explain it to people. It's imagine a thousand stars and every one of them have to perfectly align for you to even get that arrow off. Yep, and as a guide, you're doing everything for your client to make at least for good guides, they should be doing everything in their power to be making that moment line up. And then it's all coming the client's a full draw broadside, slightly quartering, whatever it is, and it's clear as done, 20 yards, 30 yards, and then you see that arrow just buried into a shank and there are hawks in the back, whatever, and you're just like yeah, that is the. To me, that is the most gut-wrenching, hardest feeling. One, because it what it takes and the luck that is you need on your side for all of it to happen.

Speaker 2: 2:42:42

And two, for me it's like not finding that one I watched a wounded bull this year walk off four hours after the shot and I had a rifle in my hand. Because of the experiences that I've had with bears on blood trails in the past, um, I could have shot that bull. He was 150 yards walking straight away from me. I could tell that he was wounded. I I knew that that bull was going to go off and die slowly. We never found him. In Alaska, a guy just required to follow up on a wounded animal, you know, in oregon it's illegal. So the feelings that I had, standing there with my rifle watching that elk walk off, knowing that the odds of me finding him were incredibly small, you know, and he walked off. It got dark, spent the next three days looking for him, never found him, um, it just sucks. That's why I mean we lose.

Speaker 1: 2:43:40

Just I don't want to say we lose just as much during rifle season, but it's just, man, it's so tough, I mean, you get it is. I would I always say, like, if you're not getting as a deer hunter, if your arrow is not zipping through a whitetail, oh my god. Yeah, if it is, I'm talking, if you're, if your arrow, I don't want to, I don't want to see an arrow slow down because of a whitetail that's it's.

Speaker 1: 2:44:06

Honestly, when I watch some of these videos and the arrow does go, I'm like, oh wow, that's how it should be because, I feel every whitetail guy, I mean their whole entire arrow sticking out of this deer and they're like they're cheering for it. And, as a western guy, if I see this much shaft sticking out of an elk I'm like, oh fuck here this is this is not what we want, right?

Speaker 1: 2:44:26

yeah, even a mule deer, you don't want that and it's. You know, and that's my biggest thing, like my advice. I'm like, hey, if you're, you're drawing 65 pounds when you're mechanical out here, it is not going to cut it. And I I mean how many? I'm sure you've seen it. I mean I've had clients that just straight shoulder, a bowl, and that I mean I had a guy two years ago with a crossbow dead on the shoulder and the whole entire broadhead. Everything blew up in the.

Speaker 1: 2:44:51

The bolt just fell right to the ground. Hammered it, I hammered it. I'm watching this bull run. I'm like, man, it must have buried in this thing. But the way this bull was running, I was not phased and I'm watching, watching it stopped and it ended up turning the side and I'm looking, no blood, nothing. And I'm like, are you sure, drilled it? Drilled it like, okay, all right, you know we've all heard that a million times. But I'm, and this bull is just standing there like what the fuck happened? It goes and takes off and we go over there and there's this bolt on the ground and there's literally a chunk of meat where it just popped in and it must have hit that and the whole broadhead, mechanical broadhead, everything just completely disassembled with this bolt and I'm like these are a different breed.

Speaker 2: 2:45:34

It's a different animal. Here's what I'll say about mechanicals. They kill whitetail fine. Sometimes the metal in those blades is the same metal that they use in disposable razor blades. So think about what a disposable razor has to do Like navigates the stubble on your face three or four times and then it's too dull to function. Now that same steel, you're asking it to fly through the air, hit coarse, muddy hair and then hide and then a rib bone and then continue to be sharp as it goes through lungs and the mediastinum and then the other side of the animal. You're asking too much of the material, so don't be surprised when it fails.

Speaker 2: 2:46:20

But yeah, I think that there's a. There's also a deficit in in bow shops across the country. People oftentimes have to go to a bass pro shop or a cabela's and maybe there's not a good bow technician there, so their bows are never getting tuned properly for sure and they feel like they have to shoot a mechanical in order to get decent arrow flight. But with our access to resources now, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to get that stuff done, even if you don't have access to to a professional um at a bow shop. But I used to drive eight hours to go to a guy to tune my bow and now I've got an outstanding shop in the grand alpine archery is wonderful, but yeah uh, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 2:47:04

Archery is a tough one man it is, it's just it's just so sad to watch.

Speaker 1: 2:47:08

You know and you see that many animals wounded, not found, or do you find them all rotted and bloated up and you're just like fuck.

Speaker 2: 2:47:15

You also can't leave an elk out overnight and expect to get meat. I, uh, I've recovered one elk that was left out overnight. Everything else has been um, been rotten me, even when I got it into a cooler within an hour I learned a very valuable lesson a couple years ago that I never thought I would ever experience.

Speaker 1: 2:47:36

But I lost the whole bull shot. It got it out within 30, 40 minutes. You know we were in flat sage. We were able to drive right to it, loaded it in, took it right to a barn, strung it up, skin the whole thing out. It was cool. It was the end of archery season.

Speaker 1: 2:47:54

I thought it was cool enough yeah everything's opened up, hanging and wrapped a big sheet around it and any bugs, everything is fine. It was the evening, you know. I got it right in the evening. Next morning, got up, took it to the butcher, cuts it in half, everything's fine, and uh, I go home like hey, just burger, the whole entire thing. I mean that bull alone. The hanging weight was like 511 pounds hanging weight like the butcher's. He's like this is the biggest. It was giant bull, giant bull, bodied wise.

Speaker 1: 2:48:26

I get a call from fish a game like three or four days later, like your bulls, your bull spoiled up here you need, we need to talk about want waste and like this guy's like give, like going at it, a typical fishing game officer. And I'm like what are you talking about? How is this even close to wanton waste? My bowl's at a butcher right now? Like what are you talking about? He's like yeah, I'm here now we got the phone call that this bowl's spoiled and I'm like what do you mean? This bowl is spoiled. It had been three or four days. So this fish cop, typical, right, when are you going to be here? I was like I'll be there in five hours and I fucking hauled ass. I got there in like three and a half. I go to the butcher. I'm like what the fuck he's like? I walked into my shop today and it reeked and it's your bowl. Only thing I could think of is I didn't pop those back hip joints to get that heat out of there.

Speaker 2: 2:49:21

And it had to have cooked His cooler, wasn't cold enough.

Speaker 1: 2:49:24

I would like to blame it on him, but he's like I got all these other. I mean he had a whole thing full and it was green. I mean it stunk, it was bad and I had to drive the whole thing back and the fish cop cop was like I need to see it all corded up at your house, then I won't write you for wanton waste. I'm like how is this wanton waste? Like I literally shot it in the next shot at that evening next morning was at the butcher, whole, just skinned. I'm like how? So yeah, it was. I had to quarter this, turned bowl. It sucked, dude, that one.

Speaker 1: 2:49:54

Those are the ones that like, sit with you for a couple years. We're just like fuck, like you, you know, especially here being a guide, and I'm so hard on you know myself, when the clients lose shit then I do it to myself. I didn't, I don't. It was weird, weird situation. Four days have passed, I get a phone call. My bull's bad. But yeah, I mean I'll take it on the chin on that one. But that that was a learning. The only thing I can think of is I just didn't open up enough of it because they hold so much heat.

Speaker 2: 2:50:18

They do hold a lot of heat in their neck and in those hindquarters. Yeah, if you can pop down to that ball joint in their hip and then pull the meat back away from the femur a little bit, that helps a lot. And then split down the back of the neck, that helps out a lot too. But with you describing what you said there, uh, there, there had to have been an issue with that cooler, um, because it just doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1: 2:50:43

That's, that was my thing, like my whole drive back up there. I'm like god, this doesn't make sense. And I'm like how, now, if I would have let it sit. We're on the field, had another client, or we hung it and brought it the next following evening to get it. Okay, you might have me, but shoot on the evening hunt in the next morning.

Speaker 2: 2:50:59

That's where none of it made sense to me I always get a million questions about dry aging stuff. Uh, and temperature, specifically, 35 to 38 degrees is what's safe? That, that's where you want to dry age, okay, and then you want to be up around. You know 60 to 70 percent humidity, but and you've done some. You've had some pretty good success on that yeah, I mean I've dry aged for six months before um and I I eat all that stuff. Everybody thinks I'm gonna die.

Speaker 1: 2:51:24

I'm not dead it looks, it looks about. Yeah, I think that deer on the bed of your truck was like white yeah and looking.

Speaker 2: 2:51:32

Looked like a piece of driftwood. Exactly looked like a piece of driftwood.

Speaker 1: 2:51:35

Exactly, it looked like a piece of driftwood. You just start cutting it. I didn't know what you were doing at first. I didn't have any audio on and I had to go back and rewatch it and I'm like this dude's about to eat. I mean, I 100% would do it with you. But it was cherry red on the inside Beautiful.

Speaker 2: 2:51:50

Yeah, it was. I just ate it raw. But you know we've been preserving stuff with salt and smoke for a hell of a lot longer than we've had refrigerators. For sure, yeah, For sure.

Speaker 1: 2:52:02

Well, dude, we got some dinner to get to. Yeah, man I appreciate you, looking forward to it Always coming on and shooting the shit with me.

Speaker 2: 2:52:08

Yeah, it's always a pleasure, looking forward to getting you on my side of the mountain Anytime you on my side of the mountain. But thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on the success you've had with show and I look forward to seeing where you go with it thanks, dude, it's gonna be awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1: 2:52:21

Thanks, brother cheers thank you. Let's go get the wives. I'm sure they're hungry you're so patient.