Matt Graham has featured on several survival TV shows such as Discovery channels Dual Survival. He is an author, runner, and primitive skills instructor. He opens up about his recent and past desert walkabout adventures, his commitment to a hunter-gatherer diet, and the profound joy he finds in connecting with a wild place.
Ever wondered how the practices of our ancestors can influence modern life? Matt masterfully weaves his knowledge of Native American traditions with his day-to-day life, from crafting juniper bows to running in handcrafted sandals. This episode isn't just about survival; it's about thriving in a world where ancient skills and ethical hunting converge with a deep respect for the ecosystems that sustain us.
As we sit with Matt, we delve into the practicalities and ethics of living off the land in an era where laws and regulations often clash with the rhythms of a feral lifestyle. We examine the human interference that disrupts our natural habitats, discussing the controversial management of invasive species and the crucial role of stewardship. Join us for a conversation that is as much about honing primitive skills like using the atlatl and tickling trout as it is about pondering our place in the world. This episode isn't just an exploration of nature; it's a roadmap for living in harmony with the world around us.
Www.mattgrahamearthskills.com
#wilderness survival #bushcraft #hunting #nature
https://bushsurvivaltraining.com/
https://www.learnhuntharvest.com/
Matt Graham has featured on several survival TV shows such as Discovery channels Dual Survival. He is an author, runner, and primitive skills instructor. He opens up about his recent and past desert walkabout adventures, his commitment to a hunter-gatherer diet, and the profound joy he finds in connecting with a wild place.
Ever wondered how the practices of our ancestors can influence modern life? Matt masterfully weaves his knowledge of Native American traditions with his day-to-day life, from crafting juniper bows to running in handcrafted sandals. This episode isn't just about survival; it's about thriving in a world where ancient skills and ethical hunting converge with a deep respect for the ecosystems that sustain us.
As we sit with Matt, we delve into the practicalities and ethics of living off the land in an era where laws and regulations often clash with the rhythms of a feral lifestyle. We examine the human interference that disrupts our natural habitats, discussing the controversial management of invasive species and the crucial role of stewardship. Join us for a conversation that is as much about honing primitive skills like using the atlatl and tickling trout as it is about pondering our place in the world. This episode isn't just an exploration of nature; it's a roadmap for living in harmony with the world around us.
Www.mattgrahamearthskills.com
#wilderness survival #bushcraft #hunting #nature
https://bushsurvivaltraining.com/
https://www.learnhuntharvest.com/
What up y'all and welcome to In the Bush Podcast with Cole and Joel. Happy Monday morning. All of y'all so glad that you can be here and listen with us this week. We have such a great episode. We have Matt Graham is on this episode with us and we talk, talk about all kind of stuff. Y'all this episode was so great. We dove into Matt's lifestyle and he was actually out on a walkabout and had been out there for quite a long while and we talk about Matt's diet, we talk about places that he's been, we talk about Adelado, we talk about hunting. I mean, we get into so much stuff and y'all. We can't wait to have Matt back and we hope you enjoy this episode, which is actually brought to you by Bush Survival Training dot com. You guys go to the website, go check out the courses that are there. We have an online course that we want you guys to go get into. It's 25 bucks. Once you get into it, you're a lifetime member, basically, to that survival course. We'd like for y'all to go check that out, and soon we're actually going to have some t-shirts and stuff like that for you guys, so we're excited about that.
Speaker 1:Um, before we get into this episode I want to share with y'all this week's top listening cities. I go in and I find out who the top five. Uh, the top five listening cities are for each week. Okay, and give you guys a shout out, because we so appreciate it. And this week, coming in at number five in our top five is Chicago, illinois. Thank you, chicago.
Speaker 1:Up at number four, we've got Little Rock, arkansas, in the loop this week. And sitting at number three, right in the middle again, is my hometown, where I grew up here in Austin, texas. Number two we have Bend, oregon, and stepping up number one this week is Portland, oregon. Give it up for Portland, everybody. Okay, y'all, I don't want to delay you any further. Happy Monday. I hope you have a good week and I hope you enjoy this episode with Matt Graham. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to in the bush podcast with cole and joel. We are super excited. Uh, joel, it's been a minute since we got, uh, our last podcast and today's guest I'm so freaking excited about man me too.
Speaker 3:Me too man. We have Mr Matt Graham. He is such a wonderful person, as you'll discover through this podcast. There isa few definitely notable things to mention about Matt. He's been on several survival shows across different networks. He's an author. He has been a primitive skills instructor. He lives the lifestyle of a hunter-gatherer. We all share this passion for the skills that our ancestors have had and we're very determined to keep those skills alive. So that's definitely going to be some avenues we're going to go down and I guess, lastly, just to mention that an ultramarathon runner is something else that Matt's big into. So very interesting guy and a good friend of mine, and I hope that you guys enjoy listening.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Matt, welcome, Thank you. Thank you for being here. It's a pleasure and it's awesome to be a part of your podcast.
Speaker 3:Matt, it's so good to see you again. Man, we first met at Bushcraft Build-Off. That was a Discovery Channel show and, from what I understand, the show didn't do too well. But I don't, I don't really care about that. What I care about is that, uh, I took the show, um, because you were going to be the host and I had seen you on dual survival and the way that you came across. You know there's a lot of survival stuff on TV, but it was very clear to me that when I saw you, I knew that you were authentic, like, you were the real deal.
Speaker 3:And I remember saying to my wife I'm like I want to meet that guy, I really want to meet that guy. And sure enough, I couldn't believe it when I got that show opportunity and they're like, yeah, the host is going to be Matt Graham. I'm like done, alright, I'll do it. And sure enough, I was so lucky. And they're like, yeah, the host is going to be Matt Graham. I'm like done, all right, I'll do it.
Speaker 3:And sure enough, I was so lucky to spend time with you and got to meet Dave, your good friend, dave Nisha a good friend of mine now too, in fact, I was just chatting with him the other day and ultimately Dave was responsible for getting me on Alone. So it's like funny how this whole this interesting world we live in the pathways that present themselves if you just look out and you follow the signs. And so since then we've been in touch and I've just been enamored by all the information you have, and it's way beyond a podcast like this. But we will try and dig into some of the juicy parts. But first and foremost, welcome, buddy. Thank you for being here and I'm really sorry to interrupt your little walkabout. So why don't we kick off with tell us what you're up to right now?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So it's still my off season. I usually don't like get get into the busy type of guiding and work until, yeah, usually late March, early April. So I've just been out in the desert on a walkabout kind of personal walkabout and I just came up out of the canyons and I'm in my truck camper now because, yeah, I just had to get a signal and give you a call. I drove up to tall Mesa I appreciate that. Optimum 5G going on?
Speaker 3:Actually, not really, it's LTE, so hopefully this works, isn't it funny, though, hey, you can be in such remote places. I mean, how far are you from like the nearest town?
Speaker 4:Yeah, probably about 40 miles. 40 mile drive yeah, maybe 25, as a bird flies, but the roads aren't straight.
Speaker 3:You know it's so funny because I've been to like over 40 countries or something in my travels and something I've always recognized is no matter how remote it is cell phones and Coca-Cola are, you can find it anywhere.
Speaker 4:Oh, totally I remember. I remember spending some no-transcript.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they did an traditional dance where they, they, they jump, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So we got to jump really high and it ended in just hysterical laughter on the ground, just belly laughter. We had so much fun yeah we uh. But one thing I I noted about them is like they're very like with their traditional um, where they look very stoic, you know, like just beautiful warriors, and then they walk so smoothly across the land but every other must say, has a little, uh, metal box in their hut and they always have a cell phone in there.
Speaker 4:So always have a cell phone I get mess email messages once in a while from my Maasai brothers Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 3:Hey, and they actually slept a night in a Maasai hut and you probably remember seeing them, how small they are and they're built out of mud and they're kind of like framed with with just you know, rough wood, and then they use mud to patch it all in and they make them in a way that, uh, the doorway kind of shields from the wind. I don't know if you remember that they kind of make it in like sort of like a sort of conical, like a shell shape, um, but they're so small inside and they always have a fire inside and they only have a tiny little vent hole so they just live in the boxes.
Speaker 4:I remember having such a hard time because I'm obviously six, three, so sleeping in there was not sleep, but I had to do it reminds me of a shelter I lived in for maybe about four years and I I actually was trying to hide it because it wasn't a spot where I just didn't want people to know about it and it was. It was super brushy on the outside so I just blended it in with the land, but the center height was five feet and I lived in this through the winters for five years and had the smallest fire and always had a pail of water just in case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just in case it went through us.
Speaker 3:So, man, that's already sparking off a lot of questions, and you know, I know we've spoken a lot about this, but there's definitely things that I want to bring up for the listeners, things that should be heard, in my opinion. First and foremost, you have spent a significant amount of time and I'm going to call it living off the land that's the sort of term I like to use and living off the land both solo and with others, right, like you've, you've done a mixture of things with others, and then, obviously, you like your alone time out there too, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I would say that I mean, the big chunk of what I've done through my life is is alone. But then I've also been an instructor where I worked with Boulder Outdoor Survival School. Then I started running my own custom program and we're taking people out anywhere from a few days to a month at a time.
Speaker 3:Gotcha and tell us what inspires you still to go out and live off the land for prolonged periods of time.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, I mean, that's a huge question. Yeah, for me, I mean, it kind of goes back to the beginning of why I started this path. Is the only way I feel like I could answer that. The beginning of why I started this path is the only way I feel like I could answer that. I think, growing up I just felt like there was something more.
Speaker 4:You know, I would say that, looking around at how society was functioning and trying to find role models in society, I wasn't finding role models and I felt like the wilderness held something and it held a way of building our relationship to the planet, building our relationship to who we are.
Speaker 4:And there was something inside me that felt this at a pretty young age. I remember at seven years old studying the Native American history in class and just being really drawn to that. So it was quite many, many years before I really dove into it, but it was always in my mind about going out with my dad. He would show me edible plants, he taught me a little bit about hunting in his own way, and I'd go to Indian camp. But it wasn't until I grew up in the city. I grew up in Southern California, but it wasn't until I moved to Yosemite where I started meeting some mentors where I could glean something from. I met a curator there at the museum who was phenomenal with making juniper. Juniper bows would send you back and you would read dogbane cordage into these long nets that were traditional carrying nets where you'd wear it with a tump line and and he had different ways of processing acorns.
Speaker 4:He showed me hand drill fire. And then I met uh lucy, who was a native american there and shoot. The baskets she would make were just like. I mean, picasso would be like this. This is mind right, because the artistic skills she had, the detail she had and her ability to make cordage look like perfection, and all these things started inspiring me more.
Speaker 4:And at the time, running and climbing were a big part of my life, and the community around that, because the community is really important. But I was always going out and practicing these skills as much as I could and, yeah, it really just came from trying to find answers, just looking at society and being like I mean even back then. You know I'm 51 now, but looking back at society back in the 70s and the 80s, I'm just like this isn't really functioning very well and I can just join in society and get a regular job and just be part of it. Or I can maybe figure out what people aren't doing and what we had done in the past and really try to understand the roots of who we are and where we've come from, and that was really important to me.
Speaker 3:Do you look at the? Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, it's something.
Speaker 1:I've got to jump on quickly. Do you?
Speaker 3:do you find that in this modern day life that you live, that you reference, that you reference the, that when you, with your decision making processes, as you go through this life which obviously there's a lot of and I I completely resonate with what you're saying this like something's missing in in that regard and I feel like that link is that constant connection and bond with the natural world. Do you find that, with the, the making the decisions in life that you reference, like what the ancestors would have done, do you use that as almost as a constant in your decision making process?
Speaker 4:um, yeah, that's that's an interesting way to put it I I would say. I would say I do more than 50 percent of the time, you know, when I'm trying to figure out, like, what to eat, how to move with the land. You know, you know I've been a runner for a long time but I've also more than half my running career, if you call it, I've run primitively, you know, with either barefoot or in rawhide sandals or sandals that I make. So, yeah, I think I'm always, always looking at the roots of where things came from and try to figure that out. You know, and that's where the primitive skills comes from. You know, when you you strip away all the technical gear and then you start making your own gear, you make your own clothes, you make your own hunting tools, you make your own tools, your knives, um, everything, when you start tracing it back to those roots, it starts to have a little bit more meaning and you start to understand, um, you start to understand that we functioned that way for 100,000 years or more.
Speaker 4:And then you look at where we're at now and it just doesn't. There is a lot of beauty in the world. I don't want to be like a Debbie Downer.
Speaker 3:But we're not thriving as human beings. I would agree with you on that.
Speaker 4:We're not thriving as human beings. I would agree with you on that we're not thriving. You know, we've, we've, we've definitely become unique artists. I would say you know, we have a culture of art that I think is somewhat admirable. Um, but we, we've, also, we're not thriving. You know, and, and there's a part of part of us, as people, that we are so creative and creativity is our greatest strength and it's also our greatest downfall, because we always, as humans, we always needed to create. And when you're in the wilderness and you apply that creativity, you survive and you thrive. But when you're out of the wilderness and you apply that creativity, it's almost endless and you just start consuming the world and you don't stop. You don't know when to stop. And I think that's the problem with humanity losing connection to nature. Is that, um, we've, just we try to overtake it now instead of be a part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge. So I'm curious, matt, like you, being in touch with with nature and going about all this, the lifestyle that you have just intrigues me so much because I mean, you're immersed in it so often, right, and a lot of people don't understand that, and like it's so healing and it just keeps you so much in, so much sane because you're not in these environments to where you're stressing yourself to the max with bills and with the day-to-day mundane BS that a lot of people have to go through and a lot of people look up to us because of that lifestyle. Like your lifestyle is much more wild than mine and some people think mine and Joel's is wild and compared to yours it's nothing like that, right? Um, could you talk a little bit like I'm curious about, like your diet and stuff like that are you? Are you? Are you contributing? Like when you, when you're out in, like, say this walkabout that you're doing, are you relying on the natural landscape to provide for you? Um, whenever you're out there doing this, you know, doing this.
Speaker 3:Or do you take some supplementation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, and I guess I should. I should put a caveat on kind of what you mentioned about, like my wildness, because, yeah, I was. I I would say I was very wild and truly wild up until maybe about 39 years old and that's when I first decided to step partially away from that life and and jump into the world of film and television. So my, my lifestyle now is is much different than than what it was previous to that, um and those those 20 years prior prior to doing film work, um, so, like I, yeah, I don't claim to be a hunter gatherer now or live live as a hunter gatherer. You know, part of my stepping away from that was to um, share it, and sharing it means, like I'm available on my lab or not laptop, but my tablet here, yeah, speaking with you and and I'm, uh, and I would say, using the wilderness. It's more of like a tool, like you said, to keep my sanity, keep that connection.
Speaker 4:And there's times when I'm like, oh, why am I spending so much time trying to share this when I was thriving, just living fully in that life, you know, in that life. So, so now, yeah, when, when I go out into the wilderness, sometimes I have different goals in mind. Sometimes I don't bring any food and I just go out and collect. What I find this trip was I'm actually developing a backpack, so I've been testing backpacks, so I had some more technical gear with me and, um, food wise, yeah, I had panole and I I'm sponsored by a company called spring, so they, so I took a couple of these smoothie packets, but yeah, but only so.
Speaker 3:It's just sort of like raw I imagine raw organic corn, like ground up corn yeah, yeah, yeah, I mostly when.
Speaker 4:When I buy food, I try if organics available, I'll go for that and yeah, agreed, it's always choice. And it's interesting you speak a diet because when, when I live more as a hunter gatherer, sometimes I bought food to supplement my diet once in a while, like rice or oil or nuts, more than 50% of my diet always came from the land, but sometimes I'd buy food and sometimes I'd live solely off the land.
Speaker 4:But I never bought meat Because I felt like I wanted the experience of gathering, of connecting and hunting my meat for myself, and the idea of farming meat never really sat really well for me and, honestly, it really doesn't still.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think all three of us are on the same page there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I struggle with it because at times when I'm not hunting as much, I'm like oh, I need some meat to feel healthy. Yeah, but I also don't feel good about supporting that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I'm curious, like so obviously it's very difficult to live like that hunter-gatherer lifestyle, like full on, especially if we're trying to make money and stuff like that. Right, it's just very difficult to do. But do you also see that like just well, I mean used to. We didn't have the laws and the the game limits and the bag limits and stuff like that. We were free to go about and do whatever we want.
Speaker 3:We can't do that now right, we also had a lot more resources than we damn right, yeah, absolutely we did, and it.
Speaker 1:Not everybody can just go down to the riverbank and pop up a camp and live like that because it's just, it's not feasible, like we can't feed that many people by doing it the way that we used to do because we're overpopulated, right, um, but when you were doing that, did you see, I mean, was it conflicting with with season dates and stuff like that, and and having to stay on top of the laws to make sure that you weren't breaking a law and stuff? I mean anything from small game to predator to even big game that you were, you know, pursue, um, I was curious how that affected your lifestyle yeah, um, yeah, it affected it tremendously, you know it.
Speaker 4:It was hard feeling like you're always riding the line of of being a criminal and not when, when, when my goal was just to be a part of the land and of a caretake. It like going into a lands, going into the ecosystem or a portion of land and looking at the ecosystem and studying it and understanding it and being able to live there and keep the balance was always really important to me. Um, and you know I'd always get, I'd always get a small game and fishing license and try to stay within those limitations, but you know that's not always possible. I was fortunate because the area I lived in was a super remote part of Utah and hadn't really been fully discovered yet. It's currently a monument.
Speaker 4:Now it wasn't when I first moved here, or the monument wasn't enacted at that time, and then, years later, more and more people were discovering it and more and more laws came upon the monument and with those laws, more people, and it was getting harder and harder to hide what I was doing. And there was also more what a lot of scientists believe that they have the right approach with the land when they poison the creeks to reestablish fish populations and they poison and kill different species of life-giving trees and they've made a lot of mistakes in my my ecosystem and my ecosystem is is sadly very diminished um the turkey population's down a good 80 90 percent. Deer population in the river drainages is down. Squirrel populations are down about 80 percent. Bird life's down about 90 percent. Um the poisoning of both the creeks and the trees, yeah, that's a lot of shock and devastation to the land oh my goodness, so they.
Speaker 3:So they poison, they poison the creeks to kill off the fish stocks, so they can then re-establish a new balance of fish. Is that why they do that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, the theory is so. Nobody knows exactly what native fish were here several hundred years ago, but they tend to favor and speculate certain types of fish and when I moved here, it was just a thriving ecosystem of all these various fish species and it was quite beautiful to see them living harmoniously together. But they felt like they needed to kill off all these fish species and just focus on cutthroat trout. But in the process, you know, it does things like kills important aquatic life, like tiger, salamanders and other things, and um, and rarely do the the creeks ever come back as healthy as they were. So it it's really sad what what I've seen over the past 20 years here unfortunately, that's our mo's.
Speaker 3:Human beings, we're just, we're so imperfect that we, we just seem to make mistakes too many times before we really learn from it.
Speaker 4:Um, just seems, yeah and well and in the wilderness, is it? You know, it thrives without us and it heals well without us. I it it's. It's almost a borderline form of racism, when, when you just think you can go there and kill every species that you don't think belongs there. And I know a lot of the people that are behind this and I understand their motif. They think that they're somehow establishing balance to other plants and native plants, but they've done a lot of damage to my area.
Speaker 3:So here's where I'm going to kind of just jump up on a pedestal here for a second and shout out to the rooftops.
Speaker 4:You are on a pedestal, I can take that back.
Speaker 3:I don't put myself on a pedestal, but I do like to jump up and down every now and then and speak my piece. And right now, the thing is that in this world we have, just like we have people that are overweight and sick and basically spearheading uh, regulation and protocols, but they don't have this connection that we're talking about with the natural world, and it seems to be just so like, just such a such an unfortunate, sad situation that we have people controlling these things that probably don't set foot in this area very much in the way that our ancestors did. Looking at the land with nothing but love and reverence, we think about things all wrong. We look through it, through the scientific too, with too much respect and too much emphasis on the, on the data, and sometimes it's just you just gotta, you've just gotta feel something. You just have to feel it. You know, I I sort of jumping back to this, using the wilderness as a tool. Um, I think, first of all, it's really sad that we live in a time where a person like yourself, person like myself, person like cole and and other people in our community we really want to engage in the experience of what our ancestors lived through, because it gives us a place of understanding, of humble, of humility and respect, not just for them but for the landscape, because when you are part of it we can throw out phases like being part of the land or having a relationship with the land or connecting with the land. All of that stuff is absolutely legitimate when you have felt it and you have experienced it.
Speaker 3:And if you haven't felt that, if you haven't truly felt a sense of love, like deep love and gratitude for a physical place because you connected it with it in a way that how you, you can't really ever explain to somebody what that feels like until they've felt it, you, it's just, you have to feel it. Just it's those, it's, it's, um, I would I would try to define connecting with the land as intimately understanding it, understanding that there are certain patterns that the animals follow and you recognize that there's certain geographical features that have formed the way they have, understanding that there's certain seasonal changes where certain plants will grow certain times and others won't. And it's understanding that. It's understanding that there is a flow, there's an energetic flow in a landscape and once you can kind of ride that wave, you feel part of it, you feel like you're on this energetic wave and you understand and feel accepted by the landscape, and that feeling is what I live for and I know you do too.
Speaker 3:And it's just so hard when you to hear you say, like you know, you wanted to live off the land and it got really hard to do that because the species have declined and you started feeling like you were on the radar, where all you really wanted to do was express who you are at your core, and that is a human being. That is where we come from. That is who we are. This is not where we come from. The concrete walls and all that this is. This is brand new. Brand new. This is foreign to us. However, we've accepted. We've accepted it with open arms and we've been conditioned to it in such a short amount of time. It's incredible how we can change so quickly. And you now use more of a tool, which I do too, because we're all slaves to the dollar bill. I've got a family and I want to walk that fine line between feral lifestyle and being an accepted modern man.
Speaker 3:So I have to use the wilderness as a just like, just like we all do now and you can call it a hobby, you can call it recreational, whatever you want to call it, but it's short bath, getting out there and connecting with that landscape in a variety of ways, and that is how I get meaning and I feel a sense of purpose. I feel the most spiritual. It's my church and so I feel you brother in all those aspects that you talk about.
Speaker 1:But, joel, could you imagine, like just to put it in perspective? Okay, because I'm sitting here thinking about this. Think about, like Matt's, situation in the creeks and the springs and the little tributaries that have all these fish and everything thriving in them, and maybe there was this little invasive species and, all of a sudden, some dude that doesn't live anywhere near where you did. Okay, let's, let's pretend like it's where you live, joel. And and all of a sudden, axis deer came in to where the elk and the mule deer thrived, and came into your area, and then somebody from the government says, you know what, let's poison them all because we can't have that access deer and you know what. So what about the local native wildlife or anything like that? Let's get rid of it all, just so that one doesn't make it. That's insane.
Speaker 3:That's insane to me, yeah who's to say what's right and what's wrong. And like I'm not going to pretend I'm not a biologist, I'm not, you know I'm not an ecologist, like I I'm not. I don't have any. I don't have any education to give a an absolute like opinion on this. But what I do know is that, if you just like, this has been going on for ages, we've been transporting seeds. Native Americans transported seeds. They transported obsidian from here in Oregon all the way over to the East Coast. This is what we do as human beings. This is the way the world works. Things spread and they adapt, and so to look at the invasive species and to say shame on them, they're not allowed.
Speaker 4:I mean, I'm an invasive species. Most of us aren't Native American either.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 4:Do we need to transport ourselves from North America next? Exactly, I think, in the way. The analogy that I like to use is that we're you know the wilderness is. It's the home to those plants, those animals, it's their home. In my area they were thriving before, and now they're not this area, who are coming in there like another species to come into their gardens, cut down their apple trees, rip out their plants, close their grocery stores and say you, you can't eat these because these aren't native you know, and that's.
Speaker 4:That's what's going on in the wilderness too they're.
Speaker 4:These animals, like a lot of generations, have adapted to this diet of the plants that evolved there and now all of a sudden, we're just coming in there thinking we can control that, and the shock and the suffering that goes on with these animals is it's horrendous.
Speaker 4:You know, I spent 10 days with a river ecologist and I asked him about all the loss of animals and his answer was we knew there would be some loss. About all the loss of animals, and his answer was we knew there would be some loss. And I said well, there's also a lot of shock and there's a humidity loss in the canyon. Did you study that? And he's like no, and there's just like. If I look at these ecology projects, there's a lot missing, and one of the things that's really missing is they forget we were actually a part of nature at one point and we were a part of improving the ecology and the ecosystem by being there of the indigenous around the world, but there's a fair amount of them that understood their role as being a steward of the land and that was from.
Speaker 3:You know lighting fires across the landscape. You know there's I've also I've read this in a couple of different accounts the areas that they harvest willow from. They'll always take the shoots. You know, their willows propagate really easily. They'll just take the shoots and push them into the ground so that then that'll grow, they'll regrow like they. They had that understanding of when we take, we have to give back, and obviously that's pretty lost in this day and age because it's more of a conquering mindset that we have as human beings.
Speaker 3:I I always hope that we can become more enlightened with our, with our landscape. Obviously it doesn't look too hopeful but you know, speaking to people like yourself, it it does give me hope. I mean because you do see the beauty of the landscape and in fact that would. That's a question I'd love to ask you because it's there's. No, it's pretty clear. You know from what you've told me and what I see on social media that you're absolutely in love with the landscape, that you roam down there. What is so enchanting? What do you love about it. Why is it so spectacular?
Speaker 4:Yeah, before I answer that question, I would like to offer an idea. So when we wildernesses are designated for all kinds of things across the United States.
Speaker 4:You know, national parks are for sightseeing, the national forest allow hunting with guns and sometimes bows, and their regulation. They also allow off-roading, they allow mountain biking, they allow climbing, they allow harvesting firewood. There's all these activities that are designated within our wild lands across the United States, but we've removed the most important one, like you said, and that's for us to live like humans and connect with our roots. So there really needs to, we need to figure out where and how to create these places where people that want to live as hunter-gatherers, people that want to experience bushcraft, have the ability and they're not criminalized for it yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:That's just like steve ranilla saying we all of the animals that we've brought back to yellowstone that were once native and ran wild there, there's one left, and that one animal left is the native people that used to roam and hunt those animals and live on that land, and we're the last ones that they won't let back into that ecosystem and we should. We should be allowed back into that ecosystem.
Speaker 3:Diving into all these things. The one thing that I did want to say is that you know I don't want to come across as just dissing science outright.
Speaker 3:I totally understand that we live in a world, in a landscape, especially here in North America, where it has thrived on correctly managing the game.
Speaker 3:Do they always get it right?
Speaker 3:No, but the overall strategy of managing the game in North America if it hadn't have been managed, if they hadn't have started doing it, if they still didn't do it now, we would probably see big losses in our big game animals. So I know that there is a success story there and I do completely support having to manage game, but I do think we need to manage them in a way that makes a lot of sense and detach emotion from the management practices and look at it purely as ecologically. What is the smartest way to manage this? We need to look at exactly what kind of animals or does a healthy landscape look like with populations, and if it's unhealthy, then we should allow hunters to go in there and be that predator, to go in there and balance out those populations. And if the predators are too high in population, once again let's allow hunters to go in there and balance out the predators. It's allow hunters to go in there and balance out the predators, because we, we just don't live in a balanced, healthy ecosystem anymore.
Speaker 4:Nowhere is like, no, no, and and you bring up a good point because when, when things get out of balance, those, those organizations that are trying to establish the balance, instead of allowing people to connect, be a part of the land, hunt those animals. They just slaughter them. Yeah, so all that. You see that a lot of life. All that, all that food is lost. Yeah, just because of these mass slaughterings and poisoning and killings sorry to interrupt, matt, but you see that a ton in california with their mountain lions and their bears.
Speaker 1:They now they don't sell those tags. They hire gunmen to go out or trappers government trappers. They pay these people to go do that, so they're taking tax dollars and they're they're funding these operations to go slaughter and murder these animals that we used to eat. I don't know if any of you have ever had bear or cougar meat, but those two alone are some of the best meat that walk our landscape in North America. Like a lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 1:And now, where hunters used to take care of that issue, now we don't. Now it's hired out because of the optics of it and because it looks bad, because nobody wants you to kill that teddy bear or that mountain lion, because of whatever reasons. Right, it's getting in there and killing dogs and and and just wreaking havoc in neighborhoods and stuff, and instead they go in and trap it whenever we could have a hunter come in, buy the tag and put money in the local economy and stuff like that, like we, like we do everywhere we go and it's it's crazy to think that now they're hiring that stuff out.
Speaker 3:They're still getting killed, but they're hiring it out instead of selling those doesn't seem to be a very honorable, sacred way to take those lives it's kind of aggravating, really. Sorry to interrupt you, matt sorry, we big tangent, big tangent there, folks yeah yeah, we should get back to the disney movie now. Yeah oh, man and smokey the bear and bambi. Um no, so let's, let's backtrack. What do you love about that landscape that you live on?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, part part of it's wildness. You know part of when I moved here 25 years ago just how remote it was. I came from the high Sierra mountains but I moved. I lived in Yosemite and Sequoia national park and I was stoked on learning the primitive skills. But I was in a national park so you can't exactly exercise very much of that. And when I came out to this part of Utah it was so vast and and just like it, just like sparked that wild, that wildness inness in me and and the biodiversity was incredible, like canyons that are almost subtropical in the summer and this big mountain environment, desert. The first. When I first got here, I remember sitting on top of a sandstone mesa and just looking as far as the eye could see, at these canyons that were intertwining and and I said to uh, who became a mentor of mine, he's a bridge for the primitive skills.
Speaker 4:Dave was scott yeah, yep, I met him yeah I was like can I just like go walk and run that out there like forever? And he's like sure, you just go there. I was like cool, so I did like the next week. I just like took off and and just explored more than 100 miles of land without a map and I was just so enchanted by every turn in the canyon and every new find and well, I love how you have been using social media in a healthy way as a tool and posting the photos and I follow.
Speaker 3:I mean, I kind of live through you vicariously with that landscape and I tell you, man, those, those like sandstone maces, but more so those, just those, those riparian areas, yeah, that is just my jam, like those riparian areas, the way that they are just so oasis like and prolific. I just love that so much about the high desert and I do know not specifically from that area but from other regions I've, I've walked, walked through and spent some time in, uh, those riparian areas and those high desert uh type of terrains are usually so vibrant with life.
Speaker 4:I'm assuming that's the same there yeah, no, it's, it's, it's phenomenal, it it's interesting. You say my social media responsibly, because I, I do, I do hide all those like super rich places everyone would like just be. Like, where is this? Yeah, I have to go there and I, you know, I give little peppering of the landscape about here and I guess I just feel like if someone feels drawn to come out here with the peppering, they probably probably belong here. Yeah, but but I'm not gonna just show them the holy grail right off the bat.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, I, like I said, I don't know when, but at some point I am going to come and explore those canyons with you, no doubt yeah that'd be awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a lot of times my media is interesting because I, because I would like to show more of the primitive skills, um, like, if you like you follow me on my media there's a lot of running, which is a big part of my life, yeah, but that's also where I feel like I could have my phone with me, or or film, where the primitive skills is so personal that when I do my primitive trips I just leave my phone behind, even though that's what everyone really wants to see. That's what everyone wants to see, yeah. And then there's also a lot of skills I can't show for reasons that we previously discussed. So, unfortunately, I do have to buffer a lot of what I'd like to share, but that's just how it goes.
Speaker 3:So let's get into that. I'm sort of always hesitant because I'm in this world of primitive skills. I'm always hesitant to like dive into like the instructional type stuff, because I feel like there's probably other podcasts out there with you giving giving instructional and, hey, you run courses. People really want the instruction. There's videos, you know. They can go out and do courses with many other people. But what I do want to dive into, which is the hardest of all the primitive skills I think you would agree, is feeding yourself. I mean, all the other hard skills can be learned in a pretty short amount of time. With some good dedication and focus. You can learn to build a shelter and make fire, purify water, make some things out of leather and break some stone and kind of get a rough edge to work with. But being able to go out on a landscape and consistently harvest whether it be, you know, wild plant foods, edibles, or hunt or trap animals, is extremely difficult. I think the hardest skill obviously our hunter gatherer ancestors everything revolved around that.
Speaker 3:So let's delve into that with you. You have been doing that for a long time with probably with all of the above mentioned methods trapping, fishing, all that sort of stuff. But I know that you and I have talked a lot about the atlatl that is very dear to your heart, versus the bow that you've hunted with both. I know that, but the atlatl seems to be your preferred choice when you're out there hunting. Why is that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I do equally have a love for the bow as well. I made many and hunted for quite a bit many years, even before I really got into atlatl, quite a bit many years, even before I really got into atlatl. Um, and, and it's really I, yeah, man, I, I love them both. The atlatl works really well for the Canyon environment I live in because it it is really dense at times with foliage and sometimes I'm fishing, um, so having a longer projectile means I'm not going to lose it as often and I'm not going to break it as often.
Speaker 4:And that's huge. And also because it is so large, I can use just almost any kind of tip for a medium-sized animal, versus if I had an arrow I'd have to have, obviously, a cutting edge. So that's one of the reasons I favor it. There's a beauty in its simplicity too. I actually people look at it and they're like, oh, this is not hard to move through the brush with, but it's actually a lot easier than a strong bow that constantly grabs plants and stuff on the string. Yeah, a strong bow that constantly grabs plants and stuff on the string. Yeah, the, um, the, oh, sorry and then when you have to climb down a cliff.
Speaker 4:You just throw your darts down and then climb down the cliff. You don't have to figure out how to carry your bow down a cliff or climb up out of cliff, and there's a lot of cliff climbing where I live yeah's true, there's a lot of cliff climbing there.
Speaker 3:That would make sense. Yeah, I think the way that you have displayed the atlatl through the TV and through your social media is just beautiful. It's perfect. The atlatl thing. I think I really feel like you've put it on the radar for a lot of people and I can definitely speak for myself that, um, the atlatl was not something I knew much about until I first watched you using it and then it just absolutely became an obsession for me.
Speaker 1:and, and I will say from my personal experience in a survival situation, provided you've got a cutting, a decent knife, I would go towards making an atlatl over a bow for sure any day damn right for sure, I made an atlatl in africa whenever I was on my 21 day challenge, but they didn't show any of it because, um, I wasn't allowed to harvest the crocodile with my bow, so I had to, you know, adapt and overcome, and I made a. I made a pretty damn good atlatl that I tried to open that thing with well, it's you, I mean, you can get pretty accurate, pretty quick just the bow.
Speaker 3:You know, you just put enough time in inside inside of 20 yards.
Speaker 1:I mean I was hitting, you know, a pizza, a pizza pan, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:And uh, can you I could do it but, matt, if you don't mind give us just a brief uh rundown? For anyone who's listening, who does not know what an atlatl is, could you just give us a brief description of what it is and and how it works? For those that are uh, listening, he's showing us through the video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unfortunately we don't have any video. We don't record our video yet. That is a beautiful freaking thrower though.
Speaker 4:So yeah, the outlateral, okay. So no one's seeing this, so I'll just tease you guys for a moment, then I'm going to set it down. That's beautiful. So the outlateral it predates the bow and arrow. So in the United States the bow and arrow has been used roughly a thousand years depending on the culture where the atlantil goes back 12,000 years or more, and a lot of people associate it with, oh you know, just the woolly mammoth, just the big game, and then the bow came after that. But that's not the case. I mean, there was no woolly mammoth a thousand years ago.
Speaker 4:So the atlatl is what it is is. It's an extension of the arm. So it's usually a two-foot lever that connects to the hand either with two fingers, or you can grip it more like a baton or a baseball bat with one hand. Um, and then it has a hook in the other end that hooks into the super long arrow. The arrow is it can be anywhere from five feet to seven feet. Common seven feet's about. What I use are six and a half um in Africa they use darts.
Speaker 4:It's hard to call it a dart, but their spears that they're throwing at bat ladders are 10 feet long on average, so the size varies.
Speaker 3:You can call it a spear too, totally.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the size varies depending on the culture and the type of game.
Speaker 3:For smaller, jumpier games, sometimes a smaller projectile is used and it is incredible that that lever which I for someone who's like, what an atlatl, what's that I'm like. You know, those ball throwers that you throw, throw for your dog yeah well, how do you think you throw that ball twice as far with that little thing versus just on? It's because of that lever, that extra lever gives that extra, that extra sort of force, and that's exactly how the atlatl works.
Speaker 3:I mean you will not be able to throw that spear with your hand as as fast and get as much momentum as you would with the actual lever yeah, so with that with that ball thrower.
Speaker 1:you'd basically put the end of your atlatl dart where the ball goes, and then you would pinch it with your two fingers and then, just like you're throwing that ball, you would throw that atlatl dart.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. It's always cool seeing the look on people's face. They've never seen one before. Like literally a few days ago, before I went hiking this, this younger gentleman, he was also like a super into ultralight stuff. And he younger gentleman, he was also like a super into ultralight stuff and he, he's he saw me walking with that, my outlaw dart which is was about six and a half feet long feathers, and he's like. He's like, is that your hiking stick? And I was like, yeah, sometimes, but you know, I also fish with it. And he's like, he's like what you know? He's just so confused. And then I showed him how, how it throws with the out loud on the look on his face when he just saw this thing, like charging super fast into the, the river bank, he's like whoa, what are some?
Speaker 3:so okay, so we, we just need, I need I this needs to be said you're, this is not like, this is not just like a fun little toy. You, you are dangerous with it. And, um, I did hear once it could, it was probably at rabbit stick or something, but I heard that you, uh, it was sort of tongue in cheek, but you had just said challenged the world, the Atlanta world champion, and said hey, how, how about? How about you take me on, let's see what happens? And you, you actually beat him. Was that true?
Speaker 4:um, yeah, yeah, yeah, I beat him in quite a few matches, okay, yeah, and then he, he, actually he still won that year because the day I've only thrown once at the actual championships and it was kind of a windy day, so so my they, they take your overall score for the year. So I ranked fifth that year, fifth overall in the world, but he, yeah, he stayed the champion. But that day, yeah, I, I took him quite a few times. We had fun.
Speaker 3:He was so proud of you. Took him quite a few times. We had fun.
Speaker 4:Oh, so proud of you he was so obsessed with my throwing style and he had these papers and he was really into math and I don't know what kind of numbers he was drawing, but his wife told me how obsessed he was with me.
Speaker 3:I know there definitely is.
Speaker 3:There's a couple guys that I see at the gatherings that are like very particular about how you throw the atlatl and this way, this way, and I think you know it's just like shooting a bow right, some people can't the bow, some people kind of lean over, some people stand upright, like there's so many ways to shoot them, but bottom line is the way that you do it. You have personally found success. You, you are very accurate and you have consistently shown that through anyone that wants to um, for anyone that wants to go and actually see matt in action. I mean dual survival. Um, there was uh, what was the other one I loved? Man? It was um, uh, live free or die was. Is that? Did I get that right? Live free or die through? I think it's national geographic.
Speaker 3:I really love that representation of you. I think that that was kind of you in your element, um, but there's a lot of uh stuff out there where they can watch you throwing an atlatl. Um, what have, what is? What are your sort of? I know you've, you've, we've talked a lot about fish and and, uh, it sounds like that's definitely your preferred um target animal for, for, for food, and it makes a lot of sense with an atlatl. That's the only the only species I've hunted with an atlatl fish. I've never been able to take any other game animal with the with that lateral. Yeah, speak to like what kind of animals you, you, you really enjoy, what animals are conducive to hunting?
Speaker 3:with the atlatl that you found in your landscape.
Speaker 1:And real quick. And what animals would you love to hunt, but the laws don't allow you to because… oh, good question, because of the weapon that you're choosing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are all great questions. Um, yeah, during the time I was a hunter, gatherer, I I mean, I can't even count the amount of animals that I've hunted while living off the land. I mean in the hundreds, approaching probably close to a thousand. Um, and I would say fish aren't my preferred go-to. They're probably one of the easier ones and and I like to use I, I like to eat fish like twice a week. I try to limit it because of the mercury, um, but I use the fish heads for trapping these big rock squirrels, so it kind of kind of goes hand in hand. Um, and then I uh, rabbits are great. I love hunting rabbits and squirrels and um, yeah, and that's all blunt.
Speaker 3:That's all blunt tips. Right, are you using blunt tips with the a little with on the dart for rabbits?
Speaker 4:no for for well, for rabbit I'll use anything. Yeah, for squirrels, their skin's a little thicker, so, um, I usually go for some kind of point, just to make sure they don't get away.
Speaker 3:Are you using steel points at all, or are you just strictly stone?
Speaker 4:I do quite a bit now, just because of the ease of maintenance and the ability to make a cleaner shot sometimes. And the ability to make a cleaner shot sometimes, you know when I've, when I've gone fully stone age, there's been times when I I've made shots and in a couple times and the animal got away and I just felt really bad. Um, I have a lot of experience with primitive tips but, yeah, these these days I do, I do enjoy, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 4:So when I I did a primitive project with my friend links, yeah, yeah, we talked about like what, what maybe are two things that we um miss, you know and for me it was it was steel points on my darts and dental floss dental floss 100.
Speaker 3:Agree, 100. Oh yeah, dental. Like I cannot deal with meat stuck between my teeth.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure. But, yeah, there's a lot of. Yeah, the outlattle works on anything that a bow will work with and a lot of the animals I just I can't talk about, obviously, for sure, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you've had some success with big game too, right with the atlatl definitely I have.
Speaker 4:I have limited it though because of those legal reasons so so I used to go out and I used to practice on deer by throwing just over over the top of their shoulders yeah, so I know it's a great tool for deer, but I've actually never intentionally hunted a deer with the atlatl. I've just used my bow for that but pretty much everything else I've hunted with the atlatl um yeah, it's cole's question.
Speaker 3:What would you? I mean you have your pick worldwide. Yeah, what animal would would seem like a very fitting animal for you to a challenging animal for you to harvest?
Speaker 4:Well, elk would be great. I wouldn't call that the most challenging. Elk's a perfect, perfect thing for the out loud, because it's easy to. It's easy to conceal the movement from an elk, um, more so than more so than even a rabbit or or a deer oh, for sure, yeah, I would say that elk is the perfect combination.
Speaker 4:Um, and I'm just as accurate with an out loud as I am with uh arrow, maybe more so. And that just came with living with the tool. I don't think I had any super predisposition to it, I just was throwing all day long and you get good that way. The world champion probably threw every day of his life, but only once a day. There's a big difference between throwing once a day and living with the tool in your hand.
Speaker 3:Well, there's also a big difference hunting with the tool and just throwing it at a target. I don't know. I think personally I guess call it stump shooting, Whether it's with an atlatl or with a bow, I just find that I'm way more accurate, it's way more realistic and it just hones in my accuracy in a more realistic way than just shooting at a foam target. You know, I always realize that. But you know it's just convenient to shoot a target Like I've got a bunch of straw bales in the backyard. It's easy just to walk out and fling some arrows at that, instead of just walk the landscape and just shoot at pine cones and things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but how much more accurate are you whenever you're out there stump shooting just amongst the land and you're not like really like, you're not even really trying, you're just, you know, almost taking up time. You know you're just having fun with it and it seems like you you're more accurate and you're just building that confidence as you're going through your hunt yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4:Practicing all the time is key. I you know, when I first picked up the atlatl, I have to admit I had this like love hate relationship with it for a good year or two and it was because I I got pretty successful with the primitive bow and and the atlatl is like it's really hard to conceal the movement like, and after, after about a year or even less of like a lot of practice, I got so accurate Like yeah, just pretty insanely accurate, like 45 yard shots pretty consistently hitting end size target stuff that most archers just couldn't do. That's tough.
Speaker 3:Did you say 45?
Speaker 4:45. So, I developed this insane accuracy, but I was. I was losing all these shots because I couldn't figure out how to conceal my movement Gotcha that's the hardest part about the atlatl. Yeah, and I remember….
Speaker 3:What is your trick? What nut did you crack?
Speaker 4:So I was walking through this area where one of my shelters I lived, and I was hunting, I had my outlaw and I saw this squirrel that was at least 45 yards away, maybe 50. Like it was basically like two sections of draws over and against this cliff and I was just I looked at it and I was like I just kind of on fate. I'm like if I can make this shot, I'll never give up the atlatl. And I was ready to give it up. I let the shot go and it and it skewered the little squirrel's like heart and just dropped it like instantly and I was like, all right, so I gotta figure this out and what what I found it it took was really learning to throw on my knees and learning to throw more concealed and learning how to work with brush.
Speaker 4:So, like when I was rabbit hunting, instead of taking the shot I would normally take with the bow when the rabbit was maybe just chilling against the corner of the bush, yeah, I would walk around the other side of the bush so the rabbit could hardly see me and throw my dart through the bush. So I was, I was figuring out ways to wait for that opportune shot. Um, where in the bow you just gotta take it. But with the atlatl you have to be really smart about how you approach it. And the nice thing about an atlatl is it does arc a little more than a bow, so you can throw over things to conceal the movement and through things that's cool.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's so. I love talking about this stuff, man, that's incredible.
Speaker 1:Now I want to invite Matt to our pig hunt so we can see some atlatl, some atlatl, hog hunts, I mean.
Speaker 3:I Matt to our pig hunt so we can see some atlatl hog hunts.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 3:I 100% agree with you, man. If I had an atlatl and there was one animal I could choose legally, I would go after an elk I was just fixing to ask Matt where can I purchase?
Speaker 1:Is it better for me to hand make my atlatl in darts or is there somewhere that I can go buy this stuff so I can start actively pig hunting? Because somewhere that I can go buy this stuff so I can start actively pig hunting, you know cause, here in Texas, man, we, we have endless opportunities.
Speaker 3:Oh, those pigs are made for it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, there's. There's a lot of companies that make out loud. Generally they make it with like the baton grip, you know, or it's just, it's more like you hold it, like like you're swinging a swing in a rack tennis racket, and that, that style, I think, is for a lot of people it works really well. For for me, I have adopted the split finger grip, which is common in the southwest region I live in, and these you kind of have to make because they really need to be tailored so your knuckles don't go all the way through them, and that gives you the leverage and control, um, and if you want to get like super good at it, like you, you could do both, but I'd recommend the split finger grip, which you have to make your own.
Speaker 1:I've thrown both. I prefer the split finger over um the baton style. Uh, more or less. I'm just looking for somewhere to get straight darts the, the leverage aspect of it. I think it would be cool to build that myself with some cool wood and some deer antler and stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:I used to use I mean, I make a lot of my own darts, but I also used to use Thunderbird Bob. He just has ash shafts that are so yeah, Thunderbird yeah. Yeah, and they're not the best, but they, they penetrate well yeah and they work um. The best best darts, though, are made from like arizona, rundo and different types of cane that's a little bit lighter um, but still has that weight behind it we have some pretty good, um, some pretty good juniper cedar we call them cedars um, that are pretty straight.
Speaker 1:You know lighter wood that, uh, that tends to. They're very straight and you can easily get an eight foot stave out of them. Um, you know, that's the size of your. You know the size of your pinky, or a little bit bigger yeah, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think one of my favorites around where I live. It's really hard to find, but service berry when you find a straight one cause, it lasts forever. Every time I I harvest a service berry dart, it's with me for like a couple of years or more.
Speaker 1:They're pretty stiff, aren't they? Little little, yeah they are, so you gotta either shave them down a bit or find one that's not too, do you usually fire straighten most of those if they're not like where you want them to be?
Speaker 4:um, typically, yeah, typically, the way I straighten darts and arrows if I have the time is, uh with time, so so I'll gather it and I'll shave some of the bark off, and then I'll let it sit in the sun for that day and then I'll straighten it a little bit, and then I continue doing that a couple times every day for a few days until it becomes drier when, when you're, that makes it.
Speaker 3:That definitely makes a stronger arrow or dot.
Speaker 1:I've learned anyhow it's blow dry that way, yeah, yeah so when you're yeah when you're drying it like that are you waiting it on the certain side? Um, yeah, okay with rocks. Or it like that are you weighting it on a certain side? Yeah, okay with rocks, or something like that, and then weight it out in the sun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it has a big banana bin. Yeah, I'll put some sticks in the ground or something to keep it straighter, cool, but getting out the wiggles takes some work.
Speaker 3:So I have to get to this. I have to ask this, let's take some work. So I have to get to this. I have to ask this so so turkey have been they're they're such a tough animal to hunt with any, with any weapon, because obviously their eyesight is so good. How have you fared with with turkey and the, the atlatl, um uh uh, uh. I can't really talk about it you don't hunt turkey with the atlatl right.
Speaker 4:I've eaten a lot of turkey. I'll just leave it at that yeah, right on, that bird is.
Speaker 3:I have so much respect for it. Yeah, absolutely, you can't really get away. You have to be. If you're going to hunt it with a, with, especially like a, like a trad bow, a primitive bow or an atlatl, you have to have good hunting skills and you have to understand where that animal is going to be at a certain time and, you know, be able to potentially make good blinds, good camo like, keeping yourself very concealed in the landscape. It's a very hard bird to hunt but yeah and yeah.
Speaker 4:The deeper you're in the wilderness, the more wily they are. Like that you know, some. Some people have more successful turkey hunts because they're on the edge of towns or where turkeys are a little more conditioned to people. But when you get deep in the wild, yeah, like you said, those turkeys, they're really keen they're switched on and you know they.
Speaker 3:I always kind of like find it interesting in their personalities that you know deer and elk have that certain level of inquisitive nature to them, where they kind of they want to verify what they're looking at.
Speaker 3:And you know, like, how their head movement, you know like they stomp around and they might even circle down when they get a sniff okay, I know what you are. And then they're out. Turkeys are just like oh, movement, no, I don't, I'm gone. Like they don't even know what you are, and then they're out. Turkeys are just like oh, movement, no, I'm gone. They don't even want to know, they don't care, they're just like. We see movement, it's probably dangerous, we're out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, completely.
Speaker 3:But, man, I've had such frustrating times trying to hunt quail with the atlatl. They're one of my favorite birds to eat and I would track them down just by listening to their calls and then ambush them. And, man, I would have them walk by like four yards in front of me and still miss, and I just they're so hard to get with the outlaw, I managed to acquire a couple quail yeah, they're really switched on.
Speaker 3:So can we jump into trapping just for a second? Um, with the small game with those? Are they like california ground squirrels, is that? Is that predominantly the squirrels you're talking about in that area?
Speaker 4:yeah, the, the ones I put a lot of focus on because because it's it's legal to trap in utah is the, the rock squirrels which live in the ground and they're they kind of look like at one point they hybridize or mated with a marmot, because they're quite big. Yeah they're?
Speaker 1:are they the big gray and black ones?
Speaker 4:they. They're like gray and, uh, more like a reddish brown.
Speaker 3:Okay, like gray, yeah yeah, the reddish brown and are. Those are those guys also known to carry the fleas which carry the plague. I know that's always yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4:I mean every 10 years we get kind of more of an outbreak.
Speaker 3:So I'm more careful during that time, yeah, you, just you, just you, just you send them off in the fire before you handle them. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, if it's one of those years or it's questionable, which you can usually tell, their fur is usually like kind of missing and in some sometimes they limp a little bit.
Speaker 3:If they're really sick, yeah, and so yeah, I really, um, I really enjoy like I've done a lot of squirrel hunting too and I really enjoy those animals, um, because I really enjoy the taste and um, I just they've just got such personalities. You know, like hunting them is just a lot of fun to try and outsmart them, especially the tree squirrels they are just half the great tree squirrels, but the ground squirrels are definitely way more achievable to hunt but they're just made to be trapped, like they are just awesome to trap, to be trapped, like they are just awesome to trap. And obviously, like with the deadfall, I imagine you're you're probably focusing mostly on like a Paiute deadfall. What's your preferred?
Speaker 4:For squirrel, yeah, I would say Paiute most of the time. Um, anything bigger than that.
Speaker 3:I usually start moving into various types of snares. Okay, okay, gotcha. And then for your deadfalls, like, what do you? What baits are you using? Natural baits of the landscape?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, cooked fish heads are great. They can smell that from a long ways away and they're always interested. If I don't have that, I'll use. I find that if you roast things, it helps a lot, so I found that roasted a roasted pine nut works great. A roasted acorn. Roasted acorn, yeah, even caught them with roasted biscuit root um. So sometimes roasting is like key, um. Or prickly pear fruit's great yeah yeah there's quite a lot.
Speaker 3:Or if you happen to bring just a little bit of peanut butter in the backcountry, that's one bite, that's not, not a bad one.
Speaker 4:You know what they actually. They like more than peanut butter is walnuts. They're always going to go for a walnut, I think partly because it has a little bit of an acorn flavor. It's like an acorn but with more fat is kind of what it tastes like yeah, fatty or not, huh I think they're stoked on that, so I'll use that then.
Speaker 3:I'll just I'll just take a little bit and rub the oil on the stone below them, and they're pretty exciting do you like, when you, when you're setting your deadfalls in those areas, I I imagine you know you're setting them up mainly in those sort of rocky outcrops where those a lot of those squirrels probably live. But, um, are you, do you have a lot of raccoons and stuff in those riparian areas or any other critters that are going to come up and and want to get hold of those fish heads?
Speaker 4:um, yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, even even a fox will sometimes get in there and kind of mangle the trap up a little bit.
Speaker 4:Um, they rarely get caught in it though, like I'll see the tracks, like especially the raccoons, because they use their hands so much yeah yeah, so they don't really get caught in the traps but they're, yeah, if generally like, if, like, if I see the area that the squirrel's in and I read the tracks and it looks active, and I set up the trap before 11, 11-ish like sometime early late morning, there's like a 50% chance that the squirrel will be there in the afternoon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, gotcha, yeah, okay. So raccoons being more nocturnal, you're not going to have an issue with them. Then if you trap that way, that's smart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've trapped raccoons with foot snares and that definitely seems to be an effective way. The way that they move and stuff a head snare on a raccoon is just I've found to be very tough. I definitely haven't mastered it, but the foot snares it's awesome be very tough.
Speaker 4:I I definitely haven't mastered it, but the foot snares it's awesome. That's good to hear. I honestly like I've kind of struggled with raccoon trapping. It's kind of been one of those things that it's like man, why is it so hard for me? So yeah, I think I'll have to get you to come out and show me what you're doing. I tell you what matt once you eat one of them.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm sure you've eaten a raccoon at some point.
Speaker 4:They're great fatty, yeah it's so bad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh so good. So yeah, I really try to focus on them, like in florida, you know myself, we've done some, I've done several trips out there in the raccoon world I'll give you a little trip on your raccoon trap.
Speaker 1:So you got to dig a hole about the size you know, probably about inch and a half round, and then stuff you uh stuff you, um, your bait down in there. I like to use one of the giant marshmallows, um, and then your snare, um your snare over and around that.
Speaker 3:Uh, that is so yeah, absolutely yeah, I'm gonna put it more yeah, I'm actually.
Speaker 4:yeah, I've caught a lot of animals with foot snares, but I don't know what it is the raccoons around here.
Speaker 1:The problem is is they've got that other hand? They can damn near get out of anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if you look at a raccoon's, you know especially like their front, their front feet look like a human hand, they can almost articulate. And then their back, their back feet, are kind of like a human's foot, like they're pretty big and pronounced and it's incredible. You look at the track. It almost looks like a little baby's put push the hand into the sand when you see their tracks and they're smart too, very smart animals. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3:I'm really fascinated by them. The the other thing I have to ask you is something which I've seen you do and I know others have done, and I'm so jealous because I've never done it is tickle trout.
Speaker 4:You never hand fished, I've never hand fished.
Speaker 1:Joel you got to get out more dude.
Speaker 3:This is something I have to do. It is a bit embarrassing to say that I haven't done it, but it's something I have to do. It is a bit embarrassing to say that I haven't done it, but it's something I want to do. So, uh, any tips, any recommendations on on hand fishing trout?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, everyone's got their own way of doing it. I've gotten pretty skilled at it, I think. Skilled at it I think, um, yeah, I'd say that. So. So there's two, two approaches with hand fishing one is the underhand and one is the overhand. Okay, I prefer most people like to go underhand because they because they hear the word tickling and think you gotta like go under its belly or something.
Speaker 4:I personally like to go over the top and there's a couple reasons for that. One is is if you, if you move along the bottom with your palm down and your fingertips up as you approach the fish, you ideally want to move towards its head first, because it starts shadowing the fish even more, and then the fish feels more secure when it it it nights out, when it's dark, so you get your hand over its eyes and it relaxes even that much more. And then, the other hand, if you, if you have the opportunity to use two hands sometimes you don't, but you'll put it near, closer to the tail, and then it's. It's easy to secure the fish by grabbing it and pushing it to the bottom at the same time. It's easier to do that than just try to randomly the fish by grabbing it and pushing it to the bottom at the same time. It's easier to do that than just try to randomly push it up to whatever.
Speaker 3:Easier just to push it down into the.
Speaker 4:Push it down, you'll get more control. The other tip I'd recommend is that when you cup your hand, always make sure that at least your pinky digit is in front of its head before you attempt the grab, because the fish always swim forward. That's the big mistake everyone makes. Is they have their that that lead hand, the head hand, too far back?
Speaker 3:that makes sense. Yeah, and I guess I feel bad I shouldn't have. We might have lost some listeners here. Hand fishing obviously if you haven't put together now, is the art and skill of going down to a creek, usually in creeks right, like like shallower creeks, would be probably the most ideal situation for them yeah, yeah, creeks are great.
Speaker 4:Um, sandy bottoms are good, obviously because you can control the fish a little more.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah your hand, trying to figure out where they are, putting your hand underneath those banks where they may be sort of resting or hiding out and trying to grab them with the hand, pull them out the water.
Speaker 4:Banks or rocks in the middle?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the places I like to key in on are some of those like, as they're coming up, a couple of waterfalls. There are usually pools in between that are kind of confined in those. When those fish get up into those little pools they'll immediately tuck up underneath the bank or up underneath the rocks that they um for shelter and either an arrest or whatever to get up the next little batch of rapid Um. And then once I identify what bank they go under, then I just go real slow and just I've done it. I've done it several times. Uh way up in the in the high country yeah, very cool, yeah, all right I'm gonna give it a go.
Speaker 4:It's so fun fishing is like one of those. It's one of those arts I'm like always really careful when I teach, because it teach. Because, Joel, it's super easy to get good at it. The younger ones that are just living off insects, but sometimes the older ones they get a little bit bigger head and a little bit narrower body.
Speaker 3:You're talking about cutthroat or rainbows, all of them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we have quite a few cutthroats and german browns and brooks in our area it's probably the most common okay, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've got. I really want to give that a go. Not by any means do I want to go out there and and harvest, do big harvest, but I guess it's just, I want to be able yeah, I just want to be able to say, okay, I know how to do it right.
Speaker 3:It's like, it's like all the skills, like there's certain things like like, uh, brain tanning would be a great example. Like I don't, I'm not drawn to like tanning hide after hide. I just I want to know how to work my way through it so that I can sort of intelligently understand how to do it. But, um, I gravitate towards certain things that I want to do more of. But, yeah, I'd love to tickle out a few fish for sure.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I actually lived on a creek for eight years that had fish and I was the only one in this canyon because it was so remote and so brushy to get into and when I first built my shelter there, the fish population was pretty small and the fish were really small. Through there the fish population was pretty small and the fish were really small. But by just being very cautious about how I collected like, I was able to like, nurture and grow these fish into better populations and bigger fish and it was really cool to see that I was able to live um from from these fish and I was also able to increase their productivity.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a responsible conservationist in my eyes. Absolutely. Harvest the old harvest, the ones that are past their breeding age, that are doing detriment to the species themselves, and let the young flourish.
Speaker 3:That's such a great conservation mindset, coming from your understanding and relationship with the nature, with the, with the environment, right back to what we're talking about. In the beginning, your connection with that land was intricate and you were able to observe things like this and then be able to steward the land in a meaningful way yeah yeah, it was so cool to see even the plant species that I was harvesting.
Speaker 4:You know, I had had a nettle patch that I'd go to in a watercress patch, a cattail patch and and all these other plants and I was nurturing them and watching them grow like despite being there and collecting them, they went from these little spindly patches to these big fields of of the plants that I needed yeah, I mean, certain plants thrive in that way.
Speaker 3:They grow faster the more they're harvested it. Obviously you know you got to get the tempo right, but I've noticed that myself in certain canyons that I used to roam that man the plants each, each year.
Speaker 4:They would just come back more and more abundant, stinging it all like being a really good example yeah, I think that's a missing part of our culture that doesn't live with nature, that they don't understand. They just think that if you're out there living off the land like you're going to hurt it. But I've seen the other way around.
Speaker 1:It's a symbiotic relationship, you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah totally.
Speaker 3:It is, but it takes a while, I think, to figure out how to do it in a symbiotic way though.
Speaker 4:It does. But I, you know, I think Native people probably easier were. They probably found that when they were younger because they lived with it and they had the responsible elders to teach them. I think it's hard because our society teaches us that we need to make money and we need to take, we need to take, take, take and we're we're all taught that from a really young age and and we're taught that being successful is taking and and yeah, if you take that out of your brain because because I had it, I went into the wilderness with some of that culture culturing in my brain and once you learn to remove that, then you start seeing how nature can keep growing and keep thriving.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Well, that's it, let's change it. Yeah, let's change it. I've got to go, guys, guys. Unfortunately I'm on a little bit of a time constraint today, but man, have I enjoyed this matt. Just we got to do this again down the line I'd love, I'd love you to come back, you know, if you'd be open to it. Um, I just feel like there's so much more you could say and uh, and I'm certainly wanting to listen yeah, for sure it's good.
Speaker 4:Good, uh, connecting with you even though we're on the, on the screen.
Speaker 3:It's kind of weird, but it's good, it's weird, but you know it's like, like we've got to use it as a tool. You know it's just a tool and if it means that I can, you know, know, connect with you, then I'm okay using that tool Awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, buddy, you have been just such a it's so, so awesome, Like I'm just so grateful that you took time out of your schedule to make this happen, and I'm excited for you to continue with your walkabout. I know you've got some, some cool, exciting plans up ahead. How can people find you? Follow you? What would you anything that you want to point out?
Speaker 4:please shout it out um, yeah, so I do have a website that a friend, couple friends helped build a couple years ago. It's my name, matt graham, and then earthskillscom, and and that's also my Instagram handle is Matt Graham earthskills. Those are pretty much the only two platforms I keep up. I've tried to keep up others, but it just it's. I just don't want to. I just don't want to do it.
Speaker 1:So I'm not.
Speaker 4:I'm not on Facebook. There is an account, but other people put stuff up on that and yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3:And then are you running some courses coming up this spring?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I got quite a nice lineup this spring. I got the primitive skills retreat in April and there's a running class in Colorado. It's like a primitive hunter-gatherer runner. It's kind of a hybrid course and I'm actually going to the Amazon with a friend, Joe Flowers. I spent time with the Matisse.
Speaker 3:Oh nice.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll be teaching out little fishing there to the clients that come down as well, so I'll be learning and I'll be sharing some skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's going to be exciting.
Speaker 4:And then yeah, more stuff back in utah and then also have a hawaii retreat with dan bard and later in the year oh, cool man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, hawaii was, remember we. I hit you up for some knowledge there and you kind of put me in touch with a buddy of yours and so I figured, yeah, I went to kalalau, spent um four or five days in the valley, you know, hunted goat, ate all the wild edible and I drank from the streams, like it was incredible. Um, I, you're absolutely right about that area. It's just, it's magical. The energy there is spectacular. That is a land that you can live off pretty easily.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah definitely yeah, you can thrive there. Oh man, yeah, you're gonna have a great time when you go back.
Speaker 3:Well, uh man, I can just yeah, I don't want this podcast to end I just went to call out I had.
Speaker 4:I had two pounds of rice that I went in there with, and that was it. I spent 21 days there and I came out with a pound of rice. That's nice.
Speaker 3:Easy. The crazy thing now is that they've kicked out all the squatters in there, all of the feral pigs and goats. The numbers have just exploded. I could have hunted three dozen goats quite comfortably, and the pigs were rooting up everything.
Speaker 4:So the amount of meat that's available there is endless, totally I found a spot in the valley, um kind of in the upper part where, where I could run down any goat, so it was pretty cool yeah, you told me about that running down the goats.
Speaker 3:I can absolutely see how you could do that there, no doubt yeah, yeah they're.
Speaker 4:They're really agile on the cliff sides, but there's certain terrain that they're not as agile on. Yeah, yeah they are.
Speaker 3:They are pretty clumsy at times, I must say, and they definitely not. Not a lot of them are not very wary too, you know, they don't really see us as as a major threat, which is great. Gives us an advantage and such good meat, incredible meat. I grew up eating goat in africa and it's I will. I will pick it over beef when I'm back there, but especially cooked underground yeah, oh yeah, yeah, nice and tender it's awesome well uh, man, thanks again, matt uh great episode.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate it. Cole, love you man yeah, I love you too. Uh, I just can't wait for the next time that we can have you back, matt.
Speaker 4:Yeah for sure sounds sounds great thanks for having me yeah you bet y'all thanks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, give us, give us the ending I will.
Speaker 1:Y'all thank you so much for listening and we appreciate it if you tuned in this entire time. Do us a. We need you to go leave us a five-star review. We appreciate it so much. Um, make sure y'all go check out Matt and everything that he has going on this, uh, this spring and summer. And, matt, we can't thank you enough. Man, we really do appreciate your time and, uh, we, we love your lifestyle so much and can't thank you enough for coming on.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Appreciate you, Cole and Joel.
Speaker 3:Thank you, you bet. Thanks, buddy, enjoy the rest of your trip. Bye y'all, cheers. See ya, I'm going to go get him, thank you.