Should I Feel BAD About Shooting an ELEPHANT? - With Corey Knowlton

I sit down with Corey Knowlton, one of the most experienced international hunters alive, to talk elephant hunting, North American hunting and double rifles. From there we dig into the Jim Shockey era of hunting TV, why North American trophy hunting opportunity is never coming back, and why a $30,000 archery elk hunt makes almost no sense when you look at what that money buys in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, or Tanzania.

In this episode:
Why it's easy to win the elephant argument logically — and impossible emotionally
The Jim Shockey years: how those shows actually got made
Elephant overpopulation and why management has to happen
How to plan an elephant hunt: heat, full moons, tracks, and judging old bulls
Double rifles vs. bolt actions — and why the front trigger comes first
Why hunters will end hunting themselves, not anti-hunters

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:49

So on the elephant hunting, dude, and this might sound insane to you. I kind of feel like I'll feel bad shooting one. Do you have a perspective on that?

SPEAKER_04 0:57

Sure. But I'll ask you, why do you think that? What what is if you had to explain the feeling that you've got now not doing it, how would the how would that come out in words?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

I don't know if elephants know when part of their group dies. Fact that they're old when you kill them. You know what I mean? They're the age of me or maybe older, you know? Like though those aspects of it, I would be lying if I said that those sort of things were not in my mind. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 1:23

Sure. Well, it's easy to win that argument logically. Sure. It's impossible to win it emotionally. So if somebody has an emotional feeling about it, which you're going to, that's the one thing that's going to happen on an elephant hunt. They're giant. You look, you're looking up at them. It's very close proximity. A long shot on an elephant hunt's 45 yards. Yeah. You know, that's that's long. Most of the uh all the elephants I've hunted, the pride average is 25 to 30. There's not an equivalence in any other hunting. So so you're you're gonna feel like this thing can break me with nothing. You walk, you go walk up to it, watch it push down a giant tree, break big trees, hear them breathing, hear them. I mean, it's a it's a visceral experience. First time you do it, you cannot prepare yourself for what that is.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I I highly doubt that you remember this, but we've actually met in person, and it was probably it was when SEI was doing their deal in Vegas. Uh I'm I I met you right when I met Jim and you were wearing dark sunglasses. I think I think it I think it was I think it was when you were in the uh you were in the heat of like public perception was all over you. Uh I just met I just met you real briefly, but uh um so we have met before, but maybe only I remember it, man.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

But uh when I saw your page on Instagram, I recognized you. Okay. But I I couldn't say where in those times, especially during like those conventions are nuts for me. They always have pretty nuts for me. And and so you meet a million people, but you've got a more recognizable face. You got the probably hunter look, you got it down.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Good deal. That that's good to know. Um, but man, uh, let's jump into that actually, because I think it was I think it was right in the time, I mean, before I mean, I feel like I know you a lot better than you probably know me, Corey, because I used to watch all Shockey stuff back in the day. Um always viewed it, you know, I always viewed his shows and the shows you did with him as like kind of the apex of of video content around hunting. You know, uh now that I'm doing a fair amount of that stuff myself, it's so hard to tell a story. And you guys, you guys did a great job at it. Um I mean, do you do you mind telling me like what those days were like and and maybe a little bit of your perspective on how it changed?

SPEAKER_04 4:09

Sure. Um, so I met Jim about 2001, somewhere around there, 2000, 2001. And he had never been on virtually, if possibly zero international hunting, but certainly never been to Africa. Okay, and I had only been at that time like one time. And I met him at the show through another friend of mine, and we just discussed hunting and so on and so forth, and um, and I took him to Africa on his very first trip, and he was uh he was in his early 40s then, so it's funny to think about he's younger than I am now, thinking back on this, you know. But anyway, he um we just discussed hunting a lot, and he said he really had this vision about hunting the whole world, and at that time I was I'd done a lot of guiding for my age, um, you know, not and now you know looking back on it, not as much, but mainly all my hunting was involved in a professional capacity, taking people hunting, working for outfitters and outfitting hunts myself to the extent I could. And we just discussed hunting on like a big scale, and he wanted to go to Africa and he wanted to film at that time. It was like he had didn't have the idea for the TV show yet, but he had an idea for videos. So we were making video production. That first hunt was in Namibia. He was really big in the muzzle odor thing then, right? And the I remember we filmed each other shoot the animals there. I filmed him, he filmed me. He was bitching at me the whole time. It's like, dude, I'm not a cameraman, you know. And uh he was very, very, very focused and intent on it. And he had this dream, which was really cool that he ended up achieving it all. Not very many people did, but he was thinking about what the Weatherby Award was and what it meant to him, um, which is far different now than what it was then. And and you mentioned all this changing. He we just sat by the fire and talked about all these hunting dreams he had. And uh we did that hunt, it was great. And then about five or six years later, he went on a few African hunts. And one of the interesting things about it that I think he would probably tell you it changed the trajectory of his career, it certainly changed the trajectory of mine. Was at that time, you had these other guys involved in it that were big name people. I don't want to go through the list, but certainly your viewers would know who they were, okay? Big TV and writers, such like that. And a lot of people were just hosting them and giving them the hunts for free. That was just happening. Right. And so, to to an extent, they were shaping the way people perceived this international hunting through this, right? So these are the windows we had back then. It wasn't it wasn't this massive internet presence that people had. So all of a sudden, you you'd have the idea of Africa being or Zimbabwe being with one outfitter, and that was what was portrayed to us all, right? So you got these you got these narrow views of what it was. And I told, and Jim was like upset with the hunts he'd gone on since we gone together. And I was like, Well, Jim, you know, you're paying them very little for it, if anything.

unknown 7:33

Right.

SPEAKER_04 7:34

And the best people in the world, you're gonna have to pay them, dude. Sure. They're not, they don't care who you are, they're not, they don't, you know, that don't, and and he agreed. He was at that point that he was doing okay. And man, from that day on, it just went through the roof. He had the best hunts in the world that we went with none of the outfitters felt like we were trying to get anything from them, and it was the trajectory just went through the roof, and the and the quality of the content was fabulous. We were in the best places. It's hard to make a TV show about hunting if you don't have any animals in it. Nobody wants to watch that. So we flooded it with that. And then, so a couple years into it, I told him, I said, Jim, I I still I'm still selling hunts. At that time, I worked at the hunting consortium with Bob Kern selling lots of international hunts, and I said, I watch all this stuff, and man, these people aren't professionals at this. Like they're getting guided by the professionals, and they're going to people who outfit professionally, but they're not they're not really professionals at it. They're really not that good at the production side. Most of it was pretty bad. I think you could go through, you know, like the the real tree stuff had a high production value, and but I mean, what harping them to find good deer hunting?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

So and it's not, and those are pretty, those environments to film in are pretty, I don't know, I mean, stagnant compared to what you're walking around in Africa or climbing a mountain. So anyway, we we um we just discussed that, and I said, the idea for the show needs to be about us. You're actually guiding people, Jim. In addition to the stuff he had this outfitter territory in the Yukon, he is he was absolutely full-time professional in it. And and the hunting he was doing, he took that on prof as uh even though he was amateur in that realm, being guided by somebody, he was professional at the being him, sure, and right, and and and he was a professional hunter guiding people. So I said, let's just I I'm I'm take people professionally, guide them and book them, and they trust me on all this stuff. Let's just talk about what our lives are, and that's how that came about. And and he brought his son in, which we wouldn't have done it without his son, it would have been almost a joke without his son, brandly.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Just from a production standpoint and having a having a camera guy.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

Yeah, dude, the guy was masterful with it. He had he had Todd, he had we had Matt, we had a couple really good camera people, but the idea like that when you were saying those those shows hit you, it was because at the time the the guy who was producing it was pretty smart, and the idea we we spent a lot of time telling those stories.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Well, it and that do I think that's the key to it, Corey? Because I I was totally naive to this with during my guiding days when I was watching your guys' stuff. I had I was naive to how big of a challenge it is. I mean, I and it's not a knock on the guys that have filmed hunts for me, but every time I watch one that I've done, it's it it's not capturing the story, and that's so hard, dude. It's hard, it's super difficult. Like it's a production thing that people don't realize. You can't just like have a camera guy follow you around, you have to tell the story. That shit's hard, man.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

Brutal. And the one the I think if I was gonna like consolidate that down, what's so tough about it is hunting is like an observer-based reality, it's what it is for you as a person, and you're seeing it through your eyes. And if you're the one who's taking the shot or you're the one who's experiencing these emotions, it seems extremely real for you. Sure. And that person right next to you with a camera may not be filming, feeling the same thing. His you know, he has it's just so you're getting the eyes of somebody else through trying to get the experience through your eyes and capture that. It's it's a diff it's a different thing than a movie or like what we're doing now. It's it it uh I totally get it. And that was one of the Jim was really good at telling those stories far better than I were was. It wasn't hard to make the stories because that's what was happening.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Right.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

It wasn't super difficult at those times, man. It wasn't like today where you got Starlink. Those early times, we if we had a satellite phone, the thing barely worked. Sure. And you're just out there and that's what you got.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah. So I mean, there's our there's real adventure built built into the oh lots.

SPEAKER_04 12:02

I mean, yeah, lots. We had all sorts of, and and and and it's not it's not as it's still you can still find that adventure today. It's just not as the death part of it isn't as prevalent. People still die, but back then it was like something happens out here, we're we're toast.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

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SPEAKER_03 13:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Yeah, dude, I I think about that a lot, Corey. Like, I I was actually hesitant to bring Starlink into my camps. Uh, admittedly, like, we we have it now. Uh, and I and I appreciate aspects of it, mostly just like keeping up on you know other things I need to do in life. But uh, dude, it isn't it weird to think that that's gone for all future hunters. Like the the idea unless they purposely choose to, there's nowhere you can go on this earth where you're literally disconnected.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Yeah, it's a big thing, I think. It takes away, especially the idea of safari or hunting in Asia when you're not disconnected. That was part of it. My first Asian hunt was in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, and I might have talked to my wife twice during that.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

You know, if it and and it was very, very remote then. Today, like the way it's changed in the last 25 years, it I couldn't put it into words the way it was when I got into it to the way it is if if somebody was going to do these hunts now, how much it easier it is. Now, even then, it was you think about like those Marco Polo hunts, those guys who originally did those hunts, a lot of them died of altitude sickness. A lot of them had all sorts of other injuries and problems on the hunts that like trashed it, weather, so on. They had no idea what they were getting into.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:32

And then it was 60 days, 30 days in hunt, and then 20 days down, whatever it was. Nowadays, you go in there, you shoot your thing, you're done.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:41

Yeah, I'm not saying I'm not discounting the challenge of that. I'm just saying it's not the same ball game. It was easier for us. You look at those guys who came 30 years before I did it. It they they were it was difficult.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, it's always a relative comparison, right? Like I I look at the uh I mean, dude, I have very little Africa experience, you know, but but and we'll get into that. But you know what? When I when I went there, you know, I can feel like a little tinge of an edge in certain social things and that sort of thing, but I compare it to the guys that went over there on a boat like 80 years ago. You know, I mean you even know what you didn't even know if the political situation changed from when you got on the boat to when you got off of it, you know.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

For sure. And I mean, and and malaria. Oh this this medicine that I got I had malaria 25 years ago. I'm here, my little nephew's here, and they were just hunting in Central Africa, and he got malaria. And in three days, he's better. They got this quartum, you take it, you're better. When I had it, I'm in the hospital. You know, it's just a different thing, you know, it was a bad deal. So I think a lot of it's changed. It's a lot safer, regardless of what the news say. The the degree or the news says the degree of safety is so much higher. Just like you said, having the Starlink there. Does it cost you something? Yeah. Is it justified by if somebody happened to have an accident there with you and you have that and it saves their life, you take that every day.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, you'd feel like an idiot idiot if you didn't have it, you know. So, but but it's it's absolutely this intrinsic change that I I guess to me, what's weird about it, Corey, is it's permanent, right? Like that, like it's almost like that that disconnection's over, you know.

SPEAKER_04 16:24

Yeah. Yeah, you have to choose you, yeah, you have to choose it if you want it.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, dude, I wanna before we get beyond it, I want to touch on a little bit because I didn't really know this about you until we talked, and then I you know I knew it about Jim, but I kind of knew it, I kind of thought of it honestly as like a marketing thing, the whole guiding outfitting deal. Um, and you've been in that world and and it sounds like you've done some guiding outfitting yourself or qu or quite a bit. Do you think do you think that was like an essential part of I is it essential part of of your experience? Is it as was it a central part of of Jim's TV shows? Like ha having that experience. Do you think if he didn't have that, if he had just been a client, he'd just been a hunter on his own, that that the perspective of those those videos would be different?

SPEAKER_04 17:13

In his case, it would have been disingenuous. Yeah. For us, that was just our lives. And and he was he, you know, he had a very successful outfitting company. I had very successful outfitting company. We outfitted a lot, and that was part of it, and something we had in common. And I think the perspective of that as the responsibility of selling the hunts and providing good product to people, that the stakes that you're looking for filming a TV show are already raised. You're already part of this. So that I think that added to the edge of it. And and our our perspectives, well, certainly my, you know, he he was really trying to promote that. That was probably his reasoning behind doing it. My I was just doing it, and and this was an opportunity that I had. I didn't, you know, I had no problem really selling hunts. It was something that I did really well for a long time, talking to people and taking on their dreams. It wasn't a big thing. For me, it wasn't near as competitive either. His market competing against all those guys in Canada and North America is far more competitive than uh this market is.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Sure. It's it's interesting, Corinne. I'd love to hear your perspective on it. Uh, just this last week, I was teaching some some courses and stuff, and a guy asked me, he's like, Hey, is this harder? You know, this this seems like it'd be harder than guiding. And I almost laughed out loud. The the hard the hardest the hardest thing, man, I've ever didn't done in my life is guiding and outfitting at volume. And it was uh it was a psychological thing, man. Like the there's just there's variability to hunting, and the fact I couldn't control every bit of that variability was so hard for me. Like it and I it it was like the I you know, so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. It like it's so hard to keep like I I wanted to truly fulfill guys' expectations, fulfill the adventure they're having. Some guys it might be the only hunt they ever go on at like that price point, you know. Um do you have thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_04 19:33

Absolutely, I can tell you how I handled it. Um, especially I grew up hunting on public land and real expensive or real inexpensive private land in Texas. You know, your your public land opportunities are virtually non-existent of anything you'd really want to do. Um and the private land opportunities used to be really inexpensive. And so, like my first deer lease was $600 a person or something.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

Right. So so it equate that. The opportunities were there, the hunting was about what worth what you paid for it. But sure, that that's that that's what we had. So coming at that aspect, understanding from starting there, dreaming about your your what your hunting dreams are, whatever that is, getting some guys elk, is a deer, is elephant, whatever it may be, and having those yourself, what I what I would do is I I treat their dreams and what they wanted like mine, but understanding each one of these guys, they come with a toolbox. And those toolboxes are rarely the same. You know, some guy can't some people can't hear, some people can't see. If they're not used to being out there, the edges and what they see with their eyes aren't the same things of what you see. I mean, you can you can go through millions of stories like that, but I would understand that and say, okay, well, I'm not gonna diminish what we can achieve here, I'm gonna maximize it by what we can do with this person. And I as I my clients got older and older and their desires got uh higher and higher, I've I've I've figured out how to maximize that it if they're willing to apply the time, effort, and money to it. If they do those three things, you can pretty much get most all of it done. But if if they're not gonna give you any money to hire anybody to help them, if you need an extra guy to carry something for them, they're not gonna do it. You know, they're they're limiting it. But if they're if they're open-minded and they say, okay, yeah, this is what I want, I'm willing to sacrifice physically for it, I'm willing to give my time to it, and I'm willing to give my um I'm willing to give this amount of money to it. I I didn't find it to be super difficult as long as there are realistic expectations. If somebody comes up to you and they're telling you, I want to do this and they're not in physical shape to do it, I mean, what can you do?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

Yeah, you know, you get your heart broke because you want to do it for them, but they're limiting you.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you and it is I I always like now that I've kind of evolved through this and dealt with a lot of folks, and it's like that's my advice to any like younger guy getting into it, is the expectation deal is the whole thing. It's the whole the whole deal, you know, what what what they could do, and then you know, and then money of course comes into play, right? There's you know, they it absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

I I'll tell you one thing that I I feel real bad about the younger people coming up is is that those opportunities that I had for killing big deer and killing big elk and kill killing these big animals in North America and having great experiences in North America, that has fundamentally changed so much that it and it's never ever coming back. It happened during this COVID, and it happened during this whole I've been of Instagram and Facebook to it all. The amount of money it takes to do the North American stuff, it it's mind-boggling to me. So to get this level of experience that I got and some of the guys of my generation, gener X or baby boomers got, I don't know how this is going to happen again.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 23:08

I I I mean, there's going to be rare that somebody comes in at a young age and they get this experience to be able to either be really good at guiding or have an awesome hunting career and get what you want. I look at I look at what it takes now on mule deer and elk. And man, I've run some very, very big mule deer and elk hunts where we had 900 game cameras out. Yeah. We had unlimited budget. And we still struggled. It's like, you know, I mean, we're looking for a very big animal, but nonetheless, you would think it would be easier than what it was given unlimited resources and it isn't. It's brutal.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yeah, no, no, for sure. And you and you mentioned uh sounds like you have a take on how like current social media and hunting content affects that. Like what dig into that a little bit, Corey. I mean, do you have a real negative perspective on it, or or is it just that it changed it from a demand standpoint?

SPEAKER_04 24:08

I would say I wouldn't have a negative view of it. I think it's awesome that the stuff's out there for everybody to see. I wish when I was younger, all that content was out there to be able to consume. I mean, in the 90s, if you found a decent deer kill footage, that was something awesome, right? You're like excited to see this. So, so no, I think it's positive from that aspect. I think the negative aspect of it comes into somebody who has like repeated success for a long time, either at outfitting or hunting themselves. Though they they're only showing either this picture or this small clip of it, the other all the effort that they put into that is basically lost. And then you know it's all they see it for a second, they swipe, they go on to the next thing. Uh that's that probably gives a false sense of reality to the viewer. Oh if they if they're just overloaded with that, and and and then the false equivalence of some of the I don't know, either uh high fence hunting, like you see a guy with a big mule deer in Mexico. Okay, when I started that and I started the hunting there in the early 2000s, dude, if you killed a 180, it was awesome. If you killed 200, unbelievable. And it took a lot of effort to get that done. I remember the geese going down there for with a guy named Brian Bundrick, they went down there for, I don't know, 45 days at a time. And yeah, they killed some big bucks, but they were down there for 45 days at a time. Sure. And that's what it took to kill them. Now you go to some of these places, you shoot that buck in a weekend. Right. I mean, what is it? I'm not demanding, I'm not diminishing it, but it's not the equivalent.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Well, what what's interesting about it is I actually think like the the Mexico mule deer world and a lot of other things that are that are going on there in other places. What's wild to me is that uh there's no context around it with social with social media. And I actually like I don't I don't care if guys go to Mexico and and shoot mule deer in a in a high fence or whatever. Um I mean I think you could you could view it from the perspective of hey, there's way more opportunity there to hunt big deer. Um you could view it from a negative light, whatever you want to do. But what's weird is I I think you're you're pinpointing something that's that that's odd about current social media, like there's no context about what's going on. And I think it's because everything's short now, Corey. I think it has to do with like I I heard Elon Musk uh in an interview, somebody asked him, like, hey, is there one thing that you've been a part of that you you you're not really proud of? And he's like, Yeah, short form content. I had to kind of laugh out loud because it's like, yeah, man, it's made everything so you don't you don't get the rest of the story. And uh none of that, none of that's talked about now. It's kind of it's kind of wild.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

I would I'll I'll be a proponent of high fence hunting. I'm not a proponent of canned hunting, but high fence hunting doesn't bother me one bit. The thing that uh gets me is the the false equivalence.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

You know, it's like okay, well, this guy comes in and he shows up with this gray big deer, and then and then somebody takes that as the same as a guy who killed a free range buck and wherever. It's just not the same. It's not there's nothing wrong with either of it, right? Right? If you just want to go kill the big deer and you don't care about the rest of it, go kill a big deer. Great. Yeah, I'm all for hunting in any way, shape, or form. Probably far past what most people are. Um, but but man, the I think you're right. You hit it the the short con how how do they know the story? But most of us when we see the picture, we're gonna be pretty sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, you know, you're gonna be pretty sure I I would I would argue that most uh most of maybe like people that have a little bit of background in the industry, Corey, but I don't think a lot of people I I think a lot of people have no idea, you know what I mean, about about how things are changing in in different regions. And I think it's because that story's not told for for for better or worse, you know. Um so it's uh it's interesting. I mean, dude, I know like your depth of knowledge on Africa. I have no idea uh when I look at a picture if a cave if a Cape Buffalo was raised in a feed lot or if it was, you know, free raging its whole life. I have no context for that. You know what I mean? Because not not not because I have an issue with one or the other. Um, you know, the the the f the first Cape Buffalo I shot was out of a a big a big high fence, like a 25,000 acre high fence. I I had a freaking blast doing it. But that's like my only that I I would have never even before that trip, Corey, I didn't even know that Cape Buffalo were killed in high fences. You know what I mean? Um so uh yeah, I don't I don't know what the answer is, but uh I do think that as hunting has evolved and and like everything's become shorter and just specifically about the animal, I don't think I think it kind of goes back to what you originally said with like I I guess the the context there was that we saw only a s only a certain type of outfitting because those were the guys that were trying to market via via like the TV channel, you know what I mean? And so I think in some ways we're seeing maybe even more maybe maybe even more of that now.

SPEAKER_04 29:36

Right, and it well there you go, the person who's got the the highest viewership and puts the m the best content out, generally those guys are gonna be South African guys, sure, right? And and and the South African uh places, a million times easier to film. Sure. You don't have to get filming permits, you don't have to deal with that, you're not going into a game reserve, you're not having to pay extra money every day to have somebody in there, you know, I have to pull them in, pull them out, and a lot of the and it's consolidated to an extent that most of those outfitters that are further north, they don't need it. Right, right. It's it it it's onerous upon them to have it and deal with it. They just do it, you know, and they're they're not struggling to sell hunts. Yeah. So there you go.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Well, well, what's crazy about it, man, is like my my experience in North America. I I've got a few clients that are not that, you know, they're wealthy guys that spend a lot of money hunting, but they they don't want any filming. And they don't, they don't care, you know, that's not of interest at all to them. And there are there are places that I hunt with them that nobody knows about, Corey. Like nobody knows about, and they and they pay full price, and they're they're phenomenal hunts. Like they're some of the best hunts. But but the guys that do them, they don't have any they don't have any need to market their hunts or anything like that. So there's still um there's still that component, man, still exists today, you know.

SPEAKER_04 31:06

True. Right. I'm and at at the expense of at the expense of understanding all that that continent offers, they if you s if you limit yourself to looking at the content that you see and rather than reading or traditional media, you'll you can you can learn a lot about African hunting in general, far probably more uh by reading books and looking at the history of African hunting. And most of the good spots that were good years ago are still good today for the by and large, some of it. It's certainly, especially in East Africa with all this advent of tons and tons of people, it's less, but most of the good spots are still the good spots, all right, guys.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

And some of my content you're gonna see that I've been using this chest holster from Invader Concepts. This is with my 10 millimeter. I also use it with my Glock 19 and even a PMR 30. I'm gonna do a bunch of content here in the next couple months on that around bear defense. It should be interesting. It looks a little awkward to have your gun under your bino harness, but if you test out all the different variations, it is the best and you have it on you all the time. I do have a discount code, it's Cliff G and it's for 10% off. Go check them out. And we're gonna we'll jump into Africa, but uh I do want to hear, I want to finish up your perspective on on North America. Do you do you hunt much do you hunt much more uh much anymore in in North America?

SPEAKER_04 32:44

Only up until COVID, lots. I got a lot of desert sheep hunts, I did it a lot of governor's tag hunting. When I mean like putting together governor's tag hunts or are specific things that people were looking for, not always governor's tag, but oftentimes. I mean, I couldn't tell you how many of those I've done.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 33:07

Still would do one or two a year, but not like heavy 60, 70, 80 days of North American hunting like I used to do.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Yeah. And dude, and over over the years, like I remember Corey seeing you with seeing you with stone sheep and seeing you with big, you know, big free range oddad, seeing you with big mule deer. Like you, you, you went through all you, I mean you went through all of that, like at a time.

SPEAKER_04 33:32

Those are the things I mule deer is my was my favorite thing to hunt forever.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 33:37

And so that and especially archery mule deer hunting, I loved it. And but the hunting for it's just not that good anymore. And then for me, like I've killed three mule deer over 200 with my boat. Maybe I had six thousand bucks on average in the entire hunt of those, you know, each each one. So to say, okay, now I'm gonna go spend what it takes to go do it in the time and effort. I mean, and I don't know how many bucks under that I killed, I mean, and and guided a hundred. So, so it's like to to me to go through what these people have to go through uh to kill something nice, it's just not the value is not there for me. If it was still good, I'd still be doing it.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah, no, no, I hear do you is it is it uh do you think it's game management or do you think it's just do you think it's just the value proposition has changed?

SPEAKER_04 34:28

Uh the for the former there, the game management for sure. So and this is something that I think if if you're a big public land person, you probably feel it. The public land hunting for elk and mule deer was generally superior to anything except Indian reservation, or you know, if you're just talking about the populations or in a national park. So so what happened during that is the best I could tell over the last 25 years is now you have all these people that want to hunt. When I was a kid, it was like, let's get everybody hunting we can. Everybody thought we were gonna run out of hunters. That was wrong.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

Yeah, they were in that and when I hear people say that today, I I I really don't get it. It's too many. So it's not too many, but it's it's getting there.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

Yeah, there's no there's no lack of hunters.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

I mean it seems to be a weird, a weird use of statistics, Corey, because I I still hear that today, that there's you know that would that the hunting population is declining, but dude, in every aspect of my hunting, I don't I don't see that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

That's not the case.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Yeah, it's just misuse of statistics.

SPEAKER_04 35:44

Yeah, I think I think so. I I mean I mean how many girls hunt now? Right. Lost.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:51

When I was a kid, how many? None. Very few. Yeah. Um, so so the game management aspect. If if you were to say, okay, back in whatever, 15 years ago, you're gonna hunt, um, and you're gonna either have preference points to hunt those best places, or or you're gonna go through governor's tag process or buy landowner tag that you can hunt public land or private land, whatever it was. Most of the places, whether they had a uh if they were close to a national park or close to an Indian reservation, they were pretty pretty good. Most of the hunting was pretty good for by and large. Now, if you're looking for like trophy animal, so many of these things are up against a national park boundary or up against a up against a Indian reservation boundary where the hunting's really great. It's because they manage it for hunting opportunity, and those people that are inside in Indian reservation, they're managing it for the best they can for the wildlife.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 36:49

It's not about we're gonna get 600 residents into this unit.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04 36:53

So so that was is what's flattened that opportunity out to the I'm I'm not saying they can't go kill deer. It's just not like it was.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Yeah, yeah. No, uh, no, I agree, man. The other thing that I've changed or I've seen change since I was a kid, dude, maybe, maybe some maybe some individual instances have biased this perspective, but I don't see like this almost almost completely across the western states, the game departments, they no longer, they're no longer what I would call like supply driven. They it's like they they're they're what I from what I've seen, they're not, there's very little effort to you know open new areas or try to increase the population of, you know, I mean bighorns would be a perfect example in all the units I've guided in Colorado. There's very little interest in saying, like, hey, let's do everything we can to turn this 50, uh, you know, these 50 bighorn sheep into 150 over the next next few years. Like I see very little of that. Um, and same thing with the elk populations and everything else. And I think that that has its trickle, trickle down to just like the average public land guy, you know.

SPEAKER_04 38:02

Right. For sure. The the the opportunities aren't the same. And it's not uh how many of uh how many people that are involved in those bureaucracies have different beliefs than they did years ago? Probably quite a few. Sure. It's you know, is that good or bad? I don't know, but it's it's probably represents the time we're in. I I I look at what happened in my state here in Texas, what they've tried to do with Mountain Lion, what's happened with our bighorn sheep population, these things the the bighorn sheep stuff, negative large by and large went down because of the advent of all the odd uh odd ad. And that's a lot again, hunter opportunity. How many, even if we had the best population we ever had, you're talking about a handful of desert sheep tags, right? Compared to a thousand people hunting odd ad. So, but the but the the the sheep hunting was wiped because of it.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. Uh dude, before we go to Africa, I do got I want to ask you about Texas. I had uh an interesting guy on a couple weeks ago. I haven't put the podcast out yet. I'd probably this next week. Uh his perspective, uh, you may even know him, his name's Brian Gilroy. Uh his perspective is that uh the whole exotic w world in Texas is is basically about to explode. And I I pushed him a bit on does that mean just more um hunting opportunity for exotics in Texas, including some that I didn't even know you guys had. Like I didn't I didn't know there's Cape Buffalo in Texas. Uh I I I really didn't even know there was a like a legitimate kudu population, those sort of things. But I pushed him at it, I didn't get a uh uh super clear answer, but I'm curious if uh if like the the type of experience is gonna change in Texas due to that, too. Do you I mean do you have a perspective on that?

SPEAKER_04 40:04

I mean, from from from living here and hunting it and uh understanding that exotic hunting was part of the hunting that was here, it's always been, it's gotten a lot higher quality than what it used to be, and a lot more diverse than what it used to be, and the African population of animals here is higher than it used to be. It I wouldn't say that it's gonna be at the expense of anything. Okay, I don't think it's gonna be at that. I I think you're gonna see that okay, buffalo hunting is gonna be happening here. Sure. The popular there that it is what it is, the extent that those ranch owners are gonna want to deal with the liability of it would be the only thing. I think the desire for people to go do it would be there. Um, but again, the it's gonna it will probably be less expensive as all of it, it kind of changes.

SPEAKER_03 40:54

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

But the I don't think it's gonna be the expense of anything.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah, I got you. Um, all right, dude, let's talk about Africa. So one thing that I have noticed, and I I'd throw myself to some extent in this category. Uh, I'll preface this with Corey is like the one time I went to Africa since the day I got back, and I'm not bullshitting you, I think about Africa every single day of my life. Like it's it's wild. And I think a lot of the things we've been been talking about, it's very hard for me to talk to a young guy or even a 50-year-old guy who's just getting into hunting, and not to say, like, hey, dude, this should be on your radar. Like, you know, and it's it's hard for me to say that not only should it be on your radar, maybe it should be like the primary thing. You know what I mean? Like the the primary the primary thing you look at hunting the next 30 years.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

If I if I was gonna do if if somebody was coming at me and they were gonna say, Hey, I I want to hunt for the next my adult life, this is what I want to do with as a hobby or as you know recreational activity, this is what I want to do. The value is there, the value isn't here. Yeah. It's just it's it's if you were to take like I was with a buddy of mine the other day. We were actually in Tanzania, and he was telling me about he sells hunts, and he was saying, I had a guy call me up and uh he called a well-known outfitter in Utah and said the guy wanted to do a um a uh archery elk hunt, and he really wanted to kill a big bull. His dream was kill a 380-plus bull.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

And it was like 70,000 bucks.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:34

And I'm thinking in my mind, okay, 70,000 bucks, you got your eight or 10-day archery hunt. What do you do here for 70,000 bucks? You're not gonna look at Earth the same after you get home.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Right.

SPEAKER_04 42:45

That you're gonna you're and the the different things that you can do for your money is you you got decades to do them all. It's gonna take you that long. So the opportunity is is there. I I think the opportunity is there for a while. It's certainly trended far more sustainable use than what it used to be. I think there was a lot of, I don't know, opinion where the anti-hunting community and photographic community made that hunting look in a little bit more negative light than what it's looked at now. Now, the the only country that's uh that isn't pro-hunting virtually is Kenya, and they're the outlier, and their populations are down. You look across the border in Tanzania, booming. So I I think the opportunity is gonna be there for a while. It's it's this is the time to do it, though.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, dig dig in, dig into that, man. And and we'll we're gonna go down the I I I'm I I've told you this many times via messages. I'm very interested in the whole elephant side of things. Um, but just in general, like why why do you say that? That like yeah, I mean, is is right now like the good old days of Africa or like the good old days of Africa.

SPEAKER_04 44:03

It'd be the good old days of elephant hunting.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:07

Gotcha. It'd be the good old days of elephant hunting. The from from 2020 or for I would say 2021, this decade, it's gonna be real, it's gonna continue to be pretty good. The last few years, if you 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, were really, really good. And I think to the extent it trends, those elephant populations are high for the areas they're at. The opportunities there, the different amounts of money you can spend for different levels of hunting experience are it's not just I gotta spend 80 grand to go do it. You could probably go spend 25 grand and go do it. Yeah, it depends on what you. Want so that yes, the good old days of elephant hunting are here.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

I mean, it's wild for me to hear that, Corey, and I've been researching and stuff. I mean, you're you're basically talking about equip an equivalency of good elk hunting, like really good pay-to-play elk hunting in the US. It's on the same level to some extent as elephant hunting.

SPEAKER_04 45:12

Yeah, except the elephant hunting would be good.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yeah, yeah. No, I uh I hear you, man. Um what uh I mean Africa in general, what what would you say to a guy that says, yeah, but I I don't want to just go somewhere and shoot a bunch of shit. I'm I'm into the mountain experience, that side of thing, which which you've experienced here in North America. Do you do you have a perspective on on what you tell them?

SPEAKER_04 45:38

If they wanted just to go have a hunting experience and they're looking to have like put in a lot of effort for one or two animals on the hunt, is that what you're saying? Versus going over there and having a like a broad planes game experience where they're shooting a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Do I think it's just that a lot of people, that's still their perspective on Africa, Corey, is there's no there's no experience to it. It's just you go over there and shoot a bunch of shit.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

If you go, if you go to a ranch in South Africa and you shoot a bunch of shit, that that I think it's a good experience. I think it's good for a lot of ways. Most people don't get to hunt a lot. Right? If you talk to a guy, if that guy had killed 10 deer in his life, killed quite a few deer.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:16

So I would say in it take that experience for what it is, you're gonna get a hunting experience to shoot a lot of different animals and shoot a lot. So so there's something to be taken from just that experience alone. If you're talking about the experience of going on an elephant hunt or going on a mountain and yala hunt, going on a Lord Derby Elon hunt, going on a bongo hunt, going on a hunt for big K buffalo or a lion or leopard hunt, it's it's it's a far bigger hunting experience for those animals than it would be most of your North American animals, I think. And maybe bigger. It's just it's it's it's a more immersive experience, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Well, well, uh, I mean, what component of it, man? Is it the challenge, the cultural side, dealing with the logistics, adventure involved in that? Like what what what is what do you mean?

SPEAKER_04 47:07

You're going on in a real you're going on a very uh a real adventure of cultural uh changes that you're not gonna experience here. You're gonna look at people like just the trackers and the staff there, if they're great at it, they you're gonna be sitting next to a guy who's actually hunting in about the most raw form that ever existed. If you were to hunt with those sand bushmen and hunt leopard with sand bushmen, they're tracking those leopards in grass waist high as a group, and they're tracking the leopard themselves. Maybe they bring dogs in at the last minute, but I've been there with those guys, tracked the leopard to all the way and jumped it right next to us. So think about that. Most people can't identify a damn deer track, and you're with a group of people that are tracking a cotton ball through grass this high as a team. So you get to see something that is lost on us. You would have to go to find that North America, you would it would be like going back to the Columbia Mammoth days in California.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Yeah, yeah. Man, totally odd question because I I actually dug around. Uh the well, last year I did some due diligence on this. Dude, I I could never figure it out, Corey. But the tracking thing in Africa to me is so interesting because it's not, I mean, even amongst hunting guides in the US, it's very low level. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Very extremely low level.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Yeah, almost like non-existent, right?

SPEAKER_04 48:38

It's not existence, it's lost on us. And then like the mountain lion guys got it. They got it. I'm not gonna take away when I said that about the Columbia Mala, except for those guys.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Yeah, but but overall, like it's it's uh I don't even want to call it a lost art, like it doesn't really exist, you know what I mean, outside of the the the Huntsman stuff. I uh I wanted to go to Africa and just like tag along with the tracker just because I thought it would be fun, you know. Um I could never figure it out because uh uh most of the guys I talked to, there was a language barrier and stuff like that. But have you found through all your Africa hunts that you've been able to pick up some transferable skills to wherever you hunt, like on that tracking front?

SPEAKER_04 49:19

It made made me an incredible hunter on a different level than I wouldn't have been otherwise. Yeah, and that's just you're look look, and this is this is hard, and I don't mean it to be demeaning it anyway in any way. But if you go hunting two weeks a year and you shoot something or not, how really good can you get at it? Sure. Right? Really like it'd be like talking to a professional basketball player. I play basketball for two weeks a year. Yeah. Okay. So how if you're talking about really getting great at it, you're it again, the opportunities we had here when we were kids, you could do that here. You could go work for an outfitter, you go, you can. I'm not saying it doesn't exist today, but it's very expensive to do it. And if you're gonna do it as an amateur guy that wants to experience hunting, I can't imagine if that's where you were at with it, you didn't go take advantage of that. Because this is North America, the hunting's gonna stay here. That hunting in Africa, I believe it's gonna stay too, but it's gonna be different. And and now it's pretty good. So so if you're talking about dollar per dollar, if you're talking about saving up to do the hunt, I can't imagine not doing it. Now, I do understand it's not for everybody, it's not sure, it's just not. If you if you love deer hunting, it's good, it's I mean, deer hunting and mule deer hunting, it's it is what it is. It's hard to beat. It's got its own thing to it. That's just different. Yeah, it's just different.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

No, I I I hear you, man. So on the elephant hunting, Corey, uh, because I'm I want to go there uh with this on you. I'm gonna preface this, man. I I I'm still in the mode of like kind of kind of debating whether whether uh you know I'll do it. Dude, and this might sound insane to you, but I kind of I I I kind of feel like I'll feel bad shooting one. Do you have a perspective on that?

SPEAKER_04 51:08

Sure. Um, but I'll ask you, why do you think that? What what is if you had to explain the feeling that you've got now not doing it, how would the how would that come out in words? The best you can do it.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Yeah, I think it's probably from what I what I see from like a media standpoint, you know, I think it's like, you know, and I don't know if they're true or not. I don't know if elephants know when part of their group dies. Um the fact that uh the fact that they're old when you kill them, you know, I mean they're the age of me or maybe older, you know. Like though those aspects of it, um, I kind of sound like I kind of sound like this, it's like the same levers that, you know, maybe like an anti-hunter gets gets pulled, but I would be I would be lying if I said that those sort of things were not in my mind. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 52:00

Sure. Well, first you might it's easy to win that argument logically. Sure. It's impossible to win it emotionally, yeah. So so if somebody has an emotional feeling about it, which you're going to, that's the one thing that's gonna happen on an elephant hunt that you know it can happen on a lion hunt. If that lion looks at you or you hear it, you know, it it's it's different. Um, but on an elephant hunt, they're giant, you look, you're looking up at them, it's very close proximity. A long shot on an elephant hunt's 45 yards. Yeah. You know, that's that's long. Most of the uh all the elephants I've hunted, they're probably average was 25 to 30.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:48

So you're you're against that and you're there, you're gonna feel very small. And if they if they give any kind of aggressive movement towards you or sound, you really there's not an equivalence in any other hunting. So so you're you're gonna feel like this thing can break me with nothing. You walk, you go walk up to it, watch it push down a giant tree, break big trees, hear them breathing, hear them. I mean, it's a that's a visceral experience.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

I mean, is that that's kind of the point though, right, Corey? Like you you want to be close.

SPEAKER_04 53:26

You want to be close to them, and and that gives you your best chance to take them cleanly. I mean, I've seen people at 25 yards miss them completely. I've seen them hit badly, all of it because of people are just not you can't prepare yourself for that. The first time you do it, you you you you cannot prepare yourself for what that is. Especially if you see the whole thing. If you're there, you got a good view of him, and you're there and you look up at it, and it's like a a big Western seaboard, African, like Casa, Botswana, Namibia, those giant things, you look at it, it's overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

Yeah. And uh I mean, I guess I'll just ask you straight up like what what was your feeling on the f on the first couple that you that you killed? Um, I mean, was there any sense of regret or like holy shit, I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life?

SPEAKER_04 54:17

The first one I shot was oh, about 20 years ago, closing in on 20 years ago, and I and I hunted it with a very experienced guy in Botswana. And he he had taken a lot of big bulls, hunted a lot, old school, old school as it got. And you know, he was your like quintessential brandy drinking laid back kind of guy. And yeah, that who you're gonna do it with is gonna change your that's gonna form your perspective of it because you're gonna hear these stories about what their experience is, you're gonna see how they act. And and and luckily for me, that guy was extremely relaxed. He was calm, cool, uh, knew everything about it to to the I mean, had had had hunted hundreds of them and made it real nice. Now, that being said, when you shoot it and you fall over there, like the it yes, I would say you're not gonna be a human being if you don't feel something there. I mean, people do when they shoot deer, you've been there, you've probably been you know, I've seen people shoot wild boar and cry. Yeah, so you know that that's part of hunting. You're it's maybe not the right term, but you have an intimate relationship with that animal.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 55:30

Yeah, and and the closer you are, the the more that in that relationship is transfixed. You know, if you shoot some animal 500 yards away, you know, I mean, I'm not taken away from it. There's a lot to be a lot of awesome things about that, and a lot I'm I'm I'm glad that is what it is. It it's just a different thing.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 55:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

I mean, I think I think Corey, I I think it's interesting. I know guys that have hunted a lot in the West, and I don't think they've actually been next to an animal when it dies. You know what I mean? Like I you know, I don't think they've actually experienced that. Because I mean I've I've guided guys who've hunted quite a bit, and then you get into whatever situation, and you end up right there when they die. And I look at the guy and I realize, like, oh, this guy's never he's disconnected from it, yeah. Yeah, he's never actually experienced like death, like right there, you know.

SPEAKER_04 56:25

Yeah, and that's it, that's an excellent point. And I don't know that I've ever had anybody bring it up in the way that you brought that up there. There's a especially with the the screen mentality of swipe and watching all this stuff, it's you know, like maybe like playing GTA 6 or something, you know.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 56:44

It's a it's not the same. Um, and that would what that's what I would say about one of the things that's interesting about the elephant hunting. A, it needs to happen. It's and if you feel that way about it, um there was a there was a movie to kill a mocking bird with Gregory Peck, and he had to shoot the neighborhood dog. I'm not complete like making the equivalent, but people said that hey, you know, he he's gonna that's a job that nobody else wants to do.

SPEAKER_01 57:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:16

All right. I'm not there's a lot of people that want to elephant hunt. It's not it's not that, but if you had that mentality, that needs to be done with or without you. If the if they're not managed, it's done. I'll give you a little bit of equivalence. The Kavongo-Zambezi transfrontier region, it goes from uh Namibia over Botswana, a part of part of Zambia, and um Zimbabwe. There's 230,000 elephants in that. That's about 105, 106, 7 million acres. That's the size of California. 104, I think California is 104 million acres. You guys have probably about 300,000 deer, I don't know what the numbers are, three to four hundred thousand. Imagine replacing that with elephants, right? Okay, now okay, let's just say, okay, let's just say we just replace it with two-thirds or half with 150,000 elephants. Each one of those elephants eats 50 to 70 times more than a deer. Sure. If it's if it's not taken care of, the one thing, the elephants themselves, those populations will go up and down with with with or without us.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:23

The human wildlife conflict is going to exist and it will be worse, unmanaged. And you can replace an elephant, an animal population. How do you replace an antiquated teak forest?

SPEAKER_01 58:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:35

Can't. It's gone. Sure. So so those things are real, and it needs a lot more the situation needs a lot more elephant management than even what it has now. There's hundreds of elephants killed in Botswana every year, legally hunted, but they've got 130,000 elephants. Right. Okay. Then you're going to say there's some that are poached, which is bad as poaching is, it's some sort of population control.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 59:02

And if you look at where the elephants are, it's so weighted to the north that it some of those areas just look like hurricanes come through.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

Yeah, they're getting wiped out by this population. How uh I don't want to go too crazy deep on this, but I am curious, uh, Corey, how did it happen? Because there's such a long, you know, they such they have such a long lifespan. How how did they get so overpopulated?

SPEAKER_04 59:25

Okay, really good question. There's gonna you're gonna hear all sorts of different theories about it. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. I have what based off of spending a lot of time with experts on it, the things that seem to jump out is more water. So a lot of times there was, I'll give you, for instance, there's a national park in Namibia, Chowdom National Park in northwestern Namibia. They gazetted that park in the 80s, and I think there was maybe 16 elephants there. Well, there was no water there. So they now it's a national park. If people want to see animals, they put water holes in.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

I got you.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:07

I think there's 3,500 animals there now, maybe more. So in 40 years. So those animals that were drinking onto the natural seeps that existed in the middle of a desert, it can only handle so much. You put the what you put the um water holes in there, and what ends up happening is around those water holes, it it's almost like a Darwinian nightmare. It starts out where the the trees and the foliage and the browse and the grass all can withstand it, but more elephants come, more elephants come. So they eat around there. Now, let's say that the elephant, a big bull pulls up and that water's not coming out. Now he sets there, those other bull, those animals, they they're not going to go challenge him. So you'll get 200, 300 animals sitting there watching them, and then the whole thing gets devastated. Well, that's getting larger and larger, large in part due to more water, but also better management and less area for them. And in Tanzania, East Africa, a lot different. There's a total different situation. Not quite as many elephants, but a much higher degree of population. So that population pushes them into these concentrated areas that are really taken care of pretty good, and they're they're good for them, and the population bumps up.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

Sure. Well, with these uh these areas that you view um, or or like the consensus is they're overpopulated in that you've hunted, Corey, uh, is the is the planes game wiped out?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:44

Yeah, it's not it's not like it, it's not like it was before that for sure. It would be like the the equivalent would be putting those elephants in an area that had a lot of desert mule deer, and now all the water has been taken over by the elephants, all the browse has been trampled by the elephants, and all the trees and the cover has been destroyed by the elephants. So, yes, it's not, you know, certain ones make it. You'll go there. That national park, for example, has a real high population of roan. You see them everywhere. Um certain areas that aren't don't have that park protection, you're gonna see a lower population oftentimes of planes game animals compared to elephant. Some of those elephant areas are in areas that have a lot of people and a lot of bushmeat poaching, and so there's a lot of things that go into that. Sure. But but yes, not all of them, but certainly some of them you're not gonna see high pop plains game populations in.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Yeah, I got you. I mean, there's certain species that just probably compete with them a lot harder than uh others can can deal with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:45

Yeah, they the the whole thing about them destroying the browse and destroying the trees is a massive deal. Yeah, it's it's really the big problem with it outside of the the disasters of human wildlife conflict when people die.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

Yeah, well, dude, uh that's something I picked up in our in South Africa talking to guys. Like, no, nobody, I mean, they're obviously like they're strictly managing these game populations, and I would say that like South Africa to me was a level of game management that I haven't really seen anywhere else other than maybe Texas. Um, but they none of them want what uh my feeling was at least very few of them want anything to do with elephants, and I'm assuming it's just because they consume so much feed.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:27

Yeah, and and they destroy fences. There's nothing that's the cool thing about elephant, is you're not gonna really high fence an elephant. You're not gonna take you're not gonna take the wildness out of it. It's transporting to a disaster, yeah. That's the that to me that is part of what makes a king. There's a lot of the experience that part of it that is there, it's not it's an animal that helped fuel transcontinental expansion. Sure. And what people ask me about it, if you were to take like two big elephant tusks and put them in a room, and you were to take any of these animals here. Most of the people who would if there's an average person off the street walked in and they saw uh a moose or a hard beast or deer, they may not even know what it is, they just look at an animal and they're something to them. They see those big ivory tusks, it's beautiful to anybody who's ever seen it, right? Right, and so there's something about that that is it's unique.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:24

Yeah. Isn't it funny we do that as hunters? Because like the exact kind of way you frame that up, Corey. When I was uh I went on a stint for four or five years where I was in September, I I quit guiding archery elk hunts and I was only guiding mountain goat hunts. I think I guided maybe 25, 30 mountain goat hunts in that that period of time. Yeah, and of course I had uh uh my own perspective on it, my own bias. But one thing I I developed over that is when I would go into a guy's trophy room room or go into a guy's house, and maybe it was his grandpa's mountain goat, or maybe it was his or whatever, there was like a feeling I got about it. I could look at a mountain goat and I could be like, this guy went into the mountains to kill that. And I don't know why it matters, but it was like it represented something to me. Like I I know enough about that kind of hunting that almost certainly he didn't kill it off the road. Not that it matters, I don't I don't give a shit. Right, right. But but it was like it symbolized like that guy had to go to the mountains to do it. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:25

Well, you explaining it that way, you can tell why you like to hunt.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:29

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:31

Yeah, that I think I think a lot of people who really love it and it's they can't imagine life without it. That's how they look at things. They see they they see it a little bit deeper than what it is.

unknown 1:05:41

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:41

You're seeing the effort that went into it and actually the accomplishment of it, and that's that's freaking lost on a lot of what we've been talking about. I'm not saying it still isn't there, you just have to have hunted a little bit to to appreciate it. Uh, you're talking about those mountain hunts. When I was young, I really liked to mountain hunt. And I uh any extra dime I made, I spent hunting in the mountains. I was they talk about a super slam of wild sheep, like 12 wild sheep from anywhere in the world, but the real ones for the North American Grand Slam and that. I was the first that I'd ever talked to unsuccessful super slammer. Went on 12 unsuccessful sheep hunts. And so when I see people with a uh, and you know, there was all different reasons for it. Every, you know, I every reason in the world for not being successful from either passing stuff up to bad hunting, bad whatever, Asia was rough in those periods of time, all a lot of it. But um, I never like I never see like a guy, a picture of a guy with a small Himalayan blue sheep. You know, that guy had to go to 14, 15,000 feet. Yeah, we're sitting here drinking. Our coffee at home talking shit about this guy. We're killing a small ram. It's like, dude, it he was up there. Sure. He did it. That that means a lot in and of itself. And I saw a lot of that. I was like, man, so what?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, it was representative representative of the adventure. There's no existence.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:10

Exactly. And not all those hunts, man. You hunt a lot, you hunt a lot, you're gonna screw it up, you're gonna have it, and it's gonna go bad for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:16

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Um, bring it bringing it back to elephant hunting, and uh, I'll throw it back at kind of a maybe an analogy here. If a guy told me he was gonna go mule deer hunting in Mexico, there's specific things I would be like, hey, like you know, you should you know make sure you're you know the experience is what you're looking for, you watch out for these certain things or whatever when you when you go look to book the hunt. What's the equivalent what's the equivalent on elephant, Corey?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:46

Who if we're looking for like just to prepare yourself for it, or you're or you're trying to look out uh try to look at it from the perspective of yeah, like what the opportunity, but also the experience.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:59

Like, are they all the same? Are you always just tracking elephants?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:02

They're nowhere near all the same. That's for sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:05

I mean, what what are what are the big variables?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:08

Location, uh time of year, and um opportunity of older bulls, where where the older bulls are, why they're there, when they're there. Um, and so look, you can kill a big elephant bull in almost any area that has elephant. Elephant, there's just because the transient nature of them, you know. So uh walk 20 miles, 30 miles over a night. So one can come in from anywhere. But no different than any other animal, there's there's reasons why they're why they're there. The L the reasons when it comes to elephant, they're just a little bit bigger picture. And the things that you want to prepare for to make yourself have the the best opportunity to take something old and great, it it's it's a it's a little bit different perspective than or uh a different knowledge base and things that affect it. So if we're gonna go look right off the bat, let's just say Southern Africa, you're gonna go to Botswana, you're gonna go to Zimbabwe or Namibia. Um the thing you really want is heat. It's much better when it's hot.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:16

Okay. And you'd want a full moon if you could get it. And you'd want it to be when it's as dry as possible in general. So that's just consolidating where they're at.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:28

Now you're locked, they're locking down on water.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:31

Yeah, they're gonna be in certain either, either they need to they they're gonna need to drink more, they got to travel more for food. So that means tracks go across the road, better chance of you just driving around, seeing them, or walking around and seeing them. But you're gonna see more track, uh, tracking's a big part of elephant hunting in general. Not it's something that not every hunt it is. Some hunts you just drive around, look for them, or you glass. Some of the biggest bulls I've taken, I use all the sheep hunting skills that I had to find them. Sure. So, um, so yeah, you want to be able to do it when it's hot, preferably in a full moon. They're walking more, they cross more roads. They uh the night, if it's if it's 40 degrees Celsius, 100 degrees in the daytime, they're they're gonna, if they can see at night, they're gonna walk more, they're gonna it's gonna be cooler.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:18

And and so they can they can travel more, and the water make the heat makes it to where they got to drink more. So so you could you could most of your areas in southern Africa, I I would start when I when I plant it, I'm looking at time of year, and and not every year is the same in the sense that if it's really wet, it's generally going to be a little bit tougher. If it's if it's moderately dry, it's gonna be pretty good. If it's super dry, it can be good, but there's a threshold on that too, you know, to where they they start dying.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:49

Oh, yeah, yeah, I got you. And and what what about like the style, Corey? Like, what if I told you, hey, uh, I mean, I'd love to hunt a big one, um, but that's not my highest variable. Uh, really, the the biggest variable to me is that I want to do the tracking. Like the like I'll give you some some context there. When I with the the Cape Buffalo my shot, we glassed up, stocked up to it, and and shot it. Um I shoot shot it from 40 yards or whatever. Um, I won't take anything away from the experience. It was I had a freaking blast, like probably close to life-changing as I could say. Like life-changing in the sense, like, uh, I'm like now I have to do this again, type of deal. But I also had the opportunity to hunt with some other guys where we were primarily fat uh following tracks. That was, I don't know if it's because it was kind of unique to my hunting background or whatever, but that I fell in love with. Um, if that was the style of hunting I'd I I wanted to hunt elephants under, um, do you have would you have specific recommendations?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:54

Well, well, I think most of all elephant hunting is there's a gonna be a track uh aspect to it. Most almost every part of it. When you're driving down roads and you're looking for tracks, you're looking, you're you're generally looking for tracks. Some places you're looking for animals. If you're some places with a high population, you're gonna cruise through. Now, if you're looking for a great big one, it really becomes a numbers game where the more you can see, the better off you are. I I remember when I I've done a lot of aerial scouting for them, flying for them. The more you see, the better off it is. Now that doesn't, it's funny. You you you'd think the aerial part just is a magic key to it. It isn't. More of what I found from the ground. I mean, they're harder to see than you think. There's all sorts of things that go into that. But ultimately, let's just say you spotted one from a hill or you glassed it up. The first thing you're gonna go do is go look at that track. Because if you're gonna evaluate it as far as a trophy goes, that's the big that's the that's the start of understanding what you're dealing with. So if you're in in um Botswana or you're in Namibia or you're in Zimbabwe, uh you 20-inch track's an a nice size track, okay? So if and and I've seen them as big as 25 long on the back foot, 25 across in the front foot, you want to go over there and see that that track's big, and then the scale is coming in to say, well, am I getting like has it got a dwarf, a small body, and a small head, right? So there's a there's a process with that. So you want to look at that track and then and examine it and and then say, okay, look, the way it's it's big for one. I like I don't like to see a lot of smooth spots on them. I like to see them big and knobby like a off-road tire. Look at that, and then go then then then go look at the shit. Is it how well has that been digested? If you just see big twigs and it's barely digesting, that's a good sign that it's probably older. So you look at the you look at the tracks, you look at the you look at the feces, look at it, add all that together and say, okay, now what does that elephant look like once you get up to it? So if you're like tracking on a big elephant track, there's more to it than it's just got big feet. Sure. Right? So because they they're like a balloon, they get bigger and bigger and bigger, and the bigger that track is, um the the generally the bigger the animal is, the bigger the animal, the bigger the head, the more room for there to be ivory because most of the weight is starts in this area here. So so I there's a lot to the tracking part of it and understanding the track. So almost anywhere you go, that track part's gonna be a part of it. But if you're really you just say you want to, you know, you're big into the tracking thing. Anywhere that there's bushmen, they're gonna be the best trackers in general. So so Calahari Bushmen are the best tracking, I would say. So but that that that that doesn't take anything away from going hunting in Zimbabwe, you're gonna track elephant there, sure. So right, and the guys are good great at it. Yeah, but but but in generally, tracking is almost a part of every elephant hunt, I would say. The track's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:03

Do the uh trackers, or even you, Corey, where you're hunting the same same areas over and over, get do you know individual elephants by the tracks?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:15

There's stories of it, and uh you know, I've heard kind of old-timey guys talk about it. You certainly know individual elephants by their appearance. And I've seen them one year. I mean, there's one that we tried to get in Zimbabwe for years and we never did. And I saw him again last year, and his like tusk are falling out, he's just falling over and dying. But yeah, he was in a park and he'd come and go, and most of the time you'd see him, he'd be on the park side. Um, so the yes, there you I would say yes, that happens. I wouldn't say it's a large part of it, but if you a lot of times you'll see that those those bulls, they frequent the same places time and time again, and so you can see a bull or get a glimpse of a bull. And if you saw him there September of last year, there's probably a good chance you're gonna see him September of this year if he's still alive.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:08

Yeah, I got you.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:09

They they frequent the same places.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:11

Uh, how how old is the big one typically?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:14

They start probably getting pretty big in their 40s.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:18

The oldest one that I ever was a part of was probably in its mid-60s.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:24

But that is ancient. That was the oldest. The side I was actually hunting with the head of science or the head scientist of the country, and he he examined it, and you know, it was the oldest he had seen.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:36

Yeah. They they they just die from efficiency.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:40

They're teeth, their teeth. They've got these sets of molars that rotate out, and once they're gone, they're gone.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:44

Guys, I've been using Onyx Maps for almost two decades now, hunting, guiding, outfitting. It is the gold standard tool when it comes to mapping software in the hunting world. They've been a huge supporter of my content for multiple years. So if you want to support me and you want to support them, use my code CLIFG for 20% off at onxmaps.com. It is an awesome tool that I use all the time when I'm preparing for hunts, and I use it almost every single day in the field for navigation, knowing unit boundaries, knowing private land boundaries. It is the tool you have to have. Yeah. The the the giant ones that uh, and I and I know, you know, I don't know much about elephants, but I I know you're a guy that for sure over years have has targeted uh big ones. Uh, what keeps them alive, Corey? Are they are they pat are they going into parks a lot of them? Is that what keeps them alive?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:32

No, I think there's certain is that that's part of it, but what keeps them alive? They're they're pretty damn smart. Okay. And and but but part of it is their their habits keep them alive. If one is a one that uh hangs out in a spot where he's gonna be seen, he's gonna be seen. If he hangs out in a spot that he's not gonna be seen, there's not as many roads around, or he doesn't frequent the area where look, most of these hunting areas have the same roads forever, and they clean them out every year. And and if you in Botswana, the season starts in in April. If that bull's sitting around there and he's in an area in April, that when you come in there, he just frequents places with roads, his tracks on the road. And and if all things being considered, if you get on it early and he walks the way elephant just kind of takes the direction and you got the wind, you're gonna find him. Yeah, and you may not be able to shoot him, but you should be able to find him. And and so, unless he's just gone so far, if he's gone over 10 miles or whatever, you know, you turn around. But sure, I would I would say that their habits are what makes it. If if if if he's one that just never goes to those places, man, he could exist for his whole life and you didn't know he existed.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:53

Yeah, dude, I I I think what you just said applies to a ton of North American species too. Like is, you know, it that there's always I think there's this this human tendency to always equate it with intelligence, like, oh, it's just an old smart bull elk or whatever. And it's like, well, he's probably not like that much higher IQ. He just happened to develop a set of habits that kept him safe.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:15

Absolutely. Absolutely. Like those big, like big bulls and big deer that you would kill um on drought years. Why is he big? Well, he decided to eat some kind of weed that was sitting by a spring, and that's where he hung out with, and it was there. Yeah, and so yeah, he had some nutrition that the other ones didn't have, and he was in a spot that the other ones didn't have, and there you go. Yeah, nobody blew up, and the other and everything else shrunk. Yeah. I think it's real funny. I I used to think about this in a way about intelligence and animals, you know. And this is an old topic, and I'm sure you people all the whitetail hunters would think the mule deer's dumb because he runs 200 yards and turns around.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:54

Right, okay. Put that mule mule deer, big old mule deer buck in your white tail woods and go find him.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:01

And then ask the guys who talk bad about it how many big ones have they killed.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:05

Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, where where they live, circumstances and vegetation, all that stuff factors in a different way.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:12

100%. So, yeah, so in elephant bulls, the the the park thing is a big part of it, but it's it's certainly not all part of it. It it the they they are they are intelligent on a different level. They move like when I was talking about the moon and the heat and all those things, those are big factors that move a big animal around. They're they're they do have something about them that their vision keeps them from being as sharp. You know, if you're 80 yards away, you can't see it very well.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:45

That's their weakness.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:46

That's their weakness. Their hearing is incredible, their nose is incredible, the way they act, yeah, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:53

What's the full moon deal about?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:57

Yeah, I I felt like this in North America too, and I learned this guiding, and I used to guide a lot of deer hunts in eastern Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:06

And you could see out there in those plains. And what I'd find is driving the roads and hunting, that I would see more um animal movement in a 24-hour period on a full moon. Now you can't hunt at night, but if you're going to talk about the actual movement that takes place, the animals would move more during a full moon. You'd see more tracks on the road, and and if the weather was right, a lot of times you'll talk to guys, experienced hunters who kill big bucks in the middle of the day when it wasn't a full moon, maybe they weren't moving in the middle of the day. Sure. So so that you got this more animal movement that applies to in uh in elephant hunting to me, and I I generally put myself out there during those times if I'm playing the hunt, because if it's hot in the full moon, they're gonna walk more at night.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:56

And then and you're looking for tracks.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:58

Yeah, you get tracks, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:59

Yep, and so so there's a better chance that he crossed the road there.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:02

Yeah, and it could just be a their comfort level with the fact they can see.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:06

Yeah, they can see exactly. They can see and it's cooler. Yeah, and then and and they will freaking be very, very active at on those full moon nights.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:17

Yep. Um, no, all that all that makes sense. Did I gotta ask you because this has come up like as I've kind of thought about elephant elephant hunting and talking to people, and same thing with buffaloes come up, like going to other countries and and hunting them. I I have, and this is not a knock on anybody who's ever had this discussion with me, but I've had a lot of Phs that it I'm trying to figure out a way to put this in context where it's not like brutal on those guys, but they clearly want to go elephant hunting. You know what I mean? Like they they want the opportunity to go, you know, sure to one of these countries and go elephant hunting. But there's a part of me that's like, well, I don't want to go, I want to go with a guy who has hunted 50 elephants or a hundred elephants or or or whatever. Um, what what's your perspective on that? Like the the guy you hunt with, like how how important is it?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:11

The most important.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:14

Yeah, most important thing. Those are the two things, those those those are things that you can control from who you're gonna spend your time with and spend your money with and plan your time around. Um the level, the m the the experience that it level it takes to be really good at that and comfortable around those things, it it's through repetition, like anything else. Um, but the the the experience you're gonna have is gonna be far more predictable on a person who's been in that situation over and over again and knows how to act and isn't just totally relying on the local crowd there. Um a lot of pHs, if they haven't been in that area, they're gonna come in, they they get their local tracker there, and dude, that's the guy that's showing them around. That's and he's running the hunt. And he's and you're dealing with the translation and safety device and the pH guy, right? And an experience part of it. So that that that highly experienced elephant pH, it's the the stakes are very high. You can die really quickly elephant hunting, you can die quickly being around elephants. What it takes for them to kill you is nothing, and the ways they're gonna do it's endless. So, so it and and you want to have a person who understands elephant behavior that can take you up there, walk you in and out of one where he's not going to overreact or freak out or cause a situation. Just forget getting killed, just being uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:43

Yeah, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:44

Right? So, so you want to be with somebody who's very experienced in that. And and uh once they get 50 after 50 of them, if you've done 50 elephant hunts, you're gonna have a pretty good experience. Yeah, no, it's you're gonna you're gonna you're you should have a pretty good experience. It's not gonna be the same as a guy who is an ex-culling guy from Zimbabwe who's killed a thousand himself. Yeah, that's gonna be a different, a different level. That yeah, I mean it would be like riding in a car with freaking Max Verstappen or Schumacher or something, yeah. Yeah, you know, that they are gonna put you in a situation where you're not gonna understand what it's like to be a human.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:25

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:26

You know, and they're very and they're comfortable as they can be.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:29

Yeah, well, I'm I'm I'm assuming that like that type of guy is obviously super rare, but even even a pH that's guided 50 elephants must be pretty damn rare, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:40

You know, with all the elephant hunting bots wanna, and uh it's there's guy there's uh quite a few that got that level of experience now. Yeah, I mean they're shooting hundreds a year, and you start hunting in April and you hunt all the way through, you know, the some of those guys are taking eight, ten, twelve bulls a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:57

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:58

So they and now it's been going. So there's there's more than what it used to be. It was a big like hole from 2010-ish. There was there's a big poaching app epidemic that took place in Zambia and Tanzania, and and and to maybe a lesser extent other places, but certainly there. And so uh the elephant hunting virtually went away in those countries, and then to the to the extent it was happening before. Sure. And then in Botswana shut down elephant hunting, and the the places in Namibia that were good elephant hunting were very limited. So now that that opened back up and these populations are coming back in Tanzania, all these opportunities are going through the roof again. Yeah and you're gonna see to an extent the prices are already starting to come down on that. And for a person who wants to have a great experience and be a part of it, they can do that for less money now than they could five years from now, five years ago, and and that's gonna continue to change. Yeah, it's gonna continue to come down, I think. Yeah, um, and and and even uh like a some areas that are let's say they're not the prime best spots, they're still great places to go hunting.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:14

Yeah, I got you. Um the uh dude, I gotta ask you about the double rifle thing. I uh I mean I've shot one a little bit, Corey. My my take on it is I'm trying to figure out my mind a hundred percent. I acknowledge that they're they're cool, right? And they're they're a it to some extent, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but part of it is a cultural thing. It's just a cool, it's like the way to hunt Cape Buffalo, to hunt to hunt elephants. Is is that what it is mostly, or is it practically superior to uh to a bolt rifle?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:53

If you practice with it, it's superior to a bolt rifle. And it it so in dangerous game situations, the true dangerous game situations with that that are dangerous, not just I'm a hundred yards away shooting at whatever it is. True dangerous situation. The cool thing about a double rifle is it's either fully loaded or fully unloaded. It's going off. Each barrel, it's either going off or it's not. Sure. So so that it's there's a there's a bullet in it, you have a very basic safety, you're just pointing a stick. There's not a scope involved in it. And now they've got these dots that are cool, but pretty minimal, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But minimal it it takes the the uncertainty out of it. If you watch these videos, if you're anybody watching it, go Google just Cape Buffalo charges or elephant. Sergeant or whatever, and you see people with a bolt or lion, you see them with a bolt action, they are in it's a chaotic situation for them. Yeah, it's chaotic enough without that. And people short stroke it, that it's asking for trouble. Now, look, if you are a you know that's what you're comfortable with, and you don't want to spend the time to shoot that rifle, well, you're far better off with the bolt action. Sure. But if you if you're going to spend time and and practice it and that's what you want to be, it's on a different level because it's immediate. And there's the the practical benefits, I'll talk to you about it on this on the scheme or on the on the situation of shooting the elephant.

unknown 1:29:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:31

Big elephant sitting there side with you, and let's just say you're going to shoot the elephant yourself and you don't want anybody backing you up. This happens. Okay. I don't think that's the if you know, unless it's it's a personal preference deal. Sure. All right. So so so if you let's just say you're that guy, if you've got that double rifle and you shoot it well, think about heavyweight boxing or or boxing. How many people are just knocked out with one punch compared to the guy that's boom, boom, a combination takes him out. So on a big elephant bull standing there, and and I generally shoot him in the shoulder. I've shot a handful, a few in the brain, and it's never my first choice. But that's just a personal thing. You hit him once, and that second bullet hits him almost immediately, it the effect is it's it's more than double. It's the I can't tell you how many times that second one just smashes them, especially with 600 nitro express. 500, 500, 577, 600, it hammers them. And so so that that second immediate pop, the and the time that you don't have to get off of it to do that is just boom, boom, it's a big, a big benefit. Now, charging animal. Cool part about charging animal with a double rifle is let's just say it's bolt action and you have animal charge you, it's coming. All these different decisions are gonna go through your mind about when to shoot it because you got to cycle it.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:03

And if it's coming at you 30 miles an hour, you don't, I mean it's close, that isn't much time to to make those decisions and go through those motions. So if animal's charging is out there, if you want to go ahead, if you feel like you got it and he he's 30 yards away, which is a long way for a charged animal, sure, do it because you got the other one to shoot from here to the screen. So so so that is a big benefit. The practical benefits, if you're gonna practice with it, now it takes it takes practice. It's it's something that there is an art to shoot in those things, and most people struggle with it because they don't practice with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:40

When you talk about practice, like how do you practically practice with like a 500? I mean, from a from a recoil perspective, I mean snap caps, do you do you have no no no you can have these people loaded up to where it's half three quarters? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:55

So you download the loads, download the ammo or or just you know, like on 470, it pops you, but you don't have to go out there and shoot 100 rounds. If you went out there and by the time you went hunting and you just shot it 50 times, I mean, how many people go shoot their their before they come hunting with you? How many of them go shoot their and their rifle 50 times before they go hunting?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:15

Yeah, yeah. No, I've I I've had yeah, I I would guess the average guy shoots less than a box of shelves a year.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:20

There you go. Yeah, right. But if you're gonna take that double rifle, you you want to be proficient with it. Now, if you shoot a shotgun, it's very similar. It just doesn't, it just doesn't beat you up the same level. Um so so and and like what you're you it's interesting you talk about that, getting used to getting popped by it, it's not that if you're a grown man, it's not that bad. Not that bad. It it has a lot to do with your your right hand. If you grip that well and hold it into you well, then everything moves together. But if you just hold it with like you're holding granddaddy's 3030, it's gonna slide through there and you're just making a ramp hammering you. And then when you see these guys double trigger it, what's happening is they think that I'm gonna use the back trigger and that's gonna save me. The double rifles are meant for front trigger than back. And so when you pull that front trigger, boom, the gun, the the gun fires. Now it's rocking back. Now, if all this comes together, you see your hand moves with that front trigger, it comes back, then you then you move your finger back and go to the back trigger. But if you've got it there where you're not holding it, what happens is it bounces off of you and then the slams the other trigger and the gun goes off twice.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:33

So you become a backboard for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:35

I got you. Do you you said something interesting? So they uh because I I've heard like I I put a little clip up on uh somebody else had a had a double and they and they were shooting the front trigger first, and I I get tons of comments from I'm assuming guys that probably haven't uh yeah, I have no idea their level of knowledge, but oh, you should always shoot the back one first.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:58

They know as much about that double rifle as they know flying a helicopter.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:02

Yeah, I gotcha. So they are which which intuitive, like when I look at one, I'm like, well, yeah, I'd put the finger on the front trigger first, it makes sense to me. I understand this logic of you don't want to put pull both triggers at one time.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:15

So mechanically, almost all of them are designed where the front trigger is lighter. Okay. So so so, unless you were just look, I know one of the most experienced guys I know in the world, he loves shooting the back trigger first, but he's used to it, and that's what he likes to do, and he shoots it well, you know. And the guy's taking over a hundred elephants and God knows however much with that. And I'm not saying it's a it's a necessarily a bad, bad decision to do that, right? That's generally not how the rifles are designed.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:47

Okay, gotcha. So you so and that extends to like if you're shooting the front trigger first, you're not doing it, you're not breaking some rule by any means.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:56

Well, no, you want to shoot front trigger first, unless you unless you, you know, look, if you have a smaller hand, it might be difficult for you. Sure. Right? That's why those those rifles is good to have them designed for who you are, have a pretty large hand. And so I and especially I I shot the 600 Nitro Express probably as much as anybody ever, maybe Mark Sullivan, but even Mark's told me, you know, like I definitely have more experience on elephant than he did. But the the if you're used to that, you need you need to you need to when you feel that it's like an athletic thing, like grabbing a basketball or whatever, a football or a baseball. You want to feel that, and that needs to feel natural and comfortable to you. Sure. Because if you think about the type of hunting that most of us will do, it is a um almost like let's just say you had all that mountain goat experience. That's a lot of mountain goat experience you would have saw. You understand they're tough, you understand everything about that. But when you're setting those guys up, you understand all that, and so it is as set as it can possibly be. You want that dude to be as comfortable as he can, to where in a perfect world he just touches a trigger of the mountain goat dies. So, so so if you're talking about double rifle, double rifle, forget the shooting sticks. Just I'm not saying you don't ever use them, but it is a it generally it's less than 50 yards, generally it's close. Like I watched that that guy was talking about on your video, he said men in a buffalo brain. It's actually buffalo, yeah, yeah, sure. So so that's that's the old term is men in a buffalo. So when they're out there a long way, that that that front side is the side of the size of them, but those guns are bringing so much punch. The whole idea is it gets past where you need to be certainly super precise. Sure. And and that that so if you're talking about the the heart, lungs, kill zone of a buffalo, it's pretty big on a buffalo, on an elephant, it's gigantic. Yeah, it's it's huge. So so that's that's personally why all the bulls that I've taken, almost all of them, I I'd shoot them in the shoulder because it's shooting the brain, let's say it's about this large, and you can see that on the screen there. It's probably about almost like the perspective. It's here, and then now you've got to find that in this that's moving like that, right? And and there, you can read Bell and these guys who were awesome at it and use small calibers and so on and so forth. But when you're close to it and and you're shitting kits kit kittens, you haven't done it a lot, then you've got to break this by the zygomatic arch between these two air ear holes, and something that's just big, it's just adding all this complexity to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:35

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:39

Yeah, right? It's it's over. He was there one second, the next second, he's not. And for you, it's also a lot of the pHs will have you do it for this reason. They know if you screw it up, there's no question if they're gonna back you up or not. Yeah, there's there's just not a question. So, so a lot of the higher ego people will go in there and say, I'm just gonna drop him, I'm gonna shoot him one time in the head. When you're gonna see like guys that have killed lots of them, lots, uh oftentimes they're leaning towards shooting them in the shoulder. Yeah, because I mean, I'm not gonna I don't want to say this in a wrong way. Elephants a team hunting sport, sure, or not a sport, it's a team activity, right? As much as anything. I mean, back goes back to I mean, when they were hunting mastodons and stuff, it wasn't one guy, yeah. And so the do-it-yourself aspect of elephant hunting is just not an aspect for anybody. If you get 20 yards away from the guy you're with, trust me, you're by yourself. Sure. It's you don't I know so few people that have even gone on an elephant by just them and the tracker, that it's there's it's a time for team achievement. And and it now there's a solo aspect of it when you're shooting it, you want to do the best, but you need to have somebody behind you that has done a lot to make sure that if it's not done correctly, that that elephant's not gonna go kill somebody, kill you, or just die.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:07

Become a nightmare, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:08

Yeah, yeah, it is it is that wounded elephant thing is the ultimate nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:12

Yeah, I mean they can I'm assuming part of that is that they can go somewhere where it's a real problem to go get them.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:18

Oh my lord. Yeah. Like to it to a level that you would do anything, you would do anything to have another bullet in that animal once the second it's out of your sight. Sure. Like I know people that have tracked them for 70 kilometers, you know, and and never find them. Sure. You know, especially if it's hitting that big honeycomb in the brain.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:43

Well, yeah, that's what when you're talking about the brain. I that's what I'm thinking to myself, like, one, it's a fairly small target, but it's surrounded by a bunch of things that if you hit it, it's nothing.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:53

A big bony sponge that means nothing. And now he's pissed. Yeah, and I'm telling you one thing, those things get mad.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:00

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:02

Like, yeah, they that people talk about emotions and they uh that they get mad.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:08

Yeah, well, I and I'm a I'm a guess, I'm guessing that it it's a real thing that they associate it with you now.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:15

That they're they uh you know it's it's really interesting, certain animals are that way. Um, like I've had a friend of mine, Rocky McBride, for years. Rocky hunted, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of jaguars and and cats. And he hadn't hunted leopard with dogs actually going, and he's an experienced dog person in Paraguay and West Texas. And though he would talk about with those those jaguars when they'd come, they're they're looking at the dogs, they're paying attention to the dogs. You're you know, he'd been attacked a couple times and that wasn't that bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:47

Yeah, leopard is looking at you, they know like you're the one in charge.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:51

Right, and and anybody who ever goes on a cat hunt, I'm gonna this is some free unsolicited advice, never point at them. Yeah, if you're driving down the road and you see it, don't do this, don't get there. I mean, they know immediately. They know you're the guy now, they know they know, yeah. And and so on on elephant, to the extent that they understand what's going on, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It it it's an interesting, yeah. I know it's a real thing. I think some people that listen to this will be like, oh, Corey's full of shit. You don't point at him. Dude, I years ago, I'll keep this story super short, but I I you know what a whip it is, like a pole, like an extending ice axe. They used to carry. Okay, I guess. Yeah, I I can't remember the company that used to produce them, but I used to carry one of those when I was lion hunting. And one time we uh we made a mistake and we didn't we well what happened was the hunter made a mistake. There's maybe a little miscommunication there, and he shot the lion before he had all the dogs leashed up. And of course, I mean, you know, I'm you've lion hunted and hounds hounds enough that you know what happens, but the dogs want to kill the lion, like they think they can kill it, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:42:01

So they just want to stretch it. I mean, and that's a real thing. Sometimes you get there and it's dead.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they they this lion came out of the tree wounded, and we had half the dogs leashed up, and the dogs immediately got on the lion. And I took that whippet, that that uh extendable ice axe, and I poked the lion like in the chest, hope hoping that he'd get off the dogs. And the lion got he was dying, but he got up, and I swear to you, Corey, he's he slapped the stick like this, but he was staring at me. Like he he was stare, he was staring at me like he knew he knew that I was like the bastard part of this whole whole thing, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life, man. Like him staring right at me, being like, I know, I know that you're inflicting this.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:46

I think it's a cat thing. Yeah. Like on I've I've I've hunted, you don't want people, any of this staff, kids with you. If you drive down the road and you see leopard or you see lion, you're hunting, it's not that they're just gonna immediately attack you. They just understand you've identified them.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:03

Yeah, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:04

Yeah, right. It's not it's not like, oh, I want to kill him immediately right now because he's pointed at me. Most of if they have no winner, they're wanting to get out of there. Sure, yeah, of course. You know, lion a lot of times don't really care, but if you point at him, he's gonna start to care.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he knows, yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:20

Yeah, they they they see me.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:22

Yeah, yeah. And that's their primary defense. I mean, I don't, I don't, I'm not, I'm only familiar with mountain lions, but I always viewed that their primary defense was just avoiding people and being undetected, and they know that. You know, they they know they know that hey, I can be around people, but I can't be seen by them, and they're exceptionally good at that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:40

The leopard would be very similar to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:43

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Um, on the elephant thing, um, what are are the hunts different in terms of how the like what happens to the animal? Uh, Corey, like how how does that work?

SPEAKER_04 1:43:55

Is it always in general? They're very similar. Just how you go about what happens is is there there's there's the rare occasion where it's super remote or there's no people around and there's just nothing to do with the meat. Sure. Okay, but the meat part is a big part of it. Um, if you're in in bots or in Zimbabwe where most of the elephant hunts are taking place, they have tractors, boom trucks, everything to deliver that meat. That's not getting wasted in most circumstances. Gotcha. So the meat parts of the community benefit part of elephant is gigantic, probably the largest of all hunting, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:37

Yeah, so there's usually a community that's looking forward to absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:42

Absolutely. You know, very rare cases you're gonna find where there's certain, and even then, you're just gonna drive it somewhere where they can get it. Yeah, yeah. Not a lot goes to waste in Africa.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:52

Yeah, I got you. Um, dude, the last one, this is totally just a logistical question, but I'm I'm curious about it. When I first started thinking about doing it, there's part of me, you know, going through the regulations on importable, not importable, these sort of things on the I'm assuming that's all about the ivory.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:11

Is that ivory skin, whatever everything. Okay, everything, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:15

Yeah. So um what uh I mean what's your thoughts on that, Corey? Like, do you is it are are the I guess the only way I can ask it, are the are having the tusks important to you?

SPEAKER_04 1:45:28

Me personally, no.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:32

No, but I'm I'm I'm rare in that sense. Yeah. Um the the things I like about elephant hunting are really personal, emotional, and and I'm an extreme proponent of sustainable use, so logical too. I feel like the sustainable use part of if you want to be a part of sustainable use conservation, and the highest pinnacle that you could be, it's elephant hunting.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:54

Yeah, I got you.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:55

Yeah, and and so so there's there's so many reasons to do it, and there's so many things like that uh it's complex.

unknown 1:46:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:05

It's not it's it's hunting in itself oftentimes is complex emotionally, but uh elephants are complex in a lot of ways. And so if you hunt a lot, which I've I've I've hunted a whole lot, I've devoted my life to it, and uh, and and and especially professionally, it's it's interesting taking people elephant hunting. It's interesting, it's far more interesting to me. So sure. And people appreciate it a lot. You appreciate every member of the team that does it, you appreciate the meat part of it. It's it's a it's a it's a very big experience.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:39

Yeah. No, and I uh I'm I appreciate your transparency on your answer because I've debated it, Corey. There's a part of me that's like I don't, I don't, yeah, I'm I'm not really a big taxidermy guy. Like all my taxidermy now from a life of hunting's in a conics container, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:46:54

Like I yeah, all my since since my house is burned, and even before that, I had a handful of trophies. I'm not in my house here. I had a handful of trophies that uh are really mattered a lot to me. Sure. You know, uh uh uh let's say 1520, but of of all the large number of elephants I've taken, I have one set here in America.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:17

Yeah, I got you. Yeah, it's uh the reason I brought it up or bring it up is because even with the lack of taxidermy in my life, there's something about like if I if I went on a hunt like that, I think I'd be in I think I'd be being dishonest if I wasn't like, you know what, if I may only get to do it once, I kind of like uh maybe when I'm old or maybe it's just like uh maybe it's just uh I don't I'm just being honest. Like I kind of want the tusks, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:46

I think there's more people that want the tusk on elephant, that's a that's a huge part of it. They run them. They really do. And that's that's why the US Fish and Wildlife making it to where we can bring them in like without some of the issues that that traditionally have happened. Now it's a uh enhancement mandate and a case-by-case basis. You hunt with the right people, you hunt in the right places, you're not shouldn't have any problems bringing it in.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:14

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:15

So so that the demand for them for these hunts is is much, much higher. People want them, like you said, it's it's an animal that most people they're only going to do once, maybe twice in their life. There's few people that are really ate up with it that continue and they just do it. There's a handful of us. Yeah. But there's there's there's most people really want them.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:37

Yeah, no, I got you. Um, and then and then of course, so that factors into some of the places where you'd hunt them or or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:44

Sure, sure, absolutely. But most uh the the place that's actually really good that you can't bring them back is is southern Mozambique.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:55

Yeah, you can't, you can't they don't for a lot of reasons they can't import them, but Zimbabwe, you're bringing them home, Botswana, you're bringing them home, Namibia, you're bringing them home, South Africa, all these countries, you shouldn't have issues bringing them home.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:09

Yeah, I gotcha. Well, it to me, the whole uh we don't need to dive deep into it, but the whole like importing animals or even within the US states, you know, you can't have a lion, you can't have a lion in California or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:23

It's complete borshit.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:25

What a wild, what, what a what a wild uh stretch of like, hey, we know better than you, so we're gonna restrict our population, so they they basically don't want to come spend time.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:37

It's based in why you want that. Imagine if if we were to restrict women on which brand of purse they could buy. Sure. For the reason that they liked it because X. Right. So so if you are the guy, if you're if you're the person that wants a crocodile hide purse, what's the difference between you wanting a crocodile mount?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:02

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:03

The crocodile died, you got it. Right. But it matters not to it. So it's it's just it's just strange how the the temporal reasoning that's put on it all.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:18

Yeah, yeah. No, I I I totally, totally agree. Um, Corey, did we miss anything on the elephant front or any any big topic?

SPEAKER_04 1:50:25

I mean, I mean, I'm answering your like your questions. I would say, you know, if you if you wanted to get into size about it and locations, I can get into it, but that might be like getting into the weeds where you know you're you're generally most of the people that are probably listening to you probably were are more interested in the macro aspects of it, I would think. But I'm I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:47

Yeah, I mean, I I I mean I think most people that are listening. Listening to this, a bunch of them, it's never gonna have crossed their mind. And a bunch of them are gonna honestly be like, Cliff, I would have never, I would have never thought that you would want to go elephant hunting. And then a small segment of them, including hunters, Corey, will be like, Oh, Cliff, now I know you're an asshole.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:07

Yeah, which is in itself is wild. I'll tell you this, and I've never uh I've never really got it, and it it's almost like a statement of ignorance. When you when you scroll through comments and you'll see so many hunters, if it's a mega f fauna, sure, you know, they they don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:30

And and so there one of the things that I find in Hunter is like that, they say the difference of what's the difference between ignorance and apathy. I don't know, and I don't care. You see a lot of you see you see a lot of that in in Hunter. But if it's not the way they do it, then we're gonna dismiss it. If it's something I'm never gonna be able to do personally, let me dismiss it and and talk down about it. And you you know, you it would talk to the whole big tent thing. I if if if I don't understand the whole like tall poppy syndrome of wanting to talk down or knock down people that are really successful in hunting, despite whatever their personal things are. You may not like me personally or whatever, but those hunting accomplishments are what they are. Yeah. And so and there's a lot of kind of guys that are really super, let's say on like amateur level, that they weren't guides whenever that had whatever immense amount of money or immense amount of opportunity, or they just it just the the one that I don't get that they hate is that it is the one almost they're most jealous of. The guy that doesn't have money who's gotten a lot of shit done. Yeah. And because basically what he's proven to you is you're you're just not good at what you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, it's because I think that's because they you can't pull like an uh a variable outside of hunting that is like you're you're gonna you're that you're trying to equate the value of it to, right? So then it just frustrates. I mean, you those kind of guys, Corey, a lot of times, I mean, I you maybe you don't see it on social media because people don't have the balls to do it there, but in conversations they'll be like, oh yeah, but you know, I bet he was uh you know, he he probably never saw his family or was a bad dad or whatever. It's like all of it. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_04 1:53:16

You know what I mean? Like he how about this? Hey, like, imagine if the one thing that I don't that uh was confused me about hunting is is um there's a lot of people that have their reality about it and they're really comfortable with that, sure, but they're uncomfortable with what somebody else's reality is of it, and it's the same it it's just a it's a mirror into what you're doing. They they just you know they're not hating on you for whatever your reality is, like the bow hunters versus the archer versus the gun hunters or the crossbow guys versus or the the archery guys with the crossbow guys, used to be the muzzle, the traditional muzzleader guy. All of it, they I don't I never really got that. It's like if that's what he wants to do, so what?

SPEAKER_00 1:54:02

Yeah, I don't know. I I have no idea what it is other either, Corey. Like it's an enigma to me. The only thing I can think of it is think of what it's related to is particularly, and maybe it's a guy thing, but we want to have some sort of scoreboard. And in hunting, there is no if you really think about it, there can never be some scoreboard that we're all on, but guys want to they they want to make sure that they're high on whatever scoreboard they're thinking about.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:33

Well, so they can draw up the rules how they want them, so they're always the winner, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:37

Exactly. Yeah, and maybe that's our nature, dude, to our to our detriment, because as you and I have discussed, it's surely not the best thing for hunting, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:50

This is really important for people to understand this. And it and if you weren't if you didn't have a window into it, it's hard to get it. But there was a period of time when there was uh HSUS, Humane Side of the United States, large probably the largest enemy of hunting ever. All right. The guy that ran them was a guy by the name of Wayne Pacelli, and he was very effective fighting for their cause. He had a debate, and the legend goes, he had a debate with a guy named John Jackson of Conservation Force, who might be the biggest proponent of hunting that we've ever had. All right, he's argued it in front of the Supreme Court, lawyer, lots of experience. He's in his 80s now. But I remember years ago, and and and uh John and I were having a conversation, he and he he gave me a window and he said, I had a debate with Wayne where I felt like I just destroyed him and the debate. The other people in the room, you know, most of them felt the same way. I stuck to logic, he had his emotion involved in it, and was talking for those people. And he said, Wayne and I actually had a real friendly relationship outside of this, being talked, and and he said, after Wayne told him, he said, um he said, John, I'm never gonna be able to end hunting in the United States, but I'm not gonna have to because you're gonna do it for me. And he's and and and John was a little bit confused. Wayne went into it and told him that that this this way that hunters treat other hunters is it's gonna be them that end it. And I think about so many times I've seen this now the game cameras being eliminated from Arizona. That was a hunter-led initiative. Right, they're the ones that took that right away. Now, if you don't want to use them, don't use them.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:47

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:48

Right? Okay, but that if you were talking about one thing that benefited the guides and outfitters over the guy who doesn't want to hire them, you just took the great equalizer out. Your camera's set next to his. Right. Now he now those guys got people up on the hill looking 24 hours a day.

unknown 1:57:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:05

They're up on the sun's up. These people are sacrificing their whole life to find a big deer. Their marriages, everything. You can't, it's gonna be very difficult to beat that guy, but if you got that camera, okay. And so the same thing that he I remember I remember John telling me that they were in a debate, all these congressmen congressmen there, they were actually like talking about ending aspects of high fence hunting. It's like, well, there wasn't an anti-hunter in the room. Right. So so it'll be it'll be us that eliminate this, it won't be the outside. So when I hear people when I hear people bitch about the anti-hunting community, it's it's take take the plank out of your own eye. Because you actually are you actually having a window into why this needs to happen. They don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:49

Right. No, I think that's that's a very good point, point, Corey. The one that the one that always pops back in my mind is the hound hunting in California. That was ended primarily by hunters. You know what I mean? Like that that and and people forget about that, right? Like it was when that was an issue. I mean, I remember being a little bitty kid, uh, it was basically hunters that pushed it through, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:13

When when it comes to anti-hunting victories, they almost always wake up on third base and think they hit a triple.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:21

Yeah, sure. Yep. No, I I hear you, man. Well, Corey, I've I've stolen two hours of your time, man. I I greatly appreciate it. You've got like an insane amount of just background on all these things. So I appreciate you taking the time, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:36

Uh, where where can people, I mean, anything, you know, where they can find you if they're Oh, no, just if people have any questions or whatever, they just need to. I have a private Instagram page. It's not a very thick page, plus, you know, whatever 12, 13,000 people, they can just message me or whatever and I'll let them in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:52

Okay, that's the best route. Good deal, man. Well, well, thanks, man. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:56

Thanks a lot. It was awesome, Cliff. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:58

If you enjoyed this content, do me a huge favor. Subscribe on whatever platform you consume it on. Spotify, Apple, YouTube, whatever works for you guys. Everything else is on my website, pursuitwithcliff.com. Go there, and it's going to be very apparent to you that I work my ass off just to not have a real job. All the hunts I got, all the seminars I put on, all the unique experiences I offer and the membership side, all the details are there.