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Cam Anderson from Blacktail Studio and Blacktail Ranch joins Eric G and John Dudley for a deep dive into the world of YouTube content creation, sprinkled with a dash of personal anecdotes and a sprinkle of wisdom. Right off the bat, we tackle the raw honesty that sets Cam apart in the woodworking community—he shares a memorable story about a video that blew up despite a tiny, hairline crack in his work, leading to a revelation about transparency in content creation. We dig into the nitty-gritty of Cam's transition from helicopter pilot to woodworking sensation, and how his journey has shaped both his craft and his channel's direction. Plus, there's talk about the ups and downs of home renovations, with candid reflections on the challenges of managing expectations, budgets, and the occasional existential crisis that comes with building a dream shop. So, whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just love a good story, this chat is filled with insights, laughter, and a ton of relatable moments that make us all feel a little less alone in our projects.Takeaways:Cam Anderson shares how a hairline crack in his early woodworking project led to a viral video, teaching him the power of authenticity in content creation.The discussion dives deep into the challenges of blending personal life with creative projects, especially during tough times like divorce, which can lead to unexpected content.Cam's transition from a helicopter pilot to a woodworking YouTuber showcases the importance of following passions and adapting skills to new ventures.The podcast highlights the behind-the-scenes strategies of running a successful YouTube channel, including the value of showing mistakes and learning experiences to engage viewers.Eric and John emphasize the real-life complexities of home renovation projects, showcasing how the planning phase can often take longer than expected due to unforeseen challenges.The conversation touches on the balance between managing a growing business and personal life, revealing how Cam strategically hires out work to focus on his strengths in woodworking.Companies mentioned in this episode:Blacktail StudioBlacktail RanchRed Wingaroundthehouseonline.comN3 NanoThanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listenIf you want to join the Around the House Insider for access to the back catalog, Exclusive Content and a direct email to Eric G and access to the show early https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/support We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.Mentioned in this episode:Subscribe to the podcast Make sure and Subscribe on your favorite podcast player or the link below! Podcast Subscribe 2026Around the House 2026 YouTube! Make sure and Subscribe to our YouTube page! Around the House YouTube Made by Contractors for Contractors check out Instabid.pro Turn 3 hours of manual estimating into 5 minutes. Real material prices. Real labor rates. Professional PDF quotes delivered instantly. To find out more head to https://instabid.pro/ InstabidCheck out the smartest hardware with Baldwin Baldwin Hardware, known for its luxurious solid brass craftsmanship, has partnered with Level, an ASSA ABLOY Group brand that combines advanced technology with timeless design. This collaboration pairs Baldwin's iconic style with Level's innovative engineering—featuring a hidden battery housed within the bolt— to set a new standard in secure, stylish, smart-living.Baldwin Hardware Subscribe to the podcast Make sure and Subscribe on your favorite podcast player or the link below! Podcast Subscribe 2026
What happens when hunting becomes more than a hobby? In this episode, Eric sits down with Eddie Boyer of Rags to Ridges for an incredibly honest and vulnerable conversation. Eddie shares his journey from prison life to discovering purpose through hunting, public land, faith, photography, and the outdoors. What started with hunting magazines behind bars eventually turned into a complete life shift centered around self-reflection, personal growth, conservation, and chasing adventure in the Pacific Northwest. This episode dives into: Finding hunting later in life Prison, redemption, and second chances Public land conservation Stoicism and personal growth Faith and spirituality in the outdoors Blacktail deer, mule deer, and western hunting Mental health and solitude in nature Why hunting can genuinely change lives This is one of those conversations that goes way beyond deer hunting. Follow Eddie / Rags to Ridges: Instagram: @ragstoridges Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it — life got in the way and we missed a week. But we’re back, and this one was worth the wait. Joe Epple is one of those guys who doesn’t fit neatly into a box. Retired professional football player. CFL veteran. Director of Business Development for Wild TV — Canada’s largest hunt and fish TV network. Co-host of The Edge, now in its 17th season. Father of two boys. Columbia blacktail hunter. Stone sheep chaser. A 6’8″ giant of a man who grew up in Squamish, British Columbia, hunting for meat and mushrooming in the rain just to make ends meet — and who somewhere along the way figured out that all those lessons in the wet coastal bush were actually building the foundation for everything that came after. This episode goes deep on what it really means to make the transition from professional athlete to serious hunter, and why the skills that make you elite in sports — goal-setting, resilience, the ability to learn from getting your ass kicked — translate directly to the mountains. Joe talks about growing up in a logging family that hunted out of necessity, not recreation. About being the fat, knock-kneed kid who nobody bet on, who started going to a rusty prison gym at 13 and never looked back. About how hunting blacktails in the miserable, soaking wet coastal bluffs of BC taught him to push through discomfort long before any football field did. We get into the mental game of hunting — specifically what it looks like when you’ve got 14-day fly-in stone sheep hunts on one end of the spectrum and a four-year-old who snaps every branch and asks to go back to the truck every five minutes on the other. How do you stay present? How do you keep the long game in mind when you’re sitting in the gutter on day 10 of a backcountry hunt wondering why you’re not home with your family? Joe’s got a framework for that, and it’s worth hearing. We talk about Kristen’s bear — a giant boar that’ll likely crack the top 15 all-time in the province. About Joe’s most-prized blacktail taken at 12 yards with a bow. About why archery hunting teaches you more about your weaknesses as a hunter than anything else. About what it’s like to hunt stone sheep as a resident in BC for a fraction of what nonresidents pay, and why he still hasn’t punched an archery tag on one. And about the pressure social media puts on new hunters to skip the learning curve entirely and shoot a 200-inch muley on their first trip out. Joe’s a straight shooter (pun intended), genuinely humble, and packed with perspective from both sides of the fence — the elite athlete world and the deep wilderness backcountry. This one’s got range. Turn it up. Episode Sponsors onX Hunt If you’re hunting out west and you’re not running onX, I don’t know what to tell you — it’s not optional at this point, it’s foundational. Land ownership, access layers, terrain intel, route planning — onX does it all. The difference it makes isn’t just convenience. It’s confidence. Confidence that you’re in the right spot. Confidence that you’re legal. Confidence that you can find your way back to the truck when things go sideways. That’s what elite membership gets you. Website: https://www.onxmaps.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss | Use code: TRO — Save 20% on Elite Membership Bridger Watch This one’s personal — I built Bridger Watch because I was frustrated. I was pulling my phone out 100 times a day just to check my onX, and I thought there had to be a better way. So we went down the rabbit hole and set out to build the best smartwatch for hunters. Maps on your wrist. Built for the field. If you’re a watch guy and a hunter, this is the one you’ve been waiting for. Website: https://www.bridgerwatch.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss | Use code: TRO — Exclusive discount Timestamp Chapters 0:00 — Intro & Sponsor: onX Hunt 1:30 — Sponsor: Bridger Watch 3:00 — Welcome & catching up — the missed week, quick intros 5:30 — Joe’s roots: growing up in Squamish, BC — logging family, pine mushrooms, coastal blacktails 10:00 — Why Joe pursued athletics instead of the outdoors — the unlikely path to pro football 14:30 — The transition: retiring from pro sports and returning to his outdoor roots 17:00 — Joe’s current life — Director of Business Development at Wild TV, The Edge TV show 20:00 — Raising kids in the outdoors — Walker and Wyatt, making it fun vs. making it serious 26:30 — Cody’s excavator story — how to build positive associations with hunting for young kids 30:00 — Spring bear hunting as a family — dance parties in the mountains and Kristen’s record-book bear 36:00 — The fat kid with a doctor’s note — Joe’s aha moment at 13, the rusty gym, and building self-confidence 42:00 — Growing up with zero sports culture in the house — how a 6’8″ kid ended up at Washington State on a full ride 47:00 — Blacktail hunting as the foundation — why the gray ghost builds hunters who can do anything 51:00 — Joe’s most prized blacktail — the 12-yard bow shot, the branch deflection, and the bluff recovery 54:00 — The mental game of backcountry hunting — learning lessons on every trip, reframing failure 57:30 — Archery vs. rifle — why Joe hunts with a bow even when he doesn’t have to, and what it’s cost him 60:00 — Dream archery hunts, stone sheep with a bow, and where to find The Edge on Wild TV 3 Key Takeaways 1. The Outdoors Builds the Foundation — Not the Other Way Around Joe flipped the typical narrative. Most people assume athletic success leads to outdoor opportunity. For Joe, it was the blacktail hunts in the BC rain — the cold hands, the wet wool pants, the days you saw nothing and came back a prune — that built the grit that eventually carried him to pro football. The outdoors taught him to show up when it sucks, because the lesson is in the discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered why some people can push through brutal hunting conditions while others fold, this conversation gives you the answer: it’s not a hunting skill, it’s a life skill — and you build it long before you ever draw a tag. 2. Play the Long Game With Your Kids Joe and Cody both land in the same place on this one: the goal isn’t to turn your four-year-old into a stealthy, branch-free hunting machine. The goal is to make sure they ask to go again. Unlimited bubbly water. Bring the toy excavator. Let them jump on every frozen puddle. Have a dance party in the mountains before you sneak over the ridge. The association you build right now — “hunting is fun, hunting is where we laugh and eat good snacks and do dumb stuff together” — is worth more than any lesson you could drill into them about staying quiet. The discipline will come. The desire to be out there has to come first. 3. Stop Writing the Story Before It’s Over Two or three days without seeing an animal and most hunters start mentally packing it in. Joe’s been there on 14-day fly-in hunts when the wheels come off and you start questioning every decision. His counterintuitive advice: that’s the point. That’s the adventure. The highs wouldn’t mean what they mean without the lows, and things change in a moment — a bull materializes, a bear steps into the open, the hunt you’ve been grinding finally breaks your way. The story isn’t finished until you’re back in the truck. Stay in the field. Stay sharp. The last two days have a funny way of making up for everything that came before.
Welcome back to the Mindful Hunter Podcast! In this episode, Jay wraps up the massive backlog of listener questions from our recent Q&A, covering everything from backcountry bear hunting stories to controversial reloading opinions. We kick things off with a recap of Jay's first guided bear hunt of the season, detailing a successful 400-yard shot and a massive 6-foot+ boar. Then, we dive into the Q&A, tackling some heated topics. Is extreme spread (ES) and standard deviation (SD) actually important for hunting, or is it just a distraction? Jay shares his unfiltered thoughts on why speed for speed's sake is useless and how to reverse-engineer your bullet velocity for maximum terminal performance. Jay also answers questions about the best books to improve your hunting (spoiler: you should probably just spend more time in the field), the single biggest mistake he made when he first started hunting, and why using a floorless shelter in the high country is a recipe for disaster. Plus, get the details on a massive $10,000+ giveaway, the upcoming technical apparel launch, and some exclusive outfitting opportunities. Whether you're looking for reloading advice, scouting strategies, or just some honest, unfiltered hunting talk, this Q&A is packed with actionable advice to help you level up this season. Timed Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro & Housekeeping (Apparel Launch & Massive $10k Giveaway) 00:00:15 - Bear Camp Recap: A 400-Yard Shot on a 6-Foot+ Boar 00:11:35 - Field Processing a Bear: Meat Care & Packing Out 00:15:52 - Remaining Guided Bear Hunt Openings for 2025/2026 00:17:22 - Match Bullets for Hunting: Reverse-Engineering Velocity for Terminal Performance 00:21:01 - The Truth About Extreme Spread (ES) & Standard Deviation (SD) 00:25:47 - The Best Books to Help You Improve as a Hunter 00:28:38 - Plans for a BC Whitetail Hunt & Unfinished Sheep Business 00:32:35 - Advice for Someone Struggling to Get Their First BC Mule Deer 00:35:44 - Heated Gloves, Telson Optics, & Winter Kit Swaps 00:36:59 - Goat Redemption Plans for 2026 & Hiring a Full-Time Filmer 00:38:26 - Spotting Scope Recommendations: Kowa 88 vs. Swarovski ATX 85 00:38:53 - How Often Do You Eat Wild Game for a Healthy Physique? 00:39:34 - Argali Clothing Review: Pants & Grid Fleece 00:40:46 - The Best Rifle Cleaning Products & Process (Modern Day Sniper Method) 00:43:20 - Upgrading from Cheap Binos: Are the SIG Zulu 6s Worth It? 00:43:49 - Is a Vacuum Sealer Worth It for Backcountry Food? 00:44:13 - The Two Biggest Mistakes I Made When I First Started Hunting 00:48:27 - Kootenay CWD Tags, Born Primitive Gear, & Podcast Guests 00:52:12 - MDT Carbon Stock vs. Rok Stock vs. XLR Element 4.0 00:54:34 - 6mm Creedmoor for BC Mule Deer, Blacktail, and Elk? 00:54:55 - Canadian-Made EDC Pocket Knives & Island Blacktail Tactics 00:58:59 - Floorless Shelters in the High Country: Why You Shouldn't Do It 00:59:53 - Outro & Final Giveaway Details Jay Nichol jay@mindfulhunter.com https://www.mindful-reviews.com/ https://www.mindfulhunter.com/ Forged In The Backcountry https://forgedinthebackcountry.com/ Merch https://www.mindfulhunter.com/shop Newsletter https://www.mindfulhunter.com/contact IG https://www.instagram.com/mindful_hunter/ Podcast https://www.mindfulhunter.com/podcast Free Backcountry Nutrition Guide Free Training Guide For Mountain Hunting https://www.mindfulhunter.com/tools
Zack recaps his 2025 Oregon blacktail hunt with Anthony Strangis. Anthony was kind enough to have Zack come down to hunt the mountain Anthony has grown up hunting his entire life. Anthony was a massive reason to why Zack was successful on this hunt with a truly unique blacktail buck of a lifetime! The guys talk through blacktail tips, tactics, and strategies they used on this hunt. So if you are a blacktail fan, or looking to gather more blacktail knowledge while hearing about a super fun hunt, this is the episode for you! LINKS: KUIU GEAR - https://kuiu.sjv.io/GK1o7m EXO MOUNTAIN GEAR - https://exomtngear.com?ref=4 VORTEX OPTICS - https://alnk.to/cSJYlok MARSUPIAL GEAR - https://alnk.to/5FcU7YA ZOLEO - https://tinyurl.com/428ydbua PNWILD - https://www.pnwild.com/store-snytH DEVOS OUTDOOR LIGHTING - https://rstr.co/devosoutdoor/15643 COUPON CODES: GOHUNT STORE & MAPS & INSIDER - PNW OLLIN DIGISCOPE - PNWILD CANYON COOLERS - PNWILD10 VORTEX CLOTHING - PNW20 ZOLEO SATELLITE - PNWILD VELOTRIC E-BIKES - PNWildN2X01 PNWILD - YOUTUBE If you want to learn more about PNWild visit https://pnwild.com/ INSTAGRAM: @pnwild_ https://www.instagram.com/pnwild_/?hl=en FACEBOOK: / pnwild TIKTOK: @pnwild_ / pnwild_ Got questions? Send us an email! Email: contact@pnwild.com Find all PNWild Partners and Codes here: https://www.pnwild.com/partners
Join us for a candid and revealing conversation with acclaimed bartender, Will Pasternak, whose resume includes time at the Dead Rabbit and BlackTail in New York. Will shares the story behind BlackTail's recent pop-up and the invaluable insights it provided about how hospitality concepts must evolve to meet today's economic realities. He reflects on the delicate balance between creative ambition and operational sustainability, offering a masterclass in adaptability from someone who has helped define modern cocktail culture. Drawing on his experiences at two of the world's most influential bars, Will discusses how the industry's most innovative minds are rethinking everything from staffing models to guest experience in order to thrive. Sign up for Giffard West Cup 2026 U.S. Cocktail Competition here: https://bit.ly/GWC_ErickC FOLLOW US ON TIKTOK: Erick Castro: https://www.tiktok.com/@hungrybartendert=ZT-8uBekAKOGwU&r=1 Bartender at Large: www.tiktok.com/BartenderAtLarge FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: Erick Castro: www.twitter.com/HungryBartender Bartender at Large: www.twitter.com/BartendAtLarge
Kelsey Ross from the Conservation Coalition of WA. Why you need to join us 11/14 for the Lynnwood WDFW Commission meeting Fight Wa Wildlife first Sportsmen last... // Northwest Outdoor Report Brought to you by 3riversmarine.com! // Duckworth Wheelhouse Scott Haugen of ScottHaugen.com Blacktail tips and game cam tricks! // PoulsboRV’s Really? Where? Come visit us at any or ALL of our four locations in Kent, Auburn, Everett and My Vernon! PoulsboRV.com
It's October, it's all happening, people. We're right in the middle of deer season and duck season, so we talk to Justyn Schmidt, communications manager for Warne Scope Mounts and a deer, elk and duck hunter. We talk the 30-06, long range shooting schools, mantras for blacktail deer and how to solve cross-dominance shotgun challenges. For more info go to https://warnescopemounts.com/If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the Information Superhighway, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/This episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats, of Philomath, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for steelhead and salmon fishermen. Visit https://westcoastfloats.com/Our TV sponsors include: Nosler, Camp Chef, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, ProCure Bait Scents, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, Madras Ford, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited
In this episode of the Tricer Podcast, Drew and Brad Hunt dive into their epic Alaskan blacktail deer hunt, a true test of grit and determination. Battling relentless rain, low visibility, and tough meat care conditions, the group still managed to notch a successful trip, including a last-day buck to beat the timer. Along the way, they share stories of camaraderie, lessons learned, and the gear they'll be upgrading for the next adventure, like a big canvas tent and extra rain protection. Affordable, challenging, and unforgettable, this hunt proved why Alaska blacktail should be on every hunter's list.BRAD HUNT - GUEST HOSThttps://www.instagram.com/brad_whunt/TRICER USAWebsite – https://tricerusa.com/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tricerusa/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/tricerusa/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@tricer6985#Tricer #TricerTripods #westerhunting #blacktaildeer #alaskahunting #deerhunting #publiclandhunting #backcountryhunting #diyhunt #tricer #huntinggear #huntinglife #huntmoreworryless #mountainhunting #westernhunter #outdooradventure #huntpodcast #huntingcommunity
Welcome to the first edition of Talk about it Tuesday; where we talk about whatever it is thats got you thinking. This week in honor of deer season opening up, here are some helpful tips, thoughts and maybe something to help you remember to pack that certain lucky jacket!
We talk to John Nores, author, speaker and tactical firearms instructor. He was the first guest on the podcast five years ago, talking about the Hidden War. And has been on the TV show and the podcast a few times since then (go see How To Be A Bear Hunter No. 15). John likes hot rods, fast trucks, good-shooting rifles and he is also a rock and roll bass player. We talk about all these things and blacktail deer hunting and bullets and our new and old favorite cartridges. Visit https://www.johnnores.com/ to find out more.If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the Information Superhighway, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/This episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats, of Philomath, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for steelhead and salmon fishermen. Visit https://westcoastfloats.com/Our TV sponsors include: Nosler, Camp Chef, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, ProCure Bait Scents, Sullivan Glove Company, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, Madras Ford, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited
We talk to free wheeler Jonathon Klein on his blacktail hunting journey. Jonathon Klein has been riding motorcycles since he was 17, when he snuck home a 1986 Kawasaki Ninja 600 while his parents were on vacation. Since then, he's traveled the globe, riding all manner of machines in far-flung locales. He lives in Utah and hunts with bow and rifle. Check out https://www.rideapart.com/If you want to support free speech and good hunting content on the Information Superhighway, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/This episode is sponsored by West Coast Floats, of Philomath, Oregon, made in the USA since 1982 for steelhead and salmon fishermen. Visit https://westcoastfloats.com/Our TV sponsors include: Nosler, Camp Chef, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, ProCure Bait Scents, Sullivan Glove Company, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, Madras Ford, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited
GFCC: GATEWAY TO GLACIER TRAILS JEREMIAH, FOY'S TO BLACKTAIL TRAIL AMBER TRT: 10:39
Ready to book dream photo and video clients in Glacier National Park and beyond? In this episode, we're taking you inside the most intentional, strategy-packed, experience-driven photo and video retreat in the industry — happening this September in Northwest Montana.We walk you through every part of the retreat — from luxury portfolio-building shoots in Glacier National Park, Flathead Lake, and the Cabins at Blacktail… to deep-dive education on SEO, blogging, hybrid shooting, video marketing, and building a client experience that books $10K+ weddings.You'll hear how every single detail is designed to help you scale — not just creatively, but strategically.This isn't a “get inspired and go home” kind of retreat. It's an immersive, done-for-you opportunity to:Build a portfolio that books high-ticket clientsLearn to upsell video and scale your businessGet expert SEO + content marketing trainingCreate content that ranks for Glacier National Park weddings, Flathead Lake elopements, and destination micro-weddingsActually implement everything you learn with our help
In this episode Jaden and Tyler Bales and I recap our first trip into the mountains for blacktail deer. We discuss the reality for locals who must travel by boat, truck or both to access hunting grounds, how AI is impacting the outdoor space, flooded tents and knowing when it's time to call it and get off the mountain. Check out the On Step Alaska website or subscribe on Substack for articles, features and all things Alaska. Click here for a 20% discount on an annual subscription to The Westrn, the outdoor community's newest newspaper. Thanks to the sponsors: Sagebrush Dry (Alaskan-owned business that sells the best dry bags you can buy.) Alpine Fit (Premium outdoor layering from another Alaskan-owned business.) Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
This week on the podcast, I'm joined by Eric Clark, the mastermind behind Okayest Hunter. Eric and I dive deep into how the brand began and how it quickly resonated with hunters who are tired of the pressure to be the “best” in the field. We chat about their recent film on a blacktail hunt […]
Deja que la llovizna fluya desde tu alma, suave y constante, sin prisa pero sin detenerse. Aprende a escuchar, por encima de todo, a tu intuición, esa voz sincera que habita en tu corazón. Porque cuando lo hagas, te darás cuenta de que tu vida estará envuelta en un torbellino de pasión y magia, transformándose en momentos irrepetibles y memorables.La ambientación musical de este episodio corre por cuenta de Tape Machines junto a Blacktail.
Jeff and Zack chat with friend Robbie Elliot, Robbie is a very succesful blacktail deer hunter from southwest Washington state. Robbie cut his teeth hunting western Washington and has been fortunate enough to take several great bucks! Checkout Robbie at https://www.instagram.com/robbieelliott_7/ This episode is packed full of great information on how to hunt down your first blacktail buck in 2025. Enjoy this episode! USE CODE PNWILD WHEN PURCHASING WILD SOCIETY MEALS OR COFFEE! CHECKOUT OUR YOUTUBE BELOW! https://www.youtube.com/@PNWild/videos SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/c/PNWild FOR GOHUNT use code PNW thise code will give you $50 in GOHUNT Shop credit when you purchase an Insider Membership and $20 when they purchase an Explorer Membership and 10% off the GoHunt gear shop! VISIT OUR LINKTREE FOR ALL OUR DISCOUNT CODES!! https://linktree/pnwild PNWILD STORE - USE CODE PODCAST AT CHECKOUT
Daniel Buitrago, Brandon Fifield & Chad Aurentz sit down with Marshall Johnson regional director of the shiny new Blacktail Deer Foundation established in December of 2024 A transition from a career in the newspaper industry to habitat conservation, recent wind storms in South central Alaska, the death of news paper, American Primeval, Marshall's loss of dominate eye sight, starting the Blacktail Deer Foundation chapters in Alaska, Mule Deer in Alaska, Team Blacktail, 2024 Kodiak Big Buck Contest, Blacktail deer night @ the Double Shovel in Kodiak, Blacktail Deer Foundation Kodiak Chapter Banquet May 3rd 2025, Infrared drone, opening new chapters in Alaska, the new Anchorage chapter, plot treatment projects in the Tongass, a focus on habitat conservation getting the information to the people through a digital age, finding common ground for a common cause “Conservation of Animals & the Resource) Visit our Website - www.alaskawildproject.com Follow us on Instagram - www.instagram.com/alaskawildproject Subscribe on YouTube - www.youtube.com/@alaskawildproject $upport us on Patreon - www.patreon.com/alaskawildproject
In this insightful episode of the Soul Seekers podcast, host Johnny Mack reconnects with Tom Ryle, a seasoned hunter and ... Read more The post Ep. 301 | Blacktail Hunting 101 w/ Tom Ryle appeared first on Soul Seekers.
We sit down with blacktail hunter, rifle enthusiast, sawyer and educator Bret Michalski to talk about blacktail deer vulnerabilities in the middle of the season. How to hunt the folds and benches you don't see from the road. Favorite calibers, deer camp food and the role of the hunter in modern society. If you want to support free speech and good hunting content in the Internet Age, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/For more info on forage blends, click on http://baileyseed.com/products/frontier-unlimited-wildlife-mixes/We appreciate our sponsors: Nosler, Camp Chef, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, Madras Ford, Central Oregon Shooting Sports Association, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. and on Hunt Channel TV or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited
Send your buck fever segments to bucksandbales@gmail.com thank you for tuning in!
It was a 2-1/2 day blackpowder hunt for a trophy blacktail in southern Oregon's Applegate Unit. We rattled antlers, scraped antlers on branches and tried to make our luck and then it rolled our way. We sit down with Brad Douglas, the producer of High Desert Outdoorsman to recall a favorite hunt in poison oak country. If you want to support free speech and good hunting content in the Internet Age, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends at https://www.garylewisoutdoors.com/Shop/For more info on forage blends, click on http://baileyseed.com/products/frontier-unlimited-wildlife-mixes/We appreciate our sponsors: Nosler, Camp Chef, Warne Scope Mounts, Carson, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce, Madras Ford, Central Oregon Shooting Sports Association, Bailey Seed and Smartz.Watch select episodes of Frontier Unlimited on our network of affiliates around the U.S. and on Hunt Channel TV or click https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gary+lewis+outdoors+frontier+unlimited
Foys to Blacktail Trails's Amber Steed & Glacier Skate Academy's Jennifer Irwin
EP 645: Hunter McWaters This week on the show, I'm joined by Hunter McWaters, who's back with some incredible stories since our last chat. Hunter shares the tale of his recent adventure hunting blacktail in Oregon, where he executed what seemed like an impossible stalk. We dive into his journey from authoring a book to […]
On this episode of GOHUNT's Western Rookie Podcast, Brian has Nathan Endicott on the podcast to talk all about giant Blacktail Deer and Roosevelt Elk! Nathan is an avid bowhunter for Oregon and loves sneaking up on Blacktail deer with his bow each fall! On this week's episode Nathan shares some of the tactics and stories from his recent hunts and some of the impressive bucks he has tagged! The guys also talk about Roosevelt elk, and the differences between those and the Rocky Mountain sub species. Click the links below to check out more from Nathan and his awesome hunts! https://www.instagram.com/nathan4you/ https://endicottfilms.com/ Connect with Brian Krebs https://linktr.ee/thewesternrookie Have Questions or Comments? Send an email to Brian@westernrookie.com! Sponsors and Discounts: GOHUNT Insider - $50 Gear Shop Credit with code WESTERN https://alnk.to/g3aa8L4 GOHUNT Gear Shop – 10% off most items with code WESTERN https://alnk.to/e75Pm4u GOHUNT Explorer Mapping Only - $20 Gear Shop Credit with code WESTERN https://alnk.to/4BEUo3x Save $150 on Steelhead Outdoors Gun Safes with code WESTERNROOKIE https://tr.ee/fbNvbFXX6Q Save10% on Maverick Hunting Blinds & Accessories with code WESTERNROOKIE https://tr.ee/vWHcxHKo4u Save 10% on Ollin Digiscoping Adapters with code TWOBUCKS https://tr.ee/ZE1XcQ-fbb Save 20% on your first order at Bull Elk Beard Oil with code TWOBUCKS https://tr.ee/X4mp2wWCRK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this episode of GOHUNT's Western Rookie Podcast, Brian has Nathan Endicott on the podcast to talk all about giant Blacktail Deer and Roosevelt Elk!Nathan is an avid bowhunter for Oregon and loves sneaking up on Blacktail deer with his bow each fall! On this week's episode Nathan shares some of the tactics and stories from his recent hunts and some of the impressive bucks he has tagged! The guys also talk about Roosevelt elk, and the differences between those and the Rocky Mountain sub species. Click the links below to check out more from Nathan and his awesome hunts! https://www.instagram.com/nathan4you/https://endicottfilms.com/Connect with Brian Krebshttps://linktr.ee/thewesternrookieHave Questions or Comments? Send an email to Brian@westernrookie.com! Sponsors and Discounts:GOHUNT Insider - $50 Gear Shop Credit with code WESTERNhttps://alnk.to/g3aa8L4GOHUNT Gear Shop – 10% off most items with code WESTERNhttps://alnk.to/e75Pm4uGOHUNT Explorer Mapping Only - $20 Gear Shop Credit with code WESTERNhttps://alnk.to/4BEUo3xSave $150 on Steelhead Outdoors Gun Safes with code WESTERNROOKIEhttps://tr.ee/fbNvbFXX6QSave10% on Maverick Hunting Blinds & Accessories with code WESTERNROOKIEhttps://tr.ee/vWHcxHKo4uSave 10% on Ollin Digiscoping Adapters with code TWOBUCKShttps://tr.ee/ZE1XcQ-fbbSave 20% on your first order at Bull Elk Beard Oil with code TWOBUCKShttps://tr.ee/X4mp2wWCRK
On this episode of GOHUNT's Western Rookie Podcast, Brian has Nathan Endicott on the podcast to talk all about giant Blacktail Deer and Roosevelt Elk!Nathan is an avid bowhunter for Oregon and loves sneaking up on Blacktail deer with his bow each fall! On this week's episode Nathan shares some of the tactics and stories from his recent hunts and some of the impressive bucks he has tagged! The guys also talk about Roosevelt elk, and the differences between those and the Rocky Mountain sub species. Click the links below to check out more from Nathan and his awesome hunts! https://www.instagram.com/nathan4you/https://endicottfilms.com/Connect with Brian Krebshttps://linktr.ee/thewesternrookieHave Questions or Comments? Send an email to Brian@westernrookie.com! Sponsors and Discounts:GOHUNT Insider - $50 Gear Shop Credit with code WESTERNhttps://alnk.to/g3aa8L4GOHUNT Gear Shop – 10% off most items with code WESTERNhttps://alnk.to/e75Pm4uGOHUNT Explorer Mapping Only - $20 Gear Shop Credit with code WESTERNhttps://alnk.to/4BEUo3xSave $150 on Steelhead Outdoors Gun Safes with code WESTERNROOKIEhttps://tr.ee/fbNvbFXX6QSave10% on Maverick Hunting Blinds & Accessories with code WESTERNROOKIEhttps://tr.ee/vWHcxHKo4uSave 10% on Ollin Digiscoping Adapters with code TWOBUCKShttps://tr.ee/ZE1XcQ-fbbSave 20% on your first order at Bull Elk Beard Oil with code TWOBUCKShttps://tr.ee/X4mp2wWCRK
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on May 3. It dropped for free subscribers on May 10. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoJosh Jorgensen, CEO of Mission Ridge, Washington and Blacktail Mountain, MontanaRecorded onApril 15, 2024About Mission RidgeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Larry ScrivanichLocated in: Wenatchee, WashingtonYear founded: 1966Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass – 2 days with holiday and weekend blackouts (TBD for 2024-25 ski season)* Indy+ Pass – 2 days with no blackouts* Powder Alliance – 3 days with holiday and Saturday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Badger Mountain (:51), Leavenworth Ski Hill (:53) – travel times may vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.Base elevation: 4,570 feetSummit elevation: 6,820 feetVertical drop: 2,250 feetSkiable Acres: 2,000Average annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 70+ (10% easiest, 60% more difficult, 30% most difficult)Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 3 doubles, 2 ropetows, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mission Ridge's lift fleet)View historic Mission Ridge trailmaps on skimap.org.About BlacktailClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Larry ScrivanichLocated in: Lakeside, MontanaYear founded: 1998Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass – 2 days with holiday and weekend blackouts (TBD for 2024-25 ski season)* Indy+ Pass – 2 days with no blackouts* Powder Alliance – 3 days with holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Whitefish (1:18) - travel times may vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.Base elevation: 5,236 feetSummit elevation: 6,780 feetVertical drop: 1,544 feetSkiable Acres: 1,000+Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: (15% easier, 65% more difficult, 20% most difficult)Lift count: 4 (1 triple, 2 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Blacktail's lift fleet)View historic Blacktail trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himSo much of Pacific Northwest skiing's business model amounts to wait-and-pray, hoping that, sometime in November-December, the heaping snowfalls that have spiraled in off the ocean for millennia do so again. It's one of the few regions in modern commercial skiing, anywhere in the world, where the snow is reliable enough and voluminous enough that this good-ole-boy strategy still works: 460 inches per year at Stevens Pass; 428 at Summit at Snoqualmie; 466 at Crystal; 400 at White Pass; a disgusting 701 at Baker. It's no wonder that most of these ski areas have either no snowguns, or so few that a motivated scrapper could toss the whole collection in the back of a single U-Haul.But Mission Ridge possesses no such natural gifts. The place is snowy enough – 200 inches in an average winter – that it doesn't seem ridiculous that someone thought to run lifts up the mountain. But by Washington State standards, the place is practically Palm Beach. That means the owners have had to work a lot harder, and in a far more deliberate way than their competitors, to deliver a consistent snowsportskiing experience since the bump opened in 1966.Which is a long way of saying that Mission Ridge probably has more snowmaking than the rest of Washington's ski areas combined. Which, often, is barely enough to hang at the party. This year, however, as most Washington ski areas spent half the winter thinking “Gee, maybe we ought to have more than zero snowguns,” Mission was clocking its third-best skier numbers ever.The Pacific Northwest, as a whole, finished the season fairly strong. The snow showed up, as it always does. A bunch of traditional late operators – Crystal, Meadows, Bachelor, Timberline – remain open as of early May. But, whether driven by climate change, rising consumer expectations, or a need to offer more consistent schedules to seasonal employees, the region is probably going to have to build out a mechanical complement to its abundant natural snows at some point. From a regulatory point of view, this won't be so easy in a region where people worry themselves into a coma about the catastrophic damage that umbrellas inflict upon raindrops. But Mission Ridge, standing above Wenatchee for decades as a place of recreation and employment, proves that using resources to enable recreation is not incompatible with preserving them.That's going to be a useful example to have around.What we talked aboutA lousy start to winter; a top three year for Mission anyway; snowmaking in Washington; Blacktail's worst snowfall season ever and the potential to add snowmaking to the ski area; was this crappy winter an anomaly or a harbinger?; how Blacktail's “long history of struggle” echoes the history of Mission Ridge; what could Blacktail become?; Blacktail's access road; how Blacktail rose on Forest Service land in the 1990s; Blacktail expansion potential; assessing Blacktail's lift fleet; could the company purchase more ski areas?; the evolution of Summit at Snoqualmie; Mission Ridge's large and transformative proposed expansion; why the expansion probably needs to come before chairlift upgrades; Fantasy Lift Upgrade; and why Mission Ridge replaced a used detachable quad with another used detachable quad.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWashington skiing is endangered by a pretty basic problem: more people in this ever-richer, ever more-populous state want to ski than there are ski areas for them to visit. Building new ski areas is impossible – you'd have better luck flying an American flag from the roof of the Kremlin than introducing a new mountain to Washington State. That shortage is compounded by the lack of slopeside development, which compels every skier to drive to the hill every day that they want to ski. This circumstance reflects a false commitment to environmental preservation, which mistakes a build-nothing philosophy for watching over Mother Earth, an outmoded way of thinking that fails to appreciate the impacts of sprawl and car culture on the larger natural ecosystem.Which is where Mission Ridge, with its large proposed ski-and-stay expansion, is potentially so important. If Mission Ridge can navigate the bureaucratic obstacle course that's been dropped in its path, it could build the first substantial slopeside village in the Pacific Northwest. That could be huge. See, it would say, you can have measured development in the mountains without drowning all the grizzly bears. And since not everyone would have to drive up the mountain every day anymore, it would probably actually reduce traffic overall. The squirrels win and so do the skiers. Or something like that.And then we have Blacktail. Three-ish years ago, Mission Ridge purchased this little-known Montana bump, one of the West's few upside-down ski areas, an unlikely late addition to the Forest Service ski area network seated south of Whitefish Mountain and Glacier National Park. I was surprised when Mission bought it. I think everyone else was too. Mission Ridge is a fine ski area, and one with multi-mountain roots – it was once part of the same parent company that owned Schweitzer (now the property of Alterra) – but it's not exactly Telluride. How did a regional bump that was still running three Riblet doubles from the ‘60s and ‘70s afford another ski area two states away? And why would they want it? And what were they going to do with it?All of which I discuss, sort of, with Jorgensen. Mission and Blacktail are hardly the strangest duo in American skiing. They make more sense, as a unit, than jointly owned Red Lodge, Montana and Homewood, California. But they're also not as logical as New York's Labrador and Song, Pennsylvania's Camelback and Blue, or Massachusett's Berkshire East and Catamount, each of which sits within easy driving distance of its sister resort. So how do they fit together? Maybe they don't need to.Questions I wish I'd askedThere's a pretty cool story about a military bomber crashing into the mountain (and some associated relics) that I would have liked to have gotten into. I'd also have liked to talk a bit more about Wenatchee, which Mission's website calls “Washington's only true ski town.” I also intended to get a bit more into the particulars of the expansion, including the proposed terrain and lifts, and what sort of shape the bedbase would take. And I didn't really ask, as I normally do, about the Indy Pass and the reciprocal season pass relationship between the two ski areas.What I got wrongI said that Mission Ridge's first high-speed quad, Liberator Express, came used from Crystal Mountain. The lift actually came used from Winter Park. Jorgensen corrected that fact in the podcast. My mis-statement was the result of crossing my wires while prepping for this interview – the Crystal chairlift at Blacktail moved to Montana from Crystal Mountain, Washington. In the moment, I mixed up the mountains' lift fleets.Why you should ski Mission RidgeMission Ridge holds echoes of Arapahoe Basin's East Wall or pre-tram Big Sky: so much damn terrain, just a bit too far above the lifts for most of us to bother with. That, along with the relatively low snowfall and Smithsonian lift fleet, are the main knocks on the place (depending, of course, upon your willingness to hike and love of vintage machinery).But, on the whole, this is a good, big ski area that, because of its snowmaking infrastructure, is one of the most reliable operators for several hundred miles in any direction. The intermediate masses will find a huge, approachable footprint. Beginners will find their own dedicated lift. Better skiers, once they wear out the blacks off lifts 2 and 4, can hike the ridge for basically endless lines. And if you miss daylight, Mission hosts some of the longest top-to-bottom night-skiing runs in America, spanning the resort's entire 2,250 vertical feet (Keystone's Dercum mountain rises approximately 2,300 vertical feet).If Mission can pull off this expansion, it could ignite a financial ripple effect that would transform the resort quickly: on-site housing and expanded beginner terrain could bring more people (especially families), which would bring more revenue, which would funnel enough cash in to finally upgrade those old Riblets and, maybe, string the long-planned Lift 5 to the high saddle. That would be amazing. But it would also transform Mission into something different than what it is today. Go see it now, so you can appreciate whatever it becomes.Why you should ski BlacktailBlacktail's original mission, in the words of founder Steve Spencer, was to be the affordable locals' bump, a downhome alternative to ever-more-expensive Whitefish, a bit more than an hour up the road. That was in 1998, pre-Epic, pre-Ikon, pre-triple-digit single-day lift tickets. Fast forward to 2024, and Whitefish is considered a big-mountain outlier, a monster that's avoided every pass coalition and offers perhaps the most affordable lift ticket of any large, modern ski area in America (its top 2023-24 lift ticket price was $97).That has certainly complicated Blacktail's market positioning. It can't play Smugglers' Notch ($106 top lift ticket price) to neighboring Stowe ($220-ish). And while Blacktail's lift tickets and season passes ($450 early-bird for the 2024-25 ski season), are set at a discount to Whitefish's, the larger mountain's season pass goes for just $749, a bargain for a 3,000-acre sprawl served by four high-speed lifts.So Blacktail has to do what any ski area that's orbiting a bigger, taller, snowier competitor with more and better terrain does: be something else. There will always be a market for small and local skiing, just like there will always be a market for diners and bars with pool tables and dartboards hanging from the walls.That appeal is easy enough for locals to understand. For frequent, hassle-free skiing, small is usually better than big. It's more complicated to pitch a top-of-the-mountain parking lot to you, a probably not-local, who, if you haul yourself all the way to Montana, is probably going to want the fireworks show. But one cool thing about lingering in the small and foreign is that the experience unites the oft-opposed-in-skiing forces of novelty and calm. Typically, our ski travels involve the raucous and the loud and the fast and the enormous. But there is something utterly inspiring about setting yourself down on an unfamiliar but almost empty mountain, smaller than Mt. Megaphone but not necessarily small at all, and just setting yourself free to explore. Whatever Blacktail doesn't give you, it will at least give you that.Podcast NotesOn Mission Ridge's proposed expansionWhile we discuss the mountain's proposed expansion in a general way, we don't go deep into specifics of lifts and trails. This map gives the best perspective on how the expansion would blow Mission Ridge out into a major ski area - the key here is less the ski expansion itself than the housing that would attend it:Here's an overhead view:Video overviews:The project, like most ski area expansions in U.S. America, has taken about 700 years longer than it should have. The local radio station published this update in October:Progress is being made with the long-planned expansion of Mission Ridge Ski & Board Resort.Chelan County is working with the resort on an Environmental Impact Statement.County Natural Resources Director Mike Kaputa says it'll be ready in the next eight months or so."We are getting closer and closer to having a draft Environmental Impact Statement and I think that's probably, I hate to put a month out there, but I think it's probably looking like May when we'll have a draft that goes out for public comment."The expansion plan for Mission Ridge has been in the works since 2014, and the resort brought a lawsuit against the county in 2021 over delays in the process.The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year.Kaputa gave an update on progress with the Mission Ridge expansion before county commissioners Monday, where he said they're trying to get the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement right."You want to be as thorough as possible," Kaputa said. "You don't want to overdo it. You want to anticipate comments. I'm sure we'll get lots of comments when it comes out."In 2014, Larry Scrivanich, owner of Mission Ridge, purchased approximately 779 acres of private land adjacent to the current Mission Ridge Ski and Board Resort. Since then, Mission Ridge has been forging ahead with plans for expansion.The expansion plans call for onsite lodging and accommodations, which Mission Ridge calls a game changer, which would differentiate the resort from others in the Northwest.I'm all about process, due diligence, and checks-and-balances, but it's possible we've overcorrected here.On snowfall totals throughout WashingtonMission gets plenty of snow, but it's practically barren compared to the rest of Washington's large ski areas:On the founding of BlacktailBlacktail is an outlier in U.S. skiing in that it opened in 1998 on Forest Service land – decades after similarly leased ski areas debuted. Daily Inter Lake summarizes the unusual circumstances behind this late arrival:Steve Spencer had been skiing and working at Big Mountain [now Whitefish] for many years, starting with ski patrol and eventually rising to mountain manager, when he noticed fewer and fewer locals on the hill.With 14 years as manager of Big Mountain under his belt, Spencer sought to create an alternative to the famous resort that was affordable and accessible for locals. He got together with several business partners and looked at mountains that they thought would fit the bill.They considered sites in the Swan Range and Lolo Peak, located in the Bitterroot Range west of Missoula, but they knew the odds of getting a Forest Service permit to build a ski area there were slim to none.They had their eyes on a site west of Flathead Lake, however, that seemed to check all the right boxes. The mountain they focused on was entirely surrounded by private land, and there were no endangered species in the area that needed protection from development.Spencer consulted with local environmental groups before he'd spent even “two nickels” on the proposal. He knew that without their support, the project was dead on arrival.That mountain was known as Blacktail, and when the Forest Service OK'd ski operations there, it was the first ski area created on public land since 1978, when Beaver Creek Resort was given permission to use National Forest land in Colorado.Blacktail Mountain Ski Area celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, it is still the most recent in the country to be approved through that process.On Glacier National Park and Flathead LakeEven if you've never heard of Blacktail, it's stuffed into a dense neighborhood of outdoor legends in northern Montana, including Glacier National Park and Whitefish ski area:On WhitefishWith 3,000 skiable acres, a 2,353-foot vertical drop, and four high-speed lifts, Whitefish, just up the road from Blacktail, looms enormously over the smaller mountain's potential:But while Whitefish presents as an Epkon titan, it acts more like a backwater, with peak-day lift tickets still hanging out below the $100 mark, and no megapass membership on its marquee. I explored this unusual positioning with the mountain's president, Nick Polumbus, on the podcast last year (and also here).On “Big Mountain”For eons, Whitefish was known as “Big Mountain,” a name they ditched in 2007 because, as president and CEO at the time Fred Jones explained, the ski area was “often underestimated and misunderstood” with its “highly generic” name.On “upside-down” ski areasUpside-down ski areas are fairly common in the United States, but they're novel enough that most people feel compelled to explain what they mean when they bring one up: a ski area with the main lodge and parking at the top, rather than the bottom, of the hill.These sorts of ski areas are fairly common in the Midwest and proliferate in the Mid-Atlantic, but are rare out west. An incomplete list includes Wintergreen, Virginia; Snowshoe, West Virginia; Laurel, Blue Knob, Jack Frost, and Ski Big Bear, Pennsylvania; Otsego, Treetops, and the Jackson Creek Summit side of Snowriver, Michigan; and Spirit Mountain and Afton Alps, Minnesota. A few of these ski areas also maintain lower-level parking lots. Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania, debuted as an upside-down ski area, but, through a tremendous engineering effort, reversed that in the 1970s – a project that CEO Nick Fredericks detailed for us in a 2021 Storm Skiing Podcast.On LIDAR mappingJorgensen mentions LIDAR mapping of Mission Ridge's potential expansion. If you're unfamiliar with this technology, it's capable of giving astonishing insights into the past:On Blacktail's chairliftsAll three of Blacktail's chairlifts came used to the ski area for its 1998 opening. The Crystal double is from Crystal Mountain, Washington; the Olympic triple is from Canada Olympic Park in Alberta; and the Thunderhead double migrated from Steamboat, Colorado.On Riblet chairliftsFor decades, the Riblet double has been the workhorse of Pacific Northwest skiing. Simple, beautiful, reliable, and inexpensive, dozens of these machines still crank up the region's hills. But the company dissolved more than two decades ago, and its lifts are slowly retiring. Mission Ridge retains three (chairs 1, 3, and 4, which date, respectively, to 1966, 1967, and 1971), and has stated its intent to replace them all, whenever funds are available to do so.On the history of Summit at SnoqualmieThe Summit at Snoqualmie, where Jorgensen began his career, remains one of America's most confusing ski areas: the name is convoluted and long, and the campus sprawls over four once-separate ski areas, one of which sits across an interstate with no ski connection to the others. There's no easy way to understand that Alpental – one of Washington's best ski areas – is part of, but separate from, the Summit at Snoqualmie complex, and each of the three Summit areas – East, Central, and West - maintains a separate trailmap on the website, in spite of the fact that the three are interconnected by ski trails. It's all just very confusing. The ski area's website maintains a page outlining how these four ski areas became one ski area that is still really four ski areas. This 1998 trailmap gives the best perspective on where the various ski nodes sit in relation to one another:Because someone always gets mad about everything, some of you were probably all pissed off that I referred to the 1990s version of Summit at Snoqualmie as a “primitive” ski area, but the map above demonstrates why: 17 of 24 chairlifts were Riblet doubles; nine ropetows supplemented this system, and the mountain had no snowmaking (it still doesn't). Call it “retro” or whatever you want, but the place was not exactly Beaver Creek.On Vail and Alterra's Washington timelineI mentioned Washington's entrance onto the national ski scene over the past decade. What I meant by that was the addition of Summit and Crystal onto the Ikon Pass for the 2018-19 ski season, and Stevens Pass onto the Epic Pass the following winter. But Washington skiing – and Mt. Baker in particular – has always been a staple in the Temple of the Brobots, and Boyne Resorts, pre-Ikon, owned Crystal from 1997 to 2017.On Anthony LakesJorgensen mentioned that he applied for the general manager position at Anthony Lakes, a little-known 900-footer lodged in the western Oregon hinterlands. One triple chair serves the entire ski area:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 33/100 in 2024, and number 533 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
Welcome to a brand-new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today, your host Steve Larosiliere is joined by Cam Anderson from Blacktail Studio. Cam reflects on the changes and challenges he faced over the past few years, especially during the global pandemic. He made the daring decision to quit his full-time job as a life flight pilot to pursue woodworking and content creation. Cam shares the challenges and uncertainties he faced during this transition, especially considering his wife's business and the state of the world at the time. Despite the initial uncertainty, Cam's decision paid off as he witnessed a significant surge in his YouTube channel's popularity during the pandemic. With dedication and hard work, Cam managed to replace his income and even surpass it through his woodworking projects and YouTube content. Listen now and get the whole story! “I need to find this voice because I want to be like this person. And for me, this is the only one I know how to do. You know, if you had me in charge of a TV show, and I had to create a character? I couldn't do it. Because it would just be the one.” -Cam Anderson The Creative Process: Cam delves into his creative process, highlighting his approach to finding inspiration for his woodworking projects and YouTube videos. He emphasizes the importance of staying open to new ideas and leveraging various sources for inspiration, such as social media platforms like TikTok. Branding and Authenticity: Cam discusses his branding strategy, which revolves around simplicity and authenticity. He shares insights into his snarky humor and how it resonates with his audience, leading to increased engagement and brand loyalty. Expanding Horizons: Apart from YouTube, Cam has ventured into other entrepreneurial endeavors, such as launching Maker Book—a directory of woodworking spaces—and creating his own product line, including the successful Three Nana ceramic finish. Lessons Learned and Future Plans: As Cam reflects on his journey, he emphasizes the importance of focus, commitment, and embracing change. He discusses his future plans, including further expanding his YouTube channel, growing his product line, and staying relevant in the ever-evolving world of content creation. Conclusion: Cam's story is a testament to the power of passion, dedication, and resilience. From quitting his job to pursue his dreams to building a successful brand and product line, Cam's journey inspires aspiring creators and entrepreneurs to follow their passions and carve their own path to success. “It's about getting their name and their brand out there and getting their unique perspective out there, like that's what a woodpreneur to me is like, because woodpreneurs do things that not a lot of people can do.” -Steve Larosiliere Want to get in touch with Cam Anderson? Contact him through: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blacktailstudio/
This week we have Cam from Blacktail Studio as a guest!
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 8. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 15. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBenjamin Bartz, General Manager of Snowriver, MichiganRecorded onNovember 13, 2023About SnowriverClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Midwest Family Ski ResortsLocated in: Wakefield (Jackson Creek Summit) and Bessemer (Black River Basin), MichiganYear founded: 1959 (Jackson Creek, as Indianhead) and 1977 (Black River Basin, as Blackjack)Pass affiliations:Legendary Pass (also includes varying access to Lutsen Mountains, Minnesota and Granite Peak, Wisconsin)* Gold: unlimited access* Silver: unlimited access* Bronze: unlimited midweek access with holiday blackoutsThe Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass also include two Snowriver days with no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Big Powderhorn (:14), Mt. Zion Ski Hill (:17), Whitecap Mountains (:39); Porkies Winter Sports Complex (:48)Base elevation:* Jackson Creek: 1,212 feet* Black River Basin: 1,185 feetSummit elevation:* Jackson Creek: 1,750 feet* Black River Basin: 1,675 feetVertical drop:* Jackson Creek: 538 feet* Black River Basin: 490 feetSkiable Acres: 400 (both ski areas combined)* Jackson Creek: 230* Black River Basin: 170Average annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 71 trails, 17 glades, 3 terrain parks* Jackson Creek: 43 trails, 11 glades, 2 terrain parks* Black River Basin: 28 trails, 6 glades, 1 terrain parkLift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 6 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 ropetows, 1 carpet)* Jackson Creek Summit: 6 (1 six-pack, 2 doubles, 1 T-bar, 1 ropetow, 1 carpet)* Black River Basin: 5 (4 doubles, 1 ropetow)View historic Snowriver trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himI could tell this story as a Michigan story, as a young skier still awed by the far-off Upper Peninsula, that remote and wild and snowy realm Up North and Over the Bridge. I could tell it as a weather story, of glacial bumps bullseyed in the greatest of the Great Lakes snowbelts. Or as a story of a run-down complex tumbling into hyper-change, or one that activated the lifts in 1978 and just left them spinning. It's an Indy Pass story, a ski area with better skiing than infrastructure that will give you a where's-everyone-else kind of ski day. And it's a Midwest Family Ski Resorts (MFSR) story, skiing's version of a teardown, where nothing is sacred and everything will change and all you can do is stand back and watch the wrecking ball swing and the scaffolding go up the sides.Each of these is tempting, and the podcast is inevitably a mash-up. Writing about the Midwest will always be personal to me. The UP is that Great Otherplace, where the snow is bottomless and everything is cheap and everyone is somewhere else. Snowriver is both magnificently retro and badly in need of updating. And it is a good ski area and a solid addition to the Indy Pass.But, more than anything, the story of Snowriver is the story of MFSR and the Skinner family. There is no better ski area operator. They have equals but no betters. You know how when a certain actor or director gets involved in something, or when a certain athlete moves to a new team, you think, “Man, that's gonna be good.” They project excellence. Everything they touch absorbs it. Did you know that one man, Shigeru Miyamoto, invented, among others, the Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox franchises, and has directed or produced every sequel of every game for four decades? Time calls him “the Spielberg of video games.” Well, the Skinners are the Spielberg – or perhaps the Miyamoto – of Midwest skiing. Everything they touch becomes the best version of that thing that it can achieve. What we talked aboutSnowriver's new six-pack lift; why Snowriver removed three chairlifts but only added one; the sixer's all-new line; why Midwest Family Ski Resorts (MFSR) upgraded this lift first; the rationale behind a high-speed lift on a 538-vertical-foot hill; knocking 100 vertical feet off Jackson Creek Summit's advertised vertical drop; “Voyager” versus “Voyageur”; swapping out the old Poma for a handletow; the UP snowbelt; the bad old days of get out of the trees you blasted kids!; Gogebic Community College's ski area management program; Mt. Zion, Michigan; Giants Ridge, Minnesota; the Big Snow time capsule; why MFSR purchased Snowriver; Mount Bohemia; changing the name from “Big Snow” to “Snowriver”; where an interconnect lift could run and what sort of lift it could be; why Snowriver renamed all the lifts and many trails on the Black River Basin side; potential future lift upgrades on both sides of the resort; potential terrain expansion; new and renamed trails and 17 new glades on the 2023-24 trailmap; the small parcel of Snowriver that sits on U.S. Forest Service land; why Black River Basin is only open Thursday through Sunday; and a joint pass to Snowriver, Granite Peak, and Lutsen.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe entity now known as Midwest Family Ski Resorts has been running ski areas for decades. I've been running The Storm for four years. So by the time I launched in 2019 and then expanded out of the Northeast in 2021, MFSR had already transformed Granite Peak and Lutsen into modern Midwestern giants. Their work on Granite had been particularly impressive, as they'd transformed Wisconsin's beat-up and decrepit Rib Mountain into a sprawling and modern ski area.I mean look at this dump:And here's the same ski area in 2023:So what a gift when, last year, the company announced the purchase of the side-by-side time capsules then known as Indianhead and Blackjack. A rare chance to see that Skinner magic uncorked on a beat-up backwater, to watch, in real time, that transformation into something humming and hefty and modern.Most multi-mountain operators buy diamonds, ski areas already streamlined and upgraded and laced with modern machines. MFSR digs deeper, finds coal, then pounds it into its final form. It's a rough and expensive way to go, but the strategy carries the great advantage of maximum flexibility to sculpt a mountain into your daydream.The dream at Snowriver is straightforward but impossibly complex: modernize the snowmaking, chairlifts, bedbase, trail network, and grooming; connect the two ski areas with an aerial lift; and establish this snowy but remote complex as a legitimate midwestern destination ski resort. MFSR has, as expected, moved quickly, rebranding the resort; removing five(!) lifts from the Jackson Creek Summit side and building an outrageously expensive six-pack; and making dozens of subtle tweaks to the trail network, adding new runs, renaming lifts and trails, and dropping more than a dozen marked glades onto the trailmap.This period of rapid change, pronounced as it is, will likely be viewed, historically, as a simple prelude. MFSR is not the sort of operator that lays out grand plans and then glances at them through its binoculars every three years. They plan and tear s**t apart and build and build and build. They act how every skier thinks they would act were they to purchase their own ski area. The difference is that MFSR has money, ambition, and a history of transformational action. Watch, amazed, as this thing grows.Questions I wish I'd askedBartz started Ben's Blog, a cool little update series on Snowriver's goings-on. I wanted to get into his motivation and mission here, but we were running long.I also wanted to get into a unique feature of Snowriver a bit more: the huge amount of onsite lodging, which was a big motivating factor in MFSR's purchase, and a large part of the vision for building a sustainable destination ski resort in a region that has struggled to support one.What I got wrongI said that the four Black River Basin Riblet chairlifts dated to the 1970s, and then corrected myself to say that “I believe” one dated to the ‘80s. Ascender, Brigantine, and Draw Stroke date to 1977; Capstan was installed in 1983.Why you should ski SnowriverEver wonder what it's like to ski in 1978? Pull up to Black River Basin, boot up, and walk over to the lifts. There, you just time traveled. Centerpole Riblet doubles, painted ‘Nam chopper green, squeaking uphill, not a safety bar in sight. There's snowmaking, but most of the snow you're skiing on blew in off the big lake 11 miles north. Skiers in their modern fat skis and helmets would blow the illusion, but there are no other skiers to be found.Then a kid skis by, backpack speaker booming, and you're like, “OK phew for a second I thought I'd really time-traveled and would be forced to do things like drive around the block without navigation assistance and carry around a camera that was not also a supercomputer and required $15 to purchase and develop 24 photographs.”If Black River Basin is the past, then Jackson Creek Summit is the future. That sixer landed like an Abrams tank on a Civil War battlefield. I took this video of the old summit double last February:Now look at the top of the six-pack, which sits on more or less the same spot:Wild, right? Snowriver is going to keep changing, and it will keep changing fast. Go see it before you miss what it was, so you can truly appreciate what it will become.Podcast NotesOn the four removed chairlifts on the Jackson Creek Summit sideSnowriver's new six-pack directly or indirectly replaces four old lifts. The resort also switched up the trail network, with a bunch of new glades and a handful of reconfigured trails. Check out the Jackson Creek Summit side of the resort's trailmap from pre-sixer and then today (note, also, all the newly marked glades and renamed trails):On the new trails on the Black River Basin sideMFSR has also renamed most of the lifts and trails on the Black River Basin side, and removed a handle tow (which is now on the Jackson Creek Summit side). Here's a side-by-side of the ski area's 2018 and 2023 trailmaps:On Gogebic Community College and Mt. ZionSo you can actually earn a college degree in ski area management. There are a few schools that do this, one of which is Michigan's Gogebic Community College. From the program's overview page:OverviewThe Ski Area Management Program at GCC is one of the nation's most comprehensive training programs for individuals interested in pursuing a career in the snow sport industry. Technical and academic study is combined with a practical internship which is conducted at major resorts throughout Coast to Coast. A valid driver's license is required for completion of this program.Unique FeaturesStudents spend their freshman year and the first eight weeks of their sophomore year completing prerequisite courses. During this period, the Mt. Zion Recreation Complex is utilized as a training laboratory. Mt. Zion is our college-owned and operated winter sport complex located on campus which is open to the public. Co-opThe Cooperative Work Experience assignment (Co-op) is the capstone of the Ski Area Management Program. All sophomore Students participate in the five month internship where they gain important operational experience in an actual resort environment.The huge advantage that Mt. Zion has over similar programs is that it owns an on-site ski area, Mt. Zion. While this is just a 300-vertical-foot bump served by a double chair, it's laced with some twisty fun little runs fed by 200 inches of annual lake effect:On Giants RidgeBartz really launched his career as Mountain Operations Manager at Giants Ridge, a 500-footer in the Northern Minnesota hinterlands. Here's the most recent trailmap:On the UP snowbeltFor such a remote area, the UP is home to one of the densest concentrations of ski areas in America. Five ski areas sit within a 21-mile stretch along the Wisconsin-Michigan border: Whitecap (in Wisconsin), and Mt. Zion, Big Powderhorn, and the two Snowriver ski areas, all in Michigan. Here's how they line up:On the proximity of MFSR's portfolioMFSR's three ski areas are, as a unit, really well positioned to serve the major Midwestern cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Here's where they sit in relation to one another:And here's the distance table between them:On Rick SchmitzRick Schmitz – who owns Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and The Rock Snowpark in Wisconsin – once owned Blackjack, now Black River Basin. He relays that experience, and why he ultimately sold his interest in the ski area, starting at the 39:40 mark of this podcast we recorded together last year:On Mount BohemiaBoho is, as I've written many times, one of the most amazing and unique ski areas in America. It has no grooming, no snowmaking, and no beginner terrain. It's lodged at the ass-end of nowhere, on a peninsula hanging off a peninsula in the fiery middle of Lake Superior. While regional lore credits (or blames) the renaissance of MFSR's Granite Peak with looting Snowriver's skiers, the rise of Bohemia, which opened in 2000, surely drew more advanced skiers farther north. Here's a trailmap:And here's a conversation I recorded with Boho owner, founder, and president Lonie Glieberman last year:On two ski areas becoming oneFor decades, the two Snowriver ski areas now known as Jackson Creek Summit and Black River Basin were separate, competing entities known, respectively, as Indianhead and Blackjack. Observe the varied style of trailmaps of recent vintage:At some point, the same entity took possession of both hills and introduced the “Big Snow Resort” umbrella name. Each ski area retained its legacy name, as you can see in this joint trailmap circa 2018:Then, last year, MFSR changed the umbrella name from “Big Snow” to “Snowriver,” and changed the name of each ski area (though they framed this as “base area renamings”) from Indianhead and Blackjack to Jackson Creek Summit and Black River Basin, respectively. I broke down the name change when MFSR announced it last September.On the Snowriver interconnectBartz provided outlines of four potential interconnect lines. In all cases, Jackson Creek Summit sits on the left, and Black River Basin is on the right:On US 2The Snowriver ski areas both sit off of US 2, a startling fact, perhaps, for skiers who use the same road to access ski areas as far-flung as Stevens Pass, Washington and Sunday River, Maine. US 2 is, in fact, a 2,571-mile-long road that runs in two segments: from Everett, Washington to St. Ignace, Michigan; then breaking for Canada before picking up in northern New York and running across Vermont and New Hampshire into Maine. It is the northernmost cross-country east-west highway in America. Ski areas that sit along or near the route include Stevens Pass and Mt. Spokane, Washington; Schweitzer, Idaho; Blacktail and Whitefish, Montana; Spirit Mountain, Minnesota; Big Powderhorn, Mt. Zion, Snowriver, Ski Brule, and Pine Mountain, Michigan; Bolton Valley, Vermont; and Sunday River, Titcomb, and Hermon Mountain, Maine; among others.On the Legendary PassFor the 2023-24 ski season, MFSR dispensed with offering single-mountain season passes, and combined all three of its properties onto the Legendary Pass. The gold tier, which is now sold out, debuted at $675 last spring. The Silver tier ran $475 early bird, which is not a material increase from the $419 Snowriver-only 2021-22 season pass (which did not include any Granite or Lutsen access):The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 106/100 in 2023, and number 491 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
I have hunted blacktail deer on Kodiak Island in Alaska and believe the experience offers the most adventure for the dollar in all North America. This year our crew included three guys who had never hunted in Alaska; Mark Denham, Levi Sopeland, and Kevin Guillen (who had never been to Alaska prior). We sat down to capture their emotions and thoughts, there enthusiasm and awe reminded me of my first trips to the state. After you listen to this show, you will want to book your own adventure. If the boat-based trip interests you call Alaska Coastal Marine at 907-262-4359
Worked very hard to get this thing edited, forgive the rough audio....Title says it all! Enjoy.OnX Maps – use code: QUEST and save 20% when you join / support the show___________________________________________________________________________MTN OPS – use code: QUEST and save 20% on all products / support the show ___________________________________________________________________________Heather's Choice, use code: QUEST – save 15% on backcountry meals @heatherschoice.com___________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to my YouTube Channel!https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGVP4F5g3SiOookJK01Jy5wFollow me on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/thehuntersquest/ and @huntermcwaters____________________________________________________________________________www.thehuntersquest.com
Join us for a discussion with Cat Bradley on her last minute Blacktail hunt in Oregon with Cam. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Cat Bradley Links: https://www.instagram.com/catberad/ Thank you to our sponsors: MTN OPS: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping Black Rifle: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first Order Santa Cruz Medicinals: scmedicinals.com use code KeepHammering for 15% off Bass Pro/Cabelas: https://www.basspro.com Leupold: https://www.leupold.com/ Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv Go Ruck: https://www.goruck.com use code CAM for 10% off Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro: A Last Minute Hunt 0:05:18 Cat Almost Got Arrested 0:08:03 Sighting in for the Hunt 0:12:45 The Night Before the Hunt 0:15:43 Glassing - No Deer 0:20:08 “Piss-Pot” 0:24:28 The Stalk 0:31:29 The Pack-Out 0:36:04 A Note to People That Don't Hunt 0:44:46 Outsides of the Mountains is a Different Life 0:48:42 Outro
Cory Ford is a friend, video producer, hunter, and health expert. Hew is part of the Angry Spike Production team who are well known for their adventures in the PNW chasing Roosevelt Elk. The Angry Spike has also been on Destination Elk the last couple years along side Corey Jacobsen and others. Use Code "dave" at www.mtntough.com/dave for 10% off your membership Use code “altitude” at http://www.outdoorclass.com for 20% off Use code “altitude” at http://www.gohunt.com for a discount on becoming a member Use code “ALTITUDE” at http://www.peaxequipment.com for 10% off Use code “ALTITUDE” at https://sthealthyhunter.com/ for free Shipping & 10% off all CBD & Gear, and 5% off Non-CBD Products
In this episode of Fin and Fire with Jeff Mishler I dive into the challenges of water management in the State of Oregon and discover that it boils down to the relationships between the landowners and the state agencies. In Oregon, Spencer works at the epicenter of these relationships. He's also a prolific hunter/angler and we trade stories about our pursuits of the elusive Blacktail bucks of western Oregon.
Ketchikan residents Jake Rodgers and Ryan John recap their memorably miserable pack out after taking two big blacktail bucks in mid-August. We discuss best time of day to find bucks, how Jake keeps finding big bucks, the willingness to return to brutal areas and hitting weather windows. .5 episodes are bonus Thursday episodes meant to keep the release closer to the event and provide a better sense of time. For more about hunting, the hunting industry and content creation, my latest book Beyond the Hunt is available at OnStepAlaska.com, Amazon and local bookstores in Southeast Alaska. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Casey McConnell and I recap the first weeks of blacktail season and preview his sheep hunt. We discuss deer tactics, gear and how they are similar and dissimilar in a sheep hunting program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We continue Vortex Week with an amazing story about a group of guys who headed to Alaska for a once in a lifetime blacktail hunt. Mark, Sawyer, and Eric share the story of how the trip was planned, the logistic behind the trip like what gear they needed to take, how much of food to take, and where they planned to get their water from. It didn't take long for the guys to locate both deer and bear and put a game plan together for the upcoming days. But the hunt wasn't easy, the guys battle extremely wet conditions and fog for most of the hunt but were still able to find success. For most of us, Alaska seems like an impossible place to hunt, but the guys mention that the tags were over the counter and and for the most part affordable. The travel costs however were a little bit of a different story. This is both an entertaining and educational episode, about one of my dream hunts. Be sure to check out vortexoptics.com for all of your optic needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We continue Vortex Week with an amazing story about a group of guys who headed to Alaska for a once in a lifetime blacktail hunt. Mark, Sawyer, and Eric share the story of how the trip was planned, the logistic behind the trip like what gear they needed to take, how much of food to take, and where they planned to get their water from. It didn't take long for the guys to locate both deer and bear and put a game plan together for the upcoming days. But the hunt wasn't easy, the guys battle extremely wet conditions and fog for most of the hunt but were still able to find success. For most of us, Alaska seems like an impossible place to hunt, but the guys mention that the tags were over the counter and and for the most part affordable. The travel costs however were a little bit of a different story. This is both an entertaining and educational episode, about one of my dream hunts. Be sure to check out vortexoptics.com for all of your optic needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cam Anderson of Blacktail Studio joined me this week to talk about his newfound fascination with making tables out of denim. Is he a trendsetter? Well, we also discussed how the first person to do something is rarely the best. Watch Blacktail Studio: https://www.youtube.com/@BlacktailStudio Support this podcast! https://www.patreon.com/creativeculturepod
NJ and Greg have a guest this week. Listen in as Cam Anderson tells his story about how he went from helicopter pilot, to woodworker, to YouTube star. Cam and Blacktail studios do fantastic woodwork and the videos they make for YouTube are addicting! Cam talks about making his decision to change his profession and how it is to manage the woodworking he does while producing episodes for his 2.3 million YouTube subscribers.
Kev interviews Valerie Rose Lohman, the voice of Tara Wylde from Wylde Flowers. Also, Al and Kev go through the news of the week. Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:47: What Have We Been Up To 00:11:23: News 00:27:59: Interview Links The Ranch of Rivershine Early Access Fabledom Roadmap Paleo Pines Accessibility Considerations Go-Go Town Power Tools Farming Simulator Competitive Mode Valerie’s Linktree Kev on Twitter Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript [00:00.000 –> 00:02.000]
On this week's show, we are joined by Cam from Blacktail Studio to discuss why he's pouring epoxy down his pants and his affinity for pranking his friends. Also, Keith has a REAL fire to contend with and Jason gets a handle on Craig's desk build. Blacktail Studio YT: https://www.youtube.com/@BlacktailStudio Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/shopsoundspodcast. You can find us on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Tiktok : @bourbonmoth and @kjsawdust And don't forget to check out Bits & Bits at www.bitsbits.com and use coupon code MORSELS15 to save 15% Be sure to hit up Katz-Moses Tools at www.KMTools.com - cool tools at a fair price. If it's on their website, it's in Jonathan's apron. Wanna feel good about yourself?? Check out Katz-Moses Woodworkers with Disabilities Fund at https://kmtools.com/pages/kmww-charity --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shopsoundspodcast/message
Nathan Endicott of Endicott films is a Pacific Northwest native, film maker, and killer bowhunter. Nathan has taken a lot of deer and other animals with his bow, but he is somewhat of a blacktail deer specialist. As you may have heard me mention, this year I am headed to the great pacific northwest in search of Columbia blacktails myself so i wanted to get Nathan on to talk about hunting these awesome deer. His film, recently released has some amazing footage of his 2022 bowhunt, it is absolutely worth a watch! Enjoy this Episode!
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on March 29. It dropped for free subscribers on April 1. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoNick Polumbus, President of Whitefish Mountain Resort, MontanaRecorded onJanuary 13, 2023About WhitefishClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Winter Sports, Inc.Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal pass partners:* 3 days each at Great Divide, Loveland, Mt. Hood Meadows* 5 days at Red LodgeLocated in: Whitefish, MontanaClosest neighboring ski areas: Blacktail (1 hour, 15 minutes), Fernie (2 hours), Turner (2 hours, 30 minutes), Kimberley (2 hours, 45 minutes), Montana Snowbowl (3 hours), Lookout Pass (3 hours) – travel times will vary considerably pending weather, border traffic, and time of yearBase elevation: 4,464 feetSummit elevation: 6,817 feetVertical drop: 2,353 feetSkiable Acres: roughly 3,000 acresAverage annual snowfall: nearly 300 inchesTrail count: 128 (8 expert, 49 advanced, 40 intermediate, 25 beginner, 6 terrain parks)Lift count: 15 (1 six-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 6 triples, 2 T-bars, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himYou can be forgiven for thinking that Epkon chewed them all up. That the only ski areas worth skiing are those stacked on the industry's twin magic carpets. These shuttles to something grand, to what you think of when you think about the mountains. Ikon got Jackson and Palisades and the Cottonwoods and Taos. Epic got Vail and Telluride and Heavenly and Park City. What more could be left? What more could you need?You probably need this. Whitefish. Or Big Mountain, as you will. Three thousand acres of Montana steep and white. Plenty of snow. Plenty of lifts. A new sixer to boom you up the hillside. The rootin'-tootin' town below. A C-note gets you a lift ticket and change to buy a brew. No bitterness in the exchange.It's hard to say exactly if Whitefish is an anachronism or an anomaly or a portent or a manifestation of wanton Montana swagger. Among big, developed U.S. mountains, it certainly stands alone.This model is extinct, I thought. Coercion-by-punishment being the preferred sales tactic of the big-mountain conglomerates. “Four lift tickets for today, Mr. Suburban Dad who decided to shepherd the children to Colorado on a last-minute spring break trip? That will be $1,200. Oh does that seem like a lot to you? Well that will teach you not to purchase access to skiing 13 months in advance.”So far, Whitefish has resisted skiing's worst idea. Good for them. Better for them: this appears to be a winning business strategy. Skier visits have climbed annually for more than a decade. Look at a map and you'll see that's more impressive than it sounds. Whitefish is parked at the top of America, near nothing, on the way to nothing. You have to go there on purpose. And with Epic and Ikon passes tumbling out of every other skier's jacket pockets, you need a special story to bait that journey.So what's going on here? Why hasn't this mountain done what every other mountain has done and joined a pass? Like the comely maiden at the ball, Whitefish could have its pick: Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, Indy. An instant headliner and pass-mover. But the single life can be appealing. Do as you please, chill with who you want, set your own agenda. That's Whitefish's game. And I'm watching.What we talked aboutWhy Whitefish typically calls it a season with a 100-inch summit base depth; Front Range Colorado and I-70 in the 1970s; how Colorado and Utah snow and traffic impacts skier traffic at Whitefish; how a Colorado kid enters the ski industry in Vermont; a business turnaround at Whitefish; “get the old fish out of the fridge”; how Whitefish has stayed affordable as it's modernized; why the ski area changed its name from “Big Mountain” and how that landed locally; who owns Whitefish and how committed they are to independence; the new Snow Ghost Express sixer; ripple effects on other chairlifts after Snow Ghost popped live; record skier visits; snow ghosts; the best marketing line of Polumbus' career; a big-time potential future expansion; the mountain's recent chairlift shuffles; why chairs 5 and 8 don't go to the summit; the art of terrain-pod building; why Bad Rock isn't running this winter; thoughts on the future of Tenderfoot and the Heritage T-bar; Why Whitefish lift tickets cost a fraction of what similarly sized mountains charge; an amazing season pass stat; the mountain's steady rise of skier visits; and much love for the Indy Pass even if it “isn't a good fit for us.”Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWell I actually thought that January was a great time for this interview. Which is why I recorded it then. And here it is in your inbox, a mere 11 weeks later. Which is a bad look for me and a bad look for the brand and not very considerate to my guest. I'll offer an explanation, but not an excuse: the sound quality on this recording was, um, not good. Most podcasts take two to four hours to edit. This one required 10 times that. So why didn't I just blast it out back in January? Since so much of what I write is reaction to breaking news, every hour I spend on a pod is an hour I'm not delivering more urgent content. And most Storm Skiing Podcasts are fairly evergreen. Skiers binge them on long roadtrips – I know this because they tell me so and because the numbers keep going up on eps that I dropped back in 2019.But none of that matters to you or to the team at Whitefish, and it shouldn't. I know that a lot of you have been waiting for this one since I started hyping it last year, and this long delay was disappointing. I get it. One core promise of The Storm, however, is that I will continually improve the product and the process. So I'll own this one and refine my workflow to prevent future delays. Sorry.But, to address the actual purpose of this section: why did I think that now was a good time for this interview? It's everything I said above. Alterra has copied Vail's ridiculous day-ticket price structure, and Boyne and Powdr aren't far behind. Even little Mountain Capital Partners is allowing the robots to price-surge Arizona Snowbowl tickets past the $300 mark on peak days. Whitefish doesn't exactly stand alone in resisting these price schemes – plenty of other ski areas will still sell you a walk-up lift ticket that costs less than a heart transplant. But none are as large, as high-profile, and as modern as Whitefish – at least not in our beloved U.S. America. Like some brash hipster rocking a Walkman on his fixed-gear bicycle, Whitefish has made the once-pedestrian into the novel. Innovation by staying in place.The Epic Pass gets a lot of well-deserved credit for stabilizing skiing by front-loading pass sales to springtime, insulating revenue from weather-dependency. But Vail and Alterra have cast the $250-plus lift ticket as an essential piece of their passes' success. As though no one would buy the pass if they knew they could still go ski Beaver Creek for $100 anytime they liked. There is a brutal logic to this. You're only going to buy a $275 lift ticket one time. Then you'll go looking for hacks. But the process is demeaning and embarrassing, like you're the last guy to the gas pump in the apocalypse.I wrote a story on Whitefish's business model back in 2021, profiling both that mountain and Jay Peak. Both are run, perhaps coincidentally, by headmen who are fist-bump bros that came up together at late-ASC Killington in the ‘90s: Polumbus and Jay Peak's Steve Wright. I don't know how much they brought their brains together to arrive at similar ticket menus, but I know from interacting with both that they share the same kind of heart. A down-to-earth humility and empathy that considers humans in the business equation, rather than just making them the number at the transactional finish line.Why you should ski WhitefishDid you see the part above about 3,000 acres of terrain and 300 inches of average annual snowfall? Yeah, go enjoy that.But let me harp on the lift ticket thing just a little bit more. If your boys are anything like mine, they are more likely to translate War and Peace into Braille than they are to heed your advice to purchase lift tickets 10 months before your next ski trip. I say this not because my friends are brilliant, but because they are lazy a******s who need their wives to label their underwear drawers lest they be forced to go commando for months on end. So if you're planning, say, “Gary's 50th Birthday Ski Adventure,” you have choices: Heavenly (South Tahoe!), Jackson (Jackson!), Telluride (Telluride!), etc. My buddies, mostly Three-Day Dans, are going to ignore my clear and repeated reminders to purchase Epic Day or Mountain Collective Passes, and are instead going to commandeer their monthly car payment to cover the cost of two days' skiing. And then be all shocked and annoyed about it. Whitefish, where even last-minute skiing runs less than $100 per day, is the solution to such gatherings.That's an edge case, I realize. And surely there are attributes of skiing Whitefish beyond the low cost at the turnstile: the terrain, the views, the snowghosts, the unpretentious vibe, the snowfall, the enormous breadth of it all. But the price thing matters enormously. If you have an Ikon Pass and you're passing through Park City, you're probably not stopping to scope the place out. Throwing down $269 for a day of skiing seems a little stupid if you have unlimited skiing on a $1,000-plus pass that you already own. But if you're rolling from Sun Peaks down to Big Sky and you want to sidebar to Whitefish, well, that lift ticket's not going to kill you in the same way. That sort of pop-around spontaneity defined a big piece of the road-trip ski scene for decades, and it's fading. Too bad. Podcast NotesOn American Skiing Company and S-K-IPolumbus refers to the S-K-I and American Skiing Company (ASC) Merger, which roughly coincided with the beginning of his Killington tenure in 1996. Check this crazy portfolio, as documented by New England Ski History:At the time of the deal, both companies only had New England ski areas, with LBO Resort Enterprises' portfolio composed of Attitash Bear Peak, NH, Cranmore, NH, Sugarbush, VT, and Sunday River, ME, while S-K-I Ltd. owned Haystack, VT, Killington, VT, Mt. Snow, VT, Sugarloaf, ME, and Waterville Valley, NH.Can you imagine if that crew had held into the megapass era? Instead, they are split between seven different owners:The coalition didn't hold for long. The Justice department made ASC sell Cranmore and Waterville Valley immediately. And even though the company was like “F you Brah” and purchased Pico five minutes later, and went on to purchase The Canyons (then Wolf Mountain, formerly Park West, now part of Park City), Steamboat, and Heavenly, the whole enterprise disintegrated in slow motion over the next dozen years. New England Ski History documents the company's arc comprehensively:On lift shufflesWhitefish moves lifts around its mountain like some of us re-organize our living room couches. Check out the 2005 front-side trailmap on the left. By 2007, the Glacier Chaser Express had been shortened and slid looker's left to replace the old Swift Creek double, and the Easy Rider triple had moved down-mountain and become Elk Meadows. The new Easy Rider, a quad seated across the mountain, was also a relocated machine, from Moab Scenic Skyway, according to Lift Blog.In 2017, Whitefish moved Glacier View, a 1981 CTEC triple, to a new location and renamed it East Rim:Then last year, Whitefish moved the Hellroaring triple looker's left across the mountain. Note the changes in the trail network below Lacey Lane, which ran under the old line:Amazingly, that was the second time Whitefish had relocated that same chair. It began life in 1985 as the Big Creek chairlift, which served the North Side in this circa 1995 trailmap:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 27/100 in 2023, and number 413 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us. 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One for you, one for me. Games we played this week include: High on Life (13:30) Vampire Survivors Moonspell DLC (50:40) Potion Craft (56:50) Blacktail (1:10:10) --- News things talked about in this episode: Expensive Dual Sense Edge has less battery life than standard PS5 controller (1:07:40) https://www.theverge.com/23518070/sony-ps5-dualsense-edge-gamepad-battery-life Tesla cars can now play your Steam library (1:11:30) https://www.eurogamer.net/tesla-rolling-out-steam-integration-in-cars Activision COO leaving to run the ape JPEG company (1:15:10) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/activision-s-departing-coo-to-lead-startup-behind-bored-ape-nfts Chocobo Racing GP abruptly announces end of services (1:21:20) https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/phil-spencer-claims-playstation-wants-to-grow-by-making-xbox-smaller/ Self-described “video gamers” file suit to prevent Microsoft acquisition of Activision-Blizzard (1:23:15) https://kotaku.com/microsoft-activision-merger-lawsuit-ftc-call-of-duty-1849917017 Goat Simulator 3 trailer pulled on copyright grounds for including leaked GTA VI footage (1:27:15) https://www.eurogamer.net/indie-dev-suggests-players-dont-buy-his-game-as-the-relationship-with-their-publisher-has-dissolved Limited edition G-Fuel energy drink powder based on Conker's Bad Fur Day (1:29:55) https://gfuel.com/products/conker-mighty-poo-collectors-box --- Buy official Jimquisition merchandise from the Jimporium at thejimporium.com Find Laura at LauraKBuzz on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon. All her content goes on LauraKBuzz.com, and you can catch Access-Ability on YouTube every Friday. Follow Conrad at ConradZimmerman on Twitter and check out his Patreon (patreon.com/fistshark). You can also peruse his anti-capitalist propaganda at pinfultruth.com.
BlackTail, Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell, Marvel Snap, Bramble the Mountain King, I am Jesus Christ, Divine Knockout, Diablo 4 Collector's Box, Outpath: First Journey, World of Warcraft Dragonflight, For Goodness Sake, Elves Christmas Hentai, High on Life, and more fun. Amazon God of War and Warhammer 40k series, MS gets sued again, and more gaming news. For the uncut blooper version watch on Twitch.tv/johnANDmichelle or head to videogameoutsiders.com for our Discord, to support us, and gain access to the back catalog of over 18 years and weekly bonus shows where you can listen on the web at ilovevgo.com or on our free VGO apps.
The Best Gaming Podcast #370 Guessing Starfields release date, Blacktail, High on Life, PSVR2 Remaster Problem, Warhammer tv show, And much more! https://www.patreon.com/AngryCentaurGaming This podcast is dedicated to all the gamers who watch us, and love games. Every single Game Award shown, discuss about the presentation of the event and more. Amazon Affiliate https://amzn.to/3XuHcL8 us this for any shopping if you don't want to worry about specific links from Jonny or Karak 300 Hour Cloud Alpha Wireless(same Karak uses) https://amzn.to/3EDhw6G SennHeiser HF 599 https://amzn.to/3ieA9X1 55% off Firestick deals 50% off https://amzn.to/3u2dfEY Assorted Samsung NVME High Speed M2 memory https://amzn.to/3F48Yar Incredible PC deals 15-44% off https://amzn.to/3VvfiNA More than 15-40% on some videocards https://amzn.to/3Oziohb https://www.amazon.com/deal/11b4bff9?showVariations=true&searchAlias=fashion&ref=dlx_black_gd_dcl_img_5_11b4bff9_dt_sl7_b0 Buying a game on Epic use the ACG creator code KARAK-ACG My Gaming and News Webpage https://www.acgamer.net/ All my links https://linktr.ee/ACG_Karak Follow me on Twitter for reviews and info @jeremypenter JOIN the ACG Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ACGVids/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/acg/message