Introduction To Norse

This is a podcast where the host, Justin Stearns, and his son, Kyson, talk about their hunting and wilderness adventures. They discuss how they got into hunting and their passion for it. They also mention their plans for future hunts and the tags they are applying for. The podcast will cover stories and experiences from their hunts, as well as other activities like fishing and camping. They also mention the possibility of bonus episodes with hunting news. You have tuned into the Norse Wilderness Podcast where we sit down to relive our past adventures and memories of our time spent on the mountain. I am your host, Justin Stearns, and I am joined here by my son and your co-host, Kyson. Welcome to the podcast, guys. This podcast is just going to be about us introducing ourselves and where we see this going and why we're doing it. So, without further ado, I am Justin Stearns, Kyson. Hello, my name's Kyson Stearns. I'm 12 and I'm here with Batman. This podcast will be unfiltered. I do cuss a lot and can't control it, so if you don't like swearing, my apologies. I grew up in the construction industry since I was a little, little, little tight, so I always cussed. I cussed without even noticing, so my apologies if that offends you. It does not offend me. So next, the reason why we started this, so when we were on our way to Arizona for our elk hunt down there, and I've had this idea of starting a podcast or something before, but I've just never had the balls to do it, so Kyson's like, why not? We should do that, and he's like, and I told him, I was like, I don't think I'd do good at it. And Kyson, he's like, well, I don't know. What'd you say? Do you remember? Because I do. I don't remember that much. Kyson's idea, or he told me, he's like, well, I think you'd really do really good at it. I mean, I love to sit here and listen to you explain how you, about all these hunts we go on and everything, and you just get so animated when you talk about it. So, I was like, well, fuck it. Why not? You don't like me? You don't like me. I just don't give a fuck anymore. Do you have a reason why you wanted to podcast? Something to do. Why not? Sometimes I talk about other hunts, and I love to be talking about them. Now, the next talking point I come up with is, what is going to be on this podcast? And I know this is like terrible. I shouldn't be like, what's my next talking point? It should be just going with the flow. And we'll get into this, but this is number one. This probably won't be published, but we'll try it. But you got to say, that elk doesn't have interest in it. It was standing down in the jungle. Yeah, he's very broken up. That's why we found all them broken horns and ways down there. Tyson's talking about, and you want to talk into the mic, dude. All right, yeah, like this. Yeah, but Tyson's talking about the bull I shot in Arizona. Just a tiny little bull I had sitting here in the man cave. We overboiled it, so it got skull capped, and it's just hanging on the wall. Tiny little guy. And just about every point's broke. And we found lots of broken sheds of ice down there. Not the biggest ones. No bull sheds. No browns. Just a lot of broken pieces. On this podcast, we're just talking about telling and sharing our story of some of the hunts we've been on. Some of the adventures we've been on. Hunting, shed hunting, fishing, camping, backpacking. Whatever it is that we do in the wilderness is what we are going to talk about. Also, we will have on here, hopefully, at least one if not two bonus episodes a month of hunting news. Probably for now, we'll just keep it to more local Utah-based news just because Randy Newberg is already doing very well with Montana. And he does really well with all the states, but definitely highlights Montana, because that's his home state, so he knows the most about it. Very knowledgeable on every state, but he knows the most about Montana. So I've been hunting for, I don't know, my whole life, really. When I was just a little tyke, I woke up to my dad shooting a cow elk out the window with our little Chevy Blazer. And I said, there you go, boom, boom. I'll go bye-bye. That's just one of your dad jokes. No, that's an actual legit story that happened. I'm just realizing I'm still missing that spike shed. Here's your still in the ranger. The one that Tristan found and gave to you? No, the one I found out in Arizona. Oh, yeah, that was cool. That was a cool shed we found. I'd like to get shed hunting a lot. I bet. I bet it gets tore up. Because we put on, what, like 90 miles down there, 100 miles? I think you put on 90, and I think I put on like 105. And that's all we found was like five pieces and one spike shed. So, I mean, we hiked our butts off. But, yeah, I've been just hunting. So I'm 31. Yeah, so I've been hunting pretty much 31 years. I mean, couldn't hunt big game until I was 14 because that's the age it used to be in Utah. Now it's 12. When I started out hunting, I was 14 to hunt big game. Got my hunter safety at 11 and started hunting small game when I was 12. I was pretty good into hunting when I was a teenager. And I really loved archery hunting. But then when Utah went from being able to buy a deer tag, archery deer tag over the counter, to having to apply for it, I said, no moths. I just stopped bow hunting. And then it was down to just the general season rifle elk hunt that I did every year. And I was only doing that on the weekends. So hunting kind of died off for me for a while. I wasn't obsessed with it. I mean, I hunted every year and did a little bit of prairie dog hunting, coyote hunting, a little bit here and there, pheasant hunting. As far as big game hunting, I was just doing the one Utah general season elk over the counter. We'd pop down to Arizona any time we drew, which I take that pretty serious. But I still didn't have the bite like I do in the last three years, four years that I've really gotten bit. And in the last year, it's even worse. I just can't stop doing anything and thinking about anything that's hunting. I was thinking about how you started serious hunting once you shot that big bull. But after that, you started putting it through crazier places. Yeah. I remember exactly what got me bigger into hunting. And it was when I shot that little tiny buck that's upstairs over the arch. Because I got that tag and put it in for it. It says, like, that year I shot at that one six-point across the canyon up there in elk camp. And you got all excited. And I was like, huh, well, I really need to get Tyson more excited about hunting. I was like, I need to do a little more hunting. So I think I'm going to do a deer tag next year. So I'll do it rifle, though, so we can come with. Put it in, drew the tag. You didn't even want to go that day when we went deer hunting for this. We get up there, and you're just whining because you didn't want to get out of bed. So we just hunt it from home. Drive up there, an hour and a half to two-hour drive. And we're just driving around because both you and Brooklyn are in the truck. She was actually super excited to be there and, like, waiting to point out deer. This is kind of a funny part of the story. And we're just cruising down the road. And here goes some deer running by. And Brooklyn goes, yeah, deer, deer, deer. And I'm like, yeah, they're all does, all skinheads. But then I look up on the hill, and there's three-point bucks there. And they're like, oh, there's a buck. I jump out and shoot it. And it ended up making not a great shot. Had to run up the hill and put another one in it to finish it off. Drug it down the hill, and that's when you were all excited. You were, like, stoked. So excited. At that point, Brooklyn hated it. She didn't like that there was a dead animal there. So you guys totally switched spaces. You just didn't want to be there at first, and then you loved it. And then Brooklyn didn't want to be there anymore. That's what, when seeing your excitement that year, is when I come home and just become obsessed with it. I remember coming home that evening after taking care of the deer. I got in the bathtub and popped up the iPad and started watching hunting YouTube videos. And the first thing that pops up is Randy Newberg. Ever since then, I've been obsessed with him because I just, I think that night, I ended up sitting in the bathtub for, like, two hours just watching these YouTube videos of Randy Newberg. And he was just barely starting out in his YouTube career. I mean, he'd been doing Fresh Tracks on Reel TV, the outdoor channel, I think, for a while. But he just barely started doing YouTube. And he had a bunch of footage of us just watching all of it. But ever since then, I mean, I've just become more obsessed with it every year. You got rid of his tags this year. Yeah, this year I had, what, four tags? Yeah, I mean, let's see. I'll pull it up right here. I'm not sure which one of these are going to be for-sures. But here's, I'm going to explain my entire year strategy for you. The first one coming up is Wyoming. I'm going to put in for a unit there. It's up there. It's a Type 1 tag, so it's a rifle tag. If I draw it, I will buy the archery stamp and go archery hunting this unit. So I'm putting in for a pretty good unit and just hoping that I draw it in that 25% pool at random because they designate 25% pool and I'm hoping that I draw it in that 25% pool at random because they designate 25% of their non-resident tags in a random pool and Utah does that 50%. But up there, so I'm just hoping to draw this in that 25% because I ain't got a single point anywhere. Oh, that's a lie. I've got three Utah limited entry deer points. Only points I got in the whole western states because I burn my points when I get them. And then after that is going to be Arizona. And so we'll put in for 70 again. Probably won't draw that, but we'll start building points for it. So unit 70 again. Then New Mexico. So I'm going to be putting this in for like the premier in the Gila National Forest unit down there for archery elk in the rut. And so New Mexico don't have no points, so I'm just shooting for the stars there. Shoot for the stars, try to win the lottery there, huh? If I draw that tag, that's the tag that I will spend probably 10 days on. Yeah, you can have that water. But if I draw that tag in New Mexico, then I won't worry about probably any of these other tags for archery. I will spend the month of September down there because it's the trophy potential down there is 370+. Yeah, it's where big bulls are born. I mean... Yeah. I mean, we've got some big bulls here in Utah that people don't realize. It's just hard to find them. Especially if you want to hunt next to tribal lands up the hill creek. Brian will tell you a story that he's seen a bull down there. He's working on tribal lands at one of their houses and the guy brings in this 350, 360 inch bull. The guy jumps it out of his truck and he's like, it's just a baby, I'm going back for the big one tomorrow. Tribal members, if they have the tags, they get the tags. Not sure how that works, but apparently they can get tags. Because out there in Hill Creek they have huge ones. Oh, you should have went and picked up my buck from the tax service with me. A tribal member shot... It's only a 350. They say only 350. I mean, that's a huge freaking fucking bull there. But he shot a 350 bull and it's albino. Pure white. It was at the tax service. That was awesome. Albino bull, 350. He's telling me about the dude. He said there was a bigger one next to it, but he just had to have that white one. Because that's an e-tree. But then after New Mexico, we got the Utah draw coming in. Archery deer, rifle elk over the counter, and then you said you wanted to do rifles, so we'll do rifle deer over the counter. And then that bison hunt. I can't wait for that dude. I'm fucking stoked for that one. Fucking 10 day float. Oh yeah, that's going to be fucking awesome. I mean, I still got to earn some money to buy us a raft, but we're doing it. Then after that it's Colorado. And I'm going to start building points there again. Because I burnt all of them last year. And then I'll probably do a Colorado OTC tag archery. So over the counter. And I'm probably going to do a unit close to us so that I can just weekend hunt it. Because I can only take off so many days. I'm thinking I want to go do some high country deer hunt over elk. I don't know why. Running elk is like the best. So I don't know why I'm picking deer, but I am. But I'm going to pick to go and do a high country deer hunt. I can always pick up the OTC tag later in the season though. So, if I don't get any of these deer tags I'm applying for, I've got a little bit better OTC tag I found in Colorado that we'll go on with the backpack on. We'll probably do baby style or something like that. But then after Colorado we've got Nevada. And I've got a really good game plan for Nevada this year. I'm going to do put in for deer there. Mountain goat and desert bighorn. Start building points for all those. And then Wyoming deer comes up after that. I'll most likely probably I'll probably just buy a deer point because I don't think they can take time off then. Because we've already got so many other hunts going on. And all that around that same time frame. So I'll just buy a point most likely. And then Idaho. Idaho deer, elk, and mountain goat. And then we'll have Arizona Coos deer if we can still afford it and put time into it. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I have to transfer elk over everything. That's going to be one of our podcast topics is mule deer versus elk. I don't know. I just can't sit in a tree stand. And I know you can somewhat spot and stalk something in whitetail. But if I ever go do whitetail I doubt unless we win the lottery and I can just go buy one of them tags on one of them ranches that's guaranteed to see a buck then yeah I'll sit a stand if I'm guaranteed to see a buck. But I can't sit a stand. I've got to move. I'm a western hunter. Yeah, I think those are blacktail from Oregon. The other day he said are there one or two of them blacktail and whitetail? Never heard of that. If I do whitetail it's probably going to be a mountain whitetail in Montana, Wyoming or Idaho. Most likely I'm going to be doing a mountain whitetail. That's why I want to go Coos deer hunting in Arizona in January and hunt a deer. Yeah, we'll be doing caribou and moose in Alaska hopefully 2024. It's pretty much down to money right now. I know if I put a lot of research into it I could probably do it for about 5 or 6 thousand. But I don't know if that's going to get me the hunt that I actually want to do. I don't want to go get dropped off and hunt within 1 or 2 miles of my tent because that's all the further you can pack an animal up there. I want to do that float hunt like Ryan Lampers and Brian Caldis did. They did a 15 day hunt which I haven't figured out how to find a transporter to get us in. Which if I buy a raft we really could if we could just find a transporter to fly us in and pick us up. Could do it a lot cheaper than the other alternative That's 15,000 per person but they do an extreme float hunt and they supply the raft and everything and they fly the river every day. So if you shoot you're getting flown out the next day. You don't have to float down to a certain destination by a certain time. You just float and float and float and in the 10 days that you're allotted to shoot something or get picked up at that 10th day wherever you're at. That's expensive. But that's the type of hunt that I really want to do. I've just got to put a little more research into it or a lot and find out how we can just find a transporter to fly us in, drop us off and pick us up at a, let's just say can we find someone that drops us off at point A and we meet them at point B 10 days later whether we kill them or not. That's what I want to find is a transporter like that. I still haven't found it. You can't just Google transporters because it hasn't worked so far. I've tried it. A little hard work, determination, never give up. Just like I almost gave up on this podcast idea because of how difficult it was to get your microphone working. Five freaking weeks ago and just to get that one microphone yours. I almost gave up on the idea because of the fact that how many times it failed. I bought another microphone, didn't like it, it wouldn't work. I bought another one, it wouldn't work. I bought the headphones, they wouldn't work. Finally I got the right freaking microphone and now it works. I had to go through four microphones before I found one that would work. But that one never would. After a lot of troubleshooting I found out it had to be the microphone because I started to think maybe it was not the microphone after the second one. No, with all the troubleshooting it just had to be the microphone and I was right. Let's get back to the topic of years hunting. I think I said I've hunted since I was 14 we'll call it and I'm 32 now. How many years have you been hunting? I got my hunter's safety when I was 9 to 10 and I used to just go off of the Evie Gun and hunt squirrels. It's one of my favorite things to do. And you've been big game hunting since you was 12 and putting you in Arizona since you was 10 that's why I had to get your hunter's safety at 9 so I could put you in Arizona. My son is 12 years old and he's already had an out of state limited entry out tag. I was 19 which for some is still really young. Why do you like to hunt and fish? I like the thrill of it and usually I get bored around the second or third day and I'm like this is super boring just spotting around and then you see one and you're like oh my gosh it's like my favorite part is when you actually spot one it's just so crazy. You embellished that a little because you said second or third day you get a little bored you're like second or third hour you're like we haven't seen shit there ain't nothing shit in this fucking mountain let's go home. If we ever start to record this stuff Steve and I are going to see that. This is shit's unfiltered dude I drink beer. Drinking a beer right now? Yeah me too. I can't wait for shed hunting. Hopefully my knee is going to be alright I'm kind of actually scared about it what Sunday night that really messed it up that kind of scared me. I'll give it a few days I might buy a brace I can't wait for shed season dude although it's going to be hard to find a shed this year dude I don't know where they're going to be unless we get a really hot spring this snow is going to hold them low longer so it's like all the last few years of us knowing where the sheds aren't because we don't find very many of them are they finally going to be back in there and that's why we're finding chalk because that was the last time we had this much snow is that why we're finding chalk or so where are they going to be I just don't know dude it's hard like do we go back to where we've been going and found a few sheds but they're always chalk or deer sheds that are brown I haven't found a single brown elk and we hike 4 or 5 miles without finding a shed because I've got some really good ideas on where to go but I don't there's a little bit higher in elevation so it's like are they going to be there and shedding there even though it's that high because normally we wouldn't have this much snow because we've been hunting a little bit lower than that and not finding them so they've got to be higher when's our first trip we go on just like a short one go down to lower places maybe check out a few places if we can probably about February and March. March you can get out and maybe find a shed here and there end of February and March like as soon as ice fishing is done we'll just go out and just do some driving around and find elk and deer and see where they're at about that time of year yeah I like to hunt and fish anymore mainly hunt for the fact just the adventure of it dude I love every aspect of doing it and I love every aspect of planning a hunt like right now it's kind of fun with all this application strategy. Planning and packing for a hunt I enjoy that. I enjoy the trip there getting camp set up I enjoy that I love to hike anymore. Love the adventure of it. I love seeing new places I love getting to the top of the mountain. I love hiking the mountain. I love the thrill of actually like glassing up a deer or hearing an elk bugle back at you. Screaming one in the face. Bugling at them. I mean that's just I just love the adventure of all of it. I even love packing them out. When I packed that bull out this year by myself I was dead at the end of it I was cussing up a fucking storm going up that mountain like 9 o'clock at night dark as shit been raining on me all fucking day so I'm going up this dark ass mountain like for some reason I just started thinking fair I better start making some noise. It got pretty comical dude. If I'd have recorded that I'd have probably made fucking millions on America's Funniest Home Videos if they still do that shit. Cause it was just fucking funny and I was laughing at myself at the end of it cause I don't even remember what I said but I remember it was a good fucking time I can just imagine you having like a conversation with that fake bear over there What was even creepier is when I come across fucking headstone dude. Crawling up this fucking mountain, slipping and sliding dark as shit, thinking fair all pissed off from how tired I am just having that type B fun or type 2 fun I guess it is I look over and there's a fucking headstone. What the fuck dude that's creepy as shit right now in this new unit especially cause the night before I swear to god Sasquatch was outside the tent and it was all I would not want to come across a gravestone walking that far in that would be creepy dude like the stuff you see in horror movies that would not be very pleasing especially with that dark and rainy so I guess we kind of went over what type of hunting we like to do and I kind of already hinted at this that I'm tied between deer and elk right now cause last year when I killed that bull in the rut bugling at him, calling him in, that was fucking epic dude like I was shaking so bad from that. That was so much fun having an elk bugle back at you calling him in, him coming up that knob doing that t-rex roar but for some reason I always go back to deer right now I love the early archery deer I love the spot stock, the glassing with spot stock I do love that as well so I don't know, do I like that more or do I like to hunt elk in the rut tough decision there I was just thinking like one of the first things I notice when I walk out of my living room and see all those elk is, I always look over at that Colorado I want to think how funny and depressed we watched it it's missing a few teeth yeah dude, but that was the easiest freaking year old mountain I've ever done I literally spent probably 20 minutes of time on that thing total and that's boiling it it took me like 2 minutes to put it in a pot and boil it and then after an hour and a half I went and pressure washed it took like 5 minutes walked out back, fired the pressure washer off and went done, so we got that bad ass pressure washer yeah it lost a few teeth but it was done threw some bleach on it and it was done dude hung it up, that was the easiest one I've ever done definitely found out you can boil one way too long yeah you can really see the lines I don't know if I like the elk or deer more it's just such a hard decision, I just like the adventure of it right now what about you dude I love the when I get to visit, this is my first time ever going to Arizona it was just so cool usually I get bored after like an hour in the car I actually enjoyed that entire drive on the way there you slept like clear to grand junction just like 3 hours yeah I slept about 3 hours on the way back I slept a little bit yeah you slept a little bit, then again I had hunting podcasts on a lot of that if we weren't talking we had hunting podcasts on it was just fucking awesome Brian Call and Ryan Lampers on the way back a few times talking about Still Healthy did quite a few Go Hunt, did a lot of Remy Warren I remember we was out driving around on scouting day listening to Remy Warren one thing is eventually I want to have a website and we will have a website up as soon as I can find the funds to pay for it get us a website up so that people can go there to see some of our media like this podcast and pictures because I love to take pictures eventually we will have like some videos I don't know if they will be on YouTube or not but we will have some videos I know with podcasting everybody says video record and put them on YouTube so eventually we will probably do that too as well so I guess we will have that, don't have social media yet I will probably in the next couple of days make a Instagram and Facebook for it but we will see my goal with this podcast is just to have fun and share our adventures with those that weren't there the biggest thing is I want to share these adventures with people that weren't there and for people to learn really why I'm so obsessed with this I think it's cool to listen to all the fun people have out of state like Montana out in Alaska I wish I had like DRL something that we have here in Utah yeah that's pretty much all I had other than health I mean what do you do for health? go on walks, get in shape for next time of season that's about it I'm doing that, I'm doing this to healthy protein, doing 50mg CBD every day as well with those pills from the Metcalf Clinic vitamins from them exercise trying to not do sugar anymore not doing real good at that but I'm trying definitely always try to be protein heavy with all of our meals and then we will also have we did, I think we already went over this but if not, we'll talk about it again we'll have, this will be weekly episodes coming out, not sure which day we'll just be recording these whenever we have free time I will try to have a set schedule of what day they come out at what time so that it's consistent we will have 2 bonus episodes a month as well so a total of 6 episodes a month but the bonus episodes will be 10-15 minutes it's going to be news related to Utah mainly Utah for now, we'll probably go into Colorado because we're so close to the Colorado-Wyoming border we'll probably talk about their news as well definitely because they just released 15 wolves over in Craig which fucking pisses me off just last year, 10 miles over the Colorado border 30 elk got killed by a pack of wolves they're like, oh we don't have wolves around here I just don't realize what it does to the elk and deer population oh and it's because people that do this don't actually watch a wolf kill something watch it kill an elk, they go up and hamstring the fucking thing the whole pack's eating on it so it's getting eaten a lot before it's dead, it's getting eaten so it has to feel every bite and it's just sitting there crawling out crying especially because they'll kill for fun they won't even feed the pack, they kill for fun when they get in a frenzy well I think that's going to be it for this episode we'll review it, see what it's like my outro for this week is going to be pain is weakness leaving the body as I have a fucked up knee peace out thanks for tuning in once again if you liked today's episode which is pretty rough if you still liked it, let us know appreciate the listen