Mark Sasser is a life-long Californian and outdoorsman. He lives in Fresno CA with his wife Alicia and their youngest of 3 children. After being introduced to archery with a bear longbow as a 4th grader at YMCA camp he started traditional bowhunting in 1990. In the last 34 years Mark has hunted the west from southern Arizona to Alaska. As a co-owner at Bwana Bows Mark is constantly working to deliver custom longbows and recurves to the Tradbow community and enjoys watching customers become friends as he becomes a part of their adventures.
Find Mark on the interwebs:
Instagram: @california_tradbow_hunter
Bwana Bows: www.bwanabows.com
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[Music] Good evening and welcome to the Bowyer's podcast where we explore the ancient art of bow making, traditional archery and the age old pursued wild game. Together we're going to chat with masters of the craft to uncover the deeper wide behind reviving the old ways in a modern world. Today I've got the pleasure of sitting down with a pen pal of mine, Mr. Mark Sasser, co-owner Bawanna Bose. Mark, how are you? I'm doing well, thanks for having me. Yeah, man, I know we've been trying to link up for, I don't know, a couple months at least between my travel schedule and yours it's been tough and then I mean I think California has about the earliest bow season out there so you've been trumping up and down some mountains too so I'm glad we all make it happen. Yeah, you know we do, it's the coastal buck season opens the second Saturday in July. I did not go out this year, I've killed a lot of bucks over there and I love hunting over there just with travel and some things going on. I had some opportunities to hunt later this year and so I purposely didn't go over there and man, friends of mine just smashed some great, great, but yeah, I was super jealous, I was like only gone, you know, so I've got hopes for for what's to come but I was pretty bummed that I didn't go over there and then you know in that whole season it's also a great time for hog hunting out here because of the heat and the water factor and so anytime you go out for that that coastal buck season you better have pig tag or they actually change the laws this year you don't have to have a tag you have to have a stamp now so but in the past it's like you better be looking for hogs too because you got a 50/50 chance of what you're going to have an opportunity to take a shot at. Well and out there you've got the I mean it's California's when the only states that has like a true like Eurasian style hogs too right? So I don't know right I don't know if that's true I've heard that before but I don't want to say it like it's the gospel out here it's so it's kind of funny there's two kinds of there are two distinct kinds of hogs out here we've got the feral pigs like you'll have a wild hog with a straight tail and coarse air that looks like a hamster. Why is it black hog with a big white stripe on it like what's going on here and you get some good calico's you get a lot of white ones my favorite of the reds right if there's a red pig I don't care how big it is I'm going to shoot it right and it's one of these Jerome teases of me about all the time but like I like red pigs so we've got that whole thing going on from the feral hogs but then the Spaniards when they when they kind of populated California and through the California coast and had all the missions and everything that at least California as you learn about that in fourth grade they had they had that the European pigs and so there's the European pigs that came from the Spaniards and then there's the the feral hogs that got away from ranches and then they kind of all kind of crossbreed yeah yeah you know it's it's really kind of crazy you can take a domesticated hog and cut it loose in the in the wild and within six months to a year it looks like a wild pig like it's crazy it doesn't even numb or it's really weird you know they talk about like from an evolutionary standpoint right that like animals with a shorter lifespan adapt per generation more quickly so you think like okay well pigs are very prolific right multiple multiple letters a year many many piglets in a in a litter but it's not actually the same thing because it's not just the generational aspect it's like that those pigs generally can adapt to being wild or feral and in a matter of months of being wild right like yeah and it's individual hog right and so if you think about it like if they if they set you or i loose in the Yukon probably in six months we're gonna look different so it's the same thing but yeah the hogs out here you know the hogs generally they can they can knock out two to three letters a year right and they can start breeding it six to eight months yeah so they don't have to be very big and they pump out a lot and we've got so many hogs out here that they for years when i started 30 some years ago you could just go out and shoot pigs they didn't care and then they figured out they could make money on it so we had tags for years and they just one last step when you think about it it's like it's an invasive it's devastating for the ecology but the state has to get theirs right and so finally this year they they did a they did a impact study and they realized that they're not killing enough pigs to even put a dent in the population so this year as of july first we could buy a a pig tag like a like upper upland gamber stamp right so you buy your pig stamp and so you can shoot as many hogs as you want all year long you can shoot them on private property at night now which they would never let you do that was poaching before and so at night you can at on private property you should have at night with a rifle with a spotlight whatever um with a bow doesn't matter um on public land you can shoot them 365 days a year doesn't matter how many they just they want you to log on that on the fishing game app if you killed one so now pretty much the only thing we can't do is bait them okay but all of the good private property that we hunt like i i'm blessed i'm very fortunate to have a piece of private property that i'm allowed to go hunt and it's a wine vineyard they they are there oh oh yeah every every night i bet they really want you to send them out i'm sure they could be very very devastating yeah but it's crazy you'll you'll be sitting there and we'll be watching the wild hogs and there'll be a tulle elk out there in the vines there'll be black there'll be the black tail deer out there can't shoot those but you know there's there's just hogs that go just running in and out of there every day it's crazy so that's super cool yeah i am so i lived in europe for a number of years in the pigs that would be hunted out there they're the big you know razorback you know like everybody's mascot is like a Eurasian bore you know the big razorback humpback thing which we don't have a lot of like in the southeast generally um so it's kind of cool to like think about in california where i think so so much of the hunting community does not think of california it's like an awesome hunting state but so many people have really convinced i've still never hung out there so many people convinced me otherwise between yourself and uh but Austin Caldwell oh yeah awesome and my my my real job is based out of Irvine California so there's a you can imagine most of the the dynamic and like with the space in our community are not hunters but there's a couple of folks that um do hunt out in california and i just think that's really cool plus it's isn't it is it the only state you can hunt tule or is it basically okay i wasn't sure if you if they had them in Oregon or Washington you know only state is good julies that's wild super cool yeah yeah you know what's funny is we've got a lot of hunting out here it just it the state's always got a bad rap right now our government like our state government it's kooky right it's very left wing but that there's a lot of there's several million hunters in california right when you bring in waterfowl and bird hunters there's got to be who's going to who's going to piss off all those people in Idaho if it's not california hunters right there's a lot there's a lot now there's not a lot of trad hunters you know but like i personally know i personally know probably 10 guys that hunt trad in california that you put them anywhere anywhere and they will be one of the best guys in that area right so there's really there's really good guys they're they're great shots they're good woodsmen they hunt hard and and you know not not that california guys are that much better than everybody else it's just it's really hard here right it's difficult and if you can if you can elevate yourself to be one of the top guys in this state you can go and you can you can do well in anywhere right when you and when you look at that right people go like oh well who who's from california right what what well-known bow hunters have ever come out of california right south cocks right is one and then there's a guy that he's not really a trad guy but probably the best guy that's ever done it in modern times chuck Adams he's california guy right you know i think i think it was Remy Warren who like raved about california at one point as being just like this head and gem that people don't think about blind it's right for black and sorry we for black bears we have the bear hunting here is next level man i and i've gotten such like i just started hunting bears four or five years ago and i like it's starting to become my favorite thing to hunt to be honest like i i um it's it's my favorite animal to watch and observe for sure they're cool here right it's just they're they're so they're hard to judge they're hard to judge up close much less at distance you know coming in color phases um always making sure that there's not a there's different challenges right like when it comes to harvesting make sure it's not a south cubs and all this stuff but then again if you have the opportunity to glass or watch a south cubs it's freaking adorable i don't care who you are i know i sound like a Disney princess but man it's it's super cool to see that right that's one of the so as being a bow hunter one but being a tribe bow hunter that's one of the cool things is we do get to to spend that intimate time right whether it be a deer elk bear whatever you get to spend that that time really close and i tell people all the time it's like if you if you become like a really good traditional bow hunter ground shrinkage goes out the window right because you're taking those shots so close and and i i have friends that are rifle guys or compound guys you know and i know some guys are very good rifle shots and i'll ask them only how far was that shot and they're like oh it was like we'll throw a number 600 yards okay 600 yards that's more than a quarter of a mile we're not quite half a mile right and then in the hike in the high country here in california like 600 yards it could take you 30 40 minutes just to walk it oh yeah man i so i got my first bear back and i think like 2019 2020 maybe 2019 so it's ready for covid and kick off and like i i've done a lot of longest since rifle shooting and i got that bear i shot it at 650 and i was on one mountain side and i fired and shot that bear in the other mountainside and i watched it for over an hour and it was also just trying to like maintain a shot maintain you know chain of custody with my line of sight and watch his bear and breathe and all that stuff um it took me like darn near an hour to get over to it you know it was super high but it was like like 7 000 feet so i had to go down one mountain side cross the creek go back up the other mountain yeah it's that as a crow flies that's not far but when you're going up and down the mountain it's they tell guys an hour all the time and i stopped saying an hour because i felt like i was being offensive but yeah so realistically in in big country it's an hour right and so when you think about that which it's an it's an impressive shot right i'm not i'm not discounting the ability to do that it's an impressive shot but at 600 yards you can't see if a bear's got copy can front angles right you can't you can't really tell if it's got shoulders versus hips you can't tell how long that neck is you can't right yeah trad at trad distance oh you see it all you see they're sacking right it's like yeah we're like um you know like even that far out right it's like you're like oh it doesn't look laggy well the vegetation just might be you don't have you can't compare it to a lot well it might just be the vegetation is covering up so it looks like it's belly's dragging in my case it was it wasn't a big bear it's probably 150 pounds like my first bear and i was still super stoked look it was my second last day of an elk hunt and i happen to see and there's already snow on the ground i happen to see a bear that had come out and i was like i'm stoked it's my first bear but like and they're delicious yeah and delicious right i mean but like there were certainly some ground shrinkage that was involved and everything else but like i was also still super stoked that it poked a bear at 650 yards so i mean yeah but here's the other thing right animal behavior like i started so i started rifle hunting from time i was a kid i guess like more like smoggin with 22 shotgun i i started rifle hunting when i was 11 i didn't pick up a bow until i was 14 and just the the level of woodsmanship that improved once i picked up a compound bow was was tremendous and then just our last few years of hunting with a stick bow it's it's been exponentially greater like like the way their eyes move watching their nostrils flare vocalizations right like when you're consistently within definitely within 30 yards but sometimes within like single-digit yards um trying to find an opportunity to draw back and not get winded i mean you pick up on a lot of behaviors yeah you know you do and um that's what i love about it you know i i have a different experience i started out so i started off as when i started hunting i was a track guy and then for a couple of years at the end of my first marriage i i rifled hunted for a couple of years right and so i was married and and we had had little kids and she's like you're always going hunting and you know you're spending all this time hunting you're not bringing very much back and so i'll be you know what you want me to break stuff back oh oh i'll buy a rifle so i i set up a rifle and i went out and i filled all my tags in like two weeks and then she and then she was like you're here all the time but um you know so it's a toss-up but i don't really rifle hunt very much anymore i made this year my kid my my son's 26 this year and i set him up i bought him a rifle and got him set up and he really wants to get a bear this year so we will probably do some some late season bear hunting and he'll have the rifle and so if he's got a rifle i'll probably carry mine too just so i can back him up so we'll see what happens but you know we'll do see what happens yeah man i am i'm one of those guys that says hunter first bow hunter second yeah especially when he's our kid right yeah yeah and so this will be my first year that my my eldest who is 11 really starts spending a lot more time hunting um you know he's 11 so he's not strong enough to pull like 40 or 45 pounds back yeah so he's gonna take out like a 243 that we've got him um he got his first day in what earlier this year with a 223 down in 40 you got a pig and um but yeah man i'm like i'm not gonna be like oh well you gotta wait like four years or however long until you're strong and pulled back up oh i want it to i want him to really enjoy the woods and flourish but also like last year i got to where i was like man it was like late november and i had only put one deer on the ground yeah and oh i put a deer in a bear but i wanted to like i'm trying my darners to not you know get our protein from the store i was like rifles coming out and like right away i had two two more deer on the ground and like a matter of you know seven days or so and i was like yeah i was i didn't i didn't i wasn't like oh the trad people weren't gonna like me like i didn't care at all like i'm super stoked that i've gotten out more meat in the freezer yeah you know um so i'm kind of pen pals right you said that um with jimmy cow right yeah out of michigan he's in Alaska right now yeah he is and so we've kind of started a loose friendship you know via the internet and and he does the same thing he's like you know he goes i'm a hardcore trad guy but i'll pick up a rifle yeah and so i don't have a problem with this especially so i've got friends that have um management issues right on their ranches and they'll be like hey can you come out and and take care of this for me hundred percent right like and at that level i'm doing them a favor and they're letting me go out so i'll take the rifle out we go out there's times you go out in 15 minutes and you take a management buck or take out some hogs or something you know yeah we're like hi up right if i had a farm where i'd let me hunt on the plate yeah sorry i interrupted no that's fine but you know we're we're in agreement on that lesson yeah i mean i i very much prefer one of my long bows or a recurve but i don't exclude you know other other tools there man i think it's great and we're definitely like man we're getting ahead of ourselves i want to know like uh i want a little bit about your background so you started out you know with the stick bow um but give me a little bit of like uh of your origin story and then maybe a transition to blana so all right i know it's not a clean segue but here we are that's all right uh the segue from me being a archer being into the bow business wasn't clean either so let's do it um so you know i grew i grew up here well i'm not in california right now but we're gonna say we're gonna act like him so i grew up here in california um and my dad was a motocross racer so we went camping to go motorcycle racing right and so doing that we did that for several years and when he retired from from doing that then it was we went camping to cut wood and stuff like that so he was just never really a hunter but i got to spend a lot of time in the outdoors and that's when when when i was a young teenager we started doing more and more of the the wood cutting and logging and stuff like that and so he taught me how to shoot right and um that was very much against my mother's wishes is me shooting firearms right and so but because she didn't like the firearms and she didn't want me to do that now her dad was a hunter you know and you really you think about in the 50s and early 60s hunters back then i always say who's probably more of a poacher right like the only rifle he owned was a 22 mag you know so um but you know they were poor right they were poor and you could go out and you could shoot a doe or whatever so that's my guess is what her experience with hunters was so i was never really promoted to do that and then um i ended up i got out of high school i went to junior college for one semester to play baseball and i got hurt so i got a job right i went right from that and i got a job um left college after i got hurt and got a job and there was a guy there that was a bow hunter right and so this guy Rick was he was a bow hunter and he uh was shooting compounds this would have been 88 right 1988 so Rick was a bow hunter and he's he was bringing in to work he's he'd gone to Montana and they hunted mule deer and he's bringing you know what what i thought were really big deer they they weren't but at that time i thought they were giant right and he's telling me how they went camping with a bunch of guys and they did this hunt and they saw elk and grizzlies and all this and i just i just got kind of intrigued in it and he told me at the time he's like you know if you ever want to try to shoot a bow i've got an extra bow you can try to shoot it so he he brought a bow and he let me shoot a little bit and um i kind of started getting hooked on it so at that point you know every day there was no internet back then so it was still magazines so every time i'd go to the grocery store it started looking at magazines and then um i want to say it was probably i changed jobs right i i was working at a car dealership so i went from one car dealership to another one and there was another bow hunter and this guy was a trad guy this guy and he's still you his name is Jim Boyagein right he's still he's a very good california hunter um he's old now but at the time you know to me in 88 he was an old guy and he was probably 40 you know a lot younger than i am right now right and um but he he told me you know if you want to do this um i've got an extra bow and he gave me a like a 1968 Ben Pearson right that was like 50 pounds and he gave me some arrows and he's like take this bow out shoot it and he started dragging me around took me to some archery shoots and stuff so that happened and then traditional bow hunter magazine came out and i started buying all the magazines and then it was one step after another it's like i was in it and you know i didn't i didn't need my mom's permission anymore i was just kind of growing up and everything and so at at back in those days that was probably late onset hunting right not like it is today and so i i kind of got my start with Jim and he just started dragging me around and it didn't really didn't really kill anything for five or six years but i hunted a lot and you know i went to some archery shoots and stuff and um i want to say it was probably christmas time of 1990 1991 i met Jerome right so Jerome and i have been friends all of this time and um at that time he was uh he was shooting in Onida right and so i would have been in 91 i would have been 22 years old so he would have been 20 right um he was shooting in Onida just like Uncle Ted right Onida instinctive with the release had long hair with the ponytail he he was shooting at i was shooting a um what was the bow i had right it was a hat field takedown right 60 pounds at 28 inches i was way overbowed for me at that time which is now all these years later that's what i shoot but um so we had these different bows but we were the same age right and so we kind of met at the archery shop and then funny enough there was a younger guy that worked at the archery shop part-time when he was graduating high school and everything and that's my friend Steve that i went to Kodiak with in who i'm going to Canada with next year so out of all the guys we knew there was three young guys Steve Jerome and myself yeah and one other guy Darren balls who Darren still hunts the hunts with a compound but there was the three of us and um it was just kind of a random thing like we weren't friends but i knew who they were they knew who i was and as random as can be i was christmas shopping at the mall and i see Jerome right with his girlfriend at the time and um he's like hey man i don't i know you and i was like i was like i think so like but i wasn't sure where and he's like you shoot archery right and i'm like yeah and he's like you want to go hunt some pigs i'm like hell yeah let's do that right and so now you know that's how we really became friends right and he just which is funny because i tell you how introverted he is like he was the reason that we're friends because he was he threw it out there like hey you want to go hunt pigs and i was like yeah let's go do that um so we ended up hanging out like we became buddies at that point and you know he had this old land cruiser i had my four granger we go we started out road hunting and then figured out how to get away from the roads and using boats and hiking and all this stuff and so we we really grew up together right we grew up and turned into men at the same time and learned how to hunt and then um we kind of went separate ways for a while right we we were really good friends for probably 10 years or so and then probably around 30 when i started having kids i went the other way right to be all about family for a while and um it wasn't until right before covid right so for like 20 years we didn't really hang out we didn't hang out really we didn't talk you know but when covid happened i was at the archery shop and i had bought i was curious about iLFs right now i had been shooting the same black widow ma2 for 15 years right i was curious about iLF i had seen some stuff on it i want to know what this is all about so i went to the archery shop and i bought a hoitsatori right told me just order it for me i don't care what it costs like yeah i i want this bow when i try it out so i get this hoitsatori and i didn't like it right it shot great but it felt like a compound so you you shot compound for a long time right it was heavy it was cold to the touch i didn't like the grip i had to spray paint at camo right because it was ugly all this stuff i just i didn't really like it you know and um the way i found so a backtrack for a second drum had started many many years before that probably in the early late 90s he started he transitioned to shooting recurbs and long bows okay but we weren't really friends at the time and he had started a company called ethics archery custom recurbs so drum invented the three spinning insert that's still alive today he invented that i'll tell you that sorry a second now his brother owns and runs the company today but drum invented that and um so part of that was he had the the inserts and he started building bows and he called them ethics archery customer recurbs and he just looked like hey did the drum just kind of go from hey i really like to bow hunt i'm going to try to start making bows or had he already kind of died than that no so he's he's an amazing craftsman first off right he's super talented and we we always joke around like i am a rough carpentry guy he's a finished carpentry guy right we don't have the same skill sets but what's funny is how he got started is he he really i i as like my dreams of bow hunting were glint st charles and even chuck right chuck adam's glint st charles guys going to alaska having adventures um you know those were my heroes back in the day leery d jones um and drum drum wanted to do the the africa thing like all his dreams centered around africa and i want to say like he's got the most impressive african trophy room that i've seen the people that i personally know yeah his house is amazing and so he started going over there and he you know he started we grew up right we became men and now we have jobs where you can do stuff and he started going to africa and he went over and did i think three or four african safaris with the compound he shot everything under the sun that he could afford that he could afford right yeah and he's like it's just not that big of a challenge anymore i want to up my game which many of us have done right i didn't because i started off there but many guys that hunt that bow hunt they start off compound hunting like yeah i want a little bit more of a challenge that was his story and so he was like i want a little bit more of a challenge i he builds custom guitars right well if i can build a custom acoustic guitar i can build a bow so he started researching how to do it and so he built himself i think the first one he built was a long bow and he took it to africa and he killed a bunch of stuff and he's like that was awesome and then he went now i'm going to build a custom bow with wood arrows right and so he kind of went down the rabbit hole so that's how he kind of got into building the bows this whole time i'm off i've got kids i'm hunting on my own i'm doing i went very isolated i say i did the unibomber thing i just did my thing um and um so in 2019 he decided to relaunch it he'd kind of i think he'd got frustrated working with his brother and his dad at ethics archery and he's like you know i want to do my own thing i want to rebrand it so he sold his interest in ethics to his brother he cashed out and he took the money and he's like i'm going to relaunch this whole website thing i'm going to i'm going to prepare myself for retirement and i'm going to really give it a go and so he came up with buona bows which buona if you go on an african safari master or something right like a master of your craft yeah exactly and so if you go on a safari the professional hunters call you buona right or big buona right it's like boss right and so he named it one of bows and so all of the bows not all but most of the bows have like some sort of african tribute to it so yeah i know the models have like different africanian yeah it started with the even like the logos that you guys have some of your t-shirt designs have like a different african game you all of that yeah and it's the tribute to his origin right that's how like we wouldn't have this had he not done all those hunts right and had he not had those experiences we wouldn't be doing this today so we really try to pay tribute to that so we've got the safari model was the first one that we did you know and there was the safari and then we you know which everybody knows what a safari is and then we he came out with we wanted to do a little bit more of a hunter model so there's the ascari which is like the soldier is what that right we came out with the ascari and then we did he decided he decided on his own he's like you know we need to do something really cool so he made the first royal safari and that's the highest line bow that we make it's gorgeous right there's still there's a lot of options you can pick but it's they start at 1,800 bucks that's a high-end level right he did the wrong and just to add to this like i had i got to shoot Brandon Brandon Lily's bow yeah what's it all right winter strong early sure yeah i shot that with the one with the or isn't it orange limbs yeah yeah um yeah just amazing at the recurve limbs that have cross cut camo and then we just did some orange bird side maple for them for that they were yeah the long boat i think this was after you got the orange limbs and put on there but man it's super cool what i love and i i know i'm interrupting but it's i hope it's a complimentary to the story you're telling you say like man like i um i love that generally the the models that you guys make or have like the traditional wood grain look and all that stuff but if somebody wants something a little radical and unique you guys happily accommodate it and it looks i mean it's the finesse and craft is really really beautiful and i i you know it's it's hard to get up close to a Buana bow because it's still a pretty fairly small company and in fact i got to look at Brandon's and see all that i was like oh man this is like this is real beautiful craftsmanship so so thank you first um and it is kind of hard to get a hold of them you know we're slowly moving east that's why i always enjoy doing podcasts with east coast guys even though like i'm a west coast guy like like through through um but like um Drew Kohl offers got one right from selway yeah we built him a bow and uh Drew's got a really cool one because he's like anything fancy i i want it like stripped down i think i might turn the video out because i think it's uh our bandwidth is low so if you can go back 30 seconds i'll edit it or something but um it was like getting all digitalized and so where we're um talking true yeah from selway okay i still got you though okay all right i'm gonna turn my video up as well okay yeah because i just i um sometimes the hotel we fees are a pain in the butt you know as you know they are like annoying so all right we should be good all right um so what i was saying is you know it's tough for guys to get a hold of them on the east coast but um you know Brandon's in Kentucky he's got one Drew Kohl offer from selway has one and um the bow we built for for Drew is is really kind of cool um it's a sleeper right Drew was like i really want i want one of your bows but i don't want anything fancy at all because i want like a straight diamondwood riser i want like brown glass like i don't want any engravings and i'm like i told him like Drew you know and i'm like Drew we're on the phone i'm like you don't want any of the cool stuff we do like how am i gonna make this cool and Drew's Drew's response to that was it's gonna be so old school that it's gonna just ooze coolness and i was like all right whatever man like you're both right i'll do what you want and so we found uh we got a piece of diamondwood so it's a manufactured piece of wood right so we super hard super heavy but not g 10 and that's so the one line in the sand i'm gonna back up here Jerome and i argue all the time about bow design and marketing all the time just like brothers and uh the line in the sand that Jerome drew was i'm not gonna do g 10 risers and the reason his reasoning behind that was um one it's doesn't have much soul to it right as a boyer it's really hard on tools so it tears up your blades it tears up all your sanding sanding equipment it's hard on your body right g 10's not the most fun media to work with and he's like you know what i just i don't want to do it i want to stick with custom wood product so diamondwood which we get from the rosewood shop in in Missouri it's a product that works really well for us it's super strong it's it's heavier than a natural wood but it's not g 10 um and it comes in all these awesome colors and they make that in a o sage color and so we got a piece of o sage colored diamondwood and we made him this bow with brown glass wood limbs and it looks then it could have been from the mid 80s you'd have no idea but it shoots fast it's got all modern techniques to it you know it's got a piece of carbon in between the lambs we did everything we could to soup it up um but it but it looks like a standard bow from the 80s or even 70s that's super man that's some seriousness nostalgia yeah it's pretty fun and so you know we did that and so you know we Brandon's was so we'll go back to Brandon's boat Brandon's bows totally opposite of that yeah loud not noisy as in like visually loud right yeah it's a hot rod right and so you really look at it right it's like you've got you've got the the pro stock hot rod versus the rat rod you know like they're totally different but they're still the same thing um you know the and both of those bows which is funny um is kind of the first bow the first bow that I really had input on design is that model bow which is probably the lamest name that we have which is the hunter right it's like you know we've got the safari the scari the kufa the royal and then there's the hunter sometimes that'd be original man well you know we talked about it and he drum it built um I think in 2021 or 2022 he had built just a streamlined version of a safari and so a safari so let me just talk about the models real quick and we'll we'll be able to bring it down yeah so a royal safari is every option that we have any wood that we can get whatever you want we'll do it that's taking that's that's going to chip boost and have in your car built right whatever you want you got it we'll do that and then a safari is roush Mustang right it's it's still it's got some stock options to it but it's really nice and so with a safari you can get any of the exotic woods you know we we do some some glass we do some glass accents to it we engrave track backs on one side we'll engraven the animal head on the other side you can mix exotic wood not as many options are available as the royal and then the askari is just a step down so the askari is going to be not the high-end exotic woods right but still pretty nice woods and so my askari i have an askari that you know i named that boat uncle charlie and that one is it's california walnut right so it's so it's a really nice wood it's gorgeous it's got some beautiful movement to it but it's not snake wood or it's not you know any of these woods that are uh it's not black and white ebony or it's not you know any of these that are that are more expensive and harder to get um can i ask what the name uh uncle charlie what's what's the question about that so is so it's really special uh the first custom bow that i ever had the opportunity to purchase was um a stocker custom recurve no my charlie fish rot right charlie's original owner and the founder of stocker and charlie lived about three hours north of me and the first bow that i was ever able to order custom i got it from him i had always dreamed about a black widow but i just i couldn't afford it you know and charlie had this model of bow which is which is funny our hunter model bow is designed after the model of bow that i bought from charlie is my first custom all very cool and so it would have been 94 i think it was 1994 i ordered this bow from charlie beshrat um which was my first custom and i had that bow for many years if anybody has it in tradland and you've got a custom bishwak custom bishwacker built for marxasser contact me i will buy it from you um that bow i loaned it to my brother-in-law and it disappeared but um charlie built me this bishwacker that he had and really you know you got to remember at this time i was 24 25 years old young guy not a lot of hunting experience and charlie let me go to his house and sleep on his couch hang out in his shop um took me to archery shoots and introduced me to guys like brian morris um like some really good mark give me a favor give me a favor and i'll just turn off the video part of their of your thing here there we go so no video now not that i was don't want to see your handsome face but um i think that'll help our idea so uh so you know charlie really as a young guy and i bought the cheapest bow that he built right the the cheapest bow i could get from him i bought it he made it with the care that he would make any of his high-end bows he let me sleep on his couch he invited me to go to the to the channel islands to hunt katalina and sanicrues introduced me to people and stuff right so charlie bishra is a very special person in my bow hunting history right charlie sells stalker to south cocks right we all know that's south has turned it into a monster probably probably the biggest bow company and trad behind black widow at this point um and uh while that transition was going on this guy brian morris who's a friend of ours amazing hunter brian's a friend of charlie as well brian's over at the shop and charlie had three pieces of this california claro walnut that south just didn't want and they were cut into the shape of like a violin charlie's dad used to build custom violins right wow and so there was these three big blocks of this claro walnut that south didn't want and charlie didn't want to throw away so so brian took him and and had him in storage for a decade so when i came in as um part owner in buana i'm at a shoot i run into brian right and brian tells me he goes hey i've got some wood that charlie had that south didn't want would you be interested in it and i was like you know you never turned down free exotic woods and i'm like yeah sure especially with that story behind it yeah and i'm like yeah sure you know whatever you've got just you know i'll take a look at it well he brings these blanks over and they were just perfect gorgeous been drying for a decade like they were prime and so i took them over to the shop and i showed them to drum and i'm like hey you know you think we could build something out of this and you know we we tested it for we tested the moisture level check for cracks and everything is like drums like no this is good we can we can run with this and so i built that bow or at that time drum built me that bow out of that wood from charlie shop right from all of that history and so i like to name my bows i give them nicknames so what else could i name it but uncle charlie right so that's my that bow is my true that bow is my walking talking tribute to charlie bicharat i've killed animals from alaska to illinois with that thing right north the south oh man that's awesome i love a good a good nostalgic story like that yeah you know it's it's still it's you know it's probably not my favorite bow i don't know it's hard that might be my favorite bow right at least in the heart you know i've got other bones that that have a lot of meaning to me from for other reasons whether i was you know part of the design or i built it myself or whatever but but uncle charlie is the one like uncle charlie is like there's it seems like there's a higher chance that i'm going to kill something really nice if i have that bow in my hand do you have one do you have a bow like that that just happens to be the good the lucky charm man i mean i've got i've got i've got i've definitely have a rifle like that um yeah that like i was the first rifle my grandfather um he bought it for me for 75 bucks but it's an it's an old seven millimeter mouser okay it's like that i you know i can tell you that the the snakey bow i built for myself last winter early this spring um is my favorite bow but then again i can also tell you that like maybe the most fun to shoot is like my blackwood opsa you know like which one do i like better i like the oce i like the snakey one that i built myself because it's i think it was like the first successful snakey oceage self bow i made it's with it's within target weight um it's not the cleanest finish because i was like oh it's for myself i don't have to get all the finished on perfect and he's that nature it's definitely like the my favorite bow but there's also something that's like you know i pick up like that blackwood opsa and it feels like i'm cheating a little bit um and that you know that those are those things uh that that definitely um you know there's there's the joy of shooting but there's also like a nostalgia thing where there's a a story to it and i think i think we're allowed to have that evolve over time too though yeah i agree with that you know it's kind of funny like with uncle charlie if if i'm paying money right and you just went to canada i really want to talk about that trip but if i'm paying money to go hunt somewhere or if i'm doing a shoot and i know we're gonna bet for cash i'm shooting that bow you know it's like that's the bow i'm shooting i shoot at the best it's it's not technically the best boat bow i have you know and i've chucked it i've thrown it into boats i've thrown it across rivers i've dropped it down i've dropped it down cliffs i've fallen on it it's it's spray painted it's still it's it's my favorite right it's like that's the one yeah so yeah so you know that's that's where that's where that whole story goes off the rails is i could talk about that bow all and tell stories about hunts with that bow for hours that's awesome i mean that's that's how i mean it should be that way right if you i don't know i feel like if i wasn't that fond of a bow that i had hanging on the wall it's it's time to get rid of it you know sell it gift it donate it you know that type of thing if it's not i don't know and my wife she was trying to do some minimalist thing like a few years ago and there's some i think it's like a Japanese designer something's like if it doesn't spark joy you know get rid of it or something you know some hippie dippy stuff like rub two crystals together and like find out what you like but um yeah i think it's like oh you've got you know these beautiful pieces of like craftsmanship and whether they look beautiful or they shoot well or or they just feel right for your hand um the ones that don't you know i mean it's great they're collecting dust in the wall i guess teach their own but i'm also kind of like you know i think this bow is awesome but it might not be awesome for me and yeah that's what i might make a pivot you know what's funny is i have because of the bow company i have the opportunity to shoot any bow that i want that we build right it's like mm-hmm i can i can build out of any wood i want i can make it however i want all of that stuff i've got four bows out of all the bows that i personally own i've got four bows that i will never sell i've got my 1992 black widow right it's taking apart it's not even on the rack it's taking apart it's in my closet hiding in the dark um that one because it was i shot my first pope and young deer with it that's awesome i've got uncle charlie not going anywhere right um i've got a lot of bows like i've given bows to friends i've just sent them to people like hey test this out nice stuff um and i don't care it's like i don't care if it's a thousand dollar bow go shoot it right um but the black widow uncle charlie aren't going anywhere the other two are bows that joron built for me as surprise gifts and um can't get rid of those right my best friend built a bow for me as a gift um one of them is a black and white ebony royal safari that's got both carbon fiber recurve limbs and uh some black and white ebony longbow limbs it's the best bow we make and he made it and would not allow me to pay him for it right i was like this is this is too much and he's like nope right this is it my gift to you and the other one is he built me a um for if he can ever get me to go to africa he built me a dangerous game bow um it's gorgeous it's so beautiful 65 pounds at 28 um you know so with my draw it's probably 66 67 and um you know shoot about a 700 grain arrow out of it um he built me that dangerous game bow that that one's not going anywhere anywhere either so you know i i think it's cool to have bows that mean something to you and that's that's something that nobody nobody is going to sit around and talk for probably 20 minutes that we've just talked about these special bows about their 1998 point right yeah or two thousand and three matthews right you don't have that and that's one of the really beautiful pieces of engineering right and there's cool stories with them but like they are kind of soulless pieces of machinery right there's not life and energy and memory inside each and every piece in my opinion and i mean i own a compound i mean i haven't used it for i think four years it's my my closet but i get it it's a great tool beautiful piece of engineering but it's not it's not alive i guess yeah i don't know how to put it to articulate that but yeah i get it so that's i you know that's to me that's one of the things i get really passionate about with traditional archery and and why i just love it so much because you know it it was alive right so whatever would you pick and that's one of the reasons we don't do G10 right but it was a living it was a living breathing thing and we can craft it into something that you can carry and take on any adventure you want to go on and so that's why we say you know they're bonobos built for adventure right whatever the adventure you want to go on is we'll build you about for it so i know we totally went off on a tangent i don't even know what we were talking about oh i love it man i but first of all i've got the memory of a very addressed as got the merit of a goldfish but like i love it that's how it's how it's how this supposed to be it's supposed to be organic we're yeah we're two guys talking about some pretty cool passions and i love it yeah man i love the fact that you guys not only are you know if smooth shooting high performing bows but like just like you've mentioned a lot of it right a lot of the exotic woods that are being inlaid with this in addition to some carbon right some carbon fiber in the limbs and they're true works of art i mean i i don't know what next time i'm out in cali or something i don't have to look i know you live a little bit north of where i usually go down to work some i go to socal but yeah we'll have to link up on all the time i've got a territory rep down there we can we can make that work yeah man it'd be great it'd be awesome um and i know like i've i've followed you know the bawanna bows um instagram page for quite a while and so like drums photos from like the african trips are pretty doggone impressive right like he obviously has a passion for being down there i i think i was i can't remember who i was talking about it might have been actually Brandon a little bit um because he and his lady just got back from uh south africa like last month and we were talking about that a little bit and i was like man i used i spent a lot of time in africa but i was usually chasing bad guys um and in a former life and um and my wife did like aid work and stuff down there and like early 20s so we're both very well versed in africa and we really actually want to you know our kids have not been our kids one of them was born in europe they both lived in europe and all this stuff's a very bold trap i mean my wife and kids are in europe right now actually on holiday and work work was not allowing me to to go but um you know visiting old friends and these that near shawover but man i want to get our kids to the continent and things that nature and i would love to do like safari family trip but i'll also spend two or three days me being selfish and chasing cool animals with my with my stick bow yeah um but i'm more so like you man like i'm gonna get ready to make my first Alaska trip here and as you know this we've talked about it quite a bit because you went to to Kodiak not long ago but um i'll be heading out there in just a couple of weeks or three weeks now and man i i feel like i have way more recalling to go to Alaska to hunt say caribou or blacktail or spot black bears or something like that or someday to be dreamy and chase moose more so than african game and i i don't know why that is and maybe i'll change after i go to africa or after i go to take alaskan come back but i i certainly feel more called to like north american species um then than africa but as far as making a family trip and stuff i would love to get them to africa you know drum loves africa he's very very passionate about it and super knowledgeable um you know everything we do almost everything we do in the company we try to throw that tribute to it um i'm a what i am a western guy and i was gonna say isn't that how you and i originally started talking and became friends was so i think that's what it was man to be honest i think it was because uh yeah i i can see something on the conscience trip yeah oh dude you're in for such a treat man like i i was talking to i think it's just boss lady here and i was like even if i don't come back with a deer right i mean it's a blacktail there it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be super cool right but it's not like you're bringing back you know like 400 pounds a meat or anything it's a cool adventure but it's the fact that i have fellowship with these guys and most of them are which are gray bears have been doing this for decades at this point it's the fellowship and like man i just want to sit next to and learn through osmosis it's it's gonna be man i can't i'm stoked you you were in for such a wild ride right so um i have so many questions so this about you man this this podcast is about you don't steal your own spotlight or don't don't give me your spotlight no i am i am happy to give you the spotlight and and um i am so excited for you and this is what this is how we really became friends is having this conversation and i think i i think i encouraged you to go right um yeah i think we i had actually like picked your brain on it to be honest yeah so i went it was such a cool scenario where like burkhart had posted a thing that there was gonna be an opening and i messaged him and i hadn't talked to burkh i had met him at etar last year how are you going with him yeah he's such a nice guy dude he's great he's he's answered like he answers any phone call or text message i send him and everything like he and echal are both in you know in alaska chase and moose right now yeah um i'm super stoked for them both both those guys actually have answered any call or text message or any question i've ever had um they're great stewards of the craft and of the sport of traditional artistry and all that stuff money grinding has been the same way yeah i mean that guy is just as good as gold um but yeah i mean he was like oh sorry i think we're full you know he called me and then i was like all right no problem i just thought you know try my luck he saw that there was an opening and he calls me very next day he goes are you still interested i was like yes sir he's like you're in and i put down my deposit like as soon as the guys at it um home or ocean sent me an email i was super i just i was like i'm gonna get to hang out with these guys have been doing this many times and everything else and learn so much from them like uh man that it's an irreplaceable opportunity so it's so much fun right and like just the flight from Kodiak city so you guys are going to probably be hunting Olga Bay right so yeah i guess oh yeah oh yeah oh shoot you some on expence um so what's funny is my my trip to Kodiak was really kind of like my coming out like nationally in Trad because i was doing this stuff and i knew a lot of guys but when i when i decided to go to Kodiak with Steve and it was just a random thing our trip ended up much like yours is there was um a couple of cancellations and so Steve messaged me he's like hey you know there's two spots opened up the peak of the rut can you go and so you know i talked to Alicia and she's like you know she's like you should do it when i told her about it she's like you should do it and i'm like wow it's expensive she's do you have the money i said yeah you should do it well it's a lot of ways days away from home do you have the PTO time i said yeah she's you should do it like every time i tried to give her an house you know she's like no you you need to do this and so um it was really kind of funny you got to go up there and um i had reached out to Brian Burkhardt right and he had been in he didn't message me back i messaged him on instagram right and i messaged him like hey i'm gonna go to Alaska for the first time can can you have any you know tips i think is how i asked it i didn't hear from him for weeks and finally he messaged me back and he's like hey you know i have time to talk if you do so i call him and i'm like hey thanks for taking my call i just have a couple questions no problem i'm just sitting here in the anchorage airport with Monty Brownie we just came out from moose hunting and i'm like are you kidding he's like yeah he goes we we're on layover we got nothing to do whatever you want to talk about let's talk about it and he just spent time with me right and Monty's chiming in and i i've never met him face to face right and so you know he was just great and um you know i was just a Compton member and he treated me like a friend and i ended up reaching out to brian kolger who was going right before i was you know who's one of the best bow hunters at montana has ever seen aside from shafe and you know and so brian and i talked a little bit and he was just very very just giving up his information that he had and so then i went and i got to do the hunt and because i did that hunt it's like now i get to have educated conversations with you right and other i've i've told since 2021 i probably talk to 10 different guys about going on that and what to expect and and what you're gonna get to do as an adventure and then heard their stories when they come back i would have never had that opportunity had i not gone on that particular hunt right and in contrast we've kind of changed the tables a little bit because you're going up to sick flingers next year right so and i am and so that was one of the things i wanted to know because you just need that right oh yeah man it's a great experience yeah it's it's really great um ryan ryan ryan ryan der der der der lago anyways ryan the outfitter up there has a great setup this guy there's super stellar guys there's plenty of big bears um i didn't see a single color phase uh i didn't have my heart set on color phase but the other 200s in camp both saw color phase bears um and yeah i you know i i didn't get a booner but i walked away with a 300 plus pound bear and i'm super i mean i was super stoked yeah i couldn't have been average would you what it measure out at did you measure the sky uh yes uh i haven't got the skull um but the the hide was squared at six one but i've got to get the skull measured so yeah i mean i was i was super happy about it man so so we're going up when we do that trip it's kind of fun so it was i reached out to my friend steve and i'm like hey do you want to go hmm and he's like ask me about it so we have a lot of color phase bears here in california and like my dream bear is a big popin young jet black and we can really they're not that many of them around here they're all color phase right man you sent me some some videos on text message a couple weeks ago of some beautiful color phase bears i was jealous we've got some nice bears up here um but you know i wanted to go to stick flingers and so i reached out to steve and then we ended up i posted something on it on instagram and so ryan barnewell from texas he guides for scottie at top of tex ryan's going with us with another buddy of his from texas so we're all going to fly into fargo and rent a truck and drive up there together oh there you all come in yes so excited and it's not crazy expensive then again i think his prices are tremendously competitive yeah i think so too and yeah man i was like actually i was like hey man i was like i'll book for next year and he's like oh man he's like i'm actually booked till 27 at this point i was like well put me on the label yeah wow yeah i i was very close to being able to go the week that you went and it just it didn't work out with work otherwise i would have gone for that spring hunt this year i would have loved to be able to share camp with you that had been fun but what are the dates that you guys are going to codyak i think uh let's see here i i know i'm flying out of here on the 18th of october okay and i think flying back home on the 28th yeah that's about right ten days you give yourself a day on each end yeah i think i give myself a cushion each day at this point so man it's so much fun you get that phone call that okay we've got a window to fly and you go down to the docks and go through that whole process and just have you ever flown in a float plane where they take off and land on the water no man i got the cool little helicopters and do all that stuff back when i was cool and but never you know doing this so i'm like super stoked start you know look at float planes and these little these little boogers dude that is like taking off and landing on the water is that's worth the price of admission to that whole hunt right there i bet and then you just fly over the heart of codyak you know and you guys are going to be there if you're there that that third week of october you're going to be getting some really good rut action not the heaviest part of the rut but i actually think that's better um if i were to go again i would go the week that you're going probably the week after because you're going to get more bucks that are cruising for those and then um now you're limited to one one deer this time right yeah yeah i think so at one point it was three that it was two now it's exactly three and i shot i shot two but having one is kind of the way to go i would highly recommend having the cash in your pocket to buy a caribou tag you know work hard to the same thing because because the home erosion guys they they can print a tag there um and they're like it's not something they care they've got caribou yeah yeah so they the guys killed two caribou well we were out hunting one day and they barbecued the rips for us for at night right it's cool um yeah super awesome but um they're they're usually if the caribou are in range they're they're do you can get them they're in the flats most of time um especially the time of year you're going i think the tag is 600 bucks and then i think they charge you a fee on the boat if you kill one but um for even if it was a thousand dollars all in you can't go do a kit caribou hunt for that no kidding you know and um and they're delicious uh one of those things i'd ask for forgiveness rather than permission but um you know take a grunt tube we did really well we did really well decoying and i was actually gonna yeah i mean we can talk about on here i was gonna ask your pick your brain on it because let's talk about it on here because guys might go and want to know yeah man so i was going to read i was i've been i've done a lot of research on it and um a lot of folks actually do um give praise to the decoys like the little two-dimensional i think they're called was it Montana decoys or something like that we took we each had a Montana decoy that we carried right and we would always set them up so when you go up there you're gonna hunt with a partner right you don't really go off solo on Kodiak island um yeah i imagine with all the the big rizz around i probably would rather yeah but at Homer you know with you're hunting with Homer um you hunt with a buddy and and it's a great way to do it it's awesome right um and plus the country is so big having two guys glassing it just works um we we each took a Montana decoy and we'd set them up now what we found and and you're gonna try it and test it but what we found is if we set up those decoys below an elevation of the bucks they would come in if we set them up above the decoys they weren't gonna put the effort in they're like eh i can find another dough closer that i don't have to climb that hill for you know and you're kind of like the true hardy is dumb man i'm not doing this yeah they're like nah it reeks of effort i'm not doing that um so you know set up below and and they'll probably come in the the buck that i shot it was late afternoon like three o'clock or something and um we we ended up seeing some um we ended up seeing some deer maybe a hundred feet elevation above us or so in another hundred yards away from us and we popped up the decoys and hit a grunt tube and and that buck came on a string off that mountain right down right down into the pocket where where i could get a shot at it um i did not make the greatest shot in the world on him and i ended up um losing that buck due to freezing cold nights we had to go back to the boat they told us we're we're tracking it in the dark in the snow and they said all right you guys either got to come back to the boat or you got to stay the night we're like uh we're yeah i mean if you haven't packed it's hitting all that stuff and you know i don't know you know big riz country yeah um i did it so yeah no so we we ended up going out and then with the weather we couldn't go back into that spot for a couple of days and so we ended up losing that buck i was pretty bummed about it but um steve shot a nice popin young buck in the same area two days later so he was the benefit of it but setting up those decoys they really work they're they're curious little animals right and so um and we sat right next to them we did not hide right we had our camel on we set them up and we would kind of use the decoy as like a ground blind right we'd just sit behind it a little bit and shoot off the shoot either over it or off the sides and um steve had his shot at 20 yards like easy 20 yard shot i've seen and and i know a lot of guys that have got much closer shots than we did um but you know that's that's the experience that we had um grunt tube works well um it's awesome you're gonna you're gonna see i i say it this way like if a guy were to go on that hunt with a rifle you could shoot a uh booner easy right i i've heard that yeah you're going to code you had to get a black till you're definitely get a deer and it's like oh yeah oh that's awesome man i'm super stoked yeah you're good you're taking long shots i'm like oh yeah like 25 yards tops not 25 yards so i came home with a dough i shot a dough at 42 yards of the last day right because i had lost spoke yeah but you're a way better shot than me mark so well thank you uh i don't know i don't always feel like it i can have a nice broad spot broadside less than 20 yards shot i'm i'll be great sure that's your nature cooperate i would think with a week's time that you're gonna get that opportunity right um we were steve was being pretty picky he wanted uh a popen young buck popen young's 80 inches and he shot i want to say an 88 boona crockett's a hundred inches right um so i mean 88 is a fork and horn with i guards right you're gonna be or maybe it may probably a three by three with i guards 80 is gonna be a fork and horn with i guards people talk about them being little animals they are not little animals right they're heavy um they and you're the time of year you're going they're gonna probably have two inches of code on them so they look stockier than they are i heard i've heard that they i mean i've just seen videos right i've never seen uh you know it's like a black tail but i've heard there's stout stout little guys they are they're not as long as say like a white tail and definitely not like a mulee but they're they're stockier yeah they're and they're gorgeous right they're just beautiful deer i think it's the most handsome deer out of all the species right um you know look for one with a double throat patch or you know something find one that is special to you you've got a week in one you know you can only take one right now because of the winter kill of a couple years ago right you've got a week like really look at them and and don't don't the first couple days like don't get don't feel the pressure right like enjoy it take it in um you know and then there's big bears around we never saw a bear on the ground we saw bears from the boat four times or something we saw bears from the airplane going in and out there was one one guy from i think he was from mrs. Sippy who was on the boat with us that poor guy saw a bear within a hundred yards like four or five times like almost every day he'd come back oh this white is a sheet oh man i saw a bear it was right here and you know he poor guy Jared was freaked out um so you might you might see him you might not we didn't get to um but you know you can't look at a you can't look at a map of that island they'd say oh you know i'm a i'm in pretty good shape i can hike you know i can hike a mile every hour in the mountains or an hour every 45 minutes it's like no man those older patches it can take you an hour to go a couple hundred yards i've i've heard that like the ground a squishy the alder devil's club and some these other things i've heard gnarly right like yeah yeah it's it's it's the most awesome place right so just soak it up enjoy it um you know you're gonna get an opportunity to deer i came home with a doe just because i wanted some meat um and you know we had we had a rough go of it nobody i think there was one guy that shot two deer and he had a rifle everybody that was bow hunting got one but oh believe me if i wasn't if i wasn't going up there with like the Compton crew i would take a rifle with me in addition to my bow just so that i could be like okay it's the last day i'm going home with some antlers in me yeah um but i think you're gonna do well yeah i think i might get some frowny faces from the smart guys at Compton no i doubt i doubt it you know they probably i mean they're not very open-minded they would be like oh well i mean like how often do most people get to go to Alaska and do this i'm like okay yeah right well especially if it's your first time right if it's your first time it's like you want to get something it's expensive you know it's not cheap right and i'm away from the family but um you know i shot a really nice non-typical buck right really nice non-typical um and i you know i made it was a 36 yard shot and i would not have shot it that far if it wasn't the non-typical that i shot at right um but i hit him he was quartering away so i hit him a little bit far back and um we just tracked him for a long wait he got bumped by a gris which pushed him further and then it got through from this right and i don't i don't even care that i didn't bring that buck home i know the bear ate him right yeah the bear ate him it didn't go to waste um i shot that dough i was sitting shoulder to shoulder with one of my best friends when he shoots a pope and young buck i'm i'm happy right that's a pretty magical trip in my mind man yeah 100 right and so i i was stoked with it um you know i think adventure trips like that like they would go into slick stick cleaners next year um you know we can't bait here in California and i've always been curious about it and it's like you know what i've got a corporate job i've got a little bit of money i can do these things now i'm gonna go i just i i know i'm gonna go do it yeah that's my mindset now right like i i find i think i've just reached the age where one like i my kids are old enough to where they're not toddlers anymore to where i don't feel as bad for going on a trip my wife and i have done great at like you know communicating and making sure each other are going you know doing things that are important to us as individuals but also then subsequently as a couple and the other part is like we're at an age now where we we probably a lot of us can have might have the means from a financial standpoint to do an adventure a year or every other year or what have you right or if you're like bird cart and you go on like ten a year i don't know but um yeah a little bit bigger corporate job than we have yeah yeah he's way bigger big shot than we are um so so that's just it you know and now this year like i you know obviously i'm doing i did the stick flingers thing and then i'm gonna go to Kodiak now i already had the Kodiak i think i booked that thing and like early this year the stick flingers was like a cancellation type of thing where they offered a really good deal a discounted price i mean they knocked off like darn near a grand on the trip and it was like but man my wife is amazing she she blessed off on it and was like go do it but i do hunt over bait here north carolina um when i what was cool up there with the stick flingers guys man i talked to a guy who was up there on the spring hunt and he said over six days he saw 64 bear isn't that nuts like i want to do that yeah i want to do that it's crazy i mean so my first that first night and i did read i think i actually just came out so um like last week was the bear hunt recap on the on the podcast but yeah the first night i only saw a satin cubs and i sat in you know i was like six or seven hours in the stand i was like oh this is not no bueno okay like i was that was a little discouraged yeah but the other two hunters camp one saw nine and the other saw ten yeah i was like okay it's just it just happens to be the stand i'm at whether it was wind or whatever like they're here and then the next night i think i saw six or seven and the other hunter saw like around ten also um so some of them and they both had seen good bears definitely shooter bears um some color phase bears so i mean man like the density is cool and it's it's just the opportunity to sit and observe them like all the vocalizations and everything that i heard up there is is really good and you're not going to do that on a spot in stock hunt right so no not at all right and plus like it's the opportunity to know that you can and steal some patience and make it really good like that that now i ended up shooting a sal uh that i thought with a boar but she was so big she she did have kenkels um yeah like i thought i was almost certain it was a boar i mean when i threw an arrow at her um but man like i watched that bear for 45 minutes before i drew my go back and how far was that shot 12 yards oh that's so cool like that that is you can that's awesome like i i've killed a i've never killed a bear that close i've had bears that close but i've never killed a bear that close both i've got two nice bears they're both about 20 yards but i've killed several deer in the single digits several uh black tail yeah Pacific hybrids in the middle i had it i had at least five bear walk right underneath my stand that's so right and it was just neat oh yeah you're just like they they are again i think they're for me they're the funnest animal to observe at least no for sure they're they're awesome you know and um it's funny all of my buddies that know me like i like to shoot right i i i like to shoot especially when the shot feels good and so they're all like we're not even gonna let you take arrows the first day and i was like come on like let me take some arrows you know but they know me like mark is gonna fill this tag on day one if it's you're going in the spring right yeah we're doing we're going um the second week of june this the spring hunt is supposed to be way more productive in the fall um like i mean that's what the parker the guides and everybody would say man yep like we see almost twice as many bear in the spring we do the fall um it's also like i mean like the weather's gonna be cooler like i would prefer to do a spring than fall again because like the weather's cooler you're i mean it was it was darn near it was kind of hot to be honest like we're there you know it's what's august so it was still hot there were bugs you know all that like yeah man it's just like like right now i'm hunting in both seasons started here in north carolina on the beginning of september and it's hot as hell right now and the bugs are terrible i i yeah i never prefer to be you know like below like in the 40s or something like that when i'm honey yeah so yeah i agree i i hunt california i'm used to hunting when it's hot but yeah i might do this it's like my meal deer yeah yeah uh my biggest thing i'm looking forward to on this on this uh stick flinger hunt is that steve has never shot a bear oh right i'll be great so i'm going up here with one of my best friends and now i get to take i get to take him somewhere for his first right and uh you know he's never shot a bear before and it's funny he's like well you know i i don't really want the meat i'll probably donate the meat and i'm like whoa whoa whoa like dude bear is delicious oh it's wonderful and i'm like we're gonna bring that shit back and he's like well it's expensive and i was like well no wait a second it's not expensive to bring it back now he usually flies uh alaskan airlines mm-hmm i fly united a lot right and so i've gotten premier status it's like i can take 375 pound bags per person i'm like we're bringing it back you know it's like for reference i had to include so meat yeah in school i had 140 pounds and it cost me 400 bucks um so i told him i said i'm gonna book the tickets with united and we're gonna each take our duffel bag and we're gonna each bring back you know 150 pounds we'll take up to 150 pounds each and it's not going to cost us anything because of my status with united thank you to my corporate job right yeah yeah and that's just it man so the unfortunate thing to me is that i traveled for four days before it flew up to to win it yeah so i had like i already had luggage and otherwise i wouldn't have had to pay a dime or i would pay maybe for one one luggage fee which would have been like a hundred bucks uh otherwise it had been yeah yeah that's awesome man i'm excited that's i'm excited to go up there and do that i'm glad that you got to do it um i'm really glad that you're getting to go do that cody i can't like that that is once you do that hunt you will that's all you'll think about it's going back right like i i'll go back there like i mean between like talking to like mommy and yeah brian and jim and like all those guys that go up there quite a bit i'm just like man or like yeah i just finished like last month we're finished um mommy browning's diy alaska yukon moose honey book i probably mixed up all the words but man i've always thought that this had to be like a forty thousand dollar trip and i'll be be clear that's not ever going to be in my my wheelhouse yeah i mean either um and he's like yeah i mean yeah if you go with a big outfitter and all this stuff up there but he made it he made me realize that it's obtainable maybe not every year but it's obtainable like not every other not every year because one maybe it's a cost but also the fact that they go up there and spend like three three plus weeks straight up there and that that's that's a hard sell for work and the misses but yeah every couple years it could be certainly doable you know yeah i've been talking to jimmy cat a little bit about it you know and um i would really like to go do that at some point and you know that brian's gonna have to do a 60th anniversary of the little delta hunt coming up in a couple years right and so they did that the few years back like they're gonna have to do that so you know i'm gonna just kind of raise my hand if if they need somebody to go i'm willing to do it you're willing to take one for the team right you know somebody's got to um that's the next step on the adventure right it's like and those guys have such a good time up there doing it i i love to listen to their podcasts where they're sitting around the fire oh it's great yeah i think they did that for like the broken i i it was either it was either stickboys or broken arrow i don't remember that was good i work art and i are playing on doing that on this this this Kodiak comp that we've got you know what's cool about the Kodiak and and i know i keep going back to it but it's that cool of a hunt is um now i went on the old boat you're going on the new boat which is going to be much nicer than the old one but i went on the old boat and you you get a feeling after a little bit you yours and some of the coolest times that you're going to have on this entire hunt do not happen while you're hunting they're the times that you have when you're having fellowship and you're hanging out with the guys and you're sharing a meal or eating something or you know and i like to drink right i didn't drink that much on the trip because we're just having so much fun like just chit chatting and i might have drank two beers in a week you know but you know you're not it's not a party atmosphere it's just this good bonded feeling that you get and so for me i'm sitting in this chair and i took a photo of it right i'm sitting in i'm sitting in one of the the kitchen tables in this seat and i i just had the thought right like how many of the icons of our sport have sat in this exact spot on this exact like jeff red ashbell glint st charles right like you just start naming them they're a brine bird cart right you know brine has been there a bunch of times you start thinking like all of the people that have had this exact same experience and you sit there and you drink your coffee in the morning you just look around and you're like this is what it's all about right it's not about the gripping grin it's not definitely not about the heavy pack outs right it's not about making the amazing shot posting it on instagram it's about sitting having a cup of coffee in a place that even with all the people that have done that you're still a handful of people that do what we do have had that experience and you sit there and you take that all in you're like this is absolutely worth the price of admission you know so i'm excited for you i can't wait to hear about it good dude well man i know we're wrapping up on well for me on bedtime on this and what's next what's next for bonobos do you think so i can talk about proteac all day and night yeah i know you're fine but um what's next bonobos you know the the biggest thing that i've got to put out there and i promised to drum maybe i threatened to drum i don't know you choose when you hear it um but i i guaranteed him 100 that i would let everybody know what a stud drum is so you know i just have to say that drums are stud oh he's he's the brains he's the beauty he's the bronze oh yeah he's all of it right he's the man the myth the legend so um you know and humble and humbled oh yeah very humbled but no so we uh we try to come out with something new every year right we've since 2019 we tried to introduce something new every year um so in 23 it was a hunter model and 23 we also came out with a one piece the kufa longbow this year we cut that thing in half and we started doing the two-piece longbow um so really like right now we we're just it's this time of year that we start kicking around like what's the new thing for us um so i don't know i would say stay tuned um i did design a new t-shirt right i started doing that but as far as the bows i don't i don't know we're kind of we did a lot of carbon limbs for a couple of years and we're we're starting to back away from that you know the the three to five feet a second of performance you get out of it it just it doesn't make you happy when you look at it compared to a beautiful set of like desert ironwood or black and white ebony or something so we're kind of backing away from that um there's something will come out i don't know what it's going to be yet um well no you know i am 100 line we uh Jerome did this on himself i did not i did not pressure him he's going to get all the credit for it and i might get in trouble for talking about it but he's a little better like from the time we recorded time it publishes it's like a month so oh sweet he probably it's he's never ready for me to talk about things he's like damn it he's he talked about it now i gotta do it um we Jerome designed a new wedge and we came out with a new wood limb i've been testing him for a while i posted very few pictures of it um we came out with a new limb that's got wood veneers instead of carbon so it's it's not like a super curve but it's got more reflex deflex to it on the longbow it's got more more figure to it on a recurve and they shoot as fast as a carbon-limbed recurver longbow that we build that's awesome so we're calling it the speed limb right and so it's kind of funny like if you look at a longbow strung up from the side it almost has like a horse bow shape to it right they just come out more vertical from the riser before they flex back um for me like i'm still getting used to the aesthetics of it man they're fast right so like my longbow limbs shoot as fast as my carbon recurve limbs on uncle charlie charlie right and you know so it's a and it's a longbow i don't need a stringer right it's quieter you know there's there's all the benefits of a longbow and the speed of recurve i'm like all right i can get into this so um that's what we're doing right now um we haven't sold any we we built several test sets uh we haven't sold any yet i don't know what we're gonna sell them for um we'll kind of cross that bridge when somebody wants some um but i'm gonna take them out i i've got those limbs on uncle charlie's riser so i get home on thursday from arizona and i'm gonna head straight to the mountains um i got i'm gonna give away my secrets i just got today permission to hunt a new piece of private land that's got a smoker buck on it um it's rifle season going on in california right now so i'm gonna go home and and hit that with the the uh the rub was i can hunt this private land but i can only use my trad bow and i was like i'll shoot that buck with a rifle and they're like nope so so i'm gonna get home i'm gonna do my friday morning meetings i'm gonna go hunt that buck for a few days and hopefully well i hope i get a big cheesy grip and grin on a text message you know you might get one it probably won't see it online i i don't post many of my animals online anymore i just text message make it vanish after a minute like yeah no i'm fine with that but my thing is is if i can't take a professional grade photo of an animal i'm not gonna share it yeah you know yeah i got a friend one of my friends in belgian where he was like man he was like the animal deserves if you're gonna commemorate the memory and a photograph make it look like you're trying to do that and not just trying to like show you know murder so i do a lot of photos of the antlers in my back pack i do that because it shows here's the animal right here's the class you can you can you can use your imagination a little bit but i get so disgusted by and i have friends that do this i get so disgusted from seeing photos with you know bloody rib cages and tongues hanging out and just you know why post that right it just fueled the fire for the people that want to stop us from doing this and um you know instagram's bad facebook's worse so i just i don't post them and i get i get harassed like drew cold offers one of the guys that harasses me the most he's like just send me the picture you know and um so nobody will if if i get this bucket this book is would be the biggest buck i've ever shot right and he's and he's in california so he's a fantastic buck i don't know if i can do it um i've i've got a couple of really good bucks in the high country i'm chasing so um i'm going to give this i i have permission to hunt this private land i'm going to take advantage of that um if that doesn't work out or even if it does work out um i have a second tag i'll be in the high country until the end of the month end of october um and then after that it's bares till christmas time so hopefully there'll be something coming from me i i would love to fill a tag um you know with one of our bows but i'll be shooting those speed limbs this weekend so it might be the first animal take with those new limbs so i don't know we'll we'll see um but i don't know you know it just it's kind of a weird it's a weird year with the election it's stuff people don't have extra money yeah sales and the peace sales have slowed down you know it just so it's a little bit of a weird year business-wise but um you know i'm ready to go back out and get after it i got my butt kicked for eight days on my last hunt so hopefully this time will go a little better i sure hope so man i'm excited for you i i mean just just the opportunity to hopefully get some eyes on a buck of that caliber it's going to be really great too man's and i know you appreciate those things so i've only seen him i've only seen him on cell phone pictures so the guy that owns the land sent me a picture he's like hey is this a good is this a good one but um he's a really nice he he looks from from the photo i saw looks like a really nice probably symmetrical four by four mulee with some nice mass to him so um i've killed a couple four by four four by four like so like eastern ten point right four by four with i guards yeah really tough to come by out here um especially really big ones this one i don't i don't i mean i'm pretty good at field judging i'm gonna guess he's easy-popping young right absolute easy-popping young buck i'm guessing probably 160 to 170 range right nice buck nice buck i've you know we just don't get them out here so um i'm gonna go up and and i will chop wood i will pull weeds whatever it takes for me to be able to hunt that property i'm gonna go do it so so we'll see what happens you might get a picture me gardening that's fine too hey man so where can uh folks on the the radio ways find you and wana bows so we we're on instagram two ways um if you go to instagram and it you go to wana bows b w a and a bows on instagram that is the page that drum runs and it's almost exclusively bow builds so it'll be everything from running our cnc machine or laying up bows or picking out woods just going through the process that's where you find those things there's very little hunting my page is california underscore tradbo underscore hunter and that's where all the nonsense happens all the all the trad lifestyle the 3d shoots the hunting the goofing around um that all happens on that page um and then you know we've got our website which is www blanabose.com and then we've got a youtube page it's embarrassing doesn't have very much on it but if people request it we'll put more there but the main way to find out what we're doing is going to be instagram and then um the website direct and then my cell phone number and drum cell phone number are both on there um if you have questions you want to talk about um bows or builds um even if it's another builder and you want to ask a question of it um reach out to me i will answer those questions for you without a problem uh the last way the probably the hardest way to get answers is our email address which is bonabose@gmail.com so that's the info hopefully somebody out there um we'll reach out man awesome and i will also include all that in the show notes so where folks can reach you uh if they don't have if they've got the uh short memory like me and no notepad um and that's all going to be pasted in the show notes so they'll be able to find you and um reach out to you guys for some sweet ass bow builds so i'm excited i'm excited hear about how the hunting season goes here in the next month or so and uh stay on the line man but uh i will just remind our listeners here to uh check you guys out also remember to get outside get a little dirty and learn something new if you've got a trade or a craft or some knowledge to share don't be selfish with it share it and help get others out of doors and reduce the barrier to entry all right everybody have a good evening
Mark Sasser is a life-long Californian and outdoorsman. He lives in Fresno CA with his wife Alicia and their youngest of 3 children. After being introduced to archery with a bear longbow as a 4th grader at YMCA camp he started traditional bowhunting in 1990. In the last 34 years Mark has hunted the west from southern Arizona to Alaska. As a co-owner at Bwana Bows Mark is constantly working to deliver custom longbows and recurves to the Tradbow community and enjoys watching customers become friends as he becomes a part of their adventures.
Find Mark on the interwebs:
Instagram: @california_tradbow_hunter
Bwana Bows: www.bwanabows.com
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