Super Good Camping Podcast
Hi there! We are a blended family of four who are passionate about camping, nature, the great outdoors, physical activity, health, & being all-around good Canadians! We would love to inspire others to get outside & explore all that our beautiful country has to offer. Camping fosters an appreciation of nature, physical fitness, & emotional well-being. Despite being high-tech kids, our kids love camping! We asked them to help inspire your kids. Their creations are in our Kids section. For the adults, we would love to share our enthusiasm for camping, review some of our favourite camping gear, share recipes & menus, tips & how-to's, & anything else you may want to know about camping. Got a question about camping? Email us so we can help you & anyone else who may be wondering the same thing. We are real people, with a brutally honest bent. We don't get paid by anyone to provide a review of their product. We'll be totally frank about what we like or don't like.
Super Good Camping Podcast
From Darkness to Discovery: The Transformative Power of the Wild
Rob Spence, known to many as "Rob in the Outside," shares his profound journey of finding salvation through nature after hitting rock bottom. Following his mother's passing and a difficult divorce, Rob discovered that kayaking, fishing, and wilderness exploration quite literally saved his life – transforming his darkest moments into a passionate outdoor lifestyle that now defines him.
The conversation takes us through Rob's evolution as an outdoorsman, from his early days spending dawn to dusk on the water fishing for bass and pike, to his more recent obsession with fly fishing. "Until you get into it and get into a river and hook a big one and fight – it's hard to explain where the passion comes from," Rob explains, his enthusiasm palpable as he describes the thrill of battling brook trout on a fly rod.
We explore Rob's deeply thoughtful approach to hunting, which stems from a desire for self-sufficiency and ethically-sourced food. Unlike trophy hunting, Rob ensures every part of his harvested animals serves a purpose – from feeding his family and his dog Kiva to using hides for crafting and fly-tying materials. He candidly shares his three-year journey of learning deer behavior before successfully harvesting his first one, showing the depth of respect and knowledge that guides his practice.
Perhaps most compelling is Rob's raw honesty about the psychological impact of wilderness immersion. He describes the almost depressive state he experiences when returning from extended backcountry trips – a testament to nature's profound effect on his wellbeing. "I love coming back to my family, to the dog, everything else. I hate coming back to everything that's outside of this house," he admits, capturing the sentiment many wilderness enthusiasts feel but rarely articulate.
Whether you're an experienced outdoorsperson or someone curious about the healing potential of nature, Rob's story offers both practical knowledge and emotional insight into how the wilderness can transform lives. Follow Rob's adventures on Instagram @Rob_in_the_outside and YouTube as "Rob in the Outside" – and discover how connecting with nature might change your own perspective.
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Hello and good day. Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.
Speaker 2:I'm Tim.
Speaker 1:And we are from supergoodcampingcom. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today's guest seems to be outside all the time. Whether it's walking the dog, fishing, camping, hunting, shoveling snow off of a roof, trying out new gear or watching the stars from a dark sky reserve, he's out there and often creating content. Please welcome from Rob in the outside. Rob Spence, hey, welcome.
Speaker 2:How's it going?
Speaker 3:guys, thanks for coming out. Man, no problem, thanks for having me. It's been a minute trying to get this one organized right.
Speaker 2:Or a few years.
Speaker 1:How do you want to look at that Hilarious?
Speaker 2:So, backstory for those of you that don't know uh, man, it's. We've got to be coming up on maybe three years, something like that, since we first had that first chat yeah yeah, I think so yeah, three years sort
Speaker 2:of I think. I think we knew of each other but but we got yak and in in the in the chat in one of Dennis's like Canoe Hound's shows, one of his live streams, and then at some point I think we yakked in the green room and then we did like a Zoom meeting to try to set this up. We've run into each other at the Toronto Outdoor Adventure Show, you know. We've had all kinds of conversations. None of them on the podcast, yeah that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have nothing to talk about. Yeah, no, of course not, we're done.
Speaker 2:Thanks guys, see you later. Bye. Shortest episode ever yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to say I think it has been three years that we started, that we started talking, that's what tiny brain, but that's what it feels like. Yeah, I'm pretty sure yeah, and I think two years ago is when we started talking about trying probably three yeah, yeah, and I think it's been two years since we've been trying to hook up to get our schedules to fall into place for an interview. Well, you're, you're a busy guy.
Speaker 2:Yes, share some of the busyness. What have you been up to lately, man? Other than shoveling snow off roofs so they don't collapse and stuff yeah.
Speaker 3:Actually, I guess this last month and a half I have been knee-deep planning a hunt for deer. But what? What I'm doing is the four of us that are going. I'll get into that in a sec. But the four of us that are going, the four deer that we get, we are going to bring to the brackenry butcher who's going to teach a butchering class to kids from the Wata Nation and from the Moon Creek Reserve. He's going to give a butchering class to those kids and then we're donating all four deer that's been butchered back to the reserves. So for the people that need it.
Speaker 3:The reason why we're doing the reserves is because I tried the food banks and the Salvation Army and stuff and once they found out it was deer, they had no interest in it whatsoever. So I've been working with this place Landscapes about doing the hunt there, um, on about 600 acres, and andrew, who's part of our fishing crew, is coming on the hunt, and wyatt black from alone. He was, uh, from alone. He was the runner up in season nine, I think it was nine or ten um, him and his father are coming on the hunt as well. So, yeah, that's that's. That's what I've been doing for the last month, month and a half is trying to organize that with um, getting some sponsors involved and then getting it all arranged. So cool.
Speaker 2:Well, that's, that's a whack of work to to put together landscapes, is that they do a camping thing where there are canoes at each individual lake and you literally hike, then you paddle back. Oh cool, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was checking them out. I've checked them out two years in a row at the uh, the Toronto, uh outdoor adventure show. It looks like a, looks like a cool gig, like it looks like that would be a cool thing Everything that they're trying to do with that whole I think it's 40,000 plus acres.
Speaker 3:What they're trying to do there is absolutely phenomenal, with the management of the deer herd there's elk in there, the moose in there, trying to revitalize the trout population in a couple of lakes, like everything from the ground up, including the insects and stuff. They're trying to rebuild that whole ecosystem, which is absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and we've been planning our spring trip. I remember you're planning your spring trip through there. Yeah, okay, cool, yeah. When we saw them at the show, enthusiastic is not even close to what they were. They were so. They're just, they're so behind what they're doing. You know what I mean. Yes, it was awesome to see that kind of passion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then our spring trip actually is sorry, I was going to say we're not planning it through there. Our spring trip is actually 10 days in Algonquin and then Andrew and I are pulling out for another five days and then we're going back in with Josh again for another four or five. So we're going to be gone for, I think, a total of 18 days.
Speaker 2:When you say pulling out for five days? Are you like bailing, going back into civilization, or are you just going to crown land and then no, we're going, we're going into, we're going into crown land.
Speaker 3:Andrew and I are going to go fish a couple of lakes just on the outskirts of algonquin. So yeah, we're not coming home cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't, let's see in 20 days or so. Yeah, cool does, cool Does. This year is this your full-time job? Um, you get to camp.
Speaker 3:It's. I'd like to turn it into that. I don't know if it will ever turn into that revenue wise. Like I, I make a few bucks here and there. I don't make anything off any of my sponsors financially Um. It's more of a barter system where I get stuff from them and I promote the hell out of them. But I'm still. I still do side jobs here and there, but my side jobs happen when I get back from a trip and the wife says you've spent too much money, you need to go to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used to do some contracting. I know how that works. Yeah, fishing You're a fish nut, like you are. You tell, tell us how passionate you are about fishing. I've seen a whole bunch of your videos, which we'll make sure we reference your YouTube channel.
Speaker 3:You're a way better fisherman than me. You love to do it like as often as you possibly can. Yeah, I, um, I've always been a spin cast kind of guy, like I love bass and pike, like that's what got me started. Um, and I've been doing that for years. Um, when I first moved up here, probably about five years ago, I'd be on the water from 4 30 in the morning till 10 o'clock at night, and that's it. The wife would paddle out once in a while at lunch to come and have lunch with me on an island or something out on cooch, and then she'd head back in and go do what she had to do, but I would stay on the water and then, um, I kind of pulled away from fishing a little bit because I got heavy into um running some rivers and then doing a lot of these back country trips. Um, and then I met Josh and he put a fly rod in my hand and I tell you that now that I picked up fly fishing, I have just I, am I, just I, and I have just I, am I, just I.
Speaker 3:Until you get into it and get into a river and hook a big one and fight. It's hard to explain where the passion comes from it, like it's just, it's. It's just such a thrill. And the and the trout are just the brook trout and the splake and stuff. They're just absolutely beautiful, beautiful creatures Like stunning and pound for pound. I think they're the best fight.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and and yeah, as often as I can. So did you grow up camping and doing all the outdoor adventure things, or is this something you picked up as an adult?
Speaker 3:Um, we had. My stepfather bought 75 acres in Wilberforce when he was 19. So I spent a lot of my summers well, actually all my summers up until I was about 10 or 11 in in the back 40 there, like the sec. The second we were awake, we were thrown out of the cottage and we weren't allowed back until there was food ready. Um, and I really got a passion for it there. And then, um, once I got into the electrical trade, I kind of lost touch of all of that. There there was no more hobbies, it was work, work, work. And then the only hobby that I really picked up was, um, I got into uh radio, um, internet radio radio, because I love music as well.
Speaker 3:And then when I moved up here I moved up here because I fell into a dark hole. My mom had passed away. I got in the middle of a nasty divorce, pretty much lost everything, climbed into a dark hole and brought a shovel with me to see how much deeper I could get. And then, when I got up here, I got into the kayak one day and started fishing. And then I started going on a little couple of camping adventures overnight to fish, and it literally saved my life and it just, and now I'm enthralled with it and I can't um the wife talks to me about it a lot if I, when I go away, even if it's for four days, when I come back, I, for the first little bit, I'm almost in a state of depression which is and sometimes I don see it, I notice it when I go on my really long trips and I come back I have a very, very hard time adjusting.
Speaker 3:Like the wife kind of leaves me alone for a few days. I won't even, I won't even go get gas, like it's. It's weird to explain Like I, just I love that, not so much the isolation, like I love doing it alone. Like I, I, if my wife hadn't come back from Australia, I would not have come out of the bush, but she did come back, so I did come out. But just being out there and just I don't even know how to explain it. It's just listening to nature, it just everything about it, just it heals my soul and I hate coming back to. I love coming back to my family, to the dog, everything else. I hate coming back to everything that's outside of this house.
Speaker 2:Yep, the world can be a I'm trying trying to, I'm trying to think of a nice word to use can be a bit of a bit of a hot mess, especially.
Speaker 2:yes so I totally get where you're coming from. Like you know, I'm not uh I me personally, I'm not a solo camper. Uh, I can't with either either pamela or one or both of our kids, or however that plays out. I don't need that space just for myself, although it's pretty easy to find that space. Like you can still be with somebody else and be totally on your own. You know what I mean. Like you can just do that nature piece, zen thing.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, your story is not not terribly unusual. We've heard very similar from a number of people and it's usually some kind of a something went sideways. Things are crappy. I went and found solace in the forest and it's been my go-to since, and and that excites me, like I think that's. That's fabulous, that that shows just how much getting out there, the value of getting out there, regardless of how you do it or what you choose to do out there, run around naked, I don't care Like it's just just get out there, man, like it's good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly it, it's it, you know. I I thought To me in my head when I would explain to like the rest of my family, what being out there has done for me. I almost felt like I almost felt like a whack job trying to explain it. But then getting into the community, you know, and then talking to people where I started to, you know, meet people, dennis Canoehound, absolutely Like I love what that man does, that chat and the people in that community. After getting in, after climbing into that and being accepted into it, realizing that my story isn't special, like there's a lot of us that have found nature the same way and found it as healing and it's and it's hard to explain to people and until you experience it, nothing I say to anybody makes any sense.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, agreed. I mean, I don't know, maybe you know a city slicker, as they call us bad names, those of us that live in Toronto, but some of us aren't that bad, just saying yeah, but yeah, as somebody who's been, you know, extremely urban for their whole life, that's been their life experience they don't have any I don't know what the right term is reference, maybe They've got nothing to compare it against until they actually get out there and then go holy crap, how was I missing this my entire life? Because that seems to be how it plays. Like literally not everybody, but it's like oh, I don't like bugs, okay, well, fine, stay like.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't like bugs, okay, well, fine, stay home, I don't care yeah, yeah my, my favorite question every year around this time of the year is what are the bugs like?
Speaker 2:right now they don't exist. They're going to be very bad then there'll be a different bug. That's going to be very bad, and then they'll be slightly less bad, but they're still going to be a bunch of them. That's how that goes yeah, yeah and if you go near marshy areas they're going to be very, very bad, and if you go away from marsh areas, they'll just be very bad. Yeah, welcome, welcome to welcome to spring and early summer in ontario, man, yeah, exactly, if there isn't ice on the water, there's bugs, that's it.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, there's two seasons and that's bug season and ice.
Speaker 2:Toronto is winter and construction, but, yes, same idea. So we're recording this at the end of march. You guys don't? You guys don't have open water yet, do you?
Speaker 3:or at least you're not fully ice out we're not fully iced out, but there is a lot of open water. Um, I'm not, actually I'm probably. I'm a kilometer away from the falls, um, and I can hear them raging all night long. The flooding that's going to happen up here is crazy. A week ago, I had six and a half feet of snow along the side of my driveways and we're now down to about three feet and it's, yeah, it's, it's, the flooding's gonna be bad, but yeah, there is open water here now, but it's not fully iced out, but yeah, it's. Um the the ice fishing season is over, so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I knew the ice fishing was over, but I saw um, just it happened weirdly been following the weather because again, we're at the right at the end of of march and we're here in toronto. We're likely to get mostly rain over the course of the next three days. You guys are going to get whacked with all kinds of stuff freezing rain, ice pellets, maybe snow, who knows?
Speaker 3:you got a bunch of crap coming out, so I was looking at satellite imagery oh, yeah it's gonna, yeah, it's what are you well welcome?
Speaker 2:welcome to spring in ontario. Yeah, um, but I noticed that lake simcoe still had an awful lot of ice, so I figured, because you guys are north of that, right I? Figured you guys were still still looking at the hardwaters type deal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's weird because some of the lakes right now you'd figure, with this warm weather that we've had, like we had like three, four days in a row that were 15, 17 degrees and you'd figure like the edges would start to go first, but some of these lakes it's still around the edge but the center started to come out and it's so, yeah, a few people have lost their huts.
Speaker 2:That's creepy. Well, that's the Lake Simcoe, because because it's the closest sorry, lake Ontario is the closest big body of water, but Lake Simcoe is the next one, like like heading North, and that's, that's what you hear. That's usually the. The spring cry is oh, you know, john lost his truck because he was parked on the ice or the snowmobile went through the ice?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, Like I went down to Barrie the other day, I drove by Georgian Bay and it's surprisingly it has opened up huge. I thought Georgian Bay usually takes a little bit longer but it's already coming down the 400 400. There you can see like it's just open water as far as you can see right now.
Speaker 2:so wow, cool. Well, you'll be out in the canoe doing some fishing soon. Um, very hunting, what so? Well, talk to me about what you hunt and how, because I can see I'm going to use the wrong term, but I can see yes, exactly the thing that shoots arrows, crossbow. What styles like what do you use when you hunt and what animals do you harvest?
Speaker 3:So I've got a crossbow here, the Excalibur and a recurve. I haven't hunted any big game with the recurve yet. I know it's an easier target than small game. I just haven't felt comfortable enough to take it with big game because the last thing I want to do is wound an animal. But all small game I hunt. I haven't hunted for coyote or wolf. I will never hunt wolf. I know there has to be a management program for it and I understand that. Just me personally, I would never take one. Just me personally, I would never take one Um.
Speaker 3:With the access of, with the excess of coyotes that we've had this year, I may start doing that Um, but basically I'm hunting small game um, rabbit, squirrel, um, porcupine, raccoon, um and deer. I put in, I put in for my moose and I put in for my elk. I've yet to get one um, hopefully this year, um. But deer, deer has been my, my biggest pull um so far and I, I, just I absolutely love it and it's, you know, none of it's a trophy. I know I've got, you know, I've got it on the wall. And when people see that they're like, oh, it's a trophy, well, for me that's not a trophy, it's when I come into the house and I see that my mind goes back to everything that happened in that moment and for me that's an appreciation of that animal that just fed my entire family. So and it's, and it's, it's an argument that'll never be one.
Speaker 3:With animal activists and stuff like that. They all think trophy hunting. For me, trophy hunting is when you go fly overseas and you go shoot some big animal and take its tusks and brag about it and leave everything else there raw. That's, that's not what I'm in this for this. Um, I started hunting because my wife and I decided that we wanted to start growing our own stuff. Start and forage Prices are ridiculous. The treatment that commercial animal gets, I think, is absolutely disgusting. The stuff that they put in it once they've harvested, it is absolutely disgusting. And I mean you can't get any more organic than harvesting an animal that's been eating acorns and tree buds all year round.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, oh, and bear, I forgot bear. I took my first bear last year and that was on my birthday. I have never in my life tasted a meat and I any more delicious than a bear heart. Um, with all, with all the animals that I take, the big game, the first thing we eat is with the wife. The first thing we eat is the, the um, uh, the tenderloins from inside Um. But the first thing I eat is the heart, and bear heart is absolutely phenomenal. I am probably the only man in Canada right now who has can will tell you that raw bear meat tastes absolutely phenomenal. I got trigonosis and was very close to not making it. I cooked a tenderloin from the bear the same way I cook my venison, and within four hours I was not doing well, but I'll tell you it tasted really good.
Speaker 2:Okay, what's trigonosis?
Speaker 3:Trigonosis are an easy way, layman's way, I guess the easiest way to explain it would be worms kind of. But they're parasites. It's a parasite and first it gets in, comes out through your stomach, gets into your muscles. Once it's what's the term I'm looking for Once it's laid once it's laid its eggs and it starts to grow and everything else, it gets into your bloodstream. Once it's into your bloodstream, it instantly goes to your heart and to your brain and once it's done, that you're done. There's no coming back from that. So, yeah, they figured they.
Speaker 3:When, um, yeah, when I, when I got diagnosed with it, they had already, um, gotten out of my digestive tract and had already started to get into my muscles. The pain was excruciating. I've never, ever in my life, I woke up at 1.30 in the morning and felt like somebody had put both of their hands on my esophagus and were wringing it out like a towel. Yeah, absolutely, and that was probably one of the nicest pains that I went through in the first few days. So, yeah, and I waited a week and a half.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I waited a week and a half before I even went to the doctor to get diagnosed because I still had three deer tagged to fill.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that's what the wife said. Yeah, I learned my lesson.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you're on the other side of that, jesus man? Yeah, yeah, I was still. It was stupidity on my part note that pamela's looking at me giving me some side eye here yeah, stupidity
Speaker 2:oh, I know a guy like that okay, well, off that sad note, back back to the. So harvesting. So what for for you? So this is you. You mentioned it, it's all it would always be. You know, a fight you could never win with a, with a, an animal activist. But I wouldn't say that we are.
Speaker 2:I've done hunting myself when I was considerably younger. I've hunted moose, unsuccessfully hunted deer. We, we did, we did full hearst, like, like the entirety of the moose. We took it to a butcher. We, we sucked at at doing all those things, um, but we, we took the entirety, like, like man, we lived off that venison for for ages. Like it's, that's a, it's a big animal, right, so not my gig anymore. Just, it's just a personal same as you do it, it's a personal choice, right, like that's what you choose to do. I choose not to um, but I have nothing. I'm not adverse to it in a, not a don jr, rip the tusks off, go home with this, with the. You know the souvenir I'm exactly that sucks that. There's no place for that in my world. Yeah, but as far as you know, providing sustenance, et cetera, or providing sustenance for other people with the same thing.
Speaker 2:I'm totally behind that. So how do you do you do it yourself? Do you do you have a butcher that does it? How does that? How does that work out?
Speaker 3:that you get everything out of the end. So after I've taken it, I will clean it out in the field, then I'll bring it home and I'll pull the cape off the hide, I'll take the tenderloins from the inside, I'll take those off and then I'll bring the rest to Reed the bracken rig butcher. He is going to teach me how to butcher it, but I like bringing it to him because it gives me more opportunity to get back out, because I pull my whole six tags every year. So now I should learn how to do it myself. You know my wife wants to do it. She's already talked to read. He's going to get us a stainless steel table and you know I'm going to be part of that class where he teaches. You know the butchering of it and stuff, and so yeah it's. It's something I do need to learn how to do properly.
Speaker 3:Um, but I nothing, nothing that I bring home goes to waste. I like, right down to the bones, every single bone, except for the ribs. Um, actually, no, even the ribs. Um, the dog gets. You know like we take absolute anything on that animal that I can't eat. My dog will eat. So with my we we feed, we feed Kiva a raw diet anyways. So, um, if I, if I get three deer, she's got a whole one to herself. She gets half the bear as well. Um, we cook it for though. So, but yeah, we use. We'll read saves the bones for us. I bring them home, I take a, take a saws, all to them, cut them all up into little pieces for them. Um, sometimes the wife will boil some of them, like, get the marrow all soft and punch all the marrow up for her, and sometimes we just throw her the bone and let her go to town.
Speaker 3:So, but yeah, absolutely nothing. Nothing goes to waste, even even the hides. Um, I saved a couple of hides. The first, the, the first hide I did by myself didn't turn out that well, um, um, but I did luck out, cause a buddy of mine said I can still take it and cut some of those, some of the hairs off and use it in my flies. So that worked out. So I've kept a little piece for myself and I've done a few practice runs at getting the hide to a workable thing for us. But the thing about deer hides is that it is so thin that if you do work it too much, there's not much you can really use it for, because the leather's not as durable as other animals, so, but you can still make some nice stuff out of it around the house.
Speaker 2:So I, how much time do you spend hunting? I don't mean, I don't mean, like you know, you spend three months out hunting, whatever that, whatever that window is, I mean, like for an average deer, like, do you spend from start to finish? I make the assumption you are scouting trails, potentially trail cameras, looking for feeding spots, you know that sort of deal and then you go out and you're whatever, you're in a blinds, you're how? How does that all play out? What is that length of that timeline from the time?
Speaker 2:you start prepping to the time that you're bringing one home.
Speaker 3:I start usually prepping around probably about the second week of August it's after my oldest son's birthday, after August 15th and then what I'll do is I'll look for certain areas for where I see some like heavy traffic, and then I'll look for a couple of rubs and then what I'll do is I'll set a trail cam up and if there is some traffic in that area decent traffic, maybe a decent size buck or stuff then I'll start laying some bait and stuff to see if I can keep them in and around. And then, if that works and there are some decent bucks in there and when I say decent I'm not talking about the rack, I'm talking body size Like I yeah, I would, I'd love a nice rack to put on my wall, but my priority is the meat. So I'm looking for for a big animal I don't care how big its horn is and then and then I'll lay bait to keep them around. And then come the season, um, which is October 1st for Bo and it's two and a half months long. Um, sometimes, sometimes I could tag out right on the first day. Um, but my other five tags I have to do a lot of traveling for because I, when you get additional tags in Ontario. Um, you get assigned, you can, you can pick the WMUs but you have to travel Like you won't get two, two, three tags in a specific area, like you might you know, for, like, say, I'm in um, wmu 57. Um, so I might be able to pull my two additional tags in 60. I might get two tags there, but there might only be one available one for me.
Speaker 3:So sometimes with my first tag, which is good for anywhere in Ontario, you know, and I've said it in a couple of my videos, like man, I hope I don't regret passing that thing up. And it's not because I'm looking for a bigger buck or anything, it's because I don't want to come out of the bush. What that interaction, being able to call them in, having them come in. You know that, that whole and that adrenaline rush when you do make a call and it works and it comes in, looking to see what's around, like I don't know how many times I've had my crossbow and I've had them dead in my sights and I've just gone. Yeah, I want to do this again tomorrow. Yeah, so it.
Speaker 3:I, I spent. I spent probably a good month and a half prepping um, researching my first three years of hunting when I didn't tag out at all, and I think this is where I learned to love hunting so much. My first three years I didn't get one deer. I couldn't even get close enough for a shot. Two of those years I was doing spot and stocks.
Speaker 3:But in those three years I learned so much about the deer, about the flora and the fauna, all in this area the deer's habits, their eating habits, their sleeping habits, their travel habits. It was like going to school and I haven't learned everything. There's still a whole bunch I've got to learn. But the amount of information that I gathered walking through that forest and then stopping, like taking three or four steps, stopping looking around to see if there's anything there, to see if I hear anything, and stuff like that, and then trying to figure out what they're eating and where they're bedding and that kind of stuff that has paid off for me now. So I'm very glad for those first three years that the wife and I decided that this is what we were going to do, that I didn't tag out, because if I just went into the bush popped one, I wouldn't have learned anything.
Speaker 3:You know. So to me it's every time I go out. I'm learning something new about them and I'm learning something new about the environment and everything. It's crazy when you try to tell people that even the bees in this area will affect what the deer do. It's a butterfly effect and I don't think people understand that. And I love what I'm learning while I'm out there and it's the, it's the, the. The wife likes to see the smile on my face and she loves my passion about it and I tell you I couldn't do any of this without her. She is a patient woman because come August 16th I'm gone and I'm like for hours every day. I'm up at 2.30, 3 o'clock every morning and I'm not back until well after dark, and that goes on right up until December 15th. And God love her, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I happen to see that you wrote a book.
Speaker 3:I did. And you know what? It's funny, I was going to edit it and have it all proper grammar and proper English and punctuation and all that other stuff. And my son said to me because it's my trip, it was my trip from Algonquin when I blew out my shoulder and my knee and my son said, why would you do that? And I go to make it like proper book. And my kid says to me he goes, that's not you, you're not all prim and proper, nice, smooth edges, like you were like bleep, bleep, bleep. You know, like that's, you're straight up, you're a raw, you're a raw exposed nerve all the time. Why would you change that? Why don't you just go through it for spelling mistakes and just throw it up and if people like it, they like it, and if they don't, they don't.
Speaker 3:And I went you know what, maybe I'll do that. So that's basically what it was. It was my diary from that trip and you know some of the punctuation I fixed. Some of it I didn't, I just left it as raw as I wrote it Like I literally took my diary, put it in front of me and just went verbatim, everything Like there's periods missing, comms missing, but that's, that was my experience, and my son said that. And that's what my son said. He goes that's your experience, don't change it, just do it Okay.
Speaker 3:So yeah, kids can be smart sometimes, yeah yeah, and it's really not an easy read because it's you know it's scattered and you know I think there's a couple of pages in there that I wrote while I was in the middle of an emotional breakdown on like day five or six, so it's like gibberish.
Speaker 2:What's the name of the book and where can people get it?
Speaker 3:It's on Amazon. Kindle is what it is, so it's on Amazon and it's, I believe, the title. I haven't looked at it for so long. I've still got the actual diary. It's a little tiny green book and I think I just called it 15 Days Alone in the Algonquin Backcountry.
Speaker 2:Okay, we'll double check that. We'll make sure it ends up in the show notes and stuff. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cause I think, I think that's, I think that's what it was called. 15 days alone in the Algonquin back country. Sweet yeah, well, that was quite the trip we, we, we know.
Speaker 2:a published author.
Speaker 3:Well too, you know Kevin Callen as well.
Speaker 2:That's true. That's true. That's true. All he does is write books, though like 18 of them or something crazy. They actually must be more. Now, I think it was 18 last time we talked to him that's it for us for today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much to rob in the outside for joining us today and please do check him out. He's on Instagram it's Rob underscore in the outside, and on YouTube he's Rob in the outside, so please do check him out. Check us out while you're there. We'd love it if you subscribe to us and if you would like to talk to us or you have any suggestions, any ideas, any future topics you'd like us to cover, people you'd like to talk to, please do email us. We're at hi at supergoodcampingcom. That's hi at supergoodcampingcom, and we'll talk to you again soon. Bye, bye.
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