Welcome to the Vortex Nation podcast, brought to you by lovers of hunting, shooting, public lands, the Second Amendment, and good food.

What is up, everybody? Mark on the mic and across from me, Mr. Ryan Muckin-Hern and Mr. Eric Barber.

And welcome to the 2025 gear in review. We got a pretty quaint crew for this one. Some really cool items.

This is one of my favorite podcasts of the year. I personally look forward to this. I think it's because I just like gear and stuff.

And I'm excited about the stuff that I personally used and liked.

But I'm also really excited about stuff that you guys used and liked.

And the other thing, you know, we haven't even talked about these things ever collectively.

So like I really don't know what you guys have brought to the table

today. Is this our third or fourth year doing this? I believe third. I think it's third. Every year

we've done this, I have purchased something right after I walk back to my desk because of what we've

done on this episode. I hope that what I have

you're going to buy. I hope so too. The fact that you've come with one item. No, no, no,

there's three. Oh, okay, good. Good. I'm just using the box. The box is a handy container.

Okay. I'm glad you have three items. But also, if you only did have one item, I'd been like,

this must be significant.

I'm so intrigued. What is our order of operations today? You drive the shit, Marco.

Historically, I've gone last just because I feel like that's... I'll just, I'll go first. Yeah, I'm very, I can't, I need to know. Okay. First item on the list, this was introduced to me in Idaho. A couple of my elements here were from Idaho this year. So I killed an elk in Idaho. I was, I was hunting with some very dear friends. Now I met three of the coolest dudes I've had the pleasure sharing a backcountry hunt with. And elk are giant.

This was something I was not prepared to, I guess, understand. They're large mammals. Yeah.

There are a lot to deal with. I haven't fiddled with, you know, too many of them because they are my

arch nemesis of hunting.

But every time you're looking at you're like, golly.

Yeah.

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