Welcome, welcome. I'm Joseph von Benedict, and this is the introduction to my

brand-spanking new backcountry hunting podcast. And my wife told me that I need to tell you why I'm doing this and a little bit about myself.

And since she's almost always right, I'm following her instruction.

Let me just throw a scenario at you to set the scene for the sort of thing we'll be discussing.

Imagine you're 20 miles deep in Utah's high U.N. Mountains.

It's hard, very remote out country. You've got an arrow into a big bull, but

you're fogged in, night is falling, and you've just slipped and fallen and torn all the ligaments across the top of your foot.

You're stuck on a cliff several miles from camp.

Freezing sleet is falling and it's getting rapidly colder.

This actually happened to a good buddy of mine and we're going to discuss this on a future episode.

This is the sort of thing that I want to address.

Hunting methods, survival methods, prep work, gear,

all sorts of things that will help us with success,

help us enhance our chances of success and our enjoyment of that gorgeous,

dangerous backcountry where the big ones live.

The main reason I'm doing this podcast is because I believe there is nothing in the hunting world that's more fulfilling than a successful backcountry adventure.

And I often get asked for advice on how to get started in backcountry western hunting or how to refine methods, especially when it comes to gear, rifles, optics, ammunition, bullet types, boots,

packs, and so forth.

I write full-time for various hunting and shooting magazines and I do a column for

Peterson's hunting called Open Country and in it I do quite a lot on do-it-yourself techniques for hunting the west. I get a lot of letters

from that column and a lot of good feedback, a lot of readers that appreciate that sort of

information and really I guess that's kind of been part of the

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