Welcome back to KaFaru cast everyone. I'm your solo host today, Aaron Snyder. Frank took today out. He's Fletching arrows and I've got a really cool guest who I've kind of followed along for many years. Paul Navarre. You you originally from Michigan moved out West at 78 years old. Howdy.

Well, I'll be 78 next month March 7th. So almost 78 years old. Crazy solo. Do it yourself backpack hunter. You've killed the Colorado big eight. CBA board member for eight years. Yes.

Eight years. A bunch of other stuff I can't really remember, but I initially saw you on both site. And you're in charge of the banquet basically this year as well for the CBA. Is that correct? That is really true. Yeah. The banquet's next month on March 16th and 17th in Fort Collins at the Marriott Hotel.

Gotcha. So you and you hunt with a compound and a stick bow. I would say that what I know you most for is the the solo hunts, which is super cool, especially you're still getting after it at 78. So yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I grew up in Ohio and back in 1940. So just think about this. It was dial up phones, a party lines and didn't have our first 12 inch black and white television till I was 12.

So just think about all the social media and the electronics available today about myself grew up in a rural area lived on Lake Ury travel up and down the beach shot gunning crows and catching snapping turtles and trapping muskrats and in raccoons for, you know, a buck in a quarter of hide and make a little pocket money.

Would hitchhike the school of two miles and played football and a little bit of basketball and ran track and always tried to save save, you know, be physically in shape and didn't know it at the time, but that's sort of an athlete at the time and had a good time graduated from here on on high on Lake Ury in 1958 and went near force for four years station, the Upper Peninsula, Michigan where I actually killed my first white tail doe with a recurve bow that I bought at the base BX. So yeah.

So when did you move to Colorado? Trish and I moved here in 1992 from Ohio. Yes. Yeah, my kids were out of college and daughter married and I had been a sales rep for a large furniture company at the time and could give that up and we came out here and bought a tourist lodge on Lake Granby and we ran a bed and breakfast restaurant tavern for 10 years and I was right there on Lake Granby able to catch some nice three foot Lake trout and then be right there and it all worked out.

So I was looking for a place to look at the lake area. Right in the thick thing. So you so you and you've killed the Colorado big eight so explain what basically what that entails.

What we're very fortunate here in Colorado to have 10 big game species plus a variety of small game. So if you look at the 10 big game species, you have two species of deer, mule deer and white tail.

You have a high mountain animals like big horn sheep and mountain goat. You have your elk, you have your pronghorn, you have your bearer and most of those bears here are color phased or we don't have any grizzlies in Colorado anymore.

And then you take the big horn sheep and the mountain goat and then those are the big eight and then the two hard to get ones is the desert big horn sheep, which are only about 10 tags a year.

And the moustag, which is difficult. You have 12,000 people applying for a couple hundred moustags and there's also mountain lion correct and mountain lion. Yes. So I've taken those eight. Yeah. Yeah.

The yeah, I've been on several mousthunts here and the moust population here is definitely not only growing, but producing what I feel we will have the top 10 chyrus moust and next.

And maybe top top five to 10 in the next five to 10 years will be covering the chyrus moust and so far size goes there is massive moust everywhere in Colorado and their the populations only growing and some of the units that 10 years ago I was in you hardly saw moust.

We've got them on game cameras now just kind of keeping sure it was kind of a neat for me to be able to see him when I'm not there. So we don't really use the game cameras for hunting, but we definitely even though sometimes I leave him up for elk. I'm a lot more excited when I'm seeing giant moustwalk in front of him in the grand be is.

Grand be is.

That is good as you can get from a moust area.

Sure. And historically they planted them in sort of in the grand be Walden area over 25 years ago and I remember when I moved to Colorado in the early 90s there was only about 900 to 1000 moust and now they're

guesstimating there's at least 2000 and yet you're right they were spreading out and they're opening up new opportunities in a variety of even the front range areas and for an example we're talking to talk about the CBA in a little bit but one of the founding fathers,

clinky, chilled his moust last year with his recurve bow and so Marvin are the same age and he's still out getting after him and there you go. So the division of wildlife now we know it as parks and wildlife are dedicated people to to develop habitat and wildlife management and the difficult part for them. I'll just say there's briefly is that there's only so much pie to go around and everybody wants a bigger piece.

And so CBA is out looking for you know more opportunities and muzzle loaders are and rifle hunters are and then you have the non hunters that want to enjoy Colorado because all the wildlife in Colorado belonged all to state people.

So you have a mixed bag of interests out there and it's difficult for the division in many cases to manage not only wildlife but the people and how they can give everybody a fair share.

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