Imagine you're on an almost sheer wet rocky slope. You're clinging to it like a

spider and out of morbid curiosity you turn and you range the valley floor below

just to see how far you'd fall before you stopped and it's 1100 feet.

Then you realize you can't go back and you don't know if you can go up but it's your only option. In that case you want to have absolutely

the best equipment to try to make that effort to get out of that situation.

I found myself in this situation a couple years ago in the high country of Idaho while hunting bears.

And we're going to talk about that and about two things that I firmly believe will never

know, but I believe may have saved my life that day.

I'm Joseph von Benedict and this is the backcountry hunting podcast.

Welcome today folks, thanks for tuning tuning in this is going to be

short and sweet today because I have bronchitis and it hurts to talk but I want to

share a couple of gear tips with you that were emphasized and kind of,

geez, reemphasized this past week. I was in Northwestern Montana with my good buddy Adam

Weatherby his marketing guru Kevin Wilkerson and with Justin and Shane from limitless outdoors, there just isn't a better group of guys to hunt the backcountry with.

I had one piece of equipment that none of them had, and by the end they were all envying.

And we're going to talk about that a little bit.

Now, ha, let me back up just a little bit. When I was young and I used to levitate up mountains

because I weighed 155 pounds and I was nothing but long bone and spring steel muscle from too many

years of irrigating and hauling hay in southern Utah, I used to guide.

I guided nine years professionally in Montana and southern Utah,

and I would see hikers coming out of the backcountry.

In their, you know, their strap-on sandals

...