00:00:00
Speaker 1: K ladies and gentlemen. It’s an emergency drop of me eater podcast. An emergency drop. We did one of these when the guy rescued the people out of the outhouse. That wasn’t an emergency drop, no, but it was an American Hero. This is an emergency drop we have on American hero Aaron Chin from Cornell University. If you’re a news buff, if you are a news buff, or if you’re a hunter, and you read your text messages a couple of weeks ago, around the week of September eighth, I would say you probably got all kinds of people texting you an article about some students from Cornell University who were in trouble, out of trouble, getting in trouble for having skinned a bear in their communal.
00:00:54
Speaker 2: Hall at college.
00:00:55
Speaker 1: Right now, I typed in Cornell black bear skinning into Google, and I have the Cornell Daily Sun.
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Speaker 2: I’m looking at an article there.
00:01:06
Speaker 1: I’m looking where it was covered in an op ed in something called The Dartmouth and it’s a person complaining about them, saying that it’s not what you’re allowed to do, it’s what you ought to do, and it’s the real lesson behind this covered in the Ithaca Voice. Cornell students found skinning bear in campus, NBC News two Cornell students killed bear and skinned it back at blank a long spirited reddit thing, People Magazine, People dot com. Two college students killed one hundred and twenty pound bear.
00:01:43
Speaker 2: I heard it was bigger. Yeah, Aaron, you don’t have the idea where the one twenty came from?
00:01:48
Speaker 3: Do you?
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Speaker 4: No no idea? I was around around a one point fifty. I know, I know how much my buddy weighs, and you know I’ll pick them up.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: It’s just, you know, a little lighter than that.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: So wrong on dred and twenty pound bear. Here’s an outdoor life article. Here’s a big discussion on rockslide. I could go on and on, covered all over, and it was one of those things that everybody sends me. The article about the two kids at Cornell who were in trouble or we’re not in trouble for having dared kill a bear on campus, or could not kill a beart on campus, but kill a beart in process it in a communal space on campus. And then as I followed the story along for a couple of days, it turns out that police game wardens the student handbook. It turns out no one could find anything that was actually wrong. I said to Krana, said, we have to talk to these guys. With Diane to talk to these guys. So here we have one of the butchers, Aaron Chin from Cornell. We’re gonna hear. We’re gonna hear his story. We’re gonna hear about what it’s like to all of a sudden be part of a national news story, what it’s like to probably be real scared for a minute and then feel relieved, and then what’s the what’s the next hunt plan?
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Speaker 2: But like, first, let’s let’s start off.
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Speaker 1: So you’re at Cornell University, you’re from You’re from San Diego, California. Correct, Yeah, what give me your hunting background? How did you get started hunting?
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Speaker 4: So I didn’t start until the very like tail end of high school. I’m my parents, we we we never really did that. We weren’t really an outdoorsy family. But that was something I was super into as a kid. I’d read Bushcraft manuals and I’d watched these survival shows. So I started shooting and shooting archery, thinking like early middle school and whatnot. So I was that was always kind of in the back of the mind. I shot Olympic archery for the longest time. I started teaching that performance archery, which primarily catered towards I mean that’s where the money is in the.
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Archer’s performance archery.
00:03:45
Speaker 3: Mean, it’s it’s just the bow shop I worked at.
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Speaker 1: Oh I thought I made a discipline called performance archery. Yeah, yeah, an archery shop.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, And a lot of the guys were big bow hunters. I was super curious, and I started shooting traditional archery with kind of the hopes of being able to to to hunt traditionally with with just a with a with a bear bo And yeah, I went out a couple of times in San Diego. Hunting in San Diego is really difficult, all all public land. It’s it’s kind of one of those things where you’ve got to get lucky right time. There’s not a lot of water there. So I went out for turkey once and then and then deer another time, but pretty much very little success, very little experience. That’s that’s why part of the reason I chose to to go to to Cornell One besides.
00:04:31
Speaker 3: That really get engineering school. But you know, the proximity of Wood.
00:04:33
Speaker 4: I saw the deer Management program, and I’m like, I can I can kind of learn all learn all the skills and live live the lot, learn all the skills that I wanted to as a kid. And now that there’s there’s forests and there’s there’s state lands to do that.
00:04:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, there’s a real Like we spent some time on the campus recording some podcasts a couple of years ago, and there’s like a hunter’s community.
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Speaker 2: There’s like a hunter’s community at Cornell m Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And so when you came out there, you guys, how did you become aware of Uh.
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Speaker 2: So you’re junior, third year? Is that right? Correct?
00:05:08
Speaker 1: How did you become aware of spring black bear season?
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Speaker 2: Like? Like what did you dig into?
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Speaker 1: Like how did you how did it hit you that, like, hey man, let’s go out and let’s go out and do a little bear hunting.
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Speaker 4: You and your body saw it on the DC website, you know, reading it through all the rules and the seasons you can and and the biggest thing is when I first got here.
00:05:27
Speaker 2: Sorry not in spring bear season. Fall I’m sorry, fall bear season.
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Speaker 4: Like you get everyone gets a black bear tag with the with all their with all their accoutrements and and and so when you.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: Buy a hunting license, your issue to black bear tag.
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Speaker 3: Everyone gets a black Bear tag like a regular. Yeah.
00:05:43
Speaker 4: So I was like, this, this could this sounds really cool. And I saw I saw a recipe somewhere like like black bear PASTRAMI I don’t know where and eyes like that.
00:05:53
Speaker 3: That sounds delicious. I mean, I love a.
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Speaker 4: Good on Ryan, like you know what, two and two let’s maybe really cool. I was reading them and at this point I’ve got a rifle, so I was like, well, this could be like a very realistic, realistic thing.
00:06:06
Speaker 3: So I started looking looking into it.
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Speaker 4: And it’s the first it’s the first big game season of the of the year. So we’re like, all right, you know, tests aren’t going too crazy, academics are pretty chill.
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Speaker 3: Let’s let’s let’s get her down. Let’s figure it out.
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Speaker 1: And and you and your hunting partner, you guys go out and you guys are hunting public land?
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Speaker 2: Is that right? Yes?
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Speaker 3: Public land?
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Speaker 1: And how did you how did you kind of hit on Like here’s the spot, here’s what we’re gonna try, here’s where we’re gonna hunt.
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Speaker 2: Like lay that out for me.
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Speaker 4: A lot of a lot of research, a lot of e scout in so I’d look at the d C kind of they have the bear harvest reports where so I was looking at the regions where they have the highest you know, uh bears reported and for one hundred square miles from there, I look, I look what’s closest to the university because we’re full time students essentially, so where’s the closest state forest.
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Speaker 3: That we can we can hunt?
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Speaker 4: And from there reading articles, figuring out like, well, they’re going to be they’re gonna be berry trying to get fat for the winter. So I honed in on a on a piece of piece of state forest and I started looking for water features. That was the biggest thing, swamps where where I think we’re like berries and and and shrubbery that they’d be foraging on. And then we went there Friday. We we right after classes, we went out and the first thing, yeah, we went out. We we we scouted, and then the next day we we kind of set up and figured it out.
00:07:32
Speaker 1: And when you guys set up, you and your hunting body, when you guys set up, did you guys set up in blinds or were you trying to like still hunt. You’re trying to do a stand hunt, like what was your strategy?
00:07:42
Speaker 3: Still hunting?
00:07:43
Speaker 4: So the day before on Friday, we found like fresh bear, bear shit and tracks everywhere.
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Speaker 3: So we’re like, all right, this.
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Speaker 4: Is the spot we’re gonna bed down the next morning, because you know, we’re just season hadn’t open open yet, we’re just looking around. So essentially there was a little like a grove or like a like a there’s a little clearing and there was a there’s some shrubs in the middle of it. So that’s where we saw kind of like paths and they’re still uneaten berry.
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Speaker 1: So we decided the next morning, you know, you’re looking at an active feeding area, okay, yep, And you guys set up and it was that and it was the was it the first day of the season that you guys got a bear?
00:08:22
Speaker 3: Yep? First day okay, like like like nine o’clock. But we didn’t get it.
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Speaker 4: In that clearing, we heard we heard scratching and and like climbing in a pine grove about like one hundred yards to the side. So we moved out to there. We waited in our first position, we moved out. We sat there for a good amount and then we we lost track of it. There was a there’s a pine grove, and there was a.
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Speaker 3: Hill, like a really steep hill.
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Speaker 4: So we sat there for a good thirty forty five minutes and we we stopped hearing the scratching. So we thought to ourselves, a maybe maybe the bare clover clover leafed around back to back to that original clearing. So we go back and and we don’t see anything. We’re like, all right, let’s let’s pack up. We’ll go back out in the in the afternoon. And just as we’re rounding a corner, my buddy he sees it.
00:09:15
Speaker 3: I don’t. I don’t.
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Speaker 4: I’m behind this corner, so I just see him, you know, his eyes go go full killer.
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Speaker 3: He chambers around, and I’m.
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Speaker 4: Like and I and I cover my ears because because we’ve got a pretty good kind of know each other’s body langers, and I knew he wasn’t he wasn’t just looking looking through And yeah, he pops off a shot and we we he gets it was it.
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Speaker 2: Did you have a big track and job or did you find it pretty quick?
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Speaker 3: Really really quick?
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Speaker 4: It was like a forty yard mac shot.
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Speaker 3: It was pretty close.
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Speaker 4: And then we’re shooting one hundred and eighty green point three o eight, So that that thing dropped pretty pretty fast.
00:09:52
Speaker 2: Okay, now here’s where things get interesting. You guys. You guys live on campus, correct.
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Speaker 1: Okay, you don’t have an apartment, you don’t have house you rent, you live on campus.
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Speaker 2: Had you even.
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Speaker 1: Had you guys got around of being like, well, here’s what we’ll do if we get one. Or were you just not even thinking about that yet and you’re just gonna take it as it comes, or did you have like a if we get one, here’s the butchering plan.
00:10:22
Speaker 4: We thought about everything, we were and yeah, we’re gonna go to a buddy’s place. But last minute, I think he had some some emergency to tend to. So the place we were going to do it closed off and we were really paranoid that, you know, that the meat was boil wanted to get it cooled as fast as possible. We opened it up, but just to just to get it all processed in a fridge as fast as possible. So we’re like, well, our one when one place was gone, so might as well do it there.
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Speaker 3: And it was in the morning. I think it was around like ten o’clock.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: Okay, so explain what this place is where you take it, Like what on campus?
00:10:54
Speaker 2: Like what is the place you bring the bear to?
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Speaker 4: Just there’s like a communal kitchen on the on the first floor of kind of the residential building. It’s like a really it’s like a really really open space. There’s like a study tables and whatnot. But it looks more like a like one of those those modern like a like a like a coffee shop, a lot of space and then and then concrete floors because we you know, carpet would just be a dick move.
00:11:18
Speaker 1: But it’s meant for people to do their cooking. Okay, So presumably there’s a big table in there, and you guys, you guys bring in you bring in the bear on to the table. Correct who’s around when you do this, Like, like who’s in the room.
00:11:40
Speaker 3: There’s not a lot of people.
00:11:41
Speaker 4: There are a couple of people studying, but no one really comes up and makes a big deal of it. It’s in the morning, Saturday mornings, so people are still probably a beg humeover and whatnot. So we had a couple of people just throughout our two three hours of processing. They’d walk by people would you know, try to take pictures or like just don’t have us in there, and most most people were super curious, like, hey, we’d love to try something that’s that’s really interesting. We’re explaining i mean, the whole idea of stewardship and whatnot, and we were aware it was going to be pretty graphic, but just explaining, hey, this is this, none of this goes to waste. And for the most part it was you know, people were really really curious low foot traffic especially, and that’s why we chose to like, all right, we can.
00:12:24
Speaker 3: We thought we’d get you know, yelled at by an r A.
00:12:26
Speaker 4: Maybe, but we we didn’t expect it to blow up to the extent of which it did. A.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when you when you thought, okay, we’re going to go into the communal are we’re going to go into the dorm kitchen and we’re going to process our bear, you weren’t having conversations like hey, this could lead to very serious trouble and all this news attention. Like you were just kind of doing what made the most sense in the moment, and you figured anything that came up would just you just be able to resolve it through conversation.
00:12:56
Speaker 4: HM. We think we both thought that, you know, maybe it’d be a like a little blurb, you know, people talked about it. It was like, oh, that’s that’s kind of that’s kind of odd. But we didn’t expect for it to blow up. We we were really diligent in reading all of the rules, you know, regulations, Like we made sure we did everything by the book because we knew, you know, we’re gonna be under scrutiny. So hey, we’re gonna we’re gonna clean up. We’re gonna use you know, bleach lysol wipes and whatnot. We’re gonna we’re gonna kinda keep it, you know, public image where no no blasting heavy metal or or or or music at all.
00:13:29
Speaker 3: We’re pretty we’re thinking about that.
00:13:31
Speaker 4: We didn’t know it was gonna cause that much of a backlash a day later.
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Speaker 2: But you knew it, Like but you knew the dorm rules and the campus rules, and there’s no thing saying like thou shalt not process a big game animal in community kitchen.
00:13:48
Speaker 3: Yep, nothing nothing that said against it. You know.
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Speaker 4: We I even you know, labeled my my meat bags too, because that’s what they wanted. Later on, that would bite me in the ass because people would be like, oh, we we figured it out.
00:13:59
Speaker 3: You know where you know people get this kid?
00:14:01
Speaker 2: Oh, because you’re storing it in a communal freezer.
00:14:04
Speaker 3: Kay, at the time being before I could get it out to people off campus.
00:14:08
Speaker 2: Indeed, Yeah, got it all right.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: So Saturday comes and goes, you guys get your bear, you get the bear processed, and then it winds up being that Sunday night. What happens Sunday night, someone someone finally says, I have to take a stand and report these young gentlemen for having cleaned a bear in the dorm.
00:14:32
Speaker 3: Something like that. So there’s a there’s a local Facebook group.
00:14:34
Speaker 4: It’s called I think Ithaca or Tompkin County Scanner Scanner Beats. It’s this one one guy who’s just constantly monitoring like police and fire radio. I used to be a volunteer firefighter. So this guy like we’re on en route to a call and this guy pings up. It’s like, this is crazy, this is I think it gets like an old retired guy. So he he Someone sends me a screenshot of the page and like, huh, that’s that’s really interesting, and I’m I’m I’m like shopping or something I’m not even on campus, and they’re like, CUPD is there.
00:15:05
Speaker 3: There are our police department.
00:15:07
Speaker 4: Oh ho.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: The guy that monitors the scanner is saying, hey, law enforcement is at Cornell And that’s how you get word that law enforcement is there.
00:15:20
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, they’re like they’re acting endico. They’re investigating back up this klon.
00:15:25
Speaker 2: And they’re like, I wonder if this has to do with me.
00:15:28
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:28
Speaker 4: I was like, oh yeah, they said in the report bear skinny. I’m like, what, everything’s packaged up? It’s everything super cool.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: I mean, that’s how you became aware of this?
00:15:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, huh. Interesting. I go to sleep Monday morning, it’s like everywhere.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: I’m like, oh no, so that night you didn’t go down there that night to see what’s going on?
00:15:49
Speaker 3: No?
00:15:49
Speaker 4: No, Because I was walking back after done shopping. They were you know, there’s nothing there. It’s a Christine kitchen, so we we want and there’s there’s there’s.
00:15:58
Speaker 1: Nothing like light splash and an ambulances and okay, okay, So you wake up Monday and then what’s going on?
00:16:08
Speaker 3: It’s all over like so I’m not I’m not sure.
00:16:11
Speaker 4: If you’re familiar with side chat, A lot of universities have like a regional like social media and it’s a lot of the keyboard warriors and whatnot, and people have started circulating pictures of the of the you know, the bear of us processing it. We’re people the day before came up to take you know, ask you if they could take pictures. We’re like, we weren’t sure about that, like we know people were gonna do it. Anyways, there’s like, hey, just don’t put us in it, and yeah, and then it was it just it just overnight, just became a huge sensation.
00:16:41
Speaker 2: And at what point did someone want to come talk to you? Though? Like what they what point did law enforcement want to have a word with you?
00:16:50
Speaker 3: I think it was.
00:16:53
Speaker 4: Might have been Sunday night, Actually I don’t. They’re just like, hey, we want to clear clear clear the clear the error because they saw my my net idea on the package meet and whatnot, like hey, we want to we just wanted to hear yeah. And then and then I was like, oh, I didn’t think too much about it. And then Monday, the whole like the world figured out. But PD was super supportive. A lot of them are on the Deer Management program. The guy officer I spoke with before. I had a three hundred pound black bear on his game camera, So who’s talking about go hunting and whatnot. So they just wanted to hear what was going on because I you know.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: So they look into it and I read that like the game boardens are like, he’s got a license. It’s bear season. It’s a legal bear. The police departments like these guys doing anything wrong. We didn’t violate the student handbook. But it seems like in the media covers there’s like somewhat of an expect there’s somewhat of an expectation or sense of surprise that there shouldn’t be repercussions for this.
00:17:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, there’s I guess it’s just something that not everyone’s familiar with.
00:17:59
Speaker 3: You know a lot of people there’s the the rumor.
00:18:02
Speaker 4: That it was a cub that was that was that was the big thing, and people people, people started freaking out. People didn’t even know it was season. Like if you look at on the online forums, people are you in and.
00:18:13
Speaker 3: Like, well, no, it’s legal. There people couldn’t fathom.
00:18:15
Speaker 4: That we drove like two hours to our to our spot and drove back. There’s just a lot of a lot of internet discussion got it.
00:18:22
Speaker 1: So yeah, so people, yeah, like they’re not educated about the whole thing and something. They’re eager that something must be wrong here. M yeah, and that did did the campus like who would be who’s like the campus authority? So did the campus authority at some point in time coming to ask you any questions or say like how did you clean up?
00:18:44
Speaker 2: Or where’s the bear?
00:18:45
Speaker 4: Now?
00:18:45
Speaker 2: None of that happened.
00:18:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, none of that happened at one point because of the news coverage. I think when the students support people reached out. They’re like, hey, we’re here. We know you’re probably you know, if you’re going through a stressful time, we’re here. It’s like it’s a game if I if I if I if I, if I hang myself or something. They don’t want to get to. But they were, you know, university was super. No one said anything.
00:19:06
Speaker 3: I mean, we didn’t. We didn’t. We didn’t do anything wrong.
00:19:08
Speaker 4: I heard through like that, you know, dean and vice princident president was contacted at some point, but they’re like, you know, I mean, we were we were just we’re just we’re just doing what we were doing, you know, So.
00:19:20
Speaker 2: We reached out. I don’t I don’t.
00:19:21
Speaker 1: I don’t know why. I don’t want to name. I don’t want to say who. We reached out. We reached out to contacts we have. That’s not be hard to solve. We reached out to contacts we have at Cornell. The contacts we have at Cornell had were just thrilled by. It’s so great to know that there’s still kids that know how to do this kind of stuff. Just goes to show the caliber of the students we have. You know, someone’s like, oh, they they might be interested in my program at the school, and they’re like, but I don’t. We didn’t want to didn’t want to give names out, so it was kind of like, well, we’d have to check and make sure it’s okay, Like I can’t just send you their contact information. But it was like, no one know, No one that that Krinn communicated with, our producer, no one that Kriinn communicated with expressed anything other than like, oh, that’s cool, let me see if I can find them for you. Uh and so you know, all’s well, that ends well, but let me ask you this, Like let’s say you know, later in the fall, Okay, you get a deer m do you do the deer. Do you process the deer in the communal kitchen or have you had enough?
00:20:32
Speaker 3: Oh?
00:20:33
Speaker 4: Hell no, My buddy is like a bunch of people opened their doors. They’re like they saw that.
00:20:37
Speaker 3: What happened.
00:20:38
Speaker 4: They’re they’re like, all right, all right, all right, You’re a lot of people open their doors. I’m super great. People reached out and they to the organizations that I’ve known, I’m affiliated with, and they.
00:20:49
Speaker 3: Hate there were We’re always here. I mean, of course the Keyboard Warriors.
00:20:53
Speaker 4: And the and the Basement people have been been overwhelmingly supportive. I mean we were talking about love labovo Ornithology last year. They they let they were gracious, and Mary Margaret it’s been super helpful with helping me clean my my my schools with germistic beatles and professor Keith Timball on Facebook kind of really respected figure defending you.
00:21:17
Speaker 3: Know, I’d hear construction workers too.
00:21:19
Speaker 4: I remember when it was with when I was high point talking about it, I’m like, wow, okay, this is this is the talk of the town. And for the most part, people in the real world have been pretty pretty supportive.
00:21:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it’s not that so you’re not going to go back to the dorm. But it’s not because you’re scared, it’s because you got better options.
00:21:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty pretty much. And then you know, I don’t want part two happening. I mean that’s kind of asking for it.
00:21:44
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I got you. So would you say that in hindsight?
00:21:50
Speaker 1: Do you feel that in hindsight are you glad you did what you did because it advanced this conversation or do you feel like it like like it put.
00:21:59
Speaker 2: This thing out there to test and you kind of.
00:22:02
Speaker 1: Learn from the experience and it gave you sort of a snapshot of you know, your university, your community. Right, that’s one approach, or you could have the approach of staying In hindsight, I really could have done without all the distraction.
00:22:15
Speaker 2: I shouldn’t have gone process my bear at the dorm.
00:22:19
Speaker 3: I’d say a little bit of both.
00:22:20
Speaker 4: I think I should have been a little bit more. I should have I should have prepped for the worst and and realized that some people would you know, would would would would blow up. I didn’t think it would become that that large. And definitely if we probably do in the woods next time, but also that like looking back, no regrets for what we did, how we conducted ourselves, like the fact that we thought about the implications and we were we went through were very considerate of just our etiquette and kind of how we conducted ourselves when we were processing.
00:22:53
Speaker 3: I think there’s a little a little bit of both.
00:22:56
Speaker 1: So yep, I’ll tell you why I like you, guys. It’s not you cut that bear up in the dorm. What I like about it is you come. You’re from somewhere else, you come to New York, you find out there’s a bear season, You do the work, you scout, you spend time online, you do the research, you make calls. A lot of guys would be like, you’re never going to get a bear. Why even bother, I’m not gonna go out. You’re never gonna get a bear, blah blah blah. You ignore all that and you go out and you had success. That’s cool. Love to see it, man, like your American hunting elbow grease dude. So I love it. I’m glad. I was so thrilled to see as I followed the story along, I was so thrilled to see that nothing bad having you guys. I was thrilled to see the way people are, like, hey, man, this kind of stuff should or some people in our world or like.
00:23:47
Speaker 2: This kind of stuff should be celebrated.
00:23:49
Speaker 1: Like you know, they’re they’re producing food for themselves or taking responsibility. They’re they’re staying in accordance with the law. It advanced the conversation. Everybody got a little smarter about everything. And yeah, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say you’re an American hero.
00:24:05
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. See he’s the world.
00:24:08
Speaker 1: True American hero in fact, Aaron Chin, thank you for coming out, man. I love hearing your story and tell congratulations to your to your hunting partner, the trigger Man, and I’m glad for you guys, and I can’t wait to hear about your next hunting adventure.
00:24:25
Speaker 3: Thank you. I appreciate it.
00:24:26
Speaker 2: Well, I did appreciate it. Uh, good luck to your studies.
00:24:29
Speaker 1: You’ve got a couple more years ago than you’re going to be entering the engineering field, so that’s good.
00:24:34
Speaker 2: Okay, Thank you man. Good luck with school.
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