Peax Thrive Vodcast

Two bulls down, a grizzly on the blood trail, a barrage of gunfire next to our kill site, and a llama still running with an elk herd at 12,000 feet.

The Wyoming hunt had it all.

This is a Peax Thrive Live From the Hunt episode, recorded at a Montana trailhead the night before packing in. Mark wraps up the final days of the Wyoming elk hunt with Josh and Chiam Loyd, and previews what's next.The full stories behind the gunfire and the grizzly are coming in the Wyoming hunt film. Subscribe so you don't miss it.

🦙 HELP US FIND SMOKEY. Smokey, our 6-year-old pack llama, broke his lead rope during a bear encounter in camp and has been missing in the Wyoming backcountry since September 2nd. He's black with white face markings. If you're hunting the Cody area and see him, message us on Instagram @treeline_pursuits.

Go to: https://www.treelineacademy.net/ to find out more about the new Treeline IQ Suite and other course offerings.

Gear up at peaxequipment.com and use discount code TREELINE.

Follow along: Instagram @treeline_pursuits

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com

Five days into our Wyoming elk hunt, a grizzly came through camp at two in the morning. One of my llamas broke a half-inch lead rope and disappeared into the dark. He's still out there.

This is a Peax Thrive Live From the Hunt episode — recorded in camp at last light, no script, still in the middle of it. Josh, Chiam, and I go through what's happened so far: hundreds of elk and almost nobody else in here, a textbook stalk on a bull with 25 cows that fell apart for no reason we could see until we heard the howls come up out of the drainage, and a grizzly above camp that turned an ordinary evening into buttoning down for war. It has not been a clean hunt.

We don't have an elk on the ground. We've had more close encounters than I can count, and the wind has taken every single one of them — six straight days of it, thermals running exactly backwards, prevailing southwest blowing out of the north.

IN THIS EPISODE • Elk are spread from the bottom to the top this year • A perfect stalk, a herd that blew out, and the sound that explained it • What llama alerts actually mean at night • The 2 a.m. wreck that cost us a llama • A grizzly above camp, and the worst thirty seconds of my week • Bulls answering but not committing • Smokey is still missing

Gear up at peaxequipment.com; use my discount code TREELINE

Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Chiam owns more backcountry stoves than any sane person should. So, he finally did what nobody in the hunting space has done: he put twelve of them head-to-head on a 100-point scorecard and let the data decide.

Boil times measured three separate ways and averaged. Fuel burn weighed to the gram, before and after every boil. Cold performance after twelve hours at negative four. Altitude performance re-tested at 12,800 feet on top of the

Beartooth. Wind resistance at 20 miles an hour — where a surprising number of big-name stoves simply never boiled at all.

The winner scored 91 out of 100. Last place scored 51. And the stove that took it costs under $70 — while the newest, priciest, most-hyped stoves in the test finished at the bottom of the board.

I sat down with Chiam at the PEAX Equipment headquarters in Bozeman to walk through how he built the test, what shocked him, and the one number every backcountry hunter should know before their next hunt: how many grams of fuel your stove burns per boil. Get that wrong, and you're carrying a second canister you never needed — which weighs about the same as the stove itself.

We keep the winner's name out of this one on purpose. Chiam's full review has the rankings, the charts, and every data point. Link below.

WHAT WE COVER

- Why almost every stove review you've watched is missing the comparison

- How the 100-point scorecard was built, and what got weighted heaviest

- 12 burner and pot combinations, 3 boils each, 16 oz every time

- The cold soak, the altitude run, and the 20 mph wind test

- Regulated vs. non-regulated, and why it decides everything

- Where Jetboil still wins by a mile (simmer control is not close)

- Why every piezo igniter on the market is on a countdown

- The half-flame fuel myth, tested

- The night in New Zealand when a stove was the difference between

miserable and done hunting

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO: https://youtu.be/gqMZAZxHNtE?si=GVLiVb6RGFZYkdGa

GET 20% OFF THE HUNT IQ SUITE - Use code THRIVE at checkout: https://www.treelineacademy.net/

Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

In this Thrive episode, we dive into the Work That Nobody Sees And Few Hunters Do!

Five e-scouting and hunt-planning tactics that will help you find elk before you ever load the truck. How to set your elevation band off this year's soil moisture instead of habit, how to actually map hunting pressure instead of guessing at it, why the MVUM is the most useful access document nobody reads, why an elaborate basecamp may be costing you elk, and how to build the hunt plan that ties all ten tactics together.

None of these is a silver bullet. It's the stack that matters.

GET 20% OFF THE HUNT IQ SUITE - Use code THRIVE at checkout: https://www.treelineacademy.net/

Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

Three hunters. Nine days. Three archery bulls. We recored this after the hunt a year ago, sitting in the dirt next to all three racks, the day we came off the mountain.Last September, Jeff Helm, Josh Smunk and I packed eight llamas 4,500 feet up into very remote piece of public land.

What came out of it was a film called The Hat Trick — and this conversation, which has been sitting in the vault ever since.I open the show at the Peax studio with Chiam, who created the film.

Then we jump straight to the recording we made on location, with Jeff and Josh, before any of us knew how it would land.What you'll hear:— Jeff's bull on day three. Thirty-eight minutes of nothing, and then an entire herd came in running, cows with their mouths open. He passed a five-point at seven yards to take the bull behind it.— Josh's bull, which crossed a canyon — a ranged 1,600 yards — to a cow call. It was his first archery elk.— My bull on the last day, out of a drainage with at least eight bulls in it.

I drew on a bull at eight yards, broadside, and let him walk. I still can't tell you why. But the pass was worth it!

Watch The Hat Trickhttps://youtu.be/oAyo6kbZGDg?si=iXrnFbwoqF7ikh7s

TREELINE E-SCOUTING If you want to learn how to find elk before you leave for the hunt:https://www.treelineacademy.net/

Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

Elk season is just weeks away, and here are five tactics almost nobody actually uses. Every one of them is still doable this week. (Part 1 of 2 — Part 2 drops next Tuesday.

Most elk hunters read the same articles, watch the same videos, pick the same trailheads, and walk up the same trails — often at the same time. Predictable hunters get predictable results. In Part 1 of this two part series, I cover the five field moves that break the pattern: hunting downhill from trailheads, getting off established trails, being on the glass before first light, staying out of camp all day, and locating elk at night.

Part 2 next Tuesday covers the e-scouting side — soil moisture and elevation, mapping pressure zones, MVUMs, staying mobile, and building a real hunt plan.

HUNT IQ SUITE — 20% off with code THRIVE

treelineacademy.net

________________________________________ Additional Thrive Resources

Use My Code TREELINE For A Great Peax Discount At: https://peaxequipment.com

Treeline Academy. – (Use code THRIVE to save 20% on any course) https://www.treelineacademy.net

On this Thrive Live From The Hunt, with Bow Disciples but this time we've traded the elk woods for the islands of Hawaii — chasing one of the most beautiful and most destructive animals in North America: the axis deer.

Introduced over a century ago, they've exploded across the islands, stripping native forests, wrecking ranchland, and pushing fragile ecosystems to the brink. Out here, hunting isn't just sport — it's conservation!Join us for a special Live From The Hunt edition you won't forget.

_________________________

Additional Thrive Resources

Use My Code TREELINE For A Great Peax Discount.

https://www.peaxequipment.com/

Treeline Academy. – (Use code THRIVE to save 20% on any course)

https://www.treelineacademy.net

Treeline Podcast Archive

https://www.treelineacademy.net/podcast-main--b42b4

Treeline Thrive Vodcast Archive

https://www.treelineacademy.net/thrive

Six percent.

That's how many public-land elk hunters actually punch a tag.

The other ninety-four out of a hundred go home empty-handed.

Those six percent aren't luckier than you. They're not tougher than you. They just did the work, months before the season, behind the e-scouting screen. It's July.

While everyone else is posting countdowns to September on Instagram, the smart hunters are already e-scouting and planning their missions.

This episode is dedicated to getting ready!

_________________________________________ Additional Thrive Resources

Use My Code TREELINE For A Great Peax Discount.

Treeline Academy. – (Use code THRIVE to save 20% on any course) https://www.treelineacademy.net

Treeline Podcast Archive https://www.treelineacademy.net/podcast-main--b42b4

Treeline Thrive Vodcast Archive https://www.treelineacademy.net/thrive

In this live from the hunt Thrive episode, Chiam and I are joined by Lucas, the Peax Equipment spring bear hunt giveaway winner.

We sit down together on the hunt to talk about the lessons learned and the highs and lows of spring bear hunting.

This season had it all: snow, heat, and a lot of miles!

Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

On the morning of May 3rd, a 33-year-old man named Anthony Pollio left his father a voicemail from a trail in Glacier National Park. He told his dad he was hiking up a mountain.

He told him about his day. He said he loved him. He hung up the phone and kept walking up that trail.

He never came back down.

A search team found his body three days later, fifty feet off the Mount Brown Trail. His injuries were consistent with a bear attack.

The first fatal grizzly attack inside Glacier National Park in twenty-eight years.

The day before they pulled Anthony off that mountain, four hundred miles south, in Yellowstone Park, two brothers — fifteen and twenty-eight years old — were ripped open by a sow with cubs on the Mystic Falls Trail.

Airlifted out. Critical condition.

Two parks. Two attacks. Forty-eight hours.

I want to be very clear before we go any further. This was not bad luck. This was not a freak event.

This was a predictable reckoning of a system that has been failing and intentionally putting people at risk for more than a decade.

The people responsible have names, offices, and budgets, and we're going to talk about every single one of them.

_________________________________________ Additional Thrive Resources

Use My Code TREELINE For A Great Peax Discount.

Treeline Academy. – (Use code THRIVE to save 20% on any course) https://www.treelineacademy.net

Treeline Podcast Archive https://www.treelineacademy.net/podcast-main--b42b4

Treeline Thrive Vodcast Archive https://www.treelineacademy.net/thrive