Bear Grease - Ep. 188: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Luke McFadden & American Wilderness

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

This week on the Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by Brent Reaves of “This Country Life," Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker and Maryland crabber, Luke McFadden. The crew talks about eating crabs before turning their attention to the most recent Bear Grease episode, "American Wilderness. (Part 1)." Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Nobody cares if I'm making any noise.

Your headset turned off. I feel like a four wheel in here. You feel like what? A fourth wheel. No. No, Josh. A fourth wheel turns a tricycle into a way. No, Josh, you're more like a spare.

Kind of like right on the back of a jeep. When Brent falls off, I just slide up in the place. Ah, man. So we're running, this is like a skeleton crew, the bearer, We've got four folks here. We have maybe one of the best mystery guests of all time, though, on the bear grease render. Could be.

For real. So I got Brent here. Hey, buddy. I got Josh Lambridge spillmaker. Here, a key. Who sounds like a humpback whale? It's not me. Here, turn it. This one?

You got it. Yeah, yeah. Is that better? Get it out of your nose. Say something now. Something now. Or give us the snort. My nose is pretty big.

Pull it out like this. Right there? Yeah, that's it. It's the first time I've ever done this. Let's hear your snort. These are nice. There's no way to get it anywhere. Sorry, Phil.

I'm sorry. You're like a mule. I have like the Britney Spears circa mid-2000s. You know what I mean? Booth bike. I like that's very nice. You like Garth Brooks. They're right.

So when I'm riding a mule, I have a mechanism that I can use a physical mechanism I can use to tell how how worked up they are, how much physical energy they're exerting and how close they are to their maximum output. My Peloton does the same thing. Yeah, it's just probably a lot like your Peloton. Nostril flare. Really, I'll look at Amule's nose, and if his nose is just kind of like slightly pulsating, it's like, oh, he's got a lot more.

Put the spurs to him. You know, let's go up the mountain. When they get to just like, when the nostrils are flaring out, like getting like a half to three quarters of an inch bigger than usual, and they're moving at like one inflation per second, like, they maxed out. Maybe give him a break. Maybe.

You're hitting rev limiter on your mule. Yeah, yeah. That's like pushing it to like 4,500 RPM. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. So mystery guests we have here today is the crabber himself, Luke McFadden. He is a craver. And I ain't no crabber.

You ain't no crabber. I ain't no mule skinner. Well, you're more of a mule skinner than I'm a crabber because you rode a mule yesterday for probably eight or nine miles. Yeah. It was awesome. How'd it go? It was great. No problems at all.

Is that your first time riding a mule? It was my first time riding any... Any equine animal? Oh, yeah. Yep. Well, I watched the video. I thought it was 50. He's pretty solid.

Yeah, yeah, he did good. Were you nervous at all? Not really, to be honest, because... I don't know why. I think I'm just maybe I'm a little too dumb to be nervous. It just looked about that situation. It just seemed... They seemed nice enough, you know what I mean?

I thought, all right, I trust them. Trust these guys. You get thrown out of a mule. All you got to do is get up and get back on him. You get thrown out of a boat. Then you got to swim. Yeah, it's a whole thing. It's got a whole lot of stuff.

We could get into a debate on, like, which one would be worse. I'm trying to give him his props, man. Yeah, yeah. Well, true story. The, I told Luke about a story of a young man that rode with me the other day that had, like, zero. Like, if they're, on the scale of one to ten of just knowledge of equine animals, like, he would be, like, minus one. Which end is the years old? Yeah, yeah.

He was like, shouldn't his feet be pointed upwards and not right on his belly? He was so, and I'm going to use this word, it's not derogatory towards him, but like almost naive. He just jumped up on that mule and was like so relaxed. And what I was trying to tell Luke is that an animal picks up on the energy. I don't care if you're a neuroscientist and think this earth is just like natural physics. man, there is something deep going on inside a horsemanship. It's very natural and there's a scientific explanation for it, but that animal is picking up what you're putting out.

If you're tense, fearful, it feels it, it knows it, and it translates to that animal. If you're just like totally relaxed, because I put this young man on a mule that's usually pretty hopped up, Izzy, and Izzy's a great mule, very much so a finished meal, thousands of miles, never done anything wrong, but she's hard to handle. Like you wouldn't put Mee Ma'amaw on Izzy.

Right. Izzy would just, she wouldn't hurt her, but, well, she probably would. She could because she might, you know, not buck her off, but just kind of get out of control a little bit. And so I put him on there, and I was actually a little nervous about it. But he was a scrapping young lad. Alex, this is the first I heard of this. Yeah, I was going to say, you told me this thing was totally fine yesterday. It all comes out now.

This was before that. This was before that. And so I put him on there, and he was. So he was so relaxed. Izzy was relaxed. And I mean, he just rode, we rode all over the place and totally fine. That's what Luke's telling me he did. He was just like, hey, this is no big deal.

I did notice. I did notice on the video when they got midstream, there was a little bit of a little. Well, Izzy tripped. Yeah. And Luke's eyes got a little bigger. But that was the only expression that he had. And he just like, all right. We just keep going.

Was that when we were crossing the river? Yeah. She tripped and I thought, oh, boy. We had to get our cold plunge in for the day. Yeah, that would have been awesome. Well, hey, before we get two-starred, I have something for you guys, for each of you. I brought from Maryland, I also smuggled on the airplane. It was not quite as hard as the live craft, but it had its own different challenges, but they did make it here.

Okay. I have one for each of you. I'll explain after I give it to you. Here you go. Oh, I can't. What, Brett, what's your guess? I don't know. What is it?

He's taking off his shoes. Hold on. Don't show, bring it over here, but don't show it to us. What's my guess it could be? Oh, I don't know. I have no idea. Like, not even a single idea. If this is a dead...

Oh, I know what it is. I've felt it now. If this is a dead fish wrapped up in newspaper, I know I'm a goner. I know what I do. It's heavy. So they're wrapped up in newspaper, but this is a Maryland tablecloth here. That's what we use e-crab. Oh, dude.

This is unreal. Oh, snap. This is a, tell me what this is. We call that a bluebell or blackhead duck decoy. You have a canvas back, Brent. Oh, wow. Listen, these are not any duck decoys, all right? These are, so you guys just did your book on market hunting deer.

Yeah. Right in America. Yes. So the Chesapeake Bay, where I'm from. from had a long stretch of history where market hunting ducks was a huge part of culture and you know industry so these decoys and then you know so that went from 1800 to 18 or 1918 was market hunting where it was legal and then 1918 they outlawed it so then there was a culture of outlaw market gunning.

So these decoys are actually from between 1918, after 1918, but before 1930. These are actual outlaw market gunning decoys. If these decoys could talk. Man, let me tell you, my brother right now, Tim, he's doing a double backflip

right now, and he don't know why. Because I'm holding this. And to a duck guide, man, this right here is It's history, man. Oh, wow. Those are made right, you know. Do you think this is hand-carved? Oh, I know they are. Absolutely.

I know they. I could tell you, I have done some research on both of these, and I can tell you who made that one. I don't know who made this one, but that, they're from Rock Hall, Maryland, which is right across the bay from me. It's a crab out of Rock Hall sometimes. And so that, the canvas back you have, Brent, is likely turned down on a gun lathe from Like World War I or what I know I don't know

Not that great whatever like an old military gun laid that they would these guys would get a hold of Right so they would turn some decoy bodies So like that one is likely turned on a lathe and then finished with a spoke show Do you know what kind of wood it would be? I don't know they were kind of using whatever Yeah, but that one a lot of more bass I think Basswood yeah I know that's common these days I don't couldn't tell you what these are made out of it's a heavy wood Yeah so that one that you have is likely hatchet carved and then finished with a draw knife.

They would take a block and they would carve it with a hatchet. Wow. It's beautiful. Holy cow. Yeah. Dude, you couldn't have given this to people that would appreciate it more. See, this is going in the museum. There's a part of me that hates to take history from where it's originated,

lived its entire life, you know, in, within 10 miles of where I live at, you know, forever. and there's a lot of history with these two things, but I know that you guys, if anybody will appreciate it and take care of it, you know, it's going to be you guys. This is amazing. What a gift, dude. And I have, hey, hey, this is like, this is about as good a spot on a gift as could be given.

I would suggest not eating those paint chips, though. So this is for you. Yeah, there's a little lead in those paint chips. Check this out. Oh, wow. I'm sure you know what those are, but those are brass shotgun shells. And so those...

Describe what it looks like, Luke. It looks like a 12-gauge shell, but it's just made up. It looks like a spent 12-gauge casing, but it's brass. Yeah, the whole thing's brass. Looks like a section of one-inch brass pipe. Those are earlier than the decoys. So those are from somewhere between 1900 and 1910, those are from, allegedly, from the guy I got them from and the research I've done.

And those were very, very common with the market gunners because they could reload. them. Yeah. And shells were expensive. So they would use these brass shells that they could. They used to call them St. Louis 2's. They shoot number two shot at them. Really.

They would head rake them, you know, across the bay. Boy, they used to hunt these things with punt guns, you know, that would really be a cool thing. You know,

these like 10 foot long shotguns where they would pour like two pounds a shot. And then they used that little skulling boat and take out the whole flock and a roost. That, man. Wow. That's incredible. You could see the knife.

cuts on that on that canvas backs heat so it's a blue bill now blue bill is like a duck that people want to kill up there oh yeah yeah canvas backs are kind of the king of the chesapeake you know been known for that but the blue bills i mean that's what you know that that's like number two really there's there's a lot of around so that is awesome it's likely that these

have been reheaded okay since then but i mean they would that one's kind of got a cracked head you know they would carve the bodies they put 20 heads on them in their life because they would just break off. There's actually even, I was looking them over, and there's a couple spots where there's shot in these decoys, which I think is the cool. I think it's cool. You know, like, and I know they don't look like much, but there's a shot right under that one's eye. No, dude, that's going to hang in the museum.

I'm going to. These things have seen things that I hope that we will see again, but it's unlikely, you know. Wow. Just cool. Okay. Hey, I have a gift for you. And this is not a retallel. a retaliatory gift.

This is not, I was going to do this before I knew these were here. And in a way, it's a gift from me, Josh, and Brent. Oh, man. These things are getting scarce, man. Yes, this is a genuine plot hound treed. Ozark Mountain killed custom. One size fits all.

Yeah. Raccoon. Hat made by Josh Lambridge spillmaker. Really? That's a... So my good dog Fern treat that coon. Really? The last guy I gave one to...

Well, I gave one to Cam Haynes, Cameron Haynes. And he asked me if I killed it, and I said, probably. And the reason it was probably is because there was probably three or four kids underneath that tree that may have shot it. Right. But that is a genuine Arkansas. Treasure. Treasure. Well, thank you so much.

That is awesome. You might need a fur hat up there. It gets pretty cold. Oh, yeah. No, I think I'm just going to wear it to the airport. You know? I like that. Hey, if TSA tries to take that from you, call us.

I know. We're coming right. No, I appreciate that. That is amazing. Thank you so much. Hey, the duck decoys. Incredible. Um, so if you don't know Luke, all you got to do is just look up.

Type L into your search, into your Instagram search. Just say, say, Lou, and he's going to pop up. And Siri goes, Luke McFadden. Luke Skywalker is second. Luke Skywalker. Luke, uh, Luke Adonichick, he might come up. NBA guy scored 60 points. He ain't a grabber.

Yeah. No, so Luke has a big TikTok. You kind of got, TikTok was like your thing there for a while. Yeah, yeah, definitely started on TikTok and it kind of spread across all platforms. So now, you know, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Yeah. That's what I've been putting a lot of time into here lately. You're a crabber.

Yeah, yep, that's what I do. It's a full-time grabber. And so you just give me like a short, overview of your business like you're catching crabs and then you're selling them direct to people yeah yep so um 27 i started when i was 18 on my own boat and everything and i sold to wholesale you know middlemen for the first seven years and then i tried to get into you know retail which is kind of how i got into the social media stuff i was trying to figure out you know find a market for my product really you know what i mean just kind of figure out a way to market it better and whatever else so

ended up selling a direct-to-customer, and so I've been doing that for the past two years, and it's growing, you know, which is a great problem to have. But yeah, now I'm a full-time waterman on the bay. And you tell us about smuggling those live crabs. So like two days before he came down here, we're in Arkansas at the global headquarters.

I was like, hey, could you bring some crab down here? I mean, if I was going somewhere, I could see somebody saying, and hey, would you bring some bear grease or some bear meat? And I would be like, well, bear grease is a little bit harder to come by. But I would, I'd be like, sure. And so I texted Luke and I said, hey, what are the chances you can bring some crab? And he said, like, frozen crab or like live crabs?

And I was like, well, I don't even know what I'm asking for. You tell me, but live crabs sound pretty good. And it went something like that. And so what did you do? Well, I like a challenge, you know, so I, uh, and I'm in the, you know, I make videos. So I was like, you know, it would be an awesome thing, whether it went really well or really bad is if I tried to get like live crabs to you guys on the airplane and not like check them, like carry them on the airplane with me. And I was like, I don't know if you can do that. They won't let you bring a bottle of shampoo, but I was like, you know, I think it'd be funny either way.

You know what I mean? Like, did you go ahead, keep going. And I was doing this stuff before I even started. social media. I'm the kind of guy will go the extra mile for laugh. You know what I mean? For me or somebody else. So I was like, I just thought it would be, you know, an interesting thing to try anyway. So I, yeah, no, I got like a duffel bag and I built a cooler inside the duffel bag, put the crabs in there and then carried them on the airplane. So I have some pictures of me and my crabs on the plane. And when you put those crabs through the scanner, did no one just say like, uh, can you open that up for me?

Surprisingly, are you, no. I put them through the, you know, the x-ray mission. But they'll stop a pair of fingernail clippers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I seen it go through, and then it stopped. And my heart stopped. I was like, oh, no. And then it went back.

And then it went through. And I seen the lady, like, pull the screen a little closer to her face. And it was like, 4.30 in the morning. So I was like, there's either chance they're going to be really grumpy and they're going to give me a hard time, or they're going to be like, it's too early for this. It's just Maryland things. Like, whatever. Just like.

And then the third time. And it went through. I was like, oh, we're good. And so I got them behind security. And then the only issues I did have was trying to carry them on the actual airplane. They were going to try to make me check them there for a moment. But that was a size issue. That was a size issue.

They didn't even know what was in it. You know what I mean? They were like, they told them, hey, that bag's too big. And then what, yeah, so she gave you a hard time. She gave me real hard time. And I was like, you know, I can't check it. You know, you can't just like, it's got to stay upright. And she's like, why?

It's a baby because there's a baby. I was like, well, you know, there's like, it's full of seafood. She's like, okay? I was like, like live seafood. You know, if you turn, if you turn seafood over, it pours out. That's right. Right. I was like, I don't want to be, you know, carrying this.

That was my first leg of the journey. I was like, I don't want to have to be carrying this nasty thing. What town was this in? That was in Baltimore, actually, that I was, you know, having the hard time getting on the airplane. So, you know, after some heated discussion and some other. things. I finally did get it on the airplane with me and into the overhead compartment. They made them here. And only two crabs died. I couldn't believe it. How many crabs do you think? I think we had about three dozen. Three dozen crabs. And I was expecting for to, you know, hope,

I was hoping to get about, you know, at least 50% here alive and well. But I tell you what, man, complimentary drinks, you know, on the plane. The crabs were good. You know, give them some snacks. They were just fine, you know. Do they like those little biscoff? Yeah, yeah, they do. And a window seat. They love a window seat. I do have a picture of me and my crab seeing the world together. These crabs have seen things other crabs who could never dream of.

On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed and there was a pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left. behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you have somebody sitting by you when you pulled that one out? I did. And it was awkward. It was like, but the guy kind of was like, it was this, okay, there's me. Multiple kind of interactions that you have with someone that sits with you on a plane.

Yeah. There's like the no look, you know, there's like multiple options. There's the no look. No look, no talk. Yep. It's just like imaginary wall, ignorance is bliss. Like, let's not do this. We're just.

Then there's me. And then there's the kind of the southern, like, nice guy. Like anybody you set with, you need to greet them. And where were you at on this? You know, in Baltimore, it's not really, it's more the, you know, I'm... The Baltimore stank guy. Yeah, I'm upset that you have to be even on the same airplane.

Even if you cured cancer, like that kind of hospitality. You didn't talk to this person. No, I didn't say anything. It's kind of just best to, you know, I just kind of went about my business. I thought, you know what? There's days where you're that guy, you know? Okay. And these days are becoming more and more frequent with my life, oddly enough.

But I was just that guy. That guy that had a crab on the airframe. So you pull a crab out. The guy beside you acknowledged it? He kind of just, I think that he saw it. You know, he looked and he was just kind of like, I, he kind of acknowledged that he saw it because I saw his demeanor change, and then he just kind of, like, looked back forward and closed his eyes.

I was like, I wonder, it's like, it's so early in the morning. Maybe this guy thinks, like, there's no way I just saw this crab on an airplane. You picked the wrong thing. Yeah, and then I... I wonder if he thought it was, like, cooked seafood, and he was like, oh, wow. Or, like, a rubber. A.m. The guy beside me is cracking crabs.

Right. See, that would have been funny to bring crabs, you know, cook crabs and eat them on the airplane on the way home. That would have been. Well, so when he got him here, Josh, we did a big crab boil. I love it. We had steam. We go get some hate mail. Oh, sorry.

Old crabs in Maryland. We steamed them. The most tragic thing about the whole scene, though, is that Clay made his famous, regionally famous Coast Law. You know. Yeah, yeah, with the jalapeno. Can you confirm to them that it's regionally famous? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Every church potlut, it's going to show up. Yeah, yeah. Every wedding on the Newcomb farm, it's going to show up. I even hand chopped the cabbage, the stuff. Oh, wow. After, yeah, it's a long story.

I put it in the refrigerator to chill. Yeah. You do that with the coastal, Josh. Don't give me a... Josh gave me the island. Why are you chilling? Oh, you're a crab. He's facing a chair.

And so we... Then we go steam our crab. Right. And we have this huge meal, and we leave the Kostlau on the fridge. Oh, shoot. So we're going to have some of Clay's famous Kostla on the render before we end today. I'm kidding. That's a joke.

But you got brand excited. Hell, let's eat. So we start. Tell us how you, how you steam crab. Well, we just put them in a, you know, in a pot. Probably like it looked like a canning pot or something. Yeah, whatever. We use what we got, you know what I mean?

And put some water. and vinegar in the bottom. What's the vinegar do? The vinegar actually makes them easier to pick, so it keeps the meat from sticking to the shell so bad. Interesting. Yeah, so, like, if you use, like, I've heard of guys using, like, sea water, not Chesapeake Baywater, but, like, sea water to steam seafood and stuff.

We're putting seasoning with salt in it in the water, and that seems like a great concept, but it makes the meat stick to the shell worse. So if you put a little white vinegar in there, maybe, like, one third part white vinegar, you know, it'll help. So just water and... That kind of stuff always intrigues me

how they figured it out. Right, I was about to say the same thing. Okay, give me that diesel. Yeah, that didn't work. How about some WD40? No, that didn't work either. What we got left? Here's some white vinegar.

It's like the same guy that figured out you could eat a crab. Or motion. Who was the guy that decided that it didn't stick to the shell as bad? Probably the guy selling vinegar, but... Yeah, yeah. Because the stuff we cooked in vinegar, I'd say, say the meat stuck to the shell. Oh.

Last night? I mean, when we ate it? Yeah, this is kind of what happens. Yeah, it does a little bit, but I'm telling you, it can be a lot. There's a lot of times where you're trying to get it, and it's like, it's like, the meat stuck to itself that's like stuck to the, I don't know, it's hard to describe. But if I gave you two, you could probably pick, you. I don't know.

We may have to try for science. So these are blue crabs. And ironically, these actually probably came from. Louisiana. Yeah, Maryland blue crab season is closed right now. So you, but they shipped them live from Louisiana to Maryland. Yep. And then you brought them from Maryland to Arkansas.

Wow, man, those dudes have been around. They're well traveled. These are blue crabs. What's the scientific name of them? Calenectus sapitus. And so the males are how big? Males, I mean, they'll get up to, I mean, I've caught, like, the biggest one I've caught probably is like nine inches point to point across the carapace, which is a giant.

I mean, that's a massive crab. Usually when they get that big. Do you know? I didn't, but I have seen mounted crabs, but I don't have a mounted crab. That would be pretty cool, though. Yeah. I sold it. You know, but, yeah, so, you know, they get that big, and usually the thing that gets them is either a waterman or they, you know, they die a shell rot. They get so big.

They can't shed. They don't have the energy, shed their shell anymore. Like males will, in theory, just keep growing and growing and growing. Oh, really? Females, once they shed from an immature, feet. female to a mature female, that crab never sheds again. Interesting. I'm surprised that in, like, water folklore, there's not a giant crab somewhere, like a whale or a squid.

Like a six-foot crab. Well, I mean, no, like a 20-foot crab. Oh. Like, there could be. I mean, the thing is, you know, I use crab pots instead of, like, an alternative method to catching crabs in Maryland would be like a trout line where the crab is just holding on to a piece of bait. and then you're driving a boat along the line and you put like, you have a hook over the side,

you put the line over the hook, and you're just driving along it, and the crabs will hold on to the bait until you get to the surface, and then you dip them off the line with the net. Oh, wow. So in a crab pot, you can only catch a crab that will fit through the funnel.

You know what I mean? So they catch some real giants, you know, trat lining because it's just anything that can hold on the bait. But you just probably don't catch as many. Well, there's different areas you can go. and, you know, I mean, when you're doing on a really large scale, like what I'm doing, you know, you're fishing up to 1,400 crab pots when I have two license sometimes, you know, crab pot is kind of the way that you would go, you know, to do it on a really big scale. I see. I see. So, Luke, when I was a boy, I grew up on the Gulf.

I got called the crab pot. We used to go crabbing. We had, my uncle had two crab pots, and then we'd just take the lines where he put the meat through. We'd pitch them out there, and we'd catch blue crabs there near Galveston, yeah. Huh. Just to eat, just to eat them home. Steaming to eat them. They're all over the East Coast now. So blue crabs are, are they all over the world or just? I mean, America.

I know they have them in South America and Central America. Same species. I believe so. I've never been there to witness it, but I do think they do. I hear they don't get as big. Okay. But, you know, with East Coast going through, there's a lot of ecological change kind of going on in the northeast, you know, of the East Coast. So, I mean, they're even finding blue crabs in Maine.

You know, I got to know guys that lobster and that raise a blizzard up there. No, that doesn't sound. Like, I figured they were already there. They're not. They're not. No, they're not. But they're starting to show up. So it's a southern, like, Chesapeake Bay is the northern range of the blue crab.

Historically is, you know, yeah, like Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, you know, I know they have some in New York and all, but it was kind of like, from what I understand, you know, that was kind of as far north, like, you know, there's not a fishery for them in New York. Well, I think, maybe there is. Just as a little caveat, if the Arkansas gaming fish finds some blue crab in the Arkansas River, it didn't have anything to do with us. Right, right, right. So, yeah, like, I guess there is a fishery for blue crabs in New York. I don't know a ton of it, but, you know, there was kind of like as far north as you would really find them. So when you eat these things, there was,

you said something when we started, you said blue crabs are the only thing you could starve while eating. Yeah. It's a surprising, surprisingly small amount of meat on a pretty big looking crab. Yeah. Would you have said that, Josh? Yeah. But once you get into it, you realize it's the,

it's the social aspect and the meat is very, very good. And you have to work for it. It's kind of, it's fun. Generally, you supplement the crab with coleslaw. Usually. Yeah. A good host would. So just quickly tell me how you'd break down a crab, like to eat it. So if you just had to describe it to somebody in like a minute.

Yeah, break the claws off. You can get into the claws, eat that pretty pain free. Then pick the apron off the bat. Flip it over. It's like the hood, like the big part. Sort of, yeah, yep. The bonnet. The bonnet, if you're in England.

Yeah, something like that. It's just reproductive work. Don't let this, this might indicate my socioeconomic status, but one of my biggest interaction with seafoods has been Captain D's. And Captain D's, when you get the seafood platter, it actually has a real crab shell stuffed with like, you know, crab dressing. Anything but crabs. Yeah.

It's probably a real crab shell stuffed with like imitation crab or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It was good though. Yeah. I wonder if that was a blue crab. Possibly. Probably. It's about the size of a blue crab. It was about as big as a mango. Yeah.

Yeah, probably a blue crab, something like that. From our mango tree in the yard. Yeah, right. Carry on. Unit of the measure. Okay, so you take the top big part of the shell off. Yep. Yeah. You'll pull the, you know, the carapace off, and then you'll be left with the body. You'll see the lungs. and then kind of like the guts in the center.

You pull the guts out. It looks like ramen noodles. You know, you don't want to eat the forbidden ramen noodles. Okay. But I don't suggest it necessarily. And then they have lungs on either side. Okay. You'll pull them off.

It's like gills, like fish gills. Gills, lungs. There's some kind of thing about them because they can live out like that. That's what they look like. Yeah. Yeah. Pull them off. You don't really want to eat them.

And then I take the body, break it in two pieces. You know, it'll split into two even pieces. And then, you know, I usually, flip it over and you'll be able to see the lines down the, you know, the underside of the crab. I'll kind of take my two thumbs and break them along those lines and then you can kind of crack the top and then pull the meat out of all the little compartments, you know. I like to keep it still attached to the legs.

It just gives you, you know, for dip in and whatever else. Yeah. Because a lot of times we'll dip them in butter and stuff like that. Now that you're describing it and I've done it now, it helps me to think about it like this. The muscles, there are muscles attached to things that have to move. Yeah. And there's a muscle attached to every leg.

So it has eight legs, right? Yeah. Eight legs and two pinchers. Something like that. Or maybe six. I don't think it's eight legs and two pinchers. Six legs. It's got a lot.

I think he's got three legs a swim fin and a pinter on each side, I believe. Okay, so that's four appendages. You ain't no craver. Yeah. I ain't no craver. But like every leg has a little tuft of meat, like a tiny little bit of meat. And so you're basically cracking off that. leg and pulling it out so that meat kind of comes out with it. And then you have this little

crab hole hand, you know, handle of the leg. And then you dip that in some melt of butter, touch it into a little little bit of, a little seasoning that you have, and then you eat it. And so you do that with all the legs. And then you've cracked the claws, which not all of them had claws. Yeah, well, sometimes a lot of times the claws fall off when you're steaming them at all. Okay. You know, they're in there fighting, you know. whatever. They don't go out without a fight. Why is it so hot in here?

Like in a restaurant, when you get crabs, a lot of times they have... One of them's wife is like, can you turn up the heat? It's freezing me. Yeah, right. In a restaurant, they would either shock the crabs, electrocute them or ice them. Really? Like flash ice them.

Usually they electrocute them. What do you do for a living? Electrocut crows. Yeah, right, right. The merchant of crustacean death. But that's so that... It's a new tattoo. Oh, so when they steam them so they don't fight them so they don't fight in the

pot so they don't have to do in animal ethics or anything well i mean maybe i don't know but i mean i know in the industry it's like so that because you know if you're serving crabs as a restaurant people will complain sometimes they don't have all the claws even if they're like there they want a crab with all yeah so so you you i'm on it you shock them it's kind of like a gladiator fight when you throw them all that pot and then put the lid on oh yeah we put the lid on and we had some potatoes and corn on the top and uh i think missy said something about like Uh, it's moving. I mean,

there's a, there's a cob of corn up there's going, a wiggling back to the lid starts kind of moving a little bit. I was like, yeah, it's, it's just, just,

we'll check in on over like 10 minutes. What I learned is that it's like extremely, like Luke said it's a, it's a full contact sport. Like, you know, we had crabs just everywhere. It's like you have a huge pile of just stuff.

But at first, when I was watching him do it, I was like, holy cow. this is going to be wild because he was like, don't eat this, don't eat the lungs. There's what he called the mustard in them, which is the fat, which just looks like this like pasty yellow. I mean, it would be like, you'd think, don't eat that. But it kind of gets on everything and it's actually really good.

So there was nothing that I put in my mouth from that crab didn't taste incredible. So I kind of got it. I was like, oh, you don't have to be afraid of anything. Right. You just like go to town. And it was great. It was a lot. It's definitely a cold.

Full contact sport eating crabs for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like a big crawfish ball on steroids. Yeah. It's a little messier. Yeah. I can see how if you really do what you were doing, I mean, you'd just.

If you try not to make a mess, eat them outside or in the bathtub because that's, you're going to get it everywhere. Luke, what's your record of eating crabs? How many crabs have you eaten? I mean, you know, in one sitting? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I mean, usually by the time I've, you know,

If I really get it, you know, the tunnel vision on eating the crabs, it's kind of like everything else just kind of fades away. So it's kind of like you just kind of wake up in the world. Covered in an old bay or chaos seasoning. I can't remember what happened. Why am I in Arkansas? I mean, I don't even remember bringing these on the plane. Okay, if I'm going to do a crab boil for family and friends, how many, how many, that's, I'm sorry,

crab steam. Yeah. You don't do a boil for your family. friends who do steams. How many crabs do I need to factor in per person? I mean, you could count on like, you know, if your friends are from Maryland, I would count on 10 crabs a man. Per person?

Per person. Oh, wow. Depending on the size. The size of the crab makes all the difference. Right, of course. We didn't have any giant extra jumbos because I was trying to, could only bring so many on the plane. I was trying to get a little more case some died.

I sent a picture of that to Michael Roseman when they were all laid out on the table. You know, he's wife's from Maryland. And she said, what's everybody else going to eat? I get into a dollar on myself. Yeah, I would say if I'm eating like large crabs, which are like my largest are six to six and a half inches across the top. You know, I could count on eating between 10 and 12 myself. But I'm a very efficient crab eater.

You know, I don't, I actually don't eat crabs that often. You know what I mean? That's like Biggie Small is breaking his eighth crack commandment, man. You can't get high on your own supply. You got to. There's a lot of them back in that. That reference will play with a lot of bear grease. Right?

That's good. Wow. I was going to say four crabs. Okay. After four crabs, I was wore out. He was like, can I just? I ain't some sausage. I mean, true story.

I ain't no craver. It was a lot of fun. Can you imagine steaming a deer whole, a deer live deer? Just eating it with your hands? Yeah. Dump it out on a table. Don't give him any idea. That's a great idea.

We'll be doing that next. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. But he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Man, I hate to change the topic from crabbing, but we've got some serious conversation to have here about a podcast that I've been working on and excited about for probably over a year. Like the sequence of the way these things happen when I do a series,

It's not always a year, but usually I'm reading a book or doing something that's connected to something that I'll, will materialize much later. I think last summer, maybe last spring, I started reading Roderick Nash's book, Wilderness in the American Mind. That book, this book was written, let me see what the copyright date is. This is going to blow your mind. this book first edition published in 1967 oh wow this book is considered

the quote unquote book of genesis of let's see this book is a mandatory prelude to any modern treatment of conservation problems here's another one when Roderick Nash

when Roderick Nash's Wilderness in the American mind first appeared in 1967. It was justly praised as the first real idea book in environmental history. Indeed, a classic study and greatly influenced. That's not what I'm looking for. This is the book of genesis of American wilderness. This guy was a, was a, like getting his Ph.D. in 1967 wrote this book. When I read this book, I cannot fathom what a human would have to go through to gather the

information he did and cover it in such an incredible way. This is a top five book for me in the world. Oh, wow. Yeah, like massively influential because it unveiled for me things that were happening inside of me that I didn't know why. And that's something I'm very interested in all areas of life. I popped out of the womb in 1979 in Arkansas, and I have this view of the world, these ideas about different things.

how much of that did I come up with on my own? How much of it I came up because of my individual family? How much did I come up with it because of the culture that I'm raised in? How much did I come up with it because I am an American? Like where does this stuff come from? And to me, that's all real important. Because you will live a life of deception if you think, I mean, this whole idea of being like a free thinker

and like we're these independent people that just came up with all this stuff on our own. And nobody tells me what to do. It's like, dude, you're a product of your culture because your culture valued that. Your culture valued you saying that you're the only one who ever thought of this and you're this autonomous man. And I love that. But what I'm saying is that came from somewhere. This whole idea of like rugged individualism of the American is kind of... You're influenced by everything is an influence, either positive or negative.

Well, and a whole lot of the way that we think. Unless you're Steve Ronella. Well, we're going to get to that. No, when Roderick Nash started talking about wilderness, I was like, yeah, yeah. And I had no idea. He was talking about all this deep history about, oh, I mean, this was way different than like the Donnie Baker story. I mean, like radically, like if an alien came down and analyzed this podcast, they would be. like two different people must have made that for for for because it's like very different right

which I like I like that it went from this very personal very personal story to something I don't view it as academic but it is philosophical and philosophy not be to me philosophy is really functional because to have an understanding of who you are you have to kind of know why and I've always loved the idea of wilderness, but also wilderness with a capital W. So this book just specks it out. And so much, I got to give Roderick Nash

credit so much of what I talked about in this first episode came from this book. And I tried to get Roderick Nash, he's still alive, he's in his 80s. I tried to get him on this here podcast and he wouldn't do it. And I'm not afraid to say that

because it's just the truth. but good i have a lot of respect for what he wrote but uh but holy smokes did i have a cast of characters though uh dr dan flores incredible guy um just came out with a new book called wild new world he wrote coyote america he wrote american serengetti which if you hadn't read american serengetti you ain't no crabber if there's not pictures then i ain't read it Most cravers probably ain't. To be honest with you. American Serengeti is basically about the Pleistocene North America.

It's just mind-boggling. Oh, burritos are ready. We're going to... Colby Moorhead came over here the other day and told me how to make that battery pack stop beeping, and I forgot what he said. So every time it beeps in this podcast, we're giving one of the listeners a Coonskin hat. Not true. American Serengetti talks about Pleistocene North America.

And basically that we had more charismatic megafauna than even Africa, like what we looked at. You know, we had the bison. We had like multiple giant cats. We had horses. We had ground, 2,000 pound giant ground sloth. We had cave bears. We had dire wolves. I mean, it was, it was like a, it was like.

It was like Jurassic Park here. Anyway, Dan Flores wrote a book on that. He's number one. Number two is Dr. Sarah Dant. It's Dan's wife. I think the world knows that. Their dinner-tidal conversations probably got a limited scope of... Oh, they're like the most interesting people at all time.

So she's a professor at Weber University in Utah, and she wrote this book called Losing Eden, which is an environmental history of the West. It is like so much packed with deep human history on the landscape of North America, kind of mind-blowing book too. And so she's on there. And then Steve Radella, who I'm interested in see what y'all's take on the Steve Radella section was. Steve's always great to have on.

He's, yeah, great. And then one of my favorites, Hal Harris. Harry who Hal Herring is a character. If you don't know how, then you ain't no crabber. But Hal Haring, great guy. Where to start? I mean, you know, you said that the last, the Donnie Baker, this really aren't related, but I mean, it kind of is, though.

I mean, you can't tell me even though Donnie Baker what he did. I mean, he, I guarantee, you know, he shared all the same interests in the wild and that we do, you know, and that everybody else did. So really, it's kind of almost the origin story of the whole thing, you know? It's like starting, you just had the Franks before the beans a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't think it's very, it's not that unrelated.

It's like, you know, his desire to be out in the wilderness and take deer and do whatever else, even though it went a little sideways there for a minute. Yeah. You know, probably has the same roots and ideas. So he was going to an area that had unmolested animals that were easy to hunt. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. To me, that was the most interesting thing.

One of the most interesting things in the podcast is that this, what we now view as a love of wilderness and us like federally preserving wilderness areas goes back deep into our epigenetics, as Dan Flores said, when we loved places that were absent of humans because we could go there and be successful hunting because the animals were undisturbed. I mean, that's like wildly fascinated. I feel like this podcast. made me more contemplative about it than I've ever been. Because I think when you say the word wilderness, it does evoke an emotional response to a lot of people. And I thought, I thought, what is wilderness really, you know, beyond the definition, what does it mean to me? Because, you know, we've traveled a lot with our kids to national parks and whatnot. Yeah.

You know, you see the capital W wilderness and you kind of go out there and you see the paved parking lot and you see all the trails. and the signs that say... That wouldn't be capital W wilderness. That would be a national park. Well, national park. But we have seen wilderness areas. And it just... You're like, that doesn't...

It is. I mean, if you can drive... It's hard. Yeah. So... Oh, well, you're talking about national parks. Yeah, yeah. But the idea of wilderness is, to me, is captivating with a side of terrifying.

Mm. Because I thought you were going to say captivating with a capital C. No. Um, captivating. Like, like, like I'm, I'm, I'm, I am just bewildered by it and I'm drawn to it. But at the same time, there is that, that aspect of, of, of, like, it's, it's wild. I mean, it is like, it's, it's, uh, unpredictable. And, uh, going back to what I, I talked about this before, if we're going to talk about wilderness, you can't talk about it without the movie, the wilderness family. I didn't bring them up in this. But, you know, I think about that idea of being dropped off in the middle of nowhere and being forced to make something of it. And there are certain things like we talked about unmolested animals,

but also at the same time, there is a raw wildness about it. I thought the etymology of your word there was fascinating. I got chills listening to that yesterday in the truck coming home from squirrel hunting. So I- Stringer squirrels in the back truck. I love it. But I'm excited about, I'm excited about hearing more about it because it is, it is a thing that is unique. I've never thought about wilderness being something that when you lose it, you don't get it back.

Right. I'm not, it's hard to wrap your mind around. It doesn't come back. Yeah, it's done. Yeah. So we have a potentially extinctable resource that really does need to be cared for. And so I appreciate the deep dive. Well, I think it's important to understand like this broader scale of humanity.

Humans as a species coming out of being hunter-gatherers moving towards civilization, which civilization would be defined by agriculture and domestic animals and congregation of people, which would have increased birth rates, produced a lot of more security. As people were coming out of wilderness into that, there was this very longstanding human idea that wilderness was bad. Even though we were drawn to it as hunter-gatherers to go into places that were unexploited, when all of a sudden there was a new option, we were very very interested in becoming. And again, civilized is a politically incorrect term that I'm going to use because we just have to understand what we're talking about.

You know, because when you say civilized, it insinuates that they're humans that live uncivilized lives. And so that's politically incorrect. But you understand what I'm saying. So when all of a sudden the security of civilization was here, there was like, let's say 99% of people were very interested. and get into that so that they didn't die when they were 18 years old from starvation or from a woolly mammoth tusk in the butt. You'll have that. Took it right in the...

The old piece here. But the tables shifted as civilization then dominated the face of the earth. And then all of a sudden there's this artifact where we woke up in the 1800s, the romantic era and all of a sudden it became cool to love wilderness. It's like this sloshing from one side to the other. Wilderness is our enemy. We have to get to civilization. And then it became civilization is the enemy.

That's what Thoreau and Emerson and Muir and we have to get back to wilderness. And then today we live in a world that's so lopsided in civilization. there's those of us who are scrapping and wanting to interact with and go to a place that's such an anomaly across the face of the earth where we could go and experience a place that people don't live that is a way you know that's interesting you think about you think about i'm sorry no no go ahead well you just think about the you talked about the romanticism of it and in our realm where we work here the majority of the products that we sell that we offer for sale that we use are all geared to make going into the wilderness easier yeah you know i mean that's how we make a living boots and waterproof clothing and backpacks and being lighter weight and being able to carry more stuff with you that you need to yeah to survive at a time out there when back in those days it was hard you know you had to it was just a little bigger struggle when And we're doing it now, not for survival, but for pleasure, for fun to fill that need that we have, that we wake up that we long to get away from everything that's around us, all these light bulbs and stuff. You know, we all the time I'm here, we're working, we're hunting yesterday, I'm answering text messages and emails while I'm on the back of that mule.

And we get out there when there's none of that, it's a whole different. way to look at a sunrise or the way to look at riding down a road or walking down a road when you're so far removed from it. I had the thought that in there where he said that it's in our nature to long for those places to go. And I may be paraphrasing what he said, but what I got out of what he was talking about was it's in our DNA and our genetic code to want to go to the wild place. my wife thinks if we're in a town that doesn't have a target that's about as wilderness as it gets

That's a wilderness area She don't want any part of that She wants to go the opposite direction So You know But she wouldn't like to go To in the middle of living the middle of Baltimore Or even in the middle of Little Rock

That's too congested She wants somewhere in the happy medium That's still got the security That you can go here and here and there with very little trouble. Me, on the other hand, give me a coal oil lamp and a pocket full of shells and a shotgun, and I'm going to be fine just wherever I can get away from people. So at some point, you know, it was a pendulum.

Yeah. At some point, some folks still followed that, that want or that need to do something. And some folks didn't. I mean, they stopped at the edge. You know, this is far enough, but there's still others that want to go further out. Yeah. And it had to be that way, or this country wouldn't have, wouldn't be where it is now. Yeah.

You know, with exploration. That was just something that I thought about it. Luke, what did you think? You know, I just kind of had a thought about kind of the irony of like you were talking about, you know, human's desire to preserve, recognize and preserve wilderness and wild places. and it's kind of the same theme here is where everything is gone so full circle where like in an effort

to do that we have places like Yellowstone which I, to me, is the least wild wilderness that you could experience. You know what I mean? Three million people a year. Right, right, exactly. Like so it's sort of like it's just,

I think it's just one of the common denominators of human nature. You know what I mean? The same thing that drives people like us to go experience places where there is no one else. The same, you know, that's what the people that discovered new continents and, you know, Americas and whatever else had in them, you know what I mean?

But there's always, you know, I think it's getting kind of bred out of us. You know what I mean? It used to be one in ten people now. It's one in a million people that want to go have that desire to, like, go out and see that. But, you know, I don't know. My thought was just. You said something about scarcity earlier, about how, do you remember how you said scarcity the, is the, humans always gravitate towards what's scarce.

You kind of just won't what you can't have. I mean, everything in your nature is kind of like that. When we were forging a living out of the wilderness, we wanted more security. Right. Then now that we're forging a living out of civilization, we want to reach back to something more wild. It's just, I think, humans' desire to really just kind of want what is scarce and what they, kind of can't have, you know, it's like one of the downfalls of man, you know. It's all one of the things that sets us apart from animals. Which is, in a sense, the antithesis of

wilderness, because the only way to keep wilderness wilderness is to keep a bunch of people out of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like, well, you have these people who want it, but how many people being there makes it not wilderness anymore? Right, right. That's what I say, where is the line of wilderness? Okay, you guys are totally ruining episode too. I wasn't even going to bring it up. No, yeah, there's a major philosophical problem with wilderness. Yeah. Is that wilderness is a wilderness because nobody's there.

Because you're not there. Exactly. So once you go there, then is it still wilderness? And, okay, I'll, even though we have this natural desire just baked into us to experience what is wild. You just listened to episode two. Thank you for example. Check back for episode.

Let's just do another render now. Yeah, just go right to the next render. No, that, that, we get into that pretty extensively about these issues with wilderness. And there's another big issue that I'm not going to bring up just yet, unless one of y'all leaks it out on action. Don't do it. Don't do it. No.

On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce,

and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkly. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have this desire in me to do, that drives me to do what I do. for a living, you know, this, who's crabbing is like this kind of desire to be where people aren't, you know, where there's like an even playing field between you and nature in a way, you know what I mean, where like, you know, your rules and, you know, kind of man's societal boundaries. That's what Hal Herring said.

You know, like, like crabs, fish, the bay where I'm at, it doesn't, nothing, none of that matters. You know what I mean? That is all off the table. It's between you and, you know, in nature. Yeah. You know what I mean? So to me, it's a wild place and I'm drawn to it just for no, it's just, it's in me. You know what I mean?

And so, you know, I live in this, in just below like Baltimore City. I mean, there's tons, people are nuts to butts there. You know, it's just, we're jammed up. But I have this desire to get to the closest place I can and spend the most amount of time there, even if it's a hundred times more work, you know, just because I have this thing baked into me for, like this longing for wild things in wild places and like so i think it just kind of it's different for everybody he's a true representation of it because it's not a legacy thing with him right right he's like a first-gen generation crabber yeah in his family so it there's something there somewhere yeah

well and in your example is is relevant to all of us is that the idea of wilderness you can experience anywhere like you in the chesapeake bay which is not federal wilderness with the capital W, which is not wilderness by many definitions, but you're having that experience of, like what Hal Herrian said, he said wilderness is a feeling where you enter into a place

that's no longer governed by the laws of men. You're governed by ancient laws. And it, boy, I mean, that's for real. I ain't read that book, I promise. No, no, how, this isn't how's book. Hal Haring said that on the podcast. Oh, real? Yeah, yeah.

And that's, that is another critique of wilderness, Josh, is that Dan Flores talked about how we've sacralized. He said a lot of different groups have sacralized wilderness to the point that you might get the idea that that tree out in your yard is not nature too. You see what I'm saying? And like you minimize, you minimize something that's wilderness. On my property right here, I could experience that feeling of wilderness. I mean, it's kind of funny. I have a small piece of land. When I go to particular parts of it, it's the wildest part of the land that I have.

Right. Which is not wilderness by any definition. But it feels, I have that feeling of this is a special place. This is furthest from my house on my land. I feel that way when I'm on the river. Like I'm in a spot where not everybody can get to. You know, when I'm in my boat and I'm cruising down there, I have that feeling like of there is something wild and connects me to nature inside of it that's just mine in the moment.

Yeah. Yeah. I can experience, you know, I have been out crabbing and I am experiencing, you know, that same thing. thing, well, there's a million dollar yacht going by me 50 feet away. You know what I mean? So we're in the same place doing the same thing, but I'm experiencing, you know, my idea of wilderness. And this guy's probably just drinking Mikhailob Ultras at 9 a.m.

That's a million dollar yacht. You know what I mean? So it's like you can, it's just such a weird thing. It's like a totally separate, you know, the feeling, I guess, of wilderness. And then, you know, actual wilderness to, I would guess probably two different podcasts, really. Well, you may have tapped into episode three right there. I didn't mean to. No, no, no.

I'm kidding. I think that the spiritualizing of wilderness really, it's true. You know, I think we've all experienced it. If you've been somewhere remote and you've seen a breathtaking mountain scape with a sunrise that just blows your mind how the creator could have made that for you to see that morning. I think a big aspect to it is the removal of noise from your mind, from your life, from your agenda that makes that thing that much more intense and gives you that experience. Yeah.

What's unique about that is no people have different words to describe it, that there's no humans that deny that that happens. Yeah. Like there's, you know, you use the term creator. There would be people that would not use that term. The one thing that's for certain is that people, whether they believe in a God or don't believe in a God, have a spiritual, and, you know, people might have different definitions of what a spiritual experience would be. But nobody has argued that when you stand on top of some beautiful summit and see a sunrise,

that there is a sublime feeling. Like the guy Burke, he popularized that word. The sublime is like the overlap of the natural and the spiritual. And that is what is not up for debate, is that something happens that's bigger than just normal human stuff, which I think that's incredible. Yeah.

That we're not arguing about this thing that happens. and it would make sense, maybe even biologically, that it doesn't make sense that that would happen unless we were coded to respond to these things, which I think we are. Yeah, you know, they talked about people gravitating toward art paintings and stuff that was the landscape. Wasn't that interesting? Yeah, the trees were just limbs or whatever were just laden with fruit. They hadn't been picked. And animals that were, that were, didn't look scared. Do you remember the guy, go ahead.

Well, I was just, you're, you're not experiencing Canada in Saskatchewan, when the bears were, the famous bear that poked his head and the blind on us. And all the bears that were walking around is they had no fear of us. They didn't, they were actually, they were absolutely unmolested. Yeah. And they had no knowledge. That was one of my top experiences ever. Yeah, they just weren't afraid of us. They weren't afraid.

Do you remember the guy had on from, I don't even remember which bear grease it was, but one of the bear grease is where a guy told us that people respond to landscape, art with humans that are in cover. So if you had a picture of a group of people like out in the middle of, of a field that you would that that that you would you would be more drawn to a picture of people that were close to a bluff because there's a vulnerability yeah yeah it's kind of the same thing it's different it's different than wilderness yeah yeah he Dan Flores was talking about how we respond to unmolested scenes of calm animals fruit trees that hadn't been picked like stuff like

that but but there's there's like deeper stuff so coated into us because They're like, we want to be close to cover. Anyway, I just thought human response to landscape art is pretty interesting. Versus a photograph of a bison goring, a national park visitor. Yeah, I dig those myself. You get what you pay for. Well, then do you think the coding is just a desire for food, water, and shelter? You know what I mean?

It's the same kind of response. It's deep-rooted, no doubt. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are things built inside of us. that help us survive. But I don't think that comes at the exclusion of what Josh said. I do believe that the beauty and intricacy and architecture of the natural world, what it does for me, and I think I speak for a lot of people,

it does draw me to a creator. Like, you know, there's the old thing about if you walked out into a field and you found a watch laying in a field, Josh. Okay. You'd pick it up. And you know what time it was. You would know what time it was, but you would go, who put this watch here? Yeah.

Who made this watch? Or a stone point. And you walk out into nature and we see something that's far more complex, far more designed, far more intricate, far more intelligent than the making of a watch. And we say, well, should the question be, who made this? Right. So to me, that, like a sunrise evokes inside of me a connection, a desire for a connection to my creator. That is not exclusive to, it's also deeply biological in epigenetics, like a, my biofilia,

E.O. Wilson wrote a book called biophilia, which means that deep, we have, philia means like an obsession with. Right. We have an obsession with life. we're the only species on planet earth that has an obsession with other animals' lives, other than like a prey, like a predator and a prey or whatever. But like we want to domesticate animals. We're interested.

And that has been the biological thing that's made us so successful is this love of life. And it's like that's deeply coated inside of us. I think that's also a big part of what makes us human and has this consciousness. But what I'm saying is is that you can have this spiritual thing, happening and a natural thing at the same time. What were we going to say, Luke? So I was just thinking this is maybe jumping ahead or whatever, but it was just... Episode 4?

That was the Ronella thing I was thinking about. So he's talking about, what was it, the north slope of Alaska? The north slope of the Brooks Range. It's the most wild. Yeah. Well, what if he's sitting there glassing and he sees a goat with a collar on it? You know what I mean? Does that make it less wild to him?

Does that take away? Is it no longer wild because that am? animal has been molested by man you know what I mean like I mean what what's that scenario like where's I guess I don't know if that goes into where the line is I'd be curious to say to I'd be curious to hear what he has to say about he said something like that he's addressed that before oh he said oh he said it would ruin it for him really yeah because another human's already touched that you know I kind of have the same I sort of have the same kind of thought I was just thinking about it like you know that's the most wild place you can think but what if that's

what he, you know, saw there. What would he have to say about that? There's a lot of paradoxes inside it today because of the scarcity of wilderness, you know, the question is, is there really even wilderness left? I mean, comparing the collar on the goats, man's, you know, trying to preserve wilderness, you know what I mean? That Steve makes it less wild. It's just like this whole crazy thing.

I mean, there are some places on Earth that are untouched. I mean, there's some places where I think things exist. that we don't I mean you definitely in the sea you know what I mean we have we have we have places where humans have never even seen crabbers only crab only cravers but I said human yeah but there's some places in Africa that are that are pretty that they they don't think they're so adverse to where you getting this information about Africa I was reading about it's been years since I I read about this, but they think there are creatures in there that humans haven't seen.

Right. Deep in the jungles. Yeah. But on a landscape level, I don't think Africa is like the place to think about. I'm not arguing with you. Yeah, I see your point. But I think the bigger, the bigger unmolested landscapes in the world are in the, in the, closer to the north, the poles. I mean, Antarctica, obviously.

It's probably the. Would wilderness be more abundant in places that are more harsh, like harsh climate? Yeah, because humans are wanting to live in places that are favorable. Right. They're comfortable. And so... That's why there's no wilderness in Kansas. Right.

It's all very profitable land. Ohio. And what we're going to talk about, too, in episode two, here we go, is that there's a thing called the rock and ice wildernesses. The wildernesses that we have today are preservation of places that were unusable. And so that's the reason we don't have very many prairie wildernesses. Imagine having a section of prairie in Kansas. Right. Britos are ready. Oh, I'm hungry. Giving away our second Coonskincap. Imagine having a four million acre wilderness in Kansas. Well, what do you think, you know, you say the word wilderness, and I immediately think of

mountains and trees. I mean, I see a picture. You have been marketed to your whole life. Oh. That's what wilderness is. You're a sucker. Yeah, yeah. You're just to the average sucker.

Kind of a funny thing is like if you were to ask a lot of people, like what's the most wild thing you can think of or wild place? Like so many people would probably say something like Mount Everest, you know? Yeah. It's like the least wild mountain there is. You know what I mean? Just because of the people and, you know, whatever else. It's just lines of people.

Yeah. No, and it was interesting. So we're building a case that not that it's better or worse, but that the American worldview on wilderness is different than the rest of the world. And I think by the end of this, we're going to quantify that to a pretty heavy degree. You're trying to tell me that Canadians don't care about wilderness? Well, that's what Steve Rennell was trying to tell us. No, and his point was, I left that end.

there honestly just because it was entertaining. When I was having this conversation with Steve, I was like, this isn't working out like I thought it would. And then, but I felt like it was valuable because I wanted to include it because

he's right. Like, we're not, I don't want this to be like, wow, look how great Americans are. We're superior to the rest of the world because we've preserved wilderness. But at the same time, America was the

America pioneered I believe this to be true and I don't say this with arrogance and we have international listeners don't get your feelings hurt America pioneered modern ideas on conservation of wilderness for a lot

of the world to follow. I mean we were the first place that had designated wilderness areas. We were the first place that had public lands that were open for people to hunt trap, fish, recreate, Like nobody else was doing that. We also have the, in America, we have the luxury to do that.

Yes. You know what I mean? Yes. Like that's... So it's not just from the merit of our own soul. It's like we... Exactly. You know, I just know from dealing with all the things that, you know, I'm kind of dealing with the Bay right now.

It's like when I really think about it and you think, you know, the whole, you know, we're dealing with issues in the Bay, but, you know, they're dealing with issues a thousand times worse all over the world. you're like, if you're going to stop the pollution or this or that, like you've got to fix it in China. Well, you know, being able to have the luxury of caring about the wilderness and the animals that live there is a very, you know, it's a privilege. You know what I mean? It's a first world. It's a product of economic, economic, having it, having economics, having money. Prosperity. Yeah, because in a lot of the world, in a lot of the world, they've exploited massive amounts.

of what they have just because they could. And we're not exempt either. Part of America's success on preservation of wilderness was simply that we had a huge continent, you know, filled with resource. Yes. That they use the resource there to like become kind of, it's like we just barely, you know what I mean, on a graph, just barely crossed right before it was too late. Exactly. It's like we came here, basically, you know, took from the land as much as we could, but it put us in a position where we were, now, you know, we have the luxury of caring about,

the land that we had left, you know, saving this last little bit. It took 95% to get there to be able to have that luxury. Yes. In reality, I think. Yeah, that's a great way to describe. And then we were able to take that, you know, we had the privilege of taking that 5% and preserving it, you know. So it's like, I think America. America just barely saved it.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I was surprised to learn that 5% of America is federal capital W wilderness. 5%. That's a lot. Where are there like bulks of that in different areas? I would think Alaska. If you had listened to the podcast, you would have heard that there are 806.

I'm kidding, Josh. 800 there are 806 federal wilderness there right the bulk of the the the big chunks in volume are in Alaska okay like here's huge wilderness in Alaska and then the Bob Marshall um is a huge wilderness that's in Montana the cellway there's I somebody's gonna tell me I'm crazy uh the Bob Marshall how big is somebody look up how big the Bob Marshall is I got it it is a massive chunk of land we have a lot of wildernesses in the east that are very small, like under 10,000 acres, which are extremely valuable. But, I mean, you could fit all of Georgia's wilderness, every one of them into, like, a teeny tiny corner of the Bob Marshall.

More than a million, 1.5 million acres. 1.5 million acres. For Bob Marshall. Yeah. Look up some of the other wildernesses in Alaska, like the biggest Alaskan wilderness for the capital W. I would argue that the reason that those places are still so wild is because it was not easy to get there and profit off of the land. 100%. That is.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. There's no giant cities in Alaska that sprawl across the half the place, you know, because it's just hard to get there. And it's not profitable, you know. And it's saved us. Wilderness is extremely controversial. And it's controversial today.

57 and a half million acres of designated wilderness in Alaska. Out of 222 million federal acres. How much of Canada is that? Well, Canada is not like 90% probably. I mean, but they don't have federal designation. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, there's a different country.

It's Queensland up there. Or Kingsland now. Crown land. Crown land. Yeah. Whatever it is. Yeah, I don't know if... Hockey land.

Canada probably has some type of wilderness, but I wouldn't know what it's called. It's not the same as ours. I mean, we're not counting their land in ours, you know. Even though Canada is basically the 51st state. We all know that. You're not making any friends right now. Canada, I love you. Love you so much.

I love your geese. I spend a lot of time of Canada. The geese are excellent. Well, for fear that we're going to spoil the rest of these episodes. This has been a good, this has been a great start. Yeah.

I love this topic. I'm serious. I love it. And I do think that even if, I would hope that people that are, human attention span is so small, it's possible someone could be like, I'm not interested in wilderness and not listen to this podcast.

I would hope if they did, they would be drawn in and be like, I should be. I should at least have an understanding of this. because we're going to see how much this idea is tied into American identity. Really? With the frontier thesis, Frederick Jackson-Turner, you're going to hear about it. But this is a good place to start.

Luke, thanks for coming down, man. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. Seriously, I really appreciate it. It's pretty wild. I never thought I'd ever be here doing this, truly. So I'm truly grateful that you guys. Yeah. Allow me to come down here and do this.

If you come back, bring more crab. Or don't come. Yeah, right. We have the technology. We can make it happen. Yeah, we know how to get through now. That's right. We know now.

I have a little watch list now. You know what? Just have them drop shipped here when you come. A little parachute. Oh, that's no fun. No, if one day, my dream is that one day, every TSA board in America will have a picture of a blue crab. Yeah. You have a big circle with an X across it.

And I'll be like, Luke McFadden did that. It would be my mark on society. Yeah. No live blue crabs on the plane. All right, guys. Thanks so much. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over.

They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime. podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras. just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.