Bear Grease - Ep. 352: Render - Calling All Chefs for the Squirrel Cook Off

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

On this episode of the Bear grease render, Joe Wilson joins host Clay Newcomb along with Bear Newcomb, and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker as he shares about his adventure cooking a whole moose in Alaska, and preparations for the annual World Champion Squirrel Cook Off which will be held at the Ozark Highlands Nature Center in Springdale, Arkansas on September 13, 2025. If you’d like to participate as a cooking team, you can reach out to Joe Wilson on the World Champion Squirrel Cook Off Facebook page. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on 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. Welcome to the Bear. Grease Render. I knew I was here for some reason. Yeah, man. Well, it's been a while since we've had Joe Wilson on the show. The illustrious Joe Wilson. I wish I knew what that meant, brother.

Same. Does that mean heavy? Just look in the mirror, brother. Just that one thick. And start calling stuff that you think looks like that, illustrious. See how it goes. I got it. I've seen it.

Oh, man, it's good to have you, Joe. Man, I appreciate y'all having me back and always have a good time. Learn a little something. Yeah, man. We've got Barron Newcomb here. Josh is here. I feel like looking at the screen of what's on the screen, I feel like I need to explain something real quick.

This is a painting of Tacompsa. This is a famous painting of Daniel Boone. And this is an AI image of my mother, Judy Newcomb. So she retired. My daughter made retirement party decorations of juju. This is who we call juju. Yeah. And my daughter made that and made them on a like a hanging banner.

So there was just like juju's everywhere. And it was so my mother's so. How close is it? Like a great woman? It's pretty. I mean, if there were seven ladies in this room, you'd be able to pick her out. I got you. But I thought it was appropriate to be up here by Tecumseh and Boone.

All legends. All legends in their own right. No doubt. But no. Joe, you, I've been hearing a lot about your trip to Alaska, where when were y'all up there and what did y'all do? Oh, man, this year, we were there in May. And I think it's the first time, Clay, anybody's ever cooked a whole moose, like spit roasted a whole moose. You spit roasted a whole moose? I spit roasted a whole moose. And, you know, I try to plan out stuff a little bit. Actually, that's not right.

I'm more of a scrambler. Okay. You know, and I think I work best in scramble mode. But, you know, as you're driving down to get Cook Inlet, there's road signs, and those road signs will have a picture of a moose, and they'll say, how many moose versus vehicle accidents have taken place that year. And I guess as we were coming into town, the sign said 163. Dang. Now, holy crap. Yeah, so the moose that we cooked was harvested via a Ford Raptor, okay?

Just at the knees. And so whenever the truck hit it at the knees, that moose had severe whiplash and didn't make it. So there's a list in Alaska to where roadkill, bears, moose, whatever it is, they'll give you a call. so my friends are on the list in about midnight Arkansas time I get the call which you know I'm asleep I get the call hey you want this moose and Joe Wilson doesn't say no no to a whole move is this is the timing of it coming up or do they have a way that they can freeze it

or about a month and a half out okay so they would have to process it and then freeze it yeah so the moose is about 30 miles from their house they get the call just so what happens like in most of Alaska they got stuff so they had a miniature excavator flatbed trailer and they went and they picked this thing up off the road with a little mini X put it on the trailer took it back skinned it butcher well processed it for for a whole roast and called me in the morning they said you remember what we talked about last night and I said I'm cooking a moose

And they said, yeah. So, you know, it's a story, Clay. So. Hold on a second. Joe, slide forward for me. Just, yep. And Bear and Clay, you guys need to get a little bit closer. Who needs to move?

Probably Bear. Bear, just slide that way a little bit. That's better. All right. So it's a story, Clay. So Joe lives in Arkansas, just to establish that. You live here in Arkansas. You got buddies in Alaska.

Yeah. You go up there every year. Been going 18 years. And so now you got a moose. So now we got a moose. I know how to season meat. I know that I'm going to need fire. But I know how hard it is to get things to rural Alaska.

And so I worked out a deal with the charcoal company. And they flew me a pallet, a charcoal. And I worked out still to actually. I got a palette of pecan wood. Oh, nice. Which is probably not native to Alaska. Not a lot of pecans in Alaska. They probably call them pecans.

First time I went to Alaska, I was on a little old trail out by Denali. And as far as you could see, everything was about three, three and a half foot tall, you know, the shrubs. And I was walking on this trail, and I thought someone keeps dropping their pecans all over this trail. and there would be a pile, you know, like a coffee can worth of pecans. And after about half a mile of walking, I reached down there and grabbed me one of them pecans. I gave it a squads. No, it didn't, man. It was just because they're eating, it was a moose turd.

So they're eating all this bark and all of this dry stuff. And I, Bear would do the same thing. I just squeeze this old pecan and it turns into dust. Well, back to where we were at. Back to the roadkill moose. So I get the wood. I get the charcoal. I know all about seasoning.

I get the seasoning shipped up there. And I'm thinking, how am I going to cook this moose? Because I'm going to need something. Best I could do was I went on Amazon. And I ordered a bed frame that. that said it was all steel and it would ship via prime. And I'm thinking I'm gonna sprawl this moose out, corner to corner, build me a fire around it.

Okay. And I'm gonna cook a moose on a bed. How's that sound? Sounds risky. So this is the plan. We make a little flyer, we invite the whole village, everything's riding on this bed frame. Well, we go to Whittier, we bear hunt for three days and fish and shrimp.

It's not relaxing because I got this big mission ahead of me. I got to perform. And we show up in the Nilchik, Alaska. And the first thing I want to do is see my cooker. And it's in a little old six-inch box about four foot tall, and I open it up. And three quarters of the pieces are plastic. But it's supposed to be steel. It's set all steel, man.

And I got it for a steel and Prime shipped it for free. So everybody's bought something on Amazon that you don't get what you think you're going to. This happened to me in the middle of Alaska. So that day, there was three gentlemen I had never met in my life. A mountain line hunter from South Arizona. Great story about that guy, a chiropractor and a cowboy. It sounds like a setup for a joke. It sounds like a joke.

It's not. They come up and they said, we hear you're cooking a moose. I said, yeah, but I ain't got nothing to cook it on. They said, we're master fabricators. We can build anything. So in Alaska, in your yards, it's like Oklahoma times 10. They don't get rid of anything. They don't get rid of nothing.

No. So we go on a little, uh, Field trip, scavenger hunt. We get about 10 miles off the highway, and there's a, like, a Scooby-Doo version of an RV park. Kind of, you know how it's kind of spooky. And sitting off in the corner is a spit-roasting barbecue pit all by itself. Already built. Already built.

So we eased down this road. Get over there. It's got two flat tires. It's rusted out. It's got an electric motor. And they said, would that work? I said, yeah. Then we get up.

Let's use it. They said. I said, who we asking? Don't worry about it. So, come to find out a can to fix a flat, and that part of Alaska is $28, you know. And we buy a couple cans of fixed flat, put it in there. We go drive a little bit, maybe 50 yards. We got two more, you know, two flat.

Yeah. Go to town, get an air compressor at one of these guys at the place and got a cowboy sitting in the barbecue pit. And as we're driving down the road, he's hopping out about every 300 yards filling up the tires. We get it back. First thing I want to is plug this buggar in, you know? Right.

I plug it in and it's got a pulse. You hear a little, mm, that's a good sign. We find out that this barbecue pit had set over there. about 20 years, an electric motor in Alaska, uncovered. You can imagine what that's like. Sure. And it had a pulse. We spent about 14 hours working on this deal.

Now, when do we have to feed the people? The next day. The next day. So this is the day before? Still haven't seen the moose. Okay. I mean, there's no point in seeing the moose if I don't have something to cook at all. Is the moose frozen?

At this time, I've been. don't know, I know there's a moose. And I'd heard this moose was about 600 pounds. And as locals start showing up, helping us, everybody wants to help. This is a big party of the ear, you know. This moose keeps getting lighter and lighter and lighter. And I'm not discouraged by this. That means I could sleep, sleep, sleep, right?

And so we get the barbecue pit. get a new chain, get it all greased up. It's running, jumping the truck. We go to where the moose is in one of these homemade walk-in coolers, you know. And I pull up with a trailer and the guy says, oh, you won't need that trailer. I'm saying, I'm here to pick up a rabbit or something, you know. He said, that moose, heck, it don't weigh 250 pounds. and we open up the door, and it was about 250 pounds.

So it was a yearling... A calf. Yeah. Which is still a big piece of meat. Yes. Right. I mean, you're not going to cook a hog 250 pounds and be successful. You want a hog 110, 120 pounds, right?

Yeah. So we pick up the moose, bring it back, and I rubbed this whole moose down with vinegar, clean it all up with vinegar, and then season it, tarp it, go in, get some sleep. And the whole night, while I'm trying to sleep, I'm thinking bears are going to come eat my moose or all them eagles you see is going to peck this moose apart. Nothing happened. Four o'clock in the morning we put it on. We cook this moose for 16 hours. And that barbecue pit never missed a lick.

Really? Bit roasting this thing. Dang. Now, are you, so what's your, what's your strategy for those 16 hours? Are you basing it? Yeah. So, believe it or not, there's not a lot inside this house that I'm into. So there was a two and a half gallon bucket of peanut oil sitting over there.

And I took peanut oil, I took some mustard that was in the fridge and some Greek seasoning. and I mixed it all up, pretty much made an Italian dressing. Yeah. And I paid about 50 bucks for a mop because it's Alaska. And we mop this thing based it the whole time. But Clay, I had no idea what I was even shooting for. Mm-hmm. You know?

Mm-hmm. Because if you talk to Alaskans, moose isn't high on the, I mean, it's grind. They want to grind it down. Yeah. It's not like their favorite thing to eat. eat. They all have moose. Someone's given a moose, but it's not their favorite. And here I am, redneck from Arkansas, cooking a moose, having the time of my life. And it got to the point 14 hours into this deal to where I could poke my finger through the ham of this moose.

Really? Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was pretty amazing. And anytime you're roasting a whole animal, it's the most inefficient way to cook. Yeah. Heat's escaping. Yeah, the ribs are going to be overcooked. The hams are going to be undercooked. It's just, and there's an art form to get in real close, but you can't cook a whole animal perfect.

So what do you do anytime something's not going to be perfect, you call it tacos. Right? So you start just like shaving it off. We debone this thing. We got it all deboned. I went chopping. I had three guys working over some oil over there.

We made fry bread. Oh, nice. And we made Indian tacos. And we fed about 250 people. Now, if you ask me, the moose was okay. But when Alaskans come around and tell you that's the best moose they ever ate, they either want to be your friend or they're telling you the truth. Yeah.

So it was good. It was fantastic, man. We actually, we filmed the whole deal. What are you going to do with it? It's going to be on dead meat on the outdoor channel in the future. Oh, wow. Cool. In February, I think.

So, yeah, it was quite the adventure, Joe. Quite the adventure. You ever cook a moose? Yeah, we've killed a boost, and we spent two years eating one. Yeah. A lot of frying it, I guess. What did you do with those? Man, so I would, if you'd ask me without you saying what you said,

about how people view moose. I would have said they view it pretty high. Like as a, as a, I mean, we ate a lot of ground meat, just like burgers, chili, tacos, that kind of stuff. But, but, man, a moose steak, Becca Spring, Justin Becker Spring made me a moose steak one time when I was at their house of Montana. And I'm telling you it was as good as a beef filet. So it's pretty good. I thought it was, I thought it was good, too. I mean, and we got to sample backstrap and little muscles.

Was there a prime piece on it? Man, of course, the tender loins were tender loins like everything. It was just well-flavored. And, you know, that's one of the deals with Wild Game. That's been my bread and butter for a long time, trying to cook things that either people don't want to try, you know. Like, they'll say that's not what we eat. You know, in Alaska, when we first went to Alaska,

18 years ago, every cod we caught, they thought was a trash fish. And we were, I was watching the guy, and he's shaking them off, putting them back. And after about a dozen of them, I said, hey, Bubba, next one of those you get, go ahead and shake it off in that box there. We'll cook it for dinner. And he said, you don't want to eat cod. I said, look, where I come from, we see the word cod on the menu. Yeah.

We much rather eat that than catfish. Right. You know, it's to us, it's an exotic deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's good. And so we started cooking cod, and over the years, cod kept being put in a boat, not only our boat, but other people's boat. There's a lot of animals like that.

You know, that's thus the squirrel. That's why we started the squirrel cookoff was to show people that this meat that they think is so exotic and strange, tree rat or whatever. Yeah. We wanted to showcase whatever you're out there harvesting, whether it be fish or fowl or a bear or whatever it is. There's ways you can cook it and you can turn it into something fit for 250 people. Yeah.

Or for the squirrel cook off thousands of people. Yeah. Definitely a lot of critters that get a bad reputation just for like no real reason. Or like one person had a bad experience with it. And then like all of a sudden it becomes like a cultural thing. We live in a time period where we're eating the most. most, the wildest meat that humans have ever eaten, where we're taking beef cows and pork and chicken, genetically modifying them, some of them, the chicken and whatnot.

Yeah. Feeding them out with corn to the point of obesity. And that's the norm. Yeah. So the standard for modern society, at least in the Western world, would be, you know, like a really, like the highest end in human history of a beef and pork. So, you know, if you just go back a little ways, I mean, you know, there was, it wasn't that long ago when you look at the span of human history that they were selling deer and bear and all kind of stuff in these big meat markets, even in the big cities. You know, in these St. Louis and Memphis and Chicago had these huge outdoor markets. Yep.

And, I mean, well, throughout, they were selling wild game. people loved it. Throughout your storytelling on this show, I mean, we've learned about market animals, you know, and how bear was something that people wanted to eat. And a buffalo tongue, right? Wasn't that a big deal? And it's amazing how we went so far backwards on the thing. I'm really not scared to cook any of them. Have you ever ate porcupine? Believe it or not, I have. It's good, too, right? It tastes like, it. taste like spruce. The one you ate tastes like spruce.

The one I ate tastes like gumbo. You cooked it up there? Yeah, they come to me one night and they said, you ever cooked baby bear? And I said, no. And they said, we've got a baby bear. Will you cook it? And they brought out a bag.

And the only thing, I'll fast forward, it's a porcupine. But the only thing, the only thing that's got furrowing fur is its feet and so it's got the fur around and the claws looks like a little little baby bear feet and uh they said that's the baby bear what are you going to do with it i said well sounds like gumbo to me and made porcupine gumbo and it was fantastic for me it was beefy yeah it had it had a good beef flavored yeah um but what she said's 100% right whatever these animals are eating yeah I mean, you could take, if you take a steer and we want to finish that steer and we finish it on grains and sweets to get that meat tasting right, there's a lot of stuff. Caribou to me, if you ask me what caribou tastes like, I'd tell you sage, because the caribou that I ate, it had been eating a lot of sage, you know.

And so the same thing goes with squirrels. The springtime squirrel to me is a heck of a lot better than that squirrel that you're going to be harvesting in August. is September whenever they're just eating that old green stuff off the Akron's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Yeah, man. Well, it's world champion squirrel cookoff. So Joe is the founder of the World Championship squirrel cookoff. I think Joe's secretly getting rich off of this squirrel cookoff. Oh, I wish. Don't tell my wife. I mean, he can't work this hard and not get anything out of it. Man, I get the fun of being around some people for one day.

it's been a 100% no profit. How many years now? Well, the first one was in 2011. Wow. And we missed a couple for COVID, you know. But yeah, 2011, I think most folks probably know the story if you don't. We were filming bizarre foods for the Travel Channel. Yeah, we need to review this.

Do you remember this, Bear? Clay was part of me. I do, yeah. Yeah. And part of the lie. Part of the lie. Because one of the big backstories on that is what's old boy Blake? There's a guy named Blake.

He had a big old bear on camera. And we were supposed to film... Oh, yeah, yeah. I know you're talking about it. Yeah. We were supposed to film Blake hunting this bear. And then once he got the bear, we were going to cook up the bear. And the camera crew showed up.

Now, this isn't an outdoor camera crew. No. This is a big city. big lights, big cameras. Zarr Foods with Andrew Zimmern's crew. And the director had a big old cigar. You remember this? Yeah, you would think this guy's the director of, you know,

Hollywood production. Right. He played the part well. Yeah. He has got a big old cigar and shows up to do this hunt, smoking a cigar, a bunch of lights, and asks Blake, what time will the bear be here? We ain't got all day.

1232. And Blake called and he says, man, I'd love to help you, Joe. But it ain't going to go like this. I said, I get it. He said, I'll put the word out, first person gets a bear, and we'll send that crew over that way. And just so happens, it was a fella that was not near as popular at the time. His name was Clay Newcomb, didn't have his own. own hats, didn't have his own shirts, nothing.

Had a little old magazine. You know, when they called me about that, I thought it was a joke. And I actually, I almost ran them off, you know, because they were like, hey, we're looking, we're going to be in Arkansas. We need a bear on this day at this time. And I was just like, I can't guarantee you anything. I said, you know, there's no way to predict that we're going to be able to. kill a bear that day.

And basically, I didn't know anything about Andrew Zimmern at that time. And I was like, what do y'all wanting to do? And they're wanting to film somebody, skin and cook a bear. And this was so long ago, I didn't really know anything about media. And I actually thought they were looking for some hillbillies to make fun of. And I said that. I said, hey, if you're looking for somebody to make look dumb, I'm not your guy. and they were like, oh no, no, no, no, no.

Andrew Zimmern's really respectful. And then I started watching Andrew Zimmern, and he's like this world traveler and like really cool guy and has this really legit show. And anyway, they said, well, we need a bear on this day. And so I then put out a net of people that I knew and knew where they were hunting. And I was like, hey, if anybody kills a bear, call me.

And sure enough, that day, my buddy, Trey Clark killed a bear. And so we had a bear and the whole crew came down. They filmed it. They filmed this making bear cracklings. That was a great show. Yeah, it was cool. It was all about the Ozark. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning call

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. They gave us a list. They wanted bear hunt, rabbit hunt, sucker fishing, sucker gratt. Well, gigging suckers on the river. And then they wanted a crow hunt. And they asked if I'd ever cook crow. And I said, I'd done it twice, but I'd been drinking both times.

And they said, so you don't eat crow all the time. And I said, no, nobody does. Poultry is 45 cents a pound. Now, you can tell this was back in 2011. Yeah. I said, poultry is 45 cents a pound. We don't have no room to go out there and work like that for them crow. And they said, we really need crow.

So I called Phyllis Spears. Yeah. And Phyllis Spears had been cooking on PBS for years and years here in the Ozarks. And I called Phyllis, and I said, Phyllis, I got myself in a pickle. I said, I need to cook some crow for a TV show. And she said, you need my help? And I said, yeah. And she said, do I need to bring my own crow?

I said, probably wouldn't it hurt. And side story on that, man, we went out by my house to crow hunt. And we knew there was crows out there. And we start calling a little bit. And one of the guys, he goes shooting at that, you know, that old spy crow that comes out. And wrecks the whole deal for us. And that director smoking that cigar, he says, we need to kill some crows. And he said, what could we do?

I said, well, I guess we could go to the store and buy a few things, and it may help us. So we went to one of them giant retailers off the highway there that specializes and everything hunting and fishing. And when we pulled up that deal, we grabbed three shopping carts. And we bought fishing poles and bull blinds. and we bought everything. None of it really dealt with crows too much. But he had a credit card and he was willing to spend it. And so to make a good TV show, we get back, Phyllis is there.

She pops her tailgate down. She's got four dead crows in the back. And we threw that one in the air three different times to make some B-roll. That's a true story, man. We made some B-roll. And we cooked a... We cooked the crow. She made Shepherds pie, and then we just fried up some crows.

How did she cook it for the shepherd? Did she put it in raw or did she cook it first before she put it on the shepherd's pie? She kind of browned it up and then put it in. But, man, my nemesis in life is sweet potatoes. I just, I can't do them. That's not my deal. And so I dug around all them orange potatoes to get to the crow meat. If you ask me, crow was exceptionally good.

Really? If you find that video and you look back at it, I went back for seconds on the crow. To me, it was beefy. It was the farthest thing from poultry. And what was unique was, was the thighs were the dark meat, and the breast was the lighter-colored meat on the crow. And these, I'm talking Ozark crows, so we know what they eat. dead armadilloes, everything on the side of the road.

I'm thinking the boys up there in Nebraska and Iowa. Might have some good crows. I think they got good crows. And so the squirrel cookoff was, they said, do you cook squirrel? I said, world champion squirrel. And they said, how do you know? I said, well, we throw a world championship. They said, when is it?

I said, well, when do you come? And I, that's kind of like the water witch and saying, where do you want your will? Yeah, yeah. Does that mean it's not real? So they said the date, whatever it was, I think it was in August, late August. Yeah. And I said, you ain't going to believe this. It's the same weekend.

No kidding? I said, yeah, it's the same weekend. They say, how many teams you got? I don't know, like 25. The whole time I'm telling this story, I'm thinking, man, I got some work to do. And so they're good at digging yourself holes. This is like when you went to Alaska. Same deal.

Didn't have a spick. I see a pattern for me. It is for your life. 51 years of this trap on me. And so they said, we're going to be there in two weeks. Yeah, no problem, man. You'll be there right in time. And so I went to scrambling.

So you had two weeks to put together the World Championship Scroll. And this was in 2011. Yeah. And so I start calling friends. This is where networking comes in. If I could give anybody the secret of life, build you a network. You got to have a guy, right? You got to have a friend.

You got to do favors, never asking for them to come back to you. But trust me, they will. So I started calling people. That's good advice. I started calling people. I said, hey, old Joe's in a pickle. I got I got to get a squirrel cookoff going and I don't even cook squirrel I don't care he's just meat we'll cook it I believe I had teams from seven states wow did you get 25 teams yeah yeah 25 teams in two weeks

and they come from seven states and in my mind I needed judges so let's be fair so I called two different county judges actual judges because I thought it'd be fun These weren't guys that you'd stood in front of before were they? No, but they were heavy weights and I knew they knew how to eat. So I got two judges

and chef Matthew McClure. Yeah, yeah. And he was a James Beard type chef and I said, man, I need you come eat some squirrel with me. And he agreed to it. So we made this show and you're going to find this hard to believe. I dug myself into another little hole.

Another one. Because we got so much attention. That show aired, Clay, in like 120 countries. You know, me and Clay become movie stars overnight on this deal. Well, they start sending messages. I need a T-shirt. I got them. They had 20 bucks.

So I had to find someone to make a little. mess of t-shirts. Well, then I started sending t-shirts to Australia, and heck, it costs more than 20 bucks to get them there. So it was a short-lived business. And that started it, man. We got a lot of traction, or a lot of traction.

But it turned into something I never thought it would. Now, you could call it a lie. I don't know if it was a lie. It was just something that wasn't there yet. It was a fabricated truth.

Good. fabricated truth. I could go with that. Well, you, but you've followed through on it. And then it's, and then it's become something really cool. So the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff is in Springdale, Arkansas. Yes, sir. At the Arkansas Game and Fish, Big Nature Center there.

Yeah, yeah, right off the highway. September 13th. September 13th, 20, 25. And it's a one-day event. One day event. All day. 9 o'clock in the morning until we get done. Bear, have you been, hadn't you?

Yeah, like three or four years Describe what it's like Basically there's a bunch of teams Cooking squirrels And then there's just There's all sorts of like attractions and stuff Live music and Last year we had Gene Simmons from Kiss

Okay Did you see him there? I saw whoever was playing But yeah Basically a bunch of teams Cooking squirrels And then they You know they're cooking throughout the day

They bring it to the judges and then they judge the squirrels. There's squirrel skinning contests. There's all sorts of stuff. There's a real hoot. But I'd say the biggest attraction, though, is all the different teams all day while they're cooking. So they've only got to cook like two meals for the judges.

Yeah, so you're cooking an entree and a side for six judges. Okay. Do both have to have squirrel in them? If you don't put squirrel in your side dish, you lost. And not because you're disqualified. It's just worth five points. Okay. And so anytime we're in any sort of anything, five points is a lot, right?

And then out of 100 points, five is huge. And so, yeah, but there's tricks. Like, we've had people use squirrel bone broth to mix in with their mossa to make tortillas. Oh, right? Sneaky, sneaky. So let me say this, the thing that I think stands out, people as an event that people would come to is that you get so these people are cooking for six judges but everybody's cooking a whole lot so all day it's kind of just a thing that as guys are

cooking they're giving away food for free to the public and there's no guarantee that anybody's going to do that they don't have to do that per se but i think they want to and i yeah i think that goes back to who we are as outdoors people right we like to share our bounty and We also like to let people experience new things. And, you know, we did, like two years ago, we cooked the two largest Asian carp that had ever been caught. Right. They come out of Grand Lake.

Brian Baker out of Grand Lake is a guide over there. He figured out how to locate and snag these horrible fish, right? We want them out of our waters. Arkansas just offered up what a $100 bounty on every black cart. Yeah. Right? And so they become a big problem. So Brian was breaking these records, and I hollered at Brian, and I said, man, what are you doing with those fish?

He said, what do you want it for? I said, I'd like to make tacos out of big Asian carp. And I got the University of Arkansas's culinary team to come down and cook this carp. Never in the history of man do you think there's ever been a thousand people waiting in line to eat a carp. Really? I mean, it's unbelievable the things that we've cooked at this event. You know, we've cooked everything. Exotic animals.

You know, some guy goes down to Texas and shoots an exotic and you don't know what to do with it. We'll take it. We'll cook it and we'll feed them. So is it still 25 teams? No, so we're a maximum of 40. Okay. And the reason why we're a maximum of 40 is it's torturous to the judges. Sure.

Brent Reeves has judged twice now, I guess. Yeah. And big old Brent, he hits the wall, man. There's a wall that you can hit. Yeah. So last year, Malcolm from How to Barbecue Right. Is that right? Yeah, Malcolm Reed.

Malcolm Reed was there. He's a really cool guy. He has a huge, huge YouTube, TikTok. When I want a major barbecue man. When I want to know how to cook something, I go to here. Yeah. So Malcolm comes and then Clifton Jackson, who has a 22 rifle named after him. I believe it's the most expensive squirrel rifle you could buy.

Yeah. Cooper Arms puts it together. So Clifton is a Arkansas gaming fish biologist. Won the squirrel skinning contest multiple years in a row. Every year. Every year. Unbeaten. Every year, like since you started doing the.

Skinning contest. Every year. What method is he using? Somebody needs to... He uses the tail method. Somebody needs to try to dethrone this guy. I mean... The teeth?

It's like the... Golly. They've used... It's pretty... It's pretty gross. It can be. I mean, this year it got down to the finals. And it was Clifton and another fella.

And they're really wanting to win this deal. And the crowd is behind them. You know, we're hooting and a hollering. And Clifton had a squirrel that had, it was definitely a shotgun squirrel at probably a closer range, and it split on him. Oh. And so since it split on him, he went third gear on this deal

and grabbed his teeth. Oh, really? Oh, my. And he goes to torquing around on this squirrel. He had to do what he had to do. And so his competition sees this, and thinks this is the method. So his competition is a tugging around.

Is this a timed event? First, no. It's like two on two. Like so you sign up. How long does it take it? It's two people and they go head to head and whoever wins moves on. So it's like. We'll call it squirrel skin and drag racing.

I see. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, if you're up against Clifton, you probably won't do very good. But I saw people that had never skinned the squirrel. Oh, really? Like trying to do it. And there's people that will impress you.

I mean, you'll have these dainty females show up. And we become judgmental. And then all of a sudden, she undresses a squirrel like a Barbie doll. You know, just, wham. Skins off. This thing is done. Yeah. And so, yeah, we do side shows.

We do that. We bring in music. we bring in. And it's free, isn't it? It's free. So you just walk in there and Kevin Murphy. So Steve Ronella's proclaimed the greatest small game hunter in the world. Kevin Murphy has come the last two years.

I don't know if he's coming this year or not, but the last couple of years he's been there. Yeah, Kevin brings dogs with him. Me and Brent are planning to come. I'm out and Janice Putellis is wanting to come. I have a feeling he won't. It's right in the middle of this whole elk season. season, yeah. It's in the way a lot.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, trying to put an event amongst the fall. Yep. And nobody wants to stand around neat squirrel in the middle of the summer in Arkansas. We've had good weather, you know? Yeah. And I went ahead and AI did it and the weather's going to be beautiful that day. Perfect.

Sweet. I checked it out. And they said, Joe, in, say, for instance, last year, do you have any idea how many squirrels were consumed in this event? ballpark and 40 teams I'm going to say between 800 and a thousand 800 and a where are all these squirrels come from

mostly from the tops of trees but I'm not to sell but so I'm looking for 800 squirrels are you are you looking for teams right now absolutely I'm looking for teams and and you know

and I get it there's a lot of of places in this country to where squirrel season doesn't start until October. And, you know, which is really unfair. I mean, there's not a lot of signs billboards out there saying don't walk in this field because you might disturb a squirrel. When you're jogging or when your power goes out or whatever, you know they're squirrels. Those squirrels are not going to power out quite frequent. But the biggest problem is, is this is one of the only cook-offs.

that I know of that you got to work before the cookoff to be able to be in the cookoff. You can't go down to... Is it BYO squirrel? It is. But once again,

it goes back to the heart of the outdoors people. You know, there's plenty of people. If I put out a 911 that, man, I got three teams and they don't have any meat, someone's going to volunteer. But part of the game is

is I want you to get out and try it. I want you to understand why we feel that this game meets so precious. You know, them big game hunts watching clay chase a mountain goat up a hill or watching clay on his moose hunt and all this, and everybody you watch who does this. I mean, you're putting yourself at risk. You've spent your treasure to get there. You've thought about it for so long.

There's been so much work put in. into this, you better eat that meat. Mm-hmm. And let me tell you what an insult would be. An insult would be to use some sort of chinette and plastic. Now, grab that metal, grab that good plate, and turn it into a meal. If we live our whole lives just feeding people on a napkin, this game meat that we get, it becomes third-rate meat automatically, you know?

showcase it. It's the treasure. The older we get, the more we much rather see young people do all the stuff. You know, my son right now is me hunting. And this year we turkey hunted in three states, and he got two bucks, and he likes squirrel hunting and all that. And he stands there, and he helps clean it. And then at the end of it, if you ask my son,

son, what his favorite meat is, it's not squirrel. That's my daughter. But if you ask him, his favorite meat is bear. Out of all the things that he could eat. And I think he got into some really good bears that he was eating on, you know? But he just, he loves bear meat. And it's because we make a big deal out of it. And when we cook it, it's labeled right on the package. You know, when you go out to the freezer, you know what you're getting. And it kind of puts you a notch above a lot of other people who don't know anything about what they're eating. Yeah. And it's a cool story.

It should be a bigger story told is the use of what we are out there getting. Yeah. And I like to be just a small part of it. And we've fed tens of thousands of people their first taste of game meat. most people come and their nose is turned up and and when they taste that first bite, that whole paradigm of what they just ate goes away. And especially whenever you're doing it right.

Yeah. So the thing that most people ask me about the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff is what do people cook? so you might think that it's going to be like squirrel and dumplings, fried squirrel, you know, kind of these traditional meals. It rarely is. Right. What, Bear, do you remember any specific dishes that somebody made? I'll try to run through a few, and if you'll think of maybe four or five really good ones or just memorable ones.

So if you get a team, if you're one of the lucky 40, that gets a spot and you've never been here, you are going to be, there's all levels of cooks. Yeah. There's people that have never even cooked squirrel that are doing it. There's also the potential to be some legitimate chefs that work at restaurants. You are, but you really need to do something cool.

I don't think this team even placed, or I know they actually didn't, but it stood out to me. There was a team one time that they were dressed like people from Chick-fil-A. And they made Chick-fil-A squirrel sandwiches. And I disqualified them. Did you? Yeah. Well, don't spoil my story, Joe.

Let me just have fun for a minute here. So they, I actually may have told this story before. The point is that they made sandwiches, squirrel sandwiches, they had the waffle fries, and they had a schick. Like so, you know, the idea was that when the judge got it, it would be like, oh, squirrel filet. And it was really good. I don't even know what they had as a side dish. You know, you have the squirrel gumbo people. But everybody has this like elaborate meal and the better naming that you have of it usually does good.

There's some marketing in the way it looks. I've had squirrel chocolate chip cookies, squirrel meat chocolate chip cookies. For real? Yeah. Ice cream What Do you remember any Like really good

Didn't like Some sort of Some sort of Thai food Place last year Do really well last year? Asian food tends to do really well Yeah And one of the reasons is

Is You know If you think about the activities The squirrel is Participating in He's using every muscle On that body Right

And so dark meat dark meat but meat with a lot of power you know if if if you're looking at a steer when you get to the chuck the first three rib eyes coming off that chuck are going to be the most tender and that's because that animal doesn't turn right there right it's it's unused it's lazy meat lazy meat and so lazy meat is going to be your most tender now you're working meat is going to be your most flavorful, but tougher, you need to put more care into it. So if you take that tough working meat and you cut it into small pieces, something that your tooth can go ahead and get through, that's where these Asian dishes really come in.

We've had people grind it, make squirrel sausage. But Clay is right. Showmanship is a big part of anything. it's 25 points. So there's a rubric for scoring. Very, very serious, very, very legit scoring system. Yeah. Well, and you, I mean, you guys measure deer antlers for weeks upon weeks.

So if these people are coming to win a world championships, I'm going to. We want it to be some standardization. We want it to be as standard. Yeah. And I want my judges to be as accurate as possible. You know, I always ask all judges when they first come in if they have any squirrel allergies. Right. Because I can't have that.

But the fact that you have put in the time and effort to hunt the animal, to focus and build a recipe, to come and put that recipe together, I want you to be critiqued as fair as possible. Yeah. And that tells you that that guy who may work at a high-end restaurant, or that lady who might cook on the riverbank are equals at the steel and another key component to keep in this this ain't a chili cookoff this isn't cooking brisketes or anything everybody's cooking something different right so you're going to be judged on your own merit yeah and that's a big part of it's it's a lot of it i mean if i were if i had a team i would be thinking real serious about what i was going to make and you know you could you You could always go with something simple and just make it really good, or you could do something crazy. I mean, there's been squirrel pizza. Yeah. Squirrel pizza won last year.

Oh, really? Yeah, it really did. And to be honest, it's used to this. The rules state that 80% of the meat used in the dish has to be squirrel. Now, it doesn't say that 80% of the dish is squirrel. Right. Right. And that confuses some people.

So you can have other meat in there with it. Well, 20%, but like your pizza, you may only be eating a little bit of squirrel. Right. But in like most of your meal is a pizza with cheese and the dough and everything. And so that's why that's confusing. So if you're thinking about coming, 80% of the meat you use. And that 80-20 is a perfect combination of a hamburger, right? Right.

So we wanted to allow 20% for other, which could be fat. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason, Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record.

If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds. on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts

at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. We had a team of doctors

come from Oklahoma one time and they made squirrel hot dogs, which they actually emulsified. Really? And did all of this. And so their 20% was a can of spam. Oh. Right?

Nice. Did they make it there on site? That's why when Clay said the Chick-fil-A story, and I said I disqualified them, because the rules clearly state that the squirrel has to be whole-quartered or halved and unmanned. and unmarinated. Okay.

And so you can... So everybody starts at the same time. Yeah, we're all... Right. We're all... Heck, I was modern before I knew it. But everybody's equal at this deal. So in order to make that Chick-fil-A sandwich,

the secret, the Chick-fil-A is always done is what? Pickle-juice. Pickle-juice. So they marinated it for life. So they had marinated their squirrel and pickle juice. I see. Before they got that. And so one of the things we do,

to make sure there's no contraband, is we do a meat inspection. The meat inspection is to see that the meat is 40 degrees or less. Right. That it is squirrel. It's whole quartered or half, and it's not been marinated or season. And then straight up 9 o'clock,

everybody starts off fresh, and you go and make it. What time is the judging? About noon. Okay. Have you got judges? This year, I'm looking for a couple. Yeah. I'm looking for a couple. I'm out. I know. I, that, uh, that seems like a hard job.

It is fun. It's fun. I've been back there at the room and it's really a fun vibe. Yeah. And, you know, Arkansas Game and Fish, I give them a judging spot every year and they auction it off to raise money to help whatever it is. And that is always amazes me watching that auction because I'm looking at cool stuff, you know, sitting over here. and squirrel judge is higher than a bunch of stuff. Man, really, this event has so much potential. I mean, it's already, like, thriving. I mean, you know, I don't know. Do we have any idea how many people would have come on a given day?

I mean, just a guess, I mean, like. An overwhelming amount of people. Yeah. You know. It's not a huge, it's not a, it's not a, it's not like this thing sprawled out over a half a mile or something. I mean, like the, the courtyard. there at the nature center is, you know, not too big, but I mean, several thousand people are coming to this thing.

We asked to make between 7 and 8,000 people show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's one day, a lot of people, a lot of fun, a lot of, there's other, like our buddy Casey Brewster down here that brings his pack goats up there and is giving, giving, letting kids feed and play with the goats. And he's showing how he uses them for packing and doing all kind of stuff. and the fish tank will be there, the Arkansas Game and Fish.

Don't they bring their fish tank? Yeah, that we have a shooting event, you know, BB guns, pellet rifles, things like that's going on. Cool. What we try to do is we try to show who we are and not intimidate people. I think camouflage for some reason

is intimidating to those who don't wear camouflage, right? And there was a time in history, Josh. There was the time in history. Sorry, I'm so intimidating. People thought that was the Army because hunters were wearing red and black flannels. And, you know, that's an Army guy. Yeah.

But, you know, a lot of sources has tried to turn people with firearms or people that hunt into bad people. We put a lot of effort in showing that's different. one of the things I'm proud of at the event is we bring in a lot of organizations that support children. You know, we're fingerprinting kids. We're doing all that with the sheriff's department there doing a database to protect kids. And we want to protect kids. This year, there's going to be two different organizations that deal with foster kids. and, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do is get these foster kids into the outdoors.

That's a high-risk deal. You know, God bless the people who take on the responsibility of being the foster kids, and you don't know what that kids went through. But we've heard it time and time again the healing of PTSD and depression and all that through the outdoors. It's not even an experiment. it's the truth, right? And so this year when you show up, they're not going to have signs on them, Clay, that say I'm a foster kid.

Right. Right? Because they're just kids who don't know about the outdoors. And so I've had a couple of those organizations reach out, and I want them to know they're just people, right? Just like us. We're just people. And I want them to gain experiences that prove that they're just people.

And I offered one organization, three team spots. And I said, get your adult and take two of these kids and they might become world champions. Now, anybody who tries to help people in life, you're kind of, it's a false thing that thinks you're going to heal everything because of your organization or whatever. Drop that. Just heal one. or Hill 10 and let those go out and be the ones

that do it for you in the future. And so I want to help out these foster kids a bunch. There's a bunch of them out there. Arkansas's a state loaded down, you know. As a country, we're loaded down. So I'm going to bring those out.

A lot of feel-good stories out there. ACC, C, Cropy sticks. They're coming from. from Tennessee. They're, they're going to fry up a whole bunch of fish that, you know, to give to the public.

Townsend Spice and Supply, an Arkansas company, will be there seasoning up all kinds of weird stuff. And we feed it to, to everybody. So we don't sell food at this event. We give it to you. Yeah,

man. It's, it's, that's what makes this so unique. Yeah. It's free. And then you come and you'll, you know,

if you're there, especially if you're there early, you'll, you'll leave full with a bunch of cool food. Yeah. And then we record an episode of The Render. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, what's weird about when we record The Render is Clay will ask who hears from Arkansas,

and you'll hear a six pack of people holler. Yeah, a lot of out-of-state people. A lot of out-of-state people. We've done it the last several years. I plan to do it again this year. We do like a live render. And it's not a, you know, it's not like in a stadium, but like people can, we just kind of are in this big room. And people can just kind of gather around and listen.

And it's a lot of fun. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. I really, you know, last year we had multiple families who traveled from England, who didn't even know each other, who show up in Arkansas to eat a squirrel. Wow. And now you said it was a lie earlier that I said whenever I got this thing started, right? I think it was supposed to happen. Yeah.

You know? Yep. World championship. Yeah. Well, it's really cool. It's a cool event, man. It's a lot of fun. And, uh, yeah, man, I love some squirrel hunting.

So it's a great, it's a great fit. It's a great fit. It's a great fit. I also love the story where they kind of tried to run Joe in the event out of Bentonville. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't have to go into the whole thing, but. Bentonville got a little highfalutin.

Yeah, Bentonville is a wonderful town. We love Bentonville. But they're asking for it back. Are they? They want it back. Oh, they want us to come back now. They want us to come back. Everybody needs a redneck.

Hell, you don't know when you're going to get a flat. Token Redneck. Man, I would really like us to promote the hunting end of it better. I've never been able to do that. And I think you, in particular, do a good job showcasing that. I think Bear does a good job. I think Bear is one of the most needed things in the outdoor industry is showing the youth, you know, because there's so many novice people.

as a dad who grew up in it I have experience and I know opportunities but it's intimidating for a lot of people and for this more rough hunting and fishing

style of just going down and gig some frogs that was perfectly normal for me as a kid but now it's so far out of line you know we need people younger than bear showing it too I think that's a

big missing part of this whole thing, man. Yeah. If everybody's got a cell phone now, we didn't. Just think of the stuff we'd have on video. But I think what Bear's doing is cool. I think that the showmanship is showing dad and son and a lot of stuff is... If I can get Bear to go with me anymore, he's got all his own friends now. I know.

I've seen him at the Bear Bonanza. I felt like he was going to have a paparazzi or something out there. Well, man, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a blast. And, yeah, come on out. Come on out. Joe needs teams. I need teams.

How do they contact you? Well, basically, it's always on Messenger on Facebook. So pretty much, there's no official website. Oh, that costs money. Yeah, there's no website. So you've got to engage with the Facebook page. There's a world champion's squirrel cook. off Facebook page and they can reach out to you directly through there.

Yeah. And we'll keep you updated on things. You know, last year, spur of the moment, I like to scramble. We've heard. I decided how funny it would be to watch kids under 10 years old eat raw oysters. Okay. And so you were already inside signing autographs or something, but we threw a under 10-year-old oyster eating competition.

And it worked out exactly last. like I thought it was. So is that happening again this year? Maybe. I don't know. I'll come up. We'll see what. You never know what Joe's got up his sleeve.

Yeah. It's a great family event. Yeah, it's a family event. Yep. Well, dang bear, I was going to have you tell about your mule training. Mm. But too late? No.

Close us down. Tell us about, give us a mule update. Mule update. Just like overview. People hadn't heard about your mule training. Okay, I started our mule slow trap like maybe a month ago, a month and a half ago. Got a saddle on them, got him riding the round pin, took him out of the pin for the first time two days ago. And then today I was just riding him around and he was doing pretty good.

So I decided to take him down the road and we just kept going. And he did really good. I was coming up the road and I saw a bear and slow trap coming right down the road. Yeah, didn't miss a lick. Really? Yeah, he'd been everything. Yeah, he did for like two laughs around the round pin. He was bucking at one point the first time I tried to get him to trot.

Hey, listen, let's talk about the marketing here. I think we might describe it more as a crow hop. I wouldn't describe it. I think if it was bucking, it would have bucked you off. He was, he was bucking. I mean, I'm telling you. You know, the biggest thing with like mule training and stuff, if no one's there, when you tell someone that the meal was bucking, everybody's like,

now was it really bucking or was it just kind of crow hopping? I'm telling you, it was all I could do to stay on. I mean, after the first laparrow, I started looking for how I could jump off onto the side panels. So I told him this could happen, is that you can, so he's riding on this mule in a round pin, walking it, and it's doing everything he wants it to do, giving it cues, and it's moving. and stopping, backing up, doing everything. But the first time you trot one, this 150-pound animal on your back,

you know, you're the mule, starts bouncing on your back while you're trotting. And it's a whole different feeling. And a lot of times the first time you trot them, they get, it scares them. So I told him, I was like, hey, when you trotting, be careful. Yeah. And sure enough, he kind of, he didn't like it. Yeah. So I was able to stay on them.

and then just, you know, we never stopped. We just kept going. So the name is Slow Trap. It's not our best work, but Gerstocker, one of my heroes from Arkansas, old guy from the 1800s that was market hunting and doing much stuff here in Arkansas, one of his good buddies from south of Fort Smith on the Fush Lafay River in the Washthals, they called him Slow Trap. And Slow Trap was a super good hunter.

And Gerstalker talks about him in the book, and that name always stood out to me, Slow Trap. And the Gerstalker book, Wild Sports, was also the book that I first read about Bear Grease. The first time I ever read those words, Bear Grease was in that book. I remember that story. So Slow Trap is this, it's a black mule with white stocking feet.

And bears trained it completely. Like I didn't. I mean, we used it. I guess we did, we did, we did mess with a little bit last summer. It was packing with us. He got a little help from Uncle Cash. He did get a little help from Uncle Cash. Yeah, I mean, Uncle Cash really set him straight.

Yeah, well, last summer I saddle broke him or just got him to where he could put a saddle on. Yeah, and then we used them a little bit. So it wasn't like a total, like, fresh start. So are you enjoying training a mule? Yeah, I am a lot, actually. At first it was a little, like, you know, I knew I wanted to try and train a meal just to kind of to experience it because I've heard that there's a lot of, like you gain a lot of other stuff whenever you.

I told you that. You did. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, some other people. But so I wanted to do it just for the experience. But as I've been doing it, I've really been enjoying it. Like seeing him progress and like start to understand what I'm telling him to do.

Because, I mean, really like they speak a language. They don't speak a language, but they have a language. And you're just trying to figure out how to communicate with him, which is. is it's super interesting and super fun. It really is. It's kind of like hunting with a dog. You know, if you don't have a dog and you just go with somebody with a dog, the experience. I mean, it can be exhilarating, but it can also be just like, oh, yeah, that was fun.

You get a dog and all of a sudden it's like next level, like human physiology, chemistry, wild stuff. I mean, it's like biological. Like you're engaging with this animal that you raise and that you know and a lot of cool stuff happens. You talk to somebody about riding mules or horses and they're like, oh, that sounds fun. I can get on that horse and ride around. You know, it's like maybe not that big a deal. You train a mule or train a horse and then ride it and use it in the mountains to haul out game or to rope on or whatever you're going to do. completely different experience.

I'm going through the same deal. I want to talk to Josh about it a little bit. Uh-oh. Well, for my whole life, I always thought fly fishing was ridiculous. I always, I compared fly fishing to the chopsticks and the fork.

That once China found out there was a fork available, they should have just ditched the chopsticks and went straight. They didn't. But they didn't. They held on to the chopsticks. And then I took fly fishing

Was like if I drove four hours to go fishing With my spinning reel And I got there and it broke I'm just going to have to deal with it So I'll just swing this fishing line around And try to catch a fish Well about a month ago I went on a fly fishing deal

And I caught some fish in a place That I know The only way I was going to catch those fish Is with what that dude put in my hand that day So I did what I do And I scrambled. And now I own three different fly rods. I bought all kinds of stuff.

And I stand either in the creek in my backyard or in the front yard. And I'm trying to figure this out. I no longer think that fly fishing is stupid. Now, I do think there's plenty of room for a fork. Well said. Well said. But I agree. I want to.

I want to get a lot better at this fly fishing. You haven't been with Josh. No. Yeah, you need to go with Josh. We'll go. I'll tell you how ridiculous I am. You know who's a good fly fisherman? Who's that?

That guy right there. I don't know about that. Catch some fish here and there. I'm kind of a fence rider in life. I don't want to cross over and get in trouble, but I'll go ahead and rub the side of that fence. And so you'll rub it by talking more about fly fishing. We don't talk about fly fishing.

We're trying to keep our... The only way we talk about flyfish is when Clay's gone. Yeah, when the thing gets hijacked. Well, boys, I bought some flies. It looked just like the feed that they feed them fish at the hatchery. Oh. And that's probably not traditionalists, but I don't think I'm going to get into this steel clay as a traditional. Sometimes I'll use that fly rod as a cane pole, I promise you.

So, yeah, that's what, chopsticks and forks, brother. Chop sticks and forks. Well, great. Well, me and Bear, we've, uh, we we broke out the man from snowy river about two nights ago that is a great movie it's a great movie especially if you're training horses training mules bear watched uh or running them off a cliff buck yeah buck buck branneman buck brandaman super movie i heard dale kind of pin you up on a lonesome dove yeah i mean yeah i i don't i don't know that movie that way i have watched it but uh I don't watch a lot of movies. No.

Did you heal from the horse? No. No, no, we didn't do any roping or anything. No, no, not that kind of. Did your leg heal? Did the bruise heal up? Oh, dude, I heal. You went straight up cowboy.

I'm impressed that that's where your mind went. Oh, well, yeah, healing. Yeah. I can still feel where it kicked me. Yeah. Yeah, it was fine. You know what? When it happened, you know, I had my sunglasses on,

and I actually thought there's no way you can get kicked at heart and not break something. I mean, I actually thought my leg is going to be broke. But when I watched the video, it didn't even look that bad. Man, I heard it and I saw it. I was standing at the fence, and I thought that's bad. Like, anybody who heard it was like, there was kind of like this collective like, oh.

Yeah, I wish they could have seen what it looked like a few days after the doctor. when it was like purple. And then it immediately was just, like, what you see in the video is like a minute after it happened, and it doesn't even look that bad. By the time we got done, it was swollen up quite a bit. And then like two days later, there was a big black bruise that kind of spread all down my leg. So you stated that you had the sunglasses on, were they hiding the allergies that happened? Well, I just think I would have, I mean, I wouldn't crying, but I just feel like if you just feel like,

If you'd have seen my face, you would have seen my eyes. Yeah, yeah, it's no fun getting kicked by a horse or a mule. But, golly, when they do, you respect that animal because, holy, Cali, got some power. Yeah. Yeah. Bears, bear's mule, we've got a new plot hound and slow trap is like this super gentle, like, dog gentle mule. and man, it just reared back and whop, kicked our meal right, our plight out right.

He's not a huge fan of dogs because Tim is an idiot and we'll just like chase him. Yeah. And then so then he'll, you know, start trying to stomp him and Tim will like run out of the fence before he gets him. So I think he's probably, they have a good relationship though. I think the meal likes it. Yeah, I think at this point. That's the same relationship I have with my wife. She kicks me in the head.

I think she likes it. Hey, I'll leave the show with this. If you're interested in cooking at the squirrel cookoff, reach out to us on Facebook. It's on September 13th, Springdale, Arkansas. Free to the public show up at 9 o'clock. Enjoy the day. The teams are bound to enjoy the day.

And they like seeing you. They like hearing. Clay will be there. Brent Reeves will be there. Josh said he's showing up. up. Bear, if he ain't chasing frogs or lizards or whatever he's doing,

he'll be there. And we'll have a good time, but it's not what you expect when you get there. And it's a good time for everybody. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Joe. Hey, I got you some sauce.

Man, that stuff right there is the best. This is not, like, sometimes at meat eater, we have to, like, put stuff in a camera, and talk about how great it is. And if we do that, it truly is our endorsement. It's good stuff. This is not that, except that.

This is incredible stuff. I wanted to make sure Bear has a pack of that to carry with him and, you know, cooking all the environment. So it's Kraft Worcestershire sauce and... Walsher sister sauce. Wilson Shire. Yeah, it was easier to say. I kind of got one of them impediments. Well, I was pretty proud of the way.

said it. But yeah, for real, that is like the best stuff in the world. I don't even know. It doesn't even taste like Worcestershire sauce to me. Well, it's better. Better. It's better. Put it on there and come see me. Hey, if you like my stories, though, we got a little podcast. Joe's got a podcast. And it's called Cooking Up Story. Don't cut this out. Okay. But it's called Cooking Up a Story. And we take normal people and talk about how struggle leads to success. and it's a good time. A lot of fun. All right.

Keep the wild place is wild because that's where the bearers live. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds. that gobblers are looking for.

I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps' cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.