Bear Grease - Ep. 354: Special Episode - Bozeman Unplugged

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

On this special episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're coming to you live from the MeatEater headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. Host Clay Newcomb is joined by MeatEater’s own Janis Putelis, Mark Kenyon, Ryan Callaghan, Heather Douville, and Brent Reaves. Get to know these illustrious members of the MeatEater team. 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.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. So this is a special episode for the Bear Grish podcast. Mark, in case you didn't know, there's a podcast out there that's called Bear Grease. And we do a documentary style podcast every other week. And in between weeks, we do a Bear Grish render.

So you might be confused when you see this and think it's a Bear Grish render, but it's not. This is a special episode of Bear Grease. Oh, I thought this was great. Green grease proper. No, Mark. No, that's the reason I've targeted you. Thank you. I can see it in people's eyes when they think it's something's going on that's not going.

A third title coming. Air Grease crackling. Not a bad idea. That's a good marketing idea. This is really fun for me because I've got a good portion of the meat eater team here. And I think there's probably a lot of bear grease people that would know who you guys were. but there's some portion of them that wouldn't. But from right to left, we've got Ryan O'Kal-Kal-Kalahan.

Good to see you. Good seeing you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like old. Like old cow. Yeah. Yeah.

You kind of said it like a... Yeah, like an Irish type or Scottish type of surname type of deal. Okay. Oh, see, I always did think that it was Oll without the decal. When I was going to college during my short... experience with college. I had a bunch of friends who didn't have jobs

and stuff like that. And I had a lot of worldly wisdom from outside of college. And so they're like, oh, old cow, old cow. You know, it's like, reminding them too much of their dad. Look at this. Yep.

I thought I knew the media crew, but now we're even learning something new. Oh, Cal. Okay. Well, Ryan Callahan. And then Heather DeVos, Ville, A.K. Moosey. Hi.

Glad to be here. Tell everybody where you're from. I live in Craig on Prince of Wales Island, Craig Alaska. That is cool. Yeah. Now, Heather, I've got to make claim. I think I was the first person from Medita that reached out to you. Can that be disputed?

Because I... Yes, you were. I shared one of your backpack technique for... deer because I have a deal that was taught to me by James Lawrence called he called it shock pouch in a deer where he cut the legs out of the deer and tie its legs together and for a decade I'd searched trying to find the source of that or if anybody that ever did it and you were the first person that I saw and it was it was the way that you do it is is different but it's still like the same idea I shared your deal and then you were like hey thanks for sharing

Because every time I share, we call it the Flinget Backpack, so it's a traditional backpack passed down through my culture. People tell me it's the clay. So that's why when I posted it and shared it with Meat Eater recently, I said, this is not the clay. You've got to set the record straight. No, I never took credit for that at all. But, man, if you haven't seen Heather on the meeting your main channel, she's doing a bunch of cool stuff with sea otters. Thank you. She's the sea otter girl.

I've heard. Yeah. The otter lady. You're the fur lady? Yes. Yeah. I answered to that. Cool.

And then we got old Brent Reeves over here. I only see Brent when I come to Montana anymore. I'm not sure what's happening in our relationship. But that's why we've brought you here. I heard you don't have any good dogs. and he won't have you have you. No, you didn't hear that for me, but you could have heard it from anybody. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I don't have any coon dogs at all right now. I haven't had for two years. So he would be right. Now, I do have, I have squirrel dogs. He's got some up-and-comers. I do have a young plot house that's, uh, they're trying this year. How many total dogs right now? I've got five dogs right now.

Five dogs, four kids. How many mules now? Two mules. Two meals. One wife and a good one. thank goodness anything else in the on the property

chickens chickens chickens got a pretty good spread of chickens so you have a lot of responsibility you know we does that ever keep you up in night

oh yeah he's in monta man hey that's all in Arkansas when I was a kid when I was a kid we had I had coon dogs and when they would bark at night some you know imprinted memories

on my life cow where my dad busted into my room in the middle of the night Make your dog shut up. You know, because it's keeping them up. So I walk outside and, you know, do whatever I got to do to get this dog to shut up. Every single night. Well, there was a decade or two where I didn't have dogs.

When we were raising our kids, we just couldn't change diapers and have dogs. So we didn't have dogs when the kids were little. I slept better than than I think I do now. Because every single moment you're thinking, are the mules getting out? Is my dog like baying someone? one's cow right now. Stuff like that. Liability.

I get it. Yeah. Yeah. It's stressful. So, but it's, it's worth it. You've learned to deal with the stress. So, Brent, good to have you, brother. Thanks, buddy.

Yep. Yonis Putellis, the Latvian eagle, been on our hearts heavy the last several months because of your 100-mile race. We're going to come back to that, but everybody knows Yonis. Have you ever, have you been on Bear Greece before? Never before. Well, I'm glad that... Really?

I don't think he has... Why don't you like him? I love Janus. Everybody knows I love Yonis. That's wild. When I'm around Yonis, I just follow him around and ask him what we're going to do next. That's pretty much what I do, right, Janus? Anywhere we go.

You said that. Yeah. And then Mark Kenyon, who Mark's been on here a couple of times. I have, yeah. But Mark is our whitetail. What's more surprising that you have? haven't been or that I have been. Now instead of me being less like not been on once at all, you've been on twice.

Yeah. So there's the disparity. It is odd. Well, Mark has been to my house and we podcast a couple years ago when you hunted in my neck of the woods. Got to state your parents' house even. Yep. Yep. You stayed at the Believers house and Juju's house.

Yep. So, but Mark, Mark has wired to hunt, which is our whitetail sector. Now, Tony's not here. He couldn't be here, but Tony's your, Tony's your buddy, Tony Peterson. Yep, Tony's my little buddy. Oh, Tony. A little Tony. Yep, yep.

He does some good stuff. Does some very good stuff. Yeah. So, okay, here's what we're going to do. I kind of want to, like, I want to go around and I kind of want to tell what everybody does. Mark is writing a book. Can we tell people that? Yeah.

can talk about. Mark is deep into his second book. Yeah. First book was that Wild Country. Yes, sir. And now you're deep in a second book that you just submitted to the publisher. Yep. And what's about when's it going to come out?

The book is about the current state and threats to fish and wildlife across America. I guess you could say the past, present, and future of fish and wildlife in America, explored through the lens of a hunter and angler. So kind of a hunter and angler take on what's going on with critters out there right now. now follows me in a bunch of hunting and fishing trips across the nation as I'm meeting with researchers and conservationists and hunters and anglers and business owners and all sorts of different people that have some kind of connection to fish and wildlife. And that book comes out probably late summer next year, 26. Right now, the working title is Wild Lives. That could

be changed. But right now, that's what we're working with. Does it ever stress you out that when people say, do you feel like you have to have like a super concise answer about what your book's about? Like the secondary one-liner? Yeah. Like what's your one-liner for what your book's about? The one-liner has to change a little bit based on the audience. Like if it's someone who pays attention to like environmental and conservation kind of stuff, I would say like it's an exploration of the biodiversity crisis from a hunter-angler perspective.

Okay. I like that. If it was a little more of like a general audience, I might use the sub-tile like the past, present and future of fish and wildlife in America, keeping it a little more high level. Because the biodiversity crisis maybe isn't something that every person recognizes. But that's what I'm working with right now. Okay, I like it.

It's coming along. Come along. Do you get to just go do the fun stuff and then chat GPT just takes care of the rest? I wish. No, that chat GTP is not quite up to snuff. So I actually think the fun stuff is the writing. I enjoy the process. It is sometimes like beating your head against like a brick wall. I'm sure you've been experiencing this too. But it is also like the magic when stuff comes together when you finally are able to. I think writing is the kind of the final touches of it clarifying your thinking. So like by forcing yourself to write, you have to clarify your thinking on something. And so it forces you to really. really ponder things, organize your thoughts, and really come to real conclusions about how you feel about the world or what you think about a situation. And so going through that process and then

figuring out yourself and then figuring out how to put words to a feeling or an experience or a concept in such a way that anyone else could pick it up and be like, oh yes, that's like a magical thing when those pieces click together. Yeah. I really enjoy that. Yeah. I think it's a powerful exercise that if, I mean, you know, not everybody writes, but it really is a powerfully clarifying exercise to really hone in what you're thinking. Mark is a copious reader, but Cal does that, when you see all the books that he reads, what do you think? He's mowing through him for sure. I mean, do you, are you like, ferocious. Are you, well, you may read more books than him, and you just don't put it on the internet, but when you see him, are you like, man, I got to read more,

or, man, I'm glad he does that or dang, I would never do that. Like, how do you bounce it? Oh, you know, I think we all go through different phases of life. There's a time where people would make fun of me because in every room of my little ramshackle apartments or houses that I lived in, I'd have two or three open books. Okay. And I was just constantly going to a little ADD, you know, picking up things and putting them down. and I haven't read

Cover to cover a book In at least a year right now Yeah Yeah Which is just Would be highly abnormal From a decade ago Yeah

But this decade's a lot different Than the previous one Yeah I get it I get it What happens when you see Mark's giant bookstacks Of all the books he read like this month I'm impressed Does it make you want to read

Or you just It does Yeah Yeah Yeah yeah This poor guy had to listen me talk about books the entire time I ran with him. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Well, we're about to get to Janus' 100 mile race. I got to make one other comment about how little you read, Clay. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because, so I finished writing the first official manuscript of my book. It's due June 1st. I send it to the publisher and the editor on a Friday. I think I know where this is going.

It was such an amazing feeling to ship it out. It's like giving birth to a baby. I don't know what that's actually like, but I'm a special. but I'm assuming it's something like there was a huge relief. This thing's, you know, the first phase out there. And I immediately am like, all right, I need to go for a run and like just kind of burn off that energy, feel good, kind of celebrate. So I go for a run.

And Clay text me as I'm running. And I happen to feel a buzz or whatever. I look at the phone as I'm on my run, just like full of joy. And he's like, hey, man, will you send me the first chapter of your book? book. I'd love to read it. And I'm like in such a great mood. I'm like, heck yeah, buddy. Better than that, I'll send you the entire book. Clay's my best friend. I'm like, I'll send you the first chapter, but here's the whole man. Read whatever you want. If you have any feedback or thoughts, we'd love to hear it. He's like, great. So I send it within like minutes. So that was six months

ago or whatever. No, not six months. But a few months ago. Okay. And me and Clay see each other two days ago. I'm like, Clay, what'd you think? Like, I haven't got to read a bit of it yet. Yeah, I felt really bad when I saw Mark because in the moment, I was very like, if I had this right this second, I would read it. And then he sent it. And then it just like quickly just got lost. So I look forward to reading your bookmark. So many things are making sense now. I'm first time Bozeman, first time meeting y'all in person.

And one of the first things I say to him is, I don't read. And he goes, you don't read? I didn't say it like that. That is the best impression of Mark I've ever seen. He's like, you don't read. And I'm like, no, never. And now this is all, I'm tracking all this. This is our author here.

Don't feel bad. This is our author. Yes. But I think you kind of shot yourself in the foot. Which way? A chapter is like manageable. He was asking for just a taste. Yeah, that was it.

And he had time for just a taste. And you were like, well, here's the whole pie. Got intimidated. It was like, gosh, I got intimidated. Could have scared your way. Yeah. You'll like it better when you see the real deal. You know what I'm looking forward to is the first line.

Yeah. Oh. The first sentence. What is the first sentence? The quote? Just, no, not the quote. I'm kind of looking at books and seeing what the first sentence is. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Is it a barrage? We've been talking about this in our entire mediator career. That's the barometer for how the whole thing is going to go. Well, there's just a lot of ways to do it. I mean, like, some authors are just, like, you can see the first sentence isn't this sacred thing. It's just like, let's talk about this. Some authors, the first sentence is a sacred sentence.

And it just has to have, like, a lot. Which is not a right or wrong answer. You used to always share about the man's. Yeah, so one of the ones that always sticks in my mind is the man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. Wow, that was it. That's Stephen King's the Dark Times. tower. Exactly. Yeah. That's nice. The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. And, you know, you're like, okay, well, I want to see what happens. And what happens. That really is a phenomenal first sentence. It is. Yeah. And it was Johnny Cash. The man in black. Well, so, so Janus just ran 100 miles. How do you feel? Well, let me just say, Janus ran that less than a week ago. On Saturday. When I saw Janus for the first.

time this week. He informed me that he was still in a little bit of a brain fog. Because I saw you on Tuesday. You ran it on Friday, so, you know, four days before or so. And there's, there should be some clarifying, though, is like 100 miles is a long way, for sure. But there's a lot of routes to go 100 miles. This is through the crazy mountains in Montana. And there's a big elevation changes in there is one thing but also one of the toughest hundred miles in the country it sounds like the footing the whole way it was just very unpleasant isn't isn't a place that you would go to just have an enjoyable run i rate that there was 23,000 feet of game yeah that is three thousand real not quite Everest but close yeah man you know how do you feel yonis i actually feel

pretty good. Yeah, all in all. I've got some sore toes. Brent calling me last night right before I went to bed to check in on my little toes. We'll be talking about that. Yeah, tell us what you had to do. But yeah, I'm going to lose some toenails over the whole thing. But overall, I feel pretty good. Proud of the effort, obviously. You spent, I mean, really, you don't really prepare for a race like this in months. It's more like, you. It's more like. years. For sure. Yeah. No, I've been built, I think about five or six years ago, I ran my first mountain sort of trail run race. Actually, that's not true. I ran one back in Vail a long time ago, but since I moved to Montana, we have a great community race here in Bozeman called the Ridge Run, and it basically runs from Ferry Lake up in the Bridgers, down the ridge, the spine of the Bridgers, all the way down to the M, the College M, which is very popular. trailhead. It's like 19-ish miles, maybe 20, something in there. And then once I did that,

our buddy Rick Smith used to do this race called The Rut. And so I was like, oh, I can do the rut. So I did 30K, which is about, or 50K, and that was 31 miles. And then once I did that distance, I thought, oh, maybe I could do 50 miles. So I did a 50-mileer. And then I made the leap to 100. I think I should have went to like a 65 and then the 100. At least I had that thought when I was at 65 miles. What's so wild about somebody running a 100-mile race is it feels impossible. I mean, and I run a little bit. I don't promote it, but I do.

I run a little bit. And so I know what it's like to run 10 miles. And to think of running 100 miles just seems wild. Now, Mark, you're a runner. Can you envision what it would take to run 100 miles? Or is it like otherworldly? I've read, man, I'm such a character of myself, but I've read a lot about it. And, you know, I've ran a pretty, what I thought was a pretty hard, like mountain trail race, just a 30K, but nothing on the scale of him.

So I can imagine a bunch of the things, but I'm sure that my imagination is nowhere near the actual reality. But it appeals to me. Like, it does feel like a thing, like, someday, yeah, probably, I'd like to see if I could do it. it. Yeah. Well, Janice told me, and I probably had heard this before, but these guys are running 250 mile races. Yeah.

How is that humanly possible? Does that non-stop? Uh-huh. Well, no, I mean, some people do it without sleep, and well, most of the racers will stop and sleep for an extended period, like many hours. Yeah. So there's a writer that I really like, a writer and podcast, or it talks about this alter running stuff and he always says that

the cool thing and kind of the funny thing about every one of these races, you go to the starting line and you look at the other people around at a hundred mile race and they're all different shapes and sizes and they have all sorts of different backgrounds and different styles, but every single one of them

is the weirdest person at their office or in their family. That's the guy. He's that crazy dude that goes 100 miles. I think that's pretty cool. I'm not the crazy dude around here. Oh, you know, you are.

Everyone's like, oh, yeah, he's the dude that runs 100 miles. Like, you're not crazy for other reasons. I'm saying they're weird because they're willing to do that. Yonis is the only guy at this office with bleach blonde hair.

That is true. Which you did for the race. At the moment. That's a little crazy. And painted toes, you know. I saw that. Blue toes. No, I think if you're into

sort of pushing the boundaries a little bit of what you think you might be able to do or handle, this is a thing to go do and check out. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, even though as much as I knew what a long day it was going to be and how hard it was going to be, I had no idea of what was going to actually come and hit me.

And it was fun and scary and great and real shitty all at the same time, you know, because it's hard to remember in the moment when you're there and you're like, I hate running and I should probably just stop this right now. it's it's harder go oh right no this is what you paid for like all the training the first 70 miles was just like the entry ticket to get to that moment to be like oh let's see what you're made out of can you do the thing called just one foot in front of the other that's all you got to do cal just one foot in front of the other well that gets really hard how many steps when my watch quit it ran out of battery at about 30 hours I was at 90 miles I was at like 110 thousand steps. Whoa.

You are an inspiration. I mean, that's like a serious way. Oh, I think so, too. That's awesome. It's inspiring. Do you, how would your brain

have functioned if you wouldn't have had Pacers? Oh. How critical was that, I guess? Like, mission critical. Yeah. For the first one, I don't know if I would have finished

without the Pacers. Especially, my one good buddy, Stephen Brucker. Because everybody else, even though they're great people, positive people, like Mark right here, right? They didn't have the experience of dealing with somebody that's just like in the dumps and, you know, low on energy, low on fuel and then how to manage that situation. What did he do? Huh? What did Mark do or what did Stephen do?

Well, I mean, this guy that you said was really experienced. Well, just like staying on top of the hydration and the fueling and just the. constant pushing and pulling and nonstop positive positivity. Stephen has ran several hundred miles himself. It was like speaking to Yonah's some personal experience. Yeah. But constantly being like, hey, man, we're moving. You're looking great.

Let's keep going. You know, it's never like, he's not like, do you look like shit? That was the, that's what I tried with, Janus. That's definitely. You're like a ghost of yourself right now. Yeah. Wow. Well, you know, when I hear about people running 100 miles and then even running 250 miles, it puts in perspective some of these ancient human migrations that just seem implausible.

I mean, for instance, and we don't have the details of all this stuff. I mean, it's like prehistory, but like, you know, the people that went down into South America from presumably coming through Alaska on foot without modern technologies, clacking rocks together to make fire. and like you just think that is an impossible journey like couldn't be done and then but they did it I mean there were people down there that were connected to the people up here you know and you think maybe it wasn't that big of a deal and not that they did it all at once

and that's not what I'm suggesting but just like this this the mobility of a human is pretty darn unique and you see it in these today what are extremes of guys like Janus that are running 100 miles You do think like the amount of calories that Yonis probably put down just prior to like 24 hours ahead of time then through the race and then let's say 24 hours after like what would be the caloric naturally found food caloric equivalent if you had to source it yourself at any like right because there's a serious cost associated with that part too. burning calories to get those calories. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So probably cracking open bones for bone marrow and eating kidneys and. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know where you'd get the high sugar content stuff. Because that's what I feel like is like all the sugar, well, when you're drinking these carb drink mixes, it's basically sugar. So you're like a hummingbird. You know, you're just eating, drinking sugar water, you know, the whole whole time. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know what you would do that if you had to just gather that in the woods. Yeah. Yeah. Berries. Well, again, in way of introduction, Mark is a whitetail hunter. That's his main thing, fly fisherman too. Yonis, I would say, is an elk hunter.

And in the last five or six years, a houndsman. But all these things that you're doing kind of translate in your mind to being able to do what you need to do in the mountains. That's what I hear you talk about when you talk about fitnesses. Just having longevity. So when you're 70, being able to climb a mountain. That's right. Yep. Yeah, I want to hunt elk at 70.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 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 do. did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. All right. Okay. Brent Reeves and Heather, you guys, trouble, trouble, trouble. I had nothing to do with this.

Tell me about what happened last night with Brent and Cal. Go ahead, Heather. Okay. Well, we're done with dinner and I said, hey, Brent. I needed to call Steve and tell him you love him. And he said, has your medication worn off? I'm not doing that.

I want to keep my job. So we settled on Cal. Cal was the getting big. You were the second string, you know, like, recipient of this joke. Now, apparently there is some... Just count Steve, I like to say. There's some kind of trend on social media

where friends call each of male friends call their friends at night just before the bedtime. Tell them good night, sweet dreams, I love you. Something that probably doesn't happen a lot amongst friends, you know. And so you film. It was either you or him going to make the call, but we thought, you know what,

if anyone calls somebody and says, I love you, good night, sweet dreams, and it's going to be the most believable it would be Brent. Yeah, well, it was pure peer pressure. She could have made me rob a liquor store And I kept saying Don't forget tell him I love you Tell him I love you

So we all go into the The lobby of this hotel Heather goes and asks the hotel people To turn the music off Oh wow Because they're just like ambient music playing Which I thought was a pretty high level move And then

So Brent calls Cal I didn't think you'd pick up Cal I just kind of thought But I bet Cal is not even going to pick up. What time at night was this? Nine o'clock? And I later asked Steve, if we would have called you, would you have answered? And he said, nope.

I told you. So, yeah. Yeah. So we call Cal and Cal inch. He's like, hey, Brent. Hey, Cal. I always call him Ryan. That's what his mama calls him.

That's what I'm going. I said, hey, Ryan. What are you doing? And he said, and the most Ryan Callahan answer ever. He said, well, I just got through eating some white-tailed back. strap and I'm laying down. What are you doing? And the conversation just kind of went off course from there. And I can see Cal's face while he's talking to me like, Brent's lost his mind. He said, I just wanted to see if you had a good day to day and call you and tell you good night.

And Cal goes, yeah, it was really nice. It was like super nice. It was the best. Well, I thought Brent may have been having a moment. And I was like, okay, you know, mental health is a big thing. I was like, I want to let you know I'm here for you. Don't want to push the direction someplace it shouldn't go. Like, you tell me, how was your day? That was right. And emotionally intelligent. It was great.

It was great. Yeah, Cal was just like, he just took it. At what point did you like get kind of confused? Were we on speaker with Sam? At what point were you a little bit like, what's going on here? Well, like I said this morning, right? Like I have several friends all across the country. There are veterans, and they deal with some tough mental health stuff.

And I always make sure that when this comes up on occasion, that they know that they can call me. And I make sure that my number is in their phone because that's a huge, huge. huge part of, you know, this, like, very tragic suicide rate amongst veterans and PTSD is when they often do reach out and call people when they're in these crisis moments. And often the difference of creating or committing to an act that you can't go back from, like suicide, is whether or not somebody picks up the phone. So, wow. Cal took it to like I mean, Serious place quick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. It is. So yeah, I mean, that's what I was like, oh, this is a little odd. So I tried to, like a lot of my buddies, nine o'clock at night,

I'm sitting there with a girlfriend on the couch. I can let that go until the next day. Yeah. Right? But, uh, you never call me at nine o'clock at night. Nope. Must have been something going on.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, That's one thing that you could, I figured he'd pick up if he saw it was me on there. He had service and he did.

Yeah, yeah. And then, and then so Brent ends it with, uh, all right. I said, well, good night, buddy. I was a good night, Cal. And he's like, good night. And I'm like, I love you, buddy. He goes, I love you too. I appreciate it.

And I still don't get the joke. Yeah. It's just funny. It's like, yeah. And just. Now we know who it was. the list as our emergency contact. You're not going to pick up.

Cal, if you see me call it, not answer, please, okay? I won't be filming. No, that's funny. It was good. It was a good call-headed. Oh, yeah. We didn't know about this when we did our- Almost simultaneously.

Steve Rinella, it was actually, it was a major setup, and I didn't even know it. I don't think they really meant it to be a complete setup. Steve Rinella doesn't call me that often. I mean, I consider him a good friend that a guy I love. He doesn't call me that often. I don't know if he calls you all much. Steve Ronella calls me in the middle of our

meeting yesterday. And he knows I'm in a meeting. And so I'm like, oh, this must be important. I like scramble around, like bump people and get out in the hall. And I'm like, hello. And he's like, Clay, man, this physicist that you interviewed on this water witching episode, I was disappointed in him man I mean the guy like he he should have read a little more about it but he did say one thing and Steve just starts talking and I mean I talked to him for 25

I listened to him for 25 minutes talk about the water bear grease water witching episode and he's just going on and on and he you know I kind of get fired up you know I mean like he's speaking my language

you know I'm excited and I'm like I start talking and I feel like I'm talking to, you know, a confidant here, you know. A fellow belief. I can really say what I think. And so I'm talking about holding the sticks, Waterwich, and we did this whole episode on Waterwich and what makes the sticks move. And so I'm describing passionately a even more detailed version of what I said on a podcast.

It's really good. All the while, Randall, Dr. Randall, the Randallamil himself, is filming Steve Ronella with his phone, sat on the table, and Steve just laughing, like silently laughing, like throwing his head back, laughing at me on the line, just like, pour it out my heart. They just threw it out there in real, you know? They had, I mean, dude, yeah. Are they going to use that? Is that going to go to social media?

It's already been sent to media your social media person. Oh, geez. So, so anyway, I was punked as well, Kyle. Yeah. Yeah. for folks whoever get in this situation when Steve calls

and he's going off on his thing, right? If you interject and you stop him, he clicks into reality again of the fact that there's somebody else on the other end of the line. And more often than not,

and you guys got to listen for this, he'll be like, I'll let you say your thing, but I just got to say one more thing. Just let me say this one last thing. So, okay, So it didn't end with Cal last night, though. We're going to have trust issues now in this.

Yeah, yeah, somebody calls you're going to be like. Yeah. So we had so much fun with Cal that we Brent immediately calls Janus. A little more skeptical. What was your experience like here, Janus, with this? Yeah, I was also in bed, had just finished my second ice cream bar of the evening. But you earned. And I was probably scrolling through some poultry picks on my lap.

top and Brent Reeves's number pops up. I answered. He goes, I was just thinking about those little toes. I saw you. He's like, I saw your toes. I was worried about your toes. And I'm like, that's kind of weird, but it's fine. Funny you say that. I had to do some like little surgery today. So I tell him about doing a surgery. He was immediately skeptical. He was like, whatever. What do you need, Brent? I was like, no, man, I just call it check on your feet. Oh, you're right. I kind of forgot about that where I was like, okay, Brent, huh, like, that's funny. What, what do you need? Can I help you? You sniffed it out. But you stuck with it. And then that's when I kind of went back towards like, Cal's feeling. I'm like, oh, you got to commit. Man, what's going on with

Brent? Yeah. I know. He needs somebody and he called me. I'm not to be here for the guy. I'm like, what happened at group dinner? Yeah. Yeah, no, because my first thought was, Brent's, to me, Brent's big softies, like a big teddy bear, you know. And he's got a lot of, you know, passion, emotion, probably empathy, sympathy for people. And I thought, I've seen Brent drink like a beer or two, but maybe last night he had three or four. And, you know, this is what happens. And he just needs to call his buddies and just tell him he loves him. He loves it.

Quick checking, yeah. Better at 9 p.m. And 4 a.m. Yeah. Then, wait. Then he says, I love you. And go bye. See, Brent.

Yeah. Hey, buddy. And then we're like, he don't love you. Cal loves you. Cal's was. He goes, love you. They were both unique experiences. But you know what?

They were trying to get me to do it. And I was just like, I couldn't do. I could not pull it off. Brent used to be an undercover agent. Yeah, you know, I thought actually then you should have done a better job. Wait, can we talk? Do we know the story about what you first thought of him?

Oh, we talk about it all the time. Okay. He never should have. That he was so nice and had all the great qualities of what you'd want and a friend that made you suspicious. Yeah. Because he's a good person. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I'm still not. not fully convinced that's not a long-term plan. Long con. Man for the long game. A long con. Like 15 years now. Mm-hmm. So that was pretty exciting.

And it was all Heather. It was all Heather. Heather, it was her idea. You guys had enough after Cal and myself, no one else? I mean. No, that was it. It just was about all. Yeah.

Who else would, we were there. Oh, right. Now. I think it gets a little less funny probably every time you do it, like in the moment. The first one was just hysterical. Duke, Duke from First Light was there. And he was giggling like a schoolgirl. He was laughing so loud.

He couldn't quite hear him say, I love you too. Which was, we were a little crushed about that. We're like, shut up. Well, when you sent the video that you filmed, Sam was like, you couldn't hear this in the background? I thought the same thing. It was so, oh, wow. I'm like half the time I can't hear you on the other end of the couch. You were playing attention.

No, it's, yeah, it was great. It was great. It was fun. It was fun. Heather, tell me about this tattoo on your hand. Can you show it to the camera? Yes. They float like this.

This is a wooden halibut hook. It's in my traditional language, it's called Nach, spelled N-A-X-D. if you want to spell it in English. And this is a hook that it has a sea monster design, and it's the only hook we've retired. My dad and I fished with these. And it fished for like 30 years. We finally retired it because it...

One hook. It always caught the fish, and they're set in pairs to compete against each other, and it would always catch. So we retired it to give the other ones a chance. And those 30 years, because it looks like it's lashed together, right? Do you find a Y-shaped piece of wood to make it out of? It's two pieces of wood.

We're actually going to film in my upcoming show next week, an episode on using them. But they're made of two different types of wood. So the part that has the design is U.S. And then this part that has the barb was yellow cedar. Now, is that on purpose? Or is that just that specific one was like that? The different densities of wood make it float appropriately. Oh, really?

when you set them. So the you wood wants to go to the bottom. Wow. And then this, you know, we have a, you know, cordage there that needs to be placed in the right spot. So this yellow cedar part floats level to the ocean floor. So not like this or this, just level. So that placement's important. Traditionally, the materials used would be spruce root, you know, to fasten the two pieces together and a bare bone bar.

and cedar bark line. The float at the surface traditionally was an inflated dried seal stomach. And then there's a tattletail buoy and typically that's a cormorant no black bird. And when you get one it tips up.

So you'd set them, go to the beach and watch and it tips up and you go check your hooks. And the halibut come up real easy, you know, handline them and if you've caught halibut on a pole, it feels like you're pulling up a mattress. But with these, you know, my niece is 10,

she pulled up a 215 pounder, just real easy. Wow. Hand line it up. Why is it different? I don't know. It's the technology, you know, it's just a plinget traditional method of fishing and just the way that the hooks are created

and fished and the halbit, just stay calm. Wow. But then are you spearing them on the surface or gaffing them or bonk in them? There's got to be some sort of violence involved here. Yeah, when they come up, you want to hit a halibut right on the nostrils, right when its head comes up by the water before it can get mad. So if you hit them really hard right on the nose. With the bat of some sort?

Like a back, you know, a gaff hook or club. They don't flop around like that. I know I see people shoot them and harpoon them. It's not necessary. You can get a big 300-pounder, hidden on the nose, the right spot, and it just peacefully comes up over that. I have come to the conclusion that harpooning them is not necessary at all,

but it is so much fun. I would rather do that. It's just so much fun. Then if it wakes up, sometimes you splash water on the deck and it'll wake up. If you hit a halibut on its belly. You know, if it's dark side down, belly up to the white side. You hit it on its belly and you head it going towards its tail. It mimics that feeling of them like swimming and their belly on the bottom of the ocean.

And they lay right back down. Whoa, that's cool. You hit them on the stomach and go like this. Wow. And they go back to. That is interesting. Yeah. Do you prefer to eat a 50-pounder or a 250-pounder?

The, yeah, the medium, smaller ones. But so with this, to prevent overfishing, you know, you only set the amount of hooks the fish you want to catch because you can't release fish off of here. So typically we'd release a big alibi off like a skate or a long line. But you have to keep the fish that you catch. So you catch a really big one. Does it hook like...

203 pounds, 150 or more pounds, you know, you might just want one fish. So to ensure you don't over harvest or only take what you need, you're just going to set a couple hooks. So I want to go back to what you said in case anybody missed it. I've heard you say it before, but you're setting, you set two at a time so that they compete. Yeah,

so it's like a friendly competition. Each one has eyes so it can see what it's catching. You lower them. And in our traditional language, you like give them encouraging words. And they, you pick two out and they're different designs. So we're like, oh, we're going to compete sea monster against eagle or whatever the other one is. And then sometimes both catch, sometimes none, sometimes one.

And it's sort of just like a way of, you know, having fun and encouraging them, putting an energy into the things you do and the food that you harvest. And then it's a myth. You know, some people say that you can adjust that. width to catch a smaller or larger fish. That's a myth. A halbit cheek or lip is about the same size, whether it's a 20-pounder or a 300-pounder. And we've caught all different sizes.

So you retired this one because it was so good. Energy. To give the other ones a chance. Always caught hundreds of fish. And it has T-Pat. You know, I should have brought it to show you, but right here it's got a bunch of teeth marks. It's like old and gray. The wood.

So where did that one? Did your dad make that one? He makes all of them. So, but that's specific one that you've retired. He gave it to me. I mean, that's, this is a sea monster, but yeah, he gave it to me. It's at my house. Wow.

That's pretty cool. I want you to get two new ones and name one Brent and one clay. We could. And see which one catches the most. In my episode, you know, we're going to film and you can pick your design. Really? Yeah, we'll call you up, we'll have you choose. You compete against each other.

It's own. Okay. Is the hook baited? Yeah. So you wrap, so take a octopus tentacle and you shave off a thin layer, you know, the part that has the suckers. Because if you put a whole octopus tentacle on here, it would be so heavy. It wouldn't float appropriately. So you just shave off that layer to make it look like.

like a lot of bait. You wrap it, so it looks like a lot. And Halibut love octopus. You bait this part and wrap it around. The barb is exposed. You know, wrap around. Then you do like a little piece of nylon twine, do a couple half hitches, wrap it over the tentacle and then secure it here. When a halibut goes to eat, you know, they can't see very well because they have eyes on top of their head. They can smell really well in gear. So when you set them, the sinkers are these rocks with the groove carved in them and you kind of knock, wake them up. Really?

So you set your hooks and then you like knock on the ground with the, pull the line, obviously up here. And you could feel that rock like knocking. Hmm. You feel like that's calling them. Oh, we've had them fight when you do that. Oh. You could feel it. Just any, any disturbance down there.

they're there picking up on it. If they're there, they're going to bite. You know, halibut's my favorite fish? Is it? It is. You ever seen them cook it?

No. When they eat, when halibut eat, they open their mouth. Mark's had my halibut. It was good. It was good. You did well.

It creates a vacuum and it sucks that part in their mouth and they don't like something. They try to spit it out. When they eject it, it goes in their cheek. The barb. The barb, which is oftentimes the shin bone of a

Yes. Yeah. That's pretty cool. The barb. I like to dry. My favorite way to eat halve is dried. Dried. See, I would have never had it that way.

Cold smoke, then dried. Is it kind of like dried salmon? Like meat snacks. Yeah. I have a hard time fishing with octopus because I like to eat the octopus so much. Yeah. That's tasty stuff.

Yeah, we get octopus from sometimes they go in their crab pots, you know? Right, right. Yeah. Heather, when do your meat eater? films come out. I think September. Oh, they're coming out soon. Pretty quick. So you'll be able

watch on the media or YouTube channel a bunch of stuff filmed in Alaska with Heather and her dad. And it's going to be cool. I'm looking forward to it. Does any of this fishing talk get you interested

in diving into fishing for other class? I mean, I enjoy fishing in Alaska just because of the novelty of it. And I actually enjoy fishing. I just had to make a decision when I was 22 years old when I had my first child, it was like, I had it got to be a, because at that time,

it honestly could have gone probably either way. I liked to fish and hunt, and I just knew I couldn't do both. So I kind of rejected, reject, I went that route, rejected fishing. How did you cook the halibut? Um, bad. Mark's given me a hard time. Mark, Mark was our judge.

He made a sandwich. Fish sandwich, fish and chips. Oh, fried. Yeah. Just butter, sauteed and butter. Just butter. Sauted and butter. pretty much. Man fry. It is good. Just

seared. Grilled halibut. He'd be terrific given the circumstances. Yeah, it was on media roast, the cooking show, you know. Oh, oh. So it was fun. It was good, though. But I do love halibut. Who won that mark? You mean that was you? Oh, that was what I did win that.

Right one. Yeah. 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 Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut

is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. O'Call. Hey, man, you know what people ask me all the time, and I want to ask you? Well, you were just on Joe Rogan. Yeah.

Tell me about that experience. And you can tell us what we're talking about, what you guys were talking about, but this is a huge deal. I mean, like, you, in our culture, if aliens came down here and analyzed our culture, they'd be like, wait a minute, why do people think it's, like, unique and cool to go on Joe Rogan? Rougan? Who is this? Yeah. But, like, you were on Rogan, like, two weeks ago. It's, yeah, I mean, it's a weird deal.

I feel like I've known Joe for a long time now. It's not like we're talking on the phone every day, but however long it was. I love Joe Rogan tonight. I love you, Joe. I love you, buddy. Check it on those toes. It's a lot different these days. The last time, like when we hunted together and then we did the Joe Rogan podcast when he was still in California.

So you've been on it before? Yeah, one time for the exact same reason as this last time, right? Public lands. But, you know, when he was in California, it was like, cool, show up at this address. Oh, there he are. We walk in. He unlocks his own door. We're walking together.

Now it's way different, right? Undisclosed location. And you get picked up, dropped off, you know, his security. team is all the same guys from the last couple years really you know nice guys so sat around BS with them and Joe finally rolled in and and yeah did did the podcast and it was kind of odd timing right because we had been talking and I'd been like hey Joe need to pay attention to this public land sell off stuff it's very real so you had said that you had communicated with him before yeah in some way yeah yeah yeah just maybe

What you did he was in the loops? Call him, email him. I was just texting him. Just saying, hey man, like, this is real. Just to stay on top of it. And Cameron Haynes was, I was keeping them in the loop, right? And then eventually I was like, this is super real. Like, we got to make a podcast happen.

And he's like, yep, you're right. It's important. That's, that's gutsy. I like it. That you had the boldness to say, hey, we need to do a podcast. Yeah. And he did it. I'm not going to call him and be like, hey, I want to talk about me.

Right? I mean, this is important stuff. So, and, yeah, I mean, he was like, okay, how about July 4th? And I was like, dude, July 4th is too late. They're going to vote. They're supposed to vote in the Senate on July. So it's got to be earlier than that. And he was like, okay, yeah, I'll reschedule this other guy.

And got in there July 3rd. And he's like, but that's the best I can do. So I went down there and, and yeah, had a good talk. But, you know, at that point, we had just gotten two days earlier the public land sell-off language removed from the Senate version of the budget bill, big, big, beautiful budget bill. And so we kind of had like a little bit of a recap, but also like this is kind of how we got here. And, you know, Joe likes to have tangents too, you know, some of which I'm not super. interested in if I'm being honest. But so, you know, have to kind of redirect, but, you know, very important to me, obviously.

Making sure we have places to go hunting fish and making sure that people understand that even though you're not using it, this is yours right now. Do you want to lose it forever? Because once it's gone, it's gone. And, yes, that's what we talked about. And then, you know, right now, today. I just got a call because the next version of land sell-offs is coming in, and there's a lot of folks working really hard to defund a lot of very specific areas of

how we manage our public resources and in an effort to kind of minimize those areas and make them easier to sell off. So I got a call from the Washington Post today to talk about where we think this funding is going. And is it important to hunters and anglers? You know, so yeah, I mean, and it's just going to keep coming until folks understand that public land, public water, public wildlife is so important to everybody that it's not this political bargaining chip. You got to keep your hands off of it, right? And by keep your hands off of it, there's always these extremes these days, right? The ultra-crazy liberal left and the ultra-crazy conservative, right? And nobody talks about the ultra-crazy middle, right?

Where it's not keep your hands off it. You can't touch it. You can't go out there, as some people like to say. and it's not, it only does us good if we can extract everything off of it, right? So we all use stuff when it's time for extraction. It's got to be responsible extraction. And there's ways to do that stuff responsibly if we demand that it needs to be done that way, right? So, yeah, kind of advocating for the ultra-crazy middle ground.

Yeah, like the radical center. Yeah, exactly. Is it true that maybe I heard you say it, Mark, today that Mike Lee, who was the face of the bill that was part of the bill that was wanting to sell off the land, that after all this he was like, there was murmurs of him thinking that where did all this opposition come from? Was it this dark money? Who's funded? What dark money is funding all this opposition? As if our voice and all the hunters and names. who stood up on social media and it could not be legitimate right it it we had to be somehow

being coerced or paid or i mean right that actually he actually said that yeah because apparently that's the way they do business up there yeah it's revealing right yeah yeah and and that's a huge like where we need to get to thing is is we're only going to have as much transparency into this process as we demand. And a lot of these people do not want people paying attention to them. They just, they do not. The more spotlight to have on them, the less they're going to get done in their own way.

And that's the role that we all have to play, you know, as citizens, is demanding that these people represent our interests. And sometimes the chips might fall in the right direction when we're not paying attention, but that's not where I'm going to put my money, you know. You want to see the roaches running high, just turn the lights on. Turn the lights on, yes, sir.

So there's a lot of very smart folks who are in tune with things saying that there's going to be another big land sell-off attempt here during hunting season, because people have realized that it wasn't until the hunting community. and this is something that we should be patting our backs on. It wasn't until the hunting community really got riled up that everybody else started taking it really seriously. And it was this kind of domino effect, if you will. And so people have been like, oh, my gosh, well, let's just do it during a hunting season.

And then these people are going to be distracted because we know they care way more about hunting than what we're doing. Well, the thing is I've always thought that we as the hunting and fishing community kind of have a superpower on these types of issues because folks like Mike Lee and his ilk, they can ignore the traditional environmentalists, the traditional left-leaning, green crowd, because those folks weren't supporting Mike Lee or anyone on that side of the aisle anyways, right? But they do need to listen to the hunting and fishing community, which has traditionally supported the right side of the aisle, and they need the support of our community.

So when all of a sudden we start making a ruckus about this stuff, we are being hurt. they do need to, you know, work for that constituency. So there's a little bit of an extra opportunity we have in these moments. Yeah. And there's a giant chunk of under, I feel like something that the politicians need to pay attention to is there's this huge, huge group, literally larger than the group that voted for the Democrats and larger than the group that voted for the Republicans in this last election that are saying, We are not being represented. And it's motivating that 36% that didn't vote to vote one way or another, right? Like, where's my representation?

And I think a lot of those people definitely stood up and made phone calls and posts and rallied people during this public land sales stuff. So the more that we can get people engaged, the more they're going to pay attention. So I say policy, not politics. Don't support politics, but you got to be involved in policy. Here, here. Well, I was proud to know you, Cal, on that whole deal. I was just thinking about, I mean, it's, I mean, sometimes those kind of issues, aren't on the forefront.

Yeah. But when they are, I'm looking to you and some other people. Mark was really vocal on it. Not just vocal knowledge of all, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So anyway, it was a, it was a clutch play.

You know, and there was so many people involved. I mean, it was... Yeah, oh, absolutely. But it was, yeah, and I guess we're just going to have to keep fighting it, man. I mean, you know, we're preaching to the choir so much, but I mean, we just have, I feel like that we just have no real awareness of how fortunate we are to live in this country, have access to public land. Yep. Period.

I mean, it's just like this is a human experience that's, that is not happening in other places where we could. And I mean, there's all this to talk about, you know, people being upset about elk draws being harder to get to and hunting being limited. but, golly, I'm just happy that I can get an elk tag in my lifetime. I mean, I don't want the bar to drop so low that, I mean, I realize there's challenges, but I'm just, I just think it's cool that we have access to what we have. And, you can put your name in the hat for a bighorn sheep, right? And it's like, and it's possible. Yep.

Right. Yanni drew a big horn, right? That's a tough one to grab. But folks, yeah, you just can't be complacent, right? because it doesn't matter how big Joe Rogan's podcast is. Like if the people don't listen to that and then make the phone calls and the emails on their own, he's just one voice, right? Or Clay or Heather or Brent or Janice or Mark or myself.

And you can't assume somebody else is going to do the heavy lifting. Correct. That's the deal. I feel like we should put some effort into opposing Mike Lee next time he has to run for his seat. We can definitely remind people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be great to get him primaried. I want to close down with one story that has just come up and everybody's talking about it.

And I just kind of want to get your hot take on it. Yonis, tell us about the guy that poached the deer that everybody's talking about. There's a good meat eater article about it. There's articles all over it. We just give the world. I look into what this guy did and what happened to him. Yeah. Well, I'll preface it with saying that I was really impressed by our editorial team, Maggie, and I can't remember who she said.

She wrote it with. Jordan did it with her. With her. But the latest, like, email that I got from them, I forget what the title was. It was like, don't be a moron. And then, like, the top three articles in this email, and what's on the website today was all these poaching cases, right? but Maggie wrote a nice little piece about being like, don't be these people.

Like, let's celebrate all the great things and do it right, respect it. And it was just really nice to see like us coming forward and putting our voice out there, not just writing an article, you know, sort of, you know, trying to get clicks with another poaching case, right? But the first one in this set of three is about a hunter, a, and a, a, you know, internet celebrity YouTube hunter who has a show, albeit small, but he has a show on YouTube. I think he also is on Carbon TV, if I'm not mistaken. Sounds right.

And he was hunting in Kansas in a unit that he did not have a tag for. He did have a Kansas tag, but not a tag for that unit. Killed a deer, drove that deer to Oklahoma, where he also had a tag, and then tagged that deer there. then went back to Kansas and hunted in the unit that he did have attacked for and killed another buck. In the

end, when it all came out and he got busted, he got in trouble for killing two deer in Kansas, which you're not allowed to do. You can only kill one buck. And then he also got in trouble through the Lacey Act for transporting that illegal animal across state lines. He's going to say, Brent, when you're out there committing

crimes, do you suggest crossing state lines? That is a bad, bad juju right there. It's going to escalated from us. How did they catch him? From a state to federal. I'm not sure the article even stated how he was caught. No, we don't know how it got caught. But I do know that there was like some heavy hitter government agencies in on it. I think it might even said CIA was was in on it. Like the big kids came out to stop this guy. So obviously both fish wildlife departments from Oklahoma and Kansas were involved.

But yeah, it's a big deal. He's losing his license for his lifetime in Kansas. And then I forget how many years. Five years nationwide. Five years nationwide. It was interesting seeing all the hunting companies that sponsored him come out with their statements this week. Yeah, there's multiple, multiple companies had these big write-ups about how they're rejecting

their association with this person. I was surprised. Why they would even say anything at all? This was personally, I'd never heard of this person before or this thing. I felt like you were actually bringing more attention to him and your association with him by doing this post than if you just said nothing at all. I don't think anybody would have known about it. Exactly.

Yeah, but I think that the PR side of things, they don't want to get caught being like, hey, everybody else sort of made a statement. Are you condoning this? Yeah. Yeah, maybe after one person does it. Yeah, maybe so. The whole thing gets, that's crazy. The whole thing gets messed up.

So I heard a story about another person who had been in this world that we're talking about, like the media world, who had been busted for some illegal stuff and got busted in part by the Lacey Act because he had brought an animal legally harvested across state lines. And that made it so much worse because of that. so now this person supposedly whenever this person kills a deer in a certain state even if he thinks he did everything

by the book he leaves that deer in that state for a minimum of five years to ensure that nothing else is like found out and dug up that he could get in trouble for if he were to transfer over state lines now he chose to do this or the judge said he had to do this

again this is all second hand so you're saying when he leaves a deer you're talking talking about the head at this point. So he leaves it with the taxidermist and does not take it to his home for five years. Boy, that's a good way to get a deer back from a taxidermist in 20 years. If you're like, hey, don't worry about it, I'll pick it up in five years. I won't worry about it. Or you're the only guy that's actually going to get your taxidermy on time.

Well, everybody loves a good poaching story. Why? Well, I have all people Because I actually don't My buddies Well, yeah What do you think What would you do that for?

Just to get Mark Well, the best You're the best Some of the highest Listen to Barre Grays episodes of all time Have been our poacher stuff I didn't know you've got some good ones And they're just interesting

They're human interest stories Because the interest in this case If I was sitting down with this guy I would be like What did you know why did you do this? What were you after? Why did you think you'd get away with it? Did you steal stuff when you were a kid? Did you tell the truth? I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, like a human psychology fascination. Yeah, it's just like a human interest story. And what you

usually find out is that some of these guys aren't that much different than just the average guy. I mean, and it's, and it's sometimes a momentary lapse in judgment. It's usually a lifetime of lack of character, honestly, when it's disaggregious. I mean, you don't do this on accident. You know, I mean, and there's such a nuance to me inside of game violations, you know, there's some that

are just clearly egregious. This is egregious. Like, this guy... There's planning. Yeah. This guy didn't do this on accident. Like, he didn't accidentally kill it there in Kansas thinking he was in Oklahoma. No, he had to, you know, film a 22

minute episode or whatever. and continue this lie through the episode. So he's saying he's in Oklahoma. Do you still film it? No, he's with him. Well, he's got an accomplice for him. That's the film work, Johnny. Would you consider it a film or an episode?

Was the film, does he do create content? Was it all part of the, just filming because we're going to cover it up. And we're going to say we're here. No, he was filming for the show. He made an episode. Well, so the FBI, profile for serial killers is like you can overlap it with cereal poachers and they did that study with i want to say like u.s. fish and wildlife service maybe um just just to see a few years ago and so that

made the rounds quite a bit i want to say like five years ago and uh it's been referenced a couple other times because there have been serial poachers that have one day just decided to kill somebody and they had the exact same reasoning as to why they shoot a handful of bucks at night every year or whatever it is right um it's like i don't know just did it um so that's really interesting to think about on the the poaching side of things and then the guy that i would love for you to interview because I just, I want to know the whole reason why is this dude. This is a big time case. It broke, gosh, I want to say about 18 months ago.

And then the kind of the civil part of it just kind of wrapped up now. But this guy, Carl Schlaugter, I think is his name. He's a southern Idaho dude, Buell, Idaho area, Burley, Buell. but like local farmer kid done super well for himself sits like went to lineman school got on the board of a co-op and then got on the board of this giant electrical company making tons of money and just a filthy poacher right and has all the cash to go wherever and do it all right and free time and stuff and gets like really into it to where he's like, well,

none of these poachers are really doing it at a pro level. And so he kind of sets up his own insider trading of illegal tags in Idaho. And that's at the point at which he got busted. But, I mean, he'd been observed for quite a while and the case was being put together.

But that is the guy I would love to sit down with or have you sit down with and just be like, walk me through the decision? Because he was, he was killing, like, his kids' bull elk for him. You know what I mean? Like,

there's a guy in my town. I love this guy. Like an old... Here we go. Just love this guy. Every time I see him at this store, I stop and talk to me. He drives around with, like, six dogs,

and gets a pack of ground beef and feeds him raw ground beef and truck. And, um, I love him. But he has a, You poached lots and lots when he was growing up and in his adult. He tells me stories all the time. He said they would. No, he's, I think he's like in his late 70s now.

Reform. He doesn't, he lives in Alaska, but. He told me this one story about, you know, they'd watch him. They'd wait for him and at night and he got so good at hiding the deer. You know, he said one time he put it in a spare tire. It was in the back of his truck and then put the rim back and that the police were looking all over and they're like, we know you got one. And they couldn't find it.

And they're moving this tire around is so heavy. And he said when the guy retired, the law enforcement officer retired, he told him it was in that tire the whole time. Oh, man. You'd like to talk to this guy. Well, I thought it was interesting about the one that we started. started the conversation with is that he's doing it for a show. And since all of us film some version of hunting, catching, you know your episode is going to be better when something dies to some extent, right?

Yeah, and you get the goal of the show. Yeah. And sometimes the hero doesn't, you know, get over that hump. But, like, that's a real pressure, right? to come home with pressure you know pressure is one thing but integrity is something else and that that's going to win every show as far as I'm concerned right and y'all too I mean I'm not I'm telling Noah about the flood saying that to you guys but it's just the the idea that a fella can anyone and put themselves in a place to feel

the amount of pressure that the only way that they can do that is to have the hero shot with a dead animal. It's the only way that you can win. He's not out there for the same reasons I am, for sure. Or any of you folks. You know, we didn't mention either. One of the deer was like 190-something-inch butt. 190?

That's what? For sure, I read that. Yeah, 197. That's different. Well, that case. How much is Oklahoma Tech? Yeah. Well, when I was filming, you know, I'm new at this,

And we were filming, we were hunting up in Alaska. I was like, do you show the misses? Oh, yeah. It's okay. I just watched a little preview of my first episode. I go, you just show me missing five times in a row. I go, are you going to show me getting? They're like, oh, you're missing?

Because it's far, you can't tell. I was like, oh, oh, watching it. Like, oh, it's so close. So it's real. It's part of it. And it's okay. It is. It is.

That's reality. It makes you human. Yeah. You know, every time I see one of those things, in all honesty, the reason I was paranoid about Brandt, just a little bit when I first met him, was because I had just stepped into the hunting industry that not full time just was like writing some stuff. And I've told the story so many times. I won't belabor it. But we really grew up. My dad actually, I didn't realize this would be abnormal.

but my dad actually really taught us to follow the law. I mean, like, we didn't get to... It's not abnormal. I don't think that's abnormal. Well... Clay. Okay. I know some people...

I think it was abnormal. He just, he took it unusually serious for everybody that I knew, for real. Just like letter of the law kind of stuff. So I grew up with that and maybe a little bit of paranoia because of that. And then, just when I got into the hunting industry, you know, I had been, Well, what if I just made a mistake? You know? Yep.

And this thing is over. And so I always, I don't have, people maybe have accused me of being empathetic, sympathetic towards poachers because of some of the stuff that we've done on Bear Grease. And I was going to tell you, any candidate of a Bear Grease story, there's got, it's got to be really. redemption in the ark. Uh-huh. Yeah. So this guy, this guy in Idaho, like, you know, I don't want to give him any press if he's kind of still a dirtball.

Well, I mean, that's the... Yeah. I mean, it's very well could be. I just don't know. I'm dying to know, like, the psychological reason. It's like, you could have gone... I mean, he's wealthy enough to where he could go anywhere outside of the interstate compact and continue to hunt and

and be just and do as much as he wants just not close to home, right? But it's just like I'm just dying to know like what Yeah. What got him to go? I did ask why my guy poached. Oh, you did a little interview. Dad was sick. Dad had cancer. He's sick and they were starving, poor.

Mm. That's what started it, but he kind of kept on. No, he said the word, I'll call it a warden. That's what he called it. He said during that time his dad is sick. He said the guy who's always after him, he was like, I'll see you later. It was kind of like a nod to, I'm going to look the other way because I know you all are struggling. But then he kept on after. And then I think it was, I don't know if it's a dopamine thing or what, you rush. You know when you do that?

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, the white, the white tell stories are always wild and, you know, I mean, yeah. That's my, I don't really have a conclusion. I just wanted to talk about, I just wanted to talk about that story. Pat D.

He has a good conclusion. You know, his quote, you know, big deer, make people do stupid stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You just say, I love you, buddy. Good night. That's how we're going to close off the episode. Hey, it's been fun.

It's been fun having everybody on here. Thanks for having. It really has. It's been a fun conversation. And first ever crackling. Dude, Bear grease crackling. We're going to have to call,

if we do that, if we use that name for the third rendition of the, you know, the Bear Grease podcast feeds getting really complicated. Because we got the Bear Grease Proper, which is our documentary style episode. We got the Bear Grease Render, which is us sitting around talking about the Bear Grease Proper.

We got Brent's This Country Life podcast, and now we have Lake Pickles Backwoods University. So there's a lot going on there. So, and then now we're going to have the Bear Greas Crackling. Do you eat the Crackland? Oh, yeah. Like, we feel crispy fat.

We call it crispy fat. I usually use them as dog treats. Nice. You can put salt or sugar or both together. All right. Thank you guys. Brant, why don't you wish them good night? Good night.

Thank you all for listening to Bear Grease Crackling. And like I always say to my friends, good night buddy tonight 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 Ronella 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.

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