Bear Grease - Ep. 476: Backwoods University - Catching Crawfish

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Without a doubt, crawfish, or crayfish, are the most well-known, and tastiest crustacean in all of North America- but how much do we really know about them? Where did they come from? How many of them are there? What role do they play in the ecosystem? We’ll all learn by the end of this that these tiny shellfish have more to offer than a what comes out of a boiling pot. Connect with Lake Pickle and MeatEater Lake Pickle on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places, and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. And today, well, fire up the boiler, cut up some onions, garlic, and sausage because it's time for a crawfish bowl. Well, not actually. I wish it was. But it is time for all of us to learn a little bit more about the most popular crustacean that has ever graced the North American fresh waters. And believe me, I bet you'll be surprised at how much there is to learn about these critters.

Let's get into it. I can picture the whole thing in my head right now. It's early April. I pull into my parents' driveway, and the second I opened the truck door, I am welcomed by the familiar smell of boiling crawfish, the Cajun seasoning, the diced onions and garlic, the chopped sausage, and of course, the crawfish, all intermingling together in a giant pot of boiling water to make a harmony of good aroma, and it even, even though.

better taste. If you have never had the privilege of attending a crawfish bowl, you are seriously missing out. It's a social event just as much as it is a feast, and it's been a staple of American Southern culture for a very long time. I would even wager to say that you won't find anyone down here that doesn't at least know what a crawfish is. But that is where most of our knowledge ends, myself included before I did this episode. Crawlfish. The small and delicious freshwater shellfish that has brought more people together than Woodstock ever did. But what else do we know about them? Where do they come from?

How did they get here? How many of these things are there? My friends, there's a much bigger and interesting story here, more so than I even anticipated. And I think you're really going to like it. So let's jump into it. And then we've got these, basically, these are yabby pumps. It's early June, and I've just met up with Calvin Razak for a day spent a field digging up crawfish. Calvin is an ichthyologist, which in the most basic terms means he's a fish scientist

that specializes in crayfish, and he works for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. I would say this is probably the last week I would do a burrowing crayfish. It starts to get dry. It gets dry, man. Oh, okay. And these things are six to eight feet deep from sometimes. Like, we're probably only going to get them if they've just started a new burrow. or if we've just pissed him off enough for them to come up. Okay. Calvin is explaining to me the methods that will be trying to dig up these burrowing crayfish or crawfish. I'm pretty sure the terms are interchangeable.

Okay. So that's this one species. It's called the Jackson Prairie Crayfish. Jackson Prairie Crayfish. Yep. And so the Jackson Prairie fish is named after this region. This is called the Jackson Prairie. I didn't know that.

Yeah. I did know that part. I didn't know there was a craven. You were Mississippi State, right? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, you know a lot about the ecology and region. So yeah, it's only, it's this type of crayfish that lives in these prairie habitats,

or these remnant prairie habitats. Remnant prairies, yeah. And we got like 68 species of crayfish. Okay, sorry to interrupt again so soon, but we just found fun facts number one. There are almost 70 different species of crawfish just in Mississippi alone. Mississippi Flatwoods crayfish, Jackson Prairie Fish, Camp Shelby Burrowing Crayfish, abandoned mudbug, lonesome grave digger, war-paint mudbug. These are all different species that also have some pretty cool names.

Cool, huh? See, that's the other thing that I didn't know. Like, I knew that there was probably the same as most people. Like, I knew there's crawfish that goes in a boil. Yeah. And then beyond that, like, I would know when I was a kid at, like, Shiloh Park playing baseball. Yeah.

In between practice, we would go to the ditches and try to find crawfish, and I just knew some of those crawfish looked a lot different than one ended up in a crawfish bowl. And I was just like, I looked different. That's about as far as my knowledge went. And that bass eat them sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's about it. But I didn't know there was 68 different species.

Yeah. No, I had no clue either. And, you know, fish and muscles and these aquatic organisms are really diverse. like in Mississippi, like we've got a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I might get some hate if I say crawfish or crayfish, you know. I never knew, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I kind of use them interchangeably, but, I mean, if we're talking about it, I'm in a science term, like if you're writing them down and it's supposed to crayfish. Yeah. Where did crawfish even come from, you know? So. Cajuns? Well, it's a French.

Yeah, well, basically, kind of, it's a French. Oh, it is Cajins. Well, yeah, basically. It's like crevice, I believe, is like the French. word for it, crevice, and you can imagine, you know, if you're just mixing that up, kind of crevice, crevish, drawfish. Yeah. That's kind of how it evolved. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no one causes a crayfish bowl. Right, right. Right, right. Personally, if someone ever invited me to a crayfish bowl, I think I would pass on it, taking that poor use in terminology to be an indicator of their cooking capabilities.

But anyway. I can show you, I brought, in case we don't. get a whole much crayfish. I brought some... I watched Calvin open the back door of his truck and begin digging around in the back seat. And he emerged with a plastic tackle box, one that you would take fishing. Except this one, you didn't have crankbaits,

or artificial crawfish lures. He had actual crawfish, like live ones, swimming around in there. I brought show and tell. Yeah. So, yeah, these are from our survey we did up in North Mississippi. But that's a lacuna camberus.

These are generally, you know, in more layman's terms, a mudbug. Is that what we call these guys? I mean, he looks like he'd go in a bowl. Yeah, yeah. I've actually heard people eating these guys and they just, they taste muddy. But, I mean, maybe they didn't purge him, right? Look at the claws on that guy. Oh, my gosh, man.

These guys, so this one's called the War Paint Mudbug. Because it's so fearsome. And it's got some real, I mean, this is going to. This would hurt if it gets me, get to hold of me. But something to be said about the confidence of a crawfish. You know? Yeah, he's just like looking at you and he's like, I got this. Well, if you're a crawfish, you know, man, everything eats a crawfish, right?

You've got to have these big clauses to defend yourself. If you got any chance, like bass love crawfish, right? Right. There's a lot of studies out there. um owls hawks different snake species amphibians like the hellbender otters mink I mean there's like hundreds and hundreds of things

animals that live in the water or or adjacent to the water that just they'll eat them eat them and it's like uh like ibuses 90% of their diet is crop fish and they're probably eating the ones that are these burrowing ones that come up seasonally after a rain event they might live in pools and then they kind of go back down but yeah

this is is there any telling like a crawfish that size is there any way to tell how old the crawfish that is or crawfish like that is yeah that's a great that's a great question um yeah crawfish we are it's such a new field that there's questions like that we don't even really know the answer to yeah we we think something like this is like a three or four year old crawfish but there's this cave crawfish that can live 25 30 years there there's some crayfish that just live a year yeah and so it would not surprise me that if we you know develop the the proper tools to actually start studying these guys that we would figure out that these guys live a little little longer than three to four years that's wild because I mean these leaves live underground

and I mean they don't move very much and they stay in their tunnels underground year-round. I would guess if they're underground can't nothing really get to them. Oh, it's a perfect defense, right? Yeah. I think that's why a lot of these adapted to start digging underground because it's... In a stream environment, you're a perfect prey, right, for a lot of things.

But if you live underground, then nothing can get you. So, what have we learned so far? Well, a couple of things. Number one, humans aren't the only ones that love to eat crawfish. A whole lot of other things do too. Ows, hawks, raccoons, ibis, just to name a few. Number two, there's some crawfish that can live up to 25 years. That is insane.

Number three, and I'm speculating here, but from what I can tell from Calvin, it seems like there's a whole lot left to learn about these tiny animals. Anyway, let's continue. Yeah, okay. We got a few more here too. I mean, it looks... You know, that... I don't have, like, a great example of a normal-looking crayfish.

I got this one of Arquareem. He's a little messed up. He probably looked... That vernal crayfish looked probably something like this. He's got his claws all busted. What happens, man? Yeah, he's lost the claw. But you can see, he's starting to grow...

He's starting to grow that back a little... They're growing back. Yeah, that... Yeah, right there. That's got a little mini... That's a little mini claw. Give it enough time, they'll grow up back, yeah. I have no idea.

Yeah, yeah, when they grow up back, it doesn't... When they grow their claws back, It doesn't always come back the same shape or size. Basically, they're trying to grow it back as quickly as possible because if you're a crayfish, everything needs you, you got to. That's your defense, yeah. And this guy's got a really bad closet. Yeah.

And you're lucky you're in aquarium. Yeah. Yep. This is another lacuni can bearer, so another mud bug species. Yeah. Called the painted hand. We found this one is new. We've got a couple of species that we, so we're still growing our knowledge on crawfish

and where they occur. And so up until a couple months ago, we did not know a couple of these species occurred in Mississippi. Really? Yeah. How crazy is that? I don't know about y'all, but personally, I tend to think,

or at least hope that we have a pretty decent grasp on species taxonomy within our states, especially in freshwater aquatic species, but here we are in 2026, still finding new species of crawfish that occur in the state of Mississippi. And frankly, I find it fascinating. So that, I mean, that's cool to me entirely because it's like you would think at 2026 we've got to get handle on all this stuff.

But it's honestly, it's pretty cool. You're still finding new stuff. Yeah, we, crayfish. I think crayfish have been neglected as like a, you know, as an organism as a whole for their importance. And it hasn't really been since 2005, maybe the late 90s that we've really started to like, oh, we should look at these things and where are they occur and how they? how they are important to the ecosystem. These two species here, the pain and hand mudbug, and the hatchet burrowing crayfish,

are our two newest species to the state of Mississippi. We knew they were in Tennessee, but we went up to North Tennessee on the counties, that border, Tennessee, Alabama, and we found these two guys. That's cool. Yeah, so we're still growing our knowledge, and this is an undescribed species right here.

I've got a colleague who works on trying to look at the genetics of crayfish and see if they're different. So that one doesn't have a name quite yet. Hmm. Yeah. And unnamed, okay. And unnamed crayfish. Not only are we discovering new species occurring in the state, but now I'm currently looking at a, quote, new species that Calvin has in his crawfish tackle box that is yet to be even described. Boy, I tell you, when I drove out to meet Calvin today,

I planned on learning a little bit more about crawfishing, getting to play around in the mud a bit. I had no idea. I would be getting to see all this new science and even newly discovered species. That's the thing about wildlife, man. There's always something new and interesting around the next corner. No.

That's cool. Yeah, it is really cool. That's what kind of drew me to this field is... There's just so much we don't know. Oh, man, there's... The questions you've been asking that I don't have to... of answers for and where these things occur. That's what's so cool is, there's a lot to be discovered here.

Yeah. Some of them even have bad wraps too. We just did a recent project doing morphological comparisons of a subgenus of crayfishes up in the northeastern part of the state. And they, whenever they were discovered in 1936 by a guy, it was all to see just how to kill them because they were all viewed as crop pests because they burrow down like from how they were described like 10 feet yeah and then they would all come up when these big rain events and just like just walk through all these big fields ag fields and they were all

considered agricultural pests but now we're finding out that there's a lot of probable cryptic diversity within those groups through some of the morphological comparisons and stuff but there's a lot of genetic work that needs to be done to just kind of see but fascinating. As I listen to Calvin and his technician talk about newly discovered species, questions about the animal that still have yet to be answered, and some of the studies that have been done strictly on more of a pest control mindset, this might sound a touch outlandish, but I'm honestly reminded of the episode we did a while back on the Gulf, when we learned about how much we still don't know about that area, and what studies have been done have been focused

on what we can gain or extract. Again, obviously, I'm for sustainable use of natural resources and Lord knows I love a crawfish bull but I just think that there's a lot more that this species has to offer and there's definitely a lot more that we don't know it's this the thing that keeps coming up and coming up with this show specifically is like we talked and we figured this out early on it's like you can't appreciate something that you don't understand right so like you don't understand crawfish right apparently is there's a lot left to be understood right then you can just like, ah, those things are pests. Right.

Or, yeah. They're just things that make a... Or this is one... This is just a brown bug and they're everywhere and there's one species, right? I think that's such a misnomer. Everyone thinks that there's just one crawfish, right? Yeah, yeah. Crawfish is crawfish.

But they look so different, right? You can go to a ditch and you're like, oh, that looks real... That looks real different. Yeah. But the knowledge just isn't out there that, you know, we've got so many different kinds. I tell you. Just in these few minutes of discussion or so, my curiosity for the humble small crayfish or crawfish, whichever one you want to call it, has done nothing but grow.

All these unknown facts. All these numerous species. And I think it's time for myself and these two gentlemen to do what we came to do and see if we can dig up some crawfish from out of this small prairie remnant that we are currently out in. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear first light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear.

Built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses.

Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Let me give a quick rundown on some general crawfish history, if you will, before we go and get our hands in the mud so we can all have just a little more context. Crawlfish, freshwater crustaceans that trace their ancestry back to marine lobster-like animals from all the way back in the Paleozoic era. Think about the Southern Dinosaur episode that we did.

Kind of in that deep time frame is what we're talking. The transition from saltwater to freshwater happened multiple independent times, which is why the crawfish that you would find in your average Mississippi ditch and the ones that you would find in a creek in Australia are actually descended from completely separate lineages. North American crawfish fossils go back roughly 165 to 200 million years, putting them on this continent well before the first humans ever set foot here. Every crawfish native to North America east of the continental divide belongs to a single family,

Camberidae, and that family has exploded in diversity across the southeast. North America is home to roughly 400 crawfish species, more than any other continent on Earth. And the epicenter of that diversity is right here in the southeast. States like Tennessee, Alabama, here at home in Mississippi, consistently rank among the most crawfish rich places on the planet. And this probably has a lot to do with why we're so infamous for crawfish bowls. Shout out, Louisiana. Ecologically, crawfish punch way above their weight.

They're omnivores, eating algae, aquatic insects, small fish, and just about anything else they can get their claws on that'll work for them. That makes them a critical link in aquatic food webs, both as consumers and as prey. River otters, herons, bass, raccoons, mink. they all depend heavily on crawfish. Many species of crawfish are also primary burrowers, which is what we're going to try to dig up later today,

meaning they spend most of their lives underground, which makes them important for soil erration and water infiltration, even in upland habitats far from permanent water. Okay, that's all the context we need. Let's dig in the mud. You want to go? You want to go dig up a crawfish. Can't say I've ever done that.

Well, I have, but not the way we're about to do it. Yeah, yeah. The way I did it when I was 12 was a lot more, I don't know, not as advanced as what we're about to do. Oh, trust me, I still do that stuff all the time. And yeah, so here's a knife. You got that, Shane, you got that too? Okay. We grab all of our gear, a large soil knife, a hand-powered water pump that closely resembles the type of pump you would use to fill a bicycle tire and large containers of water.

And we head downhill towards the large number of crawfish burrows that are scattered out across the grassy area in close relation to a large container. Creek. However, the first spot that we stopped at, I was kind of surprised at how far we were from the visible water. No, is it surprising it'd be that far from the creek? Depends on where the water table is. Okay. It's surprising. I've studied this species. I studied this species last year. Yeah. And we learned that look how far we are away from the creek, right? Yeah. We're like 100 meters away. Yeah, those are I was going to say 100, 110 yards. Yeah, it's pretty impressive.

And we're up on this slope, right? How can this crayfish be living up in what you think is this really dry habitat? Well, there's these perched water tables underneath and this Jackson Prairie clay, that's, you know, the Yazoo clay people talk about, that's shifty. And, well, it's a great habitat for crayfish because it holds moisture. And so they're, they can live in some really insane areas. So compared to a lot of a lot of crayfish species, it's pretty unusual to find them this high. But they're in high elevations compared to a lot of different species. To your point, like I know I've been out hunting before.

Yeah. And all of a sudden will be like, huh, cropfish hole way out here. Yeah, like, how'd you get out here, right? After surveying a few different spots, Calvin picks what he says would be a good one for my first try. In reality, I think he's trying to find me an easy one to put me on, but we'll see. I've got to pay attention here because he's about to give me some instruction on how all to do this. Like right down here, this one might not be bad. You should try this one.

Okay. Looks that mud's a little bit darker, so it's at least a little bit more recent. So he's been active, maybe in the last few weeks or so. But you see the crayfish is coming up out of the grass. They're used their claws to basically excavate. the mud, dig deeper, right? That water table's dropping,

so they got to go deeper. To find water. To find water. And so then they're just kind of, this species is kind of a lazy roommate. You know, it doesn't build these large towers. Okay.

Like the mud bug species, they just slough it off to the side. They're like, yeah. Yeah. You know, it doesn't need to look pretty. Yeah, it works. But,

you know, there's a learning curve to this. I would imagine. Yeah, I would imagine. But if you get one, man, That'd be awesome. Hopefully you can. So right there's a hole. It's got to be right here. There might be and sometimes they might have two or three entrances. It's possible this one has that.

But like I just poked my hole, my finger down on the hole. And so I can feel that there's a tunnel. I can feel the tunnel. Yeah. And without cutting your finger off, you just kind of keep your finger in the tunnel. maybe dig a little semicircle and just start prying at that mud and as you're doing it you just don't want to drop a bunch of dirt down in the hole it gets harder and it gets more compacted yeah yeah yeah it's just harder to dig it but you just keep opening that hole up and you're just trying to follow the tunnel

yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's I think I'm following what you do again this one's pretty decent I think so that's what it's going to be. I would suggest, you know, keep that tunnel open as much as you can without having a bunch of dirt falling. Like, I'll pry with one hand,

then I'll slip another hand behind it. Gotcha. And kind of get any dirt that would fall. Oh, yeah, I can see that thing now. Yeah, yeah. How deep do I need to go? Deep enough till we get a crawfish, I guess. Fair enough.

So you might end up sticking your whole arm socket in there. No kidding. Yeah. All right. And I would just, just open it up, enough to eat your hand in there, and your forearm in there, your elbow in there. And if you hit water, then that's good. Because usually when you hit water, you can kind of tickle the surface

and the crayfish might come up, maybe. If that doesn't happen, you still don't hit water. Then we'll add water with these jugs and kind of hope to trick them. Like, hey, it's raining right now. You guys might want to come up. Okay. That's kind of what the goal is. Yeah.

All right. I'm going to get to digging. All right. Dig the coffee. I'm my best. Don't know there's the wedding ring. My wife would not be happy with that. The feeling is going to be more difficult than I.

It appears to be. Now that I have the direction I need, Calvin takes off digging a crawfish hole of his own and leaves me to see if I can figure out the process from here on out. He did stay within easy talking distance of me, though, in case I hit any problems. I take off digging the hole, using the large sole knife to cut parallel to the tunnel that the crawfish has already made, and then using my hands to pull the loose dirt away. And let me tell you, I greatly underestimated how deep I was going to have to dig. Before I knew it, I was up to my shoulder socket before I even found water.

And a crawfish dug this all by himself, a tiny little crawfish. That's wild. But before I found the shellfish I was looking for, Calvin found success. That's good. That's good. I dropped. We were just talking about this. Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. That's really, that's great. That's great. Okay, so yeah, Jackson Prairie Crayfish. This one's the female. The females get a little larger than the males. And that's a male. And so I was talking about earlier with the beard.

Yeah. So it's on this. Yeah, I see it. Yeah. So that's, man, that's cool. I've never gotten. a male and a female of this species in the same, same hole before. So that's great, because we don't even know anything about their,

their reproductive habits. No one, no one, so crayfish have eggs underneath their tails. And then the baby's hatched from the eggs. It's kind of like a kangaroo. Yeah. And no one's ever seen a female, we call it in berry. Like a crab has, they get a bunch of eggs underneath their tails. Yeah.

Abdomens. No one's ever seen a female in berry. the fact that we found a male and a female in the same hole. That's important? That's important to note. Just because they must be... Some kind of courtship. Yeah, they must be mating, and that's really, really cool, man.

That's cool. So we'll hold on to these guys. We can put them in a bucket for now. But that's cool. I'm glad. Let's see if you can get... I think you're close. I got water.

I got it. You're going to get it, so... Backwoods, university attendees. We just had an event of high importance happen on this show. As stated earlier, there's a whole lot that we don't know about crawfish. And just now, before our ears and eyes, Calvin has pulled out a male and female Jackson Prairie Crawlfish out of the crawfish hole that he was digging, which is something that

he has never done and is the first actual indicator of this species mating that has ever been documented. How cool is that? And how lucky are we that we just happen to be there to record it? Too cool. Not long after that, I finally found some success myself. Okay. And we're going to try to draw them out and try to draw them up.

That's what I did, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might want to, I think I met it. So let's go catch it off, off guard. Feel anything hard? No. Oh, yeah, I got it. I got it.

There you go. Hey. I was like, no, I didn't get anything. Look at that. Yeah, yeah, so that's exactly so. Dude. Yeah. That's way cool.

I'd have told you I didn't have anything. Look at that. Just living in the mud. Jackson, Prairie crayfish? Yep, yep. As a kid who grew up searching ditches for crawfish and snakes, this was a heck of a fun day for me. I even ended up digging up another burrow and finding another crawfish.

Calvin did tell me that it was rare for a newbie to go two for two on his first day. and he may have just been being nice, but I'll take it either way. Just another note, but like when you hear the term Jackson Prairie, a lot of times when people think of Mississippi, and I'm not talking about people not from here, I'm talking about people that currently live here right now. When you hear Mississippi, you don't think of prairie. A lot of that has to do with agriculture and plantation pines.

But it used to be a whole lot of prairie here. Jackson Prairies. That's what this crawfish is named after. Too cool, man. I said, I would have been doing this stuff. I wouldn't have known to do all the methods of these biologists know how to do, but I would have been doing this when I was 10 years old and I would have been just as happy as I am right now.

It's always a curious kid. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to ask Calvin a question about the role crawfish play in our ecosystem. You were talking about, like I meant to ask you earlier, but I didn't want to interrupt. You mentioned we were there at the truck still. You said something along the lines like how important they are to like the entire ecosystem. Yeah. I got to ask you to elaborate on that.

Yeah. The saying goes is that everything eats crayfish and crayfish eat everything. They are the perfect intermediate transfer of nutrients and energies. right, they break down leaf litter and sticks and they might eat little bugs that are in the streams. But then in turn, they're also eaten by avian predators, owls, hawks, you know, raccoons and otters, and they're eaten by snakes and amphibians like the hellbender.

I've seen wild turkeys eat them. Yeah. Tiny one. Yeah. Crayfish are so vital as a bunch of different fish species. You can look at the diets of, a lot of these organisms and they're like, you know, 50 to 90%

hellbenders are, it's almost like 95% crayfish in their diets. Same things with otters. You know, they're so vital to the ecosystem. If you don't have crayfish around, then, you know, things fall off. Crayfish also, there's certain species that live in crayfish burrows.

This is animal. Oh, other people utilize their burrows. Yeah. Organisms utilize their burrows. Okay. Like gop for tortoises. Yeah. Well, yeah, so like there's...

Like other critters, I think there's like a couple hundred species that utilize gopher tortoise burrows. It's the same thing with crayfish, yeah. There's a bunch of different invertebrates, but there's this animal called crawfish frog that is named aptly after the crawfish because they live in the burrows of crawfish, specifically the burrowing types. Yeah. And so if you don't have them, you don't have these amphibians around. So they're really, they're really important to the ecosystem. So like you have the burrow thing, so like mutualistic.

And then you have like, we did a several months ago, we did this podcast on Menhaden in the Gulf. Yeah. And they were talking about like because they're, anyway, without getting into it, people were talking about how important Minhaden are and they get overlooked because they're just this tiny little fish. But they're like, they're a forage base. Yeah. So it kind of sounds like similar to what you're describing here. Like they're a forage base for a lot of species.

Right, right. Absolutely. Super underutilized and really ecosystem engineers, you know, they're making habitat for other things as well. That's crazy. Yeah. Crawfish, mudbugs, some fine table fare, and some pretty vital players in our ecosystem. Who knew?

Think about that next time you pull up to a crawfish bowl. What a tasty and cool critter. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University, as well as Bear Grease and this country life. It means a whole, whole lot to all of us over here. If you like this episode, share it with a friend this week, and stick around, because there's a whole lot more on the way. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype.

It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry-leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to constantly, conservation and land access, no shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com.