The Bobby Bones Show - Steven Rinella | The Man Behind MeatEater

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

On this episode, Granger sits down with American outdoorsman and writer Steve Rinella for a deep dive into storytelling, hunting, and the power of narrative. From the challenges of MeatEater’s unscripted moments to addressing the controversies shaking up the hunting world, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Email your questions to [e-mail] to be featured in future episodes, and don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, Steve, thanks for being on, man. I appreciate the chance. Sorry, it took so long and I was late and everything. Man, I've been, last night I was actually trying to put together, like, how would I, if I were going to write a doctrinal statement on Steve Ronella, like, what kind of thesis would I come up with? Because you're all over the place with so many projects, especially the last, say, three or four years, so many projects. So let me tell you what I was thinking. Please, I'm going to write this down because I need something like this.

Well, you can't say, you can't say that at Steve's core is a hunter. You can't really say that because if you run that out to its most logical conclusion, then some things don't make sense. You can't say at Steve's core he's like a wild game enthusiast. you are but it's not your core there's something else and so you can't say that you're an outdoorsman at your core because there's other things that if it runs out to its most logical conclusion don't make sense either so i was thinking about it and i think you can i mean it's you so you can correct me from a wrong but but i think at your core is a storyteller yeah i usually will say

writer and outdoorsman. But sure, I like storyteller. I don't know if that's the kind of thing you can say about yourself, though. It's more like maybe something someone else has to say. Well, look, I think when I think about you, there was a moment for me, and this might sound weird, but there was a moment on an airplane somewhere, this is probably three years ago, and I'm watching meat eater on my phone on the plane. And to bring in the scene, it's like, you know, a mountain scape and time lapse, clouds, fog, a rolling river turning over on itself, this like real melodic, droning piano song, real pensive starts playing. And then the camera's on the ground. And here comes, you know, these boots walking by. And that's our hero walking by.

and who's he with? He's not with a celebrity to hunt with. He's with his brother. You know, me coming from a family, I got two brothers. Here he is with his brother. So I'm locked in on the scene, right? And I watched the whole episode. It's called Walking the Clouds.

And you guys are, you guys are doll sheep hunting, which is the hardest of the hunts in North America, right? arguably. And you guys, you chase these sheep. Sometimes you see them. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you see a legal ram, but you can't get to them. You run out of time. The show ends and you never got one. Yeah. And I thought I watched the whole show and I was actually entertained. Did you feel, you didn't feel like you got ripped off? No. That's the crazy thing I want to say. I didn't feel ripped off. I felt drawn into a story of a storyteller.

This is how you ended it. This is what you said. In the end, you get to a point where you just have to give up and go home. The land beat you, or the sheep beat you just by running out the clock. Now, all you have is a long walkout and plenty of time to spend in your

own head. To think about how you'll get too old to do this eventually. Getting back into places like this could break your body. Knees give out. Backs go bad. Lungs get tired and half useless. That's the painful thing to look ahead to. But it's not nearly as bad as to think about leaving this place.

One just breaks your body. The other breaks your heart. Scene ends. Show over. That's a story tale. That's doll sheep hunting right there. That's incredible, man. Oh, thanks, man.

I appreciate that. I appreciate that. We used to worry when we started doing meat eater, we used to really worry about what would happen to you if you had unsuccessful episodes. But we didn't, you know, you'd put all that time into going and filming one and you'd kind of map out your year, you know, and you're going to go make, let's say you're going to go make eight episodes. And you go spend six, seven days on something and you don't get anything. When we started doing it, we didn't have any options. You know, we had to figure out a way to to run with them.

The impulse would have been that you'd bury it somehow, you know. We just didn't have, it was funny because the decision was made for us. We just didn't have a way to get the time back. Yeah. So we learned how to do them. And it was, yeah, when you're out, you're really pushing as hard as you can to be successful. Like I like, you know, I like to be successful. And you're pushing really hard to be successful.

and when you're not, I never think to myself, oh, great, we weren't successful. Now we can make a skunker episode. And that's what we would call them is making skunkers. Yeah. But we just learned to, you know, we learned to deal with them. And it was fun because it was one of the ways in which I kind of fell in love with the audience is because people, for the most part, were supportive of it. I remember getting one email in the early days of making the job. meat eater. I remember getting

an email from a guy and he had said, I have enough failure and disappointment in my life. I don't need to get it from my TV. That's a man trained. So depressed, so depressing. Man, he's just been trained by the

mindless hunting shows that have come for decades. The whole trailer is the kill shot and the animal falls and the music plays and it's all leading to that. And then your show comes around and sometimes you don't get anything. Yeah. And for me, I'm like, yeah, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we, sometimes we didn't don't. But man, it wasn't, I'm promising you do it. It wasn't because we weren't trying. That's evident in the show, man. Yeah. That's evident. And then your storytelling, though, it's, uh, I mean, was it somebody,

was it a producer or a manager or was somebody like, hey, Steve, now we got to start writing books. We got to start getting your voice recorded for campfire stories. I mean, you took this this whole universe

of your world. Your brand has gotten, it's so wrapped around the storytelling. And hunting has always been about the storytelling. From the beginning of time, it's always a, it's never just about the kill. It's about the setup. It's about the campfire before the hunt and the campfire after

and eating of the animal. It's always been that. And this is you. Is this somebody else's idea? Or were you the guy that was like, yeah, let me tell the story? No, I started out. Like, I was a writer before anything. You know, when I was, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a, even, I mean, beyond being kid. From the time I was 10 to 22, I was really pushing. to be a fur trapper. And that was my main interest. And I became interested in writing. I went to graduate school for writing.

So I'm like a trained writer, formerly trained writer. And I started doing magazine work. I did books before I ever did any kind of television. You know, in fact, doing TV stuff came out of doing books and then doing a podcast and other stuff came out of being a writer. So, you know, I was born a writer. I'll die a writer. In a lot of ways, I, you know, earlier we were, I was not joking, but you were bringing up how to describe it.

And I said that I always tell, you know, I was described like, and I'm an author and outdoorsman or a writer and outdoorsman. I feel like the very stuff I've been involved in is I look at it all from the perspective of being a writer, you know, first and foremost. And then, you know, doing the writing on the show is, is, I kind of think of like, you know, I'm hosting it, you know, but I kind of more think of I'm like, I'm like writing it, you know. That's how I picture it in my head. Even if the camera wasn't there, you're writing, you're writing the story. Yeah. And whether you're just telling it to your kids or telling it to your friends. This is just who you are in there.

Yeah, I think that that's a little bit. Yeah, I think that that's that way. But I should also admit that when I'm just out hunting around, you know, by my, hunting with my buddies or hunting with my kids, I'm pretty far away from, I'm pretty far away from thinking about narrative. You know, I mean, I guess I, like, you know, we'll tell a lot of stories and we relive a lot of stories around home. But I don't, for me to sit down and make sense of it for somebody else,

for me to sit down and like tell a story that would engage someone who wasn't there or doesn't share in the memory, I need to like sit down and be very deliberate about that process, right? You know, I think I, even though I spend so much time reliving, recapturing experiences, when I'm having the experiences, I'm not, I'm not really in that space, right? That's why if you think, like, if you look at the Meteor show, there's a lot of what we call VO, right? It's VO heavy, and we write, like, I write the VO. So an editor will write, like, a scratch.

Like, our editor will make placeholders for VO, and then I come in and write the VO. So one could look, like, if you look generally in production, the way you would generally view it is you would view that VO is not good. So if you're watching nonfiction television, and there's a lot of VO, you might look and be like, it's emblematic of or a symptom of poor hosting

because the host in the field didn't do the job. So then you're stuck filling in all these blanks and doing all this interstitial stuff and making all these connections because you screwed up in the field and didn't give it to camera. So it's normally like a lot of producers in regard doing VO,

is it's a big giant band-aid for what didn't get done, for what didn't get executed properly in the field. But we came to it, because I'm, you know, like writing and am a writer and was first known to writer, we came to it viewing it like, like VO was an asset for us.

It wasn't just a crutch. It was a strength. And so we would just, we would kind of, you could almost be a little bit lazier, filming, knowing that you were going to build this VO narrative that was going to help you patch all this stuff together. And so, you know, as we kind of like put the show together, that's just sort of what we fell into, where we fell into it being like very reliant, very reliant on, on narration, no,

VO narration, right? And I've always enjoyed that, man. Me too. And I understand that critique, but I don't agree with that critique because I do the VO from Meat Eater is what drew me in and no one ever told that to Anthony Bourdain his whole show was successful because of that in its unique way because of his writing in his VO work

and it would it would be a really shallow critique to say that's just because he wasn't very good in the field he wasn't good on the fly well you know the guys the whole the people I started making a mediator with were all Bordane crew Yeah. Yeah. So it was, and it's funny, I just did a show, you know, the History Channel show we're launching right now, the showrunner that I worked with on that show was the first camera guy that ever filmed all the first media episodes. And then he became a, he was a camera guy for Bordane and then became a producer for Bordane. And he actually produced the, Bordane's last full show. They never cut it into an episode. But his last.

full show in Italy was this same guy produced it. So, you know, I wasn't buddies with him. I knew them, but we weren't, like, buddies at all. Bordane, you know, I mean, like, I knew him, but we weren't pals. But anyway, there was a lot of, there was a lot of overlap in us both winding up with the same production place, winding up with a lot of the same crew, both coming from writing, you know. In some ways, I think that maybe when I started into that, there was a template that I walked into that had been established by him. You know, I didn't think about it at the time, but looking back from more of a long-term perspective, I kind of walked into his template because I walked into working with guys who were used to that.

Yeah. They were used to that having a writer building story, you know, from a writerly perspective, right? Yeah, man, it's Shawshank Redemption. You know, it's Morgan Freeman. Andy Dufrein, you know, walked in to Josh. And I love that. Your show, your new show, when I first read it, I read it as hunting history. And then I realized that I was reading it wrong.

And as I researched, I was, no, it's hunting history. Yeah. No, I think a lot of people, yeah, I think that was, that's a forgivable mistake, considering the host one could be forgiven for making that

mistake yeah hunting down history like taking a hunter's respect down history yeah

yeah yeah whose idea was that how did you get brought into that because that's I think it's a

perfect match I love history myself but it's somebody made a really interesting

connection to put you in on this yeah you know what though is like my first book

I published my first book in 2004 somewhere around 2003 2004 so quite a long time ago my first book was called The Scavenger's Guide to Oat Cuisine and it was a book

about a book. It was a book about this crazy French cookbook that came out in 1903 so like that's like the year they're right brothers did their first, you know, flight with a heavier than air vehicle, right? And this guy,

Schofier wrote this 5,000 recipe compendium about French cuisine. And so my first book was about going hunting and fishing to catch all the stuff from that cookbook. My second book was about the history of the American Buffalo, the animal, right? It was like a history of a species. Yeah.

had a lot of hunting in it. My first book, again, was a history of, it's like about like French food, but had a lot of hunting and fishing in it. My Buffalo book was a history of the animal had a lot of hunting and fishing in it. As a magazine writer, I did, like I wrote stuff about like the colonial French,

you know, all kinds of things. So I'd always like dealt heavily in history. We did, we have a thing meat eaters American history, these audio originals we do about history. So I've always been a place. player in history and always been very interested in history and I've always been very interested in hunting so for me to do a history show people that are familiar with my tv show meat eater might look at it like it like it being different than what I would normally be engaged in but if anyone who was

accustomed to what I wrote the stuff I've written you know it's my stuff's always been very heavily informed by by history and then um and um and so in that way it just felt more um that way it felt more like a like a continuation of what i've already been up to the difference here being is that in some of the cases um rather than really long deep dives into subjects doing an hour long show where you tackle a whole subject in an hour it's kind of like more fun and cursory than it is to do like book length explorations of subjects right It's breezy and entertaining, you know. That's a good way to look at it.

Yeah. And I saw in the episodes last night, and it's, it's breezy. It moves quicker. Even the mediator in a lot of ways, it moves quicker. Yeah, isn't that funny? We don't have depensive piano on the history channel with this. But it's still super cool. And it's such an extension of your brand that works so well.

I also listened to that audio. what did you call it? Media's American history? Yeah, that was so, that was so engaging. It's good stuff. Did you listen to the one about the long hunters? I did. I did.

I did. I'm sitting here looking at this and I'm like, yeah, he's getting, got the new show on the History Channel, hunting history. But then I started realizing, but that's, I mean, that's what's new right now. But, I mean, some of that stuff was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Man, I mean, that was like last year you put that out. So there's a lot of recent things. Yeah, yeah, the long, yeah.

So we're going to do, we're actually working on this series of things like, you know, as an outdoorsman, you'll kind of appreciate these names that pop up. But like, you know, you know, Daniel Boone. Yeah, he's some of a household name. Jim Bridger, John Colter. So what we're doing is we're breaking up American history into these chunks and looking at market hunters from these different eras. So people know Daniel Boone. Not many people know that like what he actually did, like what his actual job was. Daniel Boone was a deer skin hunter. Like he hunted deer for the skins. And these skins were exported to Europe and turned into leather. If you see those old

paintings like kings from the 17 hunters and they got those white pants on, those white breeches, those are probably American buckskin. Wow. So that's a Boone. for living. He did the other stuff too. He hunted for bear grease, you know, oil made from bears, but he mostly hunted deer skins. And we kind of break up American history where we look at the deer skin trade from 1763 to 1775. And we sort of argue why 1763, it was, it was the, there was the end of a frontier war. And so these hunters could kind of push into Kentucky. And it wasn't as risky for them to go there. They hunted from 63,

75, everybody knows 1775, what comes next? 1776, the American Revolution, and the frontier got untenable again. The frontier got very bloody after the revolution began. So we look at like these guys, and we know them now as,

well, they were actually known in their time. They were known as long hunters, and it had to do with the length of their trips. You know, they were gone very long hunts, hunting deerskins. The next one we're jumping into is 1806 to 1840 and it's the beaver skin trade and that's called meat eaters American history the mountain men and it covers figures like jed smith john colter jim bridger who are all just

rocky mountain beaver trappers and then when the beaver market collapsed all the attention moved to the buffalo hide hunters and so the next one we'll do is the buffalo hide hunters um we'll probably run that 1865 to 1882 the last big herd was shot out the winter of 82 and 1865 was the end of the Civil War and a lot of guys were coming out of that war going west to hunt Buffalo. So it's all these really detailed examinations of sort of the economy and life ways

and skill sets of these like American archetypes, you know, but also what drove the economy to be that way, you know? And again, they're really, they're like deep dives into these things. But it's fun to do because I feel like that is, I've read about that for my whole life. And so it's fun to get it down, you know, to get the work down. And I love this about you,

but what is the affinity for North America for you? This is where you concentrate everything. I mean, I love it, but what is it about you? I don't know. I always tell people, when people are talking about other stuff, I always tell them I'm just like way too American to understand. I just feel like I'm so completely American, dude. I can't even, like, I have a hard time.

I like to read about geopolitics, but I just have a hard time understanding. You know, one of the things I'll joke about with people is like, you know, if you're in America, if I'm in America and I see a dude walking down the road, you know what I mean? I feel like, that guy looks like he's headed the work. That guy looks like his truck broke down and he's in trouble. That guy looks like, whatever, you know what I mean? Like, I just can tell what's going on. Yeah.

And when you're in another country and you see someone walking down the road, you're like, I have no idea what that dude's doing walking down the road. I agree. That's a way to look at it. I got to stick to the place where I just feel like I know what's going on. Okay. I mean, there's more to it that also, yes, I agree. I hear you.

But you have a love, you have an American love. Yeah, I have an American love like the country for sure, but also, I guess you, you know, every man, it's funny, I got a buddy who, he had this guy that worked for him. He had a ranch manager that worked for him. And he once went to give the ranch manager a talk, you know, like about kind of expanding his role in the ranch manager and said to him, you know, every man's got his limits. And I just kind of have my limits. Like, like, I'm very into. I don't care how far back you go in North America. Like, I don't care if you go back 20,000 years. I remain comfortable in North America talking about North America 20,000 years ago. But I wouldn't be comfortable talking about Europe today. I don't have any subject matter expertise, you know. Yeah.

So it's just like I like the American story, the American characters. It's huge. It's a big subject. I just, I will, you know, earlier I talked about writing a book about French food. But when I wrote a book about French food, I talked about French food as understood in America. Sure. Has there been a place that you've traveled in North America that has surprised you or that you continually think of as like the pinnacle of this is where Steve has to go? This one area.

Yeah, the thing that most is blowing me away is now, like I don't go a day in my household without saying to my kids or my kids or my wife. wife. I'm like, you know, the Cajuns, when I started hanging out, like, I don't know what took me so long. Louisiana was the last, Louisiana was the, it was the last state. It was the state I'd never been to. So I'd been to 49 out of 50 states, like, in a count, like spending the night, not to some airport, but spending the night. Okay. And hadn't been there. The first time I was going there, we had made it as far as like, we were going to, we're going from Memphis to Louisiana, made it as far as the Delta

in Mississippi, close. And they're like, yeah, there's a big hurricane coming. And we sort of thought about it, decided not to go to New Orleans. And it was Hurricane Katrina. Okay? Then we made another trip to go down there and had another hurricane happen

and didn't go. And eventually made it and kind of fell in with hanging out with Cajun dudes. and I mean guys that like they don't even know the they don't know the names for ducks that we use they still use the French names for their ducks

they use the French names for their inshore fish you know and they when they're cooking stuff they got a word you're like what you know I can't like all the French words for the food French words for the ingredients like that how just impressive

that culture is is in the level of like cultural continuity and and cultural identity that the Cajuns held on to. And I say the Cajuns. You know, you know, it's probably sound like some kind of like a idiot saying like the Cajuns is like this monolithic thing called the Cajuns. But it just blew my mind. You know, like the food, the language, the customs. And man, yeah, if I had found out about that world when I was 18, I probably would have tried to like perfect a French accent and I'd have gone and tried to like slip in, you know, join in, right?

I mean, I love all of our Louisiana listeners right now, but I did not think that's where you're going up to end that question. Anywhere in North America, you're like, yeah, Louisiana. Yeah, that, yeah, that like blew my mind. man. Like I always heard about it, but like that's thing that's really shocked me is just my love of that little corner, you know, that corner of the world, man. And I've always been a northern guy. I've always lived in the northern tier states, Montana, Michigan. Like I've always lived up North Washington. Always touching Canada, you know. I just want to tell everybody that's listening right now, all the Louisiana people, this is a man

who's been dalshi punting, you know, the top of Alaska, where he could see the whole world. And he's saying, I like Louisiana. I like the Cajuns. Oh. That's impressive. I like eating all that, yeah, all that food they got and all the words they got for their ducks. I love it, man. Yeah, that should be more than.

You know what the coolest things about talking to the Cajuns? I'll leave, I won't talk about this all the time, I promise you. But what's funny is, like, like, having all the French words for, knowing all the French words for ducks and the French words for all the inshore fish, you know. And what's funny is, like, if you get to the offshore fish, like in the Gulf, okay, you get out, you can get out, you got Wahoo, yellow tail, all these offshore fish. And that'd be like, well, what's the French word for, right? Like, yellowfin tuna. Like, what's the French word?

Yellowfin tuna? And they don't have any of those words. And one of my buddies pointed out to me is, like, at that time, no one knew that stuff was out there. Like, 20 miles into the Gulf, you might have been on another, you might as well have been on another planet. Oh, yeah, that's true. Like, people weren't, like, people were aware that 20 miles out there in the blue water

were like, wahoo and stuff. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? They were like redfish, trout, right? Whatever. And it was so, so they never incorporated, as close as it seems now, as close as it seems now, it was never like, no one had a way to get out there. You know, you weren't rowing, you weren't paddling out there.

Yeah, so they don't have names. Yeah, that's wild. It was there, but it was there, but like I said, it might as well have been on another planet. That's, that's wild. Well, I hope that you've heard already about Yee Yee Festival that is May 9th and 10th. 10th, you could come see me and all the gang at the Yee Yee Farm. We've got all kinds of crazy things that are going to be happening. It's good for the whole family.

I really, really think you'll love it. So go to Yee.com for more info. If you like the content in this podcast, hey, consider sharing it with a friend, subscribing to this podcast, giving it a good review if you want, and commenting on the YouTube page. These are all things that help this podcast reach more people. If you want to get a hold of me personally, you go to cameo.com slash Granger Smith. I could make you a video message for anything that you want.

It could be happy birthday, happy anniversary, maybe just a word of encouragement. Go to cameo.com slash Granger Smith. Your dad, he got you into hunting. Could you say that? Yep, my dad. Is your dad still around? My dad.

Oh, no, see, no. See, my dad, he had me in, my dad would be 101 years old. He had me in 1924. Or not had me, what am I saying? He was born in 1924. Fought World War II. enlisted at 17,

fought in World War II. It came home and was just a big hunter and fisherman. So I was always brought up around hunting and fishing. And, you know, he didn't trap. He didn't trap, but I got into trapping, and he was very supportive of trapping. And he, I got lucky with those, I got lucky, like, with my mom and dad,

in a lot of ways, but one of the ways I got lucky with them is they didn't, you know, my dad didn't finish high school, right, formally.

So for them, you know, when you meet people, like, I've met a lot of people like this in my life who's, who they,

they get a lot of family pressure to go into things that maybe they don't want to go into, you know, occupationally. And I have kids and we pressure our kids. We don't pressure them

about what they do, but we pressure them about their performance in school, right? We pressure them about how they treat, their elders, whatever, like we pressure them. But, but, like, when I said, oh, yeah, I'm going to be a trapper, it was kind of like,

oh, that's great, it's good idea. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to be a writer. That's a great idea. Like, never had any sort of pushing in a different direction. And for me, like, because my dad was a big outdoorsman, when I started getting a little success writing about hunting and writing about fishing and writing about the outdoors, he just thought that was great, you know. He thought that was a great move.

And the fact that you had to live for many years below the poverty level, I always point out to people that, like, if you don't have, if you're not married and you don't have kids, there's no such thing as being poor. You're broke, but you're not poor. Like, poor is later, you know. So I just lived for a long time without any real serious income. but in like my parents' minds I was like very successful

because I had chased something kind of weird and did it you know and so it was cool like that like that with my dad as much as he enjoyed that hunting and fishing to see for him to see his kid kind of make a way in that he liked that a lot when did you lose him he died right after the it was right after the terror attacks no it was either right before or right after the terror attacks So that was before almost every reason.

I think he died that December. I think maybe it was that December he died. So that was before most of the world knew of you and meat eater. Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, there wasn't nothing like that. I mean, he died before I published my first book. But I was a magazine writer. I was a magazine writer.

And I remember, like, I wrote a couple of things. You know, I did some stuff in Field and Stream. and did some stuff from outside. And I remember the last time I hung out with him before he got real sick, we were down on Florida to fishing. And we were going to buy shrimp, you know? And he's like, you know,

you tell he's like waiting for someone to, he's like, you don't know who this is. You know, he's like, waiting for someone to like recognize me because I had written a field. That's a good dad. That's a good dad. Yeah.

Not realizing that no one reads who wrote the articles they're reading in magazines. No one looks at the author's name. That's amazing, man. I love that. I love that. That's hilarious, though, yeah. Your kids, you said you put pressure on them. Oh, yeah. And yet you didn't necessarily get that pressure from your dad. But it's also just a different time. Oh, no, no, we had a, we had a pressure for sure, but not like, it wasn't directional. It was just like a pressure to perform, you know. Like it wasn't, it wasn't like a pressure to following dad's steps and become an orthodontist.

You know, it was like, you couldn't be a screw off for sure. And you had to work hard. You were going to be in trouble. But there was no, it wasn't hyper directional, I should say. And now it is, you're saying? Is it directional pressure you put on your kids? No, no, I just had this conversation this morning. Me and my wife were talking to a friend of ours this morning.

and I was, my wife's much more inclined to get after him about grades. You know, she's pretty demanding on grades. And I was trying to explain to a friend of mine that I didn't have that relationship with school. I did a lot of schooling, but I didn't have that relationship with school. And I don't look at it like, I don't look at it as the sort of sole opportunity. I don't look at like academic performances being the kind of like where you're making, that that's your chance to make or break yourself. Or I don't look at like the quality,

the quality of a kid's formal education really like casts their die and sets their destiny, you know? I look at it like it's a part, it's important, it's a part of a much broader collection of things that go on in one's life that'll sort of determine where they had, right? Um, within that, you know, if our kids screw off in school and they get bad grades, they're going to lose privileges. Yeah. Yeah. So what does cast the die?

Oh, man. Or is that too broad to ask? No, no. It's very funny that we're on this because, because we were like having this, we were having this very question earlier. And a friend of mine was pointing out, my friend of mine was taking the other perspective here. And she was saying, you guys, meaning our family, she's like, you guys are really engaged, you like know a lot of people, you have, you know, a lot of connections, you have a lot of opportunity, you have a lot of passions.

If you take some kids and strip away where they have like not a great home life, they don't have engage parents, it might be that that is their chance, like shining in school without people backing them up and without people backing them up at home and supporting them at home and like creating chances for them. Yeah. Right? Sacrificing for them. She's like some people, if, and she was, she was her family during the Iranian revolution, they fled Iran, right? Yeah. And can't do America with nothing. She's like, dude, for me, for us, if we didn't make it in school, you weren't going to make it. Right. Because that was your chance. Like, that was your chance to shine, and that was like your spot. You were going to do it academically because there wasn't another

way you were going to do it. And I was like, yeah, it's kind of true because, but I point out, like, I'd be thrilled if my kids joined the military. I'd be thrilled if my kid went up and became, you know, got a job guiding, you know, became a sheep guy in Alaska. Like, I'd be thrilled for him. It, you know, it doesn't, I don't have, there's just, I think there's a lot of paths, you know. When is your die, when is your die cast? That's a great question. We have a 10-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old. I don't know at what point you feel like you're out of the woods.

Last night, the cab driver I drove with from the airport, we were talking about this subject a little bit. and he said he when his kids were when his youngest one was kind of finished in college he all of a sudden said I felt like I had done it you know he's like I felt like I could look and be like you did it yeah you did it you did a good job you got it you know my kids are the same as you're it my oldest is 13 though yeah I'm right there

and yeah we don't we don't like at 14 I can tell you one thing we're not doing is we're not kicking back saying we did it because there's still a lot of there's still a lot of rose to hoe no man do you guys is there a do you guys have a faith in your family no you know we're brought up well yeah it's it's it's present because we were both brought up very much in the in the christian tradition and and our kids have observant um our kids have observant family members observing observing grandparents on each side, but in our household, no, it's like they, uh, we've never been, we're, we're observant in the tradition like so many people are where we acknowledge holidays, but we're just not, we're not church going.

Yeah. We're not churchgoing people, even to the point where our kids have expressed and we'll go with their grandparents, you know, like they've taken the end, they're interested. but it's just something that for us it's something that we were grounded in and based in and then just got like just drifted in some way you know. Does that

feeling change when you're on top of a mountain alone or Yeah because you know what? I feel like a spiritual connection to nature and I feel a sort of like I don't know like a spiritual connection to my friends and my fellow man.

Like, I never have this feeling of being that it's pointless or being that we're just like drifting in outer space and there's no broader meaning things. You know what I mean? I feel like very grounded in a order where there's a higher order and there's a thing that we need to pay homage to and there's something that we're indebted to, right?

So those feel that there's something that you owe back to right we try to raise our kids with that awareness but what i wouldn't say that we're um observant you know okay that's interesting so what uh what would you owe for the sake of conversation i'd have to think about i'd have to think about why i feel that way i don't know like i'd have to think about why i feel that way uh and that's a thought you would you would have on the top of a mountain in alaska you would have that feeling like i feel i feel like i owe something like yeah like a sense of like a like a sense of it like a sense of indebtedness um that's a great question i can't really answer why i have that you know it's like i never dug back i never dug back more

layers on it to really think about why i had that feeling of of um you know being in a like like existing in a sort of sense existing in a world where there's where there's like a continuity and a broader meaning to it all. I've never fallen into, I've never had a sort of despairing feeling of, of it all being empty or it all being pointless. I've never felt that way, you know. Even in the absence of organized religion,

I've never felt that. Perhaps it was from being raised in that tradition, you know. Right, which is that emptiness, you're kind of alluding that that emptiness is typically what drives people into searching for a deeper, understanding of a creator. You'll hear people say like, could this really be it? And I never have that feeling of it could really be it.

I think that that's one of the things of one of the big strengths of one of the reasons I like like parenting and am serious about parenting and find a lot of value in parenting is I think it creates a, there's a term I used in a different context before, but I use this term like an arena, an arena of consequence, meaning I've said that one of the reasons I like exposing my kids to the outdoors is you're in an arena of consequence. Like, you can get into situations, you know, you're out in big water in a small boat. Yeah. Right. You're in an arena of consequence, man, like, screwing up has, there's a real thing that happens when you screw up. Yeah. If you're not paying attention, there's a real thing that happens. And I feel that, uh, I've found so much more clarity in

life as a parent because it makes the whole thing an arena of consequence. I remember my buddy, earlier I was talking about the guy that used to work for Bourdain on the Bordane stuff and he's the showrunner on the History Channel show. We were talking about this and he described to me like once he had kids, when he woke up in the morning, he felt like he was in one of those old movies where you put your hat on and go off the door in the morning, you know, racing to work. with a newspaper under your arm, you know, like raising the work. He just felt like he loved it.

All of a sudden there was like a mission, you know, your family. It gives you a mission. And I think that's one of the things that the reason I have like found such a greater happiness as a parent that I did prior to being a parent is the huge sense of purpose. So when I talk about the continuity thing is all of a sudden you're like, you kind of like, oh, I get it. If I can take the things that I've learned and things where I find value and being a good person to the people around you, whatever, trying hard. And I put that into my kids and that grows in them and then they move on and do that as well. You know, it kind of makes things have a lot of sense. And it wound up being really, really psychologically, mentally, for me.

mental health and stuff for, I would say for both speaking for my wife, who's not in the room right now, but if she was here, I'd say the same thing. It helped us a lot. Like, like, mentally, it did, having kids and being parents did a lot for us, a lot for us in a way that's taken me years to realize. Did you struggle at any point before that with mental health? Yeah, I did. I did. Yeah, I had, like, yeah, drank too much. Like, we know, I don't drink at all now. I'm not down on it, but we don't have time to. Yeah, no.

Drink too much. Yeah, just not like, not great, you know, mold a lot of things over. You know, I talked a lot about my parents. I talked a lot about my dad. That was not always a very, like a completely harmonious relationship. He had had terrible experiences in the war. And, yeah, it was just, you know, my net, my net overall happiness just, I kind of found it with family, right? I found it with family. And I wouldn't even have, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even have said that until I was well

into the job of being a parent, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did. That's interesting. I have to think more about that, that becoming the parent fulfills something in you that, yeah, that's fascinating stuff. I feel like, yeah, it gave you, it gave everything a shape, I feel like. I think it gave everything in life a shape. Yeah. As I sit here, I do realize, and it's not lost on me, that I'm in a position that millions of American men probably worldwide would want to be.

and that is I get to talk to Steve one-on-one and ask them anything I want. So this is a huge privilege, and I appreciate the time. I do want to ask a few questions, though, for the rest of the men out there. One gun, one rifle, and that's the only one you get the rest of your life for any hunt. What are you taking? This is my 14-year-old's favorite game. That says a lot about my brain, I think, right? Yeah.

No, no, not all going on it, because I'm right there. with them. It was funny. If we had to do, okay, if it was the one gun, the one gun, me and my boy,

both decided it would be a 12 gauge and we were just become slug hunters for big game. Interesting. I like it. Because we hunt everything, man. Like we hunt rabbits,

squirrels, deer, whatever. We're like, man, if we could have any shell, we wanted, we would go at the 12 gauge.

For rifles, I shoot, like, for, rifles, my main like all around gun is I shoot a 300 win mag. Okay. But see, but we, you know, I hope, you know, I like to hunt moose and stuff, man, you know. And I know there's a lot of advances and, you know, bullets are getting so good and a lot of

stuff and you can get away with much lower calibers on stuff, but I've never been bothered by recoil and I enjoy shooting a 300 wind mag. So if I was picking a rifle, you know, my younger buddies, everything now is like smaller, You know. But yeah, I shoot 300 win, man. The one gun deal for sure, man, 12-gates shock. All right. You could even get a bird with that.

You can get a dove with that. I like it. That's a good answer. Oh, no. We hunt turkeys. We hunt dogs. Yeah, you just do everything, man. Top five game meats in order.

I know that would probably change. So today, in your current mood right now from your hotel room, top five games. We eat a lot of mule deer. My family, we've always eaten a lot of mule deer. People tend to like what they know. You know, when people talk about something tasting strong, because it's unusual to them. We eat a ton of mule deer. My kid's first deer, you know, all mule deer.

That's what we hunt. So that's the favorite. We like to eat a lot of halibut and salmon. Like cottontail rabbits. Interesting. Yeah, we like cottontail rabbits so we can get them. Cottontail top three. Interesting.

Well, no, you know, now that you put it that way, it's hard. Oh, black cod. I'd put black cod on that top list. Okay. Sablefish. I like a lot of stuff. That's a, that's why that could change tomorrow. That's a tough question.

Well, that's the thing is I'm like, yeah, I always joke. Like, I got way too many. I'm like, I always talking about that's my favorite food. And I'm like, well, I do like that other thing too. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Give me a, give me. But, yeah, but seriously, if I had to, I'll tell you this way, If I had to eat one, if I had to eat one thing, just one thing, and I had to access the one thing, it would be like I would want, like, deer bodies, deer.

Okay. White-tailed deer, meal, deer, the whole thing. Yeah. The whole tongue. Deer. Everything, I want just deer. Okay. Even an eyeball.

You ate an eyeball one time, didn't you? Yep. I'd want the whole deer. If I had to pick one thing, I'd be like, it has to be the whole deer. Yeah. What's a hunt? One hunt that just, you've had so many. You look back in your life.

Is there one that just pops out? knocked your socks off. Yeah. You kind of hit it on the head talking about hunting doll sheep. I've been real fortunate. Like in Alaska, you can't hunt sheep without a guide unless you have a relative that lives there. It can be your cousin.

They call it second-degree kindred. My brother's been in Alaska for 25 years or something. So periodically I'll be able to go sheep hunting and we just go. I can just go with him, you know. And man, that's like. it's the epitome of mountain hunting the epitome of mountain hunting

another favor for me would be like hunting mule deer during the rut you know hunting mule deer in late November is just a blast just a blast love it yeah that's great one more thing and I'm not going to push you on this because it's contentious but

CWD oh I don't think it's contentious it is contentious but it doesn't bother me talking about okay well I mean here in Texas a lot of these ranch owners are, especially the ones raising deer, are actually pretty scared. There's guys that have based their whole life, their whole income. Everything is based around deer. And now the government has authority to come and just wipe out the whole herd with a 24-hour notice.

Yep. Is there anything nefarious that you think could be happening here? Is this a ploy in any way, especially after we saw what happened with COVID? Is there more to this as we see these CWD cases popping up randomly? Is it naturally occurring? Have you seen any way to eradicate it that's effective? These are all tons of questions that have. No, no.

Well, you're opening up a bunch, but I'll give you like, if you don't mind, I'll give you sort of a general perspective on it. It was first identified in the 70s. some people feel as though it was always there and we weren't finding it. We have a lot of testing in place now all around the country and we have areas now where you can test, test, test, test, and you don't find it and then you can test, test, test,

and you begin to find it. I do believe I do believe that it is a somewhat novel, meaning new, I do believe it is a somewhat new disease, and I think that it's expanding its range. I think it's spreading from deer to deer to deer in areas. I do not believe there's any stopping it. The primary thing that I worry about with SWD is that it would,

I am very concerned about the ramifications. if it would jump into humans. There's no evidence that it will. It has not. I've had people challenging me on this. I think that there are hundreds of thousands of hunters, hundreds of thousands of Americans who've eaten CWD positive meat.

No one's gotten sick. There's been groups of people that we can track over time that we knew eight infected meat, you know, whatever, 15, 16 years ago, and they routinely, you know, check up with them. There's no evidence that it's happened. However, other pre-on diseases, there have been other pre-on diseases, Mad Cow, for one, there's been other pre-on diseases in time that have jumped and infected humans. So it can't happen.

You go to England, and it's happened where Mad Cow has infected people in a couple a handful of cases. So as a preon disease, and it's not, you know, you have like mad cow and cattle. There's a preon disease, scrappy and sheep. There's a preon disease, CWD that hits members of the deer family. So you have these different kinds of creatures and they have different preon diseases. You have a preon disease that hits humans, Yakop Kreutzfeld or, you know, I think it's Yaakov-Kroitsfeld disease or Kreuzfeld-Jakop disease. That's a preon disease. That's a preon disease. that occurs in humans. So, yeah, I believe that there's a preon disease

that occurs in cervids, not ungulates, but cervids in the deer family. There's a rub here that even when people have tried to slow the spread or to eradicate the disease in certain areas by killing tons of deer, they haven't successfully done it. there's no there's no place where you can go look and see that any human efforts have done anything to get rid of it when people land at a spot that it's just people that have landed at a spot that let's say someone

someone out there accepts like i believe the c wd is a disease that that can kill deer or that does kill deer i believe that that's true um and i believe it's just out there i don't believe it's going to infect humans, and I don't believe that us trying to do a bunch of measures to control it are going to be successful. I could see a person landing at that in that position quite logically. I could see someone landing there. For me, like what I support, what I would like to do is I would like to continue us hunters, anglers, not outdoorsmen, livestock producers, whoever, I think that we should continue to explore research and continue to fund research and try to get somehow, it's very hard, but try to get like really unbiased information from someone who's not pushing an agenda,

not pushing a pre-existing agenda, or trying to use SWD to get something they were already after anyway. Yeah. Right. But like straight shooters, honest straight shooters continuing to explore like, What is this thing? What are the risks, right? Like, I welcome all of that information. And it sounds like there's almost a race to who gets there first.

Because the hunters need to get to that, need to get to the solution before the nefarious side that says, hey, we're going to use this for something we already wanted to accomplish. Yeah. It's, and like, and I've seen that, man. And I understand people's frustrations where, like, like, I'm coming from a percent. perspective of a guy that's concerned, very concerned about CWD. I'm also concerned about some researchers, just some research that came out of Wisconsin, suggesting that CWD in areas of Wisconsin has far surpassed humans as the leading cause of death for deer.

So some people feel that at a certain rate, when you get up, when you get CWD infection rates, 30%, 40%, that it's going to, you're going to lower your deer numbers. Your deer herd is going to go down. And here's the other thing is like CWD is always fatal. Like when a deer gets CWD, it's usually dead within two years. So if it take six years, five years, six years, six years to grow a mature trophy white tail, and you have infection rates at 40% or 50%, and it's always fatal within a couple years, you do wonder about our ability in areas that have a lot of infection,

are we going to have the ability to produce big bucks? Now, a lot of people outside of hunters are going to look and be like, well, who cares about producing big bucks? But you care, I care. I care about that. I don't care about that a lot. I care about dear me more. And if it wound up being that, like, I had be,

that if it wound up being that some, that it did jump. and we started seeing a higher rate of preon diseases in humans that were like consuming a bunch of deer meat, right? We haven't seen this yet. There's no evidence of it at all. Hopefully they never will be. But if we did see that down the road, the first thing I would think is, like, man, I wish that we had paid more attention this early on. But again, on the other hand of this, what burns a lot of guys is what burns a lot of guys is without all this information, trying to set regulations and trying to take preventative measures that aren't really showing to be effective, but that work against the interests of hunters. Meaning there's some county that gets CWD and they come up with the idea, well, let's go kill every deer in that county.

Everything, yeah. And then why is it being, it doesn't do anything? The deer come back and you still have CW. So it's like, why do we just kill all the deer in the whole damn county? Yeah, I was in Montana just a few months ago. A game warden friend of mine comes in. Sorry, I'm late for dinner. Oh, we've just been killing deer all day.

Last two days, just killing deer. Mm-hmm. Because of one CWD case. Yeah. There's an idea. There's an idea that picture that you had, picture there's a cold going around town. Right.

And you might be like, well, how's the cold spread? Well, it spreads from person to person. Okay, let's get rid of half the people and see if we have half as many people with the cold. Yeah. That makes no sense. I see a new show coming one day, Steve Ronella and CWD.

Man, I don't want, listen, I don't want you to think, here's the one thing I don't want you to think. I don't want you to think that I am not claiming to know all the answers. Yeah. I'm not. But I'm telling you flat out. I'm telling you flat out. I think it's something we should pay attention to.

Hopefully in 10 years, it'll be like, we'll look at at SWD the way we now look at COVID, where we're like, hey, you know, something happened. We got some things right. We got a lot of things wrong. You know, there's a lot of things we did. We didn't need to do. And now we can kind of coexist, right?

It's around. It's around. Sure, it's around. Like, E.HD. is around. All these other deer diseases are around. I hope we land there. I'm not rooting for, I'm not rooting for public. disease. But I don't think that we should,

I don't think that we should view it differently than we would view any other wildlife disease. Like, we, we like research, we want to research wildlife diseases and understand what their capabilities are. Yeah. Right. No, I want information, man. Yeah, I want information, you know. That's good. Hey, bro, thank you so much for taking the time being on here, hunting history from the heart of a storyteller. I appreciate you so much, man. And it's a great new show that you guys have. Well, I appreciate you saying all that nice stuff, man.

And I appreciate you bringing up and having, bringing up talking about chronic wasting disease because, you know, it's a real frustrating mystery. And it's kind of dividing some hunters. And I, yeah, I just hope that guys that have a vested interest in deer continue to, read up on it and follow what's going on and have opinions, but, you know, have informed opinions, right? Like, get, try to draw some information from a variety of sources and weigh it out in your head and see what you think. It's good to talk about it. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, 100%, man. 100%. Yeah. Well, thank you, brother. Sure appreciate your time. Yeah, ma'am. Take care. Yeah, you too. Thanks for joining me on the Granger Smith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out

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