The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 007

Episode Date: April 16, 2015

Madison, Wisconsin. Steven Rinella talks with Remi Warren, Doug Duren, and Janis Putelis. Subjects discussed: big game hunting in New Zealand; getting poison oak on your pecker; whether or not there's a difference between poison oak and poison ivy; the redneck capitol of Wisconsin; acclimatization committees and impacts on New Zealand's wildlife; Steve's reluctance to eat human beings; extirpation of 500-pound birds by Polynesian cultures; Janis's need to save money for kiddy bicycles; weasels, ferrets, mongooses, and rats; Remi's first shotgun; the hardest animal to hunt; the qualities of Himalayan tahr meat; hunting Canada geese with a rifle; apex predators; how a blue heron's life is tougher than you'd think; the novelist Tom Robbins; and Remi Warren's latest TV project. Guests: Remi Warren Host of Apex Predator Doug Duren Janis Putelis Misc. Links: The 4-part New Zealand episodes of MeatEater featuring Remi Warren Janis' Hunttoeat.com site Download episodes of Remi Warren's new show Apex Predator Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meat. Hey, everyone. This is the Meat Eater Podcast. We're recording in Madison, Wisconsin. I'm here with Doug Duren from Madison. Are you from Madison or Casanova?

I'm from Casanova, but I live in Madison. Yeah, Doug's from Cazenovia, which is like the redneck stepchild of Madison, right? That's a pretty accurate description. Did you grow up hating people from Madison because you were from Cazenovia? No, I spent a lot of time here. I used to come down here when I was in high school and stuff. Yeah, Doug's from a farm family, an ag family.

His dad, I've hunted onoug's a handful of times and i spent more time in wisconsin than i do in my home state now and uh doug's dad was a rural mail carrier right that's right um funny story about doug's dad he some one time someone made some calls trying to accuse doug's dad of being a communist because he had delivered some magazines called Red Book. Free sample of Red Book magazine. Which for those of you who don't know.

They thought you spread communist propaganda. Well that and some other things that had gone on politically in the area. If you don't know, Red Book magazine is a woman's magazine. I expected something like this. He's like, I't know, Red Book Magazine is a woman's magazine. So I expected something like this from you. He's like, I knew it. I knew it.

Red Book. Commie. Here with Remy Warren. We're mainly talking with Remy. Also here with Giannis Poutelis. A little known fact about Giannis Poutelis is right now he has poison ivy on his pecker. We just got back from turkey hunting in California. And where we were hunting, the...

Is it predominant or prominent? If I was going to say the blank undergrowth. Predominant? Yeah. How about pervading? The pervading undergrowth. It's like a lot of places you go and you'd be like, oh, shit, there's some poison oak or poison ivy. This place, it was just everything that wasn't a tree was poison oak.

There was like trees, grass, poison oak. grass poison it was the prevailing predominant prominent dominant you know you didn't have to take a seat out of it though so yeah yanni made himself a little like a little ghillie suit out of poison no i don't know we did blend it right in i wanted to hide you know I've gotten that stuff so bad in the past. I've gotten that stuff so bad that I had to go to the emergency room for having bad fevers because we were burning at one time. We were clearing a lot in Indiana and burned a bunch of that stuff, and I'd breathe it in. It wasn't hours later, and I just got a very bad fever. Since then, I've always had a problem with it.

But the weird thing about this time is initial exposure was eight days ago. And I just got my first blister this morning. But Yanni's had it on his tally whacker since. Maybe it's just sympathetic symptoms. It could be. You're just feeling for him a little bit. So you're like, look, right here's a little bit cheap. It seems like in our crew, we're about 50%. They got it.

No, everybody's saying they did not get it. No, because you now have a spot. Well, yeah, but I don't count that as having it. Oh, okay. This could be anything. Then it's just 20%. Well, no. Mike has.

Cal and nothing. I thought Mike said nothing. No, Mike said his forearms. Watch this guy on his forearms. He sent me a picture. It's pretty good on his forearms. Oh, it is. God, I hate thatarms. He sent me a picture. It's pretty good on his forearms. Oh, it is. God, I hate that stuff.

Yeah, it's wicked. I made it about four or five days really strong mentally and just been holding off, not scratching at all. And at 3 o'clock this morning, I just woke up. And I even put Band-Aids over the worst ones so that I couldn't scratch while I was asleep. And I woke up ripping the Band-Aids off. Just so ones so that i couldn't scratch while i was asleep and i woke up like ripping the band-aids off just no unconscious because you want to get before i

actually woke up i was already pulling them off dude the last time i had a bad was i told this story a hundred times but i skinned a wild pig that had been rolling in it and it was just immediate it was like the next day i just had sleeves of it my waistline i could see how i tucked my shirt in oh and like actually like finger lines where i had like tucked my wool undershirt in like finger lines running down my abdomen had it on my scroll had it on my tally whacker. Had it just everywhere. Just awful. And then we went to hunt in Montana after that, and it's like below zero. So you're laying in your sleeping bag, just so, you know, it's cold,

but it's just like, I hate that stuff, man. That seems like the worst. But Yanni's got it pretty good now. And we were taking every precaution like we'd hunt and you couldn't not you couldn't you'd either have to not hunt right the only way to avoid it be to not hunt so we hunted turkeys quite successfully and we'd come back and just take off your pants and boots wash your clothes clothes. Anytime I touch my boots, I would tie my boots in the morning, scrub the piss out of my hands.

When I took my boots off at night, scrub the piss out of my hands. I kept two or three layers on at all times. I still feel like I defeated it, but it could come out 14 days later. When I was blacktail hunting down there, and I did the same, I was just camping though, so I just had a pair of gloves that I always wore. Anytime I was touching any of my clothes or anything,

it was like, put the leather gloves on. Then I shot some mountain quail with my bow, and then see the arrow laying over there, I was like, no. That's good, because I thought next time I draw that arrow back, it's going to touch my face. You was like yeah that was expensive expensive birds to shoot at because like no i'm not picking those man i think the next time i do it i was thinking about uh every time i've hunted there every time i hunted in california i've gotten in this area. I was thinking about trying to use bringing a shitload of latex gloves.

Yeah, I think that would work. Just all day long, man. Have like a Ziploc baggie and just all day long be like putting latex gloves on and just periodically taking the things off, putting some latex gloves on and taking them off. That would probably work. It's from your hands.

Or your clothes, that oil. Right now, I can feel some. It hasn't done anything. Usually, it does. I can feel it on my face. It pops up where your skin's thin. My eye socket, I can feel it right here for sure. I bring those alcohol wipes, too.

I think that helps. They say isopropyl alcohol will cut that oil. When you get poison oak, what's happening? This is something we were talking about, Doug. My understanding right now,

and I want someone to look this up. I was just doing that. Is it poison oak and poison ivy? There's no difference. Are poison ivy and poison oak the same thing what source you on i'm on answers.com yeah they ought to call it bullshit no is the is the answer poison ivy toxic condor and

radicants and poison oak toxic condor i'm oh they look different really you know diverse but i thought it was a a unbroken cline of intergrades across the species. I really liked that when you said that earlier. I was like, wow, he really knows what he's talking about. But he's been throwing that at every show. I read that term, so I've been trying to use it whenever possible. I have this unbroken cline of intergrades.

You can picture what that means, right? It'd be like, you've got some bird that's everywhere, but you look at one in California. The wild turkey is a good example. Yeah. Gotcha. For instance, the wild turkey, the Osceola turkey in the eastern, there's no genetic barrier. An Osceola turkey is what is known as a subspecies of the wild turkey in the Florida Peninsula.

What? What? You can't see it, doug's giving this face like this like oh here we go face i was just thinking about a conversation that addison i had earlier about i want to i want to hear about doug's uh purple suburban but first let me tell you about doug's purple suburban it was oh sorry no please please it's. It's only my podcast. I know it's your podcast. All right. So, unbroken client of integrates.

Eastern turkeys look different than Osceola turkeys, but there's no gap. There's no gap where one ends and the other begins. The same thing with mule deer and Columbia blacktails. According to Boone and Crockett, it's I-5. West I-5, he's a blacktail. East I-5, he's a mule deer. You could go from being a blacktail to a mule deer just by crossing the highway. Unbroken client of integrates.

They look different. All right, what were you saying now? Well, they're not the same, but they are related. Is that right? All right, I believe it. And it's the resin that is the same. Is the resin the same? Yeah, but then we'd have to get a taxonomist to talk about this.

But they're the same genus, different species, different family. Different family. Yeah, Jennifer is. So I think you're right. Oh, you know what? Yanni's wife, Yanis' wife's a botanist. What'd she say? Yeah, different family, the two of them.

And then poison sumac is the whole other one. Yeah, well, I know that. See, I always thought poison oak and sumac were the same. Or however you pronounce that. They all bring the same oil uh good i stay uncorrected no no i was gonna blind scrolls wrong now and then i was gonna say that you were right steve's right how well in that they're they're they're related oh okay all right let's move everybody's right rami you're just off the plane from new Zealand. Yeah. All right.

I want to talk about New Zealand for a minute. All right. But I want to address listeners for a minute. When I'm done, you correct me where I'm wrong. All right. I'm taking notes. New Zealand is a big-ass island in the Pacific. It's like a continent-y kind of island, giant.

It's actually two primary islands. About the size of California. So the only native mammal that New Zealand had were some bats. Pre-arrival of humans. The first humans to go there were the Maori, right? They were not the first humans, but they were the maori right how did that they were not the first humans but they were the most successful correct yeah polynesians yeah i mean apparently the maori they took over the island and then they because there wasn't a lot of food so then eventually they used the original native people as food source yeah yeah they were big into cannibalism

like putting people out on islands and stuff yeah but they uh well that's because they essentially extinct extinct their food source which was a moa giant yeah that's what i want to get to so new zealand had no mammals except for some bats and um but they it was like they had birds that filled all the niches or niches, if you want to sound like you know more what you're talking about. They had birds that filled all the mammal niches. So they had giant grazers, 400, 500-pound birds. Yeah, and then top predator was the hast eagle,

which ate a 500-pound bird. So that is a giant eagle. That's what my kids would call bad mofo yeah natural history museum you ever been there in um what's the main big town at the bottom of the north island uh auckland auckland this is the capital right yep yeah i think it's a natural history museum we went there they have a recreation of a cave and it's like well it's like a hole in the ground right below the ground level where one of those eagles had caught a moa and then crashed into there.

And the bones were on top of each other. Oh, really? So they had it kind of recreated in there. You're kidding. Yeah, giant. Oh, that's crazy. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet.

Welcome to the OnX club,.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. All right, so New Zealand. There's a problem with islands where when people colonize islands, they tend to eradicate all the wildlife. It happened in the Hawaii Islands. The Polynesians, when they arrived in Hawaii, led many, many, many extinctions. One problem is they show up with rats.

They show up with rats. People tend to show up in places with pigs. It causes all manner of problems. So when the people of Polynesian descent show up in New Zealand, it just crashed. The place crashed. Pretty much, yeah. They just ran out of food. All those big birds were very vulnerable to overhunting.

Later, the Brits show up. I was just reading about this the other day. The Brits, the British, had had these committees you know like nowadays you belong to a conservation organization like i'm a member of a handful of conservation organizations and the goal of a conservation organization would be that you conserve generally like you're conserving native wildlife pheasants forever is a conservation organization that tries to conserve an introduced bird the pheasant. Pheasants aren't from here. They're from Asia.

When the British were in New Zealand, they had these things called acclimatization organizations. It's an organization dedicated to trying to make New Zealand seem familiar to Europe. Yeah, everybody wants to feel like they're at home. Let's go across the world and feel like they're at home. Their goal was to bring in... They were organizations based around bringing in and introducing wildlife. And plants

and other things. The worst plant there is gorse. Let's bring a plant that every time you walk past it, it pokes you and then causes rashes. Was it intentionally brought in? I think so. Just another, I mean, I don't know for a fact, but it could have just been a byproduct of bringing in some other animals or other things.

Yeah, it came out of accident. Yeah, there's just a ton of plants like that that have no point. Yeah, like spotted knapweed here. We have tons of stuff here that was accidentally that rolled in on wheat seeds yeah you know or thistles all kinds of stuff so in new zealand they introduced everything a lot of things stuck and now in new zealand you go hunting there and you're not hunting um native wildlife but it in new zealand an environmentalist is someone who wants to kill all the wildlife. Pretty much, yeah.

Because there's a big movement, particularly with predators, because they have a lot of small, no, they don't have any big predators. They have a lot of small predators, weasels, skunks, the omnivorous possum. No skunks. Stoats. Oh, not skunks. There's stoats. Which is an ermine. Possum? Stoats. Oh, not skunks. There's stoats. There's feral cats, weasels, ferrets.

No skunks though. Stoats. And then possums, but they aren't opossums. Yeah, a red possum. Yeah, they're an Australian. The possums were actually brought over for, it's like they put it in with the wool. They mix it with the wool. Gotcha.

So when you shoot a possum, you can actually pluck them while they're still warm. Yeah, so you mix it with sheep wool and it gives it this cashmere feel. It's super, super soft fur. Oh, I got you. Pretty cool pelts.

So they did that and they got a big problem. Rats, too. Yeah, rats. Rabbits, hares. Those are the worst problems. Yeah, so New Zealand's got this big struggle where they're like uh you know it would be a goal if you asked if you asked like a conservationist

or an environmentalist of some sort in new zealand it would be a goal you'd you'd clear the island of all non-natives and somehow start rehabilitating all the lost species many of which are gone forever like you won't get them back but there's a lot of endangered birds there and stuff and hunting is weird because on one hand the government's out gunning animals from helicopters and poisoning with 1080 serial poison so you've got kind of everyone's like oh there's no predators, no limits, no seasons. But you've got government guys shooting them from helicopters, people poisoning areas, and everybody hunting all the time. It's just a different – No closed season.

Yeah, there's no closed seasons, no bag limits. Your competition isn't so much other hunters as it's government sharpshooters shooting out of helicopters. It's just a wild place to hunt. I had a great time. If viewers of the show, me either, might know Remy from the various things he's involved in. But we did four episodes, very well-received episodes of media that we shot in New Zealand hunting with Remy. You spent what time there? About three months, like March, April, May, a little bit in June.

Yeah. You know what? I know I got a buddy in Anchorage. One thing about New Zealand, like when you see – if you see like a TV host type personality guy go over to New Zealand and he shoots a giant stag, always it's a penned up animal. So what they do is they raise, except I'm going to tell you about a dude I know.

Okay. So they raise stags like red deer. They raise them for many things, meat, but also to harvest the velvet for aphrodisiac markets in Asia. Well, and joint medicine is a lot of it. Oh, so it's not aphrodisiac? It's like human performance stuff. Oh, is that what the velvet's for? A lot of times, yeah.

Oh, you know what? Yeah, okay. Yeah, so I mean, I'm sure it is aphrodisiac stuff, but they use, I guess they use, recently we've been asked to collect the tails. I guess there's a gland in the tail that they use like dried up something like that on like while they're rutting this gland so they sell it then yeah but the yeah you can make like uh there's something that's good for your joints so they raise deer like it's profitable the velvet's valuable enough where you can raise deer just to pull velvet and sell it. Yeah. Okay. And when a stag gets... I'm so paranoid about ticks,

I'm still checking my head for ticks. Turkey helps crawl for ticks, man. Yeah, mine's playing ticks on me. That's good. So when a stag gets to be as big as he's going to get, right? Yeah. They'll sell it to a guy who runs hunts they'll put in a truck and

drive it over and turn it loose in his little penned area then a dude will come out and he'll be like they'll be like well how much do you want to spend and what's the cost if you want to shoot a 400 inch sag uh about 12 000 somewhere around there and they'll charge you based on the you'd be like oh i want to spend 10 or 12 and they'll charge you based on, you'd be like, oh, I want to spend $10,000 or $12,000, and they'll show you which one to shoot. I have an idea for New Zealand. I brought this up with you before. They have range-finding binoculars.

I want to make a rifle scope. This would be good for Texas and New Zealand, a barcode-reading rifle scope, where as you're aiming at the animal, like when you're hunting a high-wire place in Texas, they'll use it in Africa. When you're aiming at the animal, it shows you're hunting a high wire place in Texas, they'll use it in Africa. When you're aiming at the animal, it shows you what it costs at the bottom of your scope. That guy could actually, you could just set it straight to my iPad or whatever, and then they can just adjust the prices. Your heart rate goes up.

That probably wouldn't work for their advantage, though, for the guides, the people trying to make the money. Because I feel like they're always like, yeah, that one's so much. This one's a little bit more. And he's like, no, I can't afford that one. And then the guide says, well, just look at him through the scope. You know? So then you look at him through the scope and you go, oh, yeah, he looks good.

Now, I feel like if that price tag was blinking right there, you'd be like, nah, no. That's my wife gonna think yeah that's probably a good point so um but yeah i was watching a guy i've always admired there's a guy i don't want to name his name i've always admired him and i was watching him hunting in new zealand he's just sitting there it's just like giant stag after giant stag after giant stag i'm like this dude's hunting like a penned up spot yeah but there's this guy known anchorage who was just in new zealand hunting tar okay and he killed a bull that scored the 390s wet score and his he said his guide was shocked that they found it was it private land no publicly oh that i don't know but it wasn't an offense well yeah i call him he got away i call him escaped convicts yeah yeah it's an escaped convict because depending on where he's

tar hunting uh yeah you just aren't going to find them that big. They just don't grow that big in the wild. I mean, it's not. I would say like the real world record is probably in the 330s. Okay. That's how big he'd get on a free range place. Yeah. I mean, that's if they were only well managed. I mean, maybe they could get a little bigger, but yeah, it's an escaped.

So is it supplemental feed that mostly makes them a lot bigger or just letting them get to an H class? It's the same thing as deer or anything. It's breeding, feed, combination. Yeah, I mean, now there's like when they breed them up, you could have a first-year stag, like after spike, second-year, two-year-old that scores 400. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. Like, these ones that they grow to. Selectively bred. Yeah. Apparently, they just grew, like, a new world record. I don't even know what that means, really. And it was, I can't even remember the numbers, but it's over 700 inches. But no one's going to accept, like, a trophy-type place,

no one's going to accept the score, right? If it's a fenced animal. Yeah, they have like a special category for fenced animals. But that's why with them raising so many true wild, my thought is your record should be public land only. And then there's going to be the occasional dude that shoots one that just escaped. And those guys know. They'd just be like, well, this isn't a wild deer.

And so, you know, but you can tell a real big... Most stags that are wild are big 12 or 14-pointers. But it's funny, because you could be on one of these high-fence deals, and you'll see these giant 400-inch stags. But then there'll be

some wild ones that they just cannot kill out of there. And you see them, and they could be some wild ones that they just cannot kill out of there so yeah and you see them and they're they could be like good wild ones and they see death all the time those are probably the hardest to kill animal you can find in the world because they just know i had a friend that's like this he had this wild one jump into his his little operation there or i don't know maybe he's born in there who knows and i mean it'd been in there for like five years they couldn't kill it it's crazy i mean because they just live in the in the thick bush and he just seen every animal on the place get slaughtered so he's like yeah if you he's like go in there and shoot it for me because it's killing my big stags i was like oh yeah this

should be no problem it took me five days to find them to find it it's crazy i was like, oh, yeah, this should be no problem. It took me five days to find it. It was crazy. I was like, huh, okay. But that's, I mean, I'm not, you know, obviously I don't hunt high fence stuff, but I went in there to go take care of a problem for a guy and thought to myself, what's harder, going on public land where there's 30 stags per square mile or go on this one place and there's one stag per 20, you know, 20,

I don't even know how big the place was, you know, 1,000 acres in one stag or go on the wild property where there's 20 stags per 1,000 acres, you know. Yeah. It's like,

okay, that took a lot long. And it was frustrating because you're like, this should be easy. This is stupid. Yeah. You're just getting pissed off.

The most exciting thing I did, and I know it's something you like the most in New Zealand, is you can do that, right? There's plenty of red deer hunting. But there's also just a lot of crazy animals just living out in the... Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, if I'm going to hunt for myself, I'm going to go tar hunting.

It's just the country. It's like, okay, I can go on a doll sheep type hunt, mountain goat type hunt, whatever, just on the weekends for fun, every week, whatever. It's amazing. The country is really what it's all about. Public land. Oh, yeah.

Open stuff. You just drive up these areas, and it's just a matter of what you're willing to hike. Yeah. We ran into Shammy. We went through private land to access. We were hunting public land, I think. No, the road goes through.

The road was like an easement through private land. But it's open to anybody. Oh, yeah. Anybody can drive that road. Oh, really? It wasn't even a road, really. Yeah. We just kind of drove up.

Basically, you're just driving on gravel moraines and stuff up into the mountains. Yeah, because the river is just like Montana. The river is public between the high water marks, so that's why we drive up the river. Oh, okay. So, yeah, we were there. I don't want to tell you where it is because you'd be screwing Remy over, but we went into a place to hunt. Did we drive 20 miles? 20 to 30 miles, yeah.

Just driving up river, very careful. You can kind of see where vehicles will go. There's a lot of gravel, just like Eskers and Marines, gravel bars. You can kind of see now and then. You'll see a route. Sometimes you can't find the route. You just pick your way up this river. It'd be just like driving up a big braided gravel stream channel.

20 miles. And it was almost kind of arbitrary where we stopped. It was like you couldn't really go any further. Well, there's a point where walking is a lot faster yeah but you want to get as far as you can because we had obviously a lot of gear camera equipment it's like might as well drive up as far as we can and then walk from there yes we got where you couldn't go any further and then it's not far up there everything it just turns into glaciers yeah but you hike from there and you're glassing from the valley floor and you're glassing up and seeing chamois which was rare where we were at that's like my little secret rare little pocket chamois and you're seeing tar but it'd be like you're seeing them

but you're seeing them and it's it's a day investment to go even begin to try to find one yeah but you don't even need a hunting license. No. Well, you kind of do. Oh, what do you need? Well, it's just this thing. You don't buy it, but you fill it out online. So they call it a hunting license. There's nothing we would think of as a hunting license. Yeah, there's no non-resident tag.

Yeah, you have to have this special permit that says, oh, I can be in this area. Is it free? Yes, it's free. Okay. Just online. I know some of that stuff might change in the future, but as it is right now, you just boom, pop online. It's interesting because they get you for the fishing tag. Well, yeah, fishing, you got to pay for it.

And duck shooting, you have to have a hunting license for. But not geese. Geese because they deregulated geese. Yeah, I shot a goose with a rifle there. Oh, yeah. Which feels fun. Which is a weird, this is fun. Very weird feeling.

Yeah. Last time I was up that, I go up that canyon quite a bit just because it's close to where I'm at. And I got a double on geese with my rifle. Is that right? Lined them up? Yeah.

I got a buddy, and he's like a crack commando of a hunter. He's a guide. He's a doll sheep guide. He just rounded up a couple friends, and they went to New Zealand. Just all on their own. Yeah. He just did a bunch of research talked to everybody he could think of to talk to and just like hunted public land uh one of them got a stag everybody got tar i sent him into my

tar spot oh did you yeah oh you know what i'm talking about oh yeah yeah yeah he uh i said actually he got into he had a good hunt up the place that I always go, it's just kind of like, you know, just like anywhere, I'd rather hunt the same place five times than a new place every time. Yeah. Because you just get to learn the ins and outs of it. And he was telling me about the stag they saw in there. I was like, why didn't you shoot it, man? He's like, oh, I don't know.

It just didn't seem big enough. And I went back in there right after they left looking for it. I never found it. Oh, really? It was on public land? Yeah. New Zealand's a trip, man. Here's the thing. I liked it, but

it was hard for me because there's no... The animals are missing their sort of context their sort of historical context but maybe it's because you're around the culture so much because for me i go there and you know i like and i understand where they're coming from like i've seen the videos and heard the stories from the old timers and the animals in new zealand have a very important role in the culture and the culture of hunting because well

obviously okay they're non-native but how many non-natives do we enjoy here brown trout and pheasants and you know all kinds of things and so over there the culture of hunting is is just different you got to like look at it through the lens of a native-born kiwi hunter where they were not essentially that one who hunts kiwis correct yeah essentially it is based on culling animals where the animals were released and then they started to overpopulate because there's no no big predators. Correct. And so hunting was they would go out, and they would shoot for meat and control the numbers. And then it became a huge meat market thing where they would go and shoot the animals and sell them. And then you got into this era of –

Yeah, these guys feed – like you'll go to a guy that owns dogs. He'll just have like a little closet. They'll just shoot animals. That's what you feed your animals with. They just cut chunks of meat off and throw it in the dog pen. It's just like, imagine an inexhaustible supply of meat that was always available to you.

Yep. You never had to worry about... And so you go there and venison is so accepted there. Whereas in America, it's like this... It's a hip thing or a new thing or something hunters eat. Not everybody eats venison there. That's meat.

That's what you eat because it's everywhere. You don't have to go out and – everybody knows somebody that can go shoot meat. You raise a point that I've actually thought of because I mull this over in my head all the time. When you mentioned pheasant and brown trout. For instance, I was brought up in Lake Michigan, on Lake Michigan. Across the lake, we're in Wisconsin right now. i was brought up in late michigan on lake michigan and across the lake we're in wisconsin now it's going up in michigan on lake michigan and we grew up fishing steelhead coho king salmon okay yeah now a guy might have come

out from california alaska and said to me but dude these are just introduced yeah but to me it was like just an ingrained part of culture and it wound up being that i knew like academically it's like yeah they're not from here but they're from here because they've always like from my perspective born in 1974 they were just here yeah you know and it's like yeah sure i accept that they're non-native and you think about like people you might hunt pheasants in some place. Your grandpa hunted pheasants. Exactly. It winds up being so, but that's what I'm saying.

A stumbling block for me going to New Zealand was, let me just put it this way. Let's say I go out to hunt caribou. I'm very interested in sort of the ecological history of caribou traditional use patterns among indigenous hunters right right the way the animal like the way it just tied into things about how the first americans who ever crossed the bering land bridge were probably caribou hunters right i get i i find pleasure in that it makes things like relatable to me in a deep sense. To go to New Zealand from an outside perspective, I just felt like, yeah, but you just let all this stuff go.

It felt like it was yesterday. But it's not. It's like, okay, I drew a... I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure... Red deer in New Zealand have been there longer than elk have been in the state of Nevada. So you draw this coveted Nevada elk tag, and

you're like, woo-hoo, I just shot a big elk in Nevada, and you don't even think twice about it, yet you go to New Zealand, and the deer have been there twice as long. That's right, folks. The Meteor Podcast brought to you by the New Zealand Chamber of Commerce. No, you raise a valid point, dude. You raise a valid point. It's just when you start talking, if you talk to people that grew up in that culture, I mean, there's so much history of the people there in that hunting and the animals and what it means to them that you respect.

You're like, okay, you grew up doing this. And they have the stories of back when they were shooting them, putting them on helicopters and taking them out overloaded and guys going into Fiordland and these wild, wild places trying to hunt elk and other things. There's actually moose released there. They've tried everything. It's kind of like our Bigfoot.

It's one of those things where people keep seeing moose tracks every once in a while, but there really are probably no moose left. Are they that good at trackers? I don't know. There's some pretty good hunters. Imagine being able to hunt all the time in mountainous, rough terrain and not having season limits, whatever. These guys are probably some of the best hunters in the world, to be honest.

That dude that we went pig hunting with. Garen. He's been around the block. Oh and i mean the guys killed thousands and thousands of animals and that bush is rough it is the mountains are way rough oh yeah yeah that was some of the sketchiest ground i've ever hunted big game on oh it's it's crazy i went to a place what was it last year and i mean i had to cross these glaciers and everything. Where else can you go do that? Besides maybe the Himalayas and a few places in Alaska.

Go hunt a species that can't be hunted anywhere else in the world, really. Like the Himalayan tar, at least. Alright, Remy wins. We'll take a quick break to give a quick shout out to one of our supporters, Wealthfront. Alright, if you like listening to media podcasts for free,

you have to pay special attention to what I'm saying because it's like these boys at Wealthfront help keep Meat Eater Podcast free and widely available. It's an automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way. So if you want to grow up to be a guy that just hunts and fishes all the time, listen to what I'm saying. Wealthfront software manages your money using investment strategies

that used to be available just like super wealthy investors for just about one quarter of the cost of using a traditional advisor. And Wealthfront monitors your account around the clock 24-7, and they automatically rebalance your portfolio, reinvest dividends, and maximize after-tax returns. Again, man, I'm talking about getting where you don't have to work and you just hunt and fish. You've got to invest. I used to not be good about it, but I'm better about it now.

Launch us back in, man. What were we on? New Zealand. Crazy bush hunters. All right, so yeah, you've made all kinds of money on Wealthfront, and now you're going to go. Seriously, though, do you guys worry about your future? Do you do anything to save for the future?

Wait, you're saying stockpiling meat in the freezer isn't good enough? It depends on, you gotta watch the prices. You gotta wrap it right so it's still saleable later. Because I have a forced investment thing now.

Like, you ever heard of a SEP? Like a tax thing? No. Every year when I do my taxes, they make you save some money. Oh, yeah.

So I finally have money. It's only because there's a gun to my head. They're like, basically, you can either save it or give it to us. I'm like, I'll save it. You're basically deferring paying taxes.

Which, nothing wrong with that. No. Three kids, Steve, I think probably saving would be a good idea. The whole college thing. I feel like you've got to save for the bicycles. I feel like I'm buying a new bicycle every two weeks now. Trade.

We just bought the new Strider bike. I was telling you. My three-and-a-half-year-old gets a new Strider bike like six weeks ago. We're striding along. Everything's going great. She can coast it. Well, she just grabs a pedal bike from her daycare because she wouldn't leave it alone. So the daycare owner was just like, look, just take this thing home. It's all beat up and rusty. She gets home, puts her feet on because she wouldn't leave it alone so the daycare owner was just like

look just take this thing home so i'll beat up and rusty she gets home puts her feet on it starts pedaling it now that thing's so beat up that she's like i need a bigger one look at the bike that girl's got so yeah never ends no and you can't really deny him because it's like exercise like you'd be like no i'm not buying you a blank oh and you know there's a housekeeping dude we're recording a hotel and the housekeeping guy's banging out here ducky talk to those guys sorry no i was just saying that the the cheshire cat grin on her face when she's riding that bike i'd buy her as many boxes she could ever want not totally understand where you're coming from

you know i was saying we had a strider, and my kids smoked the bearings out of it. I don't want to talk about New Zealand anymore because I want to talk about something different. Yeah. Anyone have any concluding thoughts, Doug? Concluding thoughts? It was a question. Doug primarily hunts the same patch of ground he grew up on. Yeah, very much.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I wondered about, you said that the government was poisoning and there's sharpshooters and all this. Why don't they introduce predators? Oh, well, they actually... They got a whole new problem.

So during... Well, I know, but I... Because they're raising sheep. No, during World War II. Well, that's a problem. So the rabbits were a problem. So they introduced the weasels and the ferrets. Well, the weasels and the ferrets?

Well, the weasels and the ferrets decided that the native flightless bird species are way easier to kill and eat than rabbits. That's when they brought in the mongoose. They brought in in Hawaii, they had the rat. They brought in the mongoose to take care of the rat. And then the mongoose just devastated ground-nesting birds. So you can't get them to focus on a particular species. This will piss someone off.

The writer Tom Robbins was talking about the rat-mongoose is just devastated ground nesting birds. So you can't get them to focus on a particular species. This will piss someone off. The writer Tom Robbins was talking about the rat mongoose thing in Hawaii, and he said, we used to have a crime problem when we brought in cops. I just found this out recently, though, that during World War II, when all the men were away fighting, the deer population just exploded. You're kidding. And they actually thought about bringing in mountain lions. No way. Yeah.

That was a legitimate solution to the problem. I would have been all for it, man. Yeah. Well, imagine the shepherds, though. Yeah. What are the deer going to eat now? Or what are the lions going to eat? I would have been for it because I would have been like, listen,

it's a crazy zoo now anyway. Let's just go for it. I think they should bring in Bengal tigers. Might as well be something that's semi-endangered or highly endangered. We've got enough mountain lions. Let's set some Bengal tigers loose. Yeah, listen, here's the thing. For my own wrap-up on New Zealand, I want to do my own thing.

One thing I felt about New Zealand, and I had a blast there, and I'll remember it all the time. I hunted a red deer in England, and if I could scrub the memory from my mind, I would scrub it from my mind. No, no, I hunted a red deer in Scotland. If I could scrub it from my memory, I would. Because it just wasn't. I just didn't care about it.

Yeah. It wasn't exciting to me. The system there is not exciting to me. Yeah. It's like you can only hunt. With the game keeper. The game's all privately owned. You go out with the game keeper.

He's not even supposed to let you touch the gun until he lines it up. Yeah. It's just like, yeah, it's like old world it scrubs all the adventure from hunting in terms of new they get special they get dressed up in special clothes but see that hunting is about the adventure for me and new zealand is way adventure yeah listen that's what i was gonna try to say way adventure oh yeah it's a 30 miles 30 miles up a river valley well i can i tell one of my favorite stories that i has ever happened out hunting yeah if you count it as your wrap-up yeah okay with a 30 miles up the river valley remember we sent uh when you were here oh the story yeah

that's good nobody's heard this story no no this is a very behind the scenes behind the scenes into the into the workings and dealings of meat eater and so this is a great story you shoot your chamois and i my buddy ben who came over from australia was he's just hunting around and so i said hey we need some guys to carry equipment do a little packing so we've got ozzy ben carrying cameras and recharging batteries. So we shoot the chamois, and then we send Ben back to the vehicles to charge some batteries. And I'm thinking – It's past dark. Yeah, it's past dark, and we're back at the hut cooking up dinner, and I'm like, man, where is Ben? No, he was supposed to have been gone longer.

No, was he? Yeah, have been gone longer. No. Was he? Yeah, he got back early. Oh. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he gets back. We thought he'd come back the next day, I thought. No.

He was going to come back just after a while. And we were all just joking around. Like, oh, I wonder if hopefully Ben's smart enough not to run the vehicle out of fuel. And so we're eating, and Ben comes back, comes back and he just like doesn't talk to anyone no eye contact and i go you didn't run the vehicle out of fuel did you ben just joking around and he's like real quiet and then we do our thing we're eating it comes up to me goes remy i need to have some words and i thought i thought ben was pissed that we were making him the grunt like i'm sick of carrying your crap i'm not going to go up the mountain for tar.

I'm like, oh, great. Now he's going to quit on us. I'm like, we've got this big production crew. The pressure's on me because I'm kind of orchestrating the whole inner dealings out there. Doug's been in that position. I'm like, oh, great. These guys are going to be pissed.

He's going to quit. He goes, Remy, I don't know how to tell you this. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm expecting him to just be like, I'm sick of carrying crap and charging batteries. And he goes, I shot your truck. And I look at him and go, what do you mean you shot my truck? And I'm like, are you okay?

He's like, yeah, well, I was sitting there. And his vehicle, I guess the power plug wasn't working or something, so he gets in my vehicle. He's sitting in the passenger seat, and we shot some geese. We had the shotguns ready for shooting geese. And he goes, you know, in Oz, we don't have semi-automatic weapons. And this dude's an engineer. He's a smart guy.

Yeah. We don't have those kind of guns in Australia. We don't have those kind of guns in Australia. So he's trying to figure out how it works. Yeah, so he goes, I've been here hours. So he's sitting there, and he's just charging batteries for a few hours, just bored, and he says he's sitting there. He pulls the thing back, the action back, looks in there, pulls it back,

and he's just sitting there flicking the action, click, click, click, click, looks in a few times, nothing. Oh, there's a button on the bottom. Hits the button, hears the click, click, click, looks in a few times, nothing. Oh, there's a button on the bottom. Hits the button, hears a noise, huh? And he's sitting there click, click, click, click, click, flipping the action back and forth out of boredom. Decides to reach down and pull the trigger.

Well, there had been shells in the magazine. Not in the chamber. We didn't leave it loaded, but it's fine. And we thought it was all adults. We thought it was adults. Exactly. I mean, I leave shells in my magazine. It's not wherever we're at.

It's not illegal or anything. And he pulls it back, pulls the trigger, boom, through the floorboards, blows out the fuel lines. And he said that when it went off, it was like shell shock. He opens the door, and he's just with his arms on the ground. It would have to scare you half to death. Oh, it would be so loud. And then not only that, but now smoke's billowing out, and we're 25-something miles back.

We towed that car 20-something miles. I told them that I always knew Australians were good shots because they could shoot a truck while it's running. But, yeah, so we had to tow that view and multiple river crossings over rough terrain he's like he didn't blow his toe off well that's why i always set the barrels you know barrels down but you know my dad carried shotgun pellets in his foot that's what you're saying yeah for just ever. Got shot, yeah. Well, I think, no, I'll tell you.

I'm giving a talk tonight at the university. I'm going to talk about that story for a minute, so I don't want to. Yeah, don't want to ruin it. Yeah, I don't want to blow it because you guys might be the only people there. You guys, some bitch talked about this earlier. Remember, the worst, though, was towing. How long did it take? About eight hours to get the vehicle back?

Took forever. All day. It was all day. And me and you, I was steering the back vehicle, just sucking diesel fumes. You were a soldier sucking diesel fumes with me for ten hours. I felt so sick after that. If I remember right, I repeatedly brought up the idea

that we should cut a piece of vacuum rolls and patch the line. And someone kept saying, maybe you, that once you run these kind of vehicles out of gas, that doesn't work. Well, because of the diesel engine, they're built on compression. You fixed it and said that's not true. You can fix it.

Right. I don't think we could have fixed it. I was accidentally right. You were accidentally right because we didn't have the proper tools to fix it because remember how bent the fuel – I mean everything was – I had no idea what I was talking about but ended up being accidentally right. It was more of a general like can we just pull something from somewhere else and patch it up?

Yeah. And theoretically we could. Theoretically we could have. I'm not a very good mechanic. That's not my thing. I bet you're a better mechanic than I am. I doubt it. Maybe we should have a contest. All right. But I want –. I bet you're a better mechanic than I am. I doubt it. Maybe we should have a contest.

Yanni, you got any wrap-up? I want to talk about why Remy came back. Quick wrap-up to some people listening because I grew up in Michigan and we couldn't even have the ammo within arm's reach, I think, of the gun in the car. Is there a rule or something like that? Fully enclosed case, yeah.

Not in this state anymore. Well, anymore. Because the great governor here got it where you don't need to have your gun case. That's right. No matter what else, you don't have to case your gun anymore. Back east, it's very strict rules on that. And then you move out west, and it's like in a magazine of your shotgun or rifle cartridges down in your

bolt action rifle in the backseat of the truck. It's totally normal. We just drive around like that. Out west, I think... When did I get my first shotgun? I think I was eight, nine? Nine. I was like, here's a shotgun.

They're like, you can keep it in your room, but you can't have shells in the magazine. And I was like, but we can have them in the magazine when we're driving around. My mom's like, my mom drew the line. She's like, you can have the gun in your room, but you cannot have shells in the magazine. We had guns when we were so young, man.

It just seems weird now, man. We'd drive around on our bikes with slung.22s. I remember, like, I didn't even understand at the time, but certain kids weren't allowed to hang out with us. Because you guys were the gun-tokers. Roll up on our bikes with, like, those two fed Marlin.22s over our shoulders. We just went, let's go.

Yeah. But remember, at that time, you just felt so, you're like, I'm eight. I can have a shotgun. Yeah. I was like, okay, no problem. Yeah, my dad my dad just be like don't shoot robins yeah we had a long list of birds we were allowed to shoot now i'm embarrassed to even say what was on that list but chickadees and robins were off so oh one other thing, though.

The meat there is good, though. The tar. Oh, it's my favorite. When we killed a tar, remember we made Tarbecue? Tar, tar, tar. That was fun. All right, that's not what I want to talk about. So, Remy, you came back in town because you knew shoulder time. Exactly.

Now, when I met Remy, I met Remy when I went to hunt in New Zealand with him. You had already been doing some television. Yeah, I'd been doing solo hunters for about a year, two years, something like that by then.

Yeah, I wanted Remy to come on and be like, when I was on vacation, I wanted Remy to host Meat Eater. But instead, he's got his whole new damn show now.

I'll still come on. Today, we're going to cook up. What's the worst thing you could think of to eat? We've already eaten a coyote, and I saw you eat a monkey. Is there anything just for us? Here it's just folks. Yeah. I think that can be arranged.

No, Red Fox and Hedgehog are on the list. Not Hedgehog, Groundhog. Groundhog. Hedgehog's already eaten? Hedgehog's live in England. You can't kill a hedgehog. They're too adorable. Well, whatever the one is back east.

Not the cherry. Woodchuck's a groundhog. Woodchuck. Same damn thing. We might be able to arrange a woodchuck. It's a good time of year to get them, too. They spend a lot of time out in the burrow right now. So anyways, now, Rami's been working with same folks

who made Make, Meat Eater, to launch a new show, Apex Predator. Talk about that. Yeah. I mean,

what we were, my thought was, I think if you watch Apex, Apex Predator is just a show you have to watch to understand. Yeah.

Because it's not necessarily a hunting show. And especially coming from a guy like me, my life is hunting. Straight hunting. Straight hunting. I mean, I guide for a living. I write for Western hunting articles and magazines. I do solo hunters, which is all hunting.

I want to bring this up. I got to bring this up. I wound up knowing you from reading your articles on Western Hunter. Right, which is funny. I said, I want to meet this guy because you'd write great articles. I remember you had a great article about you do a lot of stuff like self-guided stuff,

how to get away from the crowds, backcountry junk. You had this really cool article about trying to find hunting mule deer in high-pressure areas in Nevada. It's funny that when I got the first email from you, you were talking about hunting in Montana, I think, looking for some ideas in Montana. I was like, I'm going to New Zealand in a month or so.

Want to join me? You're like, yeah, sounds awesome. I think I might have even got your contact from Chris Denham. I think so. At Western Hunter Magazine. Yeah, which is funny because you sent the email, and I'd watched, now I can't even remember the name. Traveled Wild Within.

Yeah, and I loved that show. And it was funny because I'd been talking about that show before I got your email, and I was like, that's strange. The guy that's about that show before I got your email, and I was like, that's strange. The guy that's on that show just sent me an email. It was like the most random email I'd ever received probably, but it turned out being pretty cool. You're able to go to New Zealand.

So then we met, and I was like, yeah, I really wanted to work with you more. So talk about Apex though. Just give what it is, like what it's a study on. wanted to work with you more so talk about apex though yeah like just give the i mean give what it is okay so like what is the study on it's it's looking at the way humans are have become or are the top predators and there's a lot of factors that go into it but i have this thought that we can look at like if you look at every animal on the planet, they're all, they all fill a niche. They're specially adapted. They do something specific to survive. And that's how they get by surviving, whether it's a predator animal or a

prey animal, they all fill a certain spot and they're all really good at something. But as humans, we can look at something that nature has specialized in and try to mimic it for our own hunting tactics, our own hunting style. Or it really like the more we do the show, it amazes me how much we actually compare or can compare to these animals that we think are way out of our league or hunt so different than us we've taken a lot of tactics and a lot of things from a lot of different aspects in nature and one of one of the things that got me thinking about doing a show like this i was hunting elk in montana it was the very first time i saw a wolf and i'm walking i see this wolf wow it was 30 yards away and at this point this is before

you saw wolves in montana yeah yeah yeah this was like mid 90s i mean i was ecstatic i'd never seen a wolf in my life and this was awesome and it was just kind of looking at me i get my video camera out i'm like trying to film it and i'm cool i saw a wolf today so i go and i've been where was that this was in the bitterroot valley in montana do you remember what year it was i could think it was uh 2002 okay yeah something like that maybe 2000 yeah 2000 and you know so i i see this wolf and i and i've been hunting this specific bull elk. I'd passed up a lot of elk. I was hunting one big bull that was behind my place.

So I see the elk out on this far ridge. So I walk around, and I get set up, and I'm on the backside of this ridge, and the herd elk's there. Well, sure enough, here comes the wolf hunting the same elk. And I only saw the one. So I don't know if he was just hunting alone, which a lot of people always talk about him hunting in packs. All the elk that I've witnessed get killed by wolves have been single wolves. Is that right?

Yep. Never seen a pack attack wolves. I've seen four elk killed personally just visually watched elk getting killed they've all been by single wolves you're shitting me no and that's interesting two cows two bulls two spikes yep two cows two bulls and so anyways the wolf goes and gets the elk running and i'm like damn it and it's a hot it's one early yeah early september days but i thought i just in my mind i was like i know this area so well i know where those elk are going and they had this up and down up and down up and down and you watch them come up just

after the first rise their tongues are hanging out there i I mean, you've, you've seen it, you know, like they get, it's like running a horse uphill. They get tired fast. A lot of people don't, you think like you could never catch up to an elk. I thought I'm just going to run straight up this Ridge and try to cut them off. So I literally started sprinting to the top and I get to where, I mean, it's probably, I think it's five, six miles away, but I just ran up to the top, took my route. I could see them going up and down the ridges, and I get to the spot where I think they're coming up,

and they are dead tired. By this point, they're walking. Their tongues are hanging out. You can see the veins in their face. They just look gassed. And I stand behind a tree, and all the elks start walking by just looking about half dead tired at probably the furthest were 20 yards i whip out my camera i take a few pictures and the bull never showed up and i think what happened was because his antlers were so heavy he took a

different route he took a different route he went down because i ended up walking down and seeing two other bulls that were smaller lower but it just put into my mind at that point that's exactly how the wolf would have hunted them and i would have never thought in a million years you could catch up to her everybody says once you spook elk they're gone 10 miles you'll never find them again well there's some validity to that because a lot of people aren't going to. Right. Well, in heavy timber, it's fairly open country. But they do get gassed. I mean, they don't have the ability to sweat like we do.

They're a large animal running in the heat up and down steep mountains. Just by knowing the terrain and other things, I was able to catch to him and had the bull gone that route i would have killed it you know i got some cool picture i still have that picture on my fridge it was like the first time and and then walking uh you know so fast forward a few years i was out guiding one day and i you know as a guide, you, you have to get really good at killing elk in a certain amount of time. So, you know,

like you can't mess up, you know where they hide, where they do this, where you have to know them so well, because each week we're killing two public land elk for 10 weeks, which you just got to be on it. So I know these elk pretty well. And I have certain routes that I walk in certain mountains because I know where they prefer.

Like you look at the whole mountain, the elk will be in one spot. It could be a million acres and they're going to be on a hundred of it. Yeah, and you get the sense that if you killed every elk on that mountain range and let new elk come in, they would be in the same spot. Right. come in they would do the same thing in the same spot right and and i have a certain way that i walk this ridge because i know the way that the the thermals go in the morning the winds the the way that i can come in through the trees and be hidden at this point where they like to bed then i walk up and do this so i'm walking my route which has worked forever and i see some wolf tracks and it surprised me the wolf was hunting that mountain the exact same route that I take. Here's another hunter that hunts every day.

It's like I figured out something. It was just like we are so similar. He knows where these elk bed to. He knows the route. He knows, and we're hunting them in the exact same fashion. It was crazy to me. Yeah, yeah, it's and so i started thinking about

and thought okay what other animals can we learn from or emulate like if i just watched how the wolf did things i would probably come to the conclusion that took me 10 years to figure out this route and here he's hunting every day he has this knowledge and as predators we do things in a very similar way and so i thought what other animals are out there that i can learn from what tactics can i take away from an alligator or a great blue heron or a river otter you know what's funny you met we one time we're in michigan's up and we watched river otters catch a fish. We're like, what the hell are they catching? We realized they were catching a giant perch out of this river.

We later went back and caught perch. Really? We'd have never known about that spot if it wasn't for those otters. Just, yeah, just like, I had no idea, dude. And you can probably see, you can probably see where the lines and the, like, you know, a fish will hold, it's the same, even in a river. Fish will hold certain currents. Because what I do a lot if I go to a new river, I put on snorkel and I float down the river and see visually where the fish are and how they're holding the currents.

What kind of stuff they like, yeah. And then I go and walk up that river and I catch 10 times the amount of fish because I know exactly where those fish are sitting. I know the seam to cast it because you know where the big fish are in the river. I totally understand. If you just watch the otter, what lines is he taking? Because that's the line where the fish are holding.

You can learn a lot. How many predators, in Apex Predator, how many predators do you guys explore? So far, we've done six. When we were talking about name you know i i see it as looking at all of nature other things not necessarily predators because i think that there's prey animals that could i mean think of our camouflage patterns and other things yeah i

mean it's not just humans are essentially an apex predator and And I first want to look at predators, but also take a look at other animals that necessarily may not be apex predators or could be predators, could be non-predators. But so far we've looked at the golden eagle, the wolf, the river otter, the great blue heron, and that Catlin painting about the wolf skins, which he helped me out. Yeah, there's a famous Catlin painting where he painted two dudes, right? Yep. Two guys underneath. Two Plains Indians hiding under wolf skins.

And that, see that right there is looking at. To approach a herd of buffalo. And that falls within the way that we're looking at it because obviously they observed animal behavior and figured out a way to make it work for them. Oh, yeah. I mean, as you mentioned in that episode, the bison, when they see an upright human,

know that if they run, they're safe because the humans can't catch them. But if they run from the wolf, the way the wolf hunts is by getting it to run. If they stand there, the wolf won't attack them because it knows it's outweighed, outmatched. So they saw, oh, when the

wolves are there, the bison stand there. Let's throw a wolf skin over our back and then we can spear them or shoot them with our bows or whatever. That has to be just direct observation. Direct observation. Yeah. And then there's the thought of,

well, the first episode was the alligator. And that one, so what day is Apex on? It's not support. Thursday, 8 p.m. Yeah, so I feel like it's the same slot. It is. It's the same slot as Meat Eater. Yeah.

So that's what – I'm just riding your wave. Yeah, Meat Eater is not on the air right now, but Apex is on the air right now. You guys only run one. It's probably on repeat a little bit. Yeah, it's 8, and then it's sometime in the morning, and then whatever. So you did the alligator one, which is cool as hell. The alligator. And then this week talk about that talk about like like in the alligator one like remy hangs out with people who know a lot about alligators they kind of talk about their strat

how would you describe an alligator's hunting strategy i i describe an alligator strategy as they're they're a lion weight predator but the way i see it is they're a living trap that goes and sets themselves it's it's just like what i could relate their hunting strategy to the best is either trapping or stand hunting they aren't uh a spot and stock type animal they like where a lion sees the prey sneaks in and kills it the alligator is just based on patience And that's something Western hunters like myself do not have. I have happy feet. Oh, when you can go 100 miles.

If someone's like, you can go 100 miles if you want it, then you're going to go 100 miles. No, I'm a chronic. To my own, well, I shouldn't say to my own detriment because it makes me happy. Yeah. But at times, to my own own detriment as a guy that wants to be a successful hunter i walk too much but then i can't be like what i should be less happy

right i should be less happy and walk less it's like i just like to walk right but anyways yeah they don't gators the gators don't and then so we set up the task the way the show is is we set up i wouldn't even call them challenges because What I'm trying to do is learn from the lens of that animal. Originally, when you're starting a new show, you've got these ideas in your head of how it's going to work out. It just doesn't

ever happen like that. Let's go try to grab a pig with my hands in the swamps of Florida. And the focus was on the task of grabbing the pig. And what it turned out to be was learning from the alligator. And yeah, that should be the point.

What am I trying to learn here? Because it was about the patience. It was about setting the trap and really blending in with the environment. Because the way the show works is we look at the animal, and then we go and do what I like to call the training aspect, or the human comparison aspect, where we compare humans to that animal. Yeah, like what is the difference? Why can the alligator lay in the water?

Right. It's so long, and his vision's good. And what makes it that you can't lay in the water like that? Yeah. With you, it's like freezing your ass off well yeah you think about it humans can get hypothermia in 70 degree bath water which is you think about oh yeah right no you you do your body does degrade and there is when we did the test with the broad jump and and the body temperature your body temperature goes down pretty fast and You lose your heat quickly.

You lose your full physical potential within five minutes. I'm not saying that you couldn't perform the task, but you aren't what you – where the alligator can sit – they sit out all day, and they can conserve that energy for hours and hours and hours because they have a slow heart rate. They're cold-blooded. So they heat up, and then they essentially assume their environment. And that's a lot of this show.

I find things that are very similar between animals that kind of put into the perspective of me as a human of how to assume the environment and be more natural. You think about, you ever be out hunting, and an animal just looks in your direction or whatever and it knows you're there? And you think, how does this animal even know? Or they look right through you and they can't register it. Right. And I think it has a lot to do with how, even walking. There's certain people that walk through the woods and the animals start running or another person that can walk through the woods and it doesn't bother them and i think it's a lot of how you meld into your environment and especially

the kind of movement the kind of movements the how familiar you are with with the area and the land and other things but but there's a lot of things that i've noticed throughout predators that i wouldn't have noticed without doing this and a lot of it is just blending with your environment being comfortable and a lot of things about us as humans that oh man we actually are a lot better at some of these things with if we we could train to do it as well as some of these other animals yeah like in your guys wolf episode when's that air Aaron? Coming up? That's coming, yeah, it's not this

next one, but the following. So in this wolf episode, Remy's exploring the idea of chasing elk like a wolf does. Yeah. Right. Just like that you just get on them and just go and go and go and go and go. And eventually catch them. And Remy goes into this place to test his

VO2 max. It's like how well you take and process oxygen, right? Yeah, it measures your endurance capabilities. It doesn't necessarily measure how. It's just like your endurance potential. So what you could potentially do if you trained up to it. Like how well you could pull in to restore depleted muscle with oxygen. Exactly, yeah.

And where your body goes in. And you had a good score. But then a dude tells you what a wolf has? Yeah, you can't even compare to it. It's like you're just not going to. Right, you're not going to compare. You're never going to run like a wolf. No.

You got to start breeding that into you, I guess. Yeah. Well, a lot of that. Kids or grandkids. What was yours and start breeding that into you, I guess. Yeah. Maybe kids or grandkids. What was yours and what's the wolf's, do you remember? Well, my VO2 max was like 83.3, and a wolf's can be over 300. But then, see, the other thing that I learned, though, is some of the stuff, a lot of it's just genetic.

Because the 83.3, I guess they did like... Lance Armstrong was like 86 while he was blood doping or something like that. Mine just so happened to be... Yeah, like preternaturally high. Naturally high. It's just like in the top probably one percentile of people. But I think that's pretty genetic because my family's... I'm just in a family of endurance type athletes.

Yeah. Even like my grandma's finished Iron just in a family of endurance type athletes yeah even like my grandma's finished iron man's over the age of 50 last year yeah no she's like 70 now but she still she still goes every year for her birthday she goes and hikes this we hike this big mountain it's like she'll do that forever i would think as long as she can. But a lot of it, yeah, there's aspects where you can't even compare to these animals. But we have the advantage of it all comes down to our brains. We can devise ways to improvise where these animals have to rely on their natural ability. We can strategize.

Yeah, borrow stuff. Yeah. Borrow stuff. Exactly. Borrow things, create things and try to outthink things. You like to think you could outsmart an elk or a deer, but sometimes it's a lot harder than, than you anticipate. Hey folks,

exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in Canada the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I think it's a big part of hunting, though. I think what the show

demonstrates to me like a type of reverence for wildlife that I think is essential for a hunter to have. Yeah. Like, I... I was talking about my old man earlier, like, that I think is essential for a hunter to have. Yeah. I was talking about my old man earlier.

We'd have what we were supposed to shoot and didn't shoot. He's been dead a long time. But I remember he had such a myopic vision about wildlife that if it wasn't a game bird, it was a Tweety bird. Right, yeah. No fault to him. He didn't grow up in a hunting you know he invented hunting for our family right now he didn't grow up in a hunting household he was raised by like italian immigrant grandparents you know like they just like the last thing on their mind was appreciating wildlife to live in chicago trying to make ends meet yeah a very modest upbringing during the depression right So he didn't learn that.

I try to teach my kids to really love wildlife. And I haven't introduced them to the idea that there's desirable and non-desirable. It's like, learn your birds. Love wildlife. Like a lot of hunters, man, it's really easy to get in that sort of good guy, bad guy attitude about wildlife. I remember I duck hunted with some guys and they had, in their mind, there was mallards and there was the term scrap duck.

Which I think is disrespectful. It breeds a sort of disrespect to be that, oh, if there's no use to me, if this species is of no immediate use to me as a hunter it doesn't warrant my observation yeah and i think there is that approach but how many i think a lot of

hunters well maybe i'm just talking about myself here but i love every aspect of being out there it's not just that one animal it's hunters a lot it's hard to explain to non-hunters because hunters love animals. I've always admired animals. That's the reason that I started hunting because I liked animals so much. But for me, I remember being a kid flipping through those animal cards or animal fact sheets. I would collect them. My thing was animals. I loved figuring out what they did, how they lived.

And that's why when I got into hunting, I could become a part of their system. And that's what really felt cool to me, is I liked the idea of when I first went out hunting, almost this feeling of when I shot a bird, it was now my bird that I was a part of like yeah the birds are out there i could see the animals at a distance but now hunting it put me in that situation where that bird is now mine now i can eat that bird and it was just this cool feeling of being a part of it

like immersed not just looking at i was really so hard to explain no i was recently having this conversation i was out hunting with a first-time hunter. I was explaining that I'm sort of the opposite of a Buddhist. I try to be interested in all animals. I try to study all animals. But it always, for me, just like Apex Predator, the show,

it always winds up being sort of like coming back around to in some way me. Like, what does it mean for me? Like, I love a piece of information that when you hear a pine, like if you're not a hunter, you might be out in the woods

and hear a pine squirrel chattering. You might just be like, oh, the pine squirrel's out chattering. And I hear it, but what I hear is that pine squirrel's pissed about something. Yeah.

And he might be pissed about something far away. And I mean, he's not pissed about me. Something is pissing that thing off. It could be, I've heard them bark at elk. They really bark at bears, right? So it's like you hear that, and that's like sending a message to me. So I'm interested in pine squirrels. I've eaten them, but I don't like hunt pine squirrels.

I'm interested in pine squirrels. I want to know everything I can know about them. I was fascinated to hear that they're a big predator of snowshoe hares, one of the leading snowshoe hare predators. I did not know that. That's crazy. And that when they chirp, they're pissed at something, and it's not a noise you should ignore.

There's an animal over there making him real mad. So I love them for their own sake, but I do internalize it in some way where i'm like okay i like this animal but what does he mean to me what does it mean for me the same way i've many times found dead animals and other interesting things by just observing like you see a bunch of ravens up in a tree circling around getting all excited probably something dead laying over there i have a multi-tool that i still own that I was just watching a bunch of ravens once and walked over there and found four moose hooves in a multi-tool. Really?

Yeah. Some dude got a moose and left his multi-tool laying there. And so I'm like, yeah, I dig ravens. I like their body language, and I just can't help but personalize it. And Apex Predator is cool because it acknowledges that. You look at one like herons. What is the heron doing when he's standing out there? How does he do what he does?

When he's hunting? Yeah, so I'm saying, you look at it, and it just is a reasonable question. How does he do what he does so well? Exactly. And the other thing is you look at the heron, and how different does that you look at the heron and he just how different does that bird look than other birds quite a bit different it's like why is he look like that where what what process made him the largest yeah what process made him like

and you look at the way and sometimes you look like i always thought my assumption of the heron, just a naive assumption that I would see him when I'm out fishing. And I'd always be. Just so you guys know, Remy did an Apex episode on herons. Yeah, on herons. And so one of the reasons I wanted to do the heron is because I remember seeing that bird and thinking like, as a kid going, it's a dinosaur. It looks crazy.

And then as a fisherman fisherman how many times you're out there seeing her and you almost kind of curse the heron like he's taking your fish because you see him as like it's so easy if i could just go spear these fish i would have like i would and i've got this rod and i'm having trouble catching fish and i look over and this heron's got a five pound trout lodging his throat it's about to die you know and you look at it and i always i had this naive assumption that the heron it was easy for the heron he just spear these fish and he could pretty much have his pick like he was taking my fish he barely had to work for it so i kind of almost i liked them and i thought wow that'd be cool to be able to do

but i almost had this as a fisherman this weird oh he's he's my competitor my dad used to have friends that uh were big trout fishermen and didn't carry a pistol to shoot at river otters yeah and and so there's a good all the fish and so doing this i go okay so that my assumption going into the heron episode was oh this is a cru. I'm just going to be up there and spear and fish. And then I started watching. I really started looking at the herons, and most of the things they were eating is just small. They were scrounging for their food.

And then I go and attempt to be like the heron, which seems ridiculous as I put some stilts on and get in the river. And I had so much trouble, it wasn't even funny. And then I realized, I see why the heron's scrounging for food, because it's not easy. Its life is not easy. It's a big-bodied bird that has to catch a lot of food in difficult situations, so they'll catch anything. It's a lot of time hunting.

Exactly. I mean, they spend all day, a lot of of times all night just trying to scrounge up a meal and when i thought it'd just be this cruisy mission of going out there and having all the advantage you realize okay this is the heron's life and then i learned a lot of things on okay yeah you have to be patient you have to pick your spot well you have to be patient. You have to pick your spot well. You have to take advantage of opportunities. Trial and error. My old man, he didn't make live wells.

He had a washing machine. He had a perforated tub and a washing machine. He used to pull steel ones. He used to make them out of steel and set it in the water with a couple of bricks in it. If you guys are hearing what sounds like just a constant scratching and rattling, that's Doug Dern playing with his headset.

Trying not to cough into the microphone. All right. So my old man had these steel wash tubs and he used them for a live well. So we just set it in the water and put a couple bricks in the bottom to keep it from floating away. And as we caught bluegills on our dock where I grew up, we'd throw them in the live well. And then when it was enough to bother scaling them and flaying them,

we'd scale them and flay them. And it's perforated, so they're getting aeration, you know? Yeah. And the herons used to land way down the beach and pull a painstaking stalk on the live well. They never just got like, I'm just going to land there and eat it.

They're like, they land way down and they just start sneaking and sneaking and sneaking and they get up and whack, bluegill. You know?

Fun to watch, man. But they had to reach over the edge to get down in there. But they pick it up, the vibration from the fish or something. Yeah, I think that they have almost polarized. But he's not seen there. He's not seen. So they're underneath. Under the water.

Feeling the vibration. In a perforated steel tub. But I feel like they would, I don't know, they would just. Feel the vibrations with their feet or something. Yeah, they'd know that those fish were there. Because that's what, even in the muddy water, there's a lot, like the herons would actually walk and kick up small prey. And then they would essentially jab where they thought it was going. Like a bonefish does.

Yeah, they just kind of like push things up with their feet. And then as they felt it swim away, go for it. But it's a lot. They also have to deal with things that we have to deal with as well, like water refraction and other things that make it hard to spear fish underwater when you're above. And then imagine not having good water visibility or clarity or low densities yeah just makes it it's a hard knock life for the heron when you think you look at him on the beach going oh yeah do that that bastard he is a yeah he's got it made and

that's not the case all the time yeah no that's good stuff man so thursdays th, 8 p.m. Watch it. And then what's really cool is if you don't have television. Oh, we forgot to say. It's on Sportsman Channel. It's on the same network. Same network, same time. Sportsman Channel. So I wonder, you may be a TiVo meat eater. Maybe I wonder if it's on that time slot or if it's on the name.

It may just pop up. It's probably on the name, though. But if you are a meat eater fan, which most people listening, I imagine, are, you can just tune into the same bat time, same bat channel. And if mugs want to check you out on Twitter, Facebook, what should they do? At Remy Warren or Apex Predator TV. But, see, I'm more of a non-traditional media user myself. I'm traveling all the time.

I like to watch stuff on Netflix, internet-based stuff. So the bonus part is if you don't have the network or you don't have TV, you can go to apexpredator.tv and just click on by the episode or the season and the time it airs. Is that a VHX deal? VHX deal. So when it airs on sportsman's channel, like that week you get it in your inbox. Yeah.

So you can go, you don't have to wait until the end of the season. You get it that night. But no, cause meat eaters like meat, a meat eater dot VHX dot TV. Go to apex predator dot TV. That's it. Yep. And then it'll, there's the link for the VHX.TV Go to ApexPredator.TV That's it? Yep. And then there's the link for the VHX. It's all right there.

And you get it. And I think it downloads at 8.30 p.m. You can stream it or download it. Exactly. Can you buy a single episode? You can buy a single episode. Or I'm pretty sure you can get the seat. What's a single episode worth?

$2.99. Sweet. Worth checking out. And you don't have you can get the seat. What's a single episode worth? $2.99. Sweet. Worth checking out. And you don't have to wait until the end. While everyone else is watching it, you just wait 30 minutes. Boom. You got it. For those that don't have television, which there's probably quite a few out there that don't.

I didn't for the longest time. $2.99. It's worth that. You'll learn that much worth of stuff. Yeah. Definitely. If you want to see those old Meteor episodes with Remy and Steve in that sweet New Zealand country we were talking about,

you can go to meteater.vhx.tv, and it's in Volume 3. Or if you go to themeateater.com, you'll find links to go find and download those episodes. Yeah. And we sell, like, media's are up in these little blocks. They're all in one block. The New Zealand ones. You can buy all the New Zealand shows.

You'll be able to see, like, a lot of the stuff we covered about New Zealand, it's kind of like if you watch those all together, you'll kind of get, you know, you'll get the picture of New Zealand. Those are some of my favorite episodes. They're good, man. Just the the visual it just looks awesome yeah well and then crossing the river was pretty sweet i re-watched those ones all i'm like that oh great man we had a mo yeah he diamond mo fallon man done a good job he's like just a great great cinematographer and he shot those episodes that are beautiful man we shouldn't have tied that rope to you, but I don't care.

We did it. Gone and done it. Yeah. Step one, never tie yourself to a rope across a river. I don't know. Live to tell the tale. Exactly. All right.

Concluding thoughts, Yanni? Oh, Yanni's got his Hunt to Eat t-shirt on. Go to, what is it, hunttoeat.com? Yep. Go buy one of Yanni's t-shirts on go to um go to what is it hunt to eat.com yep go buy one of yanni's t-shirts hunt to eat.com thank you that's ryan's concluding thought remy i i'm gonna go buy a hunt to eat t-shirt and then are you really yeah i like this one yanni never has them in stock he sells them out faster than they can print them. They look pretty sweet. We have some that hopefully by the time this podcast airs,

we'll be back in stock. HuntD.com. Buy Yanni's t-shirts. Then Yanni's going to take all of his money and invest it in Wealthfront. And bicycles. And fantasy football.

Or baseball. And then he's going to come out in New Zealand. Concluding thoughts? Don't worry about Yanni hunting. Oh, I'm not worried. Yanni used to be a hunting guy. Then he came to work with us. But the other day we had a day off.

Goes out and got a turkey. See? Don't worry about that kid. All right, concluding thoughts? If you have not seen Apex Predator, you have to check it out. And you can do so on apexpredator.tv or Sportsman's channel. So what's the website, though? Apexpredator.tv.

Or www.apexpredator.tv. Easy. Yeah. Anybody can remember that. And then, obviously, we've got my favorite thing about the show is our web videos. If you want to have a good laugh or see something crazy, you have to check out our web videos. Yeah, so go check out some content. You can see what Remy looks like.

We've got some crazy stuff. You're not married yet, are you? I am not married. Remy's still in the market. I am single. Wow. Yeah. stuff. You're not married yet, are you? I am not married. Remy's still in the market. I am single. Wow. Yeah. Ladies.

You know what? But that's what you get when you travel around 24-7. How old are you, Remy? I just turned 30 a few weeks ago. Do you have a large investment portfolio? I've got a large portfolio, yes. Okay, so Remy, he's got a huge investment portfolio. Single. Four freezers?

Four freezers. Good-looking kid. Doug? Doug's married. Any thoughts? I'm excited about this $299 deal on the Apex Predator because I don't have cable anymore. So I'm in. Did you buy one of Yanni's t-shirts yet?

That's the next thing I'm doing. 2XL. We have those in stock. How much are those? Same price as the other ones. $24.95. Doesn't cost any extra to be a big guy. So $25 plus $3 to buy one of Remy's shows. $28.

You'll be looking good and watching good. Alright. That's it. I don't have any concluding thoughts. My concluding thought is we get a lot of people who are always writing in to ask a good bang for your buck, elk hunt, because they live in the east and they want to go out and do an elk hunt. Check out Remy, too, for that. Good elk hunts.

Affordable elk hunts. I'm pretty jam-packed. Never mind. Don't go talk to Remy. Go out and hunt Doug's place. Come in from the backside. Come in from the backside. There aren't any elk there, though. Come in from the backside and shoot a giant whitetail at Doug's place. Go with a bow. Go with a bow and hunt weekdays.

If you placed yourself, no one's going to hear you say nothing. All right, kids. Thank you for listening.