The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 017

Episode Date: September 3, 2015

Seattle, Washington. The Complete Podcast Accompaniment to the Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game. Steven Rinella talks with Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew about the n...ewly released guidebook. Subjects discussed: how Janis became the world's most powerful t-shirt magnate; the problem with gun writers; why Steve isn’t cut out for reading any post-WWII hunting material; the making of the guidebook; what's in the guidebook; why Steve thinks you are smarter before you get married and have kids; making sense of cartridge nomenclature systems; wildlife photographer John Hafner; hunting mentors; the importance of being a versatile big game hunter; authors Jack O’Connor, Robert Ruark, and Chuck Hawks; cutting through the BS of archery equipment; good hunting etiquette on private property; inside tips on how to get good hunting info; and plenty more. 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.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:00:37 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 meet. All right, everybody. This is the best news to ever happen in the entire history of everything. Individual meat eater episodes from our new season, I'm talking the TV show, not this here podcast, are available for instant streaming and HD downloads right after they air on TV.
Starting point is 00:01:13 So you get a new episode every Thursday. There's no embargo where you got to wait a long time to get a new episode. It comes out on TV. You go to your computer. You watch it on your computer. No problem. Head over to meateater.vhx.tv to instantly watch the new season of Meat Eater in HD. Use the promo code MEATEATERPODCAST at checkout, and you get five bucks off any of our previous volumes.
Starting point is 00:01:40 Go check it out. Prime viewing for you. Hey, this is the uh hunt to eat podcast actually that's a lie it's the meat eater podcast but yanni is selling hunt to eat t-shirts tell them about him yanni hunt to eat t-shirts my brother and i started this project maybe three years ago now really yeah yeah it started slowly we started talking about it you know but how it came about was the fact that i love to hunt i love to tell people about hunting i love to wear i wanted to wear a hunting t-shirt that represented really the way i felt about hunting and i really didn't feel like I could find that at Cabela's and Sportsman's at the time. So we started making our own hunting shirts.
Starting point is 00:02:29 How many states you got now? Montana, Colorado, Texas. And we have a couple just kind of blank hunting shirts, not state affiliated. No, I've always been able to say, because I'm always plugging Yanni's t-shirts not state affiliated no i've always been able to say because i'm always plugging yanni's t-shirt company his t-shirt empire because i don't uh you know i don't have any stake in the game right back me up on this no all you get is a couple free t-shirts all i get is a couple free t-shirts i already have too many t-shirts but now that's going to change because Yanni is actually going to be working on his design. He and his design team at the corporate headquarters. World headquarters.
Starting point is 00:03:15 At the Huntee World headquarters are going to be working up a meat eater Huntee shirt. Nope. It actually got, the design got approved late last night and uh the uh graphics guys doing the final artwork on it this week so i haven't even seen it but this new shirt is going to be available through meat eater channels and also through yanni's own hunt to eat what's your hunt to eat.com yes sir h-u-n-t-t-o-e-a-t yeah don't put the two letter two in there yeah t-o someone else already snagged that don't main name really yeah did you find out who well we've it's the same thing with like meateater.com you know we've tried to contact him left and right and it's you know he's got
Starting point is 00:03:58 a facebook page but it's more it's like hunting for restaurants is kind of oh is the basis but there's nothing there you know uh we're gonna talk about now that we're done plugging yanni's t-shirt company where actually the thing i want to talk about been working on called the complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game volume one big game volume two small game but first i want to like talk about a different aspect of books and it's because yannis my whole life like my whole professional life or hunting life, whatever, both of those lives,
Starting point is 00:04:49 people have been telling me to read Jack O'Connor, who is, you'll hear main descriptions of the guy, but he's like the granddaddy. Okay. The first, the original, what's known as a gun writer,
Starting point is 00:05:03 right? Yeah. He was at Alder Life for a bazillion years he was doing like the bulk of his hunting and writing kind of in the post-world war two years okay up and up well into the 70s and if you own a 270 you you own a 270 because of Jack O'Connor. He was a great champion of that cartridge. And I was guilty of having never, despite everybody always saying, oh, you should read Jack O'Connor. I never read Jack O'Connor.
Starting point is 00:05:36 One of the things people always tell me about to read Jack O'Connor is because he liked to hunt coos deer, and I like coos deer. He's also a big sheep guy. So I started reading. Yanni gave me a book. It's like the complete Jack O'Connor. Yeah, some sort of like a compilation, greatest of, I think.
Starting point is 00:05:55 Yeah. It's been a very difficult read for me. Why? I'll start out by saying this. I'll start out saying Jack O'Connor. And I encourage you, listeners, I encourage you to go read some Jack o'connor what jack o'connor has going for him is he's a fantastic writer okay he's a he's a great writer yes when you read some of those stories i feel like when he's talking about even though it's a warm beer because back then they didn't refrigerate their
Starting point is 00:06:24 beer well when they're out camping he talked about coming back from a coos deer hunt when he's talking about, even though it's a warm beer, because back then they didn't refrigerate their beer when they were out camping. He talks about coming back from a coos deer hunt and sitting in a hot tent but cracking this warm beer. And man, when he describes it, I was like, man, I'm right there drinking that beer with you. Yeah. That was great.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Great writer. Has unique ways of getting into and out of his stories you know a phenomenal craftsman of words but i just like the whole like gun writer thing is always very troubling to me because like you get the sense marino connor that guy wouldn't go on a squirrel hunt without a guide you think yeah he just like he in some ways the old gun riders and some gun riders they're like they seem like trigger men they are out there to shoot right and everything else to them is just like besides the shooting everything else to them is just like details they can't be bothered with right but i feel like back in his day it's like take me out so i can shoot something that's what i feel like their attitude is and he's got this thing too like this like he
Starting point is 00:07:40 probably started this the whole gun writer thing where he goes he's talking about shooting at these doll sheep and reading his description brings to mind now what everyone's great fear is about long range shooting like now like long range she's like oh people are taking these shots they shouldn't be taken yeah but here's jack o'connor like bragging up about taking 300 yard shots at doll sheep running full tilt yep and he's like aiming eight feet off the end of its nose gets up there he's got one in the jaw one in the ass one on the back one through the lungs and then he goes into that dumb thing gun writers go into where he's like okay so he like fills this thing full of holes taking shots he should never be taken eventually drags it down to the ground and he's like oh and the uh 68 grain you know or the 160 grain boat tail pushed by 56 grains of and a blank primer
Starting point is 00:08:34 really did its job i'm like you didn't right it's just ridiculous it's like when you're reading gun writers now and they always have that part where like we went to wherever to africa to test out the new load and they talk about this hunt they're like and the bullet really it's like really like that's that's that's not how people test things in real life so you can't like act like that's a test right right it's just you're just making anecdotal observations and here your anecdotal observation is based off blasting away at a dull sheep at 300 yards, this running full tilt. He's like every shot the guy takes makes you cringe. He's got up.
Starting point is 00:09:10 He's got. That was almost a hundred years ago. No. Yeah. Yeah. So I just feel like there was, there were different ethics back then. I'm not talking about different ethics. I'm talking about, it's just like, yeah, but it's the same people stuff are saying now
Starting point is 00:09:24 people act like, oh, the old days. Right right so people think about jack o'connor right like the old days yeah people didn't take these shots that were you know people were experienced and and um you know one like the old one shot one bullet deal and now you got these long range guys taking shots they should never be taken and here here's this iconic, like everyone's favorite gun writer, right? Taking ridiculous shots that guys nowadays don't take. Yeah, no, people still do take them. I don't think you'll find many doll sheep hunters who are shooting at full tilt running doll sheep at 300 yards.
Starting point is 00:09:58 I doubt it. I think a lot of guys would be like, nope. But here's a guy getting famous off that stuff. No, I'm going to disagree. He's going to take a crack at a doll sheep where there's a U standing there and a ram standing behind the U, and he can just see the crest of its back behind the U, and he takes a shot seeing if he can't nick its spine.
Starting point is 00:10:22 He's taking ass shots, ear shots, like he's just shooting that's what i'm saying that's how it was okay people hunted it was okay to do that back then i still think that now maybe not skimming one over the back of a you and into the spine of one is something someone's going to try today but i still feel like people are taking i mean mean, think about Antelope. How many dudes do you think are shooting at running Antelope with 300 yards every day? I've killed running Antelope. Sure. That's true.
Starting point is 00:10:54 Yeah, like, I just feel like now people are discussing that more in a is this okay to do ethics type of conversation, where back then it was okay. I mean, look at Art Young and Saxon Pope. Those boys used to launch, they used to go on hunt trips with like a thousand arrows because they'd see one game animal at 100 yards and would just start launching like a war,
Starting point is 00:11:18 just raining arrows, and that's the beginning of the Pope and Young Club. Yeah, no, my old man, that's a good point. My old man was involved in Pope and Young way ago, like in the 50s. He was bow hunting back before there were bow seasons. And he knew this guy from the Chicago, because he was big into Chicago bowman, like a Chicago area archery club before he moved to Michigan where I was born. And there was some guy at this club called Art LaHa. I guess he was some kind of big, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:46 big swinging dick figure in Bohan at the time. And he had this video he made where he went up to Alaska and just shooting, you know. And I remember he pulls up, he's out with some Eskimo hunters off the west coast of Alaska and pulls up on some walrus on an ice flow and puts an arrow into a walrus. And it's like the walrus didn't even know it happened. Right.
Starting point is 00:12:14 And he's just kind of curious what had happened. It's like the walrus just didn't even register the shot. Yeah, it's just like a different. That was a real world test. Yeah. That's pre-Marine... That was a real-world test. Yeah. That's pre-Marine Mammal Protection Act, obviously. So you might have a point with just like the standards have changed over the years,
Starting point is 00:12:34 but I expected, just after hearing about O'Connor all these years, I expected to read it and have a guy who had some reasonable things to say about making the shot right here's this old guy the old guard right your master the original and you read it and you're expecting to hear like just great insights about making the shot instead it's just a book of page after page after page of you know five bucks came running by and we all just opened up we got over there we didn't know if we got any yeah you you went in there with expectations
Starting point is 00:13:17 that was where you messed up you went in there thinking you knew what you're gonna read there um but he's a good writer yeah no i just i feel like he was just a he was a i mean a what do you want to call it a gun rider or a trigger man trigger man gun an adventure rider he just wrote about the hunts that he went on you know yeah it's been difficult for me reading reading jack well Well, the reason I gave you that book. I was sitting on the couch next to my woman last night reading a little Jack O'Connor. I haven't taken it lightly. I'm reading the damn thing. My brother told me to read it.
Starting point is 00:13:54 And you and everybody. Yeah. The other guy I still haven't read that everybody talks about is Rourke. What's his name? Rourke? Rourke? Rourke. Rourke? Yeah. Some big African game hunter robert yeah robert ruark
Starting point is 00:14:08 i gotta read him too but i'm kind of you know what i'm not into like was he writing in that same time period yes i'll read anything about hunt that was written pre-world war one but i think i'm just not cut out for post-war. When I say post-war, I mean post-World War II. I'm not cut out for the post-war generation of which my father was a member. Who, and here's his image right here on my desk, sitting there with a Pope and Young Colorado black bear that he killed. Yanni was commenting on that because there's a pack of hounds there and you can no longer hunt bears with hounds in Colorado. That and his apparel
Starting point is 00:14:50 dates that photo. And before we started recording here, Yanni was talking about how now, you know, we all run around in synthetics for mountain hunting. And he's like, how did you manage all that wet stuff?
Starting point is 00:15:02 Cotton and wool. Yeah. Did dudes spend more time tending to their duds or did they spend more time wet? Yeah. And it's all relative. You know, it's not like they were any more uncomfortable than we are when we're out there. No, but keep in mind too, like this. He had spent a couple years hiking from Southern Italyaly up into europe during world war ii and
Starting point is 00:15:28 living in a hole in the ground so imagine like you know just people who camp a lot camp better you know so at that way like yeah maybe after that like that generation of guys that fought probably were able to deal with a lot of discomfort the same way that you and i will deal with a lot more discomfort than people who haven't been camping much you just learn to get you become accustomed to the feeling of wet stuff um watch this i'm gonna do this amazing segue right now so o'connor wrote a book and we're here to talk about a book that we have that's coming out now like right now complete guide to hunting and butchering and cooking wild game now when this whole thing started
Starting point is 00:16:13 i can't remember how it was just like it became this idea that i had and it's that a handful of the guys that I work with at 0.0 production, we started putting together this idea of this book because we had been accumulating a lot of great images and information and had the luxury of really traveling
Starting point is 00:16:38 around, meeting a lot of phenomenal hunters. What the hell are you doing, Yanni? Setting a timer. And sold this book idea to the publisher i work with which is uh spiegel and grouts imprint at random house and and sold this book idea and i mistakenly put down as we were putting this proposal together i put down the word complete so it's gonna be the complete guide to hunting and butchering, hunting, butchering, and cooking wild game. And I learned over the following handful of years that you should not throw around the word complete when talking about a book, because as we started to outline the project, everything that came up,
Starting point is 00:17:23 you'd be like, well, should we have something on this? Should we have something on that? And you'd always have to say, well, yeah, because this is the complete guide. It should have been called the truncated guide to hunting, butchering, cooking wild game or, you know, the basic guide. But no, it's the complete guide. And we worked on it for a few years by the time it was done the book came in at 750 pages long
Starting point is 00:17:56 and i sat down with my publisher and she kindly tried to explain that you just can't it's just very difficult you just don't really make books that big so we were faced with this thing of either trimming the book out now when i wrote my buffalo book which is a narrative non-fiction book okay it's like a book that tells a story it It actually tells two stories. It tells a story of a very involved hunt I did for Buffalo on a special lottery license that I drew in Alaska. It tells that story. And then along with that story, it tells the story of the species, of the creature from the ice ages up until the present day. Very dramatic story about an animal. That was a narrative book.
Starting point is 00:18:48 That came in long. I remember I cut 100 pages out of that book. And it was painful to cut those pages out. But then the book's better. It reads better. It's like I was never writing better. I was never writing as good. I'll never write better than I was writing when I wrote my Buffalo book.
Starting point is 00:19:02 I now know. That was pre-marriage and pre-kids. You're smarter. I think you're a lot smarter before you get married and have kids. You don't agree with that, Yanni? No. Not in my case. It wears your brain down.
Starting point is 00:19:20 It does. It wears your brain down. The exhaustion and you don't have time to read um but with this book with the guidebook it wasn't like that man i couldn't stand getting rid of the stuff and so we hit on this idea we're going to split it into big game and small game and it was different than just taking like an exacto knife right or like it was different than just separating it out just change the whole nature of the project and that added we'd already been over two years into that added another year into it to build the complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game
Starting point is 00:19:55 volume one big game volume two small game a thing that's frustrated me um the name of the book has led a lot of people to to like write and ask about like the recipe book but the cookbooks or butchering books they are that okay the books are that but they're much much more than that and the way this thing works i want you to feel right now like you're watching qvc. You're watching a show, an infomercial show. So just try to get yourself in that mind frame where you're ready to call them with a credit card. Because the way the book works is I have volume one in my hand. Volume one's available now. Volume two will be available in a couple months.
Starting point is 00:20:40 Volume one is divided into five sections. Section one, what is an introduction? Then even section one and section one deals with gear. All aspects of gear with very heavy emphasis on answering the types of questions and we get many hundreds of them that come into the meat eater website from both new and experienced hunters about gear preferences so it covers gear up to i mean from hunting out your back door to hunting in the deepest back country around. Section two, I'm going to walk through these a little bit more to explain better. Section two is tactics and strategies.
Starting point is 00:21:36 Okay. So it deals with the basics of hunting and lays down sort of a working vocabulary of different hunting methodologies, hunting methods. We'll talk about those a little bit more. Section three is big game species and methods. In this section, we have very detailed profiles on 14 of north america's most popular big game animals from biologic details how to read sign, best hunting methods, archery, rifle, early season, late season, calling, lay it all out. Animal by animal. Section four. At this point that we're into section four, you're into the 300th page of volume one.
Starting point is 00:22:40 So there's 300 pages preceding this, right? But starting at page 300, you enter into butchering. And butchering covers all aspects of field dressing, butchering, even up to packaging for the freezer, big game. And this isn't just like how to cut up a deer on a workbench at home we deal with butchering issues in backcountry skinning methods for you know caping heads black bear rugs everything and i'm talking soup to nuts or nuts to kidneys with great pictures to back it all amazing. Amazing pictures. Because here's the deal. If you normally go out and buy a book, here's one thing we're able to do. So we've made like 60 some episodes of Meat Eater.
Starting point is 00:23:38 Plus, I've been hunting and swapping pictures of my hunting buddies my entire life. So I have a big catalog of images. But 60 episodes of Meat Eater. And the way the technology is now, we're able to use screen grabs. So we're able to grab images, publishable quality images out of footage to use to enhance step-by-step procedures in the book. 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.
Starting point is 00:24:09 And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of 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
Starting point is 00:24:29 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
Starting point is 00:24:45 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
Starting point is 00:25:02 hand-picked 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. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. The other image thing. Well, I'll get to the images in a minute.
Starting point is 00:25:36 Finally, section five, cooking big game. Now, this section is actual recipes. I'm talking, you go into your freezer, open the door, pull out a package, butchered and processed in the way that's described in section four, and what you actually do with it. I mean, teaspoon of this, tablespoon of that, recipes. And these are highlight recipes. Proven great things that I love to cook, that friends of mine love to cook,
Starting point is 00:26:08 recipes that we've kind of developed over time by sharing information back and forth, things that were inspired by some chefs that I know that I like to cook wild game, just like great recipes. And no make-believe recipes. Like a lot of times you open up a cookbook and there'll be a recipe like, you know, take some duck confit and put it on pasta. It's like, dude, that's not a recipe
Starting point is 00:26:33 because you're not telling me how to make duck confit. You're assuming I'm going out and buying it and then I'm putting it on recipes. Like if that's a recipe, then you might as well put one in there called peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or butter and bread, you know? These are like real
Starting point is 00:26:45 recipes that you build from the ground up not like so many recipes like like god bless them but when i'm looking at a mario batali cookbook i mean great cook obviously just you know great guy great cook but a lot of times it's like basically you're going down to an italian you're going down to a high-end italian deli buying three or four things coming home and mixing them together it's like you didn't make any of that junk like you didn't make the pancetta you know it's like you're just like compiling things that someone else made for you this is like real cooking ground up full balls from scratch cooking all that being said i feel like they're not overly complicated no like. Everyone that I've tried out of here, read through it a couple of times.
Starting point is 00:27:28 I'm like, all right, I can do this. The recipes lay a foundation for just understanding how to work with wild game. If you went through and cooked all the things in here, you'd be like, I get it. Because if you do the Big Sky Roasted Head, which is based off one of my favorite Mountain Man books, The Big Sky by Guthrie. He always talked about his characters in this book love to roast mule deer heads. So we had a great roast mule deer head recipe where you're basically taking like, you know, it's a taco dish with some jowl meat. Once you roast the head for that thing, you'll never look at a head, pig head, any kind of head the same way again. You'd be like, man, there is some treasure inside that head. You might not go and make the tacos I describe in the book,
Starting point is 00:28:16 but you're going to learn a lot about something that you've been throwing in the, you know, out in the woods or in a dumpster for a long time. So it was meant to build up one's foundation. You wanted to talk about photography. Talk about photography, Giannis. Yeah, well, starting with the butchering section, I feel like I've looked through a lot of other books
Starting point is 00:28:40 that have talked about butchering animals, game animals, and whatnot. And it seems like either it's like great pictures without having the writing to explain it or vice versa but not really both together i feel like we did a great job of you can read it and if you don't quite understand it you look right next to that and there's the image that you're like oh all right that's what they're talking about there's that that pelvic crest you know they need to chop out to you know to pull the uh the guts all the way through the animal yeah no i think
Starting point is 00:29:11 they're good and we put a ton of emphasis on that like someone on our team britney brothers actually i mean over all those years i'm talking about we worked on this she was during all that time that we're writing this book is operating at large as like a photo editor to help find and pull out the best images to explain everything we explain here there's a beauty quality to it too because we use a very prominent hunting photographer named John Hafner. We hired John when we were doing the recipe shoot. So we rented a house and went up for a week and just cooked and tested recipes, photographed recipes. Hafner did that. So all the food stuff is John Hafner work. If you go look up John Hafner, you're going to see some hunting stuff that will blow your mind.
Starting point is 00:30:02 John Hafner shot all that. At the same time, just out of the goodness of this dude's heart, he opened up his vast catalog of hunting images and wildlife images. It rivals anything you see in Nat Geo, I feel like. Just go into
Starting point is 00:30:20 his website and just cruise around and look at his images. You'll find yourself lost and burning time, you know, and just taken to different faraway places. He's got some great stuff. Yeah, Hafner likes to hunt, man. Like, he likes to hunt. But he's even said to me he'd rather – he likes to hunt with a camera.
Starting point is 00:30:37 Yeah. You know, likes to photograph wildlife. And so we have a lot of great wildlife imagery in here. Also, the gear – so, like, wildlife imagery in here also the gear so like jump back talk about the gear stuff we kind of like kick off the gear section with a quote by even though i was just trash talking gun writers we kick off the gear section with a quote by a gun writer that i do admire greatly chuck haw Hawk. The one and only. Let me ask you a quick question, though.
Starting point is 00:31:08 Are there any others right now you can just name off the top of your head that you do admire? That I admire? Yeah, gun writers. Like a gun writer? Yeah. No. And I'll tell you why.
Starting point is 00:31:16 I'm going to read the quote that kicks off the gear section. I'm going to read Chuck Hawk's quote. Don't be intimidated by anyone's experience, including mine. There have been, and still are a few good writers with vast experience in the firearms field. There are also plenty of plain old fools writing about guns and shooting and plenty of younger fools as well. Gun writers, especially those who have to produce a regular column love controversy that column
Starting point is 00:31:46 becomes a beast that must be fed every month so the columnist is always hungry for something to write about and controversial ideas generate reader interest and response perhaps it is understandable if they sometimes go overboard just don't go overboard with them the reason i put that at the head of the gear section i can't remember who did you find that quote i don't i don't even know where you did from chuck hawks actually contributed to volume two where truck hawks writes this great treatise on the double deuce the 22 most popular cartridge ever he writes a great piece breaking down the history and versatility
Starting point is 00:32:27 and different ammunition options for a small game hunter of the 22 and it was great he's the most reasonable gun writer out there and it's funny that his quote kind of like takes a stab at his profession because it is it's true if you open up those things like you know like newsletters you get they'd be like 10 overrated cartridges 10 underrated cartridges 10 sleeper long range cartridges they love the 10 list it's just like what in the world so what we try to cut through in the gear section is just all the noise okay because to be honest with you this is going to make guys cringe and this is something people fight about in bars you know to be honest with you a lot of the distinctions that get drawn between calibers that let me put it there for you there's a ton
Starting point is 00:33:18 of distinctions and debate happening between calibers that are just like you really can't tell them apart in a hunting standpoint no it's just like people like yeah i really can't decide between the then and then it's all it's fighting over nuances you're fighting over very little and it's like if you're taking reasonable shots you know if you become aware of your capabilities and you're realistic about your capabilities and you're putting your shots through lungs
Starting point is 00:33:55 it's just like people are writing and debating about points that are just pointless they should be taking all that energy to talk about their damn boots. Right. Or, yeah,
Starting point is 00:34:10 so much other stuff about the calibers, whether it's the bullet construction or taking time to learn about shot placement, wherever it might be. But I think it comes down to just basic ignorance because people started fighting about calibers. Yet, I had a guy the other day that did not know that the.30-06
Starting point is 00:34:27 and the.300 Win Mag shoot the exact same bullet. If you choose a 125-grain.30-caliber bullet or a 180-grain.30-caliber bullet, you can put that same bullet in either one of those two cartridges and put it down the barrel of the respective gun. But people just look at one that says Magnum behind it, and they think, oh, man. I'm just like, I'm throwing a grenade at the animal versus just the old piddly.30-06.
Starting point is 00:34:52 Well, it's just not the case. One bullet, the only difference, really, when it comes down to shooting that animal is that one bullet might be moving 100 feet or 200 feet faster. That's exactly the kind of information that try to put in here is like helping people cut through some of the noise and make good gear decisions without getting bogged down in details they don't want to get bogged down in but But that doesn't mean that it's like, the thing I focus on with these books, and we talked about constantly, is they're not for beginners exclusively,
Starting point is 00:35:32 and they're not for experts exclusively. Every page in here is going to have something that's going to surprise you. Because the books give you opinions right you get yannis's opinion put forth as an opinion on issues you get my opinion put forth as an opinion on issues and you'll get opinions given as such given as personal opinions from many of the best hunters i've been lucky to meet around the country the book is full of sections called weighs in on where like so-and-so like Chuck Hawks weighs in on the 22. Yanni Patel weighs in on his regimen, his, yeah, his regimen for practicing archery ahead of a hunt. How would you put it um yeah just the the the preparate the
Starting point is 00:36:26 basically the summer prior kind of the year prior preparation yeah how do you know when you're ready for a bow hunt yeah basically like yeah how do you know when you're ready to go on a bow hunt for real yeah well i want to make a note on that all the ways in i feel like it's so reflective of how one becomes a hunter becomes a good hunter on their own, because I've had so many mentors, you know, I can just off the top of my head list 20 mentors that have all been weighing in on me for, you know, 30 years. And you just take a little bit here, take a little bit there, and you kind of formulate your own program, you know, and then eventually, you know, you can weigh in on, you know, that, that certain subject, but that's how I feel like this book is, you know, you can just go through
Starting point is 00:37:08 there and, you know, pick a little bit from all these different people and then, you know, go forth on your own path. Yeah. That's a point I try to make again and again is like, don't discount the information that you already know to be true. I would never say, oh, pick this up and drop everything you found to be true because this is the real truth. It's just different. Learning hunting works differently than that. Yeah, and the subject is too vast to ever do that.
Starting point is 00:37:40 I used to always shoot Remington Coralock bullets. I thought Manny's things worked great. Love him, never had a problem. And I eventually grew suspicious of the bullet just because people were always talking about other bullets. I'm like, well, there must be something wrong with my own findings. Don't fall into that trap.
Starting point is 00:37:58 If it works for you, it works, but this is going to help you inform your thinking and it also gets into stuff like even though we're just kind of like laughing about these endless controversies about what caliber is best we have a big section on called cartridge nomenclature that breaks down what all these things mean when you hear people say they were out shooting a 45 70 405 or you know the difference between the millimeter cartridges and the standard like 308 cartridges the 762 by 39 like how to understand these numbers and how to have a conversation with people and when they name things how to like get what they're talking about not just because you memorize each particular
Starting point is 00:38:42 cartridge and what it means, but how to make sense out of the numerical system used to describe cartridges, right? Maybe that's stuff you need to be a better hunter, but stuff you just need to be able to process information better when you're seeing it.
Starting point is 00:38:56 A lot of stuff about rifle scopes. Defining the terms that you see when you buy rifle scopes and the terms you see when you buy binoculars and making sense out of what those terms mean which ones are important and which ones are not a section on muzzle loaders including an explanation of why you should if you're a versatile well-rounded big game hunter and that's really what the book's trying to make you is a versatile well-rounded big game hunter why and that's really what the book's trying to make you, is a versatile, well-rounded big game hunter, why you should probably think real seriously about getting into muzzleloader hunting if you haven't already.
Starting point is 00:39:32 Yeah. And just looking at that muzzleloader page makes me think of something, because I've just looked through the first 20 pages here, and there are companies and brands across the board. I think that's important to note that like, we weren't held to anybody's check when we were writing this. No. Right?
Starting point is 00:39:52 This was done completely independently. Yeah. No company, even companies I have great relationships with, no company had the door into this book open to them. You will find recommendations for things across the board. You'll find images of many different types of gear. It's just not a catalog.
Starting point is 00:40:23 Don't worry about that. A very thorough explanation of MOA. What minute of angle means. How it applies to you and your life. Rifle cleaning. A heavy section on archery equipment. Making sense of archery equipment. Cutting through the BS of archery equipment and arrows and broadheads.
Starting point is 00:40:43 Field maintenance kits. A heavy section on hunting optics. How to select optics, what they mean, what you need on a backpack hunt, what you can do without on a backpack hunt. How to decide if you want 8X or 10X binoculars. And the choice really kind of comes down to that unless you already have a good pair. How to make sense of range finders big thing about blade tools what blade tools you need on backpack and backcountry hunts what blade
Starting point is 00:41:12 tools you never leave home without survival kits and utility kits i don't even use the word survival kit anymore because my kit a utility kit i carry that thing i could be hunting like cranes in texas or doll sheep in alaska i have a little baggie that i switch out what's in it but just my utility kit it's my emergency kit and you can have emergencies such as like a broken gun anywhere so how to have a kit that you are constantly upgrading and adapting for what you're doing that almost eliminates or can help eliminate the panic you have
Starting point is 00:41:56 when you realize that you should have something and you don't have it with you. Maps and navigation tools. A very healthy, spirited section on apparel. How to layer your clothes. How to make decisions between synthetics
Starting point is 00:42:14 and wools. Is camo clothing and scent control clothing worth the expense? The answer is more complicated than you might think. A lot of stuff about staying warm. A lot of stuff about boots,
Starting point is 00:42:32 including my opinion that footwear, no, foot problems, ruin more hunts than any other problem. When I think of people just having a bad time on a hunt or having to call off a hunt, footwear causes that. Yeah, and that's definitely a little more true towards, like, Western mountain hunting.
Starting point is 00:42:56 No, no. No? Even freezing your ass hunting ducks in Michigan. Right. You got to have the right footwear to keep your feet warm for sure. Yeah. But, yeah, the blisterswear to keep your feet warm for sure. Yeah. But yeah, the blisters and issues,
Starting point is 00:43:08 mountain hunts for sure. But just like feet problems kill people. Feet ruin hunts. Yeah. What doesn't ruin a hunt is that, man, I brought my 30-06
Starting point is 00:43:18 and should have brought my 300. That's just not in real life. That's not a conversation you hear. What you hear is, dude dude i should have listened to you when you said that i should break my boots in for real before i go on this trip we're waterproof from properly and know how to do it because my feet have been wet for three days and i want to go home yep yanni's wonderful section on waterproofing boots the tools necessary then a big section
Starting point is 00:43:45 specific to backcountry hunting because it's like i find that many guys like in my age group my level interest in hunting that live in the east want to do in their life you know they want to do in their life, they want to do some backcountry hunts. They want to go on that Colorado elk hunt. It's intimidating to get into what do I really need? What do you carry? What is actually in your pack on a backpack hunt? I think that this will help immensely. It's not pushing
Starting point is 00:44:22 one product over another. I'm looking not pushing one product over another. I'm looking at a page here right now. I'm looking at an outdoorsman's pack system, an archeric's pack system, a mystery ranch pack system. Pros and cons of each. But basically, it's grabbing good gear that I like and that my friends like. And kind of rather than boring you with the stuff that doesn't work it's like the stuff that does work for people why it works for people
Starting point is 00:44:50 um stuff on loading a pack okay how to handle big weights on a pack how to pack when you're going out that you know you might be coming back heavy with gain. Sleeping in shelter. Tents, bags, sleeping pads. Bivy sacks. Are they a waste of money or not? I would say, yeah. I'm telling you why I think that they're a waste of money. Keeping warm at night in your sleeping bag. Camp stoves. I'm talking for truck hunting, car camping, to backpack hunting. Pros and cons of stoves.'m talking for truck hunting car camping to backpack hunting pros and cons of stoves how to use them how to manage them how to pack food for a hunt a simple way you can run into a grocery store run into a sporting goods store and go bam bam bam and know that you are equipped with food for however long you're going to be out car camping or backpack hunting. Like just a simple fail proof system of grabbing food for a hunt where you're not going to run out
Starting point is 00:45:52 and you're not going to come back with a bunch of spoiled stuff you never ate. Cookware. How to handle fire and water, meaning purification of water, how to get fires when you need them, despite the, you know, whatever the conditions. A very graphic picture of a crushed finger in backcountry risks. Staying safe in the backcountry. Now, Section 2, Tactics and Strategies. Yanni, walk them through Section 2. Just kind of include the highlights, the stuff that like, kind of what's in there, some surprising things.
Starting point is 00:46:33 I feel like this is where I maybe learned the most because my main hunting career started, you know, once I moved to Colorado at the age of 19, started guiding elk hunts, and I hunted the same spot all the time, and it was shown to me, you know, because that to colorado at the age of 19 started guiding elk hunts and i hunted the same spot all the time and it was shown to me you know because that's where i had to guide where you i think came out west and we're not guiding we're just hunting on your own and so you just you know learned a larger chunk of ground and had to figure out on your own how to find these sweet honey holes that i was pretty much you know shown to and so i feel like you do a great job of really just breaking down like a
Starting point is 00:47:10 um a method of you know looking at maps talking to people plat maps and whatever and little tricks to like go and find your own honey holes which is you know that's awesome that's an important thing i got into with this and i talk about public and private land how to get permissions on private land mainly how to find spots on public land because i find a lot of guys have a vulnerability like you got a guy likes to hunt i've had a lot of friends fall in this trap man they like to hunt they got this spot they hunt deer right and they go there every deer and every day they shoot a deer and that's their spot then Then all of a sudden something happens. Guy that owns it dies,
Starting point is 00:47:47 sells it. Yeah. His nephew gets old enough. Or say he moves. Yeah. The guy moves. Yeah, that's another thing that happens. Your buddy moves
Starting point is 00:47:55 and they never hunt again because they never figured out like how to find hunting spots. It's like, oh, I hunt my mother-in-law's place, you know, and then whatever, you get a divorce,
Starting point is 00:48:04 you don't have a mother-in-law anymore place you know and then whatever you get a divorce you don't have a mother-in-law anymore and then they just hang it up because they can't fathom the process of beginning to find hunting locations oh man and i'm going through it firsthand right now like you wouldn't believe i'm living that every day i mean i moved to montana yes and less than a year ago it's my first year to live as a resident in that state. I've got a pocket full of tags and yet I'm looking at these maps and I'm like, I mean, I have places that I'm going to go and I'm going to hunt because I've figured it out.
Starting point is 00:48:32 But like, I don't have anything on my map circle that says go here. Proven location. So, you know, and that's the thing too. I get into is like a lot of like, not sneaky,
Starting point is 00:48:44 but a lot of things that people don't think about trying totally and i think that shows up even more in the private land section because so many people i think i don't know why now it's it's that way when you know 20 years ago everybody just went knocked on doors but like people i feel like just don't do it as much anymore and don't think about trying to go and find a free private land hunting spot yeah like they're out there and i got yeah and i include in here some strategies for doing that such as and it's a thing that's worked for me many times is you get your foot in the door with a squirrel hunting or rabbit hunting permission yeah totally that you request
Starting point is 00:49:22 in the winter time when that guy's not getting his door beaten down by people and you prove to be a cool guy who like comes out to hunt squirrels knows how to respect the property knows how to close the gates a little bit there it goes a long way next thing you know brings the guy some zucchini bread right cook some kind of cool thing with the with the rabbits that he got off the guy's property brings him by a little bit of that maybe even emails the dude a couple pictures saying hey man i thought you'd like to see um the awesome dinner i made with the squirrels i shot on your place and he's thinking that crazy son of a bitch ate those squirrels i like that guy yeah and pretty soon he's saying to you you know what you know if you
Starting point is 00:50:05 um you know we got room out here you know if you want to come out and hunt deer you know go ahead yeah and again maybe it starts with a couple does but then two years down the line you gotta look down the line look into the future next thing you know he's like sure you can shoot a buck it's happened to me many times yeah i got a guy he's a friend of mine but he's a he's a landowner and i've been out to his place a hundred few times and after a while he noticed that i never actually really shot anything on this place i'd kind of go out there just to kind of like i'd be like i'm gonna come up but i'd wind up hanging out doing stuff with him you know that kind of won his heart in a way.
Starting point is 00:50:45 I also tell just a couple actual stories about stuff. But also, public land. Tricks you might not think of, like something I like to do, and I've done with some success now and then, is be undercover and interview hikers at trailheads. Not telling them what you're actually trying to drive at, but just talking to them like, hey, what'd you see? Yes. What'd you hear? You know, did you guys see any blank up there?
Starting point is 00:51:12 And you can get some up-to-date information that if you jumped out and said, yeah, I'm hunting, they'd have kept quiet. Yeah, totally. Sneaky little things. Many of them. How to read maps. Bit about using trail cameras and the main thing how to access areas other guys aren't accessing and i don't mean because it's way off in the mountains it just could be because you know you're like parking you know alongside a power line and
Starting point is 00:51:37 you're hammering ducks or in this case big game you're hammering deer in some spot the guys aren't hunting i never thought to bring a pair of chest waders with them and the first thing you got to do is wade across a couple big ditches and also you realize no one's going over there they all go in the other direction because it's like they want to get away from the car yeah i almost i almost fought you on publishing that little tip because i know chest wader deal i know guys that do it and literally it takes them an extra 10 minutes of getting up earlier in the morning and that way they can put them on cross tip because i know chess waiter deal i know guys that do it and literally it takes them an extra 10 minutes of getting up earlier in the morning and that way they can put them on cross the river take them off they stash them under a tree and they have haunting grounds that are just like
Starting point is 00:52:15 under people's noses but people are like oh river yep keep driving can't get across that thing you know if you hunt white tails or you hunt pheasants and stuff and you don't have chest waders sitting in the back of your truck, you're a moron. A big thing about tags and licenses, just kind of breaking down tag draws. It's a thing people are always wondering about. Breaks down over-the-counter stuff.
Starting point is 00:52:40 How over-the-counter stuff works. How registration hunts work work how stuff like governor's auctions are governor's tags good or bad we talk about that and kick that issue along um i'm talking like in an ethical way how do you feel about governor's auctions how you feel or like how to work not how you feel about how to work what's called landowner tags, how to play the points game for dream hunts in Western states. What are the toughest, coolest tags you could possibly draw? I researched that little piece, and that was interesting to me as someone that hunts a lot to really see what are some of the toughest tags to draw
Starting point is 00:53:23 that most of us will never ever draw but i was surprised to find one on the east coast of the uh country and i'll keep that a surprise for you then we get into the methods and it starts off with spock and spot spot and stock hunting and i feel like this is it's a basic overview of each one of these methods but there are points where it gets so detailed i can't call it just a basic overview of spot and stock hunting anymore um got a map that shows you a great way to already pick your glassing locations before you ever even set foot in the country. All different kinds of stuff on glassing, how to use different methods of glassing,
Starting point is 00:54:09 whether it's- Yeah, like how to work a patch of ground with a pair of binoculars. Yeah. Like you sit down and here's like 360 degrees of terrain. You don't glass it like you think. You don't just sit down and be like,
Starting point is 00:54:21 oh, I'm going to start looking around my binoculars. It just doesn't work that way. There's a system. There's a way you break up the landscape and prioritize the landscape and study it in chunks. And that's explained here. 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.
Starting point is 00:54:47 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
Starting point is 00:55:02 are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps 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 Meat Eater Podcast., 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.
Starting point is 00:55:31 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
Starting point is 00:55:54 OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Me and Yanni right now are just lost in reading. Yeah, we're just looking at the pretty pictures.
Starting point is 00:56:16 Binals versus spotting scopes. When is each appropriate for spotting stock hunting? Things like, what do people talk about when they say you're going to put them to bed? Or how to plan stocks on animals you found. you see them go into their bedding area you see them go into their feeding area how to pattern their movements how to plan stalks according to wind and topography big issue yeah and actual actual diagrams and pictures showing that stuff like hey here's a picture this is the actual place that i saw an elk i made a stalk this is how i did it this is what the wind was doing and um it just hammers at home you know you can see it in a picture like that how the wind behaves on a mountain like you always have like wind direction right but the wind gets squirrely in the mountains
Starting point is 00:57:06 due to thermals and the structure of a mountain and how to like make predictions about what the wind's going to be doing and things that override dominant wind conditions okay detailed stuff but very important and anyone who's hunting in the mountains especially the bow is going to know exactly what we're talking about this is going to make sense of some of the observations they may have had or some of the things they didn't put together ambush hunting you know i love our illustration here and we got to give a shout out to piece of jesky because he did an incredible job with our illustrations and it's basically just an illustration showing six different ambush points, funnels, pinch points, whatever you want to call them. And you're probably never going to
Starting point is 00:57:51 see exactly what one of these looks like. But when you look at the whole overall illustration, you get the idea of, okay, when I'm in the woods, this is what I'm looking for. This, you know, this would be a great place to set up an ambush. Yeah, like how to anticipate funnels and pinch points. I learned to start thinking about game in terms of funnels and pinch points when I was a fur trapper. Because in a fur trapper, you're looking at it on a grand scale.
Starting point is 00:58:17 How are animals just going to move across the landscape? But at the same time, how are you going to get them to place their foot on a one and a quarter inch circle, a trap pan? So I really started to think about stuff that way. And I also started to be like, why do I always catch fox here and not there? And you step back and look at aerial photography and you're like, oh man, I can't believe I never realized that. This power line or gas line connects all this different agricultural land. And the animal can basically run down this power line
Starting point is 00:58:47 and hit farm to farm to farm to farm, you know, and travel on a clear path. And you go like, that's why there's always fox there. It's not because like whatever, how the fields laid out. It's because he got put there by his path, you know, by the best way for him to travel the landscape. So step on that. Where are we at with time?
Starting point is 00:59:07 We're at about 50 minutes. Okay. All right, everyone. I know you're enjoying the meat eater podcast and you're especially enjoying it because it's free. And to keep it that way, we got to take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Starting point is 00:59:21 Still hunting. Yanni had, Yanni worked a lot. Cause Yanni's a a still hunter like he likes to still hunt for elk and we get into how still hunting is different than just walking around in the woods which essentially is what it is and why i love it is love taking very long slow walk through the woods with rifle in hand but uh yeah it breaks it down decoys and calling another very detailed you know long and again these are the basics in each uh species by species section we revisit decoys and calling for elk we revisit spot and stock hunting for elk and you'll actually find more words written in that section you know specifically you know to that animal about spot and stock hunting than you do here in the basic
Starting point is 01:00:19 section yeah that's the thing that i want to point out about the books like if you get into the books start reading them is you can't just be like oh i like to hunt elk therefore i'll skip ahead and read the elk section it just doesn't work that way if you are if you just hunt white tails i would still suggest that you read the entire book because you will constantly find insights and ideas everywhere in this book. They're going to pertain to your life and your type of hunting. As a great example, Jay Scott and dark Holborn of Colburn or Scott outfitters weigh in on judging
Starting point is 01:00:56 big horn ramps. The way that these guys methodically go about doing this for big horn ramps, you could take the exact same principles and apply it to any other animal if you're into judging antler size or whatever it might be. These guys have to know this because
Starting point is 01:01:15 they're sheep guides. When they get a high paying client that comes in and he wants a sheep of X caliber, it's these guys that eventually say that's the one you're after. And their livelihood, their business depends on their ability to say what that thing is.
Starting point is 01:01:33 So to hear them talk about how to look at an animal, if you like to hunt bears and you don't care about shooting a record book bear, you just don't want to be surprised and walk up and realize you shot like a 75 pound, one-year-old female because you'd rather have 200 pounds of meat. Learning their idea about how you look at an animal, how you compare animals to other animals, how you make these decisions is going to apply to your life as well. Or you might be in an area where you have certain
Starting point is 01:02:04 requirements you have to meet. It's got to be a brow-tied bull. Brow-tied has got to be six inches long to be able to kill an elk. The elk's got to be a branch antlered bull. It's got to be a full-curled sheep to be legal, right? How to look at animals. And not just be blown away and surprised when you see them, but how to look at them objectively and make determinations about the size, age, characteristics of the animal you're
Starting point is 01:02:26 looking at. A lot about drive hunting. I grew up drive hunting for whitetails. It was a big part of every year. A few days you spend drive hunting for whitetails. How to do a drive hunt. How to try to pull off drive hunts in the mountains where it's very difficult. And then a lot of things on being a backpack hunter. Earlier we talked about backcountry gear. Here we talk about backcountry living. How to camp in the backcountry on a hunt and not ruin your own hunting chances by leaving too much of a footprint.
Starting point is 01:02:58 How to deal with grizzlies. Making the shot, a lot of information about shot placement for big game about actually shooting and marksmanship different types of rests how to aim on animals in a variety of positions how to decide what sort of hold on an animal you need according to where it is and what it's doing shots not to take how to track track. How to blood trail. How to look at a patch of blood and tell what you're looking at. Whether you did a good job or a bad job, what you might anticipate happening. How to read an arrow.
Starting point is 01:03:36 When you find your arrow after a shot, what does that arrow tell you about your hit? And not only that, it's not just like looking into a crystal ball. It's going to tell you how to behave according to what you see on that arrow. How long to wait, why you're waiting, the risks of waiting, how to make decisions. Big game section, alphabetical. We start with antelope. Each section like this, you like the antelope section. It's got
Starting point is 01:04:05 basics okay we have each animal has a barroom banter we'll tell you something surprising about the animal you do not know
Starting point is 01:04:12 barroom banter is meant to make you a cooler guy to talk to at a bar cause you'll be able to tell you know what I'll tell you one thing and you'll tell the person
Starting point is 01:04:21 the thing you read in barroom banter and they'll be like no shit yeah diet life and death and you'll tell the person the thing you read in Baroom Banter and they'll be like, no shit. Diet. Life and death.
Starting point is 01:04:32 How long they live and what kills them is life and death. Breeding and reproduction, how that goes down for them. Kind of habitats they'd like, telltale signs they'd like. Distribution. So it's your classic where it lives. What's cool about that is next to that is hunting opportunity, state by state hunting opportunities map, where it breaks down that animal, not just in its distribution, but whether hunting opportunities in a state are widely available, of limited availability, where you have the animal, but there's no hunting for it,
Starting point is 01:05:07 and where it's just not present, so it's not an issue. If you look at the bighorn sheep hunting opportunities map, it's all limited availability. There's no easy way to get a bighorn tag. Antelope, it's split. Half the state's widely available, and we explained what that means and how to go about getting those tags. Half the state's limited availability.
Starting point is 01:05:27 You got to do a draw to get an antelope tag. It'll help you think about destinations if you want to go on that big Western hunt. Then edibility, just thoughts on edibility, general thoughts on the hunting opportunities, and then hunting methods. So earlier we were talking about spot and stalk hunting, ambush hunting, decoys and calling. those then get applied in a very specific way to each of these animals archery firearm how to do all those hunting methods how does that apply are they appropriate for the animal or not if so what particular things do you need to do to make those methods described in the hunting method section work for the species so we get into animal then we roll into bighorn sheep. Bighorn sheep for the hunting methods, the main thing I talk about in bighorn sheep
Starting point is 01:06:10 is I get into some details about tag draws. The only way you're going to hunt a bighorn, unless you're loaded, and I explain how to do it if you're loaded. If you're not loaded, how are you going to hunt bighorns? You're going to win a lottery tag for a bighorn tag. This section is basically devoted to that. If you have a life's goal of hunting a bighorn, how do you start right now? At what age is it too late for you to start? What age is it that you should start now? And here's how to kind of begin and how to kind of think about getting the tag. And if you read the rest of the book and learn how to spot and stalk and still hunt whatever, you'll be prepared when you do draw that tag.
Starting point is 01:06:48 You'll be prepared for a big one hunt. Black bear. Long section on black bear because you got to deal with coastal hunting, mountain hunting, hunting fruit orchards, bait pile hunting, hunting everywhere from Maine to California, spring and fall. It's a big subject. Yeah. And our hunting opportunities maps, you know, this information changes because animals fluctuation, the population of these animals fluctuates. And so in 10 years, you know, these maps might not be spot on, but work on the hunting opportunities maps was very interesting to me
Starting point is 01:07:25 because you just have no idea. You just always focus on your own state where you live or your region of the country. And you go, wow, you can actually hunt black bears, it looks like, in more than half the states in our country. I had no idea until I worked on making that map. So I feel like out of every section, when you look at those, it'll just kind of give you more of a continental, or not continent-wide, but country-wide view of where these animals live and where you can hunt them.
Starting point is 01:07:54 Now, as far as like something, we got an Appalachian bear hunter. He goes by the name Shing Daddy. He weighs in on how to establish a bear bait station. All of his thoughts on that. Then we got Jared Fink, a Wisconsin hunter, weighs in on archery stand placement a bear bait station. All of his thoughts on that. Then we got Jared Fink, a Wisconsin hunter, weighs in on archery stand placement for bear baits. So if you're hunting bow over bear bait, how you go about thinking about positioning your stand?
Starting point is 01:08:16 We got another guy, an Idaho bear hunter, Chad Bart, weighs in on places stand near bear bait for rifle hunting. What are the special considerations you have to take into effect when you're doing you have to think about when you're doing bait pile hunting with a rifle all very different black tail deer okay range from california on up into alaska how to work topography for black tail deer the difference between a black tail deer hunt in September and November, how the animals move and use their landscape.
Starting point is 01:08:50 Buffalo. A little bit about buffalo hunting, a lot about how to handle big carcasses. That's the thing I think of when I think of a buffalo hunt is you're handling a giant carcass. So earlier I mentioned, like, it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to find good stuff in all these chapters. I don't care if you hunt moose, caribou, whatever.
Starting point is 01:09:07 You're going to learn a lot about handling big carcasses and handling big carcasses in grizzly country in this section that you'll be able to apply to any situation you're in. Caribou. Careful detail on caribou and a lot about my favorite way to hunt them which takes into effect the funnels so earlier we talked about funnels pinch points we get into greater detail with caribou how lakes impact caribou movements how valleys and valley floors affect caribou movements how mountain passes affect caribou movements. How mountain passes affect caribou movements. Some tricks to dealing with air carriers and bush pilots when you're trying to do a guided
Starting point is 01:09:49 caribou hunt. How to tell a male from a female, which is a lot more difficult than you might think because they're the only antlered animal we have where the females carry antlers here in North America. Doll sheep. A personal favorite of mine.
Starting point is 01:10:09 But again, the chapter has a lot to do with hunting in the mountains and living under very difficult circumstances. How to get in a position where you can put on a lot of miles in the mountains every day without wearing yourself out. Rick French, an Alaska sheep guide,
Starting point is 01:10:25 he weighs in on the do's and don'ts of dull sheep hunting. It is probably, you know, it's a couple hundred words that has more wisdom about sheep hunting in it than anything you're going to find. We get into elk, and Yanni worked tirelessly on the elk section. Break down some thoughts here, Yanni. Including a sweet picture carved into a tree that Yanni found of an elk, which is kind of amazing looking.
Starting point is 01:10:55 Yeah, it is great. I'm glad I know exactly. Hopefully that tree still stands for quite a while. I can go back and look at it. That's in Colorado. More than likely a um what do they call them arbor glyphs a uh sheep herder that they usually come up from south america uh during the summer in colorado and herd sheep come from all over the place uh peruvians
Starting point is 01:11:19 and uh i can't remember some of the other anyways you see a see a lot of arbor lifts on the Aspens in Colorado. And it was funny because where I found this, this was on a little scouting mission I was doing. And I think like a week or 10 days later, we ended up killing two cows within a couple hundred yards of that tree. Oh, is that right? Yeah. That thing too, it's like this book takes time for beauty, man.
Starting point is 01:11:48 This book has a nod toward the beauty of the natural world yanni gets real heavy into uh yeah yanni was the elk guide gets real heavy into calling how to make sense of game calls how to use game calls yeah and especially here for elk you know and again the uh illustrations that uh you know we came up kind of with the ideas and and then Pete Secheski was able to actually put them into what now looks like art. And you really get a good sense of when we, in text, talk about the T-boning technique and what that means to kind of basically parallel a herd, waiting for the right opportunity to bank in and make a move and try to get a shot. And again, he put it into a beautiful illustration yeah i think we talk about a lot with elk hunters where you know a lot of great elk hunters and i used to be an avid uh archery elk hunter as you kind of talk about like what's your strategy and
Starting point is 01:12:35 you'd be like oh we kind of just get close to him wait for something to happen yeah you know like what does that mean exactly and he just breaks down with the thing he calls t-boning he breaks down like what that means when you get into a herd how you can stay near herd without that herd knowing you're there and what you're doing when you're waiting for like what we call something to happen happen and how to help it happen um and mainly just like staying close to elk without elk knowing you're there we have a section called a bunch of things to keep in mind when calling elk. Just bullet pointed stuff that might not fit into the text, but it's just like stuff you got to have. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:13:13 And again, ambush hunting is covered in regards to elk. Still hunting is covered in regards to elk. All of it's there. Javelina. It's not a celebrated game animal. It should be. Mainly, the goal of this chapter is to make you realize that you are insane if you don't hunt javelina.
Starting point is 01:13:36 Big thing on moose, okay? Everything you want to know about moose hunting. Alpine stuff, low country stuff, Maine stuff, Alaska stuff, how to gauge legality of moose, which is very tricky for anyone who wants to go do a do-it-yourself moose hunting alpine stuff low country stuff maine stuff alaska stuff how to gauge legality of moose which is very tricky for anyone who wants to go do a do-it-yourself moose hunt in alaska where they tell you it's got to have a 50 inch spread or four brow tines you have never known stress in hunting until you've pulled the trigger on a moose and then you got to get over there and find out if your calculations were correct how to like think about that and how to not make mistakes and a very good definition an explanation of why you should never pull the trigger on a moose if you think he's 50
Starting point is 01:14:18 and that's all you're going by is your estimation of him being 50 inches wide. You need more than that. You need more than, oh, he's got to be 50. How not to make mistakes that could land you in very serious legal trouble with a confiscated animal, potentially a confiscated truck and firearm, like how to avoid these kinds of mistakes. And that sort of information is everywhere in here. How to handle more stuff on handling a big ass carcass. Mountain goat hunting. Telling males from females where to go. What kind of mountaineering equipment you want on a mountain goat hunt?
Starting point is 01:14:59 What's too much? What kind of mountaineering equipment is going to get you in trouble? What kind of mountaineering equipment might save your ass? A picture of my wonderful sister-in-law, six months pregnant with a mountain goat she killed, going to show that not anyone can hunt mountain goats, but someone with the right attitude can do it no one of my favorite sections 12 pages that are just packed full of awesome information about hunting mule deer and some of the better uh ways in not better they're all great but great ways in pieces from remy warren steve reed colorado uh hunter and guide Warren, Steve Reed, Colorado Hunter and Guide, Remy Warren, Brody Henderson, all guys that kill a lot of mule deer,
Starting point is 01:15:51 just kind of give you their view of it and how they go about it. And here's Yanni with a giant mule deer he killed on a public land Colorado hunt, not far from a road. Yeah. Crunch time hunt, high competition. Colorado hunt. Not far from a road. Yeah. Crunch time hunt.
Starting point is 01:16:07 High competition. Getting dandies. Big thing on wild pigs. Okay. This gets into the politics of wild pigs. It gets into the definitions of wild pigs. Razor's back.
Starting point is 01:16:22 Eurasian boars. Feral pigs. Wild pigs. How it's all one thing. Seuss Scroffa. Okay. Everything, spot and stalk hunting, how to hunt natural baits, naturally occurring baits for pigs, shot placement on pigs, the trouble you can get in bow hunting for pigs with shot placement. Oh, humungi whitetail section.
Starting point is 01:16:47 Because a lot of people, a lot of hunters cut their teeth on whitetail hunting. The whitetail section, more than any other section, is meant to be a beginner's guide to whitetail hunting. Yeah, we did a little piece on the gray ghost, Steve's favorite, the coos deer. The whitetail hunter, Chris Eberhardt, weighs in on public access whitetails. This guy's whole deal, like he's devoted his life to killing whitetail bucks in places you would not even think to hunt. And he breaks his method down for you. He hunts chunks of land you didn't realize you could hunt on.
Starting point is 01:17:23 And he kills deer that no one knows are there. And what love about chris is that he does it economically out of an old minivan yes the guy just has a system he hunts everywhere and this guy can roll into a new state and find bucks that the guys that live there don't even know are there as long as you can find as long as you can afford the tag and some gas you you can do it the Chris Eberhard way. Doug Duren weighs in on his favorite whitetail hunting method called the mooch. I don't know. We tease him endlessly. What is that?
Starting point is 01:17:54 Because that's a fishing term. You know, it's like banana weight, cut plug herring, you're mooching salmon. Doug, they mooch deer. It works. It's a fun hunting method. We break it down with graphics they've killed some giants big thing about jack o'connor's very own gray goes to coos deer why you should get into hunting it butchering you know he was the one that called it the poor man's sheep which i didn't know until i read that book and uh it's fitting Butchering big game. Big game in the field. Okay. What to do in the field.
Starting point is 01:18:30 How to handle large animals on the ground in the field. How to gut a deer the right way. You can break all the rules, but you got to learn them first. It's like with writing. You can break all the rules in writing once you learn them. You can break the rules in gutting once you learn them. Here's how to really gut an animal well. All your shortcuts and gutless method and all that garbage, it's fine. Do it well. Do it right the first few times and so you know what product you're after. And then you can mess around. How to gut. How to skin, how to leave evidence of sex, which is a requirement in many states, what that means, the best way, cleanest way to do it. Field skinning, okay? How to skin stuff in the field, how to skin it on the ground, how to skin it hanging in the field. Very detailed photography. A bunch of just random field dressing tips. 12 random field dressing tips.
Starting point is 01:19:28 Skinning big game for taxidermy and tanning. How to handle bear hides, deer capes, everything. How to cut away skull plates. Handling meat in the field. What not to do, what to do. For clean, good, safe, healthy meat. Thoughts on aging game meat. Bonus parts or how to show maximum respect for your prey.
Starting point is 01:19:52 How to handle deer heads, deer hearts, kidneys, liver, nuts. Tongues. Tongues. Yeah. And this stuff is kind of interspersed too in some, well, little sidebars, you know, about a, you know about a tongue or whatever. And that's the true mediator style. I feel like where we take it to the next level and give you the power to do more.
Starting point is 01:20:16 How to handle lard. Thoughts on handling lard from bears and wild pigs. What's it good for? What it's not good for? How to make it? How to use it? There's another example of that. Breaking down a big game animal. so you got a skinned out carcass you're ready to butcher how to break that thing down how to think about the different cuts how to freeze the
Starting point is 01:20:32 different cuts how to bone out what bones are good for stuff how to do something fast because you don't have time and you got to get your animal in the freezer because it's hot out and you got to be to work and you want to do it yourself, but you only got an hour. What to do then that allows you to do a better job later when you're ready to pull it out of your freezer later. It's like a two-stage butchering method that I use all the time.
Starting point is 01:20:56 Just how to do it fast and right. How to make burger, grinding burger, okay? How to freeze big game meat, a variety of methods, pros and cons for all the ways to put big game in your thing. And finally, we get down to the recipes. Smoking hams off deer and bears, making pulled pork recipes with wild game, making stock from Wild Game. Blade-in roasts.
Starting point is 01:21:27 Ossobuco or braised shank. How to fry up heart and liver. How to do marinades. How to make veal parmesan with game meat. All kinds of stuff about grilling steaks and marinades and dry rubs and do's and don'ts, stuff on burgers, jerky, grilling whole loins, making deer heads, all kinds of stuff on making your own fresh sausages and charcuterie, stuff about camp meals, in the field preparations of crazy stuff that'll blow people's minds,
Starting point is 01:22:02 a lot of thoughts on burger, how to deal with it. Some surprising stuff like mincemeat pie with bear lard crust. How to roast a rack of deer ribs out in the field for a great camp meal. It just goes on and on. And on and on.
Starting point is 01:22:20 That feels pretty complete to me. Dude, it's a complete guide to hunting, butchering, and cooking wild game. Okay. I already have my closing thought. Yeah, what's your closing thought? And I'm sorry, listeners, if we feel like we're rushing out of here, but we have a big day.
Starting point is 01:22:35 We've got some travel. We're heading to Alaska for a- Secret project. Secret, top secret. Yeah, we're going out to work on a secret project that is not meat eater. Yes. We're bringing rifles and fishing poles but that's for just extracurricular you know but it's a part it's a part of a master plan anyways my closing thought on this monster infomercial guidebook plug here is
Starting point is 01:22:59 that um i'm not brown nose and it's gonna sound sound like I am, but like all Steve's books, it's, it doesn't read like some dry how to manual. It is that, but it is intimate and fun to read. And, um, you get to read other people's words, you know, with all the ways in. So like, it's not like you're picking up a textbook and prepared to be bored. No, you're going to pick it up and go, man, I can't believe I just knocked out 50 pages and it's time to go to bed. I want to hear the anecdote about your brother in this book that you just told me yesterday.
Starting point is 01:23:36 My brother called me to say how much he liked it when he got a copy and he's been reading it to his six-year-old as bedtime stories. He said his kid's fascinated. Here's the deal. Here's my concluding thought, man. I don't want you to think this is just a big bullshit party
Starting point is 01:23:54 we're having right now. I honestly, okay, I honestly am very happy with how these books turned out. I'm very proud of these books. If I wasn't, I would not be sitting here doing this.
Starting point is 01:24:10 I'm not just doing this to sell some books. I'm really not. It was a lot of work that a lot of people did, and it's something that I will look at for the rest of my life and be proud to have been involved in. 18, 19 people were heavily involved in the making of this book. Okay. It was a group effort.
Starting point is 01:24:39 It's really like, there's nothing else like this exists in the hunting world. I promise you. I have read it. Okay. It's out there. I've read it. Nothing like this is out there. I'm telling you in a personal way, you will not be disappointed by these books.
Starting point is 01:24:54 You really won't. That's as much as I'm going to say about it. This is the infomercial podcast. Go buy one of Yanni's t-shirts. Buy Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game, Volume 1, Big Cam, available now. Steve and Ronella.
Starting point is 01:25:14 Enjoy yourselves. Yanni, you already gave your clothing thoughts. I did. Okay, that's it. Peace out. Take it easy. Bye-bye. Hey, listen up.
Starting point is 01:25:24 This sounds like an advertisement, but it's not. It's different than an ad. I need you guys and gals that listen to go check out the complete guide to hunting, butchering, and cooking wild game, which is written by myself and some people from the Meat Eater team and a collection of the best hunters from around the country it's a two volume set volume one big game it's coming out in august volume two small game comes out in december um again it's called the complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game it totals about 750 pages of content dealing with gear tags hunting basics advanced hunting strategies field butchering recipes everything you need to know to be a better hunter or to get started in hunting if you haven't done it before.
Starting point is 01:26:25 If I had had this book when I was a kid, it would have changed my life. It's going to change yours. I'm not joking. You can pre-order now Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Target, Powell's, Walmart, wherever books are sold. It's out there. It's beautiful. It's huge.
Starting point is 01:26:43 It's two volumes. Do yourself a favor. Do me a favor. Give this book a look. This episode of the Meat Eater podcast is brought to you by the Art of Charm, a podcast about leveling up in life and relationships and friendships at work, at home, and everywhere in between. This is not pop psychology. It has insights with a practical edge so listeners can apply something right out of the box every show. Go to artofcharmpodcast.com or find the Art of Charm in iTunes or Stitcher.
Starting point is 01:27:15 Take your life to the next level. you Thank you. 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.
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