The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 027

Episode Date: January 21, 2016

Las Vegas, Nevada. On this SHOT Show two-part special, Steven Rinella talks with Kenton Carruth and Ryan Callaghan from First Lite, Janis Putelis and Helen Cho from MeatEater, Jason Nash from Federal, and Bill Dermody from Savage. Subjects discussed: Shot Show; First Lite receiving Outdoor Life's Open Access Award; Oregon dickshines and false patriotism; Steve and Janis's armed takeover of Yellowstone National Park; chronic wasting disease; Steve's wife's repeal of the Rinella household bear meat prohibition; Trichinosis from bears; the weird and disgusting worm in Janis's Coues deer head; out-of-the-box Savage rifles; Chuck Hawks; the AccuTrigger; ammo shortages; the break-in and cleaning process of rifles; copper vs lead; budget vs match grade loads; the best all-purpose caliber; and the fluctuating regional popularity of various rifle calibers. 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 meet. Thanks for joining the Meat Eater Podcast. We're in Las Vegas, Nevada at something called SHOT Show. Some folks might call it SHIT Show, but it's SHOT Show. It's a chaotic, hectic convention dedicated to

all things shooting and hunting related. It's an annual thing in Las Vegas. It's like, I'm here with Giannis Petelis, Helen Cho. What's wrong, Helen? Nothing. Just looking at Ryan.

Helen Cho, Kenton Carruth from First Light, Ryan Callahan from First Light. Someone take a stab at explaining SHOT Show. After two days, I... Ryan knows what it stands for. I know what it stands for, too. Shooting, hunting, outdoor, and trade. You can't finish... Oh, okay.

It's just too much. If they wouldn't let any people in, and I could just go around on... You know, like a while ago, there was a big scandal because Oprah Winfrey wanted to go into some store in Paris, and she had them close the store. I'm not up on my Oprah news.

No, this is old. I just remember hearing this. She had them close the store so she could shop privately. where it's just all the people who run all the booths, but no other people are allowed except me to go in and walk around and find out about what I want to find out about without anybody else being there except people who I needed, where I would push a button and the person would materialize and tell me about what I want them to tell me about. That's my kind of shot show.

That'd be the Steve show. But herding down these corridors is just too much. What do you think about it, Cal? Man, yeah, I totally agree. Except for my version of shot show, I wouldn't be here.

Well, I'd hit your button. I'd go to first light light i'd keep hitting the button until callahan showed up there and i'd be like cal talking about some new products yeah but it obviously serves a purpose it serves a huge purpose it does it does you know there's the people are like bringing out their new stuff here they They're launching new products here, and that's pretty interesting. And you get, you know, there's a lot of press folks. Like when we had the BHA cocktail hour yesterday, we had a lot of magazine editors there, and that was cool.

And what were they sniffing around about? Mostly free beer. So, yeah, you had a keg And a magazine editor showed up You got to do a little elbow rubbing Yeah elbow rubbing And we were getting That open country award I was going to talk about that in a minute

So we got You know I got a couple pats on the back And I got to Let them know that it's true. We actually do good things. At this moment, Kenton, share with us your acceptance speech. At this moment, Kenton is carefully crafting an acceptance speech that will be awarded to First Light tonight called the Open Country Awards. It comes from Outdoor Life magazine, right?

Right. For advocating on behalf of, not just advocating, acting on behalf of, advocating on behalf of, being a defender of public lands and public access. Yep, yep. We, I don't know, maybe a year ago um i gotta give brian credit we uh we basically did a similar thing to what midway does with the nra and it is we had a we call it roundup for conservation so when a guy buys something he can uh either round up the next

dollar donate you know how much ever he wants basically i think we'd stipulate five ten and hundred but um to a certain extent um and then he can uh either pick whether he wants to give it to the uh the trcp which is the teddy roosevelt conservation partnership or he can give it to the backcountry hunters angler pheasants forever um or all of the above um so uh you know we're a small company but you know every little bit helps and it's kind of built into our company's kind of ethos that i mean if we didn't have public land we wouldn't have a business so you kind of gotta you know it's uh it's uh it's important you know because most of you guys customers are like open land mountain hunters. Yeah. Even the guys I think that are back east a lot are guys that are hunting. It's not quite so prevalent there, but they try to maybe separate themselves a little bited up and it's hunting clubs everywhere and public land is not a viable option for actually harvesting game, how technical of hunting apparel do you need?

Everybody's sitting in a heated box blind. Right. We wouldn't exist. It's kind of like it's very apropos today to be getting this award right now, and that they're giving out the award right now about conservation of public lands because I think public lands are something people don't even really think about. But then over the last few weeks, we've been dealing with these oregon dick shines who are well put coming out i mean they're not even oregon just these dick shines in oregon

who are coming out and saying that the best thing to do with our nation's public lands is let them have unfettered unpaid grazing access on those lands. As though it's like, I don't think the public should own it. I just think that I should be able to do it for what I want to use it for because it's here, and so am I. I wonder what they would say if I rolled in with a trailer with just like, you know, 50 head and said, well, boys, I'm going to graze my cattle here too. No, that'd be great. Good idea, son. Matter of fact, I'm going to graze my cattle here too. That'd be great. Good idea, son.

Matter of fact, I'm going to set up a grazing operation here as well. What I'm going to do now, now that it's become clear that there's absolutely no problem from a law enforcement perspective for you to commandeer federal property, I'm going to go in. I'm going to go take Mammoth Hot Springs.

I'm going to be like, you know what, dude? I should be able to hunt here in Yellowstone. I don't want all these other people in here at Yellowstone. I've been eyeballing this place for a long time. People used to be able to hunt here prior to 1877 or even later than that. So it's back to the way I want it. I got a gun. If you come near Mammoth Hot Spring, I'm i'm gonna shoot you i'm building a hunting cabin i'm hunting it bitch because this is just my shit and i got a

gun putting a couple pipes in this hot spring why yeah no it's like why like why not because law enforcement doesn't care matter of fact i'll be'll be driving around. I'd be down here at SHOT Show in my Yellowstone National Park truck. Right. Because they drive around and come and go in federal vehicles. Right. And it's A-OK. Dude, if it was any other kind of mug, they would have shot them up. And the really funny thing is, like, here at SHOT Show, you go to the law enforcement department.

All it is is all kinds of equipment for enforcing law. Law enforcement. So it's like every kind of thing you need to kill every kind of crook and defend every kind of property is all here. And it's like, why not let's round up a bunch of this shit and go enforce some laws in Oregon? No one cares. It is so pain. We've discussed this at length at the first light office while we should be doing other things more specific to first light. I,

they care and they should be enforcing it. I think they're taking a very tactful approach that I do not understand. I would prefer they go in and kick the doors down. Yeah, you don't want it to be like Ruby Ridge. You don't want it to be Waco. You can't have being the one of these guys who's in there making some coffee on the government coffee pot

and all of a sudden his brains are splattered all over the inside because some guy shot him through a window. Agreed. But they're leaving town and going to all these kind of activities and grocery shopping. One of them was at some public comment period

with a bunch of law enforcement officials and he drove back to the thing. Yes. Yeah, wind's enough enough. Have you even seen any of the packages I sent in them? Yeah, I like it. The dildos? Yeah, it's funny. Have you guys sent them anything on behalf of First Light? I don't know what we'd send them.

I wanted to jump on the bandwagon in a bad way, but when it's not your original idea yeah you know i got a buddy who's saying that um he hopes that pretty soon they'll be spending some time in another federal facility but the only problems will be paying for them there too yeah true yeah like right now we're paying their heat yeah it's cheaper to be law enforcement you know um because there's so many different agencies right there but But the Forest Service cops are at the Forest Service building, which is shut down. And they're watching out and making sure nothing gets screwed up with there.

And we are paying for an insane amount of overtime. This is all actually just a diversionary tactic from when me and Yanni take Mammoth. Right. I like it. When we take Yellowstone, dude, north entrance. It's like everybody's watching Oregon and Austin and me and Yanni going to Yellowstone. Guns drawn. Guns blazing.

That's right. They're like, damn it. We're taking this back and hunting it. Guns blazing and clothing optional. Right. Exactly. It just is. It's like, I don't want to talk about this all day, but it's so ridiculous and so anti-American.

And the fact that these guys can somehow cloak themselves in the flag. You know, it'd be like if I went in, I'd get like a Ryan Callahan shirt. Like, I get like a Ryan Callahan shirt with Ryan's picture on it and stars all over it. And I go in and burn your fucking house down. And you'd be like, oh, but you know what? He says he's doing it for Ryan Callahan. So I must be confused. I must mistakenly think that this is somehow an aggression against me because he says it's for me.

So we're doing this for America. It's like, what aspect of America? Your private livestock business? It has nothing to do with patriotism. It has nothing to do with the United States of America. It's just like unbridled greed and a complete disregard for historical perspective and no fucking idea what you're talking about. Have you ever ducked on it there?

No. Have you, Cal? No. Supposedly pretty good, huh? It's just absurd. And the fact that people keep giving these guys like a platform to talk about oh putting the land back to use for who you right now it's working for like it's working for the nation it's working for you know our like common wildlife heritage our common access heritage

is providing like you you can't i don't care what kind of denomination you come from what's that a devotion you come from we need to have habitat and protective measures for American wildlife. One of the ways we do that is through the refuge system, particularly of wetlands. If you think it's somehow, I don't care, like, where you're coming at it from, religion or some kind of pagan perspective or some kind of atheist perspective, it is just simply wrong to abuse wildlife. You have to have a place for wildlife and a place for wildlife habitat. The fact that you'd act like a wildlife refuge

is somehow this pointless land being not used. It's being used for probably the best thing it could be used for. Plus, it's open to the public. Then you hunt the refuge system. Obviously, the fact that they went out under the guise of protesting to get these two ranchers out of prison.

Whose families didn't even want them to do it. And they're poachers. I mean, they're poachers. They're burning the field to cover up evidence of poaching. That's the other thing. It's these guys before went and like went out and burned your lands. So burned your lands, so burned federal lands,

and then back off federal agents with firearms, nothing comes of it. What kind of message does it send? You can just bully our institutional enforcement measures. It's like, oh yeah, patriotism, patriotism. However, you people who abide by the law, follow electoral politics, try to engage in civic duties, and we've put together a constitution, we've put together a way that we enforce laws, and a way that we have a representative government that you can address and have legislation and initiatives to change things you don't want.

We don't like any of that. We're so patriotic, we can't stand constitutional government. That's how patriotic. It's like, at what point are they going to be called out for people who are un-American, anti-American? Yeah. Helen? I don't even want to talk about that. How do you really feel, Steve?

You're going to get a lot of people fired up. I don't care. Fired up about what? No, in a positive way about what's going on here. I think a lot of people fired up. I don't care. Fired up about what? No, like in a positive way about what's going on here. Because I think a lot of people are a little complacent. They're just kind of like watching on the news, and they're kind of like, yeah, whatever. Dick shines in Oregon. They ain't bothering what I'm doing right here in my world.

Dude, I would invite anyone. We need like a call to action. I would invite anyone who's curious about this issue to go read about the environmental history in that area and study up on what it was like under the cattle barons. Study up on what it was like when it was decimated by drought and overgrazing and no one was doing shit there. It's more complicated than just that there was this long, glorious heyday of unfettered land use. And all of a sudden now, they're fighting over things or arguing over things or wanting to take claim for or wanting to seize access to things that exist because of the level of federal protection it has. People had to work so hard to get that protected in all people. So many people

had to come together and be like, okay, we really messed this stuff up. We're going to take some measures, protect this stuff. The feds have made concessions to local ranchers. The existing size of the refuge is actually smaller than when it was established. So it's like this beautiful example of the process working not the process not working like it's totally it's a bipartisan beautiful thing and these guys are totally using it as an example of god knows what greed is what i come yeah there's so much public support

for where they're coming from, then why don't they take political measures to fix it the same way anybody does anything? I don't want to keep talking about it all day, but crying out loud. Anyhow, First Light's getting this big award. Kent doesn't know what he's going to say.

Kent, just right now, real quick, act like you're up there. And the award goes to First Light Kenton stands up Kenton stands up and says I'd mostly like to thank Andrew McKean and

Outdoor Life Magazine for paying attention to that this is a big cause and at the end of the day there's a lot of people that don't want vast amounts of public land. They'd rather use it for their own personal and potentially ill-gotten gains. For the greater population, it gets taken away. These guys are up there, them and the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

And they're these groups that are fighting and they're fighting hard to keep lands public. So people that, you know, might not have, you know, $50,000 to go to Africa or to do these, you know, crazy private hunts can have these amazing public experiences well within their means, you know and and from a selfish point of view i that's what i love to do and it's what my company makes clothes for people to do to people to be able to go out and you know brave the elements and spend time out in the woods

so um it's a it's an issue close to my heart it's what i like to do i like to go out in the woods and in wintertime whether it be you skiing or snowboarding in the backcountry, or whether it be hunting on public lands. You know, that's how I spend a shitload of time. 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.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. That was perfect. You filled up your time slot perfectly well. Just remember that. Thank God we recorded it. I'm just going to play it. You just stand up there and be like.

Ken couldn't be here today. Go up there with one of those tape decks. Like in the old days at a wedding, they'd set out like a CD player and hit play. Yeah. You could say Kenton is under the pupit having mild to moderate anxiety but in this place i'll play this right here i just like to keep to keep going on i just i do have a couple more things to say the issue like i was talking to my brother about the public lands issue he's like i just don't understand when someone goes by you know they

go by to say like the gallant mountains so like there it is national forest open for everybody to go to protected in perpetuity is he like are they driving by an adversary to public lands an adversary of federal public lands do they drive by and look at like what do they see like he's like are they, I'll only be happy when that's a resort. I'll only be happy when that's developed from the valley floor to the peak. That's my vision. I don't understand. What is the motivating factor?

I understand it's economic. But what is the motivating factor? Why can't you just look at that and be like, thank God. Because we are at no risk of running out of developed areas, but we are at tremendous risk of running out of non-developed areas. I think one of the big problems is that they've never looked at it. They look at it all the time. You think constantly there's adversaries to the public land movement and then staying public land that are driving by those mountains looking at them thinking that? They're not thinking that, but they're seeing it. But I don't think they're there.

The movement against public lands is in a lot of ways is the native movement. Okay. I agree with all fronts, but I think that the way it kind of plays out is a little different. I think how it plays out is the state gets in a bind. They owe a ton of money somewhere, right? Yeah. And then – well, first of all, the federal government says, okay, you control this state. So they give it to the state.

That's a whole other argument, right? But then the state gets into a bind and they're like, I don't know how we're going to get out of this. We're broke as shit. And they think, oh, I know we can sell that place. Then all of a sudden, that's kind of the slippery slope. No, that's how it's going to shake out in the long – that's the version of events of how this becomes trouble. States aren't going to allow the level of access, public access, that they have the right to and will lessen protections or sell. But then what I'm talking about is then all of a sudden that is what people – all of a sudden the dollar signs start going off.

Like I don't necessarily think people think they drive by the crazy of the Gallatins or any place and say, I want to develop that. what happens is that there's a couple things that happen and all of a sudden it gets to where this you know some developers whoever believe they can profit off of it all of a sudden then they start to see it but i don't necessarily think that they're saying it's going to start a i got to get that before the next guy does yeah somebody else is going to get it but i and i and i think that once they smell blood then they go after But that's not necessarily so much. Yeah, you hate an open mountainside. Yeah. Or not even open, like scratch. I keep making this mountain-centric.

It's not mountain-centric. Well, in Oregon, we're not talking about mountains. We're talking about wetlands. Right. That scrubby little mixed grass chunk of prairie out there. Yep. It's right on the edge of a development anyway. Shit ground.

Yeah. Doesn't do anything. Ain't making me any money exactly come on uh so you know it's i think it just and it gets just chipped away and chipped away and chipped away you know and and it's a battle there's they're just there's forces that want that for themselves helen you do a lot of exercising in Central Park, right? You said that's where you're riding your bike to get ready for your elk hunt? Too bad the beds don't open.

You can apparently just go in there and take it. That'd be sweet, take Central Park. Great lawn. There's a terribly awesome, terribly bad movie which made it really good about taking Central Park. I can't remember what. I think it was called Taking Central Park. Is Cho in it?

I don't bike in there anymore, though. Cho, tell me some stuff I don't know about. Oh, I wanted to ask you a question, actually. Have you eaten all of your deer? Have I eaten all my deer? No. I actually just bought a chest freezer. Nice.

So have you eaten much of your deer? A lot of it. But I don't know when the next opportunity I'll have to go hunting, so I'm kind of... Milking her. Well, I've been just kind of savoring it. I've been eating more fish, more fish than our deer. I told you we'd come out in the spring, we'll do morels and turkeys. Yeah, that would be amazing. Now, Helen, let me ask you about this we we were deer hunting in

southwest wisconsin an area that's known as the cwd zone and it's an area where there's been a a number of high profile cases of chronic wasting disease in that area for a long time the state of wisconsin thought that they were going to kind of shoot their way out of the problem by radically reducing herd densities in southwest wisconsin it's like basically it's like always deer season unlimited tags it was just then they kind of regrouped and now it seems the strategy is to learn to live with cwd monitor it see where it goes. CWD, chronic waste disease, is of course the deer and elk version of mad cow or scrapey and sheep. We brought our deer in for testing. Did you wait to get the results from your deer before you started eating your deer? No.

So what happened was apparently we cut it too short so he couldn't test my deer they didn't have the glands on yeah exactly so i ate it what are the symptoms of cwd well you get a your your brain starts to look like swiss cheese but it's never no one no humans ever got cwd uh crutsfieldJacobs is the human equivalent. No, I started. I mean, we ate it there. It's never jumped. Yeah, but here's the thing.

Okay, so there's a number of things that they talk about with CWD. It's the prions. You hear it called prions and prions. Are concentrated in the spinal column in the brain. Kenton just immediately clicked over to sci-fi. He's like,ryant um it manifests itself in a more stressed you're more stressed all the time that's the yeah you have been feeling like stressed by any chance

it allowed me when it's real severe they like wind up for weird reason in las vegas so if you're like feeling stressful in Las Vegas. Start seeing lots of people. Yeah, it could be. So what they advise, well, it's such a complicated picture with CWD. No person, no known person, there's no known case of transmission from deer or elk to humans. But some people think it's a matter of time. Some people think if it was going to happen,

it would have happened. Really hard to say. When a deer gets it, it's invariably fatal. Like how soon? I mean, how quickly does it happen? It could take a year or two. But you will die.

Great. No, not you. A deer that gets it, it's a fatal thing. It's just not instantaneous. They go along, go along. It seems like nothing's wrong with them. And then they begin to collapse. How's it transmitted?

That I don't know, but it has to do with close proximity to the animals. Does it move through insects? Someone looked this up because we sound like some real dumbasses for not knowing how deer and elk... No, it's nose to nose. It's mucus, I thought. Because that's how it jumps from high fence operations, game farms and stuff. Because wild animals inevitably wind up rubbing noses through the fence. Imagine that Bambi scene.

You know, I've never seen Bambi, actually. Maybe, yeah, I've never seen Bambi. So you never got the result. I got the result of mine. No, John got his result. Which was? Negative. Yeah, Doug's never, Doug Dern has never had a CWD,

not anything he's doing, but he's never had a CWD deer, to his knowledge, come off his property. I waited, but this is the first deer that I've ever eaten off Doug's place that I had tested. I waited to get the test results because I have young kids. Now, I'm not worried about, not that I'm not worried about them. The main thing I live in fear of, no, I'm worried about, but here's the thing. The main thing I live in fear of. Some make it, some about... But here's the thing. The main thing I live in fear of...

Some make it, some don't, Helen. No. Let me just scrap all that. Just forget I said all that. I want to begin anew. The main thing I live in fear of is my wife's wrath. Okay? Like, nothing...

She's kind of a dad. Nothing scares me like my wife's wrath. Were I to... Come home with my deer, well, first, were I to get a deer, and I got two does, and I submit the heads for testing, so there's results pending,

then I would come home, and we'd eat said deer. Then I would get the results, and I would come home and we'd eat said deer. Then I would get the results. And I would say, oh, by the way, the deer we've been eating, turns out it's negative for mad cow disease. It's a no-win situation. It would be my balls. Did you listen to our podcast?

No. That's not good news. So if I was to say, oh, the deer we've been eating, turns out it has chronic wasting disease. The upside is there's never been a person known to get it. Lose. I could have not brought the head in. I could have done the whole thing secretly.

But the problem is when I try to do stuff secretly, it doesn't work and I get caught. So it's like I try to every day wake up and have it be that I wake up and my goal is to not be divorced. Jeez, Steve. You live in a constant state of fear. No, no. I just live in a constant state of fear. No, no. I just live in a constant state of reality. It's like I am committed to staying

married and reducing friction. And friction is feeding the kids meat that turns out is CWD. In fact, that would be major friction

because I've only just recently got back the right to eat black bear meat after getting trichinosis. We had a moratorium on black bear consumption that took me forever

to get out of. Do you know that Kenton, and I've seen this firsthand, cannot just openly say, oh, I saw a bunch of elk today or deer, and I passed them up. Oh, that is the truth. She'll be mad.

Yes. She wants them in the home fridge. She wants them dead on the plate. Yeah. And when I say, you know. She's not interested in the whole shopping around for big bulls. Oh, no, not at all. And when my buddy asks me, like, how'd it go?

I have to be a little bit untruthful and say I was terrible. When in reality, it could have been really good. You know what my wife says? Especially bow hunters. You could be day 20 and you're just like, man, I'm tired, but I'm pounding. I'm getting it done. My wife's always encouraging me to get out there

and get after it. I'll be like, but you know, think about all the memories I've made in the last 20 days. She'll say, you know what? You can't eat memories. Exactly. Exactly.

Produce, Mr. Patelis. Yeah. Yeah. Did you guys have any kind of blowback about eating bear meat? Serve it to the kids and stuff? No. One day, the first time I did it after that, I made meat candy. My kids were just hosing it and uh my wife was trying to like she got she could feel like what is this anyways i'm like oh

it's you know i know casual yeah she got mad for a minute but the kids were just like shoveling it into their mouth i'm like any damage is done it's done now yeah just wait and see now because rosie just ate a half pound of that stuff. Chest freezer is a good source of anxiety. That's like my anxiety is when you go to that chest freezer and flip it open and it's like at the one-third mark, one-third full. That's where I start. Yeah.

We need to get stamps at the office, too. I think there's a lot more meat sharing going on. I think sharing would be the positive way of looking at it. We have some kind of communal freezers. Oh, you got a lot of meat, though? We have that at ZPZ West in Bozeman, too. And my stuff is in boxes, duct tape, shut. Every package has my name, like where the animal was killed, dates.

And then I noticed someone else deposited a bunch of meat. Nothing on the wrapper at all. I'm thinking, well, maybe they're going like them. Just by anonymity, they're hoping that people will be like, well, don't know what that is. Or I'm like, you're just being an idiot. People are going to be like, oh, well, this is obviously just communal. You should just cut your box open and slip a little more in there.

Wait, so what did you guys do with the rest of the bears that had trichinosis? You put it in the communal for just a reason? Oh, trichinosis. Did you cook it for a bunch of people? No, I smoked it. No, here's the thing. This is a funny story because my brother. You texted me or something.

You're like, yeah, I guess what I'm doing. My brother was getting married, and he had a rehearsal dinner. They had a rehearsal dinner for 75. He gets me and a bunch of our buddies together, and we're all going to contribute wild game dishes. We did do this. We did a rehearsal dinner for 75 people,

and it was a dozen courses of wild game. Wow. Because everybody just gets little tastes you know so like danny made uh he made uh he took moose brisket and made pastrami so he did these little open-faced rubens okay um that was like one dish i thought we had like pickled pike on down the line and i had been saying yeah man i'm bringing in before we even had the damn bear i'm talking about yeah i'm bringing in uh smoked bear ham so i get the bear and before i realized it got sick i like smoked this big bear ham and and um then later i you know got sick and i was telling matt he's like man don't be telling people about that because when they eat it they won't want to eat any of the food and i said well i can't not tell him

he goes you're not telling them? Don't tell them that. He goes, it's cooked now, right? It's totally safe. I'm like, yeah, but I feel an obligation. He said, if you're going to tell them, don't even bring it. He goes, I think you bring it and don't tell, but don't bring it and then tell because then they'll think that something's wrong with it. Hey, it's his wedding.

You know, bear is good, but you've got it i mean that it's like 98 of the bears have this is i don't know but tons of it's a huge percentage of bears that have trichinosis so you just huge percentage of cases of trichinosis 98 they said but the fact is you come from bears come from bears yeah not but now i say this so and there's two counties in montana lincoln county and sanders county 100 of the bears over six years of age that are tested in lincoln county and sanders kind this is old information from when i first had my first bear came back positive 100 of the bears that had hit six years of age had contracted it in those two counties i think it's like i think

it's rampant. Me too. In 90-some percent of the cases that humans get are getting it from bear meat, but when I got it, I was registered by the CDC as being in King County, Washington State. And that was in whatever the hell year, 2014 or 2015. The previous guy to get it in

all of King County was the guy that got it in 2007 from Mountain Lion. Oh, interesting. But most cases are from Bear. But it dies at, what, 160 Fahrenheit or something? 165. Yeah, you don't have to, like, ruin your meat. You just got to get to 165.

You just got to cook it, man. That's right. We're back to eating it. Like, we're back up and running. And I'll tell you one thing I'm done with is I'm done getting sons of bitches tested. Yeah, just get it to 165. We're back up and running. I'll tell you one thing I'm done with is I'm done getting sons of bitches tested. Yeah, just get it to 165. Because I'm not going to.

What am I going to do? Let's say they come back and say it's negative. Is it really expensive to get it tested? No, I never paid a dime for it. It's free. You know how much that bear, we got sick from it, it had 868 larva per gram.

I know, you sent me that photo. It's so gross. That's like almost 400,000 larvae per pound. Oh, my God. Which tells you two things. One is some dinky larvas. Dinky larvae. Because you didn't get the impression that you were just eating larvae.

Right. Do you feel like that you now have 866? I hope. More protein. I can tell you where it all66? I hope. More protein. I can tell you where it all is. Yeah, it's like I can tell you where it is from the pain. He's prepping for the zombie apocalypse. From the parts that were painful.

Damn. Yeah. And you had like pain, Yanni, back of your neck, your calves. Yeah, it was mostly back and legs and then like biceps, triceps area. What's interesting is when you used to be able to get it tested for free at the university in Bozeman, you would send in, they wanted a golf ball-sized piece of the tongue. No, not my tongue. No, not your tongue. No, not your tongue.

Not worth it. Yeah, it's like one of these days I won't be able to talk anymore. I'll be like, no, I wanted to find out if I had a trick, bro. I had to write it out. I'm like, I sent a golf ball-sized hunk of my tongue into the university. I'll grow it back. I want to make a little point here. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere or not

But people are always like Can't believe that we're still eating bear meat What are you dicking around on your phone for while you're talking? I was doing a little bit of research here But it's like Salmonella Which you can get from pretty much all Raw fowl right?

Everybody eats chicken Most Americans are eating chicken at home. Not raw chicken. Not raw chicken. You pretty much, well, some are now, a small percentage. But you have to treat that almost like bear meat. Now, obviously, I think that the symptoms, what I'm just reading here, sounds as bad as what we went through with the trichinosis.

It's basically a very severe fever, and you're going to have to go and get it diagnosed by a doctor to have them say, yes, you have salmonella. And it's probably in very rare cases fatal. Yes, exactly. Young, old, whatever. Now, anybody that has salmonella is then not living with salmonella for the next five to ten years like we are. But that doesn't matter because you don't feel it and you can't recontract it.

I know. I just want people to think about that. When you have raw chicken in your house, you're dealing with a very similar product that has to be treated similar to your beef steak. You might as well be a bear hunter. I agree. It's 160. It's not that high.

Salmonella's 167. 167, so 165. We got sick for being just downright stupid. And we knew we were being stupid while we were being stupid. We were being hasty. Hasty. And commenting and joking about how we were going to catch the sickness. We're like, yeah, you can really get sick off this.

Yeah, I'll eat some more. It was like, it's just, I'm so glad it happened because it just gave me, you know, it just gives me more things to think about and made me learn about a lot of new stuff. And it's just not that bad of a sickness. If you knew, it'd be even better. But it's like you get a little worried because the word sounds weird. And you got worms.

And that's unnerving to have worms. I thought you guys said it was god-awful painful. I thought. Yeah, but not for that long. You're sick for a week. It's like in retrospect. You're sick for a week and if I had known.

Here's the thing. You're sick for a week. If I had known. Like when you get a cold. It sucks. Now imagine you got a cold, but you'd never had one in your whole entire life. And all of a sudden there's shit running, like snot's coming out of your nose. You had no one to ask about because you never knew anyone that had one before. How upsetting it would be. Like I can't understand.

There's all this fluid draining out of my head. My ear's ringing funny. I get these like weird body chills. Sneezing. Yeah. You'd be like, I must be dying. You be dying you call around people like that's never happened to me right then the next time you get like yeah it's weird i have like all this like mucus draining out of my face which is unusual but i've been through this before it goes away so if i got it again now i just hang tight i don't think i would miss work wait

wait did so you do you have sick medicine are you just very expensive i took a lot of ibuprofen and i took some very expensive deworming pills and i was the only one that took the expensive deworming pills and we all got better the same day interesting we're all sick about... Yeah, there's basically no evidence to say whether those steroids, those deworming... How did you take them? Was it pills? Or if you had ate bear meat

and then the next day were like, uh-oh. Let's say you got all drunk or something and you were eating bear carpaccio. And the next day you're like, what did I do? That's when you take the deworming pills. Yeah, well what I heard is that if you eat a large and if you consume a large enough amount

then you will actually feel the gastrointestinal pain which is the party that the worms are having in your stomach which then you could go to the doctor and be like something's wrong they might be able to catch it you take the oral steroids it, it kills it. But because we all ate maybe an ounce of meat that day that got us sick, none of us had symptoms for 30 days. So they had to build up a strong fortress before they really. It's when they start, they get into your vascular. After they make love and have babies, they get into your vascular system, and then they start burrowing into your muscle tissue,

and that's when you start feeling sick. Jeez, it's like a science fiction. No, man. Here's the thing, though. You have more bacteria in your body by magnitudes of hundreds than you do actual cells. Kenton is more other shit than he is Kenton. I'm pretty clean. I wash my hands

a lot. You know when you're eating bluegills or perch and they got little black specks on the fillets? Nope. I mean, I eat hundreds of them. Only in late life does someone point out to me that that's larva. You ever open a halibut up?

I have, and I've taken plenty of grouse apart and had them just like, oh, man, worms everywhere, and I still got eaten. Oh, you want to hear a worm? Can we tell them about our latest worm? This is upsetting. All right. I shot a coos deer buck last week.

In old Mexico. In old Mexico. And we lopped off his head. You know how you hit the little spot right there where you have those two lobes and it's really easy just with a knife you can take his head off. The frame and magnum. Is that what that is?

What's the spinal cord part called? Which one is the skull? That part of the skull, I might be pronouncing it wrong because I've only ever seen it written. I've never heard anybody say it, but that part of the skull is the frame and magnum. Like the –

Oh, okay. That little smooth – Yeah, with the hole, like that little portion. Yeah. I'm not sure. I should look up how to pronounce it. Did you cape it out or you just – we're taking the head apart? Just the head.

No, we left the cape. They're covered in ticks. It takes hours and hours to get the ticks off. Because you can't bring it back into the U.S. Plus, it's like – They go through it with a fine tooth comb anyways you can imagine that head coming off you look at that like spinal cord area and then below that you kind of have the the back end or the bottom end of the nasal slash mouth cavity and in there are maybe a dozen the smallest being the size of like a, what are the little worms used for ice fishing?

Yeah, waxworm. Little waxworm. The biggest being like the size of a big, fat, white maggot. No, the size of half, bigger than half of your pinky. Yeah. That's like silence of the lambs. And live it right in its, where its sinus, okay, it's the place where your nasal cavity sinus intersects with your throat. Right.

The esophagus starts, basically. Yeah. It's a bot fly that lays an egg on its nose, and it goes up there and goes through all of its permutations in there, and they are spilling out. Different colors, sizes. Some have legs. Some have arms. I mean, it was.

Dirt myth. I'm down there. We're down there leaning over and working on it in the dark with headlamps. Garrett Smith, almost like he starts like he's going to vomit. Dirt myth. And I'm like, get away from me, man. I'm like, if you're going to throw up on this deer. It's like like buck up but yeah the vaqueros said

every single coos deer they've ever seen killed has it we killed a Columbia black tail in California that had it was it in the meat too? nope you could eat the thing if you wanted to those things then fall out and

go through a whole cycle in the ground. Then when they hatch out of the ground, it's a fly. Then again, he lands on the deer's nose, drops the egg, the whole thing starts over again. It doesn't seem to cause any kind of infection in the animal. It doesn't seem

to cause any kind of extreme discomfort. These guys down there have never seen one that didn't have it. One of these guys was telling us the vaqueros, or the Mexican cowboys, have a sort of legend where that is what thinks. That's the part of the deer

that thinks. Interesting. Hmm. Disgusting. Yeah, disgusting. We have that canine larva. Your deer had that. What's the canine parasite? Puppies?

That's the parasites in your mule deer. Where in them? In the meat. Seems like I didn't know about that. Oh! Yeah, those little dots. What's it called? It's a canine parasite.

What do they say about that stuff? Because they find it in coyotes and wolves and stuff like that. They say, can you catch anything from it? No. You just digest. Not transferable, yeah. That's good, dude. Give me a heart attack, man.

I would have to tell that missus about that. I learned something interesting. So now, we... Yeah. Ellen, what's your concluding thoughts?

No, I had a question. I wanted to know if you guys had seen The Revenant. Nope. Real bad want to. Same. My buddy. None of you guys have seen it? I saw it.

What did you think? I liked it. The bear scene in particular reminded me of Steve. The bear scene is very realistic. It is. Interesting. Because Steve had always said that he wanted to get swiped once. That would be like his tattoo.

Yeah, I want to get mildly mauled by a bear. And if he could, I would like him to give me claw marks in a diagonal pattern starting at my shoulder down to my lower abdomen. Like a tattoo, but a scar too. Yes. That'd be pretty tough. That's what I would like. If you whipped your shirt off and had something like that.

I wouldn't be wearing one right now. I agree. I'd get shirts made out of see-through material, man. Indeed. Would you be disappointed if you caught it across the upper thigh? Yeah. Yeah. Better than nothing, but not what I would prefer.

Yeah, for a short, short time. I would like it on my face. Now that I'm would prefer I would like it on my face now that I'm married I'd like it on my face it's not like I gotta go out and meet ladies yeah chicks would dig that hell in yeah but no they wouldn't even need to Tyson yeah it's like big bear

mall mark because I'm already married doesn't matter would you give up one of your eyes for that? No. Not that cool. Would you give me the pinky? Yes. For the scratch I'm talking about.

Yeah, for the pinky scratch. Not just to have him bite off my pinky and run off. That just sucked because no one's going to see that and know what happened. Yeah, that's right. Grizzly bear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, I had a – I think it was a yachting injury. I had like a distant relative. I had a distant relative named – we called him Uncle Gunner, but it was later explained to me that he wasn't my uncle. He had a stuffed monkey in his entryway. So we'd go there, and I remember his dude name was gunner and his wife's

name was tootie and we'd go there and she always would like make a ham with pineapple on it and um he had this entryway he'd go into before going to his house like a little porch and he had a stuffed monkey on a stick and uncle gunner was missing a couple fingers and it was always explained to us you know like how people bullshit little kids with outlandish things yeah but they don't think that you know they don't realize that the kids actually think it's true uncle gunner always told us he lost his fingers because that monkey bit him off and they gave him the monkey that's what he said like later i i grew up being like it wasn't till the consolation my mom was like, that is not what happened to that man's fingers. I don't know where he got that monkey.

He lost his fingers to a lawnmower. Like, I have no idea what he told you or however, like, got to live this long in your head. That's what happened to Uncle Gunnar's fingers. You've won multiple debates on that fact as an adult. Yeah, but in fact, monkeys do bite fingers off because I saw the monkey. I know a guy. Sir,

we apologize for the monkey being vicious. You may take it home. Yeah. Alright, so concluding thoughts, Helen? That was it. I just wanted to know if you watched The Revenant. That's not even like a thought. That's my only thought right now. Cal?

Oh, have your concluding thought be about some exciting new products we can see coming out in the first light? I'm just super excited at what we have going on. If people don't buy a single thing, this is our best year of product. I mean, it's amazing stuff.

So I'm going to be very comfortable. I like those new mittens a whole bunch. Yeah. I had a lot of very sole original thoughts on that product. It's really come along. No, Steve and Giannis and Kenton and Ben and everybody has put a lot of work into these mittens in there. You know what else I'm liking?

I haven't got a chance to wear it. It's the balaclava that has the – what's that stuff inside there called? I don't know that thing. Shearling. Shearling. Shearling? My God, that stuff's nice. It is, and you can still hear out of it.

It doesn't – That's what's great about that. It's a high level. Yeah, that's what's great about that is you can still hear out of it. It doesn't – That's what's great about that. It's a high level. Yeah, that's what's great about that is you can hear through it. Yep. I like to have panties made out of that stuff, man. Interesting. Line of that stuff.

Interesting. We'll run that by the way. We tested the – I'm sorry, I don't know the name of the new lightweight puffy. That is the Cirrus puffy. The Cirrus. Yeah, we used that a lot last week in mexico and it was cold we're layering it under our uncle pogres and uh it was a nice piece good well yeah good good layering piece you know in the rockies at least where we are it doesn't rain a ton and usually at least early elk

season it doesn't get too cold so you know it's nice to be able to have some light stuff that's going to go in your pack if you goofed up on the weather call you know you wake up in the morning and it's like even if you can see the stars it doesn't it could rain or you know it can temperature can change and nothing worse than just saying i'm going light because i don't want to you know fill up my put stuff in my backpack and then freezing your ass off you know so definitely provides you with quite a bit of, no matter what the weather does, you should be pretty good for only a pound and a half

between that and the shell. Yeah, you could stuff that thing in your back pocket. Totally. That might be an exaggeration. You stuff it in your cargo pocket. What was the one you showed me yesterday that I should get for serve casting? Was that the one that he has?

That's the heavy-duty one. And we also make, like, a one that's a three-and-a-half layer, just full-on, like, as burly of a waterproof breathable as you can get. You know, if it's going to rain too much for that, you pretty much need to wear a rubber, you know, fishing-style suit. Full discretion on that, Giannis Patelis came up with the winning name. It's called the Yanni it's got a man with long hair mustache playing the piano calling it the seek which is an acronym for southeast alaska i like that yeah and you guys have gotten aware of that right

idea i wore in um british columbia this year where it rained more than it did not rain on that trip, and it performed well. Nice. I can't remember what Giannis won for getting the winning name. He hasn't been paid. I think a pair of socks or something showed up in the mail. That or a Porsche. Gianni, what are your concluding thoughts?

Give us an update on Hunt to Eat t-shirts. Oh, man. I know some people were heckling Yanni last night about a Nevada one. Yeah. Or Utah. Yeah, everybody, if I can touch on that for just a second, everybody likes to write into us and see me and say, how come there's no Kentucky Hunt to Eat shirt?

I'm like, well, because you're like the third person that's requested it. He likes 10 requests. If you can write it. Yeah, gather up some of your buddies. We're not asking for a couple hundred, but even like 10 to 20. And that would really bring your state to the higher standing where it'll be next in line. But I think last time I said we have Pennsylvania and Alaska. California just came out.

California's shirt is way sweet. Looks like their flag. It says Hunty. It's got a pig on it. Do you think you'll eventually have all states? Oh, that's what I have in my mind right now is like one of the old, old flags. It's got like six stars and a circle on it. Remember Sportsman's guide?

The sportsman's guide catalog back in the 80s and stuff, or 90s? It'd just be pages and pages of t-shirts. It'd be like, happiness is a warm gut pile. And it'd be like an Indian on a horse holding up a compound bow, and it's like, what if? And there's all those

shirts of wolves howling, and just like pages and pages and pages. Like an outhouse joke on it. Your catalog is going to be like that when you've got all 50 states. I hope so. We're doing your new home state next. Really? Ten people from Washington asked for one?

Yep, and then our home state after that, Michigan. Michigan. Michigan. Yeah. 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. Whew, 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 in 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,

24 K 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. Yeah, there you go. You just need two more requests. You'll be there. We have eight so far from New York. I wouldn't do it now that we know. Now that Ted Cruz has informed us that Helen has horrible.

What do you guys have over there? What? You guys have bad. Oh, you guys have real bad values. Oh, yeah. You have real bad values. Clearly. Yeah.

Joe, you bastard. I had no idea. I had no idea until I heard from Ted Cruz. You got New York values. I had no idea Helen was so un-American. Depraved. I think that all she thinks about, if I'm not mistaken, is you think about fashion and the media, maybe.

Yeah, that's all I think about. What do you think, Helen Show? Yeah, especially if you think of your father out there just delivering the mail, and he's like, fashion, media, fashion, media. Or dudes digging through the rubble of the World Trade Center, fashion, media, fashion, media. It's like, give me a break, man. Yeah, that's my concluding thought.

My concluding thought is Helen's horrible. I just found out. And in fact, some of the best people I've ever met in my entire life are also awful and I had no idea that they have a bad value system based on where their work put them. And they're going to seize Central Park.

Taking it back. Taking it back. Bear meat is yummy and you just have to make sure you don't eat it undercooked. I don't want to give a bad rap because people might hear a little excerpt and freak out and think that, you know.

No, people don't listen to just little bits. They listen to the whole thing. They know that bear, nothing wrong with bear. I like bear. I guess I didn't eat the trichinosis bear. You made the bear ham. Smoked bear ham.

You probably had, it just wasn't tested. Great. I did have one test negative one time. I forgot about that. All right. So this is part one. Here's the deal. This is a longer one than normal

because this is part one of a two-part SHOT Show podcast. So this is going to segue. Now just keep listening here. Things are going to change. It's going to get real noisy with all kinds of background noise.

And there's going to be a part two where we sit down and talk to some gun guys. Stay tuned. Hey, welcome to the Meat Eater podcast. We're in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the first time we've ever done one of these anywhere near this many people. You can kind of hear a bunch of background noise. Now, we're at something called SHOT. Do you guys even know what SHOT

stands for? Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show. Oh, I knew it must stand. Yeah. I've been here a number of times, and I never picked up what it exactly stands for. But it's like, when I was a little kid, we always had this dream that everyone that lived on the lake I grew up on would all go away on vacation, and we would drain the lake and be able to go out there and see what was in the lake. I have a similar dream about SHOT Show where I could have a private day where no one would be allowed in, and I could just quietly stalk the aisles of SHOT Show because it's so much stuff goes on here, you cannot take it all in.

It's just, there's, it's everything you've ever heard of or thought about in terms of the hunting and shooting sports all in one place. It's impossible to me, it seems, to kind of like focus in on any single specific thing because there's just so much stuff going on. You can really find out sort of the state of the world by coming down here. This is my third time, but I'm here with a couple of guys from Vista Outdoors. We have Bill Dermody. Bill, explain yourself, what you do and everything like that. Justify my existence. I'm the marketing director for Savage Arms and Stevens. Basically, within Vista, the firearms product and the marketing revolving around that product. Explain Vista. Vista. Am I allowed to talk?

Of course you are. So, yeah, Vista Outdoor is just, you know, it's an organization that the consumer doesn't really hear about. It's our parent company. I got you. But all these, if you look around here, all these great brands, we really are one of the largest outdoor companies there is. So from Savage Firearms, Federal Premium, CCI, RCBS, Blackhawk, all these great outdoor

brands, and even some that aren't here at the SHOT Show, we're just a big piece of this show here. And really, from a standpoint of me working on the gun portion of this, it's a real treat for me because not only do I have the firearms line, everything that goes on, in, or around a gun is within arm and reach for me now. And then you've been, you've come to SHOT Show how many times now? My first one was 1997, so, yeah. Did you come into working in firearms, too? What's your background growing up? I mean,

did you grow up around shooting? Actually, I became a shooter as an adult. I was a Boy Scout when I started shooting. I grew up in a family where there were no guns in the home, and I'm the first generation shooter in my home. And I learned how to shoot at Boy Scout camp up in New Hampshire and came home from camp and wanted to buy a gun and my parents didn't so they didn't allow it so i didn't buy my first firearm until i was in college and now look at me i've been in the industry this is the third different gun company per se that i've worked for i've kind of been typecast i'm stuck now i can't i can't go do anything else and my parents now have been converted their life members of the nra and then gun owners and shooters. And it's just, you know, life takes its neat twists and turns. But,

you know, think about all the other shows that happen in Las Vegas. And where would you rather be? I mean, it beats the heck out of the consumer appliance show or whatever they're doing across town, right? Yeah, for sure. I could be talking about dishwashers and toasters all week. And, you know, this is where it's at. This is where the action is. A good buddy of mine is over at the home builders thing going on right now, and he's really itching to try to find his way into this spot. Now, Jason, give us your lowdown, man. I'm Jason Nash. I'm the marketing director for our ammunition brand, so the most commonly known federal premium, CCI, Spear. We've got a number of different brands under our umbrella,

and it's really exciting to this will be my 13th this is my 13th shot show and i have to remind myself every year how lucky we are and it doesn't take long to walk down the halls to realize how lucky we truly are to be involved in such a passionate industry you know for me it all started with grouse hunting with my dad and uh you, you know, getting out in the Northern woods of Minnesota and chasing around these birds that were really hard to hit, but, uh, challenged you and really were exciting. Um, so being part of that is like you said, it's a dream. Did you, uh, when you were growing up, did you think about how you wanted to stay in the, you know, around hunting products and hunting equipment and that kind of stuff? No, I just wanted to hunt, quite honestly.

I just wanted to get out and enjoy the outdoors, be outside, and spend time with friends and family. I didn't really think about it as a career. In fact, I didn't think it was probably an option. So the fact that I was able to get into this industry and make a good career out of it has been fantastic. Yeah, when I was a kid, like all the guys that wanted to hunt and fish all the time, we didn't know about occupations.

You know, like little kids always want to be firemen. We all wanted to be game wardens. Or I wanted to be a mountain man. But then they told me I was late for that. So everybody was like, yeah, I'll be a game warden. I'll be a, you know, everybody wanted to be like a wildlife biologist. Everybody's always like struggling to try to find some way to be in the outdoors. And then guys I know now that have done that

and grown up and have like, you know, found like a livelihood in the outdoor industry. Very few of them would have been able to even, they wouldn't have known what they were doing existed at the time, you know? Oh yeah. So let's jump into, now I have over the years, I've been hunting all fall with a Savage rifle. And I've owned Savage rifles going way back.

I used to be a fur trapper. And I had one of the, what I thought was a very early form of the old 22-20 gauge over-under that had the trap door. I don't even know if they still have them like that. They had that aluminum plate. Model 24? It had like an aluminum plate. You could slide a bunch of 22 shells and a couple of 20 gauge shotgun shells into the stock with an aluminum plate on there.

Yeah, we always had that. And then had a lot of, like growing up, always had Stevens shotguns. And then I bought my first Savage, like my first new Savage rifle in, I think, 2009. And I grew up, my dad started me out shooting right-handed. I was always weirdly ambidextrous as a kid. And he eventually realized I had a dominant left eye. If you're ever curious if you have a dominant right eye or a dominant left eye, yeah, just act like you're doing a one-eye aim with your thumb like so pick some object and

you're going to aim your thumb at it um you'll find a lot of guys that shoot right-handed when you do that test they'll wind up closing their right eye and want to look left-eyed and my old man did that with me and realized i was left-handed so i had to relearn how to shoot a bow relearn how to shoot a gun all left-handed but i did it all with right-handed stuff. Because I never had anything that wasn't a hand-me-down firearm until I was in my 30s. I didn't own a left-handed rifle until I was in my 30s. And when I did buy a left-handed rifle, I bought a Savage Weather Warrior rifle, and I would shoot and immediately drop down, throw the rifle into my other hand and try to work the bolt with my right hand. I had to totally relearn, you know, on a left-handed

firearm. Over the years I've owned, you know, I've owned and shot so many different guns and I've had, and I have and do own a handful of like very high-end custom rifles that I would never really be in a situation to buy if I didn't work kind of the work I do and get stuff the way I get it. And so oftentimes guys are like, we'll talk about hunting, and they'll be like, yeah, but your gun's $5,000 or $6,000. And I always want to be like, yeah, it is, but it doesn't. It's just that's the way I have it. I found so cool about hunting with Savage Rifles and shooting with them is the fact that people can afford it, right? It's a good gun you can buy.

And out of the box, they just shoot in a way I can't explain. Maybe you got, it's like we've now messed around, just in recent months, me and Giannis, who's sitting here all real quiet, we've messed around, how many have we shot? Like out of the box, five or six? Oh around how many have we shot like out of the box five or six oh maybe 10 big game rifles out of the box shooting the box rifle with the box ammo and just shooting tight ass groups i mean shooting like sub moa groups out of the box and it's just nothing else i found it's like that i was talking to a buddy of mine who works in the firearms industry and he was saying yeah the reason that a buddy of mine who works in the firearms industry, and he was saying, yeah, the reason that a lot of the custom guys get pissed at Savage is because Savage Rifles just do what they're trying to do,

but they do it for a tenth of the money, you know? You know, it's really interesting you say that. That's what we're known for is that lights out accuracy, and that's our trademark. And it's interesting you say that about Gunmiths because when we're looking to innovate and we're looking to come up with things like the AccuTragger and things that have really put us on the map like that, we've never looked to our competitors for inspiration on what to do next. We look to gunsmiths.

What is a gunsmith doing to a rifle to make it more accurate, to make it fit better, to make it perform better? And then how can we do that on a factory basis? I mean, we can't glass bed an action, so we came up with the Accustock, which is more of a drop-in solution to glass bedding. And same thing, long ago, triggers were horrible. They were heavy, and because the lawyers kind of won out at every gun company, you've got to have a heavy trigger to be safe.

So we came out with a gun with a trigger job that was safe. And so really, those guys, as mad as they are with us, they're our inspiration, you know, because everything they do is because a gun isn't performing the way it should. So if a gunsmith can make it happen once, we can make it happen hundreds of thousands of times if we're creative we've figured out and

figure out how to make a factory gun shoot like a custom gun and i'm sure there's a lot of people here that have had that can share the same experience you've had i mean just where they shot alongside a buddy that had a multi-thousand dollar expensive gun and just hung right with them shooting them group for group right with expensive gun. The guns just shoot. There's a gun writer that I've always admired a lot, Chuck Hawks, and he was one of the first guys I started reading about that was really always celebrating just the unrivaled accuracy of coming out of the box with it. And what I've liked about it is a lot of people come to me,

and they'll ask me, like, what do I need to do to shoot this and shoot that kind of groups. And in a way, I almost feel silly for in the last, you know, the recent years, how much time I spent messing with the hand loads and messing with guns. And I enjoy that kind of stuff, but it is, like, refreshing to be able to have something you just go out and tell people is, like, going to work, you know, flat out of the box. Can you explain two things? Explain what an AccuTrigger is, because I think that that's something that's not well understood. And when he talks about a heavy trigger and light trigger, like a lot of things, you'll buy a new rifle and it might take like five pounds or seven

pounds or even on some things like a nine pound trigger pull. It means you have to apply obviously like nine pounds of pressure to get the thing to go bang. And you lose all kinds of accuracy by exerting that amount of force on it because you're manipulating you know you're moving the gun sideways when you do it so explain with that how that thing works because that's kind of something i find it like a lot of guys who aren't familiar with it will look at it they'll be like what the hell is that yeah why does that matter yeah so the accutrigger really addresses the weakest link in a firearm which which is the shooter, right? We could do everything we can think of to make the rifle more accurate, but if the shooter can't tap into the mechanical accuracy of the firearm, it's no good.

And it's like exactly what you said. If you have a heavy trigger, anybody can line up the crosshair on something, but how do you fire that gun without disrupting that crosshair? And it takes a light trigger to be able to do that, be able to fire it without disrupting the crosshair. Well, how do you do that gun without disrupting that crosshair? And it takes a light trigger to be able to do that, be able to fire it without disrupting the crosshair. Well, how do you do that while being safe? So if you look at an AccuTrigger, it's got a regular trigger, and it's got a little blade in the middle of the trigger that we call an AccuRelease,

and that blocks the trigger. And the best way to explain it, especially, you know, in audio, where I can't make gestures with my hands or anything, but if you've ever fired a single-action revolver, you know, there's a half cock position and there's a full cock position. You can fire that gun from the full cock position. And if you have that gun cocked and you drop it, it'll fall to half cock, right? So we have internally within an AccuTrigger that that blade blocks the trigger from accidentally discharging. So in order to have that light trigger, we have very minimal trigger and sear engagement to make that trigger light. But if you were to drop that gun, a loaded gun, hard enough, you would hear a click. And that's

the accutrigger falling to half cock. It's not, you know, on a lesser gun, you're going to hear a bang instead of a click. So it still has that light trigger-sear engagement, and it still sears off if it's treated harshly when it's cocked, but it adds the safety into the system. So the science of a lighter, crisper trigger is old science. The safety aspect of it catching itself and clicking instead of banging, that's the essence of the AccuTrigger, and that allows the shooter to tap into all that mechanical accuracy in the rifle. That Accutrigger deal is one of the things that first drew me to it

is because when we're out filming, we got a lot of activity going on around you on a hunt. We got camera guys and people moving around. If you and your buddy are out, you kind of always know where everybody is. But in that kind of situation, safety is always on my mind because it's just harder to control. And I like just that extra element of I just feel better about it. In those moments when you are ready to fire, there's like an extra level of control, and it's comforting to me. And once you get used to it, I don't have any problem with it.

So I want to go back to Mr. Nash here. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys handle the ammunition end of things? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and just like Bill talks about all the technology that goes into building a gun and building a better trigger, we've got a team of people back at the factory who are constantly looking to innovate ammunition and give people more confidence when they're in the field. Sometimes ammunition is kind of a last-minute purchase decision. I'm going hunting. I forgot I've got to pick up some ammo. But to have true success, you really need to think about the one thing that's going to touch the animal out of your gun, and that's the bullet. I mean, with all the hunting that you've done, you know how important it is because you're not always going to have a perfect shot.

The animal may turn. It may start walking from being in a still position. So having a bullet that's built strong enough to withstand bone, heavy tissue, not a perfect angle, that's what we really focus on. And then, of course, putting it where you aim it, which is a combination of the right gun, the right preparation, and the right bullet. That's an interesting point you bring up, man, because I find that

a conversation I always have with people is people are always talking about all the best case scenarios. And Having been able to do quite a lot of big game hunting, I find that the best case scenarios don't happen quite as often as you'd like. I think that people need to be better about when they're trying to select ammunition, talk about what caliber they're going to use,

what types of distances they're comfortable shooting. Stop thinking about all these perfect broadside, right behind the shoulder situations and start asking yourself, what's going to happen when things don't go exactly as I planned and am I tooled up and fitted up for those kind of things? I think it's super easy. Yeah, if everything's perfect and you hit everything just right, sure. You could be hunting big game with subpar stuff. But it's

those things when things go south and go bad, which happens just a lot, man. And I've always trying to advocate to people to plan on that and stick with adequate calibers, stick with good ammunition, practice a lot of restraint on shots you're going to take because you think you're going to make it. And always factor in when things are going to go bad do you guys find like when you're building ammo do you somehow tailor your ammo to your own brand of rifles do you mean like when you're building you build the the federal premium stuff thinking like this stuff's going to shoot great out of a savage rifle is that something you think about well as closely as we work with savage and we've had a couple of recent innovations i mean from the savage side and we've partnered with them on the a17

and some other guns that where we can truly custom fit to work perfectly out of that platform so that's a great advantage of being part of the same you know family of brands yeah the a17 yeah yeah exactly but but we also want to make sure that if people happen to be crazy and not shoot a savage um we it's not the whole market it's not it's not the whole market so so we got to make sure that we take all the most popular gun platforms out there and test our products in those platforms also so that we know that we've got the best quality product out there that's going to perform no matter what platform you choose. But yeah, having these guys part of the same family has been great because we can look forward and say, all right, how can we better meet the needs of hunters and shooters

going ahead? And how can we partner on that? You know, I would ask you one last quick thing here. Are the, you know, like, is the ammo shortage thing, like, is it done now kind of in your guys' mind? Well, I mean. Or, like, what was it? Well, obviously, you know, rimfire is a question we get asked about a lot, right? And it's a popular caliber for people getting started in the sport. There are more and more great platforms out there to shoot from. And when you think about it, it used to be that you could only shoot maybe 10 rounds out of a clip. Now there are clips out

there that hold 30, 50. There are different AR style platforms available for.22s. And let's face it, it's fun to shoot, right? For a new shooter, it's not intimidating because there's not a lot of recoil. And so there's a combination of factors. It's popularity. It's more people coming into the sport. And there's also some people that are stuffing it in their basements. We know that, too. In a way, it became a self-perpetuating thing because I always just took for granted.

I think of the real shortage of.22 shells that was going on. It felt like, let me back up, because I always took for granted when you just wanted some, you bought them, right? So you'd buy 50 of them or buy a thing of them. And then one day someone's like, oh, you know, it's hard to find. It prompted me to start doing the, like making the problem worse by responding to that, by getting it, you know? So when people say like, oh, it's limited to two boxes and I only wanted one, I'd be like, oh, I better buy two. So pretty soon I had massive amounts of this stuff laying around because it was like this self-feeding thing, you know, where I think that in some ways

that kind of prompted along. But you guys had to get this pounded with questions about stuff like that. We did, absolutely. And, you know, it's tough because you want to have demand for your product, but you also don't want people to be dissatisfied because they can't get it. So, you know, we are 100% committed to building more product. Federal and CCI are kicking out more rimfire product than we ever have. And we're confident that it's going

to be more readily available. And I think we're seeing that already. But it's been an interesting time. All right, man. Has anybody got a question that they want to ask right now? Anyone? If not, we've got a bunch of people that have come in on social media with questions. I thought I'd stick some to you guys. Yanni, what you would like in any of them?

Have you seen the questions? No. Pick something out. Has anybody got anything? Go ahead. Are you seeing an increase in like 6mm, 6.5mm type requirements for factory produced like 6.5mm? Yeah, restate the question too if you would. That's a gun and an ammo question, right?

Yeah, so he asked about the popularity of 6mm and 6.5. Yeah, we're seeing that, absolutely. And we've actually introduced a couple new loads in our American Eagle product line in federal. So we're excited to expand it to meet the demand of that platform. It's a very accurate caliber, and we're excited to offer more options. You know, someone wrote in that I've heard that I've struggled with because I don't fully understand it.

When it comes to like, when you get a brand new rifle out of the box, everybody's got a different theory about the break-in process and the cleaning process. Some guys be like, shoot it once, clean it. Shoot it twice, clean it. Shoot it three times, clean it until you're up to ten times. Some guys be like, shoot it once, clean it, shoot it twice, clean it, shoot it three times, clean it until you're up to 10 times. Some guys are like, I shoot it,

I clean it, never clean it again. I mean, all these different versions on it. And you're making game time decisions just by like putting a patch in there and seeing what it looks at. What's your recommendation on someone with a brand new thing out of the box? Like he takes it out of the box, what should be his regimen, and then on top of that, once that break-in process is through, however you define the end of it, what is your recommendation on cleaning the board? It's funny, I got a guy right here in the booth, his name is Stan Pate. He competes in F-Class, which is a 1,000-yard competition,

multiple-time national champion, world champion world champion f-class shooter and i was i was staying alongside him one year at the nra show and somebody asked him that exact same question and his answer was i just take him out and shoot him yeah you know you'll get better accuracy out of a clean bore than you will out of a dirty bore but as far as what prep it needs to achieve that maximum accuracy it we just really haven't seen anything definitive that shows us that any process one or the other has any effect on the long-term accuracy of that product the way it's broken in just that the you know after it's broken in however it's broken in clean guns gonna shoot better than a dirty gun yeah i've got guys uh who you know say

they clean every 20 rounds guys say they clean every 20 rounds. Guys say they clean every 1,000. You're tipping more in the other, tipping in the latter direction. I mean, that's an extreme, but. I hate cleaning guns. So, and I'm not a good enough shooter. The difference between clean bore, dirty bore

really affects me that much because you have to have the ability to tap into that extra bit of accuracy. But yeah, it really depends on the, you know, copper fouling is an issue. Copper fouling does contribute to opening up the group. And that's different by load, right? If you're shooting really hot, really fast, it's going to foul more, where some of these lower pressure cartridges, they don't foul as much.

So I think you just need to kind of work out your process and monitor your own accuracy. But me personally, I'm not cleaning any more than I have to. Here's another one we get a lot from people is a guy wondering about, someone just mentioned copper fouling. Guy wondering about copper versus lead ammo. So what I've done in my own personal hunting is I've tended to use like, you know, what you call non-toxic or solid monolithic stuff in places where like in California, we have the condo recovery area. I've used it there, but I find that more and more guys, like a lot of guys just who are looking for just performance and ballistics, you know, are going now and shooting copper. How much do you see,

like when you look at the, the whole realm of people buying ammo, how much do you see, like, when you look at the whole realm of people buying ammo, how much do you see that transition happening and how much is it just because I hang out with guys who kind of obsess about this stuff a lot? Well, we definitely are seeing more popularity. We've added Trophy Copper to our premium line of products and introduced here at the SHOT Show, we've got a new one, Power Shot Copper. That's more of a mid-priced copper bullet for those who want to shoot it. What we've always been about is offering as many options for people as possible. For those who want to shoot or have to shoot certain types of bullet construction, we have that capability. And others who are tried-and-true lead bullet guys can shoot those too.

And the key for us is we push weight retention on bullets. So when you're hunting, you're shooting big game. Fusion is our deer hunting ammunition. It's a bonded process, fused jacket to the core. It holds together really well, so you don't get a lot of fragmentation. So we're, again, technologically advanced ammunition and options for everybody. And copper bullets shoot really well too. I mean, you can get some great accuracy out of them. But do you find that that's like a fast growing segment?

It is gaining popularity. We've seen some good acceptance of our trophy copper line, but there's always going to be a market for the lead core bullets also. Yeah, I think in some ways, a lot of that comes with what you're familiar with. Yeah, man, it's like the bonded lead stuff. I just have always just trusted it and used it, just had great results hunting with it you know um what else you got any more good ones how are we on time man we're getting kind of over time no we still got 30 minutes oh no not for this portion oh um i like the budget versus uh match grade or hunting loads if they want to touch on that yeah so here's the guys like can you discuss the round to round performance of practice or budget ammo versus match grade or hunting loads

you want to take that one on well as bill can attest to and a lot of people obviously it depends on the gun you know different guns like different bullet styles different grain weights so we always encourage people to try a number of different bullets, a number of different products, and see what works best. But we pride ourselves on making quality ammunition no matter the price point, but you get better features. It's like buying a luxury vehicle. You get leather seats.

You get a moonroof. You get heated seats if you're in the north. But it's really you get a moon roof, you get heated seats if you're in the north. But, you know, it's really, you get what you pay for. And what you pay for with top quality premium ammunition is better accuracy, more stringent quality control. And then you also get features like on our trophy bonded tip product, you get a boat tail and a tip that increase the ballistic performance of it. And you also get weight retention so that if you do happen to hit the shoulder bone when you're trying to hit the vitals right behind it,

it's going to pass through and it's going to hit the vitals. So what you don't want to have happen is, you know, if you're shooting a trophy of a lifetime, buy a cheaper ammo and have it fail on you. Just to kind of pile on to what Jason said, here I'm the gun guy. I'll tell you straight up, don't put crap ammo in your Savage rifle. You will not be impressed. And sometimes from a marketing standpoint, we want to trouble with that because everywhere we go, we say accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, and we talk about the one shot, one kill and all that. And then every once in a while, not a lot, every once in a while,

somebody will send a gun back and say, this gun isn't accurate. It's not grouping well. And, you know, say they send a.308. I know the load they're going to test that customer's rifle with. I know that they're going to shoot a 168 grain federal gold medal to see if that's an accurate rifle.

And our service department will shoot it. And they'll send a gun back to the guy with the target and go, you got an MOA gun here. It shot.8, you know. And the guy says, well, I want it to shoot like that with the crap ammo. It's just not the way it works, you know? And I'll tell you, as a gun guy, you know, you will not be satisfied with your rifle if you don't put good quality ammo in it from an accuracy standpoint. And also from just a terminal standpoint, I've never killed a single deer with a rifle.

I've killed everyone with a bullet. So think of all the expense you go through, hunting licenses and travel and all that. The least expensive part of your trip is going to determine your success or failure of that trip just as much as the expensive part. So don't spend all that money on a Savage and a nice scope and all that. And then practice with the cheaper ammo, fine. But, you know, don't, you know, and I'm not a ballistician. You know, all those deer I killed and what would have happened if I had shot cheaper ammo at them? I don't know. I don't want to know. I don't want to leave that to chance. I personally inject enough variables into that equation through my own lack of skill.

But I just want to cross that off the list and not worry about it. That's a good point, mate, because all the shooting I do, and some of them are recreational shooters, but all the shooting I do is basically inspired by the fact that I'm going hunting. So I spend a lot of time at the range, but I'm experimenting with things, seeing how things work. I'm never looking for just to buy some case of subgrade dirty stuff that I can run through my things because to me that's not adding to my knowledge of my tool. It's not adding to my knowledge of what I'm capable of doing. But I do think a good thing for guys who are trying to mess around with a rifle and find out is my rifle up to the job or not, is it accurate or not,

you've got to shoot a handful of things. Just try a couple different things from a company you trust and see, because there can be a radical difference, even right down to shooting.22s. Just different weights. You might try a.36 grain,.38 grain, different muzzle velocities, and you'll get huge differences. Some guns, it's idiosyncratic.

Some guns just shoot some things better than others. And you really, without trying three or four different things, just small differences. Some guns, it's idiosyncratic. Some guns just shoot something better than others. And you really, without trying three or four different things, just small differences, I mean like bullet weight, stuff like that, you really have no idea what your thing's capable of. Because I've seen groups shrink out from three-inch groups down to one-inch groups just by going from one box ammo to another box ammo. And it's something I think a lot of guys overlook, where they just buy some stuff at the store, have no idea what they're doing go out shoot it's like this thing don't shoot you don't know you don't know until you get in there all right uh yanni concluding thought i could add to that a little bit you know preparing for our hunt last week

we went down to mexico to hunt coos deer and uh i was shooting a 110 and a 270 and you guys sent me i think uh your ballistic tips um the nozzle ballistic tips the the trophy bonded and the uh sierra game king yeah the Game King or bonded bear claw? Sierra Game King. Sierra Game King, yeah. All three of them shot like right at an inch, but the trophy bonded shot like three quarters. And that was three groups of each. So I was like, wow, this is great. And I really got to test it all, which was awesome.

But yeah, that's my concluding thought on it. The last question for you that I saw on there that I think everybody would like to know is if you could just hunt with one rifle right now, what would it be? Or one caliber? Yeah, I get asked that all the time, man. It's such a hard question to answer. Right now, I've been doing a lot of hunting with a 270. So the Savage Weather Warrior and the 270 model 116 it's just i don't know man it's so much that comes down it's like what you know and what you're familiar with it's just something that i just have shot a lot and i just know it and i'm comfortable with it um i think that this is fueled in large measure

by gun writers and other people. I think there's so much noise out there where people are arguing about the supremacy of different calibers that for real-world hunting applications are almost indistinguishable, different attributes of them. So I'm kind of like, I realize now I'm kind of like an

old curmudgeon-y guy that still have a 270 and have not ventured out. I own many calibers, but just something I almost like because I feel like it's like having a campfire. This old, comfortable thing that I know well.

And I have great luck with it, man. If I, but if I had to own one, if I could just like hunt, because I hunt a wide variety of things, everything from moose down to javelina. I would probably, if I just had to have one for real, it'd probably be like a, you know, something in the line of a 300 win mag. Just something to be like kind of a little bit heavy, you know, a little bit heavy for some applications, maybe a tad in some people's minds, a tad light for other applications. That'd be my one sweet spot thing right now. Like my hunting arsenal is my two 70. And then with that, I shoot, you know, one 30, one 50 grain bullets. Then I have a 30 caliber rifle that I got that I can shoot 180s and 200 grain bullets for big Alaska stuff and I feel pretty covered concluding thoughts it's a nice quiver

I mean 270 has been proven for for years and it speaks again to to quality of the bullet if you're shooting a trophy bonded tip a nozzle partition a fusion and you put the shot in the right spot it's going to do the job and i like 272 i've got a 270 short mag and of course the the 30 out six is also a favorite you know where i'm from and where everybody's from yeah when you say i was a favorite you're from what like i grew up in michigan it would be that there was a day and i was very young when it happened, when everybody had a.30-30. It was like, oh, yeah, it's a brush gun.

And it was like one day you woke up and everybody in the world shot a.30-06. It was just like this thing that happened overnight. Giannis is still. Yeah, I shoot.30-06 a lot. Yeah, but it was just like this. There's so much regionality to it. And you talk to other guys. I've got friends who brought up know, brought up in other states.

Never touched it. It's just like you have, like, your region and the guys in your region kind of, like, spread these little things. I think where that's all that, you know, misinformation and just, like, ancestral stuff comes from where you just, like, have these ideas that you're familiar with, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Bill, you got some concluding thoughts? Yeah, I think for me personally, especially when hunting, it just comes down to putting in the time on preparation.

Like you said, it's what you're comfortable with. Well, you're not going to be comfortable with something you don't spend time with. So spend some time on the range with your rifle. Spend some time shooting different loads of ammunition so you know you're confident that the particular load that you've selected is the one that's going to perform. Be comfortable with your optic.

Be comfortable with all your gear. For me, maybe I'm just too simple-minded. I can't think about all that stuff when I've got an animal in front of me. I just want all that stuff off the list. I don't want to worry about it, and I don't worry about it when I put the time in. Yeah, man, that's a good point. And it's something that I find myself kind of pounding my head about is there's so many guys out there you know you might just hunt like a couple days a year and i feel like even if that's the case like if that's all your schedule has to allow you need

to spend more time with your equipment i think it's like you have an obligation to yourself you have obligations to others you have an obligation to the animal just to get to understand what it is that's going on how the stuff works works. It's an investment, man. And even for the two-day-a-year hunter, you've got to tap. I think you almost got to have like an annual or like a year-round approach to thinking about your kit and thinking about your gear and thinking about what you're going to do. All right, with that, we're going to wrap up this part.

Meet you at your podcast. Tune in next time. Like I said, we're coming at it from SHOT Show. Not open to the public, so I can't just say come. You got to find a way to finagle your way in through some kind of industry. Did we just encourage that? No, no, of course not. These guys, that's coming from me.

Find a way to finagle your way in and come and see what's going on in the outdoor hunting and shooting worlds. All right, till next time 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 on axe 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

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