The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 030

Episode Date: March 4, 2016

The Rockies, Idaho. Steven Rinella and Janis Putelis answer listener questions with Ryan Callaghan from First Lite, along with Adam Moffat and Garret Smith from the MeatEater crew. Subjects discussed: Hunting ads that should be illegal; whether draping clothes over carcasses to prevent meat loss from predators and scavengers actually works; conspiracy theories on the reintroduction of wolves; tips on traveling domestically and internationally with firearms; tips on traveling with wild game; the only game meat Steve's ever lost traveling; what NOT to bring on a plane to avoid a $4000 fine from TSA; long distance shots and the longest shot Steve is comfortable taking; and tips for westerners who want to go out East for a whitetail hunt. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meat. This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you from a portion of Idaho that flows into the Snake River. That's right, right, Callahan? Copy, correct. Copy.

The reason I can't tell you that is we just got done mule deer hunting, and Callahan. Um, he's real skittish. He's got little spots all over and, in multiple States even. But he gets leery when you talk about Northern,

can I say Northern Rockies, Cal? I mean, Rocky. I mean, what's Northern Rockies? That's British Columbia. Okay, the Rockies. The Rockies. You're calling me saying we've been hunting the Rockies. We've been hunting mule deer in the Rocky Mountains

to not betray anything. What I think ought to be illegal... This has nothing to do with any of this, but it's just been something that's really weighing on my mind. What I think ought to be illegal. This has nothing to do with any of this, but it's just been something that's really weighing on my mind. What I think ought to be illegal is ads, hunting ads, where a dude, hunting ads

that show a dude with a rack on his pack when you know that it was just a rack someone had laying around or in a freezer. Especially when that dude is still looking very sneaky. Yeah. Because to me, I'm like, that guy's a poacher.

No. It's like the way those pictures look. Yeah, you're right. Why is he still sneaking? Yeah, he's still sneaking, and he's got nothing else with him. Like, Lord knows where the meat is. He's got like a rack, and he's always standing on a pinnacle surveying the landscape. Dudes packing game don't look like that.

No. They don't look like dudes that you want to run into for the most part. Dudes packing game who actually have a rack on their back look like some guy that just is in the suckiest situation imaginable, can barely walk, and is headed in a downhill direction, and is not going out of his way to climb pinnacles and look all majestic and survey the landscape. Or it'll be a dude with a big old rack, and he's crossing a raging river with a mean look on his face, and he's still got his bow already.

The situation never happens i would make an ad of a couple dudes who just looked like they hated their lives and had no weapons because they left them at another part of the trip they'd like this their third trip and they're in a fight because they're fighting about something, and one of them's knee hurts. That's right. And it'd say, like, Steve's gear. I told you we shouldn't have taken that trail. Yep. The other guy's readjusting his hip belt.

Yeah, the other guy's trying to figure out what's wrong with his backpack. Because he's like, dude, it shouldn't hurt my neck this bad to have a backpack on. Why is it that either my hips kill or my shoulders kill it's when it's supposed to all be evenly distributed yeah that would be a realistic ad but no it's a guy looking like like a makeup person might put a little dirt on his face and he's on a he's like surveying a majestic mountain scene, rifle in hand, and some giant elk rag where you mysteriously can't see any part of the thing. Or some of the guys are sneaky and they keep a bloody old skull in their freezer. The sneaky, but all of these guys, even if they're surveying some scene, they're always in a semi-crouch, like a semi-sneak.

Yeah. I'm like, whoa.sneak. Yeah. It looks majestic. Yeah. I'm just thinking about this because we just did like, I mean, it wasn't even a huge packout, but as the way out, I was thinking like,

if you took a picture of me for an ad, I don't know what they added me for. Bear? You wouldn't be selling anything. Bear. Bear has to. No. You look like somebody

you would never, ever ever under really any circumstance like pick up off the side of the road you'd be like that guy's having a hard time yet there's something wrong with him so there's something about blown by yeah there's something about how miserable he looks it gives me the willies there's one guy i don't know who he is, but there's one guy I know that must have kept a skull. He had an elk skull in the freezer because I feel like that elk skull popped up in more ads of packing ads. What we're doing today is we're answering,

we're doing, we're here with Garrett Smith. Garrett. Howdy, everyone out there. Garrett has an electric toothbrush, lives in a vehicle, just getting done living in a vehicle at 32 years of age, but has an electric toothbrush. And he got an electric toothbrush

because he thought it was a step toward adulthood. Baby steps. Baby steps toward adulthood. That's a $40 toothbrush yeah it's a calculated move yeah he blew he blew 40 bucks on a toothbrush that makes a humming noise ryan callahan hello uh janice vans wall putellis and adam i don't even know your last name that well yet. Moffitt. That's right.

Yeah. Adam Moffitt, who's a camera guy. The first time we ever went out with you. Did you have enjoyable time? Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. You guys taunted hard. It was tough, but fun.

Got to see Callahan's mustache. You got to see more than that. Yeah, I dig it a little more than that. Callahan came back into camp wearing nothing but his suspenders one night. And his mustache. With a mustache and a pair of suspenders.

The reason for that being... It was like, what were the suspenders holding up? His pants. Oh, yeah. He doesn't just clip them. He needs that kind of the old clips. He can like clip it to his buttocks and his hips this was not a uh fashionable moment it was very dark out and uh i had taken the majority of my sweaty clothing off and draped it over mule deer so the black bear that i had i'm gonna point out he left to go get a black bear and came back with a deer

yes came back with a bag of guts from a deer um but yeah so i i'm not uh adam pointed out i looked like a fat stick it's like you're 140, but you have a beer gut. How's that work? Anyway, yeah, so I had peeled off a good portion of my clothing to put on top of the deer. To keep the bear you were trying to kill from eating your deer. Or give me some peace of mind or something.

I feel like that trick works. We did that all the time, leaving elk overnight. Yeah, we don't know it empirically. No. But it feels like it would work. I pee around, put clothes on it. It can't hurt. I've never seen bears get on carcasses faster anywhere than Colorado.

So I think if, and you're talking about doing that in Colorado all the time, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that for me would be a pretty good litmus test. My brother lost a good portion of an elk to a bear last year. I'd like to ask him if he did the close trick or not. That was archery too, right? Yeah. What he did is he boned out he left the

four legs on the bone and boned out um the rest and the bear ate all the boned out stuff and buried all the bone in stuff so he loaded all the boned in stuff dug it back up put it on his llama brought it down to a creek and washed it all and got out of there. Because he'd lost his quiver in the night. Because heading back to his camp after dark, threw the latch on his quiver. He had one of those tight spots, but he didn't have it on there right. I thought your brother was shot recurve or longbow.

That's my other brother. Oh was danny no matt danny is a traditional oh danny is well i mean he likes to shoot a recurve but he hunts with primarily with a rifle i think he killed like a deer with his recurve but he likes to shoot recreationally oh okay i gotcha my other brother shoots a compound he don't like to hunt with a rifle he just likes to hunt with his boat matter of fact he's got a mountain goat tagging right now he's hunting mountain goats with his bow. But he's bringing his rifle too. I told him he's going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger

in the end of Commando when he raids that island compound with a duffel bag full of weapons. He's going to have a caddy. He'll be like, this is about a 250-yard shot. Give me my bow. This is one of those special

podcast episodes where we answer questions. Here's the first question. Everybody gets a chance to answer this. It's from, what the hell town we near? This is something from this town.

We're in the middle of the Rockies. Well, I just had a weird thing happen where i felt like i'd entered like another dimension because the guy named drew says this is that the town we're in look at the bottom of that darn close darn close a fellow darn close to us right now has to say so i'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but i have a buddy who is convinced that the clinton administration's main motivation for reintroducing wolves back into the west was for gun control with wolves growing at an exponential rate and negatively impacting ungulates the tradition of hunting would diminish over the years. With fewer and fewer hunters, the sale of new firearms go down

and in time, hunting won't become an American value. Garrett, what'd you take on that? I think his buddy's got to focus on another field of study. Because it personally... That's a roundabout way

of going about stuff. Yeah. You're taking the real because it personally that's a roundabout way of going about stuff yeah yeah you're like you're like taking like the real like long gamble on it i got an idea i got an idea dust particle feather feather floats too no drew i uh I think there's no question how the Clinton administration past and the potential Clinton administration future feels about firearm regulations. There's no question there. Do I think that they would have the wherewithal and the crystal ball clairvoyance kind of thing

to have such a long, drawn-out plan that seems so sketchy in its inception and difficult to track. And I don't think that's the case. I don't think there's a big mystery about why wolves are back. I think wolves were reintroduced because they had been extirpated, regionally extirpated from human-caused activities, and we have an obligation to remedy human-caused ecological catastrophe. It's not always popular,

but I think it's our obligation. We can't drive animals to extinction. I think it's bad business. It's bad spiritually, very bad. Depending on your worldview, I think it would be a sin against God and man to just accept extinctions as a matter of course.

So I think that there was an obligation to right that wrong. Now, I'm not commenting right now on whether or not we should regulate wolves. I think wolves should be regulated like any other big game. I think they should be, at this point, managed in places where they've recovered. I think they should be managed on the state level as a renewable resource. But no, I think your body's off. I think your body may be smoking a little too much herb. One thing I think when I see a question like that is,

this is writer Joan Didion, and she has a book called Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Or maybe she has another book called The White Album. I can't remember which of her books this was in. But she was talking about in the 60s now not now but this is going on in the 60s she's talking about because there's so much information out there that people get like the more information that becomes available the more widespread and easily accessible that information is people get get more hungry for the secret story.

We were talking about this earlier today in relation to how it seems that people that smoke a lot of weed really start getting hungry for those inside scoops. My brother believes that it's the same kind of guy who's hungry for an inside scoop is the same guy who likes to start smoking a lot of weed. And it's not that smoking weed makes you hungry for the inside scoop that no one knows the real truth about. Yanni, do you think that's why?

Do you think that was the ultimate goal of Wolf Reintroduction? No. Disarming America? No, no. I agree with the smoking too much. Woo-hoo. Really? Yeah.

What if he's never smoked weed in his life? He needs to start. Too much time. Maybe Stardew will help calm those nerves. Adam, are we missing anything on this question? No, no. Yeah. That just seems so implausible.

I just don't feel like it really warrants much more of our time. Wrap that one up. Yeah. No. I just don't feel like it really warrants much more of our time. Wrap that one up. I'm interested. This is a question though. You guys always go into such great detail in your discussions. That was a compliment. That wasn't even part of the question.

I would love to hear about your recommendations, experiences, horror stories, and traveling by means of airplanes. Navigating TSA. Passports, experiences, horror stories on traveling by means of airplanes. Navigating TSA. Passports, visas, customs. Packing guns and cameras. Packaging and traveling with meat and hides. Leaving production element out of it,

which isn't as interesting to me, like the cameras and stuff like that, and leaving the passports and visas out of it. What I like about this question is the traveling with game meat. I like that aspect of this question a lot. And I like a little bit the travel with guns thing. In all the travel with game meat I've ever done, one time I lost a bunch of American eels.

It was very hot. They were lost in the Billings, Montana airport. done, I've lost, one time I lost a bunch of American eels. It was very hot. They were lost in the Billings, Montana airport. I was coming back from New York State with a bunch of eels. And by the time I got them back, it was just a sack of slime and eel bones. I mean, it was bad. It's the only thing I've ever lost.

I'm pretty careful about it. I like to freeze stuff, put it in a cooler, duct tape the cooler shut, and check it. And even if it were to get lost for a day or two, the stuff's going to stay pretty good inside there. You can, when dealing with small amounts, like I've taken turkeys, and instead of even trusting that I would lose the turkey to baggage loss. I just carry the bird on. I one time had a bag of pig guts frozen in my carry-on. They pulled it out to inspect it and had no comment on it.

I another time had a shotgun shell in my carry-on, and that did not go smoothly. I was interviewed by the police, and they knew. I was like, man, we were just hunting ptarmigan. I forgot to take the shotgun shell in my carry-on and that did not go smoothly i had i was interviewed by the police and they knew like i was like man we were just hunting ptarmigan i forgot to take the shotgun shell in my bag but they had like a whole rigmarole they had to go through and they knew that i was obviously just you know made a mistake but they still had to notify the police and fill out a you know a bunch of paperwork and they were kind of annoyed with me because you could tell that it happened to them every day in Anchorage. Some Yahoo has a thing.

Yanni, tell your story. Shotgun shell story? About your turkey, your dead turkey and your shotgun shell. Yeah. That was just last year, wasn't it? Yeah. I think, have we done a shoot? And then I was maybe, I stayed to hunt?

No, it wasn't a shoot. Oh, we were just hunting dogs for fun? Oh, no. We were turkey hunting in California. Or no. Or was it Wisconsin? I think it was my personal trip. I was hunting with my dad and my brother in Wisconsin.

I was coming home. Anyways, checked my bags, went through security. What was it? You didn't tell them what's in your bag? Well, I'll get to that. Oh, you're doing the story and I wouldn't tell the story in this order, but go ahead. Well,

you know I'm coming home from a turkey hunt. So I check all my bags. All I have is my backpack with my laptop in it on me. And they call my name, Janice Petalus. Please come back to security. And I roll back in there and he's like, we found a loose –

so I walk through the door. They take me through the back door, and they've got all these stainless steel tables set out in this room. And I had packed my not-yet-frozen turkey parts just in Ziplocs, double Ziploc bags. They were cool. Just packed them into the middle of my big duffel. Like it was a skinned turkey cut up into legs and breasts.

Exactly. So I walk into this room, and they've got these giant, I don't know how many liters those duffel bags are of ours that we have, like 75, 80, maybe even bigger. Those big rubberized North Face duffels. All my stuff is spread out, you know, just like individual. There's like turkey because I was bringing home like wings and, you know, feathers for my girls. And, you know, all the meat and just everything's just spread out everywhere.

And my gun case is actually locked up. Like it's off to the side. I'm like, oh, that's kind of weird. It was kind of funny, you know. So they told me that the meat is what ticked off the x-ray machine because the big turkey breast kind of looks like a glob of weird matter, I guess.

They went and checked that and they found a loose shell in there. You can have ammo in your baggage, but it has to be in a container made for the purpose. Yeah. Either original packaging or a plastic container made to carry it. And it's not supposed to be able to touch.

Like, you know how.22 shells come sometimes just touching? Yeah. It's supposed to have dividers. Oh. I didn't know that. Yeah. So he shows it to me, and I'm thinking, oh, man,

because I had just heard your story so i was thinking now i'm gonna miss my fly because i'm gonna have to go through like the big you know police interview and yada yada he goes he like makes a phone call and goes no we just got to pitch this well i look at it and i had a box of 25 um turkey rounds like in one of those like aftermarket plastic boxes you know and 90% of them in there were like the heavy shot the stuff it's like four or five bucks around and then there was five that were like some cheaper remington stuff well he's holding the heavy a heavy shot in his hand i'm like you know if we're gonna throw a shell out you know maybe i could do a little

swab because i've actually got a container in my gun case locked in there. And he's like, yeah, sure. I don't see why not. So I got to keep the heavy shot. That is amazing. I got my heavy shot and pitched the Remington. That dude's probably a turkey hunter, man. Apparently, it doesn't hurt to ask.

Now, we had a fuel canister. Yeah. We get into a situation a lot of times. You're buying bear spray, and you can't fly with that no matter what. And fuel cans, you can't fly in commercial airliners with fuel cans. And I think we had a $4,000 fine for a fuel can from TSA. That never even made it on the plane. Isopropyl stuff.

Never even made it on the plane. Not isopropyl. What's the word I'm looking for? Isobutane. Yeah. Never made it on the plane. Not isopropyl. What's the word I'm looking for? Isobutane. Yeah. Never made it on the plane. So they call one of the guys we're traveling with. They call his name because we're just checking bags under whoever's name.

He goes down. They're like, hey, there's this canister. He's like, oh, hell, I don't need it. Throw it away. He thinks nothing of it. A couple weeks go by, a letter, a $4,000 fine shows up in the mail. A lawyer got it down to half that. Unreal.

Yeah. I would say, just to throw in one helpful tidbit here, if you're traveling internationally and you're looking at your flight schedule and you're like, oh, don't have any long layovers, you may want to adjust that so you have two hours at customs i think two hours at customs is kind of the minimum i think we had to we had to and wasn't enough the gun stuff throws them for a loop it does it throws them for loop there's just some formalities now if you're like i'll tell you one the biggest tip i would give the

biggest trouble i had if you if you are traveling, is go to U.S. Customs and have them give you a – there's a form that even has a standard number. Basically, you write down what your rifle is, serial number, description of rifle. They stamp that form. So when you're coming back into the U.S. – like people are always worried about what the other country's government is going to think. But when you're coming back in the U.S., you can't just be turning up in customs with a gun they're going to want to know is that your gun where'd you get the thing so getting that and i had i didn't do this one time and it caused all kinds of headaches get the customs form and get it stamped saying i own x serial number firearm what scope is on it serial Serial number of your scope.

So when you come back to the US, you can go like, I left with this thing. Look here. It's a temporary export and then import form. Yeah. That can cause trouble because they don't want you just turning up at the border, toting guns that they don't know how you came into it and what it is. So you got to watch out for that stuff. Just flying generally, if you've never flown with a firearm, it works like this. how you came into it and what it is and so you got to watch out for that stuff just flying

generally if you've never flown with a firearm works like this i'm talking general domestic travel you got to have a hard-sided case and you got to have locks on it and have it actually locked up you got your case locked in such a way that you cannot get the gun out without undoing the locks i've seen people take a regular case and put a little padlock on the two parts of the handle. A couple weeks ago, I had a woman in front of me get turned away by the TSA because he just threw the latches and pulled the gun out. The lock wasn't doing shit for good

because it was locked in the middle of the case. You've got a hard-sided case that is such that you cannot get the firearm out without removing the locks. They don't care if it's two locks, three locks, four locks, one lock. It's got to be unlocked to get it out. It doesn't need to be a TSA lock, like the universal locks.

It doesn't need to be that. You go up, you tell the check-in counter, you say, I'm traveling with a firearm. They're going to give you a declaration form. All the declaration form says is you're saying the firearm's not loaded. Depending you can have the ammunition in the case or not.

To be safe, don't put it in the case. Have the ammunition in a hard case. Meant for the purpose of transporting shells. The reason I don't like the paper cases is because they can just get messed up, paper rips, whatever they spill out, you could have trouble. So go and buy those little $4,

$5 ammo cases, tape the thing shut, put your ammunition in there, have it labeled. Where was I? You tell them you signed a declaration, you put the declaration into the case, you then will walk your firearm. This is most airports. You'll either walk your firearm to a TSA oversized baggage area and they'll swab the outside of the case while you stand there, never even open it up. Or the ticket agent will send it back on a conveyor and tell you to hang tight until she gives you the word. Then they'll go and check your firearm. They'll give you the wink and a nod. You get on the plane.

Generally, nine out of ten times, you go to baggage claim, your firearm does not come out on the carousel, but you go and you need to present an ID to a baggage handler at Oversized Baggage. You guys feel that that's true? Yeah. It's pretty simple. I would say also that because of the liquidity, is that the right word to use for that, of those regs and rules? They change, and then you've got to argue with the ticket agent because you know the rules better than they do.

Exactly. So what I was going to say is do your research ahead of time. Maybe print out a few pieces of paper from their website that has their rules and regs. Because if it's someone new and they haven't done a few of those and it's busy, they don't have the help, they can back them up. You can do yourself a huge favor by having that mean like, look, got this right off your website. Here it is. Here's the deal. Because international airlines can be different because what you just described is domestic, but we just went over to BC a month ago.

And Air Canada, you cannot now have ammo in with your rifle. But they didn't even know. Exactly. We had to argue with them about what it was. She's like, no, you can't anymore because there's just a big snafu. And the other woman's like, no, you have to now because of the big snafu. Right. Yeah.

And then they get a third guy who jumps in with his own opinion about the whole thing. But that's international. It's like, yeah, do your research. I'm just saying like generally in the U.S. it's how it goes. But if you're flying into Bozeman, Montana, those people are processing firearms all day long. They know the rule. If you're flying into weird towns, like let's say for whatever reason you're flying a gun. I don't know.

I'm pulling this out of my ass. Let's say you're flying a gun i don't know i'm pulling this out of my ass let's say you're flying into miami it might be good to be prepared to present at the miami airport someone to demonstrate that you know what the rules are i one time in in new york state so any airport run by port authority which is a police it's like a police department that sort of operates on behalf of new jersey in new york ports and airports. They have their own procedure where when you go to check a firearm, they have a Port Authority police officer come to the ticket desk, ticket counter, and that Port Authority police officer records the serial number, makes sure you have the proper permit to have a firearm in New York City. If you're flying out of New York City, you're flying through New

York City to go hunting. Then they escort you to the TSA. Now, I knew that I was supposed to be escorted by a Port Authority police officer. I had a ticket agent assuring me I was not supposed to be escorted by a Port Authority police officer. They had me walk my own gun over to the TSA, and then I wound up having to sit there in a little cop office explaining my story until the ticket agent person came and clarified that I did in fact argue with her and that she messed up. So yeah, be armed. But I don't like it to sound like a horror story, man. It's generally like shockingly easy. Yeah. How early do you get there before your flight? No different than normal. No different than normal. Two hours. No, but I like to go early. Yeah. I like to go

early. And I buffer with a firearm for sure. Yeah, another half hour, 40 minutes. Like the other day when I was checking in Seattle, for whatever reason, they were just like backed up with – the TSA guy was backed up with people's golf clubs and skis. You know what I mean? And he was just having a slow time of it. So I leave a little buffer.

Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. of it. So I leave a little buffer. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning

GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the

OnX Club, y'all. Looking at these questions here. Could I say one quick thing about production flight? Yeah, please, man. Do that while I pick out a good question. the thing we've had issue with is the lithium batteries and like trying to take as many of those and carry on throughout the crew because they will ping sometimes and you have to deal with that and we always carry on a full camera kit with media bats audio so if check baggage gets yeah ends up you're still

up and you can still keep rolling while you wait for everything to come in yeah so you know there's that that whole like rumor that tsa agents are really rough on hunters guns that's why you need to sign them in when you get what you ever heard that it's like why you when you travel internationally or you know domestic when you go and you want to sight your gun as soon as you can because the baggage handlers kick your guns around, right? I have to rough on everything. Yeah, it's just general. I don't think they see guns.

I've never had it. That's what I'm curious. I've never seen it. I've had more TSAs guys be all excited about what you're going to do hunting for. I think it's rough on bags. Yeah, no, I agree. You ever sit in a plane and look out the window and watch them load bags? They could care less, dude.

Yeah. I couldn't believe it the last time that happened where I actually had that view looking out the window. And I'm watching this guy, and he looks like he's my size. And he's grabbing our Pelican cases, which weigh 50 to 80 pounds. And he is making sure that he's getting them airborne before they hit the conveyor belt you know like he's just like yep getting my training in right now you know i just couldn't believe it like those things were landing with a nice thud yeah okay i will add it is nice if you're talking about buffers to look somewhat like you do in your passport picture the only reason i ended

up in the room for further review when we came through customs after the bc trip this year is because the guy kept looking at me at 32 with a mustache, and he's like, I'm going to send you back for further identification review. Yeah, I can see that. And then all of a sudden,

he's like, I go back to the back room, the rest of the crew comes through, and they're dealing with all the production stuff, and they're like, oh, you guys are traveling together? Like, lumped them all into one group.

And then it was like, let me see your firearms and all this stuff. Had I just looked a little bit like I did in my passport picture, I would have breezed right through. See, that's why I like a guy like me who's timeless. It's just one of the side benefits of being timeless. Can't grow facial hair. Yeah, but you wouldn't shave your mustache for that BS. No way.

Well, I got to get a new passport picture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, all right. My buddies are giving me a hard time. This is a question. My buddies are giving me a hard time because I took a 300-yard shot on a goat yesterday. Where is he from?

Does he mean mountain goat? I don't know. I wish I knew what kind of goat he's talking about. This is already a great question. My buddies are giving me a hard time because I took a 300-yard shot on a goat yesterday. Oh, a lot of dudes, especially more and more every year, call antelope goats. I wish you'd clarify. Not that it's going to affect the answer.

My buddies are giving me a hard time because I took a 300-yard shot on a goat yesterday with my 30-30. My point was that it was 300 yards straight, but I was 280 yards above the target, which means my horizontal was 150 yards. So he's saying angle compensated. I'm not sure what he's saying because it doesn't really make sense to me. Let me take a look. He's holding for short range. I don't know.

Do you think he is? Oh, you know what? He's talking about some kind of wild goat because now he's going on about Hawaii. Oh, okay. I'm going to parse the question out because i think he's saying he's he kind of goes on about archery yeah okay yes yes and no i don't even know what let me take first but let's two questions 300 yards with a 30 30 i think 300 yards is is is is a long shot for a 30-30 because they really start to drop off. Yanni Vanswall will know. At what point does a 30-30 really start to drop off?

I don't really know. I mean, we know that it's definitely a slower round, but I would think that with today's ammo, you can probably get something that a hotter 30-30 round that could – That still has some energy? Sure, sure. Yeah. Okay.

So there you have it. 300-yard shots. This is just a perennial thing that comes up. Like what kind of shots are too far? It's impossible to answer. It's not impossible to answer. There's some guidelines a shot's too far when you're taking it and you're trying to and you're wondering or not if you're going to hit it he fails to mention if you hit the goat yeah can i add on to that just real quick

please can i finish up finish it up oh the very i just popped in my head because i read another question earlier and i was thinking about it but But the way to answer that and to figure that out is basically whether or not your bullet, whatever velocity it's doing at 300 yards, if your bullet is still performing. So a lot of bullets say they perform down to 1,800 feet per second. So basically if your bullet is dropped to 1700 feet per second when it hits it's not going to expand it's going to retain its shape and just going to pencil through the target pencil through the animal so you're not going to get that mushrooming so i would look at you know look at the ballistics chart if you don't get the mushrooming you're not going to get the damage to the animal. Chances are the recovery is going to be much harder.

Yeah. I shot a deer at 460 yards through the lungs with a monolithic bullet, solid copper bullet. The wound channel looked about like if you took an arrow with a field tip and poked it through the animal. This thing, it was through the lungs. It didn't even register the hit. He kept chasing does and then got

a little woozy looking and fell over. No, it was like he didn't know. I'm sure he felt it. It was like he didn't know what happened because that thing didn't have enough energy to open up. It was a bullet that already had almost 100% weight retention. It just took a lot of velocity to open that thing up.

They were into those solid copper bullets that were supposed to pedal, but it took a lot of velocity. So that's a good point to bring up is the energy. Because oftentimes you look at a ballistics chart, and you'll see a number will be red. And it'll it'll be like at what distance does that thing lost so much velocity that doesn't have the energy anymore to get it to function but they i don't but i i think if the guy i'll just say this i think of

this dude here is really fixing to do a lot of 300 yard shooting and i don't care about all the new definitions a 300 yard shot is a shot that you have to pay attention to. I agree. That's bordering on, even by Western standards, a 300-yard shot is out into the marksman. It's out where marksmanship matters. Right? 100 yards, you can be six inches off off you know and and be in there

300 yards you have to be doing everything right 300 yards minor mistake becomes a big error becomes a big error yeah if this dude is and he's hunting goats and i know he's in hawaii so he's hunting like i'm talking like little barnyard goats which are small i would think that he would if he's going to get serious about this, and that's his new norm, I would think he'd be thinking about a new rifle. Yeah, I could be completely wrong on this, but just from, you know, my growing up,

I've never heard of a 30- being some you know an accurate weapon to begin with it's always been like a saddle gun type of thing exactly it's like yeah guys i mean the only guys shooting 30 30s anymore seems to be like guys shooting bears and lions with hounds because shooting out of a tree right up right above them but the other thing is it's like sure it's let's say it does have the energy the thing is when you get a when you get a a bullet that has a lower muzzle velocity and it starts to drop off it really matters like there's a big difference between an animal at 280 yards and an animal at 300 yards when your bullet's losing inches when it's losing inches to gravity over short spaces

because it's traveling so slow. Like physics 101, if I took a bullet, let's say I'm holding, let's say you're shooting 150 grain bullet, okay? And I took a bullet and held it out at arm's length and dropped it from my fingers. And at the same time, I shot a bullet at that height

perfectly on a flat plane. I shot a bullet from that height perfectly horizontal. Those two bullets hit the ground at the same time. It's not defying gravity. I open my fingers, the thing hits the ground. So if you're shooting 500 yards away, your bullet is traveling in a downward thing. As it slows down, that becomes more exaggerated.

So unless you're really good on range and you have a great range finder, if you're just guessing like, oh, he looks 300 yards away, but you're in fact wrong and he's 340 yards away, that's not a very forgiving cartridge. Like let's say you had some, you know, let's say you had a 300 win mag shooting 3100 feet per second the bullet's going to be a lot closer to your point of aim at 340 yards than one that's just poking along put that in better terms john you're better at that kind of stuff no you're exactly right but

i mean i think you explained it very well the thing to remember is that even with a.300 Win Mag, the difference between 300 yards and 340 is to be compensated for. To shoot flat out to 350 yards, very few cartridges have a maximum point-blank range of something that far. What's that rifle Floyd was talking about? .3378. So it's a.378 neck down to a.30 caliber.

And I think he was saying that he has point blank out to four or something. Yeah. So he's got a souped up, real fast rifle that he can zero at 200 yards and basically aim on an animal where he wants to hit out anywhere from zero to 400 yards to be within three inches.

Yeah. And I bet they zeroed because they knew they were going to take long shots. They probably zeroed at three to get like a point blank range out to four plus. So then if the deer jumps out and he's 20 yards away or he's 400 yards away, you just aim where you want to hit and pull the trigger. And you'll be within a few inches. But it doesn't, I mean, to to go back it does not matter where that rifle zeroed at if you suck at aiming if you suck yeah man suck at shooting if you jerk that trigger

and you're shooting something at 400 yards you're gonna be either getting a very gut-wrenching lesson or missing completely yeah at 400 yards yeah my personal for me personally if i can't 400 yards as far as i like to shoot animals at living creatures 400 yards that's just where i'm at personally and that's just the you know i know i mentioned one earlier that's the first i've ever shot at something, at an animal. If I'm hunting, I can get within 400 yards and I think that that's as good as I'm going to do, I will take a 400 yard shot with its light wind or no wind. And I got a good rest, all that kind of stuff.

I took a 392-yard shot the other day, and it was still a good hit, a little higher than I would have liked, out much further. It could have been real bad. It wasn't where I called my shot. It was within inches of where I called my shot, maybe six inches of where I called my shot. was within inches of where i called my shot maybe six inches of where i called my shot eight inches could have been trouble just do me a favor and talk about your setup for that shot and this was a real hunting situation a heart-thumping hunting situation let's just say i was already setting up for that shot before i even i found an animal from a long let's

say i found an animal from 800 yards away maybe maybe. I identified a ridge that would... No, we arranged it. What was it? It was six something, wasn't it? Yeah, because we were guessing the shot was going to be anywhere from 350 to 400. Yeah, so it was like 620 when we found him. So I found an animal 620 yards away. The next ridge I thought would probably give me a nice shot at it.

It was a mule deer buck who was kind of running the doe. They looked pretty settled in. It wasn't like a race. I wasn't racing the deer. It wasn't like the deer was traveling and I was trying to race it to a meeting point. I was already thinking about my shot. The minute I had to go across a little gully and climb up the other side, and I was thinking about my shot the minute I hit the bottom of the gully. I didn't run up that hill. I went up

that hill at a very slow pace because I was going to get to the top of that hill and I wasn't going to be winded and I wasn't going to be shaky from exertion. So I was already thinking, if I get up there, I'm not going to rush this. It's going to be a long shot. I'm going to do everything right. I took my time. I stopped to keep my breath because I wanted to hit the top of that hill fresh.

I also, on my way up that hill, ran through my head all the things a fella could do to screw up the situation with the shot and what criteria needed to be met for me to touch that trigger because it was a buck that I very much wanted to get. And I had set some parameters in my head, like what's green and what's a green light and what's a red light

when I get to the top of the hill. And I had settled that in my mind. I wasn't leaving it up to moment by moment situation. Got to the top of the hill. I approached the crest so that I had some rocks off to the side of me to give a little contour to the hill. And I had trees behind me to break up my outline. I crawled up. I have a butt pad I use and I'm glassing.

I had my butt pad out. I pushed my backpack up ahead of me. I put my butt pad on my back pad to help get everything padded out right. I moved out ahead with my hand and matted down some grass that I didn't like being there. And I got, I waited for the deer to turn broadside got lined up i did my little test where i'm lined up on it and i closed my eyes for a three count and then open my eyes back up and see if my crosshairs have drifted off that's a good one i like that i can't remember who was just telling me that i've never heard that before oh in like an actual hunting situation yeah that's great i remember this guy i'm trying to remember who it was i was talking to a military shooter who was talking it doesn't matter i saw a new military shooter who uses that

trick you do that to see if you're torquing it your body's in a neutral position you're torquing it interesting because you'll like he said he thinks you'll subconsciously torque to get on. Yeah. So he closes his eyes. You want to make that shot. He closes his eyes and then opens and sees if his thing has drifted because your body's working with your eye and doing stuff. And he's like, for a dead rest, it should be. Of course, you can't walk away. In some way, it's resting on you.

But if you're doing that little torque, you won't be able to keep it up. You won't be able to do it right when your eye's not on it because you're holding it just so. So he likes to close, open, and see if the crosshair drifted. I even did that. And then pop. Could I ask about the red and green light? I'm just curious about that. Oh, just meaning. Or, I mean, what they were. Could I ask about the red and green light?

I'm just curious about that. Oh, just meaning... Or I mean what they were. Okay, I'll just come out and say it. I had screwed up. I missed an antelope in Wyoming because I got up to a spot where I was on a stalk and I got up and I had in my head where these animals were going to be

and got up and they weren't there. I'm like, what the hell happened? Started thinking that I'd misjudged where I was. I was on the wrong hill. Stood up and I was like, started to entertain like, did I like totally misread the situation? They should be right there. And all of a sudden the antelope blows at me

and they were down below me and they took off running and then they stopped and I didn't, I just like, it was 250 yards, and I didn't do my checklist. And I just laid down and like took a stupid shot and shot over an antelope's back and just hated myself for it. And when I say green light, red light, it's like asking yourself, okay, what conditions need to be met here? The conditions with that buck the other day, the conditions that need to be met is I was going to be met here you know the conditions with that buck the other day the conditions that need to be met as i was going to be i was gonna be like i'm either gonna do my checklist and close my eye

and do all that garbage or i'm not gonna shoot i'll come back and try to find the buck later if he's gone it's like gonna have it be perfect um or he'll be 50 yards away and i don't worry about checklist because i can just freehand it but But the other part of his question is like, this is something that comes up all the time too. Like if you're shooting at an angle, yeah, the only thing that matters is the horizontal distance. If you somehow, let's say you're in a tree. Let's say you're in a tree that's 200 yards.

You're in a tree staying 200 yards off the ground, and there's a deer at the foot of the tree, you're holding for a one foot shot. You're not holding for a 200 yard shot. Horizontal distance is the only thing that matters. That's another part of this question.

Anyone have to add to that? I was always, I was misledled maybe but like if the animals below you you aim high and same with if that's just you do need to picture the animal's position and what the line of travel of the bullet's going to be through the animal's position yeah you got to factor that in but you'd aim as if you were shooting perfectly flat you use your set your knowledge of anatomy yeah to figure out where on that thing you want to hit in order to get through where you're trying to hit oh i got you if you're directly above an animal and you want to hit through the lungs you're going to be burning a hole down through its backbone yeah between its shoulder blades yeah

if you were somehow in some situation i can't imagine directly underneath it you're gonna be sending a bullet up yeah into sternum, like whatever. You know from anatomy where you want it to travel through, and you know from anatomy at what point on the outside of the animal you're trying to place your arrow or bullet. But to get to that point, you hold only for horizontal distance. Vertical distance doesn't matter because it's just how gravity affects the travel. You want to add to that?

You know, I just want to say that, you know, Steve goes through this checklist, and he's thinking about this shot, and it's a 400-yard shot. 400-yard shot is a long shot. It was shy of 400 yards, but, I mean, it is a long shot. And there's a lot of people talking out there right now and have been for a long time about how they don't even start getting serious until they're out seven eight a thousand yards um and for some reason i find it entertaining that they always mention the caliber that they're shooting like it's some sort of validation yeah of being able to shoot those distances that if you aren't calculating and thinking about these

mental checklists and what has to happen what criteria have to be met in order for you to touch that trigger you should not be taking those shots, regardless of what size cannon you're packing around the woods. Because you don't know. There's a couple things. One of the best things about long-range shooting, one of the best arguments against long-range shooting came from a guy, one of the guys I know who's one of the most capable long-range shooters at a range.

What he was talking about is something you don't hear many people discuss, is the amount of time that elapses between when that bullet leaves the barrel and when it arrives at its destination 800 yards down the line. And that amount of time is enough time for an animal to take a couple of steps. Yeah, you cannot pull that bullet back. You don't know know what the so you got like the wind you might know what the wind's doing where you're at but hunting in the mountains or hunting in open country around topography and other things you don't know what the wind's doing on its way there and what the wind's doing at the animal and you don't know that that thing's not gonna

step now the bullet's gonna get there before the gets there, but a lot can happen in a couple seconds. 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. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24k topo maps way points and tracking that's right you were always talking about uh we're always talking about on x here on the meat eater podcast now you um you guys in the great white north can 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 onx x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all and this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about, and it can go on and on, and it's a lifetime of podcasts worth of talking about it because there's the recovery.

Recovery, it's a lot easier at 100 yards than it is at 400 yards. It's a dense topic. I don't like it. I don't like the idea of taking super long shots. You know, a good way to not worry about all this stuff is just get in closer. Yeah. But it is a thing, man.

It's a thing that it comes up all the time, and I think you got every day, you got more and more guys who have bought a gun, and all of a sudden they think they're Joe Long Ranger. And you just, there are so many problems with thousand-yard shooting about where was that thing. How able are you to walk over and show me where that animal is standing and show me that there is or is not any sign of a hit, hair, blood, whatever? I need to know where it was standing and i can

recall lots of times that i've seen shots on animals at very close distance where that animal had almost an imperceptible reaction to a fatal hit at 200 yards 250 yards 350 yards almost imperceptible you could almost not tell that that thing got touched and if you're telling me that you can shoot a thousand yards and i mean you got to follow up on your shots i mean it just drives me. Another thing is what's pushed a lot of the super long range shooting is TV shows that deal in long range shooting is like popularized it and what they don't show. And I know this from, I mean, like I work in the industry, so I know things and talk to people and you know, I just know things a lot of people don't.

A big part of that stuff that they, that they just don't include, they don't include wound loss and they don't include the part where they're shooting at rocks and shit at the same distance to try to see. Like they'll pick a rock a couple hundred yards away from whatever they're shooting at and have a spotter, and the spotter will be like, oh, you're three feet high on that rock. Conditions are such that you're three feet high on that rock, and then they'll move over and shoot at the animal. At those distances, the animal can't really put it together what's going on. And so it's like a common thing is to take some practice shots at stuff to try to get honed in with a spotter on how many MOA you need to adjust for

and then move over and start directing fire toward the critter. My buddies were just hunting moose, and they were camping by these guys who were bragging up their recent caribou hunt, and they were shooting at some caribou they were 600 yards away and then they were halfway through shooting into a herd of caribou when they realized that there was a guy that was 300 yards away from those caribou putting a stalk on them while they're blasting away at the caribou didn't notice him didn't notice him there's another guy down in arizona and i'm good way to not have fun in the woods. I met the people involved in this.

There was a guy sneaking up on a black bear with a bow and arrow in Arizona, and the guy started shooting at the black bear from across the canyon and hit the bow hunter in the belt buckle with a rifle. Almost killed the guy. That happened a few years ago. Wow. Floyd didn't even know that guy. Wow.

All right. Can I play Devil's Advocate just a little bit? Somebody needs to. Because... I'm already talking about a couple a little bit? Somebody needs to. I'm already talking about a couple long-range pokes I took. No, no, no. I want to switch that over to shotguns and small game. Because I think the reason that we like to take short shots or keep it within our discipline level with big game and our rifles

is because we want to be like our personal ethics towards the animal right to make it a clean one-shot kill right yet it seems like when we switch over to small game and shotguns and flying birds all of a sudden it's like well it's okay that i shot 20 times today and i killed two birds it's like you're missing you're wounding yes we get a couple so yeah it doesn't seem like we're is it so as you've talked about it we're like yeah you give a level of respect to give a level of respect to big game animals that are six seven eight ten twelve years old that have different kind of fecundity, things that warrant a much more limited harvest than you do to, say, a cottontail rabbit

that's capable of putting off 24 babies in a year, has a life expectancy of about four months. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that if you were talking to an ethicist, which is the role you're playing right now he would say why does a elk warrant this great level of respect about clean kills you're virtually certain you're going to make a clean kill whereas a quail you're like what the hell bam bam bam

yeah that's a good question man You should bring it up next time. You should send in a question to the Meteor podcast. That's great. You should formally present your question because it's a valid question. It is. Here's one here I don't want to answer, but it's a good question.

We'll wrap it up with this question. Really? That's where we're at. No, we've got to do a couple more quickies. We're in an hour? Hour 10. Okay. I want to do a question that I don't want to answer.

Is that including the, uh, uh, small break that we had? Wow. All right. Here's a question I'm not going to answer, but it's a good question.

Have we come to a point where a safari is an outdated form of hunting? Here's a question i do want to answer the meat okay they always start with a little they fluff you this one starts with a little fluff then he goes on to say um oh no no it's not a fluff the meat eater podcasts have given out great information on how to hunt western states as a non-resident. But I was wondering if they could address westerners going out east for a whitetail hunt.

Great question. We never talk about this. Because me and Yanni, Callahan's from, Callahan, you're from, Garrett's Montana born, Callahan's Montana born? Utah. Okay. Because me and Yanni are from Michigan. Our focus is on getting out west and getting after it.

But I say the other boys here, we're wondering like, well, how do you go east and do the kind of hunting you guys used to grow up hunting? Never wondered that. So from my understanding, you in some states get multiple tags. Takes a long time to draw a deer tag out west yeah so dude out west wants to go whitetail hunting everybody's always talking about how to live out east and come out west

to hunt what about a guy that wants to go out west and go east to hunt I would say this I'm assuming you're not going to you want to do a do it yourself hunt if not if you want to do a do-it-yourself hunt. If not, you're not going to be asked. If you're going with a guide, you don't do anything but make sure you got your underwear and socks packed up.

Yeah, you're right. Even then, he'll probably send someone to get them for you. Yeah, I don't know if it'll be so much a do-it-yourself. Everybody can do it themselves. It'll be more of a public versus private just because there's a lot less public land back there. Yeah, so I would say this. As far as tags go, generally, I'm generalizing. Generally, a non-resident, and get a general season buck tag or get a general season tag that would be good for any deer with a bow good for a buck with a rifle you could

probably kill several does if you wanted to in some states you can kill several bucks if you wanted to it's generally over-the-counter hunting in the East for whitetail deer with long seasons and bow seasons that start in late September, early October, and rifle seasons that are generally run around for a couple weeks in November. Anyone got a problem with that? Okay. Michigan, where I grew up, at the time I was growing up, bow season started October 1.

You could hunt with your bow up till December 31. They even had some late seasons that were good for after that. And then you had a 10-day rifle season. Same deer tag. With bow, it was any deer tag. With gun, it was a buck tag. But you could also go buy one or two or more doe tags every year to use with your rifle or your bow.

So you don't need to do a whole lot of planning ahead and preference pointing and all that stuff, except for like Kansas. The only eastern states that I know of. Which isn't even the east, really. Yeah. Well, Kansas, I put in for whitetail points there. I think I paid $25 a year for a point. And then I know that Iowa also does. I think to draw the good rifle December tag in Iowa,

I believe it takes non-resident about four years. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, but what if Garrett and I, to use the kind of east versus west. Two Montana hicks wanting to go out. Yeah, I say, Garrett. Let's do this. What do you say we grab us some beer, hop on a plane, and head for Wisconsin and try to get a couple of whitetails?

So, okay, we land in someplace in Wisconsin. Milwaukee. Milwaukee. Madison. Madison. That's where I would go. Get more beer. We get properly stocked up on provisions.

I would go to Madison and drive in a southwesterly direction. Get some New Glarus beer. Yeah, New Glarus. Okay, so you guys are all bearded. Okay, and we got our, we're legal. We got our tags, got licenses. How do we then go about finding a place to go that's what i'm gonna talk about next what do we have to do to be prepared like do we have to pack tree stands so i'm gonna talk about

next okay if i was in this situation i would and this is not the same advice I'd give to someone from the East going West, because you have in the East, you have a lot, lot less public land, and you have a lot more people vying for that land. You got Western states that are 50, 60, 70, 80% federally owned, state owned, plenty of public land. They got populations that are less than most Eastern U.S. cities. There's a lot of ground to go around. In the East, that's not the case. It takes, I'm generalizing, and there's guys like Chris Eberhardt has written books about

do-it-yourself eastern whitetail hunting, how to find public land eastern whitetails. But he's an expert at it, and he devoted his life to it. For an Easterner to come out west and hunt, you just got to have some grr. You got to have a little bit of grr, half a brain, and know how to read a map, and you're going to find public land hunting opportunities. In the east, I'm sorry, and there's going to be a million guys, not a million, but a lot of guys are going to be like, oh, it's not true.

It takes a little bit of luck. It takes some, to have a successful hunt, if you've got a week to hunt, 10 days to hunt, some local knowledge goes a long, long way in even trying to crack the door on public land whitetail hunting east of the Mississippi. It can be done, but it's tough. And believe me, I grew up doing it. But my dad had done it before. It's like we knew guys.

It's hard. It's hard to just roll in and start doing it unless you're a very good, you're very good with maps, you're very resourceful, you understand the system, how to identify chunks of land that other guys aren't hunting, how to identify chunks of land that other guys might not even know are public. I'll point out, we have a ton of information on this very thing in the Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, Cooking, and Wild Game. Like how to find public land that people don't realize is public.

Hidey holes. We talked about this for a long time over dinner last night. Easements, stuff like that. Accessing, like walking up a navigable stream in order to get to a state section that you can't get to via road, but you can get to it if you stay below a high water mark in a river and weighed up with waders that kind of sneaky stuff is good if i was out west i wanted to go east deer hunt i would start really just asking a lot of questions and talking to a lot of people and trying friends and friends and colleagues and family and and just kind of feeling out for a crew of guys that likes to hunt and that are going to throw you a little bit of information.

What about, too, some states in the east or midwest slug only? Yeah, like Maryland, I know. Yeah, for sure. And I guess you'd figure that out when you're looking. Southern half of Michigan or southern third of Michigan is like that. So, yeah, that's just like a legal thing you have to figure out. Like, yeah, you have all kinds of legal requirements you got to figure out. But I think on the land thing, I think that you could, if down to Alabama to hunt deer in January. We hunted Tuskegee National Forest for about a week.

We all killed a buck. But my other brother was going to grad school at Auburn and had dabbled around in the area a little bit. He had kind of done a little groundwork. We had seven days to hunt, but he already had a working knowledge of an area. What you might do, and this gets out of the realm of possibility, you might fly out. If there's some way to do it, fly out a month before season and spend a few days figuring stuff out. Or just agree that you're going to do like an annual thing

and get to know an area. But I would think the best bet would be to just to really pursue any leads you can through friends, family friends, colleagues, your old lady's family, and just try to find someone on the ground there who can give you some up-to-date information on private land connections guys who are and there's always guys looking to get rid of deer but they don't want to just open up the gates and let a bunch of yay who's in there with guns they're trying to be a little bit you know smart about who's on their property work those or work it from a guy who'd be like yeah man you know i'll help you out and maybe someday you'll help me out and i come out to hunt your place a thing to

remember about eastern whitetails is that you don't need huge chunks of land to have a successful hunt my dad's got a buddy that has i think 10 or 12 acres in southern indiana and he kills deer on it every year you know no yeah but no but he didn't just fly in from out of town and find it no no but my point is is that like yeah so he's he has the knowledge you know that those 10 acres you know produce a deer my point is is that there's a lot of um private land back east that can uh for i feel like leases and trespass fees sound like this huge amount of money always where sometimes maybe just to access 40 or 80 acres it could be plenty enough you know ground to hunt some whitetails you might be able to get into that for a couple hundred bucks.

If you're already going to spend a couple hundred on your tag, it's like kick down a couple hundred bucks. And a lot of times that comes with some lodging. You might be able to stay in a little cabin and have 80 acres of private land to hunt for a couple hundred dollars. I would say, though... A couple of dudes from Montana. Coveralls. Arctic Pro M dudes from Montana. Coveralls. Arctic Pro Muck Boots.

Yeah. Vlog at you. I actually think it'd be more, this is a bold statement, I think it'd be more daunting for a guy born and raised, let's say in Montana. We'll say because we're in Idaho. A guy born and raised in Idaho. If he said, i got seven days i'm gonna go out on a diy do-it-yourself whitetail hunt in illinois public land never been there

before and get a buck meanwhile a guy in illinois said i'm gonna go out to Idaho, DIY, public land, and get a buck. I'd bet my money on the guy standing in Illinois who's going to Idaho rather than the guy in Idaho going to Illinois. I would put my money on him. All other things being equal. All other things being equal. And I said, like, who's going to get the buck? I'd be like, the guy going to Idaho is going to get the buck

because he's got a lot of land that he can just go and access right now yeah seven days of walking you're you're gonna turn some but you go to illinois both can walk but you're gonna go to illinois and you go there the day before and be like man there's deer all over this little state game management area along this creek that's 100 acres and then he comes back on opening day and there's 14 trucks in the parking lot um yeah everywhere he goes there's 14 trucks in the parking lot. Yeah. Everywhere he goes, there's some guy shining a flashlight at him and be like, hey, I'm over here, man.

I'm over here. I have heard that story so many times. Well, just like, I mean, I see somebody parked at a trailhead here. I'm like, well, better go to the next trailhead. Yeah. Even though that trailhead. It's an acre chunk of National Forest Land. I'm'm not gonna hunt around some dickhead in the woods i'll go to the next trailhead

all right one last question have you ever hunted roosevelt elk nope all right oh oh forgot one thing uh yanni give us an an update on Hunt2Eat t-shirts. Oh, man. Now you can go to Hunt2Eat.com and buy a Wisconsin Hunt2Eat t-shirt. You can buy an Alaska Hunt2Eat t-shirt. Idaho? Not yet. Really?

No. Cal? It's a weird-looking state. It's hard to make a shirt with that state on there. Hunt2Eat. Oh, did i let the cat out of the bag i've always maintained that i have no connection to hunty and i don't except that i'm friends with yanni um he doesn't give me anything i one time asked him to tie me a couple flies for a yellow perch never even tied them so it's like it's like the opposite of me owing Yanni a favor. So I don't want you to think I'm plugging Yanni's t-shirts for personal gain because he won't even tie me a –

like the stupidest look of fly on the planet, he won't even tie it for me. Just a little bucktail and a red little head on it. So, yeah, I have nothing to gain. But Yanni is working on a meat eater hunt to eat t-shirt. And more than likely by the time you listen to this podcast, those will be at the Meat Eater merch store. With the moose forks? Yes.

Like a little cartoon bubble coming out of the moose's mouth that says Hunt Eat? Oh, did you guys think of that? He's going to hang up and call the designer and be like, hold on, dude. Stop the presses. Did a little speed bump here. Cal's got it. What all states you got?

Hunt to eat? Colorado, Montana, Wisconsin, Alaska, Texas. Then we have a couple generic hunt to eat. Yeah, so it doesn't matter what state you're in. But I want to point out that it seems to be slightly randomized what states you decide to do and not. Is that right? We put a lot of thought into what states we're deciding to do. Well, you haven't done the states with the most licensed hunters.

No, we haven't. You didn't go in that order. But we've thought about that, but we've been doing the most requests, and we look at where our traffic comes from. Oh, so you're being scientific about it. A little bit. You're being all techy about it. Trying to be. They're just excluding that giant number.

If you're going to give me a second to do my hunt to eat pitch on this podcast. There's a pitch? Well, you always ask me to, and I never really have it. So I've kind of been thinking about it since last night. So your concluding thought, your lot of concluding thought, your concluding thought could be your pitch. I already used mine. My concluding thought was your t-shirts.

So your concluding thought can continue mine and do your pitch. I get to go now? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. If you haven't gone to the website yet, Hunt to Eat spawned from us just wanting to make some cool hunting t-shirts. Because I was sick of going to Cabela's and Sportsman's Warehouse and just being like, man, I'm a hunter. And I want to wear some hunting t-shirts.

But there's just nothing in the store that I want to wear. And I had a lot of friends that were hard. Like the happiness is a gut pile t-shirt? Yeah, exactly. It's not my thing. So as kind of an answer to that we felt like there's this white space we're like man let's make some like a hunting t-shirt that's just a little bit hipper and what i want to get to is i say we and that's because it's my brother

and i that do this motting who a lot of times is with us here on media shoots but but he puts a lot of effort into this. So maybe going forward, you can say, go ahead and give us a pitch for you and your brother's T-shirt company. Let me get this straight. You're more worried about giving credit out where credit is due than just selling the T-shirts? That's noble. That's a good man right there that's a good man i have kind of a thought i didn't know where that was going man i was getting ready

i have a thought that rounds about till the one of the first conversations you thought yes i've been sitting here smelling mule deer very strongly and you know i always kind of get a little dirty on my on my pants in particular when uh i'm field dressing a mule deer but it just dawned on me that possibly why that mule deer smell is so strong is that i dressed basically dressed the mule deer up in the t-shirt that i'm wearing now. Do you have the t-shirt back on? Yeah. Callahan's wearing his black bear repellent right now. So you took the shirt off the deer and got it back on?

I didn't bring that many shirts. So yes. I'm wearing one of your shirts. Yeah, and I gave Garrett the other shirt. We share t-shirts. You got any concluding thoughts? We're backpacking, man. We're ultra light. One t-shirt.

What's going on in First Light, Callahan? So many things. We got all sorts of people in there these days and it's fun. Products are getting better and new stuff's even cooler

than before. I was in there. Can I say something about a new product I saw? It's probably Hush Hush. I just saw some really cool looking stuff in there. I won't say anything else. No, go for it.

That new balaclava? Oh, yeah. The new mitts. New mitts are cool. I like those mitts. You guys are using a high pile fleece? That's actually wool. That's wool in there? Yeah. That's actually wool. That's wool in there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's super soft. Same stuff. It's inside. Same stuff. That's inside the,

uh, the mitts that we took to BC. Oh, that's wool in there. Yeah. Really? Yeah. That's why it kind of balls up a little bit.

Huh? I like telling you if you're a cold weather hunter, you'd be stoked. Adam, concluding thoughts? I don't know. This has been quite an interesting trip with y'all. It's been fun. You think you'll come back?

If you guys will have me, for sure. Let's talk about it. You didn't complain. No, I ran around with Callahan, so I had plenty to complain about. I've never heard that so succinctly put before. Garrett? Some of the best country to be sweaty and hurt knees and hiking in.

You can see a lot. It's been a cool trip. But I mean concluding thoughts about right then right now oh like any concluding thoughts based on the oh the podcast keep those questions coming folks all right um yeah all right meet your podcast tune in next time next time. Go to send your questions. Go to themeateater.com and put in questions

or go to Facebook. Look up Meteor on Facebook. You can post questions there and they'll get put in the right thing. Coming up, we're going to start doing a question of the day deal and answer questions every day. So answer 365 questions a year.

Yanni thinks we ought to send everyone who gets a question picked a T-shirt, but that's a hell of a lot of T-shirts to be mailing around. We'll see. Might do that. All right, take care. 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.