The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 058: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella answers listener questions with Matt Elliott from Benchmade Knife Company, Land Tawney from BHA, the pizza magnate Jimmy Doran, and Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.

Episode Date: April 5, 2017

Subjects discussed: pizza and the Seahawks; largemouth bass tasting notes; helicopters and hunting; multiple use on public lands; the author Jim Posewitz; hunting knives and the performances of replaceable blades vs. fixed blades in the field; hunts to go on that might raise your success rates; rifle vs. bowhunting for television; whether camera guys are a hunter's worst enemies; best cuts for someone wanting to try more adventurous game meals; why Steve never cooks steaks anymore; corned bighorn and tahr tartare; Steve's recommendation for Bald Eagle PR; what gear you should splurge on upfront vs. gear you can work up to later; Steve's hunting bucket list; hot-buttered buck nuts and buffalo wild nuts; knives used by the mountain men of the 1800's; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Jimmy Dorn, how many – when the Seahawks got like – how many pizzas did it cost you when the Seahawks lost one of their playoff games?

How many pizzas? Oh, goodness. It's got to be thousands of pizzas. It's quite a few. Because all the to-go, the carry-outs, the phone rings off the wall for several hours. Dude, a Super Bowl game? It's madness. Being a Seattle pizza man with the Seahawks in the Super Bowl?

It's a good day. You got to be selling some pizzas. I was. I didn't go to work the next day. I'll put it to you that way. It was. Because you're depressed about business. Done. I figure I'll look at it in two days.

So you really feel it? Oh, absolutely. The team does well. Pizza does well. It's good for the Hawks. It's good for me, yeah. We love them. When they come around, we treat them real well and we see them. The players? Players, coach,

sure. Jimmy Dorn, do you remember how we met? I do. So I moved to Seattle and I put up a thing on social media of some sort saying, hey, man, I moved to Seattle. And unbeknownst to me, Jimmy Dorn, who's in the pizza business. Can we tell the name of your pizza place? Absolutely, Belltown Pizza.

Jimmy Dorn, who's in the pizza business, owns Belltown Pizza. Unbeknownst to me, he sends an email in saying, Hey, man, I saw Steve move to Seattle. Tell him he's welcome any time to drop by my pizza place. We'll talk a little hunting. I had no idea this went on. So when we moved to Seattle, we were in temporary housing talk a little hunting i had no idea this went on so when we moved to seattle we were in temporary housing for a little bit and i took my youngster out to get a haircut

and we had to wait so long for him to get his damn haircut that by the time we got done getting his haircut i knew i didn't have time to go home and make dinner because kids like there's a window when they want to eat they need to get fed. We're walking down, and lo and behold, there's this place called Belltown Pizza. I walk in with my kid just to order a pizza. All of a sudden, there's a dude standing there being like, I can't believe you came. Pretty much.

I'm looking around like, I don't really understand, man. There's a lot of people here eating pizza. We've been friendly ever since. The thing I wanted to ask you so this has nothing to do with uh hunting and fishing and wild meat but when the when the seahawks they just like got kicked out with was it the playoffs playoffs so they lost the game they did that's got like uh that sucks for a pizza man right yeah well we're obviously a lot busier if we're winning we got a bunch of tvs a lot of people do like to come down and watch the games

it's a good spot for it and uh yeah absolutely when we lose it's you know it's over a lot significantly less people come out next week so if it's a game night or game day or game night are you like oh man we're selling pizzas now? Oh, yeah, no doubt about it. No shit. Yeah. No, it works like a champ. That's why it's, like I said, very fortunate we've had a pretty darn good football team here for a couple years. So it's definitely been a boom, especially when it comes to the playoffs. The playoffs always come January, February, beginning of the first quarter generally slow.

And when we're winning, it's like the high clover. Scott's all right. All right. So that's the lovely and beautiful Jimmy Darn. Thank you. Belltown Pizza. And then also here as a guest is Matt Elliott. Matt, what do you have to say for yourself? What do I have to say for myself?

I'm a Patriots fan. Sorry, Jimmy. It's all good. Shoot around the ball. Yeah. Nothing much, Steve. I'm happy to be here. Well, tell everybody what you do for a living.

I work for Benchmade Knife Company. I'm the director of marketing. And love hunting and fishing. Big fan of the show. And drove up here this morning, came up to do a little talking about, sounds like some Q&A. Yeah. Now, the last time you were here,

did we cover the fact that you are an obsessive fisherman, an obsessive fisher of smallmouth bass? No. The only thing I think we mentioned about fishing was that I cut a groove in my tooth biting fishing line. Yeah. Well, Matt's got like a souped up bass boat does a lot of bass fishing and in conversation he uh revealed to me that he has never tasted a bass yeah like you can't bring yourself yeah i don't know if it's that i can't bring myself to do it there's a most hardcore at least competitive bass fish they don't touch their catch and release and i just have never eaten bass

so i just haven't never a little curious i'm not oh yeah i'm not against it you told me i told you i would eat some no you said if i came down and fish yeah but it's just like never even a little bit curious i well i always have a freezer full of salmon i I've got halibut. I just, I don't know. Yeah, I'm with you. And where I grew up, smallmouth were considered a food fish, like an eating fish. Largemouth were considered not generally regarded as an eating fish. Yeah. But as close as they are, taxonomically, and the way people kind of lump together, they

were viewed, at least in our circle, they're viewed as very different fish. Yeah. The largemouth, this is hearsay, but the largemouth, I understand, tastes a little muddier. Oh, yeah. It's a little softer. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Smallmouth are more aggressive.

They generally live in cooler water. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. The good ones, at certain times of of year, you get them coming out of Lake Michigan. And yeah, considered a very high quality, not just a frying fish, but a grilling fish. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'll eat it. I think largemouths taste a little kind of weedy. Interesting. But a guy I grew up by, my fishing mentor, would, he would leave them skin on, soak them overnight in milk, and grill them.

I've heard the milk trick before, with other meats too, right? Yeah, you hear it oftentimes with fish. I've taken catfish and soaked them in milk. My buddy soaks stuff in buttermilk and then fries it. Yeah. He does salmon, takes cubed up salmon, pink salmon, like low-grade salmon. Right. Cubes it, soaks it in buttermilk and then fries it. Yeah. He does salmon, takes cubed up salmon, pink salmon, like low-grade salmon. Right. Cubes it, soaks it in buttermilk, and fries it in panko.

That shit is good, man. I bet. Yeah. And then Giannis Putellis. Howdy. That's it. Just regular old Giannis. Thanks for having me on again.

Nothing exciting. Nothing exciting there. Lane Tawney from Bad Country Hunters and Anglers. Believe that. Anything you want to say for yourself? I just say we're just keeping this train going. I think we were just talking about earlier. We do a bunch of stuff these few months,

going to Shot Show and then Sheep Show, and then we just take an airplane and see each other here again in Seattle. So we're keeping the train going. Yeah. We're doing Fan Question Part 5. This might be the last fan question one ever because we're kind of getting to the end of like fan

questions that come in all the time. They get more difficult as we go? No. Land, I want to direct this one to you. Oh, first out of the box? Yes, they do. Oh, you mean, hold on, say it again. Are the questions getting more difficult as we go? They're more obscure. First one out of the box.

Listen to this one. This is for you, Lan. Okay. Easterners, like Steve Rinella and others, put their trust in liberal politicians. Well, us Oregon hunters and fishermen know how they preserve our so-called public lands. They gate them with huge steel gates and tell us that we can still use them you just have to hike in that's fine for good old steve with his hollywood stars and camera crew i'm 65 years old and my hike in five to ten miles in the wilds and packing elk quarters out or long pass but steve ranella

probably has a helicopter drop him and his cronies off and pick them up. By the way, the BLM and federal employees unlock the gates and drive all over whenever they want. Public access, my ass. Is that a question? It sounds like a statement. I love that guy, man. I love that guy. We're not going to do that one.

Oh. Do you want to take that question? I mean, I think it's a perfect opportunity to talk about multiple use of our federal... Can we talk about helicopters that I've never flown in a helicopter on a hunting trip in my entire life? You just said it like, yeah. That's obviously one of those things that doesn't make much sense. I think it's about multiple use, right, on our public lands. And does that mean that everything should be open everywhere all the time?

No. That's why you have wilderness, which, by the way, is only 2% of our public lands. Some of those gates that I think are being put up, it's not because people are trying to keep people out. It's because they can't maintain those roads because our budget's been going down for a long time. Yeah. And so without understanding that whole, I think, process, but I think the biggest one there is it's for multiple use. You should have places where you can go behind that gate and ride a bike in for five, six

miles and get to a really good spot. You should have those places where you can drive your truck anywhere you want. I think that's the beauty of our public lands is they're managed for multiple use. So if it's open to everybody all the time, then there's only certain people that are going to enjoy that. Oh yeah,

and the problem with this asshole is like... You just don't like the helicopter comment. No, no, no. I'm fine with the helicopter comment. This is ridiculous.

But the problem with his perspective, in my mind, is like if he had it his way and I gather in his mind everything should be unlimited access. Sure.

If you like to hunt, you'd be screwed. You have to have some sanctuary areas that give wildlife a little bit of a break now and then. Well, I think it's not only the sanctuaries for those wildlife, but he may be 65 and not doing that anymore. I got a friend named Jim Posowitz who's 82 and he's still out there hoofing it. And that's because he wants to do. I think, again, you got to have those places to test our limits that are still a little bit younger. And I can get that done.

And I'm 42 now and I got to stay in shape or I'm not going to be able to do that. But why is it one way for everybody? Like this dogma, right? It has to be only one way for somebody when these lands are managed for multiple use. And I think that's the bottom line of that question. Yeah. The reason you tell this dude's kind of a prick is the assumption that somehow you have greater access to public lands if you have hollywood cronies oh yeah with their

helicopters well that's what it is like right here's my helicopter that here's one i'd like to just quickly point out too that no matter how far you can drive in there wherever you stop your vehicle you're still gonna have to hike for the good hunting so So it doesn't matter where that road ends, whether it's at the end where there's like the old logging pad or it's back two miles at the gate. Just because you drove to the end doesn't mean there's an elk standing next to that old logging pad.

Like when you start driving in rigs and riding bikes, which... Oh, here's the helicopter right here. That was perfect. I need my choppers here. Time to go hunting. Can we finish this podcast en route to the hunt? We learned in Colorado from Bill Andre, the game warden,

that hikers, mountain bikers, ATVs, snowmobiles, they all have a certain impact on where, you know, the game is in relation to the road. Right. So just cause you can drive in there doesn't mean like you have better hunting than if you stopped at the gate and had to start hunting from there. It's just all going to move outward from there. Yeah. In Michigan, we would look for places where you had to like, you could drive up to the river,

but then you'd bring a canoe and cross the river. On public land, no matter where you are, any little thing you can do to try to move yourself away from high-pressure areas is generally good. I mean, there's always exceptions, but generally, huntable animals are going to congregate more in places where they haven't gotten hunted. I know you probably don't want to talk about this anymore. No, I really don't. But he may drive around all year, and just by happenstance,

something runs across, and he jumps out the truck and shoots it, which to me is not quite the hunting that we need to portray. Yeah. But the other thing is so pouty. He's like, I enjoyed, this is a point that Jim Poswitz brought up. He's like saying, I enjoyed it when I could. Like I enjoyed the remote public lands.

I enjoyed the wilderness experience when I could. But now that I personally am too old to enjoy it, I now think that it should all end, that future generations should not be able to enjoy it so that I can have another 15 years of it. It's great while I could use it. Now that I'm out of the running, let me in there. If not, it's going to waste.

Heaven forbid you preserve it for the next guy down the line to have those same adventures and hopes and dreams and experiences that you obviously enjoyed back in your prime. I got one more problem. Before you quit taking care of yourself. He's saying it's a liberal thing. It's a liberal issue. Hunting is a liberal thing.

In reality, it'd be quite liberal to just let everybody on there to willy-nilly go whatever you want to do it'd be much more of a conservative attitude to say you know what let's keep it as is and protect it a little bit save save what we have all right matt elliott yes sir fixable here's a dude saying this. Fixed blade, folding blade, or replaceable blade? What works best for what situation? Wow. I mean, blades are such a personal thing. What works best for what situation?

I can tell you that replaceable blade knives don't work well for hard use, like digging into joints you're going to be left shorthanded if you get into a survival situation with replaceable blade knife but they perform very well for tasks that require really precise work like caping yep right uh in a survival situation or on something massive you really want want to dig in and debone it, get really dirty, a fixed blade is always the best choice. It also is a good choice for something that you use multiple times on a hunt because it's easier to clean because there's no mechanism.

And folders are good for utility. It depends on the shape of the – there's so much more that goes into it, right? It's like shape of the blade, shape of the handle, length of the blade. There's a lot more than just fixed folder replaceable but yeah a folding blade is a good knife just to keep in your pocket have for general purpose utility like for me i always have a folding knife my pocket i'll use it to do like cut tree limbs or open bag of mountain house or whatever and then i have a fixed blade in my pack that only touches meat. That's exactly what I do. Yeah. Is, yeah, I carry a folder, like generally clipped in my pocket or something accessible. And the term I always use is like a utility knife.

I like the kind that has the first inch or so serrated, then with a regular tip on it. Yeah. And use it for everything. And then in my pack pack i keep a fixed blade knife for skinning and quartering and whatnot yeah and i don't touch that thing yeah i don't whittle sticks with it i don't gouge out grooves and shit with it or dig you know roots out from under my tent yeah it only comes out if you just yeah and it's like always sharp and always there what what do you use the serrations for, if I might ask?

Rope and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. Or stuff where I don't want to mar up. Like if I'm doing something, I don't want to mar up the sharp part of my knife. I'll just use that for that. Yeah, but any kind of like cord, rope, whatever. Yeah.

I'd get by fine without it. Right. Nice thing about serrations is even if it doesn't cut quite as well as a really sharp plain edge, it'll tear at least even when it's not sharp. Yeah, that's how I'm getting at it. And then also when I— It kind of outlasts. It does.

Right? It does. It's not—the cutting performance isn't—I don't think is as good as a plain edge when it's first sharp, but it will last longer because of the tearing factor once it's not sharp. Yeah, even if I do break an animal down with with my like utility knife like my folder i'll use that serrated part to like you know i used to saw joints on big animals now i just pop the joints cut the joints i'll use that part of the knife to cut them and stuff because it just saves it longer yeah and the best way to trash your knife i think is rubbing the rubbing the bone rubbing the blade across bone yeah yeah i always give

that caveat people say oh how many how many animals can you do with this knife it's like oh depends how you cut them up if you're dragging a lot of bone you know it's not going to go through as many yeah or if you're like skinning the if you're skinning the skull cap out and you're working and you're doing all the work around the base of the the the pedicle yeah not that many flathead screwdriver you're not gonna do that many deer with that flathead screwdriver is the best gonna do that many deer with that flathead screwdriver is the best thing for that i you know oh go ahead i was gonna have a follow-up question to the knife question oh please so fixed blade backcountry or even just on a regular let's say

even if it's a day hunt but do you carry and if you do what is your sharpening tool or system? So Benchmade, we make this little sharpening tool called a Tactical Pro. And it's basically like a little two and a half inch stick of ceramic. And at the end of it, it's got this carbide V. It's like two square pieces of carbide that are laid over the top of each other. So they make a V.

And I'll just use that. Really? One of those drag through things? Yeah, yeah yeah but it can be also used as a steel yeah yeah it's got a little bit of ceramic on it also has a little groove in it if you want to use it for a hook cone and you guys like it yeah yeah i like it a lot i mean no but what about the guys who like uh the guys that sharp night because you guys have that deal where people send their knives no no those if you ask one of those dudes what they thought of it,

what would they say? They probably would think it was fine for field maintenance. I mean, I think that was kind of your question. What am I carrying around with me? No, I'm sure. And it's that, right? And one of the things people run into

with those particular sharpeners is they push too hard in them when they're sharpening. It's just a really light, almost like just barely more than the weight of the knife as you pull it through. So all you're doing, right doing right but most people know this but if you look at your edge like like straight up and down you're looking down the blade of your knife when it gets dull the

edge is just rolled over so you're just trying to pull the edge back straight and then which is what you're doing with the sharpening steel right just straightening you're not removing steel with a butcher steel you're straight you're taking the curl out yep you guys had a word for that curl the wire or is that so the wire is different so the wires so back to like what the guys back at the factory do they're actually using belts and so they're sharpening on a belt and those belts are truly removing material and as they remove it they pull the material up towards the edge of the knife on that sanding belt and it creates something called a wire it's a good memory it creates this something called a wire. It's a good memory. It creates this thing called a wire. So if you looked at it

on a micro, at a microscopic level, you would see this little jagged edge on there, and then you'd stick it on a buffing wheel, and you'd basically break that off with a buffer. And that's when the knife gets truly sharp. Before that, it's just going to tear through stuff. And then after they do that,

then they cut newspaper. You'll see them doing that sometimes just to make sure that that edge is perfectly smooth. And they're doing that to test it. They are, to make sure there's nothing catching. It should walk through it very nice. Yeah, it should go through it no catch. Jimmy Dorn, when you're out slaying all kinds of deer and elk, what are you packing around? I have a pavillon for cutting and I have a big old

Bonner big heavy sharp knife for joints. But you use a replaceable blade for cutting up stuff. I do. It's not as popular with some of the guys I hunt with but that cadaver blade is so sharp. Oh dude, yeah.

Just that and a Leatherman and I feel like I can do pretty much anything. I think it's a good argument to be made for them arguments like good arguments made for them is you don't need to worry about knowing how to sharpen a knife yeah i mean yeah i need they're like exceedingly dangerous yeah then you run into the issue of disposing of those things i see a lot of guys just kind of jabbing into the ground. So it's like, then you get like toting around other ones. You can break them. But like for its purpose, they're great.

As a walk-around knife, not so good. No, not so good. You can't torque it at all. You can't, if you get handsy with it, put force on it, it's not worth the shit. Yeah. But if you're gentle with it and do what it's supposed to be doing, it works quite well. Here's a tough one i don't want to get skunked on a hunt what tips can you give me so that i can definitely be successful

i don't know man that might be one of those deals where you have to go on one of those 100% guaranteed cow elk hunts. You've got to pay for it. Oh, like 100% success rate hunts? But he's asking the wrong question. The payoff is you may shoot something. The reason I think most of us are going out there is for the actual hunt, which is everything that leads up to that shot.

So every single time I go out, I'm getting what I want. And I mean, I get 100% kind of what I want. And then if I get an animal, it's on top of that. Now, with that sheep, if I hadn't shot that sheep, yes, that would have been a big part of not fulfilling that whole thing. Yeah, Land drew basically a once-in-a-lifetime bighorn sheep permit this past fall, and you hit it pretty hard. 15 days.

15 days. Yeah. I thought it wasn't maybe going to happen, but I will say, again, we've talked about this quite a bit, is that I felt the pressure of that hunt, and then I wasn't kind of having fun because of that pressure. And then once I let that pressure go, like, I was enjoying the hunts again. And, like, that hunt and the place where I got to go chase that critter around, God, that made my whole season for me.

And then that last little thing that happened. But don't act like you didn't want to get a ring. Oh, no, I did. I did. You did. I mean, and, you know, yeah. But if you're going out, like if you want to be successful every single day, I think that's not a good bar to measure yourself by.

But let's just say the fella didn't articulate his question quite like he wanted to. And he's just saying, like, what are some tips? Like, let's just say this, and there's nothing wrong with this. Let's say there's a guy, and, you know, he's got, you know, every year he gets a week off. He's got a week off. His primary thing is he wants to have the experience of you know killing his own meat that's like his primary thing he's more interested in what's going to happen after the hunt than during the hunt just really wants to have that happen

and he's like i have no idea what's a good approach i would would say, if that's the case, and I'm not condemning this at all, especially not nearly as vocally as Land condemning this poor fellow. I'm not condemning that at all. You're putting it in a different context now, though. I would be looking at antlerless hunts, hunts where even if it wound up being a hunt where there's no antlered season in at all, and it's just an antlerless hunt, because that really reduces the amount of pressure that's out there. And another thing is you might be hunting an area where there's enough of a

surplus of animals that they're actually actively trying to lower the population which is sort of code not a hardly concealed code for loads of critters on the ground right now most most department of fish and wildlife will make available in their regulations or at least on their websites what success rates are in different units in the state for each game species too so that's a good place to look and you're right usually the the antlerless hunts are the ones that have the highest success rates yeah yeah you can you can go that that's the thing if you are looking at like a long-term thing matt's right i mean you can find the published information like i can tell you a non like you go look and you'll find some of the lowest success rates are non-guided, non-resident archery elk hunts, where it winds up being that you got, I mean, I'm not joking,

six, 7% success rate. So if you're like, I got to make it happen. And you look and you see a six or 7% success rate, that's not for you. You're never going to, if you see a hundred percent success rate, it's probably something where it's like, you know, maybe it's like some mountain goat hunt. There's 150 goats on the mountain. They give out two tags. You know, it's just like, not something that's just going to generally come up. It's more of a once in a lifetime hunt thing. I think if you see hunts where they're, if you look and there's a hunt,'s a 50, 60% success rate, that's a very high success rate. That's kind of saying like it's a pretty good hunt. This is all making you uncomfortable. No, I think it's not making me uncomfortable. I think there's lots of other

things that make that success too, right? Like doing a lot of pre-scouting of your area and being out there and trying different strategies if things aren't working. I mean, I think there's plenty of other things that go into that. But I guess I was uncomfortable with that because I thought we were talking about like every single time you go out hunting, right? Like, and you're going to be successful. And I think that's a bar you don't really want to put on yourself. Yeah, no, we wrote 700 pages about it. Yeah, the guidebook series. But yeah, choosing

easier species. I mean, certainly you're going to have better odds at killing a white-tailed doe than you do a cow elk. It's just easier. Yeah.

This guy's saying, I feel like we've had this before. Why do you mainly rifle hunt? Is it because it is a pain in the ass to attempt a bow hunt with a camera crew? Largely, yes. Largely, yes. What do you think about that, Yanni? It takes a lot more time.

You got to have a camera crew that's like, here's the trick. This is a show business thing. Everybody's out there to do their job, right? You're out there to hunt to the best of your ability. They're out there to film to the best of their ability. They are always under pressure between filming for a good show and getting their coverage and filming for a successful hunt. Those two things are not the same thing. Even though I argue to them, if you want to have something to film, let's get a shot at an animal

and kill it. Then we'll have all kinds of stuff to film. Cutting it up, eating it, you know, but they don't see it that way. So camera guys are the hunter's worst enemy.

You don't agree with that? Not worst. Real bad enemy. I think camera guys are a real bad enemy. What about those times when the camera guy's like, oh. Spot game? Yeah. Yeah. He's a friend. They do spot a lot of games. Now, the reason we call, but Giannis isn't a

camera guy, but he is the eagle because he spots an extraordinary amount of game. That's great. A Latvian sharp eye. That's great. Dirt myth. The poor fella.

I mean, he's working on it, but. He's getting LASIK here in a month or so. That might change. The poor, but the bastard's about blind too. So you got to like, I don't want to be too hard on him. But no, camera guys, they want to get the shots, man. You'll be like all hunkered in and all of a sudden you turn around and realize they're just standing there because they can't see

and they're doing their job. But you've also always been like a pragmatic hunter where you're like, unless it's better for the hunt or better for me, then I can choose rifle over bow. I'm going to choose rifle. Yeah. I'm interested in bow hunts that are only bow hunts. Like if I'm doing a hunt and you're allowed to use anything,

I'm probably going to go with what's comfortable to me and what has the greatest efficacy you know like I seldom uh I have plenty of ways in which I kind of handicap myself but yeah I seldom um think to myself like oh you know it'd be a lot more challenging if I brought my bow I'm generally like if it's a rifle I'm going to use my rifle. I bow hunt when it's an archery season. And a lot of serious bow hunters are just going to bring their bow. Man, we're going to go bear hunting this spring, and this guy can't decide if he's bringing his bow or his gun, even though it's a rifle hunt.

I'm having a hard time with that, yeah. You've been talking about it with your wife and your therapist? I was telling you we were on an Alaska hunt, and I brought my bow, and we had a rifle there, and I had originally set out. This is what I'm trying to figure out is, like, am I going to intend on the rifle hunt or the bow hunt? Because what I don't want to do is intend on a bow hunt. In Alaska, I intended on bow hunting.

I had in mind that I was going to take a bear with a bow, and there was a moment in time when the guy said, do you want to use a rifle? The guy I was with, I said, when the guy said you want to use a rifle guy was with i said no yeah i don't want to use a rifle because i i would rather go home without the bear and and feel the success of the bow hunt the experience back to defining success than to shoot the bear with a rifle and not have gotten what i came for which wasn't necessarily because when you set your mind out to do something you're going to to do it. Yeah. Yeah. At least see it through.

And then your wife bossed your balls about it. She was, yeah. Well, I got home and she's like, what do you mean? I would have loved the bear rug. She wanted to have a bear rug, but we didn't discuss that in advance. And you shattered her dreams. I did.

With that stupid bow and arrow. I shattered her dreams. I did. With that stupid bow and arrow. I shattered her dreams. Can I tell a quick story? Please, tell a long one. So archery, you're thinking archery versus rifle and the cameraman thing. I spent a few years in Alaska

doing some guiding on the fishing side. And I remember I had my clients in the boat one time. We look over and there's some guys on the bank I can't with the camera crew and they're catching Chinook they're hooking Chinook on conventional tackle and then dragging them over to this beach pulling them up and then hooking a fly no oh yeah yeah hooking a fly into the fish and releasing it and then and then rolling camera hooked up on fly rods you shouldn't no not shooting you No, not shitting you at all. I think that there's, yeah. Not at all.

That's a little bit sad. Yeah, it was terrible. So what's that analogy? You're thinking about shooting one with a rifle and then acting like you shot it with a bow? Absolutely not. Made a bullet crossing. What are you trying to do to me here, man?

That certainly happens, though. Yeah? Oh, there's, yeah, I mean, there's immense, yeah, I mean, it's just like, I think people even do stuff they don't they would find distasteful and there's certain amounts of pressures on you i think that like one of the one of the nice things about the setup we have doing our show is we've kind of just through experience like alleviated or steered clear and learned to avoid a lot of those pressures that

make you feel like you need to somehow perform. There's no company that we work with that would ever be like, hey man, we really need you to pick it up and shoot a gigantic buck. It's just not something, you know what I mean? It's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen.

I wouldn't be open to the conversation anyways, but I think some people maybe look at it that way when they're kind of like looking at sort of the industry or whatever that you sort of need to make your name on like shooting giant shit. I'm sure some people probably have, you know, made a name for themselves because they are phenomenal hunters. I never made the claim to be one. People want to see things that are more relatable, I think,

more approachable like sometimes failure is appealing in some way on a hunt it's like the person that's kicked off this conversation in some ways like you don't necessarily need you necessarily need success or at least from the question before success can be defined in a lot of ways and for a lot of us like we don't have success, often don't have success. And so when I watch a TV show and somebody's just knocking everything down, they're always chasing it, it's harder to relate to. Yeah.

Yeah. I find that when we got into this, we were very reluctant about running what we call skunkers, episodes that you don't get anything. And the first time we ever put a skunker up, I was petrified. I was like, man, this can't be a show. No one's going to. And people loved it because they just thought it was different to see like a skunker episode

because they're like, dude, most times I go hunting, I don't get anything. I'm like, that's true with everybody in the world. Growing up, it's like archery deer season would start October 1. We'd hunt pretty hard with our bows all through archery season. Then November 15th would come around, and you had a 10-day rifle season. You'd hunt pretty hard for the rifle season. After that, you'd hopefully pick it back up and get out a few more times with your bow until January 1. If you got a deer, it was good. If you got two deer, you were kicking ass after many, many, many days in the field.

You know? Yeah. To have a deer come into range was a big night. 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 a hind 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 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 OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Almost had a shot. No shit, y'all almost had a shot. Yeah, dude. So close. It was like, sweet. You were invigorating.

It's still like that, except you don't see it. Of course it's still like that for everybody out there. It's like Facebook. People put on their best face on Facebook, though? It's still like that, except you don't see it. Oh, of course it's still like that for everybody out there. It's like Facebook. People put on their best face on Facebook, right? You don't see very often somebody talking about how bad things were that day. It's always like your best foot forward. And so that's a lot of this stuff.

Yeah, it's like here's me in my bathroom realizing the toilet paper is all gone. Trying to think of what a proper what an appropriate here's a good one man this is contentious let me talk about it for a quick second though how would a wall across the mexican border impact wildlife? Now, on a preface, note this feller is not, it does not say, how would a wall across the Mexican border impact jobs? He's not saying, how would a wall across the Mexican border impact international relations? He's not saying that. How would a wall across the Mexican border impact wildlife? So pulling that question completely outside of the broader implications of the wall, just speaking of wildlife, it would be, there's a handful of species in that area. There's three large predators in that area

that move back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. Mountain lions, black bears, jaguars. And as we speak, there are jaguars in the U.S. that come up into Arizona. And you have, of course, it could be the Mexican wolf coming back and forth. People are, you know, there's a lot of arguments to be made for and against having more jaguars in the U.S.

I tend to really love the idea of it. If you did the wall, you're going to, whatever's going to happen down the road with jaguar recovery is going to not happen. Because the jaguars that are coming in to the U.S. are coming from Mexico. At this point, it's always been males. It's been like far-wandering males that could wind up in Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas. So that wouldn't happen anymore. If, in fact, you did the impossible and had sort of this impenetrable wall

extending across the entire border, which I think that, you know, is, is not going to happen in our lifetime. I don't think, I think most people would say that just the financial, you know, just the, the burden of building that financially, it's not going to happen, but yeah, man, it would be, uh, it would be not good for, um, any large mammal and it would really impede jaguar recovery, and it would impede genetic exchange. It'd be like anywhere you go and make an impenetrable barrier, you're going to really impede genetic exchange between animals. Again, just want to clarify, this isn't a political question. It's an ecological question. And you can go find a lot more, out a lot more about that. I remember years ago when I was working on my Buffalo book,

I went to a sort of an international bison conference, which means it had people from Mexico. It had people from Canada and a lot of people from the US. And I went to a lecture where a guy was lecturing on the potential for recovery of bison or buffalo and and he also addressed the idea of a border wall and what that would mean for in the future as we look to expand and recover big game populations anyone else want to add to that i'm just curious are there any meals that use it currently as a migration route will would it shut anything down that's already taking place and doing well oh like things that are already kicking ass? I don't know.

I imagine you probably always see some lessening, but I don't know that there's a population that's... If there's a population of animals that's good now and would all of a sudden become bad with a wall. I can't think of an example like that. The thing you most hear about when that subject comes up is you most hear about

jaguars. It's just a matter of time until a female, you know, a female jaguar is going to come across, and you're going to have some animals. I guess I could be wrong, but this book that came out, it's like a bunch of the most influential trail cam photos taken. It's a collection of trail cam photos from around the world. In there is a trail cam photo of a jaguar in the snow.

And the caption says it's the only image of a jaguar in the snow. And it was taken in Arizona. Can't speak to jaguars. I don't know a whole heck of a lot about them. Bad motherfuckers. Are they? Big, big cat.

My kids know, they know a bad mofo, but they don't know what it actually stands for they talk a lot about bad they talk about a lot of animals being bad mofos the english teacher's gonna send home a note jimmy needs to know what bad mofo my kids really struggling right now he learned he heard like he overhears a lot just because he spends a lot of time around fellas you know sure and he picked up that there's a thing called bullshitting and he picked up there's a thing called the bullshitter and he's not clear on why it's okay for bullshitting but to be a bullshitter is very bad he was seeking some clarification on that recently it's awesome he's picking that up that that there is a difference. Because I used to say to him, what it was is kids, you want to carry them on your shoulders because it's easier to carry them on your shoulders.

But with mine, they always got to the point where they didn't want to do that anymore. They really wanted to be on your hip. And I would say, you want to be down here so you can BS. And so he'd just say he wants to BS, which meant he wants to be, he just thought it was a term for being on my hip. And then one day he put together that BSing was bullshit. And then he got to hearing like, oh, he's such a bullshitter. I can't stand that guy. That kind of sentence. And he's like, whoa. Blowing his mind.

Here I thought bullshit was good. Bullshit is good. It's bullshitters. Hey, Jimmy, here's a good one for you. Uh-oh. This might be good for you because I think you're experiencing the pizza business. It's going to cross over. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready.

Do you have any tips as far as the process of curing and smoking? He's referring to meats. I've read cold smoking can cause botulism and make people sick. So I want to be sure to know what I'm doing. You ever deal with any botulism?

Negative. No botulism outbreak except Belltown Pizza? Absolutely zero botulism free. It's a botulism free zone? It is a botulism free zone. You know, I don't know much about smoking.

I do know that it's really good to have a friend who's really good at smoking, and you just kind of hand him everything and then get it back later. Yeah. I do safe practices. Matt, do you smoke weed much?

I don't. Well, fish mostly. Yeah. I tried to smoke some cheese the other day, and I opened up my smoker and had a big puddle of cheese. You tried to smoke it on the bottom? A little too hot? A little too hot.

Yeah, my little chief, I don't think. If somebody has a tip on how to smoke cheese in a little chief. I'm guessing it involves a lower temperature. Yeah, but I don't, this thing's one of those, like, you plug it in or you unplug it. Yeah, no, I agree with that. That's all we have. I need a more sophisticated smoker. When I was a kid, I was like, if you didn't have a little chief, you weren't smoking.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to answer this without answering it. I'll say that there's a science to this. These are not like botulism and other foodborne ailments are not mysterious anymore. We have very concrete understanding of what temperatures you need to avoid, how many minutes things can be at such and such temperature, how long, what you need to do to make stuff safe. It can be as simple as making cold smoked salmon that the product never gets above a certain temperature.

Should it get above that temperature and become a bacterial breeding ground, then you need to make sure to pass through a medium threshold and go up into where you then kill anything by getting it plenty hot enough. So my advice is just to get a good book that breaks this stuff down and follow the guidelines. Because it's not like a thing where it's like you don't play it by feel. I mean, these things are very spelled out. There are food safety guidelines that you should follow. I feel that some of it take a little bit too far. Like if you go and look at, which is a good thing.

Some things take it too far, which means you're going to be extra safe. Some of the stuff I ignore a little bit. Like for instance, if you were to go on to some websites, you look up like I want to make my own jerky. You'll find that they always say, like, well, you need to quickly boil the meat before you make jerky. Or you need to then put it in the oven afterward and bring it up to 165 degrees, right? I just, like, don't do that. But these are people who are telling you, here's how to be absolutely safe all the time. It's the same people who don't

let their kids taste cookie dough because there's a raw egg in there, right? You're never going to regret doing it except for like a flavor way. But it could be overkill in certain instances. Yeah. But this is coming from a guy who's gotten sick by not following basic guidelines. I mean, me, I've gotten sick by not following basic guidelines on stuff. But it's just not that hard. If you look at how to do whatever you're fixing to do, like curing, smoking, if you look at how to do it well, these aren't mysterious things that are not difficult. I think the one area where you kind of can get into trouble is with a lot like you know like you're saying cured stuff um where you have a item that's essentially raw sitting around for a whole long time you should follow some basic guidelines which suggests that it is risky is you know a lot of restaurants just aren't set up to do that kind of stuff like you're not making your own oh absolutely no no no no no

i wouldn't take the risk i know it be done, but just not in my place. For sure, do we buy from a reputable purveyor, stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, just the labor involved in actually manufacturing that product would probably be cost prohibitive anyhow. I got a buddy that does make sausage. He has a restaurant restaurant does produce his own charcuterie is is um you know spend a lifetime around that stuff and he i don't want to name him but he's remarkably sort of blasé about the whole thing he's like i watch out for black fuzzy fuzzy mold. Barnette, I'm eating it. All right, Don. Anything to add, Yanni?

No. No. I've only made burger and steaks from the deer I've killed. What recommendations would you make to begin the journey into more adventurous cuts

and meals? Yannis. Good question. You want to hear it again? No, I got it. adventurous cuts and meals? Giannis. Good question. You want to hear it again? No, no, I got it. The two that come to mind would be shanks, which you could do either whole or asabuco, meaning you just take your shank and cut it into discs

and then brown it and braise it, or you can take the whole shank and just brown it and braise it or you can take the whole shank and just brown it and braise it. And I like those. And then the other one too that I'll mention is the neck. I like both of these cuts because they're super easy. Like once my wife figured out how easy it is to braise, this is like now her like go-to thing because you don't have to think about it. It's like in the morning, like after breakfast, you're like, all right, quick brown into the crock pot or into the Dutch oven. And don't want to think about it again until five.

Yeah. It'll be ready in four hours. It'll be good still in 12 hours. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah. We had a neck roast the other day. A lot of times I'll be like, just put it in the crock pot and I'll figure out how to finish it at five when I get home. Like I'll have like this hot, seasoned, well-cooked, falling apart, falling off the bone meat. And she like, doesn't want to take it to like the final, you know, presentation. But I can roll in and I looked in there and I was like, hmm,

you know, we've never done classic pot roast. So I'm like, all right, some carrots, a few potatoes, like half an onion, finish that off, and then through like a side of peas, and we had like classic pot roast. It was great. Yeah. I used to look, when I looked in my freezer, I used to like to see all the like loin and then your sirloins you know like basically your back leg

cuts and your loin i'd be like man there's the good shit you know the rest of stuff's just stuff we're gonna eat but that's like the prime i now look i'm a little bummed when i don't see shanks necks all that stuff that i used to many years ago kind of be a little bit apprehensive about because i thought they were difficult to handle yeah because there's not like if you take any of the non-prime parts of your so any part of the front leg the neck the the knee down the shank cut and the ribs and you brought you put a bunch of salt and pepper on that piece of meat brown it in oil put it in a covered pot and cover it just up to the top with stock or water and throw in a handful of garlic and a splash of wine and put it in your oven at 300 degrees it's like it's just all good and then you can do anything with it right eat it like that tacos

sandwiches it just doesn't matter yeah man over the years I've just really changed my stuff around and I've actually gotten away from doing steaks like it's been years since I've actually had like

venison steaks on the grill because now I almost all those steak something that you would cut into a steak I'll just keep it whole and sear it bring it up to 125 degrees let it whole and sear it bring it up

to 125 degrees let it rest and then slice it and i feel like you're getting a much you know moister richer better product that way and less is drying out than if you have individual steaks that are getting cooked on all sides oh yeah i know i i rarely do steaks and when i first started you know i first started cutting up deer like we always cut our own deer up when I was growing up. And we would cut them up and we would cut, if we did a deer, we'd cut burger meat for the grinder. And then every other piece of meat, we not just meant it for steaks, we cut it into steaks.

The whole loin, we cut them one inch slices, back legs, cut them all into steaks. And you'd have burger, packs that said burger, packs that said steaks. And that's how we cut everything. I don't cook deer steaks anymore now. And then in the transitional period, when I still would cook steaks and then some roast, we would mark all that meat S-R, S slash R, which meant steak roast. Not my initials, but it meant like steaks or roast. I mean, you could pull it out and cut your steaks later. What I was thinking at the time was, if you're going to cut it into steaks,

why not just do it later? Because this way you have less exposed surface area and less edges to get freezer burned. Because the meat protects itself when it's in a large block. So we do that. But now I never cook steaks anymore. I cook whole muscle groups and then slice it because you get a much better product that way.

Lastly, I think the thing I've gotten into the last few years that's an easy way to branch out a little bit is to make a sausage. Yeah. It's really not that difficult. There's some pretty easy recipes out there that, I mean, if you have your burger or your stuff you're about to grind into burger, you might only be adding, you know, half dozen ingredients.

And you can choose to do it bulk. You know, you don't have to stuff it into casings. You'd have to be an idiot to not know how to make sausages. I mean, not to not know. Okay, I'll say this. You'd have to be an idiot to not be able to figure out how to make sausages. I mean, not to not know. Okay, I'll say this. You'd have to be an idiot to not be able to figure out how to make sausage. Not that you already know, but anyone who can drive a car, for instance, could make... If you have it in you to drive a car, you absolutely have it in you to make a sausage. You're not running up against... We're not talking about like a like you'd have

you'd find that you didn't have like the cognitive abilities to make sausage this is not that hard you want to add to that um i think something that totally blew my mind this year is carpaccio yeah and like like we were just talking about cured meat and that kind of stuff and what's the techniques. And to slice a piece of meat, pound it out, put a little – we used a Himalayan salt that this friend of mine, Eric Hess, had smoked in his smoker, a little pepper. Smoked his own salt? Oh, dude. I mean, you don't want to use much of it, but it's super good.

I like that shit, yeah. And then a little baby arugula on there and some parmesan, and then you just eat it like that. And I was expecting to totally be sick the next day or even that night. And just talking about it right now, I'm salivating about it. It literally blew my mind. And so everybody I'm talking about how the hunt go this year, I'm like, oh, you've got to do carpaccio.

Big horn carpaccio. Well, I mean, I'm going to try it on everything. Oh, yeah. Did it with the big horn. get it with the big horn. Get it with the big horn. I mean, that's just sweeter meat anyways. Have you found that to be true? Have you been enjoying eating your big horn? Yeah, I mean, I shot a U 14 years ago, and it's that very similar.

It's like a sweeter taste. You know, it's pretty lean meat, but a lot sweeter than anything I've ever tried. So, yeah, it's delicious. But again, that carpaccio, like it's just this weird thing. Like you're eating, I mean, dark raw meat. And then he starts telling me that he just like, when he's out in the field and he's boning something up,

he just starts taking chunks. Like he doesn't even pound them. I don't think he just sticks them in his mouth. I think like, I've never done that. I don't know if I can bring myself to do that, especially when I'm out in the field and that might make things more difficult. But boy, and the kids ate it, and they loved it.

So I encourage anybody to try carpaccio. At least look it up. Yeah, me and Remy did tarpaccio with tar. Okay. And then we did tartar, steak tartar with tar. Okay. So tar, tartar, and tarpaccio. Tartar cubed. Like, this goes back to that dude asking about food safety issues. Tar-tar with tar. Okay. So tar-tar-tar. And tar-pacho. Tar-cubed.

This goes back to that dude asking about food safety issues earlier. You're never going to go on a government website and find where it says, hey, man, good idea. Good idea is to eat yourself some raw deer meat. No one's going to tell you it's okay. But if you're eating ungulates, like raw ungulates, there's nothing. I can't think of what it would be that would happen to you.

I've had food poisoning twice, and both times it was from cooked onions. There you go. Watch out for that shit. Right. Both times. I thought big horn sheep, we were talking about this the other night at the Sheep Foundation event. It's my favorite meat.

I've only eaten it once because I got it from taxidermist. There's not a ton of them floating around out there. He said he wants some bighorn sheep's egg, and I was expecting it to taste kind of like mutton or something. It is absolutely unbelievable how good it is. Years ago, my girlfriend killed a bighorn. She drew a tag, and we went out and got a bighorn. I made a lot of corned bighorn just to like the sound of it,

the same way I like tar-tar-tar. Corned bighorn. I thought made a lot of corn to bighorn just i like the sound of it the same way i like tar tar tar corn bighorn i thought i had a ring to it yeah yeah you know um most people don't associate like a litter like alliteration with good taste but i'm just such a sucker for a well phrased dish that i tend to gravitate towards things that have a ring to it you know i thought i'd hit the promised land remember when i moved to bozeman i hadn't been there but a few days and my buddy brendan burns calls me up and goes uh you got any room in your freezer i got a bighorn sheep i'm like what he's like yeah he had a client that didn't want the meat yeah yeah you know guy was flying and had taken like a quarter. He had three quarters.

His freezer was full. He had had a good season. I'm just like, dude, bring it on now, you know? Make room. It was good stuff. Oh, yeah. Like, and that's the kind of stuff I like. Kind of had a special little box in the freezer.

It's like every so often, you know, I worked it for two years. But yeah, that'll never happen again. I was starting to date my wife the first time I shot that U. And so it's smaller, you know, it gives as much meaning. And like, she loved it so much that she was, it wasn't that like parsing it out, like, you know, once like a month or once every couple of weeks. It was like, it was like, it was going to last forever.

And I finally, I was enjoying that she liked it so much but like hey babe we got to slow down on this thing a little bit and once she slowed down then we got married dating tips I'm going to read a funny one that no one needs to respond to I just think it's funny and then we're going to jump into one that I do want a response from so this guy's like

what's up with the epidemic of flat brim and white sunglass wearing energy drink pounding Western hardcore hunters that seem to be taking over these days? I'm a young guy in my early thirties, but I feel like a grumpy old bastard every time I see another social media post from these dudes. There's a question kind of in there later, but that's just funny. All right right here's going are there any animals you will not hunt for moral reasons now he's saying anything's fair game bald eagles his example house cats domestic dogs whatever what is something you just would feel

too torn up inside to pull the trigger jimmy dorn uh probably i'd shoot darn near anything in north america i don't really have a desire to shoot a bear for whatever reason i don't know i just look at it and it's no he's saying you gotta so you have a you have a desire to shoot a bald eagle oh heck no well you listen to the question oh i apologize everything is fair game in this hypothetical world okay so the list would be too long. Right. You can't list all the things you have no desire to shoot. Okay.

I missed the question then. No, no. You were doing it, but you were doing like a game animal. Oh, is there any animal that I wouldn't shoot? Yeah, the list would be very long. It would be like hamsters. Yeah, my neighbor's dog that barks. Many dozens of species of whales

let's just take it like game animals you don't have any desire to hunt bears i do not i couldn't tell you why i just don't always look at it it's not something i wanted i still i just heard something about them just don't want to do it pretty much half the stuff in africa i wouldn't shoot that either just don't just don't know why well with bears it is like i like um like you know if i'm out hunting you know you see a deer i see like a whitetail i'm like let's go get that deer oh yeah but when i see a bear i'm kind of like torn between going and getting it or observing it yeah i do like but i still i like to hunt bear and i continue to hunt bears but i mean i do understand there's sort of a, it's just different.

You know, and you could try all day long to act like it's not different, but for a lot of people, bears occupy a different space in their imagination. Never bought a tag. Another thing. Really? Yeah. Just never, just never, never, it's never, I like looking at them for sure. But you just don't see it in the email.

Not necessarily. And bald eagles? Yeah, definitely not. Red, white, and blue. Bird of freedom. Oh, man. I kind of like them around. Bird of freedom.

Bald eagles are not doing good PR management. They're breeding too much. Because a lot of people in this country no longer are like, Oh, my God god a bald eagle right they're letting themselves they should play the long game and slow down on reproduction in order to maintain that special status a little more ddt and like yeah my place in southeast alaska there might be 20 of them in a tree yeah you know and i bring people up there for the first couple minutes like oh my god an eagle oh my God, an eagle. Oh, my God, an eagle. Then later, they're like, eh, it's another eagle.

Look, another eagle. Yeah, I saw that happen before my eyes when I first started guiding on the Eagle River. You know, it's like your job as a fishing guide, especially if the fishing's flow is like, oh, check that out. Check that out. See that? Look at that plant, whatever. Keep them distracted. Yeah, see a bald eagle and everybody, ooh, ah. And then like,

by the, when did I quit? Like 2008 or nine or whatever. And just be like, bald eagle. Like, huh? You know, like nobody even cared.

It's like you're saying, everybody's just seeing them everywhere. They're like, oh yeah, we have those back in New Jersey now too. You know? I remember, I remember like in Michigan when we got done ice fishing

and he left some, you know, chubs or shiners out on the ice and we got done pulling tip ups. And I remember one Michigan when we got done ice fishing and he left some chubs or shiners out on the ice and we got done pulling tip-ups. I remember one day looking out there and it's a lake with houses and cottages all around it. Looking out, there's a couple bald eagles out there standing there eating our chubs. I'm like, something just changed for that bird. Now he's right in front of my house. Good for them.

Good for them. Good for them. Land? Let's scrap the whole anything in the world like cats and whatnot. Just say like game animals. Is there a game animal you don't go after? A lot of guys don't want to hunt lions. I would love to.

I've been on a couple of hunts. I've never shot one. You're open to hunting lions? Definitely. I think I'm with, I buy a bear tag every single year, but I've yet to pull the trigger on one. And I think it's partly because I do think they're kind of a special species. I'm not saying I would never do it,

but I think wolves are one of those things I don't think I would ever shoot. I think it would be such a special encounter for me to see one in the woods, like that green fire you know and stuff that the aldo leopold leopold talked about like just to be able to witness that like i've heard them a lot seen lots of tracks um and i think i've been fairly close to them but i've never seen them so i i mean what's the green fire it's like this that intense like the way they have that look in their eye it's some it's some sand county almanac that's what you're referring to right yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like there's a story about like wolves and they can how to think like a mountain yeah yes and like how the mountain doesn't have

the wolves on there anymore and um so the deer eating i mean it's a longer story this is coming from a guy whose job it was to shoot wolves yeah yeah and so i i just i don't know i think they're pretty iconic and pretty cool you know and um I know that we need to manage those wolves, and it's just not going to be me. Yeah. I'm at a similar place. Like, there's a lot. I mean, I could talk about a ton of things I have mixed emotions on.

But wolves are a funny one because, you know, I go out and get a wolf tag when I'm in areas. It's just like I sort of think, yeah, you know, someday I could see that I would get a wolf, kill a wolf. But then on the handful of opportunities I had to go after one, when I'm looking at one, I don't even really remember that I was thinking about it. I'm just kind of looking at it. I still imagine sometime in the future, maybe I will.

I was at Elk Continent, Montana this year and kept seeing wolf tracks. I'm kind of like, man, I should have gotten a wolf tag. They're all over. And then being like, but if one came out, you'd probably feel like you did every other time when you had an opportunity to go after one or had an opportunity to take a crack. It's an apex predator.

Yeah, and it's like I'm an ardent supporter of state game agencies having the right to manage them as a sustainable resource glad they're on the landscape but yeah like to have them on the landscape like to have them managed as a big game animal um and i understand that we're not going to have them everywhere that they were before but there's some places where it'll work and i support making it work in those places but i just like i and i was looking ahead of him i was like oh yeah that'd be great and then when it happens it's like it just something dissolves you know that could change too because you know like i i went from being a very ambivalent

mountain lion hunter to being like really wanting to get a mountain lion bad over time you look at enough of those tracks in the snow and after why like do I want to get one of these lions so bad, man? Yeah, here's a question for you. So speaking of lions, their management's kind of been all over the board, and now there's these lion hunters that super care about them, and there's the Montana lion hunters.

We're talking about mountain lions or cougars or pumas, whatever, just for people. And so they've really gotten engaged in the management of them, right? Do you think at some point we're going to have wolves on lemonade or something? These guys that are really good at howling on ridges, they fall in love with that species because they're probably one of the hardest ones to hunt. Kill one in every hundred that they call in? Yeah.

But, you know, but I mean like a really like, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if it's going to happen. If you just said that, if you just said in the 50s that people were going to be where they're at now with mountain lions right you know who like you know when states are using quota systems and have female mortality quotas on mountain lions that shit's coming from houndsmen that's what i'm saying like that like it's the that's who like cares about those things more than almost anybody it was houndsmen that said, let's stop eradication efforts on lions. Let's treat lions like a big game animal, a sustainable, renewable resource.

That came from Houndsman. That was not coming from New Jersey cat ladies. Do you think that's going to happen with pools? I mean, we look five years down the road. Yeah. I can see it yeah i could think if if we get where we need to be which is putting you know putting wolf management in the hands of the putting wolf management in the hands of you know people who are operating on a scientific doctrine and not you know some kind of subjective opinion um and we have wolf hunts that go on and we have sustainable populations of wolves and places and you're going to have guys that like really

figure it out and they start to admire them as a game animal and they're like really into the chase and they want to be in like a houndsman there's a lot of houndsmen out there who've killed who've been running lions their whole life and they they've killed a lion. Right. It's like being around them. Yeah. I could totally see you've got a guy that likes to hunt wolves, likes to call wolves, now and then kills a wolf, wants to make sure that the wolf hunting stays good. Sure.

I wouldn't be surprised. That's a foundation of conservation in a lot of ways, right? This is the value of wildlife so people people have to appreciate them in order to really want to conserve them and eventually it becomes that state it's like um you know a lot of the reason the wolves are in such a terrible place is because they haven't been able to be appropriately managed so they're in this dog no pun intended but like they're in a dog fight between yeah two groups are pulling back and forth and all the while it's like the state departments before they were allowing conservation some of these states are going out with helicopters and

gunning down whole packs of wolves because they're just running amok you know in these management units instead of being able to be appropriately managed and once we get to a state where we can appropriately manage all of these different areas where the wolves live, people start to appreciate them instead of them being seen as an adversary. I was joking about ego PR, how they let themselves get too abundant. But a thing that I think happened with wolves and why we have a lot of problems socially with wolves and why it's become such a thing that causes people to go into these

like diametrically opposed corners on wolf introductions and wolf hunting is that I think some states were initially very reluctant, right, to do wolf reintroductions. And then they got on board based on certain assurances saying, we're going to do this. Here's how we're going to define recovery. When we've reached recovery, here's some steps we're going to take to ease tensions between livestock growers, other interests, between big game hunters. Once

they reach recovery, we're going to strike this balance and try to maintain this number of animals. And then down the road, the recovery objective just kind of keeps moving and moving and moving and becomes an unachievable target. So you've got some state agencies who were with it and then later kind of felt like they got screwed because they went along with this plan once they were sold a certain idea. And then we've really changed what the idea looks like to now where it doesn't matter how many wolves we have, we're never going to say that they're recovered. We're always going to move the carrot out of your reach. And so I think that that really has kind of made a thing where wolves have unnecessarily had to become this thing like this you love them or hate

them right you know and i think there's a lot of game animals on the landscape that don't really inspire that level of you know that don't really inspire that level of like a vehemence but we've just set them up to in a social sense i think we've set ourselves up for failure by not being totally transparent with people in some of these issues now matt what would you not hunt for yeah i know you're going on a bear hunt i am going on a bear hunt uh i i don't know i if it was if i the only things i wouldn't hunt for are the things that i'm concerned with eating because i don't really want to shoot anything that I don't want to eat. Yeah, you'd rather hunt stuff that you're going to. Yeah, but even now, like cougar,

I keep hearing from all sorts of people that cougar meat is fantastic. You'd be shocked. Yeah, I hear it's terrific. So previously I would think, well, I don't really want to shoot a cougar because I don't want to eat the meat, but I hear it's great. I mean, even squirrels the meat, but I hear it's great. I mean, even squirrels, whatever, it all sounds good. As long as the meat's consumable and I like consuming it,

then I'm into it. That's very cool. Yeah. I like that I get to nod when someone says, you know squirrels? And they look over at me. I've become like the world's number one squirrel hunting advocate. Squirrel man. What hunts have you not done that you'd really like to do?

Man. There's so many. For me right now, I'm really kind of interested in stone sheep. I've never hunted bighorn sheep. If you, just to preface why I just said that, or where I'm going with this, is if you imagine, you know, sheep, at one time, all the, at one time, probably all the sheep that we have in

North America, so you have dull sheep, stones, and there's kind of like a fanning, which is sort of a, you know, an intermediary sheep between there, and then you go down, you have Rocky Mountain bighorns and desert bighorns. At one time, during the Pleistocene, we probably had, there was probably a species of sheep that extended from Siberia all the way down. It was probably like a species of sheep. And then through a lot of climate factors, geologic factors, those sheep species were broken up where you had genetically distinct populations of sheep, and over time, we wound up with the array of sheep we have.

So leaving out Siberia, you have snow sheep, but leaving out those, you have dolls in Alaska and in some portions of Northwest Canada, stones, and you get down into continental U.S. and bighorns. I've been on bighorn hunts, a few of them, never drawn a bighorn tag. I've been lucky enough to been on a handful of doll sheep hunts, hunting with my brothers up in Alaska, killed a couple doll rams. I would really like to hit that middle ground and go out and see some stone sheep country and chase after a stone sheep.

That's one thing I'd like to do. They're regarded as a thin horned sheep, like a doll, but they're darker fur. Dolls are white and these are a darker furred sheep. It's not so much like that I need like, oh, you know, imagine having one that had dark hair. But it's more like just kind of understanding this whole spectrum of mountain sheep and kind of seeing them in all their variations and all the landscapes they live in.

So that's very high on my list. Yeah, exploring the Canadian Rockies is really why you're going there. Yeah, which is some wild-ass Rocky Mountains, man. Yeah. Yeah. We're just some wild ass Rocky Mountains, man. Yeah. Yeah. They got parts of the Rockies that smoke anything we have in the lower 48 as far as remoteness and just wildness and having all of their animals on the landscape. That's the funny thing about wolf guy, like people that hate wolves categorically.

It's like everybody wants to go hunt in Alaska. Everybody wants to go hunt in Canada. They got wolves on the ground. If wolves mean that you can't have good hunting, and there's no such thing as big game and wolves, why do you go to Alaska? You should know that you should steer clear because there's wolves, so there can't be any game there.

They occupy 90, what, 96% of their historic range in Alaska. So that would lead me to believe that there's no point in going to that shithole to hunt. Another location where we were at recently. It's so weird that there's that misperception. They manage wolves hardcore in Alaska. Where we just were recently, I'll probably get an email about this because they're not going to be too happy giving this info up but we're hunting mountain lions there's a lot of mountain lions good mountain lion hunting and i mean the deer tracks oh my god yeah well they were

thick yeah they were hand in hand yeah the lions were there because the deer were there yeah it's a i saw a thing one time to, it's a... I saw a thing one time, to speak about lions and wolves, I saw a thing one time where they figured that out of every 100 elk calves, 30 are killed by mountain lions, in one particular area. Out of every 100 elk calves, 30 get killed by mountain lions in one particular area. Out of every 100 elk calves, 30 get killed by mountain lions. Wolves came in and everyone got real upset about wolves, but they think

additively wolves are killing 10 per hundred. So people just got used to there being a survival of 70% of elk calves would survive. And that kind of became like how our whole management structure is built around this idea. Now that it's 60, it's noticeably different. It's changed everything, but all of the blame has fallen to this new thing when meanwhile you have your primary predator has always been on the ground, but no one had to deal with the idea that it used to not be there, and now it's there. It's like this sudden change,

rather than this old thing that was going on. It's like, I hate talking about it, but I'm just so drawn to talking about it, because the wolf thing is so rich for investigation. It's really hard to find consistent information on wolves, on wolves in general and predation of wolves. I hear people talk all the time about, oh, you know, one wolf is 100 elk or consumes 30 elk a month.

I don't know. Seven pounds of meat a day. Right. That's coming from somewhere. Right. And then people talk about how they just hamstring all their animals and kill for fun. And I'm not advocating for one or the other. I'm just saying that I hear a lot of pretty dramatic attitudes on how much wolves take.

Oh, yeah. And you got people that tell you that they eat nothing but nuts and berries. Right. Right. They're like, oh, it has no impact. I'm like, how could that be? They eat seven pounds of meat a day there's 365 days a year they're eating something stop telling me that

there has no impact on wild game it doesn't seem to be a whole lot of middle ground on it no there's none polar yeah it's either polarized one direction or the other but there's none they did that study down the bitter root right i think the elk foundation paid for it i know my little local rod and gun club played a little bit of money into it. They found out the biggest impact on those calf populations was black bears. Yeah.

And so they increased the quotas on black bears. And like, there's many factors. There was those fires that, you know, went on down there. And so now there's a lot of like browse and stuff. But black bears was a major contributor. And they started to changed the quotas and now that population is rebounding.

Everybody kind of knew it could, but the Black Bears were the ones that were the main factor. That's been interesting to see in my lifetime, the sort of transformation that our understanding of Black Bears has gone through. People used to sort of see them as this kind of bumbling opportunist who would eat some carrion, primarily vegetarian diet. And there's been so much research in just the last couple decades

about how effective they are on fawns. And that they see these things moving into fawning areas or calving areas before the elk even show up in anticipation of them coming in to drop calves. And they just know about that resource. And I think people used to look right through them and see other stuff. And now we're seeing that black bears are heavy hitters. There's that mule deer, they're doing a mule deer study, obviously controversial. They're doing a mule deer study, obviously controversial. They're doing a mule deer study down in Colorado right now.

And it's in a basin where you have sort of this semi-isolated population of mule deer. They're finding that the deer are getting plenty of food. When they weigh the fawns now, the fawns weigh more

than past generations weighed at the same time, suggesting there's plenty of food, but there's just no recruitment. And they're looking, it's got to be a predator issue. And so they're going into this area. And instead, when they generally done predator control in the past, they've done it where you just sort of throughout the year kind of target predators to try to drop numbers. But now they're trying to do, in this particular study, they're trying to do targeted predator removal at the same time as they're dropping fawns. Thinking that this way you know you're getting the ones that are

in the area. And they're going to see if that method might be a method where you're actually removing fewer predators and maybe moving the needle in favor of animals that are not doing so well. Because instead of trying this like shotgun approach where you're getting animals that may or may not even be in the area when they're dropping fawns, but to go in there and they're removing coyotes and black bears. Oh, and mountain lions, right? Coyotes and black bears and mountain lions in May to try to test, among other things, to try to test this idea that you might really help a population of animals out

like a declining population of ungulates you might help them out by like specifically giving them like on the ground support at the moment they need it like covering fire basically covering fire you know yeah coyotes are supposed to be really hard on deer fawns aren't they yeah again i think it depends so much on the area yeah but in places yeah in other places people are kind of surprised and they find out that they're that they're not but one of the reasons i think people like look at coyotes is coyotes are going through such a big range expansion that it's like this new thing now yeah right it's this thing that you used to not think about when i was a kid

where i grew up i remember half my life there were none in the area. Half my life there's a ton of them in the area. And so when people see something new and they see some changes, yeah, I think that you can wind up having sort of a simplified impression of what's going on by accounting for this new thing, as demonstrated by people's response

to wolf predation as looking at it as the reason something happened rather than it being a component to a very complex picture. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. Boy, my goodness

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That's too complicated to get into. What gear do you recommend splurging on up front versus what gear can you work around and invest in later? Boots. Boots. Splurge. yeah i don't want to spend as much on my boots as my gun yeah i remember a guy he said hunt with he was a packer for a guide out on the peninsula on the alaska peninsula and the guy's thing was if he had a um you know if he had a thousand dollars to spend i can't remember how it went i think it went like if he had a thousand dollars to spend on hunting gear he'd spend 100

on a rifle and 900 on his binoculars it took me a long time to realize that shit i went through a lot of my life without ever looking through a good pair of knockers the minute i did i'm like oh now i see now i see what this is all about that was a big change for me man good binos yeah i've looked through mediocre ones and i've looked through really good ones and i've been kind of hard pressed to make the what to jump from the really i have I don't know why. Are you looking through the right end? Yeah. He had the $2,000 Swarovski, the amazing binos,

and my $450 Nikons. I'll put them side by side, take the Pepsi challenge like you like to say. I don't understand how you can think that way. Are you taking the lens caps off? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I don't know. Like I said, I've felt like they're really expensive. I mean, sure, if I want to see the color of the thing's eyes. But, I mean, I can see real well. I mean, I'm deaf as a post for 2010, and I can see. I don't know. Do you spend a lot of time glassing when you're hunting? Tons. Oh, a tripod?

No. Oh. Free hand? Yeah. Have you ever tried glassing off a tripod? You're in for a treat, man. Oh, yeah? It's the greatest.

I can't do, like, you guys with the spotting scopes and stuff like that. No, no, no. No, no. Bino's on a tripod. Bino's on a tripod. Man, I'm trying. You'll be like, oh, I didn't realize that all of this shit lived out here. Okay.

When you start doing that. Yeah, all right. It's like, oh, there's't realize that all of this shit lived out here. Okay. When you start doing that. All right. It's like, oh, there's a quail five miles away. That's right, right? Just a little movement. It's not like my knock. It's like, my binos are good. Yeah, you put them on a tripod, it'll blow your mind.

I almost never pull my spotting scope out anymore unless they're like, my buddy's got my binos on the truck and i don't have my binos or i need to see closer what i'm looking at like a lot of times i'll you just have such a wide field of view and you can see everything moving and your binos on the tripod so i'll you know i'll pick out you can pick out the body maybe it's hard to see the horns behind the branches or whatever and then you put the spotting scope on and dial it in yeah i i seldom pull out very seldom pull out my spotting scope unless i'm already looking at an animal in fact the guys i hunt with like if me and yanni are up on a glass and tit and he gets out as he like reaches over you know you got your eyes through your binos but you're sort of like

looking in your pack for your spot scope i know know what that means. So he sees something and he wants to get a more careful look at it. Now and then it might be some little hell hole shadowy area. And I start getting real curious about it. And I want to take a gander in there and I'll pull my spot scope out. But generally it's like, I'm like, oh, there's something. What is it? Tell me more. And I'll pull a spot and scope out to figure out what's going on. Or I'll glass up. It's just like glass in a hill. And I see a buck stand up and then lay back down, or let's say I see a doe stand up and lay back down. I'm like, there's got to be more deer bed in there. I look with my binals, don't find them, get out my spot and scope. And then I start going like, oh yeah, there's actually four of them in there. There's one's ear, there's one's hoof. You know, it's always do that like

detail work the first time i ever put a pair of binoculars on a on a tripod was hunting coos deer couldn't believe it then probably shortly after that went on a mule deer hunt and was spotting mule deer i would have never have spotted if i hadn't if i wasn't running that because you don't feel it but you're shaking and it makes it that like one it, but you're shaking. And it makes it that, like, one, movement disappears. When you're moving, things that are moving, their movement just blends in with the movement that you're doing. And the other thing is you just notice parts of shit. Right.

You know, I used to, like, hate it. I used to be reading articles, and I'd be like, you're not actually looking for a deer. You know, you're looking for a little flick of antler or a toe. And it winds up being like, yeah, that's kind of true, but it's like you're not looking for a little piece of antler either. You're just looking, and you develop a search image of all these different things,

and you just wind up picking up unnatural lines. Daniel Boone said that you would had, during the Indian Wars, you had more of a chance of spotting an Indian's rifle than you did the Indian. Because they were using those five-foot-long Kentucky rifles. Kentucky, yeah. Yeah, you just get in your head. There's certain shapes that just don't occur. Not that they don't occur in the natural world because a deer is part of the natural world.

But there's certain shapes that just don't belong to plants, I guess. And now and then you're like, I know that weird knee-looking thing sticking out from under that tree. And I started to blow it up when I started running tripod. I mean, it completely changed the way I hunt. It just, that's that big of a difference. Yeah, you'll feel changed the way I hunt. It changed the way I hunt. Yeah, you'll feel like your Nikons are a different binocular. The first time I ever made my dad use a tripod, I was going to hunt

across this valley and I just had him glassing for the same hillside just where I wasn't for the next hunt. And that evening when we reconvened, he's like, man, I had no idea how good my binoculars were. Like, same binoculars he's been using for 10 years. You can live up to the, you can let them see their full,

you let your knockers realize their full potential. Yeah. And I almost feel like what the question is, what can you. What are you laughing about? The knockers. Knockers. Your full potential. I'm so juvenile. Like, i just have to like oh yeah

no like nice knock yeah i'll talk about your binos bro yeah he's got nice knockers the uh what gear can you splurge on or should you splurge on no i'm not done talking about knockers no because i want to say another thing um we didn't really use but not when i lived in in the eastern i was still talking about binoculars oh i thought you're the eastern U.S. Oh, I was still talking about binoculars. Oh, I thought you were switching to other gear. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Because we originally,

everybody blurted out boots, and I do agree that the boots are right up there. Oh, yeah. But I feel like binoculars, if you buy a good pair of binoculars now and really do splurge, it might be the only pair of binoculars you ever buy. And maybe if you take really good care of them,

you can pass them on to the next generation, and they could use them for almost a lifetime, unless the technology gets that much better. Wear a pair of boots, will wear out. And I know that early on in my elk hunting career, I think I did hunt in, I mean, they were like $100. I don't want to say they were high techs,

but it was definitely just something out of Cabela's. And I was like, I just need something, you know, that I can afford that'll get me through. And, you know, I would say Spurge on the binos. Yeah, if you're hunting in your daddy's boots, your daddy didn't do much hunting. Right. They just don't last.

Binos, man, I don't really. And you can't really buy good binos that aren't covered by a good, or not that you can't. Don't buy good binals that aren't covered by a good warranty. All the good companies have a good warranty. Vortex has what is called VIP warranty. It's like if they break you, just send them in. Get new ones.

And I would say, too, buy a kind where the manufacturer covers them. Don't rely on who you bought them from to cover them. Like don't get knockers where if something happens, like you break the eye cup on them, then you're going to go back down to the retail location. Figure out which companies you can use. You send it into the company. They do the repair and send them back. Because it's just a way better approach. And also, buy from a company that's, you know, been around. I don't know if anybody makes, like, fly-by-night optics companies, but it really changes. And, you know, we always had binoculars when I hunted,

when I lived in the eastern half of the country. You know, we had binoculars, didn't rely on them as much. Then in western hunting, I really developed a real love with binoculars. Like I said, it kind of changed my way to hunt. But even now when I go back and hunt, if I'm hunting squirrels or hunting deer, I'm glassing up stuff that 20 years ago I wouldn't have found. Last time I was sitting there hunting Doug Dern's Whitetail Deer Farm in Wisconsin. During the middle of the day, I just take out my knockers and not on a tripod,

but just lean them on the rail of the ground blind, start looking down in the creek and the brush on the creek. And I'm picking off bed of deer down there that have been there the entire time I've been sitting in that blind without knowing they're there. They were already laying there when it got light. They're 150 yards away from me. And it wasn't until one o'clock in the afternoon, I was bored out of my mind that I decided to tear that little brush patch apart and realize there's all kinds of deer laying there. And in the old days, I would have gone the whole day and not known they were there. And then hunting squirrels.

You think like, oh, he went in a hole. Half the time, he didn't. Half the time, he's like laid up on top of some branch and you get your knockers up there and you see some little tuft of tail fur blown in the breeze that you would have never found with albinos. I can't stand being out in the woods with albinos. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

All right. I will take that with me. All right. Anybody else? Any other gear you splurge on? The only thing I would say that's maybe not pertinent to this conversation, but something that I splurged on a long time ago was a raft. And that raft has gotten me out on so many, like, I mean, one, fishing.

Like, I just use it way more. But it's also gotten me out on hunting trips, too, that I probably wouldn't have done. So, like, I mean, that's a big ticket item. Oh, yeah. But, like, one, I think you feel like you want to use it because you did spend that money. But, man, it gets you in some really cool places.

And, yeah, so I'd say a raft on top of the glass. I mean, I think the glass is super important. No, I like the way you're thinking, man. I think, you know, I think a big thing, the thing that I usually always own, you know, and it's a big item, but, like, I typically always will own a canoe of some sort. And then it really, having that in your toolkit, you know, helps you in hunting all the time. Squirting across, even if it's just like squirting across a marsh

or squirting across a river and getting a little bit away from where everybody's parking, you know, it's a good thing. We'll do the one last one, then we'll do some concluding thoughts. This is directed toward me, but everybody can speak to this. How does Steve draw so many tags? I don't think I draw shit for tags. Here's the thing. I put in every state. So every year when I do my tags, I put in four, starting in the top left corner of our country. I put in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and places elsewhere for everything. Oh, I forgot about Alaska. I put in for every draw in Alaska.

I don't skip anything unless I'm not eligible because like, you know, for instance, I drew a musk ox tag and you got to go a certain number of years before you put in for musk ox again. I put in for every damn drawing. I don't draw shit. This fall, I don't think- Where do people get that idea? We didn't hunt. Well, I think that they're confusing some of the hunts that we go on. Thinking it's a draw hunt. Thinking it's a draw hunt. But this fall, we didn't do a single draw hunt.

Okay, there you go. So yeah, we hunted our asses off from August till Christmas. Never did... And it was all... 100% over the counter. All over the counter. And we didn't do a single private land hunt.

Did we? I had to think a little bit, but... I don't think we stepped foot on private land for big game this year is this person in the west can he does he doesn't say say or what i have in front of me doesn't say whether he's from the west or not okay when was the last time you hunted a special draw like a tough like a tag where people are like how'd you draw that uh two Two years ago, I hunted a unit in Oregon that's... It was like a good draw. Yeah, but it was because my buddy had a whole ton of points, and I had actually drawn a good tag the year before,

which took me seven years to draw. I'd drawn a good tag the year before, and he had 14 points or something and said, hey, we should go on this hunt, and so we just split the points. I had zero, but he had like 12, I think. And so this unit took five or six. And so we split them and got to hunt it.

This is the kind of stuff, I want to use this question as a springboard to talk about a little bit of this, that kind of stuff. I know there's a very renowned archer who people are like, well, how can he do all these amazing hunts? And it's because he's very good. And there's a lot of people who would love to spend time with him in the woods. And he teams up with them on draws. He hunts with guys who have 20 points in some unit. And he's like, we'll go in together. We'll split your points. And we will hunt together, and I will show you what's up.

Just a friendship. No money exchanging hands. Just like a friendship arrangement. So yeah. Pete was like, how does he draw all those tags? Because it's something he cares a great deal about and does the time and puts in the work and makes it that he gets to go do those hunts. Yeah.

He's got expertise in the area or something that he can trade for that trade for some opportunity yeah um that's one way but yeah i got no magic when it comes to tag draws man at all you ever hunt a special tag no washington's really tough i wouldn't even know half the stuff that i put in for it or i mean like you just. You just hunt, go down to the drugs or gas station and buy a license. Pretty much. I put in for a couple, like 680 Montana archery elk. I put in for pronghorn. That's really about it.

Yeah. I mean, most of the stuff I do, I say it's just over the counter. I've killed, like, in my life, hunt all the time. And I've done a ton of hunting for a ton of different big games. I've killed one, like one world-class animal. Okay? And that animal, I killed on a tag I bought at a gas station

on National Forest Land. You're going to be like, I want a deer license, please. Okay, that'll be... And then you walk out in the woods and hunt. And that's like the one world-class animal I've killed. I had to put in for a tag for the elk that i shot this past year but the whole area is private so i mean i had to i literally had to yeah i live at oregon like i had to click off twice and i understood that private land is all private land so you got you had a buddy i did everybody you know yeah

rust took us down yeah your buddy that has a cattle operation. Leases out cattle property. Yeah, leases out some grazing on their place. Yeah, it's good stuff. Land. Coming off Big Horn sheep hunting. Yeah. How many years is that? 14.

So you put in for Big Horn's 14 years and drew a tag. And then the other hunter, there's only two in that area, and he put in for 31 years. How do you draw so many tags i will say that like i drew another i drew a mountain goat tag the year my daughter was born she was born july 21st and that tag started uh august 15th and uh i that was our first kid and i didn't get out my my wife told me i couldn't do. You didn't go? No, I went. I went like five, six days, which wasn't even that much,

but I wasn't in a row either and it was only out for the day. So I would bike in as far as I could go and hike in, see goats, start to crawl in those goats and by that time, it's almost starting to get dark. I mean, no joke.

That was like, I saw goats every single time. So I ate that tag and that was painful and I know how old my daughter i ate that tag and that was uh painful and i know how old my daughter is because i have you have to wait for seven years and i just started being able to put them again for this year yeah so every time you look at it there's a little bit of resent oh she's gonna know about it you know forever and you ruined my life and what i hope happens what i hope happens is that someday she draws a mountain goat tag and we get to go do it

together and she shoots a mountain goat that whole we get to go do it together and she shoots a mountain goat, that whole thing is complete. That would be like. In our big game guidebook, my favorite picture in our big game guidebook is my brother's, his wife drew a mountain goat tag. And then by the time her hunt date came around, she was six months pregnant.

But yeah, killed a goat. She did. With a giant gut. That's awesome. Giant gut. She's awesome. Giant gut. She's got like this sort of like, in this picture, she's even wearing like one of those things

that gals put on when they're super pregnant. It's almost like this like high waist like support. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but with a big old belly. Yeah, that's cool. Six months pregnant. That's right. She is a badass.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, she's a badass. I foresee you starting to draw more tags. Oh yeah,

because I'm building up a lot of points, man. Yeah, but you get them and then they're gone, you know? So what happens,

I mean? Because I'll sometimes do overkill on a tag. It'll be like, oh yeah, you could draw this tag with three points and it'll be something

where I got like six and I'm like, okay, I'll put it in. you did on a, yeah, Colorado was a draw. Oh. I misspoke

yep there's a lie I drew it with how many points three okay so yep I do draw a lot of tags I drew

I drew a this last year I drew a Colorado deer tag that you can draw with certainty with three points oh you can probably draw with certainty with maybe even just two.

I think I got lucky and drew it with one. Okay. So probably not what this guy's getting at. No. I draw a lot of tags by, okay, I'll give you a straight dope. I've been lying. When you're in show business, there's a thing called the show business tag. And you call up the state and you'd be like, hey, I'm in show business.

They're like, who are your Hollywood cronies? Yeah, do you have Hollywood cronies? I'm like, yes. I have a helicopter. Do you have a helicopter? I'm like, yeah. Just tell us what tags you need, and we'll send them over. You have to wear a department shirt.

You have pictures of you and these celebrities together. And I'm like, yeah, I can back it up. Like, cool. What tags would you like? I really haven't found the draw tags I've ever drawn I've had any more success on than the over-the-counter tags. In fact, I think I probably have had more success on over-the-counter tags than the draw tags that I've drawn.

Even when you factor out per hunt day? Yeah. Yeah, I'm working just as hard on either one. I don't necessarily know that i've seen the opportunity go up might it be that the over-the-counter areas are areas you're hunting often and have friends that hunt them often and so you build up like a database and then a rare tag opportunity you're going into a place you've never been before that's yeah that's possible. Yeah. For sure. I drew a very coveted doll sheep tag in Alaska in 2010, and I found that hunt to be wildly different

than the general doll sheep hunts we'd been on. Like, I felt it was a lot different. Could have just been a lucky moment. Better. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was just, you know, it was just, yeah. It was a thing that was normally like this nine day gruel fest that turned into like a pretty you could have kept going and looking

but it's like didn't take long well there's a ram my buddy's like hey there's another ram over there and um hadn't been our finding in the past you know but um in other cases i'm sure i i talked every year i talk to guys who draw some tag that think it's going to be the hunting lifetime and they go out and get their ass handed to them. There's no reason to think that you can't go out on a public land if you do your homework and you're

working hard for it and you spend enough time. You can't go out on a public land hunt and have the hunt of a lifetime. Yeah. That's been the... Over the counter. The bulk of my hunting yeah until you got your hollywood cronies yeah and the helicopters and the helicopters all right including thoughts matt i want i think i need to get more experimental with my

meat preparation consumption when you're cooking largemouth? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll do that for sure. I should have thrown that in. It's an animal that I just can't eat. Largemouth bass. You sent me a picture, I think it maybe is some moose bone marrow. You had a knife laid on top of it, and I just thought, man, I'm so boring. When I saw that picture, it just looked so cool, all the colors.

But you wouldn't have eaten it or not? Oh yeah yeah no i just need to get i'm i'm still kind of stuck in the like sausage steak burger rut i need to start doing some more experimenting yeah tongue is another easy one too yeah yeah but braised shanks braised ribs braised shoulders it's the it's the it's like the um's like the – like we said earlier, if I was going to hand off someone a tip, I'd be like, that's a rich field of inquiry, culinary inquiry right there. Do I get to – You want to plug your company? Yeah, yeah. Plug your company.

Tell us something cool about Benchmade. Not even just not even just benchmade i mean benchmade's obviously cool i mean i think we make the and we do make some of the highest performing knives if not the highest performing production knives you can you can buy and on the hunting side for sure but what i was going to say is we were talking about the first question we talked about with knives was fixed blade folder replaceable blade knife I'm I'm down for replaceable blade knives people want to pack them but I would just encourage anyone to please pack a hard use knife with you especially if you're going out and doing backcountry stuff it any survival expert would tell you that after

food and water the next number one thing to have is is a hard use knife yeah and i think too people hear survival and they imagine it being like a bigger thing so you can almost say like any shitty situation or any like even kind of dicey situation yep yeah absolutely yeah it doesn't need to be like this idea that oh you know you're stranded in the woods for a month just be like a really bad night like a really bad night can be made a lot better if you have the ability to do a little bit of woodcraft right make a fire strike a flint whatever it might be a hard use knife is is really important find some dry slivers of heartwood to get a fire going whatever rough out a little spot to get out of the wind yeah i hear you jimmy darn what's that hat you got on so Is it a fish spearing hat?

It's a Seattle Mariners logo. I tried it. Baseball. I thought you were some kind of soccer spear. Baseball. Well, I'm probably going to start looking for a lightweight tripod. That's another thing I didn't add. I always look at those things as more weight that I got to hump.

I'll tell you what, it's more money if you're going to get a good one. Again, with the binos, get a good one. I'd get outdoorsmen. Yeah? Call outdoorsmen in Phoenix area of own and tell them, say you want to talk to Cody. Cody? Because he'll hook you up with the tripod, the adapter that fits your bino. Okay.

And you could beat a person to death with their tripods. Not that I'd recommend that. It doesn't weigh 22 pounds. No, they're made out of machine aluminum parts and stuff. They're pricey. Made in the USA. Made in the USA. Giddy up.

Tell me what. I'm in. You want to talk about that red, white, and blue bird of freedom? Hey, if you say. He flies over the outdoorsman's office. Does he? If you say something should be done, then I'll probably take your word for it. You'll.

Yeah. When you're laying on your deathbed, you won't be like, man, if I had only not bought that tripod. Yeah. For me, it's always been just about the weight. It's like one more thing. Stop just weighing stuff. Stop being such a baby. I'm not a baby, man.

I'm just kind of like. Super lightweight. Don't need anything. I'm like a baby man i'm just kind of like super lightweight don't need anything i'm like what when did everybody become so afraid of carrying something well because we're always walking straight uphill i'm like well i got a friend in the military i got a friend in the military who's telling me like when he was in iraq and afghanistan and he would set out and you know set out what all different times a day and get posted up on a rooftop somewhere and um so they grow up two guys okay and i'm like well how much is all that way 150 pounds lord and i was like oh yeah i got my kit down to 12 pounds yeah i'm like okay sure i could like

not bring all kind of stuff with me too yeah but some stuff is just like really nice to have i smell more animals uh-huh well i'll give it a shot land uh this is kind of a question so i don't know if everybody's ever done this but i kept the nuts off that sheep oh buck nuts yeah and so if you've done that yeah ram just i'll tell you exactly how to cook them okay get yourself a lot of butter more butter than you think and get it in a pan and then put the pan over medium low heat and tip the pan so all the butter collects on one edge of the pan and lay your buck nut in there and just baste that buck nut and baste that buck nut and baste that buck nut with butter and keep rolling it rolling it and rolling it and basting it with butter until it's cooked through. What does basting mean?

You don't know what basting means? I know what it means. Oh. Spooning up butter and spooning up hot butter and pouring it over the top. So you're just like bathing it. Yeah, yeah. Right? And then you can make hot buttered buck nuts by adding some.

And I know you like hot sauce. Yeah. Put a little dash of hot sauce in that butter toward the end and baste it up and you're making like a like a buffalo wild nut right um or a hot buttered buck nut or don't do that just salt and pepper let it cool because if you if it's super hot you cut it it'll it'll burst let it cool a little bit slice it do you like octopus yeah okay yeah do you like bacon yeah you're gonna love nuts okay it's like a octopus it's like an octopus mated a bacon oh up bacon that is a beauty beautiful baby um yeah last thing i

would say oh this is your concluder? Is that you guys said this is like the last questions you're going to do. I think you can take a break or whatever on it, but this is pretty cool. I know. This is the last Meat Eater podcast fan question episode. Ever? Yeah. No way.

I think it works. They're just going to keep coming in now. They're going to flood the inbox. I can see it. Well, it's largely like a thing for me like it's almost like psychological where it's so taxing um like i'm so sensitive that some of the questions like about the uh uh helicopters and whatnot hit me so hard personally that it becomes very it becomes difficult for me so now we're getting down to like the root of it's like it's so mentally and

emotionally burdensome for me and then we get to talking about wolves and shit and i'm so torn about that subject and i see all sides of it and i'm trying to like wrestle out a livable meaningful compromise that can please as many people and still kind of get where I think things need to be. It's just really difficult for me emotionally. Yeah. When you get off that- I would rather watch my babies be born. That's easier emotionally than it is to wrestle with these questions. All right. Well, maybe this is the last one. I'm telling you. That's heavy duty because those are some emotional moments. Not when your babies were born, but when mine were.

Well, yeah. You guys do it like Little House on the Prairie, man. We go down to the hospital and watch a movie. I don't know what happened. What was that fellow's name out of Maryland? He was helping us out with the sick of deer hunt that we postponed. I can't remember now, but he sent me an email. He said he tried the basted buck nuts.

And they sort of, he explained it as they turned inside out and became very mushy. Got them too hot. I'm guessing that's what happened. Got them too hot. So, yeah, definitely like a. That's called bursting buck nuts. That's not what a recommend resting for me. Doesn't sound good.

Medium low. Medium low on the heat. Then you get that nice octopus rubbery exterior. I've got a pear in my freezer for the first time ever. I've got a pear for you right here, buddy. Thanks to you. Hey, big fella. Easy.

I'll cut you off on the pizza train. All right. Did anybody not get a concluding thought? Oh. I have a concluding question for Matt. I don't know when we'll get to hang out again. Jimmy hasn't had one. It's going to be a knife question. What's that?

You didn't get a concluding thought. Yeah, I did. Tripod. Tripod. Oh, sorry. Good to go. Two most common shapes of blades for a hunting knife would be drop point and clip point okay and then can you just quickly explain why somebody would go with

one versus the other yeah so a clip point that's more like your your traditional lock back knife that your grandpa had that kind of the blade sweeps down and into the tip that generally creates a sharper point on the knife you get less radius that way so less blade less curve surface in your blade edge so that that gives you the ability to do more finite work so like a caping knife oftentimes to be a clip point yep a drop point has a stronger tip than a clip point so it's gonna you're gonna be able to do a little harder stuff with it. I think it's a better general purpose utility knife. And it also has a larger blade radius so you can do more skinning with it. So it's really good to have both.

Yeah, in a perfect world, I like both. I use one for my opening cuts and my detail work. And I use the other one for the big sweeping things. But I was not going to carry two of them. Right. I always go back and forth. If I bring one, if I bring a clip point, I like it when I'm unzipping everything. And then later, I'm like, hey, I like my other one better.

Right? When you're doing all that skinning and trying to do a nice job and leave, especially if you're trying to clean skin something. If you're doing a bear, you don't want to leave pounds of fat and meat on there. trying to do a nice job and leave like especially trying to clean skin something like if you're doing a bear you don't want to leave you know pounds of fat and meat on there you get such a nice job but then when i bring that one it's just the opening cuts aren't as fun they're not they're not if you were only if if i was going to recommend only bringing one i would recommend it be a drop point i think it's all right yeah i think it's it's more it's it's better generally for all things but you're right the opening cuts aren't as fun it's more, it's better generally for all things, but you're right, the opening cuts aren't as fun.

It's harder to get the tip of the knife up under the skin because it just doesn't have quite the steep angle. But like that, the one I like, that one, it won all the awards too, the steep country. Yeah. It's a pretty like dramatic drop point. It is, yeah. But it's durable.

It is. And so is that kind of, you're doing that on that drop point to kind of blend the two worlds a little bit? So, I mean, the steep country is a pretty typical drop point, except for a fixed blade, we were able to make the blade itself wider. I mean, like taller if you're looking at it from the side profile, and that gives us a larger radius so that's what we did so yeah we did we did that so that you could have an increased ability to make longer cuts and then also when you have a bigger radius you're spreading the cut

across a basically a longer surface so you get better edge retention that way too because yeah you're applying it to a more edge so it equals better edge retention the old mountain man you ever go to mountain man museums and stuff the old mountain man definitely drop point guys yeah they were not clip point guys i don't know if clip points existed back then but they like those big bellied like the old skinning knives like big bellied knives yeah yeah yeah but it is like it's like you know you see a lot of those companies that make those little kits where it's one of each but it feels a little overkill-y to me, you know? And then it's just more junk laying around

because I got a real problem with like, when you leave the kill site, you know, it's one in the morning or whatever. It's just like the less stuff I'm kind of like trying to remember to grab, the better. But that would help you achieve that minimum pack weight that you're looking for is if you had a couple extra, if you had both types of blades.

No, that would not do it. Oh, I'm sorry. You're making a funny joke. You know, my concluding thought is this, about being emotionally taxed. All right. Land, Jimmy, Matt, thank you very much. Thanks so much.

You guys are great. Wealth of knowledge. I appreciate it. If we ever get together to do questions again, we'll do it. If not, we'll come talk about it. We'll do like an all-wolf episode sometime. All-wolf, all-hour. All right, thanks for listening.

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