The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 064: Bozeman. Steven Rinella talks with Kevin Murphy, the world's greatest small game hunter, along with Helen Cho, Brittany Brothers, Michelle Jorgensen, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.
Episode Date: May 18, 2017Subjects discussed: the MeatEater crew's favorite things about The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game; Kevin's rotating trophy; Sylvalagus aquaticus; just one more gobble: bo...ss toms, rope draggers and missed turkeys; squirrel-hunting war horses for the armageddon; Land Between the Lakes; the novelist Larry Brown; Conrad Richter's The Light in the Forest; Steve's kids are way-ass pro-hunting; unknown squirrel locales in the Rocky Mountain West, 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.
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This is the Meat Eater Podcast
coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less.
We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.
You can't predict anything.
Now we can be.
All right, what are we doing?
Good.
If I said to you, like, whew, not in the mood for Thai food right now, I just got real sick. You wouldn't be like,
oh, that's racist.
No, I guess I thought like you were just fanning.
It's like Danny when he had guacamole.
I didn't think that the beer was associated with that.
I would understand food.
However, beer, it's like,
you're just cutting out everything Mexican.
Right now, yeah.
This right here is the perfect snapshot
of their relationship what me saying like
so perfect it doesn't matter if it's about no in that in that i say i say a perfectly reasonable
defensible thing and then she questions it in that yes flashback in the car with them and
i'm talking about rap music don't bring up rap music introduce everybody so we can
continue are we recording oh all right ready to start this episode of the meat eater podcast is
brought to you by our own damn book now everyone go introduce yourself and say your favorite thing
about the complete guide to hunting butchering and and Cooking Wild Game Volumes 1 and 2. A lot of people don't realize.
What's your problem?
I don't want to start.
Janus go first.
You're worried about that.
Well, yeah, because that's like how you deal cards.
Okay.
He's going to go.
I just wanted to make.
I was.
Like I'm the dealer, right?
And I'm going to deal to Jani.
Okay.
Over that way.
Not you.
Helen will deal to you.
So a lot of people don't even know these books exist
but lifetimes lifetimes worth of information kevin murphy's in the book yes i am that's his
favorite part life lifetimes of information 700 pages of hunting how to ranging from, ranging from navigating permit draws,
private land versus public land management systems
and permission systems, how to chop stuff up,
how to cook it, how to think,
how to read a landscape.
Yeah, how to think.
Yanni, tell your favorite thing about the guidebooks.
Wait, wait, hold on.
You didn't say your favorite thing.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, but the dealer never deals himself first.
I don't deal myself first.
Ah!
That would give me more time to think of my favorite thing.
That's why I wanted to be like that.
My favorite thing is that Kevin Murphy,
no, my favorite thing is that Kevin Murphy's in it.
Kevin Murphy is, in my opinion, who's here today, is the most, I think he's America's
greatest small game hunter.
He's a hero in this office.
He's a national treasure.
He is a-
The world's greatest small game hunter.
Unencumbered.
Celebrity in this office.
Unencumbered by the need to go shoot things with big antlers on them.
And I've got the trophy to prove that.
With big antlers on it.
Yeah.
And it arrived in the mail the other day.
And Kevin got a trophy, and they did put antlers on the trophy.
You know, FedEx sent me this email, said, hey, we don't have your address.
We've got a package coming to you.
I said, all right.
My starter from a 66 Scout's going to come in today.
So I'm sitting there waiting for that to come in today so i'm sitting
there waiting for that to come in i come to the house of course i've got a sign on the door says
put all the packages into subaru because if you don't the dogs will destroy everything on the
place so i'm out in the subaru and i come in and i expect this package to well maybe they put it in
the f-150 so i'll go over there there's a package laying in there about the size of a starter in there and there's a hole already torn in the thing from the dog well i don't
know if dog shipping or what but the somebody's put it in the truck so i look in there and there's
something gold in there and i pick it up it says that's not heavy enough to be a starter says
i didn't look at it be made out of gold To be a starter
I thought well
maybe it's something
that Mary Jane
has ordered for the house
some kind of gold ornament
or something
she's going to put
on the front door
Oh are you
does that mean
are you living with
We are living in sin
Kevin Murphy
I've waited all my life
to do that
Kevin Murphy
living with his girlfriend
I'm 57
so I'm living in sin now.
Even though you're trying to make me an honest woman out of her,
I'm still living in sin.
So I open it up, and to my amazement, here's this trophy says,
Best Small Game Show Outdoor Sportsman Channel there.
And I was thrilled to get that.
And it's on the mantel.
It's going to rotate between the man cave in the
basement and the mantle just depends who i've got over that day or that night so we're going to
rotate it back and forth it's going to be a rotating trophy yeah so a little background
kevin is the architect was the architect yanni is the producer but kevin was yanni was just like a side note to kevin's to kevin's great effort in uh designing the uh perfect
kentucky small game hunt where we went down and hunted uh regular old cottontail rabbits
swamp rabbits sylve sylve sylve algislve, sylve, just aquaticus. That's it.
And squirrel.
And we did a big old hunt and kind of highlighted
Kevin Murphy's life chasing
squirrels and various rabbits
with dogs,
with various dogs,
species,
did a hunt,
did a show about it,
cooked up Kevin Murphy type food,
like cat head biscuits biscuits for instance.
And it was just this
great show we did
and then we got an award
and Kevin gets the whole
we got two copies
of the trophies but Kevin holds one of our trophies.
Well deserved. Thank you.
Very dear to me.
But back to...
Where do you get more of that?
Favorite part about the guidebook series?
700 pages!
On the last page,
there's a couple of dedications that you wrote.
I'm real fond of that one.
So sweet.
That's what I was going to say.
Oh, we should have gone first.
You had the opportunity.
I got something else on my back.
Your favorite part is the dedication that talks about you? Yeah. say oh we should have gone first man you had the opportunity i got something else on my back your
favorite part is the dedication that talks about you yeah okay i was just making a funny joke um
no i think my favorite part if you're looking at it holistically holistically like that is that uh
we did have so many experts weigh in you know so many people that just... We even used the word weigh in. We did.
What'd you weigh in on, Kevin?
Squirrel hunting
with a dog.
Surprise.
Good.
Yeah.
Robert Abernathy
weighed in on
turkey hunting.
Remy Warren
mule deer hunting.
Remy did a handful
of them, I think.
Yeah.
Ronnie Bame weighed in.
Ron Calhoun.
Mm-hmm. Jay Scott weighed in
So shit like
For instance
Kevin Murphy weighs in on the
Fine art of squirrel hunting with a dog
Jay Scott weighs in on
How to tell if a bighorn ram
Is big or not
Which is not easy
It's not as hard as hunting squirrels with a dog but it's not easy
kevin what's your favorite thing about the guidebooks this is a very long advertisement
you know i had a friend that called me up during last hunting season said hey i've got a young man
that i'd like for you to go out and take him hunting he said he grew up in a house with non
hunters and he's very interested and says i'm. I don't have a whole lot of time.
I said, I'll be glad to take him.
But I said, the very best thing you could do for that boy is buy him volume one and volume two of the guidebook.
I says, there's just a plethora of information there, small game, big game, whatever.
If he wants to be a hunter, it is in that book.
And that's what i like about it it's a it's a guide that the hunter with with little or
no skill at all can take that and start his adventures in the outdoor and have a head start
over accomplished hunters that are out there that's right ladies and gentlemen that's what i
like it take that to the bank now mich Michelle, who has never joined us before,
is in fact a new employee handling.
If you write in an email or if you comment on something and it's a real nasty comment on social media and it gets pulled down,
it'll be Michelle.
Hey, everybody.
So introduce yourself.
I'm Michelle. Hey, everybody. So introduce yourself. I'm Michelle. My favorite part of the guidebooks
so far is just the breadth of recipes and being able to take a cut of meat that I'm pretty new
to wild game and like a big roast and being able to approach it and make something super delicious.
It's been a lot of fun digging through the recipes. Good. That was good. Helen?
Want us to come back to you?
No, no, no.
Is it that there's too many things?
No, no, no. I think to add to what Kevin was saying,
I think if you're like me personally, never hunted growing up it seems really daunting to
learn how to hunt and the way it's written is in a way that's like you know like a friend telling
you not like a textbook you know and I think also what's helpful is in the gear stuff like what you
can buy now like what to spend on and what you can buy later like that's kind of stuff
is really helpful when you're starting from no gear um so yeah i'd say that's my favorite thing
that it seems approachable when you read it it's like again it's not some like scientific textbook
where you're just like i have no idea where to even begin you know something as basic as like
what to put in your like med kit i mean it seems like
common sense but i think to someone who's never like really been out camping or in the field like
it's very helpful you're telling me today that you used it um to get advice on your shotgun
purchase is that right nice britney britney who had a real love-hate relationship with the guidebook. Well, yeah.
I had a very intimate experience with the guidebook.
Working on it.
Working on it.
My favorite part would be all the great photo organization and the layout.
Because someone amazing put that together.
How many photos are in there?
Oh, my God.
Hundreds and hundreds of photos there are so many and just to go through all of them and they all have like
names like dsc 0567 and you're like wait was it 57 or was it 56 or was it 27 um no it was it was
a labor of love for everyone i think involved, involved. But no, actually, now I regret going last
because everyone else took all the things
that I wanted to say about it.
No, it was a good one, though.
It has tons of photos in it.
And illustrations and charts and graphs.
Right.
Well, and so actually what I was going to say was,
I think one of the first times that I really used it
and one of the most helpful times
was when I went hunting with Annie.
And we went out. We knew we were an area in an area where we could only hunt um male or female white tail or male mule deer and like we we like showed up to this place and like just right at
shooting light and there were just a bunch of deer running across this field and we're like oh my god
like we grabbed our guns and like ran out there and then we're like wait a minute are they white
tail or are they mule deer and we didn't have service but i had the guidebook in the truck
so like we ran back to the truck and like flipped through and like discovered what the difference is
between the two we're like those are definitely white tails like we ran back out there and they
were had all jumped over the fence where we couldn't go and shoot them anymore but at least like we knew at that point and the guidebook was
really helpful and it almost cost those dear their lives yes well it did eventually later that
afternoon we just kind of waited for them to like come back over the fence but um that was this
paragraph about patience so a lot of information i have never found any information in there about
patience because i still just don't have that.
It's in there.
Just yet.
So I don't want to play with the point, but there you have it.
Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game Volumes 1 and 2.
You can buy them on anywhere you buy books.
You can buy it on Amazon.
Dirt-ass cheap on Amazon.
I don't know how they do it.
That's one of the most important things.
It is very cheap.
Very reasonable.
For what you're getting.
For a gift to someone, to give, coffee table book, whatever.
If you've got someone out there that's a hunter, wants to be a hunter, whatever, you can buy one of those things and it's not going to bake the brick.
No, on Amazon, you're going to get both volumes, like all 700 pages for less than 30 bucks put together now
what uh what's going on with all this turkey missing this turkey missing how do we know this
would be the topic of the turkey missing that i caught window how many days ago did the turkey
missing occur uh exactly one day ago for me two days ago for john can you lay a little can you
can you what what can you give me yannis can you
can you set the scene can you set the scene for me yeah britney should because it's her spot
she's taking this oh this is the spot you pioneered on your own yes that you poo-pooed yep yep now
okay so we all told each other uh what we like about the guidebooks. I'm going to tell you what I like about Brittany. Brittany, okay, having an independent streak.
Brittany has access to Lord knows how many people who would tell her where to go find a turkey.
But didn't want to do that shit.
Wanted to go off and pioneer her own turkey spot.
Told me about said turkey spot.
I told her, hey, it'll work.
And then it goes out there
and it's got all kinds of turkeys in it.
Yeah, we were like-
You found your own spot.
We were on the road driving.
Where were we going?
Somewhere, driving to go turkey hunting.
You were at the airport.
And we're getting texts from Brittany.
She's like, man, I think there's birds gobbling
like many out of this canyon.
We're like, shit.
Bullshit. Let me tell the story that out of this canyon. We're like, shit. Bullshit.
Let me tell the story that I tell everyone else.
Because it involves, like, I was texting this story to Helen,
and she was like, the way that you told me that,
like, I heard Steve saying that.
And, like, so what happened was, yeah, I found the spot.
I did a lot of research on the internet.
And then I told both you and Giannis that, like, I found the spot.
And then you said, let me get this straight like
you mean to tell me that out of all the people that we know that can give you a spot you found
your own i can give you roosting spots like gps waypoints all this kind of stuff you're gonna go
out and board your own and i was like yep and then actually so that day i texted
yannis i didn't text you i texted yannis like i heard a gobble and i think i see a turkey you
you called me instantly because you guys were sitting in an airport like probably bored waiting
to get your drive in somewhere if i remember yeah but like you called me i didn't even text you i
texted yannis and you called me instantly and you were like here's what you gotta do not even and i was like wait a minute can we just
take a second to appreciate what just happened here like yeah you did what most people you did
what most people just like for whatever reason don't want to do. Find your own spot.
And I mean,
it's,
it's still like,
no one's been,
none of us have been successful there lately, but I mean at all,
but we've seen tons of turkeys there.
Is there a lot of pressure?
Not at all.
We saw two hunters.
That was it.
That was it.
And like the first time I went,
same thing.
They seem hardcore.
They just seem kind of like they're just checking the area out they were like a kid who was bow hunting who
was with his dad i thought that dad actually had a rifle with him i didn't even think he was hunting
turkeys wouldn't be a rifle it'd be a shotgun yeah he might have had a rifle to shoot at he
might have been thinking he's gonna shoot a coyote or something maybe um did they look like
yanni did you see these individuals did they look like, Yanni, did you see these individuals? Did they look like
they knew what they were doing
or they're passing through?
Hard to say.
I don't judge like that,
but you know.
No.
The archery hunter
had shot three turkeys
in that spot over the past,
I don't know how many years
that he's been hunting there.
Oh, there you go.
I didn't get that info.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You gotta use bullshat with them.
Yeah, yeah.
They had some very serious,
Helen was pointing out,
face camouflage on. They had like a couple, Helen was pointing out, face camouflage on.
They had like a couple of strings.
When I say they seem like they knew what they were doing or passing through, I'm saying
you could see a couple of guys standing outside their truck and the truck's running and they're
blowing crow calls down into a canyon and be like, oh, they could have just, I don't
know.
They might've have been passing through
or you could be that you saw them a mile away from any road carrying a bunch of dead birds
over their shoulder and be like oh no they were serious turkey hunters no so the guy that we ran
into basically the first morning we we went to the spot yannis like when we first drove in yannis
just started like you know crow calling basically And we heard like gobbles instantly.
So that next morning,
uh,
my boyfriend and I went to that spot.
We got in kind of early.
We didn't,
we didn't like know where the turkey was.
You showed your boyfriend the spot.
That's like a whole other conversation.
Hey man,
I've lost spots like that.
I know.
I know you told me that.
Yeah.
It's fine.
That's fine.
I wouldn't do that.
Um,
anyway,
uh, so we, the way it happened was we ended up unfortunately and unfortunately sat under a spot where like the turkey was roosting like
40 yards in a tree away from us who who suggested that well we didn't know he was there yeah we
didn't know where he was he wasn't the one going off no no
so we sat down there and just started calling we called nothing we waited 10 minutes we called
again we heard it instantly and we were like oh my god oh my god and then he kept calling we stopped
we were like we're just not gonna call anymore and he would he kept calling but then finally we
were looking around and we're like oh he's right there and he can for sure see me oh yeah
so like at that point it was like i knew that we were blown and eventually what happened was that
turkey and then there were a couple other ones over here that we didn't realize were there until
they flew down they flew into this field behind us and um so then we ran into that guy a little
bit i don't know maybe like an hour later and um he was like, yeah, I saw those turkeys fly off the roost.
And then like 20 minutes later, you guys like, you know, came over the hill.
But they were like right over this hill.
And you were just right over here.
And he was like, I was trying to get your attention.
He was just doing some calls.
But from our perspective, I heard like hen calls.
And I was like, oh, that's someone else.
Like, I don't want to go and tread on their territory.
Like they're going in on something.
And he was trying to notify you about the turkey's location yeah which i i don't know how you do
this of his heart i guess so he was like a nice guy suspicious you're not buying it i don't know
i don't know he seemed like a genuinely nice guy i bought it for sure how old was he he looks like
he was maybe like early 20s he seemed like a i don't know an honest guy
was your boyfriend with you uh-huh okay oh come on maybe he's like oh you don't usually run into
like no women out no maybe i'll act like i was trying to help her out no no no he's a nice guy
nothing else works for me like if you could have seen what i was wearing there's no way you could tell that i was like a woman my whole like everything was covered up you know so uh then how
did it come to be that you missed one okay so i just had bad distance judgment that's what it was
yeah so we set up um and like long story short finally these turkeys started like coming into view turkeys
oh yeah this is like this is the next day okay so we we like heard these gobbles you know from
a distance whatever we kind of chased them around and finally we figured out like they were on this
like i don't know little finger um sticking out into this canyon so we kind of like crawled in
and um and we cool spot i gotta describe
it for you i mean it's like this giant canyon and at the head of it there's this one finger ridge
that goes out three or four hundred yards little sandstone bluff and then it just rolls out in this
beautiful grassy ramp that when you go out to the end of it it just drops off hundreds of feet and
that thing splits the canyon it splits the canyon yeah and it was the same
place where we got into the birds the morning before but just a beautiful strut zone meadow
yeah it was awesome yeah so we like we set up and and later we figured out there were two groups
like on the right and left side of like where the meadow kind of like fans out but so we were
thinking we were gonna call in the left group because we actually when we had like first walked down there cory had seen like just like a turkey with his fan out who's
that cory my boyfriend oh oh sorry so yeah we saw him with his with the turkey fanned out but
yes yeah i met him i don't remember i didn't remember that being his name anyway um so we
thought we were like looking at those turkeys and then suddenly like these
turkeys came over from the like on the you know right side of like this or like edge you know
there's a bunch of trees and then the meadow and so like first like these you know they were coming
yeah well because so yeah so first like maybe three or four hens you know came out first and
i was like i know that there's like
gobblers behind them and i could just barely see like in the bushes in the trees these like first
one gobbler then two then three they were very hesitant but they were like behind them and they
were sort of coming out you know very slowly and they were grouped you know kind of bunched
together on top of each other calling it doesn't have to be that you were just there and they
happened to show up no no they were coming out yeah yeah exactly yeah they were aware of the calling it doesn't have to be that you were just there and they happened to show up no no they were coming out yeah yeah exactly yeah they were aware of the calling and it's not
strutting though well yeah they had their fans out yeah yeah they were fanned out but it almost
seemed like they were a little bit nervous and they were kind of bunched up a little bit so like
i wasn't going to take a shot until like i had one kind of separated and then one kind of separated
but it was right in front of these hens so So I didn't want to take a shot anyway.
Like from where they were,
I was certain.
Cause like we had been practicing,
we'd been shooting,
you know,
practicing at like,
you know,
30 yards.
And again,
like bad distance judgment.
I was like certain it was between like maybe 30,
35 yards.
So finally,
like they were about to leave,
take off back down this Hill.
And I was like,
I got to take a shot now.
Finally,
one like separated itself.
I took a shot and then they just flew away.
And we looked and there was no like blood or feathers or anything. Like it was like for sure a clean mess.
And then afterwards, after the fact, we ranged it from where we were and it was 47 yards.
So I don't know.
But it was like for sure, know they were gone yeah there was no sign of any kind
of like struggle or i don't know anything and were you calling we had been calling yeah you were
me personally yeah i've been i was doing like the i would do like the box initial like box call like
kind of like see if there are any gobbles in the area okay and then yeah and then cory had like the slate call and was kind of doing like a very quiet like a much quieter call and we were trying to be
very like conservative about our calling is he is he uh an experienced turkey hunter he's not that
was his first turkey hunt but this was your third time it wasn't my third time yeah um did you have
the jake decoy out we had the jake decoy out too so i would be curious and they
didn't run up to that decoy i was curious like maybe if they i don't even think they saw it
and they didn't even give it a second glance but i'd be curious if we had the hen decoy like
maybe it would have been different maybe it wouldn't have i don't know
but um yeah so that was a bummer but it was so exciting to see them because all morning like
we'd heard turkeys off in the distance and then we didn't hear anything and i don't know like
personally i realized i think the more i like hunt with other people sometimes i have a tendency to
like in my mind blame them for things that go wrong hell yeah man that's why i wanted to go
over here and you wanted to go over here. So it's your fault.
But when I hunt by myself, obviously it's like all my fault.
And then there's no one else to blame.
But when I hunt with someone else, so I often just like sit there stewing, like we could
have done, you know, we could have done this.
My brother, Matt talks about that a lot.
Cause he hunts more and more and more.
He hunts more alone, you know, as he gets older and the loneliness kills him. Cause he hunts long alone you know as he gets older and the loneliness kills him because he has long
periods of time the loneliness kills him but he doesn't um he doesn't like that like that
this sort of gentlemanly way where you try but what do you think right what do you think
right he doesn't like his want he just he knows what he wants to do yeah you know and he doesn't like, he just, he knows what he wants to do. Yeah. You know, and he doesn't want to have to act like he's open to someone.
He doesn't want to pretend like he's open to input and then engaging in that kind of
conversation.
For my, like, for my just personal experience, being a new hunter, hunting with more experienced
hunters, like the, like the, like the mentorship is invaluable and i i like really really appreciate
that but what i do wish i had more of was like given i would wish i was often given the chance
of like well why don't you you know why why don't you make a decision like it's more often like i'm
like oh i you i want to go check out this and it's like no no they're not going to be over there like we're going to go this way it's like well let i want to make my
own mistakes like why don't you let me just check it out like maybe there are maybe there aren't
you know what i mean like as a less experienced hunter hunting with someone who is more experienced
often i'm i just want to be given the chance to like do it on my own sometimes you know make my
own mistakes uh the flip side not the side, but another thing that could happen though
is you would have been bearing down on that turkey
and your more experienced hunting partner
might've went,
or some noise like that being like,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.
And you killed that turkey.
Right.
No, you're, you're you're you know you're totally
right i mean i i think you know it could be either situation but i guess i wish i had that
chance more often what are you doing what are you doing oh shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot
right yeah no i mean and yeah i mean anything could happen i think that's the biggest thing
is like anything that could happen but sometimes i just wouldn't make my own mistakes and in that sense i
did make my own mistakes so when you say it was your third turkey hunt you went last year i went
last year by myself to that spot the first time that time was just by yourself i was just by
myself yeah the second time was with the patelis clan at that same spot and then the third time was with the patelis clan
cory my boyfriend and helen and john and that was the most fun out of all the times now helen what
was your take on all this this was my first turkey hunt and everything i'm obsessed with turkey
hunting now even if i didn't even get a shot at a bird i'm obsessed with everything that goes around
with it you like it better than shooting cow out,
surf cast, big old striped bass?
No, they're just different.
Everything from the names of things in turkey hunting,
like Giannis was telling me,
he's like, you know what the big male turkeys look like?
They're called Boss Toms.
Oh, bullshit.
What?
Rope draggers.
Rope draggers. boss yeah do you know the little
dingle the little dingle bell that hangs over a turkey's nose and lays off to the side of his
nose is called you're gonna love this if you think if you like boss tom come on you guys were educated
on that what the waddle no no no that's in his throat
the little dangler off his head oh um called a dangler no i don't remember it's in the guidebook
i don't remember you know what else is in the guidebook beard no no no no no no no
snood oh that's right sno Snood hangs. Right.
Is the little dealies.
Oh yeah.
I mean like the very first gobble.
It's just, it's addictive.
I felt like a cracky head.
I was like, you know, you would hear it and then it would go silent.
You're like, just one more couple.
I just want to hear one more.
And the thing is, man, the thing is you can't, you can't like explain it.
You could explain stuff to people. You cannot like, you can't go to someone like, Hey man, the thing is, you can't, you can't like explain it. You can explain stuff to people.
You cannot, like, you can't go to someone like, Hey man, check out this picture of me
and this turkey I shot.
No one's going to be like, Oh yeah.
I didn't get it before.
No one's like, I'm going dude.
Yep.
You know, I'm going to, the next guy that's in a picture of the dead turkey is going to
be me.
It's like, that doesn't speak to people.
And it also.
Being out in the woods and hearing just like the absurdly loud sound of a turkey
going off and then all the calls too because we were with yannis and yannis was doing all sorts
of calls so the rhythm of calls the different kinds of calls i mean everything about it was just
it was amazing it was so much fun the call master he is kind of a call master. Yeah, Yanni's good at calling, man. Yanni's good at calling.
He made fun of all my calls.
I'm like a B caller,
but Yanni's is like an A caller.
Oh, interesting.
You don't agree with that?
B plus.
B plus?
I know enough.
So does that bump me down to B minus?
Maybe.
I can kill turkeys, but I can kill turkeys but like i i can call turkeys in but i'm not like a great caller
you know i think i think what i have more efficient yeah i think i have more of a sense
of rather than having just the tremendous vocabulary of turkey sounds i feel that i
have probably i feel like i have a pretty good sense of cadence. What's too much, what's too
little, that kind of stuff. But I don't have like a great turkey vocabulary. But the calling part
is something like if I hadn't been with Giannis or somebody who had experienced turkey hunting,
you could buy all the calls, but you wouldn't know necessarily. I mean, you could watch YouTube
videos and stuff too. Yeah, there's some good good stuff i find that if you want to learn how to use turkey calls man i don't know if you honestly
agree with this but um what wound up working for me is the stuff anything about will primos
instructive material because he is uh he is just like a like a very good, clear communicator.
And he's a pleasure to listen to.
Extremely knowledgeable.
And for calling how to Will Primo CDs.
No bullshit.
Last night, my old lady and I are in bed folding kids' clothes,
which I've been lamenting lately to you.
And we're watching Will.
Just the amount of clothes folding that goes on.
Yeah, it's like every night. It're watching will Primo's and numerous times
I had to give Jennifer the old nudge nudge and be like hey keep folding I
know bills interesting at all but keep all the way to go to bed she's a pretty
good caller she's yeah she's good she's a pretty good caller she's good yeah she's good
last year she's getting it figured out she crushed it shouldn't was she using a diaphragm or a slate
or a pot and bag mostly yeah but turkey hunting is like it's there's so much strategy that's
involved you know you think that you're like these dumb birds like but they're they're like
their sight is incredible and like also it's like chess you're like these dumb birds like but they're they're like their sight is incredible
and like also it's like chess you're like okay so you know we saw one that was really close to camp
and we're like why don't we just go over there and like kill a thing and britney's boyfriend
walked up the like path as soon as he started walking which was like pretty far from the field
that they were at they were like nope i'm out we're sitting in the campsite bullshit it was windy as all get out so we had quit at like i don't know 6 37 had an hour
figured let's get some dinner hopefully we'll lay down and we'll go try a roost a couple and it's 30
minutes before dark and i look over and i'm like what three golfers working up the edge of this
300 yards or something cory's like, I'm going to make a play.
I said, go for it.
But if I was you, I would go that way first,
about a quarter mile up over the ridge, and then come around on him.
He's like, no, let's go right up the road and cut him off.
He didn't make it 30 yards away from our little group
that the turkeys were comfortable with, and they're beast out.
He claims to not have heard that.'m like everyone else that's the thing about turkeys man is like uh
you'll have that they're out all day you know so deer you can be hunting white tails and you hunt
in the morning and then at some point the day just changes right like the light gets a certain way
the wind gets a certain way the day just feels like it's daytime. And those sons of bitches are laying in the nastiest hell hole, right?
Where you could walk 10 feet away from them and you're not going to see them. Oftentimes. It's
like nothing you're going to do. There's no tree you're going to be in to see them. You're not
going to find them. It's like they don't, they kind of like cease to exist and you got to wait till evening when they may or may not get up you know and make themselves
approachable or findable again but turkeys even when you're like pulling your hair out like they
are out walking around they are not hiding somewhere they are out eating bugs, eating grass, walking around.
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so when you see one now and then it's almost kind of surprising when you just like randomly
happen into a turkey they seem so elusive and they really do it's just like we just saw it where did it go it was right and and like
you could hear a gobble but and it sounds so close but it was like on the other side of the
you know the canyon what we saw last year in new mexico something i didn't know happened
where we come we're walking down a canyon and came around a corner and there's a tom in this where the canyon opens up and it's like a grassy bottom.
And that son of a bitch laid down and laid his head and neck out flat on the ground.
He got down.
What?
Like he pretended to be dead?
No, he tried to.
He hunkered down.
I thought I told you guys this story too over the weekend.
He laid flat against the ground. He tried to he hung her down sorry too over the weekend he laid flat against the ground
just melt and he laid flat against the ground stretched his neck out and laid his neck and
head down on the ground to hide what wow and then realized he was busted and stood up and ran off
was there a lot of hunting pressure in that area or something no lots of every other kind of
pressure that is so weird in fact there's a where, just based on all the evidence laying around, we saw where a
lion had killed a turkey.
I mean, not 100 yards from there.
Oh.
They eat shit for turkeys in there, I can tell you that.
And the one that was in there was paranoid, man.
But people who think it'd be easy to hunt turkeys are basing it off of turkeys that
are in residential areas.
Right.
That'd be like saying like, oh, elk must be easy.
I went to Yellowstone and the elk were staying around.
It's like, yeah, well, you don't hunt in Yellowstone.
No, they're not easy hunting.
They tune into whatever like threat exists.
And when they know about hunting, they're paranoid.
I mean, I've been to that same spot three times now
and haven't killed a turkey, seen them.
Well, yeah, that's because it just takes a while.
If you went out there
with Robert Abernathy,
you'd have a pile of,
you'd have a whole pile
of dead turkey stacked up.
That's a different story.
It's just like,
just takes time.
Kevin,
Murphy.
I have no turkey hunting skills.
Have you ever gone turkey hunting?
There's no doubt
you've killed turkeys.
I've killed turkeys before.
I went last Tuesday, LBLbl i got drawn for the early hunt
for monday and tuesday my daughter came in from school so we had a jeep driving exercise that day
the girl had never driven any automobile straight shift without power brakes or without power
steering so i spent the day with her driving the jeep so i got up the next day to
go hunting and it was coming a monsoon rain so when the rain came over i decided i'd go to lbl
and this is land between the lakes 177 000 acres up there and i decided to go out and drive around
look around while it was raining it finally stopped and i went up this road the ivan rogers road and
i remember about 15 or 20 years ago i was riding a horse through there squirrel hunting and there was
a like a can you back up for a minute because we've talked about this i thought you explained
quickly i don't want to lose sight of your how you came to be familiar with this particular piece of ground you're on but can you uh remind people about like what you're uh the war horse well i've got um
i guess it was probably about 1989 or something i was on a big squirrel hunt on foot up there
and i come on a gravel road and i saw these three guys come by on horses with their squirrel dogs,
and they had saddlebags, and there was tails just hanging out all of these saddlebags.
I said, you know, I'm out here walking, they're riding, I've got to get some new gear.
So about a year or two later, I got a job at City Hall and there was a boy in there,
Paul,
Paul Lowry,
you've met Paul.
Oh, yeah.
And Paul was in there
and he had horses
and he,
Well, I wouldn't,
I mean,
no offense to Paul,
but I wouldn't typify him
as a boy.
Yeah, I was going to ask.
Everybody's boy,
don't they?
Paul's 62 now
or something like that.
Yeah, okay.
So his babysitter
when he was a kid
was a horse.
When he was five years old,
his dad traded 35 bales of alfalfa for a pony that was mean as hell there. And he gave it to Paul
and everybody had ponies back in the 60s. That was the thing to have. It's iPhones now. It was ponies
in the 60s. He just grew up riding a horse there so i was up there at city hall
working he was engineering department i was in the water wastewater department
and his horse this and horse this blah blah blah horse i says
you just had visions of squirrels tails in your head man i'm gonna come over we're gonna open up
squirrel season in april we're going hunting this weekend i'm bringing my dog and the gun we're
going over there so we got out there and he's got two horses in a lot there's a little bitty pinto
pony looking thing and a real nice saddle horse so he puts me on this little pinto horse there
i ride around a lot two three times because i've only been on the horse maybe three or four times
in my life just never never been around them just a little bit so i didn't
fall off so we go out there and i'm on this saddle that's about i don't know some kid's
saddle right there so we ride it down the first hill up the next hill and it's wearing his big
blister on my backside there i said okay i said i'm either gonna get the big horse with the big
saddle or you're gonna carry the gun well he didn't want to carry the gun. So, so I got on the big horse with the gun and from there on out, I bought a horse and
we hunted hard from about 92 to just within the last three or four years. And then just,
they got older and don't hunt as much anymore, but they go with Jody. Jody's my new horse hunting
buddy. He's 67 and leon is 64
with a double hip replacement so that's they've replaced paul pretty much but we'll go for a half
of days 12 hours full days 24 as my buddy steve doolittle says when he goes hunting he was a city
planter he was in city hall he wears white starch shirt every day and had the big nerd pack on him
and he looked like a just a geek and i and had the big nerd pack on him, and he looked like just a geek.
And I finally found out that the only thing between him and the North Pole was a barbed wire fence.
He grew up in North Dakota, and he hunted and messed around.
So I recruited him to go over and go squirrel hunting, and we were out there.
Whoever's new on the board, we let them try to do all the shooting, and we said, you need to bring a sandwich and some food and the 22 rifle with the scope on it so we'll stay out
you know we'll do a half a day or so so he comes over the house at 4 30 in the morning it's an hour
drive to paul so we get over there at 5 30 get everything saddled up but so 6 37 o'clock we're
out and about and it's one of those days when the squirrels were out it's one of those rainy
misty days when they come out and they're low and we're stacking up squirrels.
And we're trying to get Steve to shoot them with his Ted Williams.22 automatic with the optical about the size of a drinking straw on it.
He says, it's just not fair, boy.
He says, y'all got those Hubble telescopes on y'all's guns.
It's not going can see through mine so the warhorse developed into we would pack our grub on it maybe a baseball bat so if they go into
a hollow tree or something you just kind of ring it a little bit beat a little bit
which works i didn't see kevin do with a baseball bat but i just see him do it with a stick
the squirrel goes into a hole and just tap the tree and he would come out.
And then he'll carry a shotgun and one scabbard and a.22 and the other.
Yep.
Maybe a machete or chopping axe.
Sleep the Armageddon.
Pretty much.
Kevin has another trick, man, that blew me away, which is cutting a long sawtooth briar.
Sawtooth briar, fork and stick.
So he'll find a big, long sawtooth briar.
It's like, you know, vines that grow.
And he'll trim it up and get the teeth off that thing,
except leave a couple teeth on the end.
And you can snake that up into a, like you're trying to clean a drain.
Snake it up into a hollow tree, and you'll bump the squirrel,
and he'll come shooting out.
Wow.
Lots of tricks.
Lots of squirrel hunting tricks.
I wish Montana had more squirrel hunting.
Correct me if I'm wrong,
but I've been telling people about heavy-duty squirrel hunters,
and I feel like it doesn't really matter really what the total at the end of the day is
as much as when you say zero got away
is that true to you like you're kind of more you're proud of the fact if you can say zero
versus five got away but we killed 15 i like both i like a big body count and none get away
now the older the older i get you know it's more enjoyable just to go now and take somebody new
you know that's never got to shoot anything do whatever and kind of show them some things that
okay and probably my pride of hunting is to see the squirrel first you know if i'm right
yeah if i'm riding two ridges over there and and I'm already looking. I'm hoping this horse doesn't run me under a tree limb or anything.
So I'm riding there looking for them to move
because a lot of times that's when you're riding up
or the dogs are running around there that they'll move.
So that's probably the thing that I like today.
I don't have to kill any,
but if I can spot the squirrel first before anybody else,
and I'm pretty good at it,
then that's enough for me
now i want to get back to the what started this whole thing but i can't you told me this i can't
remember the answer are squirrel hunters kind of not just not just horse mounted squirrel hunters
but squirrel hunters in general is that kind of fading out pretty much in your area kentucky or were you saying there's like
more dudes getting into it um probably as far as the steel hunters when i was a kid
you better have your spot staked out before way before daylight because you didn't somebody would
come in squirrel season comes in the third saturday in August, and that's traditional squirrel season for forever.
And everybody in the country would be out squirrel hunting that morning.
Now, you can go anywhere you want to.
There's not anybody out there that has disappeared.
Squirrel hunting with dogs has probably picked up more.
They're a little more prevalent out there.
With the internet, people can find out who's got dogs.
There's a lot of competitions with dogs.
One of my good buddies from West Virginia, he had a buddy the other day, and he said he saw it happen.
He sold a dog for $20,000.
Squirrel dog.
A squirrel dog.
$20,000.
Said some guy from down south, lots of money, didn't even hunt his dogs.
He just bought him to put in his kennel and paid somebody else to hunt with his squirrel dog.
And I remember back in the 80s, there was a squirrel organization, the American Tree and Fire Association,
and they came to LBL for like a competition squirrel hunt where you don't kill you just go out and tree and there was a uh a oral dentist there he wasn't that hunt but they
told me about him said yeah i said he's got 12 squirrel dogs and said they're all top-notched
you know and he says if he finds a good one he just goes out and buy it but the prevalence of
squirrel hunting with a dog is probably came up more it's not that
uh prevalent out there but there is several several people doing it but the squirrel hunt
steel hunters they go out and slip through the woods hot summertime waiting for the squirrels
to cut hickory nuts pecans that's the only way we hunted squirrels for kids that that is that
has gone down
kids just don't do it anymore
it's hot and nasty out there
they don't want to get chiggers on them
and they just don't do that
they concentrate
they concentrate on
then that's all we had to hunt
we had squirrel and rabbit
and quail
and that was all kind of turkey and deer.
Yeah, no turkey, no turkey, no deer.
That was a good segue.
Speaking of turkeys, you were out the other day and passed through an area you had grown familiar with through your equestrian wanderings in search of squirrels.
Passed through it one time.
Maybe twice.
I went through their bird hunting one time when we had some birds and they'll be some quail.
But I decided that I was going to go in there to see if I could find where that refuge sign was.
It was pretty unique.
I'd never seen one like that.
And you wanted to steal it?
I wanted to put it in the man cave.
Okay.
Okay.
For prosperity.
As a historian.
That's right.
So I went back there looking for it
and I heard a big gobbler
and he was out there gobbling.
And I thought, well, I'll sit down here
because I had all my gear with me.
Did you have a call?
I had a call.
I had a little box call, diaphragm, all that.
Are you a good caller?
No.
I have no skills. I have no skills.
I have no skills.
Doesn't really bother me.
So I got down.
I could hear him gobbling, and I would just call a little bit with him,
and a little bit he would answer,
and then I wouldn't hear nothing for a long time,
and then he would answer again, and I would call.
But this went on probably for like two hours.
He was like 400 yards.
I was down in the bottom.
Way to hell off.
And he was probably 300 or 400 yards. I was down in the bottom. Way the hell off. And he was probably
300 or 400 yards up on a ridge.
And the LBL,
you know,
the relief area,
he was probably like
100 feet above me.
Now, why didn't you
close the distance out?
Well, I did eventually.
I finally,
I decided that
I would go in there to him
and went up through there
and I could still hear him
and I was pinpointing where he was. Like I said, I was down in this to him and went up through there, and I could still hear him, and I was pinpointing where he was.
Like I said, I was down in this ravine, and he was up on top, so he had advantage on me right there.
And it's pretty open.
Generally, it was open in there.
Yeah, yeah.
Our leaves were leaved out about the size of a mouse's ear, so he could see.
He busted me.
He saw me coming up through there.
Spooked him.
Got busted.
So you didn't get him?
Didn't get him.
I'll be back, though.
I know where he lives.
How long does your season run for?
To about the, let's see, I think maybe the 5th of May.
You need to get back after him.
No, I'll go back out there.
I was just reading a thing in uh national wild turkey federation's
publication that kind of like some alarming declines in turkey numbers around the country
handful of places they can't figure out what's going on but it might be that we like
hit the that might be that we like hit the apex we like hit the the the good old days of good old days
1964 65 they ship for turkeys well they impounded kentucky like cropping numbers for the next 10
years or so skyrocketed they just come up there and then they started plummeting down
and i think that's what's happened to our turkeys
they've came in good old mother nature gives them the instinct to breed and multiply uh they produce
offspring just left and right there uh now after they've got established uh there's more predators
probably hunting on them i don't think that instinct is there so we are we're at the not the caring capacity but mother's nature's capacity of
what to have in those game birds that's what i think's happening because i i see it in my area
and i hear a lot of people talk about it um as far as any disease or anything i mean we got
turkeys everywhere they're just, there's some ideas floating around
about some pathology.
There's some ideas floating around about predation.
There's some ideas floating around,
and it's kind of almost like a taboo subject
with certain people,
but overharvest,
that we're seeing the impacts of fall hunting
where you're killing hens.
There are many, many ideas.
I just think that it's just like that
like i said you impound any lake whatever that first 10 years ago so your animals take off and
go and then after that it just it just seeks its own level of what it needs to be out there
there's no instinct to go out here and blaze new territory or whatever they their turkeys are there
they're just not in those numbers that they once be,
but we've got, you know,
boo-coos of turkeys out there.
I mean, they're everywhere, you know.
Michelle, what do you think about all this so far?
I'm taking it all in.
You cool with everything?
Mm-hmm.
No one's upset anything that upsets you?
No.
No?
Okay.
Anything you want to ask about or add?
I'm going to keep thinking on it.
I saw that you looked surprised
when you said that someone bought a $20,000
squirrel dog.
That's surprising information.
Yeah, but I mean, I've seen them work on the episode.
It was really
exciting. Yeah, because a lot of times you're out
in the woods with some guy's hunting dog, and I'm
just secretly thinking, man, we'd be doing a lot better if this
dog wasn't here. But those damn dogs,
that's not true.
Man, they work.
And they have the best names.
Oh, the Butchie Badtoe.
Butchie Badtoe.
Kevin, can you tell me about all these big old crappies you were catching this spring? Well, I've been to places, Kentucky Lake, which, like I said, was impounded in 1945, I think, the Tennessee River.
We got Barclay Lake that was the Cumber River impounded in the 60s.
Yeah, now hold that thought for a minute.
When Kevin's talking about land between the lakes,
it used to be land between the rivers.
Right.
And it was a big chunk, like an isthmus between where two rivers come.
So those rivers flow into the Ohio, right? That's correct. The two rivers come so those rivers flow into the ohio
right that's correct the cumberland and the tennessee flow into the ohio as they approach
the ohio they're pretty close together and between them was an isthmus like or i guess
yeah an isthmus like feature between them that had small communities an agricultural economy timber timber timber
agriculture pretty much in the river bottoms because the the land in between was pretty
much rolling hills uh pretty much where steel was invented steel yeah but the kelly process
that bessemer was an englishman that supposedly stole the process from Kelly and
took it back to England after several years. They were in a lawsuit, and finally, now you'll look
in encyclopedia, Wikipedia, whatever. It's the Kelly-Bessemer process. So, a lot of small iron
furnaces. They had small deposits of iron ore,
70, 80%.
You can pick up a chunk
of iron ore
in a creek bed
or in a washout somewhere
and you'll just about think
it's pure iron.
So they had the iron there.
Yeah, when I brought
a chunk of that home
that you gave me,
the TSA guys
were interested in that.
Did you tell them
it was a meteorite?
No.
I told them it was iron and he had a meteorite? No. I told them
it was iron
and he had a qualifying
question about it.
I can't remember
what he asked.
Suggested he knew
a little bit about iron ore.
But no,
they just wanted to
pull it out of the bag
and ask me what it was.
They had the timber
there also
for the charcoal.
They made charcoal
to melt the steel.
Yeah,
because there's still
charcoal furnaces out there.
Yes, yes. And it was like a little bit like removed from uh because there's a ferry system so
it was like a little bit it was a little bit like a little backwaterish backwoodsish and then they
impounded those rivers and created two big ass lakes and then there there was kind of a process of people getting bought out and leaving.
And now it's just a giant patch of public ground.
About 177,000 acres runs from Kentucky there,
starting at Lake City down to Dover, Tennessee.
With all the vestiges of habitation though,
still you go there and there's cemeteries,
old churches,
charcoal sites.
Yeah.
So there,
you're in those lakes fishing crappies.
We fish there some,
our limit there
is a 10 inch crappie
that you can then,
so a 10 inch is,
you know,
just a little bit bigger
than your hand.
That's already a giant.
That's the minimum size limit.
For Kentucky,
so.
When I was a little boy like the lake i
grew up on before the crappies kind of know that they they kind of tapered off when they killed all
the our lake had milfoil in it and they eventually got after the milfoil which is an invasive plant
but when they got after the milfoil and got rid of it it really put a dent in the crappies for a
while because it took a long time for the native weeds to get established and get going good but that would have been a giant a 10 inch back
home yeah well giant we made a trip down to oxford mississippi uh there's four lakes down there Eden, Sardis, and Washington. And we fished Eden.
And the minimum size there is a 12-inch crappie.
Oh, shit.
So one day we...
That's the minimum size.
That's what the minimum size limit for largemouth bass was.
Yeah.
We caught 17 one day, the boat I was in,
and 12 of them were over two pounds.
I caught two... Oh, shit, really was in, and 12 of them were over two pounds. I caught two.
Oh, shit.
Really?
How many inches is that?
I don't know.
We put them on a-
Like that laptop computer.
Yeah.
That's about like that.
Yeah.
That's about that size for it.
Son of a bitch.
Really?
Yeah.
I caught two fours.
One boy caught a two sixes in a boat with with me and they had the oldest organized crappie
tournament in the u.s on sardis that weekend and they called a three four i think on it
and the world record came out of sardis or ganada one of those lakes down there and is a five pounder
really so it's it's no doubt i don't understand how that could be possible
it is everything is set up you know what the hell does it look like just uh they are supposedly
flood control lakes and they were put in there i guess to to capture flood water that was going
into the mississippi river uh this was my first trip down there i didn't get to see the whole
lake situation we stayed out in the deeper water uh fished anywhere from 10 10 to 14 feet pretty
much what we called our crop like targeting old dead trees and shit that are down on the bottom
they all the dead trees and stuff were in the back of the lakes they hadn't started the what
they call the bite yet you know they get ready to go on the spawn.
They were coming up and starting to school in the 10 to 12 foot water.
I think on one day, the last day it warmed up, we actually caught some in four or five foot of water.
But in the backside, when the bite is on, they put on a pair of chest waders like you go waterfowl hunting with.
Take a jig pole out there in a stringer
and just wait around the lakes a lot of cypress stumps and trees and stuff and they'll just
wait around and catch catch their limit yeah 20 fish we had we had like two um in the lake that
i grew up on where i did 90 of the crappie fishing i've ever done we had two structures we had a stump kind of off our dock to the right a few hundred yards away and then we had a so
some christmas trees we wired together and sunk down with some cement blocks and those would be
the two good places to catch crappie until the weeds came up then the weeds in the spring would
come up and then the mill foil would just break the surface of the water,
we'd go out with live minnows and just knock the shit out of them.
Or in the winter, through the ice, go out at dusk
and take live minnows below.
You'd almost want to find a,
so you have a live minnow and a piece of split shot
two feet above the minnow,
and in a weight that was effectively at equilibrium, almost at equilibrium, its buoyancy with the weight of the shot.
So that if you blew on that bobber, it would go into water.
And you'd set that thing up out in 12, 13 feet of water, several feet off the bottom.
And they would take it and you just watch that float go out if you picked it up too fast you would not hook them
you have to watch that float just go out of sight and wait and wait and wait and then pick up and
they'd be there god you should love that man i haven't caught a crappie in 20 years
that's too long damn right man you were mentioned in oxford um yeah i know you read a lot
are you familiar with the right he i met this guy and hung out with him a little bit and he was a
very avid like he liked to hunt squirrels with dogs the novelist larry brown not familiar with
his he passed away some years ago but he was a fire it's a cool story. Larry Brown was a, was a fireman in Oxford
and there's a big literary community there. Um, and then he, he wanted to be a writer. And I,
I remember he wrote, I think he said he wrote seven novels before he sold one.
His first novel was about a man eating grizzly in Yellowstone national park. And he said at the
time I had never seen a grizzly and I'd never been to Yellowstone.
But then later it became, you know, he has many novels.
And his novels have been like made, you know, in the movies.
Father and Son, Big Bad Love, On Fire.
Great writer.
But he was a, he was a, like fish catfish,
like fish crappies, like to hunt squirrels.
Not many novelists.
Not many novelists hunt squirrels. Is aulkner. Not many novelists. No. Not many novelists hunt squirrels.
It's a thing I've found to be true in my life.
I always liked reading William Faulkner, and he had the war horses, and they would go down in the river bottoms.
Faulkner hunted squirrels off horseback?
In his stories.
Yeah.
In the stories there was a clan of old civil war generals colonels whatever from
the last of the days there and they would get the clan together load up the wagons and horses
and they would go to the river bottoms and you hunted one afternoon we didn't do any good but
we went over pause and hunted the ohio river River Bottoms. They're at Tulu there.
And that place always reminds me of what I think about William Faulkner deer hunting and bear hunting with horses and dogs in the river bottom.
So he's my favorite.
So you grew up reading Faulkner?
No, not until later on.
I didn't read anything growing up.
I hated to read because they always made us read something that we didn't want to read,
like Shakespeare or something like that.
So I was never, never, my parents didn't read a lot.
My dad, later in life, he read just immensely there.
But just, you know, if it was reading, it was something for a grade,
and I was pretty much a C-plus man.
I didn't hear anything about reading. I had to study Shakespeare so much through college and graduate school.
What I eventually developed was if you say you don't like Shakespeare, there's this thing where people would be like,
oh, you're not an intellectual fella.
When I'm older in life, when I'm beyond my productive years i'm gonna write a
book uh you know in shakespeare like when someone's mad at someone they call them a knave people are
saying knave i'm gonna write a book called knaves it's gonna be in defense of not loving the bard
and it's gonna be like a it's gonna be like a literary erudite uh defense of disliking Shakespeare.
And one of the main things I want to talk about
is that I feel that Shakespeare stole
a lot of his plot conventions from Three's Company.
Where Shakespeare's comedies are like
where someone overhears a little snippet of conversation
and misconstrues what they're talking about.
And I feel like he got that from uh jag roper and mr mr furley
but uh so how did you discover faulkner like i'm just curious like did you okay i when i was a kid
if i read like we read hemingway we read old and the Sea. Not because it was Hemingway and because it's important literature.
Like our old man read it to us.
I remember our old man, I could tell you right where he read it to us.
Camping one time.
But read it to us because it was a fishing story.
Not that it was like this is Hemingway and everyone should, you know,
great, you know, mind and literature and all that people surprised it was like oh there's a old guy goes fishing let's hear what
happens to him right so when you discovered faulkner was it like oh there's a dude that
writes about all kinds of old hunting shit down south or were you like oh i'm gonna brush up on
the literary canon it was just by accident i found a a book i think it was in a
a discarded bin at a bookstore or something and just kind of thumbed through it and said hey this
looks pretty good and it was his book of hunting stories the big woods i think is what it's called
and did you or did you not know that it was the canon like that it was part of the american
literary canon like it was part of like the literary tradition of america i can remember that they made us read faulkner in high school or
grade school but i couldn't remember what book it was it was not a hunting book you know it was as
i lay dying or something of that sort there so had you read um where the red fern grows oh yes
has you read light in the forest not that one no You know what that one is? No. Dude, that's a gutting book, man.
It's a kid, I think it's Conrad Richter was the writer, Light in the Forest.
It's a story of a boy who gets captured by Indians in the eastern settlements and raised up by Indians.
And then there's a treaty struck by which they need to give all their captives back.
And so the boy gets separated
and sent back to the settlements
and then escapes and gets back to the Indians
just when the Indians are fixing to go raid the settlements
and him being torn, it's for young adults,
him being torn about's a for young adults him being torn about you know how
where he fits into this where he fits into this it's a solid book and then uh old yeller
what else because when you look at cartoons and shit man cartoons have just eviscerated
hunters through the history of cartoons you know like hunters are always assholes but then you look at the american literary canon and it's
just full of these amazing hunting stories 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.
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That's an interesting way of thinking about it.
Why don't you make a hunting cartoon?
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's a good idea.
I mean, like, why don't I, like, really?
Or why don't I, like, yeah.
It's a good idea.
Or a children's book.
A hunting children's book.
Thought about that.
Thought about that a whole bunch.
Because now that I read two children's books every night,
now three children's books every night that I'm home.
Wait, so are there cartoons that you don't let your kids watch?
Yeah.
Because they have bad portrayals of hunters?
Well, no, because I'm not like, I don't like practice censorship.
You know what I mean?
I try not to.
I try to like our kids, you know,
our kids already know all about penises and vaginas and sperm and stuff like that.
Bad mofos. They know that so mofos they know about
bad mofos um they know what animals are bad mofos what animals are not bad mofos and so i don't want
i don't want to be like uh when i see them watching something like they're into this show now they
call trapper wolves or they watch it a couple times it's like you know the hunters have southern
accents real assholes and they're after these wolves.
And they're watching it.
And I'm telling me, I said, you know,
here's the problem with this cartoon, man.
And I tell them, but I don't like,
but I don't say like, we're not watching this
because this doesn't agree with my worldview.
You know, because I think like in some ways
they're smart enough.
Like there's obviously stuff I wouldn't let them watch,
but I'm not going to, I'm not not going to censor them on that grounds.
But so then do you explain,
you do explain then why this is a wrong portrayal?
Yeah, and also consider this.
My kids are very interested in hunting and fishing.
Right.
Do they watch the show?
Yeah.
Oh, okay. They love the show? Yeah. Oh, okay.
They love the show.
I can't stand it.
They watch it on Netflix.
It's like,
there's nothing worse than,
you know,
when they're supposed to be,
like,
they can only watch TV
two days out of the week.
Like,
in the morning,
they can watch some TV.
Their mom's real strict about TV
and sugar.
But,
in the great tradition of moms,
right?
But, now and then then they'll turn it on
and I don't like hearing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But no, they're like way ass pro hunting.
So if it was going to be that they weren't,
then I would maybe curtail it.
But I just noticed in cartoons,
like the other day I was watching,
I was on a plane and some gal in front of me,
a grownup too, which was alarming,
was watching beauty and the
beast why is that alarming it just doesn't seem like a like a good use of an adult maybe she's
really into disney it's like nostalgic yeah i don't know i didn't like it um i judged her and
and the hunter there's a dude in there who's a hunter who's a real a-hole. Gaston.
What's that?
Gaston, that's his name.
He's not bad because he's a hunter, though.
He's bad because he's a misogynist.
Yeah, he's vain.
He's very vain and a misogynist.
But they're like, well, how can we make him extra assholes? Oh, we'll have to be a hunter, too.
Put a crossbow in his hand.
Yeah, we'll have to be a hunter, too.
But yeah, but then if you go look at the really high-minded art,
the really high-minded art that...
Mark Twain.
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Great fishermen.
Hunger Games, great archery.
Do they hunt there to shoot bulls at people?
No. She goes hunting. Yeah. hunt there to shoot balls at people? No.
She goes hunting.
Yeah.
She hunts for deer, right?
Yeah.
All sorts of food.
All right, so there is a good one.
I mean, Brave, like the Disney Pixar film,
Brave, where the young girl, she's also an archery hunter.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
All right, so I'm wrong.
I don't think so.
Yeah, but you have like, oh, yeah, you have all these, you know.
There are some good depictions of hunting.
Hunting for food.
No, that's a good point.
That's a good point.
What's next, Kevin?
As far as...
Kevin hunts and fishes more.
For a guy that doesn't get paid to hunt and fish, you hunt and fish more than anybody I know.
That would ruin everything if I got paid.
That'd be on the spot.
Yeah, but it's kind of amazing how many days out of the year you hunt and fish.
Well, I'm very fortunate in my life.
I grew up with my dad who was a state policeman.
There was always a gun in the corner, Thompson most submachine gun in the closet. We went to a movie theater. He had a gun on his ankle. It was just a gun in the corner, Thompson's most submachine gun in the closet.
We went to a movie theater.
He had a gun on his ankle.
It was just a tool.
We went hunting when I was a small.
We'd go out and target practice year-round, go to my grandparents.
They lived way out in the country, my mom's parents.
There was an old abandoned gravel pit.
There used to be thousands all over the United States, and everybody would target practice. every one of them was full of shell cases yeah everybody was like we're up in
toke alaska and i'm like hey i want to check my i want to set my rifle in you know and he's like
hey if you just go down a little you know go down a mile out of town and just watch on your right
you'll see a little turn off i mean it was just wild ass alaska going sure enough it's a gravel quarry full of
shell casings and shot up tvs but it's inescapable you know i just grew up hunting and fishing and
my dad had bird dogs when i was a small kid and the birds were kind of starting to disappear and
quail quail yes and he got a squirrel dog and we just i just
started hunting with him and not as much as i do now but then after i got older and stuff i just
enjoyed it and this is before deer and turkeys before deer and turkey yes we like you know
the first deer i ever killed was in florida i mean there wasn't that many deer
in kentucky we were just starting to get them back.
And what happened to the quail?
Why are the quail gone?
Habitat?
Habitat is a lot of it.
Pesticides play a part in it?
I think there is something that came through.
I don't know if it was West Nile virus that came through in the 90s that came through.
They were gradually declining but you
know quail takes certain habitat where you have to have weed seeds and briars and with the farming
methods that were coming in in the 70s a lot of those the little bitty small farms were disappearing
and i know in fact today where some of the Amish people live, there's no predators.
They all have chickens.
They kill all the predators.
Quail could come back there if we had a pool, a gene stock to bring back and get them back.
Well, we saw a quail on an Amish farm.
Remember you commenting about how much game was on the amish property because they
practiced if they had different practices dirtier rows left more stuff on the ground
big ass fence rolls full of briars and brush and you say they're pretty hard on predators
yes because like i said they all have have chickens they have chickens so they kill
predators yeah they kill the predators that come in there they have a small farm areas you know 15 probably 50 acres would be a big giant farm for
the amish people over there so they have a small little bitty farm lots of fence rows lots of
fences and just you know if they're going to mow a field they're going to either pay somebody or
hook up the horse to a mowing machine and mow it with with a horse-drawn piece
of equipment and so they just let it grow up fallow in there a lot of times and it replenish
itself so they don't break break uh crop ground up every year you know turn it over they'll let
it go back to to mother nature and lots of weed seeds and briars grow up there but um i think the quail we
it's after 94 and i got on the internet a few years ago i was reading it with some guy in texas
and that's when he thought that he saw a big demise in them something came through in the early 90s
and just knocked him in the head but uh you know it's it's just unbelievable that you could go out
and see turkeys just about anywhere and everywhere.
And if somebody told me, I'll give you $1,000 if you take your bird dogs and go out and kill a bird.
And if you don't, you have to give me $100.
I probably wouldn't.
I would have to really think hard about it before I'd take that challenge to go out.
On quail.
On quail. On quail. LBL, there used to be, I knew
in the early 90s where there were a few coveys still left up there, but now I know supposedly
down in the Buffalo Pens, there's some in there, but I know of no other places that there's any
birds up there. They're all pretty much gone. 77, the Mississippi River froze over we had an influx
of coyotes the coyotes were gone pretty much before that time so they came in in the 70s
after the river froze over the first thing they wiped out was the groundhogs I remember you
talking about that man you just felt like the groundhogs vanished they did I mean we've got
some left around in the rock bluffs and close to town but that used to be the sunday afternoon sport for a
lot of people go out to the hayfield soybean fields and you know shoot shoot groundhogs um
there was a um that's what my dad he had a couple of varmint rifles a 22 horn and a 225 which is
equivalent to a 2222-250.
Lots of people around town had groundhog guns, and that's what they would do.
But like I said, the Coyotes came in with just a matter of a few years.
They wiped them out.
We've got an influx of armadillos now that's come in now. Yeah, armadillos around there?
Armadillos, pretty prevalent in the LBL.
Now, the last two winters we've had have really knocked them in the head.
They're not as prevalent as what they were. But yes, we have armadillos throughout
the western state of Kentucky. Pretty prevalent. I'm up into Illinois now.
No shit. And they first started coming in in the early 90s. I squirrel hunted over in Donovan,
Missouri over in the Mark Twain National Forest. They started moving in over there at that point in time.
Of course, you know, there are kind of the opportunities.
They will eat quail eggs and meadowlarks.
We don't have the meadowlarks that we used to have.
They're not out there.
You know, a lot of our bird numbers all over are way down. You know, historically, raccoons,
which are now far north,
but raccoons, opossums, and javelina
are all things that in Colombian times
have made mass northern migrations.
I didn't know the armadillos were in there as well.
They did this work with Burmese pythons.
Everyone knows they, through the pet trade and other shit,
went feral in Florida.
And the Burmese pythons, in areas in the Everglades
where the Burmese pythons have really taken off,
there is a virtual absence of a certain size class of mammal where you know raccoon sized
mammals smaller smaller up to raccoon size mammals have like honestly vanished from some areas from
from predation by burmese pythons they were doing work to find like what right now would be the
northern limit, the northern expansion limit of Burmese pythons. And to test this, they would
build these enclosures and put the pythons in there and let them winter. And I remember
our friend Robert Abernathy saying, I can't remember what he said the line was,
but people believe that the python would not find suitable habitat even into South Carolina.
I've read an article, too, on that.
Too cold.
Too cold.
But they used to say the same shit about wild pigs.
So now you have like a handful
of populations of wild pigs in Michigan,
but other people say that a bad winter is going to come.
That when we get some bad winters
back like we had in the 70s,
that it'll knock their dicks in the dirt and they'll be gone too.
I don't know. Because they sure
like the snow in Siberia where they're from.
I don't see that happening with
the wild feral pigs.
Do you guys have many of those in Kentucky?
We had some of the densest population in the U.S.
They brought the gunship in, as I like to call it, the helicopter, $700 an hour.
And the first year, they killed 350 from the gunship.
Dang.
And then what happened and then the next year they killed
i think it was like less than 200 then the third year it was like less than 50 so they feel like
they're getting on top of them they are knocking them down they're still there they hired a
professional trapper also but uh uh there was some swamp ground, what is that,
Biotiche in that area, far west Kentucky, hard to get into,
lots of cropland around, and someone introduced them down there,
and they took off.
Someone put them in there because he was thinking it would be fun
to go hunting for them.
Yes, that's the story that I hear.
You know, some states are getting out ahead of that shit and they're
banning wild pig hunting even in the absence of wild pigs because so many areas where wild
pigs are coming in they're coming in because people are bringing them in to establish a little
pig hunt even thinking that they're gonna they're they like Even thinking that they're going to,
they feel like they're going to contain them in fences
and they bring them in to sell hunts.
And then, not inevitably, but almost inevitably,
some of those pigs get away and start new populations.
So a way to get out ahead of that,
that some states are doing,
is just like banning the hunting of pigs before pigs come.
Because that winds up being one of the biggest causes of them spreading
there's people trucking them around i remember in michigan um when they were trying to ban bringing
in wild pigs and there was a there was a spirited debate about what was a wild pig and they had
they had to define it in various ways with coloration hair growth attributes
all this other kind of because like every pig in north every pig in north america
but every pig outside of africa um is just one species sus scraffa so
the little pink farm pig right it's all the same the same species. And what's unusual with pigs,
I don't know if we talked about,
have we talked about this before?
What's unusual with pigs is that,
is that the actual old wild version
exists contemporaneously
with the feral creation.
So the cattle we now have are, what's that critter the cattle came from
oryx no no not oryx yeah it's what they try to grow in germany the oryx a u r o c h the oryx
is what cattle were domesticated from but then the the Oryx is now extinct. So we have the
domestic offshoots of it, but we don't have the actual thing. With turkeys, turkeys were captured
in the new world, captured in the Western hemisphere, brought back to Europe, bred into
the domestic turkey that we now think of as a domestic white turkey which was then brought back to the u.s so
in existence in the u.s you have the ancestral bird the wild turkey and the domestic spinoff
the turkey with wild pigs in all over year i mean this animal is native in Italy, certain Greek islands, all over Asia, Eurasia, Russia, Suscrafa.
And then it was also brought by like Polynesians into Hawaii 1,100 years ago.
There's some bitches everywhere.
And it's all still just one thing, one species.
So people talk about Razorbacks or Russian wild boars.
It's all Sus scroffa
so it's hard to when a state wants to say no wild pigs it's hard to say it's hard to make a farmer's
pigs illegal because wild pigs often are just escaped domestics but they were trying to find
a way to rule out the bad hombres um be like souped up russian boars and they got some resistance from like uh
they got some resistance from um like artisan butcher type guys who were trying to make who
were fancying themselves making these products with you know r Russian wild pigs and doing like wild boar sausages and stuff.
And they got blowback from certain very high caliber,
a certain very high caliber celebrity hunter
who was selling wild pig quote unquote hunts
and wanted to be able to continue to do so.
And now Michigan has wild pigs in a shitload of
counties i'm pretty sure they didn't come in they didn't come walking in from florida i'm pretty
sure in the state of kentucky if a pig escapes the farmer from the fence he's considered a wild pig then and can be shot when he gets outside yeah um we have a young biologist that's
in charge of the wild pigs in the in the in the state and it's been some probably two three years
ago i asked him to come to our sportsman club and give a little speech about what i was going and he went into great detail and
told that and went into detail about a lot of states like you said declaring all wild hog hunting
illegal and he said they had trail cameras and pictures set up where they were paying people to
trap the wild hogs and they would actually see a group of hunters come in
with their dogs catch dogs in the armored vest you know looking at their traps so you know they
were they were hunting that area they knew that they were there or they had turned hog loose or
whatever so uh when i was younger i always thought that would be a great thing to have
but i made a couple trips to saint vincent's Island down in Apalachicola,
muzzleloading hunting down there,
and saw just how destructive the wild hogs were on the island,
eating up everything, you know, everything on there,
the sea turtle eggs, whatever,
and just realized that, hey, that's something that we do not need.
From time to time, they try to introduce them into Land Between the Lakes on the Tennessee
Inn.
They've got a trapper up there.
Try to introduce them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They've turned some loose up there.
Had some sightings.
I didn't know where a few hog traps were.
But not state sanctioned.
Not state sanctioned.
Oh, I see.
No, just illegal.
Joe Blow sanctioned.
Yes, Joe Blow was trying to get them up there.
Yeah.
But that's something we do not need anywhere in the U.S.
When my parents, I can't remember if it was right when they were married or when they were dating,
my dad took my mom wild pig hunting and my mom got chased up a tree by a pig.
My dad was out of arrows.
I think somehow my mom had an arrow and threw it to him.
I can't remember.
It's one of those stories I should have gotten more detail on.
Giannis, you've been awful quiet.
What's up?
Nothing.
Just nothing.
Just enjoying the stories.
Just your little brain.
Nothing.
Little brain.
Wow.
That was awful.
Anything, nothing you're thinking about?
Yeah, the pigs.
I'm surprised how many people don't get like when we uh we post
something about pigs and everybody's like i can't believe it there are problems but you can't hunt
them that makes no sense i just want to like clarify how that works right it's like they're
they're banning it so that no one has the incentive to bring any in or have hunts.
You can never outfit it or guide it legally.
I don't know.
How else can we clarify that?
It should be pretty easy to understand why they're just saying,
you just can't hunt them at all.
A lot of fisheries would be in better shape if someone had a long time ago
said it is illegal to fish for northern pike because that would have prevented a lot of guys
from saying like man i should bring a couple of these pike home and let them go on my lake
these are great right yeah it's just the it's just how pigs are going to get around and i like
see i'm on the side where i like to hunt wild pigs but i do understand the problem and i do not want to i don't i don't like to entertain
thoughts of what it would look like if we were to lose our biodiversity and so many of our ground
nesting game birds and ducks and all the other shit you're gonna that gets severely damaged and
knocked back when pigs come in but where this stuff gets interesting is in hawaii you have like no no humans lived in hawaii till around 11 1200 years ago no people
had found it the first people that found it were seafaring polynesians and they brought with them
dogs and pigs and and many many species of edible plants and got all this stuff established in
Hawaii. So now we have like native Hawaiians, right? And native Hawaiians are an indigenous
group and they have sets of rights and claims to some of the land and claims to certain practices.
And it's insulting to them when some, or insulting to, I shouldn't say to them,
insulting to some of them particularly a
group of guys that i've spent some time hunting with to say to them you are a native people
but this pig that you brought with you is deleterious introduced non-native and should
be eradicated because they think well if we showed up here together at the same time how am i okay but that pig is bad you know so people do hang on to it
um and i remember even like a friend of mine in california who's a cattle rancher and has pigs
and has a lot of pigs and sometimes to a problem level and i said to him if you could wave a magic
wand and have all the pigs be gone would you wave it and i said to him if you could wave a magic wand and have all
the pigs be gone would you wave it and he thought about it and said no he kind of likes them just
not so many of them but with pigs you don't always get to choose and the disease they can't bring
too that's one of of the big issues.
I got sick from one.
He was rolling in poison ivy.
I don't know if that counts.
They carry poison ivy.
Yas, would you like to explain your t-shirt?
Oh, yeah.
It got all artsy.
You think so?
Yeah.
We're going for like a... Not artsy, but you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, artsy.
A scientific plate.
Does that make sense when I say that?
Yeah, no, I'm with you.
You got like an image in your head?
Like an old book that would have plates?
Exactly.
Steve's going to post a picture on Instagram, so...
Yeah, I took a doozy.
Yeah.
High quality.
It's our new small game design.
It's got a cottontail.
Now, on the cottontail, why did you not spell out why did you not why did you do the abbreviation
for the second part of his linnaean name well you caught me off guard because i should know what
the spp stands for but it's like the overarching species right because there's so many subspecies
oh so it's all the sylvalogus yeah exactly how
do you i don't know how to pronounce that word you know how to pronounce that word nope
you did a pretty good job yeah and you got the old rough grouse with his latin linnaean name
yep and then we did choose fox squirrel did you know when you get into those linnaean names now
linnaean now linnaeus was the fellow that came up with species names right
the latin names when you get into subspecies and you wind up having to do three words
i just learned today that that's called trinomial nomenclature
bison bison athabasca it's the it's the naming of subspecies so you have genus as your first word
species second word subspecies when you start tacking on and then it becomes a real unwieldy
string unwieldy string of words and that's called trinomial nomenclature. Who taught you that? I read it today. This is Steve at a party.
I was just thinking.
I think I heard it about 37 years ago
in biology.
Trinomial Nomenclature?
I learned it today
reading National Wild Turkey Federation's
magazine that comes in the mail.
Okay.
I think.
I think I did.
But I remember seeing that
and thinking I was going to remember it.
Does it go any further down?
Can you go more than try?
I've never seen it.
Ah, I want to seek that out.
Yeah, quadnomial nomenclature.
So it'd be like a branch off of a subspecies.
Huh.
Interesting.
That'll make the lumpers freak out.
So,
any concluding thoughts Brittany
I don't know
next time I'm going to
range distance before I shoot a turkey
you use a range finder
oh I got a concluding thought about
it's not your turn
oh yeah no it's fine
I would recommend that you go shoot a big piece of paper at 47 yards.
Because you might not have missed.
I mean, you might have missed the old-fashioned way
by not having your gun pointing where you wanted it to hit.
But it'd just be good education, you know?
Shoot it at 52, shoot it at 40 as well.
Because I can tell you, if i can tell you if you were
aiming if you were legit aiming at his head you damn sure hit that bird with pellets but not
enough to get through the feathers would be my guess no it's just not you don't don't you didn't
do anything to him i mean we looked and it's hard because you didn't do anything to him it's hard to
get through those feathers it would have made a noise i've heard it it's like there was no sign. No, because you didn't do anything to them. It's hard to get through those feathers. It would have made a noise.
I've heard it.
It's like, not that noise, but it makes a noise.
Just hits them.
You ever, you probably not, but sometimes someone takes a real Hail Mary at ducks.
You'll see a duck or a goose and someone take a Hail Mary at it.
And you'll hear it on the feathers, on the breast.
You'll hear it, but that duck doesn't even change tune.
It's just. Yeah, but it flew away away i'm saying she didn't hurt it oh i see what you're saying if she was aiming true aiming at its head what i believe happened was that distance and gravity
right what i believe happened is the pellets dropped well lost a lot of velocity and the upper part of her pattern
probably still spattered the bird in the same way that i've been shot by shotguns
really far away and you hear it and feel it but it can't even get through your clothes
yeah i mean every anybody that's done any amount of
general general shotgun and dove hunts
been hit by pellets.
I mean, I've been hitting the bare skin with them
and had it not even have enough oomph to go in.
I mean, just imagine all the things little kids play with and stuff.
There's an enormous gray area between it going into you and killing you
and it bouncing out.
You know what I mean?
It's just stuff gets hit by pellets all the time.
Okay.
We used to have BB gun fights
and only rarely.
Like I remember Trish Knight and I are one time.
It was like we used to play
that you can only pump once,
but if there are people who are far away,
you tend to pump a little more.
And I remember someone stormed
Trish Knight and I's little hideout pump a little more and i remember someone stormed tris night
nair's little hideout or tris night nair tried to storm someone's hideout who was pumped up for a
long range shot and shot tris night nair and it hit him in the ball of his finger pad and exited
out his fingernail oh yeah i always think of when i think of bb gun shots i always think of the
royal tenenbaums have you ever seen that movie yep where he has like the still has a bb in his
knuckle oh who the hell are we just oh yeah okay speaking of that friend of mine was just telling
me the story long time ago he as a joke picked picked up a BB gun and acted like he was going to shoot himself in the roof of the mouth with it when he was in high school.
Okay.
In high school.
But it had a BB in it.
Yeah.
And he didn't even know it.
He thought that it was just air, but no BB.
So he thought it was just pumped up, but no BB.
And so when it hit him in the roof of the mouth, he could feel the air years go
by and he's getting dental x-rays and this thing is still lodged in the roof of his mouth.
And just like point blank range.
Pretty much.
I can't, I'm not even going to get into the why in the world you do such a like, right.
Whatever. Right. I'm just saying everybody, get into the why in the world you do such a, like, whatever, right?
I'm just saying that he was that close and it didn't, like, go right through his brain.
No, and lodged in the roof of his mouth.
BB gun pellet.
BB gun BB.
And they were like, it's good to know because if you were to go in and get certain scans and shit with magnets, you know, pull that thing right back out of there.
Maybe, I don't know.
It's copper, but.
So, yeah, next time you shoot at a turkey you're
gonna hit it that's your concluding thought yes i like that 100 um if we can go back to
squirrels for a second after that hunt because you wanted squirrels yeah um i'm about to go on my
first hunts i guess in new york in my state. So I was wondering if you personally had hunted in other places outside of Kentucky,
or what would be your advice for hunting in new areas, hunting squirrels in new areas?
Advice as far as...
You've hunted squirrels everywhere.
I've been Illinois, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Michigan, South Dakota.
Tried to get one in Africa, but i couldn't get a permit yeah you've got to have a permit to shoot anything over there and everything so
but um new advice uh or like a new territory you know advice for places that just go in there
scout you know you're still hunting, I guess,
is what you're going to be doing.
Leaf zone or what time of year?
I think hunting season in New York starts in September.
Okay.
Yeah, it goes through the end of February.
That time of year, you want to look for the food source,
their mass, so acorn trees,
hickory nuts in New York.
When I was hunting squirrels in new york a little
bit we were hunting on uh in beach beach beach is very excellent yes yeah food see what's in season
and look for the food source are you guys on ag land so no it's like game well first of all in
new york we don't have a spot yet because we haven't met. I mean, we don't have anyone who knows a spot or whatever.
So we were just going to do our own scouting and find a place.
We have a friend.
I got a buddy.
I got a couple of buddies I need to talk to for you.
Brittany doesn't like this kind of shit.
That's not true.
I'm going to hit you up for Eastern turkeys now because now after we've hit up my spot,
I want to go to Eastern.
I will get you a squirrel spot.
Sweet.
Does it have to be like- We'll. Sweet. Does it have to be like-
We'll take it.
Does it have to be what?
Like what's your range?
Like how far are you willing to travel?
We're willing to drive, so.
For squirrels?
Yeah.
Listen, I'm going to get on the phone and I'm going to pound it.
And I'm going to get you spots.
Okay, sweet.
There are spots in this phone waiting to be had.
Wait a minute, but now I'm- Public land? I am now interested in going to get you spots. Okay, sweet. There are spots in this phone waiting to be had. Wait a minute, but now I'm interested.
Public land?
I am now interested in going to Eastern Montana.
No, I can't do that for you because you just figured that out.
But I can get you spots.
It won't matter because no one's hunting the public land for squirrels.
But if you don't mind, I will find you some private land farms where you can add into the mix.
And I think you also ought to explore public land locations too, because then you kind of own them.
Yeah.
Because in New York, they're like city rats or something.
So no one's going out to-
Right.
Mostly they don't give you permission to go in there and hunt those.
Hopefully.
No. we'll see
yeah
I like your idea
but I could also
supplement your
we will take the supplement
I can supplement your
roster of locations
with some
private land
locales
Michelle
I want to hear more
about war horses
in the future
alright do you like to ride horses I do I do I want to hear more about war horses in the future all right do you like to ride horses i
do i want to see it happen um see the horses no we used to we should do a gear breakdown of your
war horse oh man a graphic i would love that right exactly coiled up sawtooth briar over his shoulder so what uh your family used to own horses
yeah we had two shasta and ed they were quarter horses uh yeah and grandpa used to get out and
hunt with uh with both of them for big game though yeah yeah a little bit um out in western montana
and yeah i rode them growing up it was a lot of fun but now they're long gone yeah they're gone
just like still got photos though like this is like fun. But now they're long gone. Yeah, they're gone. Still got photos though and memories.
Like so long ago that they're no longer alive.
Mm-mm.
Yeah. Mm-mm.
Yeah.
So I'd like to see your setup.
And if you had a horse, then you'd go get a squirrel hound?
Oh, man.
$20,000.
Because I'm telling you, if you took, because Yanni's really doing, Yanni's taking it upon himself to identify unknown squirrel locales in the inner Rocky Mountains.
I got a hot tip just the other day.
I saw that.
You saw that email, man.
I'll tell you something.
Anyone out here who's been reading outdoor magazines their whole life will know the name Jim Zumbo. uh jim zumbo and uh and turns out we have on good authority that jim zumbo is a very avid
squirrel hunter but he likes it as he he likes to clarify that he's interested in fox squirrels
you notice that he doesn't say squirrels yeah that was great i don't even know where that came
from because we're saying bye to mr. David Allen from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
And he's like –
You picked his brain about squirrels.
Yeah, but he's like – I know, but he's like –
Because Johnny's going to start the Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation.
He said, I live in Billings.
And Billings is kind of like the – I haven't yet to hear of a squirrel around Billings.
Like everything's still even east of there.
And so I'm like, oh, hey,
you're a big hunter. You've been around the woods a lot.
You know, living on the Yellowstone
Corridor. What about squirrels?
And he kind of gave me the, I don't give a
flip about squirrels, but
you know who does? Mr. Jim Zombo.
Let me hook you up. And immediately
I had an email from Jim Zombo,
which is awesome. I'll tell you what you need to do.
This would be good for just America in general.
So the Yellowstone River is the longest free-flowing river in the United States.
And the Yellowstone heads, it finds its source in Three Forks, Montana,
where the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson come together.
Lewis and Clark named those three rivers.
Madison was second.
Named them after the Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of State.
Can't remember who else.
And they form.
Yeah, who's Gallatin?
No, I'm messing this up.
I'm talking about the head of the Missouri.
So.
Yeah, you are.
But anyways, those three rivers form the Missouri in three forks.
And the Missouri arches way around and eventually starts swinging down
where it picks up the Mississippi and becomes a Mississippi.
But the Yellowstone kind of parallels it and flows into it and of course
the missouri you know flows all the way across the whole damn country and absorbs the mississippi
and the mississippi steals its name and it flows down and so it creates this long corridor right
and squirrels and other species what i was going to get at is like walleyes walleye seem to kind of taper out
right around where squirrels taper out you're right as you ascend the missouri and ascend the
yellowstone you get to a point where it ceases to be warm water a warm water fishery and becomes a cold water fishery, right? So if you go to
Livingston on the Yellowstone, it's trout country. You go down to Billings and you're in that middle
ground. You go east of Billings, you're down into smallmouth, sauger, walleye, channel cats. And I feel like squirrels and walleyes
must need each other.
No, I'm joking, but they like,
they peter out in the same place.
And what Yanni's trying to do
is he's trying to explore
the Western terminus of fox squirrels
who have headed up the Yellowstone
following the riparian area there
because they live in the cottonwood
and Russian olive groves.
And so far, he's got them located in Forsyth, Montana.
I had on good authority that they're not in Big Timber.
But here's where the picture gets weird. They're missoula montana exactly which is why that's that's in that's in that's like a
weird jumping introduction yeah and they're in there and they're in the residential areas there
where people have planted ornamentals so ornamentals there being maples and oaks and
shit like that where there's like a lot of non-native trees
but in those places where
they're living on native trees
like native habitat
he's trying to find them closer to his home
is this right?
that's right
I went in, I want in on that
when he finds it
oh we never finished up about your
so yeah, did we finish up about your... So, yeah.
Did we finish up about your shirt?
It's a new Hunt to Eat shirt.
We got to the squirrel.
Yeah, squirrel.
Kevin, do you have a favorite subspecies of squirrel?
Oh...
That's not how that works.
Oh, it's not?
No, those are species.
Oh, they're species.
They're not subspecies.
No, there's...
What?
The gray squirrel and then the black squirrel that's... Yeah, well, the black squirrels are gray. Our gray squirrel and then the black squirrel that's yeah well the black squirrels are great
our gray squirrels just color do you have pine squirrels out there red squirrels some people
call them red squirrels some people call them pine squirrels uh we have some up in the mountains
fairy doodles timber doodles timber timber timber what is it timber doodle. Timber, timber, what is it? Timber doodle is a woodcock.
Woodcock.
Oh, what do we call them?
Timber something.
I can't think.
We've got some of those.
They're up a little higher.
In the eastern part of the state.
Yes.
Yeah, the pine squirrel.
But we've got fox squirrels and gray squirrels in the western end.
But do you have a concluding thought?
Concluding thought?
Oh, if you get a chance, take someone new
out hunting and fishing.
And if you've got any institutional
knowledge in your head, don't let it go to you
with a grave. Share that with someone.
Good words,
Kevin. Yeah, you should end with that.
That was tight. Yanni?
Nope, not after that.
That's what.
Yeah, I'm going to reiterate. don't take it to the grave.
And thank you for listening.
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