The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 109: Hunter Harassment

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

La Crosse, WI- Steven Rinella talks with Doug Duren, the writer Pat Durkin, along with Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. Subjects Discussed: catching muskies and male pattern baldness; hunters as UFO researchers; legalizing deer and hog baiting; Steve's dying wish; Jim Jarmusch's masterpiece, Dead Man; hunter harassment and blue laws; fall turkey harvest; new thinking about coyote population dynamics; the business of death; the tax on stupidity; and more. You can now listen to ad-free episodes of the MeatEater Podcast on Stitcher Premium. Your subscription allows you to stream and download ad-free episodes and gets you early access to new releases of the MeatEater Podcast. 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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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. 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. Pat Durkin and Doug Dern. I guess i like you should be cousins almost we don't look like

no you know i can see a little bit a lot of skin up on top of your head i was gonna say the bald guys are on one side of the room the guys with hair are on the other side oh yeah well i don't like to get close to bald guys i'm afraid of the rub i think you're safe steve i'm really not my wife doesn't think that i am oh you're safe really well i my grandfather my grandpappy glenn coral who was an avid musky angler i don't even want to tell you his one of the tricks the musky tricks he told me about but i will tell you it's from a bygone era. He was telling me when I was a little boy, he liked to fish musky. He liked to fish crappies.

He was telling me a good way to catch muskies is, oh, it's just kind of terrible. Try to think of how to bring it up. I think just say it, man. Okay. Glenn Coral,

my paternal, my maternal grandfather, who was a farmer and then went on to be for a fire department, used to fish muskies by basically harness-rigging chipmunks, as he explained it to me. Harness-rigging chipmunks, which he would deliver out into the water by canoe and then go back and fish it. Yeah. Do you remember what his success was? I'd like to ask an animal rights ethicist about that. Well, and then too, you think about when we were kids,

we didn't know it was illegal, but we used to lip hook leopard frogs. Oh, every kid does that. I don't know if they still do but they were doing that when i was they they meaning we was doing that when i was a kid and so you don't think i ever caught a fish that way though oh i did and even i caught a dude at night i thought i was gonna catch these big largemouth bass what i caught was big bullheads i mean oh trophy bullheads you know i, 14, 15. Trophy bull heads.

Are they hanging on your wall next to your 32 deer heads you got hanging in your house? No, but we ate them all and they were good. Yeah. Point being,

Glenn, my paternal, my maternal grandfather was balder than you guys. Well, maybe not as bald as Doug, but bald. And

supposedly, like you catch it, right right you catch it from your maternal grandpa right yeah my wife thinks i'm thinning out no my barber doesn't you can tell your wife for me that when i was in boot camp at age 19 my hair was already lighter than yours as far as thickness and they shaved my head off, and then I came back. My hair was about like yours is now. That's when I was 19, but that's when I was 29. It was going fast. Yeah.

Now, my bro, I got brothers who staggered out ahead of me a year and a half, 18 months out, and then 18 more months out. So I look at their heads a lot. Their heads change man there's a little yeah yeah yeah got those widow speaks um you know one quick question the guy wrote in a ufo researcher just wrote in is that a real thing someone he's claiming to be one yeah but i mean like to say you're like an ex-researcher, like how hard is it to prove it? He didn't like, he didn't have,

I don't know that he has like, if you walked into his house, would he have like the little degrees hanging on the wall? But I think that when I see that, I'm like, I think that you could be, I think that you could be a, I'm guessing he's a hobbyist. There's not a lot of credentials that go along.

Yeah, because I think that if you were someone who like if you were an astronomer, for instance, and you were curious about life on other planets, I don't think you'd write dudes like me to say, hey man, I'm a UFO researcher. And as part of my research, I thought I'd ask you fellas who spend a lot of time out in the woods if you've seen any evidence lately.

Which is what this email was. Pat? I actually wrote part of a chapter of a book one time on this guy who runs trail cameras up here, north of here in Buffalo County. And his trail cameras up here north of here in buffalo county and his trail cameras picked up a ufo um oh can you stop for a minute yeah when you say that do you use it like

ufo like lowercase or ufo like uppercase uppercase abbreviation no no what i mean by that is if you see something flying and you can't identify it that that's a UFO. I think of that as a UFO lowercase. When someone says like, I saw a UFO and they mean by that, they mean not that they were not able to identify it, but they mean that it was a thing carrying aliens around.

I think of that as like an uppercase. So you know a fellow that caught an uppercase UFO, like an alien spacecraft on his trail cam. Definitely. Yeah. I wrote about it. I can even, I'll have to send you a copy of it.

Well, just tell me. Basically, it was, he just create picture of a doll in front of his trail camera. Then in the back, way in the back, you can see in the distance, a V-shaped object. And that V-shaped object moved in those pictures, in a series of pictures. And then coincidentally, about in that same time period,

about a week before or a week after, I can't remember the specifics, there were reports by other people in that area seeing this, it's like a wedge-shaped object that would pick up and haul us out of there. And this one guy taught the story about these guys came flying down the road, scared out of their mind.

They'd been driving and had seen this thing. And then Tom was checking his trail cameras and Tom checks his trail cameras on his computer. He watches those pictures and he's always seeing stuff and he noticed this object back there and it was right about dawn. And this thing actually did move in those pictures and he's always seeing stuff and he noticed this object back there and it was right about dawn. And this thing actually did move in those pictures where you could see it's not something,

this was a speck that showed up in the same spot. It was actually something in movement. Pat, do you believe that, I'm not asking you if you think that there is life on other planets, okay? Okay. My brother was recently explained to me that the number of other planets is it's a imagine a one with I think something like 17 or 20 zeros after it hmm he's a

statistician and he says with that many planets there is one where there is a eight foot tall furry person who is a smuggler in a spaceship like there's that many planets i don't know if i buy that but i'm not asking you to just live on our plans do you think that right now there are a there are people from other planets in amongst us flying around in ships or do you think that he thinks that or do you think that the guy thinks that um i think they're pretty well convinced they saw something but i guess the working theory is was it some kind of military test yeah yeah. Because Camp Ripley isn't that far away. Camp McCoy isn't that far away.

There's a possibility. But I guess to your brother's comment, though, I think I wouldn't argue that one bit. The trouble you wind up, and this is way off topic, but you're familiar with Jared Diamond. Oh, yeah. Okay. Jared Diamond has a thing where he and I don't want to mutilate his argument too much but but he gets into like the idea that we would have contact with another group and you imagine that so the earth four billion

years old okay and if you pictured the earth's history like stretch your arms out as far as you can stretch them out okay that's the earth's history on a timeline you could remove human history with one stroke of a nail file meaning here's this planet and planets are ephemeral they come and go here's this planet whose timeline is that long but one stroke this isn't mcphee john mcphee's the guy that brought up this that you could remove human history the stroke of a nail file but that's like how on this planet which is an ephemeral sort of thing that we've had that little human history.

Now, however you begin to define the beginning of human history, like sort of the fashionable answer used to be the anatomically and behaviorally modern humans have been around for 75,000 years. And people are like, oh no, anatomically and behaviorally modern humans have been around for 150,000 years.

But whatever it is, let's just say we have 100,000 years of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans where you could take one of them, a person from 100,000 years ago, dress them up in our duds and bring them up in a modern family and they would somehow pass as a person. They wouldn't be inconspicuous. We've got that long, thousand years of that but it's it's been our ability to electronically transmit messages has been brief okay our ability to broadcast a message out.

Let's say we've been up to it for a hundred years, which is generous. You'd be able to broadcast a message. So imagine now the trouble of having another planet, having another planet's life cycle coincide with that. So not that there's not other life, there's something that looks like a chipmunk, like my grandfather's musky fish and bait. Okay, there's another planet that has a chipmunk. But to have it be that scaled out, one, taking the assumption that life leads to a form of, leads to a thing that is curious about life on other planets or leads to a thing capable of having the faith or belief that there are other things out there, which is a new idea

here. And have it be that it lined up perfectly and led to the same place where we in the same place in the same time have the same interest and mechanisms to do so to make contact with one another it becomes very difficult it becomes very difficult to picture it so the dude the deer hunter with the trail camera when I see that my mind doesn't go to oh I'm going to explain this as an extraterrestrial presence my mind goes to

the hundred of other things that it unknown things that it could be but to get to the guy's question I was out running mink traps with a guy by the name of Carl. And I was in high school and we saw a UFO out in the swamp

checking mink traps. And I remember Carl looked at me and said, I'm not even going to tell anybody about that. I think of it as a ufo cap lowercase ufo yeah like it was a flying object i was unable to identify three lights well it's kind of swirling quality to them well you've heard of the the mysterious lights up in the up, west of highway 44, 45. Only the ones that come from like drunk drivers that night driving down the road.

No, no, no. It was this legend up in the UP and many people have seen it. Nothing unusual to see it. I think it's west of a little place called Palmyra, I think it is. But anyway, it's up off of highway 45 going west off in the UP of Michigan. And the legend is that this light that appears at night is the lantern of an old guy in the back of a railroad car. From Earth. From Earth. But it's a mysterious light.

Dude from Earth. Yeah, yeah. A ghost, basically. And it freaks people out because they go up there and they hear about this, you know, this mysterious ghost and this mysterious light and they go look at it and yep, look at it. And yep, it's there.

And then no one in all this time has ever been able to explain where that light comes from. Just an odd, some kind of physical occurrence, obviously, but no one can explain it. What do you think about all that, Doug? I was just feeling like it's two o'clock in the morning after a Grateful Dead show. Listen to this conversation. So, all right.

I think we gave that guy a due. The UFO researcher. Excuse me. The credentialed UFO researcher. Yanni, who's, can you explain the guy? Can you explain your buddy? You got the wrong piece of paper. No, I know.

Can you explain the story, this guy? Like how we got to know him? No, no, no. Just his story. Just tell the story. Oh, yeah, for sure. He wrote in. Actually, he contacted me first before he wrote us a story

because he was listening to us talking about salt bait and legalities around that. If you got caught hunting over a chunk of salt and if it was yours or not, if you knew it was there or not, and how the law would deal with it. Oh, yeah. You know what? Hold that. Pick it back up in a minute. But I need to.

We just were talking about how Alabama made that rule that there used to be, like, no bait. And it was like, okay, if you're 100 yards from your bait and you can't see the bait, if it's behind, if, like, if it's out of sight and 100 yards away, then it's okay. So then dudes started putting bait on the other side of hay bales 100 yards away because they couldn't see the bait and it was 100 yards away well just so happened that um alabama just legalized baiting for it came out because they wanted to find a more efficient way

to kill hogs they got a real hog problem in alabama so they're like legal but then they rolled in you can bait for deer and hogs now in Alabama. Full-on balls out. Much to the chagrin of many whitetail managers, you can now bait there. So like one hand, we're dealing with the spread of infectious diseases in deer herds. And one thing we damn sure know is the best way

to get infectious diseases to jump around is to invite a bunch of animals to rub noses in a feed pile, but they legalized baiting. What's funny is you have to buy a baiting license because the fish and game department was bummed about all the revenue they would be losing from being able to give people from giving citations for baiting. They were making revenue off fines for baiting. And they're like, we're going to lose the revenue

we have from it being illegal. They're supplanting it with revenue from having to buy a baiting stamp. I'm not, this is not a joke. Go ahead, Jan. Simple math, right?

It just... It's practical. But it just... Yeah. I think it definitely comes from the hog thing. And then there's certain deer dudes. And they're like, well, we got too many deer. We need to kill more.

And then people are like, the reason you got too many deer is because everybody wants to shoot big, giant, huge bucks. No one wants to kill those. They have the highest deer densities. Some of the highest deer densities in the country you're allowed to kill like i hunted alabama in the late 90s and you could get a deer a day way back then it's more than that now we went down and just like cold rolled in and hunted tuskegee national forest and killed a bunch of bucks go ahead ahead, Yanni. Speaking of baiting.

Speaking of baiting. So he contacted me and said, I got a good baiting story. He said he and a buddy were hunting ducks in North Carolina about 15 years ago. And all over the general area area the hunting was pretty slow um but they had plenty of time they had plenty of time to scout they scouted hard and they found a spot that was holding some ducks so uh they made a plan come back the next morning um it was near houses but not close enough to be dangerous. Um, but definitely close enough to where the houses could hear the shots. I think, you know, there's plenty of duck hunting

spots like that. Um, I know that when I'm at my in-laws in North Carolina over the holidays, uh, you know, they live on the intercoastal waterway and I mean, it's nonstop almost all day long. You just hear boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, as the birds are flying up and down the intercoastal there. Anyways, so they're shooting away, having some action. And all of a sudden they look over and there's a woman standing on a pier with a megaphone and she's yelling at them that she's already called the game warden because they're hunting over bait.

Well, she doesn't want them hunting. No, she doesn't want them hunting. She's calling the game warden, though. She knows they're hunting over bait. They don't know they're hunting over bait. So he says they shit their pants, and they're wondering what to do, and in no time, the game warden's pulling up.

The woman gets in a canoe and paddles over and tells the game warden that's now with them and their ducks that she knows they're hunting over bait because she put it there on purpose so she could watch the ducks but didn't tell anyone and wanted to keep people from hunting in that area. So she figured she'd bait it and then if it's baited, you can't hunt there.

The game warden proceeded to write the woman a ticket for hunter harassment and then told the two hunters to go ahead and finish out the hunt but after that to stay out of there a few weeks, since at that point they knew it was baited, and he felt that the general rule was that a baited area

couldn't be hunted for 10 days after the bait was put out. Ah, ha, ha. I love it. So I followed up with them to ask, you know, because obviously now at that point, they're like, damn, this might be good. So I followed up to see if they limited, but he said it just felt too sketchy.

So they just left. Oh, he didn't take the warden up on the offer? No. I would have. There's a lot of things. There's a lot of things going on there that warrant discussion. One is ducks are migratory. I'm talking to the listeners here.

Ducks are migratory. So a state can't claim, you know, states manage their own wildlife with the exception of something that has federal protections, like through the Endangered Species Act or migratory stuff because you can't claim ownership of a bird that's traveling thousands of miles and just stopping in at places. So the way they kind of like, the way

the feds in the states co-manage migratory birds and you have flyways in the US because you imagine like bird movements are generally these north-south movements so you have the atlantic flyway the pacific flyway how many are there all together there's four or five flyways mississippi river fly mississippi flyway sent then there's the there's one that goes down the rock central anyway then there's the, there's one that goes down the rock. Central. Anyway, then there's four or five flyways.

Look that up, William. I should know that. You got a handful of flyways. And the waterfowl, like migratory waterfowl is managed sort of on the flyway level. And then the states and the feds work together and they kind of look at, there's four flyways. Name them off, Yanni. Pacific, Central, Mississippi, atlantic there you go so you'll look at like what a state what a state's contribution so to speak is to the general well-being of a species and if a waterfowl species

really utilizes the state heavily for wintering grounds or utilizes a state heavily for breeding grounds um that state's allocation of that resource will be greater than say a state where the bird just passed through and don't really utilize the area at all and it is kind of like a good system because it prohibits the state from extracting more than its share of a resource, which would then impact other people down the line. The same way if you live on a creek and you feel free to pour all kinds of poison into the creek on your property, that poison will flow downriver and affect the guy down the stream. And that's why we have rules that prohibit one's actions on their land from having a negative impact on the actions of someone else's land. Sort of that same kind of logic at play with waterfowl.

What was I getting at? Oh, the point I was getting at is you can't bait migratory birds federal like even if the state decided hey man we want to allow uh baiting ducks you're not gonna be able to do it because the feds are never going to agree to it bait waterfowl but you can even if you go and plant crops like even if you you go, let's say you're a guy that likes to hunt ducks and you own a bunch of land. And you're like, I'm going to grow corn on my land because I like to hunt ducks. Even if you're doing that, you can't raise that corn and harvest that corn out of sync with how corn is harvested when used for agricultural purposes. Like you can't grow a bunch of corn,

never harvest it, wait for the duck migration to come in, knock all the corn down and flood it and start hunting ducks. You have to, if you plant it, you have to pick it the way it would be picked. You can't just like loophole your way around it by doing weird stuff.

People do do weird stuff and you can do like enhancements and plant native vegetation that ducks like to eat, all that kind of stuff. Habitat improvements are fine, but you can't do sort of like egregious kind of accidental baiting, baiting by, like I said, the most egregious case would be that you would somehow grow corn,

pick it and then any kind of grow corn, pick it, and then accidentally spill all the grain and not pick it up and then flood it and then be like, oh, you know, I'm a farmer. They watch that kind of stuff. And in Wisconsin, property taxes are based on rural land. It's based on land use. And I just have some folks that i'm working with who uh have a uh complaint about their property taxes haven't gone up and they said well this is agriculture and what it is is a 20 acre food plot that they you know they went in and

knocked it down i saw the crop didn't come up mean, that's what they're trying to tell the assessor. And the assessor's like, no, that's undeveloped property, which is at a much higher rate than ag property. He wasn't buying the farm. He wasn't buying it at all. I said, dude, and they were asking me, don't you think this? I said, no, it sounds to me like if you want to be a farmer, you need to be a farmer. All right, so that's one thing point of conversation out of this story

by this guy the other point is the fact that and this is i think not widely known that it's ill oftentimes in many states and pat durkin's going to speak to this it's illegal to screw with a hunter or a trapper or a fisherman. You can't harass him. You can't molest his hunt. Remember Jeremiah Johnson? He gets accused by Bearclaw, Chris Clapp,

of molesting his grizzly hunt. It's illegal to molest someone's hunt, as that woman found out. That's what she was in trouble for. Yeah. Harassing a hunter who's engaged in illegal activity. Yeah, is that a federal or state-by-state? State-by-state.

It is state-by-state. And every state now has anti-harassment law. Every state. Every state has it. The United States Sportsman Alliance back in the 80s basically helped states. They crafted a model legislation

and the states, it's one of those easy ones to pass. No one likes harassment of a legal activity. So it passed in all 50 states. I didn't know that. Yeah. I remember when it passed.

I remember I was living in Michigan, I think when it passed in Michigan. I feel like I was living in Michigan when it passed in Michigan. And I was curious was living in Michigan when it passed in Michigan. And I was curious a minute because of trapping, because trappers were getting harassed. That's where the sportsman's lines came from, right? Trapper harassment or some kind of trapping ban in Ohio.

Is that right? We heard the story recently. That might be because that's where they're from in Columbus. I remember covering those guys in the mid 80s. They were doing trips around the country in those days, rounding up support for their organization. But I remember in Wisconsin here, we had a face-to-face harassment going on

in Blue Mountain State Park, which is over not too far from Doug's farm. And the DNR had wardens out there and they pretty much didn't interfere a whole lot and didn't arrest anybody because they just figured we're not going to make martyrs out of these people. And all these laws went into effect. And basically the wardens told these people, you know, you can, okay, you've been warned

now. And if we come back and you're still harassing them, then we'll have to take action. But what's, what's, I think, fascinating about the story that you're sharing here is that's really become how that law is being enforced. I mean, there's very, very few cases now where animal rights activists go out in an organized fashion and disrupt hunts. It just doesn't, it's unusual now. What's happening now- You think it's thanks to that legislation? Yeah, that's probably part of it, that know that this is something that they can be.

If they physically interrupt someone's hunt, blur a noise, do anything to harass, molest, it's illegal. It's pretty well, it's stood up to the various legal challenges so they probably don't challenge it anymore. That's probably why you don't see that kind of enforcement action being taken because it just isn't happening probably because of the law. But what's happening is all these people pulling that kind of business where they honk their horns and the neighbor's hunting in his backyard.

You can Google this stuff. I did this in preparation. It was fun to do. You start Googling hunter harassment. What do you see? It's basically neighborhood situations, situations like a guy opening day in Wisconsin's gun season,

doesn't like his neighbor hunting the fence lines. He goes up there and starts cutting the chainsaw, starts doing his firewood project, opening day. And of course, the hunter gets pissed off, climbs down, and this is back probably before cell phone coverage was so good and calls the ward and the hunter gets pissed off, climbs down, and this is back probably for his cell phone coverage. It was so good.

He calls the warden. The warden comes out, tells the neighbor, quit cutting the wood. Come on, I can cite you for harassment. But how did he know the guy just didn't want to cut some wood? Because it's a long-running battle. Typical neighbor shit that goes back and forth between two neighbors that don't like each other.

And a fight boils over an opening day, and then they get the wardens involved. You know, I know a case where there was hunter harassment from one hunter to the other. Oh yeah. Our good friend, Kevin Murphy, the world's greatest small game hunter, did a trip up to my home state of Michigan

and was hunting my home national forest, Manistee National Forest, which I think now goes by a different name or it's Huron Manistee. Anyway, it's Manistee National Forest and they're out there with these,

they're out there with their squirrel dogs, which is not a quiet type of dog. I mean, these things make a racket. Yeah. But anyway,

some bow hunter comes peeling down out of his tree, freaking out on him. I'd have called up on that guy for hunter harassment. Yeah.

Yeah. Like he felt that his deer hunting trumped Kevin's squirrel hunting. Which I strongly disagree with. Yeah, to me, it's public land and you take what you get. Yeah, it's like, sorry, bro. The dogs may have as easily run a deer past

the guy or scared a deer. Yeah, and if you don't like it, the thing to do is get organized and try to change the laws, right. Yeah. Or change the seasons or whatever it might be. But the thing is they enjoy, you know, you enjoy both of those guys. So squirrel hunters more so than deer hunters, but you already enjoy a very long season.

Yeah. So to, you know, if you whitt a very long season. Yeah. So to, you know, if you whittled it down and we're like, okay, we're gonna have a week long archery deer season and it'll, we'll make it real quiet in the woods. I think that your average bull hunter would be like, you know what?

I'll stick with the six or eight weeks that I have understanding that there's going to be some other activities going on out here. Cause a lot of States will come in and shut down small game for the firearm season. Or like a day before. There's something like that in Wisconsin. Wisconsin. Not anymore.

There's not anymore. You can hunt. Yeah, remember? We've talked about this when we were going to hunt with Brittany and Helen. We wanted to hunt squirrels first. I thought you can't go shooting off guns the day before deer season starts. They changed it. They changed it. Yeah, it was the day before deer season we squirrel hunted with Brittany and Helen.

So they just changed it. Yeah, it's pretty recent. That you couldn't go shooting off firearms. It was more of a, oh, you don't want to disturb the woods. Oh, let's not go in there. And then the next morning, my nephew goes out there and shoots a big buck right where you guys were shooting squirrels. Because you know what it does?

It sets the deer at ease. Well, the deer like you said dude i was freaking out then i realized they're just hunting squirrels i'm going tricked that's where i'm gonna go yeah um i i so that woman was uh which woman the woman in the canoe in canoe. She was cited for hunter harassment. And baiting. And baiting. We don't know about that. Because she should have been cited for baiting also, right? Yeah.

But she wasn't baiting to hunt, so then you get into this tricky thing. Oh, yeah. Like feeding the wildlife in your backyard. That's the whole thing in Wisconsin about, oh, this isn't baiting. This is I'm feeding wildlife. I'm not hunting. Right. And in some states, you can't do that. In Montana, you can't feed wildlife at all. So that's how i don't know seems like a good rule to me yeah you

know a guy recently wrote in to say to ask how many people we would all like at our funeral meaning if you were to die and then look down from the heavens what would if you look down what would you feel would be the right number? For me, it'd be like- Or up at the bottoms of their boots, depending. Yep. Depending on how you had a point, guys. Back to the Grateful Dead show.

Yeah. Looking up from hell, how many people would you like to see there? But the reason that I'm thinking about that now is I had wanted, I haven't codified, I haven't written this down, but I know where I want my carcass dumped. I don't want to be cremated or buried.

I want to be surface dispersed. In, it's a piece of public land. And I know the exact spot and I've explained it to my wife. I want to be surface dumped there in order to be ravaged by wild beasts. Yeah. And I realized now besides the incredible headache because this is a they're gonna have to whoever does this has to haul my i think they should part it out and game bag it but they got to pack me in four miles and then dump my surface dump my carcass and now i'm

thinking about there's that's probably illegal for a handful of reasons. Definitely illegal. But you know what? Crazy horse. I'm not likening myself to these people in any way. I just know because I've been interested in having my body. I would like my body to be dumped in the woods, in the mountains. So in worrying about the legality of that, I've looked at cases where people have gone and dumped people, buried people. Crazy Horse, after he was killed in Nebraska by Bayonet, they've never found his body.

They took him out of the fort, and he's somewhere buried there. No one knows where. Jammed into a crack in the rocks, perhaps. No one's ever found crazy horses body at Abbey his friends dumped him and they have never divulged I think that the the grizzly bear researcher Doug Peacock was involved in this they've never

divulged where they put his carcass so i would like i really would like to be surface dumped but it's like maybe there is a way around it you know i don't know have you have you looked into it no i'm just gonna like make it clear that that's what i want done and then if the people who are left to do this which i presume to be my children if they're left to do this and they really honestly just do not want to follow their father's dying wishes, I will leave that decision to them. If not, I feel like they're going to have to do it

and they're going to have to face the consequences, however minor they might be. Be like, yes, your honor. We took an old man's carcass out and dumped it in the woods. Yeah. Well, I'm sure a lawyer is crafting the email right now to us to explain how we can get around it, get it done.

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. So, Pat, all 50 states have a no harassing hunter law. Yeah. Hold on, hold on. So, Pat, all 50 states have a no harassing hunter law. Yeah. So, and I know it's extensive. Hold on, hold on. We started that with talking about how many people are going to be at the funeral.

Yeah, we didn't get that. How many people are going to be at your funeral? How many people do you want at your funeral? Well, it's going to have to be at least. Is that your funeral? Enough to carry the body, huh? Yeah, like I don't want, I still want it to be fun. So, 30, 40 pounds per person. It's only going to take four people to carry it imagine some other people are gonna go too if i looked down and saw

10 but see it depends on when i die because like right now i'd expect certain family members to be there but presume me they'll be dead when i die you know so i don't know like i would like if i looked down and saw less than three i'd know there's a real problem because I have three children. Right. So less than three would be one that my life was destroyed by the loss of one of my children, at which point I don't care what happens to me after I die. And then 10, 11, I'd feel like there's some people down there who probably

shouldn't be there. They're just going because they want to see this all play out. I was going to volunteer. I'd say, you know, I'd be happy to take 30 or 40 pounds of you and drop you somewhere. You'll be so dead by then. I was going to say, you're going to have to, we're going to have to work on the timing a little bit. This is coming from a man who pulled out his hearing aids and laid them on a table. Yeah. And unfortunately, I can't have the bullshit filters on now. And I'd volunteer too, Steve, but I'm older than Doug. Yeah.

No, I would like to think you guys would be long dead. Doug, are you going to be buried at your farm? You know, we've talked about that a bunch. We're trying to figure it out. We drove past it. Making a family plot? Well, we have a big old family plot up where I went to church. And that cemetery, my family was a part of the establishment of that church and everything.

And that's where all my brothers buried there. My dad's buried there. My grandparents. I mean, you go out there and you can't swing a cat in that cemetery without hitting a Duren tombstone. So. You can't swing a cat around there without hitting a Duren.

Well, that's, that's true. Damn road down the road is named Duren Road. Yeah. I put some of my dad's ashes under his favorite deer stand on the farm. Yeah. I remember that. And did you put anything in the family plot?

Yeah. You didn't like cremate part of them and bury part of them. No, it was all cremated. So there's a little urn in the family plot and then, and up there. So those are the two places because, you know, the Pope said, we don't want people scattering ashes all around the country. Keep your, keep your pile together as close as it can be. And I figured that was close enough.

Yeah. My sister-in-law, on her ranch, they have, I guess, what passes as a cemetery. Yeah. Or a cemetery to them. Yeah. I've seen it. Yeah. Her and my brother got married.

It's like you could look off and there's a there it is rock pile or whatever over there where grandfather and mr potter get married right on top of the bones of your ancestors on your own land yeah that's nice um and now she's got grizzlies on her place so I might just be able to do my whole body dump you'd be gone tomorrow did he have any other context with the question or that was it he just wanted to know

how many people we'd like to have he just wanted to know what you would think of as good enough what's your answer yeah I never really thought about it. I guess that's the thing. It's all about the timing. Because you hope now, if it happened, that, yeah, there could be a thousand people there.

Okay, no, no. I'm just saying. Whatever. Some great amount of, you know, friends and peers and whatever. That you've had that kind of reach that so many people would like to come and, you know, support you. But yeah, when you're, you know, my recently deceased grandmother's age, it's like you don't, she didn't have any peers. She outlived everybody. Yeah. So, you know, we had quite, you know, we had almost 40 people there though, which was like, I didn't

expect it, you know, but you forget how many, i think little tentacles you know people have out there and how many you know close associations you have you know it's funny bringing it up because the the you know my father i've as i've talked about many times my father fought in world war ii so he had me when he was 50 years old and i was raised around retired as a a kid, I was brought up around retired or semi-retired World War II vets to a large degree. Many of my dad's best friends were that way and they just fished. That whole circle, there's only this one left

who lives down the beach from my mom. And I think about that guy often like last man standing, like all of that guy's friends that he spent his entire adult life with have just been whittled away. And he was a, he was a pilot in World War II. And it's like his, it's like when that guy wakes up and goes to call his buddies, ain't no one to call, man. He just ran out of them, you know, over the last 10, 15 years.

Well, he's got younger buddies now. Yeah, but like the main, you know, the main people that I watched him spend decades with, they're just gone. But what's fun about, not fun, but what's, I think, fascinating about wakes and funerals, though, is their colleagues are gone.

Their siblings are gone in many cases. Like my dad died. And yet you see all the people who they touched that you never had any idea how they touched them. They show up at the wake and you think, oh, dad did okay. Yeah. Now, that's fascinating because that is, I mean, you had some awareness of it, but until you, until they die and you hold awake, you don't know what the hell your parents, what all they worked

their magic outside the family. It was kind of a cool process to see. So Yanni, what's your final number? Let's say you died right now. You just fell over dead right now because your heart problem. Would you want it to be problem would you want to be just like me and your wife or just me or a hundred you know a hundred latvians i think i'd be probably pretty happy if just my family was there and i would feel gracious if there was 100 of my friends, I guess.

So big numbers. Yeah. So you'd want to look up from hell and see 200 boots. Everybody having a big party? 200 boots belonging to 100 people. Yeah, sure. Oh, I want it to be so somber when I die, man. I don't, like, this celebration of life, nuh-uh.

It's going to be just, I want it to be sad. I want the ground to be wet with tears, man. Well, don't I get to say how I want to go? Please. No, I do want to hear. Would you like to hear how many you'd like to have? I'd say it'd be cremated or my big wish, but it'll never happen. I've always liked the idea that they did in the Navy in World War II,

they get a big sack, throw your body in there, throw a couple of big empty shell cases in, these big brass shell cases off the side you go. That's how Osama bin Laden was buried. Yeah, basically. I always thought that's kind of a cool way. People don't have to come out and weep over a grave site. They know you're out there somewhere, and that's good enough for me.

So that's my… So you'd like to be taken out to sea. Yeah. Another way they used to do it, they'd put you in a sort of flammable boat and set the boat full of like brush and sticks and whatnot, lay your carcass out on it set the boat on fire and push it out kind of vikings huh right do you remember who it was because i feel like that was popularized by some movie it was popularized by dead man no the burning part wasn't in dead man

and in jim jarmusch's film dead man which is probably the greatest western ever made one of the greatest westerns ever made um in the end he puts a what is in fact a live person that he thinks is dead and come back to life puts him in a boat and says it's time for you to go back to where you came from got it wow have you seen jim jarmusch's dead man i guess i haven't i haven't sounds like i the premise. No, don't ruin it for me. Okay. Don't ruin it for me. Never mind.

But how many people? How many people? 25 people who were close. And then if it was a Navy ship, whoever was on deck. And I'd say if it were a tugboat, that'd be fine with me. You know, I need about eight people.

That's fine. If it had a Navy connection, I'd be cool with it. Well, your daughter would be able to pull strings because she's in the Navy. Yeah, that's right. I could, you know, keep her on a while. She'd go to the top brass and be like,

hey, here's the deal. See that bag over there? We need to take a little ride. I need a boat ride. Oh, I've never thought of this. The only thing that I've ever thought about was that whole thing about leading your life and writing your own obituary

and then leading your life accordingly. That's not something I've thought about a lot. But I did want to say about my dad, it was he and another guy, Pete Melford in casanova the last two world war ii vets and neither one of those guys wanted to give up it was like a grudge match between the two of them how long they were going to live and stuff yeah pete outlived dad but uh and that that was interesting because my father was like pats of you know pillar of the community and how many people came through. And, uh,

yeah, you really do see how, um, your, the tentacles, the influence that he'd had over people in the community. And, um,

I guess that's the kind of thing that, uh, that's really gratifying. But, you know, personally, I never thought about it. Probably won't.

I'll just be dead yeah that's the other thing i think about all the time it's like who cares i'm just dead dead anyway yeah because but the thing is death planning big business well yeah but it's like it's you do it you make your wishes alive because you're just saying what in life I like the idea of. So the execution of it, the fact that people feel beholden to carry out your wishes really says something because there's no ramification. You can't get pissed at them. Boy, I'm sure my father would have come back and kicked my ass somehow.

I wouldn't have done what he wanted me to do. Yeah. The heavens are hells. Or whatever. Yeah. The microbial form that you wind up taking. So, Pat, 50 states have anti- Is it covered by fishing, too?

I know trapping. Is fishing protected? I don't know if it is. I haven't seen anything specific know trapping. Is fishing protected? I don't know if it is. I haven't seen anything specific. You always hear hunter-harassment. So it's basically hunting and trapping, I think. Because those are the ones that... Who harasses a fisherman?

Other fishermen. Yeah. I've been harassed by other fishermen. And I've been harassed by people who own the land where I might happen to be fishing without permission at times but that's more that's different yeah but it's good to know so anyone who's listening if they ever have someone come out and harass them while hunting yeah pick up your phone or go do go to a phone and call and get the person in trouble yeah and the one that, the case you see quite often these days

is on public lands too, where a guy has a tree stand up and comes back a couple of days later and this tree stands laying in the ground or it's been damaged in some way and realizes, well, he inadvertently moved down to some other guy's turf who thinks he's entitled to that spot.

He's been hunting the spot for over a long, or what happens in Wisconsin a lot is the damn bait piles. These guys start maintaining a bait pile. They start thinking that's their bait pile, their property, and then they defend it. And so you have these wardens have to go in there and separate these guys and say, this isn't your land. He has every right to be here. And so you have those kinds of disputes. Wisconsin's got an interesting one going on going on right now they passed a law last year to um prevent animal rights activists from even filming and videotaping recording images repeat it lost something like

repeatedly and i personally think that one's going to get shot down in courts because I don't know how you can prevent someone like me, a journalist, from taking a picture of guys down the road, like let's say bear hunters getting their dogs raided to go. That's what's happening was this came up because a case came up where some animal rights activists were up in northern Wisconsin monitoring the bear hunters, the wolf hunters, the guys with the hounds, didn't like the hounds up there chasing bears and wolves.

I can't think of it. I think it's mainly worrying about wolf hunting, though. And so they got some lawmaker to write a bill saying you can't write a law, and it's actually in law now, that you can't repeatedly stand there like on a road and videotape these guys down the road doing their business.

That seems like a stretch. Yeah, that's a stretch. You're out in public doing a public activity. Yeah, you can't go into some guy's property and do that. You couldn't do that anyway. That'd be trespassing. And if you followed them through the woods, it could be harassment. Right.

But just to stand there on the road or shoot down an old logging road, that kind of thing, I think that gets in the First Amendment stuff. I don't know how that will ever stand the test of time in courts. But yeah, that's, you talk to almost anyone up in the public lines up north right now, almost everyone has some kind of story like that where they left a tree stand out or they have a bait pile, their buddy had a bait pile. There's always all those kind of stories. It's common now.

But like fratricide, hunter on hunter. Hunter on hunter, yeah. And then the one I mentioned earlier, the backyard situations are becoming more common because you have more suburban hunting. Washington, one of the suburbs of our nation's capital, these Northern Virginia neighborhoods, there's a pretty good case where the Archery Trade Association, which I do a lot of work with, actually got involved and provided an attorney to fight it because one of these neighborhood associations

was trying to prevent a guy, trying to prevent a bull hunting group. They had these cool bull hunting groups in these big urban areas that go out and shoot deer in people's yards to basically try to knock the herd down. And this one guy, one group that was doing that a lot, they were getting harassed and being told and actually legally not, you can't hunt this neighborhood. Our association has what they call covenants to prevent that. Well, the Archery Trade Association took it on, got their lawyer involved, and they got it stricken down

because it just violates... Homeowners associations cannot dictate hunting rules. That's the state's province. Unless they own the land. Unless they own the land. Yeah, but they're dictating it. It reminds me of an old joke. They're dictating it to reminds me of an old joke they're dictating it to

they're dictating it to other landowners right and you can't do that yeah yeah so that's that's why they look at yeah because the state the state is jealous of it all states are protective of its right to manage hunting and and from the the big point of view is that, well, they're representing us. You know, the state wildlife agency, they represent us. And so they're looking out for our rights by fighting it. So that's where these cases are gone. It's no longer the animal rights people typically creating the problems. It's hunters and neighbors, that kind of thing. Just to be clear, because I happen to have very personal,

what do I want to say? Covenant expertise. Well, yeah, but I got some skin in this game. Because my supposed HOA, which, you know, it came in perpetuity with the property, right? So we never signed anything. There's never been a meeting. We don't pay any dues.

There's maybe 20 rules, you know, there that we're supposed to follow. And one of them is no hunting with firearms. Only you can hunt with a bow. It doesn't say you can't shoot firearms, but you can't hunt with firearms. And you're saying that they cannot enforce that. I bet you if you were to challenge it, they'd have a hard time defending it. Because that's really a state, that's a state

issue. They can't be dictating that. But, you know, cities can pass ordinance, so if it's a safety situation, they can provide, they can do that. Yeah, no firearms in the village, no firearms in the city, no. So it's a matter, it seems like if it's a neighborhood association and there's like common ground in the middle of it, you know, and the houses are all around it, that if they own that as a group or that was a part of that development or whatever, they, I don't know.

See, yeah. I just got real bored all of a sudden. Yeah, me too. By mixing the hunting into it, I think it complicates the situation. Right. What I'd like to see, what's starting to concern me is when the agencies that will run like a bear hunt, but they'll have a mandatory check station. So Florida did this in their ill-fated bear hunt. New Jersey

in their soon-to-be ill-fated bear hunt. They actually elected a governor who ran on a anti-bear hunting, had an anti-bear hunting plank in his platform. It's just, we got an email from a guy

who started hunting. i don't it's just we got an email from a guy who uh started hunting and then got uh started hunting got divorced and now his ex-wife goes down to join the bear hunting protesters so he said his life's become a real joke real joke in his circle of friends. But they have these check stations and they make an actual protest area at the check station so that people can come down and harass hunters who are legally obligated to go to that specific

check station rather than to be able to go to a facility like, normally when you go to go to, you know, a facility. Like normally when you go to check something, you go to the Fish and Game office, right? You go in, you go into an enclosed area or whatever and do a check thing. So they got to like set off like a protest zone so people can heckle and harass people who are fulfilling, one, they're legally allowed to hunt. They're fulfilling their legal obligation to check the thing,

but they've got to do so against the backdrop of a bunch of yahoos. Well, you can't prevent people from protesting as long as they're not physically doing something to the people. Yeah, at a turkey check station,

I'm guessing no one shows up. When you have a turkey check station, you probably don't need to have an area for people. Oh, and I see. At that point, it's not really harassment because they're not affecting the hunt. Right. Yeah. I don't like it. In this world, there are things where you're like, that's why I would like to be an absolute dictator.

Because then I wouldn't have to worry about the legality. Just certain rules I wanted to have. I didn't have to worry about the legality. I could just certain rules I wanted to have. I didn't have to worry about why, like how to justify them. I'd be like, oh, in addition to all that, I don't want this to happen either.

And I don't, I can't explain why I just don't like it. I just don't like it. I can't. And I don't want, I don't care what you think. Watch this segue. Okay.

Speaking of Hunter harassment, speaking of Hunter harassment speaking of hunter harassment pat durkin i think that if that's that blue laws are a form of hunter harassment can you explain a blue law i just sprang this on pat okay um i'll right away start with an apology that i'm not from a state that has ever had blue laws i I think you should brag about that. Yeah. I think you should apologize about that. I apologize for saying I'm not the most versed in this topic, so I'm sure someone will correct me on this.

But I do remember I have some experience in this because when I was stationed in Virginia back in the 70s, Virginia had a blue law. And I think it's still in effect. And the blue law, basically, from my understanding, was that stores, like big department stores, shopping malls, hunting, you could not go out on Sundays and hunt. You couldn't go out and shop at these big shopping malls. All those stores are shut down.

So you couldn't shop or hunt? You couldn't shop or hunt. You could go fishing though. This has to do with the Sabbath, right? I'm sure it has to do with the Sabbath because the only place I'm aware of, well, actually, I think until recently, I think Manitoba had a no Sunday hunting or Saskatchewan, one of those provinces had it too. So it's not just a Southern thing. It's something that I think by certain religions just didn't think it's proper to be hunting on Sundays. Yeah, like Pennsylvania.

Like our man Brody Henderson, a frequent guest here, wrote a piece on our website. If you go to themeateater.com, you can look up Brody's piece about blue laws, which me and everyone I know feels they should be just categorically repealed across the board. It's just upsetting to me. But that you can fish.

As though to think that God would look down and be mad at a guy solemnly sitting in his tree stand all day. Okay? In quiet contemplation as he awaits the arrival of a deer that he knows will probably not show up. And God would be mad at that guy. But then some dude sitting on the edge of a pond swilling beers and yelling back and forth up and down the bank with his buddies,

fishing all day. And racing down the... It's like... Right? It just doesn't make sense. Well, I think they would probably look back now and look at that as a failure in their part when they made the rule.

It's just that we should have thrown in fishing. Definitely. And watching football. Even playing football on Sundays. I mean, the goal has got to be to get more people through the church doors. Right? Doug?

Doug, did you actually raise your hand? I raised my hand. It helps. It helps to do that in this circle. I don't want to interrupt. I think that the fishing thing is probably because the apostles were all fishermen. I like that. I like that.

Yeah. When told to that great story, cast your nets on the other side of the boat. Remember that Bible story? Yes. That could be. Now, I used to trap on some land, not Amish, but I used to trap on a lot of Mennonite properties. And they keep, I believe they're Mennonites. I believe they kept a Saturday Sabbath,

which was like the original Sabbath. People used to think that, everyone used to think that Saturday was the Sabbath, sundown, like that's how the Jews honor, right? Sundown Friday, sundown Saturday. I used to trap on their land. They wouldn't let you check traps on the Sabbath. They didn't want anybody out running traps because they honored the Sabbath.

They weren't, like, doing weird shortcuts, right? I mean, they were, like, strict by the book. And I would trap fox. So you can't not check your You got to check traps every morning. Early. Earlier the better. I'd have to go pull them all. I'd pull them all on Friday and then reset on Sunday because you can't just leave them out and not run them.

But there I was more indulgent. Because there I was like, you know what? You go so far out of your way to stay true to an understanding of a text, right? That there I feel like I'm like, yeah, I get it. But when people who just like so randomly sort of cherry pick parts that they're like, oh, I agree with that part, that part, nevermind. Then I get a little bit intolerant of it. Yeah, and what's fascinating to me about that,

not hunting on Sundays, I had shipmates who were from Virginia and they're from Southern states that had blue laws. And I'd tell them, well, in Wisconsin, we don't have that. We can hunt all seven days of the week. And aren't you working to repeal this? Why don't you get rid of that? And they looked at me like I was nuts.

That's just unheard of that you would go out and shoot a gun on a Sunday. They didn't like the idea. They'd fight it. Really? Maybe it's the peacefulness of the day. But Brody's point was this. Most guys only can hunt the weekend.

So here you are eliminating your hunting. You're cutting it down by 50%. Right. Oh, yeah. My story, my typical weekend of hunting in Virginia would be to leave the ship on Friday night, drive five hours out to Bath County, Virginia, hunt all day Saturday, shut down Sunday, hunt half the day Monday, then drive back to the ship. And it just used to drive me nuts, giving up that Sunday. I go scouting and stuff, but it's not the same. Now I'm getting ripped off here.

Another piece of this that's not related, but that I'm reminded of, It's something we talked about earlier, which is that a lot of states cut off your hunt day at some time. But I only know that for turkeys. Well, no, because my old man used to talk about this. My old man, in post-war years they would go down to hunt geese and they would hunt geese in places where you could only hunt geese till

i can't remember what it was noon but this is back when there weren't that many canada geese you know like like it wasn't like it wasn't like today where they're trying to like come up with creative ways to inspire people to kill more canada geese. This is back when there weren't that many geese, but you couldn't hunt until noon. And he said those geese would sit on a refuge. And they would, like normally a goose wakes up in the morning and the first thing on his mind, he's going to leave his roost, and they roost on open water, big open water.

He's going to leave his roost and go eat. The law had, those geese had learned to sit on the roost. And they would sit on the roost. And he said, he could be exaggerating, but he said it was like at 12.01. The geese would leave the roost and go feed in the fields. They had picked it up. Wow. Yeah.

But now it's primarily a turkey thing we're hunting california you have to quit hunting turkeys at three in missouri you have to quit hunting turkeys at one i believe i think california was four it was like i felt like it was a very odd time like very late in the day because they almost like they don't want you going in well Well, what do you think of this, Pat? Ours started off, we kind of adopted Missouri's rule. Ours started off with noon. And the explanation we got was that it gave the turkeys a break in the afternoon and made them easier to call the next day.

They had all these different rationales for it. They gobbled more than not being pestered all through the day. And then also the argument that they didn't like, they didn't think, like the idea that people could sit and wait for them to come back to a roosting area and shoot them off, you know,

coming, basically ambush them coming back to roost. But, you know, we had that. Which only worked so well. Yeah. It only worked so well. Because a turkey doesn't have.

I agree. In his life, like, what Doug? You look like you're like, either having a heart attack or like what what i was just gonna go in that whole thing about turkeys not using the same roosts and no listen listen yeah i am i am i am unplug his thing turkeys do like to use the same roost they do not feel married to a roost they'll use it when it suits them but the idea unless you're talking about some extreme desert situation where you

have an oasis that has like a couple sycamores growing in the bottom of it and that's the only way for that son of a bitch to get up off the ground. Then you might kind of have him by the short hairs when it comes to setting up on his roost. Most turkeys, like, they'll roost in the same tree a bunch of nights in a row unless there's a reason not to. Okay. Yeah. I don't want to get unplugged, so I'll agree with you now. But what? I don't understand.

It's totally a workable tactic. I mean, I've killed a handful of birds by going to the roof. But it's not like, okay. Sure. When I was researching my buffalo book, I would read about hide hunters out on the Texas plains who would find an isolated waterhole that was getting used. And when it got dark out, they would build fires and make a lot of ruckus around the waterhole to prevent any animals from approaching during the dark when it was hard to see them

and shoot and work in order to only allow them the opportunity to even think about coming for water during the daylight hours when you could kill them. And they would do it in a way where they knew they had a herd, you know, a technical term, by the short hairs and having identified its sole water source. Right. Okay? That, to act like sitting a roost for turkeys

is somehow where you're sort of like got them and you've backed them into a corner now isn't true. Oh, and now you're getting back to like the law of reasoning right yeah i totally i'm beyond the law reason i'm just saying like i i don't think that that i think that if you gave me the opportunity here's the thing i'm talking turkey strategy if you gave me the opportunity to know what tree he was in, to know where he's roosted up, I would rather know and not do anything about it than to have an idea where he might be coming, probably quietly at night, and try to exploit his coming into that. I would rather just know that he was there and going in the morning anyway. It just isn't fail safe it's

not a fail safe turkey way what doug god i can't even breathe now yeah well let me finish my my um little evolution of wisconsin turkey hunting please so we so we went from noon okay so for up. I lost track of what you were saying. Well, that's okay. So for many years, we had this noon closure. We could hunt from basically dawn till noon. And you feel they borrowed it from some other. They borrowed it from Missouri.

It kind of explained it to us when they were selling us on the whole idea of a turkey season. Well, a decade goes by or so. I can't remember the exact date. Then we started having these discussions about, well, why not extend the season later in the day? We're losing all this opportunity for hunters to go out and hunt these great new birds we have. And so eventually we compromised because Lavas just had to open the whole day.

But we compromised for a number of years, a five o'clock closure, five o'clock you had to shut down. And then that went on and the sky didn't fall. So then we talked about it again. And I can't remember again, Doug, it wasn't that long ago. We finally said, open the whole damn day.

And then also instead of having five days periods, run it all right back to back. And the season opens on Wednesday, goes all the way to Tuesday and stuff because it used to be originally five days. It'd be a Wednesday through Sunday. And then give them a couple days off. And you boys are killing 50,000 turkeys a year.

Yeah. And, yeah, and actually not the population kind of stabilized, found its, you know, found its level. You know, we're shooting less now than we were back in the days when we had, you know, this five day season, I think. Or at least it's not that long ago, wasn't it?

It's so much about turkeys and how smart they are about being hunted, the actual numbers. It's not about how many hours in a day we get to hunt. And to your point about roosting, we've been hunting them now all day until sunset for a number of years, and the population hasn't collapsed. And I've tried that where I've, I saw him come off the roost in the morning, I heard him come off the roost and I go back in there in the

evening and sit down in that area. He either picked me off or whatever, but I never have gotten that opportunity where I could shoot that gobbler coming back through the spring woods. It never happened. Still hasn't. So, I don't know, have you?

Yeah. I mean, we've got roosting areas like where we got the birds this past year. That's traditionally there. Now, again, it's not that tree, but there's a whole sort of, you know, a couple of different points and you're going to be out in there. So there's going to be turkeys there in the afternoon, just like there's going to be deer there in the afternoon because it's just that kind of place.

So, yeah, of course it's not fail safe so i agree with you if what you're going to see if we do wind up having problems with turkeys what you're going to see i think before you see any adjustments in that area you're going to see adjustments in fall seasons sure yeah fall seasons are like when you want to get serious when you go like oh man we got a turkey problem or potential turkey problem that's you're gonna see the trimmings coming from is fall seasons that are hen hunts oh yeah yeah well in montana and one of the i think it's region two for turkeys this spring you can kill two hens i believe there might be one hen in the spring for fall hunts no they No. They added a hen to the spring. So obviously that's saying that they've got some,

and I think it's a place where there's a lot of private land, and they're just overrun with turkeys. They've got too many turkeys. Yeah, and they're really trying to knock back the numbers. A thing to keep in mind in a place like Montana is turkeys aren't native there. Right. So there are a lot of areas in Montana that have turkeys that would not,

because winters are so severe, that have turkeys that would not have turkeys if it wasn't for turkeys being able to exploit cattle operations. Isahunt area and basically the southeast quadrant of the state. And it's a lot of remote areas and turkeys are just by may there's turkeys dispersed everywhere but those turkeys congregate in groupings of hundreds where cattle are being overwintered because they come in and pick grain out of the shit graining operation and if you removed those you would all together lose or like virtually lose

the population so i think in those places because we're always having this conversation people like oh like blank is overpopulated or this species is overpopulated you always have to bring up like well by whose measure like who regards them and oftentimes you'll find that by whose measure winds up being an agricultural interest so yeah if you got a non-native population of birds that are showing up on some guy's farm and 400 of them show up in november and they're going to stick around till april he might be like by my measure yeah since i'm bearing since i'm solely bearing the brunt of this all winter by my measure you boys got to shoot some of these hens

because that's when you start trimming into population. I think our fall turkey season basically just runs now we never get oh yeah it's just never been much interest. I was going to ask you do you have any idea what the numbers

are of turkeys killed in the fall compared to the spring? I bet it's minuscule. I haven't looked. Yeah. The only guy I know that's really into it was a friend of mine from back home from school. He's really into it because he raises turkey dogs. Yeah.

I was going to say that. In the 10th Legion, he talks about this as well. Colonel Tom Kelly discusses this in the 10th Legion, that a fall hunting strategy. Well, I'm not telling you boys this. I'm telling the listeners. How you're generally hunting turkeys, unless you're bushwhacking turkeys.

In the spring, what you're doing is you're exploiting the fact that they're in their breeding cycle, and you are going out and making the sound of a female in order to lure in the male where it gets hard is in turkey land how things generally work with turkeys is that the male gobbles and does his deal and struts and displays and females come to the male what you're trying to do is be so enticing that you kind of undo that and cause the male to come to the female you're trying to like generate some frustration on his part and he's like what is her problem as will primo says i'm gonna go show her just how pretty i am and he comes in and you kill kill him. In the fall, you're not doing that because the hens don't care about,

you're not going to draw in gobblers by making hens sound. They don't care. They're not breeding them. So the trick is to disperse a flock because then they need to locate each other. But a human isn't fast enough to disperse a flock. Like a human, generally,

if you go tearing after a flock of turkeys, they're so fast and wary that way before you get there, they're just going to run off as a group and not lose track of each other. But a dog is low to the ground and stealthy and so fast that he can get in amongst the flock and spook the shit out of them and send them going off in all manner of directions at which point you set up and start doing like a basically a herding call that the hens make as they're trying to regroup and they're just out there going and other little noises and they come back together and you, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, and other little noises. And they come back together, and you call them in and take a poke at them. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all we got lucky once and shot two gobblers out of a flock

that we had basically kind of called in, but also we were just in the right spot where the flock was moving down a ridge towards us. And the shooting of the two birds dispersed the flock. And then we're sitting around, you know, Jack, John and high-fiving and all excited. And then the same thing happened. So we had dispersed the flock

and all of a sudden you can hear hens on both sides calling. What were they doing? It was everything. It was had dispersed the flock and all of a sudden you can hear hens on both sides calling. What were they doing? It was everything. It was kind of the cacophony. Now, I got a buddy who used to, when he kicked up a group of huns,

he wouldn't shoot. If he kicked up a group of huns, he would kind of like look because the huns will split. You know, they're like one in this direction, three in that direction,

two in that direction. He would kind of look at like after they all landed, he'd sort of pick like what would be the middle and go in and just with his mouth make a hun noise and pull huns back into him. Just for funsies, but also as hunting. Same thing. What I'm getting at is this guy likes to fall turkey hunt because he likes those damn

dogs yeah raises breeds and sells the dog whose specialty is busting up turkeys there's a guy over in east central wisconsin that does the turkey dogs and he gets his dogs from um someplace virginia i guess there's there's, I think one of the fun things about people with hunting dogs is just how into it they get. And this guy drives all the way to Virginia to get that one breed of dog, which I forget the breed now

because I'm not a dog person. A turkey busting dog. Yeah, turkey busting dog. And he's, John Freeze is his name. F-R-E-I-S, I think. And he's such a, he loves that sport so much that he'll actually take anyone that calls him along. A guy wrote to me the other day,

said he looked up this guy after reading my article, called him up, found his name in the phone book or whatever. And John invited him up from Chicago, I think. Took him hunting, showed him a good time. And of course, the day I went, I was sick. Did he shoot some hens? I think he got one. I think he got one, yeah.

But yeah, hens are legal game, so. Yeah. No, yeah, I want to clarify. I do not have any problem whatsoever with fall turkey hunting. So long as you have a good stable population of birds that hunters agree is a good stable population of birds that hunters agree is a good stable population of birds. But in hunting,

sort of traditional use patterns are very important in management and very important in how we make our laws. And I, if it had to come down and we had to pick spring or fall, I'm always going to go with spring. Because turkey hunting, they don't call it spring thunder. It's spring thunder, right?

They don't call that for no reason. It's not fall thunder. It's spring thunder. Turkeys. And I just feel like if someone's going to have to get trimmed out, if in fact, if we do see lowering turkey numbers and someone's got to get trimmed out, I'm sorry, but I'm going to vote for it being the other guy.

Yeah, my guess would be that you won't see that happening as long as our hunting seasons are dominated by deer hunters. The fall hunt for deer hunting and bull hunting is always going to be so popular that interest in turkey hunting is always going to be secondary. Plus you have waterfowl going on. So I just don't, I don't think we've ever seen any evidence in Wisconsin anyway, in most states I'm aware of, that has any problem with fall turkey hunting being a detriment to the population. It's just irrelevant, basically. Good recreation.

Like the take isn't substantial. No, no. It's almost like it's coincidental to other kind of hunting. Incidental. Incident, well, okay. It's like Tyson sitting in a tree with a 410 shooting squirrels with his bow. It's the same kind of thing. I don't understand.

He deer hunts with a 410. He shoots squirrels with his 410 while bow hunting for deer yeah and has actually killed deer that way good for him so and he's always saying i'm gonna see if i can get a turkey that way too so i kind of killed a turkey off his land i think that was ours i was on the farm? It was right on the fence line there. But that's where he actually did, where he actually shot squirrels and then shot a buck. I didn't know he was a squirrel hunter. Yeah, well, not Kevin Murphy level.

He doesn't go to work with the tails hanging off his jacket and whatnot. In the fall of 2016, in the state of Wisconsin, the turkey hunters killed almost 5,000 turkeys. How many did they kill in the spring? 50? Yeah, roughly. They killed 5,000 in the fall. Does it say the hen time breakdown?

That was just the abstract. I just breezed through, so I didn't get down to the numbers. Pat, I see you're running a Green Bay Packers turtleneck That was just the abstract I just breezed through, so I didn't get down to the numbers. It probably does. Pat, I see you're running a Green Bay Packers turtleneck under your shirt. For your benefit. Can I make a quick correction, though? I was wrong about the female hen harvest in Montana in the spring.

It was all. They increased the numbers dramatically. It's like four, but it's all fall. So there's no hen harvest in the spring. Good. Because come on. Yeah. Come on.

A buddy of mine, Tommy Edson. You know, he's a little bit baffled by, no, but he likes sports. He likes college sports. He doesn't like pro sport, but in Washington State, they just did the fishing regs. I can't remember if it was the hunting regs or the fishing regs, but they did it in the Seahawks colors. He texts the cover to me and he's like,

it's nothing sacred. Pat Durkin. You want to hear the breakdown real quick I was just going to close her out but go ahead it's roughly 50-50 fall yeah for fall 50-50 females to males

huh an adult female surprisingly made up 35% of the total harvest juvenile hens 18, Gobblers, 35. Jakes, 12. Yeah. So it's really incidental.

Pat, so you're running a Green Bay Packers notebook. I get that too. Yeah. If you had to pick, if you had to pick and someone said, you can hunt the rest of your life or watch the Packers the rest of your life,

what should you pick? Hunting. That ain't close. Good. Yeah. Good. I actually missed quite a few games in the fall. Why don't you have a hunting turtleneck?

Johnny hasn't given me one. one of my comments on, on the Packers, Steve, please, this will be, this is going to count as your concluding thought. Oh, forget that then.

I came up with a concluding thought. I got it. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give you mine. Okay. So now you have two concluding thoughts. Okay. I've,

I've told my kids, I've told my wife, I've told close friends, getting back to your whole stuff about funerals. This is the Packers part? This is the Packers stuff. Okay. If the day, when the day comes that I die, if I haven't done it. If?

And it will, and it will. I mean, and they're the ones that have to take care of me. I guess I should say. When that day comes and they come to write my obituary, if I haven't done enough in my life to fill that obituary with substantial stuff, if they write in there, he was a diehard Packer fan, I'll be pissed. Because I'll think that's what I accomplished in life is anyone can be a Packer fan. So you want to live a life so full that when one fills up X column inches of space, they do not have to get down to that part of it.

There won't be no filling of this. It'll be like, and the next thing he'll say is, he had two cats. He survived by his fluffy and mittens. Survived by two cats. And everybody will know. They were going to write he was a diehard Packers fan. When I see that in people's obituaries, I always feel like,

God, that's the best you can come up with for your good old dad. He was a Packer fan. He was a Badger fan. Come on. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm tracking. So that was the one concluding thought.

That's my instructions to my kids. That's the one I gave you. Now give me your one. The one I wanted, I actually did thought of this last week. I was down at the Southeast deer study group meeting. It's down, it was in Nashville this year.

And I thought of you guys. They only study deer of the Southeast or it's like in the Southeast? It's held in the Southeast. And most of the research they do is from the Southeastern universities and Southeastern operations that have like hunting clubs on the property.

And they actually do some research on it. And typically what it is, it's agency people, agency researchers. That could be agencies from the federal government, state government. Then also the university and their graduate students and their doctoral students come in and get their research on deer. That sounds pretty good. To me, that was my 28th straight year of going to it. Come on, you've gone for 28 years?

Yeah, I started in 1991 going to this. I'll point out that Pat has more stuffed deer in his house than he's gone to that convention. I didn't know in this past, but for an elk anyway. So one of the things that must sting a lot in the Southeast though, because it's a growing population still is I'll say the word two different ways.

You know, coyote, the way I pronounce it and coyotes, the way Doug and you guys pronounce it. Coyote. Coyote. No, I call them coyotes. Yeah. If you really hate them, and then I don't hate them, but guys that do hate them, no i call them coyotes yeah and if you really hate them and then i don't hate them but guys that do hate them i find call them coyotes well the um the first thing

i thought about you guys because most of those i noticed most of the university researchers pronounce it coyote oh come on i'm not kidding you i'm not kidding you well you know the you know the ranella maxim on this this. Right, right. Yeah. Anyone who's killed one says coyote. Exactly. And so I thought, well, there goes Steve's theory because these guys, a lot of them are trappers and they do a lot of research. And they still say coyote.

Coyote, yeah. I'll never switch. You don't have to, Steve. But continue, I'm messing your story up. So there you are, the 28th year you've gone down. Okay, so one of the takeaways, one of the coolest papers i thought they presented was on was on coyotes and this guy named john kilgo he's a researcher from south carolina he you guys know that the typical theory on coyote um why they can repopulate so quickly that the more you hammer them the more

they they pop up so this is based on research from the West. Basically, the researchers looked at coyotes out West and said, the more you shoot these things, the more they bounce back. So it's a futile, a fool's errand to try to wipe out coyotes.

Can I add something there? I hear this all the time. I don't have a hard time like that's easy to imagine i think it's i think it's from what i've looked at it's like sure that's true if that was the case then i would think that really pro coyote people would want hunters to hammer coyotes because it would make more coyotes. I like that argument. Yeah. But they don't.

They don't. They use it as a way to say, I like coyotes. I want more coyotes. You shouldn't shoot coyotes because shooting coyotes makes more coyotes. Right. And you wind up in this weird sort of rhetorical land. Yeah. Go ahead.

You made that point in one of your podcasts a while back. Oh, really? Yeah. No, it's a point worth repeating because I think it's a great point. But what was fascinating about John Kilgore's research, I thought, was that, so that's the common thought that based on Western research, that the more coyotes you shoot, the more they'll generate. They have a mechanism that somehow they trigger this. Compensatory, what do they call it? Compensatory mortality, whatever.

Anyway, John's group went out in like over a two or three year period, trapped 235 coyotes, started checking to see, is there evidence of boosting the population through reproduction? What they found was that no, there's no compensatory reproduction taking place here.

What's happening is the more you whack this one area, the more they come flooding in from the exterior areas. So unless you can have this huge geographic area where you're just hammering the hell out of these coyotes, they just keep coming back. And so his concluding thought was, it's futile, we've got to learn to live of these coyotes, they just keep coming back. And so his concluding thought was, it's futile. We've got to learn to live with these coyotes.

Yeah, they'll perhaps adjust deer quotas at some point, but you're not going to ever slow down this animal. They're going to keep coming back, bouncing back. So they didn't find the compensatory thing that they had out west. But here's the thing, though. Not the thing, but a thing to consider, and I think that reflects that research. We discussed this before.

There's an area in Colorado where they're not seeing good recruitment on mule deer. And they're worried about an isolated mule deer herd in Colorado. And what they're trying to do is slow down the predation loss of fawns. So in the old days, you might have gone in and tried to try was instead of doing it that way, where you're like removing predators in October, say in hopes of having a good fawn crop in May, is that you would try to do it in a very targeted way. That was removing the predator load. However,

temporarily removing the predator load at a precise moment when you want it down. Because of that thing you're saying. You do all the work in October. Like, oh yeah, we killed four lions out of this basin. We're hoping to see a bunch of fawn recruitment. But in that time, it's just been backfilled. Yeah.

So to try to work in and go like, to come in and do it commensurate, or not, you know, at the same time in order to try to alleviate the predator load. That's interesting. Isn't that taking that idea of like you were explaining when we were in Alaska about how caribou all drop their fawns or their calves, I mean, in a short period of time to sort of overload the predators. Yeah, predator swamping. Yeah. Thinking that if you were to trickle it out over two months, you're going to lose them all.

But if they all hit the ground on the same day and they're vulnerable for how many ever hours or days afterward, you're going to have some survival. Yeah. And typically, it makes sense what you're talking about because the other thing the researchers always show is that basically those fawns make it two or three months they're not a point where they can outrun you know the different predators and you know have a decent chance of surviving it's that first couple weeks they really get hammered by you know

whether it's bears or coyotes whatever's in the area that's a big predator but you know then there's areas like in Wisconsin and most of the northeastern part of the country where we've had these two animals, coyotes and white tails, living side by side for at least in modern era, at least a century now, and they're just really not having much impact on them. Yeah.

I agree with the assessment that you're going to have to, I mean, coyotes are expanding their range. More people are going to have to live with them. And what it would take to get rid of them is things that we've tried in the past without great effect, but with tremendous unintended consequences which is that you'd go back into playing the poison game

which is devastating to so many species that I think he's right but I don't think that I don't think that someone would look at all that and think that using predator control,

having that be part of your toolkit, and using research to learn how to use it more effectively, I think that it's going to remain a good management tool as long as it stays socially acceptable. I would be very disappointed if we at some point decided that it wasn't something we're going to use because at times it can be very effective in recovering and stabilizing populations.

Yeah, and the thing that I always find fascinating when I work on this kind of stuff is the guys who will have a coyote contest, which can be controversial. Yeah. And the justification they'll quick jump to is we rock these coyotes so that the deer have a chance to live around this area. And you might as well just worry about how many coyotes are being killed on the highway then, because that's just most nothing. So let's just, I guess my point is, let's argue these things on the fact that you're having fun, you're not harming anything.

Except for the coyotes. Well. Well, yeah, but you're oversimplifying. But the pelts too are worthwhile. I don't see why you have to apologize for killing a fur bearer and taking the pelt. But the thing is, you can go look at what they can do with caribou herds

by doing wolf work in Alaska. It's not like, there are times when it's really effective. I agree. Go read up on the history of the 40 mile herd. Yeah. Well, no one's saying that predators don't have an impact. I've never tried to make that claim, but I guess I'm saying the case in coyote, it's hard to say that they're really, that they are causing problems in some areas, but what can you actually do to stop it? You know, you're not going to stop that coyote. Eventually they'll probably find a way around that one too. Yeah.

So that's all I'm saying. Huh. Doug? I noticed that we both said coyote rather than coyote well just because you know you want to well he kept saying coyote so it's in my head i i i quit hunting well i've never hunted him it was incidental shooting the occasional coyote coyote um but uh and now i'm welcoming them as a part of the uh the herd control the durian landscape well yeah it's i mean they're just out there trying to make a living too it's really interesting to me out walking around in the wintertime when you can follow and and watch how they sort of hunt they're real good moochers they have a real their pattern like three or you know a group of them and you watch their their trails and it's like they're hunting the same way they're either learning from me or i'm learning from them yeah i haven't figured out

which one yet many many many years ago we did a mooch and uh we mooched two coyotes past me yep uh yeah i don't have i don't have like When I see one, I don't... When I see one, I have no thought in my head about taking a poke at it. It's not that tasty. No. The last one I killed, we ate. It just wasn't worth it to me.

And I sold some when I was younger. And fur prices were better. Sold them to the taxidermy trade. This was before they exploded in numbers. And now, yeah, when I see one, it's just like not even like a – there's no part of me that's like, oh, man, I want to get that thing. Yeah, I'm fascinated by guys that do it. Or just very personally. it just doesn't click.

I'll actually watch segments of shows once in a while where they're hunting coyote out west or someplace. I stumbled onto a hunt recently near Lodi where guys were out in their trucks with their hounds and getting ready to do a hunt. If I hadn't been so pressed for time, I would have stopped and tagged along because I think it's kind of a fascinating process.

Oh yeah, that is for sure. But it's like the same thing. I don't watch the Packers, but I don't think that it's bad to watch the Packers. I just have no desire to watch the Packers. I think you made it clear over the years that you guys have no interest in that. Yeah.

I'm not like making a statement about the morality of Packer watching. Right. Jan, you got any concluders? I didn't know it was that time already. You ready to be done, huh? Got no other topics for me? No, I feel like I just have that feeling. Well, we have this fellow, as my concluding thought,

I'm going to, Greg W. wrote in to say that, speaking of the meat tree episode, that what really stood out to him was everyone's perception of the event in hindsight. And he was surprised to hear me say that. him was everyone's perception of the event in hindsight. And he was surprised to hear me say that I felt a little guilty and regretful towards the experience, which that's not how I

would have described my reaction to it. You're not even talking about the bear attack incident. Yeah, the bear attack. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to episodes 86 and 87, titled The Meat Tree, Part 1 and 2 uh and steve you felt uh grateful for the newfound wisdom and uh i just want to you know follow up to him and say that i do feel

grateful for that wisdom you know that we obviously i'm gonna my uh tactics now going into bear country are much better educated, you know, and what we're going to do when we're out there. Right. Yeah. But I think that he was saying, what he was saying is that you felt like a level of responsibility and felt

that if something bad had happened, it would have been in some ways on your shoulders. Yeah. Well, there was that. And I still feel that way, but I think he was maybe talking, talking about how at the end you and Garrettary were like glad that happened yeah that was awesome

and i was kind of like yeah i could maybe do without it you know okay yeah and he wants to know if you've changed yeah he wanted to know if i if my feelings had changed about it okay so if you could snap a wave a magic wand and have it had not happened, would you wave the wand? Probably not now. You wouldn't. Again, there is value in the experience, right? But at the time I just felt like it was so intense and it could have gone so awry that that was making me make the call of like,

you know what, I would just rather it had not had happened. You know, thinking that maybe, but if it's all going to play out the same way and we all walk out of there and get to just talk about it then sure why not have a good story yeah now dirt myth had been carried off and killed yes and you said would you wave the magic wand of course i'd be like i'll wave it i'll wave bro dirt but dirt was uh when a of weeks before when we were up there, he had the encounter with that grizzly sow who came down over the hill and he was brushing his teeth.

Yeah. And when we were sitting around talking about it later, he goes, well, I think it'd be kind of cool if I could get a scar from a grizzly bear. Careful what you wish for. Dude, we're magnets for him, man. Just lurking around. So you would not wave the magic wand.

Do you feel like our luck is running thinner now? I think it got thick now. You think it got thick? I think that that made it. I think it was getting thin, thin, thin, thin, thin. And then that happened

and now it's gotten thick, thick, thick, thick, thick. Like let's say you were all of a sudden in a plane wreck. Right? All of a sudden in a small plane. The plane crashes and we all walk away. What are the odds?

I wouldn't think that we're going to be in another plane crash. Right. And the book Dispatch is by Michael Hare, which is his, he covered the, he was a journalist that covered the Vietnam War and then came home and wrote a book about Vietnam called Dispatches. And he meets a kid in the book. He meets a kid from Miles City. And every day, or not every day, but whenever he gets a list of fatalities in the book. He meets a kid from Miles City. And every day, or not every day,

but whenever he gets a list of fatalities in the military publication, he's always looking in there hoping to see someone from Miles City on the list. And Michael Hare goes, why do you want to see someone from Miles City on the list? He goes, because what are the chances two guys from Miles City are going to get killed in this war?

So I feel like that. If we're in a plane crash, I'd be like, well, I'm glad everyone lived because that was our crash. We're not going to have another crash. And you feel that way that we've had our very, very close real bear charge.

I think things were going in that direction. I feel like things were going in that direction and now they went in that direction and now they went in that direction and now they will walk away i don't think that we're still on the slope i think that that was the valley floor i don't know why that's just my feeling i feel like it was this sounds like something you or your old man would say but i feel like that was the valley floor from which we will now climb out right partially because our again our tactics and our and the way we go about in that country might change no it's more it's not it's not based on logic it's based on just the way it felt because other things other

encounters i feel like it didn't other encounters I feel like there were unspoken words between us and the bear. Or like, you know, but this felt like just hitting the valley floor. It felt like, okay, that's where that was headed. Now, I expect quietness. Based on nothing. Based on nothing. Based on nothing. What brought that up is I was reading that story about the Arctic explorer, Worsley, that I was telling you about.

Antarctic explorer. Antarctic, sorry. And he was saying that every time they dropped a foot into a crevasse, which sometimes can be a couple inches a foot wide and that same depth, or it can be, you know, giant multiples of that, right? And it can be your death down there. But that every time you punch a foot through, you're just like, man, you know,

you're just getting closer and closer and closer and your luck is just getting thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner. Yeah, I like that. But let's say you fell into one and caught yourself and climbed out. Would you feel like... Okay, yeah. Like now what are the chances of falling into a big one again?

Pretty high. But you're saying it might be less. It just depends on perception. Yeah, I hear you. This can't be measured. Aren't you afraid by even voicing this idea that you bottomed out and going back up that you're

tempting fate? No. No, only because bears don't listen. They're not listening right now. They're out in the woods just plotting. But they don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know why I feel that way. It doesn't make any sense. This is how I feel.

It's almost irresponsible for me to share my thoughts on it. It makes so little sense. It just seems like an odds thing, you know, that the odds are you won the lottery, and now you're not going to win it again. Or you lost the lottery in that case, and now you're not going to win it. Do dudes who play the tax on stupidity and win, are they like, man, no point in buying another one of them tickets.

They're going out and spending half of their winnings to buy more. All right. Did I give you a? You took one. I'm good. I feel like I'm back in good graces here so i'm gonna you know i'm just gonna sit quietly for the rest of the time all right thanks for joining us you Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians.

The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.