The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 114: The Hollow

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

The Ozarks, MO- Steven Rinella talks with Brandon Butler of the Conservation Federation of Missouri, Steve Jones, and Parker Hall, along with Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. Subjects Discussed: the MeatEater Podcast Live tour dates drop today; bad weather; pestered by a pit bull; the perseverance of the Latvian Eagle; listening for gobblers; spittin' n' drummin'; America's toughest turkeys; the Name-a-Sound-a-Turkey-Will-Gobble-to-Game; highfalutin-quail-shootin'-facilities; diminutive channels as dinkers, whole frys, and fiddlers; Steve's lucky break; what goes into Midwest mom chili; the Ozark's lumber industry; sous vide cooking; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Now, what you can do, you go to www.media.live to get yourself some information and tickets. You can go the VIP route, which I recommend, where you come for a pre-show experience. Hang out with me, Giannis Boutelis. Special guests will be announced soon. We'll do an exclusive little private Q&A session. Get your pictures taken, books signed, general hangout. And then you stick around for the real show, where everyone from the podcast is up on the stage wrestling with all those vexing questions that come up in the hunting

and fishing world, talking about hot tips and tricks, wild game, weird trivia, just the usual bullshitting. If you just want to go the general admission route, you will admittedly, you'll miss that opening deal there, but you'll come for the main show and get the real juice out of it. So I cannot wait to meet all of you members of the Meat Eater community at the Meat Eater podcast live tour. www.meateater.live. Get your tickets now. See you soon. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less.

We put the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Yanni, do you know, do you remember, how did we get in our heads that Missouri's turkeys are the hardest turkeys to hunt in the whole wide world? Partially, I don't know all the reasons, but part of it is because my friends that i guided with from who are from missouri used to always say that they told you yeah because i started hunting turkeys in nebraska and started killing turkeys in nebraska and they would say

yeah but you really haven't hunted a turkey yet let me tell you about these turkeys down here where we're from yeah so that's that's where it started for me i think that i haven't hunted nebraska but my understanding of it and the type of turkey that's running around there uh i could see that that might be true that missouri's harder than that but are you guys familiar with that Missouri's the hardest? How many states have you hunted turkeys in, Parker? A lot. I don't have to add them up, but, yeah.

I don't know that— More than a dozen? More than a dozen, for sure. Okay. Brandon, how many states have you hunted turkeys in? Half a dozen or so. But I got a theory on why people say they're the hardest to kill, and that's because at a time in our country when so many game species were being extirpated,

the wild turkey was able to hold on just in a small amount down here in southern Missouri. In the Ozarks. In the Ozarks. And then in the 1930s, when they really started trying to turn things around with conservation and started their game survey on turkeys, it was Starker Leopold that was down here working on the wild turkey. These turkeys ended up becoming basically the stock that was used to not only repopulate other parts of Missouri, but then Missouri turkeys were taken

to Wisconsin and Indiana and other Midwestern states. So the whole repopulation of the wild turkey across the eastern United States has a lot to do with these turkeys that were just unkillable in the early days. But I feel like I've heard, though, that Missouri's not the only holdout. There were other holdouts. I've heard that about the swamps of South Carolina. I've heard Alabama. Alabama had holdouts.

North Carolina in the high country, right? South Carolina in the lower country. Yeah, that's certainly true. There was Turkey's other places. It was down in 19 states. They had some number, some unknown number, and maybe it's not specific. I don't know if it's known for sure,

but somewhere around that many states. Yeah. We got Turkey's in 30 more states now. Most of those states are probably southeast, and I feel like that's where you most commonly hear that, yeah, we have the hardest, toughest turkeys is from here and southeast. But I'm buying it, man. Isn't that right?

Because they couldn't have been that tough in Michigan because they got them all. It's like they got them all. And then, yeah, I'll buy that that the toughest turk because they got the home field advantage knowing they just been here they know it and it's rugged remote rural country a lot of it's hard to get into i mean it's hard to shoot them from the roads in some of these places you got to get way back in there and they found little pockets where they could hold out. Yeah. Did you answer me

how many states you hunted turkeys in? Half dozen or so. Montana, South Dakota, New York, Indiana, Missouri, Texas. Okay. So you've gotten around a fair bit. Yeah. And then, Park,

you've hunted them in a boatload of places. I have. and your old man hunts them hard he does he does he's actually got my mom into hunting them hard so i don't know i don't know how it happened but all of a sudden she's uh she's chasing them man she she's starting to give you tips she has she is. She has the disease. She can call better than me and the whole thing. Yeah, she's into it. And they start in Florida.

Yeah, start in Florida. And then what time of year are you hunting them in Florida? You know, Florida ends in February. South Florida, the season comes in. So they start breeding and nesting in late February. For sure. And they just migrate northward. Yep, yep.

North and west. So they'll wind up where by the end of the year down in mexico or what last year yeah dad ended up in mexico um this year i don't know what the plan is i know they're they're in texas or they've already been i don't know he's got several turkeys under his under his belt and i get the get the picture starting in february you know we're still snow here and, and dad's already, you know, knocking back to spring Turkey. So getting after it. Yeah. Now we showed up here the other day.

It was, it's kind of like amazing that the difference from the conditions, I mean, I was full on pulling my fingers in, making fists inside my gloves. Parker got snowed out opening day. Yeah. In the Northern part of the state. We had an inch of snow and 25 mile per hour winds. And, you know, as the snow pellets were hitting me in the face, I was questioning my sanity. But, you know, after waiting for a year, man, you can't miss it.

And now it's 81 degrees. We were stoking the wood stove on Monday, and now we need the air conditioner plugged in on Wednesday. Yeah, we got down here to, what did you say, south-central Missouri in the Ozarks. That's right. And got down here, and it looked like, man, when we showed up here to hunt, it looked like I was not feeling optimistic.

It looked like just wintertime. And it did. The trees aren't butted out. Yeah, it's been an abnormally long winter here our youth season um typically we see a harvest of about 4 000 birds and this year we only had 1700 it was 19 degrees on opening morning of youth season i had my my daughter out dressed up you know like it was it was a November deer hunt. So it was pretty horrible conditions. And that held on until opening day and the weather really broke yesterday. And that really like caught heavy duty into the, that's kind of nice testament to what the weather

can do to you when you're turkey hunting. We hunted a property that's just a private piece of ground that's overloaded with turkeys and we heard one gobble each day we had five youth hunters on the property nobody killed a bird and i would have bet going into it four out of five if not five out of five yeah they just weren't moving they were all flocked up still in their winter flocks and it was just horrible conditions yeah and we showed up here the other night it was so cold and i'm sleeping in a sleeping bag i'm used to sleeping in mummy bags sleeping in the old schooler open top what do they call those things those are butler bags no relation but you know i mean like the type of bags even have a name it's like classic

sleeping bag like a rectangular sleeping bag yeah i don't know then no matter how thick it is you can still feel the breeze coming into the top of the thing i know people complain about mummy bags but a mummy bag is like a genius invention you could you could fit i'm not the dog i don't want a dog too heavy on your sleeping bags i like them i've been sleeping great but you could stuff you could fit 10 zero degree mummy bags in that sleeping bag. Yeah, man.

But when you're in a mummy bag your shoulders are all constricted. I get it for backpacking in or something. I feel like I'm snuggling with my wife, man. It's like I'm spooning with my wife inside my mummy bag. But you're not. It's a sleeping bag.

But the bag makes me feel like I am and so I sleep better. I just like those kind of bags. And I was like taking a breeze in through the top of my bag. If you come back I will have a mummy bag. No, no. I like that one. I just like those kind of bags. And I was like taking a breeze in through the top of my bag. If you come back, I will have a mummy bag. No, no, I like that one. I just hadn't slept in one of those for so long, I kind of forgot.

And I wasn't aware that people were still manufacturing them. But I understand it. But just to point out how un-turkey-like it was when we showed up here. Because when I hunt turkeys, I want to see, I'm expecting to come up on little water holes and see little tadpoles in them the world coming to life yeah that's part of the the majesty of spring turkey season is you're there for the awakening of all things trees and bushes everything's budding out birds are building nests the whole it's like insects are coming up alive

i think that made the hunting harder too the fact that the woods are still so wide open i mean parker and i were in a situation this morning where we just had nowhere to hide yep well don't get ahead of ourselves too much i want to talk about the awful terrible introduction of everybody i suppose you want to introduce we don't have to but you know my dad really really appreciates it when we do that for him i was going to get to it but since it's important to you to do it now as though dealing cards we will start with me and and move this this away are you the dealer i'm the dealer well then we wouldn't start with you if we're doing it as we're dealing cards. That's a good point. It'd be shot immediately.

Brandon? I'm Brandon Butler, the Executive Director of the Conservation Federation of Missouri. I'm Steve Jones. I'm a board member of the Conservation Federation of Missouri. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know you guys were always talking business. Yep.

I knew you were involved, but I didn't know you were a board member. And also a board member of Missouri Hunters for Fair Chase, an organization that's working on chronic wasting disease topics. Gotcha. Can you guys real quick spell out, long as we're doing the intro stuff, can you real quick spell out what the Federation does? Yeah, we're Missouri's largest non-profit conservation organization. We really work on education, advocacy, and through partnerships. We have 92

affiliated organizations. We're the group that can bring together hunters and anglers with bird watchers and parks enthusiasts. We bring everybody together to focus on natural resource policy. A couple big issues that we deal with here in Missouri is we have a unique constitutional authority for our Department of Conservation, and we work to advocate on behalf of that and the dedicated funding that we have through a few sales taxes. And then any other fringe issues that come up, like chronic wasting disease is a big one for us in the last couple of years. But really those kind of key issues of constitutional authority and dedicated funding for the Department of Conservation. Yeah. Let's talk about this real quick right now because we spend a ton of time talking about how wildlife work is funded in the U.S. and we're always pointing out that most fish and game agencies draw the bulk of their funding from excise taxes

on guns and ammunition and other sporting goods equipment and sales of licenses, tags, and stamps. So basically hunters and anglers fund wildlife conservation at the state level. But Missouri went in and put in a little itty bitty teeny sales tax.

Like a what of a penny? It's one-eighth of a cent. And it adds up to the tune of what? $120 million a year. That's pretty incredible. It really is. And people voted this in. Yeah.

Yeah, 1976. We also have a secondary sales tax that supports park soil and water. And people have to revote on that every 10 years. And in Missouri, in the 2016 election, the November election, when we saw our country so divided, we passed that vote to self-impose a sales tax, a one-tenth of a cent sales tax, with 80.1% of the vote, and we passed it in 114 out of 114 counties. So we got 80.1% of Missourians to agree to self-tax themselves to fund our state parks, healthy soil, and clean water. And the other, so we know that 20% of people in Missouri hate Mother Nature.

Yeah. That's not bad. It's pretty. I'll take 80%. So there's that. Now, Yanni, you want to introduce yourself? The Eagle. Yannis Patel is the Eagle. Also the producer.

And then Parker. Parker Hall. I'm a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Well, so you're coming at this with your professional credentials. I'm coming at you today as a lonely, defeated Missouri Ozark turkey hunter. Okay, so that's your angle. That's my angle. Not speaking as a professional.

No. Just a loser. Defeat. Speaking as a loser who's had close calls. Defeat. So we get down here to do this, and it's like, and I remember right when we met up, Brandon, I said, you hear any gobbles? And you didn't really answer, but you were just like, man. I was nervous.

I mean, I'll be honest. You guys came a long way to hunt turkeys. It's not like you were going on some, you know, major expedition. So you traveling all the way down here to hunt turkeys, I wanted to make sure you had a good hunt. And the kind of hunt that I think you guys enjoy, a backcountry hunt, and show you that even in the eastern, you know, or midwestern part of the country, we can find places really rural and remote and and get miles back in there but if you can't hear them gobbling it's not like you can set up on an ag field and glass

for them there's you know you got to be able to hear them gobbling in these hills to be able to locate them and go after them and they were not talking on monday no it had everything going against it where a stiff wind so so very cold, a stiff wind, and just like that kind of winteriness, man. Like no leaves on the trees, extremely noisy to walk around. It was different than any season I've ever seen before. And like the turkeys are going to spot you from a thousand miles away. And you can't sneak up on them because the leaves are so damn noisy and it's so windy.

But then there's no cover like like leaves make it like leaves on the trees make that you can kind of move around a little bit without every turkey in the world knowing you're there but here man it's like one they're gonna know you're coming because it's so loud and two they're gonna know you're coming because there's no leaves yeah we're hunting just big oak forests there's not a lot of undergrowth at any time of year but usually there is at least some some foliage on the saplings and and like you said you can blend into that but yeah it's wide open right now yeah when we left here well first we had to deal with a stray pit bull yeah we had an we had a dog a stray dog try to accompany us and dealt with that. And then we got out and went up on a big ridge.

And the plan was just to go up and listen and make racket. Because when you, like in the spring, what you're trying to do is you're trying to find a male turkey, which you call a tom or call a gobbler. You're trying to find a male turkey and coax it in with the sounds of a female turkey. And you're sort of trying to subvert what normally goes on as well as generally understood is generally a Tom or a gobbler goes out and gobbles, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, and hens come to him. What you're trying to do is switch that around and somehow entice him into coming to you, and there's a ton of reasons he doesn't want to do this.

The first step in this spring hunting is just to find a gobbler, and you generally find a gobbler by hearing his gobble, and there are things you can do to make him gobble. Commonly before it gets light out out you do a thing just call they call it shock gobbling no one knows parker do you have a no idea no one knows why but for whatever reason it's a real vulnerability to the species for whatever reason in the spring of the year and other times of year too gobblers gobble at loud sudden noises i have heard gobblers gobble to you guys can add when i get done or we'll start let's do it like this i will start as the dealer i'll risk that being shot i will name a thing that i've heard a gobbler gobble to and we'll just go around the room until we've exhausted when you when you when you tap when you gotta tap out tap out

car horns when you shoot their buddy. Thunder. Car doors. Rumble strips on the side of the road. No. Yes. Dun-dun-dun-dun. Really? That's good.

Just simply going, hey, real loud in the woods. Hood owls. Crows. Jake breaks. Woodpeckers. A sonic boom. Dogs barking. No one did that yet?

No. Hawk screaming. Goose. Really? Honking, yeah. Train horns. Red horns red tail hawk the sound that they that people who don't know better dub over bald eagles yeah like when you're watching something there's a bald eagle and they play a noise that's a red tail hawk

yeah so yeah red tail hawk and i could tell you i could i could take you right now and show you the tree i was under when it happened a four-wheeler backfiring Yeah, Redtail Hawk. And I can tell you, I can take you right now and show you the tree I was under when it happened. A four-wheeler backfiring. Coyote howling. Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, yeah. I might be running out, man.

Man. Any loud noise works. But yeah, I'm tapping out. Do you got more? I'm tapping. A rumble strip rumble strips yeah so stuff like that uh make and i've said this before on this show that uh i remember some will primos the great call maker will primos was trying to put his finger on why gobblers gobble to noises. And he said something to the effect of, it's just him saying, this is my time of the year. But I've heard him do it other times of the year too.

So if you're trying to hunt turkeys and you go out in the dark in the morning, you go out and just start raising a ruckus to try to get one to gobble. And people bring, I think, like a little bit too much thought to it. Because we use, you know, I didn't add, I've used predator calls. So I just take a rabbit squealer predator call and just give it the most loud, heinous, sudden squeal that I can out of there because it really carries but some people would say oh yeah but he'll never come in that direction because he thinks that something's killing a rabbit over there so people generally try to shot gobble by making more benign sounds such as crows

my buddy eric always used a peacock call for some reason which he felt uh doesn't send any message to the turkey because he's never heard a peacock before um my preferred one is a crow call would you guys agree with that like it's bad to be yapping on a coyote howler and then trying to call a turkey in that direction. Why would a turkey go to where a coyote was? I think you're giving them too much credit. I'm not doing that. There are those who believe. They have amazing instincts and self-preservation and senses, but I don't think I can credit them with that much smarts.

But it just makes sense to use a sound that you know they're used to hearing like a crow or like a hoot owl uh you know but when you're up like the like not the first morning was dead quiet because it was so windy but when you're up there there's all manner there's all manner of uh owls going off up there and they're not getting gobbles well they do get gobbles when the birds are gobbling yeah they really They really do. But then I take my crow, and I do a thing called, a call that I just yesterday decided to dub the Corvid. Because I take a crow call and blow it with the cadence of a pissed off blue jay. And I get, I mean, Yanni can attest. Yeah.

I am a very effective getter of shot gobbles better than I am of calling turkeys. I specialize in getting them to shot gobble by just making a very unusual sound. It's so grating that Giannis will always want to ask for time to get away from me before I do it. That kind of noise. It worked yesterday. It just gets him to gobble. Yeah. So we go up in the squealing ass wind

to go do this and nothing happens. Yeah. I'm talking about the first morning. Run off the pit bull, go up the hill, nothing. You made a joke that it was like Rachel Carlson's Silent spring like the silent spring

happened yeah it was it was depressing you know i've been planning this for a few months with you and i'm thinking you know we'll go up to this spot where i always hear birds gobble from and we'll deploy in teams and you guys will go after this bird goblin. We'll go after this bird goblin. And there was nothing. I had nothing. So we went. Yeah. I was even thinking bad thoughts about you.

I was like, this guy don't know. This is the most God forsaken Ridge I've ever been on. We walked a long way and you and I never heard a bird gobble that whole day. No, you can hunt till 1 for turkeys. You guys don't got to quit hunting deer in the middle of the day, right? No.

It's just a turkey thing. Yeah. Spring turkeys. And there's a group of us. In fact, the Federation passed a resolution in favor of extending it to all day. We've talked to the biologists. We see no scientific data, no scientific reason not to let it go all day. We've talked to the biologist. We see no scientific data, no scientific reason not to let it go all day. The fact of the matter is it's a divided issue

between really the old timers and the new turkey hunters. And what's the reasoning behind it? Well, I really don't know. Scientifically, there's no reasoning behind it. Well, in the early days of wild turkey research, the theory was of the biologists that the birds needed a break to make sure they could get to the roost that they wanted to without being disturbed and that they needed that quiet time to be more successful at mating. And it was a logical idea. It just turned out to not be true. But by then, it was already an established tradition.

Yeah. So. I can see that. I mean, the part about, I mean, I kind of understand the roost part. But I don't think that these birds have, like here, I don't think they have, like, a lot of roost fidelity. I think they pretty freely move around and roost wherever the hell they want to roost. Well, one thing I don't like about it, I mean, not just for me personally and people that like the turkey hunt, but, you know, kids in school.

You know, you get out of school at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a lot of guys want to go turkey hunting. Do an evening turkey hunt. And they can't. So it really hinders getting youths out turkey hunting. Yeah. How was I even talking about why we had oh because you know yeah you can't say i hunted all day yeah we hunted till one you can hunt till one all day in missouri turkey terms

yeah in missouri turkey terms on all day but meanwhile meanwhile yanni was having an entirely different experience yes much different from probably most folks in Missouri that morning I don't know there's probably a few other folks that got got what I got but uh maybe in some corner of the state where it was a little bit warmer and the wind wasn't blowing but uh yeah you want me to tell my turkey story please um we we all we took four wheelers up to the spot and stopped, and then Brandon was like, all right, we can go here or here. He's giving us all the options, and Steve and I have never set foot there, so I'm like, you make the call.

So you guys decided to go on down the ridge, and you had kind of pointed me towards two different ridges that I should work and be listening off of. So I went down one and quickly ran into some private property. And so I decided I didn't want to be futzing around the edge all morning. So I just turned around. Yeah, because there's like tens of thousands of acres of. Yeah, I could just go the other direction and walk for miles.

Yeah. Which is how I like it usually. And yeah, so I literally just went over one ridge and started walking down a uh what you described as a knife ridge you know it's at times steve was actually commenting we were back on it today and i was almost like man-made feeling because it's so steve on either side perfectly flat on top it's pretty it's like the romans made a ridge did you come up with a real name for it yet i call it the hourglass the When you look at a top, Matt, it looks like an hourglass. But now I'm going to start calling it the levee.

It's like a man-made ridge. Like, super steep pitch, and then someone came in and graded off the top. Yeah, you wouldn't want to walk down it drunk at night. You'd fall off that thing. It's a long way to the bottom. I know, but it's like you're walking on a levee.

Yeah. I'm going to dig in there. I bet it's all people don't realize, but it's like you're walking on a levee. Yeah. I'm going to dig in there. I bet it's all people don't realize, but it's like this archaeological wonder of the world that people didn't realize. But anyhow. The Mayans used to be up here. Turkey hunting.

Yeah, I don't get but 100 yards down that ridge, and in the wind, I can just hear what might sound like a gobbler. And so I go a little bit farther. Can you touch on that feeling for a minute? Like people might be thinking, wondering, what do you mean it might be a gobbler? Oh. It's, yeah, you just, the sound is, because that's all you're trying.

At that point, you're not even trying to look for a turkey. You're just trying to hear one. And so your brain is in that mode the same way it's in that mode sometimes when you've been glassing for hours and you're like, is that a deer? Oh, no, it wasn't a deer. You're just looking through the woods all day long, and you start to just make up deer sightings. Well, same thing happens in the morning listening for gobblers.

You're like oh maybe maybe yeah could have been and especially in the wind because you know there's all kinds of noise carrying and uh so it basically it's just very very faint yeah there'll be like double if you're listening for gobblers it'll be that all of a sudden you'll be with a buddy and you'll both turn to each other because you so desperately want to have what you think you might've heard verified. And each person has the same feeling. And so in the woods, you find the often like are whipping your head around to look at whoever you're with to be like, did he hear that? Cause I can't tell if I did.

You know, and then usually what happens happens after that if they both heard it one guy points to the north and the other guy points to the southeast but uh so eventually it turns out that it is indeed a turkey goblin and he's gobbling as I get closer I can hear that he's gobbling quite often and that's probably every I don't know points five to ten seconds and that's what we call hammering't know, points, five to ten seconds. And that's what we call hammering. He was hammering. Not quite what I'd call choking.

But he was hammering. What do they call that in Georgia? The hammering. It's hammering. Okay. But is there a next level? No, that's as good as it gets. He's hammering.

Dudes in Georgia just start shooting when that happens and uh yeah i could tell he was on the ridge across from me i could tell he's below me in elevation and uh not knowing the country real well i mean he was on the ridge where you guys could locked eyeballs like he was like you were on opposing slope opposing yeah slopes that met in the bottom yes so i decided just to bail off the ridge and just take my time and work towards the sound that he's making and uh just hopefully and the woods are so open that at points i could see the other ridge i could see the I could see the other ridge. I could see the ground cover on the other ridge,

and I was just crossing my fingers that I wasn't going to get busted walking down this big, fairly open hillside. So I get to the bottom, and I figure sometime when I got towards the bottom, he must have flew down around 7 a.m., and I hadn't heard him for five minutes or so. And so I hooted, and he answered answered and he hadn't moved too far, maybe just down his ridge a little bit. Because on a morning like that, they're going to stay in the tree longer.

Yeah, possibly. I mean, I think he came down around seven is my guess. I mean, he could have been on the ground longer and just kept gobbling. Now I know that he was by himself. But do you guys agree that when it's cold and nasty, they stay in the trees longer? I agree sometimes they do for sure. Rainy, nasty days, I think they stay in the tree longer.

They just don't want to get up. Yeah, sure. You guys have both hunted out west and here. Do you guys get a feeling that these birds stay in the tree longer than, say, a Merriam's? I don't have extensive. I don't know that i could comment i don't know i'm the same way i think one thing that is different than out west though is and we were talking about this a little bit is they don't always roost in the same areas here you know just because they roosted in that

drainage yesterday they could be you be quite a ways away. And it seems like out west, it's more common for them to show up in the same places. So yeah, I would say more common, but not fixed. Where I think that it feels like more kind of like that there's certain spots they like and year in, year out, as long as something doesn't happen to that little local population, they'll kind of like to use that spot. But when you bump a man, it's not like they're going to, I don't think they feel forced to come back there that night. It's like a bell curve. I mean, that's generally true, but I've got a farm in northern Missouri, and there is one area there always.

I mean, 95% of the time, there's going to be at least two gobblers roosted exactly in that same spot every night. Same tree? Yeah. Even if you're leaning on it at night? Well, I don't bump them that hard, but it's a guaranteed place. Now, I don't know that I've ever seen that before other than that one location, so it's not common. But if they find the thing that does everything they want, they'll have some level of faithfulness to that location.

Gotcha. And out west, where they don't have many choices, a lot of times we'll find a— Yeah, in areas where there's just not a lot of trees. Right, right. All right, so, Yanni, there you are there i was so i crossed the bottom the little it was a dry creek bed and i climbed up maybe 10 yards or so and uh i'm eyeballing kind of a a big uh what's been oak uh maybe another 20 yards ahead i'm thinking man it'd be a nice spot to get to because i could just start to see kind of up on this the the ridge had kind of benched out where

he was i was thinking i could just start to peek my nose up and see on the ridge if i got to there and uh all my way up there he gobbles once on his own i'm like sweet great you know so like that's a good sign yeah yeah it's nice when you get a courtesy gobble that's what i like to call those when you don't have to ask him for it with a hoot owl or strike your call he's just like hey i'm over here yeah yeah i'm with you and uh so i make it to that tree and um i think he actually hammered again and uh and when i when i heard him then i was like okay i should just sit down like i don't need to go any farther this is this is something you and i have talked about that there's like a turkey goes from being real far a turkey's gobble

goes from being kind of like you can't really get a grasp of it. It's kind of far away in some sort of abstract sense. And then you cross like a thin, you cross like a thin plane. And all of a sudden it's like he's right on top of you. Do you know what I mean? Like you pass into a moment when you are suddenly like in his area. The gobble just sounds so different. You could be sitting there listening to a gobbler like i don't quite know where he is and take like a step and also you'd be like now i know exactly where he is more it's like they become at some distance they become like you you hear that you hear more

quality to the sound than you otherwise do yeah it's like at one point it's just kind of like a blur of a gobble sound and then you get just a little bit closer and all of a sudden you can hear every little uh part of that gobble as it kind of breaks you know it's like something it's like an image coming into focus yeah yeah and then all of a sudden your your ears can triangulate and go yeah he's he's over there roughly 100 yards away you know and uh yeah so i sat down and uh got my head net on and uh put a diaphragm in and uh i gave him i don't know five or seven notes pretty soft and i got no response you know i was calling behind my hand, trying to throw my call a little bit because it was a perfect spot because he had to come to about probably 60 to

even see where I was. And then there was a roll between he and I, and then right behind me, I had another little, little spot. So you can imagine when he came over looking, even if he didn't see a hen there's spots where that hen that was calling to him could have been right so i felt i felt confident in this spot and um so he didn't answer so i waited a little bit and then i just upped my volume a little bit and just gave him three three or four louder notes yeah yeah yeah and he uh he uh he just jumped right over it and um and you told me that at that point you could hear his feathers yeah i could hear his feathers kind of shake a little bit

as he gobbled um so you know that point yeah i don't know 75 80 yards and didn't take long maybe couple minutes and i could see his head coming and he came right to that edge where he was, and I could see the whole body out of range. And there he hung up for a little ways. But from that range, I could already see a blue and white head. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught that when you see a blue and white head, he's kind of in love, and you kind of, you know, the deck is stacked in your favor at that point right much better than seeing a redhead oh yeah man yeah and uh were you

hearing him you know at that point at that point he hadn't um strutted yet and i hadn't heard him uh drum or spit but uh so he He stood there for a minute or so. It seemed like five. It was probably eight minutes. Then he just started working towards me. That's when it started. He went into full strut, did some drumming, spitting. He'd leave strut.

You got a nice spit drum. Can you do it for us? I go like this which is far from right but it's like it that way yes and man it is a sound we've talked about this before but it's a sound that you have to tell yourself that you're hearing it i mean when he's right on top of you, sure. You're like, everybody can hear it. Your ears hear him better because there's been a number of times you've heard him drumming when I can't hear him drumming. It's like it's a decibel or something that somehow between your age and my age goes away.

Well, it's like those sooty grouse that we chased around. And I've got dusky grouse in my yard montana and i can get five maybe more like seven or eight feet from this dusky grouse and i can hear him you can see his yellow patches vibrating as he does this you can hold your phone out and record a video and play it back at full volume and the microphone on the phone cannot pick it up. It's a ghost sound. Yeah, it's crazy. People that film ghosts and whatnot report similar problems.

Yeah, so that's what a turkey, the drumming is. Because really at a distance, you rarely actually hear the spit, right? You more hear the yeah you know and that can work again that can work the other way too sitting there for hours and going what is he drumming do i hear him drumming i think i hear drumming which way is that is it behind me is it on top of me it's it's super hard to course you know it's just like it's all encompassing when it's close to all around you it's it like it's all-encompassing when it's close to all around you it's it's it's a neat sound you feel it more than hear it sure and what he's doing is taking his wings and like beating his wings on his body and they'll go out and beat their wings on the ground

and wear off their primaries is that the primary yeah yeah yeah the primary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like a turkey in the spring, he'll wear the ends off him. Yeah, that'd be a nice straight line. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the 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 um yes so i got the show is that's what you know i call it man he gobbled maybe three or four times as he came in and you know went in and out of strut same thing three four five times and uh it wasn't very long the whole thing happened in five minutes. I killed him at 715. So I kind of had a window once at maybe 35 yards. And at the time, I was very confident because I'm like, yeah, look at that blue and white head.

And then as soon as he gets into some thick shit again behind a tree, I'm like, you dumbass, you dumbass. You should have shot him. You should have shot him. Because it seems like I had seen it before. They get behind that tree, and you're thinking he's going to just pop out the other side at 30. And instead, the next time he pops out, he's at 60 again. And for whatever reason, he decided to go away from you.

But anyways, this time it worked just how you want. And he pops out, and he came to 20 yards or so. At that moment, I was sitting against a tree, and we were just blind calling. I was sitting there chattering my teeth against the tree and also vouch and i'm like yanni shot that pitbull because there was like no other reason that i could imagine that he would be shooting his gun off i'm like either yanni got shot by the guy down the landowner guy or the pitbull attacked him and he had to defend himself from the pit bull.

And I was kind of imagining like what sort of investigation, like how does one, when you shoot a dog in self-defense, like what happens? Nothing. I think in that case, you just let him lay. So we proceeded to wander all around. But we ended up right there. Happened, yeah. So we made a plan to meet Yanni at 10, and we just made a big, long loop heading for that spot

because in previous years, it's a really good spot. And we ended up down there, and we had to split in time to meet him at 10 when we got up there. I'll tell you, it was pretty redeeming when you had that bird. Oh, yeah. And we were doing a thing called blind, like, because we're not hearing anything, and it's not, it's just so windy. Then you're kind of like, all right, I'm going to give up on the whole idea

that I'm going to hear a gobbler. And we would just go to likely areas, little bottoms where you're kind of out of the wind. You'd get out of the wind down in little bottoms hollers hollows and um just call give it 20 minutes because that can work that can work they come in silent a lot yeah you'll lay down the thing is you got to get like real comfortable because you don't know what direction they're going to come from and you can't be fidgeting around because because he could be behind you and never make a noise, and you fidget around, and he's going to leave, and you never knew he was there. So if I'm doing that sort of thing, I like to try to get where I'm almost like, and I don't even think it's a bad thing to fall asleep for a minute, blind calling, because you want to be that comfortable and just call every whatever 10 minutes uh last year blind calling i woke up i woke up to see a turkey coming you know you get that kind of fitful sleep and also oh my god

big redhead coming through the coming through the brush you know and he that bird came and never made a peep did Did he kill him? Yeah. Yeah, but that was in Wisconsin last year. So, yeah, we blind called. And then really nothing happened. That was the end of the day. We went out that night and tried to do what's called roosting them, which is now and then like turkey gobbling just gets generally throughout the day it just gets worse like in the world calls per second just drop to where by about 10 in the morning

unless it's really good there's not many calls six in the morning is unless it's really good, there's not many calls. Six in the morning is all kinds of calls, and it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. But in some locales, you'll have a spike at night where there's something about them going back to the roost. Do you understand this at all? They never talk about this in school? No. I'm sure they did.

I wasn't paying attention. Toward night, as they're going back to their roost, for whatever reason, they sometimes will gobble some more. And then they like to, oftentimes, they like to gobble once they get up in the roost. You know, a lot of times, the turkey will gobble, and, of course, the hens come to him, like you explained before, and they'll do their thing. They'll kind of hang out and breed and knock around together. And, you know, on up in the morning, the hens will go off and kind of do

their own thing. You know, they're starting to look for a place to nest or wanting to feed or whatever. And oftentimes they leave the gobbler. And so sometimes there's a spike or you can get them to gobble midday then again in the afternoon when they're starting to gather back up the hens are kind of backing around he's feeling his oats again you know you may you may get a gobbler too and you know oftentimes it's a shock gobble that that happens at night as opposed to them just gobbling they do some but you go out and try to shock gobble um i think you get more responses than them just naturally gobbling a whole lot maybe. Hunting Miriams, which is, you know,

people don't really accept the idea of subspecies of turkeys, but like it's like varieties of turkeys, right? There's five, what's the say? There's five subspecies of turkeys in the U.S. The Miriams is a very vocal one we used to drive around sometimes hunting mirrors we would drive around from spot to spot spot on on logging roads or whatever and stop turn the car off honk the horn to find out where you're going to hunt in the morning. But we haven't heard, no one in our group has heard a turkey gobble past, I think, 9.15 a.m. on this trip.

Going out two nights in a row, spreading all out across the ridges, blowing crow calls, coyote yips, screech owls. What the hell kind of owl? Barred owl. Barred owl. Yeah.

Not a peep. Crickets. Not even, yeah. I didn't try a cricket call, but you mean like crickets, like silence. That's all we heard, crickets. So then all of a sudden we wake up the next morning, and you just knew there was going to be gobb yeah because the weather switched yeah we were brushing our teeth in the driveway and uh heard one gobble in the distance the wind no wind yeah well you hoot owled or uh called owl called adam and that's what made him. You stepped out of the porch of your cabin.

What do you call this thing? Driftwood Acres. But I mean, do you call it a cabin? Yeah. When you say, I'm going to my blank. I told my wife it's a cabin. It got a little big for cabin status. So what do you say you're going to when you go here?

The cabin. We say our shack. Yeah. Because my wife says it's not a cabin. That's called a shack yeah yanni uh had his electric toothbrush going we had to turn that off and then we could because it was like you said i thought i heard one turn the toothbrush off did it again your toothbrush was impeding the ability to listen to gobbles it was that's the only good argument i've ever heard against electric toothbrushes but so to back up we met up with yanni and we tried all these different spots

and i even took you down on a gravel bar and i know you guys were thinking there's no way oh there's that day we cut that track yeah so that was like the highlight of our day we closed out our day on a track yes we just were like well here's a track that's right and we just sat and called the track i even took a picture of the track so we'd have some semblance of a trophy from the day but yeah from the driveway i hoot out and it went and uh parker and i deployed and there ended up being four gobblers probably three gobblers and a jake and uh parker called one across the river talk about that for a minute well i i think it with turkey hunting you're either a hero or zero it's like you're never

there's no like mid-grade turkey guys you know know, it's not like, well, I saw, I could have shot a couple gobblers, but he wasn't nice. I had a great experience. But like you try as hard as you can every time, or I do when I'm turkey hunting. So we got on this turkey. They were gobbling, gobbling. We were hundreds of yards away. Right. Well, we slipped up on them and we got i don't know across the river we were just

on the other side of the river from them yeah they were up on they're up on a bluff and we're down on the gravel bar but they're not hundreds yards away a couple hundred okay yeah other side of the river other side of the river uh above us worst case scenario if you're thinking about turkey hunting you want to get you know same level or above them preferably the same side of the river you know those types of things um so everything working against us i think we were just so happy to hear turkeys gobbling um that it didn't matter you know we were right after them so um yeah they got fired up and they were in the roost and we we called at them a little bit and we got one one, sure enough, thought he wanted to play ball. And Brandon and I kind of shut up, quit calling.

And all of a sudden, man, thing zings across the river and lands on the gravel bar. Pitched out of the roost tree, left his buddies behind. Arms, yeah, the whole deal. And lands on a gravel bar. Just came sailing across. Right at us, man. It was beautiful. You could see his big beard. Arms. Yeah, the whole deal. And lands on a gravel bar. Just came sailing across. Right at us, man. It was beautiful. Yeah.

You could see his big beard hanging down. Hanging out. I said, here he comes. Yeah. That's the here he comes that I like. Yeah, here he comes. Coming in like a bomber. Did you tell him to take a pass shot?

No. Like hunting geese? Yeah, so he sailed in, huh, Brandon? He landed on a gravel bar. must make me think that like either there's something wrong with him or is the most masterful beautiful bit of calling something's wrong with the turkey trust me yeah because like i just don't think of him being like i'm gonna fly out of this tree cross the river and land on some rocks yeah he did and then he he probably landed 80 to 100 yards down from us, worked right up, and there's a lot of little scrub brush down there,

and we were tucked into some small cedars, and there was another one about 20 yards away, and he just took up shop right there on the other side of that cedar. It could have been how far, 30 yards? No more than 30 yards. I would say 20. And he's just drumming and drumming and gobbling. And it's going on for 20 minutes.

And then all of a sudden, it was nonstop action for 20 minutes, and then it stopped. The whole time I'm thinking, Brandon and I were, when the turkey sailed across the river, I said, turn and face them, turn and face them. So we were set apart from each other. So the way we were sitting against the trees, we're kind of facing each other, right? And so the turkey's behind me at this point, just tomahawk gobbling all of me, you know, and drumming. You know, and I'm looking at Brandon,

and I'm just like, shoot him, man. You know, what are we doing here? But yeah, I was right behind the bush. I never saw him that whole time. Never even caught a glimpse of him that whole time. Yeah, it's so exciting. So then he goes silent, and then he made it to this field, which is private property that we can't hunt on.

So he's got to be in the low water on the gravel bar, or in the high water area of the gravel bar. So he gets into this field, and then he starts gobbling again and man it was beautiful he's full strut every time he gobbles you can see his breath coming out that's a nice detail man oh man it was beautiful if i was a painter i would paint a turkey goblin with his breath coming out as steam or whatever that is so at that point he's probably 60 yards away and 10 yards onto private and i'm thinking he's just gonna split across and 10 yards onto private. And I'm thinking, he's just going to split across that field.

But there's one lane that runs back down. It's like whoever that landowner is, it's their lane to get down to the river, but it's cutting onto public land. And when he got to that lane, I said, give it to him. And Parker hit him, and he turned and came. He went down this swale. Hit him with a call. And Parker hit him, and he turned and came. He went down this swale. Hit him with a call. Yeah, hit him with a call.

And he turned and came back, and now he's back in the game. He goes down this swale, and I'm afraid that I didn't see him cut through the woods the first time. So I'm thinking he must have cut through that swale, and now he's going to take that same route back to the gravel bar and end up behind that bush again. But this time he made a fatal mistake of going up on top of the lip of that swale and that was the end of it blouch blouch from my perspective like i said we were facing each other right um and so i could i was watching the hunt through the perspective of watching brand and him seeing the turkey, and I can see him looking a little bit, you know,

slight movements of his head and his eyes. Like a close-up of him getting the bad news. Yeah, and he's going, he's going. He's coming. He's going to come. And I see him, his breath starts getting faster, you know. The excitement of the turkey when he realizes he's coming, and he disappears behind the swale, like he said.

And you see mild panic set into his face. Just like, oh, no, oh, no, I don't see him now. And as soon as he comes up out of the swale he's talking about, with that white head, I see his eyes get big. And then, you know, cheek down on the stock, with that white head. I see his, his eyes get big and then, you know, cheek down on the stock. And that was it.

When you, when you, when you hold, cause you're shooting a scope, which I've never done. I always just shoot elevated, a bead and a, tell you call it like a vented rib.

He's basically looked down the damn barrel. Right. But I've always been tempted with, messing around with various apparatusati even though i don't have you know i don't know i don't take long shots or something because i've never i've never whiffed a shot at one but uh when you're aiming that where are you holding on them right at the base of his neck there's a crosshair in there and i hold right on the base of his neck and you know i i was on a media hunt in south dakota and one of the sponsors

had those scopes and i'd had that gun for many years and i you know had to put it on there to appease the people paying for the trip i've never taken it off in seven or eight years it just works for me um i've got one of those red dots on my daughter's turkey gun. She likes it. But, I mean, when I shot that bird, I panicked for a second because I didn't see anything. And when I finally realized, it just never even flopped. It just went down. Normally, when you shoot one, they flop around and make a bunch of ruckus. I couldn't see it. I mean, it was just where to go.

And then I looked, and there it laid, kind of on the backside of that. Base of the neck, like were you saying where the feathers start or lower than that? Because, see, I aim where, like, the head and the neck join it. That's just below the skull. You're probably sailing some pellets over the top of his head. I kind of depend on how far away he is. I go right for the base of the neck about where the feathers start. That's where I put the crosshairs.

And I know I got a real tight choke, and at 30 yards, it's about the size of a skillet. And if I put it there, I'm not going to miss high. I'm probably not going to put too many low. Seems to work. When they're far out, I'll aim a little higher just because of drop. But I kind of hold. I don't know, man. I hold.

I've had a lot of guys say that, like, dudes that miss turkeys are shooting over the top of them. Because they're aiming for the head. Yeah, and they got a tight pattern. It just feels people feel that if you were low, he'd be dead because you got him in the neck. Or you at least would have fluffed him if you body shot him. So I kind of hold down little ways. I remember some turkey guy saying that he holds on the waddles,

which are low on the neck. So then I started kind of doing that, kind of. Isn't the waddles and where the base is neck, that's not the same thing? Yeah, down where the feathers start. The of hang a little they kind of hang like a beer belly what about you over that waistline of his feathers yeah well now that i was telling you i put a new bead on my gun and the beads a little bit taller than the bead i had on there and so if you understand how that works when you're aiming it causes you to put the the higher bead causes you to uh if you bring that bead down it causes you to shoot a

little bit lower and so um but yeah i would just aim halfway between his waddles and his head but i mean at 30 yards i don't know that if i'm really getting that precise but the one thing i just make sure of is that i can see his head over my sight yeah i don't ever cover up his head yeah i'm not doing it i'm not thinking about how when i'm trying to do shot placement shooting like a big game animal i'm not like doing that level but i am thinking when i have the thought i am thinking don't shoot over his head and i especially get nervous about it when they're super close because then you got a pattern the size of a baseball, and it's got to be on. Yeah. Or else he's going to run off.

And that's not what you're out there for. But meanwhile, while this whole gravel bar, flying out, miracle turkey thing is going on, we go out, we go back up. And early, remember how Giannis was saying he didn't want to go down and flirt with this private property boundary? We get back up in that area, and sure enough, there's a bird gobbling down in that zone.

And we don't want to do that because then we feel he's going to pitch out of his roost, land on the other side of the painted trees, and then you just got to sit there right we're going to sit there not very confident in our miracle calling abilities if whether we call them across the line that kind of stuff man i hate that kind of stuff so we just like never mind that turkey begrudgingly yeah continued on down the ridge go down the ridge hear another turkey and kind of like stay a little bit like maybe but he's very far off where it's like hard to even begin thinking about how you're going to go about it so we're kind of like yeah maybe then go a little ways and look down into this kind of little hell hole and then we we're like, that's our turkey.

There's several of them, but one of them is like, that's the turkey. So we start nosing down into the holler. Is it a cultural appropriation for me to say holler? It works. Yeah. So it's not horrible? No. Okay.

I like to be sensitive to that kind of stuff because I can switch to hollow. No, holler. Okay, good. We've been calling them creek beds. Or a draw. Work our way down. I'm going to go back to it. Work our way down toward the creek bed.

And pretty soon we get where we enter into that we cross that plane where all of a sudden you're like in his zone and we get set up and i'm thinking damn it we got too close yeah get set up and call and call up a hen who comes up just basically bitching at us. Like, they get kind of mad seeming. It does seem like that. I hope one of you guys can enlighten me. But, yeah, she just comes in there. I thought it was like a happy putt.

But now I'm thinking she's just clucking. But I guess she's just clucking and looking and trying to make that connection. But they got a thing they do. They got a thing they do where and it varies but like when you're calling a gobbler like he's kind of coming at a hen will come up and kind of cut these half circles around you far out like she you know where they don't they don't come barreling in they're very like what's going on what's going on they tend to be like very vocal we had the same thing this morning yep but i don't come barreling in they're very like what's going on what's going on they tend to be like very vocal we had the same thing this morning yeah but i don't think we ever saw the whole body of that hen she got to where she could look up on the or the bench that we had set up on little bench ridge

and looked at look look look look walked back and forth a little bit and we could see her head and neck and then she just went back over the the you know swale a little bit and shut up yeah and started to the point yeah so she she's all pissed and goes and dips off the side of the hill i should point out you can only shoot bearded you're supposed to shoot males but the way they define it is you know a bearded turkey because they have a weird beard feather coming out of their chest uh she goes off we kind of forget about her. And a while later, we realized that the gobbler we were calling to had drifted off in the other direction

as they're wanting to do. And we stand up to go chase them and she takes off flying from that same spot. So she was all pissed, went back out of sight and then just decided to mellow out and hang out. Chase, we chase that gobbler and kind of set up on them, them set up on them and then you hear

off to the right we hear a hen calling it ain't a hen off to the left i hear an owl hooting that ain't an owl it's getting a little late in the morning there's other people are getting other people are growing aware of our holler right like people are like there's a holler that has a lot of goblin emanating from it and people are zero other dudes are zero this like public land hunting man other dudes are zeroing in on this thing yanni i didn't hear this but yanni hears two car doors and he thinks that those guys left yeah i felt like the dudes on our left took off but the right as we're

working this turkey you can hear this guy on the right yep yep yep yep yep yep like coming down and the closest we get to the gobbler post roost we get close we're down in the bottom it looks beautiful put out a decoy he hammers like probably the closest gobble we got i'm very excited and then he gobbles again and he's same spot i'm more excited then he gobbles again and you just get that sinking feeling where it's just like unm unmistakably, he's farther away now, which is like usually what happens in turkey hunting. And I think he gobbled again. It's like, damn it.

That was farther away for sure. And then, boosh! Yeah. Not very far away. No, I think I heard the turkey flop. It was that close. you know about jumped out of my skin and that dude that coming on from the right just out turkey hunted us out hunted us

wasn't his first trip to the holler yeah he might yeah he might have been in there knowing that those turkeys like to leave there going up that branch. Or whatever, yeah. And then we wandered all over Holy Hell, and then pretty soon it was 1 o'clock and we came home. So meanwhile, we did a tour. Parker and I regroup after bringing my bird back to the cabin, and we hear one gobbling in the same holler where Yanni killed his bird. Then we go up to the meeting spot or the call-in location,

and we thought you guys had deployed down after that bird. I like how you used that term, deployed. We stayed out of there. We like wandered over. Made his way over. We were on a mission. So we deployed down into that holler. Deployed into the holler.

He tells me when to deploy. What a difference a day makes. All of my spots redeemed themselves. Yeah. All the ridges I said would have birds on them had birds on them. Yep. All the hollers had birds. Even killed one off the gravel bar.

So it's unbelievable how they turned on overnight. Yeah. Because, like, in that, that, they're going to breed. And in understanding all these cycles in the natural world, like fish spawning and all that, there's sort of like a photo, there'll be a photo period window, right? There's like a length of day that is appropriate. And that window, depending on what thing we're talking about,

what natural phenomenon we're talking about, that photo period window, that length of day window could be wide or skinny. But within that, there's all the variables which kind of turn it on and turn it off, right? Like you think steelhead are going to spawn. It's going to happen, like never happens before this date never happens later than that date but within that window of time there's myriad things that need to occur water level water temperature all

this kind of stuff and it's going to happen they're going to pick their moments and it's like funny with these turkeys that on monday seems to be well except for yanni's it just seems to be they're not doing that today the next day that slight change warmer no air and they're just back to it and i think yesterday was better than today even though the conditions today were almost the same as yesterday it's like they were just shocked into getting going, and today they settled back down a little bit. They gobbled early, but they stopped earlier today too. So then yesterday, did you guys work more birds?

We definitely went for a long walk. We had several minor setbacks yesterday, to say the least. I don't know if we ever worked a bird. We chased a couple others. I don't know if we ever worked a bird. We chased a couple others. I don't know if we ever worked another one. Yeah, I define work in a bird where you're in the game. We never got back in the game. An amazing thing that happened yesterday, though, is we jumped a covey of quail on the public land way in the back.

And that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. In the old days. In the old days, that's what people did. I mean, we have so much work going on on quail restoration, but in this part of the country especially. I had no idea this was the quail country. It's really not. Historically, it was.

Yeah. When you had more small farms or what? I really don't know what the change has been. I mean, I think you could be really rich if you figured out what the problem is. Because I walk around out there, the last thing on my mind would be that I would jump a quail. If I jumped a quail, it would take me a minute to realize it was a quail because I'd be so not expecting it to happen. I was really surprised. We were deep in the forest.

It was on a power line where we jumped it. So there was some brush. Yeah, it looked like the right spot for me if we were 50 or 60 miles north of here. But it was cool. Really cool. For sure. How many quail were in the covey? What do you think, Parker?

10? Yeah, 10 to 12. Yeah, it was a nice little covey. Want me to tell you a quail story? Yeah. Real quick. Let's hear your quail spitting drum. Many, many years ago, 14 or 15 years ago, my girlfriend at the time was friends with someone who was a private chef on a yacht. And this friend says to my girlfriend at the time,

hey, do you guys want a bag of quail? Cleaned up quail. And she says, sure. She goes, you know who gave me this quail? George H.W. Bush. The owner of the yacht is friends with George H.W. Bush, and he came out on the yacht and brought a sack of quail that he had shot.

So I was like, well, that's pretty interesting. So I saved them for a long time. I think I'd save them for some kind of special occasion. When I did bust them out, not one of these quail had a pellet in any of these quail. All had shot a pellet in any of these quail.

All headshot. No. Here's what someone told me. Someone told me at these highfalutin quail places, they're raising them in pens anyway. And they said, when you go to these highfalutin quail shooting facilities, you go out and shoot quail,

but then they're all shot up and the dog's been chewing on them. Who wants to eat that, right? The thinking goes. So when you leave, they just go into the pen and get you 15 nice new ones that aren't molested by shot. And that's what you bring home. I have no, I had never backed up or verified any of this, but this is just what was told to me. Do you know who Ray Scott is, the bass master?

No. Remember when bass fishing tournaments started? You know who Ray Scott is, Parker. We're from Michigan. You ever heard of Kevin Van Dam? Yeah. He's in our next match. He's actually in our next match.

Parker, you got to know who Ray Scott is, the bass master. What state's he out of? Alabama. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he basically started professional bass fishing tournaments. But I went down and stayed with him one time, and I got to my room, and it had a plaque on the bed that said, President George H.W. Bush slept here.

Is that right? So that's my George Bush story. He don't eat a lot of those bass, I'm guessing. I don't think so. We had a buddy who's a bass, he's a recreation, what do you call it, like amateur tournament bass guy, caught Lord knows how many bass in his life. One day I'm talking to him, in his whole life, he'd never eaten a, we served him his first bass ever.

A tournament fisherman served him his first bass ever. He liked it, did not want his wife to find out about it because she'd be wondering what in the world he'd been out there doing all this time. If she knew that a smallmouth sandwich tasted that good. We have to cull bass out of our pond. If you don't take so many little ones out, they get stunted, don't grow.

Because the ponds only can support so many ounces of fish and it's going to take the form of large or big. So we eat a lot of largemouth bass. So back to turkey hunting. That's my story about H.W. Bush. Someday I'm going to work up, I'd like to work up a real good punchline for it, which might take some time. But so you guys wrap her up, 1 o'clock, done deal.

This morning, step out on the porch presumably the eagle was not brushing because yeah i took jones out on the on the porch this time he's a he's a world champion hoot that wasn't impressive would you mind ripping out your owl hoot? Sure. I won't make this thing melt if I do it. What I think you might do is maybe we'll... What do you think? Just take your mic away from your face. Yeah, perfect.

Rip out an owl hoot. Woof, woof, woof, woof. Woof, woof, woof. Oh my goodness. The end. How'd you work that out? Practice. Can you just do the end for me again?

Yeah, that's nice, man. It's like you swallowed an owl. So I put him to work on the porch this morning, and I was hoping that those other three would be back, and at least two of them were and he got them fired up from the porch and this time parker and i got on the right side of the river and i'll let him take it from there we got on the right side of the river slipped in they're still on the roost um right as in right versus wrong not right. No, he's got it right both ways. He means right proper, but he was on river right.

Both. Got it. You know, like just a quick thing for the listeners. River, when you say river right, river left, it's from the perspective of someone looking downstream. So you could be facing upstream. And when you say river right, it's on your left. Correct.

Like you're floating down the stream. Yeah. So river right, the correct side, which happened to be. That used to have to be part of my safety speech every day. When you're fishing? Mm-hmm. So the proper side of the river, which happened to be river right. Correct.

We slept up under the cover of darkness, selected two trees, tried to get a tree that's wider than my back to break up my... Is this what you think about? I do. I do think about that a lot. I know some fellas that have a hard time finding a tree. Yeah. Unless they're hunting the redwoods.

Hunting the redwoods. We found one today. Well, I found one. Brandon'son's i'll get to that later this is a little little skinnier than we liked it he blames me i blame him for this what happened i blame the turkey yeah at any rate they're gobbling gobbling nice and you know they're gobbling so much that i'm trying to pick them out of the tree. We're within a hundred yards, I think. And, you know, I'm looking, looking, I can hear him. He's gobbling, gobbling, gobbling, gobbling. And, you know, we're calling just a little bit back to him, some soft yelps. And at any rate, we kind of put the call down and then we're at a standoff, you know, he's wanting to gobble and I'm not saying anything well then i see him pitch out when he pitches out to me and it's the same thing again yeah right to

us right so uh same thing janice is talking about yesterday two little little swells right so he pitches down behind these two swells over which is is maybe 70, 80 yards. Goblin, drumming, spitting, the whole thing. This turkey was going. And I had my gun on my knee, and I hear the turkey, and every once in a while I can see the tips of his of his tail fan just over the top yeah you know uh it's a done deal I'm thinking about coming back and get some of Mr. Steve's coffee the turkey comes in kind of follows his finger down right I can just see

glimpses and pieces of him he turns around the swell and, well, if he gets around that and starts breaking towards me, it's over. I got him. He's committed. He did that. He broke around, took about 10 steps. And at this point, he's maybe 55 or 60 yards coming on a string. Turns sideways. I see his head is blue.

How many yards are you waiting for? Inside 40. I like to shoot them closer than further um i know some of the new loads these days but you know when i started turkey hunting it was the 20 gauge with the two and three quarter inch six you know so we let them come on in so i like them inside 40 i really do it was too far for me some guys maybe I don't take Hail Marys at turkeys. No, I don't like to cripple turkeys or anything. But turkeys, I couldn't. I like them to get close.

So the turkey's coming. He turns sideways. His head's just bright white. He kind of comes out of strut, sticks his head straight up in the air. All the color leaves his head. He turns around and fast walks away. No doubt. His head color leaves his head. He turns around and fast walks away. No doubt. His head went back to red.

In my mind, he saw us. He walked around the corner. He saw us and he split. And that was that. I think he said, man, I'm going to check by that big tree. Nah, dude. He saw Brandon back there moving around. I'm telling you.

I was in the almost asleep mode. I was not moving around. Yeah. So that was it. That was it for me today. And then I – Wanted all over Holy Elm. Wanted all over Holy Elm, yeah.

And a wind picked up today, which was a little more frustrating. It did. That was annoying me, man. Yep. Yep. That was annoying. Yeah, it kind of makes it harder to keep going at that 11 o'clock hour like you could barely hear him if he was gobbling at 150 yards you know so here you are turkeyless

turkeyless i am coming to the end of your saga it's over it's over uh we got out the turkey in the one spot was not there in the pride in the borderland the border turkey was not there went down to the to the roman the hourglass the roman ridge descended the roman ridge and we'd already picked up a gobble by this point no we had to descend quite a ways until finally and i don't think we shocked him we were we were kind of walking and had just maybe stopped and all of a sudden we heard a double gobble two birds two birds gobbling over the top of each other so one had started his goblin before he could finish his gobbles but he'd gobble over him which is cool and then people like to talk about a double gobble which is

different double gobbles is a turkey that goes gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble but these guys were gobbling over when you go to doug duran's farm on a good day you'll get the whole ridge where it's like someone running their fingers down the piano but on the whole ridge where it's like someone running their fingers down the piano but on the whole damn ridge a bird on one end of the ridge will gobble and it just the gobbles just travel down the ridge that's fun uh we weren't in that kind of situation and set set up, and right away, repeat from yesterday, call up a hen, come up making all manner of noises. Bark, bark, bark.

Did she yelp? Yelp, yelp, yelp. I don't think she actually ever yelped. The second one did a little bit. Was doing a kiki. Yelp. Wee-wee. Wee-wee. But that's not a kiki. You know? Wee-wee. Wee-wee.

But that's not a kiki. Is that a French kiki? Yes. That's a wee-wee. Yes, yes. Do you have a name for that? When they just do... No, the kiki is like...

Kiki-wee. Kiki-wee. But she's doing like a... Wee-wee. She was purring, right? Was it not a purr? She purred. Yeah.

But that's not but that's not what I'm talking about she was doing this Yanni am I not am I right or wrong yeah you're right she purred

not that if I have my call I do it yeah yeah but that's too much like a pigeon it's just a content

clucking purring noise. I know what you're talking about. She caught. She caught. Lots of cuts. Clocked. Didn't yell.

She caught. That's not a cut. The Primo's boys call that sound that we heard. They call it woo woo. Because it's just like she's going. Oh, that's what they call that sound that we heard oh they call it woo woo because it's just like she's going oh that's what they call that yeah but it's like because the kiki is like which is a hurting noise i'm doing the kiki the kiki is like a louder longer kind of noise it's like a hurt it's like ading noise they'll make to their poults. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

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slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. So she clucked, cut, purred, and hoo-hooed? And wee-weed. Woo-woo-wooed.

And a wee-wee'd. Which I think is, it's all in that same content. Yeah, content. Here's the interesting part about it. Here's the interesting part about it. I, like, there's the way turkeys sound. Mm-hmm.

Sometimes, oftentimes you'll hear, you'll see a real turkey doing a sequence of notes over a period of time that no turkey caller that I hang out with replicates if I sat down in the woods

with a guy and clucked as many times as she did in a row for six minutes he sat there just making racket like just piling on noise upon noise non-stop i would be after a while like hitting him on the shoulder but here's a real live turkey just going to town not only just going to town she's just tromping through the woods too walking and calling at the same time yeah cutting like a big arc just raising holy hell and then not long after there was those hens we couldn't see in the bottom just raising hell it's like if you wanted to really sound like turkeys you get six seven guys

just to go sit out in the woods and start just doing crazy stuff with turkey calls it's kind of what it sounds like down there i mean but the difference is they're doing all that and it makes sense to them if you sit down and start making like sequences of strange sounds lord knows what message you're sending i think that that's part of being like a little bit judicious is because um they're feeling something that might not match up with what you're laying down like they're in kind of a little fight right or whatever and it just means it makes sense to them that they're doing you don't know why they're doing it but then um try to work our way down spook a couple turkeys here's a weird thing i think yanni knows where they are and i think they're farther away and we're arguing about this

on and off and eventually it proves that yanni was correct because here they jump they spook and fly off which is a bad sign i it's a real bad sign we thought it was the end of our morning hunt yeah and i do a kind of like a very it's kind of like having like three scoops of ice cream and all three of them just falling off your cone in the dirt man yeah and i do kind of a physical expression of yeah you know like it was like yeah you were a little paler than you were a few minutes like you're like that bird that uh parker was working yeah yeah you had a bunch of color in your head my head went from blue to red so it was just like duh right if for whatever reason yanni just does like a check like i don't know dude we do an elk hunt all the time because especially the bull might have just been over the

ridge you spook half of his cows he just hears hooves running and so all of a sudden you go give him the super sexy and like thrash around like someone else is chasing one of his cows. And that son of a bitch. You know? Oh, yeah. Then he's just like coming to see what all the fuss is about. Yeah, because there's a thing in animals, man. It's like some animals hold more.

Some animals in a group people pay attention to and some animals in a group people don't pay attention to because you could have it be that you're like putting the move on something and one will spot you and get nervous and you'll notice the other ones don't pay any attention to that one he just hasn't proven his value um other ones there's an animal that gets nervous and everyone gets nervous like when that animal gets nervous everyone gets nervous they did this thing with uh i can't remember vervet is there monkey vervet monkeys what is it vervet monkeys i'm not sure i wish i could remember the name of this monkey they went into this these researchers went into this group of monkeys and made an audio

recording of one of the monkeys in a troop they made an audio recording of his warning call and started playing all of his work started playing his warning call to the troop all the time and he lost his street cred they made it that when he made his legit morning when he made when he did do his legit warning everyone was like whatever never cry wolf. Yeah. He cries wolf. Lost credit. So it could be something like that.

Whatever it is, Yanni all of a sudden yelps again and gobble, gobble, gobble. Yeah. Right from the same spot. On top of us. But they were agitated and edgy. Yeah. And we hit the dirt and I thought it was all over because here he comes kind of not like the blue redhead yeah not in strut not in strut redhead and a hen striding a hen so close to her head's out over his tail and he comes around this open hillside and there's a number of things

that i think might have happened my guess is he gets where he can see and looks on this very open hillside and he says to himself i don't care what i'm hearing there's not a hen that's two mugs laying in the dirt not a hen i don't think he saw us probably not i don't think he saw i just think he looked and he's like i didn't get to be this old by. Which is 24 months probably. I didn't get to be this old by doing this. But here's the deal. Yanni screwed me out of that turkey because it was a yelp from a diaphragm call that got him to gobble and got him coming.

And he gets there and he gets out of yoyani and i'm watching him and he gets where he can see the hill and he started getting bored and turned around and like why is he not calling why is he not calling well turn out he couldn't see that he thought turkey was just coming and it was all over like why call now and mess up you know everything's already set in motion like Like why do anything? Yeah, because I've had experiences, not many, but I've had experiences where it's direct line of sight with the turkey and I didn't have the control to not call anymore. I just maybe wanted to hear him gobble again or whatever.

And I called and that turkey stopped and was like, I can see exactly the blade of grass that that call came from and I do not see a hen. I'm out of here. I'm out. So usually if I make contact and I see him coming, I'm shutting down. Yeah, because why mess is a good thing. Why draw extra attention?

Unless you're like a ventriloquist. Why be like, oh, by the way, this tree right here, by this shotgun. Yeah. So he drifts off and okay because there's a part of this i failed up to the left is not an owl i'm like oh really really and you know that's so it's like you're working a bird but you're also aware of the coming trouble. Because this bird's gobbling.

So you know that some bitch can hear this bird gobbling. He probably thinks that he just discovered whatever. No idea what he's walking in on. Probably the nicest guy in the world. But pretty soon the whoo-hoo switches to yip, yip, yip. And he's just coming hard, man. It's like this guy's jogging. It's like this guy's jogging it's like this guy's

jogging we never see him you just hear him like he's running down into this and the turkey's starting to move off and he's behind him and for a minute we i'm feeling like hey man we found this we've been here since before got light out or we've been here since daybreak it's not your holler so he's moving along and the turkeys are now moving and he's moving behind them and we think we're going to game them and maybe get out ahead of them but then we're just like racing over turkeys and yeah the turkeys went to his side of the holler and so we went wandering around found turkey tracks, found like where a turkey had dusted a little bit or some such stamped up and winged up an area. Found a little pig track, found a bigger pig track,

wandered around a bunch more, ate a snack. Made a whole bunch of really loud locating type calls, hoping. Wind picked up, started feeling sorry for myself come down oh man it was getting late in the day i was i was having uh sympathy yep come down a holler hit a crick and start working our way up oh found a night crawler tore it up in little pieces and threw it in the river to watch creek chub's feet on it um get down to a creek and janice and me are both commenting like man it's a little good down here and the main the luscious place we've been in the last three days main stem creek yeah lots of sunlight very lush And we start working our way along, kind of like done.

You got to quit. It's noon. You got to quit at one. We got a long walk. And all of a sudden I look and like here is a bedded down turkey. Not but 10 or 12 feet away. In a blowdown. When a hen, In a blowdown.

When a hen, like, a couple things. When a hen's like, you know, nesting, and she actually, once she gets all of her eggs in there, she's going to incubate them. I throw up my shotgun, and I'm aiming down the shotgun at this thing on the ground, and Yana says,

hen! But I've also seen turkeys lay down to hide, and you've seen this, Parker. Oh, for sure. The one time I saw it, we were coming down a canyon in New Mexico and come around a corner and caught a turkey out in the middle of a field,

and the turkey laid down flat on the ground and stretched his neck out and just laid down and then got and then got nervous and broke yeah we he i think he thought he had been just slick enough and he had disappeared you know behind the horizon because we i mean we were in a tight little canyon canyon and it had just you know broken up and it was like the first time you could look left and look down the opening all you see is a turkey head and you know descending you could see him laying his neck out you remember seconds before that we found where a mountain lion had killed a turkey yeah um so he bedded he just laid down to hide that's the only i didn't know i didn't

know that was the thing that could happen until that day so i throw my shotgun up yanni says it's a hand and i said something like i'm just checking making sure it's not a jake yeah why a jake i don't know because i thought like a jake he's young he doesn't really know what's going on maybe he would think it's a good idea to lay down and all of a sudden it jumps up and it's a crippled turkey yeah a crippled gobbler a crippled longbeard who can't he's trying to take flight but he can't take flight so blouched him to little effect he went off through i tore off after him running short shocked my shotgun. Pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. Did a regular full long stroke on my shotgun. Ran more. Caught up to him out in the woods and shot him. And get up there, and he had been injured. His wing was suffered an injury. And we did a, did you say necropsy? Yeah, necropsy.

We did a necropsy on him to no avail shattered the main joint in his wing is shattered like he got hit by a 22 he got hit by a truck but what did you make of the leg later and i wanted to ask you this all his back leg was all bruised was he running full steam or was he gimped up uh so that promise he was trying to take flight ah so he didn't run off like a way a normal turkey would run he was trying to take flight so he's beating his wings to no effect yeah so he was like putting all this energy into trying to get airborne he wasn't running with his wings tucked so he couldn't tell about the leg at that point no because it was a real it was not like a graceful departure on his part yeah yeah and plus i mean you had a shot on him in him within seconds of him getting going so yeah and it's noon you

only hunt till one it's my last day so one there's sort of like this idea that a lot of guys, if they found like a mortally wounded animal, they're going to kill it anyway, which I've done. But I'm thinking, here's my turkey as well. And he's obviously messed up. So we go there, but he's not emaciated. And the wound wasn't an old wound. That was new.

He, I don't know. He got shot by another turkey hunter. That's the most plausible explanation. But I don't know, man. That wing was awful broken up. Who knows? Anything could have happened. Anything.

There's an infinite number of things that could happen. But now he's mine. Yep. Now he's going to Seattle. Head to the fryer. I'm going to schnitzel him, cook him in a pan. So I got two turkey breast fillets in one leg coming home light good deal though i still sit here now at first i didn't feel like i got a turkey

but you know all the details get in life like the details get hazy uh-huh i now feel like i just got a turkey like like when i get home just be like hey how's missouri did you get a bird i'll be oh yeah because already like at first i was you know we pull up and like did you get one i'm like well not really you know it's kind of an asterisk next to this one but that like that was three hours later yeah yeah i got one yeah check missouri check missouri off the list. In case you're wondering, I still feel like I didn't get one. Well, you did.

You did. That much is clear is that you did not get one. Yeah. But if you'd asked me on Monday at about 10 o'clock if we were going to go three for four. Oh, I already had it all put together. People are going to be like, hey, how'd you guys do in Missouri? I was going to be like, oh, bro, the weather. The weather.

You've never seen such horrible weather. I was going to say that all before I said no. We didn't get any. But now, and they'll be like, you know that birdie got down in Missouri. How far was that shot? I'll be like, oh, it was close. You called him in? It was close.

It was close. He kind of turned right before I got him. Was he drumming and spitting? No, he was doing like, came in silent. Yeah, never peep out of him. No, yeah, I got a turkey. Absolutely, no doubt in my mind about that.

Hey, listen, had we not been just out wandering the woods until 1 p.m., it wouldn't have happened. So the hard work of that paid off. Yeah, just keep walking through the woods. Even if you're just walking around like looking for night crawlers. Yeah. Keep walking in the woods and then we came home and had um came back here and uh steve q lay out the menu for us what we had for lunch well we had some

venison chili and uh some of brandon's uh uh what kind of catfish was that it was flathead but it was donated by mark flash polar all right dude if I had a name, Flashpolar, I would fish a lot more. And I already fish a lot. He's a... I'd shorten it to Flashpolar. Waterfall biologist. Really?

Yeah. Flathead cats, man. Unbelievably good, but I love them so much. But like growing up, we'd catch a big flathead and we didn't know to trim the fat off. And my, gosh, that stuff tastes bad. Yeah. Catfish fat's not good.

Why is that? I don't know, man, but it's not. It's horrible. Yeah, we made the mistake, when was that, last fall maybe? We were doing some cooking for television. No, we were shooting recipes for the cookbook. Is that when we had that? I thought we had had that catfish when we were making the short videos yeah we didn't have any we were doing a fried cabbage thing but we had to buy a piece of catfish yeah so someone went and bought a big slab of catfish and we're you know nobody even thought

twice to get yeah think about trimming it more obviously it would have just been trimmed fine and golly it was nasty nasty nasty the fat yeah that's why i like the little channels we catch because little i mean you can trim it but i mean the little channels don't get the fat on them you call those fiddlers i know that people do call them fillers but no we call them little dinkers we call them fiddlers around here yeah i know whole fries and fiddlers just skin them back we flame because we call them little dinkers. We call them fiddlers around here. Yeah, I know. Whole fries and fiddlers. You skin them back. We fillet them. Because we eat them on pole. Why do you call them fiddlers?

I don't know. Kevin Murphy says it's because they fiddle with your bait. Yeah, that's a good, yeah, that might be it. But yeah, you can just pull back the skin and take the head off and fry them whole. We fillet dinkers because putting them on sandwiches, po' boys. With pickles. That's good. Hoagie-type roll, baguette, whatever.

Fry your catfish. Make up like a tartar-type sauce. Then you put red hot on them, pickles on them, lettuce on them. Basically like the kind of sandwiches they always feed you in Florida with grouper, but we just make them with kind of sandwiches they always feed you in florida with grouper but we just make them with kind of similar different bun but the flathead was good man and the chili was like real chili it wasn't like midwest mom chili it was from scratch it's i love that stuff because i love midwest mom chili you know what i'm talking about right i don't i don't know you take like ground

up deer meat and put canned tomato products in there, and then you put pinto beans in there. Yeah, I like it. I like the venison cut more chunky than ground, and using real chilies instead of chili powder. And adobo. Yeah, chipotles and adobo were in there. And I love it. I may have to have another bowl before I leave. Yeah, Chipotle's and Adobo were in there. I love it.

I may have to have another bowl before I leave. Yeah. I like fried catfish, man. Fried any kind of fish because of my upbringing. But in the South, you guys eat a lot of that. You guys come to – no, you say this is not the South. No, this isn't the South. I thought it was the Midwest, and you guys say this isn't the Midwest.

From where I'm from, you'd be like, it's a little South. It's technically the Midwest. There's 12 states in the Midwest. Missouri's the southwest corner of the Midwest. I will say that Missouri is in the University of Missouri is now in the SEC, the Southeastern Conference. When I'm running around in the holler. Well, that's so true.

When I'm down in the holler, when I'm down in the holler, I have a hard time believing that I'm in the Midwest. It's a good argument. Especially talking to Parker. If I was down

in the holler with Parker, we're in the South. The frigid, cold North. That's all I have to say about turkey hunting. Action packed. And I like the way you set it up with the shitty first day. Yeah, I was going to remark on that, man. That's, you know, looking back on it, yeah, it's just the way to have it.

If you set it up the other way, that would have been horrible. I did my best. To have a screaming good first day, then have a shitty last day would be a bummer. It's unbelievable what a difference it made, though, overnight. Just one day difference. It was the way turkey hunting is supposed to be. I actually thought maybe I'll find a mushroom. This time of year, we're supposed to be waking up with a sweatshirt on,

ending the day with shorts and sandals on, going out mushroom hunting, crappie fishing. The trifecta of the Missouri spring is the wild turkey, the wild mushroom, and crappie fillets. And none of those had been happening until yesterday. No. And if you come back a week from now, you won't even recognize the place. It'll be all leafed out. Well, it started to change. Yeah, in the last two days, the leaves started budding.

Things are popping up out of the ground. Yanni's friend was saying how this time of year you can sit in the woods and almost watch the leaves grow. I feel like that happened on the last two days. I'm glad you got to see a little bit of the red buds. That's such a beautiful tree, and they grow here in these hills and mountains. I know it's hard for you guys to look at these and call them mountains, but. No, no, I'm with you.

Yeah. So the red buds were starting to pop a little bit, but like Steve said, a week from now, when those white dogwoods are in bloom and they're mixed in with those red buds, which are really more of a purple color. Turkeys are gobbling. Crappies are biting. The mushrooms are popping. I mean, it's just the best.

There's a good variety of trees here, man. It really is. We got like the cedar, which is non-native, shortleaf pine, a lot of oak, hackberry. A lot of hickory. Hickory, sassafras. I noticed a bunch of sassafras trees today. Back at the turn of the century, the largest sawmill, not this new century, but early 1900s, the largest sawmill in the world was only a couple counties over from here.

For hardwood. Yeah, for hardwood. They were cut mostly hardwood. Yeah, the Ozarks were pretty much logged bare twice before protection started. And now we have incredible canopy, and there's much more management of the forest, proper tree harvest. Rather than just taking it all in one fell swoop. Right. I think originally the shortleaf pine was more dominant than the oaks, but the oaks came back after the—

Really? There's still a lot of those short leaf pines around when i'm looking to set up i'm always we're always like let's go ahead to those pines we're setting up to a turkey it's always like you're like marker you know i've got a little stand of them it's my favorite place on the property yeah we were wondering do the ozarks is there a place in the ozarks where the relief becomes more severe than what we see here? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Ozarks stretch down into Arkansas and over into a little portion of Oklahoma. And I would say the most dramatic kind of mountainscape is down in Arkansas, the Ouachita's.

Do they get taller or just steeper i can't really speak to the elevation i'm not sure but just the vastness of the entire range the tallest the tallest point in missouri though is a little ways north of here so they're kind of scattered out um what is the highest point in missouri it's right by john's shut-in. It's Tom Sock Mountain. Tom Sock Mountain, which is the heart of the pig country. Yeah, I don't know how high it is. Yeah. It'd be easy to find out.

Brandon, final thoughts, closers, concluders? Just never give up on tomorrow. Never give up on tomorrow. Never give up on tomorrow. Never give up. There could always be a crippled up turkey laying next to a tree top. You will never see that again in your life. No, I really won't.

Yeah, it was, uh, it was a great time. Glad you guys came down and, um, I'm glad the turkey hunt worked out the way it did it was tough the first day and we redeemed ourselves all worked out in the end

steve that's it you good brandon i'm good all right steve uh just it was kind of strange being in turkey camp and not hunting i've never done that before but i was saving up for going up to my farm this weekend, and it was just fun to be with you guys and cook for you. Yeah, because you have a place you like to hunt. Right. Were you to kill a turkey here, you couldn't hunt your favorite place to hunt. Right, and my wife would have said, well, we don't have to go up since you already got a bird,

and I know she really wants to go up, so I didn't want to get into that situation. So you just cooked wild game. I cooked wild game, and I know right what tree my turkey's gonna be in so yeah although he embarrassed me last year i'm gonna get even this year good yannis final uh we appreciate the cooking it was good we ate a lot of good food a lot of sous vide cooking yep this week creme brulee sous vide hadn't even heard of that yet uh we should grab the recipe from you before we leave yeah can you can you real quick walk through the sous vide uh medallions little backstrap steaks yeah it's just you just take a a loin and butterfly it

nice and thick good inch inch and a half thick and uh to butterfly it and just put salt pepper and garlic powder on it can you hold on because my like i hear that but i don't like when we say butterfly i think we're talking about two different things we would say that to butterfly like for instance to butterfly a pike fillet would be to take that fillet in every three-eighths of an inch cut through but not all the way through that's what i do i cut i cut about a about a three inch section of the loin no but you're saying you're cutting i'm just saying like i'm not saying you're i'm not saying either of us is right or wrong but our use of that term would be that, to not cut all the way through something.

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. They folded out and there was like. Oh, so you did do that? Yeah, yeah. Really? Yes. So. I guess that, because that's why, yeah.

But how, really, that's what you did? Deer loins only. I know, but I thought it was like an elk loin when I looked at it. Really, that's what you did? You did butterfly. Yeah, they were butterflies. I thought it was like an elk loin when I looked at it. Really? That's what you did? You did butterfly? Yeah, they were butterflies. We're using it the same way.

Absolutely. I didn't catch that. You sure got like a uniform looking product out of it. Well, I take pride in my work. Wow, really? Congratulations. Well, thank you. So you take them and put them in a plastic bag.

Butterfly them, what everyone knows that word means. That's right. And open it up. Salt, pepper, and garlic powder. And put it in a plastic bag. Butterfly them, like what everyone knows that word means. That's right. And open it up. Salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and put it in a plastic bag. So the meat's how thick? I'm going to say inch and a quarter. Usually I try to be between an inch.

Inch and a quarter. I'm saying the final meat, the final opened up piece of meat. Inch and a quarter. Okay, gotcha. Normally I'll do a two and a half to three inch section, and then I'll do the one seam in the middle where you cut almost all the way through your butterfly fold it fold it out and make it look pretty i had no idea that's what i

was eating absolutely and then i put it in the water i mean you can take a long time explaining what sous vide is but basically you know just put it in the water in a bag and put the little immersion circulator on and i set it 129 degrees for two hours and take it out. And then finished it with a weed-burning torch. I did finish it with a weed-burning torch. But holy shit, was that a good steak, man. Yeah, yeah. Have you tried going reverse?

Because I hear guys torching them or searing them first now and then putting them into the bag. Yeah, but that just gets all soggy. Yeah, yeah. I have heard like if I'm doing a brisket, I will smoke the brisket first for three hours, and then I'll finish it in the sous vide. I know you're messing this up, though. Reverse is to sear after because in normal cooking.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. You're right. He did do reverse. Yeah. And no one's going tell me about this wrong i have heard what you're talking about and i just like yeah i like a reverse here it's like a reverse suv because the common suv preparation i think is to you know in the water first and then

sear sure at the end so it's a good yeah but that's not like a very smart way to do it because it just gets re-sogged is that a word just gets just gets soggy all over again yeah i think but what people i think the uh the the the benefit is that the flavor that you get from the searing is then in the in there in the bag he took these steaks out on the front deck here from which he hoots up turkeys and fired up a weed burning torch. Yep. Which ranchers in West Texas will use to burn thorns off prickly pear cactus so the cattle can eat them when there's a drought. And seared the steaks. Beautifully.

That's a good steak, man. That's his white-tailed deer? Yep. From a holler? We don't have hollers in northern Missouri. We're too close to Iowa for that. That's up in the Midwest. You're up in the Midwest part of Missouri.

There you go. Some big corn-fed deer up there. Is that it, Giannis? Final closing thought. You don't have too much. I just want to say thanks to brandon again for having us my pleasure sharing this place good times vacuuming up all them invasive beetles for us parker's got to get to work on those we got to figure out how to get rid of these asian beetles those dudes are tough man uh parker do you have any final things you'd like to add no uh thanks guys it was a good time and

brandon for um having us down and you know i i did come up turkeyless but you know we heard a lot of birds in the in the last two days it was a good time man finally get back out in the woods spring turkey season's upon us i have full turkey pressure now i I have not harvested a turkey, so the pressure's building. You got more time, though. I have a little time, yeah. So hopefully we'll get after one. My final thought is the way of hunting on public land in the east, which you hear from all manner of guys about how horrible public land hunting is

in the east and i would have agreed with them at 11 59 today yeah because you're like that asshole that because we got burned yeah we got burned by a couple guys but then i then i found my special uh my special bird but even besides that man it's just like it's god you know a couple things one it's still great hunting people got you know you got a turkey people got turkeys we're working turkeys hearing turkeys it's a lot better than sitting inside um but man like if you can get if you can get and be successful regularly successful like consistently successful in a place like this you're gonna be a good turkey hunter anywhere you go definitely to have the added thing of the race

against the clock knowing that the more that like you're trying to make that bird goblin you doing everything right is going to get that bird goblinling, the more you get that bird gobbling, the more other people are going to be like, hey, there's a bird gobbling. It's almost like you'd refine a thing by which you, like you'd refine a hunting strategy by which you're like, don't, just don't gobble. I just need one gobble out of this bird and then I'm going to do,

I'm going to figure out some hunting strategy by which they just will not gobble. I don't want him excited. Just everybody stay calm. And I just want you to casually come in as to not notify other hunters that you're down here. Because the more he's

going, you can almost just feel him. You can feel the people being like, you hear that? Way up. But it's fun, man. it's a whole other challenge and it's something that's like yeah i can see why people get frustrated with it but i also see why it must make some really really good hunters some turkey masters everybody should come down here to check out these creeks too man they're pretty amazing just chomping around the hollers and and looking at these creeks that just come

bubbling out of the ground i was really clear as a bell really hoping that we'd have an opportunity to float that's partly what this area is known for our rivers are just second to none you know and i'm a guy i lived in montana and colorado and i'm telling you these ozark rivers they're just second to none. And I'm a guy, I lived in Montana and Colorado, and I'm telling you, these Ozark rivers, they're just all gravel bottom, crystal clear. They're spring creeks. Dude, Poland's spring doesn't have water clearer than that. The shit in the bottle at the store. Yeah, it's crystal clear.

This water I'm drinking looks cloudy compared to the creeks around here. We've got incredible trout fishing, but the smallmouth is what is so attractive. There's great trout fishing out west, but our smallmouth is what is so attractive you know there's great trout fishing out west but our small mouth fishing here is just world class that's in my mind a small mouth this is we're going to wrap her up but i do want to acknowledge that you're saying something super truthful is uh in my mind a small mouth cooler than a trout go ahead i agree and we can float them and and and fish out of drift boat the

same way you would fish for rainbows out west and you're fishing them with you can fish them with spinning equipment but i prefer to fly fish and so it's like you're it's like you're trout fishing on a crystal clear spring creek but you're you're fly fishing for lunk or smallmouth and they fight for trout fishermen i'd be like you know it's almost like it's almost like you're fly fishing for lunk or small mouth and they fight for trout fishermen i'd be like you know it's almost like it's almost like you're fishing smallies yeah on a crystal clear ozark stream but nothing but not harder nothing fights harder than a small mouth i i agree i think like that we used to say like in michigan everybody's like like pound for pound i would say with freshwater fish it's hard to find a rival yeah and pound for pound. I would say with freshwater fish, it's hard to find a rival. Yeah. And pound for pound fighting ability is a smallmouth bass. For sure.

I think they're at least seven times cooler than largemouths. And what would take second place in freshwater? Bluegill. Bluegill. No shit. Pound for pound? No doubt. Oh, pound for pound.

Think of the shape of that thing. Right. And it's tough fishing, too, because of for pound? No doubt. Oh, pound for pound. Think of the shape of that thing. Right. And it's tough fishing, too, because of how clear the water is. So you do really good at dawn and dusk. So when you're out fishing with some poppers or any kind of surface plug, throwing a mouse or anything for the smallmouth at dusk, and they just come up and destroy it on the surface, man, it's exhilarating. I can picture that you'd have to use some fine fluorocarbon line or something

with all that light and all that clarity. Certainly during the daytime. Yeah. All right. Thanks for listening. Oh, you know what I got to work on? A guy emailed in and he says, I have the worst way to end.

It's the worst ending for a show he's ever heard. And he says, I need to work on a catchphrase. Oh. Like, who is that guy who'd say like good night and good luck? Walter Cronkite? Yeah, something like that. I need to work on something. Like a catchphrase.

Good hunting you freeloaders. Something along them lines. Yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. on them lines. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles

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