The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 117: The Bronzeback and the Bat

Episode Date: May 21, 2018

Southwest Michigan - Steven Rinella talks with competitive turkey caller Guy Zuck, Mark Kenyon of Wired to Hunt, Chef Andrew "Pooder" Radzialowski, Dirt Myth, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: Dirt still slowing killing himself with dip; getting back into drinking; the MeatEater Podcast Live; Mark Kenyon joins the team; when quail go away; Pooder's wild game turkey camp menu; a filicidal and cannibalistic cat named Maude; what turkeys talk about when they talk about love; Steve's hit song; going through life graciously; a hunter who doesn't hunt; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Dirt Myth, it's been so long since you've joined us.

Do you still, uh, you know what I'm going to ask about, right? There's two or three things I think you will ask. Well, yeah, I got a handful of things I want to ask you about. But mainly, you still a chew man? You still a chewing man? Yeah, but half. I feel like I've cut it half in consumption. You know, we get a lot of emails.

I think I got, we get somebody, I don't even forward them to you anymore people concerned about your health people concerned about your chew habit it's a relatable issue you know i feel like but it is helpful you like knowing that people are pulling for you yeah yeah because maybe it's a self-esteem problem like sure there's some like deep deep-seated uh psychological issue maybe or something or it was a uh it was a camaraderie thing with a lot of my uh mentors in the past i don't know because you brought up in the ranching industry yeah but i don't want to i don't want to pass blame of course yeah uh dirt has a coming of age story about coming-of-age stories when he bought his first tin. My first good. His first good tin and didn't have to borrow it from ranch hands.

Still chewing, but still conscious of trying to quit. I don't want to keep hammering at you, but I was going to ask about your love life, how your truck's running. Both good. about your love life, how your truck's running. But I'm going to spare it and move on. You know, Gary did tell me the other day we were traveling together, and it was about 10 a.m., and we were walking through Salt Lake Airport, and he's like, man, I haven't had any chew or coffee yet. He's real proud of it.

He waited until 10 a.m. with no chew. Yeah, I asked Yanni to pat me on the back for it. He was hesitant, but baby steps. Baby steps. Why are you down on coffee? Well, just like anything that you can pull away from that is a necessity day to day. You know, it's nice, I guess. Any addiction.

My woman quit coffee and alcohol. day to day you know it was nice i guess any addiction my woman uh quit uh coffee and alcohol for a while right for a while now i'm thinking about getting back into drinking you always hear people you always hear people trying to quit drinking i'm trying to start back up again baby steps on that too just a little sip here there yeah a lighter i know i'm desperately trying to get back into it. I love that at one point you said you didn't give up on drinking. Drinking gave up on you. I know, and I want to try to re-approach it.

It's like you'll relate to this, Dirt. It's like if you have a breakup with a girl, right? And you reassess and want to come back and fix what was wrong. So I want to re-approach the alcohol. I'm going to come back to alcohol and be like listen we both know that we had our differences but we had amazing times too tenacity no uh mark kenyon yeah is here mark on a scale of 1 to, what do you like? You like a 5, 10, or 100? Let's go 100.

Okay, because you want to have a lot of room to really like. Nuanced answer. Yeah. On a scale of 1 to 100, how excited are you about the live podcast event that we're doing in Columbus, Ohio? 98 and a half. Oh, you excited very excited yeah it should be a lot of fun i hear that you're gonna let me join yeah well yeah because now people know yeah i think that there's no tickets left i mean there are some but by i think that by the time this airs there might be be no tickets left. So are we just rubbing it in by talking about it? No, because I'm using this to inspire people in some of the other markets

where we're doing shows to go down and get some tickets. And it's close to selling out all the rest too, right? Getting there. It's close. It might be too late. But go to meateater. It's close. It might be too late, but go to meater.live folks. You're nodding your head.

I'm just nodding my head because you got to that website, right? Thank you. meater.live I think we'll probably be adding more dates. We started out with four dates. Tempe, Arizona, Denver, Colorado, Columbus, Ohio, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

We might add more, and they're sold out. Can you say who all is going to be there in Ohio with me? And you? Well, you know, we kind of got to finalize with them, but I have extended an invitation to the world's greatest small game hunter. Mr. Murphy. Yeah. Not to be confused with our guest, Guy Zuck,

who's the world's greatest turkey hunter. Does that make you uncomfortable? Very. I bet it does. I bet it does. You didn't see that that introduction comment i'm setting them up for failure we rewind by telling them that um and then another thing uh mark mark and i are working together now we are it's like when you get when you become a couple and you start telling people is this official then this is official yeah all right mark's uh working with us at meteor now so you're gonna be you're gonna be here and seeing all all manner mark canyon and you saw me put you in the

hot seat the other the last time you were on you you really did too that was like uh kept coming we were already going out pretty steady, but I was hitting you hard to see. Feeling it out, can this really work? Yep. No promise. I guess I passed the test. Yep. I'm excited about it.

I think it's a long-term relationship. I'm not ready to talk marriage, but this is good. Yeah, we're going to move in together, though. Let's not tell our wives. And then, of course, Giannis Petalas is here. Good evening. And then Poot Magoot, otherwise known as Chef Andrew Radulowski. World class.

World class. I'll second that. Yeah, so over the last couple of days, Andy Poot fixed up for us. Walk us through, Poot, the menu, what we've been eating. Let's see. What do we have? Well, tonight we had some grilled octopus that came from the cabin up at the fish shack, along with some halibut that was also caught this summer at the shack uh we ate some turkey fresh turkey breast that was pretty good did a turkey piccata that was a lavian eagles

turkey yeah yeah mountain lion he's a little he's a little sour about it you know how i know he's sour that his turkey is the one that everybody ate really Really? How do you know? Well, I'll tell you how I know. Because I, not an hour ago, we had two of those soft-sided Yeti bags, the Yeti Hoppers. I brought one and Yanni brought one, size 40s. And we had some friends down for their first ever turkey hunt. And they each got a turkey and we're bringing them back home to la so whose bag did they take my bag yeah so here now yannis has a bag and i say to yannis i say hey man do you mind carrying my turkey home in your bag and i'll just get it from you later and he's like well you might as

well take it because my turkey's all gone it was a little it was a little passive-aggressive he's dead giveaway yeah yeah i was fishing for like a oh well bro since we ate both your breasts you know i'll give you one of mine oh is that what you were fishing for? Yeah, you didn't pick up on that. I would give you some of mine, but I'm the only one that didn't. If that's the done deal. No, I was more than happy to share mine. You don't have to do that. No, I'll go have these with you.

I just figured since you had the bulk of the meat you were taking home of our stashed, together stashed, that you would take it home yeah mostly yours i'm with you oh you know nothing you know guy why have you here how many years did you live in missouri 47 and a half so you're you're checked out on missouri yep because i want to do a quick correction or clarification it's not a correction. It's a clarification. We were talking about, we were down and we hunted in Missouri for turkeys this spring and recorded a show down there in which we were discussing how someone jumped up some quail while we were hunting turkeys. And they were surprised they had jumped up some quail.

And he got into, hey, what, we kind of kicked around like why are, what happened to all the quail that used to live in the ozarks and a guy wrote in with a one two three he wrote in with a three point four point thing explaining why there's no quail in the ozarks the guy that wrote in to explain this is a is a feller that i've known through he's like an email friend clay newcomb and he publishes a magazine called bearller that i've known through he's like an email friend clay newcomb and he publishes a magazine called bear hunting magazine i didn't hear this from him you know who that is i've heard the name yes sir yeah was fesky one of the four yep i'm gonna give them all good

call so i know now that you're checked out on this subject i heard that this guy takes a mule rides a mule up into the mountains in the Ozarks. True story. And spot and stalks black bears with a mule. That's not something you hear every day. Not something you hear every day. And you understand that to be true? I grew up on mules, too.

It's trading posts and stuff in Missouri. Mules are pretty popular. Hunt coons off of them. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Now, he goes on to say, here's what's, he says that there was not a good answer given to why there aren't quail in the Ozarks anymore. Fescue, this is him. Fescue and Bermuda grass now dominate the landscape because of the rise of cow-calf cattle operations.

Are you mad? You agree with that? A hundred percent. This part of the country now supplies a lot of the Midwest feedlots with steers, and the non-native grasses are better for cattle. Before cattle was big, agriculture, native clump grass provided better habitat for quail. Goes on to say, part two, there's not as many subsistence type farms anymore from the turn of the century into the 1980s there were lots of small farms that just provided great

habitat we used to have a lot more edge habitat our quail populations began to suffer in the early 1980s and have never recovered here's an interesting one you like that one i totally agree with that and part of the small farming that he's talking about is people spent their time taking care of their farms and their families they didn't spend it trying to brush hog every weed and stick that made their field look like it was overgrown got you you know now we're we're a fence defense farming community and a fence defense cattle farming community and a fence to fence cattle grazing community and there's nothing left for a quail earlier did you hear me mention the name kevin murphy as the world's greatest small game hunter yeah you know very avid uh he runs

squirrel hounds and he runs beagles really he's like he used to like to hunt quail and but where he lives in kentucky quail are gone too um i bring that name up because he like he prefers to hunt cottontails on amish farms and has a large network of amish acquaintances and friends and he hunts because they still dirt he says he describes as they still farm dirty yep a horse and a plow you know so there's a lot of like when when crops are picked there's a lot of stuff still on the ground they leave big uh wind rows they leave brush strips and he said that's where all the game lives and he says they he's generalizing of course but he says they also tend to be hell on predators which else yeah uh point three metal t-post i need to read this one oh okay yeah fence the fence

so the advent of the metal t-post cleaned up with herbicides and or modern brush hogs have replaced old fences that primarily grew up into brush hedge. So half of the keep-in capacity of these fences was barbed wire strung between trees, and the rest was native brush. This produced great edge habitat that quail thrive on. I'd say he's 100% correct. Then he goes on to recap.

As I understand, the dominance of non-native grasses, metal T-posts, and modern mowing machines have been the demise of quail. My grandfather, Lewin Newcomb, was a regionally known bird dog trainer in the Wachita Mountains. Is that right? Yes, sir. In the Wachita Mountains of Arkansas. Part of my passion for wildlife conservation was fueled by watching him

groan for the days of good quail hunting during the last 25 years of his life, at which point there just weren't quail. He died in 2014 at the age of 94 and talked about bird dogs until the day he died. Unfortunately, the quail died a long time before he did. Yeah, yeah. My grandfather and my dad used to hunt them, and that's all they did. My dad tried to get leave from Vietnam to come back just to not to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving with anybody to quail hunt because they had such a high population of quail

in the late 60s and early 70s. So how did that request go over? He made it. He it he did yeah he got pictures of him and my grandpa um hunting quail and it i mean like you said in the early 80s we had really really bad winters back to back we had a sleet storm that it rained on top of we got about four to six inches of sleet and then it rained on top of that and we didn't we didn't go to school for 28 days. It froze and got down below zero, and we were finding old coveys of quail froze together. Butt to butt in a circle, the covey roosted. Just froze dead like that.

Froze together. And it never come back after that. And that was about the time fescue and Bermuda grass started, and about the time the big machinery started, about the time cell phone and electronics started. It all tied together. It was a perfect storm for the quail population. You might not know this about Dirt. Did you know that he once bagged a quail at night with a walking stick in Mexico?

No. Cat-like reflexes. I thought it was a night bird but later he killed the last one there was plenty we were doing like a like a late night death march in the dark and um he sees it and later was trying to tell someone the story i think i can't remember who was overhearing him tell the story he gets to the part where he has a name what the bird was And rather than saying it. No, he goes. Yeah, it was a night bird It was really tasty that's my first quail ever a actually you you'd step me through the process Yeah, he was good. Are you cooked it? Yeah, I ate it was delicious. You bring up a great point with texas and mexico no fescue

you know especially south texas and west texas quail populations are through the roof is that right through the roof yeah think about when we went down and hunted oh yeah man near what was it called eagle with ben o'brien eagle pass texas yeah so was it in uh guy was it in missouri that you were brought up that you were raised up with a turkey yeah can you talk about that well i was seven or eight my dad got a bronzeback turkey that we raised and he was my buddy. And first year, he was all right, and then we hit that first spring, and he turned into not being my buddy anymore. Because he was coming into his own.

Coming into his own. That's a euphemism. Yeah. And before that first spring was over, you couldn't walk from the house to the car without him attacking you. And he wouldn't be mean throughout the year, but when springtime would come around, he would. And my mom, she would carry a wiffle ball bat.

And if you misplaced her wiffle ball bat, you got the end of that wiffle ball bat. But she would keep it by the door. And in order for her to get to the car in the morning in the springtime, she'd have to beat that turkey back away from her just to get to her car why did she even put up with that i mean why didn't she just say you know what i've had enough just get rid of him i think she thought my past life i was a turkey and uh she knew how much i love that thing okay yeah because when we had pet raccoons my mom hated our raccoons but she let

you keep them and they'd come in the house and she'd get a landing net and landing net them and bring them back out of the house or carry them out of the house by the tail and open the door and throw them out in the yard. And they would, like, wait by the door. So they knew how to get in. They'd wait by the door and fight their way in when the door cracked. Nice. Yeah, but she never, like, threatened to get rid of the raccoons. Love of a mother.

And you started learning how to communicate with the turkey. Yep. My dad got a few, we got a few bronzeback hens. No, explain that. What's a bronzeback hen? It's just a domesticated turkey. It's like a white turkey, but it has coloring. So it wasn't a wild turkey?

No. There's bronzeback, Spanish black, royal palm, and then just your regular white domestic turkey. All different subspecies. And talk about learning how to communicate with the turkey? Well, we had a hen named Henrietta. I mean, we were real original on the names. Tom was Tom and hen was Henrietta. But she stayed pretty docile. she'd get in your lap shooting but that's how i learned to call was by mimicking her and where i did she have a vocabulary that uh

that is similar to wild turkeys very yeah and she would leave she would leave the yard and go up in the woods and breed with the wild ones and come back i knew some girls like that and she she would have eggs every year but she never did never would raise them but uh but yeah we had her i don't know so she would she would lay down a a brood, is it a brood when it's an egg? No, it's a nest. She'd lay down a nest, but wouldn't sit them? She would sit them, but they just never hatched for whatever reason.

I wonder what that's all about. She was like leaving them too long when it's cold or something? I guess so. I have no idea, but we never could get, even one year my dad got them all and put them in an incubator and it still didn't work. That's interesting. We used to have a cat that would eat its young. That cat was named Maud. got them all and put them in an incubator and it still didn't work so huh that's interesting we used to have a cat that would eat its young that cat was named maud that's messed up it would uh

that is remember one time it laid a whole litter of kittens in my dad's shoe and ate them all oh that's terrifying yeah i don't know any girls like that. That's a painful story. Any cat lovers out there? That's something different. Oh, yeah, we ran into a, who was there? Oh, Pooter. We ran into a feral house cat today. Yep, we did.

We were calling it in with a turkey call. Yeah, it was curious, too. Yeah, it was like, oh, I'm going to kill this thing, whatever it is. And then it got close and spooked. So back to this. So Henrietta and Tom, Henrietta would go up and breed and not do it. But I want to get to the part about how, like in your mind, what was it that you wanted? Like why did you want to start talking to this turkey just turkey hunting and so it was based on turkey hunting yep it enveloped my my soul

how old were you at the time you say it enveloped your soul my first one when i was six and it was from there on you got a turkey and you're sick and was from there on. You got a turkey when you were six? Mm-hmm. And my dad took me out and got a turkey, and we went on to this place called High Ridge. And I look back now, the only thing Dad wanted to do was go to sleep. He'd been out turkey hunting for himself, and this little kid's aggravating the snot out of him to take him turkey hunting. And he gets in at 9 or 10 o'clock and says, yeah, we'll go. I'll take you.

So I had a little 20-gauge. My grandpa was 20-gauge, and he gave know he gets in at nine or ten o'clock and says yeah let's we'll go i'll take you so i had a little 20 gauge my grandpa was 20 gauge and he gave me one shell and uh he set me off about 20 feet so i wouldn't aggravate him while he went to sleep and uh i know this because i've done this guiding over the years you turn your back to the hunter and call a couple times and sleep for 10 minutes and then you wake up and but uh we hadn't been there 30 minutes and he called and i heard a turkey gobble and i tried to get his attention and i couldn't get him a throw a rock at him threw a stick at him and that's how i know he was asleep the next time the turkey gobbled he was a lot closer got the gun up and walked right up there and i shot when i shot he he yelled out loud.

It scared the snot out of me, but I got it. It's a little Jake. It had a beard about four inches long, and I don't know if I've ever got another one that I was so proud of other than that one. And so then you thought, like, I'm going to learn how to call these things in good. Yeah. And you had this turkey in your barnyard you could begin to mimic and he would answer and come to you oh so you could call him in oh yeah

you could call him in he would i mean he'd respond and come in but so you're playing like you're playing henrietta yeah to bring tom in and when henrietta would leave and go off whoring around, he would tear the yard up. He would get beside himself, gobbling, and I'd try to call him in. But the thing was, when he saw you, he wouldn't run from you. He would go into defense like he would try to kill you. I mean, he would try to flog i mean he would try to fall because he thinks that you're your competition for yeah like yeah i'm looking for my woman and then i find you here yeah so the first couple times i called him in it it didn't work out so well for me

so i got to carrying that wiffle ball bat and i tried to call him in and kind of even the odds a little bit i don't know this ain't the greatest story, but, you know, I was a kid. No, this is actually the greatest story. So as I matured, he matured, and he got to where he wouldn't come in close enough to me. So I painted my little wolf ball bat camouflage and started wearing camouflage and face paint. And, yeah, if I could get him close enough, I'd wear his butt out. And I didn't always win. I mean, there was times that he won.

And he got really, he was the wildest tame turkey in Miller County, I guarantee you. What was the county? Miller County. So you learned to do this then in your communications with Turkey. You're not using a box call or you're not using conventional Turkey calls. No. Dad gave me one when I was 12 or 13 and I had a bad gag reflex. But, you know, I learned how to do it.

But I can call on a diaphragm decently but never could use any call like I could my boys. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking 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,points and tracking that's right you were always talking about uh we're always talking about on x here on the meat eater podcast now you um you guys in the great white north can can be part of it be part of the excitement you can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service that's a sweet function as part of membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. What was the first call you think you might have learned? From Henrietta, just a yelp. She would just walk through the yard just constantly making small, little, barely audible noises. We heard that one doing it tonight.

I was going to ask you guys about that. We're jumping ahead here. No, go ahead, man. The four of us hunted together, Andy, Guy, Steve, and myself. Andy and Guy were sitting together. Steve and I us hunted together. Andy, Guy, Steve, and myself. Andy and Guy were sitting together. Steve and I were sitting together. Andy is poot. Yep.

And we had a hen come in fairly early. And we got to watch her for at least 30 minutes. Yeah. Right? And she finally drifted off. I never heard her make a sound. Did you? Nope.

And you guys did. She was talking the whole time that's you know it's funny i want to get into this more but i remember uh will primos listen to a will primos dvd and he was talking about turkeys make so much more sound than you think yeah because when you're sitting in the woods and one comes real close to you, you realize they're constantly making noise. Constantly. And I never, like tonight, she wasn't in shooting range. You can't shoot a female anyway, but she wasn't in shooting range, but I never heard a peep out of her.

I can't believe that you guys just sitting not too far away were listening to her. Constantly talking. And you don't even know if she's talking to to another one or if she's just making noise to appease herself but i know that came turkey we had she would do it non-stop oh there would be times when we get hot in the heat of the day now i don't mean she she called her head off non-stop but for the most part i'd say 80 of her day was spent making noises. The other day we had a hen roll up on a decoy, and she spent several minutes trying to figure out what was wrong with it. She'd kind of fan her tail out, walk around it, move her head up and down.

Wouldn't you just love to know exactly what she was thinking? Yeah, would love to. I kept telling Kenyon that if I could have, like all my questions about turkeys would be answered if I could be in one's brain for five minutes. That's it. Because I just want to know like how precise their thoughts are. Or is it just sort of this nothingness going on in their head? Or is it that they're having like complicated thoughts about risk and reward they live in two worlds everything's fine everything's not fine she would go up to it and was uh purring at it but also just like whistling it's really cool sounds

yeah a lot of that yeah a lot of those purrs and little subtle clucks in there. Those little bitty tiny. It's something that very few people even recognize as a turkey. But they do that to each other to, you know, they're curious. They want to know what's going on, you know. And you see it a lot when they walk up to decoys. What's the other noise you just made? Just a purr.

What is that? Do that again. There's all kinds. And the purr, you know, people talk about the feeding purr. Well, there's so many vocalizations from a hen to another hen to another gobbler to something's wrong, to an alarm. The purr that a wild turkey uses has many different call meanings. Do the yelp that your old Henrietta used to make walking around the yard. But what would shock me is she would do that in the yard, and 300 yards away in the woods, a turkey would gobble back at her. Hundreds of yards away.

Hundreds of yards away. And on a still morning, and that was, you know, a lot of guys talk about now they don't ever call to a turkey until he flies down. That was something I learned from that hen. She would sit on our barn, which was where she roosted, and she would listen to those turkeys gobble around her. And when they flew down, she would start calling to them. Why?

I have no idea. It was fascinating, but it taught me something. Don't ever call to them while they're in the tree. Wait until they hit the ground. And she would decide, she would make her mind up she'd start yelping and she'd pitch down and go to a different one just about every time so what other sounds did you learn how to make with just your mouth a coyote and two, and just any crow call, basically anything that would make a turkey gobble. Let me hear the coyote. Let me hear it.

I do it a lot louder than that, but I don't want to break your sound machine. And then let me hear the owl he lit up the owls oh man yeah these guys were saying you were calling in all kinds of owls he asked pack of owls he asked me why i don't owl hoot when we go and that's the reason why because it usually ends up like that i got five owls above my tree and i can't hear anything they're flying around from tree to tree all around trying to find the offending owl. Can you rip it again? Let me hear it. That's good.

Walk me through. So if you can, walk through what you understand to be the vocabulary of a turkey. So we talked about a purr. What is a yelp saying? When a turkey is yelping, what is it saying to other turkeys? That it wants company.

It either wants company or it wants you to. Basically, it wants company. That's it. That's their vocalization. But what is the one they use when they really are going like a dude, when a turkey sounds like a bad caller with a box call? Because they do sometimes do. Oh, absolutely.

The worst turkey callers in the woods are turkeys. What is she saying when she's doing that? She's ready to breed. She's ready for company. In the spring ready to breed she's ready for company in the springtime now she's ready for company and if you'll hear them do that in the fall too and they've usually got split up from the flock and they're just trying to find they're gregarious animals they want to be together you know as soon as the breeding season open is over the gobblers get back together and they're best friends all year until February, March.

And the same with the hens. They're a very strange creature but they're a creature of habit and they want company. You know what I just realized? Can you hold on a minute? Sure. We didn't do the list of the food.

What distracted us from doing the list of the food, Poot? Yanni's turkey. Or lack or lack of yeah that was it oh that's what happened do you mind getting back into that yeah um speaking of rewinding turkey piccata yeah we made some turkey piccata no we missed some stuff because you had some cured salmon that you caught there in the sand. Yeah, I made some lox for breakfast. Made a smoked caribou kielbasa that we ate several different times. Did you hit the calamari? Oh, yeah.

We did some calamari that— From my home waters. Yeah. You got to lay down how you— Secret spot. How that was served, too. That was a curried calamari with golden raisins, some green onion, pine nuts, and a little curry mango aioli. How was it consumed? Or in West City?

Shooting shotguns in the headlight of a truck. Yeah. As it should be. Yes. I just want to say, you guys all left, and you left a plate out there. That's why I was out there for 30 minutes. Yeah, a handful of calamari. What else did we do?

That seafood sausage. Halibut and spot prawn sausage. I think that's my favorite. Yeah, that was good. We cured some goose pastrami, a couple goose breasts, pastrami. We did Canada goose breasts. Yeah. I think that that dish, when you hear from people who get Canada geese

and they don't like eating them that much, that's what you ought to be making. Yeah, it's a go-to for sure oh and then in poot special um poot special canada goose breast pastrami recipe is in the in the forthcoming cookbook yeah yeah and get it there and oh we had some couple of different lunch items where we did uh i did a roast caribou and made little sliders out of that and then today we ate some uh took a mountain lion roast and smoked through that in the smoker and we did kind of like a like a pulled barbecue style with a little coleslaw and all the all the trimmings that was pretty good you ruined me andy dude it was a wild game extravaganza man yeah she can never be

reached again elk loin yeah oh yeah yeah we're cauliflower puree yep seared a big old elk loin cauliflower puree yeah that was that was really good he cooked so hard uh he cooked so hard and so long that some essential part of himself was lost and he was unable to get a turkey because you depleted some vital some sense of vitality that allows someone to

well I chose the wrong day to stay and do all my prep work I went on every hunt except yesterday when everybody came back with turkey. Guy, why was it so easy to get turkeys yesterday? But the day before was very difficult because today was not that great.

Well, Friday we had, what what 40 mile an hour winds out of the north blowing trees down yeah trees laying down and it's you know they don't get together that well they're scared you know predators have a better chance of catching them everything's moving and you know sites their biggest defense and uh we hit it right you know they were split up some of them were lonely and absolutely perfect weather the barometer was low everything was just hit right cool and it stayed cool for uh it was probably 11 o'clock before it really started warming up. It was just an absolutely perfect morning for... So you think it was a response to having had such a nasty day the day before? I do.

Like if you have a rainy day, then the next day is real sunny and people are more inclined to step outside. Yep. Depending on the wind and the weather. Yep. But when it's clear and calm like that after a day of bad weather over the years it's and also the next day is usually the worst that you'll have they're all back together and you and you've got the hunters you know around here that didn't hunt friday or that tried to hunt friday and knew that saturday was going to be good so you had an influx of how many shotgun shots did we hear Saturday?

Jeez, from us alone, a handful. Yeah, and then there were several from around, so they noticed the pressure. So that next day, they tend to be off a little bit. I know we heard several turkeys this morning that only gobbled three or four or five times, and that was it. And we had one gobble yesterday a hundred times at least yeah at least a hundred times at least a hundred times and i put it into that you did amen i capped him at 100 at 100 but it gets frustrating you know when you have a day like today but that's why they call it hunting it's just you live for those days for yesterday yep i was telling mark

canyon or nothing i was telling po canyon or no i think i was telling pooter if uh if it was a sure thing they wouldn't call it trying to call it a turkey amen they'd call it something different call it something different um can you make a cut noise like what a turkey does when she cuts i can't do it with my voice really yeah i can do it with a mouth call and i used to pack a mouth call to do the cutting so I could yelp with my voice at the end of it. But, you know, I've hunted turkeys for 40 years. I've heard cutting in the wild from a wild hen maybe a handful of times. No, you hear it all the time.

I just don't hear it. I mean, not the continuous cutting like I was doing today when I was calling. I don't ever hear it. I mean, not the continuous cutting that, like I was doing today when I was calling. I don't ever hear that. Me and Yanni do. Do you really? Really? Yeah. You sure you're not confusing it with just a bunch of clucks?

No. Would you define it as like a very aggressive cluck? Sort of? How do you define it? Just a series of very aggressive cluck sort of. How do you define it? Just a series of very aggressive clucks. She's not scared. She's looking for somebody to

she's looking for a time trying to get a response from a gobbler. So you can't do you can't cut with your mouth. Right. Takes too much air. I pass out. Okay. So cut with your mouth right it takes too much air i'll pass out okay so so cut with a slate do one up by your mouth do one up by your mouthpiece there. What's that turkey saying?

She's looking for company. She's excited. They call it excited yelps. I don't know anybody that's ever talked to one, actually. You don't know anybody that's ever what? Talk actually but you don't know anybody that's ever what talked to one actually what she's thinking but i think that she's looking for somebody she's looking for a response whether it be from another hen or from a gobbler but just to be clear if you just slow that down and instead of doing a bunch in a row and just do that same sound yeah you just call that a cluck cluck she's walking and looking

can you cluck with with your mouth and a lot of times what a hen says after she clucks you know i can remember in the 80s growing up everybody told you don't make a putt with your call or you'll scare everything in the woods. Yeah, because you do the sound that they make when they spook. Yeah, but what she does after she clucks or putts says everything. If she putts and flies off, every turkey in the woods knows something's up. But if she putts and yelps they're immediately calm it means a totally different thing but here's the thing if all of these things meant i'm looking for company then it wouldn't

have they wouldn't all exist like why the redundancy because we do everything backwards in nature the hand goes to the gobbler no no i'm saying if she wouldn't like there has to be some difference i'm sure you're we don't know but if she yelps and cuts and clocks all meaning i want company they must all mean variations of I want company. I see what you're saying. Like I want company a teeny bit, but not really. Yeah. I want company a lot. I see what you're saying, yeah.

And I've seen hens walking through the woods clucking and yelping and clucking and yelping, and they'll cluck and yelp until they get a gobbler to response and turn and go right to it. And you know from listening to that that that's what she wanted to do. And I've heard the same hens doing the same things, hear a turkey gobble and turn and walk the other way and get with a group of hens and go off into the woods. When it comes down to the final of it, she knows what she wants, and until we can figure out a way to get in her head, we're about as far as we can go as a group of hunters, I think.

Can you talk about when you saw a turkey gorging itself on crayfish underwater? That was at Empire Ranch, and it was unreal. She was walking along the edge of a pond like a raccoon, picking, her head would go into the water. And she had a beard about, I don't know, seven or eight inches long. It was a bearded hen. It was a bearded hen, yep. and she had a beard about i don't know seven or eight inches long it was a bearded hen it was a bearded hen yeah would you shoot a bearded hen not now would you go to a bar called the bearded hen yeah we saw you know did i tell you we saw a bearded hen last night no pencil thin really eight inch would you have shot it i was hoping that would

come in and poop could shoot it that way i could inspect it but not have to feel the guilt that's where i would be i would be able to then say like yeah i was with a guy one time i didn't do it but my buddy shot a bearded hen but they'll eat anything if they can get it in their mouth i killed killed a gobbler one time, had bagworms in his whole chest was just moving from all the bagworms he had ate. You mean bagworms like tentworms? Yep. Sure enough. And you could see him moving inside there.

See his craw moving. My wife wouldn't like that a bit. I've got to be honest, I didn't care for it at all. You were talking this morning about the hens have the hierarchy as well, and the vocalizations will change based on their status within that pyramid. Is that? That's true. And a hen goes into something that's called broody when she gets a nest.

She gets towards the end of her nest. She gets real defensive of her little area and defensive of herself and but they fight they strut just like a gobbler they don't make the same you know that a gobbler does but they will let me hear you let me hear you do that one again you know how i do it sounds about the same just an abbreviated verse um so the crayfish thing how big are the crayfish it was eating i mean they weren't like what you'd find in a crawfish bowl but they were you know three or

four inches long so she's just filling her crop up with those things yep the writer tom kelly colonel tom kelly who wrote the the greatest turkey hunting book ever amen called the 10th legion yep talks about them eating mud bugs which crawfish yep talks about them eating crawfish and i i hadn't read his book until after that happened to me but it's been a long time ago but i did i did harvest the turkey and because i had to see you know what in the world is she having to be a bearded hen yep and she was eating had a whole craw full of and once again her crawl moving. They weren't near about dead. Really? Yeah. So craw, I never thought about that. Craw is a word for a crop.

Yep. A craw is a crop. As you learned how to make all these turkey sounds at your farm there as a kid, how did you get into competitive turkey calling? And, like, what is competitive turkey calling? It's a group of guys get a list of turkey vocabulary, hen vocabulary, and you make each say it's a cluck or the cutting. You do that, and then the yelping, and it's a series of that,

and then cluck and purr, and it's a series of that, and you get judged on those calls. Do you believe in a call called the fly down is it useful to hunters absolutely now that one i have heard a lot is the fly down cackle fly down yeah and i and she that hand would do that with a slate can you yeah well you can't you do with your mouth with no call in it no i'll pass out again but go a little closer to your mouthpiece or your uh your mic and that's them that's the that's the vocalizations they make coming down out of a tree?

Yep. And I have heard hens do that a lot, especially in Texas. But when you got into doing competition calling, it was just you were doing no, just using voice calls. Now, I would have to use a diaphragm for stuff like that, for cutting and for the fly down cackle. But for basic yelps and the clucking and purrs and stuff like that, yeah. Run me through like a, run through a bunch of the,

just a whole whatever comes to your mind. The call sequences? Yeah, run me through like a, like let's say you're at a calling well where were the calling competitions let me ask that first i i took second in the world in natchez mississippi second in the world natural voice a guy named tucker chris beat me by two points but that's what i mean you just said natural voice yeah so how can you can't if you're doing the natural voice you can't have the call right Right. Okay. So you just suffer through it, and that's where I lost it, was the fly-down cackle.

I just couldn't do it. It sounded like a dead chicken, and I didn't score very high on my dead chicken call either. And that's what cost you the world championship voice calling. Yeah. I had nines and tens out of ten. He was scored zero to ten. I had nines and tens on all the calls except that one

and I had a 4. So what was the first time you went to a competition? I didn't eat for three days and I flew down to Louisiana and went to Natchez for a minute. And why were you cutting weight? I was just nervous

getting up in front of a bunch of people. That was pretty rough. So you were nervous about it well in advance of going and doing it? Well in advance, yep. And you signed up. And did you even know what other people were doing with calling? Had no idea. You just had a feeling you were good at it.

Yeah. Had a guy tell me I had to eat lemons before, and then another guy told me I had to idea. You just had a feeling you were good at it. Yeah. I had a guy tell me I had to eat lemons before, and then another guy told me I had to eat limes, and another guy told me I had to eat Hall's cough drops. That would clear my throat. By the time it was over, I couldn't even talk. But it was a great experience. I met one of my best friends for life there.

I mean, we've been friends 30-some years. I met him at that calling contest and where was the calling contest natchez mississippi or natchez mississippi however you want to say it some good friends from down there made made some really good people met some really good people down there and how old were you when this is happening 19 1920, 19, 20. Okay, now, I got to follow up real quick. How many other folks were in the voice division? I think, you know, memory is a little rough, but I think there were 16 or 18. I know there's some, Mark Drury was there.

He's an excellent excellent excellent natural voice caller and there's some other people that it's been 20 years ago that I can't remember you beat Mark Drury no he was there the year before

he won it three years in a row he was there at the contest but he didn't call that year he quit because he was there the year before he won it three years in a row he was there at the contest but he didn't call that year he quit because he was winning it every year he went into business for himself the year i competed he wasn't in it is there a day-to-day like maintenance you have to do for your throat or you know what i mean like a singer does their warm-up, do you do something? Like, you know, la-la-la-la. Yeah. Do you do that? Is he man or is he man? Oh, jeez.

Come on now. Stuck in your head now? I'm going to be singing it all day tomorrow. Yeah, I didn't realize I had such a hit. Yeah, you really had such a hit. Because my understanding is like when you write a song, it's meant to be that it gets in people's heads. And is he man or is he man? Or man gets in Mark's head and he can't shake it,

which tells me that it's a hit. What's even worse is my wife has had to hear me sing it because she gets mad at me, and I say, talk to Steve. I can't wait to get home and sing this is the annoying song. This is how it goes. Izzy Manor, Izzy Myth. So you got to warm up. La, la, la, la.

The more you call, the better you get at it. The more I practice, the better I am. All right. So at some point, we better do it now. I want you to put yourself back in your 19-year-old self. Okay. Here you are. You're in Natchez, Mississippi.

Haven't eaten in days. You get up on the stage and you set the scene for it. It's a crowd of beautiful women. And you're up on the stage and you need to start ripping out a wide array of turkey sounds that you learned communicating with the family pet.

That's it. Do you have to do them in specific order? Yeah. And they'll say call or do the Yelp of the wild. Oh, so we can do this just like a contest. Who wants to be the announcer? I can do it. You don't mind being the announcer?

Sure. I've emceed before. Okay, I'm going to be a crowd member. Go home. Contestant number one, could you please start with the cluck? You just do it a few times. And that's all you do, just a couple? That's it.

And they'll give it a minute for the judges to... Who's judging? I mean here at the table. Oh, I'm not judging. Who's judging in real life? You know, they get... A lot of times it'd be, you know, past callers, people that turkey hunted a lot from that local area.

Sometimes they'd have agents do it from that area you know people that were absolutely knew what a hen turkey was supposed to sound like and this is something put on by the national wild turkey federation yes okay did uh jay scott judges the elk calling right okay so uh announcer moving on to the Yelp. And usually you do it twice. Dang. Unaided. Ten.

I'm going to try one time. Yip, yip, yip, yip. dang unaided 10 i'm gonna try one time that's like more of a harbor seal you try dirt oh no no you're gonna try you peep peep peep peep you got yeah i bet yanni can do like an approximation of it No. Give it a try. Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip. I bet Yanni can do an approximation of it. Yeah, but my voice is not in the best place for it. But I can try. That'd be good.

Mark. That's not bad. Not bad at all. Good job. Hit it again so when you're learning how to do like now we're going back in you're not your 19 year old self anymore you're like whatever thank whatever. Thank goodness. No, you're going to go back to being him in a minute. Oh Lord. But you're younger, you're younger self. How did you,

like, were you learning to call with no call, just using your voice, just out of expediency? Like, uh, or were you thinking, I want to become a,

a voice caller? No, I was using it to, uh, kill turkeys. That was it. a voice caller. I was using that to kill turkeys. That was it. So if I had given you a bunch of turkey calls, you might not have learned. Right. Announcer?

Contestant number one, can we please now hear your fighting purr? Actually, this was big. Is this a true call? Oh, yeah. When two gobblers meet are two hens and you can tone it down

from one to the other. Ten. Yeah. You judging now, Dirk? Yeah. 10. Yeah. You judging now, Dirk? Yeah. Hit him again, Mark. Yeah, yeah. How about the Kiki Run? That's a close one.

I can barely... I barely can do that one, but... Okay, but first, can you explain to me the turkey sounds, kiki, kiki run, like all these things? Most generally, it's the fall of the young, young of the fall turkeys, babies that can't, haven't developed a voice enough. And you'll hear it break at the end sometimes. Sometimes it won't break. They'll kiki nonstop. But I've heard hens that do it.

She, that Henrietta turkey, she used to do it when she was five, six years old. She would kiki. They can do it if they want to do it. Now, babies in the fall, they don't have the voice box. They do it just because they're trying. They can't yelp. But I've heard them hens do that kiki run in the spring. And, like, I don't have video of her, but she would do it when she was older.

Let me hear the noise. That just means, follow me. I'm not sure what the kiki run is from a mature hand. I don't know what that means. I really don't know why they do it sometimes. Mm-hmm. Mark? Well, what do we have left? Do we want to hear the fight on cackle again?

Do we want to hear the... I can't. Yeah, do the putts. I'll do the feeding purr. How about an alarm putt? Yeah. Hold your ears. No, it's not a putt.

And my putt and cluck sound so much alike, you know. Yeah, but a real hen's putt and cluck. Sound alike too? Yeah. Half the time I'm in the woods going, damn it, I screwed up again. But here she comes. She's coming all the way in and i'm like oh she's not putting isn't it isn't the cadence different though on the alarm putt

oh yeah definitely yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure so when you when you what was it like when you were growing up in missouri what'd you what'd your old man do for a living? He worked for the State Department, and he wasn't around very often. And it was, you know, I lived in Tuscumbia, Missouri. It was population 200. You know, we had a, we didn't even have a stoplight. We had a stop sign, a bank, a church, and a bar, and a school. So were you the kind of kid that hung out by yourself? You know, I mean, it was hard not to be popular because there was only like 15 of us in my class.

So you were popular whether you wanted to be, but no, I wasn't popular. But it was a great place to grow up, but I was a hellion. You were a hellion? Yeah, I was a hellion. Like what? Tell me some

bad things you did i shot a lot of turkeys but you mostly ran around out in the woods yeah because like after the last couple days i can just tell like i've only known you for a few days to hang out with but you're like oh you're like what i would call like a woodsman a term that i don't i do not throw around well there's a lot of guys like to go hunt but they're not like a woodsman and and that's just it i don't hunt at all anymore i mean i don't i can't remember the last thing i harvested other than the bird that was pooping over the windowsill you know i mean relocated relocated i mean it's just i love like you guys being here and the success you guys had that's where i get my charge of of it and you know

seeing the conservation efforts that have been made for the wild turkey not only for the wild turkey but for the to bring up a bad but good point when when I was a kid growing up, you would talk to guys, did you see anything today? I shot the hell out of this bush, but, you know, it turned out it wasn't a turkey. I shot at one 70 yards, and there was accidents. And, you know, I had a really good friend of mine got shot turkey hunting. And I got him into the sport, and, you know, he got shot his second time ever being out. How'd that happen? He was hunting a public land there close to home, and he was calling a gobbler,

and he said he was just about ready to shoot it, and it saw him and run off. And he said he was just sitting there, and he looked, and he seen a guy walking up to him, and he waved at him, and he didn't have his gloves on which who cares you know he a man looks about as much like a turkey as i look like an elephant you know but he waved at him and he said as soon as i waved at him he threw his gun up and he said i knew he was going to shoot me and he he put his hand over his his eyes and saved his eyes but he had 40 some pellets up his arm and in his skull. Holy shit. But you don't hear about that anymore,

and it's through the conservation efforts of this country and educating people that you don't shoot until you are sure of your target. There was a kid that was at one of the Turkey Federation things who was an expert voice caller the story was he became good at it because his old man shot him in a turkey hunting accident and damaged his voice box yep that's a true story and now he can call turkeys like i don't even you know I try to think of like what word would describe that story. It's not irony, but there's some bizarreness to that story. Yeah. And you can't ever take that, you know, that trigger pull back.

But I don't understand, like, if you talk to a guy as soon as it's like, oh, so you thought, you thought that you saw a man's hand and in your mind was, oh, there's a turkey, and I'm verifying that it is a bearded turkey and therefore illegal, and I'm verifying that I'm holding on the waddles. Yeah. You're not doing all that. No, you're not. You're shooting that movement but that was it i mean that it was i mean we had 10 15 accidents a year in the state of missouri back in my day my buddies from missouri have a good story about watching uh an acquaintance of theirs they just happen to be perched up and and watch this like, belly crawling on a bird in a field that was gobbling.

And the guy got up and shot a fence post. The bird was still, like, 50 yards farther, never saw it, and just reared up and shot this fence post. Then stood up and, like, walked over there and realized there was no turkey. Not even close. He was trying to help the quail by killing the fence post yeah but it's because there was such a lack of it was like you had to take every split second decision to shoot something like yeah it was just and pride and ego which is downfall of the majority

of us guys but you know now through their efforts you know they had the safe sticker on the end of the gun you know and everybody made fun of it i didn't make fun of it i thought it was a great idea you know the sticker yeah it was a be safe sticker that you put on the end of your when you put your gun up it was on the whatever is that the riser or whatever yeah so you so you had to see that sticker before you made you think that one little bit. But our, I mean, this went downhill. There's hardly any now, you know, one or two a year, and it's usually somebody dropping a gun or.

Right. So some level of education took shape. Very much so, yeah. You know what I was saying, how, like, how I was saying, like I think of you as a woodsman after walking around with you i we're the reason i bring that up is our friend pat dirk and we're talking to him and he's talking about these guys that get so good at killing white tails this will interest you mark um these guys get so good at killing white tails and like killing machines

you know but they can't tell you what tree their tree stand's hanging in. They don't know what kind of tree. They learn some aspect of hunting, but they don't learn the package of it. But you, when you're out in the woods, you know your trees, you know your plants, you're observing

all of the things around you, and you're curious about the vocalizations and you don't even care to be the guy hunting. I could care less. I just, there's something to learn every time we go out there. You know, nature, woods are changing every single second of every day. And we've decimated our forests back at the turn of the century.

And they've come back. And we're learning as a nation that you have to take care of it by eradicating fire and fescue and fence-to-fence planting. In my opinion, someday she's going to get tired of it you know we got to do our part as sportsmen to give back we got to take care of our woods and our fields and our forests and our wildlife have to we owe it to the next generation our children when you're growing up did you see a lot of areas get destroyed? Yeah. Over the course of your lifetime? I did.

One of the most painful ones was in Alabama that we hunted. And, I mean, it was one of the few places I ever got to hunt that was virgin timber. And there was white oak trees. And it was 280 acres. And me and the buddy that I hunted with down there barry we could hold hands and not touch i mean around the majority of the white oak trees on that place and uh that grandfather passed away and left it to his grandson and on the one condition that it didn't get clear cut that nothing happened to it it was never to be logged which i'm not sure that i agree with the

never being logged stuff but something that pristine and that beautiful yeah i agreed with it and i remember we went down there one year and that his nephew had found a way around it and it was a clear-cut field when we got there 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.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX x club y'all it's the logging thing is is tricky and the the main when i was a little kid the main area we could go and we could like take 22s and walk out our door and go hunt squirrels. I remember those days, yeah. We'd take.22s, whatever, cross a road, and you'd go into a

small wood lot, which my old man owned a chunk of. Then you'd go down and cross Mueller Road and pass into a big woods, because it was owned by a summer camp. It came to be that the summer camp sold it and whoever got it was came in to log it okay and these are big white pines and big oaks um and they came in to log it and we were like the monkey wrench gang man because we don't want

to log it. And we noticed that the guys came in and would go around writing no cut on some trees. And my old man had gotten all this paint at a white elephant sale, and we had a sprayer. And I remember me and my brother, were i think i was 13 or 14 i remember because right around the time i was peeling logs for 35 cents a foot at a place that made log homes and uh we kept mixing that paint to try to get it to match exactly the paint that said no cut and then went all over out in the woods right no cut on stuff which didn't work and then they cut it okay so it was it was squirrel woods then they cut that forest select cut not clear but select cut it

and it was a couple years later and we had deer yep and there wasn't deer anywhere amazing near i mean it was like you would there would be now and then a deer somewhere. If you crossed the next road, White Lake Drive, and passed into this other woods, you could possibly run into a deer. They logged that thing, and we jumped a rough grouse in there. Great. A few years later, which never happened. And we actually went and hunted deer in that woods.

All right. That's great. After it was locked and then that that caused me to have sort of like an awareness of sort of like a managed forest right or like how you could that's something you think is negative like oh logging so bad but then it created this thing yep and it wasn't like this is old growth who got logged off during the logging boom anyways right it was something of a more cyclical nature but if you went there now there's now again there's nothing because then what happened was development

and someone came in and scratched it all off into lots and made a field out of it it's just houses it's houses it's just gone now and now what I think is like oh they're going to log it and it's going to be gone or it's going to be ruined no it's gone when you build like

when you develop it that's gone and it was developed by the guys that you know it was developed by the guys that you know it was developed by the guys i went to high school with it was like not like not like a evil not like an evil thing happened or someone did it with malintent it's just like the fact is now nothing's there yeah well there's some squirrels running around you can't hunt because people's yards

that's why they make pellet guns right i'm I'm a fan of logging when it's selective harvest. It's a renewable resource, just like cutting a field of grass for hay. If you don't, it's just going to go to waste. Utilize it. And if you do it right, you can help your forest in so many ways. You can help your forest and your wildlife. Yeah. Have you ever been around when they've done those ring they bore into the tree and take it out and the rings on the wood and tells you how many years old the tree is no i just know you're

counting them on the stump yeah well they got a machine or it's a little handheld deal that bores into the tree and it takes out a tube of the tree, for lack of a better word, and they can count the rings. And you can see that tree's life where it had a drought year or it had a lot of rain or it's starting to get enclosed. It's got too many trees around it, and the rings will get shorter and shorter and shorter as the forest matures. And you do a selective harvest in an area like that and come back in 10 years and do that same thing, and those rings are so far apart you can't even, it doesn't even look like it's the same tree. Like that tree's kicking ass afterward.

Yeah, now it's got room to grow and there's some light to the forest. And we as human beings, we want to see, to see well i don't and i'm sure you guys don't either as being hunters but people want to see a pristine forest i hate that word you know pristine there's there's no such thing as pristine in a forest if it's pristine it needs some work you know if you can look 600 yards through an oak forest, there's nothing there. There's a few acorns at the end of August that last, what, two weeks, and then there's nothing. You need to cut that and open the timber up and allow some sunlight so you can have growth for deer and nesting cover for your turkeys.

Deer see food and this four foot four foot of cover it they don't care about what's above them they want they want something that they can hide in and even a wild turkey does too now yeah they like their open areas but they they need security this is a little off topic do you remember what it was they were giving out at that turkey calling contest for a prize? Yeah, it's this ginormous trophy, the only trophy I've ever, well, that and co-ed softball. That's the only two trophies I got in my house.

You still got it now? Yeah. You carry it around with you now? Yeah, I do. It's one of the only ones I kept. That's not true. I won that Illinois Open and the Oklahoma Open and some other little contests,

but I don't have any of those trophies anymore, but I do have that one. Is there groupies in Mouth Turkey, Collin? I don't know. I got so far away from it. I haven't done it in so long. But there were some super guys that were that were in there yeah it's a good group of fellas and then you got into turkey guiding guiding turkey hunting yep when you're doing that are you mostly um enjoying it or mostly

not enjoying the company of it come in. Who's ego and pride? Not mine. I have none left. But when somebody's paying you for a service, they expect results. So it puts pressure on you to make those results. And a lot of times, like today, a turkey doesn't want to cooperate, and you really can't make them do what they don't want to do. And I've got enough pressure in my life.

I don't need that. But like Saturday, I live for those days you know so you felt that guiding you felt that the the the the transaction of it made it less fun yeah because the hunter had expectations right and I haven't I haven't taken money for guiding other than a few tips I tried to talk I'm out of giving me to but I they still give me but I haven't took money for guiding and gosh i don't even know how long it's been a long time and that makes you feel better about it a lot better yeah yep what were some of the things you've seen people do when you're guiding that you didn't really like oh lord one i'm not going to name the guy's name because i don't know what the statute of limitations is but he was a baseball player.

He played for the Mets. He held the record for getting hit by a pitch the most in one single season. It was like 120 times he got hit by a pitch. Mean, horrible, rough man that just was soft on the inside. A good, solid guy, but he just didn't put up with nothing. Everything was a bench-clearing brawl if it didn't go right and you you feel that's a symptom of being soft on the inside yeah he was a super soft guy he was a good guy i really liked him you know even to this day he's a he's a super guy i kind of i don't really understand what you're saying you're saying that he would fly off the handle. Yeah.

And that being a result of him being soft on the inside. Trying to hide it. That's my opinion. I understand what you're saying. That's my opinion of him. He had soft tendencies, but didn't like that about himself. Wasn't going to show it. Okay. He would go over the top and pummel you if you thought that of him,

which if he hears this podcast, he's probably going to pummel me but that's all right because well we'll pummel him right back but i took him out he aggravated me for two years to take him turkey hunting so i took him we go out and it was kind of raining that morning and i set up under a cedar tree in a glade and it was i don't, it was probably 10 o'clock, and I didn't want to be there. You know, because, one, it's raining, and the sun, it stops raining, the sun breaks through, and me and him are sitting there shoulder to shoulder. First time he's ever been turkey hunting. It was April 29th, a Friday.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Man, I'm waiting for something real bad to happen. It was pretty bad. And this turkey gobble is just out of the blue, about 250 yards down off this glade. And we're in a perfect spot. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me, you know. I get him around, get his gun up. And the rain is dripping off the cedar trees.

And there's just that little bit of mist you know and i just i was like all right that's him gobbling yeah i mean he just that was almost he couldn't because he's that with the guy shooting sorry so let's get him around get his gun set, and through this glade out steps a hen. Just a beautiful little hen, and she meows back at me. And I call to her, and he gobbles, and he steps out behind her. And it's just one of those turkeys that you never get a chance. You know, he's got a foot-long beard.

It looks like it's big as a Coke can. It's just a humongous turkey. This is what you live for, you know. And I'm telling him, this is the biggest turkey I've seen this year. Please, you know, take your time. He said, I got this. I'm like, all right. So I call a couple more times.

Can you hit that gobble again when it's the right moment? I was like, this is it. You know, he gobbled straight at us, 150 yards, 100 yards. And then she's about 15 or 20 yards ahead of him. She's just walking and feeding, you know. She gets him about 25 yards, and he's about 50. And he's just beautiful. The sun's shining off of him.

I'm like, how am I going to talk to this guy in a mountain, this turkey, you know? Because it's a trophy turkey and i said all right let him take a few more kaboom and then just explodes into a cloud of feathers oh yeah oh my gosh what in the beep beep and beep you beep an idiot well i got the idiot out and that was the end of my trash-talking him. I got a stern lesson in that he was paying me for a service. He came here to kill a turkey, and by Lord above, that's what he did. And if I didn't like it, I could march my butt right on back to the truck, which is exactly what I did.

I left him with his turkey right there in the woods and left professional baseball player yeah shot the hand and he packed that thing around and showed it to people they would have hung me they would have put me under the prison you know but not him he takes it and goes off and just as happy as he can be. It's like never again. I never took him again either. Never. Soft inside. Soft inside, but that was his claim to fame. Giannis does this.

You do it and Giannis does it. I'm trying to learn how to do it. Let's say if I meet someone who's just terrible, I'll just be like i don't like that guy but um yanni will will try to find out what it is that makes the guy that way that's a tendency for me too and then um right you'll give them like the credit of the problem. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, I do.

As opposed to just writing it off. As opposed to writing it off, he'll be like, yeah, but he. Yeah, but he. As an explanation. I think it's a more gracious way to go through life. Be like, well, yeah, but he had a lot of problems with his dad.

I understand. As a way to excuse this sort of behavior. Us men all have our faults. All of us. Yeah, dirt. I got no faults. Well, I guess to you. You're like a hunter who doesn't hunt. well i guess two and so uh you're like a hunter who doesn't hunt that's it i refuse

refuse refuse other than the relocation of a pest from time to time other than that i'll never kill another animal out of pleasure he's speechless yeah a little bit speechless a little bit speechless at a point okay so at a point would you say

do you imagine a point in your life where you say not only will I not I will not assist no in the killing of another animal too much pleasure from people too much excitement i enjoy seeing that the look on people's faces kids women adults it doesn't matter i enjoy the excitement of it and seeing the thrill do you take your own kids hunting? Very much, yeah. Do you take them hunting and then think, well, I hope that they'll arrive at a point where they don't want this anymore like I did?

Yeah, I do. I hope that someday they reach the point where they want to help others see what they've got to see in their lives. So what is it that you're helping people to see? That there's another side to turkey hunting and deer hunting. And I don't want to ruffle any feathers. Don't worry about that. All right. Well, it's not about selling the next product or making the next invention.

You know, Tom Kelly was, I mean, he's the greatest. He loathed decoys. He didn't feed corn. He didn't do anything wrong. He just hunted turkeys. He wanted that battle of him against a turkey. And it's personal for me to match wits with one of them, to know what he's thinking before he realizes what he's thinking.

And by the time he realizes he's messed up, he's laying on his back looking at the last sunrise he'll ever see. And that's because I fail so many times that when I finally succeed, it's just I enjoy seeing that in other people's eyes. Well, my son, he was eight years old when he killed his first deer with a bow. And he physically couldn't get out of the tree we had to sit there for an hour because his legs shook so bad i knew that was it for me i would never get that level of excitement and why why would i kill anything if i'm not going to be excited about it to his level and he still gets that way he still gets if it's a doe or a 10 point buck he's still

both my kids are still that way so the fun vanished i don't know if the fun the fun is there i love going out with them and sitting in the tree with them and even with my wife i enjoy sitting with her i enjoy hunting with anybody that gets an excitement level out of it but where i'm what i'm trying to say is why would i harvest an animal if i can't get as excited as they could about it i understand i understand what you're getting at but i just it's hard for me to i understand like the structure of what you're saying but it's hard for me to, I understand like the structure of what you're saying, but it's hard for me to understand it a little bit. Because for instance, when I was kids,

we were hell on chipmunks, okay? Yeah. We learned how to hunt by hunting chipmunks. Today I was having a conversation with Giannis about how we were listening to some chipmunks. I'll say, man, we used to just really hunt hard. If we heard a chipmunk cutting loose, chirping we'd get bb guns and go after it but we didn't eat the chipmunks okay right so i would now like i now when i'm out with my kid and he's in that he's got that little kid thing

where they want to get everything in the woods i'm like no because that's right we're all here for squirrels i'm not going to do that that's not something people eat it's not something we're going to eat so no yeah but here i am okay so here i am like i've engaged in this activity i used to engage in this activity and it's something i enjoyed doing and i learned how to hunt that way but i've decided that I'm like you know what I don't like that that happened right looking back on it I'm now going to tell my kid not to do something that I did my kids are raised very differently than I was raised so that so that is true very true very different than I was raised know, my mom and dad worked daylight to dark.

I can remember packing a shotgun to school. Yeah. I was seven miles from my house to school. I would turkey hunt all the way to school, leave my shotgun and my camouflage, leaned up against a big oak tree south of the playground. I'd go to school. I'd come out of school pick my stuff up and walk back home it wasn't it was just part of it i mean we i want

to go to that school when i man when when i was i remember when they banned guns on campus yeah and we'd always go hunting after school and i I'd run my trap lines after school, and I went down saying, well, this isn't going to work because, right, I have to have it. And they're like, oh, yeah, you know, that's okay. That's not what we meant. It was just, you just had to go let the principal know that you weren't going to follow that rule, and he'd suss out whether he thought it was okay

for you to not follow it or not. It was different times back then. Different times. Every guy in our class had a gun rack and a gun in the back of his truck. You know, I mean, it was part of our culture. And we've let that go because of some bad decisions of a few messed up people. Yeah. We've all got to pay for it.

Yeah. We've all got to pay for it. Yeah. But I got to tell a story on my dad, and then I'm done. Because you brought up the chipmunks, shooting the chipmunks. Mine was turkeys, all right? My dad had this box of paper Peters shotgun shells. Okay. 25 of them. You mean when they used to not be plastic, but paper?

Paper. The casing was paper. A lot of people probably don't know this the casing was paper my great-grandfather who i'm named after give him those shells and he was so proud of him well january 1st i got banned from using the shotgun i couldn't kill turkeys anymore i was in trouble bad grades i couldn't hunt that spring well that just tore me up, so he took all my shit. What about your grades? Like bad, bad?

Yeah, they were bad. And I was steady. Are you not academically inclined? No. I graduated with.1%, one percentage point, you know. If there was classes on turkeys and deer hunting, I would have aced it, but I didn't have time for school. There was hunting and drinking beer and other things to do.

But you knew how to read good. I did. Yeah. I'm not superbly stupid. I've made some bad decisions, but I'm not a complete idiot. But anyway, those shells sat inside this little drawer where we had dinner at. And so turkey season come around, and I'll sit there one morning, and this turkey starts gobbling across from the house.

So I got it. He had an old 12-gauge that he left in the corner, an old Model 97 Winchester. I got one paper shell out of there, slid it in the gun, closed it. It closed. You know, everything was good. I wonder. So they were off to work. I sneak up the ridge, and the gun goes off, and I kill the turkey.

Well, the paper, as you know, it doesn't expand like today's plastic shells. So I just took all the shells upside down and put the paper one on the bottom. That's good thinking. Yeah. No one's ever going to know. No one's ever gonna know no one's ever gonna know fast forward three turkey seasons and uh grades hadn't gotten any better and uh i was keeping the local neighbors supplied in turkey breast but we had this couple my mom my mom worked for this guy and

real highfalutin guy and mom and dad dad and mom, they cleaned the house, did everything, had this big dinner for him, they come over to the house, and we're all sitting around the table, and we just finished eating, and my dad says, the other guy, you know, you ever deal with guns, and he says, oh yeah, yeah, and he gets up, and he goes out in the car, and he brings back this gun, he says, this gun my great-grandfather gave me. And I thought, oh, shoot. He says, I got something my grandpa gave me. And he turns around and he reaches in that box and he picks up this empty case of paper shotgun shells. And right in the middle of dinner, he just chucks them at me. You little beep, beep, beep, beep. I knew, I knew better. I knew it.

So we have this huge family squabble in front of this high-fluent couple that mom and dad really laid out the red carpet for because I shot every single one of those shells. There wasn't a one of them left. I still thank my great-grandpa for that box of shells. Puder, did we name all the dishes you cooked i think uh i think we got through the ball cold man you got anything you got anything you want to wedge in there uh add on yeah clarify

i just correct i'd have to say that i learned a lot over the last couple of days about turkey hunting. It was, even though I didn't put one in the freezer to take home. You got your first turkey just last spring. Sure did, yeah, over in Montana. So now you're learning what it's like to lose. Yeah. Instead of being a winner. No, it was very educational because last year when I got it was it was a quick I had a bird on the ground within within an hour of being being out and about so this year was good because I learned way more

about the the whole process and obviously I had some good uh some good good guides to to lead that what's your favorite what's your favorite thing about turks so far uh just the interaction you know getting out there and hearing that that gobble in the morning that insane that crazy yeah beautiful noise they make yeah and then just to kind of have that conversation with them. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it didn't turn out in my favor. I really, really enjoyed getting out there and sitting and just covering some ground and seeing what it was all about. And hopefully do it again next spring. Oh, you'll get one next spring, man.

Not a doubt in my mind. Mark Kenyon. Final thoughts? Yeah. How's them flip-flops feeling? to get next spring oh you'll get one next spring man not a doubt in my mind mark canyon final thoughts yeah how's them flip-flops feeling real good gotta air these puppies out yeah you aired them six out at night i was wearing the big stomp clompers all day rubber boots so i needed these pretty badly final thoughts it's just a great weekend i mean yesterday was a lot of fun we were able to me and dirt were able to get the job done first thing in the morning which was a blast and then uh probably other than that though and the camaraderie what stands out is pooter the founder of the feast you put on an unbelievable culinary good to hear

extravaganza i think i gained 10 pounds this year some great great food who's my favorite cook he's mine now too mine too taste yeah mine as well good to hear it was great great time dirtmuth yeah i second what mark said in uh the two hunts i got a hunt with janice as well both mark and janice got their birds the light for my craft was untouchable it was just amazing the beauty of this area and michigan was the final state so oh and all 50 now not heavy i want to touch on this yeah Yeah. So do you have to, say you've been in the state, do you figure you've got to sleep there? You don't count like the airport layover. No.

So how do you count it? Yeah, like get a sense of the area. Okay. Even if it's brief, but yeah, not counting like a connection flight or anything. It doesn't need to be a sleepover. No, but I think i have probably every state at it at least a night plus i did a big trip too long to get into it but uh yeah i felt like all the states prior to michigan was uh more than just a check on the board, and now Michigan fills that same kind of role.

It was an amazing time here. Yep. So, ladies and gentlemen, Dirt Myth. 50 states. Yeah. You can look down on him because he's a slave to a substance and doesn't have the level of discipline to stop doing something that's killing him by rotting his jaw off. However.

There is always a balance. But however, he's visited all 50 states. Is there like a term for that? Is there a title? Like there's the Turkey Grand Slam holder. State Grand Slam. You're a Grand Slam holder. State Grand Slam.

I'll be. Yeah. I'm at 49. State Grand Slam. I'll be. Yeah. I'm at 49. There's one missing. A good one. What's that? You got any questions for him? On how to close her down?

The one missing for me is Louisiana. Which surprises me. I know because we were on our way there. I tell the story all the time. We're on our way there. We were down in Mississippi. I think we started out in Memphis. We're headed through Mississippi, got to like Clarksdale, home of the blues.

Yeah. Crossroads. Went to the crossroads. We went to the crossroads where supposedly Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. I was like, I'm going to get out of the car. My friend devil i was like i'm gonna get out of the car my friend i was like don't get out of the car um and then continued on our way and we're going to new orleans yeah and on the news is like we're there's like a big weather event fixing to happen and the more we go the more serious the weather event is and it winds up being there's closing some stuff

and evacuating some stuff, and we bail. That was Hurricane Katrina. Dang. So it wasn't faded. So it was like, yeah. So we could have made it into town in time to take part in that whole rodeo. Good decision. Which would have left an imprint from Louisiana.

Oh, speaking of calling that a rodeo, there's a clarification the guy wrote that I want to touch on real quick where he says that we were, he was saying getting Western and getting squirrely are very different. Oh, I'd agree. Getting Western means there's a risk of injury. How would I describe Western? Physical danger. Squirrely, I would say, too.

Yeah, he's like, you could, like, mess up the fletching on your arrow and it shoots a little squirrely i would say too yeah he's like you could like mess up the fletching on your arrow and it shoots a little squirrely yeah or like garrett was giving me eyes today in the blind and he garrett's fixing to get a little squirrely western's far different yeah yeah if you're in a blind with another man and you were to say man i thought i was gonna get western that's different than someone's getting shot no i don't know if you said like i was in a blind with dirt and things got a little squirrely no harm done but but his clarification was that there has to be a risk of physical harm is implicit within Western, and squirreliness does not... It's lighthearted.

Yeah. Something being a little squirrely doesn't mean that physical harm is going to result from that. Giannis, did you have any final thoughts? We always say Western when there's hunting, when there's too much shooting going on. Your first shot didn't really connect properly, but you decided to keep on

shooting. Things got a little Western. Like a shootout. Yeah, that was... So what is it when you get Eastern? Things got a little Eastern. I don't know. What got got western tonight that guy with the uh oh the guy

that was just shooting up oh right the neighbor steve texas he's like if that gun ain't set in now yeah that's just coming from a guy who's sort of like i used to love to just shoot when we were kids we just go shoot for christmas we. For Christmas, we'd get those milk cartons full of.22 ammo. Oh, yeah. We'd just go burn through a whole milk carton of.22 rounds. Now, it's not even that. It's just like now, it's like a functional thing. I no longer just like to just go down and just

what we call plinking yeah just blast it's just loud yeah it's like loud that wasn't a 22 today oh no no it was but i think you were he worked in the 22 later yeah the double combo is like fireworks yeah just my view on recreational shooting is it's just it's just like loud you know and when we used to just shoot, shoot, shoot all the time, I never thought about what it means for some guy who's out like we were tonight. Like that guy, he's oblivious to the fact that we're out creeping around the woods. Yeah. Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, you know.

We were trying to film an interview, and we had like 10 different takes where I'd start, and then, oh, start shooting. Stop again. Like, okay, wait, wait. Okay, wait, wait. Okay, now, go. Bam, bam, bam. That was getting Western for sure. It was squirrely.

I thought it was decidedly squirrely. Somebody could have gotten harmed. It was decidedly squirrely. Giannis, any? Yeah. I think I'm going to go home, and we have a giant flock of chickens, but I think what i'm missing at home is a couple uh henriettas yeah he was telling me this tonight when we were sitting there

just observing you're in poots hunt um i'm not saying i'm gonna become a voice caller but i figure by next spring turkey season you won't even be able to get near me my turkey calling skills like it's no better teacher spend a whole year with henrietta just listening yeah that's your concluder yeah yeah um do you guys have room for a turkey oh yeah i'm looking forward to this. Plenty. So, Guy Zuck, can you tell us what was your guys' family name before you guys shortened it to Zuck? Zuckin hyphen Snyder or something. Guy Zuck, thank you for coming on the show and talking about turkey calling.

Guys, I just want to say it was a pleasure having you all and give a shout out to our host. Thanks to him for letting us be together and I hope to do it all again someday. We'll be back here. This is a fun place to hang out, so thank you. Going to hold you to that. We're coming.

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