The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 125: Live from Tempe
Episode Date: July 16, 2018Tempe, AZ- Steven Rinella talks with his big brother Matt Rinella, Dr. Karl Malcolm, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: Neanderthal hunting strategies; when an Arizonan draws... a tag; the High Visibility and CSTB factors as they relate to turkey hunting; turning nine o'clock birds into three o'clock birds; the statistical probability of life on other planets; encounters with grizzly bears and Monte Carlo luck; who gets to take the shot?; the subjugation of bees and other vegan woes; the placenta as a sanctionable form of cannibalism; breast milk in your coffee; 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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 a meat-eater podcast coming at you shirtless,
severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. We hunt the meat-eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless.
We hunt the meat-eater podcast.
You can't predict anything.
All right, guys. Thanks for coming out, man.
Whenever I'm doing something, I always try to think of clever stuff to say in the beginning,
but all I can think about is the thing that's probably the dorkiest thing to talk about
because you guys live here and you're used to people.
I'm from the northern tier, man.
I'm sorry.
I can't not discuss.
I can't not bring up the heat.
The only thing I've ever...
It's like, the only thing I've ever... I've been going to hot yoga with my wife.
And it's like, walking on the street,
I keep expecting to turn around and see
the mist has bent over backward on a rubber mat.
It really like...
It's like, the heat is synthetic.
It's the weirdest kind of thing.
But some other stuff about Arizona, man, I think about.
I stay apprised of wildlife-y, hunting and fishing news stuff.
And you guys keep coming up on my radar.
Where in February, all of a sudden one day I'm getting blown up by people like,
dude, they're going to have a wild horse hunt in Arizona.
And I'm thinking, that's not going to go well.
And then the next day it's like, oh, they canceled the wild horse hunt.
And the other day I was really saddened to hear about,
you know, you guys got maybe two jaguars and one of them turned up dead
in mexico which was a major bummer and i got thinking like you got 40 000 wild horses and
no one can touch them you got two jaguars and one's dead you guys got it all wrong
um so i do have some good things to talk about down here. Like I came down here, my first ever successful coos deer hunt was in Arizona.
Very much.
Very much.
I have to thank for that.
You guys very own Outdoorsmans, the store.
Have you ever go down there?
Those boys lined me out on it.
And I came down here for my first two very unsuccessful mountain lion hunts.
And so I'll always remember you guys for that.
And I thought of you guys earlier.
I guess I got the email yesterday, but didn't read it until today, and I thought of you because I was reading about this new thing that just came out about Neanderthals.
Not that I think of you guys as Neanderthals, but check me out.
They just recently in Germany found this fallow deer carcass from 120,000 years ago that had very peculiar injuries on the deer. And they realized that a Neanderthal had killed it
with a low velocity spear, which implies that the Neanderthal and they
recreated on other animals they were able to recreate the injuries and it was
from a sharpened wooden spear and it was a low velocity impact meaning that it
wasn't like he hucked it he jabbed it and the angle on it they feel that he
jabbed it with an underhand motion so everybody has this idea Neanderthals
like knuckle-draggers right they don't know what's going on, but this opens up
the idea that they were doing some kind of coordinated
hunting activities.
They're working together and using concealment
and getting up very close to a fallow deer
to where a guy can just go pop
and kill it.
Which means they are
working as a team. And I'm telling you what,
in Arizona,
I think it's because of the way they do tag draws here. When'm telling you what, in Arizona, like, I think it's because the way they
do tag draws here. When a guy draws a tag in Arizona, he goes with 12 guys and half the fire
barn to where there's like, when I'm looking at a hunt magazine and I see like some dude with some
giant mule dune, there's like 50 guys lined up behind them on their camel. I'm like, that's
Arizona, man. I guarantee it, you know. So I do appreciate the camaraderie.
Everybody gets one burger.
Yeah, exactly.
When you divide it up.
It's like, I got my share in my front pocket.
So I've always appreciated about that.
It's like when your house is on fire and you expect everybody to come running.
When someone in Arizona draws a tag, it's like, I'm in.
And you guys head out. I want to hit
some introductions. So the Latvian Eagle, Giannis Poutelis. Everyone knows Giannis.
And then on rare occasion, my big brother, Matt, will join. And then we have Dr. Carl Malcolm, who's been on a number of times and always comes
and brings his expertise to us. Thank you. First question for you guys. Can you talk a little bit,
I just want people to understand a little bit bit like the kinds of things you look at. I'm a research ecologist for USDA. When you probably think
of an ecologist, you think of somebody that's outside looking at birds and plants and bees and
stuff like that. But really what I do on a daily basis is administer grants and
write computer code and do statistics so I'm just kind of a geeky kind of a
science guy that sits at a desk I guess
um can everybody hear him okay it's not like to me it sounds like not loud. Step up, Matt.
No, you're good.
Drew, can you turn this off? I'll start projecting from my bowels.
Like an acting student.
It's a lot of statistics.
And Carl, do you want to break it down?
Yeah.
So also an ecologist.
Rather than doing a lot of research as an ecologist,
what I do is a lot of trying to apply the best available science
that other people are producing to wildlife management,
wildlife survey questions.
So kind of a tech transfer position.
But I also get to do a lot of teaching.
Had a chance to work with the Forest Services International Programs,
doing some wildlife ecology trainings in places like Russia. Again, a chance to work with the Forest Services International Programs, doing some wildlife ecology trainings in places like Russia.
We got a chance to travel internationally.
And then one of the coolest things, one of the things I like most is opportunities to try to communicate about the significance of the work that we do to the people for whom we actually work, which are the American people. You know, I like to think about working for an agency
as being a career that you should feel very grateful for,
very privileged, and very service-oriented.
So when I meet people for the first time,
and they're like, who do you work for?
I like to say, well, I work for you.
Work for all of you.
You know, you guys are my boss.
And as things, you know, we have new chiefs come in, we have
new administrations come in, things change over time. But the one consistent fact is
that public service employees in agencies like the USDA Forest Service work for the
American people. So I work for all of you, trying to help care for the single greatest
public land system on the planet.
This guy needs a new drink, Carl.
So with that, I want to, now that you understand that, I want to bring up something that recently happened to me where on a previous show,
I, you guys don't hunt a hell of a lot of turkeys, but you hunt some turkeys in Arizona, right?
So everyone who's like hunted turkeys just do like a yup.
Oh, really?
Got you guys all wrong.
So one day I was like, anyone that hunts turkeys a lot knows that
the thing is that everybody thinks is going to happen
is you're going to set up and call one off a tree
and he's going to come running over to you.
And one day, I was looking at how many times you try to do that and how many times it actually happens,
and I got to wondering if it's any better than just sitting there and not doing anything
and waiting to see if one comes by you.
What are the odds that one would come by you?
And a guy came up with this.
You guys probably can't see this,
but he came up with this very elaborate formula
that explains that if you get 100 yards
from a bird in a roost tree
and you figure that you got 30 yards of range that way
and 30 yards of range that way,
you have a 9.4% chance
that the bird will just naturally come by you, which
winds up for me calling into question, like, what exactly I was doing out in the woods
that whole time, because I don't know that I've even hit.
Like, I'm doing, like, probably, like, slightly better than what I would do if I just sat
in the woods by all the antics and all the calling.
But I showed this to Carl, and you gave him an A for effort? I'm giving this guy
an A with an opportunity for extra credit. Okay. All right. Because his math is sound,
I feel like, you remember when you're in junior high, high school, you're in some dry math lecture and they give
you a word problem. I feel like if one of my teachers would have given me this particular
word problem, like spelling it out, you're this many yards from the tree. You can shoot this far
in any direction. What's the likelihood of killing a turkey? My attention would have perked up in a
big way in that class. I've been like, all right, I'm ready for some math.
Let's do this.
So there's probably going to be a lower volume yep here,
but how many people remember from your trigonometry class
Soh-ka-toa?
Yep.
All right.
That's a dude?
Soh-ka-toa.
No, Soh-ka-toa.
That was a Japanese philosopher.
No, this pertains to right triangles
and how you calculate.
You can calculate the degrees of a given angle
based on knowing the ratio of length
to where the right corner is in the triangle.
And you can use either the sine function,
the cosine function, or the tangent function. And so this guy basically did a really cool
little formula, very simple, very straightforward. It gives you an answer about the likelihood,
given some assumptions, of a turkey randomly walking past you. I'm not disagreeing with any
of that. But when you emailed me this, I said, it looks like his math is sound, but what matters
is whether or not you care about killing the turkey. Because in his language, he says,
here's a function that will tell you the likelihood of the turkey walking past you,
not the likelihood of you killing the turkey. And those are two very different things.
Anybody ever have a turkey like walk within range that didn't end up getting shot yep yeah i have all
right so for extra credit again i'm not knocking this guy's math i think he did a very sound job
yeah he would factor in all yeah there's a couple variables and to back me up i'm going to go to the
single greatest turkey hunting book ever written by anyone.
Which we talk about often on this here program.
10th Legion.
Colonel Tom Kelly.
All right.
So for starters, if you want to kill the bird, and I'm going to the techniques chapter here.
I'm going to quote the colonel.
Number one.
What you are interested in here is not shotgun artistry, but the simple delivery
of a charge of shot. A delivery affected often through a hole the size of a grapefruit,
or through a slit like the crack between two loosely fitting barn doors.
You normally only have to deliver it once, and except to ease the cramped position you may be
delivering it from, you seldom have to do
it in a hurry. So what the colonel's getting at here is that oftentimes the bird might be in range,
you simply don't have a shot. So the first challenge I would put to this listener is to
come up with what I'm going to call a visibility correction factor. So you could imagine theoretically the difference between sitting,
for example, in the middle of an agricultural field with turkeys walking by you at 30 yards.
High VCF. High VCF, visibility correction factor. I like it. You're tracking.
And you could imagine being on a real flat surface, or you could imagine being in a relatively hilly landscape where
maybe the turkey has the ability to drop down out of sight or thickly vegetated. Okay, so there's
got to be some function that this trigonometry expert can come up with that would correct for
differences in visibility, which is going to pertain to whether or not that turkey ends up in your bag or hoofing for the next ridge. Yeah. Okay. So there's one suggestion. Again, this is extra
credit because the math is sound. All right. The next one pertains to a very important skill set
that I think only a small number of turkey hunters have mastered. All right, and the colonel in 10th Legion
talks about being seated such that both knees are bent
and propped up in front of you high enough
to make your gun assume an angle of 45 degrees.
You've achieved this position for several reasons.
It lets you keep the gun partially presented all the time.
It is as comfortable as any.
If a turkey approaches from your left,
he is under the gun.
And if he comes from directly in front of you,
you can ease the gun from your left knee to your right
and at the proper time, slouch down even lower
and let the barrel down until it bears now imagine
this everybody the direction you are facing is considered to be 12 o'clock
straight ahead and the colonel was a right-handed man a turkey gobbler who's
been keeping you pinned down for an hour and a half steps around an oak tree in
plain sight at 30 yards at quarter after three. If you were at quarter to nine,
skill and intelligence would have again trumped over ignorance and superstition, but he ain't.
Okay, so the colonel goes on to say there's two ways you can kill this turkey
over here at quarter after three. The first one is if you are a practicing voodoo witch doctor,
you can strike him dead with a glance.
It goes on to say it's a wonderful way to kill him.
Not only does it save shells, which are so expensive nowadays,
but it does not spoil the meat.
If, however, you are a mere mortal,
not skilled in witchcraft or spells or incantations you can do
one other thing you can very very slowly one inch at a time carefully change hands bring the gun up
to the left shoulder squinch up your right eye look down the barrel and bust him right where he
stands in the plain old-fashioned expensive way the rest of us do with a shotgun. So the next variable is what I'm going to call the Kelly factor.
Yeah.
Can the shooter pull off what he's talking about and shoot ambidextrously?
Can they shoot everything from 9 o'clock to three o'clock. What Colonel Kelly calls turning three o'clock birds
into nine o'clock birds.
And so the other extra credit opportunity
for this listener would be figuring in the Kelly factor.
What was this dude's name?
Adam D. Nowak.
He's got more work to do.
More work to do.
Another slightly a numbers question for you guys.
Matt, I one day mutilated something you were saying
about how many planets there are.
Being interested in animals.
Can I interrupt?
I'm sorry.
Something's going to bug me for the rest of the night
if I don't say it now.
And then Adam's going to email me and be like dude what come on when he first showed up and
gave us those pieces of paper he said this is in like a perfect scenario you're pretty much like
working a bird coming off of a single oak tree and you got no other you know no veg around you
no nothing rolling at all he gave the answer to the toy problem which is like a excellent
starting point yeah exactly dude i'm not knocking so i'm just saying that he kind of already has
gotten some extra credit he did not say anything about the the kelly kelly factor yeah yeah but
your thing was but all the birds just fly off there's that too there's also there's also the CSTB factor.
CSTB?
Can't see the beard.
Oh, that's good.
That's good.
And there's another variable at play.
One of the assumptions would be that the turkey has not detected you on your approach
because you're making this assumption that, you know, 360 degrees in a circle,
and he's saying random chance that bird could go any direction but it's
pretty darn hard to get in on a bird and not tip your hand at least a little bit to the fact that
you're there in the woods so there's some assumptions at play here i'm not giving the
guy anything less than an a i'm just saying i don't care anything like now i was i'm getting
that framed and hanging on my wall and nothing you're saying has made me not want to frame it you gave a very elegant solution to the basic i like it yeah uh being interested in
animals i'm interested in the idea of other animals on other planets this comes up often and uh
one day i was saying something like one day I was talking about saying, my brother, this guy here, I was saying, he was telling me that considering how many other planets there are, you were like, I'm pretty open to the idea that there is an eight foot Wookiee who hangs out with a smuggler.
Like, and a dude wrote in and he goes, you know, how many are there?
Because I've heard that there are as many planets as there are grains of sand on earth.
Yeah.
Well, I heard a podcast, an ensemble of people somewhere that look exactly like all of us.
Talking about, first you'd come across a scene where everybody's doing like we're doing,
and it's all exactly the same,
except Yoss has a green shirt on.
But then if you go further, you'll find where it is blue.
Or it's a 6.2% chance that a turkey walks past you.
But yeah, so there's this idea that's floating around
that's avant-garde in
physics now that yeah if you're willing to look far enough you could find this replicated
and not just a wookiee
okay another statistics one and you kind of talked about this early and i really wanted
to get into this because this is something that comes up with people all the time. I've had a number of encounters with grizzly bears.
And I always felt like, I had in my head to be that, man, it seems like it's heading, it's leading somewhere.
Like this is going somewhere.
That every time you go in the woods, it feels like, or going to the grizzly bear areas, it feels like it's just heading in a direction.
And then this October we had like a really, like a big mix-up with a bear.
And there was a really real close call, and there was physical contact with a big brown bear. And I later said, like, I feel like I was going down a canyon wall, wondering where the bottom was, and that I had found the bottom now.
That that was where this was headed.
And now, there's no way it could get worse, and I was now climbing out of the canyon wall.
And three different guys wrote in to say that, and I was just expressing kind of like how
I felt, but three different guys wrote in to say that what you're committing is something called
the gambler's fallacy or the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances,
which he pointed out, one of the guys pointed out,
tends to afflict people who are involved in tag draws.
Big game tag draws.
And this is something I've asked you, Matt, about a thousand times.
Is how does one, like I used to feel,
like I'd be like, okay, if there's a 25% chance of drawing a tag, right?
I'd be like, oh, yeah, in four years,
I'll have that bitch, right?
Which isn't how it works.
Can you expand on this for a minute?
There's a lot to expand on there.
I mean, so.
There is a lot to expand on.
Yeah, there's a lot to explore there probabilities are
not intuitive numerical objects um first of all like this idea that you had that
when when your your analogy about descending a slope i'm i'm assuming you're meaning that
you felt like the likelihood that you were going to get attacked was increasing, right?
Yeah, like the more exposure,
the greater the chance of the attack.
And then I feel like the attack happened
and I was like, oh, so there it happened.
And now I just feel like it won't.
Yeah, I could see why.
I've never heard it called the gambler's fallacy before,
but I could see where,
I mean, because gamblers are guilty of that and so are sports
uh enthusiasts like my team is due i'm due for it's kind of a it's a more
it it's it's less intuitive way than of thinking than just straightforward induction. Induction is when you think that the
future is probably going to resemble the past. It's more of like a counter-inductionist standpoint
where, meaning like I never draw it. Yeah. I mean, it seems more logical to me to think
the more occurrences I have of not getting attacked by a bear,
the more that should assure me that I'm not going to get attacked by a bear, right?
You have some prior probability belief about how,
before you ever go in the mountains,
about likelihood that you're going to get attacked by a bear.
And it seems logical that you would adjust that probability
by lowering it each time you step forth in the woods
and don't get attacked by a bear.
Yeah, because I now feel like it's going to happen again.
You're like, now this is the new norm.
Well, you're an inductivist.
You're an inductivist, straight inductivist,
which makes more sense to me.
But then the logical fallacy,
you can see where it falls apart,
where it's not applicable with tag draws in general.
Like this notion that you're due carries weight when there's preference points,
as there normally is.
There's a reason to believe you're due.
And then, you know, the logical fallacy, it's kind of like,
it's when the draws are independent,
like you were saying earlier, you know?
Like when you're taking marbles out of the urn
and then putting them back and drawing again.
But if you get attacked by a bear,
let's say you hunt the same place for 20 years
and then you get attacked by a bear,
I mean, it gets complicated.
Maybe that doesn't up the probability
that you think the next time you're going to go in there
that you're going to get attacked again
because maybe they killed that bear
and it was the only bear in the area.
So can you real quick break down?
I don't know if I get it all talking about what you want me to talk about.
Part of it.
But the other part I want you to talk about is, I i think just real quick because i mean you explain this to me and it
relieving some tensions i felt of explain to me for the viewers benefit the listeners benefit
what happens when you're repeatedly going in for things that you think you have a 10 chance of
okay like how those numbers relate.
Yeah.
So we talked about this a little bit earlier.
Because some might say, like, if you have a 1% chance of dying in a small airplane crash,
that doesn't mean that on the 100th flight.
No, probabilities don't add.
They multiply.
So if you, let's just make it as super simple, as simple as we can.
There's no preference points, okay?
So it's New Mexico.
And you put in for a tag.
We're going to define two variables.
And this is going to sound complicated, but it's not.
Q is the probability that you don't draw the tag, okay?
So if you have a 5% chance...
You're putting in for a deer tag.
What are the odds going to be that you work with?
10%?
Oh, I'm not going to give you the answer.
I have to get my calculator out.
I'm just going to give you the formula
and let you work it out for yourself.
I was going to make an animal.
I was going to have it be that we're trying to get an animal tag.
So the probability... Well, we can do that.
We can do this.
So let's say that the probability that you don't draw the tag is 90%.
Okay.
So super, super nice elk unit in New Mexico.
Yeah.
So if you put in once, what's the probability that you draw the tag?
Once?
10%.
10%.
If you put in twice, it's 1 minus 0.9 raised to the number of times you drew.
What's that?
You lost me.
One minus 0.81.
It's 19%.
So you've jumped up to 19%.
But then if you put it in again,
it's 27, 73%. Four times is 36. It's 27, 73%.
Four times is 36, it's 64.
So it never degrades to a 0% chance that you don't draw.
And it never achieves 100%.
Never achieves 100%, right.
And this is all looking into the future, right?
So you could say, all right,
if I apply for the next five or 10 or 15 years,
here's my percent given all those opportunities.
But then next year when you apply and don't draw,
you're back at a new starting point, right?
Because they're memoryless.
Yeah.
Because it has no memory.
Like when you flip a coin,
the next coin you flip doesn't know
what happened with the first coin.
So the formula is, like I said,
Q is the percent chance you don't draw it.
N is the number of times you pop in.
So 1 minus Q to the power N.
Yep.
You're tracking.
How do you guys... This has nothing to do with this has nothing to do what we've been
talking about but i'd be curious because this is the thing that someone wonders about and i
and it's an interesting question when you're out hunting with other people
what are the things that you consider when you consider like who's up
because i've done everything from drawing straws to just having a sort of like a really like
complex understanding of what's going on that sort of like what's happened in people's past, what sorts of opportunities they've fielded, how far did they come?
Who's this seem like more special to?
And you arrive at like, you know what?
If we find one, you go ahead.
Thanks, man.
Done.
How do you guys work that out? because you said something to me one time
you were saying something to me like a problem with you like to hunt by yourself which i'm
going to talk about a little bit you matt like to hunt by yourself and you're saying because i never
have to wonder who's up right oh it's a source of tension yeah sure yes but i would agree you you you described it very well all those like background considerations
of well you missed that nice one last year and it's been a few years and i got one
but i've been working way harder and this is his first time out he doesn't deserve it
it's my spot yeah but he kind of suggested I ought to go look here.
Right.
Right.
So I've hunted more with Giannis the last few years than anyone.
And Giannis and I kind of just take turns.
Like, it feels like we're going to go after something.
And I was the one in front last time.
So you'll be in.
And that seems to work out good.
I'm still mad that I'm not
the one up front but so out of you two who's up front right now Oh clearly me
so you guys got it worked out who's up well you just I... This was a crucial conversation I wasn't planning on having on stage,
but glad to have it out of the way.
Glad to have it out of the way.
So it's like in your mind,
you know that this is something that has to be sorted out?
I was just...
Well, it usually happens
because he gets into the woods a week ahead of me.
And so by the time I get there, it's just like,
hey, I got one down.
Let's go pack it
out i'm like all right sweet got here just in time and then i get to it's my turn after that
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,
waypoints, and tracking.
That's right, we're always talking about OnX
here on the Meat Eater Podcast.
Now you, you guys in the Great White North
can be part of it, be part of the excitement.
You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.
That's a sweet function.
As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.
Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out
if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.
onxmaps.com slash meet.
Welcome to the OnX club, y'all.
Do you have any special? i'd add a couple um i think the seniority thing is a big one you know we talk a lot about trying to get new people in the field and i i
think given like repeated opportunities to somebody who's new makes a lot of sense this idea of
seniority um i think it's super important to have this figured out in advance and then stay committed to it.
I've been in situations where taking somebody else out on a mule deer hunt, for example,
like, you know, my little brother, his turn, then I'm glassing and just see a tanker buck.
You're like, oh, that's his turn, you know, got to stick with it. So like communicate it in advance
and then stick with it. I think when it in advance and then stick with it.
I think when you're glassing, some people will go with whoever spots it.
It's going to be their opportunity.
I don't really, that's too, I don't like that.
Well, if you're, if you're just too much like, nah, I saw it first.
It seems like something my kids, it seems like something like,
like how my kids would decide who gets like a lollipop.
Well, so imagine, imagine you've got like a good glass and spot with a bunch of country to cover and you
go to two separate sides right and i'm glassing in one spot you're glassing in the other you know
option one is i glass one up i'm like oh it's steve stern come take it or option two is whoever
spots it goes for i'm just laying out options let me tell you you're right but you're wrong okay
if i was hunting with you
and we hadn't had the discussion which is i've been in that situation hadn't had the discussion
and we both like with you and me it wouldn't be like a big question like who got what because
we both have a lot of opportunities sure and you said i'm out of here i spotted it i'd be like
yes correct go yeah but in the back of my mind i be like, that was kind of a dickish move.
Yeah.
No, I hear you.
Even though he's got every right, here's the thing.
Everyone does this.
What do you think?
Right?
And you know where you want it to go so bad.
And you've got it in your head.
You've got it sorted out.
But you still have the moment where you give the guy the chance to sink or swim.
Yes.
Hunting with Callahan.
We one time hadn't had the discussion at all until we're looking at a nice buck almost in range.
And we look at each other and it's just like this.
Yeah.
We hadn't had to talk.
And that's when we drew straws.
That's why I think getting it straightened out in advance makes sense if you're going to do like a really sort of sharing partner approach where you spot
a deer it's my turn you let me go after it let's just have that conversation in advance stick to
it yeah it's awkward conversation it is but then the last the last one i would leave you with on
this topic is um a guy who i loved to hunt with, this phenomenal mentor I had in New Mexico. We haven't drawn in a
couple of years, so I'm using it like past tense. He's still a guy that I'm applying with, but he's
a guy in his seventies. His name's Dick Polk, phenomenal elk hunter. Grew up around Deming,
New Mexico. Guy just knows his stuff. And I moved from the Midwest to New Mexico and this guy took me under
his wing and I had very limited elk hunting experience and Dick is a very accomplished
elk hunter and so he's very very picky so we're hunting together and it was basically a scenario
where if he saw if he found a giant bull he'd probably want to go after it if he found a giant bull, he'd probably want to go after it. If I found a giant bull,
he'd want me to go after it. And on two different occasions, there were circumstances where he found
a bull that he did not want to go after, but sent me after that bull. Yeah, that's nice.
And that guy, like I will forever remain indebted, not just because he let me go after the elk,
because he just taught me so much and was so generous with his expertise from a lifetime of hunting in New Mexico.
It does stand out when people take the time to be generous with sharing those opportunities,
because everybody's working hard to have that golden chance, and all of us have a limited number
of stocks to make, and it's a beautiful gift to give somebody.
Like, you know what?
You go for it.
He was just adding to the piggy bank because now every giant bull you spot,
you've got to be like.
Yeah, he's like, he knows how to game it out properly, you know?
He's thinking long game.
Okay, a guy, let's say, let's just say that there's a guy that lives in Georgia.
And let's say that in Georgia, it is not permissible to hunt black bears using bait.
It's not permissible to hunt black bears using hounds.
He gets to noticing that, man,
black bears sure like persimmon trees.
What would happen to a fellow say that he goes and starts planting persimmon trees
in the national forest,
knowing that he thinks he's playing a 10-year game here.
And he wants to know, morally, where am I?
And legally, where am I?
I don't know on legally.
I think morally, that's great.
Like, it's such a i mean it's just such a like long game and investment and kind of
like i'm like please right as though i had the ability to say yes or no but in my mind like yeah
but where is he on the where is this dude on the legal end? Can you just go do random civic cultural
activities on
national forest land?
I'll jump in here.
That's why I wanted to ask Carl about this
because he dabbles in the national forest system
a little bit.
Can a dude do that?
Be like, I'm going to plant a big berry patch
and then start hitting it.
No.
No.
The idea of like managing or can i he wanted to point out that it's not like i'm playing alfalfa or something he wanted to point
out that this is a native right i'm planting a native tree in its home range which he felt was
a very important thing to throw in let's just say okay hypothetically speaking i would not condone the activity from a legal perspective i think
you could liken it to any other manipulation of the national forest which when we talk about doing
any kind of vegetation management there is is a public engagement process. People get to weigh in.
I know we're just talking about a few trees here.
Not likely to cause any big issues,
but if you're going to be out there
like digging holes in the ground,
you have to account for all the different values
that could be on the landscape.
You want to make sure you're not, for example,
digging up an archeological site.
And if you're going to be manipulating vegetation,
there's a process through which proposals like that
would need to be vetted.
And you could liken it, you could carry the logic forth
to a situation where somebody decides
they want to plant a food plot on the national forest.
So you could make the slippery slope argument.
If you allow this, then maybe you should allow the next thing.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for slippery slope arguments, man.
Because I do believe that the slope is slippery.
Yeah.
In almost all things.
That's where my mind goes.
I would plant a whole truckload of parsimons
so I made sure there was plenty of seeds
germinate in a tree and i just sit there make sure nothing ate them
i want to point out that this guy this hypothetical person uses um he has verb, he's turned Johnny Appleseed, the noun, into a verb where he's going to Johnny Appleseed an area.
I like it.
I like it.
Which I like quite a bit.
Okay, another one.
And this you can, like, I don't know if you want to share your,
I don't know if you're going to want to share your story.
But a guy, let's say a guy goes out hunting and he makes a hit on an animal.
And he factors all the factors in and decides he's not going to push it till tomorrow.
He's going to get up bright and squirrely.
It's a cold night.
He'll get up bright and squirrely. It's a cold night. He's going to get up bright and squirrely and track it then.
But he tracks it.
Lo and behold, it's been eaten by coyotes.
He's wondering, what now is my relationship to the antlers?
He's like, would you keep the antlers?
I would 100%.
But I would keep them as,
I would keep them exactly for what they were.
Like I wouldn't feel,
I don't think I would feel tempted
to present them as something they weren't.
Like I would be like,
they'd be sitting there where I keep that kind of stuff.
And I would say to people, see that?
Well, here's what happened, right?
I would like, I would have them have them they would be emblematic of not quite getting it or you know what i mean they mean something but they wouldn't
mean what it meant had i gotten it totally you follow me totally yeah man Yeah, man. Yeah, for me, it would be like, let's say I had found it.
I mean, to me, if you don't eat it, then it doesn't, you can't.
It's not a point of pride.
That's where you draw the line.
I agree with that.
I mean, reasonable people can disagree.
For me, it's got to be shot on public land, and it's got to be.
And it's, yeah, and you got to eat it that that i would i would look at that rack with sorrow
i would take it would be a sorrow right there'd be more sorrow than but you would remove it from
the woods oh yeah yeah would you uh notch a tag no no i wouldn't i mean like like like guys do that on a penance you know but i just i don't
know like hunting season only comes once a year you got anything i got yeah i mean i've i've
you're alluding to a story where i experienced something along these lines. Had an archery pronghorn hunt
on the Gila in New Mexico. I'm not bullying you. No, no, no, not. Thanks for your concern.
Got my big boy britches on here. Okay. Archery pronghorn hunt in the Gila. Phenomenal pronghorn
country. Low density, but some really nice bucks practiced all summer
had an opportunity at a great buck i won't belabor like the whole story of the stock and everything
but bow hunting for pronghorn is inherently challenging hit this buck looked like a good shot
towards the end of the day and the buck ran off, gave it some time,
and by the time I was going to go follow the track,
it had gotten dark.
And so I went in with a headlamp,
and when I got to the area where I picked up the blood trail,
I only went maybe 40 or 50 yards,
and then I just heard all hell break loose
up ahead of me on the trail, hooves thundering off.
And so being a Midwest whitetail guy, I thought maybe I jumped the buck.
And so I left and went back to my camp and I said, all right, I'm going to sit here till midnight,
which was going to be another four hours. And at midnight, I'm going to come back out here
and resume tracking this buck. And came back at midnight, parked my truck to start hiking back into where this all had gone
down, opened the door, and the instant I opened the door, I could hear the coyotes on the carcass
just fighting and howling and yapping and making all kinds of ruckus. So I didn't even go to try
to pick up the blood trail, I just walked towards the sound of this chaos. And the sound that I had heard earlier had to have been all the does
that had piled up where the buck had gone down.
Because he only went like 75 yards from where he'd been hit.
But by that point, basically the back half was gone.
The neck was chewed up.
The organs were all pulled out and eaten.
So then I commenced. This wasn't even the
next morning. No, this was that night. And so I, I then commenced to salvaging what meat I could
off that animal, which was half a back strap on each side, some neck meat, most of the shoulders.
And this was a really like pronghorn of a lifetime kind of animal um and so i you know i took the
head as well and later on that season my wife ended up getting a really nice buck
where i was able to take the cape to mount the horns of this buck that I had gotten with my bow. Okay. Right?
And it has a different kind of feel to it than it would had I managed to salvage
every ounce of meat off that animal.
You know?
So when you're at your house and a dude comes up
and does as dudes do,
where they kind of come over and stare at it
and it invites you to say like, oh, tell them i tell them the story and so the mistake
i made i mean it was a good shot the mistake i made you know people talk about how easily pronghorn
go down there's no mistake i don't think well in hindsight hindsight being 2020 um i wish i would
have just followed up because all those does ran off. The buck was laying there.
He would have been totally untouched at that point. But it's just a matter of a few hours.
And the other thing that was interesting about that was as I was salvaging meat off that animal,
the coyotes were still close enough yapping at each other that I could hear them yapping on
either side of me. And I'm sitting there trying to carve meat off. And I've been around all kinds
of wildlife. And I know coyotes are not like a big scary animal,
but the hair on the back of my neck, just being out there in the dark with this carcass,
like carving meat off with- Yeah, because it's the object of their desire.
There was definitely like this primal kind of vibe to it, but I would agree. Yes, I would take
the antlers or the horns with me, but they almost become,
especially if you lose all the meat,
they almost become like a token of sorrow and apology
at that point in my mind.
But why do we keep these,
the word trophy is a really loaded word, right?
Like why do we keep any of these mementos?
It's about the story. It's like somebody buying a rack at a thrift store for $40.
I just do not understand that.
When you walk into a Cracker Barrel and you see the deer on the wall,
it's a hollow.
No, then it means there's got to be some connection.
But if a buddy of mine gave me something he found out in the woods,
I might hang on to it.
Yeah.
But I would never buy something.
I would never like at a yard sale, buy something that someone found out in the woods.
But if a guy kind of knew, even if my buddy's buddy found something weird out in the woods, I might hang on to it because at least it felt like somehow there's a connection.
Yeah.
And it can get to be kind of a loose connection.
But recently a guy gave me a hunk of
uh a little chunk of a mammoth tusk but i didn't know him and didn't even catch his name
and that hunk of mammoth tusk doesn't mean a fraction to me what a mammoth tooth that was
given to me by a buddy of mine yeah because i can like look at it and, uh, right. It's, you can't even put your,
you can't even really like put your finger on it, but there's some sort of, there's like a,
there's symbol rich things, wildlife relics. And it doesn't have to be positive is the point
I'm making. Like most of the time we associate these things with positive, like almost unequivocally
positive experiences. But I think there's no reason you
couldn't have something that reminds you of a very significant, somber experience that you've had.
And I don't think it makes it any less significant, but it's a very different kind of a totem at that
point. But it opens up like what happens when a dude goes into some little hundred acre enclosure you know
and arrows some 400 inch bull that he bought off a guy um he's willing what's that cracker barrel
bull i mean just like you know like like i said you just have some small enclosure they raise them
up with a bottle and eventually they let some guy go to pretend to hunt one. When he hangs it up, he knows, but he's just in it for the perception,
the false perception.
People see it, and they're like, oh, this has a rich symbolism
that I know to be true, and that person is putting it forward
because he just wants to harness the adoration.
But personally, he knows. there is like different ways that different
people handle the question yeah he's like yeah i know but you don't know and that makes me feel
good you know do you think it really does though you think that really makes it just seems if it
didn't it wouldn't be something that happened. But Matt, talk about, you haven't talked about this before,
when you had the bear steal your elk.
Can you tell that story?
Yeah, a few years ago I was hunting.
By himself.
And I shot an elk and took it apart.
And by the time I took it apart, it was dark.
And I had a couple miles back to my camp and I just was out of steam so I didn't try to get it in a tree or anything
and the next day I came up to try to get up early in the morning try to get back up to it and it had
been a bear had found it and buried about, buried it all,
destroyed about half of it,
and like an area
about as big as this stage looked like
a D9 cat had gone
through it. I don't know. There was a lot of
surplus
digging that seemed to go on.
Like he was doing extra digging.
Yeah.
But he sucked back the boneless.
Sucked back the boneless meat and buried the bone in.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
Like, I got the back quarters off of it.
And I can't remember other little bits and pieces, but I figure I lost about half.
And I remember you saying you took it down to a
river and wash it off and load it on your line yeah and then I you know I take that and I was
like I'm not gonna um not take that and have it be my elk for the year so when you look at that uh
do you look at that like man that was shitty luck do you look at that like, man, that was shitty luck? Do you look at it like lesson learned?
I got lazy.
Yeah, I would never leave an elk on the ground in grizzly country again overnight. Yeah, that was just a very practical lesson I derived.
I didn't beat myself up about it too much.
And you hung the antlers?
It was a cow.
Oh.
So you don't need to wrestle with that one no just keep the ivories i did keep the ivories you know i wanted to ask
you about ivories john are you cool on that uh you got more to add you know i lost the very first
elk i ever shot at lost it howilled him and couldn't find him.
And they found him like two weeks later
with the bear on top of it
and there was no salvaging whatsoever.
And I got the antlers and I was,
I don't know, 19 or 20.
I was really even too young to wrestle with it.
But looking back on it now,
it's funny because we've had this conversation.
I haven't thought about it prior to right now but um i remember taking pictures of go like we actually went into the woods and
i had some buddies take pictures you know of the antlers with me two weeks ago yeah i did it i did
that but i remember having like now looking back on it i wasn't um it definitely was just different
like i didn't have the excitement that i you know later did when I went out and killed my first elk
and I watched him fall over dead, you know?
Yeah.
Show everybody your wedding ring, Matt.
It's a genuine, a genuine elk ivory ring.
Do you feel that, like, what is that?
Like, why that, right, for a wedding ring?
It just seemed like the default. Like, my wife and I's first date was elk hunting,
and she was with me and helped me pack this elk out it was like
was i didn't even ever really consider a different thing i guess yeah they say that those the ivories
uh are vestigial right yeah vestigial tusks elk had six to eight inches a six to eight inch tusk
yep it's hard to picture well it's not that hard to picture when you think about other deer of the
world got miniature versions elsewhere on the global landscape that have a tusk oh yeah for
fighting or fighting yep yeah typically the males will be significantly larger than the females tusk.
So it's got antlers and then a wild hog tusk.
Not necessarily even antlers.
So, for example, in China, in the area where I did some of my Asiatic blackberry research,
they have a little diminutive deer that they call the muntjac or the barking deer.
Oh, yeah, i've seen that and they've got
they've got tusks um and and they vocalize i mean being a midway you know michigan kid
in china for the first time where you have just like seven different ungulates running around
on the landscape blows your mind you see a little deer the size of a small dog jump on a log and start barking at you
is this place but yeah they've got they've got fangs um chinese water deer have fangs so yeah
it's like the the antlers on elk have gotten bigger the tusks have gotten smaller okay but
yeah it would have been for for fighting And there's some behavior when bulls
are in their aggressive mode, not just when they're bugling, but when they're posturing,
they'll do this thing. Maybe you guys have seen it where they'll lift their lips and show their
whistlers a little bit or show their ivories. Really? Yeah. They'll do that kind of posturing
still. So it's like a behavioral relic from back in the day when they'd be showing each other their tusks a thing i wonder about elk
ivories is is liking ivories learned or would people independently arrive at the fact that elk
ivories were cool oh man it's got it's like a thing in the top of the elk's mouth that's made out of actual ivory
it seems like you feel like people independently arrive at the coolness think that that was
it's not like elk hunters of this era who are thinking it's cool and it's something that's
been cool for a real long time people have always recognized it as cool right but you
still see where you maybe your hypothesis would be correct but it's like a legacy of liking it that was never disconnected.
But it seems like you'd independently arrive at that thinking that was pretty cool.
Do you guys think that a vegan can drink breast milk?
That was a terrible segue.
I'm going to give you a
zero
on the 1 to 10 scale
for segues.
Speaking of alkyl,
I feel like I do some polished segues now and then.
And I just
didn't have the energy, man.
It was like a shock.
We expect more.
Yeah, because I just, I don't know.
Speaking of vestigial tusks.
I want to bring it up because a guy wrote in
who works with a vegan
and knows that they breastfeed their kid
and doesn't want to ask them,
but like, isn't that not?
Like, if the thing, if the definition, right?
What is the definition of a vegan?
All right. The definition of a vegan is someone who does not consume or use.
And by consume, I mean ingest or otherwise use an animal product.
Without getting into the hows and whys.
Yeah, just do you or do you not.
It's not a question of your ethics.
It's a simple do you or do you not consume or otherwise use animal products.
It seems like there's no way that that person is a vegan.
What he's pointing out is if everyone starts out,
if you are vegan and you don't use honey
because of the subjugation of bees,
you don't use milk because of the subjugation of cows,
but you grow up drinking breast milk from your mother,
could you, you know, I'll point out just as a side note,
I've thought that like, at times I've had these thresholds i wouldn't cross in terms of like what i've eaten but then i was like
served a domestic dog in vietnam i was served a monkey in south america so i've like keep passing
up the things i won't do and the only frontier left right is the unmentionable eating a vegan
no like Mentionable. Eating a vegan? No, like, it's like the only one left is the one.
And then when we started having kids, I had this idea like you could,
there's like a sanctionable form of cannibalism would be the placenta.
Yeah.
Have you had some?
We have the. the race you did.
I believe that we sent ours away somewhere and then we got back.
Basically.
You didn't mean jerky.
I would have done that myself.
No, it came back in pill form.
I got a question, though. So you shipped off a placenta in the mail,
and six to eight weeks goes by,
and here's the pill.
Can I ask a question?
Yeah, please.
I mean, there's a thousand questions.
All right.
So when I started deer hunting,
I didn't have anybody teach me how to butcher a deer.
Is this a real bad segue?
No. Oh, okay. I didn't have anybody teach me how to butcher a deer. Is this a real bad segue? No.
Oh, okay.
I didn't have anybody teach me how to butcher a deer, but I cared for the meat well and
took it to a processor.
And when I got it back, some of the meat seemed pretty good.
Other packages of meat seemed less so.
I know where this is going.
And so that was one of the motivations for me to learn how to butcher my own deer
because I was concerned that if I sent my venison to a processor,
how would I know that I was getting my deer back?
Let alone a deer back.
I'll point out, some processors are even open about the fact oh yeah that they
do combo they batch it they batch they batch your grind hmm did you check this out were you like
like do you have any worry that it wasn't your
like there's some like some lady in kansas you know and you're like eating her placenta
so but i don't understand why why did you want it in a pill form anyway they the reason that they do
it is that supposedly you're supposed to be adding some sort of nutrients it's it's for the the
mother right because she's lost a lot of blood she's lost stuff through this whole process and
and re-ingesting it's supposed to help her out right because in some in some cultures you just
like in some cultures where there's you know i imagine like lower quality food resources it's
pretty common to boil it need it yeah well in great britain it was a fad for a while yeah but
that's not the necessity one right throwback right yeah yeah
so just because it was there i was like oh yeah i'll have a couple see if i feel any different
in the morning did it put it put hair on your chest like did you feel like cannibal-y did you
feel like a little bit cannibal-ish no never crossed my mind. Yeah. And I've talked about this a lot before.
I liked to think of myself as the kind of guy that would drink breast milk.
And I bragged about how I was going to, and that was what I was going to do.
But I couldn't chickened out.
But Giannis, you would lighten your... Before I ever met you, yeah yannis you would like before i ever met you yeah
yeah you would lighten your coffee with the stuff yeah i did that
i don't know like i'm not going to defend myself i'm not going to brag either but yeah
if because i was at home with aina for about nine months or so and so jennifer and she probably doesn't want to tell all the details,
but everybody knows that moms
that are working and breastfeeding,
there's a lot of pumping that goes on.
So I was at home, thawing out.
Yeah, good.
Sounds just like your turkey drumming.
It does, yeah.
No, a turkey spits and drums like this.
And a breast pump goes.
So I valued the work that she was doing.
So I'd be thawing out bags, warming them up, yada, yada, yada.
Well, sometimes the kid, you know, you can only reheat it so many times.
It's been so long, I can't remember the rules of, you know, dealing with breast milk.
But at a certain point, there's two ounces left.
And the kid's not going to drink it.
No, I had half and half the kid the kid's asleep and you can't put it in the fridge again you can't warm it up again and so i'd say
god what a waste i love it but it is it like the fact that i couldn't do it is a burden to me.
It's very sweet.
It tastes like sugar-laden milk.
But to return back to the question about, granted, in all fairness, if I was going to ask questions, like understanding vegan questions,
I should probably take the time to go ask someone who is right this is like not accurate but or it's not the best way to go about this but it does
bring up the same because i remember going to i remember going to a jewish scholar and asking
about the old testament dietary law and in the old testament you know it'd be like it'd say um
you know the stuff like only things with uh cloven hoof only things with a cloven hoof and we look now or in like in the
prohibition on eating pork for instance okay in the old testament like don't eat pork and we look
like oh yeah well the reason they said don't eat pork is because trichinosis and other kinds of
diseases so that's why that's in there like i know that's why that's in there. Like, I know that's why that's in there.
But you go ask a scholar,
and it was a believer and a scholar,
would say, you don't know why God said that.
It's not for you to understand why he said it.
He said it, and that's the rule.
And don't try to like guess what the motivations were
and then determine that now the motivations
aren't valid anymore, on and on, right? So with the vegan thing, and then determine that now the motivations aren't valid anymore.
On and on, right?
So with the vegan thing, you look and be like,
it's because you don't want to, like I said, be mean to bees.
So you don't eat honey.
But let's say all the bees just, for some weird reason,
there's a colony of bees with honey,
and for some weird reason, all the bees just fall over dead.
So no one's being mean to the bee by taking the honey.
But you still wouldn't want to take the honey to stay true to your conviction, I'm guessing. Like no one's subjugating the bee at that point.
So in that way, I feel like if that's what it is and that's true, then you can't drink breast milk.
This is not a major question. This is not like a problem.
It's just something I wonder about all the time.
I mean, along the same lines, you could ask, well, can a vegan eat roadkill?
If an animal just died, hasn't been subjugated, it's dead, it's meat laying there.
I would guess not.
The answer is no.
It's an animal product, just like mother's milk.
You want to see a segue?
Yes.
Where are you guys on roadkill right now?
Wow, did we just change topics?
I can't even really tell.
Yeah, are you still on it?
Do you go out of your way? i mean because we used to go right
we'd go out of our way to get it right um yeah i still once in a while pick something up a pheasant
or something like that if i know it's fresh yeah yeah not i don't know why but not to the maybe i
eat a little higher in the hog now.
It's like we live in the land of plenty.
Yeah, like a full freezer.
Yeah, but I'm definitely not opposed
to picking up some roadkill.
Yeah.
Do you ever feed your family roadkill stuff?
We tried once with an elk that was smashed up,
I believe by, it was like a garbage truck
that had run
through a whole herd. And my, good old I-70 there in Colorado. And my buddy Jimmy went through the
whole process and just pulled over and waited. And, you know, they lifted into his truck and I
went and helped him butcher it. But the whole thing was just purple and smashed. And we ended
up just feeding it to Otis, the dog.
Yeah.
So we tried, but no.
But I think, yeah, somehow you mentioning pheasant,
I would think that if I came across a turkey and I didn't have to punch my tag
and I was able to quickly look at it and said,
oh, there's two good breasts and two good thighs,
I'd be, yeah, why not?
But I'm not picking up badgers and raccoons
squirrel i'd probably pass i remember driving back from hunting one time and this is in northern
montana where they have the intercontinental ballistic missile system the minute man 2
project is you know strewn across the northern great plains and they're always like the missile
silos are always off the road quite a ways i remember passing one of those missile silos
the entrance and seeing a brand spickety new army jacket that had fallen out of a guy's truck
and picked that up i'm like score because that was back in the days and stuff like that was like
you know you were loving right to have found a $20 jacket or
whatever, an army surplus coat. But this wasn't even surplus. Yeah, it was like a dude's jacket.
And just pulled out of there and got going again, feeling like luckiest guy in the world. I remember
a pheasant, as they do, ran out and stopped in the road. And you think like, how could you get a
roadkill pheasant? Because it'd be destroyed? But I remember he was just the right height where like hitting him was kind of like.
What do you mean?
It was graveyard dead.
Graveyard dead, but just like nothing happened to it and perfect.
And I might have talked about this before, but when we were little kids,
you probably remember, we were coming back from tracking a deer.
You know what I'm talking about?
We had been out all night tracking a deer you know what i'm talking about we had been out all night
tracking a deer the old man hit with his bow and we're coming back at two in the morning
and bam and i was sleeping in the front and hits a deer so he gets out you and danny are in the
back seat i'm in the front seat he gets out and it was it was a 1979 jeep grand cherokee green green with and i believe it was uh
it had the wasn't the eddie bauer design but that was late that was the mini the minivan later so
i remember the inside of that thing but he threw it in the back and starts going down the road and
all of a sudden matt and and Danny are screaming bloody murder
because the deer is up in the back of the car.
Standing in the back of the vehicle.
And I remember the old man slanted on the brakes, drug the deer back out of the car,
killed it with a knife, loaded it back up, and we were back on our...
I also remember one time hunting with you, and we found a roadkill pheasant and we
went to clean it and had nine lives cat food in its craw i do remember that too that's a bold
pheasant man rooting around on the cat i never even thought of that
and i remember you stuffed that pheasant with grapes and then stuffed it in a turkey.
Yeah, I do remember finding cat, but yeah, it is a bold pheasant.
He's like, you see that cat?
To his buddies, watch.
He's off looking for me.
Watch what I do.
Okay, so like roadkill and the obvious questions that that brings up around perceptions of food and food safety.
Here's an interesting thing that someone was talking about.
They work on mine remediation, so mine cleanup.
And they work at a mining site where the reason they're there is because of heavy metal soil contamination.
And they go there and there's a bunch of morels
grown in the mine site and she was saying like you know i picked the morels and eat them and i
think a lot of people would stumble across and just be like sweet morels and pick them all and
eat them but she's like but i know about the contamination but I eat them anyway.
And she brings up this idea, like, do you ever get where you just kind of like,
do you ever get where you feel like you just know too much about your food?
Like, people want to know more.
They want to be closer to food and know more about it,
but she's just wondering, like, do you ever get where you feel like
just all the detail just becomes difficult. And the thing I think about
when you're eating
halibut meat,
when you're eating halibut, when I'm looking
at my wife's plate,
I see the six, seven inch
long tapeworms.
Everyone who's eaten halibut has eaten them.
I see them,
but I don't ever say,
Katie, you know what that is?
And when you're eating bluegill flays
and all,
you ever look at a bluegill flay
that's got those little black specks?
When you pop that bluegill-
Flavor crystals.
What's that?
Flavor crystals.
It's a little parasite. So you pop that thing in your mouth
and you're eating hundreds of parasites which is another thing i don't point out to people
because you realize that this is being broadcast right yeah no i know
i'm worried at all right but do you know what i'm saying like there's some people who want to know
more and more and everything,
and some people who just want to know,
I just don't need all the detail.
Right?
Right.
Yeah.
I'd always want to know.
What's that?
I'd always want to know, but like you,
there's certain things that I know
that I could ruin somebody's dinner if I told them.
I don't know about eating mushrooms out of my insight.
Couldn't you get like arsenic poisoning or something?
Yeah.
So you feel like in that case,
you'd want to know and then not do it.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
What about eating all the worms and halibut?
Like you're cognizant of the fact
that it's all these worms and halibut.
It doesn't bother me at all.
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, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it.
Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.
That's a sweet function.
As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services
handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.
Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.
As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet.
OnXMaps.com slash meet.
Welcome to the OnX club, y'all.
This is pertinent because of another point of discussion i think is valuable to have
is a guy observe he's like i'd want to know if i was eating placenta
you'd want to know that i draw a lot so you're like what are these uh pills we're eating
um yeah it's interesting because because there's a there's's a guy I communicate with,
and he has a little bit of an ax to grind on the thing that he thinks that hunters are becoming guilty of.
Hunters are aware of sort of the national conversation that we're having around food, right?
And food awareness and understanding the ramifications of your choices on the global scale about how you eat and what the effects of how you eat are, right, and what's the economy that
you're participating in. And, you know, like we kind of are tuned into that. And he feels that
like a lot of guys are now who a few years ago even weren't espousing all the virtues of wild game, but they're now, because they
know that it sells well to the public, that he's finding it a little bit annoying, that
people are like, oh, and it's organic, and that's really all I care about, and it's free
range and humanely harvested.
And he feels like it's gotten a little empty,
where it's just like this sort of masturbatory activity
of doing all this.
And he's wondering, like, is it really honestly?
Like, is it actually healthier?
And the first question I want to ask around that is can you even say that it's organic
it's not certified organic non-certified organic it's not not not it is not certified could it
but could it be certified in some cases okay you're at not organic and it couldn't right
if you're hunting white-tailed deer in the Midwest,
is it organic meat?
It could not be certified as organic, right?
I mean, let's get, okay, there is a certification process.
But like, forget the certification process.
No, I'm saying it wouldn't be eligible for certification.
It would not be eligible for certification.
It's hard to grow an acre of corn in the Midwest without an herbicide.
Yeah, but not all the Midwest is the same. Are we talking like the Northern tier?
I thought we were talking about Doug's farm.
We're talking agricultural landscape. You're going to have a lot of food available to those deer
that is non-organic feed.
And if you fed it to a beef cow,
that beef cow would not be eligible.
From eligibility.
Yep.
So even a wild turkey at Doug's.
Non-organic.
Almost certainly not organic.
But free range.
Yes.
You always have that.
Backing up a little bit.
Do you think, I'm just curious what you think.
Do you think it's disingenuous?
Or do you think that there's been some kind of,
there's like a change in the air, and people are starting to take the food component of hunting more seriously?
I think that both things are happening.
I think there's a lot of genuine, and I think there's a lot of cynical.
I think there's a lot of just people looking for the crutch.
And the guy that I communicate with was raising this question. He's like, I just feel better eating it. Like I like to go out and hunt
my friends and I feel good securing my own meat. And that's what I choose. Even if you told me it
was somehow like a little bit more dangerous than other stuff and not quite
as safe as the other stuff like that's just how i feel best like that's what i like to eat and i'm
satisfied just feeling that i don't feel like i need to take some other language and some other
ideas and sort of like conform it so that my choices reflect some contemporary understanding
of what's right and what's wrong.
Because I've even at times,
I've talked about even the question of humanely raised.
I don't know.
Like, then you're sort of saying like,
is growing up,
is an animal that lives on the natural landscape,
is that a humane environment?
Getting gnawed on by coyotes?
Like living under the constant stress of predation? Watching your offspring routinely slaughtered? That if you're a
turkey and you lay batches of eggs 12 at a time, and you're lucky if you can do that three years
and have one of those grow up to an adult, So you've lost 35 young in the course of your, is that,
so like humanely raised.
Yeah, I don't know.
If I had to guess, I'd guess it'd be more,
I'd rather have that fate.
Because you see animals play and jog around and chase each other.
Especially in farm fields.
Well, in a lot of conventional farm situations farm those
those animals display like behaviors that are neurotic yeah i mean
yeah i'm devil's advocate in a little bit because i do still even considering all that i still view
it because you can't help but view it like if i was in if i was in one of those
situations which would i pick i'd be like i'll pick the that right the outfending for myself
but then there's the other question of like uh is it humanely harvested which is another one i've
thrown that out there but then you look and i'm like, sometimes, sometimes amazingly so.
Right.
Well, yeah, I would probably argue that on balance that farm animals are more humanely harvested.
They're more humanely slaughtered.
Yeah.
Because you have a system. They got a pretty systemized, you know, like that air gun that dude uses in No Country for Old Men.
It's called a captive bolt.
And the way they have things now where like animals going through the slaughter process,
it used to be that they were aware of what's ahead of them,
but now they're in a lot of blind turn passages.
So you're not aware of what's going on.
Come around the corner and thwack. Yeah, you're not like watching like, you going on come around the corner and flat yeah you're
not like watching like you know bob out ahead of you right and uh they've you know never did
like that old bob yeah they like they've eliminated that and sometimes sure you could be out and the
thing like here's an animal that you're gonna harvest or kill and it's oblivious to your
presence and there's not even a second that it has to register what's going on but earlier we talked about situations
that aren't that way oh man in hunting i mean we all know it's like not that clean i mean sometimes
it is but sometimes it's not yeah so i just want to feel like a little bit like um i just feel that
like honesty is good and i think that to go in and just sort of borrow,
like put your finger to the breeze.
Right.
Preempt the language of like, yeah,
people that are trying to do agriculture better.
And one day you'd be like, well, I used to hunt deer
because I thought if there weren't, there'd be too many,
whatever that means.
Now I'm switching.
I'm switching to organic, right?
Because you just are dying to,
and I feel like it's like a thing,
people feel like I really want to tell people
about this thing and I want them to get it.
So what do they want to hear again?
I think some of that goes on.
Okay.
You know.
You look like you're not satisfied, Carl.
No, you're making a good point point i'm running through all the words that get thrown around and i guess there's just so much potential for diversity in the answer
based on what exactly played out you know in some instances as Matt pointed out, humanely slaughtered would apply.
In some cases, some pseudo-organic label would apply.
In some circumstances, local is another word people like to throw around.
And certainly that applies sometimes.
But then you've got, like my first elk I shot in Idaho on a trip from Wisconsin.
So think about the fossil fuel implications of a transcontinental road trip to kill an elk and
drive it back home. So I agree wholeheartedly with this, you know, this caution around trying to borrow the language yeah um and also the point about
the value of honesty um but i think there is very much a growing realization among a large segment
of our non-hunting public that there's this opportunity to have more of a connection
where your food's coming from. And maybe that's, maybe that's the, it's, it's, it's.
That is a powerful connection. Yes. And maybe that's the word.
Regardless of what snazzy terms you're able to borrow from Whole Foods,
that's a powerful connection. This is, this is food that I have a connection to.
And that probably is like unequivocal. You have some
connection to that food. Yeah. That's why I was going to bring up like in looking at it.
It's a great point. You fly from Montana out to Doug's place, say, and it's not local.
It's at Doug's place, so it's not organic.
You had to shoot twice, so it wasn't humane.
But you know, I'd be like, but you know what, man?
I like being around wild animals.
And I went out there and figured out how to do it,
and I got it done, and now I got to eat it.
And not only that, but the system that we've built
in this society that allows these things to occur is actually beneficial to the resource.
So I'm feeling pretty good about this steak.
Yep.
So another word that I think generally would apply when we're talking about consuming wildlife in North America through legal channels would be sustainable.
So connected, sustainable source of food.
I think those would apply across the board
because there's no regulated hunting
that we're doing here on this continent
that wouldn't fit the latter of those two categories.
So I want to ask, to the best of your ability,
and you already did,
to the best of your ability,
why is it like
why is it the diet you prefer is it because it enables you to engage in the activity like like
what is it because it lets you do the activities you like and you're not going to waste it yeah
um i don't know it's just like we've done it since we were kids. And even when we were little kids,
it was just this giddy feeling of getting something by your own wits and having it be your food.
I remember when we were little kids,
we had this idea that we were going to have a dinner
where everything either came from the garden
or it was something that we caught.
I don't know how that came to be that that
we prioritize that but that that that's certainly a component of it is just like feeling that you
did it you got your food yourself and yeah and it felt as good and as fun then before anybody
started dabbling in the justifications right and and it's not just about
hunting because going out and get some morels that's that triggers the same impulse to me
picking wild asparagus wild asparagus garden plant right right it's like the wild it's like a wild
hog it's the wild hog of vegetables like if someone said to me like you can get some asparagus
out of my garden or you can pick some of the shit
that came up in the drainage ditch,
I'd be like, in your drainage ditch?
That's amazing.
It tastes so good.
It's so much better than the stuff in your garden.
Your pee doesn't even stink with it.
Yeah, what is it, Yanni? Do you know? You ever thought about it i thought about about no i don't
know um yeah i mean we've been doing it for so long i mean because i got into it really because
i became a hunting guide and then i sort of got into eating wild game because we like we ate some
of it growing up,
but there was only a few deer around,
so between the family, I think it disappeared pretty quickly.
But it wasn't as celebrated in my house growing up
as it was for you guys, I don't think.
It wasn't like a big deal.
We didn't sit around eating burgers,
talking about where that deer came from
or how it got shot or whatever.
It just didn't happen.
And it might have been other circumstances
why we didn't have those conversations.
But yeah, so I always found myself just, like all of a sudden i was an elk hunting
guide and then i had elk and next thing you know we're like eating a bunch elk and it just
naturally happened and so that's where i am now um i don't know if i really chose to end up there
just you know life took me there and i might it might take me away from there there
might come a time when i'm not always eating wild game or solely wild game that's hard to imagine
really it is but i'm just saying like you just get all stoned off and too old to get out there
anymore like you're just too decrepit to go i was talking with dar about it today about how
we both of us used to just like
all we thought about was catching trout on flies for a good decade of my life that was like on my
mind every day now i go months maybe even a year without thinking about doing that maybe that'll
happen with uh killing an eating wild game i don't know know. I bet it's hard. You don't like catching trout anymore?
Not as much.
Something faded, huh?
I mean, imagine a person that eats game meat on a daily basis like we all do.
It's not like if you're there by yourself, like I live alone,
or like with your family, it's probably not like a nightly thing where you go, gee golly, isn't it great to be eating wild game?
Where it really comes into play is when you have people over that don't eat it a lot that's when it's exciting yeah but i feel
guilty to not eat it oh i never don't eat it no even to have like like if i if i come home
like my wife doesn't like to cook and she'll oftentimes make the kids like for her it's like
the easiest thing is to make breakfast so So she'll sell it like a big, exciting thing.
We're like, they're like, oh, my gosh, it's amazing.
Breakfast for dinner, right?
And she'll just, like, fry eggs and make toast.
And I'll come home and get a little bit of a guilty feeling.
Right, right, yeah.
I'll be like, that's not how it is.
That's not what I want their experiences to be.
Because, like, it's important for me.
It's important to me. Well, a like it's important for me it's important to me
well a couple things important to me it's important to me that they see me making them dinner
because there's like a little bit of a like a kind of like kind of like like something i
recognize is sort of a sack like a sacrament or whatever like no matter how busy whatever it's
important to like that this person takes the time to like serve me something so it's important they
see that and it's equally important because it's like here's where this stuff came from this is
the situation like we did this and now this is what we eat because it winds up it just feels like
this that you're you're taking something that's mundane, but making it rich and instructional.
So in missing out on that, I get a guilty conscience.
The same way when we were kids, I would get a guilty feeling
if I didn't go hunting with Dad,
that I would wake up and hope to see that it was too windy and rainy.
Oh, wow.
And then I'd feel bad about hoping that it was too windy and rainy
to go sit in a tree in the woods.
And I'd feel like, like I've said before,
I think it's like how some people feel about church.
Like you'd feel guilty if you didn't go.
I just remember feeling like guilty to let the old man down.
So like so much of my life is influenced by like,
by feelings of guilt that are difficult to explain to other people.
Maybe I just don't have the normal problems that people
get guilty about anymore. Like I've just got done doing that kind of stuff and now I feel guilty
about random weird shit. Like my kids eating eggs at suppertime. Any more to add for me there? Go, Carl. So one of the key determinants in longevity and happiness
is an individual's sense of gratitude.
Is that right?
Yes.
A lot of research indicates people who express a high degree of appreciation,
recognize the things they have to be grateful for,
tend to live a more fulfilling and longer life.
Can I interrupt you for a minute?
Yeah.
Do you have your phone on, Ian?
I don't.
Every email that Doug Duren sends,
yes,
at the end of Doug Duren's sign-off,
you know a lot of guys
have some badass thing they use on their sign off
like 45 acp because it's stupid to shoot twice right doug durans is uh
doug durans is the days when i keep my gratitude higher than my expectations you know those are
good days anyways i'm sorry no it's i feel like we were dogging on how Doug's farm's not organic.
No, it's funny you mentioned Doug Duren
because he and I were texting today a little bit,
and I was texting to express my gratitude, Doug Duren.
Like, I want you to just look at this text.
This is from today.
I want to reiterate my gratitude.
Doug Duren's response,
I'm grateful for all of it too.
So what I'm trying to get at here is,
and this is a piece of wisdom I picked up from my grandma, Alexander, who taught me every day, try to find something to be grateful for.
He calls it counting your blessing, right?
And you could think about that in
a religious way. You could think about that in a secular way, but taking stock of the things that
we have to be grateful for. And that's the reason that Thanksgiving is like by far my favorite
holiday of the year. Getting everybody together, cooking a big meal, having time where you actually
just think about how good you've got it because every single person in this
room and every single person listening to this has a hell of a lot to be thankful for, right?
Yeah, you're all going to live long lives. But there's a lot of people who have a lot to be thankful for that don't recognize it,
right? So one of the things that happens when you have this food that you're connected to,
I feel like it makes Thanksgiving more than a once a year kind of thing. You have the opportunity
to sit down and take stock of all the things you had to be grateful for. And you could think about
that in terms of the wildlife resources of the country. I think I do a lot more cooking and
service to my family as a result of having this meat that I want to work my way through. Because
a piece of it is definitely like, man, my freezer is full. I do want to go hunting next fall. We got to get through all this meat.
It's not like a chore, but it's like the sand in the hourglass, right?
I got to get that sand going through the hourglass such that when August or September rolls around,
I've got some space in the freezer because I want to go hunting again.
So there's a piece of that.
But really, it's this idea of the celebration and the gratitude and
just a little story. And I'll counter just a little bit what you were saying about
other people coming into your home, Matt, where you were saying like,
being able to share with other people is a big thing. I agree that that's a big thing, but
something happened at our dinner table recently where it was just my wife, our daughter, and me.
And we have taken my grandma Alexander's tradition
of the gratitude exercise
and also stolen your best, worst, weirdest exercise
for our dinner table.
We talk about what's your best, what's your worst,
what's your weirdest,
what's something you're grateful for.
And it's a way to like have a dinner conversation
because my wife and I are trying to make
the family dinner like a sacred thing.
We're trying to carve time out
and make it like we're sitting here,
we're having a meal together.
It's going to be our nightly tradition, right?
And we got this daughter who's going to be four in August.
So she's, you know, still developing, right?
Like she hasn't figured out the whole world yet,
but there was a dinner we were having,
would have been late last year, early this year,
where we were eating some of the moose from Idaho.
And I'd done a European mount of that moose skull.
So I've got it hanging in our living room,
but you can see it from our dining room table.
And so we're sitting there going around the dinner table
doing what we're grateful for.
And my little girl is three years old.
She says, I'm thankful for the moose for his meat.
That's nice.
And it like sent a chill down my spine, dude.
Yeah.
To have this little person
who's still trying to figure things out
acknowledge that there's this way in the 21st century
for us as a family to be gathered around
this sacred Thanksgiving meal
that was happening in December or January,
and having her at that age understanding
that there's this thing to be grateful for,
which is this remaining wildness that we have in this country.
And given what I do professionally,
having my career dedicated to the conservation cause,
and then having this little person be like,
man, I'm grateful that that moose did something
so that we can have this dinner.
And I feel like my family is a better place.
Our country is a better place.
And portions of the world, at least, are a better place
because people are experiencing that kind of deep personal connection and gratitude,
and we're going to live longer as a result.
Yeah.
The family meal thing is something I push really heavy,
and not long ago I took my 8-year-old in for his checkup,
like his 8-year checkup, and they give you a questionnaire.
And one of
the questions like right off the top was like do you have guns in the home and
I'm like yeah man where's this going you know but then if it's yes it allows you
to go to the next box which is do you keep them secured the next question is
do you have family dinnertime remember, I like this son of a bitch that wrote this thing, man. Keep your guns secured, have family dinner. Got one last one,
and you guys can hit any concluders or not, and this is just a guy that wrote in and he i can just feel his pain his short clean sentences he says
i missed a beauty of a tom this morning on my first ever turkey missed 12 gauge full choke
long beard will i ever get over it? Nope. And I'm telling you what, man, I remember
the first, so the first year we were, the first year, we just completed our one, we just finished our 100th episode of Meat Eater, the TV show.
Nice.
Made 100 of them.
And however long that takes, right?
The first ever season we did, and one of the first hunts of the first ever season we did and one of the first hunts the first ever season we made I
missed a very big black tail sick of black tail the likes of which I have not
seen since I'm starting to come to terms with it like I'm starting to not be, you know, I'm just reminded of,
I got to take this in a weird direction for a second.
I remember Matt who's sitting here one time reviewing in his mind
some interactions he had had with women in high school.
And being like, he's like, now that I look at what I think was going on there,
and I didn't detect what was happening, and he was down on the floor of the bar beating the ground
and going, stupid, stupid, stupid. And I still, you know, I still like I'm getting over that now. So I think that the pain of like the myths just,
you get circumspect about it.
Yeah, I've gotten over the missed opportunities
with young girls from my teens or whatever,
but I need to get counseling.
I need to get counseling on a few misses.
On some misses.
You pointed out one thing about missing is what you don't like about it.
Is it because you miss because you panic, right?
Right.
Because if you miss a deer at 20 yards, you hit paper all day at 20 yards.
So you know it's like I panic.
And I remember you saying something really kind of interesting.
You said, what I hate is just anger at myself that i can't control my greed yeah that i wanted it so bad it's like a greed
overtook yeah it's an ugly interesting way to put it like i can't like how am i so greedy yeah i
can't control your passions yeah like yeah my pat here I am. I can't, like, beat my passions.
Yeah.
Like, I want it so bad that it actually prevents me from getting it.
Yeah.
What kind of fool?
Now I really need counseling.
He'll get over it because turkey season is going to, you know,
it's going to be here again in six, seven months.
Yeah. You get lots of opportunities.
Yeah, because turkeys, they're so hard to tell apart.
You don't have that burned image.
Right.
Like you do with something that's distinguished, like the antlers.
Right?
They burn in your mind, man.
You know?
Yeah, the giant mule deer with a bunch of extras and like 15 points on one side
and 30 points on the other side yeah you might never get over missing that one it's hard
any sage wisdom
i think so a couple of thoughts.
First off, don't hang your head
because it happens to everybody.
And once you've racked up a set of experiences
that includes a clean mess
versus an animal that gets away that you know you hit,
those are the ones that stick with me a lot more.
There are times I've missed something cleanly, and once you've been through enough of those
experiences, you're like, well, at least I missed him cleanly.
The one that got away, but got away untouched.
And if he thinks this experience with that turkey hurt, wait till he experiences something
where he doesn't recover an animal
he knows he hit then you gotta live with that yeah and i think there's no there's nothing i've
experienced that's more soul rendering like i've you know to the point that like what am i even
doing out here sometimes it it's the lowest you can feel.
I felt like there's,
I've walked out of the woods feeling like I am done with this.
Yeah.
So that's,
so the bird got away.
Hopefully the bird's fine.
He's shooting a full choke.
Chances are at close range with a full choke,
either the turkey's dead or the turkey's untouched.
He doesn't mention that he sees feathers flying or anything like that.
So take solace in the fact
that that tom is out there to hunt another day.
There's one
piece of it.
I wonder
if it walked past him off the roost
without him calling.
I want
to give him a piece of practical advice. I guarantee
he sailed it over the top of its head.
Yeah. Because he's aiming at its head, its wobbles yeah i hate to um rub salt in his
wound but i was thinking about this the other day i've never missed a turkey
i yeah you were with me i've never missed one i had one fly off
like you rolled him and he got up and flew?
And he got up and pitched off a mountainside and was gone as gone.
I mean, there wasn't even a,
you couldn't even have envisioned like going over to have a look.
He was just, that felt bad.
Any final little things?
Anything you wanted to wedge in there thinking about this and never got a chance to wedge no no it's great to be here this is a really good guy like the conversations
you guys are having it's good to be involved it's good to see everybody coming out for these things
and there's nothing you're like man i wish he would have no no i i i'm sated i feel like i've
spoken my piece no hanging chads or anything nice the hanging chad reference i like it yeah are you good
yeah lay something you don't want to lay there's nothing you want to lay out there
just like a totally like do vegans drink milk breast milk right
no no i was gonna use my 10 seconds because I know we're short on time
just to remind everybody
that we're going to set up some space here
to do some book signing
and we're going to have a couple lines
and the awesome help here at the improv
is going to help you guys make a nice line
to do some book signing and pictures.
Yeah, let's hear it for everyone
that works at the improv, man.
These guys have been great.
I wonder what it would be like,
I'm thinking now,
like if you crisped some placenta in the oven
and then drizzled it with chocolate
and dipped it in breast milk,
like cookies.
Can I just take a moment to tell you guys
about the Juul sous vide?
Have you tried one? I've done some sous vide. Have you tried one?
I've done some
sous vide. Have you done some sous vide? Yes, sir.
You look like you're ready for a big
concluder.
I'm not going to read this to you,
but I do want to point a couple things out
as a concluder. Yeah, that's fine.
So I've got the 2016 National Survey
on Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated
Recreation,
which was the results of which were released late in 2017.
This is the report that touches on the decline in hunting participation
that I've always been hearing a lot about in the news.
Of which I have many questions about.
Of which you have many questions about.
Would you like me to answer one of your questions that I know has been on your mind?
No.
About this report? No. Okay. Just stick with the concluder. I just want to let it be known that
if you look at me, rather than a halo, there's a question mark.
A question. Okay. Fair enough.
If you look at the percentage of Americans who
are participating in hunting in particular,
based on the change between the 2011 and the 2016 data,
and this is a survey conducted every five years,
we have experienced a fairly substantial decline in hunting participation. On the order of, in 2011, about 13.7 million hunters.
In 2016, 11.5 million hunters.
And these are people 16 years and older.
A modest uptick in recreational fishing.
There are about 36 million anglers as of the 2016 survey.
And then wildlife viewing, 86 million.
And so what I want to touch on as my concluder,
I've got kind of a question.
And on the way here, I was listening to the podcast
that came out from Colorado.
And during the concluders there,
you had a few of the guests I know,
Cal touched on this idea of trailhead diplomacy.
He talked about needing to interact in a positive way with the other.
To not be a dick to people at the trailhead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Putting the hunting community's best foot forward.
And there's been a lot of effort that has gone into recruiting new hunters over the last 10 years.
They talk about the three R's of recruiting, retaining, and reactivating new hunters.
But if you look at the demographics, we have this big bulge of hunters who are towards the end of their hunting career. and it's unlikely that there's going to be a similar kind of infusion of new hunters through recruitment
to make up for this impending decline.
Of baby boomers dying off.
As baby boomers age out of the hunting population.
And reproductive rates go down in the country.
Yeah.
So as a concluder, what I want to do is I want to ask a question of the audience.
All right.
Because I feel like as the hunting numbers decline,
we have a couple of opportunities.
We have a couple, a choice basically.
One option is we think about our community in terms of hunters looking out for hunters,
like doing everything we can to protect our interests.
Yep.
And think about our community as a community of hunters,
hunters looking out for hunters.
That's option A.
Watching our own.
Watching our own.
Option B is kind of like the trailhead diplomacy idea on steroids,
where the hunting community takes a leadership role,
building on the fact that some 75% to 80% of America,
the non-hunting public, approves of hunting.
And we champion a cause for conservation that welcomes in,
like actively seeks out partnership, relationship with other segments of the conservation community
to try to create a social monolith for conservation, of which hunters are a central part, but a member of a community.
And the argument against doing that, the reason you would not want to do that is because that
community comes with sharing more decision space, right? You could think about it in terms of funding, for example. We currently bear the bulk of the burden
to fund state fish and wildlife agencies
through license fees and excise taxes.
Which buys us a tremendous amount of influence.
Which buys us a disproportionate amount of influence.
So if we want to share that decision space,
you're going to be sharing that decision space
with a whole lot of people who might not have the same values, the same interests.
But I would point, again, to the high approval rating among the non-hunting public for regulated legal hunting.
And I would point to the implications of us failing to act in a meaningful way. Because if we're going to be
a small element of the population in a democratic society and potentially losing quality and
quantity of outdoor recreational opportunity as a result of most people just simply not caring
about conservation, in the long term, we have a lot to lose.
So the question for the audience, and I want to hear, like, honestly,
I want to hear a yep if you feel like hunters need to look out for hunters,
first and foremost, or the option, a yep.
For I want to hear hunters as the foundation of a conservation revolution
that involves a whole host of values.
Everybody ready for that?
Can you yep with pause?
Can you yep with pause?
Like a reticent like yep
nope you get you get a you get a or you get b and there's nothing wrong like nobody
the only ground rule here is you cannot ridicule your neighbor one way or the other for what they
do is everybody cool with that okay look out for your own or extend a hand that I like that look out
for your own hunters looking out for hunters or extend your hand hunters as
the catalysts for conservation revolution yeah good looking out for your own
hunters as the catalyst for a conservation revolution
all right it's a good experiment and thank you for uh bringing such a big, well-thought concluder. That was an award-winning concluder, Carl.
Again, Carl Malcolm, Matt Rinello, Giannis Mutelis.
Thank you.
A couple things.
One minute. Because you had a thing you wanted to add. No, a couple quick things. One minute.
Because you had a thing you wanted to add.
No, a couple quick things.
Out front we have, long ago, a buddy of mine, not long ago, this spring,
a buddy of mine was talking about a turkey he killed, how the turkey was ripping some gobbles.
And it was a real cold morning, and every time he'd rip a gobble, a steam cloud would come out of his mouth. And I observed that
if I was a painter, that's the first thing I would paint. So a podcast listener made us the steam
breathing power gobbler, and check out the posters out front. We got our Gen genuine blouch shirts out front and there's some other note sorry
wasn't there a thing that we decided that you were going to say
no there was some throwing of some hats i recall oh that there wasn't a thing like i said that's
your job yeah i already did it as part of my concluder to help everybody.
We'll come up front to sign stuff
and do some pictures and hang out until they say
it's time to go home. Thanks a lot, guys.
Appreciate it again.
Thank you.
Hey, folks.
Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.
You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this.
OnX Hunt is now in Canada.
It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians.
The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.
Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.
You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX
if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.