The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 129: Live from Minneapolis

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

Minneapolis, MN- Steven Rinella talks with the outdoor writer Patrick Durkin, along with First Lite's Ryan Callaghan, Mark Boardman of Vortex Optics, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: Recycled car batteries out the end of your barrels; the hidden value of bearded hens; putting things into perspective; chronic wasting disease, tularemia, and other food safety concerns; freezing freshwater fish; the legal and ethical conundrums of bartering fish and game; should a single-species hunter be taken seriously?; evaluating people by what they name their kids; putting your kids into an arena of consequence; becoming the face of hunting; sage wisdom from Charlie Pride and Ol' Cal; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We want the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for coming out, everyone.

Yeah. Good. I'm going to start out with a couple of introductions, then we'll dig into some deeper stuff. Down there we have our producer, Giannis Poutelis, the Laugh-Eating Eagle. And also joining us is outdoor columnist and general outdoor writer Pat Durkin. You can't see it, but Pat Durkin has new tattoos. And I was asking him, like, why now? And he said that he's old enough now where he doesn't have time to come to regret them. Also today, we're looking, we're behind Pat's car and Pat has what we thought was a vanity plate because his license plate is 270

deer. But he said it just happened to happen that way. It's like a modesty plate. It's not a vanity plate. It's like, you know, you're a true hunter when they send you a 270 deer license plate it's my wife's car and uh we have mark boardman from vortex optics and i don't know about you but i uh you know i've worked with and been friends with the guys at vortex for forever. And when you have a problem, you call up. It won't be you, but like genuine people answer the phone and help out. You can call me.

You can call and ask for Mark. Yeah, so when you have an optics question, call this guy up and talk to him. And then we have a frequent podcast guest. Probably the most frequent podcast guest is uh old cal 46 or ryan callahan 46 406 old cal 406 old cal 406 uh yeah you know i come like i come through here quite a bit because you guys are such a you you know, like Minneapolis is such a hub. And the thing I think about often, like even when I knew we were going to come here, I think about this thing that happened to me years ago where I was flying into Minneapolis to go to a weird sound. Yeah, it was.

I was like, this is the end, man. I was flying to Minneapolis to go to this white buffalo's birthday party, which was west of here out in the Dakotas. But me and my wife flew in. We weren't even married yet. And we flew into the airport and rented a car, started driving down the road and got on 94. And I saw what I believed to be to this day.

It was still velveted out. But what I still believed to be. I saw what i at the time believed to be like still the biggest whitetail buck i'd ever seen in my entire life standing it was like there's a walmart and there was a pond and a giant buck standing on the side of the road and it was burned in my mind you know and when i when i fly over now i still try to look down and make sense i didn't think to you, put a label on it or anything. But what seemed to always stick to my mind, it was the week after 4th of July.

And so we head west out of Minneapolis. We start getting out. You know, you start transitioning out onto the prairie. And even though it was a week after 4th of July, people were still cooking off fireworks everywhere at dusk. And there's this big thunderheads coming in. And against these thunderheads and all these small towns you see all these fireworks going off it was kind of like between that buck and then as as seeing that buck in the evening then we went a little farther and

seeing all that it was sort of this combination of all the things i like about america which would be like great wildlife this kind of infectious patriotism right a willingness to blow your fingers off in pursuit of a good time and natural beauty and the weirdness of it all and also what the writer ian frazier kind of lovingly described as the trigger happiness of being an american and uh so i think about that often coming through here this time time through, we did two things. Like last night, we, no, we did a thing last night and a thing this morning. Last night, we went out on Lake Minnetonka and tried for a little while to catch a muskie, which didn't work out for any of us. Giannis caught a largemouth bass that was as big as his plug.

They say it's the fish of 10 000 casts between us we logged a thousand plus casts so we have nine more trips to go and one of us to catch a big musky but i think i like it's kind of weird because when you go somewhere and you you if you go from not knowing about something and then it quickly becomes your least favorite thing. It's disconcerting. But this thing that you get a boat, that you can fill the boat with water, so that it sinks down and makes a gigantic wave that you then surf on, it's like the surfing version of shooting preserved pheasants. and and like you know god forbid that if this lake did have one stretch of natural shoreline where there was like some debris and reeds and stuff you can kiss that goodbye with the whole lake sending out six foot waves what's the problem there was a little park that we we

fished in front of a natural shoreline yeah It'll be gone in a week if this fad, if this like making surfing waves fads thing goes. But then this morning we got up and did a, we visited the federal ammunition world headquarters plant. That was fascinating. I'm going to run through a handful of things that I learned that I didn't know. And you guys can jump in and crack me where I might be wrong. But for starters, we were going to ask this as a trivia question earlier. A belted magnum, the belt on a belted magnum serves no purpose. Right? It used to, but it doesn't now.

It doesn't strengthen anything. it's just there for no reason um it was just so everybody knows originally it was there to measure headspace to measure headspace but now it's just there because people like that flash of heat, right? Expands the metal. Brass goes back, when it cools, it goes back to the shape it was. Other metals, if you made a casing and it expanded, it would just conform to the contours of the thing. You'd never be able to jack the cartridge out. Hence brass. Uh, thecoding system was shotgun shells. It used to be all color-coded out. Everyone got away from the different color-coding systems,

but the only one they stayed true on is the 20-gauge remains yellow. Everybody else kind of walked away from different ones. In fact, Federal makes a pink 12-gauge shell, which is like breast cancer awareness, and some of the proceeds for that go to that they make a box where you get it where it's all red white and blue shot shells which is the patriot box and that goes to veterans things but the rest we've just gotten rid of the whole thing all of that lead so all the lead in the shot so everything the lead bullets and all the shot

pellets that all comes from recycled car batteries. From near here, there's like gopher, what is it? I wrote it down. Gopher resources. Car batteries, China, Mexico, all over the world come here, and those lead batteries are what goes into it. So when you're out shooting federal shot, you're shooting recycled lead batteries, which I thought was pretty cool. What other lessons am I missing here? You guys drawn a blank?

Oh, the plastic in the shot shells is all local, from Imperial Plastics. Did you guys pick up anything? You weren't on the tour? I fed you half that stuff don't don't play that dude i was emailing myself during the tour of stuff that i didn't want to forget because i wanted to remember they put clove and cinnamon in the ballistic gel yes so it doesn't smell so bad when it starts to melt. I found that that was very interesting because clove cinnamon has been used to take down the smell of death for a thousand years.

Still in use today, right, in the federal ammunition. Yeah, the ballistic gel is like animal gelatin. Yeah, I didn't know about that either. It's the most satisfying thing in the world to slap. It's just like, flap. I loved it. The biggest game changer, though, I thought, was this new tungsten combination, steel and tungsten pellets,

that with a 410 shotgun, now they're putting more kill shots into a turkey more bb's in that turkey's neck area than they were like 10 years ago with a 12 gauge yeah i thought that was really cool your children will all hunt turkeys with 410s uh but right now like in most states you can't because the laws are sort of lagging behind the efficacy of where they're at with the new materials so we learned all about all that stuff. First thing I want to get into outside of that is a couple of clarifications that I want to run through from some other shows. We recently talked about our friend Doug Duren and how his deer,

and most of the deer, like all the deer around here, like deer aren't organic, right? Because most crop fields today, like most agriculture areas you go to, the corn, wheat, alfalfa, that stuff's not organic. And deer are free-ranging, which is another thing we like about them. And these free-ranging deer are wanting to walk all over and eat these crops. In fact, a lot of them feed on GMO crops and certainly non-organic crops. So most of the Whitesail deer that we eat, we're not eating organic deer. But Doug wanted to point out, he's like, hey man, my deer aren't organic, but my cattle are because they're not quite free ranging. So he's able to limit his cattle enough to keep them organic, even though his deer aren't.

Another guy wrote, and we were talking about roadkill, and we were complaining about restrictive draconian roadkill laws here in America. And he says, man, the lunacy extends up to Canada. He lives near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. One day, he's driving down the road and hits a Hungarian partridge. Gets out of his car, goes and grabs it. A police officer pulls up thinking he's having car problems the police officer after a while is like what's in the bag he tells him what it is the cop confiscates it and the guy says the moral of the story i keep my roadkill secret another guy we're talking about like we're talking about this thing that happens where let's say you go out and you get a bad hit on a deer you don't find the deer until later and the meat's not salvageable but you find the deer and you get a bad hit on a deer, and you don't find the deer until later, and the meat's not salvageable, but you find the deer, and you want to keep the antlers. We're talking about what sort of happens.

How does your relationship with those antlers change? Because it wasn't like you got it, got it. You kind of got it, or not really got it, but now you have this thing, and so what do you do when you're looking at it? And this dude wrote in to say that he hit a buck with his bow and lost it and didn't find it until the next spring hunting morels. And by then, a squirrel had gnawed off one of the main beams, and he was writing it about wondering if it would make sense for him

to get a squirrel mounted chewing on his deer antlers. And I was saying that I think that it would be better to ask me than to ask the squirrel this question, but I would say absolutely. I would go ahead and do it. Another clarification I think warrants some attention is we had a recent debate about, like if you say, if you say, I'm going to thaw out a turkey breast, it opens up the question is, do you mean both or does a breast refer to one? And someone says, like, if you say he gave me half a breast, does that mean he gave you half of the meat on a turkey? Or does that mean he took one side of a turkey and cut that in half and gave you, in fact, a quarter of the turkey? And this guy said you can solve this whole thing by picking up the commercial poultry term of a lobe.

And a chicken has two lobes. So if you were to give someone a lobe, you'd give them half a turkey. If you were to cut a lobe in half, that's a quarter of a turkey. And I'm going to start adopting. You will start hearing the term lobe all the time on this show. Another thing on the subject of turkeys we talked about recently talked about a bearded hen most states don't say male female wild turkey they stipulate or specify that you're allowed to kill a bearded turkey and there's like you know one in a hundred female turkeys have a beard so it just so happens if you hunt turkeys long if you're going to wind up with a hen have you you got one yeah i passed up to you passed up to no negative negative he was saying there's a hidden value

in bearded hens is you can get the rare opportunity which is otherwise illegal to consume a wild turkey's egg and he got a bearded hen and found an egg, and he reported the egg to be large, excellent in flavor, with an unusually thick shell. In response to nothing, except maybe in response to my buddy Ronnie Bame's maximum that you should never wear a hat that has more personality than you do, a guy wrote in with the observation, it's a proven fact that a man's credibility is inversely proportional

to the flatness of his hat brim. Hey. I don't agree. I don't necessarily agree on his point at all, because Giannis for a while was running like kind of flat brim. Gianni almost went flat. He still kept his ears outside of the hat, but he was like flirting with running flat. And I think you kind of pulled back, right?

No, I just usually wear them how they come. I haven't been wearing hats as much over the last maybe 10 years or so, only when I'm in the woods. And so I'm not thinking too much about how they look. So when I get them, they just go on my head. Yeah. When I was a boy, people, it was a fad for a while to take your hat and wrap the bill around a beer can and put a rubber band on it

to give it like a power curl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you guys aren't there, but you're running. I used to huck mine in a in a pint glass i'd just crimp it there and shove it down in the glass rubber band oh in a pint just in a pint glass and it'd curl it quite nicely yeah but you you're flattening it's evolved gradually to that as the uh jersey tunnel then another thing uh the journalist i did an interview uh with the journalist tony jones and

afterward he wrote in to uh he just wanted to send me this thing we talked about earlier today that uh minnesota has released its new management plan and they're figuring there's enough whitetails on the ground where they have the goal of harvesting 200,000 whitetails annually. And I remember seeing that and thinking, like, man, if someone wasn't familiar with just how many deer there were and sort of where we're at in deer recovery relative to where we were 100 years ago, they would see that number and maybe have a funny feeling about it. But then I thought I wanted to check and compare it to something.

And if you think 200,000 deer is a lot, this country slaughters that many cattle every two days. So that kind of puts that deer harvest into perspective. Another thing to put into perspective, this this is for callahan here ryan can you explain how you recently did some liaising like you did some liaising with are you comfortable talking about this but i keep asking you a thousand questions about yeah yeah okay no i mean there's let me set it up or do you want no go No, go for it. Okay. Ryan Callahan had the audacity of hanging out with someone from the company Patagonia who has had over the years some, like the founder is a hunter, does some amount of hunting

and fishing. The company itself has given voice to some individuals, have decidedly anti-hunting stance and Ryan has been doing some hanging out and liaising. That's a word, right? Yeah. And we we keep and people keep writing me to gripe about it like how dare you know how dare he do that right and this is the last thing i'm gonna say about it the topic i do not mind now the gripe i'd take i'm starting to get kind of torqued with but go ahead no that was all i would say like if i was going to say you know you remember like nixon that nixon was so anti-communist right his anti-communist credentials were so solidly established that

he and only he could go and interact with Red China, right? So I'm like, if I'm going to send a hunting dude to go talk to some non-hunting dudes, like, you're my Nixon. Do you know what I'm saying? So I don't know why it all of a sudden is like, oh, he's selling hunters out. He's not a true hunter now because he talked to a non-hunter. Please. because he talked to a non-hunter please yeah so i i have this very firm belief that we are not we're not doing ourselves any justice by only speaking like i can come out here and talk to

you guys every night all night no matter rain shine snow whatever and tell you how great hunting is and how much we do for wildlife and conservation and uh how we're supporting everything and by doing that i am not sadly not going to ensure that we will have hunting, wildlife, public lands, access for the future. I'm just not because our group just isn't going to grow that fast. So speaking to lots of people who enjoy that public land and that access, but they don't necessarily hunt, they don't necessarily hunt they don't necessarily dislike hunting that is the way i believe that we are going to ensure hunting public lands access long into the future so 80 percent of america does not hunt yeah but how are we going to grow that hunting number and ensure hunting because we have some real difficult stuff right now.

You told me how we do it. You do it by hiding behind your middle finger. That's what some people would like to see happen. So this isn't a thing you're not going to sell us all out all of a sudden? I've been a mole. I've been undercover in the hunting world for a long time. I appreciate you taking the time to set it there because I haven't had the energy to reply to the criticism,

but it's been annoying me. The gripe just annoys me. It's like, how dare you talk to somebody who doesn't think the way we think? He got an email today from the guy that wasn't going to buy a first light anymore because Callahan talked to a non-hunter it's like dude i'd like i thought i sleep with one i haven't sold y'all out you just lost your podcast so betrayed uh all right here's a here's a conversation i think more some discussion this is a good one this is from a dude um in california non-hunter and i'm curious to get

you guys perspective on this so he he has a garden right and lo and behold all kinds of rabbits come and start consuming his vegetables in his garden. And he gets to reading about how he or an appointee can harvest rabbits that are doing damage to his garden where he lives. Gradually, he comes to that he likes the rabbits more than the vegetables because he starts eating the rabbits. So then he gets to thinking, I'm just going to plant a lot more stuff that they like. In order to really, he's like, realize I'm really in this for the rabbits. But then he listens to us talk about different issues around legality issues around baiting. And so he's just trying to get like ethically and legally

where am i like is this is this debating that everyone's always debating and in my perspective like i can't speak i can't speak to the legal situation in california my perspective on it would be it's like it doesn't matter in my, it doesn't matter that you've made a mental transition to perceiving it. It's like the law would say you can kill rabbits that are destroying your garden only if you're sad about it. Like the law would never go there. But on the legal end, I have no clue. Is it a game species in California? It's a game species.

And I think in California, most states, as long as it's doing damage to your personal property, you can harvest it. And I read that and I thought, this is a guy after my heart. That's the kind of stuff most of us grew up doing. I remember being stuck out in the horse barn where I lived, a little bitty shack basically, with one little window and sitting out there with a pellet rifle protecting the strawberry crop. Anything that flew in there, I'd shoot, I'd usually miss it, but that was your purpose for being out there and you were encouraged to do that. And if a rabbit came came so you definitely shot it and the thing of baiting if it's something that the human would eat anyway you'll never no one's ever going to bother you about that

no if you if it was migratory waterfall it'd be an entirely different story right but it's not yeah so i think he's probably he's like cool he's cool legally i think ethically it's not. So I think he's cool legally. I think ethically, it's an ethical positive. Because he's gardening, he's raising meat and vegetables. I just thought it sounded like a really good dual-purpose garden. Yeah, dual-purpose gardening. You ought to do a book about that. And the fact he's eating it, most people that kill an animal doing damage, they bury it. This guy's eating the stuff I think is to be commended.

You're feeling good about it? I feel good about it. Another guy, so a Texan wrote in with something similar that I like a lot. But he's misreading his regulations because he's saying, know you're not allowed to use uh mechanical like you're not allowed to use electronic things on archery equipment or whatever well he discovered though he's a vapor like vape pens okay which i have a thousand thoughts about vape pens but he likes to have a man he's running a mango flavored vape pen while he hunts. And the first observation that this guy has about it is that what an amazing wind indicator it is.

He says there's something about the way that smoke hangs in the air that it gives a very nuanced read of what the wind's doing. But then he starts to realize he's starting to think that deer are liking that smell and so he's struggling with is it like i'm sort of doing a sort of electronic baiting by vaping out in the woods he's like you might wonder why i started he says i like to party and so i'm trying to do anything to this that I'm missing. Oh, but you know, I know what I was going to say about it that I remember thinking besides anybody else's opinion about it. So he's wondering, like, am I crossing

immoral ground here by vaping out in the woods and luring in deer with mango scent? But, um, same thing. He was already vaping anyways. It's like, you know how Doug Dern's piss is very attractive to deer? you wouldn't be like or soy claims yeah buckman juice right right you would never say like everyone could pee in the

woods except doug because buckman juice draws in deer you know again like it doesn't transfer over first thanks for giving away my number one big buck secret and second seriously i would think that if you are allowed to use scents and lures in your state then that would just probably fall within that category yeah i think he's worried for no reason i agree i wonder if he goes to a smoke shop and sees they have alfalfa. Alfalfa infused weed. Hey folks, exciting news

for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater podcast. Now you guys in the great white north can be part of it, be part of the excitement.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all Okay, that was on the subject of baiting. Now we're rolling back into, I want to say, like, on the subject of rabbits, even though we're a step removed from rabbits. But a good one, and this is one that comes in all the time.

And this is all part, like, we keep hearing about R3. Is it 3R or R3? R3. Retention of hunters? Recruitment. Oh, recruitment of hunters. Recruitment. Oh, recruitment of hunters. Recruitment, retention, and reactivation. So you'd get people to hunt, keep them hunting.

If they quit, you'd get them back hunting again. Right. The R3. So I think all of these things fall into the R3, particularly this one. This guy's talking about suburban squirrels and rabbits and how people keep telling them, oh, you can't eat those because there's never an answer. But there's this like prejudice against suburban. They live amongst dirty people.

It's like part of self. It's like self-loathing and stuff. I'm guessing, right? That's what he's like. They eat stuff that they eat stuff. Humans must humans eat too yeah they eat the stuff we usually you know how nasty we are i've looked into this endlessly and the one the only one i ever heard the thought was kind of interesting like let's start with the disease one the disease ones no because like all these rodents um doesn't matter wild suburban even though the suburban ones no because like all these rodents um it doesn't matter wild suburban

even though the suburban ones are quite wild uh there's some like some of them can have mites that could feasibly carry bubonic plague you can get tularemia from a rabbit i don't think that tularemia discriminates between ones that live kind of by a house and ones that live really far away from the house. So the disease one is no. But the one compelling argument I heard one time would be that what if the squirrel had eaten some rat poisoning? And I've asked around to a couple of doctors, and they're just not seeing it.

It'd be that so it ate it, and then you got it right after it ate it, and then you ate its stomach contents or something. It just isn't a thing. It would have to stay alive long enough for that poison to be absorbed into the meat somehow. And even then, there's an anticoagulant in it. I don't think it's a problem. I live in a pretty suburban setting. Certainly by my standards, very...

I mean, I'm urban. I'm an urbanite. In a very teeny town. Yeah. And I have rabbits that live in my woodpile. And I always leave them alone. And there's this older fellow that comes and walks by my place every single day and the only thing he says to me is how are those rabbits doing

and at this point i i kind of remind him that they are likely not the same rabbits because he has a sense of ownership um and i have a couple of bowls i don't have space on the insides i have a couple of bowl heads hanging outside like the fish no like uh that was a bad joke yeah it was and uh so i think maybe he's saying, like, hey, don't kill those rabbits. And I have pondered killing the rabbits. And it's not this, like, oh, they're dirty rabbits thing that's keeping me from killing them. It's the old, like, outfitter adage, like, you don't take the timber next to camp. Yeah, I got you. Because if you get snowed into camp, you're going to need that.

Yeah, as part of your, like, you're like a prepper. Yeah. Like, one day those rabbits could come in real handy. I'm not exaggerating. I've eaten, like, over the course of my lifetime, I've probably eaten suburban interface and quite a number of squirrels from the epicenter of the nation's largest megalopolis, which I don't want to go into great detail about. And all you've ever come down with is Lyme disease and trichinosis. Yeah. great detail about and all you've ever come down with is lyme disease and trichinosis and yeah and when i got trichinosis it was about as far away from a person as you can get

so no problems there um on this you see i'm you see how i'm like the trans how good the transitions are check this one out on the subject of food safety dude's wondering uh bone and neck roast so i like bone and neck roast and cwd right it's that used to like we used to just like cutting up a deer do you mind i used to cut them right here at the jaw and i'd cut them right here and just take that whole thing and cook it. And it's like as much as there's no evidence, not no evidence. We know it hasn't happened. No humans contracted CWD. As far as we know, no coyote has contracted CWD.

No black bear has contracted CWD. That's probably just, though, because it's a fake disease made up by the government, right? I know. Then I learned. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to touch about the new idea. I've only heard about that new idea in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, that in fact it's not true it's funny because one i hope that those people are right i would much rather have to deal with a large government conspiracy than i would have to do with the potential contamination of my my preferred food source so it's like i hope that it's i i would love it to tomorrow realize it's all this

big lie but i also find it's funny that so much of the, that like some of the people who don't believe that there's a disease called CWD happen to be involved in the captive servant industry. It's like, that's like too coincidental and sort of convenient to overlook. But to get back to the necros thing, it's like, even though there's no,

like it hasn't made, it hasn't jumped the barrier, right? So there's no predators that have gotten it, humans that have gotten it. There's a lot of question about how long it's been. There has certainly been. Humans have absolutely, certainly consumed thousands of pounds of CWD infected venison. Absolutely. But it's changed the way I look at it. It's changed.

Like now, I'm like, still do it. But if I'm, like hunting Wisconsin, it's like a CWD area and you get free testing. So you get back to like negative. But I still can't help but perceive it differently. Well, when they do that test, the first thing they tell you in your card you get back, it'll say something to the effect that we cannot find evidence of CWD in your sample, but that does not guarantee CWD is not present in that meat.

You know, they always tell you that. The thing that we're doing now in Wisconsin is the law changed. If you're in a CWD area and you kill a deer there, you cannot remove the bones from that deer in that area. It has to stay in that area. Like Doug Duren wants to have a dumpster for the public to use right outside of his farm there and his driveway so people and people can jump their dump their bones there be done with it and not discard it not discarded out in the landscape you know because right now

in the past you could basically shoot a deer at doug's farm or my uncle's farm 10 miles down the road and go home with it and no one ever got ticketed for bringing home a deer across out of the county, even though it's been against the law for 15, 20 years now. But to get back to the question, personally, at 62 years old, I'm not too worried about being the first human to come down with CWD. Same way you look at the tattoo thing. Same thing in a tattoo. Yeah. Same exact thing. But I'll be damned if I make a neck roast and sew it to my grandkids. You know, I don't think. OK, if it comes from a CWD area or any deer. CWD area. OK. I guess I'm just not getting that worked up about it when I go out to Idaho and shoot an elk out there or Arizona or something.

But I guess if I were in the Midwest now, though, like right here in Minnesota, too, in northern Wisconsin, we found two CWD deer on the Wisconsin River up by Rhinelander, which is up in our northern forest, which they haven't been sampling. So we can't say where CWD is not anymore because we haven't been checking for it. And if we're going to complain about our states not doing their job, our agencies, that's when I'd say we're not doing our job. We aren't doing a good job of surveying a big area periodically to just make sure we're okay. Because we don't know right now no you you have sorry you have cwd within

uh you know a hundred air miles probably of where you hunt elk in idaho definitely and yeah and and definitely i'm not that far off of a lot of places where i hunt in idaho and certainly i have it probably in the spots that i hunt in montana uh so i really want to know like how comfortable are you taking that whole elk roast out of idaho well there again i'm not packing any meat any bones out just boning it out and taking taking just the meat so i don't i don't worry about a whole lot. But there's something about leaving that bone in that neck roast. I think that had me a little bit more uneasy. Yeah, it just feels a little different now.

I don't know if you folks follow all this, but the prions that they think cause CWD, a lot of it's in the spinal column. That's where they find it, in the heaviest concentrations. And so I don't know. I guess I wouldn't want to do it. I feel like also it's one of the few recommendations that they actually make. Like, if you're not going to do anything, like, don't do this. Like you said, stay away from the spinal column.

Don't saw through it. But then a legitimate question that I have about CWD is the deer aren't contracting it from one another by eating each other's spinal column. Yeah. So it's like fluids or this, that, the other. So is it not even, is it not necessarily even a hunter issue or a, I consume deer issue?

Is it just, it's in the landscape issue? Yeah. Well, it's a good question. And the, but the thing you return to all the time is like, no one's gotten it.

As much as I was goofing on people who, I think there's this big spectrum. Like when people gripe about the CWD deniers, right? I'm making little quotey symbols with my hands right now. That's a spectrum. It's a spectrum of attitudes, okay? And I think the ones who say like, there's no such thing, I think is goofy and kind of laughable, okay? And I think the ones who say, like, there's no such thing, I think is goofy and kind of laughable, right? But there's a reasonable position to say it's there. I agree that this is a thing that happens to deer. It may have been here a long time. We weren't aware of it.

We know when we identified it, but there could be this long window of existence where we've just been having it. It's this thing that occurs naturally. Not too long, no. You don't know? No, but the history of that disease, though, is they would think, based on what was first discovered in Wisconsin, they thought it probably showed up somewhere between 10, 20 years before, based on the epidemiology of that disease. So it could go back to the 60s. Yeah, when folks say this disease has been around forever, that's not true. And, you know, you don't want to just call them BSers, but, you know, it's just not true.

It's just a fairly recent disease, and I just think we have to deal with it now. But, yeah, when I go deer hunting though, you know where I hunt. You've been on the farm where I hunt. You mean your cousin or aunt? It's my cousin's farm now. It's my late uncle and aunt's. So that's where I am.

Yeah, and he killed a turkey off that place. And she always wants you guys to come back because she likes you guys. Closed all the gates. But it's still,'s still for me as much fun as it's ever been it's something you know our family gets together sorry one time a year we hunt the weekend basically and that's it that's still fun but i'm more careful about now as far as boning things out and as always the person to bone it out anyway but now the new law is going in i

think well that's one of those laws that makes sense. It's a little more inconvenient, but it makes sense. And I think, you know, it's good public policy, I think. Yeah. When I'm talking about that, like, spectrum thing, I'm just trying to identify the point of the spectrum where my annoyance goes away. And the thing that I find is, like, people like, the thing I found about human beings is we tend to like easy ideas that make us feel good. So when I am talking to someone who's like, I don't see the big deal, I'm just going to continue eating it. I'm like, hell yeah, man. Right. For a couple of minutes. And then some other guys like, bro, do you want to be the one? And I'm like,

Oh no. And I get that sinking feeling. The annoyance part is, I mean, that that's that's what i struggle with too because when and you know this i think you've i've heard you describe it this way but when you pull that neck roast out and you do it correctly you can basically take that spinal column and remove it and it is so clean and it instantly like dries you could put it in the smithsonian it is so clean and it instantly like dries. You could put it in the Smithsonian. It is so clean and that is so deeply satisfying to look at that whitening bone that has zero meat on it. Because I feel like I've just done my job as an appreciator of that animal. And that's what I potentially have to throw away because that neck is so hard to

debone properly like you will never get it that clean in the field no no dude i don't care how nice your uh boning knife you will not it's wasteful to bone out a neck you need to cook that son of a bitch down and yeah time's changing man but again i don't know if i'm gonna give up yet uh on the subject of food safety um health advisories in fish so here we know like cwd okay it's theoretical not theoretical but like the idea that it would that a person can catch it hasn't has never happened. People have eaten thousands of pounds. Health advisories and fish, we damn sure know that heavy metals are no good for you.

I eat that stuff. I eat fish out of health advisory lakes all the time. We eat big halibut. I never think about it. I try to hide the existence of health advisories to my wife because it's a conversation I don't feel like having. Where I live right now, they suggest that, where I live right now in Fish Yellow Perch,

they suggest that you do not eat more than two meals, what is it, than two meals of yellow perch out of this lake every month, but only yellow perch that are 12 inches. Because at that point, I think it's that at that point, when a yellow perch is 12 inches, he becomes piscivorous. He becomes a fish eater. And so then he becomes a bioaccumulator. But I don't pay any attention to it. Because I just know that when I die, that's not going to be what I die from. I'm not going to die.

And then they do an autopsy and some dude's like, was he eating perch? It's just like, there's just no way, man. And then this dude I grew up around, one of my young fishing mentors was this guy named Ron Spring,

and they were trying to study the effects of heavy metals on mercury and other things on people who'd consume fish. And everyone anywhere, everyone within 100 miles of Ron Spring knew that if you want to talk to a guy that eats a lot of fish, talk to Ron Spring. This guy's job, he was a commercial bait fisherman. So he fished leeches, wigglers, dog worms, sane minnows, and supplied live bait to all the bait shops. But he also was a fish-eating machine. So he starts going to Michigan State University for these batteries, or no, U of M. They start having him out to do these batteries of tests where they say to him like okay check it out you need to go to a grocery store and you got to buy a name like 13 things he's supposed to buy then you'd have to

go sit in a room by himself and a while later they're like what are you supposed to buy again and he came home from it once and said steve i don't care if i ever ate a fish in my life i wouldn't be able to remember that list so but yeah it's like i can't get on i recognize sure but i just like catching neat and fish more than i fear death there was a case in wisconsin where a guy got really sick from um i think it was either mercury or i think it was mercury from he he took and pickled northern pike non-stop and ate it for a moment i think he ate it daily and he did get sick was his name brody henderson i don't think so but um you know my my situation i do actually read they think he got sick oh he definitely definitely got sick for

him but but then he was eating it in such quantities that he probably gotten sick of something that's just he really lived in that stuff so and it and it does accumulate and it made him sick that's a lot of pike it's a lot of pike but he's eating it daily how sick well sick we had to go to the hospital did he get better or die no i think he survived it but i I don't have the whole history. It's probably 10 years ago now. But the thing I always come into... What else did he do? When he was catching all these pike, did he have all the sinkers in his mouth? I did that for him 30 years.

Do you know what I mean? Okay, but go on. I should say, though, that that is a freak occurrence. So when you eat that much fish, you actually make yourself sick from the buildup of the heavy metals. That's such an unusual freak thing. I guess I just I read that. But I thought it was another freak story. That's where I write it off. I think for the average person to catch the kind of size pike and walleyes and perch, whatever it might be, to catch enough of those real heavy accumulated fish and then eat them on a regular basis enough to where you actually get sick,

it's still taking an awful lot of fish. So I guess I read them, I pay attention to them, but then I start doing the math and I think, I'll never catch enough of that fish to ever make a difference. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, again, though, that's for me. And when my wife was of childbearing age, we pay attention to that because I thought, well, again, though,

because I'm not the breed of a fisherman, look at how many walleyes I caught, 23, 24 inches long, the ones you're supposed to avoid. And I think, well, that happens once a year, you know, where I catch a fish that big. And one that big, if you can keep track of it pretty easily and not feed it to her. And so I think those kind of things, I think it's good public information.

I think we'd be bitching at our government if we weren't doing that. And so the fact... Oh, yeah, you can imagine, dude, if no one ever brought it up and then some journalist unearthed these troves of research pieces about heavy metal contamination. Right. It'd be like Flint, Michigan on a fisherman level. No, it's a great analogy. And the PCBs in fish on Lake Michigan.

So I think it's the government's responsibility, watching over the public resource and a publicly consumed fish has to do that. I think it's a good responsibility that I think they should keep doing. I'm always glad when it comes up. I look it over and I go, ah, it won't affect me. Don't eat enough of them. I will say this. I grew up eating salmon about three days a week. Because you're from Pacific Northwest. I'm still here to tell about it.

I may not be the brightest, but I am sitting here right now. It's funny the way people... Oh, yeah, go ahead. You're still on the subject? Go ahead. I was going to move slightly off by something that just occurred to me. For my 10th anniversary, my wife bought me one of these rubber rings instead of a metal ring. So you want to talk about how we deal with risk, right?

I've heard a couple isolated scenarios of dudes getting their ring hung up on something and sleeving their finger. And so for that, it was enough for me to not wear my wedding ring and switch to this. Okay. But I'll eat every contaminated fish that comes across my deep fryer. We're all just like, we're just like irrational watch this so you were worried that when they're doing your autopsy they're like son of a bitch got sleeved and bled out yes yeah like in some weird way enough to where i said to my wife and i didn't ask for one she didn't know what they were but it's i've brought it up enough to the point where like at whatever

point a spouse registers the idea for a gift i've brought it up that number of times like man you know i sure hope i don't get sleeved by my ring. I think you need to describe sleeved. Well, if you ever want to see some terrible pictures of what happens to people who get sleeved, which is, you know, the ring catches like, let's say you have screw-in tree steps, and you reach up and grab onto them, and as you start stepping, you lose your footing, and it happens, and guys catch that stepping you lose your your footing and it happens and guys catch that wedding ring on the tip of that tree step you want to see some gory just how many people are going like this right now like i just start going i start making a fist

i wish i wish i remember the issue of deer and deer hunting magazine when i was at deer and deer hunting magazine back in the 90s but we ran a picture of a tree stand accident by Brad Herndon. He's a good writer, and he's retired now down in Indiana. And he'd done one of those where he sleeped his ring finger. And we ran the picture in the magazine, and I'll never get that image on my mind. Yeah. What initially alarmed me is I arced it on a boat battery and welded my finger to a boat battery that's when i was like had a however i was holding the plier

and whatnot and messing with the boat battery and like leaning down you know and that thing like welded on there and i had to pop it off and that's when i started my fear that I waited four years to remedy with this here silicone ring. Well, I am convinced this thing is dangerous. Get this thing away from me. I've got a second follow-up to that. Because you're thinking about things that might get you in the end. Do you think about things that might get you in the end? Or what the likely cause will be?

What you'd like to be gotten by? I just go by, like, I type in, like, what kills American males? It's like heart disease. So I just assume, like, I picture dying from that. So you take comfort. You're just like, nope, heart disease. Yeah. So when I think of death, I picture me being very old, surrounded by loving children.

Extremely old. Very loving children. That's just how I imagine it going down. There's a lot of scenarios. Every time I make a decision, I kind of end up with, yeah, I'd be okay with that. And I haven't. But there's those, like, you're in gridlock traffic. I'm like, not today.

Yeah. This isn't one of those times but the the final thought on the health advisory thing which i keep kicking around uh is how many uh how many shots of alcohol are you supposed to do in one night like not many there's one that no one pays attention to and i remember like there's like legit health advisories about drinking booze right like no one thinks booze is good but people just drink booze you know and like i said we used to like to light bottle rockets and have them in between your teeth like let it go at the right moment what's the health advisory on that so

but it's on my mind man you know um speaking of fish someone wants to know we get a lot of questions like this how do you guys freeze freshwater fish did you grow up freezing them in buckets of water i've seen it done, yeah. I mean, we didn't, but most of our fish was, you know, either, well, I guess, freshwater, like river, you know, salmon, steelhead, or saltwater. But pretty much when vacuum sealers came out, I mean, that's when we really started putting up a lot of fish and being able to keep it for a long time.

Yeah. But growing up, man? Growing up, I remember fishing up north and putting them in milk curtains. And then, you know, getting them in there kind of where they're just kind of floating in that real packed tight together. And freezing that and taking it home. And later, I remember my mom would always, I never quite understood this, when she'd soak them in milk and then freeze them. Didn't ever question that, but it still tasted okay. I just did that with picked Dungeness crab, froze it in milk, let it sit in my freezer a year,

thawed it out, I thought it was good. Not as good as fresh, but good. Interesting. But we always froze freshwater fish in, like, we'd take gallon, my old man like take gallon milk jugs or butter tubs or peanut butter buckets anything like that man you put the fish in there pour water on it and freeze it but your whole freezer gets so yeah this is full of water yeah you couldn't bring it anywhere these days we just vacuum seal everything that's what i that's when i switched it then i had like a love hate with

vacuum sealers because i think i was using like really bad bags because you'd vacuum seal your bags and you'd open your freezer up and they wouldn't be sealed anymore and then i slowly realized that it was like you can't jostle them people that rub them you're like you know you're banging around your freezer trying to find something you're jostling the bags and banging them on the wires in your freezer banging them together and you make small abrasions. So that's why when you vac seal something and you open it later, it's no good anymore. But now I vac seal all fish.

I vac seal all anything birds. I vac seal turtles, frog. The only thing I like wrap is red meat double wrap why why you make a difference there because it's just like it just feels like it's so bulletproof man and it's just fast for me to do i just wrap it in plastic wrap then wrap it in freezer paper i like the way it looks in my freezer just like it looks like fort knox in there you know i don't know well the way we decided is that um i do all the knife work if my wife volunteers to help and gets the vacuum sealer

out i don't complain i just let her do what she wants and and if it's me i'd probably i find the paper less troublesome but she likes the vacuum seal, and I can't tell the difference in the meat. That's another thing is wrapping meat the double wrap way, you can eat it two years later, three years later. If you get that plastic wrap tight, tight, tight, like all air out, tight, like a condom, and then you wrap that wax freezer paper, it never goes bad, man. I just pulled a chunk of elk out.

We've talked about this before, but I do as little cutting as possible. Big chunks. No trimming. Wrap it in paper. No plastic. No plastic. No plastic. I'm anti-plastic as much as possible just you don't

need to you don't feel the need to just pump more plastic out into the planet correct yeah you know freezer paper i think technically is i know it's got that little shiny side there's only so much you can do yannis he's being inconvenienced already yeah uh well but i'll figure it out one of these days it's an ongoing process it's supposed to be used the way you're using it i think like when you when you look at the directions on the on that freezer paper roll like right there's a little diagram and they like they have that weird roll that nobody i don't see every anybody ever do you know what i'm talking about on the roll butcher's roll no i do a corner to corner genuine butcher's roll i don't think that's how the butcher does yeah because there's like this weird like compressed

air out of it where you roll up one end like you make a bag and roll it super tight yeah i don't know i don't know what that is yeah i don't use use it. But, like, I put this elk away stinky. I was experimenting, which I often do, and it... Aged. And it had, like, started to produce moisture again, along with it a bit of a smell. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I just kind of squinted my eyes and rolled her up and got it in the freezer. And I took that out last week, and it was fantastic.

Like it had got, it still had that ripe odor? Nope, odor was gone. Okay. Trimmed off the outside. They call it high. Like some cultures, they like high. Like if you read old French cookbooks, they'll say hang it until it's high meaning smells off yeah and i've read that i don't know that term specifically but i've read that that kind of shiny slimy is like ultra enzyme action on the

outside yeah and there's things in old French cookbooks to hang fowl. I can't remember if it's by the... Do you remember this? The neck or the foot? Until it falls. I was telling you it's from the neck until the body weight pulls it off. Until it decays enough that the body weight pulls it down to the ground. And I've mentioned this a hundred times. My dad would talk about hanging deer until it had

a quarter inch of mold on it. But we just ate... We ate some meat. We discussed this we just ate some meat. We discussed this. We ate some meat that had been hanging for 18 months. 18 months aged in a fridge. At what, 38 degrees? Yeah, something like that.

It was controlled. Tasted like cheese. Meat did. No joke, didn't it? Yeah. Well, Steve, before we move on, can we transition back to your urban diseases? Because I thought with your background, you'd tell us about your days of hunting pigeons up in the bridges. I mean, that's about as urban as you can get.

Yeah. I was going to say the college days. Yeah. Yeah. Eating street pigeons out of, like, not, you know, everybody eats street, not everybody. A lot of people eat street pigeons from out in the farm country, but eating street pigeons from cities, no problem. I've eaten street pigeons off the streets of New York, and I'm sitting here right now.

There's your proof. But I've had a lot of ailments, man. I've had a lot of weird ailments in my day, not like not related to that weird ailment but then you know the thing too man i like return around because i thought of this today when we were touring the the federal plant you're talking about that they have that lead okay they get you take lead from they take lead from car batteries and they brought these like ingots of recycled lead. But they add these small percentages of antimony, which is a lead hardener. When I was a little kid, we'd go down to the Twin Lake Gun Club, which was a mile and a half from our house.

We'd go down there, check to make sure no one was actively shooting, go far down to the other end without putting any kind of flag or notification out, and take a screen that our old man made us. He made us like an archaeologist screen, like a box with a screen in the bottom, and we would sift the berm to get all the bullets out of it. Take those home and take a torch, and we had like, you know, those pots you melt lead in, and we would take a torch and we had like you know those pots you melt lead in and we would take a torch and melt all that lead and get all the impurities off and the lead would rise up and we had a sinker mold to pour our own split shot and i never and it wasn't until the day that i understood like when you would tooth tighten that split shot you'd always hear your tooth crunch in a way that you wouldn't hear with store-bought split shot.

And I realize now it's like, the minute they said today, I'm like, so that's what that was. Because it always had like a disconcerting, like a disconcerting crunch noise, man. And there was antimony in there. I can't segue out of that all crunching at the same time it's morning a slight touch of tooth i had to laugh at the

federal plant today because we were walking through the the shot area and um about the time you probably had your same realization but they had this huge you know uh barrel full of probably number seven shot really fine shot and it's just it's brand new and it's just kind of glistening there and i think every single one of us kind of stared at it for a second and then just like a bunch of little kids you're just like hands in this big thing of lead yeah you can't not do it yeah you just gotta get in there but my brother he would like collect uh mercury out of uh old he'd collect mercury out of uh thermometers until he had like a big ball of it that he kept in the 35 millimeter film canister and we'd get that mercury out and just roll it around it's quite which i think was stupid even then

you know 35 years ago still stupid or already stupid um legal and ethical conundrums of bartering or trading fish and game. It's illegal, right? It's illegal to formally, it's illegal to barter fish and game. Like just way in the 1930s and earlier, we started to set up laws in this country to decommodify game, to destroy the economic incentive for market hunters to go out and kill North American game and sell it. And that was like the first most important step we had to take to recover American wildlife.

And they came into and said, you can't barter it. But who, it's kind of funny. And I got a buddy who one time was down on a dock. And a guy, he was coming back from lingcod fishing. Another guy was coming back from fishing spot shrimp. And they didn't know each other. And they struck up a conversation and struck up a deal by which they would do a swap in an undercover game warden right there. Really? They were doing a formal

barter. What was he bartering for? Lingcod for shrimp. Sport caught lingcod for sport caught shrimp. They didn't know each other and it was a formal they were making a formal arrangement. They were like applying

sort of mentally applying value in trading. But like my brother who lives in Alaska, when he comes down, he brings me king salmon and I trade him contaminated perch fillets. Right. But we don't it's not. But he'll even say like, hey, man, or whatever else, say, bring a cooler down when you come, because he's from the Midwest and he misses perch. Do you know that those guys challenge it? Do they go to court and challenge it? Any idea?

No. Because I would think. It's illegal. It's illegal, but it's one of those things where you talk to any sensible person and go, I don't think that's the intent of that law. And I bet you a judge would agree with you that typically when people get busted for that kind of stuff, they're doing something, they're getting real value for it. You know, there's usually money at some point in the exchange.

An easy one to do would be, let's say, I give my auto mechanic some elk every year as a thank you gift. Some people might take flowers, I take them a roast. Okay, well, if he wrote you an invoice and said, new muffler. Right, exactly, exactly. If I were to say, hey, if I give you half an elk, will you fix my transmission next week? That'd be illegal. That's cut and dried but you know fish shrimp for fish i always think any any reasonable person to say that's that's not right what if you were

to say hey i have this real nice ling cod fillet here how about you give me 10 pounds of spot shrimp and then the shrimp fisherman says, yeah, I think it's only worth five pounds. Yeah, dude. And he goes, well, all right, how about we settle somewhere in seven and a half pounds? I still think that'd be tough. No, if he's like, dude, these spot shrimp tails are 30 bucks a pound give me the whole damn ling right that you agree that there's a point at which oh yeah but but i agree too in the spirit of the law thing the spirit laws the spirit of the law i agree that my brother's saying hey i'm gonna bring

down a king salmon filet and i'm like that's great regardless i was gonna give you some yellow perch right no one's ever gonna i mean yeah like i i 100 see why that's in place and think it should be in place but then also like on like a very basic human level that's kind of like what you do as a human being like from the beginning of time right yeah it's hard to like to but yeah like you said there's tears of it it's like all of a sudden you're here and it's like okay this seems like super mellow normal like and then all of a sudden it you know escalates pretty quickly i say amongst friends i've never been like whoa whoa whoa nah give me some of that back you can only have this much right oh that's the

thing is i've never taken it to the like you never say to a guy where your body's gonna um bring you a say where your body's gonna bring you some some whitetail meat and you're gonna swap them out from walleye i've never seen someone take it to be like well how much right how much you bring it down so i'm trying to figure out when I go into my freezer how many of my milk jugs full of catfish fillets. Yeah, so I guess I've never seen it get abusive, you know, in all the years that I've kind of engaged in it. You honest? I think, I mean, oh, you've seen it get abusive.

Well, no, I used to make, you've seen it get abusive. Well, no, I used to make sure I had. Interpreting the Latvian smirk. You're like an illegal barterer? I used to be. Really? Yeah. Go on, go on. This is when I was living in Colorado in a ski town, you know,

and I was, whatever, making 15 bucks an hour and um I'd always have a lot of elk meat so some of the main things that I constantly for I don't know half dozen years I would barter for would be uh ski tunes ski passes because I had a season you were buying ski passes with elk meat well so anybody that works for the mountain hat gets like well it used to be this it's not that way anymore but back in the day used to get say i don't know 10 or 20 free ski passes which if you're skiing at baylor beaver creek those were like 80 or 100 value apiece so if i had friends coming into town i didn't have any of those if i wasn't working for the mountain. And how are you going to get them to ski? You know, like get them up on the mountain.

So, yeah. So I was very much calculating exactly how much that eye round was worth because, you know, you write it out a little receipts. No, no. And then I got a few oil changes, too. So, I don't remember you telling me this. Are you now, like, repentant? And I would do the same thing again? No, I wouldn't do it again. I mean, now I know better. In fact, then I didn't know. I hadn't read the regs that closely.

I don't think any less of you hearing this. I'm guessing that it probably didn't even occur. I felt like a good hunter, man. I had plenty of meat for myself and plenty to barter with. Did you know at the time, did you know that you were potentially crossing a line? No, no. No idea. And I think, too, if you were coming back from the, if you're going out the back door of a butcher shop

and meeting somebody in the back lot saying, here, now give me your ski passes, that gets to be, I think, a little more questionable. Just because you're on site where you know that's their business, cutting up meat, is there something about the term for that? The context of it. The context of it, yeah. Where I think when you go back to your apartment and it's now buddy to buddy,

I don't know, it's hard to get too judgmental for me on that. Especially college kids, you know. I can see that you get a citation right and then you're like digging in your freeze you're like how much is that ticket again just happen to have a couple tenderloins left um i guess to your point i we were having uh dinner over at my house the other night, and, you know, you have Buffalo Skull up there and stuff, which came off of private land, and I was explaining how, yeah, you know, the rule is, and we're talking away, and I was like, yeah, I have this regret where I was guiding in New Mexico,

and I had found this rock that was the size of a big medicine ball, and it was probably a 70-pound rock, but it had three fossilized centipedes in it. Really? It was just incredibly cool and uh i was like well i'm gonna come back and grab that and i had told these folks that i was cooking uh cooking with that i regretted not grabbing that he said well yeah but you just told us that was illegal he said well yeah but then i didn't know. So it would have been fine. Now I can't go back down there and pick it up.

Yeah, like I wish I was the me that didn't know. Right. But see, that rock would be sitting next to your woodpile, and you'd look at it every day and go, man, I've got to get that rock back to where it rightfully belongs. That's true. Yeah, you'd get caught by a dude, and you'd have to explain that you're actually returning.

I know it sounds weird, but... Hey, Sonny. You'd be like, well, I'm actually bringing this rock back to your property under the cover of darkness. Should a single species hunter be taken seriously? It's a good question.

It's not an apparent question. I never thought of it myself. Is there really such a thing? Yeah, there's definitely that kind of thing. You were with a guy last night. Who in this room is a single-species hunter? Single-species. See, nobody.

It's not a real thing say okay you're a single species hunter or a single species fisherman say yup but we fished with a guy last night who is very definitely a single species fisherman okay someone wrote in to be like i just can't take him seriously like something must be wrong with him i just think it's kind of cute it's like the dude loves muskies he's never eaten one he just likes to catch them and he'll trap he'll catch them anywhere they can be found it's like i don't i like him better than someone that doesn't fish at all no certainly yeah so it's like and that's dude that's the guy that you talk like you know i would consider like when it comes to like hunting or fishing like like you say a big game generalist right like do a lot of different things but

by that i should probably wear that t-shirt that says, like, world's okayest hunter. Because, like, I'm okay at a lot of things. But, I mean, those dudes that specialize like that, man, they are great at it. You know? I mean, those are the guys that you look to for, like, when you're really trying to sort something out. You know? Those are the guys you want to talk to. Yeah, you're trying to figure out whitetails.

You don't call a guy that, like, now and then hunts a whitetail. Right. Yeah. So, no, I get it. I get what he's saying by thinking that it's goofy, but I disagree with him. I fished with a dude who's a really good guy in South Dakota, and we were fishing for walleyes,

and I am not a walleye fisherman at all. And, you know, there's some subtlety to it that I wasn't really picking up on. The fact that they sort of think about biting rather than biting. Yeah, and then you, like, gingerly pull them up. Yeah. And he just ridiculed me every time I would either bring in a fish that wasn't within the slot limit or I would mention the fact that I liked to fish for anything else. And he would go as far as to say, that is not a fish. Pike? Oh, that's not a fish.

And I find it very hard to believe that there's, in this area of the country, that there is nobody that answered, yep, from the fishing perspective, because he made it seem that he was not alone in his specificity for walleye yeah i'd be i wish we could do it somehow where you could say how close to that single species are you are you like at 90 deer hunter and 10 duck hunter that kind of thing i know a lot of people in that category myself included where, where I probably hunt deer. If I were to break all my hunting down and put a percentage basis on it, I think it's probably about 90% deer and 10% elk.

And earlier in life, it's probably 75% deer and 25% goose. And that's not counting spring turkey. I'm just thinking about when you have to make decisions in the fall. And I saw a survey one time, it was actually a real scientific survey, where they asked deer hunters, is there anything else out there that could replace deer hunting if you could no longer do it? And it was like about overall about 49% of those deer hunters,

about half the deer hunters said, there's nothing else in my life that could replace deer hunting like for that extent okay then they asked goose hunters if you could if there's something else out there that could replace goose hunting if you were to be cut off from it forever and then none of it dropped down to like i think 10 or something they also really just So they're just not as dedicated. Just not as dedicated. There's something about, I always go back to my expression, deer make people stupid. Yes. There's just something that it makes up so much a part of you that you just cut off all reason and just go with it. I might start a T-shirt that says deer make people stupid.

Pat made me aware of another good quote the other day. It was about leadership where he said every ship needs a captain and there's no such thing as a co-captain. That's right. Which is good. Yeah. You guys cool on that subject? Yep. Okay. object yep okay there's a guy that wants to he's having a kid and he wants to know what to name it

to make extra sure that it's a hunter and i'll tell you what it's not hunter i think a lot of people are just thinking it's as easy as calling them hunter and that's going to get it taken care of but i've been a boatload of hunters that don't hunt. The name hunter. And I see people go the mountain man route. Dude likes to hunt a lot, and he's got a kid, Jedediah. Or he's got a kid, Boone. I don't know if that works or not.

I named my kid, my newest kid, I named him after my brother, Matt, who likes to hunt more than anybody on the planet um no one knows that but that's my game you hear matt you think of the dude from the new testament right so i don't i don't have a good answer for him all i can say is that when we were having kids, we picked out a boy's name and a girl's name. And for one kid, I picked out the name Bridger, if it was going to be a son.

Because you wanted the kid to be a boy? Yeah, I always had this idea that you bring up your kids and the culture and teach them about the mountain men, the famous hunters, real people, not fictional characters, real people. And just so you know, though, I had three daughters sitting around there. Use the boys' names. But did you name any of them after the goddess of the hunt? Nope. Nope.

That would have been smart. But we did name... Diana, the goddess of the hunt. We did name my third kid Carson. If it had been a boy, it would have been spelled C-A-R-S-O-N. But she was a girl, so we named her spelled K-A-R-S-Y-N. Presumably Kit Carson. Kit Carson, yeah. And just because I like history, I like all that kind of stuff.

But you don't know, though. Names are important i really i'm big on names and and i i evaluate people by what they name their kids but um yeah man bad i do a lot of judgements how did i do i don't know your kids names well if you touch basically can we it takes a little while for you to figure it out you can't do like on the spot all these people okay go ahead no you don't want to put him on the spot. No, put him on the spot. What if he has to judge people out here in the audience?

Oh, because they might have the same name as my daughters? They'll jump me afterward. Yeah, they'll beat Pat's ass over some name issue. All right, sorry, bad idea. No, go ahead. I don't care. I'm not doing it. ass or some name issue all right sorry bad idea no go ahead i don't care i'm just i'm doesn't matter i'm not doing it pat's blood will be on my hands no let's skip it i i will tell you

you may want to avoid naming your kid cal i've had a couple of friends go down that route, and it turns out there's a little too much outlaw in that name. Is that right? Spins them off in a wild direction? Found themselves on the wrong side of the law a few too many times, maybe. Already? Yeah. Question for you, though, Pat. You've got three daughters.

One likes to hunt more than the other ones, right? Oh, definitely. Was it Carson? No, it was Leah. Leah? My very first daughter. This is one thing if you ever want to get insights into how kids think and who will be the hunter.

I took all three of my daughters. I started them hunting at about age three, taking them along. I used to have a, well, we still have their wagon, their little red wagon. I always call it the ATV. I'd put them in the red wagon and pull them out goose hunting. And Leah, not kidding you, by age three, she understood the goose music. She'd get her geese coming, and her little head would just turn and start tracking. And I'd watch because she had really good hearing.

And I'd watch her. And then when the geese started to come in, you know, how they come in, just setting their wings and tilting back and forth, she just watched like a retriever, watched those geese until I shot. And then I'd be happy. And if I missed, you know, she'd just kind of stare at me. But then what was really instructive, you guys, is as the other girls came along then behind her, I'd take all three of them out goose hunting.

And, oh, God, there's a flock coming in. And all that honking, all that noise, and you know they're going to set and set in your decoys. You finally come up and you raise the gun, and I look over, and Leah's watching the geese. The other two are like this. They got their heads down, ears covered up, and all I could think was before I shot, they aren't going to be hunters. And they weren't.

Do you love that one a lot more than the others? No, uh-uh. No, that's the. No. No. No. That's the fun thing about parenting. You really learn each one of those charms. I love it. And it's fun now as a grandparent to see what's sad, too, because as girls start having kids,

you can't spend the kind of time hunting and fishing with them as you did. Because as time went on, Leah always hunted and fished. Ellie would not want to get out of bed to go fishing, but once she's on the lake after breakfast, she fished all day just fine. Our youngest one would sit in the back of the boat, read, cut up the worms. She'd do anything besides fish. And then now as an adult, though, she just finished her master's degree. And I found it very interesting that her master's degree in English was all based around the outdoors and getting back into the outdoors as an adult. And so now I think as she's now having kids and is going to go fishing with me, I find that really cool.

She's the one named Carson. So it's a slow burn of a name. It's a slow burn, yeah. Thank you. The name Carson takes gradual effect. Yeah. A thing I've been thinking about with kids lately, kind of like with the way

exposing them to the outdoors is helpful, is I've been having this debate now with my wife about teaching them to use a hatchet to cut kindling. If you come out in the yard and there's a five-year-old with a hatchet, one might question what's going on here. But a way that I wound up selling it on my wife,

and I've used this a couple times now, is I'm trying to introduce them to sort of an arena of consequence. And I find that these sorts of activities are a way to bring people in in a fun way, but where decisions matter, right? Where there's right ways and wrong ways to do things, and there's difficult questions to wrestle with. Like, why do we eat deer but not unicorns, right?

And it winds up being that it's just this thing of you're introduced in this world where, yes, this is a world in which one can be gravely injured if one doesn't learn how to master certain skills where you will come up empty-handed if things aren't done this way where there's this morality at play and life and death is struggling out it just winds up being really helpful i think that it could be that you could raise you can start out like trying to raise outdoor kids with an outdoor sensibility and have them go off and not be interested in all. And you'd be tempted to look and be like, oh, I wasted my time. But perhaps not because when you color with your kid and your kid doesn't wind up being a professional colorer, right? You're not bummed that you like, you're not bummed that you colored with them all the time. Ah, wasting all that time coloring sunshines.

You know? It's like, no one ever looks at that that way. But yeah, I feel like I'm setting them up to be cool people to hang out with. When maybe it's just there's value in those seconds. If nothing else, they will grow up into adults and my kids all still like getting elk for me deer for me fish for me they want they want that to be brought into their house and they they share it with us i mean we share it with them and to me that that's what's important get them into that culture but at least it. And when they can interact with their coworkers and they get talking about these things, there's someone in the

office who can talk real intelligently about the hunting lifestyle. And I grew up in a house where that's where we ate for the most part. And so I think that has great value. And because my kids didn't grow up out of the house and then go, oh, don't want that dumb son of a bitch. He's out of here, They grew up, and they embraced the way they grew up. So I think that's just great. Anything you can do with your kids, it gets them outdoors, eating the fish, learning how to prepare it. Eating contaminated fish.

Well, you know, like we were talking earlier today about the things that kids see that could make the hair snap in the back of your neck, and they handle it just fine. I think so often we baby kids, we tell each other that, oh, you can't expose them to that. And people worry about seeing a dead deer in the back of a car. And I think, well, somebody just went by with a full load of hogs. Where do you think they're going? You ever talk to your kids about those kind of things and make them understand that, yeah,

that deer is dead, but tomorrow all those hogs, they won't be here anymore either. And make them, you know, I think those are opportunities for people to talk to kids and explain things to them. That's my thought. Mark, do you feel like you guys are throwing some outdoors women or no? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I didn't put any thought into their names, but I do put some thought. I mean, put thought into their names, but not in that regard.

I figured, you know, hopefully we'll introduce them to the outdoors. A and B. Yeah, expose them to those things. Actually, one of my daughters, Mara, which is kind of a unique name, has the same name as your sister, which is kind of cool. But yeah, I mean, you talk about an arena of consequence. Our oldest is pretty much a daredevil, so she pretty much puts herself in arena of consequence constantly just happens to do it anyway yeah but and that's one thing that i had to learn was like i just kind of let her do it now it's like you want to climb to the top all right sort it out you know if you fall down you fall down you know and like what pat said i mean i think we don't give kids credit

for what they're capable of doing or oftentimes understanding or comprehending or, you know, and I've thought about this myself as far as like exposing them to hunting or death and are they ready for it. And we were even chatting a little bit about that earlier. And the fact of the matter is, those are normal things. I mean, that happens all day, every day. And I think the sooner you realize that and accept it, you know, the better off you're going to be. So, but yeah, but anyway, to answer, I'll go further than that to answer your question. So we have been doing some, some nature walks. So the girls like to find, find the deer walks.

They like to look for rubs. We've been picking some mulberries, been catching a lot of bluegills lately. The kids absolutely lose their mind when they have a fish on there. Like it's just, it's, it's one of the most amazing things to watch. I catch a lot of bluegills lately. The kids absolutely lose their mind when they have a fish on there. It's one of the most amazing things to watch. It's like watching electricity shoot through their body, and I love it. No, it's fun. Speaking of electricity, you guys can answer this. My kids, when they were small, what most fascinated them when we'd go scouting was deer turdsds bear bear poop anything that came out of an animal

they had to go over and check it out and ask questions about we're walking through the woods uh i was out and we were looking for squirrels with their uncle matt and i turned around and my daughter was four she was three or four and she had a mouthful of deer droppings because we had apparently picked some up and talked about it and she got the wrong like picked out the wrong detail about what we were saying about it and she's like and i realized that she chewed up a deer dropping but yeah one of my favorite, but you know what? It's like this whole reflection of yourself thing, right? And so I think you could get, the risk would be that you'd get overly invested in the idea that you're going to make them,

that they're going to be a version, like this version of yourself that you wish was the one that was true somehow like i have a picture of my little boy when he was so my eight-year-old when he was five it's like a picture of him nothing on but his underwear cocked back with a slingshot and there's a black bear standing right in front of him up at our fish shack and like i like that picture probably because you're doing some game where you're like you know you're sort of saying like it's this represent it's this literal representation of you where it's like half of your you know genetic input but you wind up like trying to isolate these moments and find these moments where this thing that you wish was true about you and i think it could set kids up for failure in a way in your

mind if you have these huge expectations like people will ask me like what are you gonna do if your kids don't like the hunt like you do probably like them 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.

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Probably won't hang out that much. Yeah. On the subject of families, dude from Michigan, he's an engineer by training, and he's going out to Idaho. All people should go hunt Idaho. Right, Cal? He's going out. He's going out to idaho all people should go hunt idaho right cal he's going out he's going out to idaho and he's wanting to know what can i tell my wife and he's going out by

himself so he's doing a solo wilderness hunt what can i tell my wife that will make her stop worrying you can rest assured he's got the smallest details worked out. Yeah. The little engineering bits worked out. I think the thing he could tell her is he could say, I've arrived. Because it's more dangerous to drive to your hunting location than it is to hunt. I've done solo hunts like that, and I think it just makes sense anyway. I carry one of those personal locator beacons that, you know,

you basically flip one switch on, and it sends a beam up to the satellite, and next thing you know, but they always tell you that when you hit that switch, you better be in trouble because they are sending help. You can also do pre-programmed texts that every day say everything's okay. You just said it, so it just does that no matter what. Yeah.

Three years later, she's still getting, yeah, some bitch is still okay. But in these days too, it's often the case, even where I hunt out west, where you get up on a mountaintop once a day or whatever it might be. I'm not one of those phone-in-everyday people unless I have to be, though. My wife and I just don't need that constant reassurance. But I think it is good to have cell phone communication if you can arrange it to where she knows you're there every day. But I'm like you. I always think the odds of

getting hurt on that one week or two weeks out there out west compared to the daily risk of routine risk you run by driving to work, all those kind of things, falling down the back stairs, all the crazy things that happen to people in life, what are the odds that the bad things that happen to you during that one time out there? Now, I could see I'd be a lot more worried if this was a guy who was going out off the coast of Alaska in a boat every day for two weeks by himself. But on land, I feel like you should do some safeguards, though, for she'll never stop worrying completely, and she'll never stop worrying until you're back home. But I found, like last year, I had a guy bail on me. I was hunting out in Arizona. Right before I

was leaving for my hunt, my buddy bailed on me, so I was going to be going out there by myself. But luckily, Randy Newberg happened to be hunting the same area, so I emailed Randy and said, hey, I'm going to be hunting this Unit 9. I knew you were going to be there too. Could you just be my emergency backup in case Penny has to reach me and she can't reach me? I'll tell you where I'm parked, give them a GPS. It worked out fine. There's always things you can do to at least maintain a link somehow. The link, though, is important, just that satisfaction or knowledge that they know where you are, that you're okay.

I think that where I'm going to be, where I'm parking my vehicle, and I think another thing that's helpful is if i'm not back by this day something's definitely not right it's helpful for people and then the the beacons i bought one of those beacons for an alaska hunt but now like i pack when i go tree stand hunting by myself like i told i keep that in my pack every time too because i'm like you know you follow the stand you might not have cell reception like oh yeah follow, you got an arrow through your gut. Hopefully not. You're sleeved.

That's not a problem anymore. I'm clear. I want to hit one more. Two more. Say the same dude is always wondering, when should you bring a spotting scope when you factor in the weight issue? First off, you need seven spotting scopes. Maybe eight. I think it just depends. It depends on the hunt. And 15s, right,

Mark? Well, actually, I mean, yeah. 15s and 10s. 15s or 12s. It depends on the hunt, though. Like, open landscape hunt, or if you are going to be doing a lot of vehicle scouting, I mean, then you're not really packing anyway. But, you know, if you're going to be doing a lot of vehicle scouting, I mean, then you're not really packing anyway. But if you're talking about packing it, I think it depends on the hunt. It depends on what a person's looking to find. If you're just looking to find a deer or locate something, then maybe your binoculars will get you through. But if you're trying to be a little bit more discerning or you're on a sheep hunt where maybe you are really, really trying to pick apart, is this a full curl ram?

You know, I think I'd let the hunt dictate it, but they're definitely handy, you know, and I wouldn't rule them out for the Midwest either because you can do a lot of really good long distance scouting around here without being intrusive on, you know, an area that you want to hunt. Yeah, yeah. Are you so honest? Have you ever, when you to hunt. Yeah, yeah. Are you so honest? Have you ever, when you get a call at Vortex, are you so honest that you've ever said, talked someone out of buying a product? Like, how deep is your honesty? No, yeah, I would.

I'd definitely, I'd point a person. I mean, you need a set of binos. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's just like, i'll never say that you don't need a set of binos but you know if you're rifle hunting i you know i'd say you need a rifle scope too but i mean i fish with binoculars i mean i just bring binoculars around with me all the time you know when i when i do anything outside like i get if i forget my binoculars which happens occasionally or actually oftentimes i drive to work and sometimes i don't have in my truck and i see

deer on the way to work then i get i get super annoyed because i'm like my first my first instinct is like and i'm like oh yeah you know i did it to myself i want to get like on the spotting scope thing um you know there what's like what's a razor 65 way does people know what we're talking about i think approximately about three pounds so when you when you got like when you got people and i used to do this where you're actually cutting your toothbrush handle in half in the interest of reducing pack weight three pounds is a big deal yeah but if it's if it's any kind of hunting where there's any sort of legal antler restriction so it'd be like identifying growth rings on a sheet because you've got to have a minimum age or whether or not it describes a 360 degree circle that for sure like with moose it

needs to have if you're in a unit that where the thing has to have four brow times yep that level of detail, or it's that you have a personal goal of identifying a X, like a big, huge, giant one. I find that it's helpful, but also I just like to have it because I like to look at stuff. So I'll cut the handle off a toothbrush, say, but then also just stick the three pound tripod or the three pound spotting scope and then a tripod because i just like to look around like when i factor in like the comfort of having a light pack juxtaposed with the comfort of being able to look really carefully at things in the natural world that are far away i just kind of lean in that direction well totally and then you got to look at what it's what

it could be saving you too right like it's like okay yeah i've toted this three pounds or you know give or take up the mountain and yeah it took some space in my pack but it could also be saving you several miles of walking per day so you know you're kind of like weighing those two things and i mean yeah my opinion it's a huge asset so this feller the idaho feller should um uh tell his wife the the do or die day he's gonna be back and probably bring his spot and scope that's it one last one i we've got time for one last one. Guy rode in. He's out turkey hunting.

And lo and behold, he's turkey hunting another guy. And he's a new hunter. And the other guy's a seasoned hunter. And lo and behold, they're calling in. Here comes two toms coming at him. And his hunting partner's like, we're going to do the old one, two, three. Okay? I'll count.

And he says that things are coming. They get close. And he goes, one, two, blouch. And then the other bird flies away. And later, the guy's like, what's up? He says, well, everyone knows you don't say three, you shoot on three. But I feel that you shoot on three just after three. Right? You'd be like, that's what I'm saying. saying without planning it out how do you make it work

i remember like i remember sitting with my late friend eric kern and we were laying down calling us some turkeys that kind of busted us but kind of didn't and we're calling and he wants to do the old one two three like the old double up which usually means no one gets anything and so we're lined up and i'm waiting for him to do the count, and pretty soon we got Hens past us. And he never does the count, and we realize we never clarified the rule, even who was. It just happened fast, and we missed a chance.

But I feel like you'd say, one, two, three, bl blouch and what would have been the four does that make any sense yeah i would i think i would agree with i think that is what i would anticipate in the heat of battle of trying to coordinate yeah i think that this dude he was hunting with intentionally screwed there's no doubt in my mind that this dude he was hunting with intentionally screwed. There's no doubt in my mind that that dude intentionally screwed him over. He got to counting, and then he's like, you know, what if he goes, what if his read on this is he's going to blouch before I blouch. And then he made a judgment call at the last second just to shoot.

Game hog. And then later tried to cover his tracks yeah we had better luck i've only done it a couple of times but it seemed it worked where we just both said yes we have the animal in our sights you shoot first so you sort of can let the the animal you're about whoever's going to shoot second can let the animal react to that shot whatever it might be and you're not going to be startled by the shot of your buddy and then you take the shot yeah because most animals i don't think in that like split second it's going to take for you to you know reacquire the target by slightly moving your gun it's not like they're just gone i also feel like it's difficult to get a good trigger squeeze when you're trying to time it.

That's the solution we've hit on. Like a version of what you're saying is like, no, no, no, no. Just do your thing. I'm ready. If it works out afterward, it works out afterward. Yeah. But hunting elk with Remy recently, where he was real eager to try to do the old one, two, three. And I was like, let's just, you just get your situation squared away here,

and we'll see if I can pick up some sloppy seconds. Right? Which didn't work out. But had we tried to do the one, two, three-sy, it wouldn't work out but had we tried to do the one two three easy wouldn't happen i think communication is is the uh the the main takeaway here right right my wife tells me that this buddy of mine uh reed dixon who i just bumped into in den earlier in the week. We were out for his very first turkey hunt. It was actually on his ranch in Oregon. And I still take a little bit of heat for this, but communication was very clear for the first half of things,

not so clear for the second half of things. They were calling birds, and two uh jakes are coming in and i'm like okay you take the one on the left i'll take the one on the right i'm gonna shoot as soon as you shoot so no one two three right and so it's gonna be like yes when in fact it was, pouch, pouch, pouch. Point of contention comes in on that third one. Whereas these birds were so close, and I was so positive that he obviously hit the first bird and rolled it, but now it was up on its feet running away,

that I was just doing the good guy thing and taking care of it before it runs off. Now, years later, there's some question as to whether or not he shot the bird from the first shell. He's like, you remember my turkey right cal he's like yeah you remember when you filled my turkey tag for me uh anyone last final thoughts i think when you try to coordinate a shot based on counting. So this isn't your concluder? Oh, no, I'm not going to do one of them. Not wasting time. I have a concluding thought, though.

Okay. No, you can final thought. I can do a final thought and then do a concluder? You can rip a concluder on the one, two, three. We'll jump over to Yanni for a concluder, and then we'll come back to your regular concluder. Oh, okay. My first concluder and we'll come back to your regular concluder okay yeah my first concluder

then um to do the timed thing where you go one two three it has to be something you practice you read about these that's good idea that the uh the sniper teams if you if you read that the account of these um pirates that were shot off the back end of one of these uh navy yeah they did a one two three yeah and it's something they practice. And I think it's a silent thing, though. They get going and pop. So it's all, it's something that they do. You eliminate the count.

You go one. Yeah, once you start the count, I think, I can't say that's exactly how it goes, but there is something where it's synced. These guys work together so much, when they get down to doing it, most people are done. And it's not something that was invented in that case. This is sniper work that's been going on for probably decades and longer. Anyway, that was my other thought.

Yeah, that's a good one. Really good. Yanni? anyway that was my other thought yeah that's a good one really good yanni oh so many things talk about um like like big high level concluders or you mean about the one two three and no no i'm over that um but it's not really high level either but i was going to bring out this we were going to talk about possibly what we've been eating lately while game also i use that for my concluder um like what you're hot on right now yeah you know i canned a whole bunch of elk in the last couple years and we really haven't been eating it that much and then your car broke down that was a bartering joke that went over my head That was a bartering joke.

That went over my head. But my house is actually kind of broken down right now. It only has three walls, one wall of visqueen, as we're doing a little remodel work. And I'd like to do a shout-out to Camp Chef and Traeger, because without them, I wouldn't be doing any kind of cooking, because don't have a kitchen right now yeah yannis camps at his house now man yeah yeah it's kind of cool i'm gonna actually miss there's a uh bird and i'm sorry i don't i haven't it's been on my list of things to do to identify the species he's got a beautiful

morning song and our house is uh it's a cabin and he's been actually kind of coming he's about two feet in the house in the morning and just like we got a high ceiling that kind of goes to this loft where we sleep and um i mean his song just fills the whole house every morning and i'm gonna miss that because it's all it's like you're camping right i mean the trees are right there that you're just flying back and forth well it's been great. Anyways, going off on a tangent here, but the canned elk has been really coming in handy, right? Because I come home and you're looking at how many dishes you've got to do. Again, no kitchen at all, so we're just doing bus tub dishes in the backyard. And when you look at canned elk, it's not the most advertising thing.

No. No, at all. But I just wanted to say that if you haven't tried it yet try it and don't go through the hassle of browning it seasoning it anything like that do what they call raw pack which you just cube it up pack it into the can can it some people add like a teaspoon of salt i think maybe for a whole quart something like that it might just be a half a teaspoon can it you put it up and then we've been just doing barbecue sandwiches with it uh sloppy joe style sandwiches uh tacos um oh yeah making a stew just like quickly blowing some carrots and potatoes dumping it in there

it's been a it's been awesome and it's been a savior so now i don't i'm gonna look at it i'm not i'm not quite so like i don't detest the looks of it so much because i see the value in it see the value now though is the thinking on raw packing um is the thinking that one you can pack more in because it hasn't gotten rigid so you get a higher like you just get higher meat to liquid but is there something too about the way it expels water or doesn't expel water? Is this ringing a bell at all? It's hard to say. I just feel like when you cook it first in the pan, you're losing a lot of moisture, probably fat, you know, and flavor.

You've got to put that back in the jar. Right, yeah. You can't do that. You put the scrape in the jar. But I feel like when you, if you're just saving yourself a step, because when you raw pack and cook it it's all just just there in the in the jar when I was a kid man and hunting season was coming on my old man would uh take a milk crate and he would like rig a milk crate out so we could just have lunches out tailgate lunches out in the woods you know or out of farms where we hunted and he would buy I remember he'd buy coffee drops like

coffee candy and he'd buy bags of prunes and he'd put mustard in there and he put a bunch of those jars of canned venison jarred venison and then we'd have uh and he'd have rye bread or whatever to spread it on and it was like an early connection i made to be, it was like always the last thing left from last year's deer would be the jars. And then you're eating the last bit of last year's deer while trying to get this year's one. And there was sort of a continuity to it that couldn't be missed, even to a kid. And I still kind of have that, like, feeling of it, you know. My brother bought one of those things to make steel cans. You can make your own steel cans, not glass.

And he started putting whole ducks in there. And then the duck would fit the can. And then can the whole damn duck. But if you drove around with it in your car for a while, by the time you pulled it out, it was just like bones laying in the bottom of there and duck meat floating on top. I remember being out one time, and my brother's neighbor had died. And they cleaned out his house, and for some reason he had a ton of Slim Fast, those Slim Fast cans. And I remember being out hunting, and all we were doing was drinking Slim Fast and eating those canned ducks.

And my buddy Puder was with us, and he says, man, I just feel like we're going to be skin and bones by the end of this trip. Pat, you got a concluder? Yeah, I have to say, I can't see you folks real well because of the lights, but to me it's really cool to think that this many people could come in here, listen to five people just talking about hunting and fishing. And I really want you to think about something Carl Malcolm brought up in the Tempe podcast about making a conservation effort, not just between the hunting community, but outside the hunting community, and build this big effort, this big coming together moment, basically.

And, you know, it's not going to happen by some big campaign, some big public relations effort. These kind of things happen slow but sure, and they happen around these kind of things happen slow but sure and they happen around these kind of venues where you folks can kind of come in here and the reason you're here i have no doubt about this it's because of steve ranella it's because of the way he can express great thoughts about hunting not in a defensive way but in an explanatory way that makes people have fun and think about things in a fun way, entertaining way. And so, like I mentioned earlier about the idea... Thank you, Pat.

I mentioned earlier, you know, the idea of driving down the highway and seeing the whole comparison between a dead deer in the back of a truck and a load full of pork or cows, whatever it might be. And the thing I want you to think about is you guys becoming the face of hunting. Wear your blaze orange, wear your camouflage, and when people talk to you, polite explain things don't be defensive just reach out to folks in a fun way in a friendly way because i found a number of times over the years people see a dead deer in the back of my truck or something and they'll come over and just want to

talk and they don't know about this another case i can can think of, I was fishing out of Milwaukee one time, and it was in McKinley Park in Milwaukee, catching salmon, we brought in some salmon. And people walking by, people have never seen a fish brought off a lake before in their lives. This is not something they do every day. And they were so fascinated that you could go out in this lake and catch a fish that big, bring it back, cut it up, and take it home and eat it. And I think that's kind of the image you should have sometimes when people, you come across them out at a gas station, at a convenience store. A lot of them don't know what they're really looking at here. So be patient with them and take those opportunities to just open up a little bit about what a great thing that we're doing because this is we're not doing it for um i don't do it to keep populations in control

or control disease all these bullshit excuses people give for hunting i do it because it's fun and it's something i and i loved i love bringing meat home processing that stuff getting in the freezer bringing it out later. My wife's a great cook. My daughters are going to be great cooks. I just find that aspect of it just so enriching and so, to me, exciting that I think that's hard to miss when you're sincere about it. So just keep that in mind. Be the face of hunting. Well, as an altruistic population control hunting specialist.

It's like, I hate hunting, but if I didn't do it, we're just all going to die from deer. But no, Pat, I was just going to say a lot of the same things you said, mostly because I've been going off your notes the whole time. But no, I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for everybody that's showed up here tonight. And I guess one of the big reasons I say that is because just the fact that you're here shows me that you care about hunting and care about fishing and care about our wild places on a very deep level. And like Pat said, you know, I mean, it's on us to be a voice for that and to communicate with people that maybe are outside our circle and help them understand and hopefully bring them into the

fold. And also thanks to Steve and the Meteor Crew for having me here tonight and letting me sit with you guys and being the voice that you guys are. Because I mean, I truly believe this, man. When we are all long gone, people are going to be sitting around campfires telling stories about you guys. So appreciate you guys. Yeesh. I was a little hurt, I guess. They didn't ask my opinion on if you're going to be away from a lady for a long time. Oh. Okay. What would you do? Well be away from a lady for a long time. Oh, okay.

What would you do? Well, not from personal reference. Say you were in a situation where you loved someone. I do listen to a lot of old country music when I'm working on the house. Charlie Pryde said, you know, tell her that you'll love her even when you're gone. Love her like a devil when you get back home. That seems to make sense to me. And to switch gears yeah i think we all have to recognize that that uh we all have a platform and uh we can use it uh in a lot of different ways we know from looking at youtube and uh my grandma and my mom said always says you know you're not going to be around that long so if you get a shot at you know talking to somebody that you want to talk to it doesn't matter who it is if they're

the president of the united states and you're right there don't regret it but utilize your time and and talk to them and let them know what you're thinking because that may be the only shot you get. And I think we've got to realize that when we have these interactions, be it in person or socially, we need to, and I'm absolutely guilty of this as well, but we need to take advantage of that time and make the best impression possible and make sure that hunting and fishing that we love is around for a really long time. And I really got to thank everybody in here who's wearing those public landowner shirts and bha shirts and the trcp shirts and um and thank you very much but you know that's not enough you gotta you gotta go a little

bit further you gotta get a public water t-shirt which doesn't exist yet but sure um and if issues come up uh not only in your state but in in others, you know, take advantage and and pick up pick up the phone and call your duly elected officials and let them know that you appreciate what you do. And the places that you can go and enjoy those things. All right. My my concluder, are you cool? Yeah, cool. First, I need to wish a happy anniversary to our friend Mitch Petrie from Sportsman Channel. He's here with his wife, Kristen, and presumably is part of a large package of experiences that he's lavishing upon her this week.

He chose to make this one of them. So happy anniversary. And also, there's an active duty Air Force serviceman here named Craig Quinnett. Flew here to be here tonight and probably not in the Air Force jet. Are you here, Craig? Yep. Great. He made it all right guys thank you very much oh a couple quick announcements uh

we got um our steam breathing our steam breathing anthem turkey posters are for sale out front if you saw those uh blout shirts meteor podcast shirts until we get kicked out, which happens when 11, 11. Yeah. So until we get kicked out at 11, we'll mosey up that, that away there.

And we'll be there to take pictures and sign stuff and hang out until they tell us that we can't anymore. Thank you very much for coming out tonight. It is great. And I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. Let's throw out some hats real quick. 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.

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