The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 142: Begging and Pleading

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

Grand Junction, MI- Steven Rinella talks with Mark Kenyon of Wired to Hunt, Chris “Ridge Pounder” Gill, Matt Cook, and Seth Morris and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: What���s a freezer full of wild game worth?; souped-up swamp rabbits and their latrine fidelity; why do rabbits eat their own shit?; waking up to the harsh reality of a played-out hunting justification; Mrs. Dash and Uncle Tom; dogs and the cake theory; trail cams ethics; an eight-feet high decorative fence; should vegetarians hunt?; The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook;match-making; squirrels, rabbits, and a thinking man's hot wings; how to roast a beaver tail; Kevin Murphy's squirrel gravy; how to handle puddle ducks and diving ducks; how to use all manner of guts; and more.For all the recipes and techniques discussed, pre-order your copy of The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook here. 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 putt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. I'm just going to come right out and say it right from the get-go.

This is the worst episode of this show we've ever made. Because this is going to be like, remember when you were a kid and you'd turn on TV and there'd be like, I think they still do this though. There's like a channel where everyone on the channel is selling something. QVC. Ronco. This is like watching, yes, this is like watching that. This is like watching an infomercial i'm just going to come flat out and say it and but there's some special parts to it

right now here's the deal well if even a small dinky dinky a small percentage of the people that will listen to this show, if a small percentage, almost like a single digit percentage, is that right? Yeah. Of the people that will listen to this show would go on to Amazon right now and get 35 bucks and go buy the Meat Eater Fishing Game Cookbook, whose subtitle is Recipes and Techniques for Every Hunter and Angler, which is available for its launches. It's like coming out November 20.

If a small fraction of people listen to this would go do it, it would do me such a huge favor, and I would be really happy. It would be like my life goal would have been achieved, and I would never work again. What they should do is buy two. Because it's Christmas time. How many pages are in that book?

We actually brought an actual salesman who's never... Matt, how many units... Matt Cook, how many units of things have you sold in your life? Not as many as I could sell this book. Well, you're feeling that confident. He's never touched the book.

I'm feeling that confident. He's a professional salesman, well-trained, has never touched the book, but we brought him in just to work up a sales pitch to sell it. Absolutely. He's working on it right now, but just quick, how many pages? I'm going to talk about some other stuff. There's 350 pages of goodness. 350 pages covering processing of, so like how to cut up, how to cook, over 100 original recipes, and processing and recipe and cooking and fixing

and substitution information for everything. It's broken down like this. And then I'm going to talk about some other stuff for a while. I'm just going to keep returning to this damn book to try to talk people into just doing me a humongous favor and going and buying it now. It's broken up into big game. So like, you know, mostly like antlered and horn being gay but also pigs and bears and then small game which is like furred small game so hares rabbits squirrels and then upland birds waterfowl freshwater fish saltwater fish shellfish and crustaceans and reptiles and

amphibians all about have you ever seen a more beautiful pictorial of how to butcher a snapping turtle no i've never seen a reptiles and amphibians chapter uh no it's beautiful that's because most cookbooks suck uh i i got you know you haven't heard this i was gonna say i was gonna make everyone here pretend that i didn't tell them so you guys are good at lying right real good okay so lie for a minute but matt wasn't here so let me ask you this a guy wrote in that this is interesting speaking of wild game his freezer he had his freezer went kaput on him and it should have gone kaput on him so he calls his insurance agent and he wants to make a claim

on having lost all his wild game. So he calls his insurance agent and the guy says, I've been in this business for a decade and no one's ever asked me about how to handle a claim on having lost wild game, like what the value of it is.

So this guy goes to the state office and comes back with this. The Farm Bureau of the state of Mississippi had come up with this formula years ago, lack of formula, that since there's no comparable market value for wild game, the only monetary replacement you can get when you make a claim on losing your wild game is the cost of processing. If you processed your own wild game, you're out of luck. So when you lose a freezer, you lose a whole L because your freezer goes to shit. Your insurance might compensate you, but limited to what you paid to have it processed is the only value they'll assign to it and this guy goes drop like an invoice that

said i paid my wife a thousand dollars to process yeah i don't know how deep they dig but it's really interesting man he's like the dude that wrote in is talking about how you know so you know we've talked about this a thousand times, but the, you know, wild game resources in this country were depleted horribly. Deer, turkeys, waterfowl, passenger pigeon driven to extinction, buffalo nearly driven to extinction by market hunters. So people that shot game and sold it into commercial markets and made a living doing it. And one of the many things we had to do to save American wildlife was end the selling of wild game. We've talked about this a bunch too. Like the other night I was in a situation

where I was almost forced to go eat pen-raised elk. So if you see elk on a restaurant menu, it's not real elk. It's the elk raised up on a farmer ranch, right? You can't sell wild game. So he's saying that this is one downside to that system is you can't get properly compensated. What if you shot the elk on a $10,000 paid guided trip? Could you turn that in to the insurance company?

I certainly would try. Well, all I can tell you, and this is just anecdotal, because this is just one mug from Mississippi, but that's what he had happen to him, and that's what he found when he researched it. Now, maybe if you had some hard-hitting lawyers or something, but I would tend to doubt it, man. I would tend to doubt it, because there you would tend to doubt it because there you're paying for the experience. But you would, you're right.

To be honest, you'd have an invoice. You'd have a credit card statement that was the dollars that generated that. But I certainly think people should try. I think maybe one agent to another may be able to slip one through. Yeah, it'd be worth a try. Here here's another thing we were talking about swamp rabbits the cottontail rabbits when he should when a cottontail rabbit shits in the woods he doesn't seem to pay a whole lot of attention where he goes um he just goes why are you cool on swamp rabbits does that you know what a swamp rabbit is i bell? You know what a swamp rabbit is? I absolutely do not know what a swamp rabbit is.

Sylvalligus aquaticus? Okay, the Latin name. Yep, now I'm familiar. Do you know? Do you know? I got it now. If you go by Latin, I'm good. Do you know that rabbits

aren't rodents, Matt? I did know that rabbits were not rodents. Legomorphs. They're a legomorph. Absolutely. So the swamp rabbit is just a souped up cottontail. Okay.

Five, six pound cottontail who will jump in the Mississippi River and swim across in order to evade a hunting beagle. It is a indigenous to the south swamp rabbits. We don't have them. Yeah. Swamp rabbits, we don't have them. Yeah, but they can go into the deep south, but they're also found in the border country. We've been debating a lot about what is the south, but they're in Kentucky, which is the south, but some people feel like it's nudging, edging towards the north. One time Lincoln, I think, sat in Ohio and yelled across the river at Kentucky, mad at them about southern issues. But so cottontail, normal cottontail rabbit, eastern cottontail, mountain cottontail, he just shits wherever he wants, right? They don't have any rhyme or reason to it but a swamp rabbit has uh fidelity to his latrine and the honest has seen this back me up

i have a guy was pointing out i was talking about this puzzling over it you know saying like when in their environs where they live it's very flax they live on the floodplain and i thought maybe he gets a log he likes to go on, and he defecates on the log, and it just makes it higher and higher up because a llama, who also has fidelity to his latrine, will defecate and build up such a mound of pellets that he uses as a lookout, like a crow's nest. Wow.

A fellow wrote in, and he was saying that he doesn't really know about this idea that rabbits defecate on a log with the intent of building up a little mound that they can sit on. He says that may be true, but he also points out that it's necessary for cottontails to eat their own poop. It's called Capra Fadgie. And he wonders about if it's not in these environs that are prone to flooding, that if it's not just a good way for him to store his doo-doo. Why are they eating their own shit? I don't say that very often. Why are they eating their own shit? You know um it has something to do with their digestive track

maybe yanni can look that up a lot of times you'll ask him look stuff up and then by the end of the show he'll find it so i have a sales idea because the hamster doesn't have anything to add to the you could domesticate swamp rabbits so that, you know, like a cat, it would shit in the same place in your house versus a cottontail, which would shit all over the house. Yeah. There's a business opportunity there. I like the way you're thinking.

Now, Guy wrote in. This is interesting. Guy writes in we're talking recently about um the sort of uh existential crisis that hunters in new zealand and australia are facing right now where hunters in new zealand australia are predominantly hunting you know there's like kangaroo hunting there for commercial markets but like your recreational hunters in australia new zealand are hunting non-natives and they will often uh they will often justify their pursuits by explaining how they're helping to control if you go on social media and you watch you'll see australian hunters you know talking about this like man you know to save the natives we got to do all this hunting

um but then what happened the reason we were talking about this recently is because in new zealand the government who does a lot of culling they do a lot of control work on some of these more uh abundant non-native ungulates. They do a lot of control work on them, and they're talking about upping the control work and getting rid of them. And it's making the hunters there real uneasy. And I was pointing out how it's hard because you're sort of justifying your activity by saying we're helping to control non-natives, but then when the government decides just to do a total eradication,

the hunters get nervous because they want some and so you're left with where your rhetorical strategy right the thing you use to justify your activities becomes null and void and a guy actually wrote in from australia and he was saying that he says it does put us in a funny position because we're like he says quote we are left exposed to the harsh reality of not just saying that we want them here so we can hunt them what do you think about that yanni i'm glad that he wrote in and accepted that just admitted it it's tricky man i wouldn't like but we've been saying and i think

all along it's sort of it's been a lousy argument for why you should hunt and just lousy justification for hunting really yeah you can't act like yeah if if i think a lot of people do it in a lot of different ways people struggle with you know there's a lot of people do it in a lot of different ways. People struggle with, you know, there's a lot of, it's complicated, right? If someone said, hey, man, why do you like to go to baseball games? You're not going to have, like, oh, a reason. It's a whole bunch of reasons, going back to how you were brought up and what it makes you think of and time with family, you like hot-buttered popcorn.

I mean, right, all manner of things, this is a huge package of things, but i think hunters a lot of times get in this thing where they try to narrow it down or like oh if we didn't hunt the deer would overtake us and kill us all or whatever and um when you get into this like where it's justified by where you're just saying like oh no i just do it for population control and then someone says oh you know don't worry about it bro we'll take care of it the government will do it then you're like then you gotta be like man i wish i would have said something different another guy wrote in about uh he says a good way to have chew good way to dip he likes to mix he mixes hubba bubba the bubble gum yeah with red man i've heard of that and we consulted with

dirt on that is that no but that's a baseball player thing that's who he's writing in about and he says the question is where do you get first cancer diabetes that's a strange mix yeah another guy wrote in. He's like, man, you guys are always arguing about Tony C's and Old Bay. Steve being a Tony C's man and Yanni being an Old Bay man. And he's like, what about Mrs. Dash? Big Mrs. Dash fan.

It's good. It has its place. But it's not like the other two. He thinks it's real good to take, like, fish fillets and put some Mrs. Dash on it and wrap the fish up in aluminum foil and cook it. He likes to take pickerel. Pickerel, you wrap them in tin foil, put some butter and some Mrs. Dash on there. He says you're floored how good it is.

He doesn't put anything else on his fish. Isn't Mrs. Dash across the country, right? Isn't Old Bay andony c's kind of just maryland and like no dude tony c's is everywhere man i was i got on the tone i got i got on it i got on the tony c's i got on the tony c's in michigan's upper peninsula what you can't get farther away from the bayou country and still be in the country. I've been duped. Well, Alaska. I've been lied to for a while then. We used to call Tony C's Uncle Tom's for some reason.

I have no idea why. Huh? You know Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mm-hmm. He probably couldn't pronounce Chattree's. Yeah, it was like some kind of shortcut, but I still don't understand how you'd come up with Uncle Tom's. Someone must have been reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.

We've been having a lot of talk about how good, how well dogs can smell. And a guy wrote in, and he's a police officer, and he's a canine handler. He was trained for two years to work with canines. He worked with a half-German shepherd, half-Belgian Malinois. Anybody know this? M-A-L-I-N-O-I-S? Nope. Anyway, some kind of souped-up mutt.

And the dog's name was Kane. And he was a dual-purpose dog, meaning he was a narcotic detective dog and suspect apprehension. Oh, yeah. That's a mean-looking dude right there. That's like the guy that in movies, when a police dog chomps on the bad guy's arm, that's the Melinois. Yeah. Well, you know what he's saying about this dog? Tell me.

He's talking about, he just, only reason he wrote in is he, because we were struggling to explain like how well a squirrel dog can smell. Like how can a squirrel dog do such a good job of smelling squirrels? And he just brings up a way that it was explained to him. One, he says it was explained to me in training that dogs can smell up to 50,000 times better than we do, which is like hard to, right? It's still hard.

But he's like, there's a good anecdote. There's a thing called the cake theory. So let's say your mom bakes a cake and you walk in the house. You walk in the house and you take in the smell and you're like, oh, someone made a cake. Like that's the smell you get. He says a good way to think about it would be that a dog walks in the house

and he goes, oh, eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar. And that's how he feels that they're a way to distinguish their abilities from our own. Another guy wrote in, and here's's a guy he's kind of established his credentials you remember yanni can you recap the andrew mclean story the famous skier i believe i can he was caught uh explain like who he is and what he does and whatnot he um it was andrew mclean right yeah yeah i don't want to mix him up with other some other famous skier but he uh he's like a utah backcountry skier known for

pioneering i think some lines in the wasatch and writing a like a ski guidebook for skiing the wasatch is that how you say that i always said it a little dinky bit wrong well i'm sure wasatch wasatch yeah that's what i would have said yeah i'm in and out of that place all the time go ahead um anyways he was caught on trail camera stealing a trail camera and a tree stand or two maybe even he made the guy had the hunters for some reason had like a double camera set and um and they only saw one camera and took it and the tree stand and the other camera caught them in the act of doing it just yeah stealing it stealing well this guy writes in he's kind of like setting up his credentials he opens up he opens up by saying i'm just headed out to film a dinosaur digging project for nat geo so he's like laying he's like okay you know i mean he doesn't say like why that matters but

he throws it out there because he's wanting to right he's wanting to paint a picture he's like build up a street cred he's building up some cred so your souls be like man well you guys are camera guys when you hear that he's going to film a dino digging thing are you thinking like this guy's top shelf depends on what branch in that geo it is man there's like there's a couple different ones so so you hear that and you don't automatically think that you're because i'm gonna get into a negative about this person. It's on Nat Geo Kids. Cause we're going to get into a negative about this guy. He, he,

so he sets up his credentials by saying he's, he's, he's in Niger, which is in Africa. And he's heading out to film a dino digging project for Nat Geo. And he says, I get why McLean did it. And he talks about, he just started bow hunting this season, and he talks about how hunters litter a lot.

And a lot of times you'll find where hunters leave little stashes out in the woods and a lot of garbage out in the woods and are tattered sleeping bag and old tarp and unusable mres and doesn't like it hunter's a real dirtbag woods trashers um and he goes on to say that he goes on to propose the idea that mclean was simply cleaning up the woods by stealing a tree stand and a trail camera, which is an indefensible position to take. There's a big difference between garbage left out in the woods and someone's legally placed tree stand and trail camera.

Anyone want to add to that? Hear, hear. That's the lovely voice of Mark Kenyon. Yeah, you could take that a bunch. You could say like your car is like a hunk of metal just sitting out there. Yeah. So I'm going to steal that to clean this place up. Cleaning up some new truck I found out in the woods.

I think the more interesting thing is the tactic that the hunter who had his stuff stolen, I think the tactic he used was something that more people should use in the whitetail world. Double kill. And I do know some people have talked about it. I've got a friend who was trying this. But it's a great way to, if we get the word out that enough people are doing that i think a lot of trail camera thieves will think twice to do the double camera yeah because i might be getting pictured right now we were looking at we had a dude showing us a bunch of trail cameras on his uh we were mule deer hunting colorado ran into a fella remember this yanni

and he was showing us a bunch of trail cam pictures of various elk and mule deer and whatnot and they all were taken at a downward angle you remember this and i was like what the guy from new mexico yeah i was like what's going on with this he said trail camera theft is so bad in new mexico that he now places his trail cameras up high up in trees angled down so people don't notice them yeah doesn't the cameras that send the pictures to the internet you know deter some of the stealing i mean you'd get a picture when someone goes to steal your camera has that curbed oh of the theft? The direct transmit. Yeah. I think that the percentage of travel cameras out there that have that feature is still

so small. Okay. But yes, I think that it's getting to the point that more and more people worry about that. I actually have gone to the point where I place no trespassing signs that I will specifically say, property, I'll write and mark a property patrolled with cellular cameras, that kind of thing, where there's some serious issues of trespassing. So they say, oh, yeah, so I can't steal the camera.

Picture's going to be sent right away. That's a heck of a deterrent. And it's true or not true? It's true. Okay. You know, take this with, this with i'm gonna say something in uh keep in mind that i'm that well i'll just come out and say it if i could if i was the the command master of the universe

i would get rid of trail cameras but I would also get rid of the internet. And I use the internet. And in fact, this is like an internet-based digital radio program. So it's like, I'm comfortable using it. But if I was commander of the universe and I could make it go away, I would make it go away. And I would make trail cameras go away. Even though I will use trail cameras, I would like, I wish they hadn't been invented. I understand that position. And I understand both sides. But one, I love trail cam pictures.

I post them all the time on social media because it's like cool. I like how they've rewritten some of our understanding of wildlife distribution. And I love it. And like you learn from it. But there's just something about it is like I only don't like them when I run into one. I like my friends a lot. I just don't like other people's. And I think that a lot of people are getting a little bit wigged out with the fact that there's like surveillance in the hills now.

I get that. I do think it also, there's something to be said about, and I've kind of battled with this a little bit myself, the fact that it takes a little bit of the mystery away. There's something to be said about going out into the woods and not knowing what might show up later tonight. Now it's, well, it's going to be this buck, this buck, or that buck. And there's never a surprise. Dude, the buck I saw this morning, I was trying to figure out what one it was from the trail cam pictures you were showing me. Yeah, you're sitting out there.

You feel like you're waiting for a friend when you're out in the woods now, man. I know he comes here. Yeah, it's like, oh, there's the one guy and the other guy. Yeah, I kind of like, I don't like it, but that's not what I don't like about it. I don't like being out and all of a sudden realizing there's some guy's trail camera sitting there. Yeah. Why not confine them to private? You know what's cool?

It was cool, but it went away. Montana, for a couple years, had it be that when big game season opened, you had to pull them. That just changed this past year. Then they made it go back the other way again. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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 On x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps waypoints and tracking that's right you were always talking about uh we're always talking about on x here on the meat eater podcast now you um you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Something is just going to get too ridiculous

because as the technology gets better and people are just able to live stream. It's just too much. It's too much. There needs to be some kind of limits. Some kind of regulation. Yeah, we limit all kinds of stuff. Yeah, we need to have that.

That's what I'm saying. I think one thing. You can't use a red dot. You can't use a red dot sight on your bow. There's all kinds of stuff we limit. The regulation I would like to see put on trail cameras has to do with cell cameras because that's where I see this line being crossed with some line of ethics and everyone else everyone's gonna have their own opinion on this but I find where it gets real weird for me is when you get a picture now that's

happening right now and you can make a hunting decision right now based off real-time data that seems to go over the line for me personally. I wish there was like a fair chase mode that you could turn on your trail camera, or maybe there'd be a law someday that requires this, that requires a 24-hour delay before anything gets sent. So there's no real-time, you're not going to see what's happening right now. You can get the benefits of a cell camera, that being it gets transmitted to your computer or phone so that if you live 1,500 miles away or whatever, you can get the benefits of a cell camera that being it gets transmitted to your computer or phone so that if you live 1500 miles away or whatever you can still get your pictures or if you don't want to have to go in there every two weeks and put your son all over

the place but this at least keeps you from abusing that technology at least i think it's abuse if you see a picture on your phone right now and go stalking in there and shoot that buck that's like yeah for me that's yeah that's like, for me, that's... That's why you need to, when you're going to do stuff like this, usually the fishing game agencies try to get out ahead of it before it becomes standard accepted practice. Like how people were so aggressive around regulating the use of drones before drones became super widespread and has so much common use.

Cause then it's hard. Cause there's like a resistance built up and, and I just haven't seen anywhere doing like that kind of leadership. I'm looking like, where is this going? Where you can be out in the woods, you know, you're, you, you go out and plant 20 cameras that are all giving you a live feed of what's going on. And you got them in all your elk meadows or you got them in all your, you got a camera on all of your duck ponds that you like to go jump shoot. And you got a live stream on your phone. I mean, we're like, you could do this right now.

Yeah. And you're like, oh, let's go hit that pond, jump that pond. They're on the, they're on the whatever end of the pond pond so let's make sure we approach from that end yeah because there's a lot of states and i think more should get on board of band two-way communications to like coordinate the taking a game it's just it's just someone's going to have to get out ahead of it i i feel like it it's's definitely on my property has influenced, you know, how we look at it when game move is demystified or maybe it shouldn't have, you know, demystified if, you know, there's animal activity in the middle of the day.

You know, we've never been in a position where, you know, let's go hunt that buck is on that spot at this particular time, but overall movement, you know, or you look and see, you know, let's go hunt, that buck is on that spot at this particular time. But overall movement, you know, or you look and see, you know, they moved overnight because it was a full moon and you probably will have a slow morning. It hasn't equated to success in particular. It has definitely reduced trespassing because you only have to catch someone, you know, 10 minutes after they've been there. Not only I think you're a freak for monitoring, but if you go there and show them a picture of them on your property

within a few minutes, it prevents, the word gets out, prevents a lot of trespassing. I'm sure there's a lot of positives. It's something that concerns me, and I think it's going to become more of an issue as the technology gets better. Mark Kenyon, wired to hunt. Yep.

So you think you're wired to hunt. Let me ask you this. This is how the email started? Someone said that? No, I'm saying that. This is a great question. Guy writes in, my dad and I have been hunting on a large property next door to their house, almost 1,000 acres for all of our lives. Guy writes, of keeping his cattle from roaming off the property. But it's a nice, big, decorative fence.

He puts an eight-foot wood fence around the perimeter of the whole property. Eight-foot tall wood fence. He says to keep his cattle in. Wow. The guy's still allowed to hunt it. But he's always been uneasy with the idea of hunting high fence.

So here is, he's always hunted a property. All of a sudden it becomes fenced. They go in there last year on opening weekend and they both get to get a deer. And then they got, and they agreed not to hunt anymore. They just can't decide. He says he still goes in there to trap. He goes in there to small game hunt, but he feels weird hunting deer on it knowing that the deer are stuck in there and can't get out. Wow. That is a tough

one, man. What a bizarre scenario. That is a tough scenario. Can anyone put a eight-foot decorative fence around their property where you're basically, you have captive wildlife? You're privatizing it.

It isn't that wildlife. Yeah, in Texas. He doesn't say what state he's in, but I wouldn't be surprised. But any property, if you know there's wildlife, can you build a decorative fence around your property knowing that it's going to capture wildlife on the inside? Yeah, when people do high fence things on high fence stuff in Texas, yeah, you don't need to kick all the deer off and then build the fence but it's not is that regulated by state wildlife i don't know i don't know what

the permitting system is i don't know he doesn't say where he is i'm more interested not to see if the guy's being if the guy i'm not really interested if the dude i mean it's interesting i'd love to know if the dude's like a breaking a law or not just yeah but i'm more interested in like the the the idea of it. So here he is, he hunts, and all of a sudden it's fenced. Does he go get a new spot? That's a really, really tough question, man. I feel like if that happened to me, I don't know, man.

It'd be real hard to go and like walk away from your spot. I understand. I think I would feel dirty. I would feel, at least for for me i would start to have weird questions about it because of that point he brought up like all of a sudden now you're hunting a high fence property and all the things that means possibly thing is a thousand acres is big it's big but then we talk about the reduction of mystery. You're never going to get a surprise deer on there again.

You're never going to have the risk of someone else getting that deer or that deer disappearing. Yeah, it's still a challenge, of course. There's still going to be a lot of work that probably has to go into it, but it's different. It would be diminished. It would be diminished. And I would probably do the same thing he did. Yanni? Yanni's thinking so hard.

It's never going to come up again. He's going to be the only guy ever in the history of our country to have to wrestle with this. A thousand-acre decorative fence. I actually want to see the fence. I feel sorry for the guy. He's got to wrestle with this a thousand acre decorative fence i actually want to see the fence no i feel sorry for the guy he's got to wrestle with it but i don't know if like us talking about it is going to help anybody else so you just don't see it being an issue yeah i mean i think you just get to go in there and see how it feels and like i would just say look keep hunting it until you're like okay that that was so easy and do because of the decorative fence and i'm quitting you know i gotta add here

that i am the one that i use the word decorative he doesn't use the word decorative but an eight foot wood no no no an eight foot wooden fence is not a practical fence. There's cheaper ways of doing that. There's an incredible amount of money spent on a 1,000-acre fence. Yeah, that's insane. That's not a typical high fence. Yeah. What's a typical high fence?

They're high. Just a little barbed wire. Oh, no. Yeah, it's just like woven wire. Yeah, I thought you meant height. Ridge pounder? You got nothing to say about that, probably, dude. It's kind of out of your area. No, it's just like woven wire. Yeah, I thought you meant height. Ridge Pounder? You got nothing to say about that, probably, dude. It's kind of out of your area.

No, no, I got an opinion. He's got to hang it up, dude. He's got to just give that spot up. There's no question. Really? In my mind, yeah. It's not easy for me, man. No, there's a fence there, dude.

I don't know. I feel like I'd probably still poke around in there now and then. You can poke around all you want. I'd just be like, I don't know. Maybe he like I'd probably still poke around in there now and then. You can poke around all you want. I'd just be like, I don't know. Maybe he didn't fence the whole thing. Would you be like him and hanging up just big game? Or would you say, yep, the rabbits are high fenced now. The squirrels are high fenced.

There's no such thing as a high fenced squirrel. Yeah, because the squirrels can jump. That's true. Rabbits, I don't really. That's up to him but yeah man he's got to quit do you know a guy wrote into you a guy wrote into me yeah about what the gray rabbit what was he got to say he says he should have done candlelight dinner you hide the grayness yeah that is very very smart okay one more one more uh one more real zinger real zinger um don't forget you're supposed to be pushing the cookbook i'm coming around to that i'm giving matt time to work up the sales pitch then i want to talk about the

cookbook i have a question real quick about the dog and the smell. I don't know the answer, but go ahead. Okay, let me ask this question. I was pheasant hunting last year, and it was September, and it was hot. And our guide said that one of the issues the dog was having was your analogy, that he used chili, that the dog can smell all of the spices, the beef and everything, and that if it's cold out, it's not as hard on the dog. The dog can find pheasants easier, but when it's hot, they can smell every ingredient. You know, they smell the plants, you know, they can smell other animals, rabbits.

Have any of you heard that, that heat? I feel like I've heard that. My buddy Ronnie Bain would absolutely have a lot to say about that. So we'll have to return to that. I had heard dryness versus moisture. So if like a moist situation, they'll be able to smell more. And I heard this in the context of, of tracking deer. So tracking a wounded deer or a hit deer, actually tracking on a rainy day is better than a bone dry day.

Similar there. hit deer actually tracking on a rainy day is better than a bone dry day similar there he was saying you know when it was cold and he didn't see if there was snow or not that the dog could identify a pheasant scent much easier if it's cold because it's it's a singular scent versus overwhelmed by all of the scents when it's warm i'm sure i'm tracking what you're saying and i can't remember i know that i heard when i was running dry ground lions with someone one time with a feller by the name of floyd we were tracking mount lions with dogs and i remember he had a lot of opinions about the climatic conditions and its effect on a dog's nose and its ability to code trail and hot trail i just can't remember what you know like what was what was good and what was bad but i remember that he had a lot of thoughts about it did you see the mats running that axe we liked a whole lot yanni no i see it

now oh yeah that's the alaska axe man yeah well man. The old, I forget what it was called. S-wing. Yeah, S-wing. But what's the name of the model? That's one of the nicest mass-produced axes I've ever laid a hand on, Matt. I'm not trying to butter you up because you're going to give a sales pitch to this book. Okay, here's one more real zinger. Real zinger for everybody.

This is more of a zinger than the zinger from a minute ago. He goes on to say how he hates hunting shows. That's cool. Then he goes on to say lots of reasons. He goes on to say how he's heard me mention that if you took away the food or you took away the fun, I would lose interest in hunting. Like it's a package of things that all need to be there for me to love it. Like I do. Um, and he goes on to say that he needs my opinion on something. He works with a fella who he generally likes.

We get along just fine. And he goes on to say this, the dude is, this is why I almost wonder if this is true. I feel like it must be true. The guy is a vegetarian. Okay. But not one of those annoying ones that throws it in your face. But here's where it gets weird. He's a vegetarian, but he hunts. He likes to hunt deer and turkeys, but doesn't believe in eating them. What? He just donates it all to a food bank.

And the guy's saying, I cannot wrap my head around this. And he says, no one buys a pair of pants from JCPenney just to take them down to the Salvation Army and drop them off. That's fantastic. Yeah, there probably are a few charitable folks that do that. That buy clothes and then donate them.

It's a good question, man. Like, you won't eat it, but you'll like to shoot it. I've always, like, it's another one of those things, it's just one of those things I see both sides of. I can't even really work up a good opinion about it. The fact that he's a vegetarian has nothing to do with it because I feel like I know dudes that are full-on carnivores that do the same thing.

Yeah, but it makes it kind of even more zingy-like that he's a vegetarian, right? Sure, a little bit, but I i think we take a step back it's it's like the same wrong wrong but wrong yeah wrong you're saying remember um happy days when fonzie was wrong he couldn't say wrong i don't he'd be like i was he couldn't say wrong. I don't. He'd be like, I was... He couldn't bring himself to say it. That was some funny shit. I know people, though, who will shoot a deer purposefully

to donate it. And they view that as a way to give back. But do they also shoot a few for their own freezer? Yeah. But why not just give money to the food bank? It's a different way to go about it.

And maybe, I don't know, maybe part of it is because they enjoy the hunting aspect of it. So to your point, there's food, there's fun,

and then also there's the management perspective too. They might need to be taking some management deer off the farm or something like that, so that might be part of it.

I'm just devil's advocate, man. Yeah, yeah. But I think the interesting thing is, though, if this guy is fundamentally opposed to the eating of meat, so many people, I imagine, would advocate for the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle because they don't want an animal's life to be taken, or on their hands maybe or something like that so this guy obviously doesn't care about that he's not that kind he's not that guy so then what's what's his angle i don't know just weird plant-based diet health so it's a health thing for him i do now and then if again man just like playing devil's advocate because i can see both sides of it to a crippling degree but i do now and then wonder if you don't want like let's say you're um in a situation where

yeah you don't want it why not just let someone who wants it get it why not like leave it for someone that wants it i get that i have a hard time i i i can't leave it for someone that wants it. I get that. I have a hard time. I can't justify killing an animal unless I'm actually going to personally eat it. So I would have a hard time doing that. But I also can understand people that do. I mean, there's something to be said about helping other people with food. It's a food acquisition process. I know a lot of guys that maybe will keep a little bit and then share the rest.

And I certainly, I share a significant portion of venison sometimes too. Like I'll have a surplus and I'll share that. And I guess like it's, there's some, where's the line where that becomes questionable? That's why I'm thinking about this because I'm kind of like the worst kind of person, where I'll share it with people who are relative to the population in general quite wealthy. And I think that that's just great. Right. But then when someone shoots a deer and just brings it down to a food bank, I'm like, hey, what's that all about? But I'm like, well, hold on.

I'm giving it to like, I give game meat to rich people. Right. That's the anti-robin hood it's like why not go like you know wouldn't it be a lot better to go give it to the needy especially if you're going to pick up the processing fee yeah what what if someone was uh like one of your buddies was like man it's last week elk season i'm not going to be able to get out you have a few free days you think you could and you had you had like a cow tag or something my own cow your own cow tag and your freezer was full you didn't plan on filling that cow tag because your freezer is full and if you were to shoot another one you would have way too much for the year is it a good friend it could be whoever

but someone's like for a good someone's like steve i'm not gonna get out anymore yes you think you're a good friend you could burn that that cow tag for me yeah for a good friend i'll do that okay but you're right and i'm just the kind of worst kind of person where i wouldn't be like you know what i'm gonna do it and pay the processing and drop it off at the food bank. Because I'm suspicious of that for a weird reason that doesn't make any sense and it's making me feel a little embarrassed that I feel this way.

Well, it's because the food bank is like the easy way out. I know people that would shoot shit and just take it to the food bank because they don't want to deal with it. That's okay. Yeah, you're helping me articulate my perspective on it because like I bring a lot, you have a lot of assumptions. So in some way you're kind of looking at it like, in some way you're kind of looking at it like you're sort of reading into their motivations.

Because let's say you met a guy who's a volunteer at the food bank and he's like man i volunteered for 10 years at the food bank and i'm telling you it's really hard like the protein is hard to come by and when we get the venison in people love it and they like makes their day and it's such a nice thing we're able to do at the food bank and once i had that experience i really started just like you know i'd get a deer for me but i really would just keep hunting because i love to support my local food bank. That dude, I'd want to give him a big old hug. But if it's the kind of thing, I one time, let me give you, the first time I ever hunted in Texas, I was hunting with a guy. And it was like my old girlfriend's dad had a dentist buddy or something like that.

And he caught wind of the fact I like to go hunting. And he took me out hunting down by Waco, Texas. And I got a buck. And he comes and comes around to pick me up where I was hunting. Am I blind? And comes around and sees the deer and just says, maybe i can get jj to take this that perspective where he was like inconvenienced by the idea of having to deal with a deer and its meat yeah is something that i like i see that and i think about that being like

a little bit offensive to me yeah i have a question for you so i have guests come and hunt and they know that i donate the meat to my inner city employees i like that though but they they have no intention of taking it they know i have an outlet for it does that it's still why do they want to kill it do they really care about your employees that much if so no that's it that's my question is i i don't feel great about it i have an outlet they know that i have people that are in need and very much want the protein and that the deer will not be wasted um i think a lot of it's the you know the deer camp experience and sitting around and eating and drinking, but then they know that there's an outlet for the protein.

It obviously benefits someone. They know it. But I feel a little bit uncomfortable when they feel good about themselves that they're hunting and they feel that there's some altruistic outlet for it. That's just not the way hunting should be. It should be, obviously, that they have every intention of consuming the animal themselves. So I feel like I set up an environment sometimes that I'm a little conflicted. But you know what?

When I'm up at my fish shack in Alaska and we're stacking up salmon and halibut, I already know that I'm going to give a bunch of it to my neighbors who are hardly needy. Not even kind of sort of needy. So if I came to your fish shack with the intention of fishing, knowing that I'm not taking it, that you're going to give it to your neighbors that are not needy, does that change it? If, okay, here's where we're getting into the nitty gritty. This is interesting. Let's say you're at my fish shack and you said to me, you know what, dude, funny thing,

all week we've been stacking up salmon and halibut. I don't eat fish. I'm going to give this all to my neighbors. I would say you can't take any home with you. If you said, dude, I love love eating fish definitely planning on eating fish and you know what else i'm excited about is sharing some of my neighbors i'd be like all right bro let's load your cooler up it's just like it doesn't make any sense but yeah it's like um i get the same it's not it's not binary for me it's like it's like it's just different man it's like

because i need to know the like i need to be comfortable with the the motivation and i need to be like like when you see the fish come up out of the depths like when you see the halibut come up out of the depths like i need to know what you're looking at i need to know like what you see of course it's a fish but what do you see of the fish? And that's important to me. And so you're looking for clues. It's like, what does this person see when he sees a fish? It feels a little bit, you know, I've had people that I've not asked back because it felt a little bit more like they were into killing, and I'm the outlet for the protein.

So I didn't feel like they were truly bought into the hunting experience. So although they know there's a, you know, a charitable element to it, I just don't feel like they're, they have skin in the game. You know what you could do if you were a real prick? If you got a guy like this, take him. He gets an elk or gets a deer. You'd be like, you know what,

man? I don't feel like messing with this. Let's just take the head and split. And if he says, yeah, you're right. Then you know not to invite him back. You escort him immediately to the edge of the property.

It's a good litmus test. I got a buddy who might throw an even different direction into it, or a different layer, rather. He loves to hunt, hates killing, eats meat, but doesn't really, like he'd be fine with donating like he's the type of dude who would if he knew if he was on a deer hunt and everybody's like we're gonna donate all these deer he would love it because he would get the aspect of hunting he'd feel better about the killing and he wouldn't have to deal with it yeah but he doesn't he like hates killing

shit but he also like doesn't really want to deal with so what is it he needs to find something new to do i know it's so weird he loves duck hunting because he likes the the like anonymity of when you're hunting with like a bunch of dudes and a bunch of ducks come in because you're like everybody's shooting you're like i don't really know who shot what i kind of you know what i mean but he also loves he likes the idea and goes deer and turkey hunting my father described that about being in world war ii where he said uh he was in a situation once where he like very definitely needed to kill something like he killed someone was like very obvious that he killed a person and that weighed on him but all the time you spend where everybody's just shooting and all this stuff you never need yeah he talked about that he says you don't know and then it came a point where he he killed a person with a hand grenade whoa and um

was certain that it happened. And he says, and that's the thing I think about. Not just like mortaring someplace and everyone shooting and just mayhem. But the minute you go like, oh man, that was my action. Yeah. That's the one that stuck with him. That's heavy. And if I remember right too, he was telling me that he thought the person was drunk

but then another relative of mine heard the story he didn't hear that part he thought they were drunk a person was drunk and maybe lost weird man at night in the dark 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.

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Yeah, he never forgave the Germans. Have I talked about this? Yes, you did. Yeah, never forgave them. Tough, man. Did you work up a good pitch for that book absolutely okay i think that the meat eater book needs to be tied in with uh a guy's ability to get women okay i think that i like it uh i think it and you went to you went to business school right it can expose uh him to his lady friend that he's sensitive, that he knows how to, uh, you know, it can open up the idea that, uh, he gets to hunt more. Um, as long as he brings, you know, a good meal and a bottle of wine to the dinner table.

Um, I think you could do some type of promotion where if a guy does meet a woman, he has to buy five more cookbooks. So I would definitely take this on as my number one product. I like it. What was your backup sales pitch? My backup sales pitch would be get the women to buy it for their man okay it's not gonna it's not gonna lead um it makes the woman appear to be sensitive and cares about her man and what he likes to do on the side and it's something that they could do together i think that a a gal and a guy could definitely create a new life together with a meat-eater cookbook. Really good, Matt.

I think we've got kind of a matchmaker going male-female, female-male. Great job, Matt. I like that. Great job. I think he's right. I don't think you're bullshitting us. Oh, no, there's no question. I actually intend to do it.

I've been married 26 years, so I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah. So just a little bit about the book for real. Of course it's for real, but I really do need people to go buy the book. And you're not going to like it. It's a beautiful book, right, Giannis? Yes, gorgeous. How long have we been working on this book?

When do we go to Wyoming and trap those beavers oh that was like 2016 no we were working on it before then not much not much that was that was spring of 2016 so yeah i cannot imagine how much work this was. Two and a half years. Because that was the first thing we started to try to collect because we realized it would be hard and we were uniquely suited to make the book because we wanted to start collecting processing photos. And collect processing photos of things that people wouldn't, weren't going to be likely to be able to go and get all of a sudden.

So we have processing photos in the book of like how to process, how to cut up and process things ranging from wild pig, white-tailed deer, mahi-m mahi crabs turtle turtle beaver we had pictures of the beaver but it didn't make it no but the beaver tail recipe is in there yeah frogs how to process for i mean yeah i'm not even kind of like scratching the surface yeah how to process clean and process bullfrogs how to clean and. Yeah, how to clean and process bullfrogs. How to clean and process squirrels. How to clean and process rabbits. A thousand ways to cut game birds, meaning how to spatchcock birds,

how to cut them in half, breast them, plucking them, skinless, boneless, breasts. All of this information is in the book. Hand that book over here, Matt. You're just admiring the beautiful pictures. Oh, man, I love it. That's definitely what everybody does the first time they open it and skim through it. Everybody just sort of looks at the pictures and skims over the words. So we start with collecting all these processing photos.

And in the meantime, like Dirt Myth has tons of photographs in here because he took a lot of what what we in in the working on it we would call them the lifestylers so there's a lot of like lifestyler pictures in here another section that we put in here um in everything so like earlier when i mentioned how it's laid out where it's laid out into these chapters where it goes big game small game waterfowl upland birds freshwater fish saltwater fish reptiles and amphibians shellfish and crustaceans and there's like an extra thing called basic and not so basic sauces sides sauces sides and accompaniments and each chapter is broken out with like an introduction of what's going on and kind of

gives like general thoughts about the thing all kinds of beautiful pictures and then we have this section that we worked on a fair bit called the nature of the beast and what i try to capture in the book and explain to people is that i don't generally think that well let me put this way sometimes like Sometimes you'll go online, we'll put up a thing where it's like a recipe for an elk heart. And someone will say, oh, do you have a recipe for a moose heart? And kind of an operating thesis in this wild game book is that the species of the animal that we're talking about, when it comes to say horned and antlered game

that the species of the animal does not matter as much as the cut did we talk about this on a recent podcast episode yanni i'm i don't know about recent i'm sure that we've covered it at some point but meaning a shank recipe when it comes to horned and antlered game, say, and in the case of shanks, also black bears and wild pigs, that a shank recipe is a shank recipe. It doesn't matter if you have a shank from an antelope, a mule deer, a whitetail, it just doesn't matter. It's like cooking shank is cooking shank. So I try to get away from these like cookbooks, these wild game cookbooks, and I own many that break it out we're like here's the antelope recipes here's the whitetail recipes here's the mule deer elk recipes

because it's just like this is a much better way to approach wild game however there are like exceptions and so each chapter has this section called the nature of the beast where it's kind of like tasting notes on all the different varieties sort of like general best practices and guidelines so for the big game nature of the beast it's sort of like a general breakdown like what are what are american pronghorn or antelope like like what are they known for what are some of the things you can expect from the meat on them same with black bear caribou elk moose m moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, wild pigs. Like generally what are best practices for handling them and what are the exceptions? And what it's meant to be is it's meant to serve as a thing to help guide you through substitutions. If you live in the Eastern US and you only hunt white-tails, you might be like, well,

that doesn't do me any good because I'm just dealing with white-tails anyways. But keep in mind that we do the same thing, the same nature of the beast thing for freshwater fish, where we talk about all of your varieties of freshwater fish, your panfish, the different bass species, northerns, pickerel, smelt, salmon, trout, you name it. All of the guidelines on best practices for handling the fish and how to figure out substitutions. So when you're on something and you're looking, this guy's got like, oh, here's a great walleye recipe. He's like, well, I don't fish walleye.

How do you make sense of the fish that you do have in order to be able to use them in generally cooking and using substitutions? Because I think that in wild game cooking, it's like really important to get away from this idea that there is such a thing as a walleye recipe. There's really not. I would say that there's a recipe for mild white flaky freshwater fish for sure and so how to like help you make sense of that um gambrel skinning so how to skin an animal on a gambrel

how to do it on the ground so like a detailed piece about how to go ahead and like break down big giant animals laying on the ground. And then we put all these other kind of like little micro sections in here where we have a thing about the big buck myth. So there's a lot of like, even wild game cooks always push this idea

that it's like young animals are really good to eat and big bucks are no good to eat. So we kind of like put that to test and talk a little bit about that. we have sections on evidence of sex requirements sections on what want and waste means sections on chronic waste and disease how to completely bone out um you know how to how to tabletop bone out a whitetail deer and what cuts you want to wind up with so when you're working on your whitetail deer and you want to plan out where you have a variety of meals you can eat throughout the year,

how to cut your whitetail deer up. What you should do, like different ways of approaching the front legs, boning them out for burger, using them, cutting it for ossobuco, cutting it for blade roasts, on and on. Jump in here, Jan, if you need to. Ribs, whole ribs, not whole ribs.

Boning out the leg. I was going to say uh, and I'm sure most cookbooks do this. Most authors of cookbooks do this, but I was impressed with how, uh, Krista, how do you say your last name? Krista Ruane. Ruane. Um, who put more, who put more oomph into this book than anybody else. Yes. Yeah. We definitely owe her a lot of credit.

But she made sure that every recipe in there was not only checked and vetted, but probably three, four, sometimes six times over by professional chefs and sometimes by two and three professional chefs. And then she would say you know what yanni i'm not quite 100 on you know that tea smoked duck breast recipe which so far is like one of my favorites it was a real eye-opener for me because i got to try it because she asked me to try it to make sure the timing was right to get it to the temp and if you've never tried it it's smoked but it's something you just do at home with like, you basically like make your own

mini smoker with, by just lining a pan with aluminum foil and putting a lid on it. Sweet recipe. And, uh, I, I tried it and I was like, yeah, it was spot on, you know, whatever it was, eight or 10 minutes of smoking and it was spot on so um i was just impressed how much emphasis she put into that to really vetting the recipes and making sure that they were just like super dialed in yeah we knew i've known krista ruane for years because the the production company 0.0 production has always produced meat eater the tv show um well yeah they like like yanni's the producer of the show we work on it i work on writing hosting conceptualizing yanni conceptualizing and producing but the the company that's done on there and handles

all the post-production things is 0.0 production. And Krista does other stuff with them because they do a lot of food content. And Krista is, oversaw the creation of the book and took a lot of like, and you know, she's worked for quite a number of famous, you know, celebrity chefs and other,

you know, high-end restaurant chefs and took a lot of those best practices to make sure. And so we ran it through where she has a team of recipe testers that we would run all the stuff through. And she was also really good about making sure that in going through it, that we had recipes that accounted for everything. So we have like how to make scotch eggs from the big game section, how to make scotch eggs, the big game section how to make scotch eggs different ways of handling liver ways to handle marrow bones ways to handle raw venison uh tongue and then like general things like how to roast a hunk of meat to perfection is one of the recipes in here where it's like rather than just giving a recipe it's like how to do a like a technique for how to do like a technique for how to make perfect roasts all the time.

And then loin. Then we make sure to have like particular things. So like wild hog dishes. And then a bunch of bulk wild game sausages. And a pictorial explanation of how to stuff and make your own sausages. How to do burger, like general best practices on how to handle big game burger when it comes to cutting with fat or not and how to go about doing all that by yourself um all kinds of preparations for ground meat ways of making pick meat for tacos how to handle bone

in ribs off antlered big game more recipes on how to cook shanks and asabuco how to can meat yanni you did that one i did a bunch of jerky stuff a bunch of jerky stuff uh i came out uh out of that no feeling like that raw packed is the way to go yeah raw packed candy when i was a little boy when you canned meat you always browned it first it just seems like the the logical thing to do yeah putting a bunch of raw meat into a glass jar and then sticking it into a pressure cooker doesn't seem like logical thing to do but when you do both of them side by side you end up with a better product by doing it that way. The thing that you found when you were working on it that I thought was interesting is when you brown it, it firms.

Yeah. It firms up, and so it doesn't pack as tight. Right. But my mom canned a lot of venison, man. And yeah, you brown in the cubes, and they firm up, and then you wind up with a lot of air air space and you got to top it with liquid. But when you wet pack, it's just meat. And I realized, I think that you're like, by doing the browning, a lot of that flavor was being left in the pan and the juices were being left in the pan and maybe evaporating where when you just put the raw into the can, it can't go anywhere.

It catches it all. it's all in there we had when i was a kid we had a my mom had a canning room it was like the laundry room but the hallway that led to the laundry room was called the canning room and my dad had built wooden shelves and it was lined with canned venison and all the stuff that came out of our garden and my mom would go to the farmer's market and can all that. And it was like you're walking down a corridor of canning jars. That was old day stuff, man. I used to think it was cool. Another thing that people will like about the book is if you watch meat eater,

the TV show, there's certain recipes that really hit us hard. Like for instance, we did a hog trapping episode down in Texas. In the end we ended the show we took our pigs to a guy that processes wild hogs clayton saunders was his name in divine texas and he made the best wild pig shoulder i've ever had in my life and had like that special sop that he learned from someone was it his daddy taught him how to make the sop or some crazy thing like that i can't remember but i use it all the time that sop is good stuff and then when you're done sopping with it you just add a little more ketchup and reduce it a little bit and it makes the finest barbecue sauce oh

really yeah so there are certain recipes in here that you might know from the show that we went and dialed in and tested and make sure they got it right. And those recipes are in here. Like that's called the South Texas wild hog shoulder. And then there's how to smoke. Finally, like, and this is one of the ones that took a lot of testing to get it where it would work for anyone, is how to take a whole deer leg. So you kill a white tail, take its back leg,

how to brine and smoke a whole deer leg. And I think that we eventually hit on probably a pretty fail-safe way of doing it. The key being you need to brine it way longer than you think you do. But it was one we did and did and did and finally got where I am, like, very confident that any Joe Schmo. Well, yeah, last time we did it was that sick call. Even Rich Pounder. where I am very confident that any Joe Schmoe, even Ridge Pounder, not even Candlelit.

You're not going to get a gray deer leg. But when we did it with that Sikandir recently, it came out perfect. I think it's dialed now. So now here, take for instance here. I wish I had one of those numbers. Call now. Anywhere books are sold. You can go on Amazon right now and pre-order.

Press pause right now and go on Amazon. And then you can just go, once you get it done, just go about your day. Turn off the, go listen to something else. But I'm just kidding. So bear with me. So we open up, I open up the small game section and we have our nature of the beast stuff. So we talk all about the different kinds of squirrels,

gray squirrels, fox squirrels, pine squirrels, right? Black phase, gray phase, explain all that. Get into rabbits. We talk about Eastern cottontails, swamp rabbits, mountain cottontails, snowshoe hares, jack rabbits. What's all up with those? Then the aquatic rodent section. So like tasting notes on muskrats, beavers, tasting notes on the rogue outliers like raccoon, porcupine, possum.

And then get into different ways of skinning. So like pants and legs or shirts and pants method of skinning for cottontails. Yanni has a beautiful demonstration of how to tail skin. Turned out really nice. Tail skin in squirrels. Yeah, gray squirrel. Done very well. You can get a good look

at the Latvian power ring in this section. Doug Dern and I went out and shot that squirrel together. Mm-hmm. How to part out, like best practices on parting out rabbits and squirrels into serving size portions. And then how to part out, like best practices on parting out rabbits and squirrels

into serving size portions, and then how to make buffalo wild wings or buffalo hot wings, which we call them here buffalo hot legs, how to take squirrel and rabbit and make a thinking man's wild wing, hot wing. What do you call them? People call them different. Hot wings. Hot wings.

That's a great photograph for that one too. Oh, dude, yeah. On the tray. Yeah. yeah that was one of my favorite the old school lunch tray yeah the lunch tray you got your blue cheese you got your celery sticks your carrot sticks you got a can of soda pop a big plate of squirrel hot legs buffalo hot legs i think it's a can of beer oh it's beer yeah probably like a single hop ipa i'm thinking um yeah so how to make inside joke matt inside joke how to make buffalo wings with squirrel and rabbit and it is like like i think that is a great have you had it mark i'm intrigued can i make you some this week i would love it we already got three squirrels i know it um i will make you some of that.

Sounds really good. Here's one that you might like the pictures for, even though a lot of guys aren't likely to make it, is how to fire roast a beaver tail and kind of the story of how that came to be a thing from the mountain man era. How to roast beaver tail and get the fat out of it. There's another thing.

If you watch the Meteor TV show and we go down and do a small game episode with Kevin Murphy, we have Kevin Murphy's recipe in Kevin Murphy's word, Kentucky style squirrel gravery with cat head biscuits straight from Kevin Murphy. All about how to make cat head biscuits. Then you go into rabbit curry, gumbo, barbecue smoked smoked beaver sandwiches rabbit or squirrel and creamy mustard sauce cacciatore then we go into waterfowl and we get the same thing we got the tasting notes and then the different processing things so all explaining all about like dabbling ducks how to handle and think about teal wood ducks mallards pintails black ducks widgeon gadwalls shovelers how to think about your divers, where you got your kind of high-end divers like canvasbacks,

redheads, ringneck ducks, and scop, scoters. Then you got your lower-end divers like buffleheads and golden eyes. Then you got your low, low-end mergansers. Like what can you do with these things? How best to handle them to wind up with passable stuff? Then all kinds of thoughts on geese, Canada geese, whitefronts, snows, cranes, like what these different things mean. A big breakdown on how to use all manner of guts from everything you hunt. With a big section on bird giblets. So how to do gizzards hearts livers from all your waterfowl and upland game birds how to clean your gizzards out how to detend and like if you're ever eating a duck and you wind up with how the back legs have so many tendons almost makes it like not worthwhile

oh there's laughing powering there yanni demonstrated that how to how to cut a duck's leg and pull the foot so you pull all the tendons out of the back leg and you wind up with a much better product. How to burn off pin hairs with a blowtorch when you're doing it. My special way of cutting mallard ducks where you wind up with a boneless breast and bone-in thigh and drumstick, which is a genius way of doing it. Handling geese. How to make a waterfowl liver pate skewered and grilled duck hearts which can be substituted with turkey hearts goose hearts and explanations all that kind of stuff duck nachos wild goose pastrami soy sauce duck ginger scallion oil tea smoke duck braised

waterfowl seared goose how to make duck raviolis should i go on but you're just making me really hungry it is dinner time we haven't eaten dinner yet and this is really getting my tummy rumbling yeah that's all like i said i told you up front it was the worst episode of the podcast ever but it's one i just had to do because i just want people to know about the fact that we put a lot of work and a lot of time and tons of people worked on it. And it's like the, I feel that it is the, it's like the magnum opus, man. It's like the great compendium of wild game cooking. Ultimate stocking stuffer. Big stocking. Combined with berry white and a bottle of wine

i'm telling you you'll smell like hot cakes yeah and i and i was just doing that really annoying run through of what's in there but i didn't even begin to scratch the surface because we hadn't got in all the fishing parts and hadn't gotten into a lot of the hunting parts do you envision that maybe a hundred years from now, someone might come upon this old cookbook and look at it and be inspired to go out and try to find all the ingredients necessary to recreate these recipes? It'd be such a great story. Write a book called Scavenger's Guide. Yeah. Could that possibly happen?

Dude, that would be like if in a hundred years someone wanted to make a movie, it would be a great movie. It would? Yeah, that someone would do with that what I did with the Skofie. You really need to buy three copies. One is the present, and then you really need to have two for yourself because it is coffee table worthy. You've all flipped through it. Do you guys agree?

Oh, yeah, man. It's totally worthy of just having a clean coffee table copy to flip through as you're having some coffee or beer. And then have your dirty copy. And then, yeah, the one that's going to go right next to the Joy of Cooking in the pantry. Get all scuffed up, dirty, covered in blood and grease. It's a big hardcover book with a dust jacket. And on the front is a really beautiful picture of game ribs and a moose antler. That's all, man.

It's like a lot of times at the end of these shows, I'll talk about how you can really do us a good turn or do us a real solid by going on to the Apple Store and clicking the rightmost star to give us a five-star rating. I'll talk about that kind of stuff. Or to go to TheMeatEater.com and get our newsletter, which is very helpful to me if people go and do that. But this is the greatest favor I could ever ask of listeners of the show

is you go and order the cookbook now. That's all, man. You got any concluding thoughts, Giannis? Do you think we're screwing people by having an episode like this? No, not at all. Because I've been paying attention to the old time, the clock

here, and I feel like they got a very entertaining 40 minutes before you ever even jumped in to selling the cookbook. So we did them right. Oh, yeah. In 140 some episodes, there's one episode minutes before you ever even jumped in to selling the cookbook so we did them right oh yeah in 140 some episodes there's one episode that's all about people just need to do me a huge favor so if you do one in 140 that's not that bad not that bad at all no if you're gonna complain about this one then you just you're like the worst kind of freeloader out there that's right uh i do it's

kind of a concluding thought, but I really want to tell you, lest people think that I'm just really not doing my job, I want to tell you about why rabbits eat their own feces. Oh, yeah. This is straight from, this is written recently by an intern at the McGill Office for Science and Society.

Rabbits are foraging herbivores, eating mostly grass and weeds. But this fibrous, cellulose-rich diet isn't the easiest to digest. And by the time dinner is made through their intestines, it still contains many of the nutrients rabbits need. Rabbits and hares beat this problem with a special kind of digestion called hindgut fermentation. In short, they eat their own poop and digest it a second time.

They actually make two different kinds of droppings, little black round ones, which is probably the ones we're most often seeing, and then a softer black one known as secotropes that are eaten. And this process is known as, you said it that are eaten. This process is known as you said it earlier. Say it again.

Something fadgy. Copper fadgy. It functions the same as cows or elk deer chewing their cud. It's not only as important because they're getting that second harvest. If you remember that joke, but it keeps their digestive system flowing smoothly.

So they have to do it. I used to know a good joke about a man who was made to eat another man's feces. And I always liked the punchline. The punchline was, I had lunch with him two weeks ago Monday. Mark, you got any concluding thoughts? Buy the book. And not to ask too much, but if you like it, I imagine you'd appreciate a review on Amazon.

Yeah, that or buy two. Or buy two. Mark Henning from Wired to Hunt, thanks for joining us. You didn't get to lay a whole lot of whitetail wisdom on us. No, hopefully we'll have another chance to do that. I'm hoping we have another chance. So we got some whitetail adventures today. And we'll have more tomorrow and the next day. Yanni had what he called his number one best day of deer hunting ever today.

We should tease that. Listen to a future episode to find out what happened. Ridge Pounder. Buy the book, man. That's it? Just buy it. Buy a couple copies. Do you think they should do it just because I'm begging?

No. Is it that? No, they should do it because if they actually are into any of this stuff, it'll be a game changer 100 i do think it would be different if you spent a whole podcast talking about why they should buy the book but the book was actually lousy then you could say all right this is pretty rough but the fact that you're doing them a favor by telling them about the best wild game cookbook out there you know what i'm gonna do it's too late for anyone to be helpful, but I'm going to call this episode Begging and Pleading

so that people don't get the wrong impression about what the episode is. Yeah. But then they won't. No, it'll be helpful still. Or you could call it Doing You a Favor. No, I think I'm going to call it that. Yeah, you know what? I like that better.

I'm going to call it Doing You a Favor. There you go. It's a good idea, Mark. I was going to call it Begging and Ple there you go good idea mark i was gonna call it begging and pleading which is so pathetic yeah you gotta come from a position of strength steve seth morris thanksgiving's coming oh yeah hadn't talked about thanksgiving there's a shitload of recipes in there that would be fitting oh dude do you mind good take it away. Okay. My brother knows a chef, and the chef, it's a long story.

My brother hangs out with a chef who doesn't hunt, but my brother would present him with wild turkeys. And the chef, over time, to my brother's estimation, perfected the art of making a Thanksgiving turkey with a wild turkey, which is no mean task, no small task. Yeah, no, that's not easy. He perfected it where my brother says it is not just the best wild turkey,

but the best turkey that exists is cooked by this man named Shannon. And he allowed us to use his recipe. So this is the first time it's ever been printed. Wow. And worked with us to go through the process, and then we beautifully photographed this thing. But this man's creation of the perfect whole roasted wild turkey.

It's in there. In there. That's one reason alone just to buy the damn thing so go on thanksgiving thanksgiving's coming christmas is coming valentine's valentine's memorial day you know memorial day and if if you don't even like to cook at all but you like appreciate really fine photography just buy the damn book. Or if you shoot deer and bring them to a food bank, you should bring that book down to the food bank too and drop it off. It's okay. Donate the book.

Buy the book and donate it to the food bank. Matt, concluding thought? Yeah. First of all, I don't think this podcast has been a commercial. I think it's reinforcing people's passion for everything that you guys are about. God, this guy's good. Reinforcing your passion.

Thanks, man. Thank you. All right, guys. Thank you for bearing with me as I present to you the Meat Eater Fish and Game Cookbook Recipes and Techniques

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