The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 153: Viva Mexico, Bro

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Mark Kenyon, Ryan Callaghan, Chris Gill, Rick Smith, and Janis Putelis. Subjects Discussed: Why we throw apple cores; dating apps, poaching, and a suitable mate from the MeatEater crew; lurking; interesting things about bucks; Janis’s days as a big game guide; hunting the US border; the patience and focus of Coues deer; Mark's classic Coues deer hunt; venison tamales; a pint jar full of ticks; getting game across the US-Mexico border; the Mexican bush monkey and other bonus critters; 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, underwear-less. We put the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. We put the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Chris, do you mind revisiting a conversation we had real quick?

Not at all. Rich Pounder and I were wondering, if you're eating an apple in the woods, you stop for a moment and you eat an apple. You finish your apple. Why do you throw it? Why do you throw the core? Instead of just dropping it. Why do you want it?

You're not going to be there my theory was because well i think about it like i can't do that in my house you have to take it over to the trash can you take the trash you got to open it and delicately place it in but when you're outside you can just huck it yeah and it feels good but if you were standing where like let's say you're eating an apple, and you finish it, and you huck it where it lands. If you had eaten the apple where it landed, you'd huck it somewhere else. Yeah. You just huck it away from wherever you're at at the time. I'm going to stop doing it, though.

I'm going to start when I finish the apple. I'm setting that. But you tried it, and you didn't like the trash being near you. Yeah, I tried just setting, just dropping the apple core, since I'm not staying there anyway. Yeah. Just drop the apple core. But no, something about your body wants to curl, huck.

I want to make a throwing motion right now, and I am not even eating an apple. People like throwing shit. They do. Certain kinds of things. Yeah. I think it's the core is visually unpleasant. You don't want that sitting next to you.

I think that's why we throw. Really? It might attract insects, animals. No, that's not why you throw a core. Well, I mean, you're saying you don't know exactly why, but it might be that's not why you throw a core. Well, I mean, you're saying you don't know exactly why, but it might be like... Oh, in your deep down. Yeah.

Well, in your deep down, you're... Is that a part of you, your deep down? Yeah, you should do that. If I told you I was going to grab your deep down. Don't they call it like the mammalian brain? Yeah, like how little kids come pre-wired to fear snakes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we're pre-wired to fear snakes yeah yeah and we're pre-wired to distribute apple seeds yeah just like a bird uh interesting i'm comfortable moving on

is everybody good yeah we're good uh you know what's funny I'll point out. What God is talking about at Apple Corps, Huckin, was not at Apple Corps. It's damn banana peel. Mm-hmm. Because you don't want to slip. No. You just don't want that thing around you. You want a clean little space.

Has anyone that you know ever slipped on a banana peel? Do we know anyone here who's actually done that? You know, I feel like maybe we had a good laugh about someone once slipping on a banana peel. The writer Chris Offit once said to me, he didn't make this up, but talked about someone having one foot out the door and one on a banana peel or something like that. But no, I haven't.

Maybe I... Where did that start? Is that like a cartoon visualization that is now seeped into like all of our i believe yeah it's the kind of thing that you know from its representation rather than its individual reality yeah uh great story we heard there and i and i think we can all put it together right uh and then we're gonna get into some a couple listener issues before we get down to talking about what we're here to talk about so a mug we were having dinner with the other night dude what's his name's hunter and he he

kind of defies my old thing that if you have a kid and you want him to hunt you're like well i'll name him hunter and he'll become a hunter and i've seen that backfire a lot but not on this dude what was this dude's name yanni hunter uh meekum i think it's meekum or meechum he guides for jay scott and dar colburn and he's a lion man he's a houndsman comes from a long line of houndsmen comes from a long line of famous houndsmen who have a long line of famous hounds in utah i believe yep they hunt utah and his father and his uncle and his family does a lot of also helps out with a lot of research projects involving lions he's telling a story about his uncle goes up, climbs up in a tree to tranquilize a mountain lion with a tranq gun and takes

a poke with the gun and misses. So I don't know if you can say blouch when it's a tranquilizer, but he shoots and misses the lion. So rather than, and now he's got to reload the tranquilizer gun. So he lowers the tranquilizer gun down on a rope to some kind of college kid who's helping out on this project. And the college kid, he made a big point to point out that it was a college kid,

reloads the tranquilizer gun and ties it through the ties it through the trigger the trigger guard ties it to the trigger guard so that once he starts hoisting the tranquilizer gun back up oh no yeah blouch hits him with the tranquilizer dart oh man and he's out his dad this hunter's dad packed his brother down off the on a on a mule tied to a mule packed him down he was out for 16 hours whoa and they had to keep him up and keep his tongue like keep him positioned so his tongue wouldn't fall back in his head which is exactly what they do with the lion yeah so they knew what to do could have very easily killed him wow

tranked yeah that'd be a good name for that movie. Tranked. Wow. This has happened recently. Game Warden from Oklahoma gets to chit-chatting on Bumble. How many of you guys use Bumble or have used Bumble? I have. So Ridge Pounders use Bumble. Yeah.

Oak El, you've used Bumble. Yep. Yeah. Oak Hill. Yep. You've used Bumble. Yep. Kenyon, you got no business on there. No. Is that a hunting app? Yep.

Sure is, Yanni. Yanni's got no business on there. And Rick, you've used Bumble, a dating app. So Game Warren is chatting up a woman on Bumble, like fixing to date her. And she mentions that she's doing good because she just shot a huge buck. He gets to asking her some questions about it and gets suspicious and doesn't do it as a date

but goes over there to do a little investigation and sure enough she poached a buck. Busted her while trying to romance her on Bumble. That's amazing. There's life in Oklahomaoma what's the moral of that story don't poach don't date that's gonna be don't date rick before the show i was asking you real quick um like you got to decide right now, man. Do you want a plug? I really hope you do. You do. No, but I appreciate that you are looking out for me.

Yeah. Our friend Rick here, grade A photographer, drone pilot, we just found out also. Grade A photographer, drone pilot. You don't want to mention that. These are not positives. In the dating world? in the dating world in the dating world no women if you you're like a oh he's like a nature documentary photographer but that would be appealing to women here's the issue though if you're into essential oils do not call rick yeah if you like multivitamins do not call

yeah because here's a weird deal about here's a weird deal if you're if one was going to date rick is like you could picture that rick might lure in he might lure in people who had habits that rick is against because he wants to fix them well like he's very suspicious of vitamins he's very suspicious of vitamins. He's very suspicious of essential oils. Skeptic overall. He's a skeptic, but you could also see that ladies would be drawn to Rick who might have a crystal and some essential oils. I'm not against that. I mean, I'm really not. So those people can contact you as well.

Yeah. I don't judge. He won't want to write anything off man you're not in the market you're not in the market you're not out of the market i'm definitely not out of the market i'm in the market he's here he's lurking outside of the market i'm like it's the color it's not a good lurking outside yeah no lurking lurks not good yeah when you're trying to get a choice when you're trying to get women to find a guy who don't use lurking, that's right. He's hovering? No.

I don't know. He's pathetically? No. I thought this was a hunting podcast. Oh, we're getting to that, Rick. This is hunting. We're getting to that. Speaking of lurking, I hope you're going to mention the little buck from your house.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good story. yeah that's a good story can you keep that in mind I'm working down through my notes here got a couple things about bucks did you finish pitching Rick oh Rick he's too bashful how do they find you so we have a lot of female listeners

they want to find you you know they're like dying they're dying to date you instagram i feel like that's the way people find each other these is rick smith media yeah rick smith media slipping no not slipping how do they say it sliding on rick's dms oh yeah this oh you're pretty much you're a millennial are you yeah the velvety tone he's right on the edge right how old are you i don't have no idea 1978 yeah yeah that's not millennial that's pre-millennial got an email that contained the saddest line of all sad lines and i've been thinking about this for a couple days now a woman wrote in a letter and her letter contained the line i'm a woman and i'm gay and so it's hard for me to find people

to hunt with which i feel like going hunting with her now saddest thing i've ever heard um not an email uh so is she saying like the one compounds the other which she's laying she's like i'm a woman i'm just super hard i'm a woman and i'm gay and so it's hard for me to find people to hunt with huh that is a bummer guy wrote in we're talking about santa claus being a great a hole because uh you know moving around captive cervids all over the place spreading disease guy wrote in about that i that's not my idea but he says man there should be a lot more scrutiny on santa because he's gonna like imagine the disease vector that guy's got going on with his captive deer going to every house every christian household in the world with his herd of deer spreading lord knows what around this guy says if you're really going

to hack on santa think about it like this he says it's my understanding that deer can't see red so the only way if all the other deer were so mean to rudolph the only way they would have known is if santa told him that his nose was different i think his nose is bigger so santa's like bullying santa's like you guys can't see it because you can't see red you can't see that wavelength to check it out i can see it and that reindeer is way different and y'all should be mean to him it's a very good point it's an interesting observation uh another thing on deer real quick ryan qdma fear fear he has something interesting to say. Talking about antler restrictions. So he says, prior to 2002, do you know this, Kenyon? I couldn't tell you the numbers right off the top of my head,

but I'm aware of the general trend you're going to tell me about. Do you mind explaining what an antler restriction is? An antler point restriction would be a regulation put in place by a state requiring a certain number of antler points on a deer's antler for you to be able to legally shoot it. So in Pennsylvania, I think in most parts of the state, they put an APR for short. They put an APR in place of four points on a side for a buck to be legal.

Oh, man. That's a steep antler restriction. He's got to be a Michigan 8. Yeah, and not from Pennsylvania. So there might have been a part of the state that was a 3.01 side. got to be a michigan eight yeah and and i i'm not from pennsylvania so there might have been a part of the state there was a three point on one side part of the state was four point on one side that might be the case um but i believe the seth sickly seth is uh too sick to even have a headphone on but most states three on one side some of the states four on the one side okay so i've got an uncle who hunts in the four on the side part which is why i know the story but it was with a stated goal of trying to help more

one and a half year old bucks make it to an older age class yeah he he wrote in because we're having this conversation where i was saying i don't have any data to support this but i was saying man like all the damn bucks when i was a kid were a year and a half old i mean virtually all of them you mean all the bucks taken yeah it's like everybody he shot bucks and they were all the same spikes forks little sixers right just little like not you know they're a year and a half old bucks it was a real rarity like i remember when the old man shot a buck that was not it was like a giant in our mind. But he was saying he didn't have any statistics at his fingertips for Michigan.

But he's saying prior to 2002, when Pennsylvania introduced mandatory antler restrictions, there, 90% of the bucks harvested were one and a half years old. So for you folks that aren't quick at math, nine out of the bucks harvested were one and a half years old. So for you folks that aren't quick at math, nine out of 10 bucks were only a year and a half old. Of that 90%, 80% of those were killed on opening day of gun season. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. that's pretty amazing yeah i'm gonna let that sink in for a minute then he goes on to say this he says in a nutshell the biggest part of our annual buck harvest

you know we killed all of our bucks basically in two days of the season 90 of those were one and a half years old. At the time, there were about 1.2 million licensed hunters in Pennsylvania. That trend, he says, was the norm in those days. In 2015 was the first time in our nation's hunting history. So we're outside of Pennsylvania now. 2015 was the first time in our nation's hunting history that we saw that trend change as a nation of hunters we harvested more three and a half year olds than one and a half year olds in 2015 does that surprise you mark kenyon wired to hunt it doesn't i've been following that trend for for probably a decade now and it's been moving that

direction more and more and and i just got the data here from this year, looking back at the most recent data. So that would have been from the 2017-18 season would be the most recent data. And that shows that still we're at the lowest, record lowest harvest levels for year-and-a-half-olds nationally still. So in Pennsylvania, you mentioned 90%,

nine out of ten bucks killed a year and a half old now nationally only 35 percent of bucks harvested are a year and a half old nationwide yeah so pretty interesting and 34 percent were three or older three and a half or older somebody tell me what's going on i'll tell you what's going on rick people used to shoot a lot of dinkers now they're shooting biggins yeah but but the why oh i understand the i didn't need a recap i needed some analysis i needed to recap bridge you up to speed now i'm up to speed i that that happened. I don't know about move on. Rick's got a good question. Mark, tell them what happened.

Well, there's a little bit of an egg and chicken kind of thing here, but probably the biggest thing going on here is there's been change in culture around whitetail deer hunting in that a lot of hunters started to to see and learn and hear about the benefits of letting young deer reach older age older age classes and a lot of that is to um to the credit of of ryan's employer the quality management association who's done a pretty cool job of talking about a lot of different things that we can do as deer hunters and managers to try to you know manage for a more natural balanced deer herd of course though to steve's point that he makes sometimes which is true hunters we get a kick out of big deer too so a lot of people realize that hey if i can make decisions that help the deer herd and help me see and maybe kill some bigger

bucks that's like a fun beneficial thing to do so a lot more people saw those benefits and started passing on younger deer and they started doing things to improve the habitat that might help deer get bigger um and a slew of other things over the years that the last 10-15 years have really changed the landscape when it comes to deer across america so yeah there's a lot more older deer and a lot more deer that are bigger too dude wrote in you good ricky cool yeah i mean yeah is that satisfied yeah i could ask some questions please well i mean i just don't know i have any idea but as the deer get older does that change the like what is that how is that affecting the population area or herds?

How does it benefit? Can we put that off to a future episode? Yeah. We're going to focus on that in a future episode. Okay, cool. Is that okay with you, Giannis? I'll tell you when it comes out. The only way I learn about hunting

is by listening to the podcast. Everyone good? Johnny you good so far? I am guy says he's got a real beef with me he says that he says I got coyote cooking all wrong he says he's saying that

he saw me cook a coyote where we roasted it with the skin on. And he said, that's a sure way to ruin any game animal. That would make even squirrel taste awful. This is him talking. Then he goes on to say, I very much enjoy coyote meat and prefer to chunk it up and fry it, dust it in flour. It tastes like a mild combination of lamb and pork and is a great way to add variety to the dinner table i would love to see you guys give it another try with the care the meat deserves that's good that's fine but i have contrary to this man's opinion i have had a

wonderful squirrel cooked where you burn the hair off of the squirrel and then and then roasted with its skin. If you read about the Plains tribes, they would cook domestic dog that way by burning all the hair off and roasting it in the skin. I've had wild pork, wild pig, by burning all the hair off and roasting it in the skin and that was delectable as for coyote being good how many of you guys have had coyote

Cal? Nope I haven't. Nope John you've had a little nibble. A little nibble one last one. We should go kill some though because I want to try Bendrix's recipe too you think we should give it a try? Oh yeah I haven't touched one since I ate my last one. We should go kill some, though, because I want to try Bendrix's recipe, too. You think we should give it a try? Oh, yeah.

I haven't touched one since I ate my last one. A guy wrote in. He had hunted in Bolivia. He was down hunting with some indigenous people in Bolivia, and he was marveling how they, two things. They went out to hunt tapir, and they had a 16 gauge shell and they cut it open and put some kind of own their own little they cut it open and took the shot out and made their own little slug somehow and put it in there and use it to kill a tape here and he said that they quartered

it with the skin on salted it like crazy but it reminded me a thing about like this talk about shotguns remind me of thing i was with some guys in south america that had a 16 gauge shotgun but their only ammo was 12 gauge shotgun shells so they were going out night hunting, and they would take their, cut open their 12-gauge shell and cut open their 16. No, let me back up. Yeah. They had a 16-gauge shotgun and a bunch of spent shells. Yeah. And they had a box of good 12- shells so they laid out some leaves like bowl shaped leaves cut the 12 gauge shell

open dumped the shot into a leaf pulled the wad out poured the powder out knocked the primer out of the 12-gauge shell, put the primer into the 16-gauge shell, poured the powder in there, took toilet paper and made a wadding and packed the wad down, poured the shot in, got a candle out and wax sealed the thing shut. And they'd get two or three of those made up, and then it was time to go hunting.

Wow. Yeah. And one night they'd go out, and they'd come back with a couple birds, and they had an aquatic rodent that they'd killed, and they didn't have enough, and so they went through this whole process and made one more shell,

and they went back out in their boat, and a while later came back and they were done hunting wow it's good stuff that is good stuff okay we got it good don't we where to begin tamales oh me gusta we're um we're just finishing up a hunt in sonora mexico um not far from you know a ways off not far from the u.s border you can see land features across the line in the u.s and it's kind of an auspicious time to be down here hunting because you know we're engaged in a great national debate about the ramifications and costs and merits of constructing a border wall so it's been funny to be down

flirting with the border and seeing the border and and and being down here hunting it's been like more i've come down here a number of times over the years to hunt and it's been more sort of uh i don't know the geopolitics around my mind now more than normal being down in mexico um coos deer but it felt just the same as years past the hunting the land well and the the whole uh travel and the process oh yeah no across the border no no problem no no i'm not suggesting that i'm not yeah i didn't mean to suggest that it was problematic in any way you weren't i was just adding that yeah not that it was problematic anyway but just like an interesting time right absolutely to come down and hunt and coos deer uh it's um coos deer also pronounced cows deer a kind of a weird dude with a real weird personal history elliot coos is the

guy whose name was applied to these deer and you'll hear him called desert white tails a little dinky 90 100 pound white tails that live in the mountainous desert in the sky island mountain chains some in new mexico a great many in arizona and then this is kind of like the good old days down here in mexico there's gotta be more coosier down here than in all of Arizona. Wouldn't you guess? Yeah. And all Sonora. Lots of coos deer. Lots of coos deer. So came down and we,

the way I've never hunted down here anyway, but this way that we've never hunted down here any way but this way. But we've never come down not with working with... Talk about Jay, how you used to work for him. My buddy Jay? Yeah, I used to work for him as a fishing guide. He was a client of mine. That's how we met. Yeah, I didn't realize that you guys met that way.

Floating down the old Eagle River. Mm-hmm. So you guided him fishing, and then you started guiding for him. Yeah, that's right. In Arizona, a little bit down here. In those big, famous elk units in Arizona. That's right. Good times.

Any you'd like to add about that? You're being awful curt. I had a lot of fun hanging out. When I see Dar down here, I always think back on those times and miss him because Dar and I used to guide together and have a lot of good laughs. So, yeah. No, I don't know what to add about it it was good um but yeah so jay i didn't had no idea how time flies but uh jay said uh this is his 21st year of doing this down

here really yeah jay scott has glassed up the last time I asked him this question how many mountain lions he's ever glassed up the last time I talked to him he was at 32 it's like he spends so much time glassing you know looking through his binos or spotting scopes his number now he's glassed up 43

so if you think you spend a lot of time out hunting add up how many mountain lions you've seen through your binos and then consider that this man has glassed up 43 mountain lions while looking for other junk yeah if you're a western hunter spend a lot of time on the glass this really wouldn't work for a dude that sits in tree stands for whitetail. No, you could wait a long time for a mountain lion to walk by. Yeah. But what Jay does, so Jay guides down.

Jay guides in Mexico. He guides elsewhere, too. But he guides in Mexico. And he guides for Gould's turkeys and guides for Coos deer, but also does, give him the spiel, Yanni. You'll do a better job of it. He basically does like a DIY program for guys that want to come down to Mexico and hunt coos deer.

And so he, the hunt itself is completely DIY, but he arranges the ranch and then helps with your paperwork for crossing your firearms across the border. And then kind of gives you, just kind of lays out the whole process of what it's going to take to cross the border, go in both directions. But he'll basically secure a ranch and secure deer tags for that ranch. And then you buy those through jay you know but the ranch provides them and then he basically uh helps you get your uh firearm permit for mexico and then gives you like a real clean rundown of like this is what you need if you're going to bring a vehicle across the border you need the insurance and a letter that says that you're the owner has

had the VIN number this that and the other and then gives you real clear directions and he also offers I think um like what we call fixers or like and translators like they can be at the border to meet you to help you through that process to get you to your ranch and once you're at the ranch you're on your own and it's like you're it's like you have you it's like having a chunk of national it's not national forest because very much privately owned land but it's like it's like you when you cross the border and come down in here not that far man it's like you've gone back like a hundred years back in time huge ranches. People still work cattle on horseback. It's great, man. I mean, I had a very different idea of how this trip was going to be when

I got the offer to jump on. And yeah, this whole situation is really fantastic. And the folks that we've had helping us out here at the Rancho are great. And it's just kind of like, it's nice watching and being around folks who are living simply. And, you know, kind of feel like a bum cause they're working, but, uh, you know, while we're tramping the Hills, but it's, it's just nice. It, uh, it's kind of, kind of relaxing. Oh yeah, man. Cut loose on like cut loose, wandering around like a giant chunk of property. Yeah. Got a bunch of deer hiding

out in the mountains in it. Yeah. And it's, it it's great too because it's not like you're not like walking down to some or not even walking in some cases you're not just like stepping out the door and looking at some center pivot that's fully irrigated and chuck chuck chucking away and there's deer living in there night and day and um you know i wouldn't mind having a spot or two like that well then you wouldn't see any of the ranch you know i mean this has been awesome because um you definitely got to do some exploring and checking out new stuff. It's been great. It's been great.

Man, it's funny. Back home hunting whitetails, when you talk about a property you can hunt, if I said I got a big property to hunt, that'd be like 150 acres, 200 acres. I'd be really excited about that. When you're talking about this kind of scale we have out here, like you said, it does feel like national forest. It's vast. It seems unending almost. Tens of thousands of acres.

Yeah. Completely undeveloped. You'd hike all day. Never cross the border. Yeah. Completely just like not developed. It's just different. It's wild.

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 a high-end 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 OnX out

if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. The way you hunt koozies, you get up this isn't the way it has to happen, but typically you get up on the

kind of the biggest, highest peaks around that you can find and you have to just watch the surrounding hillsides very very very carefully they're extremely hard to pick up the brush is tall and the animal is small and it uh like for me one thing uh that really struck me and something that i had to kind of like recalibrate my brain over and over again too was um was when when any animal stands out in the wide open you're kind of like oh yeah there he is and they seem like bigger than life but when they're in that brush these things are so small that um free handing my binoculars

and often many times throughout this hunt free handing my binoculars would be frustrating to the point where i thought it was pointless like i had to have them on on the tripod yeah because so many times i'd like looked at a deer and um the only reason that i caught it was because of the motion of the deer and that could be like the chin moving as it's chewing its cud like little white flashes from its chin moving or just an ear flicker or you know maybe in a generous way it'd be like a big white tail given a flap and so if your binoculars were moving at all you know at 1100 yards you're going to miss that little bit of motion it was just just amazing. I had a hard time

giving them the credit that they were due as far as their ability to disappear. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and then to compound on that, if you were to somehow, well, even if you had them on a tripod tripod if you bumped them or in any way left that singular focus on that little bit of movement you'd almost never find it again so if you handheld you're stuck yeah that's a good point because you're looking at like a sea of of brushy slopes yeah and then oftentimes you'll be sitting there with you with your buddies that you're hunting with and you'll be like oh got one and they'll be like where you're like i can't i don't i can't tell you i don't know i don't want i can't take my eyes off it to get the context and you can't you know that the minute you move

your eye to figure out where it is that your binoculars are centered on it in order to explain it that something's going to happen you're going to lose track of the deer yeah it's like the world's best game of where's waldo oh it's fun but it's like it's they just vanish yeah then you see him and oftentimes you like catch him and you never catch him again oh but he went into that never mind and you never see him again and we're hunting during the rut so you and yon even watched two deer make love yeah did that's the second time i've seen that happen this year i was commenting on the strong oral component

yes there was a lot of said love making a lot of before and after yeah okay that needs to be further defined oh really i don't want to define we got to go further down i know you don't it's a good family it's a family program uh there's two like there's two things and you know i've heard uh guys like big white tail guys talking to you mark you're kind of the main one I know. Talk about bucks being locked down. Yeah. A lockdown being that there's a period in the breeding cycle when you can't find any big bucks because the big

bucks are just standing there by a dome and not doing anything. They're just hanging out with the doe. And man, we saw two kinds of buck activity. Bucks that were just moving so fast and so much that it was like you couldn't go get them if you wanted them because they just come in and out of your life you know oh there he is you kind of work you watch him you lose him you watch me lose him you watch me lose him and pretty soon he's way the hell down the hill and he's gone and he's just

gone or he you catch a glimpse of him and he goes into some giant sea of brush and never comes back out and he's gone out of your life but then the ones we got no that's kind of that's not really true yeah two so the best opportunities were bucks that were that were so intensely intensely focused on a single dough that they would allow, we watched one today, that would go 20 minutes not moving his feet and not taking a bite to eat, but just stand there for 20 minutes

and watch a dough feed 10, 20 yards away from him. And all that's on his mind is standing there. They like to be a little higher. It seems like they like to be a little teeny bit higher than a doe and just stand there and stare at her. It was very familiar whitetail behavior in that regard. That seemed like something that makes sense you

saw some number of bucks cruising which was that first behavior you talked about just moving around trying to find that doe and then when a buck did have a doe sometimes several bucks all trying to be close to that doe but typically there's that one that is with a doe that's ready to breed you have that lockdown phenomena and and yeah i mean we all i think saw situations like that their patience is kind of amazing or whatever it is their focus especially when you get a look at the parasite load on these things yeah they have dozens of per i think if you looked at a patch of their hide, three inches by three inch,

there's 20 or so ticks. You look around the bald spot, just around their anus, the hairless patch around there, crawling with ticks. They have nasal bots living in the back of their throat. They can be the size of like the end of your pinky their forelegs are perforated with cactus thorns and all that and they can stand there staring at a lady i think we've all been there i don't know man that's a lot of stuff

yeah not necessarily ticks but we've all been focused on the price with Marcio's crabs you know that buck's thinking the exact same thing we're thinking when we're looking through the spotting scope or the binoculars he's like man if I take my eyes off of her I may never see her again

yeah he knows he's going to lose her. Yeah. It's kind of become one of my favorite types of hunting, those hunt coos deer. Man, I – Cow's deer. I loved every minute of it. I never had a moment where I was like, God, I hope I fill this tag.

I was always like, well, this goes on another day i'm all right with that you know yeah what i think happened with the with the buck you got the first time i've ever seen it happen with a coos deer i think is uh kind of like stumbling into a buck yes very much went up to a glass and knob and then found a buck. Yeah. And you know, it's extremely unique about that for me is, uh, I can count on one hand, the amount of times I've filled my tag before everybody else in camp has

filled their tag. Like I always, mostly by choice and the last person to fill my tag yeah it's kind of where i feel more comfortable i think mostly from growing up doing the guiding thing but steve had purposely walked away without his gun without his more binoculars and then we saw a bus. But I wasn't considering myself to be up anyway. Well, that doesn't matter. I mean, to me. No, I was thinking, in my mind, you were up.

It helped my decision making so, so much. Because you had your toiletry kit in your hand. I was going over to find a rock that i was going to flip over and then do some something then flip that rock back over on top of it and come back and check on y'all and i was just it it was like the perfect the perfect green light for me because i was like all right well this isn't even an argument at this point. Because my inclination would have been like, Steve, get your gun. No, I would have said no.

No, no, no, no, no. I can just attest to what an amazingly stealthy crew you get to run around with. Seven of us just waltzed. Yeah, Yanni. Right up to 200 yards. And they were able to film it all. It's hard using the hand signals all day and being nonverbal and all sneaky like that.

You spotted him too, didn't you? I remember as soon as we got up there, you were like, shh. Oh, the eagle. Why do you think we call him the eagle? up there you were like oh the eagle why do you think we call him the eagle dude you cannot mess with the eagle why do you think he gets to work here because he's the eagle

it's not because of his sass we don't keep him for his sass what about his shoulders yes the big beefy shoulders helps a lot his lack of verbosity right now push-up technique. The big, beefy shoulders helps a lot. His lack of verbosity

right now is not helping him. What's verbosity? How many words one uses? The eagle is the eagle, man. If you said he gave me a very verbose explanation, it would be like a little lengthy.

Lots there. Yeah, lots there. Lots there. A loquacious one. Oh, that's a good one, too. Yeah. Look at that. When he does strike, he strikes.

Yeah, man. It's kind of a sassy word. Now, with Mark's buck, we spotted up some bucks. So that was a non-trad coos deer kill. That was a non-trad coos deer kill. That was a non-trad coos deer kill. That was the first time I've seen that happen. It was the first time in the... I killed my buck last year that way.

No. Yeah. Last year. Last year. Oh, you still hunted. With John Snow and I. I forgot about last year. Yeah.

But I wasn't there. You weren't. So the ones I've been in on i've never seen it play out where um it's always played out where you see it far off and then have to do some things to get over and and get into get a crack at it the ones i've been in on, which is a good handful. It was the first one I've seen where we actually kind of came on, came upon one. Mark's was more classic. Who's your situation?

Yep. Spied him from about 1,000 yards. Mm-hmm. And then you had to work downhill and get you know 700-800 yards closer yeah first time I've ever done anything like that

because I think, I was telling Yanni I've never mule deer hunted, never coos deer hunted you know I've only ever bow hunted 95% of the time for white tails, occasionally use a shotgun or muzzleloader to shoot like 100 yard shots max so this is way outside of my ballpark of of experience that was awesome and that was all the more all the hunting this guy's done that was the longest shot he's ever taken oh yeah and the the longest shot before that was my shot last year on the

caribou so you guys have stretched and prior to that it was probably 95 yards so you guys have really stretched me um when it comes to firearms which is good but yeah we spotted that buck at a thousand yards or so and decided that we thought he was a shooter and uh yanni and myself and seth went tearing down the hill and went down the steep canyon at about 300 yards came up to this little rise at the bottom of this valley there's a small kind of knoll and we got to the top of that rise called the shooting knob shooting knob and uh couldn't can i interject real quick i want to point out an important part of coos deer hunting yeah when you're watching a coos deer and you're thinking like you're gonna go after it that's great you found a buck you're watching a coup is due and you're thinking you're going to go after it, that's great.

You found a buck, you're going to go after it. But the tricky question is, where exactly are you going to go? Because it doesn't really work generally. It doesn't work to get on his slope. You got to find a little perch or something where you can shoot over into his area. Like some kind of terrain feature where you might plausibly get there and look into his brushy little zone. You can't get on his, not that you can't, but typically it would not work to get on his slope. And this spot's set up perfectly in that way. Because you had a perch yeah had a shooting that i called a shooting shooting knob yeah and the

other thing that's important to point out i think that it was a thing i learned from this trip was the importance of before taking making that stalk you really need some reference points locked in as far as where you saw that deer last yeah because you're gonna lose it your changed perspective really flips things around so so we i remember seeing that there's really thick patch of junipers especially thick on this hillside and so we remember i remember seeing the buck and the doe in that on the the right side of that thick patch last but then it was actually seth who had made the very most important reference point was the fact that we had last seen the buck and doe next to a tree with a very unique white circle on it so when we ended up getting back to that shooting knob we found the thick patch of junipers and then we could narrow down our point

of focus even further by looking for that tree with the white circle on it so we really could zero in on where they were last and they were very very locked down, like we were talking about earlier. They hadn't moved very much at all. And we had come up with a little, we had come up with a very rudimentary signaling system using Yanni's Blaze Orange How to Gut a Deer Bandana. Yeah. Available at TheMeteor.com.

Currently out of stock, I believe, but coming back in stock soon. A little signaling system where if need be, like we agreed that if I didn't do anything, that meant nothing had changed. And if I can interject, I kind of wished that there was another signal

that we had had, which meant, what do I try to, which meant we were getting that from you many times when we looked at you, but we were not sure if you were just doing that because you didn't see us. Or I got bored. Or if you were doing it because the deer were still doing what it was supposed to do. Oh, I got you. So we needed some kind of confirmation that you actually saw us and realized that we were asking for the update. There no update yeah buck hadn't moved but we needed confirmation yeah

so i'm perched up watching the buck from afar and you're coming in and our agreement was if i don't do anything there's nothing you need to know from me if not if not i was going to take a orange bandana and tie it to a pole and uh point from my perspective what direction the deer went on the face of the slope but never needed to do it yeah so you know i looked back at you a handful of times and you weren't doing anything so the assumption was the deer was still in there just a dead stare on my face yeah that's what it was and came up to the top of that first knob creeped up really we crawled to the top of that knob and it was about 300 yards i think at that point and just could not see anything just we we stayed there a good decent bit i don't know 20 minutes yeah at least maybe

even 30 more glass and glass and glassing but no movement um so finally we could see that there was still more of that ridge that was hidden by the furthest edge of our glassing knob there was a slight rise and we just couldn't see beneath that and so we assumed then if this buck's still in there it's got to be beneath the rise so we had to make a final like 70 yard creep and finally decided to do that we crept in got right to the kind of highest point of that little rise got down on hands and knees and and that's when i spotted the doe stops glass see the doe um kind of made a game plan for what we were going to do next knew that there must be the buck somewhere nearby and um then i spotted the buck not too far away in the brush like just you know thick junipers and whatever other junks down there oak oak um

and i remember in this the first fleeting glance of him, I remember thinking, ah, it doesn't quite look like the buck we saw originally. And I turned to you, Yanni, and said, I don't know if it's the same buck. It looks like it has shorter tines. But then he moved off and crawled further and kind of got in position to where I could get a shot in that general area. So we got position, looking for them again, looking for them again. And then I'm like, hey, got the buck again. I could see this buck standing underneath that exact tree we had referenced earlier, the strange white circle tree.

He was right there underneath that tree again. In the shade, in the tangle. And I just remember saying, hey, there's the buck. And I range him 230 yards. So within range. And I'm looking at him and he's dark antlered and he's seemed whitish. I just could not see tine length. And I'm thinking to myself, God, I think this buck had longer tines that we saw earlier. I don't know. This buck's in range. I can't remember if we looked back i think seth was trying to get a camera on it and we asked him like can you see him is he look is it that buck

and he's he's like i'd shoot it if it was me and everything was kind of lined up you know it worked out well for the crew with yanni and seth were there and it was my first coos deer buck and looked pretty sweet so got settled on them and like you know like you mentioned earlier that was my longest shot ever on a on an animal so took my time getting really settled in nicely and had a bipod and the rifle set on my backpack and put a pad underneath my right elbow and just slowed it down as best i could um took the shot well it's funny i was watching the other buck through a spot and scope on a pretty narrow well we haven't yet pointed out the fact that this was not the original doesn't matter but just funny that i was yeah okay so go on well yeah so the point being that the buck i

ended up shooting was not the original one was not what was not the one i was watching to see what it would yes do but i'm staring at it through a spotting scope the one that we would always been looking at and i hear a shot and all of a sudden the buck runs into my field of view and through my spotting scope, and within a second falls over dead right in front of the buck I've been watching for all that time. And that buck seemed to not care about that at all, but eventually got like, yo, he kind of had an attitude like, yeah, better him than me. And then he went up and over top of the ridge and out of our lives.

I don't know how we never saw that other buck. Because you said it was so close, right? Can't see anything, man. It's too confusing. We talk about when he grunted right beneath us? We're not there yet. Not there yet. Then all kinds of weird stuff happened.

But we couldn't see him just because he was like the same reason we couldn't see the other deer before we moved. I think he was just below our... Yeah. The plane that we could see yeah i feel bad too man because i so badly wanted to help out and like look and stuff but i was running a camera and uh i'm always so torn i'd always rather just throw that camera in the ditch and this glass and be like there he is is. Don't shoot. Shoot. Whatever. But, man, I got to sit there and try to get my coverage. It's tough, man. Oh, man. You did good work?

Did good work. Well, we don't know yet. We'll see. I guess that's true. Mark's hunt might not even be included in the episode. We'll see. It's all shaky. Is this the first hunt you filmed?

No. No. How long has it been since you filmed one? Not that long. I filmed a little bit this fall yeah would you seek a deer hunt yeah with mark actually was that with you no kale was on that was you and i oh yeah tripod stand right i was filming cow on that hunt yeah and then uh i do a little bit here and there. And I think you did another one. You pick up a camera pretty often. Yeah.

But I feel you on the, like, not being able to look and see what's going on. I mean, and I often want to see what's happening, but I'm just stuck in the lens of my camera. Like, I don't see where the animal is. I don't get to pull out my binoculars so it's all like almost imaginary everybody's real excited about something i'm not looking at i'm like looking in the opposite direction dude but this trip i was like normally i'm like super super excited to shoot and i was yeah to film yeah good clarification um but like normally we'll film as every like hunters getting in and getting settled and pulling out their binoculars and i just wanted that part to get done so then i could sit down pull out my binoculars and start looking around you spotted

up a couple deer i did yeah i was getting a lot better. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. More on this trip than normal. You still had mama's milk on your lip when we picked you up, man. Dude, the first thing. We were talking about that today. Oh, yeah. Chris' first hunt. Nice old game spotter. Yeah. Yeah.

The buck I got was kind of like real standard sort of coos deer situation. I think there's a good example in there, though, because I was thinking about it. I got was kind of like real standard sort of coos deer situation. There was a, I think there's a good example in there though. Cause I was thinking about it. Cause, um, the terrain, um, your buck was locked,

locked down, uh, when we took off, but we did a lot of walking and sneaking and trying to get around for, for quite a while. Yeah. You go way the hell out of your way to try to eventually around for quite a while. Yeah, you go way the hell out of your way to try to eventually wind up in a spot where you're in his zone without him knowing you got into his zone. Yeah, and really didn't shave off.

I think I ranged him when we made the decision to go, and it was like 584 yards. And then 20 minutes of hiking around and sneaking, we were at 544 yards. Like we just, we did a lot of moving around to try to get to a spot where we could close distance. And then, and we weren't, we weren't effectively narrowing down that yardage. And then once we got in there, um, it, you know, it was a great stock, great hunt because there's always that apprehension of like, oh man, this, this cannot work out. This cannot work out because of the angle.

Once we, in order to close that yardage down to a comfortable shooting situation um it made the angle to the buck um very difficult made it a very difficult killing situation even though it was within effective range and this is kind of for a lack of a glass of a shooting knob right not a good really have a shooting knob i bet you found a shooting knob though but we had to poke and pry to find a a knob that would let you look up into his little spot there there's a lot going on up there too yeah at one point you guys had coos deer javelin and a coyote yeah me and seth were we stuck back and glassed from the original distance and yeah that that buck you ended up shooting was locked on with the doe four other bucks were kind of circling trying to move in on that doe and it was pretty cool is that your buck would

run one of those bucks off run off 30 40 yards and then storm right back to the doe make sure she was still there then he'd run off with a buck run right back and then yeah the javelin came passing right through maybe 20 yards beneath him at one point right around the same time the coyote trolled through and that buck stayed right next to the doe that you can see all the deer just their eyes following that coyote the whole path he took and then he left and then it was right back to the doe it's kind of a fun little wildlife watching situation i had there while you were stalking in it's kind of a fun little wildlife watching uh situation i had there while you were stalking in it's amazing that at least i won't see that footage until who knows long time from now yeah then you'll be like oh that's right that was cool couple months

no i always like uh it's fun to have that stuff um people be like hey did you take in your any photos from your trip like i took a tv show on my trip must be nice that was a very fun hunt though that was a good one who wants to be in charge of talking about how you make tamales? Hold on. Aren't you going to tell everybody how you got to shoot my buck for me too? Oh, you can go ahead and tell that story. You're just not saying anything.

You look all... Go ahead. It's hard to say things. Well, it's getting... It's tiring. Everybody's tired. I'm looking a lot of at Yonan's faces I really like that line voices

a lot of other folks talking but no after Steve shot his buck Steve and Chris walked up the hill to go

retrieve it find it recover it and Cal and I waiting down there and I forget did you just look up and go,

oh, there's another buck standing up there? It was just locked in place. No, I know, but did you see it? Is that how we found out about it? There was a small buck chasing the doe. Oh, yeah, we saw that. Two bucks chasing that doe. And then, yeah, and then another buck like bombed in and they eventually

chased the doe and right through where uh your buck expired steve's buck expired and i was kind of like oh my god hopefully one of these deer isn't steve's buck that just magically got up and ran away uh but yeah then that uh buck was down there in the peripheral view. He just showed up. I don't know. Mark had spotted him earlier, the same buck. Anyways, he's standing there looking down at us. And from our point of view,

it looks like he's 30 yards to the left of Chris and Steve. And you guys are up there making television. So Steve's not talking in a quiet voice. He's doing his thing, recovering the animal. And finally, you guys get done doing what you're doing and Steve is yelling down on us like, hey, come on up here. No.

You weren't? What were you yelling at us about? I didn't yell at you. We did. We got a whoop or something like that. Yeah. You got our attention no okay well a voice from off rich powder did i have occasion to go whoop not typically not not since i've done yeah i do remember cal you showed up you guys might have heard us talk because when you're

like when we were up there you could we were projecting pretty loud going whoop probably not whoop i don't remember a whoop but uh that might have been me actually the hey yeah might have been me well tell me more of a yeehaw all of a sudden you guys were hooting and hollering you guys recovered the deer. We recovered the deer. You did it. You made a little television. We made a little scene.

We filmed some stuff. Yeah, we found the dead deer. And then I remember hearing Cal being like, hey, can you guys take a couple steps to your left or whatever, to the north or whatever? No, he said, go north. I went south. Oh, yeah, go north. We went the wrong way. And he said, go i went south oh yeah go north we went the wrong way and he said the other way i specified a hundred yards now we just started yelling

because you guys didn't have a radio yeah we just started yelling we have a bucket 200 some yards you guys are 200 yards and we had 30 yards from the buck yeah and we're going, hey, can you move a couple hundred yards to our right? And you yell back, why? And we're like, well, there's a deer up there. Yanni's going to shoot him if you guys can walk way the hell off of that slope. That's what we did. You guys did. And the buck stood there through the whole thing.

That's insane, man. It's so crazy. The conversation is like, well, boy, it's nice, Buck. It's right there. This would be, you know, we only have so much time to, you know, fill the tag. And it's like, well, if I just yell at those guys and he stays there, kind of got to take him, right?

Yeah, we figured it would be worth a try. Right. We figured as soon as we started yelling, you know, the buck would just scatter. Ski-daddle. Leave the hill. It's hard to imagine what was going on with him. Yeah.

I think that doe was just, he knew he was the second biggest buck on the slope. It was batter up time for him because the first biggest buck was out of the equation. And those two smaller bucks were now chasing that doe. But you and Pounder were in between him and that doe, and he was like really, he found himself in a very contemplative situation. He did not move a muscle. No. No, it was really interesting, though.

I've never seen this before, obviously since I've never been in a situation like this where you're watching someone shooting an animal from a decent bit away, but I was glassing this whole thing thing watching it through my binos and both with your buck steve and janice i saw the deer react to the bullet before i heard the gunshot go off yeah that was pretty interesting oh yeah that was cool i was like oh what's he doing and then boom yes that was neat yeah so yeah deer just fell over well neither of them fell over

yeah my shot wasn't quite on the mark i missed them just a hair right i couldn't tell what i couldn't tell what went on in there man because one shoulder was completely just annihilated to the point where i didn't even bother trying to trim me well we took the shank that's how much was good of it was still you know edible and there was a hole going into the body cavity yeah on the inside of that shoulder but anyways the thing wasn't quite ready to die so steve walked over to it and uh had to sort of run it down. Shoot you up. Finally got one in its neck. Killed it. 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. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of 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 it's a hard hit makes the dream he's ready to talk about tamales i like that gray fox oh that was cool that was great fox

uh i like i like asking the boys down here about running to jaguars which happens yes yes it does happen jay said we would have probably seen the mountain lion. That didn't end up happening. Didn't see a mountain lion. I didn't even cut a track. Yeah. Saw one maybe kind of mushed track of a lion. I get the impression these guys run these cats. Like if they hear of a cat, one of these vaqueros sees one,

sees a track or something. Whoever they know with dogs is gonna run that thing yeah they got a stuffed one here kind i don't know if you'd call that even a stuffed one but a very like basic attempt at taxidermy of a lion outside there um yeah tamales so we made so today we made venison tamales. Yesterday and today. With guidance from Carolina. Yes.

We took four shoulders. And a chunk of neck. And keep in mind, a coos to your buck only weighs 100 pounds. And these things are lean. Unreal. Lean jean right now, man. They look like grey greyhounds because they've been rutting for a while i think they must have i think we're kind of toward the tail end of the they got no fat on them imagine taking a rolling pin and smashing out a chunk of uh wrigley spearmint gum and laying it out smoothing it out flat that piece of gum that is now flat after it's been chewed a little bit is not one right out of the

wrap no i'm saying right out of the wrapper and just smash that thing out that's how much fat my buck had on it i was amazed you know the fat they get around like inside their pelvis like a yeah the kidney fat and stuff yeah a couple little mini globs of fat there you know in the low like in the lower digestive like outside of the the lower digestive digestive track you'll find like some fat he had some fat there. Some fat around his kidneys. No body fat. The one we skinned out. Well, you skinned it with me. Yeah. In between the anus

and the end of the tenderloin. Right there. He had some fat in there. But nothing on the top of his... Not a lick. And when they're laying there, they look like a greyhound laying there yeah just amazed just man they work hard they don't eat the bucks don't eat when

they're rutting i was worried that the meat wasn't going to taste that good i was i was i thought for sure it'd be tougher than hell like a poor condition or something yeah but oh go ahead well i was gonna add i believe i'm right on this number that white tail deer up in my neck of the woods the number that i heard is that a buck during the rut up there can lose up to 30 of their body weight no shit whoa yeah from 30 somewhere in from how much they run. Somewhere in there, give or take. That's amazing. That's like me hunting doll sheep. How much you lost. So we took four full

front quarters. So four front legs. Boned out neck meat. What else we throw in there? Oh, cook some tongue the night before. Yeah. Real crispy little tongue little crispers what would you call those i think just cilantro white onion and a bunch of lime in there yeah like tongue cracklings yeah that was a different meal but we took uh four four deer quarters neck meat and then carolina boiled it in a pot for six hours

until the bones come out of the pot just clean yeah we should put a couple heads of garlic put some garlic in there and we picked all that meat didn't take long at all picked all that meat picked out because there's no fat to pick out barely to speak of picked out the sinew it wound up with two big imagine like a big ass salad bowl household big ass salad bowl two of those full of picked meat and then we had all that picked and then we took the boil the the. It's like boiled corn. Yeah, so it's bloated. Bloated. Yeah, it's soaked up a bunch of water.

It's what they call hominy, right? Yeah. Yeah, except for this isn't split. No, hominy is a part of the kernel. The hominy is a part of a kernel. That's right. So this isn't like a ruptured. This hasn't been soaking in water long enough to where the kernel is split it's it's just the whole just imagine like a bloated

corn kernel ran it through a grinder looks like a meat grinder like at a passing glance you think you're looking at a meat grinder but it's these two plates that mash together and the auger runs the corn out and you just mash and it winds up being like a wet cornmeal yes then you take all that meat juice that you use for boiling down the meat and wetting wet that even more put in a ton of lard healthy dose of lard put in salt put in way more chili powder than you'd ever think you'd put in there and blend that batter all up and then we forgot a part then you take your buck meat and you so you got your picked meat you take a pot and you melt all your lard in the pot and put garlic and onion in that pot and cook

it and then discard the onion which i thought was interesting yes then put all the meat in put in buckwheat water chili powder lard and make chili colorado again a lot of chili powder so you got a pot that's got chili colorado and then you got a pot that's got your mashed up cornmeal then you take corn husks and soak those in warm water until they're pliable and you lay out the corn husk you take a spoon and put a big healthy dollop of the batter the cornmeal batter on there and spread it all around. Then you take the chili Colorado and lay it in there like you're laying a hot dog on a bun

and you roll it up and fold it real special. And then you stack them into a pot and steam them. Man, those sons of bitches good. Yeah, that was good. How many did we make? That was good.

A lot. About 70. 70, 75. 70 tamales. And had leftover meat. Or did we use all of our meat? No, we had enough for chimichangas. That's right.

Yeah. Deep fried up some chimichangas. Wow. Did that use up all the meat? Nope. Nope. Really? No, there's a lot.

Still more? Yeah. Carolina's probably taken five-10 pounds home. Of the chili Colorado. Just the shredded meat. That's what's always tough on the tamale is your ratio of the maize

Is it maize? Maize. Corn. Some folks call it corn. Or masa to the meat. maize corn some folks call it corn or masa to the meat you know because you always feel like you're

stung if you get nothing but the but the masa so they don't they don't use up as much carne as you think but holy yeah I went round two this evening with several of us yeah when you cross the border back in the u.s you can you take your meat home

you can take your meat home on the bone you can take it home off the bone what you can't you got to clean if you want to bring a skull back you got to bring the skull back clean you got to bring the skull back clean. You can't bring a skull across that's not clean. So you got to boil it and clean it. The meat can go across on the bone. We're going to bring our tamales across. No problem. The tricky part is you can't bring a hide. Not that you can't. Remember I was talking about all those ticks if you want to travel back in the US and bring a cape like you want to get the deer mounted you need to get it that every

single tick on that cape is gone and the customs people will check that thing they find a tick you're back across the border am I right that seems impossible but I think most of Jay's clients cross with their capes. Just get in there and pick all them ticks.

Yeah. Have them picked. Yeah. Give someone 20 bucks to pick ticks. You'd think a high percentage evacuate the cape once that animal's been dead for a while. I'm sure that happens a little bit. Yeah, maybe if they haven't attached themselves yet, but I think most of the ones I saw are still bloated.

They're not going anywhere. I think a trick is to freeze them for a little while, make them real cold, you know, and then maybe they come off easier or something. Kill them, yeah. You got to go through there literally with a fine tooth comb and a pair of tweezers for a couple hours yeah i just bring this i've seen a pint jar full after one cape someone filled a pint jar with ticks that's cool two two cups of ticks uh man i would never i mean you know nothing against anyone that

does just personally i would never mess with that just bring the skull home set it on a school shelf so what else we have to do yanni because we still have to do that tonight that's right as far as like being legal beagle going across the border with her there's just some paperwork we get to fill out that says what we're bringing across. Okay. How much meat. And there is a tag. Yeah, you put a tag on. Okay. The antlers. Is that just a customs tag or is that like

an actual game agency tag? Yeah, it comes from the Mexican government. Really? Okay. The tag. But thes guys will check it oh yeah and when they have to inspect our meat let's pull out our tamales yeah like right there boy be like i counted those sons of bitches yeah that should be about it but i was gonna say yeah that uh carolina man that helped us make

these tamales uh that's something that jay set up too you know and that's something i think that anybody can get that comes down here and does a hunt with jay is uh you can just request that he uh um gets you a cook so for a very affordable price we ate some like super good authentic mexican food not every night we brought a lot of our own food but i think she cooked her own like recipes what three nights what else do we have how many tortillas do you think in colorado the tortillas we had italian one night and i put a tortilla in it. Yeah. It was so good. And I brought down some fish. Yeah, the fish was good. From my fish shack and she cooked that fish for us.

Chorizo. Last night. Cooked chorizo, chorizo and eggs. She left that in there. Yeah, she made hundreds of tortillas for us to eat. Hundreds. And she made a big pot of pozole. Which was amazing.

Really good soup. Mm-hmm. And what else do we have? Chili Colorado the first night chorizo the chorizo chorizo which is really good dinner and breakfast papas fritas oh man those are good yes which is the same on both sides of the border yeah but yeah there's something different about friend them in water. Yeah, I think that's what the hell is... Over a fire. She fried them over a huge fire outside. Whoa.

Okay. There we go. Fried potatoes. Fire-fried potatoes. But that was great, because it really lets us focus on the hunting and uh the production yeah it really it was noticeable late oh my gosh yeah i was like why are we getting to bed so early and it was because somebody was here getting food ready by the time we got back yeah and you'll be able to you'll be able to watch and see we filmed it and i presumably filmed it beautifully oh dude yeah the the long

kind of beautiful process of making tamales yeah of tamale production it was a nice scene you could do it in a day but it took two it's something it really should be done over two days. Yeah. Yeah. And we did an outdoor kitchen area over wood fire. A lot of it. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's dude. I can't wait to put it. I think it's going to be a really cool scene, man.

It's going to be a really cool scene. Carolina's awesome. Even though she didn't say much, she's kind of like a cool grandma-style guide passing on the knowledge of tamale making. Yeah. Which is cool. You guys were good laborers. I think she appreciated it.

Yeah. She gave you the unskilled jobs. I don't know. At times, I saw her laughing at us. Yeah. There were a couple. Yeah. I, a long time ago, had a bunch of muskox meat and gave muskox meat to a guatemalan woman and our deal that we struck was

i would get half my muskox meat back in tamales which is a good deal yeah because you want to get a bigger pile of stuff back than you gave like i gave her like i think i gave her like 20 pounds of muskox meat, and I got 10 pounds, which is a ton of tamales, 10 pounds of meat. And I wrapped them all up and put them in my freezer. And I just pulled those suckers out and ate them. They were good. Even frozen. Even frozen, thawed, and warmed up were wonderful. What's the best way to warm a tamale? Like reheat a tamale?

I feel like what I was doing, if I remember right, I feel like I was sticking them in my oven. I don't think I was microing them. I think I was throwing them in my oven. I wrapped them in foil. Yeah, or just steam them again. Re-steam them? Yeah.

That's what I would do. Lunch at the meat eater office for a while. I might even have to have another one before I go to bed i'll do it i'll do it oh yeah nightcap tamale yeah yeah all right well uh rick what's your um you know your closing thought your conclusion oh all right you can go back you can go back to luring in ladies. No, I haven't. That drone? No. Is that how much fun we had on the mountain? I mean, it's been a while since I've worked on one of these,

one of the shows. I was busy this fall, so I sadly didn't get to go on any of the adventures. I missed out on a F knack happily um but uh the first hunt i filmed was a coos deer hunt uh with remy warren that was your first foray into filming hunts yep yep it was yeah like i had never done it and i thought it sounds like it'd be a good experience but I didn't realize that it would be such a, something that I look forward to. You don't regard it as lowly? No, it's actually, I think it's kind of, in a lot of ways,

it's like everything that I like about filmmaking distilled into a very pure form. Does it, because you come out of nature documentaries and whatnot. Yeah, yeah. Do those dudes frown on you? Does that community frown on you? No. You'll go out and do the savagery? I don't really check in.

You don't care about their opinion on it? No. No. I mean, yeah, I feel like I'm more a part of just a filmmaking or documentary community, and then I have a niche, but I jump, I do a lot of different things, but I feel that it's, it's just a challenging thing to do to document these hunts in a way that conveys the aesthetic, the narrative,

everything you guys feel about the hunt. So there's just a lot of complicated factors and you just have to hike and keep up so i which i i enjoy i mean compared to a lot of the jobs i'm on you know if you're in hotels or you just feel pretty bad at the end of every day like uh yeah you feel bad and at the end of these days you might feel tired but you feel like you i don't know you feel like super yeah more like you're on vacation than you're at work dude the other day we did sorry yanni we did the we did a hunt successful hunt came back did a hundred push-up little a little lunch break. The hundo club. The hundo club.

Everybody got to a hundo, and then we went back out for an evening hunt, hiking all around. Oh, yeah. And then, yeah, you feel better at the end. I mean, we're going to bed at like 8 p.m. Just the whole deal. I mean, coos deer are easily one of my favorite animals to watch, or at least it's my favorite hunt that I've filmed.

I just really like the the process glassing it's very there's a lot of patience involved yeah i'm just i was i was happy to get to come back and it's like this is my third goose deer hunt so or filming you know which but i feel like i'm part of the part of the hunt itself so um yeah it was great i really i really liked the just visually uh this part of mexico is really beautiful and different than i thought uh yeah every morning and every evening you get just the killer sunset yeah great light really you know a lot really. And everything's spiny. Really cool plant.

I mean, everything's cool about it. Yeah, so. Well, we're glad you had fun, Rick. Yeah, I like coming along. Thanks, thanks. And, I mean, Cal, you know, I got to hang out with Cal most of the time. And he brought me coffee every day. Always had a warm cup.

Oh, man, he just treats me... I mean, in a lot of ways, it's the relationship between a cameraman and whoever they're filming. It's this interesting dynamic. Mark, I need you to take notes. Especially in a situation like this where I really am a non-hunter. I don't really know what I'm like. I'm not expert. I've, you know, I try, I do my best,

but having, uh, Cal being like, all right, we're going to do this. He's very patient, like explains the process or any, any does it both on camera to the potential viewer, but also to me. So I think he, um, I just really enjoy kind of being able to hang out with somebody that's kind of guiding me through the process. And hopefully that translates to good TV too and, you know, takes the viewer along for a ride. But I enjoyed wandering around with Cal out there. Actually, mostly we just sat, stared. And you spotted some deer. Very few.

I felt bad. I tried hard hard but i didn't have a tripod for my it was great it was not great it's hard super fun yeah dude i feel bad too every day for not spotting they're there here yeah you know they're there that's it's not yeah they were there and i just mitten not seeing them but What I'm saying is you're not alone. Even after a dozen. You guys are so good at it. I still feel that way. But I did like when you guys couldn't

amongst one another, because it happens to us because we just don't spend that much time behind binoculars for maybe as much time is when you couldn't find the animal that somebody else sees. It doesn't give me pleasure, but as much time is when you couldn't find the animal that somebody else sees it gives me it's not it doesn't give me pleasure but uh it because i often feel that like somebody else sees something i'm like i just can i don't know where you're looking you get explained very clearly where it should be

and you just can't see it what's what's happening there a lot of times the the one that sees it catches a movement. Yeah. Or catches it out in the open. Right. And so then they got a lock on it. And then it moves into a shitty spot. Yeah, yeah. And then other people, like the original finder,

it gets in a spot where the original finder wouldn't be able to find it either if they didn't already know it was there. And then it gets really frustrating. Yeah, but it didn't happen to me. No, but it... Do you follow what I'm saying? Oh what i'm saying because you wind up being like well okay but he's kind of behind that bush look you'll see his foot sticking out no and it is something about

once you notice something it becomes visually more obvious then but yeah but i like seeing that dynamic unfold because you guys are all very good at spotting things. And so when you get frustrated and not being able to. But I think you're specifically talking about. Because I feel that way often. The talking in. Yeah, talking in. The whole process is just like.

I regard that as, this is going to sound bold. But I think that I regard that as one of my specialties. Talking people. but i think that uh i regard that as one of my specialties talking people i feel that i'm i'm i i feel that i do a pretty good job trying to talk people into where i'm looking you know why because i take the time i take the time i think cal uh does some big leaps he doesn't walk you through every tree i'm like okay and then there's that tree and then if you immediately go then there's that tree and then if you go six o'clock from him there's that bush cal's like oh and over one thing i would do uh more consistently is the uh is your o'clock method the o'clock is the only way to play if you don't run if you're not running center o'clock to describe what we're talking about

is you see something trying to tell people where it is so i will i go to like a feature that everyone would agree with start with and it could be anywhere just start with something that everyone could agree with on like that big huge rocky peak and people like got it and then work from there okay it's a good method go towards seven o'clock from there until you see you have an unfair advantage because you're such a you know a natural teacher and a patient that does help it does help no frustration mark what do you got if you had to take the whole like one thing one thing from the whole thing what would that one thing be that has to be my concluder yeah it's kind of like the spirit of concluders or you can come out of the left field i don't know you can talk

about rick whatever well well my one thing is is kind of it's kind of a two-parter i guess because the one thing that struck me the most about this what was so cool was the the taking of something that's so familiar to me and then i'm so passionate about white tail deer so familiar to me and that I'm so passionate about, whitetail deer, so known to me, and then throwing that into a situation in a landscape so unknown to me. So seeing this, my favorite game animal, without a doubt, whitetail deer, here and in a place that's so

foreign and new was a lot of fun. Everything was new about this. Not just the place, but also as we talked about, you know, this type of hunt. So that was really, really fun, really interesting. But what it did leave me with was a desire to go back to a little bit of the familiar, which was I wanted to be closer to these animals like one of the things i love about hunting white tails back home is being 20 30 yards from them and hearing them and being afraid to move or make

the slightest sound or different things like that so coming out of this i think the biggest thing i'm taking away is is how awesome it was and how i want to try to bow hunt one of these suckers someday. People do it. Yeah. It just feels like an entirely different approach. Yeah. It'd be so different, so difficult. But this kind of leaves me charged with wanting to try that someday

because it would just be neat to try to figure out some way to slip in really close to one of these guys. I think you'd want to get into a situation where you had a buck you had like a like a some of that rutting activity where you got a doe and there's bucks chasing around just get down in that zone and see what happens yeah i think it's i mean like you said it's certainly possible play the wind get in that zone and then just kind of try just wait and see what opportunities or if he moves yeah you'd spend a lot of time having no idea where they were because you're on their slope with them yeah and you might hear something but it'd be tricky but i mean i don't you know people do it

yeah well it's like you know the other day after i shot my buck you came up and we had seen this other deer and then all of a sudden we heard a deer grunting and he came right by us i mean he must have been within 40 50 yards probably but you can never see him he was down slope enough and that the brush was tall enough and he was small enough probably that right there probably within bow range no idea though where he was yeah i had a buck at 10 yards we had to be jumping over a road going, get a dainty little bat. The little guy grunt. Yeah, but so cool, and I just really appreciate you guys having me along. I mean, this is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,

probably for me or a lot of people, and, man, I enjoyed it. That was good to have you, man. Glad to get something out of it. Yeah. Calhan? Calhan, as my kids call him. Calhan. Hey, Calhan. Yeah. Cowhand? Cowhand, as my kids call him. Cowhand? Hey, Cowhand.

Yeah, just a phenomenal trip. I guess observations, just the scale. Like, the grass isn't abnormally tall. The deer are just short. Like, it's knee-high grass um and i had i definitely had a hard time like making my brain put these these deer at the proper scale over and over again um and uh they're gorgeous critters um really really had a good time. Really enjoyed the terrain. Real ankle-breaking hills out here, though.

Like, all that loose rock. Round, rolling, loose rock. Got to see a coati, which was pretty hilarious. And that was a good Rick Smith. We were hiking up the road, and he's like, oh, you know, I think this poop here is from a quaddie. Cody. Well, so there's a couple of...

Different ways to pronounce it. I don't want to hash it out. Go ahead. Yeah, anyway, it's like a... Souped-up raccoon monkey. Exactly. Yes, thank you. And I was like, oh like oh yeah you know i saw one of those down on the yucatan on the side of the road one time yeah you see them out they

come out at night digging like looking around the beach for shellfish and crazy stuff yeah really cool and uh you know later on that day we're sitting on this ridge, getting outsmarted by these coos deer bucks. And I stand up and look and Rick was, you know, always attentive like Rick always was. So he was locked in his binoculars down on the ground. And I was like, oh, my God, like, Rick, you're, and I couldn't remember the name. So I'm like, you know, Mexican Bush Monkey. Rick, get up. So that was super fun.

It was just a great trip, man. All of it. Just odd observations at this point. I'm getting kind of tired. But the meat was fantastic. The people were fantastic. I love the pace of life, and Beto and Carolina down here were huge parts of the trip.

Carolina. Carolina. And yeah, stellar crew. One thing that i always love about running around the woods with uh photographer types is the fact they um they like to notice and it's their job to notice also like all the all the good extra stuff you know it's not just the deer it's the sunrises the sunsets the big thorns the um the bonus critters um and uh that's really enjoyable ridge powder viva mexico bro that's all you gotta say you loving it loving it

sunsets i mean that's fine man yeah you like filming that sunset oh dude sunsets down here we're big throbbing droner dude spiritual awakenings in those things man they're crazy it's cool it's really cool down here johnny's I think that's what they called you at the border. John East? Something like that. No, actually, I think that the guy at the Edwana, we got our tourist visa. I think he actually pronounced it properly. No, man.

I was standing there waiting for him to pronounce it because I was excited about what would happen. He said John Ease. Anyway, I thought he did a better job than normal. Yeah, I love Coos Deer. What I like about it when I always leave, I like the fact that I still feel

like a real beginner at this thing and hunting them. And it's great to have a query out there that I'm unfamiliar with and that every time I come down for a hunt, I feel really like the odds are against me. We see a lot of little bucks. I think if you just didn't care what kind of buck you're going to shoot, then I wouldn't feel that way because you probably could get that done in a couple days.

But if you set out to shoot something that's, you know, whatever, a little bit bigger than average, older than average, however you want to put it, it's a real challenge, and it's not easy to do. And I like that. Yeah. I like that. just to be just a beginner it is the kind of thing where you you're thinking like oh man next year i'm gonna because it's just you never feel like you got it totally figured out yeah i think we stayed down here for two more weeks and guided you know four guys a piece that would add up pretty quick yeah yeah a week at a time here and there and yeah i'm with you though dude they're tough great it's

instantly addicting my favorite part of the trip was honestly making the watching the tamales get made that was great, because it's like you encounter people in life that you're just not... You don't really know what their trip is, right? And they don't understand. You don't really understand the details of their life and you don't understand the details of their life.

And you're probably not even equipped to understand the details of one another's lives and then the language barrier makes it even that you're especially not going to understand the details of each other's lives um but there's like an empathy there like a like a human empathy or desire to connect it was just cool to uh be able to spend a bunch of time with someone and like learn some food preparation like that and and it winds up being that you get you just get the sense that like people are enjoying themselves and and feeling not entirely different you know and that's the kind of thing like you know to be in a situation where you've, it's a strange relationship to have with someone. Someone that you don't know and you're down filming

and so you hire someone to do some cooking for you and you can't talk really that well. It's just an unusual relationship, right? It's a relationship that tends to make me, that kind of relationship makes me uncomfortable because I feel like there's somehow like an unequal footing in some way um but then to be able to hang out today doing that and watch someone do something and and uh like do it well and do it very beautifully i thought it was cool it was a nice i mean i love the hunting you know the hunting's

great um you know come back many times do it we're already talking about coming back next year but like those little connection points i think are pretty cool would have been a completely different trip without that yeah just would have been and kind of her relationship to, you know, attitude about deer meat. It's a coveted thing. Yeah. You know. It was awesome. Yeah, it was fun to watch, man. And then just like the measuring cups.

Yeah. Just everything by just eyeball. Just like having done it and done it and done it and done it and done it. And then a pair of hands that have seen a tremendous amount of work not specialized work work yeah like work work yeah hands like that don't just happen no no i like looking at all the guys, everybody's hands. They're all work. Like a lot of time. Yeah. It's good,

man. It sets your head, right? Some trips kind of set your head, right? You know, it's fun. All right.

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